I think the implication is: "Fuck this place, we can do this work over a dinner table, let's go get some food." Which can totally be construed as: "Let's go get dinner" thinly veiled as work.
Then the high road was taken, to not press the issue. Once the seed was planted, our man Hippo had very little hope in ordering food being not viewed as "dinner together".
Also, he did say that he could go get a snack for himself if he wanted.
I understand your fear, Frankie, but I feel like people countering arguments you brought up for sympathy is a far cry from getting SWATted.
I hardly need sympathy, I love my life. I was trying to give a better picture of where I’d been to see if it would help people understand my points later. For all the disagreements, I post here because I find the majority to be well meaning. I don’t think I’ll see it in quite that light anymore. Which, ces’t la vie! This is why we post anonymously
Frankie, I honestly don't believe you weren't going for sympathy. You posted about the crippling depression you were afraid men faced and used that, the potential of your sons facing that, and your own suicidal thoughts as part of why you believed people in this thread didn't care about men.
You are also a salesperson and claim to be good at it, which means you should understand rhetoric and why those arguments were clearly written to evoke sympathy. I don't see any reason to indulge the idea those were tangents borne from the ether absent your reason for posting in this thread.
I’d hoped it would give some people a glimpse into what it can be like and how bad it can be. It’s difficult to see the flippancy with which people address male concerns in these matters. My efforts to get anyone to recognize how serious this can be ultimately failed. You are, of course, free to believe what you’d like, I no longer expect anything I say to be taken in good faith.
You could have, at any point, just said "I think I can see where you lot are coming from." without trying to get the last word in, waited a little while, and we would have cheerfully changed subjects, or continued to discuss the very important issue of no means no without you as the focus.
Instead you pushed your agenda at every turn, and practiced every bad faith argument possible.
Of course you're not going to be taken in good faith, you've never acted in such a way as to receive that respect.
Also "male concerns" can fuck right off. We've been running the world since we could bang women on the head with a rock and drag them back to our caves. I, for one, am totally ok with things being equal to slighted against me for a while.
I understand your fear, Frankie, but I feel like people countering arguments you brought up for sympathy is a far cry from getting SWATted.
I hardly need sympathy, I love my life. I was trying to give a better picture of where I’d been to see if it would help people understand my points later. For all the disagreements, I post here because I find the majority to be well meaning. I don’t think I’ll see it in quite that light anymore. Which, ces’t la vie! This is why we post anonymously
Frankie, I honestly don't believe you weren't going for sympathy. You posted about the crippling depression you were afraid men faced and used that, the potential of your sons facing that, and your own suicidal thoughts as part of why you believed people in this thread didn't care about men.
You are also a salesperson and claim to be good at it, which means you should understand rhetoric and why those arguments were clearly written to evoke sympathy. I don't see any reason to indulge the idea those were tangents borne from the ether absent your reason for posting in this thread.
I’d hoped it would give some people a glimpse into what it can be like and how bad it can be. It’s difficult to see the flippancy with which people address male concerns in these matters. My efforts to get anyone to recognize how serious this can be ultimately failed. You are, of course, free to believe what you’d like, I no longer expect anything I say to be taken in good faith.
As a professional, however, I feel I need to correct that sympathy has anything to do with sales. It tends to make you look needy, and sales need to be built on a foundation of trust. I literally tried this one time when I first started out and the lady told me, “I’d care if you were family,” and she had a point!
The bolded is literally describing an appeal to sympathy. There's nothing wrong with that, but refusing to own it because you think it makes you look weak is... not a good look.
As for being a professional: I know. That's why you deflected to talking about how awesome you were when called on appealing to sympathy. But finding such appeals ineffective professionally doesn't mean not recognizing them or not using them personally.
I think the implication is: "Fuck this place, we can do this work over a dinner table, let's go get some food." Which can totally be construed as: "Let's go get dinner" thinly veiled as work.
Then the high road was taken, to not press the issue. Once the seed was planted, our man Hippo had very little hope in ordering food being not viewed as "dinner together".
Also, he did say that he could go get a snack for himself if he wanted.
A snack sounds pretty anemic; I would have ordered a huge burger
I find that when I am made aware of the danger of the sexual parts of my gender, I amplify the non sexual parts a lot. I play up my vulgarity and eat fattier foods around women
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
since this is inexplicably still the miseducation of frankiedarling after 30+ pgs, ill comment on that and throw in some other commentary since i caught up with the thread:
It occurs to me dealing with rejection with maturity is an adult thing that everyone should be capable of doing without internalizing it until it becomes gross insecurity.
Instead of telling people when a potential romantic partner says no they should ask again. We should be telling them they should be courteous and after some COMPLETELY NORMAL emotional discomfort, they should try asking someone else.
