Meeting people is part of the college experience, and I definitely met people who attended classes with a higher female ratio in the hopes of meeting someone.
But there’s a big difference between “I’ll take an acting class because there’s a lot more women there”, where you might just happen to learn something, and “I’m going to effectively run a class and control the situation so attractive students get an advantage by hanging out with me”
>> No unwanted advances
It seems very appalling when you focus on the bits you don't like and ignore the bits like "no unwanted advances".
Yes, lets cultivate young hetero men to expressly look for sexual opportunities where they have an explicit and conscious asymetrical power-relation to women. Quality dudes these will be.
I'm most depressed that the prevalent attitude of 20's-30's somethings (men and women) tends to be maximizing hookups, binge drinking, and self-indulgence. Read a book, mentor a kid in high school, raise a service animal, donate blood, volunteer for the food bank, or talk to another human like human regardless of where they come from.
I just mean this seems like a case of men competing for womens attention in an arena where they have some kind of competitive advantage against the other men around them.
If you can't go to the bar and be better looking than the guys around you, why not go to a class where you can be more helpful than the guys around you?
As much as it creeps people out to say it out loud, a lot of social life is transactional and competitive.
If you want friends or lovers, you have to have something to offer to them, and it has be more valuable than what other people are offering.
Some people don't have to find clever ways to make this work, or to think about this at all, because they are naturally valuable in some way. These guys are probably not that.
Some folks, e.g., spoiled, expect their desired group to be attracted to and/or be friendly to them. (Brag alert: Myself and my SO - not models but not fugly.)
Others expect others, e.g., incels, expect others to treat them badly, and have a proverbial chip on their shoulders. This can be a combination of social and physical looks. People who have physical disfigurements or unusual appearances have it rough in the world, that it can either make them stronger from repeated exposure or tear them down to retreat into and hate themselves and maybe others. Yellowman and (RIP) Shock G.
We all have something to offer in the right environment, and are relatively useless in the wrong environment. Is there something juvenile about recognizing that and aiming for the right environment?
> Even worse, some women in the class seem oblivious to this or don't care, while the majority of them are insulted and hurt by this.
Well, honestly, I dunno what to say - people who are getting mad that their peers are hooking up can't very well petition[1] to stop other people from hooking up.
> A later comment by the professor makes explicit the harm being done:
>> Even worse, some women in the class seem oblivious to this or don't care, while the majority of them are insulted and hurt by this.
So? That's just a different way of saying "People who don't get dates get hurt and angry". We already know that.
We also know that the professor in this case doesn't know that the majority of them are insulted and hurt, because the professor in this case did not actually do a survey of the class.
After all, even if only 49% of the class are oblivious or happy with the arrangement, that doesn't scream to me "Something wrong is going on here".
[1] Well, they can but then they look stupid.
> That's just a different way of saying "People who don't get dates get hurt and angry". We already know that.
Perhaps I should spell out one aspect of it.
These auditing students have to survey and evaluate the female students taking the class for their attractiveness. It's uncomfortable and distracting to receive such attention when you are in an environment that's primarily for academic learning.
Now, I'll admit that perhaps this is only mildly uncomfortable. But as I said in my original comment, the likely result of students taking things into their own hands would be to just take a less preferred course that they feel more comfortable in with respect to sexual attention.
If you read the link you'd see that the women have actually stated that there were no unwanted advances.
Luckily you are here to mansplain to them how there poor female mind doesn't understand what "unwanted advances" mean...
I'm sure they all appreciate it.
If you are a SA, or a CSA, survivor, then this is the kind of behavior that gives you nightmares. I know, because it gives me nightmares. And it's brought up in almost every support group I've been a part of. Their behavior is identical to someone who profiles a victim type, seeks opportunities to put themselves in the victim's path, and creates an opportunity to engage.
