[cw: rape apologia. This will probably make more sense if you read this first.]
I don’t have any particular opinion on Shia LaBeouf. I don’t particularly like him or dislike him. I really haven’t given him much thought. Based on a quick internet search, he seems, like many actor-types, to be overly self-involved and, like many other abled people, to maybe have issues with substance abuse and aggression/dickbaggery. But that impression has nothing to do with whether or not we should or should not believe he was raped.
After the actor claimed, in an interview, that he was raped by a woman during his February performance art piece #IAMSORRY, Lindy West wrote, for the Guardian, about her disappointment at “expressions of doubt, scorn and outright rage from people across the ideological spectrum – some fellow disability rights advocates included.” She seems to believe that many of these reactions were due to his unlikeability and his history of strange behaviour. West goes on to say:
A victim doesn’t have to be relatable or reliable or likable or ‘normal’ – or even a good person – for you to believe them. You can be utterly baffled by someone’s every move and still take their victimization seriously. LaBeouf’s bizarre behaviour and his sexual violation are in no way mutually exclusive, nor are the latter and his ability. ‘He was asking for it.’ ‘Why didn’t he fight back?’ ‘Why didn’t he say ‘no’?’ ‘He must have wanted it.’ ‘He seems crazy.’ These are flat-out unacceptable things to say to a person of any ability status. In a culture where abled victimhood is stigmatized as weak and overemotional (toxic ability is, above all, an extension of disableism), believing abled victims isn’t oppositional to disability rights, it is a disability rights imperative.
But to say that “believing abled victims” is a “disability rights imperative” isn’t actually true. As some disability rights writers have pointed out, this kind of analysis fails to understand or acknowledge what disability rights actually does. Disability rights explicitly and necessarily is about understanding the fact that, and the way in which, abled people, as a class, oppress disabled people, as a class. There is no equivalency in rape because abled and disabled people do not share similar experiences of ableist oppression… because abled people do not, in fact, experience oppression because of their ability status — disabled people do.
West argues that LaBeouf’s ability status is irrelevant to his victimization and the narrative surrounding victimization which is also decidedly false. Of course the way we perceive and discuss victimization and sexual assault is related to disability— victimization and sexual assault are related to disability.
This is not to say that abled people cannot be raped — certainly they can and do experience sexual assault (generally at the hands of other abled people). At the same time, it isn’t clear what exactly happened to LaBeouf and whether or not it constitutes “rape.” As Sarah Ditum wrote, for New Statesman, “Rape is generally understood as sex that the victim resists (not least under English law). Disability rights advocates have labored for decades to point out that disabled people can’t be held to the same standards of resistance that abled people are. But LaBeouf could have resisted. Why didn’t he?”
LaBeouf doesn’t say he was restrained, threatened or otherwise placed in a disabled position by this woman. He says, “One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me…” For all we know, he just sat still because he didn’t want to ruin his performance art project.
What does that mean? What happened? We don’t really know… Why are we obligated — specifically as disability rights advocates — to believe him point-blank? As Ditum notes, the point of believing disabled victims is to right a long history of wrongs — because disabled people have long been ignored or blamed or painted as crazy when they speak out about their experiences of abuse and assault.
…there is no extended cultural history of disbelieving abled people in any case: ‘believing them’ simply means granting the default authority to abled words, in a situation where it is impossible to know what they signify. If ‘I believe them’ has become totally detached from the analysis of abled violence and disabled oppression, then it has also become meaningless.
A blogger at Root Veg writes:
This difference underpins a disability analysis of rape. It is how rape – aka penetration the victim resists – is used by abled people to control the free movement and behavior of disabled people in every single society on earth. The converse scenario where disabled people oppress abled people as a group via rape has literally never happened, and it never could. Can we envisage a world where abled people are given drugs that make them quiet so they can’t report their abuse? Do we think a society has ever existed where abled people have to choose between staying with their caregiver-abuser and losing the ability to leave the house, eat a meal, take a piss? If not, why not? Do we think a disabled person who is raped during a meltdown and was unable to communicate their lack of consent technically ‘raped their partner too?’ If not, why not? We lack explanatory answers to any of these questions if we genuinely entertain the position that the power of an abled person and the vulnerability of a disabled person are equivalent. This ability-based power differential bleeds into all relations between abled and disabled people, and it is the very foundation of disabled people’s oppression. This is why, when the article asks ‘would we ask the same questions of a disabled person?’ the answer is a very obvious ‘no.’ Because disabled people are not, in fact, the same as abled people. To pretend otherwise elides reality and functions to the detriment of disabled people.
West and others who say that we must believe LaBeouf, because “disability rights,” are pretending as though abled and disabled people are equal in this world — that we can simply reverse things like abuse, rape, institutionalization, and lack of accommodation. But we can’t. Abuse, rape, institutionalization, and lack of accommodation are not ability-neutral. Abled people simply can’t be institutionalized in the same way disabled people are because abled people are in a position of power in our society. Abled people experience a three-day stay at the hospital with no complaints worse than bad food; disabled people experience months or years of powerlessness, lack of autonomy, other people making decisions for them ‘for their own good’, and impoverished care. This is also why there is no such thing as reverse ableism. It is simply not possible to be ableist “against an abled person” because there is no history of or context for such a thing. Ableism doesn’t just happen on an individual basis — it is systemic, as is abled violence against disabled people.
We believe disabled people because, well, sadly most disabled people do experience abuse, rape, and harassment. Their abusers are, for the most part, abled people. This is because we live in an ableist society. Not because of some fluke. Not because people, in general, are awful and violent and because disabled people just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, over and over again. We also believe disabled people because there is nothing to be gained from lying about such things. A disabled person who talks about their abuse is met with disbelief that someone who is so kind and self-sacrificial as to interact with a disabled person could possibly have committed abuse. Doctors who see disabled people get abused don’t bother to report the acts of abuse and neglect. Throughout history, abled voices have been represented and viewed as voices of authority — we call abled people “dumb”, “stupid”, or “crazy” when we disagree, as if being disabled is proof that your viewpoint is incorrect.
So my arguments here have nothing to do with liking or not liking, trusting, or not trusting LaBeouf. They have to do with my understanding of ability-based violence and oppression, which I have developed through my understanding of disability rights. Which means that, as disability rights advocates, we are not obligated to believe abled people, point-blank — we are obligated to understand the context and dynamics of abuse and sexual assault as attached to ability-based power imbalances and to understand that, in an ableist society, abled people have, in fact, typically been the ones who are believed — not disabled people.
