Yup. Tons of women have posted their #metoo stories; he could've just googled it if he was so concerned for his own personal safety from accusations. Lucy Flores's story of how uncomfortable she felt when Joe Biden kissed her is a perfect example that even explains clearly where the line is--_do not kiss someone you just met._ Only kiss people who are close friends, lovers, or family. This tumblrite has got a bad case of narcissism masquerading as self-pity.
>narcissism masquerading as self-pity
Bingo. All the technicalities / "rules laywering" are a roundabout way of complaining that other people have the right to have their personal boundaries respected.
On the one hand, yeah, it’s kind of easy: don’t sexually assault
people. On the other - which is not what I say is going on - it seems
some men are intentionally dense about consent and what is sexually
harassing behavior and how to deal with the boundaries people are
putting up. However, you don’t get the level of notoriety those people
got just by misreading signals, and if you’re really worried about this
kind of thing, read a relationship self-help book and learn to
communicate with your partners (actually, do that anyway, but really
really pay attention). Go to therapy. Listen to people. Etc.
But there is a pattern of being… evasive about specifics when these
incidents happen.
Maybe because if you drew specific lines, terrible people would
rules-lawyer the fuck out of them?
Also maybe because it almost always depends on context and prior
relationship, which goes for all of human interaction yet somehow it
suddenly becomes confusing and scary to some people when it’s about
women’s sexual boundaries?
I don't know what you're referring to and maybe I completely misunderstand, but if you're not touching someone then I think you have a pretty solid defense against sexual assault.
...
...
...
...
The point is that they're claiming not to "technically" be touching them when they are, in fact, actually touching them.
You know, the way perpetrators of sexual assault do.
It's hard to work out how to make this any clearer: the 'rules lawyers' who insist that every line be made as clear as possible so that poor young men - they could be any of us! - don't accidentally slip over in the shower and rape somebody are - in the joke described above - gaming the idea of "sexual consent" to their own advantage.
> to play "I'm not touching you!"
The whole thing has to do with the meaning of this phrase. So try to work out the fact that maybe not everyone knows what this phrase means. This is no game familiar to me.
It's a way of bugging someone where you're constantly *almost* touching them but not *quite* so when they say "Don't touch me!" you can retort "But I'm not touching you!" As you can imagine, it gets annoying really fast.
/u/bobbiewickham is using this as a metaphor for what would happen if you tried to draw specific lines around what is and isn't sexual assault. There would be a ton of creepy guys using the lines to their advantage, by staying *just* on the right side of the line while still doing gross creepy things that make the targeted women uncomfortable. For example, if the line were "don't touch someone without their consent" then they might stand really close to a woman and leer at her. Okay, so you draw the line at "don't come within 1 metre of someone without their consent" and you'll get guys who hover at exactly 101 centimetres from a woman. It never ends.
>It's a way of bugging someone where you're constantly almost touching them but not quite so when they say "Don't touch me!" you can retort "But I'm not touching you!" As you can imagine, it gets annoying really fast.
OK.
>
> /u/bobbiewickham
is using this as a metaphor for what would happen if you tried to draw specific lines around what is and isn't sexual assault. There would be a ton of creepy guys using the lines to their advantage, by staying just on the right side of the line while still doing gross creepy things that make the targeted women uncomfortable.
There is definitely a problem with trying to spell out rules, but I don't think that is what it is.
> For example, if the line were "don't touch someone without their consent" then they might stand really close to a woman and leer at her. Okay, so you draw the line at "don't come within 1 metre of someone without their consent" and you'll get guys who hover at exactly 101 centimetres from a woman. It never ends.
It does end, because the rule is that you need to give people "personal space," which of course is contextual (e.g. elevators, subways) but it's actually not hard to make explicit.
The real problem is that a man cannot court a woman without going into her personal space without consent. Every successful consensual courtship involves the man judging the woman's responses to entering her personal space and using that to determine where the line is *for him, specifically*.
It is the same thing with casual touching, kissing, putting your hand on her body in more and more intimate places. You need to assess the situation and accurately predict how she will react and slightly cross the boundary that is established by previous iterations.
So the problem is not that "creeps" violate the rules but that normal people establishing normal relationships in the normal way do so by violating the rules that apply to people when there is no attraction (and/or where there is rejection). The whole process is one of establishing exceptions to the rules for one specific relationship and it is not largely done by explicitly linguistically establishing these rules. In fact it is probably the case that the woman herself does not know where the boundary is until the experimental crossing of the border by the man produces the emotion in the woman. The man needs to be in tune to these emotional reactions and back off and/or set the pace of advancing intimacy based on them.
I... don't think we disagree on anything? Your description of the correct behaviour – gently breaking barriers, seeing if it's appreciated and backing off if it isn't – seems spot on. My point with the creepy guys was that they would use hard-and-fast rules as an excuse to go on creeping: "everything not forbidden is allowed".
