So did you hear the latest about a presenter at a skeptics’ meeting getting propositioned? Elyse was handed a sexually explicit invitation by a couple of nice strangers to participate in group sex. Guys, don’t do that.
I have a simple suggestion. Think of sex as something two or more friends do; but also keep in mind that most friends don’t have sex together. When you’re at a meeting, plan to make friends promiscuously, but remember: the purpose first and foremost is friendship, not sex partners. And that friendship takes two people interacting, not one setting the expectations and telling the other what’s happening.
Maybe you make friends really quickly, and one evening of conversation is enough to reach mutual agreement and mutual attraction that leads to sex; that’s fine. But you know, playing pick-up artist is not how you become friends. Handing someone a card does not make you friends. Reading someone’s blog does not make you friends. Hearing someone speak at a meeting does not make you friends. Becoming friends takes a lot of work and communication. If you try to take a shortcut past the “making friends” part, don’t be surprised if you find yourself reported for harassment, or your activities outed and shamed on a popular blog.
The first simple guideline is: make sure you’re friends before crossing any borders.
The second simple guideline is, again: you don’t have sex with most of your friends. Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.
Be aware of that, and most of these problems will disappear, and everyone will be able to relax around each other a lot more.
This is something people’s parents should have explained to them…
Wait, PZ, does this mean I am not your friend? I invited you to church once.
Ye flippin’ gawds. Are people really dense enough that they need this spelled out?
I guess so.
While I’m acquainted with PZ and have met him a few times, I’m pretty certain I haven’t reached the sex-invitation friendship level yet. Also pretty certain this is okay with both of us … although I’m guessing, of course.
The card…… Nice hand-bra, bro.
B-b-b-b-but if this is really the way Menz! are supposed to behave, the species will die out. Besides, they probably just wanted coffee. And what about the Muslim women? How dare anyone suggest that Menz! change their behaviour!
A little pre-emptive idiocy. But I will bet dollars to donuts that at least two of these will show up on this thread. Not word for word, but, shit.
I was particularly annoyed by the couples’ notpology:
This is what bullies and other people who get caught acting inappropriately say. “It was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke?” Propositioning someone by giving them a picture of naked breasts is not funny. There’s no joke there, so these folks should stop pretending there was one.
And don’t try to start a friendship in an elevator.
‘Tis:
Yes, same here. It’s the ploy of asshole douchecanoes everywhere, the whiny complaint of “hey, can’t ya take a joke?” Ugh.
Of course it’s a joke…unless you’re interested…
Well said PZ! That needed to be said. You are correct in stating that friendship requires effort, work, and time. The idea that a web based friendship should lead to sex is preposterous.
Now it’s not just men that do this to women. When I was working in gas stations years ago many women would offer me anything from a quick peak up to a bonk in the bathroom for free gas. One particular night when I had a migraine, and was at low ebb for BS, a tweaker and her two male friends came in wanting 2 bucks(actually came out to better than 2 gallons for historical reference) and then begged me to wash the windshield. While I was washing she flipped off her tube top a jiggled herself around, believing it to be enticing no doubt, then she said put another five bucks in. When I finished adding more gas I went to collect and she said “You got your five bucks worth of show”. I leaned down and stared her right in the eye and said “I don’t go for milkers but your studs are looking pretty cute, can I borrow one?”. She threw a wad of bills at me and tore out of there calling me everything but a white man and the 2 guys were howling with mirth. The real punchline in this was that one of the bills in the wad was a hundred, so full of win.
Mike:
Not the same thing at all, Mike. You’re also missing the point by several atmospheres. Try reading Elyse’s post at Skepchick. (Again, if you already have. Twice if you haven’t.) Then read PZ’s post again.
Yes, Mike, tell us more about the systemic oppression you face because of your gender. Coolstorybro.
Mike, while it is true that it’s not just men, it is also true that your anecdote, while absolutely troubling, is unrelated to the systemic problems found by women at conferences.
I think we are over reacting here. Stuff like this happens. This is far less obnoxious and dangerous than being cut off on the freeway like I was this morning.
Just laugh to yourself and throw it away and get on with life.
Just the same response as when you get invited to an Amway party.
We have far more important issues to worry about.
And here was me thinking the major prerequisite of a joke was that it be funny…
Og Vorbis, you forgot the Dear Muslima option, as exemplified immediately above at #16.
… than the minor problem of 50% of the human race being treated like shit.
Mike, this isn’t Penthouse magazine. Please take your stories to somewhere more appropriate.
chrispollard:
Dear Muslima. How fuckin’ wonderful of you to stop by and tell us it was nothing at all, really. Certainly not in the least symptomatic of a huge problem, nope.
If you ever manage to get your privilege-swollen head out of your ass, let us know.
Your critical mistake, obviously, is presuming that that fraction deserves to be treated like human beings. Silly.
*sigh*
not even 20 comments in and they have already showed up.
Really? Who is over reacting? PZ for saying, ‘don’t do this’? Elyse? Please explain who is over reacting and show actual examples, with citations.
Yes. Yes it does. So do lots of things that are bad — racial discrimination, gender discrimination, religious (and no religion) discrimination. What is your point? Things happen so we shouldn’t try to change our own behaviour and explain to others why we think their behaviour should change?
Behaviour that marginalizes female skeptics at conferences, silences them, is, you are correct, not immediately physically dangerous. So, what is your point? Should we ignore reckless driving because children are abused? We should ignore other behaviour in which human beings are treated like things because you got cut off on the freeway? Sort of a ‘dear Muslima’ approach?
Caine
Of course not, because every reported instance is merely an isolated anecdote. Heaven forbid we should add ’em all together and spot a trend.
Please remove me from your “we”. I consider sexual harassment to be both obnoxious and dangerous.
How on earth is a calm and measured, “Hey, folks, this shouldn’t happen” an over-reaction?
I didn’t phrase it that way up thread, but I did include it: “And what about the Muslim women?”
Fuck. I really hate being correct.
That’s one.
Because it implies that men need to change to make society better?
Right. A gentle “don’t do that” is an over reaction?
Do you want it to continuing happening? Yes or No?
Because your course of action will guarantee that it will continue to happen.
So that other driver deserved something more severe than a gentle “don’t do that”, then.
And your point is what, again?
Why can’t some people learn basic etiquette? Save your swinger cards for swinger clubs. Nobody wants you whipping that out (or any of several other things for that matter) at a skeptic conference.
Even if this was stripped of its sexism context (which it rightly shouldn’t be), it would still be a pretty serious breach of decorum. I have a very hard time believing anyone would disagree with me on that point, regardless of their views on feminism. It’s presumptuous, excessively forward, inappropriate to the setting, riddled with unfortunate implications, and just plain rude.
QFfffffffT.
Almost makes me think that she should have called them from a payphone, disguised her voice, and led them on a wild goose chase of some sort. But nah. Wouldn’t make them learn anyway.
Please, General Pollard, keep us briefed on what these more important issues are, we wouldn’t want to waste The Agency’s resources.
Just laugh to yourself and throw it away and get on with life.
I wonder what would have happened to the civil rights movement if Rosa Parks had thought the same way you do.
fuckwit.
51%.
reasonbeing
Wait, what? PZ didn’t say anything of the sort. Either you are reading into what PZ said and assuming effort, work and time doesn’t included online. Or you are trying to make excuses for the couple, like they were all good friends. The article says
That sure as fuck doesn’t sound like they were well known and good friends. It still falls under what PZ is sayinng.
Mike
B-b-b-but what about the menz?!?
You moron, no one fucking claims similar shit doesn’t happen to men. This isn’t about that. This is about this sexist shit against women. Everything is always about the fucking men. Men dominate a conversation, talk over and dismiss women all the fucking time. Why don’t you shut the fuck up and listen for once? Or at the very least let us talk about it? Let this stay the fucking subject of the thread isn’t of a whining vest about what sexist shit happens to men? Seriously, feminist fight against that shit too, you know. This just isn’t the same damn thing and this isn’t the fucking place.
chrispollard
Here’s a clue, asshole, the fact that you can just shrug it off and dissmiss it shows your fucking privilege. Also, just because you don’t say hysterical, saying we are over reacting is the same fucking bullshit. Stuff like this happens because of sexism and we are trying to fight it. You are just accepting the status quo because hey, it doesn’t fucking happen to you, which is why you rather talk about traffic. Nice to know you don’t know jack shit about violence against women. I’m guessing you’re one of those, bitches ain’t shit and those sluts got what’s coming to them types. Don’t you know it doesn’t matter, it isn’t a big deal unless she ends up dead. Traffic is more dangerous!
As for this ^ bit of pignorant obliviousness, I’ll thank you not to tell me, or anyone else what happens to obnoxious and dangerous. Personally, I find this sort of behaviour absolutely obnoxious and potentially dangerous. (To all the morons, note the potentially.)
As someone who has been beaten, raped and almost murdered and someone who has ended up with a net stalker that went from net to meatspace, I’ll thank you to kindly shut the fuck up about subjects you clearly know nothing about, Cupcake.
Tis Himself
Omfg, yes. His story came off more as fucking bragging, like he was proud and happy for it.
Any one else get really creeped out, how the woman was just a tweaker, but he just called the men, men and studs? Also the leaning down, it sounds like to intimidate since he’s taller than her, and calling her a “milker”.
There is just so much “WTF is wrong with you” already in this thread.
of course it is. have you learned nothing from Egate?
le wut
1)PZ said nothing of the sort. he said reading someone’s blog (you know, unilateral “acquaintance”) is not a friendship
2)no friendship should lead to sex; they just can
3)there’s not much of a difference between web-based friendships and meatspace ones; claiming that the internet is somehow “not real” marks you as a luddite.
It was almost like he was just waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to post this ON THE INTERNETZ somewhere to brag about his manliness, almost bursting from the superhuman effort of holding it in….
…. And then he couldn’t.
So out it came, prematurely.
*facepalm* Seriously, I am not someoene who is good at socializing, but even I know that is just plain inappropriate.
I think the answer is the same to you both: lack of boundaries.
Socially/emotionally immature individuals lack boundaries and/or empathy for others around them. They are incapable of understanding how their actions affect others/are offensive.
I might also go as far to say that those who “swing” might also fit that bill, but whatever. What people do in their own homes is their business, as long as they are respectful to people who aren’t in their homes.
The “couple” who approached Elyse are DOUCHES, period. Their “apology” is crap (“It’s only a joke”—what a child would say when caught by adults).
What can be done? Keep our own boundaries. Speak out when it happens. I have little hope for shaming people back into whatever hole they live in: overt racism is no longer acceptable, so bigots have to use code words and whisper whenever they use the word “black,” etc. Maybe in less than 50 years we can also get sexists to do the same.
Ah, good ol’ Hemant. Quite the de facto ally he is.
Aaaaaand here we go.
Again.
–
Which is, in turn, far less obnoxious and dangerous than…having a drone blow up your house, for instance.
I’m sure you see why this makes cutting you off in traffic Completely Okay. I mean, really, what’s your gripe? Stuff like this happens.
WARNING:
This product contains Sarcasm. If you have a sensitivity to Sarcasm, please be sure to take the maximum dose of this product internally.
–
Quoted for defacto truth.
I had no idea Sarcasm was homeopathic. My mind is blown.
…or are uninterested in understanding, etc., ’cause everything is about them.
–
Well, sometimes, a little dab’ll do ya.
:)
–
Cicely:
This here ^. Mmm hmmm.
If you read the thread over at Skepchick, there’s a real cupcake tone trolling and mansplaining away.
His logic: this sort of thing happens all the time! Therefore, it can’t be bad!
Re Hemant’s “why doesn’t this ever happen to me” remark: Elyse and Carl, the event organizer, have both said Hemant was being ironic, not dismissive, in that conversation with them.
http://skepchick.org/2012/05/sex-and-the-keynote/#comment-150485
He may or may not be an ass in other ways, but not because of that comment.
Amphiox #39 FTW:
Please collect your one (1) internet.
Has anyone linked the nice couple from meatspace (as it were) to their online personalities yet? Did they leave an IP address behind by any chance?
The idea that a web based friendship should lead to sex is preposterous.
I guess my husband and I should never have fucked, much less married, in that case.
We met online, conducted 99% of our courtship online, and decided to have a life together online. When we finally got together IRL, after knowing each other online for 18 months, trust me–it led to sex. Lots of it, and marriage, too. 15 years next month.
Go figure.
Esteleth, Raging Dyke of Fuck Mountain
I feel as if the cupcake fucked up on the timeline like that. In my view,this is what the actual timeline of events are.
Yeah, douchebiscuit, and that’s what we’re objecting to.
Is this a chicken or egg issue? I think clearly not.
Greg Laden, 50
I don’t think this is the right answer to the problem.
Are you ever not a complete douchecake, Greg?
I don’t think this is the right answer to the problem.
Nor was it proposed as an answer to the problem.
If someone does know who the couple is, the community would (and this just my useless opinion) be better served by a quiet, well thought out, and private dope slap (figurative dope slap (I am not recommending violence)).
Greg, bad idea and we shouldn’t go there. Not because they have an expectation of privacy after such a stunt, but because there are too many disturbed wankers out there who might abuse the information.
As to Hemant’s quoted comment, to me it is at best a poor and tasteless joke, and at worst shows that he really doesn’t get it.
I think we are over reacting here. Stuff like this happens. This is far less obnoxious and dangerous than being cut off on the freeway like I was this morning.
Shall we begin ElevatorGate two? Elyse’s reaction is clear, appropriately detailed, measured, and spot on. Having something else out there in the world that is problematic in its own way is not relevant. Are you channeling Richard Dawkins?
Yes, there really are a lot of things worse than this. Let’s make one blog, with one blog post on it, that covers only the worst thing we can identify and keep all the comments on topic on that one thing!
Militant, hysterical, and shrill.
Wait, no.
And I wouldn’t have thought this guideline had to be made explicit. If the couple hasn’t picked up any rudimentary common sense from attending skeptical events, one would think they might at least have gathered a few prudent social tips from attending swinger’s
conventionsorgiesget-togethers.Oh dear, I see I started a shitstorm. Seriously people: DID THEY LEAVE AN IP ADDRESS would be a clue that I, unlike the couple with the card, was actually joking. A IP address is a thing that is used on the internet … oh fuck never mind.
Greg, why do you want to know?
</JAQ>
Greg:
I got the joke. I suggested that, if someone does know who this was, a quiet word to the wise may be better than a public outing, partly because I have a piss-poor record for recognizing anything less than pie-in-your-face humour and partly because this is an interesting facet of the situation.
Of course any such letter to Penthouse requires a paragraph that begins “well, needless to say…”
If it had been a joke, then the guy and his wife would have hung around for the “Whaaa?” “Ha ha ha!” gotcha moment. That’s the whole point of pulling pranks on people (vile as that is), to see their reaction.
This guy slipped her the card face down, mumbled a little, then ran off. Nothing that remotely suggests it was a joke.
I thought it was “I, for one, did not expect to have my body parts utilized at that point in time, particularly given the price point of the pre-registration for the event I was in attendance at.”
If the two people who were there (including Elyse, who was the target of the proposition) say that Hemant was being ironic and trying to lighten the mood I think we should cut him some slack.
Ugghhh… this whole thing just really frustrates me. What could possibly go through someone’s head for them to think this sort of thing is okay? I’m all for people being swingers, poly, kinky, etc. but one of the number one rules is don’t involve other people in your kinks without their consent. Elyse didn’t tell them at any point “hey, I love swinging and having sex with people I barely know at conferences”. Even if she had, handing her that card would have been inappropriate instead of engaging her in a conversation.
carlie @65: Well played!
These things seem to keep happening, which is why they have to be exposed and those responsible chastised. It’s hard to correct a behavior without bringing it to light. This is not a difficult point to understand. Furthermore – – as for the so-called apologies:
“I’m sorry if anyone was offended” is not a genuine apology.
“I was just joking” is not an apology, it’s an excuse.
It’s in fact quite similar to “I was Just Asking Qestions.”
None of those are acceptable forms of apology.
A proper apology admits wrongdoing and asks the offended party to forgive them. It does not include excuses or out-clauses.
Mike, nobody gives a fuck about your wank fantasies, or how you “pwned” some random desperate woman, you misogynist, racist piece of shit.
Chris Pollard, thank you so much for mansplaining how we wimminz shouldn’t worry our fluffy widdle pink brainz about something that isn’t importgant because it’ll never happen to you.
Also, go fuck yourself, you patronizing shitheel.
I never hear about this sort of thing happening at linguistics conferences. Which suggests to me three possible conclusions:
1. Linguists are better people.
2. Linguists are too ashamed to act on such impulses.
3. It happens, but I just don’t hear about it.
I’d like to think that 1 is true. But sadly, it’s probably 3.
I just want to point out:
If someone does something that makes another person feel intensely uncomfortable or unhappy, and then later says it was a joke… maybe it was. Maybe that was the joke. Maybe these two drove home laughing their asses off imagining their victim’s feelings of horror, disgust and violation. It’s not like there aren’t people like that, after all. In high school they were called “bullies,” but I have harsher names for them now.
Oops, sorry Ogvorbis, my bad. Also sorry for misspelling your nym AGAIN.
As they would say in the UK – bunch of wankers. It’s a fuss over nothing. It’s not illegal – might even be classified as a complement.
It’s not worth the column inches. If you haven’t had some worse experience in your life then you must not get out much. Some people do stupid stuff – even atheists. PZ making a fuss over this invites criticism because it has nothing to do with atheism – it’s just what humans do.
Did you check to make sure everybody washed their hands when they used the toilet? Did you whine about people sneezing without putting their hand to their face?
We’re getting paranoid. Atheists aren’t perfect and never will be. They do stuff you don’t like – get over it.
to Just a Lurker
Bullshit – it doesn’t just “happen to women” – stop being paranoid. I had a guy at work put his hand in my pants pocket.
You are playing the stupid victim card.
chrispollard:
You obviously have very poor reading comprehension. Systemic, toxic sexism combined with stupidity is not only a bad thing, it’s a widespread problem which affects everyone. The fact you don’t think it’s any sort of fuss simply shows your ignorance and your privilege, which you’ve obviously never examined. On top of it, rather than getting a fucking clue from all the responses to your earlier post, you’d rather keep digging that hole.
By the way, you clueless, willfully ignorant fuckwit, JAL is not paranoid. Women get to deal with this sort of shit on a daily basis.
Yes please. I’m a splitter and am cheering for DEEEEEEEEEEEEP RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFTS.
Wow…just wow.
Every time someone sees Chris flick him right in the forhead…not like he can complain about it. I mean it’s something people do right?
You should look up “paranoid” to ensure it means what you think it meands
By the way, chrispollard, you fuckwitted ignoramus, PZ writes on sexism and feminism often, has done for years. Sexism is a massive problem in the atheist community, not surprising, given it’s a massive problem everywhere. Even the UK, Cupcake.
Touché, Carlie.
A complement to what, darling? Someone else’s very respectable behavior? Sort of like a yin/yang thing?
Dumb-ass. Learn words.
I’m confused, does the UK not have laws on sexual harassment?
