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.
aka wankfest
Kitteh — thanks, you too!
LBT — yes. I’ve got this green stringy slimy feral stuff that takes over in a matter of days. A touch of brown algae — just forms a bit of a coat over relatively smooth surfaces (namely my PVC tubing, which makes it actually rather nice as it hides the hideous artificiality of the pipes). And hair algae, which totally takes over, but tends to grow fairly slowly and is easy enough to remove from specific locations.
I’ve also got some blue green algae, which behaves rather like the brown algae, but isn’t in that tank (yet?)
——
Creating a new handle to avoid being associated with your previous one might be socking? No, you think?
You find it “healing and empowering” to get your ass kicked in public?
LBT:
You’re right, I probably should have emailed Dave and given him a heads-up when I returned. Or perhaps today when I decided to throw in with misery.
Not our job to heal or empower you. You can go now.
You still backed the wrong horse. How was that a win?
How on earth has the experience been “healing and empowering” ? You insulted some people here who have been molested/raped/assaulted. How self-centered can you get?
“You find it “healing and empowering” to get your ass kicked in public?”
Hmm, I’m not sure if you’re referring to the literal public ass-kicking I related a story about or to the current attempt to bully me into shutting up, but both, I suppose, have their empowering elements.
But it’s more that it’s nice to see that I’ve come a long way and can participate in this kind of, I suppose, spectacle without it getting to me emotionally the way it did last time. I do feel empowered by that.
Except that thread was from May, and you posted as RaulGroom again in June:
http://manboobz.com/2013/06/13/breaking-a-voice-for-men-proved-completely-and-hilariously-wrong-about-something-again/comment-page-1/#comment-313921
http://manboobz.com/2013/06/12/lets-talk-about-sex-with-the-icky-icky-dudes-of-the-spearhead/comment-page-3/#comment-313887
So you were socking as two different people at the same time. That is kinda fucked up, and I haven’t been mean to you yet, dude, so don’t call me a bully.
I don’t think I’ve insulted anyone. If I have, please point out who I’ve insulted. I accept that it is considered rude here to assert that people can and do resist violence while it’s being perpetrated against them, and I take responsibility for that rudeness. But it is not a personal insult to anyone, and I don’t usually go in for that sort of thing even when I’m trying to lampoon someone (I’m more of a satirist.)
Anonymous asshole: Well, it’s funny. I was a commenter here once before, some time ago. If you look back through the archives you can almost certainly identify me, and in so doing you could, in fact, discern my real identity, and if you wanted to you could use that information to escalate your bullying. But I don’t think you will do that as I think in general you are a compassionate and levelheaded bunch.
So you are socking, being a dick, and depending being able to shame us with our decency to avoid figuring out who you are, and calling you to legitimate account.
So you you are an abusive liar, who is trying to avoid the reasonable response to being a dick. Got it.
Most of this is nonresponsive to what misery is saying. The plain fact is there certainly is a “best” way to resist an ongoing physical attack, just as there is a “best” way to deal with a stalker, etc. This is true whether you’re talking about a sexual assault or just vanilla assault.
This is patent nonsense. This is in my realm of expertise. There are ways to respond to all sorts of attack; but…
1: no one can know them all.
2: most of them require time to get set.
3: even if you are attacked in a way you know how to defend against someone who gets the drop on you is way ahead of the game (IME, it’s about 80 percent odds a well executed attack, with the element of surprise gets zero effective reaction from the victim. Of the 20 percent that get effective reaction the best odds are about 50/50, because the attacker has a strategic advantage (zero damage, and being prepped for the assault).
Which means the odds against you are long, even if you’ve been training for just that situation.
Anti-intellectualism has its place and is a fine tradition, particularly in American thought. But it is not anti-intellectual to say “there cannot be dispassionate analysis of boop-de-boop thing because I have big feelings about it.” It’s pure emotionalism,
And that’s what you are doing. You have a feeling that there is some way to “fight them off” and are arguing for it (if we assume arguendo that you are being an honest actor, about which the jury is still, very much, out).
I have, however, been assaulted a few times, both by acquaintances and by strangers. Now, let’s say that I decided that my strategy for protecting myself from a future assault would be to get a concealed carry permit and start carrying a firearm.
Right… Where do you live? Have you ever carried? Are you going to wear a sport coat in July? How much time are you going to spend; every week, keeping your skills up? How much money in ammo? Always going to be wearing at least 1 1/2″ belt (and if you decide to for a 2″ you need a different holster for it). Learn to sit with a lump in your back. Prepared to explain to cops that you have a carry permit: and know that you will be explaining it while one of them is pointing a pistol at you, with a very nervous state of mind.
That’s the basics of doing concealed carry. There is more.
What do you do when someone looks like they might be getting stroppy? Whip it out and threaten to kill them? That’s a crime, all by itself, most
places (Assault with a deadly weapon, even if it’s unloaded).
So that’s not actually a very good response to something which is, all in all, fairly uncommon; and rarely rises to the point where lethal force is a reasonable response.
I’m not playing devil’s advocate, by the way. I’m espousing a sincerely held position in good faith.
Really, so all these hypotheticals are why? To explore what?
Looks like “just exploring the question” to me (which is the defense most people are making when they say, “Devil’s Advocate [which is a real job, and not anything like that]).
I just happen to have a different opinion than most of you on the specific question of whether it can be useful to investigate assault resistance strategies.
