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German police chief Dirk Peglow has stated on national television that his advice to women who want to avoid violence is to avoid relationships with men. This has naturally caused some controversy, and although it will likely be forgotten soon, I do think it shines a spotlight on some topics worth discussing.
First, this is clearly not meant to be taken literally. In the broader context, the comment is based on the fact that reports of sexual assaults have increased over the past year in Germany, and he simply meant to highlight the fact that most assaults are not perpetrated by strangers but people you know. Still, the way he chose to frame it matters. Public perception would have probably been much different if the man had specifically highlighted men with Arabic backgrounds as being dangerous, even though a similar argument of "just educating people on statistics" would still have been accurate. He could have also chosen to to warn women against certain behaviors. "If your man is violent, get out before it escalates" is a complete sentence with a clear call to action that fits neatly into a soundbite. If the goal was to help women, this advice would also be much more actionable than the ridiculous "don't date men at all", making it more likely to actually help people. Alternatively, he could have chosen to not be alarmist at all. "German streets are quite safe, and crime overall is down" would have emphasized that women are unlikely to be assaulted by strangers in public, and would have helped to spread some confidence in the population.
The field of medicine is very aware that undue anxiety presents a risk to personal health. Doctors are generally quite conservative when it comes to recommending blood tests or other diagnostic procedures to seemingly healthy patients. This is because false positives and the associated stress can lead the patient down an expensive and anxiety ridden path of uncertainty and increasingly invasive medical procedures that can significantly affect quality of life and mental health. The risk of overdiagnosis is great enough, that even if you were a billionaire with ample money to spare, a good doctor would still recommend against screening for illnesses when you show no significant symptoms. When you are a public official though, care for the mental health of your citizens apparently goes out the window. Making inflammatory statements that cause anxiety among women, shame among men, and divide the population are apparently fine as long as they result in viral video clips and conform to feminist dogma.
So I wonder: Why did he phrase it like this? Telling women to blanket avoid men is a borderline impossible ask. If he really wanted to help women, he should have spoken of specific character traits (violence or addiction for example) that they should stay away from. Is he part of some invisible cabal, attempting to lower German fertility rate and weaken the nation?
Maybe he just doesn't care about the repercussions his words may have on the German people. Politics seems to often select for people that care very little about their constituents, and are mostly just there to climb the social hierarchy whatever it takes, so maybe this message was a way for him to fit in with his peers. If so, this is potentially quite worrying. The incentive structure should ideally reward public officials who have the best interests of the citizens at heart, and punish those who use their position as a means to a selfish end. If this is not the case, the we could see some truly horrible politicians in the future.
Or maybe the man is actually a devout feminist. A true believer who legitimately thinks that "Men are dangerous" is an important message that must be spread in order to turn society into a better place. It just seems insane to me that an adult man would believe this. Surely he must see that his warning implicates himself and his friends as dangers to women as well. Do men like that even exist?
The answer is simple. It's not about making women safe, it's about dragging men as a political class. There's never much trouble finding a member of a group to be the public face of opposing it. Mearsheimer, Candace Owens, Milo etc.
This is not a public service announcement to reduce female risk of victimization, this is a political blood libel aimed at shoring up the paranoia of the sort of bigots who think all men are racist patriarchal scum (but not the good Mr. Peglow).
Right, but using "men" as your outgroup is ridiculous, no? Like, we are talking about literally half the population here, including the speaker himself.
I understand that there is political power in uniting behind a common course, and that there is utility in naming a smaller but still decently big group (immigrants, jews, roma, etc.) that you can blame for all your problems. But the fact that it is possible to just blame "men" is wild. Even wilder that so many men men go along with it. The same "bigots who think all men are racist patriarchal scum" will absolutely turn on him the moment it becomes politically opportune to do so.
It is less than optimal, certainly; however, it can be made reasonable with a slight change: namely, reduce the scope from 'all men' to 'men who claim that certain actions by a woman constitute irrevocable consent to sex'¹.
If Alice does not want to have sex with Bob at this time, and has made this clear to him, and Bob forces himself upon Alice, Bob is always in the wrong. This does not change if Alice stays overnight at Bob's house rather than risk dying of hypothermia, it does not change if Bob paid for Alice's dinner, it does not change if Alice got drunk and pursued sex with every other man in their circle, it does not change if Alice eagerly consented to sex with Bob last week, and it does not change if Alice and Bob declared at a large public ceremony and in official records that they intended to have an ongoing sexual relationship; the same applies if the gender of either or both is reversed.
I would advise my daughter to avoid dating anyone who disputes this.
¹cf. claims that consenting to sex constitutes an absolute acceptance of the obligation to pregnancy.
This again seems like putting words in my mouth. I already stated I would be fine with specifying the advice into avoiding men who exhibit certain traits. Pressuring you into sex against your will could reasonably be one such. But that is not what this man did. He implicated every man as equally dangerous. This is useless and makes every man his outgroup. Retreating to your motte when criticized does not erase the bailey argument.
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