ilzolende said:
If publicly making requests like this is normalized, pretty people will have to deal with more of said requests (and they already don’t seem to like the attention they get) and ugly people will have another thing reminding them of it. I see few advantages.
What about liberty? Lack of repression? Mutually beneficial and commensal interactions occurring that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise?
I have little to no sympathy for pretty people who “have to deal with” saying “nah, not feelin’ it” (or just “no,” or even nothing at all while simply walking away) from time to time.
I also am not terribly sympathetic toward people (ugly or otherwise) who prioritize purely positional goods over absolute ones, which is how I see “given that I’m rarely or never going to be asked to show my bits, I’d prefer that no one be asked to show their bits.” Especially since it seems to me that even the vast majority of conventionally unattractive people would benefit from such a norm in an absolute sense, since there are not very many people who aren’t attractive to anyone, and a system that cuts out the unnecessary social dance crap between finding someone attractive and asking to see them naked can only increase the ease of people with unusual features and people with unusual tastes finding each other.
It is my (potentially false) belief that few people would enjoy having complete strangers express an interest in viewing their bodies. Given that I’ve heard many people complain about it and no people express appreciation for it (even in private channels), as well as the fact that I don’t model myself as appreciating it (given that I am annoyed by being stuck in environments with music with sexual lyrics), I have nonzero evidence for this belief.
I therefore think people on average appreciate the ability to not have to listen to those kinds of requests without explicitly stating permission for people to make those requests more than they would appreciate the ability to make those requests to people who hadn’t explicitly opted in and not face social consequences for doing so.
The unnecessary social dance crap is a huge part of the attraction process for many people (mostly but not solely women). Charm, intelligence, kindness, wit, social savvy, etc. are for many people more important than appearance, even for casual sex. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as a straight bathhouse.
Furthermore, AFAICT most people who aren’t at serious risk of involuntary celibacy like the social dance stuff, and may even postpone the sex so the social dance stuff goes on longer.
Possibly relevant clarification: When I say “the unnecessary social dance crap,” I’m not necessarily talking about everything that intervenes between finding someone attractive in a purely physical sense and actually successfully seeing them (partially or fully) naked. I’m talking about everything that intervenes between forming a desire to see someone naked, whether based on solely on appearance or not[1], and it being considered socially acceptable to ask to see them naked. In addition to “hell yeah,” “sure, why not,” and “nah,” I’m perfectly happy to see “not at this time, but perhaps in the future; I have criteria for that which I don’t yet know whether you meet” normalized as a response to an also normalized “hey, can I see your tits/chest/ass/dick/pussy/feet/armpits/etc.?”
Hell, someone who actually likes the whole ridiculous guessing game business is perfectly free to add “and it’s up to you to figure out what they are; no points for asking explicitly.” (Or, for that matter, to say instead “Sorry, the answer right now is no, and that means it will always be no, since not asking before being certain of a yes is one of my criteria for a yes.” That’s frankly idiotic, in my view, but people are free to have idiotic preferences.) And I’m free, along with anyone else of similar tastes and/or capacities, to add them to our respective “Hot? Yes. Worth pursuing? Oh, hell no!” lists. Hooray for freedom.
What I’m against is the existence of norms, especially but not exclusively norms enforced by government tyranny, which label it “harassment” or otherwise fundamentally unacceptable to make the request without first satisfying an extensive and ill-defined list of criteria. That’s not merely inefficient, although it certainly is that; it’s fundamentally unjust.
[1] I certainly find intelligence, kindness, and wit attractive myself. “Social savvy,” as most people would define it, not so much.
I am not terribly sympathetic to people wishing to push the costs of social interaction entirely onto me with no way to avoid it. Being bombarded by requests for my whatever when I am not interested in showing my whatever to the kind of people who would most significantly increase their requests for my whatever is basically the interpersonal equivalent of spam, except that I can’t filter or block meatspace people, and that is highly suboptimal. This set of claims is completely ignoring the fact that receiving an unwanted request for whatever does cause negative utility to me, and therefore I shall obviously try to filter out the kinds of whatever-requests that are the most likely to fall within the category of “unwanted”.
Just for the information of everyone, promethea’s whatever policy is that promethea is a mean-ass enbie who is the only one who gets to have an opinion on whether someone’s whatever request is okay or not, after the request has been made, and only people who are okay with that policy should request whatever. I will also exercise my freedom of association by preferentially associating with people who abide by this standard. Your right to request whatevers ends where my eardrums and/or inbox begin. I do not consent to whatever requests that do not comply with this standard, and this declaration shall be construed as pre-emptively asking people to stop requesting whatevers for the purposes of determining whether someone keeps requesting whatevers despite getting a “no” as an answer and is therefore a harasser.
I would also like to know what symbol I should wear in public places to signal this policy, as surely this lovely freedom includes the freedom to opt out, no? Surely this lovely freedom includes the freedom to disassociate from people who will not honor my asking them not to ask for whatevers unless they are willing to be subjected to my judgment according to my “extensive and ill-defined list of criteria”?
Besides, it’s not like my criteria are vague or anything; the criteria for being allowed to ask for whatevers without risking the possible consequences are “has promethea explicitly and unambiguously expressed that you are allowed to ask for whatevers?”. This is a very well-defined criterion which shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Of course, not everyone who requests whatevers without fulfilling the criteria gets scorned, but they will be expected to accept the possibility and judge their position in the unnecessary social dance crap accurately enough if they wish to get an exception to the otherwise whitelist-only criteria for not being scorned.
If this policy is somehow terribly unjust, I’d really like to know how, why, and where.
In addition, considering that most people are likely to prefer a policy somewhat more similar to mine than yours, I’d like to know why people who prefer my policy should be the ones who need to signal it, instead of people who don’t have such a policy because the latter certainly seems more efficient. I am definitely in favor of people getting to set their own policies because a ‘one size fits nobody’ approach doesn’t work, and surely you aren’t implying that everyone should be forced to follow your preferred policy? After all, my mailbox has a “no advertising” sign on it that advertisers are expected to respect and not being allowed to stuff their messages into my non-consenting mailbox isn’t considered a violation of the advertisers’ freedom of speech, and my physical existence as a person who has a whatever and who is unable to not be perceived as being in possession of a whatever and who therefore needs to find a different solution to the problem of the deadweight loss incurred by people requesting whatevers despite promethea not wanting to be requested for whatevers, than stopping being a whatever-possessor, is a far more significant question than physical junk mail.
Please send your unsolicited whatever-requests only to people who do not have this kind of a policy. Assuming that anyone who wishes to interact with anybody must be okay with arbitrary requests for whatever from said anybody is liable to dis-occur far more mutually beneficial and commensal interactions than classifying requests for whatever as a different interaction from most of them and therefore subject to different default protocols.
2 months ago · 37 notes · source: osberend · .permalink
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dimitriarkady reblogged this from wirehead-wannabe and added:I just want to go on record that I endorse Ozy’s opinion here.
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wirehead-wannabe reblogged this from jbeshir and added:Man I just wanna save this purely for its value as, like, the most Ingroup-y thread ever.
jbeshir reblogged this from osberend and added:In terms of *my* personal comfort, I think I would find it disconcerting but not to the point that I’d want anyone else...
princess-stargirl reblogged this from osberend and added:This seems correct in the actually existing culture in the West. “Requests, in normal human culture which is not...
osberend reblogged this from jbeshir and added:Are you actually stating that you are fine with a norm that it’s okay for people to approach strangers and say “I would...
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I am not terribly sympathetic to people wishing to push the costs of social interaction entirely onto me with no way to...
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earnest-peer reblogged this from osberend and added:Main defense against being asked, yes. Some people get offended when you decline their requests, and a lot of people...
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ozymandias271 reblogged this from ilzolende and added:The unnecessary social dance crap is a huge part of the attraction process for many people (mostly but not solely...
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ilzolende reblogged this from osberend and added:It is my (potentially false) belief that few people would enjoy having complete strangers express an interest in viewing...
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