On Problems with Bowls of M&Ms

[brooksmoses]

Over dinner last night, chinders and tiger_spot and I were talking about this, "If you had a bowl of M&Ms and knew that 1 in 4 were poisoned, would you feel comfortable eating one even though most of them are just fine?" metaphor that's been going around to explain why "most men aren't threats" is not a helpful thing. There are some problematic responses that it's been getting, mostly from men.

A lot of the problematic responses seem to be based on some wrong assumptions, aside from the fact that some of them seem to imply that men are entitled to having women eat their M&Ms regardless, or that women are responsible for the M&Ms being poisonous:

The metaphor isn't talking about women being friendly to men, or having sex in the context of a relationship where people know each other pretty well. It's specifically talking about women putting themselves in vulnerable situations with a man they don't know well, where he could easily assault them if he chose to. I suppose you could make that about women turning you down for sex when you don't know them well, but unless that sort of sex is your aim or you're feeling rejected because a woman you don't know doesn't feel safe riding home with you or coming up to your apartment, then the metaphor isn't actually talking about anything that's going to make you feel fulfilled. Maybe you have to form relationships with women in safe places first before they'll come home with you; big deal.

The metaphor also isn't saying that women shouldn't talk to men or have sex with them. It's descriptive, not prescriptive -- and it turns out that, descriptively, most women have sexual relationships with men regardless of poisoned M&Ms, and the vast majority of women are friendly to men. Many women even end up getting into vulnerable situations with men they don't know well, often for pretty strong reasons. What happens is that women mostly do these things with a bit of attention to the potential threats.

(Also, most women do not individually have sex with the vast majority of men who might ask, but that's not about poisoned M&Ms; that's about people being picky about sex partners in ways that are far more complex than value judgments.)

And there's the thing that the metaphor, really, is kind of broken. This should be no surprise; all metaphors are broken -- they explain the thing they're meant to explain, and they fail at the edges where they stop mapping to reality. So, if you're going to have a meaningful conversation with a metaphor, either you have to take it on its own terms or talk about where it doesn't apply. This metaphor is about why a few men being dangerous means most women quite reasonably view all men as potentially dangerous even though most men aren't. It's not about what women do with that view; if I had the bowl of M&Ms in question, I'd throw it out without a second thought (even if I had a poison-test kit!), and that obviously doesn't map to what most women do with men. And it's not about the numbers, either; 1 in 4 risky interactions with men don't end in assault even given 1 in 4 men will assault a woman at some point in their lives. But neither of those is the point of the metaphor, and if that's your objection, the useful way to say that is not to say "but you should eat the M&Ms anyway."

The metaphor also leaves out something that I think is really important, because it's focused on the poison M&Ms -- the interactions with men that leave a woman assaulted or worse. The claim is that the rest of the M&Ms, the vast majority of them, are just fine. The thing I've been realizing, listening to my friends talk about this (and the post I linked to above by metaphortunate is a good example) is that mostly what happens when a woman turns down a man's offer of a ride or invitation up to his apartment or whatever because she doesn't want to take that risk right then, is that he either takes it personally or gets overly apologetic and in any case it becomes this big deal with a lot of emotions and becomes this long-lasting awkward thing. And, no, that's not a "poison M&M" that gets her assaulted, but it's not anything close to "just fine" either. And it's not 1 in 4; it's "most of the time." And one of the problematic things about a lot of the responses is that they're directly part of this pattern of men hearing something like a "no", even when it's not personally directed at them, and making it emotionally painful for the woman saying it.

One of the many reasons that side of things is important is that ... well, it's hard to see where I can personally do a lot about men who assault women. Men who think that's okay tend to be men I avoid associating with, and the public persuasive essay has never been a thing I'm good at. But men who get all feelings-hurt about perceived rejections from women? It's a lot easier to find something useful to do about that: It hurts to admit it, and it's something I really don't like about myself, but I've been one of those men a few times. And so I can start by learning how to not do that again.

Comments

[zeborah]

I first saw the metaphor as cookies, some of which had been made with [disgusting substance, I forget] and some with cyanide. Numbers weren't specified.

I like this version because if you *want* to extend the metaphor beyond what it was intended for you can, a little. Because not all the contaminated cookies will kill you, some will just make your mouth really sad. And because if you really want a cookie maybe you could nibble a corner to test it out without fully committing.

