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.
Night night! It’s only 10 to 6PM over here. lol
I don’t have a reason other than that I feel this way, is what I meant. I don’t have an agenda other than expressing my opinion.
@pecunium also, lol at the “chase me down” language. I literally clicked on your name here which directly links to your public blog. I wanted to respond to you because you came late to the thread and made a lengthy post disagreeing with my points. I asked on your blog if I could respond directly to you, you disagreed so I came back here and didn’t post anything to you in private again. As a first time poster any of my comments will show up in moderation, you didn’t even need to publish my comment.
Misery, you’re only cementing the impression that you don’t give a shit about the actual topic and only care about being right.
Actually, if you’ll go back to the last page (the one with this post), and then scroll up, you’ll see that I’ve already addressed the ‘red flags’ education you propose as being one of the ones most susceptible to being rendered irrelevant by predators altering their behavior, and the least likely to be useful to potential victims ‘in the moment’.
Your opinion has been duly noted, misery.
Someday you’ll learn that not every opinion needs to be aired.
Misery: Right… you went to the effort (no matter that it was slight) to make a post elsewhere, that you might continue the conversation; without others seeing it.
I published your comments because that’s what I do (you aren’t the first person to try this, though most have the decency to go to some post far less recent; even rules posts (because that isn’t the only blog I’ve ever kept).
But, for someone who “wanted to continue the conversation” why didn’t you respond to what I’d said? What you chose to do instead was whine that I was being mean by calling you out and saying you were acting the entitled git.
When I told you why I thought Yudkowsky a lousy support for your reasoning, you didn’t defend his argument, you attacked me for saying he’s a lousy citation.
You’ve not responded to my comment about the ghostriders, nor to my critiques of “self-defense” as a “preventative” for rape, nor to my deconstruction of your 4 point claim to our logical fail.
So, when all is said and done, you’ve said, “I’m right, so there”.
Okay guys! I’ve never used DeviantArt before, but I think I successfully managed to upload a pic to the gallery. Although I had to call myself Dvarghundspossen, because the site refuses to acknowledge that Ä is a letter. (It is! It’s the 28:th letter of the alphabet!)
You were indeed successful 🙂
“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.”
Because two never cross. In any case, it’s an engineering problem that endangers one’s fish. Which, for some of us, ranks equal to, or above, personal safety.
Pecunium — real world application in a combat zone? What’s that? That’s a military problem, not a security one! Sorry, no, I can’t, my face already hurts from trying not to be overty snarky.
Cloudiah — I was thinking about it while out so here we go, Misery Loves Company!
http://youtu.be/d5_H-4JokzA
Hallelujah! The Dark Lord has seen our cries, and lo, he has heard our prayers! Thank you, thank you, Dark Lord!
RE: AK
I’m trying to get more into rap and I really liked that but don’t know who it is and didn’t see anything on the page about that. Can you give me the name of that artist?
The guy I posted was Blueprint, and that song was called ‘Radio Inactive.’ And unfortunately, I can’t give that much advice; I’m new to rap too, and haven’t yet figured out how to filter the shit from shinola. Maybe this post would be helpful for you? Sneak also really likes Cardboard Castles.
RE: Ally
Thanks for the transcript on straw Vulcan! I have a much easier time reading than listening to vid, so I really appreciate this.
RE: TWO WHOLE COURSES!!!!
*deep, sad sigh* I took five courses on straight linguistics. If I’m being gracious, I’ll say that’s just enough to half-ass a pidgin language for fiction purposes. Seriously, misery, this is just embarrassing. You admitted to taking two courses on something, fluffed up your credentials, and now you’re just still arguing with an ACTUAL expert on security measures like you have a hope of winning.
I really did want to like you, but I’m reaching AnonGuy with you. You’re not going to win this conversation. You’re just going to get us more and more pissy at you. QUIT DIGGING.
No reason to continue to a topic that was noted last night to be offensive to rape survivors. No reason to insist you’re right and people with personal experience as such, or in security, are wrong because…you say so, that’s why. No reason to dismiss everyone saying that your magical security measures are bullshit. No reason to insist that, based on your feelings and two (count ’em, two!) courses on the matter, you know more than women told these tips their whole lives, and someone who’s been doing practical security for, what, two decades? Most of them?
Nope, no reason, it’s just a fun little intellectual exercise to continue offending the regulars here and potentially hurting rape victims who’ve already had enough victim blaming to blame themselves.
You are not less wrong, you are more wrong.
misery’s track record thus far is:
1) arguing about rape (something zie has never experienced or researched) with poeple who have experienced and/or researched it
2) in order to justify 1), he argues about security (something he has taken a whopping two courses on) with actual experts on it
Is there a 3) I’m missing?
