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I'm appalled that so many other commenters don't see an issue with such behavior in class: > number of female students have approached me, noting they are disg

I'm appalled that so many other commenters don't see an issue with such behavior in class: > number of female students have approached me, noting they are disgusted and uncomfortable with the amount of leching taking place > It's also demoralizing several of them, since we routinely have cases where a young man is leading open labs as if they're a teacher themselves (in order to "wow" their female classmates, offer "private free tutoring sessions", etc). Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions). So suppose you're a university student who have a mild preference for this course. Upon hearing of such behavior, you'd end up avoiding such a class to sidestep such a distraction. Not to mention being distracted with insecurities if you don't end up being offered tuition.

murrkat 4y ago
Is there not a chance one of the young men offering open labs or tutoring might, in fact, be intelligent, enthusiastic about the sciences and decent?
- joe-collins 4y ago
  If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place?
  - murrkat 4y ago
    Begging the question.
    - felix_n 4y ago
      Piss off Plato.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Because they are, in fact, decent, and find going to frat parties to engage with a drunk girl who can't properly consent, or hiring a prostitute, to be reprehensible. Online dating doesn't work unless you're in the top X% of attractiveness, so what's a college student to do? They're not generally rich enough to garner the attention of women that way, and they're competing against a larg pool of older men who are.
    - kcb 4y ago
      > Online dating doesn't work unless you're in the top X% of attractiveness I find that most people that say this only attempt to match with people in the top X% of attractiveness.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Nice shade. But if someone is able to meet people in-person and get dates from people in that top X%, then the conclusion that it's the online component of online dating that's at fault doesn't seem unwarranted.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        The real source behind this statement was that Ok Cupid once published a blog post with some analysis of their data. They found that the average man on the platform was rated as bellow average attractiveness by woman while the average woman was ranked as average attractiveness by men. There were some more related stats in the same post. This of course exploded and they deleted the post.
        tarsinge 4y ago
        This one?[0] It's funny it's always cited with the reversed finding: while men were more fair in rating attractiveness, they then only target the top most attractive females, completely oblivious of where they stand. OTOH women were more harsh in rating but they are then able to shift their expectation to realistic ones. By these data dating only works if you are in the top X% of attractiveness if you are a woman, but it works better for the average man. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    > such disturbing tactics Really? It sounds like some of them are lacking self awareness, and maybe representing themselves poorly. But is what they are doing really on the level of disturbing? People need to learn how to interact with each other, possibly by failing like this. College is one of the places where that is supposed to happen. If it's such a big deal, maybe we should just go back to separate schools for men and women.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Because it's a) Not disturbing, and b) working. I mean, seriously, if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?
    - Tozen 4y ago
      > ...if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this? It's likely that they are bothered by heterosexual males who might have any situation or opportunity (among adults of similar age and agency) that can be perceived as advantageous to them or contributes to their happiness.
    - ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
      You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        > You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. Well, how about you explain why you are equivocating "no unwanted advances" to "creeps". I'm in a couple of these threads because a) I have some free time now to read, and b) there are way too many people demonizing males attempting to find a partner. Like you are doing. > As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here? Well, the women who are dating are specifically not complaining. Who are you to tell women where and when they may allow courtship?
      - sugarpile 4y ago
        Why do you think anyone, female or otherwise, being demoralized means something “wrong” is occurring? So silly to form a moral/ethical framework on something as intangible, fickle, and culturally influenced as people’s feelings. Also, comments like “stanning for these creeps” are disrespectful and have no place on HN, imo.
  - throway33 4y ago
    If you happen to be an intelligent and decent young man from a male-dominated major who legitimately likes helping others who are struggling to learn the subject you're passionate about, how would women in your dating pool, who find those personality traits attractive, discover those things about you?
    - ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
      Maybe they would notice you help whoever asks for it, not just attractive women, and by contrast they would think, "Hey, he seems decent, not like those creeps that only have tutoring sessions for hotties."
      - throway33 4y ago
        Of course, that's a given. But how would this happen, if you aren't even there to begin with?
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        >Maybe they would notice And how would she notice if you weren't in her class? The chances are extremely low compared to if you joined her class and made an effort to socialize with her.
