When I first heard about the Open Source Boob Project, I was sort of overwhelmed by the dipshittery and couldn’t really begin to tackle the multi-layered asshole levels required to be a part of this thing. (Summary: A bunch of dudes at some comic con decided that it would be awesome to trade on a handful of women’s serious insecurities and get some fondling. Gack, it’s complicated—just read the link.) Now that it’s been thoroughly dismantled by the rest of the feminist blogosphere, I feel like I can safely make fun of the whole thing without feeling like I’m missing something.
You have to give the assholes credit. Most men who have a strong need to have women flail around doing humiliating things (like being likened to open source software—aka, those other bitches you got to pay for, but you guys give it away for free) have to go the long, hard road and get a woman financially or socially dependent on them. You need to either go the Hugh Hefner route and just pay women openly for the favor or you go the route of any abusive fuckwit Joe Blow U.S.A. and charm her first with talk of love until you get her into a committed relationship and then start humiliating her, secure in the knowledge that it’s going to take her a lot, emotionally and financially, to break the commitment. In other words, you got to work for it most of the time. But these guys just waltzed in, declared themselves the judges of female beauty, and next thing you know, women are making absolute asses of themselves seeking the approval of these self-appointed judges. Nice racket if you can work it.
Not that I’m blaming the she-geeks that were sucked into this. As a she-geek of sorts, I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case. And thus, you might be vulnerable to the flattery of some asshole who says, “Your tits are just good enough to be groped by random dudes who think showering every day is for peons.” But I promise you, young ladies, you don’t need the affections of men who hate you in order to get your grope on. Time passes and even those of us with the most unfortunate nicknames in high school can often go on to be considered full members of the human race, and attractive even to decent people.
Ug, this story was so painful for me to read.
I was a gawky kid and a freakish teenager, so by the time I unexpectedly developed into a really good-looking adult (not trying to be vain) I had totally internalized the message that I was hideous and should be grateful for any attention I got. I absolutely shudder when I think back on the things I put up with because I was so starved for approval.
I was also a geek girl, and I KNOW that if I’d been at that con at 18 or 19 I’d have put on one of those god damned Grope Me buttons.
That’s why I feel so sorry for the women who took part - I’m sure a lot of them, like me, will feel just sick about it later.
I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case. And thus, you might be vulnerable to the flattery of some asshole
Totally. I remember being strangely empowered by the fact that, while most of mainstream society saw me as an icky nerd, I could turn the head of an entire male-dominated nerd gathering simply by showing up in a miniskirt.
Then I grew up and realized that, despite everything the Spice Girls said, ‘empowerment’ and ‘inspiring erections’ are not synonymous.
Yeah, and that such guys are using women in order to feel like the big men, as they were deprived of feeling—”big men” defined as “able to make women behave like asses for male approval”. Which is certainly not all geeky guys. I’ve met plenty who wouldn’t think of using other people like, well, like they were open source software.
First-time poster here, but I was actually going to email you with this if you hadn’t already picked it up, since my husband has been raking these idiots over the coals on the subject for the past day.
Conventions are becoming more and more hostile to women — a woman shows up at a con, and it’s assumed automatically that she’s there to be ogled, at the very least. It’s one of the reasons my husband and I, small game publishers, don’t *go* to cons anymore.
I do wonder what it’s going to take to get through the heads of these people that my body is mine, all rights to it are mine, and it’s not licensed under GPL or Creative Commons?
Long-time reader, first-time commenter.
It’s worse than that. This wasn’t a comic con, it was a big SF/Linux con. (That’s right, people may have gone for professional networking!) I know some people who go and they said what happened is a little group of people groping in the halls, which is a bit icky and people need to get a room, but not unheard of. Most people at the con missed it entirely.
The scary part is that the guy wanted to start a movement to bring this public groping to every con everywhere, as if women everywhere didn’t get enough of that outside cons. If you wear a green button, people can ask to grope; if you wear a red button, people know not to. In theory if you wear no button, you shouldn’t get asked either, but given the 60s-style sexual liberation (please liberate yourself from your hangups so I can fuck you), you know that won’t last.
Apparently it was a woman who started it, which somehow makes it OK, and people who don’t want to participate overly hung-up and bitter prudes or whatever (stop me if you’ve heard this before). Personally I don’t care what people get up to in their room, but when they drag it out in the halls and ask bystanders to join in, they’re out of line.
A related discovery is that apparently at a big con in Atlanta, they have a “kilt check” brigade, which is a group of women who ask to grope the genitals of any man wearing a kilt. So last year, they had a leafblower and blew up said kilts, and put the resulting photographs on the net. It’s now coming out that men who participated felt pressured into doing so, and are uncomfortable coming forward to ask that photos of their genitals be removed from the internet because it’s raising a stink. So bringing these issues forward isn’t just about women.
I’m a geek and I don’t go to large cons. This kind of thing is why.
I love your summary! especially this part -
“I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case.”
that pretty much sums up my whole small town high school experience. I thank the FSM every day that I got out of that place into art school with a mind that can still reason, an empty uterus and a burning desire to be myself. art class saved my life. art school helped me find my tribe.
On behalf of nerds everywhere… I am so, so sorry
This is like Barrens Chat, in real life! Ugh.
“I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case. And thus, you might be vulnerable to the flattery of some asshole.”
“I was also a geek girl, and I KNOW that if I’d been at that con at 18 or 19 I’d have put on one of those god damned Grope Me buttons.”
Yeah, this is definitely one of those owwwwwwwwwwwch moments of deep empathy.
Luckily for me I got hawt around 16, and gradually acquired self-confidence about my attractiveness via a series of boyfriends, not parties, nights clubbin’, or (new one!) conventions. By the time I began making the party scene, I was already quite comfortable sticking my nose in the air and sneering at any dude trying to pull that particular line of psychological crap to get at worst a feelie, at best a hookup. Unfortunately I was not yet a fully evolved feminist; my sneers were based (hope everytbody here appreciates the honesty cause this is embarrassing to admit) on my sense of self-worth *as it had been defined by men.* Not only is this not right from a moral and philosophical sense, it can be easily turned against you as Amanda illustrates so well: “charm her first with talk of love until you get her into a committed relationship and then start humiliating her, secure in the knowledge that it’s going to take her a lot, emotionally and financially, to break the commitment.” Happily, I am now a fully actualized person, as opposed to a potential male appendage, and I now sneer from a comfortably secure position of my self-worth as a function of, imagine, my own self.
Lovin’ feminism right now.
What’s special is that his wife is defending him to the hilt (and complaining that all the negative attention this has earned them is making her crrrryyyyyyy), and there were some other women who apparently were into it, and still some others who think nothing’s wrong with it. Therefore, what’s the big deal? It’s only the humorless man-haters who are ashamed of their bodies who are the problem!
(And, of course, he’s wielding the fact that he’s been married for eight years and therefore does get Teh Poosay as “proof” that he’s not some misogynist, sex-deprived choad. Because woman-haters nevar get into relationships with women, especially long-term ones.)
Among his other greatest hits are a post from a few years ago claiming that liberals are the ones waging the “War on Christmas,” and (though I haven’t seen it, have only heard about it) a post “about how he almost cajoled a homeless woman into having sex with him, and then got huffy when she freaked out because she was a rape survivor.”
