Not to diminish Kimstu’s posts or patience, I do think DrFidelius’ is more on point.
[quote=“DrFidelius, post:299, topic:820925”]
I do not believe that you[li] are participating in the discussion in good faith.[/li][/QUOTE]
[* Not you, SteveMcQwark, of course]
I had a big long post typed up about how my oldest daughter had to run a gauntlet in her first job. But you said it better. The only way to combat the leering is to dress ‘down’. Like baggy tops and longer skirts. And please god, no yoga pants. What is it about yoga pants anyway? I don’t wear them out of the house any more. We should be able to wear what we like without having to worry about some perv making remarks or putting hands on you. It is not right.
Kimstu has also gifted me with the term “penisfeelings,” for which I will remain eternally, snickeringly grateful. I promise to use the term far and wide because that’s it exactly–we are all supposed to just shut up and listen whenever an old white man has a penisfeeling he wants to share with all and sundry. Never mind how we feel about such talk, it’s our burden to hear and nod and smile uncomplainingly forever as the gods intended. Or, y’know, fuck that. Penisfeelings are definitely only important to the one having them. They’re like farts, very urgent to the owner but extremely unwelcome to anyone else who’s subjected to them. However, unlike farts, nobody is physically forced to share them–they do it because they want to, and making others uncomfortable is part of the fun. May their penes rot and fall off, every one of them.
My take is that normal men will make risque comments from time to time, but will generally back down if they aren’t appreciated. Most people want to be entertaining, not trolling. That said, there exists a large minority of trolls.
Anyway, on this message board, those doubling down are entirely from the male conservative minority. For the rest of us, we’ve made adjustments.
There’s something a little confusing to me hovering in the background. This SWM has a super-abundance of penisfeelings, far more prevalent than urges to fart. But like most dudes I keep it under wraps most of the time, consistent with societal expectations both modern and pre-1960. Mostly out of self-respect frankly: a dude is suppose to have a measure of self-control.
I can understand the penisfeelings becoming manifest from time to time. But when somebody is told, “Dude, dial it back”, I thought you were suppose to grin and… dial it back. Maybe apologize. Maybe feel a little embarrassed. Or sheepish. The idea that woman are suppose to indulge in this stuff is peculiar to a transitional historical era, one that modern conservatives seem intent on defending, with great outrage and resentment.
Fantastic post.
This. X1000
Kimstu, thank you. You have the patience I so sorely lack.
Penisfeelings.
You are my new favourite poster Kimstu.
Um, obviously you know your child better than me, but they sound like they’re non-binary, not female then.
It’s already been said, but shut the fuck up with that already. You’re not trying to understand or trying to have a reasonable discussion. You’re trying to browbeat. You are a giant douche.
What does that mean?
And, IRL, this is pretty much what happens, as long as the man in question knows the woman who’s telling him to dial back. If she’s a stranger to him, he feels entitled to continue if he wants to, knowing there’s no really effective means for her to stop him (unless she’s carrying pepper spray or a gun and is feeling especially mean that day) nor will there be any real consequences to him. He’s basically free to scare, intimidate and gross her out according to his whim. HE HAS THE POWER, and is therefore free to back down knowing he’s doing her a favor. It’s his call, y’see, it’s a case of that childhood “I’m doing it because I WANT to, NOT because you TOLD me to.”
On the internet, there are really NO real world consequences and the protection of anonymity is nearly total, so men feel not only free to do what they want and express themselves in gross ways to women but they also have an extra layer of entitlement about their freedom to do so. Also, the power dynamics are in no way as well laid out as they are in person and therefore men might not get that little jolt of happy “I’M the BOSS here, lady, and don’t you forget it!” feeling and that makes them unhappy and uncomfortable because then if they back down without that clear feeling of having won they have a sneaking suspicion that they might not, in fact, have won and instead (quelle horreur!) a WOMAN might have won the interaction and that is NOT TO BE BORNE. Ensue massive amounts of doubledown and escalation and whataboutism and resistance and temper tantrums. Repeat ad infinitum.
