• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Seven dead in drive by California shootings

TeapotCavalry said:
Wait, what? Sexual violence and harassment can be committed only by men?




Where is this 50% number coming from and population of what, planet Earth? Also, if half the population had experienced harassment by black men, it would be okay to imply all black men are harassers?



Can you link to actual studies, and which study are you specifically talking about when making that observation? This page is relying on news reports and sources that are unaccessable.

Also, catcalling = sexual harassment? We might have different meanings of the word in mind. But that's why I'd love to look at the studies and the terminology and situations they've used.



How is it integral or even relevant? Would it be less of an harassment if done by another woman? Is there some underlying disease integral to manhood that just drives them to harass? Make the connection, please.
Click to expand...
No sexual harassment and violence can be committed by women too, though it is a lot less common. The crime that only men commit is rape. The 50% of the population is roughly how many women there are. The studies are all referenced at the bottom of the page and not all are inaccessible. I was talking about them collectively. But if you like, I'll pick out one study that is free to read online:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Oxyge...sment+of+Women+on+the+Street+Is...-a062870396
From this we learn that 87% of American women,18-64 have experienced harassment by a male stranger and for over half of these involved physical contact or following. If you have statistics about women being sexually assaulted and harassed by female strangers, I'd be very interested.

By all means belittle women's experiences of unwanted verbal harassment by dismissing it as catcalling. But if you take the UN's definition of it (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/whatissh.pdf), harassment definitely doesn't have to be physical.

Being male is certainly relevant because with the vast majority of perpetrators are male. Because society legitimises this sort of behaviour by males, like by dismissing verbal harassment as catcalling for example. If you think that being male is irrelevant, then you have to ignore the influences of gender,sexual attraction and culture, you also have to ignore what the statistics and research show. In short you have to be wilfully blind.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
Wait......wut?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law

1-(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
(2) Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.
(3) Sections 75 and 76 apply to an offence under this section.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for life.
Click to expand...
Maybe I wasn't being aware of transgender people though, so a woman can commit rape, so long as she has a penis.
 
What continent would that be?
I've gone for the definition from where I live, of course if it turns out that the JREF is not for people from my continent, then I'll delete my post.
 
Kahalachan said:
Suppose I were to say I was mugged by a black guy. And then constantly brought up that he was black. And then brought up that every single crime that took place in my life happened through the hands of a black man.

You would be surprised if someone tried to quell racism and assure me that not all black men are like that? :confused:

So now instead of "black man" have it just be "man." I think a desire to stop sexism makes all the sense in the world.

In either case, even if there was no racist or sexist intent, it can kind of sound like it and you want to make sure certain trains of thoughts don't bloom into racism or sexism.



Also to play our little word switch, replace every instance of the word "man" in that article with "black man" and see how racist it sounds.

I'll do it myself with some find and replace.
Click to expand...

Exactly! And another point that seems to have been missed is that this moron didn't shoot these people because of cultural misogyny. He shot them because of a lack of cultural misogyny.

Think about it. He wanted to have sex with women, they didn't want to have sex with him. He felt they should be obligated to have sex with him but society doesn't allow that. He went on a killing spree not because he hated women but because society wouldn't allow him to do anything about that hatred.
 
qayak said:
Exactly! And another point that seems to have been missed is that this moron didn't shoot these people because of cultural misogyny. He shot them because of a lack of cultural misogyny.

Think about it. He wanted to have sex with women, they didn't want to have sex with him. He felt they should be obligated to have sex with him but society doesn't allow that. He went on a killing spree not because he hated women but because society wouldn't allow him to do anything about that hatred.
Click to expand...

You there...are you a member of society?
 
Checkmite said:
I'm not sure I'll ever understand why, whenever a case of misogyny or sexism is exposed and criticized, so many men who "aren't like that" so often feel so compelled to post disclaimers defending themselves. Until now I've somehow been able to ken that a complaint about a misogynist isn't by extension an attack on me just because I'm a man too.
Click to expand...

It's the same thing as the autism community reacting when it was stated that Rodger had Asperger's or people with mental health issues making the same sort of point.

This being a skeptics and critical thinking forum means we're all interested in Elliot Rodger, the big picture not just one or two elements of this guy's screwed up psyche.

