Sexual misconduct
 

I had to unfriend former Dwellar elSicomoro.

He posted that men who are not involved should "say something if they see something". I was moved to say that we gents who are blameless don't really have a job to do here, our job is to just keep being awesome.

His group of yenta friends lept on me in attack. It's always the bad ones who will say something like that, they said, and it was off to the races, no real discussion to be had.

It was their big opportunity to attack in retaliation for god knows what. All I could think is, wow I have woken and angered this pack of apes and now I see them advancing, color in their eyes. Now I'm one of the bad ones. But I can see they love it; and once in ape mode there's no talking to be done. I stuck around and played for a little while, tried to explain how attacking me was absolutely wrong. But once I had "transgressed", forget it.

Sycamore's been an associate since 2001, and came to my 40th birthday party. Unfriended. Because who on this earth needs THAT particular kind of shit in their lives?

(Nobody, and that's why this place is barren now. But I digress.)

~

People have started to call it "virtue signaling" when somebody makes a public proclamation of how they support blah blah blah. I think that's an appropriate tag. Go out and publicly declare yourself good. Shame the Others to demonstrate how Good you are.

But it's the sort of thing Weinstein does -- they all do -- I posted a picture of Weinstein at the pink pussy march, on Syc's thread, to make a point of it. I'm not a predator, I am part of your pack, Weinstein and others are saying. Hunters trick the prey into allowing them to get as close as possible before the killing shot.

Because these public proclamations are NOT for the ears of the predators.

And the behavior of the apes showed it for what it was, as they circled to create and protect the perceived pack from danger. And the danger was....

...me! :dunce:

This from ElSicamoro who used a succession of women to carry him through life until a bankruptcy forced him to move to another city with sights already set on a woman who lived there whom he hoped would carry him. I understood, but didn’t approve, which is why I refused to be his best man. The irony is bright at the sun.

My whole life the lesson from peers, movies, books, TV, even biology class, was the goal in life was sex. Sometimes dressed up as reproduction or survival of the species, even wrapped in morality, marriage, family, missionary position, the bottom line was sex.

From early on I understood the captain of the football teem, movie stars, people with money and power, would attract women like moths to the flame. I was sure that many of the moths were hoping to win the flame’s favor but went away singed and bitter. So revelations like Cosby and Weinstein going over the top are not surprising.

For the rest of us it appeared women had the power, were in control, and guys like me would have to do the best we could to win favor sex. We all used the tools we had, and for a few one of those tools was power. Whether the physical power to rape or social power of the paycheck, it’s not fair, not right.

When a bad behavior is extremely ingrained in the culture, calling it out is needed.

Maybe in a specific instance you make the calculation that "saying something" when you "see something" wouldn't be productive, but I don't see why someone would push back against the idea of doing it in abstract.

Maybe I'm too non-confrontational, or too shy, or whatever, to actually do it, but I congratulate those who do. And if I see someone being harassed, and don't say something, I should be ashamed.

"Virtue signalling" is required until the person doing so receives the response "well, of course; obviously", rather than "you think you're better than me!?!?".

No, they're for the ears of the victims who are afraid to speak out. It's fantastic that there's been enough so called "virtue signalling" to bring victims out of the shadows, and attempts to denigrate the victims to vindicate the predators are starting to fall on deaf ears.

Sure, predators will virtue signal, too, as a disguise. But as Wednesday Addams says, homicidal maniacs look like everyone else. That doesn't mean that looking like everyone else is a sign of a homicidal maniac.

When someone sees a murder and says nothing, then they are complicit in the murder. Same concept applies to other crimes.

It's the part where he's telling others how to behave. And then getting the praise of your fellow apes for being so virtuous... for actually doing nothing at all

The phrase is "behave yourself" not "behave others". El Sic and, really, all of us, have plenty to address in ourselves. (Including me) And that is where we should focus our energies.

Noting/rewarding the positive behavior? That's the correct way to operate, I believe, and is the only way to actually get the behavior we are looking for out of society.

Positive reinforcement: it's how we train our dogs. Let it be how we train our humans, too.

And now,

UnDeRsTaNd that if you had been in that thread, with those apes, and offered your position, they would have attacked you for it.

Too shy to actually say something? Wow, like being shy is your big excuse or something? Someone being nearly raped and you can't even say one word? Now we see where the problem lies. It's you, you've actually been the problem all along. The rapers, they run off instinct, but you are supposed to be better than that - and you know that it's wrong, you admit that, but you say nothing? And you want to congratulate the ones who do say something? WOW!! What do you say in your defense? And by the way, if you don't want to talk about it any more? It's even more clear and obvious proof you're one of the bad ones.

