I agree, other than that you did not actually respond to my point. You are not really saying anything particular meaningful by saying, “There are abusive relationships that are not physical.”
The question is, when do we get to decide for women that they don’t really want to be in those relationships, even though they say they do?
Also, what other times should we ignore what women say, and make decisions for them, because they’re incapable of making them for themselves? So far we have, “When drinking,” and “In an abusive relationship.”
What if they want to enter into a contract with one-sided terms when the other side has the power and money? How about if they want to have children with someone who we think is a bad guy? How about a difficult, demanding, punishing job with an asshole boss where the woman badly needs money and therefore is unable to really make her own decision whether to keep doing the job - should we take away the job for her?
Are there other circumstances where we should ignore what the woman says she wants, and just do what we think is best?
As another example, it is already the case where a drunk man can form the capacity to knowingly have sex, where a drunk woman cannot. (So far as I know, for example, if a drunk man and drunk woman have sex, they cannot rape each other, only the woman can be raped). Are there other areas where we should protect women from themselves where we don’t protect men, because women have less capacity than men do to make decisions?
I just thought of a perfect way to solve the incel problem and the incel unemployment problem at the same time.
The White Knight Police.
A.K.A. Asshole insurance.
A monthly service you pay ($4.99 suggested monthly price with a 2 year contract) to have a group of 3-4 neckbeards swoop in, wearing all white suits including white ties and white trilbys and fedoras, and surround your emotionally abusive boyfriend as you make your escape in an Uber. They pack up your stuff while you get drinks with your friends at a brunch nearby. The know they are already beta cucks or whatever but it’s nice just to be around a girl for a moment as you White Knight her and she runs away.
They are not allowed to say anything other than “milady” in response to any questions or confrontations while packing up your MAC cases and frilly undergarments for temporary storage in a storage room in undisclosed location to anyone but our customers. They are not allowed to get in physical altercations with ex-boyfriends for liability reasons. And by that I mean, while they were studying how to have bad sex with pretty girls, the White Knights were studying the blade. You get the idea.
Then, after you get back on your feet, you grab your stuff back and start the cycle all over again if you like. You’ve got asshole insurance, who cares*?
Just $4.99 a month, get two months free for referring a friend, six months free if she has low self esteem!
*Self esteem level determined by an inverse of Instagram followers
Guap, not sure you’re trying, but just wanted to let you know that your responses in this thread make you sound like a real jerk. You are being super judgy about certain types of women.
I’m sorry if it’s coming off that way. Perhaps I am being judgemental. What’s the deal with the new age? Are we never allowed to be judgemental? What’s the litmus test, no judgement at all in public spaces?
If only there were rules for situations like this.
Many people correctly point out that this is a situation where it is a he said/she said scenario. We don’t have much to go off of besides the accounts.
But, pointing that out constantly isn’t helping the discussion. We all know this, and this often triggers a lot of people that see the typical historical scenario of “while maybe she was asking for it” coming up in discussions like this. (Whether people are actually saying that or not) Because often “we don’t know all of facts” is stalling, bystepping the issue.
This is a really hard topic to discuss, but it is important. It is important because the #metoo movement has really opened the eyes of a lot of people in how overwhelmingly prevalent verbal/mental/sexual harassment have become. And, this is foreign to a lot of us guys. This is something we never had checked, on a societal level. Guys have kind of had a free pass, getting away with things that they shouldn’t have.
Seeing this stuff comes out might make a lot of us guys who would never do this kind of thing be defensive. “I would never do this! How could anyone do this?” and look at it as an attack on all men (#notallmen)(that is sarcasm). Which it isn’t, it is an attack on the men and culture that perpetrate these things.
It is important to be self reflective, and to take seriously the accusations of those who do come forward, especially women like Chloe, who don’t have much to gain and only more to lose (in the form of twitter monster people harassing them for accusing their favorite comedian of something bad)
I guess, we all just need to check our male privilege a bit, and understand that the overwhelming majority of these accusations (95%+) are true.
Anyway, I am not accusing anyone in this thread of anything. We are all in the same boat on this one.
I appreciate the thoughts, @JonRowe. I do think there is some weird conflux of culture here. Also I can appreciate taking accusations at their face value, but to me to accuse someone is to face them, or have someone face them, and to do it directly and with support. The authorities would have been nice, or an interview to an authority like a reputable news source.
This feels different because it was a Medium article directed as an attack and call for apology directly against someone they were in a relationship with. In what amounts to a blog post. The subject matter is so important, but it was handled so badly. An ambush on social media.
At some point if real wrong was done, you must respect the process a bit and get the authorities involved to give it credibility. Not doing that seems … not well thought out. It’s also very sensationalist in it’s writing, with “Trigger Warning: Sexual Assult” at the top like a trashy tabloid. But the victim wrote it! Why did she do that? Again, a professional journalist or someone in authority would be able to guide that process. The whole thing is intimate and trashy to me. Does that make sense at all?
Maybe I’m just old fashioned and don’t understand how ethereal social media is to the next generation. They share so much so publicly. But where does that leave institutions?
