Gender Roles

[Jarhyn]

There is also a significant difference between "harassment" and "social violence"

It is harassment to constantly badger someone and invade the spaces where they are discussing things to specifically pick at their statements.

It is social violence to, for instance, tell someone's employer that they kick puppies. One is annoying but not injurious, the other is actually injurious, not of their body, but the ability of that body to exist in society. Hence why it is social rather than bodily harm.

If we are looking at our imaginary "male" and "female" platonics, the male is more likely to engage in bodily harm, and the female is more likely to engage in social harm, and both are, in my estimation, equally likely to engage in efforts to cause harm.

Oftentimes violence is justified: if someone kicks puppies, their employer should probably know. Likewise if someone is kicking a puppy right now, they might need to be challenged bodily to stop them from doing it.

Either way, the person doing such a thing ought feel traumatized as the cost of doing that violence, no matter which, even if the violence is justified. Some do feel this trauma. Others, clearly, do not.

Some people take this to extremes with respect to gender roles, and view one form of violence or the other as "unmanly" or "unwomanly", but this is bollocks, an unforced error many make.

 

[Toni]

So, when someone states they have a significant trauma, please grant them the grace to accept that they were traumatized, even if you do not know the circumstances or the actual facts and even if you believe that you would not have felt the same events to be traumatic.

I have not rejected any claims of trauma, nor have I in any way at all asked for any details of trauma, nor even remotely suggested that such trauma isn't material to them.

I made a comment on the tone-deafness of the actual words that were written, and what they mean to normal people.

"Being harassed by someone was very traumatic to me. It was way more traumatic to me than when I threatened someone with physical violence"

Look, let me try this a different way. I'm going to lay out four statements, and ask you to consider which of them a reasonable outside observer would consider to be most traumatic to the subject of the statement.

1) Pat was harassed by Alex
2) Pat was threatened with physical violence by Alex
3) Pat harassed Alex
4) Pat threatened Alex with physical violence

Which of those would an external observer with no additional information consider to be the most traumatic to Pat? Which would be considered the least traumatic to Pat? Which are the most and least traumatic for Alex?

With no additional information, which person does your sympathy lie with in each scenario?
Do you think it's reasonable for Pat to expect that an external observer would feel sympathy toward Pat in scenario 4?

Now go back and reread the small portion of what Jarhyn wrote that I actually responded to, and consider what it means. Jarhyn presented the situation as if we, the external observers, should be expected to feel sympathy for Jarhyn when Jarhyn was the one who threatened someone else with physical violence.

OK but look at the situations I very deliberately chose to write about here:

I was actually violent with someone, arguably after the imminent danger was past. I threatened violence against someone who I perceived to be a threat to me. I felt and still do feel that I acted appropriately under the circumstances and was justified in pre-emptively doing what I needed to do to prevent an attack that I might not have survived. But I could be wrong about all of that. And a police investigation and a court of law would almost certainly have found I behaved inappropriately. Yet I am absolutely certain that if I had not done what I did, I would have been a rape victim a few times over, assuming I survived the first rape.

I'm pretty certain that you have plenty of sympathy for me in the situations I described. We're both women. I'm sure you've dealt with much worse shit than I have done.

But the fact that I've dealt with the shit I have dealt with makes me feel the need to trust Jahryn and to believe that he was justified in his perceptions and actions.

This is not a court of law. No one is going to be arrested or tried or convicted. I think that Jahryn deserves the grace of us believing him, just as I hope that people believe me and if they do not, at least refrain from attacking me for what I wrote. Jahryn deserves the same.

 

[Emily Lake]

OK but look at the situations I very deliberately chose to write about here:

I was actually violent with someone, arguably after the imminent danger was past. I threatened violence against someone who I perceived to be a threat to me. I felt and still do feel that I acted appropriately under the circumstances and was justified in pre-emptively doing what I needed to do to prevent an attack that I might not have survived. But I could be wrong about all of that. And a police investigation and a court of law would almost certainly have found I behaved inappropriately. Yet I am absolutely certain that if I had not done what I did, I would have been a rape victim a few times over, assuming I survived the first rape.

I'm pretty certain that you have plenty of sympathy for me in the situations I described. We're both women. I'm sure you've dealt with much worse shit than I have done.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?

But the fact that I've dealt with the shit I have dealt with makes me feel the need to trust Jahryn and to believe that he was justified in his perceptions and actions.

This is not a court of law. No one is going to be arrested or tried or convicted. I think that Jahryn deserves the grace of us believing him, just as I hope that people believe me and if they do not, at least refrain from attacking me for what I wrote. Jahryn deserves the same.

Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

 

[Toni]

OK but look at the situations I very deliberately chose to write about here:

I was actually violent with someone, arguably after the imminent danger was past. I threatened violence against someone who I perceived to be a threat to me. I felt and still do feel that I acted appropriately under the circumstances and was justified in pre-emptively doing what I needed to do to prevent an attack that I might not have survived. But I could be wrong about all of that. And a police investigation and a court of law would almost certainly have found I behaved inappropriately. Yet I am absolutely certain that if I had not done what I did, I would have been a rape victim a few times over, assuming I survived the first rape.

I'm pretty certain that you have plenty of sympathy for me in the situations I described. We're both women. I'm sure you've dealt with much worse shit than I have done.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?

But the fact that I've dealt with the shit I have dealt with makes me feel the need to trust Jahryn and to believe that he was justified in his perceptions and actions.

