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Roderick

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In relation to this, Kieth Olbermann's response is great:

Wow. That was incredible. I don't watch TV and thus don't know who this man is, but... Yes. More of this.

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Wow. That was incredible. I don't watch TV and thus don't know who this man is, but... Yes. More of this.

 

Keith Olbermann is made from refined indignation.

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Out of curiosity Griddlelol, what do you see as the distinction between you hitting on a girl and them approaching you? I'm not asking because I think they're the same, I'm just curious about where you draw the line. I personally only feel interested in dating girls I actually know rather than one I see in passing. Though I did identify with the anxiety of feeling predatorial. Mostly when I catch myself checking out random women on the street I don't like that I have to consciously stop myself.

 

If they initiate physical contact I know they're hitting on me rather than talking to me with no romantic interest. Obviously it's a rule of thumb, but I've never made a terrible mistake and someone pull away or shout at me. It might be different, people are less touchy-feely in Britain compared to America though. Everyone hugs people they've only just met in America which just freaks me the hell out. 

I didn't know many girls until I was in college - I went to all boys schools since I was 11. So the idea of being friends before a relationship is alien to me. Being in a boy's school gave me some notions are sexist, but also completely removed gender from other things.

 

I think looking at women on the street is entirely natural. I bet every man does it (and I bet women do the reverse) though, just as you say, if you become conscious of it and stop, you're probably doing the best you can. 

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Ah, see I went to mixed schools all my life, my original trio of friends was me, another boy and a girl in kindergarten, so I've never had the conception of girls as being vastly different. There's still the distanced gender roles, obviously, but being friends with either gender was perfectly natural.

 

Also about the looking, I think even if women do it too the response it garners is different because of how gender is normally treated. The minor invasive act of assessing someone's appearance is something men get sometimes but it's the default idea of how the world works for women, so it's more likely to be something they're either tired of or sorta creeped out by. ...admittedly this is not exactly backed up by anything, it's just how my brain sees the world working. And I don't really villify myself for it, just stop myself any time I notice.

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I think there is a difference between being struck by how attracted you are to a pedestrian, and ogling them. It may be worthwhile to consider that distinction.

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I think there is a difference between being struck by how attracted you are to a pedestrian, and ogling them. It may be worthwhile to consider that distinction.

 

Yeah, it's an interesting mental exercise. I never say it out loud to them, but I try to think of how I could possibly tell a woman on the street how attracted I am to them rather than just "ugh you're so hotttttt *caveman face + jack off gesture*". I hope that it disciplines my mind to think of a random woman as a human rather than an object, even if I never end up saying a single word to them.

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I think there is a difference between being struck by how attracted you are to a pedestrian, and ogling them. It may be worthwhile to consider that distinction.

 

This is certainly true, and maybe more important to make that distinction than just trying to avoid doing either.

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Oh, hey, there's an ESPN host who thinks women need to not provoke men into knocking them the fuck out.  His "clarification" about how he was "misunderstood" is a classic as well.  Because apparently the rest of the world doesn't understand how words work.  Dude was pretty fucking clear in his rant.

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I suspect you're both right but as an intellectual exercise I'd still be interested in the results.  Of course that would require someone to actually do it and given the shit that most female writers already catch I would never ask anyone to volunteer for something like that just to satisfy my own curiosity.

 

Catching up on On The Media, their short podcast version TL:DR interviewed a black woman (Mikki Kendall) who presented as a white man for awhile on Twitter to see what would happen, and convinced some other people from a variety of races and genders to try switching for awhile.  Here's a transcript if you can't listen to it.  Along with that experience, she talks about actually moving to a more urban neighborhood after getting threatened by a stalker who was harassing her about her abortion views.  She thought a white stalker would be less likely to come after her if she was in a black neighborhood. 

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I hate* coming back to an argument that was seemingly going nowhere for several pages (I read it yesterday and thought about it some today), but IMHO it is worth making a distinction of what is sexism to one woman vs. what can we somewhat objectively consider sexism and researching the second is worthwhile even if it ignores the subjective element.