Guys are linear. We like rules. That’s why we have stone carvings 3800 years old that are a bunch of rules. We like rules not just because it helps set boundaries but because it means we can game the system and can go against the spirit of the rule while following the letter of the rule.
Women are more contextual. What is right or wrong depends on the situation, not some script. This is why a lot of progressivism today is sometimes self contradictory because what women care about are the end goals not the arguments to get there.
Men have a hard time understanding why “feelings” suddenly matter when there are Rules, where women understand the contextual unstated assumption about a woman making allegations like this and may be angered many men don’t “get it”. The emotional burden and courage a women is making by coming forward.
There is an unstated unspoken assumption about gender and gender relations that is being swept under the rug here; but that’s just one of the modern world’s blind spot right now, and maybe in a more settled, civilized time we can pull back and be more objective about those differences.
Right now (ie, as a conversation between men) though you’re going to have to live in a world where women need to be treated differently than men treat other men without saying you’re treating women differently than you would treat men in a similar situation. And that means, in practice, giving more weight to women’s claims of abuse than you would men with similar evidence.
I’m interested in practical advice, not theoretical purity tests! A sort of modern version of 90s political correctness.
I do think at some point in the near future we’re going to redefine “feminine” attitudes and values as the default and male attitudes as being the “nonstandard” or “abnormal” ones, and then everyone can be happy with being different because difference is no longer threatening. In the modern world difference = inequality = oppression = barefoot and pregnant = you’re a monster. We’ll get to a point where we can accept differences without inequality, but we’re still fighting to overcome blatant sexist behavior right now so it’s probably not the time to start backpedaling with some whataboutism.
No one is deciding for Chloe. She decided to come forward with this so when you say get to decide, it’s not at all relevant or not or deciding for anyone. You have a woman right now saying it was abusive, but you don’t really care if she is deciding… you keep coming to these whataboutism scenarios that is not this one.
Choose to believe her or not, but don’t pretend anyone is deciding for her. She came out and she’s telling everyone why she felt she couldn’t decide. .And non-physical abuse is studied and documented; it’s real.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: Before you’re being judgemental, try being empathetic.
Let me take a crack at it: You’re positioning the argument in binary terms: Either it’s “A woman can choose whether or not to be in a relationship, so it’s her own fault if it’s abusive”, or it’s, “Okay, when do we step in and decide for women that they don’t want to be in that relationship?”
And of course, that’s a false dichotomy. The actual answer is: Obviously we let women decide for themselves when they want to be in a relationship, but we should also acknowledge that sometimes there are emotional or physical or psychological issues that make it more difficult to leave an abusive relationship.
That doesn’t mean that the State (or White Knights, or whoever) should be responsible for swooping in and rescuing the woman; it just means that we should attempt to be sympathetic to the situation, instead of saying, “Well she didn’t leave so it’s her own damn fault.”
She never mentioned him by name once. To me, the article, as she states in it, was meant to get this off her chest and to warn young women to get out early, and not stick around like she did.
I think you are bypassing the assault part of the allegations. Which, as has been pointed out, are almost always true. This isn’t just some relationship airing of dirty laundry, this was someone who was mentally and in her words physically abused.
This reminds me of what I hear often from college campuses and rape crisis centers is that often times women don’t realize that they are being sexually abused until after the fact. This is due to how our society is wired, the stigma around assault, and how women are pressured into sex. “Sure I said I wasn’t in the mood, but that didn’t stop him” “He is my boyfriend anyway, I guess it is OK” I think with hindsight, you might think, oh my god I was assaulted.
This is a hard topic to discuss, and I think maybe the me of 10 years ago would think differently, but now, personally, I am going to give the accuser benefit of the doubt 100% of the time.
I think when you start using terms like “sexual assault,” it doesn’t work like that.
The thing is, I don’t think you get to just throw things around like that, but then also have agency.
She could leave any time but chose not to, but was sexually assaulted? You have agency or you don’t.
I have a real problem with calling things crimes that sounds a lot like “I really didn’t want to, but I didn’t actually say that. I could have left at any time, but I didn’t. There was no threat of force and I didn’t say no, but he shouldn’t have anyway.”
And as I said, at what point does someone get to make their own demands for a relationship, and trust that the other person can make the adult decision of either meeting them or leaving? If Hardwick said, for example, “I won’t be in a relationship without regular sex,” what’s wrong with that? Is he not allowed to make that requirement known, and a condition to being in a relationship?
You may think it’s crass, but I have friends who have been on the other end. A significant other with a much lower libido, where they eventually had to make clear, “More sex, or I’m leaving.”
Is that some type of abuse? Or someone clearly stating what they want in the relationship? If the other partner agrees because they want to stay in the relationship, even though they don’t really want more sex, is that sexual assault, or is it the type of compromise adults make every day in this world?
She cried when he fucked her. He thought that was funny and even made up a name for it. I don’t know that qualifies as the legal definition of rape, but it’s pretty messed up.
There’s no question of that, though the starfish name has nothing to do with crying. It also isn’t something he made up. It’s a term for someone who just lays there unenthusiastically doing nothing, and it generally has nothing to do with willingness or non-willingness, and more to do with a person who is basically lazy in bed.