But the thing with analogies is if someone wants to pick nits, they can find nits to pick. And some guys just want to pick nits because the underlying concept is so unpalatable to them. And there's no amount of patching you can do if someone doesn't want to hear.

[brooksmoses]

Yeah. FWIW, there's an entertaining conversation happening on the LJ version of this about extensions to the cookie metaphor -- some of the cookies are moldy and infect other cookies. And you can see the mold, and some of the other cookies say, "oh, just eat around it"....

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

And, no, that's not a "poison M&M" that gets her assaulted, but it's not anything close to "just fine" either.

Maybe it's actually a lima bean disguised in a thin candy shell :D

I actually pretty much hate the M&Ms metaphor, but I was sorta amused when I thought of that extension to it.

[brooksmoses]

Hee! I'd actually prefer eating a handful of lima beans to a handful of M&Ms, because I'm weird that way, but I certainly don't want them in candy shells!

[ckd]

I've seen a version that I like better, which I have extended from the one I first read.

"Here's a plate of cookies. Some of them are fine; some are edible but really salty; a significant number of them contain laxatives or salmonella; one of them is laced with cyanide. But hey, #NotAllCookies are bad, so eat up!"

IMO that better describes the non-fatal but still negative possibilities (ranging from emotional awkwardness to verbal assault to physical assault).

[The version I saw reposted from tumblr was just laxatives and cyanide.]

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I like the version that has moldy cookies that infect other cookies, too.

[ckd]

Yeah. Sometimes you can see the mold, and the other cookies are all "oh, just eat around it". ARGH.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

OH GOD. I like that extension.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

...and I think there's also a ["why don't you just skip a meal" when someone has been having to avoid a lot of meals because of toxicity] metaphor there, too.

[brooksmoses]

I've got a bit of penicillin allergy, so if I had moldy cookies in my room I'd get mild flu-like symptoms regardless of whether I ate them. You could probably work that into the metaphor too if you wanted.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Because rape and sexual assault happen in so many social contexts, not just dates and agreements to have sex, it literally never occurred to me or anyone I discussed this image with that "eating the M&Ms" was supposed to be limited to sexual interactions with men in this incredibly flawed metaphor. Seriously. Never.

[brooksmoses]

Yeah. It's possible I'm misreading, since I haven't seen anybody saying that explicitly; they're just saying "eating an M&M". But the patterns of some of the conversations seem to be really closely fitting the patterns of men complaining about women not giving them what they feel they ought to be getting, which mostly seem to be either about sex or about responding favorably to being flirted with (and, even in the latter, "thank you but not interested" seems to rarely be counted as favorable by the men complaining).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I think this is one of those situations where "I have seen this conversation pattern before" can go very badly wrong if one party thinks they're talking about one thing (whether it's sex or neutral social interaction--flirtation was not the least sexual of what I considered might be involved here) and another thinks they're talking about another and the wires get crossed because the pattern looks familiar.

[brooksmoses]

Very much so, indeed. (And point taken that I was doing some of that here even though I was only talking about responses in general. I apologize.)

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

THIS. I don't think the metaphor was about meeting with men you don't know or anything like that.

It's about existing with men and working with them and sharing public transit with them and all sorts of interactions.

Women get sexually assaulted at work, Taking transportation. Going to school. And living at home, either with an abusive birth family, an abusive step family, abusive non-family members that enter the home, or with their partner, or their ex-partner.

These are not M and M's I can opt to not eat. I can't opt out of working, school, sharing transit, etc...

I loathe the M and M metaphor, because it implies that you can opt out of eating the M and M's. And you can't. You can't even if you were a lesbian separatist.

[snippy]

Maybe if we make it cars? One car has bad brakes, another car has seatbelts that don't work, another has the check engine light on but you're not sure what's wrong; there's a car with a non-working speedometer (that is, it reads much faster or slower than you are actually traveling); there's a really excellent car that gets great mileage and drives like a dream, a few average cars that will do just fine but maybe not for your purposes; and one car has a bomb. But you can't tell any of this stuff until you get in a car and drive it off the lot. You need to get to a dentist appointment in an hour: would you drive one of these cars?

