Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ve just got a bug up my ass because one of my neices is turning into a a bit of a classist and it bothers me to no end.
For the record: It bothers her parents too but they are sending her to a really fancy private school where they literally hang out with princesses and the children of senators stuff.
I never said it was ok. I said it was bullying. It just wasn’t sexual assault. Calling it sexual assult trivializes sexual assault.
And boys doing this to girls (or even to other boys) brings a host of physical and psychological issues to bear that escalate the implications, and victim’s fear and vulnerability above what little girls can do to a little boy. It’s not ok what these girls did. They were bullies and should be dealt with as bullies. But it’s not as bad as a bunch of boys stripping a girl. Everybody already understands the physical, sociological and psychological differences and anyone claims otherwise is not being honest.
Sit back and enjoy the show, folks. This week’s episode is sure to be a doosey!
But 14 year old girls are often much bigger, physically, than 11 year old boys. (And I’m not sure it’s appropriate to call 14 year olds little girls - they’re not exactly playing with dolls anymore…) I don’t think the difference is as gender-linked as you’re claiming here - women are more vulnerable than men (generally speaking) because of the size and strength differential. It’s that powerlessness that makes assault on women by men so bad, not because it’s men and women per se. This is the case for this child, too - he is smaller than the girls assaulting him, and so more vulnerable. The more so because there are many of them and only one of him.
So, I guess I’m saying I don’t understand the physical, sociological and psychological differences that are obviously so clear to you - are you saying I’m lying? Or perhaps you haven’t explained them as clearly as you think. Because to me, the two situations look just as bad as each other, all else being equal other than gender of the victim/attackers.
It is every bit as wrong as boys stripping girls, especially given the age and number difference. I don’t know what kind of bullies that you grew up with but this was way beyond bullying.
The US Department of Health and Human Services defines sexual assault as:
I’d say that stripping a boy naked meets two of these criteria.
Thank you doctor, for your pithy psychological analysis.
Oh, and also, thank you for perpetuating the double standard mentality and trivializing sexual assault.
I do not think a “better or worse” assessment is useful here but I do think you are overly dismissive of what the boy has to deal with.
A girl in that situation would return to school and garner sympathy from other students.
The boy will garner more humiliation as the kid who got his ass kicked by girls and oh yeah, here’s the video of him naked.
That boy, if he stays in that school system, will be reminded of that humiliation probably till he leaves for college.
He is also just as likely to have trust issues with females same as a female would develop trust issues towards males if the same thing happened to her.
Stop “not being honest”! Just admit that you know full well that a gang of violent teenagers attacking, stripping, filming and humiliating an innocent child is pretty much fine, frowned upon but nothing to be concerned about, if the perps are “little girls”.
And then claim, deadpanned, that other people (!?) are trivializing sexual assault and being dishonest about it. Though, fairly, he didn’t say it was nothing to be concerned about, he just devalued the act to the level of “bullying.”
Let’s assume that it’s true that everybody already knows this thing about human nature - that it’s predatory in a different way when a male does something like this in a way that it isn’t predatory if a female does it.
Historically speaking, when we’re talking about supposed innate differences between groups of people, would you say what “everybody knows” is a good horse to bet on? When the reasoning for a difference in treatment is that everyone knows X people are like this, but Y people are like that, and nothing more, I think it’s at least debatable whether we generally end up better off for it or whether we end up with lawsuits and movements and wars and amendments and shit like that before we as a society eventually change our minds and say, yeah, all right, bad rule. We didn’t know as much as we thought we did.
More to the point, though, I don’t see how it’s in anyone’s interest to decide that certain things aren’t actually sexual assault not because of what happened, but because of what generalizations we all make about the people involved (assuming we all do make them). I doubt this poor kid felt safe while this was happening to him, because it was only some girls. I think probably, for an 11 year old kid, the experience of being wrestled to the ground out of nowhere, stripped and pinned down and videotaped and mocked is sort of universal without regard to the identity of the people responsible, and it’s only the attitudes of the people who weren’t involved that color it as bullying or a prank in the one case and as a near-rape in the other. The kid might not have even known it was girls, or only girls, attacking him, anyway.
It seems to me what really distinguishes this is that the victim was male, and that’s what you guys think is significant. If that’s only significant because of cultural perspectives about gender, you can’t defend holding those perspectives on those grounds, though. So you must think those perspectives are grounded in some sort of natural truth. But saying that the only thing that distinguishes a sexual assault from some “bullying” is biologically-driven shame and fear that female victims feel and male ones don’t - that is how you trivialize sexual assault. So even if you’re exactly right about what everyone knows, there still doesn’t seem to be any justification for dismissing what actually happened here.
I’m not dismissing it. I’m saying it wasn’t a sexual assault. It was inexcusable bullying and humiliation, but it wasn’t sexual, and it didn’t carry the same kinds of implications and baggage that it would have carried if a bunch of boys did this to a girl.
Dismissing the seriousness of it as compared to the same situation with the genders reversed, if you like.
It is not clear that you have a good basis from which to determine the appropriate level or kind of baggage that should accompany what happened to the kid, is what I’m saying. Or why the victim or anyone should care what you or what anyone thinks is “implied” by what happened to him, given that what was expressed was, at least in your view, something that would rise to the level of a sexual assault if the genders were reversed.
Because what you know about the implications are probably just based on some bullshit. Statistically speaking. It’s what my assumptions are based on, certainly, which is why I don’t trust them. Unless you have another basis besides just what it seems like it would feel like for a guy, and what it seems like it would feel like for a girl. Do you?
I seriously doubt thats the case. Its possible he was more focussed on them possibly assaulting him further sexually, but I strongly suspect he was more focussed on being humiliated than really being afraid of them forcibly having sex with him in some way. The video shows how much they are focussed on getting the clothes off than in trying to actually touch him, and how they run away as soon as they have them.
Whether it was experienced as sexual assault or humiliation doesnt decide whether its ‘more serious’ or ‘less serious’ but there are significant gender differences in regards to fear of being sexually assaulted by the other gender, which are more likely to be magnified by any actual assault as it tends to confirm a previously held fear. Men generally dont have to worry about being sexually assaulted by women, and statistically its entirely correct - they bear very little risk of it happening to them.
Any effects he experiences are more likely to be about the subsequent social humiliation than the act itself. And I think some of you have a rather touching faith in how much support anyone gets in regards to bullying as a general experience and that most women who were in this situation would get significantly better support.
Otara
People in general don’t have to worry about having their clothes ripped off of them. However, once they do, I’d say that any fear that they might experience would be totally justified.
He didn’t have to fear being penetrated by a cock…or a bunch of cocks. That’s a different level of fear.
I’ll say again, that’s not to minimize or trivialize what was done to him, but that kind of thing jumps up a level when the assailants are male. Ask any guy if he’d be more afraid of getting both legs broken or getting raped up the ass. The latter fear didn’t exist for this kid.
Dude, just shut the fuck up. Seriously.
Are you serious? A girl in that situation would return to school and be told she was a filthy little slut by the other students.
Wow. Just, wow. Do you actually think before you post crap like this?
just call me Judge Max’em, max the little shits put them in jail, they’re criminals (junvenile detention IS jail filled with hardened criminals) further, the parents have legal responsiblity in this as well, order them to pay restitution to pay for the boys therapy from this as long as needed.
I think he has a point. That’s how the slang word “chicken” was derived, from a fear of cocks.