Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women.
There’s a distinction I draw between objectifying a particular person and a class of people. I think what drew you (Alicorn) into the argument which sparked this post is the idea of “getting attractive women”. Women should not, conceptually, be “got”, you say. Well, if you mean a particular woman, who one sees in a club or on the street, then I agree with you. If you mean that a man should not talk about the modal preferences and cognitive styles of attractive women, so that when he meets one that he likes, he knows how to convey his own value in a way that isn’t self defeating, then I disagree, and I guess that calling it “objectification” isn’t going to change my mind. To use the distinction in a different context: I claim that there’s a difference between standing in front of someone and thinking about “what you’re going to do to their body”, and lying in bed thinking about what you might like to do to some body, sometime.
Casual use of masculine and/or heteronormative examples in posts and comments that aren’t explicitly about gender.
Yeah, that sucks.
Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data
Such generalizations are generally—not always—lazy and demeaning, so I do support your proposal, but in reality the argument normally centres on whether a particular statement is a generalization, whether it’s a sweeping generalization, and whether the data in its favour are overwhelming or not. Good luck not getting bogged down in that. Really a small moderation team that explicitly deals with such matters would be a good idea. Metafilter has one and benefits from it.
Fawning admiration of pickup artists who attain their fame by the systematic manipulation of women.
Again, I agree with the literal meaning of your words, but I wager that you will find most of the people you have in mind very resistant to being characterized as “fawning” over anyone. In any case, comment after comment of “I don’t admire this technique, but I’ve verified (400 cold approaches) that negging in the opener is a very effective tool for SNLs” wouldn’t be made very satisfactory by the addition of “don’t” in the previous sentence.
Also, it would be a good idea to immerse yourself in PUA blogs and forums for a while, if you want to get a good idea of what motivates people to do this stuff. I think I first became aware of the subculture in 2007, and thought it propagated immature and offensive nonsense. Its natural growth eventually forced it back into my consciousness earlier this year, and I have refined my view: it naturally attracts a number of immature or offensive people, but I like to think of it as fundamentally an applied sociology club for boys.
I did smile at your request for more qualifiers and disclaimers. In your article, I saw several qualifiers and one bolded disclaimer, but none that could actually weaken your arguments. Rather, you prefer to express absolute moral judgements. There’s a touch of hypocrisy in that.
I’m not seeing it. There doesn’t seem to be any contradiction between “expressing absolute moral judgements” and “adding qualifiers and disclaimers”. Perhaps you can point it out more clearly?
It was specifically the idea that generalisations of women are bad and shouldn’t be used without overwhelming evidence, because they’re very harmful, that got me. There are exceptions. Robin expresses well what I think about this.
The hypocrisy lies in the lack of what I consider adequate qualification of this statement, and maybe the “fawning admiration” one too, in an article that requests qualification of “opposing” statements, i.e. ones that could be construed as anti-feminist. Phrasing things in an absolute, i.e. unqualified, fashion is just an extension of that argumentative style. An apologia for the PUA community or for some sort of “men’s rights” position would have to be written in a much softer manner than this article, in order to satisfy this article’s requests.
In my experience, demands for qualifications and disclaimers are almost always a way to hold different sides to different standards (not that this is hypocrisy, per se).
There’s a distinction I draw between objectifying a particular person and a class of people. I think what drew you (Alicorn) into the argument which sparked this post is the idea of “getting attractive women”. Women should not, conceptually, be “got”, you say. Well, if you mean a particular woman, who one sees in a club or on the street, then I agree with you. If you mean that a man should not talk about the modal preferences and cognitive styles of attractive women, so that when he meets one that he likes, he knows how to convey his own value in a way that isn’t self defeating, then I disagree, and I guess that calling it “objectification” isn’t going to change my mind. To use the distinction in a different context: I claim that there’s a difference between standing in front of someone and thinking about “what you’re going to do to their body”, and lying in bed thinking about what you might like to do to some body, sometime.
Yeah, that sucks.
Such generalizations are generally—not always—lazy and demeaning, so I do support your proposal, but in reality the argument normally centres on whether a particular statement is a generalization, whether it’s a sweeping generalization, and whether the data in its favour are overwhelming or not. Good luck not getting bogged down in that. Really a small moderation team that explicitly deals with such matters would be a good idea. Metafilter has one and benefits from it.
Again, I agree with the literal meaning of your words, but I wager that you will find most of the people you have in mind very resistant to being characterized as “fawning” over anyone. In any case, comment after comment of “I don’t admire this technique, but I’ve verified (400 cold approaches) that negging in the opener is a very effective tool for SNLs” wouldn’t be made very satisfactory by the addition of “don’t” in the previous sentence.
Also, it would be a good idea to immerse yourself in PUA blogs and forums for a while, if you want to get a good idea of what motivates people to do this stuff. I think I first became aware of the subculture in 2007, and thought it propagated immature and offensive nonsense. Its natural growth eventually forced it back into my consciousness earlier this year, and I have refined my view: it naturally attracts a number of immature or offensive people, but I like to think of it as fundamentally an applied sociology club for boys.
I did smile at your request for more qualifiers and disclaimers. In your article, I saw several qualifiers and one bolded disclaimer, but none that could actually weaken your arguments. Rather, you prefer to express absolute moral judgements. There’s a touch of hypocrisy in that.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
… Sorry...
I mostly agree with your comment, but:
I’m not seeing it. There doesn’t seem to be any contradiction between “expressing absolute moral judgements” and “adding qualifiers and disclaimers”. Perhaps you can point it out more clearly?
It was specifically the idea that generalisations of women are bad and shouldn’t be used without overwhelming evidence, because they’re very harmful, that got me. There are exceptions. Robin expresses well what I think about this.
The hypocrisy lies in the lack of what I consider adequate qualification of this statement, and maybe the “fawning admiration” one too, in an article that requests qualification of “opposing” statements, i.e. ones that could be construed as anti-feminist. Phrasing things in an absolute, i.e. unqualified, fashion is just an extension of that argumentative style. An apologia for the PUA community or for some sort of “men’s rights” position would have to be written in a much softer manner than this article, in order to satisfy this article’s requests.
In my experience, demands for qualifications and disclaimers are almost always a way to hold different sides to different standards (not that this is hypocrisy, per se).