…please do not lecture me. This is absolutest nonsense.
Despite your request, the lectures will keep coming, from me and others, so long as you continue to discuss the topic. There are facts you’re not acknowledging here, and any attempt to emphatically point them out to you will necessarily constitute a lecture.
…you can think whatever you like. There is nothing wrong with “the woman” assuming it was more than coffee. There is nothing wrong with the woman or the man asking for clarification, asking for a different venue, saying yes or saying no. If someone says:
"“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more; would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?”
It is obvious the person saying it is well aware it could be misconstrued, which is why they said “Don’t take this the wrong way.” Add in the fact that it was four in the morning, Watson was tired and may have mis-remembered what she heard, and Watson has proven to be an unreliable narrator anyway, and what we are left with is not really a lot. It may well have been a request for coffee and it may have been a request for sex. But on the basis of the scant amount of information we have and the lack of the testimony of the other party, I’m not sure why you are so sure what happened this night.
…what facts am I not acknowledging?
“Don’t take this the wrong way” doesn’t cut it in this context. In high school my wife was on a date. They were driving, just the two of them, on a road at night in a sparsely populated area. The guy pulls over to the side of the road and turns off the car. Then says “Don’t worry, I’m not going to rape you.” She was, of course, terrified, in part because of his request that she not take his actions the wrong way.
“Don’t take this the wrong way” in the conversation as described could just as easily mean “don’t be freaked out by my request for sex” or “don’t interpret my request for sex as disrespectful” as “don’t take this as a request for sex.”
The trope of pretense when it comes to invitations into someone’s room is too strong for any “don’t take this the wrong way” language to obviate its force. For example, if on a date one person says at the end “you want to come inside for a minute, don’t worry it’s just for coffee!” you can bet this is expressing a hope that something other than coffee will happen. No it’s not the literal content of the words. But there are plenty of cases where conventions trump literal meaning.
I’m not concerned with whether the conversation actually took place as described. What’s interesting is the question of what it all would mean if it did take place as described. I think in such a case it’s reasonable to assume the guy is asking for sex.
I’m a little confused about your position now. I thought you were saying there is something wrong with her assuming the request is for more than coffee. I thought you were arguing that since the literal meaning of his words doesn’t include a request for sex, it would be wrong to assume that’s where he hoped things would lead.
I’m not assuming anything, other than it was very reasonable (and even the default assumption, I’d say) to assume that the request was for sex. And I believe Rebecca’s point, that men should realize that asking women in elevators to go back to their hotel rooms late at night is very likely to make them feel very uncomfortable, and therefore should not be done, is a good point.
No, this is a reasonable understanding of how nearly every woman would interpret any request to go to your hotel room.
…we once had someone on this messageboard who PM’d another one to say “I’ve just started a pit thread on you. I figure it’s only fair you should know about it. I hope that, in doing so, I haven’t inadvertently raped you.”
Oddly enough while I spent a great deal of time lambasting the guy who sent that message, the general feeling of the board and even some of the moderators here was that brightpenny didn’t belong here and that she got what she deserved. She didn’t. What happened to your wife was comparable to what happened to Brightpenny. But it is not comparable to what Watson described.
Or it simply meant “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
You are aware that thousands of people are invited into peoples rooms (hotel and/or otherwise) every day?
It wouldn’t have mattered to you if everything Watson said was a lie?
If it had been an invitation to sex, then I’m interested in what your opinion is of McGraw’s position. She is a feminist, and a female, and she says “My concern is that she takes issue with a man showing interest in her. What’s wrong with that? How on Earth does that justify him as ‘creepy’? Are we not sexual beings?”
Do you think she is right or wrong?
…but it isn’t. There were plenty of woman who came out after elevatorgate who said that this was not a reasonable understanding of how they would interpret a request to go to a hotel room.
OK, I’ll modify it- this is a reasonable understanding of how many woman (millions!) would interpret any request to go to your hotel room. Men who don’t want to risk (and based on the previous statement, it’s a very significant risk) making a woman feel very uncomfortable should not ask women to come back to their hotel rooms in elevators, alone, very late at night.
Wrong- because it’s not that he showed interest, it’s that he made a request that could reasonably assumed to be a proposition for sex, in an elevator, alone, late at night. That is an action that a man should realize has a very high risk of making a woman feel “creeped out”, justifiably so.
She wasn’t made to feel sexualised and unsafe. She may have felt unsafe due to her own psychological problems, but she was not made to feel that way. But he MIGHT have been a rapist, so I suppose the only reasonable response is to assume she is about to be raped at all times.
