>> it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

",,, And that's what get"s results.

"You can try hard;
Don't mean a thing,
Take it easy,
Then your jive can swing."

Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, July 1, 2021 at 10:39:55 PM UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

>>You think she saw him as Dr. Huxatable and put an unreasonable
>>amount of trust in him.

>No, I don't think she confused him with his fictional character. I think
>she simply took him at face value, something which disgruntled men and
>boys have been demanding for many years, as individuals. Plus the
>likelihood that, since he'd been famous, deeply loved, and respected for
>NON-entertainment reasons for DECADES, with no indication from the media
>that he could behave violently or unethically, she probably figured that
>if he were capable of that, she'd have heard already. That's pretty
>logical. (Yes, it's also true that highly popular men - like athletes,
>whether in high school or in pro sports - often get dangerous when they
>hear the word "no," since they're not used to hearing it, but the media
>never implied beforehand that that described him either.)

Sigh

Taking him at face value, weren't young women taught once upon a time
that men wanted sex in a scenario in which the woman is invited home
with him or to his hotel room after dinner?

>>I guess I don't understood why girls shouldn't be taught not to drink
>>too much at parties so they remain in control.

>Again, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. When there were
>(rare) muggings in my neighborhood, people got robocalls that simply
>reported the muggings, not warnings to stay off the street at night;
>they could make that choice for themselves, if they wished.

I didn't say "stay off the street", which I agree is unreasonabe, but
"stay out of dark alleys" which in movies always seem to be a scenario
in which the female is about to become a victim.

>Writing a list of dos and don'ts for a book is more-or-less polite, IF
>no one's being ordered to read it. Also, I have never heard anything
>admirable about fraternities OR sororities, so I chose a college that
>didn't have them - and that was BEFORE I heard anything about the rape
>statistics surrounding them.

>Aside from that, I've said elsewhere that women could be taught to drink
>far less if society and teachers would take a much more non-partisan
>approach to drinking. That is, binge drinking is very bad for a man's
>liver and life-span, as for a woman's; whether you're male or female,
>you don't want to drink moonshine by accident; you don't want to drink
>to the point of wandering off and freezing to death in the snow,
>wandering into traffic, or falling onto subway tracks, and you certainly
>don't want to have sex with your long-term significant other in a dim
>light only to find out, upon sobering up, that it was the wrong person
>or the wrong gender, have everyone blabbing about that - and maybe even
>get accused of assault.

Ok. Children should be taught about binge drinking and drugs and the
dangers of doing something avoidable that makes you vulnerable.

>Not to mention that even just having three
>drinks or so can result in your blurting secrets that will likely reach
>the ears of the worst person eventually.

Hah!

>. . .

On Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 4:42:01 PM UTC-4, That Derek wrote:
> >> it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
> ",,, And that's what get"s results.
>
> "You can try hard;
> Don't mean a thing,
> Take it easy,
> Then your jive can swing."

Thanks for that.

I was just reading a Slate column about the importance of diplomacy. Namely, when you're at a hotel and the other people let their kids run wild and be disruptive, in theory, you CAN complain politely to the individual parents themselves, but if you complain to the management instead and get them to impose stricter rules (or at least give you a refund), the parents are less likely to get defensive, hostile or to throw a temper tantrum. (Of course, if the hotel has to keep giving out refunds, they WILL have to make stricter rules - but you can't assume that enough people will complain.)

On Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 4:58:23 PM UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>
> Taking him at face value, weren't young women taught once upon a time
> that men wanted sex in a scenario in which the woman is invited home
> with him or to his hotel room after dinner?

Well, I wasn't, and I'm a Gen Xer. At any rate, while teen boys might sympathize with the stereotype of being sex-crazed (and resent not being allowed to ask for sex in so many words without being called boors) doesn't mean they don't also get angry at the constant media implications that they can't be trusted to be alone with a date, a co-worker, or a child who needs a babysitter, without attacking. Even if the location IS his house.

