Tracy Lord is not really on my radar, but whenever she does this it drives me nuts.
In today’s day and age, her movie from the 1940s is the obscure reference, not the name of a famous porn star who is still talked about from time to time today (and her autobiography was published right around the time Tracy Lord registered, which makes her “I didn’t know!” claim all the more dubious).
She should suck it up that she has a name that evokes a famous porn star and stop acting shocked when people think that’s what her name references.
Why you beast, you brute! Just like a rapist you’re saying that she was asking for it! As if her user name allows you to follow her home and smack her bedroom window with your penis!
Caveman!
It seems that you are a man of the same words allllllll the time. Trolling, accusations of lying, moving goalposts, and all kinds of other insults. Just looking at the few threads I pulled those from it’s easy to see that the more ridiculous his point, the angrier (drunker?) he gets and instead of making more points he resorts to his childish name calling and troll accusations. What a boring little boy you are.
Because a) no-one in the history of the world has ever been offended by talking about cars, and b) demanding pictures of someone’s tits is a fair ol’ step up from them simply talking about how their favourite shirt makes their boobs look good. No-one would ever have reason to believe that asking for a photo of a person’s car would offend them. The same is plainly not true of people’s breasts (yes, even if they mention them first). Thus, the analogy is silly.
If Tracy had come out guns blazing from the start, you’d have a point. But she asked politely (only to be met with some fairly blatant “there there, little woman” crap), and was only moved to pit the idiots after it had been brought up in two separate threads. This, to my mind, is not the act of an outrage troll.
I truly don’t see how it ISN’T an innocuous remark. I can think of plenty of times IRL that I’ve heard other women make similar comments about how a particular item of clothing makes their breasts or butt look. It’s not the kind of thing I’d normally say, but I don’t consider it a particularly unusual or suggestive remark to make about one’s own clothing. (If it is, a lot more of my friends have been flirting with me than I realized!) I can easily think of several friends who might describe a favorite shirt as “the one that makes my waist look tiny and my boobs look amazing” and sincerely mean it as nothing more than a description of the shirt.
Now, as I said in the red wine stain thread and at least once here, when I’ve heard these kinds of comments it’s typically when only women are present. It’s not hard to guess why. But it’s not necessarily said only around close friends, either. Women I didn’t know that well have made such remarks in my presence. I don’t know, maybe older women don’t say these kinds of things casually, but I wouldn’t consider it strange for my age group and I must be at least 6 or 7 years older than Tracy Lord.
Considering the kinds of intimate, unusual, and sometimes disgusting personal details people have revealed on this board over the years, I am astonished to discover that some people consider a woman saying that she owns a shirt that makes her boobs look amazing to be pushing the envelope.
Yes, how on Earth could a remark about how sexually attractive a woman’s tits are be anything other than innocuous? :rolleyes:
Here’s a test if you can turn off your bias for a minute or two. If a man walked up to a group of women and said “I have an awesome cock” would that be inoccous? Or does your lack of comprehension as to why mentioning sexual details is sexual only apply to highly evolved women and not cavemen?
Let me guess, it’s because “men are pigs!” not because “if a woman makes a sexually charged comment in front of men she may get sexual attention she isn’t interested in”?
No they consider her sexual comment a comment that’s sexual.
Pretty cavemanish of them.
No, the analogy would be silly if I said that asking for pictures of her tits was a reasonable request. The point was that flirting/discussion in general was reasonable. The response she said was creepy, for instance, was someone suggesting that she should wear her boobie-shirt to flirt with the guy she told everybody she wants.
Awww, and you were trying so hard too!
You’re still a moron, but good try. Yes, when people lie, or troll, or shift the goalposts, I comment on it. And by the way you idiot, shifting the goalposts is not an insult, it’s a rhetorical fallacy. And, see, you blathering idiot, if you wanted to show that I was using a term in error you have to show how it’s wrong, not simply that I used it X number of times. This is kinda basic logic.
Then again, you’re also a Janus faced jackass, as evinced by you whining about my insulting people in the very same sentence you accused me of foaming at the mouth.
How stupid are you, exactly?
1 to 10, 10 being really fucking stupid.
