Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Leafsnail]

But the

we're trying to get you laid

As a justification of Greta Christina's good intention was the most sexist thing I've heard toward men.

I must say, I completely agree with this.  It's unbelievably patronising.  If I want advice on how to "get laid", I will ask for it.  I don't appreciate it being dispensed en masse on an unsolicited basis.  I don't appreciate people assuming that's what I'm interested in.  And while I don't usually like just reversing genders... I'm pretty sure if I tried to justify something somebody said to a crowd of women with "I was just trying to get you laid" then it wouldn't go down well.

IMHO, Godwin's law is a ridiculous idea and hiding behind a censorship method so you don't feel associated with such actions is pathetic.  I simply gave one method (used in the past) to "prevent" the spread of religious ideas that do not "abide" your morals.  It happens to be one of the most recent and outstanding examples.

You are bolting the Nazi part onto his viewpoint.  It has nothing at all to do with what he said.

Nadaka wants to help prevent serious abuses in certain religious sects.

You are arbitrarily changing this view to "Nadaka wants to exterminate people he disagrees with".  The bad bit about the view you're expressing was added by you in order to make a strawman.  Godwin's law doesn't actually come into it at all.

[Bauglir]

Taking away the room is... completely irrelevant. It's an arbitrary part of the scenario; the room is immutable and eternal. THERE IS ONLY THE ROOM. ALL GLORY TO THE ROOM.

Er, sorry about that. Anyway, I agree, the freedom to murder each of those 100 people is taken away. I'm asserting that the freedom to murder 100 people is of lesser magnitude than 100 freedoms to live (and all the freedoms each of those entails).

[Glowcat]

You guys realize the context here is when men are making advances and trying to get laid, right? This thing started because somebody made a horrible attempt at hitting on somebody when they shouldn't have.

I believe what she's saying is that she's trying to create a situation where women and men can flirt with each other and both create and accept advances with neither party feeling threatened in the least.

So yes, her actions would be helping men to get laid, if their problem is coming off creepy to an otherwise receptive target.  I don't believe she was at all trying to say all men want to have sex with women, and that's all they want.

She was, so far as I can tell, appealing to the segment of the population that is frustrated by navigating boundaries.

This is exactly it. Nowhere did she even begin to imply that all men think about is sex, but in regards to a situation where men were making women uncomfortable with their advances, then yeah, some advice to not drive people away from gatherings also has the additional effect of making future advances more successful.

EDIT: She also uses it to segue into an assault on other possible motivations.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We are trying to help you get laid.

And if you're fervently resisting that help... then I have to assume that getting laid is not the point.

When women explain to you -- in a calm, nuanced, proportionate way -- that there are some contexts in which your advances are less likely to be well-received than others, and you respond by sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming about ball-busting, man-hating feminists who are hell-bent on eradicating all flirting and sex and eroding your First Amendment right to proposition any woman at any time and place? When you resist hearing that hitting on a woman who's alone in an elevator in a strange city at four o'clock in the morning is not likely to be well-received, that it's likely to be perceived as a potential threat, and that you are likely to be perceived as an insensitive clod at best if you do it? When we explain ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, that elevators are well-documented as a common place for women to get raped and that it's therefore not an appropriate place to make sexual advances -- and you still reply, "But I don't understand what the problem is with elevators"?

I have to assume that getting laid is not the point.

I have to assume that the point is something entirely different. I have to assume that you will do anything to resist hearing that women experience male advances in a very different context from the way men experience female advances. I have to assume that you have an active resistance to understanding that women's experiences are different from men's: that (among other things) women routinely get our professional/ intellectual/ artistic accomplishments dismissed in favor of a focus on our sexual attractiveness, and that women have to be seriously cautious about physical and sexual violence from men. When you are so vehemently unwilling to see some of the ways that privilege works in your favor, I have to assume that maintaining privilege is the point.

It's pretty clear when you look at the entire post and get a greater understanding of its context.

