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I was mistaken for a call girl
- lolc 8y agoI find the conclusion took a strange turn from the story: > Those women who were complicit in hashtag crimes have actually undermined the cause, taken us back years in our endeavor to be taken seriously. The people fighting to prevent sexual attacks would generally also acknowledge other areas for improvement. Saying that you have different priorities is acceptable. But denying their priorities is not. That they are causing more sexism elsewhere is a long shot. It is not even connected to the main story.
- DubiousButOkay 8y agoPretty sure you’re engaging in selective blindness to the nature of politicization among humans. At a fundamental level the political winds are that of retaliation for past grievances. Not just immediate grievances with lving victims, but all grievances across recorded history, with no definite end-game. This creates a politically charged atmosphere that polarizes players to exist in two camps, primed for conflict intended to escalate beyond a stated goal of fairness. Now you have bitter, uncompromising rivals who will not negotiate, striving to enforce inflexible terms and who benefits? Those external to the fight. Those not dragged down and injured by the grudge match. Pay attention to the ones looking for a fight, trace that back to those who egg them on, and a picture develops about what’s really going on. Where there’s an “us versus them” tone, the divide and conquer tactic can be found. Years of setback may be true, if enemies are alert and opting not only to defend, but actively destroy dissent and redouble dominance. The war being fought isn’t something camparable to the abolition of slavery. To call our current climate tantamount to one of slavery is hyperbolic without question.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoSo beautifully put. I noticed this after learning Japanese and then listening to how Asians talk about other Asians and then checked what the other sides were saying and I was like... Oh man... this is vicious. Then I noticed the same thing in other countries that share borders, there are cases where they are sworn enemies or have bad blood because of beefs going back hundreds of thousands of years. It's amazing.
- lolc 8y agoHow does what you said apply to the situation we're discussing?
- ggm 8y agoThe managers retreat into my business my rules is a common response from people unable to deal with being caught out wrong. If you're unwilling to apologize, acknowledge mistakes, asserted rights are the joker card?
- goldcd 8y agoMy very optimistic explanation would be that "The manager had had other valued, single, female customers sit at the bar - and they'd been propositioned by men...and he was trying to protect.." Oh I'm not even buying this myself..
- lolc 8y agoHaha, yes. In that case the manager would have explained that they were being paternalistic. Which could have enraged this customer too, but probably less so than labeling her an escort.
- rage_quit 8y agoThe idea of the manager being paternalistic is stupid, but manager as tool is not. What if the narrative villifies the less charismatic individual sufficiently? Instead of the manager arriving to rescue other customers, the manager plays the role of a tool. What if the other customers used the manager as a tool, and being a dimwitted jerk, he took the cue as an opportunity to engaging misanthropic behavior. Other girls at the bar wanted to cause harm to someone they didn’t like the looks of, so they complain to the manager, craft a lie, and the manager takes the bait, enforcing the will of malicious tattletales? Or, what if the manager is actually operating the bar as a front for a nearby hotel brothel, and at the request of a pimp, ousted an unfamiliar face that seemed to be a threat to business? Would these versions be juicy enough to satisfy a quest for truth?
- alecco 8y agoI'd like to hear the other side of the story.
- threatofrain 8y ago
- anotheryou 8y agoI don't get the hn algo, but how did I click this, presumably on the front page, now to find it in the very very last place (entry 441) of hn? srceenshot of page 15, showing older dupes with less votes above: https://i.imgur.com/ibnV65s.png https://i.imgur.com/ibnV65s.png edit: now it's gone from p15 edit2: if this would have been transparently flagged as off-topic for HN I'd understand. But given the content of the article this is sadly ironic, I really hope there is a "mechanical" explanation for this.
- andor 8y agoSomebody might have flagged it, or it was a moderator. That's why I generally read HN through http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/, they show all frontpage items sorted chronologically.
