Insert Stick, Stir
Irradiated by LabRat
So I’ve so far managed to avoid ever commenting on anything related to Elevatorgate, which blew way the hell up on a lot of blogs I sometimes read and sometimes lurk in comments at, but nowhere all that close to home, and blew up in ways that were really ridiculously huge, and seems to get real stupid real fast everywhere it’s discussed. Including at Popehat, where I regarded the initial post as too reasonable to have issue with and therefore exploded in the comments.
So I recognize I’m basically failing as a pattern-recognizing organism in remarking on anything at all related, but apparently one repeated trend in discussions (other than the mass insanity) bothers me enough to do the internet equivalent of going in the bathroom, turning off the lights, and saying “Candyman” five times.
That trend is this: someone brings up Schrodinger’s Rapist, some people get REALLY REALLY OFFENDED by Schrodinger’s rapist, and things immediately devolve into a flamefit back and forth between “THIS IS NAKED BIGOTRY AGAINST MEN” vs “STOP BEING ENTITLED PIGS”.
The thing is, the basic premise of Schrodinger’s Rapist is true. Every woman I know has the idea of assault in general and sexual assault in particular ingrained in some way into the fabric of her life and routines in little rules like the blogger describes. Don’t go walking alone/without dogs at night, always make a first date/meeting somewhere public, always make sure someone knows where you’ve gone if going out with a new guy, etc. etc. Everyone follows rules basically like them; lock your doors, fasten your seatbelt, the friendly Nigerian who sent you an e-mail about the great financial opportunity probably isn’t telling the truth. The post itself goes pretty far in hammering down “BECAUSE A STRANGE MAN MIGHT BE A SEXUAL PREDATOR”, which is in fact the reason for the little rules, but most women that aren’t recovering from having been actually assaulted and possibly having PTSD aren’t explicitly thinking like that anymore than someone who gets into their car and buckles their seatbelt is thinking about all the maniacs on the road and how they might kill him. (Or, for this audience, any more than someone who showers, shaves, dresses, and puts on their carry pistol is thinking about how he or she might have to shoot someone in the grocery store.)
What it’s actually more like is that the question “If (unknown guy interacting with) asks for sex/proposes step toward sex, and I say no, what happens” is always somewhere in there, buried many layers down or closer to the surface depending on the interaction. 99% of the time this is a nonissue because strange men aren’t interacting or aren’t interacting in a remotely sexual manner or the answer is “I say no and then nothing remarkable even could happen unless he’s a raving psychopath, and I don’t see any drool and bloodstains on his shirt”. Raving psychopaths aren’t really what women are concerned about, since they are very rare; the guy they are actually concerned about is the one that just can’t seem to hear the word “no” without assuming it’s either only tangentially relevant or a negotiable point that he just needs a harder sell to answer.
In an elevator, the answer to “what happens if” isn’t a given anymore, and late at night/early in the morning when not many people are around, and the guy being maybe drunk, raises the alert level more. That’s why it’s “creepy”- as in creates a sense of potential threat- in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with how good-looking a guy is or how awkward he is. (Awkward guys with bad social skills are perfectly capable of ignoring “no”, and so are good-looking guys.) Not every or perhaps even most women would experience actual fear, but “this is a bad situation I would like to leave as soon as possible”- yeah, sure. Or even just “offputting”. Which is probably not the goal of anyone hitting on a woman unless he’s doing it to mess with her* instead of actually date/sleep with her consensually.
“Don’t hit on women in elevators late at night, it’s kinda creepy” isn’t akin to “don’t hit on women ever”, or “don’t be male in case someone finds that threatening”, it’s more akin to “don’t stand inside strangers’ personal space”, “don’t approach a stranger on the street with three of your friends when he’s alone and ask for the time”, “while they’re otherwise alone in a dark parking garage is a bad time to approach a stranger for any reason”. Basic courtesies for interacting with strangers comfortably most of us don’t need to be told about because they’re on everyone’s radar.
