Schrodinger's Rapist: When is uncritical thought ok?

[bookitty]

Her protestations of strangers saying "hi" to her on a subway come off as paranoid. I'm not whining, I simply disagree with her behavior.

Have you ever been on the subway and attracted the notice of someone who is both larger and stronger than you? Have they hit on you? Have you politely expressed that you were not interested only to have them hit on you again? When you then switched to a less polite expression of disinterest, did they become offended? Did they then curse you out, call you a lesbian, a stuck-up c**t or tell you that you were not worth their time, anyway?

Does this happen every other time you ride the subway? Have these people who became angry at you for not responding to their advances ever gotten off at the same stop? Have they ever followed you for a few blocks?

This has happened to me more times than I can count. I know that many times (maybe even most) it was just his stop and he would have left the subway and been walking in that direction even if I wasn't there. But how do you know for sure when it's dangerous? How do you know if the guy on the subway isn't hitting on you just to see how you react? Maybe some women are easier to cow, easier to follow home. Maybe guys on the subway are just bad news. How do you know?

Keep in mind, this is just the times where nothing happened outside of a vague feeling of threat. This doesn't count the gropers, the grabbers, and the frotagers.

 

[TraneWreck]

I'm not asking them to change their opinions. I'm simply expressing my opinion, which is that she lives in fear and it causes her to act like a jerk.

You should be proud. No one has ever tried the, "hey, baby, don't be so uptight," argument before. You've broken new ground.

 

[Lyrandar]

It's not yours to grant.

... I was just trying to be polite and admit when you'd made a good point. Did that come off the wrong way?

I'm not focusing a lot on whether a woman's fear is irrational, I'm just having to defend my statement over and over again.

What I'm actually taking issue with is the fact some people seem to think my opinion is worthless because I'm a man and I don't share similar experiences. I can shut up, and I can listen, and after that it's my call on how I feel about a situation. Insensitive? Well so is labeling every man you meet a threat.

That first bit isn't the impression I've been getting from you. And that leads me to another point - wrong or not, people's perceptions of you matter quite a bit, and the perception I'm getting from you makes me feel like you're worried more about making a point and applying the proper labels to other people rather than making an effort to be helpful and understanding.

Your last bit there didn't help either. Assuming you succeed in convincing me that the blogger is insensitive, then that boils down to little more than flaunting insensitivity. Even if I still think the blogger is fine, it still shows me you don't care, which isn't much better.

 

[Xephyr]

I think this thread is confusing two very different words and their meanings :

Caution

and

Fear

 

[Furcifer]

I think this thread is confusing two very different words and their meanings :

Caution

and

Fear

Exactly. I want my own mom to be cautious, but I don't want her living in fear.

"snip...you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted."

Because men are ready to deal with being killed or otherwise violently assaulted every time we walk out of the house.

I'm sorry, but if a buddy said to me "I'm not prepared to die" every time we went to the bar I'd say they've gone beyond being cautious and entered the realm of living in fear.

Obviously this wouldn't be the same if we were going sky diving.

 

[seewhatflows]

No, I consider myself a feminist because I work toward giving women equal protection under the law. I don't think women should get more than men just for being women, that would be unfair. It's very difficult to have equality between the sexes if someone is being treated unfairly.

Don't you know that you can't further the rights of women without hating all men and wanting to cut off their penises all the time because feminists are really just ugly and hairy and are all just bitter we weren't prom queen? Like how all persons of color who want equal treatment are "reverse racists".

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Ya know what? Men and women don't understand each other. Most men will admit this readily. You and your friend seem to think they know men better than they know themselves.

What on earth gives you this impression?

 

[SatanicSheep]

Wow this got ugly...

I'd like the feminist/anti-feminist crowd to note that I wasn't really asking for a debate on the merits of feminism. I simply wanted opinions about her line of reasoning. I for one smelled an inference fallacy (some of you agreed and others didn't) but like I stated I don't really have a problem with the motivation or practice, just if sound logic was used to get from A to B.

Hopefully the feminists/(masculinists?) got their canned responses to each other's points out of their systems and this conversation can go in a fresher direction sans all the childish gender based insults.

I still think that this woman's philosophy is rooted in an illogical inference and would probally make more sense if it was either made more equitable and broadened in scope and application or else refined a great deal which is how most of the women (and people in general) I know deal with the possibility of being a victim.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Please explain what about her inference is illogical. Then we can take it from there.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Quick question: Why is it that any discussion of rape will eventually lead to a discussion of Lorena Bobbitt? If we take the 1 in 6 statistic to be true (and personally I think it's a bit low), rape happens frequently but dicks getting lopped off seems to be a one-time deal. Are guys really so insecure about this microscopic possibility that it trumps empathy? That doesn't seem likely. So what is it?

It is quite common in Thailand, it lead to expressions like "If I don't get home soon its too the Ducks for me" because apparently ducks often eat cut off penises.

My last book, Bonk, has a chapter about penis transplants and reattachments. It includes the story of an epidemic of penile dismemberments in Thailand during the 1970s. In the wake of a well-publicized case, more than 100 angry Thai women hacked off the penises of their adulterous husbands while they slept. Often the women threw the severed organs out the window in disgust, attracting the attention of the livestock that hang out in the shade beneath the elevated homes of rural Thailand. (Oddly, it was ducks, not pigs, that went after the penises -- often enough that there's a saying in Thailand now: "I better get home, or the ducks will have something to eat.")

link

 

[TraneWreck]

Wow this got ugly...

[...]

I still think that this woman's philosophy is rooted in an illogical inference and would probally make more sense if it was either made more equitable and broadened in scope and application or else refined a great deal which is how most of the women (and people in general) I know deal with the possibility of being a victim.