Did you just call HM a rapist?

Don't forget the cop trying to come between a feuding couple and gets the shit kicked out of him by both of them.

Seeing a crime committed and saying something isn't even close to seeing something you find morally/socially reprehensible and interfering.

What is the "doing nothing at all" here? Saying something if you see something, or saying that you should say something if you see something?

The latter is more of a "behave others" thing, but it's not a "doing nothing at all" thing. The former is closer to "doing nothing at all", but further from "behave others", especially as a Facebook post not directed at any particular person.

If someone posted "Pay it forward! Do something nice today!", would you be huffy about them dictating your behavior?
Sure, but how does that work when you're "seeing something"? Wait until they stop harassing the victim, and then praise them for stopping? If you praise a dog when they finish ripping up a pillow, that won't help anything.

In my view, we should positively reinforce people who say something when they see something.
Perhaps. And I would, of course, agree to an extent, since it was explicitly described as a fault.
Thankfully, I haven't witnessed a rape. But if I had, and done nothing, I would be complicit. The non-confrontational/shy thing was a hypothetical. No particular instances come to mind where it has come up, but it's entirely possible that they have, and I didn't notice, or I did notice, but have forgotten, since it didn't affect me personally.

Your 'apes' might very well castigate me for that manifestation of privilege, as well. To which I would reply, "well, of course, obviously". I'm extremely lucky not to be in a situation where I'm likely to be a victim of this sort of thing, and I will have blind spots.

The latter. It's doing nothing at all.

I mean, for one thing, 99% of this behavior happens entirely privately. 99% of it represents a power game which we're almost never party to.

In that atmosphere, what does it mean to demand a moral behavior? I can't remember when I last witnessed a specific incident. (After 9th grade.) Have you? What was it? I have never seen a colleague play grabass with an unwilling secretary, or chase her around the desk cartoon-style, a la some sort of mid-60s sitcom.

Let me tell you what I *have* seen though. The unmistakeable evidence of a married 40 year old boss reaming his 25 year old secretary, on a Saturday afternoon, when the office was supposed to be empty and only the assistant IT guy would come in unexpectedly.

"Oh, uh... hi Cindy. Oh! Uh... hi Jim as well! Didn't expect to see you two here today. I'm just finishing up the work on the servers... well bye" (thinks: "wow, her hair was really messed up... like really really messed up... OH, uh, wait a minute! Oh shiiiit!! They were totally doin' it, and heard me in the hallway!
Had 30 seconds to stop before I got to his office!! :lol: ")

So, now, having witnessed that - dang should I have said something??

~

No. And actually, in this case, Cindy had all the power, and Jim was putting himself at great risk by doin' it with her.

Cindy was a family member of the founders; which was a really big deal. The grocery store chain had her last name on it. The family members were "special", given enormous consideration and respect. They managed their situation within the company rather privately, and were untouchable (from an employment perspective, cough). So Cindy literally could not be fired; when family members were judged not competent, they were inevitably given some other job.

So. There's also a possibility that they just liked each other, and liked doin' it, and that's the thought I went with as I went about my day not saying anything.*

It would depend on why they would say it; but, if I pushed back and there was a bevy of yentas screaming that I was foul, and part of the non-niceness problem, is.. is that cool?

Level of difficulty of the question: the demand was that I do something nice. The bevy is doing something not nice.




* OMG if you woulda seen Cindy. OMG. And then seeing her with her hair mussed up like that. OMG.

I got group-attacked for saying that the "bad" thematic elements in Blade Runner could be there because a dystopian future is bad by definition--THAT's THE POINT--and not because the...what was it they were all saying...?... "the filmmakers are showing their lack of empathy for disenfranchised groups by making a movie where bad things happen to disenfranchised groups' --actually I can't even reconstruct what their point was. Basically the filmmaker was doing something wrong, and the movie is bad, and because I said "maybe it's bad because it's dystopian, and it's supposed to be bad" that meant *I was bad* because I wasn't saying the right thing we were all supposed to be saying.

They can all go to hell. Friends of friends.

I disagree. The very worst of this behaviour happens entirely privately - but there's a bunch of very overt stuff that all feeds into a culture in which this kind of behaviour becomes almost acceptable/expected/considered merely a natural outcropping of male - female interaction.

When a guy tells a rape joke to his mates - he is more than likely not himself a rapist, and probably would think doing such a thing vile - and it's likely most of the mates he's telling the joke too also think it vile - but that one guy, who doesn't think of himself as a rapist (because rapists wear balaclavas or ski masks and drag stranger women into the bushes) , but does see sex as a form of conquest and women as the prize, and is not above plying a co-ed girl with enough alcohol as to not be able to stand, might be laughing for different reasons - except he won't know he's laughing for different reasons because he probably assumes all his mates think the same way deep down.