Josh:
Look at you stupid gits, having a fit over a typo! You people really need to get over yourselves! /chrispollard
chrispollard
So. Fuckin’. What?
We don’t have to care about it because no one mentioned a sky daddy?
So does the pope. Want me to get over that, too?
As we in the UK say: Fuck you, hypocrite areshole.
Sweet merciful zombie Jesus, again with this crap?
1. Inappropriate/unwanted proposition from socially inept/apathetic/narcissistic douche/s
2. Propositionee says “Ew, no thanks”
3. Various people say “Totally, ew, please don’t”
3a. Most of those various people also take pains to say “By all means enjoy your kinks, just do a little groundwork before inviting others, i.e. maybe hold off on the Penthouse routine until you’ve had more than five minutes’ conversation”
4. Gits SWARM onto the tubes to say “Fahgeddaboutit laydeez, I got cut off in traffic this morning and almost had to call the waaaahmbulance thus rendering your experience invalid! I reject your reality and substitute my own!”
5. More reasonable people tell GITS they are being GITS
6. GITS continue to be GITS and pile on the GIT antics
7 etc.
I do not understand why it’s so hard for so many of my fellow XYs (and, sadly, some XXs) to get down with the whole concept of “Do a little groundwork before offering genital congress” and why NOT doing that groundwork is grounds for an unequivocal, if measured and non-strident, response leaning toward the negative.
Sleaze, like many activities and behaviours in this vein, is in the eye of the beholder and obviously some people and some events will have a lower threshold than others. Given that, should it not be encumbent on everyone to take the time to ascertain whether something you want to say/suggest to someone is at all likely to be perceived as sleazy?
Seriously, “playas”, if you don’t have a handful of minutes to suss someone out before whipping out the ol’ business card (literally or otherwise) then perhaps you’re at the very least not budgeting your time very effectively; at the other end of the scale you may well be a comPLETE douche with little regard for anyone’s comfort or enjoyment but your own and perhaps you should go back to XBox Live where noone can stop you screaming “boobs or GTFO”, and you’ll be in good company among spoiled, raging 11 year-olds.
Stop missing the point, chrispollard.
No.
Who the hell do you think you are, chrispollard, and what makes you think you have been given the authority to tell us what to and not to get over?
It’s disheartening that things like this happen at these events. Reading her post, it seems that Elyse had a very positive experience until the point that it was marred by a couple of people who failed kindergarden, regardless of their motivation.
As for Mike’s escapade, my first reaction was “this is bull shit.” It’s probably no surprise that a little googling turns up the essentials of this story in several variations.
OH FFS, chrispollard
“It’s not illegal – might even be classified as a complement.”
Who the flying fuck cares if it’s illegal? Lots of shitty behaviour isn’t illegal, like cheating on your wife or hiding your LGBT orientation while slagging off the LGBT community or slacking off at work so others have to cover your arse. But it’s still shitty behaviour and people who do those things need to be called out on it. Should people only get irritated at behaviour that breaks the law? You complete muppet.
It’s not illegal for me to mail you a picture of my gaping anus with a post-it attached saying “that’s you that is”, either. But you probably wouldn’t like it. You might even feel a little uncomfortable. You’d probably wonder how I got your address and how I took such a perfectly-focused shot of my ringpiece.
Behaviour that makes others uncomfortable is worth pointing out so it doesn’t continue to happen. You got cut off in traffic; you whinged about it. You’re here acting like an entitled, oblivious blokey muppet; you’re getting called on it.
By the way it’s “compl-i-ment”. There’s a difference.
because all bad things are illegal and all legal things are ok.
wtf?
sexual harrassment = “complement” is a boring, old excuse that has been employed by entitled sexists for decades. it’s still not actually true though.
have you ever heard of the naturalistic fallacy…
way to minimize sexual harassment, douchebisquit
Doctor Smith: Oh the irony, the iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrroooooooony!
In case you’ve managed to fail reading comprehension yet again, chrispollard, that was a SKEPTICS’ meeting PZ is talking about, not an ATHEIST meeting.
Unrecognized toxic privilege and systemic sexism may not necessarily have anything to do with atheism (except insofar as it is one of the major things that many atheists object to about organized religions), but is has a HELL OF A LOT to do with SKEPTICISM.
It also has a HELL OF A LOT to do with basic human decency, and last I checked PZ was a human being.
Oh, and speaking out about perceived injustices? That is ALSO something that humans do.
So why are you making such a big deal about it, you hypocritical ass?
As someone who MIGHT take it as a compliment, I wouldn’t force my preferences on anyone and it doesn’t make it right.
I just hope that these invasions are not coming from members of our community, and instead are coming from our opposition. That would make more sense to me, them attempting to trash our public image by acting like sex crazed godless.
I just can not believe that rational thinking people would think this type of behaviour is in any way acceptable. I guess we will find out when the negative news reports start to appear in the theist news media.
No, this has nothing at all to do with a class of immune proteins.
that’s because “rational thinking people”, as opposed to “irrational, unthinking people” (or “irrationally unthinking people”; I don’t know whether you left out a suffix or a comma) don’t exist. There are only more or less rationally thinking people, and rationality in one area cannot be used to assume rationality in another area.
I gave PZ a hug at the 2012 GAC. Does this mean we can’t go straight to second base? Damn.
PZ: Email me. You know you want to. I said I’d go ghey for you or Dawkins, but Richard would have to make the first move.
“Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.”
Unless you’re a bonobo… and it hasn’t been proven that I’m not…
Kukukukukukukuku…. Oh wait, you’re serious? Let me laugh harder
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Not funny, not cool
Balstrome:
This is a very silly thing to say or hope. Recently, there’s been a spotlight on just how much sexist and privileged thought and action there is within the atheist and skeptic communities. There’s absolutely zero reason to shy away from this – a light needs to be shown on it, and people need to be educated, to say the least.
Words fail me. So many things wrong with this scenario. Not the sexual preferences aspect, but the cowardice and pure lack of social intelligence show deep limitations in character. In our culture anymore, being a character is valued more than having character.
I agree the current approach (Point it out, say don’t do this) is the best way to deal with it. Done enough times, the message might sink in. Given the rabid response to e-gate, a more vigorous reaction by Elyse will only serve to justify more frothing at the mouth (and keyboard) by the misogynists out there. Let them come here if they desire the full contact treatment for their stupidity, but Elyse chose the right path.
elronxenu:
FFS, are you so damn stupid as to figure out this ^ sort of shit isn’t funny or appropriate to the thread?
What are you going to do next, claim “hey, it was a joke!” as a form of notpology? Spare us.
cybercmdr:
Oh, shut the fuck up.
@Caine
I don’t think they meant rabid from RW and kin but from the response. I could be wrong, but judging from the contest
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!
Please see me in my office to collect your Internet.
Sorry.
FWIW, I completely agree with Elyse and PZ.
Ing, I got it, but what the fuck is the point? We need to be terribly polite and on the passive side, so the assholes don’t show their true colours? Egate brought them out foaming over a ‘Guys, don’t do that’. I’m sick of equivocating. Fuck that.
Amphiox,
I also don’t see how this would be considered appropriate at an atheist meeting either. About the only place I see it appropriate would be at a swingers club.
elronxenu, thanks.
@Caine
I misread. You have a point.
Seriously, it WAS exactly this response that triggered the results. Don’t blame me/us, we’re just mopping up
cybercmdr
The right path? So if she chose a more aggressive response she would have chosen the wrong path? I am sure she is glad she has your approval. *eyeroll*
crossposted from TET where I first saw this:
This would not be a problem if you’re at the right type of event, but only events that are specifically about sex are the right type, and even then I wouldn’t recommend putting nudes on them personally. I am not in the least surprised that the people who started passing them out in an extremely skeevy and inappropriate circumstance identify as swingers. While I have no problems with nonmonogamy generally, and engage in such relationships myself, IME swingers are almost invariably mysoginistic creeps. I suspect that it comes from the origins of the swinging subculture in ‘wife swapping,’ a concept whose misogyny should need no explanation. Incidentally, male/male sex is also a huge no no at swinging meetups, but female/female is encouraged (for the benefit of the menz, of course.)
@103:
Thanks Josh! Finally, something to go next to the “Most Consistent” trophy I got at the conclusion of the 1987 season of our local under-12 soccer league.
Dalillama, that’s generally been my experience with swingers as well.
About the only place I see it appropriate would be at a swingers club.
I thought so too, buy that’s too obvious I guess?
*shrug*
Fucking figures.
“It’s not illegal – might even be classified as a complement.”
conclusion:
Chrispollard is in desperate need of companionship.
very very desperate.
… if one takes random sexual advances from strangers as “a complement[sic]”
It’s not worth the column inches. If you haven’t had some worse experience in your life then you must not get out much.
unexamined privilege just drips off old Chris there like grease off a George Foreman Grill…
Oops. I guess I wasted last weekend in Baltimore, then…
Or, I dunno, at a friend’s 21st birthday party?
Happened to me – my mate had a big ol’ party and everyone was there including dudes from the band he was in at the time. The guitarist, a 6+ footer who was built like a brick privy and with awesome AronRa hair, slyly asked how my then-GF and I would go getting busy with him and his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to me, his GF was chatting up my GF at the same time (I had this vision of the couple doing some awesome special forces thing: synchronising watches, checking radio earpieces, high-fiving, hitting us up and later speaking code phrases into their cuffs like “The square is on the hypotenuse; I say again the square is on the hypotenuse” – but I digress).
When I met up with GF later we shared stories and were more amused than anything else – both being 20, myself a musician and both well-acquainted with Bohemian liberal sexual mores (i.e. kinda up for anything with the right combo of context and company) we didn’t think more of it than “Thanks for the compliment but no thanks, and, slightly, dude, EWW.” These two were not our type and frankly a bit icky but hey – at least guitar-wookiee and his girlfriend were more or less decent people and had done some sodding homework and shared some drinking and bawdy chat with us before getting all Eyes Wide Shut on us. Which is related to my entire point – they didn’t just introduce themselves then hand us a card or ask us up for “coffee”. These were people we’d known through my mate’s band for a while and had spent considerable time getting drunk and silly with at the party. Context and company is everything!
So, perhaps being prop’d by a kinky couple can be a compliment, but not if it’s done completely out of the blue by a fucking clueless pair of knicker-jockeys with an overinflated sense of how irresistible they are.
Josh –
Just so you know, “Swingers’ ” spaces are different than free love or kink or poly spaces. In my social circle there are a lot of people who met through lovetribe. Lovetribe holds lots of events that are based around touch. In fact the point of LT is encouraging positive touch and reducing negative touch in society generally – from letting babies fall asleep in our arms to consensual sex.
I’ve been to quite a number of “snuggle parties” where some people touch others little or not at all, but snuggling is welcome in the space regardless of whether it’s 2 or 12 people, so long as it’s consensual.
But there are also make-out parties (again, lots of people don’t make out, but you can, it’s okay, to make out in that space even though others are present).
There are also, and this is the point, sex parties where the vast majority of people don’t have sex, but there is a room or a floor set aside where **if you want to** you could masturbate or have sex with other people in that space even though other people are present.
At lovetribe, male-male sex is considered superhot. While it happens less than woman-woman sex (at least so I understand), I hear it gets appreciative audiences and the men who are willing to engage with each other are also decidedly more popular with the women and trans people at such parties.
Now, there’s a lot more conversation and snuggling and snacking than sex, but yes, there’s real sex that happens here and male-male sex or man-man sex is not at all discouraged. In fact it’s encouraged in the sense that it is welcome in the space. No one puts pressure on anyone to do anything, but no one puts pressure on folks *not* to do non-oppressive, non-violent, consensual things. Relative to other spaces, no pressure not to, and positive feedback afterwards, is encouragement.
I cringed, hoped, and nearly prayed that there wouldn’t be idiotic comments after reading both posts. How foolish I was to allow such absurd dreams to cloud my expectations.
With regard to the deplorable event, I’m expecting far fewer ardent objections from privileged individuals since this scenario doesn’t directly tackle their unjustifiable impositions, as previous events have done.
Specifically, whilst many of the same principles apply and any reasonable person would appreciate that, I doubt a significant number will see past the involvement of polyamory. Of course, this is wildly speculative but some of those that could benefit from generalising the reasoning to their own behaviour may miss the point. I hope that’s just me being cynical.
Naturally, this is also a minor hypothetical concern, others have expressed the important points far more appropriately than I ever could.
Ing, #80:
Unfortunately, we have none against stupidity. However, there is continued progress with regard to harassment. I just detest the fact that progression is so slow.
Disclaimer: I apologise if undetected stupidity and privilege pervade this comment or if it is nonsensical. I’m likely to be idiotic most of the time, let alone when I’ve stayed up all night reading.
Can I just say?
Garlic bread and ginger beer: one hell of a snack, heathens!
Oops, meant that snack comment for TET – taking it over there now…
I’m having a really hard time seeing social ineptitude resulting in this kind of bold boundary violation, especially by people with the age and life experience indicated. As a person who’s actually socially inept, I wish it wasn’t people’s go-to explanation entitlement behaviors. :(
Crip Dyke:
All of that sounds wonderful. :(
mandrellian,
Probably you are right that my thoughts of where this (i.e. swingers) is appropriate is a bit narrow.
I realise I have wandered away from the main point which is about inappropriate sexual advances.
Crip Dyke #119
Thanks for your post. I have a swinger’s stereotype in my mind that is unfair. I will try to correct this.
*sigh* Looks like it’s time for another rousing rendition of “Your Hard On /= A Compliment.”
^ this. I’ve been going around explaining how a (mostly) not-entitled, but still socially inept, horny person (me) interprets and handles these situations, and it ain’t that complicated. “Most people get more squicked by sex than you do. Don’t mention squicky things unless invited.” That’s a perfectly sensible rule that I learned as a little kid.
@ 123, Azkyroth
By “socially inept” I meant “unable to envision whether a particular action in a social setting will be well-received”. Someone’s narcissism and self-absorption could totally contribute to their social ineptitude by, for example, making them so enamoured of their own charms that they can’t imagine anyone not being taken in and mesmerised by them (it could also contribute to confirmation bias, making them blind or impervious to any negative results or rejections). In turn this blindness and inability to envision someone not receiving an advance gladly could easily make them violate other peoples’ boundaries on a regular basis.
In brief, I think “socially inept” encompasses a broad behavioural spectrum and could arise from and be contributed to by any number of factors, inherent or otherwise – not least of which in this case by an inflated sense of one’s personal sexual appeal combined with a lack of awareness regarding peoples’ responses; maybe even an inability to parse simple body language or tone-of-voice cues (we all know people who can’t take a damn hint, I’m sure).
Than again, perhaps these people aren’t so much inept (as in “clumsy” or “awkward”) as overly sexually aggressive and actively apathetic toward context. I’ve known borderline sex addicts that were quite literally unable to comprehend someone else not being concerned with sex at the same level they were and unable to comprehend someone else turning down their propositions because, to them, everyone wanted sex as much as they did, as often as they did, anyone who said otherwise was lying and if, for example, their partners weren’t up for it, they’d use that as an excuse to go cruising or just pay a sex worker.
Anyway, that’s the extended dance remix of my point; please stop/correct me anywhere if I’m babbling!
Agh, “Then again”. THEN!
@ Koshka 125
What Crip Dyke was describing was not a swinger event. Your stereotype of swingers may well be accurate, but LoveTribe aren’t swingers.
@ 120
Polyamory =\= swinging; totally different cultures.
We can adopt guidelines up the wazoo, issue calls for decency, tact and just acting like grown ups til the cows come home. Fact is, when you assemble a large number of people [and particularly when you throw a little booze into the mix] a certain percentage of them [happily I think not a large percentage at the meetings we’re talking about here] are going to behave like cads, boors and buttholes. There is, I think, no conceivable mix of guidelines, rules, lectures, admonitions, and the like that will guarantee 100% good behavior for the duration by any large group of people assembled for a convention, conference, meeting etc. Unfortunate, perhaps, but there it is.
Well, then it’s a good thing conventions are adopting policies that will MINIMIZE the number of incidents and have proper sanctions in place for those that do occur!
Asshole.
There is, I think, no conceivable mix of guidelines, rules, lectures, admonitions, and the like that will guarantee 100% good behavior
strawman, since nobody ever said there was.
are YOU saying there’s no reason to bother, because there will always be Dicks(tm)?
I hope not.
And a great step to reducing that is making sure that everybody understands that some behaviors are those of “cads, boors, and buttholes,” and that people who behave in those ways aren’t going to get a warm welcome from the rest of us. If you do think people’s behavior can be changed by talking about things on the internet, what is the point of your post? If you don’t, what is the point of your post?
shorter flatlander100: “Because shut up, that’s why.”
That’s the problem. Some people actually lack this ability due to disabilities; some people simply don’t care and it’s frustrating to the former to have the disapproval earned by the latter indiscriminately applied in their direction.
Yes. Disabilities, for instance, can cause this in the case of actual ineptiude, rather than simple disregard for the perspective of others. And since…
…is perfectly adequate to explain it, there’s no need to attribute it to ineptitude and smear well-intentioned people with disabilities by association.
It wasn’t my intention to smear anyone; please don’t attribute points of view to me that I haven’t expressed or even implied. I understand social awkwardness and ineptitude intimately, (not that that understanding actually helps me any) and I was categorically not impugning anybody with a genuine disability.
I was attempting to clarify the points I’d made in my previous post; I apoologise to anyone who got the wrong impression. Maybe I have to clarify a little better.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate!
This, on the other hand, I still haven’t found an explanation for.
And I find Crypdyke’s description of the Lovetribe really squicky. I do not want or need any physical contact over and above that which I get from my partner and daughter. Everyone has different boundaries and those who recognize that fact can’t go too wrong by assuming that an unfamiliar person’s boundaries are large. So what do we.do about those who can’t or won’t respect those differences? Oh I don’t know, how about writing a harassment policy and enforcing it vigorously? Fuck, that’s the very least we can do.
Dalillama #130:
exactly right, I was trying to make the distinction between “Swingers” and other folk who have sex with people relatively casually compared to the general pop and more frequently involving persons in addition to a primary partner (whether all at once or in encounters separate from those with a primary partner).
Kink & poly communities are very different from the community that calls itself “swingers”.
I’ve had this idea for quite awhile that for some sexists(or racists, or homophobes…), no act of sexism is blatant or offensive enough for them to make them stop rationalizing and start recognizing it as 1. existent and 2. a bad thing. I hate being right sometimes.
Crip Dyke not Crypdyke. Sorry for screwing up your nym.
@Dalillama, #130:
Oh dear, I offer my humble apologies. I should have noticed that error, I have no idea why I didn’t beyond sheer stupidity. I’m aware of the difference which makes it far worse. My gross inaccuracy was no doubt hurtful, I should have been far, far more cautious for the sake of the most basic level of respect. The error is intensified by the fact that the original Skepchick post and focus on boundaries stimulated me to explore hypothetical event sequences with differing motivations so that I could begin to appreciate how that impacted on various forms of bonding. As a result, I was actively thinking of the differences right before my pathetic mistake.
