And again, while I think your intentions are decent (though naive), reducing harm and suffering, the solution you suggest would almost certainly have the opposite effect. If you’d like to encourage people to treat *consensual sex *less seriously than they do, I’m sure you’d find plenty of Dope support. But too many Dopers, myself included, have worked with or read about rape victims from too many different walks of life (and even periods in time) to not see that there is something inherently painful and dehumanizing about the experience that crosses cultures and societal norms.
I think you are continuing to ignore many of the points I have made. I have not argued that rape is not inherently painful and dehumanizing. You may disagree with the wet willy analogy, but I don’t understand how you can ignore the fact that it can also be inherently painful and dehumanizing. In both cases pain can be involved, to larger or lesser degrees, depending on exactly how it goes down, and both cases can be incredibly dehumanizing. Any time someone forces you against your will is dehumanizing. Sure there are degrees involved, which we can discuss. But your continued insistence on reducing my points to their barest extremes is not enlightening.
Your point about your experience observing how inherently painful and dehumanizing rape is across cultural and societal norms is not compelling to me. Reason 1: this is what I would predict. I know of no modern culture with a sufficiently different attitude to warrant much evidence. Reason 2: you have a selection bias: you are more likely to hear about rapes that are worse for the victim. Reason 3: irrelevance – again I am not arguing that rape is not a big deal. It is not the only offense in the universe. There are other things besides rape that also fit your criteria, and yet don’t get as much media/judiciary enthusiasm.
Listen, you can avoid defending the points you’ve actually made, or you can get indignant that nobody’s listening to you, but not both. Here’s the social movement you were calling for:
Let’s pretend I’ve just been raped. Please explain how I am benefiting from your “clinical” approach to my experience. If I’m not benefiting, please explain who would, and how. Please don’t skip forward three generations to a time when we’ve all changed our minds about whether rape is worse than a handshake that goes on too long; start now, in the real world, where real people very commonly share the specific emotional trauma that results from rape.
Alternatively, because there isn’t an answer to the first question, you could explain how rape, to the extent that people feel bad about it, is different from any other thing that people feel bad about, but you’ve declined to do so thus far. Why stop at rape? Why not eliminate the societal engrams associated with everything?
I would probably treat your rape the same way you or any other empathetic person would. The damage has already been done. There would be no use for my “clinical” approach, other than, perhaps, introduced with great care over decades of psychotherapy. The “clinical” approach you refer to, that you quoted, is an argument in favor of clear-heading thinking by those who are in a position to do it, not a prescription for how a victim is to be treated.
But I have already addressed this multiple times, but you obviously have not been reading my posts very carefully. Clearly I have to start using bold again. I have said that I am not advocating dismissing the victims trauma.. I am not advocating a doctor saying “oh it’s not a big deal. Just a little bruising is all!”. I AM NOT. I HAVE NOT. What I have said repeatedly, for example, are that 1) the news media could be less voyeuristic and manipulative and PC and have story less selection bias, 2) the pitfalls of having to deal with such emotional bias in this sort of discussion could be removed and therefore increase sanity and rational discussion of the subject, 3) lady justice could be blinded, the way she should be.
First and foremost my point is that you could approach the subject more clinically. That’s where change starts. That’s how it happens. That doesn’t mean you have to be less empathetic, or dismiss the trauma. Not at all. A good scientist, a good truth seeker, looks at the facts, whether they are comfortable or not. Whether crude or not. Whether popular or not. Unfortunately, the truth is often not politically/emotionally expedient, even if, at the end of the day, it can help reduce trauma.
Reading comprehension is your friend. I have not said that “people shouldn’t feel bad about rape”. In fact, I have repeatedly said it is a horrible assault. I mean, really. How many times do I have to repeat myself?
As much as I appreciate your constructive criticism about what I need to personally do to solve a problem you don’t know anything about, I’ve found that I’m capable of approaching the subject clinically enough to have worked for a fucking clinic. Whereas the only “truths” you have access to are the ones you made up just now.
So you can stop repeating yourself any time at all, really.
