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Prey is to Predator as Woman is to (blank): The answer is Man
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Because she did recognize him?
Are people suddenly not strangers anymore if they've seen each other in a public place at some point?
I don't consider it to be out of the blue when she has been actively engaged in presentations at the convention earlier that day (?) and he was part of the group she was speaking with (although they never personally spoke) in the bar. She made herself a temporary public figure and that negates the "stranger" relationship.
I also don't care about 4am. If you're awake, you're awake.
Yeah, looks like we agree. The distinction was whether you meant you were wrong in that she turned you down (so it was the wrong move) or wrong to make an attempt at all.
Carry on, then.
That is a very problematic perspective. Simply because someone attends a public speaking doesn't mean that the attendees aren't strangers to the public speaker. Like, if I went to a Paris Hilton book signing (don't ask). I met her, we took a picture together, and I moved on. I doubt she has ever thought of me again. I met Stacy Keibler. Interviewed her with four other journalists. She spoke to us, publicly, in a very small conference room. I think we're still strangers.
I think you need to actually have some kind of relationship with someone to be their acquaintance. You need to be...acquainted with them. Simply being in their presence doesn't make you non-strangers.
In and of itself there's nothing wrong with chatting someone up on a bus. But there are better ways of doing it and worse ways of doing it (where "better" means both more likely to succeed and less likely to be awkward or uncomfortable for everyone involved). I don't think of myself as a particularly sociable or extroverted guy, but I've chatted people up and been chatted up on the bus before. Most of the time, it's been just fine, even if numbers weren't exchanged at the end. It's been fine because it's always started out with some variation of, "Hey, that [thing you're doing]/[book you're reading]/[class you're taking]/[conversation you're having] is interesting, and I have something I think I can contribute." I've also had the presence of mind, when I've wanted a number, to wait until I'm just about to get off the bus. At that point, I usually would say something like, "It's almost my stop, but I've really enjoyed our conversation. I'd like to do it again sometime. Is there a way I can get in touch with you?" Some people have given me numbers, or told me to look them up on Facebook. Other people have politely refused. And that was largely the end of it, with what I hope was minimal awkwardness and discomfort on the part of everyone involved.
It's remarkably easy to be considerate.
Aside aside: Eddie Izzard does a bit about how "wanna come in for a coffee" = "let's make out".
Succumbing to irrational fears is part of being human. Part of being a skeptic and rational thinker is working to overcome them. Working, not enforcing them in your daily life.
Note that the majority of things she complained about i think go beyond the irrationality fear from this incident. Inappropriate unwanted touching is sexual assault and there are no two ways about it and just like any victim victims that are skeptics are not required to face their attacker. Nor are they required to report their attacker. Not only are there practical aspects that make that problematic there clearly are social aspects as well, given that one of the main issues in her talk is how people don't believe that sexism exists in that community.
No skeptic, or rational thinker or activist has the obligation to be perfect and explanatory at all times. They have the right to feel irrational fears. They have the right to work over those fears in their own times or even accept that they are irrational and work on dealing with the after effects[if breaking the fear is impossible, which it very well may be] just like any other human on the face of the earth has those rights with their fears.
There is no combination of words strong enough with which i can convey this point. She doesn't owe us anything, she doesn't owe people who creep her out anything, whether or not its rational or not. She doesn't owe the world anything on that point.
No, it is totally OK for her to say how to not creep her out, in fact its awesome. What creeps her out is what creeps her out and she has a right to it, and its good that more people know what creeps her out.
But she is not just saying it creeps her out. She is saying that it is something men should not do in general to women in general. And once you get into that area you have to deal with the obligations to society, strangers, and standards of behavior and whether or not they are justifiable.
That second part is why we are having the conversation.
1) Define "socially inappropriate"
2) The point you were quoting. Yea it doesn't give a flying fuck about whether or not it is or isn't. The point was about accepting one reasonable irrationality but not accepting another reasonable irrationality.
Yes you have. In fact, you are doing it right here in this quote. You say his behavior was creepy. Well, what at the margin made it creepy. If he had not asked her for sex we have come to the conclusion (at least i think) that it would not have been creepy. This means that at some point, the addition of the proposition made it creepy.