This is not a court of law. No one is going to be arrested or tried or convicted. I think that Jahryn deserves the grace of us believing him, just as I hope that people believe me and if they do not, at least refrain from attacking me for what I wrote. Jahryn deserves the same.

Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

The trauma that I feel is based upon my experiences: My safety and wellbeing was threatened. In fact, in another incident, the same person who tried to rape me also tried to kill me. It was only by the lucky intervention by a third person that I am not dead now.

Was it traumatic to me that I had to threaten violence in order to pre-emptively prevent violence? Yeah. Should never have happened. In a different kind of environment, one that treated people with respect, it possibly never would have been necessary. In that moment, I felt it was necessary and yes, that's a bit of additional trauma: I had to threaten someone in order to keep them from backing me up in a dark store room and sexually assaulting me. Why should that have fallen on me to prevent? Why would that person decide that it was an acceptable thing for him to do? The fact that in all likelihood, that would have happened: I would have found myself isolated and being attacked by someone much, much larger than myself for no reason other than he felt like it is traumatic. And even more traumatic knowing that my daughter has faced similar situations. In her case, at least in one instance, she had a supportive (female) boss who did not fire her or reprimand her for grabbing the hand that grabbed her ass and bending it back until it caused pain--in front of the party of men at the restaurant where she was a server. I know that this is only one small instance. My action saved me but it did not save my daughter. Nor any other woman. Traumatic? Maybe. Infuriating: deeply.

My experiences taught me that dodging groping hands, evading situations where I or others might be left alone, even momentarily, from someone who threatened me was inadequate. I specifically did NOT want my attacker to be exposed for fear of what violence might have been done to him by my father and his. Which would not have prevented what I also feared: not being believed, being blamed, being thought to be somehow sullied. It was only after YEARS of this sort of abuse that I pro-actively did something in front of others that would at least cause them to question what the hell was going on. I attacked him, briefly but dramatically. And was never questioned or rebuked so I suspect they knew something was up.

And yeah, those experiences made me very, very proactive about avoiding situations that I could avoid and not demurring when I could not avoid situations but acting, violently if necessary. I had to rely on my own judgment. No one else protected me. Nor Jahryn, I suspect.

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

 

[Emily Lake]

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

I haven't attacked anyone at all, nor have I made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent.

 

[Jarhyn]

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

I haven't attacked anyone at all, nor have I made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent.

Clearly, as more than one person has observed, you HAVE.

 

[Bomb#20]

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

I haven't attacked anyone at all, nor have I made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent.

Clearly, as more than one person has observed, you HAVE.

Clearly, proof-by-capitalization and proof-by-two-people-agreeing are invalid argument forms. You are bringing a charge against Emily. So show your work.

1. If you mean she "made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent", quote her doing so. Good luck with that.

2. If you mean she "attacked anyone at all", well, she criticized you. Whether that criticism qualifies as an "attack" is a matter of subjective opinion, not a matter that can be settled either by logical argument or by voting from the peanut gallery; furthermore, it's beside the point. The factual issue at hand is that when she criticized you, she was definitely not criticizing you for doing something she, from her safe distance, deems unnecessary or too violent. She never offered any opinion about whether what you did in the events you recounted was the right thing for you to have done at that time. She criticized you for a comment you made here about those events. When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

 

[Toni]

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

I haven't attacked anyone at all, nor have I made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent.

Clearly, as more than one person has observed, you HAVE.

Clearly, proof-by-capitalization and proof-by-two-people-agreeing are invalid argument forms. You are bringing a charge against Emily. So show your work.

1. If you mean she "made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent", quote her doing so. Good luck with that.

2. If you mean she "attacked anyone at all", well, she criticized you. Whether that criticism qualifies as an "attack" is a matter of subjective opinion, not a matter that can be settled either by logical argument or by voting from the peanut gallery; furthermore, it's beside the point. The factual issue at hand is that when she criticized you, she was definitely not criticizing you for doing something she, from her safe distance, deems unnecessary or too violent. She never offered any opinion about whether what you did in the events you recounted was the right thing for you to have done at that time. She criticized you for a comment you made here about those events. When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

OK but look at the situations I very deliberately chose to write about here:

I was actually violent with someone, arguably after the imminent danger was past. I threatened violence against someone who I perceived to be a threat to me. I felt and still do feel that I acted appropriately under the circumstances and was justified in pre-emptively doing what I needed to do to prevent an attack that I might not have survived. But I could be wrong about all of that. And a police investigation and a court of law would almost certainly have found I behaved inappropriately. Yet I am absolutely certain that if I had not done what I did, I would have been a rape victim a few times over, assuming I survived the first rape.

I'm pretty certain that you have plenty of sympathy for me in the situations I described. We're both women. I'm sure you've dealt with much worse shit than I have done.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?

But the fact that I've dealt with the shit I have dealt with makes me feel the need to trust Jahryn and to believe that he was justified in his perceptions and actions.

This is not a court of law. No one is going to be arrested or tried or convicted. I think that Jahryn deserves the grace of us believing him, just as I hope that people believe me and if they do not, at least refrain from attacking me for what I wrote. Jahryn deserves the same.

Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

There are many different types of trauma and many different…levels of trauma.

