He’s just trying to help
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By David Futrelle
I don’t even know how to begin to summarize this very long and very creepy post from the Relationship Advice subreddit from a male boss who seems just a teensy weensy bit too “concerned” about a female employee’s relationship with her boyfriend.
So you’re going to just have to read it for yourself. But here’s a fun game you can play as you make your way through it: See how many paragraphs you can get through before your skin starts to crawl!
![Me [32M] with my coworker/friend [24/F] of one year, how do I let her know she is in an abusive relationship with her bf[24m] (self.relationship_advice) submitted 1 day ago by menumessages So a little background to start off with: I work for a nonprofit where I'm the supervisor of 10 people that work under me. Last fall a young woman, lets call her Jennifer started to work with us through an outside fellowship. Now she's the kind of person that just commands attention as soon as she walks into the room. She is very pretty but just has one of those personalities that everyone likes you know? I had to train her when she first started but was very surprised by how quickly she picked everything up. We do a lot of legal work and it's not easy for people without previous experience to learn so quickly. So this should give you a good idea of the kind of person she is. I immediately took a liking to her because of her work but also how easy she was to talk to. During our training, I would say we became pretty close. So much so that I would text her outside of work about non work related stuff. Also she sends me snapchats a lot, random stuff like shows shes watch like friends do. We even go to happy hour alone sometimes and I think I am the closest to her at work. One time she even had lunch with my mom and I when my mom was visiting town. So she is someone I consider a very good friend and want the best for her. Now here's the problem. About two months into her working with us, I found out she has a boyfriend. TO CLARIFY I DO NOT HAVE ANY ROMANTIC INTERESTS AND DO NOT CARE THAT SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND. I really don't care that she has a boyfriend but felt a little manipulated that she never mentioned him before. I am supervisor, been training her for a few months, we have been talking about a lot of stuff so it just comes off as hiding something. People who work in small offices will know what I'm talking about. It was a little hard for me to trust her after that but I kept it to myself. She was still a great employee and her having a boyfriend did not change anything because apparently she has been with this guy for 5 years now. He doesn't live in the same city and they barely see each other from what I understand. So months go by and everything is going really well. So much so that I was even thinking about recommending her for a promotion. We became even closer during this time. About two weeks ago our parent group is hosted a fundraising gala. I asked Jennifer if she wold like to go with me and she said yes. I always have a great time with her so I was really looking forward to it. The night of the gala I called to see when I should pick her up and she said her boyfriend was in town and he would drop her off so she will just meet me there. This is the first red flag I noticed. Is this guy really that insecure that he can't even let her date take her to this gala? Five years and this insecure? That's a problem. But I just agree and say okay I will meet her there. I get to the gala and start to mingle. She eventually gets there but I don't approach her. Honestly, still pretty bothered by what happened earlier so I wanted her to come to me and apologize. She came up to me and we talked but she never apologized for what she did but I ignored it. Soon we were talking just like before and honestly really enjoying each other's company. Here's when I noticed the second red flag. Jennifer and I were talking to another couple when she excused herself because she had to take a call from her boyfriend. I thought it was pretty rude and she has never done something like this before. A little later she comes back and says that her boyfriend is picking her up and she will leave early. THIRD RED FLAG. She was very much looking forward to this night and suddenly she wants to leave early? You know when you can just tell someone isn't happy in their situation? Yeah I definitely felt it right away. A little while later he gets there and I shit you not, this idiot walked into the gala wearing shorts and a t shirt. I almost wanted to laugh but I didn't want to embarrass him. Jennifer introduces me to him and I make pleasantries but I do make a joke about how must feel a little out of place. He says something like "nah, not really sticking around so not a big deal." Okay? I don't really get what that has to do with anything. My point was that he was at a black tie event dressed like he is going to the gym, I don't care if you're for five minutes or five hours, that's weird. So you can already see he is getting an attitude with me for no reason. I follow up with, "well there are some really important people here" and his response was something like, "I've met senators wearing flip flops, I think I'll be okay." Holy shit, I'm getting angry writing this. But you see what I'm talking about right? He completely rubbed me the wrong way. So anyways, as she is leaving, I tell her to let me know if she gets home okay. It gets around