On the other hand, one could say that this strategy works because women respond to it positively. If women expect and appreciate a man who behaves in a manner that we, modern, feminist ivory tower denizens, view as being loutish and patronizing, one could argue that we’re just arguing ourselves out of having success with most women.
The most sexist film I’ve ever seen, I might note, was a womens film, written by a woman, produced by women, and starring women. The most successful fiction series of today (Twilight and Shades of Grey) are all about women being dominated by and treated poorly by men.
One could argue that Feynman was sexist. Another could argue that the world is sexist, and failure to work in that realm just means that you’re going to be divorced from it.
Did he rape her? Did he force himself on her? No. He left after calling her a worthless whore. Granted, the worthless whore thing is over the top however her behavior wasn’t exactly pure and clean either.
The woman invited Feynman to her house. She asked Feynman to buy them dinner on the way. She then, after getting the food, told Feynman that she would keep the food for the other guy she had coming over.
“Hey, wanna buy some sandwiches and go to my place?”
“Sure thing!” Feynman buys some sandwiches. " Here ya go!"
“Great! You can’t come to my place because I have another guy coming over. But he will love the sandwich!”
Spot anything that might make someone a bit upset in that scenario?
Also the woman later went back and found Feynman so apparently she didn’t feel the outrage that you think she should.
It is also interesting that you totally ignore what Feynman said later in the story:
This. It sounds like he didn’t sleep with her, and didn’t try to force her. He just called her names. And she was a bitch if the story is as related here.
He walked away. Later that night, she came to find him at the bar.
He didn’t force her or refuse to recognize that she had the right to not sleep with him. He spoke his mind when she took the sandwiches and told him she’d be spending the night with a different guy. he also “called her bluff” when she indignantly offered to pay for the food he had purchased. I suppose, to some people, a better response would have been "ok you two have fun! Glad i was able get your sandwiches and coffee for you! "
In the book, he is relating the story as an experiment. He found it to be successful, but didn’t like it. Presumably he liked the getting laid success part of out, So he either didn’t like treating women badly, or he didn’t like the way it made him feel, or some combination. What is predatory about that?
“You can choose anything you like, but if you choose the wrong thing, I’ll humiliate and degrade you” is not exactly a textbook example of respecting anything, much less anybody’s right to choose. Even if you don’t use physical force, you can make it very clear that you don’t consider somebody has the right to do something.
Also, he made her pay him back for the sandwiches after it became clear she wouldn’t reciprocate his generosity with her vagina. So clearly he didn’t believe it was OK for her to get free food and not fuck him.
Sure. One could also argue that we’re depriving ourselves of opportunities on the job market by allowing black folk to sell their labor, rather than just enslaving them again. But just because something might be effective, doesn’t mean it’s right.
There’s also the issue that Feynman is held up as a hero and role model even today. So young, perhaps shy and awkward, men may just read that chapter and go, hey, maybe what worked for him works for me! After all, he’s still considered the bee’s knees!
Conversely, a young woman may read that chapter and be utterly repulsed, only to then find people actually defending him and holding him up as a role model in discussions such as this one. It may well make a career in the STEM fields look significantly less appealing.
But just because the world is a particular way, doesn’t mean it ought to be, as Hume taught us.
I’ve discussed that part twice now, even quoting it verbatim. So I don’t think doing it a third time is likely to do any more good.
So I guess, if I kill someone without provocation, but don’t enjoy it, I’m off the hook?
And there’s no indication Feynman didn’t enjoy it because it was a repulsive thing to do; for all we know, he might just have considered it too easy, taking the fun out of the “hunt”, or something like that. He certainly never gives any indication of finding anything actually wrong with his behavior.
Also, remember that we get the story as Feynman wanted us to hear it; that he still manages to come away looking like a giant sleezebag is telling in itself.
A good response would have been to not expect you’re owed sex in the first place. There’s always a right to say no, even after you’ve wined and dined the person you’re interested in. Again, this is not an optional idea.
And again, this is part of the problem: you don’t get to experiment with other people’s lives; you don’t get to treat them as objects of study. You get to treat them as persons, and that’s it.
Really, everybody rushing to defend Feynman should first ask themselves: would I be quite so eager if he’d instead talked about how he considered African Americans to be worthless niggers?
People expect things from others all the time. People get angry and lash out when they don’t get what they expect. Those interactions have zero to do with a respect of rights and everything to do with expressing emotion (“justly” felt or not) and trying to convince other humans to do the things we want.
Using speech to express an opinion does not have anything to do with rights.
That may well be a problem. There are probably more useful ways to address it than being angry that people aren’t willing to change Feynman’s name to “Feynman, Sexual Predator.”
