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.
Misery, it’s patently obvious that you don’t actually care about the original topic of the discussion, but only about asserting your L33T debate skills, which is why nobody really cares to engage you, because you’re really just interested in scoring conversational points.
Well, I know I got Misery & Anonwank confused at the start so for everyone’s delight, here is the entirety of @misery’s first post on the thread:
Wanking in public is never a good look.
Oh good, you’re going to be learning about public-key infrastructure, so that totally makes you an expert on rape.
Misery: I didn’t say it was your fault I have problems with Yudkowsky.
I said you lost credibility because you cited him.
I explained why this happened. If, for example, you had cited Tom Martin as an example of someone researching the how funny women are, I’d lose respect for you, because he’s patently unqualified.
The same with Yudkowsky. I find him patently unqualified as a source for how to engage in rational thought. I explained why (i.e. I have, in his works, both off the cuff [in personal interaction and observation] and published [which is to say those things he has polished, to avoid the sorts of infelicities which may happen in direct argument], have seen a great deal of emotionally driven conclusions, where the “rational equations” he uses to come to the conclusions are based on nothing more than his emotional preferences and fears).
That you think him to be a source of rules for reasoned debate is the issue. That you chose him to be the exemplar is on you. It speaks to a lack of critical thinking on your part.
And THAT is where I find fault with you.
(that, and your steadfast refusal to answer the direct questions posed at you, while you hide behind this sort of ridiculous allegation against those who are arguing with you).
My personal favourite sentence:
Because leaving things to the “professionals” has really worked for society so far, am I right? And a cost/benefit analysis is certainly the first thing I think of when considering rape. /sarcasm
Any security measure? That include the mechanics of preventing an aquarium sump from overflowing (whether from a dead pump, or loss of siphon), burning out the pump, sucking in the fish, draining the tank from back siphon…and fuck, I need to run.
In any case, I’d bet you have no idea what security measures one could take to avoid these problems, but sure, you should be allowed to debate it hypothetically in a world in which aquarists are routinely questioned and blamed when their overflow sucks in a fish.
“Lessee…this program will cost about $150 per prevented rape…that’s pretty steep. If we just distribute condoms that’ll be $1 per prevented pregnancy. Much more economical.”
Misery 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’.
So you took a survey course in threats?
Interesting. If you’d like I can teach you how to spot a large number of potential threats in everyday life. Practical experience, and lots of real world testing.
But the idea that from what you just described there is any serious “list of things” which can be done to prevent rape on the part of the victims is laughable.
Which is why we are laughing at you (well, it’s one of the reasons… the rest are laid out in lots of posts in the past day or so).
OOOH, I missed that. There are no formal professions when it comes to building an aquarium sump. Just a bunch of people with experience in wet floors, dead pumps, and dead fish. And avoiding those.
But now I REALLY need to run. Please don’t let misery get soggy while I’m gone, psych o’clock so I’ll need ’em crunchy!
Security is just a word that means protection from something. In terms of the academic discipline it has to do with protecting you against bad guys, since overflowing aquariums are more so seen as engineering problems.
Would you like your troll tenderized or a bit chewy when you return?
Who wants to bet that, even if Misery isn’t making up his credentials entirely, “taught a lot about general security topics” means “the first day of class we got a PowerPoint that started with ‘What Is Security?’ and then a bullet list of different kinds of security.”
Aren’t we off track again? Wasn’t it last page that everyone agreed on the usefulness of broader awareness of red flags? (education is a security measure)
Misery, sorry, you don’t get to suddenly decide that it’s bad to be off-topic just because you’re getting uncomfortable. Now put your money where your mouth is and show us those security creds.
Oh, are we supposed to be pretending that misery sets the topic here?
@katz, I followed two courses at university and I did a lot of reading on the topic independent of the courses. I didn’t just see a powerpoint presentation. In any case, it doesn’t matter since I never claimed to be an expert, I just said I have an awareness of the type of evaluations and recommendations a security expert could make. Where did I say that I had any credentials?
Thank you, misery, for illustrating why I ranked on your security studies.
TWO WHOLE COURSES!!!!
Baby’s first security seminar. Save your shit for dorm bull sessions.
This is why some of us oldsters occasionally get impatient with younger people, the tendency to go “I have learned a thing and now I am going to assume that I can apply it to all of the things because I don’t have enough experience to realize why that won’t work”. Luckily most people have more self-awareness than misery does.
@hellkell, I don’t know why you are acting surprised, I literally said that I followed ‘some courses’ several pages ago.
So @miseryme, do a search on rape prevention tips. Find out how, since the dawn of time, pretty much everyone, professional or amateur, has concentrated on telling women what to do in order to prevent themselves from being raped. Telling women to curtail their lives, worry, second guess themselves and then blame themselves when it doesn’t work.
And look at the statistical studies that show how completely unsuccessful that is at preventing rape. And how completely successful that is at making women feel like shit (as well as any other person of whatever gender who is a victim of sexual assault).
And then have a think about how fucking inappropriate and arrogant your fist post was.
I remember as a high schooler having a sense that “I plan to maybe study this at college” gave me some kind of authority on a topic, because if I did study it, then at the end I would know way more about it than all these grown-ups around me.
@ katz
Me too. I’m glad that my smug adolescent asshole stage occurred before it could be immortalized on the internet. Also see “I have an undergrad degree so I know more than people who’ve been doing practical work in the field for 30 years”.
Misery: you told me you were getting your masters in security and that I should get with the times. Your revisionism is adorns, now get off my lawn, twerp.