[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o this whole skepchick elevator thing has been talked to death. Why? For a long while I didn’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I know the origins of the event. Hell, it would seem impossible for anyone even minutely involved in gender issues not to know about it. Even Richard Dawkins got in on it.
Richard. Fucking. Dawkins.
So what was it all about? Some woman from the atheist community made a video about an event she attended and decided to mention how she was propositioned by a man inside of an elevator. This apparently made her feel uncomfortable enough to mention it in a video on YouTube, where thousands of people would see it. What happened next, everyone knows. People from all groups of feminism and anti-feminism decided to weigh in on Rebecca Watson’s opinion of the events of that night.
Now, I’m not the sort of guy who cares enough about famous people, or people who think they are famous, to go on the attack or defense of their character based on a dumb statement they might make. No. It takes something like advocating that the burden of proof should be switched to the defendant in rape trials to get me calling out bullshit when I see it. At least in article form anyway. Comment sections are a different story.
Basically, I was thinking; what’s the big deal? Some girl made a statement about one of the ways she would prefer men not ask her out. So what? Women complain about men all the time just like men complain about women. Men complain about how they always have to be the ones who initiate conversation and women complain about how men initiate conversation. This is a tale as old as time…I think.
However, apparently after the resulting explosion of flame wars across the internet, accusations were starting to be flung from all sides. This was also to be expected. The story took on a life of its own as feminists who wished to defend Watson’s statement compared the unknown man from the elevator to an untactful creep and even a potential rapist.
With anti-feminists the guy from the elevator became a shy, awkward, and innocent nice guy who, as usual, finished last. This event sparked so much drama that it took on its own political identifier. An identifier that I refuse to repeat because the stupidity of it all is too, well, stupid.
[quote float=”right”]Basically, I was thinking; what’s the big deal? Some girl made a statement about one of the ways she would prefer men not ask her out. So what?[/quote] I didn’t know or care about Rebecca Watson before she made that video, which I watched just so I could find out what all the stupid fuss was about. And when I did watch it I thought to myself; all of this bullshit over this? After that I refused to pay attention to either side of the incident. This whole thing went so far that someone actually took the time to gather photos of the event just to prove that Watson made up all the parts of the incident she complained about.
I mean, I really can’t express how much I just wanted this whole thing to just die already. If not because people were going way overboard just to prove their ideological views, then because the two people that the incident was about hadn’t even said anything else about it. At least not to my knowledge and I’ll admit I wasn’t trying to find out if they did. Nevertheless I resigned myself to ignoring everything about this whole elevator crap until I saw something from either Watson or the guy from the elevator giving further insight into the event.
Today, I got that insight.
As I said before, the only thing I took away from this whole thing was that Watson voiced her preference about a way she wished men would not approach her. I wasn’t really on board with the whole “she’s a stuck up feminist bitch that shames and blames men” and all that stuff. That is, until I saw her latest video, which is a response to the internet explosion that her original video caused. For those who don’t know me, I am not a man who is ashamed to admit when he is wrong. And boy oh boy, was I wrong about this incident and Watson.
[box type=”alert” icon=”none”]As it turns out, Rebecca Watson is a stuck up feminist bitch that shames and blames all men.[/box]
After listening to her response and taking in all of her “advice” about how men should interact with women, there was no other conclusion I could come to. Take note, if you bother watching the video, at how Watson states that the guy from the elevator was “cornering” her. Up until now I thought that line of thinking was tagged on to her by anti-feminists. I thought this because she didn’t say she was cornered in her original video. I thought that there was simply a bunch of people out there who despise feminism more than I do who wanted to damage her image by saying she claimed this guy did things he didn’t do.
Nope, I was wrong. The claim might not have been put forth in the original video but it damn sure was in this new one. Before anyone reminds me that I wasn’t there and don’t know if the guy was actually cornering her, as in, blocking her path and preventing her from exiting the elevator, chill out. I know I wasn’t there and the truth is the guy may have well been doing just that. Of course if he did do that then I think Watson would have dedicated just a tad bit more than a few seconds in her explanation of the event in her original video. So I think I’ll assume that he wasn’t cornering her, which brings me to my first real analysis of this situation, now that I actually have a reason to care about it.
How the fuck is a guy cornering a woman just by being in the same elevator as her? Sometimes my male privilege blocks my understanding of these things so I often need some help from feminists to get a better perspective. So please, feminists, explain to me how if a human being with a penis is standing in the same elevator as a human being with a vagina, said penis wielder is cornering the vagina holder. Explain it slow and with small words because as I said, the male privilege that I have the benefit of not knowing I have can block out too much enlightened information at once.
