6 ms·

Acknowledging public sex changed how walkers interacted with Paris

66 points by Thevet 7y ago

Overtonwindow 7y ago
This is a title that raises an idea: What’s the possibility that Hacker News might ignore limited punctuation to improve titles?
- dang 7y ago
  Title and punctuation department here. I don't quite apprehend your concern; can you elaborate?
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    Semi-related question: Do you still take the "original title" rule seriously, and if yes, what's a good way to refer articles that don't follow it? For example this popular post from yesterday doesn't have the original title or anything close to (or better than) it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082757
    - dang 7y ago
      For sure we take it seriously. The best way is to email hn@ycombinator.com if you see a problem. In the case of that post, the submitter had emailed about it and we suggested that title as more informative than the original. Happy to hear feedback if we got that wrong!
      - tom_mellior 7y ago
        "ImageNet for Code" is not a good title, I think, because I was mostly thinking of ImageNet of a dataset, not as an ongoing contest. Removing the "challenge" from the original title was not useful IMHO.
        dang 7y ago
        Good point. I've put the challenge back in the title. It's a bit of a monster now, but oh well.
Causality1 7y ago
>he was accosted by two young men with cheeks painted with makeup, who claimed to know him and who asked him to buy them some drinks. Langangne refused, which led the two men to launch a series of insults at him. >As an employee within the Ministry of Finance, Langangne seemed to expect that the streets were in some ways “his.” Ross' reaction is quite bizarre. If a woman wrote a letter complaining about being catcalled and verbally abused in public, would you accuse her of "expecting that the streets are in some way hers"?
- colanderman 7y ago
  Ya I don't understand the author's thesis either. Is he trying to claim that the aggressive/invasive "public sex" culture depicted is just a different urban culture that is perfectly acceptable and valid but for some privileged males' self-centered ideas? Like, "suck it up dude, you're in gropingville now, get woke and deal with it"? Maybe the author is going for some sort of meta thing. Like, "let's apply feminist theory reductio ad absurdum to show that groping is OK!" If he is, I'm not smart enough to understand it.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    You got it. The flâneur is knowingly intruding into the space of the street workers, but bringing his bourgeoise morality with him. He also says (without evidence) that the complainant is likely a customer of the male prostitutes rather than an observer, who happens to have had a bad encounter. I really don't know where he gets this from.
    - colanderman 7y ago
      > The flâneur is knowingly intruding into the space of the street workers, but bringing his bourgeoise morality with him. Right. I think it's the implication that not wanting to be groped in public is somehow unique to the morality of privileged males that confuses me. It's as if he's trying to make a point about hypocrisy but doesn't follow it up.
colanderman 7y ago
> “an honest man can no longer walk […] without being accosted by women who engage in revolting touches Sounds like sexual assault. The author's take: > the unwilling participation in a public sexual culture threatened the urban experience as imagined by privileged male pedestrians. …? Freedom from sexual assault is an "urban experience as imagined by privileged male pedestrians"? Maybe I'm missing something but the author's several tangents about patriarchy come across as totally non-sequitur in this article. Sure, male privilege is a thing, but what does it have to do with not wanting to be insulted/assaulted while out walking for the evening? What is the author's point? I'm sure there's a point to be made about "women have had to endure such indignities, look at how men react when they are forced to too" but if that's what the author is trying to say, they're sure doing it in a ham-handed manner. EDIT: After re-reading a few times I think the point the author is trying to make is that even privileged males, who typically could control the public space, were forced to reckon with the change in culture?
- nhebb 7y ago
  The whole thing is pretentiously written blather. > This is not to say that all women who appeared in public were assumed to be sexually available, nor that middle-class women were forbidden from the streets. The streets enabled a wide variety of encounters, dependent on the particular circumstances in which they occurred. Such insight!
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Wow. Yeah, what a convoluted way to say "many things happen in the streets".
- ip26 7y ago
  Sounds like sexual assault Given the author's lack of concern, I think they are very opaquely alluding that the man must have secretly enjoyed it, therefore not sexual assault. That these encounters bothered him enough to write, that they stayed with him after he moved on, highlights the ways sexual solicitation created new feelings and emotions that were anything but momentary.
