i think the "schrodinger's rapist" meme actually fucked me up subtly but really badly. somewhere along the way i internalized that literally every woman started their interactions with me by assuming that i was literally the worst possible kind of man
Conversation
there's a specific pattern to when i feel like i'm capable of starting a conversation with a woman i don't know and it boils down to "do i have reason to believe that she has reason to believe that i am not literally a rapist"; without that i am overwhelmingly terrified
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if we have even a single mutual friend or are attending the same event together i have no problems because that's enough to overcome that one hurdle. vibecamp was particularly nice here because everyone just knew me from twitter already which was *extremely* relaxing
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otherwise i feel like i have to... somehow overcome this burden of having been assumed to be a rapist, while not *talking* about that and pretending that she ought to believe that i am just a normal person? just absolute insanity why the fuck did i decide to do this
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okay yeah this is making some things click into place. the whole concept of men cold approaching women has always confused me *so much* on a visceral level and i think it's because of this specific thing. fucking hell
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I used to kind of have this fear as well. One thing that helped me get over it, as fucked as it sounds, was thinking about how most rapists already have some preexisting relationship with their victim.
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Playing the tape backward, if I *don't* have such a preexisting relationship with someone, and if I'm able to relax and come off as comfortable in my own skin, most people will pretty quickly relax in my presence.
That was the thought process that helped me get there, at least.
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