Sometimes it seems that no matter what I say or do or how I say or do it, some women will always see me as a creep/ potential rapist/ threat to their well being. In turn this almost makes me want to apologize just for being male and existing.
There is some truth here, though it is just a special case of making assumptions about an individual based on group membership. The minority of men who do assault women can make some women - perhaps those who are less confident, educated, or mature - view all men with mistrust, much as acts of terrorism by Muslims lead many westerners to fear all Muslims and Arabs. Assuming you treat women respectfully as fellow humans, the best near term solution is simply to ignore someone who believes the worst of you despite the evidence of your own behavior. The long term solution is to reduce assault and harassment of women, which will require continued change in our culture, helped if not led by the many men who do treat women respectfully.
They seem to have been edited since I last quoted them. Please just clarify if you feel you've been misrepresented, instead of accusing someone of doing it deliberately.
I did not edit my original post. How about stick to my wording rather than substituting your own which has a quite different meaning.
You quoted my comment "Women who place these demands on men just because they are men are lazy." Then you wrote:
I don't think it's fair to call the logical decision to use the most appropriate tool for any given situation laziness.
This suggests that a man is always "the most appropriate tool" for the job. So what jobs are we talking about here? My comment was in reply to [MENTION=19700]asynartetic[/MENTION]. I had summarized his observation as "men have to take responsibility for things, especially the dirty or dangerous ones". In the broadest sense, "things" can include just about anything, from paying the bills to caring for a sick child to fixing the washing machine. It is hard to imagine a man being "the most appropriate tool" in every single case. In fact, if we consider only statistical averages, I can think of quite a few "things" where average women's abilities make them the better tool.
Now let's look at dirty and dangerous. For millennia, childbirth was one of the most dangerous things people do, and one that cannot be outsourced to men. As for "dirty", well caring for children and elders, which has customarily fallen to women, is full of the dirty: poop, snot, vomit, blood, food, you name it. Women have long been relied on to clean up the world's messes, whether literal or emotional. Getting away from personal care, there is nothing about men that make them more suited to facing danger or messy work. Men on average are at an advantage only for those tasks that require large physical size, or brute force strength, but then they are the "ideal tool" not because of their gender, but because of their strength and stature. Many men would not be up to the task (e.g. Stephen Hawking, for an extreme example), while some women might.
Bottom line: deciding who is "the most appropriate tool" should be done based on individual attributes. Anything less is lazy. Most times when a woman expects a man to do something just because he is a man, it is something she is quite able to do herself. Perhaps he should do it, but if so that is due to circumstances and individual ability and interest, not gender.