    - Tozen 4y ago
      And, you will likely never get answers from the other side about how to do such, outside of: do nothing, consult zodiac sign, hope for magic, fate, luck, or a shoulder shrug response.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    In this age group the ratio of <gender you prefer> who are not assessing dating partners based almost purely on physical attractiveness to those who are is tiny. That being said, this is appalling, predatory behavior on the part of the students using the app. These are vulnerable people that the app users are taking advantage of and trying to manipulate into an intimate relationship.
    - Tozen 4y ago
      It comes off as very misplaced to categorize the app, by itself, as predatory and appalling. These are adult men and women. Why would it be such a surprise for intelligent young men in college to create an app to better determine the ratio of males to females in a class? This has long been done, by both sexes, way before convenient apps. I'm sensing there would be no disdain or accusations of predatory behavior, if a female student created an app or openly expressed her intentions for picking classes where she is more likely to find dates and marriage prospects among the opposite sex or even the same sex. I'm almost quite sure, the same appalled people, would have no reaction or even state this as acceptable or categorize her as being smart. It seems that if male heterosexual students, are doing something that would circumvent their supposed ranking based on innate attractiveness or better their odds in any artificial way, then it's something to be villainized and criminalized.
    - sinity 4y ago
      > These are vulnerable people that the app users are taking advantage of and trying to manipulate into an intimate relationship. Of course. Men should just stay alone, unless they are hyper attractive. Because _attempting_ to get to know other people is "manipulation into intimate relationship". I guess they're cheating because they don't know their place? Predatory behavior, lol.
  - sinity 4y ago
    > why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Seems rather ingenious, frankly. What tactics should they rely on, exactly? "Intelligent and decent" alone aren't traits that are necessarily attractive anyway.
- mattzito 4y ago
  They might be! Which makes it even more of a shame that they used an app whose intent was to help students audit classes where they have a gender ratio opportunity. If this person sent an email to the class group offering their services and coached folks without seeing their gender or appearance, I would applaud them, and I’d be more than happy to support whoever they met through that. But my guess is, that’s not the situation here. Would love to be wrong.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    The crux of the issue is if the behavior of these students harms the learning environment in any other way. For example, raising their hand to answer a question every opportunity they get meaning fewer of the typical students get to answer and learn from [their] mistakes, or running these private tutoring sessions then giving up if no attractive women show up / giving the women they're interested in way more attention. It's also not a good look if they're bad at teaching and use the tutoring session to effectively do peoples' homework for them by solving every questions on a whiteboard with little room for discussion.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Not if they’re putting themselves in that tutoring position using a dating app specifically designed to facilitate manipulating those students for romantic purposes.
- abathur 4y ago
  Is there not a chance that the professor might, in fact, be correct in her assessment of the motivation of these upperclassmen and decent? It's not like anyone's proposed sentencing them to death. (Or any punishment at all?) Most universities have gobs of overlapping official and unofficial tutoring programs both broad and subject-specific. Enterprising scholars will also inevitably find a way to announce independent tutoriing services. Students who are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge, making a few bucks, or adding a line to their resume generally don't have trouble finding such opportunities to share their knowledge and help others succeed without having to audit a course.
- klyrs 4y ago
  A decent tutor's first and foremost goal is to educate their students. If a student makes advances on a decent tutor, the tutor will rebuff them, for concern that it will detract from their attention and the quality of the lesson. That's not what these guys are up to.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I think it's a conflict of interest if someone is teaching/tutoring so they can sleep with their students, and that approach can result in unfortunate incentives for the tutor at the expense of their students.
  - ImaCake 4y ago
    It's enough of an issue that tutors and lecturers who sleep with students will often be booted from the University. There are official rules at most unis, and more importantly, they are actually enforced even for high ranking researchers (eventually...).
mattzito 4y ago
This was my first reaction as well - sounds cute and prankish until you’re one of the students negatively affected. Meeting people is part of the college experience, and I definitely met people who attended classes with a higher female ratio in the hopes of meeting someone. But there’s a big difference between “I’ll take an acting class because there’s a lot more women there”, where you might just happen to learn something, and “I’m going to effectively run a class and control the situation so attractive students get an advantage by hanging out with me”
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  It's curious how a particular app changes the language and interaction culture of behavior. For example, there was a Facebook course at Stanford by a self-styled persuasion researcher who delved into how user interfaces and appearances of websites forms the basis of an impression in the viewer's mind. And then, from that basis, encourages or discourages behavior based on the technical behavior of the website. From there, it would then influence and shape the individual's beliefs and attitudes as much as any traditional PR manufacturing of consent. (Cambridge Analytica, 2016 Russian US election hack)