Catcalling also doesn't generally happen in private. I have been insulted, flattered and frightened by catcalling, turn and turn about. When a car full of lads stops at the lights and one of them starts leering out the windows and making lewd comments to some 13 year old girls in school uniforms it's just a laugh - his mates probably laugh along, maybe call him a dickhead, but in an affectionate way - and then they drive off and it's forgotten.

Then there's the stuff that is very much in front of other people but which those other people just don't notice or pick up on. Like the boss who is always super picky with their female staff and super pally with the men, or gives the best projects to the men and passes over the women for promotion. I daresay it happens the other way around - but given the gender disparity in managerial roles across most industries, it is probably something that has tended to affect women more.

I've worked places where it has been known that one of the guys has wandering hands - was a bit of a lad. And there was a general attitude of oh well, what can you do . Though that is going back some years.

Not everything can or should be called out when you see it. But not laughing along at the friend who shouts 'show us your tits' to young teenage girls - or not laughing at a joke about rape where the rape victim is the butt of the joke and calling it out for the tasteless offensive shit that it is - that can sometimes be useful. Because it lets that guy, who doesn't really see women as human in the same way he and his mates are, know that his mates don't see women the same way. That it is in fact an aberation to see them that way and not the natural norm.

In reference to the original point, "good guys" have exactly the same responsibility as "good cops".

A couple of other thoughts:


I personally think we have, as a society, and for a very, very long time, magnified the fundamental differences between men and woman to an unhealthy degree. The whole men are from mars, women are from venus / male humans have more in common with male chimpanzees than they do with female humans attitude creates an unhealthy distance between us. Any one individual human is as distinct from or as alike as any other individual human as any differences between or commonalities across each separate gender.

We are bathed in this sense of difference - saturated with it from the womb to the grave - it's one of the cornerstones of our culture. Even as we learn how complex the true picture really is, we still carry that simple, polar understanding of gender with us. It underpins our language, our social structures, our expectations, both conscious and unconscious- it affects how we perceive the world around us and sets us in a feedback loop that continually reinforces it.

This othering of the opposite gender comes with a cost - and it isn't an entirely accidental one. At various times in our history (in some places right now) there have been efforts by concerned citizens and religious and political leaders to encourage proper behaviour in men and women - crises in gender have occurred at various times in various places. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, gender roles in Britain were a little less narrowly focused and men and women often worked together (usually on different tasks) - amongst the elite there was a new appreciation for playfulness and art, for emotional expression and extravagant dress among men - the response to this was a moral crusade - the society for the reformation of manners (primarily focused on brothels, prostitution and gay sex) was one expression of this - another was a change in literary forms, and a massive public debate (in leaflets, news sheets, sermons, poetry and educational works) in which the 'female problem/problem of the Sex' and its twin, the debate over effeminacy, were discussed and through which a proper kind of masculinity and a proper form of femininity were openly codified and promoted.

We have sold the lie to ourselves for generations - but the cost is high. If generations of boys have been raised to see girls not as fellow human beings, as individual and unique as themselves, but rather as ineffable prizes for them to win, lesser, but desirable creatures who they can conquer, or terrifyingly powerful aliens who can rock their world in any direction - then is it any wonder some men have no ability to feel any kind of empathy for the women they are driven to want.

And yes, I get that there is absolutely a flip side to that.


I have a lot of optimism for the younger generation in this regard. Youngsters today seem to have a much more nuanced sense of gender than my generation.



Second point:

For the kind of accusations Weinstein faces, there's just no excuse. He understood his power and he revelled in applying it. But - I do sometimes feel sorry for the guys that get swept up with this stuff. Sometimes, I think guys are abusing a form of power without really perceiving themselves as powerful. Or not understanding their place within the power dynamic.

Once again Dana nails it, sugar&spice vs snakes&snails, and never the twain shall meet.. on equal terms.

I'm with you Dana, all except the part where rape jokes create rapists because they make rape more socially acceptable. I don't think the jokes do that and I don't think that's how rapists are made. It's just a guess on my part though. I could be wrong.

Influence of culture, it's like what Derek and Clive said about the influence of television. Does television make people do things?

Which includes that it's barely even a case of "behave others".
That's good. If you did see that, would you prefer that everyone else just averted their eyes and let the colleague do that?
Like I said, I also don't recall such an incident.
As described, it doesn't sound like harassment. It sounds like you've given some thought into what the ramifications of reporting it to HR would be.My difficulty is in viewing a "do good things" posted out into the ether as an onerous demand on you in particular.

