No, you cannot touch my boobs
Published by Sabotabby April 22nd, 2008 in For the ladies, Bodily Autonomy, What Patriarchy?, Dudes, Cock!
Hey, I wonder why more women aren’t into sci-fi and fantasy.
In LiveJournal Land, an interesting hoopla has erupted around The Open-Source Boob Project. The story starts at ConFusion in Ann Arbor, an annual sci-fi, fantasy, anime, gaming, comics, etc., convention. If you’ve ever shown up at a con wearing a set of boobs, you know that the gender and personal space dynamics can get a bit—well, touchy. It’s not that there aren’t female geeks (and if you don’t read her already, check out Karen Healey for awesome feminist analysis of comics and geekdom), but the majority of cons are still sausagefests and not always female-friendly.
This year’s ConFusion took the creepy vibe that women often feel at cons to a whole new level, however.
“This should be a better world,” a friend of mine said. “A more honest one, where sex isn’t shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where say, ‘Wow, I’d like to touch your breasts,’ and people would understand that it’s not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.”
Obviously, the solution to our sexually repressed, sexually confused culture where women are objectified and reduced to a collection of body parts is to instigate a con-wide gropefest. Being geeks, the guys in charge of this project decided that the gropefest needed to be perfected and streamlined, so by Penguicon, they had two sets of buttons that could be issued to women, advertising the availability status of their ta-tas.
I can only assume from reading the post that an empowered, post-patriarchal utopia ensued.
Oh, it didn’t? I wonder why. Springheel_jack has an excellent smackdown:
The ferrett wonders why a man’s asking, out of the blue, if he can feel up a woman’s boobs shouldn’t be understood as “a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.” But this is simply to ask why he shouldn’t be able to continue to treat women as they have always been treated. Body first, sexual delectation to men first, as object first, “mind” - i.e. as a human subject - very firmly second. It’s simply to intensify the condition of patriarchal gender relations that already existed - or, to put it more simply, it’s a frustrated man’s fantasy of putting women back in their place.
And here we have the usual libertarian solution to everything - in the name of a false individuality, itself the product of an illegitimate reification and universalization of the social conditions of propertied white men - we have a retreat into the worst of the dark days of gender relations before feminism, offered as a so-called “advance” into a “more honest” and “freer” world. This is pernicious masculine ideology at its most pure and most insufferable. In the name of “empowering” women, we have…more of the same poison that women have been trying to free themselves of for all this time.
Go read the whole thing—I can’t add much to his analysis beyond to say that it’s spot-on. Obviously, this is not just about geekdom. Certain problems are more pronounced in geekdom because a lot of the standard modes of interpersonal relations and social niceties go out the window (and rightly so). But the patriarchy doesn’t. You can tell, because no one was proposing an open-source nutsack-grabbing project.
Look, I have a nice set of boobs. Really nice, according to some. Ever since I got them, I’ve been fending off assholes who think they have the right to grab them, whether I want it or not. I don’t need a button to advertise whether my boobs are touchable or not—if they are, gentlemen, you’ll know about it.
Update: Misia has a response. You should read it.
What an ugly combination of entitlement and low self-esteem. Being invited to touch tits isn’t that difficult, gentlemen. You won’t get to touch every tit you want, but once you actually lose your virginity and the pressure comes off, every rejection won’t seem like such a catastrophe.
I’d ask why men don’t have to wear signs saying whether they’d like their nuts grabbed, but I realize most of these carpet stains would say any
hot chickwoman is allowed to grab them at any time. In fact, they’re hoping it’ll happen eventually.I bet some of those guys have nice boobs, too. Do you think they’d mind if I started groping them?
I just posted about this as well. There’s all kinds of messed up patriarchal bullshit going on in those guys’ heads.
that’s some monumental entitlement ‘women = property’ bullshit.
it’s like one giant fucking leap backwards, and it’s no surprise that it’s some fucking dude engineering it.
The worst part is, that this sort of behavior really gives Cons bad names. MarsCon, the con I attend in Minneapolis, is pretty much the LEAST misgynistic place I’ve ever been in my life. But then you get something like ValleyCon (in Fargo, ND) and the unwashed cretins there reinforce every stereotype about gamers, right down to staring at any female.
This is why I’m glad that places like WisCon exist. Not like I’ve ever been, not like it doesn’t have its own issues from what I’ve heard, but at least I won’t get groped by some chinbearded mouthbreather.
