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Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

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Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#441

Post by gameman144 »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #339
8note wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they actually in positions of power? They are not marking papers, and nobody is required by their course to attend said 1-1s

The whole reason they chose these specific classes is because they are in a position of power in the class via already knowing the subject matter. It's not like they picked random classes that have a lot of girls in them.

How is this power, though? All the other students can still learn the information just as well as they otherwise would. Knowledge isn't a zero-sum game.

I took an art history class one time. One of the students worked at a local museum doing some curation work. I still learned art history, and that one student came across as a know-it-all, but everything was absolutely fine.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#442

Post by honkler »

cpach wrote: post #435
honkler wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

excuse me! are you negating my LIVED EXPERIENCE??

No. I’m telling you: Even if you don’t have great looks, you still have a chance. Isn’t that great?

There's a chance for everything. A gold laden meteor might land in my backyard in the next ten minutes. There's a chance for that too. There's also a 1 in 1000 chance to get laid on tinder. You'd have to swipe a thousand times to get a single swipe back. Is that humanly possible? You'd have to be a robot for that. And a heartless one -- making sure that none of those many constant rejections affect you emotionally.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#443

Post by ofcourseyoudo »

A lot of questionable defenses in these comments hinging on this phrase from the piece: "no unwanted advances". Keep in mind this is through the professor's viewpoint. I would love some direct testimony from the women students to see if they truly have received ZERO unwanted advances. I find that highly unlikely given that the piece also states that several of them have been demoralized by all of this.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#444

Post by steve_taylor »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #397

I took weightlifting as my PE elective in college, and it was full of young women. I made a comment about this to the instructor one day and he said it's always like that. The young ladies sign up for weightlifting because they think it's going to be full of buff men but instead it's 75% women and the 25% of the class that's men are out of shape and taking the class because they want to get fit. Already buff guys jus…

What a bunch of lecherous creeps!

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#445

Post by ifyoubuildit »

ImaCake wrote: post #416
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't want to make you mad, but odds are someone has done something positive for you at some point solely for one trait about you that they coveted, be it money, your network, your sense of humor, the way you dressed that day, or yes, possibly even the physical shape of your face and/or body. Why be upset about the sky being blue?

Emotions aside, why are we not allowed to discourage bad faith behaviour here? It doesn't have to be a legal rule, a social rule seems to exist already. We do the same for many other actions.

On HN? Or in this scenario?

Either way I think you're allowed to discourage whatever you want (assuming you do it in a civil way). Not everyone's going to agree though.

Some people are going to think/do things that you/I don't like. And sometimes there doesn't have to be some kind of resolution that comes out of it, some kind of trial and adjudication. Life can just go on regardless.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#446

Post by cpach »

honkler wrote: post #442
cpach wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I’m telling you: Even if you don’t have great looks, you still have a chance. Isn’t that great?

There's a chance for everything. A gold laden meteor might land in my backyard in the next ten minutes. There's a chance for that too. There's also a 1 in 1000 chance to get laid on tinder. You'd have to swipe a thousand times to get a single swipe back. Is that humanly possible? You'd have to be a robot for that. And a heartless one -- making sure that none of those many constant rejections affect you emotionally.

Dating can be rough, that’s for sure. I hope you will find what you’re looking for. Best of luck.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#447

Post by lelanthran »

ofcourseyoudo wrote: post #439
lelanthran wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Because it's a) Not disturbing, and b) working. I mean, seriously, if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?

You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?

> You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps.

Well, how about you explain why you are equivocating "no unwanted advances" to "creeps".

I'm in a couple of these threads because a) I have some free time now to read, and b) there are way too many people demonizing males attempting to find a partner.

Like you are doing.

> As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?

Well, the women who are dating are specifically not complaining. Who are you to tell women where and when they may allow courtship?

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#448

Post by CuriousCosmic »

JuniorBalleg wrote: post #214
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I have an attractive daughter studying engineering, and she tells me that her single biggest problem is that she constantly has to reject, avoid, or otherwise fend off male advances nearly every day. It's exhausting, it makes her never feel at ease in her classes, and she is constantly being distracted when what she really wants is quiet time to figure out integration by parts or whatever. As a male, this is…

That doesn't follow. You were implying that the women are not aware of the men's motives, and going along with it out of naivety. That your daughter is rejecting them outright would suggest that it's either a futile plan anyway, or that the women are already on to it so the announcement would be pointless. Perhaps your daughter doesn't need or want to cash in on her attractiveness for academic favours. Others will, q…

Not OP but I want to jump in.

Some people are just nice, some are looking to make friends, some may be confident about certain aspects of the course & want a support group for the parts they are weaker with, and some are just passionate about a given subject so they offer to help or study with classmates.

Unless the person is being super obvious, it's pretty hard to to tell whether the person offering help is one of the above types or if they are just trying to get in your pants until after the fact. When I was in uni, this was a constant issue among my female friends and it constantly left them on guard.

Then when the guy would make their intentions clear and inevitably get rejected, it'd be a coin toss whether they'd respond negatively as if they were owed for their assistance. It's mentally exhausting relying on people, having to constantly second guess whether they might want to sleep with you, and how to handle things in the event they try. Worst case if you are isolated (in a dorm, empty classroom, library study cubicle, etc), they might try to "take what they are owed" or make threats for "deceiving them". More likely they'll just drop any effort put towards helping you as you are now a missed mark and mid semester you'll have to quickly try to find someone else to study with or work on assignments with lest you fall behind.

Of course not all cases end badly but enough of them do that the majority of women will have at least one experience with some degree of retaliation for rejecting advances.

This of course is only worsened by male students like in the post who are auditing the class (i.e. no penalty for failing or stopping participating) with the explicit intention of trying to sleep with other students in the class. With the case in the post, there is even less of a chance of those making advances simply accepting the rejection and continuing to work with you. Also this particular case could be additionally problematic because if it's as pronounced as the post describes, it might shift the grade distribution (and therefore the end-of-course curve) which sets bad incentives for students.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#449

Post by sugarpile »

ofcourseyoudo wrote: post #439
lelanthran wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place? Because it's a) Not disturbing, and b) working. I mean, seriously, if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?

You're in a couple of these threads stanning for these creeps. As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?

Why do you think anyone, female or otherwise, being demoralized means something “wrong” is occurring? So silly to form a moral/ethical framework on something as intangible, fickle, and culturally influenced as people’s feelings.

Also, comments like “stanning for these creeps” are disrespectful and have no place on HN, imo.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#450

Post by saghm »

nvrmnd wrote: post #227
saghm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's interesting that one of the highest-voted responses suggests bringing in the ten ton hammer of legal governmental involvement against a bunch of kids trying to score a date. Yikes. I think the bigger "yikes" to me is the implication that being young, male, and lusty as a motivation is a sufficient to dismiss any possibility of illicit behavior.

I don't see that implication being made and I have trouble believing anyone could read that into the above in good faith. The linked questions mentions that this has created an uncomfortable environment for female undergraduates -- but no allegations of illegal behavior.

It seems pretty obvious what the intentions of the men [EDIT: described in the article] here were, so I'm not sure why anyone would bother stating that if they didn't intend it to convey anything additional. Given the relative number of times I've seen people say things like "just trying to score a date"to defend sketchy behavior compared to anything else, it's honestly hard for me to imagine _not_ having a viscerally negative reaction to that phrase. I recognize that everyone has different experiences, so the way they'll interpret ambiguous language will vary, but my good faith response to something like that is genuinely just..."yikes".
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