For a certain subset of horrible men, there are few things more infuriating than the fact that women they find undesirable can turn down men for sex. For this upsets their primitive sense of justice: such women should be so grateful for any male attention, these men think, that turning down even the most boorish of men shouldn’t even be an option for them.
Consider the reactions of some of the regulars on date-rapey pickup guru Roosh V’s forum to the story of Josh and Mary on the dating site Plenty of Fish. One fine December evening, you see, Josh decided to try a little “direct game” on Mary.
That’s what the fellas on Roosh’s forum call it, anyway. The rest of us would call it sexual harassment.
Josh started off by asking Mary if she “wanted to be fuck buddies.” She said “nope,” and the conversation went downhill from there, with Josh sending a series of increasingly explicit comments to Mary, despite getting nothing but negative replies from her.
After eight messages from Josh, with the last one suggesting he would pay her $50 to “come over right now and swallow my load,” Mary turned the tables, noting that she’d been able to deduce his real identity from his PoF profile, and asking him if he wanted her to send screenshots of the chat to his mother and grandmother. He begged her not to.
As you may have already figured out, from the fact that we’re talking about this story in public, Mary did indeed pass along the screenshots, and posted them online.
Poetic justice? Not to the fellas on Roosh’s forum. Because, you see, Mary is … a fat chick.
While dismissing Josh as a “chode” with “atrocious game,” Scorpion saved most of his anger for the harassed woman:
Look how much she relishes not only shooting him down, but damaging his reputation with his own family. She’s positively intoxicated with her power. Simply spitting bad direct game is enough to unleash her vindictive fury.
“Bad direct game.” I’m pretty sure even Clarence Thomas would consider what Josh did sexual harassment.
At any point, she could have pressed a single button and blocked the man from communicating with her, but she didn’t. She didn’t because she enjoys the feeling of power she gets from receiving attention from guys like this and then brutally shooting them down. It makes her feel much hotter and more desirable than she actually is in real life. She’s not there to meet men; she’s there to virtually castrate them for her own amusement.
I’m guessing here, but I’m pretty sure that nowhere in Mary’s profile did she encourage the men of PoF to send her explicit sexual propositions out of the blue. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t hold a gun to Josh’s head and force him to send a half-dozen sexually explicit harassing messages to a woman he didn’t know.
Athlone McGinnis also relies heavily on euphemism when describing Josh’s appalling behavior:
I don’t think its primarily the revenge she’s after, its the validation. She is enjoying the power she has over this guy and wielding it brutally because it shows she can maintain standards despite her weight and the doubtless numerous confidence issues that stem from it. In blowing up this guy for being too direct in his evaluation of her sexuality, she affirms the value of her own sexuality.
Oh, so he was just being “direct in his evaluation of her sexuality.”
In short: “I am wanted, but I have standards and can choose. I have so much agency despite my weight that I can go as far as to punish those who approach me in a way I do not like rather than simply blocking them. I’m teaching them a lesson, because I’m valuable enough to provide such lessons.
So apparently in Mr. McGinnis’ world women who are fat aren’t supposed to have agency? They’re not supposed to be able to choose? They’re supposed to drop their panties to any guy who offers to be their fuck buddy or tells them to “suck my dick?”
Also, I’m a victim bravely standing up against online bullying/harassment-look at me!”
Yeah, actually, she is. Get used to it, guys, because you’re going to see a lot more of this in the future.
This isn’t just a laughing matter for her. She needs to be able to do this in order to feel worthwhile. She has to be able to show that even she is able to maintain standards and doesn’t have to settle for just any old guy asking for any old sexual favor simply because she resembles a beached manatee.
And it’s not a laughing matter for you either, is it? You’re actually angry that a woman said no to a sexual harasser — because you don’t find her attractive. And because Josh — from his picture, a conventionally attractive, non-fat fellow — did.
Mr. McGinnis, may a fat person sit on your dreams, and crush them.
I hope you’ll be able to shred the rotten thing when you write about it, Sir Bodsworth.
No, I don’t have to write about it, thank goodness, but we all had fun shredding it in class. (I think our tutor hated it worse than the rest of us). The only person who argued for the book wondered whether if the text was making us all so angry, maybe that was the point.
Tellingly, he was the only one in the class who didn’t read it.
Wait wait wait, so this guy didn’t read the book… and argued for it anyway? What a chucklefuck.
To be fair, he raised the possibility, but everyone else said no, the book was just an inept hatchet job, he accepted it.
