Believe it or not there is such a thing as an honest mistake. Do I know for sure that's what it was? Of course not. But it is absolutely a possibility.Of course there is. And I don't think anyone is saying that the guy in the elevator was deliberately being threatening or creepy. But the point is that these honest mistakes have consequences for women who are on the receiving end of them constantly, and they have consequences for the communities that would benefit from having such women feel comfortable participating. I understand how hard it is not to feel defensive and accused when you're imagining an honest mistake being taken as some terrible act of misogyny, but I don't think it's meant that way. It's more like "look, can you try to see this from my point of view and not do this, so that I will feel like I can participate in this community on an equal basis?"
It's more like "look, can you try to see this from my point of view and not do this, so that I will feel like I can participate in this community on an equal basis?"Well, no, to be blunt. How else are people supposed to get laid at conferences?
How else are people supposed to get laid at conferences?Right. Because elevator dude got laid. And because any straight dude is going to get laid after y'all have successfully communicated to women that we can't expect even a modicum of respect from the men who will be attending your conferences and therefore might as well stay home. That's a pretty awesome getting laid strategy you've got going for you!
That's a pretty awesome getting laid strategy you've got going for you!Nothing works every time. Sure things are few and far between unless you're really attractive.
It's also possible not to treat a conference as a meat market, not aggressively seek it, and treat it as a fringe benefit if it arises out of some mutually respectful interaction.I suppose anything is possible, but you're being kind of silly right now. Are people really going to forgo all that sex just to spare some women's sensibilities? Nope.
That was exactly what she was complaining about.Yeah, I know what she was complaining about. I just can't imagine caring enough to do anything about it.
Well, aren't you a superhero.I wish I had a superhuman ability to disregard other people's petty concerns! Unfortunately, I get suckered into being considerate now and then.
Well, aren't you a superhero.I wish I had a superhuman ability to disregard other people's petty concerns! Unfortunately, I get suckered into being considerate now and then."
On the other hand, I have seen uncountable situations in my almost 50 years where women are offended by advances from (in a purely physical sense) less attractive men but flattered by and responsive to advances from more attractive men.Ok, I just want to be clear on this. Do you really think that there are a lot of women who would respond favorably to an attractive man cornering them on an elevator and saying, basically, "I enjoyed your conference presentation on how you don't like how often you are propositioned by men in our community. Why don't you come back to my room and sleep with me?" Because I'm thinking that it probably would not have made any difference if elevator dude was the best-looking dude in the universe.
pulling out very impactful words to decry a behaviorI'm not feeling very well and am stuck at this frigging coffee place until the world stops whirling enough for me to get home, so I'm just going to spend the next few minutes trying to figure out what kind of "impactful words" one can call out without being an evil bitch, etc. etc. etc.
I understand why this assumption happens (because everyone know men never speak to a woman unless they think it will lead to sex, right?), but 'I think you are interesting, would you like to have coffee with me?' shouldn't be assumed to mean anything more than that.If they're inviting you to Starbucks at four in the afternoon, I agree with you. If they're inviting you to their hotel room at four in the morning? No.
There is a very real possibility that this is simply a case of someone having no clue as to the inappropriateness of the approach. Clueless does not equate to bad intent.I'm assuming it was cluelessness and not bad intent. But the point is that the cluelessness is making women uncomfortable, and so it would be cool if guys would clue in a bit, especially since they claim to be baffled about why more women don't participate in their events. Most guys, I think, would kind of automatically get that this was not a good way to approach a woman. She's letting the guys with less-developed social skills in on the secret.
palomar: And pla and hincandenza are doing a fine job of making sure women are accused of being irrational and bigoted, so don't worry, there's plenty of equal representation going on.Not women... just the raging crazies- men and women- that show up in these threads. Most women I know don't fly into rages or accuse me of being a, or supporting, rapists.
koeselitz: However, we should have this sensitivity. Why? Because men are still privileged over women. Men still enjoy better treatment, less threatening situations, etc, than women do.Better searchers than I will turn up that much-favorited comment, I believe from grobstein (?), about how men aren't winners, just a small number of people are winners, and plenty of men get shit on. Adding to that doesn't help.
