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And how do you think that individuals' behavior can lower the friction of "male-female" relationship in a societal scale so a man wouldn't abuse a powerful posi

And how do you think that individuals' behavior can lower the friction of "male-female" relationship in a societal scale so a man wouldn't abuse a powerful position to approach and seduce a woman and that a woman wouldn't abuse its position of dozens of men courting her?

pm90 9y ago
You can't change fucking everything. I like Mz's suggestion because (s)he isn't advocating any specific action, just that people think hard and rationally about their actions. There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  The same way you can't charge just half of the people for this mess, which is exactly what happens in the current trend of digital feminism. Look at my downvotes without replies, it has a lot of meaning. And it is sick. You just can't talk that women are equally guilty for what they are complaining.
  - Mz 9y ago
    I actually talk a lot about this topic in a very evenhanded manner and I blog about it that way. I recently did a series of 5 posts that were evenhanded. This is the last one and it has links to the earlier four: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6PrldE6ZTwWHgiSSgiBWNgZ5rBi0ic_osxD6AGmeg/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6PrldE6ZTwWHgiSSgiBWNg... The problem is that your remarks are not coming across like "men and women are both adults and both need to work at solving this." You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory." If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things. Best.
    - owebmaster 9y ago
      > You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory." > If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things. Yeah, this isn't what I mean (I'm not a native english speaker, but I don't think I wrote it entirely wrong, but your emphasis is not mine's). Your previous reply nailed it, > When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards. But is exactly this my point: It is up to the women to correct/validate this behavior, when men starting to change their way. Because if in the long term this strategy doesn't work better, most of the men will drop it and start to approach women in the way they see it working. And this is my point when I say that it is not my (or individuals) fault. In an anthropological analysis, this is the same reason women evolved to rely in men for security and better chances of survival: it worked. Now we have a much better social security structure in the world so naturally the usefulness of men for women reached a new low in most countries :P
      - Mz 9y ago
        You are guilty of what you are accusing "digital feminism" of: You only want half the people to be held responsible, just the other half. Some women want to blame men 100% and play the victim card themselves and that doesn't work. But men saying that it is 100% on women to defend themselves is equally broken. And it sounds really, really ugly, like you just don't want to be bothered to behave better yourself. I talk all the time about the fact that it is a societal problem and we need to address it at that level. But addressing it at that level involves figuring out what individual's can do differently. Because society is merely an aggregate of a lot of individuals. It does not exist separately on its own or something. It is the collective result of many individual choices. You change it in part by coming up with mental models for effective actions that individuals can take.
        owebmaster 9y ago
Mz 9y ago
When other powerful men choose to publicly signal that this is just not how things should be done, it serves as a role model for others. It sets the example. But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault. Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man. So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one. When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards. People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.
dang 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822155 and marked it off-topic.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  Why? > on: The long-term cost of sexual harassment
  - dang 9y ago
    Because it started a flamewar. Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823319 are particularly bad.

pm90 9y ago

You can't change fucking everything. I like Mz's suggestion because (s)he isn't advocating any specific action, just that people think hard and rationally about their actions. There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.

owebmaster 9y ago
The same way you can't charge just half of the people for this mess, which is exactly what happens in the current trend of digital feminism. Look at my downvotes without replies, it has a lot of meaning. And it is sick. You just can't talk that women are equally guilty for what they are complaining.
- Mz 9y ago
  I actually talk a lot about this topic in a very evenhanded manner and I blog about it that way. I recently did a series of 5 posts that were evenhanded. This is the last one and it has links to the earlier four: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6PrldE6ZTwWHgiSSgiBWNgZ5rBi0ic_osxD6AGmeg/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6PrldE6ZTwWHgiSSgiBWNg... The problem is that your remarks are not coming across like "men and women are both adults and both need to work at solving this." You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory." If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things. Best.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    > You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory." > If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things. Yeah, this isn't what I mean (I'm not a native english speaker, but I don't think I wrote it entirely wrong, but your emphasis is not mine's). Your previous reply nailed it, > When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards. But is exactly this my point: It is up to the women to correct/validate this behavior, when men starting to change their way. Because if in the long term this strategy doesn't work better, most of the men will drop it and start to approach women in the way they see it working. And this is my point when I say that it is not my (or individuals) fault. In an anthropological analysis, this is the same reason women evolved to rely in men for security and better chances of survival: it worked. Now we have a much better social security structure in the world so naturally the usefulness of men for women reached a new low in most countries :P
    - Mz 9y ago
      You are guilty of what you are accusing "digital feminism" of: You only want half the people to be held responsible, just the other half. Some women want to blame men 100% and play the victim card themselves and that doesn't work. But men saying that it is 100% on women to defend themselves is equally broken. And it sounds really, really ugly, like you just don't want to be bothered to behave better yourself. I talk all the time about the fact that it is a societal problem and we need to address it at that level. But addressing it at that level involves figuring out what individual's can do differently. Because society is merely an aggregate of a lot of individuals. It does not exist separately on its own or something. It is the collective result of many individual choices. You change it in part by coming up with mental models for effective actions that individuals can take.
      - owebmaster 9y ago

Mz 9y ago

When other powerful men choose to publicly signal that this is just not how things should be done, it serves as a role model for others. It sets the example. But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault. Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man. So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one. When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards. People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.

dang 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822155 and marked it off-topic.

owebmaster 9y ago
Why? > on: The long-term cost of sexual harassment
- dang 9y ago
  Because it started a flamewar. Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823319 are particularly bad.