As an aside, I notice that the original wording of #120 implies that I personally cannot ‘see past’ monogamous relationship dynamics but I simply meant to refer to the fact that diversity may wrongly be seen as taboo (thus blamed for the issues raised) by exactly the type of people that could gain general lessons from this. I have no such negative attitude to diversified connections and will always offer my support to equality, at least as best as I can when I make inept mistakes akin to the above. Once again, I’m very sorry.
mandrellian #137:
Intent isn’t magic.
Except, that’s exactly what you did with your broad definition of “socially inept”.
Cut the fucking NTsplaining and apologize already =/
Valindrius:
No, nothing was hurtful. You thought particularly well of swingers because of their association with free love/ poly/ kink/ LoveTribe folk. You didn’t think particularly poorly of the latter because of their association with the former. Plus it was an honest mistake.
So we’re good. Don’t worry.
@Fossilfishy:
Thanks for the correction, but don’t sweat about offending me. Typos and misspellings aren’t the things that keep me up at night.
Now… end a sentence with a preposition and I’ll start to get irate.
Valindrius
No offence taken, I just like to make sure that the differences are clear, precisely because I don’t want to be associated with the kind of jackasses Elyse met.
It’s good to see that the willingness of an increasing number of women to publicise event harassment is having a positive effect. It’s led to more events adopting anti-harassment policies, and in this case Skepticamp Ohio’s policy appears to have marginalised CreepyCouple: they waited until the event was over, and even then they scuttled offf without waiting for a reaction. Granted, it didn’t save Elyse from an unpleasant experience this time, but will CreepyCouple risk doing it again, now that it’s been brought home to them that they risk public exposure?
Doubtless there’ll always be douches at these events who think that the rules don’t apply to them, but, increasingly, the slightless less oblivious ones may decide that the prize isn’t worth the risks. Or maybe I’m being hopelessly optimistic.
‘Tis, #20,
But but but I had this really great story about a female delivery person and another female photocopy repair person and an office foyer that just so happened to have a mattress propped up against the wall….
…it SO did happen to me. Honest! No really. It was with my {ahem} Canadian girlfriend. You haven’t met her.
;-)
Louis
P.S. I got this far before commenting. I am now going to read the thread. I see Mike has pre-empted my bet. I need to make a further bet at this point. Hmmm. I bet there will be “you’re just over reacting, chuck it in the trash”. Any takers?
Fuckbeans! Didn’t read closely enough. Pre-empted in #16!
Erm okay then, what now…
We’ve had “happens to men too”. We’ve had “no biggie”. Have we had “it’s a compliment?”. I’ve seen the “it’s a joke” notpology.
Louis
we’ve had “it’s a complement”, does that count?
Not hopelessly so. This was, after all, the way humans have always marginalized undesirable behaviors within the social group, from smoking in public all the way to murder.
And so long as one does not expect absolute 100% compliance, it works.
And no one does. The people who constantly remind us that we can’t get 100% compliance are hoping we’ll just drop it.
Sexual harassment adds to 90 degrees?
chrispollard:
Agreed. The sun is slowly using up its supply of hydrogen, and when it does, it will swell into a red giant, destroying all life on earth. That is our biggest problem, and that is what we should be worrying about. In the meantime, absolutely every other problem should be completely ignored.
chrispollard:
Then lead by example and shut the fuck up.
Dalillama, #110 and Happiestsadist, #112,
See my post here.
Addendum: There might be a terminology difference here too. What Crip Dyke at #119 describes is more our experience, and desire, than perhaps what you’ve experienced. I’ve lumped that in with “swinging”.
Louis
Jadehawk,
I just read that one! Yeah, it counts. Dammit I’m on a losing wicket today! ;-)
Louis
Dalillama #130,
My apologies for my ignorance and poor reading comprehension.
chrispollard #74
Dumbfuck, learn to read. I said no one claims it only happens to women or that similar shit doesn’t happen to men.
Nice to know that everyone except you taking about their experiences are playing the victim card.
Your boner is not a fucking compliment. Also, the converse, the fact that I don’t give you a boner isn’t an insult to me. I don’t give a flying fuck about it and no one should have the imposed on them.
You dismissive little motherfucker. I can’t even find the words to describe how I hate this “Dear Muslima” shit. I don’t have to explain what I’ve fucking been through. I don’t appreciate dumbfucks like you thinking it’s just the stoning and murders that matter. You know why? This shit is sexism, from little to big and it all fucking matters. It all has a fucking impact. Shutting up about sexual harassment hurts those women and it hurts those you claim that are the “true victims”.
Well, well. You’ve moved from us “over reacting” to calling us paranoid several times.
Go shove a porcupine up your ass until you feel the spikes in the back of your throat.
Balstrome #92
Nope. Athiests have issues with sexism, racism, ablism, transphobia etc. Hoping it away doesn’t help. Face up, stop being naive and start helping us fight back.
—
Azkyroth, #123
QFFT
—
flatlander100 #131
Good fucking lord, no one has said anything about making 100% gone. So because we can’t completely get rid of it let’s stop talking about it! It’s not like shouting down this kind of behavior helps or anything.
*eyeroll*
chrispollard [73] As they would say in the UK – bunch of wankers. It’s a fuss over nothing. It’s not illegal – might even be classified as a complement.
It’s not worth the column inches.
As much as I dislike invoking market forces, “column inches” are not doled out or requisitioned … they occur because of the Invisible Hand of the Internet. People more or less choose to contribute to the process of creating column inches and sometimes to even read them. Also, at the moment, there is not a real limit on column inches that are avaialble although I suppose that is not really true. Some day, as we approach “peak inches” we may have to reconsider this willy nilly unfettered creation of column inches.
Regarding the lawfulness, this was not the UK where I assume you are an expert on the law. But Ohio? It probably is illegal . I’d look first at several statutes regulation the distribution of pictures of naked couples, solicitation, etc. Start with Ohio Statute 2907 especailly sections 34 and 40. If the card is “pornographic” then its distribution outside the context of a properly permitted business (free or otherwise) or within a space with access by juveniles regulated by carding, then it might have been a violation. If it was solicitation of sex that violates some other Ohio law (there were certainly old laws that regulated these things, not sure if they do at present) then there is that. Indecent exposure is also illegal in Ohio. Not sure if one can indecently expose oneself by handing someone, unsolicited, a photograph of oneself naked. I think there are a lot of judges in Ohio who would have no problem letting a photograph stand in for an unzipped fly.
I’m not sure that it is illegal, but I’m pretty sure you can’t just state it is not because you feel strongly that it is not.
Regarding it being a clementine, please think about that further. Unwanted leering is also a compliment. Hitting on someone and even continuing to do so after you are asked to stop is also a complement. Rape is a complement. Or at least, according to the “I want to fuck you so badly that I am not going to regulate my own behavior or let you stop me” school it is. No, handing someone a “business card” like this is not raping them … but it is on the top of a column of an increasingly offensive list of things that are definitely NOT complements.
Did you check to make sure everybody washed their hands when they used the toilet?
I’m pretty sure there are laws about that in Ohio as well … :[
Good fuck, what is wrong with people!? Have none of you heard of Craigslist? Grindr (there must be a version for every sexuality by now)? Plenty of Fish? Seriously, if you
needwant to have sex so badly, is it really necessary to proposition for sex someone who amounts to a stranger and to do so in a public setting devoid of sexual context?A hint: It’s okay to ask someone if they want to have sex with you. It’s seriously preferred to assuming that they do. It’s also only okay if you do it appropriately. Consider:
1)Put an add on Craigslist and wait for a response? Great!
2)Respond to an add on Craigslist? Awesome!
3)Ask stranger out of context of anything sexual if they want to fuck? No; don’t be a horny, anti-social creep.
It’s really easy not to be an awful person.
Regarding it being a clementine
Not enough coffee, too much auto-correct. Complement. Not a small sweet tasting orange. Complement.
Compliment, shirley!
Louis
Compliant sheerly.
Yes, that made sense to me. Time to go to bed.
FINALLY someone devoted to the real issues. I tire of all these smaller not world destroying issues people seem to devote themselves to.
The nice thing about the internet is that it is electronic, which means that when we do approach “peak inches”, we can just make more by deleting some of the old stuff.
We’re not anywhere near approaching “peak worry”, either.
Rev BDC and other whiners about inconsequentialities,
Oh yeah, and I suppose the inevitable heat death of the universe escaped your notice whilst you were focussing on anthropocentric local matters. Parochial motherfuckers.
Why oh why oh why will you not get a sense of perspective?
Any day now another brane could collide with ours. ANY DAY NOW. And nothing from you self involved people. That will affect not just the women and gays but real men too, have you thought about that? WELL HAVE YOU?
It’s political correctness gone mad I tell you.
Now bend over, I have something for you. WHAT? I’m only joking.
Louis
One of the things I get the most worried about is the Earth running out of helium. How can we go on without blimps and party balloons?!
RahXephon,
I think MRI and NMR machines and particle accelerators are more of a worry. In fact I seriously think the helium party balloon industry should be banned.
I realise you probably know this already, but I’m going to get on my soapbox dammit! ;-)
Louis
Louis, think about it. Which is better: finding out you have some horrible disease…or a PARTY!? I’d much rather have a party than think about that pesky subarachnoid bleed.
As far as particle accelerators, they’re the real waste. If the only way to find more answers is to build bigger, more powerful accelerators, than they need to build one that’s the biggest, most powerfulest ever and skip all those pointless middle steps! I wanna know what’s making up the sub-sub-sub-sub-quantum realm already. (4X-quantum obviously being the real basic building blocks of the universe. We promise this time.)
Going to? It looks like you already did;you just upbraided us for our anthropocentrism vis-a-vis the heat death of the universe. What should we be thinking about, asteroids? What’ve they ever done for us besides kill the second coolest animals ever to exist (the first being cats)?
You’re worried about one measly universe?
“Dear Multiverslina…”
Chris Pollard, stop being such a muppet. If you can’t see why this sort of behaviour might cross the line then your mum didn’t bring you up right.
Cats? CATS? You monster! Cats are so NOT the coolest animals. Tardigrades are cooler than cats. Cuttlefish are cooler than cats. Sloths are cooler than cats. Most insects are cooler than cats. All ceratopsian dinosaurs, nay, all Marginocephalia were waaaay cooler than cats. Seriously, pfff, cats…
Fucking cats… get all the attention… Bloody hairball… *Mutter mutter mutter* Cats *mutter* feline bastards *shakes fist*
Methinks thou doth protest too much. Besides, I smell Fancy Feast all over you.
I think he’s still traumatised by his brush with Oh! My! God! They signalled a few minutes too late! It’s hardly as obnoxious or dangerous as being smeared with honey and tied to railroad tracks atop a hill of fire ants in the shadow of an erupting volcano, but it sounds like he’s the fragile type.
What kind of person of any character whatsoever decides that it’s way more important to try to stop people talking about an issue than to try to stop the issue itself?
(Besides, does anyone really believe his harrowing freeway tale? The only way he could have even seen this other vehicle is if it came speeding down his descending colon to barely miss his head.)
With this and Elevatorgate Atheist conferences sound creepy as hell. If these are the sorts of things the speakers experience I have to wonder how many participants have too and just left rather than publicising it.
Also I’m always amazed at how many commenters take at face value an obviously exaggerated or made-up story such as Mikes gas station fantasy.
I don’t even know what this has to do with anything.
(BTW, it was my cat’s fourth birthday last Friday. We bought him an iPad.)
I just don’t get why people think bumming for sex out of the blue is a good thing or even a neutral thing.
This is not social ineptness, it’s deliberately ignoring boundaries because of a highly mistaken belief that “hey it’s alright to ask!”. No, it’s not alright. You having a boner doesn’t make anything alright.
It’s like cold calling, only sleazier and more threatening.
For women, there’s always that nagging insecurity if this is one of the people who will take revenge for turning them down. You can’t recognize those by looks, only by how often they do take revenge.
Pf,
Oh I disagree. It’s a great substitute for a broken ring toss target at children’s parties.
Mind you, that might be why I never get the repeat business…
Louis
I’ve bred hamsters who had more sense and sexual maturity than these guys.
An entirely reasonable fear, given how people like Chris Pollard and ERV and her Slimepitizens tend to lose their shit over people saying “Don’t do that, guys.”
We call those broken rings, “horseshoes”.
@174, while I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think blaming the cupcakes assholishness on his mum is in any way productive or non-sexist. Cupcake is nice and grown up enough to have schooled himself by now, and we don’t even know if he HAD a mum or if she’d be mortified by what he wrote here, so let’s leave her hypothetical parenting out of this?
Brownian
I lol’d so hard at this I may have torn some stitches. +10, would lol again.
Brownian,
Ring toss TARGET, man. TARGET. You know, the peg or stick onto which rings are tossed. It works with horseshoes too, but I prefer nice soft, light plastic rings to hard, heavy iron horseshoes.
Well, except on Thursdays.
Louis
Brownian Part 2, The Re-Brownianing, #173,
I loled. A lot. You, sir are a giant hunk of gorgeousness and I am proud to type things at you on the interwebs.
Louis
And see, that really is the problem. Not, “Don’t do that,” but “guys.” Does anyone think that Chris Pollard and all of the other misogynyst asswipes who have shown up for every damn one of these threads for the past year would have any problem at all if it was a guy saying, “Don’t do that, girls.” Or, “Don’t do that, ladies.” Or, “Don’t do that you second-class human beings who are only tolerated because you have an extra hole for my dick.” It really is the ‘guys’ thing that sends them over the edge.
Which is my Tuesday.
@Gen, Uppity Ingrate, and Louis,
broken ringhorseshoetosser:Stop it. This adulation is making me think ungentlemanly things. I may very well be tempted to make up a bunch of little cards with my photo on them and go and cut Chris Pollard off on the freeway.
Piffle, a mere bagatelle compared to the really massive impending disaster. In a mere three or so billion years, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31/NGC 224) will be colliding with our very own Milky Way Galaxy. That’ll be a real problem!
Brownian,
I cut Chris Pollard off on the freeway once.
Does it help that I was naked?
Louis
P.S. Tosser? Not right at the moment, but that’s a bit of a personal question, surely.
IOW, chrispollard, we are only to concern ourselves with things that concern you, and only to the degree to which they concern you?
Dude…sometimes it ain’t about you, and what you want.
(BTW—anyone else getting the impression that chrispollard is willfully refusing to get the point?)
–
Balstrome:
Once upon a time, I was sure of it.
That was several MRA-infested threads ago.
–
Yes.
Because, when the tentacles hit the pavement, the Many-Angled Ones don’t care who They eat first.
–
This one has me sitting up o’nights, as well. What will we do when the helium is all gone, and you have no scent-free choices for Get Well Soon bouquets?
–
I dunno. There seems to be no shortage of people who are homestly that clueless and self-absorbed in the community of atheists and skeptics.
@ Brownian:
So much this. If one doesn’t feel like talking about it, the simplest and less harmful thing to do is not taking part in the debate. But no earthly good can be accomplished by trying to make others shut up.
While that is close to the Worst Thing Ever™, it is not, in fact, Worst Thing Ever™, so please, let’s never speak of it again.
#183, Brownian
Well, there’s that, and the fact that every woman at least knows of someone who received violent revenge for not responding with enough lordosis.
It’s really an unstated threat of bodily harm, which is very clearly understood for what it is. It’s not some nebulous irrational phobia.
Brownian, #196,
Would that be cutting you off on the freeway?
Louis
Damn, can’t win for losing.
@Koshka(109): No, Elyse does not need my approval for her response to the situation. I simply think she handled it well, without feeding the trolls. If you think I meant more than that, it was not intentional.
@Cain(101): I’m not sure where I screwed up on that statement. There was a huge backlash by the MRAs after e-gate, with multiple bloggers one-upping each other on spreading lies, and saying vile things that were totally out of proportion to Rebecca Watson’s “don’t do that” response. Rabid seemed a valid description.
Guys, I don’t mind learning when I say/do something wrong. You just have to tell me. Save the hostile fire for the hostiles, OK?
I once spit in his granola.
But seriously, before you act, be sure to ask yourself “What would Chris Pollard think of this?”
Some creep gives creepy card to woman. Woman then gives creep first page on her blog. PZ does a really weird Barney the dinosaur impression and talks about sex and friendship… While I’m not the one nighter type I have seen people make friends … really fast.
What is the evidence to indicate that creeps have the ability to become less creepy through these articles? It seems doubtful that creeps would really be transformed by them… Why bother giving them all this attention (I can almost imagine the creeps laughing their heads of when they check the presenter’s blog and see their card there). Is the notion that most people are not aware of the existence of creeps and this serves some sort of informative purpose?
I agree, pf. I didn’t mean to undercut your point; I was trying to frame it in a way that the It’s No Big Dealers might understand, since they tend to deny or unerdestimate widespread violence against women as a reason that women are wary of solicitation.
No. Unlike Chris Pollard, I’m a competent driver who leaves ample space ahead of me in anticipation of drivers who are less so.
The Worst Thing Ever™ is the legion of terrorists who force people like Chris Pollard and Jack Lewis to read these sorts of posts against their will.
I mean, it “seems doubtful” to Jack that creeps will cease being creeps (and he’s clearly one to know). What more needs to be said?
Well, this sort of behavior occurs at atheist conferences because atheists are a subset of people. So now you know: life in general can be creepy as hell, for women as well as non-gender-conforming folks.
Plenty, probably, but then, why would this bother you? Since you are big old creep yourself, a fan of predatory sexual behavior and objectification by your own admission.
What, you thought we’d forgotten? Silly troll.
There’s no way to verify if the story is true or not. He presented it as true, so why not take it as true? People do awful things to each other all the time, I don’t see anything particularly unbelievable about this story. If he was making it up then it makes him dishonest AND an asshole. So he deserves the opprobrium either way.
Most people are not aware of the existence of creeps in such large numbers, or of the tacit (often unconscious) approval that much of their behaviour gets from the society around them. It’s not so much directly changing the attitude and behaviour of creeps (though it will change some, and that’s good). Rather it’s a matter of de-normalising the behaviour so doesn’t get that approval.
It’s called consciousness raising.
isn’t this the third verse of the “Shut Up, You Whiny Bitchez” song?
Wait. What part of Chris Pollard got cut off?
One of them is typing this right now (well, you’ll be reading it later but you know what I mean). I’m dead serious.
Five, ten, twenty years ago, though I thought of myself as very supportive of women’s rights, gay rights, lesbian rights, human rights, I was so steeped in my own unexamined privilege and so thoroughly schooled in societal sexism that I, for an initial and cursory reading, would have agreed with the idiocy spouted by Chris Pollard and his ilk. I had no problem with sexist and racist jokes — after all, humour defuses situations, right? I had no problem with using pussy or cunt as a synonym for weak. In short, I was blindly misogynist (not to mention ablist, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc (which is, unfortunately, rather normal for a white middle-aged male in the US)).
When I discovered the internet for pleasure (as oppposed to work), about five years ago, my attitudes began to change as I read over-the-top non-humourous misogyny. But, until elevatorgate, I had no clue just how unaware I was of my own prejudice.