midnight and she hasn't sent me a single message. So I sent her a text and no reply. I sent her another around 1am saying I am worried and just to let me know if she is okay. No reply. I have a hard time sleeping that night because I am genuinely concerned. It's just the kind of person I am. I need to know my friends are okay or it bothers me. I wake up the next morning after getting really bad sleep and she still hasn't responded. This makes me upset because I can see she has uploaded pictures on facebook but yet won't respond to my text. The only explanation is that her boyfriend is the reason. She always responds to me and at most a few hours later. So Sunday night I finally send another message really detailing how upset I was with how she was treating me. Also how I think how much control I feel her boyfriend was exerting over her was really making me lose respect for her. I always thought she is this strong independent woman and suddenly this guy is controlling who she can or can't talk to. Of course I get no reply. Monday, inevitably we see each other at work and she confronts me the first thing in the morning. Before I even get a chance to speak, she says I made her uncomfortable and she wants to just finish her last two months of fellowship without any contact that is not necessary for work. This was about two weeks ago. I was really upset at first but honestly I've done a lot of reading. When you are in an abusive relationship, you stop seeing the world the way it is and only the way the abuser wants you to see. It makes me really sad that I am losing a good friend because her boyfriend has insecurity issues. So a few concerns here. She started dating him 5 years ago meaning she was only 19 and therefore this is pretty much the only adult "relationship" she knows. Also the guy is a lobbyist! She wants to work in public service, help immigrants and refugees but yet dates a lobbyist? Does she really not see the contradiction here? I think over the past five years he has done a good job gaslighting her and it's to the point where it's affecting her relationship with other people and it breaks my heart to see this happen to a good friend. My question is this: what is the best approach to let her know of these concerns I have? How can you make someone who refuses to see reality to actually see what is happening? I have spoken to my mother and we both agree it would be best that she is also there when I approach Jennifer. However, do you think it should just be me alone or it would be better having a motherly figure also there to talk about something this serious? And if we have this conversation and she still refuses to break up with her abusive boyfriend, what are the final steps that I should take? To be frank, I'm not sure I can remain friends with her if she continues to date him. I'm simply not the kind of person who will stick by someone who is willingly ruining their own life. I can't stop thinking about this and haven't gotten any work done today. I really look forward to your suggestions and thank you for all your help. For any of you that are currently in an abusive relationship, get out before it's too late. tl;dr: My pretty good friend is in an abusive relationship but won't notice it. How do I get her to notice for her own good but also the future of our friendship?](http://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/boss1-e1500062317524.png)
Yipes.
In the movie Election, the main characters periodically break frame for brief “confessionals” in which they explain what they think is going on; it doesn’t take long to figure out that, well, they have no idea what’s really going on, and their little monologues are at once self-serving and completely un-self-aware.
Boss man has outdone all of them here.
H/T — @leyawn
@kypo
Looks like he makes a excuse – for why she does not act how he wants. I think it is not possible that he can be friends with someone. Maybe even with anyone. Looks like he gets so upset when they behave not like he wants.
Also, my other comment missing this quote:
So a few concerns here. She started dating him 5 years ago meaning she was only 19 and therefore this is pretty much the only adult “relationship” she knows
Oh my god this was physically painful to read. Wow. Just…… please tell me the commenters called him out on this massive bullshit.
Luckily, most of the redditors on r/relationships called him out hard enough to get him to post this in multiple versions, all of which had everyone going “Dude, no.”
He kept repeating himself for a while.
Repeating himself for a while, then saying “Well, forget her, I’ll laugh when she comes back to me, having learned her lesson”, or something close to that.
Totally disconnected from the feelings of his
dateharrassed employee.I’m not entirely Reddit savvy, but it appears that he’s deleted the account/screen name he was using.
Unfortunately, that probably means that he just created a new one in hopes of getting his desired response.
Nah, he didn’t delete the name, but he does have a habit of deleting comments when he gets a lot of negative responses. In fact, he left this on AskReddit a couple of days ago:
It’s now deleted after 20 people reminded him that he was the guy creeping on a younger employee.
A lot of people here have said that it’s easy to come down hard on people who make a mistake, more than necessary since everybody has to get in on it with their own version of what you did and why it was terrible, but this dude just refuses to admit he did a single thing wrong.
