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.
So, in epic short…
Rapist ex #1 — drunk at his apartment, been having consensual sex awhile
Rapist ex #2 — didn’t understand what stop means. Probably could’ve fought my way out of that one, but a quick assessment of the physics if I did had me thinking I,d be dealing with explaining how it totally was self-defense
So, what should I have done while piss ass drunk in a private residence with someone I should’ve been able to trust? How about when consensual sex “went south”?
If your answer is anything besides “you should’ve done what you did, I’m sure you had your reasons and those are valid”, or some variation thereupon, please go reconsider what you just said.
misery, I’m still waiting on those magical tips, evaluated academically by academic security people, and proven to be successful in preventing and/or resisting sexual assault on a large scale.
No, Anonymous Guy, you’re missing the point. It isn’t on women to be constantly vigilant and have all these strategies in mind (assuming we’re physically capable of them) for avoiding rape. It’s on men to STOP RAPING. It’s also on men to stop attacking other men, since they’re the source of most violence men suffer.
It’s bad enough women live with this constant “Do this, don’t do that” litany, half of which is contradictory anyway, without being told yet more surefire tips for preventing rape … presumably ones that don’t see us prosecuted for crippling or killing the bastard.
AnonymousGuy, what can people who’ve been hit by drunk drivers do to make themselves less attractive targets? What’s the best response to that?
I confess that made me laugh, especially thinking of some of the security people I’ve worked with.
Kitteh — neither? The former roommate had a shotgun just inside the “door” to his room — which was actually a curtain by the front door with another curtain before his bedroom proper, so I could’ve grabbed it, and it often resided under my bed when I was home alone at night (I don’t do night so well). Here…there are at least three with easy access, loaded and ready to fire, between me and the door.
They don’t have to be locked here, and I’m, amazingly, going to agree with my family on this one, if everyone in the house is an adult with at least basic firearms training, accidents aren’t really all that likely.
I think my father may be the only person I know who actively carries a gun around the house. Having one loaded and stored some place useable isn’t nearly as rare though.
Yeah I’m torn between security people = pecunium, and security people = “get out of my mall!” (Riding in a shopping cart, I was unfortunately not there for that)
““is there some optimal way to respond” sounds horribly like you are blaming yourself to some degree, ”
No, that just isn’t right. I don’t blame myself at all. The closest thing to blaming myself is probably my conviction (well supported by evidence) that I would probably encounter fewer dangerous situations if I didn’t do so much solo walking at night. But that’s non-negotiable to me. The night is my house. And also fuck those guys. They don’t control me.
But asking if there’s an optimal approach to a given situation isn’t victim-blaming. It’s frankly preposterous to imply that it is. It’s a type of reasoning, if it can even be called that, which I doubt you apply to ANY other area of the universe.
There is a conditioned response here (well-earned, I’m sure, from many arguments with rape apologists) that is blocking many of you from thinking clearly about this. It sucks that comes across as a really rude thing to say, but unfortunately the fact that it’s rude (here) doesn’t stop it from being true, or important.
To be fair, a good friend of mine is going for his masters in Computer Science and he’s really into the security aspect of it. But, you know, he’s also not a douchenozzle who says it’s “purely false” that sexual assault “prevention” tips don’t actually work. Crazy, right?
At what fucking accredited institution of higher learning? The University of Your Ass does not count.
Both misery and AnonGuy can get fucked. If that’s too emotional, OH WELL.
This dispassionate horseshit around real-world issues can take a very long walk off a very short pier.
Oh, fuck off. Take your dudely privilege and just leave already.
AnonymousGuy, what if you did find the optimal response to that specific situation? How would it help anything? You can’t go back and do it differently, and you’re likely to never be in that exact situation again. That optimal response you find (if you ever do) for that one situation will probably not be the optimal response for any similar situation you find yourself in.
@kirbywarp, right, a few examples of what I mean:
I’ve been reading the feminist blogosphere for a few years now (and honestly this is literally the only topic where I disagree with the mainstream opinion), but in any case, because of my reading here I’ve read about lots of typical experiences when people are raped. It might be an abusive boyfriend, a friend that drives you home when you’re drunk, a parent or authority figure, a stranger in a bush or whatever, but really there are only a limited number of typical cases. And in those cases there tend to be typical tactics used, red herrings that you can be made aware of and so on.
