Friday, July 13, 2012

Note to Women: If you Don't want to get Hit On, then Don't Dress in a Way that Communicates the Opposite

Some of you may be familiar with Hackernews. It's a news aggregator for stories relevant to the IT industry, with a slight bent towards the sensationalist. Some headlines would even make FARK proud. Apart from the usual success porn about startups and arousing details about new hardware or software products, stories about the alleged difficulties of women in a male centric field are another mainstay of this site. As with all sites, once they reach a certain level of popularity, quality takes a nose dive. As you can imagine, the amount of politically correct White Knights and Manginas trying to defend erroneous female reasoning is rather high nowadays.

A recent story was about a woman, calling herself "kdotcot", who attended Defcon, which is "the world's longest running and largest underground hacking conference". What would you expect if you were a woman and attended a conference that attracts a mostly male crowd? Well, plenty of attention, for starters. And what do you do if you are a woman who is going to attend such a conference, and who doesn't want to get hit on? Well, you'd of course you keep the push-up bras, high-heels and skimpy skirt at home and wear something more professional. You know, the kind of outfit you'd expect from, say, a female attorney or accountant.

However, if you are "kdotcot", you do the exact opposite and parade your tits around at Defcon. Attention is great, but if you are "kdotcot" and get attention from the "wrong" kind of guys, then you turn towards the Internet and vent your frustration. She writes:

Nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught of bad behavior I experienced. Like the man who drunkenly tried to lick my shoulder tattoo. Like the man who grabbed my hips while I was waiting for a drink at the EFF party. Like the man who tried to get me to show him my tits so he could punch a hole in a card that, when filled, would net him a favor from one of the official security staff.

OK, let me break it down for you: Was there anything that kept you from wearing a blazer and other "professional" attire? I hope it wasn't the f*cking patriarchy that forced you to show off the tattoo on your shoulder. Likewise, if you party, and your are exposing your skin, you can expect some guys to get physical. This is something every girl who has ever been to a bar or a club knows. If they don't want that kind of attention, then they either seek out different venues, or dress in a way that their mothers would approve of. This is only difficult to understand if you are a woman who wants attention but doesn't want to deal with the consequences.

I can already hear the feminists clamor that men are such pigs, but let's not forget how women act when you put too many of them in a room. They are actually much worse than we men are. If you bump into a hen-party in a club, you can expect behavior towards men you wouldn't believe. Some years ago I attended a conference in Oxford, and after the official program was over, I felt like checking out the local bar and club scene, because I had a reputation to live up to. I'm used to getting my ass pinched in clubs every once in a while, but a horde of twenty drunk women doesn't engage in such minor league activities. I won't go into much detail, because I want to spare you the horrors of having to picture overweight English "ladies" trying to grab the crotch of unsuspecting men or absurdities like fatties dipping a dildo in a pint of beer and licking or fellating it. If this is an environment that bothers you, then you'd do what I did back then in this dubious bar in Oxford: turn around and go somewhere else. What's so hard to understand about that?

But little Miss "kdotcot" just doesn't get it:
Because I am a Very Bad Adult, I finished packing my bags at a completely unreasonable hour of the morning last night. While I was deciding what clothes to take with me to New York, something dawned on me; I was already thinking about what clothes I would avoid taking to Las Vegas for Defcon. Short skirts, low cut tops, tight dresses, and anything that might be overtly attention-grabbing have (sic!) been bumped to second priority on that packing list.
Oh, the Horror! Sexism! Oppression of Wimmenz!!1 Quick, let's Put a Blog Post Up and Stir Up a Shitstorm!!!1!!

Here's a newsflash for you, lady: If you don't want attention, then don't advertise yourself. If this doesn't sound plausible to you, then let me tell you why things are like they are: The reason is simply that women normally DO NOT approach men, no matter how eager they are to have a nice big cock inside of them. Exceptions only prove the rule. We live in a society in which men have to make a move. If we all just stood around, waiting for women to come on to us, we wouldn't get laid and instead of seven billion people on this planet there would be a few tribes of nomads scattered on its surface.

This is yet another example of the twisted logic of women. On the one hand, they enjoy the attention they get for wearing short skirts, or tops that expose their tits, but if they get attention from the wrong kind of guy, it's suddenly sexism. If Brad Pitt grabs your ass, it's a sexual fantasy. Yet, if Joe the Plumber does so, he's a sexist that should be locked up immediately and get castrated.

Let me thus introduce a concept that seems rather alien to women like "kdotcot". It is called personal responsibility. This means that instead of whining to someone else after you've done something stupid, you ask yourself whether your behavior has actually contributed to the result. As anybody in Western society is aware of, a woman who dresses in "provocative" clothing advertises her sexuality and literally screams, "come, hit on me!" However, at the same time she wants to protect her fragile ego and therefore leaves the task of initiating contact to the guy. The woman just sits back and waits for Brad and Fabio and Damian and Richard to make a move. Let's better hope the woman in question is as good looking as the men she fantasizes about getting approached by, but that's another story.

If you ask yourself what all of this means, then let me spell it out more slowly for the logically challenged: If a woman doesn't approach men but instead invites men to approach her by the way she's dressing or behaving, then she has no right to complain when the "wrong" kind of guy approaches them. The alternative is simple: approach the guys you fancy yourself, and deal with the possibility of rejection. Obviously, this isn't too appealing to women either. But, hey, why not just claim that men who reject unattractive women who come on to them are "cruel" and should be persecuted for psychological violence. Maybe this would fix the situation and finally enable women to approach men, and take care of the issue. I'm sorry for sounding facetious, but I can't help it when I am confronted with arguments that sound as if they were presented by an eight-year old.

Of course, all is well if a woman goes out, showing off her tits, and eventually getting picked up by a guy who makes her gina tingle. I am sure that if the woman who wrote that feminist sob-piece had found the guy attractive who invited her to his room for a "private pillow fight party", all would have been well and we would now read some drivel like "♥♥♥♥♥ How to Meet the Hunk of Your Dreams at a Hacker Conference. :) :) :) :) ♥♥♥♥♥"

You can't have it both ways. If you dress "provocatively" and leave it up to the guy to approach you, you have to live with the fact that guys you might not find attractive will hit on you. However, you can't go out, feed off the attention of guys, and then complain if those hitting on you don't all look like Baptiste Giabiconi.

Please stay tuned for next week's blog post on a half-naked male stripper who broke out in tears after getting groped by seven women on a bachelorette party.