Care to point out the post(s) in question? That thread is loooooong and frankly I don’t give enough of a fuck to wade through it all.
The Cliff’s notes version please.
I didn’t finish thread. Heck, I stopped reading after Der’s first post. Here’s a sample based on CTRL-F:
Der’s first post: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12461664&postcount=134
Der’s 2nd post: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12463204&postcount=165
Olive’s response to the 2nd post: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12463464&postcount=169
The reader can judge whether the contents above merit outrage.
I’m not seeing the “insane” level of vitriol olives was talking about, quite frankly. Not the thread I’d choose to make that point in, and I don’t agree with his stance, but it was hardly vitriolic.
Separate but equal? My foot! Freedom is the freedom to bare breasts!
I thought it was bare arms, but I am a textualist.
Regards,
Shodan
Raping and pillaging… mostly rape, lots and lots of rape
I read the whole thread yesterday, and I think it’s not so much the actual words as the context. All these women were talking about their awful experiences and how men often don’t take their legitimate fears seriously, and then a couple of male Dopers showed up to do exactly that. Things went rapidly downhill from there.
Hell yeah! Why do people think I live in Thailand anyway?
Unless I missed one somewhere, DT only had one other post to that thread beyond those linked above by MBM; a claim about the relative rates of domestic abuse for males/females.
ETA: sorry the above link is incorrect, and my connection is slow at this time. It’s post #250 of that thread.
Even if DT’s position amounted to not taking their legimate fears seriously (to which I don’t agree), that’s not to say that he posted with an insane level of vitriol, which was Olive’s claim.
Also, her claim that “he attacked the rape victims for being sexist, because they had PTSD” also amounts to a misrepresentation. He didn’t attack “rape victims” specifically, but a more general concept, and the whole notion that most women posting to that thread have or had PTSD appears to have been invented by Olives herself.
So let’s get back to the orginal quote Fotheringay-Phipps. Do you think the “average American woman” thinks every man is a potential rapist or supports and applauds rape? Do the women you encounter on a daily basis treat every man they meet as if they are a monsters? I’m really curious.
I don’t understand the context of your question.
I’m curious as to your opinion of the quote that started this whole thread. If you stated in early, I apologize but I missed it.
I did not address that quote specifically, but in my first post to this thread I did address DT’s attitudes WRT these issues generally. And what I said was that he is “largely correct” but given to hyperbolic statements.
IOW, he’s correct that a double or inconsistent standard exists, but many or most of his assertions are exagerated (as are most of his assertions about most or all other issues).
The specific quote in question is hard to pin down precisely. I personally think every strange man is a potential rapist - also a potential murderer, con artist, or pinball wizard. Question is likelihood and what degree of suspicion you have. Certainly as phrased in your second question, the answer is no. I don’t recall having ever seen any woman treat every man she meets as a potential monster, let alone the women I encounter on a daily basis.
Then we have a very different world view.
That’s fine with me, but I’m not sure it’s actually true, at least as regards to this particular issue.
My point was just that there’s a non-zero chance that any strange man might be a rapist (or anything else you might suggest), and until you’ve narrowed it down further WRT what level of likelihood you’re talking about it’s difficult to make any assertions.
Fruedian slip?
Don’t freak out, I’m not a Republican saying we should be telling women to go back into the kitchen. I believe we need to account for the biological differences between men and women. A woman would need maternity leave. A single man would not. You can’t treat them the same. Likewise, with regards to abortion, women carry the babies, so they get to decide whether to abort or not. I would never support giving a man veto powers over a woman’s body in order to force her to carry a fetus to term
I am for equal treatment regarding toplessness though. Men can go topless, so should women! 
Most men shouldn’t, actually.
But only if they are hot! Because then we’d have a our ready-made excuse for raping them: “hey, don’t blame me, did you see what she was wearing? She was asking for it!”
As in the example given earlier in this thread, there’s indeed a non-zero chance that any Australian traveler is a pedophile who will try to abuse during the flight a child who happens to be seated besides him.
There’s also a non-zero chance that the stewardess asking him to leave the seat intends to hijack the plane.
There’s a non-zero chance that I’ll end up raping an underage hijacker next time I fly to Australia.
The issue is which probability higher than zero warrants special caution for ordinary people whose issues don’t include an irrational fear of men, women, pedophiles, hijackers or planes, as you said. A “reasonable” behavior or caution can’t be based on a non-zero chance of something happening, or else we would be constantly afraid that the underage raped hijacker would crash the Australian plane on our house.
Currently, it seems that the line being traced in the sand is “It is reasonable to assume that every person flying a plane is as a potential hijacker and if male also a child rapist”. One might argue that it’s the best way to handle things, but it’s non-obvious.
(For my part, I’ve an irrational fear of planes, so the risk I’ll be victim of a hijacker, rapist, poorly behaved child, irritating stewardess, idiotic company policy, etc… is zero 
)