sexual misconduct

[black_son_of_gray]

it is asking a third party to risk life, liberty, status, and expend resources, for nothing.

The Good Guys fell for this type of behavior for a while, because white knighting used to get males laid.

I dunno, maybe we are just picturing different scenarios in our minds when we post our thoughts, but I don't get the feeling that there are huge negative consequences to intervening, at least for many situations. For whatever reason, what you are describing makes me think of the movie Roadhouse right now, with all those crazy bar room brawls... but is that reality? Would providing support for someone mean risking your life? Did all the Good Guys die martyrs? Aren't you bigger and stronger than most men anyway? Do you think that men will instantly want to duke it out with you? (I would think you could hold your own against Weinstein, Spacey or Cosby... these are not particularly physically intimidating people) Do you think this is the most likely result of intervening? When intervening, I would think that there are some relatively de-escalatory ways to distract the aggressor/ defuse the situation (e.g. maybe even humor). For one, it isn't like you have to do it alone. What's stopping you from getting some backup? Similarly, how would you be risking liberty, status or resources? What's the scenario you envision where this happens?

Furthermore, I don't get the "I get nothing" part out of it. Is the only reason to come to someone's aid the likelihood of sex as a reward? Is everything transactional for you? How about "you get to live in a better society"? How about "I get to feel good about helping someone in need" (I don't know if that works for brute)? I don't ask these questions to instigate (I know they sound pointed), I'm just trying to figure out what the scenarios are that people are playing out in their heads while reading this thread, and how they are reasoning through the possibilities.

[slsdly]

There are a class of men who are collateral damage from the effort to realize a cultural change. If you aren't successful romantically or sexually speaking because you are a less assertive man, then when you hear that men are too aggressive, do not treat women appropriately / with the respect all people deserve, etc, you are probably not getting the same message that was intended to be delivered. And simply telling the actual offenders what they are doing is wrong is insufficient -- if they suffer no loss of reputation, or consequence, and continue to have success some of the time, what incentive do they have to change their behaviour?

Asking men (edit: their friends) to socially shame the offenders is unlikely to work. As others have pointed out, our social circles are typically disjoint. For example, at work I have met those who engage in catcalling at the pub over lunch, etc and I can tell you I avoid them outside a professional context like the plague. In terms of celebrity harassment, we do seem to be seeing a lot more people coming forward about their experiences, and this shaming may provide part of what is needed to change things.

On the other hand, men do most of the approaching. If you as a man do not approach, you will in all likelihood die alone. Not only that, but most approaches fail. In online dating, you see men compensate with this by investing the minimum amount of effort in the initial approach (swipe yes on every woman, send out copypasta messages, etc), and sorting the subset of positive responses. My theory would be that if women felt empowered to approach men not just more, but on an *equal basis*, you actually would see much less of the bad behaviour from men. After all, why approach so often when the ladies come to you? I realize this might not be a popular opinion (e.g. seen as victim blaming) but I find it hard to believe that the asymmetries of the courtship process have no impact on the outcomes.

[BRUTE]

Similarly, how would you be risking liberty, status or resources?

has black_son_of_gray ever been kicked in the face, head down on the curb? gets old real quick.

Furthermore, I don't get the "I get nothing" part out of it. Is the only reason to come to someone's aid the likelihood of sex as a reward? Is everything transactional for you? How about "you get to live in a better society"? How about "I get to feel good about helping someone in need"

getting to live in a better society, and feeling good about helping someone, are both great rewards. but after seeing one too many humans get thrown under the bus by rabid, frothing at the mouth humans about nothing ("sitting with spread legs is literally a threat of rape" type stuff), thanks but no thanks.

[slowtraveler]

Aside from media hype and a few isolated incidences, I have not seen much of this in my own life. In my experiences, I have been attacked far more than seen women attacked. This lead to me learning to defend myself by various means, since I realized nobody was coming to save me.

Maybe my realization that sex without connection isn't as exciting as the media makes out to be has an impact on this. When I realize people are shitty, I stop interacting with them.

