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.
Argenti:
“On topic, I am really not okay with calling attempted rape successful rape avoidance.”
I said something like this, and I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was just saying that even IF you assume that attempted rape is successful rape avoidance, the statistics show that attempted rapes are significantly less common than completed rapes.
That website is wrong though when claiming that rationality can be divided into instrumental and epistemic. Rationality is a much wider concept than that. “Practical rationality” is basically everything that has to do with rational decision-making, and depending on which rationality theory you adhere to it may or may not cover WAY more than the merely instrumental part.
I didn’t really read after that, but the TV-trope page they refer to also says some wrong things about what rationality is, even though their main point on the Straw Vulcan page (that lots of TV shows and movies represent rationality as something fairly stupid when it’s not) is right.
It’s a framing issue, again. Someone who’s framing things that way is making it very clear that they haven’t bothered to speak to victims, or take their perspective into account. Which is never a good way to formulate policy.
Dvarg, the group is unmoderated so you should just be able to join 🙂
Fair enough, and thinking about it, when I say to email we we’re usually so far down a tangent that it’s becoming our own conversation anyways, or something like that — email me said motives?
Or don’t, I may be on the phone with you in the next hour anyways (not that that would be an appropriate time for that conversation either…I am so not looking forward to this)
Also, Yudkowsky’s twisting of stats to fit a framework where he’s already decided on the end result is just painful to read. Make your tautologies simple enough for most people to go “dude, x is the only option because not-x isn’t reasonable?” Instead of “x is the statistically most likely using Bayesian stats because the probability of outcome x is approaching 100%”
Bad stats make me crank, misleading stats dressed up as The One Truth make me furious.
I knew in posting the lesswrong article that someone would jump in to insult the lesswrong community. For what it’s worth, I’m not generally in love with them but some of the articles are good. It would be nice if my links could be judged by their contents, not the name of the link (so sayeth MLK).
Ally — no, I was reiterating what you’d said in that comment. Wasn’t the focus of the comment, but iirc you did comment on how weird/wrong that definition is.
It would be even nicer if you’d answer the question I asked earlier. Either that or commit to a “be less of a smug asshole” life plan, whichever is easier.
“Ally — no, I was reiterating what you’d said in that comment. Wasn’t the focus of the comment, but iirc you did comment on how weird/wrong that definition is.”
Ah, that’s good to hear. ^_^ I can be pretty bad with words.
And there’s the line, whipping past you. MLK? To say your LINKS should be judged on merits? Because yes, there’s just go much discrimination against links!
Not that you seem to have noticed that neither pecunium nor I went “Yudkowsky! Obviously you must be wring about everything!” but rather he addressed why less wrong debate styl is not less wrong, and what I said was a commentary on my ability to deal with his bad statistical analyses — irrelevant in other words.
And it would be nice if our comments could be judged on their content instead of dismissed as “emotionalism,” BUT I GUESS WE DON’T ALWAYS GET WHAT WE WANT DO WE
@CassandraSays, you mean your question about why I’m debating this issue? I don’t have a reason, it’s just something I feel and I made a few posts defending it. I’d rather be right than have your respect, no offense.
Frankly, “red flags” is probably one of the most straightforward cases where would-be rapists will adapt over the long term. A rapist who discovers that particular behaviors cause him to fail in his efforts will, eventually, alter his behavior. This means that the ‘red flags’ list will need perpetual updating to account for the change in approaches–and you end up with a situation where the list is either so long as to become meaningless, or it cycles generationally as old tactics become new again, after they’ve ceased to be warned against.
Furthermore, I’d argue that the best use of ‘red flag’ education is for bystanders, not victims. It’s often easier to see problematic conduct and situations from the outside, precisely because of the lack of emotion involved. Non-street rapists–ie, the majority–are, whether they know it or not, taking advantage of cognitive biases that make it difficult for us to re-evaluate a positive opinion of someone. By making a good first impression, they get their victims into a vulnerable mindset, where frankly, all the red-flag training in the world is, at best, going to be scattershot. OTOH, a bystander with no foreknowledge of the people involved may very well say, “Hey, that woman seems to be a bit too intoxicated to be making a clear decision. I should ask if she’s alright/tell the bartender he’s got a problem situation/otherwise act.”
MY THOUGHTS AND IDEAS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PEOPLE THEY HURT
WHY DO YOU THINK I FEEL STRONGLY JUST BECAUSE I KEEP COMING BACK AND INSISTING ON MY POINT IT’S JUST COMMON SENSE AAAAAAAAAAAA
/translation
Fascinating… do go on.
Misery: I see, you categorise my personal experiences with Yudkowsky (and his followers) as not judging the links by their contents. I looked at who wrote it. I am familiar with his work (both in writing and in person).
He is, full stop, not a credible source to me on the subject of logic and reasoning.
I’ve not gone into the cultic nature of Less Wrong, nor into the unwillingness of that community to address valid critiques of their arguments (I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen someone say, “when you get done reading The Sequences you will have enough of a grounding in the Theory of Rationality to try to criticise it”. Which, given that those works run to several million pages of that sort of thing, is really them saying [in a passive aggressive way] Fuck off).
But if you want to think my disdain of Yudkowsky’s intellectual faculties removes Dvarg, and Freemage’s complaints, go right ahead, but it’s not going to shore up your position the way some citations would, or perhaps you explaining how the academic security programs have come to any sort of relevant means by which rape can be prevented (absent the sorts of work I described).
Because the problem isn’t purely that you used Less Wrong; that’s just icing on the cake.
How fortunate for you that you’ve managed to be wrong AND lose everyone’s respect. I would say that takes special skill, but it really doesn’t – trolls of the pointless wanking variety are a dime a dozen.
You aren’t going to get to be either right, or respected. You may’ve managed right at one point, but you’ve gone on so many micro-rants about emotionalism and security and ignored everything anyone said that may actually be useful, except when using it to say “see, that’s what I meant all along” when you quite clearly said see thing very different.
For the record: this is what I found with for this search string: Academic programs in security
They seem to be pretty solidly focused on international relations, computers.
How is it my fault that you have problems with the author of that article? I didn’t link it to plug the author, but to link the article.
Yeah, I was looking for security programs and virtually everything I found was either cybersecurity (irrelevant) or Homeland Security (also irrelevant).
Interesting, as the biggest hole in computer security is almost always the human, and I’m fairly sure “you didn’t have a string enough password so we won’t correct the result of your [some sort of financial] account being hacked” isn’t a thing that happens with any frequency.
Whereas “you didn’t do X rape prevention thing?!” and other forms of disbelief and blaming certainly are.
He has problems with the author’s beliefs on debating, you linked to an article on debating…this isn’t rocket science. You’d have a point, maybe, if you’d linked to, idk, Yudkowsky’s favorite cookie recipe.
Misery: Fine, you posted that link in good faith. It was still irrelevant, since (once again) we were not having a definition-based dispute.
Misery is Pell with a better vocabulary and the ability to use links, basically.
Digital security is just one facet of security. I’m specifically going to most likely be studying digital security, but we were taught about a lot of general security topics which are part of the larger theoretical framework. And they can be applied to any conceivable security measure, so it’s not ‘irrelevant’.