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.
The tentacle rape porn was kind of a weird detail. Especially when ZGB began stroking his beard faster at the same time.
But otherwise, a disturbing cautionary tale.
When I was a union steward, I got to see what these bullies were like as adults. The only good part was that they couldn’t bully me; several times I got to see supervisors completely lose their shit at the thought that I could criticize them, and they couldn’t have me fired for it.
@cloudiah- it’s so NICE when the bullies can’t touch you, isn’t it?
I’ve actually had rocks thrown at me a few times.
God, I fucking hate false equivalence! I see more and more people do it these days and it just makes me angrier each time…
It’s a cowardly rhetorical tactic that enables people who are either ignorant, misinformed, or uncommitted to anything seem like “level-headed thinkers”. As if being on the fence or sidelines all the time takes some great effort – even though the reality is they do so because they want to pander to everyone, no matter who they are. The problem is that pandering isn’t a positive trait since it involves attention-seeking and getting validation from others.
I’ve gotten into too many conversations on politics and social issues where the conclusion someone comes to is “both/all sides are equally right/wrong in some way or another.” Bull-fucking-shit. Not every position is valid nor should they be considered such on default, especially when that position is entirely irrational. And, yes, some people are totally right because what they support is more ethical behavior. Having to hear homophobic Christians act as if the people who support gay rights are “just as bad” as those who are trying to stop it is infuriating. One group is forcing their religious beliefs on society regardless of whether they like it or not and the other is simply asking that people who are gay should be treated as fairly as everyone else. These are not equivalent positions in the slightest and to act like they are just makes you intellectually lazy as well as totally disingenuous.
Seconding/ yes to everything Saintnick86 just said.
“http://www.rooshv.com/an-afternoon-with-stig-greybeard”.
HAAHHAHHAAAAAA…wait, gotta ca, HAAHAHAHAHHHaaaaa… my breath….,,
@M Dubz, It’s one of the things I like about this place. People come in here and try to bully us, but they have absolutely no power over us. XD
*joins marie in highfiving Nick*
@LBT – I’m of the firm belief that one of the motivators (though not the only one) of bullying in schools is the lack of power kids have. Your whole day is controlled by adults, you have very few choices, but at the same time, especially as you head into pre-teen years, all those adults are telling you you’re growing up and you have to start thinking for yourself and being responsible. In that environment with that contradiction chafing, when you find some way to have even a tiny bit of power over someone else of your own age, you will use it because you have no power over the adults in your life.
Couple that with us locking kids up with people their own age for 8 hours a day so that every single interaction and moment gets magnified, where the social order of school controls so many facets of your life and there’s no respite from it, again, when you find some way to be not on the bottom of the heap, you cling to it like a lifeline and it leads to abuse.
@Rei – I tried to explain being bullied to someone once as every day was a minefield, and the mines were always shifting position. I could do the exact same thing every day for 4 days in a row and nobody bothered me, but suddenly on day 5, wham, I’m getting harassed or shoved for something I’d been doing for days without anyone caring. The stress came from the unpredictability. You never knew what thing the bullies were going to grab on to as their excuse that day, so there was little you could do to prevent it.
I was bullied from around 4th grade through my junior year of high school (4th grade I was also bullied by the teacher which was just the turd cherry on the shit sundae). It stopped mainly because I stopped caring. Not reacting, just caring. I was an upperclassman, and I was working and surrounded by people anywhere from 5 to 20 years older than me, none of whom gave a shit about my weight or the time I threw up in class in 2nd grade, etc. as long as I showed up to work and didn’t leave them hanging. It was a minor revelation: “some day I’m going to get out of high school and never have to see these people again.” I had known that but not KNOWN it, and once I did, I went back to school and the bullying seemed ridiculous.
But yeah, before that? If you guys remember that video of the school bus monitor who was being abused by those kids? That was my bus route. If I was in middle school now, I would’ve been on that bus. And while I felt bad for that woman, I wonder where the outrage was for all the kids those little shitstains treated like that before her? Because they didn’t start out attacking the bus monitor.
When that video went viral, everyone was all shocked and horrified and I was just nodding, “This is exactly what I remember the bus being like every day.” I was more surprised that people were upset by their behavior. What do people think is going on on school buses and in schools all the time?
I fought back once. On the last day of school, when I was about to move to the high school, and I knew I couldn’t get into trouble. This kid who’d been on me verbally and physically all year came up behind me and grabbed my hood, trying to make me trip. I snapped. I spun around and tried to claw his eyes out. He looked so shocked. It had never occurred to him that I would fight back. I kicked myself for years that I didn’t fight back earlier.
