Lots, my pal! But not now.
Yes, but I will make an attempt to follow the rules in the future. No matter how the person pisses me off (see your email).
I have to call BS here. Things that happen to us DO indeed have the power to define us. I was “lucky” enough to be born white, and upper middle class. If that fact alone didn’t play a huge role in my place in the world, I don’t know what does. A facile example, but true nonetheless. Any number of things have happened to me over the course of my life that have left a lasting impact/a defining moment: good and bad, we all have them. That fact alone is sufficent to dismiss your stance-based out of bitterness and anger. I am not about to bring up my past traumas here. Perhaps you are right to be angry re your therapist. I am having trouble with the whole “scientifically unsubstantiated victim ideology”–it sounds like a judgement, on your part, re one approach to therapy. I truly don’t want to get into your specifics, but seriously, the person to confront with your concerns is your therapist. No good therapist desires their client to maintain that stance. Get another therapist, if that is the case.
Also, it is not up to YOU to define anyone else’s experiences either-as a future therapist, I hope you learn that. While I would call the behavior you describe to be self-indulgent-but I dont’ know their personal details; you are not them.Perhaps they have not been adequately listened to or perhaps they want to avoid taking responsibilty for their healing-none of knows for sure. And as much as I hate to trot out this old chestnut–perhaps your therapist kept going over X because s/he thought you were resisting therapy. It does happen.
None of this is relevant to this woman or this case. We don’t even know if she knows about the teabagging, but I’ll bet she does. Maybe she laughed it off. I doubt it-sure she may have publicly, but not privately. Who knows? My concern is with the societal standards that Jodi refers to. And I would like to see some consequences for Lipton and his “friends”.
Zoe -I agree, but IMO, Hentor was saying that we are dealing with OUR reactions of feeling violated–we dont’ know the woman’s emotions at all. Just a thought.
We are empathizing. We are imagining how violated a person in that situation would feel, and how we would feel if it happened to us, and reacting accordingly. I do not think that is the irrational, insane response that Hentor indicates. In fact, since we don’t know the girl in question, all we CAN do is put ourselves or someone we care about into that situation to see why an emotionally charged response is warranted here.
Absolutely. Would you assert, however, that we are limited by them? An in particular, would you suggest that one single experience has the power to outweigh essentially all the others? You are more than a wealthy white woman, for example, aren’t you?
I wholeheartedly agree that we are shaped and influenced by all of our experiences. The problem comes when we erroneously overestimate the limitations that a single event places upon us. That is the BS, and that is what I am talking about, and if I might, I think what olivesmarch4th is talking about.
Something like: “My life was fine up until the point that I passed out and a guy put his scrotum on my face. After that, I knew I would never be the same.” Or how about “How could I ever date a guy? Nobody will want someone who had a stranger’s balls on her face?” Or how about “He stole something from me that I’ll never have back.” I would explore these cognitions very carefully with a person, because expecting such poor outcomes and granting such control to another person or event won’t make it more likely to have good outcomes.
She is not doing that, and neither am I. I think that olivesmarch4th is expressing that very clearly, and has already learned that very well from dealing with many people who do not understand it. Defining others’ experiences includes presuming that they should be or should remain traumatized as well as it would denying them their traumatic experience. I would not deny anyone that, as I said before.
Exactly.
And since you and I are largely in agreement about this matter, I wonder if you regard your beliefs here as “irrational and insane” or “sociopathic.”
If by “judgment” you mean I believe psychology should be treated as a science, and psychologists have an obligation to be scientists before anything else. There is no legitimacy to mental health services as a medicine if they are not based on scientifically substantiated, research-based methods. Just because something “sounds” more or less compassionate doesn’t mean it’s going to help someone. Do you know how much research supports the idea that “I’ll never be the same again?” is an effective way to help someone recover from a traumatic experience? None.
My outrage is not focused toward my therapists, my outrage is leveled toward the mental health industry for consistently choosing to turn its back on science, because it’s somehow less humanitarian to actually practice methods that are backed up by research. Bulllllshit! Not all methods of therapy have equal validity. I refuse to sit here and pay homage to a “therapeutic philosophy” that is not scientifically supported. You can decide that I’m bitter about some of my own therapeutic experiences (which I’m not), or you can acknowledge that my bitterness is based on my own commitment to the mental health field and my belief, that when I entered therapy, I was actually being treated by methods that have been proven to work. It turns out only 1 in 4 mental health professionals use methods based on scientific research. Every person who walks into a therapist’s office should be able to trust that that therapist is using scientifically substantiated methods. How would you feel if your medical doctor discounted commonly accepted research into the field of, say, cancer, because of some ideological belief of his or her own? Why would we expect any less from therapists?
