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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Friday, October 16th, 2009 08:20 pm

Caution:  May be inflammatory.

Just for the sake of possibly-morbid curiosity:  I direct you to this article that [livejournal.com profile] perspicuity pointed out to me elsewhere.  Please go and read it.  Particularly the beginning.

Now, please answer only one poll.  First up, asking my readers of the feminine persuasion here:

For my chromosomally heterogeneous readers, I offer the following alternate poll with your own seven eight choices:

My personal feeling is that if you regard every male as a probable rapist lacking only the opportunity, I want some way to know in advance, because if the very first thought that goes through a woman's head is, "Is that man going to try to rape me?", I don't even want to start a conversation.  I find the whole attitude insulting, to say the least.  It's way too high a disadvantage to start out having to first of all convince someone that you're not planning to rape or murder them, and if I knew in advance that I was going to be up against that, I'd move on immediately to talk to someone saner.  I don't know how people who approach the world with that kind of level of fear every day can even function, but I do believe that it's not my responsibility to walk on eggshells everywhere I go, just to avoid triggering someone else's paranoia.

(Heh.  I just discovered I have to answer both polls to be able to see the results of my own poll.  Pretty obviously, so does everyone else.  Please note I am RESUBMITTING to add a "Just show me the results" entry to each poll.  If you already voted, this means your vote will be lost.  Feel free to vote again.  We apologize for the confusion.)

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 04:08 pm (UTC)
While this is true, I don't believe it's really applicable, because the alarm button and armed guard don't interfere with you doing your banking¹, and because they're there to protect you and your money, not just the bank. You benefit as well by their presence.

By contrast, as several other commenters have pointed out, the woman who wrote this article has set up her standard of "reasonable" behavior such that if one is to comply strictly with her rules, a man MAY NOT EVER initiate communication with a woman, because she has set up a standard of safety that is de facto impossible to meet.
Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this woman be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.
And as [livejournal.com profile] cipherpunk explicitly pointed out, IF I am dangerous to her, then by definition it's not safe for her to be in any space with me. Hence, according to her rules, if I am dangerous, it is never appropriate for me to initiate communication. But there is no room permitted for an "I'm not a danger to her" condition. Under her rules, I am required to a priori always assume that I am a danger to her. Hence the test will always fail, because the failure condition is expressly set up as a required precondition for the test. It's as though, before checking whether your phone has dial tone, you were required to always unplug it first. Of COURSE it doesn't have dial tone ... it's not plugged in.

The only way to comply with her rules is for the man to ALWAYS wait for the woman to make the first move ... and even in today's relatively "enlightened" times, probably somewhere between 80% and 95% of women never will. (And that's not even getting into the mixed-signals issue.)

(I also note, purely as an aside, that it is a myth that a male cannot be raped by a female. It is uncommon, true, but it happens. And as for males never having to fear rape outside of prison ... I would have thought all the recent publicity about priests sexually molesting young boys should have set that to rest.)



[1] Although the bullet proof glass sometimes makes communication with the teller a little difficult, if they haven't paid attention to that. Then again, I can't remember the last time I was in a bank that hid the tellers away behind bullet proof glass.