Like I said, understanding. You’ve been using this incident as an example a fair bit but you only have half the story. I get not wanting to rock the boat though.
To be used in abstinence education curricula all over the country.
Regards,
Shodan
Color me confused.
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You believe you sexually assaulted her and believe that her silence about it, in an era that would have pilloried her for coming forward, is evidence that her being sexually assaulted was a minor thing? Don’t sound so woke to me.
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You have argued that Grace’s motivation in her graphic sharing of a private sexual encounter and in her harming Ansari by so doing was to serve the greater public good, including to put out a warning to others who might go out with Ansari. You drew a distinct contrast between that and wish for revenge by public humiliation of revenge porn. If there is a public good to be served by having those guilty of what you are defining as sexual assault humiliated then the issue is not whether or not she wants to come forward in order to punish you but whether you should identify yourself to your friends, family, coworkers, and strangers, as the … hard to describe one who sexually assaults as other than this … sexual predator that you believe your behavior qualifies you as. She can come forward anonymously or you can out yourself without identifying her but if you believe what have argued doing so very publicly in such a way that all who know you will see it fully identifying real yourself to them is the only ethical course of action. If you are morally culpable then merely feeling a sense of relief that you were lucky and got away with it is vacuous. Feeling a vague nagging sense of guilt is weak sauce. One needs to make amends.
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To me either you feel that what you did, similar perhaps to what you think Ansari did, was really not a moral wrong of significance on your part. Or you believe that it is okay for you to escape the same punishment for a similar moral transgression because you were “lucky” and had a victim who kept her mouth shut about it.
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Yes your rationalizations sound more like cowardice and hypocrisy than thoughts of a woke individual. You’ve “heard” what serves your interests to hear. Experts tell us that heartfelt apologies, ones that demonstrate taking responsibility, true remorse, and validate what the victim feels, “can have a huge impact” and help healing and recovery.
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I suspect however that if you spoke to her what you’d discover would be that she did not feel assaulted or violated but uncomfortable that a friend like-liked her while she did not feel the same way and that she was possibly sad to have to cause that to experience rejection/hurt and afraid that it might ruin the friendship. Expressing your feelings can cause discomfort when they are not reciporcated … but it is not assault. If I’m right no harm done by talking to her. If I’m wrong and she felt assaulted and you realized it then your concern of “retraumatizing her” is IMHO self-serving at best.
CarnalK harsh? I don’t think so.
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No, that is not correct.
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I am not a sexual predator, nor have I said that I am, nor have I implied that I am.
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See above to understand why your disjunction here does not follow from anything I’ve said. You’re not intentionally committing a straw man fallacy, but you are arguing against a straw man, nevertheless.
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“Can have.” When?
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You will need to read the relevant posts again, I think. You’re showing (for example in the comment “uncomfortable that a friend like-liked her while she did not feel the same way,”) that you have not read carefully and completely, and do not understand the situation as I have already described it.
DSeid in general, you’re doing almost the worst possible thing I can think of someone doing with the information and argument I’ve been offering here. You’re just insisting on all kinds of pernicious binaries and falsely-clear distinctions which I’m trying to make important problems for, and you’re doing so without argument. You’re just insisting. And the strange thing is (though I might be misunderstanding you), you seem to be framing it as an ad hominem* argument, as though you’ve spotted assumptions I make which I’m not consistent with. Like an assumption that either one is morally fine or else a sexual predator. You don’t assume that, do you? Yet you make an argument that relies on that assumption, as though you think I assume that. But there is no reason at all to think I do–and I don’t.
*not the fallacy
The set of “being morally fine” does not include “being a sexual predator.” Yes, I do “assume” that. Now one can be a member of neither set, say a murderer who has never been a sexual predator - not morally fine. But being both a sexual predator and morally fine? No.
The “can have”? According to the experts when the apology demonstrate taking responsibility, true remorse, and validate what the victim feels. Didn’t I say that?
Well now that it’s brought up, it is a little weird that the “obvious” solution for Aziz is well written apology article but for Frylock an apology to his good friend is “re-traumatizing” her.
Amongst the many huge and obvious differences between the two scenarios, there is in particular the following huge and obviously relevant difference: Grace has come forward publicly about the matter, basically inviting response*, while my friend has not.
I’ve told this story a few times in the past. Are you two both guys? I ask because, though it may be a coincidence, the fact is, it is always and only men who encourage me to revisit the issue with her. Most men, and all women, who have heard the story thus far, have said the best thing is to leave it be, for the reasons I’ve stated.
*Remember “Don’t come to me, I’ll come to you”?
And once again, that’s not even what I just said.
That two sets are mutually exclusive is a different matter than their being mutually exhaustive.
I know you know the difference between these two things. Something about this conversation is leading you not to understand things that I know you understand.
That’s not what I’m asking. You’re telling me the qualities of the apology that lead to good results. I’m asking what circumstances are necessary for apologies of that quality to have good results.
No snark intended but I do not think that I am the one having a hard time understanding things here.
