CanIHaveASong
No bio...
User ID: 579
I did mention downvotes. But it was evidence for something I was unhappy with, not the terminal goal.
The end of it, really, is that I don't want to be somewhere where apologetics for sexually harassing women is really popular, my protest against it gets no good faith engagement at all, and my protest gets treated as though it were bad faith itself when it absolutely is not. I would have been able to tolerate apologetics for sexually harassing women, but people treating my protest with respect and replying in good faith. I can work with that. But that's not this place, so I'm out. There's no reason for me to be here if people are not going to treat my arguments or me with respect.
@self_made_human too, as this is in part a reply to you, too.
Look, I've spoken to another woman who used to be a member of the Motte, and she also left because of the misogyny. You might decide it's the cost of an open discussion forum, or it's "not really that bad". But it is that bad to us*, and the cost of letting bad faith misogyny run free is the women who otherwise would have enriched this place.
I think it's telling that I literally don't think I'm being treated like a psychological equal and rational agent, and the response from you guys is, "cost of doing business in any space where saying negative things about women isn't a Thought Crime." This has nothing to do with saying negative things about women, and everything about being treated as a person on equal terms with any of you men. This kind of treatment is dehumanizing.
@ZorbaTHut may as well tag you too since this is your place, and I think this is worth you knowing about.
I don't need any sort of reply or justification from any of you, and I certainly don't expect any action. Just wanted to make sure my position was absolutely clear.
*to be clear "that bad" is as much the bad faith nature of the misogyny as the misogyny itself. It's one thing to engage with a misogynistic man when he's really listening. It's another entirely when he tuned you out before you opened your mouth because you're a woman, therefore your beliefs are de-facto wrong. My impression here is absolutely the later, and has been for a LONG time. A woman cannot work with that. There's literally no way to engage with that man in a productive and mutual way. There's nothing to do except walk away.
I've decided to leave The Motte. Anybody who wants to know why can discern the shape of it if they want to. You can think poorly of me for it if you'd like. This isn't really a change from the present- I haven't been active since the switch. More I'd always thought I would reengage here at some point, and now I know I will not, so it's time to take the steps for someone who knows they're moving on.
Thank you, Motte, for helping me hone my rhetorical skills and become better at expressing myself. I will always have very fond memories of this community, even if the time has come for me to be done.
CanIHaveASong
7mo ago
So why are you here then?
This isn't the Motte anymore. Look- I wasn't expecting my post to be accepted with applause and universal agreement, but my thought out, nuanced, cited post gets 4 upvotes, while apologia for sexually harassing women (that dismisses out of hand what I wrote) gets 30+? I used to write things that got a lot of pushback, and I knew to expect some heat, but this is different. It's just unwillingness to engage with what I wrote. This place isn't about exchange of ideas anymore. Oh, there's some interesting discussion, still. You've generated some here. I didn't follow the Motte over from reddit because it had become uncomfortably closed-minded and misogynistic, and it's noticably worse now. If this place is just about people confirming their own worldviews to eachother, then what is it?
I'm disappointed in this place. I don't know what I expected popping in again. I guess I'd expected some resistance, but hoped for open minded natures to triumph. I don't feel like my presence is welcome here anymore. This whole thing confirms to me that my time and my mind are better used elsewhere. :-\
it was a similar kind of evasiveness on /u/CanIHaveASong's part
I was not evasive. I meant what I said about it being society. Perhaps I could have been more specific and said, "mainstream society". It's not just feminist sources pushing this culture: It's songs, it's movies, it's TV shows. It's in the assumptions college professors have for their students and students have for eachother. It's most dates (even the ones my 60 year old aunt went on!). Do you think most men who expect women to sleep with them on the first date expect this because they are feminists? No! It's become society's norm. It's not specifically feminism, even if feminism is currently one of its champions. Perhaps it is the progressive-hedonistic-utopian memeplex that's dominant in the voices that get promoted by mainstream society these days? But there's the word I used: Society. Simply saying society is good enough for me.
CanIHaveASong
7mo ago
right-o. regulation. So law by a non-lawmaking agency. I'll update my post accordingly.
(Despite the sarcasm, genuine thanks)
Then women must stop rewarding these behaviors. If you want to actually impose change from on high, your authority has to somehow punish Stacey when she accepts a date with Chad after she turned him down the first time. Just telling men that 'no means never' isn't going to work if they see that guys who get laid are being persistent and guys who aren't persistent don't get laid.
I'm not going to deny that lying, manipulation, and harassing women get men laid. That's been well documented. But if you think that manipulating, lying to, and harassing women is fine as long as it gets you sex, maybe... just maybe... you're the reason Australia is considering this law regulation.
