Ah, so the Greatest Generation is also the Rapist Generation.
It’s true. Whenever I go to a job interview I always take my pajamas with me and drink until I pass out. Shame on him who thinks ill of it.
I’m not sure that “best” is quite the right term - the exchange didn’t seem to call for more than that.
I suppose there might be some amusement wrung out of actually expressing sentiments closer to what you’ve attributed to me, in seeing whether you could then dial it up yet another notch or whether your simple brain only has OFF and MAX settings. But not enough, and in any event I like to stick to my actual positions.
Apparently so. All right, I’m done playing with you, you pompous, misogynistic, self-important windbag. I’m sure the rest of the Dope will continue to roll their eyes at your inane “contributions” and you’ll keep believing your masturbatory fantasies that you’re actually accomplishing something. And as I’ve said to others of your kind, keep your paper towel tube handy. I’m sure in y’all’s circle jerk that it’ll be needed.
Hmm … still looks like the same setting …
And who is going to watch all of those vagcams levdrakon? Me?
No, I think he should. Since there’s such concern about how precious they are, who else would be a better judge?
‘‘Men can control their behavior; for example, my friends aren’t rapists’’
‘‘Yeah that’s probably cause you’re ugly’’
WTF? In what universe is that an appropriate response?
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
2. The trauma of rape is partially sociological and derived in part from society’s attitudes about sex and bodily autonomy. The implication of which that a victim of rape is even more victimized if she’s been told by society to regard what happened to her as a horrible violation of her person and honor and so on, versus if society treats it as a more minor sin. In this sense, efforts to raise awareness of rape - while admirable on the whole - also have the perverse effect of heightening the impact on the victims. And what’s relevant here is that as society becomes less tolerant of certain types of rape and sexual assault, women who suffered these at a more tolerant time will find themselves feeling more victimized in reliving the experience now than they did at the time. (This accounts to some extent for the women coming forth with stories now who maintained relationships with Cosby after the actual incidents.)
[/QUOTE]
I really want to disagree with this, but based on what I know about trauma psychology, I can’t. if you look at mass-trauma interventions like debriefing, there is evidence that they increase the likelihood of a victim developing PTSD as a result of a traumatic experience. I believe the prevailing theory on this is that the stories of the victims sort of merge together into one collectively experienced trauma. There were a lot of articles about this following 9-11, which is about as collective as traumas get, considering the media coverage they received.
It cuts both ways, though. If someone experiences something that they found distressing, and they receive little or no social support or validation at the time of that distressing event, the impact of the trauma is magnified. In fact, lack of social support at the time of a traumatic event is one of the single biggest predictors of PTSD.
The relative trauma of an experience is significantly influenced by the social context in which it occurs. So if we’re going to draw any broad generalizations, I don’t think it should be, ‘‘things would be better for rape victims if rape were viewed as a lesser crime.’’ I think it would be more like, ‘‘Each individual rape victim’s experience should be taken at face value in terms of relative harm.’’ If someone had an experience and doesn’t think it’s a big deal, it’s not good to assume they are in denial. Conversely, if someone has an experience you don’t personally think is that bad, take them at their word when they say they are messed up about it.
I also think there’s a feminist angle to be considered on this notion of feminine ‘‘honor’’ being stolen, so I’ll throw in my favorite feminist essay [The Collapsible Woman](2. The trauma of rape is partially sociological and derived in part from society’s attitudes about sex and bodily autonomy. The implication of which that a victim of rape is even more victimized if she’s been told by society to regard what happened to her as a horrible violation of her person and honor and so on, versus if society treats it as a more minor sin. In this sense, efforts to raise awareness of rape - while admirable on the whole - also have the perverse effect of heightening the impact on the victims. And what’s relevant here is that as society becomes less tolerant of certain types of rape and sexual assault, women who suffered these at a more tolerant time will find themselves feeling more victimized in reliving the experience now than they did at the time. (This accounts to some extent for the women coming forth with stories now who maintained relationships with Cosby after the actual incidents.)).
I think every paragraph is quotable gold. Anyhow, I pick this one.
Bolding mine.
Yes. Who do you think does not know this?
Just chattin? Just askin questions?
I’ll teach you another term: Concern troll.
Do you mean adding the name of the accuser?
If they don’t believe the weight of the evidence, then they are engaging in mental activities somewhere in the range between motivated rationalizing and outright apologetics, both of which would not count positively towards their moral character.
The argument “I want to see both sides of the story before I judge it,” when applied to this particular case, has been demonstrated in this thread and countless other conversations to be specious. Again–motivated reasoning or outright apologetics, which does not count positively towards a person’s moral character.
If they distrust the system through which it’s told, they’re just being ignorant which I suppose does not make them bad people. But this particular level and type of ignorance certainly tends to suggest a degree of laziness and lack of care which, again, doesn’t tend to count positively towards a person’s moral character.
How about we make the analogy really work by importing the whole news reporting apparatus, the process of education into a journalism degree, the effort and risk involved in revealing things to journalists, law enforcement people, and on personal online accounts, and all the other myriad of messy, squishy, difficult and crucial aspects at play in this case.