I think this quote of mine wasn’t clear enough:
It misleads the reader into thinking I’m referring to a single person. I’m not. I’m referring to an entire movement that has mainstream acceptance but no scientific validity. When I bought into the model of trauma psychology espoused in, for example, the book “The Courage to Heal,” I did so under the impression that these were scientifically valid methods of treatment. They aren’t. If you spent six years working your fucking ass off using said models, and later found they are not scientifically valid, how would you feel? A little cheated, yeah? A little angry maybe? Bitter, perhaps?
You can make all the assumptions you want about my motivations, how “resistant” I am to therapy, and whether my anger is clouding my judgment, but the truth is my feelings about the Holy Cult of Victimhood have a lot less to do with my own therapeutic experiences and a lot more to do with the mainstream acceptance of vast quantities of self-help bullshit which many therapists embrace despite really knowing better. I’m not about to engage in a pissing contest over who suffered more. I’m talking about science here.
And FYI, I never said this argument had anything to do with this woman and how she was violated. You took my statements from a post that I clearly acknowledged was hijacking the topic, directed at Hentor the Barbarian and obviously intended for no-one else, and assumed it had to do with the argument at hand.
The rest of your comments were addressed rather well by Hentor the Barbarian, and everything he suggested regarding my own perspective is the truth…
In response to
well, no shit. Why would I say, “It’s up to *me” to decide what my own experiences meant to my life…" and then turn around and say, “And it’s also up to me to decide what other people’s experiences mean to their lives…” That wouldn’t be very consistent, would it?
I wish you all the best. With an understanding like you already have, I think you’ll do very, very well.
One more thing…
I thought this was clear, but I don’t want there to be any mistake. My opinions about pschylogy/self-help/trauma have absolutely no bearing on the fact that I completely agree with your statement here. And while I don’t particularly feeling like getting into an argument about it, I feel that it’s a clearly sexual act and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Bolding mine.
Wow.
Wow, wow, and wow.
I lived on a college campus for about a year of my life and teabagging was almost a way of life. Granted I’m a guy and this was in guy dorms, everyone got it at least once. Were people mad at the time they found out? Sure. Did people laugh it off? Sure. Did anyone get so outraged they saw it as sexual assult or illegal in any way? Not even close. I was a on the pranking end a few times myself. It’s like depantsing someone.
I dunno, I’ve read half this thread so far and it just seems that most guys in college are used to this or are aware of this practice and are, for the most part, okay with it. Sorry, no cite. I cannot show you that guys do teabag other guys and that everyone, in the end, is okay with it…because unfortunatly it’s just one of those things I’ve seen with my own eyes and experieced a hundred times, but not the sort of thing they make a website with FAQS about.
What I think is that the guys in question were used to it and, to them, it was sort of “the norm” so they didn’t have any problem doing it to a female. Immature, gross, and stupid? All of them yes. Sexual assault? Couldn’t say. I’m sure people who are outraged will find laws to say it is, though. Rape or anything like that? No, and anyone who even compares the two is illreproachable themselves.
I have no beef with you or this trainwreck but just wanted to point out that, yeah, teabagging does occur, and quite often. Again, no cite, but my own experience shows me it is. It happens a lot that I’ve heard about and seen myself with guys doing it to other guys.
So I think astro’s point was, in this case we have a guy doing it to a girl and people are outraged and say it’s wrong, yet guys do it to other guys in frats and dorms all the time and nobody ever raises a fuss. Therefore why is it deemed not as big of a deal in one case and not the other.
Again, I think what they did was wrong and childish, but I can see the point astro and ybeayf were making.
How about “My life was fine until everyone started mocking me because I got teabagged while I was sleeping, and I couldn’t go anywhere without people saying ‘That’s her!’”?
Read Wang-Ka’s story again. What struck me about that was not the rape itself, which the victim might have recovered from, with help and time. What was truly horrible about it was that she was denied any chance to recover. The Jackass Squad made sure everyone knew that “Sherrie” had been fucked by 16 guys that night, or however many, and told everyone it was her idea, and the bitch loved it. The trauma was not confined to one night; it continued nonstop until she graduated. They did ruin her life. Unless you think that being shunned and mocked by the entire student body, including people you thought were your friends, and being slandered as a wanton slut, and harassed by guys who weren’t there and want you to perform an encore, does not ruin a life.
And it may be the same with the girl in Architect’s anedote. He’s one person who talked about it and thought it was hilarious and she deserved it. How many others are there? “Hey, did you hear what we did to that bitch?..Well, she got my towel wet!..Yeah, it was fucking hilarious!..Oh, I think her name’s [blank]…Oh, you know her?”
