Is It Really Cosplay Harassment? Or Just Neuroatypical Behavior?

[the_real_seebs]

Can we get someone with a degree on this subject in here? Or at least some cited sources? Everyone is making all sorts of claims, but nobody is backing them up with evidence.

In short, no. Nobody sane would present their credentials on an internet argument about autism, and the sources don't actually matter. For all the blathering about science and rationality, it's as meaningless as it's in any internet argument.

Okay, here again you're doing the thing where you assume everyone is primarily motivated by appearances and social approval. But they're not. But you are also strongly suggesting that you don't have credentials, because if you did you wouldn't have to make up a narrative in which no one sane would show credentials. You'd just show them.

The secret to the sauce is alexithymia. Autistic people still have emotions and are affected by them, and in an emotionally-charged topic like this, they're always in play. The problem is that autistic people are unable to identify their own emotions, which leads to heavily emotionally charged replies - and no, the autistic people genuinely think it's not angry ranting, but instead they feel like it's a calm rational reply.

This is a really interesting attempt to cast doubt on other people's replies, but it's not remotely accurate, in general. Autistic people generally can identify their own emotions. I won't deny that it sometimes takes me a while, but then, that's often true of non-autistic people as well.

But you've got an additional error here, which is that you're assuming that it's completely reasonable and rational to totally disregard everything in a post that you think is an "angry rant". It's not! Facts are still facts. Arguing that someone should be disregarded because they're angry is fallacious.

This tendency to fly off the handle into a tantrum at the drop of the hat while insisting - and genuinely thinking - they're not being emotional tends to be incredibly crippling socially for obvious reasons. While autistic people can be taught skills to manage their own emotions despite not being able to internally perceive them, these skills will not really be useful until the frontal lobe is done cookin'.

The idea that autistics cannot internally perceive their own emotions is frankly ridiculous. Seriously, it would take all of ten minutes of talking to autistic people to establish that they do in fact do that quite successfully.

It robs them of their youth and their only chance to have normal social development. A heavily traumatized wreck is the default outcome. Some overcome it, but it's up to luck. Much like it's up to luck to ever have autism in the first place.

Okay, and here's the magic cookie: "Normal" social development.

Why should everything be "normal" to be good?

I mean, if I'm gay, I don't have any chance at "normal" romantic experiences. I will have unusual romantic experiences, which under 10% of the population will share. OH NO SOMEONE MUST CURE ME. If I'm a genius, I will never have "normal" learning experiences.

The fact is, it's really easy to avoid the "heavily traumatized wreck". It's not a matter of luck; it's a matter of other people knowing how to avoid inducing trauma.

It's a very sad situation, but if it makes it feel better, you're doing everything you can by doing nothing.

Okay, I think I'm getting another part of your rage-against-autism. You did nothing, and now it's very important to you that "doing nothing" is everything you could, and it's all luck. So who did you do that nothing for? Who did you fail, by not trying to learn how to accommodate them?

Meanwhile, off in the world where people with actual degrees are doing actual research, instead of whining on the Internet about how no one has credentials, we have lots of successful work in teaching autistic kids skills, and developing accommodations that dramatically reduce their social difficulties and distress. Because it turns out that it's often very easy to provide accommodations which help kids learn and adapt.

 

[the_real_seebs]

Okay, I'm really thinking that you are very confused about how social skills work. I mean, for one thing, autistics can in fact learn the skills without being taught, it's just slow and annoying. But past that? Autistics who have learned social skills can teach them. And, in fact, can teach them well.

So, interesting trivia. Research has of course been done on educating kids about social skills. As you might expect, if you have autistic and non-autistic kids, teaching the autistic kids social skills helps them.

You know what helps them more? Teaching the non-autistic kids social skills, so they can use them on purpose and analyze failures.

Look at the posts from I Am Totally An Expert. Do you seriously think they treat people that way face to face? Of course not. But they can't use their "innate social skills" when they are dealing with text and can't see facial expressions and body language.

