NO ONE is condoning or sanctioning this, not even Shagnasty. Keep your outrage–may it keep you warm. I am the last person to accept that tautology. I am NOT defending the behavior. I am decrying the piling on when those so outraged cannot even read what is written. I give up now.
Freudian Slit: Yes, that thread* was a few years ago, but Shag keeps popping up with other examples of the horrible, crude behavior he is forced to put up with. Like his daughter saying “wicked” (because they’re living in Boston and she’s assimilating) or some relative of his, who it’s okay for him to call “watermelon chest” but it’s not okay for her to be a Picky Eater. It seems that he thinks that what one eats or drinks and how one talks is the biggest indicator of one’s character. I guess if you put on an impeccable public face, no one will suspect you of setting wildfires. (Seriously, WTF?)
And you’re absolutely right about “boys will be boys” being a steaming pile.
And Cat Fight, that’s another thing. How did so many people find out about this?
*FTR, he didn’t pit the milk drinker. He got pitted for the anecdote, which he posted towards the end of a previous million-page thread.
This kind of reads like you think it’s a bad thing, but meh, lots of bad things happen, it could’ve been worse. Which is what Shagnasty himself said.
I guess my viewpoint is that the sense of entitlement to a woman’s body I got from the description of the act just seems very dangerous. I think the attitude that because bad stuff happened to you when you were younger, that guys are just dogs/pigs is a bad one. Guys may be assholes sometimes, but that doesn’t make sexual assault any less of an offense.
I hadn’t read the whole list before. Are you actually telling us you started four wildfires because you “love fire”? Either you’re full of shit, or, seriously, you should go confess to the arson you’ve claimed here, and do some prison time.
And if you’re going to admit to felonies on a message board, at least give us details, asshole.
In many variations of the pornographic epistle—or so I’m told—the “victim” of the ol’ switcheroo (or sodomization, gang-bang, etc. while asleep or passed out drunk) signals her awareness, and approval, of what took place by saying “thanks for the great night,” sometimes accompanied by a “sly wink,” the following morning over breakfast.
Anyway, wasn’t this the plot of every episode of “The Patty Duke Show”? Where was the outrage then?
“Most” boys like to make bombs?
This is news to me! Do “most” boys also start wildfires and blow up construction sites? Jesus christ. You’re absolutely demented and NOT normal. Do you tell yourself that you’re normal? You’re not. Your internal “boys will be boys” justification is cracked.
I have to agree with eleanorrigby here. After reading this whole thread, the vibe I get is that Shagnasty has done some shitty things in his life. (And who hasn’t?) He’s not bragging about it; it was RELEVANT to the topic at hand, so he posted his insight and personal experience. Was it a douchey fucking thing to pull? Hell yes!! But it seems that he knows that already.
Shags, I have to give you a high-five for NOT shying away from your seedy underbelly. Most people spend their whole lives covering up their less-than-stellar qualities, and you’ve put yours out there for us all to see. IMHO, it takes a big man to do that. Now please shut the hell up about your wacky hijinks, and go back to telling us what a great guy you are! 
All of them have been on my own property. I accidentally set one when I was about 11 and left a campfire burning beside a log cabin I was building in the woods. I needed to use the bathroom and by the time I looked back, the woods were ablaze and the firefighters had to bring in those heavy water backpacks to get to the fire but it wasn’t too bad and only torched a few acres.
The rest have been on my 2 1/2 acres here in Massachusetts plus a few acres of our adjacent neighbors property. It was neglected for about 50 years and I have spent the past 6 years trying to clear it Jan - May which is burn season. I start building the burn piles in June and they can get very large by the time January roles around. The local volunteer fire department is a little psycho and we call them Sparkies. One lives right up the street and they will call in the trucks for anything. They have actually stopped by to put out my fires a number of times but I think that only three of them were warranted. I have never gotten a fine or anything else though.
Boy, people always assume the worst. I never said I was an arsonist.
Rilchiam, I know we have had a very tenuous on again and off again board relationship over the years (you may describe it as just plain off but there is no need to dive into subtleties now). However, if I ever get a degenerative disease, you can be my biographer any time because you seem to have an exceptional view of the facts probably more than I do.
I was born a small child in a very poor, tiny, Southern town. It wasn’t until I went to college that I knew what national standards of decency were and that was well after this unfortunate incident. I later made as much of myself as I could and started to read Emily Post books and Miss Manners columns. That opened up a whole new world to me including the topic of milk.
Later I became a father of two daughters and my views were revised yet again. Like Helen Keller, the story of my life has to be reduced to strict divisions of both breakthroughs and failures. I , like everyone, am an evolving, living organism and I embrace things learned from the past as well as the challenges that lay ahead.
Fair enough. But your priorities still seem to be oddly ordered. When you told the milk anecdote, you categorized “Susie”'s behavior as “off-the-wall” and “uncouth.” It was only after about five pages that you finally allowed that Mr. Gotbux was not the greatest catch himself, and that Susie did not, in fact, ruin her life by failing to impress him. You yourself focus so much on social niceties, I’m not sure it’s everyone else’s fault that they don’t realize what a caring, sensitive, tolerant person you are.