I don't like women being hurt, nor do I like the actions of a few men or women being projected out onto half the population. Ie- most women appreciate men but the media makes it seem all women are man haters who think a man spreading his legs is abuse. This takes away from actual predators.

If a human wants less of a certain behavior from other parties, they can learn to defend when such behaviors exist or avoid such situations. It worked for me. Being targeted for various resources (power, resources, status) is not gender specific. Incentive caused bias is always at play, making oneself a harder target seriously works.

+1 Jacob, Brute, GeneralSnoopy, Slsdly

[black_son_of_gray]

@ BRUTE No, I have not. If you don't mind sharing, what chain of events lead to that?
Also, what fraction of humanity would you say are "rabid, frothing at the mouth humans", and would you say that they balance out (in approximate numbers) the amount of sexual aggressors? In other words, is this just the system equilibrating?

[BRUTE]

@ BRUTE No, I have not. If you don't mind sharing, what chain of events lead to that?
Also, what fraction of humanity would you say are "rabid, frothing at the mouth humans", and would you say that they balance out (in approximate numbers) the amount of sexual aggressors? In other words, is this just the system equilibrating?

brute is not interested in telling the chain of events. it had nothing to do with sexual misconduct, it was simply an example of how quickly violence can escalate even in perceived "safe spaces" (before the term existed, maybe), surrounded by dozens of onlookers, under the watch of People In Charge.

brute has no idea about the percentages of either of those groups. one case is enough to ruin lives. one group doesn't pose a threat to brute, so he worries about the other.

[bryan]

I'm having trouble understanding slowtraveler, Brute, GeneralSnoopy, and Slsdly, to be honest. It may be the fault of the forum medium or just lacking the appropriate context of mind.

I don't think it's too much to ask for men to be allies to women. The least one could do is try to keep oneself out of us vs. them traps or generalization misappropriations.

[slowtraveler]

@Brute
Sorry that happened to you. Sounds like you got jumped but either way, getting struck when down isn't something to want to relive.

@Bryan
When did I say I was not an ally to women? I simply have never seen the white knight situation work in reality, I do not believe it is a useful mental model. Personal responsibility is simply more effective. I'd recommend you to read Jacob's link to what stupid means. It means to expose others to harm without benefit to self. A white knight does that, as I will show from my personal example below. A woman exposing herself to risks without benefit to herself and expecting others to save her also does that.

The one time I have tried to step in, the women pushed me off and said I was overreacting. The media hypes this issue. A jaded woman sees another woman in a situation jaded woman doesn't like and misconstrues that as abuse when the woman actually didn't feel any abuse happening. Then blasts it on the media and thinks all women are being abused. I have misconstrued situations as abuse then been told to chill out, by women. Since then, and based on my own self victimization when I was young, I have realized that individual humans need to learn to defend themselves as only they can draw their own boundary. Nobody can read minds and all it takes is one public embarrassment to learn my lesson.

Normally, predators find isolated times and then, nobody else can help, only the targeted human. They strike when nobody is around, this has happened to me on many occasions. Being slammed on the back of the head, being threatened with getting jumped, etc. So I say personal responsibility is far more useful than expecting somebody to white knight them.

There is social risk (as in my case) and physical risk (getting jumped, shot, etc.) to the white knight situation. After a single failure, unless a woman is my girlfriend or family, why would I help? She is more likely to attack me than be happy I did what I thought was helpful.

I recommend Brazilian jiu-jitsu, MMA, Thai boxing, learning how to use guns, pepper spray, not doing drugs or drinking, not dressing in a way that makes one a target (no jewelry ever, no fancy clothes outside of fancy situations), not walking through sketchy neighborhoods or countries, and overall, staying very aware of where one is and one's surroundings. Go home at night. Don't wander when it gets too dark and you feel sleepy. This has worked well for me. If a grown man finds this useful, why wouldn't a woman? Why do you think a man has to risk his life because of a woman's desire to enter risky situations?

I don't even want go to Brazil or India due to risks from my having studied those countries. I don't want to get robbed so I don't expose myself to pointless risks.

