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[Watser?]

I get a very distinct impression they don't. They should. But they don't.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

TICKLING IS CHILD ABUSE!

Seriously, I spend about 2/3rds of my day with Qingdai Jr. telling him, "No," "No listen to me, do you want to be ignored like you're ignoring me?" "This is my space bubble, stay in your own space."

Do other parents not do this all day?

No, not that. I do other things all day instead....mostly responding to complex objections and refutations- worthy of a courtroom (in a world where nobody has any experience or information)- over mundane tasks or even well known facts.

I don't even have the luxury of an argument ending "Because I say so", as that just leads to more objections as to why my saying so is wrong too.

Nobody told me that I would be raising myself to argue with all day. And, it is only me this happens with. Nobody else hears any arguments at all.

[Janet]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I know, right? It's scary seeing things like that, and realizing all of a sudden that you've spent your whole life just sort of accepting and even perpetuating these unacceptable things because you never really stopped to think about them.

I've had to figure out whole new ways to tease little kids without the C'MERE AND GIVE AUNTIE LISA A KISS game.

My best friend is a "TICKLING IS CHILD ABUSE!" kind of person, but her daughter loves to be tickled. Since Kathy had told me her issues with tickling I became uncomfortable one day when her daughter was having me chase her and screaming, "No, don't tickle me." I wanted to clarify, so I stopped and said, "A real woman always says yes when she means yes and no when she means no." She thought about it for a bit, then started running again shouting, "Yes, tickle me!" So, my advice would be to get the kids to say clearly if they really want to be chased and then play the chase game.

[Crumb]

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

No, not that. I do other things all day instead....mostly responding to complex objections and refutations- worthy of a courtroom (in a world where nobody has any experience or information)- over mundane tasks or even well known facts.

I don't even have the luxury of an argument ending "Because I say so", as that just leads to more objections as to why my saying so is wrong too.

Nobody told me that I would be raising myself to argue with all day. And, it is only me this happens with. Nobody else hears any arguments at all.

When I met the three of you, one of the things I was most impressed by (and appreciative of) was the almost Socratic approach that you and Hubby took toward Kiddo's education.

You didn't just tell him stuff and expect him to accept it without question. You asked questions and encouraged him to figure things out for himself, and you took the time to explain things to him, rather than just say "trust me; that's how things are."


I think that attitude toward Kiddo's education will serve him well.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I think most men are a bit naive about that, because they don't act that way and the men who do usually don't do it around other people. The behavior is largely invisible to casual observers.

I've mentioned it before, but I think it bears repeating that I'm grateful for this thread for exactly that reason. When you're not the one experiencing it, it's awfully easy to forget just how common sexist [and racist, etc.] attitudes and behaviors are, and how thoroughly they're engrained into our culture.


And it's a reminder that I could easily do or say something that might be misconstrued or inappropriate, without ever realizing this was the case. For instance, consider the Rebecca Watson incident. I go to conferences occasionally, and I can easily imagine myself approaching an interesting speaker -- perhaps even in an elevator -- and asking her if she'd like to continue the discussion privately over coffee or something. Without it ever occurring to me that that an elevator is an inappropriate place for doing so, or that my intentions could be very easily misunderstood. [Though I'm reasonably certain that it would occur to me that it's just wrong to make such a proposal right after the speaker had announced that she was tired and planning to go to sleep -- especially if it's 3:00 in the morning.]


No doubt, a lot of it has to do with the circumstances of your upbringing. For example, I grew up in the country, with 5 sisters. Other than my siblings, the nearest kids my own age lived literally miles away. So my sisters were my play-mates. It never occurred to me that there was anything odd or unusual or inappropriate about a boy playing with girls. I played with my sisters' toys, and they played with mine. The lot of us would play softball or tag or such games outside. And if our parents thought this was weird or inappropriate, they never made an issue of it, to their everlasting credit.

Once, when I was in the seventh grade (if I'm recalling correctly), one of my school-mates asked me if I "played with" girls. "Well of course," I told him, genuinely unable to understand why he would have thought that the sex of one's play-mates could matter. It was quite some time before it finally dawned on my why he thought my response was so amusing, and the ... strange ... way that he laughed when I told him that I routinely played with girls.


Anyway, the overall point is that it simply wouldn't ever occur to me that a person's sex would in any way matter regarding the importance or validity of their opinions. And what might seem like a perfectly-innocent proposal to me might seem like something very different to someone else. So unless I'm reminded of such things from time to time, it doesn't occur to me that these are things that I should be thinking about.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

When I met the three of you, one of the things I was most impressed by (and appreciative of) was the almost Socratic approach that you and Hubby took toward Kiddo's education.

