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Prey is to Predator as Woman is to (blank): The answer is Man
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Ah yes, it's the woman's responsibility to take precautions against men taking advantage of her vulnerability. Classy.
But it must be the case then that we can operate on the final margin.
I.E. what makes being in the elevator at 4AM, alone with a woman not creepy. But asking creepy?
Because it is that totality that has been consistently claimed to be creepy. And consistently no explanation has been given except that "it is".
I am asking why cake tastes good. I am asking why this mix makes it happen. I know that when i have these things separately they are not individually tasty and I am wondering the process by which it becomes so. And it has not been explained just stated.
[P.S. cake tastes good because of sugar and pretty much only sugar. The natural sugars in the flower and the added sugar from the sugar and other sweet things you add and the fat from the butter. Cake tastes good pretty much for the sole reason that you add things that are individually tasty sometimes things that are so tasty that they are too tasty to be consumed without mixing them with something less tasty [E.G. butter!]
wut
EDIT: If I missed some portion of the discussion where the guy admitted that he was only looking for sex all along, disregard my post. But I read the first 10 pages and didn't feel like trying to choke down 35 more.
I think a discussion about why cake tastes good would be far more productive than this debate could be.
The totality of what happened is this.
A man asked a woman to have sex with him in a way which was vaguely sleazy at worst. She said no, he stopped talking to her, and no more came of it. She was offended but as has been argued a billion times on these forums alone, you have no right to not be offended. If he has been wearing a t-shirt which said 'I like big butts and cannot lie' she might also have been offended and uncomfortable in the elevator, but he can still wear his t-shirt without some greater meaning.
What vulnerability? You're implying things here i don't think you want to imply. Propositioning a woman is not "taking advantage of her vulnerability".
The statement that Deebaser is making is simple "if you want to avoid normal and non problematic behavior by other people you should take steps to avoid normal and non-problematic behavior by other people". Kinda how if i don't want to be asked for a cigarette i should not smoke where other people might be.
Maybe instead of the two of you sniping at each other for several more pages, you could quote a specific instance of him saying what you think he was saying, and he can respond to something concrete instead of a vague insinuation on your part. Surely if he's been saying that repeatedly over the course of the thread, that couldn't be too hard.
I said that I was trolled into a response exactly once and I apologized for it. And I haven't moved any goalposts; you either haven't paid attention to what I've been saying, or you find it convenient to mischaracterize what I've said.
Please feel free to re-read all the posts I've made to re-educate yourself on my position. It has never, ever been that it is always wrong to talk to someone on an elevator. I did (in the spirit of humor) once say that I have an elevator bias in general which really has nothing to do with the thrust of this thread. I said that I wish people would treat elevators for what they are - transportation boxes that efficiently take you from floor A to floor B - but that's mostly because the people I used to take the elevator with were, by and large, sluggish, time-wasting, BlackBerry-addicted buffoons. I made certain to indicate even then that I did not think conversation in an elevator was always inherently wrong.
And I have said from the beginning that it is specifically the act of asking someone a yes or no question in an elevator that is not a good idea. If you don't comprehend the difference between flirting and propositioning, well that isn't my fault. Or maybe we disagree on what flirting is. When I say flirting, I'm not talking about "hey, baby, that dress looks great on you but it would be better on my floor." Yeah, I'd have a problem with that kind of jackassery too. But that's not how I flirt.
"WHAT YOU'RE SAYING WE CAN'T ASK WOMEN OUT ON ELEVATORS?!?!"
Do we need 10 more pages of "WHY CAN'T WE ASK WOMEN OUT ON ELEVATORS?" No, nobody is saying that, intentionally ignoring every bit of context to try and strawman and trivialize this woman's discomfort is childish and intellectually dishonest.
Not everyone disagreeing with Watson is guilty of this, but for those that are: if nobody is saying "elevators are a magic never talk to people box" stop pretending that somebody is. The faux-outrage is really unbecoming, if you read the first statement or original comment and interpret it as "never talk to me on an elevator" I think you need to step back and analyze.
@ Pony, Goum:
I think you're both giving the human brain far far far too much credit. If this was an economics thread, assuming that every random individual has perfect information and makes all decisions in a completely mathematically sound manner would be somewhere between "silly" and "really dumb."
