I'm not saying it is one way or the other. Regardless, playing the sexism/bias card here is overreacting: you have one hypothesis, OP has another, neither of you has presented any evidence or argument. Larry David doesn't count.
That is, if a man understands the concepts of societal pressures, they still may not be immediately aware of this societal pressure; it may not be obvious to them, as they do not experience it.
That women are expected to be polite and accommodating is absolutely sexist, and resisting that pressure can sometimes be just as dangerous as giving in to it.
But that men are expected to not cry and be strong and dominant and all that crap, that is just as harmful. To men, and to society.
I think it can arise due to an imbalance of whatever sort. I've been in that position with males with whom I didn't want to escalate a situation and with males while on their home turf (say, in a strange country). But I tend not to fear being assaulted by a woman or tricked/trapped by a woman in a foreign country. People routinely get scammed because they are too polite or fearful to say no or walk away.
Females might feel that imbalance a little more?
Here we go again. Somebody pointing out gender bias is blamed for being sexist.
"It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women"
as this is making wide sweeping assumptions about men behaviour based on the world view of the poster not because of pointing out gender bias.
Same paragraph ...
If we are to tackle social problems, we can't argue about language of the problem for fear of being branded as *ist
we don't do this about high blood pressure, or diabetes. The way you are arguing is actually a logical extension of the original observation in the parent. The original statement was actually present rather well.
You make the correct observation that women and men have the same mental faculties (if taken as a whole, individuals will vary.) However you make a grand gesture of pointing out that women and men are the same. We know this, the original post implied this.
no. its just pointing out that empathy is a difficult skill.
Sure but which gender does society place more pressures on?
Unless we can get a well defined and agreed upon definition of 'more social pressed' and a way to measure such, we could spend all day running in circles on this issue.
I'm not sure that there is a good, unambiguous, and meaningful way of doing a unidimensional quantification of that to make that comparison. Its probably better to recognize that each gender has different socially-imposed expectations, that create problems in different situations and present different opportunities for conflicts with between internal preferences and drives and external expectations.
You can then meaningfully discuss differences (including "which gender is more affected") between pressures in particular contexts, such as pressures to accommodate social advances in situations that compromise personal safety, without getting into a competition on the vague issue of "which gender is exposed to more social pressures" in some murky overall sense.
It's being used to downplay the original statement -- not add to it.
Did you know that the effects of non-conformance have different outcomes with different people. You might say that is a useless thing to say, and you'd be right. Just as the non-explanation you put about genders and non-conformance is as well. And my post had nothing to say that it wasn't asymmetric, so your response was changing the subject.
The grandparent post you mentioned in your post before was asking for evidence before assuming that females were more susceptible to societal pressures, as that is playing to a stereotype. He suggested that it is wiser to take a neutral view. My post corrected you when you said that that post was trying to downplay the societal pressure, it wasn't.
Your response with the "all lives matter" sideshow is changing the argument again and is quite dishonest. Just like you misrepresented the "grandparent post".
Just so you don't get me wrong.
Certainly a highly trained female body builder is an exception, but they are also vanishingly rare in the population and very unlikely to be randomly chosen.
Sorry. This is one area that feminism doesn't cover with its hypothesis of equality.
Most of the violence and rape committed to male victims has male perpetrators. Does it follow that most men can overpower an average man? Are feminists still to blame here?
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Perhaps this can shed a new perspective on why women and men may or may not bend to societal pressures differently.
When's the last time you were hollered at to smile more, for instance?
Sorry, but I'm going to have to call out this statement as sexist. There are also several other strange "facts" being passed around in other comments which are similarly biased. To be clear, I'm not calling you sexist. In fact, I think your comment makes a great point about submission to societal pressures leading to these sorts of problems.
Getting back to the quoted statement, I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated by societal pressures. I also don't think men find it hard to understand this. If there's data to show otherwise, I welcome it. In its absence, I believe it more wise to hold this neutral view rather than perpetuating a gender bias.
Let's use Curb Your Enthusiasm as a means to elucidate my argument. The lead character in that show gets into all manner of uncomfortable and disastrous situations as a result of bending to societal pressures; not wanting to be "rude". The lead character is male and I'll bet more guys than not can relate. Perhaps not to the same scale as what is portrayed in the show, because the show is meant to be entertaining, but perhaps more on the level of The Office (US) awkwardness.
So I doubt that societal malleability differs between the genders. You're still right in bringing it up, though, because indeed this habit of not wanting to be rude is clearly a contributing factor to cyberstalking cases. I just don't think it's what leads to a greater number of females being victims versus males.