I don’t think Idle Thoughts experiences apply here, because it sounds as if the teabaggings he witnessed were part of general horseplay. This was an act of “revenge”. I don’t think the girl was supposed to laugh. I think if she had been conscious, they would have kept upping the ante until she ran out of the house crying, like Belowjob craves. Idle’s teabagged pals were part of the group. This girl was not, and the teabagging was meant to illustrate that.
Yes, Rilchiam, that would be horrible. Is there some sense on your part that I’ve said it wouldn’t?
Is there some sense that I’ve said this was an okay thing to do?
I’m fairly confident I’ve been clear on that matter.
Of course, the degree to which getting tea-bagged ruins a person’s reputation depends a bit on how much people lose their shit when hearing about a person getting tea-bagged.
I guess you see getting tea-bagged as equivalent to being gang-raped by 16 people and having a scarlet letter tagged on you. So, yeah, I can see why you would regard it as likely besmirching someone.
I’m with Dave Chappelle on this sort of thing, bewildered how anyone could find this behavior amusing.
Dave: You can’t pass out around white people. They end up doing some borderline gay shit.
White guy: Frank fell asleep so we like stuck a carrot in his ass and put shaving cream on his balls.
Dave: Someone trusts you enough to fall asleep around you, and you do that to him? If I did that to a black guy, I would get killed. That is an automatic death sentance in the streets… “I’m gonna kill that muthafucka!!!” “What happened baby? I thought yall were friends? I fell asleep at his house right… Look, we was drinkin and I fell asleep right… Look, I’m gonna killa that muthafucka and that’s all you need to know… And fuck carrots!”
But then I think Dave Chappelle is funny, he found humor in this too, so pit me now.
My point, Hentor, is that at least one person who witnessed the teabagging is already talking about it. So who else might be?
And I knew you or someone else was going to say “Well, it’s not as bad as being gang-raped.” But where do we draw the line? Both were acts of aggression towards an allegedly uppity bitch. If the other guys had egged Lipton on further, do you think he would have said, “Naw, man, I’m not going that far”?
You’re right, it is a slippery slope from tea-bagging to gang rape by 16 strangers. It’s just a little jump from there to killing her, which is just another act of aggression towards an uppity bitch.
Wherever could we draw the line?
I think we draw the line at degrading people just because they piss you off.
(And no, that is not meant to include horseplay, as Idle describes. I mean acts of aggression for the sake of aggression.)
So everything on the other side of that line is equivalent, then?
I think the “Don’t be a jerk” rule is as good an idea IRL as it is on SDMB.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not engaged in the legal discussions in this thread. IANAL, and I’m not concerned with jurisdictions and statutes and the wording of the law. If that was confusing you, now you know. For me, it’s not the legal ramifications: it’s how I regard people who degrade others and act jerkishly. The two acts may not be equivalent, but they’re both wrong.
And if it’s confusing to you, they are both wrong to me as well. And they are not equivalent. And they don’t raise equivalent outrage in my opinion. And our response as a society shouldn’t be equivalent. So a guy who teabags someone who is passed out should receive a punishment that is less than a guy who joins 15 others in gang raping someone.
Since you’re not saying anything I disagree with, I’m not sure what point you feel you are trying to make.
Again I say, I’m not concerned with the degree of legal punishment, if any, that a teabagger should get. What inspired me to get into this was your apparent claim that being teabagged should not be upsetting. My point was that if people keep the incident alive and make the recipient of the TBing a figure of mockery, then that is and should be upsetting.
And that TBers should not be laughed with and egged on, because people can and do get egged on into indisputably criminal acts. I’m not saying that gang rape and TBing are equivalent. I’m saying that when people are drunk and aggressive, there’s not necessarily a limit to how far they’ll go. Or how far they’ll go the next time, seeing as they got such a great response during the earlier incident.
Do you think people really set limits such as “I’ll teabag someone but not rape them” and stick to them? If A. Chore or one of his pals had said, “Hey, pull down her pants!” do you think Lipton would have said, “Naw, man, I’m not going there”? If he had, and they said, “Hey, stick this carrot in her pussy!” would he have refused to do that? We don’t know; nobody knows until it’s happening. That’s why it’s better not to let the ball start rolling.
I’ve never once claimed this, said this, implied this, or felt this.
I’ve repeatedly said that on a range of outrage, this would be toward the mild end relative to the outrage I would feel about rape. Thus, it should be upsetting. But it should not be nearly as upsetting as rape.
This issue seems to engender, as I’ve also said before, a pathological inability to break away from either/or thinking. It’s really quite impressive.