If heterosexual women are as afraid of men as some claim, they would ask men out.

Schrödinger’s Rapist is a term created by some feminists to articulate the fear they claim women must have for all men in our patriarchal “rape culture.” As Geek Feminism puts it:

Schrödinger’s Rapist is a term coined by novelist and PI Phaedra Starling to describe the experience of women encountering unfamiliar men in a society with rape culture, where any man could potentially be a rapist. […] Unlike the cat-in-poison-box thought experiment however, the Schrödinger’s Rapist is a prolonged situation, since one rape-free encounter with a given man does not prove anything about his potential of raping later on. This even more true for the experience of women who know that the majority of rapes occur between people who know each other, and those aware of rapists employing grooming and similar tactics to gain social leverage against their victims.

It seems to me that while the word itself has fallen out of favor the tendency for women to justify any rudeness, mistreatment, even violence against a man based on the argument that he has the potential to do something sexual to her unsolicited continues (not to mention women using their irrational fears about men to justify enforcing a curfew on men).

This got me thinking: if women are really so afraid as they claim, why do they insist on waiting for men to approach them? Especially when men who approach are perhaps more likely to be violent and/or rapists due to having very high confidence and low sensitivity to others’ feelings. This is not to say all men who approach a woman are but if you insist on waiting for a man to come to you, that in itself is selecting for a certain type of man who is probably less sensitive to rejection (and there are other traits associated with that). There are studies that suggest the current prevailing tactic of most women waiting for a man to approach them is causing many of them to end up consenting to sex with men who turn out to be rapists. For example:

Various studies found that testosterone levels were not higher in rapists. Nor did sexual deprivation correlate with rape: the surveys conducted found that, if anything, rapists had more consensual sexual partners than other men. And, as the late Paul Gebhard and colleagues at the Institute for Sex Research (now the Kinsey Institute) showed in Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (1965), married rapists were just as likely to have active sex lives with their wives. These results were so consistent, regardless of the political orientation of the researchers, that the belief that rape resulted from priapism or frustration was abandoned by all sides. [emphasis added]

It is also worth mentioning that coupled with this selecting only men who are aggressive enough to ask her out, some women also seem to favor men who are violent. For a recent example everyone is talking about, Just look at how many women lust for Ted Bundy. We also know that women desexualize men who are not aggressive. Julia Serano, a feminist writer, describes this phenomenon in her essay Why Nice Guys Finish Last (contained in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti). I think this is probably an ignored factor in men choosing to become violent and aggressive. If you go through life being the “good guy” who doesn’t get any interest from women but as soon as you start being more aggressive and/or violent you start having more success that’s obviously positive reinforcement for violent behavior from women. So if women want less violent men they need to start rewarding those men with sex and relationships because men are just going to imitate the guys they see getting laid or getting girlfriends.

Finally, let’s apply the same principle in another area of life. If I am going to make a major purchase, I don’t stand around waiting for a salesperson to come to me. I look up reviews, ask around, and ultimately decide which brand or product I’m going to buy myself and then seek out a way to buy it. Why? I think many of us are skeptical of charming salespeople or slick advertisements and aware they can often be deceptive, hiding a scam, or just an overpriced inferior product. I’m sure many women are the same way when they shop. Why not apply this same approach to finding love and/or sex?