Anyone ever heard of Rebecca Watson?

I too am socially awkward.I'm also 6'6" and close to 300 lbs. I can be extremely intimidating and threatening without any intention of doing so. Especially if I'm in a foul mood. It has nothing to do with how highly a person thinks of me - if I tower a foot taller than you and double your mass, and we're stuck alone in an elevator, all I have to do is frown and other people sometimes start to look nervous.I can only imagine how an already-vulnerable-feeling woman would feel if I awkwardly made any sort of proposition in similar circumstances. "Creepy" and "frightening" are certainly words that come to mind.

I consciously make efforts to not look threatening to others, especially when in a confined space like an elevator, and especially around women.Of course, when I was younger, I had different problems. I was still tall, but extremely skinny. And I looked like a dork. I caused amusement and was always noticed. That was a less fortunate time for me. Only by High School had I filled out enough that other kids stopped bothering me. I haven't a clue either. "Disproportionate" seems like a somewhat insufficient term for the vitriol directed her way.

Sounds a great deal like the Internet Tough Guy phenomenon, where upon hearing of some injustice, an anonymous internet forum user will insist on an even more unjust punishment, often involving torture, maiming, and death, for the perpetrator. This is done to express the depth of the outrage felt.A similar phenomenon is described here:

They still exist, too. It would be funny, if it weren't so disturbing.

I've seen forum posts by actual feminists of this nature. Their reaction to misogyny is to jump straight into female-supremacy and male-demonizing. When I'm in a place where I can access what are essentially hate speech sites, I'll see if I can dig up an example or two.Never doubt the depths of madness and hatred to which human beings will descend.

Yes, forum posts. It is possible that you are in fact a raging misogynist and homophobe who only pretends to support equality through your words in these forum posts...but in the end, we can only ever know the views of others through their words and actions. Since my interactions with you, and with extreme feminists, are restricted to internet forums, I choose to take you and them at their word when they speak of their own beliefs. I think it's more likely that you are not a raging misogynist, because your words tell me that you value equality.I think that's rather fair, don't you? No, you asked someone else about t-shirts. I responded to that post making claims about the existence of such extreme feminists, but I never made any claims pertaining to t-shirts. Besides...do you really think that t-shirts are more convincing than forum posts? I have a t-shirt that says "Megatron for President: Why Vote for the Lesser Evil?" Does that mean that I actually support the election of fictional 40-ft tall robot villains to the Presidency? I am not characterizing an entire group. I did not say "all feminists are this way." I simply said that some feminists are in fact so extreme as to consider all penis-in-vagina sex to be rape, and therefore all heterosexual males who are not virgins to be rapists. If necessary, I can borrow some Venn diagrams from RAZD. That pursuit may be interesting, as I have seen quite a lot, but would take us both off topic for this thread and also likely involve content inappropriate for this board. Let's just not go there. Your point is well taken...but again, we can only ever know the views of others through their own words. Adding a charge of deception without any evidence supporting such an assertion is dismissed as easily as it is made. Possibilities do not equate to actuality, and unless you apply your view of deception equally to all forum posts, including yours and mine, you are applying it inconsistently by saying that extreme feminist posts are actually just misogynist men pretending to call men rapists so that they can later use the same tu quoque fallacy you're about to use. To varying degrees, but yes, I agree. Because the correct response to bad behavior is not more bad behavior. Because the correct response to the KKK is not to join a homicidal black supremacist organization. Because "you do it too, so it's okay" is just a tu quoque fallacy...and then the original group of bigots gets to use the same argument, and you've just provided their justification. Because you cannot establish equality by advocating inequality of the reverse type.Now, as promised, here is a blog that contains some of what I mentioned previously: "RadFem" blog

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PIV and PIV-centric sexuality support male power. Intercourse and its attendant female-specific reproductive harm is the source of terrible suffering for women all around the world. While some women may experience pleasure from intercourse, many do not; regardless, intercourse always occurs against a backdrop of institutional and interpersonal misogyny and includes extreme physical and emotional risks to women, who are both more vulnerable to disease transmission than are men via PIV, and where women and only women experience pregnancy, including unwanted and ambivalent pregnancy. Intercourse is a harmful cultural practice which harms women and benefits men, as women are frequently removed from the public sphere, whilst they spend time, energy and resources dealing with intercourse-related complications, leaving opportunities and resources for men to share amongst themselves.

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All of this female suffering, every bit of it, is due to the reproductive consequences to women of mandatory PIV and rape. And where almost all instances of rape include PIV, normalizing PIV also serves to normalize rape: we are expected to accept that penises belong in vaginas regardless of context, and where the reproductive harms of PIV as well as the political and coercive context of all PIV under conditions of patriarchy are routinely ignored.

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To call intercourse sex or conflate it with women’s or even men’s sexual pleasure is not merely misguided, but rather, a deliberate and effective means of normalizing female submission and suffering and increasing men’s individual and collective power.

