Has the #MeToo movement become a witch-hunt to a significant degree?

[Lea101]

Yeah. It’s seems like exaggeration but if a guy does not know how to respect personal boundaries, I won’t be surprised if he thinks getting a girl drunk so he could sleep with her is ‘not wrong’.

Sometimes it’s not even about not touching someone in the first place. Like I said, there are guys who do not intend to harm, but that they think that’s how they should treat women. It’s about being humble and decent enough to back off and apologize for making a person feel uncomfortable without making him/her feel frigid or weird for feeling that way.

 

[Xantippe]

It may be helpful (especially for single women or for parents of teen daughters) to have a look at pickup guides.

Here’s an example:

http://www.thepuaschool.com/kino-escalation/

That’s a guide for how to move a new female acquaintance on the conveyor belt from initial meeting from bed, using an imperceptibly escalating level of physical touch. (This being the PUA world, the initial advice is free, but you need to pay for the book to learn how to close the deal–it’s not just women that PUA types are good at snowing.)

I can’t recommend highly enough the value of teen girls, women and parents familiarizing themselves with PUA techniques. Once you’ve read about it, a lot of the techniques (for example “negging”) are transparent. It’s like seeing the explanation for a magic trick.

 

[pnewton]

Yes, it is. I put personal space (no contact, no words) at the bottom, but still on the same continuum. I do think the back and forth needs a little clarification from time to time about what part of this continuum is being addressed.

 

[Theo520]

The freeze response is extremely weak as an excuse for broadly requiring ‘enthusiastic consent’.

• Thought we agreed that a “Yes” was required? Girls who freeze are still protected by this standard.
• Girls who say “Yes” and then freeze before they can say “no” will just have to explain their special condition to their partners, they can include “I’m not acting like I’m dead” in their requirement. They should obviously also avoid random casual hook ups

Admit it, freezing is pretty far from “equally enthusiastic”, it’s much closer to someone appearing passed out.

 

[Elizabeth3]

Ultimately there needs to be a radical change on the way how women (and now, men) are viewed.

It’s kind of interesting to see how this will play out. There used to be all kinds of social rules and etiquette of how men and women were to interact in various social and business situations and most of these were thrown out as too stifling and oppressive. Now it seems we are on our way back to square one making new norms of interaction to counter the freedom that was sought from the old norms.

 

[Xantippe]

The freeze response is extremely weak as an excuse for broadly requiring ‘enthusiastic consent’.

Thought we agreed that a “Yes” was required? Girls who freeze are still protected by this standard.
Girls who say “Yes” and then freeze before they can say “no” will just have to explain their special condition to their partners, they can include “I’m not acting like I’m dead” in their requirement. They should obviously also avoid random casual hook ups

Admit it, freezing is pretty far from “equally enthusiastic”, it’s much closer to someone appearing passed out.

You and I agree about the importance of “yes.” high five

However, it’s not uncommon to bump into people who say stuff like, “she didn’t say no,” “she didn’t fight back,” “she didn’t leave,” etc, when it’s possible that the person they’re talking about was paralyzed by fear. Stuff about the freeze response is mostly for their benefit.

 

[ConstantLearner]

You just blamed the victim.

No, I didn’t blame them. You know that. I said it would be wise to be prudent.

 

[PetraG]

The freeze response is extremely weak as an excuse for broadly requiring ‘enthusiastic consent’.

Thought we agreed that a “Yes” was required? Girls who freeze are still protected by this standard.
Girls who say “Yes” and then freeze before they can say “no” will just have to explain their special condition to their partners, they can include “I’m not acting like I’m dead” in their requirement. They should obviously also avoid random casual hook ups

Admit it, freezing is pretty far from “equally enthusiastic”, it’s much closer to someone appearing passed out.

If someone is contemplating going forward with sex with a person not their spouse, why on earth would they not absolutely require “enthusiastic consent”? Are you talking about a prostitute, a person you’ve paid to grant you sexual favors? If not, what kind of lover is so wrapped up in his or her own gratification that he or she is not concerned at all times with their partner and whether or not he or she IS having a positive experience and IS NOT have moral scruples that wisely advise a STOP?