You specifically said that they would need to be taught social skills, not that they needed to learn social skills. To be taught something, you'd need a teacher. I was only following the premise you set.

Yeah, I get that. The "they have to be taught" was an oversimplification; it's most efficient to teach them. But we do in fact learn social skills through study and consideration of the topic, too.

That was an example of a situation in which autistics thrive and other people have a great deal of difficulty

And I thought we were using this hypothetical situation to imagine a fantasy scenario pitting the autistic and their advantages against the non-autistic and their advantages.

No. Vapor's hypothetical was a discussion of how, in a previous human culture, a tiny minority of autistics would adapt well. Mine was a hypothetical of a society in which autistics were the overwhelming majority. I was presuming modern technology and a majority population, which is a completely different example.

There's a lot of things that technology changes. Consider that many autistics who have trouble with speech communicate perfectly well in text. Meanwhile, many non-autistics have a harder time communicating in text, because they know tone-of-voice cues, but don't know how to pick up tone-of-words. For instance, most non-autistics think you can't spot sarcasm in text, but most autistics are aware of the cues writers use when indicating sarcasm, and can spot sarcasm in text. Not with 100% reliability, but then, no one's 100% reliable in spotting sarcasm.

 

[the_real_seebs]

Mine was a hypothetical of a society in which autistics were the overwhelming majority. I was presuming modern technology and a majority population, which is a completely different example.

Pity. That'd be an interesting wargame to play.

I suppose.

Anyway, the point is: If a majority of the population weren't deeply convinced that they had mind-reading abilities, "non-autistic" people would likely be regarded as disabled, but able to make up for it somewhat due to their specialized talents and abilities. I suspect there'd be a furious debate about whether to "cure" them or try to accommodate their strange emotional needs and requirements.

Part of the issue, though, is that society benefits a lot from the diversity of experiences here, not just from each experience individually. There are periodically cases where the autistic resilience against particular kinds of manipulation provides an innoculation effect for a large number of other people, who got sucked into a thing easily enough initially, but once someone immune points out the problem, they can recover. So a lot of people will have a hard time fact-checking something that sounds important and urgent, because the emotional significance trumps the analysis. Autistics are resistant to a lot of those things, and will comment with the rational analysis... Which allows a lot of people to slow down and think about it.

I think the world would be significantly less pleasant for most people without any autistics, but it'd also be pretty horrible without any non-autistics. Symbiosis is amazing.

 

[the_real_seebs]

White knighting... what does that mean and why is that person in the wrong?

Like pretty much every phrase born of the internet, it means different things to different people.

But as I understand it, it's basically any guy who considers himself a feminist 'ally', hates MRAs and PUAs and all that sort of stuff, but still treats women as if they need him to rush to their defense whenever anyone looks at them wrong.

They frequently get accused of basically just doing this to score brownie points with girls so they can get laid.

As to why this guy was in the wrong, well, again, up for debate. If I was with a female friend and some stranger ran up and hugged her and she was clearly not liking it, I'd have zero problem stepping in and helping. I'm not going to challenge the guy to a duel or anything, but I'd expect anyone who is a friend to do the same.

So is it supposed to just relate to anyone trying to help out anyone else? Its such a weird thing to use as an insult.

Specifically men who help out specifically women unbidden and with somewhat...excessive zeal. The usual implication (as pointed out by Ihateregistering1) is that they are doing it to score brownie points with women. They generally immediately come out of the woodwork if the person causing offense is male, they tend to be more...careful about it if it involves an issue between two women (unless others have established that said woman isn't a "real" woman for any number of reasons, including not having the political views that women are supposed to collectively have [which I find particularly hilarious]).

Part of the "white knight" thing is a tendency to do it with obvious expectation of some sort of quid pro quo. Another thing is, often the "defense" is not welcome or necessary. Sometimes it's aggressively stupid.

