Hmm, aboriginal guy, who no doubt had family and grandfamily in the residential school system
His grandparents, yes.
kidnapped by the authorities
Yes. And the rest.
Several generations of family are profoundly damaged by this
Agreed.
this bit of CULTURE (!!! WTF ?!
You tell me. You’re the one who just wrote:
the widespread belief in the dominant North American (non-aboriginal) culture that rape is no big deal unless the victim was the “correct” type of victim
Do with the data what you will; make what conclusions you will; I am only providing information that might be of some assistance in your process.
Discarding this information because it may conflict with pre-existing narratives seems self-blinding.
See : how most law enforcement deals with victims of sexual assault. Between not believing victims, telling victims there isn’t enough evidence even when the assault had been captured on video and there is DNA evidence, ignoring tens of thousands of rape kits left to disintegrate in warehouses with no climate control or even proper cataloguing, police and judges quizzing victims on what they were wearing at the time of their assault, intrusive and irrelevant questions concerning victims previous sexual history, sexual orientation, marital status, employment. The only victim that MIGHT have a chance of their case being treated with an attitude approaching respect is a “perfect” victim, white, with a well off family with high social status, and a very expensive lawyer. This victim also must have an exemplary social history as well.
If you are a woman or perceived female and/or queer, who has any sort of sexual history, who has ever used drugs or alcohol, who was behaving in a provocative manner - like walking down the street or sleeping in your own bed for example - who was dressed in a “provocative” fashion like wearing make-up, or a tshirt or a winter coat and hat - then you can expect to have your account of sexual assault scrutinized, discounted, dissected by the very authorities you are supposed to report your assault to. The minimization escalates if you were drunk or stoned when the assault happens, if the perpetrator was known to you, if you are not white, if you have ever worked as a sex worker, if you are obviously poor, if you have an obvious disability, if you have a history of mental health issues, if you are not a legal citizen…
Here, take a look at how authorities and media like the New York Times treated the gang rape of an 11 year old girl in Texas a few years back:
What does the ratio of men to women have to do with sexual assault and domestic violence ?
While it is true that there will be, statistically speaking, more potential perpetrators and predators with more men than women in a population (as most predators and perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence are male) - what do you make of the data that there is more than DOUBLE the amount of sexual assault/domestic violence happening in Alaska ? Do you think if there were just more ladies around that “romance” would blossom and the violence that is socially and culturally ingrained would just…whither ? That the effect of the ladies would just calm the savage beast within those manly men ?
p.s. How is your reading concerning domestic violence going ?
Look, I agree. There’s such a thing as a “culture” that makes rape more common. I simply don’t accept that the problem is limited to whites.
The casual attitude among ___'s family and friends towards his rapes has little if anything to do with social status or level of wealth. (I’ve left out a lot of details.) But it’s there, it’s real, and it’s every bit as much a cultural issue.
The first part of your second sentence seems like at least a partial answer to the first sentence.
I’m guessing from your reaction to my initial post that you vehemently reject the idea that men may be discomfited in any way by lack of sexual intercourse. “Blue balls are a myth!” as they told us in High School health class, and “rape is not about sex!” It seems like you are saying sexual frustration cannot possibly ever ever ever be linked to any sort of sexual molestation? Or am I misinterpreting you? I personally have no trouble believing that a violent, amoral person who is unable to find an accommodating sex partner will commit rape. And I see violent and amoral people around me every day, so I expect they exist in Alaska, too.
I’ll be finishing the book I’m currently reading about categorization, and how it works against communication between such as you and I, before I read anything else researchy, but I am not entirely unacquainted with these topics in real life.
Dude, your logic regarding sexual assault and nonsense like blue balls is medieval at best. I mean, you actual stated this:
“Resource unavailability” = resource = sex for men from women on demand ? Seriously ? Are you a medieval MRA ? So if you are feeling all lustful and every woman you ask says no, this is license to physically assault them and/or sexually assault a child ? Because violence is a stereotypical ie standard outcome for men’s frustration ?
A statement like this seems like a red flag pertaining to what potentially lives within your own psyche:
Sexual assault has very little to do with a topic like categorization, or a book written by a linguistics professor on semantics. Holy derail, Medievalist ! I suggest you get yourself some late 20th/early 21st century learnin’ about sexual assault and domestic violence from reputable sources like RAINN. Sexual assault has zero to do with the desirability of the victim, sexual frustration, the need for sexual release, or physical urges. It does have an awful lot to do with a sense of entitlement, the satisfaction of power OVER a victim, many unspoken misogynist attitudes that are everywhere (ie “you can’t rape a whore” or “she was asking for it” “she was so drunk she’ll never remember”) as well as the normalization of these attitudes and behaviours from peers.
You insist on replying to statements I have not made. You have put me in categories to which I do not belong. You don’t seem have any desire to engage with the informational content of my posts, preferring to use them only as springboards to discuss what lives in your own psyche.
Look at what you just did. You quoted me making a flat statement, which contained nothing but data points, then you repeatedly equate things that I did not equate and act like I’ve made those equations! Procrustean, you insist on forcing my comments into a form that you apparently want to hear, regardless of what I might actually want to say.
