Believe it or not, I actually know a bit about beauty pageants. Yes, I know it doesn’t fit my image, but bear with me. Back in college I went out with Miss Utah State and attended several of these things. One thing that I learned was that despite the stereotypes about the dumb beauty queen, most of these women were very smart. Capable, intelligent women understand the need to take responsibility for their own safety.
So Miss Nevada was doing the Q&A for the Miss America pageant and said something that caused the Perpetually Outraged to get their outrage on.
“I believe that some colleges may potentially be afraid of having a bad reputation and that would be a reason it could be swept under the rug, because they don’t want that to come out into the public,”Nia Sanchez said. “But I think more awareness is very important so women can learn how to protect themselves. Myself, as a fourth-degree black belt, I learned from a young age that you need to be confident and be able to defend yourself. And I think that’s something that we should start to really implement for a lot of women.”
The internet then exploded with its typical impotent fist shaking fury. Now, normal, not insane people may be confused as to what Miss Nevada said that was so outrageous, but here is a helpful glimpse into the brains of various Twitter lemmings.
How did she win after that awful and offensive answer? Idiot—
Cait Cremeens (@CaitCremeens) June 09, 2014
I’m sorry, but women shouldn’t need to take self defense classes to protect themselves from rape #MissUSA—
Peter Simon (@PeterSimon12) June 09, 2014
Let’s hope Nevada uses her media tour to reiterate that teaching girls self defense is NOT the best way to protect against assault #MissUSA
Miss Nevada, who just reinforced victim-blaming rape culture to millions of viewers, is crowned #MissUSA 2014.—
šīrīn ✺šəfīʿ (@shereenTshafi) June 09, 2014
Miss Nevada was asked about rape at colleges and answered that women need to learn to defend themselves… OR MEN COULD JUST NOT RAPE.
Yeah. Try to wrap your brain around that shit. The answer to violent crime isn’t to do things to protect yourself from the criminal, but to WISH for the criminal not to exist at all… Good luck with that.
In the same spirit as other useless feel-good/do-nothing LibProg hastag campaigns like #bringbackourgirls https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/05/08/operation-pouty-face/ somebody started #yesallwomen, which mostly consists of shrieking about how all women are victims and all men are inherently evil, misogyny is everywhere, and any conservative women who disagree are stupid, so you know, the usual.
One of the favorite topics of the #yessallwombyns crowd is rape. Rape is an evil crime. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum we can all agree that rape is bad. Everybody who isn’t a scumbag criminal would like to see it end. The difference is that conservatives live in reality where human nature and history demonstrate that wishful thinking is useless, and libprogs live in a fantasy wonderland where the idea of fighting back against rapists is somehow bad and the real problem is that somebody just needed to teach rapists not to rape.
Not happy w/ Miss Nevada’s answer that to stop rape we should teach women to defend themselves…Why don’t we teach men to not rape?—
Kelsey Bemus (@KelseyBemus) June 09, 2014
Miss Nevada described how individuals need to protect themselves from rape, instead of teaching others not to rape. Stop the victim blaming.—
Haley Ploucha (@hallepalouka) June 09, 2014
A note on “victim blaming” that I got from author Mike Williamson. If I teach my kids to look both ways before crossing the street so they don’t get hit by cars, am I victim blaming?
So a danger exists, but recognizing that danger exists and doing reasonable things to combat it is blaming the victim… I don’t know why we’re wasting all this money on police, when we should just teach all criminals not to crime.
Miss Nevada saying rape can be prevented by women learning self defense and being “confident”
Miss Nevada
What a bunch of morons (but I may be insulting morons).
The Moron’s lawyers will be in contact with you! 😀
All Morons attend rape classes. I fondly remember my first AoS rape class. Classic fun!
The best way to avoid rape is to have pointy elbows.
But Larry, self defense doesn’t address the issue of rape culture. If the woman defends herself and doesn’t get raped then they can’t use it as a case to attack good law abiding me for being rapists
Exactly. What’s happening now is the re-run of the “Take back the night” stuff that started in the 70s but was becoming the default recruitment method in the early 90s. I was on a university campus then and the Womyn’s center and the university were requiring both men and women to attend what amounted to “Come to Jesus” meetings where feminist dogma was preached in the name of stopping rape. These were led by womyn who claimed to have the “absolute moral authority” of being previously raped. An interesting claim since there was roughly one rape/yr at that particular campus.
Personally, I see this meme as battlespace preparation for Hillary.
Didn’t you know? “Rape is rape.” Unless, of course, it’s Roman Planski drugging and anally raping an underage girl then it’s “not rape, rape.”
These folk spin so hard they meet themselves coming.
And, so, some of the comments I’ve made:
Teach men not to rape? Two center of mass and one to the head gets the idea across quite effectively.
Fire extinguishers? Then house burning culture wins.
Medicine? Then disease culture wins.
Look both ways before crossing the streets? Then hit-and-run culture wins.
Wear seat belts? Then auto accident culture wins.
The possibilities just go on and on.
Of course there is the group that thinks all sex is rape.
They’re doing it wrong.
That’s the group so fat / ugly / strident they ain’t getting any. =)
Theres a group of feminists who also scream about beautiful women being submissive to the patriarchy. It doesn’t matter what those women achieve, or whether they do it on their own merit. The fact they’re ‘beautiful’ = men will make their life easier for them. The ‘ugly’ ones were the only true women, for any love from a man they got meant they ‘got it from falling in love with their inner self’ not the ‘outer shell.’
The snarling hate I had for the implication that beautiful women should wash their faces in acid to prove their worth is one of the reasons why I think radical feminists need to be sent to the Muslim countries where they can really test their convictions in the face of reality.
At least in my country I have seen claims, from time to time, that pedestrians should not be asked to be careful and the responsibility to avoid hitting anyone is always solely the driver’s, and only the driver’s. They usually come up when some hapless driver has the audacity to suggest on some forum that perhaps it actually would be a good idea for those pedestrians to really do things like look both ways before stepping on the crosswalk. And that maybe all drivers aren’t always without failing constantly vigilant superhumans who always notice everything so it’s would be a good idea for pedestrians to be careful too.
I think that links to the same thinking which goes with this ‘you should teach men not to rape’, the victim can never be asked for any part of the responsibility, no matter what they did or didn’t do (or will or will not do if they are not victims yet but might become one in the future) because that would be victim blaming. And since in car-pedestrian collisions the pedestrian is always the weaker party and so the victim then that makes her always also the innocent, even if she got hit when he stepped right in front of the car from behind a stopped bus or something similar.
I’m not saying we should kill all the stupid people. I’m just saying we should remove all the warning labels and let things sort themselves out.
They must have been reading The Mote in God’s Eye. That’s the way the mediator they were walking with said it worked.
Not just your country. Here, I had to explain to a new (read: absolutely no experience whatsoever) Safety Supervisor that forklifts have built-in blind spots. Cut short, my argument was “safety is everyone’s responsibility. You hire adults. For what the company is paying you should expect them to have the common sense God gave a baby duck, at the least.”
“Two center of mass and one to the head gets the idea across quite effectively”…ok, so any girl in a bar just has to beat every man unconscious in order to make it clear she does not want to be drugged and fucked while passed out ? rape is not always a guy with a knife. And if the girl is in a weelchair ? she is by default always ok for sex because if she is not ok she would have knocked him ?
“Two center of mass and one to the head gets the idea across quite effectively” refers to bullet placement. Even girls in wheelchairs can point guns.
Guys, too. I train with one during our weekly “Choir Practice” sessions with our instructor. He does just fine, though the added up angle means he has to watch the head shots so he doesn’t put one in the acoustic baffles.
Nice straw men you’ve got there. Build them yourself, or did you borrow them from someone else?
I see reading comprehension is not one of your strengths, blankie. You really whupped ass on that strawman, though.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I really wasn’t up to wading in again–barrel still cooling from the last round. 😉
Dear ___,
Are you deliberately being obtuse, or is it an involuntary neural disorder?
You don’t want to get drugged and raped in a bar, COVER YOUR DRINK. Or, you know, take some trustworthy backup with you. Because otherwise, you are easy meat. All the “education” in the entire world is not going to deter Mr. Date Rape one tiny bit. Sticking a gun in his face might. If you can’t, or won’t, you should have a friend who can and will. Or is that victim blaming?
Oh, and is there some reason why chicks in wheelchairs -shouldn’t- have a gun and a taser and pepper spray?
Oh, but doing anything to protect yourself is victim blaming, right? So you can’t? Poor thing. I’d stay home then, if I were you. Because every single male IN THE WORLD is just itching to get at you.
Is locking the door victim blaming too? Just wondering.
We’re through the looking glass here, people. It’s a mad house! A mad house!!!
Oh, I stumbled across a video game you might find interesting: http://nonadecimal.com/site/socialjusticewarriors/
Am I misunderstanding this? It sounds like the game creator is Pro-SJWs?
http://nonadecimal.com/site/making-social-justice-warriors/
Hell, I don’t know. I just think the existence of it is kind of funny 🙂
It appears to be a game that allows you to pretend to be a person pretending to do something by yammering on the internet. I get the idea of a game that lets you pretend to be awesome…but this is pretty lame.
There is a free one called liberal crime squad at bay12games.com. This is the creator of dwarf fortress. It’s a lot better that this one.
My god, their stupid, it BURNS…..
My 15-year-old daughter asked me last week if she could go to kickboxing classes now that school is out. I said “Hell, yes! If they offer self-defense classes, those too! Do they have Krav Maga classes?” The surprised look on her face was priceless.
That was actually funny. I’d allow the same when the time comes.
My oldest daughter is seven and I’ve already warned her not to trust grownups other than me and her mom. It comes down to the same rationale for teaching self-defense. There is no way in hell I’m gonna set my daughter free in this world protected only by wishful thinking. That redefines moronic behavior.
I just picked my 7 year old up from Krav class.
She has three rules where fighting are concerned:
1) Never hit first (she’s seven. When she’s got more understanding this rule will change).
2) Always hit back. Always.
3) Get a knockout, get an icecream.
“3) Get a knockout, get an icecream.”
That’s awesome! “Ice cream is for closers!” 😀
Get the girl a real leather jacket and some engineer-style steel-toed motorcycle boots. Armor and weapons you can get away with wearing at school.
My parents put me in martial arts when I hit high school and told me I couldn’t date until I got at least my green belt. Certainly there’s other benefits than knowing how to block blows, gouge eyes, kick groins, or break knees, but those were the ones uppermost in my parents’ thoughts at the time.
If only it burned only them though…!
Idiots. I can’t even grasp how the brain like blobs in those people’s heads function. I believe I will keep my daughter in martial arts and prepare her to take care of evil should it trouble her. I just wish I knew at what age most parents start taking their kids to the range.
6 or 7 with strict supervision, 9 with her own gun imo
I shot my first rounds at 4 or 5. The first trip was part of the “this is what happens when you shoot something with a firearm, and this is why firearms are NOT toys and are always treated as if they are loaded” training. Somewhere between that and 6 or 7, when I got my first shotgun (20 gauge, and I still have it), there were several trips to the range where I learned how to shoot accurately – the safe handling stuff happened at home. I was also the 4th child, and not the first that was trained this way.
Depends on the kid. If she’s ready to follow instructions UNQUESTIONINGLY AND IMMEDIATELY (for safety reasons), and big enough to hold the gun and pull the trigger (physics), she’s old enough. I don;t care if she’s 5 or 15.
If she’s not ready, it doesn’t matter if she’s 15 or 50.
I was 8 when my dad put a .357 in my hand… If you think your kid is old enough to understand, teach them!
I set up a BB gun range in my backyard. Santa brought Daisy Pink Carbines and Daisy Bucks. The kids all wear safety glasses and are quickly learning safe handling while ventilating Shoot-N-C zombie targets. They won’t learn any younger!
If you take the time and make the investment to defend your self, and I don’t, then that makes me feel bad. So of course you should not make me feel like i’m lazy or helpless, and you should just be a victim too. Because it’s never my fault, it’s the fault of someone else, like the government, except for Obama, Just hold hands and visualize Unicorns. Don’t think about yucky stuff.
A lot of the opposition to home-schooling has the same basis — some people don’t want to go that much work with their children, but if you do home-school your kids, it makes them look bad, so they don’t want anybody to be able to do it.
And of course shooting a rapist has one great advantage over (to choose a completely random example) pushing a rapist over a ten-foot wall: When you shoot him, you know he’s dead; fifty years later, you won’t be worried that you might have left him alive to hurt somebody.
Let the people say: AMEN!.
As the father of a teenage daughter, I taught her early on (read: 9 years old) where to kick the guy for most effect, and various other dirty tricks I never taught my boys. I also taught her to take responsibility, be assertive, and don’t take crap from anyone just because she is a girl. As a result, most of the boys are either her best friends or afraid her.
The fact that her three older brothers are either huge (like @correia45 huge), or study MMA doesn’t hurt.
You should put her in MMA as well. Knowing how to snap ankles, break collarbones, destroy elbows, gouge out eyes, do throat strikes etc. are all useful for girls. The primary philosophy should be “Engage to disengage; but while engaging, do permanently damaging and immediately disabling destructive violence.”
Women shouldn’t need to learn to protect themselves against rape #missnevada educate and respect yourself as a woman #rapeculture
…Right. And as an adult woman – generally not the weakest, smallest, or drunkest thing in my immediate vicinity – self-defense classes are also very good at helping me get skills to help protect other people.
You know, for the times when I am not the victimest victimy victim in the room.
It’s like these people are going out of their way to draw a box that says “self-responsible free citizens inside” and then lock it, with themselves on the outside.
I’m okay with them locking themselves outside – the proverbial zombies can get them that way. The problem is they aren’t limiting it to themselves.
Yeah. Not carrying so much for the Sisterhood, if that is it.
(I am still shaking my head over this. When women (or anyone) look at the world, and only see people bigger than themselves, who might deal out abuse, and ignore the people smaller than themselves, who might need protection, there was something wrong with their upbringing.)
(Logic dictates that the medium person figure out how to enlist the larger person in protection of the smaller person. Except, duh, that’s traditional human society. It seems that many people would rather create a new world where all abandon the weakest, or else join in with the largest in dealing out abuse. I don’t get it. Who raised these people?)
keranih wrote:
” I don’t get it. Who raised these people?”
I think you’ll find most of them came from single-parent households where dad was out of the picture (mom was either divorced or never married). And single mothers usually don’t have much time for their kids while trying to hold down a job, which means handing the kids off to one daycare center after another. (Some of those daycare centers have names like “____ville Public High School”.)
Which means the answer to “Who raised these people?” is “the State”. Which, in turn, explains a lot. When you criticize the State, you’re criticizing their mommy and daddy. No wonder they get irrationally angry about it.
Yeah… I can see that. No wonder they also hold parents who actually parent in such dripping contempt. Seething jealousy at seeing what they should have had.
@Robin Munn. That’s so sad and it makes perfect sense.
Robin – yeah. That does make sense. And my heart hurt.
Learning (or advocating) self-defense is not “blaming the victim”.
It’s straight-up announcing “FUCK YOU! I’m not going to BE a victim!”
And THAT is the problem. Without a significant portion of the populace seeing themselves as victims, the SJW’s won’t won’t have anyone to look up to them. They’d have to rely on their talents and intelligence to get respect. IOW, they’d be screwed.
Social version of Munschausen by proxy? Yeah that idea fits.
“I will not submit”? *grin*
Ah, but it’s also announcing that you don’t trust the Government to protect you, and that cannot be borne.
I think the mindset you describe is extremely harmful and out of touch with reality. But I do sort of understand it.
It is a cultural thing. They view taking responsibility for your own self-defense as “joining the cult of individualism”. They view rapists as someone in “the collective” who hasn’t been sufficiently indoctrinated. If only the collective had more power…
Individualist are opposed to giving more power to the collective hence we, by our very nature, are opposed to what they view as a force for good. Giving individual women the power to defend themselves distinguishes them from the masses of women that do not have the inclination, skills, or tools to defend themselves. It is cultural suicide for the collective to encourage individuals to stand out.
So they believe rapists are just people who are mentally strong enough to resist the collective hive mind and that the only solution is a more powerful hive mind? If that’s what your saying, it’s an interesting thought. Although, I am pretty sure they truly believe rape is somehow institutionalized. They are just arrogant people who refuse to admit they might possibly be wrong about something.
My hypothesis is they believe individualist “only think of what is good for themselves” and hence are predisposed to rape. Rapists need to think of what is good for the collective instead of what is good for themselves. To the extent that “institutions” encourage/allow individualists a culture of rape has been institutionalized.
This just all logical gibberish to pre-convict men as a group of immoral crimes. It’s the exact same mechanism we’re seeing in SFF. You create a scarecrow, you scapegoat men, next thing you know look who’s winning the Nebula Awards.
That’s one thing, but in larger America culture this is plain dangerous, because the logical end game isn’t some awards, but discriminatory laws.
Reblogged this on Wyldewoody musings and commented:
Important stuff
Honestly, this pisses me off so much! These are the SAME PEOPLE who claim to be able to “take care” of themselves, you know, they don’t “need” a man…but they sure don’t want to take ownership of protecting themselves. It is sooooo much easier to expect EVERYONE around them to change and then whine when it doesn’t occur. Newsflash: a criminal does not care whether you have “educated” yourself on the “rape culture”. Where exactly is this pink little crime-free world supposed to come from?
And how in the hell is making sure that you can defend yourself as a woman bad? I do not get that AT ALL.
I know, maybe we can post Rape Free Zones, they can hang those signs up with the Gun Free Zone signs, because THAT has worked out so well for them!
What the hell is going on in this country anymore? I suggest the following on Twitter, those of us who don’t live in fear of being attacked start posting the hashtag #notaf-ingvictim. We can post pictures of ourselves holding the signs too. From the gun range…the kickboxing classes, the model-mugging classes, etc. There are just as many of us who live in reality as these nut jobs.
At least Nia Sanchez seems to have some common sense.
That is brilliant! I already love posting pictures of me at my tae kwon do classes, and now adding #notaf-ingvictim will make posting them that much more fun!
frompennsyltucky wrote: “Honestly, this pisses me off so much! These are the SAME PEOPLE who claim to be able to ‘take care’ of themselves, you know, they don’t ‘need’ a man…but they sure don’t want to take ownership of protecting themselves.”
Yup. Back in the late seventies, I researched rape for a college class, and found out that about half of all rapes that occurred in the U.S. involved a man breaking into the home of a single woman, and about another ten percent started with a man hiding in the back seat of a woman’s car and ambushing her when she got behind the wheel. Actions to stop those seemed obvious. So I mentioned casually one day that over half of all rapes could be prevented by taking proper precautions, and a ‘feminist’ jumped all over me for (of course) ‘blaming the victim.’ Sadly, it didn’t occur to me to say ‘So, you think it’s impossible for any woman to protect herself from rape under any circumstances?’ Hilarity would have ensued.
Putting a lock on your door means you support burglary.
If you leave your wallet on the front doorstep and someone steals it, that is the thief’s fault, not yours! We must teach people not to steal!
( socialist think ) It’s your fault for having more money than the theif, and not freely giving it to him, you capitalist pig.
Kris, I remember the ’70s and that’s almost verbatim the attitude the ‘elites’ had about crime.
I was born in ’61. Been there, got the t-shirt.
Actually, it *is* the thief’s fault. No one should be taking wallets, let alone taking them from your front porch.
Having said that, since I don’t want my wallet to be stolen, I do my best to keep it in my pocket, or at least on my night stand. And if I do forget, and accidentally leave my wallet on the porch, and it gets stolen, I’m still going to insist that the thief, if caught, should have charges brought against him!
(And this is why taking common sense measures to prevent victimization isn’t “blaming the victim”: rape is wrong, so we should do our best to prosecute those who commit rape, even if the victim could have been better aware of her surroundings, but a little awareness will go a long way to preventing such horror from happening in the first place!)
Remember the old “Lock your car. Don’t let a good boy go bad.” campaign? New flash! A good boy will not steal your car.
It all started as astroturf. There are these groups for the prevention of “sexual assault” that rake in the bucks. They have to spread this “rape culture” meme. And, sadly, there are a lot of shrill harpies out there who love to be part of that club. Colleges have expanded the definition of “sexual assault” so many men have no idea what they’ve done to be called up to the tribunal. Luckily, some of these guys have pluck and they’re suing now, which I support and celebrate.
When making eye contact is considered “sexual harassment” and proof of “rape culture”, then you’ve got problems. And this is what’s going on at colleges all over the country. It’s a very dangerous trend.
On the note of “eye contact = sexual harassment” vein… there’s this piece of news.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2014/06/09/13/16/woman-attacks-man-on-public-beach-for-using-drone
The only other bit I could find on it was on The Daily Mail. Funny that…
Maybe it’s me but I’m having a hard time figuring out where you stand on this issue. X0D
Hmmm….maybe that’s why I’m liking MHI series so much; it seems to be the little guy getting the field level and getting some back.
Go Skippy! oo/
The problem with this “rape culture” nonsense, first of all, is that the academic Left has expanded the term “rape” to include a hell of a lot of consensual sex…and behavior that has nothing to do with sex or violence at all.
As an example of the mindset at work here, I present one academic’s “profile” of a “typical collegiate rapist:”
>”After that night, the accuser spoke with several Occidental employees, including Danielle Dirks, an assistant professor of sociology. Dirks told the accuser that Doe “fit the profile of other rapists on campus in that he had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports team], and was ‘from a good family.'”<
http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/04/occidental-expels-student-for-rape-under
Short version of the case above: Two college students decided to hook up at the female's invitation. The female then had morning-after regrets, thanks in part to idiots like like Professor Dirks – and decided she'd actually been raped because both of them had been drinking.
One suspects that Prof. Dirks is one of those feminist – womynist? – lunatics that defines all penis-in-vagina sex as rape.
In any event, the cops investigated and ruled that the sex had obviously been consensual. The school nonetheless – selectively applying its own guidelines regarding sexual contact between students – ruled that the male student was a rapist and expelled him. The unidentified student, of course, is now suing the school.
Pray tell: How do you "teach students not to rape" when you can't even decide what "rape" actually is in the first place, or change your definition of "rape" after the fact?
It’s not about teaching anyone not to rape, it’s about expanding the definition so you can call it an epidemic. Then you get the hashtags and the organizations and the dollars rolling in. All at the expense of a generation of people (both men and women) who will be severely damaged by this crap. Can you imagine trying to date in this atmosphere?
The question was purely rhetorical. And yes, you might be safer trying to clear a Waziristan minefield with a pointed stick, then trying to pick up a coed on a modern American college campus these days.
Of course, while the Left demands we teach boys not to rape, they’re also all about teaching teenage girls about the joys of sadomasochistic OH JOHN RINGO NO sex.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/10/video-planned-parenthood-sex-education-everything-youd-guess-it-would-be/
*facepalm*
If this continues on for much longer it won’t just be us religious types who simply swear off sex until marriage.
I’m fine with that. A rather large number of young men and women won’t be, but what else are they going to do?
Personally I think (hope) a lot of the people who believe this crap are simply well intentioned idiots, but that hardly matters against the reality of how freaking messed up its making my generation.
Larry, as usual, you have eloquently said everything I’ve been thinking. I’d say I want to subscribe to your newsletter, but, I guess I already do. Thank You.
Funny, in my defensive driving course way back when I drove for Fed Ex, I was SUPPOSSED to make eye contact with oncoming traffick to make sure they saw me. Both Men and WOMEN. I guess that was rape as well. I don’t have a little girl, I have a son. A great kid with a good heart that cares about others. And we’ve been teaching him to be a man, following those same prinsciples. If I had a daughter, i’d teach her the same things…. be aware of your surroundings, panick is natural but often counter to what you must do to survive, and if, if someone thinks you are their prey, fuck them up beyond recognition, then call me and I’ll take care of the body.
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
That being said, how far into cognitive dissonance do you have to be before (advocating self defense = blame the victim) makes sense?
Only slightly facetiously, I’m surprised that NOW isn’t more pro-gun, or at least pro-self-defense. What’s more empowering to the sex with less muscle mass, a firearm that levels the playing field, or believing that rapists are just a few sensitivity classes away from respect?
Expanding on this “logic” train, I guess that they believe that all rapists can be rehabilitated, and that any recidivism doesn’t indicate a failure of their logic, it just means we haven’t been rehabilitating ENOUGH. This’ll work if we just keep trying the same thing harder, right?
There is no transitive property of guilt or empathy. Just because you are vulnerable to these emotions does not in any way confer the same thing to criminals who might prey upon you. That seems to be one of the fundamental failures of liberal “logic” in this case. As Larry said, criminals don’t give a damn what you think or believe, and those in denial just can’t wrap their minds around the idea that THE world might not be simply a larger version of how they perceive THEIR world.
Growing up, our next door neighbor flew for American Airlines (a little leeway, your honor. My point is coming). Fred was a conservative, but otherwise very much in the cognitive dissonance camp. My mom knew another AA pilot, and asked him if he knew Fred. His response was classic; “Oh yeah. Fred’s the kind of guy who, while you were crashing, would dig out the flight manuals and, in great detail, explain to you how this could not be happening.”
Greg “Blotto” Garrett wrote:
“There is no transitive property of guilt or empathy. Just because you are vulnerable to these emotions does not in any way confer the same thing to criminals who might prey upon you. That seems to be one of the fundamental failures of liberal ‘logic’ in this case.”
It’s a human failing, not a liberal one. ‘Everyone is really exactly like me’ can be found in many places. For example, when whites expanded across the continent, the majority thought of the Amerinds as sub-human because they didn’t yearn to live like whites. A minority saw that the ‘Injuns’ were obviously human, and assumed that as soon as it was explained to them properly, the savages would become Presbyterian farmers. That the natives might be human and NOT want to live like whites seems to have escaped almost everyone but the mountain men, and they liked living the way the Indians did. I NEVER encountered anyone saying anything like ‘The thought of living like the Injuns appalls me, but they’re human and have a right to live that way.’
As a greater man than I said: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
“…. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
“It’s a human failing, not a liberal one. ‘Everyone is really exactly like me’ can be found in many places.”
To be sure, which is why I added the qualifier “…in this case.” In a thread that’s bouncing around from Paganism to Phineas & Ferb, the last thing I wanted to do was open the discussion up further beyond the original topic. Having said that, you are of course correct that limited perception knows no political bounds. I oppose belief and champion reason wherever and whenever I can.
Dehumanizing opponents has also long been a staple of both “good” and “evil”, though admittedly sociopaths have an easier time of it than those with a more intact conscious. I doubt serial killers and rapists have much trouble with PTSD, at least due to guilt or regret. “Good” people have demonized other groups, from “Japs” in WWII to “immigrants”, well, forever. That doesn’t make it right though, nor does the existence of the trait pretty much across the board mean that anyone pointing it out is invalidated by hypocrisy.
As far as the Solzenitzyn quote, I’m old and prefer the shorter one from Mary Shelley: “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
In that context, crooks are like the law-abiding in that they are pursuing what they want. In the case of crooks though, what they want is whatever serves them directly, while law-abiding citizens tend to pursue what benefits society (or themselves through society). What really floats most crooks’ boats (and those of the law-abiding for that matter) is compliance, but crooks lack empathy (or apply it selectively) The suffering they cause to those around them never rises to the point of their caring. “Good” people can suppress their empathy too, though it takes a little more manipulating, while the sociopath lacks empathy from the get-go. Arguing; “None of us is perfect, so what’s the point?” doesn’t really help, though it does explain at least some of the rampant alcoholism in Russia.
Larry: I think there’s a disconnect between the words that group is using, and the meaning you’re deriving from them. When they say “teach men not to rape”, I suspect you’re mostly thinking of “held at knifepoint and dragged into an alley by a stranger” rape. But there is lots of rape in the world that doesn’t fit that narrative, from molestation of children by authority figures to date rape. I think a better way of phrasing the statement would be “ensure that men know what constitutes rape”.
And when they speak of “rape culture”, they are not talking solely of forcible sexual penetration. Again, “sexual assault culture” might be a better term (at least for accuracy, although it lacks the verbal punch of the other phrase), encompassing all of the ways in which women are harassed on a regular basis. Now, maybe the more overt ones don’t happen where you can see them, and to be fair, most of the stories I hear are from SF and NYC, but I’m talking about women being groped, catcalled, followed, aggressively leered at, etc. The term “rape culture” is used to describe an environment in which some portion of the men in that society grow up thinking that is acceptable or even positive behaviour to engage in. (And I know that you know better than to say that culture and environment don’t affect how children turn out as they grow up.) So that sort of thing happens all the time, and sometimes it goes farther and women are raped, and then women hear that they need to be the ones to defend themselves (and yes, I do realise that in the moment, they’re the only ones they can count on being there, and on their side) and I can see how that feels like if they are unsuccessful at defending themselves, they are being saddled with the culpability of having been raped.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of what that crowd says is plumb stupid. But I think you should consider the possibility of thinking about the idea that the overall culture of America is a lot more accepting of sexually oriented misbehaviour towards women than you might have previously realised.
So what you are saying is that by responding to their actual words, and the actual definitions of the actual words that they are actually using, then I’m failing to understand all of the nuance of the subject? 😀
Yep. Pretty much. It was a phrase chosen for verbal “punch” and succinctness. “Culture that accepts pushing boundaries, which leads to rape” is kind of a mouthful, and doesn’t have the verbal impact of the phrase “rape culture”. As a writer, surely you’re aware of the power of words.
Being “aware of the power of words” is what makes people reject lies-by-definition like “rape culture”
Words are still just words, Perlhaqr.
These ultra-sensitive feminists are trying to redefine ogling and saying boorish things as rape, as well as redefining consensual drunken sex as rape, but only for the male partner.
They need to be told to harden the fuck up, and not have their delusions coddled.
@perlhaqr
Joel sort of said the same thing, but I feel it’s important to reiterate this fact:
The fact that words are so powerful is precisely WHY it is so important that we fight against the Orwellian-style attempts to control thought through language that the modern left has gotten so fond of using.
Words are powerful, but they also have meaning. That meaning is the source of their power. When people try to twist a word to mean something it does not, but at the same time try to fool people who are still familiar with the old meaning into following them, all for political gain, we are falling prey to the worst kind of deceit.
It’s doubleplusungood.
