Sean – I feel where you are coming from, and if I understand your greater point correctly, I’m with you.

From my (male) point of view, when other men protest their NOT being Schrodinger’s Rapist, those are the ones I’d personally keep my eye on. It is my experience that the more someone (seemingly unsolicited) protests what they are not, it’s far more likely it’s what they are. I guess my point being that I get your POV of potential.

As a side note, after this discussion yesterday, I had a completely different view of the world. It really helped me, and it was just little things. I was the last one in the office last night other than our cleaning lady. She is Latina, and speaks very little English. I know I make her nervous (actually the whole office of men does), but last night keeping what I learned here in mind, it changed our interaction. It was a little thing, but I felt I got what could be concerning her much, much more than ever before. Same with the young lady collecting shopping carts from the dark parking lot I was walking through. Little things, but I felt I was looking at the world through different eyes.

@Sean:

I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and I genuinely think that your heart is in the right place.

However, I think there’s a staggering amount of–let’s be charitable and call it naivete–necessary in order to think that the problem with men like TrackerNeil is that they can’t understand what we’re saying in our lady-language, and need to have it explained to them by a guy.

These men aren’t, collectively, any less intelligent than the men who Get It, nor are the bloggers and female commenters here less adept at communicating with men than you are.

The problem is that these men are so deeply invested in their privilege that when someone points out something unpleasant about its existence, they don’t want to think about it. They choose to continue bleating about their poor, poor privilege and how TRAGIC it would be if they had to surrender a teeny, tiny piece of it.

OTOH, they are more likely to listen to a man than, apparently, 600 women. So I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, in which case, knock yourself out, and thanks for trying either way.

@Liza-the-second: You’re totally correct to call me on that, because that’s what my words said in many ways. My sincere desire is only to try and bang away from every direction until some light shines through to a perhaps limited number of men. I have no idea if hearing it from their mothers, spouses, or female friends is more effective than hearing it from another man. I’d like to believe that a man would trust his mother or sister instead of some random dude on the interwebs, but…

Man that “but” really depresses me.