It is, in fact, a continuous, low level/background noise kind of trauma to know that my words: Stop are not enough to stop certain types of individuals from continuing to threaten or to actually do violence to me. It is, to a degree, traumatic to realize that politely demurring or simply removing myself from the immediate vicinity is not sufficient. And more traumatic to realize that in fact, it has been necessary, in my judgement, based on actual experience, that it was necessary for my actual physical safety to threaten to hurt someone who very definitely was letting me know that he was more than willing to cause me serious harm. My preference is that no means no and that no one has the right to tell another person that they had better be nice to them OR ELSE. And yet, that low level threat is something that girls and women and I strongly suspect but do not know as an absolute fact since I am a straight, cis white woman that gender-non-confirming individuals or those who are or are suspected of being gay or bi or non-binary or trans or whatever, must deal with every single day. As do non-white people or others who are or are perceived to be members of any minority group.

I’d much rather never go on the offensive but there are situations where past traumas have made me believe that going on a verbal offensive was more likely to shut down the threat.

I’m glad if you’ve never been in such a situation but many people have been and are right now and will be in the future.

I realize that my boss would not have backed me up, which is why I did what I did. I had already nearly been fired for making a mild joke at an overly ‘’friendly’ customer’s expense—again to shut down some unwelcome comments from a man nearly my father’s age. His friends, btw, laughed, which was the real problem. He had been shut down, very politely, by wait staff who really wanted to just move past awkward and unwelcome comments. And I’d been told —by management—wear shorter skirts and made to listen to my boss’s complaints about his sex life and to navigate working with a boss who had asked me out. I very much knew the score.

Would I have continued to beat the shit out of the guy who refused to take no if I had not been very drunk? Probably not but the better question is whether or not I would have needed to resort to beating the shit out of the guy if I had not been drunk because the likelihood he would have attacked me if I was sober approach nil.

Because I’ve been in situations I would have much preferred never to have been, I can understand and empathize with someone feeling threatened by a situation that reminded them of a past trauma.

And the record, I very much support individuals being able to choose which gender persons they want conducting physical exams or offering therapy. A skilled therapist’s gender ide Tory should not and likely would not affect their ability to provide effective therapy. But it could very much affect the patient’s ability to accept the needed therapy, at least initially.

 

[Jarhyn]

You feel what you feel or don't feel. But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent. You weren't there.

I haven't attacked anyone at all, nor have I made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent.

Clearly, as more than one person has observed, you HAVE.

Clearly, proof-by-capitalization and proof-by-two-people-agreeing are invalid argument forms. You are bringing a charge against Emily. So show your work.

1. If you mean she "made any judgement of anything at all being unnecessary or too violent", quote her doing so. Good luck with that.

2. If you mean she "attacked anyone at all", well, she criticized you. Whether that criticism qualifies as an "attack" is a matter of subjective opinion, not a matter that can be settled either by logical argument or by voting from the peanut gallery; furthermore, it's beside the point. The factual issue at hand is that when she criticized you, she was definitely not criticizing you for doing something she, from her safe distance, deems unnecessary or too violent. She never offered any opinion about whether what you did in the events you recounted was the right thing for you to have done at that time. She criticized you for a comment you made here about those events. When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

OK but look at the situations I very deliberately chose to write about here:

I was actually violent with someone, arguably after the imminent danger was past. I threatened violence against someone who I perceived to be a threat to me. I felt and still do feel that I acted appropriately under the circumstances and was justified in pre-emptively doing what I needed to do to prevent an attack that I might not have survived. But I could be wrong about all of that. And a police investigation and a court of law would almost certainly have found I behaved inappropriately. Yet I am absolutely certain that if I had not done what I did, I would have been a rape victim a few times over, assuming I survived the first rape.

I'm pretty certain that you have plenty of sympathy for me in the situations I described. We're both women. I'm sure you've dealt with much worse shit than I have done.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?

But the fact that I've dealt with the shit I have dealt with makes me feel the need to trust Jahryn and to believe that he was justified in his perceptions and actions.

This is not a court of law. No one is going to be arrested or tried or convicted. I think that Jahryn deserves the grace of us believing him, just as I hope that people believe me and if they do not, at least refrain from attacking me for what I wrote. Jahryn deserves the same.

Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

There are many different types of trauma and many different…levels of trauma.

It is, in fact, a continuous, low level/background noise kind of trauma to know that my words: Stop are not enough to stop certain types of individuals from continuing to threaten or to actually do violence to me. It is, to a degree, traumatic to realize that politely demurring or simply removing myself from the immediate vicinity is not sufficient. And more traumatic to realize that in fact, it has been necessary, in my judgement, based on actual experience, that it was necessary for my actual physical safety to threaten to hurt someone who very definitely was letting me know that he was more than willing to cause me serious harm. My preference is that no means no and that no one has the right to tell another person that they had better be nice to them OR ELSE. And yet, that low level threat is something that girls and women and I strongly suspect but do not know as an absolute fact since I am a straight, cis white woman that gender-non-confirming individuals or those who are or are suspected of being gay or bi or non-binary or trans or whatever, must deal with every single day. As do non-white people or others who are or are perceived to be members of any minority group.

I’d much rather never go on the offensive but there are situations where past traumas have made me believe that going on a verbal offensive was more likely to shut down the threat.

I’m glad if you’ve never been in such a situation but many people have been and are right now and will be in the future.

I realize that my boss would not have backed me up, which is why I did what I did. I had already nearly been fired for making a mild joke at an overly ‘’friendly’ customer’s expense—again to shut down some unwelcome comments from a man nearly my father’s age. His friends, btw, laughed, which was the real problem. He had been shut down, very politely, by wait staff who really wanted to just move past awkward and unwelcome comments. And I’d been told —by management—wear shorter skirts and made to listen to my boss’s complaints about his sex life and to navigate working with a boss who had asked me out. I very much knew the score.

