Summations Only

No, in my opinion saying "you're a fucking slut who ought to be raped to death, maybe I'll meet you in some dark alley and do it" is abuse, but saying "you've made an argument, but you're wrong" is not. And to say that "abuse has been flying both ways" is to make a false equivalence when one side is saying the former and the other side is saying the latter.I'm not inclined to accept the testimony of liars that Watson has been abusing anybody. I've already detailed how people have ascribed to Watson things that she did not actually say. This is, most likely, another example of it. But, hey. Prove me wrong. Who did Watson say should be raped to death? Anybody?

Lying about me twice doesn't make it true.

So she didn't actually say it - you're interpreting it that way.Doesn't that make you the "radical feminist", actually? Just a thought.

Well, but you're not repeating them. You're misrepresenting them.That's a form of lying, which you are doing.

If that's the case, then it follows that if Rebecca Watson was sexually objectified then she was subject to misogyny, and it would hardly be "extreme" to accurately characterize a situation. Are you saying she wasn't sexually objectified during the encounter? Or are you just saying that we can label accurate characterizations "extreme" and thus dismissable if we'd prefer not to face the facts?

Good thing I'm not asking you to do that - I'm asking you to substantiate your assertion that Rebecca Watson and I have said that making propositions is anti-feminist. That was nonsense back in the other thread the first time it was refuted, and it's nonsense now. Adults - like the kind who would be having consensual sex - know the difference between when they're running an effective game and when they're just creeping. You can't palm the pea on this and defend a situation where two people agreed to have consensual sex, because that wasn't the situation in the elevator - the situation in the elevator was a man making unwanted advances without regard to the wishes of the other person. I'm sorry, but the notion that people have sex with each other by a process of random survey ("hey, you wanna have sex? Hey you wanna have sex? How about you?") is just beyond infantile. Doing it in elevators seems particularly worthless - how many times do you actually wind up riding in an elevator with someone? Usually you're in there alone. Wouldn't random cold calls be a more effective strategy? When you could do it from your room, for instance?It just doesn't pass the smell test to suggest that people randomly proposition each other as a strategy for having casual sex. If that's true then what the fuck is Craig's List for? Nobody was condemned! That's the most amazing thing - Watson's incredibly mild comment about how it made her uncomfortable was met with such enormous butthurt that she was actually subject to death threats. And it's Watson that people have the temerity to refer to as "oversensitive." Absolutely amazing. And all of this - all of this verbiage, all of this attention, all of the exposure to the potential of being prosecuted for making threats - in the service of maybe getting your dick wet at Skepticon by a strategy of random-survey propositioning that sounds like something a stoner idiot would think of. What the fuck? Another claim that she didn't, in fact, make. The lying continues apace, I see. Clearly what she said was simply too convincing for you to grapple with it.

No, but apparently you're stupid enough to simply repeat the exact argument I just disproved. Again - adults know the difference between when they're running an effective game and when they're just creeping. The notion that people need to basically run experiments to find out when they've got game and when they're being creepers is a comedy routine from How I Met Your Mother, which you have apparently confused with a documentary:(Well, ok, I couldn't find a clip from the one where Barney goes around using pick-up lines and then having the girls respond to survey questions about it. But this one was pretty funny, too.) You're defending Elevator Guy by suggesting that he's trying to get pussy by means of a random survey approach - literally just asking girls up to his room without having any idea of how they'll react, hoping that he'll stumble onto one of the women who will, bizarrely, assent to this. The reason that it seems so stupid when I say it like that is that it's an incredibly stupid thing to do, and that becomes clear once we dispense with your misleading "hey, how was he supposed to know?" framing. The way he's supposed to know is by being an adult - you know, like the kind who would reasonably expect to have, or have had, consensual sex with another adult. Adults know when they've got game and when they're just creeping. Again - you're trying to have an argument about things that Rebecca Watson hasn't said and doesn't believe, and in doing so you're proving my point that almost all of this controversy is an invention by Rebecca Watson's detractors. Any time you're prepared to grapple with her actual remarks and not what you'd prefer she'd have said because it would be easier to argue with, that's fine by me. Until then you're just proving me right. Indeed. Thus proving that the enormous, sexist, violent objections that were widely and loudly raised in response - including Dawkins' - actually does indicate a sexism problem among movement atheism. I'm glad you've come around to my view, at last - the problem was not Watson's remarks (which really were very trivial), but the enormous, widespread, sexist response to them.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Well, wait. You already admitted that she was sexual objectified and you're the one who said that sexual objectification was misogyny. Not even tantamount to misogyny, just misogyny outright. We're working off your definitions, here, and they seem to point to an incontrovertible conclusion that Watson was the victim of misogyny. So what's to convince?What's bizarre is talking to you about this, honestly, because every time your own stated definitions point to a misogyny problem in a community, any community, you back away and say "wait, that can't be right. I must have meant something else." For whatever reason, you're happy to expressly state your own definitions of terms but you refuse to follow through with them when they lead to conclusions you don't seem to like.