*Yes, some men do this. It’s another context that most guys don’t really think of because it’s not a thing that happens to them nor a thing that would ever occur to them to do.
July 11th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
To be honest this was the first I’d even heard of Elevatorgate (Oh God I’m a failure on the interwebz too?) But from a quick perusal I can confirm that I too am a failure at pattern recognition.
This is basic, common sense and courtesy. Whilst I obviously have no personal understanding of what ladies feel, I as a 6′ 5″, shaved headed male, have always (on reflection unconsciously) acted to minimise any intimidation/concern (on walking on an evening I tend to cross the street, or wait, rather than appear to be following a lone woman, etc. and not just women). Any man who claims it has never crossed his mind, let alone acted in a manner deliberately, or uncaringly, to do so is either an idiot or a liar.
Would you act in a manner which could appear threatening to a weaker person? Would you act in a manner to raise the suspicions about their safety of someone carrying an amount of money? So what’s the difference? A lady is, on average weaker, and by simply being female she is seen as having ‘something of value’.
I’m sorry, but I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Perhaps it’s a limited sample but I can’t think of a male acquaintance who would need telling this (although a couple might need reminding after too much sauce, but they’d be mortified after the fact). The problem is that those who aren’t a problem already know and act accordingly, those who are a problem, don’t care. For any man to have ‘an issue’ with this is, quite frankly, ‘Tough, live with it a***hole’.
The Schrodinger’s Rapist thing seems to be a ‘hot potato’ not in itself, but in that it has been taken (for example by certain feminists, here at least) to mean that ‘ALL men are potential rapists, they just haven’t done it/been caught yet’, whereas, in my opinion, what is being said is ‘act safely and assume any man Could be a rapist until you know enough to make a judgement’. Eminently sensible, to me, even as a male, after all I assume every person I meet could be a potential threat too (that’s not paranoia, especially when you’ve had a 5 foot nothing middle aged lady pick up a 100 lb Oxygen cylinder and attempt to ‘beat yo white ass, boy’ - PCP users are so… ‘unpredictable’
I suspect how apparently common this is arises mainly from differences in perception. The woman feels threatened, the man can’t imagine (usually due to drink) that she could. If she expressed her fear he’d probably be abjectly apologetic. The problem arises as to the situation when that is what the man wants (massively in the minority I feel). And then again, why should she have too?
So, as you said this should be nothing more than “Basic courtesies for interacting with strangers comfortably most of us don’t need to be told about because they’re on everyone’s radar”.
July 12th, 2012 at 1:22 am
I followed the Popehat discussion, and found it pretty amazing. The commenters there are generally very reasonable and polite, and that is exactly how the discussion started out. It then escalates, bit by bit, until the (normally perfectly reasonable) people on both sides are frothing at the mouth and throwing obscenties at one another.
I am reminded of the “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”, only it is that is usually a problem with Internet beginners posting anonymously - neither of which is the case here.
I’m sure there is some deep, social lesson to be learned here. I’m just not sure what it is…
July 12th, 2012 at 2:43 am
In a perfect world, “Do you want to come over to my place and enjoy nonprocreative coitus?” would be a perfectly acceptable approach for either males OR females. A negative or positive answer should have the same expectation- the other party will hear and understand.
However since we turned sex into a commodity the act of negotiating for sex has turned into a complicated process.
I’m sure someone will flame me for that comment, but meh…I’m a happily married man who found his wife the old fashioned way- Viking conquest of her town.
Olga Svensdottir seems to like her new life in Greenland and barring dysentary, we should be able to have a few of our children survive to adulthood.
July 12th, 2012 at 6:30 am
it’s more akin to…“don’t approach a stranger on the street with three of your friends when he’s alone and ask for the time”
This is by far the clearest, most useful articulation of the position I’ve seen. Many thanks.
July 12th, 2012 at 7:54 am
Would you act in a manner which could appear threatening to a weaker person?