His interests include “involuntary hysterectomies” and “performing mass abortions.” Oh, and he’s anti-choice.
In short…total fucking wanker.
A great many responses within the fannish/Livejournal community have been rounded up here. Of particular interest might be vito-excalibur’s Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program.
“I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case.”
Like the previous commenters, I absolutely feel this part - in some ways, it was sort of amazing to go to cons and put on some pretty clothes and suddenly have people be clearly interested in me - and have it not be catcalls from the side of the road but just looks or attempts at real interaction (geeky guys can be very skeevy, as has just been proven, but they were also the ones to treat me like an attractive human being instead of just an object, or a nothing).
But the objectification quotient is still high. This guy apparently advocates “honesty” - meaning, men (and women too, he supposes, but it’s only as an afterthought) should be allowed to basically say, straight up, “I’d like to fuck you”, and women shouldn’t get upset - they’re just being honest, after all, you can say no. And that’s all over the place in Geek Land, anyway - if you reject a guy for “just being honest”, you’re mean and a horrible prude. So you’re free to say no - if you want to be labeled a frigid bitch, a tease, and million other things, and worst of all, be accused of contributing to the low self-esteem of the poor male geeks.
Please, cry moar.
(Argh, your anti-spam thing is difficult to read.)
(My posts on the topic are here and here
The thing about that post was how it was positively fractal in its patriarchy. It’s not just that women are there for the groping (especially the ones in skimpy costumes, which given the way women are represented in the media is all the accurate ones), it’s not just that breasts have healing powers, it’s not that it’s “pure” while other sexual activity is “dirty”… it goes on and on.
(My posts on the topic are here and here.)
The thing about that post was how it was positively fractal in its patriarchy. It’s not just that women are there for the groping (especially the ones in skimpy costumes, which given the way women are represented in the media is all the accurate ones), it’s not just that breasts have healing powers, it’s not that it’s “pure” while other sexual activity is “dirty”… it goes on and on.
This is one of those few times that I’m actually glad to have developed C-cups at an early age. I learned very quickly that guys who wanted to grope me were creepy, especially the older ones who didn’t care that I was 12 years old because, hey, I had boobies, and that meant I was open to being groped by a stranger, right?
I had tons of other geekiness attractiveness issues, but at least I was inoculated against these particular choads.
This thing totally makes my head explode. The truly sad thing is the number of people who do not understand that going up to a woman you don’t know and asking her if you can touch her is likely to scare her. It’s like they live in a vacuum where sexual assault does not happen.
There was a guy at one con with a “Free Mammograms” costume. Aside from being super cheesy, I had no issue with that, since interested parties could go up to him if they wanted.
I totally empathise, too. My specific problem was I craved male attention, because I’d been made to believe I was supposed to, but at the same time I couldn’t tolerate male attention. More recently I’ve come to the realisation that I’m not actually attracted to men at all, but that didn’t even occur to me as an option in my blue collar town. I was a geek in a lot of ways, and I can’t deny that had I been a teenager a scant few years later, when con culture became accessible via the internet to kids in the middle of the Boreal forest, I might well have been one of these girls.
Now, my mother was and is an amazing role model of self-respecting, self-righteous anger, and I can’t imagine actually participating. On the other hand, I would have felt, as I pretty much constantly did at the time anyway, as a failure to my gender because I wasn’t putting out for the boys.
This kind of shit is so psychologically damaging, and to see this assholes defending it as something “clean” and “pure”? Rage.
I totally empathise, too. My specific problem was I craved male attention, because I’d been made to believe I was supposed to, but at the same time I couldn’t tolerate male attention. More recently I’ve come to the realisation that I’m not actually attracted to men at all, but that didn’t even occur to me as an option in my blue collar town. I was a geek in a lot of ways, and I can’t deny that had I been a teenager a scant few years later, when con culture became accessible via the internet to kids in the middle of the Boreal forest, I might well have been one of these girls.
Now, my mother was and is an amazing role model of self-respecting, self-righteous anger, and I can’t imagine actually participating. On the other hand, I would have felt, as I pretty much constantly did at the time anyway, as a failure to my gender because I wasn’t putting out for the boys.
This kind of shit is so psychologically damaging, and to see this assholes defending it as something “clean” and “pure”? Rage.
Oh, so it’s moderation, then, and not my choppy modem. Whoops!
One of his friends was crying on my LiveJournal about there being “gross misunderstandings” about the “project”.
To which I say: Horseshit. He, his wife, and their hangers on jumped right to name calling and cries of “You’re just a prude! You’re so unhealthy!” the second anyone voice3d dissent.
One can hardly cry “misunderstanding” when the things people are pissed off about are right out there in plain English.
Here’s the thing: the “status quo” already IS that men go up to women and ask if they can touch their breasts.
This guy just wants to get a free pass for being an asshole.
Also, I bet he wouldn’t like it if I went up to him and said “I find you very sexually unappealing. May I squeeze your waistflab?” And yet, he seems to think it’s OK for him to offer me an unsolicited evaluation of my attractiveness as long as it’s “positive”.
I saw this going around on my fan-geeky blogs and wondered how long it would take to hit the feminist blogs.
What really pissed me off about his screed was his waxing poetic about how lovely it was to express his desire, and for women to be able to BE DESIRED. My, how revolutionary, this idea that women can freely be desired. In an entirely pure and non-sexual way of course. Except that it is sexual. (I lost count of how many times he contradicted himself on that count).
(Apparently the people who started the boob-touching were also women, but that fact got completely left out of his original write-up. But you know, the fact that he didn’t mention this at all and that he was writing completely from the perspective of a heterosexual man shouldn’t have made anyone think it was entirely men pulling this shit, so obviously we’re the sexist ones).
He was also resistant to the idea of simply wearing a button himself saying “ask me to touch your boobs if you want!” because that might make people judge him.
Oh man, I remember the day I realized that I actually was attractive. Not to everyone, but whatever, I was attractive to and adored by guys who I thought were super cool *as I was*. It was amazing. I could quit hating myself and do whatever I wanted to and I wouldn’t be alone for forever after all! And fuck anyone who wanted me to try to please them.
I wish I could give that to girls everywhere.
Also, the amazing Women Back Each Other Up Project (with a “Gentlemen’s Auxiliary!”)
I’m pretty much a geek, but I’ve never gone to conventions - mostly because while I enjoy nerdish entertainment, I don’t lurve it, and I don’t obsess over how my favorite series’ creators are destroying my show. This, though, just solidifies my opinion that there are a heck of a lot of nerds I never want to meet or spend time with. This also applies to videogamers.
http://www.theferrett.com/showarticle.php?Rant=46
The story of the homeless woman. No shocker, he’s in favor of exploiting prostituted women, too, and he’s anti-choice. He’s like a Republican hippie, at least when it comes to women.
Quotes:
Unfortunately, I can’t decry the process of “asking repeatedly,” mainly because it’s the only stimuli a lot of women respond to. Frankly, I think any woman who has to be begged fifteen times before she eventually accepts should be drug into the back alleyways and beaten, because her rampant need for a string of pleadings trains the wrong sort of men that no doesn’t mean no. And then we should go beat up the men for good measure.