“This should be a better world,” Lisa said. “A more honest one, where being sexually repulsed by the way someone looks isn’t shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where say, ‘Wow, if you ever touched my breasts, I’d be so revolted that I’d throw up,’ and people would understand that it’s not a way of reducing you to a physically unattractive man and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your face is nasty.”
When I first heard this story I went ‘Um, so why the fuck weren’t men’s bodies being treated the same way?’ I was told that in fact they were but for some mysterious reason, theferret hadn’t bothered to write about that part, even though his body was ‘open-sourced all weekend’. Speaks volumes.
I don’t think there’s the slightest thing wrong with consenting adults experimenting with their bodies like this, whether they’re male or female. But it’s a shabby throwback to everything that was wrong with ‘free love’ the first time around if you can’t even be bothered to sodding mention that there is more to human sexuality than women being felt up.
“This should be a better world,” a friend of mine said. “A more honest one, where sex isn’t shameful or degrading.”
So, they start off with feminist talking points, you know, sex shouldn’t automatically make a woman a disgusting slut. But then the solution is that anybody walking down the street should be able to grab your breasts? WTF? Consensual sex is not shameful or degrading, but sexual assault is. Anyway, can you imagine a world like that:
“Hey honey, sorry I’m late, but I stopped off at the market on the way home and got groped by like a hundred men. But at least thats not degrading.”
So, what about eyes. Eyes are the window of the soul, or so it is said. Lots of men have beautiful eyes, and if we lived in a truly free egalitarian world they wouldn’t mind my saying Wow I may not know your soul, but I would really like to give it a little poke just to say hello, and if you don’t get your mits off my tits I’m going to get to know your soul windows in a very personal way.
Criminy.
One of my friends in high school had her eyeball licked.
It was all consensual. One of her friends came up and said, “can I lick your eyeball?” And she said yes, and so she did, and that was that.
(It feels warm, and a bit rough. And for the licker, a bit squishy-slick.)
Being geeks, the guys in charge of this project decided that the gropefest needed to be perfected and streamlined, so by Penguicon, they had two sets of buttons that could be issued to women, advertising the availability status of their ta-tas.
Apparently, the buttons merely advertised their participation in the project. Clearly, making the buttons say “Yes” and “No” was just a stylistic choice, and users were gobsmacked to find that Yes and No could be interpreted as the answer to the “May I touch” question. A woman wearing a “Yes” button, for example, should still be asked and did not forfeit her right to say no.
This is obvious to the most casual observer, and of course nothing could possibly go wrong here. That ferret guy is a visionary and a genius, well versed in feminism, psychology and graphic design alike.
Also, his waxing philosophic about the whole thing, under a cascade of wishy-washy defensive updates, didn’t make me laugh at all. Really.
This is obvious to the most casual observer, and of course nothing could possibly go wrong here. That ferret guy is a visionary and a genius, well versed in feminism, psychology and graphic design alike.
LOLZ. I also heard that the women were asked regardless of colour. Which means that the red-button “No” women still got asked repeatedly. Nice!
There are these things, they are called sex parties. I suppose TheFerret has never been invited to one. People enter into a space where it is understood that sexual contact will occur, though not all people in the space will desire physical contact. Ground rules are established that participants abide by. The ground rules are generally better than ladies are supposed to wear buttons that say whether they want to be groped y/n/m. As I mentioned, these are sex parties. As distinct from the entire rest of your life.
I just…I can’t. It’s too easy, and too much. And the pity party happening now makes me want to hurl sharp objects.
Nice Guyism taken to a new level.
Oh, that level’s been there awhile, it’s just you don’t travel in geeky enough circles, Amanda.
“We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful. And lo, we touched her breasts - taking turns to put our hands on the creamy tops exposed through the sheer top she wore, cupping our palms to touch the clothed swell underneath, exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from ‘touching” to “unwanted heavy petting.” They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched. “
what a creepy little loser. seriously, what, is he twelve? goddamn. you want to feel a pair of tits? get a fucking girlfriend. even creepy assholes can find them these days, what with the innernets and all.
The creepiest thing is that these guys are seriously convinced that it’s all innocent and empowering for the girls. …. In ten years’ time, my daughters will wonder why I will only let them attend a convention if they learn how to throw an efficient left hook.
Being able to punch a bloke in the face if he doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘no, don’t touch’ is a very useful thing for a girl. Hopefully my daughters will learn not to be afraid to do just that should the necessity arise. But knowing when to say ‘no, don’t touch’, or rather, when not to say to everyone in the hallway ‘You can touch my boobs […] It’s no big deal.’ appears to be just as important, and I hope they’ll learn that as well.
