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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 12:31:13 [Permalink]
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| I have a question, what's the difference between someone who wants equality for men and women and a feminist? |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 07/19/2011 : 14:30:23 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by On fire for Christ
I have a question, what's the difference between someone who wants equality for men and women and a feminist?
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It depends on when they decide to step in and argue for it.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 16:03:04 [Permalink]
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The reason I ask is because today, in most developed countries, I would expect the vast majority of people to say they believed in equal rights for men and women. I don't know how many would also define themselves as "feminist"
I think if they changed the terminology it would benefit them. "Feminism" sounds more pro-female than pro-equality. And for men, pro-female can sound a heck of a lot like anti-male.
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 16:08:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ebone4rock
Marf,
I totally dig your view on this subject. You bring up a few things that I think many men need to be made aware of. The thing that has stood out to me the most through this whole fiasco is how obvious it is that so many men lack the skill to communicate with women effectively. (it really is different than communicating with men no matter how much people try to rationalize it) It's like women are aliens to them or something. I really shouldn't be too surprised though because this type of miscommunication is the basis for pretty much every TV comedy we've ever seen.
Originally posted by marfknox
| especially in places where women are the minority and many of the men are lacking in social skills. And sorry, but skeptic/atheist conferences definitely are such places. |
LOL. Yep, spending your adolescence and early adulthood in Mom's basement playing Dungeons & Dragons is not a good way to learn real-life social skills.
| While I believe in equal opporunity, I'm not ignorant enough to think that women and men are the same. Women and men tend to have different perspectives, both because of certain biological differences, as well as because of differences in the way we are raised and treated by others. |
I think this is an important point to pound through the over-rationalizers skulls because it results in this
| And then there are people who just want to over-logic the whole damned thing and pretend that emotions don't matter. |
My advice to these men in to listen to the women, don't just talk at them.
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If this were a conversation about how to meet and/or get along with women, you'd have a point. Since that isn't this conversation....
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 16:37:24 [Permalink]
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Dave_W said:
| You keep on comparing apples to oranges in calculating differential risk, and you go ahead and keep on ignoring the modus operandi of rapists, if those blind spots of yours keep you feeling righteously indignant about Rebecca Watson daring to suggest that you should avoid acting like a creep, Dude. |
Have you figured out why you are wrong yet? I'll explain. You, like almost everyone else who does not understand probability, are making a unit of measurement error. Happens all the time. The media does it, most people do it, it is one of the most common problems people have with probability.
It is the reason why you can't formulate an inductive syllogism to support your argument.
You can't use a probability that uses "all men" as it's unit of measure to assess the probability "a man" will commit a sexual assault. The odds of an individual committing sexual assault are not described by analysis that uses "all men" as it's units. Analysis of an individual's chance of committing sexual assault must be analyzed by different methods. Like individual history, psychology, patterns of behavior, etc.
As for EG, (going only by Watson's description of his behavior, no assumptions that he was near her, present to hear her say she was going to sleep and wanted to be left alone) Watson is only justified in her paranoia if you ignore the second half of his time in the elevator. Some paranoia may be justified when he hits on her, but when he accepts her refusal and leaves her alone, there is no longer any justification for being creeped out or paranoid. Plait's hysterical "potential sexual assault" is also falsified when you look at the sum of his behavior.
The bottom line is simple. He left her alone at the first rejection. He didn't do anything else after, at all. So the sum of his behavior, per Watson's description, can't let you reach any rational conclusion other than he behaved appropriately, therefore any creeped out feeling is simple sexism and cries of "potential sexual assault" are idiotic hysteria.
You have to engage in cherry picking his behavior to justify your argument. I'm sure you are aware of the flaws inherent in that method of argument.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 17:48:43 [Permalink]
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As I said before, Michelle has been approached or propositioned in many uncomfortable ways and places. Alone with a strange man on an elevator at four in the morning would be the sort of thing that would make her nervous. And she wouldn't have had to have just given a talk about how she doesn't want to be sexualized in her capacity as a speaker at an atheist conference. So I'm going to go out on not much of a limb here and agree that there is a bit of justified sexism going on here. Why? Because woman mostly get raped by men. Had the man said nothing to RW, and she was creeped out, yeah, what's a guy to do? But he did say something, and it was exactly what she had just finished asking men not to do in situations like the one she was in. That in itself is creepy.