But another part of the stereotype is a tendency to convert immediately to hostility and insults if not rewarded for Being A Hero. And that is a fascinating thing to observe.

 

[insanelich]

I note you're doing a thing here generally called "deflecting". You haven't said why your opinions are necessarily more valuable than those of people who have direct experience. You haven't said what your qualifications are. Instead, you've made up complaints about the post so you can declare it not-worth-answering. That's called "deflection", and it's a thing people do when they know they're wrong but they have an ego investment in not looking wrong. A problem rarely experienced by autistics.

I'm just quoting this part because that whole rambly mess is a bunch of lies, nonsense and more lies, and this is the part that made me giggle.

I mean, I know I will never "win" an internet argument about autism against someone autistic. It's a strange game.

You're demonstrating precisely why you're not a reliable source of information in protesting that statement.

I can convince you about as much as I can make autism not a disease. That was never the point. I was lamenting about the constant lack of understanding of autism anywhere and everywhere, but I'm also very well aware of why it happens and why it's an impossible problem to solve for all practical purposes. The reason I'm not engaging your furious rant is because that's all it is. Sound and fury.

Telling the truth about autism pretty depressing and also a surefire way to have young autistic people get extremely angry. I wasn't unaware that would happen. What I wasn't expecting was this perfect microcosm demonstrating why what I say is true and why the problem cannot be solved. Warms my cold, black heart.

You're arguing what you say is true. Well, no, but I won't go into the details because it'd bloat this post from "too long" to "unreadable". You're also presenting what you say as relevant to what I said.

And oh, "people with autism". You'll eventually learn how to manage it - hopefully, not everyone does - and autism shouldn't define you, no matter how crippling it can be at times. Watch me having used "autistics" by habit.

 

[the_real_seebs]

I note you're doing a thing here generally called "deflecting". You haven't said why your opinions are necessarily more valuable than those of people who have direct experience. You haven't said what your qualifications are. Instead, you've made up complaints about the post so you can declare it not-worth-answering. That's called "deflection", and it's a thing people do when they know they're wrong but they have an ego investment in not looking wrong. A problem rarely experienced by autistics.

I'm just quoting this part because that whole rambly mess is a bunch of lies, nonsense and more lies, and this is the part that made me giggle.

The term "lies" is incompatible with your narrative. "Lies" have to be intentional untruths. But if you are asserting that I necessarily know I'm wrong, and am lying, then your claim that I'm incapable of knowing relevant things is false.

I mean, I know I will never "win" an internet argument about autism against someone autistic. It's a strange game.

You're demonstrating precisely why you're not a reliable source of information in protesting that statement.

Ahh, but you haven't actually supported the claim. You've just strengthened your purely status-based argument that no one should doubt your claim. You haven't presented actual reasons for which the thing would be true; you've just said that you'll think badly of anyone who doesn't believe you.

I can convince you about as much as I can make autism not a disease.

Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, your ludicrous claim that autistic people can never, ever, be persuaded of anything, can't learn anything, can't understand anything... Many posters here are not autistic. And you haven't necessarily convinced them of the truth of your claim that no one would ever share their credentials if they were relevant to an argument.

That was never the point. I was lamenting about the constant lack of understanding of autism anywhere and everywhere, but I'm also very well aware of why it happens and why it's an impossible problem to solve for all practical purposes. The reason I'm not engaging your furious rant is because that's all it is. Sound and fury.

But you haven't established that your point of view is "understanding" either. What's the basis for your claims? Where's your sources?

Telling the truth about autism pretty depressing and also a surefire way to have young autistic people get extremely angry. I wasn't unaware that would happen. What I wasn't expecting was this perfect microcosm demonstrating why what I say is true and why the problem cannot be solved. Warms my cold, black heart.

"Young" autistic people, you say. What makes you so sure I'm young? How old are you, exactly? What's the basis for your claimed expertise?

