He hangs out in Christian bookstores with real ladies in business casual clothes. You couldn’t understand, harlot.
So should the guy in the blog face the same charges and penalty as the guy who does the same thing in a library? Why or why not?
Should we examine the behaviour of the lady in the library the same way that we examine the behaviour of the blog writer for the possibility that there may be other factors at work?
If the same thing had been done to a lady in a library would you require the same level of corroboration and / or independent witnesses as you would of the blog writer? Why or why not?
Where would you personally feel safer, reading a book in a library or drinking and partying it up as very possibly the only woman in a group of inebriated men. Why or why not?
Well, I’m not a police officer, nor a judge, nor on a jury-- so I really can’t speak to the legal charges anybody should or shouldn’t face. What the law states is necessary for proof is not necessarily what I hold as a standard for my personal opinion.
And fwiw, I actually feel less safe when I’m alone then when I’m in big groups of people I know. I suppose this is entirely because I’ve been harassed far more when I’m alone then when I’m with friends. Other Doper ladies, what say you? Do you feel the same way?
Yeah I have, and every time I have seen a lady sitting in the laps of multiple men she was either:
a) very obviously drunk and behaving outside her normal character so the men (at least the ones I saw) handled her with kid gloves and MORE respect.
b) out to pick up a guy, any guy to take home (and some of the ladies that behaved this way told me before hand that’s what they wanted to do)
Are you really telling me that the only way to signal your interest in a guy is to get half trashed at a party and squeeze your way into his lap?
I guess that I must lead a very sheltered existence then, for my wife and I we met at the local cineplex (sober), had dinner (I was embarrassed because she wouldn’t eat), watched a movie then went clubbing, where NEITHER of us had much to drink because we were both driving.
I’m not talking about legal standards or judges or juries.
I am asking for your personal opinion - is there a worse offender? SHOULD they both face the same charges and punishment? is there any material difference in what they have done?
Why wouldn’t they be treated the same way in court. If the guy made a move, she told him no, and he escalated things by shoving his hands down her pants, I’m not seeing why anything else matters.
All other things being equal, I’d view them equally. There’s no good reason not to. It’s not like being groped in a library is an outlandish, bigfoot-sighting scenario. Don’t know if you’ve been to a public library lately, but they’re often populated by mentally unstable people.
If I knew all the men, I wouldn’t feel unsafe at all (unless, of course, I knew them to be dangerous people). If I worked with them, I’d have even less reason to feel unsafe because of the assumption that evildoers would think twice before behaving in a manner that could potentially screw up their livelihood later on.
As for reading a book in a library, see answer above. Libraries attract all types of people, including mentally ill homeless men. So I’m probably going to be more uneasy there than than in a bar, hanging out with friends who happen to be men (oh noes!).
If a woman wants to do this, what’s the problem? Why are you being so judgmental? Do you have a madonna/whore complex? As long as she backs off when an advance is rebuffed (the same as a man should do when rebuffed by a woman), there is no problem or risk involved with being a drunk and flirtatious woman at a party or a bar, unless there is someone there who wants to rape her. The problem is with the rapists, not the women. **It’s victim-blaming to say or imply anything else. **
You and snowboarder bo are really just too goddamn much. You say you’re not victim-blaming, and then go into long victim-blaming diatribes trying to limit what a woman can do, lest she be held partially culpable for her rape.
Might I suggest that you actually dosomefuckingresearch and find out what victim-blaming is and is not? I assure you and bo that both of you have been engaging in it for the duration of this thread.
Well I guess that if a person consistently thinks the best way to get a man’s attention and attract him is by sexually titallating him, it’s not particularly surprising that she also consistently gets unwelcome or uninvited sexual attention.
If she sees herself and projects herself as primarily a sex object first is it surprising that people will treat her primarily that way?
To You With the Face …talk about cultural divide. Yeah I pretty regularly go to the library. And the most threatening thing I have ever seen there is a kid running up and down shelves rather than reading. I don’t think I have ever seen an identifiably homeless person in a library here.
