Let’s make an exception:
You seem to suggest that there is no need for strangers to earn each other’s trust. Rapport, intimacy, and trust are built over time, not given instantaneously.
No, not at all, I agree with you actually.
You also seem to be confusing treating each other with dignity and politeness with a right to trust that is not automatic.
No, I make a point of making it clear (though it still gets missed) that I don’t say people should actually go with strangers, stay with strangers, accept gifts from them etc. What I am doing — and which is making some people livid — is objecting to combining reasonable precautions with gratuitous totalistic judgmenets of a person’s character based on one’s own interpretation of a single thing, even though it might be a faux pas (in other words, how quickly it takes to categorize a person as assuredly being a scumbag and what thin basis that happens), or with a sense of entitlement to treat that person as trash. I never argue in favour of any trest toward in the persons mentioned in the hypotheticals, but I always argue against judging them (e.g. categorizing them as probable rapists or as someone void of self control because they spend a minute or two arguing with someone who is trying to do something dangerous) or talking trash to them.
But you give very little room to the idea that sometimes the gentler stuff gets steamrollered and that sends off the alert to call out the big guns.
Again, I agree with you. Still, in the examples that were discussed in this threat I found both the dialogues and the narrative to be objectionable in terms of showing contempt and superiority.
And actually, especially in public places, calling out loudly is one very good way to alert passersby or anyone within earshot that someone is present who is not abiding by the rules. AFAIK, it’s actually encouraged practice in places like Japan on public transit, where groping is an epidemic problem. Gropers depend on victim silence in cases like these.
No disagreement. However, this is different from:
‘Nice weather, innit?’ or ‘That is a good book you are reading’ or something else not particularly brilliant or inviting but not particularly invasive either
‘Look, you need to go away before I start shouting.’
‘What? Where did you get the—’ / ‘What are you impl—’
‘Aaaaa! Someone arrest him!’
Security arrives, guy’s cuffed, cops arrive, guy’s charged. Employer/school is pressured by an activist group, guy loses his job/scholarship. Prosecutor gets pressure from activist groups/impending election, charges go through. Judge faces the same pressure and jury is always a coinflip but quite impressionable and sympathetic to victims and prosecutors by default, so guy gets a conviction and quite possibly a hefty sentence just to make the propaganda point that yeah, we take such things very seriously here. CAF thread is started, guy gets written off as an obvious scumbag & lowlife, Chev objects, et voila Chev’s a rapist too. The same happens at a crim law conference where a bunch of people of either sex privately agree but, of course, nobody will take the lectern and actually say that out loud. Actually I was identified as myself being a ‘potential rapist’ by a liberal activist once (yup) for suggesting that the cure for our current societal problem of getting it through to people that ‘no means no’ wouldn’t be complete without also teaching people to
speak in a way that yes means yes and no means no. Liberal logic. Sigh. If you don’t offer total enthusiastic affirmation fast enough, then you’re enemy, a heretic to burn. And just like in the middle ages, where a charge of sodomy (or paedophilia or whatever) nicely rounded out the typical indictment for heresy, so does it modernly feel attractive to brand anyone who does not 100% enthusiastically and immediately agree with Nth Wave’s agenda as being rapist material.
It will not make anyone feel threatened, uncomfortable or awkward. The ultimate nice guy.