At the extreme end, Bundy did this with a cast and by targeting times of high stress (exam time). He would place the car outside of dorms and essentially fumble putting things in a car. Women would come up and start trying to help him; at which point, he'd kidnap them,
> Further similarities between the victims were noted: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, and were within a week of midterm or final exams. All of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans when they disappeared, and at many crime scenes there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling and driving a brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle.
This post isn't to say that these people are Bundy. That's not the point. If you had 50 glasses of wine in front of you, but 1 of them contained cyanide, would you drink the wine at random? Now, what if the wine glasses were being forced on you? And you still didn't know?
1 in 50 to 1 in 10 of these people won't have such nice intentions. 1 in 100 will be a psychopath. If you are at the receiving end, how do you know? How do you differentiate between the majority that's innocent and the years of hell and therapy on the other hand?
Would you want to navigate this every time you just want to go to class and learn?
I don't find this line of argument compelling though. For example, your Bundy argument appears to imply that it is immoral to have any sort of difficulty in a public place that might cause a woman to come offer help to you. This seems like a fairly absurd, possibly ableist moral guideline?
The reductio ad absurdum of this reasoning is: "Abusers breathe oxygen, if you breathe oxygen that makes you like an abuser, therefore it's predatory to breathe oxygen."
Basically by saying "X is a behavior that abusers do", decent people will want to avoid beahvior X in order to not be thought of as abusers. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: no decent person will do behavior X. This works regardless of whether behavior X is inherently problematic.
I'm really sorry that you had such shitty experiences, but I think your ideas about reworking society to give you less anxiety are misguided and counterproductive (even for the goal of reducing your anxiety).
If you're super risk-averse, you can implement some personal guidelines like "never be alone in a room with another person" or whatever. I don't think your own risk-aversion is a good justification for preventing other consenting adults from being alone in a room with each other though.
That predatory behavior and manipulation also betrays a good faith interpretation of consent. Consent isn't realized through trickery and technicalities.
If someone believes that predatory behavior and manipulation are okay, especially when it comes to dating, sex or consent, that is definitely someone that a SA/CSA survivor should be wary of, because those are the beliefs and attitudes that perpetuate such abuse.
Suppose a man does as described in OP and if anyone asks him what he's doing, he responds honestly. Is that fabrication/manipulation?
Suppose a woman wears makeup in order to appear more youthful and beautiful than she really is. Is that fabrication/manipulation? If she successfully seduces a man into sleeping with her as a result of her makeup, is that a consent violation?
> Suppose a man does as described in OP and if anyone asks him what he's doing, he responds honestly. Is that fabrication/manipulation?
Suppose one of Bundy's potential victims asks him what he's doing, and he goes, "Well, I'm just pretending to have trouble in order to get close enough to kidnap you!" Is that still predatory and does it affect his intent?
> Suppose a woman wears makeup in order to appear more youthful and beautiful than she really is. Is that fabrication/manipulation? If she successfully seduces a man into sleeping with her as a result of her makeup, is that a consent violation?
Surely you can see the difference between taking care of yourself and preying upon people. There's nothing deceptive about looking good. If they're out there catfishing people to sleep with them, however, that is predatory, but that is not what you're describing.
I agree if you want to kidnap someone, you're a predator.
>Suppose one of Bundy's potential victims asks him what he's doing, and he goes, "Well, I'm just pretending to have trouble in order to get close enough to kidnap you!" Is that still predatory and does it affect his intent?
The key thing that makes Bundy a predator is wanting to kidnap someone. If someone did the exact same thing with the intention of meeting their future spouse instead of forcibly kidnapping someone, they're not a predator, barring extenuating circumstances.
For example, the other day in the store a woman dropped something near me, while I was squatting on the floor. I picked it up and gave it to her. Afterwards, I realized that she'd been looking at me prior to dropping the object, and it occurred to me that maybe she was trying to get me to talk to her (out of all the places in the store, she somehow dropped her thing right next to me, and also waited for me to pick it up instead of bending over herself).
