That last paragraph is beautiful persuasive argument.  Create a direct analogy to a sacred cow held by many of your readers (including me) and make clear that it applies in both directions.

Of course one atheist douchebag doesn’t discredit atheism, just as one douchebag leader doesn’t discredit the idea of Wikileaks.

The idea of Wikileaks? Are we still working from the premise that he’s anything but an arrogant, overgrown douchebro who thinks of boundaries as something in his way? H’s a hacker with pretenses. He gets off on the theft and the power,  neither of which would be exactly shocking in a rapist,  who’d probably feel annoyed that a woman dared to say no to him.

Ginmar, your first sentence is about WikiLeaks. But curiously, the rest of your comment has nothing whatsoever to say about WikiLeaks, and is instead about how Assange is a douchebag. Amanda’s point was that Assange being a douchebag has nothing to do with whether or not WikiLeaks has a positive impact on the world and should be supported.

Yeah, whatever.  He’s a douchebag and what he’s doing might get a lot of geekboys’ hearts aflutter,  but is it actually doing any good?  The chopper video was arguably good; I’m less than impressed with other choices.  So diplomatic employees gossiped about Qaddafi’s buxom Ukrainian nurse?  Until somebody takes control of Wikileaks from him, he is Wikileaks.

The idea of Wikileaks? Are we still working from the premise that he’s anything but an arrogant, overgrown douchebro who thinks of boundaries as something in his way? H’s a hacker with pretenses. He gets off on the theft and the power, neither of which would be exactly shocking in a rapist,

So I guess the NY Times were just a bunch of “hackers with pretenses” when they published the Pentagon Papers?  Whatever.

I’m capable of holding two consistent thoughts in my head so I can praise wikileaks and condemn Assange’s misogynistic attitudes (and his activities if indeed a good case can be made that he actually raped someone).

Well, see, that’s actually an argument about WikiLeaks. It’s a bad argument about WikiLeaks, granted, but at least it’s the right topic. Now, while the cables do have a lot of boring things in them, they also have more than a few highly important things. The helicopter video alone is important, but some others:

(taken from the Austrailian):

The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.

Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.

Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

“extremised by the extremes”?  Ooooh, I am in awe of you!  You speak Jargon!!

Not only an asshole, but one who thinks everything he says is golden.  Looks like someone does intend to take it away from him, or anyway, start a competing site:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/openleaks-wikileaks-rival_n_794939.html

If there’s one thing that this whole business demonstrates, it’s how easily and quickly the TMZ-addled MSM can be made to shift its focus with a relatively small Draper-like effort at changing an unwelcome conversation (granted, with help from Assange’s own egotism).

The fact is, we wouldn’t be discussing Assange’s stupid nerdboy attitudes toward women if Interpol hadn’t issued an international APB on a sex crime that, unusually, did not involve human trafficking or serial violent rape.

That request for a bulletin and subsequent extradition wouldn’t have been made if a Swedish prosecutor hadn’t re-opened a “he-said/she-said” sexual assault case of the sort that isn’t pursued against privileged males unless there’s clear evidence of violence or unusual circumstances.

Those unusual circumstances, I’d argue, have to do less with the credibility of the complainants, with the ambitions of the Swedish prosecutor, or even with Assange’s celebrity status than they do with the willingness of the present Swedish government to accede to the wishes of an American government that’s been supremely embarrassed and disrupted by something else Assange did.

I don’t fault Pandagon or Jezebel for posting on this—there’s a substantive discussion to be had about sexism and misogyny amongst progressive men and/or tech geeks as exemplified by Assange, a discussion that’s certainly in this site’s bailiwick and one I’m happy to participate in.

But let’s not forget that the only reason we’re talking about Assange’s douchey views on women is because the practise of his more serious views on establishment communications networks (views which OpenLeaks share) have angered the U.S.

He’s a douchebag and what he’s doing might get a lot of geekboys’ hearts aflutter, but is it actually doing any good?

Judging by the goals set up in his manifesto linked above, which basically involve triggering an auto-immune response in the communications networks of powerful governments (invisible or otherwise), it seems to be effective. The surveillance state is already clamping down, sacrificing their own convenience and efficiency in exchange for a little security—makes a nice change when they’re doing it to themselves instead of to ordinary citizens.

Most of the stuff being leaked is common knowledge—it’s not like people who follow international relations didn’t know that Qaddafi is a cheesy 1970s swinger kind of dictator. But now the U.S. can’t credibly pretend that it believes otherwise, regarding that issue, 1000s of minor issues like it, or more serious ones like those mentioned by UmaroVI).

