Men literally believe they can touch women however they like without their consent? I find this hard to believe, and if it were true, there would be a hell of a lot more men in jail.
Some men actually do believe this. And yeah, they absolutely do not listen when they're at first politely asked not to touch, or later when they're told not to touch. They may not intend to do harm, but even things like touching someone's arm, shoulder, hand, etc. are actions men should not do when the woman makes it plain that she doesn't want him to, and when they continue to do them, it's obvious that they have zero respect for the woman's personal boundaries.
Oh, my. Look what just came in my morning newsfeed from cbc.ca:
cbc.ca said:
John Key, New Zealand PM, apologizes for tugging on server's ponytail
Anonymous server threatened to hit PM John Key after he persisted despite warning
New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key has apologized to a café worker who said he'd repeatedly pulled her ponytail when he visited the café near his home over a period of months, even after she'd told him to stop.
The worker wrote an anonymous post Wednesday on The Daily Blog website, saying Key began pulling her hair last year during his successful re-election campaign and continued the behaviour through late March. At first, she wrote, she didn't say anything as she thought Key was probably trying to be "playful and jolly."
Eventually, she wrote, she told Key's security detail she didn't like it and later told Key "No" repeatedly and wagged her finger at him. When he pulled her hair again on a subsequent visit, she said, she told him to stop "or I will actually hit you soon."
"I really didn't like it," the worker wrote. "I felt powerless and tormented and I stepped out the back and I cried frustrated tears."
The worker said Key came back soon after the last incident with two bottles of wine from his own vineyard and gave them to her, saying "This is for you, sorry, I didn't realize."
Key's office issued a statement Wednesday saying he regularly visits the café with his wife and has a good relationship with the staff there.
"His actions were intended to be light-hearted," the statement said. "It was never his intention to make her feel uncomfortable and he has apologized to her."
Source.
So... a politician repeatedly pulls a woman's hair after she tells him to stop, and he thinks a couple of bottles of wine are going to make it all okay?
Nonsense. More than anything, the same men who believe they *aren't* entitled to women are the ones less likely to think such entitlement is a common belief to begin with (me being a prime example, I've literally never cat-called a woman in my life).
Then that puts you ahead of even a pet cockatiel my mother had once. She decided to go to the beach, and took the bird with her (in his cage). So there they were, sitting on the beach at the lake, and just as a couple of young women walked by in bikinis, the bird let out a wolf-whistle. Considering that my mother wasn't sitting near anyone else and there was no man with her, it created an awkward situation for a few seconds.
Wow. Well,
of course he got all kinds of attention. I mean, look at that tight T-shirt and strut. He was literally asking for it, right?
The thing is, this video is not the same thing as normal, off-camera life. It's a
performance. And consider the fact that he was being filmed. Unless the person doing the filming was completely unobtrusive, some people are drawn to cameras, because they want to be part of whatever is going on.
I might be a tad more sympathetic if he hadn't done the "air quotes" stuff.
Not paying attention to what never happens while I'm around? Actually, I take that back, with one exception. My coworker is a all-around good guy with the singular flaw that he keeps on pointing out when a female customer has a "nice ass". But other than that one guy, I haven't had any of my other guy friends behave in that way. Or if they are, they aren't doing it with me so I'm oblivious.
...
What the hell do you want my to do? Believe something that I'm not seeing? And if I did see it I would not promote such behavior. In fact I'll go as far to say I would try to discourage it. With my coworker I simply ignore him when he tries to get my attention in that way, because trying to get in a fight with him isn't worth it since I work with him which would hurt me in the long run. But if some random dude did that with me, yeah I'd tell him to piss off.
Next time he makes that comment, I might be inclined to act surprised and say, "I didn't see her ride in on a donkey."
My eyes are a tired for reading long articles, but that story is familiar to me. Isn't that the thing where one dude simply asked a woman to have coffee in his room and then she called it 'harassment'? Asking a woman out (once) isn't harassment. If I'm not wrong (please correct me if I am) didn't that guy not even say anything sexual that actually would be harassment such as "nice boobs" or whatever? Isn't this the thing where literally all he did was ask her out? How's that harassment? If I'm right about this, Dawkins was right to call her out for whining.
It's not what he said. It's the circumstances. An elevator at 4 a.m. is not an appropriate time to ask a woman to have coffee in a hotel room. I understand completely why she was upset, since an invitation like that often has absolutely nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with sex. Any woman would be prudent to turn down such an "invitation" and get away ASAP.
Sheesh, I was one of the late-night partiers at the science fiction conventions back in the '80s and early '90s, but there is no way in hell I'd go to some guy's room at that hour, and he'd have to be crazy to even ask. As it is, I spent half the night at Noncon VI trying to fend off some jerk who thought that just because I complimented him on his costume (he won in his division in the bacchanal), it meant I wanted to go to bed with him.
So the both of them overreacted, I guess Dawkins and her have a lot in common. Perhaps he should ask her out.
She was not wrong to feel creeped out. And Dawkins is married.
