By David Futrelle
Here’s an interesting little exchange on Tumblr between a woman discussing how common it is for creepy older dudes to catcall girls in their early teens and another woman who thinks it’s no big deal. Because it doesn’t involve alligators.
No, really.
Hey, men’s rights lady, sorry you got chased by an alligator. That would indeed suck. You’d think that the experience might have made you more sympathetic to teen girls having to deal with large predators, but I guess not.
Having conversations with you must be a treat.
“Oh, fuck, I just got robbed at gunpoint.”
“YEAH WELL LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME I GOT CHASED BY AN ALLIGATOR.”
“A guy just stuck a gun in my face and took my wallet and phone!”
“WAS HE BY ANY CHANCE AN ALLIGATOR?”
As logical fallacies go, this is one of the more inventive ones I’ve seen of late. “What about the time I got chased by an alligator” is a form of whataboutism, I guess, but it really needs a name of its own. Argumentum Ad Alligator, perhaps.
Here’s the most effective rebuttal:
H/T — r/TheBluePill
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Of course they’re a Blaire White fan.
Is blairewhite-77 the same as Blaire White the right wing YouTuber or just a fan? If she is that Blaire White I have extreme doubts about her story seeing as Blaire White the YouTuber is from California.
Though it does sound like the kind of thing BW would say.
Note the feet in the GIF. In my experience both cats and dogs (and occasionally horses) tend to be more aggressive to potential threats (including other cats and dogs) when a human they like is present. I don’t know if it generally comes from protectiveness or a feeling of having powerful backup (I say generally because I’ve seen cases where it would be very hard to explain except as one or the other). Also note that the very presence of a human can be an intimidation factor for some animals – that’s a rather small gator, and a human could do some serious damage to it just by stomping on it.
(Not commenting on the argumentum ad gatorum for now)
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEN’S ALLIGATORS.
I think getting cat-called at 10-15 years old is pretty much every woman’s experience? That was when I got the most street harassment, which faded off as I became more of an adult. I don’t know if anyone else had the same thing, but I found it very disorientaring and horrible – BUT I guess I didn’t consider the alligators!
@PoM
They’re probably not getting the time of day from the lady gators, because of their looks. Have pity on the poor gatorcels.
It’s been pointed out before that when men discuss men’s problems, there is not a huge influx of women going “but what about women’s problems?” but women can’t discuss their own problems without what-about-the-menz comments.
@Naglfar
Would they be gatorcels? or scalycels or some other type of derogatory nickname? Non-white incels always get racist nicknames, so I imagine a gator incel would, too. What do you imagine a gator would find racist? That’s what they would be called.
@PoM
Toothcels? Alligators have very prominent teeth, so misaligned teeth could be the gator equivalent of canthal tilt.
@LollyPop
I still remember the looks I got when I started wearing a bra (very much under the age of consent, much like the 14-year-olds discussed above). The attention didn’t make me feel sexy. It made me feel like a non-person.
@Naglfar
Maybe gaptoothcels, taking what is a common trait in alligators and making it into a racist-sounding insult? Or swampcels. I’m thinking swampcels is short and pithy enough and maybe an alligator would find it baffling and insulting to be reduced to its habitat.
Look, I think people are going way too far here with the alligator/incel comparisons. One is a group of swamp dwelling, cold blooded, murderous hateful beasts. The other are alligators.
Apropos nothing really, but I like the pics. The lass worked at an alligator sanctuary during uni. The oldest one took a bit of a shine to her and refused to be fed by anyone else. So she got some pretty cool graduation snaps; or hopefully not!
@Schnookums
You’re right, it may have been a bit unfair to the gators.
@Alan Robertshaw:
In the 2nd gator pic the gator looks so much larger than in the first. It must be simply a trick of perspective (I hope). I say this because I’m not certain if that gator knows where the food ends, and that young woman’s arm begins.