Of course not! YOU'D TAKE PUBLIC TRANSIT, or call a taxi, or walk or bike or ask a friend for a ride. You might ask a friend to go with you to pick out a car from the lot, if the friend were knowledgeable about cars. You might ask that friend to help you test-drive one of the cars. But you wouldn't just take one of those cars home without a lot of research.

Maybe if you had to rush to the hospital to save a life, you might take a chance on one of those cars. Short of that, why take the risk?

Really, though, none of these metaphors captures what so incenses most men about the whole situation: their fear of loss of privilege, their fear that they will have to acknowledge that no woman owes them a duty of attention.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

This and thank you for expressing it so clearly.

Except you can't avoid this car. I think it's more like sidewalks - every morning, when you step outside, you don't know if the sidewalk will be there, cracked, broken, full of boiling lava, or Some Other Surprise. And the same sidewalk that has been fine for years can fail you overnight.

And no, you can't opt out of it. That's what is bugging me about the M and M metaphor.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

The poisoned M&Ms are the green ones, right?

[carbonel]

The link to metaphortunate's DW post appears to be friends-locked.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I think it might have been taken down, which makes me sad because that implies awful things about the responses it was getting, and it was a good thoughtful post.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

As far as the feelings-hurt part goes... I don't see how one can try to require men (or women) to have the "correct" (not hurt or rejected) feelings. Feelings just... are. If a woman turns down a man's offer of [something], and he takes it personally and gets apologetic and embarrassed... his feelings are not her problem. She gets to have her boundary, unchallenged. At the same time, he gets to feel whatever he feels, (but should manage his feelings responsibly), he gets to have his boundary, similarly unchallenged.

More broadly, this scenario argues in favor of the traditional view that social interaction works more smoothly overall when men hide their feelings from others, and work on appearing stoic and nonchalant (regardless of whatever is really going on inside).

[ckd]

He can always talk to his friends, his therapist, his dog, etc. She isn't the only possible listener, and shouldn't be stuck having to listen "just to be polite" if she doesn't want to.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(nods) I completely agree. Although it is harder to fake or hide the body language of disappointment or rejection (dejected shoulders, avoiding eye contact, sniffles, etc.) if in realspace with someone... much easier in virtual spaces.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

If I say no to a man, I expect some sadface. I do not expect to be screamed at, followed, stabbed, or shot. Do you see the difference? Do you understand that you are derailing this conversation?

[brooksmoses]

No, he isn't derailing this conversation. He's talking about my last paragraph, in which I was explicitly talking about the "non-poisonous M&Ms" -- the men who don't scream at women or assault them. And I was talking about the fact that there are plenty of unpleasant responses that are much closer to "sadface" than to assault -- and that these, too, are problems that also are worth having a conversation about.

I'm sorry that I don't have time for a clearer explanation now, and I was depending on metaphortunate's (apparently now deleted or locked) post to explain most of that, but I'll write more about what I'm referring to later. But I want to make it clear that this is not a derailment of the conversation I'm having here.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

There are serious and negative implications from how some men express their sadface. That's a whole post of its own.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I think we are all expected to be stoic and nonchalant, only about different things.

[brooksmoses]

Yeah, "get all feelings-hurt" was a quick pointer to a concept that I didn't explain because I was taking the (now gone) post as context, and the literal meaning by itself doesn't really do a good job of conveying what I mean.

So, brief synopsis of what I got out of metaphortunate's post. Suppose a situation where a man offers a woman a ride home from a party, say. They're acquaintances, or maybe just met at the party, and there's a mutual flirty connection, but she doesn't know him well enough to feel entirely safe getting into a car with him at night and giving him her home address. So, suppose she says, "Thanks, but I don't know you well enough to be comfortable with that yet."

There's a range of responses that women get to this. There's the obviously-problematic and (for women I've talked to about this) relatively rare "how dare you suggest that I might be dangerous" response, and a differently-problematic "what's the big deal?" response. There's the also very rare, "oh, right" and then dropping the subject response, which is ideal. And there's the response that seems to be endemic, of being extremely apologetic and wanting to keep talking about how they understand and then the flirty connection is never seen again and they never ask again even when there develops enough of a connection for it to be a reasonable thing.

That last one is the thing I meant to about the "get all feelings-hurt". I didn't mean the hurt feelings as such, but the talking about them at length (until she escapes) with the woman that just said "no", and then having that rejection color all the future interactions with them by completely avoiding anything that might possibly get another "no".