I believe the part about the man was added later.
But these guys aren’t rapists; they’re enthusiasts. You dressed to provoke a certain reaction, and you got that reaction — just not from the guy you were hoping to attract. And yeah, I’m sorry that the guy was enough of a lout to think that waxing rhapsodic over your boobs was sweet talk that would inevitably lead to the boudoir, and I can even get that it’s tiresome fending off the aroused masses… but the idea that he was wrong for approaching you is just stupid.
You went trolling for men. You caught some. Yeah, you have to throw some back, but don’t blame the men for that.
He freely admits it’s because of his high school issues, which is just….So women are supposed to liberate assholes from their issues now? Isn’t that just so…special?
Ew. I just made the mistake of clicking around and skimming some other posts of his. I need a brain enema.
Here’s the thing: the “status quo” already IS that men go up to women and ask if they can touch their breasts.
Thank you for perfectly articulating my hatred for Vice Magazine.
Actually, one of the main reason I left the fandom/nerditude community was shit like this. People who think that because they are irreverent and cynical, therefore every thought that pops into their head must be boundary breaking, therefore if they think up something racist, sexist, or homophobic it must be ’stirring up the status quo’ by default. When mostly they are just ordinary white hetero dudes with all the crappy preconceptions that implies.
He freely admits it’s because of his high school issues
You know what one of my high school issues was? Assholes asking to touch my breasts. And the passive-aggressive Nice Guys ™ trying to ask without owning that they were asking were just as bad.
Ew, really, the Open Source Boob Project makes him sound positively delightful compared to the other crap that I’m currently trying to clean out of my brain.
Not to be a troll, or anything, but when I read up on this over at John Scalzi’s Blog, I got the impression that it was for the ‘demystification of the boob’ and the realization that, HOLY SHIT! there were real live people attached to them!
He freely admits it’s because of his high school issues
I had issues in high school. Know how I dealt with them?
I GRADUATED. *poof* No more high school issues, because I wasn’t there anymore.
Showing age here but this read like ‘letters to the editor’ from old Penthouse magazines.
Jupiter: sometimes they don’t ask. Dipshit didn’t think about that at all, and he’s got some people defending him. What the hell are women supposed to think when they see this shit going on?
I’ve got a longer comment in moderation that quotes him as saying that if you wear clothes to get attention, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get it. “They’re not rapists: they’re enthusiasts.”
I’m pretty much a geek, but I’ve never gone to conventions - mostly because while I enjoy nerdish entertainment, I don’t lurve it, and I don’t obsess over how my favorite series’ creators are destroying my show.
This applies to me, too. I love sci-fi, and I could probably have been sucked into the culture if not for the time and place I was a teenager. Now, I have different priorities. My kind of con involves a maximum of ten people, wine, and enough investment for intelligent criticism of our entertainment, but not enough investment to attend panel discussions and freak out over niche celebrities.
Not that that’s a bad thing. I AM invested enough in, say, wildlife conservation to attend panel discussions and freak out over niche celebrities. I once dropped everything and queued for hours to get into a David Suzuki lecture, and I have an autographed portrait of Jane Goodall prominently displayed. Like I said - differing priorities.
It looks to me (having spent *way* too much time on this over the past few days) as though the original idea actually came from a group of women. Synecdochic has an illuminating look at the dynamics involved.
I suppose I’m not allowed to request an “Open Source Testicle Project,” wherein I can kick ‘em up high enough to double as earrings if some asshole grabs my breasts?
This post (http://blogs.feministsf.net/?p=340) has a good round up of links (be sure to click through some of the links in the comments)
As a long-time fan who has been to many conventions, and as a female geek who wants more women to go to conventions, I’m annoyed at this guy…
1. He publicly wrote about and promoted what (others in the group had said) was originally supposed to be a private gathering–that is (as I understand it) only one woman was giving out buttons, and only to people she knew. And then he/ they didn’t keep it private: that isn’t polite. And then they pushed it on other people: women in the hallways. That’s bad.
Since I think that conventions are a great place for female geeks to find a comfortable place to be themselves, this is just going to make women worried about going. Yes, there are icky guys at cons (a badge just means you paid the $40 for the weekend, it isn’t vetting), but there’s also a great diversity of neat, geeky people happy to talk about everything under the sun.
Most other places have the same % of icky guys, but without the geek-positive conversations.
.
2. they acted as if they’re doing something new.
No, all sorts of explorations of self and boundaries happens in fandom: this has been happening for decades. But if its things like backrubs or cuddle pits it is supposed to happen in a defined and bounded place, like a room, so that everyone there knows what’s up, and everyone knows that This Is Something That is Always and Only Opt-In.
As a long-time fan who has been to many conventions, and as a female geek who wants more women to go to conventions, I’m annoyed at this guy…
1. He publicly wrote about and promoted what (others in the group had said) was originally supposed to be a private gathering–that is (as I understand it) only one woman was giving out buttons, and only to people she knew. And then he/ they didn’t keep it private: that isn’t polite. And then they pushed it on other people: women in the hallways. That’s bad.
Since I think that conventions are a great place for female geeks to find a comfortable place to be themselves, this is just going to make women worried about going. Yes, there are icky guys at cons (a badge just means you paid the $40 for the weekend, it isn’t vetting), but there’s also a great diversity of neat, geeky people happy to talk about everything under the sun.
Most other places have the same % of icky guys, but without the geek-positive conversations.
.
2. they acted as if they’re doing something new.
No, all sorts of explorations of self and boundaries happens in fandom: this has been happening for decades. But if its things like backrubs or cuddle pits it is supposed to happen in a defined and bounded place, like a room, so that everyone there knows what’s up, and everyone knows that This Is Something That is Always and Only Opt-In.
I *so* relate to the commenters who spoke up about being tormented in high school, and having cripplingly low self esteem as a result. I remember, in certain situations, men acting inappropriate and creepy toward me, and actually feeling kind of relieved that someone thought I was attractive. It’s extremely embarrassing to think about, but I realize now that it’s the reason why I had a hard time setting personal boundaries when I became an adult.
I feel so badly for the women at the convention who let these creeps grope them. I look back on so many situations in my life feeling ashamed that I didn’t tell the dude to piss off. It’s sad that my desire to be a feminist bad-ass was, at one point, eclipsed by my desire to be considered attractive. I’m much better at sticking up for myself now, and for calling out creepy behavior for what it is; but it can still be hard and scary.
Am I correct in understanding that these dudes approached women in groups? That would be terrifying!
I don’t think this is funny. I read the ferret’s blog and there are quite a few female posters who were at the - I think penguicon event - who were just fine with offering their breasts up for a little NSA groping. One woman basically said that she’d been in an abusive relationship so to her mind being given the choice whether or not to participate was, in itself, empowering…. I used to think, who else but a straight male pervert would think just the choice of whether to consent indicated empowerment, but from reading those comments, I’m seeing that some of those women are defining their liberation in the same way.
I’m at a loss for how to explain myself. I’m writing this trying to focus to avoid stream of consciousness complaining. I keep thinking that if a gay men’s choir were convening in the building next door and they came over to the sci-fi con, would the men so eager to engage in groping women find it “empowering” to wear a Yes/No button to give random gay men permission to grope their schlongs? Probably not. Is there any equitable, analogous situation that straight men could find themselves in, wherein public sexual contact with strangers that would otherwise be considered at best inappropriately taboo and at worst a physical violation somehow be rendered a milestone of their sexual liberation?
