Stalked!

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

Do you know that once you've been a victim of rape, you're more likely to be raped again than someone who hasn't?

Ok, I'm sure that's true - it certainly seems plausable to me. But it's got nothng to do with the criticism I made above, which is that you need to be more precise and signal your meaning more carefully. Throwing around highly charged facts like this without any context just obscures the issue even more. I don't think that does anything to help anyone - not the millions of women who have experienced rape or sexual abuse, or the millions of men who are making a genuine effort to understand the world from thier point of view (and I think most of the male posters in this thread fall into that latter catagory, I know I do).

Can't you see this is a vicious circle? You get more wound up, you project the perfectly valid feelings you have about the men you have known onto total strangers, who take offence at being judged by someone they've never met, make light of your opinions as a result, which just enrages you more and more.

I know my own mind. I'm not a creep or a rapist, potential or actual. You clearly know a lot about this subject and I'd be really interested in discussing it with you properly, but you really need to take a step back and disengage from this issue a little bit.

Just seen your last post which is a lot more balanced, so hopefully this is moving onto somewhere more constructive.

 

[nomadologist]

See, here's where I have problems again, because I think those are only "problems" (binge-drinking, promiscuity, drug abuse, etc.) people can't deal with in women based on traditional notions of femininity. Women are delicate flowers who somehow should be shielded from traditionally "masculine" behaviors. Yadda yadda.

Those sorts of behaviors are the price of freedom, and I'm glad to take them in exchange for not being able to vote and pushing out 8 kids (one a year until I died of birth complications) while my husband went out and got syphilis from a brothel in 1890 and passed it along to all of us. When males do the same sorts of things you're citing as problematic for females, it's usually encouraged as some sort of coming-of-age ritual or "bachelor" behavior. I abhor double standards.

 

[nomadologist]

Can't you see this is a vicious circle? You get more wound up, you project the perfectly valid feelings you have about the men you have known onto total strangers, who take offence at being judged by someone they've never met, make light of your opinions as a result, which just enrages you more and more.

See, here's the funny part. Don't flatter yourselves--I would never bother judging any of you as real people. I'm only responding to words on a screen, and I don't really care about much else here. I'm not "enraged" at all. I just think some people are ill-educated and I get sick of boring PC platitudes touted as moralism.

Also, it didn't really seem like many are genuinely trying to understand the world from anyone's point of view but there own, here, to be honest. Quite the opposite.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm not applying double standards at all. I think it's vital that women have exactly the same right as men to go out and drink themselves unconscious every weekend, act like boorish, lecherous imbeciles and all the rest of it - I just wish PEOPLE didn't do that, in general. It's not good that men do it, and it's not good when women do it either.

My point was the the first wave of feminism seemed to be all about women establishing that they were just as good as men, whereas the more recent 'ladette' culture seems to be about women showing off that they can be just as crap as men. And what do you know, you've got skyrocketing rates of liver disease in young women. Yay, equality!

So, just to re-iterate, I'm bemoaning 'laddish' behaviour regardless of who's doing it - it's just that men have always done it, whereas it's a relatively recent thing in women. There's nothing liberated about heaving your guts up in the street every Friday night.

 

[mms]

Women don't traditionally own property (we have a patrilineal system of property inheritence in agrarian societies), don't have a "value" outside of the domestic realm. As a woman, you aren't allowed to feel like your individual ego is worth anything to the point where there's no ego to be devastated by setbacks.

this might have been true maybe 100 years ago up until the second world war but it's not the norm now, certainly in the west anyway.


i really don't think most women hate the world on account of their gender, misanthropy seems to be something humans have regardless of gender even though they may generalise about different reasons which are gender based.

 

[swears]

See, here's where I have problems again, because I think those are only "problems" (binge-drinking, promiscuity, drug abuse, etc.) people can't deal with in women based on traditional notions of femininity. Women are delicate flowers who somehow should be shielded from traditionally "masculine" behaviors. Yadda yadda.

No, I just think he meant it's a shame that anyone, male or female behaves like this.

haha x post, well there you go.

 

[nomadologist]

How many women have you asked about this, MMS? I mean, most women I know are nowhere near happy with gender equality in the law, in the professional realm, in our institutions. I suppose all the women I know are highly educated feminists, so that may skew things.

 

[nomadologist]

i don't really care about who binge-drinks, does drugs, or acts stupid, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

 

[nomadologist]

this might have been true maybe 100 years ago up until the second world war but it's not the norm now, certainly in the west anyway.

still a huge struggle in the U.S.--hard to get/keep a job if you're pregnant, no companies have adequate child care provided, no adequate maternity/paternity leaves. there are a million ways in which the glass ceiling is full intact in the U.S.

 

[nomadologist]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6331517.stm

Anyone ever seen "To Catch a Predator" on Fox? (Just saw that this weekend in the hospital while I was getting nebulizer treatments cuz I'm way sick with acute bronchitis.)

 

[Mr. Tea]

i don't really care about who binge-drinks, does drugs, or acts stupid, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

Well, it quite often hurts, or at least affects, other people. Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude or hedophobe, but I've yet to end up casualty because of a drunken fight, or need a liver transplant or a heroin detox programme. Do What Thou Wilt (As Long As Thou Shittest Not On Other People), shall be the whole of the Law.

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

On the subject of rape, i think the low conviction rates are appaling. But maybe it's a mistake to view this purely in terms of gender inqualities? Is it not more a case of the incompatability of the the ultra procedural world of the law and the justice system, with the irrational world of individual sexuality?

