sexual predation

>>>Just make sure you're correct about your decisions.

The thing is - you can't. It's simply not possible to tell whether trust is well-founded or not. You can take steps to increase your odds, of course. I'd feel safer loaning an old friend a hundred dollars than someone I met an hour ago. But there's still no telling. That old friend might just skip town and not talk to me again, thinking the relationship is worth not having to pay back that hundred dollars. That's a lot LESS likely to happen than the new guy keeping the money and hitting the highway, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

The reason we old folks look askance at the younger folk being too trusting is because we've usually gained a lot more experience in this sort of thing. We've gotten better at "Who Can You Trust?" Never experts, of course, but much better than we were when we were in our teens. Joey's suggestion of implementing common sense is a great one, and maybe Joey's extremely good at the trust game. But not everybody is. Many, from what I've seen, really aren't good at it at all. To use a lame metaphor, I know one sixteen-year-old that I'd trust to land a single-engine plane if we were in an emergency situation. That doesn't mean I think any sixteen-year-old can do it.

Lex

 

Question, you've talked to them for this long and why haven't you done anything sooner? I'm not passing judgment but if you haven't fought back does it mean that part of you is intrigued? Pretty words can make you fall for a guy or be intrigued to see where something can go- especially if the outcome might lead to a trip to the bedroom. But pretty words are just that- pretty words. My advice, STOP accepting friends that you DON'T know! If they are scaring you tell them you're flattered (if you are) and say that you're not looking for that kind of relationship. Better yet, DE-FRIEND AND BLOCK THEIR ASSES!!!! Tell them to (pardon my language) BACK THE FUCK OFF! Or better yet, tell 'em Raj will kick their butts! LOL!

But all joking aside, if this gets too out of hand and you get scared even more seek aid from friends, family, or even professionals. If they scare you scare 'em back- two words: Legal action!

You don't have to go that far but block 'em or tell them that this makes you very uncomfortable.

 

Don't overestimate the negative consequences of not adding friends, or not showing them everything on facebook. You don't owe people access just because they sent a reaquest.

People won't harrass you in real life because you didn't accept your friendship request (and if they do, then they really shouldn't be on your online friend list in the first place). At most they will start up a conversation about it. Which is an ideal way of getting to know them better anyway.

And if someone adds you and you're not sure, then you could also just send them a message and try to interact with them more. If you have had a few messages back and forth you'll have a better assessment of whether you'd want them as a friend. There's nothing wrong with not pushing that friend button the moment you get the request. There are other ways of getting to know them without immediately allowing them access to your profile.
If they survived without you on their FB friends for all these years, they can probably wait a few days

 

I want to bring this discussion back to its origins where Chaz started out because I think there's a salient point that some of you are overlooking.

For many people this is a non-issue that's hard for them to understand. Someone hits on you - you tell them to back off and get out of your face. Easy, right? But I know what Chaz is saying because it applies to me too - some guys are more sensitive and for whatever reason have trouble standing up to others, especially others who are pushy or direct. It can be for different reasons, maybe because we are just too trusting of a person or we have a little too much faith in humanity, or maybe it's because we're the kind of persons who want (or need) everyone to like us - whatever the reason, we have trouble pushing back. We're not "fighters" by nature and we try to avoid confrontation. I get this because I'm also that kind of person, and I find it hard to stand up against others. I'd rather that I didn't have to do it if at all possible.

Let me try asking it this way - if you had a female friend who made this same complaint about someone hitting on her on Facebook or in the real world, would you give the same advice? "Tell him to fuck off"? Is that what you'd say if it happened in the workplace or in school? No, I'd think most of you would give different advice - you'd say it was harassment and you'd probably demand that action be taken. But in the straight world if this was a guy complaining about a girl hitting on him, he'd be called a pussy.

So why is there a gender bias to the advice given? It means only one thing - that men are supposed to be tough and manly while women are frail and to be protected. Besides how obviously wrong that is, it misses the important point that not all guys are macho fighters. There are sensitive guys out there who are just as easily victimized as women, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

That doesn't change the advice that needs to be given (and which I gave earlier) that people like us do need to grow some balls and be able to defend ourselves because we're prime targets for the creeps out there. That's the truth. But it still doesn't mean that the "system" can't be more accommodating so that we don't have to be victims of unwanted advances or harassment.

