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Aww that was so cute, and only a hint of stalking... That whole entry read much creepier than I bet they intended, and might speak to sexism on the web (due to

Aww that was so cute, and only a hint of stalking... That whole entry read much creepier than I bet they intended, and might speak to sexism on the web (due to the fact that this is supposed to be a support channel). It would be interesting if they did this experiment with a fictitious "Carl" employee, to see if female users flirted in the same way.

vinceguidry 11y ago
If you want to call it sexism. I have a female friend who gets hit on virtually constantly. She works for AT&T, and has described lines of hopefuls outside her door when she goes into the office. (she now works mostly from home) She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Men offer her free trips to different countries. She really is that attractive. But women who aren't quite that attractive get hit on all the time too, maybe not to the same extent as my friend does, but still a lot, in places that people would consider inappropriate or unprofessional. It's pretty much ubiquitous. So ubiquitous that even calling it 'sexism' almost seems to downplay it. Because these little flirtatious interactions are easily hid from other people, particularly other guys, it's easy for guys, who are never the recipients of similar attention, to remain unaware of, or worse, fool themselves into believing that women are not being constantly assessed for the potential for romantic or sexual liaison. My friend started highlighting it for me, and then I started seeing it everywhere.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  A tragedy played out every day, for sure. I wonder in all that, about the part where she accepts all this attention, letting guys pay for everything. What if she didn't play along? I know, blaming the victim. But the social game is complex, and she is definitely a part of it.
  - untog 11y ago
    I've talked to a few girls about this. While some are absolutely just out for all the freebies they can get, others have said that men will get increasingly aggressive when you turn down offers for stuff like that - like they insist on being "a provider" and you turning that down is an insult to their manhood. Seems like a no-win situation all round, really. If you take it, you're encouraging his behaviour (and making him feel like you're indebted to him). If you reject it you're going to find out how he deals with rejection, which, particularly in drunken scenarios, can literally be dangerous to you.
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      Media encourages male entitlement. Movies teach us persistence is the key to winning a woman's heart. Remember the cop character from Jessica Jones? He increases courtship aggressively with each rejection. 1. Cop, under mind control, tries to kill Trish Walker. 2. Cop stalks Trish to apologize. 3. Trish is frightened and tell him to leave. 4. Cop continues to stalk. 5. Cop and Trish hook up. Step 5 should be Trish maces cop, and he loses his badge.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        I wish it were that simple. I'm reading a book on trauma, and it vividly describes the link between fear and sex. We don't really understand how to talk about it publicly, discussions about this tend to devolve into ugly rape fantasy arguments. But it's going to be very difficult to just remove this sort of thing from movies and TV shows. It's too ingrained into our psyches.
        kelukelugames 11y ago
        Are you saying science suggests Trish slept with the cop because she was afraid of him?
        vinceguidry 11y ago
        This is exactly why talking about this is hard. People are too quick to draw causal conclusions. I didn't watch the movie. The movie will tell you why she slept with him. Science just gives context for what might be going on "under the hood" in similar, real, situations.
    - dudifordMann 11y ago
      "an insult to their manhood." "can literally be dangerous to you." Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment? A man that cannot accept rejection and therefor feels he has a right to behave in a dangerous way, seems to be a problem with his view of himself, and men as a whole, the world.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    This is her life. She can't stop the guys from hitting on her, short of doing awful things like downplaying her looks or hiding herself away. I wear a suit and tie to work every day. I didn't really understand her position until I started job hunting. I like wearing suits. I own five of them, three are custom made. Now I have to make a decision. Do I wear a suit and tie to my in-person job interviews? Coders seem to have an irrational hatred of suits and ties for some reason. The conservative choice would be to wear a polo shirt and slacks to my interviews. But to do that would put me in a weird position. Once I get the job, am I going to start wearing my suits again? When, the very first day? Or hide them away in the closet until I feel ready to? Appearance is political, and therefore dangerous. But it's also very personal, you wind up wanting to take the risks anyway just to "be who you are". To purposefully choose to be less attractive feels like you're doing violence to yourself. The only real choice, once people start noticing you and complimenting you and you start noticing what it's doing for your life, is to keep going with it. You can't just turn it off. You can choose to, but it never feels good to do that, and you're just going to face the same decision tomorrow. I, and she, would rather deal with the consequences of being really attractive than to stop. That includes being accepting of other's gifts, others' attention. When she tells me about her experiences, she's not complaining. She's noting something that she's already been dealing with for years. She's had the internal conversations with herself, should she downplay it, should she present less of herself to the world. Should she stop letting guys express their appreciation for her. Over and over again, for years. They're hard questions to contemplate, and there's only one real answer.