I have to partially agree with Perlhaqr here. There’s a spectrum from “trying to pick up up someone” to “harassment” to “criminal sexual assault.” Because that spectrum is real, it’s important to make distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, and among unacceptable behaviors. But it’s also important to remember the continuity really is there.
I once read Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape all the way through. It has several sentences that are border-line insane (just look up the reviews from when it came out), and a chapter about rape in wartime that never mentions the Red Army’s gangbang of every non-Soviet women they encountered, but a lot of it was quite insightful.
As philosopher Walter Kaufmann put it, the first question about an idea shouldn’t be whether what someone said is correct, or even what did they mean. The first question should be ‘What did they see?’
Yes.
I have extensive training in martial arts and self defense. My physical prowess and ability to protect and defend myself did not protect me from being raped.
My rapist was not some evil villain lurking on a street corner. I wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t buff or all that much more physically stronger than me. I knew him. I knew him very well and I cared a great deal for him and he cared for me, too, in his own way.
He took what he wanted because he thought it was owed him. It was a crime of selfishness and of hurt feelings and of misunderstanding. He did not know better. I know him well enough to know that, and that is why I can forgive him for what he did to me, and that’s why this whole blog-post and discussion has been so triggering and so upsetting to me.
I have been in many places and many situations where men have said or done things to me because they thought it was funny, or because they thought it was owed them or because it was just “expected”. Rape culture, at its base, is a culture of entitlement and selfishness. The way to stop selfishness is to teach people how to respect each other and be selfless. That has to start when they’re kids and teenagers. Respect for people’s boundaries must be taught, and it must be taught early.
I have lived in a country where men are taught, from the time they are children, that it’s all right to hit their mothers and their sisters but it’s not all right to hit their fathers, because only the fathers are respected. It is not as bad as that here in America, but there are many subtle, insidious things I have noticed. People who should have known better have done some terrible things to me, said terrible things to me, simply because they knew they could and didn’t care if it hurt me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d been raped. I shouldn’t have to tell people I’m hurt in order to be treated with respect. I have noticed so much more of our own rape culture since being raped, the thoughtless, disrespectful, entitled ways we treat each other. And what’s more, I’ve noticed how many times people say the words “I love you” when what they really mean is “I want you to give me more of you. What I have isn’t enough.”
This thing is real. It’s an insidious monster that lies at the heart of so many things wrong in this world.
Teaching women to fight isn’t enough. We must teach everyone to be kind, to be selfless, to respect each other’s bodies and boundaries, wishes, experiences, and feelings. No one owes us anything.
Laura said: “Teaching women to fight isn’t enough. We must teach everyone to be kind, to be selfless, to respect each other’s bodies and boundaries, wishes, experiences, and feelings. No one owes us anything.”
0_o Holy crap. That’s a whole boatload of serious mental right there.
Sorry to hear about your misfortune, however if you -can- fight back but refuse to do so, that’s called a “personal choice”. You chose not to maim or kill this guy, that’s entirely up to you.
I’ve chosen not to maim or kill people doing serious wrong against me too. Difference between you and me, I own those choices. I made them myself. I’m not a victim. I’m the engine of destruction that decided it wasn’t worth the trouble that day.
And I don’t go around saying IDIOTIC crap like “We must teach everyone to be kind, to be selfless, to respect each other’s bodies and boundaries, wishes, experiences, and feelings.” and chastising anybody who won’t nod along. Because that’s flatly impossible.
Sorry if that harshes your mellow, but lets not lie about Reality. If you could teach that kind of thing don’t you think it would have been done already? In all of history, you’re the first one who thought of this?
There will always be assholes who want to hurt women. When they strike you are ALWAYS going to be alone, because that’s when they do it. Nothing in this world is going to change that unfortunate truth.
This is called PERSONAL HONOR. He did what he did, and YOU let him live. -You- decided. Cowgirl-up and own it.
I’m not whining or complaining about reality, in the whole little-girl-whine “Can’t we all just get along?”, I’m also not moping about being a victim. However, the problem with going to the extreme of denying that something was done TO me and that I had 100% choice in the matter, as you suggest, is that the PTSD I dealt with for years is real. Trauma happens with things happen TO you far more often than when you’re the one completely in charge of a situation.
We’re not in charge of absolutely everything that happens to us, as much as we’d like to be. Just like you can’t think positive thoughts and cure every illness or hardship you face.
I’m all for teaching people to defend themselves. I’m all for never whining in victim-hood. But I don’t think we should ignore teaching the other aspects of life, either. Like common decency, and what consent is.
Laura said: “I’m all for teaching people to defend themselves. I’m all for never whining in victim-hood. But I don’t think we should ignore teaching the other aspects of life, either. Like common decency, and what consent is.”
Yeah, like anyone here is saying that. The point is not that we shouldn’t teach common decency, duh, the point is that there are some humans who simply will not be taught. Too bad so sad, but those are the sons of bitches that Sam Colt’s revolver and Karate etc. were invented to take care of.
Laura also said: “However, the problem with going to the extreme of denying that something was done TO me and that I had 100% choice in the matter, as you suggest, is that the PTSD I dealt with for years is real. Trauma happens with things happen TO you far more often than when you’re the one completely in charge of a situation.”
Again, I’m not denying something was done to you against your will. I have no idea of the circumstances, and frankly its none of my business anyway. All I have to go on is your description.
YOU said you could have stopped him, but didn’t. If true, that was 100% your choice.
Trauma happens to everybody. I had PTSD too, you know. Bad dreams, skin prickling, shakes, crying for no reason, the works. I got mine from -women- abusing me in the workplace. Went into a decline for a while.
You want to know when I climbed back out? When I -finally- took ownership of the situation. When I -finally- admitted I could have wrecked the lot of them, and that it was my choice not to.
My. Choice. And I’d do it again.
That’s the cure for PTSD. Own it and move the hell on. Keep blaming it on That Guy, you get to keep the shakes and the bad dreams too.
The truth about life is that while you are not in charge of what happens to you, you -are- in charge of what you do with it. Its the thing that lets people break addictions, climb out of poverty, win races, beat depression, do all the things we do in life when the conditions suck and we get up and go to work anyway.
Or you can keep telling us how Bad things are. Up to you, girlie.
@The Phantom
First off, other people in this thread have said it, but I’d like to thank you again for sharing your story. More importantly, I just wanted to say that I agree with you 100% on the way to beat PTSD, and I wish more people would take that to heart. There was one thing I wanted to comment on a little further, though:
That’s the cure for PTSD. Own it and move the hell on. Keep blaming it on That Guy, you get to keep the shakes and the bad dreams too.
That, as well as a few things Laura said about how she DOESN’T blame her rapist, highlights one of the more insidious features of the “rape culture” meme, and one of the main reasons why so many people are so willing to embrace the idea, despite it being patently ridiculous.
As Laura, and others, have pointed out, most rapes aren’t done by strangers, but by people the victim knows, and often people the victim cares about. Like you said, they don’t want to take responsibility themselves, but at the same time, they don’t want to blame this person who is close to them. So, instead, they latch onto an excuse that allows them to blame some impersonal “culture” and shift all the responsibility to society. Responsibility doesn’t work that way, though; By definition, it’s something that an individual has to take for themselves. In a way, that’s even more sad than blaming it on That Guy. It’s an extremely comfortable lie, though, so people latch onto it with all their might. But it’s still a lie, and as such will never solve anything.
Ultimately, it’s not about blame, it’s about responsibility.
Holly had an excellent quote about this exact same subject in Monster Hunter Legion, where she tells Mosh basically the exact same thing you just told Laura, but in rather more colorful language, because it’s Holly. I’d love to quote it, but I don’t exactly have easy access to my books right now…
Holly is a great survivor character. She’s not based on any one person, but a conglomerate of a bunch of different people that I’ve known and worked with over the years, many of them from teaching shooting. Her bit with Mosh? Straight up words of wisdom I heard from people who’d survived some horrible things talking to people trying to get through bad times. As a result Holly is one of the most popular characters I’ve ever written.
But of course, that doesn’t fit the SJW’s narrative about insensitive old me. 🙂
If I may be allowed to toot my own horn a bit, the main character of my novelette “Live to Tell” (available on Amazon and other ebook venders, yadayadayada) is someone recovering from PTSD and both beta readers and the few Amazon reviews I have commented favorably on his working through that.
bjlinden, that’s why I like Larry’s books. The guy has obviously been through the same wringer and washer as I have. He writes with the authority of real-world experience.
Or he’s a genius of B.S. who’s managed to fake real-world experience BRILLIANTLY. ~:D
Either way, I like to read about characters who adapt and overcome a lot more than characters who whinge and stumble their way through an adventure.
Holly is a great example of a female character who’s been knocked down a bunch, but just keeps getting up and getting on with it. That’s my kind of chick. I’ll read about her all day long.
hint, hint Larry. bwaha!
We seem to be in reverse situations. I was only able to quit the worst of my PTSD when I finally admitted to myself I hadn’t been in full control of the situation. That I can’t control everything, that sheer determination doesn’t fix everything, and that people have their choices, too. Life is weird, isn’t it? The lessons we learn tend to balance out or expand the things we’d known or thought before, none of which, I realize, are easily summarized in discussion situations like this. Oops? In any case, glad to hear you’ve recovered. And yes, you’re perfectly right. We all choose how to react to whatever comes our way. It’s one of the most heroic and powerful tools we possibly have at our disposal: to never give up. 🙂
Some general comments to others’ replies, since it won’t let me respond individually:
Rapists aren’t always aware they’re rapists for the same reason jerks don’t always know they’re being a jerk.
Being theoretically capable of taking down your opponent doesn’t always mean you can do it in a real life situation. The good guys’ blasters sometimes miss. Sometimes the bad guys’ blasters will score a direct hit on their first try. Sometimes people take you by surprise and you’re unprepared to act against them. There are many ways these things can and do happen. Railing at me because I didn’t overcome someone even though I was physically capable of it in practice, is frankly not a wise reaction. I know women who had training or had spray on hand and couldn’t reach it or were overwhelmed or taken by surprise is a perfectly viable instance. There are so many possibilities.
Non-consensual sex is rape. The end. Unfortunately that definition has a lot of scope and range of experiences. No two stories of rape I’ve heard have been the same, but each of them have been equally horrible and fall within that definition.
Forgiveness and permission to ever do it again are two separate things.
To the commenter who said I’m diluting rape culture’s definition by showing its links to selfishness, I want to be clear. Rape is a terrible thing, but it doesn’t just come out of nowhere. At its root is selfishness, the desire to take what hasn’t been offered. I have not diminished rape or its various and differing cultures around the world by saying its event horizon stretches out at an invisible range through other attributes that can and should be fought against. Some people take selfishness to terrible extremes, others only skim lightly off the top and have more respect or self-control than that.
My comment was mostly to say one thing: teaching self-defense is great, it will do a lot of good and save a lot of people from horrible experiences, but the issue is more complex and complicated than that. Teaching self-defense and weaponry can’t be our only answer for preventing rape. It’s just one place to start.
Laura, much as I don’t want to be a jerk to you, I have some real problems with your story. You’re contradicting yourself.
First off, I’m sorry you were raped. It shouldn’t have happened. That said…
“My rapist was not some evil villain lurking on a street corner. I wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t buff or all that much more physically stronger than me. I knew him. I knew him very well and I cared a great deal for him and he cared for me, too, in his own way.
He took what he wanted because he thought it was owed him.”
Wait a minute. Either you were coherent or you weren’t. You say you weren’t drunk, and you imply you weren’t high or unconscious.
That leaves us with, either you consented to sex, or you didn’t. If you didn’t consent, it was rape. But you imply heavily that you were capable of physically demolishing him.
If you felt sorry for him, and consented, it wasn’t rape. If you liked the guy and consented, and felt bad about it afterwards, it wasn’t rape. If he was physically insistent, and you simply failed to tell him no, IT WASN’T RAPE.
It may have been a really bad decision on your part. It may have been something that you felt bad about afterwards. It may have involved miscommunication. There may be a thousand factors that were involved in your bad decision, but it was YOUR decision to fail to tell him no.
The only other scenario that I’m left with is that you told him no, he tried to force you to have sex, and you simply failed to stop him when you were physically capable of doing so. This seems to be the situation you’re implying. Violent situations are very emotionally charged, so nobody can judge you, but your sympathy for this guy is very misplaced. It doesn’t matter what he was taught, or what he thought he was owed, or anything else. You say rapists need to be taught not to rape, but “allowing” a guy to rape you because you “feel sorry for him” is the biggest kind of reinforcement to this kind of scum that there is! If you didn’t try to fight, if you don’t press charges afterward, if you don’t take it upon your own shoulders to not let this kind of thing happen, YOU ARE TEACHING THE RAPIST THAT THIS IS OK.
Rape is an emotionally charged issue, but I have some MAJOR problems with what you’re saying. I don’t think it’s right for feminists to claim that there’s a culture (whether worldwide generally or in the US specifically) that teaches men that it’s OK to rape, and then to demand that this culture change, and then subsequently refuse to endorse the message that they’re sending. If you want to teach rapists that rape is bad, then either avail yourself of physically equalizing forces and defend yourself, or if you choose not to do so, then at least avail yourself of the legal system we have in place after the fact and SEND HIS ASS TO JAIL. Don’t reinforce bad behavior and then demand that others fix the very behavior you’re reinforcing. It makes no sense to me. And I’m on your side. I think we should kill rapists so they don’t rape anymore. I know women that have been raped. I have a wife and I have daughters. I’d LOVE to kill rapists for them. I’d LOVE to make the world safe for them. I’d LOVE it if they could walk through the worst neighborhoods in a negligee at midnight and be perfectly safe. But I’m not capable of doing that, in part because feminists think that we can simply say, “Raper, no raping!” and the rapists will snap their fingers and say, “Aww, man!” and walk away.
Guess what? The world doesn’t work that way. Humans don’t work that way. There are predatory people around, and if we don’t kill them, they will kill, rape, rob and do anything else to us that they feel like. I know. I’ve dealt with them. There IS no education or reform package that works on them short of death. The recidivism rate for sociopaths after death is given is 0%. HELP ME HELP YOU!
Unfortunately, in order to respond adequately to your concerns, I would have to give you a play-by-play of what happened, which I’m unwilling to do.
I’m going to have to stand by what I said, in all of its abstraction.
Sorry, but I don’t owe anyone any details so they can pass judgment on what happened for me.
To the commenter who implied I’m a whiny brat who needs the world to revolve around me and protect me because I said I found the post triggering: wow.
Yes, the post was triggering, no, I do not need coddling or protection. But I thought it worth mentioning in a discussion about preventing people from hurting other people that some of the attitudes I’m seeing here cause harm, too.
You might be interested in reading this. It does a pretty decent job of bridging the gaps in points of view. https://medium.com/human-parts/a-gentlemens-guide-to-rape-culture-7fc86c50dc4c
First sentence of the article: “If you are a man, you are part of rape culture.” Really? Let me guess, you didn’t read much of the thread before posting that if you thought that would go over well here.
“pretty decent job of bridging the gaps in points of view”? Sorry, not buying it.
It wasn’t meant to be an article 100% in line with what everyone here is saying. 🙂 But it’s an articulately expressed dissenting point of view to most of the comments here, which I thought would be welcome, since I personally enjoy learning about other people’s experiences and views. I hope you read and considered the full article before responding to my link.
Please don’t misunderstand, nowhere did I intend to tell you to shut up. I’m all for free speech as much as anyone here. But we all here reserve the right to disagree with something that someone posts, many of us in a quite colorful manner. And yes, I did read the whole article.
Glad to hear it. 🙂
@Laura- If you have extensive training in martial arts and self defense then how exactly were you raped by someone without either killing him or being hospitalized yourself? I spent six years as an assistant instructor(although I don’t practice anymore) and I have spent plenty of time training men and women of all body types and dispositions. The weakest, both mentally and physically, of all of them left my dojo able to kill in self-defense or die trying. So did you try to defend yourself? From your comment it sounds like you didn’t. You even specifically said,”I wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t buff or all that much more physically stronger than me.” so he couldn’t have easily overpowered you.
You even said,”He did not know better. I know him well enough to know that, and that is why I can forgive him for what he did to me…”. First of all no YOU SHOULD NOT FORGIVE HIM. You should have put him in jail. Second, by making these kinds of statements you are discouraging other women to learn how to defend themselves and encouraging women to be victims. That it is okay for men to rape and they should be forgiven for it. How can you possibly think that is okay?
“I have lived in a country where men are taught, from the time they are children, that it’s all right to hit their mothers and their sisters but it’s not all right to hit their fathers, because only the fathers are respected. It is not as bad as that here in America, but there are many subtle, insidious things I have noticed.” This tells me two things. One, you lived in some hellhole of a country. Two, that you are still ignorant about the culture of The United States. Misogyny is not acceptable here.
Thank you for your wonderful reply.
I have to say, I wonder where this ‘Laura’ came from? The Middle Eastern Muslim countries? China? Africa? Some benighted part of South America? South-East Asia? One of the various Muslim countries?
Her: ” No one owes us anything.”
Yet, here she is, crying about her being triggered by the post.
I don’t understand the ‘forgive her rapist’ thing. I don’t understand why she expects sympathy for her vaguely defined rape for which she ‘forgave’ her attacker for. Why are we supposed to feel sorry for her when she forgave her attacker and didn’t try to fight or resist? At least Meg did! This is what Laura sounds like:
“I was raped, this post triggered me, you’re mean! But I forgave my rapist who I didn’t fight off because it was all a huge misunderstanding, so I’m a better person, and you’re being mean to me!!!!!1 Because I’m a victim of evil misogynist men like Larry, who wrote this post that triggered me!”
@Laura
” have noticed so much more of our own rape culture since being raped, the thoughtless, disrespectful, entitled ways we treat each other.”
This is not ‘rape culture.’ This is ‘thoughtless, disrespectful, entitled culture.’ It may even be ‘misogynistic culture.’ But it is not rape culture. For the umpteenth time, rape is a specific crime. Rape is not just being mean/rude/selfish/inconsiderate, and you cheapen the brutality and evil of rape every time you equate the two. Rail all you like at both of them, and I will gladly join you, but stop flinging phrases like ‘rape culture’ at something that doesn’t include rape.
“You even said,”He did not know better. I know him well enough to know that, and that is why I can forgive him for what he did to me…”. First of all no YOU SHOULD NOT FORGIVE HIM. You should have put him in jail.”
I have to say I don’t agree that you shouldn’t forgive people. I think forgiveness is a thing we do for ourselves, as much as for others. Because hatred and bitterness eats away at you and can turn you into someone you don’t want to be.
That said, you certainly shouldn’t get back together with him or hang out with or any of that nonsense. Forgiveness does not mean you forget.
I am very confused about Laura’s scenario, though. I’m sure she doesnt’ want to put it all out there, but being vague just invites questions. If you fought him off and were unable to win, that sucks, but if you did that no one can convince me that the guy ‘didn’t know better’. I mean, I just don’t understand what goes on in people’s heads when they are so interested in not blaming the guy for what, if it actually is rape, is an obviously blame worthy action, while at the same time blaming all of society for some sort of vaguely defined ‘rape culture’.
There are rape cultures, but in the US they are generally small pockets like the seedier parts of hollywood or in a cult. Maybe the occasional bad frat. The rest of the country is pretty well on the ‘rape is bad’ freight train.
@Laura
If I go by your definition of rape, I have been raped several times by someone close to me. However, I won’t be championed by the members of the #yesallwomen movement, or those that decry “rape culture”. The reason it won’t happen is that I am male, and therefore guilty from even before I was born. I’m sure even you would refuse to consider it rape. My significant other tends to agree with you on your definition, but got caught up in her own words when she realized that’s what she had been doing to me. So my question for you is this; Have you ever once asked if your friend considered himself a rapist? Do you think that teaching your friend this definition of rape is what is meant by teaching men not to rape? Should I teach my wife that she’s raping me, or is there maybe another reason that people might like to keep the definition of rape shifting?
By the way, I’m not kidding when I say that those of that group consider men guilty before they are born. I’ve seen a grown woman stare at my pregnant wife’s belly with fear and hatred in her eyes, once she found out that we were having a son. It was as if a tiny little rapist was going to jump out and assault her.
Personally, if there is a ‘rape culture’, the fault isn’t in judeo-christian culture, but in the free love culture of the 60s. You see, that’s the cultural shift that taught us that sex should have no consequence or attachment. Could teaching people that sex has no consequence spawn a culture of rape acceptance? I bet if I brought that argument up on #yesallwomen that it wouldn’t be well received.
How does it work that the people most triggered by rape never shut up about it and tell us all to not use words even tangentially related?
when they speak of “rape culture”, they are not talking solely of forcible sexual penetration.
Such an attempt to redefine rape should be rejected out of hand – it is false and is a slap in the face to those who are victims of the real crime.
I’m talking about women being groped, catcalled, followed, aggressively leered at, etc.
Sorry chief, but none of that is rape.
Sorry chief, but none of that is rape.
Exactly. Not all boorish behavior raises to the level of rape. To equate it all as even similar is an insult to real rape victims.
If this is the new definition of rape then I really need to talk to a lawyer. I am a young man and I have been repeatedly,”groped, catcalled, followed, aggressively leered at, etc.” by members of the fairer sex. Did I get raped and didn’t even know it?
Just want to add I am not in any way trying to detract from women who have experienced this sort of behavior from men and suffered for it. I’m just trying to point out that these actions aren’t rape.
If they meant “catcall culture”, they should have said so. The term “rape culture” was invented to leave people unable to distinguish annoyance from assault from actual rape.
This works two ways: Harassment—or even “gaze”—can now be treated as rape (inflating minor injuries, or minimizing rape, or both); and disagreement with the concept of “rape culture” can now be taken as support for “rape culture”. Because #logic.
“sexually oriented misbehaviour towards women”?
The problem is that “sexually oriented misbehaviour towards women” can include “looking at a woman the wrong way” which in turn means anything a woman wants it to mean.
Sorry, not only do I disagree with your claim concerning stuff that a reasonable person would call “sexually oriented misbehaviour towards women”, I’m saying that the term “sexually oriented misbehaviour towards women” is badly misused by Leftish women.
Years ago, I heard of a study on “violence against women” where a man getting angry and leaving the room was considered “violence against women”.
IMO this sort of garbage is what Leftish women use in their attacks on men.
Under sexually oriented misbehavior, there’s an SNL skit that is “funny but its true” with Tom Brady about how to avoid a sexual harassment skit, playing off of how women often let attractive men/jerks get away with behavior that gets other men labeled as “creeps”.
transcript here as I couldn’t get to the video from my current site: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04qfunhouse.phtml
Announcer: See? It can be done. You can have sex with women at work without losing your job, by following a few simple rules:
[ the rules are displayed on-screen with accompanying check marks ]
Be Handsome..
Be Attractive..
and Don’t Be Unattractive.
So he should hire a translator first to explain the layers of meaning behind stupid shit like this?
You can’t really translate gibberish into English.
You can’t really translate gibberish into English.
Yes but you can have a prize-winning debate team that speaks nothing but gibberish!
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/how-to-speak-gibberish-win-a-national-debate-title/
Hey, Google Translate does it…Hm. Never mind; that’s Norwegian.
Let me reply as a woman. Perlhaqr, sexual misbehavior is not rape. The very things these fainting flowers of sheltered femininity (who scream they are independent and need no one) claim to rial against, they are promoting. They are teaching men it is not worth it to be a gentleman. They scream about men opening doors, they indulge in far cruder catcalls than most men will indulge in, they wear clothing designed to catch the eye (then whine that they got looked at), they complain bitterly after being propositioned when wearing teeny shorts with ‘F* Me!’ spelled out in big letters on their ass, they slap a man on the but (if he complains he’s gay, if he slaps back he’s harassing her), the list goes on. All things I have personally witnessed. None of them right and every last one of them justified by ‘violence against women’ and ‘harassment against women.’
I’ve been catcalled, leered at, and actually harassed in various ways. There is a world of difference between a bully trying to pin you to your locker in jr. High (or a creep following you through town) and getting looked at because you look good in daisy Duke’s (old style not the modern your-butt-is-showing version) and a tank top. I might listen to them if they ever bother to make that distinction, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
I think I read somewhere, probably on twitter, that we men are guilty of eye-raping woman.
The thing is, even provided that you accept every single argument they have about the definition of rape, about needing to teach men to not “rape” under that definition, and about changing the rape culture…
Teaching girls to defend themselves for now, until the wonderful future day where we have successfully rehabilitated the entire world, is NOT blaming the victim!
There is nothing incompatible with their definition of rape culture and the concept of armed self defense for women. It only becomes one when you raise up this cult of helpless victimhood.
I learned in sexual harassment awareness training while still in the Air Force (yes, I actually stayed awake and paid attention to the degree that I remembered something) that the power to define sexual harassment lies with the victim, not the perpetrator. That makes sense to a degree (certainly more so than deferring to the alleged harasser), but giving all the legal power to the alleged victim opens up the door for reverse abuse. Giving women the power to unilaterally abuse men in court would help prosecute and possibly deter rape, but at the cost of giving them the power to falsely accuse men after consensual sex. Providing a means for counter-abuse isn’t really justice. I wasn’t a rapist in college (nor have I ever been) but I was socially awkward. The last thing I needed in order to develop into the confident, respectful heterosexual I am today was the threat of being hauled in to the campus police because I looked a coed in the eye. Like criminal gun users, the only people you’re likely to influence with such aggressive law enforcement are folks who aren’t the problem in the first place. The law-abiding citizens will be cowed, while the criminals will keep committing crimes, because they just don’t care.
There is no Constitutional right to have your delusions, desires and beliefs left intact. Not wanting to be eaten won’t keep a pack of wolves from tearing you to shreds if they’re given the chance. If you don’t want to be eaten, then don’t act like food. I’m not at all defending the rapist line “she was asking for it”, but at the same time I don’t think the answer to male physical dominance is female legal dominance. The middle ground of the hypothetical “reasonable person” would be most fair, if also most elusive. If you think that eye contact is sexually aggressive, I think the reasonable person would say “Take an EST class and learn how to take an active role in your own life.” Less reasonable is to expect the world to avoid eye contact with you and you alone for the rest of your life, while simultaneously accommodating the rest of humanity’s individual peccadillos. There is no right to live a life unburdened by reality, nor is there a right to limit the definition of consensual sex to only those conditions agreed to by the most restrictive critic. In a related point, I wonder how many of the liberal women’s rights groups realize that by constraining consensual sex to its most narrow definition, they’re getting awfully close to Puritanism. Probably not their role model going in to the debate.
There is no right to be pain-free in life. No right to be responsible only for the good aspects of life, and to foist off the bad parts off on others. Pain is nature’s way of telling you to do something different, whether it’s “take your hand off the stove” or “fight off the rapist”. That’s not empowering the rapist, it’s empowering the would-be victim, while acknowledging that rapists do in fact exist, whether you like it or not. Others cannot remove all aspects of life that might cause you pain. The most extreme (and extremely wrong) expression of the liberal viewpoint was related to me years ago (by a conservative) as; “Wipe my ass for me…no wait, I’m not done yet.”
There are real rapes occurring on college campuses, and elsewhere. Reference the links below about gang rapes in India and Egypt. Argue those as “rape cultures” and you might have a point. There’s no need to pad the numbers with glances askance or cat-calls. And there are women who are victimized and hesitant to come forward and report the crimes, or better yet defend themselves before they become victims. And there are schools, police departments and other organizations more motivated to cover up the crimes than catch the criminals. Those egregious failures of justice need to be addressed and fixed. Don’t you think those are more worthy targets of feminist angst than are those of us who espouse the idea that the world is not (and will never be) conflict-free? Spastic denialist liberals intent on preserving the pain-free fantasy world of their beliefs are doing far more to perpetuate the “rape culture” than any beauty contestant audacious enough to suggest that women actually take their safety into their own hands and learn to defend themselves from a threat that is very much extant, and beyond society’s ability to eliminate. Self-defense certainly seems like a more practical alternative to the liberal playbook of guilt and nagging.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/31/world/asia/india-gang-rape/
That was glorious. Thank you.
If we’re talking about context, Miss Sanchez’s original comments were made in response to a question about sexual assault. It’s her critics who are distorting her words to fit their narrative.
But you see, perlhagr, men who can be taught not to rape were already not rapists. By redefining rape to catcalls, they are, in fact, denying *rape*. Now it means catcalls.
So a choice has been made to keep women vulnerable to rapists… so that they can focus on the gropers, catcallers, and drunk sexers.
I honestly don’t think that it is possible that there is an excuse for that.
Most of these retards are redefining rape in intensely silly ways. Apparently their goal is to classify all male vaginal penetration as rape.
Don’t feed these retards by rationalizing their retardation.
Oh, there are some who fully admit that they believe that any of what we would call “normal intercourse” is rape. Search for “PIV is Rape” if your blood pressure can stand it.
When I was a kid growing up, I was taught to respect women — all women. I found that respecting women and treating them with respect and dignity was the greatest “date bait” in the world. I won’t say I had to fight ’em off (my face is pictured in the dictionary under “ugly mug”), but I found women easy to date, and had a great time with them. Of course, I’m 67 years old, and grew up with the dinosaurs, but going back to the culture of mutual respect would cut out a lot of this crap that’s going on today. Kids today have little or no respect for parents, other adults, on each other. Is there any wonder they act the way they do? I’m talking about both boys and girls. I’m not “out of touch” – we still have a 9YO at home.
@Lea- “I have to say I don’t agree that you shouldn’t forgive people. I think forgiveness is a thing we do for ourselves, as much as for others. Because hatred and bitterness eats away at you and can turn you into someone you don’t want to be.”
I don’t believe forgiveness is appropriate for rape. I agree that hatred and bitterness can be bad for a person in the long run(although they can help a person cope in the short run). That is why people have to come to terms with the fact that they were raped. This isn’t the same thing as forgiveness. Maybe one of us is just misinterpreting the situation or the words used, but my understanding is that you should NEVER forgive someone who raped you. I haven’t heard an argument that makes rape forgivable and I doubt I ever will.
My personal opinion is its a different version of munchausen’s syndrome, where people make themselves sick to get sympathy and pity from others. “Its okay if I don’t work hard and people take care of me, I’m a victim.”