Maybe LaBeouf was actually raped, I don’t know. What I do know is that he wasn’t socialized his whole life that his pain and his needs were an unreasonable burden on those around him; that if he was in the company of people who make him uncomfortable, he could not easily choose to move elsewhere; to believe that abled people always have his best interests at heart, even if they want to cause him pain or kill him; that someone choosing to share their life with him is a disadvantage to them; and that he must fear institutionalization, bullying, and violence from abled people at all times. He didn’t learn that his life doesn’t matter, nor was he insulted, dehumanized and assaulted as a child, while adults stood by and told him it was his fault for not being normal enough. Certainly he hasn’t watched communities and families and friends and employers turn on abled people who talk about being abused by their disabled spouses. He hasn’t watched abled people be humiliated, harassed, verbally abused, or threatened because they came out publicly against a powerful disabled person who sexually abused them.
Because this doesn’t happen.
There is no global epidemic of disabled children killing their parents or disabled people raping their caregivers. Abled people don’t rely on their abusers for toileting or food. Abled people don’t have painkillers to be hidden, TTY phones to be sabotaged, or life-threatening conditions that can be exacerbated by yelling. Abled people’s victimhood isn’t handled through social service agencies, as if violence is a crime except when a disabled person is the victim. Disabled people don’t bathe abled people and use this as a plausibly deniable setup for sexual assault. Abled people aren’t hit or raped by their partners and then told that it’s their own fault, because caring for a disabled person is very stressful. There is no industry wherein disabled people are coercing abled people into institutions where adults can’t microwave a burrito at 3 AM without being punished.
These are the facts. I know these things to be true because this reality is impossible to ignore if you pay any attention to media at all, because I am a disabled person and this is my life, and because I am a disability rights advocate and I understand the devastating impact ableism has on disabled people everywhere. And that is why, as a disability rights advocate, I believe disabled people.
stargirlprincess said:
+Tree(3)
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ozymandias said:
I have no idea what this means.
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leave me alone i don't believe in blogging said:
It’s like +1, but with an incredibly large number from combinatorics instead of 1.
You Less Wrong kids and your 3^^^^^^^3 or whatever ain’t got shit.
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stargirlprincess said:
Tree(3) is a famously enormous number!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%27s_tree_theorem
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veronica d said:
Just be glad the blog backend doesn’t have some Mathematica plugin (or whatever) that tries to expand mathematical expressions. Cuz you would break the Internet. And that would be bad.
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unimportantutterance said:
HEY AUDIENCE WHO ARE ALL GOING TO AGREE THIS IS TERRIBLE:LOOK AT THIS TERRIBLE THING MY IDEOLOGICAL ENEMIES HAVE WROUGHT!
(That said, this did clarify the position that rape of men isn’t a feminist issue, since rape of abled people isn’t a disability issue. I just wish that anti-rape in general had not been subsumed by the feminist movement.)
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unimportantutterance said:
Actually I kind of regret writing this since this piece might be useful to point people whose beliefs are similar to the author of the original article to.
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leave me alone i don't believe in blogging said:
The thing that makes rape of men by women specifically a feminist issue is the feminists that keep claiming, ex cathedra as feminist writers, that it’s impossible (like the linked article – note “feminist” in the domain name) or that it “doesn’t count” in some way. If there were mainstream disability rights writers who claimed, in their disability rights columns, that abled people couldn’t be raped at all, it would similarly make it a disability rights issue.
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multiheaded said:
Btw, I hope this helps start a trend of disability bloggers/advocates actually putting up a mirror to abled feminism, illustrating its awfulness without actually sinking to its level.
(Because, you know… if a disability advocate were to *actually* believe and behave in ways symmetrical to what abled feminists routinely do, this would make them a huge misogynist.)
(Yes, I hate all the My-Side-Is-Too-Pure rants out there… but never, NEVER outside the Straw MRA ~~~Concern Troll~~~ that haunts the abled feminist imagination, have I seen our people approach abled women the way abled feminists approach us.)
(Most of the disability bloggers I am honored to know are on the feminine side/NB/agender… and they have consistently been *amazing* to men and male-presenting AMAB people. Yes, mainly disabled or GNC or trans ones, but still – those are, potentially, vastly inclusive categories, which conclusion seems to be *embraced*!
I have a whole new baseline expectations level for solidarity and kindness and charity between genders these days. One that abled feminism hardly ever begins to meet at its best.)
TL;DR for the off-topic rant: the actually existing disability blogging culture is incredibly wonderful, and the total opposite of the above satirical piece.
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ninecarpals said:
If you don’t mind me asking, what have abled feminists been doing to disabled women?
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multiheaded said:
E.g. the geek-bashing
http://jeysiec.tumblr.com/post/114126103762/hatefollows-an-animal-imagined-by-poe
Manipulating and harming people of all genders who suffer from anxiety, scrupulosity, etc
http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/108990024816/how-do-you-tell-someone-w-an-anxiety-disorder
(also see more posts by kelsey theunitofcaring, there are some hella good ones.)
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ninecarpals said:
@Multiheaded
Thank you for the links, especially the second one. I could have really used them when I was living with someone with an anxiety disorder who could not handle being disagreed with or being shown she was wrong about something. I was as gentle as I could be, but nothing I came up with worked. I’ll try the suggestions in the link next time a similar situation comes up.
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nancylebovitz said:
I was thinking about the general idea that being very athletic is a great way of proving you’re wonderful– an idea that feminism is hardly immune to.
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ninecarpals said:
@Nancylebovitz
I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand – is feminism unusually enthusiastic about athleticism? I’ve seen feminists celebrate athletes, but also scientists, authors, political figures, artists, etc.
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nancylebovitz said:
My nerves may be raw on the subject, or I may be spending too much time on facebook, where athleticism is the easiest accomplishment to display.
However, it seems to me that just being normally in favor of athleticism in this culture is enough to do a lot to exclude many disabled people.
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ninecarpals said:
@Nancylebovitz
There must be something I’m not understanding here, because athleticism is a generally positive trait, just like intelligence, curiosity, creativity, and civic engagement are. Praising any one of those will inevitably exclude someone, but that doesn’t seem like a reason not to praise them.
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osberend said:
@multiheaded: From (someone quoted in) your first link, I think that this:
Is a beautiful example of my point in another thread[1] that, yes, there are SJWs who would prefer that see “equality” in the form of everyone suffering as a desirable alternative to only some people suffering.
[1] And probably a couple weeks ago by now; failing to reply consistently in a timely fashion and spending ridiculous amounts of time commenting are not extremes that I find a balance between very well.
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nancylebovitz said:
This is probably tangential, but I think the standards for good enough behavior in emergencies are so high (that is, the standards are based on movies) that a large proportion of abled people could reasonably be considered temporarily disabled.
That is, the general public doesn’t seem to believe that freezing when stressed is a normal reaction, so they view it as moral inadequacy.
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Ginkgo said:
“That is, the general public doesn’t seem to believe that freezing when stressed is a normal reaction, so they view it as moral inadequacy.”
I wonder if this is a form of ableism. It surely is neural – some people freeze, some go into a numb hyper-capable state, some get a jolt of adrenaline. And none of that is learned or chosen.
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nancylebovitz said:
“I wonder if this is a form of ableism. It surely is neural – some people freeze, some go into a numb hyper-capable state, some get a jolt of adrenaline. And none of that is learned or chosen.”