Would I have continued to beat the shit out of the guy who refused to take no if I had not been very drunk? Probably not but the better question is whether or not I would have needed to resort to beating the shit out of the guy if I had not been drunk because the likelihood he would have attacked me if I was sober approach nil.

Because I’ve been in situations I would have much preferred never to have been, I can understand and empathize with someone feeling threatened by a situation that reminded them of a past trauma.

And the record, I very much support individuals being able to choose which gender persons they want conducting physical exams or offering therapy. A skilled therapist’s gender ide Tory should not and likely would not affect their ability to provide effective therapy. But it could very much affect the patient’s ability to accept the needed therapy, at least initially.

Well, for what it's worth, I have sympathy for you, as both a soldier and as a human being.

It's absolutely awful being in the kind of situation where that kind of response is necessary.

There are a million thoughts that go through the mind so fast that they kind of burn in. You never really ever leave any of the moments when you meet yourself, and no such moment is ever "easy". A lot of people will have their fantasies about thinking it must be but it's not, or at least it isn't for anyone I could have respect for. It is something I never want to happen again.

Emily's posts on the subject are just so unbelievably fucking ignorant it hurts.

I have no way to express to you how much I value your support, Toni. It's a lot, if that wasn't clear.

 

[Bomb#20]

... When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?
...
Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

There are many different types of trauma and many different…levels of trauma.
<experiences and analysis of them snipped>
Because I’ve been in situations I would have much preferred never to have been, I can understand and empathize with someone feeling threatened by a situation that reminded them of a past trauma. ...

As can I. As can Emily. Since you took the trouble to splice in an extended quote from Emily, I take it you think what you quoted is an example of what you accused her of so your post backs up your accusation. It doesn't. It backs up my observation that you misunderstood what she wrote. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The underlying problem appears to be that when Emily writes "I don't have sympathy with you for X.", you seem to imagine you've read "I disapprove of you doing X.". That is not at all what the words mean. But an awful lot of people equate those two different concepts; on its face it's because they themselves make their own approval/disapproval judgments by turning off reasoning and just always taking for granted that feelings of sympathy are the be-all and end-all of morality. That habit of thought cripples the moral sense, and the afflicted often project their own disability onto others. It may well be that you can't imagine a situation where you don't feel sympathy for someone without also disapproving of her, but Emily doesn't think like you. Address what she writes, not the motivations you would need to feel in order for you to have written what she writes. She isn't you.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Bomb#20

You are clearly ignoring where she said to the effect of "trauma doesn't come from X it comes from Y", and then accused me of LIKING violence.

Quit playing dumb for rhetoric sake.

 

[Bomb#20]

@Bomb#20

You are clearly ignoring where she said to the effect of "trauma doesn't come from X it comes from Y", and then accused me of LIKING violence.

Quit playing dumb for rhetoric sake.

I take it that's a reference to this exchange...

And I am saying, in no uncertain terms to read that little bit behind the cut and maybe try to figure out why someone might have incredibly deep trauma from a moment they offered violence.

You don't get to decide what does and doesn't traumatize people.
...

I'm just going to go ahead and say this one more time, then I'm going to let it go. For all intents, what your words mean is:

I like to threaten other people with physical violence more than I like being harrassed by other people.

And maybe that says something pretty damning about you, because you can't seem to understand that you are exactly wrong about your interpretation: I don't like either of these things.

She made a statement about their relative levels, not their absolute levels. She said you said P > Q, and you're denying it on the grounds that P < 0 and you never said P > 0. And that's true, you didn't; but P > Q does not imply P > 0. If, say, P = -1 and Q = -2, then all the asserted inequalities are satisfied.

I didn't like either situation. I liked both situations 0 much. I hated one situation more than the other. These are not ends of the same scale, they are ends of different scales.

That is a philosophical opinion that Emily appears to disagree with you about. You apparently regard hating a situation with 1 unit of hate as being a different thing from liking the situation with -1 unit of like; she apparently regards those as two names for the same thing. And that's a metaphysical disagreement you two have with each other that I doubt anyone can ever settle objectively. Fortunately, we don't need to settle who's right on that point. All that matters for present purposes is that:

I like to threaten other people with physical violence more than I like being harrassed by other people.​

does not imply

I like to threaten other people with physical violence.​

In order to derive your conclusion that she accused you "of LIKING violence", you had to rely not only on her words but also on your own premise that the degree of liking anything must always be greater or equal to zero and hating being harassed is a different phenomenon from liking it a negative amount. An inference of the form:

You say X.
I believe Y.
(X and Y) implies Z.
---------------------
Therefore, you say Z.​

is a fallacy. So no, Emily did not accuse you of liking violence.

 

[Bomb#20]

Everyone on the planet will feel worse about someone harassing them than they feel about threatening someone else. This is neither new nor interesting nor insightful. Everyone dislikes being yelled at by someone else more than they dislike punching someone else - in the first case, they personally feel the negative emotions of it, in the second they don't feel the negativity of it themselves - it's directed at someone else.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

Gail Russell: Quirt, please stay away from Laredo Stevens.
John Wayne: He owes me money. And don't worry - I might come out on top.
Gail Russell: That'd be even worse.
John Wayne: Worse! Then it'd be worse if he goes down than if I go down?
Gail Russell: Of course, don't you see that...
John Wayne: Oh, I know, I'd be a guy with a marked soul.​

(Of course, there's a reason it was called Angel and the Badman. You're probably right about the 99% of us who aren't angels...)