The best advice ever given or received about trying to date always encourages persistence, but it's the persistence to keep trying in general to find someone compatible... which it seems some confuse with the persistence of pressuring one person.
As weird and messed up complicated as people are generally, the idea that someone can just not be that into you shouldn't be some ego shattering surprise.
Yeah there's some kind of fucked up synecdoche going on here, where persisting with a particular girl after she says no is standing in for the entire complex of assertive confident behaviors that allowed frankie to move from lonely to happily married. So telling frankie no means no--in terms of conversation--is like saying don't approach women ever, don't be assertive ever, even though noone is saying that! It doesn't help that ignoring "no means no" is at least part of what led to him being happily married. So yeah there's a definite disconnect there.
I know people have already tried this approach, but probably statistics are the only way out of the frankies subjective experience vs. everyone else's experience argument. To wit, what percentage of women would perceive frankie's persistence as harassment? How common is this sort of thing? Numbers might make it easier for him to realize that probabilistically, his approach is likely to have harmed way more people than he suspects.
More abstractly, how can you draw a straight line between frankie's behavior and sexual harassment and rape? How often is one associated with the other?
- grew up with the belief that men were supposed to approach women, supported, unfortunately, by self-help books who insisted a man could never love a woman who approached him first (or that such relationships were doomed to fail)
- 99% of the relationships I had were men who didn't respect my boundaries, and having grown up in a dysfunctional family I had no idea how to enforce my boundaries.
- 99% of the people who "approached" me on things like OKCupid were not what I feel like some of the folks on this forum seem to be thinking that they were. They were not nice men wanting to try dating me. They were men who messaged me with sexual fantasies right from the beginning. If any of you guys who currently don't have any bites are jealous of that, imagine an 70 year old woman with a warty nose messaging you about how much she'd like you to eat out her out and you'll get the general idea that those messages are not as desirable as you think they are. Even in cases where the men were physically attractive, however, those messages were more scary to me than fun.
I'm married to @Strikor now. Know what made him different? We hung out as friends for about 8 months and I never once got a creepy vibe from him or a sexual undercurrent to our conversations. In particular I've had a problem in the past where I want to spend a lot more time getting to know people before I'm even comfortable having them touch me. I usually let them touch, hug, and kiss me anyway because I thought that was expected (and because of the aforementioned thing about not knowing how to enforce boundaries). Because Strikor gave me time to know him, I decided on my own that I wanted to date him, and I asked him out. I've never made a better decision in my life.
But this reminds me, one of the things that enforces these gender stereotypes is ideas of things like "the Friendzone." There is no friendzone. People are allowed to change their minds.
Tangential to the majority of your post but I want to defend the good name of friendzoning. I don't think the concept of the friendzone precludes anyone changing their mind; indeed I think the fervent hope of those in the friendzone is that the friendzoner changes his or her mind. I think the term friendzone gets a bad rap because of its association with "nice guys" but I like it and want to defend it as useful: it describes succinctly the situation of unrequited romantic feelings in a platonic friendship from the perspective of the romantically rejected (and unhappy) party.
I think that the best thing men could do to improve dating is to be kind to men who are not very successful in finding love. "Virgin" shouldn't be an insult. It must be hard enough to not be able to find a partner without feeling like it means that everyone despises you for it. It can lead some men to becoming angry at women, because it seems like they are the gatekeepers of success as a man, so when a woman turns you down, she's not just saying she doesn't feel like it, but insulting your worth as a man and human being. These two things should not be coupled together.
This pressure doesn't come just from men. I suspect virginity--and sexual inexperience more generally--is unattractive to women in and of itself (see this thread for examples!), modulo religious communities that value chastity.
I understand your fear, Frankie, but I feel like people countering arguments you brought up for sympathy is a far cry from getting SWATted.
I hardly need sympathy, I love my life. I was trying to give a better picture of where I’d been to see if it would help people understand my points later. For all the disagreements, I post here because I find the majority to be well meaning. I don’t think I’ll see it in quite that light anymore. Which, ces’t la vie! This is why we post anonymously
Frankie, I honestly don't believe you weren't going for sympathy. You posted about the crippling depression you were afraid men faced and used that, the potential of your sons facing that, and your own suicidal thoughts as part of why you believed people in this thread didn't care about men.
You are also a salesperson and claim to be good at it, which means you should understand rhetoric and why those arguments were clearly written to evoke sympathy. I don't see any reason to indulge the idea those were tangents borne from the ether absent your reason for posting in this thread.
