4/01/2014

The Hint Not Taken

(What's the lowdown on High Concept storytelling? Click here to find out on this week's Jared's Inkwell! -JMG)

Story Sent in by Heather:

I met Don on a dating site, where my username was Pleather110. We hit it off, things went great, we slept together, and he never called me afterward.

It wasn't until I received an informative email from another guy on the same dating site that I checked out Don's profile again.

In it, he had written: "Pleather110 is cute but a lousy lay. GUYS BEWARE!!!"

My first impulse was to write him something nasty. My second impulse was to ignore it. Thankfully, my third impulse kicked in and I reported it as abuse to the site moderators. In less than an hour, his profile was down.

He wrote me an email late the next day: "Did you have anything to do with my profile being taken down?"

I didn't reply. He called me a few times but I didn't answer and he left no messages.

Not too long after that, an email appeared in my dating site inbox. It was written by someone with username PLEATHER110_SUCKS. This user's profile essays were the words "PLEATHER110 SUCKS!" over and over again.

Once more I reported it to the site mods and it was taken down in short order. Since then, to my knowledge there haven't been any further provocations.

30 comments:

  1. She wouldn't let his twin watch. But strangely, after looking at her profile picture, she got an email from C_Horse.

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  2. Although Don's behavior was totally shameful, I'm also thinking the OP really needs to lift her game in the sack.
    This date aside, I had an incredible march for EVS Ribbon day. I may have over did it on the Viagra and rohypnol as my house now looks like a cock forest.

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  3. @ Try - I've gathered together a small band of about a million or so and we are marching on all the bars in the downtown area. We're on a mission and we won't stop till every woman in town is cured of her EVS. Ribbons for EVERYONE!

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  4. @ Archy. I'm delivering hard unconscious men to the needy across the nation. I have to admit I'm keeping a few in the basement for myself in case of emergency. Safety first people.

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  5. OP, did you sleep together on the first date? That's the impression I get from the way you phrased your first paragraph. Look, if you shag people you barely know, not only will many guys not respect you, but it is also hard to get a sense of their personality and filter out the crazies. Third-wave feminism may talk a lot of nonsense about "slut-shaming" and how it is good for women to be promiscuous for the sake of equality (because according to their bigoted doctrine all men are promiscuous - which is highly inaccurate), but the fact of the matter is that realistically we live in a society where sleeping around carries significant opportunity costs.

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  6. @Wolfie - that's not really how the argument against slut shaming goes. There's no one saying that you should sleep with more people than you desire to in order to fill some hypothetical "equality" quota to keep up with the Y-Chromosome Joneses. Instead, it's the simple and difficult to deny set of points:
    1) If one wants to have sex with someone
    2) and they have consensual sex
    3) then two people had sex, not one person
    and thus
    4) shaming only one half of the sex-havers naturally leads one to ask; why that person and not the other person?

    It's quite difficult to make the case that disproportionately one side should get tarred for this without resorting to some ill thought out mental corner surrounded by paint.

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  7. Fizziks, the problem with your argument is that women who object to slut-shaming make the (incorrect) assumption that men who slut-shame women give other men a pass to be sluts, and that's simply not true. We acknowledge when other men are sluts but we don't shame them for the simple reason that it doesn't impact US because we are not sleeping with those men. (Except in the gay community, where slut-shaming is and does occur.) The responsibility to slut-shame men should fall on the people who are actively impacted by the slutty behavior - in other words, men should be free to slut-shame women, and women should be free to slut-shame men. We ALL have a right to avoid sleeping with people who don't suit our emotional needs (in this example, slutty people), and warning our friends about those people is a matter of informed consent.

    So I guess my question is, why are you women not doing enough to slut-shame men who sleep around? If you knew a guy is a player or a dog who sticks their junk into anybody who has a pulse, wouldn't it be your responsibility as a decent human being warn their friends about him? Why are you saying it's men's responsibility to police not only female behavior but also our own, when it would make much more sense from both a logistical perspective and an egalitarian one for you women to police our behavior instead?