 

[Jarhyn]

She made a statement about their relative levels, not their absolute levels

No, she made a statement that was ignorant of math.

You can't compare complex numbers, you can't really even compare the values of coordinates in that way.

This is a complex number: how much you LIKE, how much you HATE are simply not comparable on the same dimebsionany more than your P. T. maleness is the difference of your P. T. femaleness. These are different dimensions, for all they seem similar to the naive observer.

You can both like something AND hate it. Much like P. T. maleness and P. T. femaleness these tend towards an inverse correlation, but this is no more required than anything else.

You can compare the components, and make some assumptions given the common fact that Y ≈ -X, but Y ≠ -X.

For me, the only reason why the "hate" component for one is higher is because of the consequences.

I am traumatized by the one event more specifically because I had to call the police and interact with cops for the event in which a woman directed significant risks of being involved in physical violence at me via social violence, and people I would see again were told lies about me which could later spawn more physical and social violence.

This is significantly more stressful than a situation where the risk of being involved in violence is very short and doesn't spawn the need for a police report.

Both events bore the majority of their stress NOT in the form of physical violence but in social violence as the major consequence: any physical altercation of any kind with someone who would be considered "mannish" who carries a very large, heavy stick would generally see the removal of that large, heavy stick.

This stick is my favorite thing in the fucking world. I know as a probably-neurotypical person, you probably don't understand this kind of attachment. If someone tried to take that stick from me, steal it from me, the trauma of that would probably result in them being beat halfway to death by the bag of rocks I carry with me.

Fuck the fragile glass jars inside keeping my tiny precious things together neatly, fuck the bag, fuck my pen and tools and passport which will be ruined by an exploding fountain pen and jars of spare ink, fuck them, fuck me, I'm taking my stick back, assuming I didn't attack anyone with the stick. As per the "Big Mouth" episode where the autistic kid flips out: "like, don't touch his bag; that's his ONE rule." For me, it's my stick.

This is why I VERY much do not want to be involved in ANY violence EVER, especially when I have my stick with me. This is why the "like" component of the complex like/hate vector is 0, for ANY situation involving violence where that stick is in my hands.

And most of all, perhaps also relating to autism, or maybe neurosis, or just having some fucking principles, part of what makes my stick so significant to me is that if I were to use it to actually bring harm to someone I would break it myself. In fact, what it is to me, my relationship with it, would already be broken, and the visible breaking of the stick itself would just be a formality.

Maybe I could rebuild it from the pieces after that, as much as I would have to rebuild myself?

Trauma, actual real trauma, is incredibly complicated. Perhaps it is specifically the emotional complication of such situations that makes them traumatic in the first place? I'm not really sure.

All can say is that I wasn't traumatized in the least by any of the physical altercations I had with my awful ex (which was, in hindsight, cathartic rather than traumatizing), vs how I was heavily traumatized by both being the victim of social violence directed by a psychotic woman who did her best to get others to attack me vs the other time that you still do not understand the details of them because there are things I don't believe in talking about publicly.

Hell, I feel a little ashamed that I told Toni, or anyone beyond my husband; there are 3-5 other people who know what happened because I had to tell my boss at the time why I was over an hour late getting to work that day, and why I was going to take the rest of the day off. I would have liked to never had anyone "reframe it for me", letting my feelings on the situation stand alone instead and be mine and be private, but the damage is done, and I tried to make a point about where trauma comes from and about the reality of the traumatizing effects of social violence above and beyond bodily violence, but here we are.

So you can either shut up trying to goad me on the matter or start getting reported, because I refuse to be constantly traumatized by your inability to understand that trauma or why it's so unbelievably offensive for you to interject your ignorance on the matter of how or why trauma in general happens. Please just accept that it is not your place to wonder why or quibble over whether others experienced trauma.

As it is, look at how damaging it is to the emphatic request "Listen to people" when they make some claim, only to turn around and de-legitimize claims when others make them.

I will still "listen to women", but I will NOT listen to people who refuse to listen to others.

 

[Toni]

... When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?
...
Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

There are many different types of trauma and many different…levels of trauma.
<experiences and analysis of them snipped>
Because I’ve been in situations I would have much preferred never to have been, I can understand and empathize with someone feeling threatened by a situation that reminded them of a past trauma. ...

As can I. As can Emily. Since you took the trouble to splice in an extended quote from Emily, I take it you think what you quoted is an example of what you accused her of so your post backs up your accusation. It doesn't. It backs up my observation that you misunderstood what she wrote. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The underlying problem appears to be that when Emily writes "I don't have sympathy with you for X.", you seem to imagine you've read "I disapprove of you doing X.". That is not at all what the words mean. But an awful lot of people equate those two different concepts; on its face it's because they themselves make their own approval/disapproval judgments by turning off reasoning and just always taking for granted that feelings of sympathy are the be-all and end-all of morality. That habit of thought cripples the moral sense, and the afflicted often project their own disability onto others. It may well be that you can't imagine a situation where you don't feel sympathy for someone without also disapproving of her, but Emily doesn't think like you. Address what she writes, not the motivations you would need to feel in order for you to have written what she writes. She isn't you.

