Moderating:
This is a formal warning for failure to follow moderator instructions. Stop making over-the-top provocative comparisons to Jim Crow, etc. One more jerkish post will earn you another warning and a ban from this thread.
nobody said anything remotely like that, certainly not me.
she said
and it shouldn’t.
whatever it is you are imagining doesn’t make any sense to me, but I knew exactly what she meant by that.
I’m walking down the street. I’m late for work, I’m wondering if I should text my boss, and some guy wants to say something to me. or he tells me I should smile, since apparently I wasn’t.
he demands my attention. I’m not claiming he is a rapist, I’m saying I should get to walk down the street minding my own business and I should decide if I have time to give him any attention at all. without worrying if it will make him mad or not.
I’m not young anymore so it’s not really an issue but that shouldn’t matter, it’s something that happens to young women all the time.
This this this this THIS! I’m old and frumpy now and it’s no longer a problem for me, but DAMMIT it used to annoy me no end! Especially the patronizing smirk that went along with the “Smile!” demand, the aura of entitlement to me, my behavior, my attention, my very existence in the guy’s world.
Nobody is saying anything of the sort.
We are saying that nobody (of any gender) has a right to demand the attention of somebody else (of any gender), just because the somebody else is out in public.
Or what @JackieLikesVariety said.
I’m not currently in school. If that’s been removed from school, I’m opposed to it. But if everybody is being taught that people of any gender can be courageous leaders, think outside the box, take chances, and work with their hands, I’m in favor of it. Do you think those things should only be taught to boys? and if so, why?
Totally off topic, but I am 100% self diagnosed ADHD and I base this on my use of illegal drugs that helped me get through college for a very brief stint (I’m not talking about illegally procured Adderall). I think I’m on the mid-range of it (I have friends that are on the super side) and I’ve learned through my life how to get by. I do wonder how much more I could’ve done in life without this constant dog->squirrel brain.
False dichotomy, obviously. Used as a smokescreen? Perhaps.
Internalizing rejection is no remedy. No more than if a person took two scotch bonnet peppers and shoved one up his ass in the expectation that the other one wouldn’t burn his mouth when he bit into it.
Joining the chorus of posters telling you that no, nobody is saying that. The point is that nobody has a “right” to demand attention from any random stranger just going about their business.
Yes, anybody may properly request momentary attention from a stranger if they need help of some kind: “Excuse me sir, can you tell me what time it is?” “Pardon me ma’am, do you happen to know how far it is to Tenth Street?”
And it’s not automatically impolite to request attention from a stranger merely in the hopes of a little casual conversation, either: “Nice day for once, isn’t it?” “Can you believe they still haven’t fixed that light?” None of those are intrinsically offensive or rude remarks to address to a stranger.
But that doesn’t mean that the stranger being addressed is in any way obligated to respond with any degree of encouragement or engagement. If all you get in response to any such remarks is an indifferent “Sorry, don’t know” followed by the responder completely ignoring you, you are not being mistreated or disrespected or denied anything that you’re entitled to expect from that stranger.
Much less being shunned as “loathsome”, or implied to be a “violent rapist”. FFS, what a ridiculously melodramatic overreaction. If you casually try to strike up a conversation with a strange man on the street and he brushes it off, do you complain that he’s “hinting” that you’re some kind of violent thug or pickpocket who doesn’t have a right to talk to a respectable man?
Hid mod ignoring post. This drew a warning and thread-ban.
"George T. Winston (1901), another “Negrophobic” writer, claimed:
When a knock is heard at the door [a White woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.(pp. 108-109)"
This quote is using animal imagery to paint black men as violent rapists. This idea was used to justify the negative attitude towards black men that got Emmett Till murdered for whistling. Man/Bear is using animal imagery to paint men as violent rapists. Man/Bear is being used to justify a negative attitude towards men for simply talking to a women.
It bears repeating once again: The default model of universal schooling, heavy on rote memorization, standardized testing, sitting still while a teacher lectures to a class, formal rules for essay writing, and so on, was developed over decades and centuries primarily by male educators, primarily for the instruction of male students.
Nobody thought this was unfair to boys during all the years that sexist social structures discouraged or prevented girls from competing academically with boys on an equal level. Now that societal sexism has been somewhat reduced and girls aren’t facing so many barriers to academic achievement, it has become more apparent that the default schooling model is often easier for girls to negotiate than it is for boys.
And in consequence, a lot of people are yelping that there must have been some drastic recent changes in educational policy, suddenly causing boys to underachieve. But there haven’t. The default schooling model was always rather burdensome and shitty for a large proportion of boys (as indicated by the fact that so many boys through the last several centuries have proverbially hated school).
But you just never particularly noticed that phenomenon, as long as girls on average continued to do worse academically than boys did. Now that girls are no longer kept in a state of chronic underperformance, however, it’s finally dawned on you and a lot of other people that hey, the standard routine of childhood education is not optimally suited to boys in a lot of ways.
(You know who did notice that much earlier? Many of the progressive “education reformers” of the 1960s, with their attempted innovations in “open education” and other divergences from the default schooling model.)