I think part of the problem was that many men didn’t seem to grok the idea that what Elevator Guy was doing could be perceived as threatening. So the reasoning went, “Of course I would never do anything to make a woman feel threatened. But asking her up to her room for coffee whilst alone in an elevator isn’t threatening.” Hence the outrage.
July 12th, 2012 at 8:55 am
I dunno. The “Schroedinger’s Rapist” thing doesn’t really offend me, as a guy, for the two reasons of 1.) Yeah, it’s true. and 2.) It’s sort of just a specific casepoint of “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
If I’m going to have that attitude, there’s no reason why women shouldn’t have it too. Even about me.
July 12th, 2012 at 10:27 am
There are crazy people out there in the world.
Some of them are men who are either so dense or so evil that they refuse to take “no” for an answer.
Some of them are women who are so hysterically paranoid that they (just for example, here) sic the police on guys who don’t know them (and I don’t just mean “don’t know them intimately”, but “couldn’t pick them out of a police lineup”) and have never touched them or spoken to them or communicated with them in any way or even more than casually glanced at them (as one casually glances at everyone in one’s general vicinity, whenever one is in a public place and not _studiously and conspicuously_ working to avoid all eye contact), but do work in the same building as them and thus happen to eat lunch at the same crowded food court as them 3 days in a row.
Subsets of the victims of both groups have had the victimization lead to forcible rape.
Some allowances should be made, for folks in those subsets and for friends of such, who might thus be rendered a bit prone to overreaction to things that people say, which appear to normalize the behavior of those by whom they were victimized.
I’d say allowances should also be made for those of us who have to live in a society where those sorts of crazy people are allowed to define the norms, and have gotten so sick of it that we sometimes have difficulty discerning who is and who is not actually crazy.
July 12th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
“the guy they are actually concerned about is the one that just can’t seem to hear the word “no” without assuming it’s either only tangentially relevant or a negotiable point that he just needs a harder sell to answer.”
This. So much this. And the harder sell can come not just in an outwardly aggressive form, but as a form of subtle manipulation, usually playing on the socially/culturally taught guilt of being a mean girl who’s just made him feel bad.
It’s a damn hard thing for many women to not instantly fall into the trap of “I made him feel bad and that’s bad and I need to fix it by making him happy” which is worse than outward aggression*. Sadly it’s a very common manipulation practice used consciously and unconsciously to get women into mentally/physically unsafe conditions where they can be abused or raped. Anyone who tries to use that Nice-Girl manipulation on me immediately goes way up on the Schrodinger’s Rapist scale.
* Most women have at least some idea of how to handle outright aggression, be it screaming, kicking, or pulling out a weapon thanks to parents/teachers/other learning sources. Recognizing and handling mental manipulation isn’t taught so when a rape or abuse occurs as a result of it there’s far more second-guessing and “well, maybe it wasn’t really rape, I did lead him on by going out for coffee with him” thoughts. In worst case scenarios this can end with the victim justifying the rape in their own mind.
July 13th, 2012 at 4:33 am
@Chip:
Well, part of the problem is that, IRC, Ms. Watson didn’t really articulate what in particular (at night, in an enclosed space, etc, as Labrat said) that made that situation threatening. So to some people (including some women) it came off as being “don’t hit on women ever” even if that wasn’t her to intent.
And, then, well, the internet took over and it turned from a serious discussion into everybody accusing everybody else of sexism.
July 13th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Why is it so hard to just talk?
“You are bothering me. Leave me alone.”
“Attack me and I’ll shoot you.”
July 13th, 2012 at 10:31 am
To quote the sigline of a poster at a forum I frequent:
“Nothing personal, but I had a plan to kill you the minute I laid eyes on you.”
July 14th, 2012 at 8:44 am
Nice summation. It does seem to me to be a matter of basic reading comprehension fail as saying, ‘all x are potentially y until more data points are collected’ is quite different from saying, ‘all x are y’. Schroedinger’s Rapist says, or should say, the first not the second.
Is it unfortunate? Well yes, but then a lot of things are.
The thing is that it is the sort of mental calculation that happens so fast that you don’t notice it.
