itt a strange man asks if you saw the ass on that one

xpost It's interesting how speech is a bridge between thoughts and actions, but it doesn't have to line up straight with either.

Anyone read that William Gass story "The Master of Secret Revenges"?

i think there are split second thoughts that people might not be able to control, like seeing a 16 year old girl and thinking she's cute, but those thoughts are (normally) pushed aside in an instant when you realize how old she is, and you just move on and forget it. people who don't think normally wouldn't let a little thing like age stop them, or they'd keep thinking about this girl. eventually that might end up being an IRL problem.

with IRL consequences

Your thoughts are real life.

my name is IRL

ha this is my abandoned lutheranism coming out -- the thoughts you think are as much a sin as the acts you do, because thought is an act of the soul and it is your soul that bears god's judgment. if you think about fucking your neighbor's wife but never do it, you have still committed adultery. it's the protestant entry in the "theology that drives modernity crazy" contest, along with catholics' "unbaptized babies go to hell"

now, a pluralistic society has different imperatives: think whatever fool business you want, just leave people alone and be a good earner. this has had the benefit of keeping people alive, which is probably a bigger moral advance than doctrines of sins of intention -- but that's at the level of whole societies, not individuals.

saying "in this place, we will make no claims about what is good and bad to believe" is not the same thing as saying "whatever people think is ok, because all thought is ok".

xps

"Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."

― l'homme moderne: il forniquait et lisait des journaux (Michael White), Wednesday, December 2, 2009 4:44 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

interestingly enuf milton has satan quote hamlet, ie disprove him. it's not even clear that hamlet is right about that in his own context. but u don't rly want me to start talking about milton

xpost lol

I was merely observing a venerable citation on the subject, though you could make a Berkleyite idealist observation that an unobserved occurrence has little moral valence or even that without context it doesn't either. I.e., a man dies, good or bad?

look what happens when i leave a thread alone for a couple of hours

it starts to drop its guard

I know a guy who, in his mid-20s, had sex with a minor because they'd just met and she told him she was 19. Should he fry? Y/N

no

his penis should, though

how old did she end up being and how did he find out?

that's pretty fucked up on her part though kids, you know, they don't understand consequences sometimes...

while i'm bringing the brimstone, she should fry. IF and that is IF anything bad happened to the dude, she knew she was a minor and he didn't; acting untruthfully is worse than sex with... ok, how old was she really??

but our sex laws are goofy and neither of them should have anything bad happen to them.

lol xp

"She was 7."

</badstandup> sorry

19 is that magical number that if someone said they were that, i'd never ever believe them.

"yeah but 7 going on 39, man!"

But apparently a very mature 7

damn, omar!

I don't remember the whole story. I didn't hear it from him. I think maybe he found her driver's license or something? So she was at least 16.

there's a story here about a 12 year-old girl who had sex with a 16 year-old and an 18 year-old while pretending to be 17; both were initially done for statutory rape then later acquitted

this is a minefield tbh and I dunno what I'd do - well, i'd check for psychological damage, counsel 'em all, and let 'em go in all probability, but surely the lads should have realised she wasn't thinking like an adult...surely they ought to be reprimanded...just how?

OK there is so much to read and respond to. Ack.

hey Erica i understand why you're concerned about critiquing people's thoughts but when it comes to this stuff, i think the account where people have sexual thoughts about each other because we're all animals is insufficient. in our culture women's bodies are sexualized more perniciously and more frequently, and just more everywhere you look than are men's and sexual violence occurs disproportionately<--i know you know this already; it is basically the most obvious sentence i have ever typed? it seems non-crazy to wonder how this might affect the way people think about each other sexually and to posit that there might be negative effects.

totally comfortable with granny dainger thinking i'm a "schoolmarm" as a result.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, December 2, 2009 5:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Oh shit I didn't mean to press submit yet. lol. Hang on . . .

Of course I know that and I agree with what you said. I was reading this thread only when I got the chance while at work and since I no longer sit at a desk all day, I may have missed certain things/points. Maybe it was the language that I used when I said "not all that rational". I do get what you're saying and agree that because women are sexualized more frequently that viewing the world in that way isn't completely irrational but it still does seem sort of unhealthy especially for women who have never experienced sexual harassment, violence or assault. It just seems really negative and the way it was put made it seem like some ppl constantly feel threatened - on a very conscious level - purely because they're female. Thinking about it now I do understand why someone might feel this way but it seems unnecessary and very sad to me that this overwhelms and occupies some people's thoughts on a daily basis. I don't think I'm articulating this very well so I apologize if that's not clear.

no you did articulate it well! i guess i agree that it's unhealthy and sad but i don't think that women who feel threatened are responsible for that? or at least, not solely responsible.

i was also reading the thread less than thoroughly because this stuff depresses me, so i'm not sure my take on this stuff matches anyone else's really.

