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PUAHate shooting incident

Started by Junkenstein, May 29, 2014, 11:33:38 AM

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P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 10:12:07 PM
Shit starts to look pretty bleak. But if half of the guys in helicopters go "What assholes! I'm going to tell them it's not OK to drop bombs on you, and if I see anyone who looks like they might be heading over to drop bombs I'll fly interference so they don't have an easy time doing it", the people on the ground might be a whole lot safer.

Some guys do, do that. Some of them are guy-guys who are respected by their peers. Some of them will rip the piss out of PUA/Mysogenistic assholes, others will step in with violence, where necessary, to stop some asshole hurting someone else (male or female) whether it's a beating or a raping or whatever and some guys cover all the other points in between. If I was an optimist, I'd say some of that attitude might rub off. That's all I got, I'm afraid. Fuck if I know how we make it half.

So yeah, what do you think I can do to help? For the record, looking at this shit doesn't make me uncomfortable. It makes me frustrated. And, often, it feels divisive, which frustrates me even more.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
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walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Faust

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 10:30:09 PM
Back to the shooter; that guy had all kinds of things going wrong with him, and there were probably a lot of stages where intervention could potentially have helped. He wasn't a monster, but he did something monstrous. His parents were trying to get help for him, and it didn't work. Was it rape culture that was a root cause? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not. I don't think it was the dehumanizing of women, per se, that led him to go on a shooting spree. I don't think, from what I've read, that he had a lot of empathy or ability to connect with any humans, male or female. I think that there was probably a neurobiological basis for his weirdness, and that the weirdness combined with inability to connect with or empathize with other people led to him being deprived of social validation. I think that based on what little I know that it's likely that a combination of loneliness and entitlement led to his rage and violence, and that he would have expressed that rage and violence even had the objects of his sexual desire had been hot, popular young blond men instead of hot, popular young blond women.

That's the impression I gathered as well from his videos, he utterly despised both the male and female gender roles of society, and comes across as both self hating with feelings of inadequacy and resentment of what he perceived of people having.

It's doubtful that that the sum total of why he went on the shooting spree and as you said I'd say given the opportunity he would have killed both the boy and girl in the couple he was watching.

In Ireland these feelings manifest as suicidal instead of explosive (were the highest suicide rate for men between 16 and 28 in the world as far as I know) but the feelings seem to stem from the same place and it seems to be resentment or hopelessness at the role that society has chosen for them.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

LMNO

And for the record, if you don't step up to a guy who's harassing a woman because you're afraid he might turn on you and punch you, then how do you think she's feeling?

Faust

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 10:36:53 PM
Quote from: Junkenstein on May 29, 2014, 10:22:50 PM
Quote from: Faust on May 29, 2014, 10:21:14 PM
What can I do to help?

That.

I think the most instrumental things you can do are to intervene when you see something that makes you wonder if everything's OK. Not aggressively; you can swoop in and say to the girl "hey I wanted to talk to you about something", or be the guy who interrupts when you see a guy has a drunk girl cornered in the kitchen, or be the guy who says "Hey dude, leave her alone, that's not OK" when you see the all-too-common scenario where a woman repeatedly tells a guy to stop touching her/pushes his hand away. You can be the guy who intervenes when a guy she just met offers your drunk friend a ride home, or when you see a guy follow a girl out of the bar. I think we're all afraid of looking like an asshole or interrupting where we're not wanted, but so much of the time, that's all it takes to prevent an assault. And the real magic is, if you do it, other guys will feel like it's OK for them to do it too.

One or two of those I've had to do when I was in college, especially in a couple of house parties. As I get older I'm not in the social situations where that occurs as much.

To be honest the majority of what I can do is probably just support my fiancée when she encounters situations where she is treated differently for being a woman, and she is tougher than me so she's pretty good at taking care of herself.

Professionally I always make sure to speak up for women at work when the common perception in engineering is they are hard to work with or not as good.