You're arguing what you say is true. Well, no, but I won't go into the details because it'd bloat this post from "too long" to "unreadable". You're also presenting what you say as relevant to what I said.

Well, yes. I think it has relevance. You may not, but you haven't exactly shown that. What you are doing is preserving your pattern of making excuses for why you aren't showing your work or your sources. But you're rapidly reaching the point where presenting at least some sources would have taken significantly less time, and fewer paragraphs of text, than presenting all your arguments for why you can't present your sources.

I mean, no one is expecting that you provide a comprehensive bibliography. What's missing here is even one proper citation for your sweeping claims about the capabilities of other people.

And oh, "people with autism". You'll eventually learn how to manage it - hopefully, not everyone does - and autism shouldn't define you, no matter how crippling it can be at times. Watch me having used "autistics" by habit.

As noted, most autistics strongly prefer "identity-first" language. Because, yes, the many ways in which I am unlike "normal" people do define me. Often, in my opinion, for the better.

And the interesting thing is, you're almost certainly aware that "people with autism" is a phrase widely regarded as offensive by autistics. Why do you keep trying to use terms known to give offense, while asserting offensive things? Because you want to make other people be mad so you can say "look, they mad", and dismiss the things they say.

Is it working, though? Are all the readers looking at this smiling, and nodding, and saying "wow, that insanelich person really knows a lot about autism, and the reasons for which not a single one of these claims can be backed by a citation are convincing?"

I sorta doubt it. You're working too hard to try to make people mad, you're deflecting and avoiding too many questions, and while those tactics are effective when no one comments on them or calls them out, they tend to break down rapidly when analyzed.

 

[insanelich]

I sorta doubt it. You're working too hard to try to make people mad, you're deflecting and avoiding too many questions, and while those tactics are effective when no one comments on them or calls them out, they tend to break down rapidly when analyzed.

At this point very few people are paying attention, and the only reason I do is because I find delight in irony.

You're demonstrating one of the troublesome patterns of behavior, and nobody else can teach you how to break the cycle but you. You're trying to use several rhetorical techniques in order to attack my character in order to disprove what I say. You also are aware you can't actually attack what I say.

You're also posting posts several times longer than your points would require. This is because your behavior stems from your disease. The patterns are really quite predictable sometimes.

That's alexithymia for you.

I suggest reviewing your own behavior in this very thread, and seeing what you do. It could be a learning experience.

Not that it's likely to be. That's autism for you.

 

[the_real_seebs]

When we're talking about consent it really is as simple as just asking.

This is not quite entirely true. Some people can feel socially pressured to pretend to consent to a request if they feel intimidated. If I'm a big tall guy and give off "unsafe" vibes, a girl on her own with low confidence in her ability to defend herself may well say "yes" to questions to which the actual answer is "no".

 

[Hagi]

If someone is convinced that the action they're about to take isn't inappropriate but perfectly fine ( even though it isn't ) then when in doubt, ask isn't going to fix anything.

Then the problem with the person isn't inability to pick up on things like body language, its an inability to understand what consent is. Autism does not prohibit one from understanding what consent is so excusing such behaviour under the guise of autism is wrongful for a multiple reasons. Its untrue as well as purporting that the problem isn't a lack of understanding of consent but a lack of understanding of social graces.

Asking when in doubt and affirmative consent are excellent and absolutely required first steps. But they're not going to completely stop and prevent any and all unintentional awkward and/or inappropriate interactions.

They'll certainly stop the ones revolving around cosplay, the sort being mentioned in the article.

I think you're vastly underestimating the complexity of the subject at hand and simply saying "just ask" is a misrepresentation of the the problem.

