What exactly is wrong about this story from my childhood?
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That’s the way I was taught as a kid though. I was raised to never put your hands on a girl, and treat girls like you’d treat a princess.
No no no no no. That’s old-fashioned and needs to go. That kind of thinking takes away women’s autonomy and perpetuates the idea that they need men to care for them, which throughout history has put women in awful situations. Look, obviously don’t put your hands on anyone, unless you have to in self defense. Treat girls and women like people. With respect but not like princesses. Women aren’t princesses.
Hunter I don’t want to come down on you to hard, but women generally don’t want to be seen as princess. As a woman, being thought of this way makes me uncomfortable. I feel it puts me on a pedestal. That men look at me as someone pure and helpless. When what I want to be is seen as a full human, someone who is independent, flawed, and respected as an autonomous adult.
You shouldn’t put your hands on anyone, including women. You should afford women this respect not because we are special princesses but because we are people.
By all means, if a woman needs help, help her, but also help other men when it’s clear they could use a hand, or someone to back them up.
Be considerate, to everyone.
…yeah…that “princess” stuff doesn’t really fly these days because it’s reductive. The implication is that girls/women are precious little things that need to be cherished and protected instead of…people…
If you honestly want to tell this story and get a better reaction, after you “put the bully in his place”, just says that you know it’s kind of fucked up but you don’t really regret it. Leave out the nonsense about getting cheered and the flirting and the knight stuff because it’s unbelievable.
Then go learn some feminism, my man.
It seems like you are shocked no one is giving you kudos for this. It’s not that great of a story.
The thing is, by telling stories like this you’re just keeping tired, sexist tropes alive. If you have the opportunity to really stand up to a bully, whether theyre bullying you or another kid, that’d be great, and you could talk about it when bullying comes up, like here’s something I did that worked. It shouldn’t be about “saving” a girl.
And violence shouldn’t beget more violence. You know, that whole two wrongs don’t make a right.
Nor does it work – escalations in violence usually just fueling cycle after cycle of violence.
Beaning somebody in the face could’ve caused serious harm – it seems that was one of your embellishments, but just hearing it…yikes. No wonder people are reacting poorly you to you. The dude who brings a gun to a fist fight is never the hero; he’s the asshole unnecessarily ramping up the aggression.
Embellishments = all the stuff you said to glamoursize yourself.
I’m not going to explain toxic masculinity, if you can google this site you can google that.
But if you take one thing away, view and treat women as people; treat all people with respect.
Don’t be chivalrous to women, be considerate to all people.
I feel like you might be a dude that would benefit from this particular advice website:
I think this is the part of toxic masculinity most relevant right now:
“The idea that Real Men should be prepared to be violent, even when it is not called for.
For example, a common response to women’s tales of experiencing street harassment is for a man who’s listening to say, “If I was there, I would have punched [the harasser].” This is problematic.”But here’s the whole description:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=Toxic%2bMasculinity&=trueYou may not believe all of these things, and if you don’t that’s good, but being raised to treat women as princesses makes it hard to relate to them as people, and you could fall into these ways of thinking.