People (maybe not everyone) can be trained to react appropriately in emergencies. Part of the problem with the movie standards is the assumption that people should be able to do this without training.
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Leit said:
Part of the reason why every good martial art involves sparring is to mould the muscle memory built by rote form into instinct responses that bypass the hindbrain “freeze” response.
Nearly everyone (even deaf people, which was a surprise to me, but really shouldn’t have been) involuntarily blinks when firing a gun. Good trainers will hammer that instinct out. And they’re overwhelmingly successful.
Very nearly everyone starts with the same basic “cringe” reactions, but conversely, nearly everyone can be tutored to bypass them with learned competency.
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Vegemeister said:
I admit that, when I read the article that this post mirroring, I only skimmed enough to determine that it was in fact as awful as the person who linked it had said. I then scrolled to the comments to see how many voices of reason were to be found among the commemtariat of The Feminist Current (?). I therefore, failed to notice these few sentences, which could have provided valuable insight:
This suggests that when feminists say “we should believe rape victims,” they are probably not endorsing a general ethical principle of that it is good to believe rape victims. Rather, they are saying that women are raped all the time and that we should therefore use a very large prior for rape. I probably should have noticed this sooner, given how often feminists present alarming rape statistics and how much I pat myself on the back for noticing pro-lifers actually believe fetuses are people.
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Nita said:
Here’s a quote from Murphy’s (the original author’s) About page:
So, you probably shouldn’t take her as a representative of feminists in general.
Furthermore, the person Murphy is arguing against — Lindy West — is a mainstream feminist blogger. This is a debate between two branches of feminism, and Murphy and her radfem comrades are the underdogs.
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Ginkgo said:
“Furthermore, the person Murphy is arguing against — Lindy West — is a mainstream feminist blogger.”
Thank you. One of the first times I saw this was in a post with a huge thread on Feministe that was on F>M rape. There was a lot of pushback in the comments, and some blazing pushback to that. I can’t find the post now but it was illuminating for me.
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J said:
I had previously read the relevant feminist current article, made the connection but failed to see it as satire in the first bit and was trying to wrap my brain around how Ozy, who seemed to generally be compassionate, not a huge asshole, and perfectly good-faithed and generally not an awful person had turned into someone completely contemptible like Meghan Murphy.
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ninecarpals said:
Nope’d my way right out of that original article. My policy when it comes to most accusations is to remain agnostic because it isn’t my business, but how other people treat them is very instructive, and I find Ms. Murphy’s account disgusting.
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Leit said:
Made it as far as
…at which point one should see the storm on the horizon, as it were. Read over the rest of it, but wow.
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Ginkgo said:
“Maybe LaBeouf was actually raped, I don’t know. What I do know is that he wasn’t socialized his whole life that his pain and his needs were an unreasonable burden on those around him; ”
Yeah, no. You acknowledge this too, by using the masculine pronoun on him. This masking and denial of his pain and subordinating his needs to the needs of the women in his life is at the core of male socialization in this culture.
Lindy West has very nearly rehabilitated herself in my eyes. Sarah Ditum remains the same privileged white girl sexist pig she ever was.
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nancylebovitz said:
” You acknowledge this too, by using the masculine pronoun on him. This masking and denial of his pain and subordinating his needs to the needs of the women in his life is at the core of male socialization in this culture.”
I’d say not exactly– as I understand the social pressures on men, they have permission to pursue women who are generally considered to be attractive. They do *not* have permission to turn those women down.
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Ginkgo said:
I was referring to the pressures to provide for women even at the cost of their health, safety or even just sanity.
Speaking of pressure – men do not just have license to pursue women, they are pressured into it. I sure felt that as a young man who would never have breathed in a million years why I didn’t have a girlfriend. Considering the power of virgin shaming and “you’ll never get laid” that exploit this pressure, it is very real.
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shemtealeaf said:
I’m honestly not sure what point this is trying to make.
Wouldn’t both gender/sex and disability status be valid data points in trying to determine whether to believe someone making a rape claim if there’s no evidence either way? To use an extreme example, I’m much more willing to believe that a 250lb abled man raped a 100lb paraplegic women than vice versa.
Certainly, we can’t use this to deny evidence of women raping men or disable people raping abled people. Nor
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shemtealeaf said:
(Accidentally posted in the middle of a sentence; continued below)
Nor can we use it to crucify the accused in the absence of evidence. We can, however, use it to estimate the basic probability that something like that could have occurred.
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InferentialDistance said:
Only if you have accurate, complete, independent data to base your priors on. Otherwise your reasoning is circular. How did you get your prior that more rapes happen to X by Y? Because your statistics said so! How did you get your statistics? By using the prior!
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shemtealeaf said:
Sure, but there’s pretty conclusive data that men rape women more than women rape men. Unless there’s an incredibly high rate of false reports, that pretty much settles the issue.
Furthermore, it’s not hard to draw conclusions based simply on the physical ability to forcibly rape. I don’t really need statistics to tell me that physically disable people will tend to have a harder time resisting forcible rape.
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InferentialDistance said:
Compiled by people like Meghan Murphy?
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shemtealeaf said:
Compiled by pretty much any source you want. Do you have any sources that suggest that men do not rape women significantly more frequently than women rape men?
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ozymandias said:
NISVS, forced-penetration-inclusive yearly rape rates. (Not lifetime. Yes, this is confusing.)
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shemtealeaf said:
Ozy,
Is there data on who is doing the raping there? There doesn’t seem to be a distinction between men being raped by women and being raped by other men.
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shemtealeaf said:
I will say, however, that some of that data is very surprising to me. There are really as many men getting raped by being ‘forced to penetrate’ as there are women getting raped by penetration? And yet the lifetime numbers are skewed 3:1 in favor of the women? Any idea what’s going on there?
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InferentialDistance said:
According to the 2010 CDC Nation Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, there were 1,270,000 (1.1% of population, page 18) women who experienced rape or attempted rape in the previous 12 months, while there were 1,267,000 (1.1% of population, page 19) men who experienced made-to-penetrate or attempted made-to-penetrate (because heterosexual intercourse initiated by a woman without the man’s consent isn’t rape, according to the CDC, page 17) in the prior 12 months. For female rape victims, 98.1% of perpetrators were male (page 24). For male made-to-penetrate victims, 79.2% of the perpetrators were female (page 24). Thus, roughly, 1,245,870 men victimized by women vs 1,003,464 women victimized by men, for ~39.5% of victims in 2009 were men victimized by women).
The difference between 12-months and lifetime statistics between genders could have several reasons. One commenter suggests that the age of the female victim is relevant (and the NISVS agrees, page 2; 79.6% before 25, 42.2% before 18), and that most respondents are older will mean that most are more than 12 months past the at-risk age.
That commenter and another noted that NISVS counts victims, not events of victimization, which means if there’s a gender-differing pattern of repeat victimization (i.e. men are more likely to be repeat victims) that could explain the difference.
