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.
Hm, my rapist met me at the movies, we watched one, talked about it, drove out to the river, talked, kissed, drove to a motel. Seriously, everything was fine up until he suddenly switched on the porn channel, which is not something you spring on a person. And then he tried to sneak out of using a condom. When I told him 69 had never been something I found enjoyable, he said “Let’s try it” and got on top of me. Then he wanted to try anal, which I said I was uncomfortable with, but he wanted to “try”, which consisted of him slamming into my perinium and into my vag at weird angles. Tell me what red flags should I have looked for? When he was engaging in conversation and totally respectful all the way till we got into the motel room? What was his typical rapist behaviour?
Christopher Pell, is that you?
“You can point out that he is engaged in bullying, but an attack is not an argument and can’t be reasoned with.”
Yes, you’ve given us quite a demonstration of how you can’t be reasoned with.
That’s rich, coming from Mr La-La-La-I-Can’t-Hear-You.
Seriously, you are really wearing out – or have worn out – the goodwill you had, with all this carry-on. You’re not being bullied, you’re being told you are wrong.
RE: AnonymousGuy
You can’t really engage with a bully. You can point out that he is engaged in bullying, but an attack is not an argument and can’t be reasoned with.
How exactly have I bulled you? Was it telling you to shut up, or that I was getting angry?
Setting aside that you came here and acted like an aggressive asshole and now apparently think that we’re bullying you (unless you’re proudly announcing that you’re bullying us?), apparently interacting with bullies is totally different than interacting with rapists, who you can totally prevent from harming you.
@cloudiah “I’m not actually opposed to educating people, in general, about red flags for abuse or (if they exist) red flags for rapists. ”
????????
I’m not saying anything other than what you just said you agreed with, I promise. 🙁
“Oh noes! We are being INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST!!!
Maybe it’s a language nuance thing, but your phrasing about the radio thing read as distinctly condescending.
Also, don’t universalise what’s done in Holland to the rest of the world, or assume that everyone listens to the radio at all (I do not). Suggesting I’m somehow “against people being warned” by radio campaigns is just stupid.”
You don’t have to wear being intellectually dishonest as a badge of pride you know.
In the Netherlands we have radio announcements against ghostriders, which I pointed out purely as an example of something you can do to prevent drunk drivers from killing people. (repeating myself, sorry!) How is that universalizing what’s done in Holland to the rest of the world? I assumed people would identify with the example, I’m sorry if I was being a bit presumptuous, but I don’t see any crime of character here.
Yeah, self-defence is awesome. But…
In every fight there’s a loser. What if you’re the loser?
Well, I’m not going to argue about whether the behavior towards misery and me on this thread constitutes bullying. That’s really something for you guys to ponder on your own time. I’m not complaining; I’m just trying to explain, as best I can, why I am engaging some arguments (because they are arguments) and not others (because they are attacks without any content.)
Meanwhile, P. J. Sci. Psych. strongly recommends that rape prevention efforts target potential perpetrators. Anyone who disagrees is obviously denying the facts due to excess emotionalism.
@misery,
Oh ffs. No, you’re not. No one here has ever said awareness of red flags is a bad thing. You were talking about prevention tips. Awareness of red flags, as has been pointed out by multiple people in this thread, is not a prevention tip. It might compel a third-party observer to act, but it does not help a rapist’s target to get away for reasons I’ve already stated.
“Meanwhile, P. J. Sci. Psych. strongly recommends that rape prevention efforts target potential perpetrators. Anyone who disagrees is obviously denying the facts due to excess emotionalism.”
Indeed, and both misery and I have stated explicitly that we agree with that assertion. And in fact the site I linked makes that point ad nauseum. It also houses the paper which is not very long which for some reason no one will read or even glance at.
“In the Netherlands we have radio announcements against ghostriders, which I pointed out purely as an example of something you can do to prevent drunk drivers from killing people.”
So why can’t we do things to prevent rapists from raping people? What’s so magical about rape that that we can only give prevention tips to the potential victims?
@Alex, I’m truly sorry for what happened to you, but we all have had bad things happen to us. I myself have been bullied to the point of wanting to commit suicide in my teens and of course it wasn’t my fault for being targeted by them and of course it really annoys me when people talk about how I could have done something differently to someone evade their bullying attempts.
However, I’m not the audience for this message. The audience consists of younger kids that have to be taught not only that bullying is wrong, but also that if they are bullied that they should go to the teacher and talk about it and so on.
In context, it is.
Since you aren’t big on links, I’ll summarize: People who talk about “intellectual dishonesty” are usually bloviating morons who have never actually interacted with the real world and also probably think that the US should be broken up into 10-30 independent nations.
“The audience consists of younger kids that have to be taught not only that bullying is wrong, but also that if they are bullied that they should go to the teacher and talk about it and so on.”
So are we allowed to teach that raping people is wrong?
Ah, the time-honored “How about you guys just come up with some support for my unsubstantiated assertion?” strategy.
Uh, OK, what point were Guy and Misery trying to make again?
Shiraz: Hard to say. They’re backpedaling so hard that it’s becoming a blur.
Misery – I was laughing at your repeated use of anti-intellectual and now dishonesty, because it’s only a few days since we had a troll whose main (and endlessly repeated) claim was that everyone here was “intellectually dishonest”. Unfair to use it, I guess, but you’ve posted here often enough that I thought you would have seen it.
However you’re still digging that hole with the “wearing it as a badge” line. You’re making assumptions about people here (or me, doesn’t matter which) and showing up as being arrogant and condescending.
And just to add, in retrospect it would have been useful for me to have tried to get help from authorities etc. before. It still wasn’t nice to hear people tell me I should have done X, but that’s why I said in my original post that the context of all of this advice/awareness is what’s most important. Something that people conveniently ignore.
What unsubstantiated assertion have I made? I really try not to do that. In fact, is there anything I’ve said that anyone actually disagrees with? I’m becoming confused as to whether this is an argument about some actual issue (that is, whether what misery and I are saying is true) or about the rules of behavior in this comment section (whether, true or not, we have a right to say it.)
The latter question is a valid one, and indeed one for this blog community to make (with Dave as the ultimate judge, of course). But it would be useful to establish which question we’re actually discussing.
Also, if “anti-intellectualism” shouldn’t be used as a badge of honor, “anti-emotionalism” shouldn’t either. You don’t win at life by being an emotionless robot who looks at a horrifying crime and sees nothing but a set of data.
@misery,
Save your condescension and false pity, dude.
Then WHY THE FUCK are you pushing that very shit for rape victims or potential victims?