Was Cyrano ethically flexible though?
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Not sure about flexible but when you think about it, its a pretty clear case of older man uses young proxy to sleaze on to younger woman.
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No, that’s not quite right. Cyrano did love Roxanne, but she loved Christian, so he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness to give her a life with the man she wanted. (Of course, if he’d been more confident in himself, the two of them could have been happy together, as she eventually realizes the qualities she loved were Cyrano’s… but that’s the tragedy of it all.) I highly recommend watching the 1950 movie version; Jose Ferrer is magnificent in the title role. It’s public domain, so it’s probably on YouTube.
So I suppose Cyrano was ethically flexible in a sense, but he was so rigid in his pride and code of honor that he tended to get in his own way. I don’t see it as the same situation as these “dating helpers” since Cyrano was trying to do right by both sides in that romance.
Small edit to clarify last sentence: he to Cyrano.
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I’m just waiting to see how long it takes until someone goes on a date, finds out that they used this service when it goes horribly wrong, and then seeks out the closer that they actually matched with. https://media.giphy.com/media/XfgCrAfh6safm/200.gif
…that’d make a good romcom, thinking about it. Someone get on that!
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Let’s just say that’s not a context that I’ve ever encountered in my life.
And the one time someone tried to use “Golden Rule” logic in a similar (but dialed way back) situation, I simply asked how they would feel about receiving friendly, put persistent romantic overtures from someone who was not their favoured gender.
It was enough to allow them to apply Golden Rule logic and cease annoyance before it became outright harassment.
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Yes, but what happens when she finds out the “closer” is constantly having to refer to his guidelines on how to interact?
about to have sex
“Hang on, I have to review my notes.”
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Somewhat related, in the current issue of The New Yorker:
Some interesting perspective on what it is like to be the hired “actor” in the situation, as well as to be a user/client of the service. It shows various levels of emotional investment, and whether the clients do or don’t reveal to others that the actors are actors.
(Not the same as this “Closer”/Tinder thing, but it brought the article to mind.)
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If these professional “Closers” aren’t being hired off of MTV’s Catfish, they’re missing out on a labor pool with a proven track record.
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My son and I agree that we might be better to go back to a system where Yenta the Matchmaker arranges everything.
The modern dating system works against kids who are shy but honest, generous and smart.
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Well, since this is about online dating, I guess we could bring Pinocchio into this as well.
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You can add me to that list.
Online forum about music.
And I seriously doubt that any dating site would have matched us up.
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Unexpected connections based out of genuine mutual interests/passions tend to be quite common;
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Actually, I know 5 women who met their SOs (long term) through PoF. They were all, like, “yeah, there were stretches where every day or two I’d meet a different guy, but eventually, I found one where we clicked!” That’s emotional labor there.
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The truth is that I feel a tremendous amount of pity for the self-described ‘incels’. Many of them are the end result of overexposure to toxic masculinity combined with many other factors. We don’t resolve anything by excluding them and expressing horror at them.There is a lot of pain in social isolation.
They are woefully mistaken in their understanding of the world and justifications of their worldview, but further alienating them isn’t going to help anything. I don’t have the skills or knowledge on how to help them, but I hope we can find a way.
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You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.
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There are always exceptions, and no hard rules; being on an app or a dating site just increases one’s chances of making a connection.
They put in the requisite work; I said many people don’t, not ‘all.’
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That’s true, but we also can’t write off tragically large numbers of people and hope for a good outcome.
Many of the so-called incels have found their ‘community’ to be a refuge when everyone else rejects them, for whatever reason - be it mental illness, physical unattractiveness, disability, or any other thing.
We can all hopefully empathize with the awkward, possibly unattractive outsider back in middle school who was brutally tormented by the other kids - mentally and physically. The goofy pathetic nerd was a standard trope in 80s teen movies. Some of them commit suicide, some (like myself) get through it and grow into healthy adults, and some just get more and more depressed, alienated, miserable and become radicalized in some way or another.
There is a corollary with the incel groups and the ‘anapositive’ self destructive anorexia groups, and many others. People try to find a place where they can fit, and it isn’t always (or even often) a healthy place.
For that matter, Bakunin or would have recognized some of these guys as ripe material for revolutionaries 150 years ago. Dostoevsky wrote about an awful person who would fit right in with the incels in ‘Notes from the Underground’.
We can blame and shame that brutalized alienated person, and further brutalize and alienate him (in this case). Or we can try to think about how our culture creates their experience and alienation, and hopefully find ways to make things better.
(Note in advance - none of the following is making a direct correlation, more like noting echoes, please don’t accuse me of such). Most of us at this point don’t blame anorexics and bulimics and say ‘some people just don’t want to be helped’ as we wash our hands of them. Our culture is finally getting around to accepting the alienating experience of GLBTQ people and starting to hopefully make that better (i.e. don’t blame a person for being trans or gay and assume that they brought any social judgement on themselves).
Alienation and isolation is no excuse or justification for violence, gendered or otherwise. But alienated people are more likely to be vulnerable to be radicalized - we are social animals and really driven to find a place where we fit in. If society at large rejects people, some of them will find a home in very unhealthy places.
All that said, I don’t know how to resolve the alienation. Certainly nobody is entitled to sex with someone else that doesn’t want to have it with them (a key tenet of so-called incels, apparently). I know as a society we have a lot more influence at the childhood level than once they reach adulthood. We need to find better ways to help these people find a place in our culture and society.
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As much as I like quoting Bakunin, he wasn’t a good judge of character.
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I’m not approving of him, just noting that social alienation and isolating is nothing new and has been a ripe ground for radicalizing extremists for centuries.
Bakunin was a murderous asshole, but very recognizable now, don’t you think? And all his hangers on and associates would have fit right in with the MRAs, ISIS, Incels, and all the other groups that hack the human desire to fit in and have meaning in unhealthy ways.
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That could have been me, except I chose a different path.
MRAs, ISIS, Incels, the far-right and so on also chose their path. I am no threat to them but they are to me, and sadly their some of their actions have left me with disabilities. I should be in no way required to make concessions to someone who thinks that I have no place in their world because of the way I was born.
You say
They do that to me every day.
You also say
I do that every day, but my conclusions are not shared by them.
The reason I mentioned Nechayev is because it is possible for someone (Bakunin in this case) to be right about some things and horribly wrong about others. Bakunin was also an antisemite, which didn’t help his poor relationship with Marx. The right things do not necessarily outweigh the wrong ones.
I am borderline anarchist, but my path led to other anarchists like Kropotkin and Tolstoy. I didn’t latch on to the first thing that looked like they didn’t reject me, I found out more about what they were.
(Hopefully this is coherent, I am having a bad day IRL)
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