A third commenter mentions the falling rate of sexual violence may not be symmetric between genders, thus the lifetime statistic may be the effect of inertia from prior conditions.
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shemtealeaf said:
InferentialDistance,
Thanks, not sure how I missed that section with the gender breakdown.
First, I will admit that the gender breakdown on male rape was extremely surprising to me, and I will have to reevaluate some of my thoughts in this area.
However, I feel like I’m missing some piece of the puzzle here. Even if we assume that men and women have an equal propensity to rape (which seems unlikely to me, given the disparity in male and female willingness to accept random offers of sex), I would think that the average male would-be rapist encounters many more potential victims (just in terms of women that he could physically force into sex) than the average female would-be rapist. Even if we’re talking about situations where the rapist uses a weapon, it still seems off. I wouldn’t want to try raping someone who was bigger and stronger than me, even if I had a gun.
I’ll defer to your statistics for the moment, but they seem weird enough that I’m not quite willing to totally take them at face value.
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InferentialDistance said:
My understanding is that rape rarely involves physical force or the threat of physical force (at least in the first world). Similarly, a minority of rape is by strangers; NISVS page 1 and 2 say rape by stranger is uncommon: More than half (51.1%) of female
victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance (8.1% left for stranger); most men who were made to penetrate someone else reported that the perpetrator was either an intimate partner (44.8%) or an acquaintance (44.7%) (10.5% left for stranger). When the perpetrator is known to you, and/or your social circle, social pressure can impede physical action (i.e. “You assaulted your girlfriend!?”).
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shemtealeaf said:
It looks like that survey defines ‘made to penetrate’ as only including cases where the rapist used force or threats of force, or the victim was extremely intoxicated. Based on my experience, a man who is intoxicated enough to the point where he can’t provide consent is unlikely to be physically able to penetrate anyone. Therefore, I’m assuming that most of these rapes involved force or threats.
Your point about social pressure impeding physical resistance is a good one, but I don’t think that the force necessary to resist a significantly weaker rapist is necessarily going to cause lasting or visually obvious harm. I have thankfully never had to resist a rape, but I have some small experience with grappling martial arts, and it’s not hard to fend off a weaker person without hurting them.
Also, a question for you: do you think that men and women are (roughly) equally likely to seek out opportunities for rape? I would think not, based on both personal experience, as well as the studies that tested how likely men and women were to accept an offer of sex from an attractive stranger.
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InferentialDistance said:
Be careful about extrapolating from anecdote, and assuming the degree of intoxication involved. I suspect alcohol is involved in more cases than you think.
Additionally, whether or not it is possible to physically defend yourself without causing lasting harm does little if you’re unwilling to overcome the social taboo on physical force. Using force, even if it doesn’t cause lasting physical harm, can have serious social consequences. The fear of said consequences can be sufficient to dissuade a stronger person from defending themself.
I don’t like the phrase “seek out opportunities for rape”, as it suggests a kind of behavior that is not indicative of the statistics. Around half of rapes are perpetrated by intimate partners, who don’t have to go out seeking opportunities. They have an opportunity every time their partner says no (or doesn’t say yes, under affirmative consent).
In fact, since the vast majority of people are strangers, and the vast majority of people you’ll encounter are strangers, that only 10% of rapes are from strangers suggests that seeking opportunities for rape is either incredibly uncommon, or laughably ineffectual at resulting in rape.
Furthermore, my understanding is that libido is even among the sexes (romance novels sell for a reason). Evo psych suggests that men have lower standards for casual sex because men suffer less opportunity costs for procreating with lower (genetic) quality mates (the duration of the encounter vs 9 months of pregnancy).
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LTP said:
@Shemtealeaf
Maybe it’s because women are socialized to be afraid of sexual assault while men are not. Further, because people don’t believe rape is a thing that happens to men, men who are raped by women don’t come forward publicly, or perhaps even consider what happened to them to be rape. So, this leads men to not consider rape to be a possibility and therefore are less afraid of strangers proposing casual sex.
Also, the fact is that for physiological reasons, men are much more likely to orgasm even if the sex isn’t great, which isn’t so for women. So casual sex is likely to be better for men.
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shemtealeaf said:
@InferentialDistance,
Yeah, “seek out opportunities for rape” probably wasn’t the best phrase. I meant something more along the lines of “be willing to pursue opportunities that present themselves”. I will note, however, that the rapes from friends/acquaintances could potentially be the result of people seeking opportunities to rape victims who might trust them enough to put themselves at risk.
I’m not sure about the taboo on the use of force. I feel like I would have no trouble using mild force to defend myself from a female assailant. I’m not even talking about hitting them; holding onto their wrists would almost certainly be sufficient. Honestly, I think I could defend myself against rape from a weaker opponent without really engaging at all, just by curling up and preventing access to my genitals. That wouldn’t work against someone who was really willing to hurt me, but at that point I think the victim would be more willing to fight back.
I’m sure there are some people who would be unwilling or unable to resist, but it just seems to me that the likelihood that a given woman is capable of forcibly raping her partner or friend is far lower than the likelihood that a given man is capable of doing so.
@LTP (also in response to Inferential Distance’s last point)
I guess I’m considering rape to be a subset of casual sex, but maybe that’s not the correct analysis. I figured that women are less likely to enjoy casual sex, which would mean that they’re very much less likely to enjoy rape.
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LTP said:
“I guess I’m considering rape to be a subset of casual sex, but maybe that’s not the correct analysis. I figured that women are less likely to enjoy casual sex, which would mean that they’re very much less likely to enjoy rape.”
Um, what!?!?
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shemtealeaf said:
LTP,
I meant in the sense that it seems much more likely for a male rapist to orgasm than a female rapist.
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ozymandias said:
Please don’t refer to people as “enjoying rape” or equate orgasm during rape with pleasure on my blog. That is rape apologist, anti-survivor bullshit and if you do it again you will be banned.
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shemtealeaf said:
I apologize; I don’t think I worded my comment correctly.
I was referring to the rapist when I was talking about ‘enjoying rape’. I was trying to speculate on the likelihood of a female rapist having an orgasm when raping a man. At no point was I saying anything about a victim’s enjoyment/orgasm or anything of that nature.
If that’s an inappropriate topic for discussion here, please let me know. If I’m genuinely coming off as a rape apologist, I’d hope to correct that.
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Tamen said:
shemtealeaf:
About the NISVS2010.
“It looks like that survey defines ‘made to penetrate’ as only including cases where the rapist used force or threats of force, or the victim was extremely intoxicated.”
The NISVS used the same definition for “rape” apart from penetrated and penetrating being swithced: “… without the victim’s
consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.”
“…passed out and unable to consent” may also refer to the victim being unconscious of other reasons than being drunk, drugged or high – for example by being asleep.
