When did feminism go completely crazy?

[Narz]

A male colleague of mine was recently suspended from his job for sexual harassment. His offence? He asked one of his female co-workers out on a date. She said no. He didn’t persist.

Clearly he didn't watch this instructional video.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f76_1323277426&comments=1

 

[Tahuti]

No, but it is an immense faux pas before six.

Basically, approaching a woman as a male between 12 and 6AM is like stuffing a human with an animatronic custome. Who could have known!

 

[useless]

 

[Borachio]

You know, all of this talk about the coffee invitation has got me interested in concocting a scenario in which the whole affair doesn't sound creepy or at least isn't about sex

Okay, so I have just been at a party all night long. I didn't drink because I had to be the designated driver for my friends. When I come home after driving them, I'm tired and stumble onto the elevator and lo behold! What do I see but a pretty lady sharing the elevator with me. I'm in a panic. This is a social setting I'm unfamiliar with. What are the rules? Why say anything? But silence when another person around is awkward and weird. So I start with the safe basics. "Hello" I tell her. That's safe and non committed right? So she says hi back, and I reply with some more safe trivialities. The conversation seems to be flowing well, and in the back of my mind I'm still some what in party mode. And in a party social setting, when you hit it off with a person, especially an attractive female, you invite them somewhere (At least that is what I surmise from what I understand of party going people- I am not actually part of that crowd, so someone who is can educate me on the social etiquette and expectations). So out of my mouth I blurt the invitation. Because it is four AM I don't realize a) Holy Crap! It is 4 AM. Who wants coffee at 4 AM. b) at 4 AM in an empty elevator an invitation to coffee is much less innocuous then one at 6 PM in a crowded party. c) etc. other people have already pointed out the various problems
She says no. I realize my mistake.

This probably didn't happen, but the insistence of most people that this was about sex got me interested in seeing if I can create a scenario in which it is not. Because it is a sad society we live in if every social encounter between a man and a woman in non work related settings has to be about sex.

That said, don't approach strangers. It forces the both of you into an uneasy social interaction for which there is no guide lines. Everyone loses, and in some cases one loses more than the other.

You're an innocent abroad in a foreign land, Mr Gull. Just like me.

If someone invites me in for a coffee at 4 am, I invariably decline; saying I'd rather have a glass of water. Unless I think it's too late to go to bed and I've an eye on remaining awake for the next 18 hours.

Talking to strangers is an art I do practice though. It's not an easy art, by any means. But someone's got to do it. Otherwise the world would be populated with people who don't know each other.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

And what usually happens now is manfred pops up and burbles something about them not being remotely equivalent, but they really kinda are.

Wow, you really need to get over this obsession. It's getting quite creepy now.

 

[Farm Boy]

This is tongue in cheek, right?

No, it wasn't. But I presume the sympathy for somebody, perhaps quite reasonably, being scared by a stranger seeking to socialize with them will dry up nearly entirely the moment people can envision themselves being barely inconvenienced as a cost for acting on the empathy. Trapping somebody alone in an elevator with you will eventually come out as being fine, but it's the rebuffable social advance that just a bridge too far man.

 

[Mise]

Mise, I think casual sex itself is immoral for all parties involved, but I get called a hater if I make a stand on that too hard, so I roll with a society that largely doesn't share my views on that.

If I buy your premises, and they're not unreasonable, so let's buy them, I cannot really come up with a situation in which a man can approach a woman that he does not know, with sexual interest implied where, absent an active flag being flown by her(such as on a dating site), the following:



...is not nearly always true.

Is that basically where we're going to end up in this conversation? Or somewhere else. I'm trying to gauge. Social approaches carrying the possibility of sexual interest to women by men are only morally acceptable through pre-designated mediums and situations? Do we need to start making a list? While it's something you are probably able to convince me is true, it seems so very... medieval. It doesn't seem like it's being your sort of liberal.