Of course when you go to more meta rules like "give people personal space" and "read people's cues", which are contextual and subjective, then the whole problem with spelling out rules disappears. Those rules are good rules. But then people like the Tumblr user linked in the OP would complain "but those rules are so *subjective* and *confusing* and how can poor autistic/nerdy/shy/etc. guys ever *understand*" and keep insisting on rules of the "100 centimetres" variety, which do have the rules-lawyer problem.
>Of course when you go to more meta rules like "give people personal space" and "read people's cues", which are contextual and subjective, then the whole problem with spelling out rules disappears. Those rules are good rules.
But those aren't rules. They don't spell anything out. That was the whole "complaint" in the first place.
> an excuse to go on creeping: "everything not forbidden is allowed".
The actual situation is that everything is forbidden and yet you have to do it anyway.
So you *have* to be a creep, and the difference is whether it's appreciated or not, so you have to predict it. (What I described, and you called "gently breaking barriers," is almost literally "creeping," as in "creeping up," crawling gradually forward, sneaking in.)
For some types of people it's very stressful to break the rules and be a creep and yet you have to always do this. You (almost) never get permission except after the fact.
> then people like the Tumblr user linked in the OP would complain "but those rules are so subjective and confusing and how can poor autistic/nerdy/shy/etc. guys ever understand"
Yeah and they are completely right. It's not just "subjective and confusing." Nobody will ever give them permission (before the fact), and they can't deal with it. There is never any accepted way to go about anything. You are telling them to get permission, and to follow the rules, but that isn't how it works at all.
Even if someone is fully willing to work with this reality, the process of learning how to read the signals is going to involve failure (i.e., being a creep). Worse: failure at later ages than would be normal, if you are a social failure, and/or bad at learning it.
Finally, remember that some men are just unattractive and are going to strike out all the time everywhere so that they will never get that after-the-fact permission no matter what they do. Any possible thing they do is always going to be either creepy, or just a self-desexualization. Like the real rule if you're unattractive is actually "desexualize yourself." It's "don't even try." You are just not allowed to express attraction, even (or especially) in the totally normal way that everyone else does it.
The main reason people don't acknowledge this is just that it's very convenient not to acknowledge another person's suffering. People are socially expected to hide that kind of suffering (along with many others). They are required to pretend to be normal in that regard when they aren't; and thereby they gain the acceptance of, and faux equality with, those who really are normal. (Erving Goffman wrote a great little book that talks about this called *Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity*.)
So I think that what people are doing here is at least in part making excuses for this social reality, which of course is quite cruel to experience.
> I... don't think we disagree on anything?
Well you're claiming there is "rules lawyering" but I'm saying that that isn't the case because there are no permissions granted and thus nothing to "rules lawyer." The fact that you can't say what is allowed is just a result of the fact that nothing is allowed.
Some people are very/overly sexually aggressive, don't really care about the effect that their behavior has on women, don't have self-control, try to push or pressure women into giving them what they want, and so on. These people never ever rely on "rules lawyering" because it doesn't exist in this context since no rules ever *grant* permission to do anything sexual.
Some people have great difficulty going ahead to violate boundaries in order to establish new boundaries, either because this is too stressful for them, or else they have such a low success rate or bad judgment of existing boundaries that they are going to get some very bad reactions.
I think we disagree also about this: in theory it would be possible to have very spelled out, very rigid and explicit courtship procedures. It has happened in real historical human societies (and surely still exists in some places). Of course it's not possible to make that happen in the USA, and I'm not saying it would be desirable. But rules lawyering isn't a problem here either, because the whole premise of the rules is that men need to be prevented from taking advantage of women. Consider rules like always having a chaperone present, every woman has to accept every dance invitation, the dance partners must touch only in the ways prescribed by the dance (distance between pelvises), etc.. Probably this kind of system is relying a lot on the final rule that after marriage the woman has to provide sex more or less on demand (the marriage is finally the called-for rule that grants sexual permission), and it doesn't permit any premarital sex, so we modern people probably wouldn't want to (and couldn't) establish something like it anymore. Regardless, I think that at times society actually has been set up to let men get all the way to a marriage proposal without ever having to do anything like the animalistic creeping that I described earlier. Men would only have to do that kind of thing in premarital and extramarital affairs (and I guess optionally on their wedding night).
Cheerful Sunday evenings all round!
(It's Mother's Day here, so I had the privilege of diverting from "Welcome my son...toooooo the machine" to suddenly remembering I had to call my mum...)
> The actual situation is that everything is forbidden and yet you have to do it anyway.
Speaking as a man who's somehow managed just fine anyway: banned.
>The real problem is that a man cannot court a woman without going into her personal space without consent. Every successful consensual courtship involves the man judging the woman's responses to entering her personal space and using that to determine where the line is *for him, specifically*.
