This is why guys like us are so damn screwed up…

[MrAntiquity]

Remember that post I put up a few days ago about the catcalling, and how I found it interesting/instructive?

Ok, now here’s another post from a popular (left-wing) political blog. I’m not going to say much about the blog so that people will be free to make their own judgments. But I will say that attitudes like that of this poster (who I regular read and respect otherwise) are helping to completely paralyze guys. Let me know what you think:

On catcalling and random compliments, etc.

[SomeguyUK]

Well, technically the author is right. It can be intimidating for women, they don’t know that we’re nice guys, and they don’t know what our intentions are.

But I know that my intentions ARE good. And I cannot think of a safer place to approach a women than in a busy public place in broad daylight. It’s somehow more acceptable to approach women in bars and clubs, and yet that is where people are inebriated and where a lot of date rapes happen.

Should guys learn not to be intimidating to women? Absolutely. Should we refrain from approaching them at night when we are the only two people on a train? Probably, yes. But we should we abandon our pursuit of personal happiness because at some point we could inadvertently make a girl uncomfortable for three seconds? Fuck no.

[MrAntiquity]

haha SG–just saw that you posted on there. I know that site well–i guarantee about 1 in 20 of them will see it our way. They’ll yell at you 🙂

Yes, the author is right about the potential intimidation factor–but wrong about the “don’t acknowledge me ever–no way, no how”. That’s the problem with her attitude.

[MrAntiquity]

although to be honest–if we’re doing it right–the chances that the girl’s going to feel uncomfortable are really pretty low.

[SomeguyUK]

Yeah, to be fair, I don’t think the article is really aimed at guys like us. I’m not expecting people to agree with me but if some conflicted male is on that forum, maybe he’ll read my post.

I do find some of the comments ridiculous. People are saying you should not even smile at a woman, and that you should never talk to a woman that you don’t know.

There are also people who say you shouldn’t approach a women unless she shows interest first. What does that teach guys? It’s ok for women to express sexual interest but it’s not ok for a man to do it? Yeah, no wonder guys are fucked up.

[The_Hurricane]

First, the original video is not an accurate representation of the life of an attractive woman. I have dated my share of attractive women. Most of them report a handful of interactions with men per week, and most of those interactions would not fall into the category of cat calls.

So what’s different about this video? They chose a girl with all the right equipment to attract attention in a part of town where men are used to routinely expressing interest, welcome or unwelcome, dressed her in an outfit that showed off that equipment, and paraded her for ten hours through those parts of town where she was most likely to get a reaction.

Most New York women aren’t on the street for more than half an hour per day. In other words, this represents about twenty days of harassment, not one day. In that outfit, walking through those neighborhoods for half an hour per day, she is likely to encounter 5 such interactions per day.

This video has been criticized for the absence of professional, middle class men. They did that on purpose. Take away the neighborhood and 5 negative interactions per day drops to 1 every couple of days. Take away the outfit, and the number drops to 1 such interaction every couple of weeks.

Women understand that when they wear an outfit that highlights their most attractive attributes, they will get two kinds of attention: the kind they want and the kind they don’t want. Given that the choice is completely theirs, many women consider that a worthwhile trade-off. On some days, they want to be noticed by attractive men and are willing to tolerate some unwanted attention.

It would be a terrible imposition on women who want to meet someone in public if such meetings became taboo to protect the small number of women who both want to wear outfits that get attention AND at the same time are unwilling to tolerate unwanted attention.

One more comment that is more relevant to what we discuss here. To women who genuinely want to be left alone, the most threatening game is direct game, game in which a man expresses his sexual interest directly and before engaging a woman in conversation. The mental calculus that a woman must perform when she is approached by a man running direct game is what that article gets completely right. That is one of the reasons I prefer a somewhat elevated style of game. When I do Deep Thoughts, the first thing on a woman’s mind is not “Will he become angry when I don’t respond positively?”

–Lee

[MrAntiquity]

@Lee–

Yeah–I understand what the writer is saying (who’s male incidentally–I can’t remember if that came through in the original post but there is a set of guys on that site that seem to be out to prove their feminist credentials as much as possible) and I recognize that the annoyances and the occasional threatening postures are absolutely real. I don’t dispute that.

But I think the “men, keep your head down and shut up. Always” mentality that pervades a lot of those comments is extremely unhealthy. There were a few posters (some women too) pushing back–but the majority on those kinds of threats seem to be “fourth-wave feminism” type women–(the movement lost me at the third wave, I think). I’m a feminist in that I believe in equality and respect for both sexes–but I don’t believe in the sexual double standards I sometimes see from the movement (e.g. women displaying sexuality is to be applauded, men displaying sexuality is to be condemned–or women can smile and say hi, but men can’t)

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