Did anyone read the update he posted?
Ahh crap, i guess this is what happens when you cram a large group of people who regularly say “whatever your mental hang up, we’ll like you” together.
And before anyone says WTH? I think that is a large part of the whole Geek identity. Same with furries.
You get a group of people together who share a common often looked down upon aspect that has led to not being very socially adept (practically THE definition of geek) and they often make a false logical leap that says that since they have one “screw up” all others are ok.
This is easily seen in some one saying” yeah i know X is a bit of a jerk, but he’s one of us”
Eventually some OTHER group will form in the first that has another problem, and they will assume that everyone shares it.
And ta da, moron pile.
I had my biggest realization of this when my GF and I were looking for a different game locally: (she tends to run all the games and wanted a break. Yeah, I know, I should run them too, but I suck.) We found a game looking for players and met with the game master.
After he sat us through all the introductions and such we went home and everything seemed to be going ok.
Then the asshole emails me and said my GF would have to shave or we couldn’t play (she has a very light bit of lip hair). I was stunned! I mean, WTF?
He tried to say that it was ok to not want to talk to him after that like it was just an ordinary thing for him and didn’t matter, but that jerk ruined me ever just going to a stranger for gaming.
I’m still disturbed/angry to this day.
*gapes* Holy shit, Cat of many faces. And yet I can’t say I’m surprised that someone would do that.
People here and elsewhere have already written on this really well, but it’s just staggering how this guy takes thuddingly obvious sexism and pretends it’s some kind of superhappy awesome utopian ideal. I mean seriously, “They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched”? Ugh. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was some kind of ill-executed parody. Dollars to donuts, this guy has a “Born To Reify” T-shirt design at CafePress.
@Jason C:
While I’m not in any way defending TheFerret and his Open Source Boob Project (I’m not condemning it, either), I have to point this out. Not only is he not 12 (He’s in his 30’s, I believe), but he’s also married; If I read things correctly, his wife wore a green button. As I say, I’m neither defending or condemning his little project; my friends on either side of the gender fence are on the touchy-feely side with each other, though I think it’s safe to say that most (if not all) of us would have worn red buttons if we were at that event. I just prefer it when people get their facts straight.
Oh, hell yes. It’s an endemic problem with geeks, and I say this as someone who ran with a lot of geeks back in the day. (I don’t run with much of anyone at the moment.) When you’ve spent years on end being rejected for being socially awkward, funny-looking or downright irritating, there’s a very real tendency to avoid rejecting others for those same reasons. Which means that any sufficiently large gathering of geeks will, as a rule, contain some truly horrifying characters that no one likes but no one wants to boot.
If you’d like, you can read more about “theferret”’s value system over here. Note the adoration of his fandom.
Synthetic, I don’t think Jason was actually thinking Ferret was 12, just implying that Ferret is comically immature, which is true. I was also surprised to find he was married - if I were married to someone who did something like this, there would be Problems when he got back from the con.
Seriously, guys, take a look at the update he posted.
yes, SP, thank you for setting me straight on the age. =)
and also, that’s fine if your friends are touchy-feely with each other. great. the point is, they’re your friends… you know, people you know? bit of a difference, if you ask me…
Lindsay, he’s not saying anything particularly exculpatory. There’s a lot of excuse-making, and he seems to have the idea that if everyone could have just understood him in the first place, there’s be love and kisses all ’round for him, and probably more boob-touching as well. He’s also very sorry that this sort of thing doesn’t scale up well, without realizing that the original idea itself is not a good one.
He doesn’t look like he’s taking the slightest interest in examining his own privilege, or like he even understands that he has privilege in the first place. He was an over-entitled reeking stain on the words “Open Source” before he posted the update, and he’s an over-entitled reeking stain on them now. He’s managed to let literally over a thousand comments wash over him without apparently getting even the tiniest smidge of personal growth out of them.
Yes, a lot of people were assuming that women had to wear red pins in order not to be groped, or that men weren’t participants in some sort of analogous setup, and that wasn’t the case… but the rotten core of the idea, that if you ignore privilege and treat everyone as individuals, that it’ll all be happy meadows and kittens farting glitter, was very much there from the beginning. Springheel_Jack wrote about it in a far more graceful manner than I have, as have numerous commenters on the original thread.