There is a very real possibility that this is simply a case of someone having no clue as to the inappropriateness of the approach. Clueless does not equate to bad intent.I'm assuming it was cluelessness and not bad intent. But the point is that the cluelessness is making women uncomfortable, and so it would be cool if guys would clue in a bit, especially since they claim to be baffled about why more women don't participate in their events. Most guys, I think, would kind of automatically get that this was not a good way to approach a woman. She's letting the guys with less-developed social skills in on the secret.
Without trivialising the very real fears that women face on a regular basis, some poor guy has been paraded as a potential rapist all over the Internet because of his lack of social skills while more socially accomplished males snigger at his ineptitudeand brag to one another how they would have been able to smooth-talk their way into bedShe didn't name the guy, right? And I don't think she called him a "potential rapist."
On the plus side, Danila that's over 100 people who have considerately identified themselves as not necessarily the best people to share an elevator with at a meetup.Honestly, these threads are the reason that I won't ever go to a meetup. Which I think is part of the point.
As I read it, ortho's comment didn't say that women only have boundaries for unattractive men. It said that a man's attractiveness will affect where the boundary gets drawn.This is honestly just really weird to me. I would be very freaked out if a Handsome Hollywood Actor propositioned me in an elevator, in part because I would be concerned that I might be hallucinating.
Would this woman have been equally off-put had the proposition come from her Handsome Hollywood Actor Of Choice? Really?
yes, those horrid women.This is very clearly implying that ortho is seeking violence against women in a thread that is about sexual politics. The implication is practically transparent. I mean, seriously, what these words mean in this context is really up for debate? Seriously?!
you'll show them.
one day you'll show them all.
yes, those horrid women.If it isn't that orthogonality seeks violent revenge against women, then the real, non-violent implication still remains mysterious.
you'll show them.
one day you'll show them all.
Conley’s Major Conclusions:(emphasis in the original)
I’ll just quote at some length here:
First, male sexual proposers (who approached women) are uniformly seen as less desirable than female sexual proposers (who approached men). Therefore, gender differences in the original Clark and Hatfield study are due more to the gender of the proposer than to the gender of the study participants. Moreover, the idea that these gender differences reflect broad, evolved differences in women’s and men’s mating strategies was not supported. Across studies involving both actual and hypothetical sexual encounters, the only consistently significant predictor of acceptance of the sexual proposal, both for women and for men, was the perception that the proposer is sexually capable (i.e., would be “good in bed”). The perceptions of sexual capabilities also mediated the relationship between gender and acceptance of casual sex offers. Finally, indirect evidence suggests that perceptions of risk may play a role in gender differences in casual sex attitudes.
It's a tough thing to hear, that behavior that to you seems totally innoxuous can be read as threatening or just an endless bother to somebody else. We've all probably had that experience, and we've all probably reacted defensively.The defensiveness is kind of bizarre, when you think about it. Of course being hit on (or even spoken to, sometimes) by someone undesirable is obnoxious. If it's truly unbearable to imagine that one might be the obnoxious person in such a scenario, well, don't talk to people?
cortex: To the extent that me and Jess have now taken turns camping in that thread for basically the entire rest of the day, we were able to promptly remove some other crappy inter-user stuff from the thread before it became A Thing. What that DOUBLE STANDARD! narrative has to say about that, who knows, I'm frankly too tired of wrangling all this shit on my holiday to want to spend much more energy appealing to uncharitable readings of the work we doSo, one thing that puzzles me about mods and the mod duties are... why bother, some times? The world won't stop spinning on its axis if you look at a thread like that, throw up your hands, and just say "Fuck it. Anyone still reading and posting in that thread knows it's a goddamn mess, so what can we reasonably be expected to do? Caveat Mefite..." I get the "broken windows" theory probably applies to community sites like this one to an extent, but unlike actual broken windows, a shitstorm thread will scroll off the front page in a couple of days and be forgotten (except by the same people who'll show up in the next one of its type to link-quote from the previous thread).
the only consistently significant predictor of acceptance of the sexual proposal, both for women and for men, was the perception that the proposer is sexually capableWell, the question then is what % of the population do women find sexually desirable, vs the % of women men find sexually desirable? If the percentages are different, doesn't that imply some kind difference (caused by genetics or perhaps something else)
Fuck it. I'd like to open a PayPal account so that people can buy a fucking clue.Use bitcoin!