That's why I think we should have some expectations of where it's ok and where it's not ok to be hit on;

"Safe" Places:

- workplace
- school or college
- Facebook (unless you make it clear that you're looking)
- EC

Fair Game Places:

- hook-up sites (like Craig's List)
- clubs and bars
- airport bathrooms (at least in Minnesota ) and any restroom with a 3" hole at waist height

This makes it easy for me. If I go into a club, I'd better be prepared to be hit on or I shouldn't be in there. But I should NOT expect the same at the local grocery store - I should be able to squeeze the tomatoes without someone trying to squeeze mine.

And again I'm not saying that you can't strike up conversations or develop friendships that lead to more in those safe places - that's well within a comfort zone for pretty much all of us. But trying to connect for sex isn't. We do need to draw the line somewhere, and let's at least acknowledge that not all people are comfortable with being inappropriately hit on.

 

And are you meeting these teens in a variety of situations/settings? Or, for example, are you meeting them in the context of a support group or therapy, or in a particular role (counsellor, psychologist, social worker, etc.) because I would venture that would create a pretty big difference in the responses you get.

You'll forgive me if I don't have blind faith in law enforcement personnel's opinions about online predation, given the huge bugaboo it's made into by a sensational-hungry media and the general modus operandi of police services. I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the views of social services personnel but even there, they are enmired in a system that is particularly sensitized to the presence of problems and the often-unquestioned notion that youth are always already vulnerable/at-risk. In both cases, the bureaucracies behind both law enforcement and social services personnel are heavily invested in finding ever more problems because that's what ensures they maintain (and often expand) their funding.

Except my entire point was that a lot of the existing research is biased because of the nature of how they found the gay youth they surveyed. Also, given how "being gay" is defined as problematic in our heterosexist society for not just youth, but everyone, of course someone who's young and gay is going to be more likely to have been in therapy or under the care of a psychiatrist than their hetero counterparts.

And I very specifically wasn't saying that gay youth don't face more issues than their straight compatriots. I was simply saying that I feel, given what I know about how research on gay youth has been done, it's quite likely they're not as traumatized/endangered/screwed up as previous research has made them out to be. That doesn't preclude them having more problems than straight youth--it just hopefully helps construct them more as youth facing specific issues than perpetually at-risk victims.

Well I'm glad we somewhat agree on something.

Yes, well, I don't see how searching out someone one is attracted to is akin to searching out a "victim." This presumption of "victimhood" is at the heart of my objection to most of this thread. Casting the person expressing sexual interest in someone as a victimizer and "their target" as a "victim" in all cases is (to me at least) hugely problematic, but that seems to be exactly how many people in the thread are constructing the situation.

And yet you seem to be saying that people who are only interested in hookups are, then, victimizers/predators. And I would argue strongly that's ridiculous and represents a particularly Victorian, sex-negative type of moralizing. If someone who clearly just wants sex approaches me, and I say no, and they go away, how am I being victimized? Now if they are pushy about it, or don't respect my boundaries, then sure, that's starting to skirt into more questionable territory--although I certainly still wouldn't immediately jump to labelling them a predator. They're selfish and disrespectful, but to me "predation" implies a desire to harm the "target." If someone just wants to get into my pants, I'm not sure that qualifies as an intent to harm me.

Now if I'm a young, newly out obviously relatively clueless gay boy (which I actually was at one point, believe it or not) and some guy misleads me in order to sleep with me (which did happen), then yes, you could see that person as a victimizer or a predator (especially if they have a habit of seeking out the young and clueless). But even then, that's predation on a very different scale from a child molester (the "classic" predator).

Oh no, I'm sure I would find (and have found, even) it offensive. But someone being offensive is QUITE different from someone being a predator, which is the point I was trying to make. If someone acts in an offensive manner to me, I may call them an asshole but I think if I called them a monster (which by invoking the term "predation" people have effectively done), that's a clear overreaction. And I think calling someone who hits on you when you don't want to be hit on by them a "predator" (or even implying that they are) is an excellent example of clear overreaction.