I suppose I could make more a difference if I was involved more in the community, but girls being harassed is something I can watch out for in public at least.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Faust

"What can I do to help?" is a strong message. It's one men can embrace without, it appeals to self worth as opposed to triggering a defensive mechanism.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

One thing people get weirdly hung up on with a lot of these misogynistic PUA people is the idea that being fat or ugly or skinny or having bad skin or being nerdy are somehow this big obstacle to love, sex, and companionship. They're not. They may be obstacles to hooking up with someone who is much more attractive or athletic or in a very different social circle, but even that isn't always true. The main obstacle to sex, love, and companionship is almost invariably poor social skills and low empathy. The inability to really connect with other people or to view others as multidimensional entities with complex emotional landscapes is even more of a dealbreaker than garden-variety shyness, which can also be an obstacle (and is often on a spectrum that shares space with lack of empathy).

I'm going to say something that could easily be taken the wrong way. I want to clarify in advance that I am not justifying bullying. However, sometimes I think that some behaviors that get labeled as bullying occur as a response to something being amiss with the victim; he may be ostracized because he's unable to connect with people normally, for example, or girls may reject him because he approaches them in ways that can reasonably be interpreted as creepy. A stunningly high proportion of psychopaths were bullied in school, after their conduct disordered tendencies were already well-established. We tend to view bullying as a cause of antisocial behavior, but I suspect that in many cases it's actually a co-product, and one that exacerbates the underlying cause.

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Sita

Sorry but I really have no perspective to offer on this. Aside from an incident or two in high school I've not run into anything like what Nigel or QG have talked about.
This is probably in most part because I do not go out and socialize. And any time that I am out I'm usually with my husband.
If anyone does notice me in such a way it's never been brought to my attention.
:ninja:
Laugh, even if you are screaming inside. Smile, because the world doesn't care if you feel like crying.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Faust on May 29, 2014, 10:44:16 PM
Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 10:30:09 PM
Back to the shooter; that guy had all kinds of things going wrong with him, and there were probably a lot of stages where intervention could potentially have helped. He wasn't a monster, but he did something monstrous. His parents were trying to get help for him, and it didn't work. Was it rape culture that was a root cause? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not. I don't think it was the dehumanizing of women, per se, that led him to go on a shooting spree. I don't think, from what I've read, that he had a lot of empathy or ability to connect with any humans, male or female. I think that there was probably a neurobiological basis for his weirdness, and that the weirdness combined with inability to connect with or empathize with other people led to him being deprived of social validation. I think that based on what little I know that it's likely that a combination of loneliness and entitlement led to his rage and violence, and that he would have expressed that rage and violence even had the objects of his sexual desire had been hot, popular young blond men instead of hot, popular young blond women.

That's the impression I gathered as well from his videos, he utterly despised both the male and female gender roles of society, and comes across as both self hating with feelings of inadequacy and resentment of what he perceived of people having.

It's doubtful that that the sum total of why he went on the shooting spree and as you said I'd say given the opportunity he would have killed both the boy and girl in the couple he was watching.

In Ireland these feelings manifest as suicidal instead of explosive (were the highest suicide rate for men between 16 and 28 in the world as far as I know) but the feelings seem to stem from the same place and it seems to be resentment or hopelessness at the role that society has chosen for them.

I would hazard a guess that the reason that hopelessness and resentment is more likely to turn inward there is that Ireland is not exactly a place that is flush with entitlement.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Faust

That wouldn't surprise me, children especially follow the tribal social structure and anything weird or out of place is deemed an acceptable target, not exclusively out of a place of cruelty but because confrontation with someone who cannot create that social overlap or follow social dynamics makes them uncomfortable and insecure.

Then you get the really horrible part, the banding together of the vaguely socially awkward, who form their own little hierarchy of geeks, after them all that remains if you are really unable to connect is isolation, while they might not be bullied MORE than the geeks, for the isolated I would imagine its a far harder burden to cope with.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on May 29, 2014, 10:52:19 PM
And for the record, if you don't step up to a guy who's harassing a woman because you're afraid he might turn on you and punch you, then how do you think she's feeling?

This is a very good point, and is, along with fear of breaking the social code, one of the reasons women will often be FAR more polite than the situation warrants when cornered by a guy. One friend of mine described being raped by saying "It was less risky to just let him do it; I was afraid that if I kept saying no, he'd have a tantrum".