I'm going to take a step back here: Earlier today, I listened to a podcast on the Free Press, Bari Weiss' site. It was called Are we living through end times?, and was about the signs of social unrest that precede revolution. Our time has many of them. One of the primary signs of impending revolution is “emmiseration of the masses”. One of the things that happens during this emisseration is that people start to see that although their ancestors were able to achieve success playing by the rules, they can't anymore. They come to believe they now have to cheat their way to the top. And indeed, the cheaters win. They win in politics, they win in college admissions, they win at tests, and although the podcast did not address this... they now win in the bedroom too.
But a society cannot function if only cheaters can win. The entire system breaks down. And indeed, our whole sexual system is breaking down. 25% of 40 year olds have never been married, and 6/10 men in their 20s are single. Our birth rate is the lowest it's ever been. The situation is not better for women. I can't find the articles I wanted to cite here, so instead I'll link to an account by a university professor of the confusion she and her students feel when they are told they ought to feel happy about sexual encounters they found exploitative and upsetting. Note that it often takes women years to figure out why they felt used. Do you think Stacy likes it when Chad pushes her boundaries until she has sex with him?
The only winners in today's sexual culture are the small percentage of men who can have dozens of sex partners while an increasing number of men have none at all. We are in the middle of a sexual apocalypse, and we have got to find a way to reverse it.
This bill is an attempt to get men to play by the rules again. There have always been cheaters, but the costs of hurting women were too high for most men when the women they dated were their friends' sisters or people who were going to be in their social circles for years. Now that men can date women none of their friends know, whom they can arrange to never see again, and have a society gaslighting women into thinking casual sex is empowering, men can use underhanded tactics like these to gain an unfair advantage over other men. This is bad for women, it's bad for honest men, it's bad for men who resort to them to compete, and it's really really bad for society. When liars and manipulators win, it corrodes our culture's soul.
We can't function like this. This law regulation isn't the answer. Other posters are right that the worst offenders will find ways to slip through. This law is a bandaid slapped on a hemorrhaging amputated arm. Our sex culture needs a deeper culture change in order to work for most people again, but we have to find a way to fix this! Our whole future is riding on it.
I might regret engaging with this but... to me these rules appear targeted towards stopping sexual harassment. Most women consider pressure after she's said "no" harassment, unsolicited dick picks harassment, etc etc. And it really does feel unsafe. Now, some uncomfortable and unwanted communication just comes with the territory of being female in the dating world. I do think redefining (most) of these things as sexual violence is bad as it weakens the definition of sexual violence. But... a lot of these behaviors really are highly upsetting to many women, and the other comments saying this is just "normal dating" have me pretty worried about what these posters think is normal behavior.
Pressuring women for contact or sex when she has said no should not be normal. Unsolicited pictures of gentitalia should not be normal. Continuing to contact a woman after she's said no should not be normal. Lying should not be normal.
I think this is more an attempt to legislate men into treating women like fellow humans than trying to control dating. The way the sexes interact is complex enough that I'm not sure it really can be effectively legislated. Ultimately, I guess I agree that this law would be bad (or at least not have the intended effects), but a culture should also never be in a position where people think legislation is the only way for women to be treated well.
What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?
CanIHaveASong
1yr ago
The primary problems are that our birth rate is below replacement, (2.1 children per woman), and that on average, less intelligent people have more children than intelligent people. It's been estimated that we're losing about 0.3 IQ points every ten years because of that.
Also, women (smart women, that is), are having fewer children than they want. If we can't figure out how to reverse these trends, the long term prognosis is really bad. You can't have an advanced civilization without smart people. There are exceptions: Among people who identify as conservative or extremely conservative (mostly the religious), the most intelligent have the most children. So we have indications that it can be turned around. How do we encourage smart women to have the larger families they want?
CanIHaveASong
1yr ago
I learned about this the other day and really drove home to me, someone who takes a degree of pride in my knowledge of weird internet cultures, how little I know about the female side of the internet.
As a female on the internet, that was new to me, too, so don't feel bad.
CanIHaveASong
1yr ago
16, I think.
The topics are complex enough that I think it'd be difficult to participate productively until after university. However, one can develop skill in argumentation, and that's valuable as a late teen. The latter wins out against the former to me, so 16.
I actually know some men who have a shocking (and frankly unhealthy) number of sex partners. Thing is: They do take no for an answer. Except for one (who was ejected for being a creep), they don't try to say my contrary beliefs are insincere. I'm not privy to their Tinder accounts, but I assume they treat other women the same way. I might dislike these men's behavior for other reasons, but based on my limited experience, most "Chads" respect women.
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