If you missed my talk at Northwestern on the Friend Zone, and most of you did, I go over a lot of what I said in it in my interview with Amanda Marcotte here. My segment of the podcast starts about 8 minutes in. (The rest of the podcast is interesting, too.)
The one thing missing from the podcast that my talk had was … a gazillion terrible Friend Zone memes to illustrate all my points. So here are a couple of the ones I refer to in the interview.
Oh hey, let’s try that.
Racnad, no. Nobody here wants to have this discussion with you. We are not interested in assisting you with your inquiries. We are not willing to soothe your hurt feelings. We do not wish to continue interacting with you at all, in any way. To be absolutely crystal clear – we would like you to go away and never return. If you continue along your current path you will be violating our clearly expressed wishes. So don’t do that. Go away instead.
Let’s see how you do with a “no” that direct.
Ally_S,
I apologize for assuming your were white.
Sparky, the Dr. Nerdlove link you sent linked to another page about Social Calibration:
http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2012/10/art-social-calibration/all/1/
This is an interesting topic that helps explain, among other things, why some people are more popular than others, and why some men feel they’re unfairly being called creepy. If you refer this link to men complaining about women not liking them it is much more helpful than just yelling “Don’t be creepy!” when they feel they’re behaving just like guys who are popular with women.
As for everyone else, it is apparent that thoughtful, on-topic discussion is not possible here. There was another commenter on the post about the Santa Barbara shooter who thoughtfully discussed role of mental illness in the shooters actions, and he was attacked for maligning those with mental conditions, when the only groups one is allowed to malign here are MRAs, PUAs, and anyone who challenges a consensus view here.
@racnad
Jesus fuck!!! You want a step-by-step hand holding? Fine!
Step 1: Ask X woman out, she says “I’m actually busy this week, maybe another time”
Step 2a: If you’ve just met the woman say “No problem, have a good one.” AND WALK THE FUCK AWAY. If she wants to see you she’ll give you her number or suggest an alternate day or something. If she lets you walk away, she has no interest in you, MOVE THE FUCK ON.
Step 2b: If she’s a friend/acquaintance say “Cool. Let me know when you’re free and we’ll do something.” then BACK THE FUCK OFF AND NEVER MENTION IT AGAIN. If she’s interested in a date she’ll make plans with you when she’s free. If she doesn’t make plans with you then she just wants to be friends, in which case you MOVE THE FUCK ON.
There you go. Hand held. Now please leave us the fuck alone.
whoops, did not see cassandrakitty’s post
But guys, the problem isn’t that he barged in here and made our mocking misogyny site all about his social needs!
The problem is that we’re not being CIVIL to him about it! If we just POLITELY, FIRMLY asked him to leave, he totally would!
@ Shadow
Hey, I didn’t say anything about not venting your annoyance at Captain Selfish. Vent away! He may feel that this is unfair, but I refer him back to the fact that multiple people have asked him very clearly to go away and point out that he’s ethically obligated to accept their rejection even if he doesn’t like the fact that we’re embracing rather than rejecting other men. Women, they get to have preferences about which men they want to talk to!
@shiraz
Hey, that means he shouldn’t sock later on! *crosses fingers*
@Ally
@Cassandra
True, but the fuck that I addressed him after your post clearly turns your hard No into a soft, ambiguous, Sophie’s choice No.
*fact, not fuck lollll
We keep telling him, in no uncertain terms, that we are not his mommy/shrink/social skills teacher, and yet he still keeps coming back.
I don’t think he respects nos, guys. Maybe we did that thing where we were too loud and made him uncomfortable?
Rancid:
You need to learn what the fuck an as hominem attack is, you little skidmark. Fuck right the fuck off, jackass.
Hmm, let’s try this.
Go away, rancid. I say this in a sweet, soothing, very feminine tone of voice. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.
Oh, dear sweet racnad. It would be absolutely delightful if you had the courtesy and kindness to quietly and softly leave. One too many women here have found your unfortunate words most objectionable, and it would be polite for you to heed their words and refrain from commenting further until you can grace us with a presence that does not apologize for entitled, abusive men who hate women. So please, if you have it in your tender heart to listen to us, leave.
/end of vomit-inducing over-the-top request for trollboy to get the fuck out of here
Maybe if we wrote it in rose petals and had a fleet of kittens deliver it?
Nah, then he’d just whine that we weren’t being direct enough.
Nah. He doesn’t deserve a fleet of kittens. I think it would take a long time for a fleet of kittens to do anything, anyway. Three of them would be chasing each other, and one would be chasing its tail, and at least one would be reducing the message to something resembling lace, and then they would all fall asleep in a kitten heap.
Wouldn’t it be soothing to fall gently asleep under a blanket of kittens? Until they woke up, that is.
racnad:
NO. GO AWAY. WE DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU.
Is that clear enough for you?
emilygoddess:
I know. I was trying to work it back in to my last post, but I was getting way too wordy as it was and with all bullshit from racnad and the Santa Barnara shootings I just lost my train of thought there.