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  8. Just yikes man, yikes. That is one thorny tangle of rhetorical fallacies. It think it resolves fairly quickly if we can de-conflate some things.
    1) "We ALL have a right to avoid sleeping with people who don't suit our emotional needs" -- Did I or anyone say differently? All the nope you can eat. It is, though, rather simple to not have sex with someone without shaming them or name calling or participating in mean spirited behind-the-back talk. And it further is rather simple to tell someone a fact they may find relevant about a potential partner also without shaming that potential partner or name calling or participating in mean spirited behind-the-back talk. Seriously, I'm not shagging the entire planet's population minus one, and I never find it necessary.
    2) "Why are you saying it's men's responsibility to police not only female behavior but also our own" -- Well, for starters I am pretty sure I'm taking the stand that maybe one doesn't have to police those behaviors at all. And then I am making the secondary stand that if one does decide to police it (which would imply a reason to be involved, right? Like a non-consenting third party was involved or duplicitous behavior to others, etc.) then any one that was party to the act that required you to police deserves that policing.
    3) Pretty sure I was able to make all my previous points without saying "women should..." or "men should...." so all points you have that attribute me assigning responsibilities to each gender are entirely in your own mind.
    4) Read 3) again.

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  9. Fizziks, the problem is that what you call "slut-shaming" I call "sharing data." Slut is not an insult, it is an actual dictionary word used to describe somebody who sleeps around freely. You call it an "insult" or "name calling" but that's incorrect: the reason the term has taken on a pejorative meaning is because most men don't want to be with somebody like that, so we avoid relationships with them. If you wanted to avoid "insults" we could come up with a new word like "koeselitz" to describe people who sleep around, but what good would that do? Within a few years that new word would take on exactly the same pejorative meaning and negative connotations, because it's not the word that stigmatizes slutty women, it's their BEHAVIOR.

    As far as point 2, by "policing women's behaviors" I am simply talking about the right to refuse having sex with somebody whose behavior you find unappealing, and sharing information about that behavior with your friends so that they can make a fully informed decision about whether to get involved with that person. For example, if we changed the definition of a person who sleeps around freely to "koeselitz" I would be entirely within my rights to say "I don't sleep with women who are koeselitz," right? And if I saw my friend thinking about dating a woman who is a koeselitz I would be justified in saying "Hey dude, you're free to make your own decisions, but I just want you to know that that girl is a total koeselitz." You call it "policing behavior", but isn't my friend entitled to have that information before he makes a decision about whether to sleep with that person? This principle is called INFORMED CONSENT, and it's something that I'm a big fan of.

    Your rhetorical fallacy is that you keep saying that I hold a double standard about women being judged for being koeselitz but men aren't. First of all, nobody is "judging" anybody, we are simply sharing data about their behavior so that our friends can be fully INFORMED before CONSENTING to sex. Liberals call this judging because third-wave feminists have such an absurd sense of entitlement that they equate men refusing to sleep with them (because of their own behavior, no less) as "judging."

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  10. If any of that were actually true, it could be an issue. But it's not. You're saying the equivalent of since any term for gays or minorities can be used as a slur, there's no way to communicate that someone is gay or minority without sounding like a bigot. But, of course, there is. The difference is tone and tact. It's perfectly possible to say to someone, "Actually, XYZ, I've heard that you had sex on the first date with the last four dates you had. That doesn't fit with the kind of relationship I'm looking for."

    For point 2, again, it's possible to refuse sex and to tell other people relevant information without shaming. You're being kind of deliberately reductive in claiming that shaming behavior is consists of only refusing sex or making someone aware that another person thinks of sex differently. Just like I might say, "Hey, going on a date with LMN? I know he really drinks heavily. Thought you'd want to know." I can do that with sex and it also isn't shaming. Shaming is an action that involves being actively nasty or mean-spirited. I tend to reserve it for people that hurt others or property, and not just people that have different attitudes toward things. I also tend to stand up for people on the receiving end of nasty behavior that wasn't triggered by harm to others or other's property.

    And you continue to conflate my position that perhaps the nastiness is questionable with the straw man that I therefore am requiring people to have sex with someone one doesn't want to. You have to be aware that isn't what I've said, especially since I explicitly said it in the previous post. Point 1 of that post, even. I find it difficult to believe that you genuinely think I'm saying the only way to not be nasty is through socially coerced sex. But it is the argument you can win, so you keep attributing it to me.

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  11. Fizziks, what you're saying about "being nice" makes sense, but only if you assume a certain basic level of respect for your fellow human beings. In other words, the fundamental premise that you are building your entire argument on is inherently flawed. Most people are short-sighted, self-centered, irrational, and easily led by anyone claiming to have answers. How can you look at the world around us - with global warming, incredible societal injustices, and a vast discrepancy between the rich and poor - and conclude that the default state of humanity is NOT inherently contemptible?