zozbot234 4y ago
I think you're right about this. The male auditors are overdoing the whole showboating thing in a way that creates a bad experience for the rest of the students, and probably doesn't really help their romantic prospects either. Sensible women want to get to know friends in a gradual, natural fashion and perhaps be a little wowed in non-obvious ways. No one wants to be advertised to with "FREE private tutoring sessions, limited offer!" That alone is incredibly obnoxious.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > The male auditors are overdoing the whole showboating thing in a way that creates a bad experience for the rest of the students, and probably doesn't really help their romantic prospects either. Sensible women want to get to know friends in a gradual, natural fashion and perhaps be a little wowed in non-obvious ways. They aren't looking for sensible women, they're looking for attractive women. IOW, it furthers their goal, even if you think they should have a different goal.
  - kcb 4y ago
    > They aren't looking for sensible women, they're looking for attractive women. IOW, it furthers their goal, even if you think they should have a different goal. Maybe sensible is what they find attractive. Who are we to say?
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Edit: Changed above, as can't reply to the below, as being restricted/censored. > The young men have certain goals (like attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend), and trivialising their goals because the poster thinks they should have loftier goals (attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend of "better"[1] quality) is pointless and stupid. We are in agreement on this point. I re-read the post and the one you were responding to. Adults should be able to choose what is attractive to them, and not be restricted by what is only satisfactory to some opinionated and intruding outside 3rd party.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
nhchris 4y ago
Less attractive girls get less male attention no matter what. Why would it be any more demoralizing if that attention comes with tutoring? Why would it be distracting? It seems everyone is complaining except the girls getting tutored. And if they did complain, if some guy was pushy or wouldn't take no for an answer, then deal with him the same as any other such guy - that they're attending a class for the sake of dating would be incidental, and make their actions no worse or better, and wouldn't affect the response in any way, except that it would be easier to expel them from the class, as it wouldn't impact their academics.
- weakfish 4y ago
  It would be demoralizing because your attractiveness shouldn’t factor into whether you can get academic help
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    Upperclass men are not the only source of academic help and if they were then there would be significantly greater problems.
  - pgayed 4y ago
    The individuals offering sessions are not employees or staff of the university.
  - diebeforei485 4y ago
    Attractive people definitely get more help from peers regardless of class. However, this is a strange situation where they literally already know all the material. IMO they shouldn't be taking the class. I agree it shouldn't factor into getting help from class TA's.
  - sugarpile 4y ago
    Why not? This is reality and how the world works. Attractive men and women get promoted more easily, get better service in bars and restaurants, etc… to infinity. This idea that it’s more worthwhile to wail at the sky about how the world works rather than acknowledge it and seek to take advantage of other areas of life where the scales are tipped in your favor fucking mystifies me.
lelanthran 4y ago
> I'm appalled that so many other commenters don't see an issue with such behavior in class: >> No unwanted advances It seems very appalling when you focus on the bits you don't like and ignore the bits like "no unwanted advances".
- imbnwa 4y ago
  >It seems very appalling when you focus on the bits you don't like and ignore the bits like "no unwanted advances". Yes, lets cultivate young hetero men to expressly look for sexual opportunities where they have an explicit and conscious asymetrical power-relation to women. Quality dudes these will be.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    Would it be ridiculous to possibly interpret this instead as young hetero men looking for opportunities where they have something to offer? Or should they only look for sexual opportunities where they are outclassed by their peers?
    - sacnoradhq 4y ago
      While the thirsty may equate to "drug" users, love lacks math(s). There's plenty of CEO women with mechanic husbands. Station is somewhat orthogonal to quality, but not completely. I'm most depressed that the prevalent attitude of 20's-30's somethings (men and women) tends to be maximizing hookups, binge drinking, and self-indulgence. Read a book, mentor a kid in high school, raise a service animal, donate blood, volunteer for the food bank, or talk to another human like human regardless of where they come from.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        I'm not sure if I follow. Maybe you were thinking I meant "outclassed" literally? I just mean this seems like a case of men competing for womens attention in an arena where they have some kind of competitive advantage against the other men around them. If you can't go to the bar and be better looking than the guys around you, why not go to a class where you can be more helpful than the guys around you? As much as it creeps people out to say it out loud, a lot of social life is transactional and competitive. If you want friends or lovers, you have to have something to offer to them, and it has to be more valuable than what other people are offering. Some people don't have to find clever ways to make this work, or to think about this at all, because they are naturally valuable in some way. These guys are probably not that.