The response [to her panel] at the conference itself was wonderful. There were a ton of great feminists there - male and female - and also, just open-minded people who had maybe never considered the way that women are treated in this community, but were interested in learning more. So, thank you to everyone who was at that conference who engaged in those discussions outside of that panel. You were all fantastic, I loved talking to you guys. All of you except for the one man who didn't really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel…Conferences are full of interactions between strangers, and most of those aren't intended or taken as sexual advances.
Study 2a Results: Here’s the headline — differences between men and women in likelihood of taking the proposer up on the offer was a whole lot closer. For the proposition by the attractive person, women were at 4.09 (2.16) to 4.16 (2.56) for men — just about a tie. For the unattractive celebrity, men were at 1.43 (.84) to women’s 1.71 (1.61) — women were higher. For the unknown person, though, no such effect. Women were at 1.86 (1.38), men were still at 3.52 (2.06). Women were only marginally more interested in the offer from a stranger than from a man generally thought ugly. Men were almost as interested in the random stranger as Angelina Jolie. The short fling results basically track this, with the fact of celebrity seriously closing the gap between men’s and women’s interest, and the gap for a stranger remaining wide. The appeal of the offer follows the same pattern: little difference in men’s and women’s response to the unattractive celebrity, little difference in their reaction to the attractive celebrity, lots of difference in their response to the stranger.It's really, really worth noting that the specific scenario that participants were asked to imagine was:
You are fortunate enough to be able to spend your entire winter vacation in Los Angeles. One day, about a week into your stay, you decide to visit a trendy cafe´ in Malibu that overlooks the ocean. As you are sipping your drink, you look over and notice that actor Johnny Depp is just a few tables away. You can hardly believe your eyes! Still more amazing, he catches your eye and then approaches you. He says, “I have been noticing you and I find you to be very attractive. Would you go to bed with me tonight?”
That's interesting, but it's not germane to this conversation. This is not a conversation about "feminism". This is a conversation about "both men and women seem unable to accept that women's expressly-stated wishes about personal boundaries are being routinely ignored, and it beats the fuck out of me why that would be the case."posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:44 AM on July 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
poet-lariat, I'd be delighted to learn in more detail why you are quite so offended by the point that a transgendered woman's experience is not typical of 'women's' experience more generallyI'm a little confused about what women's experiences count as the "typical 'women's' experience", and which women you think are required to explain how their experience jibes with it.
Anyone who thinks I am articulating a purely patriarchal perspective needs to search google scholar for "transgender feminism." There is apparently a fairly large element within academic and political feminism, led by women, to limit the claims of transgender women to representation within feminist politics....Well, there was in like 1987. But that battle has been over for about twenty years, and the Rad Fems lost. Radical Feminism is very, very marginal in the academy at this point, because it relies on an essentialist view of female nature and experience that just doesn't work with contemporary ideas about... pretty much anything. And dude, am I right in remembering that you're in anthropology? Because if so, you really need to back away from this thread and go read whatever textbook your university uses for its introductory feminist theory class for undergrads. This is not "keeping up with the latest scholarship" type stuff. It's actually pretty embarrassing that you're relying on google scholar searches for this stuff.
This is nonsense. It's PC thought/language policing like I remember from being in grad school in the 90s, back when I first realized that "gender theory" was code for "ideology trumps science" and lost interest in staying current with academic feminist thought.Ok, then.
