I’ve noticed, especially more recently, how often someone I felt was intelligent, reasoned and logical will jump to erroneous conclusions, or profess an opinion that seems too divorced from the world we live in. Whether it is simply believing that person X said Y, with no evidence anywhere supporting this other than the believer just wants it to be true, all the way to someone arguing that person X should accept his or her position in a situation as though it were the believer’s position.

A recent example has been the Rebecca Watson situation. I’ve heard from far too many men, even those who I thought would have known better, that she was taking the action too seriously, and that she should shut up about it, even that she should take it as a compliment.

Even in the circle of skeptics I know, men feel that women should accept any and all approaches as their duty, or something.

I can’t help but wonder what goes through their minds? Do they not hear about the six hundred women in the USA alone who are raped every day? Women, especially intelligent and outgoing ones, should be concerned about a strange man in a strange elevator in a strange hotel, away from anyone she knows and anywhere she can go for safety. Even if the stranger meant no harm by asking her to go to his hotel room to continue a talk at 4am after leaving a bar.

Women need to be protective of themselves and be extremely concerned about even people they know well in situations where they have little or no escape. Inhibitions can be lowered due to alcohol, the thought that no one else is watching, and the notion that the next day he could be on a plane out of the country.

If men cannot bother to talk to women first, or get to know them, or even find out whether there’s any chemistry first, and leap head-first into “Want to come back to my hotel room?,” then we should be chastising these men, not the women who speak up about being the target of unwanted advances.

It’s not a compliment to ask a woman back to your hotel room, fellows.

It’s not a compliment to tell a woman that she’d be a great fuck.

It’s definitely not a compliment to call a woman a bitch, cunt, whatever else is in your vocabulary, when she speaks up about such events.

It’s a shame that otherwise intelligent people forget these points.

And it’s a bigger shame that it could be a major factor as to why women don’t want to speak out and be in the spotlight when it comes to skepticism.

We only have ourselves to blame for this.

 

CSBair