    Saying that people "deserve" respect simply by being born is thus completely irrational. Respect is not something anybody is entitled to, it's something you earn through your actions. That's another problem I have with third-wave feminist entitlements - if I don't respect one of them, they say "You're a bigot! You don't respect me because I'm a woman!" whereas the truth is that their gender has nothing to do with it - I don't respect them because they're a PERSON, and they haven't done anything yet to earn my respect.

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  12. And this is the danger I flagged about "resorting to some ill thought out mental corner surrounded by paint."

    It's now apparently irrational to try not be a dick? Interesting. Have you looked into the arguments for the evolutionary advantages of empathy?

    Are you convinced your all-caps and bolding is strengthening your case?

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  13. Ok, fair point - no more caps lock words, I promise. :-)

    Fizziks, I'm not objecting to the idea of trying not to be a dick. What I object to is that you seem to consider niceness a basic social obligation rather than a kindness. Nobody should be obliged to be nice to each other - that sort of thought policing goes against the most fundamental principle of a free society. If I don't want to sleep with a woman because she's slept with twelve guys in the past year, I'm entirely within my rights to tell her "Sorry, I don't sleep with skanky sluts" and then she is entirely within her rights to tell me I'm an asshole. Obviously I don't phrase it that way because I try to be considerate of people, but it's very important to me that my niceness is voluntary - a gift of sorts - rather than something that they should consider themselves entitled to.

    As for empathy, your information is outdated. Empathy may have been an asset to humans back when in the days when we were fending off wild animals and rival tribes, but now that we live in a civil society the greatest threat to human beings is each other. For example, psychological studies have repeatedly shown that empathy tends to skew significantly lower in people who are very successful in society, like CEOs and celebrities. From a purely logical perspective, that doesn't scream "evolutionary advantage" to me. On the contrary - in evolutionary terms, that would make empathy more like the appendix: a vestigial organ that is gradually being evolved out of existence.

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  14. The thing about the belief that humans are brutal in a general sense is that, if one does a comparative study with other animals, one finds that even our modern society, with its injustices large and small, is overwhelmingly nonviolent and cooperative. Even if one does a comparative study with historical human societies, one finds that in aggregate violence is diminishing. Crime is down. Full scale war is down. (Skip first paragraph for relevant info). Physical punishment is down.

    My information is far from outdated. The better angels of our nature are winning. It may be unevenly distributed globally, but it is measurable and verifiable of a falsifiable (and hence scientific) postulate.

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  15. Well, of course violence is down. We don't need war or crime to hurt each other anymore - we can do it more safely and efficiently with the stroke of a pen or simply hitting the hashtag symbol. Why bother killing somebody when you can attempt to destroy their career and reputation by manufacturing an outrage campaign against them? Why commit genocides and risk global outrage when you can have the same effect simply by cutting food stamps? And slavery? Pfft, that's so outdated. The modern American entrepreneur simply leases their slaves rather than buying them.

    What I'm trying to say is that the decreased violence you are talking about has less to do with the "better angels" of our nature, and more to do with the fact that humans have systems in place to automate our evil now, so we can just press buttons to commit atrocities and don't have to personally get our hands dirty.

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  16. The thing about arguing that people are basically crap is the combinatorics of it.

    Yes, each mass shooting, each terrorist event, each Madoff, each Steubenville shows how easy it is to just shit in the water supply, so to speak, and give any person a bad time. And as for automation, our technology leaves us vulnerable in ways we often scarcely imagine before the harm is done.

    And that, perhaps seemingly perversely, is exactly why I do believe it's evidence for how great we are to each other, generally. Precisely because it is so easy. It's easy and our peace and safety is fragile and yet most of us are safe and treat people great the majority of the time. We are so very very vulnerable,and the whole reason we can move freely in the world without being just an abused deflated soccer ball of a meat sack is because the good so vastly outnumbers the bad.

    Badness exists from combinatorics: if it's possible to act a way, someone will act that way. What maters isn't the existence of the lousy stuff, it's the relative frequency of it.

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  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. Fizziks, I think we're talking about different things here. You think that when I'm talking about the general evilness of humanity that I'm talking about the "one-off" events: things like mass shootings, financial scams, etc. I'm not. The crazies are just part of life and that's something that would happen in any system, even utopia.