If I saw that someone had posted "pay it forward", I would appreciate the sentiment, but through inertia and laziness probably fail to actually do it. If instead, I had interpreted it as an unreasonable demand on my personal time, and complained to the poster that there are so many reasons NOT to pay it forward, I would expect that to be an unpopular position.

Now, I have no idea just how horrible the yenta apes were to you, so they may very well have gone too far, in which case it's for the best to disconnect as you did. But I also don't really get what you were going for with your initial reply to them.

I don't think rape jokes make people rape. I don't even think they make 'rape' socially acceptable - what they can do, depending on the target of the joke, is feed into a viewpoint and potentially reinforce or confirm it. It can, imo, act to downgrade how certain behaviour is perceived - like date rape, for instance, or domestic violence, or a penchant for very young teenagers (jail bait). Not for most of that group of friends - but for someone who is already leaning in that direction.

I'll have to go looking for them at some at some point, but there have been some really interesting studies into how young men (in particular) respond to peer attitudes to this kind of thing.

I should stress by the way, that I am not referring to all rape jokes. There is a particular strand of humour that has the victim of rape as the butt of the joke. It's the kind of joke that invites the audience to vicariously participate in that power relationship. Similarly there is a strand of humour that has the battered wife or girlfriend as the butt of the joke - and again, the audience is invited to associate in to the one assaulting her.

With that particular strand of humour, there's an undercurrent of 'we'd all like to do this really'.

This.

are you just a being a dick. do we have a problem here.

Oh now I get it. No, it wasn't about me. It was about ALL good guys.

And as is the case with such things, it was about the poster. That's why he posted it. It wasn't to encourage good behavior.

One moment's aside: remember, he's on Facebook. He's not talking to the world. He's talking to his self-selected friends. This are his chosen friends. And the women who will reflect on his moral status after his statement. That is his biggest audience.

My pushback was speaking from the point of view of one of the good guys. I suppose you might not find that obvious but I did assume Terry would see it that way. From the good guys point of view, we don't need any coaching. We're good to go, Ace. We're the ones rocking the house. Our job is to keep being awesome.

And frankly, as xoB points out: in a world where the alpha males get the pussy -- and we are biologically driven to pursue the pussy -- that is No Small Task In Itself. But we stick to it, because we're fucking awesome. And because we thought about it, and are civilized, and are pro-human.

Not because someone posted about it on Facebook.

Sorry to triple post. Here's one way to think about this. Sometimes we get the advice, don't say anything to someone that you wouldn't say in person.

That just makes sense. that is a good way to think about things.

What if your friend got up in a room of all his friends and moralized like that. How would that be? It'd be like, hey friend, nice gesture but uh -- kinda wasn't needed -- you just got weird at the very least -- I mean at least based on your own past history --

Like the niece who stood up in the middle of one family Christmas party and said now let's take a minute to think about the homeless! Okay that is all perfectly fine, and a marvelous gesture, and we do care very much, but at the same time everybody knows that little display didn't actually help anyone, and was far more about Alison than about the homeless, and was not necessarily the best thing to to, it being Christmas and the family and all.

Maaaaaan, that's a lot of whining right there. I will say I'm sorry a bunch of Syc's friends were mean to you. I'll speak up here and now and say that's *not cool*. Your remark doesn't justify an ape pack attack.

I have some questions though. What kinds of behavior that you can imagine seeing that would prompt you to say something? Give us a sense of your threshold for speaking up. A couple examples would do nicely. But, maybe you're a keep it to yourself at all times kinda guy.

I'm also curious as to what virtue you're signalling with this thread, your statement of lane-staying, blameless awesomeness. What are you propounding?

You're pushing back against "if you see something, say something", and then mentioned a thing that one might see. It seemed like a situation where one might say something.
I don't use Facebook, and I have no idea how many friends he has, but I've had the feeling from ambient cultural exposure that many people treat Facebook as if they're announcing to the general population."See something, say something" is a request to the good guys. If he were talking to the bad guys, he'd say "stop harassing women". But good guys can have blind spots.

If you "yes and"ed her, she'd either be delighted, or shown up, depending on what her actual motivations were. Or, if you smile and nod, the event is over. But if you respond with "I give change to homeless people*, and you don't really care about them, you're just trying to look good to the family", then even people who might have found her speech tedious may very well end up defending her.

"Don't say anything to someone that you wouldn't say in person" seems to apply much more strongly to the response than the request in this case.