@Angel
This gon be good…
What makes you think he’s inexperienced? And inexperienced in what? Oh, but let’s not be too hard on the wee nite. He’s too naive to know better *eyes roll into space*
No, he wants to abuse her himself, and he’s salty cos he imagines that someone else got to her first
Important enough for you to mention, apropos of nothing. You ain’t slick, slick…
If treating women as sub sentient numbers is the only way for you not to creep on them, you’ve got way more issues than I’m qualified to tackle
Are… Are you ‘other fish in the see’ing this dude?
*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*
Incorrect
Cos she totally woulda hopped his bone if he was suave, right? If only he’d kept frame or whatever PUA nonsense you’re on about
If none of the rest outed you as a poorly disguised manosphere shithole, the alien talk is a dead giveaway
No misandrist like a misogynist
The lack of trust here was, ofc, all due to timing. Not that he’s an abusive shit entirely undeserving of such trust
Angel, I’m not sure if you’re trolling or just very, very clueless. If it’s the latter, I encourage you to read the whole comment thread and look at all the other shady things he’s done.
Not a bad person? His behavior is textbook abuser. He’s not even in a relationship with Jennifer and he’s trying to control her life. Imagine what he’d be like in a relationship. He’s also trying to gaslight her into believing that her relationship is abusive and he’s trying to enlist other people in his efforts to control her. He’s asking for legal advice on how he could use the court system to declare her mentally incompetent and so she’s forced to break up with her boyfriend.
That’s not a decent person who’s socially inept. That’s abusive. And considering that he’s 32 years old and in a management position where he trains new employees as part of his duties, there’s no reason to believe that he is too socially inept to behave in a creepy way.
You’re also making it seem like he’s not really creepy, he’s just being unfairly perceived as that and you’re making it seem like it’s a mistake on Jennifer’s to see him as anything but harmless and you seem to be implying that it’s unfair of women in general to steer clear of men who violate our boundaries. That’s kind of fucked up. I mean, even redditors realized he’s being a gross stalker and acting completely inappropriately.
Attractive female? I think you meant attractive woman?
In any case, it’s not only conventionally attractive women who are the subject of unwanted attention from men. I got it as an awkward, scrawny and flat chested adolescent. I get it now as a chubby 37 year old. What Jennifer looks like is so besides the point. Again you sound victim blamey, like she’s asking for it by being so pretty. Fucked up again.
Axe, you wiley scamp! I thought I was the first to spot Angel and you beat me to it!
@WWTH
*hides from rage, peers from around corner*
To be fair, deep dives with personal anecdotes and meaningful perspective take a lot longer to type than faffing about with snarky, single line responses 🙂
Is the naive, inexperienced 32-year-old boss like Don Jr., the 39-year-old “kid?”
Women, on the other hand, are completely unable to perceive beauty.
…be worth many bars of gold-pressed Latinum?
Now this is how I’m going to picture the creepy boss of the year guy
Ew.
I’m going to play Devil’s Avocado for a second and say that, even if you think that the boyfriend is a bit of a neanderthal for turning up to a black-tie event in shorts and a tee (unless he was circling the block the whole time, which he probably way), that’s simply indicative of a certain lack of either (a) social skills or (b) giving a damn what other people think. It doesn’t make him some sort of controlling, manipulative, creepy monster (you know… like the boss actually is).
SpleenyBadger – there’s textual evidence supporting (b). The long distance boyfriend was challenged by creeper boss, and responded coolly, “I’ve met senators in my flip-flops, this won’t be a problem.” That exact attitude was part of what C.B. found objectionable, it appears.
@Angel
Comments Policy, Friendjamen.
As someone who is mentally suffering, quite a lot in fact, I’d thank ye kindly to think about this kind of thing before you post it.
Dear fellow bosses,
What the fuck is wrong with you? You set the bar so low for me, I’d need an excavator to find it. How hard is it not to creep on your employees?
Boyfriend-dude wasn’t signalling appropriate deference to noble protagonist boss-man. Was specifically signalling dismissal – this is a signal used to suggest equality between social participants. This stimulates threat assessment in both parties when used outside of an established social context, with boyfriend dude having undertaken threat assessment first while (or before) formulating the signal. The signal reception stimulates threat assessment in boss-man. Both parties experience an increase in stress hormones and autonomic arousal from the interaction.
