I thought that whole thread devolved into a ridiculously pointless “mate-discussion” about the precise, exact motives behind actions that everyone agrees are horrible, terrible behaviors. I felt that the whole “point” was to then try to cast aspersions on you, Amanda, for having the insensitivity to extrapolate the motives and thoughts of men who act like women are lesser objects whose only function is lust-fulfillment.

Are “good” men who defend “bad” men from a woman’s criticism, just because she’s a woman, misogynists? I don’t really care - it’s bad behavior, anyway. Sorry you had to put up with that crap, Amanda.

* should be “meta-discussion”, not “mate-discussion”.

Although, I could pull some chess analogy out here and say that certain posters were trying to force people into a corner to declare some meaningless semantic victory, all the while oblivious to the fact that this is not a game.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that thread (given that I was one of the people sending it into the 200+ comments range), and I think there a lot of people out there (men and women - but even more men than women) who are very resistant to the idea of patriarchy. I mean, they are resistant to the idea that it exists. So they will agree that these acts are bad - and they’re not putting us on - they really do think they are bad. But they throw up all these barriers to discussing these acts as part of systematic oppression of women as a group. Sexual violence is a hate crime against women that serves the social function of keeping us in our place, limiting our freedom of movement, preventing us from fully exercising legal rights we have, etc. But looking at it that way seems to trouble a lot of people. It’s much easier to think there are a range of individuals who are socially maladapted to differing degrees who do these asshole things, but that it doesn’t say anything about the big picture.

I really hate That Guy.  They’re always homophobic, too, and kind of excessively homosocial in that “you know, we need a night away from our girlfriends, where we can be ourselves!” kind of way. 

Cough cough.

I’ve also been finding myself wanting to engage trolls who bitch about women hate sex and feminists hate lust and blah blah everyone hates me I’m lonely pay attention to me, when I know it’s a waste of time, they aren’t listening to reason, and all they really want is to fool themselves into thinking anyone cares about their opinion. I can’t even scroll through those threads anymore without getting mildly depressed and deciding to go do something else.

Here are the Google ads I’m getting:

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and

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It’s Google Ads FTW!

I wondered why I hadn’t spotted one of your (inimitably witty and accurate) comments in a while, junk science. Hope you’re back with a vengeance soon.

In an only barely related note, I knew the recession was getting bad when I stopped getting penis increasing spam and started getting fake diploma spam.

eh it just seems like theres a lot of confusion. there are so many variables and while there is clear activities that cross the line there are also many that are dependent on the person. I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that and your reaction might be agreeable or you might get really scared and then get mad at me. Similar to the “Hi, my name is Dan, this is a really great show tonight huh? May I buy you a drink? used to get a ton of different responses, some people, male or female since i hit on both, used to get visibly angry. Is that harassment? I dont want to be “that guy” but i dont ever see this ending. The men who act with dignity do lose out but again i dont see how it changes.

But what he said was something along the lines of, “You’re so pretty blah blah get in the car.” Even that pretend flirting is creepy, no?

What, you don’t find a complete stranger driving slowly alongside and inviting you into his car attractive and exciting? You really are a castrating man-hater, aren’t you?

That night, I’m hanging out with my then-boyfriend and I tell him this story.  He jokes, “See, guys like that ruin it for the rest of us. Guys like that make women not want to walk around in public wearing cut-off shorts, and then guys like me who don’t harass women don’t get to see that.”

I’d disagree with him in a way. Clods like that it easier for guys like me and your former boyfriend, because they make us look good in comparison when it comes to actual interaction. And as unpleasant as that incident was, I’m sure it didn’t stop you from wearing cut-off shorts.

I understand, of course, that there’s not as much room for debate about these dopes amongst well-adjusted women—“That Guy” can range from a minor pest to disturbing predator.

I literally could not approve of this post more.

Amanda @12:18

I think that’s why liberalrob’s accusation that you were equating lust with misogyny got me going so much. It’s one thing to make a semantic argument about what the difference is between sexism and misogyny, and that’s an area where it’s a lot more subjective and dictionary definitions only get you so far. But to read that post and say that you were saying male lust is misogyny is just, well, we hashed it out pretty good on the other thread, but it’s very problematic.

Sure, but trying to extrapolate different peoples’ behavior into an ironclad social rule you can follow that will let you NEVER come off badly is a fool’s errand.  As long as your intentions are pure, if they get scared or offended, you just politely apologize and move on.  Lots of people in the world.

It’s much easier to think there are a range of individuals who are socially maladapted to differing degrees who do these asshole things, but that it doesn’t say anything about the big picture.

I think those guys are also really hostile to the idea that men who harass and assault can be “decent” men by all appearances and that those men are likely family, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers to all of us.  This always comes up in rape apologist threads, and there were hints of it in the thread yesterday.  Some men can’t stand the idea that most misogynists who harass and attack women are, at first glance, completely normal.  I think many of them would rather imagine the dread misogynist being a dirty, crazy guy who skulks in the bushes, much like their image of a rapist, which explains why a number of men dismiss date rape but agree that stranger rape is a terrible, terrible thing.

And I should also add that it’s not just men who can think this way.  Many women try to compartmentalize, but they’re motivations are different.  While men don’t want to think about how their friends could be harassers or rapists, women don’t want to think about how not only could our friends or dates be rapists, but that we could wind up being their victims.

Aw, thanks, MissPrism. I think I’ve been thinking about this stuff too much, though, because I’ve started having dreams that all men violently hate me for being female, including my own family members, and I wake up feeling completely rattled. I think I’m just fragile right now.

I think whoever said liberalrob has friends who harass women was probably right on the money.

I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that

Bullshit.  Any man who doesn’t recognize the inherent and obvious threat implied in a man offering a complete stranger a ride is a fucking idiot.  Ever heard of Ted Bundy?  You guys know perfectly well what you’re doing when you pull that crap.

Yeah, the following alongside in a car thing is even scarier, because the power imbalance is ramped up even more.  I’ve had this happen to me as well.  For awhile there I actually started wearing a ring on my left hand so I could just flash it if a guy was following me asking for my phone number.

I don’t understand why some guys don’t get the difference between genuine flirting and creepy harassment that makes women feel afraid.  If you’re a guy who wants to have sex with women, then fostering a culture of fear in which women have to worry about being attacked or raped just because they aren’t wearing the “right” clothes, or because they were “too nice” or because they were walking in the wrong part of town really works against your interests, ya know?

I’d put this at the bottom of that thread and said mostly the same thing.

To reitterate here what I said there, though—people like the choads in-thread who were trying to defend misogynist upskirting and harassment because she was dressed so fine are about as intellectually honest as the guy who tells you “well, if you did want me to drive my riding mower over your garden bed, you shouldn’t have planted such lovely lillies.”

I always thought that guys who acted the way you describe were in some sort of power play. I have never seen anything sexual about it at all; it was pure power (I am stronger, blah, blah…). The sex, usually slam bam thank you ma’am for these guys,  was just another example of how powerful they can be; which is why coming outside a woman and on her is an intrinsic part of porn. Power. The guy in the car sees you as an object and not YOU- a classic sign of sociopathic behaviour: the ability to objectify people; a first step, by the way in the growth of serial killers. Once you objectify a person, her feelings are moot because objects don’t have feelings and hence, have no intrinsic validity. Of course, not all these people become serial killers, but the first step has been taken.

I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that and your reaction might be agreeable or you might get really scared and then get mad at me.

I’ll give you a hint—if you are a stranger, 90 percent of women will get really scared and freaked out if you try to offer them a ride when they’re just walking along minding their own business.  They may turn you down politely enough that you don’t realize how terrified they are, but trust me, the first thing in their mind is, “Oh, shit, this guy is going to try and abduct me.”

If she’s walking away from a broken-down car with a gas can in her hand, you will probably have better luck presenting yourself as a disinterested Good Samaritan.  But a woman walking to the store is probably walking because she wanted to walk, not because she was hoping some random guy would give her a lift.

The men who act with dignity do lose out but again i dont see how it changes.

I find it’s more a matter of conversing with a woman like a person and letting the flirting develop naturally (or not). For example, allowing some time between “Hi, this is a really great show tonight huh?” and “May I buy you a drink?” makes a big difference in your scenario. Offering a ride to a woman I don’t know is almost unthinkable to me (unless it’s a semi-emergency situation), but offering to help a woman struggling with packages seems fine to me.

The old joke goes, whenever a guy offers to help an attractive woman, the unspoken follow-up question is “...and would you like a side of dick with that?” Now maybe there’s some truth to that in terms of lizard-brain motivation, but it’s the genuine offer of help that counts. Expecting that one is entitled to the “side order” brings one into the realm of the NiceGuy™, or “That Guy.”

For goodness sake Amanda. What were you wearing hmm? I bet it wasn’t a Burqa. And to hear you tell it, it sounds like you were outside your house, an unmarried woman no less, unescorted by a male relative! Shame on you and your immodest, wanton behavior. Expecting men to treat you with respect and as an equal, well that’s just so obviously contrary to traditional American values.

They do.  They claim they don’t, however, because if they admitted they knew the difference, they would have to stop harassing.

Not all of them. Lots of guys are really that clueless or maladjusted. But yeah, some of them know exactly what they’re doing even though they claim not to when confronted.

And their reward is to get called assholes by Nice Guys®

Around here, their reward is to get called “hipsters.”

“there are so many variables and while there is clear activities that cross the line there are also many that are dependent on the person. I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that and your reaction might be agreeable or you might get really scared and then get mad at me.”

What planet are you on that you think it’s kosher for a dude to just roll up and offer a woman he doesn’t know a ride like that doesn’t immediately punt him into psycho-axe-murderer territory?  I mean, jesus.  I’m a small woman, and even I’d feel hella creepy just pulling over and offering some stranger-lady a ride somewhere unless she was clearly in some sort of trouble or struggling under a load.

The only way to think so is to buy into the myth that women are hostile to sex, and have to be flattered, deceived, forced, or coerced in some way into having it.

Yeah, I don’t see how decent guys lose out either, except in the sense that everyone is sometimes rejected and there is no way to avoid that happening.  It doesn’t matter how “decent” you are.  I think that’s missed by a lot of people.  Ok, men mostly, but still.

You’ve got bigger problems if you truly believe all that crap, Marie.

Oh boy! A new playmate!

And he puts on worldly airs, too.  Fun.  Bob, you weren’t there, you don’t know.  Your random assertion that Marie’s experience didn’t happen the way her fragile ladybrain thought it did is not just presumptuous, it’s pompous and stupid.

Gavel, that one is just an energy sump.  Avoid dropping matter into that particular black hole (it it’s not just a poorly scripted bot) and with any luck it will evaporate.

Oh you know him?  Dang.

“...if they admitted they knew the difference, they would have to stop harassing.”

AND, harassing is the ONLY interaction they get between themselves and attractive women.

++++
“IF it’s not just a poorly scripted bot.”  Where’s my coffee, dammit?!

You’ve got bigger problems if you truly believe all that crap, Marie.

I guess you’re the kind of moron who’ll hop into a random stranger’s car just because you’re invited. You must’ve had quite an upbringing and some “interesting” childhood experiences.

It would explain a lot about you.

I know his ‘works’.  Like a sewage treatment plant worker knows a city.  (He’s not even that entertaining, which is why I suspect poorly made script-bot.)

Silver lining to that story—how cool is it that other bystanders actively helped her?  All too often people ignore that stuff because they don’t want to get involved in a “domestic dispute.”

Generally, I’ve known misogynists like that threaten to kill me or castrate me for talking about their sister. Like asking, “Hey, how’s your sister?” 

Obviously, they’re projecting, but it’s really creepy and weird. And as a few people mentioned above, these men are always homophobic. They often, in my experience, “joke” about having a son and murdering him if he turns out to be gay.

Yes, I did go to a Catholic all-boys high school, why do you ask?

Dananddanica - I know you tend towards rape apology, ‘cause I’ve seen your posts at feministing. I really loved the one where you defended the guy who who’d been convicted of rape getting a medal for being a fine and courageous citizen.(http://www.feministing.com/archives/010854.html) And then there’s this classic “but men are raped too!!!” in this Shakesville thread on the Congo: (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/11/stephen-lewis-on-violence-against-women.html)

But I’ll comment in good faith to your post, and ignore your history of rape apology and derailing the subject towards the idea of men as the real victims. I’ll pretend that though I’ve seen you posting on feminist websites for at least a year, you’re really a naive young man who just doesn’t understand how pervasive the fear of violence is for girls and women.

No woman or girl likes to be followed by a man or group of men in a car. It’s scary as hell. That’s because women fear sexual violence from men. Men aren’t afraid of women. There’s a good reason for this. Men tend to be physically violent towards women in far greater numbers than women are to men. Very few men are raped by women. Many women and girls have been raped by men. As you may have noticed, men are bigger and have greater upper body strength than women. 

Some women might react angrily to a man in a bar saying “Can I buy you a drink?” I’ve never known one. I’ve never even seen a woman freak out at a bar or club when I guy did this, or something similar. I have seen women be rude and turn away, or ignore a guy, or say “no thanks”, or other things that could be interpreted as “bitchy” by someone who expects women to be polite and grateful at all times. I wouldn’t interpret this as rage. I’d interpret as rejection. Sometimes a woman doesn’t want to pay attention to a particular man. So it goes.

I tend to have little sympathy for the idea that men are so befuddled by the crazy feminist rules that they can’t even tell when their being creepy. Bullshit.

Never offer a strange woman or girl a ride. She’ll be scared, or, at best, think you’re a dipshit for even entertaining the thought that she’d get in a car with a strange man. Okay? And try not to take it personally when a woman doesn’t want you to buy her a drink, or rebuffs your attempts at conversation. She’s not interested in you.

I think those guys are also really hostile to the idea that men who harass and assault can be “decent” men by all appearances and that those men are likely family, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers to all of us.

I think this is a big part of it.

I find it’s more a matter of conversing with a woman like a person and letting the flirting develop naturally (or not). For example, allowing some time between “Hi, this is a really great show tonight huh?” and “May I buy you a drink?” makes a big difference in your scenario.

To any guys out there who actually are confused and not just pretending not to be assholes, the reason for this is that once you interact with a guy, if through the course of the interaction you decide you aren’t interested, it can be nearly impossible to unburden yourself of him. Personally, I would be very leery of accepting a drink from a guy who just saw me across the room and knew nothing about me except that he liked how I looked. If, after a drink with the guy, I decide we don’t really click, it might be hard to get him to leave me alone. Being open to serendipity doesn’t feel like an option. But if I’ve already been talking with a guy for a little bit - well, then I know if he’s someone I might like to talk to a little more - and I can make a more-or-less informed decision about accepting the drink.

Yet one more way “That Guy” ruins it for other guys.

I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that and your reaction might be agreeable or you might get really scared and then get mad at me.

I probably shouldn’t generalize, but I can’t think of a single context in which a strange man stopping his car and offering me a ride, especially if there’s “flirting” thrown into the mix,  would be considered anything but mega-creepy.  As in, my response would probably be to run, call 911, dash into a nearby shop, something like that.  Isn’t it the first rule of being able to walk around unaccompanied that you NEVER get into a car with a stranger?

So they will agree that these acts are bad - and they’re not putting us on - they really do think they are bad. But they throw up all these barriers to discussing these acts as part of systematic oppression of women as a group.

+1 Insightful

who’s Marie?

On the “can I buy you a drink?” - there are plently of assholes out there who get angry if you refuse the drink (bitch thinks she’s too good for me!), even angrier if you accept the drink and then don’t hang on their every word all evening (bitch just took the money and ran!), and positively dangerous if you accept the drink, chat to them while drinking it and then want to leave the pub on your own (cocktease!). So a lot of women will turn the drink down to be on the safe side. So as Gracchus says, it’s probably best not to use the offer of a drink as a conversation-starter in itself.

(Though I knew a guy once who, when striking up a flirty conversation, would ask with a dazzling smile “So, do you want to buy me a drink?” It usually worked, and I think that wasn’t just because he was hot and confident, although he certainly was both, but because the woman then didn’t have to worry about him thinking that she owed him something.)

I probably shouldn’t generalize, but I can’t think of a single context in which a strange man stopping his car and offering me a ride, especially if there’s “flirting” thrown into the mix, would be considered anything but mega-creepy.  As in, my response would probably be to run, call 911,

For serious. I am a tiny person, of youngish age but firmly into adulthood. I have, in fact, been followed a block or two by a dude offering me a ride. When I turned around, and he saw that I was an **adult** female, he scowled, shouted, “bitch!” and drove off.

So, huh. Guess someone was lookin’ to grab a kid, and thought he found a target.

Moral of story? Offering a stranger a ride is creepy, so if you don’t want to be a creep, don’t f’in do it.

“at least here in small town america they respond to males out walking by throwing bottles at them. seriously. “

“hey all yell the same thing at that man ... HEY FAGGOT! “

Here in Denver, too. When I moved to my Red Meat Suburb I drove a Vespa. I had two bottles thrown at me, many, many conversations about my sucking cock, and car, mostly SUV,  intimidation. I finally gave it up because I felt so unsafe. (In Denver I’d get some crap, but never felt in danger.) Now, 2 years later after Gas skyrockets I see Vespas everywhere around here. Makes me fume.

Hot, confident, AND thrifty!  What a trifecta.  OTOH, he’s sounds like a bit of a mooch.

liberalrob, you have no idea how warm and fuzzy you made me feel by hinting that something I wrote might have made one bit of difference to your view. I’m almost scared to ask what that insight might be, for fear your answer will ruin the feeling.

Hot, confident, AND thrifty!  What a trifecta.  OTOH, he’s sounds like a bit of a mooch.

If he’s as smart as his tactic suggests, and as hot as the poster maintains, he will have no need to mooch—all shall be given unto him, uncoerced!

My second year of college, I got into a car with a near stranger.  I’d met him once before, and agreed to meet him for coffee, but when I came out of my dorm, there he was with his car, saying, get in, get in.

Most frightening three hours of my life. Seriously. 

So women: Just don’t do it.  Nothing good can come of it.  And men: again, just don’t fucking do it.  Don’t offer strange women a ride, unless you’re in the middle of the mojave in July and her car is upside down and on fire and she has one leg and no bars on her cell phone, and even then, you should probably wait for a woman to come along to give her a ride. 

I don’t believe for a second that there’s a man alive who can’t in two seconds realize why a woman would be hell of creeped out by an unsolicited offer of a ride.  If someone pulled up out of the blue today, I would probably immediately call the police, because such a person likely has a warrant out for their arrest, or at the very least, DNA from some other evidence kit in the system.  At the very least, I would be upset and severely triggered for the rest of the day.  That’s what you risk when you pull crap like that - fucking up some random stranger’s emotional health for the day.  If you’re willing to risk that, then you’re an asshole.

If he’s as smart as his tactic suggests

Psh.  Being dealt a winning hand doesn’t make you smart.  Otherwise we’d consider W. a genius.

No, I looked silly on it (pulled up next to a glass truck and was honest). I can’t imagine anyone flirting with my 50cc’s of masculinity. Still, I loved it and it was ruined for me. (though to be pissy I’m seriously thinking of buying a pink one.)

The hotness is a winning hand. The “want to buy me a drink?” is smart. The not having to worry about owing anything would be a big incentive to see what comes of a little more conversation.

If a man offers me a ride and does it both (a) without mentioning my looks and (b) takes no for an answer without further ado, I’m not scared.  Which is why I have absolutely zero patience with anybody whining that women shouldn’t be scared, oh no, I’m just being a nice guy!!  If you ask in the way I just described, she probably won’t be.  Frankly, it’s heavily suspicious you ask in any other way.  Take me—I’m a woman.  I see a guy walking along the street.  I roll down my window and shout out—“Hey, you’re incredibly handsome.  Want a ride?”  Would any man on the receiving end of this seriously believe he was merely altruistically being offered aid?  He’d have no suspicion at all that I was trying to get in his pants?  And if he said no and I slowed down and trailed him, begging and pleading, he’d feel like this was normal behavior..?  Of course not.  So, all you knightly ride-offerers…think about it, eh?

Being open to serendipity doesn’t feel like an option.

Well said. I learned as a very young woman not to make eye contact with anyone to avoid this kind of crap. Unfortunately that got to be such a habit that I tended to avoid eye contact even with people I knew well.

Now that Im middle aged, I get less attention on the street than I used to, but since I’m small and slender I still get men coming up behind me in cars who now get pissed off when they realize Ive committed the sin of being over 25.

They just have to protect themselves from coercive, bitter, or angry men.

Perhaps its the terminology, but male-privilege doesn’t sound much like a privilege when we have to do extra work just to prove that we aren’t part of the bad crowd. Misogyny hinders happiness for both sexes, as I’m sure you’d agree.

I list one in the post, which is the ability to blame women as a group for hostility to sex because you don’t get chosen as a sex partner as often as you’d like.

So could it be said that women as a group are generally aversive to casual sex because of fear of violence instilled by prominent misogyny in society? That would make the bitter whining by males a bit more understandable, without having to attribute their feelings to their own misogyny, rather than misogyny of other people in the society. I certainly think that this is a better explanation for the “good guys finish last” meme than the “‘good guys’ are really the bad guys”...

women hate sex

Women hate the idea of having sex with someone they’re really PISSED OFF at. That’s about the only time women truly hate sex.

women get harassed even if they’re out in sweats

While out walking, my sister would get harassed the most when she wore an army surplus coat over baggy jeans. A guy whom she ignored actually threw an empty beer can at her. So much for catcalling as a tribute to the attractiveness of women.

[Guy asks] “So, do you want to buy me a drink?”

This is actually a bit of pickup artist advice. But it actually seems sensible for getting to know a strange woman, because it puts women at their ease by inverting the usual power imbalance—I can buy your attention for the price of a small amount of alcohol.

Something I read years ago, and have no idea if there’s any truth to it.: Women are more free to appear sexy in public in Latin cultures, because there is always a duenna/chaperone near by to ward off any males.

chingona, you were insightful in your summation of where I was coming from.  Not 100% accurate, mind, but close enough.  Unlike Amanda, you didn’t just assume I was another That Guy and you tried to understand my motivations rather than make assumptions and dismiss me based on your assumptions.  Kudos for that.

I don’t see The Patriarchy in everything.  It colors everything Amanda writes; and given what she’s revealed of her history, I completely understand why she would be that way.  At the same time, I see it as a blind spot that prevents her from understanding what I’m trying to say.  She either misinterprets or flat out dismisses things that don’t support her beliefs, which of course is not unusual, but it’s irksome to me when I try to reason with a clearly brilliant person and I get dismissed out of hand and dumped in the barrel of That Guys.  I’m not That Guy.

I am driving and see you walking to the store, offer you a ride to the store or wherever youre going in the nicest way that it is possible to do that.

Get serious.

I’m a guy, and I’m gonna tell you that you know damn-well that that sort of behavior is creepy as fuck.  Don’t act cute and innocent about it.

Normal, non-misogynist altruistic guys don’t ask random women that don’t know them from Adam if they want a ride to the store, because that’s creepy as fuck.

What makes a comment like that even more offensive is the sly eye-batting innocence that you attempt to intonate when you make it.

This is exactly the crap that Amanda is talking about.  No.  Unacceptable.  And you know that.  Don’t act sly, because you’re not.

MarkusR -

I’m sorry, but when we refer to “male privilege”, we are partly referring to the fact that men don’t have to take the same measures to protect themselves that women do.  Comparing how women have to take self-defense classes, look out for dark places, not go out at night, etc, to the fact that good men have to make an effort to live down the bad rep give them by those other guys, really falls short.  In what world do you think the burden upon men is comparable to women?  Yes, misogyny hurts everyone, but it hurts women MORE.

And no, the bitter whining of males are not understandable.  It’s like a seventeen-year old whining about how it’s NOT FAIR that their parents won’t buy them a new car.  It sucks not having a new car, but it sucks even more when you’re the one who has to pay for it.  Guys who can’t find a date is in no way comparable to the high rate of women who are raped and abused. So you can’t get a date? Boo fucking hoo.

And no, good guys do not finish last.  Nice Guys finish last. There is a clear difference between the two.  Nice Guys victimize themselves with their sense of entitlement.  Good guys take the good with the bad, and respect women as individuals, instead of stereotyping them as a whole group.

ARGH!

Normal, non-misogynist altruistic guys don’t ask random women that don’t know them from Adam if they want a ride to the store, because that’s creepy as fuck.

It’s also bullshit. Every woman over the age of ten knows what he really means is not “Do you want a ride” but “Do you want to fuck me/give me a blowjob.” Anyone stranger who offers you a ride on the street is *not* looking to drive you somewhere. He’s looking to see if you’re “a slut” who is willing to have sex with a stranger.

