I wanted to say thankyou for the intelligent discourse, and tell you that you hit the nail on the head that one.

I would like to say, yes, my response is out of fear. Fear of seeing sexism and racism grow. And I also feel that fear is valid. As pointed out, the statistics of being a white male myself (even if I’m a minority in things like sexual identity/preference, and religion), I often do find myself surrounded by people who ARE part of the oppression who assume just by my skin color and biological sex that for some reason I’m on their side.

And that’s why I feel my fear is valid. Because that opening is all-too familiar. “I have a hard time in life, and it seems related to this[sex and/or race] group who is somewhat to blame… oh, and I have some statistics to back it up.”

It’s a classical way a guy at a bar will start a conversation with me before going into some racist neo-nazi rant; a slight test to see if I’m open to discussing the topics. The initial article raised all the red flags. Yes, 60% of violence is done by males. I could even do one better. 75% of violence is done by right-handed people if I wanted to blame them. But neither is directing blame where it’s truly deserved.

100% of the violence is committed by people who commit violence, and trying to dilute that attention off of them and onto a broader group that has a majority of innocents (yes, 60% of violence is perpetrated by men, but less than 5% of the population perpetrates violence) is exactly how racism and sexism and other -isms begin.

So yes, it’s out of fear, specifically fear of what those ‘statistics’ can become, because I’ve seen it way too often.

(Not copying to other)