This does not mean the proposition itself was creepy. It does not mean any individual part was creepy. But it does mean that we have to explain why the combination was creepy besides saying "it was"
Because you spent an entire three paragraphs saying "it was creepy". Why did it push over the boundary? What boundary was crossed? Why do you believe that such an action was "consistent with predatory behavior".?
Oh yeah, I'm sure that was pretty close to his thought process. He just shouldn't have waited until after they were both on the elevator to strike up a conversation, and shouldn't have opened with the line he used. Plus, unless he'd only just arrived at the bar, he really should have tried talking to her there. I appreciate that some people may find that difficult, but I have limited sympathy for the argument that their discomfort entitles them to choose a circumstance where the discomfort gets offloaded onto someone else.
What vast conspiracy have you just stumbled across bowen? C'mon, blow the lid off this shit. Take it all the way to the top. Watergate. Iran-Contra. Conferencegate.
You're right. Otis was probably just a random dude who found Ms. Watson interesting and happened to be in the bar at the hotel where the conference was taking place at 4 AM.
We don't.
Can you please make your point soon? The Internet only has so much room for forum posts and we're going to run out at this rate.
I suspect she's saying it creeps many women out, and tying it back to a discussion regarding sexual assault because a woman's cultural fear of men is strongly related to a fear of sexual assault, something men really aren't comparatively familiar with.
I mean "this creeps me out and I believe it creeps many women out for the same set of reasons, so you probably shouldn't do it." That's not particularly unreasonable.
But that's just a guess, I'm not really interested in making her arguments for her.
Do you contend that the scenario, as presented, could not be predicted to elicit a fear response? Not that it was intended to, but if I described to you this scenario and asked "would this scenario be one in which you'd be more likely to feel nervous, threatened, or afraid?"
4 a.m., foreign location, alone, enclosed space, after just giving a discussion about how she essentially wants to be left alone.
That's without any other social dynamics in play, etc.
Sweet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, in his ideal version of events there would have been no discomfort at all. She'd have accepted his invitation and they'd have happily proceeded up to his room to discuss matters of great skeptical import.
If she'd not had an irrational fear of being raped in elevators but been otherwise normal then they'd both have felt uncomfortable for 30 seconds as they rode together in silence, feigning deep interest in the wood grain of the elevator walls.
If she'd been a, in the parlance that I believe is still prefered by the youth of today, stone-cold play'a then she could have brushed him off and made him have an uncomfortable ride upstairs while she whistled a merry tune and played with her phone.
Every social interaction where there's a possiblity of embarassment or discomfort carries the same risks as this one. The only difference is that the lady in this case is afraid of rapists in elevators (and, presumably, other not-easily-escaped spaces). Barring extenuating circumstances that we don't know about and can't very well speculate into existence, there's no reason to assume she was justified in those fears. She's fully welcome to have those fears, and even to berate the guy for making her have them, but telling all guys everywhere that they shouldn't try to hook up with all women everyone in every hotel elevator after any conference is silly.
As Feral mentioned, the responses require different levels of appropriate context. "What bar do I need to reach in order to not want to hang out with somebody?"
Is that the same bar you need to meet to assume somebody wants to fuck you?
Furthermore, the two "irrational" responses are not equal. Or maybe they are? I hope they aren't. I've absolutely been, personally, in situations where I get afraid and my heart skips a bit and I essentially operate on instinct and avoidance.
I think most people have, most people have been terrified at least once in their life.
Have you ever been in a situation where you literally cannot contain your "irrational" lust? Would this elevator ride be a situation you'd want to use as an example?
*edit* I suppose I should use much more appropriate examples:
Does it make you reasonably uncomfortable to not ask a woman if the circumstances make her uncomfortable?
:rotate:
He obviously knows she might be uncomfortable hence why he prefaced it. Since we can't know if he was even at the conference we don't know if he knows about her likes and dislikes or anything. He knew they were in an uncomfortable situation and he didn't want to sound like he was asking her for sex.
What it really seems like is she's a giant bitch who has a chip on her shoulder and how dare he fucking ask her. I don't even know how he'd know she just said she was tired and going to bed. Unless... unless they were talking before hand and this wasn't really a random stranger.