I realize that what you just described is slightly different. But, it used to be assumed, after all (in some American societies) that if a woman went on dates (in public) without a chaperone, she MUST be having an illicit affair - or, she just didn't care enough about her reputation, like a lady. (As with the anonymous woman referred to, early on, in Gone With the Wind, who was with Rhett when the buggy broke down overnight; her family then ordered Rhett to marry her and he refused on the grounds that he hadn't touched her - and so, he was shunned by most of society. So the old rules were unfair to BOTH sexes.)

> >Again, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. When there were
> >(rare) muggings in my neighborhood, people got robocalls that simply
> >reported the muggings, not warnings to stay off the street at night;
> >they could make that choice for themselves, if they wished.

> I didn't say "stay off the street", which I agree is unreasonabe, but
> "stay out of dark alleys" which in movies always seem to be a scenario
> in which the female is about to become a victim.

I don't see the difference. If it's daytime, there are no truly dark alleys.. If it's nighttime, all a mugger really needs is a mask, non-descript clothing, and a bush or a building so he can attack the victim from behind. Cameras and streetlights are not enough.

> Ok. Children should be taught about binge drinking and drugs and the
> dangers of doing something avoidable that makes you vulnerable.

The point is, it's outrageous the way some people talk as though sex criminals are like traffic accidents or bad weather - as in, the poor criminals just can't help themselves. (I've even seen memes like that, to my disgust.)

As I implied earlier, we wouldn't dream of talking like that if the subject were racist violence or homophobic violence, so what's the difference. Violence is not something that "just happens."

Besides, I heard once that even convicted serial rapists are not, as a rule, mentally ill. So what does that say about all the rapists who forced a crying victim into sex only once in the rapist's lifetime?

Forgot to say: In 1977, Lt. Jim Bullard of the Memphis Police Department wrote the book Looking Forward to Being Attacked: Self-Protection for Every Woman, with a lot of photographs - and a lot of uplifting humor. Despite some dated qualities, it's well worth reading, if you can find it.

I realize that a lot of people today say that courses like that aren't much good, since attackers, strangers or not, just seek out people who don't look young, strong, confident, or healthy enough to fight. But the message is one that can't be said often enough; we're destroying our own lives when we give away our freedoms, and we need a new attitude. In the last few pages, he quoted all sorts of people who were giving away their freedoms - a lot of the quotations were about theft.

Btw, here's a REALLY valuable tip I got from that book that one seldom hears: Never go with a kidnapper, even one with a gun. Sit down and refuse to budge. Fight like mad not to be dragged into the car. If he shoots you for that - or for running - he was going to kill you anyway, in a more secluded spot. That mustn't happen.

Also: years ago, I read the graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, by his former classmate, a cartoonist now known as Derf Backderf.

While he makes it clear that Jeffrey Dahmer's home life was hellish, though not exactly abusive, it's also clear that there was no "reason" for him to become a cold-blooded killer. (He was found sane by the jury.) Not to mention that there were plenty of warning signs, ignored by adults, that Dahmer was becoming a psychopath - such as animal cruelty, which started at age 7.. (Back in the 1960s and 1970s, that was typically not taken very seriously by society, if the perpetrator was a boy.)

My point is that while there's nothing fun, for a parent, about spotting signs of psychopathy - or anti-social attitudes in general - and uprooting it before it's too late, it has to be done, and EVERY adult in a boy's or girl's life is responsible for that.

In a similar vein, you don't prevent preteen shoplifting by simply telling kids that it's against the law; you have to teach them how to stand up to peer pressure - and make them FEAR the idea of disappointing the adults who love them. (Not to mention what the home punishment might be.) The same goes for drunk driving. How often have we heard of middle-aged drunk drivers who repeatedly kill people, without remorse? That lack of empathy has to come from somewhere - they could choose to drink and NOT drive, after all.