Whether elevators are statistical rape boxes or not (yes we all know they're not) isn't relevant. Fear is not a mathematically perfect emotion, the human brain doesn't say "I'm statistically likely to die of heart failure instead of crime, I'm 4% likely to have my wallet stolen at this party and only 1% likely to be mugged in a dark alley." The brain says "DARK ALLEY LOUD NOISE OH FUUUUUCK!" and shoots adrenaline through your body and kicks in fight / flight and every other bit of "OH SHIT I DON'T WANNA DIEEEE!" wiring your body has starts to get in on the game. I know both of you are smart enough to understand that fear is an emotional response and I don't see why you're insisting that it follow mathematically sound rules of statistical threat analysis.
Making someone feel threatened or uncomfortable is not simply a matter of presenting them crime statistics from the FBI. Our society, and this discussion, would be incredibly weird if it was.
Risking normal human social interaction is a risk you take when you go out in public, you can say 'Urgh, that guy was so sleazy!' but you cannot say 'The fundamental basis of society is wrong'
Nobody took advantage of her vulnerability! He asked her to come back to his room. She said no. That was the end of it. He respected her expressed wishes. If he had grabbed her, or assaulted her, or done something illegal then we'd have more to talk about. If the system had then laughed and let him do what he want because she was just a silly girl then we'd have even more to discuss. Neither of those things happened! Imaging you might be raped does not make the person you imagined raping you guilty of anything.
wtfamireading.jpg
This is how the event should play out:
SCENE
(Him and Her alone in an elevator)
Him: hey want to get some coffee and talk about stuff?
Her: No thanks, and just for the record I think it's a little inappropriate to ask me that alone in an elevator at 4am when I've just finished my talk about how I don't like this kind of situation among other things.
Him: oh, my bad, good night.
END SCENE
Is it really an argument that because of the context it was wrong of him to do so? Inappropriate, inconsiderate, awkward, possibly creepy? YES. Something that should never ever be done? no.
it's not wrong to do it, he should know that most women would have a problem with the context of what he did. It is regrettable that we live in a society where women have to have their guards up in situations like this, but it's not wrong for her to be on her guard. With that said reaching for the bear mace, rape whistle, stun gun, and cellphone 911 speed dial, etc would have been inappropriate on her part. When is rape whistle, bear mace, etc. an acceptable course of action? If she says something like "leave me alone, creep" and he continues anyway.
Ah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I have no easy answer for that. It really depends on the circumstances.
It's true that a man can't always predict when a good time to hit on a woman is, but there are certain situations where doing so is creepy, and those should be avoided.
I also don't have a problem hitting on a woman who's with friends most of the time, but again, circumstances. At a bar, sure. At a family gathering at a restaurant? Probably not.
Proud owner of the Veggie, Constellation and Cephalothorax badges
Both. I don't see a difference.
I misjudged the situation and acted in a less-than-ideal manner. I could have judged the situation better.
First off, obviously I wasn't right to ask her out once, because it was an unwelcome advance.
On the scale of social wrongs from jaywalking to lynching, it was probably a lot closer to jaywalking. Again, not a huge issue, but I think it's fair to say that I shouldn't have asked her out.
As for Sara acting "like an adult," that is a separate issue. First off, I don't think she acted particularly childish. Her friendly, not-work-related conversations gave me the impression of romantic attraction; she did not intend them to; so instead of giving me further impressions of romantic attraction she stopped having non-work-related conversations with me. I think that is a perfectly appropriate response. But even if she had reacted childishly, that does not change my initial calculus of whether it was right or wrong to ask her out.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Because she's not morally or ethically obligated to get into a discussion on the dynamics of human dating at 4 a.m. in an elevator with a guy she doesn't want to talk to?
"No, here's why" invites discussion. "No" does not.
Doing something "Inappropriate, inconsiderate, awkward, possibly creepy?" isn't wrong? This is my problem.
On one side, you have the "freedom" to proposition someone on the elevator. On the other side you have someone feeling uncomfortable. Why should it be socially acceptable for people to be "Inappropriate, inconsiderate, awkward, possibly creepy" without being called on it?
And all Rebecca did was post a general statement about the situation on her video blog. She didn't do any of the things you said she shouldn't do. I don't even think she told him "ew, get away from me, you creep," either.