Men and women may see come-ons differently. If so, men are usually the ones making the come-ons and therefore should be expected to have the correct interpretation. Women generally expect to be given the come-on, but also get het up when it’s by a man they don’t fancy in return.
Now, this man in the lift might have been propositioning her, he might not. You could say that asking someone out always boils down to a veiled proposal for sex, but lift-man adhered to the deceptive standards of society with his claim that he found her interesting (there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose), rather than just asking her to get her tits out.
If Rebecca Watson is a troll or attention seeker, you’ve gotta admit she’s a world class professional! Jesus, the JREF forum, Pharyngula and now the SDMB which she’s probably never even heard of. Give this another year or so and my morning coffee bookmarks list might just as well become the Rebecca Watson newsfeed.
That said, as a priviledged white male who is basically completely asocial and mostly asexual, allow me to weigh in to agree that ‘want coffee in my room?’ at 4am, in an elevator, with just the two peeps in it, has one and only one meaning, and it ain’t beverage consumption. Even I understand that, so it must be pretty effing obvious.
I’d say the two situations that involved physical closeness and isolation in a space from which there’s no immediate escape, with sexual connotations suggested by one of the conversants, are the two situations which are most comparable.
This is absolutist nonsense.
I’m not sure about this. A single person of one gender asking a single person of another gender into their hotel room, late at night? Without sexual connotations on both people’s mind? I admit I doubt this is common at all. (Granted I didn’t specify “late at night” in my prior post.)
The amount I have read about Watson outside text in this thread is zero, a number identical to the number of shits I give about the actual incident. The hypothetical and its implications are interesting enough.
From what is described in this thread, Watson didn’t “take issue with a man showing interest in her.” What she took issue with was the manner and context of the showing of interest.
Disclosure: I know Rebecca Watson on a non-internet basis.
What a load of pot-calling-the-kettle-black, strawman, hissyfit, weak nonsense. It was a joke. If you didn’t find it funny, move on, or at least argue why it’s so dangerous a joke to skepticism and atheism it deserves RO. Or maybe you don’t have any proper arguments, maybe your preconceived notions about RW, as evidenced by the rest of your OP, has made you … overly sensitive to perceived messages in her communications.
She’s, to quote you, “one of the open, public faces of the skeptical movement, […] one of the figureheads of “Atheism+”, […] a public figure in modern feminism.” because those of us who follow her videos because we generally like the content, and can behave like adults if we disagree, for the most part understand the context of the joke and find it funny.
Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe out there there’s a wealth of disillusioned RW-followers to whom this was the last straw. I haven’t seen any evidence of that though. The first negative response I’ve seen anywhere was this sore toed drivel.
It matters because what I’m talking about is the experience of being a woman, which is different than the experience of being a man - not because gender is such an important essential determinant of personality or any bullshit like that, but because people who present as men and women are treated differently and have different fears and experiences.
I’m not going to address the ‘allowed to speak’ thing because that’s just absurd.
You can absolutely assume stuff about me because I’m female! Starting with: assume I will feel uncomfortable if you hit on me late at night, when I’m alone and unable to leave an enclosed space. Also, assume I will interpret your request for me to come to your hotel room at 4 am as a request for sex. Assume I worry about being attacked by someone stronger than me.
I mean, you don’t have to believe me that many/most women worry about this stuff, but I’m really not sure where your insistence that women don’t/shouldn’t comes from.
Boy, I have no idea why you might be hostile to women’s responses to getting hit on if that’s what you really mean when you ask a woman out.
Question for those that feel she was unreasonable in thinking it was about a request for sex: Would you say “I find you quite interesting and don’t take the wrong way, but I’d like to ask you up to my room for coffee” at 4am in an empty elevator to a man?
This thread really shows the catch 22 that women are in. If RW had accepted the proposal and gotten raped, or the man had assaulted her after she turned him down, many of the same people(or who knows, maybe a whole different set of people) complaining about how she shouldn’t have been creeped out would have pointed out how she should have avoided that elevator, or not stayed in a bar till 4am, or had a sober friend with her at all times.
It seems the requirement is that women not only must contort their lives to keep themselves from all risk, but they must be sure to do it in a way that never suggests that any specific man might have bad intentions. For as we all know, in the words of Dan Cardamon, treating a man like a potential rapist is ten times worse than actual raping a woman. You know, because, it happens to men.