Most married people want enthusiastic consent, for crying out loud! Do you not see how far this conversation has gotten from a view of sex built on the presumption of mutual self-gift rather than mutual cooperation in an exercise in self-gratification? It is bad enough to give people an excuse to commit fornication. Does justice somehow require that they also be given permission to be such bad lovers that their utter self-absorption makes them stop caring whether or not their partner wants to stop?

If your partner is doing anything that could be remotely confused with a “freeze”…who doesn’t stop and find out what is up with that? Really, this conversation has not failed to flabberghast me. This is the “Christian” view–don’t fetter other people with what I consider an “excuse” for "broadly requiring “enthusiastic consent.”?

An atheist with a drop of human courtesy would have to read this and just shake their heads. This is the religion built on love and the killing of self-interest? RRrrrright. Sure it is. Gonna jump right on that bandwagon, sure.

Secular society sees the decency in requiring ourselves to make certain that our bids to show affection are welcome before we force them on someone who doesn’t want them. That is not a very high bar.

 

[Theo520]

You are still confusing advice ideal for loving couples with clear advice to prevent a life damaging encounter.

I think the driving analogy still lays the problem out well.

There are many many aspects that come into play in being an excellent driver, but we can prevent most intersection crashes just by having clear guidance on right of way. Clear rules of the road also allow us to assign blame when there is an accident.

 

[PetraG]

You are still confusing advice ideal for loving couples with clear advice to prevent a life damaging encounter.

I think the driving analogy still lays the problem out well.

There are many many aspects that come into play in being an excellent driver, but we can prevent most intersection crashes just by having clear guidance on right of way. Clear rules of the road also allow us to assign blame when there is an accident.

Um, no, I’m saying that if you’re having sex with a woman who is not your wife (or, if you are female, with a man not your husband) it’s on you to make sure she is totally on board with the encounter from A to Z.

To use the driving analogy, if there is a rear-end collision, it isn’t automatically the fault of the driver who stopped. Rather, the driver of a car that rear-ends another vehicle is almost always at least partly at fault and not uncommonly entirely at fault. There is a duty to leave a safe distance in case the driver in front of you stops suddenly.

If you want to talk about defensive driving, then the person who thinks they are being “followed too closely” and not given time to stop does well to pull over and let the driver who is in too much of a hurry to drive safely to go past. That is not the duty of a driver, but it is wise and what driver-safety instructors teach. That is the analogy of staying clear of would-be partners who don’t look as if they’re going to take no for an answer without question and 100% of the time.

Just likewise, when you are engaged in an activity which is morally illicit in the first place, you have a duty to be ready for your partner to stop at any time and for a reason that does not have to pass muster with you. You have no spousal rights in an out-of-wedlock sexual encounter. Therefore, you have no right to expect that your partner might not call everything off at any time and for no reason that you could see coming. That’s just too bad for you.

The decision to turn from mortal sin ought to be absolute and always given the benefit of the doubt, after all, wouldn’t you say?

There is no reason for the law to recognize that persons having sexual encounters outside wedlock have the right to expect anything. No, the other person is not a spouse and has not legally lead you to believe you are promised anything. This is particularly true when there is not even an engagement! The encounter may end at any time and for any reason that either of the parties to it decides to end it, period.

If you showed someone a nice evening in the hopes that they’d grant you sexual favors later, well, that’s your gamble. (I mean “you” in the theoretical and NOT the personal sense, obviously!!) The expectation that there WILL be something granted is an expectation of prostitution. Sorry, I don’t see any reason to protect the rights of the “consumer” in that case. “Caveat Emptor,” as they say.

The least that justice can do is to grant the moral decision the favor of the law.

 

[Xantippe]

An atheist with a drop of human courtesy would have to read this and just shake their heads. This is the religion built on love and the killing of self-interest? RRrrrright. Sure it is. Gonna jump right on that bandwagon, sure.

Secular society sees the decency in requiring ourselves to make certain that our bids to show affection are welcome before we force them on someone who doesn’t want them. That is not a very high bar.

There is that.

I think Christians ought to have an “uh oh” feeling when we see secular people having higher standards than we do.

 

[PetraG]

Find a credible accusation first. The data I trust indicates that potentially 40% of all rape claims are false. That is a huge number and makes it rather dangerous to just believe survivors like feminists insist, no?