Keeping in mind a lady is not likely to deal well in a toe-to-toe slugfest sans firearms (there’s a reason for weight classes in wrestling and boxing…), self defense training of the hand-to-hand variety should probably focus on (how to) break contact and run…
on the “victim blaming” – years ago on FB I commented that I lacked a certain Lady Gaga song, but not one of her earlier breakouts (just dance”) because the viewpoint character in that (semi-deliberately lost her friends, keys, wallet, cell phone, and did not care) was being hideously irresponsible.
I got blocked for “victim blaming”
The key there is not going “toe-to-toe” with the guy, but inflicting enough pain and agony he looks for an easier victim. If he’s clutching his genitals and has a broken kneecap, he’s not going to chase you very far. Slamming his nose up through his sinuses into his brain is another very effective method of “inflicting pain”. I don’t know ANY recognized martial art, but I taught my daughters how to inflict pain and agony, and to run and hide. They may not be able to escape the guy chasing them, but they may get enough of a head start they can set up an ambush. As long as you inflict more pain than he does, you’re ahead. The idea that “ya know, this b**ch is gonna kill me” can even penetrate even the thickest head.
Neither of my daughters were raped.
No, men as a class can outrun women, even when the women are wearing sensible shoes. So if you see a threat and can evade, great, but the most important lesson for self-defense is that once you decide to do violence, you continue till the attacker is physically unable to continue their assault.
Twice in my life I got beaten up because I was in a fight and really didn’t want to hurt the person I was fighting. Recovering from the second beating, it occurred to me that “they don’t matter”, “they” being anyone who attacked me. From then on, I never lost a fight, because when I saw that violence was going to occur, I hit first without warning and didn’t stop till they were helpless. Acquiring that mindset is the most important self-defense lesson I know.
Twice in my life I got beaten up because I was in a fight and really didn’t want to hurt the person I was fighting. Recovering from the second beating, it occurred to me that “they don’t matter”, “they” being anyone who attacked me.
I’ve had … interesting… conversations with some teenagers over the last couple of months and your story reminded me of one of them. Good kid, took studies more seriously than the average teen, and as the eldest took care of his younger siblings because his parents worked night shift jobs.
Without getting into too much detail for privacy reasons, several of us older guild members (most of whom are parents) had to encourage him to learn how to protect himself against a psychotic ex girlfriend as well as fight back against her cronies – and the guy was a kickboxing enthusiast. The girl was a terrifying example of lying manipulative bitch who knew exactly how to act and what to say to the cops so that the guy was at a loss on how to deal with her without getting into jail time. Phones with the ability to record voice and security cameras at his house were what saved his ass from being nailed by a false accusation of rape or physical assault.
Later on us parents talked about how scary the world of teenagers was quickly becoming, and that we were glad we weren’t teenagers any more.
Not directly tied to rape, but there is a case in FL where a guy dropped by his exes house (the mother in law was there as well) to pick up his kids. Argument ensued, driven almost entirely by mom in law who shot him repeatedly (and with poor aim) with a small-caliber pistol.
MIL and daughter then reported that he had come over all belligerent, and they had to shoot him in self defense, etc.
Police bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Fortunately when he woke up in the hospital dye later, he could tell the police that he had been recording on his phone, and the entire conversation (that proved MIL had started the altercation) PLUS the conversation afterward where MIL and ex plotted to lie to the police, exonerated him.
The growing numbers of crazy entitled narcissists and borderlines who are willing to lie through their teeth and destroy people and their lives and livelihood when they don’t get what they want, even when physical evidence completely contradicts their story, is one reason I take “but I felt violated/betrayed/ashamed so it must have been rape even if no-one had done anything objectively wrong” with a massive grain of contemptuous salt.
I’ve been told to my face that feelings are more important than whether or not someone actually did something wrong.
The growing numbers of crazy entitled narcissists and borderlines who are willing to lie through their teeth and destroy people and their lives and livelihood when they don’t get what they want,
Oh yeah… don’t get me started on the sheer amounts of crazy women I’ve encountered on Lineage II. They angle mostly for getting a guy to fall for them based on a fake persona, gunning for gifts and money. If the guy falls out of love for them… The most terrifying of the lot that I’d been witnessing from the periphery of was this super fugly woman (both in looks and personality, and no I have no problems with calling a shovel what it is) pretending to be a hot, nubile goth chick online who sucked thousands of dollars from a guy and through ‘if you love me you’ll do this’, controlled all his out of game interactions as well. When he wised up and tried to break away, she harassed him at work, at home, and somehow managed to harass his friends and neighbors. She also filed a false child abuse suit against a couple of friends of his both ingame and out who lived nearby and who had been helpful in getting him convinced to give up the crazy bitch, and got Child Services involved and investigating the family. The only reason why the friends didn’t lose the child was because the child was happy when with the parents, and was flat out terrified when the CS people tried to take him away for the duration of the investigation. As in flat out started crying for mommy and daddy when they tried to talk to him alone.
There’s also been a trend that we’ve noticed in MMOs where a woman will claim she was raped in order to suck up the attention; give forth on why she never got justice in great detail, and milk it for all it’s worth in gear and ingame funds and status. Inevitably said woman will also cause other types of drama against perceived threats to her ‘position.’ I don’t think I need to explain my deep, contemptuous hatred for any woman who does this. Often too, the rape never happened, or it was bad-breakup claims of rape, or purely consensual, but guy didn’t look as hot the day after without the alcohol.
Yeah. Gonna try not to get too mad today, but yes yes yes on narcissistic entitled blue cheese c-monsters.
On a somewhat tangential note, to illustrate just how “out there” this stuff can get.
I just saw an argument about the Disney Movie “Tangled.” It seems that “hair” is supposed to be a symbol for virginity* which makes Flynn’s cutting Rapunzel’s hair in the climax–since he “forced” it on her–a “rape scene.”
What? To keep her free from a lifetime of servitude to the witch (Rapunzel _always_ keeps her promises) he sacrifices his own chance at life. He takes an action that, so far as he knows, will leave him dead, but Rapunzel free.
There are people who read a rape into that?
*Then there’s the bit about the tiara. This one gets even farther out there. You see, a tiara is a crown. Crown in Latin is “corona” (incidentally the name of the nation in which Rapunzel was born). But, it so happens that “corona” is a medical term for the hymen. So when Rapunzel give Flynn the tiara (crown)….
The people making these arguments never cracked a smile. They are utterly dead serious about this.
So when someone uses the term “rape” but claims “I don’t mean it in the criminal sense”, given the very vocal people who very much do mean it in a criminal sense, well, unless that person has been living under a rock for the last several decades, I have to call shenanigans.
While insane for the context of the story of Tangled this is valid in other stories, such as in Katanagatari where Rape of the Lock was viewed as being the same as sexual rape (the setting being based in a fantastical feudal Japan, and the characters in the story reacted as if the female character was raped. There is no indication that this is the case in the world of Tangled however, so the bitching about cutting Rapunzel’s hair isn’t valid (nor is the bit about the corona/crown, since in this case Corona refers to the sun symbology that surrounds the kingdom in-story; the corona of the sun.) This is especially highlighted in the reaction of the King and Queen, and of Rapunzel herself. The distress Rapunzel feels is due to knowing with what Flynn did he will die and she will lose the man she loves; the King and Queen ignore her hair entirely and look at Rapunzel’s eyes and face to confirm her identity (eyedentity? *grin). Her hair being shorn is not a factor, nor a seen as a shame, a violation or in any negative light at all.
TL:DR the people whimpering about rape and giving virginity in Tangled are idiots for doing so. They’d have better mileage in Katanagatari, but only within the context of the anime story itself.
There have been historical examples and cultural examples where the display of one’s hair = sexual cue. The one that came to mind is Old Testament Judaism, where hair is one of the examples of female beauty; seen on the level as breasts at least (based off of the Song of Solomon, according to what I remember reading) and that the long hair of a woman isn’t something she reveals to people outside of the family, and when she is wed, only to her husband. (This is, I was told, why Hassidic Jews cover their hair and wear wigs even today.) I’d discovered that when I wanted to find out why most Jews don’t wear headscarves / don’t cover their hair any more despite having a similar cultural background on that front as Islam. (Answer: it’s not a religious tradition, but a cultural one, and cultural mores change.)
“In place of practicing wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.” – Michael Faraday
If you start with a belief, and subsequently deny any information to the contrary, there is no limit to the nonsense you can accept as true. This “belief over reason” is my personal arch-villain, even though I’m still susceptible to it myself. While I’d hoped the internet would facilitate facts over belief, in truth it’s just allowed believers to gather from the four corners of the world remotely, and reinforce each others belief.
I’ve just started reading it, but even so I highly recommend Michael Shermer’s “The Believing Brain”. It’s depressing to realize that despite telling ourselves that we are rational beings, we’re actually the product of 3.5B years of evolution, the vast majority of which was devoted to developing reflex, instinct and emotion, with only the thinnest veneer of reason spackled over the top of the mess.
Once, in extreme frustration, I asked my crazy (probably Borderline Personality Disorder) (now ex-) wife how she determined truth from falsity. Her answer was, “It depends on how I feel.” She was serious.
When I would attempt to point out that her version of reality did not match physical reality she would get anger and claim, “You always have to get your own way!” She was serious.
Words meant what she wanted them to mean at that particular moment. One time she called and asked me to pick up her sister at the airport. “I can probably do that. Which airport?” She told me the approximate time. “Which airport?” She told me the probably airline. “Which AIRPORT?” She told me the departure city. “Which AIRPORT?!!!!” She turned to her other sister and told her, “We need to find someone else to pick her up because Joe can’t do it.” Then she hung up on me. I eventually got the airport information and picked up her sister. We went to baggage claim and I asked her, “How many bags do you have?” She said, “They are green.” Yes. It is a family thing. Her brother is an admitted hard-core Marxist and a professor at a college of business.
Even when they hauled her off to the psych ward she insisted there was nothing wrong with her. It was all my fault she had gotten into a high speed chase with the state patrol and deliberately crashed her Jeep into a concrete barrier, then climbed the barrier and swam out into the near flood stage river from the melting snow pack.
I could tell stories for hours (I was married to her for almost 38 years) but you get the idea.
There are a lot of crazy people out there and protecting yourself from them is tough because they can be functional most of the time and appear to be rational for sufficiently long periods of time to convince most people there isn’t anything wrong with them.
Wow….. all I can say to that is ‘how the hell did you last 38 years?’
Oh yeah… don’t get me started on the sheer amounts of crazy women I’ve encountered on Lineage II. They angle mostly for getting a guy to fall for them based on a fake persona, gunning for gifts and money
*reads example further but not quoting it here*
So… this is a player you could confirm is an actual woman and not a guy w/a female character?
^_^;;
(Since I have a few female characters in SWTOR. The female Smuggler voice is, as I put it, full of snarky awesome.)
(This does make me wonder about the two female characters dancing around the casino on Nar Shaddaa late last Friday into Saturday morning.) 😮
G.I.R.L. = Guy In Real Life :-p
Voice chat, phone and skype were amongst the mediums used to communicate with the victim. Now the people who got hurt / were trying to help the guy all lived near each other – I didn’t (hence me saying I was on the periphery as I only saw parts of what was occurring in game) all belonged to the same clan and voice chat was required to coordinate play. They said she was a woman. And the couple who had CS sicced on them were able to get that a woman had called CS to report the ‘abuse’. They weren’t able to get more detail than that.
And I’m aware of GIRLs. This one wasn’t one. Too vicious in a way that a guy isn’t capable of unless he’s a very effeminite gay (in my experience.)
That’s pretty shameful. Hope she gets what’s coming to her someday. :-/
I know the rest of the gang knew she was a girl because she would insist that her victim call her, put his phone in his shirt pocket, so she could listen in on all the conversations, to make sure she wasn’t the topic. They discovered this when she started screaming into the phone when the topic DID veer into talking about her. The guy was very, very brainwashed. I think she suddenly, abruptly ceased all communications when it seemed like the group of friends were looking into trying for prosecution, but this is early on and it’s still difficult NOW to push for cyberstalking and similar cases in the US (especially if you’re not a student any more) and I think they were just so relieved that she went away that they dropped it. The friends eventually quit playing. From what I know though the reason why they didn’t get angry at the victim was because a few of them had met their girlfriends / wives in the game, moved in together and eventually married. Bad luck for him…
0.o….. I’m not sure ‘brainwashed’ is a strong enough term. SMDH….
Y’know, I’m suddenly curious: did he offer any justification to his friends for doing that? What possible moronic excuse could he come up with?
I think she originally posed wanting to listen in… in more ‘cute’ terms – ‘I don’t wanna feel left out’ or ‘It’d be like I’m going with you!’ and such; and that they originally knew she was listening in. But she kept quiet and they eventually forgot that she was… so…
I know the rest of the gang knew she was a girl because she would insist that her victim call her, put his phone in his shirt pocket, so she could listen in on all the conversations, to make sure she wasn’t the topic.
Um… 😮
As my counselor said when I told her I had decided to get divorced, “Mere mortals would have left years ago.”
In hindsight there were signs from before we got married. Her Mom, especially, demonstrated the same symptoms. But hindsight is so much better than foresight.
And it happened somewhat slowly over the years. A boiled frog and all that.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent. 😉
A parental figure we’ll call “Bob” once told me that if you want to see what a woman will look like in 25 years, look at her mom.
Maybe we should amend that to, “If you want to see how a woman will treat her husband…”
@Combat Missionary…
Like he said- hindsight is 20/20. But he does prove a point on relationships and people. Not all disfunctional relationships start that way. They evolve and grow, and it takes two people. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way.
That being said, I respect your faith, and I do agree with waiting on intimacy until you know the person, but again, as humans we all change over time, and sometimes for the worse.
When I married, I looked to see how he treated his mother. He treated her like gold. We enjoyed her company, and I learned a lot about quilting from her, we spent a lot of time together. That is, until she started getting dementia. That is when it changed. He was so uncomfortable with who she was becoming- he was horrid. Short tempered, yelling, mean to everyone. Nothing I had seen in the man I had known for 8 years prior to marrying. This went on for years. Nothing anyone could do or say. I tried to be understanding- it was his mom, after all. I watched my Gma lose who she was too. It was heartbreaking. But his reaction was beyond rational. Fear of losing who your parent knows them selves to be, sorrow at losing a parent, certainly. But this was crazy anger. No amount of counceling or sympathy helped.
Back to an earlier post of mine- you can not plan for everything, but you can be aware of your surroundings and act accordingly.
I saw what my future would hold, as my family too, has this unfortunate degenerative disease. Nothing in the 8 years prior to my marriage showed me that this was in this man. None of our mutual friends had any idea he was like this. We were all shocked.
Do I think I had a hand in his decline? No idea. Was there an issue with me? (as YOU @CombatMissionary suggested) No idea. I could have not married him, certainly. But what’s the point? I fell in love with the person I knew for 8 years. I married the person I looked forward to becoming a partner with. I looked to my own when this happened, and saw I did what I could, everything he asked of me, and he turned it against me. So I left. If that makes me the culpable one, so be it.
I’m not making any judgments about you or your situation, sorry if it came across that way. Clearly we can’t control everything. I would be stupid to suggest that. All we can do is try to live our lives to minimize the odds of getting into horrible situations. They’re not always avoidable. Sometimes great people change despite taking precautions. Sometimes horrible people change. But if we’re careful with our conduct, we can minimize our chances of becoming a statistic. Even if I wasn’t religious, avoiding sex before marriage can avoid a huge range of problems, and the further our world goes down into the “rape culture” culture or the anti-masculine culture, the more problems a modicum of self-discipline can help us avoid.
@CombatMissionary
Thank you for the clarification. It did come across a bit judgmental. But then again, I have a candy red button that says, “instant temper- lump me in with the idiots…” Sorry.
I resent the men and women in our culture who have made themselves such well known examples that the rest of us who are, for lack of a better term, stable. I can’t say normal, as ‘normal’ is what society dictates is the general acceptable behavior. Which is what started this conversation in the first place, no?
Anytime I hear of a woman spouting such nonsense as that woman in the bar, or ‘Teach men not to rape.’ Excuse me? Men aren’t born with the fundimantal need to rape. My son wasn’t born a rapist. Or a man stating that all women are money grubbing opprotunists who will use them and throw them away, or they may try to pin some crime on them Grr…
All children should be taught respect by action, thought and deed of their peers, parents and community. I truely wish every child could be. But I know this isn’t the case, I know there are children caught in an endless cycle of pain, hate and anger their parents bring them into and they follow their example, right or wrong. I know it takes one hell of a will to break the cycle, for those children to grow up and to say, “I won’t be like them.” And, unfortunately, there are those who are beyond help, those who are born wrong, who choose to commit heanous acts against men, women and children. I personally think this may be a genetic defect. Is there a spiritual aspect? Maybe, perhaps born without a soul? An ability to link to another human on a base empathic level of understanding. Again, it is so hard to tell. There could be those with the lack of the ‘compassion gene’ yet have the iron will to do no harm.
Either way, there are days I would love to walk up to the harried mom and give her a hug when her kids are screaming and crying, as it is obvious she has done without to give them what she can. Or force that bloody so-and-so with the iPhone, gold chains, Gucci purse and food stamps to get off the damn phone and bring her kid under control!
Yeah, I was afraid of that. Fifteen years in the military has NOT done good things for my personality. I tend to be the kind of guy, these days, that would say something like, “Hey, STUPID! For Pete’s sake, you moron, if you would just live your life like THIS, you’d be a lot happier! I’m telling you this because I care about you, you knucklehead!” and genuinely mean it. So, yeah, I tend to sound fairly arrogant sometimes. I’m working on it. I think I’m gradually evolving into the kind of guy who would say, “Come on, dummy, let’s go make your lawn look nice, that way I won’t have to tell you to get off mine.” 😀
I have a 12 year old son and I am worried about what the world will be like for him as he gets older and starts dating. Look at whatnhas been happening to college campuses with the change is sexual assault rules. Men (or really boys) are being accused of rape, put up before campus courts, not allowed to defend themselves, and convicted sexual assult with a “preponderance of the evidence” (50.01%).
We haven’t been able to teach all men to read. We haven’t been able to teach all men to take responsibility for themselves. We haven’t been able to teach all men to be Men. So women who care about themselves should learn to take care of themselves when they come accross these monsters disguised as men.
These little delusional Polly Ana princesses need to learn that not all men are Prince Charming.
Enroll him in Tae Kwon Do so he can meet girls. (Well… enroll him now, so he can meet girls there later.)
Krav Maga, or even Karate. Most Tae Kwon Do schools are non-contact, and wont teach a student how to take a blow and keep fighting.
If you can find a Tae Kwon Do school that does full contact, go for it.
Through various conversations with my 6 year old daughter about when to fight and when not to she will proudly tell you that if someone was trying to take her away she would “kick them in the pee-pee” and generally cause as much harm as possible. I hope my daughter never has to do that. If she has to I will support that decision. Yes, it is sad that she may have to defend herself. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to teach her to.
I mocked someone yesterday – in fact, I think it’s one of the ones Larry quotes above – by saying we should also teach robber to not rob. The stupid twit said she agreed with that also.
I nearly gave myself a concussion from the facepalm.
Seriously, what these people need to understand is that you can not account for what someone else has or hasn’t been taught. Even if you could, you can’t account for what they will or won’t do with that teaching. The only thing you can be responsible for is what you do or don’t do.
Saying women should learn self defense isn’t victim blaming. Saying women should be careful and alert in certain areas late at night isn’t victim blaming either, though I’ve been told otherwise. It’s no different than advising someone to not hit the ATM in a sketchy part of town. It’s advice to avoid a crime, rather than trying to deal with it.
These “women” are going to get someone killed, if they haven’t already.
Rabbits survive by overbreeding.
Yes, but aren’t these also the types that believe all PIV sex is rape, and that it’s a moral and just thing to abort children, especially if having a child while young will destroy your all-important career (and especially so if you stay at home and have five or six children, rather than wait until your career is established, and have one or two)?
Overbreeding doesn’t strike me as an option for these folk….
I’ve seen the argument that by behaving responsibly, avoiding dark alleys and other sketchy areas, and caution when drinking, that *you* are making sure the rapist rapes the other girl.
I just cannot fathom the level of crazy required to come up with that conclusion.
Seriously?
When police educate folks on how to prevent break-ins, some officers will be honest and say that you’re not going to deter a burglar from breaking into someone’s home. You’re just trying to make sure your house looks like an uninviting target so they’ll move on to someone else’s house.
The truth is, no one gets worked up about that, because if everyone makes their house uninviting to a burglar, the burglars will have to do something else.
It’s the same thing with rapists. If it’s my daughter, I want her to look like a bad idea to a would be rapist. Do I want someone else to be raped? Of course not. However, I can’t take care of the world. If her father failed to teach her how to not be a victim, that’s on him, not me. After all, if every daughter looked like a rapist’s worse nightmare, rape statistics would be drop drastically.
As Mr. Miyagi said, the best way to avoid a punch is to not be there.
Maybe there is some truth to behaving responsibly is making sure the rapist rapes the other girl. I would happily look my daughter (if I had one) in the eye and tell her, “Good. I’m glad you weren’t the victim. You were not, are not, and never will be responsible for the actions of that other girl. You didn’t get raped because you were smart and did the right thing. Good.”
*blank stare* *closes own jaw with a click*
Un-freaking-believable……
*you* are making sure the rapist rapes the other girl.
Well… if it’s a choice between my daughter and some other girl… so be it!
If my daughter, or your daughter, shoots the rapist’s pecker off (okay, okay, little teeny-tiny target with the stress of being on the receiving end of an attempted rape messing up ones marksmanship. Center of mass works too) then no other girls will be raped either–not by that rapist anyway.
Win win.
Sort of like the t-shirt for DADD (Dad’s Against Daughters Dating):
“Shoot the first one, and the word will spread.”
Predators look for easy prey. If you present yourself as a hard target, they will move on and find easier prey. They don’t want a struggle or have to worry about getting shot or stabbed or hurt. They want a docile victim who will do what they tell them to do.
It doesn’t always work that way of course, but for the most part, that is what criminals go after.
Yeah, predation WORKS, if the prey is weak enough. The carnivores eat the herbivores. The only herbivores that aren’t preyed upon are those so tough they’d probably kill or seriously injure the carnivore.
Refusing to see that truth seems to be a large part of the “liberal” mindset.
I’ve gotten the same response in discussions, namely, that by avoiding rape one is causing someone else to become a victim. I asked if I lock my doors at night, am I forcing my neighbor to be burglarized?
Predictably, I was immediately accused of equating women with property. Because, logic. Or something.
Typical libtard arguing. If you are caught in a logical fallacy, change the subject by accusing your opponent of being a racist or a misogynist, or a nazi, or something else bad.
I don ‘t remember what number that one is on Larry’s list.
“….by behaving responsibly…*you* are making sure the rapist rapes the other girl.”
This is dumb… it’s true though… it’s a little bit like if you don’t want to be eaten by a bear you only have to run faster than the slowest person. So… true-ish but mindbogglingly irrelevant.
Uh… seriously, and there is no other way to say this: what the fuck? I am NOT going to make myself a victim to ‘protect someone else from being raped. If it’s going to be someone, I’m darned gonna try make sure it’s not going to be me or mine getting hurt. I’m not responsible for the irresponsible moron who floats along with glitterdust on the brain thinking nothing will EVER HAPPEN TO HER. I cannot be the mom to the whole world.
But I will try to take care of my corner of it.
Who do they think are setting the rape quotas that will be filled– no more, no less?
Since that’s kinda required for the logic to work.
“*you* are making sure the rapist rapes the other girl.”
Nonsense. The other girl is by not taking the same precautions.
I have maintained for a very long time now that all girls should be issued a .38 snubbie at age 16 and attend mandatory classes and range time at school. A statist imposition upon the freedoms of our youth its true, but one that would change the fabric of our society for the better.
Girls I have had the honor of taking care of learned to defend themselves with gun, knife, stick, empty hand. They learn to spot trouble before it starts, they learn how to escape and how to hide effectively. They learn when to run and when to fight. They learn how to win in any situation.
This is not because I’m such a super bad-ass, but because I cannot tolerate bullies. Things you can’t tolerate you learn to circumvent or destroy.
The Left Wing objection to self defense can’t be understood from our side of the philosophical equation. We are on the “do it yourself” side.
They are on the “welfare check” side. To them, all things flow from government. Gun control (and the logical extension, rape control) are the “welfare check” of personal safety. Government does these things FOR you, you don’t have to lift a finger to do it yourself.
Men are violent? Men commit rape? Oh, obviously we need a government program to “educate” them into stopping. And by “educate” I mean oppress by means of government’s monopoly on the use of force.
That’s what they’re thinking. They shouldn’t have to do anything, government should take care of it.
They’re not stupid. They’re lazy.
Yes. They aren’t mistaken; it’s *everyone else* who needs to change. The world isn’t to their liking; they demand it change to suit them.
What’s that called again? Starts with an “N”, named after a figure in Greek mythology who stared at his own reflection until he starved to death…
Narcissus, I think you are thinking of.
I think you have a point. They are not stupid; they are lazy. If the SJWs agreed with you about taking responsibility, the next step down the logic chain is to do a self-assessment (Am I taking responsibility?). The answer is usually “Hell no!” and that leads to guilt and, hopefully, action. All way too strenuous. Much easier just to loll back and feel superior.
Also, more excuse to expand government. Very important.
It’s too horribly statist for me to support it, but you could solve a hell of a lot of social problems by giving every girl a free UID and pistol.
There’s a scene in my YA fantasy novel (intended for girls, btw) where the mom walks her older daughter, step-by-step, through how to fire a pistol. When I was writing it, all I thought was that I was setting up two scenes later on, when the daughter defends herself and her younger sister. Now I’m thinking I did a public service. 🙂
Mea culpa: I have not yet taught my daughters to shoot. But I will.
Six year old girls can shoot a .22 if you hover over them and make sure they don’t point it the wrong way. And by hover I mean your hand is never more than an inch or two from the pistol. They LOVE it too.
Four year olds can understand the combat mind set. Its a natural state of being, after all. Four year olds can also understand and learn the various wrist locks, escapes, balance, stepping and etc of any martial art.
It doesn’t have to be Super Serious Lessons either. Its a game.
If you make a game out of pushing them over at four, by around twelve to thirteen -nobody- will be able to push them over. Little kids love the pushing-over game. Particularly if you let them push Daddy over sometimes.
In this way we create young women who are fearless. A woman like that is never going to be a target. Predators know the difference between the sheep and the shepherdess, you may be sure. They fear her bow and her arrow.
One issue I’m having is that my younger daughter has orthopedic issues that limit her mobility and strength. She has great grip strength, but I don’t know if she’ll be able to pull back a slide or handle the recoil even a very small pistol.
I’ve got a variety of orthopedic problems, though I have good upper body strength. If drawing the slide is a concern, revolver is always an option. Providing her arms and grip are average, she should be able to handle a sufficient self defense round. While personally a fan of the .45, even a .32 is better than loading out with wishful thinking.
Her upper body strength is poor: she’s all of 4’5 and 65 lbs at 15 years of age (her condition–arthrogryposis–severely limits muscle growth AND has joint contractures. Yay.). But a revolver might be an option.
Larry, if you’re ever stuck for blog ideas, I’d love to see a piece on self-defense for people with disabilities. 🙂
Kenton, I still have a lot of trouble working the action on Glocks et al. I like my revolvers. The snubbie kicks like a mule (hey, it’s a snubbie), but my larger Ruger is well-balanced and easy to handle, with a smooth trigger action. It’s a little big for on-person concealed carry at my size, but for at-home defense and shooting at the range, it’s fantastic.
Kenton, as it happens I am (among other things) a physical therapist with some background in shooting for the disabled. My interest was using shooting as a therapeutic exercise for people with brain, spinal cord and nerve damage. It can be beneficial, depending on the patient. Even if it doesn’t change their condition much its still a giggle and an outing, which is usually worth it all by itself.
The condition you describe for your daughter, she may not do particularly well with any pistol or revolver due to upper body strength. Even small pistols are heavy when you hold them at arms length as in the Weaver stance. Part of this can be overcome by shooting off a rest with a revolver, but grip strength is an issue. Maybe try her on an S&W Airweight snubbie in .22, it’s a very small piece.
Were it me, I’d start her off with a .22 bolt gun made for a kid. Lots of them around for cheap. Or even an air rifle. Shooting off the rest, she should be able to manage the whole cycle. Its a lot easier to work a bolt that a slide, and harder to shoot Dad by accident.
For my range time with the six year old girl, I did all the moving the slide business for the child, and steadied the pistol the first few rounds while the child figured out what to do. The child managed one round from an AR-15 too, but because it was an indoor range with fixed table height, off-hand only, no box to stand on, blah blah blah we had to discontinue after the range officer got all mad because she grazed the ceiling. After hitting the black at 15 yards. So, not bad.
Answer: Go to the -outdoor- range.
The NRA has an entire department that handles shooting for the disabled. As you might expect, they know their business. Check them out at http://compete.nra.org/news-and-events/disabled-shooting-services.aspx
Also, for contractures. Seek out a PT who has lots of experience doing a technique called Myofascial Release. Its not magic, but it is a powerful technique. Contractures can’t be eliminated but I’ve personally gotten a lot of patients increased strength and range of motion doing it. If you’re in the Phoenix AZ area I know somebody you can call.
Phantom, thanks for the link. And yes, she has had plenty of PT (our other daughter is studying that in college) and has had a myofascial release: it fixed her torticollis! 🙂
Torticolis, forsooth! You guys are having way too much fun.
Reminds me of sitting with one of my patients in the lobby waiting for his bus ride back to the nursing facility. This guy was a quadriplegic in a power wheel chair. I was pouring Coke into his mouth for him because he couldn’t hold the can.
Outside on the sidewalk a woman goes by in a power wheelchair. Guided by a Seeing Eye dog.
My patient looks at me and says: “Every time you think you’re really fucked, you see something like that.”
I think about that guy every time I feel like whinging about something, me with my teensy little problems.
You’re doing great, Kenton. You are The Man. Go tickle that kid!