From the beginnings of this whole affair, the guy has struck me as a hardcore narcissist.  Now I have actual reasons to believe my instincts.

This does not, of course, detract from the government having to answer for the kinds of things he revealed.  One can be a complete douchebag narcissist and still do a public service.  Humans are kind of complicated like that.

That coffee thing - I don’t know what’s worse: that he did it, or that he’s willing to admit to it.  You know when those studies about scent and sexual attraction come out, and all the ladies magazines tell you men respond most to scents like lavender and pumpkin pie?  Is there a woman dumb enough to admit to the internet that she shoved sachets of lavender and Libby’s in her bra before trying to seduce a guy?  What’s your plan B if you get called out on doing something like that?  Wouldn’t you taste like poorly made, stale coffee by the time you got down to business?  Why not just buy her gifts of coffee?  You can rub espresso-roasted beans on your package till the cows come home, or you could bring her a cup of coffee when she’s not expecting you to.  Am I crazy when I say most women would prefer the latter option?  Are we really so complicated that poor Julian has to resort to such cartoonish trickery?

Umaro, way to totally miss a very clearly made point.  Not that I fully agree with Ginmar on her statement that his disregard of boundaries is somehow not state bound, but if you can’t get what she said then a lot here will go over your head.

Boundaries, darling.  Boundaries.  Read up on the concept.

You can rub espresso-roasted beans on your package till the cows come home, or you could bring her a cup of coffee when she’s not expecting you to.  Am I crazy when I say most women would prefer the latter option? 

This.

I’m sure that most adults* can hold the following thoughts simultaneously in their heads:

1) Wikileaks is releasing important information.
2) Assange is a jerk who is probably capable of committing the acts he is accused of.
3) The Swedish response to the accusations is way beyond what it would be if Assange was not an embarrassment to the US.
4) We should really start taking accusations of sexual assault more seriously even when alleged perpetrator is not an embarrassment to the US.

Outside of the punditocracy, right-wing talk shows, and beltway media, of course.

He’s not just an embrrassment to the US. He’s also one to Russia, the UK, EU, France, the Vatican, China, Venezuela, Iran (Ahamdenijad even went so far as to say Assange is doing the work of the Pentagon {!}), Saudia Arabia just about every country in the world got some kind of dirty released on them. That’s why it’s so facile to say he’s “anti-American”. He’s consistently anti-every country.

From my experience, hackers are particularly sensitive to being taken in by PUA bullshit. We’re trained to see complex systems as black boxes, with inputs and outputs, and to tweak the inputs until you get the desired outputs. People are arguably complex (the most complex of, in fact) systems. Half the shadow litterature out there on computer security and intrusion is about ‘social engineering’, i.e. the act of giving the right input in conversation with the human beings that make up part of the security system of an enterprise so they’ll give you the keys to go in and muck things up.

The assholes in the scene just think like that all the time. Not surprised to see this sort of reflexions from Assange.

WikiLeaks is still an important project and I hope somebody less shady will get its hands on it.

Richard’s a good example of fauxgressive in action.  Wikileaks is nothing like the Pentagon Papers. How very dishonest of you to try and slide that by there, as if Wikileaks is the equivalent.  It’s not. 

  His followers sure seem to a defensive bunch, but he’s another accused rapist and he’s nominally leftist. Of course supposed lefties are going to be going batshit. I don’t think he gives a shit about politics at all. He’s too arrogant for that, but it sure makes a handy hook. 

Umaro is quite possibly the only person who thinks these things are revelations.  Some people have been trying to raise the alarm about this for quite a while but until the messenger was a douchey white hacker they didn’t care.  Ultimately, that’s why I’m beyond skeptical about Wikileaks and its johnny-come-lately fans.

Wikileaks is nothing like the Pentagon Papers.

American left is way too quick to jump on the bandwagon of Vietnam analogies in general. Kind of the like the right wing and Munich/“appeasement”.

Wait, Ms Kate.  I clicked through and read more and am now perfectly satisfied he’s making it up, based on the claim that his coffee rubdowns and her lust for him combined to cause her to drink more coffee.  Which means he either makes me sad for making something so silly up, or he makes me sad for trapping this poor girl, who clearly wanted him, in a heart-exploding caffeine-addled deathspiral.  Really there’s no way to spin this story that makes him look good, or even rational

The Swedish response to the accusations is way beyond what it would be if Assange was not an embarrassment to the US.

Yeah.  I find it interesting that the Swedes have chosen This Case to atone for all their years of coddling rapists, not protecting their victims after their release from country club prisons, and generally downplaying the severity of rape as a hate crime in general.

Wikileaks is nothing like the Pentagon Papers.

