IT WOULD DEPEND on the woman and the circumstances. I can visualize situations where such behavior would be a turn-on. I can also visualize situations where such a thing would make me puke.
You must also address the issue of “what if a man looks at you (another man) in the way you describe?” I’d come closer to giving a generic answer to that one.
Why does shit like this have to be simple? If it were simple, the human race wouldn’t be any fun at all! 
No, but its normally mothers who raise children who were not raised by wolves or in barns. If you were raised by your father, or both parents equally, I’m sorry I shorted them with proper manners, I’m sorry I shorted your Dad or the other male in your life who taught you right from wrong.
And yes, you should feel shame when you are rude. Regardless of if that is gawking at a stranger, or cutting someone off in traffic, or yelling at a waiter. Shame is your conscious reminding you that you aren’t supposed to behave that way.
And therein is the issue. Sometimes women don’t care, sometimes they do - I’m guessing - and I could be wrong - that when you are in a strip club, most of the women in there really don’t care who is staring at their chest, how much you gawk, and they probably associate the cartoon bulging eyes and tongue on the floor with good tips.
And if you are in conference with Angela Merkle and Hilary Clinton, it is probably always inappropriate to spend any time at all looking at their chests. Or if you are a high school teacher - you need to make sure your gaze stays above the neck - if that’s going to be an issue, you probably are in the wrong career or should find a boys school to teach at.
In between there are millions of permutations. What is your relationship to me, where are we, what am I doing at the moment (the time for my husband to become breast appreciative is NOT when we are trying to figure out the schedule for the week, or doing our household budget, or when I’m trying to get dinner on the table, but there are other times where being breast appreciative is DEFINITELY ok for my husband), do you come off as creepy to this woman (something that you really can’t control and frankly may not be aware of), is it gawking or more of an appreciative acknowledgment. Are you someone I find sexually attractive…
Would be uncomfortable to some degree or the other, depending on who and where. If common…would probably not choose athletic cut in clothing. Might have to pepper spray some chica if nieces and nephews were about.
But, I am perhaps somewhat prudish. Some dudes would be fully proud…
(Yeah, she is looking. It is an anaconda! I am such a stud…) Probably the exact same guys who leer at cleavage at Wal-Mart.
Yeah, but those guys are mentally ill. 
So, you’re just going to double down on the BS instead of contemplating the implicit sexism of your words.
It’s interesting to me that Martian Bigfoot references guilt over fleeting glances at women, and you immediately re-frame his statement as “feeling a proper sense of shame when caught gawking”. What is gawking? Or leering? Or ogling? There doesn’t seem to have been any attempt to define these terms.
There’s no reason for any man to feel shame for the entirely natural and hard wired instinct to be visually attracted to sights he finds sexually appealing. But as a society we’ve got an unwritten rule that it’s impolite to stare. Surely the crux of the issue here is the perceived, and perhaps very real, discrepancy between what would normally constitute staring, and what’s considered ogling of cleavage. A Google search of “caught ogling” would suggest that even an absent minded glance can be considered ogling by some.
There was no attempt to define revealing clothes, either. I asked Strinbean to define the concept several times and the only time he even feigned an effort was the sarcastic ‘80% of my breasts are exposed.’ If guys can’t even explain where the line is and will look even if nothing is exposed (and we all know that happens), that only furthers the implication that guys aren’t really responsible for what we’re doing and women should just know when they’re wearing enough to taunt us. There are lots of gray areas here, yes. I think most people can live with the possibility of occasional misunderstandings if we’re respectful and make an effort to be polite, but as obvious as that may seem, there’s more than a little excuse-making in this thread.
The OP was obviously the first post to this thread, and all discussion of the distinction between glancing and staring was subsequent to that post. Saying “I don’t see why this is so hard to understand” carries the implication that it’s referring to discussion after the distinction was first pointed out.
The subsequent lengthy discussion has not featured anyone justifying staring etc., unless I’ve missed something.
But that cuts both ways. And you - and others - should acknowlege that sometimes some women may be complaining about things that fall into that gray area.