I used to think that teaching men not to rape was a silly idea. But I can see how the Tom Kratman tutorial(1) might drive the point home. To motivate rapists not to kill their victim, a murder in his system gets you free “come to Jesus” crucifixion experience, while a live victim can forgive you and reduce your punishment to mere hanging.
Of course, it is well known in education circles that the shorter the time between action and feedback the better it is pedagogically. An immediate bullet wound, even if it doesn’t kill, would do wonders for people’s attitude. I haven’t taken my daughters (or sons) shooting yet, but I will around puberty.
(1) Public impalement for rapists, probably with the video show to adolescent boys as part of their education
Yes, you are right: impalement for rapists would drive the point home.
But could you imagine how much squirming a typical Social Justice Weenie (it’s weenie, right, and not warrior? ;.) would go through, when this idea is proposed to them?
The “lumping in of all types of rape” is insidious and deliberate and needs to be called out more often. Rape is rape in the end, but you can’t address it intelligently without differentiating the contexts in which it occurs.
Victims who -feel- blameworthy due to recognizing they didn’t make good choices can be “forgiven” and brought into the fold (thus increasing the numbers and political influence) by rad-fems with an agenda by wrapping them in the same mantle as those who did absolutely everything right, without ever having to address their own choices. That kind of moral absolution will then be defended against reason to preserve the person’s new identity as “absolutely blameless” regardless of choices which increased the opportunities for victimization.
So, the person who gave trust too early, and voluntarily put themselves in a position of vulnerability, is given the same “perfect victim” status as the victim of a violent stranger rape who made all the right choices but ended up in the sights of a predator regardless.
The importance of trusting wisely is often ignored. Much like the anti-gunners lump “guys you know from the corner” in with “close family and real friends” when it comes to “gun danger in the home”: “acquaintance rape” assigns “guy you kinda know from class” the same standing of personal knowledge and trust as “person you grew up with”.
Trusting someone you only know casually to the point where you make yourself vulnerable by drinking -and- giving that person private access to you is simply foolish. Full stop.
But we don’t teach that trust is to be earned over time any more, dating had “rules” for years for just that reason, Dates met your family and friends, you did things in groups, you held off on personal intimacy, all to actually get a read on this person you are voluntarily putting in a place, worst case, to -kill- you.
“Hook-up” culture may not exist, but our post-sexual revolution dating culture has eliminated all the old safety mechanisms and our insistence on not judging people has led to too much trust being given much too soon.
This is liberalism 101. Take NO responsibility for doing anything for yourself, it’s always someone else’s job to do things for you.
Honestly I’m astonished some of them can still look themselves in the eye in the mirror every morning.
Yep.
Rapists gonna rape. Violent criminals gonna violent crime. Politely asking them not to , and expecting that to work, is akin to legitimizing their life choices as something other than the socially unacceptable indecency that it is. The way to destroy ‘Rape Culture’ is to make it far too risky and costly for the rapists to continue. Denying the ugly side of human nature won’t make it go away; you have to hit it in the face with a rock.
I want to read how these feminist think tankers reconcile the fact that it’s bad to use self-defense on a rapist but good to abort a baby that’s the result of a rape.
You know, Colleen Gibbons has a point, poorly phrased (not just grammatically), but a point nevertheless. We do need a culture free from sexual violence. Unfortunately that culture is a long way away, and, for that matter, may never occur. Throwing down our swords and shields and tearing down the walls of our cities in the midst of attack merely because we want a future culture that is free from attackers is folly beyond simple idiocy—it is suicide. It is unconditional surrender to the existing culture, which is still very bloody and dangerous, and which will likely lop off our heads after doing some naughty things to our nethers. It is the equivalent of throwing away all of our money because we want a future culture where money is no longer necessary. The reality is, however, that money is still necessary, and we may find ourselves begging on the streets if we follow that course of action.
While it is noble to work toward a good cause and a brighter future, it is stupidity beyond reason to act outside the context of our present circumstances. Foregoing a fire extinguisher because we believe the world should be free of house fires in the future probably means that your house will burn down if it ever catches light.
We’re more likely to get a culture in which we don’t have to defend ourselves from sexual violence if we make sure that most people are *able* to defend themselves against sexual violence. I’ll bet that the guy Damien Walter’s mom pushed off the wall, if he survived, was a whole lot more circumspect after that.
Not Damien’s mom; someone else in his Twitter feed.
Two points.
One, it is probably more correct to say we want such a thing, rather than needing it.
Secondly, barring interventions necessarily innately religious, like the New Jerusalem, a ‘society free of crime’ is exactly as feasible as a ‘society free of violence’, is exactly as feasible as a ‘society free of sexual violence’, and is exactly as feasible as a ‘society free of fornication’.
If you do not think we can create a society where sex only happens between married adults, one man and one woman, for the purpose of procreation, or would not support such, it would be inconsistent to support efforts to implement the other scenarios, or assume that they can be done.
Creating such a society by purely human efforts would require an incredible tyranny, that may well be entirely impossible.
I’m pretty cynical when it comes to humanity.
Such a culture will never exist. Now perhaps you could have areas where such things were rare, but people who rape, murder, steal, etc will always exist where there are human beings concentrated together into cities.
Because I am a huge geek, I’m reminded of the revelation from Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. *SPOILERS* The king wants to follow the titular book-within-a-book, The Way of Kings, but he finally discovers that the book was written after the author had fought his way to peace and stability for his kingdom. He had to do the messy, unpleasant business of war first, then he could implement those peacetime ideals. Trying to use that peacetime pattern in a deeply confrontational culture, in a time of war, was only leading him to disaster.
You mean the King’s Uncle Dalinar? King Elhokar is pretty useless.
Yes, that’s who I meant. Protagonist, not king.
I can understand that there are some elements of “rape culture” that exist and that a small number of people are ok with initiating non-consensual sexual contact, but I don’t believe that this is part of mainstream culture. It certainly isn’t part of the criminal justice system. I can’t speak for the laws in other states, but the laws in my state punish people that engage in the types of behaviors I describe above.
I have no problem with society or groups addressing these issues, but it is magical thinking to expect it to stop all criminal behavior. I think it is reasonable to expect to be able to live free from assault, but you should still prepare for the fact that not everyone shares that belief.
It is too bad that most young people are denied the most effective means to defend themselves. My state won’t let minors carry firearms in public. They can openly carry at age 18, but there are a whole host of restrictions as to where. They can get a CPL at 21.
Larry said: “There may not be some big systematic culture like the perpetual victims imagine…”
There is, actually. Its called Pakistan. Also other places in the Middle East and Africa. And Mexico. And South America. Pretty much every place in the world except Western Nations, really. Rape is considered on the same level as shoplifting.
That’s just one more reason to laugh at Multi-Culti college girls getting their knickers in a twist over the Rape Culture Of America. Can’t beat them PoC for rape culture.
I’m pretty sure the Third World is not a rape party.
You would be wrong. In most of the Muslim world, it’s legal to execute a woman for the crime of adultery after she’s been raped. There have recently been several fatwas released by prominent muslim clerics who have said it’s okay to rape Western women and women not wearing the jijab. I’m afraid you’re a bit naive.
I’m pretty sure in Nigeria a bunch of glorified hobos is kidnapping girls from supposedly secure private schools and selling them into slavery.
I’m pretty sure an entire store with one (1) woman behind the counter and nobody else in the place is an entirely unremarkable sight in most of North America and Europe. But not in India.
I’m pretty sure most people in America wouldn’t think twice about sending their 19 year old daughter off to work at McDonald’s every day. Or off to college. Or off to whatever, in a car, on her own, all day long.
I’m extremely sure -nobody- does that in Pakistan if they’re well-off enough to avoid it. Talk to any man with kids from Pakistan some time, its a eye-opener.
In most of the Third World, women are not allowed out without backup because its fantastically unsafe.
That’s the reason these Rape Culture screamers are such tools. Western countries are about the only place on Earth where its safe for an unattended woman to even leave the house, much less walk down to the corner store for smokes.
I wouldn’t call it a party, but in PNG, it is sadly common.
Some cultures do believe in rape as a social control- that if a woman shames a man, then the best way to regain status is to rape/beat the woman.
I may be naive but I can still read a map. Most of the Third World is not Muslim.
Please define “Muslim world” as in which Islamic countries it’s legal to execute rape victims and which it is not.
Al Jazeera America just ran a story on rape, citing that rape is endemic in Syria (where a large percentage of the victims are male), Bangladesh, India, and Liberia (where they gave the statistic that 77% of women there reported being raped…and we’re not talking about getting blitzed at the cotillion and doing a “roll-scream” in bed next to a stranger the next morning). Don’t make the assumption that you can understand THE world by extending your perception of YOUR world.
Women walk around on their own from Merida to San Cristobal de las Casas to Solola to San Jose to La Ceiba to Manaus to Rio to Corumba to Cochabamba to Cuzco to Jakarta to Singapore to Medan to Kota Baru to New Delhi to Varanasi to Jaisalmer to Kathmandu to Yogyakarta to Kalikbukbuk to Denpensar to Bangkok to Penang to Cairo to Seljuk. What in the world do you think those places are like – a cage match?
The number of rapes in America each month is as much or double the amount in India every YEAR! And India has 4 TIMES as many people. As for the rest, Al Jazeera’s talking about war zones.
Please provide the exact criminal code definition of rape in India versus the criminal code definition in Federal and most state laws in the US, then compare with what advocates consider “rape” (hint, nowhere near the same definition, then maybe address that perhaps, just perhaps, India’s reporting system is not quite as good or accurate as ours.
Cross-cultural comparisons are fraught with difficulty, one big clue is if the defense given by the perp is that it is “culturally or religiously acceptable” casting the woman as an object as opposed to individualistic and based on debates about consent, as in the US in most cases.
Not picking on you Mr. Burton, but have you seen the rape statistics coming out of good ol’ next door neighbor Mexico? Ai caramba!
By the way, since you mention India I have to say the government statistics there are “optimistic” to a degree that would be funny if it wasn’t rape being discussed.
This is not a Mooselimb thing. Rape doesn’t get reported in India. Not by Hindus, not by Sikhs. They -really do- blame the victim down there. If a girl gets raped, she asked for it. Plain and simple. So she says nothing and hopes for the best.
Women do not go out unescorted unless they are poor peasants. Of whom there are millions, of course.
Another big thing they do down there is marry women and then have the new bride “accidentally” get burnt to death by a “faulty” naptha cookstove. This is so common they have a “burnt to death by cookstove” department in police stations.
Serious shit goes down in India that nobody hears much about. Unlike America, they don’t advertise their warts.
In fact women of all classes go all over the place on their own in India. Where are you getting this from?
Indians. I know a bunch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_India
Given that two women were recently gang-raped, strangled and left hanging from a tree in rural India as they went outside to relieve themselves, I think it’s fair to assume that rape is under-reported in India. Countries with higher reported incidents of rape have nothing anywhere near this egregious occurring. Journalists report that 500M Indian citizens don’t have indoor plumbing, and that in rural areas women are fearful to go outside to relieve themselves because they’re afraid that this type of assault might happen. Bangladesh, Egypt and other non-war zones also have large numbers of rapes reported anecdotally, though again the reported numbers are low, telling me the problem is systemic. Either that, or the women are hysterical and making it up, and the third world is overwhelmingly populated by chivalrous gentlemen.
Now, you’ve been to India and I haven’t, but do you really think that your limited walkabout is a sufficient sample size to discredit all the journalism to the contrary on the subject?
I saw this on BBC news this morning. Disturbing to say the least.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27807539
Well you might try going all over India for 3 months like I did. Women are walking alone in the city and the country – on trains and subways and parks and sidewalks. They’re driving alone, on buses alone. The amount of kids running around by themselves playing is staggering. Who knows what’s going on under the surface of such a staggeringly complex country of 1.2 billion people, but I never had the sense of pervasive fear.
Greg, I was responding to the Al Jazeera article you yourself brought up which said 22 rapes a minute.
And my “walkabout” had nothing to do with rape, but your contention women didn’t walk around alone. In fact they do, and in great numbers.
I knew that all we had to do in Afghanistan was teach the Taliban not to be all shooty and IED-y. But did they listen? Nooooo. It was all ‘wear your body armor, carry your weapon everywhere, blah, blah, blah.’ Just feeding the terrorist culture.
I have a son and two daughters (all adults now). Before any of them could go on a date they had to complete a firearms self-defense class, a defensive knife class, a pepper spray class, and an unarmed self-defense class. I arranged for and paid for all of these classes.
I told them that if anyone touched them it should be because that person had permission to do so. And made sure my kids knew they had my permission and support to enforce their boundaries even though the schools had stupid “no violence of any type at any time” policies.
To the best of my knowledge none of them have ever been in a situation where they needed to vigorously enforce their boundaries but then they exude confidence, strength, and determination which probably causes predators to seek weaker prey.
i’m gonna go out on a limb here…but if so many of these rapes are occurring on college campus and colleges are where the final stage of this so called liberal indoctrination takes place, and that the majority of college kids are liberal, wouldn’t that make most of these rapist… Liberals?
I mean if they can throw around statistical hyperbole like they do, why can’t we use their own numbers against THEM!
Campus rape numbers are bogus: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html
Can anyone tell me how they plan on teaching rapists not to rape? I spent a little while on google and didn’t come up with anything. Now I am really curious. :/ This is my curious face.
Ascher Goodrich wrote:
“Can anyone tell me how they plan on teaching rapists not to rape? I spent a little while on google and didn’t come up with anything. Now I am really curious.”
Sure Ascher, happy to help. You see, everyone alive is identical, deep down inside. Everyone alive wants the same things, deep down inside. Rapists are just learning-disabled types who have trouble grasping that people don’t want to be raped. So you go find out the magic words, and say them, and the rapists will finally realize that people don’t want to be raped, and then it will stop, forever and completely.
At this point, I should probably mention Saintonge’s law of Education and Persuasion: There are no magic words.
Thanks for the response. For a moment I was worried,”teaching rapists not to rape…” was completely asinine.
Just another part of the “Nerf the World” mindset.
And like most Leftist attempts to make all the bad go away, doomed to fail. If prisions can’t stop rape- what success could they attain?
The mind boggles. Apparently all this time where I’ve been encouraging girls and young women to learn how to shove sharp objects into the eyes of attackers, kicking them in the groin or shooting them in the face so that they could protect themselves and not rely on the protection of men while being confident in their own abilities I was being anti-feminist!
I’m so ashamed. If only I’d known that I was teaching them to be victims, and not the opposite. Perhaps I should have told them to cower in the shadows and then be proud of their actions. Silly me with my “don’t take crap from anybody and beat the almighty crap out of anyone who tries to harm them” talk.
The comment from one of those guys about “educate and respect yourself as a woman” absolutely slays me, because that is exactly what she’s doing! I’d hate to see what he thinks a weak woman looks like.
I don’t give a crap what any of these guys say, I’m going to try and teach each and every girl I know, including my five younger sisters, how to protect themselves under all circumstances. Ya’ll have my vote Miss Nevada! You make the state proud!
Damn, you write good! I’ve quoted the first part of this and linked the rest, and also made a quibcag from it, here:
‘Now the feminists are telling us that we should “teach men not to rape.” That sounds difficult, but it’s got to be easier than teaching feminists to think.’
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2014/06/teaching-men-not-to-rape.html
What gets me (or one of the things that gets me) is this idiot notion that it’s an either-or proposition. Teaching rapists not to rape is a perfectly worthwhile goal, if we can figure out a way to do it. But while we’re working on that, let’s not throw out the boot-to-the-berries or bullet-in-the-face for those who haven’t gotten the message yet, m’kay?
I wonder if we could apply this logic to everything else: “Instead of locking our doors at night, why don’t we just teach burglars NOT to break in?”
Also, I wonder what the best method of “teaching men not to rape” is. Hmm, maybe we could pass laws against rape, which sentence perpetrators to several years of prison if they’re convicted?
(Reminds me of a secondhand story via bash.org, where someone talked about an unfortunate zoo incident where some idiot climbed into a tiger pit and got mauled. Onlookers were discussing what they could do to prevent such a thing in the future– higher fences, etc– when another snarked, “yeah, perhaps they could put a dangerous animal inside, who would harm anyone who came!”)
The best method of “teaching men not to rape” is for fathers to teach their sons not to be dickheads. It starts with men and ends with men in this case.
Hate to tell you this Kyle, but in the real world it doesn’t work that way. There are evil people out there, and no amount of reasoning, debate, or teaching is going to stop them.
The only thing that they understand is violence, and that is the only way you or anyone else is going to stop them.
You can be the best parent in the world, and still wind up with a sociopath for an offspring. Nature and nurture both have a say, and sometimes nature can trump nurture. But the concept is still sound, and moving as many kids as possible towards the responsible side of the spectrum is something to be encouraged. True sociopaths are very rare (as are true altruists, I suppose). Most of us started in the huge pile in the middle.
So, you believe it’s all just nurture, no nature?
From what I have read there may be some brain structure abnormalities in people who exhibit psychopathic behavior. And that it seems a fairly high proportion of those people who end up in jail for violence can be classified as psychopaths. Seems questionable whether you can teach that away.
Kyle, as somebody else said in this thread, this scenario assumes a father is present. No longer a given, my friend.
I’ll go a step further than what The Phantom just said: not only are we assuming that the father is present, but we’re also assuming that when the father is present, he’s not teaching the kids the best way to do drug deals, the “cleanest” way to eliminate competition (complete with preferred caliber and body disposal methods), and how to play that fun party game where a pair of dice is rolled to determine how many people will rape the new gang initiate.
Even in America, such cultures exist; it’s probably not good to rely on the fathers within this culture to teach civilized cultural values to them….
(Of course, if such fathers fail, we could send them and their children to prison! Which, unfortunately, does a very good job of allowing for the transmission of uncivilized cultural values to a wider audience.)
Every time I think these people can’t get any dumber and more outraged at completely normal stuff, they blow my mind again.
I am a woman. I can not in any way, shape or form understand what the hell these women are thinking is wrong with her answer. She made two reasonable points, one that colleges hide the stats because they don’t bad pr, and two that women need to know reality so they can protect themselves. And that self defense classes are probably great. That is not promoting ‘rape culture’. Honestly.
Having gone to college in a big city, I would also say use the buddy system going out (to parties, bars, clubs) and watch out where you walk alone late at night, and if you can’t avoid walking alone (which you often really can’t) at least choose well lit, safer routes and be wary and don’t look like you aren’t paying attention. Most people I know picked this stuff up without being told, but I know I made a stupid decision here or there that thankfully did not result in any harm but probably would have been better off avoided.
Somewhere, a bunch of 1970’s-1980’s feminist fantasy/sf writers are very upset at their future selves for disavowing all their bits about women and self-defense.
Unfortunately, I don’t think their future selves remember being angry.
The following was written _a while_ ago…
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/blamehardlook.htm#shame_rape
The con game that is intersectional fake feminism has literally turned off people’s minds. Instead of thinking of people and a single moral ethos for all, entire generations have been raised on supremacist doctrine where morality resides in women and not in men.
The dope named Anna Beth who said women shouldn’t have to learn to protect themselves elaborated that “Women are taken advantage of everyday all over the world because of the feeling of entitlement that history has presented to men.”
That’s not a moral ethos, that’s no different from neo-Nazi supremacism that’s been presented in such a reasonable way that weak-minded people actually adopt it as a code. The idea criminals are normal men tainted by their own sense of entitlement is too stupid to think about, and yet this woman obviously believes it.
Ironically, criminals exist precisely because, just like Anna Beth, they have no respect for a moral code. In a very real sense, Anna Beth herself is promoting criminal doctrine by maintaining I am fundamentally different from her and entitled to a different and lesser set of rights. Can this woman and her ideology create or maintain a Constitution? The answer is no.
In order to believe in such stupidity and hers, one would have to believe that men have built dams, pyramids, exploited fractal geometry and created universities out of a sense of entitlement, and that women would have had an easier 5,000 years with a boost of supremacist doctrine. I honestly don’t have any idea how to cure a mind that far gone other than reality itself, and that cult is a long way from getting its hands dirty and having to die for its country. They have no chips in the game and so never experience cause and effect from their stupid failed ideas.
Political correctness – and by that I mean intersectional feminist racist and sexist supremacist doctrine – is the greatest danger this country has faced since WW II.
This reminds me of the recent political activist who went to Haiti to teach people that it’s not a violent place and the people were racist for thinking so. While working there she was raped by a black man and then blamed white men for it. Some people are just too stupid to learn from reality.
As a woman, who has a black belt AND has taught self-defense to women I am appalled at the reaction to Miss Nevada’s statement. NEVER did she blame the victim, she only encouraged women to empower themselves. When teaching self-defense to women I make it clear that teaching them how to defend themselves is never meant to blame them for being assaulted in the past. In fact I always said – surviving is what is important. You’re here today, and now I’m going to help give you back some sense of power and control in your life.
While I’d love to live in a world free from violence and the risk of sexual assault, I don’t see that day coming anytime soon. I started learning martial arts at the age of 16 because I wanted to travel the world. I knew everyplace wasn’t safe, so I empowered myself.
In fact, while I fully support the right to bear arms (and hey there are many concealed carry specialty purses), your own body is the one weapon you will always have on you. You won’t forget it or leave it behind just this once.
I was thrilled when I heard about her statement. Finally, someone encouraging women to learn self-defense. Anyone against her statement is either living in a fantasy world (oh let’s magically make men stop assaulting women) or secretly wants to keep women from truly being free and liberated.
Larry I started following you because of your books – these blogs take you to a whole new (cool) level.
I’ve got a throbbing vessel in my brain, so I’m going to come back and read all the comments later.
I’m exhausted by this new contention that we just “need to teach men not to rape.” Properly civilized boys do not need to be taught not to rape, it’s part and parcel of the civilizing.
Rapists aren’t civilized, they don’t need a class they need a casket. I really don’t care if they’re dead before you shovel the dirt in.
I would suggest that the *real* rape culture is the one that teaches young women to go out and get riotously drunk in the company of young men.
I’d also say that the young men are getting shafted here too. I am not and never will defend having sex with a passed out girl or anything like that. But let me make an analogy, if you’re drunk and I said, hey man, give me $50 and you did, did I rob you? Even if you would never have done that sober, did I rob you? If you’re passed out and I rolled you over and emptied your wallet, yes, that’s robbery, but asking you?
I would suggest a really good rule is do not deliberately put yourself in situations where you are likely to make decisions you will regret later.
You left out that in the analogy -both- parties in the $50 example are probably drunk enough to not be making good choices. The implicit “the man is always responsible” is actually anti-feminist as it implies women are inherently less capable of deciding not to drink nor being as able as men to make good decisions while drunk.
A drunk man asking a drunk woman, who has been voluntarily getting drunk with him, to have sex may be being crude, but why is it his sole responsibility to remember, while drunk, not to ask as opposed to equally her responsibility to remember to say “no” when asked while drunk?
In any case the crime against an autonomous adult can only start at ignoring the no, not in asking the question.
Yes, both people drunk is another very real issue, and I suspect the most common. That doesn’t change the basic math, though. Rape is still rape and offering and/or participating in bad choices still isn’t.
When my children are of that age, my advice would simply be don’t put yourself in those kinds of situations, man or woman.
I work Security in a Las Vegas Casino. If a person gives money, chips etc, to someone, and that person walks away with it, I will advise the person giving the money that no crime has been commited. If the person receiving the money is still on proprty I will trespass them because we do not want their buisness. A lot of scam artists use the “Give me $100.00 and I will double it for you.” scam on drunks.When I see the trespasser on property again i arrest them.
If drunks could make good decisions, the Casinos would not give them free drinks.
This is one of the things being pointed out about the current ‘preponderance of evidence’ bullshit being used in those bastions of ‘thought’ known as college:
“They were both drunk, yet you consider the woman has no responsibility for her actions and the male is completely responsible for what happened; so women are so weak-minded when drinking that they require a male to think for them? Really?”
Who has a low opinion of women, again?
Last year a actual feminist wrote an article pointing out that it would be a good idea to tell young women going off to college that ‘getting stinking drunk at parties on a regular basis is not a good idea; bad things happen in those circumstances’. The Usual Suspects called her every name available, threatened her, “You’re victim-blaming!”, the whole damned works. For saying ‘Getting sloppy drunk in the company of strangers is a bad idea. Advice I gave my SON, for that matter!
It’s….
QFT
I was very proud when my oldest daughter reported, after her final in a self-defense class, that one of her sheriff-deputy-attackers told her she could really punch. The final was to, while blindfolded, successfully fight off two (well padded) attackers.
Both my daughters can shoot and shoot well. Unfortunately, neither now lives where anything more than pepper spray, a whistle, and fast legs can get them out of trouble. Hopefully, someday that will change. My wife, on the other hand, has her CCW and is looking for another class to improve her skills.
My take on this “teach men not to rape” schtick is that the Feminist movement leaders KNOW it is fricking stupid and does nothing to solve the issue, but they throw it out there because 1) the brainwashed idiots who follow them will swallow anything if enough people scream loudly enough about it, and 2) brainwashed idiots are their source of power, prestige, and quite often their bread and butter and must, at all cost, be kept on the Feminist plantation.
They don’t want women defending themselves for the same reasons the teacher’s unions hate charter schools where minorities do well and race pimps hate Black Conservatives who show that by discipline, hard work, and faith you can change your destiny and improve your life without handouts.
A genuinely strong, well-armed, self-reliant woman who is in charge of her destiny and capable of defending herself has no need for a Feminist and is thus a threat to the Feminist power structure. It’s an extension of the same reason they hate and fear the Sarah Palins of the world.
I think you are missing something even more obvious. The “teach men not to rape” schtick is simply a method to label all me as rapists and therefore the enemy of women.
Women need this kind of feminism (the kind that is anti-self-defense) like a fish needs a bicycle ;).
Snerk!
When I retired from Probation and Parole the new thing was “teaching” A person was put on probation for being on a date with a guy that had drugs in the vehicle. Usually first date. First thing was send her to ‘drug education’ when she got the certificate, send her to DUI school, followed by ‘shoplifters school’ at at least fifty a month. When she got off probation she had a whole wall of ‘honor certificates’ I guess these ‘rape school advocates’ are following the pattern. Glad I left when I did.
I have a Liberal friend who told me he gave his daughter a pistol. She put it in a drawer in his home and never picked it up. Now, she is a divorced doctor in a big city hospital emergency room and works nights. She’s worried about going to the parking lot in the dark and gets security to walk her to the car. I offered to give her a book on what to do to prevent being a victim. Park close, under a light, etc. He declined, “No, she’ll use security.” I am not going to say I told you so when security isn’t available.
On the disability factor. Someone else mentioned it; but, a knife is a good alternative and training is not difficult. A switchblade or assisted opening is easy to get. Plus you can carry it everywhere except on a commercial plane.
A knife is a good choice, but it depends on where you are. In Michigan, there isn’t any kind of knife preemption and many municipalities have ordinances banning knives. Combine that with crappy state laws, and carrying a knife can be risky.
Thank you, Larry, for so eloquently expressing what I had been thinking.
This is why we can’t have nice toys; morons keep hijacking the discussion.
Self defense and society level change for the better (ie raising awareness, discussion of issues *intelligently*, and working for a better tomorrow) are not mutually exclusive.
A woman empowering herself by learning how to defend herself is not accepting or excusing rape. It’s a person learning how to defend themselves against the fact that there are assholes in the world. It should be ok for men to take self defense classes too, because there are assholes in the world who attack men (for whatever reason).
I can learn to defend myself while encouraging the people around me and teaching the children in my life to be polite & decent people who take responsibility for their own actions.
This is why we can’t have nice toys; morons keep hijacking the conversation.
Self defense training and making the world a better place are not mutually exclusive.
I can go take a refresher on the self defense class I took in college (for gym credit!) and learn how to defend myself against assholes in this world (of any gender… who here has witnessed two women fighting? We can get vicious!) and still encourage people (of all ages) around me to be polite, decent, and to take responsibility for their actions.
Reblogged this on westfargomusings and commented:
Larry makes some good points here. What I can’t fathom is the people who think that Miss NV is wrong for wanting to defend herself. Never, ever turn _your_ security over to someone else. It’s _your_ responsibility and the other person may not always be around to protect you.
Juuuuust out of curiosity, how is one supposed to know some man on the street even signed up for the “non-rapey” class, let alone showed up and got a passing grade? Will their diploma be tattooed on their forehead?
Is this outrage from the same people who insist that motorcycle riders have to wear helmets or the police can arrest them, car drivers need to wear seat belts or be cited and children’s car seats cannot be installed by parents, they need a certified firefighter to do the installation? The people who want to bubble-wrap the world so nothing bad happens ever?
Do they keep fire extinguishers handy? Probably not.
What we see here is a symptom of a far deeper problem with society. The problem is control. I don’t want to go off onto a wall-of-text rant here or anything, but consider: in order for serfs to exist, those people have to believe that they have no rights, no ability to fend for themselves, and that all good things are bestowed upon them by their king, lord, emperor or whatever. Security is one of those good things. If they feel they have no ability to create their own security, that they are entirely beholden to the state for their security, they are already well on the way to being serfs. When they feel that the economy is managed by the state, their personal wealth, food and well-being is provided by the state, and that their safety is guaranteed by the state, they dare not raise the slightest protest against the state. They are serfs, bound to follow the state’s instructions in all things and utterly subservient to its’ every whim.
The problem is that they want the freedom to make their preferred choices, without the responsibility of any negative consequences. Those they hand off to “the state” (security, fiscal responsibility, etc.) Their irresponsible, hedonistic choices aren’t the problem (they can’t be, or by association THEY might be the problem too, and that doesn’t fit into their world-view), so it must be those fascists harshing their mellow. Ignoring the problem of Narcissism, there’s the more practical problem that their “solution” only works with 100% compliance (and arguably not even then). In this case, unless you get 100% of men to attend and adhere to gender role sensitivity training, there will still be rapists out there. Of course, we’ll never get 100% compliance on anything more controversial than breathing, so their argument falls apart there, at which point we’re told that we “just don’t get it”, and they stomp off in a huff.