>...there do seem to be a few are confused about how to talk to women. If I could I would befriend you and try my best to help you see women as just people, not "The Other." It can't be fun going through life so desperate yet so afraid.If you're talking about me (the comment I'm quoting quotes me), I would welcome your friendship and anything you have to teach me, but it seems likely that your compassion is responding to a historical resonance which doesn't really reflect my current way of life. I was never exactly a mysogynist, but in the past I have been the guy in the elevator and worse. I've since learned better, though. I've been in a mostly peaceful and mutually respectful relationship with a woman for going on three years (we got married recently.) She studies feminist continental philosophers, among other things, and would run like hell from the domineering asshole I once was. I did meet her online, though. Still haven't really figured out the whole impromptu conversation thing. That really goes for talking to men, too, though. Heck, I think I find it harder to strike up impromptu conversations with men.
>It's more that in the context bringing that up as an "it's hard out there for the guys, too" thing feels a bit out of nowhere. It's pressing an uncontroversial point—yes, everybody hurts, and that sucks—in a context where the conversation isn't so much "does everybody hurt?" as it is "this specific system shit women have to deal with really sucks".I think the hostile male reactions in these threads provide the context. It seems likely that it is precisely that sense of unmerited ostracism wierdo was talking about which brings some of this hostility forth. ("...it's understandable to be frustrated that you can't talk to over half the human race without them thinking you're an asshole for hitting on them even when you don't think you're hitting on them.") I'm not saying the sense of ostracism is necessarily accurate, but it is probably a large part of the emotional basis for the conflict here, and ridiculing the people who talk about it explicitly is only going to confirm the sense of ostracism, not undermine it.
>Trying to make the "we're really both in the same boat" argument is as nonsensical 800 comments into this thread as it was in the beginning.I can see that I did a poor job crafting this sentence in the paragraph you quoted from: "This is not to say that the relative outrage in rape, harassment or rejection/ostracism doesn't matter, only that belittling the experience of ostracism as a trivial grief relative to the experience of rape seems to be part of what's fueling the fire here." I mean it as an explicit rejection of the notion that "we're in the same boat," or any other trivialization of the outrage of rape or harassment. In that paragraph, I was talking about the dynamics which are fueling this conflict. Although rape and harassment per se are definitely by far the more important issue, it seems like here on MetaTalk it might be worthwhile to talk about some of the factors which may be making this conversation about rape and harassment so acrimonious, and what it might take so that everybody in the conversation could hear each other.
It's not about men's feelings and how they have to be taken into consideration as well. It's about men sexualizing women in inappropriate places and it's about the fact that 90% of rapes are committed upon women thus making us understandably wary.
>You think what has happened historically has no bearing on the current situation?The "current situation" being the the interactions which are going on in this thread, yes I do. Your own response to me may be a good example. For instance,
What will "repair the relationship between the groups" is not just for one group to stop caring about how outrageously it has been and continues to be violated by members of the other group, and just get over it because it should stop mattering so much. It's for the group members doing the outrageous violating to stop doing so.This shifts the focus away from the hostile way we are relating to each other and onto another set of people who aren't explicitly part of the conversation, the actual perpetrators of rape and harassment. It's an understandable shift, based on anger and grief at sexual violence. But it moves the conversation between you and I to a very difficult position: you have suggested that I want you to stop caring about these violations, and therefore don't care about them myself. ("...not just for one group to stop caring...") As I said at the start of this comment, I wrote it a little unclearly, but that is not actually what I said in the comment you're responding to. If your interpretation of my comment "made your jaw drop," and you'd actually been interested in what I was saying, I think you would have been able to parse it out, or at least ask me what I meant, because "surely you don't mean it the outrageous way it seems to read." So this looks (to me) very much like you're responding more to your own (perfectly justifiable) grief and anger than to what I was actually saying. Where do I go in the conversation from here? Where were you hoping that I and your other readers would go? In any case, I think I'll go to bed.
