From the New York Times (via Michele):
A high school principal in Columbus, Ohio, has been fired and three assistant principals suspended without pay because they failed to notify the police last month about accusations that a 16-year-old special-education student had been sexually assaulted in the school auditorium by a group of boys, one of whom videotaped the incident, school officials said yesterday.
The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl’s father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault, according to statements given to school investigators.
The police are investigating four teenagers in connection with the incident, a spokeswoman for the Columbus police, Sherry Mercurio, said yesterday, but no charges have been filed. […]
One of the three assistant principals, Richard Watson, said he had found the videotape and then viewed it with other administrators. Their conclusion, they told investigators, was that there had been no coercion.
From what the NBC story says, it appears that the boys may have been caught because they were showing off by playing the video for friends in math class. While the school administration may not have found any signs of coercion, the police investigators found quite a lot. From the Times:
One witness’s statement said a boy pulled the girl onto the auditorium stage, ordered her to be quiet, pushed her to her knees and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
“If you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you,” the boy told her and then hit her in the face, causing her mouth to bleed, a student told the investigators.
The girl told a special-education teacher minutes after the incident that she had been forced to have oral sex with two boys behind a curtain on the stage while at least two others watched. She said the boys stopped only after someone arrived in the auditorium and scared them off.
The girl, who has a speech defect, “just kept saying she was scared,” the special-education teacher told the investigators.
Maybe there’s less to this story than it seems; maybe the witnesses are lying, for example. But if the witness statements are accurate, then the boys should be arrested and tried as rapists.
MaxedOutMama , aka MOM, has an interesting post regarding this story. She doesn’t think the boys will ever be punished:
I’m outraged too, but not at all surprised. For one thing, multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies aren’t that rare any more, even in school. There is a fine line between manipulation, intimidation and outright force. Stories such as these aren’t that rare – developmentally disabled girls are often manipulated and abused in this way in school. So are emotionally vulnerable girls. Once you have kids blowing each other in the school johns in junior high, things get pretty much out of control.
I’ll give you my guess. This boys will not be convicted of any criminal charges. There will not be enough evidence; the testimony (said quietly behind closed doors) will be that the word was that this girl was known for giving blowjobs to boys. Those involved will say they thought she was consenting. Those witnessing it will agree. Not one of all the boys involved said anything to school authorities. Not one. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong, consenting and enforced acts. If they haven’t participated themselves they have all heard about such acts before.
(Link to MOM via My Whim is Law).
MOM is already mistaken about what at least one of the witnesses is saying (if the New York Times‘ account is accurate). I’m also more than a little skeptical about how common “multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies” are – as far as I can tell, adults have always vastly exaggerated how much sex kids are having. But I worry that she’ll be proved right about the odds of any of these boys being convicted of rape.
MOM goes on to suggest that “instinct” may be responsible for this disgusting act: “Instinct in a young, roving band of teenage boys dictates imposing sexually upon a vulnerable girl…” In MOM’s view, young boys have an instinct towards gang-rape, which they need to be guided away from. I don’t think there’s much evidence to support MOM’s view, however. Have any anthropologists found that hunter-gatherer societies have a high incidence of gang rape, or if they don’t, that they spend a lot of time teaching their boys that gang-rape is wrong?
I don’t think boys have a natural instinct for gang-rape. However, I do think boys have a natural instinct to rely their peer group for validation and for their self-identity (that’s something I think MOM and I agree on). In a culture which teaches boys that masculinity is measured by “getting some,” that if they’re not a man they’re nothing, that having sex is not only normal but an entitlement, and that women don’t have much worth, it’s unsurprising that gang rapes happen. It’s even less surprising that the victim is (it seems) disabled, since the disabled are also not seen as being worth much by our society.
I doubt these boys were acting out of a desire for sexual release. I think they were acting out of a desire to show each other that they’re not scared, that they’re brave, that they’re men. From the point of view of the boys, their victim was just an object, which they used for demonstrating their masculinity to each other.
MOM then makes what seems to me to be a surprising, and out-of-place, digression:
Here’s reality. Girls can be imposed upon sexually, but once they learn the sexual game they can often whipsaw adolescent boys with it. Boys often find one-on-one sex really frightening until they’ve proved to themselves that they can do it, but no such inhibitions exist in a group. Adolescent boys are often just as emotionally vulnerable as girls. Girls have an instinct to use their own powers of sexual attraction. Nature made it so. An attractive, intelligent girl can become a superstar by her junior year in high school if she plays her cards well, especially if she is carefully and selectively sexually active. In the process she may cut an old boyfriend into emotional pieces.
No doubt some girls act just as MOM describes. But what does any of this have to do with a “developmentally disabled” girl who is dragged onto an auditorium stage, hit, and told “if you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you”? The girl in this case wasn’t using her “powers of sexual attraction” to make herself a “superstar”; she was raped by a bunch of assholes using the power of threats and fists. To use a discussion of a girl being gang-raped as a springboard for discussing how girls are victimizers, too, is bizarre and disturbing.
There’s a lot more to MOM’s post, some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t; take a look.
UPDATE: Due to having nearly 500 responses, this thread is now closed. If you want to continue the discussion, please do so on this new thread.
Amp:
Well. There’s a lot of reasons to condemn popular attitudes towards prison rape (a lot of people continue to think that it’s absolutely hilarious when made into a broad joke). But I don’t think that the issue has anything in particular to do with tax rates. Legislators routinely raise taxes or issue bonds, with no particular political consequence, for building more and larger prisons and have been doing so for years. (Sometimes they even manage to Mau Mau 51+% of ordinary people into signing on to it in a local referendum on, e.g., building a new county jail.)
Voters ought to take rape in prisons seriously enough to ensure that something is done about it, and it’s a sad commentary that they don’t. But the primary source of the problem isn’t voters at all; it’s corrections officers and the prison bureaucracy, who have repeatedly shown their willingness to encourage a climate of sexual violence and terror as a means of internal control–either directly or by turning a strategic blind eye–and to protect each other behind a Blue Wall when guards are negligent or are committing the assaults themselves. Power corrupts, and unaccountable power corrupts without limit.
There’s plenty of money to solve these problems already. The problem is that the legislators don’t care and the corrections officers’ unions block serious reform efforts at every step.
No, Thomas, it wasn’t Spence as far as I recall (he tends to be more high-handed about protecting the innocent from the grinding, uncaring machinery of the State).
And what Crys T said. It’s as though every generation of adults suddenly realizes “Oh my god, teenagers might want to screw around just like we did!” and completely lose their marbles.
Thanks for your responses, everyone. I can see why some of you claim that society turns a blind eye towards rape, yet this seems like an example of ignorance and stupidity rather than evidence that rape is condoned by society as a whole. To be fair, neither would I claim that wives screwing their husbands over in divorce is condoned by society as a whole.
VK said:
You see, I have never heard any statements remotely close to those, even in jest, and even from the most chauvinistic males around. I would think that if these attitudes really were so widespread, that I would have heard them voiced at least once.
Anne said:
I would say the failure of the defense’s tactics shows that such attitudes don’t fly so well anymore. On the other hand, Sheezlebub did point out that the first jury hung, so those attitudes do sometimes still work in some areas.
Sheezlebub said:
Which threads, where?
I am getting to the other comments in my next post…
I would say the failure of the defense’s tactics shows that such attitudes don’t fly so well anymore.
It flew just fine for the first tries.
Of course the vast majority of people believe rape is wrong; the problem is when you get people defining “rape”.
Aegis, earlier today I came across a particularly interesting thread on the Everquest board that I occassionally go to and thought of you and your skepticism. This thread was posted by a young man asking for ‘advice on women’ with regards to his prom date and the choices he was going to make. I was the first one to react in horror and outrage at the post; prior to me it was what only could be considered a festival of atta’boys. Anyways, I’m going to post it here for you to look at, to hopefully provide a solid example of the implicit condoning of extremely questionable mentalities and behaviors with regards to sexual assault and rape:
And here are some of the responses he got (all males), including from people I know to be school teachers, parents, college students etc.:
So anyways, this is just some of the quotes, believe me their are plenty more.
RadGeek said:
Some of those examples were very scary. Others were a bit fishy. For instance, the ideas that “A woman who goes to the home or apartment of a man on their first date implies that she is willing to have sex”? and “A woman who is stuck-up and thinks she is too good to talk to guys on the street deserves to be taught a lesson,” don’t seem to fit with the other rape myths like believing that rape is a woman’s fault if she dresses sexy. It’s possible to believe that a woman going to the home of a man on a first date implies willingness for sex, without believing that forced sex is justified in such a situation. Also, it’s possible to believe that a woman who is stuck-up deserves a lesson, without thinking that such a lesson should be rape. The belief is still misogynistic, but it isn’t evidence that rape is societally condoned.
RadGeek said:
(I had claimed that men are expected to be initiator in sexual relationships.) Cultural norms, and most (but of course not all) women. Are you trying to suggest otherwise?
Ah, but you are quoting me out of context. Remember, I originally made that statement in response to jam:
jam said:
Hence, I am not claiming that a high desire for sex, and limited ability to find any directly cause males to rape. But it isn’t farfetched that a high desire for sex, inability to find any, pressure to initiate (and confusion over doing so), and romantic rejection could cause some men to become insecure, resentful towards women, and alienated from them. This alienation stems from the dysfunctional nature of the current system of gender roles, and can cause such men to adopt misogynistic attitudes. This system inadequately prepares many men for romantic interaction with females (though this post is too short to properly explain why).
Also, as I mentioned, there is a tendency for the most confident, assertive, dominant, and perhaps even “patriarchal” males to be (or at least seem to be) the most successful with the majority of young women. Whether this tendency is real or an illusion, it lends to the idea that women are masochistic and that empathy is unattractive to them. This kind of perception, in combination with the alienation I described earlier, could make some males more likely to believe certain rape myths.
Mary Ellen said:
Yet nice clothes, a nice car, and sports ability are not what make males successful with females. That is the stereotype of what females are supposed to find attractive. What actually seems to attract females in high school (based on my observations) is confidence, charisma, ability to flirt, assertiveness, dominance, and high social skills/status. Many of those males also happened to be good looking or athletic.
And why would I think that those girls got raped?
Next up: Kim’s reply…
Ageis:
I have heard the same comments VK had–I have also heard the old “rape is terrible, BUT–” (a lot of women lie so she’s probably lying, what was she doing there, why didn’t she just leave, she probably wants money, she’s slept around before, she’s a skank, ad nauseum). I also know a lot of rape survivors who didn’t feel comfortable coming forward because of these attitudes. (And this revelation made me roll my eyes Katie Roiphe’s illogical argument–if rape is so prevalent, why don’t I know anyone who was raped? My answer to that is she probably does, but her attitude probably isn’t going to inspire any confidences from her female friends and/or she wouldn’t acknowledge a lot of it as rape.)
If you want to see examples of some of those comments and attitudes, check out Talk Left. Check out some of the comments on rape threads here on Alas. Many posters use the “well I heard she was a slut/crazy/acted ‘wrong'” as “proof” that a woman wasn’t raped. They throw up half-baked theories about a plotting golddigger, a slut, a crazy woman, an attention-hound, etc. Though I suspect you’ll dismiss example after example.
My question to you is, where is your proof besides what you believe? Few women report their rapes, fewer rape cases are brought to court, and even fewer result in a conviction. Rapes and/or alleged rapes, such as the one mentioned in the original post, are often referred to as “sex scandals” as if two consenting adults were caught having sex in the office.
Kim–my God, what a pack of snivelling losers. That kid was 17 years old and he wants to nail fourteen year olds? He’s concerned about the slut factor when he’s a big old curb-crawling piece of slutmeat himself? And what is up with those inbred seething fuckwits who are posting replies to him? One of them claims to be a high school teacher. I truly hope that’s not the case. If it is, he sure as hell shouldn’t be working with kids.
It’s interesting how these guys think it’s okay for a seventeen-year-old to fuck a fourteen-year-old. A lot of abusers like being with people who are much younger than they are (and in those years, 14 and 17 are worlds apart); such parters are easier to control.
Kim said:
Kim, I think I should clarify what my skepticism is and isn’t.
– I don’t deny that misogynistic attitudes exist
– I don’t deny that some individuals or groups of individuals may condone rape
– I don’t deny that rape is prevalent. Though some people in this thread seem to be assuming that I do, and trying to convince me otherwise (which isn’t necessary).
Where I am skeptical is towards the claim that society, as a whole, condones rape.
Kim said:
That thread definitely demonstrate questionable and down-right misogynistic attitudes, but I am not certain that they are necessarily condoning of rape. Except the idea of a 17 year-old having sex with a 14 year-old would be statutory rape, yet you said that one poster talked about stat. rape. Perhaps you could explain exactly which comments you think could be condoning of rape, and why?