Let’s assume I, (5’2″, 120lbs, female) step into an elevator with Able (6’5″, male, presumably weighing alot more than 120lbs). My brain’s first response, within nano-seconds, is ‘threat’. A few micro-seconds later, after my brain picks up a few body language cues, he probably will get downgraded to the same level of suspicion as I would treat a woman. (which is still abnormally high) I don’t think it through, I don’t have time to think it through, nor because of its subconscious nature could I explain what I had seen.
It would, thinking about it, be interesting to study cases of woman-on-woman assault and when/if potential cues were picked up.
July 14th, 2012 at 8:47 am
I should add, it is possible to screw up in that micro-second. In a big way.
July 14th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
It is true that I will never fully be able to appreciate the emotion that a woman feels upon entering an enclosed space with a man. I can try, but I can’t actually put myself there. The best that I can do is realize that I’m comparitively immune to a violence that over half the population thinks about, at least occasionally. (And some far more than occasionally.) If anything, the difference is that I and most men consider ourselves completely immune to it (which isn’t strictly true), which may be why some men tend to think that women worry about it way too much. We’re polarized in that respect.
I wish this were not so.
July 14th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Did parenting undergo a paradigm shift recently? Heck, it seemed like I spent half my life instilling in the kids the idea that they shouldn’t trust strangers. Under any circumstances.
Now they’re older, and that’s become bad advice? Would any man not teach his daughters this very thing?
I just don’t get it I guess.
July 14th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Of course it’s natural to feel, at the very least, a slight discomfort when in a confined space with a stranger/strangers. I would think that is true for both sexes, but what do I know? I go into dark rooms and massage strangers all the time. And yes, I have plans for various scenarios. I do not assume that everyone (or every male) I meet is out to get me, but I think it’s prudent to be prepared for every eventuality.
Only tangentially related, but I thought of your post as soon as I read THIS one: http://breakfastcookie.tumblr.com/post/26879625651/so-a-girl-walks-into-a-comedy-club
(Found via my daughter’s blogpost here, http://www.systems-ready.com/blog.php?id=71)
July 14th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
“I can try, but I can’t actually put myself there. ” Matt G.
That in my view is the key, the crux of the matter is that no person can completely ‘get’ another person’s behaviours…because of this is social mores, common sense, and respect are necessary. They give all of us shared rules to play by, allowing the extremes and the middle majority to successfuly interact without offence. For the majority, these rules are no more restraint than simply being polite. One of those rules happens to be polite silence on opposite sides of the elevator. Presumably, both parties understand the rules and abide by them.
Beyond the shared rules, I know my attitude and behaviour is extreme, I wouldn’t want anyone else constrained to my rules regarding personal space and interaction. I prefer to never come within about arm’s reach of another person and have never figured out casual conversation. However, I can use the shared social rules to successfuly interact in a professional fashion. Everything else, I grin and bear it, and escape. I honestly cannot ‘get’ being comfortable around anyone, even family. But, recognizing my hang-ups as going beyond the commonly understood social rules, it is my responsibility to deal with them, to either mask them in socially correct behaviour or remove myself from the situation.
That’s all rather incoherent, isn’t it?
July 15th, 2012 at 2:27 am
It’s not about social mores. It’s about walking through life with the understanding that you are eligible for sexual assault. I can’t realistically wrap my brain around that, fully. I can try. But empathy only gets you so far. What does blue taste like?
July 15th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
I spent half my life instilling in the kids the idea that they shouldn’t trust strangers. Under any circumstances.
I am late replying, but I just wanted to say: that is really unfortunate. “Stranger danger” is exaggerated, and instilling this kind of distrust into an entire generation of children will have an effect on society as a whole. Likely not a good one.
I am reminded of the recent story I read about the girl lost in the woods, who was more scared of the men searching than of being lost. When she heard her name being called, she hid. Only when a woman searcher finally happened by did the girl come out of hiding.
Children should not blindly trust anyone, but actively distrusting everyone is poor advice.
July 15th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Sigh.
