this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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Fauxmoi
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What a shitshow of a comment section.
The facts:
This leads to three things:
A. Many women feel unsafe around men, particularly those they do not know well. (Points 1 and 4)
B. Many men feel prejudiced in conversations on this topic (Points 2,3, and 5)
C. The discourse runs in circles between A and B, failing to change anyone's mind because either 1+4 or 2+3+5 more important depending on the speaker.
To add, it isn't just prejudice in conversations but social inclusion, workspace hostility, and community resource allocation biases. It is a prejudice when women prefer less men around, especially in public spaces and spaces meant to be shared. But some prejudices are more equal than others.
Boys and men are often harmed by messaging around sexual assault that says over and over, all men are violent people who cause harm. Supporting the men caught in the crossfire between women's advocacy and sexually predatory men,can exist without undermining the effort for women. However, if your efforts to change or erase male behavior can't be accomplished without harming innocent men, then why should those men, or society, support that effort? How can they? You've decided some people can be sacrificed for the interests of women without their consent. That isn't advocacy, it's supremacy.
Your points are correct but I disagree with your conclusion. It's not deciding that some people will be sacrificed (also a bit extreme of a word choice for feeling put out by discussions of a demographic you belong to), it changing the proportion of people sacrificed in the hopes of reducing the number of people raped. The shift is away from teaching women that it's all on them. Their fault or their responsibility. Objecting when the balance changes says that it's not sacrifice you object to, but it being men. "The status quo is better than the cost of fixing it".
When you ask why men should support anti rape education if it makes them feel bad, the answer is supposed to be "because they understand rape is worse than the cognitive discomfort of discussing awful things people like them did".
Lets check the math here.
According to the USA's statistics (I will use it here because it is quite high), it is about 5 rapists per 100 000 people.
A lot of offenders are multiple offenders. Comparing that to the reported rape occurrences and the actual estimations, assuming average lifespan of 75, if a man is 30 he needs to personally know ~60 men his age to statistically know a rapist, and about 28 men his age if he is 60.
I do not think therefore your sentence is true. I do believe that most men personally know a rapist, but hopefully they don't know about it.
According to the USA's statistics (I will use it here because it is quite high), it is 37.5 per 100 000 people.
This is yearly data. Estimates are that in the USA only 1 in 4 performed rapes is reported. Assuming an average life of 80 years, and (from USA statistics that about 80% of victims are younger than 30), a 30 years old woman needs to know 6 women to statistically know a rape victim. And among 70 years old, just 5.
Cause you are most likely to know them but not know they're perpetrators. Remember, you're most likely to get SA'd by someone you know vs someone you don't know. It could be a relative of yours. It could be a friend you least expected or most expected. But don't expect you would know who it was or would be.
Points 4 and 5 are contradictory. Assuming men and women are in equal proportions in the population and distribute normally, the only way this would be possible is if somehow all the men in a single neighbourhood commit all the rapes around the city. This doesn't stand up to common sense.
The real problem here is arguments of authority are presented without the possibility to disagree with them, even as they don't hold up on face value.
They aren't contradictory if a drastically small portion of men are doing a hell of a lot of sexual violence.
That said, point 5 should be "most men do not believe/know any men they know are rapists". That can take many forms, such as not knowing their work buddy's personal life, thinking serious offenses are less serious than they are, not seeing any warning signs, choosing not to see warning signs, not recognizing warning signs…
Most rapists seem to not be telling the guys that they're raping people (though I'm a chick so idk), they're keeping quiet, hiding it, reframing it, etc. And most men aren't shown/don't learn the signs that a guy is predatory, in something I think can be compared to how people raised with a narcissist in the household can sense it, while those who weren't may not be able to see through the charming mask.
Distribution of male rapists also can't be assumed to be uniform. So clusters will create spaces where significantly fewer men know a male rapist, which will skew the median significantly.
Victims and perpetrators aren't 1-1. Sexual violence isn't distributed normally - minority of men commit a majority of the sexual assault.
Knowledge of that perpetrator is spread through the network of every woman they victimize, while it is limited to his own personal network of male non-victims.
This is before considering the fact that people are more likely to discuss being a victim than being a rapist. Even if each rapist had exactly 1 victim, it would still be more likely for women to know someone who was raped than for the male acquaintances of the perpetrator to know that they know a rapist. Doubly so given that many rapes are not officially reported, and many that are do not get prosecuted.
I have many uncles and male cousins. I don't think any of them are rapists, but the stats are pretty decent at least one is. All of my aunts have stories of perverse behavior by males, and one was kidnapped and raped repeatedly.
You wouldn't know if any of your friends is a rapist. It's not like they would tell you.
The 57 men in that Cornell group chat knew their friends were rapists.