All I'm getting from a lot of people is a vague feeling of entitlement of wanting to be able to do stuff vaguely creepy without ever being called out on it, and I just can't support that. I can support someone fucking up, or "taking a chance," or whatever, but I can't support this ridiculously selfish concept of not ever wanting to be called on anything.
Which I am not saying you are suggesting, but it is what prompted the original outcry against Rebecca, and it is an ongoing theme in this thread.
If that's true, why do singles bars exist? Singles events?
Maybe I just wasn't clear before. There are circumstances when it is appropriate for some of the first words out of your mouth when speaking to someone who does not know you to be words that can reasonably be construed as a sexual proposition. It's just that when compared to all the the circumstances that a person might find themselves in, there aren't many that fall within the above category.
For example, if I were on a bus, sitting next to a person I found attractive, but did not know in any meaningful sense, it wouldn't be particularly appropriate for me to address them for the first time, "Hey, I think you look nice. Want to come back to my apartment?"
I don't think that's a particularly prudish or stuffy position for me to take.
Hitting on a woman specifically because she's alone is, in fact, targeting her when she's vulnerable.
The subtext of that smoking analogy is kind of disquieting: a person who is smoking getting asked for a cigarette isn't at all analogous to a woman who isn't doing anything sexual getting propositioned for sex, unless you think that being a woman is itself inherently sexual.
Again, the question is not "does she have the right to be afraid". Of course she does. Everyone has the right to be afraid at whatever anyone does for whatever reason. Let them be afraid for no reason, who cares.
The question is does he have the obligation to understand that she should be afraid? And i think the answer in general is yes. But this specific situation does not warrant that. Why does this situation not warrant it? Because what he did was not creepy and the situation is not inherently dangerous. Requirements other than some rational evaluation of the situation implies that the man should in essence by psychic.
Let us note further that if we expect the man to know the irrationalities of the woman in question we should also respect the irrationalities of lust for men. Men must ask as is the custom in our society and men's minds are rarely thinking rationally when they lust after a woman. And this is true whether or not the man is capable of an attack
But here we are saying "society should respect a woman's irrationality when confronted with a man but society should not respect a man's irrationality when confronted with a woman whom he finds attractive". For what reason can we not brush off the mans advance as "well he was just thinking with his penis", no harm done if we accept that it is expected for the female to be irrationally afraid?
It's funny you say that.
I went out with some PAers on Friday and to get into NYC, I took a bus which ended up taking a little less than two hours. When I got there, we were talking about this thread and I joked that I saw some really hot girl on the bus next to me and "I wanted to ask her out but I didn't want to seem like a hypocrite." I was exaggerating, because I never would have asked her out in that situation anyway. But, of course, I did think of this thread at the time. She was quite attractive.
I have no doubt she would have been creeped out. In fact, I've seen men hit on women on the bus. It creeped me out and I wasn't even the person being asked out. I definitely think "vehicle you can't quickly escape from" is a relevant context here, and it's even worse on the bus than on the elevator. And before someone says "hurr durr she could get off any time" that's not a legitimate solution because (a) bus drivers are not allowed to just let you out anywhere (though I guess an actual emergency might be an exception) and (b) because she may not be anywhere near where she needed to be, and (c) the onus shouldn't be on the person feeling uncomfortable to escape the situation.
I think it might actually be interesting to discuss bus as a context. I wonder if people feel differently about a bus than an elevator or if it's all the same.
"Wrong" is an ambiguous term. Was it wrong of me to buy maplenut icecream on Saturday? In retrospect it wasn't very good, so in one sense of the word it was "wrong" because, given the choice again, I would not repeat.
Morally, was my decision flawed? Does it imply a failure on the part of my character? Nope.
I think when most people here are saying "he did something dumb but it wasn't wrong," its meant as an analysis of his moral character. Saying its "dumb" already implies that the poster believes the decision wasn't wise, so any further analysis is almost certainly aimed at the moral or ethical implications and not the practical ones.
I'm with acid insofar as "this was dumb but not morally wrong." Asking someone out in an awkward way isn't morally wrong. Nor would be a similar social misstep, such as accidentally asking about the condition of a dead relative.
Right.
The last time I asked a stranger out, out of the blue, she was having a drink alone at a bar at a burlesque show. I approached her, made some conversation for about 10 minutes, then asked for her phone number.