    What I'm talking about are structural inequities baked into the system which oppress people wholesale. For example, if you'll read the last link in my previous post, you'll see how convicts are essentially being used as slave labor. being paid 25 cents an hour (while the industrial prison that leases this slave labor makes huge profits). I can show you how the corporations that use these slaves lobby to have harsher laws passes to imprison more people so that they have more slaves to fuel their economy. Hell, some of these for-profit prisons have even had judges bribed to sell children into our new slave system.

    But it's not just that. It's things like our lobbying system, whereby the rich legally pay bribes to have congress pass laws so they can exploit the lower classes and make even more money. Or the way people in overpopulated countries keep reproducing without end, even though there is evidence that the reason their poverty is so intense is specifically because of overpopulation. All of these problems are things that people could easily fix if they just had the guts to stop bickering and unite, but it'll never happen because people are just too cowardly and self-interested to do anything about it. Trust me - I used to be an activist, so it's not like I haven't TRIED to motivate people. Even on so-called "liberal" websites, they're more interested in philosophical navel-gazing and competing in the Oppression Olympics rather than risking their asses to fix the system. That's why I changed from liberal to conservative. At a certain point, you just have to give up and say "Fuck it, I've tried to help you, but I just don't care anymore. You lazy selfish pigs deserve this shit. From now on, I'm going to focus on me and mine, so that when society collapses because you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, at least I'll have the resources and support network needed to help my friends and family survive it."

    Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this anytime soon, because it would be impossible to "prove" conclusively how screwed up humanity is without delving into the ethical calculus of people's actions. However, what I'd like to show you is that a reasonable case can easily be built around humanity being contemptible, and therefore one of the postulates that you have built your argument on - the claim that respect should be the default assumption - is invalid. Even if you disagree with my conclusion about humanity, you can surely see how easy it is for me and many people to arrive at such a conclusion, and for you to just dismiss their opinions out of hand by effectively saying "Well, people should be nice and respectful of others, and anybody who doesn't default to respect for a stranger that they have never met must have something wrong with them" is really a very flawed argument that relies on a lot of unproven (and very optimistic) assumptions about human nature. And to assume that this lack of respect stems from their gender just adds insult to injury.

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  19. As lovely of a diversion as the side argument was, we were never going to conclusively settle the aeons long debate of if mankind is essentially good or evil :)

    But do you really need to prove that all of humanity is screwed up in order to justify the original stance? Because that's why you introduced this side debate and very shiny distraction.

    The thing I find about people that take the "I have a right to X" stance, is that very often it is being said in response to just another person expressing an opinion. What the I-have-a-righters are objecting to is that they are receiving opprobrium, while simultaneously insisting on their right to give opprobrium to others. Let's take this case: you have a right to slut shame, because you're just stating your opinion and sharing information, and you have a right to do that however you choose and not just in the most tactful way. But the much cited third-wave feminists and anyone else that says differently is attempting to coerce you into sex you don't want. The much cited third-wave feminists are wrong to expect you to respect them before they've earned it from you, but you are to be treated respectfully by them by default.

    It gets to within shouting distance of "rights for me but not for thee."

    If one wants to treat people in a shabbier fashion than is strictly necessary because one doesn't like their sex choices, I fail to see why that person should be exempt from shabbier than strictly necessary treatment by people that don't like your choices, either.

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  20. Fizziks, everything that you've said in the above comment is true and I agree with most of it, but I feel that you are failing to extend your analysis to its logical conclusion.

    Look, words - when used publically - are weapons. There's a big difference between telling somebody privately "I think you're a bigot" and saying it in a public forum. Being branded a bigot is one of the worst things you can be - it's just slightly above being a rapist on the social respectability scale. Celebraties have been shunned, jobs have been lost, and relationships have been destroyed because of this accusation being lobbed. So saying that such an accusation is just "obbrobrium" is completely untrue. Publically accusing somebody of bigotry is not something that can only result in "hurt feels": it is a direct attack on everything that person holds dear, and like any unprovoked attack it deserves to be met with full-scale retaliation.

    Of course, I can anticipate your rebuttal here. If words are weapons, then isn't calling somebody a slut ALSO an attack? After all, being successfully branded a slut has exactly the same potential to damage one's career and relationships. Why should one be exempt from retaliation when calling somebody a slut but not when calling them a bigot? The answer is that they SHOULDN'T. When you attribute that line of reasoning to me, you're completely mischaracterizing my argument. Calling somebody a "slut" is also an attack, and the victimized party is entirely justified if she wants to call for blood.

