[herbig]

"...wore one of those wispy skirts that always make me want to send God a fruit basket for inventing summer."

Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.

And the "because I'm a writer" stuff doesn't even make sense. Because he's a writer he noticed someone being creepy and intervened? I don't understand that logic at all.

It sounds more like because he's a writer he knew the word "trope" and wanted to jam it into an article.

[mtinkerhess]

The author was saying that the woman was attractive, particularly her skirt. It's not sexist to admit to finding someone attractive.

Give it a second reading if you didn't understand the connection between being a writer and the author's interpretation of the events:

> Others might get it for other reasons, but I got it because I am a writer. I knew the tropes and the cliches and the tired old lines. I was aware of how to create a role reversal in the "typical characters."

His point is that other people might experience the situation as "someone being creepy" and someone else intervening, but that he experienced and interpreted the situation differently: in a literary context, as a reversal of cliche roles.

[olalonde]

I genuinely don't understand why this sentence is considered sexist. As a matter of fact, I am often surprised to see how people perceive sexism on HN. For example, I don't see how the douchebag in this story was sexist apart from the fact that the person he was being rude to was a woman... Is that sufficient to call him sexist? Maybe it's a cultural thing?

[foobarbazqux]

Wait, it's sexist to thank God for the physical qualities of the opposite sex?

Thank God for the physical qualities of the opposite sex. (Or evolution, whatever.)

[fosap]

It follows a feminist narrative where woman are asexual beings and sex is something only men like and force upon women. (sex-negative feminism) In such a narrative every statement of attractiveness is ultimately a outing a want-to-be rapist or a predator. If you are in such a narrative it also makes perfect sense to say it's sexist. Outside of that narrative hardly.

[JulianMorrison]

The feminist narrative is that women would like a bit of consent with their sex, thank you very much. That includes eye sex.

[fosap]

Ok, I'm not even sure if you are sarcastic or serious. Did you seriously just say that looking at somebody can constitute rape?

[JulianMorrison]

Nope, but

  as rape is to sex,

so

  nonconsensual leering is to hot eye sex.

[fosap]

So, looking at somebody consensually is "eye sex" and non-consensually is "eye rape"? I have to say... I can't take this vocabulary serious.

/edit

Looking a somebody and having sex with sombody is as far apart for me as a hand shake and a MMA fight: the polar opposite sides in the spectrum of social interaction.

[foobarbazqux]

A substantial part of feminist theory holds that intercourse is rape.

[JulianMorrison]

Nope, just that if what you want is consent, and if you don't permit consent to count unless it's genuinely meant - no pressure, no arm twisting, no punishment for a "no" - then it's damn hard to contrive a circumstance where in a patriarchal society, a man can assume a woman is consenting. "Yes" can only be understood as "yes, given the estimated probability of consequences for no". And it takes a whole lot of effort even to blunt that a little.

[foobarbazqux]

So if consent is more or less meaningless, why isn't it logical to conclude that intercourse is rape?

[mcantelon]

Appreciating clothing that accentuates womens' bodies and being sexist aren't the same thing. But, yes, he is definitely overly enamoured of the word "trope".

[coldtea]

>Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.

No, it does not negate it one fucking iota.

Appreciating a beautiful woman or dress is not sexist in the least. Period.

Appreciating the beauty (in your eyes) of a person of the other sex, and even more, gathering some courage to go and talk and flirt, is how you (and me, and just about everybody fucking else) got into this planet. It's the very basis of every love story.

Only a prudish society, which evolved politically correctness to take the place of its older puritan religious blockings, would ever make the claim that this is the same thing as being "sexist".

What exactly would be the "right thing"?

To only ever be attracted to a person you're in a relationship with? To which you'll end up with in a magical unicorn way, because it would be sexist to like (and even lust) for that person (and, say, his smile or her dress) before you are together?

[cbhl]

Another way to look at this would be to say, "we (i.e., men) are all sexist and we need to help each other not treat women like crap/objects/trophies".

I don't like this way of interpreting the author's article, because it portrays women as helpless princesses that need saving, but I'm not sure what a better one would be.

[michaelochurch]

Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.

I agree with you. If someone (male or female) were writing about an interaction with the genders reversed, you probably wouldn't hear anything about how good-looking the guy was or what he was wearing.

The (unconscious) sexism is not in finding her attractive (obviously) but in the fact that her attractiveness is treated as a relevant detail. How would it be different if she were unattractive? It wouldn't.

[foobarbazqux]

But the attractiveness is the lynchpin of the entire story. Dude wouldn't be hitting on her if she were unattractive. And who wants to rescue an ugly chick? Is the author Shrek or something? There's no fantasy for the reader if she's not attractive.

I think it's passive sexism, in that to play his role he needs a aggressively sexist beast in the triangle.

[fosap]

The outer appearance of the two people interacting are descried. There is even a picture illustrating how the man looked like.

How this is sexism against the woman is beyond me. How this is sexism at all.

This seems to be a feminist keen-jerk reaction. Outer appearance of a somebody? That somebody happens to be a woman? What a misogynist!

[michaelochurch]

I didn't claim he was a misogynist. There's no evidence of that. Now that is an overused word.

Our culture is sexist, and all of us are (in daily practice) to some degree. With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men. For just one example relative to this society (not OP) people don't infer radically different personalities for men based on attractiveness (except, perhaps, for the top and bottom couple of percent) but they do for women.

Yes, I think that, based on the totality of the OP, there's a latent sexism in the way the encounter was presented.

[fosap]

Yes, it is overused, that's why i used it. The last sentence was not serious, but a caricature.

> With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men.

Except there is not in this text. As i said, it is very balanced, if there was not the picture.

Your posts illustrates exactly what i said. Any mention of attractiveness leads to accusation of misogynist (or sexism towards woman, I have to say I don't really know the difference), no matter in witch context. No matter how the author does this for all genders, at some point somebody points out that "all genders" in include woman, and that this is not ok. And clearly discrimination to include women into "all genders".

[foobarbazqux]

On the surface I agree about the statement - I love women's dresses as much as any heterosexual man - but consider what the attractiveness means in the context of the story. She has to be attractive to be the princess. It's not sexism to make that remark, but it was a sexist situation - two men fighting over an attractive woman's affections like a prize.