And I really can’t see this as anything but a really sick way to try to convince women that self-objectification is good for them. It seems like a flimsy disguise for realizing teenage wet dreams. At least with spin-the-bottle you get reciprocation.
So, wait, after touching these boobs, people could recreate the boobs from DNA traces? And then use the boobs as components in new artistic projects, and pass on multiple copies of the boobs to anyone they pleased?
No?
Then it ain’t open or free.
I’m sure Richard Stallman would be horrified by the unwanted imposition upon female con-goers. Shithead Eric Raymond, not so much.
What in sam hill are you talking about? Neither I, nor any man I know, would ever think of going up to a woman and asking that. If I did I would expect no less than a knee in the nuts.
Sometimes, when people talk about “the patriarchy”, I feel like I’ve stepped into a parrallel universe.
PAT,
Do you know how many times complete strangers have groped me, or asked to grope me?
Because I can’t count that high.
Pat-
Feeling that something that has never happened to you, as a guy, means that this thing NEVER happens? Ever?
And that if a woman talks about something fucking scary or sexually inappropriate that a het dude has done to her and you have no idea what she’s talking about…
…because you’re a het dude yourself?
And you feel that she therefore must be just crazy and stupid and imagining things?
It’s called male privilege. Check yourself.
What’s special is that his wife is defending him to the hilt (and complaining that all the negative attention this has earned them is making her crrrryyyyyyy)
If you check their lj profiles, you’ll see that his wife is 50 - 11 years older than her husband. It’s not only teenagers who can feel insecure. How secure do you think a woman who is probably menopausal feels being married to a man 11 years her junior who likes to touch young girls’ breasts?
Pat, my boyfriend felt the same way, and further thought that basically no man who wasn’t in prison would act like that.
Until I started actually recounting for him (instead of just ‘ignoring’ them, or ‘letting it slide off’ like us Good Girls are supposed to) every time some asshole groped me in a bar, or on the Metro, or followed me down the street describing in graphic detail the sexual acts he wanted to perform on me (that last just happened to me most recently on Monday).
Once he realized that I was coming home from work with one of these stories at least once a week, he figured out pretty quick that there are plenty of men just walking the streets, looking like everyone else, who pull exactly that kind of shit.
Think back to high school and the guys you knew (or at least had classes with) back then. Remember the way they would talk about girls.
Not quite so unbelievable now, is it? You’d think that at some point these guys would stop being proud of never having moved beyond the emotional maturity level of a 14-year-old, but I guess not.
Well, it didn’t happen to Pat, so we can all relax now.
Notorious P.A.T., do you never leave your home?
Because quite seriously, people have “asked” me if they could touch my breasts in the following locations:
On the street; in a grocery store; at a party; in a job interview; on the subway; on the bus; in the airport; in a classroom; at the beach; at a bar; in the bleachers at Fenway Park; and probably other locations I can’t recall right now. Oh! I know another particularly egregious one–at a strip club, where I was not performing (in that case, the bouncer intervened, as he would have for one of his performing colleagues).
Now, I have no way of gauging how serious these requests were, because the answers were always “No.” Some of them may have been purely rhetorical (I suspect the ones that were called from the windows of passing cars, for instance, probably were).
I applaud you for knowing that this is rude and inappropriate behavior, and for not doing it yourself. Kudos to you, and would that there were more people who shared your perspective.
Neither I, nor any man I know, would ever think of going up to a woman and asking that.
Riiiiight.
That’s probably because you wouldn’t bother to ask first. You would just assume that, because you bought her dinner and she let you kiss her, therefore you had the right.
Notorious P.A.T., do you never leave your home?
Hell, you don’t even have to leave your home. Just read any blog thread about harassment on a feminist blog.
Crabby:
Don’t worry, several variants on The Open Source Swift Kick in the Nuts project formed within hours of TheFerret’s post.
More important, though, is the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program, which is actually putting together T-shirts, buttons, etc. for the next con. They’re (we’re) pledging:
We also have the IMHO equally important Y Chromosome Reserves, whose motto is “Friends don’t let friends be Creepy Guys”.“Then I grew up and realized that, despite everything the Spice Girls said, ‘empowerment’ and ‘inspiring erections’ are not synonymous.”
Yep, “inspiring erections” is a part of it, but true empowerment lies in the motivating of desire, then denying the fulfillment of that desire forever to men. That’s the basic idea, but you can use this to psychologically torture men to the point of suicide and insanity. Besides, they deserve this, the only pure kind of attraction and love lies with relations with other women.
Pat, a guy asked if he could grope me about four days ago. In the street. In broad daylight. It was such an unremarkable occurrence that I’d completely forgotten about it until this thread came up. So shut the fuck up.
“Luckily for me I got hawt around 16, and gradually acquired self-confidence about my attractiveness via a series of boyfriends, not parties, nights clubbin’, or (new one!) conventions.”
If you had sex with your boyfriends then you’re giving into the patriarchy, and you have fallen to the impure darkness of heterosexual lust. The only wholesome and pure kind of attraction and love is lesbian love.
I read through the comments in the original ferretts lj thread. It followed a very simple structure:
Woman 1: This is horrible–you’re completely objectifying women and making us qualify ourselves by how much access you can have to our bodies.
Ferrett: Oh, we have to ask first!
[like that will be respected]
Woman 2: I find this incredibly demeaning.
Ferrett: We have to ask first! It’s not demeaning, it’s a beautiful thing!
Woman 3: I will never attend a con again
Woman 4: Any chance of me attending a con has now vanished
Woman 5: I don’t want to be sexually assaulted. Count me out of any future cons.
Woman n: This is incredibly frightening. I’m never going to a con now that I could be groped or be held up as some frigid deviant because I didn’t want to be groped.
Ferrett [perhaps realizing that the ladyflesh will be in short supply now and his chance to grope beautiful women showing off their goods in skimpy blue princess dresses will be reduced]: I’ve seen the light! We’ll stop this immediately! Oh, woe unto me, it was never my intention to make the delicate breastlings feel unwelcome!
You’re the one living in the parallel universe, then. Over here on Earth-One, I’ve seen men tell women to bare their breasts, or simply walk up and cop a feel, on dozens of occasions in the last ten years. I’m sure it happens more often than I’ve seen, since assholes prefer lone victims.
Since you apparently don’t believe the words of women (or you wouldn’t have declared them sci-fi nonsense), I’ll assure you that I am a man. A gay one, though, so my testimony might be impermissible as well.
Who put the choads in my geek?
Seriosuly, this is giving me second thoughts about attending comicon this year and I’m a guy.
A list of things I have never personally experienced and therefore, must not exist:
1. HIV
2. Cancer
3. War in my home country
4. Discrimination based on the color of my skin
5. Starvation
Wow look at that. I cured cancer and AIDs, eliminated racism and world hunger, and brought peace to the world all before quitin’ time.
Life sure is great when you pretend that things you haven’t experienced don’t happen.