Oh God if I made it seem like feeling threatened was their fault I'd like to clear that up right away. It's not. AT ALL.

oh no! i didn't think you meant that; i'm just trying to figure out what i think.

like, i have been reading this thread as being about street harrassment, even though that's not precisely what gbx was talking about to begin with, and i don't have a lot of thoughts about street harrassment, really, just anger, so

man I go and think about science for a few hours

i have mostly been thinking about street harassment too! though i dunno if this type of thing can be neatly categorized into different types of harassment so i feel like my thoughts apply to other stuff. it prob contributes more to confusion than anything

See it was about street harassment (which I think everyone agrees is gross and some ppl just find it more offensive than others which is totally fine) but then veered off into a different direction and seemed to be about judging people for having sexual thoughts and feelings upon seeing someone they are attracted to even if they didn't vocalize those thoughts.

I mean we all do this. When I see a person on the street and think damn that person is hot, it's definitely not their intellect that I find sexy. I guess my point was that people think these thoughts about one another. Men do it about women and women do it about men and that is normal. While I see why some women might find the very idea of this threatening (based on what you were saying about HS) I still think the idea of this existing in one's mind on a very real and conscious level is very sad.

(err should have said above HS not "about" HS)

before anyone jumps in and accuses me of being heteronormative or some shit like that women do it to women and men to men and so on and so forth

two women i know were groped on the street recently in two separate incidents :(

ew

When I see a person on the street and think damn that person is hot, it's definitely not their intellect that I find sexy.

And yet it's not entirely NOT their intellect, either. The someone dresses and walks and their facial expression and what they're reading on the train are all things I can find instantly attractive, and those are all higher functions. I'm not much of a tits-n-ass man, anyway, and tend not to go around thinking of strangers, "Oh, I'd love to tap that." I like 'em kinda nerdy. I think a girl's hot if she looks like she'd be fun to talk about movies with. And yet I'll probably never be nudged by a bro who says, "Check out the glasses on that one!"

the WAY someone dresses etc

I don't know how you do it, kenan!

skip words while typing? What?

that was like both weirdly sweet natured and kind of grody?

Wow. You don't get a lot of "grody" anymore.

makin a comeback for sure

kind of grady

two women i know were groped on the street recently in two separate incidents :(

― mdskltr (blueski), Wednesday, December 2, 2009 8:05 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

That's awful. I was raped by an acquaintance while in college so I am no stranger to what it feels like to be violated in that way. However I don't feel constantly threatened. I don't know. This is all getting away from me now and I realize that I'm probably not making much sense and am sure I've contradicted myself more than once. It's a very very complex issue and this thread has taken about 20 different directions in one day.

Sorry to make everything about street harrassment, really I am. But that behavior is like a nanometer apart from the the orig poll. It's really all the same, the male bonding over a sex object. And while I appreciate that guys itt are saying they DO find ~that guy~ creepy and unacceptable, there was also a degree of reluctance to draw lines pointing to an overall set of views, in what is to me a painfully obvious connection.

Even if it's not as obv to everyone, it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, as even a little empathy & thought will show (and I think at this point everyone but some dorks here agrees) that they are related behaviors among SOME men.

Also trying to make the point that the set of related behaviors is widespread enough that the problem isn't really that guy, it's the whole atmosphere where that guy is funny or relatable or somehow a sympathtic, if still pathetic figure. And then it just got away from me, with all the attacks back and dismissals out of hand and so on.

kenan kinda has a point, although i personally find it quite easy to dismiss such thoughts. unless i see a hot woman dressed in full cricket whites reading modernist poetry and wearing a cardiacs t-shirt, i'm unlikely to do anything more than momentarily idle upon them, in a decided non-amorous manner. obviously sometimes one fantasises about people, and this can't be much helped, but you gotta be able to divorce this from reality

laurel i have been on yr side in this and i think ppl have been a bit quick to think yr attacking their own sexual impulses

yeah just to clarify, i agree, Laurel! i mean, the reason i immediately went to street harrassment is because my experience of this situation is obvs when the strange man says this loud enough so that "that one," namely me, hears it, at which point it is harrassment, even if at a low level.