The expert opinion reads to me that the circumstance in which a sincere, honestly remorseful (etc.) apology for sexual assault may help is its being given to a victim of sexual assault who been psychologically harmed by that assault. The article suggests that perhaps most helpful for those who are angry at their attacker and that “survivors who get apologies often recover faster than others who receive no closure.” Are you going to key in on the “may” or the “often” now? Do you want a 100% guarantee that the right sort of apology will help? Sorry, none available.
And to make very clear - an apology does not include asking for or looking for forgiveness. An apology asks for nothing from the victim.
I really am very struck and disturbed by your apparent position that you committed sexual assault and were “lucky” that your friend did not go to a newspaper presumptively to try to punish you in the name of justice (although of course it would have been her harmed more than you) but that such allows you “to feel relief that for her it was, in the end, (I believe), a minor thing”
Two thirds of the time actual victims harmed by significant sexual assault do not report the crime. Yes the perps can feel relief that they were “lucky” but if it was sexual assault they are delusional to thereby conclude that it must have been, in the end, a minor thing.
Demanding a victim to seek out her assaulter in the hope that he might be able to demonstrate true remorse, take responsibility, and validate her feelings, while asking for nothing from her in return? Your female friends who you think have told you that it is on the victim to seek out the apology and that a perpetrator who is ready to make a real apology should keep it to themselves? I think you are misunderstanding them.
I suspect that most people you tell this story suggest that you leave it be because they don’t really think you committed sexual assault. I know I don’t and I’d probably tell you to not bring it up either. What I am surprised at is that you accept that advice given that you believe you did. If I got drunk and got all handsy with a female friend, I would goddamn well offer up a sincere apology.
DSeid, when a reader consistently ascribes views to the author that the author didn’t state, nor imply, it’s not the author’s fault.
DSeid and CarnalK, you are both still working on an assumption–which you seem to think I share!–which I have explicitly denied and argued against. Namely, that assumption is the idea that sexual assault is inherently horrific and traumatizing. It can be, but it often is not. This is part of the message we’re getting from women these days–that lots of things we’ve told ourselves as a culture are just “annoyances” or “bad date experiences” because they’re not hugely traumatizing–are actually felt by many women to be of a piece in quality if not in severity with sexual assault. It’s the same phenomenon, wrong for the same reasons, and to be avoided just as carefully.
Insisting it only “counts” if it’s horrific and traumatizing serves only to justify, or at least pass over in silence as though unimportant, the cases that are still moral wrongs though neither horrific nor traumatizing.
CarnalK you definitely should be horrified by what you read about me considering myself to be a “bad dude” who got lucky. That’s the point. And the point, further, is that you (if youre a guy, and possibly if you’re not) and all guys should be racking their memories for similar instances, because it’s time for them to stop thinking of themselves as innocents just naturally doing what guys do, or innocents just being silly and clumsy and awkward, but instead, as what they are: bad dudes who got lucky.
Then, instead of continuing to act like the world is divided into evil monsters and innocents, they’ll more helpfully see the world as complex, one about which they must think critically concerning their roles and actions rather than simply feeling like they’ve picked the right side and that’s it.
Instead of centering their self-evaluation on their own circumstances, they’ll center it on what they’ve done to others.
Instead of consciously, half consciously, or unconsciously, using their gender and perceived social maladaptions as an excuse to get away with shit and not wrestle with themselves over it, they’ll own up to their behavior.
And instead of seeing guys who are successfully shown to be sexual assaulters as hopeless cases, horrible people who can’t be reached, they’ll correctly identify with them in a way that will allow for honest, constructive, growth-oriented discussions with them.
All so that men will stop casually mistreating women.
As to whether what I did was sexual assault, or what Ansari did–in the Ansari case the only question is whether he reasonably believed he had consent. No need to rehash that, it’s been talked about over and again in this thread. The underlying acts (in particular the kissing and the ramming of a penis into an ass) are unquestionably acts that underly sexual assault in the absence of consent. In my own case, I clearly did not have consent, but as to the underlying act it depends on whether, in the federal statute I linked to, the phrase “including any sexual contact” is meant to limit the definition of “bodily harm” as “any offensive touching,” or only to give one possible example of “any offensive touching.” If the latter, then even in the narrow legal sense, I certainly committed sexual assault. But even if that’s not the case, there is not much moral difference between touching a woman’s thighs very close to sexually charged areas without her permission, and touching her sexually charged areas without her permission, no matter what legal distinctions may exist there.
If you got drubnk and got all handsy with a female friend, and you remembered it clearly, but she did not (say she was drunk too), and she asked about it the next day, and you said nothing happened, and you continued to be good friends, and twenty three years later some people on the internet who you don’t know said you should now apologize to her… would you think that was reasonable?
Apologies are pretty much always for the benefit of the apologizer, not the one receiving it.
In this scenario, you (hypothetical you) assaulted her, and then lied about it.
Every day that you continued to remain friends is a continuance of that lie.