They’re obviously not exactly the same, but it’s misleading to say they’re “nothing like” the Pentagon Papers.  Not at all?  No similarities whatsoever?

Yeah, most of the cables are banal, but there are a fair bit that really highlight just how much secrecy allows bad actors to thrive.

But, there are occasional gems like the nice case of the state department being asked to cover up reports of the U.S. company DynCorp procuring young boys and buying drugs for a party…

she looked up, fluttered her eyelids and said ‘Oh, you know so much! I hardly know anything!’

No. I refuse to believe this actually happened. Unless maybe the woman was just messing with him. Or maybe she traveled from the Victorian era in a steam-powered time machine.

Ever since a commenter a few threads back said he looks like Draco Malfoy’s creepy meth addict cousin, I tend to giggle a bit when I see pictures of Assange. There’s something so off about him. And the idea of him reducing a young beauty to batting her eyelashes like a silent movie star… No. Uh uh. It never ever happened.

Most of the stuff being leaked is common knowledge

That’s not really true. The stuff that’s made headlines in the US has been pretty no-consequence stuff, but much of the content of the 3 big dumps of data (there were 3, not just the most recent one) isn’t “common knowledge,” and still isn’t because few people have done much digging in the data.

WikiLeaks is still an important project and I hope somebody less shady will get its hands on it.

This. It’s very unfortunate when important issues like Wikileaks get personalized, and doubly so when the person in question is (at the very least) an asshole and a careless one at that. But obviously his ego is much too big to permit him to recognize that he’s become a liability to Wikileaks.

Nice observation, BlackBox.  Having worked with programmers extensively, I agree completely that there is a “see if this works” or “what happens if I do this” attitude that works less well on human beings than it does on black boxes.  What I hate most, though, is a refusal to acknowledge that social engineering is often out and out LYING.  It’s an “end justifies the means” rationalization that leads to the horrifying mindset that EVERYONE out there is lying, also.  It’s like playing an endless round of poker, where you can never, ever show weakness or fold, or if you do, it’s just part of a deeper strategy . . .

The political goal of WikiLeaks is to force governmental transparency. The contents of the leaks are at best secondary.

@jfwlucy: The extreme individualism in that crowd leads to something akin to sollipsism. That’s also why they’re prone to mansplaining, devolving into right-wing libertarianism and such. The Hacker Manifesto is a very beautiful piece of writing that gives lip service to egalitarianism (‘on the net there’s no such thing as race’) until you realize that most people who could afford the gear to muck around during the BBS era were going to be middle class white males. It’s easy to be colorblind when (almost) everyone is white…

Anyway. I’m glad I got over my douche phase. I wish more of the people I studied with had done the same.

That’s not really true.

You missed the part where I mentioned “people who follow international relations.” To quote myself from the earlier thread for the sake of convenience:

It’s not news to anyone who cares about international affairs that the House of Saud or the government of Pakistan aren’t really the West’s allies in the GWOT. It’s not news that Karzai is a corrupt tribal warlord or that Iraq never had a chance of becoming anything resembling a democracy post-Saddam. It’s not news that the concept of Muslim unity, absent a common enemy like the U.S. or Israel, is a total joke. And it’s not news that Russia is a corrupt oligarchy.

... and it’s not news that warlords and dictators are prone to using their power or asking help of their more powerful patrons to indulge their scaly personal urges.

If one claims that any of this is news, then one either don’t follow international relations or is very adept at self-deception (e.g. the Beltway types mentioned by carovee above).

In any case, the details revelations are beside the point in this effort—the occasional gems you’ll find in a massive data dump are fun, but the details in and of themselves are not the main goal of the project.

It’s an “end justifies the means” rationalization that leads to the horrifying mindset that EVERYONE out there is lying, also.  It’s like playing an endless round of poker, where you can never, ever show weakness or fold, or if you do, it’s just part of a deeper strategy . . .

Welcome, also, to the dank confines of the conservative mindset. If Karl Rove had any tech skills, he would have been a script kiddie and PUA disciple, and we all might have been spared 8 years of grief.

But then, just when one might suspect that men are krill to the baleen of female romantic manipulation

Yeesh.  I call on Wikileaks to make available the documents authorizing the torture of that metaphor.

Anyway. I’m glad I got over my douche phase. I wish more of the people I studied with had done the same.

I’m kinda glad they didn’t—made things a lot easier for me personally. For you too, I suspect.

That said, I’m not a woman and didn’t have to put up with the advances of these entitled and privilege-blind clods. I only hope that one of them won’t be in charge when SETI makes contact with real alien life forms—“let’s try some NLP on ‘em—worked really well with that babe at O’Hurley’s the other night.”