I’m outta here. Pick a fight with somebody else; I refuse to play the role you want me to fit. I’ve been a little too close to the reality to want to engage in any Internet chest-beating contest over who has the most sensitive and politically correct viewpoint.
For anyone else reading this, be assured I am not an advocate of any of the stances SatinSatan would like me to take, and I will not defend rape, rapists or any other form of immoral violence.
Parity in the sense of there being roughly equal number of men and women - why wouldn’t there be? There’s no sex-selective abortion going on, nor massive emigration of Alaskan women leaving the state. Looking up the demographics, there are, in fact, pretty much equal numbers of native Alaskan men and women in the state.
That is some of the ugliest, most uncharitable reading of someone’s comments I have ever witnessed. Uncharitable reading means taking the most insane of all possible readings of someone’s statements and assuming that must be the one they meant. It inhibits understanding between the parties in the conversation and is kinda unproductively hostile, IMO.
Wait. What? Whoever said that is a moron. They definitely exist. If some guys are aroused for too long, they have to orgasm or they’ll feel like they’ve been kicked in the balls. Obviously that’s not a good reason to coerce a potential partner, but it is a good reason to excuse yourself from a social situation and take care of it yourself.
Mod note: Get back on topic.
I brought this subject up with my wife and she is of the opinion that the excuse of not having enough police is really the excuse for why the men and women of these communities don’t take care of it themselves. She proposed that once bodies start showing up with signs that say ‘rapist’ on them, money will be found to get police involved.
Gee, they couldn’t find the money to get police involved when hundreds of aboriginal women have been found dead or have completely vanished in Canada, particularly women from rural or isolated communities and reserves.
http://www.nwac.ca/files/download/NWAC_3D_Toolkit_e_0.pdf
Law enforcement doesn’t have a great history with many aboriginal folk, particularly with regards to actually respecting them as…people. Alaska is not Canada, but many of the issues that affect isolated communities in the north are identical, including deeply ingrained attitudes that are profoundly racist. I don’t know that law enforcement would exactly care about bodies with a rapist sign on them, unless of course the bodies belonged to law enforcement personnel or other white folk in positions of power.
Man, there’s some fights you just ain’t going to win. The Noble Savage of the post-cultural relativism era is AllSocialProblemsStemFromTheWhiteCapitalistWest® and if AllOtherEthnicAndReligiousGroups® could have just done their thing in peace, awesomeballs. I mean, it’s not even like anybody would need to inflate the numberrs on social problems caused by the white capitalist West but, there they go.
Eye of the Shitstorm: some queer/feminist/human rights activist from rural Nicaragua at a conference where white US university students won’t let her relate the problems affecting her and her community as she sees them, because the gringos are just so sure that everything is all about them, oops, I mean about US influence.
(note-I’m not minimizing the bad done by the meddling capitalist west and the history of its horrors. Nor am I failing to see that PART of the problems in the article are US military, and libertarian wingnuts. Just noting the fustration on being on the inside of working on a problem that more powerful groups insist on simplifying as ‘just more of their refuse’.
All this made me remember a video taken by early-to-mid anthropologists studying the San people (one of the last indigenous nations of South Africa (sic) to be squeezed out of their traditional (sic) lifestyle. In the videos, there’s this middle aged dude who constantly chases, picks up, tickles and grabs young kids. The white reseachers laud how playful he is with the kids and how wonderful the ‘culture’ is for enabling such spontaneous interractions between the generations. In college, we saw those clips vaious times when the San people came up. Only much later, in a class about feminist takes on Anthropology, did we see further video shot decades later of some of the girls (now women) who had been filmed with this dude, saying how annoying and invasive he was and how they always hated that he got away with bothering them all the time.
Is the Alaskan rape culture aboriginal? The article seems to suggest transplanted workers were the big factor.
It wouldn’t surprise me.
(Edited to add: …that transplanted workers were the cause of so much violence against Native women.)
Also unsurprising: the recent Republican alternative version to renewing the Violence Against Women Act, which specifically left out expanded protections for LGBT, Native American and undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence.
Another topical fact from last year: Alaska Senator’s “Alaska Exception”
From what I have read it seems that the Alaskan rape epidemic is two pronged: white men from the south who feel a sense of entitlement (same as rapists everywhere) with an extra helping of racism and within the native community as a result of the incredible damage done by the christian residential schools where rape by staff/priests, etc. done to children was widespread.
One of the lingering effects of sexual assault as a child is the damage it causes to the psyche. Either this normalizes the sexual assault as just a thing that “happens” to children everywhere (since a child within the residential school would probably know of other children who were being assaulted as well as who the predators within the staff were). Victims are commonly blamed/disbelieved and threatened during the assault. This conditions a victim to not move away from harm. Kids were were abused like this often wind up in a succession of abusive relationships as adults, or repeat/re-enact the abuse that happened to them, thus perpetuating the cycle. Sexual abuse/assault also causes a huge amount of emotional damage, which is often linked to patterns of self-medication/addiction, as well as chronic underachievement/dysfunction. Some survivors are able to triumph over the harm that was done to them, while other survivors get stuck in an endless vortex of pain.
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