Because I don't like having comments on my journal that I don't look at. People write them, at least in part, to me, and ignoring them seems pretty callous of someone's time.

Apparently you have to freeze each thread individually, and even then you can't stop new ones. If someone knows a better way, tell me.

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Because I don't like having comments on my journal that I don't look at. People write them, at least in part, to me, and ignoring them seems pretty callous of someone's time.

Not reading all of the comments to your entry immediately upon their posting is not callous. I don't think anyone expects that from you, and since you certainly don't reply to every comment, even the ones specifically directed to you, it's not like failing to do so due to a lack of time would be any more callous than choosing not to because you have nothing meaningful to say in reply.

What does come off as a dickish, since a good chunk of the commentary was between people commenting on your entry but not necessarily addressing you, is pulling the plug right in the midst of it. It's actually worse, from my perspective, that you did it out of some misguided sense of duty to your reading public - somewhat... damn, patronizing is NOT the word I want, but there's one similar to it that would work perfectly. Anyway, whatever that word would have been, that's how it comes off.

It's your space, and it's not your responsibility by any means to put the desires of your commenters first, but it does kind of suck. The discussion had moved well beyond the initial project and into some interesting spaces, at least in some threads.

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damn, patronizing is NOT the word I want, but there's one similar to it that would work perfectly.

"Condescending?" "Patriarchal?"

One could make the argument that the comment threads had evolved beyond being responses to Ferrett. On the other hand, he's under no obligation to host a discussion board in his journal, nor to receive over a thousand updates to a discussion.

Still, the "final word" on it came across as fairly passive-aggressive, almost a "fine, I'll take my ball and go home and just eat dirt, then" drama flounce.

There were good discussions going on, all originally stemming from what you posted, Ferrett. You got a lot of vitriol, and while the personal attacks were unnecessary, things like this are hot buttons for a lot of people. It's a shame some of them couldn't separate the personal from the theoretical, and it was unfair of many of them to declare you some kind of con-goer public enemy. Still, you made people think; don't apologize for that.

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Well, no. I guess sure, I'll take my ball and go home - but the ball was hitting people in the face.

Again, I'm gonna call this one on "No good way to put it." I'm not trying to make people feel guilty. That's not the way it is.

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I could argue that the ball was only hitting them in the face because they were intentionally putting their face where the ball was going. There was a comment thread in there where I was trying to make that point, in fact, that one cannot be held responsible for all the potential repercussions of being oneself in public. This journal, as has been mentioned, is your journal, and you can say whatever you want, run the comment permissions however you want. So here even more than out in meatspace, you can be who you want to be and those coming in are responsible for treading carefully, not the other way around. As for going to cons or not going, you are by far NOT the creepiest guy attending cons, so letting someone else's possible offense run you off from somewhere you were having fun with friends is horrible.

All I can say is that I wouldn't have closed the comments, I wouldn't stop attending those cons, and while I would intend no disrespect to those finding fault or even finding my actions or words to be triggering, I'm not their therapist. No matter how much I may sympathize with either their conditions or positions, I'm not going to not be me in public. It's not an option.

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Do you go up to women in the street and ask if you can touch their breasts? If you do not, is the social pressure not to do this an unforgivable infringement on your right to "be you in public"? What makes the street different from a con hallway?

As for going to cons or not going, you are by far NOT the creepiest guy attending cons,

Wow, that's totally the endorsement I would want on my tombstone.

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The street is different from a con hallway due to context and circumstance; however, that doesn't mean I would have participated in the Project under either circumstance. Context was one thing that a lot of commentors to the post were ignoring.

Wow, that's totally the endorsement I would want on my tombstone.

Ah, now this is a wonderful example of taking something too far, another thing we were seeing in the comment threads. As an epitaph, it is lacking. As a response to Ferrett not going to cons because he is afraid of creeping out people who go out of their way to find men creepy, it is serviceable.

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What are the context and circumstance that make a con hallway different from a street?

Ah, now this is a wonderful example of taking something too far, another thing we were seeing in the comment threads. As an epitaph, it is lacking. As a response to Ferrett not going to cons because he is afraid of creeping out people who go out of their way to find men creepy, it is serviceable.