So could it be said that women as a group are generally aversive to casual sex because of fear of violence instilled by prominent misogyny in society?

Absolutely.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive to the point of idiocy.

That would make the bitter whining by males a bit more understandable, without having to attribute their feelings to their own misogyny, rather than misogyny of other people in the society.

Almost.  The fact that those guys are bitter towards the victims of misogyny rather than realizing that those victims are reacting a particular way because of the treatment they’ve received is at best an asshole move, and at worst feeds into that same misogyny loop since said guys assume all women are “just like that” and not that women have had to deal with multiple assholes before meeting their wonderful selves.

Whenever someone tells me to “smile” I cross my eyes and stick my tongue out at them.

The look I get in return is absolutely priceless.

Hi Gavel! 
*OK, back to reading thread.*

Ginger, I am RIGHT NOW going to go and practise crossing my eyes in front of the mirror so I can do that too.
Sadly I haven’t the courage to routinely employ Melissa’s Boob Pistol of Disdain.

Whenever someone tells me to “smile” I cross my eyes and stick my tongue out at them.

The look I get in return is absolutely priceless.

Oooooh, I’m gonna have to remember to use this next time that happen to me…

Hi!  I’d be commenting, but Mnemosyne keeps stealing my lines. 

In my high-rape college town, it’s well known that girls don’t walk outside at night for this same reason (well, at least not without a large dog).  The creepers just crawl out of the woodwork, and there’s several serial rapists that the cops seem to have no care about.  It really sucks, because it gets dark by 6 pm and i can’t walk down the street for something, and if I have to go to a meeting on campus, I drive six blocks there because it’s safer than walking.  If you do walk on your own, there are just SO many creeps in cars that offer you drinks, harassment, rape…  not to mention weird people who will walk around behind you, just close enough for creepiness, and with just enough acknowledgement that they’re following you to scare the shit out of you.  I live in a house with three other girls, and one night I was here alone and there was a guy tapping on windows.  Scared the shit out of me, and I turned on every light in the house and didn’t sleep all night.  There’s also four locks on every door and bars on some windows, because a girl WAS raped here.

So could it be said that women as a group are generally aversive to casual sex because of fear of violence instilled by prominent misogyny in society?

Absolutely.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive to the point of idiocy.

I don’t agree that that’s the only reason.  Look at the number of women who experience orgasm during a hook-up.  If memory serves, it’s something like 20 percent, compared to 80 percent of men.  For whatever reason (and it’s not too hard to guess at it), casual sex is not all that enjoyable for women.

For whatever reason (and it’s not too hard to guess at it), casual sex is not all that enjoyable for women.

Most men are terrible at getting women off without extensive training, and are either too embarrassed or too callous to ask and experiment during a one-night fling.  I blame the Patriarchy.

I don’t agree that that’s the only reason.  Look at the number of women who experience orgasm during a hook-up.  If memory serves, it’s something like 20 percent, compared to 80 percent of men.  For whatever reason (and it’s not too hard to guess at it), casual sex is not all that enjoyable for women.

I think you’re looking at the chicken and assuming there’s no egg behind it.  If we had a misogyny-free society where a woman could go into a casual hook-up assuming that she would have a good time and not be constantly on guard for the moment where the guy turns into a weirdo rapist, I think you’d see those statistics turn around.  You (usually) can’t have an orgasm with someone you don’t trust, so if you automatically don’t trust the guy you’re with for very good societal reasons, you’re not going to have one.

The fact that women are societally inhibited from really enjoying casual hook-ups doesn’t mean it’s physically impossible.  It just means that we all have that voice in the back of our heads at all times telling us to watch the guy and make sure he doesn’t make any wrong moves, which tends to interfere with one’s orgasm.

When I’m walking alone after dark, I’m lucky enough to not get much straight-up harassment—but oh boy do I get TONS of men saying things like “Aren’t you worried?  This isn’t a safe area, you know” and “You should be more careful” and “You’re lucky you ran into me instead of some bad guy” and any number of variations on how I’m taking my life in my hands.  The thing is, these lines have THE EXACT SAME EFFECT as straight-up harassment—they make me feel less safe (and they’re generally not true either; the areas I walk in are reasonably safe as city streets go).  I have a REALLY hard time believing that these guys genuinely care about my safety, and this post articulates perfectly why: their “concern” is exactly as sincere as the harassers’ “compliments.”  The goal of making women feel like they don’t have the right to be out and about without feeling uneasy and frightened is exactly the same.

their “concern” is exactly as sincere as the harassers’ “compliments.” The goal of making women feel like they don’t have the right to be out and about without feeling uneasy and frightened is exactly the same.

There I could see ignorance being a possibility.  We all internalize the Patriarchy to some extent, and so the guys warning you have probably never really thought about what they’re saying.  I doubt they’re trying to intimidate you, even if it ends up having that effect.

I knew a guy who used to insist on walking women home at night, and oddly enough his motives were pure - what wasn’t pure was his not taking no for an answer and insisting he knew better than them.  We had to have a long talk about the origins of chivalry and why his behavior was condescending and insulting.

If we had a misogyny-free society where a woman could go into a casual hook-up assuming that she would have a good time and not be constantly on guard for the moment where the guy turns into a weirdo rapist, I think you’d see those statistics turn around.

I still disagree.  Gavel Down has the right idea at least in my experience of experimenting with casual sex and talking to my friends about it.  Men find it easier to get off during bad sex and most casual sex is bad sex.

And as unpleasant as that incident was, I’m sure it didn’t stop you from wearing cut-off shorts. -Gracchus

It takes a mountain of strength and confidence to not change your life in response to harassment. Amanda might still wear cutoffs when the weather requires it, but, as she said, she still dresses knowing that her fashion choices will be falsely implicated if she is harassed. I’ve never met a woman who didn’t feel obligated to accommodate harassers by keeping covered up or walking only in open, well-lit spaces or carrying a makeshift weapon (car keys in the eyeball FTW!) when leaving the house alone. (As most women have learned, though, dressing unattractively and limiting your movement to “safe” places is not a sufficient deterrent.)

Gracchus, I know you’re not implying that Amanda continuing to wear cutoffs was some indication that harassers are harmless. I know you’re not a troll. Your comment just got me thinking about the everyday steps women are forced to take in their lives to accommodate misogyny. This is an issue I’ve been grappling with and that sometimes makes me cry at my desk. How do I live my life as I normally would, in such a way that doesn’t let the misogynists “win,” without still feeling like an idiot for wearing a tank top in public or walking home at night without my finger on the pepper spray trigger? How can I intellectually understand that I am in no way at fault for being harassed, yet still accept that I need to dress conservatively to make it clear that I’m not inviting harassment?

Blitzgirl, I have a wedding ring. Doesn’t make a difference. Then they just inform you that they would be a superior match to your current spouse. Because clearly women aren’t capable of choosing the husbands that they actually want. Fucktards.

[M]ost casual sex is bad sex.

Phew! I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

I don’t see The Patriarchy in everything.  It colors everything Amanda writes

That’s a bit unfair. I’ve seen feminist bloggers who are far more obsessed with identity politics than Amanda is—her balance is one of the reasons I come here. From what I can see, she’s also sex- (and lust-) positive. Sometimes I’ve disagreed with her feminist reading to a particular situation, but she’s not hostile to reasonable critiques.

The most prominent example of this balance was the whole Hillary/PUMA business during the election. If Amanda really saw the Patriarchy in everything and it coloured everything she wrote, she would have been on board with the pro-PUMA feminist bloggers. Instead, she sensibly derided that “movement” as counter-productive.

When I read Amanda’s earlier post, I thought, well, duh.  It was so obviously correct that upskirting was coercive and creepy that I didn’t even bother reading the comments.  I assumed it would be a bunch of examples of women who were victimized and I didn’t need further convincing.  I’m naive in many ways I guess.  I’m surprised anyone would try to justify it.

As far as offering rides to women a man doesn’t at least have some acquaintance with, to be mystified by women finding that creepy and/or offensive this day and age is simply clueless or disingenuous. 

I am a visual guy and I like looking at attractive women.  I will admit to being influenced by the cultural conditioning of what is classically beautiful, though my own personal range of “beautiful” is considerably wider than say, glamour magazine.  If an attractive woman walks by me on the street on a warm day with few clothes or even provocative clothes, I not leer, not stare, not say anything.  I will look and silently appreciate.  If our eyes happen to meet I will smile a small but appreciative smile and go on my way, thankful and happier for the sight.

“we have to do extra work just to prove that we aren’t part of the bad crowd. “

Markus, what extra work do you have to do to prove this?  If you think that saying “trust me, I’m not a bad guy” is “extra work”, not only are you wrong about what “work” is, but saying that still makes you a creepy weird guy.  Telling another person to trust them because they aren’t bad instead of letting the other person figure that all out on their own is creepy and weird.  De facto.

If a girl walked up to you and said “You should go out with me.  Don’t worry, you can trust me, I’m not one of those psycho weird chicks!  Ha ha!”  do you *really* think you’d believe her?

People can form immediate impressions of someone in an instant and are constantly re-evaluating that opinion as more information comes in.  Trying to hinder a person’s ability to evaluate what kind of person you are by *telling* them what to think and how to trust is not trustworthy behavior.

Ugh, I hate when men try to take the blame off men who assault women because the women somehow deserve it or led him on or wore skimpy clothes and shouldn’t be surprised if a man is interested. I’ve seen people blame women for being raped by saying they should have known better than to “dress like a whore.”

I would think that most intelligent men would rather fight this argument that men are all incapable of controlling themselves around an attractive woman.

And rape is not about lust anyway. Any kind of woman, no matter what she’s wearing or acting like, could be raped or harassed, and it’s often by someone she knows. It’s about control and domination, not a man’s inability to stop himself after seeing a bit of leg.

This “blame the victim” culture in America only makes women feel guilty and ashamed of what happened to them, and stops them from reporting the crime. As long as women continue to be portrayed as sex objects before being actual human beings, rapists will keep being encouraged to hurt them.

I consider myself a very pro-sex feminist, but erotica and porn are very different, and I support it only when there is an equal balance of power in the relationship and both partners are treated as people who consent to the act and care about the other person’s pleasure.

There must be something that we can do to change the way young men today view women, as equal partners whose feelings must be considered rather than just a piece of ass there for the taking. Intimate partner violence, harassment, and sexual assault will continue as long as these misogynistic ideas continue, and I really don’t think a majority of porn contributes to new attitudes about women.

And for the record, I’m assuming the “For the idiots on this thread” crack was referring to me.  If it wasn’t, I apologize for my assumption.

i’m pretty certain too that [in Chicago] was when i developed my perma-scowl in public.

Not just women. When I lived in Chicago and rode the CTA, I had to put my game face on (more like a “Don’t fuck with ME, man” look). Find some clueless grinner to victimize, was the message I was trying to send.

Most casual sex is bad sex because most men who participate in casual sex are in it for their own pleasure and nothing more. Male privilege. I’m a bi male, and I’ve had my share of sexual experiences with men that had the same mentality. Most of them were with ‘bi curious’ males, which I’ve since started to translate as ‘I’ll fuck you like I’ve fucked women before, which is only for my personal enjoyment. You’re just by fetish toy for tonight’. Hence, bad sex. The fact I was male myself did not salvage the bad sex from being bad sex.

When I lived in Chicago and rode the CTA, I had to put my game face on (more like a “Don’t fuck with ME, man” look). Find some clueless grinner to victimize, was the message I was trying to send.

I’ve begun to worry that a perma-backthefuckoffyoufuckingfuck look is actually interpreted as a challenge to be overcome by harassers, at least the kind who get off telling women to smile.

It’s easy to put that on women, because you know that they can’t come back with the evidence that they love sex, thankyouverymuch, without it just feeding the creepy vibe that’s already been put into the room by That Guy behavior.

Yes, exactly.  I’ve experienced that many times; I’d rather have That Guy regard me as a loathsome sex-hating prude than use me for his creepy masturbation fantasies—and those are generally the only options with That Guy. 

On the “can I buy you a drink?” - there are plently of assholes out there who get angry if you refuse the drink (bitch thinks she’s too good for me!), even angrier if you accept the drink and then don’t hang on their every word all evening (bitch just took the money and ran!), and positively dangerous if you accept the drink, chat to them while drinking it and then want to leave the pub on your own (cocktease!). So a lot of women will turn the drink down to be on the safe side.

Exactly.  It’s hard enough to shake some guys at bars when they haven’t spent money on you.

The local resident young dudes in my undergrad college town who catcall or pull this BS make it plain it is all about the power play and getting a rise out of terrifying women, especially if they happen to be college students. 

There was a recent incident in Boston where some geezer in town for a conference decided to feel up a teen girl on the subway in such a way that several people hustled him off at the next stop and detained him until the cops came.

Ms. Kate,

When did this take place? Was that geezer there to attend the National Sociology Association Conference….or the National Poli-sci Association’s Conference?

Gracchus, I know you’re not implying that Amanda continuing to wear cutoffs was some indication that harassers are harmless.

No worries. Just to be clear, my point was that Amanda seems like the kind of strong-willed person who doesn’t let creepy jerks dictate her fashion choices. I’m aware of and appreciate the the privileges that I have that women lack, and don’t consider them an onus. But I also understand that different women handle that situation in different ways.

Being a man, I’m obviously not aware of the many less visible choices a woman might have to make on a day-to-day basis. I wish I had an answer for you, but there are as many different types of men as there are women. I guess it’s common sense to assume a significant proportion of guys are jerks, and respond to that fact as you see fit. Cold comfort, but there you have it.

Most men are terrible at getting women off without extensive training, and are either too embarrassed or too callous to ask and experiment during a one-night fling.  I blame the Patriarchy.

Per my earlier comments on clueless guys, this is one of those situations where I’m kinda grateful to the Patriarchy.

I’m surprised anyone would try to justify it.

I don’t remember anyone trying to _justify_ it.  One strand of the discussion was about whether it was a disgusting and assaultive thing for one man to do to one woman, vs. it being an act that stemmed from one man’s demeaning view of all women, applied to one woman as a target.  Thus, is it an act of desire gone horribly awry, or an act of hatred and degradation that works exactly as intended?  Is it something singular, or something embedded in a matrix of social forces?  Unlike the Salma Hayek thread, this time no one said the behavior was unexceptionable.

Where I live (Maui) hitch-hiking is sort of a way of life. There have been several times where I’ve picked up an attractive woman and neither been offered nor expected sex. I pick up men too, but not so much—more because statistically a man is more likely to be an ax murderer than that I don’t want to have sex with them, but both factors are taken into account.

you assume that of course the weak female brain is the one with the blind spot.

There you go again, you assume that I consider female brains “weak.”  What is the basis for this declaration about what I think?  I never said anything of the sort, don’t think that at all, certainly never accused you of having a weak brain, and now I’m a sexist who thinks female brains are weak.  Where did that come from?

I don’t assume that “the weak female brain” has the blind spot.  I think YOUR otherwise-smart female brain has the blind spot.  Therefore, I am a misogynist That Guy, QED.  Right?

“Certain flattering myths,” indeed.  Nice.

@Hugo,
I’m from Latin America, and no, this is not true.  Women do not dress skimpier.
In fact, where I am from, society can blame the victim of most every crime, not just raped.  If you got mugged, that’s what you get for wearing jewelry.  If your car is stolen, that’s what you get for parking int hat street.  You get run over, you should’ve looked both ways.  You get raped, you shouldn’t have been drinking/walking by yourself/trusted a man that wasn’t your father/been born a girl in the first place.

See, neither of us said a word, but white male privilege is such that simply being female or not-white and alone at night is an “invitation” to violence, and we were on guard.  When he realized I was female, he laughed, b/c I was obviously not a threat to him.  When he laughed, I realized I’d startled him, and a kinship was formed by our mutual defensiveness against the MAN.

Caren, that is an awesome parable of City Life.

I have accepted rides from men (though far more often from women).  Mostly when I lived in a small town, though once on the res between Tempe and Mesa.  I can count the number of times on one hand, and I don’t do it anymore.

Generally the guys offering were elderly or otherwise seemed easy to overpower.  They also were either altruistic or doing a really fantastic job of faking it.  The vibe of “I’ve been in your shoes and it sucked,” was strong, and there was <i>no<i> vibe of harrassment or even anything related to sexual appreciation.  I was never in desperate straits.  I might have been carrying stuff, but I was never struggling under the weight of anything but my own stupidity (no bus money, missed the bus, let my phone die, forgot to pack enough water, etc.).  I felt comfortable saying yes in part because it would have been so easy to say no; I didn’t need the ride, but it would make my day nicer.  With the gascan or the flaming car, yes you need help and you’ll accept and most people will offer in a situation like that, but the situation itself provides enough coercion to give creepy guys an opportunity.

@Caren
hahaha!  That’s an awesome story.  He was probably waiting for you to pass him.  I do that when somebody is walking behind me, so I don’t feel theatened by someone following me.

pepito:  Um…

[casually whistling, not looking it up in a dictionary…]

Yes, it means “beyond reproach.”

[not putting dictionary back on shelf]

I get the same kind of heebie-jeebies feeling Caren describes when walking down the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood.  Fear of the unknown, and knowledge of the possible.  That black man might not have thought it was the KKK sneaking up on him, it could just as easily have been he was afraid of a black or latino gang-banger.  It doesn’t matter; the fear comes from the threat of violence, not the specific characteristics of the potential violator.

Amanda, I appreciate your comment. I does clear it up a bit.

Rachel II, with “extra work” I mean extra effort a man has to go through compared to “a world where women feel safe”, as Amanda put it in the OP.

I guess the take-home-message (besides the misogyny talk) here would be is that if you are a man that is feeling a bit depressed by relationships (or sex), feminist boards are not the place to go. But darn it, don’t we need to hear this stuff?

Uh, and I also like keshmeshi & gavel down’s replies for on casual sex. Very informative.

LiberalRob, if it’s just Amanda that has the blind spot in her fantastic mind, do you not think it’s a bit odd that everyone else on the thread gaped at your insane “empty set” definition of misogyny? Or do we all have the same, identical blind spot? Or do we just have weak female brains? Or - and I suspect this is your real mentality - are you just so much smarter than everyone else on earth, male and female alike?

I especially enjoyed when you defined “misogyny” such that serial rapists and wife beaters were not included. Nice.

Here’s a lesson in how to not be an asshole, by the way.  Reading Caren’s story, I found that I was surprised.  It never occurred to me that a random tall black man in Chicago would feel threatened by strangers like that, but instead of preserving white privilege and denying your experience, I’m going to choose to believe you.  And think long and hard about why that might be, and if there’s a whole world of experience that man you encountered on the street has had that I’m not privy to.  See, it’s easy!  Men could totally extend that to women instead of assume they know better than we do what we see.

Fucking-A, Amanda. That was awesome.

@ liberalrob. I was afraid that was what you got out of that. As I said in the other thread, I don’t think you’re a misogynist. But I do think you might want to ask yourself why you are so vested in seeing these acts only as individual acts. Could you, perhaps, have a blind spot? Could the collective experiences of so many women maybe, just maybe, offer some insight? Or because you, personally, don’t hate women or hold them in contempt, does that mean that any theory that looks at this behavior systematically is flawed?

Seriously, I was LOL’ing at some of the car comments.

My place at work is in the inner suburbs of Atlanta, and I take the train there.  However, I walk the last mile or so to the business campus.

Thing is, I *enjoy* my walk.  There’s an airport on one side of the road, and on the other side, there’s construction, abandoned property with and old peach tree, some houses owned my Hispanics who grow corn in the front yard, and this huge briar/kudzu patch around a drainage creek that houses quite a bit of urban wildlife.  And all of this changes over the seasons such that there is always something cool to look at.

However, my coworkers (not strangers) keep offering me a ride, and I keep smiling and refusing, saying that I enjoyed walking.  Hmph…car culture…

As for the stupid sexuality, one of the things I was going to mention but never got around to (but was tangentally referenced to) was the culture of mangas and anime that features all sorts of fan service (and skirt uplifting is considered a fan service-type thing).  There are distinct types of such mangas—harem and ecchi among others that pretty much caters to perverts and pedos even if it’s not actually hentai.  And it’s *mainstream*!  I’d go from Black Lagoon, with very limited actual fan-service and a thoughtfully violent plot, to Gakuen Alice, which wasn’t bad, but devolved to the typical shoujo silliness despite that the main characters were all very small children, to Elfen Lied, which is was a combination of shonen with the worst of sexist ecchi aspects to it such that I felt dirty reading it.

Speaking of culture, what do people think about the Big Bang Theory?  I think that show does actively try to show how normal, if very intelligent men, could be raging sexists (and how not to be that way).  Alot of the ways that Wolowitz is shown to be a creep towards women, are really standard stuff for many sexists, stripped of any normative cover.  Like with the “negs” dating strategy demostrated a couple of weeks ago?

Ellen beat me to it, but yeah, do the rest of us who agree with Amanda happen to share this so-called blind spot?

As far as offering rides to women a man doesn’t at least have some acquaintance with, to be mystified by women finding that creepy and/or offensive this day and age is simply clueless or disingenuous.

Disingenuous, period.

I suppose it’s possible that there is that one exception when it really is just a genuine case of cluelessness, but I have yet to meet a single guy who really is that clueless.  And if they do exist, they’ve literally been living in a cave for at least 50 years.

This is by far one of the best posts I’ve ever read since I began posting here, even if it came about as the result of some asshole trolls.

Amanda has nailed it perfectly, and made the strongest case I’ve ever read here about how unacceptable it is to just accept that men are by nature nothing but clueless lust-driven fools who can’t help themselves, but that they are quite the opposite, and should be held to an expectation above that in how their behavior is to be judged.

Because if the truth is that men really are just clueless, lust-driven fools who can’t help themselves, then how can anyone ever rationally argue for an end to the patriarchy?

If read in the right perspective, this post is in fact very male-positive.  What’s unfortunate is the number of posts I’ve seen here that treat some nearly rape-apologist commenters as if they can’t help the fact that they don’t have a clue, when the fact is, yes, they DO have a clue, and they are playing games, and people are falling for it.

LiberalRob, if it’s just Amanda that has the blind spot in her fantastic mind, do you not think it’s a bit odd that everyone else on the thread gaped at your insane “empty set” definition of misogyny? Or do we all have the same, identical blind spot? Or do we just have weak female brains? Or - and I suspect this is your real mentality - are you just so much smarter than everyone else on earth, male and female alike?

No, Ellen, not odd, if you all feel the same way.  It just means that I’m an outlier in this group, which I to some degree expected going in though I’d hoped to find at least a little support.  I would rather it not have involved declaring me “insane” and a variety of other unflattering names, but I guess them’s the breaks when you go against the crowd.  “My real mentality,” which you “suspect” incorrectly yet again, is that I hold a different opinion on the subject in question.

I especially enjoyed when you defined “misogyny” such that serial rapists and wife beaters were not included.

That’s your interpretation.  I didn’t exclude them, you did (and I never excused their actions, regardless).  I just refused to jump to a conclusion about them that you feel is impossible to deny is 100% true in all cases.

“Rachel II, with “extra work” I mean extra effort a man has to go through compared to “a world where women feel safe””

That patently makes no sense whatsoever.  If it is *work* to listen to your girlfriend recount a story about a douchebag on the street and NOT tell her that she should have felt flattered by such attention then YOU ARE A BAD GUY.  If it takes *effort* and *work* beyond *living your life* to not scare women, then YOU ARE WHO WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

I mean, it’s one thing when you’re starting out as a non-misogynist and you have to check your initial inclination to blame the victim.  But if your unaltered personality is that of a jerk, then you are a jerk.

No, Ellen, not odd, if you all feel the same way.  It just means that I’m an outlier in this group, which I to some degree expected going in though I’d hoped to find at least a little support.

Stupid, bitter women, never willing to let the Outlier Male Savior tell them why they are wrong about everything they’ve ever experienced. That’s gratitude for you.

I would rather it not have involved declaring me “insane” and a variety of other unflattering names, but I guess them’s the breaks when you go against the crowd.

Victim complex? I said your definition was insane, not you. Read, then post.

“My real mentality,” which you “suspect” incorrectly yet again, is that I hold a different opinion on the subject in question.

Actually, your opinion is that you have a Crystal Clear View Of The World, as opposed to the stupid bitches here who have a Broken Blind Spot.

Enough with teh troll already.  It’s the same old song and dance in every thread and at some point, if you don’t get it, you’re beyond help and the best we can hope for is that the troll doesn’t hurt anyone else.  It sucks but that’s the way it is.

