High profiles murders in the U.S: what is going on?

[Shonx]

Shonx was claiming that condescendingly lecturing to women about the dangers of drunkeness (public or private) will help protect them from being molested/raped, implying that those women who do get plastered only do so on account of their ignorance or a lack of knowledge of the perils of unrestrained drinking.

Nope. Where did I say that? I said that it creates easier targets and that rapists aren't after a challenge. I don't think that there's anything unfactual about that at all.

 

[nomadthethird]

It's not about the drinking though, it's about the vulnerablility. A woman in the home alone clearly has no-one else around if the rapist decides to rape. I'd imagine a fairly large percentage of those also involve alcohol too. Judging by the domestic abuse cases we get coming through my work, alchohol taken by both parties seems to be a contributing factor, for the abuser because it disinhibits their urge to violence and for the abused because it makes them easier to attack.

Chatting to one of the female lawyers at work a while back, and she said that one of the best ways to combat domestic abuse was to build girls' self-esteem when they were younger so they could recognize these scumbags earlier and not feel that being beaten and possibly raped was all they were worth.



You're still wrong. Endless, increasingly tedious repetition will not change this. Seems to me you're projecting your negative concept of what you'd like us to be, regardless of whether we say otherwise in a desperate attempt to appear right. Basically your theory only stands up if we're all liars. Very scientific, not to mention offensive to everyone you've just slated.

Chatting to two women friends last night about this discussion, and they think that it's women constantly projecting narrow stereotypes of men (and quite often women too) and their emotionally-laden but analysis-lite theories that have actually caused far more damage to the feminist cause than most men could ever do. Most men don't have a problem with equal rights for women, most think that violence against women is wrong, most feel repulsed that rape occurs. Most however are unlikely to align themselves with branches of feminism that tell them they are something they're not, or damn them for the actions of a few. That is a losing game.

I haven't once said that I was going to be protecting anyone, I said that women should protect themselves, and drink responsibly if they're out on their own which is exactly the same advice my female friends would give to women. Obviously though, given that I'm a man, when the advice comes from me it's patriarchal flexing, when it comes from them it's sensible advice.

This entire post proves everything I've already said. YOU are still wrong, and you make yourself look entirely stupid and sexist in every last post you continue to make on this topic.

Alcohol does not make it that much easier for a woman to be attacked. Unfortunately, most women are no match for any man at any level of sobriety. As Waffles points out, alcohol in this discussion is a red herring.

Chatting to one of the female lawyers at work a while back, and she said that one of the best ways to combat domestic abuse was to build girls' self-esteem when they were younger so they could recognize these scumbags earlier and not feel that being beaten and possibly raped was all they were worth.

This is the kind of rhetorical flourish that I just relish in a self-proclaimed woman proctectionist non-sexist. So a "woman" told you this at work, eh? So does that mean it has some sort of authority, because a woman said it? So a woman told you that, once again, as you've been repeating endlessly here, that it's UP TO WOMEN to get smart and buck up to the task of making themselves invulnerable to rape, is it? As has already been made abundantly clear through statistics and facts, it is simply impossible for women to do this. A woman is responsible for her own self-esteem in many ways: all of society is responsible for making sure undue pressure to live up to an unrealistic ideal is not put upon women. I would argue that female self-esteem would benefit greatly from an immediate moratorium on victim blaming, victim "advising", and other misguided if well-intentioned shift of the focus from deviant male behaviors to female social proclivities.

Chatting to two women friends last night about this discussion, and they think that it's women constantly projecting narrow stereotypes of men (and quite often women too) and their emotionally-laden but analysis-lite theories that have actually caused far more damage to the feminist cause than most men could ever do.

More proof that, alas, women can be just as sexist and in denial as men can. Pushing for more rights and better prosecution and prevention tactics for rape IS NOT "damaging" to "feminism."

Who damned non-rapists in this thread? No one did. Who "projected narrow stereotypes of men"? I'm the one who has been arguing that RAPISTS CAN CONTROL THEMSELVES. Rape is not an inevitability because some men choose not to control their impulses. I'm the one who has been arguing that men are in fact mostly well-intentioned people, and many rapists simply need to learn things that their parents and society never taught them about rape (i.e. rape is not always committed through excessive force, consent is ALWAYS required and can never be "implied" by a woman's flirtation, clothing, or state of intoxication.)

But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and listen to your victim focused "rape prevention" advice without calling bullshit when I see it.

I'm sorry if that offends your sense of masculine superiority. But do cite something else one of your female friends said, rather than numbers or hard facts, to support your case.

