I have a confession to make. When I see an attractive woman, in any context, my concentration shifts

[engineer_comp_geek]

Moderator Note

@MandaJo

I am going to go on about this, because this is exactly the sort of thing that I think causes a disconnect on the misogyny issue here. When the OP tells the story of walking down the street, thinking “Damn, I want to hit that”, he just called me and every other woman in this thread a “that”. Right there, the tone was set and I was told that this would be a conversation among men, and any woman is starting at a disadvantage because she’s not even really a person to the OP–who is confident he speaks for all men.

And yes, there’s a potentially interesting discussion suggested by the OP, but it’s framed in a misogynistic and degrading way: it’s “Hey, fellow dudes, let me tell you about the problems the women cause me”. It’s humble-bragging about how powerful his sex drive is, so powerful he can’t interact with attractive women. He’s not looking for advice–he doesn’t think it’s a problem. He’s explicitly looking for validation that his thoughts are normal–and he only wants it from other men, because anything women say will be met with “you couldn’t possibly understand and any man who tells you different than me is lying to you”.

Potentially interesting conversation starters shouldn’t get a pass on being gross. I’d shut down the thread and suggest the OP or someone else restart it with the understanding that there are women and men in the room.

To clarify, the OP wasn’t given a pass because the resulting discussion ended up being interesting. Everyone’s responses in the thread showed that, instead of just shutting down the thread (in which case nate would learn nothing), everyone could instead point out the various issues in the OP and address them, and hopefully nate can actually learn something from all of this.

In any event, discussions about the moderation and whether or not threads should be closed should be in ATMB. If anyone wishes to discuss this further, please start a thread there.