Chris_Chambers 7y ago
Didn’t even need to click to see the author’s name to know it was written by some filthy kike. What the fuck is this doing on HN by the way? I demand OP be banned immediately for even thinking to post such drivel here.
angry_octet 7y ago
Whatever the merits of the author's scholarship, which I am fortunately unqualified to assess, I "feel" that the "English" "language" has been "violated" by the excessive "quotation marks". I can almost hear the author talk with air quotes.
- inimino 7y ago
  There's nothing fortunate about being unqualified. The quotes are not air quotes, they are actual quotes (in translation) from the letters he is discussing. Edit: there are some exceptions to this around paragraph 7. Anyway, discussing the finer points of the writing style doesn't seem worthwhile.
  - Retric 7y ago
    To meaningfully quote text you need to include enough context to support what your saying, thus “accosted” and “his“ are not a meaningful quotes.
    - dahart 7y ago
      Quoting single words in literature and in the media is absolutely commonplace. I can also clearly see that in the two very cases you cite, there was plenty of context, and very specific reasons to quote the single words that were quoted. They are meaningful because they’re demonstrating the character of the framing that the speaker was using, and by quoting it, the author is explicitly suggesting there are other possible framings. This kind of one word quote, for example, is used all the time to convey the sense that the speaker is exaggerating something. And please forgive me, but if we pick nits at this level, it’s invited, right? s/support what your saying/support what you’re saying/
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    I suspect being qualified would in this case involve doing an MA in an esoteric field like gender studies in post revolutionary France, having a large education debt and poor writing skills, but at least being in-group. The author isn't quoting to reference that the words are verbatim (which they are often not eg [1]), but because he wants to identify as someone who disagrees with the subject's world view, to diminish and mock them. I comment on the writing style because it is jarringly poor and detracts from the argument. I thinks we are allowed to make such observations, but you are free to refrain from spending your time on counter arguments. Ugh rate limiting is killing me. Is it like 3 posts per hour or something? [1] >> The “violation” felt by thee two men at the attention of female prostitutes disrupted their ability to move about the city as they so chose, but it did not necessarily put into question their status as potential clients. Insofar as these “assaults” may have elicited a sexual response, they may have heightened their awareness of their status as sexual beings even as it challenged their gender privilege.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
I wonder how likely one was to get mugged walking the streets at night as opposed to being propositioned. It's not clear that night-time streets are a "public space" at all. I'd buy his notion of "public sex" if it happened during the day and prostitutes were mixed in with the vegetable stands, but the examples seem very weak.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  It's a very short piece - perhaps he includes more in his book > Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    I looked through the Amazon preview and couldn't find anything interesting. The whole book seems to be discussion of historical sources within the decency vs pleasure kind of framing. If he does discuss the fact that prostitution happened mostly in the evening when there weren't many people around I expect it would be a few paragraphs at most, and quickly forgotten in the course of the book, since his focus is mostly on male prostitutes / pederasts.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
xrd 7y ago
If you just admire the historical imagery for what it is, it's an amazing article. Really, how can you resist this: "the boulevards are currently a veritable court of miracles planted in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah, and soon all promenades on them will be forbidden not only to honest women who have not been able to show themselves for a long time, but also for men who should not have to be at odds with rascals."
m0nsoon 7y ago
“ many Parisians began to see sex everywhere they looked. Encounters premised on these forms of sexual knowledge created a new sexual public.” Oh my, another reverse sexist propaganda piece written by a sophomore at Wellesley.
- agf 7y ago
  Since I'm seeing this comment at the top: > Andrew Israel Ross is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Maryland and the author of Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lgeorget 7y ago
A very tangential point. I would not translate "violenté" by "violated". It simply means being the target of violence, getting harmed. The author states that it doesn't imply a sexual assault yet reads a bit too much into the original text. Edit : actually, the French language has evolved since then and back when the letter was written, "violenté" could indeed mean (sexually) violated, like our modern "violé". My bad.

