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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   32721 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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I have ridden the trolley nearly every day of my adult life, normally multiple times a day. I’ve spent literally thousands of hours on public transit. I’ve taken it at every imaginable hour of the day, through every neighborhood of the city adjacent to the trolley lines.

Sure, and I imagine a private in the US army undergoes training thousands of times over many months/years while being as observant as they can. I don't think this private can really tell me anything about conditions in the Russian army.

The assumption you're making when you say "I've never seen this happen" is that you're assuming a lot of things are equal/the same over all areas. For example, how do you know that you're not just on public transport with a semi-permanent cast of morally upright people, while these women are having a totally different experience?

It's entirely possible you've accounted for all these things. Maybe all these women really are situated in the same commuting climate that you are. But without knowing this to be the case, your post reads like you're asserting your experience as the universal experience in an effort to suggest that women are either consciously or unconsciously promoting "liberalism" over acknowledging "reality".

Again, as I mentioned, I’ve ridden the train thousands of times, at every possible hour (including after midnight) and in every neighborhood of the city. It’s laughable to suggest that I’m only seeing “the good side” of public transit, given that I was very explicit about my near-constant exposure to junkies and physically aggressive underclass types. Presumably those would be the same people harassing these young women, yes?

I'm sure you've seen the aggressive types. But you and the women you speak about can still experience things that don't necessarily carry over between the environments you each experience. This is why I gave the analogy that I did - you can simultaneously experience a wide array of things and still be unaware of another set of things for a variety of reasons.

So you do have experiences of being harassed non-sexually by junkies on public transit, but because it wasn't sexual you don't believe that junkie harassment might be sexual when directed at women?

The harassment and anti-social behavior I’m witnessing is, notably, not subtle, not hidden or surreptitious, and not something an observant person on the same trolley car would be likely to miss. Again, I’m fully aware that harassment of a specifically sexual/gendered nature does occur - I acknowledged that I’ve observed it probably less than a dozen times - but that it does not appear to happen with the type of frequency implied by the fact that every single one of the women I’ve talked to reported experiencing it.

I have no reason to doubt them, they aren't really woke at all and weren't big on MeToo

Are they anti woke? If not then maybe it's worth reconsidering if you should doubt them. Me Too captured the hearts and minds of women everywhere, except the anti woke. Everyone loves being told that they're a victim, that they're uniquely put upon. People will internalize this if it's a dominant message in society.

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