What’s the subject you’re doing, Sir Bodsworth? I mean, why was the book set?
Doing English Honours. The book was part of a unit on true crime. It’s interesting as a text because Garner make no attempt to be objective or to disguise her subjectivity, which is the most honest aspect of it as a text. Otherwise it’s a trainwreck, but you can learn as much about writing from the mistakes of bad authors as from the successes of good ones.
That sounds like an interesting, if skin-crawling, subject. 😀
Ha, I’m having memories of the last time I did an English class, in that first year at RMIT. Our teacher was the partner of Helen Garner’s ex!
Or rather, “our teacher’s partner was Helen Garner’s ex,” speaking of bad writing. 😛
Small world!
Yup!
Bill Garner’s an actor, and he came to class one day. I can’t remember what he talked about, except he praised Sir Alec Guiness’s acting, which made me really happy ‘cos he was my absolute favourite actor at the time (which long predated Star Wars). 🙂
Absolutely. It would be one thing if he announced that emotional intimacy isn’t for him and stopped there, but the fact that he tries to project his own pathology onto the rest of the world makes him an extra flaming five-alarm asshole.
I saw a photo of Roosh once, posing with a bunch of Brazilian models and one other guy. The body language was very telling. He was on the edge of the group, looking like a tagalong. All the women were facing towards the other guy and shunning Roosh. He’s not even good at being a douchebag PUA. The only schtick he has is preaching bile to the bitter.
sarahlizhousespouse: One would think the manosphere with its history of doc dropping and harassment would know the difference.
That would require some level of self-reflection. They see the doxxing as, “holding them accountable”, so her doing what she said she would is exaclty the same to them.
That’s what they tell themselves; it’s the strained analogy they use to justify a campaign meant to get revenge on someone they don’t know, for her having called to account someone else they don’t know.
What they want is to make an example of her; to make here suffer for defending herself; for thinking of herself as a human being worthy of being treated as a human being. They also want to drive her off the internet, and to make it public enough that some other women will just take the abuse that some other man chooses to ladle out to her because it amuses him to be an asshole and a bully.
I think (at root) the thing that bothers the MRM about sites like manboobz is they don’t know how to deal with being made mock of. In the same way making fun of the king: or otherwise making public critique of policy, was as great a crime as revolt (and more thoroughly punished. Usually a rebellion only saw some of the people punished, but each bookseller who trafficked in a, “libellous” publication would be: Elizabeth I (one of the more enlightened rulers of her age) had a man’s right hand cut off, because he sold a book which challenged a decision she might have chosen to make.
Punishments for booksellers in the Renaissance
dlz: That same crowd seems pretty quick to turn around and talk about how that isn’t appropriate when, say, a guy takes a shot in anger at a wife who was hitting him.
That’s the difference.
Me, I’m not a pacifist (per se). But I do believe that 1: violence is a last resort (in that if I am pushed to the point of violence, I won’t be voluntarily interacting with you again). 2: It’s requisite to be proportional in response. 3: As soon as it is done, in so far as is practicable, one involves the police.
So, in a battered partner situation, the violence is the last possible act the abused sees as being able to resolve the situation. In such a case I will condone (but not encourage, there is an important distinction there).
Taking a shot at someone just because they are hitting you, not anywhere near meeting the criteria. Taking a fist to someone (even in self-defense) and not involving the police afterwards is problematic. Doing it repeatedly, means you are doing something wrong.
So where do we draw the line? It seems pretty far down given the double standards here. If this girl had been creeping this guy and sent him nude pics, you guys would shit a brick house if he posted them online.
Bullshit. If the circumstances were reversed he’f have been within his rights to do just what she did.
Your projection is showing.
Mongoose: I’ve read about it. It’s shitty.
Re bullying: I was more treated as, “not one of us” by most people. There weren’t many people who actively tried to bully me. The only one who was “at school” was one who had a sort of moral leverage over me (I wasn’t always one to keep to the rules) and I wasn’t old enough to realise that his ability to do anything about it was lost in short order; which meant I had a semester of moderate misery (though it was good for my situation awareness, and learning to work systems so as to gain various levels of advantage in secondary ways).
But I did have some friends, and if anyone tried to actually strike me, I hurt them.
The last time I had someone try to physically bully me it went about four months of minor harassment; which ended when he (and a couple of friends) cornered me and a friend of mine). He got off easily, because it was one of his friends who tried to blindside me while I was paying attention to the primary agressor/threat. I’m certain he was concussed. It’s possible I fractured his skull.