Like Larry and others have pointed out, rape is a complex crime with no one easy definition of a typical perp. Telling both boys and girls that no means “no” is important. But yes also means “yes”, not a “no” deferred until all parties sober up. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, which is part of what attracts people to consume it. If you get soused, don’t do so in a venue that includes activities (like casual sex) that you wouldn’t agree to sober. Getting drunk at a frat party is a high-risk activity, and needs to be treated as such. You can’t expect the world to put safety cones around you every time you do something risky. FWIW, a non-responsive partner does not mean “yes” either, though some men think otherwise, and then we’re back in rape territory. Could this pool of men respond to further education? At least some could. For those who aren’t swayed by reason, guilt or shame, teaching self-defense to their intended victims seems to be a much better, more practically effective course of action than leaving women defenseless for fear of branding those victims who came before them as somehow complicit, and teaching sociopaths not to rape. For that last point, I’ll relate what I told my wife before her six month deployment to Baghdad; “9mm means ‘no'”.
If you haven’t already, you should get to know Marc MacYoung. He has been around this block a couple of times and has written about it. He has websites “No Nonsense Self Defense” and “Conflict Resolution Group International” in addition to several books. I think you will enjoy getting to know one another.
Boy howdy, the novel I’m writing would probably make these #YAW yahoos’ heads explode.
In Act 1, an actress is being targeted by a violent stalker, so her agent hires a bodyguard for her. It takes some doing, but the bodyguard convinces her to take some Krav Maga lessons so she can protect herself just in case, and tells her flat out,” You shouldn’t have to depend on someone like me to be safe.”
Two chapters later, stalker breaks into her house, barricades the two of them in her bedroom, and tries to rape her. Bodyguard races to the rescue, gun in hand, and breaks down the door… and finds the actress literally beating the snot out of the guy, along with the rest of his bodily fluids.
Long story short, ends up in the ER with multiple broken bones and a penile fracture.
Originally, I thought I wrote the scene that way because I wanted to make the actress a strong, empowered character rather than a delicate damsel in distress, but now I realize that it was because I’m actually an evil mysogninist who hates women and wants to promote the rape culture. [/sarcasm]
Dude, if that’s the case, them I’m in really deep. Most of my female heroes are strong characters who take care of themselves.
My MC’s wife beats the ever loving shit out of a would be attacker. They’re really not going to like me too well either.
That sounds like a really cool scene that I would CHEER on reading!
Reblogged this on flyoverboondocks and commented:
A good post by Larry.
Danny, TL: You ain’t the only ones! My female MC’s would do that, and the male MC’s are the one’s who taught them!
As a libertarian writer, I tend to stay in trouble with BOTH sides.
That just means you’re doing it right. 😀
Look up the recent US Supreme Court case of Kennedy vs Louisiana where capitol punishment was for the rape of a child was declared unconstitutional. Now take a wild guess about the idealogical make up of the majority on the decision.
We do have a rape culture in the US, and the libprog left is all for it
You know, I really don’t have a problem with not giving the death penalty for rapists who don’t kill. Reserving it for those who actually take a human life to me is acceptable.
I disagree. When it is recognized by decent and common societal rules that it is justified to use deadly force to stop rape (it is considered to be included in the “risk of death or great bodily injury” definition), then the appropriate criminal court penalty for such an act should also be deadly.
SirBrass,
For some reason, there was no reply button at the bottom of your post…
I can see your point. But killing in the heat of protecting yourself is one thing. I have no problem with the state taking the life of a murderer, and I have no problem with ANYBODY protecting themselves with deadly force from rape, robbery, or murder. But I worry about a state with the power to take the life of someone who has not murdered.
I think that’s is a legitimate check on the state’s power. Now as far as the victim or the victim’s family during the assault- that’s a different story.
You are justified to “use deadly force in self-defense”, that force which is -capable- of causing death, not “execute out of hand.”
Different concepts.
And I have no problem with killing them all.
@Danny Harbison
“I think that’s is a legitimate check on the state’s power.” The irony being that you would agree with 5 people deciding that they have the authority to extend the power of the federal state over the wishes of the people of the state of Louisiana as expressed through their elected representatives using the spurious reasoning of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” The law which they overturned was passed in 1995 not some quaint holdover from the 18th-19th century.
Lastly I must state my opinion that the violent rape of a child is simply one of the most vile acts that I can possibly conceive of. If a society cannot even entertain the option of capitol punishment for it then I do not believe that society is one that can be considered to be on the upswing.
Ad Astra- As a friend of mine used to say, “Even a blind hog finds an acorn once and again…” And the purpose of the Constitutions is to protect the individual from the state. The Bill of Rights is designed to protect us from the tyranny of majority rules.
There are certain rights that no community can vote to revoke from the individual. The argument that it is duly passed by the people doesn’t hold water if it violates the rights of the individual spelled out in the Constitution. You cannot use the power of government to vote to strip a specific person or group of their rights.
“The Bill of Rights is designed to protect us from the tyranny of majority rules.”
When did 5 people in robes become a majority?
Actually it’s supposed to protect the rights of the people and the states from the federal government.
“The argument that it is duly passed by the people doesn’t hold water if it violates the rights of the individual spelled out in the Constitution.” So where in the Constitution are the child rapists spelled out as specially protected? Right next the clause that says “separation of church and state” I guess.
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES ARTICLE [V.]
“…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;…”
So a law is passed by the legislature the penalties for violations (including death) are spelled out in it. and it is signed by the executive. somebody violates it is convicted in a court of law by a jury. Guess what, thats due process according to the Constitution.
“You cannot use the power of government to vote to strip a specific person or group of their rights.”
Actually you can convicted felons in many states are banned from voting, owning firearms, living in certain areas, and from certain professions.
A dead person can’t assist in the investigation (less likely to find the rapist) and can’t testify (less likely to convict even if they find the rapist). If you execute rapists whether they murder the victims or not, you’re going to end up with a lot more dead victims.
Bullshit.
Rapists already murder victims to hamper prosecution in cases where the penalty is likely only mere imprisonment.
If you are trying to manipulate them into leaving victims alive, you might as well borrow the whole flawed legalization argument.
It won’t work for this either, because a person who breaks a law for one reason, will break other laws in related ways.
Rape, Murder, Arson and Kidnapping are common law capital felonies because the people who do them, will tend to pose a significant danger to human life.
Plus rapes often are he said she said cases, with no other physical evidence except maybe that intercourse happened. And women do lie.
Even if the death penalty was limited to cases where she is also obviously roughed up, and maybe to underage girls, you might still get cases where she, for whatever reason, makes things up. And teen girls can sometimes look as if they were legally old enough, and I am somewhat sympathetic towards men who fall for one who wants to make it with a grown man and lies about her age (not very, but people do make mistakes, and I remember talking once with a girl who claimed she had done that from when I was young. No idea if she actually had but the claim was presented as a bragging and a winning point against poor me who hadn’t – ‘I can get adult men, I know more about sex and everything than you do…’).
Pohjalainen,
Keep in mind that in American law, the word Rape describes a specific crime, which is a felony.
A felony generally requires being able to show that the criminal had Mens Rhea, a guilty or evil mind, when they did the act.
I am not a lawyer, and never have been, so maybe I’ve explained things poorly.
Check out the difference in US law between homicide and murder.
Anyway, once one reaches the point of sentencing for Rape in a US criminal court, it has already met certain levels of proof, and is not a matter of he said, she said. Except in jurisdictions where the lawyers, and the lawyers in legislature have completely screwed things up.
Perhaps. But I know of no systematic evidence, and what anecdotal evidence I have says that some would-be rapists will be deterred.
It does seem evident that cops look harder for rapist murderers than “mere” rapists, and that it’s much harder to convince a jury that ‘It was really all consensual’ when there’s a dead body involved. And an executed rapist rapes no more.
All things considered, it isn’t clear what the overall effect would be on numbers of rapes, and number of murders.
“I am not a lawyer, and never have been, so maybe I’ve explained things poorly.”
I am a lawyer. Rape in the Common Law is the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will. Consent is assumed in the case of wives, and consent cannot be granted in the case of minors.
To mitigate the injustice of requiring a woman to resist until force is used, many statutory laws have done away with the element of force, making it merely a matter of ascertaining the woman’s will.
But, at the same time, to mitigate the alleged oddity placing the victim’s state of mind on trial as opposed to the perpetrator (and rape is the only crime where the state of mind of the victim is material) many statutory laws have attempting to substitute recklessness on the part of the defendant in ascertaining her will.
Since, at the same time, sex outside marriage, which under the Common Law was a crime, has become not only legal but laudable, juries can no longer assume unmarried women are unlikely to consent to copulate with strangers, nor can juries assume paramours might not at times couple with an unwilling partner.
The continued attempts to expand the definition of rape to include situations where consent should rightly be assumed, as when an inebriated women climbs into bed with a partner yet allegedly changes her mind, or allegedly lacked the acuity to give informed consent, while at the same time removing all social stigma from fornication, have created an intolerable difficulty.
These two opposing tendencies in the law have produced an situation where what is the most degrading and vile crime in human experience is at once both encouraged and trivialized by the ambiguity of defining the crime.
In a pro-fornication culture the only element of the crime is the state of mind of the woman, and normal boundaries or barriers which in a healthy society tell a man when a woman is off limits do not exist.
In older days, if an inebriated non-virgin invited a man into her bedroom and took off her clothing voluntarily, even had she been drinking, any jury would assume she had consented, and that any later protestations were regret rather than violent trespass on the part of the man.
But under modern customs and laws, an inebriated nude who wishes only to be embraced and kissed is told she is perfectly within her rights and perfectly reasonable to expect a man with whom she has no marital relationship to respect that final boundary forbidding intercourse as he would respect the doors of a nunnery, as sacred and inviolate.
The jury can no longer assume consent exists even in situations ladies of an earlier generation would avoid like poison precisely because no lady entered that situation unless consent had been given. The law can no longer define a clear dividing line.
There are, of course, jurisdictions which still apply the death penalty for rape, but usually in cases where there are aggravating circumstances.
There is nothing I can add. You’re spot on.
Note- the ‘sad puppies’ song just came up. Which makes me wonder if pseudo feminist anti self defense whining is an additional source of Puppy Related Sadness.
Hear, Hear, Larry. I piss off a lot of people when I say that having bad things happen to you doesn’t excuse you from the responsibility of having made poor choices. Because I’m blaming the victim, never mind that I’m pretty ok with the idea of lowering a rapist an inch at a time into a pool full of starving piranha, because I don’t instantly make the victim out as a perfect saint or believe that wishing hard enough will eliminate all violence from the world, I’m an awful person.
It takes them a little longer with me since I have a uterus, but it still happens.
The men are evil bunch really get confused when I tell them that I’ve been made to feel far more uncomfortable and sexually pressured by lesbians than I have by men, too.
Rape culture is whatever promotes, advances, or makes women vulnerable to, rape. Thus, if you want to disarm women, or talk them out of learning to defend themselves, you are part of rape culture. If you tell women that, in an ideal world, what they wear, where they go, and what they do shouldn’t matter, but then neglect to tell them that we don’t inhabit that world, you are part of rape culture. If you partake of the thoroughly debunked and dangerously mad nonsense of man being a tabula rasa, and so put your rape prevention efforts into the idiotic and impossible effort of trying to make of him an androgynous bit of mush, instead of actually doing something about rape, you are part of rape culture. If you do that to the men who would actually defend women, thus leaving women more vulnerable to sociopaths who actually commit rape, you are part of rape culture.
But Liberals and Feminists, don’t feel bad; even though _you_ are the wellspring of “rape culture,” because rape culture doesn’t exist; it is a purely artificial and preposterous construct of your diseased fucking minds, a fantasy, an hallucination. Thus, it doesn’t matter that “rape culture is all your fault.
But much of rape still is.
Word. The best way to prevent rape is to teach women self defense. And to publicly crucify surviving rapists.
only problem i have in your scenario is that if women are already well trained/armed enough to defend themselves from rapists, thereby making rapists become a dwindling minority is thus.
Those surviving rapists would be so far gone out of any concept of normal moral decency that public violent executions would really serve no purpose. you would in essence remove the “accidental” and “opportunistic” rapists with making women capable of defending themselves. The only ones left would be the sick twisted f**k’s who really wouldn’t care if they were publicly executed.
I much prefer dragging them to the desert, absent all media, digging a whole, hit em in the back of the brain pan with a .22 and walk away. no media blitz, no big ordeal to glorify them, just an anonymous grave in the middle of nowere
my 2 cents 🙂
P.S. add a doctor to go in and say “yep he’s dead.”
Why?
Pugsley Addams: “Are they Dead?”
Wendesday: “Does it matter?”
(And then they fill in the holes containing the “bodies” of the bad guys.)
My first thought was to just make sure we can say the perp is actually dead, People have survived getting shot in the head before.
my second thought was you know.. because vampires…
My third thought was, i’m prolly going to hell for making a vampire joke in a rape defense comment stream.
Just thought i’d share my “process” with ya folks.
The death penalty is one of my few concessions to emotion. It makes little sense logically (costs more, doesn’t deter the sociopaths…) but I have a hard time suffering sociopaths to live. If they have committed heinous crimes, show no remorse and can’t be fixed, execution is fine by me. I’d take no pleasure in it, and not exactly be dancing a jig afterwards though. Like putting down a dog, it’s the least shitty choice on a menu of shitty choices. Put them down and be done with it.
It’s for the children, Greg.
I wish they’d just teach people not to crash their cars. Seat belts are just victim blaming 🙁
Larry as someone who survived TEN YEARS of systematic sexual abuse can I just say THANK YOU! This piece nails it to the wall and should be required reading . Thanks for taking time away from your paying work to post this. You’re a good man and I really hope your family lights up like a Christmas tree with pride when they tell people “Yeah, he’s with us”
Call me a cynic, but perhaps the agenda for not promoting women’s self defense is that the feminists WANT rape statistics to rise so they can use that to grab more power.
I’d call you a cynic, except that I agree with you. Wait – I guess we can both be cynics, right?
Back when I did martial arts I would sometimes assist in teaching Women’s Self-Defense classes. We mostly stopped offering them after a while though, and I was OK with it, because I was almost always A) disappointed in the fact that so few people showed up for a free class and B) unconvinced of how much good it does you to go to a class one time and never practice.
Maybe now I should start offering free “How not to rape” classes for men. HuffPo would totally do a feature on me as a hero.
It’s not victim blaming. It’s victim preventing.
Speaking of the “rape culture” the feminists love to prattle about, what do you make of this?
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/06/pink-sff-is-worse-than-you-think.html#comment-form
Apparently Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of SF/F’s more prominent recent authors – and certainly one of its more prominent feminists – was a rapist herself, and an enabler of child rape to boot. According to – among others – HER OWN DAUGHTER. Quote:
>”None of this should be news. Walter was a serial rapist with many, many, many victims (I named 22 to the cops) but Marion was far, far worse. She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls.”<
Holy crap.
That….. that….. I’ve got no words. Though I need to pick my jaw up off the floor before I start catching flies.
I am a bit wary of that discussion from the first line forward on the page. It seemed less about dealing with rape and molestation than it was about attacking sci-fi writers who portray same-sex relationships (which I am do). It was less about helping the victims and more about attacking gays.
Check the sources. Moen, Greyland and Goldin, from those sources, do not appear to have an axe to grind against gays specifically.
Bob- I’m simply wary of such sites from recent experience. Was in the middle of a pretty good article about problems with modern feminism when the author suddenly went off on a wild tangent blaming the whole situation on “the Jewish problem.” By the time it was over, I left in disgust with a new appellation to my own name: The pagan Anti-Christ’s answer to the Jewish problem, a heathen who likes Jews.”
So, I tend to avoid sites like that.
Now you are just being silly.
Greyland was in MZB’s custody as a child. Her problem seems to be specifically with MZB, Breen, and Lisa whose surname I forget.
Goldin and Moen are quoting legal documents. You can go read the legal documents yourself, I sincerely doubt that the lawyers were attempting to say anything about pagans or gays in general. Goldin and Moen also seem to specifically have a problem with MZB et al. as individuals.
Bob, you misunderstood. I wasn’t saying that this site was doing that. I was just pointing out my recent unfortunate experience with a similar site that seemed to have an agenda. I will do some actual research on her claims. I just won’t use it to justify some kind ad hominim attack on sci-fi writers who are gay friendly as the first few lines of that page suggests. .
Vox apparently has an agenda. Sure. As I said, he links to the websites of Moen, and maybe also to Goldin, who apparently have an entirely different agenda, on that matter specific to MZB and her choices in associates. I forget if I got the link to Goldin from Vox or Moen.
Vox lost an election for president of the SFWA. Shortly after, he was kicked out of the organization on grounds that, he has documented, others have apparently transgressed worse on. Those others apparently have not been punished for their trolling, apparently because of better political connections. It seems reasonable to conclude that at least part of Vox’s agenda here is to point out the contradiction between the SFWA punishing Vox for speaking thoughtcrime, and lauding MZB who was apparently involved in some very evil real crimes.
Bob-
Again, I am not attacking the people who filed the actual reports against MZB (Not an author whose works I have enjoyed) but the very opening of this discussion goes:
By way of example, consider that one of the foremost heroines of Pink SF/F turns out to have been the very sort of monstrous sexual freak the pinkshirts so love to write about in their inclusive, people of colorful, sexually deviant fiction.
It gets worse from there. If what MZB is accused of is true, then she need to be punished for it- and severely. However, that is not an indictment of the whole gay friendly scifi universe. Hell, you’d have to take out David Gerold one of the creators of Star Trek if you did that. (Blood and Fire). That was my problem with the site. I would welcome links to the actual documents so I could get them unfiltered through Vox’s own agenda and mania.
Danny,
The second sentence in Vox’s thing had a link to:
http://deirdre.net/marion-zimmer-bradley-its-worse-than-i-knew/
That linked to:
http://deirdre.net/marion-zimmer-bradley-gave-us-new-perspectives-all-right/
Both are on Moen’s site.
Which links to:
http://www.sff.net/people/stephen.goldin/mzb/
Which has the depositions, and is Goldin’s site. The invitation check the sources, along with mentioning surnames of the secondary sources, was to point out that they were readily available, without being filtered through Vox’s stuff.
Getting so hung up on Vox, and about general statements about gays and pagans, struck me as obfuscating the issue.
MZB is dead, and has been for many years.
Bob-
Sorry. Just pointing out that he poisoned the well for what could have been a good point. I will definitely check out those sources- at my convenience. I didn’t know MZB was dead. I won’t mourn her. (Never said I was a nice man.) But as I pointed out, Vox’s own blathering tended to make me not take his arguments seriously.
Really, the issue here isn’t what Vox Day thinks of “pink SF/F,” as it relates to this discussion. (Yes, due in no small part to his ongoing disputes with SFWA, Vox is clearly tarring with a broad brush; I don’t think you can plausibly call the likes of David Weber and Marko Kloos “pink,” which Vox apparently does because he considers their portrayal of strong female characters “unrealistic.”)
The issue here is that while the Left is stretching the definition of “rape” well past the breaking point to score cheap political points, they’re overlooking a really horrific, actual rape culture within their own ranks, and the whitewashing of MZB is but one example. You might also recall the critically-acclaimed “The Vagina Monologues,” which features “the good rape” of a thirteen-year-old girl by an adult lesbian. IIRC, Piers Anthony had a scene in one of his books that featured, approvingly, a scene of sex with a child.
Roman Polanski was mentioneed back up the thread. (“Hey, it wasn’t ‘rape-rape.'”) Samuel Delany (who just received a lifetime Nebula) played footsie with NAMBLA. It was apparently OK for Bill Clinton to be both a rapist and a serial sexual harasser. Same deal with Ted Kennedy, and the Bloat of Hyannisport actually KILLED a woman. Ira Eichhorn…oh, hell, you get the idea.
See, that’s what happens when you go full collective: the welfare of individuals is meaningless, and amorality is the order of the day.
So you’re willing to discount the actual words of the victims involved in a savage, inhuman, and decades-long career of child abuse because the article linked to is from VD, who doesn’t like Teh Gheys?
So tell me… which is more important to you?
DaveP. An honest discussion.
(And can someone tell me why I can directly reply to some posts and not others?)
Danny,
The software only supports threading so deep, so many layers of nesting. It stops where it stops because the alternatives are squashing the postings more than the designer cared for, or breaking the formatting of the page.
Okay. Just wanted to make sure you understood that I wasn’t ignoring your posts.
Danny, you don’t want an “honest discussion”, or you wouldn’t insist on excluding people just because you don’t like their agenda.
Also, try to imagine the reaction in, ahem, certain quarters if a top-selling, well-respected SF author widely identified as a conservative or right-leaning libertarian turned out to be a child-rapist and enabler of child rape.
Really. Think about it for a minute. Just how much demand would there be to “separate the artist from the work”? How much denial would there be of eyewitness accounts and admissions in publicly-available documents? How much excuse-making? How much “re-examination” (not to mention boycotting) of the work might take place?
My wife and I have a saying, “Don’t be the stereotype”; as in, “If you don’t like the stereotype of Group X as all doing Thing Y, don’t do Thing Y and don’t be afraid to police the members of your in-group that do Thing Y.”
But, asking members of a group to refrain from harmful and self-destructive behavior that reinforces stereotypes about that group would be oppressive, right?
Not at ll Rocinate2. I definitely want an honest discussion, but I dismiss people’s point of view when they get unreasonable, and radical and aim their diatribe at people not involved with it. As I’ve said, I was unaware of the MZB issue until someone brought it up here. I have to do my own research to form an opinion. But in the mean-time, if someone wants to use it as an excuse to gay-bash or attack gay-friendly scifi-writers (of which I am one) I tend to dismiss their point of view as agenda driven.
As I’ve said in the past, I’m not a fan of MZB. Not because she writes gay-friendly, but because I just don’t like he work, period. I put her in the same category as Culberth and Mirshak’s Triangle story. I don’t have problems with characters being gay or bi, but some characters are NOT gay or bi and should not be portrayed as such. I’m not that impressed with MZB’s work.
As for separating a body of work from her personal life, I have no problem with that. I do it with Arthur C. Clarke, I do it with Robert Heinlein, and I do it with Ayn Rand, and William Moulton Marsten.
BTW, I was deeply involved in both the fan community and the neopagan community for the better part of two decades.
While monsters like MZB were by no means typical, they were distressingly common. Sociopaths and the deeply disturbed are attracted to permissive environments because they can do their thing more easily there and because people are much less willing to call them on it.
Not every socially-awkward male SF fan is a creeper, but creepers go to SF conventions because girls! in spandex! who like the same stuff I do!
Not every grandfatherly pagan man is a pedophile, but grandfatherly pedophiles go to clothing-optional events so they can watch little girls run around nakies.
There was a lot of lip service given in both places to “respect” and “safe space”, but I saw stuff in both communities that seriously squicked this small-town A student/varsity athlete/Eagle Scout. I was generally told, “it’s none of your business” or “it’s not what you think” or “don’t be so judgmental you pale patriarchal penis-person”.
Very nearly every thing that looked or felt “wrong” (especially where kids, self-destructive, non-sacramental drug use, partner abuse, etc.) turned out to be so.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the “village” is a Lutheran farm town, or pagan festival. If most people in the “village” think the 38 y.o. married guy is boinking his best friend’s 14 y.o. daughter on the sly, it’s probably true.
Question is which community might be more likely to act on this knowledge? Which community, due to a combination of “tolerance”, enabling, and just plain cowardice, might do nothing.
For the record, it took the presence of a mandated reporter (DFCS employee) at the pagan festival for anything to happen.
Make what you will of that.
I don’t know who Moulton is, and Rand was certainly a piece-of-work, but I’m not aware that there was anything particularly unsavory about the private lives of Clarke or Heinlein.
Do enlighten me.
Also, my apologies if I “went off” on you a bit. I *did* really enjoy some of MZB’s work, and it profoundly influenced me when I was younger. I shook off a lot of the crazier stuff on my own, but there is a heartsickenss beneath my anger, and I directed some that at you.
I’m also angry that all the things I alluded to earlier, that I thought were wrong, *were* wrong. But everyone around me told me I was “imagining it” and “being judgmental”.
Sounds kind of like what happened with MZB: an inner circle of enablers (if not active participants) and an outer circle of science-fictional tolerance and open-mindedness, and she was never held accountable. (The fact that her insurance company paid a settlement after she died doesn’t have too many positive karma points.)
Moulton was the creator of Wonder Woman and had a bit of a taste for bondage. Lots of women getting thoroughly tied up in early WW comics.
This whole MZB issue puts me in a very . . . strange place.
You see, MZB was one of my “writing mentors”: the third editor to buy my work, and the first who would actually talk to me. I actually have a blurb written by her for a “middle reader” SF novel I wrote (which ended up never selling but which I might revisit in the future).
I knew nothing about any of these other issues then and didn’t until well after her death. When I first heard about them several years after her death. But the memories that I had don’t go away because of the horrid stuff that’s come out since.
So, like I said, I find myself in a very strange place.
I can understand that. It does sort of put you in a pickle, and legitimately so. Someone who has been kind to you personally, but you find out may have a darker side. (And I use “may” because I have not yet read the documents.)
As someone who did take a brief look through them, I would advise not eating lunch until afterwards. I’m not trying to be overly dramatic, either. I thought I was going to be sick for awhile there. It was just….. vile.
No hard feelings. Like I said, I don’t have the facts on that one yet, so I can’t form an opinion other than I really disliked her work. Moulton was the creator of Wonder Woman and was into bondage and group marriages. There are suggestions that the reason that Clarke lives where he does has more to do with an appreciation of lads. As for Heinlein, he got labeled a Nazi because of Starship Troopers.
Danny, I count five responses to the post by you … and all five of them are far more concerned with Vox and his opinions (including doing the “he reminds me of someone who’s anti-Semitic!” bit) then they are with the original information (about horrible long-term molestation). That’s pretty indicative that it isn’t Vox’s honesty- or MZB’s- that concerns you.
Sorry, but I won’t apologize for taking with a grain of salt someone whose opinion drops into an ad hominem attack into all sci-fi writers who have gay friendly stories. I will look at the original documents and make a decision myself. As for Vox’s opinion, let’s just say that the amount of salt it would take would be appropriate for a field of watermelons.
Danny,
To be honest, your objections to Vox seem like objecting to a purely cosmetic feature.
Moira Greyland’s email to Deirdre Moen stands on its own.
With the effort you’ve put in on this, it should have been trivial to read it on Vox, or follow his link to read it on Moen, or even the link to Moen I provided.
The only additional data that Vox provides relates the matter of MZB to several controversies that the regulars here are very familiar with.
Twenty five years ago, Moira Greyland seems to have helped get Walter Breen, MZB’s husband, jailed for pederasty.
Fifteen years ago, around the time MZB died, Goldin, the stepfather of one of Walter’s victims, put some documents on the internet regarding the matter. In some of these, Lisa Waters mentioned a story told to her by MZB, of Marion tying Moira to a chair, and threatening to pull out Moira’s teeth with pliers.
Then there is the most recent thing, Moen publishing an email where Greyland claims MZB sexually molested her.
If I credit some of your statements about why you apparently didn’t look even at the last item, it makes you seem lazy or weak-minded.
Continuing to answer ‘because Vox’ will continue to be boring.
Sixth post by Danny more concerned with VD’s religious choices than with the posts he links to.
I think part of the problem here is that what SJ activists mean by “rape” and what the… PRAs? Personal Responsibility Advocates?… mean by “rape” is not, in practice, the same thing; or at least, the *form* of the crime that is being imagined, and its context, is radically different.
When PRAs hear the word “rape” what they tend to imagine more than anything else is a violent stranger-to-stranger assault that relies on physical force and surprise to implement and which can often be forestalled or fought off by someone with sufficient training, attitude, or a carried weapon. When SJWs hear the word “rape”, what they tend to imagine more than anything else is sexual coercion, via psychological pressure, existing social power dynamics (a boss with his secretary, for example) or a perceived *threat* of physical force, applied to a woman from a man she already knows, whom she may have been persuaded into trusting in other contexts, and often with whom she may have initially *consented* to sexual activity before realizing that she actually doesn’t want to further participate.
It is a *lot* harder to use the kind of training and mindset (quite properly) advocated by Ms. Sanchez in these latter situations: very often there is a great deal of emotional conflict because the victim already knows her abuser and may have mixed feelings about him, or feel shame or guilt at changing her mind (as is her right), and they also tend to take place in situations where the victim has already let down her guard and is never given the opportunity to regain the physical or mental equilibrium needed to *use* her self-defense training properly, or gain access to weapons. So it is these latter types of crimes that the “don’t blame the victim” advocates are complaining about, the kinds that negate the value of self-defense by sidestepping it and which are better prevented by proper sexual chivalry than thwarted by better training.
(The real problem, of course, is that it is completely impossible to train men to a better standard of sexual chivalry without abandoning the culture of sexual permissiveness that has overtaken most of the West, and which most SJWs I know are set on defending wholeheartedly. Our problem isn’t that we have a “rape culture”, it’s that we have an *oversexed* culture, and I’ll take the first feminist SJW seriously who admits that women have done their share of contributing to that.)
Alas, for there to be functional Chivalrous behavior there must also be proper Lady like discretion and modesty, which is the last thing these females want. They don’t really want courtesy or chivalry or respect either. Just watch them mock a polite country kid who holds a door or calls them ‘Ma’am’. They are actively discouraging the behaviors that create the environment they claim to want. The sexual behavior is simply a more blatant manifestation of the ‘I should be able to do whatever I want with no consequences, so there!’ mindset. It makes dealing with real issues on both sides exponentially more difficult.
“They don’t really want courtesy or chivalry or respect either. Just watch them mock a polite country kid who holds a door or calls them ‘Ma’am’.”
No, I think they do want respect; the tragedy is simply that they’ve bought into a perspective — or bought into keeping the good opinion of others with that perspective — which sees the traditional courtesies as “demeaning” and sees their lack as “respect”. But like Lazarus Long’s observation on the effect of disdaining insincere politeness, the idea that being liberated from a small annoyance may help open the door to an altogether more dangerous mindset is simply not a cost-benefit analysis that they are willing to make.
Heather, that seems to me to be the core of the problem. The liberal position seems to boil down to “we want the freedom to make hedonistic or belief-based choices, without being held responsible for any unsavory consequences of our choices.” This seems to be a recurring theme whether the topic is self defense, abortion, employment or health care. The result of course is that they wind up painting themselves into more and more convoluted positions logically. I’d like to hear how they resolve this increasingly obvious cognitive dissonance, but so far all I’ve heard is that “we just don’t get it.” Which I suppose is true.
