And frankly, if it's more about the "undesirable" part -- if it's okay to proposition women in an elavator as long as she deems you hot -- I just can't sympathize.
"How dare he proposition me in an elavator ... without being desirable, I mean!"
Even if feminists said exactly that, it would still be helpful.
Sympathy is not yet relevant at the stage I'm talking about. Such a remark would still be helpful as a correction on a factual error into which the Typical Mind Fallacy would have led me. Setting aside for the moment how anyone ought to feel, the "what would I feel" heuristic would not suffice to tell me that many women are in fact uncomfortable being propositioned by someone undesirable — in an elevator at least. I can't even get to the stage of judging the appropriateness of that reaction until I know that that reaction is in fact happening. That knowledge is one bit (of a very simple sort) that I have gotten from reading feminism.
I thought I made clear that my evaluations of sympathy would be given at a later stage, similar to when you would do so, and after a (predictable) response is given.
Also, having to turn a man down is always going to be uncomfortable; the relevant question is whether doing so on an elevator is more uncomfortable in any relevant sense, and whether women would apply the rule hot guys..
When _ozymandias posted zir introduction post a few days ago, I went off and binged on blogs from the trans/men's rights/feminist spectrum. I found them absolutely fascinating. I've always had lots of sympathy for transgendered people in particular, and care a lot about all those issues. I don't know what I think of making up new pronouns, and I get a bit offput by trying to remember the non-offensive terms for everything. For example, I'm sure that LGBT as a term offends people, and I agree that lumping the T with the LGB is a bit dubious, but I don't know any other equivalent term that everyone will understand. I'm going to keep using it.
However, I don't currently know any LGBT people who I can talk to about these things. In particular, the whole LGBT and feminist and so on community seems to be prone to taking unnecessary offense, and believing in subjectivism and silly things like that.
So I'd really like to talk with some LWers who have experience with these things. I've got questions that I think would be better answered by an IM conversation than by just reading blogs.
If anyone wants to have an IM conversation about this, please message me. I'd be very grateful.
EDIT: Wow, that's an amazing response. Thank you all for your kind offers. I'll talk to as many of you as I can get around to.