I more readily understand and .....sympathize with: I don't approve of what you did but I sympathize with why you did it. The reverse of what you wrote.

Totally unrelated made up situation:

I don't approve of the fact that you cut your husband's shirts up into 1 inch squares because you found out he made a pass at your friend at a party but I totally sympathize with you having done that especially since I know (and you may not) that is not the first or only time he's done that.

In other words: I don't approve of destroying someone else's property because you are pissed off, however justifiably. But I sure do sympathize with WHY you did it and your anger and fury at his actions.

Do you see the difference here? I can absolutely disapprove of someone doing something (bad): cheating on a test, cheating on a spouse, keeping that $50 you saw fall out of that rich old guy's pocket---while 100% sympathizing with WHY you did what you did: You were unprepared and under tremendous pressure to pass this course and your grandmother just died; Your spouse is never around for you/is an Alzheimer's patient; You don't have enough cash to buy food to feed yourself/your kid/your dog. Those are all sympathetic reasons to do something bad but do not justify the bad thing. The reasons explain the behavior and evoke sympathy but that does not make those actions not bad.

 

[Jarhyn]

... When Toni wrote "But that's on you and does not give you the right to attack someone else for doing something you, from your safe distance, deem unnecessary or too violent.", she was clearly misunderstanding what Emily had written.

I have sympathy for you with regards to you feeling threatened by physical harm. I don't have sympathy with you for you threatening violence against someone else.

Do you feel that you were traumatized by threatening physical violence against someone?
Or do you feel that you were traumatized by the threat of harm from the other person?
What is the source of the trauma that you feel?
...
Oh for the love of sanity, I don't disbelieve Jarhyn.

But I also don't feel any sympathy for him threatening someone else. I might feel sympathy for him feeling that he was at risk, but I feel none at all for him threatening someone.

There are many different types of trauma and many different…levels of trauma.
<experiences and analysis of them snipped>
Because I’ve been in situations I would have much preferred never to have been, I can understand and empathize with someone feeling threatened by a situation that reminded them of a past trauma. ...

As can I. As can Emily. Since you took the trouble to splice in an extended quote from Emily, I take it you think what you quoted is an example of what you accused her of so your post backs up your accusation. It doesn't. It backs up my observation that you misunderstood what she wrote. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The underlying problem appears to be that when Emily writes "I don't have sympathy with you for X.", you seem to imagine you've read "I disapprove of you doing X.". That is not at all what the words mean. But an awful lot of people equate those two different concepts; on its face it's because they themselves make their own approval/disapproval judgments by turning off reasoning and just always taking for granted that feelings of sympathy are the be-all and end-all of morality. That habit of thought cripples the moral sense, and the afflicted often project their own disability onto others. It may well be that you can't imagine a situation where you don't feel sympathy for someone without also disapproving of her, but Emily doesn't think like you. Address what she writes, not the motivations you would need to feel in order for you to have written what she writes. She isn't you.

I more readily understand and .....sympathize with: I don't approve of what you did but I sympathize with why you did it. The reverse of what you wrote.

Totally unrelated made up situation:

I don't approve of the fact that you cut your husband's shirts up into 1 inch squares because you found out he made a pass at your friend at a party but I totally sympathize with you having done that especially since I know (and you may not) that is not the first or only time he's done that.

In other words: I don't approve of destroying someone else's property because you are pissed off, however justifiably. But I sure do sympathize with WHY you did it and your anger and fury at his actions.

Do you see the difference here? I can absolutely disapprove of someone doing something (bad): cheating on a test, cheating on a spouse, keeping that $50 you saw fall out of that rich old guy's pocket---while 100% sympathizing with WHY you did what you did: You were unprepared and under tremendous pressure to pass this course and your grandmother just died; Your spouse is never around for you/is an Alzheimer's patient; You don't have enough cash to buy food to feed yourself/your kid/your dog. Those are all sympathetic reasons to do something bad but do not justify the bad thing. The reasons explain the behavior and evoke sympathy but that does not make those actions not bad.

Not to mention that without details, without context, any approval or disapproval of an action so general and abstract is premature. Judgement is not warranted either way in such a vacuum, and the people who would judge in an informational vacuum, these are not worth anyone's time.

 

[Bomb#20]

I more readily understand and .....sympathize with: I don't approve of what you did but I sympathize with why you did it. The reverse of what you wrote.

Totally unrelated made up situation:

I don't approve of the fact that you cut your husband's shirts up into 1 inch squares because you found out he made a pass at your friend at a party but I totally sympathize with you having done that especially since I know (and you may not) that is not the first or only time he's done that.

In other words: I don't approve of destroying someone else's property because you are pissed off, however justifiably. But I sure do sympathize with WHY you did it and your anger and fury at his actions.

Do you see the difference here? I can absolutely disapprove of someone doing something (bad): cheating on a test, cheating on a spouse, keeping that $50 you saw fall out of that rich old guy's pocket---while 100% sympathizing with WHY you did what you did: You were unprepared and under tremendous pressure to pass this course and your grandmother just died; Your spouse is never around for you/is an Alzheimer's patient; You don't have enough cash to buy food to feed yourself/your kid/your dog. Those are all sympathetic reasons to do something bad but do not justify the bad thing. The reasons explain the behavior and evoke sympathy but that does not make those actions not bad.