- anotheryou 8y agooh sweet, thanks! If it was flagged I'd still see it, no? (I have that enabled) edit: now it shows as [flagged] [dead] edit2: and back on the front-page again, thanks for undoing this mods edit3: now vanished (even from "new"). weird mechanics or a mod-battle :) ? edit4: I'll take the down-votes with pride
- angry_octet 8y agoThere is a significant cohort of users who flag this type of article. As there is no way for them to say why they dislike it, I doubt we will ever be certain. Obviously it isn't technical or scientific, it is anecdotal, perhaps valid reasons for not upvoting, but surely not flagging? I've only flagged obvious spam and a dangerous pseudoscience article. And after that, I couldn't flag anymore, so I guess I'm not in sync with the powers that be. I think it is just necessary to accept that HN is imperfect, only one venue, and reflects the biases of its users to a significant degree. It is a shame those biases are not more transparently revealed. If you want to see things that people you respect recommend, go to twitter and curate your feed. Although the constant reordering and sometimes-showing and so on is even worse on twitter.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoEh, they can't prove who is or is not a call girl. They have blunt tools at their disposal for trying to "crack down" on this, such as saying "Hookers typically sit alone at the bar. So no more single women sitting alone at the bar." I'm not saying it's fair. I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy of cracking down on sex workers and they don't need to have actually mistaken her for a sex worker per se to decide this policy applies to her.
- empath75 8y agoIt’s blatant sex discrimination.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoSo are many legal definitions of rape. Many legal definitions of rape are framed such that rape is a crime only a man can commit and only a woman can be victimized by. I've already allowed as how it isn't fair. Is there some greater point here?
- vidarh 8y agoThe difference is that you're presumably not excusing those legal definitions, but you come across as trying to excuse and justify this discrimination when you write: > I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy without any caveat about how this policy was applied only to women. I don't know if it was your intent to come across that way or not, but that is how I read it.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoThe title of the piece is "The night I was mistaken for a call girl." It's basically a click bait title. She may not have been mistaken for a call girl. She may have simply been caught by a policy designed to address the issue, however ham-handedly. The conclusion that she was actually mistaken for a call girl seems shaky. I did give a proviso that I wasn't saying it was fair. So I don't know where you are getting this idea that I'm justifying sexism.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoDiscrimination? For a reason or another they thought she was an escort and they don't like that kind of activity in their establishment. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. She says no, but very few would admit. Either way, maybe they don't even like single, pretty women looking for their "knight in shining armor" at an expensive restaurant. It ruins their image and they don't that kind of a crowd. Just like they would not guys coming at the bar laughing and screaming with a couple of escorts. Not exactly sexual discrimination, as they'd almost certainly ban guys that are touchy feely with female guests. More like trying to preserve their reputation and business, false positives and all. You can't really ask to see their Whatsapp or FB messages to investigate...
- vidarh 8y ago> Not exactly sexual discrimination, as they'd almost certainly ban guys that are touchy feely with female guests. Of course it is sexual discrimination. What more is, you're skating close to it yourself by equating a woman eating quietly by herself with a guy being "touchy feely with female guests". If she was being touchy feely with male guests, and that was the justification, then that would have been an entirely different scenario. You go on to compare it to guys "coming at the bar laughing and screaming with a couple of escorts". Again you miss the point: If they set policies for conduct, such as "don't get touchy feely with the guests or you'll get sent to a table" or "no laughing and screaming at the bar", it'd be fine and not discriminatory. But when they send women to tables but allow men to continue eating at the bar, it is very clear cut. I don't know if it is illegal in New York, but that clear discrimination certainly would be many other places.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoWe read an article, or her version. So we should keep that in mind. I doubt they did that the first time she sat there...
- grkvlt 8y agoI'm not convinced it would be illegal anywhere though. She isn't being prevented from eating there, simply being asked to sit is a particular place, chosen by the management. This is basically the definition of how seating works in restaurant. Your seats are selected for you, and if you don't like it you can go elsewhere...
- 300bps 8y agoNow try being an “unaccompanied male” on a playground filled with children and see what happens. https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/police-called-after-man-seen-14990130 https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/police-called-after-man-... People make judgments about other people. They base them on a mixture of accurate, incomplete and inaccurate data. They base them on their own biases and perceptions. They base them on their own agendas and lack of time to explain them. These events aren’t article worthy.
- throwaway-hn123 8y agoIt's a shame that your harmless hobby of hanging around childrens' play areas has caused you harm.
