I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12 • Hacker News Board

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#151

Post by saint_fiasco » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

facepalm wrote: post #115

shalmanese wrote: post #24

There's a moment in the pilot of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where the women are rescued from the bunker and put on a daytime talk show and Matt Lauer asks one of the women how she ended up in the bunker: "I had waited on Reverend Richard at a York Steak House I worked at, and one night he invited me out to his car to see some baby rabbits, and I didn’t want to be rude, so… here we are." And Matt Lauer responds: "I…

Um how is the "societal pressure" not to be rude different for women and men? In general people try not to be rude. Not only because of societal pressure, but also to avoid escalation of conflicts. What is different is that women get asked out a lot more than men, so maybe they are more often confronted with the task of rejecting somebody. There is no indication here that being rude would have prevented the stalking.

Women may be more afraid of escalating conflicts than a man would. Surely it's not controversial that an average woman is physically weaker than an average man.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#152

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:39 PM UTC

jahewson wrote: post #111

fpgaminer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain female agency in the world. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call out this statement as sexist. There are also several other strange "facts" being passed around in other comments which are similarly biased. To be clear, I'm not calling you sexist. In fact, I thi…

> I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated by societal pressures. Sure but which gender does society place more pressures on?

I won't pretend that I know what the answer to this is, but the idea that the answer is evident is fucking absurd. Gender roles cut quite sharply both ways, and the only way to think otherwise is willful ignorance: for one extremely obvious example to anyone with even a second of thought, how often do you see men crying?

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#153

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:45 PM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #80

epx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this, but men are victims of stalking as well (considering the theme of the article). Perhaps the article insisted too much that it is a women's problem. In any case, if the laws related to staking don't exclude male victims, good enough.

They don't exclude men. The ability to get LEO to give a crap varied by jurisdiction but plenty of guys have managed to get consequences enforced on their male or female harassers. Mostly I think it's a result of the average LEO/judge being older and having no clue what the consequences are of the ongoing harassment. It's definitely true that lots of judges/prosecutors have told people to "just get off the internet".

>They don't exclude men.

Laws don't exclude, but their application and interpretation sometimes does.

Not long ago in my country, there was a proposal to add funding to research domestic violence committed by women.

The women's organisations of all major political parties (except one) signed a common statement which opposed the funding of this research. They said it was diverting attention away from the main problem which is violence by men. This they were saying without looking at the actual numbers. They were in fact opposing research to find out and evaluate the actual numbers.

The actual numbers in this country from crime statistics: in 2008, the victims of domestic violence in homicide and grievous bodily harm cases were 116 men and 111 women. This was irrelevant, according to these political women's organisations.

The issue was raised to public consciousness when a man, assaulted by his wife, brought to publicity the response he had got from calling 112 (emergency number), where the police dispatcher said to him: "What, are you letting a woman beat you up?"

Yes, laws are in principle gender neutral, but their application is in many cases favouring one gender. Often the favoured gender is women.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#154

Post by facepalm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:46 PM UTC

saint_fiasco wrote: post #151

facepalm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um how is the "societal pressure" not to be rude different for women and men? In general people try not to be rude. Not only because of societal pressure, but also to avoid escalation of conflicts. What is different is that women get asked out a lot more than men, so maybe they are more often confronted with the task of rejecting somebody. There is no indication here that being rude would have prevented the stalking.

Women may be more afraid of escalating conflicts than a man would. Surely it's not controversial that an average woman is physically weaker than an average man.

Maybe, but in general it is a bad idea to provoke a conflict without good reason. Even if you are very strong, there is always a probability > 0 that you receive some damage in a fight.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#155

Post by DanBC » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:48 PM UTC

stevetrewick wrote: post #131

jahewson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Um how is the "societal pressure" not to be rude different for women and men? Where to begin? A rude man might be described as "tough", "assertive", or "confident". What would a rude woman be described as? Moreover, what constituted rudeness for a man? How about for a woman? See the double standard?

> See the double standard No, not in real life. Wherever you live/work is fucked up if you do (academia, perchance ?). Rude men are just described as rude, often in less polite ways. I've worked bars, factories, manual labour, all the way up to board rooms and I have never once seen this particular double standard applied. I say this as someone with both a keen eye for and a near zero tolerance of prejudice and discr…

Imagine a business meeting. A person is talking, and a man interrupts and talks over that person.

The person asserts themselves, and tells the interrupting man not to interrupt.

That person is more likely to be seen as confident or assertive if they're a man, and more likely to be seen as shrill or bitchy if they're a woman.