I am no stranger to discussions of “picking up chicks” on internet forums. I have seen many massive internet forums that are entirely devoted to “pick-up” and “seduction.” The misogynistic attitudes and Machiavellian tactics advocated on these forums would blow your mind! These forums assume that women are masochistic, that most women are not worth having relationships with, and that men must always be dominant alpha males. I’ve seen some posters on these forums advocate looking at women as pets. The refer to “chick logic” to describe the way women supposedly think. Yet the fact that these forums are underground shows how far their ideas are from mainstream acceptance. And I have never seen rape or date rape advocated or excused. Nor have I seen borderline cruelty advocated, such as “doing fucked up shit” to girls and bragging about it, or making a girl walk 10 miles home after taking her virginity. If anything like that was posted on any of the “pick-up” forums I’ve seen, the guy would probably get censured.
If anyone wants me to post links to some of these forums to see what I mean, then let me know.
Sheezlebub said:
Perhaps you could link to a particular thread so I see precisely what you are talking about. And again, I am not denying that these attitudes exist. I am denying that they are widespread enough to justify the claim that society, as a whole, condones rape. Also, a bunch of people excusing rape doesn’t show that rape is condoned by society. When Clara Harris murdered her husband, she was given a lot of sympathy and her actions were excused. Does that show that society condones wives murdering their husbands in revenge, Sheezlebub?
Proof of what? As far as the claim that “society as a whole condones rape” goes, it is the job of others to prove it, not my job to disprove it (although I actually have given some reasons that I am skeptical towards it). The burden of proof is not on me.
I don’t think a claim like that should be accepted lightly on the basis of highly selective evidence; in fact, I think it would be irresponsible to do so. Yes, I am setting a high standard for proof here, but I think that this is exactly the kind of claim that should have to meet a high standard! (and I do believe that some claims of extreme MRAs should be held to this standard also.) I have no problem with people suggesting ideas like this to see where they lead, because I believe speculation is very important to understanding anything. What I have a problem with is people saying “society condones rape” as if it was empirically demonstrated, when it isn’t.
I see no reason to believe that claim without seeing a lot more evidence, because I have never heard attitudes like that voiced in real life, nor have I seen them on the most misogynistic internet forums I’ve lurked on. I understand that many people here have encountered these attitudes, but even if they are more prevalent than I’ve observed, I don’t see how one makes the massive leap from “some people condone rape” to “society as a whole condones rape.” Nor have I seen any empirical evidence that conclusively demonstrates that society condones rape. When something has not been validated by my personal experience or by empirical evidence, I have a lot of trouble believing it, and why shouldn’t I? I understand that some people might think I’m being naive or difficult, but I don’t see at all how my skepticism is unjustified.
Aegis, all I can say to you is that apparently you lead a very sheltered life. Rad Geek has provided you with some empirical studies, which you’ve chosen to ignore. For myself, the prevalance of these attitudes is as prima facie evident to me as the sky being blue and grass being green. Then again, I’m female. The brunt of these attitudes falls squarely on my shoulders. I can’t blissfully walk through life assuming that I will (a) never be raped, or (b) be believed to have actually been raped, in the event that I am, or (c) have the assumption be that I did not want to be raped, and that I did not deserve it, in the event of a rape.
Perhaps there are some small, ultra-liberal bastions of the United States where women who are raped aren’t deemed to have been at least half-responsible for their own rape. Perhaps in these oases women who have been raped aren’t vilified as cheap whores and sluts. But I don’t live there. Go read the studies that Rad Geek posted again.
You say you’re skeptical. I say you’re privileged. You can joyfully walk away, saying “not my problem!” without any repercussions. You can read through the odious examples of misogyny that Kim brought up, and say, “yeah, that’s too bad….but these attitudes have absolutely nothing to do with rape.” You have the privilege of assuming that hatred of women will not translate into either rape, or the ignoring of rape. I don’t. The smart inference for me is that a man who would engage in commentary of this nature would, at the very least, refuse to help me if I were raped, and/or blame me for my own rape by calling me a “slut”. The men making comments on that board and other boards like that one will likely serve on a jury someday….maybe during a rape trial. They are more likely to see the rape victim as the criminal, rather than the rapist. There’s a reason that after all this time of feminists doing our damndedest to raise consciousness about rape, many, if not most, women still do not report rape to the authorities.
Oh, and Aegis? You wanted to know where the line was that signalled condoning of rape? It’s right there at the beginning…..”I will be sleeping with whichever one I pick, so sluttiness is not a factor….”
Let me translate that for you: “sluttiness (i.e. in this moron’s mind, willingness to have sex) is not a factor…” He automatically assumes he’s going to be having sex. Why? Why would he assume that? Could it be because it doesn’t matter is she agrees or not, hm?
What La Lubu said.
I get the feeling we could pile up example after example, study after study after study, all showing that society in general has attitudes towards rape which condone it at worst or simply encourage looking the other way at best, and still Aegis would be rationalising them away.
Any society that teaches girls and young women the “Virgin/Whore” dichotomy of sexuality while simultaneously teaching boys and young men the “Stud/Loser” dichotomy is condoning rape. I can’t think of a much more obvious example.
I also think that taking any given week and examining what is on TV (including the news) and what is playing in the cinemas will show exactly what entertainment value rape has in this society. That pleads a pretty heavy case for condoning rape. Fodder for the grist mill and all that.
… or you could compare the US supporting the oil war in Iraq to the US ignoring the rape of 40,000 women in the Republic of Congo and come up with a open public-policy of condoning rape.
A society that calls a sexual woman a whore and a sexual man, well, just a man condones rape.
And Aegis, if you are going to posit that society doesn’t condone rape, I suggest you show some proof to back it up, instead of telling me that I must prove you wrong.
Sheelzebub and Q Grrl have it right in my view. Demonizing female sexual assertiveness is not entirely separable from condoning rape, since in doing either, one must deny that women have a right to choose their own sexual partners. Since the latter in indisputable the prevailing attitude, the former is at least tacitly common.
OOps. I meant, since the former is indisputably the prevailing attitude, the latter must be tacitly common.
Ugh, the quality of debate in this thread just dropped a notch. I’m in a rush now, but I wanted to respond to one comment.
La Luba said:
Are you seriously suggesting that Rad Geek’s study demonstrates that society as a whole condones rape? Come on. As I’ve said, it’s very disturbing how the study shows that a significant minority of kids have these attitudes (if I’m reading it right). Yet to claim that society as a whole condones rape, those statistics are just not sufficient, and it’s just silly to pretend that they are.
Aegis, what would constitute society “as a whole” for you? 100 percent in the empirical studies Rad Geek posted? It doesn’t work that way for anything. It didn’t work that way for Jim Crow and lynching, but to say that doesn’t prove there was societal approval for such attitudes would be simplistic.
Rape, as defined as a stranger jumping out of the bushes and beating a woman to a pulp before forcing her to have sex, is widely condemned, especially if she is a “good” (i.e., nonsexual) woman. That’s not the case when she knows the perp, when she’s been drinking or doing drugs, when she’s promiscuous, if she’s married to him, or if he’s wealthy and she isn’t.
It seems to me that it’s often sexist men who make the most of their condemnation of rape by strangers.
I think this is because most men are aware that there are tremendous pressures on women to consent to sex even when they’d rather not — which makes the issue of consent more difficult than it looks at first. Some worry that they’ve abused women, some know they have.
And some, I believe, prefer to pretend it’s all crystal clear, when they know it isn’t. Thus, the long speeches on their wish for bloody revenge against those strangers in the bushes, together with their denials that date rape is really rape, and their insistence that rape isn’t really that common.
La Lubu said:
How do you get from “these attitudes are prevalent” to “these attitudes are held by society as a whole”? I am not denying that these attitudes may be prevalent in some areas, communities, or subcultures. I am denying that they are held by society as a whole.
La Luba said:
That’s not what I said. I said that I wasn’t certain these examples necessarily had anything to do with rape. In other words, maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I am unwilling to jump to the conclusion that they do because I don’t presume myself to be omniscient.
You may be right that I am privileged in some ways, but that is an ad hominem as far as this argument goes. Whether I am privileged or not, nobody in this thread has demonstrated that society as a whole condones rape. In answer to Sheezlebub: no, I do not require studies showing that 100% of people have that attitude. I would at least require some majority of people, and not just 8th graders and highschool students in the midwest. I don’t think that’s unreasonable at all.
La Luba said:
I’ve seen enough to misogyny to know that there is a wide range of negative attitudes towards women. Maybe some of them will translate into rape, but probably most of them won’t. This is true regardless of whether I am privileged or not. (Likewise, not every misandric comment from a woman demonstrates that she would be willing to screw a man over in divorce, or file a false rape accusation.)
La Luba said:
Could it be because he is full of empty bravado, hmm? Note: he talks about having a certain “touch,” so I think he has an exaggerated opinion of his attractiveness to women, and his ability to “game” them. Of course, I can’t rule out that he might coerce a girl into sex, but I am not as willing to jump to that conclusion as you seem to be, because I don’t presume to be able to read his mind.
You know, Aegis, after a certain point, when you just keep going, not good enough, not good enough, not perfect enough, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that you just don’t have an open mind.
You don’t want to believe in this stuff, therefore you reject everything from people who’ve actually lived through this. There will never be perfect proof for you, because you just don’t want to deal with it. What’s kind of disturbing is this attitude that we have to somehow adopt your standards and that nothing short of meeting your standards is good enough. You twist and turn to give that revolting kid an excuse; you make excuse after excuse. Yet there’s a noticeable trend in the direction of those excuses: to deny what people are telling you. It only goes one way.
Enough.
Crys T said:
Since nobody has succeeded in providing a study that conclusively shows that society in general has attitudes towards rape, I really don’t know.
Q Grrl said:
How? Those dichotomies are definitely a big problem, but I don’t see how they are necessarily condoning of rape.
Sheezlebub said:
Yet another sweeping statement with no support. I see no reason that someone couldn’t hold that double standard, and still not condone rape.
Thomas said:
Wow, that makes three examples of sloppy reasoning in a row.
Demonizing female sexual assertiveness is a big problem, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that women don’t have the right to choose their own sexual partners. Even though women are expected to be passive, they are also expected to reject men they don’t want (which shows that they do have choice over their sexual partners).
On the other hand, the expectation on men to initiate and women to be passive is an indirect cause of rape, because obviously if men weren’t initiating at all, male-on-female rape could never happen. Does this mean that society condones rape by expecting males to be sexually aggressive and female sexually passive? I don’t know, and I would have to think about that more.
You could spend an hour or two in the library looking this stuff up for yourself. Google, “I never called it rape.”
The old legal definition of rape was based on the Virgin/Whore dichotomy: a woman’s chastity was what made her valuable. To render a woman unchaste was to render her ruined. A whore–which means any woman who is not a virgin–cannot be raped by that definition, because her chastity has already been given up. So it doesn’t precisely condone rape of whores–it just turns it into a contradiction in terms. The Virgin/Whore dichotomy may not condone rape of virgins, but very few women fit into the former category. Preserving this dichotomy means that women who aren’t perfectly chaste–women who go out after dark, women who wear short skirts, women who (shock horror) get drunk at parties–have a much, much harder time prosecuting their rapists. And believing that there are women who “want it,” and that those women don’t have an equal right to say no, condones the rape of those women.
The Virgin/Whore dichotomy also places the burden of consent on the woman, not the man. The idea of women who want it means that for certain women–most women–consent is presumed to be granted until it is explicitly withdrawn.
On to Stud/Loser: Under this standard, a man who has sex is a Stud, and a man who doesn’t is a Loser. Not a caring partner. Not a respectful pro-feminist. Not a standup guy. Just a Loser. So what happens if the Stud/Loser gets rejected by a woman he’s on a date with?
Aegis, I’m beginning to think the only thing suitable to establish validity to the idea of society condoning rape is to have a bunch of people blatantly stating that they condone it. Tons of information has been given that show direct and conclusive links of at the very least, the notion that women are objects of sex, not participants in it. I don’t know what more could be offered that would help you make the logical leap that this sort of mentality that is sweeping and large in society is tacit approval of sexual abuse all the way up to rape.
ginmar said:
Yeah, my disagreement with you must be because I am privileged and close-minded. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that nobody has provided any conclusive evidence, or with the egregious jumping to conclusions in this thread.
ginmar said:
You are right, I don’t want to believe in this stuff. But again, pointing to whether I want to believe it or not is simply an ad hominem.
