Basic Errors (Part the Second)
Click for more of the same, only more so, and most definitely send the children out before you do.
Let us take DaveC as a specific example, Billvon; in the time since I started this post,
he has answered the question↗:
“I am not lumping street harrassment under public interaction - you are lumping public interaction under street harrasment.”
Or, as
I had previously suggested↑ to Daecon:
(1) That the generalizations are intended to invalidate and exclude the actual examples by simply ignoring them.
(2) That the generalizations do, in fact, include the specific examples, and this is our answer, anyway.
In the context of the women telling us what the problem is, they tell us about harassment, and DaveC changes the subject.
Once is an accident,
maybe. Repeated insistence over the course of months would seem to require some deliberate attention; and now we have this to settle the question―the women tell us what's wrong, and DaveC tells them what's
really important.
The disrespect is obscene, and after this long, and with enough iterations, it would be exactly contrary to presume this is some manner of innocent accident.
Bells↑ appears to have made the point sufficiently in
DaveC's↑ case, but there is, in that circumstance, always the proverbial tomorrow, and there are also several others who are taking part in the basic error of insistently disregarding and disempowering women.
†
Think of it like a cynical punch line:
Hush, dear, the men are talking.
In my lifetime, it hasn't always been a punch line. Indeed, the only reason we call it a punch line is that the same sectors of society that once relied on such presuptive supremacy are also the ones who bawl any time a feminist reminds of the words. To the one, they disdain the stereotype; to the other, they really,
really want what it describes―the voiceless, subordinate role of women in a masculine hierarchy―to be real. And, you know, after decades, it would seem those voices in my generation have finally figured out, for the most part, to not say it explicitly.
But this attitude is a powerful component of American culture; it even has a home at the Supreme Court.
I'm not joking; consider this notion:
A seventy-some year-old man asserting child molestation isn't a big deal because he knows how a thirteen year old girl really feels about being molested by a group of adults. These days, the legend of the Notorious RBG captures headlines. While Justice Ginsburg has always been a tireless, poweful voice for equality sounding discord against perverse harmonies of institutionalized prejudice, her rise to this celebrated notoriety begins with the Safford United debacle, when she granted a press interview in order to publicly excoriate her male fellows on the Court for so wilfully and thoroughly silencing a young victim. The majority drove the point home in its decision:
Yes, the school district acted illegally; yes, they should have known. But, hey, they say they meant well and didn't know, and since there's no harm done, we will give them a pass. Oh, and we're not setting any precedent today.
†
When you read that list of quotes, can you tell me where the women are?
How about this:
It doesn't matter where the women are.
At various points, Billvon,
you have even called out this behavior; that's one of the reasons I tacked your post,
#502↑ to the end of the list. There are a couple others in there, too. And that's the thing:
You know this is going on.
Are you searching for some "pragmatic"-sounding "middle ground"? Because in the face of insistent, identifiable behavior, it seems absolutely absurd to go pissing your credibility all over the carpet for the sake of potsherd diversion.
And if you were watching the arsonists run down the street, torches in hand, setting fire here and there, would you stand in the way of the fire trucks to split hairs about your opinion of the definition of arson?
Because this has been going on a long time. Colloquially speaking, this has been going on "forever". In the Sciforums chapters, there is always a persistent crowd of seeming newcomers ready to step up and give the same roadworn, offensive, objectifying arguments about putting women in their place, as if simply repeating the stuff yet one more time will
finally convince people.
Over the course of the last couple years, we've engaged these issues repeatedly as a community, and the result is pretty straightforward; the discourse is stalled at the insistent objectification of women. And it really is like the scene from
Airplane!
†
Macro:
We are professionals who compete at the highest tier of the premiere political league in the world ... which is why our candidate went into Election Day not only projecting the confidence his supporters need to see, but actually believing he was going to win because he had no clue what was actually happening. Our professional expertise is why you could watch, real time, the candidate and his wife falter from believing in his inevitable victory and plummet into the slow and agonizing comprehension that they just lost. We are professionals who compete at the highest tier, which is why our team had exactly no clue what was about to happen.
Micro:
I am a passionate advocate deeply invested in this issue, which is why I have never heard of this component over here, and when I go looking for answers can only find the opposition. My passion leads me to invest myself in misinformation, which is why my opinion is definitive of the issue.
There comes a point at which the only real question is why certain people aren't paying attention. In the face of consistent results the idea that one needs to delve into conspiratorial distractions in order to find some middle ground redeeming some aspect of an an irrational argument advocating inequality and injustice just seems rather quite ... oh, what's the word ...
desperate?
Women are telling us what the problem is, and the only way for these advocates to deal with that information is to correct the women, because, apparently, women need to be told what their own experiences are. By silencing women's voices―he doesn't need a right to disrupt her for his own purposes, she needs to make her position clear in response, and even has to do so according to certain demanded protocols―they're really no different from
Wellwisher↑. No, really:
If a guy is cat calling a woman, this is better described as crime of rudeness. So why the need to create confusion? Why are they trying to make the women afraid, with the buzz word, hate, so women react in the fearful way to a clumsy attempt at flattery ? And do women actually fall for this, and if so, what does that tell you?
It seemed well enough to
ask the obvious question↑:
You do realize where Nottinghamshire is getting this idea?
After all, when it comes to
silencing a woman's voice in a discussion of her existential condition―(Hush, dear, the men are talking)―we just don't find a more blatant example than what Wellwisher offered.
Go back and read those quotes.
His fancy.
His prerogative.
Her obligation. Some would even go so far as to implicitly protest the obligation to pay attention to what women tell us:
"Do you really think that I read all the ... written here?" (
Schmelzer, #455↑)
The women are telling us what's wrong; we see an enduring, bigoted response, which is to correct women in order to tell them what is
really going on in their lives, because apparently they aren't capable of comprehending their own existence and need to be told.
Would you prefer we pretend none of this is happening?
Or, more directly:
I see this phenomenon on a lot of forums. There's a tendency to normalize to the opinions of the moderators or frequent posters; anyone to either side of them is an extremist.
Really?
Do you think you can actually justify your thesis?
Do you think you can actually wave away the mountains of evidence? Can you actually make your case?
Go for it.
I dare you.
C'mon. Put some effort into it.
It'll be fun.
―Fin―