Feminism out of control?

[Strike For The South]

Half of the problem is the way the story is written. I understand why the author would try and conflate not choosing the wine with what later transpired, power imbalances being what they are. Unfortunately, every rebuttal seems to lead with that. It was a very poor framing choice. By the end of the story the author makes the inexplicable choice to insert herself into the story and comment that it was in fact a very cute dress. The whole thing was very poorly put together. Coupled with her tantrum on twitter a few days later, it made for some low hanging fruit.

How to move beyond the toxic masculinity that makes a man "press the advantage" when confronted with a less than enthusiastic woman is a problem that I do not have a solution for. The earliest media both boys and girls consume hammers a powerful narrative into our head. Men are to go out and impress while women are to be to discerning. There is also a disconnect between what people advocate for and roles within their own relationships. I have known many a feminist who wouldn't take the trash and many an ally who would end up eating a tide pod.

Something that can be done is helping men with emotional intelligence. The rallying cry for many men seems to be "just say something". Considering how much of human communication isn't verbalized, this is a poor excuse for bad behavior.

[Montmorency]

Half of the problem is the way the story is written. I understand why the author would try and conflate not choosing the wine with what later transpired, power imbalances being what they are. Unfortunately, every rebuttal seems to lead with that. It was a very poor framing choice. By the end of the story the author makes the inexplicable choice to insert herself into the story and comment that it was in fact a very cute dress. The whole thing was very poorly put together. Coupled with her tantrum on twitter a few days later, it made for some low hanging fruit.

It's arguable that the publication pursued this story as a feather in its cap. Apparently almost all the writing/editing staff of Babe are college-age; seems to be the new colloquial style. You can see the like in this CNN article, though it's authored by a middle-aged guy:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Why no one knows anything as the government nears a shutdown

Here's what we do know:
The Senate will come back into session at 11 a.m. ET
Sometime soon-ish(?) after that, the motion to end debate -- cloture in Senate slang -- and bring the House-passed bill to fund the government for another month will be brought up for a vote.
It will fail. (Republicans, based on current whip counts, need a dozen Democrats to cross over and vote for the so-called continuing resolution. That is, um, not happening.)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Something that can be done is helping men with emotional intelligence. The rallying cry for many men seems to be "just say something". Considering how much of human communication isn't verbalized, this is a poor excuse for bad behavior.

Here's one take (the TLDR is in the title):

Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer

I just read a paper from the discipline of conversation analysis. It dovetails nicely with what I wrote in Talking Past Each Other, and I’m going to go through some of the findings (I can’t redistribute the paper itself), and talk about some conclusions. Long story short: in conversation, “no” is disfavored, and people try to say no in ways that soften the rejection, often avoiding the word at all. People issue rejections in softened language, and people hear rejections in softened language, and the notion that anything but a clear “no” can’t be understood is just nonsense. First, the notion that rape results from miscommunication is just wrong. Rape results from a refusal to heed, rather than an inability to understand, a rejection. Second, while the authors of the paper say that this makes all rape prevention advice about communicating a clear “no” pointless, I have a different take. Clear communication of “no” isn’t primarily going to avoid miscommunication — rather, it’s a meta-message. Clear communication against the undercurrent that “no” is rude and should be softened is a sign of the willingness to fight, to yell, to report.

@Seamus Fermanagh this is your discipline. Any thoughts?

many an ally who would end up eating a tide pod.

?????

Is this the new "jenkem scare"?


EDIT: Here's a source for the Babe staff ages.

"Most of our hires are recent grads, and I think having a team this young — our average age is 23 — and this talented and hardworking is what’s been the most important part of our growth," Mitzali said.

Indeed, the oldest editorial staffer at Babe is 25.

DO NOT search for "college age Babe".

[Seamus Fermanagh]

... @Seamus Fermanagh this is your discipline. Any thoughts?

Buddy of mine in grad school used conversation analysis as his prime methodology. I was also fortunate enough to have a class with Robert Hopper [RIP] who was probably it's foremost practitioner for a time. It is an incredibly intense focus on conversational exchanges and how sounds, gestures, utterances and very minute changes therein alter the course, tone, and content of a conversational exchange. What impact does a 1.3 second pause following a surprise revelation during a phone call have when compared to a 1.7 second pause? Very meticulous stuff, but the combinations of 'move/countermove' are endless and fascinating.

This can be used to emphasize the potential for people to end up "talking past each other," (hopefully Thomas, the author you quote above, referenced J.F. Lyotard's Le Differend in writing the piece he refers to. If not, he's stealing the idea on a nearly word for word basis) when there is no shared decision rule for how to interpret an exchange or when people do not clearly identify the decision rule they seek to evoke. Thomas references it positively, suggesting (correctly) that there are more ways to say no than a simple bald declarative. On the other hand, he is completely underplaying the role of context and culture in determining the decision rules we as listeners will use to interpret an utterance.

e.g. In Japan (a classic example of the high context/indirect communication style of culture), at least prior to the turn of the 20th, a businessman would say a mild/qualified/lukewarm in tone "Yes" in order to indicate "No" or "Hell No" while not causing the other party to lose face by being denied in a bald, outright fashion. This caused no end of problems with US (low context, direct communication culture) business people who took the intended no as an actual yes and tried to move forward contractually from there.

e.g. My wife (then fiancée) was propositioned at a party (At Hopper's house btw) by a woman grad student from English writing whom she'd met in an English Rhetoric class. My wife said thanks but no thanks, then pointed to me across the room and noted that she was here with her fiancée [subtext of message. No, and I don't go for same sex]. Response was along the lines of "congratulations, but it doesn't matter what you do with a male, I am interested in expressing REAL physical love with you [subtext of message being men and penetrative sex are irrelevant, are you interested/do you really mean no?]. There are whole layers of co-cultural and situational influences on the correct interpretation of these messages.