This is a wonderful example of missing the point. For those of us who are protesting the creepiness of Ferrett's proposal, it is not in fact serviceable.

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The context and circumstances of the original event as described by Ferrett were that it was a group of people who all knew one another at least in passing and who had already been having a conversation that set the resulting activity in context. Opening it wider presented more problems, perhaps, and that has been addressed already in the threads we can no longer see.

As for missing the point, there's a lot of that going around in regards to this whole flap. You find what he was suggesting creepy. There were an awful lot of other people who clearly didn't find it creepy, men and women alike, based on the evidence of the original post's comment threads. It's all down to personal opinion. However, there are now people who are comparing Ferrett to a rapist based on this whole mess. He apparently now feels that he is protecting the public by not attending two conventions. You call that a reasonable position to put someone into for engaging in something like this with other consenting adults? If you're about to say that you didn't consent to watch, then you need to never leave your house again, because people in the public sphere might not censor themselves out of fear of offending you.

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No. The context and circumstances as described by Ferrett were that an event that originated among a group of friends was then taken into the public sphere and made into a movement by members of that group of friends who asked strangers to participate, thereby sexualizing the public hallway space which con members, hotel guests, and hotel staff were or may have been passing through. I do not grant friendship or intimacy privileges to people attending the same con as I am, or working in the same hotel I am, any more than I grant friendship or intimacy privileges to people by walking down their street, or by working in the same office building they do.

Because male geeks feel welcomed and accepted by cons in a way they don't in the outside world does not in fact obligate female geeks to treat them like friends and family.

There were an awful lot of other people who clearly didn't find it creepy, men and women alike, based on the evidence of the original post's comment threads. It's all down to personal opinion. However, there are now people who are comparing Ferrett to a rapist based on this whole mess. He apparently now feels that he is protecting the public by not attending two conventions. You call that a reasonable position to put someone into for engaging in something like this with other consenting adults?

Poor Ferrett! He is so oppressed by his determination to protect women, whether it be from our denial of our true, breast-groped sexuality, or from our tragic misunderstanding of his nonthreatening male sexuality!

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I'm missing where you or anyone else could not say, "no," "no thank you," or just walk on and not watch if you didn't want to. I'm missing where you're allowing for personal responsibility, here.

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Let me break this down for you:

When I am in my office workplace and my coworker touches my breast, I am perfectly capable of saying, "No, fuck you, I am filing a sexual harassment suit against you." When random strangers on the street call out, "Nice titties!" I am perfectly capable of glaring at them or cursing at them -- unless, you know, there's a gang of them, and I am afraid that they'll use the provocation to assault or rape me, which is not an unusual situation. In none of these cases am I denying my own personal responsibility for my sexuality. In all of these cases, men are assuming that *their* sexual pleasure is more important than my safety, comfort, or humanity.

By telling men they may not, by default, treat me as if I am there for their pleasure, sexual or otherwise, I am not infringing on their rights or denying their personal responsibility. I'm telling them they don't get to see me as meat, a teddy bear, a headless silicon model of boobies, or whatever the fuck else they think I am besides a human being. Expecting someone else to treat me like a human being and not ambulatory breasts is not a demand for a special privilege.

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Now, in your breakdown, you mention that you could sue for sexual harrassment if a co-worker or especially a boss were to touch you in what a reasonable person would consider a sexual manner. Based on existing case law, you could probably sue if a co-worker even said, "Nice tits." Why is the behavior out on the street different there? Legally, because you're in a position where in the office, you're under compulsion to be there. In the street, you can walk away. There IS a difference based on circumstances.

Now, were this a rationally-run country or world, rapists would be slowly tortured to death. I am not kidding about that; we don't coddle rabid animals when they bite, so I don't know why rapists ought to be treated any differently.

Who however here has told you that you may not tell others not to treat you like a sex object? Where in any of this flap did someone tell you that you are required to give consent to being touched if asked?

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A lot guys say, "now, rape is bad, and rapists should suffer [insert horrible fate here]".

To which the response is, as it rightfully ought to be: WEV.

Because, in this world (and if you're US, like me, this country) where DESPITE THE EXISTENCE OF A VIDEOTAPE CLEARLY SHOWING A GANG RAPE TAKING PLACE, rapists can go completely free, lip service to the badness of rape is so far short of a good enough reply that it's insulting in and of itself.