I read that as unicorn steward at first. Which sounds like the best job anyone could possibly have.
Hugs to all who were bullied. I had some mild bullying in middle school, but my brother got it real bad. When I saw him being bullied, I’d stand up for him, but then he got crap for “having a girl fight for him.” I remember feeling really angry and powerless about it all.
“Not every position is valid nor should they be considered such on default, especially when that position is entirely irrational.”
^This.
I’m confused, what’s wrong with herbivorous dinosaurs?
Saintnick86: it’s a component of what I like to call Fox News thinking–the idea that every issue has two valid sides, and that every opinion should be listened to. Uh, no. Some opinions are too stupid or evil to validate.
Ancient Alien Astronauts is like Evil Castrating Feminists.
If you’re dumb enough to believe in the latter, Scientology here we go!
Herbivorous dinosaurs are awesome. And I want to be a unicorn steward too!
Eh, the rainbows stain something awful.
Unicorn Steward really is a job title to be proud of. It’s one of those things where you can’t help but be in awe.
Sorry, guys, I really did type “union steward.”
Incidentally, though, I am a unicorn.
In all seriousness, union steward is a much better thing. But aren’t they becoming much rarer, too?
BOOM. I’m slow.
infrequent commenter so be gentle because I will probably not express myself well. I’m a 50 something woman. I also was very lucky to have parents who were supportive of my choices. One of my favorite stories about my chemical engineer dad was that someone made a comment about one of the people he managed as being a flashy dresser (in this case it was a man but dad did have a number of women engineers on his staff). My dad’s response was that he didn’t care how the person dressed as long as he was a good engineer. That was his criteria and is how I try to judge things. I have (in college) been told that when I objected to the tone of a conversation that I “must be on the rag” or when delivering a terminal server cable (that does date me) to a fairly high up guy’ being told that “it sounds dirty” when I explained how to use said cable. My response was “Only if you are 8 years old”. My boss at the time asked me if I wanted to report it and I said no. Bottom line, no one has the same experiences or levels of support so don’t judge how they react to stuff Fairly incoherent I know
Could not disagree more with Saintnick86. Pandering is a very positive characteristic which has led to everything good that has ever happened in the world. Those who complain about “false equivalency” are showing their authoritarian attitudes, demanding that everyone police their thoughts in order to be put in the cool kids category. Freedom of thought and open-mindedness are important over all else. I am glad that I have a group of friends who understand the concepts of devil’s advocate, open thought processes, and valid comparisons of ideology. No one is ever going to be perfect. Michael Shermer was considered to be a god among skeptics; as a Christian I even liked him because he went after occultism. And now he is gloriously fallen. The conversations here have been about bullying. It shows how many people in the world are bullies. White straight men are overpriveleged but lots of women, racial minorities, LGBT people, have also done objectionable activities, even to other disadvantaged groups. All this proves the imperfectability of the feminist and atheist ideological/epistemological constructs. To get back to the topic, I do think Josh was out of line. Anyway, we are surrounded by authoritarian constructs and only false equivalency and fair/balanced opinion construction can protect us.
Man, don’t I wish someone had told me it was all right to fight back against the bullies. But my mom was very much a “grin and bear it, don’t make waves” kind of person, and in the interest of teaching me to be a kind and well-behaved person, she insisted that I consider what I might have done to provoke the bullying.
Part of the problem was that it didn’t occur to me to use the word “bullying.” I complained that the other kids were always teasing me, which she interpreted to mean that they were just indulging in childish ribbing, and I was too thin-skinned to handle it with proper grace. Then, too, she put more trust in the school system than it deserved and assumed that if anything really bad had been going on, the teachers would have put a stop to it, so I must have been overreacting. I know this because she confessed to me recently that if she had known then what I was being subjected to, day in and day out, she would have swooped in and made some goddamn waves.
I said “I tried to tell you, but you didn’t believe me.”
I dread to think what would have happened if I had retaliated against my bullies in any meaningful way. The shitstorm at home for getting in trouble at school would have been monstrous.
While we’re on the subject, you want to know where else I got bullied? At church. Seriously. Specifically, at the religion classes all Mormon teenagers are supposed to attend in the morning before school proper starts. Anyone want to guess whether the culprits there were ever disciplined or even lectured? Anyone? You want to take a stab at whose side the authority figures would take in that situation–the sons of ward leaders vs. the weird girl with the divorced parents?
Fuck Mormonism.
Uriah, you really are a heap. 😉