> I have never once seen this particular double standard applied. I say this as someone with both a keen eye for and a near zero tolerance of prejudice and discrimination of any kind.

I'm surprised by this, because it's very very common, and has been written about in national newspapers in different countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/speaking-wh...

http://time.com/3666135/sheryl-sandberg-talking-while-female...

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/03/19/google...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/12/03/womens-id...

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/stop-interrup...

etc etc.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#156

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #39

I know this is entirely inadequate, but what about suing for defamation? The police, I fear, want to start getting a bit more proactive. When someone is able to get away with sabotaging someone else's life with complete impunity from authorities, a lot of people take actions in their own hands.

[deleted]

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#157

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #40

pervycreeper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain female agency in the world Without commenting on whether this is a fair assessment, I will observe that in order to make this case for this to be true, more evidence than a single (fictional) anecdote would be necessary, and one would also want to accurately assess whether non-women are also expect…

Strong username for this reply. If you don't think women are socialized to be accommodating you have your head in the sand. Look at profession choices, look at the plethora of anecdotal stories, and look at how parents interact with their daughters.

I don't understand how people are always so shocked that some people are unaware of these issues. For a related example, I didn't know catcalling was that prevalent (outside of the assumedly anachronistic stereotype of construction workers I'd seen in movies) until shortly after college. I'd never witnessed it happen, and none of my female friends had ever mentioned it happening to them, so why would I assume that it happened super often?

It was only after we all graduated and moved to denser cities that female friends started experiencing it and mentioning it (and since then I've read plenty of articles about it). Since none of my friends are assholes, my initial "wow it's really that universal an experience?" was met with affirmation instead of "you really are a pervy creeper with your head in the sand".

Your specific example about socializing women to be accommodating is also not something I knew existed until a couple years out of college. I didn't see how my friends' parents raised them firsthand and my sister was/is a holy terror, by far the least polite and accommodating of our otherwise fairly reserved family (myself included). The girls in our friend group tended to be less demure and more confident. Again, I wouldn't know about it if I hadn't read so much about it, and there are plenty of people who haven't been exposed to articles about it.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#158

Post by benten10 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

...so how many women are actually commenting on this post? Raise your hands please?

Hahaha, this is a classssic hackernews discussion. "There is absolutely no discrimination. Women are held to the same standards as men. They just complain. Saying that women have it unfair is ITSELF sexist" type arguments are the best (for entertainment value).

@dang and other hackernews people: Regardless of if you agree with them or not, you do realize that this will reflect on Ycombinator's perception/PR right? No amount of office hours for women is going to counter this RIDICULOUS volume of INSANELY UNAWARE sexism going around in these forums. I mean, for YCombinator's sake I hope you guys agree with most of the comments here, otherwise this is just deadweight on whatever your 'diversity' aims may be. Calling them lazy, complaining fools is how you put the bullseye on your backs for the time when the pitchforks come out.

Just saying. This is ridiculous. It doesn't have to be this way. Really.

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#159

Post by varjag » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

jeppew wrote: post #127

varjag wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many men end up kept in bunkers against their will by women?

well to take your question a bit literally, men have quite a long history of being pressured into soldiering. First thing that hit my mind when i read your question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather

You of course realize that this was the same kind of social conditioning and gender role pressure that the grandparent post is downplaying?

Re: I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

#160

Post by facepalm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #155

stevetrewick wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See the double standard No, not in real life. Wherever you live/work is fucked up if you do (academia, perchance ?). Rude men are just described as rude, often in less polite ways. I've worked bars, factories, manual labour, all the way up to board rooms and I have never once seen this particular double standard applied. I say this as someone with both a keen eye for and a near zero tolerance of prejudice and discr…

Imagine a business meeting. A person is talking, and a man interrupts and talks over that person. The person asserts themselves, and tells the interrupting man not to interrupt. That person is more likely to be seen as confident or assertive if they're a man, and more likely to be seen as shrill or bitchy if they're a woman. > I have never once seen this particular double standard applied. I say this as someone with…

I think you have changed the subject, though. Interrupting somebody in a group discussion may or may not be rude at times, but it is hardly the same kind of rude as brushing off somebody who invites you to a date. Taking a woman's ideas and pretending they are your own is completely unrelated.

Edit: more specifically, your links are about non-rude actions by women being considered rude, whereas the discussion is about rude actions by men not being considered rude. For example, from one of your links, I don't think anybody thought Kanye West was not rude for grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift.