tussock wrote:Well, my whole argument should have been to tell you shut up and listen, but then you'd just tell me to shut up and listen. And here we are anyway. Did you see the rest of my post? It was better.
No one cares that when you say a stupid thing and are told it was a stupid thing you wish people had not told you that thing was stupid and instead talked about other things that (you hope) are less stupid.
tussock wrote:And stop telling the world that women are wrong to feel threatened by men.
That is not the argument. Women can feel threatened by men if they want. Cashiers can feel threatened by the black men in their store late at night. It's offensive, but even people who otherwise mean well and know better are sometimes accidentally intimidated. The argument is that when you use "I felt threatened" as a justification for claiming men who have not violated your rights (i.e. harassment, assault, or worse) or otherwise acted in malice have done something wrong (as she did, because she turned it from a conversation about personal discomfort to a prescription for male behavior to a discussion about sexual objectification), you are being sexist.
It is very similar to a cashier asking black people to stop coming into the store late at night because it makes them feel threatened. Now, black men are obviously a considerably more underprivileged group than white men and that is a far more pressing social matter, but I'm not really getting into that. The point is that it's the exact same "____ label intimidates me, and I wish they'd do the things I want them to do that make them less intimidating to me." It really doesn't matter what the label you put in the blank is, that's a very imposing request. If I know you're going to say no then obviously I should respect that and skip asking, but people aren't mind readers and some women will answer yes to that question and there's nothing wrong with that on either side.
A man in an elevator politely asked Rebecca Watson if she wanted to come up for coffee. It is very likely that he was implying sex. Rebecca Watson said no, and he accepted her refusal and went on his way. He may have heard Rebecca Watson say she was going to bed, but I have no idea why some of the people in this thread think "I'm going to bed" is a massive commitment about which people could never possibly want to do something else given the invitation. He may have heard her talk about about how women were being mistreated at the convention and harassed and coerced, but he was clearly not one of those people and completely respectful of her rights and boundaries.
Being asked for sex in a confined space (which almost certainly had cameras and would expose itself to far more public spaces every thirty seconds) made her feel threatened. That's a shame, but the man didn't actually do anything that warranted Rebecca Watson's perceptions of possible future aggression. And once everything was said and done, he did not live up to Rebecca Watson's perceptions of possible future aggression. Rebecca Watson was afraid because there exist men who do violate women's rights by badgering them/groping them/raping them, but there wasn't any legitimate reason to believe this man was one of those men. And when she went on to tell men that they are scary even when they don't do the scary things she is afraid of because
other men do the scary things she is afraid, and that is why all men everywhere should endeavor to be less scary... she was being horrifically sexist. It is Geraldo Rivera telling young black men not to wear hoodies because he is scared of them (whether or not they're actually violent criminals) and they would be less scary if they didn't wear hoodies.
I would tolerate Rebecca Watson's discomfort. I would frown at it, and be slightly offended, because I am a man and I am not a rapist and when Rebecca Watson is afraid of
me because
other men are rapists she is reducing me to one of her negative stereotypes of the labels I happen to wear and she is genuinely diminishing me as a person in her mind. But only slightly offended, because I am a white male and my privilege is genuinely off the charts. But the part where she turns her discomfort into my moral imperative is really quote offensive. It is offensive when racists try to do it to minorities. It is offensive when homophobes try to do it to homosexuals. It is offensive when a subset of the feminist community tries to do it to men.
That's it. That's the whole story. I am asking Rebecca Watson not to censure men as though they are sexual predators unless they are actually sexual predators. She can, in fact, be afraid of all the men she wants to be.