I am not rejecting the experiences of others; I am rejecting the inferences they are making from their experiences. Just because someone has a terrible experience, it doesn’t suddenly make them omniscient. Imagine an MRA who has gone through a terrible divorce, and thinks that his experience suddenly gives him the authority to claim that all women are manipulative goldiggers. Should I believe him too, ginmar? If I took your advice, I would have to.
ginmar said:
Actually, since some of you seem to be insisting that I agree with you, and villifying me when I don’t, then it is perfectly fair for me to say “your arguments aren’t convincing me, so deal with it.” Anyway, you have got to be kidding if you think that Rad Geek’s studies are sufficient for empirically demonstrating that society as a whole condones rape. Such an extrapolation would not fly in a field like sociology. I am not adopting high standards just for the fun of it; any claim about what society as a whole believes should be subject to high standards. Otherwise, anyone could use their personal experience to “prove” anything they liked.
Aegis,
You asked a question and were given answers from several different people which all pointed to the same conclusion. And yet you continue to reply to each post with the same: “I don’t see how this necessarily shows that society condones rape.”
Society condones rape. Whenever a rape victim is asked questions of this ilk: “why were you out alone at night”, “why were you with a known womanizer”, “why did you drink”, etc., or told “you should have known better than to be out alone at night”, “you shouldn’t have been wearing something so risque”, or similar, it is an example of society condoning rape. These questions are asked of the victim because of the unspoken assumption that men rape because it’s what men do, and that women should know this and therefore protect themselves; women who don’t were bringing it upon themselves. Or, it’s assumed that women who are promiscuous or enjoy wearing provocative clothing, deserved what happened to them because they weren’t behaving as good girls should.
These attitudes exist in the minds of individuals. Lots of them. Men and women alike. When you’ve got thousands, indeed millions, of individuals making these assumptions about the nature of rape and the nature of rape victims, you’ve got a society that condones rape. By making excuses. Any time a man is said to have raped a woman because he couldn’t control himself because of her clothing or her behavior, rape is condoned. Any time a woman is told that she shouldn’t have done x, she is basically being told that it wouldn’t have happened otherwise–ergo, she brought it upon herself, and the rape is being condoned.
Example after example has been presented before you to answer your question and yet your answer, time and again, is unchanging: “I don’t see how this necessarily proves that society condones rape”.
The fact that you say the same thing, verbatim, every time, indicates that you are damned and determined to believe that society does not condone rape, no matter what is placed before you that proves otherwise.
And I must agree that your attitude is indicative of a very sheltered person. That’s not an ad hominem. “You’re a stupid idiot” is an ad hominem; concluding from your words that you have been highly sheltered is reasonable logic.
Aegis, I’m confused about what the phrase “on the whole” means to you. If you’re interpreting it to mean, literally, that everyone in society says “rape is okay with me,” then you’re right, society on the whole doesn’t endorse rape.
Even most rapists don’t endorse rape, in fact. Mary Koss’ seminal study of rape prevalence found that men who admitted to making a women have sex when she didn’t want to, with force or threat of force, nonetheless didn’t consider what they did to be “rape.” People have an amazing capacity to rationalize what they do; I’m sure that many rapists sincerely say that rape is evil, and would grow angry if it was put to them that the time they just allowed themselves to not hear their girlfriend say “no” was rape.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself. But when I talk about “rape-endorsing attitudes and beliefs,” I’m not talking about people literally saying “I think rape is just great,” because practically nobody ever says that – and yet rape happens a lot.
What I am talking about is the endorsement of belief systems that I’m convinced – from a mix of both social science research and my own thoughts on the matter – contribute to making rape more likely and prevalent.
As I see it, a strong belief in gender roles and that masculinity is fragile and must be earned or protected (i.e., “don’t be a pussy”); a belief that women, and what women want, doesn’t matter as much as men and what men want; and the view that men are entitled to get sex from women (which I think practically screamed out of that post that Kim quoted); are the social attitudes that make rape more prevalent. (I describe this line of thinking in more detail in this post.)
Do I think that every single person in our society endorses all of the above? No, of course not; just look at the posters on this blog.
Do I think that attitudes and ideas like that are frequently endorsed in our society – in the boardrooms, in the schoolyards, and in media? Hell, yes.
In this case, the implication seems to be that what Aegis is saying is wrong because he’s (allegedly) led a sheltered life. If so, then that definitely is an ad hominem.
I’d prefer that people try to address arguments, not people. Making “is Aegis sheltered” is making Aegis the subject of conversation; I’d rather you stick to “are Aegis’ arguments correct, and if not, why not?”
Aegis,
A number of people have provided you with plenty of evidence to demonstrate that society condones rape. You seem damned and determined not to believe them, whatever your reasons may be.
When a woman is asked any of the following or similar questions: “why were you in such a place?”, “why were you wearing that?”, “didn’t you know better than to be out alone at night?”, or is told “you should have known better than to go out with a known womanizer”, “you should have stayed away from alcohol”, “you shouldn’t have been in that part of town”, she is being blamed. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not. When she is being blamed for the rape, the actions of the man are being presented as expected, as normal, as typical. When it is assumed that a man rapes because that’s what men do, rape is being condoned. When women are told that if they don’t want to be raped, they have to modify their behavior, rape is being condoned. When the answer to the existence of rape is to avoid putting oneself in the position of being raped, because it is assumed that rape happens and is “just the way it is”, rape is being condoned.
I can accept that it doesn’t appear at face value that rape is being condoned, but if you look more closely at what’s going on, you’ll see it. When it is assumed that it is natural for men to rape and that if women want to avoid being raped they have to take certain precautions, the actions of the men are being condoned as something that they do. When a man’s actions are assumed to be natural male behavior, rape is being condoned.
Society is made up of individuals. When millions of individuals fall back on these assumptions about rape they have internalized, they are condoning rape. Society is condoning rape.
Any time the woman’s actions are considered, weighed, measured, and analyzed to see what she did to bring the rape on herself, rape is being condoned.
I’m sure you’re going to ask why to that last one. The answer, again is that, even though rape is done by men to women, it’s women’s actions that are considered, which illustrates that rape is considered natural male behavior.
Consider that a lot of rapes are not believed to be rape at all, because of the actions of the woman. When people ask what the woman was doing, what she was wearing, who she was with, or where she was, they are often looking for clues to determine whether or not it was really rape because they have fallen prey to the notion that it’s only rape if certain criteria are met. Sometimes this is just the reaction of people looking to see if there was anything the woman could’ve done to prevent it, or to possibly see if they can pick out where she went wrong so that they don’t make the same mistake. Other times, people honestly believe that rape only happens under precise circumstances and want to be sure that the woman has it right; still other people hate women and don’t believe there’s such a thing as rape because they feel that sex is an entitlement–for them, there’s no such thing as rape at all, there’s just a man taking what he wants irrespective of what the woman wants. But in all cases, they are condoning rape. They’re explaining it away, saying it wasn’t, it couldn’t, have been rape, but rape it remains, and they’re condoning it by saying that’s not what it was.
When society says that it’s only rape when a woman is viciously attacked in a dark alley by a stranger, they’re explicitly condoning all other forms of rape by saying that it’s just sex. When that dark alley rape is the only legitimate form of rape, men are being told that it’s okay to have sex with their date even though she doesn’t want it, because that’s not rape. It’s okay to grab that hot college freshman who turned you down last week, and have sex with her in the janitor closet, because that’s not rape. If she’s your girlfriend, it’s okay to have sex with her even though she said she’s not in the mood, because that’s not rape. It’s okay to have sex with that drunk woman who didn’t decline or consent before passing out, because that’s not rape. At the same time, strangely, the dark alley rape is being implicitly condoned because when such a rape occurs, the first thing that’s going to be questioned is the woman’s motive–why was she out there when she knew what could happen?
Society condones rape.
Oh, and saying that you must have led a sheltered life is not an ad hominem. It’s not even an attack, period. You’re using a strawman to avoid responsibility for your refusal to accept the answers you’ve been given. “You’re a stupid fuck!” is an ad hominem. Stating that you must’ve been sheltered is a reasonable conclusion based on your unyielding refusal to believe that society condones rape.
Of course, since you’ve responded to everything with the same verbatim phrase, “I don’t see how this necessarily shows that society condones rape”, I don’t have much faith that anything I’ve said will make a difference and I’ve probably just wasted my time. Oh well.
Bah.
For the record, I didn’t mean to post the same thing twice. The first time I posted, it looked like Internet Explorer ate it, and I refreshed and refreshed and it still didn’t show, so I took the time to type it out again.
Sorry.
/embarrassed.
Aegis, how many wonen have to tell their stories before you would consider it more than mere anecdotes, to actually being representative of the lives of women? I’m not kidding when I say I consider U.S. society at large to be condoning rape. Why? I’ve not only heard a lot of conversations that were disparaging of rape victims (as opposed to the rapists); I’ve also heard a lot of survivor stories. Most of the women I know (well) have been raped. You could say “that’s hearsay”, because I’m certainly not going to print their names…..but if you don’t mind published accounts, you could go here, to the Voices and Faces Project.
Now, if you’re looking for a die-hard overview of the problem of societal attitudes toward rape victims, you’re in luck—someone wrote a book on the subject. Actually, you can find a lot of good information at the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
RAINN is another great site to go to for statistics; they offer the stat that one out of every six women in the U.S. has been sexually assaulted. (The one-in-six stat is also offered at the UCLA Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center, which also has survivor stories on their site). Keep reading, and you will find that out of all reported rapes, there is only a 50.8% chance of an arrest. Keep on going, and you can see that of the 39% of rapes that are reported to police (hey! that’s up from 30% in the early nineties!), there is only a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison.
Now head on over to the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, and you can find out that half of convicted rapists serve less than one year in prison!
To recap: fifty percent chance of seeing your rapist arrested. Sixteen percent chance of your rapist going to prison. And fifty percent chance that if your rapist *gasp!* does go to prison, he will serve less than a year.
Tell me again how society at large doesn’t condone rape.
You are right, I don’t want to believe in this stuff. But again, pointing to whether I want to believe it or not is simply an ad hominem.
Nope. If you don’t want to believe something, you are likely to be less willing to accept evidence and consider arguments that the ‘something’ is, in fact, the case. (“Bias” is another word for this.)
People need to stop jumping all over poor Aegis. He/she (i’m afraid I’m not familiar with the term, so I don’t know gender) is making the point that rape is not condoned by society. And, on the face, it is not.
Going by my group of mysgynistic male friends again, I actually asked them what they would do if they discovered I got raped. The reiterated the oh-so-sweet cheese-grater-to-the-nuts. I asked them what they would say if I was walking alone at night. One said “Well, did you have a weapon? Was this Grand Forks or New York? Were you wearing slutty clothes? Because if you were unarmed and in New York, there better be some good exteniuating circumstances, or I would be chewing your ass out”. *nods around the table* I asked, “But would you still want the guy to be prosicuted?” “OH, hell yeah. What he did was so wrong and he deserves to be gang raped in prison”. We went on the same line with me going up to a guys apartment, and getting drunk at a Frat party. Same thing; they would chew me out, but the guy should still be prosecuted.
To them, they would claim that they are NOT condoning rape. To me (and many other people) they would say that they are condoning it by blaming me at all.
I think this is where the misunderstanding is coming from.
But recall that your friends are talking about you. What if the rape victim were a stranger? Or a woman they thought was a tramp? Would they, if they were on a jury, vote to convict?
He didn’t make the case that society does not condone rape, he denied that it condones rape, and refuted every argument that suggest society does, not with sound arguments to make his case, but with unfounded comments to the effect of “I don’t see how that necessarily shows that society condones rape”.
It’s already been pointed out that few people are going to come right out and state “I condone rape” or condone rape by stating “this is not rape, this is acceptable sex”. That doesn’t change the fact that society actually does condone rape, however, and I think it very much condones rape “on the face of it”. People may not be willing to state that they condone rape, but most people don’t hesitate to insist on knowing what the woman was doing prior to the rape; most people don’t hesitate to justify rape based on what the woman was wearing, whether she was drinking, where she happened to be, or what her reputation was, or any number of supposedly related factors. If that’s not condoning rape on the face of it, I don’t know what is.
I’ve been busy recently, but I wanted to reply to this thread again…
Nimbrethil said:
No, a bunch of individuals in society are condoning rape. Unless you can show that those individuals are a significant majority of society, then there is no justification for leaping from “many individuals condone rape” to “society condones rape.”
Maybe. But I think it’s perfectly possible to examine the actions of a victim of any crime without condoning what happened to them. Perhaps in the case of rape, such analysis may mask tacit endorsement of the rape sometimes, but I don’t know if that is the only motive of those who analyze how a woman’s actions may have placed her in a position where she was raped (for example, people who advise women on safety must take that into account).
