6 ms·

> Long story short, if you step into a bar full of males who normally have few opportunities to make contact with women in a social context...yes, you are stepp

by bkrausz 14y ago

> Long story short, if you step into a bar full of males who normally have few opportunities to make contact with women in a social context...yes, you are stepping into the lion's den. Males are sexual, but not necessarily "sexist" -- don't confuse the two. On the one hand, I believe you are technically correct (the best kind of correct). On the other, you seem to be implying that this kind of behavior is somehow ok or even justifiable. Explainable, certainly, but it's not justifiable. "Stepping into the lion's den" makes it sound like it's their fault for going to Defcon and not expecting to get grabbed. If this was something as harmless as a lot of men glancing at her, or even the occasional crude date offer, I would agree with you, but being grabbed, asked to show tits, etc. These cross a line that any reasonable person would know not to cross. It's reasonable to minimize potentially promiscuous clothing at an event full of under-socialized individuals. It's not reasonable to have to pass out cards that identify that blatant propositioning is inappropriate.

gavanwoolery 14y ago
I agree - I do not think this type of behavior should be condoned or justified, but I do believe it should be expected. I have seen the same behavior in many bars/clubs. Deep down, every man want two things: food and sex (akin to Freud's "id"). When you have enough drinks in you, your control/moral mechanisms get toned down (your ego and super ego). So, yes, in any bar full of drunk males, any female should expect to get harassed. For clarification, this is expected, but not justifiable or condonable, in my opinion. If you give a knife, fork, and napkin to a starving person, and then feed them a steak, do you think they will act civilized and use proper manners, or pick it up and tear into with their teeth? It is a thin line that separates us from the beasts. ;)
- mootothemax 14y ago
  Deep down, every man want two things: food and sex (akin to Freud's "id"). When you have enough drinks in you, your control/moral mechanisms get toned down (your ego and super ego) This is terrible and a disgusting position to take. I am quite capable of going to a bar, drinking like a teenager, and managing to go home, all without sexually harassing or assaulting anyone. You're attempting to justify awful behaviour by saying that it should expected. If you, or any of your friends, are incapable of appearing in public without harassing or assaulting another person, the problem very much does not lie with the person on the receiving end.
  - mkramlich 14y ago
    > If you, or any of your friends, are incapable of appearing in public without [flirting, hitting on and/or touching] another person, the problem very much does not lie with the person on the receiving end. [... Wait what?] Adjusted that for you to illustrate a different perspective.
    - mkaltenecker 14y ago
      Sigh. You are deliberately obtuse, aren’t you?
      - mkramlich 14y ago
        No. Deliberately insightful and helpful, I hope.
        mkaltenecker 14y ago
        Grabbing someone's ass without their consent is inexcusable harassment. You do not do it. Ever. This is simple. Not hard.
        natrius 14y ago
        Who are you implying disagrees with this? EDIT: There's now a sibling comment that disagrees with this. Mea culpa.
        mkramlich 14y ago