You didn't just tell him stuff and expect him to accept it without question. You asked questions and encouraged him to figure things out for himself, and you took the time to explain things to him, rather than just say "trust me; that's how things are."


I think that attitude toward Kiddo's education will serve him well.

I think it will too, unfortunately knowing that it will eventually pay off doesn't make it easier to have an hour long argument over what day comes after Saturday

[maddog]

Originally Posted by Crumb

My maternal gm did this exact thing to my mother's brothers when they were youngsters. Sewing ruffles on my uncles' shirttails is what passes for a funny family story in my clan.

#2890

[The Man]

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

What in holy hell is this?

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

HerbsandHags: How I became a rape victim

This one is really good; it talks about how the guy tested her out at first, then she tried to convince herself it wasn't rape... and how he tried dating her, and take away her sense of self.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by Anastasia Beaverhausen

HerbsandHags: How I became a rape victim

This one is really good; it talks about how the guy tested her out at first, then she tried to convince herself it wasn't rape... and how he tried dating her, and take away her sense of self.

Years ago, something somewhat like this happened to a former girlfriend. I wound up losing a friend because I didn't know how to deal with the situation.


We had broken up years earlier, because of her -- in my estimation -- very inflexible views. She seemed to be utterly incapable of understanding or accepting that not everyone else saw the world exactly as she did, or such was my impression.


A few years later, she was raped by an acquaintance.

She described the incident in a letter to me. To me at least, her letter seemed like a perfect description of what not to do.

She met the guy as a blind date at a party. After they had both been drinking for awhile, he asked her to come back to his place, and she agreed. More drinking ensued.

She eventually told him that she had to be getting home. He told her that it would be hard to get a taxi at that hour, and she should just stay the night. She agreed.

More drinking ensued.

He told her that they could sleep together on the bed, and that everything would be fine. She agreed.

In the morning, he suggested that they have sex. She refused. He didn't take "no" for an answer.




In her letter to me, she said over and over again, that the rape was "a completely random event" and "completely unpredictable," and that there was nothing she could have done differently that would have made it any less likely to have occurred. We discussed the incident in a few more follow-up letters. It seemed to me that he had clearly and quite deliberately lured her into a place from which there was no easy escape, and had taken advantage of her naivete.

I tried to point out, as delicately as possible, that while it was not her fault, it was also not true that the rape was "a completely random event," nor was it true that there was nothing she could have done to have made it any less likely to have occurred.



My intentions were good, but it didn't go over well. At all.

The last I heard from her -- through a mutual friend -- she was still insisting that rape is a completely-random and completely unpredictable thing, and that there's no point in trying to take precautions against it.

A sad and distressing situation all around, I'm afraid.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

I tried to point out, as delicately as possible, that while it was not her fault, it was also not true that the rape was "a completely random event," nor was it true that there was nothing she could have done to have made it any less likely to have occurred.

Well, honestly, that's probably going to sound like saying it's her fault, whatever the preamble. Because it connotes a lack of reasonable precaution. Maybe the way to drive home that it's not her fault would be to emphasize that it wasn't a completely random event because she was targeted and made vulnerable, that she refused her consent (indeed, said no), and was deliberately assaulted anyhow. That's pretty much the opposite of random.

Caveat: I'm about as far from expert about this stuff as it's possible to be. But I think that a denial of the predictability of an assault may well be a way of fending off the widely-reported feeling among rape victims that somehow it was their own fault that they were raped. Emphasizing the avoidability of the outcome seems apt to heighten that awful, corrosive feeling rather than just correcting a mistaken view about randomness.

[erimir]

She could have avoided it in the way you can avoid getting hit by a car on the sidewalk by just never using the sidewalk.

But you can't really predict when going on the sidewalk will be a threat to your life because there will be a reckless driver or a drunk driver or whatever who will veer onto the sidewalk. Obviously this is a more extreme example, but you get my meaning.

Can you predict which men will rape you if you go back to their place and have a few drinks and then refuse to have sex with them? You can avoid it by never going to a man's place for drinks, sure. But I don't think the fact that you have a higher risk of getting raped if you go back to a man's place and get drunk means that it is therefore predictable and not random. I mean, I'm going to speculate that probably there's not a great chance of getting raped in that situation. I would just be making up a number if I did, so I can't really put a number on it, but I imagine most instances of that don't result in rape.

So, I mean, it's not completely random... but most things aren't.

[lisarea]

Basically what erimir said.

You're probably not relating to that case because socializing and getting drunk don't really appeal to you, so you're not really seeing past the risks. It's really no different, though, than saying that it's dangerous to go out walking alone in the woods for you. Sure, there are inherent risks, but I assume you wouldn't even consider giving that up to avoid the risks. People who really really like to socialize need that just as much as you need to live your life the way you choose, so talking to them about the inherent risks is as fruitless as telling you that you should stay in cell phone range or something.

