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.
Time travel never goes according to plan! Learn from the Doctor, you might end up accidentally saving Hitler!
On topic, I am really not okay with calling attempted rape successful rape avoidance.
Nick – ::applause::
It’s nauseating, isn’t it? Instead of people just accepting responsibility for making a crappy argument – it’s “satire”. A friend of mine on FB loves using the term whenever he goes on some Islamophobic rant and gets called out on it. He isn’t being funny in any way but apparently he still expects me to be amused by such shit.
It’s like when Yasha Levine tried asking Malcolm Gladwell why he was so adamant in his defense of the tobacco industry – only for Gladwell to, as dishonestly as possible, claim it was all a “joke.” Nevermind the articles he wrote are entirely sincere in tone and lacked any sense of irony or social critique, but it’s obviously easier to just make that claim than own up to anything you said…
I knew a guy IRL who claimed that the purpose of Facebook was for people to create alternate personalities for themselves and that I didn’t know this because I wasn’t on Facebook. By which he actually meant that he posted a lot of bad satire to his wall and people were never sure if he meant it our not.
Yes, and if AnonArse is trying his “satire” schtick (which I don’t believe: he’s too invested in whining about how meeaaaan we all are) then he’s an even lower level of scum, because that would mean he’s deliberately throwing all this bullshit out at rape victims for shits and giggles.
Then we may be talking about the same guy. Either way – what a fucking tool…
Exactly. He’s just shooting himself in the foot even more, when just taking responsibility for what he said would’ve at least made him save face. It’s not that hard to do and acting otherwise just indicates an ego problem.
Yes, and it went full circle to the whole BS about “academically sloppy” and “intellectual/anti-intellectual” that misery started, with him playing the oh-so-wise person who talks as if there’s a cheat code to not being raped, and it’s all some sort of mental exercise.
It’s such a mechanistic attitude, like it’s a computer game or something. It doesn’t seem that far removed from the dudes who think there’s a cheat code to getting Teh Secks from women (whether it’s Game or NiceGuy™ whining). This whole “prevention tips” crap puts the onus on women not to be raped, just like every other freakin’ rape apologist does, and never mentions the rapist as the agent of the rape, or the reality of anything but stranger rapes.
AnonWank seemed torn between complaining about being bullied!!!1eleventy!! and claiming from his great and dispassionate and not at all emotional distance how one really can just not be raped if one only tries and one’s rapist is considerate enough to wait while one uses the code book to figure out just what solution one’s meant to apply. If only we’d put our ladybrains into gear and listen to his wisdom, instead of being so nasty and rebellious and telling him he’s wrong!
Oh, boy. Raul, I think Cloudiah put it well:
You came into a discussion about rape and declared most of the people in the discussion, some of whom have themselves been raped, to be not only wrong on the issue of prevention but also driven by “pure emotionalism, which is a silly way to approach any serious problem.” Oh, and you referred to the strong feelings that rape elicits in many people in a dismissive manner, as “big feelings.”
http://manboobz.com/2013/08/23/roosh-v-forum-members-baffled-that-fat-woman-doesnt-welcome-sexual-harassment/comment-page-6/#comment-344367
That doesn’t sound so much like someone hoping to have a discussion. It sounds like someone hoping to start a fight.
And then, when people responded with anger and/or irritation to your dismissve and patronizing remarks, you complained that you were being bullied? I’m sorry. You don’t come into a thread about rape, insult everyone here, then continue with the condescending remarks even after you’ve been called out for them again and again, and then declare that everyone here is a meanie.
If you show up at a party and announce that everyone there is an idiot, why would you expect the partygoers to treat you civilly?
I’m putting you on moderation for now; this thread is off-limits for you altogether.
Sweet relief!
Thank you David.
It’s funny how many people nurse a grudge against this place over the fact that their comments/persona proved unpopular. Given how abrasively unpleasant many of them have been you’d think they’d be used to people responding to them in a negative way.
Yes, it’s hard to believe they aren’t like that in person, and that nobody ever called them out for it before.
A lot of them are both abrasive and dull too, and that’s a combination that’s almost universally disliked in pretty much every culture (at least every culture I’ve ever encountered). Be mean in a snarky, funny way, or be long-winded but kind and interesting, and some people will like you, but long-winded, boring, AND mean-spirited? That’s a perfect storm of “wow your personality sucks”.
Makes you wonder if this is the most socialising they do – not because they like it here or are physically isolated, but because they’ve worn out their welcome in most places AFK and online.
“long-winded but kind and interesting, and some people will like you”
You should see pecunium and me in email, here I edit down to about a third of what I have to say, so I hope I have kind and interesting going for me! He certainly does, but is better at pithy than I am.
Our random annoyances…not so much. On any count.
He used the Satire defense? Jesus H. Christ. Thanks for the relief, David.
Anonymous Asshole: Which obviates about 90% of the responses to this line of argument that have appeared on this thread.
No, it doesn’t. That paragraph says nothing. It’s so couched in weasel-words and slippery phrasing as to be meaningless. It’s wishful thinking.
Let’s boil it down:
Be careful when presenting the material. Why? Because it involves a variety of strategies (not delineated in this graph), which “women use”, but it’s not to imply (heaven forfend) that physical self-defense (which has been married in the graph to “verbal strategies”) is they best, or only choice.
Banal cliché is banal; and tautological.
This is your argument? It says, “these techniques may work, for some women, but they may not be for every woman. Duh.
Wouldn’t it be useful to know when those times are, and when violent resistance might improve your outcomes?
It would be nice to win the lottery and be able to pay someone $20,000 a year to come and clean the catbox too; and, (since I don’t buy tickets) it’s just as possible.
No, but I’ll clean for train fare (no, really, I did an ex’s place, complete with roaches for $10 more)
Things you’d know if you’d check your email before coming here — he got the mallet of loving correction.
I’m better at pithy? The world is agog.
Than me? Yes. Check your email if you don’t believe me!
And fucking misery tried to take it to my blog (by “hijacking this thread”. Because he couldn’t find my e-mail. Entitled much?)
So I told him this, which (because I think it relevant, I repeat here).
And now I’m off to work.
Have fun at work, particularly since I can comment over there ^.^
You totally do “take it to email” though, assuming, you know, you want to talk to the person in question.
For the curious, finding pecunium’s email it’s terribly difficult. But don’t misery, the harassing part is very true.
Entitled, really?
I didn’t want to continue the discussion on manboobz since I felt that I was disrupting the atmosphere here, but I thought it would be civil for me to respond to pecunium’s arguments since he/she came late to the conversation. That’s why I asked that innocent question on that blog site.