[QUOTE=Arac]
Don’t get me wrong, I in no way want to denigrate what must have been a truly appalling tragedy for you, and maybe this is just a quirk of my own psyche but I assure you that I’m not in any way relating this to any personal rape fantasies (God knows I hate feeling powerless in any way). I can fully imagine the humiliation and pain of being forcibly penetrated, so we’re not talking a lack of imagination on my part, either, but take away the violence, take away the penetration or threat thereof, and take away the guilt from being forced to betray my wife and what I’m left with I cannot imagine as rape, but instead something that feels more in line with… Oh, I don’t know… Having to drink a pint of vomit: Very unpleasant, yes, a truly hideous experience while it’s happening, but not something that would have the lasting effects I associate with the word ‘rape’.
However, I concede that you speak from authority where I do not, and even if what I’m saying is true, I don’t want to imply that this makes me better or stronger or anything of that ilk. If anything, it may well make me worse that I feel I could emotionally seperate myself so easily from what I consider a purely biological act. Furthermore, you seemed to imply that you knew the perpetrator, and I think the ‘betrayal’ factor would make a huge difference to myself as well.
[/QUOTE]
But you’re asking the victim to “take away” an awful lot. Even penetration is a purely biological act, if you take away all the ramifications of it. And victims, male and female, don’t always experience lasting effects in the sense of never getting over it.
[QUOTE=gigi]
But you’re asking the victim to “take away” an awful lot. Even penetration is a purely biological act, if you take away all the ramifications of it. And victims, male and female, don’t always experience lasting effects in the sense of never getting over it.
[/QUOTE]
Granted, but I’m just trying to get down to the… uh… pure distillation of rape, if you will, in that being forcibly - and against my will - made to penetrate someone hypothetically seems a lot worse than forcibly being penetrated, even if said penetration is made as painless as possible. There are all kinds of aggravating factors, I wouldn’t argue against that. I also imagine that there are women who have been raped who genuinely regard the experience the way I described it in my previous post - excrutiatingly horrible at the time, but not life-breaking.
[QUOTE=Aangelica]
He was warned - repeatedly - in that thread that there are a number of rape survivors on the board who were likely to read the thread and kept right on making rape jokes.
[/QUOTE]
I post very little and not certainly in the Pit. So, I am not here defending or criticizing any one side.
However, I would like to understand why members are expected not to talk lightly or joke about subjects that are sensitive to some others on the board? This is a public message board, right? Are there any rules specified on this board that state this requirement for membership and posting privileges?
Some people here have been raped, therefore do not start a thread about enjoying getting raped - is that a rule? Why?
I have not been raped. Someone else has been raped. I can sympathize with this person if he talks to me about how it was bad for him. As long as one-on-one I do not make fun of him, or hurt his feelings by direct personal comments, or behave in any way towards him that trivializes his emotions, why should I be expected not to talk about the subject elsewhere in any manner I find suitable, humourous or otherwise?
If the person who has been raped is offended by someone making fun of a subject, - mind you I said “subject” not the “individual”- well all he needs to do is to stay away from any thread or post that mentions the subject.
Why the expectation that because the subject offends one person’s feelings, 20 others cannot talk about it amongst themselves?
If you want to make fun of something irrespective of other posters’ feelings about it, do it here in the Pit. The more polite fora are expected to abide by fundamental rules of courtesy, including the one about refraining from making stupid wisecracks about topics that other posters have explicitly warned you are too painful to be funny.
This is also known by the metaphor of “not talking about rope in the house of the hanged”.
Refraining from stupid wisecracks is not the same thing as stifling genuine discussion. Nobody in that thread was being discouraged from talking about rape; Roboto was just being warned that he was acting jerkishly by insisting on making stupid wisecracks about it.
Excuse me for staying out of this for a while – I’ve been busy, and even when turning roboto’s apology around in my mind, have been pretty much unable to figure out how to respond to it. It doesn’t ring true to me, and doesn’t touch a lot of what went before – but at the same time, I recognize that I’m less than objective about the whole thing.