Amanda, this isn’t much more than a “fuck yeah”.  What’s odd to me is that we even need to have this discussion.  I can’t fathom just bellowing at some random woman walking or cruising alongside some woman walking down the street entreating her to “get into the car”.  That’s fucking insane.  So if I seem dismissive of the men who do it it’s not because I am unaware of their existence.  Sadly, I know they’re there.  I just think those men should be treated like the anti-social assholes they are and really, what’s the point of arguing with or about them (which isn’t to say that this thread or discussion should not exist).

We’re always going to be saddled with assholes.  Some humans just are.  Sure, if we didn’t have ridiculous religions and many other things influencing our society it might be better but, well, as I said above, that’s just the way it is.  Maybe these discussions can help some of the men on the fringes but for the most part, I don’t believe we, you, I or anyone else, is going to convert or educate them.  They’re past that.

“and obvious threat implied in a man offering a complete stranger a ride is a fucking idiot. “

What if the man was in a taxi with a light on which states the taxi is available? What if it was a woman would you go with her?

You should be more alarmed if the person pulls up and opens their door for you to get in without saying a word.

liberalrob, if that’s your argument, why are you so concerned with the 1 percent or 2 percent who might not misogynists?

Ellen beat me to it, but yeah, do the rest of us who agree with Amanda happen to share this so-called blind spot?

If you agree categorically with her that all antisocial behavior towards women is based on (or defines) misogyny, then I’d have to say yes, in my opinion you all have this blind spot.  You are rushing to cry “misogyny” when the true explanation might be any number of things.

If our eyes happen to meet I will smile a small but appreciative smile and go on my way, thankful and happier for the sight.

I have to say that, while I shouldn’t encourage anything along these lines, the only times I’ve ever felt that someone noticing me/being attracted to me on the street has been this sort of reaction, or maybe a minor non-threatening comment to this effect.  I still remember this one time, when I was about 19, running around the block with my friend’s big yellow dog.  I passed an older man sitting on his stoop, and he said something like, “I have been waiting for this moment my whole life.”  Quietly and calmly, remaining seated, and not leering at all.  It was one of the most strangely sweet and poetic things I’ve ever experiences.

Not that I’d have gone off with him or anything - it was just one of the few times when getting a compliment from a stranger didn’t make me feel like meat.

Rachel II, I’m going to assume that what he meant by “extra work” was that “it’s harder to get a casual hookup when the women has to assume that I might hurt her because we live in a an ugly world”.

If that’s what he meant, then, yes, men have a hard time of it, too. Kind of how it wasn’t just the Jews who suffered during World War II - I mean, the upper crust of German society had liquor shortages.

Yeah, I just Godwined the thread. I’m sorry - it’s been that kind of day. Yes, I agree that a misogynist world hurts non-misogynist men, too. Several posters have noted the same already. It just seems kind of obvious and whiny to bitch about it when we’re talking about a collective fear of abduction and rape. But I apologize for being touchy - probably my fault.

why are you so concerned with the 1 percent or 2 percent who might not misogynists?

Because I don’t believe it’s 1 or 2 percent, I believe it’s more likely to be 50 or 80 percent.  I simply can’t accept that there are that many true sociopaths in the world.  It defies common sense.

LiberalRob, out of curiosity, do you also believe that there aren’t many racists in America?

Wow. I wasn’t expecting such a literal example of that old “Women aren’t objective enough to talk believably about their own experiences” thing.

I passed an older man sitting on his stoop, and he said something like, “I have been waiting for this moment my whole life.”

Opop, you were neighbors with Phil Collins?

It defies common sense.

I love how you’ve decided that Amanda and, indeed, all women are the sum of our (flawed) experiences.

But you, YOU LiberalRob, you are the essential essence of truth. And that which defies YOUR “common sense” cannot possibly true.

Ah, such fun.

If we are talking about “a world where women feel safe”, take a look at the central rules of most swinger clubs:

1) Ask before you touch
2) No means No (and nobody should ask twice)

It’s fairly simple, but I don’t feel this safe anywhere else.  In regular bars, girls come up and try to kiss you without asking for their boyfriend’s amusement.  Or people don’t ask becase they think it’s not spontaneous or whatever.  Ask! Damn it, so I can say yes or no!  And then, once your space has been violated, if you say no, or no thanks, it’s taken as a maybe.  And they will come around and ask again.  Or keep following you with their car, same thing.  And if you bitch them out and forcefully say no, people look at you like you’re the crazy one.  Or come to your blog and say you are a man-hating bitch.

It’s not just about the rules, but the fact that society (in this case the club-goers) are at hand to enforce the rules, and the rules are important for everyone’s fun.  So, even though at a regular bar it is not OK for drunk assholes to harrass you, if you flip, nobody takes your side, because it’s not crucial for the fratboy’s fun that you are not harrassed.  The manager might escort the asshole out, but you’re weirdo drama-bitch for the night, and he’s the victim who got kicked out.

Amanda is right.
Guys who want to nit-pick apart are just trying to keep the privilege.

You really can’t get much simpler;
IF men (and some women) would quit harassing women,
THEN women would feel safer
AND they’d dress however they felt like dressing.

Some would feel they could dress showing off more, some would dress so they would show off less, some wouldn’t change.  But since everyone would treat them ( and everyone ) as equal humans, it would be their choice.

Regarding ride offering, I can understand if the weather’s shitty or the nearest store is quite a distance away or the person in question is obviously having difficulty walking or is disabled or something (and, as earlier mentioned, there’s no “hey baby you’re sexy wanna ride?” types of shit), but if it’s only a few blocks, even offering without any kind of catcall is obviously just some sort of overture for trying to get into someone’s pants.

In any event, strangers in cars offering any variety of unsolicited rides or assistance are generally unconditionally creepy, despite the fact that some of them may actually just be nice, helpful, friendly people.  Plus, there’s also something weird about someone assuming you can’t do things on your own.

do you also believe that there aren’t many racists in America?

What is your definition of “many?”  Yes, there are racists in America, and more than none is too many.  But do you believe that all white males are racists?  Or that all but 1 or 2 percent are?

LiberalRob, before I answer your question, what makes you think that anyone here assumes that “all white males are <misogynists>”?

The “misogyny” word was lobbed at Upskirters who are, demonstrably, much closer to 1-2 percent of the population than they are to 100% of the popluation. So I really don’t understand your question. Please elaborate.

  I simply can’t accept that there are that many true sociopaths in the world.  It defies common sense.

See, that’s the thing. I don’t think that every man who engages in these things is a sociopath. They do it because they can. It’s socially acceptable. Indeed, they are encouraged to think it is their right. Think about this for a minute. Put down your defensiveness and really think about this. Your view is that these are individual actions of sociopaths. That would mean that a huge percentage of the population is made of sociopaths. Scary, huh? Hard to believe it might be true, right? Guess what? I don’t think it’s true, either. I bet Amanda doesn’t think it’s true. That’s why we have come to the conclusion that there are larger, societal forces at work that tell men they can get away with this and indeed, that they should do these things to be considered manly men. And that’s why we get worked up when you insist there is some other cause. It’s you who are the pessimist who thinks we might as well throw up our hands and we who are the optimists because we think by combatting misogyny, things might get better.

“Kind of how it wasn’t just the Jews who suffered during World War II - I mean, the upper crust of German society had liquor shortages. “

HAHAHAHAHA!  It was worth the Godwin.  I love dark humor.

This thread and the other is making me think a lot about the guy who tried to rape me in college.  He was part of our college feminist group, always called people out on their sexist behavior, categorically said that rape jokes aren’t funny, etc.  Then, this guy, who any woman would feel super safe around because he’s legitimately anti-rape, tried to rape me.  As a result of this, I am extremely hostile to any guy who presents as feminist or liberal.  Like, it takes months of me being around someone to stop being openly hateful to them.  And yeah, I don’t have casual sex/make out sessions because of it, either. This great, not-creepy guy soured me on any type of sexual contact with people I don’t know very, very well.

So in effect, yes, if I’m wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like” tshirt and some non-creepy, genuinely nice guy says he loves my shirt and have I read the latest essay by Gloria Steinem, I’m as likely to glare at him until he walks away as I am some guy who says “Nice tits”.  I’m sure it does suck for men to have that happen; they are nice, they don’t deserve that response from me.  On the other hand, statistically speaking, they have never had someone they considered an ally try to rape them.  If I had the choice, I would much, much rather receive a violent rejection that I don’t deserve so I’m pretty sure that the men in these situations are still coming out ahead of the game.  I mean really, can we really weigh “that chick was mean to me” against “this is how I respond after rape”?

Plus, again, if they get hateful and start trolling the internet about these dumb bitches who get hostile when some guy talks to them in a bar, they weren’t that nice to begin with.  The line between justified anger at such a rude dismissal and misogyny isn’t that small.

Yes, I’m in therapy.

Well, I hope it’s male lust-positive, DTG.  Because while I’m disinclined to talk about it with the whiff of creepy in the air, male lust has largely been a positive thing in my life.  Some guys have hidden behind lust to express anger or resentment (or really, plain old misogyny), but I can easily tell the difference.  It’s misogyny I dislike.

Yes, that’s a much better way of putting it.  Male lust-positive.

And that’s the most important part of your argument, and why someone like “liberalrob” really stays stuck in what the patriarchy has told him anti-misogyny is.

Being a guy and digging teh sex isn’t, and never has been, the problem.  The patently misogynistic sense of entitlement many guys have about teh sex IS the problem.

The whole Nice Guy phenomenon occurs often when a guy thinks that he has to behave in a pseudo-altruistic manner in which he’s attempting to hide his normal sexual urges, but continues to behave in a patronizing sexist way which still exudes a sense of entitlement to have those urges fulfilled.  It’s bullshit, and I don’t think it fools anyone.

I think that if a guy GENUINELY wants to become egalitarian and non-misogynist in how he views and treats women, he won’t focus on getting rid of his sexual urges (which would be an utter waste of time, because they’re not going anywhere), he’ll focus on not carrying himself with a sense of entitlement with regard to those urges.  And he’ll recognize that if he really thinks about it, he knows in his gut what is and is not creepy behavior, and he will not engage in creepy behavior.

There was only one point in my life when getting into a car with someone you don’t know (well) was even fractionally reasonable, and that was a really specific circumstance.

I spent some time at a large university that catered mostly to commuting students.  Said university had an insanely bad parking problem.  This led to the rise of two types of behavior: vulturing (circling around until you see someone leaving whom you can then follow) and sharking (idling near the front of the lot and asking people if they’re leaving, including offering them a lift if they’re more than a couple of rows back).

Like lonespark mentioned above, there was a very clear sense of “we’re all in this together.”  Plus it was offsetting favors - a lift for a guaranteed parking spot.

I love how you’ve decided that Amanda and, indeed, all women are the sum of our (flawed) experiences.

Our life experience is part of who we are.  All of us, not just women.  I didn’t say “flawed,” either.  It is what it is.  But when your life experience seems to be leading you to make what I consider incorrect statements when we’re discussing something, I’m going to point that out.

But you, YOU LiberalRob, you are the essential essence of truth. And that which defies YOUR “common sense” cannot possibly true.

Whereas of course you, YOU Ellen, know for a fact that it is true, right?  Come on, Ellen, this isn’t discussion.  It’s just character assassination.

Rachel II, that’s a terrible thing to have happen to you, and I can understand why it would be hard to trust people after that. Whenever I meet a guy who seems to be pro-feminist or liberal, I am more likely to trust him a little more quickly than other males. That asshole who did that to you wasn’t really feminist or liberal if he would disregard a woman’s consent for his own selfish reasons. He was operating under the same sense of entitlement as openly sexist guys. Most men who call themselves pro-feminist or liberal probably really do care for women’s feelings and rights as people; he was just using the labels because he thought it would attract women more easily or something. But I have no understanding of the situation, so who knows. He’s a piece of shit no matter what the reasons.

You have my support =)

I’m going to go anon on this one to say that Amanda is right and guys who think women hate sex are idiots.

I am a rape survivor. And for a long time in my younger years I did hate sex. But I was dating guys who, if not rapists were coercive at times and made me feel guilty for having reservations.

So then I started putting myself in safer situations, listening to my intuition about men, and meeting safe guys. My current partner in particular had to wait a LONG time for sex with me. But he was totally cool about it and made it his top priority to make sure I knew I was safe and that I had equal power in the situation.

Do you know how much fun it is to have equal power in a safe environment? For the first time ever, I was the main “instigator” of sexuality with him. It kind of opened up a whole new world for me and it was all good. I love sex. But I gotta know that both partners are coming from equal places. Which means that the guy is going to have to consciously give up some of his implied physical power.

But anyway, my point is, I’m very fond of sex. Quite love it, actually. And as Amanda says, it is to guys benefit for all men to ensure safe environments for women so that women can truly be able to enjoy it without having it be overshadowed by fear. These guys that use power over women will probably never quite know how it is to be with a woman who truly wants to be with them and will let all of her inhibitions and safeguards go.

LOL, LiberalRob, the difference between you and I is that I have no problem believing these other women’s experiences and evaluations of the situation they experienced…whereas you have no problem telling them that they are simply wrong because their experiences do not fit the special view of the world that you have developed via your comfy male privilege.

liberalrob, how about actually engaging with the arguments instead of complaining about how mean we are for devoting so much energy to debating you?

I think Amanda’s lynching example is really important. Do you think that every single person that gathered in those crowds were sociopathic? Entire towns made up of sociopaths? Unlikely. Were all those people racists? I’d say so. Yet many of them probably, if asked, would claim not to hate all black people. They would just say that black people needed to know their place and the lynching victim had done something very specific to deserve what he got.

That’s how misogyny works. It teaches all of us how we are supposed to behave, determines who gets away with what, and what the punishment is for those who get out of line.

@DTG—In general, men who are *already* very socially adept report that spontaneously starting a conversation on the street yields a strongly positive response, i.e. some kind of conversation/socializing about 2% of the time.  In a system where men have to initiate, men have to be both pro-active and totally impervious to rejection.  The dehumanizing, “Groundhog Day” aspect of having TENS or HUNDREDS of complete strangers make snap judgements about you, all but a tiny percentage unfavorable, is only partially tempered by the realization that YOU are the interruption in the daily routine.  Writing off the “numbers game” element as “entitlement” is a form of shorthand that ignores the lived experience of many, many men.  You really DO have to like people (and women) enough to meet hundreds of them without an agenda.  Raspberryjamba’s 1)&2;) are obvious, and make me laugh a harsh, bitter laugh—swingers’ clubs are safe(r) because they often bar single men, precisely because of the prevalence of male entitlement.

I’m sure it does suck for men to have that happen; they are nice, they don’t deserve that response from me.  On the other hand, statistically speaking, they have never had someone they considered an ally try to rape them.  If I had the choice, I would much, much rather receive a violent rejection that I don’t deserve so I’m pretty sure that the men in these situations are still coming out ahead of the game.  I mean really, can we really weigh “that chick was mean to me” against “this is how I respond after rape”?

No, the two aren’t even remotely comparable.  That sucks.

It probably does suck for truly altruistic guys to receive such a reaction, but shit, who could blame you for being gun shy?  That’s perhaps the shittiest thing about the pervasiveness of the pervasiveness of male privilege, that it can literally exist across the spectrum, and even those who you would think could be trusted as allies have to be approached with a sense of apprehension.

And the truth is, I don’t believe there is a guy on the planet who at some time or other didn’t give in to his own awareness of his male privilege, myself included.  Any guy who claims otherwise is full of shit.  Which isn’t to say that all guys are scumbag misogynists, just that all guys at some point or another have exhibited misogynist behavior.  I think truly good guys, however, recognize the behavior, and recognize not only that it’s wrong, but that they really do have a choice in the matter, and that they aren’t just neanderthals incapable of behaving like civilized human beings.

Eurosabra -

Genuinely not trying to be glib, but I’m not exactly following what you’re saying.  Could you clarify?

I knew a guy who used to insist on walking women home at night, and oddly enough his motives were pure - what wasn’t pure was his not taking no for an answer and insisting he knew better than them.  We had to have a long talk about the origins of chivalry and why his behavior was condescending and insulting.

I used to do this, indeed, several women I knew would often call me and ask me to show up where they were and to walk them home…  The college campus at the time had an epidemic of stranger-rape, and since they were classmates and friends, I was happy to do it.  I never realized it was condescending or insulting.  I just thought it was something a friend would do for another friend who was frightened.

Then again, I guess I am one of those guys who doesn’t get it…  As I’ve grown older, I’ve become less comfortable meeting women, so much so that since my last girlfriend died (1991, in a hiking accident) I’ve not even tried.  Turns out, I’m happier for it—it allowed me to develop my interests in wildlife and photography, and has sent me on safaris to places like Borneo and Madagascar…  Something I never even considered when I was attempting to conform to the standard couple meme.

By the way, your attempt to describe my writing as aimed at all heterosexual men in a post where I argue that decent men are hurt by these forces is pure bad faith.  As I suspected.  Were you ever in this on good faith?  Because one of the favorite things That Guy likes to do is equate male sexuality with predatory behavior and thereby excuse his own predilection for predatory behavior by suggesting that it’s inherent to masculinity instead of his own nasty personality that he refuses to control.

PRECISELY.

It’s the whole “You can’t get mad at guys for acting like guys, because everyone KNOWS that they can’t help it that they’re raging horndogs who have no self-control when it comes to how they behave towards women!” argument.

What if the man was in a taxi with a light on which states the taxi is available?

Oh, yawn.  It’s obvious nobody was talking about taxis.  Dumbest gotcha ever.

James, it’s not walking women home that’s being objected to: it’s the insistence and the not taking no for an answer. Is this in some way hard to understand?

I used to do this, indeed, several women I knew would often call me and ask me to show up where they were and to walk them home… The college campus at the time had an epidemic of stranger-rape, and since they were classmates and friends, I was happy to do it.  I never realized it was condescending or insulting.  I just thought it was something a friend would do for another friend who was frightened.

Then again, I guess I am one of those guys who doesn’t get it…

Yes, yes you are.  Do you honestly not see the difference between doing something another person asked you to do and doing something someone another person asked you NOT to do?

Seriously.  Dude.  Are you stupid?  The rest of the world learns this in kindergarten.

It is what it is.  But when your life experience seems to be leading you to make what I consider incorrect statements when we’re discussing something, I’m going to point that out.

“Quiet, little woman, let me tell you what you think.”

commentors, I think “liberalrob” has consumed enough energy today.  Let him go back under his fucking bridge.

I used to do this, indeed, several women I knew would often call me and ask me to show up where they were and to walk them home… The college campus at the time had an epidemic of stranger-rape, and since they were classmates and friends, I was happy to do it.  I never realized it was condescending or insulting.  I just thought it was something a friend would do for another friend who was frightened.

James, what you describe there isn’t the same thing as what Gavel Down described.  There is a difference between being willing to do this favor for a female friend who has called you and requested it, and imposing that “favor” on your female friends when it hasn’t been solicited by them.

Put down your defensiveness

That’s a lose-lose for me, isn’t it.  How can I defend myself without being defensive?

Your view is that these are individual actions of sociopaths. That would mean that a huge percentage of the population is made of sociopaths.

Only if a huge percentage of the population were doing these things.  (By “huge percentage” I’m assuming we’re talking 75% and up.)  I don’t think it’s the case.  And you agree:

I don’t think it’s true, either. I bet Amanda doesn’t think it’s true. That’s why we have come to the conclusion that there are larger, societal forces at work that tell men they can get away with this and indeed, that they should do these things to be considered manly men.

Well, all I can say is I didn’t get the memo from The Patriarchy that told me to go out and take upskirt shots; and to my knowledge, there is no such memo.  There are douchebags and assholes in the world and guys who feel like they can do whatever they want, and I object to them and their behavior as much as I think you would.  But it’s quite a leap to go from the fact that a few choads take upskirt shots to the conclusion that there is some sort of universal white male cultural imperative demanding that they go out and do so, I consider that sloppy reasoning and I disagree with it.  And saying that they’re all misogynists and hate women when it seems to me that most of them are probably just losers with panty fetishes similarly leaves me scratching my head. 

Maybe I’ve led a very sheltered life and the world is a much harsher place than I ever suspected.  I’ve not run into many white male acquaintances who I would consider likely candidates to engage in this kind of behavior, so from my perspective it would seem to be a fairly rare phenomenon.  From the perspective of someone who saw it every day and hardly ever met a white male who wasn’t such a potential asshole it would seem to be the rule and the occasional guy who “got it” a rare exception.  That’s possible.  All I can do, as a participant in a discussion, is put my view out there and see what responses I get.  I certainly got an eyeful.

If you agree categorically with her that all antisocial behavior towards women is based on (or defines) misogyny, then I’d have to say yes, in my opinion you all have this blind spot.  You are rushing to cry “misogyny” when the true explanation might be any number of things.

I’d love to hear what the “true” explanation is of why a guy follows me in his car screaming insults when I refuse to get in.  I’m sure it’s a really good one.

You know what, even if it WAS a taxi, IF I WANT A TAXI I WILL HAIL ONE.

If a taxi driver pulls over and tries to solicit me when I’m walking home late at night, I start thinking Bone Collector. And yeah, Taxi Drivers have freaked me out—particularly when they start asking me if I live with anyone or have a boyfriend or anything. One time I told him to let me out at the corner then I went over and hung out with the neighborhood drug dealers until he left.

It was an interesting conversation with the drug dealers.

“ARE YOU A POLICE OFFICER?”
Me: “Yes, I’m a police officer. All police officers are scared of taxi drivers. True fact.”

I’m tired of being nice every time I get called a troll.  Fuck you, Eric.

That sounded more sarcastic than I meant. But this entire thread is about women like male lust but don’t like harrassment, and how some douchebags claim not to know the difference.

If you can understand that one woman might ask for one guy’s company when walking at night AND YET a different woman might not appreciate a different guy forcing his presence on her when walking at night, you are on the right track.

Maybe I’ve led a very sheltered life and the world is a much harsher place than I ever suspected.  I’ve not run into many white male acquaintances who I would consider likely candidates to engage in this kind of behavior, so from my perspective it would seem to be a fairly rare phenomenon.

I have four older brothers who would often talk about women as though I wasn’t there.  If you’ve never heard about that behavior or other equally misogynistic ones from your fellow men, you’re probably the most sheltered man in America.

liberalrob, re:

If you agree categorically with her that all antisocial behavior towards women is based on (or defines) misogyny, then I’d have to say yes, in my opinion you all have this blind spot.  You are rushing to cry “misogyny” when the true explanation might be any number of things.

Out of all the antisocial behavior targeted at women, it’s a safe bet that only a small percentage has nothing to do with the target’s being a woman.  Just because there are a few guys who are assholes for different reasons, that doesn’t somehow mean we should ignore the general sentiment of misogyny pervasive in our society in favor of treating every instance as an individual case that cannot be considered part of a trend.  I mean, yeah, sure, not everything falls into that trend, but that doesn’t mean that the trend doesn’t exist.

James, it’s not condescending, and it’s not “insisting” if they’re your friends and they requested your presence.

Rachel II - I’m so sorry for that awful experience. Your reactions sounds entirely understandable. I wish I were a theist so I could smote him to Hell, but as a godless liberal I’m relegated to hoping that one day that man realizes the mistakes he’s made and revises his views of women’s sexuality. I wish you the best.

@DTG:

Shorter me:  “entitlement” is a clumsy shorthand for the burdens of performative masculinity.

@eurosabra
I have friends who also make friends with girls on the street, but they are careful not to put them in a scary position, and to be really cute.  And “impervious to rejection” to them means that they feel really lucky when they are not rejected, rather than thinking that women are bitches for rejecting.

Also, if 1 & 2 are so obvious, then why do you think everywhere else, people think no means something other than no?  And why do you think banning single males is evidence of male entitlement?

That is not to say that entitlement does not exist.

James, it’s not walking women home that’s being objected to: it’s the insistence and the not taking no for an answer. Is this in some way hard to understand?

I read it as Gavel Down also objecting to the “being walked home” by pointing out the origin in chivalry:

We had to have a long talk about the origins of chivalry and why his behavior was condescending and insulting.

That’s why I assumed it was more than not accepting “no,” it sounds like Gavel Down was objecting to the concept. 

Now, I’ll admit I may have misread.

Troll.

Fine.  I surrender.

Amanda, in regards to rob (and anyone who actually sides with him in this debate) I think you said it best here:

Ice, just want to agree that we won’t change any assholes minds.  But I do think that there’s a level of tip-toeing that assholes expect because they have their plausible deniability in place, and these threads can encourage people to see through them better.

This guy epitmozies The Nice Guy.  He’s putting on the front that he wants to engage in a rational conversation to understand, but really what he wants to do is to “prove” what an anti-sex man-hating harpie evil feminazi he thinks you are.

Based on what I’ve read from him so far in this thread, I’d have to give him an EPIC FAIL.