If a man gets mugged in a dark alley, is it “condoning mugging” to wonder what the hell he was doing there? I honestly don’t think so. I think it’s possible to ask that question, and even to call him a careless idiot (assume he could have known better), without condoning what happened to him.
La Luba said:
You know as well as I do that anecdotes do not make empirical proof. Honestly, your argument here comes off rather as an attempt to guilt-trip me into agreeing with you.
These figures are very disturbing, but aren’t you taking them out of context? Couldn’t these figures stem at least partly from the nature of the crime, rather than from society endorsing it? Perhaps rape is simply a difficult crime to prosecute and convict, and not only for reasons of possible societal bias, because it often has to satisfy a difficult burden of proof (especially in “he said, she said” date rape cases). Furthermore, we would have to compare these conviction rates and sentence lengths to those of other violent crimes.
Ampersand said:
Good question. Basically, no. Some people might not consider some situations to be rape (i.e. date rape), so the real question is whether society condones actions that are rape (regardless of whether some people think of them as rape or not). To show that society as a whole condones rape, I think one would have to demonstrate that a significant majority of people believed the type of “rape myths” that Rad Geek described (although I take exception with some on them, as I have mentioned). So far, nobody has been able to provide any kind of evidence that demonstrates this.
I am not usually a stodgy empiricist, but sweeping generalizations like “society condones rape” should really have to satisfy empirical proof before being accepted as facts.
Yes, I will agree with you that certain belief systems probably make rape more prevalent.
mythago said:
Only if you assume that I only believe things that I want to believe. On the contrary, there are plenty of things I believe even though I don’t want to, when they are properly supported by evidence. I’m biased? Sure. So are you. So is everyone. Yet whether someone is biased has nothing to do with whether their arguments are correct or not. I could say that you people are rabid, biased, “feminazis” who only believe that rape is condoned by society because you want to see how women are victims. But would be an ad hominem (attacking the person instead of their argument), which I do not engage in. I hope that you all will extend the same intellectual courtesy to me.
Nimbrethil said:
Basically, yes. The burden of proof is on YOU to show that society condones rape, not on me to show that it doesn’t. This is how burden of proof works. Sorry, but by the standards of proof that you would find in a field like sociology, the evidence presented in this thread doesn’t come anywhere near empirically demonstrating as fact that society as a whole condones rape, and I think it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that it does. Even if we can’t demonstrate that society condones rape, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t widespread biases that need to be changed.
Aegis, you’re just wasting everyone’s time. You do not have an open mind; you do not want to be disturbed, and no proof will satisfy me. You’re like one of those OJ jurors who went in determined to believe he was innocent.
“Taking things out of context”? That context was a USDOJ study that found that rape had a two percent conviction rate.
What is he saying, here? That a simple majority of society would have to be quoted as saying, “Yeah, rape is fine with me!” in order for it to be true that society as a whole condones rape? That wasn’t true of lynching, even while thousands of people were being lynched, and even as Southern senators were arguing that an anti-lynching law would be an insult to Southern tradition. Ginmar’s right: this standard is ridiculous.
I’m just curious, Aegis: what do you feel would be an accurate, non-inflammatory statement about how society as a whole views rape? Is it out of order to talk about complacency? Insensitivity? How widespread does sexism have to be before it is considered characteristic?
Aegis: the question that runs through my mind is — what do you stand to lose by entertaining the notion that society condones rape?
How is that sentiment WORSE than the physical rape of women? Why is it threatening to you? If you were to embrace it, what personal characteristics and habits of your own might need changing?
For all the times I’ve seen a community stand beside a rapist instead of his victim, I find it amazing that some people can’t think of that as “condoning” the rape. Hell, in the town I grew up in, two guys made a girl walk home naked and everyone said she was lying and needed to quit crying about it.
ginmar said:
1. As I explained, to view that figure in context, it would have to be compared to the sentencing and conviction rates of other violent crimes.
2. Even if I was to agree with you that society as a whole condones rape, it wouldn’t make the claim an empirically demonstrated fact. You need to deal with that, and stop hurling ad hominems and personal attacks at me. Ampersand has already asked that you address my ideas, rather than me as a person; if you won’t listen to me, then listen to him (because he at least understands how intellectual honesty works). This is my last reply to you in this thread until you desist with ad hominems and personal attacks.
piny said:
In my last post, I think I made pretty clear that this is NOT what I am saying.
Those are actually excellent questions. I think more accurate statements would be something like, “views condoning rape may be held by a significant minority of people,” (supported by Rad Geek’s statistics) or even “some communities may condone rape” (supported by Amanda’s anecdote). I think that if someone could show that a significant majority of people believed in the type of “rape myths” Rad Geek described (with the exception of a few, as I already explained), or if someone could show that virtually every community was like Amanda’s hometown and defended rapists, then it might be accurate to say that society as a whole condones rape.
Q Grrl said:
The question that runs through my mind is… when will you people learn to address my actual arguments instead of the person behind them? If I was to throw it away my standards for proof, I would have to believe all sorts of other unjustified claims about society, such as the extreme MRA notion that society views men as the “disposable sex.” Is that what you want?
Amanda said:
Ok, this story would show that your community condoned rape. If all communities in society were like this, then it would probably be accurate to say that society condoned rape.
Welcome to the world, AE. My community (then) was not unique, but Smalltown, USA. The one I live in now is very liberal, very feminist and even still there is hostility towards rape victims quite a bit of the time, pressure towards us not to get justice but suck up our abuse rather than disturb the apple cart.
You know, I don’t think that comment is likely to help either one of us.
The purpose of civility is not a weapon you can use to attack people who have attacked you. If you feel that Ginmar is attacking the person, not the argument, then your best response isn’t to attack her back personally (as you did above, by implying that she doesn’t understand how intellectual honesty works). That’s being part of the problem, not part of the solution. If you’re genuinely against personal attacks, then don’t make them.
On the other hand, just not replying to people who you think are making personal attacks is a good idea, and one that I’d encourage.
Meanwhile, I’d just like to remind Aegis and everyone else to please attack arguments, not people.
* * *
I think your insistence that “society condones rape” is an empirical proposition that should be debated on an empirical basis is dubious. I’m not asking you to respond to this on-line, but maybe you should consider whether or not your reaction to the statement is over-the-top, or is really the appropriate response to a statement that is more polemical than empiric. (Note that I’m not saying that polemical is a bad thing. If you read the great political activist writings of the past century, most of them made use of both polemical and factual statements. An expectation that activists make no statements that are not empirical propositions is unreasonable.)
I do think our society condones rape, in the sense that our society endorses attitudes and beliefs about gender and sexuality that have the effect of making rape more acceptable and common than it might be otherwise. But that’s just my opinion. In the end, I don’t think that “society condones rape” is an empirical question.
* * *
On the other hand, folks, I don’t think that it’s unfair of Aegis to express skepticism about evidence offered. It’s quite true, for example,that the low conviction rate for rape doesn’t necessarily prove that our society condones rape; it might indicate instead that one reason date rape is attractive to rapists is that it’s possible to rape someone without leaving empirical evidence of their crime behind.
As for being “close-minded,” it’s very rare that anyone changes their mind in the course of a single internet argument. My observation is that when people change their minds, they generally do it over a great deal of time, and as the result of either the accumulated impact of many arguments or of new life experiences.
* * *
First of all, please don’t refer to people you disagree with as “you people.” It’s not as if everyone who disagrees with you speaks as one from a collective group-mind.
Second, she didn’t ask you to change your standards of evidence. She asked you a hypothetical question – “if you were to accept it” – which is not the same as asking you to actually accept it.
Third of all, there’s a real difference between personal attacks and legitimate questions intended to make you examine yourself and, perhaps, raise your consciousness (although sometimes the line is blurry). This is a discussion, not a formal debate, and Q Grrl is under no obligation not to digress from the topic (whatever the heck the topic is!).
If the questions are unfair or make assumptions about you that are unjustified, you can just say so (i.e., you might answer, “I’m not threatened, honest” or “I don’t think it’s worse than physical rape”). But the questions were, I believe, serious, and deserved a serious response from you.
Suppose that you came to accept that in many ways, our society does endorse attitudes than encourage rape. (Leave aside for now the fruitless debate about if that’s “the whole society” or “part of society” or “a significant minority” or whatever). Is there anything in your own life that would need changing? Is there anything around you you’d view differently?
These are not illegitimate questions. Of course, you’re not obliged to address these questions. But since you chose to address them, I think it would have been better if you had addressed them seriously, rather than dismissing them with a misplaced “when will you people” comment.
Sorry, Amp, but after 200+ comments, it’s impossible not to compare and contrast Aegis’ precise and demanding standards for feminsts with those that he holds for MRAs and Glenn Sacks in the other thread. It’s instructive. It’s also indicative of the pattern that was observable during the other debate, the one about civility. When someone protests that they are open-minded, it behooves to actually be open-minded. It’s also typical of lots of discussions about feminism.
Well, this is going to open a can of worms, but you know sometimes you have to point out to people how their backgrounds are affecting their perceptions. For example, you took La Lubu to task for suggesting that Aegis had to have led a sheltered life. OK, going by the rules set up to define ad homs, no doubt she was wrong. In the world of reality, however, the fact that Aegis is incapable of seeing what so many of us see is actually a pretty good indicator that s/he *has* led a pretty damn sheltered life. And the type of life may be what is blinding her/him to the reality that the rest of us have to live.
To give another example, if a middle-class person living in a wealthy community in North America who gets all their news from mainstream sources says, “Capitalism is great and good for everyone, because *I* don’t see any downside to it,” I think it is perfectly valid to point out that the reason they are not seeing a downside is because they are a middle-class North American living in a wealthy community who gets all their news from mainstream sources. They way they personally live is going to colour their perceptions on this topic. And if they casually wave away any and all examples you provide to refute this, I think it’s fair to say to them, point blank, that they are doing so due to their privileged and/or sheltered personal life.
And if I have to argue about abortion with men, one may call my pointing out that they can make the arguments they do because they are men and therefore will never be affected ad hominen attacks. Again, I really don’t think that it’s unfair for me to do so. And btw, I am well aware that women can often hold the same opinions, but they do so for other reasons and I also think that must be taken into account.
Actually, though I do agree in a general way that in debate we should focus on arguments rather than the people making them, to hold that up as an absolute rule for 100% of occasions also serves to deny a lot of reality. It can sometimes strip a debate of important context and meaning. It also forces classes who are not hegemonic, who do not have a lot of power, to work endlessly supplying “proof” while the privileged classes sit back and comfortably say, “I don’t see it that way” without really having to justify their position.
The endless refuting of “proof” or “opinion” coming from sources that are outright ignorant or distorted to show a bias in favour of the powerful is what I find most exhausting and frustrating about debate. Which I think is exactly the point: hobble the less powerful by not allowing them to legitimately use personal context in debate and you are then free to throw out as much rubbish disguised as honest dialogue as you please, exhausting debators and listeners alike, diverting the main question, and ultimately blocking any progress.
Sometimes in a debate, one party’s opinions ought to have more weight, simply because they are the one who has first-hand knowledge of the situation, they’ve done more research, they are the one who is personally affected, and so on. Sometimes, it’s the other way around, and you get someone in a debate who not only isn’t personally affected, but also has no idea what they’re talking about in the first place. I see absolutely nothing wrong in pointing this out, whether it’s technically “ad hominem” or not.
Aegis: it was indeed a hypothetical question; not geared towards you in particular. I see you as part of a larger class of males who hold the same ideas about rape.
Furthermore, I dont’ embrace ideas such as “intellectual honesty” or “empirical evidence”. I think there is enough common evidence and common honesty to dispute both of these concepts. “Honesty” and “empirical” , as you use them, are neither — the are merely signs pointing to a hierarchical structuring of knowledge (i.e those who have the power to claim truth). Beside my own belief about this, your use of these terms seems more like a bludgeoning tactic, rather than a means to dispute our own forms of knowledge. IOW, you’re hiding behind it.
We live in a global rape culture and most everything we do is evidence of this, from the physical rape of women to the rape of the earth and to the rape of the psyches of those who neither look like us, nor think like us. We use the physical rape of women to create a class of citizens who are compliant, submissive, and terrorized. During the formative years in which sex education is taught to girls and boys, boys receive a singular message about sex (its functions and end results); girls, on the other hand, are taught a dual/simultaneous message, one about sex, the other about rape. Often enough, the message about rape comes slightly before puberty and slightly before the discussion about sex, creating a confusing and horrific image for young girls. This is a terrorist tactic, shrouded in protectionism, but with the same end result.
