A conversation about conversations about bigotry

[Relm Zephyrous]

Didn't notice snake posted so I'll get to that in a moment because it needs a thought out response, but this I can respond to quickly.

Originally Posted by Nique

I have no idea why you are expecting anything different since everyone has been explaining why your arguments are terrible and a huge derailment to the issue and providing objective evidence to that effect for like 4 pages now so ??????

My arguments are not terrible. They are looking into exactly what the issue is, and we have gotten into a dialogue of interesting topics. One of which being insight into the different levels of problems once we cross the line of a 'need for societal change' as snake would put it.

Also, by '4 pages' you mean about 1 page, by 'everyone' you mean just snake and possibly yourself spare this last batch of comments.


Barring that, I would like to see what "objective evidence" you would say there is that my arguments are terrible, because I've responded to most all the arguments presented, at least in this thread.

[Nique]

Barring that, I would like to see what "objective evidence" you would say there is that my arguments are terrible, because I've responded to most all the arguments presented, at least in this thread.

No you haven't and I'm not going to do that because it would be insulting to Snake and Pocheroes especially who have posted numerous points and links that you should have already been paying attention to but haven't.

[Relm Zephyrous]

Originally Posted by Premmy

Definitions of rape.

Yes, I know the differences between the words is murky, and different in different areas of the culture, as well as the law. I would say that copping a feel is, while bad, not nearly as bad as actually getting a girl drunk and raping her.

Both acts are terrible, but just because an act is terrible does not mean that another act cannot be 'worse'.

Originally Posted by Premmy

Snake handled it pretty well.

I was primarily referring to the part where you seemingly said I was hiding behind hyperbole, and that you would cut my fictional balls off in the night. Which seems more like an attack on my character than anything else.

Originally Posted by Nique

I never claimed this.

(The this being "I never stated that the problem never existed, as you're claiming I did.")

Originally Posted by Nique

Like, this kind of attitude towards women is known. There are studies. It is observable.

This makes the very strong impression that I believe the inverse.

Originally Posted by Nique

No you haven't and I'm not going to do that because it would be insulting to Snake and Pocheroes especially who have posted numerous points and links that you should have already been paying attention to but haven't.

If you are deliberately are counting it against me for not physically having the time to get around to the newest questions and taking this as 'objective evidence that I did not refute' I'm not sure what to do about that. I can't help this.

Also poch only referred specifically to me that a lot of people have used that phrase with her, and the link itself was unrelated to the specific argument that snake and I were having other than to provide more evidence that yes indeed, there is such a thing as rape and a culture of rape, which we already knew.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...Well, I'd disagree with the 'merely' part, of course.
Also, disagree with the 'moral outrage' part there. What I'm looking for isn't a threshold for moral outrage, it's a threshold for demanding societal change.
Which, yes, is something that I am morally outraged about -- I'd hope many others are, too -- but it's also something that demands a more sustainable, permanent and structural fix than mere 'moral outrage' often tends to imply. The demand isn't just for men to behave better because they're being immoral, the demand is for our culture and the institutions that define our society to shift so that we can live in the equitable world that we all as human beings deserve.

Yes, I understand that we need to have a change in social structure. But I feel like we need to keep a consistent eye on what the problem is, not just that there is merely a problem.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

I think my response to this is that you're concentrating too much on what I'll label 'active malicious intent' upon a very narrow list of specific actors. My point is that when you cross a certain threshold, the question of 'why' can no longer be answered by addressing individual perpetrators. It's a societal problem that's engrossed in our education system, our government, our corporations, our media, our legal system (look up rape's definition at common law sometime if you'd like to be disappointed.)

I'm not looking at the level of individual perpetrators, I'm looking at the level of what social structures make this more likely in certain areas.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

I also think that characterizing those who'd like to combat this as merely expressing outrage "over and over" misses the point. That's not the intent of most feminists out there who express outrage about these issues. To belittle their protests against societal bullshittery merely because their outrage might not lead to immediate results strikes me as unnecessary.

I was not talking about widespread protests, the entire point of non-violent protest is to get a single or small handful of ideas out there and known as a critical issue. I was talking about dialogue that gives ideal solutions to the problems at hand. Once there is a solution and we are ready to have an implementation of the ideas, repeating them over and over to get the more ignorant people to listen and maybe change their views is a good thing.

However, when talking with a audience that entirely already understands the issue as I expect us all to, repeating that over and over is not productive, because the point of such discussion is convincing the sexist party of the sexism.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...A-ha!
And here you prove the point I was making earlier, which was that you're coming at this from the perspective of trying to save the integrity of men, when that's not remotely what this all should be about.