I am still sexist and racist and a little bit homophobic. This is the way that I was socialized in public school. This is the way I was socialized in cub scouts and boy scouts. This is the way I was socialized in sports and in the Army. The difference is I am now aware of my privilege and all of the truly horrible ways it manifests itself and am trying to empathize, trying to avoid using terms that oppressed segments of the population object to, and trying damned hard to live up to who I think I am.
Because for every shit-slinging sexist out there, there are probably 100 people like me who are aware that there may be problems but have absolutely no clue just how endemic rape culture, sexism, racism and hompobia are within the thoroughly toxic US society. And if those who are clueless, as I was (and (in many ways, still am!), read what others have written here in defense of humanity, some of them may actually find a clue or two and adjust their behaviour so it is a little more accepting and a little less toxic.
Hell, yes! I am, as I have stated before, an example of the good that can come from doing rhetorical battle with men’s right’s activists, misogynists, sexists, racists, bigots, homophobes, and just plain assholes.
Huh, it was sounding for a second like he’d finally learned something.
Still let’s keep bashing PZ it is probably good for one’s inferiority complex…
Seriously, who keeps letting this dumbfuck in here?
Tis @ 191: Universe….heat death. All else pales.
Therefore, sunshine and puppies?
I don’t get it.
PZ looks totally hot in purple.
Because maybe it will embarrass the creeps into not being so creepy. And it gives those of us who are neither creeps nor targets of creeps an idea of what’s going on, so that perhaps we can be more sympathetic and supportive to the creeps’ targets, and do what we can to help keep them safe from creeps (e.g., by encouraging anti-harassment policies at the conferences we attend).
Bloodflow to the brain, obviously.
If he has, then he needs to demonstrate it by apologizing for his previous behavior. The shit he pulled in the MRAs Are Hilarious thread was inexcusable. If he wants to be regarded as someone who deserves the benefit of the doubt, he needs to explain why.
#202, Brownian
The problem isn’t that they don’t understand. Not at all.
It’s that they decide it’s overstated, and besides they themselves are not like that, so long as she behaves, so stop overreacting.
The worst part is the “no big deal” people are probably patting themselves on the back for never actually beating a woman into submission, while they still use the approach which is enabled by the threat of violence.
@Jacklewis #201:
If your definition of reformation is referring to character change via introspection then I could, perhaps, consider that as a possibility. However, I think it is worth castigating such behaviour in order to encompass any possibility of such change, irrespective of how large or small. I most certainly wouldn’t avoid that because it could, possibly, maybe give opponents the chance to ‘laugh their heads off.’ More importantly, I don’t believe this ‘concern’ vaguely compares to the harm of suppressing the desire/need to speak about harmful experiences. I would sincerely hope we’ve all learned from the explorations and experiences of others so I consider that good precedent for believing it can be done in this case.
Alternatively, if you’re referring to transformation of public interaction without concordant reform of personal values then I wholly disagree. Firstly, I believe posting this publically allows lions to be risen from slumber by engaging their empathy for an issue that is unjustly ignored. Flowing from that, I would hope that activism increases and scrutiny of social conventions increases. Secondly, I would assert that the effect of such posts is to emphasise a deterrence effect, inspire solidarity, and allow release for the individual subjected to it (amongst other important things). Admittedly, the deterrence may fail but knowing that such an overwhelming numbers oppose such behaviour or that victims are supported appears to have an impact. Effectively, I think the ‘informative purpose’ can lead to creeps being ‘transformed’ in some sense.
In a short window of time, anti-harassment policies have proliferated and those involved in this particular incident offered a notpology. Whilst the contents demonstrate that it’s almost certainly not sincere, I think the very act of attempting to hide behind ‘it was a joke’ demonstrates that stigma can be potent. Furthermore, it could be seen as a very public demonstration that harassment policies can, and will be, applied in an efficient manner. For me, this is proof of the overarching good generated by posts on these horrible events as it takes another step on a positive path towards a vital sense of security at conferences and genuine inclusion.
Of course, this is my very privileged interpretation without any citations, a background far removed from sociology or psychology, and I’m sure it isn’t even close comprehensive/accurate. Above all, I don’t presume that these are Elyse’s motivations or that anything deviating from them would be anything less than admirable. I don’t get to judge.
Why assume this is about THEM?
A policy’s not meant to teach the creeps anything past “You’re on notice now.” It shows the targets they have recourse and support, and everyone of good faith what to watch out for and guard against. Including the hypothetical clueless doodz who thought creeping was okay but care about getting along with others.
And that line ain’t getting any shorter. Brownian, I hope you have really good time management skills.
.
To all the assclams who persist in waffling on about this being much ado about nothing, haven’t you ever noticed how often people – including out-and-out arseholes – take silence for consent? Reminds me of the excellent point made on other threads when Nice Guys ask “what can I do” in conversations about misogyny in general and Schrodinger’s rapist in particular: don’t listen to sexist “jokes” and misogynist talk without comment or, worse, with a smile. Call people out. Let it be known that this is shitty behaviour, don’t provide protective camouflage. Because that silence and those all-buds-together smiles send out a message to anyone who is listening that bitchez-ain’t-shit is OK by you, that it’s normal and fine and OK by society. Just saying it is not OK makes a difference. If enough people indicate it’s not OK by them, sleazes get embarrassed and anybody who might have wanted to escalate at least knows they won’t be getting any protective cover – that they’ll stand out, that they’re not surrounded by “buds” who think misogyny is not a problem because it’ll never target them.
Mandrellian, I second Josh’s response to your #87. Well, I suppressed the actual laughter, because I’m in the office, but that was pretty awesome.
Cybercmdr:
You are indulging in the fallacy of “The Good Old Days.”
Fuck you, Flatlander100. Do you ever say anything that’s not full of up-your-own-ass fail?
Rah Xephon:
And making little squeaky voices!
Brownian:
FTMFW.
Louis:
It’s also handy, I hear, for picking up half a dozen(*) doughnuts for your office mates while your hands are full of coffee cups.
(*) Your doughnut carrying capacity may vary.
What a Maroon:
I once dug up all the carrots in his garden, shoved them up my nose, and replanted them again.
WWCPT?
Daz:
I’d say most women are quite aware of them.
BTW, Mike seems to be an all-around troll (and, yes, it’s the same Mike).
The point isn’t transforming the creeps (although that would be good), it’s transforming the society that enables and encourages them.
Brownian (#177)
Indeed. The proper answer to truly trivial problems is to say, “Oh, well, I didn’t realize that was a problem, but it’s no sweat off my back if I never proposition women in elevators or never hand strangers naked pic invitations to sexy-times.” Being resistant to fixing the problem indicates it’s not so trivial, and firing off ranty screeds about the horrible, irrational imposition of being asked not to perpetuate an oh-so-very-trivial problem is a bright-enough-to-see-it-from-orbit sign that things aren’t trivial at all.
Ms. Daisy Cutter
Indeed. My bad—my apologies.
I believe this is the problem the others are objecting to. You are perhaps inadvertently framing less mild responses as “feeding the trolls,” which amounts to a victim-blaming and also pings some “SHUT UP THAT’S WHY” detectors because of people like jacklewis (@201).
Paging TLC. Paging TLC.
We have had people come into these threads and explain how they used to act, and how the discussions here have helped them understand why they were wrong.
See above. In fact, even more people have admitted to having been unaware of the number of creeps and the extent of creepy behavior that women in particular face on a regular basis. We can’t help if we don’t know about it. These are not isolated incidents; they are patterns, and there are still people who think this kind of shit is perfectly fucking okay (see chrispollard @73). I’m glad that you know this is creepy! You get a gold star! But while we’re educating people who haven’t gotten that yet, you’re perfectly free to go learn things you don’t already know – here’s a good place to start.
The creep couple promised not to do it again. Then wrapped up their non-apology by pointing out that they were now part of the community.
It doesn’t matter how they see it in the privacy of their own home. They won’t be going to other events and passing out their “pleasure card.” Less people will be harassed by them. This is a good thing.
btw, the phrase “pleasure card” makes me want to barf.
@203 Sallystrange
I’m so ashamed you quoted me saying if someone takes a couple of E’s its possible for them to still give consent depending on the situation. That shit really IS inexcusable. Anybody who takes class A drugs should probably be locked up for their own safety or better still we could just arrest anyone they sleep with by default. After all if they’re wasted its impossible for them to give consent, right? Although this would also involve arresting a lot of couples the summer of love would have been sooo much better with this policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Summer_of_Love
Strangely (geddit?) I’m not required to agree with all elements of your brand of feminist ideology to oppose womens oppression in theoretical and practical ways.
Definitely many are, but some women, at least, have bought in to the “isolated incident” mentality and don’t know how common this shit is. I mean, admittedly I got it through my head when I was 22ish, but I can imagine that if it hadn’t been for Pharyngula, I would have continued to assume that I was some sort of unique magical creep magnet.
Gunboat Diplomat,
You SHOULD be ashamed of your behavior on that thread. You continued to argue that objectification wasn’t so bad after openly admitting that you refused to read personal accounts of just how bad it could be. You also continued to make creepy sexual innuendos at people who were arguing with you after it was pointed out that that was out of line.
Louis:
Just make them use hydrogen in those balloons. Ok, this would mean the occasional clown going up in flames, but I think that’s a reasonable trade.
Comment by Gunboat Diplomat blocked. [unkill][show comment]
Should have done that last time around. The thread smells cleaner already.
you must be friends before having sex?
what victorian world of illiberal sexual repression does this guy live in?!
in appreciation of the context anyway, she was socializing with other speakers and attendees and had communicated with the couple on facebook.
Elyse’s demands – bordering on illiberal – are based merely upon a predisposition to being easily offended.
she needs to grow a thicker skin.
to deny our prime function as being for sex seems fundamentally un-darwinian
Ill continue to self-censor from these two blogs while occasionally reading only to discover the latest manufactured storm in a teacup.
if people wanna show pics of their body and flatter us with invitations for sex, lovely for them. it might not be my cup of tea but that doesnt mean we should ban it cos of our fragile aesthetic taste.
the only valid criterion for having sex is consent.
pz, how dare you tell me who I should consider having sex with.
…has someone made a bingo card yet?
Strap yourself to a fuckrocket and shoot yourself into space.
If you don’t like me being rude, grow a thicker skin, assclam.
kungfuhobbit, you are a douche and a shit-for-brains. To call you a tosser, though apt, would be a slight to perfectly amiable onanists everywhere. Oh, and fuck off.
Feel free, don’t let the door …
btw, Brownian, I’m completely convinced we’re on the same side here. I just wanted to explicitly say some things, so someone could see that.
Someone who might learn from either your or my way of saying it.
Brownian, #202,
I once forced Chris Pollard to look at a copy of “The Female Eunuch”, but I think I got away with it.
Ms Daisy Cutter, #217,
Thems some small donuts! I mean big donuts, damn huge massive ones…erm…no one noticed that mistake there right, I totally meant big ones, and I’m not saying big like it’s some form of over compensation or anything, it’s a pretty good size, I mean not like Brownian in that photo or anything, but then even Brownian in that photo isn’t like Brownian in that photo if you get my drift…
I’ll shut up now.
Louis
P.S. Dear everyone, I happen to know that some of the gentlemen in kitchens worldwide have seasoned every single takeaway Chris Pollard has had with {ahem} “Chef’s special sauce”. Don’t ask me how I know this.
See, jacklewis? Told you.
YOUR BONER IS NOT A COMPLIMENT. How many ways do we have to explain this to you? Whether you want to fuck me or not has absolutely no reflection on my value as a person. Telling me about it just demonstrates that you don’t respect my boundaries. Elyse has the right to have personal boundaries, and it’s not your job to decide what they should be. As you point out in your post, consent is important, and Elyse clearly didn’t consent to looking at these people’s naked bodies. Elyse clearly made no indication that she wanted to be sexually propositioned. And maybe if you had a sense of what it is like to be constantly reduced to your fucking sex organs, you’d have a better sense of what it means to argue that it’s our primary fucking function. (By the way, if you want to pull out the “un-Darwinian” idiocy, not that it actually matters to the conversation since it’s a shitty argument in the first place, but reproduction would be what you’d argue was our “primary function,” not “sex.”)
Well, I suppose it would be lost on kungwhatever that “invitations for sex” are at the minimum dismissive of who we are and at the maximum threatening as all hell. I guess I just need to grow a thicker skin or some shit.
To hell with it, I’m with RahXephon: Blow your worthless opinion out your ass, scumfucker.
If we were using a bingo card, kungfuhobbit would definitely have gotten the Invisible Hand of Evolution square.
I just love the whole “it’s natural for me to be a douche because evolution argument.”
If you’re trying to write haiku, remember 5-7-5.
Now why don’t you get back to your primary function and stop wasting your fucking time and ours with your stupid, poorly-expressed opinions?
Amphiox, #33. Wikipedia disagrees with you. Not that it makes any bit of difference. I guess we both have the SIWOTI syndrome.
@cipher #224
Actually I said sexual objectification does not necessarily lead to dehumanisation and abuse. A pretty uncontroversial statement. You’ll recall we had different definitions of objectification with me taking the common usage in european english, not the feminist ideological definition.
As for not reading individual stories I would have thought people on this blog would know anecdotal evidence is usually considered very weak evidence in the humanities as well as the sciences. Anecdotal evidence from anonymous internet posters is even weaker and doesn’t add much imo.
As for my “creepy” innuendo if I’m being verbally abused to such a ludicrous extent for having an opinion the least I can do is make fun of it.
Groundhog day? Much?
Cipher:
Well, yes, there are the Chill Girls and the just plain oblivious ones. Though awareness of general creepitude is not necessarily a feminist thing. Mothers and other older relatives and friends have been warning young girls about creepy men since time immemorial.
Azkyroth: Bingo card, as promised. Mildly NSFW.
kungfuhobbit:
(Emphasis mine)
I think Cipher @233 already explained this beautifully, but just in case you don’t get it, it’s not lovely or flattering. In a context where propositions like sex cards are expected and welcomed, this would be fine. A skeptics conference is not that kind of context. A sex card is likely to be, at best, unwelcome.
From my perspective, being offered a sex card would be fucking terrifying, not flattering. I’m a young, small, shy woman, and I am acutely conscious of the power differential in this type of interaction. If I thought that this kind of creepy behaviour was likely to happen at a conference, I would not attend.
Creepy advances should be unwelcome in the atheist/skeptic movement because they make women feel unsafe and unwelcome. When the atheist/skeptic community demonstrates that this kind of thing isn’t okay, it shows that women are wanted and valued members of the community.
@ Azkyroth, #228:
I must admit to declaring bingo upon reading ‘*insert conveniently self-serving interpretation of evolution or spurious evolutionary psychology* so it’s natural, nothing can oppose that!’ I actually have a macabre list that I jotted upon reading the original post, it helps me preserve my sanity and I would never allow it to trivialise my treatment of the sheer insidiously vile nature of those asserting the stupidities.
I may have missed them being drawn but I’m still waiting for ‘they already apologised, why isn’t that good enough? It was genuine, you’re just cynical’ and ‘you’re worse, you publically shamed them
in a name specific manneron the internet.’Skeevy space is skeevy.
Poorly lit amateur porn is nobody’s best angle.
My fucking killfile is broken.
Oh no, we have blasphemed St. Darwin, get out the hairshirts.
So, Mr. Hobbit, can I assume that you wish to sire a child with whoever you sexually desire?
Everybody, be on the alert for this future rapist.
Actually, GD, you argued that sexual objectification was a necessary prerequisite for sexual relations, and that it was entirely harmless, and that rape culture is a fallacious concept. You maintained that false rape reports are a far greater problem than actual rape.
You also attempted to sexually objectify several posters with whom you disagreed, apparently ignorant to, or uncaring of, how thoroughly this contradicted your previous stance that objectification is a harmless practice.
If you are here to recant what you said on that thread then fine, go ahead. But it appears you are going to lie about it instead, which, I guess shows that you are somewhat sensitive to the shame you ought to feel about making such statements, so… congrats on not being a full sociopath, I guess. No points for being a lying sleaze.
“This never happens to me, so I assume it must. be. awesome.”
Gunboat Diplomat
What the fuck? Iirc, sexual objectification was a concept feminists came up with.
Anecdotes can disprove universal claims. Ergo, it all depends on what the anecdote is about.
Why is supposedly having insufficiently “thick skin” a worse offense than making people feel disrespected, uncomfortable and unsafe?
But Nutmeg! If women feel unsafe and unwelcome, that’s obviously our own damned faults for not having a thicker skin! I mean, we can’t expect to be treated like human beings when we’re walking around with bewbz and stuff.
Problably not appropriate for the setting. Clearly lacking in decorum. But to call it harassment or sexist? I don’t think so. Just say “no” and move on.
It seems like you all want to make thinking sexually about any person a thought crime. I feel sorry for some of the men who hang out in the comments here too long – they wont have any idea how to indicate sexual interest in a woman without fearing repercussions. Sex is natural, it feels good, and we all like to do it – but sometimes the person you want to have sex with wont feel the same way. Thats life.
I swear, with all sexual repression going on around here, you guys are starting to remind me of Christians.
@Cipher(221) – Thanks for the explain. Still processing how to generalize that so I don’t make the same mistake again here.
So expressing sympathy/approval of the way it was handled is OK, but superimposing any possible justifications from my perspective is not, because it was her call. OK, got it. I don’t know how long it will take for that rule to become automatic, but if I forget I’m sure someone here will swat my nose with a figurative newspaper and remind me.
BTW, as someone with some amazingly capable daughters (and a wife who is much too good for me), I do appreciate the efforts within the atheist movement to stomp out misogyny, both blatant and implicit. If that includes my own subconscious biases and preconceptions, more to the good. I’ve been running into a number of my own mental limitations and bad habits while trying to get my PhD done, so I’m already geared up for whatever mental flossing is required to become a better and more capable human being.
It only seems that way to people who have zero filters between the things they think and the things they say and do.
Does that describe you?
Yeah, totally not sexist. They were propositioning male keynote speakers all over the place OH WAIT NO THEY WEREN’T.
Guess I’ll just have to keep having sex with men. Fine by me.
That’s funny. No one here is repressing sex.
I do just fine, thanks for asking.
Yep.
After a long time at Pharyngula, I would be on the borderline about attending a conference if it weren’t for this shit (the social anxiety and probable sensory problems would make them still pretty scary for me, and the lack of money and transportation is always a problem, but I might be brave and try to venture to one if it were nearby), but after Elevatorgate? After the Slimepit? With this array of shit being expected and explained away and dismissed, and talking about our discomfort with it called “illiberal” and “feeding the trolls” and pointless? Nope. No fucking way. I don’t try local skeptics’ groups or atheist groups in person, and I sure as hell am not paying to go to a conference. The skeptics’ community isn’t a safe community.
—
Anecdote was about how treating people like objects is not a-fucking-okay, btw, and can do harm and be abusive all by itself.
Oh hai, Karlvonmox the PUA.
kungfuhobbit – Since listening to people directly affected by this is to difficult for you, do the world a favor and jump off a really high bridge. Take Gunboat Dipshit with you.