There’s been a lot of “it’s really not complicated” sanctimony in this thread.
What do you mean?
That’s precisely what I acknowledged in the sentence you’re quoting. People are allowed to have their own interpretations of their experiences and they won’t always agree about what happened, so there’s not much to be done about that. Making an effort to be respectful is still going to produce better results that ‘whatever, you should know what to expect if you dress a certain way (which I cannot define).’
And a lot of “stop complaining” stupidity. I find that much more objectionable.
I think visible breast skin will do for the purposes of this thread. That includes sheer material, but admittedly doesn’t cover (ha!) tight fitting material.
Difficult to say. I mean I can readily ID obnoxious comments and in the past have taken steps to curb/confront them IRL. I’ve been told that I have nice butt, but only under appropriate circumstances. I can speculate about your question, but I lack the proper experience about how I’d react. I can say that the few times that I’ve been approached by prostitutes have always been mind altering - that level of female attention is far far away from my ordinary experience.
Speculation:
No, I don’t think I’d start dressing differently, unless I was attending a party or social gathering and I was interested in meeting someone. The butt comments haven’t changed my sartorial choices at all, though they might if a gf said she liked one outfit or another. I frankly hadn’t thought much about the issue until it came up here. Yes, if a woman acted unusually I’d think something was up: what that something was would depend upon the details of the situation.
My point: there’s a rather bright line between verbal commentary on women and refraining from commentary. The stare/oogle/leer line is more mysterious: I confess it took me a while and a couple of conversations (years ago) for me to work it out.
Also: I understand that some women have a rather pronounced inclination to dress up. And that what they consider dressing pretty might sometimes involve wearing outfits that I perceive as hot. I’m not sure how to weigh those competing phenomena, but at the very least I think the easily anticipated and possibly psychedelic effects of your clothing choices on others should be a consideration. In contrast to what I understand to be Dangerosa’s stance.
Yes. This. This wins the internet for me today. Thank you Martian.
The repeated requests to define “revealing clothing”, as if there’s some ambiguity about what cleavage is that needs to be resolved before reasonable discourse can take place, while taking a “we know it when we see it” approach to ogling was what was nagging at me.
What has been stated in this thread and reiterated in your post is that it’s unfair to expect women to intuitively grok what amount of clothing they need to wear in order to be non-provocative and to state otherwise makes them responsible for how another person feels.
But for some reason it is OK to expect men (and gay women I suppose) to intuitively grok if, how and how long they can look at a part of a woman’s body she chose to leave exposed and that they find aesthetically pleasing. Further, if they fail to understand this on a case by case basis they then become responsible for the woman feeling uncomfortable and can be mocked, labeled a creep, and should feel ashamed because of it (only if they were raised properly, by women :rolleyes:).
I just don’t see the logic in that second part. Hadn’t it been agreed that we shouldn’t hold others responsible for how we feel? If catching someone checking out their cleavage makes them uncomfortable, aren’t they responsible for figuring out why and how to best resolve the situation for themselves? To bring it full circle to the OP, I suppose getting angry is one way to go about it, but it doesn’t seem like the best long term solution.
“Gee, I sure like staring at that girl’s breasts. I wish she would cover them up!”
This position apparently seems logical to some people. Huh. Interesting. Completely bonkers, but interesting.
Based on the timing I assume this is directed at me, but it’s such a mischaracterization and exhibits such a complete an utter failure to understand any of the points I made that I’m honestly unsure. If you could make an attempt at a thoughtful response devoid of glibness and sarcasm it would be appreciated. In particular, I’m interested in finding out where you think I implied that men who enjoy the sight of cleavage want women to cover it up. The point was rather that men shouldn’t be expected to feel shame if they look at cleavage, nor are they ultimately responsible for how that makes a woman feel.
Is a person with a facial deformity being provocative by exposing their face to the public? Is it unfair that we expect people to “intuitively grok” how long they should let their eyes rest upon burn victims, amputees, the morbidly obese, or someone who is unusually short or tall?
