Powerful Men, Beautiful Women, and Sex

[dimreepr]

5 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Here we go again.

And no doubt several times more, before we unravel the difference between an excuse and a reason. 

"Boys will be boys" may be an excuse to be naughty or cheeky but it's certainly not a reason to be rapey.

[zapatos]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

And no doubt several times more, before we unravel the difference between an excuse and a reason. 

Unfortunately, until we debate the merits of a statement rather than just dismissing it we will never get there.

[mistermack]

20 minutes ago, Strange said:

And the evidence for this is where, exactly?

The evidence is in your own head, but if it's not there, that's nice. Genetically though, you are no different to the hunter gatherers from 100,000 years ago, who used to kill and sometimes eat their neighbours. And you have the same embedded tendencies.

26 minutes ago, Strange said:

There is a point but you don't think it will work? So what is the point?

Work isn't binary. It can work a bit, and that's the point.

[dimreepr]

16 minutes ago, mistermack said:

The evidence is in your own head, but if it's not there, that's nice. Genetically though, you are no different to the hunter gatherers from 100,000 years ago, who used to kill and sometimes eat their neighbours. And you have the same embedded tendencies.

2

Have you ever heard of nature v nurture? Or do you eat your neighbours?

[zapatos]

7 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Have you ever heard of nature v nurture? Or do you eat your neighbours?

While nurture may keep you from acting on tendencies that are a result of genetics, I don't think it will keep you from having those tendencies in the first place. Which is basically the point mistermack is making. Nurture can keep you from eating the food off my plate but it will not stop you from getting hungry.

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

While nurture may keep you from acting on tendencies that are a result of genetics, I don't think it will keep you from having those tendencies in the first place. Which is basically the point mistermack is making. Nurture can keep you from eating the food off my plate but it will not stop you from getting hungry.

And that's the difference between excuse and reason.

[zapatos]

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

And that's the difference between excuse and reason.

Well that wasn't so hard!

[Strange]

58 minutes ago, mistermack said:

The evidence is in your own head,

Maybe it is in your head. 

When you read about Weinstein, was your immediate thought "ooh, it must be nice to have that much power, I wonder if I would have been able to resist ..."

Or was it: "how could ... but ... that's just disgusting ... nooo ... I can't even imagine ... what is wrong with him?"

[dimreepr]

13 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Well that wasn't so hard!

Well, the hard bit was the excuse! 

[zapatos]

6 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Well, the hard bit was the excuse! 

What do you mean?

[swansont]

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

It doesn't, unless you are trying to twist it. Girls will be girls. Is that an excuse or a fact? 

Unless you are talking about some involuntary action, it sounds like an excuse. To me, the unspoken/unwritten addendum to this is "...so there's nothing we can do about it" (sometimes expressed as "Whaddaya gonna do?")

 

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

The evidence is in your own head, but if it's not there, that's nice. Genetically though, you are no different to the hunter gatherers from 100,000 years ago, who used to kill and sometimes eat their neighbours. And you have the same embedded tendencies.

Once again, unless you are talking about compulsory behavior (e.g. breathing), this is moot. We are sentient beings. We can make choices. Perhaps you might be able to find a few exceptions, but by and large, sexual assault is a choice. 

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

You really do try to twist things. Why not debate the statements made, rather than your own version? I've not only not said that, I've been absolutely clear that we should not stop trying.

When I proffered that suggestion, your actual response was "Good luck with that."

So pardon me if I didn't get your "clear" message.

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

Most men do have the tendency, and therefore the potential. But most men don't act on it, and don't want to act on it. Most men also have the tendency and potential to act in the opposite way. We have all sorts of tendencies lurking. 

I didn't say the second bit. There is point in trying to stop them. But don't hold your breath. Don't even expect it to happen in your lifetime.

I'm not sure how one interprets "don't hold your breath" as a contradiction of "no point in trying to stop them"

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

While nurture may keep you from acting on tendencies that are a result of genetics, I don't think it will keep you from having those tendencies in the first place. Which is basically the point mistermack is making. Nurture can keep you from eating the food off my plate but it will not stop you from getting hungry.