Jokes and sarcasm aside, let’s really think about this for a moment. Remember how I said that men and women have been complaining about each other since the beginning of time? Well here’s the interesting thing, feminism has turned female complaints into government enforced laws. This is why there are forty billion ways a man can be brought up on charges of sexual harassment. I might have exaggerated that number.
[box type=”note” icon=”none”]Really think about it though. Which half of the human beings inhabiting this planet dominates the proportion that initiates romantic activity from icebreaking first hellos to a little morning sex before work? Is it the half with the penises or the half with the vaginas? If you chose the first answer then chances are, you have a penis.[/box]
Using this knowledge we can discern that the other half of the population might get a little annoyed with the millions of ways they are propositioned, for anything. Now this is all normal in my opinion and I don’t see anything wrong with it. I’m not that much of a talker and I hate it when some of my buddies won’t shut up. But I don’t run to the government and demand laws be put in place with which I can force them to shut up.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is in my personal opinion, one of the many end goals of feminism; control. Those who seek power long and hard enough usually gain power in some way or another and those who gain power seek more power, plain and simple. I didn’t find misandry in Watson’s reaction to a guy asking her back to his room for coffee. The place where I see misandry is in her interpretation of the incident. The guy walking into the same elevator as her and asking her out transforms from an annoyance she wishes she didn’t have to endure into something of a threat, “cornering” her in said elevator.
This is what decades of overblown hysteria from feminism creates. But unjustified fear is not the main focus of Watson’s misandry. Think back to the video and remember how Watson outlined her views on what “normal” men do. “Normal” men don’t ask women out at four in the morning. That isn’t the “appropriate” time to ask a woman out, according to Watson.
Oh, my dear, dear Watson.
Let me put on my Sherlock Holmes hat for a second and explain something to you. There is no “appropriate” time to ask a woman out. Not in public places. You, my misguided feminist, as a woman, have absolutely no say in how or when a guy can walk up to you and ask you out just like men have absolutely no say in how or when a woman can ask them out. The western hemisphere is littered with countries that have laws set up in order to ensure men and women continue to have those freedoms. For now anyway, which brings me back to my first point about the end goal of feminism.
If Watson’s line of thinking was law, almost every man in America would be locked up right now. I say every man because even if Watson’s statement was meant for both men and women, men are almost the only ones who initiate conversations with people they don’t know that lead to going out on dates or one night stands. It’s a large part of the reason why there are so many of us humans around.
Here is something for Watson and every feminist like her to think about. This is no longer the 1950s or any years prior to that time. You are not going to have men walking up to your doors asking for your permission to call on you or court you. Men aren’t going to hold their tongues around you or try and remember the fifty things they did that annoyed you to avoid doing those things again. Just because you feel that it isn’t appropriate for a man to ask you out in an elevator at four in the morning that doesn’t mean it is inappropriate. Normal people realize this.
The rest of Watson’s reply is nothing more than a common display of shaming that many men know all too well. According to her, any man who doesn’t agree with her is a loser who never gets laid less he resorts to using sex toys, because male sex toys are only for those losers who can’t get into a woman’s pants. The nonsense she spewed doesn’t get any more copy and paste than that. “Do what I say or no woman will ever want to fuck you. I know this because I am a woman and therefore I speak for all women.”
One really does have to stop and wonder about how feminism can warp so many minds. I’m sure there was a time long before I was born, back in the sixties and seventies when pompous women like Watson were walking through the streets screaming men were wrong in everything they do, while some guy somewhere said jokingly, “next thing you know they’re gonna be saying we’re harassing them by just saying hello”.
Well, the joke would be on that guy, if he ever existed. It just goes to show you that opposing feminism really is the equivalent to supporting freedom. They already got the government discussing whether or not female prisons should be shut down over in the UK. How much longer will it be before the suggestion that “hello” from a man, and only a man, is sexual harassment? That wasn’t a joke by the way.
If feminists had their way almost none of us would be here because there wouldn’t be billions of men asking random chicks out every day on this planet. Not if they were being arrested for simply inhabiting the same enclosed space as a woman or god forbid, saying hello.
I wonder what all of the male feminists who stood in defense of Watson, their white knightly armor shining, will say to us misogynistic by difference of opinion anti-feminists now? I can already imagine. Funny guys, male feminists are. They actually try and scribble out dating advice to men against feminism on their blogs and in their books.
“Make sure you do everything she says and for god sakes if she looks annoyed APOLOGIZE. No it doesn’t matter if you actually did anything or not, just fucking apologize. Always play it safe and remember, you’re always wrong and she’s always right.”
Maybe it would have been better if so many guys weren’t so eager to ask women out. Fewer people usually means less bullshit. Then again compared to the overall population there aren’t that many feminists, and just look at all the bullshit they’ve caused.