>Dude, they're related. The current situation has centuries of history behind it. It doesn't, no it can't just go away, when two people, let alone 20 start talking to each other.Yes, centuries of history, centuries of grief, which can't just go away. And the impact on the current conversation is to distort people's perceptions of what they're saying to each other about the topic on both sides of the conversation, which seems to be contributing to the ongoing verbal conflict. This maps pretty exactly onto the analogy to the tit-for-tat conflict that I was trying to draw. But if we look at the grief itself and how it's driving the conversation here, as I tried to do with that example in the comment you quoted from, we might find a way to see past those distortions and express ourselves so that others can actually hear what we're saying. You don't get someone past anger and grief by telling them it's inappropriate because their suffering is less outrageous than yours, even if that's true, which I accept that it is in this case. Best case, they put their hurt in a box and it comes flying out later in some equally disruptive way. (Very best case, they grow up while the hurt's in the box and deal with it gracefully next time it comes out to play. But forcing it out of the discourse altogether makes that pretty unlikely.)
...I'm amazed people are still doing the back and forth over this, 850 comments later.I'm trying to understand why I'm so compelled to watch this trainwreck, partly by getting in the middle of it. The reactions I'm experiencing are interesting.
> ...going from there to "and therfore, women, you should not let bad experiences with men prevent you from engaging without fear with me, because that would be unjust and the equivalent of racism", I think falls down on two levels.Thanks for your thoughtful response, running order. I agree with everything you say here, and just want to clarify that that I did not mean that comment as some kind of sermon drawing an ethical equation between wariness about sexual violence and racism. It was a framework for thinking about the issue which confused me but at the same time seemed to point to something important underlying the intractability of this conflict. Your observations of disparity in risk and power dynamics show why it makes no sense to draw an ethical equivalence between the two situations, and helped me to clarify my thinking about the issue. But it was never my intent* to say something like "This fear of sexual violence is ethically equivalent to ethnically-motivated fear of violence, so you should stop being afraid of us." That would be at least as counterproductive as saying "My experience of sexual violence is far more outrageous than your experience of ostracism/rejection, so STFU about your pain," because obviously the grief of sexual violence is going to cut far deeper, and be far harder to get past, than the grief of ostracism. What I was stumbling towards with the your-race-owes-me-a-dollar analogy was a better understanding of my own sense of ostracism/rejection, and your comments have been helpful in that regard.
That's a completely logical thought and thus has no place in this discussion.Thanks for clarifying. I'll go take my frustrations out on my cats instead. I will post video later.
If it's inappropriate for a man to come on to a woman in an elevator because it's a confined space and she is justifiably assuming him to be a rapist until he proves otherwise, then it's inappropriate for a man to get into the elevator alone with a woman at all. He's not some genderless nonentity until he opens his mouth, at which point he suddenly transforms into Schroedinger's Rapist. To the extent that there is reasonable anxiety about being in an elevator with a man because he might attack you, that danger - and thus, anxiety about the danger - is present as soon as the doors close.I don't understand this. Why should behavior not be part of perceived threat level? A number of people in this thread have already pointed out that maleness alone is not the source of the threat.
Thank you, thank you very much for that intro. Can everybody hear me in the back OK? Yeah it's never really been a problem for me, but everyone else has been asking that so I figured I would as well.posted by floam at 11:08 AM on July 6, 2011 [4 favorites]
I was a little unsure about what I would be speaking about because, the topic of communicating atheism is such a large one, and I really wasn't exactly sure what I should narrow it to. And then I saw the really interesting panel earlier today, on women, women atheist activists. And I was going to ask a question, at the Q&A, and I didn't have a question, so much as an hour-long lecture. So, I'd like to get that now. No, specifically I took issue with something said by Paula Kirby, whose work I really enjoy. But she made a comment that she felt that there was no problem with sexism in the atheist community, because she's never experienced any sexism in the atheist community. In the skeptical movement we refer to this as an argument from ignorance, and in the feminist community we refer to it as an argument from privilege. And I'm really genuinely happy that she hasn't experienced any, any sexism. But I don't think that's a proper basis to make a judgement on whether or not there is a problem with sexism and atheism. And she also later said that she didn't think that there was some great conspiracy to keep women out of the atheist community. Well I don't think anyone thinks that -- I think that's a bit of a straw-person, if you will --, I think, unless you want to consider the patriarchy, in general, as a conspiracy. Which I don't -- I don't think that there's any club getting together: "How can we get less women involved?", no I don't think that's happening. But there is an issue with sexism, and I thought that, because the topic of this panel is "communicating atheism", I thought maybe I could offer my perspective, as someone who communicates atheism while being a women, because it differs from Paula Kirby's experience, and I think it's important you know that her experience isn't my experience.