8, or 9?
You still haven’t retracted your lie about my posts in this thread, even though the record clearly shows you were lying. Whoops, pointing out you were lying you’re lying when is just wrong of me!
Just like it’s wrong of me to point out that when you say you haven’t addressed the stupid arguments of the people I was responding to while you only gummed at my ankles because you ‘don’t respond to anybody’s points but your own’, you were obviously lying and spitting bullshit in order to troll. Oh noez! Pointing out that you used an untruth to annoy me when that’s the case is just wrong! Bad Finn, bad!
I am so sorry for pointing out your behavior.
I totally shouldn’t do that.
Women do say things like this. And they mean it makes them look more sexually attractive. Next time one says something like that, ask her why it matters to her. I bet her response to your question won’t be innocuous, mine sure wouldn’t.
“My boobs look amazing” is a sexual comment, especially when posted on a public message board.
That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with posting it, but it does mean there was nothing wrong with the two very mild sexual responses either.
There was also nothing wrong with Tracy asking people to stop talking about the subject she just brought up.
So where did everything go wrong?
Tracy decided to take offense and claim people were being sexist. Even in her first response, she was claiming there was something bad about the responses.
The responses were not out of line with her original post. In some cases people do post obnoxious responses to nonsexual comments, but this isn’t one of them.
If she had just said “I know I just told you my boobs were amazing, but on second thought I would rather nobody talk about them” I don’t think it would have been an issue.
On the plus side, even though this instance is not an example, I am always annoyed at similar responses to nonsexual comments, and hopefully this thread will help put a stop to those.
Maybe a lot of my supposedly heterosexual friends have been trying to seduce me for years and it’s all gone over my head, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty confident that if I asked them what they meant by “I love that shirt, it makes my boobs look really good” then none would reply with “I was flirting with you and hoping you’d ask to see my breasts.”
ETA:
Actually, all she said at first was “I would appreciate it if you would not say things like that to me again”. I don’t see how she could have been much less accusatory than that while still conveying the message that she wanted the remarks to stop. Everyone else could, and should, have just let the subject go then. It certainly didn’t need to be something they brought up in other threads.
Sure, amongst all the accusations in this thread, right? And there are tons of them, one more over the top and extravagant than the next. What’s one more? And how is this one more unreasonable than any of the others?
But this assessment I can agree with completely. Tracy Lord was naive and overreacted to comments that were annoying, juvenile, and obnoxious, but not proof positive of sexism. Her opponents then multiplied her overreaction ten times over and did go on to say some pretty sexist things after the fact, proving that virtually everyone involved in the conversation lacks perspective, and some in fact are blithering idiots.
How’s that? Think that’ll put the conversation to rest? I doubt it.
FinnAgain, if what is riling you up so is the OP’s claim of sexism, have you noticed that practically everyone agrees with your position that it isn’t sexism?
Lamia, I agree with your assessment of the original remark. I don’t believe that every evaluation a woman makes of her body or how clothes fit her is based on sexual attractiveness or lack of same. Maybe I know the wrong people, but if someone says to me that a blouse makes her boobs look amazing then I’m taking it that she finds that article of clothing visually pleasing to her without expecting that a given man would find it so also. I’m assuming that there is no thought of men in her assessment. So to me it’s not a sexual comment; it’s a comment about a blouse with an aside detailing why she finds it pleasing. It is a fine distinction, perhaps, but I’ve never had follow-up conversations that indicated otherwise.
So I have been surprised to read the opinion that any positive visual evaluation a woman gives of her breasts and then mentions in a post is considered to be a sexual remark. It just never would have occurred to me. I expected that a remark would have to be more explicit and direct to earn that label.
Actually, I was hoping that once the ranting stopped, the conversation could begin. I think there have been some good questions raised in this thread.
I most certainly have, and I’ll take this opportunity to offer congratulations to them. That isn’t my only complain though. I’d say that, also:
-Calling men “cavemen” or alleging that they’re out of control fiends because they have a (non-obnoxious flirting) response to women’s anatomy which has evolved precisely for sexual signaling purposes is absurd and offensive. Men, in general, like tits. Men, in general, like women. It’s part of what drives the species. If people want to be offended by rudeness, that’s fine. But acting as if normal male sexual desire is somehow icky is, simply, biophobic and carnalphobic.
