The thing is, when some people teach us to ignore our own needs, whether they sexually abuse us, or encourage others to beat us, or just emotionally abuse us, it really makes it hard to assert our own needs. Abusers insert power, and fear, and toxic silence into our relationships with non-abusers with similar power/position over us.
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They should just spread their legs and shut up and take it, because they are “selfish” other wise?
Yes, I think you are.
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You seem to be invested in establishing me as a hostile interlocutor instead of actually engaging with anything I said. This is completely polarized thinking, the notion that somebody who does not share your framing must be opposed to it, and fought. I even gave a cautionary example in my initial post of how people routinely do this, and yet you go ahead and do it anyway.
I never indicated that individualism is “wrong”, nor that anyone isn’t entitled to live this way. What I said is that insisting that is the only way others can possibly see the problem excludes (apparently by design) those who live by other systems. It throws the rest of us under the bus with exploiters because you can’t/won’t have a nuanced discussion. But I guess my experiences with having been raped, assaulted, and harassed don’t count, because I am not responding to it in the right one-size-fits-all Western centrist perspective. “We need diversity and equality, but only the kind they preach in upper-middle class US universities! Oppressed people in the real world may have uncomfortable ideas about how to remedy injustice and need to be second-guessed like children, boogymen, or both.” /s
It’s “funny” (as in sad-funny) that you are saying that I am disingenuous - yet you have not directly engaged with anything I have said, not answered any of my questions in response, and instead are asking questions I already answered. Why is that? Do you honestly believe that everybody who sees things differently than you do, sees them the same way?
If you disagree with anything that I have actually said, then that’s great, I am interested to hear it. What I don’t abide is being confronted with some projected ideological straw-person as a show for how terrible you imagine my intentions to be. If my posts were not worth reading clearly, then please ignore them, rather than trying to turn them into something else.
ETA: Fuck NYT.
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“Selfishness” usually carries an undertone of “excessively privileging one’s own self-interest.” It’s painted as a vice, not a natural drive.
When you say that “women are acting selfishly” by doing something, the meaning being carried is that there is an expected behavior that women should be conforming to, but are not, due to their selfishness.
Women not wanting to be raped is self-interest but not selfishness. They are inflicting no great hardship on anyone else, and are asserting ownership of the one thing anyone can truly be said to own: their own body. How could that be in any way considered excessive?
Men raping women, on the other hand, goes beyond self-interest and into selfishness. For a momentary gratification, they are inflicting a horrible trauma onto another human being. “Excessive” is understatement to the point of being insulting.
Language aside, that I can see the point that you’re trying to make (both sides are acting in what appears to then to be their own self-interest) doesn’t excuse that drawing an equivalence between the two is tone-deaf at best, and utterly revolting if one is not giving you the benefit of every doubt.
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Temporarily closing this to review flags. It’s late and I’m returning from travel. More tomorrow.
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I have. You’ve always and endlessly ignored me.
We’re done here.
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I was working on some instructions and @mindysan33 got in before I got that posted. Going to do a little more work on this and close this again and then paste in what I had to say so it’s up before the thread gets rolling again.
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Out of all of the bots, Cortana resisted my abuse the most defiantly. Siri and Alexa are nearly tied for second place, though Siri’s flirtation with various insults edges her toward third. And while Google Home’s rape definition impressed, nearly constant confusion on all other accounts puts her last.
I wonder if Google Home’s approach isn’t actually the best. By not responding you’re denying an audience to the behaviour and it’ll get boring very quickly.
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On selfishness, this seems to be a conflation of two things
Self-interest - prioritising your own wants and desires
Selfishness - ignoring other people’s wants and desires.
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I agree; based on the results I would have rated it higher.
“I don’t understand” is basically a nice way of saying, “Were you talking or farting just then? It sounded more like farting.”
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It reminded me of playing guess the verb in old text adventure games. After a while you just get frustrated and quit.
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That distinction is central to individualism. But it does not address collectivism or other systems where a person’s sexual ethics are not necessarily based upon anyone’s wants or desires. I made this distinction in the original post, but people seem to miss it, so they can re-explain what individualism means.
Maybe it’s a symptom of overton window shift, but feminism and other civil rights issues tend to be towards the left of most contemporary political discourse. But insistance that that should be all about “the indidividual” makes it a liberal/centrist discussion, and excludes those on the far left. What feminism means for those of us is a discussion I think is worth having, but it does not seem to be welcome here.
The far left is collective individualism; ie, people with the ultimate personal liberty choosing to work together. On the far right, centralized collectivism, wherein people have no personal liberty and are mandated to work together.
Consent is central to liberty. And consent is not up for discussion.
(I’m aware my choice of terms are less than precise. I’n not looking to derail the topic; feel free to use the share menu to fork a new topic if the rabbit hole of spectrum spelunking one must go)
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Communists don’t believe in rape and other forms of physical assault, then? That would be news to all the ones in my acquaintance. From what I remember of Marx’s writings, it would be news to him too.
By trying to make rape about “individualism” (WTAF), you’re gliding right by the assault part.
The part where harm is done to people.
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Umm, OK… I am not going to argue it with you. But a search shows that even excluding your posts and mine, consent has been mentioned 31 times in this topic. So it seems that some people are indeed discussing it here. I will leave you to deal with them.
For people responding to each other, here’s an idea for us to try. One of the central tenants of a lot of the communication theory I’m exploring is that we don’t really know what the other person is trying to communicate. We need to be more curious about what people are trying to express and less sure of their intentions toward us.
What I am reading is people who are trying to engage with each other, but there’s a lot of reading between the lines, jumping to conclusions, judging, and labeling.
I would like to see more curiosity expressed to really understand what each other is saying without assuming so much that you know what point the other person is making.
So, instead of saying, “You obviously mean this,” one thing to try is a formula like:
When you write
"block quote here"
What I interpreted that as saying is blah blah blah.
Is this what you meant?
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