She could have become all rational and said to herself, well... it's likely that this guy isn't going to rape me. But even if she had done that, and she probably did, because of the circumstances, it was a creepy proposition that opened the door to other thoughts that she now had to grapple with. What the hell is so hard to understand about that?
I don't understand what men don't understand about how vulnerable a woman may feel given the right set of circumstances. Is it wrong for them to feel vulnerable? |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 18:54:19 [Permalink]
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Kil said:
Had the man said nothing to RW, and she was creeped out, yeah, what's a guy to do? But he did say something, and it was exactly what she had just finished asking men not to do in situations like the one she was in. That in itself is creepy.
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You have to ignore the other half of his behavior, i.e. cherry pick, to get there. Once you include the second half of his behavior... So no, in total, his behavior was not creepy.
| And she wouldn't have had to have just given a talk about how she doesn't want to be sexualized in her capacity as a speaker at an atheist conference. |
Yeah, she doesn't want to be introduced with adjectives that describe her appearance. But so what? We are talking about a guy hitting on a woman, aren't we? Women absolutely have the right to reject any guy, and to have their rejection accepted without hesitation (as happened here with elevator guy). What they don't have is the right to demand no one hit on them at all.
| I don't understand what men don't understand about how vulnerable a woman may feel given the right set of circumstances. Is it wrong for them to feel vulnerable? |
No. But that isn't what this is about. It is about Watson's manifestation of sexism due to her also cherry picking elevator guy's behavior and about Plait's hysterical reaction.
And honestly, if Plait had not gone off the deep end, this conversation could be about Dawkins being a dumbass. Watson is an attention seeking tabloid hack, so I'd have dismissed her comments (probably would never have read them really) out of hand, then the only one seriously out of line would have been Dawkins.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2011 : 20:44:22 [Permalink]
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Dude:
Watson is an attention seeking tabloid hack, so I'd have dismissed her comments (probably would never have read them really) out of hand.. |
Let me see if I have this straight. Watson is "an attention seeking tabloid hack" so you would dismiss her comments on feminism and sexism in the atheist community (which is what she was talking about) "out of hand" on the grounds that she's "an attention seeking tabloid hack" and not on the merits of her comments.
What is it that skeptics and critical thinkers call that kind of thinking? |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 05:16:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
If this were a conversation about how to meet and/or get along with women, you'd have a point. Since that isn't this conversation....
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I disagree. The subject of this topic is about listening to, getting along with, and not dismissing women. The social skills required are the same no matter what you are trying to do with them. |
Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 07:12:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
You can't use a probability that uses "all men" as it's unit of measure to assess the probability "a man" will commit a sexual assault. |
Nobody is trying to do so. Nobody is assessing the probability that "a man" will commit a sexual assault, we are rightly assessing whether any man could do so, and taking into account the details of a particular encounter.| The odds of an individual committing sexual assault are not described by analysis that uses "all men" as it's units. Analysis of an individual's chance of committing sexual assault must be analyzed by different methods. Like individual history, psychology, patterns of behavior, etc. |
And none of that is available, so we can't assess it. EG wasn't "a man," he was a random man. All that is available about him is, effectively, actuarial data about how men behave in general. And that's all that mattered from Watson's point-of-view. She would only know for sure whether EG was a rapist when he either raped or didn't rape her. But that doesn't mean she should have thrown out all the other data about the sexual differences in rapists and how rapists behave in general before she knew definitively about EG himself.| As for EG, (going only by Watson's description of his behavior, no assumptions that he was near her, present to hear her say she was going to sleep and wanted to be left alone)... |
Then you're ignoring other evidence that we have.| ...Watson is only justified in her paranoia if you ignore the second half of his time in the elevator. |
You, once again, are incorrectly thinking that somehow his "good" behavior after rejection should make Watson retroactively re-assess her feelings of threat before she rejected him. Here's the timeline:- Watson in the bar with lots of other people.
- Watson leaves the bar alone.
- Watson gets on an elevator with EG.
- EG propositions Watson.
- Watson rejects EG.