No, they do. That's part of what makes them adults.And if they do creep someone out as a result of bad judgement, guess what - the way you solve that is by taking your bro aside and letting him know he's being a creeper. The way you don't solve it is by sexist violence visited on those who noticed he was being creepy. It just means you're immature.

I'm the only one in this thread trying to keep the focus on what people are writing and saying, instead of what others think they're writing and saying. For you to suggest that to me, and then immediately not do it, is just bizarre. Show me where in Watson's "feminist theory" - whatever that is - misogyny is solely defined as sexual objectification.And even if you did have Watson on tape making an "accusation" of "misogyny" - which by your own admission you don't - if sexual objectification is a form of misogyny, why would Watson be wrong to make that accusation? So what? Isn't that the problem? That that's something you're proud of?

I don't understand why you think it's necessary for me to participate in that argument. Isn't the issue here that, once again, you've revealed yourself to have been arguing on the basis of things Watson didn't say?This would seem to be your admission that you've been misrepresenting Watson throughout.

Well, it has to be Watson's feminist theory specifically, or else once again you're trying to tar her by association with views you don't have any evidence she holds. To know if she was sexualized? I don't follow. Surely she only has to know her own mind, her own reaction, to determine that. If I insult you, for instance, you don't have to read my mind to know if you were insulted, you only have to read your own. So didn't that happen, though? I mean, what part of the conversation in the elevator was it where Rebecca Watson's individual desires and preferences qua her as an individual (as opposed to her as a conduit for his sexual pleasure) were afforded his interest? When did that happen? Be specific.

So prove her wrong. It sounds like she did express a personal preference, which was to go to her room and get some sleep.Does the rest of the conversation, as reported (and recall that neither participant has contested the facts of the conversation) indicate that her desire and preference was afforded equal attention to his? For that matter - has it in this thread?Neither of us have to be mind-readers to solve this, because as you'll note, none of her definition of "sexual objectification" involves plumbing the depths of anybody's psyche. It's not about thoughts, it's about actions. Did his actions in the elevator evince a lot of attention about her feelings and desires, or just about his own?

We're not talking about a situation where someone said "hello" and in doing so, insulted another.

You're right. But the response to that isn't to throw up our hands and refuse to criticize people who insult others, because we can't read their minds and know that they're not Martians, or something, who just don't understand our human insult technology.Some people need to hit the guardrails to know where they are. That's fine, but they shouldn't act like that and then expect people not to let them know where the guardrails are. And they shouldn't expect people not to criticize them for not yet having matured into the adult technique of knowing where the guardrails are before you hit them. All things considered, we as a society prefer that people live according to the latter technique instead of the former, and people who haven't yet caught up to that should expect to suffer criticism for it - even criticism they may find unfair. Ignorance of the law is not a defense. That's true. But Rebecca Watson didn't act like "some grave injustice was committed". In fact, she did exactly what you suggested - she mentioned to the guy, and to others, that his proposition caused offense. Did he apologize and move on? I don't know. But in response to Watson, a great deal of entitled men suddenly acted like some grave injustice was committed merely by Watson pointing out that offense was caused, an injustice that they tried to rectify by "punishing" her with threats of sexualized violence.That's the actual controversy we're talking about. Not that Watson took offense to an elevator proposition, but that her simple statement that she had taken offense instigated a torrent of sexist filth, including by a number of very public figures in movement atheism that should have known better.