Well it's ironic I'm arguing this position since actually, I very rarely hit on people, certainly not indiscriminately, and I'm very sensitive to whether there's indications of obvious disinterest. I'm pretty pathetic at hook-ups, too--not really wired for it so I don't generally seek them out. I just find it highly offensive that some people here seem to advocate everybody else self-policing because they are turning someone's unwanted advances into some kind of serious crime.

 

And that sucks for you and for Chaz and others but to expect everyone else to avoid approaching anyone unless there is an obvious indication of interest is, to me, totally unfair.

Very few people actually like confrontation. But requiring people not to hit on others because it puts you in an uncomfortable situation is expecting too much.

Actually, the reason there's a hightened sensitivity to women being sexually harrassed is because traditionally, men hold vastly higher amounts of power over women in every social setting. The situation is not at all the same between two men, or if a woman is hitting on a man, no matter how sensitive a particular guy may be. There's no gendered power imbalance at work there.

And if a female friend of mine was being hit on via Facebook yes, I would definitely tell her to block the guy or tell him she isn't interested. If it happened in the workplace or at school, my response would depend more on the situation: is it someone she is in a relatively equal position with (student hitting on student) or is she being hit on by a supervisor at work? In the first case, if she is hit on by a fellow male student, and she says she's not interested and he lets it go, that's not harrassment. If she's being hit on by someone where she's in a subordinate position to them, that's highly problematic and I would definitely point that out.

And yet the thing is, being subject to an advance should not make you a victim. An unwanted advance is not (always) the same thing as harrassment--if it were, there couldn't possibly be a court system substantial enough to handle the situation.

I understand your distinctions but I don't think they're at all realistic. It's like expecting not to be hit on if you attend a gay youth group or university group. And most people find most of their partners where they spend the most time, which for most people is school or work.

I think maybe that's the crux of it: the type of advance, rather than the fact of the advance itself. I certainly expect (and accept, albeit grudgingly) more salacious advances in a club or bar than I would at school or work. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect NO advances in other settings. There are appropriate and inappropriate ways, however, to approach people based on the specific settings one finds oneself in. If I strike up a conversation with a person at school, I don't think I should only be able to do that if I want to have his babies and move in with him. That's not to say I think I (or anyone else) should be granted leave to be crude... but I think it's more than a bit restrictive to insist that someone's primary purpose in initiating contact with people in (so-called) safe places has to be more than sex. The underlying assumption there is that sex is dirty and base and "lesser." And as I always argue, I don't think that's healthy, realistic, or useful.

 

^Maybe it would help if I clarify my position - I'm saying no inappropriate advances in these safe places. Remember that this discussion is about people hitting other people up for sex right off the bat, not for serendipitous meetings that start friendships that lead to sex down the road. Surely you must agree that there are some places in the world where people can feel safe from being cruised.

And I'm not dissing lead-ups to relationships. In fact to the contrary, I think that random meetings anywhere on earth can and often do lead to greater things - relationships, hookups, whatever. For example at a gay youth club, people meet, they become friends, and often more. That's not the debate. The question is whether there are places in the world where someone doesn't have the right to go from Hello to sex in 60 seconds flat with a person they don't know. Would you not agree that it would be inappropriate for a student who walked into a GSA meeting for the first time to have another student hit them up for sex 5 minutes after they first introduced themselves to the group?

There's a time and a place for everything. There are places where cruising for sex is appropriate and expected, and there are places where it is not. This isn't a black-and-white argument, it's about boundaries, and all I'm saying is that somewhere, somehow, everyone has to set boundaries. Otherwise you're saying it's ok for someone I've never met to ask me if I want to come home with him for a romp in the hay while I'm getting communion at church. Let's be honest, there is a line.

 

Well yes, we're talking about appropriate/inappropriate situations but while there are some situations where that's obvious (during Communion), there are others (online) where it's a LOT more murky. And I don't think it's good for people to start yelling "predation! predation!" when someone hits on them in a situation/venue that they consider inappropriate when it's debatable as to what constitutes inappropriate. And I think "online" and Facebook (when you're randomly adding random people as "friends") is a pretty murky area.

