And from the " Slut-Shaming Is The Way We Live, Deep In The Heart of Texas " Department...

[Kimstu]

@Starving_Artist

Not reward it, ameliorate it.

If you’ll recall, the idea is to lessen the boys’ alleged crass and boorish behavior.

Well, you’re the one who has been making the claim that when boys are “rude” and “crass” and “mean” toward girls, the girls ought to respond with a “demeanor” that “says they’re friendly and they like you as a person. They make you comfortable, in other words”.

That is, rudeness and crassness and meanness from boys should be responded to with attitudes of friendliness and liking from girls, so the boys will feel “comfortable”.

In general, when Person A is mean to Person B in order to make Person B feel bad, and Person B is expected to respond by being friendly and nice in order to make Person A feel better, that comes across as advocating rewarding Person A’s bad behavior rather than punishing it.

[HelenTroy]

I logged in just to say thank you for your patience, Kimstu. The ideas put forth by SA are so repulsive I barely have the words. Women (or girls) are responsible for taming the savage beast men by being simpering victims so they never feel badly about themselves and hurt us more? As a woman, I am of course horrified by the shift in responsibility from the bad actor to the victim. I suppose blaming liberals makes sense in this context from the party of personal responsibility (sarcasm for the reading impaired). However, I would think men would also be offended. It makes them out to be infantile and needing someone to coddle their sensitivities in order to be civilized.

Hey, remember those threads about the insidious nature of the MRA and Incel movements? This right here is that mindset in play and not even from some young and lost dude. The ideas have been around for decades and SA is the disgusting example.

[Kimstu]

@HelenTroy

I logged in just to say thank you for your patience, Kimstu.

No problem, plenty more where that came from! Thanks also to you and chaika for the kind words.

[iiandyiiii]

I’ll challenge Starving Artist once again – is there a single woman Doper that endorses your approach to this? If you can’t find one, does that not give you even a single moment of pause in the rhetoric you use? If every single woman who is reading these posts says that they’re awful, then isn’t there some non-zero chance that you might be coming at this the wrong way? In real life you may be different. Maybe you speak differently than you post. But these posts are all getting the same response from women – 100% of women reading your posts are disgusted by them. Literally, unless I’m missing a supportive response. Are you really so old that you’re incapable of learning something new and possibly changing your mind?

[Wallet]

@iiandyiiii

I’ll challenge Starving Artist once again – is there a single woman Doper that endorses your approach to this? If you can’t find one, does that not give you even a single moment of pause in the rhetoric you use? If every single woman who is reading these posts says that they’re awful, then isn’t there some non-zero chance that you might be coming at this the wrong way? In real life you may be different. Maybe you speak differently than you post. But these posts are all getting the same response from women – 100% of women reading your posts are disgusted by them. Literally, unless I’m missing a supportive response. Are you really so old that you’re incapable of learning something new and possibly changing your mind?

I rarely post, but just wanted to add my voice to this - I am a woman, and I do find SA’s messages beyond disgusting.
Thanks to everyone for being able to state all of my views so eloquently.
-Wallet-

[chaika]

@Starving_Artist

Is this really what you draw from that paragraph, that my being a man is the reason woman should speak to me of sexual assault?

Or would it more likely be that in 55 years of spending time with women of all kinds and in sorts of ways, including romantic relationships and marriage, none of them in all that time has complained to me about the constant non-stop sexual harassment and assault that, according to Kimstu, statistics prove women experience as they innocently go about their daily lives?

They have certainly complained to me about plenty of other things men do, so why not that? If daily life were like Kimstu suggests, I would expect women all the time to be complaining that “I can never so much as set foot out of the damn house without some asshole grabbing my boobs or my ass or shaking his crotch at me and yelling obscenities.”

But I’ve heard nothing like this in all in the 55 years since I turned 14 - 15 and began experiencing talk involving sex coming from the girls and women in my life. I’ve not even heard about wolf whistles or suggestive comments or excessive requests for dates. And I’ve certainly never seen any of this assaultive or harassing behavior myself, and I get out and around a lot and I always have.

So my guess is that most women experience sexual assault of a serious nature pretty rarely if at all while out in public or otherwise going about their day, and that to whatever degree they encounter minor harassment and annoyances, it happens so infrequently, and they consider it so minor and inconsequential, as not to be worth mentioning. And that perhaps Kimstu’s “statistics” have been exaggerated by someone with an anti-male or woman-as-victim agenda to make it appear that women’s lives are considerably more fraught with abuse than is the case in reality.

I think you’ve drawn some odd conclusions there. I can’t say that I have discussed sexual harassment with my uncles, cousins, male colleagues, etc. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. It most certainly has. Why do you think the phrase MeToo has resonated so strongly among women? Precisely because virtually every woman can say such incidents have happened to them. And simply rejecting statistical evidence, based on nothing more than idle speculation, doesn’t even enter the realm of reasonable debate.