areoform 4y ago
It goes deeper than that. It's predatory. And it can go from being harmless to SA really fast if you're on the receiving end. If you are a SA, or a CSA, survivor, then this is the kind of behavior that gives you nightmares. I know, because it gives me nightmares. And it's brought up in almost every support group I've been a part of. Their behavior is identical to someone who profiles a victim type, seeks opportunities to put themselves in the victim's path, and creates an opportunity to engage. At the extreme end, Bundy did this with a cast and by targeting times of high stress (exam time). He would place the car outside of dorms and essentially fumble putting things in a car. Women would come up and start trying to help him; at which point, he'd kidnap them, > Further similarities between the victims were noted: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, and were within a week of midterm or final exams. All of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans when they disappeared, and at many crime scenes there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling and driving a brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle. This post isn't to say that these people are Bundy. That's not the point. If you had 50 glasses of wine in front of you, but 1 of them contained cyanide, would you drink the wine at random? Now, what if the wine glasses were being forced on you? And you still didn't know? 1 in 50 to 1 in 10 of these people won't have such nice intentions. 1 in 100 will be a psychopath. If you are at the receiving end, how do you know? How do you differentiate between the majority that's innocent and the years of hell and therapy on the other hand? Would you want to navigate this every time you went to class to learn?
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  I'm sorry this behavior gives you nightmares. I don't find this line of argument compelling though. For example, your Bundy argument appears to imply that it is immoral to have any sort of difficulty in a public place that might cause a woman to come offer help to you. This seems like a fairly absurd, possibly ableist moral guideline? The reductio ad absurdum of this reasoning is: "Abusers breathe oxygen, if you breathe oxygen that makes you like an abuser, therefore it's predatory to breathe oxygen." Basically by saying "X is a behavior that abusers do", decent people will want to avoid beahvior X in order to not be thought of as abusers. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: no decent person will do behavior X. This works regardless of whether behavior X is inherently problematic. I'm really sorry that you had such shitty experiences, but I think your ideas about reworking society to give you less anxiety are misguided and counterproductive (even for the goal of reducing your anxiety). If you're super risk-averse, you can implement some personal guidelines like "never be alone in a room with another person" or whatever. I don't think your own risk-aversion is a good justification for preventing other consenting adults from being alone in a room with each other though.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
There's a widespread lack of male role models, absentee fathers, and anything and everything male bashing. The ladies could be mentioning to the guys specific constructive feedback, because the guys probably don't know how they're failing or how they're making others feel. The surprising and shocking secret of being a ladies' man, is underwhelming and doesn't get press: being human and treating others as human according to their needs (improved Golden Rule).
- ausbah 4y ago
  why does it fall on the person being made uncomfortable to correct the behavior of the being making them uncomfortable?
  - mantas 4y ago
    Who else would? If something makes you uncomfortable and you don't try to correct that... It will keep going. Of course, sometimes that's not possible (threat of physical violence and whatnot), but in many cases it is perfectly fine. Especially if the other person is just naively making you uncomfortable instead of trying to harm you. And being corrected on the spot is much more effective than someone else telling you days later you did something wrong. At least for me, I remember very well few times I was dumbass and that was made painfully clear to me. I remember those lessons to this day and it sure did help me.
    - ausbah 4y ago
      I mean there's a certain amount of social awareness of what to do & what not do due in different contexts I don't think is wrong to assume someone has (barring cultural differences, neurodiverse conditions, the occasional misreading of social cues), asking someone out out of the blue is one of those things yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this
      - mantas 4y ago
eyelidlessness 4y ago
It’s absolutely appalling. And especially so with so many comments suggesting the opposite of the things you quote. Seeing no harm by pretending the directly express harm was never expressed at all.
threatofrain 4y ago
Some people choose universities on its reputation for sex, partying, and drugs!
bongoman37 4y ago
[dead]
commandlinefan 4y ago
> you'd end up avoiding such a class Of course, the only workable solution is the only one you're not allowed to suggest: gender-segregated colleges.
sinity 4y ago
So, the social norms are that men are supposed to approach women to form relationships. But they can't even offer women free tutoring lessons... because other women feel bad about it? Wat? Or women are offended, supposedly rightfully, solely because of the presence of these men (because person who asked the question said clearly they have done nothing wrong)? What the...? "Being distracted with insecurities" - men, on the other hand, have no such problems, yes? They willingly went to classes that are useless to them, in order to try to impress women. We live in a society, I guess...