How is it that I somehow can control my gaze when I’m sitting across someone who is eating pizza or donuts, regardless of my appetite? Do I go around assuming people chowing down in public are trying to arouse me, or do I assume their choice to eat has nothing to do with me? Just like my choice to eat has nothing to do with them?
A lot of yall are acting like women routinely go around with their boobs jiggling bare and unrestrained in the wind. Perhaps you’re framing the topic like that so that we are sympathetic to the gawker plight? I don’t know what that’s about, but I do know that when I see cleavage, nothing about it strikes as being so wild and provocative that there suddenly becomes a reason to call time-out for civility and etiquette.
This expression of “the rationalist view” is superfluous, redundant, condescending, evasive, and victim-blaming.
No woman needs to be taught this rationalist view. They live with and apply it every day. These discussions exist as part of an effort to reduce the need for this rationalist view.
Human society is capable of tremendous change, as demonstrated by the 20th century alone. Stating this “rationalist view” as if people don’t know about it functions as nothing more than advocating throwing up your hands and lying back while thinking of England.
I think overstated discontent toward the behavior of a few creepy men is tantamount to throwing up your hands and lying back while thinking of Plato’s Republic.
*“oh, what could be…”
*
If you find a creep he’s gonna be a creep no matter what. If you can change that, then I’ll worship at your idol. Until then, join us here on the ground.
The analogy to deformities, especially facial deformities, isn’t particularly good since one is either present or not, and if one’s present there’s not a whole lot that can be done. Unlike cleavage, which is easily concealed. But in the spirit of playing along: No to the former. They’re not responsible for how people feel in their presence. And I generally agree with women on this point. Yes to the latter. In terms of simply looking, it’s unfair for them to expect others to know precisely how long they can take an interest in their particular quirk before it becomes offensive.
And the other side of the argument is pretending that the only time men get called out for ogling is in cartoonish situations. Is it possible they’re doing this to make people more sympathetic to their argument? Let me put it to you this way: You’ve said you’ve seen cleavage, which means you’ve looked at cleavage. This would cause some percentage of women to consider you a gawker and according to them you have called time-out on civility and etiquette.
That’s kind of my whole point. As it stands, by looking at their cleavage, no matter how briefly or innocently, by simply looking at something that’s only there to be looked at because of choices they made you became responsible for how they feel. I don’t see the logic in it.
You could reduce almost any act of social hostility to this process of trivialization. “You can’t do anything about creeps, so stop whining about it.”
But who are the creeps? Some genetically intransigent insignificantly tiny group of people whom it is futile to try to reform? While some number of them might be so, you do a disservice to everyone by pretending that that’s all it is.
What about the men who 50 years ago thought it was okay to make harassing comments to women in the office, or to pinch asses in elevators?
They were for the most part not members if this tiny group of intransigent creeps. They were men who were otherwise considered upstanding members if society and role models for all.
It is only because people started denouncing such behavior and stigmatizing it that American society has changes so much in this respect.
Absent “overstated discontent” (and don’t think We all don’t know what that’s a euphemism for), nothing would have changed.
But that line of rationalization is clearly false, and let’s off both the creeps and the people like you who would rather not be faced with demands for change.
Under your rubric, none of the advancement our society has made in changing race and gender relations—outright discrimination and lynching included—would have happened.
But again, why is this any different than other thing that might attract attenton? If we can suspend our impulse to stare when the object of attention is a burn victim, why is cleavage a game-changer? A person who is wearing hideously unattractive makeup might attract attention just the same as someone who has made themselves up to look like a super model. In either situation, are people given a pass to stare at them without causing offense? Of course not. It is not unfair to “expect people to know precisely how long they can take an interest in their particular quirk” because the rule of thumb is that if people notice you staring at them–for whatever reason–you’re liable to cause offense.
So now your opinion has officially jumped the shark. Having functional eyesight that allows you to, you know, actually see is not the same thing as gawking. Seeing and staring are not synonyms. If someone thinks I’m a gawker because I have the audacity to not be blind, then that would make them an idiot and I couldn’t care less about that.
Probably because you’re thinking too hard.