So, a few weeks ago, I have a podcast called the Skeptic's Guide To The Universe, and um... No you were right not to applaud, it's fine. That was the right decision you all made. No, and, if you're not familiar with the, it's mostly skeptical topics, science topics, but we occasionally discuss secularism and things like that. I talked very briefly on these talks I've been giving recently at atheist conferences in which I describe the religious right in the US, and their war on women they've been raging very recently. Just to give you a quick idea, in the first 3 months of this year, state legislatures in the US passed 916, er, not passed, sorry, introduced, 916 bills that restricted reproductive rights.
Um, amongst those that passed, were some really horrific things, like abstinence-only education must be taught in one of the states, I think in North Carolina, unless the school petitions the government to teach something called "Abstinence Plus", which is a way for religious conservatives to get abstinence-only education into the schools, while throwing in something about condoms at the end. Um, also some very serious restrictions on abortion, and also on general access to contraception, they're allowing pharmacists for instance, to not give contraceptives to women who ask them for it. And you know, they're protecting the pharmacists jobs, saying they're allowed to take a religious exemption. Which to me is like saying "a vegetarian priest can refuse to give the flesh and blood of Jesus.... [laughter] and still keep his job. If you can't do the job, don't do the job. So I spoke briefly about that, on the podcast, and I encouraged people in the audience who were concerned about the separation of church and state when it comes to things like prayer in schools, and creationism, I encouraged them to learn more about what's happening to women, and to get involved and help fight the religious right.
And then the emails started coming in. The first email was addressed to "The Female On The Podcast" [laughter]... My name is on the top of the show, everyone calls me by that name. It's Rebecca. It's on the website. But it was address to the female, and he was wondering why I was encouraging people to kill babies. He's an atheist. Another email I got was addressed not to me, but to the men of the podcast. It was basically, Dear Guys, won't you do something about that Rebecca? This isn't the first that.. I get those emails all the time. They're not addressed to me, they're addressed to the men, to shut up that girl. And it most-often happens when I talk about feminist issues, women’s-rights issues, things like that. And I'll also note briefly that that email was terribly misspelled, grammatically incorrect, and ended up "you should all just grow up" and then, "with great power comes great responsibility." [laughter]
And so my response was simply, um, thanks for your e-mail, it takes a lot of courage for a semi-literate adult male to quote spider-man... [laughter] and then tell us to grow up. [applause]
So I wish I could say that those e-mails were rare, but they're not. I get a couple of them a month, usually. More if I'm talking about women's issues. They're extraordinarily... there's some... they range in sexism. From extraordinarily sexist, to "this is probably kinda sexist." and it's quite disheartening to get these emails from people who actually agree with me on 98% of everything else that's important. But not on this. Then there are there e-mails from people who seem to agree with me 100% of the time, there are, I get fan mail, and a certain percentage of the fan-mail is graphically sexual. [laughter] And it's, you're laughing, I hope, out of a little bit of discomfort. [laughter] And if you're not uncomfortable, I'm gonna make you uncomfortable. [laughter] Because some of these emails do describe in graphic detail what these men would like to do me sexually. These are from the people agree with me and they think they're complimenting me by sending these e-mails, these tweets, youtube messages, things like that. So these are from atheists. And they don't necessarily understand that they're being horribly misogynistic, but they are. Because misogyny isn't something that's just relegated to religion. Religion can certainly bring it out, and strenghten it, but it's a cultural problem, and even atheists, even rational people, haven't necessarily rationally looked at their own ideas of gender, and equality and sex.