murrkat 4y ago

Is there not a chance one of the young men offering open labs or tutoring might, in fact, be intelligent, enthusiastic about the sciences and decent?

joe-collins 4y ago
If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place?
- murrkat 4y ago
  Begging the question.
  - felix_n 4y ago
    Piss off Plato.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Because they are, in fact, decent, and find going to frat parties to engage with a drunk girl who can't properly consent, or hiring a prostitute, to be reprehensible. Online dating doesn't work unless you're in the top X% of attractiveness, so what's a college student to do? They're not generally rich enough to garner the attention of women that way, and they're competing against a larg pool of older men who are.
  - kcb 4y ago
    > Online dating doesn't work unless you're in the top X% of attractiveness I find that most people that say this only attempt to match with people in the top X% of attractiveness.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Nice shade. But if someone is able to meet people in-person and get dates from people in that top X%, then the conclusion that it's the online component of online dating that's at fault doesn't seem unwarranted.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The real source behind this statement was that Ok Cupid once published a blog post with some analysis of their data. They found that the average man on the platform was rated as bellow average attractiveness by woman while the average woman was ranked as average attractiveness by men. There were some more related stats in the same post. This of course exploded and they deleted the post.
      - tarsinge 4y ago
        This one?[0] It's funny it's always cited with the reversed finding: while men were more fair in rating attractiveness, they then only target the top most attractive females, completely oblivious of where they stand. OTOH women were more harsh in rating but they are then able to shift their expectation to realistic ones. By these data dating only works if you are in the top X% of attractiveness if you are a woman, but it works better for the average man. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  > such disturbing tactics Really? It sounds like some of them are lacking self awareness, and maybe representing themselves poorly. But is what they are doing really on the level of disturbing? People need to learn how to interact with each other, possibly by failing like this. College is one of the places where that is supposed to happen. If it's such a big deal, maybe we should just go back to separate schools for men and women.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Because it's a) Not disturbing, and b) working. I mean, seriously, if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?
  - Tozen 4y ago
    > ...if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this? It's likely that they are bothered by heterosexual males who might have any situation or opportunity (among adults of similar age and agency) that can be perceived as advantageous to them or contributes to their happiness.
  - ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
    You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. Well, how about you explain why you are equivocating "no unwanted advances" to "creeps". I'm in a couple of these threads because a) I have some free time now to read, and b) there are way too many people demonizing males attempting to find a partner. Like you are doing. > As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here? Well, the women who are dating are specifically not complaining. Who are you to tell women where and when they may allow courtship?
    - sugarpile 4y ago
      Why do you think anyone, female or otherwise, being demoralized means something “wrong” is occurring? So silly to form a moral/ethical framework on something as intangible, fickle, and culturally influenced as people’s feelings. Also, comments like “stanning for these creeps” are disrespectful and have no place on HN, imo.
- throway33 4y ago
  If you happen to be an intelligent and decent young man from a male-dominated major who legitimately likes helping others who are struggling to learn the subject you're passionate about, how would women in your dating pool, who find those personality traits attractive, discover those things about you?
  - ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
    Maybe they would notice you help whoever asks for it, not just attractive women, and by contrast they would think, "Hey, he seems decent, not like those creeps that only have tutoring sessions for hotties."
    - throway33 4y ago
      Of course, that's a given. But how would this happen, if you aren't even there to begin with?
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      >Maybe they would notice And how would she notice if you weren't in her class? The chances are extremely low compared to if you joined her class and made an effort to socialize with her.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    And, you will likely never get answers from the other side about how to do such, outside of: do nothing, consult zodiac sign, hope for magic, fate, luck, or a shoulder shrug response.
- sidlls 4y ago
  In this age group the ratio of <gender you prefer> who are not assessing dating partners based almost purely on physical attractiveness to those who are is tiny. That being said, this is appalling, predatory behavior on the part of the students using the app. These are vulnerable people that the app users are taking advantage of and trying to manipulate into an intimate relationship.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    It comes off as very misplaced to categorize the app, by itself, as predatory and appalling. These are adult men and women. Why would it be such a surprise for intelligent young men in college to create an app to better determine the ratio of males to females in a class? This has long been done, by both sexes, way before convenient apps. I'm sensing there would be no disdain or accusations of predatory behavior, if a female student created an app or openly expressed her intentions for picking classes where she is more likely to find dates and marriage prospects among the opposite sex or even the same sex. I'm almost quite sure, the same appalled people, would have no reaction or even state this as acceptable or categorize her as being smart. It seems that if male heterosexual students, are doing something that would circumvent their supposed ranking based on innate attractiveness or better their odds in any artificial way, then it's something to be villainized and criminalized.
  - sinity 4y ago
    > These are vulnerable people that the app users are taking advantage of and trying to manipulate into an intimate relationship. Of course. Men should just stay alone, unless they are hyper attractive. Because _attempting_ to get to know other people is "manipulation into intimate relationship". I guess they're cheating because they don't know their place? Predatory behavior, lol.
- sinity 4y ago
  > why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Seems rather ingenious, frankly. What tactics should they rely on, exactly? "Intelligent and decent" alone aren't traits that are necessarily attractive anyway.
mattzito 4y ago
They might be! Which makes it even more of a shame that they used an app whose intent was to help students audit classes where they have a gender ratio opportunity. If this person sent an email to the class group offering their services and coached folks without seeing their gender or appearance, I would applaud them, and I’d be more than happy to support whoever they met through that. But my guess is, that’s not the situation here. Would love to be wrong.
- judge2020 4y ago
  The crux of the issue is if the behavior of these students harms the learning environment in any other way. For example, raising their hand to answer a question every opportunity they get meaning fewer of the typical students get to answer and learn from [their] mistakes, or running these private tutoring sessions then giving up if no attractive women show up / giving the women they're interested in way more attention. It's also not a good look if they're bad at teaching and use the tutoring session to effectively do peoples' homework for them by solving every questions on a whiteboard with little room for discussion.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Not if they’re putting themselves in that tutoring position using a dating app specifically designed to facilitate manipulating those students for romantic purposes.
abathur 4y ago
Is there not a chance that the professor might, in fact, be correct in her assessment of the motivation of these upperclassmen and decent? It's not like anyone's proposed sentencing them to death. (Or any punishment at all?) Most universities have gobs of overlapping official and unofficial tutoring programs both broad and subject-specific. Enterprising scholars will also inevitably find a way to announce independent tutoriing services. Students who are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge, making a few bucks, or adding a line to their resume generally don't have trouble finding such opportunities to share their knowledge and help others succeed without having to audit a course.
klyrs 4y ago
A decent tutor's first and foremost goal is to educate their students. If a student makes advances on a decent tutor, the tutor will rebuff them, for concern that it will detract from their attention and the quality of the lesson. That's not what these guys are up to.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I think it's a conflict of interest if someone is teaching/tutoring so they can sleep with their students, and that approach can result in unfortunate incentives for the tutor at the expense of their students.
- ImaCake 4y ago
  It's enough of an issue that tutors and lecturers who sleep with students will often be booted from the University. There are official rules at most unis, and more importantly, they are actually enforced even for high ranking researchers (eventually...).