When we're talking about consent it really is as simple as just asking. There's nothing wrong with being on the safe side. I have a speech impairment which tends to lead people to not understanding what I say. How do I respond? I am mindful talk more slowly, clearly and often repeat myself. There's a common root of communication errors on my part so I take steps to mitigate them. Nothing bad has ever happened because of me taking these steps where on the other hand a lot bad has happened by making assumptions about my communication with others.

Imagine a man who, for whatever reason, lacks fine motor control of his arms and hands. When reaching for things bad stuff can happen. He drops things, he grabs things he didn't intend to and overall things are far from great. He, for whatever reason, will never have great control of his arms and hands. But with practice he can greatly improve and do many things he's incapable of right now.

Now at first he obviously frequently asks for help, let's people know about the problem and does everything in his power so that others experience no trouble from his disability. Whenever he's unsure if he'll manage he asks. But he practices, he pays attention and works hard to improve. In time, even if he still has trouble with picking up small things and finer control he's managing quite well. He gains confidence and makes fewer and fewer mistakes. So with matters he feels confident he's got a grasp on he stops asking for help, stops trying to make sure everyone knows his problems, tries to do the things he thinks he can handle like everyone else. He thinks he's got it, and he does, nothing goes wrong for a while.

Then one day, perhaps a bad day, perhaps just an unlucky day, he reaches for his suitcase on a busy bus and, to great shock and outrage of those nearby, hits a small child standing next to it. He thought he had it, he was wrong.

Should this man have kept on asking for help always? Should he not have tried to pick up his suitcase? Should he always be on the safe side? Never try to pick things up himself when strangers are around?

 

[the_real_seebs]

I sorta doubt it. You're working too hard to try to make people mad, you're deflecting and avoiding too many questions, and while those tactics are effective when no one comments on them or calls them out, they tend to break down rapidly when analyzed.

At this point very few people are paying attention, and the only reason I do is because I find delight in irony.

That's quite possible!

You're demonstrating one of the troublesome patterns of behavior, and nobody else can teach you how to break the cycle but you. You're trying to use several rhetorical techniques in order to attack my character in order to disprove what I say. You also are aware you can't actually attack what I say.

That seems inaccurate. I have repeatedly criticized things you've said as contrary to my experience or the experience of others. For instance, I don't accept your claim that autistics generally can't know what their own emotions are. I am also primarily criticizing your posting behavior, not your "character", and I'm not doing it to disprove what you say, but to point out patterns in how what you say is not actually supported. What's particularly interesting, though, is that you are accurately describing one of your own behaviors here; you've regularly attacked my character rather than responding to the things I say!

You're also posting posts several times longer than your points would require. This is because your behavior stems from your disease. The patterns are really quite predictable sometimes.

Vague and unsupported. You assert that my posts are longer than my points would require, but what if I'm writing with intent to clarify and expand on points, rather than just asserting them without either evidence or explanation? You do indeed assert that the patterns are "predictable", but so what? If you trip and stub your toe badly, you're likely to make pain noises. Does the fact that the pattern is predictable mean it's invalid?

That's alexithymia for you.

No, it isn't.

I suggest reviewing your own behavior in this very thread, and seeing what you do. It could be a learning experience.

Smug, and condescending, but intentionally uninformative. You don't go into enough specifics to be useful. That's a very effective tactic on most people; you target their insecurities (everyone has insecurities!) by pointing out that there's something wrong, so they can fill in the blanks with a thing they think might be wrong, and think you pointed it out. But you didn't. You just used emotive language to try to make them feel bad and fill in the blanks themselves.

Not that it's likely to be. That's autism for you.

And you keep saying this, but you keep not supporting your points. You still haven't offered even one citation. Not one. Why not? You've put in a lot more words than a citation would have taken.

So, what we've got so far is:

* You have asserted that the people arguing with you are "young".
* You have made a number of excuses for not offering any evidence as to your qualifications or expertise.
* You have made a number of excuses for your complete lack of sources or citations.

What have you *not* done?