Which, from my expert standpoint is based on fuck-all, save ignorance and pipe dreams.
Misery: I don’t really like the notion that there are literally no useful rape prevention tips for women
I don’t like that there isn’t any way to avoid catching a cold; and that even if I get a flu shot I might get a flu; that’s just the way the world is.
2. advice that prevents individuals from being targeted
Like what? Because all of them boil down to, “you have to suss out what any person who might rape you is looking for, and never do that”, which is defending agaist everything. That’s impossible.
It also leads to victim blaming: i.e. if “the right things” had been done, then there would have been no rape, so it’s worse than useless, it’s counterproductive.
#3 seems very useful, since it will also deter rapists from attacking women since it will increase the risk factor of getting caught. However, they can still change tactics. Using the example of self-defense training, maybe rapists will now start to carry weapons to more easily overpower victims, increasing violent rape. However, rapists are not some group that come together to theorize about how to best rape people and there really is a limit to how effectively they can adapt their tactics.
This is the same advice for any crime of violence. But since a lot of rapes aren’t violent, just abuse and control, they aren’t going to be amenable to this.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that “some guy isn’t really taking no for an answer”. He’s engaging in a lot of “boundary testing”.
Are you going to advocate that ( warning: description of graphic violence capable of stopping a rapist in his tracks) women start applying a smashing heel of the hand to the front of the groin, with subsequent testicle hooking; followed by a “clutch, grab, and hold” as they whip out their phones to dial 911?
Because that’s the sort of response needed to “stop” that sort of rape. And that’s gonna go over badly when the cops show up and the dude says, “all I did was touch her on the arm and she went all “HULK SMASH” on me.
But this is attacking the problem from the wrong end. We don’t say, “what you need to do to avoid being killed is never do a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p… (unless, of course the victim is a Trayvon Martin, who should never have left the house, worn a hoodie, walked in the night, talked on the phone, defended himself…).
We tell people, “don’t murder”. And we prosecute them for it (and for burglary, and auto-theft, and hit and run, and….).
I don’t see why it should be acceptable to say something that’s false just because it supports a good cause.
As someone who teaches “security” as practical, not theoretic, discipline, allow me to say you are teaching something false; in what you think to be a good cause.
RE: AnonymousGuy
I wasn’t implying I was “memorable” but indeed the attacks were memorable to me, as is this experience which is quite healing and empowering.
That’s great. I’m so glad you feel healed and empowered. Now go take your empowered self elsewhere.
Raul, how about you get consent before using us to empower you? I really don’t like being sucked into someone else’s pissant psychodrama.
I don’t think I called you a bully. I did call LBT a bully in a moment of weakness. In general it’s better to speak of “bullying” which is a behavior, and not to call people names. But I do occasionally slip up on that, I admit.
If I did call you personally a bully, I apologize.
“And hair algae, which totally takes over, but tends to grow fairly slowly and is easy enough to remove from specific locations.”
I had an image of algae-growing-in-hair then (yes I do know what hair algae actually is!) and went EWWWW.
I think AnonWank must be another too-cheap-for-a-dominatrix type.
RE: AnonymousGuy
I don’t think I’ve insulted anyone. If I have, please point out who I’ve insulted.
ME. I’m plenty insulted.
This is passive-agressive:
“But it’s more that it’s nice to see that I’ve come a long way and can participate in this kind of, I suppose, spectacle without it getting to me emotionally the way it did last time. I do feel empowered by that.”
And sorry, but I think you’re too emotionally involved right now. I mean, what, you came here for revenge? Think really hard about this, now. Why would you bother if you didn’t care a little too much?
Wow. LBT is about the least bullying person imaginable.
I feel like we’ve entered the same imaginary OppositeLand I so often encounter with MRAs.
Ahh, Sir Pecunium’s arrived.
::settles in comfy chair with big bowl of popcorn::
Not gonna lie, cloudiah, this guy is really getting up my ass. He comes up to me, all like, “Hey bro, so I’ve totally never been sexually assaulted, but let me tell you, someone who has, all about it!” And then when I tell him to shut his hole, he calls me a bully, and claims that this whole experience has been very healing and empowering from him.
If hubby asks me what crawled up my ass and died today, I’ll have a good answer for him, that’s for sure.
With respect, I do not need anyone’s consent to stand up to bullying.
I also don’t mean to imply that you don’t have a right to bully me. The question of what to do about genuine trolls is a thorny one, and bullying behavior certainly is employed against trolls everywhere and may in fact serve some purpose.
However, I am being as civil as I can while espousing this inadmissable point of view. I really like you guys. I accept that you will never like me because of my point of view. But that doesn’t mean I have to leave, unless of course I get banned. I’m not sure under what rules that would occur (other than perhaps the sockpuppet thing, which I understand you guys are quite het up about but I have a feeling Dave might be a bit more forgiving of; we’ll see), but of course I would respect it if it came to pass.
This board needs cute. Beagle kisses! Jedi Hugs!
Brain Bleach:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/26/d5/4a/26d54a592b0acc8e1965cb38b1d5062d.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5b/a9/ce/5ba9ce2d42549fbf8ecc487ad13d4e87.jpg
Oh pecunium, thank god. I was waiting for you to show the fuck up, since you’re the local security expert.
That he feels the need to get revenge on a comment section on a blog…get a life.