Assertiveness is the good kind of Uncomfortable

[geonator]

"HEHEHEHE that's funny."
A girl's voice might say that, but her mind (which you are expected to read) might be saying something more along the lines of "I dislike what he just said, and now I dislike him and hope he gets in trouble and I hope everyone else starts to dislike him too."

Today, sexual harassment claims seem to be handled in very different ways than other types of wrongdoing claims, in which in the former, a woman's words will be accepted as if she is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the other side of the story is not heard. Personally, I don't believe that it's common for women to completely make up stories where they feel uncomfortable with something a guy says, but that doesn't mean she is telling the whole truth. It doesn't mean she isn't filtering out parts of the story that don't help make the guy look bad. That's why the girl should communicate if she is uncomfortable, and the guy's side of the story should be heard, and he should be constructively criticized or punished depending on the situation.

Before I tell the story, I will first state that looking back, I now do believe that what I did was overly risky and warranted constructive criticism. I was in a volunteer group, socializing pretty well with this girl, and I ended up asking her "If you hug a girl firmly, does it make this *pointed to my own chest* uncomfortable?" She genuinely laughed, and appeared to put a good amount of effort into answering my question. Later, I hugged her and asked if that was too firm of a hug. She told me she wasn't gonna answer that question. So I realized that that was probably a bad idea on my part, and I apologized. Later, I was confronted by the leader of this group and he told me that what I said to her was "super inappropriate" and didn't ask for my side of the story. Looking back, I do recognize that those actions on my part were overly risky, particularly that second part of it (I'm admitting it now, so I will ignore bashing comments in the opinions section), but really, she could have told me she was uncomfortable. She didn't need to go straight in the direction of trying to get me in trouble after initially acting perfectly fine with it. I'm not a mind reader.

"But she was uncomfortable telling you she was uncomfortable, so she shouldn't be expected to." Really? If we were talking about literally any other situation, the person would be told to step out of their comfort zone and be assertive. But women who play the "uncomfortable" card become immediately viewed as helpless victims who don't need to take on any type of challenge, and the guys they are reporting are viewed as total perves whose side of the story doesn't matter. And I will agree that for more traumatic things, like rape or more severe comments, going straight to reporting is more warranted. I myself would report a woman who tries to rape me and wouldn't first tell her to stop. But I'm talking more about the more grey area things, not about severe things like that. For more grey are things, women are more than capable of speaking up for themselves, and especially if they claim "equality" with men, should expect themselves to do so.

Of course, this is the kind of post that many guys will like and many girls will dislike, plus a bit of the other way around. I have made a sincere effort here to understand women's position with this kind of thing, and so I will only consider constructive criticism on this post from women who appear to put a sincere effort into understanding guys position on this. I will ignore comments from women who claim that I am condoning sexual harassment, because I clearly state in here that I'm not, and such women clearly have an agenda.

[NathanDavis]

bull...