Like PAT, I can’t say I’ve seen that sort of thing happen*, or at least not often, and I DO sympathize with his feeling of “stepping into a parallel universe”…
…the (well, one of the) difference between us, however, is that when women report things I don’t have direct experience of, I believe them. Especially when it’s so widely reported, by nearly any woman you talk to. Even before I took to thinking of and calling myself a feminist, I instinctively believed women when they told of their problems.
I guess that’s not a very common thing among white, heterosexual guys - certainly not common enough. I know when my friend’s girlfriend was raped at a party, I was very shocked to find out how few people believed her story over his, and looking back, it’s a source of some small pride that I was one of them.
*though it could be that I simply didn’t notice it at the time. SEP field, privilege blinders, etc.
“Parallel universe” is actually a pretty good metaphor. You have the universe of what men experience and the universe of what women experience.
My comment got smoked. WTF?
Anyhoo, I also read ferret’s original thread and there were quite a few women *defending* the NSA groping from this perspective: man/men walked up to me and asked if it was okay, and then I consented, thus it is empowering because I …
1) know what I’m comfortable with and I was comfortable with it
2) was in an abusive relationship in which everything was about what the male wanted, not what I wanted and I wanted this
3) felt good about myself knowing my breasts were desirable.
4) was given the choice to consent.
I’m not really sure what to do with arguments like these. In the case of the first justification, I see parallels between the groping and domestic abuse. A DA victim might “consent” to remaining in a relationship with her abuser - even defend him - but that doesn’t make the abuse okay. In the case of the second, I fail to see how the woman can assert empowerment when she’s essentially consenting to objectification, as if that’s a GOOD thing. For the third justification, I just want to scream. I suppose any woman in the patriarchy looks for some kind of public approval because we’re socialized since birth to do so, but to see it acknowledged and almost cherished is disturbing. If this woman’s self-esteem is based on approval from others, it’s time for some I-love-me-for-me education. As for the last one, it’s worthy of crying. Since when do we equate the freedom to consent with sexual empowerment in a modern, western society? I could understand feeling that way in Somalia or Saudi Arabia, but the US? In 2008? Haven’t we gotten way past that yet?
I wouldn’t allow men to grope my breasts but I think people should be free to grope each other in public if they want to.
I think what pissed me off most was his claim that the whole thing was “not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.”
Excuse me, but how is walking up to a stranger and basically telling her “I don’t give a flying fuck about you as a person, let me grab your boobies” not seeing her as a set of tits with legs?
Particularly telling also was the comment thread where somebody proposed that instead of the women willing to be asked about a grope wearing a button, the prospective gropers would wear a button proclaiming that the wearer would like to touch some tits, would anybody interested please apply. It was immedeatly shot down because a) the guys would not get in as many gropes that way and b) they could be judged for wearing that kind of button. Tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that asshole.
Ah yes, this is the guy whose claim to fame is a book about hosting a good “LAN party”. Ugh.
Bumped into him once before from a debunkingwhite LJ discussion. None of the debunking regulars who tried to get him to see past his white privilege had any success. Doesn’t surprise me in the least that he’s all up in his male privilege too. Attitudes like his are incidentally one of the many reasons I returned to school to get away from IT.
Guys who don’t understand why women aren’t flattered by this sort of thing assume they’d just love it if women objectified them in the same way, always imagining being groped by hot young women they’re attracted to. They seem to miss the point that, throughout real daily life, women don’t get to choose to only be harassed by men they already find attractive (in fact, the act of harassing usually makes them UNattractive). I always wonder (and explicitly ask, if in a siutation where I can) how these obviously-hetereosexual men would feel if gay men were allowed to do the same thing to them — here I guess that would be grabbing their ass or testicles. And of course, these choads all think that should be met with disgust, anger and/or violence. But wait, I though it was supposed to be FLATTERING to be told you’re so IRRESISTABLY ATTRACTIVE??? Right?
Holy crap I remember this guy from way back in my Magic:The Gathering days. (If it is the same guy, and I think it is from his LJ days)
Here’s what I remember. Way back in the early days of M:TG when the tourney scene was first starting up there was a site called TheDojo that was the first community site for strategy, tournament reports, whatever.
In any case, one writer, I believe his name was Jamie Wakefield (I might be wrong..it’s been a while) became pretty well known in that circle for his off-the-wall strategy, humorous reports and basically irreverent attitude. (In a good way, at least if memory serves me right.)
After he dropped out of the scene a bunch of writers came up to try and fill that void. I believe this TheFerrett was one of them. Not nearly as funny, and for some reason I have a dark memory in my mind of this guy. Which this whole story (if it is the same guy, and like I said, I think it is) kinda just brought to light.
Sorries, that last statement was meant to be the other comment I saw frequently in the ferret thread.
But Jane, they’re not attracted to men, so it’s totally different! If they were approached by a lady, they’d be totally stoked, no matter what! Even if she were 80 years old, or their boss who’s a total racist, or their mom.
of, forgot to add my voice to the “fuck you, PAT” chorus
Fuck you, Pat.
KarmaKin: Might be the same TheFerrett. He’s got a gig at the Magic site www.starcitygames.com.
And if I hadn’t already paid for a yearly subscription a few months back, I would seriously consider taking my business elsewhere.
Oh crap, BTW sorry for linking to the damn site. Last thing I want to do is shill for it. If I could go back I would edit out the name/link of the site, just say he has a gig at a well known Magic strategy site.
Right. That site. That’s who I’m thinking of too. Wonder if it is the same guy.
Outright Choadery isn’t all that common in the geek community, although it does happen. May I state that I really fucking hate chaods?
I know someone who writes for that site, and my best friend’s mother apparently knows the guy who wrote the initial post.
The internet creates a very small world.
http://misia.livejournal.com/1055120.html
The Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project
Reminds me of a story my shrink told me once about going out on a date with a guy who, as they were driving, just reached out and grabbed her breast and started squeezing.
She then had to say, “Uh, that’s my breast prosthesis, not a breast.”
oops, forgot the hat-tip to Sabotabby at Punkassblog…
I think the reason some men are reluctant to believe stories about groping is not because they mistrust what the women are saying so much as because they are so appalled by the idea that anyone would wander around groping random women or telling them what they wanted to do sexually and so forth that astonishment is the logical response. I can remember when a female friend first alerted me to this: I didn’t think she was being insincere, but my tiny little mind just had no way of accepting the idea that there were guys out there who were that big of jerks. I mean seriously, how bored and useless do you have to be to act like that?
II read the link and, while I see the temptation to regard this as a feminist issue, what these boys are proposing doesn’t strike me as much different than the gay bathhouse scene of the late 70s and early 80s. If it would be prejudiced to damn gays for anonymous sex, how does it make sense to damn heterosexual males for wanting the same thing for women?
Also, some women are really into being sex objects, like Nina Hartley.
“I think the reason some men are reluctant to believe stories about groping is not because they mistrust what the women are saying so much as because they are so appalled by the idea that anyone would wander around groping random women or telling them what they wanted to do sexually and so forth that astonishment is the logical response.”
Yeah, but there’s astonishment, and then there’s “Nuh-uh! That only happens in Bizarro-world.”
