Posted by Duncan Wilder Johnson on 2009-04-16 17:29:16 +0000
WOW!!!!!
Posted by MF DU on 2009-04-16 18:26:44 +0000
Wow - what a train wreck.
I know it is naive of me to say, but it still depresses me to actually find out about people like this that more or less exist by taking advantage of others.
Posted by virtue on 2009-04-16 19:09:47 +0000
Train wreck, indeed. At first it was funny, the scamming of the hipsters, but then it was very sad. The young woman struck me as suffering from serious mental illness, and as unlikely to ever receive adequate treatment, if any. It's also sad that her modus operandi works so well (and so often) because our society is so fucked up about sex and gender. It fucks her up and then she uses it to fuck up other people. Sadder still are the comments from the vice site--many about her physical appearance.
Posted by mr. mister on 2009-04-16 19:14:49 +0000
never trust a girl with a giant tattoo on her chest.
Posted by pamsterdam on 2009-04-16 20:00:25 +0000
I am toying with the idea of arguing that grifting is not gender-dependent, that an attractive young man could just as easily have perpetrated these cons, that had that been the case you might be singing a different tune re: mental illness, and that given the volume of comments on the Vice site - and the average age & gender of their readership - there are relatively few comments regarding her physical appearance.
But I hate arguing.
Posted by Corby Trouser Press on 2009-04-16 23:55:52 +0000
A welsh chap of indeterminent age called Julian was in my hall during my first year of University. I thought he was a nobber from the get go and could not stand him. However several friends of mine let him rack up thousands of pounds of debt with them. He also got them into credit card and insurance fraud. He disapeared towards the end of the year. The people who he owed money to tried to track him down and discovered that his whole back story was a fabrication. About a month later a message appeared in the student newspaper: "To the Raglan Rd suckers - thanks, Julian"
Posted by virtue on 2009-04-17 01:58:16 +0000
I don't think that grifting is gender dependent, more that the specifics of her scam(s) relied on certain assumptions of gendered behavior. I think it's entirely possible, if not probable, that some attractive young man could have perpetrated similar cons, as regards to monetary and personal value, but I do think that the form of the con would be substantially different (obviously, the pregnant thing wouldn't fly;). I do think that the scams/behaviors would very likely be equally gendered.
I think you hit closer to home with the comment re: my assessment of mental illness. I hadn't thought about how the story would read with a male protagonist (I fight for/believe in the possibility of a gender egalitarian world (or, should I say, just plain old egalitarian world), mind you, but I never said that I thought that I had personally attained it). At the knee jerk level, I believe that any buy-in to our fucked up gendered world implies some sort of personal culpability, in a western liberal cogito ergo sum sort of way. The part of me that has lived experience as a girl/woman in our society says that it would be absurd to assign full culpability to anyone who has individually participated in our culture's gender inequalities.
Or perhaps I just cling to the latter option to absolve myself from my feeling that it can't hurt as much when you're the one benefiting from un-egalitarian assumptions. Or to negate my own failure to attain ayn randian personal happiness. Whatever.
Despite my personal goal to recognize the equally real damage done to the privileged (or is that ultimately merely to absolve myself of my own anomie in the face of my overwhelming social privilege, my biological gender notwithstanding?), I do find it somewhat difficult to be as sympathetic to a "he" taking advantage of already advantaged gendered behavior.
Posted by tgl on 2009-04-17 02:23:19 +0000
Ayn Rand was a miserable bastard. There was a cartoon biography that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly a while back. I can't seem to Google it for the life of me.
Posted by Miriam on 2009-04-17 04:22:50 +0000
I totally thought this was going to be about straight wives of gay husbands. Boy, was I wrong?!
Posted by respectless on 2009-04-17 12:11:17 +0000
We cannot absolve this girl of her misdeeds simply because of the inequality of gender in our society. Just as we wouldn't absolve a pedophile because they were the victims of molestation themselves. This girl knew exactly what she was doing and used her ability to control a sex/gender role situation by making all these guys think "wow, this chick's totally gonna fuck me!". I laugh at all the stupid hipster guys who bought her line of shit and didn't question the outlandish behavior and run at the first mentions of "My psycho ex-boyfriend got me in all this financial and legal trouble, can you cash an out of state check?"
Some guys got hosed, she is entirely to blame, and I find it completely hilarious.