    The difference is in the truth value of the arguments. A slut (according to the dictionary) is basically somebody promiscuous who sleeps around with others, so if you call somebody a slut for doing that you are telling the truth and being completely accurate (even though you are being an asshole). However, the dictionary defines a "bigot" as one who holds negative views of a group based on their race or gender. If somebody publically calls you a "slut" because they disapprove of your behavior, that's not bigotry: that's just asshole moralizing. So if a promiscuous woman responds to an accusation of sluttiness by calling her accuser a bigot, she is taking the argument to a new low, because she has only been attacked with truth, whereas her retaliation is to respond with slander and lies. In other words, she has just escalated a minor verbal skirmish into a nuclear exchange. Telling lies about somebody is far worse than simply being an asshole - in fact, it's considered so reprehensible by society that we have laws specifically to protect against it (it's called "slander" and "libel"). Do you see what I mean? If somebody who was slut-shamed simply retaliated by calling the offender an "asshole" or a "jerk", those would be truthful comments and I would be OK with the retaliation. If she was slut-shamed inaccurately (ie, she is not promiscuous), then I would have no problem with her calling the other person a bigot because he slandered her first, so she is entitled to equal retaliation. If she was slut-shamed accurately and had proof (not just her "gut feeling") that the reason she was slut-shamed was because she was a woman, then I would also be OK with her calling the other person a bigot, because then her accusation would be accurate. My problem is the fact that when a man slut-shames a woman, third-wave feminist's instinctive response is to accuse the man of bigotry. That's not only hurtful but it's usually slander. The hurtfulness they deserve, but the slander they do not.

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  21. P.S. Sorry about the two caps-lock words - I got carried away in my rhetorical passion. <:-(

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  22. As interesting as the wolf vs Fizziks discussion has been, I'd like to ask wolfdreams... where does slut-shaming come into this at all? "Don" didn't shame Heather for sleeping with him on the first date, he just said she was bad at sex. So not only is he just as "slutty" as she is for sleeping with someone on the first date, he's also a lousy human being for having a crappy attitude about it afterwards, when he could have just shrugged it off and gone on to his next conquest.

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  23. Well, the data presented here makes it sound like the OP slept with a guy she barely knew, and she describes it in such a manner as to make it seem commonplace. This would make her a slut, and the problems she is describing here (ex-lovers talking smack about her, people she slept with turning out to be crazy, etc) are EXACTLY the kind of problems that sluts, whether male or female, often tend to have in my experience.

    If the OP is OK with being a slut, that's cool. It's a personal choice and I'm certainly not going to judge her morality. My point is simply that such behavior typically carries a fairly predictable set of problems, so if she chooses to engage in this lifestyle, having this kind of situation really shouldn't come as a shock to her.

    I pointed this simple fact out (in comment 7 of this thread), and from there the thread sort of naturally got sidetracked into slut-shaming.

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  24. First of all Fizziks, I clicked on the two links to your definitions, and the way you have quoted them is shamefully inaccurate. For example, under the definition of nigger, you conveniently forget to include the words "usually offensive" (which are repeated twice, so it's pretty significant that you left it out). For the definition of bigot, I also noticed that you cut your quotation short and omitted the more significant half of the definition from your quote, namely "especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance." If you're going to quote definitions, be fair and use the complete definitions, not cherry-picked excerpts that completely misrepresent the dictionary's intent.

    So no, it's not bigoted to hate somebody because of their behavior. It's bigoted to hate somebody because of a group they fall into, such as "all women," "all black people," "all gay people" etc. If you want to split hairs, I suppose you could define anything you want as a "group", but by that standard, we would ALL be bigots. After all, when hasn't somebody said "man, I hate Republicans!" or "I hate those assholes at the DMV."

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  25. For the record, I personally don't hate sluts. In fact, two of my friends are sex workers, so I'm hardly one to judge. However, I fully support other people's right to despise and attack any behavior that they want, as long as it is not something like race, gender, sexual identity, or something that the victim has no control over. One of the things that makes this country great is that people have the freedom to attack other people and try to cut each other down in an attempt to reshape society, as long as they accept the risk of being cut down themselves by the people they have attacked. That is what makes the U.S.A. the greatest country in the world - with enough effort and hard work, you can shape this country into your vision of perfection, and the conflict between these visions promotes evolution, darwinism, and new ideas.