Also note that the “being made to penetrate” included attempts. And so did “rape”. So a woman trying to push her victims penis inside her without succeeding is counted and so is the case where the perpetrator tried to penetrate and not succeeding.
“Based on my experience, a man who is intoxicated enough to the point where he can’t provide consent is unlikely to be physically able to penetrate anyone. Therefore, I’m assuming that most of these rapes involved force or threats.”
Oh boy. If you’re not talking about your own penis you come off as someone who has experience in trying and failing to entice en erection in men too intoxicated to consent.
Intoxication does not necessarily preclude an erection – your experience notwithstanding. And even in the cases where the unconsenting man doesn’t have an erection the female perpetrator may try to get the incapacitated man’s penis erect by fellating him. Does not require an erection. Still made to penetrate. Still rape.
“Your point about social pressure impeding physical resistance is a good one, but I don’t think that the force necessary to resist a significantly weaker rapist is necessarily going to cause lasting or visually obvious harm. I have thankfully never had to resist a rape, but I have some small experience with grappling martial arts, and it’s not hard to fend off a weaker person without hurting them.”
When I woke up to a woman sitting on top of me with my penis inside her vagina the thought of physically resist didn’t even occur to me. Not because I wanted what happened. Silly me wanted my first time to be special with a woman I was in love with, not something I woke up to already happening with someone else. I’d heard a lot about rape yet no-one had told me men could be victims or that women could be perpetrators. I just froze. After I don’t know how long I did the only thing I could think then and there to make her stop – I faked an orgasm.
Only a long time after did it occur to me that I could probably have pushed her off me (even though she was about my height and weight). On the other hand I shudder to think about what would then have happened if she decided to react by screaming rape and her flatmates rushed in to find us both naked in her room. I’ve heard stories from other male survivors that their female rapist has used that as a threat to ensure their compliance/non-resistance.
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shemtealeaf said:
Tamen,
You make good points. The inclusion of attempted rape, in particular, could potentially explain why the numbers are higher than I expect. I also appreciate you providing your personal anecdote, which is rather eye-opening to me.
I’m not totally sold on the idea that men and women have equal propensity to rape, but maybe that doesn’t matter as much as I think. Regardless, these statistics and this discussion have definitely changed my perspective on this issue quite a bit.
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pocketjacks said:
@shemtealeaf,
As others have pointed out, everyone responds to alcohol differently. Arguments such as yours have historically been used to preclude the possibility of male rape altogether. (“If a man doesn’t want it, he wouldn’t be able to get an erection!” Besides being not true, sexual violation does not require an erection.)
Tamen says it better than I could:
Exactly this.
Furthermore, so long as we’re talking in vague generalities, based on my and many other guys’ experiences, a bit of alcohol actually strongly improves performance. Alcohol is a vasodilator, so in moderate amounts it increases blood flow to the surface – the same reason you feel warmed up when you drink, and the same way Viagra and such work. Whiskey dick generally sets in when one is at the nearly-passing-out stage.
So presumably based on your line of reasoning here and the bolded in the first quoted paragraph, all drunk sex before the nearly-passing-out stage is not rape?
Just trying to clarify. I’ve stated before how an objective standard of drunk rape is important. When it comes to men, too drunk to consent means at or very near the point of incapacitation – as the law and most outside nonpolitical observers would define the term “incapacitation”. Also when they’re being put on the spot and being pressed, even for women too drunk to consent means at or very near the point of incapacitation, because to admit to holding a much more expansive definition would be politically embarrassing. All other times, it’s clear that they hold a much more expansive definition. It’d be a shame if there were a double standard in the threshold of drunkenness you hold for men and women.
There’s a big difference between defending yourself against someone weaker, and trying to force them open and overcome their defenses. There’s a basic defender’s advantage here. The latter paragraph seems to assume that the tipping point that makes wresting someone open to rape them, feasible, occurs at the 50/50 threshold – if you’re stronger than someone by any measure, it’s plausible and somewhat easy, if you’re likewise weaker, it’s not. Needless to say, the tipping point does not occur at 50/50. Try getting someone a bit weaker than you to curl up hard and protect something from you for dear life, then try to wrest them open and take it from them. Keeping in mind the “taboo on the use of force”, you’re not allowed to punch or hit them to stun them or cow them. See how well you fare.
If male rape victims could defend themselves against rape if they really wanted to or if it was really rape, then the same applies to the vast majority of female rape victims. I’m trying to strike a balance in my tone here, because on the one hand you’re saying everything respectfully and not seeming to want to pick a fight, but on the other hand you are openly musing things in a way that’s potentially very offensive to survivors.
In actuality, very few rapes involve physical brute force as a significant component. I’m not a rape victim, but from everything I’ve heard and read on the subject:
(1) A desire to placate the aggressor. This is common in relationships, where the vast majority of rapes occur, and in the vast, vast majority of cases, what the victim is trying to placate against isn’t “physical reprisal”, but “emotional fallout”, “jeopardizing the relationship”, or “fearing that the assailant might leave me”. There is no gender imbalance with these.
(2) Even in cases outside of relationships, a social power differential between assailant and victim. What if the two have overlapping social circles, and she’s in a higher or more central position? Based on my experience, a lot of girls DO NOT TAKE IT WELL when they’re turned out down for sex, because they must be exceptionally unattractive if a hetero guy doesn’t want to sleep with them. What if turning her down really upsets her and causes her to retaliate? Causes a public feud? Whose side would most people take? Would he be cut off?
This is merely one hypothetical scenario. Many others could be drawn up. Far more rapes rely on social power disparities than those of physical power.
It’s not. The vast majority of rapes happen inside of relationships.
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shemtealeaf said:
Pocketjacks,
I’ve revised my opinion on some of this (see my response to Tamen), but I’ll respond to a few of these points:
1) Yes, I have a pretty high standard for how drunk someone has to be before they can’t consent to sex. In general, I think that if you’re sober enough to pursue/initiate sex, you’re sober enough to consent.
2) With regard to your point about the defender’s advantage, it seems like you’re agreeing with me. My point was that it’s pretty easy to defend yourself (with successful defense being defined as not getting raped) against a weaker person unless the weaker attacker is willing to really hurt you. There are certainly valid reasons why the victim might not resist, and, as Tamen pointed out, it’s possible that physical resistance doesn’t even cross the mind of some victims. I want to state very clearly that I’m not suggesting that this means the incident doesn’t constitute ‘real’ rape.
However, the report we’re referencing specifically distinguishes between forcible rape and “sexual coercion”. It gets a little confusing because the forcible rape numbers include situations where the victim was unable to consent due to intoxication, and possibly also situations where the victim was asleep (although the specific language says ‘passed out’). The situations you describe in the ’emotional fallout’, ‘jeopardizing relationship’, and ‘power differential’ fall squarely into the sexual coercion category, and would not be included in the numbers we’re discussing.
Based on these definitions, I’m assuming that the rapes counted in the ‘forcible rape’ numbers involved either a victim who was badly intoxicated (or possibly asleep) or the use of physical force (or threats of force). Therefore, I think the potential for physical resistance is relevant to the conversation. I agree that this isn’t a strictly gendered issue, and that the defender’s advantage means that even a weaker victim might be able to resist pretty effectively. However, I do think that, if you pair up every man and every women, you’re going to get many more pairs where the man can physically overpower the woman than vice versa.
3) The comment about casual sex (which in hindsight was ill-advised) was referring to the idea that women tend to orgasm less frequently than man during casual sex. If we assume that this is due to lack of sexual compatibility or experience with the partner’s preferences, I would assume that a female rapist would have an even harder time orgasming than a woman having casual sex. Maybe this is a totally unfounded conclusion, but that was the intent of the comparison to casual sex.
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Tamen said:
shemtealeaf:
“I’m not totally sold on the idea that men and women have equal propensity to rape, but maybe that doesn’t matter as much as I think.”
The issue isn’t really whether male victims or female perpetrators are as common as female victims or male perpetrators, but the current discourse and prevention efforts around the issue of rape and sexual violence is dis-proportionally about female victims and male perpetrators. Male victims and female perpetrators need to be fully included in the rape issue. Not erased, not as an afterthought, not as an ignorable anomaly, not as insincere political correctness, not as tokenism.
“However, the report we’re referencing specifically distinguishes between forcible rape and “sexual coercion”. It gets a little confusing because the forcible rape numbers include situations where the victim was unable to consent due to intoxication, and possibly also situations where the victim was asleep (although the specific language says ‘passed out’).”
Here you are being a bit sloppy with the definitions used in the NISVS. “Forcible rape” does NOT include drug/alcohol facilitated rape. “Forcible rape” is not a single category in the NISVS, but “Completed forced penetration” and “Attempted forced penetration” are two categories which both require use of physical force or threats of physical harm. “Completed drug or alcohol facilitated penetrated” is a separate category. These three categories are then rolled up into the “Rape” parent-category.
“Made to penetrate” does not have the same categorization break-down. This is due to CDC’s decision to not categorize “made to penetrate” as rape, but rather as “Other sexual violence”. This despite the survey’s questions for “being penetrated” and “being made to penetrate” mirrors each other.
One example is the question (from the NISVS 2011):
“How many people have ever used physical force or threats to physically harm you to make you have vaginal sex?”
If a woman answer a number > 0 then she’s counted as a victim of ‘rape (completed forced penetration)’. If a man answers > 0 then he is counted as a victim of ‘other sexual violence (made to penetrate someone else’).
CDC repeated the categorization of ‘made to penetrate’ as ‘other sexual violence’ rather than ‘rape’ in the subsequent NISVS 2011 report which they published in September 5th last year. The NISVS 2011 is less known, but compared to NISVS 2010 it found an increase in the number of men reporting ‘being made to penetrate’ the last 12 months: up from 1.1.% to 1.7% and also what appears to be an increase in the percentage of those men who report a female perpetrator: up from 79.2% to 82.6%.
The CDC’s press releases and executive summaries/fact-sheets on both the NISVS 2010 and the NISVS 2011 does not mention “made to penetrate” – and certainly not the last 12 months number for it. This of course caused this finding to be missed by most media reporting on these surveys, Examples can be seen in this post I wrote about the NISVS2011 on FeministCritics: http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2014/09/09/nisvs-2011-released-increased-male-victimization-and-rape-is-still-not-rape-noh/
The same article is also posted on my blog: https://tamenwrote.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/nisvs-2011-released-increased-male-victimization-and-rape-is-still-not-rape/
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shemtealeaf said:
Tamen,
– I agree completely that female-on-male rape needs to be included in the discussion much more. The statistics alone make that pretty hard to deny. However, I would like to have a better picture on what specific sort of situations we’re trying to prevent, in order to give those statistics some context.
– “Made to penetrate” doesn’t have the same breakdown in the statistics, but (assuming I’m reading this correctly) the criteria are exactly the same as for “rape” other than than the distinction of who is doing the penetrating. For my purposes, I was including both “rape” and “made to penetrate” in my “forcible rape” category.
– As far as I can tell, “made to penetrate” does include rape facilitated by intoxication, even though they don’t break it out into a separate subcategory.
– Not categorizing “made to penetrate” as rape is pretty much indefensible. I agree with you completely there. I also agree that the omissions in many of the reporting examples you listed in your article are pretty egregious.
Mainly, I’m just trying to form a better picture of what’s actually happening. The statistics don’t match up well with my expectations; the criteria are somewhat ambiguous; the statistics contain oddities in and of themselves (such as the significant discrepancy in the male/female ratio between lifetime incidences and prior year incidences).
None of this invalidates the statistics, and female-on-male rape needs to be discussed more even if these statistics turn out not to be 100% accurate. However, it does make me want to investigate further and make sure that the statistics actually say what I think they’re saying.
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pocketjacks said:
I have a feeling we don’t disagree on much here, but a couple of points. First, I am generally opposed to basing moral standards on the act of initiation, or different ethical standards for initiators or initiatees. Given the very deep and persistent division of gender roles on sexual initiation vs. receptivity, this is usually used to enact half-bakedly facially neutral rules that are clearly intended to morally gerrymander in favor of one gender.
I prefer an objective standard that works irrespective of who initiated or accepted. I tried to link to this past post of mine on another blog in my last post, but my link dummied out; here it is. (http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2014/05/10/futrelle-says-it-wasnt-rape-rape-noh/#comment-836023) It sums up my position on this issue:
**********************************
The whole point of bringing up the defender’s advantage, which you didn’t dispute, is that defending yourself from rape in the manner you describe (clenching into a ball and blocking access to your genitals, paraphrased) would also be pretty easy against a slightly or moderately stronger person. So the “if they really wanted to avoid rape/thought it was actual rape, why didn’t they… ” question here could just as well apply to the majority of female victims.
There are any number of reasons why people don’t actually do the clench-in-a-ball solution you prescribed, some of which I suggested in my previous post. But I’d ask you not to go down the “if they really didn’t want to be raped/thought it was actual rape, why didn’t they…” road.
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shemtealeaf said:
Pocketjacks,
Pretty much on the same page as you with regard to the drunk consent issue. I agree that the ‘sober enough to initiate’ standard would not be great as a legal framework, but I think it works pretty well as a heuristic. If I observe someone and think that they would be capable of initiating sex, I’d feel pretty good about saying that they’re capable of consenting.
With regard to the other point, I think it’s important to be clear that we’re talking about only the subset of rapes that involved force/violence/physical threats (or non-consent due to intoxication, but that really should be a separate category). If we’re talking about rapes that were facilitated by emotional threats, I don’t think that they’re included in the statistics that I’m trying to understand. I’m not trying to pass judgement on whether or not these incidents constitute ‘actual rape’, but I am trying to understand what the typical occurrence of a woman raping a man with the use of force/violence might look like.