Chances are high that boss-man has a very easily stimulated threat assessment system. It’s what’s motivating his drive to “protect,” which is in evidence throughout his description of the story. Suggests that his D(def) is historically poorly rewarded. Gosh, I wonder why.
why no i am not a robot disguised as a human. i don’t know where you would ever get that impression.
I know there are rules against internet psychoanalysis, and I’m not sure if this sort applies. I’m not suggesting that he’s got some sort of psychological problem or mental illness! He’s got perfectly normal brain hardware. Perfectly normal brain hardware can fail in so many gloriously awful ways. This is one.
@Sailor LeadDragonite
Hugs if you want them.
Scildfreja – your analysis of social dynamics among certain primates seems quite plausible.
So much of routine human interaction is intended to enable us to engage safely with other humans outside our Dunbar’s number limit, it can be disturbing when it breaks down (or is broken down).
Thank you! Reading my own stuff there though I made a mistake, and you pointed it out – the increase in stress and autonomic response has nothing to do with the fact that they don’t know one another. That happens to us whenever someone is dismissive of our signalled status. The same would happen if they knew one another and boss-man had habitually projected a “protective” signal as he was doing.
I’m really not sure how much of our social structure has come about in order to deal with outsiders; I think the majority of it is for dealing with insiders. The same mechanisms are co-opted in external threat assessment, I think. I’m way out of my wheelhouse, though, so this is all just blabber.
Speaking of horrible bosses:
http://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/the-internet-is-mad-we-work-too-hard-at-barstool-sports/
I like all the bragging at how successful the site is. Maybe it is successful, but I’ve never heard of it.
@wwth
But if they weren’t so successful how could they afford strippers? /s
My favourite part was the commenter at the bottom that asked them to work less and just post more fat shaming content. Like, that’s content they were looking for.
ugh
humans
…”Fair game”…
I don’t recall signing up to be endlessly harassed by the ‘church’ of Scientology.
On the other hand, if nobody ever approaches anyone, then relationships can’t start.
Right now we seem to have a somewhat crappy place-based system, where approaches are socially accepted in some places (mainly, bars) and generally not in others (mainly, nearly everywhere else). Obviously, this has problems, especially for people without lots of money (alky is expensive, bars don’t tend to be next door to residences and car travel is expensive, and public transit is very annoying and slow and only somewhat less expensive).
I was going to suggest maybe we should update the old, somewhat broken ring based system we use (which hasn’t changed since back when “isn’t wearing an engagement/wedding ring, nor a nun’s wimple, nor a priest’s collar, equals available”, before “going steady” long before engagement was a thing, and which expects everyone to have even more money to spend than the “meet-in-bars” system does). Perhaps a pink or red ring for “available for the ladies”, blue for “available for the men”, and some third option (green?) for “available for trans/nonbinary/other” … or something.
Advantages include: can take off/put on at any time, when one would/would not welcome approaches; if only the color and being on the ring finger of the left hand matters, then any cheap bit of plastic will suffice, so nobody is economically excluded; can be extended to be more inclusive if need be; obviates strategies that amount to lying involving bogus wedding ring/hiding same, other than if you really do want to lie; and creeps would no longer have any excuse for making/having made an unwanted approach.
Disadvantages include: colorblindness could be a problem, but shapes or writing aren’t anywhere near as readily readable from a distance — maybe a which-finger code? Also, the system isn’t that helpful until it’s near-universal, and would take time to saturate.
Then someone beat me to it with some similar system involving earrings, which has the same advantages and one additional disadvantage: everyone who wants to date would need to get pierced, and then to keep the holes closing up there’d have to be “neutral” earrings for wearing at all other times. Earrings are also a hazard if they get snagged on anything and yanked hard as a result. Finger rings have fewer problems, and are already sort of used for this purpose, but in an obsolescent (and classist) way that just could use an update.
On the one hand, a system like that would be so simple and nice. OTOH I assume we’d just get whiny dudes refusing to acknowledge your ring/earring status and/or flying into a rage at women who go around wearing the “not interested” ring. Crappy people will be crappy.
