Reading the “Women and sexual assault” thread in this forum got me to thinking a bit.
I’ve seen some responses from men in that thread that seemed to be insinuating that men are frequently victims of sexual assault too, both as child victims of pedophiles and adults, but somehow they don’t grow up fearful of being raped and assaulted like some women do.
I’m going to post a poll. Bear with me, as I have never done this before and will probably screw it up.
I should clarify: By the second set of questions, I mean fearful/uncomfortable that you were going to be raped or assaulted, not fearful and uncomfortable because you couldn’t get it up or something.
That’s not how the other poll was set up. It was simply being made to feel uncomfortable. I can’t remember which poster it was, but she described a co-worker hitting on her “because of course [she’s] a woman.” While she was certainly made to feel uncomfortable, I doubt she was afraid that she was going to be raped. The polls aren’t equal. Fail.
Plus, the choice for “made to feel fearful/uncomfortable in a sexual situation by a woman or another man” is when you were an adult in this poll, whereas the original poll did not specify it had to have been when you are an adult.
This is a tough one. I have been the ‘victim’ of both sexual assault and made to feel uncomfortable from the perspective of many women but I didn’t really consider it that way for myself. If a female is forced into a corner at a party and fondled, there is a good chance that they will consider it very serious whereas a man might not and may even take it as a compliment or think it is funny even if he isn’t interested. Some females seem to set the bar really low for what they consider sexual assault.
I have never been raped or molested though.
Then fine. I take it back. You can now answer that you’ve been made to feel fearful or uncomfortable about anything due to a sexual situation, provided it was a non-consensual situation. So being fearful about not being able to get it up still doesn’t count, but being fearful about possible job repercussions does.
This wasn’t supposed to be a mirror image of the other poll, folks. It’s actually a response to the discussion within the last few pages of that thread, specifically the kind of things that Wesley Clark was bringing up.
Yeah, well, it should be a direct mirror. “Women, have you ever been made to feel uncomfortable?” “Men, have you ever been made to feel uncomfortable about getting raped as an adult?” You’re going to get super misleading results if you set your shit up that way. You’d make a great pollster for, say, FOX News, but not on the Dope, my friend.
You’ve made your point. Let’s see how the poll proceeds, o.k.?
I don’t think that’s an entirely fair comparison. In the case of the female, there is a greater possibility that she is unable to get out of the corner and that the harassment is out of their control. Whereas, in the case of the male - a good percentage of the time - if a female has them cornered, they can physically get out of the corner.
Put a physically intimidating female (or male) in that corner with male, fondling you, and I think that the male would consider it very serious.
I don’t think it’s a ‘setting the bar low’ issue.
I should probably stop posting in that other thread, I’m pissing people off and sullying my stellar reputation I’ve earned through years of copying/pasting things from wikipedia.
Here is what I don’t get/understand. Perhaps I’m wrong. Someone explain alternative views.
If I deal with trauma via humor, I’m a bad person. Lots of people in law enforcement and medicine deal with trauma via humor as an example. I’ve had bad things happen in youth and been sexually intimidated in adulthood (the intimidation part was when a close female friend of mine started hitting on me way too hard out of the blue and made me really uncomfortable). However I don’t think the response is to be serious all the time, or condemn my friend for having a sex drive. I just wish she had better social skills and more empathy if she was going to do that. However, my situations can’t compare to women who have to worry about these things constantly.
The assumption that seems to be floating around there that if one woman dislikes it when one man does something, then all women dislike it when all men do it. Therefore any man who does it to any woman is a bad person and anyone who doesn’t agree doesn’t ‘get it’ or is responsible for societies widespread sexual abuse. I don’t get it. I really don’t because women are different.
Find me a society where sexual abuse is as rare as homicide. I don’t think they exist. I don’t know why it is so common to be abused or sexually abuse others. People have a lot to lose by becoming abusers. You permanently damage the psyche of the other person and their relationships with friends and family throughout their lives after you abuse someone. Also if you get caught you run the risk of losing your job, family, social standing, friends, etc. Despite that it is common almost everywhere.
[Moderator Note]The topic of this thread(and poll) is Men and Sexual Assault only. Please attempt to stay on topic.[/Moderator Note]
I’m not a man, and don’t need to respond to the poll, but I really must address this.
I’m willing to bet $20 that people in medicine/law enforcement don’t deal with the trauma of victims using humour in front of the victim.
If you really can’t tell the difference between making a joke in a philosophical discussion and barging in where people are talking about their own rape experiences…well, you’re maybe not so bright.
This exactly. I am a public defender in juvenile court. As you can imagine, we see some awful, awful shit sometimes. And we have lunch together almost every day, and blow off a lot of steam by making jokes. But we would never dream of making those same jokes in front of the families we’re helping.
In my abusive long-term relationship, I’ve been quite a few times forced to have sex with her because she imposed it, for fear she might retaliate.
Are you saying this kind of abuse is equally prevalent across societies, regardless of cultural attitudes? Because if this is your assumption, you should scrap it unless you can find some data to back it up.
Hey, me too.
Hey, guys. I made a Great Debates thread for Wesley and anyone who wants to debate the concept of rape culture.
You lose, I got a 14 y/o victim and her mother to chuckle when I saw then in the ER, and I’ve used humor with many trauma pts.