I think the problem with this, and for male apologists, is that there are a lot of guys for whom this behavior and the motivations behind it are so foreign to us that we can’t even relate to it.  And when we try to project our own experience with sexuality on it, it just doesn’t compute.  And it’s not just our individual experience, it’s our experience of talking about sexuality with other guys.  It’s not just me.  No one I know well would do this.  It not only doesn’t jive with my own sexuality, it’s foreign to the way me and my friends talk about women.  I think it fuels a lot of skepticism and resistance in men to accept what women say on the subject.  You start hearing enough stories from women, and you begin to figure out this stuff goes on way more than I, as a guy, would ever guess.  But just like my friends in Southern California find it hard to believe racism still exists, I think because most guys don’t get exposed to it we find it hard to believe misogyny exists and happens as much as it does.

@dude,
You are not TOTALLY wrong there… 
But when cute guys catcall it’s still harrassment, not flirting.  Same with grabbing you at bars.  Or even more, upskirting.

Aren’t most kinds of privilege pretty well summed up as “leading a sheltered life”? I mean, it boggles my mind and I can scarcely believe my ears when I hear about (for example) how many white people think it’s OK to pet the hair of black people as if they were stray cats.
Because I’m white, people don’t do that to me. But I believe that it happens, because I accept that in this sense I have indeed led a sheltered life.

And saying that they’re all misogynists and hate women when it seems to me that most of them are probably just losers with panty fetishes similarly leaves me scratching my head.

It’s both/and not either/or, in my opinion.

How can I defend myself without being defensive?

Maybe, instead of defending yourself, you could actually think about and engage with the ideas being presented to you. A few people have called you a troll, it’s true, but lots of people have challenged your ideas (strongly at times) without insulting you.

Well, all I can say is I didn’t get the memo from The Patriarchy that told me to go out and take upskirt shots; and to my knowledge, there is no such memo.

Aha! I’ve been suspecting this for a while, but I didn’t want to make assumptions. You are one of the people who thinks the Patriarchy is five old dudes in a room somewhere sending out orders to their minions. That’s not how it works. We’re not claiming that’s how it works. We’ve been trying to descibe to you how it works, but you won’t listen. Social conditioning doesn’t make men take upskirt shots. It doesn’t make men rape or grope or harass. But social conditioning tells men that women are an acceptable outlet for their frustrations, regardless of who the woman is or how she feels about that. And then many men feel free to take out their frustrations in whatever way most appeals to them.

I’ve not run into many white male acquaintances who I would consider likely candidates to engage in this kind of behavior, so from my perspective it would seem to be a fairly rare phenomenon.

I’m white. I’m not racist in the “I hate black people” way. I do have prejudices, stereotypes, preconceived notions, that I try to deal with. I don’t have any white friends that are openly racist. But when black people tell me about incidents they have experienced that appear motivated by racism, I don’t say “Well, chances are that person isn’t racist. Maybe you ought to consider a different explanation. Maybe they just prefer being around other white people, and it was nothing against you personally.”

Wallace gets the good answer, and I get to talk to the hand.  TANJ.

James - You did.

James:  My fiancé used to volunteer at the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan, setting up for special events and weekly drawing sessions and things like that.  One of her co-volunteers was this guy who was otherwise pretty cool, but claimed that the reason he wasn’t letting her do much volunteering (which, she felt, made her feel and appear lazy and useless) was something along the lines of:  “The way I was raised, women weren’t supposed to do physical labor, so when I see you hauling chairs and tables and things, it makes me feel bad.”  She was—quite understandably—a little insulted, even though his intentions weren’t exactly awful, because of the implication that she was somehow incapable of doing things that A Man could do—especially things that she was clearly demonstrating she was capable of doing.

It’s not that courteous behavior is intrinsically negative or insulting, but when helpful and considerate acts are targeted specifically and unsolicitedly at women as though they somehow need rescuing or special attention from any random inconvenience or menial task, it’s insulting and demeaning and categorizes women as this kind of fragile little thing that warrants protection.  And how would you feel if some random guy who thought he was stronger and somehow superior to you insisted on lifting a box for you or walking you home at night?

And saying that [“upskirt-ers” are] all misogynists and hate women when it seems to me that most of them are probably just losers with panty fetishes similarly leaves me scratching my head.

The thing is, most of the guys who focus on the upskirt fetish aren’t “just losers with panty fetishes.” If that were the case, they could get off using everything from Victoria’s Secret catalogues to most standard porn, focusing on the undies. A loser as much access as anyone else to that stuff, as well as actual panties.

No, there’s another transgressive thrill at work here, and that thrill is a violation of unwilling/unwitting women’s privacy (not men and women; not one particular woman; but women in general). In other words it’s anti-social behaviour, directed exclusively at women: misogyny. You don’t have to be Alan bloody Alda to be a man and understand this.

I’ve not run into many white male acquaintances who I would consider likely candidates to engage in this kind of behavior

I’m willing to take the “white” portion of that sentence as unfortunate phraseology, but you might want to clarify that it is so.

I kept thinking liberalrob reminds me of someone but I couldn’t think who. It’s Uhura! from the blacks and gay marriage threads. At first, she comes off as kind of nice and like she really wants a good faith discussion but just doesn’t agree with the consensus. But every attempt to explain or engage somehow just isn’t quite good enough. But she’ll never say quite enough to give you something to work with, to know where the objection really lies, so you keep reframing your argument in some other way, hoping you’ll find a foothold that can at least advance the discussion. No dice. Then people start to call her a troll and she gets very offended and complains that we don’t want a real discussion.

I read “careful to be really cute” as “exceptionally good-looking.”  I’m sure you meant something like low-key, relaxed, non-threatening.

Clubs ban single men because there are no guarantees of good behavior, and because they can be pushy and exhibit entitled behavior.  Amber Rhea of Being Amber Rhea had a good post on that.  There is also a mate-guarding aspect to it, in that the men who arrive as part of a couple want to exclude single men.  (The clubs with a policy of “Couples only, but we’ll make an exception for an extra girl who arrives with a couple” make me roll my eyes and stoke my cynicism.)

The campus rape prevention slogans that went “No Means No” were read as “Yes I Do but not With You.”
So I think your friends are inherently attractive enough that their experience is radically different from the average man’s, although that degree of acceptance of rejection is necessary and salutary.

That’s why I assumed it was more than not accepting “no,” it sounds like Gavel Down was objecting to the concept.

I think you misinterpreted—Gavel Down was saying that it was the insisting on walking a woman home over her objections that was the problem, not the entire idea of walking a woman home after dark.

At my school we had a service that you could call and they would come by on a bike or in a car to get you home so you wouldn’t have to rely on the random kindness of strangers in a pinch.

Male acquaintances, period.  The “what about racism” comment leaked.  Apologies.

Well, Wallace didn’t accuse feminists of hating lust. Wallace said “I think I get hung up on this because of this personal experience of mine, though I realize that other people will have different experience.” I don’t want to say your problem is the way you phrase things, because I think I actually just disagree vehemently with your ideas, no matter how you put them, but if you think you and wallace are basically the same, you need to go back and read your own comments.

I knew a guy who used to insist on walking women home at night, and oddly enough his motives were pure

Yeah, I’m that kind of guy—don’t consider it odd at all. I don’t exactly insist, but I don’t feel good about letting a woman walk home alone on a dark night, so I offer—once. Same with escorting her from the car to her front door at the end of the evening. Sorry, that’s how I was brought up—I blame my very independent but very manners-insistent aunts (and The Patriarchy—always The Patriarchy).

It could be considered chivalry, and even condescending or insulting, but I offer because, like everyone else, I acknowledge certain realities about women walking alone late at night. I know women who’ve been assaulted and stalked, so I’d feel awful if I didn’t offer and something happened (yes, I know this is selfish—sue me).

Now if I know that the woman is capable of kicking my arse (and I do know such women), then I’ll usually refrain from making the offer. And—more importantly—if one refuses the offer, that’s fine, too. Certainly no-one, including feminist women, has ever given me a hard time about it or lectured me. Maybe a little gentle teasing, but unlike the knights of yore I don’t take these things too seriously.

It’s a mild example of my expressing male privilege (“I can walk alone at night with no worries; you can’t”), and certainly not the worst example of instances when I’ve done so.

Rob -

When I was in my early twenties, I was promoted from waiter to assistant manager of the restaurant I worked in. Most of the waiters were female, and I’m a bit of a flirt. It was all innocent and fun, but the thing is I kept flirting in the same way even after I was promoted, and even with new female staff who were hired after I was promoted.

It just didn’t occur to me that the supervisory power I now had changed the dynamic, and that flirting was no longer appropriate, especially with staff with whom I hadn’t previously established an “equals” relationship.

It also didn’t occur to me to question why I had been promoted instead of female staff who were at least my equal at the job and who’d been there longer.

So no, I wasn’t a misogynist prick in intent. And I’d bet the men who promoted me weren’t even conscious of the fact that the promotion was at least questionable.

But I’d also be willing to be you could find at least a couple of the women who worked under me who found my ongoing flirtatiousness at least a little creepy and/or wondered why I got promoted.

So no, there are no “memos from the Patriarchy.” There’s no secret handshake known only to men. But the effect upon women is such that there might as well be.

No man with whom I am friends participates in or even implicitly condones sexual harassment or assault (that I know of). But every single woman with whom I’m close has a horrific story to tell.

Every single one.

There’s a problem. It’s systemic.

Wallace gets the good answer, and I get to talk to the hand.  TANJ.

Because Wallace admits that though he hasn’t seen the behavior in his social circle very often, he knows that it exists and must be pretty pervasive since he’s heard many stories from women he knows.  That’s quite a bit different than you saying that you don’t see it in your social circle and so therefore it can’t possibly be as pervasive as women say it is.

Big difference.

I don’t exactly insist, but I don’t feel good about letting a woman walk home alone on a dark night, so I offer—once.

The offer is generally appreciated.  It’s the insisting after the offer is turned down that becomes creepy.

I wish I was participating in this thread more, but I have a turkey to wrestle with.  But yes, I second everything Crowley said as regards “chivalry.”  I think there’s an element of pushiness and i-know-better-than-you-little-lady implied, mostly because otherwise it wouldn’t be a separate word from “politeness.” Also because all the men I know who’ve prided themselves on being chivalrous have been pretty contemptuous of women at their root.

My oh my.  “Fuck you.” Tsk. It’s so HARD to be so dense and in such deep denial.

Troll. Energy sump. Nitwit.  Take your pick.  “Most sheltered tool in the country” looks good on a resume.

But she’ll never say quite enough to give you something to work with, to know where the objection really lies, so you keep reframing your argument in some other way, hoping you’ll find a foothold that can at least advance the discussion. No dice. Then people start to call her a troll and she gets very offended and complains that we don’t want a real discussion.

I’m not offended, I’m disappointed.  And I’m sick and tired of being called a troll, and more than a little pissed off.  A troll just comes into a comment thread to stir up shit.  That’s not me, I’ve tried multiple times to have substantive discussions here but unless I’m in abject agreement with everything Amanda says I’m a troll.  Fine.

Thank you, chingona, for trying to have a substantive discussion.  I appreciate the effort.  It’s been my experience that you will never change anyone’s mind in a blog discussion; all you should try to do is get your position clearly understood, and after that it’s just clarification and exploration.  Conversion if it happens at all will probably occur offline.

I find it interesting that you are thanking me because my impression of this thread is that I am the one you were least willing to engage with. Almost as if you would rather be insulted and put upon than have a discussion. Just saying.

Male acquaintances, period.  The “what about racism” comment leaked.  Apologies.

No big deal. I read it as either trying to tie it to the concept of “white male privilege” or noting how your self-described sheltered life has limited your male acquaintances to white ones. Figured I’d save you a little grief in a thread where you’re already in trouble.

More importantly, I really hope you got my point about how people here are (very validly and basically) defining misogyny, especially in re: this “upskirting” fetish.

I never ‘aggressively demanded” or even politely asked you to describe your sex life in excruciating detail, Amanda.  That’s bullshit.  But as you said, we have nothing to talk about.  Enjoy your echo chamber.

Just for fun, a taxi story. I was once in a taxi with a driver who was so fucking creepy that I got out at my friend’s stop and walked 10 blocks (through the city! in the dark! after midnight!) rather than stay in the cab. And I was with my then-boyfriend, now-husband and another friend, a guy, when it happend. He kept taking about that show (Taxicab Confessions or something like that) and saying that he wouldn’t mind at all if we all had sex in the back of his cab. We told him thanks but no thanks, we were fine, and he kept talking about it - would not move on to another subject. So yeah, if a taxi that I didn’t hail pulled over, I don’t know that I would get in it.

Right, because the rest of us aren’t conflating lust with misogyny, this is an echo chamber. Well, then, hello-hello-hello-hello-hello-!

I find it interesting that you are thanking me because my impression of this thread is that I am the one you were least willing to engage with.

No, you were the one I most directly answered.  Ellen would be #2, though mostly she just wanted to insult me.

I am glad Ms. Marcotte was not riding a bicycle. A friend from my university days claims she was deliberately hit by a car while riding her bicycle to or from school. She was semi-lucky, only broke one leg.

My husband once was deliberately hit by a car while he was on his bicycle, though he just got a little scraped up - very lucky. That proves that what happened to your friend wasn’t misogyny.

That’s a lose-lose for me, isn’t it.  How can I defend myself without being defensive?

Christ on a bike, you’re a piece of work, aren’t you? Are you in junior high? ‘Cause that’s the last time I heard someone insist upon defensiveness as the Sole Available Tactic of Argument.

Like the upskirting thing—-I think most of the good guys and gals out there, if they found upskirting porn on a friend or relative’s computer on accidence, would immediately seek out rationalizations, ways to tell themselves that this is just about lust, and there’s nothing weird or coercive going on.  But the danger in that is we’re lying to ourselves.  If nothing else, we should file that information away and keep the lookout for further creepy behavior, to see if there’s a need to intercede.  It’s not like a certain thing that the guy is someone with major issues, but it is a red flag.

I think the upskirting thing is a pretty big deal.  I mean, that’s like finding out your friend occassionally slips women the date rape drug.  That strikes me as pretty serious sexual predator behavior, and I’m not so sure I’d laugh it off if I found that out about a friend.

But Wallace, maybe your friend is just a loser with a panty fetish? Why so quick with the rush to judgement?

(I got to get off this thread. I’m starting to get punch-drunk.)

chingona, i’m dyin’ to get off the thread, too, but there’s a cat on my lap who won’t let me do anything productive.

J Crowley, mad props.  You really get to the heart of chivalry at its worst.  At its best it’s an acknowlegement of privelege and an attempt to politely make someone else’s experience of the world more pleasant.  But that’s the ideal.  In other circumstances it’s rank disrespect of the personhood and self-determination of another individual. 

My favorite example of the difference: I’m a short woman, but healthy and strong, if not necessarily that organized.  Before kids, I used to go hiking and camping a lot.  Sometimes I would be carrying a lot of stuff to a campsite.  It might be my own stuff, and I might have taken on a lot in order to minimize trips.  Or it might be group stuff that I volunteered to haul to do my part.  Random other people would frequently come and offer to help.  There was a HUGE difference between people who would offer and take no for an answer, and people who would grab stuff out of my hands, then maybe ask if it was ok. 

I wrote a poem about my feelings on the subject and an acquaintance who read it liked from the perspective of a disabled person living in an ableist society.  If you think you’re being nice, or kind, or polite, but you’re not respecting the full humanity of the other person, you’re doing it wrong.

In Toronto, a lot of the stories you hear about *public* harassment involve men who are obviously immigrants. What’s more, the vast majority of men sent to “John school” for soliciting street-prostitutes are new immigrants. (Toronto is Canada’s New York, i.e. where most new immigrant groups first settle, and most of our immigration these days comes from countries with more… “traditional” gender roles.)

So while not to excuse the behaviour, I wonder if everyone wouldn’t be better off if we provided more and better information to new immigrants on the gender mores of this strange, new society they’re trying to negotiate.

And kind of along the same lines, I wonder if anti-harassment training wouldn’t have to be part of a truly-comprehensive sexual education course. Lord knows I’d have preferred to have been taught certain things in class than have to have had various very-patient women slowly remove what I learned from fellow fourteen-year-old males from my brain.

Wallace:  Even more troubling than the “upskirt” stuff is this thing where women will have their clothes torn off or pulled down by one or more masked men while some other guy films, and then they all run away.  Some random acquaintance giddily forwarded me a link to one of these videos on AIM once and found himself on the receiving end of a long verbal beatdown.  I don’t really talk to him anymore.  Pretty awful stuff, apparently rather prevalent in Japan.

One of the worst things I ever heard a coworker say firsthand was something about how this attractive woman in her early twenties in our office will “hopefully never get pregnant because it would just wreck that awesome body of hers,” or something to that effect.

The point isn’t that he was a part of some secret organization that meets weekly and discusses how next to subjugate, harass or demean women—it’s a sentiment that’s pervasive in many levels of our society, and encourages men to embrace, justify and excuse primitive biological urges and ideas as “the way we are” instead of using these big brains we evolved to recognize that early human males’ abusiveness toward women is something to be deplored and overcome.

Er, sorry, that wasn’t all directed at Wallace—just the first paragraph.  The rest was to the other guys in this thread who think that the patriarchy is this sinister global organization in league with the Seven Jew Bankers and the Illuminati.

I wonder if everyone wouldn’t be better off if we provided more and better information to new immigrants on the gender mores of this strange, new society they’re trying to negotiate.

It might help to tell them that that behavior can be illegal.

However, it depends on the country, but, in my experience, many third world cultures don’t condone sexual harassment against women.  Not that those cultures necessarily respect women, usually that behavior is frowned on for simply being improper public behavior or for being an assault on another man’s property.  Many of those men probably can’t behave that way back home and certainly not towards women of their native countries.  Many of them are harassing women because 1.  they think they can get away with it, 2. they think American (or Canadian) women are sluts and totally deserve it.

“Yeah, I’m that kind of guy—don’t consider it odd at all. I don’t exactly insist, but I don’t feel good about letting a woman walk home alone on a dark night, so I offer—once.”

See, the thing of it is that when you offer, it’s cool.  When people ask you and you oblige, it’s cool.  When a guy you don’t know super-well starts insisting and deciding not to hear you saying “no,” and this insisting involves him being alone with you on a dark street or at your front door or to your car in an empty parking lot, though…that starts setting off warning bells.  I’m sure you can understand why.  Somebody who’s more concerned with rocking out in white knight fashion by overriding a no and relying on women being conditioned by society to not kick up too big a fuss is using the same mechanism that gives a fair number of acquaintance-rapists access to their victims.  It’s a huge red flag, and it’s the sort of situation where suddenly you can wind up more worried about your actual nonconsent-ignoring escort than you are about some hypothetical attacker hiding in the bushes.

But it would be worth opening up a discussion with the guy to find out if it was something he downloaded without thinking about how it’s non-consensual or if it’s a thing for him and non-consensuality is the point.

My husband once downloaded a bunch of very disturbing, non-consensual porn as part of a “packet” or something like that.  He didn’t even know it was there and I happened to find it first (I was curious!).  When I pointed it out, he was both alarmed and apologetic and made it disappear immediately.

My husband once downloaded a bunch of very disturbing, non-consensual porn as part of a “packet” or something like that.  He didn’t even know it was there and I happened to find it first (I was curious!).  When I pointed it out, he was both alarmed and apologetic and made it disappear immediately.

“I think it’s so sweet that he said that… and that you believed it!” - Helen Lovejoy

Theaetetus:

I assumed Lee was joking. I hope. I can’t conceive of that level of naivete. “Oh my god! How ever did this porn get on my computer! I only watch woman-friendly pro-feminist pornography.”

I don’t think Lee was joking, or needed to be.  He probably only intended to download slightly disturbing content. <g>
I think my husband used to download stuff in a similar way, then go through it and delete most of it.  Now he has an account on some site, and it’s easier to just get what he wants.

when it seems to me that most of them are probably just losers with panty fetishes similarly leaves me scratching my head.

There’s a difference between a panty fetish and surreptitiously taking pictures underneath the skirts of unsuspecting women.  A world of difference, in fact.  It involves consent.  If I say it’s okay to take pictures of me in my panties, or if I state to my boyfriend that he can take pictures of my panties under my skirt when I’m not aware, that’s one thing.  If he does it without me knowing, without me being able to tell him that I do not want that, then it’s creepy, and there’s a whole lot else going on there.  If you can’t see the difference between someone giving permission and someone not giving permission or not being given the choice to give permission, then you’re the one with the problem, not us.

I’ve not run into many white male acquaintances who I would consider likely candidates to engage in this kind of behavior

But that’s your privilege.  They’re most likely not going to rape you.  The default setting for most women is going to be “rapist”, because rapists look like family, friends, and coworkers.  While it is very sad that a lot of us have to default to that, there are ways to change society so that women don’t have to do that.  The reality is that we get blamed for “not knowing better” in some way, however small, and to protect ourselves, any strange man we meet is going to be assumed a rapist, until proven otherwise - and sometimes not even then.

James sed: Then again, I guess I am one of those guys who doesn’t get it… As I’ve grown older, I’ve become less comfortable meeting women, so much so that since my last girlfriend died (1991, in a hiking accident) I’ve not even tried.

Yes, we should all be open to the sage advice of James, the man who last had a girlfriend 17 years ago.

Sorry about her, by the way.

But 17 years and you haven’t even tried? And yet you’re offering advice?

I don’t think Lee was joking, or needed to be.  He probably only intended to download slightly disturbing content. <g>
I think my husband used to download stuff in a similar way, then go through it and delete most of it.  Now he has an account on some site, and it’s easier to just get what he wants.

I wasn’t joking, nor do I think I’m naive.  I know my husband very well, and we’ve had a lot of discussions about porn as well as watched some together (mainstream porn is fun to MST3K if you’re in the right mood).

Given that I’ve had “accidental porn” happened to me when I wasn’t even downloading anything X-rated, I have no reason not to believe that the creepy stalker guys stuff came with the “lesbian slumber party” that he was actually after.

dogcat said: I assumed Lee was joking. I hope. I can’t conceive of that level of naivete. “Oh my god! How ever did this porn get on my computer! I only watch woman-friendly pro-feminist pornography.”

“Really, dear? Then please, show me your regular collection.”

lonespark said: I think my husband used to download stuff in a similar way, then go through it and delete most of it.

No, totally, and more what I suspect Lee’s husband was doing. I mean, geez, who hasn’t downloaded a 3 GB zip file of uncategorized porn, then gone “toss, toss, toss, toss, keep, toss, toss, toss…”? For serious, tho… The fact that he had it without having tossed it yet means she either really beat him to it, or yeah, he kept it having viewed it.

J. Crowley - Your site = pretty damn funny

That picture at the top looks like a portrait of my ancestors…

Gavel: Thanks!  Glad you like it.

I’d been kind of on the fence about RiM, but that last comment put me over. He can stay.

I married a woman who was mercilessly tormented by the man-boys in the high school that she went to. She was tormented actually from about the age of 14 when she says with a hearty laugh, she ‘woke up with tits’. She says that somewhere between 2 and 4 AM would have been the time for her and a training bra. They came in fully trained she and her mother joke… By the time she was finishing junior high, she was a 38-C and had drawn the hatred of not only all of the girls in her school but a large number of the female teachers and other support staff too. High school was not any better in spite of going to a private high school. She was propositioned by 50 year-old men and harassed by most of the men-boys. Whistled? Check. Groped? Check. ‘Snapped’? Check. Dirty looks? Check. Thoughtless comments? Check.

As a result, she grew up with a huge complex about the way she looked. She hardly ever wore bathing suits and when she did she wore those doughty grand-mother looking one piece ones. She was even embarrassed to get fitted in a store for a bra.

I would just like to meet the many idiots and assholes that felt it was their right to torment and torture that beautiful woman because she ‘had tits’. I am also pissed at the many guys, and women too, who told me that I dated her because of her tits. Oh yeah, that happened. Sure they were nice but they got in the way a lot too. But I was amazed that so many man-boys out there felt it was in their right to treat her like one giant set of tits out there for them to treat like shit.

It took a long time to get her to want to be with me and have the lights on. It took a long time for her to feel comfortable around even me in a bikini. It took a long time for her to realize that was beautiful and not some freak to be put in a sideshow and have people treat like shit.

It was an eye opener to see it from the other side of the fence so to speak. So, thanks to all the assholes in the world. Thanks for treating her and no doubt many other women like crap…

Yeah, men can be pigs but some of the women were even more ruthless. My own half-sister once joked to me about my wife getting her share of ‘tits’. Uh, yeah. It was a joke but abraded the surface of the old wounds.

And let me tell you that a t-shirt in the heat of summer was meant for her, and cut off shorts too, when she finally got her confidence back.