mattzito 4y ago

This was my first reaction as well - sounds cute and prankish until you’re one of the students negatively affected. Meeting people is part of the college experience, and I definitely met people who attended classes with a higher female ratio in the hopes of meeting someone. But there’s a big difference between “I’ll take an acting class because there’s a lot more women there”, where you might just happen to learn something, and “I’m going to effectively run a class and control the situation so attractive students get an advantage by hanging out with me”

sacnoradhq 4y ago
It's curious how a particular app changes the language and interaction culture of behavior. For example, there was a Facebook course at Stanford by a self-styled persuasion researcher who delved into how user interfaces and appearances of websites forms the basis of an impression in the viewer's mind. And then, from that basis, encourages or discourages behavior based on the technical behavior of the website. From there, it would then influence and shape the individual's beliefs and attitudes as much as any traditional PR manufacturing of consent. (Cambridge Analytica, 2016 Russian US election hack)

zozbot234 4y ago

I think you're right about this. The male auditors are overdoing the whole showboating thing in a way that creates a bad experience for the rest of the students, and probably doesn't really help their romantic prospects either. Sensible women want to get to know friends in a gradual, natural fashion and perhaps be a little wowed in non-obvious ways. No one wants to be advertised to with "FREE private tutoring sessions, limited offer!" That alone is incredibly obnoxious.