Very few people are defending him. What I think most of us are saying is that:
[ul]
[li]Had he said that, he wouldn’t have been violating anyone’s rights[/li][li]Had he said that, it wouldn’t make him a “racial predator”[/li][li]Had he said that, he would have been a total asshole, and it would surely be a blemish on his character and his legacy[/li][/ul]
Well, as a young woman reading his book, I read that as an anecdote about him, not about the entire set of STEM fields. And he gives LOTS of evidence that he was peculiar, even among geeky physicists.
The difference is that most of us are assholes at least occasionally, so we tend to give someone a bye for a rare outbreak of assholery, especially if they stop doing whatever they were doing. For some peculiar reason, we treat the occasional outbreak of murder differently.
Really, do you want to compare saying something nasty to a woman who legitimately treated him badly to murder?
Yes, he comes across as a sexist asshole. Not as a sexual predator, not as a murderer. And also, he was a brilliant and sometimes charming man.
Like most humans, he was neither all good nor all evil. I don’t think anyone in this thread is defending his sexism, or claiming that he wasn’t demeaning to women. We are defending him from the over-the-top charges like “sexual predator”, which don’t seem to apply. I’ve yet to see any evidence that he raped or abused any woman. (Unless you count “saying nasty stuff to a woman who barely knows you” as “abuse”. Yes, he was an imperfect man. That doesn’t mean we can’t admire his good qualities.
I’m not even convinced that his “player game” (for lack of a better term) would be all that out of place today, or that his reactions to things would be unusual. Certainly not ideal behavior, but not really a relic of an earlier age either.
Guys STILL behave like that, and it’s not sexual predation.
At least as far as I can tell, being a sexual predator usually involves some lack of consent, or a drastic power differential, and in Feynman’s case, neither of those is present. He’s just behaving in a somewhat distasteful way toward independent, consenting women.
Asshole, maybe. Probably even. Predator? Not even close.
Bricker, do you believe the column you posted accomplishes that? In general I find your reasoning and explanations to be fact-based (as opposed to “proof by anecdote”), so I’m a little surprised.
As to the original question, I don’t think Feynman was a sexual predator. He sounds like he could be a misogynist, and he leveraged his “rock star” status to get sex. I don’t admire that. I still admire his work and his teaching ability.
Hey, Bricker, why not ask the mods to close what seems to be this ongoing train wreck? Every single person, even the perhaps mis-apportioned Half Man Half Wit, appear to agree that Feynman was not a sexual predator. So all this other stuff is just an argument about his degree of his douchebaggery, if any. Your point is made.
I have just snipped out the part where you responded to me. Your “response” isn’t one. Leave out expectations or hopes for a minute. We are talking and i say, hey why don’t you pick up wine and dinner amd come over to my place? After you get the food, i then say great but yeah. …you can’t come over because there’s another guy on the way. How do you respond? Do you hand over the food, shrug and say have fun? Do you get annoyed? Do you offer to go buy dessert, too? How would you respond?
Of course she had a right to say no - and Feynman didn’t force her. He said unkind words to her. As a woman reading that passage, i thought well, that was kind of a dick move to a bitch move. Then the fact that he acknowledged that it worked but he didn’t enjoy it caught my eye. The lesson i took from it is sometimes being a dick works - but is it worth being a dick? He apparently felt it wasn’t worth it. Someone else might have taken the lesson as “being a dick works” full stop.
And Feynman seemed to treat himself as an object of study. Sociological and psychological studies look at how people interact all the time. He changed his style of interaction to see what would happen. I can’t be peeved at the idea that someone was trying to figure out the world he lived in. Is it an admirable trait? No, not really. But it seems he learned something about himself in the process (hey turns out i don’t like being a dick. )
I agree. But dishonesty (for the purpose of exploitation) creates a lack of real consent. You can’t meaningfully come to an accord with someone, about anything, if they’ve been lying to you throughout.
I am not sure why you aren’t getting this except maybe the fact that sex was involved. So let us back the sex out of the situation.
Feynman meets a person (pick a sex, it doesn’t matter) at a bar.
The person says 'Hey, wanna go to my place and play canasta?"
Feynman says “Sure, sounds great!”
On the way to the house the person says “I’m hungry, wanna buy us some sandwiches?”
Feynman says “Sounds great!” and pays for the sandwiches.
The person then says “Hey Dick, I have another person coming over so we can’t play canasta, you’ll have to leave. Sorry about that. But thanks for the sandwiches!”
Feynman gets pissed.
Is it wrong for Feynman to get upset? If so, at what point it is acceptable to become upset? Ever?
Does it seem that, in the situation I describe above, that the person used the idea of going to their house to play canasta as an excuse to get Feynman to buy dinner for the person and their other friend? That the person never had the intention of actually playing canasta and that they only did that to get the food?
And I also don’t get why you seem to be unable to acknowledge that Feynman decided that this method of getting laid wasn’t his style and that, even though it worked, he didn’t like doing it that way.