* Specified exactly how old you think people would be if they are "young". (Presumably, you're planning to wait until someone says they're older, then accuse them of being underdeveloped.)
* Offered a single actual source or citation.
* Offered any evidence that you have relevant expertise or knowledge.
* Answered any of a large number of directly relevant questions. You sometimes do the thing where you claim to have already answered the question, because most people won't risk the social embarassment of asking exactly when.
* Told us why this is so very important to you.

I dunno, it's not seeming very persuasive to me. And yes, I'm aware that most people probably aren't still reading, but I also know that I only have to persuade one or two people, or convince one or two people to doubt you, to get a significant payoff for my time.

The real mystery is how dogmatically you're committed to believing that nothing could be done to make autistic people less traumatized. Nothing. It's absolutely pure luck, you tell us. That's... surprising, to say the least? Because there's nothing else in this world where nothing affects degree of trauma. And why is it so important to you that people believe that? Why is it so important to you that you believe that?

 

[the_real_seebs]

This is not quite entirely true. Some people can feel socially pressured to pretend to consent to a request if they feel intimidated. If I'm a big tall guy and give off "unsafe" vibes, a girl on her own with low confidence in her ability to defend herself may well say "yes" to questions to which the actual answer is "no".

Because of the implication

Yes.

But my point stands: It is not as simple as "just asking".

 

[the_real_seebs]

Imagine a man who, for whatever reason, lacks fine motor control of his arms and hands. When reaching for things bad stuff can happen. He drops things, he grabs things he didn't intend to and overall things are far from great. He, for whatever reason, will never have great control of his arms and hands. But with practice he can greatly improve and do many things he's incapable of right now.

Now at first he obviously frequently asks for help, let's people know about the problem and does everything in his power so that others experience no trouble from his disability. Whenever he's unsure if he'll manage he asks. But he practices, he pays attention and works hard to improve. In time, even if he still has trouble with picking up small things and finer control he's managing quite well. He gains confidence and makes fewer and fewer mistakes. So with matters he feels confident he's got a grasp on he stops asking for help, stops trying to make sure everyone knows his problems, tries to do the things he thinks he can handle like everyone else. He thinks he's got it, and he does, nothing goes wrong for a while.

Then one day, perhaps a bad day, perhaps just an unlucky day, he reaches for his suitcase on a busy bus and, to great shock and outrage of those nearby, hits a small child standing next to it. He thought he had it, he was wrong.

Should this man have kept on asking for help always? Should he not have tried to pick up his suitcase? Should he always be on the safe side? Never try to pick things up himself when strangers are around?

The comparison falls apart because the social actions made by an autistic person are voluntary while the actions made by the man in your comparison are involuntary. Unless your intent is to purport that people with autism have no self-control in social settings it doesn't work, as I doubt you're saying that autistic people don't have control over the decision to touch somebody, ranging from hugging and kissing to punching and groping. That would seem to contradict what you're already stated.

Now I'm not autistic so I can speak from personal experience but I did go to school with some autistic people lying on various points on the spectrum and none of them ever tried to kiss the student that they had a crush on. None of them ever shouted "Ms. Robinson you're hot!" in the middle of class. None of them ever took a shit in somebody's locker or piss on somebody's face. There were some incidents of lashing out at other students when provoked, usually non-violent but still hostile like spitting on them, but most of the time when taunted or provoked they didn't respond. They understood that certain actions had certain consequences and acted accordinally. Clearly they all had some self-control, as did every other autistic person I've met, including a former lover. Judgement is clouded by a language barrier but that doesn't render decision-making moot.

Okay, so, I have a fair bit of experience, and a lot more indirect experience and anecdata on the topic.

And here's the thing: Sometimes, people misunderstand social rules or protocols, such that they genuinely do not believe there is an ambiguity or uncertainty, but they get the rule totally wrong. And this is true of all people, whether or not they are autistic. Does anyone seriously think that all the construction workers catcalling people are autistic? I don't.