    - Michael_Murray 11y ago
      This. Every guy on the planet should have to understand the deep meaning of this when relating to women.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      How is downplaying one's looks "awful" or "doing violence to yourself"? When we wear non-practical clothes (e.g. anything besides athletic wear or comfy cargo pants), the entire purpose is to cause other humans to respond to us in a way that we find favorable. I recently purchased a slim red pants designed to convey a) that I'm a moderately creative type and b) that I have a nice ass. The net result is that I get desirable attention from women I like, but also I get undesirable attention from fat chicks and gays. I can switch that undesirable attention off anytime I want - I just need to dress like a slob and/or be less careful about having a desirable body (i.e. eat more butter, do fewer exercises aimed at aesthetics, not carefully calibrate my beard). I choose not to because that undesirable attention is a small price to pay for the desirable attention I receive. Similarly, consider the daily annoyance of recruiters. Who among us would trade recruiters + super hot job market for no recruiters + humanities academic-like desperation for any job at all?
- ksdale 11y ago
  This. I worked at a golf course for a summer and all of the other employees were attractive young women and literally every other guy who came into the pro shop attempted to flirt with them. And most of them were older and married and probably didn't intend to seem sleazy, but it didn't take very long for the sheer volume of it to gross me out.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    To play devil's advocate here: isn't there a difference between harmless flirtation and actually attempting to initiate a sexual relationship? Maybe these older, married men miss the days of their youth when they could be around pretty, young women and flirt with them (and more...), and in their current lives they don't have that any more because they're in a boring, monogamous marriage to someone who's not so young and pretty any more and maybe their marriage is rather unhappy too, and their flirtation is just a way to make themselves feel happy, even if they really know that these young women have zero interest in actually having any kind of physical relationship with them. Maybe they just like the interaction, and it serves as a happy distraction to their otherwise unhappy existence.
- yock 11y ago
  > She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Then she's playing along at least on some level. Accepting gifts while calling them unwanted is disingenuous at best.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Never said they were unwanted.

vinceguidry 11y ago

If you want to call it sexism. I have a female friend who gets hit on virtually constantly. She works for AT&T, and has described lines of hopefuls outside her door when she goes into the office. (she now works mostly from home) She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Men offer her free trips to different countries. She really is that attractive. But women who aren't quite that attractive get hit on all the time too, maybe not to the same extent as my friend does, but still a lot, in places that people would consider inappropriate or unprofessional. It's pretty much ubiquitous. So ubiquitous that even calling it 'sexism' almost seems to downplay it. Because these little flirtatious interactions are easily hid from other people, particularly other guys, it's easy for guys, who are never the recipients of similar attention, to remain unaware of, or worse, fool themselves into believing that women are not being constantly assessed for the potential for romantic or sexual liaison. My friend started highlighting it for me, and then I started seeing it everywhere.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
A tragedy played out every day, for sure. I wonder in all that, about the part where she accepts all this attention, letting guys pay for everything. What if she didn't play along? I know, blaming the victim. But the social game is complex, and she is definitely a part of it.
- untog 11y ago
  I've talked to a few girls about this. While some are absolutely just out for all the freebies they can get, others have said that men will get increasingly aggressive when you turn down offers for stuff like that - like they insist on being "a provider" and you turning that down is an insult to their manhood. Seems like a no-win situation all round, really. If you take it, you're encouraging his behaviour (and making him feel like you're indebted to him). If you reject it you're going to find out how he deals with rejection, which, particularly in drunken scenarios, can literally be dangerous to you.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Media encourages male entitlement. Movies teach us persistence is the key to winning a woman's heart. Remember the cop character from Jessica Jones? He increases courtship aggressively with each rejection. 1. Cop, under mind control, tries to kill Trish Walker. 2. Cop stalks Trish to apologize. 3. Trish is frightened and tell him to leave. 4. Cop continues to stalk. 5. Cop and Trish hook up. Step 5 should be Trish maces cop, and he loses his badge.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      I wish it were that simple. I'm reading a book on trauma, and it vividly describes the link between fear and sex. We don't really understand how to talk about it publicly, discussions about this tend to devolve into ugly rape fantasy arguments. But it's going to be very difficult to just remove this sort of thing from movies and TV shows. It's too ingrained into our psyches.