You're looking at these facts, interpreting them as personal attacks on the credibility or integrity of men, and you're more worried about men's honor being aggrieved by mere association with said outrageous statistics, than you are worried about the possibility that yes, a majority of men might well ignorantly believe -- out of ignorance, if not active malice -- that women are consenting when they are in fact NOT consenting.

Do you see how this attitude to the subject could be offensive to women?

If that is how I was actually looking at the issue, then yes. But this isn't about saving my integrity, this doesn't even have anything to do with my integrity. While the idea of consent being something that a decent portion of people wouldn't quite understand is a big issue, my point there was to point out that different numbers suggests a different attack on the problem.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

These statistics do, however, paint an awful picture of our culture's definition of consent, our acquiescence to enabling coerced sex to occur more than it should, the inability of our government and our legal system to convict rapists, the inability of our education system to adequately define consent, and the inability of men to comprehend how their privilege has colored years upon years of societal stereotypes about what consent looks like.

Yes, I think a lot of the problems with sexism and rape can be chalked up to what it meant to 'consent' to acts of sex, and how this is and is not understood.

[shiney]

Thank you everyone for remaining very civil! See this is what I am wanting to see happen.

Relm this is a good crossroads for you to evaluate your position vis-a-vis the near unanimous opposition received in regards to your argument. Plenty information and links and evidence have been given in regards to this discussion and the responsibility is now yours to self-educate lest this spin madly out of control and get back into the situations which lead to the creation of this very topic. To do otherwise suggests you are not interested in resolution as much as merely the advocacy of your own viewpoint.

[Relm Zephyrous]

Originally Posted by shiney

Thank you everyone for remaining very civil! See this is what I am wanting to see happen.

Relm this is a good crossroads for you to evaluate your position vis-a-vis the near unanimous opposition received in regards to your argument. Plenty information and links and evidence have been given in regards to this discussion and the responsibility is now yours to self-educate lest this spin madly out of control and get back into the situations which lead to the creation of this very topic. To do otherwise suggests you are not interested in resolution as much as merely the advocacy of your own viewpoint.

I have been looking at evidence, and I have learned a fair bit more about the issue than what I came into the debate with. Though the links to the facts that rape happens were not news to me, the entire dialogue with determining a threshold for what demands social change was an interesting idea I had not thought too much about. While worse is always worse, the idea of finding out what goes over that line and where that line holds for different people is a very intriguing thought, as well as one that can yield a lot of productive thought. Also, the cultural definition of 'consent' can be largely to blame for a significant portion of the problems with the attitude with rape.

A lot of the other stuff and 'unanimous opposition' seems to be mere miscommunication issues on things we generally agreed on. But overall, this was far more civil than I thought it would be, as well as far more fruitful than I expected it to be. Considering this all started with me making a statement on how we should be accurate with our statistical data and how I got talked down to at the start, I really expected that to go straight downhill.

... I wonder how long it'll be until the social subforum returns to its usual self.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Relm Zephyrous

Also poch only referred specifically to me that a lot of people have used that phrase with her, and the link itself was unrelated to the specific argument that snake and I were having other than to provide more evidence that yes indeed, there is such a thing as rape and a culture of rape, which we already knew.

...I'm not really sure if the rest of your arguments throughout this thread has portrayed with any degree of consistency that you actually know what 'rape culture' is, as contrasted with merely assuming that you know what it means.

I'd strongly advise you to read Pocheros' posts again, at any rate.

Yes, I understand that we need to have a change in social structure. But I feel like we need to keep a consistent eye on what the problem is, not just that there is merely a problem.

The problem is that we live in a society that glorifies men partaking in actions that leads to non-consensual sexual activity. The media indulges upon positively-reinforced stereotypes of men drugging women to get what they want, women dressing up in a certain way out of sheer desire for sex alone, women refusing sex but really secretly wanting the man to take action, and that the lack of explicit dissent is akin to explicit assent. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that men, who have been accustomed to centuries of dominance in the social realm due to their privilege, have generally not been properly educated in how consent should actually work.

The problem is also that victims, upon being coerced into said unwanted sexual activity, have very few legitimate social and legal resources available to them to receive the help they need and pursue legal charges against the aggressor. Furthermore, their claims are often disbelieved because 'rape' is erroneously defined to merely encompass sexual activity in which the victims actively and violently resisted, and the burden of proof often requires the victim to prove a lack of consent to receive redress, which is a very difficult thing to do.