* Or whatever the equivalent of not harassing women is in this analogy.

It isn't fair, it isn't right.

I believe that I should try to do what *is* fair, what *is* right, all the time, to the best of my ability. I fall short of that ability practically all the time, with occasional spikes up to the line of my ability, then back down to "if I'm not too tired".

Sex... whoooooo....

What a loaded topic. Just freighted with all kinds of stuff, power, desire, violence, romance, tenderness, and on and on and on and on. And I know you all know what I mean and the degree to which this is understated. I'm a grown goddamn man and it's still a delightful, frustrating, satisfying, complex, fulfilling, enticing, teasing *MYSTERY*, day by day. There's so much to it, and yet it can still be focused to a pinpoint, figuratively speaking.

I think of an orchestra, when it's at it's most fulsome and graceful. And sometimes I just feel like a Buddy Rich solo, so to speak. The coming together (pardon the pun) of two people each with their own baggage, present mental and physical state, can we be heard?, can we be seen, and on and on....

That people do get it on at all peaceably and mutually seems more a miracle, more surprising than the current domination of the news of So. Many. Assholes.

In my experience, and using my experience as context for what I'm reading and hearing, there is a WIDE RANGE of gambits and a similarly wide range of responses. And context is king. No, strike that, Consent is King. Anyhow, I think I mostly (stupefying understatement) don't know all the facts, or even many of the facts of what's in the news lately. But I also know that I have had my words and intentions misunderstood. Sucks for me. But for someone on the other side of the conversation, maybe their experience wasn't just "darnit, let me try to rephrase that", but something much more alarming, more horrible.

That mismatch, man, I hate it when that happens. But some of these fucking assholes are COUNTING ON THAT MISUNDERSTANDING, as several, including you, UT, have pointed out. Who the fuck likes being tricked? And then fucked in the bargain? Right. Nobody. Doing it with deliberate deception is just evil and/or criminal. Those fuckers should burn.

And along the spectrum, being crass, being boorish, being a clue-challenged asshole shouldn't be grounds for criminal prosecution, and maybe not for being forced from one's job. Maybe maybe baby baby... what the hell do I know.


Using the tools one has, pursuing the goals one has, engaging and communicating with another person, enjoining them to join together, so to speak, that's how it's done. But if my tool is power and her tool is her body, and my goal is an orgasm and her goal is to keep her job... it's not gonna end well, not for her. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. We all know that. But we now see many many instances of justification, if you're not caught, you're not guilty. If you don't resist, you don't have to go on unemployment.

Yeah.. that's not right.

I don't think she said they create rapists, she said the rapist doesn't realize the others aren't laughing for the same reason.

BigV, ever since "go forth and multiply" or "Be fruitful and multiply" that's been the mandate our lives wrap around. :blush:

All of which is to say, Facebook is breaking us. It was an interesting experiment sharing our individual truth to a large self-chosen group but group think is reinforced across politics, religion, race, and gender. Nothing subtle is expressed, we get puritanism from each group but people are not pure, we are damn messy and need to think out loud. Fuck it, I'm going to work.

She said "because he probably assumes all his mates think the same way deep down." The suggestion is that the rape will now happen because the rapist believes there is an element of acceptability.

I'm just guessing, because I never took abnormal psych or anything, but I imagine rapists are generally sociopathic.

The calculation of "those guys think it is ok therefore it is ok" is OUR logic because we are normal. But it's not the way a sociopath would reason; with a lack of empathy, what other people think and how they will cast judgement is not important to them. I would imagine that a sociopath is more likely to rape because it's NOT socially acceptable. But like I say, that's just my guess.

It really is, and that's the bottom line of this thread if anything.

As people react to my poorly-communicated reaction, it requires long text to really discuss well; it requires a little knowing about each other; it requires a little angry back and forth to be permitted; and a little faith. None of this can happen on Facebook.

Which is why the unfriending. People are going to be political on Facebook, but we can't discuss it. We can't talk, it's a horrible venue for discussion of any kind, and in this case leads immediately to tribal ape behavior where the outsider must be purged. Fuck that; as the outsider I will just purge myself and make it easier on everyone.

Just being argumentative has led you to casting me as bad. Yeah don't do that. Assume I'm good. You've had 15 years and 25,000 posts to figure me out, you should know by now.

You can assume I would actually say something if I were ever in the position of being able to do so and assuming this situation was understood and there was benefit. I don't know why I have to say this.

And again, that is partly why the moralizing is empty, and meaningless, and ineffective at trying to change things.