I will undoubtedly get yelled at. Hard to believe it was a whole year-ish ago that this whole thing started. Old wounds getting constantly picked at, and such.
The Schrödinger’s Rapist post was subtitled “Or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced”. This was not common sense information to women. This was a woman telling men they should just deal with being treated like potential rapists.
It included such gems as: “…do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is.” and: “So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me? Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.” (A very similar statistic can be applied to men, btw (http://1in6.org/the-1-in-6-statistic/))
But let’s continue: “If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.”
That seems to be pretty naked bigotry. Reasonable caution is great and understandable, but this went beyond that. Let’s translate into racial, rather than sexual terms: “If you, as a black person, expect me to trust you,—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.”
Taking people at face value is not following them back to their hotel room if they ask; it is to treat them as their behavior has warranted. That is what civil society is about. If someone hasn’t been a threat yet, treating them like one is being unfair, and if you do it about only one race or sex, regardless of their actions/behavior/words, then that seems pretty definitively bigoted. “Some men should never approach strange women in public” indeed.
Women have historically been treated poorly at these cons. This is a fact, and it is a fact that needs to be dealt with. But that doesn’t make every complaint valid, and while every person has the right to be creeped out by whatever they want, by that same token, others can think they are overreacting. This doesn’t mean they don’t see the bigger problem, or that they’re misogynists.
We know nothing about this EG but what RW has said; she, and everyone it seems, assumes he was inviting her back for anonymous sex. My very first question was why is that kind of assumption valid? She runs a website, her face is known (and that’s not a comment about the racy calendar I guess she did, that is a stupid thing to bring into this debate and I’m only doing it to make sure no one thinks I’m doing it, which I know others have done…I’m just saying that while not famous famous, she was and remains recognizable), she has been a speaker; we don’t know if he was a shy fan, gay, or what. The original question (for context and per RW) was:
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you really interesting, and I’m wondering if you’d like to go back to my hotel room for some coffee.”
I find this, then “a man who is quite obviously propositioning me,“ to be unfair of her. Why does she assume he must have wanted anonymous sex, and not anything else? He even prefaced it all with “don’t take this the wrong way”…so what wrong way was he hoping she wouldn’t take it? I can only assume from that statement, as quoted by her, that he was saying he was specifically not talking about sex. This hotel, it is to be borne in mind, was full of con goers, a bunch of them awake (“late at night/early in the morning when not many people are around” seems an untrue statement…from her story, the bar was full of people even at 4am; she said she left a group of people, and even used that against EG, as he wasn’t part of that group but was expected to have heard her).
So while I understand the greater problem, I feel RW was being unfair in her original post (she leapt to assumptions about EG), and that she then proceeded to fan the flames quite a lot with her further behavior, particularly when she “called out” Stef McGraw publicly, in a forum Stef couldn’t reply in, when she’d been invited to talk about a completely different topic.
Unfortunately, often this debate does often become little more than invective, and I assume I’ll be soundly flamed and/or banned, but as previously stated I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut.
July 16th, 2012 at 5:26 am
Grifter, the problem with making that conflation is that women ARE more likely to be raped than men, and men ARE more likely to be the perpetrators of an assault. The same does not hold true for interracial violence.
And frankly…yeah, men should just deal with being treated as POTENTIAL predators, which is not at all the same thing as being treated as actual predators. And, yeah, if you lack the basic empathy to understand why being propositioned (“lets go back to my room for coffee” comes out like a proposition no matter how he actually meant it) in an empty elevator at 4AM might be uncomfortable, you should probably work on that before you go around approaching strange women.
July 16th, 2012 at 7:06 am
Actually, you are incorrect. Statistically, some minorities are more likely to commit certain crimes (based on incarceration rates). Sounds awful, though, doesn’t it, when I say that?