If we were to take two eight year old boys and teach them about airplanes and flight, it is easy to see the damage/terror we could create if we showed one boy a film of “To Fly”, complete with a Vangelis soundtrack, and we showed the other boy the complete footage of September 11th, 2001. We could follow up the film screenings with comments about the safety and ease of flight (and it’s cultural status), all the while whispering to the traumatized boy that 9/11 was an anomalie and unlikely to happen to him if he avoids working in high rises or for the WTO/IMF or World Bank.
That’s why I find your dismissal of personal narrative problematic. You don’t know how the majority of girls are raised vis-a-vis lessons about rape. You seem to think that the impact of rape is only occuring during the rape and solely in the act of rape. Yet women have stated, time after time, that society (and men particulalry) benefit from the cultural and class wide terror/submissiveness that the knowledge of rape (and how it is taught) induces. The cultural “strength” and “aggressiveness” and “leadership” that men, as a class, express is predicated on another class (read: women, or read: 52% of the population) being “weak” and “submissive” and “malleable”. Surely you are not under the belief that those traits are essential or intrinsic to male or female bodies. And if you aren’t, have you not asked how a culture arrives at such a neat division of power structres that falls so conveniently down gendered lines?
Have you never asked yourself why boys aren’t taught about rape during sex ed? Not the rape of their own bodies, but about rape and their responsibility not to rape.
I want to repeat what I wrote in post #111 (?):
To which you responded that the “quality of debate in this thread just dropped a notch”.
Do you deny that we teach these dichotomies? Do you think they are harmless? Inconsequential? Cute? Stupid?
I don’t see how you can miss the increadible power dynamics in teaching boys to be studs and girls to be virgins and not see how rape IS GOING TO HAPPEN BECAUSE OF THIS CULTURAL MESSAGE. The message sets the grounds for rape. Pure and simple.
In other words, for a boy to be appropriately masculine he must have sex. For a girl to be appropriately feminine she must NOT have sex. Couple this with other appropriately masculine and feminine traits such as strength, meekness, aggressiveness and submission and there are going to be raped girls/women. The cultural formula/imperative is right there, staring you in the face.
I use “appropriately” not as my own term, but as a cultural marker.
You know, it may be a little late to be mentioning this now, but when I called Aegis out on privilege, my intention was not “nyaa, nyaa, you’re privileged and I’m not; therefore I have more moral authority than you”, but rather “walk a mile in my shoes.” As a female, and especially as one who has chosen a “masculine” profession, I am constantly in the position of putting myself in the shoes of men, and seeing the world from the male perspective. I don’t think it’s asking too much that a man attempt to see things from the female perspective….particularly on the subject of rape.
To give another example of how society condones rape, think about in years past, before anti-discrimination laws, women were prevented from holding third-shift jobs. Part of the rationale for that was to prevent women from being raped. As a woman, I can’t help but think that “solution” is rather accepting and accommodating of rape. Think about it….instead of having more aggressive policing, and harsher sentencing of rapists be an effective deterrent, limiting the opportunities and freedom of women was seen to be the better solution.
Also, the thread on the veto of the rape victims rights bill, where Robert seemed to think that the solution for women is to order our own Plan B over the internet, and have it on our nightstands, just in case of rape. That also seems to me to be rather accomodating of rapists; that we as women should prepare ourselves some “rape insurance”, the same way we save for retirement. I think it’s indicative of a certain amount of expectation of rape.
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Ewwww, I hope in my post it didn’t sound like I was interpreting La Lubu’s words that way, either! I was referring really to questions of experience and knowledge, not “moral authority” in and of itself.
I didn’t interpret your words that way, Crys T! ;-) And I thank you for your thoughtful response. Salud!
Personally, I find the “prove it! show me the independent, published, peer-reviewed studies” tactic maddening. Societal attitudes about rape are prima facie evident to women—all of us. Asking us to come up with the “studies”, knowing full well the history of the academy and what is considered important enough to study, not to mention where the money comes from to fund studies, can be quite the effective silencing technique. Requiring formal statistics and studies before any assertion means tacitly accepting the power imbalance of the status quo.
That’s what I was trying to get at when I said, “how many women have to tell our stories before it’s not just mere anecdote?” How many individuals does a trend make? And if a tree falls in the forest, but an anti-feminist man isn’t around to hear the “thump!”, did it really happen, since only us squirrels were there to hear it? Maybe someday, after enough of us keep asserting and exerting ourselves, someone will come up with the money and the plan for a study that will conclusively prove what we’ve been saying—and living—all along.
La Luba:
I totally get that “accomdating for rape” thing. It’s like in the Military schools where people argue that women shouldn’t be in them because of the high rate of rape in them.
(Do not go off on a military rant).
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!
Yes, that is so EXACTLY it! And of course, when it isn’t something that the academy/government/think tanks in general find “important”, of course there will not be enough “independent” studies to convince.
Such a model of sexuality doesn’t mean that a society condones rape. It means that it is a society where males have the job of “getting” females.
In order for this not to exist, you would need males and females to be equally active in searching for someone to date or have sex with.
But this is not how things are now, now we have women acting as the “passive” sex, and men acting as the “active” sex.
And I personally doubt that it is ever going to change… due to obvious differences in attraction to the opposite sex.
It is also not true to say that being “active” in searching for a mate is always an advantage.
Consider this:
A guy asks a girl for a movie. Now she has the option of saying “yes” or “no”.
This means that he is the one that has to face a possible rejection, and he is dependent on her confirmation.
This gives her a certain amount of power in the relationship…
This is a contradiction.
You can’t at the same time say that women are only considered “good” by society if they are nonsexual (and if they are sexual they are stigmatized as “whores”), and that they have a tremendous pressure to consent to sex.
You need to demonstrate how this tremendous pressure is created, by what social forces, what attitudes are behind it, etc.
I wouldn’t say that in an average relationship there is such a tremendous pressure. If a girl doesn’t want to have sex, then she can just not have sex.
It’s that simple.
If her boyfriend doesn’t like it, then she can leave him…
My brain hurts. I think one person on this board said something about the college escort program being some messed up way to strong arm women. I’ve almost used that program myself. There are barely any lights around my campus and a lot of guys travel in packs around here, drunk off their asses most of the time. So, whatever. If you see trying to protect yourself as bowing to male dominance than you have some seriously flawed logic there. I think knowledge is empowering. Knowing that I have a safety net to fall back on when I’m in an unsafe area is awesome.
Rubbish: women are supposed to consent to having sex done to them while simultaneously not actively wanting it. And when they *do* submit to having sex done to them, they are immediately “bad” and “dirty”. I know it makes absolutely no sense, but that is how it works. Every woman on this board knows that when a single woman goes out with a man, she’s likely to get caught in that double bind: if she doesn’t put out, she’s a prick-teasing bitch, but if she does, she’s a cheap whore. The whole point is that women are NEVER supposed to win in this situation. Whatever you do is the “wrong” thing.
There are library shelves full of material demonstrating exactly that. I suggest that if you are sceptical you get off your backside, get down to one and look some of this material up, rather than sitting comfortably back and saying, “I don’t believe you, prove it to me while I do nothing.” I know how I have had to live my life. I don’t owe any explanations or justifications to you. In fact, when you tell me that I’m mistaken or lying about my own life, and that you as an outsider know better, I rather think the onus is on YOU to supply the stats and studies to back up YOUR position.
Of course, how stupid I’ve been! Of COURSE if she just doesnt’ have sex she doesn’t want, no one will publicly humiliate her, no one will threaten and terrorise her, no one will beat her up, no one will forcibly rape her, no one will mutliate and torture her, no one will kill her. It’s all just so damned simple.
You really have a lot to learn about the way the world works.
Even in so-called “normal” relationships, not putting out on demand will entail a lot of guilt-tripping….and of course every woman has learned from friends, family and the world at large that if she doesn’t do her duty to satisfy her man’s every little need, he’ll be stepping out on her in no time flat. And of course, when he does so, hey, who can blame him? A guy’s got NEEDS, ya know? If he cheats on her cos he can’t get enough at home, it’s HER fault.
And of course, that boyfriend will NEVER, EVER retaliate in ANY of the ways I mentioned above. No……we don’t want to believe that happens, so HEY PRESTO!, it never does happen.
Hmmm… I wonder what makes you have such a pessimistic view? This is just not true.
You make it seem like the whole world hates women, including women themselves.
Every girl has sex and relationships, no one would say that a girl having a boyfriend is wrong. What the hell??
… I don’t know what to say.
Have you ever been in a relationship? Did the relationship end? Were you threatened or terrorised?
Thousands of women leave their boyfriends every day, with no harm caused to them.
You make it seem as if every guy is a crazed maniac that will immediately stab his girlfriend if she attempted to break up with him.
Break-ups happen all the time every day, and most people somehow manage to stay alive…
Such a thing is called crime. Obviously it does happen. And still, it isn’t such a problem for the average girl with a mentally healthy boyfriend to leave him.
Like I said, thousands of break-ups and divorces happen every day…
And of course angry ex’s sometimes can do nasty things… but that happens to males too, believe me… there is plenty of vindictive ex-girlfriends. I am sure there is at least one to match every vindictive ex-boyfriend. And it doesn’t matter, you are just fixated on negative scenarios.
Overall, women are free to do whatever they want. They can not have sex if they do not want to, they can get out of a relationship when they want to, etc.
“Every girl has sex and relationships, no one would say that a girl having a boyfriend is wrong. What the hell??”
Do you not watch the news, read newspapers?
Just recently in Canada a father killed his 17 year-old-daughter for dating outside of their religion. You’ll probably say that was an anomalie.
Look if men are responsible for “getting” women, then rape is going to ensue. If we teach boys that a certain amount of coercion and force is acceptable in a “normal” relationship, then women and girls are going to be raped. It’s just that men won’t believe the girls/women b/c some man along the way told him that force (i.e. rape) is natural and that the females are just confused and really “No means Yes.”
What about that doesn’t condone rape
Someone, are you using the term “girl” to refer to females under the age of sixteen? The usual term when referring to females sixteen and over is “woman” or even “young woman”.
In case you haven’t noticed, this is a thread about rape. The young woman in the story that started this thread was not the “girlfriend” of any of the young men who beat and raped her. Earlier in the thread, I mentioned a real estate agent who was raped at gunpoint while showing a house; her rapist was not her boyfriend. I also mentioned a woman raped by her former employer, who was not her boyfriend. I also mentioned a fourteen-year-old who was raped by a hockey player; he was not her boyfriend. And the teenage daughter of a plumber I know, who was assaulted and raped by a boy in her school, also, not a boyfriend.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Yes, boyfriends can and do rape. But when women are raped, it’s a common scenario for others to assume that the woman must have been dating or otherwise having a sexual relationship with that man—otherwise, he wouldn’t have raped her, or at the very least, she never would have been in the position to be raped. Even if she has never seen her rapist before, she must have “known” what was on his mind beforehand.
Someone, go back to the top of the thread, and follow the links about the original story that started it. Read some of the commentary out there in the blogosphere. In the anonymity of the ‘sphere, people tend to be a little more bold about how they really feel. Many people commenting on this story felt that the young woman was wrong to go with those young men; that she “should have known” that they were planning to rape her. That she should have had some level of expectation of assault and rape in school. Some commenters even went as far as to question the young woman’s motives; that perhaps she had led them on, that she exploited her sexual powers so as to cause these young men to beat and rape her. That the power dynamic consisted of her flirting or sashaying, and thus forcing these poor, helpless young men into raping her. Her sexual powers were so formidable, that she was even able to force these young men into videotaping her rape.
And then think on that, before coming back with an ignorant comment to the effect that all a woman has to do to avoid being raped is to just say no to her rapist.
I wonder why you have such a blinkered, unrealistically optimistic view? Yes, it IS true.
God, where do you live that girls who screw their boyfriends aren’t at risk of being labelled “sluts”? It certainly isn’t anywhere that I’ve ever been to or even heard about. Where do you live where girls who want sex & actively pursue it aren’t then labelled “easy lays” and then considered fair game for any guy who wants to have a go? Again, nowhere near anywhere I’ve been.
I have been in not one but a number of relationships. And yes, in more than one of them I had to deal with guilt-tripping. And as far as being terrorised, the answer is yes. It happened. It’s also happened to most of my female friends. And other women that I know well enough to have these sorts of conversations with. Maybe you should stop being so sceptical of & hostile to women’s experiences so they’d feel they could tell you honestly about their lives. You just might hear some things from them that would tear that safe little cocoon you live in wide open.
And an unacceptably large number, most of them women, DON’T manage to stay alive. And an even larger number do stay alive but have to put up with all sorts of guilt-tripping and assorted other bits of harrassment and head games. Just because you don’t want to believe it doesn’t magically make the reality go away.