I don't have any particular reason to believe she's a predator based on that interaction, even if she dropped the item intentionally.
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. It seems like you're using a wild analogy with Ted Bundy to demonize harmless flirtation of the sort you'd find in a romantic comedy.
>There's nothing deceptive about looking good.
Let's change the scenario -- suppose she deliberately makes her makeup look natural, and when someone asks if she's wearing makeup, she lies and says no. What do you call that?
Because it seems about as bad to me as a man who does as described in the OP, and when asked why he's in the class, says something like "yeah I like helping people, I don't know!" In both cases you're doing something to attract people you're interested in and telling a white lie related to it.
It crosses the line when it becomes abduction.
They aren't looking for sensible women, they're looking for attractive women. IOW, it furthers their goal, even if you think they should have a different goal.
Maybe sensible is what they find attractive. Who are we to say?
An argument where people should not choose what is attractive to them, but what is satisfactory to some outside 3rd party, looks bizarre.
I'm not demonizing the males involved. I'm not saying anything about my beliefs. I'm not saying it is wrong that they find certain females attractive, or that there is wrong about anything with their choices.
I am saying that the judgements being passed on by the poster are invalid, because the poster's implication (i.e. the women who fall for this are not quality women anyway) is irrelevant.
The young men have certain goals (like attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend), and trivialising their goals because the poster thinks they should have loftier goals (attracting a mate/partner/girlfriend of "better"[1] quality) is pointless and stupid.
IOW, you and I are making the same general argument in this thread, but on the particular comment upthread I was only addressing that poster's implication that the males are doing something wrong (because that poster feels that the males should have the same criteria for "quality partner" as that poster has).
[1] Completely and totally subjective.
That's a very big IF. Their goal seems to be to attract an (or more) attractive woman(women). There is no indication that your assumption is in any way correct, and I've no idea why one would assume this.
Your post came off as dismissing their goal of attracting a mate. I just reread it, and it still reads like "If they want to get the CORRECT girls, they're doing it wrong."
What you consider to be "correct" or even "sensible" is completely subjective.
Their criteria is obviously not to get girls that is "correct" under your definition, it's to get girls that are "correct" under their own definition.
If they simply want to impress girls enough to get them to agree to a date, then what they are doing actually is "helpful or conducive to that goal".
Making way too many assumptions, to include interjecting personal beliefs on how other adults should or are suppose to meet.
These are adults, that have the right to choose how they want to approach and interact with each other, as long as its consenting and legal.
It also comes off as a denial of agency and choice of the adult women involved, as if they can't freely decide to enter a relationship or not. Thus we have 3rd parties wishing to involve themselves, where arguably they should not be placing themselves, to attempt to decide for them (interloping teacher or college) by villainizing or criminalizing the male students. Which at the end of the day, is actually what's wrong.
Actually, no. If you want to ban stuff or stop an activity between two consensual adults, you better have a damn good reason, other than it offends me!
They appear to be doing just fine with the girls, which once again makes me question why you think that the girls who welcome these advances are behaving incorrectly.
Everything else you say is purely wishful thinking on your part and there is literally no evidence that the males are not getting whatever it is they are aiming to get.
The complaints, remember, are not coming from those girls who date, it's coming from the professor (who is unhappy about this), and from the girls who aren't getting advances.
The TLDR is this: There's no obvious evidence for any of your conjecture about how courtship should go; in this case it obviously is going correctly if the girls who get advances aren't complaining, but the ones who don't are complaining.
How do you befriend these "sensible women" if it's apparently not okay to go where they are -- because they're there?
I've done the opposite to what these guys do by ignoring this when choosing my education, so I met basically no female peers from HS to higher education to _now_.
Discussion around this question really reinforces my conviction that things are fuc*d beyond point of repair. "Get to know friends in a gradual, natural fashion"? Lol, impossible, because you can't even meet people without it being an issue.