I mean, I was astonished when a black woman prefaced a simple request for help in a shop with “Do you talk to black people?” as if that was a perfectly normal, non-batshit thing to have to ask. It had not, up to that point, been my experience that some people were so racist that they might flat-out refuse to converse, however briefly, with a black person. But I can’t imagine the set of gonads it would have taken to assume that she must have been crazy and that racism like that doesn’t actually happen, just because I’ve never seen it.
I’ve been to cons four times in my life, DragonCon in Atlanta and Comic-Con in San Diego and I am lucky because I’ve apparently missed shit like this. There are usually tons of women/young girls at comic-con so I’ve never felt marginalized because of my gender. And I’d hate for it to infect Comic-Con because I love going to that con and I would hate to get banned because I’m a violent person when it comes to invading the personal space bubble. Touch me when I don’t want you to and there will be blood. Pun intended.
Count me among those young women who came out of high school never having had a boyfriend or gotten any real approval/attention from men and it fucked me up royally for most of my college years. Now I totally know better and there are things that I look back on and wonder why/how the fuck I put up with them.
I can’t really add too much because a lot of other people have had excellent posts about this. But when I first started reading about it on other blogs it reminded me of Girls Gone Wild when it first started and I and my friends couldn’t figure out for the life of us why women would show their breasts (or more) on camera for a trucker hat. It seems to me that some douchebags have figured out that it no longer requires actual payment (i.e. money) for the female body, male attention has become the new currency and apparently you can trade for that shit like gold.
See, I hear “open source boobs” and my immediate thought was some manner of open source pornography project that simply picked that for a cheeky name (as “Open Source Pornography Project” sounds so humorless. Wikiporn maybe, or GNUdity Project). So, you know, real human beings contribute fap/schlick material featuring real people, created outside of the studio system, with among other aims, producing something that isn’t the becoming disturbingly common violently misogynist porn, and denying revenue, either in membership or advertising dollars, to people that produce such materials.
so, in addition to being choads, they’ve immediately cornered the marketplace of ideas, so now anything associating sex with open source is going to be mentally linked to these dicks. good job, asshats.
Nah, karpad, once Stallman gets GNUdity up and bootstrapping, he’ll just crank out a blog post saying that Open Source Boobs was imcompatibly licensed, and was never porno libre to begin with.
OK, how screwed up am I? I’m sitting here wondering if the reason no mouth-breathing, slack-jawed, slime-wad has ever tried to feel me up in public is because my boobz are too small.
Yep. Worried that I haven’t been sexually assaulted because I’m not pretty enough.
Holy crap, do I need help.
If you had sex with your boyfriends then you’re giving into the patriarchy, and you have fallen to the impure darkness of heterosexual lust. The only wholesome and pure kind of attraction and love is lesbian love.
Oh, please. Just because random women don’t want your fugly ass groping them doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with heterosexuality. It’s not all men, just the creepy entitled losers.
Worried that I haven’t been sexually assaulted because I’m not pretty enough.
I’ve been there. …Hell, what am I saying, I’m there all the time.
It’s weird reading about women saying they’re harassed every day, because I am not even harassed in the “hey ugly bitch” way. I am totally ignored. Given how different my experience is from most others, I can’t help but wonder why. Note that I am not lamenting, and not meaning to put anyone off.
I can kinda see where NPAT is coming from. I would never even consider treating someone that way, and I wouldn’t put up with it from the people with whom I associate either, so my first reaction was “what the fuck?” But I’m not willing to assume that every one of the women who report this behavior are liars. Which still, I guess, leaves me with the response, “what the fuck?” I really hate people sometimes.
Anyway, I volunteer on the staff of one of those big cons in Atlanta that was mentioned upthread, and I’ll be forwarding word of this story on to our boss and the security team so they can be on the lookout for copycats. We get some new and disgusting behavior every year, and it really only takes 2 or 3 idiots out of tens of thousands to cause a major problem. Hopefully this won’t be the idiocy this year.
OK, how screwed up am I? I’m sitting here wondering if the reason no mouth-breathing, slack-jawed, slime-wad has ever tried to feel me up in public is because my boobz are too small.
I have large breasts and have never been groped, if that’s any comfort to you. Though, being chubby provides me with a magical cloak of invisibility such that most men ignore my presence all together which isn’t a bad thing in many situations.
I go frequently to anime cons, and we have our own share of special ‘fanboys’…but when I’ve heard about this, and it’s been repeatedly so over the internet and my friend’s pages, I’ve just been like. “Wtf?” Then I tried to read, and I was like… “O…k…that MIGHT have been a good idea among friends…” but his major mistake was trying to expand it. THAT, is a big no no. As in NO!
I’ve been lucky. I’m chubby, even if curvy, and short. I don’t get many assholes, and I’m also friends with many a guy, and girls too, who do NOT PUT UP with that shit, and we’d all come to each other, as well as stranger’s backs if needed. (I did once threaten to get Con-security on a group of fangirls harassing two cosplayers. I am LOUD, if short, and I was totally serious once I confirmed that no–the cosplayers did NOT want that attention.)
*sigh* For me, I think one commenter put it best when they mentioned it’s about discretion. (Aside from the obvious patriarchy and male-entitlement issues…) The minute you do something like this in public, you are taking away other people’s choices as to whether they want to ‘participate’ or not. B/c it is in public, they are somewhat stuck in the ‘role’ of witness.
*Sigh* I love cons, and I hate to see this as having tainted it.
sandchigger: That might well have been the idea. Wouldn’t be the first idea that proved a disaster in implemention, or in any context but the very narrowly defined original one. And not having seen this coming sets the originator up for the old malice/stupidity razor.
deep6: The only vaguely analogous idea that comes to mind (missing the sexual part) is walking though town wearing a “you may ask me to hand over my wallet” button. Or sandwich board. (Or the already mentioned “Open Source Swift Kick in the Balls Project”…)
Grammar RWA: Rivkat on LJ goes into some detail on why calling that “Open Source” is an ugly category mistake. And now I’m getting my brain into knots by imagining the Open Source folks going after these creeps for trademark damage, or something.
PAT: when people talk about “the patriarchy”, I feel like I’ve stepped into a parrallel universe.
The one where the other half lives.
Also, numbers game. Imagine one in a hundred people being a scumbag, and one in ten scumbags too busy to harrass you. And then consider how many people come within hearing range of you in a day.
felagund: Those “The world’s a lot more shitty than previously assumed” moments of insight. It seems one is never done with them.
As a boring straight guy who works in IT and has worked a lot with open source software, this kind of shit just pisses me off. This kind of crap is unacceptable any kind of con, professional or otherwise.
But is anyone surprised that a guy who named himself after a weasel is involved in this?
mwg: Hey! ;p
Actually, I always feel bad for the lj user with the same name sans a trailing “t”, when something like comes up.
Most likely geography. New York seems to be the capital of Random Assholes on the Street, but other cities where people walk a lot seem to have lots of reports of bad behavior.
It doesn’t happen to me often here in Los Angeles because most people drive everywhere and car-to-car hooting isn’t very effective. When it happens, it’s usually when I’m on foot.
OK, how screwed up am I? I’m sitting here wondering if the reason no mouth-breathing, slack-jawed, slime-wad has ever tried to feel me up in public is because my boobz are too small.