[slsdly]

I'm not sure where I said men shouldn't be an ally to women. I guess the question I ask myself when discussing a hypothetical assault happens is not "why didn't somebody help her", but rather "how do we avoid this situation". Clearly there are things that could be done for the former, but on an intellectual level, I consider it the less interesting problem. I would probably not be thinking this way in the situation -- in fact, the other day I heard a woman screaming in the hallway, went to investigate, and found it was (screaming/crying aside) a physically non-threatening breakup, and went on my merry way. I certainly wasn't asking myself "how did she do this to herself" .

With that question in mind, "men should stop other men" doesn't seem like a workable solution. The men who would do the stopping aren't really considered peers to the men doing the assaulting, and I don't think it would discourage future such behaviour. Chivalry too seems like a red herring to me; did men not give a friendly slap on the ass to women in the age of chivalry? Maybe if you combined today's social norms (women aren't property, etc) with chivalry, you might get a different result. I will concede that . Maybe women should dress less provocatively? Some men will merely find the scent of tropical rainforest shampoo to be an invitation. No, dressing differently won't do enough. (Again, all of this might be useful on an individual level.)

I used the wrong word before. My *supposition* (not theory) is that perhaps it is rooted in the idea that men have to do their little peacock display of feathers. It starts out innocently enough, and some of them aren't getting the results they desire. So they seek alternative strategies. Clearly a subset of men have determined that catcalling, physical assault, etc actually gets them what they want. This is in part due to the lack of clear communication between the parties. Maybe 19/20 women are offended by the jackass's behaviour, if he does that 20 times on a night on the town and gets laid, then why stop?

I'm not saying "some women are getting hurt because they don't tell men what they want", I'm saying "maybe some men get on the road to aggression in response to the lack of clear signals." If women and men had similar levels of participation in initiating, surely this will have an impact on men's behaviour. Maybe fewer would consider aggressive tactics? There will always be the psychopaths who hurt others because they don't feel many emotions themselves, but I'm not really thinking about the outliers for whom social norms are a big question mark, and instead require the force of law to keep them in line.

Let me be clear. I putting an idea out there. To hopefully make a meaningful contribution to the discussion, and see if others evolve my idea further, or if new ones rise in response to it. I'm not standing on a soap box preaching saying all of this is the fault of women.

[7Wannabe5]

@Loner: lol- I love Harper's. It was my safe space where I could find people who actually thought like me when I was in high school in rural Michigan.

@jacob: Excellent analysis. I was going to attempt something similar, but starting from the problem of scarce resources to devote to enforcement.

As you noted elsewhere, your forum/ your rules. So, here goes something.


*****hard break to alternate universe*************************************************************************************

@jennypenny:

(I sidle up to the virtual bar.) Hey girlfriend, what we drinking to? 28 years, no way! Congratulation, and better you than me. Ha-Just kiddin. That's great. Give the old chain and balls a slap on the azz from me. (glug) Ahhh, nectar of the Goddess. Whew, I needed that. Yeah, rough day. Lost my blouse AND my skirt trying to roll hard 8 against the big girls on Bitcoin; lucky I still got a bra to tuck these old titties in (loud laugh, slap to the back.)

(glug, scans the room) Now, lookie, lookie. What do we have here? Mmmm...check out those guns.I wouldn't half mind finding that cruller still dipped in my coffee tomorrow morning. Yes, mamamee Sue. What? Friend of yours, you say? Kind of reserved? Heck, all the better. I'm not looking for conversation. Check you later.

@BRUTE:

(I pull stool up real close and straddle) Hey cutie, you got any fries to go with that steak?


****************************************
ETA: Upon second reading after second cup of coffee, I think my attempt to leave nobody unoffended while aptly analogizing would be better served if the first paragraph was edited to "Give the old chain and balls a yank from me." AND, obviously, in the second paragraph I meant to type "Bismarck", not "Cruller."

[jacob]

@7 - Thanks, I'll throw in some more "systems-goodies" for further analysis of the problem of going from "here" to "there". Although maybe a better way would be to look at existing systems to see what other equilibrium solutions are possible. For example, India, Scandinavia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Pygmy, Inuit. These are just suggestions of different approaches to the same problems ... I don't know if any of them are currently in a materially dynamic state.