Our culture already treats male sexual desire as one step away from aberrant and female sexual desire as one step away from liquid awesome. Just think about what the reaction would be to a woman who masturbated in front of an open window, and a man who did the same. A woman who’s horny and wants a guy is seen as supremely attractive. A man who’s on the prowl is seen as nearly a predator. An older woman who hits on younger men is a “cougar”. An older man who hits on younger women is “scuzzy” “a pervert” or “creepy”.
-Alleging that those pointing out that women who mention sexual details shouldn’t be shocked that people discuss those sexual details, even while explicitly stating that of course men should stop discussing them if it makes the woman uncomfortable, are using the same rationalization as rapists… is wildly inappropriate and true ‘fighting words’.
-Alleging that anybody who points out that a woman shouldn’t be surprised that a sexual reference to her tits elicits sexual responses from men is, in fact, saying that men should be allowed to harass her in any way they see fit even once she’d made clear that she wants to be left alone, since “she was asking for it!”
-And, of course, alleging that a woman mentioning how sexually attractive her breasts are, in a public conversation with men, is doing something totally innocent and there’s something totally wrong with men who take that as a sexual reference.
Well, I’m in total agreement with that. They are sleazy and inappropriate, not to mention not even in the neighborhood of being funny. And if posting a link to this rather tame post is what set people off then I don’t think Tracy Lord is the one who should be criticized for overreacting.
I do not see anything in her post that was so inflammatory as to justify other posters not honoring her request and letting the matter drop. Especially since most of the other posters who gave her a hard time in the red wine stain thread hadn’t even posted before that point.
This didn’t need to be a big deal, and it was not Tracy and Tracy alone who made it a big deal. Once she said “I would appreciate it if you would not say things like that to me again” then that should have ended things. Heck, she wasn’t even demanding an apology, although WormTheRed was decent enough to make one. It seems like she would have been perfectly happy if the “jokes” had stop and people had directed their attention back to the subject of how to remove wine stains.
A succinct summary and one that everyone should take to heart.
I know! And to me, that is the beauty of this thread. It’s like one of those sandbagged clown punching bags: depending on how you hit it, it bounces here and there, but always pops back up. It could make for a very good GD discussion, but I lack the time to set it up.
But Lamia, forgive me, but you are not the arbiter of all human behavior and response. YOU may not see the remark as a problem, but this thread and the fallout clearly show that nothing is so cut and dried. I think we can agree that the male response was NOT sexist. Or can we…?
You can hardly blame women for our (men’s) reactions to women who masturbate in windows or hit on younger men or whatever. Anyway, women weren’t supposed to have any sexual desires until about 1960; it’s understandable if they have a lot of frustration to work off.
If it bothers you, just make sure that the next time you’re flirted with you make sure to tell that dastardly woman what a foul trollop she is.
Neither are you, but that didn’t stop you from attributing an ulterior motive to Tracy. I don’t know what she was thinking when she wrote her original red wine stain post, but neither do you. I’m inclined to take her at her word and believe that she really did just want to describe the many ways in which this shirt was special to her so posters would understand why she wanted so much to get the stain out.
Ironically, there are plenty of words for women who express overt sexual desire, and a lot of them are things like slut, tramp, and whore. It’s not that women who are openly sexual are roundly praised and applauded, even in our supposedly enlightened times. I don’t know that there are equivalent words for men who are similarly sexually active. Somehow, it’s considered natural for men to sleep with anyone they want, but if a woman does it, there are still people who will judge her harshly for it.
Also ironically, it’s the men in the thread who said it’s only natural for men to think and say sexual things if there’s any mention of breasts, and to expect them not to was defying reality. Women didn’t assert that men couldn’t control themselves; men were using this as an excuse for their inability to refrain from making rude comments. But somehow, it’s been turned around to make it seem like women are chastising men by saying they’re out of control. Nope, sorry, that’s not how it went down in this thread. The men themselves claimed it was absurd to assert that they could or should control themselves.