Just out of curiosity, what time zone are you in? Here on the east coast, day is dawning.
It’s such a compelling argument to hypocritically argue for civility while being uncivil. Many of you who are on your soap box concerning this subject don’t care about broad brushing with offensive stereotypes about other groups.
When the other group is "deliberately obtuse mysogynists " I really don’t see the problem.
Or to recognize and convey sarcasm, sometimes. I had a flatmate who thought it was So Cute that her home-country nickname of Mona meant “cute” in Spanish, haha! Yep, every Hispanic person who met her would eventually remark on how mona she was; extremely mona. The part she was missing is that mona means “cute” but also “cute and stupid”, the second being much more likely if people have taken a while to say it (you don’t need time to notice someone is cute, but you do need some time to notice they’re dumb as a plank).
Not in the same way, as it is used to address both men and women, or, more accurately in my opinion, boys and girls.
Let us review all the objections you received, and determine the objectors’ values.
Well, this is a political issue, isn’t it?
Yes, they do.
ETA: A point that no one has raised in response to the “Well, no woman has every complained to me about being called attractive” is that the woman might have been reasonably afraid of retaliation, from being labelled ‘a trouble-maker’ at work, to having ‘fucking bitch’ yelled at her for the rest of the bus ride.
Starving Artist and rap music: You can get away with things in art that you could never do in real life. A woman who stood on the street corner reciting a synopsis of the words to Love for Sale would get arrested, and you can’t go to the art museum dressed like Michelangelo’s David.
Art can reflect life without condoning.
The answer’s plain as your face-nose: reverse racism! Ain’t that right, Hewey?
I cannot let this go by:
I lost track of the post, but Starving Artist said this:
"It’s as natural for a man to notice and comment on a woman’s good looks as it is to comment on the looks of a cool car or a work of art. "
Holy shit, dude. You LITERALLY lumped women in with OBJECTS. WTF is wrong with you that you can’t see that this is demeaning?
An Six Ate said this:
“It might be interesting to create a list of “Women who bailed on The Dope” due to this crap.”
Raising my hand. I have left for months at a time because of this kind of thing only to check back in and find some men doubling down on this shit.
Wah, people keep telling me I shouldn’t treat women like things and give my opinion about their looks whenever I feel like it.
There’s a whole lot of assholish snowflakery going on.
I find it very funny in threads like this to hear people say things like “No one has ever complained about this to me” or “No one in real life has a problem with this.” The thing is, when threads like this demonstrate so incredibly well that you don’t listen, why would we believe that no one has said it right to your face a million times?
In and of itself, the “I hate politics cause they moved the hot chick I was leering at” comment is :rolleyes: but the doubling and tripling down is downright infuriating.
She’s not accomplished at all, her only accomplishment is being hot. It’s natural for men to remark on women as if they were objects. Women who swear deserve to be treated badly. Wah, I don’t know what’s demeaning and what’s not. Women who don’t like being reduced to an object are just brainwashed by evil feminist ideas. It doesn’t bother me as a father of daughters, so why would it bother women. All the women I know love it, so that settles it.
My young female goes through life being a they/them and being as androgynous as possible to avoid derogatory and demeaning treatment.
I am starting to think that the “people in the real world” who don’t object are by definition men. Women aren’t really people, you see. We are pretty things to rate on fuckability, to discuss with teenagers, and ornaments, or not-pretty things to be ignored or disparaged.
I think you’re overestimating some of these old white guys, I can think of one who publically speaks about how hot his daughter is and how he would fuck her if she wasn’t his daughter.
But really, it’s communication. I used to go out of my way to introduce one of my employees to my clients and praise his work. There was nothing inappropriate about that and it is something that I thought would be appreciated.
But the guy was kind of shy and it made him uncomfortable. So he asked me not to do it anymore. And I didn’t.
End of story. No drama. I still do the same with other employees because I feel that, in general, it’s appreciated. And totally appropriate. But I also respect the feelings of this one guy. And it’s not a big deal.
I frequently start to write an in-depth response to these threads but I don’t know where to start. I was an extremely attractive woman when I was younger. And I was an outside sales rep, selling and promoting technical products to architects, engineers, designers, and electrical contractors and engineers . It was a job where I was expected to socialize with prospective clients. And, like a lot of the salespeople, I did my own on-site technical setups to make a little extra money. So I spent a lot of time working on construction sites.
I was quite good at navigating this landscape but the challenges were pervasive. I dealt with countless men who pretended to have a projects for me as an excuse to try to get close. I worked on construction sites where the men had hard-core pornography ( spread eagle stuff) openly displayed on their workboxes. I had men that I considered friends and had worked closely with for 10 or 15 years kiss me out of the blue because “really, look at you, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t at least give it shot.” This happened more than once. There was a guy in my professional circle that cut me dead for 5 years because I turned him down…didn’t matter that I turned him down because I was engaged. And mostly the fact that many clients acted like social time with me was a quid pro quo for their continued business.
And it’s wasn’t really any one incident, it was just constantly dealing with this, day in and day out.
I navigated this because the only alternative was to find a different line of work. There were no bosses or HR departments - I made money if I sold product and if I didn’t sell anything I had no income. That was a power differential that a lot of men were all too happy to try and take advantage of. Especially when I was dealing with sales that frequently carried 5 figure commissions.
I dealt with this and considered putting up with this crap as part of the territory but I met a lot of other women in my position that actually lived in a constant low level state of terror. They were afraid to be In a room alone with their bosses or managers because the guy groped them or made a pass once. They had sleepless nights before meeting with certain clients. Some of them couldn’t do it anymore and quit. And they shouldn’t have had to.
What about “hot dude”?
See post #226:
If you need the male equivalent spelled out for you (and from your posts here so far I’m suspecting that you do), here it is:
Nobody cares what you personally think about some dude’s hotness or what you say about it in the company of other consenting people. The problem is when you take it for granted you should be able to freely share your thoughts about his hotness irrespective of the circumstances and the company.
What about “oblivious, invincibly stupid dumbfuck,” that work for you?
I do not believe that you are participating in the discussion in good faith.
Of course they do, depending on the context. Here, for example, is the real-world website of a real-world HR consulting firm, instancing the use of that very phrase “hot chick” as part of insulting/demeaning behavior in workplace sexual harassment:
So, Starving Artist, which part of the following do you still not understand?
The internet is not your personal locker room, and public discussions of politics are not an appropriate place to talk about the way a particular woman makes your penis feel. (Nor, since you asked, are they an appropriate place to use obscene or vulgar expressions from rap music lyrics.)
There are plenty of places in the real world and the internet where you’re welcome to talk with other consenting adults, in whatever sort of language you choose, about the way a particular woman makes your penis feel. Your persistent mistake lies in expecting that you should be welcome to share your views about your penisfeelings in any circumstances whatever, without regard to whether the subject is relevant or interesting to the other people present.
And contrary to your mistaken belief, using mild terms like “hot chick” instead of more extreme ones like “jiggle-ass bitch” or whatever does not make your irrelevant oversharing about your penisfeelings appropriate.
I know this has been said already, and I hate to do a me-too post, but damn! Kimstu, you are really good at this. You clearly and articulately lay out the issues, and you have the patience of a saint.