I suggest you look up some stats to find out how often. And also consider that a lot of cases don’t even make it into the stats. Also, check with the experts and see what their opinions are about the numbers of times these crimes happen and the percentage of the perpetrators who are arrested, tried and convicted for them.
Oh, because you say so, things are equal, right? No, sorry, doesn’t work that way. Also, the damage vindictive girlfriends wreak is usually neither as severe nor as socially accepted as the damage vindictive boyfriends wreak. If I have to choose between having my clothes cut up and tossed out the window as opposed to being beaten and raped, I know which I’m going to pick.
Again, because you say so, right? No. You are wrong. Flat-out wrong. Until you do some reading and can demonstrate that you have an opinion based on something more substantial than “that’s what I think so it must be the truth” forget it, I am no longer responding to you. I’m sick of men who rarely if ever have to worry about rape coming here and lecturing me, a woman who’s had to deal with it all her life–even before she was old enough to understand what it was she was being taught to fear–about my life. As far as this subject goes, you are ignorant. Completely ignorant. And until you have done the work and can satisfactorily demonstrate that, you don’t deserve any more of my attention.
Great post, Crys T. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
La Lubu: Read what post I was replying to, that should clear your questions… I was replying to a specific post by Brian Vaughan, and then I replied to Crys T’s post. Just follow the conversation instead of attacking me.
Q Grrl: Rape is a crime that is done by rapists, not by the entire society.
From your post it seems that you have these premises:
1) If both sexes engaged in searching for sexual partners equally, rape wouldn’t happen.
2) It is possible to change this aspect of society somehow, so that men aren’t the “getters” and women aren’t the “target” anymore, but rather both sexes pursue each other equally.
I doubt that these premises is true…
Crys T: Your post is too hostile, this is not the way I have written my posts to you.
You are attempting to draw some sort of a gloomy picture of a misogynistic world where women suffer from all kinds of humiliation every day and can decide nothing for themselves under a threat of violence.
This doesn’t correspond to observable reality.
Hmm… there are also some women that get mad when a guy doesn’t respond to their hints. Then they might say that he is gay and start spreading rumours about him.
…Which is waaaaaay worse than rape.
Well, just when you need evidence that society condones rape, here comes a troll to prove it. Way to go, someone!
Why am I a troll… ?
piny: It isn’t way worse than rape, if you read my post I wasn’t actually comparing it with rape.
Someone,
Where do you live? As a feminist raising a daughter, I am very motivated to relocate to your hometown where ” women are overall free to do whatever they want….a girl [sic] can choose not to have sex if she wants…” and women can have sex without being maligned for it. I have lived in several communities where this (sadly) was not the case; where women are often penalized for the exact same choices that men make, where women can NOT always choose not to have sex, and where women that do have sex have sometimes been villified for it.
The good news is that Aegis tells us that this misogynist attitude of several communities does NOT equal the attitude of “society”, and you confirm this with reports of your extremely woman-friendly locale. How wonderful to know that I can move to where you live and allow my daughter to grow in such a place of equality! Please tell me your location right away so I can start packing! I am thrilled that Aegis was right all along.
And your post is too dismissive as well as lacking in objectivity and knowledge of the subject matter. It’s all about your opinion and your observations. From nearly the first post I found you hard to take seriously because you come off as really ill-informed and content with that.
Because it’s blatantly evident that you are posting to educate all the ‘men hating pessimistic women’ about your reality, and what I can personally only construe as unwilling to really do some research. If you’re not, the best exercise I could recommend to you would be to start some research based on specific questions, for instance statistics of unconvicted rape cases, or statistics of anonymously interviewed women that admit to having experienced at least some degree of sexual intimidation or rape. Are you seriously contending you’re unfamiliar with the whole ‘she’s a slut’ portrayal that is placed upon young women with a frequency that is alarmingly high?
Why? Comparisons like these come off as attempts at justification. People here aren’t unfamiliar with the notion that women as well as men can be abusive or behave badly in relationships; the point that you seem to be missing is that due to the lack of value society places on women that are considered at best careless, or worst whorish, rape becomes a crime that is looked at on a scale of acceptibility that goes up and down not in consideration of the actions of the rapist, but instead the actions of the victim. The Kobe Bryant case is a classic example of this – ‘She had sex with others around the time of Kobe’ – I’m sorry, what exactly does that mean? It means that society is okay, or at least grudgingly willing to condone his actions based not on the case, which Bryant actually admits the victim truly believed she was raped, but instead on whether it matters if she was raped because she was a little slut anyways, just look at her panties, right?
Aegis is right, you are not. Easily observable.
Perhaps you are just extremely sensitive and perceive as misogyny things that aren’t? Or perhaps you are consciously constructing your posts to sound so pessimistic. I doubt that you are a person that is completely disconnected from reality.
The reality is that women quite literally indeed can refuse sex, and such occurences happen in every city thousands of times every day.
And another aspect of reality is that modern western society isn’t in fact some sort of a fundamentalist muslim society where women are controlled by the family father and stoned for having sex outside of marriage.
Women are free to choose their partner for a relationship, free to leave a relationship, free to marry, free to divorce, free to engage in sex, free to refuse sex.
All of these actions are legal and socially acceptable since almost every woman does them in her life, without any significantly negative consequences for most of them.
A woman that breaks off a relationship with her boyfriend still retains her male and female friends, and she is still a part of her community, whatever that might be. Then after a while she can find someone else and date him. After a break-up, she doesn’t become a social outcast that is condemned by everyone. She just resumes her normal life.
Not only that, but she might actually tell her friends the reasons for why she broke up with her boyfriend, and they will probably support her.
Rape:
In the real world rape is actually not condoned, even among males. If a girl or woman admits to being raped, then I assume most of her friends and family members will respond with compassion and sympathy, rather than murdering her for dishonouring the family.
A rapist is a social outcast, even in prison rapists are the lowest caste. They are beaten and raped themselves.
What I have written above is called “describing the objective reality”. You should try it…
-Sigh-….No, the reality is this statistic:
FACT: UN: In the US, a woman reports a rape to the police every 5 to 6 minutes. Researchers estimate that only 1/3 of strangers rapes and 13% of all acquaintance rapes are reported to the police.
and this statistic:
FACT: UN: 683,000 women are raped each year in the US according to the National Women’s Study. This translates to 1 every 3 minutes, 78 per hour, 1,871 per day.
and this statistic:
FACT: UN: In the US, 9 out of 10 women murdered are killed by men; most are at the hands of a male partner.
and this statistic:
FACT: According to the former Surgeon General Koop, 3-4 million women in the US are beaten by their partners each year. Studies on prevalence suggest that from 1/5 to 1/3 of all women will be physically assaulted by a partner or ex-partner during their lifetime.
and this statistic:
FACT: UN: Battering is the single greatest cause of injury among women in the US, accounting for more emergency room visits than auto accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
and this statistic:
FACT: Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes (1 reported every 5 to 6 minutes), according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
and this statistic:
FACT: Approximately 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994)
and this statistic:
FACT: The FBI estimates that only 37% of all rapes are reported to the police. U.S. Justice Department statistics are even lower, with only 26% of all rapes or attempted rapes being reported to law enforcement officials.
and this statistic:
FACT: In a national survey 27.7% of college women reported a sexual experience since the age of fourteen that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, and 7.7% of college men reported perpetrating aggressive behavior which met the legal definition of rape.
(Lets consider that last fact for a minute – if 7.7% of college men reported perpetrating aggressive sexual behavior that met the legal definition of rape, a CLASS A school has 300+ students in it. So a small town school with 200 students if we assume the split is 50/50 has around 7 or 8 young men likely committing acts of sexual behavior that meet the definition of rape.)
I forgot to add to my post:
While many women can and do successfully refuse sex, the statistics of women that can’t successfully refuse sex and become victimized is appallingly high. I didn’t pull these stats outta my arse – I only WISH they were blown out of proportion, but studies indicate that it’s in fact just the opposite.
BTW, as recently as last week, I was called a whore and a slut on another board for being a feminist and pro-choice. I was told that I just needed a good fuck to chill me out. This coming from men who state they are ‘Pro-Life’, and ‘anti-rape’, one even claimed to have worked in women’s domestic violence shelters (hahahaha yah, right). They all know two personal facts about me: One, I’m happily married, and two I’m happily pregnant. If these aren’t blatant uses of sexual aggression in the form of degradation to silence the ‘uppity feminist woman’ I don’t know what the hell is.
Kim says:
Yes, this is called crime. Those are very disturbing statistics, but you achieve nothing by saying that society condones rape, or that women are under a tremendous pressure to consent to sex.
High statistics of rape doesn’t mean that society condones rape… victims of rape receive sympathy, the crime of rape is considered a very disgusting one by most people, and rapists are hated. You can hear very hostile statements towards rapists very often. Like “he deserves to have his balls cut off”, etc. This isn’t the same as condoning rape…
So…
Do you expect to go through life without ever being insulted?
Or are you saying that males never get insulted? Or they get insulted significantly more rarely?
I think your view is overly simplistic.
Consider the case that started off this discussion. What caused the case to become a news item is that the rapists were so incredibly stupid that they made a videotape and played it in public. If this same case had happened without the video – but with all the other elements in place – I doubt it would have made the news, or that the boys would have gotten in trouble. Without the incredibly damning evidence of the tape, the principal would have gotten away with covering this up, and most of the boys’ schoolmates would have given them a pass. After all, the boys were popular, whereas the girl was in special-ed (or whatever they call it nowadays).
Is explicit, acknowleged rape condoned? Not widely. In that I agree with you.
However, there’s another way of condoning rape, and that’s refusing to acknowlege it as rape when it happens. Kim mentioned the study of college men; one interesting finding from that same study is that even men who reported having used physical force to make a woman have sex when she didn’t want to, generally don’t consider what they did “rape.” So that same man who – genuinely and with passion – talks about how rapists are scum and should be castrated, may also be a rapist.
What happens when Mary says that when she and Jack went out on a date, Jack raped her? A lot depends on who Jack and Mary are. If Jack is well-off, popular, and white, while Mary is poor and non-white, then pretty much the entire community will side with Jack. “There are so many girls who’d love to go out with Jack – obviously he doesn’t need to rape to get some.” “Everyone knows Mary is a bit slutty.” “Mary is getting back at him because she slept with him but then regretted it when he didn’t want to go out with her again.”
Even if the rapist and victim are similar when it comes to popularity, class status, and race, that still won’t mean she’ll be believed. A lot of people will still dismiss her as a slut (although research has shown that being considered a “slut” has as much to do with class as with behavior). A lot of people will say “it’s unfair to hold these accusations against Jack without absolute proof.” “We can’t be sure it’s rape.” “I think what happened was probably a communication problem – in Jack’s mind he wasn’t raping her, he thought she was into it.” “Mary didn’t say no clearly enough, so that Jack understood.”
Almost no one condones rape or a rapist, in the sense of saying “Jack is a rapist, and that’s okay with me.” But people make excuses. People explain why a rape isn’t really a rape after all. If the rapists weren’t stupid enough to make a videotape, people will find reasons to favor his version of events over hers.
Jack tells himself that she was into it, that if she had really struggled he would have stopped, and that she can’t lead him on and then just expect him to stop; but Jack never tells himself that rape is okay. In fact, Jack hates rapists – just ask Jack.
Even when a videotape is made, as we recently saw in California, it may take two trials to find a jury willing to reject the “she was a slut, so it wasn’t rape” defense. At the point where a videotape isn’t a clear-cut, virtually automatic conviction, I think we have to admit that the “she’s a slut, so it wasn’t rape” defense still has a lot of credibility among ordinary Americans.
Why do you think this is a reasonable question to ask?
First of all, nothing Kim said logically implied that she thinks she’ll get through life without ever being insulted. So your question is illogical.
Secondly, just because something is expected doesn’t mean it’s justifiable. I don’t expect to get through life without ever being physically assaulted; that doesn’t justify the assaults, or make it unreasonable of me to find assualts objectionable.
Men and boys are rarely (if ever) insulted by being told that all they need is a good fuck. That’s a misogynistic insult generally reserved for women.
If a black person objects to a racist insult, the fact that white people sometimes get insulted too doesn’t make the racist insult okay.
someone says :
But when they say this the image of rape they have in their heads is “rape of a young, virgin, sober girl by a complete stranger, who jumps out from behind the bushes and physically batters her, before raping her”
They do not have “my son forcing himself on a drunk woman who was willing to sleep with him yesterday, but not today”
You do get very hostile statements towards victims – the police will often push victims to drop cases that don’t fit the 1st stereotype, (phrases like “your bruises aren’t good enough, you might just like rough sex” being said by cops to victims reporting the crime), local communities will push victims to drop their cases (1st assumption when someone is accused “she’s lying, she’s a slut, she probably wanted it and changed her mind, or her parents/husband found out and she’s lying to cover it up” etc. Think of muggings – how often does anyone tell the victim “had you given him your wallet before? have you given anyone money before? were you dressed in a way that implied you were willing to give money to anyone who asked? well, then it’s your own fault he got confused and thought you wanted him to take it”
Think of the Footballer rape case in Britain last year. Someone accused 7?8? premier league footballers of gang-raping her, after she had consented to sex with another memeber of the team.