[Vector]

I must say, I completely agree with this.  It's unbelievably patronising.  If I want advice on how to "get laid", I will ask for it.  I don't appreciate it being dispensed en masse on an unsolicited basis.  I don't appreciate people assuming that's what I'm interested in.  And while I don't usually like just reversing genders... I'm pretty sure if I tried to justify something somebody said to a crowd of women with "I was just trying to get you laid" then it wouldn't go down well.

I don't know if you know this, but one of the things often said by men in response to feminists discussing navigation of boundaries is:

"But that way no men ever get to have sex with women, it's too clumsy, it's a turnoff, I don't want to do it."

Feminists have begun to respond to this common complaint with explanations on how to negotiate sex while respecting boundaries.  I believe the post in question has been taken woefully out of context.

I could, however, be wrong.

[SalmonGod]

Andir:  Why do we need to have a flawless step-by-step plan for eliminating something we don't agree with to be able to discuss whether or not we agree with it?  No one is asking you to do anything.  No one is advocating any extreme actions.  We're all basically just talking about things that bother us, so that we can teach each other about them and all gain a better understanding of the world's problems and develop well-informed attitudes and behaviors towards them. 

This whole thing began over a simple disagreement regarding the scope of an issue that even you agreed is a real issue.  It struck a nerve with someone who has personally dealt with the issue, and you continued to insensitively poke at that nerve and put words in peoples mouths until they inevitably got a little ticked off, and then you started crying foul because people were rightfully annoyed with you.  Please take a moment to review the progression of the last few pages and cool down a bit.

Edit:  And just to clarify, I get the feeling that you're acting a little out of character right now, and don't understand how you ended up at this point.  I'm trying to advise you in good faith right now.

[Duke 2.0]

I'm asserting that the freedom to murder 100 people is of lesser magnitude than 100 freedoms to live (and all the freedoms each of those entails).

 This had better be based on basic mathmatical assumptions that 100 freedoms to live is greater than a single persons freedom to kill and various freedoms associated to it. Otherwise you start attaching morals outside of freedom to the scenaro, which would require justifying on their own framework.

 Looking back and at the current discussions it seems my own rant is unneeded. The basic premise of any action taken to help others should be peaceful, nonviolent and noncompulsatory disregard any tagent on deprogramming, which seems already lumped as an evil that should not really be used nowadays. At the very least I will show that I understand that there are various abusive people that will hide behind the freedom of religion of this country to abuse others, and that there is not much you can do about that without taking away the very thing allowing religions and Athiesm to grow.
 I am a bit iffy about an organization devoted to basically saying "Your beliefs are wrong and we can help you" and such an organization being supported by the government. I know its purpose and how vile some cults can be, but very strict guidelines on what constitutes a cult such organizations can take on and a way to differenciate sects from eachother need to be formed first. It is very easy for a scare over a new radial religion to cause unjust reaction over it.
 (I use the term radical as diferent, not radical extremist)

[The Maestro]

Tantamount to creating a state religion? What? That's nonsense. Having the government regulate religion is very much like having it regulate any other entity. There might be minor abuses, such as an official of one religion trying to be a dick to churches of another religion, but that can be dealt with in turn. and is still vastly preferable to violence like this.

And regulation =/= violence.

and having the government fund such groups? waste of money. You'd be better off organizing them from the bottom up, because trying to make that kind of thing from the top down is an exercise in futility.

So what do we call it when the government decides what is and is not an acceptable thing for religions to do?  There's an organization called the TSA, and every year their decision on regulation become more and more draconian to the point that people are calling for it to be dismantled.  It started out just the same way: preventing people from bringing obviously harmful objects onboard aircraft, and has progressed steadily towards excessive regulation.  Yes, yes, slippery slope and all that, but when it's a proven phenomena (please find me a regulatory agency that deals in criminal matters that doesn't progressively encroach on peoples' basic rights) which happens time and time again then I see an issue with giving government direct power to regulate religion.