- jmull 8y agoPeople do make biased, inaccurate, and incomplete judgements about others. But should everyone really just shut up about it and accept it? If everything can’t be perfect, we shouldn’t try to improve anything?
- 300bps 8y agoPeople do make biased, inaccurate, and incomplete judgements about others. But should everyone really just shut up about it and accept it? If it’s something significant, then deal with it. If it’s something insignificant, then yes it’s better to move on. You could spend your entire life correcting people’s misconceptions about you and people will still have misconceptions about you.
- cco 8y agoI would encourage you to join people like the author as I hope she would join you in condemning the prejudice against me in places with children rather than try to say, "yeah but this is worse!"
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- mac_was 8y agoMaybe it is because man usually arent call girls?
- fareesh 8y agoIf an old man shows up to watch the high school girl's volleyball matches daily, maybe he really likes volleyball, right? An old woman would definitely have the privilege of that assumption. An old man wouldn't. Welcome to society, it will never be perfect and that's ok. Trying to turn the dials and create a perfect one is the stuff of comic book villains. It looks like the west has solved so much that it is starting to go backwards. In the third world we have actual cases of families forcing daughters to stay home or worse, get married at 17. Give me a break with this Nerf ball stuff.
- ModernMech 8y ago> In the third world we have actual cases of families forcing daughters to stay home or worse, get married at 17. Uh... This happens in the US too. https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-29/us-has-forced-child-marriage-problem-too https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-29/us-has-forced-child-m...
- james_s_tayler 8y agoYeah, I feel genuinely self-conscious when I take my son to the local park. Especially in the moments he is briefly out of sight and there I am just a lone male at a park with a phone in his hand. The "all men are rapists" sexism is really getting to us too. I don't think I'm the only one. I've come to the conclusion that life sucks in some way to some degree for everyone, everywhere and this is necessarily the case. When you bend something into a shape that suits you it is bent out of shape for someone else. She even states it when she says now men are sometimes avoiding being alone with Women because it represents a risk they don't want to take. It's the hard problem of delineation. We all need to take a little bit of crap in our lives but it's close to impossible to delineate what the parameters for yourself and others are such that everyone is taking the minimum amount of crap possible and the system is also stable.
- akudha 8y agoAn old man wouldn't. Some time ago, there was this news article - an old man was turned away from a park, because he was alone and because everyone else in the park were "a family with kids" and they won't feel comfortable with a "single old man by himself" (don't remember the exact words, but this is the gist of it). It gets worse. A woman with her son (just a kid) was asked by other moms to leave, because they were all mums with daughters and she was the only one with a son. I don't get the logic at all. Society is weird...
- Jonnax 8y agoIt this legal in New York? Where a man is allowed to eat at a bar but a woman is not?
- blunte 8y agoAs with my rules and non-rules, it's ultimately a question of a court battle. Particularly in the case of restaurants and businesses choosing not to provide service to homosexuals, it depends on the state. But it also still depends on the courts to enforce or clarify rules. Unfortunately what this all means is that unless someone is looking for a potentially lengthy and costly legal fight, the rules don't matter. The flipside of this is that even if there are rules, a motivated litigant can make it not worth the opponent's time or money to fight. In this specific case, the best way to get "justice" would be to push a publicity campaign to make the restaurant feel pressure and change its ways. But that too requires effort and time to do, and success is iffy. Keep in mind that it's NYC, and there are more diners than good restaurants usually. So if she gets angry, and even if she gets a few thousand other people angry, that restaurant still probably won't suffer.
- bradleyjg 8y agoNo. But writing this article likely accomplishes what she hoped to accomplish faster and cheaper (in opportunity cost) than filing a lawsuit.
- nilsocket 8y agoThis is how woman start getting serious for such silly issues. The problem with citizens of developed countries or those with rich background is, they haven't seen how real problems look like. They usually cry for very silly things. Things cannot be perfect. The more woman ask for equality, the more alone they are going to end up, because men feel fearful even for approaching, who knowns what kind of mentality the other person have.