66 points by Thevet 7y ago

This is a title that raises an idea: What’s the possibility that Hacker News might ignore limited punctuation to improve titles?

dang 7y ago
Title and punctuation department here. I don't quite apprehend your concern; can you elaborate?
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  Semi-related question: Do you still take the "original title" rule seriously, and if yes, what's a good way to refer articles that don't follow it? For example this popular post from yesterday doesn't have the original title or anything close to (or better than) it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082757
  - dang 7y ago
    For sure we take it seriously. The best way is to email hn@ycombinator.com if you see a problem. In the case of that post, the submitter had emailed about it and we suggested that title as more informative than the original. Happy to hear feedback if we got that wrong!
    - tom_mellior 7y ago
      "ImageNet for Code" is not a good title, I think, because I was mostly thinking of ImageNet of a dataset, not as an ongoing contest. Removing the "challenge" from the original title was not useful IMHO.
      - dang 7y ago
        Good point. I've put the challenge back in the title. It's a bit of a monster now, but oh well.

Causality1 7y ago

>he was accosted by two young men with cheeks painted with makeup, who claimed to know him and who asked him to buy them some drinks. Langangne refused, which led the two men to launch a series of insults at him. >As an employee within the Ministry of Finance, Langangne seemed to expect that the streets were in some ways “his.” Ross' reaction is quite bizarre. If a woman wrote a letter complaining about being catcalled and verbally abused in public, would you accuse her of "expecting that the streets are in some way hers"?

colanderman 7y ago
Ya I don't understand the author's thesis either. Is he trying to claim that the aggressive/invasive "public sex" culture depicted is just a different urban culture that is perfectly acceptable and valid but for some privileged males' self-centered ideas? Like, "suck it up dude, you're in gropingville now, get woke and deal with it"? Maybe the author is going for some sort of meta thing. Like, "let's apply feminist theory reductio ad absurdum to show that groping is OK!" If he is, I'm not smart enough to understand it.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  You got it. The flâneur is knowingly intruding into the space of the street workers, but bringing his bourgeoise morality with him. He also says (without evidence) that the complainant is likely a customer of the male prostitutes rather than an observer, who happens to have had a bad encounter. I really don't know where he gets this from.
  - colanderman 7y ago
    > The flâneur is knowingly intruding into the space of the street workers, but bringing his bourgeoise morality with him. Right. I think it's the implication that not wanting to be groped in public is somehow unique to the morality of privileged males that confuses me. It's as if he's trying to make a point about hypocrisy but doesn't follow it up.

colanderman 7y ago

> “an honest man can no longer walk […] without being accosted by women who engage in revolting touches Sounds like sexual assault. The author's take: > the unwilling participation in a public sexual culture threatened the urban experience as imagined by privileged male pedestrians. …? Freedom from sexual assault is an "urban experience as imagined by privileged male pedestrians"? Maybe I'm missing something but the author's several tangents about patriarchy come across as totally non-sequitur in this article. Sure, male privilege is a thing, but what does it have to do with not wanting to be insulted/assaulted while out walking for the evening? What is the author's point? I'm sure there's a point to be made about "women have had to endure such indignities, look at how men react when they are forced to too" but if that's what the author is trying to say, they're sure doing it in a ham-handed manner. EDIT: After re-reading a few times I think the point the author is trying to make is that even privileged males, who typically could control the public space, were forced to reckon with the change in culture?

nhebb 7y ago
The whole thing is pretentiously written blather. > This is not to say that all women who appeared in public were assumed to be sexually available, nor that middle-class women were forbidden from the streets. The streets enabled a wide variety of encounters, dependent on the particular circumstances in which they occurred. Such insight!
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  Wow. Yeah, what a convoluted way to say "many things happen in the streets".
ip26 7y ago
Sounds like sexual assault Given the author's lack of concern, I think they are very opaquely alluding that the man must have secretly enjoyed it, therefore not sexual assault. That these encounters bothered him enough to write, that they stayed with him after he moved on, highlights the ways sexual solicitation created new feelings and emotions that were anything but momentary.