Would you just posit to a random strange guy in an elevator that, "... I'm tired and heading to bed." Before they asked you anything? No there is clearly more going on here than that. Either it's A) Made up or
... Or a totally reasonable concern that Otis might have, like too many men, taken the rejection poorly and done something less bad but still invasive and unpleasant to ruin her night and send her to bed feeling upset.
Sure, she doesn't speak for all women. Very few people speak for others in any official or comprehensive capacity. I don't see a lot of backlash aimed at her by women, though. I'm sure there has been some - I haven't thoroughly sifted through her written blog or the comments on it - but it seems to me like most of the backlash have come from men and center around the fact that the guy didn't do anything worth complaining or even posting about. I haven't seen any from women claiming that she doesn't speak for them or that they particularly like being propositioned in this context. In fact, the women that have posted here (and again I admit I don't know the gender of every person posting in this thread) have more or less agreed with Rebecca.
Too many women are sociopathic fucks, but I'm not going to treat all women like that because that would be called baggage.
She said she announced it to the bar, not to the guy.
Anyway, your thought patterns on this subject are clearly the exact opposite of mine so I think this is fruitless.
Plus I think you are misinformed about the events as she relayed them. If I entered an elevator with a girl and she turned to me and said "I'm really tired and heading to bed" out of the blue I'd probably say to her "so what?" and then ignore her, because that's fucking stupid. It's certainly reasonable to tell that to a crowd of people at a hotel bar that you've been conversing with, though.
(Note, this implies no harm in all situations. If harm occurs then this is right out, fear becomes entirely rational)
No, not all feelings are equivalent, but we should recognize them. And furthermore, most actions based on irrational states of mind[not feelings mind you] have a hard time being pinned on the person in question. After all, the statement that we are working to validate is essentially "men should know that this isn't something they should do" once we say that "men must recognize the womans irrational fear".
This might be seen as a step of states going from "its ok" to "men should not do this because its stupid" to "men should not do this because it is wrong".
It is wrong if they are expected to recognize the woman's irrational fear. But is it wrong if they act out of and irrational state of mind? If we say it is, then why do we not also blame the woman for the irrational fear? And why do we blame the man for his irrational state of mind over which has no real control while we do not blame the woman?
If the man is not expected to respect the woman's irrational fear then the situation is "its ok". If the man is expected to note the fear but it is ok for him to be irrational then "its ok, but stupid" and if the man is expected to note the fear and also expected to be rational then "its not ok"
Side note on the implications of this:
Obligation without privilege is not equality, it is inequality. The only way to make such a system equal is to either grant privilege or share the obligation. I.E. if we as a society expected women to ask out men as much as men asked out women [and it happened about equally] then such an inequality in the process of asking. I.E. where we don't respect that the asker might not be in a rational state of mind
Second side note:
Practically we make limitations on what an irrational person is allowed to do. The obvious one is physical violence, but we also make limitations on threats, so when we are talking about "accepting the irrationality" of the man in lust, we aren't talking about accepting him making threats or any violence.
Why do you assume someone wants to fuck you to ask? Maybe there is enough of a chance that you think its worth it. Maybe you're lusting and you're thinking there is a higher chance than there really is.
I mean, its a proposition, not an assumption. He is asking. Literally what he is saying is "i find you attractive and want to sleep with you, i hope you want to sleep with me too, do you?". She says "no" and he goes "darn" and is on his way.
You're making it out like its the containment that matters and not the severity of the action that matters. I have indeed asked women out, out of the blue because i have had an urge i could not stop that i must do something or i will miss this opportunity. Sometimes it has worked, and sometimes it has not. Granted usually i am not asking for sex(but this is because i am more interested in a relationship than sex), but i am not sure what that has to do with it. Except the latter is much more forward
It's like you're determined to fill every square on the anti-feminist bingo card on your own. Amazing.
Maybe she was at a conference
on feminism or something
and said loudly "I'm tired and going to bed"
But its ok, you're probably right, it strikes me as much more likely that she's an evil man-hating giant bitch who just fabricated this entire story in order to pretend that men are evil and further her plans to destroy penises everywhere
I bet she even used feminine magicks to lure Dawkins into posting his stupid-ass response
So like I said, blow the lid of this conspiracy bro. You're the only one who sees the truth.