There are so many (feminist!) websites on the internet where people mention red flags for relationships and they seek to inform people to become wary of possible abusive behavior. My thinking is that you can extend this to rape: if people are more broadly aware of the methods that rapists use (someone in this thread mentioned keeping the glass filled as a tactic, just as an example) I think some rapes could be prevented.
I’m not saying that all rapes can be prevented or that it’s someone’s fault if they get targeted and fail to prevent it. And I don’t think that what I’ve just mentioned will make victim blaming more likely.
The reason I brought in the Security stuff is that I literally don’t see the harm in mentioning that you can evaluate my type of suggestions using the concepts from that field. And I think it’s anti-intellectualism to try and prevent such efforts because you are afraid that outsiders will claim your experience and take it away from you by looking at it abstractly. We don’t think that way for sociology or war documentation, even though poverty and war are also really bad things.
@hellkell, I’m going to have my master in security, please keep up with the real world.
Anonymous Guy, but as Alex pointed out before, you don’t even know what the “given situation” is until you’re already in it.
As to conditioned responses, do you not think women are conditioned from infancy to be trying to “prevent rape”? That we don’t alter and limit our lives enough already, without having this fucking twelve-point-plan in mind every time we step out the door?
What do you think we’re supposed to do, have some dispassionate (oh how the Devil’s Advocate rape apologists love that word) plan for What To Do ready 24/7? Are we never allowed to be just living our lives? Do you really think shock and fear can just disappear like *that* because we have this magic advice on what to do in this particular situation?
You’re not promoting more freedom and safety for women, you’re talking about yet MORE restrictions, and more ways in which “Why didn’t you do this?” will be thrown at us, without ONE WORD about changing rape culture or teaching men not to damnwell rape.
misery: I did not know the CrackJack people had branched out into the degree arena.
^CrackerJack
re: the drunk driving analogy, do you really mean to imply that if there were an optimal response to seeing a drunk driver careening into your lane, you wouldn’t want to know about it because that’s victim-blaming?
I don’t know of any such strategy, but if one exist I’d certainly be interested to know about it. I do know that if you see a moose in the road you should not try to avoid it completely (because they are too big and you’ll run off the road and crash) but should instead aim for its butt. I doubt that knowledge makes me appreciably safer when I’m driving in Maine but I certainly appreciate the person who bothered to do the research to discover it. Perhaps people who have had loved ones killed in moose accidents find it impertinent, but that doesn’t factor into it one way or the other for me.
Wow, the arrogance. WTF gives you or anyone the right to treat people as some sort of abstracts, to reduce their experiences to some sort of jigsaw puzzle? Empathy fail times eleventy. I’m reminded of my social science teacher who giggled her way through the film of the Milgram experiments.
“But asking if there’s an optimal approach to a given situation isn’t victim-blaming.”
I’m not saying that all rapes can be prevented or that it’s someone’s fault if they get targeted and fail to prevent it. And I don’t think that what I’ve just mentioned will make victim blaming more likely.”
So, for the third time, how do I make myself a less attractive target to a drunk driver? Come on, guys, what’s the optimal response to that situation?
*crickets*
@misery, So, in other words, these magical tips are only theoretical. Yet you have told us that our statements that prevention tips don’t work is “purely false”. I don’t actually give a shit that you agree with feminism on everything else. Do you think that’s going to make us suddenly be okay with what you’re saying? Not how that works. So you know what? Until you find these magical tips that can prevent any of the “typical” cases, don’t you fucking dare tell us that what we say is “purely false” and “anti-intellectual”.
It was mentioned already, but strenuous disagreement is not anti-intellectualism.
Kitteh: what a horrifying teacher.
Telling choice of words there.
I want to know how I can keep that drunk driver from careening into my lane in the first place. How do I control that drunk’s behavior?
hellkell – yeah, she was a douche. The whole subject sucked. Only reason I took that elective was ‘cos it was less worse than the alternative (and I can’t even recall what that was).