1) “Domination” and “control” just didn’t seem like particularly useful words in this situation to me. Maybe it’s a matter of opinion, but if I think of someone as dominating or controlling me, I think of them doing something coercive to me that limits my freedom of action. I didn’t feel dominated or controlled by anything Starling wrote.

2) I don’t think she is talking about being victimized, she’s talking about preventing being victimized. I don’t doubt that you have been sexually assaulted (although the fact that it didn’t bother you is hard for me to understand – to me, the fact that someone’s action toward me bothers me is a definitional component of that action being an assault). There is no escaping the conclusion, however, that sexual assault happens to women a lot more than it happens to men. She isn’t saying that women ought to live paralyzed in fear, only that women have reason to take more precautions in their interactions with strangers than men do.

3) She NEVER suggests that all men are rapists. She does make the true assertion that a certain subset of men (which she quite clearly believes is a minority of men) are rapists and that she has no way of knowing any given man is a rapist when he interacts with her. This means that she will take certain reasonable precautions in dealing with him until she knows him better.

4) It is very difficult for me to imagine how fifteen emails in two days after a single date containing scolds for non-responsiveness is reasonable. Maybe she drugged his drink and stole his wallet? But scenarios in which what he is doing is reasonable seem pretty far-fetched. She was actually quite clear about what she said “no” to – she said no to further contact. He continues to contact her anyway. By saying that we don’t have both sides of the story, you are suggesting that she has to justify her demand that he stop contacting her. This heavily implies that you don’t think she has the right to terminate this relationship for any reason she wants. By the way, she doesn’t use this guy as a means of making generalities about all men. In fact, she compares the guy with the cockroach tattoos favorably to this chap. What she is doing is perfectly reasonable – she is making an individualized conclusion about an individual man based on his individual behavior. Isn’t that what you want women to do?

5) You are absolutely correct that she conflates sexual assault and rape. This was careless on her part and a valid criticism can be made of this. However, it doesn’t affect the validity of her advice or conclusions. If we replace all instances of “rape” and “rapist” with “sexual assault” and “sexual assaulter,” it doesn’t cause any of her advice to men here to be unreasonable. The fact that rape is worse than non-rape forms of sexual assault doesn’t make sexual assault any less undesirable.

6)2) Nothing about the way Starling treats men is pathological or unreasonable. Her demands amount to 1) don’t sexually assault me; 2) don’t contact me when I ask you not to contact me; and 3) don’t pester me when my body language signals I want to be left alone. She is not saying that men don’t have a right to occupy the same public spaces as women. She is not saying that she has the right to pepper spray you if she isn’t in the mood to talk to you. And she is definitely not accusing all men of being rapists. My whole point is that Starling never makes an unreasonable behavioral demands, but your strongly negative reaction to what she says leads me to wonder whether you disagree. If she is making an unreasonable demand, I want to know what, specifically, you think it is.

You make the entirely unfounded assumption at the end of your essay that Starling’s real problem is that she is attracting average frustrated chumps. Aside from Mr. Email, she doesn’t tell us anything about her tastes in men or the type she is generally attracting. The only conclusions we can draw are that she doesn’t like rapists and she doesn’t like men who violate her boundaries.

And yes, individuals have a right to choose not to interact with someone on the basis of race. It’s not nice or commendable behavior, but it’s an individual choice. If Starling refused to interact with Asian men (like myself), I would think less of her and call her a racist, but I wouldn’t deny her the right to make that choice. In fact, she would be doing me a favor because I wouldn’t want to interact with a racist. If she were an employer engaging in discrimination on those grounds, it would be another story. But she is an individual and individuals have the right to make irrational choices about personal interactions.

6)3) This is probably the most disturbing statement you make this entire exchange. It is men’s responsibility not to be rapists and creeps, not her responsibility not to attract rapists and creeps. If a female friend of yours has been date raped, do you ask her to spend time evaluating why she attracted a rapist? I would hope not.

And yes, asking whether pestering a woman who doesn’t want to talk to you is a good strategy for attracting women ought to be a dumb question. Unfortunately, your essay is the one that prompted it.

@Eric – It’s been a while since I revisited the context of this blog post. I will do my best to address your points.

1) My use of the words “domination” and “control” were specifically regarding her use of the teacher/student metaphor. If I suggest you are a student and I am a teacher, what does that imply about my perception of your knowledge, understanding, and ability to add value to the conversation?

2) There is some validity to your point here, but it becomes a problem with this point is used to support a pattern of victimization. I have been sexually assaulted on more than one occasions including having a female manager grope me while working on a ladder. It didn’t bother me, and if I had filed a complaint it would have most likely been laughed at. Reverse the genders, and it could have been a law suit. Many women use false rape claims against men for malicious intent. The percentage of rape claims that fall into this category have been shown to be at least 20% and possibly as high as 60%.