Yes, good examples. But it works the other way too. Trivial example: I don't disapprove of anyone who's in the mood for it turning on some jazz, to each his own; but I'm utterly unable to sympathize with how anyone could perceive that as music. More seriously, an awful lot of fools apparently get a rush from playing high-stakes poker against Elon Musk. I don't sympathize with how bad they must have felt when they collectively lost five billion dollars in four days shorting Tesla stock -- what did they think was going to happen? If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. But short-selling serves a useful function in making markets more liquid; it was their money; they had every right to gamble it as they saw fit; so what's to disapprove? Or, more on-topic for a gender roles thread, I don't disapprove of Bobby Riggs challenging Billie Jean King to a tennis match, but I have zero sympathy for his hurt feelings when she took him out in straight sets.

 

[Bomb#20]

She made a statement about their relative levels, not their absolute levels

No, she made a statement that was ignorant of math.

No, she made a statement that may perhaps have been ignorant of the correct way to model a (pace Emily) physical phenomenon, but was in no way ignorant of math. Emily is a mathematician.

You can't compare complex numbers, you can't really even compare the values of coordinates in that way.

This is a complex number: how much you LIKE, how much you HATE are simply not comparable on the same dimebsionany more than your P. T. maleness is the difference of your P. T. femaleness. These are different dimensions, for all they seem similar to the naive observer.

You can both like something AND hate it. Much like P. T. maleness and P. T. femaleness these tend towards an inverse correlation, but this is no more required than anything else.

You can compare the components, and make some assumptions given the common fact that Y ≈ -X, but Y ≠ -X.

Well, in the first place, the real and imaginary components of complex numbers go negative too, and it's perfectly legit to compare re(X) with re(Y) the same way Emily compared negative liking levels. And in the second place, the theory that liking and hating work like complex numbers is what you think, not what she thinks. So assuming your analysis is correct, and I'm not claiming it isn't, that justifies saying Emily was wrong. It doesn't justify saying she was accusing you of liking violence.

For me, the only reason why the "hate" component for one is higher is because of the consequences. ...
... the damage is done, and I tried to make a point about where trauma comes from and about the reality of the traumatizing effects of social violence above and beyond bodily violence, but here we are.

Thank you for opening up and helping us all get a (limited) picture of what it's like navigating the world while carrying the burdens you're stuck with. You have my deepest sympathies for all of that.

So you can either shut up trying to goad me on the matter or start getting reported, because I refuse to be constantly traumatized by your inability to understand that trauma or why it's so unbelievably offensive for you to interject your ignorance on the matter of how or why trauma in general happens. Please just accept that it is not your place to wonder why or quibble over whether others experienced trauma.

And you were doing so well up to that point. You are very bad at modeling other people's minds; you know this about yourself so you ought to take it into account when you feel the urge to make accusations. I haven't tried to goad you; you report others' posts for insufficient reason; since I don't understand your trauma I haven't commented on it; "for you to interject your ignorance on the matter of how or why trauma in general happens" is make-believe. It never happened. You are either mixing me up with someone else or failing badly at reading comprehension. I did not "wonder why or quibble over whether others experienced trauma". If you disagree, quote me.

As it is, look at how damaging it is to the emphatic request "Listen to people" when they make some claim, only to turn around and de-legitimize claims when others make them.

The claims you've made that I turned around and delegitimized were claims you made about other people. I haven't said a bloody word about whether you were traumatized.

I will still "listen to women", but I will NOT listen to people who refuse to listen to others.

But you regularly refuse to listen to people who listen to you. If you listened to me you would not keep making false accusations against me. Practice what you preach.

 

[Bomb#20]

I said pretty explicitly I'm only speaking for myself. But so are you. I have no idea whether there's a cultural difference between Austria and Yankistan in 2024 in terms of what does or doesn't constitute a definite turn-off for a typical heterosexual male, I've no idea how typical my reaction is for Austria, and I don't think you have good grounds to claim to know how typical your reaction is for America.

Fair enough.

What I do know is this: the reactions, whether in Austria or in the US, are strongly modulated by culture. "Heterosexuality" in an invention of the late 19th century, and was invented after "homosexuality". That's trivially true when talking lexicology, but I believe it may well be true in a deeper sense. Throughout much of Western history, sex with women vs sex with men was a bit like whiskey and gin to us. Some people like one more, some people the other. Men tend to like whiskey more, but when they feel they really need a shot and there's no whiskey in the house, many (most?) will take gin. Sure, some will go without their goodnight shot if there's only gin, but even those you won't hear saying "I can't, I'm not one of those pervy gin-drinkers."

You say that like Western culture was tolerant until homosexuality was "invented". I can't speak for Austria, but it was very much the other way around in the English-speaking world. The "invention" of homosexuality was part and parcel with the entire culture-wide change of thinking we call the Enlightenment. Prior to that, gay sex was defined as a sin against God and a crime against the State. People were assumed to do it because they'd chosen to be wicked. The American colonies inherited laws against "sodomy" from Britain, and people were executed for it; during the American Revolution Thomas Jefferson tried to get the penalty reduced in Virginia but failed to convince the legislature; states didn't start repealing the death penalty until several years after independence. Back in Britain people still got hanged for it into the 1830s. "Inventing" homosexuality amounted to belatedly recognizing that same-sex attraction isn't a choice. Medicalizing it was progress.

This is presumably the same nonmagical mechanism that would make the person not going to be your first choice for a long term relationship. If it doesn't equally scrub your interest in a one-night-stand, that would appear to be because you're a swinger, not because you're het.

i have no idea what gave you the impression I'm a swinger.

