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Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

georgiaweidman.com

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Re: Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

#11
post #8
post #5

ETA: I agree with mvanveen's comment below. As Georgia says, her duty is done. My confusion should be taken as my own failure to relate. Our duty is to fix these problems. I'm confused by the attitude of (maybe I'm reading this wrong) "This is a big deal, not like that silly 'feminist' stuff" when everything wrong here (other than the attack itself) is subtle institutionalized sexism. They guy's a creeper, but he was…

I was similarly taken aback by her apparent dismissal of feminism. For most of her post, she outlined the subtle institutional sexism that enables her would-be rapist and prevents her from taking any effective action. Does she believe that by giving credence to the feminism that challenges the less overt sexist attitudes and actions in the community, we divert attention from 'real' violence towards women? Perhaps she…

The way I read a lot of that apparent dismissal of feminism was as a way to get her community to see her complaint as legit. That is, by saying "I'm not one of those feminists, the ones that get upset at every little grope," she's trying to underline that she has a serious incident to report and is not blowing it out of proportion.

Honestly, I think that's heartbreaking twice over. Not only is she working in a context that she perceives as hostile to her getting respect and equal treatment, but she apparently feels that she has to bad-mouth those pursuing equality just to have a hope of getting people to accept her assault report at face value. And all that comes on top of getting assaulted and robbed and almost raped. That is hideous.

From what I understand, the infosec community has been in an uproar lately about somebody objecting to some sort of sexual content in a conference talk. So perhaps she feels she's speaking in a context where she really has create a lot of distance between herself and the people on the losing end of that uproar.

Like you, I really admire her for speaking out like this. After my mom died a couple years back, I learned from her sisters that she had been raped as a teen, and had insisted on pressing charges and testifying in court, despite social pressure to just let it go. I was immensely proud of her. I still am.

Re: Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

#12
post #3

Quite a direct story. And it's hard to find that line where further advancements suddenly become unwelcome. I guess the advice "know your limits" is what we have.

I don't think it's hard to know the line where further advances become unwelcome. I ask. It's surprisingly easy; you should try it.

Re: Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

#17
That's fucking awful. On far too many levels.

Right now I'm feeling very angry, I'm not going to write anything more other than to say: it doesn't matter what Georgia wore, it doesn't matter if she let that bastard into her room, it doesn't matter if she said something he might have construed as sexual. You don't rape women.

Georgia did nothing wrong here. To say otherwise is disgusting, and if you think it you're a worm. Less than a worm actually.

Re: Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

#18
post #3

Quite a direct story. And it's hard to find that line where further advancements suddenly become unwelcome. I guess the advice "know your limits" is what we have.

If the other party says "no", "stop", "I'm not comfortable with this", or any number of other things like this, then you stop. Immediately.
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