++
OM<G, you're totally right! Randomly flashing people and propositioning them while they're at work is totally NOT the definition of harrassment.
Throw yourself off the bridge too.
Do you even think that’s true?
Really. Read through what you said. Do you genuinely think that’s what we want?
LOL of course Mr. Blatant Sexual Harrassment is a Compliment is a PUA. I’m sure he’s completely confused why every women he meets calls him creepy.
So the only way some men can think of is approaching women out of the blue and demanding sex?
They don’t sound like a very considerate or intelligent kind of men.
Is this a bingo square yet?
Gee, my husband and I somehow managed to meet, date, marry and stay married for 22 years so far without either one of us ever making the other feel harassed or creeped out.
Guess we’ve been doin it rong all this time.
Attention everybody! Red alert! karlvonmox, a gen-u-wine card-carrying menz™ , is being sexually repressed by our preference not to be sexually accosted at his convenience, particularly in wholly inappropriate contexts! This Is A National Emergency!!!!!!11!elebenty! His pwecious fee-fees are at stake! And that’s what’s really important here, let’s face it.
Here’s a quiz. For each of these scenarios, answer OK or Not OK:
1. You’re in an elevator with a woman you’ve never talked to personally, but you’ve heard her say that she doesn’t like to be hit on at conferences, that she’s not interested in sex that night, that she’s tired and just wants to go upstairs to her room and sleep.
2. You’re at a professional conference with your partner, and you’re approaching the woman who just gave the keynote speech, with whom you’ve had some superficial contact on the internet.
3. You’re giving one of your employees a performance evaluation.
4. You’re at a bar talking to a woman who is clearly inebriated.
5. You’re on a date. You have a romantic, candlelit dinner, you take a long walk holding hands along the waterfront, you sit down on a bench and kiss passionately, you continue your walk, this time with your arms around each other.
Give us your answers.
I’m kind of fascinated by all the sad, sacks of shit who think that asking them to stop and rethink their shotgun approach to coercing women to pity fuck them is tantamount to eugenics.
And as for anti-Darwinian: if you’re the kind of turd who thinks that sexual selection somehow violates your version of the naturalistic fallacy, then trust me; humanity is not lamenting the fact that you’ve spent most of your adult life jizzing into a sock.
I’m actually kind of impressed that y’all are so open and frank about how much you suck as human beings.
@Karlvonmox #250:
Even if you ignore the innumerable arguments above explaining how this constitutes harassment and sexism, you’re still wrong from a legalistic perspective as the conference policy contained specific provision for this. Of course, you could still contest that it’s not an explicit image if you’re really desperate.
Yeah, I remember.
What I remember is that the sad, pathetic, little fuck never has anything to say about any issue but this one.
I’m surprised he has time to have sex, given how busy he is with his mouth wrapped around his own cock.
It’s certainly what keeps *me* up at night.
Shorter FTB for today.
Elyse is minding her own biz, gets handed skeevy card by skeevewads who flee. Gives a detailed analysis of the obvious – this is not ok. Much agreement. MRA’s come out in full force “But why? What if? Hows that? But naturalism! My boner! Compliment! Overreaction! Complement! Evolution! I’d love it! MY BONER!!!”
DJ Grothe – If skepchicks could just stfu more women would come to TAM.
A second bingo card. With thanks to Josh and LDTR for suggestions.
#264:
I probably came off as someone not getting it, but I rather objected over there to a) the perceived exaggeration of any such things, at all, to the extent that even attempting to become friends could be misinterpreted as harassment, and b) the specific one where someone, without stating any context, insisted that there was never any situation where it was appropriate, ever. Its hardly clear that the answer was No to 1-4, and yes for 5, or even how the poster figured you ever get to 5, since even the hint of interest in any other context was, “imposing your internal emotional state on someone else.” So, yeah, I think some of it does get exaggerated. And, frankly, so would most people, if they bothered to step to one side, long enough to realize that context ***is paramount***, but when ever discussion of such a situation happening arises, context goes right out the window.
So why do you get to be the arbiter over what Elyse is allowed to be offended about? What, she’s not enough of a human being to decide for herself what offends her?
You are treading on kungfuckwhoever’s right to treat human beings as things. How dare you!
So you admit that sexual objectification, treating a human being as an object that exists for your personal pleasure is okay? You really do not read what anyone else writes, do you? Individual stories, by people who were treated as objects for someone else’s personal pleasure are just fucking anecdotes? It doesn’t agree with your reality and can thus be dismissed?
Yes. It may be harassment and it is sexist. They told Elyse that, no matter what else she does, her only actual use is as a sexual plaything.
What is sexually repressing about treating women as human beings?
karlvonmox,
Except for asexuals. But I suppose those don’t count, as they are not you.
Seriously. We’re talking about not creeping out people in order to make the entire group more diverse, more interesting, etc. And all these whiny ass boys say “What do you mean women don’t like it? I would like it! Therefore, they have to like it! Because, I would like it!”
And you know, these dumbasses are envisioning being propositioned by people they would want to have sex with. Because, those are the only women that exist, of course.
And grothe can go fuck himself. The day that douche has anything useful to say on the topic of women in secularism is the day hell comes into existence, gets a reputation for being really hot, then freezes over. He needs to STFU.
LOL. Expect crickets in response. Misogynists never have an answer for this question.
Fu-Douche, I have this lovely, decaying, maggot-ridden porcupine all nice and lubed up for you. Shove it hard, Cupcake, until it lodges in your throat and takes care of that troublesome breathing difficulty you are suffering from. Ta.
If it helps me avoid acting like a stalker/harasser/clueless walking boner, I’m OK with that.
karlvonmox, you are invited to join Fu-Douche in spiny activity.
karlvonmox (#250)
Soliciting people for sex is not a purely mental activity that doesn’t involve other people.
We talk about that all the time. We just do it in a way you wouldn’t understand because it’s generally accepted that women aren’t just moist holes for men to ejaculate into and that women’s reactions to being propositioned are important considerations in figuring out the politics of communicating sexual interest.
Kungfuhobbit,
No one wants it banned. People just want it to be “banned” (if “against a voluntarily entered into code of conduct” = banned) at conferences.
Do you see the difference?
Feel free to pass pictures of your, or indeed anyone else’s, genitals to anyone you please. There is no ban. There are, however, consequences. Are you such a tantrum throwing, mewling infant that you cannot handle consequences?
I go into bar, go up to large gentleman, stand on his feet and ask for “a quick go on your Mrs, mate, she looks like she needs a proper man”, I expect a well earned pasting. Especially if said large gentleman is a feminist.
I go to a conference of professional adults and, considering this is not a specialist sex conference, whip out either my throbbing boner or a photo of my purple headed tumescent cock, and hand it to a lady or gentleman of my choosing, I expect to be taken by the lughole and escorted bodily from said conference with my knackers in a sling.
Why? Because I think nice, hell even nasty, ladies in bars should be able to drink without me going up to their large gentleman friend and treating them as if a) they were not there and b) pieces of meat for his disposal. Call me an over sensitive dribbling bumflower, but women are people. I can ask her. Nicely.
I also think that at a conference the people, especially the speakers, are not there to fuck you, they are there to do their job. Speak. On a subject they, presumably, know something about. You do your job which is listen. Or bark and hurl furniture about as appropriate.
What you do not do is go up to a female speaker, a professional there just to speak, and say “Nice tits, love, fancy a go on my one eyed warrior?”. Why because whilst she may indeed have nice tits and be monumentally flattered by your elegant advance, she is also an intelligent, professional person likely being paid by your conference fees to be there. Dismissing this aspect of her person is tantamount to getting up halfway through her talk and saying “That’s nice, treacle, can you can it for a bit, men talking, make yourself useful and get us a brew will you?”. In other words it simply ignores her professional nature within a professional context and reduces her to the sum of the parts you wish to oh so briefly put you tiny little pee pee in.
Not so nice is it?
I don’t know what you do for a living, perhaps you have risen to the lofty heights of draft excluder or paper weight, but whatever it is, should you ever have a professional gathering of shit heads, imagine a large gentleman of the homosexual persuasion approaching you and offering to use your mouth as his personal ball resting place for the remainder of the conference. Just after you’d given a talk on precisely how to be a very professional speck of fly shit.
See the problem? Hint: It’s not because the guy is gay, that’s irrelevant.
There’s you, all in your best…suit…all proud because mummy and daddy are there to watch little Kungfuhobbit do his first big public talk. Mummy has washed your face with a spit covered hankie, you’re so proud. And up comes this man and offers to secrete his plums in your gob. That’s how seriously he takes you. You are nothing more to this man than a gonad stand. All your effort, all your achievement is as nothing to him. You are a glorified jock strap. An ambulatory bollock ornament.
That’s not very nice is it? Not very ennobling of you as a human being. Not recognizant of your whole rich sum of personhood. In fact it’s pretty fucking demeaning.
Now imagine it happens at the next conference. And the next. And the one after that. And half the times you walk down the street. And at work. And in relationships. And you see it on telly. And in adverts and films and books and video games and indeed in every medium there is. You are not a person, you are a nad rest. Nothing more. Nothing less. Might that begin to piss you off just a wee bit? Might you long for a little space where this wasn’t true? Where Mummy and Daddy Kungfuhobbit could come and see their brave little boy not get asked to have balls dunked in his mouth at every turn? Where you could truly BE?
I imagine it would be nice. I imagine you would like that very much and wish for it just a bit.
Welcome to the world of being a woman.
Maybe, juuuuuuuust maybe, we should make some kind of allowance for this if we wish to include more women at our conferences. And we do.
Louis
Sometimes, being interested in women for a reason other than sex is a good thing!
feralboy12 – avoid that trap. That piece of shit isn’t being honest. He’s mystified that women talk to men that aren’t him, because he can’t get them to talk to him no matter how much money he drops on PUA courses.
he needs to believe that being a creepy ass harrasser is the only way to ‘get chicks’ because that’s the instruction his money has bought him. If that doesn’t work, then he wasted his money. And he’s far to superior and perfect to have been duped!
I know precisely how to instigate sexual relations with a woman and not fear repercussions.
I say “Evening love, how’s about a bit of jiggy jiggy” and the Mrs promptly kicks me in the balls. Thus is the relationship between her foot and my spherical rhomboids maintained.
Louis
P.S. Some of the above might not be entirely true and possibly solely for comedy purposes. That’s right, she uses a spade.
Gunboat Diplomat
One anecdote is an anecdote. one hundred anecdotes might show an emerging pattern. Fucktillions of anecdotes spread around every forum anywhere that deals with this subject is fucking conclusive evidence. Unless, of course, you can come up with some explanation (not involving tin-foil hats) as to why they’d all be lying?
WAAAAAAAAAAIT!!!!!
Have you castrating feminazis been hurting MAN FEE FEES (Important) again?
What have I told you about doing that?
Okay every one of you naughty naughty feminists line up. It’s time for spankings. And only one each, I can’t keep rewarding you like this, for fuck’s sake my hand hurts!
Louis
@Daz
Precisely. As the saying goes: “The plural of anecdote is not data, but the limit as anecdotes approach infinity is.”
The second simple guideline is, again: you don’t have sex with most of your friends. Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.
I don’t think this qualifies as a guideline as stated. What is PZM trying to say here? Don’t have sex with most of your friends? (Kind of a non sequitur, under the circumstances). Or, don’t feel as though you have to have sex with your friends ? DOesn’t seem to fit the context either.
Any help? Please don’t flame me; I feel stupid enough as it is, not being able to grok a “simple” guideline (sic)…
@philboidstudge
It is quite literally what it says. Sex is not a necessary condition for friendship.
I don’t really have time to respond to all the shit that gets hurled my way after I comment on one of these topics. I seem to have touched a nerve with Brownian in particular – its not my problem he gets an ego-boost from putting down others he doesn’t agree with.
I don’t comment on every post because I agree with the vast majority of people here on almost every single issue that comes up, except for this one and a few others (“dictionary atheism” and the controversy over the “obey your masters” billboard ring a bell), plus I actually have a life outside of sitting on my computer refreshing the same page.
I’m just disillusioned by this notion, whether actually stated or implied, that any unwanted sexual attention is always inappropriate. If a person pursues despite CLEAR signs that the other person isn’t interested, THEN its inappropriate. But not before. There is nothing wrong with being interested in sex and indicating that in some way – in fact in our society the men almost always have to make first move, whatever the cause. I don’t understand what is mutually exclusive about indicating sexual interest in a woman and treating her as a human being. We are all capable of doing both.
I’m sure this handing out cards thing might actually work for this couple in a small number of cases. That being said, I’ll concede that Valindrius has a point, and it was most definitely inappropriate to be handing the card out at the conference.
WHY DO YOU FUCKING HAVE NO FUCKING UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEXT?
Karlvonmox,
So what ElevatorGuy did was inappropriate?
Louis
philboidstudge
I read it as “Don’t make getting laid your goal. Make making friends your goal.” “Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.” merely emphasises the point: Really don’t make getting laid your goal. The object of friendship is first and foremost, friendship, not a stage on the road to sex. If sex happens, great, but don’t make it the goal.
Shit…I just refreshed the page. This means I have no life, right?
Fuckballs. That’s not good. Where can I get me one of those?
Louis
Karlvonmox
You know, we can’t actually tell when you are thinking sexually about someone, not having mindreading skills or anything. Nor do we particularly care what you are thinking. The problem comes when those thoughts lead to actions – such as propositioning random people you’ve never spoken to before.
Keep your thoughts inside your head and no-one will know, or care.
Funny how “I object to myself or others being rudely propositioned in a completely inappropriate context” translates to “no one is ever allowed to be sexually attracted to anyone else, ever” in Whiny-Privileged-Idiot-ese.
Gee, thanks.
Kungfuhobbit, meet John Morales. John Morales, meet kungfuhobbit.
Uhm… the hint is in the word UNWANTED. I would have thought that’s obvious. If one knows it’s unwanted, or even that there’s just a reasonable chance of it being unwanted, than one should realize that it IS FUCKING INAPPROPRIATE. Also, and I realize this has been said a gazillion times already, but there’s this thing called CONTEXT.
Louis, I think the way you get a life is by complaining endlessly on the internet about how other people are talking about such unimportant things and being on the internet, thus demonstrating your fascinating range of interests.
Something like that, anyway.
Umm, what does it mean if the print’s worn off my f5 key…?
Karlvonmox,
Far from it. To completely unabashedly quote myself in reply to someone else on a related matter from here:
Louis
@skepticalmath
It is quite literally what it says. Sex is not a necessary condition for friendship.
That is not quite literally what it says. Quite literally, it says, “Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.”
But even if ‘condition’ and ‘side effect’ meant the same thing (it doesn’t!), I’m not sure what this “guideline” has to do with the swinging couple. By which I mean, they might know this to be true, but it would not have prevented their overture (because it doesn’t apply),
Translation: I’m a fucking coward who can’t admit when he’s wrong.
No, diddums, you THINK you can do both. If you ACTUALLY could, we wouldn’t have to have these conversations over and over and over and over again. You ignore what women say, because it doesn’t fit what you’ve decided is okay. You argue with women’s experiences, because it doesn’t conform to what you want to be true. This negates the possibility that you treat women as human beings.
Being sexually interested in someone and treating them like a human being ISN’T mutually exclusive. Its only mutually exclusive for PUA sockfuckers and whiny ass MRAs who are apparently incapable of thinking of women as anything but pussy vending machines that are obviously malfunctioning if they don’t put out on demand.
@Daz
Yes, I guess that’s true. Really the only way to read this is as separate from the swinging couple’s case.
and
It’s unwanted, there is no reason to do it. It will not end well. It will not achieve the desired outcome. And then the second quote. But it might work a small number of times. Skeeving out a whole bunch of people is OK if you might get laid once. The mere potential of getting laid is more important than being a decent human being.
Trust me, your boner aint worth it. Sex with the desperate is always a waste of time.
Caine:
I ♥ you so hard.
I almost want to engage in cupcake-like behaviour myself, just to see what insults you come up with.
But I’m sure there will be plenty of cupcakes in this thread, even without my help.
Louis: You are a delight. I don’t know if I can join the Groop Secks with Louis queue, because that’s not really my thing. But here are some virtual *cookies and boozes* in appreciation of your efforts.
Well, gawrsh, I’m just a backwoods human being with supramarginal reading comprehension, but ah reckon it prob’ly means “you shouldn’t expect to have sex with everyone you consider a ‘friend’.”
Azkyroth #296, see Karlvonmox #289. Not my claim, his.
Daz #300, Inferior manufacturing. It cannot be your fault. That’s right out.
Jefrir #299, Ahhh I get it. Well two can play at THAT game:
I am not one of these saddos on the internet endlessly refreshing the page just so that I can tell people who tell other people on the internet that they are saddos for presumably endlessly refreshing the page that they have no life. More than that, the topic of feminism and sexual politics is so trivial to me that I must comment upon it to tell people who trivialise it that their trivialisation is, in fact trivial. More trivial than the trivial topic under discussion.
I, unlike these people, have a life.
Louis
The problem is that these guys don’t see friendship as a necessary condition to sex. For them, it’s as personal as jerking off, the receptacle on the other end being a woman is a bonus. The desires, dreams, and self respect of said receptacle are irrelevant.
What puzzles them is why this is important.
philboidstudge #304
Sorry, I don’t understand what point you’re making. (Not snark; I really don’t see what you’re getting at.)
philboidstudge – In this context it means that this couple apparently thought they have some sort of connection with Elyse because they read the blog or something. And that this could be why they thought it would be appropriate to do something so ridiculously assinine.
PZ is saying there are conditions that must be met to call someone your friend, and treating them like a fuck toy isn’t one of them. (and, really, would you consider someone your friend who did treat you this way?)
That’s what I took from it anyway.
@LTDR #248
What’s more, why do the people telling us to get thicker skin seem to have the thinnest skin possible when told that something they have done or would do is not OK?
Bingo.
That sums up every sockfucking PUA on earth.
Nutmeg, #306,
Oh you are most kind.
The Groop Secks ™ queueueueue/pile/mishmash and generalised Groop Secks™ activities are not compulsory even if you are in the queueueueueue. I’d explain, but it’s quantum and there would be maths.
However, we cater for everyone. This is a LouisCorp event where the only meaningful consent is enthusiastic consent, when we say “yes” we mean “ooooooooooh yes”, and as such for our patrons who don’t always want to get slathered in lube and generally furtle their way through a pile of writhing humans you will find the complimentary bar and buffet. Featuring hot and cold dishes, a full variety of alcoholic beverages and recreational pharmaceuticals, and a chill out zone.
Please don’t enter/re-enter the orgy immediately after having the chilli con carne. Someone substituted the bell peppers with naga jolokia last week and we thought we had a case of gonorrhoea in the pile. Not nice.
Louis
@Daz re #310
I’m agreeing with your read: “Don’t make getting laid your goal. Make making friends your goal.” “Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.” etc
…but I don’t see what this has to do with the swinging couple.
Haha, sorry, that was totally my bad — sometimes jargon seeps so deep within me that I forgot the usual meanings of words. Logically speaking, a “necessary condition for x” simply means something which is always implied by x. So saying that sex is not a side effect of friendship means that friendship does not always imply sex, or, equivalently, sex is not a necessary condition for friendship.
But, I admit, that was totally my bad.
On further thought, I think what you might be missing is that this particular bit of advice does not follow directly from the incident. Rather, PZ is clarifying that when he says that sex is something that friends do, he doesn’t mean all friends.
philboidstudge
They appear to have assumed that a few messages on Facebook made them friends of hers, and furthermore that said friendship gave them licence to act as they did.
Oh crap, I knew the name sounded familiar. Urgh, PUAs… *spit*
@ Illuminata
Okay; I guess I missed that the couple assumed a friendship or pre-friendship (reading back, I see they have or had a thin FB connection with Elyse). I thought they were just being dickish and twatish swingers.
I think I give such people a little more slack than most. It is creepy and asinine to hand out nude photos of yourself, but I think of such overtures as sad more than “harassing” or sexist, though I can certainly see how others would take greater offense at it.
Louis,
Why, that’s interesting. Count me in!
Yeah. I think the point is that, while you should be friends with all the people you fuck, this shouldn’t be taken as instructions to attempt to fuck all your friends.
Speaking from experience, fucking with friends is generally better than fucking with strangers. Fucking strangers can sometimes lead to friendship and/or more fucking, but it is a crapshoot.
When I say “better” I just mean that the sex is better. No moral judgment should be inferred.
Right back at ya, Nutmeg. ♥ By the way, do not let Louis put a tattoo on your ass for love or money.
*light bulb goes on*
Because they’re selfish douchebags?
I haz an epiphany!
@LTDR :D We’re going to need round the clock volunteers for the MRA WHaaaaaambulance very soon.
Caine, #322,
YOU PROMISED NOT TO TELL!!!!!!
Look, how am I going to destroy the universe by summoning the power of the Old Ones without occasional mythic, gothic and generally eldritch tattoos placed ever so precisely on people’s arses?
Hmmm?
If I don’t get that right the power of the orgy won’t be properly harnessed in time for the alignment of the planets and the end of the Maya….
…I’ve said too much.
{Waves hand}
This is not the secret conspiracy of pervy arse tattooing IlLULZminati you are looking for.
Louis
Err, I meant LDTR.
You are correct. Any unwanted sexual attention is always inappropriate. Any unwanted sexual contact is always inappropriate. Why the fuck is this so fucking hard to fucking grok? Unwanted sexual attention treats a woman (or child, or man) as an object whose only purpose is to provide sexual release. When you do this, you are treating the human being as an object.
How can you not see the connection? The couple’s goal was to gain a sex toy not a friendship. The couple was treating Elyse as an object to be used for sexual pleasure.
Pee U Asshole?
(Yes, I know it is Pick Up Artist, but PeeUAsshole just sounds so much more appropriate.(
Louis:
You cannot fool me, Louis. I know you’re just looking to date Yivo.
Louis:
Yes, but you see, Louis, large gentlemen are people. Wimminz who go out in public unaccompanied by their lawful owners are ambulatory moist holes.
Karl:
What Illuminata said at #303.
IOW, issues that require you to regard them from the perspective of someone other than a white dude.
Oh, not this hoary old line.
The cause is sexist double standards, but since it doesn’t affect you, I doubt you’ll acknowledge it.
Illuminata:
AHAHAHA!
Philboidstudge:
Must be nice, never to have to be on the receiving end of that shit.
Caine,
Pfffff.
Who isn’t?
Louis
Not cool, phil. We don’t serve pineapples to our most distinguished guests anymore, so expect a platter of porcupine for your efforts.
“You ignore what women say, because it doesn’t fit what you’ve decided is okay. You argue with women’s experiences, because it doesn’t conform to what you want to be true. This negates the possibility that you treat women as human beings.”
I have news for you Illuminata – women arent some monolithic, uniform group that agree with your assessment of every situation and the general hysteria that comes from your radical feminist wing. This is why you demonize any woman that comes along with a different perspective, because they interfere with the polarity and “us vs. them” dynamic you want to set up.
Every situation and every person is different. You cant simply pin down every interaction into “THIS IS ALWAYS INAPPROPRIATE” and “THIS IS ALWAYS APPROPIATE”. There is a grey area. Hence the reality of why there will always be awkwardness in any place where people gather and sexual interests arent mutual.
I also have news for the rest of you. Some WOMEN dont WANT to know the life history, dreams, desires, of the person they are having sex with either. PZ is wrong – sometimes sex does happen before any meaningful “getting to know” period. Its not just the “PUAs” you hate so much, but its people of both genders – and I know this from experience. It is NOT just men who do this.
Don’t try to instill your own personal morality about when its appropriate to have sex onto others. Again, this is something theists do.
But some women DO. And their wants MATTER. I guess it’s the last part that you have so much trouble with.
karlvonmox, douchecanoe at large:
Why I thought you didn’t have time for this, having a life and all, little sockfucker. Tsk. In this case, you may wish to pretend you have a life, and go away. Your feeble attempts to demonstrate your thinking ability are pure fail, Cupcake. Go with the flounce.
What is a cat going to do with an iPad? At least get him something with a mouse.
Shorter karlvonmox: I’ve seen women leave with other guys they haven’t known very long. It happens!! Stop judging me!
Louis:
I can’t speak for everyone, however, I’d be game.
What we are talking about here is when it is appropriate TO SOLICIT A STRANGER TO HAVE SEX, and NOT when it is appropriate to have sex.
And if you are unable to recognize the distinction between the two, then you are not ethically fit to participate in human society, and I would ask you, politely, to leave.
And if you can recognize this distinction, but think it is appropriate to deliberately ignore it for the sake of making an argument, then you are also not ethically fit to participate in human society, and I would ask you, politely, to leave.
There will be some situations when this is true. In most situations it is not. Approaching someone at an atheist conference who has just finished giving a talk, and who you only know through a few exchanges on Facebook is not one them.
Do you want to think this through a bit more ?
Learn what words mean.
karlvonmox
And I have news for you. Unless you have a magical ability to only single out such women for your attention, this means squat. If ‘playing the odds’ means that you end up violating the personal space of women who don’t want to be cold-propositioned, then you’re still putting your hard-on before their right to be left the fuck alone.
Karlvonmox,
Any answers to my #291 and #301?
Or are you, ya know, going to keep whinging about straw men?
Louis
As far as I’m aware, the only organisms with uteruses and wings are bats. O.o Is he saying feminists fly at night and eat bugs? I don’t get it.
We fucking get that women aren’t a uniform group. You just can’t assume that women in general are totally okay with your sexual advance, just because there are some women out there who are, you asshat. A certain proportion of women have voiced their discomfort at being propositioned like this. Saying that some women don’t experience this discomfort does not make the fact that at least some women do go away, and their opinions and feelings on the matter do matter. Are you really that incapable of empathy? (Actually, why do I even ask. You’re fucking PUA scum)
As has been expressed a couple of times now: unwanted sexual attention is UNWANTED and therefore INAPPROPRIATE, pretty much by definition. And yes, unwanted sexual attention is ALWAYS inappropriate.
Karl, if I’ve read you correctly, you’re saying that because some women — or, to be fair, men — don’t care about the life history of their partner, it’s therefore appropriate to treat every woman — or, again, man — as a potential sex-with-you-haver? Because geez, that would make you a dunce.
Actually, the oviduct of birds is quite commonly referred to as a uterus.
I remember Freddy Mercury, when asked what he does for fun, said something like, “I have sex. I have sex with whoever I choose.”
We can be sure that he wasn’t friends (first) with everyone he screwed.
Why should friendship come into it anyway unless it’s just a concept some boring old man thinks will get him a few new girlfriends and plenty of nods from the yes-men here?
This post is a load of bollocks. PZ is making stuff up again…, just like the time he claimed that no college student of his ever had a crush on him.
You know PZ’s time is up when he needs to lie like a bishop.
Karl, old buddy old pal.
Can you answer a simple question? I’ll repeat, for your convenience:
So, does it?
This is true, and I wouldn’t disagree with it at all. Sorry to disappoint you.
However, how do you get to that point? You could be an asshole, and go up to every woman you meet and say “Wanna fuck?” and you will sometimes hit the jackpot and find a woman who’ll enthusiastically say yes. Great, you got laid. But what your sexual calculus fails to take into account is that for every successful (by your narrow definition) encounter, you have pissed off or alienated or creeped out 20 or 100 women.
I do not consider a strategy that requires me to parade the fact that I’m an insensitive, hormone-addled jerk to the world a good one. I do not consider a strategy that annoys far more women than it “wins” (and then, only in the sense of a brief sexual experience) a successful one.
Your view clearly differs. But then, you’re an asshole.
¡hostia! So Freddy Mercury was a rapist, or did he mean something different?
Ogvorbis,
Well, it’s hard for Karlvonmox because he’s pretending that “unwanted” just means “turned down.”
It’s just an expression of the basic “can’t blame a guy for trying” attitude.
Azkyroth,
Is… is one out of two good enough?
Yeah, sometimes you peacock with your big hat and neg on her hair before trying to seal the deal, and sometimes you peacock with your lamé vest and neg on her clothes before trying to seal the deal.
Of course, we should probably read in an unspoken “…as long as they choose to have sex with me.” But at the end of the day, does it really matter? Freddy Mercury’s ownership of a good singing-voice doesn’t make him some sort of moral genius.
Porco always means the same thing: “Nobody’s paying attention to me.”
Looks like we can add Porco Dio to the growing list of people obstinately refusing not to miss the point.
Sad.
Friendship should come into it because friendship is a good and valuable thing. Seriously: one good friend is worth 100 bad lays. I don’t understand people who can’t appreciate this point.
I would love to stick to a strategy that wins me new friends. I know you’re trying to use innuendo by calling them “girlfriends”, but these are relationships without a sexual dimension, so that’s rather silly.
The way you call my claim ridiculous is by arguing that it’s no less ridiculous than that a grey-haired, pudgy, boring 55-year-old man might not be considered sexy by a 21-year-old woman? I like my students and I hope many of them like me, but I have no illusions that this in any way implies a sexual interest. Grow up, guy. You’ve got all the sexual sophistication of a 13-year-old boy.
So you’re saying…friendship works? Then why are you dissing on it?
(anybody else wants to untangle the rest of the thicket of stupid from Pigman, go ahead, it makes my head hurt)
Externalising costs.
I see well know asshat and all round fuckwit Porco Dio has arrived on the scene. Such fun.
All this has been adressed. Read before you write, asshat.
A (attempt at) a personal insult to PZ and some whining about groupthink. Yeah, right, we’re all totally impressed now.
Please indicate exactly where PZ has lied in this blogpost? Or rather, no, don’t even bother. Just go the fuck away, you miserable little shit. We don’t want you here.
Karlvonmox,
I’m sorry but I am forced to agree. This does happen and I have frequently been the beneficiary. Women are sexual people too! Who knew?
What I am struggling with, and this is perhaps where you can help me out, champ, is how this is even tangentially relevant to this incident?
And since I am part of “the rest of you”, how is it relevant, or even contradictory, to anything I’ve said?
I’ve got nothing against anonymous, “meaningless” sex. I enjoy it when it happens. It’s one type of sex. But when it does happen, I am beyond exceedingly sure that the person in front of me wants to partake before I make my (and I hate myself for using this word) “move” (usually they’ve made their’s actually. It’s a fucking good way to be sure). This is remarkably not the case in this instance. Nor does it involve a “life history”, brief conversation can usually suffice in the right context. Hint: the right context is very rarely a conference and very very very rarely with a speaker at that conference. What about this is troubling you? Is context somehow tricky to grasp?
I, and most likely most people here, have no problem with sex, however it is done as long as it is fully consensual etc. What we have a problem with is pissing people off needlessly when hitting on them. There’s a difference between a reasonable approach that unjustly pisses someone off, and an unreasonable approach that justly pisses someone off. Hence why I asked about ElevatorGuy.
The sweaty, grunting, passionate, pull my ball hair and call me Nigel, down and dirty sex isn’t the problem. Walking up to every woman you meet and asking “DOWN TO FUCK?” and then following every rejection with “DYKE!” is. (Or equivalent)
Are we getting through to you yet?
Louis
Have you met Porco? Do you honestly think the putrid little fuck has anything resembling a friend?
Brownian,
I am fairly sure one of his hands likes him.
Or at least it says it does. I heard it was cheating on him with other dicks. Not that that’s a bad thing, you should just tell your partner. Disclosure, just one cornerstone of an adult relationship.
Louis
I should hope he hasn’t, but then I’m reminded of the shear volume of misogynist creeps that are out there. Scary shit, that is.
Brownian:
Does his fleshlight count?
And of course his hands will SAY they like him. They are entirely dependent on him for fluid, oxygen, food, on all the other necessities of life. The power discrepancy in that particular abusive relationship is way too large to expect anything else.
Having myself been made mildly uncomfortable by sexual advances in a more appropriate context, I can only begin to imagine how terrible it would be to be propositioned in such a context.
Again, I am thankful for the availability of anecdotes that can help to rectify my privileged blindness, and for the courage it takes to bring them forward. I am learning, and this improves not only myself, but my society.
Mostly, I just wish there were more I could do. This sort of thing is really beyond the pale, and I hate that I live in a world where it happens.
Audley,
It rejected him.
It turned up on my doorstop last night, bags packed. I hadn’t the heart to turn it away and it seems happier now it’s free. I put it on the mantelpiece next to a life size representation of Ron Jeremy’s wang made from lottery ticket papier mache. They seem to be getting on famously.
Louis
And of course, bishops will ALWAYS land on squares of the same color as its own square of origin. Eternally steadfast, the epitome of consistency, they are the one chess piece that never lies.
Louis:
It’s a sad state of affairs when someone is so fucking creepy that their sex toys run away from home.
I really hope that the idiot pig doesn’t have any pets. :-/
<blockquoteFriendship should come into it because friendship is a good and valuable thing.Friendship may be a valuable thing but so are chance sexual encounters. I’ve had several, initiated a few and even been offered to join a swinging couple (which I politely declined without playing the harassment card).
Making a rule of friendship-before-fucking is a tad silly. Where I live there are swingers clubs, swingers pubs, parties where the men put their car keys in a bag at the door when they arrive and when a woman is ready to leave she’ll reach into the bag and pull out a set and go home with the guy who’s keys she picked. This is northern Europe – a pretty free and civilized place.
Just because some people can’t deal with sexual advances and others pick inappropriate moments for a proposition doesn’t mean that the drivel in this post is anywhere near reality based.
It’s not ridiculous at all to expect some young lass would be attracted to a boring old man. No.
And there is no reason to lie about that either. I wish one of them would step up to the mic and say, “oh yeah, PZ? I’d have done him time and again.”
Beware, this might just happen… and just because your narrow view doesn’t allow for it that doesn’t make me a 13 year-old. It makes you either ignorant, stupid or a liar. Take your pick.
Audley,
They turned up an hour or two before the fleshlight. They didn’t have to hitch.
Which, let’s be honest, is fucking hard when you have no thumbs.
Louis
P.S. I know I have privilege, and thus can afford mockery, but does it make me a bad person to enjoy mocking the sexist fuckwits so very much?
Yeah. I didn’t mean that I was necessarily OK with being afraid of “repercussions” in every encounter; there is certain a middle ground between fear of being seen as a harasser and walking around with your dick out. The MRAs always want to exclude that middle. Which is a fallacy. There’s probably a name for it.
But anybody looking for an indication of whether a sexual proposition is welcome or not should probably, you know, take a clue from the context. The situation. If a woman is at work, she’s where she is for some express other purpose; she’s not there hoping to get hit on. It’s not a bad default assumption that such attention is unwanted in that case. And I think it’s a very good assumption that no woman doing her professional thing wants to deal with propositions all day. And that’s what you’re opening the door to when you buy into the idea that it’s acceptable to hit on a woman in those situations.
Guys who think it’s OK and appropriate unless there’s some clear sign that it’s not? I can’t say what kind of sign they’re looking for, but I suppose a row of running lights and some kind of intermittent buzzer would suffice. Me, I assume the fact that she’s there for some express other purpose to be a pretty reliable sign.
Can someone enlighten me as to why Porky McDouchebag thinks it’s relevant to the discussion whether some 21 year old might, conceivably, ever be attracted to PZ? Because I don’t get it.
Lest they forget, need we remind these mansplainers that our society recognizes the desire for sex with strangers, and sets aside places where the propositioning of strangers is expected and acceptable? And if one really must get one’s kicks that way, one can go to these places sincere in the expectation that most strangers they’ll meet there have implicitly given their consent to being propositioned already, by the willful act of entering said premises? And wherein one can proposition to one’s heart’s content without fear or guilt?
Need I add that in some of these places, the sex may even be free of charge?
Must I also mention that a Secularism Conference Hall is not one of these places?
Amphiox, #374,
Your point about different places is very complicated and requires blood be channelled away from my boner and towards my brain for the purposes of thinking.
This hurts.
Therefore you are a prudish, extreme feminazi, castrating bitch.
Glad we got that sorted out.
Louis
I must have missed something. I vaguely recall encountering a few of Porco Dio’s posts before and I don’t recall such a degree of blithering cluelessness, blind dishonesty, or ethical depravity.
Am I misremembering and confusing him with someone else?
Personally I’m looking forward to the next sexularism conference where we can all meet up for coffee and have a big fraternal laugh about our differences.
Yes yes, these may be considered special cases, with different rules.
The fact that a lot of people don’t like being cold-propositioned automatically means that cold-propositioning is rude, at best. We in the civilised world call this concept ‘manners’.
The fact that you acknowledge the fact that there may be inappropriate situations, means that you actually do understand the above, yet apparently choose to ignore it. Nice…
I’m sorry. Where did PZ say you are a 13 year old? I quote:
That doesn’t say what you claim it says.
I won’t. I promise.
Probably, yes. He’s always been a class 1 asshole as far as I can remember (of course it’s also possible I’m misremembering).
Amphiox:
Yeah, I think so. As far as I remember, Porky’s always been a flaming doucherocket.
I shall. PZ claimed never ever ever to have been attracted to a student and that no student was ever ever ever attracted to him. He knows what I’m talking about.
Considering the thousands of men and women he’s lectured and that not a single one has ever had a crush on him is a little on the far side.
It just shows how out of touch he is and that’s why I used the example in this thread.
Society also has designated places and times in which it is acceptable, encouraged even, for an individual to hit another individual until that individual is unconscious, bleeding, and broken.
Brownian, #383,
Ah I see you have met my mother in law.
{Sad trombone}
{Business with bladder}
{Divers alarums}
Louis
Ah… So not relevant at all, then. Glad you cleared that up, Porky.
I like to pronounce it as one word, with a heavily aspirated /p/ and a short diphthong. Try it–it’s a great way to express your feelings about the puas.
Porco Dio,
So because (in your view, obviously you know more about his life than he does) PZ is wrong about him fancying students and students fancying him, he is wrong about the principle that treating people at quasi-professional conferences in a friendly manner before entertaining them with junk shots is a useful way to avoid potential discord and discouragement?
Glad we got that cleared up. Very logical. Well, it isn’t, but hey, we can’t have everything now can we?
Louis
Groupthink! Just like evolution!
My apologies, but Im not sure Im going to get to every response here. I will try, but I have to be somewhere in an hour so this might be my last comment. As a whole Im actually pleased that I bothered to comment – it has made me think a bit (and that’s what you all want, right?)
“Karlvonmox,
Any answers to my #291 and #301?
Or are you, ya know, going to keep whinging about straw men?
Louis”
Louis,
What EG did was clumsy and ill-advised. But Im not sure it can harassment/sexism/potential sexual assault/etc that others have called it.
As for your #301, Im not sure I disagree with what you wrote – we can probably then agree then that the problem lies in the actions that manifest themselves from those thoughts. Some of the people on here (apparently “radical feminist” is incorrect, although the label seems apt) would seem to argue that taking action on those thoughts before some kind of “getting to know” period is always inappropriate. This is what I did not agree with – since the “getting to know” period is highly variable, depends on the person, and isn’t always required.
Amphiox, I understand the distinction, but that comment was in response to what Illuminata and others were saying about how bad it is to have quick anonymous sex.
Matt Penfold, if you read my earlier comment you will see that I’ve already conceded the point about that particular situation – I guess this discussion has evolved into a broader argument about how to indicate sexual interest in people you meet.
“However, how do you get to that point? You could be an asshole, and go up to every woman you meet and say “Wanna fuck?” and you will sometimes hit the jackpot and find a woman who’ll enthusiastically say yes. Great, you got laid. But what your sexual calculus fails to take into account is that for every successful (by your narrow definition) encounter, you have pissed off or alienated or creeped out 20 or 100 women.”
Ah, the Man himself responds. This is also a response to pentatomid and michaelblayney. First off, I am not and never have advocated going up to every woman I meet and saying “Wanna fuck”. Even if you are truly interested in NOTHING but sex this will never work. Second, I am not interested in fucking every woman I meet (is that shocking?). But I do know from experience that moving fast to a woman Im interested in in some way always tells me where I stand because it makes my interest clear. This can be done any number of ways depending on the situation, but the best way is probably just to ask for a number and set up a date. When there is mutual attraction after meeting someone for the first time this can be very effective (remember I said that in our society it’s usually the man that has to make the first move, this is a reality that cannot be denied at the moment). I’ll once again reiterate that I get a general sense from all of these threads that this behavior, and indeed any behavior that indicates interest in a woman is to be condemned at atheist conferences because it might make someone uncomfortable. Tell me if I’m wrong.
It is apparently not worth it to tell you that you’re wrong, because you’ve ignored the five thousand fucking times that people have explained to you that CONTEXT FUCKING MATTERS.
Karlvonmox
Thanks for getting back to me.
You said in #289:
RW had spent all night saying she did not want to be sexualised in this way, showing how it is a problem for some women, a problem sufficient to dissuade them from attending sceptical/atheist events. ElevatorGuy was there, he heard the talk he heard/participated in the extensive post talk discussion at the bar.
Then he ignored all of RW’s clear statements and signals on the matter, isolated her (perhaps inadvertently) in an elevator, and made a tactful, if slightly graceless, sexual advance.
Given that context, answer my question, was what he did “inappropriate”? “Ill advised” and “clumsy” are not what I asked. I’m using YOUR original word.
Ignoring for the moment “harrassment” and “potential sexual assault” which I think are red herrings, I’ve never mentioned them, how was his action not sexist? I.e. not casually dismissive of a woman’s stated desires?
No one is denying there is a spectrum of human interaction necessary before sexual propositions can be made. What is being fought against is the consideration that the actions of THIS couple in THIS context were appropriate or not significant.
Please stop making straw men.
Louis
Oh and: You’re wrong.
Louis
Really? Have you tried having an interesting personality? Sorry, dumb question. I know you haven’t.
Of the people I’ve slept with, over half I’ve slept with on the first date, and I never had to make the first move. With other, I was already friends with them, and things progressed from there. Hell, I’m still good friends with most of my exes.
Check out my picture. You can see I’m nothing particularly special in the looks department.
So, how much do the PUAs charge for their seminars again?
karlvonmox,
You’re either being dishonest or just very stupid. Sorry, but it’s been laid out for you like a gazillion times in this thread. If you haven’t understood by know, I’m honestly at a loss how to explain it.
How the fuck are there people who are actually arguing that it’s appropriate to proposition virtually complete strangers for sex?
I mean, seriously, people, there aren’t a whole lot of black and white situations that don’t involve body counts but this is one of them.
Don’t proposition a stranger for sex unless the context of the interaction explicitly states that it is within the rules.
Brownian comes back with another butthurt comment.
I remember Greta Christina once did a post asking this exact question – “guys, do you feel pressured to make the first move”. Answers were overwhelmingly in the affirmative.
It doesn’t always happen this way. A few times women have actually made the first move. But the majority of the times I’ve had to initiate. I don’t know if its the people I’m hanging out with, or what.
I can confirm this.*
Oh what? WHAT? You expected me NOT to go there?
You set that up, you lobbed the ball over the net, it was a smash. Come on. I’m weak. We know this. I can’t resist a joke that easy or that bad. I have a problem.
Louis
* The cock, however, magnificent. A masterpiece of phallic engorgement. According to some trick photography at least!
You can tell a PUA by their dogmatic insistence on talking over you to tell you how adept their are at human interaction..
“Shut up, bitch! I’m trying to tell you how I get Ito women’s pants by listening to them.”
Do you hang out with feminists? No?
Well, then.
Again: do you have any filters between what you think and what you say/do?
I realize that a lot of people don’t know this, I only learned it like a year ago myself, so I’m definitely assuming this is unintentional. “Butthurt” is homophobic in origins and still often is in its uses. Its use is therefore a bad idea and you should avoid it. Anyway, stop pretending you know shit about Brownian and his motivations, because it’s really obvious that you don’t. (I don’t know either, but I do know that this isn’t what Upset Brownian looks like.) Whatever you’re trying to do, that just makes you look like more of a jerk and a dumbass.
Yeah, it totally sucks that the people who think guys like you are slimy pieces of shit ask me out and take me home. It sure ain’t my ass that hurts, chump.
I don’t even have to spend all night telling them how alpha I aim, first.
But do go on explaining how women and men are. I’m fascinated.
Cipher,
Is it? Ohhhhhhhhhhh fuck!
I thought it derived from being given a spanking.
I’ll try and keep a lid on that.
Louis
I’m still skeptical of this; it’s pretty common knowledge that pain accompanying anal sex is a Bad Thing and the behaviors it’s used to describe are far more consistent with, say, constipation or hemorrhoids than gayness.
(…is a Bad Thing, and thus something that wouldn’t be part of the experience of people accustomed to it. Unfortunately the variety of male-male sexual experience *isn’t* common knowledge.)
Or your arrogance that a woman must sexually gratify you, and the ignorance to go beyond bounds civilized people stop at.
It’s called ‘peacocking’: making sure you sick out from the crowd as much as possible, in the hopes that you won’t be forced to compete with other men on your merits.
Reasonable trade?! It’s a fucking improvement.
Yeah, there’s another variable in that equation you might be overlooking.
Louis, that was actually what I thought before too. Unfortunately, I can’t get to the threads where it was discussed because fucking sciblogs – it came up here, (warning: cached page, almost unreadable) but at least part of the discussion appears to depend on links to things that don’t exist anymore because FUCKING SCIBLOGS. Maybe someone with better search-engine-fu than mine can get at it.
Don’t rely on your personal idiosyncracies to tell you what the term commonly means. That’s the opposite of being skeptical.
Look it up. We have an easily available quantified measure: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=butthurt
There’s a helpful start. Now, look for any entries which explain what’s causing this pain to posteriors. Here’s the first one:
Finally, here’s the first one that doesn’t reference anal sex:
Now back to your regularly scheduled homophobia:
And so on, and so forth.
Gorsh! We don’t got nuthin’ like that here in Amerryca! Cray-zee! Sure am glad that you still don’t let the women drive though, that would be a disaster!
Because Porco hangs out by the community college in a dirty raincoat, that’s why.
Also, he thinks Lolita is an instruction manual.
Also, he eats his toe jam.
Dang, I’m having a hard time insulting this guy worse than he does himself.
Hmm. So the “contains the word ‘butt,’ must be about gay men” meme is more widespread than I realized.
Urbandictionary as “objective” is more than a little silly, though.
Weird how none of those places is ‘keynote speaker’s table at conference’. It’s almost as if Porco’s just as much of a fucking idiot as he’s always been.
I did something a good while ago that I found quite useful:
Comment by Porco Dio blocked. [unkill][show comment]
It’s a great resource on this kind of word. It’s a social site; definitions are voted up or down.
It is currently the best quantified resource on usage in the wild. The skeptical thing is not to poo-poo the data; if you have better data then just offer it. Otherwise this is what we’ve got, and data is better than any one person’s gut feelings.
(If you’re partial to personal idiosyncracies, though, just look at John Morales’s report in the cache CC linked.)
Azkyroth — even if you’re right, what Urban Dictionary shows is that a lot of internet users do believe that it references gay men. So regardless of origin, considered linguistically, it still functions that way. I’ve mostly given up trying to fight this one, but I think a lot of people including me would appreciate it if everyone could find a different way to insult whiners.
…which will then be somehow converted into a something-“ist” insult…
What?
Speaking of alpha-maleness, the wankerings of these various PUAs, MRAs, and assorted apologists always reminds of that tongue-in-cheek car add some years back about automotive symbols of sheer testosterone drenched virility, which showed a sequence of three young bachelors and their purring sportscars, and then the one someone older gentleman with the SUV, and five children.
If there is any relevant biological measure of successful alpha status, it is certainly not number of momentary conquests, or conquest attempts.
There are plenty of insults that have avoided becoming sexist or homophobic or whatever over the years. Usually by not having anything to do with parts of people’s bodies. So, my advice, is go that direction. Or just come up with really unique and ingenious insults, which is better anyway.
So, try not to be an asshole?
Hahahaha yes, indeed, I do see what you did there.
[In fact, I don’t know that anyone has ever claimed that asshole is homophobic or sexist or whatever….]
Give them time.
Azkyroth, what exactly are you trying to snark about here?
So, Karl, you have standards: you don’t want to have sex with every woman alive. Every woman alive will no doubt be thrilled to hear this.
Perhaps this will make more sense for you: Assume that no one ever wants to have sex with you — this should be easy; I’m assuming that’s why you’re a PUA in the first place. Assume that no one wants to hear about your attraction to them, or to which part of their anatomy you wish to apply your genitals. Common, basic courtesy, that. Now here’s the tricky part: go about your life. It’s that simple. Once you stop treating women — they’re people! Idiot! — like potential loin-shedders, perhaps you might actually meet one who’ll appreciate that you’re not objectifying the fucking shit out her. All I’m hearing from you is “I don’t have to respect boundaries; I’m fuckin’ Alpha-dog-bro-mate-chum-pal-guy.” Good luck with that.
So. Azkyroth… are you saying that people are seeking the destruction of insults for the sake of it?
That doesn’t sound very likely.
Well said, michaelblaney.
Really, if the women here are saying “don’t do that”, how is it in the interest of someone whose goal is ostensibly to be with women to say “too bad; it’s what I wanna do, so just shut up and accept it”?
Really, it’s impossible to be with women, as people, if you don’t actually want to listen to what they have to say.
oops, sorry for the misspelling of your ‘nym, michaelblayney.
*sigh* I’ve been reading this blog for almost a year, and today is the first time I’ve desperately felt the need to make a killfile.
To Karl, kungfu, chrispollard, et al.:
CONTEXT–HOW THE FUCK DOES IT WORK?!?!?!?!
Azkyroth, why don’t you ask gay men whether ‘butthurt’ is offensive? Oh, sorry, it seems you did… neglected it, and doubled down.
I already backed off. Was that insufficiently humiliating for you to be satisfied?
This is what I’m snarking about. Any actual concern for anyone else being hurt, being subordinated to the desire to be the one doing the hurting.
I don’t see how that’s related to the strange claim you made about insults.
“Anyway, stop pretending you know shit about Brownian and his motivations, because it’s really obvious that you don’t. (I don’t know either, but I do know that this isn’t what Upset Brownian looks like.) Whatever you’re trying to do, that just makes you look like more of a jerk and a dumbass.”
This is rich – I come back and check the thread, and the same people who do nothing but make assumptions about my background and motivations are the same ones who are telling me not to do it on someone who has contributed nothing substantive to this whole discussion.
Then I witness another useless diatribe, this time about what insults I can or cannot use, while making broad statements about who it is offending with little evidence.
Meanwhile, there was nothing about the points I made. Too much vague nonsense about “context” while ignoring the obvious point that context can be different for different people and different situations. Nobody has made any substantive case here whatsoever.
karlvonmox:
What, you mean this point?
Hm. Seems to me that it’s inappropriate if the other person doesn’t want it. That’s just logic, and common human decency. What you describe is selfishness: you should be able to sexually proposition anyone you want who hasn’t explicitly told you “no.”
Tell me, Sweet Pea, do you like spam?
Except for all the stuff you’ve been too intellectually dishonest to acknowledge.
Always inappropriate AT A SKEPTIC’S MEETING WITH SPECIFIC AND EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICIES.
Attendance at a SKEPTIC’S MEETING WITH SPECIFIC AND EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICIES, is a CLEAR sign that the attendee ISN’T INTERESTED, AT THAT TIME.
It would be different if it were a single’s bar, but IT WAS NOT A SINGLE’S BAR.
Get that through your thick, thick, thick, thick skull.
O rly?
O rly?
Slimeball, you have no idea how fucking unjustifiably gentle I was with you with that “diatribe.” I went out of my fucking way to make sure it came off as well-intentioned advice, because I assumed, apparently wrongly, that you didn’t want to appear homophobic. Now I see that the effort was wasted, so I’ll stop coddling your fucking fee-fees.
To Karl, women are in a perpetual state of consent, as per patriarchal culture.
Only a loud scream of “NO GODDAMIT” suffices as a “clear” sign that the person isn’t interested.
If there are AMBIGUOUS signs that the other person isn’t interested, it’s okay to pursue.
If there are NO signs that indicate whether the person is either interested or disinterested, it is okay to pursue.
In reality, the only time to pursue is when there are CLEAR signs that the other person IS interested. “Pursuing” anyone who hasn’t given a clear signal that they want to be pursued is rude and aggressive. It’s right there in the word choice: “pursue” rather than “flirt” or “ask questions” or something along those lines. “Pursue” is what you do to someone who’s running away.
karlvonmox wrote:
Well, in a sense that’s true; all Brownian did was make us laugh (at you, not with you) by repeatedly pointing out what a clueless, pompous ass you were. However, since we already knew that from what you’ve revealed about your mental capacity and character via what you’ve written here, it can’t really be considered substantive.
That’s because they were, well, stupid – and already dealt with. Duh.
Which is WHY THE CONFERENCE had an EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICY.
Linked HERE, (and present at PZ’s original link)
http://skepticampohio.com/anti-harassment-policy
And direct from that policy:
So this is what you call vague?
And you know, karlvonmox, here’s the thing. Around here, when you assume that any poster but particularly a well-known regular is posting with perceived vehemence because you “touched a nerve” when it’s apparent to everyone else that xe’s somewhat idly toying with you, it’s not like it’s hurtful. Maybe a little annoying. Mostly it just makes you look really really silly. Kind of adorably pathetic. Like a Maltese inside a fence chasing a passing Rottie barking savagely, then strutting back thinking he’s chased the Rottie off.
So again with the “I was trying to do you a favor.”
Amphiox:
Did it say anything about “Pleasure Cards?”
No?
Then it was vague with regards to “Pleasure Cards.”
It also did not specifically call out exposure of my best bits. Which, I might add, deserved a fucking parade, and not just the brief baring they received at the reception.
And I don’t appreciate the resulting giggles of bemusement. Those were inappropriate.
Indeed, mostly Brownian wasn’t talking TO the slimewad, he was talking TO the rest of us, ABOUT the slimewad.
Of course the Baron vonMoxie, like most misogynist slimewads, is also a narcissistic slimewad, who thinks that he is the centre of everyone’s attention, all the time, and just because he has barfed out something, everyone who refers to it MUST, of course, be responding directly to him, because only HE matters.
Also, too, I’d like to add that an explicit anti-harassment policy should’ve been unnecessary. This isn’t an opt-out policy like phone spam. You should assume the other person doesn’t want sexual attention unless you’ve established otherwise.
Period.
Whether there’s an anti-harassment policy in place or not.
Any behavior otherwise is shit-flavored douchebaggery.
Of course. “Explicit sexual language and imagery” is clearly not appropriate, but “Explicit sexual language and imagery on a card” is a grey zone, not being specifically proscribed.
Fucking greyscales everywhere, man. What’s a poor, binary-thinking alpha male to do?
Cross posted from Ed Brayton’s blog:
Old joke warning.
One day before Esso became Exon, I was driving up gasoline alley in a nondescript town. Stopped at a red light, I saw a swarm of bees fly over my pickup and land on a Texaco sign just up the street to my left. Except for two or three that landed across the street on a Esso sign.
I sighed as I was again informed of an unfortunate human proclivity. In every swarm there is at least a couple of SOBs.
Gender-specific opprobrium aside, it was at one time a joke making the rounds. I remember it now because it was, and remains, so very descriptive.
Blah blah blah – more of the same. You should all already see that more than 100 comments ago I already said that the pleasurecard incident wasn’t appropriate. Frankly I’m tired of rehashing the same retorts over and over again to you clowns. This is very telling though:
“Attendance at a SKEPTIC’S MEETING WITH SPECIFIC AND EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICIES, is a CLEAR sign that the attendee ISN’T INTERESTED, AT THAT TIME.
It would be different if it were a single’s bar, but IT WAS NOT A SINGLE’S BAR.”
Translation: Dont hit on women, or think of them sexually, or indicate sexual interest in any way. Above people were telling me this is a strawman – but it seems to be whats really going on. Absolute stupidity.
And lest the poor binary-thinking alpha males want to make hash over this, “establishing otherwise” doesn’t necessarily have to be verbally shouted to the high rooftops, or signed before an Notary Public in triplicate.
Our society recognizes that sometimes adults of both genders are interested in receiving and giving sexual attention to strangers and/or brief acquaintances.
Our society also recognizes (though it seems not so well) that other times adults of both genders do not want to receive or give such attentions.
So our society has established locations and circumstances where the usual social restrictions are relaxed, areas of, as it were, implied consent. Places wherein an informed adult can “establish otherwise” simply by making the choice to be present in that place.
A Conference Keynote Speaker’s table/hall is NOT such an area, anymore than your grandmother’s living room is such an area.
This is (partly, among other things) what we mean by CONTEXT.
PZ:
Yah, I know. I’m about to tap into a keg of explosives, because most people shan’t believe this disclaimer (and I have what I consider good reason for it) that my forthcoming point is what it is and no more, and will imagine I am alluding to many sinister concepts.