Sorry, no offense intended; maybe I perceive the category too broadly due to being a square; but I got that impression from the implication that you'd have sex with someone you didn't want a long-term relationship with.

Most het males are not into ass stuff and doing strap-on stuff and liking it.

I'll give you strap-on stuff, maybe, but I'd be very surprised indeed to learn that it's true in any interesting sense for ass stuff. This is an area where anything relying on self- reporting needs to be taken with a huge gain of salt. When asked about what arouses them, people will invariably report a mix of what actually arouses them and what they feel they should be aroused by, given that they're het and all. That includes conversations with close friends. Heck, it even includes what people about to themselves!

Fair point.

The most valid kind of data would be measurements of physiological correlates under conditions of various stimuli types, but there's still the question of interpretation: if a heterosexual male is aroused by depictions if anal sex, how do we know whether he's aroused by the penis-in-anus, or by the hot ass itself? There is, however, an experiment you can do at home: open any mainstream porn site in a private tab. I bet you a crate of beers, or whatever it is they use in informal bets in post-prohibitionist Yankistan (it's def a crate of beers in Austria, 20×0.5l in refundable glass bottles to be precise), that among the first 20 suggestions on the landing page, 5 or more videos will include anal sex.

This doesn't show most heterosexual men are into ass stuff. It does however show tat among those that aren't, few are turned off by it, or else those sites would be chasing away much of their most numerous consumer demographic.

Hmm. Do those sites indicate that they're ass videos before the client watches them? If a site doesn't make a customer actually watch the ass stuff in the process of searching for whatever stuff excites him I'd be surprised if its mere appearance in a list of options would turn off the customer enough to make him lose interest in whatever he came looking for.

 

[Jarhyn]

the theory that liking and hating work like complex numbers is what you think, not what she thinks.

And my point is that she is WRONG on that front, full stop.

Someone can hate AND like something. Someone can hate AND NOT like something. Someone can like something without hating it.

Because her model is wrong, her statement (specifically that this equated to me liking offering violence through some oblique fuckery) is wrong.

You don't get to say something wrong with a wrong model and then claim you didn't say what you said simply because your model is wrong. It doesn't work that way.

The model being bad means the math is bad. That's the point here.

I haven't tried to goad you

Well, you were working with Emily on the matter, and maybe you didn't realize what she was trying to do, but I look not at what you were trying to do but what you did by picking up the intent, derived not merely from an assumption but by a clear pattern of behavior.

You are here quibbling over trying to defend Emily's rank fucking ignorance on the subject.

How hard is it to just say "Emily, you're wrong and by pushing on this wrongness you are being very unkind; reality is more complex than that"?

And don't fucking pretend that you didn't make a post attempting to goad me on gender and pronouns with fuck-fuck games pulling in some other language just to not use plain and common English, or any of the other goads you have attempted to pull.

Threatening someone with physical violence isn't traumatizing to you, it's traumatizing to them

This is the specific statement that emilyade that is so dripping with ignorance it is scarce to be believed, linked back to a history of goads wherein she clearly disregards in entirety the trauma of certain situations.

Instead of saying "I acknowledge that you experienced trauma but I don't understand how that would be traumatic" despite the fact that I described why it was traumatic many posts before that; this post of hers came AFTER the first time in which I attempted to explain why it was traumatic!

I shouldn't have to explain myself three goddamn times that just thinking about that moment makes me unsettled by the constant stream of complicated emotions pouring off my connection to the memory as I can't help but access it, combined with incredulity as to why it would be traumatizing at all.

Even before today, on several occasions, I have taken the time to explain this: that my stick is not for violence, is my favorite thing, and that I am paranoid of losing it and being told I may not have another on account of involvement in violence with it. Generally, this comes up on threads on gun control, and in the previous instance was a discussion I had with ZiprHead. I'm not sure you would have read it, to be fair, other than the second time that happened before the third time, the second time happening in a post prior to your acknowledgement.

Still, I shouldn't have to debate my trauma, and the very act of having to do that is itself re-traumatizing.

Anyway, I realize I am pretty animated about the above. I'm not angry at you, Not really, even if some my anger "splashes". Really, I'm angry at the reason for the whole situation in the first place, at the fact of "the events of the train platform". If I could scold anyone to my satisfaction it wouldn't be you, and that is and was and perhaps will continue to be unfair to you in that you didn't choose for those events to happen; you only chose to ignore someone "on your side" spouting some pretty ridiculous and ignorant shit and ignoring the details when I explained why trauma was involved.

You could have saved needing me to tell you the details by looking up "why do people experience PTSD for situations in which they killed/injured/attacked/threatened others", and not approached it from a hostile posture even if my posture was hostile. I will state plainly that my posture tends towards hostility on the subject because my posture on the subject is related to the posture I experienced during the related trauma: The very existence of that linked posture is in fact part of the trauma and what traumatized me.

I regret bringing it up at all in many ways. I was under the mistaken impression that the default reaction to being involved on any side of an altercation or anything like an altercation is trauma, and that this only varied by how much consequence someone antes to their participation irrespective of the directionality: "War is hell" and all that. People who get off on violence (social OR direct) are alien to me.

Also, I'm going to note that a lot of what I take issue with from Emily is subtextual, and I'm not fluent enough in translating subtext to explain how she is managing to say half the shit I respond to. Toni may be better at translating it out, but to be fair, people only very rarely directly address subtext-as-text and doing so is intended to be difficult because the whole point of subtext is often plausible deniability.