I mean, we can say that the government will be severely limited, but when the rubber meets the road the only feasible way to force these groups to change their ways (through a bureaucracy) is eventually through actual force.  Then what happens if a religious group says something that is not necessarily harmful, but the director of the agency under the current administration deems to be so?  It's happened before innumerable times in other agencies, why not this one?

@The Maestro

I feel the need to point out that I don't believe freedom is a zero-sum game. That implies that all freedoms are of equal magnitude, but I'd argue that if one man has a mini-gun in a room with 100 people, forbidding this man to fire indiscriminately creates a net gain in freedom. I know that's a detail that isn't relevant to your overall point, but I feel like it's a point worth noting early on in a philosophical discussion, which seems to be where you're going.

The minigun analogy breaks down if we give them all guns, because now everyone is on an equal footing.  I would, however, prefer to avoid a gun debate because those never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have a productive discussion or outcome.  Ever.  Suffice to say that analogies are a poor way of proving a point except to illustrate what you are saying.  I get where you're coming from, but the solution to a problem is never to take power away from one person by using even more power from another source, it is to give power to everyone so they may contest the conditions themselves.  This connection I will make more clear in a moment.

That is the exact opposite of what I'm saying: forbidding a tiny group of people doing something (man with minigun), and thereby giving an opening for more and more restrictive regulations on the larger group (the 100 other people he threatens) is exactly the problem.  Big governments always, always harm freedom.  I don't mean big government like healthcare, I mean big government as in it gets to monitor/regulate what people (as distinct from business regulatory agencies like the FCC) do without their necessary consent.

Take, for example, the fact that all (and I mean all) agencies dealing with criminal justice are known to routinely abuse their power.  E.g., police cannot be put on camera because of 'wiretapping' restraints that extend from either state law or, failing that, the patriot act.  This power given to them (the power to censor public filming of their actions) has led to literally countless cases of police abuse being unprovable and therefore unpunishable.  Take, for example, the DHS tracking people without their knowledge or consent or being required to submit a warrant of any kind.  As well, my previously mentioned TSA issues.  Oversight only fixes the problem after the fact.

If any government agency is going to be given the power to potentially violate peoples' first amendment rights (and lets not kid ourselves, we are giving them the potential to do that at the very least) then there will be abuses of the system.  People always have the best of intentions from their own point of view, but many times that is disconnected from the reality of what is actually good.

So, I guess the connection here is that we give non-governmental organizations (NGO) the support and help them empower those made powerless by restrictive religion, instead of using even more power to remove the authority of those abusive religions.  Grassroots is right, it's bottom-up that most effectively kills the abuse of power.

What it comes down to is that Angle, you say top-down funding of an NGO is not going to work.  Well why the hell is a top-down government organization going to work?  They will use the sword, perhaps judiciously at first, but as I've clearly demonstrated with specific cases, the sword's arc will swing ever wider...

Duke 2.0 makes a similar point: even strict guidelines on what beliefs are not acceptable will take on new meanings as time progresses.  Case-in-point: second amendment debate.  That short, two or three sentence paragraph is subject to wildly varying interpretation depending on who reads it.  Can you really look me in the eye and say such misinterpretation of a much more massive doctrine (either of the regulations or the beliefs of a church) will not happen at least semi-regularly?  Can you tell me it won't lead to severe issues that easily outweigh the good done by preventing the minuscule percentage of abuses of religion from propagating?

EDIT: Time for me to sleep, I have work tomorrow and will be on the road most of the day.  I'll be back tomorrow night to continue this discussion.

[Vector]

I don't know that it'd be so much a "your beliefs are wrong and we can help you" as "you feel your situation is hurting you and we want to help you get out of there."

It would be self-advocated rather than enforced by external authorities, save in situations where such crimes as rape and murder are prevalent--because we cannot allow religious law to supercede the law of the land.