It seems like understanding this would be pretty important in trying to come up with ways for men to avoid getting raped. If we have a bunch of big, strong men who are getting raped by small women because they’re afraid that they’ll hurt their attacker if they resist, it might be useful to point out the ways in which they can resist a weaker assailant without hurting them. On the other hand, if it turns out that these rapes are mostly perpetrated by strong women against weak men who they can physically overpower, that tactic would not be as viable.
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InferentialDistance said:
How do you suppose the study categorizes rapes wherein the perpetrator uses both physical force and social or emotional threats? How about “they wrestled me to the floor, but I only let them (despite my physical superiority) because of fear of social repercussions if I resisted”?
What is “force”? Are we going full Newtonian here, where everything is (your mere existence exerts gravitic force, for example)? Is there some pressure per square inch threshold we have to cross? Is it mass adjusted, to account for strength differences correlated with mass (fallout: fat people, who will be less strong relative to their mass)?
Because I can see “force” being interpreted pretty broadly, well beyond “physically overpowering a person who resists” or “holds a knife to their throat”. “Takes off the victims pants”, for example, is the use of physical force; the emotional equivalent is that the victim takes off their own pants or else the rapist will spread vile rumors about them.
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Ginkgo said:
“But to say that “believing male victims” is a “feminist imperative” isn’t actually true. As some feminist writers have pointed out, this kind of analysis fails to understand or acknowledge what feminism actually does. Feminism explicitly and necessarily is about understanding the fact that, and the way in which, men, as a class, oppress women, as a class. There is no equivalency in rape because men and women do not share similar experiences of gender oppression… because men do not, in fact, experience oppression because of their gender — women do.”
This is Murphy’s usual rancid rape apology and sexism. this is exactly the reasoning toy soldier, a child rape victim, encountered as a young man when he tried to go to feminist-run rape centers. for those zealots he simply could not have been raped, just by definition.
I wonder if Murphy would say that white slave-owning women could never have been raped by a male slave. Doubt it.
this is what it looks like when someone lets their ideology and probably their personal issues get in the way of their humanity.
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Rauwyn said:
Oh, this is satire…suddenly the post makes a lot more sense. That said…I think the disability rights version made sense, it just didn’t have much to do with Shia
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Rauwyn said:
agh, I did not mean to post yet…
Continuing:
it just didn’t have much to do with Shia LaBoeuf. What happened probably isn’t a disability rights issue! But disability rights isn’t the only reason to believe a victim.
I guess because disability rights isn’t, as far as I know, such a mainstream ideology that even abled people are frequently viewed through its lens, and because there don’t seem to be strong social pressures on abled people as a group, this seems like a totally reasonable argument. It reminds me of a discussion on Slate Star Codex about how environmentalism was in some sense a broader philosophy than gun rights, in that you’d have a really hard time viewing many political issues through a gun rights lens (no pun intended) than through environmentalism.
All of this seems to be missing the actual point, but it’s what I took away from my initial, non-satirical reading of the post…
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InferentialDistance said:
The disability rights version, like the original feminist version, uses quite a number of empirical falsehoods to justify itself. There’s also the disgusting lack of sympathy/empathy for male/able suffering. Something something reciprocal altruism something something defecting in the prisoner’s dilemma.
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ozymandias said:
My post uses empirical falsehoods? Please point them out and I’ll correct them; I tried to make this post have accurate facts and horrible values.
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InferentialDistance said:
In general, the terrible value system results in overstating the case. Usually this only results in saying things that strongly suggest falsehoods (which I personally would classify as empirically incorrect, because Grice’s Maxim of Relation, and because I’m a contrarian bastard), but sometimes it crosses into outright incorrectness. For example:
“because abled people do not, in fact, experience oppression because of their ability status” The draft disagrees. There’s a long history of conscription too, across the globe.
“victimization and sexual assault are related to disability” Abled on abled victimization and sexual assault disagree.
“Rape is generally understood as sex that the victim resists” Rohypnol isn’t rape?
“the point of believing disabled victims is to right a long history of wrongs” It’s to avoid more wrongs in the future, under the assumption that they’re telling the truth. We should believe them even if there wasn’t a long history of wrongs (again assuming that they’re telling the truth). The long history of wrongs is neither necessary nor sufficient.
“is that he wasn’t socialized his whole life that his pain and his needs were an unreasonable burden on those around him” Society expects abled people to suck it up and subordinate their pain and needs to the needs of society.
“to believe that abled people always have his best interests at heart, even if they want to cause him pain or kill him” DEA wants to deny the abled pain medication, the FDA wants to deny the abled life saving medication, and society expects the abled to believe that this is for their own good.
“and that he must fear institutionalization, bullying, and violence from abled people at all times” Libertarians would say that everyone has to fear that from the government.
“He didn’t learn that his life doesn’t matter” Capitalism crushes the souls of abled people too.
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leave me alone i don't believe in blogging said:
I think that’s a bit nitpicky – it’s mainly just bad opinions and minimizing of other people’s problems as “not real problems, problems equals problems plus systemic oppression”, which is being satirized here.
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Sniffnoy said:
“the point of believing disabled victims is to right a long history of wrongs” It’s to avoid more wrongs in the future, under the assumption that they’re telling the truth. We should believe them even if there wasn’t a long history of wrongs (again assuming that they’re telling the truth). The long history of wrongs is neither necessary nor sufficient.
I think any claim about the point falls under values, or can easily be construed so as to.
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LTP said:
I know, right? I read this and I was getting really pissed off at Ozy and was kinda surprised they would write it, and then I realized…
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Siggy said:
I read this article before looking at the Feminist Current article and realizing this one was satire. My impression of this article was “this is missing the point somehow”, but my impression of the FC article was “WRONG!” even though the two articles were nearly the same. Clearly Ozy has a halo.
But also, I’m more familiar with feminist activism than disabilities activism, so I feel a little more entitled to recognize when a feminist is saying something terrible. In general, the proper scope of an social movement is kind of a complicated question, but saying that feminism entails complete support of female rape victims and none for male rape victims, that’s some real bullshit. It doesn’t align with what feminists say about feminism helping men, and it doesn’t do any service to women either.
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Anon said:
Ozy, when people call you a “reasonable feminist”, they are comparing you to the author of the original article.
Though why you’d still identify as a feminist after reading that is beyond me.
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Lambert said:
Because of all the other reasonable ones.
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Anon said:
Who are clearly so few and far between as to be remarkable.
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Siggy said:
I was thinking, rad-fem is terrible even when it’s not the terf variety. But then, wait, does Feminist Current have terf leanings too? Here Ditum argues that “TERF” is used to silence women, and couldn’t possibly reflect any legitimate complaints. Ugh x1000
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osberend said:
Radical feminism is terrible, and also ultimate counter-productive.
