Any solution that will work needs to include legalising sex work. Without that available as an outlet, a large share of the young male population simply must harass.

Consider one such event: National Stalking Awareness Month (January).

What happens around January 17th or so when you're getting ready for bed and it hits you like a thunderclap:

"Fuck! NATIONAL STALKING AWARENESS MONTH and I wasn't AWARE of it once day!"

By the way, "National Heatstroke Awareness Day" is next week, so if you were planning on having heatstroke, be aware.

I had a guy repeatedly call my parent's house, and a friend's house, threatening to kill them if they didn't give him the number of where I was staying so I could tour with his band.

I wasn't -really- afraid because I didn't think he would follow through but we did contact the police and have them listen to the 30+ messages he left on the machine.

Turned out, at the time, I couldn't get a restraining order because I'd never been romantically or sexually involved with him. I think the law changed since then. But I was pretty annoyed.

Florida, the second state to enact anti-stalking laws, stalking is "willful, malicious, and repeated following or harassing."

It becomes aggravated stalking when it's done in defiance of a court order, such as a no-contact order or injunction, the victim is under sixteen, or it places the victim under reasonable fear of grievous bodily harm or death.

I researched all this during the Trayvon Martin debacle when the keyboard lawyers made the accusations of "stalking" against George Zimmerman.

And Zimmerman never even came close to breaking any anti-stalking law.

The problem is, legislators who won't vote for these measures for increased government patrol of faked problems are few and far between.

There is a class of people in the US who look to the government to solve all our problems, even problems of an interpersonal nature - e.g., name-calling - that should be handled one-on-one.

The problem is those folks are voters. Any legislator who votes against an expansion of laws for these hyperbolized problems will face an opponent's campaign ads claiming he refused to protect the voters' wives and daughters, exposed defenseless women to stalkers and perverts, and is indifferent to domestic violence. With enough of those government solution voters in his district, those ads will be effective and he'll be voted out of office.

A DJ at an alternative radio station in San Francisco years ago expressed her frustration with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of government laws regulating what she could say and do in her personal life, "I'm tired of legislating for people with no people skills."

NicoleK, that was REALLY bizarre, on the part of the police.

anon4, I trust you understand the difference between "will" and "must"?

First, it's pretty well-known that johns don't typically have to worry about getting arrested or even publicly humiliated. So men with money often do as they please.

However, men who are both unpopular and poor are clearly out of luck. That does not change the fact that men simply do NOT need sex in the way that they need food or even sleep. There has never been any proof of an injury (or death) caused by virginity or lack of sexual activity in general.

Plus, any idiot should know the difference between socializing and harassing, just as anyone knows the difference between driving and speeding, even when surrounded by drivers who are speeding. Even in a bar, there's a certain etiquette. That is, you don't assume that everyone there is looking for a date or a one-night stand. Some people are just having a bad day and want to grab a drink in a bar where they don't know anyone.

Bottom line: no one "must harass." Even when being polite doesn't work.

Regarding what I said above, here's what Paul Kivel, author of "Boys Will be Men," wrote on pages 170-171:

"Too often the conclusion boys draw from these conflicting (parent vs. media) messages is that men shouldn't hit women EXCEPT when the woman is out of control, too emotional, going crazy, defiant, rebellious, manipulative, or just generally out of line, i.e., when she acts like a bad girl as men have been taught to define it. Men fear that if they let a women get out of control, or if they lose ultimate control of a relationship, the woman will take advantage of them or they will be abandoned.

"Boys are also taught not to rape women. But the underlying and pervasive social messages boys receive is that women are sexual objects and that successful men are able to get sex from women. All men can buy pictures and videos of women's bodies, smooth-talking men can seduce women, rich men can buy access to women's bodies, and the rest have to use more force. Although extreme force is nominally condemned (but still rarely punished), the assumption that men should have access to sex from women when they want it is not generally challenged."

(I realize, of course, that Kivel didn't really mean "have to" as in "they can't help themselves." But I can't assume that with every writer.)

Just to illustrate the earlier point about deceptive campaign ads:

The freshmen US senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis, in a town hall debate discussing the over-regulation of US society opined, in response to a debate opponent's example, that even the law requiring restaurant workers to wash their hands was an example of an unnecessary over-regulation, that the restaurant itself could require hand-washing.

He went on to say that restaurants should be able to opt our of this government regulation, but those that do should be required to post a sign to that effect. He went on to say the the market would soon take care of those unsanitary restaurants.

Now, his opponent is running ads that portray Tillis as saying restaurant workers should not be required to wash their hands, at all.

This kind of distortion is why we can't have an honest debate about the role of government and the optimal level of regulation.

Lenona, have you ever had to interact with the police for a similar reason? What NicoleK went through seem quite typical to me. My mother was getting harassed by a mentally unstable neighbor a few years ago. The police did a basic investigation just to verify something was actually happening (make sure it wasn't a hoax). They went to the DA. DA said that doesn't get her votes so the cops told us to come back after someone has died. You get a similar situation when dealing with the police after a burglary. The cops come in and write a report saying yes, he got robbed. And that is is. They usually don't actually try to catch the robber.

Life isn't like they depict on TV.

