@japhroaig - I like Colorado and I like shisha…
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Well, I was inferring a large and useful signal to noise ratio… But I’ll take some CBD any day of the week.
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You folks will likely never know how much I value your friendship. It’s a really big deal to me.
And I like unifying posts like this one.
Safer places means a safer world. We can take better care of one another. Governance can make sense. The sexes don’t have to have a constant undertone of conflict with one another.
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I could certainly be wrong, but I think @Aloisius, when attributing that mindset to me and others here, was referring to the mentality that the role of men is protectors and the women protectees. Your eminently practical suggestion is the protection of everyone by everyone, which is precisely the sort of world we should put our hands to work to realize. And I would go further and say that the most effective means I know of to accomplish social change is to make the small practical changes we can actually implement in our lives and in our communities. If you look at movements throughout history which succeeded in changing the world, whether you agree with their specific ends or not, they did it by each person and each group within the community doing the things they knew they could take concrete action on, whether it was saying no to relinquishing a seat on a bus or telling the world what an unaccountable spy agency was up to or writing code that reflected their ideals.
ETA: I’ve been a BoingBoing commenter for 8 years, and a lurker for 9 years before that. @Aloisius has been around for a while as well. And while we seem to have crossed signals in this thread, I do believe we have similar goals and aligned objectives, even if we disagree on how to pursue them. I regard our disagreement here as healthy, but friendly, and I wouldn’t want him or anyone else to think I harbored animosity toward him.
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I have unfortunately met a number of very misogynistic guys with daughters. Anyone with a Madonna/whore complex will just assume their daughters will be good girls who know their place.
Even pick up artists tend to just assume that they will be able to teach their daughters how to avoid being girlfriends and become wives instead.
These kinds of guys believe that their daughters will always be able to avoid attack by being good and polite and not speaking out of turn.
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There’s a documentary on Netflix about Anita Hill where she talks about that recording. It is so bizarre, and watching her testimony all over again, so unreal how she was treated and how calm she was under the pressure.
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Yeah, when I mentioned to my dad that one of my daughters had decided not to apply to a particular school because of its track record against female students, his response was: it’s only girls whose mothers didn’t bring them up right who get raped. I still haven’t picked up my jaw from that one.
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Yeah and there’s a whole set of issues around trying to unlearn that being a “good girl” doesn’t always protect you, or if you try to have a little fun and get hurt than you feel it’s all your fault and let him skate.
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I have this memory of going to a party years ago with my ex. It was a pool party. It was a group of parents. One kid there was about 15 or so, old enough to have “filled out” or “blossomed” or whatever you want to use as a metaphor for got some boobs and hips. I remember when this girl’s dad was away all the fathers have a conversation about how the girl was so hot. I think I was turning green listening to it. It was really disturbing. But then, I recall when my own daughter was on a swim team one of the BOYS had “filled out” and was wearing a Speedo at a certain meet and a few of us moms were talking about the, uh, positive changes so I guess it works both ways. I’m not sure why there is this double standard where us moms having a good titter was not as weird as the dads perving on the girl.
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Here here.
Now, lets go solve all our cultural and structural problems–see you for tea at one GMT at the regular spot? (No, I am totes serious (really))
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That leaves 30% of stalkers who aren’t intimates or friends/family/workmates. Nearly a third.
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Actually quite a few fall into the “unknown” category because they never identified the person and a category called “victim unable to identify a single offender who was most responsible” (which frankly I don’t understand).
Just 9% of stalking, according to the BJS, is done by strangers - about the same percentage of stalking is done by someone’s current intimate partner.
this is incredible. I havent been so moved by anything in a while.
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Oh god yes. I hope I didn’t come across as overly antagonistic.
I think we both think harassment is awful and the drive-by groups of misogynistic assholes who seem to pop up and attack en masse women is a huge problem.
I was just dumbfounded by the idea that only women are victims of online harassment and therefore men don’t have sympathy for the harassment women go through. It just seems so contrary to my worldview.
That doesn’t change the fact that I think harassment can be fucking traumatic. There is a reason I keep my mouth shut about certain topics (even in real life).
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I don’t think it’s a double standard. The men go, “Gawd she’s hot look at her [fill in the body part]. I wanna {bleep} her up the [bleepity bleep].” I had a friend who would comment about every single gd girl or woman who passed by. Damn him, he made me uncomfortable and I called him out: do you HAVE to comment on EVERY SINGLE WOMAN? We parted ways because after a while it just grates on you and you know you’re not going to change him. Just ridiculous bull-headed, unintelligent male behavior. Appreciating beauty and even commenting on it overtly sexually can be done in a non-objectifying, non-trivializing way. He hadn’t mastered the art, and neither have I so I just don’t comment and silently appreciate. Maybe there are some women who’d rather have it out in the open, instead of some silent creep obviously glancing at her butt as she walks by. I dunno.
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Honestly I don’t know how to do this right.
I know that she might love to have the compliment, but I also know that I’m a great big man commenting on her appearance so I’m automatically a threat on some level.
That’s not her fault, but I’ve got bupkes on navigating it.
(And so I don’t.)
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that may be the most unappealing proposition I’ve yet encountered on the internet.
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I hadn’t heard of “group stalking” per se but I suppose a fair bit of faceless or mob online harassment could potentially pose that categorization problem when a study is designed on the premise that there is just one “most responsible” perpetrator.