His Aspergers is only relevant in that it might have hindered his attempts to form relationships with women yet it's part of that big picture analysis. His misogyny is just a part as well. Rodger was a perfect storm of issues and to focus in on just one of those as being "the cause" offers nothing to those of us trying to understand what happened here and merely serves to promote the political agendas of those with their personal axes to grind.
 
mediocrity511 said:
thefreelibrary.com/...
From this we learn that 87% of American women,18-64 have experienced harassment by a male stranger and for over half of these involved physical contact or following. If you have statistics about women being sexually assaulted and harassed by female strangers, I'd be very interested.
Click to expand...


Where in that link is the full study? Maybe i'm just blind but I can't find the pdf (or whatever format it's in).
 
Last edited:
Stout said:
It's the same thing as the autism community reacting when it was stated that Rodger had Asperger's or people with mental health issues making the same sort of point.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think the push-back stems from worries about "the misogynist man" becoming the default instead of the exception. I'd hate to see a stereotype born that might paint me in a bad light.

It took me forever to overcome the stereotype of "the husband is the family provider," and the, "if you are a sensitive man, you must be gay."
 
mediocrity511 said:
But it is different. If there was a kind of crime that only black men could commit it might be the same. If nearly 50% of the population had experienced harassment by black men then it might be the same (http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/statistics-academic-studies/ shows the vast majority of women experience male harassment). If victims of black male criminals were routinely told they were exaggerating, it was their fault, they must have wanted it etc. then it might be the same. When women experience sexual violence and harassment, the fact that a man is the perpetrator is integral to the crime, the colour of his skin is not.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

No, being a man has never made me feel compelled to defend "men". Like being white, my gender is happenstance, not some kind of clan that I owe allegiance or whose honor I have to fight for.
 
Checkmite said:
Exactly.

No, being a man has never made me feel compelled to defend "men". Like being white, my gender is happenstance, not some kind of clan that I owe allegiance or whose honor I have to fight for.
Click to expand...

Really? So, if you were gay, you wouldn't defend gays?
 
The high percentage of women being harassed by men doesn't mean a high percentage of men are harassing women.
 
NoahFence said:
Absoloutely. No question.
Click to expand...

Stupid and douchey - absolutely. I guess I'm lost what sexual harassment really means, it seems to mean any- and everything someone could take offense of. A dictionary tells me harassment is something persistent, but perhaps it's a legal definition that is used here. I could find sexual harassment explained only in employment and work environment situations.. Can someone point me to the more general law of sexual harassment and how it's defined? Could we prosecute catcallers?



Ps. sorry for the thread hijack.
 
mediocrity511 said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law


Maybe I wasn't being aware of transgender people though, so a woman can commit rape, so long as she has a penis.
Click to expand...

Actually, women can rape without penetration, but through "envelopment". Unfortunately, this is not widely recognized as "rape", either by society or the law. A lot of women erroneously think that erection equals consent. Even worse is that there are very few resources available to men who have been raped. Besides the pain and shame, these men also have to bear the burden of no one understanding them, not even other men. Most people still think that if a man gets raped by a woman, he's lucky.

(And before anybody says it, yes, I'm sure that rape by penetration is much more common than rape by envelopment, but I wanted to clear up this popular misconception.)
 
Axiom_Blade said:
Really? So, if you were gay, you wouldn't defend gays?
Click to expand...

I imagine that if I were gay and it came to things like laws that I felt repressed my rights as a person simply because I was gay, I'd speak up against such laws for example. But just some fool spouting off about how evil or immoral or condemned-by-God gay people in general are, for example? No, I wouldn't "defend gays" from such statements.

But this isn't really an analogous situation, because "attacks on gays" tend to be religio-political arguments. A woman complaining about how often she's had to deal with harassment or outright physical intimidation or abuse from men on a day-to-day basis isn't some kind of abstract argument or political musing; it's reporting observations. "This happens to me, a lot. It bothers/scares me. All the people who've done it so far are men." I can't imagine how I'm supposed to take another person's observations, of what happened to them, personally. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

ETA: Consider child molestation (not really, I mean as a topic). By far, by overwhelming majority, when children are molested it's by an adult the child knows. Given this, whenever a molestation story hits the news where some kid is molested by his/her parent, do you feel compelled to rush and defend with "Not all parents molest their children!! Sometimes strangers or other kids molest children too!" just because you are a parent who isn't a pedophile? I bet you don't. Your reaction is right where it appropriately belongs - sympathy for the victim and outrage at (or at least some kind of decided disappointment with) the perpetrators.

To me it's the same thing.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom