Yeah, that would have been even better. Thanks.
Oh, I know, and I thank you for repeating it. My beef is not with what people think, it’s for using a phrase that implies the opposite. That, and for the assertion (by only one person who is not you) that any man who objects to that phrase must be doing so because of a deep personal flaw.
Worse (depending on some people’s opinions), I confused you with Bricker. <Major Hijack>No Bricker challenge in ages! What’s up with that?</hijack>
tdn, as always (when you’re not pissed off) you explained your point very well. And I understand why it would be insulting. My irritation was due to the fact that I was being accused of saying something I never said.
And, why are you swallowing blood? Dentist?
Give it up. Cites are the one thing she demands (and then rejects as unacceptable out of hand) but is never willing to provide. She teaches at a university! That should be enough for anyone! Because, y’know, that qualifies her to pontificate on any subject she chooses. :rolleyes:
Thanks. I have my lucid moment.
Seems we have a problem that everyone on one side of the fence is considered to be a single person. Chotii says something, automatically you’ve said it too. In that light I’d just like to say that while I agree with a select few points that catsix says, I am not, in fact, her.
Yep. Osama bin Dentist. He pulled out a tooth and replaced it with pain.
Terrorist in a fucking smock, that guy.
Nice cross. Need some help climbing up?
Could we please end the strawman now? This is feeding on itself. Margin posts something about “the attitude SEEMS to be…”, and then Sally responds with some anecdote that happened God knows how long ago in another country. You all still seem to be laboring under the misconception that there is some sort of prevailing attitude that women are reponsible for being raped. Yet when I ask for even ONE cite of anybody on this board actually saying that, I get nothing. Just a bunch of “They seem to be saying…” nonsense.
Look, this is very simple. We all take measures to prevent crime. We lock our doors, we put The Club on our steering wheels, we glance over our shoulders before we use the ATM, etc. That doesn’t mean we are responsible if a crime is committed against us. It just means we live in the real, imperfect world where people do commit crimes. So let’s please stop with the conjecture and outdated anecdotes that are feeding the martyr complex you people seem to have.
Finn, there is a huge difference between:
And this (which is what I was responding to):
Of course the causes of rape aren’t solely societal. A man can be born with excess testosterone (too much gas) or an underdeveloped frontal lobe (not enough brakes) due to genes, child abuse, or Fetal Alcohol Symptom, or even both at the same time. He may have a defective amygdalae and is unable to interpret non-verbal cues and social signals. However, I think that the percentage of men whose genes absolutely doom them to be rapists is very, very small.
Since we can’t do anything about the genetic side, we should be focusing on the societal conditions that we can control. The worst thing to do is just throw up our hands and say, “mutations happen, there is nothing we can do.”
Perhaps I wasn’t totally clear (happens in text), but my point is not that we shouldn’t try to do anything, but that we may never be able to totally eliminate rape. I’m all for societal modification to a certain degree… I just know that, from my own experience of growing up and going to undergrad on the northeast coast, these societal changes are already made. Every dorm I’ve ever been in has had leaflets and posters and such detailing what date rape is, why it’s bad, how to protect yourself, etc… I’m honestly not sure what else they could possibly do beside masssive psychological profiling in order to identify deviant personalities…
I’ve been in health classes in highschool and multiculturalist/feminist classes in college (which were required of all students). “No means no” is a phrase that has become part of the public vernacular. Telivision shows as long ago as, what, the early 90’s had episodes dealing with rape. If all this isn’t enough societal engineering, I don’t know what would be. Men already know rape is wrong, that it is vile, that a man who rapes women is scum. We agree on this, I think, almost (no pun intended) to a man.
So, to sum up: We should try to prevent rape as much as possible. We should also realize that it might be impossible to reduce rape to zero.
Please, it’d take something a lot more formidable than a feminist to think I’m a martyr.
How do you propose we do that? Do you believe that society today encourages rape?
P.S.
Thanks for the encouragement from the ‘other side’ (I think we agree on most points anyways). Sometimes when I see red, it’s hard for me to be all that rational, and the way conversations were crossing and responses being answered, I misjudged who was supporting what, exactly. My apologies.
And, as a gesture of truce ~grins~ I will point out that the word ‘feminazi’ is a Godwinization if I’ve ever seen one.
Do I disagree, in the strongest possible terms with feminism? You betcha. But that’s because I’m a secular humanist, and I believe that everybody has the right to be an individual, and to be treated equal due to their humanity, and nothing else. I believe that, ultimately, dividing the world up into ‘camps’ of victims only keeps us seperate and obfuscates that the essential issue is our humanity, and nothing else. And, I must admit, as a man, refrences to ‘the patriarchy’ or the meme ‘men rape women’ have turned me off to mainstream feminism. But such is life, I suppose.
So. Now that we have the labelling out of the way, and given that we all agree that using common sense, taking precautions (getting a good lock, being aware of your surroundings, knowing how to defend yourself, etc) is clearly not doing the job of preventing sexual assault, how then do we address this part of Try As I Might…'s post?:
Had I never met a feminist nor read a feminist work that advocated the genocide of nearly all men on the planet, or the creation of camps into which a small amount of men would be put (I’ve heard that men should make up no more than 5% of the population on the Ms. forums, for example.) I might not apply such a term.
But I have heard those things, and read those things, such as Valerie Solanas’s S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and statements about how fathers are unecessary and just a lot of thing about the world really not needing men except as carefully contained sperm producers.
That is why I use that word.
Keep in mind that the most vocal and most outrageous segment of society is usually a tiny minority of that society, and often shunned by that same society. The people you speak of are the Fred Phelpses, Timothy McVeighs, and Osama bin Ladens of feminism. As unfair as it is for them to paint all men with one bigotted brush, it’s equally unfair to paint all feminists the same way.
I don’t think it does place responsibility on the victim. I think that it acknowledges that there were actions taken by the victim that involved being in a situation where an attack occurred, but I don’t think that means it’s the victim’s fault.
Sometimes those situations are avoidable, and sometimes they are not. You can avoid sleeping over while drunk off your ass on the couch of someone who is just a bit above ‘acquaintance’ on the scale, but maybe you didn’t and he and a couple of buddies found you there and attacked you. I mean, that is what happened to me. Do I think that it was my fault? Of course not. I do think that it’s 100% true that it wouldn’t have happened had I made a different choice that evening or considered the risks differently. Acknowledging that fact, that if I hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have been their target, doesn’t mean I feel responsible for what happened or that I was responsible for what happened.
It’s simply a fact of the matter that an unfortunate miscalculation of trust resulted in a very bad experience. It’s also why I believe that although it is possible to significantly lower the risk of being raped by making informed decisions and avoding unnecessarily risky situations, it’s impossible to ever eliminate that risk entirely.
I’d much rather accept the fact that it is impossible to avoid all risk and to eliminate all bad acts and then try to go about increasing my odds of never experiencing one of those things than to believe that there is some way to make the world perfectly safe.
I don’t know if you believe it’s possible to completely and totally irradicate rape from human beings, but if you do, how do you think that can be accomplished?
I don’t. I consider it like a coin toss that didn’t go my way. I made a decision, and after that decision (not because of), certain things happened. Yeah, there were a million different ways I could have gone through that night. I could have decided not to go to that party. (Incidentally, it was not a frat party) I could have decided to go home much earlier than I did. I could have decided to call a cab. I could have decided to sleep in the spare bedroom and lock the door rather than say I was just ‘too tired’ to leave the couch I’d fallen asleep on while the party still raged.
But I did none of those things, and no amount of ‘coulda shoulda woulda’ now will ever change that. Why second guess it now?
It happened, it wasn’t something I could ever have forseen unless I had the impressive powers of Miss Cleo, and it’s over. Sometimes shitty things happen to people who don’t deserve them. Sometimes there’s no way to stop that. Does that suck? Of course it does. It just happens to be a reality of life that I don’t think can be avoided, because there is no way to make anyone’s life 100% safe.
If we can solve such a problem on this board, then the world would owe us one major debt of gratitude. But let’s remember that others have tried and failed, so let’s keep our expectations realistic.
Be that as it may, it might help to consider that not all aquaintence rapes are considered equal, either. Drunk girl passed out at a party is probably quite different than, say, ongoing spousal rape coupled with verbal abuse. Can we maybe list as many common scenarios as we can?
Seems to me we have done a lot. Aren’t there now “rape shield” laws, and isn’t the victim’s prior sexual history now inadmissible in court unless it is directly relevant to the case? Aren’t rape sentences pretty severe at this point? What else do you want to do? Deny men the right to defend themselves in court? Restrict innocent men from travelling freely? Make the jail term for rape greater than the jail term for murder?
If victims are suffering from a false sense of guilt, it seems that educating victims would be in order. But that’s already being done, isn’t it? Should we stop giving advice to women, but rather encourage them to put themselves in risky situations? That doesn’t seem like a good call either.
I guess I don’t understand what solution you all are proposing.
catsix
Stick to computers. Really.
You have painted the posters here with some very broad brushes. No one here has advocated putting men in camps etc–where do these leaps come from?
No, reread my post. I stated that you used misogynistic terms (like femiazi, bitch etc) all the while calling us misandrists.
You have no talent for dialogue. Do you really speak in such terms as these in everyday conversation? Why? Do you truly feel the need to express yourself in constant expletives? Why?
Again, I have no beef with your stance. I agree with you that many research studies are flawed. You keep beating this dead horse that the women here must be misandrists b/c one poster stated that “men are rapists”. It has been refuted time and time again as the focus of this discussion. Why the need to harp on it? Wny the need to spew venom? Maybe it has to do with feelings ?
Your argument seems to come down to “I know misandry when I see it and al the female posters are here, and I will be persecuted by the feminazi’s for saying it–see?” What kind of argument is that?
And Maureen --I agree. She needs to get off the cross, we need the wood.
Unfortunately there isn’t that much shunning going on. I don’t hear the millions of feminists who belong to NOW making clear that they abhor such ideas. I don’t hear any women’s studies departments decrying Valerie Solanas or her ideas. I didn’t see the Ms. Magazine representative employed as a forum moderator standing up to say that statements about men being unnecessary in society, or advocating that they make up no more than 5% of the total population were not tolerated by the Ms. Magazine organization.
The Reader would most certainly not let members get away with advocating that a particular race or gender should be kept under strict population control so that they amount to no more than 5% of the population at any time, because to sit idly by while such statements were made on their stage would be to implicitly agree to them.
Where’s the shunning of Solanas’s so-called utopia? Why don’t we see a single feminist organization that refuses to let such hate filled and inflammatory things be said on their stages?
What I don’t understand is whether they think that it’s possible to completely eliminate rape from human existence.
What I’m asking, blowero, is what else can be done to reduce the number of rapes that is not being done already? I didn’t propose a solution at all. I asked for ideas.
For someone who’s telling everyone to quit stereotyping and reading things into posts, you’re doing a pretty good job of it.
Neither do we. That’s what we’re here to discuss. Once we have the solution, then discussion’s over, right?