I would say, rather than harassment happening “so infrequently” or women considering it “so minor and inconsequential as to not be worth mentioning,” women have been told for so long that they must accept such behavior from men that they have often remained silent. I am pleased to see the beginnings of change in this regard. But as with all significant cultural shifts, it will take a great deal of time and no doubt encounter a considerable amount of opposition from those resistant to change.

The trope of the woman as a civilizing influence, who takes on the bad boy and transforms him into a decent, upstanding member of society, is a hackneyed cliche. It is certainly not advice we should be giving children about how to interact with members of the opposite sex.

[andros]

Old Thoughtless White Guy remains old, thoughtless, and white. Color me shocked.

[Nava]

@Starving_Artist

Not reward it, ameliorate it.

If you’ll recall, the idea is to lessen the boys’ alleged crass and boorish behavior.

How exactly do you think rewarding it will accomplish that?

You’re the one who appears to think that (copypasting from the quote as I’m feeling lazy)

Girls who are ladylike are not threatening, they’re not foreign, and they’re not intimidating.

and who claims that girls should be “not threatening” and “not intimidating” to people who have been borish and rude to them. Being nice to someone rewards whatever behavior they are displaying; therefore, being nice to someone who’s just been a borish, rude ass to you rewards being a rude, boorish ass.

Apparently you’ve never met an actual lady. The ones I know have exactly zero problems making it clear when they are Displeased. They aren’t just threatening, they’re Threatening with a capital T. When one of them makes it clear This Will Not Do, the offender’s sexual bits climb up above their ears and don’t come down until he or she has apologized satisfyingly, made amends and promised to never ever behave so uncouthly, ever again.

But then, you begin by thinking that boys (all boys without exception, really?) view girls as some kind of alien species. That wasn’t my experience, but then, even my father in the Jesuit seminar he attended between the equivalent of 5th and 8th grades had more contact with girls than you seem to have had, based on your projections - and it’s 8km from that seminar to the nearest town.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Didn’t Starving Artist want to fuck off? What happened to that?

[raventhief]

@iiandyiiii

I’ll challenge Starving Artist once again – is there a single woman Doper that endorses your approach to this? If you can’t find one, does that not give you even a single moment of pause in the rhetoric you use? If every single woman who is reading these posts says that they’re awful, then isn’t there some non-zero chance that you might be coming at this the wrong way? In real life you may be different. Maybe you speak differently than you post. But these posts are all getting the same response from women – 100% of women reading your posts are disgusted by them. Literally, unless I’m missing a supportive response. Are you really so old that you’re incapable of learning something new and possibly changing your mind?

Add my disgust as well. I think, despite his claims to chivalry, he does NOT respect women at all.

[raventhief]

“certainly never seen such behavior”? Not even once, and remembered so vividly over 50 years later that it is posted on a message board?

@Starving_Artist

I recall once when I was about 14 visiting a buddy who had a pretty good-looking big sister who was about 17. My friend and I and another friend of his who was about 15 were sitting at the kitchenette when my buddy’s sister walked by in a tight pair of pedal-pushers (as they were called then) and this other guy reached out and patted her rump and she walked by. She whirled around and slapped him in the face so hard it almost knocked him out of his chair an yelled, “DO NOT EVER TOUCH A GIRL ON THE BOTTOM LIKE THAT AGAIN! EVER! DO YOU HEAR ME??” And naturally, me being me, I couldn’t understand what the big deal was (:p) so when the incident came up to my friend’s mom I asked her about it and she said that you just don’t touch girls or women on the bottom (that’s how people talked then). It’s disrespectful and you should never do it. (Given my age she left off the sexual connotations so I still didn’t get it, but the next couple of years took care of that bit of ignorance.) But the point is that during this same era, women and girls set boundaries and enforced them, and they were a hell of a lot better off than now where any and every affront is a source of outrage and victimhood.

I remember years ago hearing about how liberals were working to create a society of victimhood, and that’s exactly where we are now. If someone says the wrong word or does the wrong thing (in this case, a hand on a crotch) it’s “OMG, THE WORST THING EVAR!!!” and the recipient is trained by societal expectation to be traumatized by the experience, to feel victimized and helpless and negatively affected for life, and the offender is widely believed to be deserving to lose a career he’s spent perhaps decades striving and sacrificing for and/or go to jail for what in reality and according to any kind of objective assessment is a relatively minor offense.

It does not do people favors to convince them through your own reactions and attitudes to their misfortunes that they have been irrevocably wronged and traumatized by some unfortunate thing that has happened to them and that they’ve permanently damaged. It’s much better for people to be brought up to learn how to deal with adversity and then put it behind them without taking it personally.

