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Post by devogirl on Mar 15, 2023 8:51:51 GMT -5
Maybe creepy is the wrong word, since it is open to personal interpretation. What ichbin describes is abuse, stalking, and objectifying behavior. It's one reason devs have such a bad reputation. It's why Lee and I created Paradevo, and why straight male devs are not allowed to join. Sadly, when this happens, the reaction usually is "it's because they're devs" not "it's because they're men."
There are some women we have had to ban here, for harassment, stalking and catfishing. I can't say definitively that women devs never behave badly, but it is more rare, because women are not brought up with a sense of entitlement in pursuing sexual desires. The flip side of that, though, is that many women are so alienated from their own desires that they don't realize they are devs until far into adulthood, or think they can never act on their desires in any way.
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lyon11
Junior Member
Posts: 55
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled
Relationship Status: In a relationship
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Post by lyon11 on Mar 15, 2023 10:54:43 GMT -5
I believe that the male devs (the macho ones, not all) who only seek the satisfaction of their fantasies and who do not care about knowing or treating the other person, are the ones who make them form a bad image of the devs. People with disabilities are also guilty because we prejudge or let ourselves be guided by the opinion of others, without giving ourselves the opportunity to know how the other person thinks or feels.
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Post by sungod on Mar 15, 2023 11:54:52 GMT -5
I haven't encountered many creepy devs, fortunately. ichbin is on the right track that obsessive behavior tends to be the creepy aspect. I see that most of the replies in this thread follow that trend. And I totally agree, we men are good at being obsessive creeps, so male devs tend to be the worst offenders. My couple of experiences: 1. Very early in my exploration of devs (~2009, not on PD), I met and chatted with a female dev online. It was relatively early in the days of video chatting, but Skype was an option. We set up a time to video chat, and her camera "was not working"… Insert eyeroll here. I kept with it for about five or 10 minutes while she talked to me through text. She was asking me to move around, lean forward and backward, I can't remember what else. I eventually WTFed out of there. At this point, one of my guesses is that this was actually a guy exploring with fake pictures. 2. Much more recently, on a another non-dev specific site, I keep getting hit up by gay male devs. I'm pretty clear in my profile that I'm generally interested in chatting with women, but men try to get me to switch teams anyway. One dev in particular somehow found me on IG, so I chose to use the rarely-used block feature (rarely-used for me, anyway).
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Post by Dani on Mar 15, 2023 12:24:56 GMT -5
I've been called "sick" and "perverted" and other bad words by guys who are pissed off when they find out I'm not into them or will not tell them my darkest sex fantasies just because they're in a wheelchair. I've also been asked if I am sure I don't want to get a good d... inside of me instead of going for para dudes in chairs...I could go on and on how much crazy I get. It's very discouraging to say the least...
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Post by ichbin on Mar 15, 2023 12:47:16 GMT -5
Well, Dani, who hasn't. It's a pain, isn't it?
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Post by Dani on Mar 15, 2023 12:48:59 GMT -5
Here is a relatively tame message I got recently. Please note that I have never chatted with this person in my life. I don't know them. I simply got this message and when I wanted to contact him, I couldn't as he had already blocked me. So I am like a 🦕 Attachments:
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~creepy~
Mar 15, 2023 23:52:44 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by blueskye101 on Mar 15, 2023 23:52:44 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that the link will bring you to a movie trailer. Watch that and tell me she's not a creepy Dev! She definitely is creepy. Looks like a good movie. Love both the male actors.
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Post by Quad787 on Mar 16, 2023 2:18:30 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that the link will bring you to a movie trailer. Watch that and tell me she's not a creepy Dev! She definitely is creepy. Looks like a good movie. Love both the male actors. It's such a good movie. I found it on the Peacock app. It's a really good character study. Hugo Weaving is great in the lead role as the blind photographer. Russell Crowe is so good as the friend. Ive never seen him so young. And the woman who plays the creepy dev/housekeeper is amazing. Obsessive, controlling, sadistic.
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Post by devogirl on Mar 16, 2023 2:21:44 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that the link will bring you to a movie trailer. Watch that and tell me she's not a creepy Dev!
I watched the movie Proof when it first came out in theaters, long before I knew that devs were a thing and I wasn't the only one. It was the first time I ever saw a blind guy in a movie portrayed as romantically attractive, and not pathetic or a side character. I loved the movie and watched it repeatedly. It also appealed to my early 20s goth girl edgy tastes, an indie movie portraying messed up impulses you wouldn't really act on in real life.
In hindsight, if I watched it for the first time now I would probably react differently. The movie has a lot of ableist stereotypes and isn't particularly accurate about the reality of living as a blind person. It's more like treating blindness as a metaphor, which I hate. Even at the time, it was deeply frustrating to me that the blind guy is so childish and asexual. I was constantly rewriting scenes in my head to make him have more agency.
While Celia's actions are manipulative and abusive, there's nothing in the film to indicate that she's a dev.
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~creepy~
Mar 16, 2023 2:52:52 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Quad787 on Mar 16, 2023 2:52:52 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that the link will bring you to a movie trailer. Watch that and tell me she's not a creepy Dev! I watched the movie Proof when it first came out in theaters, long before I knew that devs were a thing and I wasn't the only one. It was the first time I ever saw a blind guy in a movie portrayed as romantically attractive, and not pathetic or a side character. I loved the movie and watched it repeatedly. It also appealed to my early 20s goth girl edgy tastes, an indie movie portraying messed up impulses you wouldn't really act on in real life.
In hindsight, if I watched it for the first time now I would probably react differently. The movie has a lot of ableist stereotypes and isn't particularly accurate about the reality of living as a blind person. It's more like treating blindness as a metaphor, which I hate. Even at the time, it was deeply frustrating to me that the blind guy is so childish and asexual. I was constantly rewriting scenes in my head to make him have more agency.