 

[nomadthethird]

Nope. Where did I say that? I said that it creates easier targets and that rapists aren't after a challenge. I don't think that there's anything unfactual about that at all.

Oh, but there is, as has been pointed out count em 13 times in this thread.

Women are NOT easier targets when drunk, because the statistics suggest that being at home with a rapist is when it's easiest for men to rape them. Most women are raped by their fathers, their brothers, their uncles, their boyfriends (my mother was at 13), their best friend.

If you really think women don't know that getting so drunk that they lose consciousness can't lead to unfortunate circumstances and situations, then you're being completely condescending. Women are constantly aware of the immanent danger they are in just by virtue of being female. Most people do not deliberately drink themselves to unconsciousness.

Many rapists pose as police officers and buy blue-red lights to pull women over on quiet streets and rape them. There are all sorts of ways to get raped. Women know this. They do not need you to tell them about this. They already know.

If you're so concerned about women getting raped, why don't you start a thread where you remind men that being drunk might lead them to rape? It's statistically more likely that a rapist is drunk than a victim of rape, after all.

Or is this fact just too hard for you to accept because it implies that men are entirely responsible for their own actions?

 

[nomadthethird]

So what is meant here? That we can not claim there is culpability and responsibility on the part of these excessive drinkers for placing themselves in peril and doing something they understand to be wrong because 'disavowal' in various forms is all over the place? Or is it that to do so would be hypocritical or somehow unfair?

It is not WRONG or ILLEGAL for a woman to drink, even if she decides to drink to excess and pass out. It IS WRONG and ILLEGAL to RAPE someone.

Why do you keep switching the roles around so that women are somehow RESPONSIBLE for the WRONG and ILLEGAL actions of others.

You know, if you men are so worried about women respecting men and not unfairly thinking of men as potential rapists, you'd think you would quit this "women are partial participants in their own rapes" mantra.

 

[nomadthethird]

Shonx just went for that old chestnut, the fact that feminists who are concerned with the idea that focusing on a victim's actions preceding a rape can be damaging because it encourages the notion that victims are partially responsible for the crime that is committed against them are "emotion-laden" (like all women are, women can't think because they're so illogically emotional) and "analysis-lite" (even though I have, and many others have, spent many years studying these things.)

He clearly hasn't read any scientific papers about rape (although I've posted quite a good one about the theories of experts in the field regarding why people focus on a victim's actions rather than a rapist's), but his friends opinions aren't "emotion-laden", they're the final word on the subject. Just because a woman said it, doesn't mean it isn't misinformed and misguided, Shonx. Believe it or not.

Plus, your endless repetition of the idea that rapists are recognizable "scumbags" (they're not, usually, they're just like everyone else, act just like everyone else, are often rather charming, seem sincere, and are easily able to gain a person's trust, just like many child molesters) doesn't make this true. It makes you look misinformed and bigoted.

 

[nomadthethird]

How, exactly, do you propose that women learn to "recognize" sociopathic or psychopathic rapists, or normal-but-justified-by-victim-blaming date rapists? A whole worldwide governmental law enforcement institution is often unable to recognize sociopaths/psychopaths, after all. Sometimes FBI profilers can't even detect them after years of investigation.

What does a rapist look like? What does he say? Does he smile more often than other men? Does he draw attention to himself publicly by acting strange, or does he try hard to blend in and seem nice and friendly?

Yes, it's all up to women to prevent even crossing paths with rapists. That would solve this obviously intractable problem.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yeah sure, I was talking more to him than to you. My point was that 'idiot zombie drunks' do exist and are indeed fairly commonplace.

Yup, and they're far more likely to kill someone driving drunk than they are to get raped, and stupid-zombie-drunk women who are out drinking at a bar are far less likely to get raped than other women.

If we're going to talk about alcohol and rape, why don't we ever mention to men that their intake of alcohol seems to increase their own statistical likelihood of committing rape?

The day I see that public service announcement on TV, the one about how male drunks are more likely to be domestic abusers, rapists, and killers, will be a happy day for rape prevention.

 

[jambo]

Obviously I was asking waffle that question because it refers to something he said.

 

[nomadthethird]

Well many thousands of people, men and women, do it every weekend in this country alone. Their intentions when they set out for the night are pretty irrelevant from the point of view of their vulnerability to predatory criminals, pointless brawls, motor traffic or liver disease.

Yeah, but the good intentions of those in the media who are involved in constantly focusing on a VICTIM's actions, rather than a RAPIST's actions, has nothing to do with the real effect that their publicly focusing on a victim's own implied complicity in their own victimization has on society.