I’d still have to call “BS”
First – we have an issue of conflated contexts. You sort of point this out but then bring up that “PRA’s” primarily think in terms of stranger on stranger instead of forced vs consent.
Seriously, the stats on rape, years and years and YEARS of SVU episodes, etc., have sure as hell brought “awareness” that someone you trust may very easily be (and in sexual abuse cases, more often is) someone you know.
What constituted “forced” vs. “consent” is the real issue, and these “empowered” women can’t seem to distinguish what is truly “forced” vs “made them feel bad”.
The issue we have here is that once you get into the “social pressure” realm, it becomes an entirely subjective standard. And thus the core of the SNL skit I mentioned earlier. I’ve seen girls at a gym coo over a hot guy that was a jerk to them while asking the gym manager to speak to another guy who clumsily tried to say “Hi” a few times and they couldn’t be bothered to say get lost ( the manager explained that he knew the guy hadn’t done anything wrong per se but they found him being nearby “threatening”).
So no – “force” doesn’t have to be at knifepoint, but to be legitimately coerced instead of “gee, he was insistent” requires an act that would generally be illegal anyway. Assault and battery. Unlawful detainment aka “imprisoned/locked in a room”. Extortion. And so on.
Otherwise you’re left with something utterly subjective about whether or not they “felt” pressured, and were “raped”.
“What constituted “forced” vs. “consent” is the real issue….”
I agree; I am simply pointing out that almost by definition, the issue of self-defense capacity and opportunity is only relevant once this decision has already been made, and it’s not an illegitimate objection to note that a significant proportion of rape cases rely on exploiting the victim’s own ambiguity about what’s happening, or fear of the possible consequences of resistance or refusal, to obtain their goal before the victim can come to that decision and act on it.
The SJW perspective, to put it another way, is to complain that the self-defense advocacy is like saying that the solution to a series of blackmailed bank embezzlement crimes is better vault doors and more heavily armed guards; the physical ability to thwart a crime is irrelevant if the people involved have been tricked, exploited or manipulated into making the wrong decisions.
The problem here is that it is entirely possible for a sexual encounter to take place, and for one person to perceive it as a coerced and traumatizing experience while the other perceives it as a consensual and enjoyable one, and both can be right from their own points of view and perspectives — it requires a tragic lack of communication and obliviousness but it can happen. But our legal code has absolutely nothing in place to deal with that kind of subjectivity, and the consequences of error in both directions have become so emotionally polarized (and politicized) that no even partially effective and practical solution will please everyone.
“It is a *lot* harder to use the kind of training and mindset (quite properly) advocated by Ms. Sanchez in these latter situations”
This is where you are wrong.
The training might not always help if the rapist is significantly stronger or better trained than you, but the mindset always will. The most important thing you can get out of any self-defense training is the mindset that no one is responsible for your own safety but you, and that mindset will always serve you well, no matter the situation.
Just for example, you, yourself, listed “a perceived threat of physical force” as one of the tricky situations that Social Justice advocates are talking about when they say “rape,” and which self-defense training won’t help much. This is completely untrue. If you’re able to defend yourself, and know you’re able to defend yourself and that defense is always an option, an attitude you will develop with enough training, then that perceived threat won’t seem like much of a threat anymore, and won’t stop you from fighting back. And that’s only the most obvious example. Even in the others, such as the authority figure abusing their position and similar situations, the confidence you’ll gain from developing this mindset will put you in a much better position to speak out in your defense, even if no punches ever need to be thrown.
While I see where you are coming from, I think I would have to disagree with your conclusions. “Situational Awareness” is an important self defense topic–and the basic idea is to be aware of what’s around you, and avoid anything that you would consider “hurtful” or “dangerous”.
If you include “made me feel bad” as a standard of “rape”, and you don’t want to be “raped”, then there are still key things to do to prevent that from happening. Don’t get drunk at parties, or if you do, have a designated “watchperson” to protect you. If the boss is hitting on you, report the issue to HR, or if the company is poisonous enough, leave. Even if you think you could trust your friend, do not hesitate to do everything in your power to resist his advances; indeed, determine beforehand certain points you will refuse to go past (no passionate kissing, for example), and if those points are reached, call off the date and go home.
Obviously, not even these actions will perfectly shield you from all situations; even so, they are reasonable steps to take to try to prevent unwanted sexual encounters. Of course, as you stated, the real problem is a combination of sexual permissiveness (well, permissiveness in general) combined with an “oversexed” culture, and the SJW types will insist that we shouldn’t be proactive in preventing such things, whether that action is to pull out a gun on a stranger rapist, or demanding your over-eager boyfriend to take you home, or even just drop you off at the nearest convenience store so you could call for a ride home.
Alpheus said: “If you include “made me feel bad” as a standard of “rape”, and you don’t want to be “raped”, then there are still key things to do to prevent that from happening.”
If you include “made me feel bad” as a standard of rape, you are a -lunatic-.
If you are a lunatic and want to be sure not to get your feeeeeelings hurt, get a dog. Dogs are very tolerant of teh crazy if you feed them regular and take them for walkies.
One of the college programs suggests the woman should throw up or piss herself. I think it would be more effective to make the aggressor throw up or piss himself…or bleed profusely.
One thing that protected women somewhat was chivalry and a christian society. Libs hate both those things and made sure they have mostly gone the way of the dodo.
Muslim men seem to have some kind of issue that allows them to rape under the “right” circumstances. Libs love the Muslims unconditionally, will NEVER mention their weird ideas about “a woman’s place is in her burka” but still embrace The Religion of Peace. Schizo.
Just about every sex offender in prison today will readily tell anyone who asks that there comes a point where porn just doesn’t do it anymore – that particular addiction needed more reality in the game. Libs will tell you, and your children, that porn is THE First Amendment right, if you don’t like it move on, it is just fine and dandy and ok and HEALTHY – our tax payer supported college campuses offer classes in it and even why Asians are excluded from it (mostly).
“Teach men not to rape”. Guess they’ll need a new drug boys can start in high school and continue throughout their lifetime so they will “comply” with this new lesson.
Oh I can’t believe I’m doing this *sigh* oh well.
You are operating from a false assumption. The statement you make: “The thing is most rapists already know it is bad” is simply not true. Many, and I would even venture most, rapes are committed by men who don’t realize what they’ve done, or who feel somehow justified. You’re picturing a very narrow scenario when you think about rape, and the fact is that only a small minority of incidents actually fit that profile.
You know that Wilem Dafoe quote about playing villains? “Ain’t no difference, everybody thinks they’re righteous.” We, as human beings, have an amazing capacity for rationalization. Almost a quarter of rapes are committed by intimate partners, nearly 3/4 are people the victim knows. These aren’t strangers in ski masks lurking in parking garages. They’re husbands who actually buy into the whole marital duties thing. They’re guys in bars who think that handing a girl tequila shots until she’s incoherent is a legitimate pickup technique. They’re the “friendzoned nice guy” who thinks that when she wakes up she’ll be into it. They’re normal guys who do something horrible, but they don’t see themselves as rapists because their situation is special somehow. I’ve heard, dozens of times, all about how it “wasn’t rape because -insert excuse here-.”
My generation didn’t talk about consent. I was given outright misinformation about it in school, and even my liberal and openminded parents never really felt the need to talk to me about it. If I, with my charmed upbringing, made it to my mid 20s before I fully understood what consent means, how much worse must it be for others? We can’t eliminate rape, no one is saying that we can, but denying that there are cultural factors that contribute to it is irresponsible.
I think that self defense classes are great. Knowing and developing your body’s capabilities is worthwhile, useful, and can be a factor in deterring crime. It just won’t do much at all to prevent the majority of rapes.
Yep, I should definitely get rid of all these fire extinguishers then.
By teaching women to fight and take responsibility for their safety, I’m irresponsible. Got it. I must have missed the part where I denied there were cultural factors contributing to it… Oh wait, that would be all the fucking imbeciles on Twitter demanding a world without evil in it. So I do believe you’re angry at the wrong person.
I think you might have just skimmed until offended, because I mentioned how there were various types of offenders and it was a complicated subject, and how self defense was simply one tool in the tool box, so please forgive me for not writing a gender studies dissertation about all of the various types of rape, and instead talked about the actual topic at hand, which was Miss Nevada being attacked by a bunch of fools.
EDIT: and I would add that I’m not incorrect at all. Rapists know it is bad. Don’t make excuses for predators. Your generation wasn’t taught about consent? Where the fuck did you grow up, Pakistan? I think you may have accidentally hit the nail on your head when you talked about your Liberal parents, because most sane people get it.
“Yep, I should definitely get rid of all these fire extinguishers then.”
To maintain the metaphor, I think the feminist point here is not “We should get rid of all these fire extinguishers.” The feminist point here is “More fire extinguishers aren’t going to make a difference if the arsonists know how to keep you from getting to them once they’ve started setting the fire, or if they know how to confuse you about whether what’s happening is a campfire cookout or an act of arson until it’s too late. (And that latter is even easier if all they think they’re doing is having a cookout — they may not burn your house down, but they’ll definitely leave you with a ruined floor.)”
Now this is followed up by a considerably more questionable assertion, namely “The recommendation of keeping fire extinguishers handy is not only useless for the majority of arson victims, but actually counterproductive for society in general, in that it can give people a false sense of security and a feeling that they can afford to stop looking out for arsonists — which only makes it easier for those arsonists who know how to avoid setting off the alarms or manipulate victims into not using them, and makes those unlucky enough to actually be victims of arson feel even worse by implying it was their fault for not acting quickly enough.”
Part of this comes from a basic SJ assumption (derived, I believe, from Marxist dialectic) about human psychology, which is that humans can’t think very well in terms of multitask approaches or evenly balanced contributing factors — anything we focus on, by definition, tends to push other elements out of the picture, so people who focus (or appear to be focusing) on one approach to a problem tend to act as if that’s the only approach that will work. In itself this isn’t implausible; it’s simply the unwillingness to trust that something important won’t be missed without top-down unified control, and the impatience to wait until other things are addressed, that is the Marxist holdover and the fatal flaw.
It’s okay Meg I can’t believe you just wrote all of that either. None of it made any sense.
“People they know” includes “a guy they met at the bar” and “a guy from class.” Merely being introduced to someone doesn’t mean you “know” them in any meaningful way.
The use of the phrase “people they know” is a -deliberately- conflation of mere acquaintances, who no sane person, man or woman, should trust enough to put voluntarily put themselves in a vulnerable situation with, and people known and trusted who violate that already earned trust.
Control for that and the numbers look very different: stop trusting people too early and thus stop voluntarily putting yourself in a position of increased physical vulnerability by impairment and solitude, and the opportunity for both active predation and “mixed signals” goes way down.
As for “…handing girls tequila shots until…”? I’m sorry, when did women stop being competent, autonomous adults able to control their own alcohol consumption and become childlike idiots without personal agency?
And “friend-zoned?” Why on earth is a woman drinking to insensibility and passing out in the presence of a man -she- knows desires her romantically, but for whom she doesn’t reciprocate? Her opinion of the relationship doesn’t magically turn him into a woman or a sexless being. Nothing justifies a man who rapes, but outside of a trusted long-term -romantic- partner, no man should be in a -position- to do so.
If she wouldn’t pass out alone with a strange man, she shouldn’t do it with a “friend-zoner.” Grow up and learn to sleep alone at home. Again, personal agency.
“mere acquaintances, who no sane person, man or woman, should trust enough to put voluntarily put themselves in a vulnerable situation with”
Depends on what you mean by ‘vulnerable’. It is difficult to date without putting yourself in vulnerable situations. You can obviously avoid being passed out drunk (although drugs are somewhat harder to avoid), but alone? Hard to avoid at a certain point.
And I think this is where good judgement of individuals comes in. If a man is a good man, he is not going to be dangerous. So hopefully your instincts are good in this department. I don’t know you teach good instincts (although you can certainly teach warning signs), but I thought The Gift of Fear was a useful book.
No, it’s really not. The initialism my firearms instructor uses is “USO” for “Unusual, Suspicious or Out-of-the-ordinary”. The mantra we’re taught when we see a USO situation is; “This is bad, I’m going to get hurt.” For this to have any defensive value though, you have to be aware enough to detect the USO in the first place. I could also reference Jeff Cooper’s self-defense awareness color code;
White – completely unaware (you should only be in this state while asleep, though most people occupy it as their default state)
Yellow – No specific threat, but a general awareness of people and things around you (this should be everyone’s default state)
Orange – a specific potential threat has your attention
Red – That threat requires immediate action.
Some instructors include;
Black – Use of deadly force, but this is more of a legal distinction than one of practical self-defense.
I know this seems excessively formal in black and white, but in practice it essentially boils down to the Ferris Beuller line; “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Those examples were to point out situations where the men involved would have considered the behavior okay. Which is to say, they would be rapists who didn’t think it was rape. The behavior of their hypothetical victims is entirely irrelevant to that point.
Do you have any sons? I hope to God you don’t because you are saying that they could be punished for rape without “knowing” that they raped somebody.
In other words, in your world “rape” exists only in the mind of the woman and not in some objective standard.
It’s been said that rape isn’t about sex but about power. You and women like you prove that saying. You want the power to destroy men by having “rape” to be what the woman says is rape.
Meg,
I disagree with the “men thinking it was okay” assumption. And crime is by definition an interaction between victim and perpetrator, so both sides choices absolutely -do- matter every time. Why is it only with sex crimes that we (some people) are afraid to address that?
Lea,
Alone meaning “not in the presence of others until trust has been established.” You can meet at a restaurant, or movie, or date during the day in public, and make it clear you are getting out of the car alone, or closing the door on the date after the kiss on the doorstep when dropped off easily enough. Being sober and confident of ones abilities to enforce those decisions, and being clear about your signals, is essential.
One of the things the modern dating scene/ “hook-up” culture has lost is the idea of “pre-screening” of potential paramours by friends and family, and “delaying tactics to gain intel” via group dates and such in the early phases of a potential relationship. Now we jump right to “come over to my place alone and hang out and watch movies”, or “go out and get hammered” expecting no possible negative outcomes.
The attached is a good look at the bonding process in humans, and how it progresses. When the process is short-circuited and/or there isn’t clear communication, we introduce the possibility of mistaken reads. Again, this doesn’t “excuse” anything, but not recognizing reality and adjusting the one thing you can control, yourself, to it is foolishness.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/bonding_process.html
A crime is an interaction and you can’t know the others thoughts or intentions so you plan based on capabilities until trust and knowledge have developed. If we could get both young men -and- women to learn what is going on in their interactions and exercise some personal agency we could largely eliminate most of the non-predatory rapes.
““wasn’t rape because -insert excuse here-.”
Just because they gave an excuse doesn’t mean they didn’t know it was wrong. I think all the people you mentioned absolutely knew it was wrong, they just didn’t care.
And I disagree that knowing self defense won’t help with a whole lot of these rapes that occur between people who know each other. Maybe they would help more in some cases, because the level of criminality (read danger to life) between you and someone you know and you and the strange jumping out from the bushes is probably less in many cases, or at the very least it’s somewhat known and you can react to it.
Consent isn’t that complicated, unless you make it so, so I’m not sure why it would have to be taught.
I’ve often burglarized houses and thought of it as taking a shortcut to the street on the other side because I’m a magician who doesn’t acknowledge locks and borrows computers and jewelry on the way and means to bring them back but forgets because I’m not sure what I’m really doing at any time and “burglary” is just a word and maybe it’s actually a cloud.
Your premise is that most rapes are acquaintance rapes, and that these go unreported (or under-reported). Unfortunately FBI crime statistics don’t differentiate between stranger-rape and date-rape, which I suspect is part of the reason those decrying a “rape culture” bring up the topic in the first place. There is no hard data to confirm or deny their allegation, and so they default to their belief. There is a point to be made that there is no paper trail for these date-rapes reported anecdotally, and that on college campuses they seem to be handled through the school and not through the appropriate law enforcement authority, not lending credence to the assertion. I’m sure date-rape occurs, but I’m also sure that there are camps out there working to talk up the threat rather than put it in perspective.
Advocating self-defense to protect against stranger-rape in no way detracts from combating date-rape, however. What does though is insisting that the world be made perfectly safe from any hedonistic actions we take by trying to eliminate (or ignore) any negative consequences of those actions. It’s not blaming previous victims to tell girls not to drink themselves into a stupor. It’s part of responsible self-defense. There is no right to act without consequences, nor is there a right for the world around you to protect you from your irresponsibility. And it does no one involved any good to equate regret with rape. No means “no”, but yes means “yes” too. Yes is not a “no” deferred until such time that all parties involved have sobered up. If you don’t want to be held accountable for decisions made while your inhibitions were lowered, then don’t lower your inhibitions. However, a lack of response doesn’t equal “yes” either, and for those men who think it does, we’re back in rape territory again.
Having said all that, if I hear a woman (or a man) crying for help, I will defend her (or him) to the best of my abilities, because no really does mean “no”. I am a man, but I am not a rapist. I am one of Dave Grossman’s sheepdogs.
You’re right that villains think they’re the righteous ones, but the rest of your argument doesn’t follow from that fact.
Most murderers will come up with dozens of rationalizations to justify what they’ve done to themselves as well. That doesn’t mean that they don’t know murder is wrong. That also doesn’t mean that we live in a culture where murder is accepted, or that it is the fault of the producers of violent games or movies which might glorify murder depending on how you look at it whenever someone is murdered. I literally cannot imagine any we we could teach people that murder is wrong any more strongly than they already do. However, people continue to do it, and continue to justify it to themselves.
The idea that everyone who argues against the idea of Rape Culture or victim blaming, or who advocates self-defense classes to help protect women from rape is only thinking of rape as strangers in ski masks lurking in parking garages is even more of a false assumption than you’re accusing Larry of making. Virtually EVERYONE knows that forcing yourself on an unconscious victim or exploiting a position of power to get sex is wrong. People do it anyway, and justify it to themselves just like the murderers in the above example. Education on the matter certainly isn’t a BAD thing, any more than self-defense should be considered a bad thing by people who think the solution is more education, but by itself it certainly won’t stop anything.
(Incidentally, Ms Nevada actually SAID just that! She said AWARENESS is important so that women KNOW they need to learn to defend themselves. Awareness=education. She actually AGREES with the people who are complaining about her! I’m not accusing you of being one of those people, mind you, but I just wanted to point that out, since that’s one of the things that’s been bugging me most about this whole debacle…)
If someone honestly doesn’t believe that rapists don’t realize it’s wrong, I propose a little test.
Tell them that someone raped a woman they care about (mother, sister, daughter, etc.) and watch what they do to the guy you say did it.
@T.L. Kighton
Exactly.
In fact, don’t even use the term rape, since it’s so loaded.
Tell them some guy got their mother drunk until she passed out and then had sex with her. They’ll want to kill the bastard.
Even if they’re using the standard dictionary definition of rape and not the Orwellian re-definition of “rape” the Social Justice community is trying to force into the language, they’ll still realize it’s wrong. (Which any reasonable person will still tell you is a bad thing, just not rape.) Tell them their mother had sex with a guy but was too afraid to tell him she didn’t want to, and regretted it later. They’ll probably STILL want to kill the bastard, albeit not quite as badly as in the previous example.
Education is not the problem.
Thank you for this. It’s crazy to complain when a woman advocates taking care of herself, and I am grateful that you said so, in no uncertain terms.
By the way: I should mention that for all I am attempting to understand and explicate the point of the complainers as a principled argument, here, I have lost almost all actual sympathy for them in practice by observing that the same sort of POVs respond equally vociferously to an observation that one of the best ways to “teach men not to rape” is to get them into stable marriages:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/10/the-best-way-to-end-violence-against-women-stop-taking-lovers-and-get-married/
One of the single biggest tipoffs to me that somebody isn’t really interested in solving a problem, but only in using their complaints about it as a way to reinforce their personal moral or political cred, is when any solution gets criticized for not being perfect while no solution is ever recommended for being an optimum, or even workable, interim compromise.
I’m neither angry nor offended, though insulting my parents is moving me in that direction. I do think the reaction to Miss Nevada’s comments was overblown. She was asked for a simple answer to a complicated question, and she gave one. It wasn’t a particularly good one, since the types of rapes which happen on college campuses aren’t usually the type where self defense classes would be preventative, but I didn’t find her answer at all offensive. In fact, only a few of the tweets you quoted even suggested that they were offended. Most of them just pointed out that her answer wasn’t the best one to address the problem, that’s not really an attack.
I did read the whole post, including the part about the fire extinguishers, and I’m entirely not disagreeing with that. My point is that stranger on stranger rape is a small percentage of even the reported rapes in this country. To borrow your metaphor, saying that self defense classes are the best answer to college rape isn’t like saying that having fire extinguishers in your house is a good idea, it’s like insisting that they’re the best way to protect it from a wildfire. It may be useful in a limited capacity, but clearing a firebreak is better. Promoting fire extinguishers doesn’t make you pro-arson, but it doesn’t get the firebreak cleared either.
I’m not an apologist, trying to understand what causes behavior isn’t the same as trying to justify it. I fully recognize that there are predators out there, men and women who specifically target and exploit the vulnerable, but I disagree that those kinds of predators make up the majority of rapists. You maintain that most rapists know what they’re doing is wrong, but I disagree. The fact that the majority of rapists know their victim, and that many of them are intimately involved with her, introduces all sorts of complicated dynamics. They may know that it’s not entirely right, that there are better ways to behave, but do they know it’s criminal? Do they know what an impact their action will have on their victim? Do they really know that it’s rape? I don’t think so, not entirely, I think we have an expectation that it is the woman’s responsibility to communicate objection, instead of an expectation that it is her responsibility to communicate consent.
Since you asked, I grew up in rural KS. When I say I wasn’t taught about consent, I mean that I was told in high school sex ed, outright, that men aren’t responsible for their actions if you lead them on, and that after a certain point they lose all control and can’t stop. That was a common attitude among my peers and my teachers. My parents never addressed it because I’m pretty sure it never occurred to them that I was unclear on the concept. Of course, like most parents, I don’t think they were comfortable thinking about their daughter in an ambiguous sexual situation either. It wasn’t until I was 26 that I realized I could withdraw consent at any time. I was in bed with a boyfriend and he did something which frightened me. Afterward, we had a conversation about it. I was dumbfounded, completely, when he told me that I could have just told him to stop. That was a trainwreck of a relationship, but I’ll always be grateful to him for that conversation, and for showing me Boondock Saints for the first time.
“the types of rapes which happen on college campuses aren’t usually the type where self defense classes would be preventative”
I just don’t understand your logic here. Sure, avoidance won’t necessariliy help if you are already alone with/in a relationship with someone, but she was talking about martial arts. Just because a person is not a stranger does not mean you can’t physically resist.
“Do they really know that it’s rape? ”
Unless you are using an odd defination of rape (which you may, idk, some seem to think mild persuasion fits the bill: I do not), I think if someone is quite clear that they are not interested, there are not many men of at least a normal IQ (which college students should be!) and no psychological disorder who do not understand this simple fact. They may not understand the consequences completely (legal or emotional), but that is true of lots of criminal things for 19/20 yo’s.
Perhaps it is an odd definition of rape, I’ll try to explain. I view all sex as a dichotic experience, wherein two people are experiencing the same event in an emotionally charged and somewhat altered state (moreso when there are intoxicants involved). Those two people can have vastly different experiences of that same event. In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
Now, I know that’s entirely subjective, and I’m not advocating rounding up and prosecuting every guy who meets that very wide definition. I do think that there needs to be a much stricter standard than that for criminal prosecution, but for the purposes of education, treatment of victims, discussion of contributing cultural factors, that’s where I stand.
Meg- so what you’re saying is that Monica Lewinsky raped Bill Clinton. After all, we all know he regretted having sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. THAT is how you are defining rape.
In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
That’s devastating insanity. I can’t, at present, form a cogent response.
In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
What the hell?
Meg, I understand that you’re not talking about this being a definition for criminal behavior, but I’m going to tell you one thing right now that you have to grasp if you want to have any meaningful discussion about rape.
RAPE IS A CRIME!
You need to stop trying to create a definition that you know won’t work for criminal cases when you’re talking about something has heinous as rape. You devalue people who have truly been victimized in such a way.
Consent is used for a very real reason, and that’s because rape involves a lack of consent. You may not like it, but that’s what it is, and that’s because it provides an objective standard everyone can understand. I know that if a woman says “no”, that a line has been drawn. I can accept that because it’s easy for me to know where things stand. If I make it impossible for a woman to give consent, like by drugging her into unconsciousness, then I have also crossed a line because we can easily agree that she is unable to give consent. If she were to give it, I wouldn’t have needed to drug her, now would I?
Things get dicey when you talk about drunk women. It’s one thing when someone uses alcohol as a substitute for ruffies, but I maintain it’s quite another thing when both parties are intoxicated and that’s a point of dispute, in part because it’s not an objective standard that can be easily understood by all parties. I mean, if I’m intoxicated and an intoxicated woman comes onto me and I consent, am I guilty of rape? Some would argue that I am, while others would argue I’m not. See the problem?
Rape has specific definitions because it is a crime. In countries with functioning legal systems you can’t have fuzzy nonsense definitions of crimes. You have an agreed upon set of parameters.
What you are proposing is asinine from a legal standpoint. Since I come from a background discussing serious issues, involving lethal force and potentially killing people, and then having to defend your actions in court, you’ll just have to forgive me for not using your asinine emotional fuzzy definitions in my original article.
T.L
Yes, rape is a crime, but it is the only personal crime where the subjective concept of consent comes into play. If you punch someone in the face, there’s not usually any question of whether it was consensual. If you have sex with someone, whether it was a crime or not hinges on whether it was consensual or not. You gave some clearcut examples, but you went on to give an example that points out how subjective concepts don’t always fit neatly into objective criteria.
Let’s use that example, you’re drunk, she’s drunk, you start out having a good time, then she does something that freaks you out (for this example let’s also pretend she’s larger and stronger than you). You’d like to object, you really want to stop, but for whatever reason (too drunk, face covered, etc.) you’re not able to actually communicate that. She goes on as if everything is still good, then when she’s done she passes out. Have you been raped? Is she a rapist? Is that prosecutable? Should it be? Is there any kind of objective standard that can address this kind of situation?
You gave an example of a very stupid situation to be in not an example of rape.
Yes, rape is a crime, but it is the only personal crime where the subjective concept of consent comes into play.
Bull.
“Consent” isn’t subjective. Any argument that it is subjective is beyond ridiculous. Consent is something that is given or it isn’t. It’s kind of binary in that way.
This is especially true when you introduce your bullshit definition of rape occurring if one person feels raped.
You introduced a hypothetical, but I’m going to point out something for you that you need to understand real well. First, if someone is too drunk to revoke consent, they’re too drunk to give it. Second, if someone “covers” my face to the point I can’t say to stop, then they’re probably trying to kill me.
Really, your hypothetical scenario is beyond ridiculous. There are tons of cues one can give to show you’re not feeling what’s happening. These aren’t necessarily “subjective” either, in part because it’s universally understood that if a woman is trying it push you off, she’s obviously not happy with where things are going.
Why don’t you do yourself a favor and trot on back to wherever you came from. They might actually buy this bullshit you’re trying to peddle here. No one here will.
@Meg Re: the “you’re drunk, she’s drunk” example:
She’s probably stronger than me because she took self-defense classes. If I had taken some self-defense classes myself, I wouldn’t be in a position where I would be unable to communicate my displeasure. Even if I wasn’t skilled or strong enough to actually get her OFF me, I’d at least be able to get my face uncovered, not to mention the fact that, no matter how rough you might usually like it, there’s no way to misunderstand what someone who ACTUALLY KNOWS HOW TO FIGHT means when they start to fight back. (Though, if that last example were the cause of the misunderstanding, you should have known to establish a safe word.)
If I’m SO drunk that I’m physically incapable of speaking, then yes, of course it’s rape. There isn’t a single person in this comment thread who would dispute that, and it isn’t some sort of great mystery that nobody has ever been exposed to. However, people still do it anyway, hence the need for self-defense.
If I feel scared, or pressured, or worried that I’ll ruin an otherwise good relationship, then too bad for me. I still made the choice not to speak up. A person’s choices are their own, and while peer pressure may suck, and people who push other people into doing something using it are kind of shitty, the pressured individual is still making a choice. That’s why the concept of “victim blaming” as espoused by Social Justice advocatesis basically bullshit (Well, one reason. The other reason is that the concept that “all suspects are innocent until proven guilty” is a far more important principle, and more vital to the existence of a free society, than the concept that “you shouldn’t blame the victim) and why self-defense is still important, even though most rapes aren’t done by strangers using force.
Basically, Miss Nevada’s answer was completely right.
“In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all. ”
So in other words, sexual violence is completely subjective and entirely at the definition of whichever party feels aggrieved…
Yup.
Tell me, has any man in your life ever accused you of rape? Or is that a “women-only” prerogative?
“I think we have an expectation that it is the woman’s responsibility to communicate objection”
Maybe you ARE using a different definition than I am. I think you should be obvious one way or the other, about your consent or objection, and this isn’t generally terribly hard to do.
I agree that it should be obvious, but I think it’s important that the expectation should be that any doubt defaults to “no.” Which is what I mean by it being the woman’s responsibility to communicate consent, whether verbally or by participation and encouragement, or prior conversation if dominance play is their kink. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, or something we should just write off as impossible to teach. We’ve built up a sexual dynamic for centuries that is based on a woman having to meet a certain criteria for objection before an act is considered rape. Then we tried to fix that by moving the criteria around. It hasn’t worked, so maybe it’s time to stop thinking about rape in terms of objection at all.
Snort.
In other words, even if the guy honestly believes that the girl is willing, it still can be rape.
Without “objection”, you are expecting men to be both mind-readers and knowers-of-the-future.
IE men have to know that she “really doesn’t want sex by reading her thoughts” and have to know that she decide in the future that she shouldn’t had sex with him.
You just want the power to destroy a man’s reputation by saying that he raped you.
Paul, yes, she can still experience rape even if he genuinely believed she was willing. The flipside of that is that he didn’t experience committing rape, he experienced consensual sex. That was, actually, the point of my very first post. Both experiences are valid, why is that such a hard concept for people to grasp?