If this person sent an email to the class group offering their services and coached folks without seeing their gender or appearance, I would applaud them, and I’d be more than happy to support whoever they met through that.
But my guess is, that’s not the situation here. Would love to be wrong.
Because it's
a) Not disturbing,
and
b) working.
I mean, seriously, if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?
It's likely that they are bothered by heterosexual males who might have any situation or opportunity (among adults of similar age and agency) that can be perceived as advantageous to them or contributes to their happiness.
Also, comments like “stanning for these creeps” are disrespectful and have no place on HN, imo.
Well, how about you explain why you are equivocating "no unwanted advances" to "creeps".
I'm in a couple of these threads because a) I have some free time now to read, and b) there are way too many people demonizing males attempting to find a partner.
Like you are doing.
> As a mental exercise: why do you think several of the women are demoralized by this environment if there's nothing going wrong here?
Well, the women who are dating are specifically not complaining. Who are you to tell women where and when they may allow courtship?
So if some woman is demoralized solely by my presence, I should move out of her sight?
Oh, also: these demoralized women are apparently the ones who aren't getting attention. So yeah...
IDK, I believe in gender equality.
> Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions).
The more attractive women are receiving all the positive attention, and the others are hurt by this. Which is totally understandable, but...welcome to the world. Life is unfair, and being attractive opens doors that aren't available to others. Are people obligated to show equal interest in everyone, regardless of their actual feelings towards them? Men who hold this belief are usually derided (and rightfully so) as "incels".
And how would she notice if you weren't in her class? The chances are extremely low compared to if you joined her class and made an effort to socialize with her.
Really? It sounds like some of them are lacking self awareness, and maybe representing themselves poorly. But is what they are doing really on the level of disturbing?
People need to learn how to interact with each other, possibly by failing like this. College is one of the places where that is supposed to happen.
If it's such a big deal, maybe we should just go back to separate schools for men and women.
I find that most people that say this only attempt to match with people in the top X% of attractiveness.
This of course exploded and they deleted the post.
[0]https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
Young heterosexual men have to compete with older men, who may be already established in terms of socioeconomic position, maturity, knowledge about women, and focus. These attributes, of what older men can bring to the table, can be very attractive to younger women and severely reduce their availability. Many women, in general, are not even looking or caring about these younger men, unless they are in the top 20% to 10% who hit the genetic and/or socioeconomic lottery and mostly have it all in terms of looks, style, build, height, innate charisma, popularity, and/or family wealth. The further the young men are from the top, the harder their struggles with the opposite sex can be. And dramatically way more so, than their female equivalents.
This can be why such young heterosexual men (outside the top 20%) can be resorting to seemingly extreme measures that are incomprehensible to females and non heterosexuals. More so, many women have little to zero sympathy or empathy for the harsh struggles of such young men, and even to the point that such women have misplaced unreasonable disdain and contempt of males, combined with the arrogance of their position and ignorance to the realities.
Many women take attention, sexual choice, and sexual opportunity for granted. It's something they can choose to indulge in (particularly as young women), almost whenever they feel like or the mood hits them. These are options that most young men do not have whatsoever. Which is why some kind of app, doing auditing, or tutoring are even seen as helpful possibilities.
Shouldn't we disallow girls from drinking alcohol, then? It's rather weird to allow parties with alcohol, and then claim that rape occured "because someone was drunk and so cannot be held responsible for their decisions".
What if the man was also drunk? If a drunk person can't be held responsible for their decisions, well...
I don't understand why is it always about guys supposedly taking advantage of girls.
That being said, this is appalling, predatory behavior on the part of the students using the app. These are vulnerable people that the app users are taking advantage of and trying to manipulate into an intimate relationship.