And actually, in the case of the gay youth club, I didn't at all mean "friendships that lead to more." I meant specifically contact that leads quite quickly to a hook-up. But yes, I would say that hitting on someone 5 minutes after they arrive at a GSA is not cool. But is it never appropriate?

And actually, the debate (initially) was about the apparent trauma of being hit on by relative strangers via Facebook. While I don't really think that's desirable, I hardly think it should be taken as traumatizing, as a reason to label the situation "sexual predation," or that it can be unexpected if one is indiscriminate in adding strangers as contacts.

 

Not to mention, the whole pretense of this post is based on implicit intentions of two friends of a friend. I mean, it doesn't sound like they came out and said "Hello [60 seconds] ... sex?"

I'll give the OP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their true intentions, but intentions can often be misconstrued, especially on the internet. Some people can think they are just being nice, but if it's implied that them being nice is them hitting on you, it's apparently sexual predation to some people. Yes, a lot of this is just common sense, but as someone else mentioned in this thread, some people just don't have it.

 

Then I remain quite curious as to how it is, and under what circumstances, you're coming into contact with all these queer youth--enough to feel comfortable making the generalizations you're making. In my experience, it is relatively unusual for adults to come into contact with as many youth as you imply you have and to have had the extent of interaction you must have had with them to make these claims, especially in the queer context because of the whole "older queer people are predatory" myth. The only reason I have as much info to draw on as I do about traditionally-aged undergrads is that I stayed involved with the campus gay group of the university I graduated from because I ended up working for the institution for a number of years. If you're not a social worker or counsellor, then my only other guess would be gay youth group leader, especially given you're talking about writing particular grants, and in that case, I think that qualifies as meeting queer youth in a particular context that would most definitely bias your own personal sample, as it were. While a gay youth group is not necessarily officially a social work or therapy setting, I've been to enough to know that they are attended by a certain type of gay youth, and as a general rule it's not a predominantly "everything in my life is fine" population.

It's weird that you won't just come out and say it plain, however.

And you're conveniently ignoring the fact that those types of surveys are only going to capture youth who are comfortable self-identifying as gay in high school. As we know quite clearly from EC, there are plenty of people who still come out post-high school or who wouldn't be caught dead admitting on an official government-sponsored survey that they were not straight. The fact that these instruments so easily miss those types of youth are exactly the problem with traditional research on gay youth--because for all we know, those youth who don't "register" are relatively well-adjusted or at the very least aren't being constantly subject to people who inappropriately want to get into their pants and/or spike their drinks.

While I certainly have no problem saying no when someone asks for sex and I'm not interested, if you think I'm so confident and fine with rejection that I can easily and comfortably ask for sex, well, you haven't been reading much of what I've written here over the years. The difference, as I see it, is that I don't expect people to bend over backwards to accommodate my fears of rejection because my fears of rejection are *my* issue, not theirs.

I don't see why people who know how to set personal boundaries should have to face suspicion and be expected to modify their behaviour because some people don't have the ability to set their own boundaries. As I indicated before, isn't that very much a case of dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator? Shouldn't we be working on helping people who struggle with personal boundaries develop the skills to set them rather than expecting the rest of the population to walk around as if in a minefield for fear of accidentally offending the (I would argue overly) sensitive? At a certain point, the "oh no let's not do anything that might offend/traumatise anyone" approach becomes ridiculous. It would be akin to dumbing down school curriculum because certain people have learning disabilities.

And again, there's where we differ. I do think there are assholes and predators out there--I just don't think they're as prevalent as you make them out to be. And I certainly don't think non-assholes should have to suffer to the extent you propose in order to protect people who should be empowered to be less vulnerable rather than oversheltered to avoid shattering their illusions about life. Because ultimately, the rest of us can self-police until the cows come home, but the assholes and predators won't, and the people who don't properly learn to set boundaries (especially because they've been coddled by the fact that most people are self-policing) are going to be even more vulnerable to being taken advantage of.