We already have a sort of list of socially acceptable places to meet people of the opposite (or same) sex. I'm really not sure what the problem is. You seem to be implying that we need to write it down, in a law or something. But we don't, and I don't think anyone has been arguing that at all. We're talking about social acceptability, common courtesy, being a "good person". We're not talking about changing the law.

And yes, I accept (and have argued in the past) that "social acceptability" can be just as (if not more) freedom-restricting than the law. But that's why I'm subsuming this into a discussion about liberty, because it really is an important discussion from a liberal perspective. You're right that, taken too far, it would seem medieval and illiberal. There's a cost in terms of liberty to asking men not to try to have sex with women in certain situations, sure. But there's a cost in terms of liberty to making it socially acceptable for me to try to have sex with women in elevators at 4am. Personally, I think people overestimate the cost to men in the latter and underestimate the cost to women in the former.

Let's unpack what you mean by "medieval". I think what you mean is that it seems old fashioned; it seems to castigate people for wanting sex, which isn't very liberal. In the past, in the sexist Victorian days where sex was a shameful act that good people didn't talk about, we might have universally criticised the man for approaching the woman for sex, and the result was that it was socially unacceptable for the man to do so. Then we were sexually liberated by the Beatles or whatever, and now it's totally okay to like and want sex, so it's far more socially acceptable for a man to approach a woman and ask for sex. Then the feminists came along, and said "no you're not allowed to do that any more!", and we're suddenly thrown back into the Victorian times.

That's what it might look like, anyway. But is that really the case? What really is a medieval attitude toward sex? In the past, sex was used as a stick to beat people with -- primarily women. It wasn't simply that sex was shameful, it was that women were supposed to be virginal and chaste, and when they had sex, they became damaged goods. After all, men are entitled to a chaste wife, are they not?! Men who tried to approach women for sex were robbing women of their chastity, which in turn robbed other men of the opportunity to have a chaste wife some day. Again, not to labour the point, but the reason why men weren't allowed to chase after women freely was because society had placed strict limits on women's sexuality; these limits on men's behaviour was designed to preserve those strict limits on women's sexuality.

Nowadays, women are more sexually liberated, and society no longer places such strict limits on women's sexuality. (There are still limits of course, "slut shaming" and so on, but leave those aside for now.) Women are allowed to have sexual desires now; they're allowed to be sexually permissive, sexually active, sexually awakened. They can have sex whenever and wherever they want. The sky is the limit for informed, consenting adults.

But we're not really talking about sex here, are we? For the man, yeah, maybe. He's interested in sex. But for the woman, we're talking about unwanted harassment that just so happens to be of a sexual nature by a strange man in an elevator at 4am. The purpose in Victorian times was to keep the woman and her sexuality within the strict confines of chastity and virginity. The purpose in this case is so that women are free to go about their daily lives without being harassed by strange men in elevators at 4am. They're two very different thing. The purpose of the former is deeply illiberal, as it is specifically designed with the intention of restricting women's freedom sexually. The purpose of the second is inherently liberal, as it is specifically designed to maximise liberty overall, taking cognisance of the fact that there are two competing liberties in question.

Furthermore, the former takes no account of the woman's wants, feelings, or consent. The latter is explicitly designed around taking into account everyone's wants, feelings and consent. Consent is a fundamental principle in liberalism; it's completely lacking from the medieval view, but is front and centre of the modern, liberal view.

So I really don't accept that this is "medieval". You're free to consider it that, of course, but to me, this is just a very limited, circumstantial view. It might seem like that on the surface, but when you unpack it, there really isn't anything substantial behind it. It's a very forced analogy that doesn't hold up for me at all.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm still reading Mise, but restructure medieval not as referring to the right of men to a chaste woman, but of dealing with the realities of a system where a woman caught alone by strangers could be raped and almost nothing could be done about it. Not even from a punitive standpoint, much less a deterrent. Many of those terrible woman-based restrictions were the safety and risk management precautions of an even less civilized time. Not justifying them, mind you.