In an only barely related note, I knew the recession was getting bad when I stopped getting penis increasing spam and started getting fake diploma spam.

A little while back, I got infected with some sort of malware which continually opened up ads for viagra, hair loss products and general fatigue.  It’s creepy how much they know…

One time I told him to let me out at the corner then I went over and hung out with the neighborhood drug dealers until he left.

It was an interesting conversation with the drug dealers.

“ARE YOU A POLICE OFFICER?”
Me: “Yes, I’m a police officer. All police officers are scared of taxi drivers. True fact.”

You know, I can honestly see the drug dealers from my mother-in-law’s neighborhood helping out with this.  Nice fellas, really - helped me parallel park and watched some luggage I left on the curb while my wife and I were moving some stuff into my MIL’s apartment our first year in NYC.

Not that I’m foolish enough to think that all drug dealers everywhere - or even these particular guys - are a bunch of harmless teddy bears, but I think it’s funny how the reality of a couple neighborhood guys supplying pot and pills to Columbia students doesn’t quite match the image of the Scary Brown Men With Guns that I was taught in the 99.5%-white small town I grew up in.

Sorry for going OT.  Just some interesting thoughts…

I find this whole thread very enlightening. Someone upthread indicated that any male who didn’t know that a strange man offering a ride to a woman was threatening was a complete idiot. I am that idiot.

I have a mild case Asperger’s (or something like it, accurate diagnosis is difficult) and a lot of the fairly obvious bits of social interaction that most people take for granted completely slip me by. Anyways, I was spending a weekend at a LARP event and at the end of the event, it turns out that a female friend of an acquaintance who I had enever met before suddenly no longer has a ride back to (town name here). I have space in my car and so I offer to give her a ride back.

She kinda freaked.

I was thinking : “Yeah, I can give her a ride in my car, I can move my props over in the back seat, and she doesn’t seem to have much stuff. It will only be a ten to fifteen minute diversion tops, which is well within my acceptable trip length/side trip ratio for an hour and a half drive. I need to stop off at a gas station though and why is she looking at me like that?”

I know that I am harmless, but it just didn’t click in my head that a woman who did not know me would find anything threatening about me offering her a ride in my car. It was just one of those weird interactions that I have had in my life that I just sort of file away in my memory on the off chance that it will make sense later.

And today it does. Thank you.

I can scarcely believe my ears when I hear about (for example) how many white people think it’s OK to pet the hair of black people as if they were stray cats.

You cannot be serious.

Wait.  You can.  Holy shit.

I hope such people receive approximately the same reaction they would get from a stray cat they petted without its permission.

I think the problem with this, and for male apologists, is that there are a lot of guys for whom this behavior and the motivations behind it are so foreign to us that we can’t even relate to it.

I think you’re onto something there, Wallace.  I know I had a similar problem when I first entered into conversations about feminism and other forms of inequality.  As a result, I felt picked-on, blamed for things that weren’t my fault every time someone complained about men in a way that didn’t specifically exclude me. 

Fortunately for me, this early period took place on a mailing list full of people ten or so years older than myself who demonstrated what was, in retrospect, truly remarkable patience in educating the angry cub in their midst.  After awhile, they gave me so many examples of things that were just so awful - and worse, so commonplace - that I had to grow some perspective. 

If I’d gone through that formative period in the hurly-burly of the blogosphere, I would’ve taken a real beating.  But I did do one thing right, and it’s the exact same thing you’re/i> doing right (and the exact thing that liberalrob is doing <i>wrong for that matter): you’re starting from the assumption that the people (even women!) talking to you have valid viewpoints, and the proper course of action is to listen and engage, rather than simply look for a way to refute or undermine them at every turn.

feminism and other forms of inequality

How embarrassing.  Sexism and other forms of inequality.

I don’t agree that that’s the only reason.  Look at the number of women who experience orgasm during a hook-up.  If memory serves, it’s something like 20 percent, compared to 80 percent of men.  For whatever reason (and it’s not too hard to guess at it), casual sex is not all that enjoyable for women.

Can you recall a cite for that?

There’s a cultural difference here - NZ women are the most promiscuous in the world, reportedly more so than the men.  Drinking and cruising in packs is common, and judging from the women I know well enough, there’s way less of a problem with casual sex, and getting off on casual sex, than represented in this discussion.

It’s possible that my friends are more relaxed about the subject than normal, but there sure as hell seems to be a difference in attitudes.

...but c’mon, that’s about as opposite from the article as you can get!

It’s not Skynet yet.

Wallace, Seraph, I can attest to the same Internet dynamic you mention.  “Surely this can’t be so!”  After a while, with the proof thrown in my face over and over again (Thanks, gin!) I finally caught a clue that this wasn’t made up,  it wasn’t exceptions, it was THE RULE, it was endemic, and if anything I was only perceiving a tiny fringe of what women experience every damn day.

And it’s good to get ‘booster shot’  reminders of this, because it’s so easy to fall back into thinking the world is full of reasonable, respectful guys.  It is, but it’s also full of assholes and ignorami.

(Which isn’t a word, but should be.)

““accidental porn”

Today’s band name winner.

Eric, I disagree that it’s the rule rather than the exception.  I think every woman I’ve ever met has multiple stories of creepy guys they’ve had experiences with.  But I don’t think most guys are like this.  I think that once a creep is emboldened, he is repeatedly creepy.  So one creepy guy might be responsible for two dozen creepy encounters.  I think that amplifies their presence.  But among my group of guy friends, I don’t think, as a rule, we’re creeps, and I’d like to believe we don’t even have any closet creeps amongst us.

I once went to a ‘Take back The Night’ walk and was hit by a 2x4.

Not literally mind you but there was a group of women who did not want to men to walk with them. There was a vocal and very emotional sub component of that group that didn’t want men to be there at all.

I was shocked. My girl friend was shocked. Some of the other guys that showed up were not impressed. Some of them thought that it was a militant anti-male thing rather than an uplifting demonstration of both sexes saying that violence against women is wrong.

Some of the women left. Some of the men left too.

I was amazed that men could be that cruel and vicious to women and also amazed that some women couldn’t get past the idea that not every ‘walking penis’ isn’t out to get them somehow.

I walked in the ‘men’s group’, a half block behind the woman’s group. That was the committee’s decision. I’m sure that it looked weird. I felt weird. I was angry at being excluded and angry about being labeled and hated and feared.

I was sorry for the pain they carried, and caused. I’m sorry… I didn’t do it… I wanted to help make it stop…

After a while, with the proof thrown in my face over and over again (Thanks, gin!)

When I first read this, I thought you were telling us that succumbing to alcoholism finally gave you a sense of women’s experiences with harassment.

unclepervy, put the porn away and start looking at the job listings.

Careful, Wallace.  You’ve got a good start, but you’re still in danger of backsliding.

What Eric means by this:

I finally caught a clue that this wasn’t made up, it wasn’t exceptions, it was THE RULE, it was endemic, and if anything I was only perceiving a tiny fringe of what women experience every damn day.

Is NOT that most guys are creeps.  As a general rule, people on this blog don’t believe that.  I assure you, you’re about to see a shark-frenzy of people going after unclepervy.  Saying “all/most men are creeps/pigs/wev” has the dual effect of 1) Insulting men who don’t deserve it and 2) Letting men who behave badly off the hook in a “boys wll be boys” manner.  Neither is acceptable around here.

What Eric is saying is that abuse and harassment of women - misogyny - is the rule, rather than the exception that sheltered (entitled) men like you, me, and him believed it to be.  He was simply agreeing with you - and me - that realizing that was the first step in his feminist education.

But 17 years and you haven’t even tried? And yet you’re offering advice?

Catholic priests do that type of thing all the time, offering advice on marriage and sexuality… I guess if I was looking for advice on buggering little kids they could speak with authority… They have no claim to morality. None at all.

Uh…maybe you should go to bed, PLB.  You’re kinda rambling, and the kind of unfocused sorrow and outrage you’re venting is the easiest way to say something you’ll regret later.  Believe me, I know.

PinkyLeftBrain, not to step on your story, because your heart is in the right place, but:
I married… I would just like to meet… I am also pissed… I was amazed…  want to be with me… feel comfortable around even me… It was an eye opener [for me] to see it… So, thanks [from me] to all the assholes… My own half-sister once joked to me about my wife…

Call me crazy, but I think there might be a better way to tell this anecdote.

I don’t think it’s an issue of rules and exceptions. The decent guys aren’t the exception, but sadly, I don’t think the creeps are either. I think there are lots of both, and some people think they are one but they actually are the other. I work with a guy who loves his wife and thinks rape is the worst thing in the world. He also told me that “Sometimes girls need a little convincing.” Now, I didn’t ask him what convincing meant to him, because I work with this guy and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But it’s a little hard to reconcile the notion of enthusiastic consent with “convincing.” He’s also told me several of his friends regularly go to prostitutes because they just prefer prostitutes to dealing with girlfriends. Those guys probably don’t think they’re creeps. I have no reason to believe they are cruel or abusive. But what is the mentality of a guy who could get a girlfriend but prefers to have sex without someone he can pay to leave? How does that person view women generally? Then there are guys who wouldn’t do any of that stuff, but think that the guys who do are just “being guys” and women who have an issue with it are humorless or prudish feminists. They are not themselves creeps, but they provide cover for the creeps without really thinking about it. See what I’m getting at? It’s complicated.

I knew a pretty creepy guy once.  He wasn’t a sexual predator, but he obviously didn’t have a healthy attitude towards women.  The kind of guy who went out of his way to treat men different than women, and who treated the women below him like shit.*  But a couple women I knew, at least, found him attractive.  One, in particular, was pretty hung up on him.  And another expressed the opinion that she would be interested in him if he were interested back.  And when I was first dating my wife, one night she said “I need to tell you something.  I once hooked up with [creepy guy].”  And I thought it was over.  That was it.  I couldn’t be with a woman who, even for a moment, didn’t know instinctively that [creepy guy] was a creep.  My face went blank, and I turned white starting to think about how I was going to wind this relationship up, and she said “I’m just kidding” and started laughing.  That was one of the biggest scares of my life.  It seemed plausible, because I knew these other women had expressed interest in him, even though why any woman would be attracted to him was beyond me.  She’ll bring it up once in a while, and we still laugh about the time she told me she hooked up with [creepy guy].

*I was going to say earlier that I didn’t think I encountered misogyny a lot, but now that I think about it - I encounter this all the time.

The decent guys aren’t the exception, but sadly, I don’t think the creeps are either. I think there are lots of both, and some people think they are one but they actually are the other.

I think in attempting to pry the “lust = misogyny” bullshit out of LR’s brain, an important distinction may have been lost—There is, in fact, a spectrum of misogyny. It’s just that lust is nowhere on it. Some people hate women. Some people simply hold them in contempt. Some people distrust and dislike. These are all misogyny, even if only a fraction of these people ever actually mistreat an individual woman. And yes, while a large portion of humanity isn’t on this scale…a large portion is.

BunBun @ 9:52:

I think there is a big difference between what you did, which is a perfectly civil offer, and some of the other behaviour mentioned in this thread, like slowing down next to a woman walking down the street and offering her a ride, or being insistent.

I don’t know why the person you offered to drive freaked out, but it seems to me that offering a ride to someone who is at an event with you, and you have met (even if only tangentially), is just good manners. It’s also good manners to cheerfully accept their refusal of your offer and wish them on their way - that’s one of the dividing lines in these scenarios.

chingona -

I agree.  Eric and I both admitted that realizing that misogyny was widespread and systemic rather than rare and exceptional was the first step in our feminist education, but I hope it wasn’t the last.

What you’re describing is Feminism 102: “You Mean I Might Be Sexist Even Though I’m Not A Alley-Hiding Knife-Wielding Rapist”? 

That one’s even harder in its own way, but passing the first class at least makes it possible.

@eurosabra 5:26
Hahaha, my friends are decidely not what you would call good looking, but have a good sense of what to say and how. 
I find the policy “no single men” being pushed more by women than by men, even though non-swinger males always assume it’s a protective thing that the males just impose on the club.  When I’ve been to house parties that included single males, they were almost always pushy to someone.  Not the case with single females, perhaps because they are not socialized to exhibit desperation.

@eurosabra 5:26

See, that’s what I mean with the “no means no” thing.  If no really means no, then people asking twice are just nagging and harassing.  The problem is that some women are socialized to say or indicate no even if they means yes, so it may fuck with some men’s idea of what women really mean when they say no.  Suddenly, you say no with your words, but assholes of the world think it’s okay to freely interpret your no for an opening that it decidedly isn’t.  Why does it have to be “Yes I Do but not with You”, why can’t it just be no?  Why do guys need to hold on to that stupid hope that no might, just this once, mean yes? 

You know, instead of women having to be the keepers of everything, I think men should take on the task to take no at face value ALWAYS.  That way, when women (real or imaginary) flirt by saying no when they mean yes, and you subsecuently act like no (always) means no, then maybe they will start saying yes when they mean yes!  We have language for a reason.

What you’re describing is Feminism 102: “You Mean I Might Be Sexist Even Though I’m Not A Alley-Hiding Knife-Wielding Rapist”?

Well, that’s important, but it’s not actually the point I was trying to make. Reading Wallace’s story about the creepy guy he worked with made me doubly sure I didn’t make the point I was trying to make.

My point was that it’s not always so obvious who is a creep and who isn’t. Not every guy who harasses women on the street comes off like a bully in the rest of his life. Not every guy taking upskirt shots is some dweeb with a child molester mustache. Some of them definitely are, but people can really compartmentalize this stuff too.

Actually, your response to Wallace, Seraph, was better put and more to the point - it’s not that rapists and misogynists are the rule among guys, but that misogyny is the rule. And going along with that, well, what? is absolutely right that this exists along a continuum, which gets back to the some of the other stuff we were talking about.

But there won’t be a shark-frenzy on unclepervy cause it’s late and we’re tired and he’s an obvious troll, unlike liberalrob who seemed, at least at first, to actually want to talk about shit.

junk s.;

When I first read this, I thought you were telling us that succumbing to alcoholism finally gave you a sense of women’s experiences with harassment.

If that had been the case, it woulda been “Thanks, vodka!”

>;^)

I work with a guy who I always considered sort of an Alpha Male… kind of a jerk but generally OK as a colleague. One day he comes into my office and says “can I sit down?” Now I’m a smartass all the time, and I said NO! assuming he’d know I was kidding. Most of my colleagues would instinctively know that I was kidding.

He’s like, “OH, sorry.” And I said, matter-of-factly, surprised at his lack of comprehension, “uh… I’m kidding…” He actually said,“oh, so No means No, except when it means Yes.” This is a married man. I was so taken aback that I didn’t even openly react. But to this day, two years later, I’m totally uncomfortable around this guy. He also has made “this fat bitch” comments and other things that have made me consider going to my union.

Many people consider themselves above reproach, because they have not been called out on it. This does not mean they don’t need to re-evaluate the way they view things. I wish I had said something to this guy right away, but I was uncomfortable making an issue of it. Women deal with stuff like this pretty much every day. I really wish men who don’t get it, since they don’t value women’s experience, could at least listen to the men on this thread (who, in their twisted minds, are the only people with any credibility) and just fucking learn.

But RacyT, haven’t you heard that feminists don’t have a sense of humour? The poor guy was obviously confused!
/snark

Hahaha at Theaetetus, in the context of wank fodder:

toss, toss, toss, toss, keep, toss, toss, toss…”? For serious, tho… The fact that he had it without having tossed it yet means she either really beat him to it, or yeah, he kept it having viewed it.

Forgive me while I have a gutter moment.

Ok, I will admit I will hang out freely with misogynists.

Like someone like liberalrob, I hung out with a few people who did not understand that women were people and could consent.  Which, I guess, is why I do get on him and people like him so, and why I think the “he’s loser, and can’t date real women” thing is totally useless -

My story -

There was this guy who was a fairly decent artist.  And everyone loved him so.  Apparently, I did not, because after the four hundreth time of “I was love in this girl” trope, including how she apparently treated him like furniture line, I got so mad that I just belted out with, “Well, what the hell did shewant?” line.  “Did she say she wanted the moon and stars?  Did you even bother to ask her?”  I was radioactive, in that other women at the table were horrified that I even said that.  And for the first time, the Artist realized that perhaps “women” was not collective, despite other abused women saying so.  I suppose I would not feel bad, if other women were not feeding into his “Nice Guy” attitude.  And he had the biggest crush on me, so much more than guys who didn’t have that talking to.  But I made it clear: he was creepy.  And I told him why.

So when Amanda says, “What it is going to take?” and says that sexual experiences will prove that she’s not a prude, I believe her.  Being in a nest of these kind of folk, it is true.  And if the rest of you men, liberalrob included, don’t like that, you have to understand, we speak from an experience that may be outside of your realm, but not ours.  If you don’t want to listen to us, ok, but don’t think that you not listening to us makes it invalid, well, you are living a fantasy that will never exist outside of your own mind.  We’re not furniture.  We’re people, and we react, and if you can’t understand that, well, you’ll never understand anything in life or at all.

If you can’t expend an iota of imagination for what it is like to be female, to live in fear, then whatever you’re doing, you need to give it up, because you have no imagination at all.

oops - and the “bitch” of the story -
I would have gladly been his girlfriend, had he realized that a) that women react to the world around them, just like *gasp* men, and b) that his thoughts were harmful to everyone, me and and other women around me.

Eventually, he learned that.  But with much coaching and patience.  More than I really would invest in someone now.  Now, if a guy doesn’t come from that philosophy, well, tough luck.

Now that I’ve caught up with the comments, I completely agree with misogyny being the rule.  Creepy men, regular men, the “good guys” - it affects them all (and women too, of course, although that’s not the discussion).  I work in a male-dominated environment (IT) and the amount of sexism and homosocial bonding that goes on at women’s expense is far worse than any other industry in which I’ve worked.  And this is in New Zealand which is overall more progressive than the US.

I’ve had this and yesterday’s thread on my mind a lot over the past two days because I’ve been upskirted and the whole thing has brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings, and an example of the standard casual harassment happened just today.  I was waiting for a taxi with three (all male) colleagues to go to a meeting when a woman approached to ask for directions.  Interestingly, she directed herself *straight* at me, pretty much ignoring the guys which I thought was pretty telling, but that’s just an aside.  She was harried, trying to find her destination, and young and attractive.  Now, of the men I work with there is an entire spectrum of competence with women from many that are really socially inept (tech geeks living up to the stereotype, hello!) and a few who are far better with women and with whom I’m comfortable.  Now after this woman had gone on her way, the guy at work who is by far the most normal/attractive/competent at social interaction pretends to be talking to her after she’s walked away a bit (to the other guys moreso than me) “Well hey, would you like a personal escort?  Oh wait, what, is this my apartment we’ve ended up in ha ha ha.”  In other words, he objectified her and sleazed over and harassed her as a form of male bonding and, in the process, made me extremely uncomfortable and think he was a creep.  So, as it turns out, her approaching the lone woman in the group turned out to be smart business and I get a fun reminder of the continued misogyny of my work environment.  I’ve never worked anywhere before this where I was so constantly aware of the fact that I have a vagina.  And this man is someone I would consider on the very very “good guy” end of the spectrum for the most part.  And yet there he is, casually being a sexist pig and maintaining the misogynist status quo.  (By the by, I would sometimes say something about this kind of thing but I pick my battles, and this one wasn’t worth it, sigh.)

DUHMonster, your story reminds me that I just watched an older episode of Bones in which, after Hodgins has punched his fiancée’s ex, he has the following exchange with Cam (his female boss):

Hodgins: I thought women liked it when we fought over them.
Cam: Women is not an acceptable generalization

It is so refreshing to hear a line like that on network TV.

mean, geez, who hasn’t downloaded a 3 GB zip file of uncategorized porn<blockquote>

Wow, that would be a lot of random porn—10x high-quality 15-minute video clips at least. I guess someone who DLed that is the kind of person who buys those mystery bags with question marks in the 99-cent store.

I understand about finding unpleasant surprises in otherwise intriguing sounding porn—happened to me a few times. But downloading random ZIP files of porn seems to be inviting it.

<blockquote>As a result, I felt picked-on, blamed for things that weren’t my fault every time someone complained about men in a way that didn’t specifically exclude me.

I was immunised from this feeling early on by a couple of things: first, a female relative was stalked by a deranged ex, and I saw the results first-hand; second, starting in college women felt comfortable enough to tell me about abuse/rape/stalking experiences—it seemed like every one had at least one story to tell. Men assaulting women might not be the rule for men as perps, but it certainly seemed to be the rule for women as targets.

Now of course I know I wasn’t that type of guy, but I could see how Group A, a large proportion of with is regularly assaulted by certain members Group B, might see some issues with Group B. I didn’t take it personally.

That’s not to say some feminists don’t take that attitude too far:

Not literally mind you but there was a group of women who did not want to men to walk with them. There was a vocal and very emotional sub component of that group that didn’t want men to be there at all.

I’ve heard variations on that “Take Back the Night” experience a lot. Unfortunately, at any street demonstration, feminist or otherwise, you’ll find a militant or ideological fantasist contingent that seems bent on alienating supporters because they’re not “pure’ enough. It’s yet another reason I avoid street demonstrations as a form of protest.

Thanks Seraph and Theaetetus. I could have said it better. I had a rough day which isn’t much of an excuse but the best I have…

There is so much cruelty in this world. I guess that was my point. Objectifying anyone isn’t a good thing, usually. Things get out of control. The assholes that tormented my wife and the men that tortured those women from the march are proof to me that human beings are descended from animals. There isn’t a question in my mind of that fact. Some ‘humans’ aren’t so advanced over that primitive animal psyche as others are. Less evolved or somehow retarded along the path or somehow just lacking in respect for others. Life is too short to go through life making other people’s lives hell, making people wish they’d never met you. Ironically I had a talk along similar lines yesterday. The angle was that people have gotten so self centered lately. They’ll step on you as quickly as give the time. This last political race (to the bottom) seems to have exacerbated the problem. The whole Palin Wasilla Hillbillies in the mall thing was not funny. People feel entitled to be able to make other people’s lives hell. Heck, I had a discussion with someone once who backed the whole idea that women who are raped or assaulted ‘ask for it’. What fucked up logic is that. Where did respect go in America and more importantly how the hell do we get it back. Can we get it back.

On that note, back to bed… I must be coming down with something or maybe just depressed…

But on a brighter note.

What do you have to be thankful for? I’m thankful that I have a roof over my head and food to eat but that’s cheating. I’m also thankful for my health in the shadow of Dow Chemical. Who knows how long that will last. I’m thankful for the simple and yet wild chemical dihydrogen monoxide and it’s properties. I’m thankful for cold days and tight sweaters and birds that still sing and the animals that I have and that McCain wasn’t elected… I’m thankful for people that make this world a better place… I’m thankful that there are people in my life that help me to be a better person, that make me want to be a better person… I better quit while I’m behind…

I can’t believe I spent at least a half hour following this thread. Not that I see anything particularly controversial in anything Amanda or any of the regulars have said. It’s just been somewhat short of fascinating watching liberalrob melt down. Since you, liberalrob, can’t seem to grasp what the women are telling you, perhaps it will sink in coming from a man, albeit a fictional character. You are coming off as a pathetic whiner. And frankly, a bit of a creep. My advice is to just stop. None of this is anywhere near as difficult as you make it.

More on topic. Of all the men I have known, there is only one (that I know of) who was in the habit of harassing women strangers on the street. This was someone I knew since childhood and eventually quit having anything to do with, for behavior like that and a host of other personal failings. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any great insight into that kind of character. One of the last times I saw him, he made a sickeningly crass proposition to a woman while we were stopped at a traffic light. I asked him if that kind of thing ever got him anywhere. He laughed and said no, that he just liked doing it. He didn’t know why.

What made him like that? I don’t know. He was from a stable two parent family and I know that he loved his mother and sister. I know he was in a mutually (emotionally) abusive relationship with his long time girlfriend, who I also knew since childhood. I admit that if she was all I knew of women, I might be a misogynist too. But I don’t know if the relationship had more to do with shaping his misogyny or the misogyny had more to do with shaping the relationship. And how does any of that result in harassing strangers at traffic lights?

I have no explanation other than that some guys are just creeps. How anyone can not sympathize with women who have to put up with that shit, as well as support social and legal sanctions, is a genuine mystery.

You know, I can honestly see the drug dealers from my mother-in-law’s neighborhood helping out with this.  Nice fellas, really - helped me parallel park and watched some luggage I left on the curb while my wife and I were moving some stuff into my MIL’s apartment our first year in NYC.

Similar to a friend of mine in Toronto.  He worked for a famous criminal defence firm and often had to go out to interview clients and witnesses.  He’d park his car right by the most disreputable bunch that he could find, get out and say, “I’m X from Firm Y, and I’m looking for address Z”, even though he knew damned well where address Z was.  His car was never stolen or broken into, even in the worst neighbourhoods at the worst hours.