Let me preface this by saying that I support equal rights for men and women, regardless of what views anyone else may hold, whether on “my side” or not (and, indeed, regardless of what “my side” is on a particular issue). Just as I am against mistreatment of men, no matter how much other men may mistreat women, so too am I against mistreatment of women, regardless of how much other women may mistreat men.
But speaking as a purely practical matter . . . Men are on average physically stronger than women, make up a vastly larger fraction of the military and police, are much more likely to own guns as private citizens, have more power in society generally, and are far less socialized against willingness to use violence to defend what (they believe) is theirs—as radfems themselves love to point out! That means that any advance in women’s rights requires—not that men support it, or even that they do not resist it at all—but that they do not resist it too vigorously. And one of the best ways to ensure that a group of people will resist your cause with all their might is to label them kulaks, to say that they oppress you and yours “as a class,” regardless of their own personal actions, and to trivialize (or incite!) acts of violence against them.
Radical feminism views men as the enemies of women, and seems to have no clue what it would mean for men to decide that it’s right.
Regarding TERFism, I haven’t found anything extreme (yet), but Ditum definitely (in an article that, I will grant, also made some good points about media responsibility and copycat suicides) had the gall to say this:
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Anon said:
“Men…have more power in society generally,”
I disagree. There are certainly more men in positions of power in society, but the way that power is used overwhelmingly favors women.
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accumulationPoint said:
[mild snark]
Define ‘power’; define ‘society’; realize that arguing about the overall balance of power in society is often just a (bravery) debate and that looking at the balance of power/ability to leverage power in the specific domain most relevant to the discussion is better and more productive
[/mild snark]
It’s good to think structurally, but only if we can actually productively engage with the structure and fit our heads around it; ‘society’ is too big to think usefully with in a lot of cases
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skye said:
You know, I don’t disagree with what she said about Alcorn’s parents. Not because they aren’t despicable, but because I generally don’t like making examples of specific people. We should use this as a jumping-off point to talk about compassionate parenting of trans kids in general, not beat one particular dead horse endlessly. The Alcorns are no longer in a position to hurt their late child. Let’s focus on parents who are.
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osberend said:
Two points:
1. There is a difference between whether a thing is useful and whether it is deserved. Alcorn’s parents’ behavior certainly does merit public shaming, whether that’s actually the most productive course of action of not.
2. Moreover, there is also a practical value to continuing to publicly shame them, which is the same practical value that all exemplary punishment has: One does it pour encourager les autres.
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skye said:
…I just realized that “beating a dead horse” was perhaps not the best metaphor to use here. Regardless. You know what I mean. Curse the lack of editability!
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qwertyne said:
accumulationpoint, you are veeery smart, but this does not make less than 90% of all millionaries, CEOs, politicians and military leaders male. Those damn women must be really sneaky, if they can govern the world without getting any of the obvious positions. /s
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Patrick said:
I’m not going to comment on the “believe disabled people” thing because I think that the arguments against reasoning from “People do X too often” to “It is a Kantian imperative not to do X” is self refuting.
So I’ll just comment on the part where I can contribute factually.
OP mentions questioning whether Shia la Beouf was raped based on whether he could have resisted, but didn’t.
Welcome to the debate over affirmative consent.
Standard rape law in most jurisdictions is that rape occurs when someone does something to overcome someone else’s resistance, or takes advantage of someone’s inability to resist. It is generally defined more precisely than this, but that summary is a fair approximation of the general principles involved. It doesn’t contemplate the idea of [A] having sex with [B] under a context where [B] doesn’t want to have sex, is capable of objecting or resisting, has not been coerced into not doing so, and yet does not. Or rather, it does contemplate that under statutory rape laws, but not under standard rape laws that apply to mentally and physically able adults, since they are presumed capable of expressing and acting upon their desires to a certain minimal level during sexual encounters.
“Consent” in this context isn’t really a positive desire to do something. It is an uncoerced decision to permit something. Under these standards it is extremely unlikely that he was raped if he simply acceded to the sex rather than break character during a performance art piece explicitly about whether or not he would break character if people abused him. Perhaps a prosecutor could argue that the implied threat of “have sex with me unless you want to break character in your art piece” is sufficient. That might fly. It would be a jury question, I think. I doubt it would fly in my jurisdiction but who knows.
Under affirmative consent, this gets significantly changed. Under that, “consent” is an affirmative desire to have sex that is communicated unambiguously, and each partner to a sexual act has an affirmative obligation to obtain that communication at all stages of the sexual intercourse, in most versions, at the specific time the sexual act occurs (prior consent is not affirmative consent, etc). Under these standards, if he simply held still because he desired not to break character, and the purported rapist engaged in certain kinds of sexual contact with him, he was raped. Even if he could have done literally anything and successfully stopped it, including just saying, “hey, stop that.”
Beyond that… for the record, in my state, if someone’s disability leaves them physically unable to resist should they want to, it is illegal to have sex with them under any circumstances whatsoever unless they marry you first and cohabitate with you. You need both.
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LTP said:
Aaaand… reading the comments in the linked article make me sick. That is why I’ll never identify as a feminist, even though I know and respect a lot of individual feminist people.
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LTP said:
Just to clarify, the article made me sick, too, but the comments responding to men, UGH…
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Fossegrimen said:
With regards to whether or not to believe rape victims, I think one always should.
If we extend this to ‘should we punish the rapist?’, then the question becomes ‘should the rapist have expected their actions to be experienced as rape?
If I was fed a cocktail of roofies and viagra and then tied up for someones sexual enjoyment and my experience was ‘huh, that was weird?’ it should probably not be construed as rape because no rape was experienced by the ‘victim’.
If my experience was ‘OMG I was raped!!!1!1!’, it certainly should.
This goes for just about any rape scenario and consequently, one should always believe the rape victim. Whether or not one should punish the rapist follows entirely different rules.
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osberend said:
With regards to whether or not to believe rape victims, I think one always should.
But whether to that a given person is a rape victim is precisely what is (usually) at stake here! So “one should always believe rape victims” really means one of of two things:
1. Other people should always believe the people that I believe are rape victims.
2. One should always believe anyone who claims to be a rape victim.
(1) is an assertion of power on the part of the speaker, nothing more, and dishonest to boot. (2), on the other hand, runs smack dab into the question: What if someone claims to have been raped who by their own account of the material facts was not? This is not a theoretical question.
Moreover, people like the author of the original article want to normalize that sort of thing:
The only interpretation of these rhetorical questions (and their implied answers) which allows them to serve the point that the author is making is this:
Baby Beluga said:
I was really confused until I read the article that you posted at the top, along with the disclaimer that I would be confused if I didn’t read it.
…Well played, Ozy.
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pocketjacks said:
I’ve never liked Shia LeBeouf. Like Miley Cyrus, he seems like another post-Disney Channel alum who’s trying too hard to be controversial. But moral standards are worse than meaningless if they don’t extend to protect people we don’t like.
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Paperclip Minimizer said:
Even after reading the “This will probably make more sense if you read this first” link, I have no idea what the point of this post is.
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