How to recover lost marbles

I wasn't planning on writing about the sexist comments made toward Sheril Kirshenbaum on the Bad Astronomy Blog since other people have written some very good commentary on this shit. But after reading and commenting in the post on CPP's blog (which is filled with awesome commenters, trolls, and clueless fools), I decided that I had some things to say that are probably a bit teal deer for a comment. I'll probably be repeating some things mention in the posts linked above.


Point #1: This whole issue to me isn't simply about people commenting on/judging Sheril based on her appearance. Because while that is admittedly a shitty thing to do, I think there is a deeper issue with the with the comments. The problem I see is that too often the metric for judging women is attractiveness ( defined: How much men should want to stick their penis in a particular woman).

This kind of judgement is often made based on what a woman looks like (it was in this case), but it's not exclusive to appearances. Commenting on how sexy a woman is based one her intelligence, interests, hobbies, or a particular personality trait is not as widespread, but it happens and it's still unacceptable.

I've mention before some of my interests. Most of the people who share these interests tend to be male and this means that if I want to talk about them the community I'll be joining will be made up of 90% men. And such was the case on one forum where I post. Of course, I post under a pseudonym and it happens to be a masculine sounding pseudonym. This made a lot of people assume that I a man and I was treated as decently as anyone there can expect to be treated.

After a month or so of posting for whatever reason, I can't remember, it came out that I was a woman. The response that followed was interesting. There was the expected reaction; some people insisted that I must fit their stereotype of a woman and therefore I would infect their precious community with feminine shit. There was also a response I did not expect. I did not expect to receive come-ons that ranged from the almost innocent to the obscene. These were from people who had no clue what I looked like and only knew that I have an interest in certain shows.

This doesn't happen as often in real life, as it's much easier to sexualize based on appearance, but it indicates that the problem with how many men treat women as sexual objects extends passed just finding them physically attractive. And this is what I find offensive about the comments. It's that a women was treated as if her first, if not only, role is to sexually please a man. This kind of treatment denies us the ability to be fully human. This is even more troubling in the context of the history of women's oppression. For thousands of years women have been treated as if their only possible role was to breed and be mothers.

Point #2: Some comments were made indicating that we where just overreacting to an innocent complement. I hope the above convinced you that the comments, while possibly made innocently, are not at all innocent. But lets assume that those comments are harmless. Lets assume that we are living in a historical vacuum. Even in that case I think that the people defending them should apologize and shut the fuck up.

Why? Well, that involves trying to understand what a goddamn compliment is. A compliment isn't simply saying the X is a good trait of Y person. When I compliment one of my aims is to make the person being complimented feel good. I think that's the more important part of compliments and that's why I try not to offend people with inappropriate praise.

Now, if you read all the follow-up to the comments, you'd have realized that quiet a lot of women found the comments offensive, including Sheril. So your compliment failed. All you did was offend the person you wanted to compliment and therefore you should apologize and STFU.

Point#3: "When is it appropriate to comment on a woman's attractiveness?" you ask.

I would say the best guidline is to think, "Would she want to know or care whether I want to bone her or not?" It's really as simple as that. Well, unless you think that every woman is here as as your personal cockwarmer. But then you're an irredeemable misogynistic waste of air.