Why it’s almost like the police do their jobs and investigate instead of just taking one person’s word over the other as feminists would have us do!

Why is it more dangerous to believe people who decide after the fact they have regrets than to take the chance of not believing someone who really was sexually violated, who was subjected to sex without their full consent? I mean, provided that what is required is proof that there was in fact a sexual encounter? What is the danger you’re referring to?

Do you think the harm of being falsely accused of rape by a woman not your wife with whom you “believed” to be having consensual sex is worse than the harm of not being able to accuse someone who felt free to rape you because you (a) knew him and (b) had chosen to take your clothing off but changed your mind?

Really, if I were to want to have someone afraid, I’d want the people with the accelerators to be afraid of a collision, not the people who wanted to be able to use the brake pedals. Certainly, as a legal matter I can see wanting to be able to legally differentiate between forcing yourself on someone who had welcomed physical intimacies of some sort compared to forcing yourself on someone who doesn’t know you, but that doesn’t mean I think there should be any point at which a person should not have any concern that their partner may later say there was a lack of consent.

Some people think that having to get a signed piece of paper in advance is just the worst thing in the world…why should it be? Why should there be sex outside of marriage that carries no concern of unforeseen consequences? Isn’t there already the concern of out-of-wedlock parenthood? If the interest of a child is not protected, sorry, why would I care that the parents have worries that they could be accused of something? It is a realm where people ought to proceed with great caution and realize they don’t have the guarantees that marriage affords. What is so terrible about that, from society’s standpoint? The couple having sex outside of marriage with someone they barely know are a couple of people living dangerously. If they want to do that, they can bear the likely consequences. A false accusation is bad and worth avoiding. It is not remotely as bad as being raped. Not. Even. Close.

Heaven forbid that we be more worried that a sinner be accused of a sin worse than the one that he or she committed than we be concerned about someone being violated when they were in the midst of committing a serious sin and decided to come to their senses and stop. The preponderance of concern needs to be with the sinner who wants to stop.

 

[Xantippe]

There are many many aspects that come into play in being an excellent driver, but we can prevent most intersection crashes just by having clear guidance on right of way.

It’s not just rules, which has been causing some issues for self-driving cars:

5 big things still standing between us and a glorious self-driving car future

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

“A far more difficult hurdle, meanwhile, is the fact that driving is an intensely social process that frequently involves intricate interactions with other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. In many of those situations, humans rely on generalized intelligence and common sense that robots still very much lack.”

“But Olson points out that there are thousands and thousands of other challenges that pop up, many of them quite subtle and unpredictable. Just imagine, for instance, that you’re a driver coming up on a crosswalk and there’s a pedestrian standing on the curb looking down at his smartphone. A human driver will use her judgment to figure out whether that person is standing in place or absent-mindedly about to cross the street while absorbed in his phone. A computer can’t (yet) make that call.”

“Or think of all the different driving situations that involve eye contact and subtle communication, like navigating four-way intersections, or a cop waving cars around an accident scene. Easy for us. Still hard for a robot.”

“Olson explains that fully self-driving cars will ultimately need to be adept at four key tasks: 1) understanding the environment around them; 2) understanding why the people they encounter on the road are behaving the way they are; 3) deciding how to respond (it’s tough to come up with a rule of thumb for four-way stop signs that works every single time); and 4) communicating with other people.”

One of the rules of the road for dating needs to be–when not completely sure, do not proceed.

 

[Theo520]

To use the driving analogy, if there is a rear-end collision, it isn’t automatically the fault of the driver who stopped. Rather, the driver of a car that rear-ends another vehicle is almost always at least partly at fault and not uncommonly entirely at fault. There is a duty to leave a safe distance in case the driver in front of you stops suddenly.

You worded that funnily. If there is a rear end collision it’s automatically the fault of the driver in the rear, it’s pretty clear cut, no equivocation about whether the following car was at a safe speed or even if the front driver did a strange and sudden stop in the middle of a busy road.

Your desire to judge ‘enthusiasm’ is like trying to judge whether they were careful drivers before the accident. It’s a complication that just adds to the grey or confusion.

Much better to have it clear cut, did you have clear consent regardless of how much enthusiasm was subsequently shown.