What those men don’t realize is that a majority of women have plenty of experience dealing with cranky toddlers in one capacity or another and we recognize the signs and the behavior. And yes, we absolutely ARE laughing at you and pointing and being absolutely hysterically entertained by these patently foolish and threadbare displays of cranky male toddler dominance. However, since we know how toddlers are we continue to put on our mad faces and engage as though it were a serious discussion because toddlers need to learn about limits and social IQ and taking turns and sharing and all those things they don’t want to learn and laughing at them either enrages them further to the point where they are too blocked to catch the lesson (which means the whole process will have to be repeated way too many times) or it teaches them they can act like that to play the clown and get away with their crappy behavior which is also non-optimal from the standpoint of teaching them to be decent humans someday.
So we’ll continue to engage with the socially retarded among us and we’ll behave as though we take them seriously but on the internet that anonymity works both ways and there’s nothing any one of y’all can do to seriously threaten us so we’ll continue to laugh about you and make fun of you behind your back. Deal with it, or grow up, who gives a shit. Y’all are literally impotent toddlers to us, keep that in mind as you’re typing away and wiping spittle off your monitors.
It’s probably not spittle.
What’s sometimes lost in these discussions is only a tiny minority of men harass strangers on the street. Of those who have, I’m guessing quite a few are like Shodan who once did something like tip his hat (metaphorically) to a woman in NYC and got a nasty look. He then curbed his behavior. (I don’t know what the hell he did: I don’t remember the exact details of his report, and I’m guessing some key info was left out anyway. The point is I think he responded to feedback.)
Yeah, the internet. True. Caveat here is that most are not members of what Noah Smith calls the shouting class. You are, I am, he is. But most aren’t. Just a caveat. But yeah, internet entitlement crosses ideological boundaries.
Those power dynamics preceded 1960 of course. The difference is that it was understood that calling a high class woman (in today’s context, wearing a blue suit and attending a confirmation hearing) a “Hot chick”, would have been understood pre 1960 to show poor manners. Thanks for articulating the weird pomposity though: I struggled with that point.
Since I’m intent on changing the subject, serious if offensive question. Apologies ahead of time. Are you this much of a wise-ass in real life? Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I’m asking because it seems hard for a female to pull off (but I’m guessing terrific if she does). I’m just wondering if you’re like one of those actors who finds freedom on stage (or the internet) but is relatively subdued IRL. Like Bruce Willis (who has a stutter). As opposed to actors who play their RL personality onscreen. Just curious and no need to answer if you don’t want to.
This.
So much this.
Thanks very much indeed for the kind words, folks! But I have to note that the word “penisfeelings” is not of my coinage; I don’t know where it originated.
Thank you! I don’t think it’s patience so much as whatever it is that makes me the person at knitting circle who jumps at the chance to unravel somebody else’s catastrophically tangled skein of yarn. 
The typical Starving Artist post is the same sort of intriguingly snarled-up mess, with clumps of assertions, generalizations, prejudices, logical inconsistencies, anger and sentimentalism all graunched together. There’s something fascinating about pulling on the different ends of the rhetoric and seeing all the underlying issues they reveal as you draw them out of the tangle.
LIKE!
Well shoot, if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy, I have a map here of the Middle East that you might be interested in.
QFT
Whole lotta women in this thread blotting the blood from their foreheads and glaring at the brick walls.
Kimstu manages to look all graceful, while I look like a pissed off brawler.
I am absolutely like this in real life and it’s caused me no end of grief over the years. I do not fit in well with corporate culture, it’s taken me decades to learn how to put on a poker face when there’s idiocy afoot and I’m very sweary because I believe that colorful language cements a point in a person’s head when they hear it. I’ve met quite a few Raffers IRL over the years and I think they’d attest that yeah, I’m at least this much of a wiseass. I think I’m funnier IRL though because the weird rubber faces and freakish character voices don’t translate into written communication. 