Reaction of public : she’s lying. They are rich, and famous – they could have any girl they want, why would they need to rape. She said she would sleep with one, who she barely knew, clearly she was a slut and so would have consented to a gang-bang. She just wants to get in the papers (despite not releasing her name/the name of any of the footballers involved).
No-one said they deserse to have their balls cut off in my hearing, although i heard the above quite frequently (usually from men,, occasionally from women, reassuring me that this wasn’t actually a terrible thing to happen to a girl -i got rather over emotional about it – since she was almost certainly lying and didn’t deserve my sympathy)
How about “what society believes is rape is not condoned, but society has a narrower defination of rape than the legal system, and so there are cases of rape society condones, because it sees them as sex not rape” Even that’s not quite right, because like the footballer case above, people say that “if this were true it would be a terrible thing and I would condemn the people who did it, but the supposed victim is clearly lying” The action is seen as wrong, but it also seen as not happening in particualar types of situations – irrespective of whether or not it actually happens (eg. drunk girl gets raped by her date to a party – she went to the party, she drank the alcohol, she flirted with him – what else could she have thought was going to happen, hence by doing these things she consented, without consideration of whether or not she did consent)
Part 1
Ampersand says:
I am sorry Ampersand, but I think you are wrong here.
When you say things like “everyone”, “a lot of people”, etc, you really mean males.
I bet that if we took the responses of males and females to the case, most males would be inclined to believe Jack, and most females would be inclined to believe Mary.
Furthermore, If both Jack and Mary are people that are liked more or less equally in the community, there is another reason that many people (mostly males) would rather side with Jack. Why? Because they aren’t very willing to acknowledge that the Jack they knew and loved is an evil rapist, and they don’t want him to be in prison. On the other hand, saying that it was a misunderstanding and he didn’t intend to rape her resolves the case (in their mind) without anyone being evil and having to be punished.
From your post it seems that you believe that when a girl (or woman, but most rape victims are teenage girls) says that she was raped, everyone should believe her without question. Such a situation would actually be unjust and afford the accused person no credibility at all.
Right now it will be more or less 50% on either side, mostly divided by gender.
What you are doing is looking only at the responses and opinions of the men in a community and ignoring the women. Please don’t do it next time…
Part 2
Ampersand says:
Ampersand, as many posters here have also been able to acknowledge, there are different sexual associations for males and females.
These associations exist in the minds of people of both sexes. That means they are the same for men and women.
Males are considered to be looking for some sex most of the time.
Females are considered to be occupied with rejecting it, and choosing only the males that they like.
(And this is how it actually is for most people…)
So telling a man that he needs a “good fuck” to chill him out wouldn’t actually be an insult.
But a man can be insulted differently – “I bet you don’t get laid often”, “you are a sore loser”, “you will never get any”, etc.
For a woman “losing” is when she gives herself up for sex easily. Another way of “losing” is being so unattractive that no one actually approaches her.
For a man “losing” is when he is unable to get sex. Another way of “losing” is being unskilled in satisfying his partner, this is often used by bitter ex-girlfriends…
Sometimes this can be applied to women that are considered ugly, but most of the time insulting one’s ability to get sex is directed at males.
There is also a common stereotype about women that if they don’t get enough sex, they will be frustrated and irritatible and take their anger out on other people. (This is probably influenced by the associations that most people have about PMS.)
This might look sexist, but the existence of sexist stereotypes about women doesn’t exclude the existence of sexist stereotypes about men…
For example men are considered always to be ready for sex, and they are considered to be more likely to cheat. If a boy doesn’t respond to a girl’s attempts to get closer, he might be labelled as gay. This is common in teenage subculture…
It’s just different ways to insult someone. A girl might be called a “whore” or a “slut”, a guy might be called a “loser” or a “fag”.
(And words like “whore” and “slut” can also often be used as a general insult without its direct meaning… just a way to insult a female.
A girl that has sex very rarely, or even is a virgin probably has the same chance to be called a “whore” when someone wishes to insult her as one that has sex very often with different partners…)
Conclusion: While sexist stereotypes exist for both sexes, it isn’t so bad that it makes dating and relationships impossible.
Lots of women switch their boyfriends often, have one night stands, etc.
Lots of girls spend their time in bars and clubs looking for someone to have sex with for the night.
Modern culture is actually very lax on sexuality and it doesn’t enforce monogamy very strongly. (Whether this is good or bad… you decide)
Despite the fact that these stereotypes exist, they have little effect on most people.
Part 3
VK says:
This is more like it…
Much more realistic.
You still have to take gender into account though… (Look at part 1)
No, I don’t “really mean males.” Since you pat yourself on the back so much for being sensible, you can start by not making assumptions and putting words I didn’t say into my mouth.
Look at jury studies – women aren’t more likely to believe the claims of an (alleged) rape victim than men are. Sometimes women are especially eager to find a fault in the girl or woman’s behavior to blame (perhaps to reassure themselves that it won’t happen to them).
This I agree with.
Nope, didn’t say that, don’t believe that. I think too much depends on the individual situation to make a single rule for every situation.
I think we need to realize that there’s a difference between what one can reasonably believe to be true, and what can be proven in a court of law. If one friend tells me she’s been raped, and I believe it, then I don’t need a court’s verdict to act appropriately (including cutting the rapist out of my life).
But there are cases – say, a case where I don’t know a thing about either the alleged victim or the alleged rapists – where I can’t know, or where a community can’t know. In real life, too often, a large part of the community reacts by quietly, subtly shunning the girl for making an accusation she couldn’t “prove.” Often, communities don’t just take a “well, we can’t know, so let’s treat them evenly” attitude; they look at how nice a boy the accused rapist is and worry that this could ruin his life, and they implicitly accept his version of events.
The courts have a very high standard of proof for criminal convictions (and they should, in my opinion). But one consequence of that is that, by accepting that criminal courts should have high standards of proof, I’m also implicitly accepting that many rapists will never be legally punished. (Of course, it’s easy for me to accept that – maybe too easy – since I’m male).
Regarding insults, of course there are sexist ways men can be insulted too (and homophobic as well, such as your “fag” example). (Although most of the sexist insults of men and boys involve calling them girlish or feminine, which is a weird combination of insulting men and at the same time being misogynistic). I’m not sure why you think I’d disagree with that.
But I still think it’s the case that women and girls face a more difficult balancing act than men. Men feel pressure to get laid, but so do women (and boys and girls, as well). But at the same time girls feel pressure to be able to find willing sex partners (to prove they’re not losers), they also feel pressure to not “give it up” too easily, or else they’re sluts. Men and boys don’t have things perfect, but that particular balancing act – too much sex and you’re a slut, too little and you’re a loser – is faced by girls but not boys.
Of course, we’re generalizing way too much – a lot depends on the social group people hang out in, their class, their cultural background, their region, etc..
Part 1
Ampersand says:
Okay, I am sorry. I should have worded it differently like… “it seems that you might be unconsciously only looking at the responses and opinions of men and ignoring women”.
Link…
Thanks
Yes, of course… personal relationship to the individuals involved affects with whom you will side. This is why I mentioned in my example that Jack and Mary are both well liked in the community.
Now imagine, if both your female friend and the guy she says raped here were your good friends, who would you believe then?
Would you be quick to make a decision? If the guy is your old friend since high school or something… And she is too…
Wouldn’t you be in trouble?
I don’t know about this… I have no personal experience since I don’t know anyone that was raped.
I suspect that responses of people will generally vary according to these variables:
1) They are in a good relationship with the alleged rapist – they will tend to take his side (a larger portion of these might be males, since males mostly have male friends)
2) They are in a good relationship with the alleged victim – they will take her side (these will be mostly females, see above)
3) They are in a good relationship with both of them – they will not express an opinion
4) They know both of them personally but aren’t in a close relationship with either – they will tend to take his side cautiously, due to what I described above about settling the conflict without anyone being guilty. They might say that she was “confused”, etc.
5) They don’t know either of them personally (seeing them a few times on the street doesn’t count) – these will just go by how the newspaper presents, or what their friends that do have an opinion say. In other words this is quite random… Most of those probably won’t care anyway, they will just read the newspaper and go about doing whatever they were doing…
Part 2
I have to disagree here…
This balance for a girl can be solved by simply having a long-term boyfriend.
This way she isn’t a loser because she does have a boyfriend, and she isn’t a slut, because she is in a long-term monogamous relationship.
(This is how things usually settle down in societies that aren’t totally lax with free uncommited sex. Most people get in long-term relationships.)
Then it might happen that the boyfriend dumps her… if this happens she might be viewed as a “loser”… or the ex-boyfriend might be viewed as an “asshole”… this is random, it depends on the situation and the individuals involved.
I don’t think that it’s correct to say that either sex is in a significant disadvantage compared to the other…
Males certainly have their problems…
And on the other hand, most people still are able to find someone, get in long-term relationships, get married, etc.
I was going to write a long explanation here about ranking of males and females according to alpha/beta/gamma, but then I decided that it is unnecessary since there is too many variables involved, and besides one’s chances to get a mate, there is also things like personality compatibility, your partner’s attitude, etc.
This would be getting into a whole huge new discussion.
But in short words, the problem for “beta” males is that they are in a competition with “alpha males” for “beta” females (even though in the end the “alpha” male will most likely settle for an “alpha” female, he will be blocking lots of “beta” females for a long time), and they don’t have access to “alpha” females.
(“Beta” males and females are the large majority, “alpha” and “gamma” are minorities… although with the recent epidemic of obesity, the “gamma” category might become significantly larger…)
The thing that I believe is correct to say is that the more “lax” a society is with free uncommited sex, the more it actually ends up disadvantaging the majority of both males and females.
It makes the competetion between both males and females much more fierce, it undermines stable relationships, it exacerbates insecurity in insecure teenagers, teen suicide (due to a feeling of being unloved/unwanted or feeling ugly), and more…
someone says:
I don’t agree. In a long term relationship the pressure on a guy to be having sex with her increases. Often after a certain period of time, the length of which depends on the peer group, the assumption that they must be having sex arises. This happened with my last boyfriend – after about three/four weeks we were sleeping regularly in each other’s rooms (I’m in college accomadation), and increasing people assumed since he was sleeping there, we must be having lots of sex. He would correct this, and increasingly he got a confused “but why are you still sleeping there then?” response.
But the pressure on a girl not to have sex, doesn’t nessicarily decrease – particularly girls who “give it up” too soon are seen as slutty. I’ve seen guys question their relationships with girls, after sleeping with her several months into a relationships – often an issue that comes up is they realise they don’t actually like her that much, and don’t see it lasting long term and then blame her for allowing it to become sexual when she must have been capable of seeing the relationship was not going to last. (The logic goes , I believe, as a man I am not capable of controlling my sexual feelings, or objecting looking at a relationship while sex is a possibility. women can. therefore how far a relationship goes is completely in her control. if looking back at a relationship, i went further than i think i should have, it’s her fault for not being as chaste as i would have been , had i been able to control myself. hence she is a slut).
I had particular trouble in high school, with a rather nasty long term ex who did the obvious “she wouldn’t have sex with me, i cannot admit this, hence i will claim she is a slut and asked for it and I teurned her down”. And people believed him – and it stuck. Nice guys wouldn’t date me, because i had a bad rep. Less nice guys a) expected sex straight off b) got angry when the rumours weren’t true c) didn’t admit the rumours weren’t true, but instead added to them. On the otherhand, the guy who did this to me, sleep (supposedly) with about 50+ girls in high school – no-one made any judgement calls on him, he certainly wasn’t called a slut and was rather admired for being so attractive to women.
Long term boyfriends are not the answer. Changing the societal veiw that men want sex, women don’t but should have sex to please men is the answer. (note: Not just for the sake of the girls, but for the boys too – I know several who got very cut up over the assumption they wanted sex/were sexual predators. They also have problems with women taking “i don’t want to have sex” as “i don’t want to have sex with you because you’re ugly /I’m gay” when they actually really like the girl, just don’t want sex as the goal of the relationship. The idea that there is a way boys work, and a way girls work and that men have to chase women with the goal of sleeping with them harms both sexes and needs to be corrected)
Someone, why are you still referring to women as girls?