NOTE: Among these problems, which are not all-encompassing and merely represent a small fraction of the issues here, notice I did not include how men's precious honor and integrity has been threatened by the fact that their counterparts engagin' in rape has ruined their credibility, or how men should be outraged that women won't trust them anymore because they'll generalize them as monsters, or how men have been 'oppressed' by the fact that acknowledging that rape happens and they're disproportionately (almost always) the perpetrators inflicts irreparable harm to the self-images of men who don't engage in criminal behavior, or how men may be victimized when statistics are released that imply a majority of them might have a flawed notion of consent, or some other absolutely ludicrous nonsensical bullshit.

I'm not looking at the level of individual perpetrators, I'm looking at the level of what social structures make this more likely in certain areas.

Rapes occur everywhere, at far too high a rate, in every sector of society. Rape is not occurring in any one jurisdiction. It is not limited to one culture, one ethnic group or one socioeconomic status of wealth. It is not limited to one geographical location. Perpetrators vary by age, victims vary by age. While certain generalizations can be made about large swaths of victims -- for example, statistics I recently quoted suggest a majority of rape victims are girls under the age of 18 -- the fact is, this is a universal problem as a result of male privilege.

Again, your attempts to narrow the field of inquiry to a very specific subset of 'social structures' or presumably ages or geographic areas or anything else that would contribute to a 'higher likelihood' of rape miss the point. Rape is not a disease. It is caused by perpetrators who make the conscious decision to take advantage of a victim. And it happens everywhere, because 'rape culture' is ubiquitous and all-pervasive.

You're attempting to corridor rape into this nice little box and attempting to identify specific factors that are responsible for rape because you don't want the message to sound anything like: "Men everywhere are the problem, so women should fear men."

What you're failing to understand is that no one is even attempting to say that "Men everywhere are the problem," but that doesn't mean that there's necessarily a strict strata of statistical factors that are going to lead any man to be more or less likely to rape. In this fucked-up culture -- as indicated by the earlier 83.5% statistic -- plenty of men have a guilty mentality that leads to sexual assault without even recognizing they're doing anything wrong. The problem is thus pervasive, and it requires a response that is not conditioned among a set of discrete factors we can label that dispel men of their obligation to clean up the mess the patriarchy has wrought.

However, nothing I've said above necessarily suggests that all men are guilty, horrible, evil human beings. The mere fact that culture as a whole is all kinds of hella awful due to male privilege is not akin to a direct condemnation of every individual man, everywhere.

But this isn't about saving my integrity, this doesn't even have anything to do with my integrity.

I don't believe you.
I think the evidence in the content of your posts, and your selective ignorance of facts presented, speaks for itself. You're smart enough not to directly come out and claim your intent, but a couple times you've slipped and the truth has come out, albeit indirectly.

It is about saving your integrity, or rather the integrity of a group among which you self-identify as, but I'm not sure you know it just yet. Or rather, I'm not sure you want to believe it.

Your primary goal throughout this whole charade is to question the validity of a statistic that you didn't want to believe because of what it said about men. Even after I supplied evidence regarding the source of said statistic that suggested that the statistic was, in fact, an accurate reflection of how (at least college-aged) men behaved and acted, you've persisted and you've refused to concede. I can't think of any other explanation for your stonewalling here.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Originally Posted by shiney

Thank you everyone for remaining very civil! See this is what I am wanting to see happen.

Relm this is a good crossroads for you to evaluate your position vis-a-vis the near unanimous opposition received in regards to your argument. Plenty information and links and evidence have been given in regards to this discussion and the responsibility is now yours to self-educate lest this spin madly out of control and get back into the situations which lead to the creation of this very topic. To do otherwise suggests you are not interested in resolution as much as merely the advocacy of your own viewpoint.

Who are you and where the fuck is shiney?

[Premmy]

Originally Posted by Relm Zephyrous

Yes, I know the differences between the words is murky, and different in different areas of the culture, as well as the law. I would say that copping a feel is, while bad, not nearly as bad as actually getting a girl drunk and raping her.

Both acts are terrible, but just because an act is terrible does not mean that another act cannot be 'worse'.

Your point seems that we should distinguish between "Rape" And "Sexual Assault" I.e. Distinguish between "a thing that is almost 90% rape and one thing that isn't rape within a very specific subset" and Rape.

[MSperoni]

Originally Posted by Relm Zephyrous

... I wonder how long it'll be until the social subforum returns to its usual self.

Statements like this ain't helpin' much.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Relm Zephyrous

... I wonder how long it'll be until the social subforum returns to its usual self.

Originally Posted by MSperoni

Statements like this ain't helpin' much.

Was going to come and comment on this but Matt already did.

But yes, Relm, please refrain from making comments like that.

Also, going to ask that if anyone is getting frustrated, because I think I see this in some of you, just step back for a bit.

PM me about it if you want.