Yep. Worried that I haven’t been sexually assaulted because I’m not pretty enough.
Holy crap, do I need help.
eh, it hasn’t happened to me since I was about twenty, and I am slim with big boobs and get called beautiful quite often. I’d put it down to the problem not being as bad in Ireland where I live, but that is not the experience of some of my female friends– and it definitely used to happen to me sometimes.
I have noticed that the only time i EVER get bothered by men on the street now (at least when I am by myself) is when i am emotionally upset or in actual physical pain. I think the rest of the time I put out a vibe that scares them off, whether it is something in my expression, my walk or what. Not that it really matters why, and I am sure that my ability to look through people like they’re unstylish furniture wouldn’t protect me in a city where street harrassment is REALLY bad– but it is the case that some women seem to be able to avoid this crap more than others do, and it has nothing to do with appearance. If you don’t mind getting advice from a random stranger on the Internet, mine would be: appreciate your luck, and don’t worry about it!
mwg: hey! leave the Mustelidae alone. They’re cute. And they can’t help the smell.
drooling_ferret: I always feel bad for the lj user with the same name sans a trailing “t”,
I happened upon her LJ by typo today. Seems she’s annoyed at everyone in 20pt letters right now, and with reason.
Let me go back to what caused my original post:
The status quo is what is normal and accepted. I don’t think it is normal or accepted in our society for a man to do that. There are, of course, plenty of freaks, mutants, and a**holes out there who don’t care what society considers appropriate either way, but I hardly agree that our society tells men they should go out and make any woman they see their personal blow-up doll.
Of course I believe women who say they have been abused by some of these a**holes, but I deny that that is the default state of our society. I do leave my home, every day, and I’ve never even seen a man assault a woman. There could be a million scumbags out there and that would still be just 1% of the American male population (too many, of course, but still not enough to make it the status quo). I would even go so far as to say that if someone were to report an assault like that to the cops, there’s a good chance they would do something about it.
Also, let me reiterate for those who don’t know or have forgotten: being kicked in the nuts is excrutiating. It not only hurts, it inspires feelings of nausea that transcend the mere physical. If a man grabs someone without their permission, or even suggests such, he has earned a nice, swift demonstration. Heck, just a grazing will cause the desired effect.
I would even go so far as to say that if someone were to report an assault like that to the cops, there’s a good chance they would do something about it.
Everyone who wants to sign up for NPAT’s planet, the line forms right behind me.
Looks like the only drawback is that NPAT lives there.
NPAT: wow… just, NO.
First, as others have said - your experience of reality is extremely different from, well, apparently a lot of people’s.
Second, and you’re not the first to respond this way, WTF is it with the “OMG even joking about a blow to the testicles is out of bounds - looking at them the wrong way is enough to crush a man forever!”?
Ha! Yeah, I see this a lot. Usually from the same guys who think it’s funny to make rape jokes
Most likely geography. New York seems to be the capital of Random Assholes on the Street, but other cities where people walk a lot seem to have lots of reports of bad behavior.
Yeah, good point. I’ve lived all my life in Atlanta, an area which avoids walking in public as much as humanly possible.
I don’t think it is normal or accepted in our society for a man to do that.
And yet, here we are.
“The status quo is what is normal and accepted.”
Thanks, we understand English. As we’ve been trying to explain to you, when deciding what’s normal and accepted in terms of treatment of women, it’s best to ask the women, as we’re the ones who know how we are treated. The fact that you personally don’t do these things is appreciate, but does not mean that others don’t, or that you couldn’t get away with it (in the sense of police and bystanders not caring) if you tried.
And, yes, we know that a kick to the balls hurts. That’s why it’s being suggested as a response. Because having your boob grabbed out of nowhere by a random stranger (which HAS happened to me, as has ass-grabbing, crotch-grabbing and face-licking) is SCARY. It puts me in fear of being raped and/or killed. Not exaggerating. Because a person who behaves so far outside the bounds of what is respectful? How the hell can I know where he’ll stop. And a total stranger coming out of nowhere and even just asking to touch my breasts? Not any less scary, for the same reason.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I kind-of understand the feelings on both sides of this.
You need to understand that there’s a certain innocence/ignorance at hand here. This kind of thing at cons isn’t generally promulgated by those who just want to grope.
A lot of science fiction and fantasy authors write books with different sexual mores where sex is more open, less shameful, and where it’s possible to openly negotiate a desire for sex.
The key difference is that, in those worlds, reality is different. Women aren’t constantly on their guard against rape; women who love having sex are not viewed in a negative light; you’ve got entirely different cultures.
Shrug. Then, add in that many congoers are socially awkward in the first place, not sure of the rules or the reasons behind them.
Mix those aspects together, and it’s easy for a group of them to think “damn it, why not? Why couldn’t it work? Why couldn’t ‘can I touch your breasts’ be just a question, like ‘hey, could I borrow your pen?’”
Anyway. I’m not saying that it’s not a terrible idea, but it’s a lot more understandable if you know the frame of mind of many congoers, and there can be more ignorance than entitlement going on.
“Hey, can I borrow your pen?”
Um, in case you haven’t noticed, a woman is not an inanimate object, nor are her body parts some divisible collection of fun spare parts.
Ginmar:
The most polite response I can make to this follows:
Kindly sharpen your reading skills. It can be valuable to understand the difference between a hypothetical question, asked by a hypothetical person, and an actual question asked by the speaker.
Thank you for your consideration.
A lot of science fiction and fantasy authors write books with different sexual mores where sex is more open, less shameful, and where it’s possible to openly negotiate a desire for sex.
Not to unnecessarily rag on all sci-fi ever, but I’ve always noticed that works that cover this particular theme are VERY often written by and for men, with an eye to the sorts of ‘different sexual mores’ that are much more likely to engage the fantasies of typical hetero dudes. Not that there isn’t awesome and sexy feminist sci-fi out there, but, yeah, this is just another example where “idea that aligns quite easily with the status quo” gets classified as iconoclasm.
Not to mention, seriously, if these guys are so deep in the nerd underground that they can’t tell where Torchwood ends and reality begins, they need a lot more help than any kick in the nuts could ever provide.
I’m going to have to stop commenting at Pandagon. Holly has a post up at Feministe outlining the problem, and I’m putting up the comments I made there, here:
***
I’m a regular commenter at Pandagon who doesn’t have a feminist blog worthy of the name — pretty much all I post on my blog are copies of comments I make on other people’s blogs, to keep track of the conversations I’m in.
Last week I didn’t have time to read all the 200+ comment threads where this was being discussed, so I decided to wimp out and follow Pam’s lead, because I think of her as my link into the POC blogosphere. I thought, “as long as Pam’s happy, I’ll assume there’s nothing I need to investigate in greater depth.” But I’ve felt uncomfortable enough to make a point of commenting on other Pandagonian’s posts more than Amanda’s.
I know, I know, OK?
Anyway, Holly’s post here has sealed the deal for me. Unless & until Pam — for whom I still have enormous respect until proven otherwise — gives me a persuasive reason to come back, I won’t be commenting at Pandagon any more.
And for me this is a wrench that it isn’t for most of you. You read the posts; I’m part of the community of commenters. This decision cuts me off from that community, and though some of the regulars are people I run into around the blogosphere, there are a number I can’t count on encountering again. And *that’s* why I’m crying.