So why doesn't this apply to sexual assault?

[Raider5678]

12 minutes ago, swansont said:

I'm not sure how one interprets "don't hold your breath" as a contradiction of "no point in trying to stop them"

 

Because if you read the part you quoted:

"There is point in trying to stop them."

Then you'll realize that what you posted is literally contradicting exactly what he said.

Think of it this example.

Person 1: "Snakes bite people. There is point in trying to stop them. But don't hold your breath. The results won't be very noticeable at first."

Person 2: "So you're saying there is no point in trying to stop them?"

 

This is literally what happened. You're reasonable, and I'm certain you can see how quickly your logical process falls apart put into this context. Now apply it to the discussion, and suddenly it makes no sense. You're saying "He means A = B" by quoting him saying "I don't mean A = B"

It makes no sense.

 

 

[zapatos]

13 minutes ago, swansont said:

So why doesn't this apply to sexual assault?

It does. No one I've seen is saying that having a tendency to do something makes it acceptable. Did someone say otherwise?

[dimreepr]

40 minutes ago, zapatos said:

What do you mean?

 

[Raider5678]

Nobody seems to disagree we shouldn't take safety precautions against rape.

I.E. Don't walk topless through a music festival.

I.E. Don't purposefully walk down a dark alley in a city known to be filled with crime, and believe you're perfectly safe.

 

Nobody seems to disagree that women SHOULD NOT HAVE TO take safety precautions.

I.E. Men shouldn't rape women, there's no excuse.

I.E. Men are under complete control of their body. 

I.E. The world should be different.

 

We do seem to disagree whether mentioning the idea of Safety precautions is good or not.

I.E. Party 1 says it's an excuse to say women should take these safety precautions, Party 2 says it's simply a fact of life that women should take these safety precautions.

But we don't disagree that ideally, women shouldn't have to take these safety precautions.

 

So, this discussion is going in a loop, and unless we find a different topic will continue to follow the above loop, like a faulty computer code.

 

 

6 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

 Video

 

Well, that's totally not offensive in any way. 

 

[iNow]

4 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

We do seem to disagree whether mentioning the idea of Safety precautions is good or not.

If we're looking to address the issue of drunk driving, does that really seem like the best time to focus the discussion instead on pedestrian behavior and how they could be more cautious when crossing the street? The issue is the drunk driving, the pedestrian line of thought is a distraction, and that's why there's pushback.

[Strange]

8 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

Nobody seems to disagree we shouldn't take safety precautions against rape.

I.E. Don't walk topless through a music festival.

I.E. Don't purposefully walk down a dark alley in a city known to be filled with crime, and believe you're perfectly safe.

 

But this is (largely) irrelevant. These sorts of things are not a factor in the vast majority of cases of sexual abuse. In other words, if people didn't do them, it wouldn't make much difference. (And most people wouldn't do it anyway.)

Edited January 9, 2018 by Strange

[Raider5678]

Just now, iNow said:

If we're looking to address the issue of drunk driving, does that really seem like the best time to focus the discussion instead on pedestrian behavior and how they could be more cautious when crossing the street? The issue is the drunk driving, the pedestrian line of thought is a distraction, and that's why there's pushback.

Maybe.

But in a city with a lot of KNOWN drunk driving, would you think it's wise to warn pedestrians that they should take extra precautions because there's a lot of idiots out there who drive while drunk? 
Does that somehow give the drunk drivers an excuse? 

 

 

[dimreepr]

12 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

Well, that's totally not offensive in any way. 

 

Agreed...

[Raider5678]

7 minutes ago, Strange said:

But this is (largely) irrelevant. These sorts of things are not a factor in the vast majority of cases of sexual abuse. In other words, if people didn't do them, it would make much difference. (And most people wouldn't do it anyway.)

 

70% of rapes are by someone the person knows personally anyways.

We're focusing on the 30% of rapes committed by strangers, I.E. "the rape culture". 

No, I am not saying that 70% of rapes are perfectly okay. But you can't really take precautions against those because they're an entirely different scenario. Premeditated, I believe the word is. And while I'm not a criminal psychologist, I think it's safe to assume that when it's premeditated that clothing will have nothing to do with the situation.