What purpose is served by pretending both sides in the debate are being equally uncivil then complaining about their "canned" responses?

And then you just reiterate the silly point with which you began the thread with out bother to explain the "illogic." There is a real danger of sexual assault and the woman is (1) taking proportionate, reasoned measures to avoid that danger and (2) requesting that men stop being creepy ********.

It's funny that people are up in arms about the first one without ever dealing with her actual behavior. She doesn't want to talk to people on the bus. This is "illogical?"

 

[TraneWreck]

It is quite common in Thailand, it lead to expressions like "If I don't get home soon its too the Ducks for me" because apparently ducks often eat cut off penises.



link

100 times in the 70's is not "quite common."

By comparison, "Nearly one in every three adult women experiences at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood. Approximately four million American women experience a serious assault by an intimate partner during a 12-month period."
http://www.findcounseling.com/journal/domestic-violence/domestic-violence-statistics.html

4 million a year vs. 100 forty years ago.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The existence of a popular expression doesn't mean that something literally happens commonly or even at all. It's really metaphoric or allegoric language.

After all, we talk about some show jumping the shark, and actually there isn't any kind of fish involved. We talk about someone chewing your ear off, but that hardly ever literally happens. The last famous case was Mike Tyson, innit? We say stuff like "the boss has been riding my ass all morning", but actual sodomy is hardly a common management technique. We talk about grilling some suspect or about raking someone over coals, but that doesn't happen in the literal sense, does it?

Or for a more western equivalent of the ducks quip, we say things like, "I have to go home or the missus will bite my head off", although I think it's actually physically impossible. Unless you've married one of those critters from Alien, anyway.

Basically while those 100 cases are, of course, deplorable and I hope they have been tried and punished, the existence of a funky expression does not mean the literal version is a common occurrence. It just means it sounds memorable enough, really.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Yes it is.

Here are some more numbers from the bar association:

Do you know any men who have been victims of sexual abuse? Did any of them report it?
I know men who have been victims of sexual abuse. None of them reported it.
I know women victims who also failed to report. I know women who reported. I also know women who recanted, and women who were proven (at least to my satisfaction) to be lying about an assault.
Statistics in this area are skewed by severe underreporting for both men and women, combined with frequent false accusations by women. It would be wonderful if we could find some way to get around these problems and get accurate statistics, but I'm not aware of any. The area is too personal and too taboo.
It is unfortunate that an area so rife with deep impact and damage on victims, is also so subject to misinformation and misdirection. The crime is so commonly evidence-free, and relying on only the testimony of the accuser and the accused.

 

[TraneWreck]

Do you know any men who have been victims of sexual abuse? Did any of them report it?
I know men who have been victims of sexual abuse. None of them reported it.
I know women victims who also failed to report. I know women who reported. I also know women who recanted, and women who were proven (at least to my satisfaction) to be lying about an assault.

About 3/4 of abuse against men is perpetrated by men.

Statistics in this area are skewed by severe underreporting for both men and women, combined with frequent false accusations by women. It would be wonderful if we could find some way to get around these problems and get accurate statistics, but I'm not aware of any. The area is too personal and too taboo.
It is unfortunate that an area so rife with deep impact and damage on victims, is also so subject to misinformation and misdirection. The crime is so commonly evidence-free, and relying on only the testimony of the accuser and the accused.

So some doubt about the statistics means that we can assume women and men are abused at about the same rate?

There's no fudging of stats on murders. The victims don't really need to do any reporting. Those stats were posted, they show that the problem of men suffering at the hands of women is trivial in comparison to the reverse. That doesn't mean it isn't a problem and shouldn't be dealt with, but trying this infantile reverse sexism nonsense is a waste of time.

The number one leading cause of death among pregnant women is murder. And almost all of those are committed by domestic partners. Finding the exceptional cases of the opposite occurring has no bearing on the effect of domestic violence against women.

"Hey, you don't need to be afraid, little lady. Sure, 4 million women will be abused this year, but maybe a hundred thousand men will be abused by women. Sure, the abuse will be significantly less drastic and severe, but there are a few out there. So smile and flip your hair when I address you on a bus."

Male whining is not a good argument.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Don't you know that you can't further the rights of women without hating all men and wanting to cut off their penises all the time because feminists are really just ugly and hairy and are all just bitter we weren't prom queen?

The fact that it's possible to be an actual, real gender-equality advocate doesn't change the fact that a lot of feminists are in practice very anti-male. Our society is extremely gender conscious, and as a general rule feminists haven't escaped this; they've just tossed it in a different direction than some others.

 

[AvalonXQ]

About 3/4 of abuse against men is perpetrated by men.

What proportion of abuse by women against men goes unreported?
Or are your statistics based on rates of reporting?

 

[TraneWreck]

The fact that it's possible to be an actual, real gender-equality advocate doesn't change the fact that a lot of feminists are in practice very anti-male. Our society is extremely gender conscious, and as a general rule feminists haven't escaped this; they've just tossed it in a different direction than some others.

Show some citations. You're just making this up based on your biases.

If you interpret the words of other feminists as you've done with the article in the OP, you will undoubtedly arrive at a negative opinion of the women's movement. This is, however, your fault for making childish characterizations of their arguments.

I want to see some examples of these men-hating shrews. Extra credit if they're more than a random blogger with 20 people reading their page.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Wait, so you're honestly making the assertion that American feminists by and large have escaped the same gender biases that essentially color all daily interactions in the United States? Or are you asserting that those gender biases are imaginary?

 

[AvalonXQ]

And by the way: if you really don't see how "every man is Schroedinger's rapist" is an indication of sexism, I'm not sure that any evidence I would put forward would convince you.