    However, one very important thing to remember is that we have laws and rules that we must all abide by - in order to maintain bounds to these conflicts and stop them from degenerating into outright anarchy. For example, if I hate a certain politician, I can't just go out and shoot them - as much fun as it might be. I can try to ruin them financially, I can try to expose their sexual peccadilloes, etc... but I need to operate within the bounds of the system. In return, I gain the protection of the system from other people, who can only attack me in certain tightly defined ways. This is called the social contract.

    When somebody violates the law by slandering another person, they are breaking the social contract. This makes them a threat to anybody who has an interest in a fair and orderly society. After all, why should I play by the rules if other people don't? If they can ignore the rules for slander, then why shouldn't Jack ignore the rules about not stabbing people? And if Jack is going to stab people, then why can't Jill embark on an arson spree? After all, fire is so pretty!

    I think where you and I are failing to see eye-to-eye, Fizziks, is that you think people have an obligation to be nice to each other, whereas I think that conflict is important to a healthy and vital society. Similarly, because you don't acknowledge the validity of aggression in the first place, you haven't put a lot of thought into understand why it is so important to have the boundaries that limit such aggression to be absolutely sacred, and why we as a society must do whatever is necessary to make an example of the people who break these rules. People will always find ways to be assholes to each other, but when they cross the line into slander they are indirectly helping to unravel the fabric of society because it is less and less useful for Jack and Jill to participate in the social contract.

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  26. "Well, the data presented here makes it sound like the OP slept with a guy she barely knew, and she describes it in such a manner as to make it seem commonplace."

    Um... wow. That's quite a leap to make. I honestly didn't get this impression at all, and even if it were true, how is it relevant to the story at all? Again, he didn't "shame" her for being a slut, he complained that she was a "bad lay," i.e. bad at sex in his opinion i.e. he didn't enjoy the sex.

    "This would make her a slut, and the problems she is describing here (ex-lovers talking smack about her, people she slept with turning out to be crazy, etc) are EXACTLY the kind of problems that sluts, whether male or female, often tend to have in my experience."

    ...so? You're saying she deserved what he said? She should have just cringed and cried and said "you're right! I'm a slut so I deserve to have someone badmouthing me over my sexual performance!"

    "If the OP is OK with being a slut, that's cool. It's a personal choice and I'm certainly not going to judge her morality."

    But by calling her a slut, you ARE judging her morality. Whether you think it's an accomplished "fact" or not, and whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the word "slut" has a very negative connotation to it in our culture and society. Using it to describe her behavior (based on extremely limited knowledge, no less) is a very judge-y thing to do because you are basically saying that her sleeping with this guy was something she should be ashamed of and should not have done, when really it was just two consenting adults hitting it off and having a one-night stand. I also notice that you haven't commented on how your reasoning makes the guy a slut as well. If the OP had turned it around and done the same to him, would it have been fair play?

    "My point is simply that such behavior typically carries a fairly predictable set of problems, so if she chooses to engage in this lifestyle, having this kind of situation really shouldn't come as a shock to her."

    Again, you're leaping to a lot of conclusions based on a small detail in the story (i.e., they slept together on the first date *therefore* she does this ALL THE TIME). Whether or not it shouldn't have been a shock to the OP, "Don's" behavior was still a crappy and disrespectful thing to do, considering he was just as "slutty" as her. I'm just wondering why you're so hung up on arguing that she's a slut so somehow she deserved all this, when the original complaint was that she was a bad lay, not that she sleeps around (if she even does).

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  27. Luna, I never said she "deserved" this, I'm simply saying this shouldn't come as a surprise to her. Being a slut has both advantages (more sex, more fun) and disadvantages (more crazy people, occasional reputation-smearing). OP needs to do a cost-benefit analysis of her lifestyle to decide if it is worth the trade-off.

    I'm not judging her, and whatever choice she makes is fine by me. I'm simply inviting her to examine the situation from a pragmatic and realistic perspective. Choices carry consequences, and regardless of whether those consequences are "fair" or not, they ought to be considered and factored into one's decisions. Life isn't about fairness, it's about winning.

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  28. Outside of the HUGE argument between the commenters..I am confused. This guy put a rating of her sexual prowess on his own profile? Other men cruise each others profiles for ratings?

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    Replies
    1. LOL!!! Great observation! One potential problem might be that women she knew could be cruising the site. What if a mean co-worker, for example, happened to see that, search the username, and recognize Heather? Yikes.

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