Argenti: Depends on what you mean. I started the serious study of Situational Awareness as a practical discipline with Security/Self-defense applications when I was 19, so that’s 26 years ago. I did work a s security guard (in part designing site security for a couple of commercial real estate tracts), and in hospital ERs (where we did a lot of risk analysis/threat detection, esp. since one of the hospitals I worked at had a psych ward) as well as being a guard at HP, where the methodology was different: in that we were local resolution/examiners, and the detection system was monitored remotely from a nerve center 900 miles away.
It taught me a lot about how to exploit systems, and detect latent vulnerabilities.
Then I went into the Army, where my job dealt with a lot of that.
So, apart from personal experience going back to my early teens, we can round it out to 25 years.
Oh, and in that stuff for the Army I’ve been trained on/done little, “Personal Protection Detail”, which is Army Speak for being a bodyguard. That requires some serious applied paranoia.
Oh and two courses…I’m an expert on art theory then! (I am not, though I can talk Van Gogh or Mondrian all day)
Hey, I appreciate said applied paranoia, means only one of us had to pay attention!
“esp. since one of the hospitals I worked at had a psych ward”
Any schizophrenics smash guitars into the nurse’s booth? Cuz that’s the point in The Asylum where EA realizes the armed guards aren’t there to protect the inmates patients. (Co. Ed. Psych. Ward. *shudders*)
And remind me never to piss you off, I have no desire to have my vulnerability exploited…which is relevant to our current email topic now isn’t it? Taking this back over there then.
@misery:
Feeling something is the reason. Also, why are your feelings important enough to throw all over the thread ad nauseam, but other people’s (you know, the ones harmed by this “prevention tips” bullshit) are bad and anti intellectual and so on?
Are we talking massive lack of self-awareness, utterly incompetent communication (and not from lack of English skills) or sheer hypocrisy here?
@Ally:
Live long and prosper!
“Theoretical framework” and “any conceivable security measure.”
We’re not talking a fucking security system. We’re not talking fucking computer security. You’re trying to apply formal setups to individual lives and treating women (and men, but primarily women) who have been raped as goddam binary figures for your supposed prevention.
RAPE PREVENTION IS ABOUT STOPPING PEOPLE COMMITTING RAPE. IT IS NOT ABOUT WRITING CODE FOR VICTIMS.
Argenti: It was the walk-ins who needed to be committed which were the problem. OMG, some of the shit that went down while we waited for the 5150s to come back.
As to exploiting mental vulnerabilities: that’s interrogation. The security work was exploiting technical vulnerabilities in systems; such as being able to get into, “secure” areas, and then take advantage of them (I know a hospital which has an open tunnel to the building in which they do research. Unless things have changed
1: Those offices are empty on weekends
2: Anyone can make a left and go through that tunnel.
3: Simple locks are the only secondary security.
4: One need not leave that building by that tunnel, it opens onto a parking lot.
5: There are contract guards, all one needs is a generic badge, a black slacks, white shirt and a bassketweave belt and no one is likely to look twice. A simple pin (one which isn’t in any way identified, no numbers, etc) would complete the ensemble to the point of of getting the employee prices in the cafeteria. When I left I was not asked to surrender that pin.
That’s what I mean by finding exploits.
Dammit Pecunium, I was enjoying that coffee!
LBT: Thanks for sharing that song; it’s really neat! At the risk of sounding totally pretentious, Seattle has a really good independent rap scene. Have you heard the Blue Scholars? They are a Filipino/Persian hip-hop duo who were studying engineering at the UW and then they dropped out to become musicians.
Kitteh — it’s less-wrong-itis. Something about that site turns well meaning logical people into entitled assholes who insist they know more than everyone else. You remember the “friend” who insisted that death from old age is worse than genocide because of the sheer body count? Less wrong logic is where that came from.
Apologies if this is turning into a comment string while I catch up! 😛
Good, with any luck zie’ll emerge in our general manager’s office. They deserve each other.
Pecunium — oh I knew what you meant, the point was just that you could destroy me if you wanted to.
And 5150 is Cali for involuntary commitment right? Pretty much a sure bet anyone being involuntarily committed is going to be particularly thrilled about it. Email me, I love a good hospital horror story.
Those tunnels…I’m gonna assume not UPMC, but I think they may have the same problem. I get lost in the steam tunnels, so I never tried, but they sure as shit aren’t in any way secured on campus (lol! And I’m fairly sure the law firm connected to them directly with one little lock to get into the rest of the building [two to get to archival storage, and the kitchen])
My favorite though? My first apt, dude upstairs had zir printer in an open wireless network labelled with the apt number. Do you know how much self-control it took not to print creepy messages?! (Yeah I coulda exploited it, but I’m more chaotic neutral ^.^ )
Hands up anyone who cares about misery’s opinion. Anyone?
Didn’t think so.