        Respectfully disagree. Unlike you have. Here's how I'll disagree. I hereby claim the following premise: that grabbing someone's ass is just grabbing someone's ass. At a minimum. Inherently. It may or may not be "harassment" depending on other particulars. And it is definitely not clearly inexcusable. Not always, not inherently. More specifically, grabbing someone's ass WITHOUT their explicit consent beforehand is NOT necessarily harassment, and therefore is not necessarily inexcusable. Again, it's just grabbing someone's ass. (Oh noes!) WHETHER it's bad, whether it's harassment or "inexcusable" depends highly on the context, the environment, and the two people in question. Indeed, the word inexcusable means it cannot be excused. But clearly if say a handsome hunky man grabs a pretty woman's ass at a bar or on a dance floor one night, there's music, dancing, alcohol, people are feeling frisky or lonely, looking to hookup, etc. and the guy finds the woman attractive, and especially if she finds him attractive (this is key), and she's in the mood (this is especially key), guess what? She may excuse him. That's a strong bet to make. It's happened before, it's happening now I'm sure all over the world and it's going to continue to happen for a long time into the future. People have sex. Behind closed doors they get nekkid and fuck like rabbits. And for every time you hear a woman saying in public she wants to be treated with respect, treated like a princess, be respected intellectually, etc. you'll hear another woman (possibly the same woman in a different context or mood) saying she likes to be hit on because it makes her feel more attractive and desirable, she wants men to touch her, she wants men to be aggressive and dominant with them and she sometimes, deep down, honestly, she wants to set all higher-ordered thought and pretensions aside and get fucked long and hard like an animal -- the whole "ravished by a pirate" fantasy, or "swept off her feet by a rich handsome witty man" fantasy, to cite just a few among hundreds of similar variants and archetypes. (I'm not making this stuff up, fellow HN'ers, this is fairly common out there outside academia and software engineering-land.) It's all over the freaking web, in books, private lunch conversations, women's magazines, etc. And so for a variety of reasons, yes, sometimes due to men with bad social/romantic judgement, and yes sometimes due to inebriation, some ass grabbing goes on. And sometimes women like it. They fantasize about it. And sometimes they do NOT. But to call it always inexcusable harassment is clearly in violation with the facts of the real world. Is it happening more than it should? Probably. Is any real harm done? Not unless you have a very ethereal and non-physical definition of "harm". Which some people do, of course. And that's the larger, meta-problem that many of us have with discussions about this topic. It's not that we don't agree with you that sometimes men do inappropriate things, sometimes. They clearly do, sometimes. But it's this repeated meme some folks propagate that merely to touch someone constitutes rape. That a momentary butt-in-pants squeeze is somehow violent or life-altering or traumatizing. That flirting is always harassment, and so forth. There's a whole lot of survivorship bias which occurs. And there's a whole lot of nuance and shades of grey, that exists out in the real world, that I think gets sadly glossed over. Heck if I went to a bar or dance club at night and some woman grabbed my ass my reaction wouldn't be, "Oh no! That's inexcusable harassment. I feel so violated. I'm going to call the police. I'm being oppressed by the female gender again." Instead I'd be more like, "Well, hello ladies!" and feel complimented physically. (And how I'd respond would depend heavily on whether I was single or not, etc.) And again, of course, it depends on the situation -- it would be less appropriate in a corporate office setting during a workday, by a stranger, for example. But at an office party, at night, alcohol flowing, loud music, etc? Heck yes.
enqk 14y ago
I think the onus is on those damn men to get the fuck out and interact with women normally in the course of their lives, so as not to educate themselves about what it is to interact respectfully with other human beings.
- mkramlich 14y ago
  > so as not to educate themselves about what it is to interact respectfully with other human beings. Indeed. Especially in a bar or hotel at night in Las Vegas at a convention full of adults. What the heck were they thinking? Save that rowdy animalistic raw sexual behavior back for your corporate IT office cubicle in Podunk, Iowa. :)

