One quick bit of stupid to smack because I just saw it so it’s fresh in my mind – Dan Fincke has a (public) mini-essay on Facebook making the point that it’s not very humanist or reasonable or compassionate to respond to a woman who says she has PTSD from verbal abuse by assailing her with more verbal abuse. Predictably but annoyingly there’s a guy who keeps saying all she has to do is stay off social media, and problem solved.
It’s not victim blaming if there is a 100% effective way to avoid being a victim. Even doing nothing would prevent becoming a victim in this context. A victim in this instance would have to willfully participate in their victimhood.
Someone responded with “like going to parties or bars.”
No, like not reading what people are saying to you on social media.
Ok stop right there. 100% effective way to avoid being a victim? Just not reading what people are saying to you on social media?
You have got to be kidding.
It’s on social media. What does that mean? That it’s public. Other people can see it. What does that mean? It’s trashing your reputation. Can you 100% solve that problem by not reading it?
No.
Of course not.
Jeezis. How obvious does it have to be before people will see it?
That’s rhetorical, right?
Well, yes in the sense that I don’t expect anyone to know, but no in the sense that I really don’t know, myself.
His answer betrays his goal – to shut her up. All she has to do is stay off? Yeah, that’s easy, just shut up and nobody will bother you.
Translation: “Shut up and go away, bitch!”
See? Translating their obvious code phrases is easy!
Most of those people are also the people who do tell us that if we go to a con or a bar or drink or work outside the home or wear the wrong thing, that we should expect to be harassed / raped. I don’t think they’re missing the connection at all. I think they just want us to either shut up and take it or stay home. Preferably, both.
The message is, “That’s what you get for existing while female”. There is no concern for Melody’s actual safety or quality of life. If she doesn’t want to be punished she needs to stay out of sight and out of mind. Her visibility and her ability to influence the world around her is threatening to the culture that coddles these shitlords. So, they’re trying to shut her up and make her go away. Of course, these same people will then claim that Schrodinger’s rapist and the very idea of rape culture or patriarchy are the real sexism and that women don’t do public speaking because it’s “more of a guy thing”. What else are they going to say, the truth? That it is clear that misogyny is a real problem that harms actual people and that they actively participate in and encourage others to perpetrate that problem?
Nah.
They’ll keep denying and gaslighting as they continue the barrage of harassment and threats.
Melody can’t “stay off” social media because she’s works in public outreach. Everyone who tells Melody to stay off Twitter and other media are telling her to quit her job.
Better plan – STOP FUCKING HARASSING HER!
That guy is long-winded, isn’t he? Seems fitting for Fincke. But he’s also obtuse.
Really? You’re going to give racists a pass if they say they are merely ‘trolling’? It’s good to see Fincke smacking him down.
By the way, on Mr Halpin’s own timeline, he now says this:
I got bingo on my playing card for just that one paragraph. Impressive.
In other news, suicide is an effective way to prevent being victimized by homicide.
Not wanting to be threatened and harassed out of public or out of a job is “extreme feminism”?
I. don’t. even….
Let’s see what Michael Pearl has to say:
-from To Beat Up A Child
Huh. Some company they’re keeping.
“harassment can’t really hurt anyone”
“if you weren’t so sanctimonious I wouldn’t be sympathetic to the people who harass you”
“when people act so holier-then-thou they are provoking me to harass them”
“women shouldn’t dress so provocatively if they don’t want attention”
“rape threats online are just threats”
“why did she put herself in that situation with aggressive guys if she didn’t want sex?”
Did I miss any? Or are these not actually the same people?
If you are on the wrong end of an online storm, like the one directed at Melody at the moment ,your only way to avoid it is to be off the internet, away from the phone, possibly even not be at home. But unless all women pre-emptively never go on the internet, or interact with society at all, how are they not at risk from being exposed to it at any moment? I mean it’s not like the instant she, or anyone else targeted with harassment, popped onto the internet they were bombarded with hate. It was probably fun at first, still probably is most of the time, keeping in contact with IRL and online friends is fun. Then along comes a misogynistic dog pile, how is she or anyone else supposed to know they are required to immediately vacate their online life when this happens?
Not to mention what a tool it gives trolls, don’t like what someone has to say? You can easily harass them into silence. What they are actually trying to do, but this guy would make it even easier.
Dan’s post doesn’t appear to be there anymore. At least not for me.
Yes, he must have changed the status to not public.
There really isn’t that much space between “I hate you” and “I have zero concern for your well-being so I will pretend to hate you because it amuses me.”
” It is entirely possible for a person to call someone the n-word without being a racist,
because they know it will get the person they are trolling into a frenzy(understandably so).”
Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night explores the idea that one can pretend to be a racist without being one in order to produce a greater good. At least Vonnegut’s character was trying to do good. Trolls are not motivated by good. Vonnegut’s novel discredits the idea that evil can produce good; evil, in this case using racist invective for evil, can only be evil.
So no, you can’t pretend to be a racist and not be one, and the only person you’re fooling is yourself.
Or something like that .