If he could paste that in without seeing how it encompassed every fucking thing that’s wrong with the idea, and his supposedly-fixing-everything update didn’t even address it, I think it’s fair to say that he’s the same overgrown walking neckbeard that he was at the beginning of this whole fiasco.
And all he can do is dumbly assert that it didn’t seem like a bad thing to him, because he’s so blinkered that he’s not only proposing that we all ignore privilege, but he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. I wish I didn’t see such frequent examples of Jonathan Schwarz being right: power makes you stupid. But, alas, we live in a world tragically full of stupid.
Oh. Duh. The Springheel_Jack post was linked to at the very top. I must have gotten turned around; that’s my bad.
The extra tragedy of this, for me, is that the kind of stupid that TheFerret has isn’t the incurable kind. It’s actually very easy to fix it. I’ll freely admit that when I read the original post, I thought that it was faintly creepy, but didn’t really have a handle on why. So I read what women had written, who were explaining, again and again, in terms a four year old could understand (if they weren’t so drunk on privilege they couldn’t perceive the obvious), exactly what was wrong with the idea. And through the non-apology apologies (I especially like this one from one of his acolytes), it becomes blisteringly obvious that them, all of them, are putting a great deal of work into not getting it. It’s not hard to understand. It’s really not.
And that makes it just ever so slightly more depressing, to me.
This guy has a history of anti-feminist bullshit; where have you guys been? He’s said women ask for it; he’s said women are to blame for mens’ bad behavior—and should be beaten—-; he’s anti-choice, he berates his wife, he’s hiding behind her now; he’s exploited prostitutes and homeless rape victims—but he’s the real victims, dammit!–all with pretentious language and bullshit.
Ginmar: I’ve been shielded until now from interacting with this guy or even knowing that he existed. Ignorance is truly bliss. What a repulsive character.
ginmar, can I ask where the “women ask for it” bit was? I found the homeless rape victim bit (note his infinite self-pity over panhandling for twenty-three minutes in his creepy attempt to get into the homeless girl’s pants), the hiding behind his wife, and oodles and gobs of pretentious language and bullshit. He appears to declare as pro-choice, though he whines a lot about how sad abortion makes him, because he’s the sort of narcissist who reminds me of “Brick”.
This is reminding me of that grad-student job that involved picking apart mounds of elephant dung to determine its exact properties, but I’ve been staring into the dude’s asshattery for the last few hours. Its diamond-like purity is absolutely stunning, and I find myself compelled to keep picking at it.
But I suppose there’s a functionally infinite array of these types out there, and I shouldn’t get too attached to mocking this one in particular.
Wait, scratch that. I really should have a five-minute rule for posting anything. I see that you’ve already gone over this at your place. Don’t mind me.
Ginmar’s place on livejournal means she knows the freaks so the rest of us don’t have to. My furry ex-boyfriend is also a LJ user. There’s a certain type of geek there in greater concentration than the other free blog sites.
And the guy calls himself ferrett? … In German, a ferrett is a small, slick, weasly, untrustworthy, creepy, disgusting guy.
Oh, he’s not pro choice when it comes to control. He appears to be a choice for men type of guy, and his wife is eleven years older than him. Imagine that dynamic if he’s browbeating her publicly for all the problems in their marriage. This guy has a long history of this shit, and lots of people fall for it.
Yeah, I kind of think the name is accurate, too.
Ginmar: “I kind of think the name is accurate”
Hey! Let’s go easy on ferrets!
theferret is cuh-reeepy. Ew. Ew. Ew.
I particularly enjoy the comments coming from people who seem to think they’re defending the geeks feeling boobs project by writing, “Oh, my friends and I did something similar to this in high school. It was fine!”
Right. Socially awkward adolescents exploring their sexuality (sadly, within the matrix of a patriarchal culture, but what other matrix is there, esp. in high school?) = fine. This is how one learns about boundaries.
Adults in their THIRTIES, initiating this sexist awkwardness? That’s creepy.
I’m especially concerned b/c it would appear that other man-geeks take this ferret individual seriously. Geeky men of the universe, I beg of you, do not make this man your role model!
Sounds to me like a simple case of a guy who’s never touched a boobie coming up with an elaborate scheme to accomplish that goal. I feel bad for the guy, he’s probably a jerk but he might just be a pathetic loser that really believes he is liberating people sexuality, the fact that he wanted guys to do the same makes me think this is possible. Or maybe I ‘m just too nice about giving people the benefit of the doubt.
Eh, most likely he’s just an asshole.