Schrödinger’s Rapist
Via Richard Eriksson’s (low bandwith, high-content-value) blog comes a link to a MetaFilter post (“Hi. Whatcha reading?”) that is a link to an article entitled “Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced”
MetaFilter’s gotten better, in that there is higher SNR and fewer trolls, but OMG it’s still MetaFilter and there is just so much content of such varying intermingled quality, and one is hopping between scores of parallel conversations/arguments/rants with some balance of informed contributors, automatic arguers, trolls, and land-mine comments such as the in-line personal rape account that has upset my stomach for the last hour.
I don’t really know what to do with this topic, so I’m putting it there for discussion. What I can say is that I know I’m big, hairy, and strange, and that, beyond the uncountable number of times I’ve feigned an untied shoelace or an urgent and immediate appointment across the street (in order to avoid a woman’s thinking I’m following her, and to avoid, meta-ly, her thinking that I’m aware that she thinks I’m following her), I actually stay home from events sometimes because I’m worried about sending the wrong messages (e.g., I’ll go to a Tool concert alone, but I won’t go to a Tori Amos concert, let alone a festival moshpit show, alone.)
Am I bitter about this? A tiny bit, but then I feel guilty about feeling even a tiny bit bitter about this, in a similar way to how I’ll die a little bit inside whenever I lock my car door whenever I see someone with a particular lunging stroll pass, a walking pattern which is not equally distributed among ethnicities in my area. The fact is: I am absurdly big, I am ridiculously strong, I’m far from clean-cut-and-shaven, and I have this Atlasload of male guilt.
OK. That’s what I’ve got in me so far. Thoughts?
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2 Responses to “Schrödinger’s Rapist”
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November 10th, 2009 at 12h45
Here’s the way that I look at things: I’m bigger and stronger than the majority of the population. The plus side of this is that it affords me a degree of protection that most people don’t enjoy. In the past fifteen years, I’ve run into exactly zero people who were both stupid enough to attempt physical aggression against me and capable of presenting a genuine threat (cops being the exception, of course, but that’s bound to happen when one side of any conversation has a stick and a gun and a couple of well-armed buddies with him). The flip side of this is, of course, that a significant portion of the population takes into consideration my size and strength when considering their own safety.
Women really are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. For every woman who gets scorned for being too guarded around perfectly innocent guys, there’s also a rape victim who someone will scold for having not been more careful around strangers.
A couple of years ago I commented that rape is the new bat mitzvah. It’s how you know you’re a woman. Even if it never happens to a particular woman, it’s a constantly present threat. Most of my female friends have been the victims of sexual violence at least once in their lives. That’s something that I try to keep in mind when dealing with a woman that I don’t know; even if she hasn’t been the victim of sexual violence, odds are good that many of her friends have. That she defends herself accordingly, despite the criticism to which she becomes a target for doing so, is an unfortunate necessity.
Also, that MetaFilter thread really is best of the web, in my opinion.
November 10th, 2009 at 19h49
I read the young woman’s post. I got three distinct impressions from it.
1) She gets approached in somewhat creepy ways, like unfortunately girls frequently do. This happens specially with nice guys, because they don’t know better, and because they don’t have a lot of knowledge and skills when it comes to women. More on this later on.
2) She is wise to be concerned about safety, as all women should. What scares me is that some rapists can have a lot of social skills, specially the narcissistic sociopaths. I remember watching on some channel that there was this serial killer that got all these love letters from female fans cause he was charming. Women are not the best judges of character. They don’t tend to base decisions on the history of what you do, but more on how they feel at the moment. And they are very aware of creepy or contradicting vibes, which here she is equating with being in front of a potential rapist.
3) I didn’t care for the “I am the owner of the truth, so listen up” vibe she writes this with. I see it as strange that she wants guys to understand the woman’s point of view (and they absolutely should btw), but she doesn’t allow herself any room for understanding what might be going thru the guy’s mind. This is NOT how all women are. This is how this one seems to be. If she is like this most of the time when dealing with guys, I call this an energy vampire. She lives just a little too much in fear. If you are not going to have a good time when meeting someone, and are going to have to deal with bad assumptions she has about you without knowing you, just cut it short and leave. No explanation or apology necessary. There are plenty of great women out there.
Women generally want to be approached. They just want to be approached the right way.
First, check WHY you want to approach. Does she have a great energy? sense of style? is she doing something you are interested in doing? or is it because you think she is hot. If its the latter, the sexual vibe the guy is transmitting will likely creep her out. No wonder she equates some approaches with potential rapists. She’s thinking: “this guy doesn’t even know me. What does he want from me?”
Second, approach respectfully. Pay attention to her social situation at the moment. Act wth tact and respect.
Third, absolutely do NOT apologize for who you are or for being a man. Its ok to get a little nervous. Its not ok to have an apologetic body language. Again, not a good vibe. She knows what’s going on, but from the moment you approach she’s evaluating to see how will she will feel like with you. I am a Christian now ( translation: I renounced single sex), but still this is valid: a woman knows within the first minute of the interaction whether she will sleep with a guy (or whether he’s eligible, so to speak). It’s all primarily about vibe and body language.
If she doesn’t respond well, realize that she doesn’t know you at all. She can’t reject you, cause she has no freaking clue of who the guy is. She’s rejecting the approach. Its important to realize it is only a skill, not a core part of your soul.