While Celia's actions are manipulative and abusive, there's nothing in the film to indicate that she's a dev.
I get what you're saying about the impractability and the ablist stereotypes, but I can look past those failings, especially for a movie made in the 90s. You think there's nothing to indicate her being a dev? What would you consider a strong indication? She's obsessed with him, and perhaps his blindness. She uses his blindness as a weapon against him. She resents Russel Crowe bc he is able to get closer to Weaving by helping him see photographs through words. She doesn't come out and say she has a thing for blind guys, but you wouldn't expect her to just blurt that out. At any rate, you're much more of an expert than I am in this area, so I would defer to you. I totally agree with you that weaving was playing such a wimpy, childish character. Celia was super gorgeous and sexy. And literally throwing herself in his lap. I kept wishing that he would just go for it. He was right when she said he may not have another chance.
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Post by devogirl on Mar 16, 2023 3:24:19 GMT -5
You think there's nothing to indicate her being a dev? What would you consider a strong indication? She's obsessed with him, and perhaps his blindness. She uses his blindness as a weapon against him. She resents Russel Crowe bc he is able to get closer to Weaving by helping him see photographs through words. She doesn't come out and say she has a thing for blind guys, but you wouldn't expect her to just blurt that out. At any rate, you're much more of an expert than I am in this area, so I would defer to you. The screenwriter/director is a woman but I seriously doubt she's a dev or even knows we exist. The story isn't about the actual experience of blindness, how real people adapt, or the real experience of having a disability. It's all an extended metaphor that is based in the sighted person's fantasies about vision, that is, the scriptwriter's ideas of blindness and photography. Very similar to how CODA is really about hearing people's thoughts on hearing or not hearing (although that movie is elevated to greater realism by the inclusion of real Deaf actors). As someone who spends a lot of time writing and reading devvy fiction, Proof doesn't feel to me like a dev fantasy, even aside from the abusive parts. It was a great favorite of mine, but at the time there was literally nothing else.
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Post by Quad787 on Mar 16, 2023 3:54:55 GMT -5
You think there's nothing to indicate her being a dev? What would you consider a strong indication? She's obsessed with him, and perhaps his blindness. She uses his blindness as a weapon against him. She resents Russel Crowe bc he is able to get closer to Weaving by helping him see photographs through words. She doesn't come out and say she has a thing for blind guys, but you wouldn't expect her to just blurt that out. At any rate, you're much more of an expert than I am in this area, so I would defer to you. The screenwriter/director is a woman but I seriously doubt she's a dev or even knows we exist. The story isn't about the actual experience of blindness, how real people adapt, or the real experience of having a disability. It's all an extended metaphor that is based in the sighted person's fantasies about vision, that is, the scriptwriter's ideas of blindness and photography. Very similar to how CODA is really about hearing people's thoughts on hearing or not hearing (although that movie is elevated to greater realism by the inclusion of real Deaf actors). As someone who spends a lot of time writing and reading devvy fiction, Proof doesn't feel to me like a dev fantasy, even aside from the abusive parts. It was a great favorite of mine, but at the time there was literally nothing else.
A genuine thank you for that explanation. It's actually helpful to my understanding. I didn't even consider the screenwriter, or what she might have intended. I wasn't considering whether it was intentionally written as dev material. I was looking solely at the behavior of the characters. But that's interesting what you said about it being all there was at the time. Meaning that it's weak Dev material, but used as such because there was no alternative.
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Post by devogirl on Mar 16, 2023 4:19:07 GMT -5
But that's interesting what you said about it being all there was at the time. Meaning that it's weak Dev material, but used as such because there was no alternative.
Yes, it's a little bit like how in the 1960s and earlier, gay people would mentally re-write films with gay subtext to see themselves on screen. But in those cases, the filmmakers were almost always aware that gay identity exists, whether they were trying to hide it or not. But hardly anyone knows that devs exist, so almost all of the films we enjoy are only accidentally devvy. There is the film Quid Pro Quo, but that is about BIID, not devs. I can't bring myself to watch it.
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Post by Armus on Mar 17, 2023 10:01:53 GMT -5
i haven't interacted with any devs in meat space (as far as i know), though i have had a couple experiences with women being really creepy toward me but had no reason to suspect they were devs.
however, one of my exes and i met on a popular but quite small subreddit where we were both regular posters. when we "came out" to everybody that we were dating, she got a DM from a throwaway account from someone that was clearly another regular (we never figured out who) that was some rant about how lucky she was to date me because she'd be able to smell my wheelchair cushion whenever she wanted. there were other things in the message that fetishized the chair but that's the one i always remember because like...why? you may as well shove your nose directly up my ass instead of sniffing the cushion my fat ass is farting on all fucking day.
truly bizarre and weirdly invasive.
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Post by ayla on Mar 17, 2023 13:53:54 GMT -5
A lot of this stuff falls under the umbrella of “your kink is not my kink” — not appealing, but not necessarily creepy either. I think men are far more likely than women to have a blind spot about their own creepy behavior. Men are raised in a society that says they should be virile sexual beings from a young age. I remember my younger brother, as a TODDLER, dressing as a construction worker for Halloween and *everybody* thinking it was the epitome of humor to teach him to catcall as part of the costume. “Hey baby, gimme a kiss, mwah!” was his “trick or treat” that year. This was probably 1992. Not so terribly long ago. I think the ratio of creeps to non-creeps is probably the same among devs as it is among non-devs. Meaning, if 10% of men have creepy behavior, 10% of male devs do too. And if 0.1% of women, then 0.1% of female devs. Total guess though, and I’ve still yet to hear a firsthand account of an actual female dev who acted in the way male creeps do in the ways we’ve all experienced.
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