As inflectionpoint was getting at, this is one of the sorts of things that has serious negative consequences, especially because it seems to be a really endemic pattern. Remember, there's a mutual pleasant connection going on that the woman is enjoying! And so she ends up in a position where saying "no" to the offered ride means a very large risk of losing that flirty connection forever, which is really not a good incentive for being safe.

(There are similar patterns where another woman I know talked about tending to withdraw from male friends who develop a crush on her, because her experience is that nearly all of them get very awkward when she says it's not mutual and then the interaction becomes one of them continually pining unhappily at her or otherwise having it be a big deal in a way that eclipses the rest of the friendship. It's maybe not the same sort of incentive to make unsafe choices, but it's part of the same general problematic pattern.)

But, yeah, I agree with your implication that the pattern of men always hiding their feelings is a bad thing. As texanne said, some amount of sadface is expected. But dealing with the feelings responsibly means, in a situation where a woman has just said "no", not dwelling on them with her (unless one has a negotiated relationship where she's said she's willing to be supportive for such things, which is an entirely reasonable thing to negotiate).

A related thing that I've been learning how to do is being aware of when I'll take a "no" badly, and asking some other time. Which is hard, in part because mostly I've been getting by with not asking at all (it's the easy way to avoid hurting people, but not so functional overall) and so I don't have a lot of practice.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Hm. I often feel like if I've been clueless enough to put someone (man or woman) in a social setting in a position where they have to say "no" to me directly, then I've screwed up so badly that I shouldn't bother them in the future or risk offending them again?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

not dwelling on them with her (unless one has a negotiated relationship where she's said she's willing to be supportive for such things, which is an entirely reasonable thing to negotiate).

(grimaces) yeah, I had an instance recently where there was a rejection of a sort, I was unhappy but keeping it to myself, but then was asked "something seems to be going on for you, what's up?" Whereupon my choices were all bad ones, either lying baldly (which was probably the socially kinder thing to do) or being honest. I chose the latter, and then the other person was upset with me because I was not feeling happy with the outcome. Which she then said left her feeling pressured. Sigh. If she didn't want to know the answer, I wish she hadn't point-blank asked me how I was feeling.

[ckd]

I don't know how well "Something that I can't really talk about" would have worked as an answer, but it may be a useful option to keep in mind for any similar situations in the future. Honest but less pressuring?

[ckd]

While it's not the same sort of thing, my approach to offering backrubs/massage is to say "You are invited to let me know if you would like one" and then leave it. (I may reiterate the offer at a later date just so they know it still stands, but we're talking about things like "I offered at Arisia and now it's Fourth Street" rather than "I offered at lunch and it's almost dinnertime".)

I did make an offer a while back that was much more potentially fraught in a more direct manner, and in that case said "I expect that your answer is no, but would [X] be helpful to you?" (The answer was no, so I said "I thought so" and dropped it.)

As for the awkward crush pattern...that's a big part of why I have a hard time expressing interest to anyone, because I understand that tendency to withdraw and don't want to put people I like in that position. This does not interact well with my desire to be clear about things, alas.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Another facet: if you are in fact the sort of person who can take rejection gracefully (because there are other fish in the sea and you really do have the well-being of the other person in mind), I think it actually makes your offers less skeevy. Because we pick up on the unspoken cues, and somebody who really has a laid-back "no harm, no foul" attitude is not going to be projecting signals of tension, which means the recipient in turn will be less tense than otherwise. So cultivating that attitude doesn't just make things better after the offer, but also before and during.

Which doesn't help at all with the cultivation of the attitude in the first place. But it's another reason why doing so is good.

[cheshyre]

The thing I've been realizing, listening to my friends talk about this (and the post I linked to above by metaphortunate is a good example) is that mostly what happens when a woman turns down a man's offer of a ride or invitation up to his apartment or whatever because she doesn't want to take that risk right then, is that he either takes it personally or gets overly apologetic and in any case it becomes this big deal with a lot of emotions and becomes this long-lasting awkward thing.

Somehow, this is starting to feel like a setup for some kind of educational video game (intfic or cyoa). So many seeminly-innocuous choices, but with serious ramifications (randomized to avoid blaming particular behavior)...