Women Are Natural-Born Stalkers, and That Can Be a Good Thing

[galileoreloaded]

Great read guys, and an unimpeachable source that gets quoted here often. I wonder if there is a corollary behavior in men? Thoughts?

http://jezebel.com/women-are-natural-born-stalkers-and-that-can-be-a-good-498786986

"When you become romantically interested in a guy you just met what's the first thing you do? Google him. Find him on Facebook. You gather intel (a series of photos in which he's seemingly very familiar with a pretty young woman?) which you then analyze (oh, OK, she's just his sister) to create a composite of his life (seems like he's very into "family&quot that you believe will lead you to have a better understanding of him as a person (yep, he wants children). Most women do some version of this in varying degrees—not because they're psychos, but because they're smart. In fact, if women weren't so good at stalking, we never would've caught Osama bin Laden.

Not to be all gender essentialist about it, but there's something about borderline-obsessive curiosity that is more in line with the personality traits of women. Maybe it's a result of being raised in a world with implicit biases regarding our behavior as females. Generally considered as physically weaker, it only makes sense that we would develop our strength through social acumen and find power in trading information."

[Major Nikon]

1. Rating Men on Lulu Isn't Empowering. It's Creepy.

Last week, I put out a call for more hook-up apps that are actually designed by, and for, women. Social media pro Alexandra Chong answered my call. Enter Lulu, an app so female-friendly that it doesn’t even require men to create their own profiles—women do that for them.

...

Unfortunately, the creepiness of Lulu doesn’t end at the bloodline. This app asks women to publicly sexualize (#KinkyInTheRightWays) and shame (#BabbyDaddy) the men in their lives without their consent. It’s the textual equivalent of leaking your ex’s naked pics to the Internet—it’s not wrong because it’s sexual, it’s wrong because it’s nonconsensual. Chong says the app’s point system and preset hashtags help Lulu sidestep the negativity of its predecessors, like the rant-based Don’t Date Him Girl. Lulu, she says, is a place to “recommend guys rather than trashing them.” But the nastiness has been curtailed just enough to prevent women from sharing crucial information (#HeRapedMe / #GaveMeAnSTD / #HasASecretFamily). All that’s left is leering and negging. Any woman who's been cat-called by a stranger on the street knows this: Unwelcomed sexual commentary isn't a compliment, it's harassment. If Lulu is really a boon for men, then let willing parties create their own profiles.


At the Cut, Kat Stoeffel rightfully ridicules a group of Redditors who denounce Lulu as anti-male harassment while defending their own right to post unauthorized naked photos of women to the Internet and unleash the anonymous commentary. But these guys are half right. As one said, “I wonder how society would react if I made an app that let men rate women they knew and gossip about how slutty they are." I do, too. And the next time sexual harassment goes the other way around, I expect we'll hear: "But girls are doing it on Lulu!"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/07/lulu_app_for_rating_men_it_s_just_as_creepy_as_rating_women.html

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Another perfect example of behavior that would be relentlessly creep-shamed if some "dudebro" wrote

a gushing blog post about it; for instance, how good men are at digging up info on their exes' significant others or whatever.

It would be a massive chorus of "EWWWWWWW" along with torch and pitchforks calls to arrest these clearly deviant dangers to decency.

But, when women do it, it's okay.

[Bonobo]

3. The Lulu Ap deserves its own thread. nt

[nomorenomore08]

5. I agree!

nt

[nomorenomore08]

4. Female harrassment of men may be less common - generally speaking - but that doesn't make it

any less wrong. And women who participate in stuff like this are just as deserving of scorn and ridicule as their male counterparts.