I was supposed to visit my 80 year old mother and her husband in Florida last March. Sadly, COVID-19 put an end to our plans.
Speaking of creepy dudes; just in case anyone cares what Steve Bannon is up to currently.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/steve-bannons-far-right-school-cant-evicted-800-year-old-italian-monastery-judges-ruled-week-1872006
Executive summary: Turning a beautiful 800 year old Italian monastery into a far-right bootcamp. Managed to avoid being evicted but Ministry of Culture appealing.
@Alan
I am totally not surprised to see that the woman in question is an Aggie.
(So is Mr. Parasol’s sister, as it happens.)
TBQH the only association I ever want to see between “alligators” and “men who catcall 14 year old girls” is that the latter should be fed to the former.
@Alan
OMG that is adorable! I love stories like that.
And yeah I grew up hearing that reptiles are dimwitted and sociopathic, so it’s always been a bit of a surprise to me seeing videos of e.g. tortoises or lizards clearly responding to affection from their human caretakers. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Animals having richer inner lives than most of us assume seems to be kind of a given.
Those poor gators, they never did anything to get dragged into this. They don’t even have a dog in this fight (the last time they had one they ate it when it got too close to the water).
By that same token I could shut pretty much anyone complaining about anything because there’s lots of black bears in Quebec (bonus points for all the ways I could give it a somewhat racist spin /s)
@Alan: That’s so cute! Always loved reptiles. Unfortunately I don’t think I’m quite ready to take care of one as a pet (and in any case crocodilians are illegal as pets here).
As for the Bannon thing, I’m rather disappointed by the Italians. They’ll evict boat people and stop them from coming to shore (with all the tragedies that this implies) but they’ll let someone who’s an actual dangerous parasite on society set up shop in a magnificent historical site.
@Cyborgette
I think this is a case where humans project themselves onto other creatures and assume that the animals are evil and sadistic because many people are, when really most animals are simply trying to survive.
@ Vicky P
.
Aggie-gator!
(I’ll get me coat)
@ cyborgette
I read up a bit more when that story came out. Seems that although crocodiles tend to remain wild at heart, gators can become quite docile and friendly. They’re pretty much on a par with dogs intellectually.
(Maybe not that collie that can play Jenga, but she’s a bit of an outlier I guess.)
@ paireon
Remember those comic book ads for x-ray specs and Sea Monkeys etc? And of course the actual product never quite lived up to the illustration. So guess what you got when you sent off for this?
Actually, you really did get an actual alligator.
@Alan Robertshaw
I think that if I tried to teach my dog to play Jenga she would either a) ignore the whole thing in favor of something else or b) delight in knocking over the tower, then chewing on the blocks. I was never very good at Jenga myself because my hands aren’t steady enough, so I doubt I’d be the best teacher anyway.
More or less the same for me. But I’d say my peak street harassment years were 12-20. During that time, I basically couldn’t leave the house without getting harassed.
*Persistence of the “baby” trait not guaranteed. For legal reasons, it is advised that you should in no circumstances flush an alligator of any age or size down the toilet. We rescind any responsibility of improperly kept alligators clogging toilets/sewers, living in the sewer system or turning into mutant monsters due to environmental pollution.
Thankfully I didn’t get cat-called much growing up, it only happened twice that I noticed, but I’m not sure why. Maybe I just was unobservant? Maybe people kept mistaking me for a boy from the distance? I know that happened a few times at least, which was not so much offensive as weird; my face has never been particularly masculine-looking, and I had wide hips and decent-sized breasts, how could you not notice those? Wait, was it the hair? I had short, boyish hair until I went to college. Also my clothes were unisex style, and I had a bit of muscle development due to being on the middle school track team and then later the high school volleyball team. So maybe even when I wasn’t mistaken for boy, I didn’t look like a safe harassment target? ?♀️ I mean, even mannequins get catcalled (presumably by accident) so it’s hard to say how much attention they’re really paying.