 

[Mise]

Fair enough - if that's what you mean then I don't view it as a criticism. Not trying to have sex with women in elevators at 4am is indeed a safety and risk management precaution that men can take so that women aren't made to feel unsafe or harassed late at night in an elevator.

 

[Farm Boy]

Fair enough - if that's what you mean then I don't view it as a criticism. Not trying to have sex with women in elevators at 4am is indeed a safety and risk management precaution that men can take so that women aren't made to feel unsafe or harassed late at night in an elevator.

Ok. So we are indeed finally to the crux? That female sexual liberation is progress. Possibly because of past history but predominately because of physical size, the relative absence of significant rates of stranger based female-committed sexual assault, and raw differences in the structure of sexual reproduction coupled with advances in medicine more female sexual freedom = more liberty/win.

Male sexual liberation(while less needed), ultimately, has different limits. Due to the relative prevalence, or perceived prevalence, of male on female stranger sexual assault, differences in size, and the simple biology of penetrative genitals, men will need to be, if they are to be empathetic, less free. There's a latent threat in penises and testosterone. It needs to be accounted for and controlled.

I suppose there's another option. We could argue that all differences in (sexual)violence rates between genders are based on socially constructed realities rather than having any significant causal link in biology. That with enough of saying the right things the rates will even out, hopefully near zero, and that any gendered differences in sexual freedom/liberty/ethical behaviors will evaporate like a half-remembered bad dream.

 

[Mise]

Less free than they were, sure. Like I said, I don't think this is a huge issue, because the degree to which men are less free is really quite small. There are plenty of places where men can talk to women that aren't likely to make a woman feel threatened, so I don't think my freedom is restricted in any meaningful way.

I'm not sure what you mean by the other option. Could you explain it again? Do you mean that, if we keep telling women that they won't be raped if they talk to men in elevators (assuming this is true/statistically valid), they will be less fearful, and men will be able to ask them for sex in an elevator in the future? Maybe you're right, and maybe this would be a good thing, but even if it is, I'm not sure why I'd bother... Not being able to ask for sex in an elevator isn't a big deal to me, and I doubt it would be to many people. I know this is a cheap shot, but I wonder how many people defending the right of men to ask women for sex in an elevator have actually asked a woman for sex in an elevator? How many would honestly have the guts to ask them for sex in an elevator, but be too shy or coy to chat them up in a bar or some other socially acceptable place? Is this really a problem for people?

Let's put this another way: I am being denied the freedom to talk to women in a way that is likely to make a woman feel threatened. And I'm perfectly okay with that.

 

[Traitorfish]

Watch as the concept of intellectual-property moralism pollutes cultural negotiation...

Since when has scholarship or politics been served be "no, don't use our knowledge, it's ours"?

I don't follow?

So tell me, did Asian Americans just piggy back off of the work of African Americans?

I don't think I buy that analogy. Men are a dominant group, women are a non-dominant group; African-Americans and Asian-Americans are both non-dominant groups. That changes the dynamic pretty fundamentally.

 

[Farm Boy]

Less free than they were, sure. Like I said, I don't think this is a huge issue, because the degree to which men are less free is really quite small. There are plenty of places where men can talk to women that aren't likely to make a woman feel threatened, so I don't think my freedom is restricted in any meaningful way.

I'm not sure what you mean by the other option. Could you explain it again? Do you mean that, if we keep telling women that they won't be raped if they talk to men in elevators (assuming this is true/statistically valid), they will be less fearful, and men will be able to ask them for sex in an elevator in the future? Maybe you're right, and maybe this would be a good thing, but even if it is, I'm not sure why I'd bother... Not being able to ask for sex in an elevator isn't a big deal to me, and I doubt it would be to many people. I know this is a cheap shot, but I wonder how many people defending the right of men to ask women for sex in an elevator have actually asked a woman for sex in an elevator? How many would honestly have the guts to ask them for sex in an elevator, but be too shy or coy to chat them up in a bar or some other socially acceptable place? Is this really a problem for people?