      - kelukelugames 11y ago
        Are you saying science suggests Trish slept with the cop because she was afraid of him?
        vinceguidry 11y ago
        This is exactly why talking about this is hard. People are too quick to draw causal conclusions. I didn't watch the movie. The movie will tell you why she slept with him. Science just gives context for what might be going on "under the hood" in similar, real, situations.
  - dudifordMann 11y ago
    "an insult to their manhood." "can literally be dangerous to you." Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment? A man that cannot accept rejection and therefor feels he has a right to behave in a dangerous way, seems to be a problem with his view of himself, and men as a whole, the world.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  This is her life. She can't stop the guys from hitting on her, short of doing awful things like downplaying her looks or hiding herself away. I wear a suit and tie to work every day. I didn't really understand her position until I started job hunting. I like wearing suits. I own five of them, three are custom made. Now I have to make a decision. Do I wear a suit and tie to my in-person job interviews? Coders seem to have an irrational hatred of suits and ties for some reason. The conservative choice would be to wear a polo shirt and slacks to my interviews. But to do that would put me in a weird position. Once I get the job, am I going to start wearing my suits again? When, the very first day? Or hide them away in the closet until I feel ready to? Appearance is political, and therefore dangerous. But it's also very personal, you wind up wanting to take the risks anyway just to "be who you are". To purposefully choose to be less attractive feels like you're doing violence to yourself. The only real choice, once people start noticing you and complimenting you and you start noticing what it's doing for your life, is to keep going with it. You can't just turn it off. You can choose to, but it never feels good to do that, and you're just going to face the same decision tomorrow. I, and she, would rather deal with the consequences of being really attractive than to stop. That includes being accepting of other's gifts, others' attention. When she tells me about her experiences, she's not complaining. She's noting something that she's already been dealing with for years. She's had the internal conversations with herself, should she downplay it, should she present less of herself to the world. Should she stop letting guys express their appreciation for her. Over and over again, for years. They're hard questions to contemplate, and there's only one real answer.
  - Michael_Murray 11y ago
    This. Every guy on the planet should have to understand the deep meaning of this when relating to women.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    How is downplaying one's looks "awful" or "doing violence to yourself"? When we wear non-practical clothes (e.g. anything besides athletic wear or comfy cargo pants), the entire purpose is to cause other humans to respond to us in a way that we find favorable. I recently purchased a slim red pants designed to convey a) that I'm a moderately creative type and b) that I have a nice ass. The net result is that I get desirable attention from women I like, but also I get undesirable attention from fat chicks and gays. I can switch that undesirable attention off anytime I want - I just need to dress like a slob and/or be less careful about having a desirable body (i.e. eat more butter, do fewer exercises aimed at aesthetics, not carefully calibrate my beard). I choose not to because that undesirable attention is a small price to pay for the desirable attention I receive. Similarly, consider the daily annoyance of recruiters. Who among us would trade recruiters + super hot job market for no recruiters + humanities academic-like desperation for any job at all?
ksdale 11y ago
This. I worked at a golf course for a summer and all of the other employees were attractive young women and literally every other guy who came into the pro shop attempted to flirt with them. And most of them were older and married and probably didn't intend to seem sleazy, but it didn't take very long for the sheer volume of it to gross me out.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  To play devil's advocate here: isn't there a difference between harmless flirtation and actually attempting to initiate a sexual relationship? Maybe these older, married men miss the days of their youth when they could be around pretty, young women and flirt with them (and more...), and in their current lives they don't have that any more because they're in a boring, monogamous marriage to someone who's not so young and pretty any more and maybe their marriage is rather unhappy too, and their flirtation is just a way to make themselves feel happy, even if they really know that these young women have zero interest in actually having any kind of physical relationship with them. Maybe they just like the interaction, and it serves as a happy distraction to their otherwise unhappy existence.
yock 11y ago
> She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Then she's playing along at least on some level. Accepting gifts while calling them unwanted is disingenuous at best.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Never said they were unwanted.