 

If attributes of sexism could be somewhat objectively recognized as such, there could be more general rules (laws?) to prevent it, widely accepted. When dealing with masses (even a games convention, for example), you can't be preventative by relying on the subjective experiences of individuals and have to have some general rules that treat everyone the same to some degree.

 

I'm not talking out of experience, so it maybe out of my ass instead.

 

* revel in.

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The idea is to make everyone feel included. If someone doesn't feel included, regardless of whether or not it is due to a policy or act that is objectively agreed upon as sexist, they don't feel included; they are the authority on this. 

When creating policies, then improvements of things that are commonly seen as exclusive in nature should be prioritized. But there isn't a point at which improvements shouldn't be sought after until every feels included. 

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10 PRINT Yes, both sides are important, which means the objective side is important too

20 PRINT Yes, both sides are important, which means the subjective side is important too

30 GOTO 10

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but IMHO it is worth making a distinction of what is sexism to one woman vs. what can we somewhat objectively consider sexism and researching the second is worthwhile even if it ignores the subjective element.

 

If attributes of sexism could be somewhat objectively recognized as such, there could be more general rules (laws?) to prevent it, widely accepted. When dealing with masses (even a games convention, for example), you can't be preventative by relying on the subjective experiences of individuals and have to have some general rules that treat everyone the same to some degree.

 

I have safe spaces policies at my events and brief staff on them. So far I've either been lucky enough that nothing has happened, or having the policy and publicising has meant that nothing has happened, or someone has been harassed and still not felt safe enough to report it. I work in dread of the last of those. I also deal with safe spaces related situations in several other communities.

 

An added complexity is that the events last a day, but the communities attending them are together year round. Several times I've had people approach me and not directly ask me to apply the policy pre-emptively, but kind of ask for that or say something like "I'm not asking for that, but just want to flag up that such and such has done these asshole things in the past and I'm not very comfortable being in the same room". Sometimes people are really ignorant of how their words or actions affect others. Sometimes one of those others is also on a hair trigger, which in turn, while looking like an over-reaction, is actually connected to a deep, long term web of how that person tends to be treated by others. Sometimes the situation is complicated by mental illness, or friendships, or power, or racism or any number of other things. Each case is unique and few rules can help, which makes it really difficult for people. Usually, a person or group of people taking action recognise that to do nothing would be terrible, but feel uncomfortably authoritarian by taking any control.

 

Trying to make cast iron rules, especially tied up intimately with definitions, can have terrible consequences in any of those unique cases. Even done with good motives, it can render forms of abuse invisible to organisations (an extreme example from my past: Jehovah's Witnesses try to do everything literally by rules they pluck from the bible. Because of this scripture, victims of harassment and sexual abuse are ignored and marginalised due to lack of witnesses).

 

The only general rules that have been useful to me in setting and enacting safe spaces policies are "Harassment is not welcome", a brief outline of harassment*, and that as soon as anyone speaks up they're treated with respect and taken seriously. It doesn't need to be more specific than that, and being more specific over, for instance, what sexism is or isn't, doesn't help in caring for and respecting people. A report of harassment isn't the trigger for a system of rules to creak into activity, it's the jumping off point for listening to everyone, making decisions on an appropriate course of action, and being able to explain that and step through it with everyone else.

 

I fully expect that even a policy this light on rules and definitions will eventually attract someone trying to game it, but I can deal with that and it's far more important to support victims. I'm not saying you'd be unsupportive Erkki, and the distinction you advocate might be useful in some abstract sense, but in my experience actual situations are far too nuanced for it. So much in them is subjective that questions like "Was it really sexism?" are useless once the situation has started.

 

*As well as the specifics on the geek feminism wiki policy that many are derived from, I added this paragraph:

 

If you act or speak in a way that someone thinks is inappropriate, it’s inappropriate to that time, place and person. If somebody tells you that you are making them uncomfortable, you must stop making them uncomfortable. Do not put your opinions or desires before the comfort of others; “It’s just a bit of fun”, “It’s just a joke”, “Where’s the harm in it?” (and so forth) are not excuses for behaviour that makes anyone else feel unwelcome or as if they are a target. If you feel compelled to tell someone who is uncomfortable that they are wrong to feel that way, you are most definitely putting yourself in the wrong.