And “yeah, if you lack the basic empathy to understand why being propositioned (“lets go back to my room for coffee” comes out like a proposition no matter how he actually meant it) in an empty elevator at 4AM might be uncomfortable, you should probably work on that before you go around approaching strange women.” is pretty insulting. I’m going to try to be very polite and see how long I can manage, but I’m just going to point out that what you’re saying is that there is nothing he could say that wouldn’t be interpreted as a proposition, and pointing out that that’s sexist “lacks empathy”. I can empathize with someone and still think they are being unfair. If you assume the worst of everyone despite their actions, then oddly enough you’re going to see the worst all the time. You ignored the fact that the hotel was full of con-goers, many of whom were up by RWs own words. This whole “it was 4AM!” thing is disingenuous; the reason 4AM is “bad” is because it’s a time when no one’s around, but clearly there were lots of people around by her words.
And you’re really going to have to explain what exactly you mean by “men should just deal with being treated as POTENTIAL predators, which is not at all the same thing as being treated as actual predators. ” How is it not at all the same thing? Are you saying it’s the difference between being rude to them versus running away screaming, and that that’s okay and preferable to just treating them like regular people?
July 16th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Unfortunately, often this debate does often become little more than invective, and I assume I’ll be soundly flamed and/or banned, but as previously stated I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut.
You can take back the wood and the nails for this cross you’ve built for yourself, I won’t be helping you nail yourself to it. The only circumstances under which I ban people (and there have been exactly five in the five-year history of the site) are for either establishing a history of making bad-faith arguments that endlessly derail threads, being blatantly beyond the pale (that was the guy who mounted the spirited defense of sex with preadolescent children), or attempting to win arguments by posting the same one or two arguments over and over again and achieving victory by exhausting all others on the field. In essence, wasting huge amounts of my time.
So no, I’m not going to ban you unless you dedicate your life to winning arguments by blunt force in my comments section, which only a handful of people have felt was a worthwhile activity thus far. I can’t say coming in with the attitude that the big mean feminist is gonna FLAAAAAME AND BAAAAN YOU for having the temerity to disagree has endeared you to me, however. Speaking of empathy, do you have difficulty seeing that you have opened by insulting the host?
(and that’s not a comment about the racy calendar I guess she did, that is a stupid thing to bring into this debate and I’m only doing it to make sure no one thinks I’m doing it, which I know others have done…
….And yet, somehow, this calendar appeared nowhere in this thread until you introduced it!
I get the distinct sensation that you are attempting to have an argument with the entire internet re Elevatorgate in addition to me. I really have no interest whatsoever in dissecting the minutiae of exactly what Rebecca Watson said and did and exactly how she did it. I share Ken’s attitude that the most fascinating thing about the whole debacle is that it IS a debacle, as to both of us “asking a woman who’s never met you before back to your room when the two of you are alone in an elevator will make her feel more threatened than flattered” is a self-evident truism. It’s not even “asking a woman who’s never met you before back to your room in an elevator should be a punishable offense”, it’s presumably not the reaction he wanted and is one of those little things that can make cons uncomfortable for women.
Are you saying it’s the difference between being rude to them versus running away screaming, and that that’s okay and preferable to just treating them like regular people?
This? Please stop this. No one ran away and screamed. Normal women do not run away and scream from strange men for no reason. Stop acting like this is what women mean by “treating someone as a potential predator”. The ENTIRE PURPOSE OF MY POST, that’s the one above this comment thread, not Rebecca Watson’s post or Schrodinger’s Rapist, is to clarify exactly what that feels like from the average woman’s perspective. That is, it’s not looking at strange men and going… “Could be a PREDATOR! Time to be SCARED!”, it’s including the possibility in the basic background threat assesment most normal people run daily when interacting with the world at large. That’s why I compared it to how an average man might feel when approached, alone, by three strangers (of any color, FFS) asking for the time, and not to the average man going to Condition Red and finding cover to fire from.
It’s just that, since the possibility of being sexually assaulted by a random stranger isn’t usually on the radar for men unless they themselves HAVE been assaulted, they don’t read/understand the situation the same way, and don’t understand that they are doing something functionally akin to standing inside a stranger’s personal space and staring- i.e. not actively threatening, but will sure feel that way to the stranger.
