He doesn’t stand out as a bad guy as a poster in my mind; He seems fairly benign. I just think he showed poor judgement on this issue. Perhaps it’s a sign of a deeper issue given the sports team he eponymously supports.
Don’t worry, I have a very short memory. In fact, to be honest, I had to scroll up to remember the guy’s name.
Meh. I wasn’t really fishing for anything. I was just looking for opinions.
I disagreed with someone on Facebook and wanted to see what the rest of you thought. That’s basically it.
But without context. That’s the key thing. By itself, the OP confused some people, ticked off others because it was unclear.
Without context or your Humble Opinion, how could the rest of us think anything illuminating? Why would you even ask?
The original statement misrepresents itself. That’s not my fault.
Want to make an argument that men don’t properly recognise rape in all its forms? Fine. Make the argument; don’t obscure it under some bullshit nonsense comparison about ‘shaming’.
It’s not an argument; it’s a pithy saying, a quip. But even a moment’s reflection over what it could mean would suggest it probably isn’t defining rape as “men understood as having committed rape”.
I mean, do you agree with what I think it the very obvious sentiment conveyed by the quip? That traditionally (and this is changing), there are many types of rape–like spousal rape, rape by deception, rape by intoxication–that were treated as less shameful than promiscuity by women?
Well, I didn’t want to inject my opinion into the original post.
So here’s the thing:
I totally disagree with everything in that OP. In fact I feel offended by it . It’s total bullshit and possibly applies to one percent of the male population.
And I definitely have a sheltered, white, middle-classed privileged viewpoint. I get that.
BUt you made the original post when you posited about it without expressing your own opinion…like you’re chumming for replies.
I don’t know how to answer this. I don’t consider any kind of overt sexual assault to be less shameful than any kind of consensual sex. Perhaps my peer group is unusual in that I am fairly sure they would agree (it’s not something that I have discussed with many people).
Where there are people failing to recognise rape, or recognising it but excusing it, that’s bad, and wrong. Where there are people shaming other people for their choices, that’s also wrong.
I think shaming someone unnecessarily is wrong, but if I have to compare the two, I think it’s a less severe wrong than ignoring or enabling rape.
But the statement isn’t about whether YOU shame women more for sex than men for rape. The question is whether you believe it may be the case that there are workplaces and social circles where a rumor that a woman gave two dudes blow jobs after the Christmas party will be believed and repeated, and her career hurt, but where a dude making boasts about getting girls drunk to fuck them will be a faux pas at worse.
I think this is dramatically less the case today than even 15 years ago, but in my lifetime it was. The statement isn’t an accusation toward you, it’s an observation of a social norm. When so many men in this thread dent that that is or was ever the case, it seems like basically saying women are making this shit up.
That’s why I said I don’t really know how to answer. I’ve never really experienced a workplace or social circle that was like that. I guess I believe they exist, because stories about them have to be coming from somewhere., but ‘men shaming women who have lots of consensual sex more than rapists’ or (as it turns out we are discussing) ‘men don’t properly recognise rape’ are not accurate descriptors of the world where I find myself. As I said, maybe I live in a particularly unusual peer group.
Why the hell would that be wrong? What you call “chumming for replies” is what most people call putting up a topic for discussion. He wanted to get answers without biasing it with his own opinion. This is a normal thing, as is wanting replies to what you posted.
I cannot see how anything in the OP would make anyone angry, and the civil replies suggest most other people didn’t, either. It seems you have to make certain bad faith assumptions to infer I’ll intent.
Plus Leaffan is a person. He’s posted here many times. And nothing from his history suggests that he would be trying to piss people off. He’s not even a snarky poster. So why would your first instinct be to assume this known decent person is acting in bad faith?
This plays into exactly what my response to the OP was going to be: Don’t be so quick to judge a saying that sounds ridiculous, posted without full context. Ask them for further clarification on what they actually mean. Often times, it will turn out your initial interpretation was wrong, and that you actually agree more than you think.
For example, it seems that there is a way in which this statement is arguably true. It isn’t talking about convicted rapists or obvious rape, but the various non-consensual aspects of sex that are not shamed as much. I’d also argue it coupd be a feeling statement, and means the person posting it feels like she is being shamed more for sex than other people in her life were shamed for non-consensual sex.
The irony is that the bad faith assumption of the OP is exactly the problem I see with the kneejerk responses to the initial statement. Both could have been cleared up by asking what was meant and/or further context, instead of making a negative assumption.
The OP can now feel firsthand how assuming something is bad right away can harm discussion.
Finally, I’m aware this comes off as preachy. But I genuinely think it needed to be said. And I genuinely don’t know another way to express it or otherwise try to deal with this issue.
In my whole life, (and I’m not young), the only people I have heard attributing fault to women for their sexual behaviour (including “walking alone” and “dressing like that”). have been other women. I can see why they might attribute that belief to other people, and I’m not saying that a man wouldn’t agree out of politeness. But the idea that a man would actually express that belief in words does not match my experience of any man I have ever known.
Rape, like murder, is one of those crimes any man may commit, from any level of society. By modern definitions, it is more rare in concert than most crimes, like violence, burglary, theft, drugs, where almost always somebody else knows and approves. One of the reasons is that, in abstract, men almost universally disapprove of the idea.