There was massive snipping to isolate that little anecdote. But that whole thread highlights why you may not hear women tell you about harassment- you make it clear that you feel it just shouldn’t bother them. Or set and enforce boundaries in what some might call an unladylike manner.

[Sparky812]

@Starving_Artist

…
And it isn’t our own employees that pose a potential threat, but rather any of a number of the random criminal element our society is so rife with these days.
…

@Starving_Artist

…By the time they reach middle school, everyone, boy or girl, should know that there are simply bad people out there, and there’s no way anyone can guarantee that you won’t ever run afoul of one of them. And believe it or not, most people know this already…

OMFG, how did these fucking massive turds go unnoticed? You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about! 85-90% of reported sexual assaults and rapes are committed by persons known to the victim not some “random criminal element”. In fact, it’s far more likely that another employee may actually pose more of a threat, such as the old, creepy guy who insists on walking all the women to their cars… alone at night… in the dark.

@Starving_Artist

Not quite. If I were using it as a counterpart to anything, it would be to the stereotypical provocatively dressed drunk young flirt who passes out and gets raped behind a bar.

But the scenario wasn’t intended even for that. It was intended solely, and by virtue of having no woman involved, to get people to admit to themselves that people do indeed bear a degree of responsibility for the consequences if they engage in foolishly thoughtless and risky behavior.

It’s difficult to believe this point has to be argued in the first place, but here we are.

…bolding mine

Well fuck me, at least we agree on one thing.

[Trafalgar_Laura]

I’ve met a lot of men who claim “I’ve never known anyone who has been raped/sexually harassed, therefore it never happens.”

LADIES DON’T USUALLY MENTION IT TO MEN. THEY JUST DON’T. Even their husbands? Even their ‘best male friends’? Usually, NO. I’ve been sexually harassed, sometimes just as part of a group with other women, and I’m not exactly the world’s biggest feminine glamour queen, nor am I wearing those infamously triggering sexy lady-clothes. I basically dress and look like a dude with long hair and boobs. That’s pretty much as much as it takes for some people, apparently.

But sexual harassment has a lot of faces. A lot of that really is just strangers shouting or touching or bumping against in obnoxiously obvious, repeated ways. And people don’t respond to assault by logic, it’s a momentary shock and then lizard brain kicks in, because you’re being assaulted. It’s flight, fight or freeze, and if your lizard brain didn’t decide it was wisest to fight off the larger, stronger person, it’s all your fault it happened. Of course, if you do try to fight them off, that’s not ladylike and making them want to believe you like them, so you probably also have it coming then too.

Rape and more intense assault is less likely in public from random asshole strangers, though. The idea that evil criminals are just waiting in bushes at night to jump out and commit the majority of attacks is hilarious. The more serious the sexual crime, the more likely it’s people you know. People you trust. That’s another big part of why a lot of women don’t fight, don’t even tell at first if ever. And when you add the “Why wasn’t your gut instinct to transform into Wonder Woman and beat up the grown adult male?” factor, the “Why were you close to them? Couldn’t you tell?” factor, the possible guilt at what would happen to the male you previously trusted and may still care about if you do report, etc, etc…

We’re expected to “fix” men of these things, and told we’re acting helpless and unable when we protest that role. We are told sex abuse isn’t a problem, then when we complain it is, we’re told it can’t be or we misinterpreted or we were responsible. Of course most guys don’t hear about it! A disappointing number of guys, when given this information, either block it out as impossible (ideally, because they wouldn’t do it themselves?) or claim the women are lying or claim it was really consensual or…

Why would they talk to you? Why would any woman? There are men in this thread who I think would be told, or would be more likely to be told, just because of their responses and awareness of the situation. People whose first response is “No way. I didn’t hear about that before. And what’d she do to make it happen?” Nope, no point in telling other than adding grief to whatever has already happened.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@raventhief

Add my disgust as well. I think, despite his claims to chivalry, he does NOT respect women at all.

Oh, he respects women, sure he does, as long as they conform to his 1950s expectations for nice girls. Anything else is wrongheaded, unworthy of respect, and led astray from correct thinking by those man-hating women’s libbers and society-destroying liberals. Also skanks, if they have the unladylike nerve to strut their stuff like Beyonce.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Trafalgar_Laura

We’re expected to “fix” men of these things, and told we’re acting helpless and unable when we protest that role. We are told sex abuse isn’t a problem, then when we complain it is, we’re told it can’t be or we misinterpreted or we were responsible. Of course most guys don’t hear about it! A disappointing number of guys, when given this information, either block it out as impossible (ideally, because they wouldn’t do it themselves?) or claim the women are lying or claim it was really consensual or…

Why would they talk to you? Why would any woman? There are men in this thread who I think would be told, or would be more likely to be told, just because of their responses and awareness of the situation. People whose first response is “No way. I didn’t hear about that before. And what’d she do to make it happen?” Nope, no point in telling other than adding grief to whatever has already happened.