That written, onto the meme-pit I venture:
“Guys, don’t do that” → “People*, don’t do that”.
(The offending party, here, was “one man and his wife”)
—
* People are a superset of guys.
You’re really bad at translating.
A bit of levity, but sort of on topic. This issue of the webcomic “A Girl and her Fed” involves a jerk propositioning at a gas station, and how the heroine answered it (for the punchline, also read the next page).
The Girl explains that this is creepy behavior. Do I need to say I fully agree?
Depending where you are working, other issues of this webcomic may be NSFW.
Oh, the blue pixie is the ghost of Amelia Earhart.
The Clownfish on the next page is the heroine’s boyfriend’s implanted computer’s interface (an upgraded version of MS Office’s Paperclip – don’t ask).
Just because you SAID it doesn’t make it true. Your subsequent behaviour and posts CLEARLY show that you were LYING when you said that back there.
NOT AT A CONFERENCE WITH AN EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICY.
At a Single’s Bar, or other similar locale, go right ahead. The adult women who choose to frequent a single’s bar express their consent to having strangers indicate sexual interest in them by choosing to be present at that bar.
A woman who agrees to be a keynote speaker at a Conference WITH AN EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICY has DONE THE OPPOSITE. She has expressed her REFUSAL OF CONSENT to have strangers indicate sexual interest in her BY HER DECISION TO PARTICIPATE IN THAT CONFERENCE.
And you, when you DECIDE TO ATTEND THAT CONFERENCE, have also given your implicit promise that, during the conference, YOU WILL NOT BE EXPRESSING SEXUAL INTEREST IN STRANGERS AT THE CONFERENCE, per the EXPLICIT ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICY of the Conference (which really shouldn’t have to be explicit – it should be implicit for all conferences of this type).
And if you then go ahead an harass anyways, you’ve done MORE THAN just engage in sexual harassment. You have also BROKEN YOUR IMPLICIT WORD to the Conference organizers.
The only absolute stupidity on display here is yours.
Welcome to the fapwit club, fapwit.
Well you see, I used CAPS LOCK.
The fapwit seems to labor under the impression that, because CAPS LOCK was used and CAPS LETTERS are BIGGER and more EXPANSIVE than regular letters, the meaning of the sentences also therefore EXPANDS IN MEANING, in order to encompass whatever the hell he wants them to mean.
karlvonmox wrote:
♫ One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong… ♪
The difference in kind of significant, in that when you’re only thinking about women sexually, it’s not you thrusting your peeny in someone’s face because you believe you’re entitled to do it whenever and wherever you want.
And as for ‘hit on women or indicate sexual interest in any way’, if you can cite where any poster has said – or even implied – anything like this as a rule for all situations, feel free. Because anyone who isn’t a privileged, self-absorbed idiot would be able to read what’s been written and realise that it’s their having chosen the wrong time and fucking place to hit on someone that’s the problem.
Why do you clueless fucking asshats not get that? In simple language: stating that there are places where you shouldn’t hit on other people ≠ doesn’t mean never hit on anyone, anywhere, ever.
Fuck, but you’re whiny. I don’t waste my time with your kind of baggage, butterbrain.
“The fapwit seems to labor under the impression that, because CAPS LOCK was used and CAPS LETTERS are BIGGER and more EXPANSIVE than regular letters, the meaning of the sentences also therefore EXPANDS IN MEANING, in order to encompass whatever the hell he wants them to mean.”
Um, you’ve clearly just confirmed with your comment that those words meant exactly what I thought they did. Don’t express sexual interest in any way at an atheist conference, because it will always be branded as harassment. Always inappropriate, always unwelcome behavior, and you claim to speak for everyone there (including those women that problably wouldnt mind hooking up at said conferences). You’ve already said it. Notice I’m not hearing anything anymore about context or strawmen, etc. Maybe the late hour and lack of sleep is bringing out your true colors.
Its too bad since some people actually go to these things to get away from religion dominated society and meet like minded people, even potential romantic interests. What you are doing is creating a toxic climate.
Democrats are the REAL racists!
Seriously dude, negging isn’t going to get you a handjob from anyone here.
Fucking choke to death, you lying, sleazy puke.
Is that what you thought they meant? Then why did you say this?
But the point is, when the privileged, self-absorbed idiots do, in fact, choose the wrong time and place to hit on someone, even if you might just get, begrudgingly, half-heartedly, fleeting acknowledgement (and immediately nullified by subsequent mansplaining) of the inappropriateness of it, it is NEVER acceptable, EVER, to ever criticize, call out, describe, relate, admonish, look quizzically at, disapprove, raise an eyebrow, or otherwise draw attention to the mistake of the choosing.
Because privileged, self-absorbed idiots must NEVER have their privileged, self-absorbed deficiencies exposed, and thus shamed, to themselves, their peers, and *gasp* especially, to women.
Karlvonmox,
I’ve wasted my time saying this to you enough times now with no effect on your idiotic fucking arguments, but just for s&g, here:
FUCKING CONTEXT.
There. Feel better?
Like women. And they don’t want sleazy fucks like you around.
Remember this:
It’s because you’re a fucking narcissistic, self-centred sleaze.
Shut your fucking cake-hole, and learn how to stop being one.
karlvonmox wrote:
I guess we can add ‘oblate spheroid-shaped planet with time zones’ to the list of things your tiny brain can’t grasp, right underneath ‘context’.
Meh, its no longer productive to continue to argue with you self-centered clowns. You people aren’t listening and aren’t interested in getting past an elementary school playground level fight that just consists of hurling insults at each other.
Brownian seems to enjoy it though, his egotistical musings have the emotional maturity of a 10 year old bully who feels better about himself when he puts others down. Feel better buddy?
Amphiox and Cipher, Im also done dealing with your lack of reading or communication skills. Gets your heads out of your asses and stop assuming every single woman at every conference is going to think exactly like you.
Peace.
No I haven’t, fapwit.
Fapwit descends immediately to lying. Not surprising.
Not ON THE CONFERENCE FLOOR, if the CONFERENCE HAS AN ANTI-HARASSMENT POLICY, fapwit.
There are places and times you can go during the conference but NOT ON THE CONFERENCE FLOOR where expression of sexual interest would be appropriate.
And herein lies the deliberately intellectually dishonest distortion.
And the “express sexual interest” thing is ALSO a deliberately intellectually dishonest distortion. Unless the fapwit thinks that the only way to express sexual interest in another person is to harass them. Which is rather telling of its pathetic level of ethical maturity.
Why should I waste my time repeating what others have already pointed out and demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt, fapwit?
And apparently TWO posts counts as “not anything anymore” for the fapwit. Even goldfish have better memories than that.
Or else the fapwit is deliberately LYING, yet again.
Pitiful.
one good friend is worth 100 bad lays
actually, I’d say that one good friend is worth considerably MORE than 100 GOOD lays.
seriously, a good sex session is like a great game of [insert favorite sport here]. It’s nice to have in your life, but friends can save your life, a good lay is over when it’s done.
in fact, I’d say that in the end, a good friend is perhaps the most valuable thing to have as a human being.
Yes, that’s exactly what we’re assuming! It definitely hasn’t been explained to you over and over that we understand that and it doesn’t matter!
Gain some of your own before being arrogant enough to presume you can recognize it in others, fapwit.
Another lie and slander from the fapwit, as I never said any such thing. In fact it should have been OBVIOUS from everything I have posted that I believe the exact opposite. Which segues back to the reading comprehension bit.
NO.
To make peace with the likes of you on this subject would be a violation of every tenet of fundamental intellectual dishonesty and basic human decency.
So no. NO PEACE except by your unconditional surrender.
Brownian seems to enjoy it though, his egotistical musings have the emotional maturity of a 10 year old bully who feels better about himself when he puts others down.
hell, if the 10 year old bullies I dealt with had half the wit of Brownian, I would have let them beat the fuck out of me every day, and chalk it up to “valuable learning experience”.
*looks to see if Brownian waves me forward in the que…*
karlvonmox wrote:
Translation: I’m getting hosed and I know it. Time for brave Sir Robin to run away!
Translation: I hate the fact that you’re not only smarter than me, but funnier as well.
Translation: Brownian is especially good at pointing out what a jackass I am, so I’ll focus on misrepresenting him in the hope that is distracts people from realising that there are at least half a dozen people here taking turns handing me my ass and making the other readers giggle.
[pro tip: it won’t]
Translation: I suspect one or both of you are women, and because I’m the sort of man I am (e.g. an insecure pissant) I shouldn’t have to listen to you, no matter how grounded in logic the points you’re making are, and how much smarter than me you obviously are.
WAAAAHHHH!!!! Why won’t anyone listen to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!?!
Is it just me, or has karlvonmox just ignored the objections about how he failed to make any difference between actions and thoughts, twice?
Also, “.”
Also, “.”
This makes vonmoxie the sixth misogynist fool whose done this to me (as most of you already know, I’m male) on a Pharyngula thread. The other five, incidentally, were all eventually banhammered.
Of course he’s ignored it. His whole argument rests its entire rickety superstructure on that singular assumption.
Perhaps, having no capacity himself of restraining from immediately translating every sexual thought into action, he simply has no experience that such a thing is even possible, and just cannot conceive of such a thing at all.
I’m quite certain it’s more than twice.
Okay, Karlvonmox, you CAN’T hit on any woman, ever. Other people can, mind, but you are apparently incapable of doing so in an appropriate and non-harrassing way.
Seriously, this is not hard. You don’t have to be bestest friends for ever with everyone you sleep with – but you should at least know them well enough to know if your proposition is likely to be welcome. If you don’t know, either continue to get to know them, or back the fuck off. Your (tiny) chance of getting to fuck is not more important than women not being harrassed.
Karlvonmox, are you committed to giving every woman you meet a good impression of you, regardless of whether sex is on the table or not in the same country?
If not, you should be.
So basically, what he’s saying is that he can ignore all women who happen to find his propositionning uncomfortable and feel harassed by it, because, hey, some women do like it… Here’s the fucking deal, mate, you don’t get to dismiss people’s opinions and feelings just because they don’t suit you. (But then, ignoring stuff seems to be what you do best) Women are actually, you know, FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS, YOU ASSHAT!!! What they say, what they do, what they feel does matter. It’s been made clear, both here and elsewhere (eg. Skepchick) that a significant number of women are made to feel uncomfortable by the advances of douchecanoes like you. Again: if there’s a chance that your sexual attention is unwanted, AssVonHole, then it’s inappropriate. Deal with it. Your boner is not more important than other people’s feelings of comfort and security at these events, okay.
You know what, just never, ever communicate with women ever again, okay. PUA scum like yourself should be weeded out of the population. Fuck you.
PZ… :(
How could you say that!?!
I’m a little disheartened that Karlvonmox has ignored the explanation of why “never ever chat up women ever” is not what’s being said in favour of his own “translation”.
It’s almost as if he is not an honest interlocutor…
…luckily we never see any of those around here.
Louis
“PUA scum?” Pick up artists are scum now? As I understand it from books like the Game its all about shy men learning how to talk to try and get them into bed.
ie PUA’s seem to be interested in consensual sex.
The comments section on this blog gets nuttier by the hour
Yes, PUAs are manipulative, dishonest scum.
The comments section is getting nutty. You could improve it by leaving.
Listen to yourself… “to try to get them into bed”. It’s about psychological manipulation. It explicitly promises to train men in how to manipulate and control women in order to get sex from them: dehumanizing them, portraying them as targets rather than human beings. It’s a deeply unhealthy approach to relationships.
xkcd said it best. Pickup artists are dehumanizing creeps who see relationships as adversarial and women as sex toys.
@PZ I don’t think that will be very effective but shure we’ll give it a go.
Pond-dwelling algae will always be infinitely more decent than anyone who tries to convince “shy men” to treat women like Rubik’s Cubes in need of “solving”.
1) See woman.
2) Find woman sexually attractive.
3) Approach woman.
4) Use a series of techniques derived from pick up book/seminar to manipulate the woman’s feelings/thoughts in such a way as to coerce her to have sex with you.
PUAs, which stage of this process do you think is being objected to?
Louis
Consensual would usually encompass non-coerced, unmanipulated and with both participants being honest. The PUA is interested in sex, period. Consensual is entirely optional for those asshats.
“Consent” =/= “plausible deniability”.
Azkyroth,
Is that what you were doing at #417, #421, and #423, backing off?
Are you suggesting that commenters here were hurting you by pointing out that the term frequently has homophobic connotation?
Are you suggesting that a queer man saying “a lot of people including me would appreciate it if everyone could find a different way to insult whiners” was expressing a “desire to be the one doing the hurting”? Toward you?
I have some news for you, sockfucker. I’m not a radical feminist. However, even if I were, that doesn’t negate my argument in the least, nor does it give your worthless ass any grounds for implying such. We get it – you’re a whiny ass creepy bigot. You can stop reinforcing the message.
What the fuck are you on about? What women have I demonized? Obvious liar is an obvious dipshit.
No shit, sockfucker. THAT’S exactly what these conversations is about – the best way to navigate through. That said, you already gave yourself away up thread with your little Freudian slip about “unwanted attention”. Meaning you already know when your attention isn’t want but you press it anyway. .
Again, what the fuck are you on about? We’re attempting to make the entire group more diverse, more comfortable and – gasp! – facilitate hook ups without the creep factor. YOU, on the other hand, are throwing a ridiculous temper tantrum because women don’t magically do what you want them to do because its too ‘disillusioning’ for you to accept the fact that people don’t want to be hit on 24/7/365. Poor, poor baby. The world doesn’t work exactly how you want it to work.
Don’t’ try to shove your sockfucking PUA bullshit down our throats and pretend to be the victims. That’s something theists do.
You know what the best part of being called a radical feminist as a prejorative is? Given my my PT job, they would NEVER accept me in their ranks. I am, after, using what evoluation gave me to sell/promote my breweries. I’m the lure.
I’m the ‘chick’ Karl would be hitting on. I could straight up tell him what would be guaranteed not to work, and his response would be to throw a major wobbler and hide under the bed.
I am convinced that sockfuckers dont actually want to be successful with women, they want to be navel-gazing crybabies.
karlvonmox:
Right.
And stop assuming every single woman at every conference wants to have sex with you.
That’s the point, Sweet Pea: some might want to have sex with … well, probably not you, as you’re a narcissistic assclown. But with someone. Others (probably most, in fact) just don’t. This is true of the population in general. Most people probably don’t want to have sex with you.
That’s OK. Most people don’t want to have sex with me, either. I learned a long, long time ago that my self-esteem is not dependent on being universally sexually desirable.
But think on that a bit: most people don’t want to have sex with you. Unless you are in a location that increases those odds significantly (which, in your case, would be a convention of people who are chronically bad decision makers), most people don’t want to have sex with you.
Let’s go back to a question you conveniently didn’t answer.
Do you like to receive spam? No? It’s an annoyance, right? People who spam are exploitative doucheberries. They treat everyone as meat, effectively.
I fucking hate spam. Yet on the other hand, I don’t mind commercial offers from Amazon. Why? Because I fucking expressed interest in receiving them. I opted in.
Women get spammed by jackasses like you all the time. From my understanding, many of them are fucking tired of it. Propositioning a person under your opt-out scheme is effectively objectifying them, turning them into nothing but a fuck-toy. Many people (most, dare I say?) would prefer to be appreciated as something other than a fuck-toy.
Now, I realize you’re pretty fucking dense, so I’ll outline a few things that are acceptable (though this is not, obviously, a comprehensive list). It’s perfectly acceptable for two people to treat each other as fuck-toys and enjoy a nice evening of hot sweaty greasy monkey sex. It’s perfectly acceptable to proposition someone who has expressed an interest in you. It’s perfectly acceptable to express an interest in someone else, as long as you don’t cross the line.
What’s the line? That’s contextual. In most places, since the vast majority of people don’t want to have sex with you, it’s pretty much limited to, “Would you like to get coffee / a bite to eat / ice cream,” sorts of things. Then you get a chance to talk about personal interests, crack jokes, talk about shit. You know, figure out whether the other person likes you or not. So the line moves.
In a singles bar or an orgy, the line is quite a bit different.
Really, the only important point of this whole post is this: most people don’t want to have sex with you. So don’t assume they do. In fact, don’t assume they want attention from you at all. It’s not just bad manners, it’s fucking annoying.
And now as I’ve read further and seen the “butthurt” discussion (which I used to think was related to getting spanked, but over the past several years have concluded was at least vaguely homophobic), I wonder if the term “assclown” is also homophobic.
nigel,
As linguistic histories are contingent, if the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, there are almost certainly other Earths where assclown is widely used in a homophobic fashion.
However, because the term does not connote weakness as easily as a term which refers to being hurt does, there are probably fewer assclown-homophobic Earths than butthurt-homophobic Earths.
Consulting my references, I do not see evidence indicating that we live on an assclown-homophobic Earth.
ॐ:
That’s excellent. I like the sound of the word, as well as the connotation of creepiness, foolishness, and vast amounts of annoyance.
LILAPWL,
However, we do live on a world full of homophobic assclowns.
Louis
Why yes. Isn’t enjoying yourself the point of the exercise?
Now, maybe if you gave me CLEAR signals that you weren’t interested in arguing with me, I’d consider my actions inappropriate.
But these weak little snipes tell me you want to play just as much as I do, baby. Now give me some sugar. Show me some of that hot PUA charm. I’m so close…
Brownian:
Once again, you get to take the Internets home for today, ’tis all yours.
Its not of course, the problem being that when you try to pin down what it does apply to you get literally an arbitrary line in the sand, which no one can adequately describe, everyone is sure they can never the less identify, and which, when someone tries to figure out the parameters of, ends up looking like:
|maybe|—————–giant grey area—————–|never|
What is upsetting to some people, including me, is that the left “border” of “never” up there seems to change from post to post, because its not just the specific case that happened that is being discussed, its *every* case, and some people think that even suggesting attraction in virtually all cases is horrible, but they can’t quite define when it isn’t, while others have a much looser definition of where it is (some of them so loose that we would have to drastically change our cultural norms, so that attraction was something to brush off, not a thing to potentially scare/offend), and, the answer given seems to be, “Just treat everyone, in every situation, as though the left edge of ‘never’ is half way into the middle of ‘maybe'”. Because, the reality is, we don’t know, can’t know, and won’t know, where any single person thinks the line is, from day to day, or situation to situation, and certainly not if without risking offending someone.
Perhaps the problem is that you’re attempting to represent a complex, multi-paremeter “function” with a linear expression?
@Louis:
Well, you see, the universe is fined tuned for homophobic assclowns. Look at the value of α, for instance.
Sorry, behind on the 8 billion posts.. But, wow.. This guy must also be a corporate lawyer, or one of those ‘Constitutional’ lawyers you get pushing bullshit laws, or undermining others, by specializing in stuff like, “Well, we can’t discriminate due to race or religion but no one said anything about hair color!” Its also why, sometime, kicking the idiots out and not letting them back in is more useful that trying to create explicit laws. You end up with not one rule, but 10 rules, with 500 subclauses, and someone, someplace, will still find a damn loophole.