“Right now we seem to have a somewhat crappy place-based system, where approaches are socially accepted in some places (mainly, bars) and generally not in others (mainly, nearly everywhere else). ”
Really now? Are we talking specifically of strangers approaching others with sexual/romantic intentions?
I don’t see why we should have a system for that. It really shouldn’t be a thing at all for that matter.
“Disadvantages include: colorblindness could be a problem, but shapes or writing aren’t anywhere near as readily readable from a distance — maybe a which-finger code? Also, the system isn’t that helpful until it’s near-universal, and would take time to saturate.”
How about having to think who may or may not get in my pants every time I leave my damn house?
“Look, Jennifer, I’m getting some real mixed messages here. I think it’s only fair to warn you that if you continue to ask me not to contact you because I make you uncomfortable, I’m not sure I can continue to be your friend.”
Bullshit. I enter into relationships all the time that were not predicated on hitting on strangers. I go places to make friends, and make friends. I go to work, and have relationships with all of my co-workers. I post on message boards – I have relationships of various types with all y’all. I go to social events and have relationships with the people I meet there.
People who are not me go to church, a time-honored way to meet other people.
I know that what you mean is romantic relationships, and you’re being inexact, but a romantic relationship can grow out of any other type of relationship.
Additionally, we have dating operations, and always have. Once upon a time, it was common for young people looking for a romantic relationship to attend dances or other community functions explicitly to meet other people. Today we have online dating and in-person dating organizations that serve the same function. Not all of them charge money.
So this “If I’m not allowed to hit on strangers, the human race will die out!” argument needs to die itself. It isn’t true and never has been.
If we are going to be wearing ornamentation to indicate our desired interactions with the rest of the world, I’ll most often be wearing a burning halo of coruscating and all-consuming fire.
Might try that out anyways. Hmm.
Actually, North America seems to be a poor place to meet people, period. Unless you have money. Nobody here believes in decent tax-funded affordable public transit; clubs you can join either want money or your devotion to Christ; pretty much every non-work venue where people are open to meeting new people is either expensive or a private gathering of friends-of-friends (raising a chicken and egg problem); and, of course, workplace friendships mostly would arise among people with actual careers, so middle class and above. At a McJob everyone’s overworked and rushed, so there isn’t much time for conversation and getting to know people, and of course the turnover is so high you won’t have a single coworker in common with your self of a few months ago. If you’re unemployed, forgeddaboudit.
Even networking through friends won’t work if they mostly avoid you because you’re inconvenient to accommodate, because someone else always has to make transportation arrangements for you to visit with them or go somewhere with them, and you can’t afford to buy your own tickets to $(EXPENSIVE_EVENT) they all want to attend, and you never take a turn to host any gatherings due to lack of money and living space at your digs, and your random and unpredictable work hours make it impossible to coordinate plans with you, and so forth, so even that is basically out of the question for the below-middle-class.
And of course since 2008 the economy has been in the shitter, with a very significant fraction of the population lacking a career or a career-track middle class job.
School is, I suppose, an option for people without workplace prospects for meeting friends, but of course that costs an arm and a leg these days.
So, basically, in North America meeting new people other than “strangers in bars” is limited to the middle class and to those, mostly also middle class, who can get existing friends or family to introduce them to new people, who can introduce them to more new people, and so on. And then there’s that chicken-and-egg problem again.
How many people in North America are not middle class or above, have nobody they know who lives close to them due to having been uprooted and moved recently (chasing jobs, most likely) or for any other reason, and are therefore stuck that way? A million or more? I doubt the number is much smaller than a million.
If anything, what this says is the earring/ring thing needs to be expanded for people seeking plain old (non-online-only) friendship, if we don’t want to make that the exclusive province of people who can afford car payments, plane tickets, and suchlike. With so many people these days barely able to keep their rent paid up, utilities connected, and food on the table, I can’t agree with maintaining the current “barriers to entry” to meeting new people, whether for romantic purposes or non-.
Are you a sealion?
All of the problems you outline sound like personal issues to me, because I experience none of them and neither does anyone else I know. My problem is that I meet too many people and don’t have time to keep up with everyone who might be a friend if I were willing to put in the work to build a relationship up to friendship.
If you are having problems meeting people, try googling “singles meet-up [NEAREST MAJOR TOWN]” and then going there. It doesn’t always cost money and when it does, the cost is nominal.