I work in philosophy. I live and breathe simplified analogies for the purpose of testing out manners of reasoning. It’s a tool which works better in some cases than in others. This here is not one of those cases. The reality is messy, and abstracting away from it in ways you can put in a paragraph or two is always going to leave out crucial aspects of the situation. This is a case where we can’t escape from engagement with the reality we’re trying to think about.
I didn’t say anything about what I would want, I made a statement concerning facts about, in so many words, signal, noise and confidence levels.
FWIW, I think it’s technically true that rape victims would suffer less trauma if rape were viewed as a lesser crime. But there would also be many more rapes, so that’s not much of a practical consideration.
The main context of my remarks was in explaining why many victims appeared to have different attitudes towards BC closer to the time that the incidents happened than they do now.
Can I just say, once again, how much I love the ignore function? Ever since I put my first lying asshole on there, Strangling Tubist, lo these many years ago, I’ve never, ever had to read one more dribble of his idiotic blather. Now I’ve been able to add a new slew of fucktards to the list and I’m finding that my Doping experience continues to be much improved. I highly recommend it because there’s never going to be anything worth reading, unless you just like to point, laugh and share with friends on facebook to do the same.
I uh… I think you’re not supposed to talk about that. I might be wrong.
I believe it’s OK under the rules (at least in the Pit).
But if you talk too much about how you’re ignoring people, you’re not really ignoring them. So there’s that.
So you would agree that increasing awareness and condemnation of “nonviolent” acquaintance rape is a good thing?
You can. In the pit. 
No, no, it’s just that you aren’t attractive enough to be raped!
I know it’s the pit and all but this board has really been making me sick at heart. It’s not the specifics of the Cosby case but rather the underlying attitudes towards women that does it. I don’t know any men like this either–harhar I must be a withered old bat–and I’m wondering why I let such sad, hateful, and profoundly idiotic people into my life via computer screen. Easy enough to fix.
I should probably add for the sake of clarity that I find the idea that acquaintance rape is ‘‘less bad’’ than other kinds of rape to be problematic. It flies in the face of my understanding of clinical research on this subject.
Again, every rape happens in an individual context featuring a number of different factors. If we can try to operationally define the badness of a given criminal act, I’d say ‘‘likelihood of developing PTSD’’ is a good rule of thumb. Some factors that may contribute to a traumatic event resulting in PTSD:
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prior trauma history (see: rates of PTSD for combat veterans are much higher among those with an abuse history.)
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existence of other stressors at the time of the event
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social support (or lack of)
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thought patterns on the part of the victim in the immediate aftermath of the trauma (‘‘I deserved this’’ ‘‘this is my fault’’ ‘‘I could have prevented this’’) etc. and whether or not those patterns are reinforced by society/social network. This may seem paradoxical to some posters in this thread, but when victims assume responsibility for what happened to them, it usually compounds the trauma.
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gender (women tend to have significantly higher rates of PTSD than men)
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nature of trauma - the rates of PTSD among rape victims, male or female, are significantly higher than for other kinds of trauma. Make no mistake, there is something special about rape that makes it particularly bad. This is in part why it is used so effectively as a tool of war.
To be honest, actual ‘‘severity of the crime’’ however we define severity, is pretty low in effect size. Whether someone is raped in the heat of the moment when she just wanted to give someone a hand job, or raped on the street at knifepoint, all of the factors listed above are going to take precedence over our gut instinct as a society about how bad a crime is.
In fact, I could totally see it being worse for the hand job woman, because folks have no problem telling her that she bears at least part of the responsibility for what happened, whereas people are less inclined to blame a victim if she is raped at knifepoint (but of course those women get blamed too because we live in a magical society where people bend over backward to justify rape.)
[QUOTE=Emiliana]
I know it’s the pit and all but this board has really been making me sick at heart. It’s not the specifics of the Cosby case but rather the underlying attitudes towards women that does it. I don’t know any men like this either–harhar I must be a withered old bat–and I’m wondering why I let such sad, hateful, and profoundly idiotic people into my life via computer screen. Easy enough to fix.
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I honestly think I’ve been around so long I’m mostly inured to it. In fact, relative to the rest of the internet, the Dope is my safe, happy place. Perhaps because it’s all so predictable by now.
When I told Sr. Weasel about this thread (or rather, collection of threads, as things typically go during Rape Week), he proposed that we adjust the definition of troll.
There’s Troll Type 1, where someone deliberately posts to upset people (see: kstarnes.)
Then there’s Troll Type 2, where someone honestly believes the things that they say but are nonetheless extremely unpleasant to be around.
He thinks they should be handled roughly the same, that sincerity is no excuse for spewing garbage.
Lots of Type 2 trolling in this thread.
(Since we’re on the topic of my husband, he also suggested that our bizarre obsession with penetration as the ultimate harm with regards to sexual assault is really missing the boat when it comes to frank conversations about rape culture and consent. Yes, he’s awesome.)
Yes.
Although I would guess that attempts to make a one-size-fits-all “rape is rape” definition is probably unhelpful in this regard.
So, to give another example, suppose we’re considering marital rape of a woman who lived 300 years ago when (as I understand it) these things were fairly routine. You’re saying you think this woman’s trauma would be (on average) on par with a woman dragged off the street at knifepoint?
[As you note, there’s “something special about rape that makes it particularly bad”. I would suggest this is societal attitudes about sex in general and rape in particular.]