I’d hoped it would give some people a glimpse into what it can be like and how bad it can be. It’s difficult to see the flippancy with which people address male concerns in these matters. My efforts to get anyone to recognize how serious this can be ultimately failed. You are, of course, free to believe what you’d like, I no longer expect anything I say to be taken in good faith.
Also "male concerns" can fuck right off. We've been running the world since we could bang women on the head with a rock and drag them back to our caves. I, for one, am totally ok with things being equal to slighted against me for a while.
This is an interesting point. Are you feeling this pain currently or just saying you would be OK with it in theory? I feel like there's a big difference between "structural advantages in favor of women are currently making my life harder as a man but I am OK with that because of my ideological beliefs " and "I am OK with structural advantages in favor of women making other men's lives harder because of my ideological beliefs." How much of this (theoretical) structural misandry would you suffer before you said no mas? How much would other men have to suffer before you were no longer OK with it?
I regularly go to this Zaxbys near my work for lunch. Like at least once a week. They have all been super cool to me, with one cashier getting manager approval to comp my meal one time when my card got declined.
Before I continue and for reference, I'm 36 years old, balding, and not really out of shape but also not really in shape. Definitely a dad bod situation going on. I'm married with two daughters. Definitely not someone one of these 16-18 year old cashiers are gonna flirt with and vice versa.
So I order at Zaxbys and sit down. I wait. And wait and wait. I don't notice that I'm waiting all that long because I'm watching Netflix on my phone with buds in my ear, but up comes the server.
She seems a but confused: "Hey, is this your food?"
"Yeah, it sure is, awesome!"
"I'm so sorry it took so long," and some mumbled excuses are uttered as I start to turn down my show.
I gesture it's not a big deal, "No worries, you're fine."
She awkwardly says something I don't fully hear as I've yet to get my headphones out of my ear.
I clear my ears and respond, "Excuse me?"
She looks even more awkward, "Uh, You too..."
Me, not fully understanding what was being said, "Ok, thank you," and then pop in my ear phones again and get to working on my food.
While eating I replay the convo in my head and immediately get embarrassed. Did she think I was saying she was "fine" as in attractive?! She totally did and then responded in kind thinking she had to be nice and ohmygod.
Is it my fault she misinterpreted my response? Nah. Is it her fault? Nope. Just good ol communication problems due to two different people interacting.
Now to act like that doesn't happen in initial conversations between two strangers compounded by awkwardness from both sides due to landmine filled social structure is crazy.
Men are going to interpret soft nos as neutral responses and persist. Women are going to communicate soft no's and neutral responses that will be interpreted as soft and hard yes's, respectively, by men with different communication backgrounds. Does that make the light persistence of those men indicative that they are potential racists? No.
This is a very false equivalency. And a strawman.
No one here has ever argued that conversations occasionally go awry, or people are misinterpreted.
We're saying that when you initiate that conversation, and the person you dign to talk to says some or any form of no, you don't press further. You don't treat it as a misinterpretation. You don't act as if you know what's best for them (not that you're implying that, in this specific example).
Ok, and what if a man doesn't interpret it as a no, even though in her head she meant it as a soft no?
Then he would be
Part.
Of.
The.
Problem.
And I'm saying it's not his fault since he's genuinely doing the best he can.
Which I guess is the fundamental difference here and one of the reasons I'm peacing out of this convo.
If a person doesn’t know any better they can still be part of the problem. That’s not good but it is still solvable.
If a person is told they’re helping cause a problem and decide they don’t care, well, it’s a jerk move.
I'm saying its not a matter of them knowing any better. It a matter of them understanding communication differently.
I don't think all men should be required or expected to understand and communicate at whatever definition this thread expects of them.
There should be more understanding from women that men are just trying to get their personality out there and sometimes that takes more than a single interaction. And men should be more understanding and err more on the side of leaving women alone if it does sound like a no.
This thread so far has been very: no matter what, if a woman feels a man has persisted too much then it's the man's fault!
Let's clear this right the fuck up
The genders don't matter.
If you start interacting with someone, and they indicate a wish for you to not to do that, stop doing it. It doesn't matter if it is a guy talking to a girl, a girl talking to a girl, a guy talking to a guy, a girl talking to a guy.
This is basic interaction etiquette.
No means no.
Yes if you persist to the point you've made them uncomfortable it is your fault
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
This thread is busy and fast-moving and needs an extra degree of moderation attention when moderators are spread kind of thin doing bullshit like reproducing or important things like video games. For that reason, and because I feel like everyone's had ample opportunity to weigh in and engage with one another, I'm going to go ahead and close it.