Legitimate question: you’re male, right? How old are you?
If someone goes off the road in snow, is it victim blaming to **wonder **if they were speeding?
If I fall into an open (un-roped off) manhole, is it victim blaming to wonder if I was watching where I was going?
If I get hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing, is it victim blaming for someone to ask if I checked for oncoming traffic before crossing? (note, the law here is that a car must stop at a pedestrian crossing IF IT IS SAFE TO DO SO)
Is it victim blaming to have a touch of scepticism when the woman, by her own admission, had been playing beer pong, squeezing herself into multiple men’s laps, laying across a bed and drinking?
As I have said many times in this thread. If it went down exactly how she blogged it I am in the “lock him up and throw away the key crowd”. But I do want more than just her say so, given the circumstances surrounding (what she said) went on.
To give perhaps another thought. I (one time in my life) got into a street fight. The police came up and saw four of us exchanging blows. They pulled me aside, and although I was sober and coherent (the others were drunk) said to me “look, all we saw was four guys fighting, if we do anything you’ve all got to go down to the station”.
Why do we need to take her version as the sole and complete arbiter of facts? Why can’t we ask if there were other things that were going on? We can’t we wonder if she is telling a complete story? Why is that such a terrible thing/
It feels like by not having that touch of skepticism we are swinging the other way into mob lynchings
Then sorry, you’re probably not very qualified to lecture anyone about assessing risk appropriately. Your naivety keeps revealing itself.
Yep, I am a 36 year old male.
raised in a small town in New Zealand. (population less than 1,000)
Studied in a city of about 300,000
Now living in Singapore
married 13 years
You grew up in a tiny town, studied in a not large city (people refer to where I live as backwoods and we have a population of about half a million), and live in what is often touted as one of the safest places (due to the strict justice there)*. You don’t think that maybe your experiences are slightly different than the average American woman?
*I may be totally off base here, but that was always my understanding of Singapore.
I have a question for the people who keep on with the “we’re not blaming the victim but here’s all the things she did wrong” people who pop up in any sexual assault thread. Would you alter that at all if you knew a potential rapist was reading it? I would love it if rapists were actually extraterrestrials from the planet of Evil Assholia, but they’re not. Treating rape as inevitable, attacking victims’ credibility, blaming the booze-all of it sets up their excuses.
I also have a Pollyanna complex 
But I am not trying to “lecture” anyone on assessing risk. God knows, what do I know about risk in the US?
All I am trying to suggest is that there are situations where people will have more and less “self control”. That what is seen is an open invitation to a brawl in one situation will be seen as a bad joke in another.
What will be seen as a serious invitation to the room to “come pull a train on me” at one time at another will be seen as a playful joke.
It doesn’t take familiarity with the US, tech conferences or your life to realise this.
Of course, where this is falling down, is in how it should be applied to the situation at hand - namely this particular case of (alleged) sexual assault
I believe you mean “run train on me” and I assure you that my tight red dress was not asking groups of men to fuck me, one after another.
If you read some books about trauma recovery, you might get a better idea why some people find your stance so offensive.
As I said in the other thread, the victim’s behavior prior to the incident was, is and I hope will be always considered, both socially and legally, and rightfully so.
Law enforcement and security situation in US and other first world countries is much better compared to others with regard to rape (Despite what some will have you believe). If it ever gets bad enough, behaviors will change accordingly.
No, I doubt you’ll ever understand anything I meant, judging by that post. I also doubt you’ll ever take any real responsibility for yourself or your situation. It’ll always be someone else’s fault, to you.
BTW, thanks for leaving out details and then trying to use them as a gotchya. Not that they matter at all, I just think it’s great how you did that. :rolleyes:
Yeah, you could make that argument, but since the situation was long over by the time the blog entry got typed, how did it help to end said situation? Oh, that’s right, it didn’t.
If it stops a future situation, good. But it does nothing to alleviate the bad thing as it happens.