The point being, of course, that women are not being “unclear” when they use “soft no’s,” because the “no” is clearly heard, men jut choose to ignore it. So it doesn’t matter whether a woman uses a “soft no” or a “direct no,” the end result is that she is saying “no.” And some men react violently to “no” no matter how it is phrased, so yes, women are justified in fearing rejecting men.
Suggesting that women just need to know how to reject men in the right way is just pure victim-blaming assholery.
Remind you of anything we’ve been saying on this thread? And how it’s been falling on the most willfully dear ears imaginable?
http://time.com/114043/yesallwomen-hashtag-santa-barbara-shooting/
One is reminded of the epigram on Caroline of Brunswick, George IV of England’s queen; though she seems not to have done much to deserve it, it seems apt for our racnad:
“Most gracious queen, we thee implore
To go away and sin no more;
Or, if that effort be too great,
To go away at any rate.”
Or, as Dan Hicks put it:
“How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
Oh, I’m crushed. racnad has decided I’m not so absent of hostility. He doesn’t even make a show of replying to me anymore. I’m just one more person who doesn’t “like to be challenged” and whom he claims has nothing more than profanity to offer.
Of course he lies about how I said what he pretends I didn’t say.
racnad, no. I don’t want to see you anymore, unless it’s to apologise for blaming victims, putting all the burdens of asshole’s behavior on women, trying to make them responsible for men’s manners; and education, being rude to everyone, being even ruder than that to Ally, ignoring women’s experiences; while imputing that your ignorances are dispositive fact, and being a general douchnozzle.
For that, before you took your final leave I would be willing to suffer your miserable presence.
But only for that. For all other things, NO, I don’t want to see you, nor hear of you, nor in any other way be made aware of you; be you living or dead.
Was that direct enough for you?
Or did I miss something in the “Magical racnad Formula of Harrasshole Banishing”?
Oh nice, he really didn’t even try to address anything else I said. Other than the apology, which to be fair is appreciated.
But this:
Maaaajor side-eye at the vagueness of that phrase. Virtually all men know what it means to be creepy and how to avoid being creepy. It’s not that hard. So yes, I will continue to yell that.
Lol, that’s rich.
Yeah, because maligning terrible human beings like MRAs is exactly like maligning people with mental disabilities. Do you ever proofread your comments for absurdity?
So much fail. In keeping with the steady stream of fail about your own writing though, so it’s really not surprising.
What that person did was say, ‘it’s not that he hated women, it’s that he was crazy; and crazy isn’t to blame”.
Which is wrong on a lot of levels.
1: We don’t have any way to know if whossisname had any mental illness.
1a: Even if he were mentally ill, mental illness doesn’t cause the sorts of reaction he had to women not worshipping him.
2: Absent any evidence, the effect of moving the murderer into the category of “mentally ill” is a convenient means to remove his hatred of women from the context of his society.
2a: Which means we can continue to pretend we don’t have a society which has an ingrained disdain, and dislike, of women who act as if they were real people, entitled to being treated as any other person (i.e. men).
But, since your entire raison d’etre is to say women owe men things, I can see why you want to move a guy who killed women because they didn’t give him the things he thought they owed him into a different category, one of “not like us”.
Because your demand that women “reach out” to men who are being assholes, your frustration that they won’t “work to see to it fewer men are frustrated” is only different in degree, not kind, from the killer.
You won’t admit it (and I see why you don’t want to) but you are much like him.
Which is why we don’t want you around. You, by spouting the bullshit we’ve been refuting, give men like him excuses for their hate, and rationalisations for their crimes; such as his act of mass murder.
You do actually support him in email.
Asshole.
Pecunium,
For someone who doesn’t want to see me, nor hear of me, nor in any other way be made aware of me; be I living or dead, you sure put a lot of effort into writing messages designed to provoke me to respond.
I believe this is the first time on the Internet I’ve seen the trolls get trolled.
Dude, you don’t English very well do you.
It was rhetorical flourish.
here’s the thing… you said you needed an unequivocal no.
Lot’s of people gave it to you. You ignored it.
Why? Because you (as already admitted) don’t take no for an answer. When you knew a woman was saying no obliquely, you pressed on her, to make force her to be less oblique; so you could make her uncomfortable.
So I mocked you (which didn’t really take much effort). You don’t like being mocked (you also don’t like responding to arguments, facing the meaning of the words you’ve used, listening to women, respecting boundaries, etc).
If you’d been being honest in wanting an open declaration of, “get the fuck out of here, you tosser”, you’ve have left. But you don’t, because you think you deserve to have the world on your terms. So the barbed sentence was there to goad you, to make it plain you don’t respect people’s boundaries.
You (again) made it plain.
I’m not writing for you. You are a lost cause. I’m writing because other people read this forum, and silence equals assent and it’s not actually work to rebut the drivel you write (my little sister is 15, she is a better logician than you are).
I do it because putting morons in their place pleases me.
So dance boyo, dance.