Nonsense. Man/Bear is just highlighting the reality that bears out in the woods, although in rare circumstances they can be terrifyingly violent towards humans, are never violent rapists who are deliberately seeking to prey on lone women.
Men out in the woods, on the other hand, although statistically they are very very seldom violent rapists deliberately seeking to prey on lone women, fall into that category way more often than bears do.
The “negative attitude towards men for simply talking to a woman” is an entirely different issue. The complaint there is that societal sexism inculcates in very many men the expectation that women should give strange men their attention whenever they ask for it. That’s a fundamentally sexist and entitled assumption, even if the men in question are posing zero physical threat to the women they’re demanding attention from.
It’s rude for a man (or a woman) to tell a strange woman (or man) to “Smile!”. It’s rude for a man (or a woman) to sulk and whine just because a random stranger doesn’t put time and effort into talking to them.
And it’s fucking ridiculous for a man (or a woman) to complain that a random stranger’s declining to put time and effort into talking to them is automatically tantamount to treating them like a “violent rapist” or “brutal animal” or whatever.
If a bum asks you for a dollar, do you ignore them?
Me personally? No, my usual practice is to say sympathetically “No, sorry” and keep going. If they try to prolong the encounter, though, or make a fuss about my not giving them what they ask for, I will definitely ignore them.
You would treat them with human decency and respect at first? It’s not demanding your time?
You don’t deny them the humanity of talking to you?
Of course it’s demanding my time, as well as requesting my money. They are asking as a favor that I will give them some money, and in the process give them some of my time and attention. They are not intrinsically entitled to any of that, and if I decline or even simply ignore their request, I am not mistreating them.
Moreover, if they explicitly demand a donation, along the lines of “Hey, you, give me a dollar!”, then they’re being openly rude and entitled. That’s the sort of entitled rudeness that so many women don’t like when it’s exhibited by strange men cavalierly ordering them to “Smile!”
What does that even mean? Any human may politely address an impersonal and neutral-toned passing remark to any other human, in most public circumstances. (There are exceptions, of course, as in the etiquette convention that strangers in an elevator or other temporary enforced isolation don’t speak to each other.)
However, the other human who is being addressed by a stranger is not intrinsically obligated to give the stranger any of their time or attention. Especially not if the stranger is making personal remarks, being overly familiar or presumptuous in their manner, and so on.
(Are you really sure that you want to stick with the analogy you seem to be intending to draw between men trying to strike up conversations with strange women in public, and panhandlers begging passersby to give them a monetary donation out of kindness? Because ISTM that that analogy is way more insulting to men than anything anyone else in this thread has said.)
Hid very off-topic post. Modnote given. {WE?}
Yes I would.
My small village there are a few people everyday standing at the entrance to the only store. I’ve seen them 100s of time. Most of them know my husband.
They call me Ms.“his first name” (don’t ask, don’t know). I’ve never once given them money. They buy beer with money they collect. I don’t care they drink beer. I just ain’t financing it.
But, if a perfectly strange person talks to me in public, man or woman. I don’t care about their humanity or what ever you seem to think that means. I don’t owe my time, attention, easiness in my fear of people to allow them to get to me. I’m great at zoning out and walkin’ on by. If I feel I can’t for some reason I put my ear buds in. Helps immensely.
I do not understand why people, M or F feel they gotta talk to me. I’m a stutterer I’m not likely to speak to anyone but my family. They can’t know that, for sure. But, when I don’t speak back they get perturbed. I speak ASL, to them. Then they just holler. It’s ridiculous. Take a clue. Please.
Hid off-topic trolling post
Man/bear thing is pushed by TikTok, Chinese spyware, to pin men and women against each other in the US. Countries like that thrive on dividing more powerfu nations/societies. It is mainly believed and pushed by intellectually stunned individuals who lack basic logic. Just like how you have Asian/Chinese nationalists in the West who say that they support CCP because they love their country, even though communist regime in China not only killed millions people, but also destroyed many buildings and historical monuments that were centuries old and built socialist buildings there, not to mention destroying many historical documents.
The whole “women were oppressed in the past” narrative is just a gross self-pitying growling, considering absolutely none of them were alive back then or experienced it, the same way no men alive today caused it, and obsessing over something in the past that you or even your closest relatives never experienced, and which can not be changed no matter what we do in the present, and wanting revenge for that, is borderline psychopathic. They need to grow up and get over themselves.
This thread needs a lot of reviewing.
I’m shutting it down for a few hours before it gets worse.
I see several hijacks.
@Mislav, you can expect a review of your posting privileges. I’m going to bump this up to modloop consider your other recent issues related to this.
@Beckdawrek, you’ve went well off-topic twice now. If you go off-topic once more it will be a warning and a thread ban. This is only a modnote. I’m hiding your reply.
This is a warning for hijacking another thread with misogynistic ranting. This one appears to be a deliberate attempt to hijack the thread or get it closed. I’m bumping this up to the Modloop as I believe you might be trolling the board.
You’re also suspended, pending review.
This is a Thread Ban for you. Do not post in this thread any more. Or the other related Man/Bear thread.