I’m not saying, at all, that should be the criteria for criminal prosecution, (or any action for that matter). In fact, I think that pursuing prosecution in those situations hinders the pursuit and prosecution of genuine predators. What I’m saying is that we need to be aware of the factors that lead to those situations and influence them where possible.
Also, Wayne. The women in those hypothetical situations had no responsibility because the women weren’t the point. The point was to illustrate circumstances where a rape might occur without the rapist realizing that what he was doing was criminal. I find it telling that every response that addresses those examples has a lot to say about the women’s responsibility, and not much about whether the men should know that they’re committing a crime.
Meg,
So what you are saying is that women are NEVER responsible for what they do, and men are always at fault. Got it.
There is no word for “non-criminal rape” in any language I know of.
I don’t that the majority of women who scream about the “rape culture” think the rape they’re talking about is “non-criminal rape”.
In the modern universities, young men are being punished in situations where they reasonably thought that the young woman consented but “later changed her mind”.
The majority of men consider rape to be evil as well as illegal.
You need to understand that they can reasonably be insulted when told that they are rapists according to your stupid “definition”.
Paul, yes, she can still experience rape even if he genuinely believed she was willing. The flipside of that is that he didn’t experience committing rape, he experienced consensual sex. That was, actually, the point of my very first post. Both experiences are valid, why is that such a hard concept for people to grasp?
It’s hard to grasp because it’s an indefensible position. The contortions necessary to declare a woman experienced rape while giving her sexual partner the experience of consensual sex… They boggle the mind.
Let’s leave aside the point Larry has raised, and that you acknowledge, that this has no legal role to play. This has no social, cultural or educational role to play. If one party can validly believe they are engaged in a consensual activity, and the other party can, with equal validity, believe they are being raped then consent is meaningless and rape is meaningless and the discussion is hopeless.
Rape is a crime. It is not dependent upon the perspective from which the event is viewed. Your view that the woman alone is responsible for defining an event as rape is consistent with what I was taught in the Air Force in the late 90’s, in a rather knee-jerk fashion to social pressures of the time. The lesson struck me then, but with time and the benefit of hindsight (as well as the insightful comments here) I can see that giving all of the legal power to the female does not equalize the disparity of physical force enjoyed by most males. Providing a mechanism for counter-abuse does not equal justice. Insisting otherwise strikes me as something of a power-grab by the feminists, who quite honestly lobbied for sexual freedom in the 60’s and 70’s, only to do something of an about-face when confronted with the consequences of the casual sex they hedonistically campaigned for. What we’re left with now is an implied (or explicitly stated) formality diametrically opposed to the “if it feels good, do it” mentality they chose to live until it caught up with them. We’re not to this point yet, but we’re getting awfully close:
“Okay, the party of the first part, that’d be you, hereafter referred to as “the woman” agrees to coitus with the party of the second part, that’d be me, hereafter referred to as “the man”. Further, we agree to have said coitus at a time and place to be determined, no later than 48 hours after having both parties tested negative for any STD’s, with a BAC test administered no more than 45 minutes before said coitus, the results of which cannot exceed 0.02% for either party. Okay, sign and date here, and initial here [flip] and here. Great, I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve had my lawyer look this over.” It’s Sheldon Cooper sex, not something the feminists were gunning for I’d wager.
I suggest you look up “Mens rea”.
Rape is a crime. Until such time as you devalue the word so much that it’s no longer criminal (and you’re going a long way toward accomplishing that end–good for you /sarc), then criminal standards apply. And one of those is “mens rea”. Most crimes _require_ criminal intent. “Mens rea” is the difference between “involuntary manslaughter” or simple accidental death and First Degree Murder. It matters.
If one party honestly thought they had consent then there is no Mens Rea and. they. are. not. guilty. of. a. crime.
That’s even leaving aside the whole deciding after the fact thing which is a whole separate abomination.
“not much about whether the men should know that they’re committing a crime.”
How can a man know something is not consenual unless you tell him so???? That is not some crazy difficult burden to put on someone. And if you have said no, have made it absolutely clear by word and possibly deed that you are not interested, and the other person proceeds, that is rape. That is where you are losing everyone.
This is leaving off confusing moments when everybody is drunk. And unconfusing ones where someone is passed out and unable to consent or drugged.
“If one party honestly thought they had consent then there is no Mens Rea and. they. are. not. guilty. of. a. crime.”
While I disagree strongly with Meg’s ‘definition’ of rape, there /are/ men out there who are so messed up in the head that they honestly think that ‘no’ secretly means ‘yes,’ that the woman trying to get away is just ‘playing hard to get,’ and/or her fighting back just means she wants it rough. So going exclusively by the guy’s view of whether he committed rape isn’t necessarily the best route. There’s a reasonable man standard, too.
@Meg Re: “Why is that such a hard concept for people to grasp?”:
The concept, in and of itself, that people experience two different things during sex is not a difficult one to grasp. The problem is that this concept is not rape. RAPE is rape.
If you’re going to describe a new concept, don’t coopt an existing word with a concrete legal definition, a ton of emotional weight behind it for anyone who hears it, and dramatic social and legal consequences to anyone who is accused of it. Come up with a new word.
Re: “any doubt defaults to no” and similar assertations that rape victims have no responsibility to voice their lack of consent:
Human communication is inherently imperfect. Two people can NEVER completely understand what the other is thinking or feeling, and always have to make educated guesses. Until we are all uploaded to the post-singularity hive-mind, or Gendo succeeds at implementing the Human Instrumentality Project, there will always be doubt. When someone misunderstands you, it is your responsibility to correct them, not just assume they will magically figure out your intentions.
Take the examples you provided yourself, for example. You said someone can communicate consent by participation and encouragement. I’m sure you can see how easy that could be to misunderstand. One person’s “participation and encouragement” may look to the other person like playfulness. As you said yourself, people experience different things during sex. More to the point, how does the whole “prior conversation if dominance play is their kink” thing work if consent can be revoked at any time? If it is not an individual’s responsibility to tell their partner when something is not okay, and “no” is always considered the default, then it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for prior conversation to count as consent.
By this standard, no sex can ever occur without a written contract, signed in triplicate, with at least two additional witnesses.
Misunderstandings happen. It’s a fundamental, unavoidable aspect of the human condition. But the way we correct misunderstandings is by, well, correcting the person who made them, not by just assuming they should never make them in the first place, and then calling them a rapist if they do.
Which is why I prefer the legal definition of rape. Of course, each case depends on the merits, but if it is alleged that consent was not given, the court will look at both parties’ behavior after such revocation and whatever evidence is available to find the truth (which, admittedly, is not so easy a lot of the times).
At least with the legal definition it helps to sidestep any emotional ambiguities of whatever new interpretation people might like to add.
@Achillea
No one so far has said that defining the situation from the male POV is any better than defining it by the female POV. Instead what is being advocated is the strict legal definition of rape. As in, “this is how a court of law will define that situation.” Your example of a guy so clueless that he takes a ‘no’ for a ‘yes’ is irrelevant. If consent was clearly revoked and he proceeded anyway, it is rape.
I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying. By your reckoning making out requires a complex system of codes so beyond my ken I might’ve raped my own wife for 10 years and not known it. When I proposed did she say “yes” out of fear and intimidation, a lost soul with nowhere to turn?
The wife says no, but who knows what she’s really saying or what I’m hearing? “I love you” might be code for “I’ll kill you if I ever get the chance.”
I was happy until 5 min. ago, but now I’m nervous after reading fyunch (click) to rape stuff. Gonna have to watch my back.
I’m not an apologist, trying to understand what causes behavior isn’t the same as trying to justify it.
Actually, by laying all of the responsibility on the man, you are being an apologist. You just don’t realize it.
– You’re saying that the woman who takes all those tequila shots the man hands her and gets so blasted she can’t tell which way is up, had no responsibility to avoid getting drunk off her gourd with a man she hardly knew.
– You’re saying that the woman who gets drunk and passes out with the guy she friendzoned had no responsibility to NOT get drunk and pass out with a man she probably knew wanted sex with her.
– And, you’re also saying that the wife has no responsibility to be definitive in a refusal to have sex with her husband if she doesn’t want it (The definitive refusal point is important, because if she IS definitive, then self-defense is most definitely of use, here).
Now, understand I’m not saying the men in the situations above are not jerks, but a responsible adult can avoid most of those situations, if they want to. Your statements, however, are an implicit statement that women should be able to be as irresponsible as they want, and expect that no one will do anything that she might disagree with, even after the fact.
Eh. I don’t agree with the weakening of the definition of rape, but I’m going to push back on some of your examples.
A person does have responsiblity for getting drunk/high/whatever that they are not in full control of their actions. That choice was something they did.
But if a guy is walking down the street so wasted that he can’t tell he dropped his wallet, and I come along behind him and – instead of running after him hollering “HEY, MORON! You dropped your wallet, dude!” – I pick it up, take out all the cash, and drop the wallet in the trash can, it was me who did that theft, and him the victim of it, both morally and legally.
OTOH, if we as a society have gotten to the point where a guy in a bar can stagger stool to stool, holding out c-notes and saying “Hey, take it, I want you to, I love you, man, you’re awesome, no, take it” and we, the reasonable fellow citizens don’t look at anyone who actually takes his money as an asshole and a thief, we’re doing something wrong. I don’t see how a theft could be legally prosecuted in that case, but it’s still wrong.
In the same way, a guy who has sex with someone too drunk to say yes or no is raping her (note: equally drunk is an explaination, but far too easy to use as an exuse). A guy who takes a drunk gal up on the offer is an asshole, but not, I think, legally a rapist.
(Swap genders as one thinks appropriate – I think it goes both ways.)
I was specifically pointing out that Meg was being an apologist for women having no duty to act like a responsible adult. Her statements laid ALL the responsibility at the foot of the man, and none on the woman. Now, since then, it appears that that’s not what she meant, but I was responding to the statements as written.
You might also want to review the part where I said that such men are still jerks (even if what they did wasn’t actually rape).
Remember also that I was responding before she had amended her statements to admit that she was using the wrong term, and that at the time of my comment, her definition of rape included deciding after the fact that it was, which meant that the jerk, for example, who just bought some woman 6 or 8 tequila shots may have gotten an enthusiastic response at first, but when she woke up with regret and a hangover the next morning, she could consider it rape.
“Since you asked, I grew up in rural KS. When I say I wasn’t taught about consent, I mean that I was told in high school sex ed, outright, that men aren’t responsible for their actions if you lead them on, and that after a certain point they lose all control and can’t stop.”
Yeah, I still remember the advice the girls got in our sex-ed class: “Girls, if you tell the guy to stop and he does, that means that he really cares about you.” True as far as he went, but not exactly the most thorough or useful advice. About the best you could expect from a guy in the 70’s with a PE degree, I guess. Given the truth and utter lack of usefulness of his answer, he probably went to work at Microsoft at some point.
“She was asked for a simple answer to a complicated question, and she gave one. It wasn’t a particularly good one, since the types of rapes which happen on college campuses aren’t usually the type where self defense classes would be preventative,”
Have you taken any sort of self-defense training, specific to women’s self-defense or something general like karate? Then how would you know what’s in that training?
Because I would think that the types of rapes on campus are *exactly* the type where a self defense class would be *preventative.* Not *responsive*, but actually preventative. And if the prevention didn’t work, then yeah, responsive too. Because any self-defense class is as much about situational awareness and avoiding conflict before it happens as learning to fight. Unless you’re focused on competition instead of self-defense, it’s NEVER about training to stand toe-to-toe with some guy.
Because almost guaranteed… you can’t do that and win. (Which is why Larry prefers arming women for those violent stranger rape situations.)
From your description of the sorts of things you had to unlearn, a self-defense class would have aided you and actually *taught* you those things you had to figure out and learn by accident. A good martial arts class teaches far far more than cat stance and little tiger.
Have you taken any sort of self-defense training, specific to women’s self-defense or something general like karate? Then how would you know what’s in that training?
Because I would think that the types of rapes on campus are *exactly* the type where a self defense class would be *preventative.*
Possibly it was from the belief that that college rapes are usually “he wasn’t as cute as I thought last night” or even “Now I feel like crud because I slept with a guy– it must have been rape”?
Self defense doesn’t do a lot of good if you’re blind drunk…..
In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
I am in such a state of incandescent rage at reading this statement, that I am on the verge of saying ‘screw being civil.’ However, this is not my blog, and out of respect to the host, and not you, will I forgo my initial desire to simply heap swearwords on your head for your incredible double standard insane demands that will never be fulfilled without making men a second class citizen.
Instead I hope that you never, ever have children, and if they do have the misfortune of having you as a mother, I hope you never have sons. If you do have sons already, I feel sad for them, as they are experiencing, undoubtedly, incredible psychological and emotional abuse at your hands because you are teaching them that they are no better than animals, that they are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, have no morals and that they are automatic scum, since the difference between them landing in jail and not landing in jail is the ‘feeling’ that the woman has that she was raped. If you have daughters, I hope they never have boyfriends or girlfriends, because they will be life-destroying home wreckers, given what you are advocating.
Your point of view about sex and rape is just a step above ‘all PIV sex is rape,” and barely that.
And no, you are not giving a ‘nuanced’ anything. You are flat out advocating that the definition of rape be redefined to be ‘anything I don’t like at the time.’ You devalue actual victims of this crime just for more attention drawn to you. And just because YOU don’t understand consent (from your statements here you illustrate that you don’t know what it is and only have swallowed hyperfeminist hogwash) doesn’t make it that the rest of us share the same brainwashing you do. Thank gods so far the laws aren’t using your insane definition either.
You, you delusional fool, are exactly what is wrong with the breakdown between men and women. You implicitly remove a trust that exists, and are seeking outright to remove the definiton of consent so that at whim, rape accusations can be used as an emotional, legal and social whip to destroy anyone you feel has slighted you with less than earth shattering sex. If you feel that the state of such is so bad in the US, please, kindly, move to Saudi Arabia. I’m sure you’ll find your perspective easily vindicated there, and I’m sure they’ll respond appropriately to your complaints.
From your statements I wonder if sex is a traumatizing experience for you – given that your belief is that for rape to be rape, you must merely feel that it was rape. There are things out there that give sexual pleasure without the need for human interaction; batteries aren’t always necessary. May I suggest you invest in a Real Doll? That seems to be what you’re looking for, not a person, to have a ‘relationship’ with. In fact in the long run it might actually be safer for the people around you and possibly be more fulfilling for yourself.
You can’t see me, but I’m holding up my lighter like a fan at a rock concert.
*wistful smile* I daydreamed we could set the idiotic idea on fire and have the ashes blown away by the breeze.
Not even “at the time” but “at any time,” Change your mind after the fact? It becomes rape.
There’s a word for that. There are a bunch of words for that. But in deference to Larry’s tender ears, I won’t say them. 😉
(Yes, I have a tendency toward dark humor.)
You really didn’t understand a single word I said, did you? Never once did I even suggest that one person’s feeling of having been raped ought to be a legal standard. Never once did I suggest that men are animals or incapable of controlling themselves, and I certainly am not proposing any kind of double standard. I’m proposing different ways of looking at the issue, suggesting that the criminal definition isn’t the only thing to consider.
Your concern for my sex life is touching, but you don’t need to worry. My boyfriend and I have an active, fulfilling, and rather adventurous relationship, complete with lively discussions on, among other things, this topic. He disagrees with certain aspects of my opinion too, but he doesn’t feel threatened by it and is (reading over my shoulder) a little ticked off that you are saying he should.
So I guess your boyfriend likes having the risk of having ‘accidentally raped you’ hanging over his head? Well trained! And I think he knows quite well where you the gelding tools, if he’s only a ‘little ticked off’.
See, special snowflake know-nothing, rape is a horrible, terrible thing because it’s a crime, and since it’s been repeatedly explained to you exactly why you are wrong, I’m not going to bother. Clearly you don’t bother reading any of it. You came here with the intent of telling us in your shiny special snowflaking stupidity ‘you’re wrong’ but that isn’t going to work here.
Seriously, Real Doll. That way there’s no risk of ever feeling ‘you were raped’ by someone else, or any risk of you ever having to traumatize someone else with that. Have some consideration and expand your horizons! Sure it’s expensive but it’s cheaper than court cases later on.
Cheers! ^_^v
Meg –
What you said was, “In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.”
Do you understand why T.L. Knighton reacted the way he did to that statement? Why Larry Correia did the same? Because despite your assertion to the contrary just now, that statement is claiming that the definition of rape, a major crime, should be entirely dependent on one person’s feeling of being raped.
You claimed just now that you didn’t suggest that (“never once did I even suggest that one person’s feeling of having been raped ought to be a legal standard”), but you did suggest exactly that in the sentence I quoted above: “In order for it to BE rape …” (emphasis added).
Now let me say something else. The man who raped you did commit rape. Even if he didn’t understand that at the time (and his actions later on in coming to your house and threatening you suggest strongly that he was lying through his teeth about not understanding it), he still committed rape. That’s why the standard in law is “a reasonable person would understand”, not “the person in question did understand”. Nothing in what I’ve said so far, or will say, should be taken to mean that I find that scumbag in any way excusable for raping you. He should have been brought to trial, and the prosecutor who dismissed the physical evidence of bruises and a concussion should be fired for incompetence.
However, let me try to explain where the people responding to you are coming from. They’re coming from having read stories like the (false) accusations of rape directed at the Duke lacrosse players, where despite the evidence disproving the accusation (which is completely different from “there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it, so we have to assume innocence”) lots of people still believe the accusation to be true. Or the more recent case which I can’t remember all the details of, but which I’m sure someone else in this comment section can fill in: a woman was a participant in a group sex session with five (I think) men. She then claimed that it was a gang rape, but it turns out that one of the men had filmed the whole thing on his cell phone camera, and the evidence showed that she was enthusiastically participating — definitely not a case of “I got scared and decided not to, but he went ahead anyway” like what happened to you. Or the case of Daniel Kopin, which was reported in the Daily Beast just a few days ago (google his name plus “daily beast” to find the article by Cathy Young — no links because I’m about to supply a link to something else, and WordPress only lets you put in one link per comment before it sends you to moderation). Or the dozen or so cases listed in this press release.
In all of those, the false accusation of rape would have ruined the guy’s life had he not fought back against it. And that’s what’s driving the reaction to your statement — because by defining it to BE rape if one person feels like it was, that would become the legal standard.
Personally, I think that anyone who knowingly makes a false accusation of a crime (that would NOT include your situation, by the way, but WOULD include the woman who accused the Duke lacrosse players) should be sentenced to the same punishment as suits the crime he/she is accusing someone else of. Knowingly bring a false accusation of rape, and this is proven in court? Receive the same punishment as a convicted rapist. Knowingly bring a false accusation of fraud, and this is proven in court? Receive the normal conviction for fraud. And so on, and so forth.
So here’s my challenge to you. See if you can understand why people who’ve read all those recent stories might possibly be just a little bit concerned about a definition of rape that would be entirely subjective, and not allow for any objective “a reasonable person would conclude” standard. Can you understand that? Or are you unable to see why your statement caused such concern?
Actually, he doesn’t run that risk at all because we’ve discussed, at length and in detail, what’s okay and what’s not. That includes his boundaries as well as mine. We’ve each taken the responsibility within our relationship to communicate our consent (the default is still always to ask if in any doubt) It’s actually much easier that way than trying to find the boundaries on your own, and more fun too.
Robin, I see what you are saying, and I chose the words in that sentence poorly. I’ve clarified, repeatedly, that I was talking about the victim’s experience, not any kind of legal standing. I don’t know how many different times I need to say it. How about I just restate that portion of my “definition”: ” In order for someone to experience rape, they need to feel like they have, that’s all.” There, is that better?
False rape accusations do happen, but maybe part of the reason is that there isn’t a space in the usual conversation to talk about the experience of rape without immediately turning to discussion of crime and punishment. I’m sure there would still be attention seeking false reports if there were, but what if it was okay to say “This happened to me, I need help.” without it always and immediately becoming about who to punish and whether there’s enough evidence to do so?
It’s kind of you to say that what happened to me was rape, but I wasn’t looking for acknowledgement by sharing that. I was trying to frame my perspective in the experience of having been raped, but not meeting the legal standard for prosecution. I was doing so to explain why I really don’t have much use for the legal definition. I experienced what I experienced, whether it was rape in the eyes of the law doesn’t matter at all. It wouldn’t have been any more or less a rape if he hadn’t bruised me up, or if he’d drugged me, or if I’d been unable to get the “no” out. Any one of those would have contributed to the legal definition of the act, but they wouldn’t have changed my experience of it one bit (well, not being concussed might have, I was pretty fuzzy there for a while).
As to whether he knew he’d done wrong, he actually threatened me for breaking up with him, before he knew there were rape charges being considered. It was all a very fucked up situation.
Yay for you and your boyfriend. You learned, it seems, the hard way, what you should have learned before becoming sexually active.
How about I just restate that portion of my “definition”: ” In order for someone to experience rape, they need to feel like they have, that’s all.”
You’re… dealing with a bunch of people who respond to authors. On an author’s blog. I’m gonna be blunt, and be thankful I’m omitting swearwords.
You ‘reworded’ it but IT STILL MEANS THE SAME THING AS YOUR ORIGINAL STATEMENT. Why? I can see your bewildered mind asking. Let me put it here side by side.
ORIGINAL: In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
Your ‘restatement’: In order for someone to experience rape, they need to feel like they have, that’s all.
See the sections I bolded for your convenience? Yeah, that didn’t change in the least. Changing the first part doesn’t change the whole, though I realize that the standards of education have come down badly, you are only saying the same thing again phrased differently.
In fact, your restatement only serves to RE-EMPHASIZE your original statement by reinforcing the latter half with the fuzzy statement of “experience rape.”
Also: FEELINGS does not equal to ACT. REGRET is not = to RAPE.
Your story? Yeah, he raped you. That’s a tragedy, and you were very unfortunate. This however, does NOT in any way or form give you the right, or license or even the emotional excuse of redefining what rape IS, even in this ‘oh but I’m not talking about the legal definition…” sparklefluff you’re insisting on going with. You were too naive, as someone has already pointed out, with still believing that he ‘didn’t believe he was comitting rape.’ The fact that he was a lying fucktard that had learned to game the system and play with the attorneys does not, in any form or way diminish the fact that the acts. It was RAPE by the legal definition.
Also, going with the story you gave, it stopped being consensual the moment you told him to stop it. He lied. You’re not responsible for the three other women he raped. Frankly if he thought rough sex and resistance S&M without safewords was a great excuse, the BSDM community would like to have a word with you. That’s EXACTLY why SAFEWORDS ARE FUCKING IMPORTANT – to keep it all safe and consensual.
Yeah, you chose not to kill the son of a bitch. That still doesn’t make you responsible for the other women the lying twatwaffle went on to rape. Yes, you’re naive – but not for the reason you think. You’re naive to think that you’re responsible for his actions. You’re not. End of story.
It is not YOUR FAULT the prosecution didn’t think it was enough to prosecute – take note of the use of the words ‘enough to prosecute’ – this implies that they might have believed it was a rape case, but there was not enough evidence to bring to bear. Which may have been true, which is why it likely didn’t go very far.
And yes, it sucks, but his story was plausible. BECAUSE of all those women who brought false accusations of rape to court. BECAUSE of the idiots who are looking to redefine rape to regrets and ‘it felt like it.’ You’re helping the same women who made it easy for this guy to get away with it with your ‘feel they were raped so it was rape’ statement. If you want to blame someone blame the women who falsely accuse of rape.
You want to be responsible? STOP with the ‘IT FEELS LIKE RAPE = RAPE.”
People like you who believe that statement are EXACTLY why real victims find it harder to get the justice they deserve – that YOU deserved.
And on the flip side of this insanity? There are those of us who do NOT like the idea you are pushing because you’re essentialy saying perfectly consensual sexual encounters can be redefined as rape ‘because it felt like it’ or through morning after regrets, and seem to operate on the stupid notion that only women can be raped or have their lives destroyed by rape.
For the record, BECAUSE of the life-destroying properties of false accusations of rape, I feel that false accusers should bear the same punishment a rapist does.
Even if Meg doesn’t want to give her definition of rape a criminally legal definition she wants to give it a definition that can be used to slander a man.
“Oh, that brute! I woke up next to him after being out all night drinking with him and I think we had sex! Rape! Rape! What I can’t prosecute him? Well I feel raped! So we’ll brand him as a rapist and tell everyone that he’s a rapist!”
I actually had a friend that this happened to. The girl made his life miserable and he lost his job over it. What Meg is calling for is the right to simply destroy a man.
What Meg is calling for is the right to simply destroy a man.
Yeah, she’s calling for the right to falsely accuse a man of rape without consequence. She may have been raped herself, but her stance and the damage she’s doing to the legal system with her advocacy of this ‘definition of rape’ have made clear she is a Useful Idiot with Agenda-Furthering Tragedy. (ergo, someone who had a tragic experience and is used to further the agenda, in this case, the feminazis.)
I LIKE how she blithely goes on to think that her boyfriend will not be targeted by another vengeful, bitter harpy with the same things she so dearly advocates. He rejects the advances of a different woman because he wants to stay faithful to Meg, and the woman accuses him of sexual assault or outright rape. “I felt raped, ” says the accuser. “Therefore it was!”
I should further clarify that when I say I have little use for the legal definition, I mean that I have little use for it in discussions of prevention or support for victims. I do not, of course, mean that I support any other definition in the prosecution of crimes.
AND YOU DO IT AGAIN.
You accuse us of not reading what you say. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. We’re reading exactly what you’re saying. Unfortunately for you, we’re not accepting the fuzzy definition you WANT us to accept.
Prevention, support and legal definition are not separable. Support for victims can and does include encouraging them to seek legal aid. RAPE. IS. RAPE. Stop HELPING people like your rapist by FUZZYING UP THE DEFINITION.
Actually I wrote that last before you responded, because when I reread what I had written I could see where it could be misinterpreted. You must have started your reply before I finished mine.
Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. I’ve strayed a long way from my initial beef with this post and way too far into a conversation I never really intended to have with people who believed they had me pegged from my first sentence.
I’ve strayed a long way from my initial beef with this post and way too far into a conversation I never really intended to have with people who believed they had me pegged from my first sentence.
That is entirely your fault. An insanely horrible sentence that you claim you said badly? Even your ‘rephrasing’ was just as bad, if not OUTRIGHT WORSE. I explained to you how, but again, despite you saying I don’t read/understand anything you wrote, I did, and you’re only projecting now.
And since you cannot refute nor argue nor defend in the face of REPEATED explanations both civil and not… *refers to The Checklist*
Let’s see, that last bit could qualify under “Disqualify that Opinion”, followed by “Disregard Inconvenient Facts”, since your entire
argumentconcern trolling was based on resorting to moral equivalency in the first place (I was raped, my rapist did THIS therefore *insert your insane fuzzyfeeling statement here*)”TL:DR: You: *run away* waaaah meanies! How dare you take apart my well meaning correction of your foolish definition of rape! *dismisses them all!*
And yes, by holding to your definition of rape, you DO actually think that boys/men/males are animals who don’t know the difference between right or wrong and that even if they think they did nothing wrong IF THE OTHER PERSON FEELS THEY WERE RAPED THEY’RE RAPISTS! Thus, have no control nor cogence over their actions, thoughts and anything else, because they’ve COMPLETELY surrendered mastery over themselves to … you? Their accuser?
Let’s reiterate, for emphasis:
In order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all.
and
How about I just restate that portion of my “definition”: ” In order for someone to experience rape, they need to feel like they have, that’s all.” There, is that better?
No, little snowflake, not in the least.
The worst part is, you can’t even see how you’re hurting yourself and other victims. For that, I feel nothing but pity for you. I hope you don’t find a man or boy you care for faced with the accusation you so cherish as a definition.
“… with people who believed they had me pegged from my first sentence.”
Aaaaaaand there it is, the “you’re stupid so I won’t be back” argument. I don’t know if you realize how juvenile it makes you look, but here’s a hint: it just dropped my opinion of your maturity from “adult” to “teenager”. You’ve been hurt, but you’re letting that hurt color your entire response (as teens often do) instead of looking past that hurt to understand why others are saying what they are (as adults should try to do).
Now, if you want to stick around and actually discuss things maturely, you’d be welcome to. Here’s a good starting point: the legal definition of rape, and the prosecution thereof. You said that your experience did not meet the legal definition of rape, and that’s why it wasn’t prosecuted — and that’s also why you don’t have much use for the legal definition of rape, because it’s too narrow. But that’s one of the major mistakes which undermines everything you’re saying, because what happened to you, given the details you’ve shared with us, did meet the legal definition of rape, and there’s absolutely no need to redefine “rape” the way you’re suggesting. The fact that you had an incompetent prosecutor who didn’t think he could make a rape charge stick with “only” the evidence of bruising and a concussion doesn’t change the fact that by the law as it is now written, he raped you and should have gone to jail for it. And there’s absolutely no need to redefine rape in order to see that.
“But,” you keep repeating, “I’m not interested in changing the legal definition, just changing the way we think about rape from a helping-the-victims standpoint.” Is that a fair summary of your position? Because, and I can’t say this strongly enough, that’s a TERRIBLE idea! Are you seriously trying to suggest that people who ARE rape victims, by the standards you’re suggesting (“[i]n order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all”), should NOT seek justice against their rapists? Are you seriously suggesting that a rape victim should only seek psychological help, and not also seek to put their rapists behind bars?
Of course, that’s not what you actually want; you’ve proven that with your comments about how you wish you’d managed to get your rapist arrested after he raped you, because that would have spared three other women the same experience. But are you able to look at your own words objectively, and see that the “rape victims shouldn’t seek justice” position, which you don’t actually believe, is what you’re effectively arguing for when you say “the legal definition of rape shouldn’t be the same as the one we use to help victims”?
Because, see, if you’re saying that “I feel like I’ve been raped” means that you have in fact been raped, yet you don’t want to make that the legal definition — that means that you are saying that people who have in fact been raped should not press charges. It follows logically and inescapably from the positions you’ve been advocating. It’s not what you actually want — but it’s what you have been saying. What you have been saying is not what you actually want. You might want to think about that, look at what you’ve been saying, and realize WHY we’re all telling you that your suggestion would be a TERRIBLE idea.