For Lyotard and the other Post-modernists, there was an essential emphasis on the pastiche -- that communicative meaning could be achieved but only in, of, and for that moment. Contrastingly, Habermas would suggest that the difference in message, and the effort to resolve and bring them together, are the source of communicative structure (and by extension all societal structure). I'm more on the Habermas side, as I don't view everything as fleeting and connected only haphazardly.

Either way, though, saying no is clearest when it is a bald declarative. Not all are comfortable being so blunt, however, as cultural mores and/or situational concerns may be driving their choice of message every bit as much or more than does the specific discrete message objective.

And that's not even focusing on the axiom that all messages have both a content [subject material of the exchange] and a relational [implied status of the nature of the relationship between conversants] that are going on, and which very much DO affect how we seek to communicate a specific message.

Enough to chew on for now?

[Montmorency]

Enough to chew on for now?

It's useful, but somewhat tangential...

I was confused, but it looks like you were replying strictly to the quoted paragraph. I don't follow the linked blog or know anything about it's proprietor/contributors. To summarize the article and its relevance:

The author (Thomas) was expanding on Kitzinger & Frith. "Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis In Developing A Feminist Perspective On Sexual Refusal", Discourse & Society 1999 10:293. Which paper basically:

Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour.

In sum, these young women’s talk about the rudeness and arrogance which would be attributed to them, and the foolishness they would feel, in saying clear and direct ‘no’s, indicates their awareness that such behaviour violates culturally accepted norms according to which refusals are dispreferred actions.

[Y]oung women responding to unwanted sexual pressure are using absolutely normal conversational patterns for refusals: that is, according to the research literature (and our own data) on young women and sexual communication, they are communicating their refusals indirectly; their refusals rarely refer to their own lack of desire for sex and more often to external circumstances which make sex impossible; their refusals are often qualified (‘maybe later’), and are accompanied by compliments (‘I really like you, but . . .’) or by appreciations of the invitation (‘it’s very flattering of you to ask, but . . .’); and sometimes they refuse sex with the kind of ‘yes’s which are normatively understood as communicating refusal. These features are all part of what are commonly understood to be refusals.

The problem of sexual coercion cannot be fixed by changing the way women talk.

From his own work Thomas adds,

Indeed it is evident that these young men share the understanding that explicit verbal refusals of sex per se are unnecessary to effectively communicate the withholding of consent to sex.

All of this is taken to demonstrate that "It’s Not That [Men] Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer." Being also that most rapes are committed by dedicated predators and serial rapists, men who rely on alcohol and try to isolate the most pliant and vulnerable women in a given space or environment, it has been suggested that teaching women to say "No" more forcefully is fruitless. Here Thomas disagrees, because

I’m no communications theorist, but communications are layered things. As we’ve seen, the literal meaning of a message is only one aspect of the message, and the way it’s delivered can signal something entirely different. Rapists are not missing the literal meaning, I think it’s clear. What they’re doing is ignoring the literal message (refusal) and paying very close attention to the meta-message. I tell my niece, “if a guy offers to buy you a drink and you say no, and he pesters you until you say okay, what he wants for his money is to find out if you can be talked out of no.” The rapist doesn’t listen to refusals, he probes for signs of resistance in the meta-message, the difference between a target who doesn’t want to but can be pushed, and a target who doesn’t want to and will stand by that even if she has to be blunt. It follows that the purpose of setting clear boundaries is not to be understood — that’s not a problem — but to be understood to be too hard a target.

If rapists are "rational and opportunistic", forceful refusals may be an effective means of self-defense for a woman in a particular situation, even as "the only lasting answer is to change the culture".


Now we can see for ourselves the implications for the thread at-large. I mean, that's what I was getting at with the query.

[Gilrandir]

e.g. My wife (then fiancée) was propositioned at a party (At Hopper's house btw) by a woman grad student from English writing whom she'd met in an English Rhetoric class. My wife said thanks but no thanks, then pointed to me across the room and noted that she was here with her fiancée [subtext of message. No, and I don't go for same sex]. Response was along the lines of "congratulations, but it doesn't matter what you do with a male, I am interested in expressing REAL physical love with you [subtext of message being men and penetrative sex are irrelevant, are you interested/do you really mean no?].

If you rendered your wife's response accurately, it is clear why that woman's advances at her were continued. Pointing at you she should have said "fiance" instead of "fiancee".

[Seamus Fermanagh]

If you rendered your wife's response accurately, it is clear why that woman's advances at her were continued. Pointing at you she should have said "fiance" instead of "fiancee".

My typo I fear....verdamt froggie language

[Montmorency]

many an ally who would end up eating a tide pod.

?????

Is this the new "jenkem scare"?

This gives me such joy.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[CrossLOPER]

This gives me such joy.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Why? Because the social media frenzy has finally culminated in giving people who are so desperate for attention that they are willing to do something that will either kill them or leave them with lifelong medical problems just for views or likes?

[Montmorency]

Why? Because the social media frenzy has finally culminated in giving people who are so desperate for attention that they are willing to do something that will either kill them or leave them with lifelong medical problems just for views or likes?

The skit video is funny. People hurting themselves isn't funny.