I figured: it's a bar, which is already a place that is widely understood to be an acceptable location for pickups; she's alone, which means she doesn't have a significant other with her; it's a public place with plenty of room, which means she's free to walk away if she doesn't want to talk to me; and it's a burlesque show, so it's already a sexualized environment.
There's still a possibility she found me to be a creeper; there's still a possibility that she went home and complained about me. I think those probabilities are relatively low, and if by some random chance it happened, as I said above I'm not going to be wracked with guilt over it. Live and learn and move on.
The point is that I actually went through that in my head before approaching her. I made a general assessment of the situation to figure out if there's a good chance my approach would be inappropriate.
That calculus only makes sense if there are situations in which such an approach would be inappropriate. I think there clearly are; there are definitely situations in which it would be inappropriate. Everything else is just ironing out the details, and the only way to do that is to have these kinds of conversations.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Type "singles bars" into google with your zip code. NYC comes up with a bunch of hits and granted that is NYC, but most cities probably have a thriving "singles scene" of some kind. It's not like you're going to see "Jay's Singles Bar" but a lot of bars will have "singles' night" or something of that nature.
And it's a safe bet that if someone is alone at the bar, they may not be unopposed to at least some kind of interaction with a stranger. Or that they are an alcoholic. But I like to stay positive.
Yeah. Or Yelp, which has a specific category of bars: "good for singles."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
So your plan is to ask women for sex around other people, so that those other people know you asked the woman for sex and know what her response was.
What if she wants to have sex with you, but doesn't want everyone to know she is going to have sex with you?
A person who is smoking getting asked for a cigarette[truthfully i get asked even though i don't smoke, i should just have just said "being in public:] is entirely analogous with a woman who isn't doing anything sexual getting propositioned for sex so long as you believe there isn't inherently anything wrong, different, or deviant, about women wanting sex.
The key was "if you want to avoid something that isn't problematic, do not do things that invite that non-problematic behavior, because society cannot be expected to respect your wishes to not be the subject of non-problematic behavior"
You have to justify in and of itself, why this proposition is bad. It is fine to justify why the entirety of the situation makes it bad so long as you actually have a justification that holds at the margin that was determined.
Yeah, I tend to agree with this. Typically, if I want to get to know a woman, this is how I go about it.
1) Attend a social event, or go somewhere where people are being social (bar, pool hall, etc.)
2) Make platonic conversation with the person
3) Typically, I know by this point if we're at least shallowly compatible, by my desire to keep talking to this person. Usually I can also tell if they want to keep talking to me. If it's going well, I'll start to flirt properly.
4) If I want to talk to them again, I ask them for contact info before they go. If I'd like to sleep with them, I propose that before they go (but only if I feel like they'd want to. This is the part where I'd make a misstep if it's going to happen, but through steps 1-3, I can usually get a good feel for it).
I don't think I'd ever ask someone cold in an elevator for sex, but then again, I very rarely go for one night stands in general.
Proud owner of the Veggie, Constellation and Cephalothorax badges
But she isn't a random person. She is a woman who is turning herself into an activist for women's rights in the Skeptic community and instead of confronting problems as they occur, she gets passive aggressive and complains about them after the fact to the community at large. I'm quite interested to know if she tells people who grab her/send rape messages/tell her to talk about bigfoot get a direct response, or just a panel directed at them.
It's getting sort of hilarious to me at this point. Half of you are literally imagining some guy walking up to a girl and saying "Lets have sex?", or perhaps just saying "Want to come back to my place?" with a suggestive smile. The other half are imagining a guy walking up to a girl, trying to strike up a conversation in a legitimate effort to get to know someone they think is attractive.
What I mean by "wrong" here is that if you know beforehand that your behavior is likely to be "'inappropriate, inconsiderate, awkward, possibly creepy?" then it is actually morally wrong, at least to some degree.
And I think the fact that he opened with a disclaimer proves that the idea that it was . Given that, I don't believe he is totally socially ignorant. He was at least cognizant enough to realize that his proposition might make her uncomfortable; you can infer this from the fact that he opened with "don't take this the wrong way."
Sure, if you're just socially ignorant, that's one thing, but it seems like people want to cling to their ignorance and feel that they are actually entitled to it. It's been a big angle here, that Rebecca Watson did something wrong by communicating her feelings because society and socially awkward people are better off being ignorant. It's something ElJeffe said or at least implied in one of his first posts here and it is something other people have implied as well.