Trying to paint me as someone who is bad in order to win a point is infuriating, and I won't stand for it. If this happened in person it would be immediately obvious where the transgression lies. I don't get violent, but I wouldn't let someone finish their sentence. If I'm BAD, the discussion is over.

Don't

Facebook is best when people just post about their lives. The ball game they went to or the trip they took. The gig they played.

A lot of it ends up being boring and of no interest, but it's nice to see what's going on with people and you can scroll past the stuff that doesn't interest you.

The shit that Facebook feeds me is when a friend comments on a stranger's post. I don't want to see that. I don't know that person and I don't care about their conversation. I also don't want to see anything that is shared, because it's almost always political bullshit. They are trying to persuade me. I'm guilty of this myself because I have shared stuff, but the stuff I share is cool and non-political. Finally, I don't want to see anything that a friend has liked on a stranger's post. Likes should be visible only to the person being liked and to anyone who is already going to that post.

What do I want to see? Original content posted by friends. Tell me about your life.

I think the problem is that very few people tell you about their life, and so Facebook has to fill your feed with something. And if they fill it with controversial shit that makes you mad, you will stick around longer looking at their ads.


Oh, and for the record, I oppose sexual misconduct.

All true

The one thought I had about unfriending Syc was, well, it's not a big deal; he knows where to find me...

Found an interesting piece on workplace training.

Humphrey Bogart grabbed the girl and kissed her. Everyone wanted to be a man just like Bogart. Today that is sexual harassment.

But Bogart followed the three simple rules. The great Fred Armisen, the great Amy Poehler, the great Tina Fey, and the Greatest Of All Time Tom Brady explain, in this public service announcement.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-li.../2751966?snl=1

Back to my first response then. When someone says you should do something good, say "well, of course, obviously!"

I do assume you're good, which is why I was surprised at your reaction.

Using "virtue signalling" as a pejorative is just about the definition of assuming that people are bad, and would only advocate for something good to trick you.

People are bad, mmkay?

So you're on Team Yenta, is what you're saying.

:D

I'd have to friend him again to fetch my actual wording. I've described it, but you could assume it was something like

"Good guys, you don't need any additional instructions. You were on the right track all along. Just keep being awesome."



Horrified gasp? Unleash the hounds?

I don't believe most men who rape or abuse women are necessarily sociopaths. I think there is a gulf of difference between not being capable of empathy and being unpractised in applying empathy to a group of people who you've been raised to believe are fundamentally different from you.

There's also, I think, a tendency for some men to desire women, and also resent them for being desirable and feel they are entitled to them: They've done everything right, they're a nice guy, they don't beat women up or treat them bad, so what gives those bitches the right to throw their desire back in their faces, when they should be rewarded - after all they earned it. I mean, even the way they walk is an invitation right? They must know the power they hold - just by being desirable - and they hold that over the guy, right? They fucking know.

A sociopath isn't going to give a shit what others think. But different perhaps for an emotionally immature young man who has been raised in a culture/family that has coded women as fundamentally other - and as a thing to be won/earned, and maybe surrounded by other men who see girls in terms of prey or conquest, with more than a little stripe of the Enemy in the War of the Sexes ( the We Were Kings attitude)

Jokes and the general cultural noise that surrounds can confirm all of that or challenge it. And men who don't really see women as being the same or equal are far more likely to listen other men that they respect or can relate to.

Not saying it would prevent a determined rapist from acting, nor convince a sociopath to change their ways - but it might help clue some young men in to the fact that their way of perceiving women isn't actually the norm, nor is it healthy

We seek validation and confirmation from our social peers. For young men who see female as fundamentally other, those peers are male.

Why would anyone even assume that?

This attitude change is coming in waves. An eariler wave was, for example, Farrah Fawcett's Burning Bed movie. It resulted in law enforcement actually enforcing domestic violence laws.

Second was Anita Hill's testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee. Clarence Thomas got confirmed in part because the 'good old boy' network suppressed testimony of Thomas' repeated sexual harassment of many women. Clarence Thomas, in history, will probably among the weakest Supreme Court justices. But that is not as significant as the controversy that Anita Hills testimony started. Sudden people began to understand what sexual harassment is.

In this third wave, we have finally decided that sexual harassment is justification for legal action. Since Anita Hill's testimony, it should have been. But it took this long for some to finally admit it even exists.

So what might be a fourth wave in 20 year? What is the next step in admitting, addressing, and eliminating this situation? Will it go from a western 'industrial nation' domestic problem to an international one? Or will there be a backlash when it goes too far?

Between Anita Hill and now, there was a pause in our evolution due to an unfortunate national sequence of events that happened.

