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Xantippe
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Right. I think that the social instinct that is being used here is the instinct to preserve friendships, keep the peace at all costs and assume that whoever is making waves must be the person at fault.
Has the #MeToo movement become a witch-hunt to a significant degree?
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Xantippe
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Obviously, women are enabling too, as you can see from reading MeToo stories (that’s definitely true of Harvey Weinstein)–BUT one woman cannot effectively exclude another individual from a group without the group’s cooperation. The choice that might need to be made is between losing all of one’s friends and staying but being exposed to a creep and being complicit in exposing other women to a creep. That’s a very high price to pay either way.
What’s the application to the Captain Awkward letter I was sharing? Was she supposed to call the police after her friend found the guy caressing her while she was passed out? Or was it a police matter when the guy tried to coerce her friend into sex after giving her a ride? Seriously, what do you think the police is going to say about that? And what do you think the friend group is going to say about it if the woman’s first move is to call the police?
I really have to give side eye to the argument (which I’ve seen in this thread and elsewhere including from yourself) that everything is either a) to be handled by the individual or b) a police matter. There is a large middle ground of behaviors that are beyond the capacity of the individual to deal with but at the same time are not a police matter (or at least not something the police is going to do much with). Exclusion from the social group (or at least a group-issued ultimatum) is a very good punishment for this sort of middle-ground bad behavior.
Right, which is why the police isn’t necessarily going to be a lot of help.
Seriously, look at what you wrote–you said to go to the police, but that the police probably won’t have enough to work with to do anything.
I’m happy for due process to be a thing at colleges, but it is nonsensical in the social environment. I don’t need due process to figure out who I don’t want in my home or who I don’t want to socialize with. or who I don’t trust to give rides to female friends.
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starshiptrooper
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I would rather be exhausted on my own terms than browbeaten.
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DarkLight
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As I mentioned upthread though - we do that sort of thing all the time. It’s very strange to me that we have this attitude that suddenly, when it comes to sexual assault, it’s completely unfair to make judgments in the exact same way we make judgments regarding social relationships in a normal case.
Plus, as I’ve pointed out earlier, there’s lots of creepy unacceptable behaviors that aren’t actually illegal - from the example, telling a woman that she owes you sex because of something you did and following you around doesn’t actually break any laws. It’s still something that a reasonable woman would not want to interact with! You’ll notice the example in that case too isn’t even that the woman wasn’t believed. It’s that she was being told that a guy trying to touch her when she wasn’t able to consent, or putting her in a situation where he’s indicating he’s not ok with taking no for an answer, is ok behavior and she shouldn’t complain.
Human psychology being what it is, we can’t expect people to suddenly act differently when something goes very wrong. If a guy puts his hands all over you, and the message you get is that if you make a fuss, it means you’re overreacting and just some crazy woman who’s out to get a perfectly innocent guy…you’re going to apply that same thinking when it actually does come to rape, you’re not going to turn around and suddenly figure, well, this time sexual contact with a woman without her consent is actually a big deal that you should totally go to the cops with when something a bit shy of it was just you being oversensitive.
The fundamental problem is seeing it as an either/or. If you’re seeing it as “either you have to stay in control of a woman all the time, or you’re a browbeaten guy who is getting pushed around or taken advantage of”, that’s not a good foundation for relationships. It is possible to have a relationship without one partner dominating the other - but if you go into relationships with the idea that one person’s got to be in control, you’re not likely to find one.
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Xantippe
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You don’t like the idea of a wife who is attracted to you, thinks you are all that and a bag of chips, and WANTS you and tells you so?
Listen to married guys (including Red Pill guys)–one of the biggest gripes from men who have been married a while is about having to do all the asking and dealing with a wife who avoids sex and seems bored by it–men who have been married a while usually appreciate a wife who asks.
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Xantippe
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I also think it’s not even possible–short of one of those situations where the guy has women locked up in his basement.
One adult can’t really be another adult’s jailer and have much of a life.
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Werbenjagermanjensen
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Asking someone for sex isn’t a crime but groping an unconscious woman is against the law in most parts. If the police interview the guy he will probably even admit to groping her. If nothing else they can increase patrols around his house and may catch him on an unrelated charge.
I’m not expecting all that much because the police aren’t Batman and have to work within a process. I still think it’s the system you should use because it works a heck of a lot better than a whisper network of social exclusion. And besides all that getting excluded from a group of friends just isn’t all that much punishment.
Agreed. I don’t associate with people for no other reason than I just don’t like the cut of their jib. I do think that it is a good idea for women to trust their instincts and not be around people that give them the creeps. I just don’t think that I’m a supporter of rape culture because I don’t automatically believe every accusation that leaves a woman’s mouth. Or by the time it would get to me in a social circle it would be more of the nature of Susan told me that Jennifer told her that Brad’s girlfriend let her know that she shouldn’t let his son around Mr Smith because he’s inappropriate.
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starshiptrooper
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We must be getting our intel from different sources then.
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DarkLight
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I don’t know where you are, but most everywhere I lived the response would be “you think we have time to bother with that because some drunk girl said a guy copped a feel?” Plus it’s really unlikely that he’s going to be doing this sort of thing out on the street - he’s specifically targeting women in his social circles because he knows he knows not much will happen.
The point here is more that you can make judgments based on things like whether the woman is honest, how many different women are accusing one guy, that sort of thing. But I’d point out that the problem of “rape culture” in the example wasn’t disbelief but dismissal. It wasn’t them saying “oh, well, I don’t think that actually happened” but “yeah, it happened, that’s just him, you know? Don’t make a fuss.”