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Sorry for the double post, but I realised this morning that this relates to the link Argobot posted, and I'd never made the connection before.

 

 (an extreme example from my past: Jehovah's Witnesses try to do everything literally by rules they pluck from the bible. Because of this scripture, victims of harassment and sexual abuse are ignored and marginalised due to lack of witnesses).

 

I was thinking of a specific man in a position of power there ("elder", people who are given congregational leadership roles, each congregation has about half a dozen of them). He used to persistently grope women at public meetings when no one was looking. I was in my early teens, and due to being home schooled used to overhear really fucked up conversations among the women about how uncomfortable it made them, but how they could do nothing due to lack of witnesses and the other elders not taking them seriously, and then usually ending with some expression of faith in the rules and their god and that if they just prayed about it everything would be okay eventually. Eventually, he seduced one of them and it became public knowledge. She was publicly humiliated and kicked out of the congregation, he got a slap on the wrist and, six months later, was right back in his role as community leader.

 

Unconsciously, his example taught me so many things that I erroneously pegged onto male sexuality instead of sexist culture. In my teens and early twenties I reproduced the behaviour in the advice column in a really extreme way, to the point of avoiding women who expressed any kind of interest in me. Until now I thought it was just behavioural inertia from the JWs sex negative, patriarchal attitudes towards sex and relationships, but I only just realised how far above that miasma this guy sticks up, how much my behaviour was a misguided reaction against everything he embodied. Small, residual bits of behaviour that have puzzled me for years, and that I assumed were just too deeply embedded to get rid of, suddenly have roots I can attack. Thanks, thumbs. Ththumbs.

 

If I had a time machine, I'd go back there right now and smash his teeth out. Not for the effects he had on me, and not because I've feared being like him. Just for being who he was and doing what he did.

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Violence is not the way forward, David. You should travel back there, pick him up, and drop him off in the Cretaceous period. Let God sort him out.

 

 

Because I was lazy earlier in my hashtag mention, here are a couple of things that seem to be getting some attention:

 

http://iwantedwings.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/a-response-to-women-against-feminism/

 

http://kristalgarcia.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/how-i-went-from-a-feminist-to-a-honey-badger/

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also http://confusedcatsagainstfeminism.tumblr.com

 

edit: I can't really take honey badgers seriously, which I consider something of a moral failing given I can stare into the abyss of fringe Christianity and not blink. But it seems like the inciting incident might have been the ongoing problem feminism has dealing with women who want to express their sexual identity in a way that just so happens to look like sexual exploitation? (aka The Miley Cyrus Problem) I expect that's going to be a sticking point for the movement for some time, there's not really a solution for it, and I strongly doubt the appropriate move is to become an MRA.

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There's something about #orangeroom too, but I have no idea what that is.

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I assume, in particular, it's the "I don't give a fuck" attitude. I did not read the entire article though. It was long! Sue me. ):

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Oh My God that video fucking gave me a headache I laughed so long.

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This piece is kind of fascinating, I can appreciate how this woman's history and her family shaped her views.  But I find her claims of how universally wonderful her sex work experiences have been to be as hard to swallow as I do a piece like this insisting all pornography and sex work are dangerous traps that exist to please and reinforce the patriarchy. 

 

Both sides have legitimate points, but take their logic to an extreme that it's hard to take them seriously, as their assertions don't seem to line up with reality very well. 

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I assume, in particular, it's the "I don't give a fuck" attitude. I did not read the entire article though. It was long! Sue me. ):

 

From the post:

From there on I was very clear I was a Honey Badger-an endearing term for female MRA’s.

 

 

What that article (which I did not completely read) mostly says to me is that there are going to be assholes no matter where you go.  There are feminists who are assholes.  There are MRAs who are nice.  There are also nice feminists and asshole MRAs.  The bottom line is they're all people and people, especially on the internet, tend to be jerks given the chance.  Like Bjorn, I think it's interesting her life led her to the conclusion it did but she seems to be overlooking a lot.

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