And yes, sometimes that means getting a rule wrong in a serious or possibly upsetting way. And the point here is that, if you've got a rule sufficiently wrong, you don't know you've got it wrong, so you don't have anything to ask about. And that can result in really upsetting miscommunications or boundary violations. So it's not that they can't decide whether or not to kiss someone, or whatever; it's that they have a whole lot of information suggesting that this is a kissing circumstance, and sometimes... It's not.

That said... Honestly, I don't associate the kind of behavior described with autistic people at all, because the (slight) majority of autistic people I know have significant social anxiety because they have a history of breaking rules and getting yelled at, and being unable to get anyone to give them a coherent explanation of what went wrong. And that means that they are particularly unlikely to randomly grab someone in public.

The people doing that are usually the people who are relying entirely on body language cues and instinctive social processing, and who haven't ever given their social rules conscious thought.

So, while I totally do think that there's an occasional case or three where autistics will screw up a social thing because they misunderstood the rules, I don't think it's got anything to do with the harassment of cosplayers. I've been at conventions, and I've interacted with cosplayers, and I've generally been careful to maintain distance, ask before touching anything, and try to actually look at faces rather than boobs whenever possible.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Does anyone seriously think that all the construction workers catcalling people are autistic? I don't.

Just want to point out that I don't think that's a good example. Pretty sure that is not a misunderstanding, it's people who feel entitled to do their creepy behavior. Maybe I'm overestimating how obvious it is that that's creepy behavior, but I find it hard to believe they're unaware instead of just doing it anyways because they can.

 

[the_real_seebs]

Does anyone seriously think that all the construction workers catcalling people are autistic? I don't.

Just want to point out that I don't think that's a good example. Pretty sure that is not a misunderstanding, it's people who feel entitled to do their creepy behavior. Maybe I'm overestimating how obvious it is that that's creepy behavior, but I find it hard to believe they're unaware instead of just doing it anyways because they can.

Honestly, I suspect this is also true of most of the cosplay harassment. That said, most of the guys who do that appear to be genuinely unaware that it could be upsetting rather than being a "compliment". I mean, they get told, and they just laugh it off as "that's ridiculous, obviously people like this."

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Does anyone seriously think that all the construction workers catcalling people are autistic? I don't.

Just want to point out that I don't think that's a good example. Pretty sure that is not a misunderstanding, it's people who feel entitled to do their creepy behavior. Maybe I'm overestimating how obvious it is that that's creepy behavior, but I find it hard to believe they're unaware instead of just doing it anyways because they can.

Honestly, I suspect this is also true of most of the cosplay harassment. That said, most of the guys who do that appear to be genuinely unaware that it could be upsetting rather than being a "compliment". I mean, they get told, and they just laugh it off as "that's ridiculous, obviously people like this."

But I'm pretty sure they're aware that it's a rule, they just think they know better and flout it. Which is different from being unaware of a rule.

 

[the_real_seebs]

Does anyone seriously think that all the construction workers catcalling people are autistic? I don't.

Just want to point out that I don't think that's a good example. Pretty sure that is not a misunderstanding, it's people who feel entitled to do their creepy behavior. Maybe I'm overestimating how obvious it is that that's creepy behavior, but I find it hard to believe they're unaware instead of just doing it anyways because they can.

Honestly, I suspect this is also true of most of the cosplay harassment. That said, most of the guys who do that appear to be genuinely unaware that it could be upsetting rather than being a "compliment". I mean, they get told, and they just laugh it off as "that's ridiculous, obviously people like this."

But I'm pretty sure they're aware that it's a rule, they just think they know better and flout it. Which is different from being unaware of a rule.

It's an interesting question, because a lot of them seem to be genuinely surprised to hear that people actually object or think it's objectionable. I know that probably seems really strange, and they could just be lying, but in any event, many of them appear to think their behavior is acceptable and friendly.