If someone were to attack you out in the woods or something, it wouldn't be your fault, and it wouldn't be appropriate to blame you even in part for just doing something that you enjoy and value, and that you have every right to do. And it would be pointless and patronizing to explain to you what you did to bring it on, because that's a choice you made, and that's what's important to you.

The thing about not lecturing women about safety things like that isn't because there literally are no situations that are riskier than others. Obviously, there are some, but for the most part, those recommendations involve telling women to not do things they enjoy, or even things they need to do just to function in society. And really, you could take that as far as you want. Don't go to parties. Don't get drunk. Don't drink period. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk to men. Don't go out without a chaperone. Don't go out.

As adults, we all set our own risk tolerance levels, and most of us take a fair amount of risk in order to live life the way we want to. Some things aren't negotiable, and for a lot of people, those things involve drinking and socializing.

[The Lone Ranger]

In my own defense, this happened more than 15 years ago.

Had it happened today, I'd have responded quite differently. My main reason for posting was to illustrate that no matter how good your intentions, ignorance and lack of understanding can lead one to make very inappropriate responses.

[Qingdai]

Live and learn, die and forget it all.

[Watser?]

This one just got a lot more exposure: Rape: Is It Really All That Bad? | Care2 Causes

[Clutch Munny]

Re-reading a great collection of articles, The Lynching of Language: Gender, Politics and Power in the Hill-Thomas Hearings (Ragan, Bystrom, Kaid & Beck, eds., U. Illinois Press, 1996). Currently I'm looking at S.A. Wiegand's essay on how the senators ended up testifying instead of questioning, especially the Republicans. Ran across this great, awful quote from Orrin Hatch, regarding the absolutely mind-boggling shockingness of the idea that a man might say sexually harassing things in the workplace -- talk about porn, or the size of his dick, or sexual acts, for instance. That kind of thing just could never, ever happen, right?

"I have to say, cumulatively, these charges, even though they were made on all kinds of occasions, I mean they are unbelievable that anybody could be that perverted. I am sure there are people like that but they are generally in insane asylums."

Two Joe-things I'd forgotten: (1) Joe Biden was the Chair who blithely let Hatch, Specter and Simpson take a large greasy shit on natural justice and all basic rules of evidence. (2) Joe Lieberman testified staunchly in favour of Thomas.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Watser?

This one just got a lot more exposure: Rape: Is It Really All That Bad? | Care2 Causes

Ozy is leaving the Good Men site:
I’m Leaving the GMP — The Good Men Project

I can't say I'm surprised and certainly not disappointed.

[The Man]

California judge admonished for saying victim’s body should have ‘shut down’ rape | The Raw Story

Is there some petition to impeach this asshole? If not someone should start one.

[livius drusus]

He should have been disbarred years ago. Check out the original 2008 story for more on this fucking monster of a judge.

According to transcripts, he stated that Doe’s vagina had not been “shredded” during the sexual assault, an indication in his mind that she’d given some sort of consent.

And it's not like this one case was a freak event.

In an ongoing case against Jeffrey Patrick Haley—a man accused of repeatedly punching, kicking, strangling and pointing a loaded handgun at a girlfriend, Johnson has ridiculed the victim in open court, calling her "a dullard."

Convicted killer/robber/woman-beater Terrance Russell knew he faced California’s Three Strikes Law if he committed another crime but tried to strangle a woman with both hands in September 2007. Prosecutors wanted Russell, who pleaded guilty, to receive a 35-years-to-life sentence. But to "make sure that justice is done," Johnson ignored the wishes of the frightened victim, reduced the two felony charges to misdemeanors and gave Russell just eight months in the local jail.

But hey, he apologized to the commission and got an admonishment, so it's all good now, right? The entire fucking commission should be sued, fired, arrested.

[Janet]

Chivalry Has Nothing to do with Respect and Everything to do with Manipulation

Mutual respect is not based on the idea that half the human race could defeat the other half but kindly chooses not to because they, like, totally respect women and their womanly ways. This is psychological manipulation. At best it’s irritating and at worst it’s plain abusive.

On reading the article linked within, that this is responding to, I have to say I'm amused by the idea that lack of chivalry has "killed dating". Because they sure did a lot of dating back in the Middle Ages, didn't they?

[LadyShea]

Recently, four female servicemen and the Service Women’s Action Network sued the Department of Defense over the military’s combat-exclusion policy.

HESCHMEYER: Radical feminism waging the real war on women - Washington Times

[Ensign Steve]