NOT COOL DUDE

[Adora]

NOT COOL AT ALL!

GRAAAHH! (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=79&art_id=vn20040927105338482C352432&set_id=1)

Please excuse the caps, but the subject matter deserves it. SERIOUSLY FUCKING FUCKED UP!

PS: Link nicked from a wank community which nicked it from wtf_inc community on LJ, for the record. I don't go looking for these links... they come to me.

[livius drusus]

What the holy fuck... Why bus conductors? How could they make a declaration like that and not be arrested en masse? Since when does gang rape = indecent assault charges? It's nauseating.

[viscousmemories]

Man, that's fucked up. :(

[Goliath]

:eek: :( :deepsigh:

[seebs]

I assume it's a job which is available to comparatively unskilled and uneducated people.

[Petra]

I assume it's a job which is available to comparatively unskilled and uneducated people.

What, gang rape?



That is so fucked up, I don't care how unskilled and uneducated the people are.

:(

[livius drusus]

Unskilled and uneducated doesn't really explain it to me, seebs. For one thing, in many countries (including the US and Italy) driving a bus is a good job. It pays relatively well, is stable and flexible. I wouldn't assume that bus conductors/drivers in Swaziland are particularly unskilled and uneducated.

But even if they are, I don't see how that translates into a group declaration of intent to rape. There's obviously some big cultural baggage involved: the encouraging lustful thoughts ban, the privately owned minibuses, the no pants in the royal village rule. I would tend to look through those bags before hitting the lack of education one.

[Adora]

Nor does skills or education reduce the occurance of rape, or excuses made for it. Rape is about power, through and through, and such systems of power that allow rape to happen exist in all levels of society. This specifically is about the dominance of men over the women in the professed "conservative" country.

It's a sick society, not sick individuals.

[The Lone Ranger]

Rape is about power, through and through, and such systems of power that allow rape to happen exist in all levels of society. This specifically is about the dominance of men over the women in the professed "conservative" country.


I think it's overly simplistic to imply that rape is always about power. I suspect that in the majority of cases it is, but always? I doubt it.

Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer caught an awful lot of flak from people who didn't want to hear it, but they make an awfully good case that you'd expect men to commit rape under certain circumstances, because it would be an adaptive evolutionary strategy. What they point out is that if you look at who is raped and under what circumstances, the numbers don't support the notion that rape is always about power. While I do think that Thornhill and Palmer go too far in suggesting that rape is mostly about men using an "alternate" means of getting their genes into the next generation (as opposed to using rape as a tool to enforce power over women), they do make a good case that this is true at least some of the time.

For example, they point out that women who are generally judged to be sexually attractive are much more likely to be raped than unattractive women, other factors being equal. And while nonreproductive women are certainly raped from time to time, when you control for other factors, women who are at their reproductive peak (early- to mid-20s) are far more likely to be raped than younger or older women.

When you look at the men who commit rape, a reason for this pattern begins to emerge. Men who commit rape are overwhelmingly poor and socially outcast. For various reasons, Thornhill and Palmer point out, wealthy and powerful men have little trouble finding sexual partners; poor and socially-outcast men have far fewer options, however. So, it makes sense from the brutal perspective of natural selection that men who find themselves in this unenviable position would be inclined to commit rape as a last-ditch means of getting their genes into the next generation.

In the animal kingdom, this sort of behavior is actually quite common. In many species, females preferentially choose to mate with the most dominant males -- typically, the largest and strongest ones. Accordingly, the dominant individuals often advertise their presence, and the females come to them. Smaller, weaker males often "ambush" the females en route and attempt to mate with them -- whether the females are willing (and often they're quite obviously not willing) or not. "Rape" is by no means committed only by Homo sapiens. And in non-human species, it is often quite clear that rape is committed as an "alternate" reproductive strategy when "normal" strategies are unsuccessful. This suggests that a certain percentage of male humans are committing rape not [only] as a means of asserting dominance, but as a reproductive strategy.

None of this means that rape is ever a morally-excusable act, but the reasons that men commit rape are probably more complex than we tend to think.

Cheers,

Michael