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In real life, and as mirrored in media images, boys and men are obsessed with death. Mary Daly referred to this obvious male preoccupation with death as necrophilia, meaning the love of death. Men’s necrophilic tendencies are not limited to literally sticking their dicks into corpses, although it includes that; necrophilia refers to men’s obsession with death and all things related to death and antithetical to life, including neglect and abuse, causing reproductive harm, rape, murder, torture, war, inflicting physical and emotional pain generally, and placing themselves and others in harm’s way in every way. Where women are interested in and indeed heavily invested in preserving and nurturing life, often because they have to, or face legal or social consequences if they fail, men are working very hard to undermine women’s efforts to nurture life at every turn.

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Why? Because

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Necrophilia supports male power.

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It's a long blog post...feel free to read the whole thing. I'm quite sure the author would be highly amused at your accusal that she is actually a misogynist man posing as a radical feminist.As I have now backed up my assertion with evidence, I would call upon you to do the same with refard to your assertion that such "radical feminists" who equate heterosexual intercourse with rape must in fact be misogynous males themselves using deception to create a target for their misogyny.I'll note that, typically, all a misogynist needs for a "target" is a person who appears to be female, and that requiring them to be "feminazis" or something is almost never required to harass and intimidate women, or even simply to make them feel slightly uncomfortable or give them a lower wage than a man. Those things happen all on their own, with no need for a "feminazi" for rationalization.ABE: I want to add for clarification that in no way do I believe Rebecca Watson to be a "RadFem." I don't think there are very many "RadFem" women, and I think that they embody a tiny minority of feminists. I consider myself to be a feminist, as I strongly support the equality of men and women and every other subdivision of humankind. My entrance to this topic was simply a response to crashfrog's incredulity that such extreme forms of feminism exist, as they in fact do, just as not all men are misogynist and not all misogynists are so extreme as to be rapists or to consider rape of women to be morally acceptable. Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Where, precisely, is this happening on EvC? What evidence would you find convincing as support for the claim that radical feminists exist? If neither words nor garments nor banners nor protests will convince you, it would appear that you are simply ignoring reality.Personally...if a person tells me that "men are obsessed with death and therefore necrophilia supports male power, and PIV intercourse is akin to rape," I'll think that person has rather extreme anti-male views. I think it's "bad behavior" to react to anti-woman ideology with anti-man ideology. This isn't physics, particles and antiparticles cancelling each other out (though the explosive reaction to the meeting of matter and antimatter can certainly hold an analogy).I think that it's "bad behavior" to react to bigotry by becoming a bigot of a different type.If bigotry is wrong, then bigotry is wrong, regardless of the target.Men are not less than women, women are not less than men. Neither men nor women are more good or evil than the other. Asserting otherwise is defamation of one or the other gender, and is wrong. But that's not even remotely my argument. Obviously excessive privilege must be taken away - that's the point of affirmative action, and that is not at all a form of fighting bigotry with more bigotry.My argument is that the proper response to the KKK is not to form a homicidal black supremacist movement. My argument is that the proper response to woman-hating is not man-hating.My argument is that the proper response to bigotry is to oppose that bigotry, regardless of the target. That means working to eliminate misogyny and racism and homophobia, but does not mean working to eliminate men or whites or Christians, as stereotypical examples.The form of bigotry found in the radical feminist movement is no less evil than misogyny, it's simply less pervasive and so has less real effect on society. When someone says that PIV intercourse is "a harmful cultural practice which harms women and benefits men," that person is going beyond simply stating that sexual activity is more burdensome for women. The key words would be "harmful cultural practice." This author is taking a more harsh stance than you are representing, by far...see the necrophilia quote, or for that matter read the rest of the blog. I'd quote more, but I'm at work now and cannot go to that site until I'm home again. You did, in fact, make that very assertion: You claimed that the radical feminist movement is "the invention of its detractors," and compared it to false reports of people urinating on veterans. You expanded on this assertion by saying that the radical feminist movement is likely the invention of "people claiming to be them...on the internet:" Have I grossly misunderstood your words, crash? Because it would appear to me that you specifically claimed, repeatedly, that there is no such thing as a real radical feminist, that such views are straw men created by their detractors. You've offered nothing whatsoever to support these claims, which are in actuality arguments from incredulity, while others have posted independent forms of evidence supporting the existence of radical feminism.Note that none of this has anything to do with Rebecca Watson, as neither I nor anyone else in this thread that I've noticed has suggested that she is a radical feminist, or that the views of radical feminists have any bearing on whether Ms. Watson should be "dismissed."Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Sure they do.But it's understandable that a woman, alone in an enclosed space with a much larger man, might feel intimidated and uncomfortable.He doesn't even need to say anything necessarily. Hell, I'm 6'6" and I know that some people, particularly women, display uncomfortable body language just from my presence when alone with me in an elevator.And when I think of how I'd feel with an 8' tall man in an elevator with me, I don't entirely blame them for a little discomfort.Nobody is suggesting that Ms. Watson could not just decline the invitation. Her point as I understand it was that men are not always conscious of how threatening they can be unintentionally, and that this can lead them to make matters even more uncomfortable when they, say, invite the lone woman to another enclosed space with the man who already makes her feel mildly uncomfortable.I don't see any of that as unreasonable.