Sex educator and Philadelphia Weekly columnist Timaree Schmit posted the peculiar document below to Twitter the other day. It was evidently handed to a friend of hers who was innocently making photocopies by some guy who wanted her to know that she had given him a boner and that he felt really really bad about this, because Jesus.
Guys, don’t do this.
Here’s the creeper’s little manifesto; the pic is a little blurry, alas, so I made a slightly less blurry version of the key bits and pasted it below the original.
I already used the nope badger in an earlier post today, so here’s a nope doggo instead.
H/T — @TByrne75 for letting me know about this, thanks!
Dear Dude,
Sincerely,
Me.
I want that shirt.
If consideration for the women he felt he was somehow disrespecting is even a tiny fraction of this guy’s real motivations, then in the future he should just stop what he’s doing and leave her alone. Then later, he can pray for forgiveness privately/go to confession/take whatever personal steps feel necessary to atone without involving the woman in question.
Seriously guy, it’s okay if you just leave women alone. It’s really super okay to do. A lot of them would probably prefer that.
Also… I haven’t been to church in over a decade, but I’m pretty sure when you recognize the thing you’re doing is considered a sin, you’re supposed to try to stop doing it. Having a bunch of cards saying “sorry I sinned” seems like you’re just trying to smooth things over after the fact, instead of changing your behavior to prevent it from happening at all.
All I can think is that’s really gross. I’d want to tell him that by handing out that preprinted “apology” he was actually making it worse, but that might make him violent.
I can see someone trying to play it off as a joke but it still would be a world of nope. Of course it brings up a bunch of questions. If he is lustful towards an image on a billboard does he tape the note to it or mail it to model? Did someone suggest this to him or did he come up with it all on his own? I could almost see this a journaling activity but never something to actual pass out. I’m only guessing but couldn’t it be used to get a restraining order?
I was raised adjunct to these religious types. I no longer have to talk to any of those people, but nothing about this letter surprised me. It took me an extra second to recognize how creeeeepy it is because I was desensitized to this shit. Its hard to see how fucked up your world is when you are right in the middle of it.
You get stoned one night and you’re like, ‘fuuuuuuuuck. Everything was a lie. And all that “normal” shit you grew up with IS NOT NORMAL OR OK.’
This letter represents the ‘normal’ I had to grow up around.
@Vince: “Dearest Damsel” are the first two words… but that’s appropriate. your skin SHOULD have been crawling immediately.
I sure hope he has these cards for violating commandments, or thinking about it. I’m sure his neighbor gets lots of “I was coveting thine wife” apologies, and that it goes over super well. It can’t possibly be that he uses this particular one because it gives him some sort of “I have over these ladies and they are now picturing my boner” jollies.
Brian: It was!
It was also creepy for containing every white femininity stereotype ever invented. That put-her-up-on-a-pedestal, bastion of all that is properly female stereotype, that White women have been actively working against forever.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/y3PWaHz.gif
The irony is that red pill guys think that this is how women in the gynogracy WANT men to behave; apologizing for the sin of DARING to look at a woman. If they read these comments, I bet they’ll start carrying on about how you just can’t please women, & you’re damned if you do & damned in you don’t.
We just wanna be treated like people. That’s it.
Speaking in my official capacity as an ambassador for the feminist government (in exile), it’s okay, dude.
Boners come. Boners go.
If you have the kind of relationship where such a question wouldn’t startle, alarm, repulse, or bore a woman, you can talk about your boner to her.
Otherwise, keep your boner and your meditations on your boner strictly to yourself.
@dr ej
Oh yes, I follow her on Twitter.
“Dearest Damsel”? Was she (in the estimation of the Nice Guy™) too young or too unladylike for a “Milady”?
Matthew 5: “28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
I think his course of action is pretty clear here.
FFS, I just realized that the guy in the photo is Lee Harvey Oswald, a MGTOW if there ever was one, simultaneously lashing out at others and fleeing his responsibilities.
After he killed President John F. Kennedy (and was in turn killed for his efforts), he left behind his Russian-immigrant wife and two young children, one of whom was a newborn.
Wow, I’m apparently way more innocent than the rest of you. I didn’t really read that as “oh no raging boner, let’s inform everyone”, but as “I’m not allowed to find a woman beautiful and don’t know how to deal with doing it anyway” (which doesn’t necessarily cause boners in public Afaik).
It’s definitely weird and a bit creepy, but I didn’t read maliciousness out of it, more a deeply troubled and confused attempt to deal with massively repressed sexuality and no idea how to act towards strangers. (i.e. Not really being aware that this is not cool.)
That may be. Even so, it just screams Nice Guy™.
@Laugher at Bigots
Of course, then we have to define what kind of nice guy he is.
This isn’t the kind of nice guy who’s a good guy.
This is the kind of nice guy who is odious, tiresome, and repellent — possibly a criminal.
@Kat:
Of course; that’s why I and many others like to put ™ at the end, to distinguish this sort of Nice Guy™ from actual nice guys. I pronounce “Nice Guy™” “Nice guy (trademark)” to distinguish the two.
Apologies if I got a little mansplainy there.
I don’t know what to think. If I or someone I knew got a paper like this I’d think the giver needed a counselor – preferably nonreligious and nonMRA.
@Laugher at Bigots
TM: two little letters that say a lot.
https://youtu.be/KuTwJUYqdQw
If I were a woman, and got such a note, I’d seriously consider calling the police, or at least get a security escort or friend to come with to wherever you’re going next. It’s such an odd thing, especially considering he went through the trouble of making it.
Close but not quite; that’s Merrick, not Merritt.
@zaunfink
I don’t care what his intentions are, this is harmful, over-the-top creepy behavior. If someone handed me this I’d get that super sinking feeling in my gut and probably never feel completely safe in public again. The type of person who feels the need to have a card printed like this, which can’t be cheap with the metallic lettering, and then hand it out to strangers has exactly zero concern for the safety, comfort, or well being of the women he harasses with this drivel.
On the note itself is anyone else bothered by a) the right margin being smaller than the left margin, b) the use of center justified text and overall poor design layout, and c) the signature being all over the place? I mean, if you’re going to do this, at least do it well.