Just because people who make these PSAs and shows and commercials that focus on women drinking (despite its statistical near lack of relevance) don't intend to victim blame doesn't mean that the effects of these commercials isn't negative, and doesn't help rapists to justify their own actions ("she wouldn't have flirted with me then passed out in my arms if she didn't want me to 'have sex' with her")

 

[nomadthethird]

Basically your theory only stands up if we're all liars. Very scientific, not to mention offensive to everyone you've just slated.

Exactly which "theory" are you talking about here? The one that's based on FACTS and STATISTICS that the government has collected on rape?

 

[nomadthethird]

when the advice comes from me it's patriarchal flexing, when it comes from them it's sensible advice.

No, it isn't, it's still extremely misguided.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'd imagine a fairly large percentage of those also involve alcohol too.

You might "imagine" this, but it would be demonstrably untrue.

 

[nomadthethird]

Which is to say that those forms of violence that are already inscribed into the symbolic order, that is to say, structural injustice, are not considered to be violent at all. ("She was asking for it", "She's only a slut", "I just did what I'm supposed to do in that situation" etc).



Yeah, but is it really just transparent 'advice'? Is there really anyone - other than the imaginary stereotype of the idiot zombie drunk - who thinks it's a bright idea to deliberately binge-drink to the point of chronically impaired senselessness? The implication, here, again, is that an inebriated person (male or female) who is raped is implicated in the crime by virtue of their drunken over-indulgence, just as a scantily-clad ("provocative") woman might be, or - in the extreme case - a prostitute (What are a prostitute's chances of convincing anyone that she's been raped, much less mounting a successful prosecution? Or, indeed, of a male-rape victim?).

As regards scapegoating/fetishizing alcohol ("It's the drink that done it"), there's a telling double move here: if a woman is raped while drunk, she's implicated; if a man rapes while drunk, it's an alibi. Rather than the reverse.

Really, alcohol is not the central issue here; or rather, it's a symptom of the structural prejudice/obsession.

Nicolas Roeg remembers. 'The actors were frightened when they realised the disgust you feel when you can't control yourself. It's an extraordinary, horrible crime, rape. And you don't often see the rape of the unconscious. Usually it's someone dragged screaming into the bushes. There's a lot of acting going on. There wasn't a lot of acting in that scene."

Wow. Doesn't it seem that the reason why so many men can only conceive of a rape scenario wherein a completely lifeless, passed out woman is (without resistance) raped by some waiting-in-the-wings psychopath has--erm--unconscious implications?

Some people call this sort of fetish for lifeless-but-still-alive women "necrophilia without tears"...

 

[jambo]

Doesn't it seem that the reason why so many men can only conceive of a rape scenario wherein a completely lifeless, passed out woman is (without resistance) raped by some waiting-in-the-wings psychopath has--erm--unconscious implications?

Is this actually a sentence?

'so many men'????

 

[nomadthethird]

Is this actually a sentence?

'so many men'????

Yes. It's a sentence. What about it is unsentencelike?

There are definitely a few men in this thread who, despite all real statistical evidence to the contrary, will not accept the fact that most women are not raped when they are passed out drunk. They seem to think that women only get raped by strangers (or even their own friends and family) when they are "too drunk" to fight off the rapist. This, however, is patently false. Most women cannot fight off a male attacker fully sober. The vast majority of rape victims are not passed out drunk when they are raped. From what I can tell based on the statistics, the incidence of fully unconscious drunkeness on the part of a rape victim is very low (probably less than 10%). There are some cases (20% by some estimates) when a woman is drunk but fully conscious. More rapists are intoxicated than rape victims are.

This thread is hardly the first time I'm heard men claim that rapists mostly target or focus on strange women who are intoxicated beyond all reason in a bar. Maybe this is the only sort of rape that gets reported, believed, or witnessed by others, but this sort of rape is BY FAR the LEAST LIKELY sort for a woman to experience.

How much clearer could this be?

 

[jambo]

I understand this much...

Doesn't it seem that the reason why so many men can only conceive of a rape scenario wherein a completely lifeless, passed out woman is (without resistance) raped by some waiting-in-the-wings psychopath...

But then there seems to be a bit missing?

...has--erm--unconscious implications?

Or is something other than 'the reason why' signified by that first 'it'?

 

[waffle]

So what is meant here? That we can not claim there is culpability and responsibility on the part of these excessive drinkers for placing themselves in peril and doing something they understand to be wrong because 'disavowal' in various forms is all over the place? Or is it that to do so would be hypocritical or somehow unfair?