Most importantly:

• Chesterton's Fence:

  In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

• Le Chatelier's Principle that states that any change to an equilibrium system creates an opposing reaction that aims to restore equilibrium.

These would typically be used in combination to see why "modern" reforms have unintended side-effects.

And an addition for the existing analysis [in the rest of the thread]:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect ... in particular the variables that enter in emergency situations.
• Hidden orders: If a passive seller does not reveal the price they're willing to accept, it universally holds that they will be able to get a slightly(*) higher price than if their price was public (in financial markets, these kind of orders exist and are called hidden [prices] and lit [prices]). Unlike in financial markets where the hidden price is set and on the book, IRL, the seller also retains optionality (the option to not commit to the offer) which also has value.

Insofar one can trade with hidden orders + optionality, it's not in one's personal interest to light them up and ignore optionality even if it is in the public interest. So every passive seller retains them. That's the Tragedy of the Commons problem. Being the first (on the margin) to surrender this value is the most painful because the cost is highest for the first person to step in.

(*) If the market is inefficient, a hidden sell order can get a much higher price.

Same "hidden order, optionality" tragedy is seen on the enforcement side. Males have the hidden option to step into a conflict or not. This also has value. Because of that, they're less likely to engage compared to if their order was public and nonoptional as would be the case if they were security/bouncer/police.

Add: For anyone who has never had the experience of taking enough damage to get downed or delivering enough of it to down someone else, I highly recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/Little-Black-Boo ... 1594391297 just to get realistic perspective on real world violence as a potential solution method to misconduct... It also covers the legal ramifications of the aftermath. Quoting from the book's blurb:

Every time you engage in violence, no matter how small or trivial it may appear to be at the time, it has the potential of escalating into something extraordinarily serious. What is really worth fighting for when you might find yourself spending the rest of your life behind bars, confined to a wheelchair, or trying to dig yourself out of bankruptcy from beneath the crushing weight of a civil lawsuit? It is important to ask yourself, "Is this really worth fighting over?" While in some instances the response could legitimately be "Yes," more often than not it ought to be "No."

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

All very interesting.

I would note that in addition to self-interest inherent in maintaining hidden price and optionality, any attempt to market an asset that is usually assumed to have price as $0 will likely result in unintended negative side-effect of generating buyer suspicion in regard to either underlying value or small print of contract. Therefore, for instance, a happy, successful gardener who finds herself with too many tomatoes on her hands, would be better off putting the tomatoes in a pretty basket on a table next to a jar with a sign that says "Pay Whatever You Think Is Fair Price " rather than tossing them into a cardboard box by the curb and scrawling "FREE" on the side.

Since the only circumstances in which a happy tomato gardener would ever have to actually pay another party to take excess tomatoes off of her hands would be in the context of a rigid-contract monopolistic economy with low tomato demand, this would be the sort of situation a happy, successful tomato gardener producer would be most likely to avoid. Ergo, pantheistic matriarchal cultures with abundant resource base (or even just perception of abundant resource base) also tend towards easy-going polygamy. I am not going to be able to explain very well, but this is because the power behind "masculine" sexual desire is an intermittent flow, not a stock, so you can't very well put it in a cage and keep it, but you can put your tomatoes behind a barrier to entry that represents some work you would like to see done, and then you could maybe attach a storage battery.

Anyways, that's why many of the complaints lodged by other females just seem to me like they don't understand basic principles of physics, biology or martial arts. For instance, if I was working as a secretarial temp for C.K. Louis, and he asked me if I would be willing to watch, I might say something like "Sure, if you give me $5000, and I get to keep my clothes on and NO touching. Throw in another $2000, and I will even pretend like I am either delighted OR disgusted. Your druthers." I mean, I feel sorry for submissive males sometimes, but the clock is still tick-tick-ticking on me becoming financially independent. However, this is a very, very crude example, and I probably wouldn't really say something like that, because I tend towards wanting to exhibit higher principles.