And yeah, I should hope that no one is recommending the normal sort of deprogramming.  I could see some sort of recommended counseling schema for vile cults that had to be dismantled, but I'd hope it'd look more like normal psychological counseling for the issues at hand than "YOUR GOD IS BAD BAD BAD."  Voluntary, in general, rather than imprisoning.

Note--I know "vile cults" is subjective, but please overlook that for now.  I'm again talking about groups that commit clear-cut crimes.

[Leafsnail]

I don't know if you know this, but one of the things often said by men in response to feminists discussing navigation of boundaries is:

"But that way no men ever get to have sex with women, it's too clumsy, it's a turnoff, I don't want to do it."

Feminists have begun to respond to this common complaint with explanations on how to negotiate sex while respecting boundaries.  I believe the post in question has been taken woefully out of context.

I have in fact read the entire post in question, and I still feel that the (fairly large) section based on the argument "we're trying to get you laid" is patronising.  Even with a caveat that "we're also doing other things", it's very clearly talking down to men.  Stupid men who just can't work out how to get laid.

I acknowledge that the quote is a view that exists, but that doesn't justify mass patronisation and unsolicited advice along these lines.

[The Maestro]

I don't know that it'd be so much a "your beliefs are wrong and we can help you" as "you feel your situation is hurting you and we want to help you get out of there."

It would be self-advocated rather than enforced by external authorities, save in situations where such crimes as rape and murder are prevalent--because we cannot allow religious law to supercede the law of the land.

And yeah, I should hope that no one is recommending the normal sort of deprogramming.  I could see some sort of recommended counseling schema for vile cults that had to be dismantled, but I'd hope it'd look more like normal psychological counseling for the issues at hand than "YOUR GOD IS BAD BAD BAD."  Voluntary, in general, rather than imprisoning.

Note--I know "vile cults" is subjective, but please overlook that for now.  I'm again talking about groups that commit clear-cut crimes.

Quick response since I just saw this: that is what I'm saying!  Do not make it a government thing!  Make it a private organization that focuses on advocacy for people that are abused by their religions.  Have you ever seen the ACLU do something terrible to people?  Now how about the DOJ's track record?  See what I mean when I say NGO vs. Government?  When the power is in the form of voluntary advocacy then it is always better than the mandated power of a government.

[Vector]

I have in fact read the entire post in question, and I still feel that the (fairly large) section based on the argument "we're trying to get you laid" is patronising.  Even with a caveat that "we're also doing other things", it's very clearly talking down to men.  Stupid men who just can't work out how to get laid.

I acknowledge that the quote is a view that exists, but that doesn't justify mass patronisation and unsolicited advice along these lines.

Having eaten, and thus being capable of thinking straight, I agree with you on the patronization and tilt being somewhat absurd.  And, furthermore, if the post in question was not in context of a response to that particular question (which constitutes a solicitation, in my point of view) within a body of comment threads, it does sound kind of... yeah.  Disgusting.

I'm afraid I may have spoken too hastily, because I don't know what the precise situation was.

[Andir]

Why do you defend it? Why do you defend the rape and abuse of children?

Damn right I am categorizing everyone in a sect that actively endorses rape and child abuse as evil. WHAT THE FUCK IS EVIL IF THAT IS NOT EVIL?
...
Every single post you do makes it more clear exactly what you are.

I really wish you would quit telling me that I'm defending people that want to rape and do evil things.  I never even said that.
What you are doing, however, is placing everyone that labels themselves as a particular religion into a group which you feel needs to be "corrected" because you feel it's evil.  You still haven't mentioned how you intend to remove that influence on particular people (and I assume even against some of their own will since you seem so adamant about it.)
Also, if you do not stop with the personal attacks in calling me whatever it is you are, I will be forced to report you.  I am not advocating the continuation of said actions.  I am simply asking you what you intend to do about it and you keep going back to attack mode by insinuating that I'm something...whatever that is.

Wait, you're saying that he has a right to kill people? What is this i don't even...

No.  Freedom to do an action does not imply a right to do that.

You are bolting the Nazi part onto his viewpoint.  It has nothing at all to do with what he said.