I'm sensing there would be no disdain or accusations of predatory behavior, if a female student created an app for picking classing where she is more likely to find dates and marriage prospects among the opposite sex. I'm almost quite sure, the same appalled people, would have no reaction or even state this as acceptable or categorize her as being smart. It seems that if male students, are doing something that would circumvent their supposed ranking based on innate attractiveness or better their odds in any artificial way, then it's something to be villainized and criminalized.
Of course. Men should just stay alone, unless they are hyper attractive. Because _attempting_ to get to know other people is "manipulation into intimate relationship".
I guess they're cheating because they don't know their place? Predatory behavior, lol.
Seems rather ingenious, frankly. What tactics should they rely on, exactly? "Intelligent and decent" alone aren't traits that are necessarily attractive anyway.
It's not like anyone's proposed sentencing them to death. (Or any punishment at all?)
Most universities have gobs of overlapping official and unofficial tutoring programs both broad and subject-specific. Enterprising scholars will also inevitably find a way to announce independent tutoriing services.
Students who are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge, making a few bucks, or adding a line to their resume generally don't have trouble finding such opportunities to share their knowledge and help others succeed without having to audit a course.
It seems everyone is complaining except the girls getting tutored. And if they did complain, if some guy was pushy or wouldn't take no for an answer, then deal with him the same as any other such guy - that they're attending a class for the sake of dating would be incidental, and make their actions no worse or better, and wouldn't affect the response in any way, except that it would be easier to expel them from the class, as it wouldn't impact their academics.
I agree it shouldn't factor into getting help from class TA's.
This idea that it’s more worthwhile to wail at the sky about how the world works rather than acknowledge it and seek to take advantage of other areas of life where the scales are tipped in your favor fucking mystifies me.
Why not hire based on attractiveness and promote based on blowjobs? This is reality and how the world works.
... alternatively, we could strive to make the world a better place.
There’s clearly a disadvantage to not having any meritocratic considerations during the hiring process and it will eventually come back to bite the hiring company. That said, everyone has free will and should be completely free to hire whomever they want for whatever reasons they want.
Yep. This discussion is full of insinuation that trying to leverage your knowledge or intelligence to attract women is _manipulation_ or _predatory_.
(Been there)
One time, me and some other people signed up to volunteer for H4H, to get 1 or 2 college credits, and because it was a cool thing to do, and in my case because I wanted to learn the American way of making houses.
We rebuilt a former crack house. It was actually pretty cool (although I don't much like how American houses are made - they go up fast, but they also are intended to come down in 1 or 2 generations, I'll stick to brick and granite, thanks!). I did my part. Guess who was and wasn't called when it was time to take a picture showcasing all our work. This was before consumer-priced smartphones, so I don't have a picture of that.
Ironically, the men that OP is complaining about almost definitely feel the same way: "even when I go out of my way to be helpful, I can't escape being so unattractive that they professor actually wants to kick me out of class."
This is simple reality, but it seems certain people want to reject it. As if the less attractive women should be forcibly provided special access to the more attractive or top percentage of men.
> It seems everyone is complaining except the girls (college women) getting tutored.
I also find this quite strange. It's as if the college women tutored are denied agency and are children of the school. Like these guys are not talking to adult women who can choose their actions, but rather the teacher of the class and school administration control these women and mandate dating access to them.
> And if they did complain, if some guy was pushy or wouldn't take no for an answer, then deal with him the same as any other such guy...
Again, you are noticing the same thing. Not seeing why any actual complaints can't be handled on its merits, based on the individual it happened to. What the hell is going on that the teacher feels she should control the "dating privileges" of her female students and be empowered to block male heterosexual student access to her class.
I find the behavior and intended actions of the teacher in question very strange. It's as if she wants to run a "pre-crime" unit, where the male students are already guilty, and her female students need to ask for her permission for who they can or can't date.
1. Teachers and TAs are forbidden from discriminating and signalling romantic/sexual interest during the course.
2. Those in the course are typically either being graded or auditing the course out of academic interest, and so romantic/sexual interest is rarely the primary factor for grouping up and helping each other out.