***
I might also return if Amanda herself makes a series of posts on the various racial issues that have been raised around the feminist blogosphere. I’m a little incoherent with grief, at the moment: being part of the community of commenters here has meant a lot to me.
I’ve cross-posted at my blog (linked to my name), so drop me an electron there to let me know where you’re hanging. Ginmar, Jes, etc. — I’ll be seeing you around.
where it’s possible to openly negotiate a desire for sex.
Kind of like the real world. It’s really not that hard for those who more time talking to women and less time pondering why women don’t want to be groped by strangers. But I get that congoers are less likely to understand or appreciate that.
It frustrates me that most of these guys probably honestly don’t get what’s wrong with this shit, and there’s no way I can think of to get that through to someone so deluded. They’re getting women’s “permission” to grope them, so what’s the problem? If women don’t want to be put in that position, they don’t have to come to the con. Hey, you women like being groped by hot guys, don’t you, you hypocrites, so you can put up with having to fight off the ugly ones. Telling these guys that this makes them look like pathetic losers has no effect, because they already know they are, and it’s made them heroes and martyrs in their own minds. Hey, maybe we can’t get a girl to talk to us, but we should at least be able to have a little hands-on wank fodder. We’ve accepted that we’re pathetic and we suck, so why do the selfish bitches have to hoard the goods away from us starving men?
LongHairedWeirdo, kindly sharpen your not being an asshole skills. She’s pointing out that these two questions can never be equivalent, no matter how “socially awkward” the asker, because one involves a person’s body and one doesn’t. In other words, there’s more going on here than just “innocence/ignorance”.
I’m not saying that it’s not a terrible idea, but it’s a lot more understandable if you know the frame of mind of many congoers, and there can be more ignorance than entitlement going on.
A), Ignorance is no excuse and isn’t mutually exclusive from entitlement, and B), Why do you assume we don’t already know the frame of mind of many congoers? Nothing you’ve said is news to me; I’d wager many of us already know Heinlein. I suggest, if you’re actually interested in discussion on this topic, that you look into the many, many discussions of the topic, many of which are by *gasp* female congoers.
I think you’re wrong in both particulars, but I’m not the voracious reader I wish I was, so I could be wrong.
I think most folks recognize that how we do sex is so twisted and broken that there must be better ways, and one of the biggest “better ways” to imagine it is to have people be sufficiently empowered that they could freely own what they want, and be willing to speak about it unashamedly, when appropriate.
But it requires a world very different from own own.
They are sharp enough that I knew precisely how to be an asshole when I wished to be.
LongHairedWeirdo: kindly google “Men Who Explain Things”. Just like that, quotes and all. That first result? Read that.
Annejumps:
As for A, I’m not saying it’s an excuse, and sure, it’s not exclusive of entitlement. But it can be a different mindset, and that mindset can explain some of why the discussion gets strangely contentious.
Herm. How to explain? I think almost anywhere you went, you’d find most folks would recognize this as being completely ridiculous and indefensible.
I think if a typical fratboy had come up with this, the flavor would be entirely different, and the entitlement would be obvious and noxious.
But I can easily see myself in my late teens (or, gads, do I have to admit, early 20s?)thinking “well, why don’t people at least recognize that this could be nice, *if* it was possible? I mean, I know it’s not, but can’t people *dream*?”
And a large part of the reason is that I simply didn’t quite get the level and constancy of sexual nastiness in our culture. I didn’t understand how ingrained it was. I didn’t understand what it meant. If a Socratic questioner had asked me the right questions, I’d have understood, but without such a questioner, I didn’t have the ability to put the pieces together for myself. It was a disease of my youth, cured by more maturation.
So now I know better. Now, I’m embarrassed by people who bring up issues like this, because, god, guys, don’t you *get it*? But it doesn’t change the fact that the biggest reason I’m embarrassed is that I know that I could have fallen under the sway of such an idea a long time ago.
I think if a typical fratboy had come up with this…
Which argument boils down yet again to “nerdy guys get a pass because they’re, like, innately transgressive”.
Nobody gets a pass. You do not have to be a stereotypical douchebag, jock, fratboy, or republican to be clueless about feminism. Hip guys, creative guys, sensitive guys, smart guys, and nerdy guys are not automatically clued in via their niceness, intelligence, or membership in a cool subculture.
Mix those aspects together, and it’s easy for a group of them to think “damn it, why not? Why couldn’t it work? Why couldn’t ‘can I touch your breasts’ be just a question, like ‘hey, could I borrow your pen?’”
Anyway. I’m not saying that it’s not a terrible idea, but it’s a lot more understandable if you know the frame of mind of many congoers, and there can be more ignorance than entitlement going on.
Kindly stop being an entitlement-denying asshole. Others have said it, but let me re-iterate, dipshit: a woman’s body is not the same as a pen. What the fuck next? Comparing a prostitute to a hamburger? Has a new meme started?
Actually, I think the typical frat boy and the typical nerd/geek thinking up these kinds of “brilliant” ideas are getting them from the same place: a deep fear of women that festers into hatred.
The nerd/geek is seeing women as objects just as much as the frat boys are. They may be less audible in their hooting, but they’re making the same assumption that women are so different from men that they’re not even human and so don’t have to be treated the way they would treat their fellow humans (ie other men).
I really wish this surprised me but I’ve spent way too much time around the geek set (gamers, programmers, etc) and find this totally consistent with the subculture. It doesn’t even surprise me how many women are defending this and claiming it empowers them– so many went from getting no attention/looked at as unfeminine in high school to suddenly being the objects of desire that they mistake this as liberation. I know that feeling firsthand too. Too often the geek set objectifies women in worse ways than in mainstream culture because they do it to their female friends, whom they claim to see as equals.
And while the sexual fantasies found in much of the sci-fi seem really liberating to the male readers, it is still heterosexist and phallocentric, thus not very appealing to many women. As this dipshit and his friends amply prove.
No one said they get a pass. Why does “X is understandable” equate to “ignore X”? Why doesn’t “X is understandable but terrible” not equate to “stomp the holy fuck out of X because it’s terrible”?
I said it is a terrible idea. It is a terrible idea, and that it is terrible should be driven home.
Ginmar:
Since you are still unable to read for comprehension, let me make it clear. In the portion you quoted, I am speaking about a hypothetical set of people (that means they’re not real) asking a hypothetical question (there’s that word again).
Get it? I am not asking that question; I am speculating about the possibility of others asking that question as a hypothetical, and that, due to a “terrible” level of cluelessness over the human condition, and an inability to separate truth from fantasy.
Now: if your life is so empty that you have to add meaning to it by attacking imaginary slights performed by imaginary people, please, carry on.
I might be willing to, but you’ll have to explain first. I have no desire to be blindsided.
“I might be willing to, but you’ll have to explain first. I have no desire to be blindsided.”
Dude, it’s a link. The point is to follow the breadcrumbs, not stand around and ask us what kind of bread the crumbs are made from. And the general idea of what it’s about should be pretty damn obvious, considering the conversation that led up to it being suggested.
Follow the link and be enlightened - or don’t. Just don’t ask any of us to hold your effing hand through the whole ordeal.