The extreme individualism in that crowd leads to something akin to sollipsism. That’s also why they’re prone to mansplaining, devolving into right-wing libertarianism and such.

Computer jocks are (in large part) nerds; nerds are introverts; introverts focus on their own needs, and not the needs of others. “Nice guys” are introverts, too.

Assange seemed way full of himself in one interview he had with an international correspondent. 

Reminded me of many hardcore STEM nerd/geek high school who were either arrested for unauthorized hacking or ended up graduating with 3.7+ level GPAs from MIT, Caltech, CMU, Cornell, etc and ended up unemployed for 3 years after the tech bust of 2001 because they felt developing ANY social skills….especially with non-techies was a “waste of their time”, “beneath them”, and “for the stupid people who can’t hack STEM majors”.  Yep, those were direct quotes taken directly from the horses’ mouths. 

Welcome, also, to the dank confines of the conservative mindset. If Karl Rove had any tech skills, he would have been a script kiddie and PUA disciple, and we all might have been spared 8 years of grief.

More like if Karl Rove was a wannabe computer geek with no actual geek/nerd cred, he would have been a script kiddie and PUA disciple. 

FYI: The vast majority of script kiddies don’t really have much in way of tech skills….they just download pre-fabed scripts off the net from those who actually do.  Also, genuine hardcore techies IME would feel quite insulted at being equated with script kiddies as the latter are viewed with the same disdain they often reserve for non-techies who see themselves as the techies’ intellectual equals/superiors. 

The equivalents to your modern-day script kiddies in two of my Intro CS classes for majors were all among the 30%-50% who ultimately flunked.

genuine hardcore techies IME would feel quite insulted at being equated with script kiddies as the latter are viewed with the same disdain they often reserve for non-techies who see themselves as the techies’ intellectual equals/superiors.

“Script kiddie” and “genuine hardcore techie” are mutually exclusive terms as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve found that the script kiddies are usually a lot more arrogant (and a lot more insecure on the inside) than coders who’ve earned some geek cred.

Julian is a friend of a friend—about a decade ago he was very active in the BSD community, so I know a fair number of people who knew/know him.  Obviously, he’s been a topic of discussion amongst us lately.

I’d say my friends who know him are split about 50-50 on him—some remember him as a technical genius, some remember him as a flaming asshole.  Par for the course for visible people in the open software community.  As such, I’m not surprised he’s dogmatic, and socially inept…

I only hope that one of them won’t be in charge when SETI makes contact with real alien life forms—“let’s try some NLP on ‘em—worked really well with that babe at O’Hurley’s the other night.”

Is Earth going to be vaporized because of negging? Goddammit.

Brought to you by the executive producers of today’s Two Minute Hate.

Julian is a friend of a friend—about a decade ago he was very active in the BSD community

I read that at first as ‘the BDSM community’.

@38: Well, that’s not too far off considering you have to be a masochist to use BSD… *ba-dum-ch*

Wow, I went to bed and the entire comment thread has been replaced with another one, as if I just hallucinated the first?

I’m guessing Amanda deleted all the troll comments/OKCupid comments because they were irrelevant. Still kinda creepy though.

So he’s Ron Burgundy with a vocabulary. He’s kind of a big deal.

Is Earth going to be vaporized because of negging? Goddammit.

I’d worry more about the aliens demanding that Earth owes them spaceships after that encounter causes them to laugh so hard they accidentally spit out their drink of choice onto the ship consoles….

But seriously, has Naomi Wolf lost her mind?

introverts focus on their own needs, and not the needs of others.

That is complete and total bullshit.  I’m an introvert, and, if anything, I put the needs of others way ahead of my own.  And I’ve known way too many extroverts who are solely interested in being worshiped by others.

Nice guys are largely introverts, true, but their introversion is responsible for their lack of success with women.  Their narcissism exists independently of that.

And, FYI, introverts are very concerned with appropriate behavior (often to the point of being crippled by it), are extremely sensitive to the disapproval of others, and are ultimately highly prized as romantic partners.  Does that sound like the characteristics of a narcissist to you?

Yeesh.  I call on Wikileaks to make available the documents authorizing the torture of that metaphor.

astronautgo wins the internet today.

Daisy—-Naomi Wolf thinks that she talkes with Jesus. I saw her on c-span speaking at an event to build relations between Jews and Christians and she kept calling the Christians “you people” and end up implying that jews really do secretly control US foreign policy. She also makes statements using a question tone. I have always thought her waaaayyyy over-rated and have no idea why she is such a prominent voice in the feminist movement. She went off the deepend long ago. If she ever was a serious thinker it predates my memory.