Amanda,

Should have gotten the license plate # and passed it along to the police, even if you didn’t want to make a call you could of jotted down a letter and mailed it, maybe the info would be useful, Texas is the fatherland of serial killers, at least it seems so on TV. And perhaps we all should learn how to get of a quick cameraphone message off, like the women in the NYC subways do.

High school was not any better in spite of going to a private high school. She was propositioned by 50 year-old men

Which 50 year old men? The teachers? Random men on the street? If it was the teachers or staff, hopefully she ended their careers right quick. Apart from school employees, ny 50 year old perv even politely enquiring about the possibility of a date with a woman less than half his age is delusional.

But let’s say the perv in question was 21 or so. I have thought that one problem with having big boobs is that they make girls look much older than they are. In high school, my sister had a friend who at first glance looked like a 23 year old beautician. She was actually a 15 year old high school sophomore, like my sister. They met smoking in the school’s shrubbery during breaks.  This young woman could get into any of the local clubs without question, and she did. As a community college freshman, she bagan dating one of the math teachers, who eventually she married despite their 10 year plus age gap.

I think in college is where a lot of feminists teeter on the edge ...

Ding ding ding.  A lot depends, I think, on the nature of the feminism that they deal with there.  A lot of feminist women I know came to my law school as self-identified feminists and left three years later point-blank refusing to call themselves feminists.  Were they any less feminist in their goals or outlook?  Nope.  They had just had it up to the eyes with the particular views and tactics and statements of the law school’s feminist organization, which was front and centre in a controversy roiling at the time over who was to be the new dean.  For them (and for many of the men in the school) “feminism” as an identifier was made synonymous with a narrow, very political group.

You know, instead of women having to be the keepers of everything, I think men should take on the task to take no at face value ALWAYS.  That way, when women (real or imaginary) flirt by saying no when they mean yes, and you subsequently act like no (always) means no, then maybe they will start saying yes when they mean yes!  We have language for a reason.

Word, raspberryjamba.  Face it, there’s a lot of women who either happily buy into or have been brainwashed into tropes about the Coquette Who Must Be Convinced.  [Now is that a band name?]  It’s such an old and pervasive cultural meme that I’d be amazed if there weren’t women who did so.  (Hell, I’m sure most of us who went through Catholic school met or directly knew of at least one girl who was firm on Saving Herself For Marriage and then dumped boyfriends who took her at her word until she found one who wouldn’t respect that boundary and push her where she wanted to go.*)  I’ve heard many women complain about the stupid gatekeeper role (Amanda and The Happy Feminist, to name just two) and I agree.  It’s shit for men and it’s shit for women.  The only people who like it are those with an affection for manipulative head games.

* - It’s experiences like that, I’m sure, which push some boys and men to teeter on the precipice of NiceGuydom.  Some fall in, and spend their seething, bitter lives believing things like “oh women say that they want you to respect them, but what they really want is some total asshole who doesn’t even respect her to come along and fuck them”, [and cue all the other bleatings].

I read a few posts and scrolled down to the bottom, has anyone raised “what do men get out of feminism?” Reading your blog has made me think seriously about this and I honestly can’t find a single reason why a Man would willing give up any power (in any realm, not just the realm of gender)

You pretty much nailed the reason for the exsistance of the sex trade in one sentence on comment 8, so I’m expecting you to nail femminism in a similar forthright way.

If there is one good thing about getting older (and not trying to stay young), it’s that you no longer have to put up with that kind of shit.  Perhaps if I were single this sexual invisibility that happens after about 45 might seem depressing, but frankly, I feel freer than I ever have in my life.  Instead of being “the fat chick” or the one being hit on (depending on the time of my life) I can be that cool lady who pumps the gasoline herself when the station is busy (I live in NJ) and who knows what a timing belt is. 

Behavior like that Amanda describes isn’t about lust and it isn’t about hitting on a woman.  It’s about intimidation.  Maybe when we get older and assholes like that identify us with “mom” they realize that we’ll kick their asses if they don’t knock it off.

Another interesting point has just popped into my head.  Is it the attention or unwelcome attention that’s the issue.  Is it alright to hit on every (notice how we say “hit” to mean chat up?) woman you happen to fancy if you’re Brad Pitt but not if you’re, well not.

A lot of the post read a bit like complaints that ugly guys had the nerve to try it on, then push their luck, when had it been a good looking guy it wouldn’t have been a problem.

Oh and about the whole male sex drive thing.  No women could ever have a proper perspective on that.  Sorry, it just one of those things that only we guys experience, that and having our genitals on the outside are unique to us. 99% of the dumb things we (men) do, bravardo, violence, dangerous sports, insane competitative behaviour, all arise from our sex drive.

I can only describe it as being handcuffed to a lunatic or strapped onto a wild horse, at first you have no control but after a couple of years you learn to control it most of the time. I found violent contact sport to be the best way for me.  I am not a slave to it, but it is there from the moment I wake up every morning until I go to sleep at night.  It is the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong” that I choose to ignore

If I could take a pill to remove it and return to how I remember being when I was 11, before this unquenchable thirst rose up inside me, I most certainly would take.  I’d save myself a fortune in Drinks alone

Oh, my God. It just never ends, does it.

annejumps:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.
Albert Einstein

“What do men get out of feminism?”

Oh, I dunno, maybe something unimportant like basic humanity or empathy.

Another <strike>interesting</strike> totally unrelated point has just popped into my head.

Fixed that for you.

Is it the attention or unwelcome attention that’s the issue.  Is it alright to hit on every (notice how we say “hit” to mean chat up?) woman you happen to fancy if you’re Brad Pitt but not if you’re, well not.

A lot of the post read a bit like complaints that ugly guys had the nerve to try it on, then push their luck, when had it been a good looking guy it wouldn’t have been a problem.

A bit? Where in Amanda’s initial post does it specify the physical attractiveness of these cat-calling creeps? Or are you implying that the only way for guys who don’t have Brad Pitt looks to engage with attractive women is acting like mouth-breathing jerks?

I can only describe it as being handcuffed to a lunatic or strapped onto a wild horse, at first you have no control but after a couple of years you learn to control it most of the time. I found violent contact sport to be the best way for me.

Many of us have more control over our Warren Beatty-level libidos and stallion-like penises—enough that we don’t even need to supress them with rugby or football or boxing. That violent male-on-male contact sports are the best way for you to control it most of the time speaks volumes.

I am not a slave to it, but it is there from the moment I wake up every morning until I go to sleep at night.  It is the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong” that I choose to ignore

I like sex and women a whole lot, too, but I’d be worried if a little voice in my head was urging me to rape every attractive woman I saw walking alone.

If I could take a pill to remove it and return to how I remember being when I was 11, before this unquenchable thirst rose up inside me, I most certainly would take.  I’d save myself a fortune in Drinks alone

In terms of intellectual maturity, 11 sounds about right. No worries there.

In regard to the testosterone issue, I don’t know about pills, but I believe they have well-tested surgical procedures to accomplish the same result for guys with poor impulse control. Not only would it save you on drinks, but it would save the women at the bar from worrying about one more potential assailant. Win-win.

[seriously, no-one offers up this many easy openings. Russell has to be a parody]

It is the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong” that I choose to ignore

Give the man a cookie for not raping women. Jesus Fucking Christ. One more exhibit to prove that sexists have a lower opinion of men than feminists.

I’m more likely to accept something from Mnem or chingona who post here all the frikken time than from someone I’ve never seen before. 

This kind of made me smile. I still think of myself as new here. Also, I’ve been fortunate enough in life that I am far from an expert in misogyny in my personal life. I haven’t been raped (yet), I haven’t been abused by a boyfriend or family member, I grew up with feminist parents, etc. Despite being youngish, thin and conventionally attractive, I think I get less street harassment than some women, though I’ve certainly had my share. It’s just that I’ve reached a point where, well, I have yet to come across a better analogy than that of the Matrix. Once your eyes are opened, there’s no going back.

the whole male sex drive thing.  No women could ever have a proper perspective on that.  Sorry, it just one of those things that only we guys experience

Look, desperate creepy guy, just because no woman has ever wanted to have sex with you doesn’t mean women don’t have sex drives, and powerful ones too. That women don’t like you has a lot less to do with your looks than the fact that you actually pat yourself on the back for not raping them. I feel sorry for people like you who will never be on the receiving end of female sexual desire, and you obviously feel the same way, given your need to deny it exists.

I wonder how creeps find your blog.  Do they search for feminist blogs?  What search words do they use?  Not content with creeping out women on the train ride home, do they get home to google and look for more women they can actually creep out?
Or maybe they are just not getting off as much from upskirt pics anymore, and they come here to actually piss off women.  Or maybe they got to your blog while searching for “upskirt”? 
Ew.

“the whole male sex drive thing.  No women could ever have a proper perspective on that.  Sorry, it just one of those things that only we guys experience”

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.  Do you think women don’t have strong sex drives?  I do, I just know how to control myself and not inflict my sex drive on passersby.  What you’re describing is not your inability to control yourself because of your crazy strong sex drive, but your unwillingness to control yourself because of your unchecked privilege.  You can take that privilege back to your mom’s basement and spend the rest of your life jacking off to it, and leave the rest of the world to the people who know how to primarily treat each other like human beings rather than like potential sex toys.

Russell is a hero for not raping people. It must be really hard not to rape people when you’re a dude. I had no idea. God, his manly, turgid, throbbing prose has really opened my eyes about the male sex drive. It’s like a freight train hurtling through a tunnel! It’s like bludgeoning a hobo! It’s like the opening scene of The Fountainhead! It’s like a rocket ship inside a rocket ship being shot into the sun!

Man, if I get raped I’m going to be a lot more understanding. I’ll give the poor chap an affectionate punch in the shoulder and say “Better luck next time, slugger!” And maybe give him a coupon for some martial arts lessons so he can better channel the beast within.

I’m with Gracchus.  Gotta be either a parody or a provocation troll.

Dress Like A Woman
Specialty products ready to make any male look like a total lady.

Best Google ad I’ve seen here yet.

“It is the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong” that I choose to ignore”

I checked this by my husband, and he thinks you’re an ass.

Gah.  I know it’s flamebait, but it’s still fucking creepy and I feel the need to respond anyway.

has anyone raised “what do men get out of feminism?”

Yes.  Yes they have.  I’m sure someone else can say it better than I can, but allow me to summarize.  What men get out of feminism is women that feel free to express their sexual desire.  Women who have sex with men because they passionately desire it, not because they feel coerced into it. 

For you, Russell, this may not mean much since I’m going to guess that you don’t particularly care whether a woman passionately desires you as long you’re sure she’s not going to blow her rape whistle. 

Oh and about the whole male sex drive thing.  No women could ever have a proper perspective on that.  Sorry, it just one of those things that only we guys experience, that and having our genitals on the outside are unique to us.

 
Well, shit.  If only I were a man, and thus capable of experiencing the full range of human emotions.  But maybe I should just shut the hell up about things that I’m completely incapable of ever understanding.

If I could take a pill to remove it and return to how I remember being when I was 11, before this unquenchable thirst rose up inside me, I most certainly would take.

You should consider therapy.  Seriously.  And not for the reasons you probably think I’m referring to.

FWIW, the Classical-era Greeks were of the opinion that women had stronger sex drives then men, no doubt why the married women(outside of Sparta) were kept in the home so that they didn’t get out of control.

@PinkyLeftBrain on 11/26 at 11:33 PM:
Well, Pink, you see, one interpretation of the Take Back the Night March is the right of women to walk at night WITHOUT a male escort.

Frumious B:
We get that.  We’re not stupid.  A lot of men go to Take Back The Night marches not because the wee lassies need a strong arm to protect them.  They go because they believe in the same things that the marchers do and want women’s safety and freedom to break free of its bonds as just a “women’s issue” into the realm of human and societal issue.

Decent men want to stand with women in this struggle.  Not in front of, not hide behind, not beside so that we can be leaned on.  With.

There is some considerable merit to making such things a women’s only space; others above have detailed that better than I.  But make organizers should make that clear in advance, not leave it to chance and create conflict between people who are on the same side.

Russell:  I’m not that big a fan of many of the natures of humanity, and had it been possible for me to somehow choose to have been born some kind of equally-intelligent sentient creature that wouldn’t have to deal with myriad confusing chemical fluctuations seeping incessantly through the fragile, electrified wad of meat I call a body, it would’ve been a tempting offer.

There are many aspects of being a human that suck, but there aren’t really any outside of brain injuries and insanity that are adequate excuses for any of our negative behaviors, and saying “well, golly gee shucks, I really do wish I could’ve just gone back in time and taken a pill to make me something else, but since I can’t, this is just the way I am and I’m not even going to bother to change because, well, I’m a victim of my own nature” is taking the lazy path out and resigning yourself to be some sort of idiot beast whose brain is incapable of controlling it—a convenient fiction of a condition that’s just a justification for being an enormous asshole without remorse because “hey, it’s just the way I am!”

Yeah, we all do a lot of stupid things.  Yeah, men and women are partially in different boats when it comes to the kinds of chemicals that affect our actions and reasoning processes.  It’s part of being human.  But so is having a brain—a remarkably powerful instrument that with a little practice and patience is good at analyzing and applying reason to all of our normally-experienced impulses and desires.  Hell, even a dog can be trained to not just randomly hump things whenever it has the whim—one would think a human would be able to train itself to deal with biological urges at least as well, being capable of substantially more complex thought and all.  So your “OOK OOK I’M JUST A HELPLESS SEXBEAST!  YOU WOMB-EN CAN’T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF MY PENIS!” argument doesn’t really hold much water for humans any more evolved than a few thousand years ago and any more intellectually and socially developed than a few hundred years ago.

Amanda,

I’m going to play devil’s advocate a bit and say that women whose non-verbal signaling was passive-aggressive and generally worthless were/are the bane of my romantic life.  If I had a quarter for every woman in my life who went limp on a couch, waiting to be taken, with no verbal communication whatsoever as to what was welcome or expected, only to be totally perplexed by my taking off, I’d have a roll of quarters.  (When I did ask, the line was that I killed the mood.)  Oddly, they were all feminists from cultures in which a very strict view of traditional sex roles is still strong.  Given that that sometimes happened in semi-public areas of dormitories, I’d say that it was either raw power play (slap away the hand that reaches out after the flirtatious chat), testing for masculinity, or the only way they knew how to ask.  Since that’s the classic “grey” scenario, I thought you might want to know that for some men it’s THE NORM and I can count the number of women in my life who have been unambiguous about positive consent on the fingers of one hand.  So, you know, dysfunction and ambiguity exist—other than that, what you said.

Eurosabra, what’s your point?  That patriarchal constructs screws up the ability of lots of women to deal with men in a way that’s tuned into the sexuality of both partners?  It’s a sex-positive, male-positive feminist blog: both it and most of its posters and denizens want to get rid of this nonsense. 

As for trying to have sex in “semi-public areas”: DIGNITY: U R DOIN IT WRONG.

Seeker6079: That’s what I felt. “Why am I here” and “Why, if they ‘hated’ men so much wasn’t it advertised as a ‘woman’s only’ event.

I was left speechless.

Since we know now that I have a hard time saying what I mean, I’ll just say this: I was there at the march to provide my voice to the cause and to show that not all men are animals and power hungry assholes that build themselves up by beating down women. The idea that I didn’t have anything valuable to say on the subject was interesting. I came out with a different emotion than I expected. No I didn’t want to be a ‘protector of women’ nor did I expect to have women flock to me for support. I did expect to be a symbol of men (a man) that are fed up with the violence and torture that some women deal with on a daily basis, or have dealt with in the past. A man standing up for the right of a woman to feel safe in our ‘civilized’ society. The pariah treatment was a surprise. I wonder how much farther along race relations would be if the early marchers for racial equality had excluded whites from marching and visibly supporting their cause? Or is that a bad comparison?

That march was a long long time ago. Hopefully they handled it better after that. We never went back and whenever they announced another march, we both stayed away. It was handled badly. I don’t think they realized how badly. Even my girlfriend was embarrassed that she brought me but she didn’t know… It was counterproductive.

Good grief Russell sounds like he should be in a display at the Smithsonian in the ‘primitive man’ exhibit.

Fear the sexual beast that he becomes lest you be ground down by it’s booted heel…

I knew someone like that. I think he’s still serving time in Jackson Federal Prison for aggravated rape and assault. I guess ending up as someone’s ‘bitch’ would only be fitting for his many crimes against women…

Pinky, FWIW I don’t think he’s legit.  I think he’s using this thread as an excuse to intellectually indulge his creepier fantasies.

I was there at the march to provide my voice to the cause and to show that not all men are animals and power hungry assholes that build themselves up by beating down women.

The thing is, though, no one can just look at you and know those things. The hell of it is, women tend to have to generally lump nearly all men together in a group called People Who Could Potentially Hurt Me. As another commenter demonstrated re: her rapist, even people who seem to be allies aren’t necessarily allies at all; and yet some could be perfectly great people. Think about constantly having to evaluate who you can or can’t trust, and knowing that in the eyes of some you’ll be at fault for whatever happens to you anyway.

You’ve used a lot of “me” language in talking about the Take Back the Night; I don’t know how much you’ve tried to think about it from the perspective of the marchers, but you might want to work more from that perspective. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re privileging your hurt feelings over the experiences of the marchers. Maybe that’s just because you’re specifically talking about how that made you feel here, but…. it’s not the most useful or newest thing to bring to a feminist blog.

Annnnd I feel like I’m rambling or possibly saying things you already know, so….

@eurosabra,

How could you possibly think someone ‘limp in a couch’ is waiting to be taken?  Limp in a semi-public couch, no less!  Definitely NOT waiting to be taken, sorry. And if you can kill the mood by asking, then there was no mood to begin with. 

If you encounter more of these women (they are the bane of my existence too), save yourself the bitterness and find someone who can use their words.  Or, be patient and do the courtship thing until they are ready to ask for it cleraly.  Either way, it’s impossible to have good sex with someone who doesn’t enthusiastically consents.

Nothing really to add except that there’s something about being in a car(like being online) that can turn somewhat normal people into raging assholes.

Annejumps: If you view everyone in your life an enemy, then you are alone in the world.

Yes, I can imagine what it feels like. I grew up tortured and beaten mercilessly as a child and to this day can barely deal with it when I hear of it being done to others. That doesn’t mean that I feel that all parents are going to physically and mentally torment their children just because I was treated so by my parents. I like to think that I have dealt with my issues from growing up enough to realize that there are very good parents in the world and that I just happened to have a pair that were near the bottom of the barrel. I survived and maybe in some ways am stronger for it. Who knows.

I do remember an incident that my future mother-in-law told me several years after it happened. I hadn’t been dating my future wife for long when, at their house I reached into the freezer and a rather huge Pyrex glass pan fell onto the floor and shattered. She, the future MIL came wheeling around the corner and she said that I raised my arms to cover my face and shoulders. She at first thought that I had been hurt but then realized that I was afraid of being attacked. She wanted to know that I wasn’t hurt. It was a few years after that incident that she revisited that time with me. I think that moment helped our relationship. She’s a pretty cool woman. Going through life being the victim and allowing fear to control your life is no way to live a life. I don’t know what the point of that story is but, there it is…

I fear no one like I once did. I see my parents as flawed people that never let me develop into the me that I could have been with them. They cheated themselves out of ever knowing the real me. I feared that house. It was strange going back the first few times. I guess that I saw those women, at the march, as eternal victims and felt sad for them. They will perhaps always view men (and rightly so, I’m sure) with a large amount of suspicion and perhaps contempt. That’s no way to go through life. I see so many people ‘stuck’ in traps of their own making. That doesn’t mean that I’m not either, perhaps, but I feel that I know myself better and more aware of them. I did participate in the march. I didn’t leave and didn’t participate in the discussions that went on about where to put ‘them’. Some wanted all men to leave period. I did turn down the t-shirt.

I think I can understand their fear. I think I can understand their terror. I felt sorry for them that they hadn’t found a way to deal with their personal life and victimization. They have all of the control that they give themselves. Learning that you don’t have to go through what you did in the past is a powerful shield and perhaps a weapon against those that seek to control you and keep you down.

And, a interesting story, perhaps. I was ‘upskirted’, in a matter of speaking. In a bar in the Bahama’s, the restroom door for the men’s room opened in and the urinal was right there next to the opening part of the door. I was standing there doing my thing when someone came in the door and had a camera at waist height and took a picture as the door opened. I naturally turned away when I saw the door open and was amazed later at what had happened. I don’t think the pervert got a good picture, or at least I hope not. That was before I heard about fetishes and how disturbed the people are that do it. Had I been a steroid addicted hothead, I could have beat the shit out of the jerk and ‘taught him a lesson’. But in hindsight, the pervert was willing to take the risk for the quick thrill, and the picture. Mind you, that was in the days before digital cameras. It made me feel powerless and somewhat of a victim. I was just standing there… The idea that a person thought that was worth the possible threat of being beaten or confronted was bizarre to me… Anyway, I rambled again… And yet, maybe I don’t understand their position at all.

Wow, that was longer than it should have been. Sorry… This has been an interesting ‘holiday’.

PinkyLeftBrain, I also grew monster boobies over-night, at the age of twelve. The girls I went to school with were mean, the mothers of my friends disliked me, but the treatment I got from the boys I went to school with was far worse. Daily, they grabbed me and tried to take my clothes off, and said the most vile, hateful things. Contempt and disgust were mixed with their lust.

Girls writing ‘slut’ on my locker? I can deal with that. Attempted rape from a boy who tells me I’m too ugly to love? That shit is still fucking me up.

Thank you. This is something I’ve been trying to explain to friends of mine who fail to back me up when I try to intercede in such circumstances (one of the things feminist men can do in hostile situations is to provide a “competitive” male presence; creepy guys often shy away if they see that their target has a male companion [further evidence that they know their behavior is unacceptable, btw]).

We men can’t change the fact that we were born to privilege, but we can at least use it to try and level the playing field, and you’re right—a world where women can safely be open and comfortable about their bodies and their sexuality is better for everyone but creepy control-freaks.

That said, media and culture have to share some of the blame; men are told very clearly (if not directly) that “nice guys finish last”, and that aggressive, controlling behavior is the best course of action if they want “success” with women.  Sadly, there are a fair number of women who reinforce that message, intentionally or otherwise.  Yes, the men need to take responsibility for their behavior, but it’s also important to try and shape our culture so that the correct behaviors becaume the default.

if you can kill the mood by asking, then there was no mood to begin with.

I want this laser-engraved on large metal plates and put up in the common areas of each and every dorm in North America.

That said, media and culture have to share some of the blame; men are told very clearly (if not directly) that “nice guys finish last”, and that aggressive, controlling behavior is the best course of action if they want “success” with women.  Sadly, there are a fair number of women who reinforce that message, intentionally or otherwise.  Yes, the men need to take responsibility for their behavior, but it’s also important to try and shape our culture so that the correct behaviors becaume the default.

I just wanted to second this comment, because I think it’s pretty perceptive.  One of the challenges to reforming one’s Nice Guy-ness is learning to recognize when the behavior you’re trying to change is being reinforced and training yourself to have the appropriate response, i.e., instead of thinking, “This just proves I should be an asshole,” you think, “I need to walk away.”  It’s particularly hard when you experience this reinforcement coming from someone of your preferred gender to whom you’re attracted.

Obviously women also live in our culture and absorb all sorts of messages. Particulary with something like sex that exists in this stew of physical urges, cultural norms, religious beliefs, family expectations, desire for approval/respect/flattery/etc., just deciding with your head and saying with your mouth that you are a feminist doesn’t make all of that magically go away. It comes up with other things too - my husband and I have a fairly (but not perfectly) egalitarian relationship, but on Thanksgiving, I don’t particularly want men in my kitchen. Does this make a lot of sense? Of course not. But there you have it. And with sex, there’s so much more stuff all twisted up with it. It’s been a long time since I was single, but when I was, I was not a big maker of first moves. I definitely pursued my husband more than I’ve ever pursued any other man, but it still was in the form of creating opportunities and lots of hinting. I’d like to think that if I was out there again, I’d be different - wiser, stronger, more mature - but I’m subject to the same cultural pressures as everyone else. And those cultural pressures are not just of the “Oh, what will people think!” variety. We absorb them and make them our own.

I’m sure it’s frustrating sometimes to be a straight man and not know what the woman you’re after wants. Just remember that we’re not the enemy. We’re individuals struggling through the muck, just like you.

“I like to think that I have dealt with my issues from growing up enough…”

PinkyLeftBrain, why do you continue to make everything about YOU? This is where it gets condescending: ‘if i can just GET OVER IT all these silly women should too!’ stop digging.