- dsajames 8y agoNot the more they ask for equality, the more behavior is directed at past transgressions that had nothing to do with a guy. Discriminatory divorce laws keep men from marrying. I see this very openly. Overcorrection with MeToo will make many men hesitate to interact with a woman if he gets a vibe that she might misread his actions. It will also decrease interactions by men who planned on harrassing her though.
- ajnin 8y agoI felt immediately sympathetic to this article. The tale of everyday injustice is something that speaks to me, makes me want to change things. However when I see #MeToo, I feel much less sympathetic. Why ? Because it paints a single enemy : men, and as a man who does not feel at all like he behaves in the way often described next to this hashtag, I feel an injustice. The MeToo campaign is creating too camps, and a such it can create entrenched or retaliatory positions like this restaurant owner. A war is not something anyone should want.
- lsiebert 8y agoI mean, how familiar are you with the MeToo movement? Did you see female friends and colleagues post on Facebook about their experiences? Read tweets? Or are you hearing about it through the news? Because it's not about men as an enemy. It's about people saying that they too have been effected by sexual harassment, assault or abuse. It's someone saying, "That happened to me, too." If it feel's pervasive enough to be a campaign, instead of a movement, that says more about our culture's response, or lack thereof, to sexual misconduct then it does about men.
- ajnin 8y agoI don't know directly anyone who is in that situation. I know about it only indirectly, through the news, blog posts and such, but it's affecting me all the same. I think "MeToo" goes beyond simply exposing particular situations. It is also attempting to explain those cases of abuse by the gender of the perpetrator, as if it was the ultimate cause. Maybe the particular individual is an asshole, but not the whole category. Maybe that guy that "mansplains" things is condescending with everyone. I think that too quick generalization and broad accusation creates resentment and diminishes the potential of support from both sides. I wish things were written like "many persons have been called out" instead of "many men have been called out", because the latter implies that only men can be, and also even if logically false it is easy to go from A => B to B => A in the eyes of opinion.
- BerislavLopac 8y ago
- ykevinator 8y agoThis seems not worth the effort it took to write. She's an excellent writer though.
- Simulacra 8y agoAs a woman, I really think there’s more to the story then she’s telling us. I’ve seen this same story that she’s been blasting to several websites, and I honestly can’t picture this. I’ve sat at the bar alone eating, drinking, or just staring at my phone, many times in many big cities traveling. I’ve never gotten so much as a cross-word from anyone. So I call BS on this. There’s more going on here that we’re not being told.
- slededit 8y agoIf you follow the story, then for years she was just like you. Same restaurant for years on end with no issues. All was fine until it wasn't.
- jcampbell1 8y agoI believe this story. If you were on a business trip and went to the bar at the Waldorf Astoria, then you would be around escorts. The bartenders would completely know you are not an escort because they haven't seen you before. Men may approach you, but looking for conversation and would quickly know you were a business traveller. Most men aren't looking for escorts at all, but ones that are, don't make it obvious. Bottom line is there is a decent amount of high end prostitution around high end hotels near midtown during the weekdays. It is nearly invisible which is why she didn't notice it for years. Now that I have told you, you will probably start to see the pay-for-play scene. It isn't huge, but it exists in the business traveller world. It sucks that she got mixed in with it. That being said, it is a small number of women and men in that scene, it has a flavor of consent, and I personally think other harassment issues are a much broader problem to worry about. As a guy, the pay-for-play scene is often super annoying. Get approached, have an hour conversation, then get asked for money. Just feels irritating to have a conversation that was financially motivated. The bars then start policing it... like not allowing the girls to approach men, e.g. making them sit at tables. I know a bit too much about this scene because I have a policy against any shaming of sex workers. Thus after rejecting their pay-for-play offer, I often end up in a conversation about their lives and work. I make it clear that I don't look down on them. I suppose the possible thing missing from the story is that she is a healthy adultly woman that enjoyed having sex and went home with interesting and attractive men from the bar. Normal thing to do, especially if you don't have time for a relationship because you are splitting continents. The bar could have misread the situation.
- Markoff 8y agoarticle it's missing name of the restaurant, so don't waste your time, might as well read Harry Potter. if it's not made up story she should name and shame them
- techpop10 8y agoThis is awful! When these things happen, why don't people name names? What restaurant did this????