Let's put this another way: I am being denied the freedom to talk to women in a way that is likely to make a woman feel threatened. And I'm perfectly okay with that.

I think I'm just rolling with the idea that gendered violence and the disparity of rates between men raping women and women raping men is predominately predicated in rape culture. That rape, as it exists, is a socially created reality(rather than "simply" impacting the reality). The idea that it isn't testosterone, violent impulse, and force-usable genitalia that create a baseline incidence rate of rape between strangers and acquaintances and family members, it's privilege. This actually does seem like a reality that's preferable to a reality in which testosterone and dicks do actually cause in combination a degree of sexual aggression. That reality forever lands us with a gender that is safer and more sexually acceptable by default.

I don't know about the cheap shot Mise. Like I said, I actually do think sex is a terribly important thing, to use FP's verbage. I don't really think it's something that best serves us to be tossed around relatively lightly, jokes about tuxes aside. But I do not particularly like a world where ~half of the population's urge to court and/or rut is innately suspect of beastliness simply for being what it is.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Okay, it's interesting, watching everyone speculate about the elevator incident. But how many have actually heard the woman herself describe it?

Here it is (warning: contains one mild swear word near the beginning):


Link to video.

I had originally had quite a lot of multiquoted posts to go through, but since that would take a couple of days, I've combined some of them (apologies for going a bit out of chronological order in some cases).

I can agree that how he says things isn't always PC but that has more to do with the weird PC bounds than Dawkins himself. I also agree with the sentiment that he occasionally says things that are meant to annoy some people but that I can understand - it must be frustrating to try to convince people that the Earth really isn't only 6-10 000 years old & stuff like that so I'm pretty much agreeing with Valka on all cases but this

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.

got me curious, why not?

I assume that's still about the time night clubs close in many places so it's probably a fairly common scenario after all and even if the question was more direct what's the problem? A no is still a no so apart from possible discomforth no harm done and in some cases I'd still assume a positive response regardless of the question being veiled or direct. Single people 4 in the morning are known to seek company.

I am still waiting for the video links to show me what kind of a terrible person Dawkins is that "everybody" would hate him.

That said, having seen the video describing the elevator incident, I think Dawkins should have kept his mouth shut about that. He wasn't there, and he's never been in the situation of having to worry that a stranger could have sexual assault on his mind instead of an innocent cup of coffee.

I assume that some people here in this thread have been to conventions and are aware of the turn that some of the after-hours socializing can take when the panels are done? Sometimes the parties and discussions are still going on at 4 am, and at that hour it's not unusual that someone would say she's tired and wants to go to sleep (been in that situation myself a couple of times). It's presumptuous to assume that this means anything other than just that. It's not code for "I'm available." It was just plain rude of the man to not respect her wishes.

If the man really just wanted to talk to this lady about her speech, he could have asked her if they could meet later the next day for coffee - in the hotel restaurant.

4AM in a closed elevator is the sort of scenario predators choose (unmonitored, no escape). Now you may know you're not a predator but theres no excuse to force a woman to smile and decline politely while surreptitiously reaching into her pocket to slip her car keys through her knuckles.

Exactly. You (generic guy) may know you mean no harm, and that most times a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee. But the woman doesn't know that, and if there is anything about your tone of voice or nonverbals that seems off, or it's an inappropriate time or place, she has every reason to be cautious - and even upset. This is something that is so obvious to most of the women I know, that as hard for some of you to understand why it's a problem, it's every bit as hard for me to understand why some of you don't understand that it's a problem.

Oh, there's definitely no reason to force a smile. Very true. But I would hope we don't start teaching women the sort of trigger control and profiling that we teach our cops. Those underclass males out in public are !!dangerous!!
...
Define accost for me again?

Wiktionary gives the definition "To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request". I'd say that the events describe at least run up against the boundaries of this definition.