3) She is justifying her behavior with the false fear that all men are rapists. She can behave however she wants. However, spreading this mentality as somehow acceptable is damaging to our overall social structure much the same way as saying it’s ok to assume all women are manipulative and materialistic. Some are, but not all… and it’s horribly unfair to the ones who are not to treat this as if they are. All you accomplish is hurting those who have chosen to be better.

4) I don’t have a problem with anyone terminating relationships if they choose and don’t see where in my writings you would have thought otherwise. If I said something to suggest this, please point it out so I can address it…

5) You’re missing one of the most important points completely. If you’re going to use statistical evidence to back up a point, it is unethical to knowing skew those numbers in favor of your argument. What she presented is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and there are thousands of eager readers who will consume that information without verification and use it to justify their own victim patterns.

6) You seem to be projecting things I never said. What would be reasonable is for her to :

1) Verify her statistics before presenting them to a mass audience (a sensitive audience) as facts
2) Stop blaming men for the way she treats men. If this were race based instead of gender based, we’d never accept it. If she were to say she was scared of any black person that approached her because a black person mugged her, we would not discuss this issue the way we are now.
3) Spend some time evaluating why she is attracting the kind of men she is attracting instead of making broad assumptions and accusations about all men.

And, finally, no… You can’t attract a woman by pestering her when she doesn’t want to talk to you. That was a pretty dumb question.

1) I don’t understand how you reach the conclusion that Miss LonelyHearts is seeking domination and control. She is asking that her right to choose with whom she will interact be respected. This is a right that you probably take for granted. After all, do you think you have an obligation to hear out a telemarketer that calls your house or read every piece of junk mail you get? Of course not. A woman has the right to determine the degree to which she will allow you to participate in her life. We men have that same right vis-a-vis women, but since random women we meet are significantly less likely to test that right (which is not to say it doesn’t happen), we’re more likely to take it for granted. What degree of interaction are women required to allow random men so as to avoid being controlling under your definition? How is refusing to interact with you oppressive? From where I see it, a woman is no more oppressing anyone by refusing advances or flirtation than you would be to me if you refused to sell me your car.

2) I’m not in a particularly good position to judge whether Starling’s fear of being raped, sexually assaulted, or groped is reasonable, since I’m a man and it doesn’t typically occur to me to worry about these things. I can say that my wife has had a dirty homeless man aggressively paw at her on a train while calling her beautiful. She found this experience understandably unpleasant, the compliment notwithstanding. What’s more, while a lot of women I know have at least one story (frequently more than one story) of an experience like this, virtually no man I know has. This suggests to me that I shouldn’t be surprised that most women are less willing to take chances with their safety in public than I am.

3) She is not accusing anyone of being a rapist. Nor is she suggesting that legal or punitive measures be taken against any man. She is saying that she doesn’t know whether a random man is a rapist and she has no more obligation to take the chances on that than you do to take the chance that your bike won’t get stolen if you leave it outside unlocked.

4) Why do you have a problem with her asking a man in whom she is not interested to stop contacting her? Does she have a moral obligation to keep taking his calls or responding to his emails? Both men and women have the right to terminate a relationship at any time, for any reason or no reason. Think about it, if someone you don’t like and don’t want to talk to keeps calling you, do you have an obligation to speak to them?

5) If Starling is confusing sexual assault and rape stats, so what? She probably sees both as strongly undesirable. If you tell a woman that, no she doesn’t have a 1/6 chance of being raped, only sexually assaulted, she’s not going to be very reassured.

6) Your assumptions about what Starling wants sexually have no real basis in anything in her essay. The only thing we know about her tastes in men is that she doesn’t like men who breach her personal boundaries, boundaries she believes she has the right to establish. You seem to think that her right to establish personal boundaries is more limited; again, I’d like to know where you think those boundaries ought to be.

What worries me about your argument is that it suggests that people shouldn’t have the right to establish personal boundaries and don’t have the right to choose the circumstances or intensity of their interactions with you. If Starling is being unreasonable, what would be reasonable?

You also talk at length about how you’ve changed so as to be an “average frustrated chump” no longer. Does that require making advances on or pestering people who don’t want to talk to you?

I think the rape accusation vs. rape conviction data is a bit misleading since rape is difficult to prove. For all we know, 95% of the cases thrown out were on insufficient evidence where a rape actually took place. We simply don’t know.

“However, she’s scared because she keeps dwelling on, reading about, talking about, and exposing herself to the things that scare her.”
I feel like you did a terrific job of summarizing many feminist blogs with this line.

I’m a student from Raanana (Israel).

I have to analyze how much time someone spend on internet.

There are websites which are a guilty pleasure, but there are websites which only have a visits duration of 40 seconds.

I would like to know how much time do you spend on internet (day/week/month).

Thanks for your help!

Rick