Nope. This is flat out false in every respect and says more about you than about "every successful consensual courtship." As does your certainty that rules-lawyering your way around consent is not a problem.
> Maybe because if you drew specific lines, terrible people would rules-lawyer the fuck out of them?
>
> Also maybe because it almost always depends on context and prior relationship, which goes for all of human interaction yet somehow it suddenly becomes confusing and scary to some people when it's about women's sexual boundaries?
And also maybe the victims don't want every detail of their private life out in the open and scrutinized and want to just be trusted that this thing that was done to them was not okay?
No, I want clear and specific instructions on how to interact with any woman in any context, instructions which ensure that I never cross any boundaries or get called a creep, because then I can follow those rules, still not get laid because I reek of desperation and put women on a pedestal, but then still have feminism to blame for my failures instead of myself.
> suddenly becomes confusing
There are folks for whom all social cues are confusing, all of the time.
If you knew someone like that, what advice would you give them?
From your article:
> When my little boy integrated into mainstream kindergarten last year, this was his first time among neurotypical children. In his excitement he was running around and pulling other kids' hair. We worked patiently for months to teach him not to do this. He got it.
Does that really make your point? It takes months to teach the kid not to pull hair. Now think of how subtle people expect to be able to make rejections.
Holly/Cliff Pervocracy did a [good post on social skills](http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-points-on-social-skills.html) that gets linked often.
"which goes for all of human interaction yet somehow it suddenly becomes confusing and scary to some people when it's about women's sexual boundaries?"
I mean, that's kind of the thing though? It's not just about sexual boundaries, it's in general. (Obviously there are people gaming the system, but that isn't close to all of it) A lot of people on the autism spectrum finds all sorts of social interactions difficult and/or scary, not just things related to sex. (other people manage, for various reasons, it's far from universal but it's clearly A Thing)
Here's an [article about it](https://medium.com/@marcgunther/the-peculiar-metoo-story-of-animal-activist-jacy-reese-eb921b72c9c9).
Basically this OP is worrying that what happened to a public figure in a position of some authority, could just as easily happen to him. It's sort of like worrying that you're accidentally going to end up paying a porn star to sign an NDA.
The anxiety potential is compounded by the fact that the details of what Reese did weren't fully disclosed, although it seems he's polyamorous and was inappropriately hitting on almost anything that moved. It was serious enough that the Center for Effective Altruism severed ties with him, and he posted a public apology.
Yes but this person is probably worried that hugging or brushing a shoulder could lead to being ostracized. It might actually be reasonable for someone to provide more explicit and helpful information for these sad low-status men. I dunno who though, the only people I've seen even approach doing so being the PUA community.
I remember seeing some good advice on a blog called DoctorNerdLove. Can't vouch for everything in there, but I think there were some good guides on how be more attractive without being a creep.
[The reason the only people you have seen even approach doing so being the PUA community is that this is an excuse for sexist incidents and only PUAs make excuses for sexist incidents.](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Autism_is_to_blame)
It doesn't help when a significant portion of internet people keep saying "never touch someone without asking" which is advice no one follows consistently. Hug your aunt without asking? Assault! Ideally you just don't take those internet people seriously, but for literal-minded or high-scrupulosity people that kind of sloppy rhetoric can be upsetting.
I was going to comment on the ability of water to stick to most solid
surfaces, but actually I think this person might just be having a
scrupulosity thing. That seems to be common on rattumb, actually.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Autism_is_to_blame
The "scrupulosity" meme is just an attempt to make a pseudo-SJ excuse for Objectivist philosophy under secularized Catholic jargon. Hot take but being unscrupulous is actually bad.
So if you challenge the notion that one should feel bad about not following every SJ dictate shrieked into Tumblr, you're a callous Objectivist. Let me guess, you also think every manifestation of political correctness is "just being a decent person?"
[deleted]
On the one hand, yeah, it’s kind of easy: don’t sexually assault people. On the other - which is not what I say is going on - it seems some men are intentionally dense about consent and what is sexually harassing behavior and how to deal with the boundaries people are putting up. However, you don’t get the level of notoriety those people got just by misreading signals, and if you’re really worried about this kind of thing, read a relationship self-help book and learn to communicate with your partners (actually, do that anyway, but really really pay attention). Go to therapy. Listen to people. Etc.
Maybe because if you drew specific lines, terrible people would rules-lawyer the fuck out of them?
Also maybe because it almost always depends on context and prior relationship, which goes for all of human interaction yet somehow it suddenly becomes confusing and scary to some people when it’s about women’s sexual boundaries?
What is the “Jacy Reese case?”
My proposal:
*froths at the mouth in incoherent rage*
I was going to comment on the ability of water to stick to most solid surfaces, but actually I think this person might just be having a scrupulosity thing. That seems to be common on rattumb, actually.
Wait, did Jacy sexually assault people?