Dayyyuuuummm! Your entire post rocks! Right up there with Kimstu’s superb posts.

One of the few good things about getting old, fat and frumpy is that it’s cut way down on the amount and intensity of harassment I get – but still hasn’t eliminated it.

[BeeGee]

Another woman who thinks that SA’s confusing Harlequin Romance novels of the 70’s and girlish reticence with good manners. The coffee has burned and the bottom of the pot fallen out. Still, he sleeps on, unsmelling and uncaring. He couldn’t answer my very first question and I’m not about to waste any more time on someone who persists in being ignorant of his own free will. The world is full of men who think they are so great to women, but mean only the ones who are small, vulnerable, quiet, and willing to be condescended to by men.

It’s easy to love the loveable. But even the unloveable have rights that should be protected.

I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve heard all this before. A poster who INSISTED he luuuuuuuuvvvvs women and women luuuuuvvvvv him, too. Except he couldn’t find a good woman to date and all the women on the board found his behavior disgusting. I KNOW I’ve heard this before…

[Kimstu]

@raventhief

“certainly never seen such behavior”? Not even once, and remembered so vividly over 50 years later that it is posted on a message board?

For clarification, that quoted anecdote was from this Starving Artist post in this 2016 thread.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Kimstu

For clarification, that quoted anecdote was from this Starving Artist post in this 2016 thread.

…Wow.

But all of this is really somewhat beside the point. What I’m contesting is the notion that putting one’s hands on a woman’s crotch or on her breasts over her clothes is some horrible, outrageous event worthy of traumatization on her part and prison time on the offender’s part.

Wow.

But to get back to what we were talking about earlier, girls in the 50s and 60s knew what to expect from the guys they went out with. Their moms prepared them in advance and told them how to deal with it, and the way guys acted on dates was a common thread with all their girlfriends. And girls rarely went out with guys they hadn’t already gotten a pretty good read on as to whether he was likely to be a jerk who wouldn’t take no for an answer or not. But the thing is, if they got groped or treated badly by some guy, they put it down to his being a jerk and didn’t let it affect the way they felt about themselves. They stopped seeing the guy, told their friends what an asshole he was, and got on with their lives hardly giving the experience a thought.

Wow.

Starving Artist, you’re scum, y’know that?

[andros]

Well, mostly old and lonely and sad. But also a bit scum.

[Starving_Artist]

I’m happy to report that I got called a “hero” tonight.

After having been out for a while I was returning to work after dark, and sure enough, veering unsteadily through a parking lot I sometimes drive through to get to my building, was a weird looking dude in red shorts, no shirt, short, spiky blonde hair, and carrying some sort of tube similar to what a cue stick might be carried in, only about six or seven inches wide, bright red and only about two feet long. He didn’t give off a homeless vibe, because he looked fit and trim and both his clothes and whatever the tube thing was looked new and in good shape. He kind of smiled at me as I drove by and then started looking inside the truck he was approaching at the time I drove up on him. Shortly after he walked away from the truck and began to amble on his way.

So I get to work and one of the young women (the one who’d previously jokingly complained about having to walk to her car by herself once when I wasn’t there) asked me if I’d walk her to her car as she had some boxes she wanted to put in the back, and that she hated to bother me and had attempted to take them out herself but “there was this weird guy out there by my car so I came back inside.”

I asked her what the guy looked like and she described the man I’d seen in the adjacent parking lot. I told her I’d seen him too and that he had been walking away from our building at the time I’d seen him. She asked if I still thought he was out there or if he’d come back, and I said “I don’t know. I’ll go take a look,” and turned away to head for the back door. From behind as I walked away I heard her quasi-playfully yell, “My hero!”

As I said before, it’s so nice that now some of the loonier aspects of the otherwise very worthwhile women’s movement are starting to fall by the wayside and that women are finally beginning to feel more free to recognize that there are indeed significant differences between men and women, and that properly utilized, men can be of great benefit to women.

It was such a refreshing change from this thread where the idea of “being good to each other” seems to be demonizing men in general, and to such a ridiculous degree that a simple exhortation to be ladylike is interpreted as giving boys free rein to rape all the girls they want. Oh, and also to be “slut-shaming,” because as we all know, if a woman isn’t a lady then by definition she’s a slut. :rolleyes:

I would suggest that if you people are serious about encouraging a lessening of mistreatment of women by asking people to simply be good to each other, that you stop portraying men as would-be rapists faunching at the bit to be set free, or as oppressive assholes endlessly seeking ways to oppress you and keep you in your supposed place.

People can’t get along when one side is constantly demonizing the other side. This is something else you might want to give some thought to.