Reply to Is the line between "courtship" and harassment really that blurry?

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Reply to "Is the line between "courtship" and harassment really that blurry?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think if people are honest, they realize that the paradigm of "men must chase women" is most of the problem. This has been the rule for generations. Men were expected to chase and be persistent about it. Otherwise, they were regarded as  either wimps or gay. And that's not an exaggeration. Now it's suddenly changing to "men must chase women, but they must also follow increasingly stringent set of guidelines that can be altered at a whim." OK fine, don't pretend that things haven't changed. Things WERE different up until very recently. A lot of "bad" male behavior was socially expected up until very recently. Don't deny that the goal posts haven't been shifted.

The reality is that most men don't really even like having to "chase." They just do it because they have to. Some guys do like to chase. Those are probably the ones that are approaching you all the time. Trust me, 80% of men would prefer not to approach strange women or risk being viewed a creep. There just wasn't an alternative.

Maybe with the development of dating apps, men won't have to "chase" and then women won't have to deal with men approaching them all the time.[/quote]

I mentioned this several pages ago and got no responses, so I'm gonna say it again.

For most of history, women have been property. We were not allowed to say no to male advances or attention. There were no rules against sexual harassment in the workplace, in addition to the many other extremely misogynistic policies associated with paid outside-the-home work for women. "The rule" for generations was that men got to choose who they were interested in and pursue that woman. They had to ask her father's permission to do so in many if not most instances. Her interest in their attention was completely irrelevant. I am not unsympathetic to the damage that the patriarchy has done to men, and I think it's truly unfortunate that many of y'all have felt uncomfortable approaching women in any context. But don't sit here and pretend that any of this is the fault of women. We didn't make the rules, and insofar as we are "shifting the goalposts" it is in the direction of actually being able to control who we speak to and how we engage with the world.

And for the other PP, no one is saying that unwanted attention in a coffee shop is the same as rape. Literally no one is saying that. [/quote]

I didn't see blame in PPs post about the goal posts moving. Expectations are changing, and they're changing at varying rates. Some women view men as unmanly if they don't pursue. Some women still think playing hard-to-get is a good idea. Some men will lose respect in the eyes of other men if they aren't pursuing and being successful with women. Other groups have the more progressive view that men and women ought to be forthright about their interest or disinterest and that one's worth as a person ought not have anything to do with their interactions with the other sex.

It's not a surprise that people are going to get it wrong sometimes. And, just to complicate things, some men whose intentions are malicious are more than happy to use this ambiguity as a smoke screen to give them cover for predatory behavior. [/quote]

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