[EMJ]

I hope Jacob will respond to @ sl-owl-orris

If showing cleavage is presenting assets, then living in warmer climates must be a hell for women. Being comfortable and not overheating by wearing layers of clothes may put women in danger.
Where do you cross the line?

[7Wannabe5]

@EMJ:

It doesn't matter whether you wear a burka. If somebody does not choose to play or pay by the rules then the validity of a "No Trespassing" sign is moot. I think the important thing for young women to realize is that men truly are very visually-hardwired in their sexuality, and not just in a manner like unto assigning women beauty queen ranking grades. Every woman should spend some time exploring the variety of fare offered on popular internet porn sites, and do some reading on the effect of testosterone on the brain.

That said, knowledge is not the same thing as sense or intuition. Like most women, there are many times and contexts in which I am thinking that I am behaving, dressing or otherwise signaling INVISIBLE, NOT ATTRACTIVE or NOT AVAILABLE, even though I rationally could know that wasn't the case. A lot of men truly do not grok this either. They simply can't parse the difference between a woman who puts on a pretty red dress to make herself feel cheerful and a woman who is signaling like a baboon in heat. I'm definitely not saying that every remotely attractive woman should look at herself in the mirror before leaving the house and ask herself "If I was a guy is it possible that I would experience a noticeable bit of circulatory action if I saw me looking like this?" because I know that the answer is likely either going to be "Yes." or "No. My thighs are repulsive and my hair looks like shit." depending on degree of ability to inhabit male perspective combined with current level of self-esteem.

IOW, you can legislate sexual behavior, but you can't legislate sexual desire. In ANY context you inhabit, REALITY will be that you are inhabiting both fields, or both systems. The intelligent actor always attempts to make decisions based on reality rather than what should be.

[jacob]

@EMJ/sl-owl-orris Sure, ... I actually "tested" sl-owl-orris's response on DW and she went along the same lines as I was frantically waving my arms and going "but respect is a cultural code, not a biological quantity ... it's like gravity, if you let go of a suspended object, it will fall ...so you can't demand that gravity goes away to make objects stay in mid air even if that's more respectful to the person who put it there". Not really my best pedagogical effort, but the situation is complex...

My point with my original post was to describe how the system works. The physics, the biology, the signals, the potential violence. I think I did a fairly good job of it too.

I definitely did not want to get into a discussion of the particulars of cleavage with my example (which wasn't about cleavage per se but all possible signals... see shampoo comment above) and I was actually hesitant to add my original example because I know from experience that there's a high risk of turning examples into a debate about particular details while missing the larger insight. FWIW, my original model example was to be considered completely stereotypical for clarity.

DW's point was that eye-contact vs ogling was about respect. However, "respect" is a cultural term. It's therefore not innate to the functional behavior of biologically driven and resource constrained systems. For example, field mice, chipmunks, or elephants don't have a concept called respect. Different human cultures and even different humans have different understandings of what respect is insofar they have one. Therefore one must never assume respect to be universal or even exist in a given person. I refer back to various Overton windows in my original post.

Since their response was mostly about the world as it should be, I want to emphasize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#Essays (referred to in my original post for a good reason) to help explain why "should be" is not a practical life-strategy when dealing with other humans.

First, if the cultural system is in a flux, then it requires individual human effort to deal with it. We have 4 different types of individual males: (I'm not really going to get into arguing the details with what is what in the four quadrants. These descriptions need to be refined.)

• Intelligent: An intelligent male will realize that it's in his best interest and in her best interest (and also the common good) if he expends significant frontal lobe energy to override his primal instincts and adhere to "eyes up here" protocol. This will benefit both parties. An intelligent male will grasp the usefulness of a human construct such as "respect".
• Helpless: A helpless male will consider protocol to be too difficult (might not have the lobe energy to override instinct or whatever) or have other issues/challenges that makes talking to females too difficult, e.g. lack of precision wrt being considerate or assertive. This will hurt this male.
• Bandit: A bandit male will have realized that banditry is sufficiently rewarded to keep going at it. Note that there are intelligent bandits and stupid bandits (refer to Cipolla for details). Someone commented above that if it 19/20 of females hate ogling but 1/20 like it AND bandit-attempts have almost no costs and almost no risk, then continued success is ensured by approaching 20 different females. Important to note that an intelligent bandit will make a deliberate cost-benefit analysis. The bandit can therefore be deterred by changing the prices and probabilities. (I have no idea whether the actual ratio is 1/20. I just know that it's >0.)
• Stupid: A stupid male will not realize that it's in his best interest to stop ogling. This both kills his chances and annoys the female. The stupid person can not be deterred. You can not regulate. You can only avoid (see law 4,5 --- this also applies to enforcement).