It would be really interesting to see if the conviction rates for male-on-male rapes were any higher than for those where the victim was female. That would give some insight as to whether rape convictions are low because of social bias against women, or because of the difficulty in assessing the nature and meaning of a sexual act in a court of law.

 

[mms]

How many women have you asked about this, MMS? I mean, most women I know are nowhere near happy with gender equality in the law, in the professional realm, in our institutions. I suppose all the women I know are highly educated feminists, so that may skew things.

Well i discuss these things with my girlfriend, and it's not so highly rarefied a subject that i've not spoken about these issues with successful professional women who own property and have egos, some who are highly educated feminists, so it doesn't skew things. Some of them have similar concerns to the ones you have but none of them feel hatred to the world on account of them just being a woman, or feel a huge sense of worthlessness because of their gender.

 

[nomadologist]

When did I say I felt hatred toward the world? And I don't think I'm worthless, but many laws do. Many other people think I'm "just a woman." I've heard the crassist shit imaginable come out of men's mouths about female "inferiority."

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

Don't flatter yourselves--I would never bother judging any of you as real people.

Why would I be flattered? It's deeply unpleasant to be called a creep by someone you've never met.

 

[Mr. Tea]

On the subject of rape, i think the low conviction rates are appaling. But maybe it's a mistake to view this purely in terms of gender inqualities? Is it not more a case of the incompatability of the the ultra procedural world of the law and the justice system, with the irrational world of individual sexuality?

It would be really interesting to see if the conviction rates for male-on-male rapes were any higher than for those where the victim was female. That would give some insight as to whether rape convictions are low because of social bias against women, or because of the difficulty in assessing the nature and meaning of a sexual act in a court of law.

Well, if a straight guy has been fucked in the arse - and he's genuinely straight, and not just lurking in the closet, or 'bi-curious' - it's a pretty good indication he's been raped. Whereas there could be unequivocal forensic evidence that a straight man and a straight woman had sex, but that doesn't prove a rape took place, i.e. it could have been consensual. Obviously this line of argument is only relevant in cases of date-rape and such, as it's pretty obvious that a woman probably isn't going to have consensual sex with some guy she's never met before while walking through a park.

 

[nomadologist]

On the subject of rape, i think the low conviction rates are appaling. But maybe it's a mistake to view this purely in terms of gender inqualities? Is it not more a case of the incompatability of the the ultra procedural world of the law and the justice system, with the irrational world of individual sexuality?

It would be really interesting to see if the conviction rates for male-on-male rapes were any higher than for those where the victim was female. That would give some insight as to whether rape convictions are low because of social bias against women, or because of the difficulty in assessing the nature and meaning of a sexual act in a court of law.

Not in the U.S. Here the problem is usually that the defense turns the issue into he said/she said, smears the victim in court, and the general attitude of the jury of peers is "women who wear miniskirts late at night are asking to get raped."

Male-on-male rapes are hardly ever brought to trial, based on the intense amount of shame associated. Most male victims of rape never come forward.

Does the U.K. have "Law & Order"? There are several shows in the U.S. dedicated to just this mixture of social attitude and legal procedure...dramatized of course...

 

[nomadologist]

Why would I be flattered? It's deeply unpleasant to be called a creep by someone you've never met.

I wasn't calling YOU a creep--don't flatter yourself to think I'd actually care WHAT you are. (that is what i meant)

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

Well, if a straight guy has been fucked in the arse - and he's genuinely straight, and not just lurking in the closet - it's a pretty good indication he's been raped. Whereas there could be unequivocal forensic evidence that a straight man and a straight woman hed sex, but that doesn't prove a rape took place, i.e. it could have been consensual. Obviously this line of argument is only relevant in cases of date-rape and such, as it's pretty obvious that a woman probably isn't going to have consensual sex with some guy she's never met before while walking through a park.

Well, I was thinking more about comparing male-on-male 'date rape' (ie. where the was some prior relatinship between the two parties) with the equivalent male-on-female cases, so you were comparing like with like. But I don't know if there are enough male-on-male cases of that type for them to be statistically useful. And I'd imagine that juries who are skewed against women because of prejudice are likely to feel just as prejudiced about gay rape, if not more so, which makes it tricky.

It seems to me that the problem with date rape cases is that, once you've established medically that sex did take place, juries are being asked to decide which if the two parties has the most plausable story. For a trial to work in those terms, jurors have to be given some information about the personalities and past histories of the victim and the defendant, but that goes against the central tenet of democratic justice, which is that the court is judging the actions of the defendent in this specific case, not their overall personality.

Then again, most rape allegations fail to result in a conviction because the case never comes to court in the first place, which suggests that it's the period between making the complaint and getting to court which is most discouraging for victims. Again, it would be good to see if countries like France and Germany, which have a less adversarial legal system, have any greater success in convicting rape cases than we do in the UK.

 

[mms]

but if any of you knew any women very well, you'd understand that most women spend most of their lives hating the way the world is. It's not *just me* or *just where I live* or *just people in x state*...

this statement says to me that what you mean is a certain type of anger and hatred is gender specific, correct me if i'm wrong, i think there are particularly male types of hatred and anger which might be the ego ideas that boil down to why men kill themselves, which you mentioned before, maybe suggesting that misanthropy is cast by gender is a little strong, which i'm sorry if you got the wrong idea about , but all these symptoms of malaise have circumstances and cultural frameworks do they not, most of these things have some generally identifiable root causes.