There also the option of DOING SOME WORK YOURSELF instead of expecting the world to hand you romantic attachments.
If you don’t know anyone who has a book club, start one.
Go to your local comic book store and check the board to see who is running an RPG that interests you. If there is no open game, start one yourself and put up a note about it.
Etc. etc. it really isn’t that hard and I’m not here to manage your personal life. Your personal problems meeting people are not universal, and not an excuse to lift the social sanction that keeps most men from making my bus rides an unpleasant airing of boners. I don’t care about boners and don’t need to hear about lonely ones. A boner being lonely somewhere is not my problem and I don’t appreciate it when the boner-owner tries to make it my problem.
WHAT!?
NO, you do not hit on people on the bus!
For crying out loud, do we have to tell people this in the year 2017?
That sounds like several of my TERA characters.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that if a woman wears whatever jewelry that signifies that she’s interested in possibly being approached, a man approaches her and she turns him down and then he sexually assaults her, she will be blamed for wearing slutty jewelry.
If we did have this jewelry code in place, women would learn very quickly that men will decide that if a woman is okay with being approached, that she isn’t allowed to turn down any man that approaches her ever and it is unlikely that many women will be willing to wear that jewelry. Then men would just complain about how there were no women willing to give men a chance.
In other words, dating culture wouldn’t change at all. Women would still be mean prudes for saying no. Sluts and whores for saying yes and saying yes to one men means she has to say yes to all men or she’s a slut and a mean prude all at once.
And when women started wearing “Not available” jewellery to protect themselves, and found themselves attracted to someone and acting on it? Deserving rape as punishment for either infidelity or lying.
Double-bind: It’s what for dinner.
I did not suggest approaching people on the bus! The public transit would be to get around to places where meeting people might, or might not, happen.
The point was that people below about the bottom edge of middle-class have usually a small travel radius, and many other obstacles in the path to meeting new people for any purpose (not just sex, or even just romantic relationships).
Unfortunately that seems to have been misread.
Also, I never claimed that I was in such a situation. I’m not sure how that got read into it either.
What is certain is that many people in North America are limited in their access to meeting-people opportunities, particularly those who live in smaller cities. I doubt very many cities under 100,000 in population have comic book stores, for instance. In the very big cities (NYC, Toronto, LA, Atlanta, etc.; not so sure about in Mexico) I’d expect there to be some, but then there’s the question of transit quality and accessibility. It’s probably not so bad in a metropolis with a subway. It’s probably iffy in a mid-size city with a bus system with more than 2 routes. It’s very doubtful in a town or smaller city to easily get about, or that it will have very much beyond “ordinary” or “non-social” retail (shoes, clothes, food, household items, furniture, hairdresser, etc.), a few bars and restaurants, a multiplex, and possibly a nightclub or two.
I’ve seen bigger cities and I’ve seen little ones. The little ones look like they could easily isolate people without sufficient money to regularly travel to the nearest big one, or a substantial existing network of friends. And that’s aside from the other isolating impacts of lack of money and/or of wonky and changeable work hours, both of which go with the territory of being below the middle class.
When I plugged the names of three towns within 100 miles of my city into Meetup.com I found nothing, nor did a facebook search reveal promising group names (e.g. Singles, , etc.), nor did a Google Street View stroll down their main streets suggest any promising venue. (Nope, that includes no comic book stores). Populations 15,000, 14,000, and 8000. Only the largest one had a bus stop sign that I noticed, and that had no route numbers printed on it, so probably the three towns combined have a single hourly bus with a circular path through the densest suburb and the main street of the largest one.
What Google Street View did show was low rent looking apartment blocks and tract houses near the peripheries of all three, and a single McDonalds on each main street, so there’s no doubt there are people with McJob-level or poorer employment/socioeconomic status in each town.
My point here is that anyone who says it’s easy to meet people may be exhibiting a touch of class privilege, or perhaps in some cases a sort of “urban privilege” (though, with the prices I’ve seen listed and recent reading about gentrificiation issues and other things, being able to afford so much as a bachelor pad in downtown anywhere-big-enough-to-have-a-comic-book-store probably is class privilege now, unless it’s rent controlled and you’ve lived there since the 80s).