In white-collar circles and amongst tradesmen, ideas like that would get you shunned. From the ex-con’s, ideas like that could get you bottled.
I’m a bloke. I hang out with blokes, and work with blokes and went to school with blokes. When somebody in this thread asserts that "“Men shame women for having a lot of consensual sex more than they shame other men for rape.”, it seems like basically saying I’m a liar.
:dubious: :dubious: What you’re claiming here is that you have never encountered any instance of a man referring to a woman as a “slut” or “whore” or “easy”, or in similarly disparaging terms, because she has a lot of consensual sex.
AFAICT, the possible explanations for this highly implausible claim are these:
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For some reason, you hardly ever encounter any opinions expressed by men about women at all. I mean, just googling the phrase “she is a slut” gets you millions of hits illustrating quite clearly how extremely common it is for men to characterize women that way. If you didn’t know this, then you’re in some kind of hermit-level isolation as far as your awareness of male behavior is concerned.
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For some reason, you’re interpreting the OP’s statement about men “shaming women” as applying only to what one knows about male behavior from personal interactions with one’s own social circle, and no man in your social circle has ever disparaged a woman for “sluttiness” in your hearing. That’s not inconceivable, but I’m not sure why you’re interpreting that statement in such a restricted way in the first place.
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You may be having a failure of recognition about “slut-shaming”, like the failures of recognition about rape that we’ve been discussing in this thread. That is, you may in fact encounter men subtly making fun of women for being sexually active, or treating a sexual “conquest” as some kind of victory over a woman, or snickering to each other about a woman’s sexual activity in a way that embarrasses her, but for some reason you just don’t interpret that as men “attributing fault to women for their sexual behavior”.
Are people’s views and experience only valid if they affirm one particular side of this argument or something?
I don’t think so. But it’s unreasonable for people to expect their own interpretation of their “views and experience” to invalidate massive amounts of empirical evidence on the other side.
For example, when Melbourne says he feels that to treat the statement “Men shame women for having a lot of consensual sex more than they shame other men for rape” is “basically saying [he’s] a liar”, he’s demanding that we privilege his own account of his own experience over all the other experience and evidence out there.
Nobody AFAICT is making the claim that “The men that Melbourne knows personally shame women for having a lot of consensual sex more than they shame other men for rape”. To make such a claim in the teeth of Melbourne’s description of his own experience would be calling him a liar, unjustifiably.
But that doesn’t mean that Melbourne’s experience disproves the significantly different claim that’s actually being made.
This is IMHO; I’m fairly sure what we’re meant to be doing here is relating our own experiences of a phenomenon.
If this were GD, perhaps we would be trying to find stats (if such exist) on the global scale and severity of the asserted phenomenon.
Unlike Melbourne I will not say I have never encountered such ‘shaming’ behaviour in my life. I will say that I have only encountered it rarely. In most situations of my everyday life, if someone were to begin discussing in vague general terms the sexual proclivities of another person, I think it would get wrinkled noses and general responses of distaste.
If someone were to go as far as using words such as ‘slut’, I think the reaction would be actual shock and offence.
Maybe I have lived most of my life in some little privileged bubble or something. I don’t disbelieve that there are other places where behaviours are different, but I can only really speak about the world I find myself in.
Except that’s kind of what you actually just did in your response to Melbourne.
Okay, but this particular OP is about a general statement that transcends any individual’s personal experience.
Making a claim along the lines of “Men in general do X”, when Melbourne or anyone else says “I personally have never known a man who does X”, is not calling Melbourne a liar. Unless you’re interpreting the phrase “men in general” to mean “all men invariably”.
Are you talking about only what you encounter in real-life personal conversation with men in your social circle, or all observable venues of male behavior including, e.g., online comments on articles? Because if you’re taking the former as a reliable representative of the latter, I’m not sure that’s justified.
You think I was calling Melbourne a liar? How you figure?
I did point out, politely, ways in which he might have been mistaken or in which some possible interpretations of his remarks would be obviously factually incorrect. But that’s not the same as saying that he’s lying.
The OP literally asks ‘what is your opinion of this comment?’ - The OP does not ask ‘is this comment consistent with measurable statistics in humanity in general’. I tend to interpret threads like these, in this particular forum, as asking ‘what is your personal experience of this phenomenon’ - and I think that’s perfectly valid. Statistics should more or less stand on their own, but they are often broad and general - what’s happening in different pockets of reality, may however be interesting and different from the norm.
People online seem often to be generally shittier versions of the self they present in person - and online comment fora can be like an open sewer - however, I have not noticed much if any ‘shaming’ in the online places I frequent. Racism aplenty; political extemism, sure; general misogyny and misandry, a bit; shaming of sexual choices, not so much. Maybe I’m just not moving in circles where that is common. Maybe that’s something I should be glad of.
I get that you laid out explanations, but I would say that describing a statement that someone made in earnest as ‘this highly implausible claim’ is sort of the same as calling it a lie.
You mentioned upthread: “But it’s unreasonable for people to expect their own interpretation of their “views and experience” to invalidate massive amounts of empirical evidence on the other side.”
Please can we see the empirical data, then maybe we can move away from just trading opinions and personal, local experiences, if that’s what you desire.