Most every guy I grew up with loved to blow stuff up. In my experience, most boys love to blow stuff up.
People like watching things blow up, that’s for sure. Pretty much every blockbuster movie in America is packed to the brim with things exploding, and these are fed to us with the full complicity of the establishment. It’s only logical that a lot of boys will actually blow stuff up themselves, especially in more rural areas where there’s space to do so, as was the case for me and my friends in high school.
A few of these guys wind up hurting themselves or someone else. A few of them probably go on to become actual criminals. Most just grow up at some point.
I haven’t blown anything up in about 6 years. But when we did it, back in high school, we were a bunch of wild kids having the time of our lives. Looking back on it, it was dangerous as hell. Definitely. But we’re all grown up now.
I don’t know anything about the alleged “rape” here, I just had to jump in and say that playing with fire and blowing stuff up is common as hell among teenage boys. That’s all.
Not that wikipedia is never wrong, and if you have better information please let me know, but as far as wiki says, the collection is called Switch Bitch, and includes a story called “Bitch” and another called “The Great Switcheroo.”
The Great Switcheroo is apparently about a man Vic who wants to sleep with Jerry’s wife, and convinces him to let this happen. The next morning he discovers that unbeknownst Jerry has gone and slept with his wife as well. The kicker is that in the course of planning this, they discuss technique and Jerry criticizes Vic’s style, annoying him. The morning after this event, Vic’s wife says that he was uncharacteristically amazing in bed the night before.
I’v seen a lot of baseless slams against Miss Manners on this board, but now you’re claiming she agrees with you that ordering milk with dinner or at a bar is either an egregious etiquette violation or a sign of hopeless gaucherie?
This will not stand.
On another note, I don’t know whether to confess to the youthful peccadillo of sexual assault or confess that I was a boring teenager.
Oh alright. No sexual assault, kidnaping, bombmaking, or arson here.
It’s more common than not. We (mostly my older brother, and I’d look on) first started with breaking off the stuff on sparklers and burning that, then graduated to buying gunpowder and making pipe bombs. We’re probably lucky no one got hurt.
Remember when Star Trek showed Captain Kirk making gunpowder out of some kind of carbon and convenient deposits of potassium nitrate and sulfur? I can’t have been the only kid who went out and got some saltpeter from the drugstore, sulfur from my chemistry set, and charcoal briquets from the garage shortly after that broadcast…
It was 17 years ago. If it had happened yesterday I would be more vocal in deploring it. If he had come here to brag or gloat about it, I’d be holding one of the pitchforks. I just can’t see getting all worked up about something that happened so long ago–something he says he regrets. Why does that part seem to get skipped? I regret having said some very, very hurtful things to some people when I was 17. I regret having consensual sex at 17(I was too young for it). I remember distinctly being humiliated by a practical joke in Health class at 17 (nothing to do with sex), by a guy. The entire class laughed. (no, it is not comparable–I’m just saying that cruelty and stupidity is fairly common in teens).
I think this woman looks back on this (IF she looks back on it at all) with maybe some anger and maybe a judgement that those guys were jerks. And they were! No one is saying this stuff is OK. At least, Shagnasty isn’t, nor am I. It’s over and done with. If the OP had posited, is this ok behavior or What Do You Think Of This Joke–I’d be there with anger. Emotions seem to be running high here over this. I guess for me there is so much to be outraged by that I have to ration it. I also see this thread as a not so subtle way to just beat on Shagnasty– which is it? A thread about misconduct by guys? Humiliating girls sexually? Sexual assault in all its manifestations? Or I never really have like Shagnasty, so let’s rip into him for a bit? It’s muddled and futile, to my mind, so yes, I’m a bit meh.
Gala
I think he meant that now that he has read Miss Manners, he understands better about drink choices…
I was not a boring teenager, and none of this behavior seems terribly outside the norm.
Blowing stuff up, setting fires, joyriding, assault, inappropriate sex. Yep.
He was a 17 year old boy. Pretty much all 17 year old boys are idiots.
I have to say, once you confess to a serious felony and then post:
I wouldn’t be surprised that people mad the jump to you being an arsonist.
Shagnasty is a total asshole, but I think he should get a pass this time. He says he wasn’t expecting it to work- he probably thought that as soon as he went in she’d realize it and freak out and it would be a joke. He went along with it because he didn’t know what else to do. He says he didn’t want to have sex with her and would have stopped if that was going to happen, so it’s not like he was trying to rape her.
Even with those mitigating factors it was a bad thing to do, but he regrets it. Give him a break.
17 year olds in general are stupid.
And when it comes to the SDMB, I don’t think women get the short end of the stick. It’s like a wonderful outlet for putting down men when you’re angry, just make sure you don’t stick too many in a post or someone will call you out.