What Rebecca has tried to do is increase awareness. Nobody has the right not to be aware. Just as Pony said people don't have a "right to silence" I similarly believe that people don't have a "right to ignorance" either. Nobody is forcing anyone to listen to, agree with, or follow what Rebecca Watson says, but she's not wrong for it and it probably is a good idea at least to listen.
And yes, if you are aware that some behavior on your part is likely "inappropriate, inconsiderate, awkward, possibly creepy" then I think you do have some moral obligation to at least think twice about it first.
--LeVar Burton
And again, you are pulling out elements and saying "But this is not creepy". I have never claimed that merely being alone in an elevator with a woman at 4 am is inherently creepy, nor that hitting on a woman in an elevator is inherently creepy.
To take your example of what you actually thought might be creepy: Are you really saying that 'licking his lips' is inherently creepy? (Maybe he's just nervous, or thirsty!) Or that a low, sexy voice is inherently creepy? Or that stepping out of the elevator after her is creepy? (Hey, maybe he just wanted to let her know where his room number was in case she changed her mind. )
You'd probably be annoyed if somebody took apart your creepy example that way, because your point was not that any one of those things (lip-licking, sexy voice) are instant indicators of rape, but when somebody does all of those things, that is creepy. And that's the same thing I am saying.
[P.S. cake tastes good because of sugar and pretty much only sugar. The natural sugars in the flower and the added sugar from the sugar and other sweet things you add and the fat from the butter. Cake tastes good pretty much for the sole reason that you add things that are individually tasty sometimes things that are so tasty that they are too tasty to be consumed without mixing them with something less tasty [E.G. butter!][/QUOTE]
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I don't see how you were in the wrong, to be honest, Feral. More like, you were well within your rights to do so, and you even made the right move from a biological-imperative perspective--you interpreted her signals as her being interested in you.
Now, you were mistaken about that. But that doesn't make what you did wrong in an objective sense.
You're doing it again.
"Irrationally afraid" should mean "in response to what is mathematically actually going to happen."
You're using the term to mean "a fear that is unreasonable or unsound."
So if you want to argue that point, you have a strong basis to do so (statistical threat analysis) but you've got a shitty opponent you need to convince (the human brain and the dynamics of the fear response).
It isn't "mathematically rational" for someone to be frightened of the dark or loud noises, but somebody experiencing a mostly biological fear response to those stimuli isn't be unreasonable.
So be real careful about "irrational," because it either doesn't mean what you want it to, or it means what you want it to but there's no reason to have this debate because you'll need to change the human brain in order to be right.
This is regardless of whether or not she is an activist or not. Her inability to confront attackers[if it exist] or to directly confront people who do things she does not like is not an obligation for her. This is especially true if we are assuming that she feels fear in these situations. She does not have an obligation to society to fight through her fear.
In my experience hotel bars are really "good for singles", especially late at night whilst at a conference.
I'll take a third option.
"Hi, would you like to come up to my room and have coffee?" may or may not be a sexual proposition, but it is still an intimate proposition. There is such a thing as platonic intimacy. A private conversation at 4AM in one's hotel room is what I would define as "intimate" regardless of whether sex or the hint of sex was involved.
I wouldn't feel very comfortable having a heart-to-heart conversation with someone in private that I've never, ever conversed with before. Would you? I mean, assuming the proposition was totally non-sexual...the elevator guy may have felt some kind of kinship with Rebecca Watson if he followed her blogs or whatever in the past, or saw her conference, or listened to her speak at the bar. So to him, she wasn't a stranger. But she didn't know anything about him. To her, he was a stranger. I can't see how this was appropriate even negating the sex angle.
And this is going to sound weird, but I almost find it creepier to want to have a private, meaty conversation with someone you've never had a conversation with before, and especially at 4AM. I would almost find a sexual proposition less creepy. I don't have intimate, private conversations with people I've never met before. I'm willing to bet that one-night stand conversations are less common than the sexy kind. :P
So you believe she has an obligation to continue her work at any time, and for any reason, with any person, regardless of her comfort level or her exhaustion (as she wanted to go to bed, it being 4-fucking-a.m.).
That's ok, I want to continue this discussion with you. At 4 in the morning, at a place of my choosing, regardless of whether you want to discuss it then and regardless of whether you have other things you'd rather be doing.