I'm waiting for an instance of one person being charged with sexual harassment by another; but, both being so desperate for publicity that they agree on an apology, forgiveness, and make-up sex just to get their names out there.

I am troubled by some who immediately react to allegations. It is difficult to know whether some accusations were vetted before dismal or suspension. That creates prime opportunity for the fake news people (Trump organization, Russians, etc) to invent allegations with bogus witnesses.

The Stanford Experiment showed we're all just a half-step away from being sociopaths. We're herd animals, more like, and we follow what we see (or what we perceive, at any rate--and in the absence of clear signals, we see what we want to see.)

It's true that good guys don't have to do anything but keep being awesome. But like Dana said, it's also nice when the good guys can evangelize a little to the mediocre guys, because it helps out us folks who the mediocre guys see as objects and would never have listened to in the first place. However, I do agree that large public pronouncements are often virtue signaling, and sometimes even evidence of a hidden problem--like Weinstein at the Women's March, or to a lesser degree, Syc's really weird possessiveness of his new wife's kid. What matters is not what you declare on Facebook, but what you say to your best friend, one-on-one, when the two of you are talking about that chick you wanna bang. You are good, UT, and I trust that you'd want to say the right thing. But also, sometimes we're all Billy Bush, laughing along at the horrific guy because we don't know what else to do and we want whoever we're talking to to like us in the moment.

They already tried. The Washington post was targeted but they did due diligence. It was that same nutter who said Planned Parenthood was selling babies to Chik Fil A

OMG. Hilary Clinton was running a sex ring out of a pizza shop. Good thing we have so many people with big guns to stop it. He should have used his 155 mm howizter. We need bigger guns to stop all this evil.

Just say'n.

What in the way of sexual misconduct are women laughing along with the horrific woman about; because, they don't know what else to do and they want whoever they're talking to to like them in the moment?

The women often have to laugh along with horrific men, because for them the interaction has a threatening overtone, and humor is often the fastest way out of a situation. I have absolutely laughed off comments that terrified me so that I could remove myself from the conversation.

Yup

That doesn't address the gist of my question. What in the way of sexual misconduct has women laughing along with another woman because she makes them feel threatened; or, intimidated and they want to gain her acceptance?

Is there no sexual misconduct by women that does that?

You hot babes are always at risk. :yesnod:

Statistically, no. The closest analogy would be an adult woman making lewd comments about an underage male--perhaps a high school student being preyed on by his teacher, for example--but that shit just doesn't happen, because other women would immediately freak out at any woman who said that, and likely put in a tip to the cops. The "good" women have proven that they will speak up and be proactive, you see, not simply refrain from molesting teens themselves, thus the behavior is perhaps less rampant than it would be if all us moms got together for coffee and leered at the high school kid busing our table and talked about how we were gonna ride that underdeveloped dick all night.

"but that shit just doesn't happen, because other women would immediately freak out at any woman who said that"

That's all fine, and if our brains were identical response to the different hormones our bodies create were identical, we'd be down for that approach too.

But they aren't, so what if the "locker room talk" is a necessary part of getting those feelings figured out? What ARE we going to do with these feelings if we can't talk about them?

The feelings are quite different, despite Dana's objection and here is the crux of our differences. For 100,000 years, with no culture to assist, it kept the species thriving under many different conditions, so it is one of the most powerful things we know.

So please feel free to translate:

"Holy shit, I would *destroy* that ass."

to:

"Guys, that waitress over there? I feel a remarkable, mostly inexplicable but unattainable attraction to her, that I cannot possibly just ignore. I would never actually act upon this, and must assume she would not permit it, as a default condition. That is why I must express this in the fiercest way possible, so that it indicates how crazy my own brain is driving me right now. Do you agree because I would like to know I'm not alone in this feeling."

Also you women may not have noticed a different kind of harassment preventative male chatter that happens routinely. It, too, is along the lines of "if you see something, say something" and it goes like this:

"If you so much as look at my woman I will break this cue over your head."

I know there will be objections to the word "my" and etc. so I'll note it doesn't have to be "my" and it doesn't have to be "woman"... "girlfriend" "boyfriend" "daughter" "wife" "friend" or it often just goes unsaid.

Maybe that's where we went off the evolutionary track--we became a polite society first, where men didn't break cues over each other's heads, and then the bad apples became more confident, because they knew no man would make that threat anymore, let alone actually follow through with it? I'm not saying it's a better way to be, I'm just noting that no man was, or even is now, punching Weinstein in the face.

I totally buy the evolutionary nature of this stuff. But isn't the most effective way to temper those feelings for a man to actually be getting laid on a regular basis? And isn't part of the thing that keeps some men from getting laid on a regular basis their poor socialization with regards to women?