Ben, I don't watch modern fictional TV shows, just so you know. (Or most talk shows.) I've hardly seen any recent movies that take place in the present, either.

And I should have clarified that I meant the law, not the police, per se. The police can't help when the law doesn't allow them to, clearly.

But, today, when the police get a call saying that someone is sneaking around a house at night and acting suspicious, don't they typically come and try to stop any break-in that MIGHT happen?

And yes, I have called the cops for a car that was oddly parked at night - and they came. (IIRC, the driver was sleeping - maybe drunk.) Also, when a middle-aged neighbor was yelling from his front door for a long time - at the entire neighborhood - SOMEONE called the cops, and they came and managed to get him to quiet down. He never did that again.

Yes the cops will show up if you are in a reasonably nice neighborhood and just want them to tell someone to go away. That is all they will do. Maybe a report get filed. If you have someone stalking and harassing you they won't do much more than write it down. What prevented your neighbor from making more of a ruckus was himself not the cops.

Neither of us can really be sure of that, since I couldn't hear what the cops told him. Clearly, you'd have to be pretty out-of-control to behave like that in the first place.

Lenona, he could have just done it the next day. Or the day after. That he didn't is on him not some magical cop spell.

The cops come in and write a report saying yes, he got robbed.

That's so you can file a claim with your insurance company if needed.

Also, take a look at Amy's adventures during the theft of her Pink Rambler. She did pretty much everything but slap cuffs on the perp for LAPD.

What prevented your neighbor from making more of a ruckus was himself not the cops.

It depends on what transpired. Perhaps the cop said if I have to come back here to deal with your mouth, I'm gonna shoot you in the head. That's a pretty good incentive to keep one's cake hole zipped.

I'm not disparaging the cops IRA. Insurance companies and their customers need an impartial group to come in and say this isn't a hoax. It is a useful function. Just that what you see in movies isn't real. NicoleK's experience is quite normal.

I have a friend who's apartment got robbed. He had video of the guy stealing his stuff. When the cops came he pointed the guy out. The guy was using his stuff with his name written on it in sharpie while sitting outside. The cop looked at my friend and said 'You've got your form. What do you want me to do?'

This is just how things are.

I was very happy with the cops. They actually answered the phone while he was there and told him to piss off (in more professional terms than that).

It was the dumb law I was annoyed by. They have changed it since.

But at no time did we actually think this loser was going to kill my parents. He was pretty clearly a pathetic boaster.

The question is, why did the law apparently allow police to come over and prevent a robbery from happening, but not a murder? How much has that law been changed? If not, why not?

And if the police refuse to do what they ARE allowed to do, why doesn't the public rise up and do something about that?

To paraphrase Shaw, why should anyone have to accept the idea that "this is just how things are"? Even when change is hard and complicated?

Geez, summa youz is isolated. Whatever made you think cops have a DUTY to you?

They do not have such a duty. Under any circumstances.

Why do you think that "self-defense", of your person or your property, is somebody else's job?

As more and more of the populace descends into continuous expression of self-importance, this will only get worse.

Did you know that gas stations used to put cans of motor oil out by the pumps, and nobody would take them because they weren't theirs?
Do you imagine that laws or the police will make that happen again?

Prevent what murder Lenona? Sticks and stones and all that. You have a very misguided view of what the police do and why they do it.

Did you know that gas stations used to put cans of motor oil out by the pumps...? ~ Radwaste at July 24, 2020 9:53 AM

"He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!" ~ Navin Johnson

A big part of the problem with the whole 'awareness' ethic is that it endorses the overstatement, exaggeration and expansion of problems. The Campus Rape crisis was a classic example of that.

Basically even though people know that the headline statistic is exaggerated, they often feel that's warranted to raise 'awareness'. But then when the same bogus statistic is employed to justify some law or policy that is either far too severe or misses the causal factors entirely, people go along with it as though the statistic is true. Sometimes that's because many people now believe it's true, or as often because they feel that disclaiming the statistic hurts victims.

There's obviously harm to men from all of this. Millennial men are an example of that. But there is also harm to many women who grow up believing this stuff and so can never have a relationship with a man. The latter group is less conspicuous because they tend to fall in with Feminists and people attribute their issues to that ideology. But I've known a few and have seen how they were inculcated to fear men beforehand.

Some laws HAVE changed over the decades. Got a problem with that?

From Harvard, 1999:

...Less than one third of the states have anti-stalking laws that explicitly cover stalking via the internet. California, for example, only recently amended its statute to cover cyberstalking in order to prosecute a 50-year-old former security guard who pleaded guilty on April 28, 1999 to using the Internet to solicit the rape of a woman who rejected his romantic advances.

Federal law provides some tools to combat cyberstalking. Under 18 U.S.C. 875(c), it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, to transmit any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure the person of another. Section 875(c) applies to any communication actually transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce - thus it includes threats transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce via the telephone, e-mail, beepers, or the Internet. This is the statute under which Jake Baker was charged...

Sorry not to include the link, but I kept trying to post it and the blog kept refusing it - that is, it kept implying that I hadn't typed in "cars."

Try searching on Harvard plus "State and Federal Stalking Laws."