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To which the response is: "I wasn't on that jury."

You can take anything you like as an insult. That is something that one could take from this whole Great LJ Boob-Out of '08, in fact, that perceptions differ wildly. As I said, in an intelligently-run world, rapists would be executed. That many or even most of them are not is not an indictment of the sentiment, nor does it mean that, given the opportunity in government, I would not apply capital punishment to rapists. It is perhaps an indictment of the criminal justice system as it currently stands, but that's not the topic at hand.

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Wow, way to miss the point.

It doesn't actually matter that you, one singular, specific male, would have voted to convict rather than acquit on that case. What matters is that the men (and, presumably, women) who were actually on the jury did not. What matters is that, as society stands now, that acquittal is not only possible, it is a not unexpected outcome. As a woman, I spend my entire life aware that these things not only could but are extremely likely to happen to me. Telling me that, when some guy I wouldn't know from adam propositions me on the street, I'm free to just ignore him and walk away, trivializes and dismisses the very real fear that act causes me.

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Uh, no. The situation on the street is different because I CHOOSE NOT TO ENGAGE FOR MY OWN PHYSICAL SAFETY.

There are plenty of women who have been trying to explain male privilege and the omnipresence of harassment for women in many, many, many threads in this very LJ. If you're interested in education, you can read them. I don't have time to engage with someone who doesn't see what's wrong with a man on the street saying "Nice tits" to a strange woman and who consistently places the onus on the women to react and not the man to refrain from being an asshole. I give up on you and your sense of entitlement.

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Lady, you don't know me, my background, or what I believe in or support. Your bias makes you see entitlement arguments where they don't exist, and makes you assume that just because I disagree with you that I am uneducated. You show me one place where I've said that anyone is entitled to the right to treat any other human being like anything less than a human being and I'll apologize. It hasn't happened, because I don't believe that for a second, but you've got your crusader helm on and thus can only see a narrow field of battle. Just like in life, you've every right to walk away from a situation you don't want to be in, and more power to you. Personally, I'd suggest you take a long look in a mirror to see the person who is making you think that everyone who disagrees is out to get you.

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Well said.

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I don't know you from Adam, but I sure as fuck can read.

If you don't believe that anyone is entitled to treat others as less than a human being, why are you defending the practice of yelling "nice tits!" at random women on the street?

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I'd love for the expected response for someone harassing you is "No, fuck you", but people get beat up/shot for that, and even if it didn't turn into violence, that person doesn't want to hear me say why I'm offended. What the hell are my choices besides 'do nothing'? "Ignore it an it will go away" is as useless advice on the playground as it is here. Where the hell can I do anything?

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I'd love for things like this to not even be an issue, but they are. People are rude and disrespectful in part, I think, because they are ignorant of possible consequences. Shooting a person for verbal harassment is considered an overreaction, and there's no way to have a bodyguard around for every individual so that some jerk-off catcalling doesn't decide to lay his filthy hands on a woman who shouldn't have to put up with his nonsense in the first place.

I don't have a solution to offer that doesn't involve going back to a universally-armed society. It would be a very messy civilization if every rude idiot was gunned down as justifiable homicide due to public disrespect... or at least, it'd be messy for a generation or so. I agree that "ignore it and it will go away" doesn't work on the playground, and that there are a lot of authority figures who don't respond to playground bullying in any rational way. A kid can't ignore someone punching him, but if you fight back, you're in as much trouble because defending yourself is participating and violates zero tolerance rules on violence. (sighs, shrugs) Like I said, I don't have a good answer. I cannot however tell you that it is okay to tell consenting adults what they can and cannot do for fear of potentially causing an onlooker to be offended. I can't see how that is rational, either.

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It was the same thread I was in, actually, and all stemmed from my paltry original comment. Heh.

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"Condescending?" "Patriarchal?"

Closer, but... I'll hit the thesaurus when I get home. Or maybe there is no perfect word? That would suck.

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You should probably private-lock it, individually freeze the threads, put an ETA at top and bottom asking for no further comments, then unlock it. It would take about half an hour. But it will make you look like less of a coward than just making all the comments vanish.

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