- EG accepts rejection (assumed).
- Watson leaves elevator alone (assumed).
The minimum threat Watson faced was at time 1. The threat Watson faced increased through 2, 3, 4 and even 5, and only lessened at 6. Thinking, as you seem to, that after point 6, any threat she might have thought she faced at earlier times is unjustifiable sexism is to ignore the fact that humans experience time.| Some paranoia may be justified when he hits on her... |
Thanks for agreeing that her feeling threatened was justifiable. Why have you been arguing against it so hard?| ...but when he accepts her refusal and leaves her alone, there is no longer any justification for being creeped out or paranoid. |
Duh. You'll note that Watson never used the present tense to describe EG or her reaction to him. It was always the past tense.| Plait's hysterical "potential sexual assault" is also falsified when you look at the sum of his behavior. |
Up through and even including time 6, the situation was a potential sexual assault (again, note the tense of the verb). It only stopped being one when Watson was safe. Why do you have such a problem with this simple fact?| The bottom line is simple. He left her alone at the first rejection. He didn't do anything else after, at all. So the sum of his behavior, per Watson's description, can't let you reach any rational conclusion other than he behaved appropriately... |
This is utterly stupid. He behaved inappropriately by propositioning her in that time and place, and then behaved appropriately in the face of rejection. I don't know why you think analyzing the "sum" of his behaviors is appropriate, when one behavior was bad, and the next behavior acceptable. Why judge on the second behavior alone, when what Watson was complaining about was the first?| ...therefore any creeped out feeling is simple sexism and cries of "potential sexual assault" are idiotic hysteria. |
Now you're back to your earlier stupidity. I had high hopes for you when you agreed that her feeling threatened was justified.| You have to engage in cherry picking his behavior to justify your argument. |
No, because you agreed with my argument. I don't know why you're arguing against it.| I'm sure you are aware of the flaws inherent in that method of argument. |
Which is why I'm not doing it. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 07:33:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Why does someone have to be right and someone wrong in this discussion at all? This isn't a damn debate about whether the theory of evolution is true, or whether the earth is billions of years old or not. |
Nobody has to be right or wrong in those debates, either. There's no universal, objective obligation for us to teach our children well, we just feel obliged to do so based on an assessment of societal well-being, and thus insist that a proper science education is a good thing.
In the case of Elevatorgate, there is also a clear right and wrong. It is clearly wrong to label people "sexist" and/or "hysterical" based upon a dismissal of context, an ignorance of statistics, a denial of facts and a bizarre focusing upon a single facet of the story while insisting that it is the "sum" of them which tells the whole tale. It is even more wrong to do so while accusing others of failing to engage in proper critical thought. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 07:41:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
So no, in total, his behavior was not creepy. |
But the part of his behavior that's being complained about was creepy.| And she wouldn't have had to have just given a talk about how she doesn't want to be sexualized in her capacity as a speaker at an atheist conference. |
Yeah, she doesn't want to be introduced with adjectives that describe her appearance. |
Bwahahahahahahahaha! You're so wrong about that. She clearly stated that she abhors being hit on at skeptical conferences. The point of the conferences isn't to have singles' weekends.| But so what? We are talking about a guy hitting on a woman, aren't we? |
We're talking about a guy at a conference hitting on a lone, trapped woman who had been talking "nonstop" about hating being hit on at conferences.| What they don't have is the right to demand no one hit on them at all. |
What they have the right to do is to suggest that guys not act creepy, which is all that she did.| No. But that isn't what this is about. It is about Watson's manifestation of sexism due to her also cherry picking elevator guy's behavior... |
But you agreed that she was justified in finding EG creepy at one point in time, and that's the only behavior she was complaining about.| ...and about Plait's hysterical reaction. |
Which isn't hysterical once you agree that feeling threatened was justified. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 08:03:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Dude:
Watson is an attention seeking tabloid hack, so I'd have dismissed her comments (probably would never have read them really) out of hand.. |
Let me see if I have this straight. Watson is "an attention seeking tabloid hack" so you would dismiss her comments on feminism and sexism in the atheist community (which is what she was talking about) "out of hand" on the grounds that she's "an attention seeking tabloid hack" and not on the merits of her comments.