lelanthran 4y ago
> The male auditors are overdoing the whole showboating thing in a way that creates a bad experience for the rest of the students, and probably doesn't really help their romantic prospects either. Sensible women want to get to know friends in a gradual, natural fashion and perhaps be a little wowed in non-obvious ways. They aren't looking for sensible women, they're looking for attractive women. IOW, it furthers their goal, even if you think they should have a different goal.
- kcb 4y ago
  > They aren't looking for sensible women, they're looking for attractive women. IOW, it furthers their goal, even if you think they should have a different goal. Maybe sensible is what they find attractive. Who are we to say?
- Tozen 4y ago
  Edit: Changed above, as can't reply to the below, as being restricted/censored. > The young men have certain goals (like attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend), and trivialising their goals because the poster thinks they should have loftier goals (attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend of "better"[1] quality) is pointless and stupid. We are in agreement on this point. I re-read the post and the one you were responding to. Adults should be able to choose what is attractive to them, and not be restricted by what is only satisfactory to some opinionated and intruding outside 3rd party.
  - lelanthran 4y ago

nhchris 4y ago

Less attractive girls get less male attention no matter what. Why would it be any more demoralizing if that attention comes with tutoring? Why would it be distracting? It seems everyone is complaining except the girls getting tutored. And if they did complain, if some guy was pushy or wouldn't take no for an answer, then deal with him the same as any other such guy - that they're attending a class for the sake of dating would be incidental, and make their actions no worse or better, and wouldn't affect the response in any way, except that it would be easier to expel them from the class, as it wouldn't impact their academics.

weakfish 4y ago
It would be demoralizing because your attractiveness shouldn’t factor into whether you can get academic help
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  Upperclass men are not the only source of academic help and if they were then there would be significantly greater problems.
- pgayed 4y ago
  The individuals offering sessions are not employees or staff of the university.
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  Attractive people definitely get more help from peers regardless of class. However, this is a strange situation where they literally already know all the material. IMO they shouldn't be taking the class. I agree it shouldn't factor into getting help from class TA's.
- sugarpile 4y ago
  Why not? This is reality and how the world works. Attractive men and women get promoted more easily, get better service in bars and restaurants, etc… to infinity. This idea that it’s more worthwhile to wail at the sky about how the world works rather than acknowledge it and seek to take advantage of other areas of life where the scales are tipped in your favor fucking mystifies me.

lelanthran 4y ago

> I'm appalled that so many other commenters don't see an issue with such behavior in class: >> No unwanted advances It seems very appalling when you focus on the bits you don't like and ignore the bits like "no unwanted advances".

imbnwa 4y ago
>It seems very appalling when you focus on the bits you don't like and ignore the bits like "no unwanted advances". Yes, lets cultivate young hetero men to expressly look for sexual opportunities where they have an explicit and conscious asymetrical power-relation to women. Quality dudes these will be.
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  Would it be ridiculous to possibly interpret this instead as young hetero men looking for opportunities where they have something to offer? Or should they only look for sexual opportunities where they are outclassed by their peers?
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    While the thirsty may equate to "drug" users, love lacks math(s). There's plenty of CEO women with mechanic husbands. Station is somewhat orthogonal to quality, but not completely. I'm most depressed that the prevalent attitude of 20's-30's somethings (men and women) tends to be maximizing hookups, binge drinking, and self-indulgence. Read a book, mentor a kid in high school, raise a service animal, donate blood, volunteer for the food bank, or talk to another human like human regardless of where they come from.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      I'm not sure if I follow. Maybe you were thinking I meant "outclassed" literally? I just mean this seems like a case of men competing for womens attention in an arena where they have some kind of competitive advantage against the other men around them. If you can't go to the bar and be better looking than the guys around you, why not go to a class where you can be more helpful than the guys around you? As much as it creeps people out to say it out loud, a lot of social life is transactional and competitive. If you want friends or lovers, you have to have something to offer to them, and it has to be more valuable than what other people are offering. Some people don't have to find clever ways to make this work, or to think about this at all, because they are naturally valuable in some way. These guys are probably not that.