We know very little, almost nothing, about how early man interacted and socialised. The idea that we have an unbroken 100,000 years of a particular way of men and women interacting and expressing emotional and sexual needs is one that doesn't really hold up to close scrutiny.

We have recorded history, to give us clues, for the barest fraction of our time as modern humans. The archeaological record is even scanter for periods before cities and settled civilisations.

Even through that small fraction of known human history there have been very different ways of organising societies, very different ways of understanding gender at various times and in various places.

I don't think there are no differences between men and women - I just think that society and culture magnify these beyond what they would naturally be without that cultural influence. There is so much variance between women and between men that it outweighs many of the apparent differences between men and women.

Except that, culturally, men will have a particular set of experiences women generally won't and vice versa.

For instance - we have the notion that men are less in touch with their emotions and women are better at expressing theirs - but I know plenty of women who suck at expressing or understanding their own emotions, and I know plenty of men who have a very nuanced understanding of their own emotions and high levels of empathy.

Things may be weighted one way or another - but often the statistics for tests of emotional maturity, or word usage, or preferences in play for kids, or aptitude for maths and science, caring and languages etc etc show a vast middle ground in which the determining factor is not gender, but much more individual.

In terms of what is or is not acceptable in sexual conduct - well that's a bit of a different thing. Though I don't doubt predatory behaviour can be found in males and females, as can passivity.

Again, though - we can only really judge our time and recent times for any sense of what is, is not, and has been acceptable.

Also - that's not really the stuff that needs quashing, so much as the things that hint at (or outright reference) a lack of consent or a sense of predation as ok. That includes catcalling young girls, getting a girl too drunk to object, or joking about rape.

"Holy shit, I would rape that " would be a different matter. Now that's probably not something you'd encounter in your age group - but it's something younger lads have been heard saying.

A few years ago, a group of young men at a party gang raped a young woman who was unconscious. They filmed it on their phones and posted it on Facebook. They didn't think it was rape - she wasn't forced at knifepoint, she wasn't screaming - she didn't say no.

There is a disconnect there where they just didn't see her as a human being. She was a thing to be used. And they didn't see it as an issue - nobody in the party stopped them. They didn't hatch their plan in secret and not speak to anybody not in their circle about it. They did it at a party and posted the video on social media.

I do think things are getting better though. Girls and boys are growing up in a very different culture now and I feel pretty optimistic about the kids coming up now and approaching adulthood. But part of that, I think, is borne of the debate we've been having in our society for the past couple of decades. I also think it's because boys and girls lives and interests don't seem to diverge as sharply as they once did - there are a lot more areas in which they intersect and interact. They have more opportunities to interact with each other in ways that demonstrate the things they share.

We... we don't?

There is a lack of awareness of this issue, so I am asking any of my fellow guys in the thread, who have been assaulted, or at least physically harassed to the point of being truly frightened, to please use the hashtag #MeAlso in your messages.

#MeAlso

(Me: assaulted several times. Worst assault required plastic surgery. Once was by a teacher in a full classroom. I've faced being beaten by school officials of course, in the north of England and the redneck zone of America. I've run in fear a handful of times. A friend was assaulted two years ago, and another friend threatened a pool cue solid body guitar assault eight years ago. I'm guessing my experience was average.)

Part of his calculation was putting himself in a place where he couldn't be assaulted. Otherwise he would have been; every man knows this. Also, we don't know that he wasn't punched. I imagine he probably was.

Men relentlessly keep quiet about their assaults out of shame.

#MeAlso

'Cept those sexually aggressive guys often wind up socialized specifically for sexual pursuit (and are terrible people in real life, narcissist pricks etc). The ones who are, get laid more regularly than the guys with girlfriends -- we know, we did the math or at least had the math explained to us.

OMG 1 in 200 men is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. That was a different time. But still, 1 in 200! Dang!

"If you so much as look at my woman I will break this cue over your head."

"If you don't want your woman to be looked at, keep her at home in the basement."

And then I got my ass handed to me. I wasn't bleeding alone, though.

True Story™.

Maybe there were a few more sentences involved.

Is it misconduct to stare?

'Cuz if you're a particularly attractive woman, I will stare right at your pretty.:mg:

And if you're the prettiest woman I've seen that day, it is not unheard of for me to tell you that.

Depends how long you hold the stare and if you drool.


Depends on the context for that one. If, for example, the prettiest woman you've seen all day is the one bringing you your meal in a restaurant - don't tell her. If the prettiest woman you've seen all day is a total stranger at the train station with whom you've shared not one word - don't tell her.