Okay, enough of that. That’s the most “shouting” I’ve done in print in a long time. Meg, either you’re intelligent enough to understand the logical consequences of the position you’re advocating and why those consequences are not what you actually want, or else you aren’t. Either way, I’ve made myself clear enough and would only start repeating myself if I continued.
Honestly? I’m just reminded of the stance Arwen mentioned further upthread – ‘if you don’t let yourself be raped, you’re at FAULT for the other victims!” – I’m not surprised at all that she sees she’s at fault for the other three rape victims. It’s ALL HER FAULT… nobody else has any responsibility… that’s why SHE has to be The One Who Defines Rape… and can point her little finger and accuse because she felt she was raped and as she was raped herself… she is thus the only moral authority to define rape – legal definition of rape IS NOT VALID because SHE doesn’t acknowledge it / has little use for it.
That’s what I got from her verbal looping around. TL:DR: I want to have the power to socially destroy men the way I was.
You know how sometimes you know there has to be a better word for what you’re trying to say, but you just don’t have it? I woke up this morning to a message from a friend who’s been following this conversation: “I think the concept you’re trying to explain is referred to sometimes as “sexual trauma.”
Yup, that’s it, that’s it EXACTLY. When I was talking about the experience of rape separate from the crime of rape, that is the term I should have been using. I never set out to redefine the whole concept of rape, I was asked if I was using a different definition (in relation to talking about the experience of the victim). I tried to clarify that I don’t think that experience necessarily has to line up with the legal definition of rape for their trauma to be valid and to require help. From there a lot of wild assumptions were made about my motivations, my attitude toward men, even my treatment of any theoretical children, which is what I mean by having a conversation with people who already think they have me pegged.
Robin, now that I have the better term, I can address some of the substance of what you brought up.
You asked: “Are you seriously trying to suggest that people who ARE rape victims, by the standards you’re suggesting (“[i]n order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all”), should NOT seek justice against their rapists? Are you seriously suggesting that a rape victim should only seek psychological help, and not also seek to put their rapists behind bars?”
No, not at all. I absolutely think that a rapist should be prosecuted if they can be, but that should be based on the legal definition of rape, not only the sexual trauma the victim experienced. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t completely dependent on each other either.
What I’m suggesting is that during the process of dealing with a rape there’s this phase where you have to justify, over and over again, to yourself (and to to others) that what happened to you really qualifies. In talking to victims, I find that this is especially true if the rape isn’t prosecuted, or they never reported it, or if their perception was altered in some way, and sadly it’s REALLY prevalent in very young victims. You question what you could have done differently, you second guess your own memory of the event, you compare your experience to what others went through and look for reasons why it was not as bad, or why it was worse. It puts you (or at least it put me) in a kind of limbo where you constantly analyze whether you have the right to feel what you’re feeling instead of addressing it. It can last years (8 in my case) before you reach the point where you realize that it doesn’t matter whether what happened was bad enough to justify what you’re feeling. This is where you are right now, having a panic attack on the bathroom floor and you need help.
When I’m talking about supporting victims in this context, what I mean is that it would be tremendously helpful to be able to separate the trauma of what they experienced from the legal, or even social, implications of the act that caused it. I’m not suggesting that they shouldn’t pursue criminal charges for rape if that’s appropriate, but the support and help shouldn’t depend on whether they do pursue it, or what the result of that pursuit turns out to be. Immediately addressing what they’re going through without having to first wade through all the was it/wasn’t it questions gets practical coping strategies into place sooner, it makes crisis intervention available, most of all it provides support that isn’t constantly dependent on rehashing the event.
That is a different conversation, and a different set of circumstances.
I ask that you look around American society at present, observe the nature of the discourse. Perhaps the vehement response you’ve received here will become clear.
By the way, I really like how you pretend to respect Robin by ‘sounding’ civil, but completely ignoring everything else she’s said unless it directly relates to you thinking it is pandering to your insistent terminology of ‘rape-not-but is rape’ idiocy. But hey, keep walking toward that cliff while keeping your eyes to the sky.
Newsflash, snowflake – you don’t get sexual trauma unless there’s some kind of sexual assault. And guess what! In civilized countries, one of which you are extremely privileged to live in, sexual assault is considered a crime. With again, very definite descriptions.
You really don’t mind enabling other sexual predators, do you? By further fuzzying up the terms of what is rape/sexual assault and going entirely by (sing with me now!) FEEEEELIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS, you’re making it easier for men like the man who raped you to get away with it.
Seriously, you have been displaying a trauma that has clearly left emotional and mental scars. Reworking words to make them sound more sympathetic to you does not result in those terms changing, no matter how much concern and insane troll logic !reasoning you display. It’ll work in feminist circles and such, but not for the rest of us who live in Reality.
I absolutely think that a rapist should be prosecuted if they can be, but that should be based on the legal definition of rape, not only the sexual trauma the victim experienced. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t completely dependent on each other either.
BZZT. WRONG. Also we’re not making wild assumptions about you; you’re stating quite clearly what you think. Unlike you, we are quite cogent of the results your line of thinking brings about, because either we’ve seen them, or we can deduce the unfortunate conclusions based off of similar types of events. You’re too focused on feelings, and not enough on brain. This is probably going to get you into lots of trouble because a lot of folks don’t like that game you are playing (My feelings trump facts and reality, in case you’re wondering.)
Okay, much as I’m a fan of reason over belief, and as much as I appreciate the instructional value of “fear, sarcasm & ridicule” (I used to be an Air Force instructor pilot after all, and my cynic-fu is strong), I think going bad cop on the rape victim might not be the best avenue of approach. Just sayin’.
Your previous comments on alpha-bitches (a few of which I’ve dated in my bachelor past) did remind me of a joke though:
An airliner lands at LaGuardia (busy place) and misses the turnoff onto the taxiway they’d been assigned to take to the gate. The ground controller (a woman) comes on frequency and says: “Southwest 232, you’ve missed your turn! Argh, you’ve completely screwed up my traffic flow! Stay right there! Expect progressive taxi when I get to you. You will move only when I say and turn where I say!” Several seconds of silence pass, with no one wanting to be the next voice on the frequency, for fear of incurring further wrath. Finally, another (unidentified male) pilot comes back with “Didn’t I used to be married to you?”
Heh I think I read that joke in Reader’s Digest some months back! It’s certainly familiar.
Two points, and then I will try again to sleep. My back is hurting badly so I will try to be brief. Also, bear in mind that I am taking this stance after her latest reply to Robin: Alright, that’s clarified.
I’m treating Meg’s being a rape victim and someone who stated a horribly bad idea as two different things because they are two different conversations. Actually looking, TL Knighton addressed the majority of the Bad Idea ones, including the poor communication, better than I can at this moment.
I am vehement about her not being responsible for what her rapist did after he raped her, even if she chose not to kill the bastard when he came to her and threatened her. She is not responsible for his actions. Period.
However, I am equally vehement about rejecting that the bad idea she espoused with similar vigour (and now says isn’t what she meant at all, oopsie, she really wanted to talk about supporting people with sexual trauma! not rape = rape if the ‘victim feels s/he was raped, consent notwithstanding) because it is an idea, that despite being ‘framed as a non-legal concept’ that is being used to destroy the lives of men – and probably a not a few women as well – because it is an idea that eventually goes to legal repercussions. Pointing out that she refuses to address Robin’s other points is not going bad cop on her it’s showing she is cherry picking her argument. Pointing out the flaws in her further statement is… exactly that.
Meg being a rape victim does not earn her clemency for stating and then supporting a horrible concept any more than it would earn her clemency from me if she supported the hypothetical slaughter of a neonatal ward. I am treating her as a whole person instead of a cripple/eternal victim – a stance which I have never given to any rape victim I personally know, because it is demeaning to them to treat them childishly. No rape victim I personally know wants to be treated as if they’re broken things, ‘tainted’ things, ‘less’ than other people.
As it is I’m letting her retractions stand, instead of pointing out the other inconsistencies, and allowing that she may have, in fact, not really espoused a new hazy definition of rape that makes more victims, and makes it harder for those selfsame victims to have their day in court. Herself included. Perhaps she really did phrase things very badly, then did not understand why her ideas were met with rejection. I’m an incredible cynic myself – perhaps she played us here. But hey, perhaps she is sincere, and it costs me nothing to give her that chance after her latest reply to Robin.
And gah, that ended up long. On that note, sleep! as it is 4 am QLD time.
“Heh I think I read that joke in Reader’s Digest some months back! It’s certainly familiar.
Two points, and then I will try again to sleep. My back is hurting badly so I will try to be brief. Also, bear in mind that I am taking this stance after her latest reply to Robin: Alright, that’s clarified…”
Quote included to try and keep clear what I’m replying to.
My point was that the rape victim and the harmful dichotomy of “rape/non-prosecutable rape” reside within the same person, one who might not respond well to direct, vociferous, repetitive confrontation. It also opens you up to the perception of being observed as a bully. Having caught up with subsequent posts however, I think you’re tack is probably the more valid one, and I’m the one left luffing into the wind.
Carry on.
My point was that the rape victim and the harmful dichotomy of “rape/non-prosecutable rape” reside within the same person, one who might not respond well to direct, vociferous, repetitive confrontation. It also opens you up to the perception of being observed as a bully. Having caught up with subsequent posts however, I think you’re tack is probably the more valid one, and I’m the one left luffing into the wind.
I’m … Wow. Thank you. I didn’t expect this courtesy, nor did I think anyone was still capable of this in this day and age, and your words have managed to restore a bit of my faith in humanity, today. Thank you. *bows*
I was and am quite aware that readers will probably think “Ah, that Shadowdancer is a mean bitch, she doesn’t hesitate to yell at a rape victim!” – especially after she brought up that she was raped, and that sense was reinforced by her ‘pointing out’ that she worked with rape victims.
But do rape victims, or, indeed, any other victim of a tragedy or any other trauma, suddenly become sainted, that they become unquestionable? Are they suddenly elevated beyond the rest of us, that their words – especially if they’re incredibly harmful ideas -can no longer be tested or confronted in the arena of ideas? Do people who have been traumatized in some way gain a special knowledge that makes them unimpeachable and beyond criticism if they espouse a point of view that is not only hypocritical, but one that actively will create more victims, encourage social if not actual vigilantism, and remove the protection of innocent until guilty?
No, they’re not. They’re still people, and being a victim of a tragedy and a person who espouses harmful ideas are two separate things, even if they reside in the same person. They are just as capable of having lethally bad ideas as the rest of the population. They are still capable of being hypocrites. And their ideas are just as eligible for testing on the arena of ideas, not automatically segregated from it, nor are these ideas entitled to being given smacked with wifflebats of sympathy instead of swords of reason and scrutiny.
If pointing that out makes me bully, that is no worse than being an enabler who allows the spread of the idea by refusing to confront it simply because the person spreading that idea is put in a special class of social perception of Saint Victimhood. I figure anyone who is unable to see the difference of confronting a rape victim’s bad idea versus being mean to the victim about her rape wasn’t going to read what I said anyway and would be more interested in playing White Knight to my Black, not whether or not the ideas themselves are valid or invalid. They weren’t going to read anything I said, but would simply skim until offended and start screaming. (This is not what you did, I should note!)
I explicitly kept repeating that she bears no responsibility for the actions of her rapist, especially with regard to the other women he raped later on, even with her saying she didn’t kill him later when he approached her in her own home to threaten her; no the only thing she is responsible for in that incident is her own protection and she did choose to not protect herself. I chose to take her entirely at her word that she was raped, and not making it up, even though I am aware that there are women who WOULD make up that they were raped to skew the conversation to their advantage, or do so in order to blackmail a man. After all, I cannot verify it, nor am I interested in doing so, since her claim has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that she is in fact that she herself is “Reenforcing that (her) narrative and perception, in the total absence of any evidence supporting it,” which is, per her words, “is an incredibly harmful thing to do.”
I don’t have to experience a rape in order to be able to confront a horrible idea and fight it just because the person espousing . I don’t have to play the “My tragedy is WORSE than yours” game in order to engage the bad ideas espoused by a person who is victim of a different tragedy than the ones I’ve suffered in my life. I do not make a banner of my pain and wave it around in order to have people treat me gently if I am being a fool. I refuse to play that game at all. Either she’s willing to
The color of my skin, my gender, and sufferings of life does not magically make me Special. I’m not Obama, who needs to play the race card or victim card or whatever card, in order to declare myself outside of criticism for whatever injustice or insanity he pushes for. I don’t use my pain as a stepping stone to winning on an argument. Doing that only weakens the stance I am taking, and shows I have no respect for the other person.
If I were to treat a harmful belief that has humanity-wide impact gently because the person spreading that harmful idea was herself a victim of a crime, then I do a great disservice to myself, and others by refusing to say “You’re wrong on that.” Refusing to reject it to seem ‘nicer’ is no better than my advocating it. I do a disservice to everyone else if that person repeatedly insists that the bad idea is what should be adopted as the new standard, and those bad ideas become the basis for policy, social standards and law. If this makes me a bad person, and a bully, then I have no problems being called outright evil, because dear gods, if that is considered ‘evil’ then I do not wish to be called ‘good’! “Bully” is then a ‘Shut up’ as “I’m a rape victim, don’t argue with me! EVER!”
Bad ideas are bad ideas and shouldn’t be given leniency because of the messenger. I’m okay with being demonized because they cannot counter the actual content of my words. I refuse to shut up, because I’m a ‘mean conservative.’ (Klavan again.)
Besides, I’m already being pilloried as a ‘follower of Vox Day’ simply because I am not willing to condemn him on demand, seen as a race and gender traitor, a slave to the patriarchy and a whole list of dismissive labels.
What you’ve described up until now is cognitive dissonance. You were raped, and subsequent history of the rapist supports this, but the legal system didn’t prosecute the rapist after your assault. You’re attempting to resolve this cognitive dissonance by inventing a new term for some state between rape and not-rape. Your error isn’t one of terminology, it’s one of concept. You were raped. Your rapist was not prosecuted for the crime he committed against you. These two states are not mutually exclusive, nor do they need a new term to describe an imagined “rape limbo”. No means “no”. Incoherence does not equal “yes”. Only Yes equals “yes”. Yes does not mean “no” deferred until after the alcohol wears off. Regret does not equal rape. Guys will lie to get girls in to bed, and crooks will lie to stay out of jail. These facts all combine to create a pretty airtight picture of rape vs. not-rape. Convincing yourself that rape is dependent upon perspective merely deflects you from one (or more) of the facts I’ve listed, and is an avenue of denial not worthy of pursuit.
Look, I sure as hell don’t have all of the answers you need, and in any event, hashing this out in a SF writer’s blog probably isn’t the venue of choice to resolve your dissonance. I appreciate your perspective and insight, and I’ve learned from your experiences you’ve related to us here. If you’re not currently in therapy though, I would humbly suggest that you seek it. That would be a much better venue for you to resolve this perceptive conflict, in the company of professionals and not us random SF fans with an internet connection. If you’re in the Kansas City area, a quick search produced this link: http://www.mocsa.org/srv_sxasrv.php
They (or counseling services closer to wherever you live) would be better equipped to help you understand this than is our sorry lot.
I’m sorry, but any “sexual trauma” is between the individual and their therapist. So long as consent is given (and it is not subjective, no matter how much you wish it were), then there’s nothing anyone else needs to worry about.
Your poor communication skills are the reason you have managed to piss a lot of us off, and you don’t even have the decency to apologize for trotting out a dangerous definition? For the record, it is dangerous. Just because you don’t intend for a definition to ever mean squat legally doesn’t mean it never will. Marx may not have meant for 100 milllion people to be killed as a result of communism either. It doesn’t make those people any less dead. Once the idea is let loose, it can gain a life of its own, so yeah, we fought it. Hard.
As for the trauma the victim feels, what the hell does that have to do with a damn thing in this conversation? Honestly. How they “feel” is a direct result of them. They consented but now feel “dirty”? Tough. Learn to deal with disappointment. I felt that way after my first fiance turned out to be a lying sociopath. So what? I don’t want a Lifetime special to be made about my experiences. I sucked it up and learned from the experience.
It sounds like some people need to learn to live with the results of their poor life choices…kind of like the rest of us.
Meg –
Okay, good. Using the right term for the concept you’re talking about is vitally important to avoid being misunderstood, and it sounds like you’ve finally managed to stop using the wrong word. I would agree 100% that emotional trauma (whether caused by a bad sexual experience or any other really nasty experience) doesn’t depend on any legal definition: if you feel traumatized, you feel traumatized and need to find some good way of dealing with it. (What exactly will be a good way will depend on your personality: some need to talk it over with someone, others need time to sit and process silently, others might need to take some kind of physical action to burn off the mental/emotional crud, it depends on the person.) If you had had, and used, this word from the start, it might have avoided a lot of these misunderstandings.
Actually, this brings up an important point. A lot of the accusations flung in your direction were at a position you do not actually hold, going by your latest response. But are you aware that a lot of feminists do hold the position that “if a man and a woman have sex, and then after the fact she feels like she was raped — then the man is guilty of rape, regardless of whether she said she consented at the time”? Because if you weren’t aware of it, well, you sure are now. That’s the “legal theory” (contempt-quotes entirely deliberate there) behind most of the incidents recorded at http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/189975/ — and that’s also what’s been driving the strong emotions you’ve seen on display. Emotions that were directed at an evil idea which, thankfully, it seems you do not actually hold. But far too many people do, and the harm it’s doing to our young people (both men AND women) is incalculable.
So if you learn nothing else from this kerfluffle, please remember this: there is a false idea floating around out there that rape can be determined after-the-fact, which in practice means anyone can destroy someone else’s life with an accusation of rape. (“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I figured out later that that was rape!”) THAT idea is evil, and needs to be obliterated from our society. THAT idea is what people were reacting to, because your attempts at explaining your idea (with phrases like “[i]n order for it to be rape, one party needs to feel like it was, that’s all”) sounded EXACTLY like that evil, cannot-be-condemned enough idea. I’m glad that that’s not what you actually think.
Question: now that you understand that the anger you saw was not actually directed at you, but at an idea that you don’t hold — are you able to look at what was written on the subject and see why that idea (which you don’t hold, but which far too many people do) makes us incandescently angry? And why that idea causes so much harm?
Robin, yes, that idea is abhorrent. You’re absolutely right that I do not hold the belief that rape can be determined, in any kind of legal or social way, after the fact. The only exceptions would be if a victim is incapacitated (drugged or unconscious) during the act and has to piece it together afterward, or if they’re unaware of what legally constitutes rape (such as the surprising number of men who don’t know that it’s possible for them to be raped by a woman) I’m also not trying to equate regret with sexual trauma, it’s a different beast altogether.
I would suggest though, that the idea isn’t as widespread as you think. I know a lot of feminists, some of them pretty radical, but I don’t know a single one who supports that view. I’m sure they’re out there, but I haven’t met any.
Meg, I’m not at all sure your alleged facts are correct. I’m not sure how important they are if they’re 100% correct.
What is rape? Sex without consent seems to be the definition the law uses, and that you are using. Jumping on a woman, hitting her over the head, and fucking her while holding a knife to her throat is obviously sex without consent. ‘I changed my mind but didn’t say anything, and he fucked me’ is also obviously sex without consent, and therefore rape by this definition, but significant differences exist. And statutory rape is based on the idea that consent can’t be given, even if the same actions by an older person would be consensual. (And what are we to make of the idea that a sixteen year old can’t consent to sex with a twenty-six year old, but can consent to sex with a seventeen year old?) It is not obvious to me that the three crimes belong in the same legal category, or should be thought of as similar, or that the latter two should be thought of as rape, or necessarily be criminal. It is obvious that someone committing rape under either of the last two definitions is overwhelming likely to be known to the rape victim, making the meaning of the statement ‘3/4 of all rape victims who know their attacker’ rather vague.
When I researched rape over thirty years ago, a statistic I came across was that half of all rapes involved a man breaking into the home of a woman who lived alone. Possibly that was wrong. Possibly it was true then, but not true now. Let’s assume that it was true then and still is, for the sake of discussion.
Does that mean that your statistic about three quarter of rapists knowing their victims is false? No. Men sometimes attack and forcibly rape women they know, thinking she won’t complain, or thinking that they can beat the rap, or just not thinking at all. I once knew a woman fairly well who had an occasional, out of town boyfriend visiting her. One night he sorta forced sex on her. She told me about it the next day, with tears in her eyes, and he told more or less the same story (he was ashamed of how he’d behaved). She could easily have had him arrested, and possibly convicted of rape, but didn’t try. Instead, she had me get him packed, out of her place, and out of town.
A year or two later, she moved from her city to his. Guess where she stayed while she found a job, and got her own place? Guess which bed she slept in, and what she did there? She’d gotten over it, and she forgave him.
Was my friend raped? Damfino, but if forced to say yes or no, I’d go with yes. But the take-away lesson seems to be that consent is not an all-or-nothing category.
You seem to implicitly ass/u/me that self-defense training only works against strangers, but in fact it works fine against people you know, if you have the right mindset. But that mindset can be difficult. In my rape research I read a woman’s description of being attacked in her home, wrestling with the attacker, and stumbling into the kitchen with him, still struggling. There was a knife she could have grabbed and used, but she didn’t, because she didn’t want to hurt him. I don’t recall if she knew the man, but I submit it didn’t matter.
Susan Brownmiller of Against Our Will wrote about taking a self-defense class (some form of karate, iirc). It was mixed sex. In the first class, the instructor called each student up one at a time, and said ‘Hit me.’ Every man taking the class hit him. Not a single woman did. The girls all swung, but they couldn’t bring themselves to connect, not a single one. I submit that the training Brownmiller received in overcoming that ‘Never hurt anyone!’ mindset not only reduced her risk of being jumped in the parking garage by a stranger in a ski mask, it reduced her chance of being pressured into sex she didn’t want, or allowing a man to get her drunk and have his way with her.
We agree that self-defense classes, and a self-defense mindset won’t prevent all rape, even if the self-defense always worked. But I think it would prevent a far larger percentage of rape than you seem to believe, regardless of the definition of rape.
And statutory rape is based on the idea that consent can’t be given, even if the same actions by an older person would be consensual. (And what are we to make of the idea that a sixteen year old can’t consent to sex with a twenty-six year old, but can consent to sex with a seventeen year old?)
(Obligatory “I am not a lawyer” disclaimer here)
Several years ago, statutory rape laws were being discussed where I live. I don’t remember why, but I do remember the justification for them and the age distinction you mention.
Statutory rape laws (as I understood the descriptions) are premised on two different points: 1) Not having the maturity to understand the ramifications of their decision, and 2) The greater experience and worldliness of the older person being able to overcome the resistance of the younger to convince them to consent.
It is likely that there is a consideration in there that younger people should not be held to a criminal standard for the same reason that they are not considered able to consent.
Wayne Blackburn, on June 15, 2014 at 1:33 pm said:
[SNIP]
“Statutory rape laws (as I understood the descriptions) are premised on two different points: 1) Not having the maturity to understand the ramifications of their decision, and 2) The greater experience and worldliness of the older person being able to overcome the resistance of the younger to convince them to consent.
“It is likely that there is a consideration in there that younger people should not be held to a criminal standard for the same reason that they are not considered able to consent.”
Good point, but I think a rather more important reason is that, as John C Wright, on June 15, 2014 at 8:36 am said, we live in a pro-fornication culture. Gotta encourage the hotties to start fucking as teens, so that we can nail them when they turn legal.
Once in one of these discussions I had someone state the same thing that advocating for self defense was victim blaming. When I pointed out similar things to your comment Larry, I was informed that as a man, I would never know what it’s like to be told to watch your back every where you go. Never know the fear of walking through a dark parking deck alone. And never know what it feels like to have to constantly think about who or what could be a threat around me.
Apparently this person (and frankly all of these “self defense is victim blaming”) people have never actually met a man. Every single man I’ve ever known (at least that was raised correctly) was taught self defense. Was taught to watch their back in strange places. Was taught to keep a high alert when alone (especially in places like a parking deck). Every man I’ve ever known is constantly evaluating other people (and especially other men) for potential threats. And while it is true that as a man, I will likely never have to fear that another man is going to sexually assault me, my wife has never had someone start following them around and threatening her because she apparently looked at them wrong or some such thing. I on the other hand (and many men I know) have.
It’s not that men wouldn’t know or experience these things, it’s that we’ve been taught it from day one. The substantial difference to me is that men have also been taught from day one that we must defend ourselves (and indeed we are expected to). Teaching (and for that matter encouraging) self defense isn’t victim blaming, it’s elevating women to the same standards that men have been held to since the beginning.
All men were once boys. There absolutely are women and men who sexually prey upon boys.
As we become adults, we learn more, and gain more tools for countering predation.
Specific self defense training, self cultivation, or a general defense minded upbringing all develop mental habits.
Mental habits are as useful for not stepping in front of a moving car as they are against predators human and animal.
A forklift jacking up a couple of heavy pallets will squash a man as easily as a woman.
I am careful who I trust to what degree.
I’m not extremely sympathetic to the view that expecting what I imposed on myself of others is excessive.
I’ve heard that argument before, and it pisses me off to no end.
My usual response to those people is “Holy shit, have you ever been to Afghanistan? Spend a few months there, even if you ARE inside the wire most of the time like I was, and then you can talk to me about what it’s like to need to watch your back constantly and never know who might be a threat.”
The same could be said for literally anyone, man or woman, who grew up in a rough neighborhood. Or, like you said, to any man, anywhere, who grew up learning that you may be called upon to fight to defend their honor.
The difference is that, from day one, women are taught to be victims, and men aren’t. The feminists are actually right that this is a problem in our society. But why the HELL would they try to argue that “teach women not to be victims” isn’t the only logical SOLUTION to this problem?!?
You only have to read Meg’s comments to understand:
A) how incredibly dangerous these people are for men to be around
B) how far common sense has fallen in America
C) how insane radical feminists have compromised and muddied law in the name of an anti-male agenda
D) how mainstreamed feminist thought got the responses it did to Miss Nevada for saying the least thing that would let men who have nothing to do with these crimes off the hook. Feminist dogma cares not one whit for rape victims
This country is in for some rough times ahead.
One of the things I’m hearing from Meg is “it felt like rape so it was rape”.
To an extent, I can understand the “it felt like rape” idea but not agree with the idea.
A person after the fact can feel shitty about what they got involved in and wants to put the blame on the other person not on themselves.
It’s very human to want to deny responsibility for one’s mistakes.
Unfortunately that’s all too common today and IMO that’s where Meg is coming from. [Frown]
Well, your opinion of where I’m coming from does not remotely resemble where I’m actually coming from, so there’s that. What I’m saying, what I’ve been saying all along, is that the experience of rape and the crime of rape are different things. If we want to actually prevent rape, we need to be able to think about them both independently, without always having to have our understanding of the experience depend on whether we can treat it as a crime. If the only time we acknowledge rape is when the law determines that there has been a crime committed, there will be a lot of rape victims who will not get the help they need, there will also be a lot of rapists who are reenforced in their belief that what they did wasn’t really rape.
And if you want to know why I come from that perspective, here it is.
The man who raped me wasn’t prosecuted, not because the circumstances were at all ambiguous (I made my refusal very clear) but because the county attorney decided that a concussion and a bunch of bruises weren’t enough to counter his assertion that it had been consensual. He really did believe it had been, or else faked that belief well enough to convince a lot of people. What he remembered was that I had initially consented, pretended to resist, then submitted. What actually happened was that I initially consented, changed my mind because he got too rough during foreplay, screamed my head off and struggled until I knocked myself out on the headboard. He walked away from that without serving a single day in jail, and went on to rape three other women over several years before the powers that be admitted that we probably weren’t ALL just making it up and actually brought him to trial. After I read about his conviction, I asked around and found out who victim #4 was. We had a nice long talk, and one of the things she told me that really stuck with me is that when the verdict was read, the piece of shit was SURPRISED. He’d gotten away with it at least three times before, rapes that were reported, were investigated, and were dismissed because someone decided that the case wasn’t strong enough. He genuinely believed that what he’d done wasn’t wrong, wasn’t rape, that we’d really wanted it. No one ever contradicted him, not the teachers who gave him the same misguided idea of consent I’d been given, not his roommate who heard the whole thing and did nothing, not the prosecutor who decided that his story was plausible. Hell, even I didn’t push the issue. I just meekly went along with the prosecutor’s recommendation, he was an adult in a position of authority, so surely he had to know better than me, right?
You want to talk about personal responsibility, fine. A week or so afterward he came to my home and threatened me. I was armed and I could have killed him, but I didn’t, I’m responsible for the other three. I accept that, I’ve accepted that for years. I have three rapes on my conscience and my own in my memory, still think I’m naive?
Yes, in fact, I believe you’re incredibly naive to believe that the man who did that actually believed he did nothing wrong. He was surprised at being convicted because he had gotten away with it three times before, not because he believed he was innocent.
And in the unlikely event that I’m wrong, then he was mentally deficient, and should not be used as an example of mainstream relations between men and women.
And the prosecutor, his roommate, the other people who he told about it after the fact, they were all “incredibly naive” too?
No, they are corrupt assholes who should be hunted down and beaten with a lead pipe.
He was very convincing, as I said, I imagine a person’s arm would get tired before they got through all the people who believed him. It probably wasn’t the entire town of 3000 or so, but it sure seemed like it.
I’m sorry, since when doess one injustice (that rapist managing to get away with multiple rapes, with you as one of the victims) excuse your own brand of injustice (redefining rape to the point where someone with a grudge can ruin another) in any way?
“Would I know if I was?” – Fail Burton, criminal
“If the only time we acknowledge rape is when the law determines that there has been a crime committed, there will be a lot of rape victims who will not get the help they need”
Ah. Now I think I understand where you are coming from.
Here is the problem. Rape between people who know each other well, and particularly those who are already in a relationship, is much, much harder to prove. That does not mean it wasn’t rape.
And if you need help, call a therapist. They will help you, whether it has been prosecuted or not.
I am sorry for what happened to you, but you are not in any way responsible for what he did. I think you might ought to go to therapy, if you haven’t already, if you think you are. I wish you the best, but redefining definitions is not needed. You can tell people you were raped and be truthful, whether the evidence is enough to prosecute or not.