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The endless kvetching about men perceiving women as sex objects when they choose to present themselves as sex objects is always quite amusing. The idea that one should be taking umbrage on behalf of the women even when objectification was their goal is downright incomprehensible to me. People appear to believe that when a woman dresses skimpily and gives everyone involuntary panty shots it should somehow have no effect on how anyone thinks of her, no matter how shamelessly she is advertising her services, and woe betide the man who dares to notice since it's clearly just a failure on his part to Appreciate Her Personhood enough.
And it is only male attraction that is to be judged in this way, of course. That doesn't apply to a woman rubbing one out to a picture of David Beckham.
If you have created lewd content of yourself and disseminated it into the commons for money or other gain, you are advertising yourself as being willing and able to fulfil a certain need, and people who stumble upon that will view you in that context. Seriously the quoted statement above is about as intellectually sound as saying that I don't view bus drivers as Fully Realised People because I'm not interested in the minutiae of my bus driver's internal life and see him as a tool whose purpose is primarily to take me from point A to point B. People interact with others differently in different contexts. Yes, in a context where someone is advertising or providing services to me I am seeing them primarily instrumentally through the lens of what they are offering me, that doesn't mean I would not be capable of viewing and approaching them in any other manner with a different goal in mind if I were to encounter them in other contexts (say, in a social setting). That’s normal human psychology, not a pathology, but if women want to opt out of relationships for that reason then that is their choice.
Oh, I'm not saying the girls weren't foolish to do that. But the people benefiting from that were the men running the show and the TV network, not the girls themselves. And they got themselves the reputation among the men watching them as nothing more than wank fodder. Now maybe "My angel is a centerfold" is a true representation of a man's view of such women, that he would be delighted to date her and not think less of her and would still treat her with respect as wife material instead of "woo-hoo, I get to bang the thot".
And maybe not.
So like. Suppose, hypothetically, that it has come to pass sometime in history that a teen girl saw on a screen an attractive male professional entertainer who is a stranger to her and who in some part earns his living by being good at titillating the opposite sex. (Leaving aside the central cases of Johnny Depp making dreamy eyes or Elvis doing a really good hip gyration, suppose it’s just some softcore fanservice bit with a buff dude in shower in a TV show) Suppose watching the bit, she experienced some not unpleasant mammalian reaction not entirely unadjacent to the act of mating, that contributed to the viewing experience, and she shudder liked that.
Now would you equally be of the opinion that she ought be scolded for cheapening the well rounded human personhood of the actor in particular and the male sex in general (what if he was your brother!), and if she’s such a gross creature that she gets this morally bankrupt little thrill as a reaction without really choosing to, it’d be at least basic manners to carefully pretend she doesn’t? Maybe an exception can be made for when somebody personally familiar to her like Timmy from Accounting is courting her?
Or is it more of a quod licet Jovi non licet bovi thing?
I have no idea how this meme cartoon of "Sally will take flirting from Chad but not from Weirdo Wes" arose, but okay. I'll concede. All the young white guys are being held down and oppressed by The (Wo)Man! You can't get jobs! You can't get dates or sex! You are not getting what society owes you! And it's all the fault of women who won't go on a date with you when you walk up to her in the street and tell her to take her knickers off, won't put out on the first date, won't do the particular sex acts or kinks you picked up from porn, won't simultaneously be 'good in bed' (read: perform all the sex acts and kinks from porn) and be a virgin for you who never even looked at another man before you, won't marry you, won't have four kids and run the house and have her own independent income so you don't have to be the main breadwinner, won't meekly and tamely accede to a divorce when you get tired of her because now she's thirty-five, the hag, and you want that hot new twenty-three year old intern at work, and won't tell you that you are marvellous every hour on the hour. And their (and your) mothers. And feminists. And single women. And lesbians. And DEI. And Boomers, because you'll never be old yourself one day and want/need a pension and health care. And the government, both left and right.
Anything I'm missing out?
EDIT: I should do my own meme! 😁
What men think women want
What women really (1) want (2) want
Where did you get any of that from what he said? You've basically imputed all of your own imaginings onto him based on one comment posing you a hypothetical.
For what it's worth, I agree with @TitaniumButterfly. Your commentary is routinely so incredibly low quality I barely respond to it, but I would honestly prefer not to see it here.
This is her whole thing. She hallucinates stuff to get indignant over and then mocks anyone who objects by implying they're too dumb or insecure (or whatever) to see her point.
Yeah the absolute gall of this user never ceases to astound me, especially considering she routinely violates so many of the rules of this forum. So many of the rules are about limiting antagonism, charitability, kindness, avoiding low-effort participation, avoiding weakmanning, providing evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory one's statement is, and she just freely flouts all of these rules as if they shouldn't apply to her. In this thread alone she has done this to at least two separate users: she has assumed your mental state and accused you of not seeing women as anything other than body parts to fuck and jerk off to, then accused someone posing her a hypothetical of asking her to "concede" to a whole list of imagined uncharitable points of view that were present nowhere in the original comment. It’s nothing but flagrant bad faith.
I understand the point of having affirmative action for minority posters in order to ensure ideological diversity, but when someone pollutes the commons this consistently and has such a small (nonexistent?) roster of quality contributions they end up having a strong net negative effect on the forum. And somehow you collectively got singled out alongside her for being inflammatory in spite of the fact that you were responding to a ridiculously uncharitable and downright slanderous picture she painted of you. Incredible.
A few things:
First, this "affirmative action for minority posters" thing is taking on the character of a Motte urban legend. Being a lefty or Jewish or black or a woman doesn't give you extra latitude to break the rules. We are sometimes slower to act on people who are being reported a lot for having unpopular views, because frankly there is hardly any active poster here (with only a few exceptions) who, if everything they said was getting reported, wouldn't end up having some comments cross the line and the mods getting a sense that this person is a Problem.
Second, @HereAndGone2 has been modded and temp banned, many times, and she is aware that her previous record does not get erased when she creates a new account.
Third, yes, I scolded her and @TitaniumButterfly both because they were both getting unnecessarily personal. I am telling you the same thing. The fact that some poster really grinds your gears does not mean you should take the opportunity to write screeds about how much they annoy you.
To clarify, I didn't mean "minority" posters as in a minority demographic, I meant minority posters in terms of holding and expressing unpopular views (hence why I referred to "ideological diversity").
This is true enough, and I do understand this principle. But there exist unpopular posters here who are capable of engaging within the rules of the forum and don't repeatedly flout it (in spite of the fact that I am sure they get reported). magicalkittycat and Goodguy are some examples who, in spite of sizeable ideological difference from many of this forum's users, I would prefer to keep around. This user's behaviour on the other hand regularly brings heat and not light, with relatively few quality contributions to show for it unlike other posters like Dase/Ilforte.
I realise moderation isn't a task that can be 100% consistent all the time, and had I ever been offered a moderator position I would probably refuse. But this kind of user criticism does not seem particularly out of pocket for this forum; it's something that happens on this forum a lot.
So just to clarify the rules for the future (and I am asking this to clarify, not as a rhetorical question): What is the definition of "personal", and does criticising the visible behaviour of a poster here without extending into their personal life count as overly personal? If not what's the criteria for moderation? Because it has been stated before that criticising people isn't against the rules, only making personal attacks, and as such before this I would have thought criticism restricted to how one's behaviour breaks the rules is fair game, especially considering that virtually every time any other user has reacted with hostility in this thread, it was in response to bad faith.
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