 

[Xantippe]

Much better to have it clear cut, did you have clear consent regardless of how much enthusiasm was subsequently shown.

Weeell, what if one party becomes suddenly unresponsive?

I think that calls for a check-in. (Are you OK?)

 

[Theo520]

Weeell, what if one party becomes suddenly unresponsive?

I think that calls for a check-in. (Are you OK?)

You are clearly in felony territory when one party is passed out. It has no connection whatsoever to your ask of gauging ‘equal enthusiasm’, on someone who might be a complete stranger.

 

[Xantippe]

You are clearly in felony territory when one party is passed out. It has no connection whatsoever to your ask of gauging ‘equal enthusiasm’

OK–how about “non-responsive”?

 

[Theo520]

OK–how about “non-responsive”?

Same difference. passed-out, comatose, drugged up, asleep, non-responsive, you’re in felony land. You are responsible for making that basic determination, and it’s clearly much easier than missing a few verbal cues that they were engaged but their heart wasn’t fully into it.

 

[PetraG]

You worded that funnily. If there is a rear end collision it’s automatically the fault of the driver in the rear, it’s pretty clear cut, no equivocation about whether the following car was at a safe speed or even if the front driver did a strange and sudden stop in the middle of a busy road.

Your desire to judge ‘enthusiasm’ is like trying to judge whether they were careful drivers before the accident. It’s a complication that just adds to the grey or confusion.

Much better to have it clear cut, did you have clear consent regardless of how much enthusiasm was subsequently shown.

I really do not care about enthusiasm; I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I’m saying that it is on the couple having sex outside of marriage to make sure at every juncture that their partner is not having second thoughts. Honestly, if we are Catholic, the expectation ought to be that these ill-adviseed partners would talk each other OUT of mortal sin, but we’re talking about a couple on the wrong side of that divide. There is no expetcation of honor among thieves; people have to live with that. I don’t have a problem with that.

There is an easy way to get a clear-cut expectation of consent, by the way:

Get MARRIED.

Do I have a problem with a legal classification that differentiates for a violation of consent that happens in a consensual situation rather than a situation in which there was no consent from start to finish? No, I think that is reasonable. I can see that is a rational standard.

Do I have a problem with rules that recognize that lovers can become spiteful when the relationship doesn’t go the way they want? No, I have no problem with that. Of course there ought to be recognition that there is a big difference between the situation of an accusation of wrong-doing between lovers (even if very short-term lovers) rather than an accusation of wrong-doing when there was never consent for anything even remotely sexual whatsoever. Even when there is a true offense, one is on a different level than the other.

Yes, there ought to be a recognition that a person might give and take sexual favors freely but then want to do as much harm as possible when spurned later and not given a long-term relationship. Yes, it is only rational to recognize that some people might want to change their tune in order to spite someone who doesn’t want to tie the knot with them. That is why I think it reasonable to recognize this as a different class of possible offense.

Still, when someone accused is saying “she is lying about me” or “he is lying by calling me a liar” it does need to be recognized that sometimes one party has much more reason to lie than the other. Which one that is varies. Sometimes, both parties have a reason to lie. Sometimes, it is, reasonably speaking and in light of all the evidence that can be found independent of the accusation, the accused who has far more reason to bend the truth than the accuser.

 

[DarkLight]

Sometimes it’s not even about not touching someone in the first place. Like I said, there are guys who do not intend to harm, but that they think that’s how they should treat women. It’s about being humble and decent enough to back off and apologize for making a person feel uncomfortable without making him/her feel frigid or weird for feeling that way.

Yeah, part of the problem for women is it’s a catch-22. It’s not like there’s a glow only women can see around dangerous men. I’ve known some men who got very upset on being told that approaching women on dark, isolated streets isn’t likely to be well received. We don’t know you, we have absolutely no way of knowing your intentions.

It’s kind of interesting to see how this will play out. There used to be all kinds of social rules and etiquette of how men and women were to interact in various social and business situations and most of these were thrown out as too stifling and oppressive. Now it seems we are on our way back to square one making new norms of interaction to counter the freedom that was sought from the old norms.

Yeah. And some of that was necessary. Many of the old norms were set for a time when men and women didn’t typically work the same jobs, and where it was expected that men primarily socialized with men and women with women.