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Xantippe
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Can you point me to any Red Pill guys who have been married a long time, have kids at home, and seem thrilled by having to do all the initiating? I’ve browsed a lot of Red Pill comment threads, and the wife never initiating is a common sore point.
In the context of a long-term relationship, it isn’t nice to always have to be the person who asks.
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Xantippe
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You’re saying that the cops will do nothing, but why should a person who was touched inappropriately by a person in their friend group have to zip their lips about it? Why does it have to be a whisper network? Why not several friends getting together to say something like, “Chris, you need to stop touching people who don’t want to be touched and if you can’t do that starting now, we can’t have you around”?
There are a lot of options here. Captain Awkward has a bit of a specialty in dealing with creepers and she has a lot of scripts for dealing with them, boyfriends who are friends with them, and the friend group who doesn’t think it’s a big deal.
Her technique is the very opposite of a whisper campaign–bringing it out into the open and having clear personal boundaries and not tolerating bad behavior in social groups.
She’s also super duper feminist, but hey, she’s really good at this.
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Werbenjagermanjensen
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Fair enough. Groping an unconscious woman should get you excluded from any social circle. If they believe it and do nothing that is inexcusable. Asking for sex from a young lady should be enough to get you kicked out of the knitting circle at church but hardly seems like a crime worthy of getting kicked out of your biker gang or group of stoner friends.
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Xantippe
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In the Captain Awkward example, it was “Offering to drive my stranded friend home from a party, then informing her that he expected sex as “payment” when he dropped her off; following her to the house after she said no.” That sequence of events would make the vast majority of women feel very, very uncomfortable.
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DarkLight
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The “asking for sex” wasn’t the problem; it was telling her that she owed him sex and then trying to follow her inside when she said no. If he’d asked, she’d said no, and that was the end of it, that would be a quite different matter.
It’s not wanting or asking for sex that’s the big problem here; it’s acting like he’s entitled to get it whether the woman’s willing or not. (Especially with trying to follow her in like that - as in, trying to get her into a situation where he’d be alone with her after communicating that it wasn’t ok for her to say no.)
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Mi_Rose
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I have another example. Now I was 50 and my dad was in his seventies. I was not exactly a hot young thing.
I told my dad his friend was handsy with me, his married friend, and he said that his friend was always like that.
This guy was over 70 and I was 50 but yuck. You may call it rape culture or whatever you want but my dad’s friend had gotten to his seventies and people were still making excuses for him. I do not want that for my granddaughters.
I told my dad his friend was handsy with me, his married friend, and he said that his friend was always like that.
This guy was over 70 and I was 50 but yuck. You may call it rape culture or whatever you want but my dad’s friend had gotten to his seventies and people were still making excuses for him. I do not want that for my granddaughters.
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Xantippe
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Here’s another issue:
I think that there is a need to have higher standards for behavior inside groups where there is a lot of trust. The issue is that whereas most of us are maximally vigilant in anonymous public settings (Greyhound stations, large urban parks, downtown), we tend to be more relaxed and less on our guard in more selective environments: college, work, church, gatherings with just friends or friends of friends, our extended family, our nuclear family, etc. Each of those environments is going to have a different level of expected trust (depending on the group and the individuals involved). I would argue that there is a higher level of responsibilities for people in authority or who are influential in the group to make sure that the group’s actual safety level matches the perceived safety level. That’s a big problem with Captain Awkward’s friendship group examples–tolerating bad behavior against group members violates the implicit promise of the friend group that “we are your friends, we care about you, we have your back.”
Edited to add: And note that in Captain Awkward’s examples, the bad actor is leveraging in-group trust and solidarity and weaponizing it against women in the group.
I think that there is a need to have higher standards for behavior inside groups where there is a lot of trust. The issue is that whereas most of us are maximally vigilant in anonymous public settings (Greyhound stations, large urban parks, downtown), we tend to be more relaxed and less on our guard in more selective environments: college, work, church, gatherings with just friends or friends of friends, our extended family, our nuclear family, etc. Each of those environments is going to have a different level of expected trust (depending on the group and the individuals involved). I would argue that there is a higher level of responsibilities for people in authority or who are influential in the group to make sure that the group’s actual safety level matches the perceived safety level. That’s a big problem with Captain Awkward’s friendship group examples–tolerating bad behavior against group members violates the implicit promise of the friend group that “we are your friends, we care about you, we have your back.”
Edited to add: And note that in Captain Awkward’s examples, the bad actor is leveraging in-group trust and solidarity and weaponizing it against women in the group.
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DarkLight
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It’s also worth noting that support or lack thereof has a pretty strong effect on the long-term prognosis of the victim. People who get blamed after traumatic events are much more likely to develop long term symptoms and have more severe ones; people who are believed and supported tend to fare better in the long run. Reporting is affected too; people who feel they will be disbelieved by those around them are less likely to make an official report.
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Theo520
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NPR had a segment last night on #MeToo, it was on a 30+ year old woman that was molested by her gymnastics teacher when she was a kid.
It was interesting for me because it helped me realize most of my posts here are from the perspective of what I’ll call the ‘typical guy’, someone who hasn’t assaulted a woman nor has any intention of doing so. Many other posters here are focused on serial predators.
It was interesting for me because it helped me realize most of my posts here are from the perspective of what I’ll call the ‘typical guy’, someone who hasn’t assaulted a woman nor has any intention of doing so. Many other posters here are focused on serial predators.
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Sarcelle
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It is now quite common for couples to live together without being married and have several children together. No need to be promiscuous or have IVF to be the single mother of several children.
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starshiptrooper
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You are missing the point, the Red Pill exists to solve those problems, so of course it will attract people who report those problems and are willing to reject their conditioning. Using your logic I could reasonably conclude that feminism is bad for women since so many of them have or had problems with men.
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