This article is meant to resonate with anyone except the men it is about.
PREface
Men, the ones who drown in their own privilege, have left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m talking about the ones that make you feel unheard and unseen. The ones who can’t comprehend the word “no.”
In this article, I will delve into my theory of what inherently keeps men from listening to others, even when it comes to personal autonomy. Through sharing stories of encounters I’ve had to endure and my reflections on such, I will explain what it feels like to have an unseen perspective, as well as why some people are unable to see.
A tale as old as time
Have you ever indulged in a conversation with a man who seriously didn’t listen to you? And I’m not just prompting the classic image of a woman being spoken over at the table. I mean, maybe he was conversing with you in the necessary back and forth, but jeez, every sentence flew over his head.
My receptors for sensing when a man isn’t listening to me are as sensitive as exposed nerve endings.
It feels like I’m speaking to a man-shaped wall. I can see a divide between us, my perfectly formed, thoughtful sentences hitting a halt as the wall contributes back a sentence of its own, unrelated to anything I’ve just said.
Incapable of absorbing information and unable to build depth off of what I, or anyone else, shares, the wall stands strong in its own impenetrable ways. The result of this is a conversation, or rather an argument, that goes in circles.
A story of science and inability to listen
I recently had a jarring conversation that involved me sharing some interesting facts I’d been learning in my Sex and Evolution: Sociosexuality class. It was stated that the willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships that lack emotional attachment is heritable by around 50%.
Neat! Right? Totally, until I had to argue the science of heritability over and over again. “Dude, I literally just took notes on this in class today…” met with a completely unfounded personal opinion on the subject and an “ehh, I don’t know…” after I again reconstructed my points.
Often, the only benefit I get from discussions like these is the challenge of having to form and reform my sentences. So while he might not have believed me, at the very least, I got some practice in before my exam later that week.
The same man was shocked when, later that night, I told him we should no longer see each other. I landed the blow softly, gave him some grace, even took some blame; “We both seem to always want to be right and don’t listen to each other very well.” Of course, he disagreed.
While giving him the examples he asked for, I got increasingly frustrated with the fact that he was continuing to not see where I was coming from. Explanation after explanation, he stormed out, angry and in disbelief that “I was speaking to him this way.”
He felt that he was always in the right because he only ever heard his own perspective on things. Meanwhile, I only ever felt wrong because I possess the power of conversational consciousness. And in this consciousness, I become subject to the villain of Unlistening-Man… consider this paper my revenge.
It’s not just the science of heritability that man doesn’t listen to. It follows that a man’s inability to listen is not just an annoyance, but a danger, as it applies to the word “no” as well.
MY THEORY ON What causes THE inability to listen
Most of us know what it feels like to be unheard, as most of us face a society that we don’t inherently obtain privilege from.
Well-documented is the phenomenon of women not being taken seriously by their physicians, of minorities enduring systemic setbacks and disabled individuals not having access to proper infrastructure. In facing this wall of society, we grow as people. We take our experiences of not being heard and use our perspectives to help us hear others.
So, what comes of people who have never had to face the wall of society? The wall that presents an unwavering ear and makes people who they are through what they must endure?
If being unheard is what, in turn, prompts us to hear others, what becomes of people who have never experienced this feeling? For those who are presented with no barriers by society, the privilege to always feel heard leads to an inability to see when others are faced with barriers. We see the perspectives of others because we are forced to. Whereas some men may go through life never feeling interrupted in who they are or what they believe.
This internal mechanism of “inability to listen” is rooted in a lack of life experience, or rather, the privilege of not having to experience. Someone with societal privilege may never need to listen and be affected by someone else’s perspective, as they might not ever run into the halting wall of being limited by someone else’s perspective. Because of this, man might not ever have to examine what it means for himself to be disagreed with, as he is always accepted by society.
Privileged minds inherently cannot respect the intellectualism of those they converse with, and in doing so, they expose their own lack of intellectualism. Intellectualism, defined in this context, is the ability to see the perspectives of others and converse considering such.
It is the inability to look at life through another’s perspective that leads men to not grasp the concept of “no.” They can’t hear it, because they literally can’t see it; they don’t want “no,” so why would someone else?
The Making of a mediocre Rapist
It’s not just the word ‘no’ that they struggle with. For any complex woman, who is most of us, we can see that the fronting complex man really has no sense of absorbing complexities at all. It’s the mentality of ‘nobody can know better than myself, even if it’s in concern to themselves,’ that leads to conversational unawareness and coercion.
Some men don’t listen, and they can see that they’re not listening. They think they’re sly, good manipulators. While others don’t listen because they oh so innocently can’t; this innocence is not with clean hands and is all too often dangerous to those who experience it.
No mean no? No… No? No. No to no, no ‘no.’
Is it manipulation either way when you’re met with the feeling of not being listened to, no matter how much you talk? And no matter how clear you make yourself? I mean, how much clearer can the word “no” be? What else can you do to make them hear it if they simply refuse to see it, because in their eyes, they see yes?
Some men are evil, malicious men who commit heinous acts and find pleasure in doing so. And then, there are the men that don’t even know they’re committing heinous acts because they’re only capable of seeing the act through their eyes; the act of them wanting yes, so how could someone else possibly want no?
Saying no to this type of man is like saying no when your phone prompts you to download the newest software update. It reminds you in the morning, then again in the afternoon, then again at night. The decline of the notification simply doesn’t compute.
There is a deplorable innocence of coercion, especially in younger, inexperienced men, and the younger women who must endure them. But when a certain age is reached, this coercion can no longer be credited to the excuse of inherent inability; these men become mediocre rapists.
For anyone involved with other people, the rest of a conversation does not matter when reasoning starts and ends with “no.” This goes for hearing or saying the word. When faced with someone who cannot see this reasoning, the only way to outsmart it is by walking away and letting the fate of man rest in its own demise, of others having to experience it.