“How could you possibly think someone ‘limp in a couch’ is waiting to be taken?  Limp in a semi-public couch, no less!  Definitely NOT waiting to be taken, sorry. And if you can kill the mood by asking, then there was no mood to begin with.”

I found this part of the conversation interesting and talked about it with my husband.  He said that his experience in college was that sometimes there were girls who would not tell him what they wanted, and since he was never the type to press things they were girls he never ended up having relationships with.  My husband is and always has been a decent person though, likely to deal with everyone as a person first and a potential sex partner second.  If he didn’t get a clear message he didn’t move forward.  Sounds easy enough, eh? 

And he said all this with no residual resentment of said young women for not giving him clear enough signals.  It just was what it was.  Sometimes young people don’t exactly know what they want;  and if you don’t know what you want you’re probably better off waiting.

That puts the onus on everyone to be clear about what they want.  I believe that there are some young women who wait to be taken;  because that’s how they’ve been trained to behave and possibly because it is what always happens anyway.  If you get used to your own desire not being consulted, maybe you approach sex differently than a person who has been allowed to want it first. 

If you are a young man in this situation the best thing to do if you aren’t sure whether your advances are welcome is -obviously -to back off and possibly -gasp -not have sex.  People are complicated.  They aren’t always going to want it all the time, and it’s easy enough to go home and masturbate instead.

In all of this I don’t know where the anger or the resentment comes from.  Actually, I know it comes from a place of entitlement, but I hope that most people realize how unfair that is.  Sex isn’t always guaranteed in social situations and you should always wait for your desired partner to be openly desirous of you in turn.  It really isn’t all that difficult.

I’m sure it’s frustrating sometimes to be a straight man and not know what the woman you’re after wants. Just remember that we’re not the enemy. We’re individuals struggling through the muck, just like you.

Oh, I agree, chingona, and I hope I didn’t imply otherwise.  Let me make clear that as individuals, we’re ultimately responsible for our behavior and we’re the ones who have to change that.  I was just saying that behavior happens in a context and that understanding that context helps us understand the behavior.  Which is, of course, not a justification.

The basic principle of communicating clear intent - and looking for clear communication from others - is a pretty easy thing to grasp, as Eileen points out.  At least on an intellectual level.  On the emotional level, it can be a little more challenging.  Particularly if you’re trying to learn the intricacies of social interaction and at the same time carrying with you all of the messages you’ve absorbed that are functioning on an unconscious level.  This is further complicated when you’re in unstructured situations and don’t always have the time to think things through and fully integrate that which you understand intellectually.

People are complicated; they shape and in turn are shaped by their social environment.  Some people learn how to deal with this in a healthy way more quickly than others.  Again, this doesn’t excuse assholish or manipulative behavior.  In the end, it’s up to me as the individual to not do that.

In all of this I don’t know where the anger or the resentment comes from.

I’m years out of the dating game, but I’m wondering whether or not it’s from the same place that women feel when they get into a relationship with a guy they thought was progressive and whoops! he’s trying to control her life and she’s doing all the laundry and cleaning.  I think many young men today are raised with reasonably feminist messages about equality so it’s probably a bit of a shock for them when they have to suddenly switch from being Mr. Modern to Rhett Butler, especially if the young woman in question isn’t normally the old-fashioned passive feminine type. 

In both situations there is an element of “WTF, when did you change the rules?!?”  I think most people feel resentful when something that should be a joint effort is suddenly and unilaterally Your Total Responsibility.

PinkyLeftBrain: “That was before I heard about fetishes and how disturbed the people are that do it.”

I’d just like to clarify that fetishism is not the same thing as sexual assault, and that save for cases like upskirting and voyeurism where the fetish is something that actually involves violation of a person’s consent or knowledge (in which case, yes, it is disturbing and if one can’t control their urges they need to seek help), the only real difference is that a person is turned on by, say, a pair of shoes instead of or in addition to the normal triggers for sexual arousal, and consent is just as important and crucial as with regular intercourse.

These aren’t things a person chooses to be aroused by, in much the same way one’s sexual orientation is set, and individuals are only “disturbed” if the fetish itself is dangerous or harmful to themselves or others, or they are unable to control themselves, or it begins to interfere with their everyday lives.  (e.g. Having a foot fetish is fine, but if you find yourself unable to walk by a shoe store without staring or taking pictures through the window, or if you start licking women’s feet on the subway like that dude about a year or two ago who eventually got arrested for it, then you have a problem and should get help.)

“But a man with his head on straight thinks, well, like a woman.”

If you could ever distill one person’s substance to its most simple, concentrated quintessence, this would be it. 

It is Parfum Marcotte, though I doubt it is sold between Chanel and Creed at Neiman’s.

“I don’t see lust and misogyny as things that exist on a continuum that can turn into gray.  They are separate things.  Now, misogynists lust for women, and therefore take rejection hard because they think women don’t have a right, being as we are the sex class.  And they turn to violent or coercive porn to get revenge.  But a man with his head on straight thinks, well, like a woman.  That he isn’t owed anything.  I’ve been rejected plenty in my life, and I never felt like I needed to feel better by invading random men’s privacy.  Why?  Because I’m not entitled.”

Prop, this is not the place to take people’s words out of context. 

And I’d be off to amazon.com to order some of that Parfum Marcotte, but I hear it attracts the trolls.

I said I had a thought, I did not say I acted upon it.  To think a thing a very different from doing a thing.  Perhaps I am the only person who sees a someone leave behind a wallet in Starbucks and thinks, just for a moment, “take it, no one’ll see and you could be out of here before they realise”. Of course I’m not in the habit of stealing wallets, but to say the thought never crossed my mind would be a lie.

I did not say I was unable to control myself, I said it was something that required a conscious effort.  The mark of civilisation is not that one has ceased to have barbarious thoughts but that one has ceased to indulge them.

We humans are barely out of the Jungle.  Evolution takes place on the “deep-time” scale.  We are indistinguishable from our “Caveman” ancestors.  A shave and a Haircut changes nothing.

Human sexuality is something that has arisen out of evolution. Since reproduction presents a greater risk to women than men clearly evolution would favour a strong desire to reproduce in women.  However as reproduction requires minimal male participation evolution has favoured those males who inseminated the broadest range of females.

Whatever we may think, what the particular society and era we happen to live in may say, to these evolution is totally indifferent.

I think it says a great deal about the confidence a person has in their ideals when, those ideals being questioned, their response, their first response, is to hurl insult at the questioner. Arugmentum ad Hominem.

Having a go at me is one thing, attacking Ayn Rand is below the belt

“But a man with his head on straight thinks, well, like a woman.”

There are a couple of ways to interpret this sentence, of course. You could read it in context, which raspberryjamba conveniently provided for you above, and arrive at:

“Reasonable people have similar opinions about lust and coercion, regardless of gender, one of which is that lusting after a person doesn’t entitle you to force your will on them.”

Or you could put it through the Propaganda Due translator:

“Amanda Marcotte hates men so much that she would actually suggest that it’s good for them to have anything in common with such loathsome and degraded creatures as women.”

Having a go at me is one thing, attacking Ayn Rand is below the belt

You were at least coherent until there, if wrong about what you have in common with other people.  Then you just completely lost it.  Why on earth is attacking Ayn Rand below the belt?

That was a joke.  Someone mentioned The Fountainhead.  Anyone who wishes to honestly re-evaluate all values is accused of being a crypto-fascist by Liberals and a psudo-communist by Conservatives.

Actually I don’t really think that much of Ayn Rand, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because she fails to appriciate that human endevours are collective in nature and genius is a result of exception circumstance rather than exceptional being.

Nietszche is my homeboy.

ps.  It says “Blaspheme” rather than submit, does that only count against those idols from long ago or modern ideological idols?  Why go through life with one intellectual arm tied behind your back?

Russell,

Yes, we are not far, timewise, from cave times.  But consider this:  We are ALL equally distant from cave times, but not everyone bases their arguments on that fact.  Why do YOU get to be the caveman?  Why do YOUR thoughts get to be caveman thoughts, and MY thoughts get to be artificial-civilization thoughts? 

And if there is one true thing that can be extrapolated from usually lame-ass evo-science, is that we are ALL here because our ancestors were successful at reproducing themselves, and they were not all rapists.

Also, I find it really strange that evolutionary scientists are always trying to justify their beliefs that men have the urge to mate with as many females as possible, and “evolution has favoured those males who inseminated the broadest range of females”.  Where is the proof for this?

And where is the proof that this somehow ties in with misogyny and upskirting?  Are you saying that caveman would rather look at pictures of women’s granny panties than full-frontal but consentual nudes?  Because I would think caveman must’ve enjoyed consensual sex much much more than rape, which can result in nasty bleeding, infected scratches and bites.  I mean, think about what rape must have implied in the good old cave times.  Surely cave women must’ve fought back pretty bad, leaving the rapists with potentially infectable wounds.  If they die or get weakened, doesn’t that cut into their inseminating days?  And if the fight weakens the female to the point of bad health, this would DEFINITELY cut into the viability of the pregnancy and of the health of the offspring, no?

I agree that it is more fun to use ALL of our intellectual arms and blaspheme against ALL the idols, specially the evo-science ones!

Shorter Amanda:

“Billy Ocean:  Enemy of Women Everywhere.”

Raspberryjam,

In evolutionary time, from the gene’s eye view, 10,000 years is less than a tick of the clock.

I don’t get to be a Caveman, I live in Society and as such I abide by the “Social Contract”, but my thoughts are my own, as are yours.

You don’t have to and shouldn’t police your own thoughts.  If there is one place where you are totally free it is inside your own head. 

No Thought can ever be bad.  Only actions can be jugded.

We are here because our ancestors successfully impregnated women who then survived childbirth and (because such instincts were favoured by evolution) nurtured their offspring until they were able to sustain themselves within their group and begin the whole cycle again.  However distasteful we might find it, the circumstances of the impregnation are wholly irrelivent

Russell, you’ve demonstrated that you know nothing about evolution, and you’ve demonstrated that you’re ideologically married to your idiocy, by virtue of your complete ignoral of RJ’s excellent points that consensual sex favors survival much, much MORE than rape. I’m not going to bother to add much more except to point out that the “maternal instinct” you laud so much isn’t that simple - abortion has been around for as long as we have, and another preferred method of getting rid of an unwanted drain on resources (such as a rapist’s baby) has always been good, old-fashioned infant exposure. Sorry to burst your “my grand-daddies were proud rapists” fantasies.

@Russell,
Maybe I’ve had the misfortune of reading more evo-sci than you, but the latest finds are that circumstances of impregnation are very much relevant. 

I disagree with you about thoughts.  I though Nietzche was your buddy?  I do police my own thoughts, and it gives me great results, mental-health wise.  I can think about my own thoughts, and therefore I do, and I judge them too, and can even control them, sometimes.  I think being able to judge and control (or even attemp to control) my thoughts makes me human.  What do you think?

Raspberryjam,

“Also, I find it really strange that evolutionary scientists are always trying to justify their beliefs that men have the urge to mate with as many females as possible, and “evolution has favoured those males who inseminated the broadest range of females”.  Where is the proof for this?”

Good point.  I think the theory is from analogy to other primates and genetic diversity.  Although I’m no expert.

As for the second point.  Upskirting is something I’d not heard of before yesterday and I haven’t thought about it enough yet to get a handle on it. 

I didn’t mean to imply that I thought rape was the norm thousands of years ago.  As you point out there would have been risks involved for the rapist, but no more so that today, doubltess they would have had no conception of infection and they certainly wouldnt have been aware of the evolutionary implications.  Evolution favours only that which works

Hi Ellen! 

“Evolution favors only that which works”.
Right.  And this implies that every trait every creature exhibits is either being subtly phased in or phased out. 

“they would have had no concept of infection and [...] evolutionary implications”. 
LOL!  This just made me picture a raping caveman getting a scratch infected and thinking “Drat!  There go my chances of furthering my unique trait of having five testicles into the next generation!  I have failed…”

BTW, Russell, you’ve also failed to address the fact that many men do NOT, in fact, think, “Hey. there’s a weak, alon, attractive woman. I could rape her…but I won’t.” Since we’ve all descended from the same evolutionary process, either one of two possibilities are applicable here:

1. All those feminist men are lying about their inner rapist thoughts in order to nail feminist chicks.
2. You are a self-deluded piece of shit who wants to use evo-psych to justify rape fantasies.

I eagerly await which option you pick as the objective truth.

Raspberryjam,

Does being able to control my thoughts make me human?  I dont think it does.  I think trying to police your own mind is a sign of an oppression so all encompassing it’s victims actively choose it.

Trying to control your own thoughts is akin to actively trying to delude oneself.  If you want to be free at all the first thing you have to free is your mind and to do that you have re-examine everything “in” your mind.

How can a Thought be a Crime?  Electrical currents passing through pate.

Hi, RJ!

Russell…good gods, he stupid burns. Let’s review, shall we? You are so often plagued by ]rapist fantasies regarding complete strangers that, by your own admission you have to play violent contact sports in order to keep your raging penis from leaping off your body and acting out these rapist fantasies. And yet you think that us lower life forms who control our thoughts and don’t daily practice, internal, being an out-of-control rapist are the oppressed ones?

Seriously?

Ellen,

Firstly, that’s a false dichotomy and an ad Hominum.

I’m curious to learn how you could know exactly what one single other person has ever thought, let alone all the thoughts of all men living today.  You could never know, I could never know, no one could ever know.  We can both take a guess though, and my guess is based on what I’ve heard other men say over the years.  Men who certainly had nothing invested in my thinking they were “nice”

I wouldn’t normally, but I’ll respond to both, taking the second part first.  I don’t have rape fantasies.  Of course you’ll never know either way because you can’t read my mind or any other.  However if I did, surely it wouldn’t be a problem unless I acted upon them.  A Fantasy is just that.  Why is it important to police the thoughts of others?  Have you read 1984?

As for the first point. Remove the word rapist and I agree with you.  No man can be feminist, no king can be republican, no Turkey can be pro-xmas.  Those men who claim to be are either lying to you or themselves (or some combination of the two)

“All those feminist men are lying about their inner rapist thoughts in order to nail feminist chicks.”

It’s the double-reverse Nice Guy.

@Russell,

I thought you would say this about the link between controlling your thoughts and oppression.  But the thing is, when you have thoughts that oppress you, then your mind isn’t free just because you let your thoughts roam free.  I don’t know if you have ever had a song stuck in your head like a never ending loop?  The same thing happens with thoughts.

Nobody said a thought can be a crime, not at all.  All I said is that you CAN, if you want, and you work at it, control your thoughts.  Maybe not all your thoughts, but definitely some.  It’s not like being Yoda or something.

If a thought bothers you, you can examine that, and practice triggering other thoughts.  I started thinking about controlling my thoughts when I realized that I thought about celebrity gossip way too much.  You can practice letting go of a thought, or trying to trigger other, better, thoughts.

Russell,

No man can be feminist? Really? Huh. Well, gee, thanks for the heads-up. I guess someone better tell Jesse, Auguste, and the plethora of male commentators on the threads. We need to ban those lying liars who lie.

Or, perhaps, it’s just that this one, particular man can’t be feminist. That seems more likely…

More ad hominum,

You may not have noticed, but I’m not the only man who plays contact sports as a controlled outlet for aggression.  Is it better to have a socially acceptable outlet for aggression or not?

It seems having the urge is wrong, trying to control the urge is also wrong!  I’ve never acted on the thought, but I have had and I’m not the only one.  How many men intentionally get women drunk to take advantage of them?  Go out to the local hotspot and just watch people.

I never called anyone a lower life form

Russell,

I think your argument has huge holes in it, please bother reading other people’s points that have been made about feminist men before saying “no man can be feminist”. 
And “No king can be republican”?  Seriously, rethink.  Just because a person stands to benefit from their current status doesn’t mean they can not be pro-a better idea.  Does that mean I can’t be against racism because I am white?  That I should be against education because I have something to gain from others remaining less educated than me?  Shit, even a turkey, granted it is a Christian turkey, could think itself into being pro-Christmas.  Many saints and martyr stories prove my point.

I think YOU are lying to yourself, by trying to justify the fact that you are not a feminist by arguing that No man can be a feminist.  It’s like kids who get an F and tell their moms that the test was too hard and nobody in the whole class passed the test.

I think YOU are lying to yourself, by trying to justify the fact that you are not a feminist by arguing that No man can be a feminist.  It’s like kids who get an F and tell their moms that the test was too hard and nobody in the whole class passed the test.

raspberryjamba wins the internets!!

Russell, you’re moving goalposts and ignoring real problems with your own arguments. Once again, please justify this ridiculous notion of yours that we are all/most decendents of rape, given the fact that rape is NOT an efficient means of procreation, and evolution favors “what works” as you simplistically put it. A child is much more likely to survive and thrive in a loving family environment, not in a mother-was-raped-and-didn’t-want-the-little-bastard-in-the-first-place environment.

Oh, and you suggestion that all men have rapist thoughts and urges, and the ones who have openly stated here that they do NOT and that you are full of shit - are those men liars, or aren’t they? Either your rapist thoughts and urges are the rule or the exception. They can’t be both.

I’ve found that the only way that I have found to deal with or attempt to relate to what others have or are going through is to try to put it in the context of my life. Yeah, sometimes it doesn’t fit and, well, I don’t know what to do in that case.

I can understand how people. women, could feel the way they do. Believe me I can. The wife had a friend who was a militant misandrist and she had every right to feel hatred for men. She went on a rant that ‘men were pigs’ and I agreed. I know many men who are pigs. Sexist, ignorant pigs. Well, my wife spoke up and said that I was different. That was surprising because under the onslaught of heated hatred I actually began to doubt myself.

There is a lot to be said for getting over old wounds, if you can. It took me a long time to get over some of the shit that happened to me. I had flashbacks once while taking some medication for an unrelated thing. Yeah, those were fun… Reliving cowering behind a toilet while getting beaten with both fists by the woman that claimed to love me, my mother. Yes, I can’t possibly know what a battered woman might have gone through in a really bad relationship. I should just shut the fuck up and walk away because this is ‘real women’ talking about their feelings and I’m not allowed to be able to relate to anything that a woman could ever go through. Get over yourself…

LynstHolln: I am sorry. I can’t take the blame for all men but I am sorry that other boys treated you like that. There was a girl in my junior high that developed early. She was teased and picked on too. Hell, even my best high school friend at the time used to comment about her. She started dating football player types and they took care of most of the teasers. I met my half-sister about 4 years ago and she said that she got teased a lot because she was short, and flat chested. I wished that I could have been there to defend her. As it was, her brother, my half-brother, was busy taking care of her. Me, I had a massive inferiority complex and as a result constantly felt that I was lower than everyone in school. Yeah, that really tends to work against you… It took a long long time before I could learn to like myself.

I am sorry that I’m not making comments that fit into what people think that I should be saying. I would gladly take all pain away if I could. I try to live the life that I feel that I can and treat people the way that I’d want to be treated. I have lived my own version of hell that apparently doesn’t live up to what other people have been through. Sometimes it gets bad again like the week after my dear sainted mother died. I actually whistled the ‘ding-dong the witch is dead’ song for almost the entire week and felt great. Then it hit me. She is gone. There was so fucking much that wasn’t said before the bitch died. So many questions, so many words… Left… Unsaid…

Whatever…

Gosh, Ellen. That was funny… Everyone should fear Russell’s penis. Probably Russell too because it might decide that he’s not being a big enough asshole towards women and jump on his throat and start choking him some lonely night…

A friend of mine in high school played sports because he was gay and firmly in the closet and actually got off on playing contact sports because he found a way to release his need to touch other men.

I guess some guys play sports for completely other reasons…

PLB, I’ve got no dog in your fight, but it sounds to me like you did the best you could in a difficult and confusing situation (with regards to the Take Back the Night march) and it sounds like you tried to take into account both your own feelings and the feelings of the women who felt threatened by your presence. That your consideration for all parties was not fully communicated here is, in my opinion, a fault of the internets, and not your own - it’s not like we can read your mind, or like you can explain a complex situation and all your reactions to it in 1,000 words or less.

I’m sorry you had such a rough childhood - sounds like hell. Hugs from this corner of the interwebs.

Oh, yeah, and PLB? Thanks for being a feminist man, even if they don’t exist. :D

A child is much more likely to survive and thrive in a loving family environment, not in a mother-was-raped-and-didn’t-want-the-little-bastard-in-the-first-place environment.

Heck, why even look that far ahead?  A woman injured in a rape is that much less likely to pass on anybody’s genes.  And let’s not forget the not-uncommon phenomenon of a rapist killing his victim.  How does that fit into the equation?

“You may not have noticed, but I’m not the only man who plays contact sports as a controlled outlet for aggression.”

I would agree, except that I thought you said earlier it was a controlled outlet for sexual aggression. It is a much smaller subset of men who feel that contact sports with other men are the only way to channel away rapey urges toward women. As a man who plays contact sports for reasons that have nothing to do with controlling sexual urges I find your argument very strange.

Maybe that’s because When I see a sexy woman I don’t know walking by herself, I don’t have the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong.” My “little voice” just says something like “she’s hot, wonder how she is in bed” usually followed by a brief fantasy that has nothing to do with using my strength to overpower an unwilling woman.

How about the other men here?

Maybe that’s because When I see a sexy woman I don’t know walking by herself, I don’t have the little voice inside my head that says “She’s alone and you’re strong.” My “little voice” just says something like “she’s hot, wonder how she is in bed” usually followed by a brief fantasy that has nothing to do with using my strength to overpower an unwilling woman.

How about the other men here?

Depends.  If there are lots of other people on the street, sure.  If we’re the only two people around, it’s more like “Gosh, I hope I’m not making her nervous.  Maybe I should pass her so she doesn’t think I’m following her.”

Is that a good idea, btw?

Seraph, I think - in Russell’s mind - the scantily-clad, wispy blonde cavewoman just laid back and enjoyed being raped by the manly, musky caveman. Once impregnated with his blessed parasite, she thanked whatever gods they had recently invented and set about readying the cave for the arrival of her little pride and joy. I mean, that’s how it worked, right? Right??

Sigh.

“If we’re the only two people around, it’s more like “Gosh, I hope I’m not making her nervous.  Maybe I should pass her so she doesn’t think I’m following her.”

Is that a good idea, btw? “

Obviously you’re another weirdo like me, not even thinking about raping her in that situation.

If the woman seems nervous, I have a big enough stride to pass her in non threatening way. Maybe stopping into a store for 2 minutes to give her some space if I’m not in a rush. Running to pass her would NOT accomplish the goal of making her feel at ease.

I mean, that’s how it worked, right?

Of course.  That’s just what women were like when they lived as God/Nature intended.  Then feminazism came along and gave them the crazy idea that their pussies belonged to them, and it’s all been downhill from there.

Running to pass her would NOT accomplish the goal of making her feel at ease.

Well, I kinda figured.  Usually I just speed up my walk a bit, actively Looking Past her, like I’m in a hurry to get somewhere.

“Gosh, I hope I’m not making her nervous.”

LOL, I think that when there are birds in my way.

So, I wasn’t going to engage Russell because it didn’t seem worth it, but ... I doubt that even Wallace, much less liberalrob is still checking in on this thread, but if the question is how many men are decent guys versus creeps, let us take Russell. Russell probably presents in real life like an okay guy. I mean, he doesn’t actually rape women. He understands that it’s not the right thing to do. But he has a little voice that reminds him that he could, and sometimes when he sees an attractive woman walking alone, he thinks about how he could, if he wanted to, but he won’t. This is a fundamentally different thought than “she’s hot, wonder what it would be like?” which is something that I have thought about attractive men I’ve passed on the street or who have taken my order at restaurants or whatever. Russell’s brief flicker of fantasy, the little voice, involves forcing yourself on someone, regardless of their will, their desire. Now, how many men out there are like Russell? I have no idea. I would like to think it’s a tiny minority (my husband was visibly startled and then really angry when I related Russell’s statements), but Russell says it is a common thought for men to have. Given what the rape rate is and then we’re not even talking about men who actually rape or abuse women - just those who occasionally have the thought of it - I think it might be a sizable number. But I have no idea. And so women go out in the world knowing there are men who think this way. Which ones? When I’m walking by myself and a man passes the other way, is he thinking that he could rape me if he wanted to? To those who doubt the persistence and commonplace-ness of misogyny, just contemplate that a bit.

Google ads now are offering “Self Pleasure for Men.” I didn’t realize that was something that required marketing.

