Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site hoptoad.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!hoptoad!laura From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles Subject: Re: Re: Re: Beach harassment Message-ID: <519@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 01:49:25 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.519 Posted: Fri Feb 14 01:49:25 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Feb-86 04:47:49 EST Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 103 Xref: watmath net.women:8985 net.singles:10271 In article <977@whuxl.UUCP> stu16@whuxl.UUCP (Pippin) writes: > Methinks you have completely missed the point. > > My interpretation: A person you absolutely can't >stand makes a suggestive remark - that's harrassment > > If a person you get along with quite well makes the >same remark - that's humorous. (Attitude also depends on the >harassee - how she takes the remark). >-- > Pippin Stuart > whuxl!stu16 No, I got the point the first time. I just think that the sort of non-objective thinking that produces concepts such as ``harrassment is in the eyes of the harassee'' is cruel. If you actually go around thinking this way, then I suggest you change your way of thinking, and as fast as you can, because you are probably being extremely hard on the people around you in your life. They are in the unenviable position of having to read your mind before they can determine whether their efforts are going to be considered humourous or harrassment. This is one heavy load to expect hald the human race to carry. Face it, the world is full of lonely men who would dearly like to meet a member of the opposite sex with whom they can get along. Remarks like this only serves to let them know that they have to go at it blind. What one woman will call ``humourous'' another will call ``harrassment''. When some women say ``Leave me alone.'' they mean, ``buzz off, buster, I'm not interested'' -- and others mean ``if you work real hard, I will be nice to you, but I'm going to make you work very hard, because I am shy, or interested in having you prove yourself to me or...'' It is all very unappetising. It makes you want to stay home and hack on your editor, and give up on meeting women altogether. Luckily for those lonely women out there, most guys are lonely enough to run through the mill again and again, still looking for someone they can understand well enough to like, and eventually love. (Others, of course, give up on like altogether. They fall in love on the bus, in class, at work, on the street...this is a hard way to live, but I suspect better than concluding that the other half of the race is too irrational to go out with -- after all, they are bound to run into a good one after a while.) Can't you see that it is *really*, *really*, *rotten* to hand this out to people at large? Most readers of this list (like most men, surprise!) have no interest in harrassing women on the beach. Meeting them, yes. Taking to them, yes. Persuing the acquaintance, maybe. Something more than that? also maybe. But almost nobody gets up in the morning and says ``Hey! Let's go down to the beach and harrass some women!!'' So the readers of this list are waiting, with bated breath, to figure out how it is that you go down to the beach, meet women, and don't harrass them. They have a nice strong interest in this. And what do they get? They get told that the whole situation is hopeless. If random-female doesn't like the way you look, or the way you dress, or whatever, she will consider your opening line harrassment. If she likes you, then she will not. Seems rather hard on the ego of poor old average-guy-wanting-to-meet -someone-on-the-beach. No matter what you do, sucker, I can still get you for harrassment! I find this really, really, really mean. All I can hope is that the problem is that, for all the talk of women's liberation, the people who say such things haven't ever taken the big step of approaching men to whom they are attracted and waiting to see if they are going to get an ego-crushing rejection. (Which probably won't happen. Men, being well aware of this as a big source of anxiety try to let you down gently, when they try to let you down at all. Most of the men which I have asked out have been so overwhelmed at the ego-stroke of having *somebody else* ask *them* out that that is enough to make them accept. Things will even out over time, as more women ask more men out, but right now things are pretty unbalanced.) In the meantime, I still see this horrible double-standard. There is all this talk about ``insensitive men'' and ``sensitive caring women'' but I wonder -- are those women only caring about other women? Labelling men as harrassers, without providing objective standards for harrassment goes pretty high on my ``insensitive'' list. Perhaps the problem is that many women cannot see beyond ``he said something which I didn't like'' to ``I wonder why he said that?'' It is easy to scream harrassment whenever you don't get what you want, but hardly fair. Never attribute to malice what is easily explained by stupidity, and remember -- while you are not obliged to like every man that comes around, the ones you don't like aren't obliged to live in a hole either. And you can't find their very existence harrassing -- just as they can't find your existence harrassing. ps -- for any men who have managed to read this far. Try real hard to forget the notion that if a woman rejects you it is because you have ULTIMATE LOSER scribbled across your face in a way only she can read. It's hard, like swallowing elephants, but true. keep on trucking. The first ten rejections hurt like hell. the next ten also hurt. From then on, it is not so bad. the trick is to get this far. (Big hint -- you won't get this far if all you do is hack on your editor...) -- Laura Creighton ihnp4!hoptoad!laura laura@lll-crg.arpa