This is a totally viable strategy. The risk of getting a disease is there, yes, but between rape and recovering from a broken jaw, a lot of women will choose the rape, especially if they have a family to take care of. I certainly would.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 11:01:46 PM
One thing people get weirdly hung up on with a lot of these misogynistic PUA people is the idea that being fat or ugly or skinny or having bad skin or being nerdy are somehow this big obstacle to love, sex, and companionship. They're not. They may be obstacles to hooking up with someone who is much more attractive or athletic or in a very different social circle, but even that isn't always true. The main obstacle to sex, love, and companionship is almost invariably poor social skills and low empathy. The inability to really connect with other people or to view others as multidimensional entities with complex emotional landscapes is even more of a dealbreaker than garden-variety shyness, which can also be an obstacle (and is often on a spectrum that shares space with lack of empathy).

Speaking as someone who used to be a neurotic little fuck with the self esteem of a mollusc, I'd say you were bang on the money. I'm thinking we need a "PUA" alternative. Maybe the "score with chicks" thing is a hook, maybe not but the course is building healthy self esteem and diffusing some of those potential powderkeg emotional/psychological quagmires? Once again we come back to education.

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 11:01:46 PM
I'm going to say something that could easily be taken the wrong way. I want to clarify in advance that I am not justifying bullying. However, sometimes I think that some behaviors that get labeled as bullying occur as a response to something being amiss with the victim; he may be ostracized because he's unable to connect with people normally, for example, or girls may reject him because he approaches them in ways that can reasonably be interpreted as creepy. A stunningly high proportion of psychopaths were bullied in school, after their conduct disordered tendencies were already well-established. We tend to view bullying as a cause of antisocial behavior, but I suspect that in many cases it's actually a co-product, and one that exacerbates the underlying cause.

Kids can be cruel. Half formed personalities, sometimes working like pack animals, attacking the perceived weak links. Maybe this kind of bullying is a trigger or at least a contributing factor for psychopathology? A push over the edge kind of thing. It's not an area I know much about, to be honest, so maybe I'm way off base.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Faust

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 11:07:17 PM
Quote from: Faust on May 29, 2014, 10:44:16 PM
Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 10:30:09 PM
Back to the shooter; that guy had all kinds of things going wrong with him, and there were probably a lot of stages where intervention could potentially have helped. He wasn't a monster, but he did something monstrous. His parents were trying to get help for him, and it didn't work. Was it rape culture that was a root cause? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not. I don't think it was the dehumanizing of women, per se, that led him to go on a shooting spree. I don't think, from what I've read, that he had a lot of empathy or ability to connect with any humans, male or female. I think that there was probably a neurobiological basis for his weirdness, and that the weirdness combined with inability to connect with or empathize with other people led to him being deprived of social validation. I think that based on what little I know that it's likely that a combination of loneliness and entitlement led to his rage and violence, and that he would have expressed that rage and violence even had the objects of his sexual desire had been hot, popular young blond men instead of hot, popular young blond women.

That's the impression I gathered as well from his videos, he utterly despised both the male and female gender roles of society, and comes across as both self hating with feelings of inadequacy and resentment of what he perceived of people having.

It's doubtful that that the sum total of why he went on the shooting spree and as you said I'd say given the opportunity he would have killed both the boy and girl in the couple he was watching.

In Ireland these feelings manifest as suicidal instead of explosive (were the highest suicide rate for men between 16 and 28 in the world as far as I know) but the feelings seem to stem from the same place and it seems to be resentment or hopelessness at the role that society has chosen for them.

I would hazard a guess that the reason that hopelessness and resentment is more likely to turn inward there is that Ireland is not exactly a place that is flush with entitlement.

Not flush with entitlement but not as bad as other countries certainly, a history of staunch catholic self loathing and begrudgery are a huge part of Irish culture so people don't FEEL entitled, people can be successful but they are not respected for it and it isn't celebrated.

It's probably why so many celebrities have holiday homes here, people make a point of not looking at them in public or otherwise treating them as if they were different. It's a not a positive thing, unless you are a celebrity I guess.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Pergamos

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on May 29, 2014, 08:51:00 PM
Quote from: Junkenstein on May 29, 2014, 05:56:38 PM
QuoteThe solution is nothing to do with striving to be stronger and to overcome, right? It's something about the whole rest of the world changing or something?

Why not both? Surely one helps the other, pretty exponentially. I guess it's the think local - change global mindset but I see no need for an either/or here.

