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Why would I be softer on her than I would be on myself? Have you seen Dogville ? It toes the line to unwatchable arthouse crap, but the ending is cool.
From a higher vantage point, I don't view maintaining the current social order, where legible propositions and social awkwardness are harshly punished, as moral. Especially when there is no legitimate answer to his conundrum, according to its proponents. When me and the gang suggest the more viable way, physical escalation, it's also worthy of condemnation. That means to them his desires are immoral in themselves, and I won't accept that.
I haven't seen Dogville or even heard of it, so I don't get the reference, sorry.
I think we disagree on what constitutes "punishment." Being laughed at is punishment. Being labeled a creep is punishment. Being shunned and made a pariah is punishment. Academic sanctions are punishment. Being charged with a crime is punishment. An awkward proposition will generally result in a "punishment" somewhere on that spectrum, and while we obviously agree that sanctions and charges are too severe, you apparently believe that anything worse than embarrassed giggling (and maybe even that) is too harsh.
Nonsense.
It would have been entirely appropriate for him to just ask her out, and I'd agree completely that the worst he should suffer for that is a potentially embarrassing rejection.
"I don't want to date her, I just want to fuck her" is certainly a desire you can have, but having a desire doesn't mean it needs to be socially acceptable to express it.
It's Nicole Kidman being horribly mistreated by some villagers for 2 hours even though she shows them nothing but kindness. Spoilers : She keeps finding excuses for them, it gets worse and worse. She's beaten, tortured, raped and enslaved. And still, she is generous and strong, deploring the poor circumstances, etc, that made them do it. She can’t really understand why, she would never do this herself, but they must have a reason. In the end she realizes she wasn't being fair to them. She was arrogant, treating them as so far below her, not with the respect due a fellow human capable of making moral decisions. So she has them all executed. The End.
I don’t think that is the source of our disagreement. You say a (small) moral trespassing happened, or perhaps it was against something else, social norms, whatever you want to call it. This deserves punishment, and we are debating what the appropriate punishment should be. You think what happened , being labeled an immoral creep, is appropriate, I think it should be less. Ideally zero, because I don’t recognize what he did as an immoral action. The moral value of what she did after he acted is a different moral question.
But as you know, that is not equivalent to what he truly wanted. The man wanted pizza.
Not necessarily, but in this case it’s a very common one, and it could often save time and headache, were it more widely expressed. And anyway, even if it was some awful desire, I have a hard time condemning people for just telling the truth.
Not quite true. I don't think what he did was immoral, precisely. But it was creepy and offensive, and she took offense.
I don't think he should be "labeled an immoral creep." He probably isn't an immoral creep, he's just a socially obtuse dumbass.
What I'm saying is that sometimes you fuck up and you suffer for it, and you may not think it's "fair," but it's an expected consequence. The only way he could avoid suffering is if the girl he insulted is extraordinarily charitable and forgiving (i.e., she should make sure his feelings aren't hurt and she never mentions what he did). It would nice of her to do that, but I don't think it's a reasonable obligation on her part.
I guess? I do not personally have a high opinion of "hookup culture" and I'm not even a social conservative, so I'm dubious that normalizing "Hey, I think you're fuckable, wanna fuck?" would make sex relations better.
"I'm really into fisting and threesomes and heavy S&M, how about it?"
There are desires that require a lot more work to establish a relationship such that it's appropriate to express them. "Wanna fuck?" is obviously not as extreme as the above example, but it's on that spectrum.
You're considering the wrong alternative. It's not chastity vs hookup culture. It's hookup culture with words vs hookup culture with sticks (physical moves).
I’m sorry to have to resort to this, the biggest cliché in the dumpster fires that are the relationship subs, but Communication Is Key. Ideally, it’s better when things are verbalized, instead of pushed.
And since apparently it’s movie night, I’d like to present When Harry met Sally as an example. Now Harry is a bit smoother than our unfortunate study guy, although his line ‘empirically, you are attractive’ is just as dorky and immediately recongized as a-come on by sally, who is annoyed, but quickly tells him to ‘let it lie’. He repeats his come-on even more explicitly by suggesting a motel, and she turns him down again, no big drama. They proceed to banter about their life philosophies the rest of the way. Who thinks Harry is the unbelievably stupid socially retarded biggest loser ever?
I’d like to point out that Harry’s come-on actually does reflect badly on his character (from a normal monogamous perspective) and hers, because Sally is Harry’s girlfriend’s friend. But I don’t think Sally’s behaviour is 'extraordinarily charitable and forgiving', even though she has far more cause for outrage. Once upon a time, women could be trusted to handle such ‘insults’ and not take offense, and I think it’s a better model for everyone than the extreme coddling/hardcore PUA dichotomous model we have now.
But I've never disagreed with this. I think if what you want is a fuck buddy, not a date or a "relationship," you should absolutely be honest about that, and it should be okay to express that.
That does not absolve you of any obligation to, using another dumpster fire of a cliche, "read the room." Just because you are looking for a fuck buddy, or you happen to think your cute female classmate would be a good one, does not mean that appropriate communication consists of telling whichever girl you're interested in that you'd like to fuck her. Part of communication is making some attempt to gauge interest, mutual attraction, and receptiveness.
Now, this guy might have made a good faith effort to do that and he just catastrophically misread the signals. Which is why I am not like the folks on reddit who believe he's a creepy predator who should feel ashamed of himself for wanting to fuck his classmate.
But I also think some embarrassment is just par for the course when you screw up like that.
Your Harry met Sally example, besides being based on a Hollywood movie where the characters are Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, is also not how things universally were. In the past, a woman propositioned by her girlfriend's boyfriend certainly could be expected to take offense (and very likely tell her girlfriend!). This didn't happen to Harry because Harry is Billy Crystal and Sally is Meg Ryan and Hollywood says they're meant to end up together anyway. I do not think the social norms you are suggesting - "a woman asked by a casual acquaintance if she'd like to fuck just politely declines and never takes offense" - were ever actual social norms.
Unlike communication, which can help sometimes, this is legitimately a completely useless piece of advice and judgment. 'if she said no, you shouldn't have asked'. Certainty is not achievable. Apparently, uncertainty is wanted, so punishing error is downright immoral.
Sally's reaction jives with my own thought experiment about a gay friend, and lesbians and gays among themselves. It's certainly not inconceivable that a woman would react like that, as you imply.
The whole point of that movie was that Harry and Sally were always destined to be together, they just didn't realize it at first. So of course Sally doesn't blow up at a proposition that she was down deep secretly pleased by, as the audience well knows.
I guess we've reached our point of irreconcilable disagreement: you think it's appropriate to ask any woman you'd like to fuck if she wants to fuck, without risk of the slightest social consequences for a badly-targeted approach. I don't think social interactions, and especially trying to get laid, are or should come with such a safety guarantee, even for socially awkward men.
Her internal monologue doesn't matter. I demand objective standards in dating behaviours, not dependent on women's secret whims. Ok, to wrap this up and come full circle, it's freedom of speech, it should be free from consequences, he did nothing wrong. She and her defenders support a cruel, contradictory, costly and harmful interaction model. They are blinded by a pathological, exclusive empathy for the woman in any situation (look at the relationship subs), and seek status by shitting relentlessly on low status males.
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I don't think most people are arguing for "without risk of the slightest social consequences", merely that the social consequences should be proportional, both to the "offense" and to what consequences women face for similar missteps.
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