I feel compelled to add that there is a LOT more evo-psych basis for racism than for sexism - racism can mesh nicely with fear of the Other and garden-variety tribalism. Since Russell is attempting to argue from an essentialist viewpoint (we are products of rape, ergo we think about rape), I wonder if, when he sees a black man, he thinks “He’s alone and different and a potential threat, and I am stronger…”

Since racism is rightfully acknowleged in our culture as a Big Deal, I suspect Russell will be less comfortable owning up to a viewpoint that says, “Why, yes, I fantasize about murdering black men almost as often as I fantasize about raping lone women, because - hey - I’m a caveman”.

None of which is to say that racism doesn’t still exist and isn’t still a big problem - it is. It just seems like the asshats use evo-psych to justify it less often than they use it to justify misogyny.

(And, yes, LiberalRob - I am calling Russell a misogynist, based on his comments here. First, he assumes that women always/usually keep and nurture rape babies because we cannot overcome our evolutionary Maternal Instinct - this is condescending and reductionist. Second, he does not feel any guilt or shame over fantasizing about raping strangers because his thoughts should be wild and uncensored - this is an excuse to brutalize women without facing the consequences. And third, he honestly believes that without the “release” of his contact sports, his super-high sex drive would cause him to actually rape women - this acknowleges that his sex drive is more important than a living, breathing woman because she isn’t “really” a human being. It doesn’t get much more misogynist than that.)

Honestly, I hope Russell is a troll. I imagine going through life with constant nagging thoughts of assaulting other people is a pretty grim existence.

I feel compelled to add that there is a LOT more evo-psych basis for racism than for sexism

Er, I have to disagree with that.  Any sexed species, by definition, has to evolve different reproductive strategies for each sex.  This includes African plains apes - the question of how they apply to modern homo sapiens is another matter entirely.

PIATOR,

“Different reproductive strategies” != “Rape culture”. In fact, very few species propogate by rape - many, many species propagate entirely by the female chosing the mate, and not vice versa. Changing the “rules” for cavemen just because it’s expedient to do so is pure bias.

“Tribalism” == “Racism”. In fact, many species will shun, ostracize, or kill members of their own tribe for failing to be as alike enough as the rest of the members.

I stand by my point that there is less standing in evo-psych for rape-approval than for racism-approval.

When offering strange women rides, I always point to my “Gas, Grass or Ass” bumper sticker, so’s she’ll feel empowered to make a choice.

@Seeker6079:

You CAN kill the mood by asking, if you are dealing with a passive-aggressive semi-traditional feminist-everywhere-but-bed Russian woman whose idea of femininity includes twisted ideas about “male intuition sensing when a woman is ready.”  (As she explained—we’re still friends—months later.)  Simple cure:  don’t try to have teh sex with uncommunicative people.  Which I didn’t.  Which left both of us disappointed, I suppose.

There is also the shocked-surprised “I get wild when I dance but don’t mean anything by it”, the flip-side, the woman who can separate dancing from an explicit sexual invitation and is surprised when men interpret actual physical contact as an implicit or explicit invitation.  Which brings us back to consent and the way men/women handle it as different subcultures.

@Jess,

Not really. I know that if I wish to live in Society and enjoy its benefits I have to abide by, most of, “The Club Rules”.  The only rule I have broken is to honestly say what is going on inside my skull, rather the parrot what is “acceptable” to say is going on inside my skull.

I am suprised how many people equate thoughts with deeds.  There are many much worse people in the world than me who don’t just think, who act.  For every crime I suspect there are large number of people who had the means and motive, thought about it, but did not act.

How do I know most men, even if they can’t admit it (and by the way, I applaud those of you who’ve trained your “men” sufficiently that they know the reaction you expect/demand to anything you disagree with, Lysistrata would be proud), think as I do: Porn.

In the vast majority of skinflicks the male characters are typically agressive and domineering, if that wasn’t satisfying some fantasy then it wouldn’t sell.  Of course you could imply in someway that those who watch porn are childlike (how to discredit people who do things you don’t like, call them children) but to imply millions of people are childlike is silly.

@eurosabra,
Did you really wanna fuck a woman who’s not a feminist in bed?  I don’t think you should be dissapointed, you should be thankful that you dodged that bullet! 
I also disagree with your idea that men and women handle consent different.  What do you base this on?  Have you been reading a lot of Laura Schlessinger?

And everybody has the right to dance however they want and still not have sex with their dance partner.  And if they do make out with you and turn you on, they can still say no to having sex.  And if they do agree to have sex, they can still decide to call it off even as you are naked and making out in bed.  And even if you have vaginal sex, she can still say no to having anal sex.  And this is all perfectly within a person’s right to decide to do what is best for them as long as is doesn’t harm others.  Do you disagree with this?

@russell,
Just because there are people worse than you doesn’t mean you couldn’t use some sef-improvement.  Wasn’t Nietzche your buddy?

And russell,  I watch quite a bit of porn too (while I wait for people to comment on pandagon, natch), and I don’t see what you see.  Maybe we all see what we want to see in porn.  Maybe you want to see these males as domineering and aggressive because it satisfies your personal fantasies.

there’s also a lot of porn where women are dominant, or femdom as it’s known. also, one could argue that most porn is made by men, for men and that may be why the old paradigm of men/agressive, female/submissive is featured, ‘cuz that’s how men (the target audience) like it, not how women like it.

also, the comment regarding “men” “training” and “doing Lysistrata” proud- really? i mean, honestly, really? you think that we women have to deny sex to men in order to train them to regard and treat us as though we are full human beings? you, sir, have a stupendously low opinion of the male gender.

you know, no one is trying to police your thoughts, russell.  that comment about your “little voice” was just beyond creepy.

@raspberryjamba:

Sure, of course.  But men and women approach consent differently, because of sub-cultural messages about sex.

As for Amanda getting on the “entitlement” kick, I would venture that until you can eliminate capitalism and war, you’re not going to do much about the fact that more successful, dominant men appear to be rewarded with women who are “better” sex objects, which is at the core of the Nice Guy(tm) debate, one that gets occluded.  (Très icky, not least on the objectification front.)  Coupled with one’s own palpable sense of the limitations on one’s dating life caused by not being a better “success/dominance” object.  So for me, feminism’s triumph = safe sex with fat chicks.  Of course, there has to be enough snark or sarcasm or irony in that, or at least honest affection for one’s partners, an appreciation of sheer human frailty, that it doesn’t read like a confession that will elicit MRA snickers or feminist disdain.  I have plenty of work to do in that department, ah tja.

This comment thread really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Come to think of it, Russell, your statement that all men see women and automatically have that little voice that says, “I’m strong and she’s alone,” is the same as someone saying that all parents, when alone with their kids, have the same voice.  “I’m stronger, and they’re defenseless.”

Because we’re talking about a mindset that views human relations as predator-prey.  And, based on your statement, I really hope you don’t have children, because I would be very scared for a teenage daughter of yours.  There is no difference.

Oh, and your equating a female with a wallet is disgusting.

@Jess,

Not really. I know that if I wish to live in Society and enjoy its benefits I have to abide by, most of, “The Club Rules”.

Actually, you don’t have much of a choice about living in society. For someone who had recourse to evopsych early on in this tailspin of yours, you don’t seem to pay much attention to the actual conditions of human evolution.

We are a successful species (well, the jury is still out on that—check back in a few centuries to see if we’ve killed ourselves, and the rest of life on Earth, off yet or not…) because we are social. It would seem that a major price of our having individual brain power, and flexible minds to use that brainpower, is a hugely exaggerated period of development, during which we are helpless and utterly dependent on the goodwill of our elders. Furthermore, the real power of human intellect is not a product of some Cartesian “cogito ergo sum” or Nietscheian Superman thinking up all the survival and prosperity tricks by his Randroid Galtian self; nope, we are given the tools of survival by our ancestors, and the process of improving them is not the work of lone geniuses but the collaborative process of pooling our diverse perceptions. We are social animals, and clearly your overlooking this has a lot to do with your obstinacy in insisting that Man is Naturally a Rapist, and awarding yourself medals for your restraint in this matter.

If you will reflect on the social nature of humanity in your armchair, along with the completely speculative “proofs” you pulled out of the air about why males must be rapists at heart, you’ll see some strong countervailing tendencies. How could our ancestors have cooperated with one another with a bunch of alpha males rampaging around the group, impregnating every woman they could lay hands on obsessively? More to the point—where is the evidence that this was in fact the state of affairs before the rise of modern civilization?

Clearly if you are as hag-ridden with the urge to take every woman you meet regardless of her will as you’ve claimed, you are quite different from our barely verbal ancestors.

The only rule I have broken is to honestly say what is going on inside my skull, rather the parrot what is “acceptable” to say is going on inside my skull.

Again, you seem to have a confused understanding of what thought is. The point of thinking is to enable us to grapple with the material reality we live in—and it benefits greatly from sharing it, comparing different perceptions, and developing along lines of greater accuracy.

You express this internalized authoritarianism that beats your average cultists all hollow; instead of agreeing on particular points, you seem to have this internal Hitler who automatically rejects anything that seems to come from outside—leaving you pretty much enslaved to other people’s memes that you just didn’t stamp as of foreign origin in time.

As you’ve said, we really don’t know, in some ultimate sense, what is going on in people’s heads, except insofar as we can infer them from acts—which, you know, include words too.

So how is it you know either that all men are ruled, as you claim to be, by this wild stallion of sexuality that very nearly rides you, or still more, how can you possibly know anything about the intensity or direction of women’s sexual impulses? Consider the clitoris, that is, according to the findings of medical science, wired up with twice as many sensory nerves as our penes—doesn’t that indicate that if anything a woman’s motivation might be stronger than ours? Yet, while defending the integrity of your own mind, you write off women as insipid eunuchs and those of us men who dismiss your claims of heroic self-restraint as overdramatized nonsense as liars, intimidated and sneaky liars.

(more)

More of me v russell:

I am suprised how many people equate thoughts with deeds.  There are many much worse people in the world than me who don’t just think, who act.  For every crime I suspect there are large number of people who had the means and motive, thought about it, but did not act.

And by your “no mind reading” thesis, you have no idea what these guys were thinking.

Those of us who think that actually thoughts and deeds have and should have some correlation generally feel we can in fact piece together enough of what other people must have been thinking to have a more or less workable map of what they are likely to do, and in that sense we can say we know something about why.  And it is perfectly clear, if we grant that people can understand one another to some extent, that the notion that these men are just giving in to the near-uncontrollable impulses you talk about is false. They do not rape (or indulge in less drastic but still harmful behaviors) because it gratifies their sexual drive—they rape and abuse as power games, as means of either demonstrating their power to force others to act against their wills or at least fooling themselves into pretending they have that power.

How do I know most men, even if they can’t admit it ... think as I do: Porn.

In the vast majority of skinflicks the male characters are typically agressive and domineering…
russell on 11/29 at 11:24 AM

Ah Russell, clearly you’ve never been around during our own Porn War battles here at Pandagon.

You’re saying exactly what Amanda often points out about the content of porn, sampled statistically for content anyway.

Except Amanda doesn’t conclude, as you do, that this is just because that’s the way men are; if she did, she’d be trying to organize women to do exactly as she said earlier in her main post—lock the men up, or send them out to live as the wild rampaging beasts they would be. And given that the real key to human progress has in fact been cooperation, and that such men as you believe in could not reasonable cooperate in anything more sophisticated than a berserk raid, then the history of humanity would never have included men in the first place—all the arts of civilization would in fact have been invented by women (as more of them than we assume probably actually were), shared by women, performed by women—and men would have been nothing more than pets or predators.

Actually, though, Amanda knows other types of men, and so do most women here, and some of us can manage to grunt out a few words for your enlightenment, if you will listen.

“Different reproductive strategies” != “Rape culture”.

You actually said “sexism”, Ellen.

PIATOR,

You can read my comments for actual content and not be a jackass, or you can try to split hairs to win “semantic points”. Thereby being a jackass. You choose.

Yes, there are many kinds of ‘sexism’. I think it’s abundantly clear what I meant. Why do you keep trying to split infinitesimally small hairs in order to make a point about…well, it is never clear what your point is - I never could get what YOU were getting at with the whole “she’s not objectified if she never knows about it” argument earlier.

I think it’s abundantly clear what I meant. Why do you keep trying to split infinitesimally small hairs in order to make a point about…well, it is never clear what your point is

No, when you use the word “sexism”, I assume you mean “sexism”.  If you want to use the term “rape culture” instead, go ahead.  Use precision in your writing - words mean something.

I never could get what YOU were getting at with the whole “she’s not objectified if she never knows about it” argument earlier.

That wasn’t my argument.  My argument was related to the differing internal perceptions of those harassing, and those shooting those pictures.

No, when you use the word “sexism”, I assume you mean “sexism”.  If you want to use the term “rape culture” instead, go ahead.  Use precision in your writing - words mean something.

Guess that tells you what his choice is, eh, Ellen?

Well, in fairness:

I feel compelled to add that there is a LOT more evo-psych basis for racism than for sexism

“Sexism” and “racism” are really broad terms, and when used, most people aren’t necessarily going to jump to the most extreme or comprehensive ideas of either.  There’s a difference between disliking black people and being okay with black people being lynched, and both can be considered “racism”, just as there’s a difference between disliking women and being okay with women being raped.  The English language is pretty terrible for concision, especially considering that a lot of meaning is contextual, and especially when it comes to the amount of brevity required to get past all the TL;DR filters people have when dealing with reading things on the internet.

My point is, perhaps it would do everyone well for everyone be more forgiving of others’ misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the things we say—especially online.  It would probably make them more willing to accept corrections instead of everything just boiling up into an impasse time and again because we’d rather take delight in pointing out how wrong someone is than actually try in earnest to correct them.  I’m more than guilty of that myself, so I’m not casting judgment or anything, but I think it’s something we all need to keep in mind—myself very much included.

I realize that the concept of “context” is a little hard for some people, but is it really THAT hard?

I feel compelled to add that there is a LOT more evo-psych basis for racism than for sexism - racism can mesh nicely with fear of the Other and garden-variety tribalism. Since Russell is attempting to argue from an essentialist viewpoint (we are products of rape, ergo we think about rape), I wonder if, when he sees a black man, he thinks “He’s alone and different and a potential threat, and I am stronger…”

I really do not feel like this paragraph was difficult to understand. For that matter, I get the impression that Seraph does not feel that this paragraph was difficult to understand. And since it’s a common troll technique to pretend that there’s no such thing as context or reading comprehension skills I’m not really going to waste 1,000 words making it clear what I clearly meant in the first place. Geez.

Anything can be misinterpreted or misread, for any number of reasons, from accidentally skipping over a word to not being a native English speaker, to generally not having a good reading comprehension or a knowledge of the terms being discussed, to (as some do) letting the first sentence in a paragraph alter the tone for the rest of it, to simply having a different brain or perspective from the person doing the writing.  There’s no way to get a perfect 1:1 transfer of the complete comprehension of meaning of information from one person to the next.

There are a number of words you use there that don’t really have precise definitions or meanings or are unquantifiable abstracts or broadly-enveloping terms:  “LOT”, “more”, “basis”, “racism”, “sexism”, “nicely”, “garden-variety”, “think”, etc.  While we all have a linguistic set of identifiers for all of these things, the concepts they’re representing are going to differ from person to person in any number of ways, and certain aspects of a word’s definition are going to have different signifier priorities for different people.  The way you define a term and rank its multiple definitions, if it has them, isn’t necessarily going to precisely match the way anyone else in the world does it, and even if you get the wording of the definition the same, those are just dozens of other words you have to deal with defining, then, as well.

Anyway, my point is, there are just so many things that can go wrong with language and communication that it’s probably best to err on the side of forgiveness, especially if you actually want to convince someone—the second you give up and start condescending or browbeating or dismissing or using ad hominem or whatever else people end up doing instead (and again, I’m guiltier than anyone), you can rest assured that you’re not going to be gaining any more footing with the person you’re trying to convince.  I mean, yeah, if someone’s quite obviously trolling you, or you feel like they’d receive anything you said to them about equally and respond the same way whether you were insulting them or patiently trying to reason with them, then at least you can get some amusement out of the argument by mocking them, but I think sometimes people can be too quick to conclude that the other person’s being malicious or intentionally either misreading things or unwilling to listen.

J Crowley, no offense, but based on what I’ve seen of PIATOR and his comments in the previous Upskirting thread, I stand by my assessment that PIATOR is deliberately misunderstanding me.

I find it amusing, though, that you think it is important to point out that each and every one of my words has different meanings, oh my! Now would you like to explain how my individually ‘confusing’ words - put together in the exact sequence that they were - were ambiguous as to what sort of “sexism” I was describing?

Good grief, are we giving out ‘troll points’ now for people who don’t understand basic communication now?

Oh, and I don’t really expect an honest response from you, J Crowley, considering that when you first stuck your nose in to plead that my post was confusing, you had to strip my quote entirely of context in order to “prove” that my post was confusing.

I’m becoming deeply suspicious of posters like Piator and supporters who find the concept of “sexism” in the context of a rape-apologist discussion to be this scary, gray, nebulous word that is so frighteningly confusing as to be almost meaningless. It’s not that hard, people.

Okay, PIATOR may be a total asshole, but telling him “You’re a total asshole” isn’t going to accomplish anything, other than maybe fortifying his resolve against whatever concepts and ideas you’re attempting to get him to understand.  If you’ve just given up hope that he’ll ever get what you’re trying to say and have written him off as a lost cause, why even bother responding to him at all?  Just ignore him and it’ll stop fueling his need to aggressively convey his apparently insurmountable ignorance.

I was never trying to “plead” or “prove” anything, for whatever it’s worth—I was, at least from my own perspective, doing nothing but attempting to advocate rational patience in dealing with misunderstandings and misinterpretations, given the complexity and subtlety of language, the stripping-of-meaning effects of text-based conversations on the internet, and the myriad other factors that influence what happens between one person’s brain and another’s.

Combinations of words can be misread and misinterpreted as much as individual words alone.  In fact, the combinations can serve to further complicate things.  The assumption you seem to be making is that the way in which you assemble words is going to result in absolute clarity for anyone who may read them, and that any fault must automatically be an intentional act of the reader since your words were so clearly written as to be infallible to anyone with any level of understanding of the English language.  You can work to lessen ambiguity, but you can never fully eliminate it because everyone’s mind ultimately works differently.

For the record, I never necessarily disagreed with the sentiment you were expressing—I was pointing out that, like anything anyone ever says (including what I’m writing right now), it can be misinterpreted.  My point was never to “prove you wrong” or anything, but rather to try to get you to understand that it’s possible someone may misread what you said, and to try to encourage you not to become impatient with anyone who might because beyond that point, you’re basically undoing everything you were attempting to do in the first place.

J Crowley, I appreciate your concern, but I have no problem telling Piator he’s an asshole (even if it doesn’t change his mind!) because (1) I wasn’t talking to him - I was talking to Russell and (2) believe you me, if Piator was going to use his brain, he’d have done it before now.

I don’t waste time responding politely to trolls who want to butt in and derail threads by nitpicking the semantic denotations behind every word I use. And your jumping in to “help” him just bolsters this nonsense that sexism is hard to understand.

For all your pearl clutching, you have never even attempted to explain how my full quote, taken in context was hard to understand. You haven’t attempted this, because you can’t. What I said wasn’t overly difficult or complicated - now you’re just arguing for the sake of argument because you wanted to play Moderator between a legitimate poster and a troll and you’re upset that no one is giving you your Fair and Balanced points. Only it’s not going to happen because it’s obvious that Piator was being a jerk and you won’t get points for lashing your wagon to his. If you really find my post ambiguous, please tell me specifically what you don’t understand about it, instead of this “Oh, he might not even speak English!!!” bullshit hand-wringing, when he clearly DOES speak English and it makes you look like a moron for suggesting that I’m verbally abusing an EASL. Or, better yet, I recommend Dictionary.com, if you really have that hard of a time reading my posts.

“I realize that the concept of “context” is a little hard for some people, but is it really THAT hard?”

That’s what she said…

“It’s not that hard, people.”

THAT’S what she said.
:(

Stating that language is intrinsically prone to misinterpretation has nothing specifically to do with sexism or the word “sexism”.  To attempt to clarify:  My complaint isn’t about anything you said in the first place—you could have, for all intents and purposes relevant to my complaint, been speaking about religion or continental philosophy or goats or the Moon landing—but rather that when someone appeared to have misinterpreted it, your first course of action seemed to be to take immediate offense and start browbeating without acknowledging the fallibility of language.

Anything can be misinterpreted—that’s always already an unavoidable consequence of the nature of language and human communication and perception.  It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, there’s bound to be something that goes wrong somewhere among the various mechanisms between one brain and another, and nobody’s going to learn anything if we get angry and dismissive whenever it happens.

I haven’t actually read the other thread’s comments, so I’m not privy to any of PIATOR’s previous displays of ignorance.  Within the context of this conversation, though, it appeared as though you just immediately lost patience with him over what seemed like a misinterpretation.

This itself is a kind of metaphor for what I’m trying to get at, here:  Even within a given context, there can be any number of influential factors and histories tied to elements present for every party involved that alter the dynamics of meaning.  Every word is going to have a history or earlier context of some sort in every reader’s mind that will in some way obfuscate or alter the writer’s meaning.  For instance, you came into this conversation with a prior history dealing with PIATOR, and I did not, which led to our differences in interpreting the unfolding of events.  And that’s only one of the many factors that can influence readers and lead to misreads and misinterpretations.

You haven’t attempted this, because you can’t.

Well, right—nobody can.  Just like nobody can demonstrate that it was easy to understand.  That’s exactly my point.  There’s no intrinsic difficulty or easiness involved that I could point to.  It’s not that you didn’t write as clearly as you feel you did, it’s that you’re refusing to acknowledge that not every person who comes across that arrangement of words is guaranteed to read and process it in the exact same way, let alone in the exact same way you intended.

“Oh, he might not even speak English!!!” bullshit

This seems to demonstrate my point in that I clearly haven’t gotten across the message I intended.  I’m sorry if this is all you’ve gotten out of everything I’ve been saying.

In any event, I don’t really understand why you seem to be getting so angry with me over my advocating patience when it comes to the potential misunderstandings guaranteed in communications, especially when the potential benefit is at least a few more men stripping away their misogynist leanings and misconceptions.

Raspberryjamba,
Also, I find it really strange that evolutionary scientists are always trying to justify their beliefs that men have the urge to mate with as many females as possible, and “evolution has favoured those males who inseminated the broadest range of females”.  Where is the proof for this?

Eh, did you just call Russell an evolutionary scientist? I’m offended by association

In actual evolutionary biology there’s something called parental investment theory, and there’s a lot of evidence in favor of it, but it bears little resemblance to Russell’s version.

Forinstance if “reproduction requires minimal male participation”, why do over 90% of bird species have biparental care? Why do male seahorses carry the young? Are they victims of feminism?

All other things being equal, it’s true that a male (or whichever is the non-limiting sex) can always improve its chances by adding additional partners while a female’s gain from additional partners levels off sooner or later. But since all other things are never equal in nature, Russell is full of shit.

Right windy, and there are at least 2 specific things that offset this hypothetical tendency in H sapiens:

1) we are a social species. In fact human children are cared for by a number of people.

2) we are intelligent; therefore regardless of whatever instincts might come into play, we can and do look at situations and judge them rationally.

For whatever the concept of “instinct” is worth, I think it’s clear that they do not, at least in fairly bright species like most mammals, serve to rigidly program actions. (If they did, it’s hard to see what the point of investing in fairly large brains would be, and if rigidly programmed responses were sufficient to ensure survival, that investment would clearly be a big waste). What instinctive reactions do for higher animals is provide an impulse to do _something_, but actually we tend to have a range of options offered to us, often quite contradictory ones—“Fight OR flight” for instance in moments of high stress. We still need to think, or rely on trained (which is to say, socially programmed) reactions, to determine which impulse to follow. That’s what all the brainpower is for, and it works by attempting to develop a more or less detailed model of reality.

Thus, we are always evaluating the situation; from this inherent tendency, combined with our objective need for cooperation (reinforced by instincts and emotional reactions selected to enable society) we derive concepts like fairness, justice, and morality.

I think it is pretty much useless to try and account for social institutions and norms based solely on armchair speculations about general rules of evolution. The moral frames we have come up with have often been quite a travesty of the basic picture of reasonable humans I have tried to paint here, but I think those inversions can best be accounted for by looking at how they are functional in particular societies operating with particular technical skills and under particular constraints. Actually I think we live in a world largely shaped by the demands of militaristic competitiveness—which is something pretty much alien to the sorts of societies we had throughout most of our evolutionary history as modern types of humans.

“That guy” behaviors and arguments don’t arise from our ancient evolution; they arise from the imperatives of types of civilization developed less than 10,000 years ago. If “instinct” has anything to do with it, it is a matter of society training us all to respond selectively to some impulses and not others that we have just as strongly.