So roboto, I hope you don’t mind if I decline to actually accept your apology – but instead just ignore what has gone before altogether. I guess in a practical sense it amounts to the same thing.
You made some reference to post-counts and such-like before, but I think you’ll find that there’s no such thing as tenure at the SDMB, and there’s no “weight” that goes with a high post count or an antidiluvian join date, and no initial resistance to overcome. (If anything, I wish I could erase my post-count – it’s just a numeric testament to an embarrassingly long period of obsessive arsing about.)
Arac, gigi said pretty much what I would have if I returned before she put a word in. If you take away the violence, you’ve redefined the situation until it isn’t rape. Rape is violence. I guess you mean actual blows, or choking, or similar – but being forced (actually forced, not roughly persuaded) to have intercourse with someone when you don’t want to is violent in itself.
It’s one thing to joke and discuss and debate topics - that’s encouraged 'round these parts. It’s another thing entirely to repeatedly and deliberately poke at someone else’s sore spot after you’ve been asked to stop. You can do that in the Pit, but not in any of the more civilized fora. Hell, that’s what the Pit is for really.
If Roboto was all that interested in making crude jokes in questionable taste about rape, he could have come here to do it. To do it repeatedly, after being asked to knock it off, in a fora other than this one, is flat-out jerkish behavior and prohibited on the board in fora other than the Pit. We’re allowed, nay encouraged, to be jerks in here.
I know but that is rather vague by definition and prone to personal interpretations. Someone appearing a jerk for you may not be true for someone else. That is why we have the mods here who decide who is being a jerk and who is not. It is absurd to let everyone have this privilege.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
If you want to make fun of something irrespective of other posters’ feelings about it, do it here in the Pit.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Yeah: “Don’t be a jerk.”
[/quote]
I know but that is rather vague by definition and prone to personal interpretations. Someone appearing a jerk for you may not be true for someone else. That is why we have the mods here who decide who is being a jerk and who is not. It is absurd to let everyone have this privilege.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
If you want to make fun of something irrespective of other posters’ feelings about it, do it here in the Pit.
[/quote]
On the contary, why can’t the other poster simply stay **away ** from the thread that disturbs him especially if he/she is not the one directly addressed by the op or any of the other posters in the thread?
What makes it so compelling for the poster with “feelings” to enter the discussion and throw tantrums at others? If I do not like discussing a particular subject because it hurts me, all I have to do is to I stay away from discussions related to it.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
This is also known by the metaphor of “not talking about rope in the house of the hanged”.
[/quote]
Oh so this message board is now a “house”?? And now you will also tell me that the owners of the house and the people who call the shots around this “house” are the posters who have at some time in the past suffered damage to their psyche on some account?? Be afraid…be very afraid of them… :rolleyes:
wisernow…have you actually read that other thread? This isn’t about “discussion of that topic hurts me”, it’s about someone jocularly mocking the very idea that such rape was possible and begging for himself to be raped. Roboto’s behavior there is nobody’s idea of non-jerky behavior in any context, anywhere. It requires no special discernment to recognize as assholery. And the rest of your post just seems to be empty argumentativeness. The mods DID decide he was being a jerk, and individual posters do not have the power to decide that. That a poster in particular chose to voice his displeasure has nothing to do with the thread being closed. It would have been, and Roboto warned, if nobody at all publically complained.
[QUOTE=wisernow]
What makes it so compelling for the poster with “feelings” to enter the discussion and throw tantrums at others? If I do not like discussing a particular subject because it hurts me, all I have to do is to I stay away from discussions related to it.
[/QUOTE]
Huh? Someone asked, directly, (and apparently earnestly) if it were possible for a man to be raped by a woman. Why wouldn’t someone with some personal insight into this offer their perspective?
As for “throwing tantrums,” while I acknowledge that my comment was way out of line for IMHO, it’s also a pretty natural response to someone who behaved the way he did in that thread.
