Comment by 37824912238
1 day ago
The thing is, /both people are telling the truth!/ If you read their accounts, they're not especially contradictory. It's not as if she's saying, "he raped me" and he's saying, "no I didn't."
It's somewhat subjective, but if you read between the lines, it's clear, and sad all around:
pretty.direct is borderline incel, incapable of forming meaningful romantic relationships. But he's not being malicious -- in his view, he's acting in good faith, trying to at least get some consensual action.
yifanxing is young and not yet sure how to exist in the world. She believes what people tell her.
They had sex, as humans do. She was friendly with him for a time thereafter, but eventually came to regret the act, and then came to see herself as a victim.
This was understandably unforseen by him, and the whole episode, though unfortunate, is not really worth all the anguish it has caused everyone.
If both people are telling the truth, then it sounds like you're saying that although very sad, a community "gatekeeper" sexually exploiting a vulnerable newcomer is just part of life and we should move past it.
I'm not sure I agree with this, and I think we can and should do better.
Where exactly is the "sexual exploitation" part? He didn't blackmail her, he didn't force her, he didn't offer her favors/status in return for sex. She was not a child, she made her decisions, she regretted them. Yes, there's a power imbalance, but it's not as if this was some sort of Bill Cosby type of situation.
I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance posed here, or if you just can't see it as a problem, but I don't really care. You need to improve.
Too many people (of all genders) see the value that men provide to their potential sex partners as being status and power, and therefore they believe that men should seek to acquire status and power and use these things to bargain for sex.
This leads to all kinds of shitty problems like the potential (I don't want to assert that the proposed situation in this comment thread is the actual ground truth) miscommunication we're seeing here where a man has done what society expects of him and a woman comes to be abused and we can't even agree if that's a bad thing. We focus on her "regret" as if consent were ever possible in such a lopsided situation and she's retracted it after the fact.
When people talk about the rape culture, this is exactly what they mean. If you see no problems here, you're lost in it.
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What does "gatekeeper" even mean in this scenario? There was no employment relationship, no ability for either party to fire someone or impact pay or job responsibilities.
And is "exploiting" synonymous with "having sex with"?
You seem to be saying two people in the same community can never have sex, because one or the other will have more power within that community making it exploitative.
If not, are the circumstances where it's not problematic?
When you're a new member of a community, you're dedicating a lot of effort to working out its norms and customs. How frank are you in giving feedback? Is it OK to swear? When is it appropriate to go out with the group for dinner or a round of drinks? There's no right or wrong answers to these questions, so you can't reason about them from first principles; you just have to learn by absorption what the community finds normal.
As an established member of the community, especially one who routinely organizes events for it, your actions heavily guide that process of absorption. So you can't sleep with anyone in the community until they've been around long enough to understand that the sex has nothing whatsoever to do with community norms. It's not just about whether they think they have to; they have to know that it's not a default, that it's not something a typical community member would do in their shoes, that nobody's going to think they're weird or a prude for turning you down.
"Why would anyone think that in the first place?" There really are communities, including big ones that organize events, where sexual access is part of the norm. Everyone knows what's up when a rock star invites you to share his hotel room. You and I understand that the analogy to a programming conference is ridiculous - because we're deeply acculturated into what a programming conference is and what kinds of things are or aren't normal at them.