One can insist that there should be respect. And I'm sure that if the world was composed strictly of intelligent males and females, then quick convergence on 100% respect would be no problem (however, see law 2). Yet, like gravity, that's just not the case and so I think (and that's my opinion) framing one's approach to reality in terms of what it ought to be or what should be is ineffectual.

Similarly, (and this was also done above by slowtraveler), I could argue that people should respect private property enough so I can wave an expensive smartphone around near a bus stop in a crime-ridden neighborhood. Now that would be really nice for me, but reality is such that by doing so, I'm communicating to any delinquent stupid/bandit within 50 yards that here's a crime of opportunity for them to take (IOW, I'm putting up a sell signal for my smartphone asset). I could argue that my smartphone waving shouldn't be construed as a signal. But the economical/sociological fact is that it is a signal whether I like it or not. And it's not about smartphones either. If I stand around in a sketchy part of town while dressed expensively (another signal), chances are higher that I will be robbed.

Insofar other men should step in ... again, realize that the knight might be/play the role as either intelligent, helpless, stupid, or a bandit. And in particular realize that knight can't know for sure whether he's dealing with a jackass who's stupid or a bandit; or even intelligent or helpless insofar he's misinterpreting the situation (a helpless knight, see slowtravelers example).

Females can, of course, be similarly categorized in terms of how they deal with the underlying physics of the situation. Just realizing that whoever you run into will have either a helpless, stupid, intelligent or banditly (what's the word?) framework is super practical and helpful. See other posters above for examples of various classes of females.

Personally I consider the "should be"/"shouldn't have to" way of looking at the world fall in the helpless(*) category because it ultimately hurts yourself. It's a little bit like driving through a green traffic light w/o checking for cars left and right because "there shouldn't be any cars when I got the green light"(**). Sure ... but that's failing to account for the stupid/bandit drivers that are bound to be out there.

(*) Don't get hung up on words. We're looking at the functionality of the category. Feel free to call it what you want. Wishful? Hopeful? Optimistic? Naive?

(**) There are some humans who seriously believe so much in regulations that their framework becomes the regulations themselves. They are thus incapable of imagining the existence of behavior outside regulations. All booksmarts. No streetsmarts.

It's a general rule that "You can't fix stupid" but ultimately, cultural codes may impose some sanctions or constraints on its effects. However, keep in mind that making theft illegal hasn't eliminated theft. You can't regulate stupid away; and since regulation is not 100% effective, you can't eliminate bandits either. More importantly, though, since the US is currently transitioning, I think it's pertinent to develop a real appreciation of Chesterton's Fence. Lots of fences are currently being torn down w/o understanding why they were there in the first place. Because many of these decisions don't seem to be guided by any systemic insight, the side-effects will come out of unexpected places. So maybe consider why some of the rules that have been eliminated were put in in the first place before worrying about fixing the unintended consequences with new fences. It's a worthwhile exercise if trying to understand why a complex system is breaking.

PS: If there's any interest in clothing based solutions ... just go check out what people came up with in other countries. You'll probably not like it ... but they're human-solutions nevertheless. Compare the Pygmy dress code (I use Pygmies because I saw a documentary on netflix some month ago---but it holds for almost all tropical tribes) with the Iranian dress code. Both are physiologically working hot climate solutions at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

[7Wannabe5]

Now I am fretting about what qualifies as intelligent bandit? Was Tom Sawyer an intelligent bandit? Was B'rer Rabbit an intelligent bandit?