EVERYONE is massaging his/her image when it comes to mating,

Did you mean to type “dating”?  Because if I’m looking out for a hookup, I would never in a million years say and/or think of it as “mating”.  Mating implies that I am merely possessed by a biological urge to reproduce.  Fucking people for the hell of it because it’s fun with no urge to ever be pregnant does not fit under that umbrella.  The process for humans is far more complex than for ants or bees or cows or dogs.  I mean, it’s fine if that’s all you’re trying to do, but I would sincerely hope that you have the woman’s consent to impregnate her.

EVERYONE is massaging his/her image when it comes to mating,

Did you mean to type “dating”?

Lol, no kidding. Maybe “everyone” massages their images, but only a select tragic few call it “mating”... (is that supposed to impress the “college-educated” types you’re so desperate to address? Using science-ish terms like “mating”? )

I see Eurosabra’s douchesignal lit up. Honestly, I absolutely love it when I can tell by the first sentence whose nick is going to be at the bottom of a post like that.

she looked up, fluttered her eyelids and said ‘Oh, you know so much! I hardly know anything!’

No. I refuse to believe this actually happened. Unless maybe the woman was just messing with him. Or maybe she traveled from the Victorian era in a steam-powered time machine.

You might be surprised! I have heard young (late high school maybe) women doing this exact kind of thing with guys numerous times. Maybe it’s a little lighter on the delicate, refined blushing, and it has more finger-twirking-in-hair than eyelash-fluttering, but it involves lots of inane giggling and healthy dollops of “I don’t know anything about that” and “I’m not smart enough for that, I’m so dumb”. Always makes me want to puke, but there it is.

“Yeah, whatever.”

G-mar’s go-to retort when the quality-control on her meds aren’t up to industry standards She growls a bit, but she’s a lamb, really.  Just throw her a fresh celebrity corpse for her to kick & she’ll leave you alone.

it’s more that I often deal with traditional religious communities where “dating” isn’t such a great descriptive term for the process, and “pairing up” seems too vague

I’m curious, do you deal with those communities in the capacity of a PUA guru? If so, tell us more—it sounds like a fantastic grift.

Really, most PUA snake-oil salesmen wouldn’t see the potential in traditional religious communities, but when you think about it they’re untapped semi-captive greenfield projects, filled with sexually repressed and naive young men who are ripe for the picking. Virgin markets, so to speak. I will admit it beats the usual way male sexual frustration is often channeled in such communities (“72-Virgin Markets” would be more descriptive term in re: Islamic fundamentalism).

There are unique challenges, of course. For example, traditional religious communities usually don’t allow outsiders in to offer seminars to young people. Would one pretend to be a fellow true believer, complete with the get-ups and gear? I assume at the very least whatever holy text is applicable would be used to gild the standard PUA patter.

To be clear, I’m interested in the business mechanics only. Don’t expect me or anyone else here to actually buy the line of PUA BS you’re selling ...

EVERYONE is massaging his/her image when it comes to mating

“Massaging my image” ... I like that. “I wasn’t telling outrageous lies about myself and my respect for women to get you into bed, baby, I was just ‘massaging my image’.”

You seem to be conflating “authenticity” with “honesty,” applying your contempt in equal measure to both.

Of course, we don’t have a discourse of male sexuality in this culture that can deal with the manic energy of the pick-up cult

We do, however, have a discourse of maturity in this culture that sees the “manic energy” for what it is: flashy, empty, loud-mouthed BSing aimed at “tricking” women into bed. Grown-ups, even playful or romantic ones, understand that there’s really no need for trickery. That’s why we mock PUAs, with their cheesy close-up magic and feathered hats and oily lines.

With the word “cult,” however, you get closer to the reason for the PUA hate—as with MLM hucksters and self-help motivational speakers, the PUA gurus use many of the same shoddy tricks as religious grifters to separate their marks from their money. No-one around here likes to be pitched to by snake-oil salesmen.

the blogs that work at the fringes of the Schrödinger’s Rapist issue [...] are seriously engaging questions of feminist PUA, from a male sexuality-friendly (and generally non-PUA) perspective.

It’s not bloody rocket science, Eurosabra. When a man loses the puerile attitude that women are mysterious alien beings who exist soley to be f*cked and instead treats them like fellow human beings with agency and desires of their own, you’d be surprised how diminished the Schrödinger’s Rapist issue and the supposed unfriendliness toward male sexuality becomes amongst women.