However, focusing on the 30% of rapes done by complete strangers, perhaps there would be a larger effect when taking risk mitigation.

There's very little study into this area, for obvious reasons. Stopping 70% of rapes through risk mitigation is very unlikely. However, surely it can't be wrong to look into the 30%?

 

 

Edited January 9, 2018 by Raider5678

[iNow]

5 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

 would you think it's wise to warn pedestrians that they should take extra precautions because there's a lot of idiots out there who drive while drunk? 

Of course, and we’ve done that here. The problem is some people KEEP talking about the need for pedestrians to take precautions. At some point, it’s wasting everyone’s time and looks an awful lot like blame shifting.

[Strange]

7 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

We're focusing on the 30% of rapes committed by strangers, I.E. "the rape culture". 

That's news to me. And why aren't the other 70% part of this "rape culture"?

And what about the more general problem of abuse of power that we could/should be discussing?

 

Edited January 9, 2018 by Strange

[iNow]

1 minute ago, Strange said:

That's news to me. And why aren't the other 70% part of this "rape culture"?

And what about the more general problem of abuse of power that we could/should be discussing?

 

It's moot. The implicit suggestion was that those other 30% could have been avoided had they just been more cautious or worn different clothing, which is itself bullshit.

[Raider5678]

19 minutes ago, iNow said:

Of course, and we’ve done that here. The problem is some people KEEP talking about the need for pedestrians to take precautions. At some point, it’s wasting everyone’s time and looks an awful lot like blame shifting.

Agreed.

However, it's like pouring fuel on the fire.

Looking back into the previous discussion, when it was brought up, if someone had simply said "I agree we should take precautions, there's no harm from that. But we should focus on X instead" I think we would have long ago moved on from that. Instead, they responded with this "You're justifying the rape culture by saying there's an excuse for men to rape women because women didn't take precautions. Regardless of what you meant" Or something along those lines. Which then resulted in 8 pages of finger pointing at one said saying they're justifying rape culture, and the other side spending 8 pages trying to say they aren't justifying rape culture.

You've turned those who proposed a simple and agreed upon idea, into the enemy. That idea was that women should practice risk mitigation while we try to solve this problem. But then anyone who supported this idea was turned into the enemy because they thought it made sense.

In this way, the discussion failed to produce a general consensus until after several pages of debate, and even then I don't think we have a general agreement.

 

They talked about it for a single post, with a single person mentioning it, as a side note(go back in the discussion. The original post that brought up risk mitigation wasn't about risk mitigation I believe.) and suddenly they were the enemy.

This form of debate, where unless the person is exactly on par with you they are the enemy, is wasting a lot more time. We've(well, the others. I just rejoined) been trying to stop talking about it for several pages.

 

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

It's moot. The implicit suggestion was that those other 30% could have been avoided had they just been more cautious or worn different clothing, which is itself bullshit.

Dude, strange said that factors of clothing are moot in a vast majority of rape cases, and I agreed.

And as a result, it's bullshit.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Strange said:

That's news to me. And why aren't the other 70% part of this "rape culture"?

And what about the more general problem of abuse of power that we could/should be discussing?

 

Surely you're smarter than that. I know you are.

I clearly said that 70% of rapes are a problem, and you're worried about definitions.

This is why we aren't currently discussing the more general problem of abuse of power.

Additionally, just because the majority of rapes are by someone who they knew, doesn't mean we should ignore the 30%.

The same reason we research small diseases even though cancer kills more. 

 

 

"Surely it can't be wrong to look into the 30%?"

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

It's moot. The implicit suggestion was that those other 30% could have been avoided had they just been more cautious or worn different clothing, which is itself bullshit.

Evidently, looking into statistics because they might be offensive is bullshit.

In an attempt to restore any shred of credibility to this discussion. 

Can you provide evidence, that in rapes committed by strangers, there is absolutely no correlation to their location?

You're the first one to look at my question and scream bullshit. Since you screamed bullshit before I got a chance to even look into the evidence, the burden of evidence is on you.

 

Edited January 9, 2018 by Raider5678

[dimreepr]