Manipulative *and *PC? Care to expand on at least #1 (I fear it’s only a matter of time before we hear the h-word if you delve into #2, not that it’s a coherent sentence, really)?
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to deliver a low blow here, but you sound like you’re either a sock puppet for the young teenager who’s on here sometimes (Curtis? or is that someone else?) or simply another person who lacks serious life experience, which may or may not include sexual intercourse.
You don’t seem to be able to either read, comprehend, or respond to my points. Instead of debating, you declare yourself more knowledgeable than me on the subject. Thanks for contributing.
What is contradictory about the news media being both manipulative and PC? The manipulation of people’s emotions in the name of ratings is a pretty accepted feature of the mainstream news media. Fox news is probably the worst IMO, but let’s not get into that debate ;). And PC? This is another usual feature – the intentional avoidance of thousands of letters from irate masses. Certainly they cater to viewership more than they should in the name of reporting alone. Some may disagree, but these are both very common sentiments. It is why I still watch the News Hour on PBS. Although it’s gotten worse over the years.
Ad hominem, inappropriate IMO, and wrong. I have been relatively patient here, confronted by reactionary responses that often repeatedly misrepresent or ignore important parts of what I have said. It’s all in the record folks, if you care to look back at it. By continuing to project this speculative stereotype of some naive rape-defender onto the actual words that I have written, you are proving the point I have been trying to make. I mean, really, this is exactly what I have been talking about. How do you not see this?
Could you maybe put all your thoughts on the matter in one coherent post? As you’ve repeated, you’ve felt the need to repeat yourself. What are you arguing beyond ‘Rape is traumatic, but it would be less traumatic if people would stop making such a big deal about it (and, by extension, genitals)?’ And what are you basing this on, the idea that rape victims are traumatized by an exaggeration of the seriousness of the crime (rather than common reactions to rape victims’ stories such as, ‘No, you weren’t raped,’ ‘What did you do to make him?’ and ‘But [blank] is such a nice guy!’)?
Again, if you are going to wish for a major, unprecedented shift in societal attitudes, I’d argue (again) that women’s sexuality is what you’d want to focus on. Lessening misogyny and the ever-present slut/virgin dichotomy would both achieve your goals, in part (because one of the reasons female rape victims are often seen as ‘irreparable’ is because they’re ‘used goods,’ whether or not they were virgins beforehand. And one of the reasons male rape victims are reluctant to come forward is that they’ve been reduced to the status of women), and perhaps even reduce actual rape rates. Imagine that. (Not sure how this would affect child molestation, however, for either gender. But you know there is some middle ground between panic-inducing pedophile stories and expecting your child to react the same to being kicked in the shin on the playground and having a stranger insert their fingers into their anus).
But really, it feels like you’ve spent more time defending your points rather than making them.
I haven’t had much choice in this matter. If you genuinely want to follow my actual points, I’d start with my first post. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that post is fairly benign, and pretty much summarizes my position. I think where things went downhill quickly was after I introduced the “wet willy” analogy, which, unbeknownst to me, is apparently a common, loaded concept, that brings with it a lot of baggage. But if you look at the post, my use of the analogy was merely to prove a simple point:
In some cases societal norms can be just as much responsible for emotional trauma as the physical act itself
And then it gets worse. Because while my point is benign (and fairly obvious IMO) on its face, people immediately project onto it the idea that what I am really saying is something like:
the victims, not the perpetrator, are responsible for the emotional trauma they experience
Which simply does not logically follow. I think this happens because many react instinctively with “oh look, it’s another asshole saying that women make too big a deal about rape.” Then they take off their thinking cap and put on their arguing cap, and make assumptions about intentions and use that as a recipe for flippantly responding to posts without reading them critically, drawing up straw man after straw man.
Anyways, as you said… I’m spending more time defending than making new points. Fair enough. Perhaps I will take your recommendation and draw up a longer post that makes my points with a little more care than my usual “furiously typing 70w/min in a frustrated attempt to correct a facile mis-characterization of my position.”