Also, it is pretty easy to tell the clueless oogler from the bandit oogler, because the bandit oogler has hard eyes, and will often be man-spreading, or exuding some other clear signal of dominance/predation. The 1/20 female who might sometimes choose to either hard-stare back at bandit oogler OR purposefully signal submission to bandit oogler likely has some self-interest in mind, but maybe just keeping herself amused.

[jacob]

@7 - An intelligent bandit is someone who gains more than he hurts others. A stupid bandit is someone who hurts others more than he gains himself. In the essay, they're referred to as B1 and B2. See http://cantrip.org/stupidity.html for an illustration There's also H1 and H2. Same idea.

[7Wannabe5]

X-post. Again. Sorry will read essay. Tom Sawyer gained more than he hurt others _Intelligent Bandit. B'rer Rabbit re-directed the energy of bandits towards his gain, more like a permaculturist or double con-artist?. The individual who stole my garden shovel is a stupid bandit. The individual who set the Little Free Library on fire is a stupid bandit.

[C40]

Someone commented above that if it 19/20 of females hate ogling but 1/20 likes it AND bandit-attempts have almost no costs and almost no risk, then continued success is ensured by approaching 20 different females. Important to note that an intelligent bandit will make a deliberate cost-benefit analysis. The bandit can therefore be deterred by changing the prices and probabilities. (I have no idea whether the actual ratio is 1/20. I just know that it's >0.)

If the bandit has just a very basic level of intelligence, the actual can be surprisingly high. I did an experiment 15 years ago of bandit behavior that would cause a riot if done today where TopHatFox studied. My friends and I were out at the bars and someone asked "if you just went up to that woman and asked if you could play with her breasts, what would happen? What percentage of women would say yes to that?". We all made our guesses and then I tested it out by asking maybe 20 women.

I think I guessed that 0-10% would say yes and that I may get some very angry responses. After one or two attempts, I had a phrasing worked out well enough (plus a disarming tone and smile) that 50% of women said yes. 50%!!!!! I'd walk up and say "Hi. My friends and I have a debate about what percentage of women will say yes if I just go up to them and ask to touch their breasts. Can I touch yours?". I never thought the yes rate would be so high. I was totally surprised.

edit - this kind of behavior was and is totally out of the norm for me and I haven't ever done anything else like this.

[Riggerjack]

The correct response to an unwelcome hand at the range, is with the weapon pointed downrange, announcing to nobody in particular, "the next hand that touches my ass will receive a (insert caliber here) hole in it."

The correct way of convincing a man that is too close to give you more space is a bit more involved.
Step 1, look him in the eye
Step 2 smile (this step can be omitted, but really, it helps.)
Step.3 place your open hand on his chest.
Step 4 increase pressure until desired distance is achieved. Adding "I'm going to need more personal space." Seals the deal. Nobody mistakes being placed at full arm's length.

Do you see what I described here? These are nonthreatening, direct responses that require no interpretation, and make your feelings absolutely clear.

Now, to some folks, suggesting you would shoot someone would not be nonthreatening. In the context of a gun range, though, it absolutely is. Because the gun is pointed conspicuously at the target, and the statement of intent was general. The same statement, uttered behind someone while their gun is pointed downrange, would be considerably less nonthreatening.

Placing you hand on his chest and slowly increasing pressure is equally clear. Leaving your face free to communicate any other signals. Be aware that alcohol will delay response from your suitor. No need to shove him off his stool. But there is no more need to moderate the signal than you feel.

As for catcalling, that video was 2 minutes edited out of 10 hours, in NYC. If that's too much attention, perhaps NYC is not for you. I can say that in my entire adult life, including 4 years in the army, and over 10 years in construction, I have never been in a group of men catcalling a stranger. I have whistled appreciatively to women I knew, usually as they were going out with others, or on a date with someone else, as a general note of approval. If they didn't like it, they never did more than smile, or smile and roll their eyes.

Past cultures had more structured signalling, and formal rituals of courtship. We threw that out. What is left is what the majority will deal with. Not ideal, but nothing is. The majority likes ambiguity, the rest of us just have to deal with that.