As such, this is rarely the norm when it comes to academic attention, in contradiction to
> This is simple reality
In response to complaining, you say
> It's as if the college women tutored are denied agency and are children of the school.
But the right thing to do in such a situation is exactly what they have done: to exercise their agency by raising their discomfort to the one that seems to be liable for setting the norms of their course, the professor. The other thing I've seen happen is students exercising their agency by avoiding the course altogether, albeit since the situation I've discussed is so rare, I'm thinking about an analoguous situation where a professor was notorious for giving preferential academic attention to attractive women.
> What the hell is going on that the teacher feels she should control the "dating privileges" of her female students and be empowered to block male heterosexual student access to her class.
Because the majority of her class who are taking in good faith thinks that this is detrimental to their student experience... the complaint isn't against men who are also taking the course in good faith.
> empowered to block male heterosexual student access to her class.
I find it a radical suggestion that people ought to be allowed access to a course when their goals are not in line with the course's goals.
> I find the behavior and intended actions of the teacher in question very strange. It's as if she wants to run a "pre-crime" unit, where the male students are already guilty, and her female students need to ask for her permission for who they can or can't date.
... no? She's not trying to control their students' dating lives. Her actions are against behavior that violates unspoken norms about the environment in which her course is conducted, violations for which she has received complaints for.
And fuckton of men get literally 0 attention. That's, of course, not an issue at all.
The ladies could be mentioning to the guys specific constructive feedback, because the guys probably don't know how they're failing or how they're making others feel.
The surprising and shocking secret of being a ladies' man, is underwhelming and doesn't get press: being human and treating others as human according to their needs (improved Golden Rule).
And being corrected on the spot is much more effective than someone else telling you days later you did something wrong. At least for me, I remember very well few times I was dumbass and that was made painfully clear to me. I remember those lessons to this day and it sure did help me.
yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this
All of those is a thing and it does happen. Especially is we include sub-cultural differences into „cultural differences“ bits.
> yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this
Maybe it's a cultural differences or whatever, but I'd say this demographic is VERY prone to misreading social cues..
However, I think this is not age or whatever related. People are different. social circles are different. People move around. Various norms change and people talk across age groups. It's never ending process of finding a common protocol to communicate. I doubt it's possible to rely on a hope that everybody will know how to not upset people around them.
It's quite interesting that if a college woman picked a class where she is more likely to find dates or a husband, that this situation is not seen as immoral, dangerous, threatening, criminal, or villainized.
> ...to show the women that they can protect themselves...
What exactly are these adult women, capable of choice and agency, protecting themselves from?
From heterosexual males asking them out on a date? From possibly deciding to be tutored by "smart" heterosexual males that know the subject material? In any individual situations, aren't these women capable of reporting any criminal wrong doing or harassment?
If these women are not capable of free will and have mental disabilities then maybe they need a 24/7 caregiver assigned to them, but somehow don't think that's the case.
Of course, the only workable solution is the only one you're not allowed to suggest: gender-segregated colleges.
But they can't even offer women free tutoring lessons... because other women feel bad about it? Wat?
Or women are offended, supposedly rightfully, solely because of the presence of these men (because person who asked the question said clearly they have done nothing wrong)? What the...?
"Being distracted with insecurities" - men, on the other hand, have no such problems, yes? They willingly went to classes that are useless to them, in order to try to impress women.
We live in a society, I guess...
> number of female students have approached me, noting they are disgusted and uncomfortable with the amount of leching taking place
> It's also demoralizing several of them, since we routinely have cases where a young man is leading open labs as if they're a teacher themselves (in order to "wow" their female classmates, offer "private free tutoring sessions", etc). Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions).
So suppose you're a university student who have a mild preference for this course. Upon hearing of such behavior, you'd end up avoiding such a class to sidestep such a distraction. Not to mention being distracted with insecurities if you don't end up being offered tuition.