The core of Pandagonians’ disdain for PUA gurus and their (often college-educated) suckers lies in the bone-headed inability to understand these things. Your constant surprise and dismay that a blog run by a sex-positive feminist skeptic might regard PUA gurus in a negative light would fall into the same category of general clueless douchebaggery.

Did anyone else find Eurosabra @ 46 a combination of baffling, laughable and offensive?

I’d say my friends who know him are split about 50-50 on him—some remember him as a technical genius, some remember him as a flaming asshole. 

A colleague of mine remembers him as both.  This is a both/and blog, remember?  The fanciful seduction and “just so” stories are also likely fabrications in her opinion.

I’m still going with narcissist, but that’s based on second-hand attribution.

The fanciful seduction and “just so” stories are also likely fabrications in her opinion.

You make it sound so sleazy, when all Assange may have been doing was “massaging his image.”

Did anyone else find Eurosabra @ 46 a combination of baffling, laughable and offensive?

All of the above, plus exasperating. I think Eurosabra keeps returning to these threads because he genuinely believes his own BS and thinks we’ll come around.

Smartpatrol, your crush on me is getting kind of embarrassing. To say nothing of the fact that you consider your attacks on my mental health——injured while serving my country——to be the height of your oversimplified rebutttal to whatever it is you think I’m saying.  Or go dig up that celebrity corpse and suck its dick.  Julian Assange ought to make a great substitute for a guy like you, who likes to dish it out but won’t take it. What a fucking coward you are.

And, FYI, introverts are very concerned with appropriate behavior (often to the point of being crippled by it),

It’s all about them,

are extremely sensitive to the disapproval of others,

and their feelings

and are ultimately highly prized as romantic partners.

Not if they’re constantly self-conscious.

  Does that sound like the characteristics of a narcissist to you?

Ah, there’s the point. A narcissist says “I’m beautiful, don’t ever change.” These people are not narcissists, they are simply focused on themselves. They might even hate themselves.

  EVERYONE is massaging his/her image when it comes to mating,

  Did you mean to type “dating”?

“Dating” does get on my own nerves. It seems so 50s: Dating Do’s and Don’t's. You Don’t Have to Pet to Be Popular, etc. Mrs. Smith opening the door in heels and pearls, “Hi Billy, Judy will be just a minute!” Billy in jeans with Judy in bobby sox and a letterman sweater sipping a milkshake with two straws at the Sweet Shoppe.

The way people hook up in the 21st century does not correspond to “dating.”

I have heard young (late high school maybe) women doing this exact kind of thing with guys numerous times. Maybe it’s a little lighter on the delicate, refined blushing, and it has more finger-twirking-in-hair than eyelash-fluttering, but it involves lots of inane giggling and healthy dollops of “I don’t know anything about that” and “I’m not smart enough for that, I’m so dumb”.

I kind of want to barf now.

Planet of the Blue Monkeys, it’s like what people like Deborah Tannen and Carol Tavris have been pointing out for years. Women have to be apologetic about existing and taking up space for us to be tolerated.  If a woman speaks more than about 30% of hte conversation, both men and some women regard her as hogging the conversation. If she doesn’t lace her comments with apologetic prefaces and qualifications…“I’m sorry, but….It’s probably just me but….. It’s just my opinion but….” she’s regarded as bossy, bitchy, angry.  Or nuts.

Ginmar, yeah, you’re right. And beautiful women had better sit quietly and listen to the man, or they’re stuck up bitches who need to be brought down a peg.  Once upon a time, I was a babe (think Kate Winslet in “Holy Smoke”), and I endured far too much of the “I want to fuck you so I’ll condescend to you” crap with far too much politeness. With a frozen smile and non-committal sounds, not eyelash fluttering and cooing. Who knows, maybe the men interpreted it as “wow, she’s so into me!” What I was actually thinking was more along the lines of, “of course I know who the Beatles are, you preening weenie”.

As a chubby, be-spectacled 45-year-old, men don’t do that to me any more. Which is good for them, because my patience with douche-nozzles disappeared right about the time my grey hair started coming in.  “Hey, Mr. Assange, I surmise you’d bruise like a peach. Keep on talking and I’ll test my hypothesis.”

“The Seduction Community”. *barf*

You know something is douche-y when members feel the need to capitalize it inappropriately.

As someone who has been the (surviving) beneficiary of a suicide attacker’s attentions on three separate occasions, I would object to the characterization as “72 Virgins Markets”.  That’s a bit flip.

And intended to be. I am sorry you were caught in attacks by these twisted individuals, but sometimes the only thing that cuts through the horror is dark humour.