Farm Boy, I've combined some of your posts, because otherwise it would take too long to go through the ones I originally multiquoted.

I sense some defensiveness from you in this. There's definitely a lot of snark and sarcasm here, and I really do not understand why you can't seem to be able to put yourself in the woman's shoes for a moment and try to see it from her pov. Yes, she was accosted. I'd say inviting a woman to one's hotel room at 4 am, especially after hearing her say she wanted to go to sleep (thus implying bed), is going quite a bit farther than merely bold. It's rude, thoughtless, inconsiderate, and so very, very clueless and inappropriate.

Noone has even justified how Richard Dawkins is Sexist and Racist among other things. He was pointing out a feminist saying absolutely crazy things. (they may in a few cases have attempted to do so but fall far short of getting anywhere close)

This thread OP proclaims feminists as crazy, alot of the posts here have certainly proven the correlation I would say.

This thread makes me worried for democracy, the level of irrationality displayed scares me.

I've just explained why what she said was not crazy. She explained it herself in the video. Why do you think that she said "absolutely crazy things" and why does this make you "worried for democracy"?

Please understand that it's not always what is said that's the problem. If he'd invited her for coffee in the middle of the afternoon, there's nothing inappropriate in that, although she would be wise to insist on keeping it in a public place like the hotel restaurant.

Where the problems tend to come into it is how things get said, and the circumstances. Facial expression, tone of voice, body language, and other nonverbals are all things that contribute to how we react to people and what we think of a situation.

If literally all he did was ask her to have coffee with him, I honestly don't see the big deal. If all she had to do was say is "no" (which she did), and that was apparently the end of it, I'm not seeing the big deal here.

If I asked a woman out for a cup of coffee and her response was "he harassed me" I would roll my eyes also.
...
Ok, so what if he just flat said "would you like to have sex with me"? Same situation. All she has to do is say no, then it's over.
...
Well that's what it comes down to. Either he continued to talk to her after she said no, or he didn't. And from my understanding if the situation, he didn't. He asked her for coffee at 4 in the morning and she said no, then he left. Yeah, forgive me for not giving a damn.

Yeah, I am profoundly annoyed by the above posts.

Again, it's not what he said, but the way he said it and the time and place. He may very well have just meant a cup of coffee and a discussion about her speech. But it's ludicrous to think that it's appropriate to ask that at 4 am after the woman in question has just stated that she wants to go to sleep. It's not wrong for her to wonder if he interpreted her statement as "I want to go to bed, anyone wanna join me?"

Meh. People can *potentially* harm another anywhere in the world. At least an elevator is inside a building with security cameras so the man would have been caught if he tried to pull some BS. My understanding is places like dark alleys are where those kinds of situations are more likely to actually happen.

You really think that rapes and assaults mostly occur in dark alleys? Seriously? Even if it's no more than an unwelcome invitation to coffee, those happen in the home, in a hotel room, or out in the open a hell of a lot oftener than they happen in a dark alley.

Sometimes they happen on the corner of a busy intersection downtown. Or they happen on a quiet residential street in the middle of the day. Sometimes they happen in the middle of a department store.

All he did was ask her for a cup of coffee and she said no, then he left her alone. If he *did* continue to make advances after her initial refusal he's harassing. But at what point can men (or women for that matter) approach at all? Can't even ask for a cup of coffee? Christ.

Nobody is saying you can't approach. But keep it appropriate. Four o'clock in the morning is not appropriate, and neither is a pretext that makes no sense under the circumstances.

Honestly, I've been to conventions where I've partied until 4 am and finally got to bed an hour later. There was one year that I had a concom meeting to get to at 9 am, and anybody offering me coffee before I'd gotten some sleep would have gotten a "no, thank you" from me and "what kind of idiot asks that at this hour" train of thought running through my mind. Anything that's worth discussing over coffee can wait for a decent hour in a neutral location.

That said, don't approach strangers. It forces the both of you into an uneasy social interaction for which there is no guide lines. Everyone loses, and in some cases one loses more than the other.