I want you all to understand something: this doesn't mean the thread was a failure or bad or that I (or any of the other mods) are upset with anyone. Some discussions have a natural lifespan that is lower than 99 pages and that's okay. I know that emotions ran high and a couple of people got dinged but by and large I'm quite happy with how you all conducted yourselves with a very fraught topic that has at times in the past been actually disastrous and led to outright bannings.
Some of you may feel upset or unfulfilled because you didn't change someone's mind. I don't think that's a realistic standard for any thread and I think many participants and onlookers benefited from exposure to new data and fresh perspectives. That's ultimately always the best we can hope for.
The subject of dating norms will remain off-topic in the Weinstein or other threads.
Posts
Also, he did say that he could go get a snack for himself if he wanted.
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
You could have, at any point, just said "I think I can see where you lot are coming from." without trying to get the last word in, waited a little while, and we would have cheerfully changed subjects, or continued to discuss the very important issue of no means no without you as the focus.
Instead you pushed your agenda at every turn, and practiced every bad faith argument possible.
Of course you're not going to be taken in good faith, you've never acted in such a way as to receive that respect.
Also "male concerns" can fuck right off. We've been running the world since we could bang women on the head with a rock and drag them back to our caves. I, for one, am totally ok with things being equal to slighted against me for a while.
Seems fair.
The bolded is literally describing an appeal to sympathy. There's nothing wrong with that, but refusing to own it because you think it makes you look weak is... not a good look.
As for being a professional: I know. That's why you deflected to talking about how awesome you were when called on appealing to sympathy. But finding such appeals ineffective professionally doesn't mean not recognizing them or not using them personally.
A snack sounds pretty anemic; I would have ordered a huge burger
I find that when I am made aware of the danger of the sexual parts of my gender, I amplify the non sexual parts a lot. I play up my vulgarity and eat fattier foods around women
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yeah there's some kind of fucked up synecdoche going on here, where persisting with a particular girl after she says no is standing in for the entire complex of assertive confident behaviors that allowed frankie to move from lonely to happily married. So telling frankie no means no--in terms of conversation--is like saying don't approach women ever, don't be assertive ever, even though noone is saying that! It doesn't help that ignoring "no means no" is at least part of what led to him being happily married. So yeah there's a definite disconnect there.
I know people have already tried this approach, but probably statistics are the only way out of the frankies subjective experience vs. everyone else's experience argument. To wit, what percentage of women would perceive frankie's persistence as harassment? How common is this sort of thing? Numbers might make it easier for him to realize that probabilistically, his approach is likely to have harmed way more people than he suspects.
More abstractly, how can you draw a straight line between frankie's behavior and sexual harassment and rape? How often is one associated with the other?
Tangential to the majority of your post but I want to defend the good name of friendzoning. I don't think the concept of the friendzone precludes anyone changing their mind; indeed I think the fervent hope of those in the friendzone is that the friendzoner changes his or her mind. I think the term friendzone gets a bad rap because of its association with "nice guys" but I like it and want to defend it as useful: it describes succinctly the situation of unrequited romantic feelings in a platonic friendship from the perspective of the romantically rejected (and unhappy) party.
This pressure doesn't come just from men. I suspect virginity--and sexual inexperience more generally--is unattractive to women in and of itself (see this thread for examples!), modulo religious communities that value chastity.
This is an interesting point. Are you feeling this pain currently or just saying you would be OK with it in theory? I feel like there's a big difference between "structural advantages in favor of women are currently making my life harder as a man but I am OK with that because of my ideological beliefs " and "I am OK with structural advantages in favor of women making other men's lives harder because of my ideological beliefs." How much of this (theoretical) structural misandry would you suffer before you said no mas? How much would other men have to suffer before you were no longer OK with it?
Let's clear this right the fuck up
The genders don't matter.
If you start interacting with someone, and they indicate a wish for you to not to do that, stop doing it. It doesn't matter if it is a guy talking to a girl, a girl talking to a girl, a guy talking to a guy, a girl talking to a guy.
This is basic interaction etiquette.
No means no.
Yes if you persist to the point you've made them uncomfortable it is your fault
I want you all to understand something: this doesn't mean the thread was a failure or bad or that I (or any of the other mods) are upset with anyone. Some discussions have a natural lifespan that is lower than 99 pages and that's okay. I know that emotions ran high and a couple of people got dinged but by and large I'm quite happy with how you all conducted yourselves with a very fraught topic that has at times in the past been actually disastrous and led to outright bannings.
Some of you may feel upset or unfulfilled because you didn't change someone's mind. I don't think that's a realistic standard for any thread and I think many participants and onlookers benefited from exposure to new data and fresh perspectives. That's ultimately always the best we can hope for.
The subject of dating norms will remain off-topic in the Weinstein or other threads.
Norm Peterson, however, is always on topic.