Chris_Chambers 7y ago

Didn’t even need to click to see the author’s name to know it was written by some filthy kike. What the fuck is this doing on HN by the way? I demand OP be banned immediately for even thinking to post such drivel here.

angry_octet 7y ago

Whatever the merits of the author's scholarship, which I am fortunately unqualified to assess, I "feel" that the "English" "language" has been "violated" by the excessive "quotation marks". I can almost hear the author talk with air quotes.

inimino 7y ago
There's nothing fortunate about being unqualified. The quotes are not air quotes, they are actual quotes (in translation) from the letters he is discussing. Edit: there are some exceptions to this around paragraph 7. Anyway, discussing the finer points of the writing style doesn't seem worthwhile.
- Retric 7y ago
  To meaningfully quote text you need to include enough context to support what your saying, thus “accosted” and “his“ are not a meaningful quotes.
  - dahart 7y ago
    Quoting single words in literature and in the media is absolutely commonplace. I can also clearly see that in the two very cases you cite, there was plenty of context, and very specific reasons to quote the single words that were quoted. They are meaningful because they’re demonstrating the character of the framing that the speaker was using, and by quoting it, the author is explicitly suggesting there are other possible framings. This kind of one word quote, for example, is used all the time to convey the sense that the speaker is exaggerating something. And please forgive me, but if we pick nits at this level, it’s invited, right? s/support what your saying/support what you’re saying/
- angry_octet 7y ago
  I suspect being qualified would in this case involve doing an MA in an esoteric field like gender studies in post revolutionary France, having a large education debt and poor writing skills, but at least being in-group. The author isn't quoting to reference that the words are verbatim (which they are often not eg [1]), but because he wants to identify as someone who disagrees with the subject's world view, to diminish and mock them. I comment on the writing style because it is jarringly poor and detracts from the argument. I thinks we are allowed to make such observations, but you are free to refrain from spending your time on counter arguments. Ugh rate limiting is killing me. Is it like 3 posts per hour or something? [1] >> The “violation” felt by thee two men at the attention of female prostitutes disrupted their ability to move about the city as they so chose, but it did not necessarily put into question their status as potential clients. Insofar as these “assaults” may have elicited a sexual response, they may have heightened their awareness of their status as sexual beings even as it challenged their gender privilege.

Mathnerd314 7y ago

I wonder how likely one was to get mugged walking the streets at night as opposed to being propositioned. It's not clear that night-time streets are a "public space" at all. I'd buy his notion of "public sex" if it happened during the day and prostitutes were mixed in with the vegetable stands, but the examples seem very weak.

lazyasciiart 7y ago
It's a very short piece - perhaps he includes more in his book > Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  I looked through the Amazon preview and couldn't find anything interesting. The whole book seems to be discussion of historical sources within the decency vs pleasure kind of framing. If he does discuss the fact that prostitution happened mostly in the evening when there weren't many people around I expect it would be a few paragraphs at most, and quickly forgotten in the course of the book, since his focus is mostly on male prostitutes / pederasts.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

xrd 7y ago

If you just admire the historical imagery for what it is, it's an amazing article. Really, how can you resist this: "the boulevards are currently a veritable court of miracles planted in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah, and soon all promenades on them will be forbidden not only to honest women who have not been able to show themselves for a long time, but also for men who should not have to be at odds with rascals."

m0nsoon 7y ago

“ many Parisians began to see sex everywhere they looked. Encounters premised on these forms of sexual knowledge created a new sexual public.” Oh my, another reverse sexist propaganda piece written by a sophomore at Wellesley.

agf 7y ago
Since I'm seeing this comment at the top: > Andrew Israel Ross is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Maryland and the author of Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lgeorget 7y ago

A very tangential point. I would not translate "violenté" by "violated". It simply means being the target of violence, getting harmed. The author states that it doesn't imply a sexual assault yet reads a bit too much into the original text. Edit : actually, the French language has evolved since then and back when the letter was written, "violenté" could indeed mean (sexually) violated, like our modern "violé". My bad.