And more than the chest tattoo, the one that bugs me is the "I love beards" tattoo. I don't think I'd date a girl who had that tat. Even if she really DID love beards, that is personal and private. Where is the decency?
Posted by pamsterdam on 2009-04-17 12:13:15 +0000
I see that I'm carrying out my role as male apologist again... :o)
The idea of an attractive young man getting money/affection out of me by being hot, sexually forward, emotionally needy, and occasionally physically unable to care for himself (instead of pregnancy or cancer I could imagine sudden unexpected homelessness or his car breaking down) does not seem terribly far-fetched to me.
Attention attractive young men: please do not attempt this.
In any case, nor does it indicate any more gender difference than the - I believe - fairly standard assumption that in terms of what our society values most, men have things and women have their bodies. Yes, this involves gender politics. To a certain extent, however, I also think it involves biology.
Yes, I know that I'm treading on thin ice. But I would argue (albeit tentatively, as I hate arguing) that biologically speaking a woman's value has always been inherent: we can make babies, carry them inside us, and then feed them - all with minimal outside contribution - and this extraordinary part we play in furthering the human race makes our bodies biologically extremely valuable. And to be rather crude about it, men make semen. Which is important, but they have to do a lot of other stuff - accumulate and work on a lot of other stuff - in order to match that inherent biological value.
And now I sound like I don't think men are inherently valuable. Which obviously I do. But from a purely biological standpoint... you can see how we've culturally accepted that women hold their worth in their bodies, no?
Further, while I agree that mental illness - along with any other extenuating circumstances or conditions - must be considered when laying the blame in any situation, but this woman took advantage of people by playing into their libidos and their sympathy, and sadly not everyone who does this is crazy. Some people are just not very nice.
Your last point makes me think of a conversation I had recently with a dear female friend, in which I was explaining the fact that my father doesn't drink. It comes back to the same reason he's a feminist (in the context of his gender & generation). He was raised by his mother in an apartment building populated mainly by low income young couples and families. The walls were thin, and every Friday night he was awakened by the sound of the (generally drunk) menfolk in the apartments on either side coming home from work (followed by many hours at the bar) to questions from the womenfolk about where the rent money was, where the gas money was, how were they going to put food on the table when all the money had been spent on alcohol. And then the beatings would start. My dear female friend started to laugh - which, to be honest, freaked me out. And then she realised that it was the men beating the women, not the women beating the men, and suddenly she found it a lot less funny.
As you know, I'm a humanist. I believe that no one should be treated as any less of a human being as anyone else - regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, ability, etc. I don't relish hearing about anyone being treated badly, and that includes sex-crazed hipsters who get taken in by a smoking hot grifter. Even if they do have boy-parts instead of girl-parts. And even if we still make about 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same damn jobs.
My view at the moment is this: the only way to work toward meaningful societal change is to change legislation to make everyone equal in the eyes of the law. With time, change will come to the eyes of our fellow citizens, and in the eyes of ourselves. The civil rights movement is still going on, none of us has reached true equality within society, but some of us are considered equal under the law. These aren't baby steps, but they are relatively small steps toward a society that I believe can exist. Probably not in my lifetime, but in the lifetime of humanity.
This reply is all over the place, but hopefully it's on-topic.
Posted by G lib on 2009-04-17 16:01:40 +0000
I'm with you on the absolution, respectless. But this situation really highlights the difference in the ways that people can be so easily manipulated by sex.
Saying "I want to throw a hotdog down your hallway" to a stranger in a bar = is stiletto to the nads worthy.
Saying "I want you to throw a hotdog down my hallway" to a stranger in a bar = a male hipster fansasy, apparently.
Posted by TheFullCleveland on 2009-04-17 16:13:47 +0000
I don't think that fantasy is specific to hipsters, though.
Posted by G lib on 2009-04-21 12:44:44 +0000
It would be particularly funny if she showed up to this pomo bullshit
(pomo bullshit that I'm totally fascinated by)
Posted by tgl on 2009-04-21 13:19:05 +0000
Still waiting for my subscription. This dude I met at Drink a month or so ago went to Yale with some of the editors/founders and said he could straighten things out.
BTW, I didn't really get the title until I started the Logic section of my Discrete Math class.
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2009-04-21 15:17:27 +0000