Such a focus (on female culpability) reflects a predominantly male POV and deflects from a serious consideration or analysis of sexual violence, placing or emphasizing the responsibility of those on the receiving end of such violence, effectively 'naturalizing' rape as some uncontrollable 'act of nature' rather than behaviour that is actually socially learned, nurtured, reinforced and unconsciously inscribed into dominant social structures. If a child playing in a park is molested do we hold the parent/minder as being 'complicit'? And in a moral panic, parents then banning their kids from ever playing in parks, rendering public spaces off limits to them (but not to potential molesters), as the tabloid press needs to sell newspapers via fear mongering? If a pedestrian crossing the road at a traffic light is run over, is s/he 'complicit? Etc. If you're mugged or attacked (whether sober or sozzled) on the street, are you 'complicit'? Are blind people (statistically more susceptible to attack/accident etc) who are attacked 'complicit' in such violence by viirtue of their blindness? If you're ripped off by some supplier (builder, handyman, financial institution, etc), are you complicit? If you're made redundant or 'constructively dismissed' or harassed or threatened at work, are you complicit?

 

[jambo]

There are definitely a few men in this thread who, despite all real statistical evidence to the contrary, will not accept the fact that most women are not raped when they are passed out drunk. They seem to think that women only get raped by strangers (or even their own friends and family) when they are "too drunk" to fight off the rapist.

I'm not sure if people on this thread think that or not.

Another way to look at it though is that most men just find it next to impossible to conceive of at all, so of course there is a difficulty and a repulsion in trying to imagine any scenario. It's unthinkable, or at least most would really rather not go there.

 

[nomadthethird]

People here are acting as if I'm simply making up the facts about rape because I think men are bad or something (?)--I have no idea why they would think this.

Unfortunately, I am not making up rape statistics (I've already linked to a couple of the best sources), nor am I making up the fact that the systematic abuse, rape, torture, and murder of women is all too common.

This thread was started in order to discuss the reasons why certain types of murder seem prevalent in America. At some point, it descended into some sort of debate about whether it is misguided to focus on the actions of a completely innocent victim of rape who did not deserve to be raped (most claim to agree with this) while ignoring the implications of drinking when it comes to a man's statistical likelihood to commit rape.

If it were up to me, none of this would exist. It is not my fault that there are men who are rapists, or that many women are raped. It is not my fault that very few rapists are women. The fact that some men are rapists remains, and cannot be ignored if we really want to protect women and give them good advice.

In good faith, I've been patiently trying to explain why victim-focused "rape prevention" doesn't work, and in fact contributes to misconceptions that rapists use to justify their actions.

I've repeated over and over that I think men are actually born good, and that rape is not inevitable--if we start focusing on preventing men from raping women, rather than continuing to focus on a rape victim's social activities, style of dress, or sexual histories, we are far more likely to make headway than we are if we continue spreading misinformation and encouring victim-blamers in court and elsewhere.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'm not sure if people on this thread think that or not.

Another way to look at it though is that most men just find it next to impossible to conceive of at all, so of course there is a difficulty and a repulsion in trying to imagine any scenario. It's unthinkable, or at least most would really rather not go there.

It's repulsive to me, but I have no problem acknowledging that as a woman, most men could probably rape me at any point, regardless of my relative state of inebriation or intoxication.

It's especially annoying because I have more female friends and relatives than I can even remember or count who have confided in me that they've been raped. Almost none of these were raped by strangers, and only one of them (out of around 20) was drunk. This anecdotal experience fits in well with the known and widely agreed upon statistics regarding rape.

I used to play with Krista Absalon's infant daughter and young son in our backyard while she did housework. She was a nice, hard-working single-mom who had every right to go out and blow off some steam at a local restaurant (where there are usually plenty of other patrons) without being gang raped. If we're going to talk about culpability, why did no one in court blame the bartender for not stepping in to save Krista? Why didn't the kitchen staff (I've been to this restaurant, my grandfather was close friends with its owner) who were just steps away behind a swinging door do anything to help? Why didn't any citizens come forward before Krista heard through the grapevine about her own rape because the rapists were BRAGGING about it? Why did the community BLAME KRISTA. Even as a young teen this entire experience was deeply disturbing to me.

The defense attorney carefully chose his six jurors based on whether they believed things like "women shouldn't drink too much, or they endanger THEMSELVES", "single moms are loose and will usually have sex with anyone", etc. Gag. These sorts of people were in no short supply, and this thread mirrors what to me is a sickening trend toward victim-blaming that is abhorent to me.