That, and you are tacitly accepting the idea that single women are, by virtue of being single, sluts. If they were “good women”, they would be in a long-term, monogamous relationship. Why should judgement calls on a particular woman be based on whether or not she has a man in her life?
Let’s go back to that “lots of girls spend time in bars and clubs looking for someone to have sex with for the night.” No, actually “lots of girls” don’t, because here in the United States, one must be eighteen or twenty-one to enter bars and clubs, which would make them women, not girls. It is true that some women are in the bar or club looking for a sexual partner. But there are more women in the bar or club who are there to: (a) meet friends, (b) have a drink and unwind from the work week, (c) scarf the happy hour treats before going out for the real evening’s activities, (d) hear some good music, (e) dance, etc.
Except for one problem. Every woman entering the place without a male partner is going to be assumed to be looking for sex. And if a woman who goes to a bar or club is raped later that evening, she will be assumed by a significant number of people (males and females), as having done something wrong—even if she left alone, even if she conducted herself with impeccable, Miss Manners-type poise, even if she didn’t drink any alcohol, just soda! Because only “slutty” women go out in public without male companionship, dont’cha know.
Oh, and BTW, you do know women who have been raped. They just haven’t told you. The statistical probability of you not knowing any rape survivors is astronomical.
Do you have a definition of “alpha”, “beta”, and “gamma”? I’ve never heard of “gamma”, and I’ve only heard of “alpha” and “beta” in the most shallow, pseudo-psych, pop-culture reference. Anyone….are those terms for real? Do social scientists actually use those terms, or are those terms simply a media trope to sound more official than using high-school terms like “jock”, “stoner”, etc.?
Doesn’t the whole “alpha male” stuff come from zoology? You know, studies of wolf packs and all that? I think pop pseudo-psychologists latched onto it to use in discussions of human behaviour because that image of the male as Lone Wolf or dominant gorilla are just so damned kewl.
THANK YOU!! When I used to go out, it really got up my nose the way guys would assume that the “real” reason I was on the dance floor was to woo them with the suggestive motions of my body (yeah, that’s why I really liked to dance to Einstürzende Neubauten & Killing Joke–so sensual), or that the fact that I was sitting at a table on my own meant that they had the right to plop themselves down with me and tell me their entire life stories from birth to that exact moment, in excruciating detail. Because of course, listening to someone rabbiting on about how great they are is sooooooooooooo sexually intoxicating.
heh heh. Well, you probably figured out I was writing from my own experience! I was telling a friend of mine (a poet) about some of the more interesting incidents of self-appointed Mr. Wonderfuls who figured I walked into the place to make their night; she laughed, took notes, and said, “there’s a poem in here somewhere!” There sure was. I don’t know if she reads it at open mike nights anymore (this was several years ago), but it always brought the house down!
Btw, I am planning on replying to this thread (and to Ampersand’s post in another thread), when my midterms are over…
I am not sure why you are being hostile to me once again… this isn’t how I write my posts.
“Alpha” and “beta” are indeed terms from zoology. I figured them to be appropriate to use in this context, since I don’t see a better alternative…
Your comment about gorillas and lone wolves wasn’t amusing. Please suggest better terminology?
Crys T says…
I don’t see anything amazing about this…
If you aren’t there to pick up someone, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t.
So… what is the terrible crime of trying to chat up a girl?
You seem like a perfect example of a woman that believes that a guy talking to her in an attempt to “get to know her closer” (whether for sex or dating) is already commiting an offence, unless she finds him attractive and she is in the mood.
Try to look at it from his point of view…
And now… you see… because you are female you don’t have to go through all this. Trying to talk to people, being rejected in a rude way, etc.
You just have them walk up to you and offer themselves. You are the one with the choice. You aren’t appreciating your own power.
What you wrote is a perfect proof of my theory.
It’s also hilarious how you were able to reject so many males trying to have sex with you/or to meet you and didn’t get murdered or harmed in some way by any of them. You are contradicting yourself.
You actually can reject them. You are actually free to have sex when you want, and you are free to choose whoever you want to be your partner in a relationship.
The more I think about it, the more asinine your comment seems.
These guys that talked to you came there in hopes to find some girl. So they saw you and tried their luck.
But you actually make some ridiculous assumptions about what they think your motives for coming to the place or dancing are. And then you decide that they must be amazingly self-centered and misogynistic because they assume that you are there to woo them.
It isn’t about that, it’s about them trying to find someone. They can’t read your damn mind.
I don’t understand what makes you so angry about this.
La Lubu says…
This just doesn’t make any sense…
You can’t expect to go to such a place and not to have anyone trying to pick you up… What is your problem…
They aren’t “Mr. Wonderfuls”, they were just trying to find someone. Holy Jesus.
Someone says:
Nothing, but there is a big difference between trying to chat up, leaving an obvious and easy way for the other to get out of the conversation if they wish, and forcing your company on another person. Also a big difference between “trying, hoping to succeed” and “trying, gonna succeed because women alone in a bar = sex to first man to say hi”.
I’m thinking of, in particular, the difference between someone asking you to dance, and someone just coming up behind you and starting to grind against your arse.
or
is different from asking their permission to sit down and chat to them (which would be kinda a basic level of courtesy to someone you don’t know in a bar). The crime is not chatting up a girl – the crime is chatting up a girl, when she is not intested, but assuming she is.
Not sure if that is what Crys T meant, but that was what I read into it.
Hmmm…. okay. I guess this was a (bad) misunderstanding on my part. Sorry.
I thought that she was angered by the mere fact that people assume she might be available and tried to talk to her.
(Apologia: I realize that this is a weak analogy in a lot of ways, not least that negligence is not the same as violent assault, and consensual sex (duh) is not the same as rape.)
Most people are not HIV-positive. Most people who are HIV-positive take steps to prevent transmitting it to others, up to and including serosorting and celibacy. Most people, HIV-positive or not, would be aghast at the idea of someone wilfully transmitting the disease, and believe in an abstract way that everyone should get tested regularly and use protection, yadda yadda yadda. Does that mean that I should start barebacking, since society as a whole does not condone jeopardizing others through unsafe sex? Should I not be worried at all? To the extent that I am worried, does that fear affect my sex life? And if society as a whole is not complacent in this type of negligence, why do some people feel perfectly fine about not getting tested, not using protection, and not informing their partners of their HIV-status?
Many people in this country believe that rape is evil only insofar as rape is very narrowly defined: brutally violent stranger rape. Toss in variables like the amount she had to drink or the number of dates she had with him beforehand, and suddenly moral condemnation turns to water. Have you listened to the rape survivors on this thread? They clearly have first-hand experience of the tenor of other people’s sympathy, and it doesn’t jibe with what you’re speculating.
“But in short words, the problem for “beta”? males is that they are in a competition with “alpha males”? for “beta”? females (even though in the end the “alpha”? male will most likely settle for an “alpha”? female, he will be blocking lots of “beta”? females for a long time), and they don’t have access to “alpha”? females.
(“?Beta”? males and females are the large majority, “alpha”? and “gamma”? are minorities… although with the recent epidemic of obesity, the “gamma”? category might become significantly larger…)”
**SNERK**
whoooooo-buddy, I’m damn sure glad I’m a dyke. So, so, so much easier. We have secret handshakes that determine who we’re allowed to shag. And we gave up on the pissing contests ’cause we kept peeing down our own legs.
Someone… have you ever hung out with anyone above the age of 21? 22? 23? Have you even had sex yet? If you have, have you had sex with someone you liked, rather than just fucking their body? Please don’t tell me that in a world in which we can put humans into outer space and have discovered a vaccine for polio, you don’t still believe that our basic human interactions are nothing but biologic alphabet games? Is that why so many young people have to get hammered before they sleep together?
But you did miss the loophole in your own logic. You claim that girls [sic](which ones? Alpha? Beta? Gamma?) can and do refuse sex. But if this is true, you can’t have an alpha male, can you? Not if his advances can be rejected. That would automatically make him something other than alpha, no?
piny: I don’t really get your analogy… society as a whole is not to blame for the actions of a minority of individuals which aren’t even connected to each other.
This might be true or not… read again what I wrote about the relationship of the “commenter” to the alleged victim and the alleged rapist.
Read the 5 cases that I described.
And yes, in a case where they don’t know both of them, or aren’t too close to them, they might tend to disbelieve her.
The people that are completely uninvolved will just form their opinion according to what the newspaper says, or the person that tells it to them.
… Read my previous posts, I already explained this.
It wouldn’t make sense if everyone always firmly believed the alleged victim when such an allegation is made. People will always have different opinions.
I didn’t yet, since there is too many posts.
Q Grrl:
Where did I say that in lesbian/bisexual communities there is no rankings like this? I am sure that lesbians are also attracted to different individuals differently. Doesn’t necessarily have to be physical attraction only, but there will still be some that are more successful with finding someone, and some that are less.
Not really… does this matter?
I had two girlfriends…
I am simplifying and generalizing things to make it easier. The ranking isn’t based on physical attractiveness only. It also depends a lot on one’s social connections, social skills, “personal charm”, and more…
Do you disagree that such a ranking exists? If you do then does that mean that you say that all individuals in a community are equally successful with everyone of the opposite sex?
Almost all animals have sexual selection in some form. This is a consequence of sexual reproduction.
And sexual selection automatically causes sexual rankings to be created, since in order for a selection to be made, there must be some criteria for making a selection.
Humans aren’t an exception.
You are trying to define an “alpha” male as someone that never ever gets rejected.
But that is not what an “alpha” male is. He does get rejected, especially by “alpha” females, which are on the same “level” as him.
And by “beta” females, if they happen not to like him…
He can even be rejected by “gamma” ones, but an “alpha” male usually won’t try to woo a “gamma” female, since that would bring down his status as an “alpha” male in most communities. (An alpha male is supposed to get the “hot” girls.)
And girls/women of all sexual rankings can refuse sex.
You are trying to point out loopholes where they don’t exist.
Someone says: “…what is the crime in trying to chat up a girl?”
Well, someone, assuming the chat is for the purpose of eventually having sex (or even having a relationship that includes sex) the crime is called statutory rape.
Oh, wait. Did you mean “…what is the crime in trying to chat up a WOMAN?” Oh! Well, then, nothing, I guess.
I am 18, so I refer to them as girls.
Someone, do you refer to yourself and other young men as ‘boys’?
Please define the terms ‘alpha’, ‘beta’, and ‘gamma’. Pardon my ignorance, but I have no idea what you are talking about.
hrrrm.
I was pondering this thread last night. Ya’ know Someone, the fact that you feel not the slightest hesitation in turning a thread about rape (forcible rape per the original story) into your beliefs about dating trends is enough, ON ITS OWN, to highlight how our culture CONDONES rape. You can’t even stay on topic.
If you don’t want to believe women or feminists, there are many male writers/philosophers who also acknowledge our rape culture (specifically men involved in the environmental movement or sustainable living).
… Just follow the conversation and see how it developed into this. Why are you blaming me? And why are you all constantly attacking me?
The discussion about dating trends developed from Ampersand making a comment about how women must maintain a balance between “slut” and “loser” etc.
Read the posts and stop attacking me.
And I already explained what “alpha”, “beta” and “gamma” are, read the posts.
Why is it impossible to simply have a normal discussion without all these personal attacks?
La Lubu: I may use the word boys as a term of endearment, like “hey boys I am back” to my friends.
But I don’t use it to refer to young men/male teenagers in general, because this isn’t how the word is used. It is used to refer to children.
But girls is used to refer to teenage girls and young women.
This is how the words are used in the contemporary English language, I didn’t make it so.
someone, the term “girls” as used to refer to women is a sexist use of the English language, one that fell out of common usage many years ago. Because you haven’t stated that English is your first language, I’ll give you a break. If English is your first language, knock it off already. You already know that women see the term “girls” used to refer to female adults as infantilizing and insulting. Knock. It. Off.
And no, you haven’t defined alpha, beta, or gamma. You brought the terms into the discussion, so please bother to define them. I kind of get the idea that alpha is supposed to refer to “top dog”, but I have no idea of what the traits are that supposedly make someone an alpha or not. I get the idea that “beta” is supposed to be bottom dog, but I have no idea what the traits are that supposedly make someone a beta or not. Gamma, I’m at a total loss for. Someone who isn’t a dog at all? A dog from another planet? What? My only contact with the term “alpha male” was from the Al Gore fiasco, and to tell the truth, I really didn’t understand it then, either. I figured it was a media-generated bullshit sexist sideshow, designed to insult women by inferring that unless a man fit some bogus “big daddy” stereotype, we wouldn’t vote for him.
>>But girls is used to refer to teenage girls and young women.
This is how the words are used in the contemporary English language, I didn’t make it so.>>
So are a few other words, which I won’t repeat here. What’s your point?