Yeah I thought it was pretty clear that Wesley brought up dogs, so CCL went along with his analogy.
Wesley himself brought up the dog analogy.
I really don’t care who started it-it is the analogy itself I don’t like. I thought it was simplistic and dismissive the first time I heard it many years ago, and it is no less so now.
But in this case, it was an analogy made specifically to relate to a fear that someone had specifically expressed. If Wesley had said he was afraid of spiders, it would be been spiders. It’s got nothing to do with men and dogs, it’s about the nature of fear and threat.
I’m seriously curious: How could she have possibly made a spider analogy? If there are spiders you know of that hump women’s legs I don’t want to know about it. I’m having enough trouble sleeping as it is.
Not all men are horrible but SOME cannot stand to hear the word “no” and will do just about anything to get you to do what thaey want, and it’s these men we can live without. I don’t know that i wou;d have used the word dog, but everyone knows what dogs are like; i don’t think ferrets, or guineapigs would have worked as well in the analogy.
If the analogy is about illustrating fear (which is how I read CCL’s post) then it doesn’t have to relate to sexual behaviour, does it? It’s about illustrating how you can be afraid of things because you don’t know how they’re going to affect you and while most are harmless, not all of them are.
I should point out that I know I suck at making analogies, before everyone else does. But despite that, maybe you see what I’m trying to get at - the dogs bit isn’t the important bit, it’s the fear and unpredictability and omnipresence of the object inspiring fear… Speaking of which, if I now have nightmares about giant, leg-humping spiders, I’m blaming you AClockworkMelon 
It wasn’t so much the analogy itself that truly bothered me. It was the way and the extent that it was written, the specifics were absolutely dripping with bitterness. Putting their noses in your crotch, humping your leg, etc. I see several of you continue to pass this off as Westley Clark’s doing.
Again, I don’t think that should excuse the absurd tirade in the post that followed. This was more than just simply a continuation of “men are analogous to dogs” - it was much much more than that.
For those thinking the response justified, we agree to disagree. But don’t powderpuff the specifics that were written in response to Westley Clark. Read again page 384 - some of the many highlights of the disgusting post made by CCC. This is utter bullshit.
Yeah, this to me was really lame. Plus, it made it seem like even “good” men might slip up and hump your legs because, oh, they just don’t know any better! Sometimes a dog will hump your leg or be extra licky and it’s just being a dog. But a guy either commits sexual assault or doesn’t. I don’t know what kind of men that the rest of you are meeting that you think, “Oh, some of them do the human equivalent of leg humping/slobbering and some bite.” Am I not living in the real world, that I just see men as regular human beings, not as unpredictable fear inducing things? I don’t understand this mentality at all.
That post went way over the line from analogy into a hateful insult.
Are people seriously arguing otherwise? I know lashing out can be cathartic, so I didn’t think much of it, but it is worrisome that anyone thinks it was something other than just lashing out at all men.
To compare fear of dogs to fear of men did not require dehumanizing men. That only hurt the analogy, because that is the part of the two situations that is not at all similar. The similar part was only the fear of a potential attack, and that was hardly mentioned. Almost the entire post was an excuse to dehumanize and insult all men.
By the way, insults like that do not help people understand. On the contrary, when I see people agreeing with something like that it makes me question everything else they have said. Luckily not all women are like that, and there are enough who haven’t blown all credibility that the message of this thread still comes across loud and clear.
There seem to be a lot of people in this thread who want to tell some of us what our experiences have really been like. I think it’s time for me to un-subscribe. Thanks to those who started the thread, contributed usefully to it and who got it. For the rest of you who seem to have taken it over: you may have it.
I was trying to think of a calm way to say something like this - I’m out too. Have fun.
I have no objection to, and certainly do not question, any of the posts describing experiences in this thread. It is only that one analogy that has been used as a billy club for an untold number of years that I object to.
Yes, because when those men attack us, they don’t hump us, grab us, stick their noses next to us and whisper “I wanna fuck you.”
Did you READ this thread. I think if you have an issue comparing rapists to bad dogs, you have a thin skin. Cause dogs don’t do anything worse than rapists do. That you had to bring this thread up weeks after it became inactive and react in such a fashion where it will likely be closed, what is up with that? Please ask yourself that.
I like both dogs and men. Have one of each in my house (well, two, my husband and my son). I’ve also run into each that are badly behaved. And I’ve run into each that have turned on me. And some of each that are just plain mean. Yet, I continue to like both dogs and men.
And it seems particularly inappropriate since when a women misbehaves or turns a man down…she’s called “bitch.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! You all fucking failed the analogy section of the SATs, didn’t you? She was clearly not saying that men literally “Putting their noses in your crotch, humping your leg, etc.” but was using the doggie equivalent to obnoxious men’s actions.
And note that it’s a compound phrase there. To “obnoxious men”, NOT to all men.
You seriously can’t fucking see that? Hello?
[Moderator Note]This is not the BBQ Pit. Please post appropriately.[/Moderator Note]
No, spiders don’t hump legs–they build sticky-ass webs that cling to your face/arms/whatever when you accidentally walk through them or collect dust and are a pita to clean up, they scuttle across anything and everything (including you and your food), they trap flies that buzz and buzz and buzz waiting to die. In other words, they do stuff that people can reasonably find off-putting, all without any malicious intent at all. And they can put your ass in the hospital with a single bite, but it’s really hard to know at a glance which ones are dangerous and which aren’t.
That works with pretty much any potentially dangerous animal people are commonly afraid of–every creature on this planet has some behaviors that people can find icky or annoying. If Wesley had cited worrying about being attacked by something else, I would have made that analogy. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying your self-righteous indignation.
While I assume you meant to say “…or turns an obnoxious man down…she’s called a “bitch””, it is just this sort of shortcut that might cause others to object.
Ah, but see we don’t know if he’s obnoxious until we turn him down. I don’t know how many times I’ve turned some guy down only to be called “bitch” or “stuck-up” or “think you’re too good for me?”.
What if I’d not turned him down and didn’t have a reason to show his true colours? Wouldn’t he still be an obnoxious guy?
For the record, I’m not some man-hater. I love men! A smart, funny, nice guy can turn me into a puddle of goo. And their bodies aren’t bad either.
You are right…at the same time, I’ve known plenty of non-obnoxious men - and women - who have no compunction about calling a woman a bitch - in the interest of disclosure - its a word I use myself. Apparently, we can get by in society by calling comparing women to dogs (i.e. on this board its perfectly ok to call someone a bitch - not as a direct insult out of the pit, but other than the direct insult) but we get all up in arms when we compare men to dogs? What is up with that?