Men look at Elliot Rodger and say, “I would never do something like that.” Women look at his victims and say, “That could totally happen to me.”

~ Doug Muder from, #YesAllWomen and the Continuum of Aggression

The realization that men and women fundamentally think about, and understand, aggression differently, is probably the single most “wait wat?” moment that I had in 2014.

Seriously.

My brain — and that of every guy I’ve asked — has different categories of violence; Murder is a “no way, no how, would I murder a woman” category. But every woman I’ve asked has “aggression” organized into one big continuum. Rhetorical: Does that strike you as a huge difference in the way men and women view the world? Does is perhaps suggest something about how the male half of the species treats the female half?

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