The fact is, religious fundie “leaders” do often channel the carefully cultivated sexual frustration of young male adherents into sectarian violence and, for the more desperate, into a death-support network (a term I like—thanks). They take advantage of the same “customer base” that you do, but with far more awful results.

The other fact is that I couldn’t resist the double pun.

Thing is, you can’t really sell people flow charts of “And then she could do ANYTHING, because women are complex and have their own motivations, some of which are hidden to you or her or both of you.”

Exactly, which is why all you’re left to sell is a mix of snake-oil flow-charts and banal “wisdom” about attire and grooming available to anyone who has the price of a GQ magazine. Of course, a guy who’s already been damaged by a religious fundamentalist upbringing tends to be easy pickings for someone peddling solutions based in magical thinking, which is why it’s a great scam.

I really, really enjoy everyone’s snark, however.

The snark is coming, Eurosabra, because you keep pushing the same pseudo-intellectual patter you use with your marks. I understand that it’s important in terms of creating bogus added value for those clueless douchebags, and equally important when it comes to attaining the dubious distinction of fame in the PUA “Community” (which seems as paradoxical a phase as “the Libertarian Community”). Here, though, we’re already wise to the scam, so no need to insult our intelligence with claims that your mix of water, sugar and bootblack is a peer-reviewed results-may-vary medication.

If you’d just said “I make some cash on the side coaching particularly dense and lazy religious fundies how to operate in mainstream social situations—techies like Assange could do with that as well” you’d get high-fives instead of snark. But you just can’t resist your own line of PUA BS, or hide your dismay that people at Pandagon don’t buy it. Until you can, deal with the snark.

Speaking of knowing how to market yourself to the opposite sex—I think blue monkeys wins with her self-description as “a chubby, be-spectacled 45-year-old [version of] Kate Winslet in ‘Holy Smoke’.”

Er, Hector, there’s about twenty years between “Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke” and “chubby bespectacled.” Time is one mean bitch.

Hector, what’s up with the introversion hate? What have we done to you? Turned down your social invitations because of our selfish desire not to be exhausted and unhappy for the sake of extroverts who don’t notice or understand our needs? And here I was so proud of myself for slowly learning not to make myself miserable because I believed I needed to in order to be a good friend (I have since come to believe that being happy and enjoying the time I spend with people is a better way to be a good friend, but that could just be the narcissistic self-interest talking). Just let us talk quietly amongst ourselves and I promise we won’t try to bother you.

keshmeshi, the concern with social appropriateness you’re talking about is more a matter of self-monitoring than than introversion/extroversion. I don’t know that the two are completely uncorrelated, but you can definitely be an introvert who is a low self-monitor and an extrovert who is a high self-monitor. The theory of introversion that makes the most sense with my experience and also the personality psych research I’ve read is mainly that it’s a matter of having a higher sensitivity to stimulation, thus needing less external stimulation for optimal function, and being more prone to overstimulation in general. It does seem likely that people who are both introverted and high self-monitors tend to have more manifestly withdrawn social behavior because trying to pay attention to all the social cues and respond appropriately is yet another source of stimulation that can get overwhelming.

for the sake of extroverts who don’t notice or understand our needs?

As a nerd friend told me in high school, “Why do I have to make small talk with her? Why can’t we just fuck?” Couldn’t she notice his obvious need?

And, FYI, introverts are very concerned with appropriate behavior (often to the point of being crippled by it),

It’s all about them,

No, it’s all about wanting to treat other people well, asshole.

Ah, there’s the point. A narcissist says “I’m beautiful, don’t ever change.” These people are not narcissists, they are simply focused on themselves. They might even hate themselves.

An introvert, by definition, has thought processes that are inner directed, which in no way implies self-centered behavior.  It means that they’re slow to speak (but what they say is often better thought out than the blather that comes out of extroverts) and that social interaction exhausts them.

You, meanwhile, piss on anyone/anything you don’t understand or like.  How’s that for only caring about your own needs?  Physician, heal thyself.

the concern with social appropriateness you’re talking about is more a matter of self-monitoring than than introversion/extroversion.

I guess I’m conflating shy people with introverts.  While not all introverts are shy, I’m certain that all shys are introverts.

Oh, God, Blue Monkey—-“I want to fuck you so I’ll condescend to you,” really rang some bells. And if you’re not Kate Winslet, then you might as well just dry up and die, too.  YOu’re not just supposed to not offend men; you’re also forbidden from interrupting them, inconveniencing them, reminding them that you exist and so on. And they have the right to get offended at any time, as much as they want.  You have to justify your existence with every breath and that existence doesn’t include humane treatment. Hell, sometimes you can’t even make the buggers leave you alone.