areoform 4y ago

It goes deeper than that. It's predatory. And it can go from being harmless to SA really fast if you're on the receiving end. If you are a SA, or a CSA, survivor, then this is the kind of behavior that gives you nightmares. I know, because it gives me nightmares. And it's brought up in almost every support group I've been a part of. Their behavior is identical to someone who profiles a victim type, seeks opportunities to put themselves in the victim's path, and creates an opportunity to engage. At the extreme end, Bundy did this with a cast and by targeting times of high stress (exam time). He would place the car outside of dorms and essentially fumble putting things in a car. Women would come up and start trying to help him; at which point, he'd kidnap them, > Further similarities between the victims were noted: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, and were within a week of midterm or final exams. All of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans when they disappeared, and at many crime scenes there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling and driving a brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle. This post isn't to say that these people are Bundy. That's not the point. If you had 50 glasses of wine in front of you, but 1 of them contained cyanide, would you drink the wine at random? Now, what if the wine glasses were being forced on you? And you still didn't know? 1 in 50 to 1 in 10 of these people won't have such nice intentions. 1 in 100 will be a psychopath. If you are at the receiving end, how do you know? How do you differentiate between the majority that's innocent and the years of hell and therapy on the other hand? Would you want to navigate this every time you went to class to learn?

ShredKazoo 4y ago
I'm sorry this behavior gives you nightmares. I don't find this line of argument compelling though. For example, your Bundy argument appears to imply that it is immoral to have any sort of difficulty in a public place that might cause a woman to come offer help to you. This seems like a fairly absurd, possibly ableist moral guideline? The reductio ad absurdum of this reasoning is: "Abusers breathe oxygen, if you breathe oxygen that makes you like an abuser, therefore it's predatory to breathe oxygen." Basically by saying "X is a behavior that abusers do", decent people will want to avoid beahvior X in order to not be thought of as abusers. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: no decent person will do behavior X. This works regardless of whether behavior X is inherently problematic. I'm really sorry that you had such shitty experiences, but I think your ideas about reworking society to give you less anxiety are misguided and counterproductive (even for the goal of reducing your anxiety). If you're super risk-averse, you can implement some personal guidelines like "never be alone in a room with another person" or whatever. I don't think your own risk-aversion is a good justification for preventing other consenting adults from being alone in a room with each other though.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

There's a widespread lack of male role models, absentee fathers, and anything and everything male bashing. The ladies could be mentioning to the guys specific constructive feedback, because the guys probably don't know how they're failing or how they're making others feel. The surprising and shocking secret of being a ladies' man, is underwhelming and doesn't get press: being human and treating others as human according to their needs (improved Golden Rule).

ausbah 4y ago
why does it fall on the person being made uncomfortable to correct the behavior of the being making them uncomfortable?
- mantas 4y ago
  Who else would? If something makes you uncomfortable and you don't try to correct that... It will keep going. Of course, sometimes that's not possible (threat of physical violence and whatnot), but in many cases it is perfectly fine. Especially if the other person is just naively making you uncomfortable instead of trying to harm you. And being corrected on the spot is much more effective than someone else telling you days later you did something wrong. At least for me, I remember very well few times I was dumbass and that was made painfully clear to me. I remember those lessons to this day and it sure did help me.
  - ausbah 4y ago
    I mean there's a certain amount of social awareness of what to do & what not do due in different contexts I don't think is wrong to assume someone has (barring cultural differences, neurodiverse conditions, the occasional misreading of social cues), asking someone out out of the blue is one of those things yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this
    - mantas 4y ago

eyelidlessness 4y ago

It’s absolutely appalling. And especially so with so many comments suggesting the opposite of the things you quote. Seeing no harm by pretending the directly express harm was never expressed at all.

threatofrain 4y ago

Some people choose universities on its reputation for sex, partying, and drugs!

bongoman37 4y ago

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commandlinefan 4y ago

> you'd end up avoiding such a class Of course, the only workable solution is the only one you're not allowed to suggest: gender-segregated colleges.

sinity 4y ago

So, the social norms are that men are supposed to approach women to form relationships. But they can't even offer women free tutoring lessons... because other women feel bad about it? Wat? Or women are offended, supposedly rightfully, solely because of the presence of these men (because person who asked the question said clearly they have done nothing wrong)? What the...? "Being distracted with insecurities" - men, on the other hand, have no such problems, yes? They willingly went to classes that are useless to them, in order to try to impress women. We live in a society, I guess...