What is it that skeptics and critical thinkers call that kind of thinking?
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The same kind of thinking that lets me dismiss anything Ken Ham has to say. A corrupted source is a corrupted source. Can they be correct on occasion? Sure. But is it worth your time to continue to read/listen to them? Probably not.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 08:37:02 [Permalink]
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Dave_W said:
EG accepts rejection (assumed).
Watson leaves elevator alone (assumed). |
Assumed, but unless you are going accuse Watson of faking the whole episode, those things have to be correct. If they are not correct, and given the context/point of her statements, why would Watson omit them? Assumptions yes, but they are reasonable.
| But you agreed that she was justified in finding EG creepy at one point in time, and that's the only behavior she was complaining about. |
That is actually the exact opposite of what I said. Good to know that you are so lost here that you have nothing left but douchebaggery. I said that you have to cherry pick his behavior in order to call it creepy. You literally have to ignore half of his actions. Then, as Mab also pointed out, maybe they guy just wanted to chat? You have to view the whole proposition through our jaded cultural point of view in order to decide it was a sexual proposition. Without this assumption your entire position becomes nothing but hysteria and hot air.
| Nobody is trying to do so. Nobody is assessing the probability that "a man" will commit a sexual assault, we are rightly assessing whether any man could do so, and taking into account the details of a particular encounter. |
Bullshit. You and Plait are saying that elevator guy is a potential rapist. In this thread you have even tried to apply group trend statistics to make the argument that EG could be a rapist. Just admit you are worng, that you didn't understand and misused probability, and move on.
| And none of that is available, so we can't assess it. EG wasn't "a man," he was a random man. All that is available about him is, effectively, actuarial data about how men behave in general. |
Are you listening to yourself? You are actually trying to justify your error. "A random man" is still "a man". Singular. You are still making a unit of measure error. You are a smart guy Dave, do you really want to sacrifice your credibility because you don't understand probability?
| You, once again, are incorrectly thinking that somehow his "good" behavior after rejection should make Watson retroactively re-assess her feelings of threat before she rejected him. |
Exactly. I'm sayin that you have to examine the entire thing together. If you cherry pick, then you are using bad logic to justify your hysterical claims. You don't tolerate it when the 'tards cherry pick, so I'd advise you not to do the same thing. When you put it together with your failure to understand probability you are not doing well here.
| This is utterly stupid. He behaved inappropriately by propositioning her in that time and place, and then behaved appropriately in the face of rejection. I don't know why you think analyzing the "sum" of his behaviors is appropriate, when one behavior was bad, and the next behavior acceptable. Why judge on the second behavior alone, when what Watson was complaining about was the first? |
Your cultural bias is the only thing that lets you say his invitation was anything other than a harmless invitation. Personally I agree that it was probably a proposition, but at least I can recognize why I think that and admit that it could be incorrect.
I am not judging by the second behavior alone. I'm taking them both into consideration, and the conclusion is simple. When you look at the situation in total, at no time was Watson actually in danger. Her initial feeling of being creeped out was unjustified. At no time was she actually in danger of being sexually assaulted by EG. The worst you can say, if you assume he was propositioning her for sex, is that he is an insensitive dumbass.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2011 : 08:54:41 [Permalink]
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Dude:
The same kind of thinking that lets me dismiss anything Ken Ham has to say. |
No. We dismiss what he has to say based on the merits of his arguments. That they happen to be often idiotic does not mean we get to ad hom the guy. If you want to ignore him, that's your business. But you can't say that because in your view he is a corrupted source, his arguments are false. Ignoring him is one thing, but dismissing his arguments "out of hand" because of how you feel about him is ad hominem.
| The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made). |
Based on this definition, you might be on firmer ground with Ham. But I don't think so.
And just so you know, RW is an asset to the skeptical atheist community. I don't know where you get this "attention seeking tabloid hack" stuff. She has done more to bring woman into our community than probably any other person. I don't understand your animosity toward her, but that doesn't really matter. The reason you gave to "dismiss" what she has to say "out of hand" without considering the merits of her argument is an ad hominem. It's a classic ad hominem, right down the pike. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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I do not like Rebecca Watson (aka skepchick)