...And men can spend hours discussing ‘manly’ stuff and women are supposed to just quietly listen, but as soon as they hear one woman ask another where she got her shoes, they act like there’s a straight razor up against their balls.

(Sorry, all you men reading this for whom this does not apply. You all are cool. I just work with a bunch of troglodytes, and it makes me cranky.)

The Community

Lol, it’s like an M. Night Shyamalan movie. And in the end it turns out that… no one in “The Community” ever has a satisfying sexual or romantic relationship. Ever.

... whatta twist!

This is why I have no clue why anyone on the Left is defending this prick. He already gave off misovibes, but its obvious he’s a blatant PIG!

#1. He’s a misogynist
#2. He jeopardizes lives of U.S. soldiers
#3. He’s accused of rape
#4. He bullys if he doesnt get his way (Visa/Mastercard)
#5. He’s a paranoid nut

= He can fuck off. Hope he’s in jail soon.

Err, Assange didn’t do anything to Visa/Mastercard. He’s not behind the DDOS attacks. That was just your regular Anonymus cyber civil disobedience. Assange doesn’t have superpowers to convince every nerd online to do what he says.

Smartpatrol, your crush on me is getting kind of embarrassing.
Said the same lou-lou bell who kept trying to contact me repeatedly to the point where I had to reach for the banhammer/bozo filter, despite having been told directly & in public to knock it off.  Boundaries, G-mar.  Boundaries.

To say nothing of the fact that you consider your attacks on my mental...yadda-yadda-yadda.  “My PTSD from having !!!BEENINIRAQSTANDINGONTHEEDGESOFMASSGRAVES!!! gives me free licence to be as unnecessarily vicious, condescending, belligerent & obnoxious to complete strangers as I want & to make up as much shit about them as I please.  Neener neener neener.”  Low-hanging fruit actually, but coddling bullies & the mentally ill only encourages them, & there is the delicious thrill of giving a disingenuous chest-thumper a hard, swift kick in their spiteful rhetoric.  Who needs Breitbart when we’ve progs like G-mar in ur feminism co-optin’ ur ragez?

“...injured while serving my country…”
Noted the first 1000x you mentioned it.  But what have you done for us lately?

“Or go dig up that celebrity corpse and suck its dick.”
G-mar once again letting the rest us know how much she believes oral sex is inherently degrading &/ graciously sharing what turns her on, despite no one having asked.

“Assange ought to make a great substitute for a guy like you…”
The difference between a pair of swelled-headed thin-skinned types like Assange & G-mar is that one has, despite their personal deficiencies, managed to hold powerful bodies of authority accountable by providing a means for whistleblowers to get information into the public sphere, while the other…?.

“who likes to dish it out but won’t take it.”
There’s what one can take vs. what one doesn’t have to take.  No one is under any obligation to put up with a load of crap from a shellshocked shit-talking bulldozer who often can’t be bothered to read a post to the end before making ludicrous assessments re: the character of the commenter while glibly dismissing (“Yeah, whatever.”) &/ ignoring the actual content of said post.  Ever.  Boundaries, G-mar.  Boundaries.

“What a fucking coward you are.”
I don’t measure up to a rhetorical bully’s standard of courage.  Quel dommage.

Anyway: Crooks & Liars has an excellent post about the vitriol directed at Assange by members of the media could very well be based on what Wikileaks might have on them.  On a more visceral level, I’m confident that when you’re getting cretins like Tom “Fatwa” Flanagan to reveal how they really think in public, then you’re doing something in the public service.

The pleasure taken in violating boundaries is a positive boon for hacktivism & an absolute disaster when applied to personal relationships, no argument.  If these reports are credible & Assange really is a big ol’ Mysogonerd, then it’s pretty clear that his lousy attitude toward women is what has left him open to this kind of attack.  But Assange is the weapon & Wikileaks is the target.  The goal of this particular smear campaign is to tie Assange & Wikileaks together so that in the minds of the slope-browed & soft-skulled they become one and the same, & any actions of the private individual becomes that of their public organization.

Until somebody takes control of Wikileaks from him, he is Wikileaks.

Ah.  We’re already there.

Um. Asshole. That’s not an apology or a concession.  YOU went off on me when first you surfaced here, about something years old.Oh, wait, was I supposed to be Mother Theresa in the face of somebody harassing me for stuff from five years ago? And am I supposed to REALLY forgive you or something when you keep peddling lies and bullshit and yet won’t answer a goddamned thing?  “I CONCEDE THAT YOU’RE A CRAZY BITCH WHO LIES AND MAKES SHIT UP” is not a hateful comment at all. Nor is it anything but another attack again.