by bkrausz 14y ago

gavanwoolery 14y ago

I agree - I do not think this type of behavior should be condoned or justified, but I do believe it should be expected. I have seen the same behavior in many bars/clubs. Deep down, every man want two things: food and sex (akin to Freud's "id"). When you have enough drinks in you, your control/moral mechanisms get toned down (your ego and super ego). So, yes, in any bar full of drunk males, any female should expect to get harassed. For clarification, this is expected, but not justifiable or condonable, in my opinion. If you give a knife, fork, and napkin to a starving person, and then feed them a steak, do you think they will act civilized and use proper manners, or pick it up and tear into with their teeth? It is a thin line that separates us from the beasts. ;)

mootothemax 14y ago
Deep down, every man want two things: food and sex (akin to Freud's "id"). When you have enough drinks in you, your control/moral mechanisms get toned down (your ego and super ego) This is terrible and a disgusting position to take. I am quite capable of going to a bar, drinking like a teenager, and managing to go home, all without sexually harassing or assaulting anyone. You're attempting to justify awful behaviour by saying that it should expected. If you, or any of your friends, are incapable of appearing in public without harassing or assaulting another person, the problem very much does not lie with the person on the receiving end.
- mkramlich 14y ago
  > If you, or any of your friends, are incapable of appearing in public without [flirting, hitting on and/or touching] another person, the problem very much does not lie with the person on the receiving end. [... Wait what?] Adjusted that for you to illustrate a different perspective.
  - mkaltenecker 14y ago
    Sigh. You are deliberately obtuse, aren’t you?
    - mkramlich 14y ago
      No. Deliberately insightful and helpful, I hope.
      - mkaltenecker 14y ago
        Grabbing someone's ass without their consent is inexcusable harassment. You do not do it. Ever. This is simple. Not hard.
        natrius 14y ago
        Who are you implying disagrees with this? EDIT: There's now a sibling comment that disagrees with this. Mea culpa.
        mkramlich 14y ago
        Respectfully disagree. Unlike you have. Here's how I'll disagree. I hereby claim the following premise: that grabbing someone's ass is just grabbing someone's ass. At a minimum. Inherently. It may or may not be "harassment" depending on other particulars. And it is definitely not clearly inexcusable. Not always, not inherently. More specifically, grabbing someone's ass WITHOUT their explicit consent beforehand is NOT necessarily harassment, and therefore is not necessarily inexcusable. Again, it's just grabbing someone's ass. (Oh noes!) WHETHER it's bad, whether it's harassment or "inexcusable" depends highly on the context, the environment, and the two people in question. Indeed, the word inexcusable means it cannot be excused. But clearly if say a handsome hunky man grabs a pretty woman's ass at a bar or on a dance floor one night, there's music, dancing, alcohol, people are feeling frisky or lonely, looking to hookup, etc. and the guy finds the woman attractive, and especially if she finds him attractive (this is key), and she's in the mood (this is especially key), guess what? She may excuse him. That's a strong bet to make. It's happened before, it's happening now I'm sure all over the world and it's going to continue to happen for a long time into the future. People have sex. Behind closed doors they get nekkid and fuck like rabbits. And for every time you hear a woman saying in public she wants to be treated with respect, treated like a princess, be respected intellectually, etc. you'll hear another woman (possibly the same woman in a different context or mood) saying she likes to be hit on because it makes her feel more attractive and desirable, she wants men to touch her, she wants men to be aggressive and dominant with them and she sometimes, deep down, honestly, she wants to set all higher-ordered thought and pretensions aside and get fucked long and hard like an animal -- the whole "ravished by a pirate" fantasy, or "swept off her feet by a rich handsome witty man" fantasy, to cite just a few among hundreds of similar variants and archetypes. (I'm not making this stuff up, fellow HN'ers, this is fairly common out there outside academia and software engineering-land.) It's all over the freaking web, in books, private lunch conversations, women's magazines, etc. And so for a variety of reasons, yes, sometimes due to men with bad social/romantic judgement, and yes sometimes due to inebriation, some ass grabbing goes on. And sometimes women like it. They fantasize about it. And sometimes they do NOT. But to call it always inexcusable harassment is clearly in violation with the facts of the real world. Is it happening more than it should? Probably. Is any real harm done? Not unless you have a very ethereal and non-physical definition of "harm". Which some people do, of course. And that's the larger, meta-problem that many of us have with discussions about this topic. It's not that we don't agree with you that sometimes men do inappropriate things, sometimes. They clearly do, sometimes. But it's this repeated meme some folks propagate that merely to touch someone constitutes rape. That a momentary butt-in-pants squeeze is somehow violent or life-altering or traumatizing. That flirting is always harassment, and so forth. There's a whole lot of survivorship bias which occurs. And there's a whole lot of nuance and shades of grey, that exists out in the real world, that I think gets sadly glossed over. Heck if I went to a bar or dance club at night and some woman grabbed my ass my reaction wouldn't be, "Oh no! That's inexcusable harassment. I feel so violated. I'm going to call the police. I'm being oppressed by the female gender again." Instead I'd be more like, "Well, hello ladies!" and feel complimented physically. (And how I'd respond would depend heavily on whether I was single or not, etc.) And again, of course, it depends on the situation -- it would be less appropriate in a corporate office setting during a workday, by a stranger, for example. But at an office party, at night, alcohol flowing, loud music, etc? Heck yes.

enqk 14y ago

I think the onus is on those damn men to get the fuck out and interact with women normally in the course of their lives, so as not to educate themselves about what it is to interact respectfully with other human beings.

mkramlich 14y ago
> so as not to educate themselves about what it is to interact respectfully with other human beings. Indeed. Especially in a bar or hotel at night in Las Vegas at a convention full of adults. What the heck were they thinking? Save that rowdy animalistic raw sexual behavior back for your corporate IT office cubicle in Podunk, Iowa. :)