Defo! Thing that strikes me is this thread is about "PUAHate shooting incident" and I'm picturing this poor kid who aint a woman. So by definition he, what? Can't understand what it's like to be her, right? And he's ugly and fat and stupid and awkward, or he certainly feels that way. He's left out of the shit that normal people take for granted. I can see how this messes up his head. He feels marginalised. He's a young man. That feeling is just as likely to channel in the direction of anger. Of rage. Normal people do not do what this kid done. Takes a broken mind to do it. But it all started with a victim mentality. Stuck on the sidelines. Nobody knows what it's like to be poor little him.

Anyone who tries to help this kid, at the start, they could be saving two lives really, if you look at it that way, but he's a monster. He's a PUA scumbag. Doesn't deserve saved, does he? Deserves to be called "creepy rape guy" for his misguided, botched attempts to get his fair share of playtime  in the mating game that most "normal" people take for granted but his pain is nothing. It's invalid because nothing matches the level of suffering that group-b goes through. He needs to be shouted at and vilified and marginalised more, cos that's the solution, right? That totally helps the fuck out of everything?

He wasn't ugly or fat, you look at the pictures of him and he was quite an attractive young man.  Awkward he my have been but I pretty strongly suspect the reason no women wanted to sleep with him was because his hatred of women was clear enough to drive any and all away.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Faust on May 29, 2014, 11:10:25 PM
That wouldn't surprise me, children especially follow the tribal social structure and anything weird or out of place is deemed an acceptable target, not exclusively out of a place of cruelty but because confrontation with someone who cannot create that social overlap or follow social dynamics makes them uncomfortable and insecure.

Then you get the really horrible part, the banding together of the vaguely socially awkward, who form their own little hierarchy of geeks, after them all that remains if you are really unable to connect is isolation, while they might not be bullied MORE than the geeks, for the isolated I would imagine its a far harder burden to cope with.

I dunno, I was a geek, and we banded together not because we were socially awkward leftovers, but because as few as there were of us, we were fluent in each other's social language. And there WAS a guy who wanted to belong because he thought we were a hodgepodge of outcasts, and his community of last resort... THAT guy was a scary, scary motherfucker. Goemagog. It still creeps me out to think of him.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: All-Father Nigel on May 29, 2014, 09:49:07 PM
Is that your reaction to the fact that things are bad? I'm confused by what you mean. KNOWING that things are bad, shining a light on it, is what encourages people to do things differently.

Naw.  That's my reaction to a combination of three things:

1.  "5 guys discussed it, and one was a dick about it." 
2.  "10% of guys are poisonous, so the rest must be held in the same regard."
3.  People getting their junk rustled by P3nt, when it is KNOWN that P3nt is out to rustle junk.

Quote
Seriously, if someone's reaction to a small minority of people being abrasive and alienating about a subject that brings so much anguish and suffering to so many people is "Well I WAS gonna be an ally, but that one person ruined it for me and now I don't feel like helping", they might consider re-examining their motives and attitudes. It's a little like refusing to take an anti-slavery stance because some slaves are really angry about it and that just seems hostile and rubs you the wrong way.

I'm not an ally because or in spite of your reaction or QG's reaction, because my allegiance isn't for sale.  I'm an ally because I have a daughter and a spouse and a mother.  And also because, you know, it's the right thing to do.  I am not going to STOP being an ally in this, because that would be immoral, and it's kind of fucked up to use that impossible scenario as a club to thump me with because I object to being told that I am potentially toxic because 10% of guys are (not sure where that number comes from) or because 20% of PDers in the thread put the troll face on when the subject came up.

My objection to people being abrasive and alienating is that it is not constructive, when it is aimed specifically at the people who are not - or are trying not to be - the problem, as it was in the original 10% piece.  It's tumblriffic indulgence that would make Garbo blush and maybe even stop slamming people with the cookie-seeker stamp for 10 or 15 seconds (perhaps I exaggerate).

I know what I am supposed to do about the societal problem being discussed, because I've thought about it and discussed it with my daughter to no end, and she's enough authority on the subject for me.  But if I didn't, I'd be a little confused right now.  5 guys aren't even supposed to talk about it.  I wasn't aware we needed a minyan.

So when I say it's hopeless, I mean it's hopeless to discuss it on PD, because nobody except maybe LMNO is actually out to communicate.  As far as the actual problem goes, I am not taking my cues from tumblr, facebook, twitter, or PD for that matter.  The uniform is plenty snappy, but it doesn't fit.
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