So, that's one of the things I like to do on SkepChick, that's one of the things that SkepChick as a website stands for is, it's a place where we combine skepticism and atheism and secularism and humanism and feminism. And through that we hope to sort of let know about what their privileges are and how they can help be more welcoming to women, how they can get rid of the biases they hold that they might not even realize they hold. So, what it's like to deal with other atheists as an outspoken atheist woman. And of course there's also, I should mention, the contact from people who disagree even on the atheism. The contact I get from religious people. I'm sure we've all heard of Richard reading his amazing hate mail. Which is hilarious. [chuckles] Which I should mention, is actually my cell-phone ring. [laughter]
I probably should have brought it up here. But yeah, I'm like walking to the grocery store, and suddenly my purse goes "YOU SUCK!", "I HOPE YOU GET BY A BUS!"
[Laughter]
[Dawkins leans over laughing, starts to say something]
Rebecca:
"...BY A CHURCH VAN.",
[Laughter]
... that's right. So, the hate mail I get, obviously we all get some pretty terrible hate mail. I'll just mention briefly, that as a women, a lot of the hate mail I get isn't just violent, I do get the death-threats, and you know, the standard sort of hate mail like that, but I also get a tremendous amount of threats from religious people that involve rape. Um, a huge amount, probably more than the death threats, are the threats of rape. Whether they're threatening to rape me, or they're just saying somebody should, because you'll probably be better off. They come in all the time. And it's incredibly damaging.
So, I'd just like to add my voice to the...the earlier panel I thought was really great, and I thought it was a great message to tell women, yeah, you do need to speak out, you do need to stand up, but you also have to knowledge what you're going to be facing when you stand up. You're going to be facing... you may be facing, obviously not every woman has these problems, it depends on probably what media you're using. Don't go on YouTube. Don't do it. And I'm hoping Aron can maybe speak more to that later.
But, we do need to acknowledge the fact that women in our community do take a risk by standing up ask speaking out. And when we acknowledge that we can help build a better support basis for them, so that when they start getting these terrible e-mails, when I was getting them, I was alone, and I would cry a lot about it. Until the other guys from the podcast started speaking up about it "you know these emails are terrible! Do you know how terrible these emails are?" and I'm like "Yes! Thank you!", And I just want to encourage you all to support one-another, and to supper the women in your lives, and to know that it is a problem, and to me to even watch your own language, and your own behavior to try to root out any biases that may be lurking within you.
And so, that's all I've got.
[applause]
And then I would make a comment about how there could really be more women in the community, and the responses from my fellow skeptics and atheists ranged from “No, they’re not logical like us,” to “Yes, so we can fuck them!” That seemed weird.posted by rakim at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]
So I started speaking more about women. About how they’re not idiots. About how they can think logically but maybe there are other social pressures keeping them away from our message, like how we tell women they should be quiet and polite and not question what is told to them. I spoke about how people need role models, and there were so few women on stage at these events.
And I got messages from women who told me about how they had trouble attending pub gatherings and other events because they felt uncomfortable in a room full of men. They told me about how they were hit on constantly and it drove them away. I didn’t fully get it at the time, because I didn’t mind getting hit on. But I acknowledged their right to feel that way and I started suggesting to the men that maybe they relax a little and not try to get in the pants of every woman who walks through the door. Maybe they could wait for her to make the first move, just in case.
And then, for the past few years as the audience for Skepchick and SGU grew, I’ve had more and more messages from men who tell me what they’d like to do to me, sexually. More and more men touching me without permission at conferences.
I'm Sorry If I Inadvertently Spurned Advances You May Have Made At The ConferenceThe follow-up card would read
Inside (It's Just That Strange Places With New People Make Me Blind With Anxiety)
You Probably Don't Remember Me And I Just Made An Ass Of Myselfposted by adipocere at 1:57 PM on July 6, 2011 [6 favorites]
Inside (Business As Usual, Here Is A Coupon For A Free Denny's Egg Breakfast)
posted by MattMangels at 11:02 AM on July 4, 2011 [3 favorites]