There's nothing wrong with simply saying "hi." People around here do that all the time, whether on the street, in the mall, and yeah, even in the elevator here. But none of those people take it any farther unless it's some neutral comment about the weather.

... If he knows the camera were there rolling (I'm guessing he did as they would be in just about any elevator), he'd have probably have known better than to commit a felony on film in the first place.

Some people are remarkably absent-minded about such things when they commit crimes.

She was overreacting like crazy, and Dawkins was certainly within the right to laugh at it. If some woman asked me for coffee at 4 in the morning I would probably laugh it off. She should have done the same... Especially because nothing happened.

Nope. She legitimately felt uncomfortable, and her "guys, don't do that" was in no way over the top. It was a straightforward account of something inappropriate that happened and she was letting her male viewers know that it was inappropriate in general, not just for her.

Dawkins may certainly laugh at it if he wants, but he was a jerk for having done so.

Personally I think feminism is a topic should be banned on CFC, because nobody is going to change their mind.

And some people wonder why there aren't more women in OT.

You don't get to decide what her level of discomfort was or should have been. As you mentioned, you would have handled the situation differently. Bully for you. That underscores that you are different people. It is perfectly permissible for people to have different reactions from how you believe you would have acted.

You underscore that nothing happened. That's absolutely correct, he didn't do anything other than talk. She wasn't touched. What you ignore is that she didn't do anything either. She didn't do anything but talk either.

All he did was use his voice. All she did was use her voice. And you are applying a double standard by condemning her voice while permitting his.

All she did was spend one minute on a youtube video talk about this. Just one minute.

In the video, she talks about how she was personally uncomfortable the situation because of the context. She mentioned that she found it uncomfortable because she was a single woman in a foreign country in a lift with a stranger at 4 am after giving a talk about misogyny. It was because of those specific factors that made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe if only one of those were a factor she would have a different feeling. Or if only three of them. But apparently six coinciding factors crossed the line.

So she spoke out. That's all she did.

She didn't punch him.

She didn't insult him.

She didn't run away, call the police, or shame him in front of other people.

She didn't name him.

She didn't even make fun of him.

All she did was suggest that maybe 4 am in an elevator at an atheist conference isn't the best time to try and pick her up. There wasn't any shaming or name calling. She expressed her personal opinion and feelings on the matter without condemnation towards anyone else.

Exactly.

 

[Triewd]

Clearly he didn't watch this instructional video.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f76_1323277426&comments=1

Thank You

I needed that I actually feel much better now.

 

[Senethro]

Thank You

I needed that I actually feel much better now.

Some dudes in this thread subscribe this weird narrative of "fickle woman not responding to my advances are the real villains here".

 

[Triewd]

Anyway Valka D'Ur

Just a quick message: I am "worried for democracy" because of what people on this thread have said; elevatorgate is just the icing on the cake. Thats A subject I may go into later.

Why do you think that she said "absolutely crazy things"

(Valka)

THIS:

Thats right You liberal intellectual guy who has a healthy interest in science and skepticism but who finds feminism distasteful and would rather not hear about it- You are worse than rape threats

^Rebbecca Watson

It is textbook insanity.

Next:

Don’t take this the Wrong Way but I find you very interesting and I would like to talk more, would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee”

^unknown Innocent man

There is nothing wrong with that.

 

[Senethro]

Anyway Valka D'Ur

Just a quick message: I am "worried for democracy" because of what people on this thread have said; elevatorgate is just the icing on the cake. Thats A subject I may go into later.



THIS:


It is textbook insanity.

Next:



There is nothing wrong with that.

Who are you quoting? Who said those things? What do your responses even mean?

 

[JollyRoger]

MRAs can rest a bit easier tonight. Rosie the Riveter is dead.

http://news.yahoo.com/woman-famed-rosie-riveter-painting-dies-92-060311125.html

 

[caketastydelish]

Why should that make anyone happy?