So I never touched him (I don’t know what effect it had on his relationship with those friends). He (nor they) never came within 50′ of me again.
I’ve actually had rocks thrown at me a few times.
That happened to me once. Funny thing was I didn’t realise it was a rock. I thought it was a baseball that had missed, never mind the blood (stitching, or sommat). Didn’t parse it at as rock (never mind there was no reason for anyone to throwing a ball around; and no one with a glove: I just didn’t think of anything else it could be).
ikonographer: i am against making false accusations, but i’m not stupid. we don’t really know how often that happens.
Yes, we do. Somewhere between 2-6 percent of filed reports.
Same as for any other crime.
Now why am I not surprised they’d be shunning him? 😀
@Pecunium – and many police forces seem to lump things like “no corroborating evidence” or “assume she’s lying and don’t bother” under the same heading anyway. Those 2-6% figures are way inflated. (I know you know this, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it for anyone who doesn’t know or wants to pretend otherwise.)
@LBT:
Same here.
It’s why I can’t stand people who proudly go around calling themselves “humanists” (not “secular humanists” – just “humanists”), that come off as contrarians who are often ignorant or misinformed about an issue they “feel strongly” about. I’ve certainly come across many who were using rape and harassment apologia, usually with the self-serving excuse that they’re just being “objective” (which they aren’t).
It’s like when people call themselves “Libertarians” but each and every one has a completely different definition of what that means. It gets annoying when one self-proclaimed Libertarian, after pointing out another self-proclaimed Libertarian committed fraudulent business practices due to his ideology, that said person isn’t a “true Libertarian” – it’s like talking to people in various sects of Christianity, each who think they’re more right than the other for completely arbitrary reasons. Either way, they’re pretty dishonest about their own intentions and the fact they go around with this holier-than-thou attitude is intolerable.
Paglia’s written MRA-ish material? As if Shermer being a sexual predator wasn’t bad enough news…
I’m surprised MRAs aren’t all over Paglia, she’d fit right in.
I’ve never been able to understand a word of what Paglia’s written.
Yeah, everything I’ve heard about Paglia says she’s a skeevy contrarian and pretty damn misogynistic – that’s with an “iirc”, it’s been a while.
When I see someone claiming to be a humanist I think – what, are you Sir Thomas More? Erasmus of Rotterdam? Clarify plz!
Yeah the FBI stats are 2-8% and that’s for “unfounded” reports, not false reports.
Pecunium — shocked I tell you! Shocked! You, not stick to the rules?! And apparently our views on acceptable violence aren’t all that different, will have to remember this the next time it comes up.
Oh, and if anyone wants some examples of Paglia’s misogyny, check this:
http://theabsolute.net/misogyny/paglia.html
Like hellkell said, she’d fit right in with the MRM. She doesn’t just hate women, she hates English, too.
I’ve only read a couple things from her I liked (though they didn’t deal in feminism), so I decided to go to Wikipedia and look at the article on her. This bit was my “that’s fucking it” moment:
Y’know, I’m actually offended by that as a guy – since people like this assume we’re all incapable of restraining ourselves (nevermind many do so every single day with no problem) and thus just enable the worst of the worst to act that way, with the convenient excuse that it’s “just biology.” Except we’re not animals out in the wilderness who live completely by primal instinct, we’re capable of contemplating abstract concepts and being self-aware – which includes ethical behavior within our society. Claiming “natural urges” doesn’t make you a victim, it just means you lack self-control and inconsiderate of others. The fact these people try and use a scientific facade to validate it is fucking appalling.
Al… (I know you are probably reading this) Don’t make me tell John Scalzi what a stupid twit you are (and no, I don’t think he will ban you; and that’s not why I’d do it), because I’ve been ignoring your past there, since you’ve been a decent sort. But the obsessive way in which you come here to say things at 180° from what you say there means that one of those iterations of yourself is bullshit.
I’d like to think it’s here; and that the ass you’ve had (so frequently) handed to pissed you off. Why you can’t get over it is your problem. I know you like that he thinks you a decent sort, and you enjoy that. I’m more than willing to show him, not your past; but your obsessive, and ongoing present.
And I know he thinks well of Dave/manboobz, so showing him that you like to try and take the piss here, just for the sake of being an asshole… where there go your brownie points.
I am kinda ashamed that Camille Paglia was the first post-1920 feminist I ever heard of. (She was mentioned in a comic book I read at sixteen.) Gah!
Maybe Paglia and Tom Martin should get married and have incoherent feminist babies together.