As for what prompted this research, it was a Guardian article a while back about how neoliberalism was spreading an “age of loneliness”. It troubled me so I sought to look into just how bad the problem could possibly really be, and the answer was: Quite bad, if you wound up in one of those smaller cities without a middle class job, and probably not great if you wound up in even a large city without such a job.
In closing I would like to reemphasize that I absolutely do not support approaching people who do not wish to be approached. I was under the impression that some such approaches come from people being intentionally abusive, but others do not, and a clearer way of differentiating the two would be useful, especially if it meant the latter source of unwanted approaches vanished entirely (some unwanted approaches gone is surely better than none?) but perhaps not. I do see WWTH’s point that there might end up being no improvement to the problem, except perhaps to eliminate unwanted approaches that were not predatory in intent — though if no woman would end up signaling willingness to be approached, then we’d be fully back to the status quo ante. (And yet, women do go to singles bars…)
Perhaps there’s no solution short of a complete and total smashing of the patriarchy?
And perhaps the friendship problem, to the extent it likely exists in at least smaller cities and towns, has no solution short of a Scandinavian scale welfare state with widespread public transit (including affordable intercity trains), more affordable housing and utilities, and a higher minimum standard of living that gives everyone, from the lowliest unemployed person or McEmployee up, enough discretionary income after necessities are paid for to splurge on occasional travel, or tons of gear from Sportchek or the comic book store or whatever fits their interests, or membership fees for various things.
But somehow I don’t see either of those things happening on this continent especially soon.
Wow, that’s a very teal deer, and true to form I’m not reading it all.
Why is that certain? Where is your study that demonstrates this? I am interested in seeing your research that supports the assertion that boners in smaller cities are so incredibly lonely that my quality of life needs to be significantly impaired in order to satisfy them.
I mean, it does significantly impair my quality of life to have boner-owners bothering me everywhere I go. Significantly. If you don’t personally experience this problem then maybe you don’t realize how incredibly negatively it impacts me when some boner waves itself at me unsolicited. You want to trade someone else’s quality of life (not even your own – you’re not heroically making this sacrifice, you’re instead sacrificing someone else) in order to satisfy the nebulous loneliness of boners in cities of less than 100,000 people.
You’re just asserting assfax and your solution to a “problem” that only exists in your mind is to sacrifice me. I hope you forgive me if I say fuck that and fuck you for suggesting it.
Let me get this straight. First, someone else mentions an idea, which at the time nobody criticizes. Then I elaborate upon the same idea, and somehow suddenly it’s a misogynistic idea (despite being gender-neutral, and indeed not heteronormative or trans-erasing). And now, you don’t read what I wrote, admit that you didn’t read what I wrote, assume that I wrote certain things (when in fact I didn’t write anything remotely resembling those things), and then criticize the heck out of those things, concluding with “fuck you for suggesting it”?
I will state for the record one more time:
– I do not suggest sacrificing anybody’s quality of life.
– I do suggest that social isolation is likely to be a problem for people in lower socio-economic brackets in North America, due to a complex of factors that include poor and expensive transportation options and a lack of social venues in lower income areas, especially outside of major metropoles.
– I do not pretend to know a full and complete solution to the problem, but I certainly would not recommend any that replaced the class oppression noted in the Guardian article with sexual or any other kind of oppression.
I’ll drop this entire subject now, because for some reason it doesn’t seem to be possible to communicate about it without being misunderstood.
I don’t think it’s possible to discuss a system for people to know which other people are open to romantic and/or sexual relationships without people who have lived their whole lives being creeped on feeling incredibly squicked out by it.
Hello.
I do not know if someone aleady post it (cause i can not see some pictures – except for the lovely cat ones in general – must be a cat conspiracy, for sure), but this person ranting makes me thing to this :
“You are tearing me apart, Jenifer !”
> Katz
I do not know if it is still an actual thing, but network computer nerds would tell it is a “Windows situation”, by opposition to a “Linux” one, because in Linux, by default all ports are closed and you just open the ones you want to communicate through, while in Windows, by default, all ports are opened, and you have to shut down those you do not want accessed, often receiving a pop up message each time something tries to go through a port without a open/close setting (unwanted offers, then).
Have a nice day.
