[peterwwillis]

I think you and vinceguidry are really missing the point.

"I, and she, would rather deal with the consequences of being really attractive than to stop."

There should be no consequences to how you look, in general, but especially not the kind of consequences that women have to deal with.

Some people (probably most people) don't wear clothes just to get a reaction from others. They wear clothes because they just like them, and don't expect, and should not be forced to comply with, unwanted attention from anyone, simply because of how they choose to dress. vinceguidry stated as much, but then seemed to just go "oh well, that's how things are I guess."

The "real answer" of "what should I do" about being treated this way is to fight this misconception that unwanted behavior is simply expected and has to be either accepted or you have to change your looks. Nobody should have to change how they look to prevent being mistreated. This is not an acceptable choice, and you should not put up with it, nor should anyone.

And as far as comparing yourselves to women's experiences, yes, you may both get "undesireable attention" for the clothes you both choose to wear. But this treatment is not even remotely like the abuse women receive just for wearing a skirt, or having the audacity to have big breasts or a nice butt or a pretty face.

While you are welcome to have your own opinion, lumping your own experiences in with theirs and expressing an opinion about both as if they were one experience is not only factually inaccurate, it prevents discussion about the issue at hand, which is women receive unfair and undesireable treatment from men.

[yummyfajitas]

It's not possible to know attention is unwanted until after it's given. Sometimes such attention is wanted.

I know at least two women who sometimes complain about unwanted attention from men at tech conferences and similar circumstances. On the other hand, they both slept with me within a few hours of meeting me under the exact same circumstances as a result of exactly the same type of attention. They just happened to find me attractive but other folks unattractive. This doesn't make the unattractive folks hitting on them sexist villains. It just makes me a guy blessed with virtues like being tall and having a symmetric face.

The fact that women receive more attention is solely proportional to the convention that men must approach women. Feel free to try to change that - I'm sure nerds with approach anxiety everywhere will thank you if you succeed.

Attention, wanted or unwanted, is of course always proportional to how desirable a person is. That's the cost of being beautiful. Similarly, being a hot commodity in the job market has some costs like unwanted recruiter attention, in addition to benefits like six figure salaries.

Is it really a worthwhile use of our time and attention to make life marginally better for people who are already at the top of the heap? (Not that you've actually provided any mechanism for separating wanted and unwanted attention.) Why not focus your time and attention on the folks who are really suffering - e.g., low skill workers who are barred from working in the US, or unattractive men who get laid once a year at best? Why is increasing social inequality such a priority of yours?

[peterwwillis]

"It's not possible to know attention is unwanted until after it's given."

It is totally possible to know in many different circumstances. Let's take the_af's example: sexual attention in the workplace.

IT IS NEVER APPROPRIATE TO GIVE SOMEONE SEXUAL ATTENTION IN THE WORKPLACE. So, right there we've got at least one way to tell when someone wants attention or not.

Another way to tell is if you are engaged in any kind of business transaction. Paying money at the toll booth, getting your strawberry power boost at Smoothie King, getting an adjustment in yoga class, getting help from tech support. Do not hit on people during a business transaction.

Yet another big hint is any time you're interacting with people you don't know in a situation where they would neither expect nor look for attention. Ask yourself if they came there to get hit on - coffee shop? Nope, they came for coffee. Farmer's market? Nope, came for vegetables. At a tech conference? They came to listen to tech talks. They did not attend so you could hit on them.

--

On a more personal note: you, sir, are basically the stereotype of a misogynist womanizer. You go to tech conferences and hit on women, and even as they complain to your face about guys who pull the same shit you do, you completely ignore the fact that they're telling you they do not want that kind of attention there. The fact that you can convince them to sleep with you does not justify this behavior.

You say women receive more attention because of a social convention about hitting on people, completely missing the fact that most women do not want to fuck everyone they meet, like most men seem to. Women actually receive more attention because of a different social convention - that men believe they have the right to objectify and pursue sex from every woman they find attractive.

Finally, men who don't get laid are not suffering. Except maybe by suffering under the delusion that they are owed sex.

[the_af]

You more or less have to assume sexual attention is unwanted in the workplace. This is merely a default, and is sometimes the wrong assumption; the problem is that the error is more serious when you assume the attention is ok but wasn't.

"But I'm polite and I'll back off if Cute Tech Support Gal isn't uninterested" isn't enough. When multiple customers decide to hit on her, this is probably upsetting to her regardless of whether you in particular were willing to back off. Even if everyone backs off it's still upsetting. It negatively impacts her work experience. Especially if her coworker, Tech Support Guy, is not constantly flirted with and customers treat him more professionally instead.

To me it's self-evident that hitting on someone using a tech support form or chat is especially lame. We're not talking about a couple who are coworkers, go to lunch frequently, talk every day, and then something blossoms between them. I've no problem with that. Instead, this is creepy male customer behavior, which decide to abruptly hitting on a staff member just because she was a girl and they liked their tiny profile picture. This really screams "inappropriate".

[JoeAltmaier]

...and the big issue facing society is, how much of that is really programmable? Shall we chemically sterilize men on one end of the spectrum? Or sequester women in convents on the other. Which in-between ideas are really practical, and which fly in the face of a million years of evolution?

[vinceguidry]

> Some people (probably most people) don't wear clothes just to get a reaction from others.

The clothes people choose to wear becomes a part of their identity. They are choosing for a reason, that reason comes from them. Unless you're a kid and your parents are picking out your clothes for you, what you wear is a reflection of who you are.

Nobody deserves to receive negative attention from others based on how they dress, but it's a bit of wishful thinking to claim that there should be no consequences to how you look. People get what they work towards, not what they deserve. And two people can receive the same attention, one person can receive it positively, the other negatively. Without reading a person's mind, it's impossible to know how to 'safely' interact with them.

> he "real answer" of "what should I do" about being treated this way is to fight this misconception

Need to stop you right there. You can't demand that someone get political just to change their personal situation. Fighting for social justice is a privilege afforded to those who have managed to reach a point in their lives where they can afford to spend great deals of their time persuading others to change the way they think.

You and I have this privilege, most people do not. Many people, if they start trying to fight the "way things are", it will get them fired.

> While you are welcome to have your own opinion, lumping your own experiences in with theirs and expressing an opinion about both as if they were one experience is not only factually inaccurate, it prevents discussion about the issue at hand, which is women receive unfair and undesireable treatment from men.

Nobody is doing this. I expressed an experience I had that I felt had parallels to her experience. Both experiences had parallels to the ordinary one. I shared them because I felt they'd help illustrate what goes on under their noses. It's not quite as overt as in my case, but it still happens, more subtly.

I'm not trying to conflate, but to raise awareness.