Sure it does.  Identify a particular group of people who you do not agree with based solely on their religion (it doesn't matter if they are firm believers in the religion or if they were simply born into it...) and subject them to special advice.  I'm not stating that there has to be killing.  There have been concentration camps in prior history that did not involve genocide.  (See the US attitude toward Japanese during the war.)

Andir:  Why do we need to have a flawless step-by-step plan for eliminating something we don't agree with to be able to discuss whether or not we agree with it?  No one is asking you to do anything.  No one is advocating any extreme actions.  We're all basically just talking about things that bother us, so that we can teach each other about them and all gain a better understanding of the world's problems and develop well-informed attitudes and behaviors towards them. 

This whole thing began over a simple disagreement regarding the scope of an issue that even you agreed is a real issue.  It struck a nerve with someone who has personally dealt with the issue, and you continued to insensitively poke at that nerve and put words in peoples mouths until they inevitably got a little ticked off, and then you started crying foul because people were rightfully annoyed with you.  Please take a moment to review the progression of the last few pages and cool down a bit.

Edit:  And just to clarify, I get the feeling that you're acting a little out of character right now, and don't understand how you ended up at this point.  I'm trying to advise you in good faith right now.

I never asked for a flawless step by step plan.  I am pointing out the flaw in the thought process that someone's religion should be a determination of enforcement though.  I'm being told that I'm in the wrong here by stating that it's rather improbable/impossible to rectify the situation.  I then asked how and I'm being confronted as a supporter.

I'm rather calm right now, there was a brief moment earlier when I was being called evil but that's long since passed.  I can't say the same for everyone here, but I can say I'm not enraged one bit.

I asked a couple things:
1.  How are you going to identify and or inform the people that fall into that trap?
2.  How do you confront said person without enraging them?
3.  Why do you assume that everyone calling themselves a Pentecost is a rapist and child abuser?

There's no character to act out of...that I'm aware of... I think people have the freedom to remove themselves from the choices they make if they so choose.  There's evidence of one such person in this thread and I keep being told that I'm evil for stating obstacles.

[Glowcat]

I don't know if you know this, but one of the things often said by men in response to feminists discussing navigation of boundaries is:

"But that way no men ever get to have sex with women, it's too clumsy, it's a turnoff, I don't want to do it."

Feminists have begun to respond to this common complaint with explanations on how to negotiate sex while respecting boundaries.  I believe the post in question has been taken woefully out of context.

I have in fact read the entire post in question, and I still feel that the (fairly large) section based on the argument "we're trying to get you laid" is patronising.  Even with a caveat that "we're also doing other things", it's very clearly talking down to men.  Stupid men who just can't work out how to get laid.

I acknowledge that the quote is a view that exists, but that doesn't justify mass patronisation and unsolicited advice along these lines.

You're still missing the context here. This rebuttal isn't for men in general, it's for those who are/were attacking Rebecca and other women for speaking out about sexism at Atheist and Skeptic gatherings. Read the entire thing again, including the part I edited into my last post, and it's clear who Greta is addressing with that remark. Heck, here's the entire section:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To the men who have been resisting and pushing back against the feminists on this issue, there's a very important thing I want to say to you:

We are trying to help you get laid.

We're trying to do a lot more than that, of course. We're trying to make the atheist community more welcoming to women: because that would be better for women, and because it'd be better for atheism. We're trying to educate men about the reality of women's experiences, including the reality of how sex commonly gets used to trivialize women, and the reality of sexual violence. We're trying to make the world a less sexist place.

But we are also trying to help you get laid. (Many of us, anyway.) We are trying to show you the context into which your flirtations and advances and comments about our appearance are falling. We are trying to show you what it's like to be a woman: what it's like to try to be flirtatious and sex-positive and still be realistic about the no-joke threats we face every day to our safety and our lives. And we're doing this, in part, to give you a better shot with us. In fact, one of the very first feminist responses to this latest ruckus, from Jen McCreight at BlagHag, came in the form of a helpful guide: a guide about context, a guide about when/ where your flirtations and advances and comments about our appearance might be well-received... and when/ where they might be perceived as insulting, demeaning, or dangerous.