July 16th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
I am sorry. I very much did not mean to insult you. I was more expressing that this is a debate that often rapidly spirals, and I wouldn’t have blamed you for ending it quickly and bluntly. I wasn’t trying to martyr myself, and I apologize if that came off in the manner you have taken it; it was not my intent, and I should have therefore phrased it better. And I apologize for the parenthetical statement; I have before been accused of trying to make a sideswipe that I didn’t intend, and I was trying to nip that in the bud. Clearly I should not have done so.
The post’s subtitle was “a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced”, so please do not pretend that this was just an attempt to garner empathy for the position that women must assess threats. Of course they must assess threats, and I understand that from your and many other perspectives, that’s how it came across, but this wasn’t a general statement about women’s threat assessment, this was instruction for what men are allowed to do. Just as the men are expected to be empathetic, so too should the women, and when men are told “some of you should never speak to a stranger of my gender, how do you think that comes across?
“No one ran away and screamed. Normal women do not run away and scream from strange men for no reason.” A valid point, which was why I used it. Because the only time someone does that is in response to a true direct threat. But barring that, there is no real difference between treating someone like a nebulous “potential” threat and treating them like an actual one, which was why I asked for clarification. Because the subtitle for the SR post is “if you approach a strange woman, she might mace you, and that’s your fault”.
A woman being careful of her own space is no different than anyone ever being careful of their own space. But there is a difference between being cautious and expecting others to cater to your fears. The post spoke to men and told them what they’re not allowed to do.
“Asking a woman who’s never met you before back to your room when the two of you are alone in an elevator will make her feel more threatened than flattered is a self-evident truism” No, it is not. Dozens of women came forward, including Stef McGraw, to contradict that. So your “self-evident truism” is more a common feeling amongst many women; the fact that you treat it as a “truism” when it is verifiably not one is a core problem of the whole debate. It became a debacle precisely because both sides immediately entrenched themselves into their positions. There was no “Hmm, I see why you might have read that into what I said, I meant it more like this” from the OP of the SR post, only defense and “how dare you read this into it!” It’s still being used as a reference despite the things I’ve pointed out, which have been pointed out before, so there has been ample time (a year) to correct anything that the OP of SR wanted to. I used quotes to explain how I read what I read from the post, and from RWs comments, and you did not contradict them. There has been no empathy for EG, no “Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions”. By that same token, Richard Dawkins stuck his foot fairly far into his mouth with his “Well, people in muslim countries have it worse so I don’t see why she’s complaining” comments, and then proceeded to continue ramming it down his throat with his fairly insulting defenses.
July 16th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Fair enough. Let’s have some good faith happy rainbows and sunshine, shall we?
Schrodinger’s Rapist generally always causes a kerfuffle, mostly for the reasons you stated; it’s worded very strongly. I think the reason for that is that it’s meant to hammer home the notion of having to evaluate “might sexually assault me” in the normal fabric of their daily lives; it really is something most men have absolutely no frame of reference for. Most of us, for example, largely withdraw our defenses when we’ve reached a stage when we’re willing to share a meal with someone, but muggers, to choose the obvious comparison, do not normally buy you dinner before they hit you over the head and gank your valuables. It’s an awkward mental place to have those “I need to make sure someone knows where I’ve gone and about how long I should be away” defenses up when the entire reason you’ve gone out is to get to know someone you maybe want to be intimate with better, but a sadly necessary one.
Would I have written it like that? No. For, again, pretty much the reasons you’ve stated. There’s a pretty fine line between telling the world at large what they’re allowed to do and making a point forceful enough to penetrate the skulls of some folks who have a really aggressive “I am the world” perspective. Those people who should maybe never speak to a stranger of any gender on the street? I’ve met them. They exist. They’re generally profoundly unpleasant to be around if you’re male OR female. They’re in the audience next to you, virtually speaking.