I don’t think an apology is quite enough there.
Yes Frylock no one else in this thread and extremely few in the English speaking world use the word “assault” to encompass actions like pulling someone from in front of a moving train or giving CPR and your idiosyncratic usage of the phrase “sexual assault” as a fairly benign entity is not used by most.
There is some false ascribing going on here and you are the one doing it. FWIW I do not see, and do not read CarnalK as seeing, “the world is divided into evil monsters and innocents.” (If anything in the Grace-Ansari story the objection many of us have had is to that simplistic formula in which Grace is cast as “innocent” and Ansari as “The Monster”.)
I get the tactic you are attempting. It is one that is tried in other discussions too. We see it often with some trying to get all White people to accept that they are “racists.” Wotta surprise that few take being called a racist and lumping them with the Klan as an invitation to examine how they may have behaviors that have racist impacts even though they have no explicit racist beliefs at all. The tactic of getting the average liberal White with no explicit racist beliefs to identify as a racist in order to get them to explore how they may without conscious thought do things with racist impact fails miserably every time.
“Sexual assault” does not include making requests during a sexual encounter in progress, it does not mean an arm around a shoulder in a movie theater on a date that turned out to be unwanted, and it does not include every honest miscommunication. And placing ALL the responsibility for any miscommunication between the genders regarding potential sexual wants and not wants on males is a poor way to get a conversation about how communication regarding sexual interests and disinterest misfires going and a piss-poor way to encourage self-reflection. “You too are a sexual assaulter”, “you are a bad dude who got lucky”, is a polarizing conversation ender that closes down consideration of complexities and the grey zones.
Communication is complex and communication regarding sex more landmine laden than most. GOOD people of both genders fail to communicate clearly and that failure does not make either of them BAD people. Start for a presumption that GOOD people can make mistakes and learn to improve and consider the process of typical interaction more than labelling men as “bad” and women as victims. Save the bad dude victim language for, well, the bad dudes who are actually victimizing women.
Oh. As to this one. As you are stating these things are “of a piece in quality if not in severity” it seems reasonable to go a bit more along the line to make this clear.
If you got drunk and had intercourse with an even more drunk, basically passed out, female friend, and you remembered it clearly, but she did not, and she asked about it the next day, and you said nothing happened, and you continued to be good friends, and twenty three years later some people on the internet who you don’t know said you should now apologize to her… would you think that was reasonable? How about if you had digitally penetrated her while she was virtually passed out and she did not remember and you lied about it? Felt her breasts? Grabbed her ass? Which sexual assault would you apologize for having done and for having lied about and which not? Does its being one year or ten years or twenty three years alter the moral calculus? Why or why not?
You and I agree that good people can make mistakes and learn to improve and consider the process. For example, I’d call myself a good person. And Ansari himself may for all I know be a good person.
If I had my druthers “good person” and “bad person” wouldn’t be terms that exist in any language. However, exist they do. And given that they do exist, it makes sense to me to follow the logic of “bad person” where it leads. Since a person who is not careful about consent is a bad person, it follows that Ansari and I are bad people. It follows that practically all of us are. And it is precisely hat realization, that we good people are also bad people, that the “bad people” aren’t these others, separate from us, which can lead us to learn to improve after making mistakes.
What is your argument here?
A lot of details would need to be known about each of these situations in order for anyone to be able to say anything informative about them.
But let’s assume I gave you the wrong answers in each case. What’s your argument?
What is the relevance of your questions to the idea I’ve expressed, that one thing we’re learning from many of the women speaking on this issue, that many things we think of as minor or even normal, are in fact, “of a piece with, in quality if not in severity,” sexual assault as traditionally conceived?
There are no additional details needed to offer an opinion about those scenarios and the effort you are making to avoid responding to them is … well I’ll use the word “amusing.”
To state what should be obvious about how it is relevant-
When things are “all of a piece” exploring the gradations and the complexities, figuring out where, if anywhere, it becomes grey, is to me always a more useful exercise than is simplistic labelling. And 'right" or “wrong” is less important than the exploration of where right and wrong answers become harder to give. To me none of those are grey at all. The behavior in each is indeed sexual assault and the man’s lying to cover up his crime is also a “not morally fine” thing to do, even though it spared her the retraumatization of knowing that she had been raped or molested while too drunk to consent. Her not knowing because of the lie and time do not alter that calculus either. To you (who had all the information needed to condemn Ansari) these as-ifs are too grey without more details. Huh.
The discussion, not so much argument, could continue from there as to what aspects make those each actual sexual assault and what would need to be altered in the scenario to make it not be. What would not warrant a true remorseful apology with admission of responsibility years later? Well not actually being sexual assault would be a start.
Ah I think there’s been a misunderstanding. In no case–including my own–do I consider it okay to have initially lied to cover up the incident. I’ve been addressing the question of whether to bring it up 26 years later in order to apologize. Does that also seem black and white to you, easy to answer without additional information being relevant?