The women who are raising this issue are not a bunch of man-hating ball-busters or sex-phobic prudes. If you read Watson's blog, or McCreight's, or Amanda Marcotte's, or mine... you should know that this is patently absurd. We like sex. We like flirting. We like men. We're not saying you're all rapists. We know you're not all rapists. We know that most of you aren't rapists. We're explaining that, until we get to know you pretty well, we have no way of knowing whether you're a rapist or not, and that some situations (such as being alone with a strange man in an elevator) are well-documented as posing a greater risk of rape than others, and if you approach us in those situations, our guard is very likely going to be up.

We are trying to help you get laid.

And if you're fervently resisting that help... then I have to assume that getting laid is not the point.

When women explain to you -- in a calm, nuanced, proportionate way -- that there are some contexts in which your advances are less likely to be well-received than others, and you respond by sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming about ball-busting, man-hating feminists who are hell-bent on eradicating all flirting and sex and eroding your First Amendment right to proposition any woman at any time and place? When you resist hearing that hitting on a woman who's alone in an elevator in a strange city at four o'clock in the morning is not likely to be well-received, that it's likely to be perceived as a potential threat, and that you are likely to be perceived as an insensitive clod at best if you do it? When we explain ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, that elevators are well-documented as a common place for women to get raped and that it's therefore not an appropriate place to make sexual advances -- and you still reply, "But I don't understand what the problem is with elevators"?

I have to assume that getting laid is not the point.

I have to assume that the point is something entirely different. I have to assume that you will do anything to resist hearing that women experience male advances in a very different context from the way men experience female advances. I have to assume that you have an active resistance to understanding that women's experiences are different from men's: that (among other things) women routinely get our professional/ intellectual/ artistic accomplishments dismissed in favor of a focus on our sexual attractiveness, and that women have to be seriously cautious about physical and sexual violence from men. When you are so vehemently unwilling to see some of the ways that privilege works in your favor, I have to assume that maintaining privilege is the point.

Even if it reduces your chances of getting laid.

I have to assume that your purported desire to get laid is a smokescreen -- although quite probably an unconscious one -- for your desire to not understand how sexism and male privilege work.

And that is EXACTLY the reason we have to keep talking about it.

[Bauglir]

Jeez, why do people insist on changing the scenario? Don't. Take the one you're given. One person has a powerful, unwieldy weapon (precise murder is impossible; killing one will necessarily kill several), and everyone else is unarmed. I'm providing a counterexample to demonstrate why freedom is not inherently zero-sum; it is possible to restrict freedom so as to have a net gain. Guns are irrelevant; the man could have high explosives, toxic gas, or even just really big muscles and an urge to swing his fists around indiscriminately. Government is irrelevant; the restriction could be handed down from a deity, from loudspeakers set into the room, from the 100 people banding together and insisting, or even from the minigun-wielder's own self-control.

All that matters is this: 1 person exercising a whim can drastically decrease the freedom of 100 people. You can write your own scenario, but the point I intend to get across is that forbidding that whim, while technically a decrease in freedom, has the effect of drastically increasing the average freedom per person in the system. It's a semantic argument, because you can always argue about the magnitude and variety of the particular freedoms in a real situation, but it's necessary to dispel this notion that it is impossible to achieve greater freedom through regulation of other freedoms. It's a real problem, because it means a lot of people automatically dismiss any authority as inherently oppressive.

And, yeah, my judgment, for the purposes of this argument, is purely freedom-based. A dead person has no freedom; a living person necessarily has nonzero freedom, though it can approach pretty arbitrarily close to zero.

[Vector]

Andir, you keep on assuming people's points of view, rather than asking them about them.

You really need to stop doing that, because as far as I can tell, it's caused most of the problems here today.