I link it knowing it’ll probably cause a row, but the reason I still do is simply that it’s the internet touchstone on the subject. I also linked it with a much gentler clarification that explicitly was meant to provide some context that is solely about perspective and not about instruction. Yeah?
No, it is not. Dozens of women came forward, including Stef McGraw, to contradict that. So your “self-evident truism”
Reread the sentence, which I noted you failed to quote the first words of, which were “to both of us“. It is explicitly in the sentence structure that I was acknowledging that was our perspective and not a universal law. That is why the rest of the post is in fact an explanation of how that perspective feels and why many men wouldn’t find it intuitive.
Again: please argue WITH ME, not the rest of the internet, and not Schrodinger’s Rapist.
As for elevator guy? He was never named, and if he was shamed, it was strictly personal, as none of the people speculating one way or the other who he is or what his intentions were know. And part of my point was that, from the perspective of a woman dealing with a complete stranger, it’s not actually relevant whether he’s shy, awkward, gorgeous, confident, or any of those other things; any guy with any of those traits could rape.
I’m sorry he gets to be at the epicenter of an internet shitstorm, but no one knows who he is other than himself, and part of the entire point is that from the snapshot threat-assessment perspective, his true intentions were essentially irrelevant. Hindsight is always completely and perfectly accurate, and since we have no idea who he was, we don’t even have *that*.
July 16th, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Thank you.
It seemed to me that that statement was that to you and Ken it was a self-evident truism, not that it was a truism for you specifically. Did I misunderstand?
And while I understand the context you tried to bring to the SR post, by not pointing out the flaws (you said it hammered home points, but it didn’t seem when I read it that you pointed out the flaws; you seemed to mock those who did), it seemed you were tacitly endorsing the thing. I am going to draw an analogy that is not precise, and is admittedly hyperbolic:
If there were a post saying “Be careful when you walk your dog, watch out for cars, make sure your dog is on a leash, and be careful you don’t get too close to any Jews”, I would expect something about “The Jew part isn’t so good…”, and if you didn’t, I might think that you didn’t disagree with the comment.
July 16th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Try this formulation on for size: “To Ken and I, it was an immediately self-evident truth, but the types of backlash that were common indicate it is not, here is the perspective from which it’s immediately understandable and what I think causes the difference between the two…”
Everybody thinks their own perspective is accurately representative of The World At Large. Nobody knows where that’s really not true until the seams are found.
It’s been a long time since I read SR all the way through, and most of the people I know directly didn’t react the way you did to it, because they’re by and large a community that is rather self-defense minded. Speaking of “seems self-evident”, they take it as given that EVERYONE could be a threat and one should, as they say, “have a plan to kill everyone you meet”. It is not remotely personal.
So in my world the people who have a big, active objection to it are mostly people I don’t know that well. So it doesn’t occur to me to caveat it before I link to it.
Ah, perspective.
July 16th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
That formulation makes a good deal more sense to me.
I would like to say that I am defense-oriented, and so are the people I know. It wasn’t the defense aspect of the post that bothered me.
July 16th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
OK, fair enough. I don’t know you at all, and I was merely speculating on why, maybe, the difference. Evidently I was wrong.
July 16th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
No worries.
July 31st, 2012 at 9:40 am
There’s something that’s been bothering me about the whole “Schrodinger’s Rapist.” argument.
It’s the same exact argument used for gun control.
It’s based on the theory that because a person has the capacity to commit an act. Has penis, might rape you, Has Gun, might murder you.
And that by that logic -all- penis/gun owners are suspect until …well, -always-, because just because he didn’t rape/shoot you -this time-, doesn’t mean he might not do it later.
And that seems… horribly wrong somehow.
anyhow, I’ll swing by later to see how you feel about it.
July 31st, 2012 at 11:12 am
Except for the part where it’s not being used at all to actually impose any sort of legal restriction on anybody, just as a metaphorical tool to explain the concept “we have a threat condition that probably isn’t even on your radar”.
WERE it used as justification for a legal imposition rather than “please don’t be unconsciously rude in this fashion”, then I would be wholeheartedly against that imposition.