The only person who said anything remotely like what you are saying was Diego, and if you think Diego wasn’t criticized then you need to read for comprehension. If you think Dalillama was saying anything remotely like what you are saying, then again you need to read for comprehension.
To claim that what you’re wanting is not misogynistic is to totally ignore the gender regime that results in women and people who appear to be women receiving almost all street harassment. There is just no epidemic of men and people who appear to be men being creeped-upon in public, because women are considered public property in a way that men are not. You want everyone to be public property, but if you think this isn’t going to be implemented in a misogynist way you have your head so far up your ass there is no hope for you. Your bullshit doesn’t exist in some kind of vacuum where everyone is magically treated in identical ways and men are bothered on buses and on the street at the same rate as women right now.
I have better things to do with my time than read an 800-word essay from random people on the Internet. If you can’t express yourself succinctly, you don’t get read by me. I’m not interested in your manifesto and you aren’t entitled to my time in the way you think you are.
I responded to specific things that you wrote and I quoted. You did, in fact, write the things to which I responded. If you walked back your entire previous position somewhere in that 800-word essay, then good for you? but for some reason I don’t actually believe you did that. All you’ve done so far is repeat yourself using different words, with added assfax about the terrible, terrible loneliness of boners in small cities. You seem to believe that I just don’t understand what you’re saying, when I do understand perfectly well and just don’t agree with you.
There is no problem. There is no issue with the human race in small cities dying out just because there is a very very mild social sanction against men bothering women on the street. This problem only exists in your mind, so it doesn’t need a solution that infringes on my right to exist in public in peace.
You’re being understood just fine. Your “problem” is imagined and your “solution” is shit. Again I will say that this idea needs to die already and you shutting up about it is a great plan.
@Surplus
I think you’re talking about a real problem, that being loneliness, and like most problems it affects people without resources more than it affects people with resources…the trouble is it feels like you’re shoehorning that problem into this situation. Douchey bosses aren’t lonely and telling people they shouldn’t hit on coworkers and especially subordinates does nothing to increase the problem of loneliness in general society. If anything, limiting hit-on areas would help because people would feel more comfortable being around others that they don’t know very well.
I don’t think you’re talking about a non-issue, but I think you’re talking about it in the wrong place.
Areas of grinding poverty have some of the richest and most vibrant social structures you could want. Unless you have actually visited the poor where they live and talked to them and asked them what their problems are and what they need to solve them, you shouldn’t make proclamations about what their issues are and what needs to be done for them. Your imagination does not trump the actual experience of the poor.
Teenagers who can’t drive yet who live in wealthy suburbs experience social alienation at exponentially higher rates than the very poor.
And the solution to both poverty and social alienation is not for people to start feeling free to hit on others to solicit romantic attachments. As I keep saying, the human race is not on the verge of extinction. Romantic relationships keep happening, babies keep happening, and the purported tragedy of lonely boners is not actually a tragedy.
Thank you, PoM. I was making myself dizzy rolling my eyes at how a creepy boss somehow got translated into sad boners of non-boss people. Thank you for shooing away that teal deer.
I don’t care, I’m keeping the halo of fire. It’s mine now, you can’t have it.
More seriously: Loneliness has always been a thing in smaller satellite cities and towns. They’re suburbs, and suburbs in North America are ridiculous artificial petri-dishes of agar, posturing, and misery. “I can’t make meaningful relationships” isn’t due to a lack of social signalling – it’s due to the fact that we’re all signalling “I’m busy.”
Or, like me, we’re signalling “f off or I will incinerate you with my brain lasers.” Either-or.
This is a problem of wealthy and middle class people who have willfully socially isolated themselves. Looking for romantic partners is only a tiny slice of that pie, and you can’t take that slice out of context.
Besides, your solution’s been tried before. Victorian flower language, fan code, that sort of thing. Wealthy people trying to signal intention without having to actually say anything so that they can keep up the illusion of being aloof and distant.
I wonder what flower says “I will incinerate you if you come within ten feet of me”? Yellow lily I think? Clearly it should be an ever-burning phoenix blossom.
North American culture is screwed up. We’re a bunch of weirdos, guys! Why is our job considered the be-all and end-all of our lives by so many people, and who do we literally kill ourselves in doing them? We’re just dummies. More money than sense.
Eugh.
Still keeping the halo of fire.