serious question for men who’ve been in relationships with women, not gonna elaborate on context for the time being but might later: how do you hold women responsible / accountable for ways they’ve hurt you? (in your own sensemaking at least, not necessarily confronting them)
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okay this was a little too vague so in a bit more detail: i have a lot of trouble getting angry at women for hurting me, generally speaking i take on all the blame myself, there’s something wonky here about treating women as perfect blameless angels or as like moral children
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and i am wondering if other men here have struggled with *that* and what they did about it? this is sort of pre- angrily confronting them because the problem is i mostly don’t feel angry but i… worry the lack of anger reflects a distorted view of the situation
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and the genders are specific in the situation b/c i feel like for me this goes back to deeply internalizing feminist memes as a kid about how men are the ones hurting women all the time and we should all feel very bad about it
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“QC doesn’t this probably have something to do with your mom too” oh you best BELIEVE it does, she’s the only woman i really know how to be angry at but i still don’t expect her to ever take responsibility for anything she did to me
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alright so i gotta say i’m frustrated by a lot of the responses here and here are some snippets from a convo with a friend (who actually inspired this thread) that get at why. this is sharp trenchant analysis, get it while it’s hot
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okay i also want to be clearer about this - when i talk about "responsibility" and "accountability" i am explicitly *not* talking about "blame" or "fault," that's why i used the words i used and not those words
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
i do this by holding everyone to the same standard (none). there is no blame, there is no fault, everything happened exactly the way it had to. i've still cut certain people off even after forgiving them because i can't ask them to be other than who they are
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when i reflect on *my own* mistakes, i don't blame or fault myself, i try to see the ways in which i could not possibly have done anything else given who i was and what i had access to at the time, *and* i hold myself responsible and accountable for doing better *anyway*
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i believe that i have a responsibility to the people around me to become a better person, own up to my mistakes, try to clean up my messes if i can. the question i am trying to ask you guys is: do you hold women to that same responsibility? how? if not, why not?
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dude just NO. the point is to not let anyone be "responsible" for anything ever. its not that i CANT TELL IM DOING IT its just that its a bad game to play (zero sum) if youre going to RELY on someone repairing any sort of damage they do
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I’ve always ignored it until you can’t ignore it anymore and then it’s time to end the relationship. I’ve left a couple jobs that way, ended quite a few romantic relationships over it and stoped talking to a few family members.
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That's in the context of an ongoing relationship. You can't really hold someone responsible if they're not interested in being held responsible?
You can't hold someone responsible who you're not currently interacting with except as some weird 'validity of blame' or some such.
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Low key you are my favorite “let’s learn to be responsible for ourselves” account
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My take is that stuff like "anger" "responsibility" etc.. imply some kind of pre-agreed set of expectations that both parties have agreed to satisfy. Then, either party can have "justified" anger towards the other for failing in their responsibility to uphold these expectations.
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Of course, most of the time, there is no explicit agreement. You're probably angry because that person didn't uphold a default expectation that you have of *all* people that you interact with, which is personal to you and possibly unknown to them.
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