Yes it is. Not always, but in these circumstances it is.
2 Likes
Yeah, that’s fair enough, and from what you said in your preceding comment it’s clear you weren’t close enough to Applebaum to really have been able to do anything about this anyway.
I don’t think it’s so much “some guys witnessed this and did nothing” so much as “women have come forward in the past and gotten a response that sounds something like Metzger’s comments.” It’s not that men ignore the problems and that women don’t therefore come forward (though that contributes). It’s much more salient that a lot of men (like Metzger) actively punish women for coming forward with such stories.
And this has a hugely negative effect on friendships. I mentioned this before, but someone coming forward with an accusation like this is likely to split their circle of friends into a group of victim supporters and a group of supporters of the accused, often with really incredible acrimony between the two groups who had been god friends just a few days before. This is a huge disincentive to report anything! Especially when it’s unlikely to produce any good outcomes, and may very well be followed up by retaliation.
In fact, that is a common thread with many of the stories about Applebaum – that he would even explicitly threaten retaliation against any women who reported him. Any wonder then?
Women will be more likely to report things when they have more confidence that the men in their lives have their backs. That requires the men to take some responsibility and behave like allies. If you want women not to be so quiet about this stuff, then you have to work to prove that being quiet isn’t the best outcome for victims.
7 Likes
Intentionally it’s the latter, but your alternate interpretation is interesting and I really appreciate your sharing it!
2 Likes
About?
Your response to my post has convinced me that I would not confide in you about this kind of trouble either.
8 Likes
Kurt Metzger has a history of this crap, stretching back to at least 2013. This is quite possibly the reason why things progressed so quickly.
I agree. Thus my point is, that I see a lot of effort being put into, ah, home remedies for this problem while I think, though cannot be certain, that it would be infinitely preferable to put all of the anger I see not into single cases or into prescriptions of a weeding out of the ‘creepy’ but into making it living hell for the high and might of the police force until they knuckle down and do their goddamn jobs.
Most rapes are done by a very small number of repeat offenders. This is a real opportunity for a reasonable input of police effort to produce a tremendous result.
1 Like
I think that just the authorities doing their jobs will be quite sufficient to get good results. Yes, rape can have he said/she said problems—which you can’t fix by automatically trusting one side because that’s a blatant miscarriage of justice—but often there’s enough to get results if it is pursued diligently. As it stands, it is not pursued at all. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Social methods, I fear, won’t help because the people who listen to earnest attempts to fix the problem aren’t really going to be rapists. Oh, sure, someone might not figure out what consent is, but that’s a dying problem. Education on the subject is everywhere. To not grasp it now is willful ignorance.
Your loss, since you want to make it personal. I’m not going to lose sleep that you, personally, don’t trust me. I’ll keep it in mind for the future though.
Don’t complain five years later that no one helped you when you never asked either.
Seriously, your responses are making it clear WHY someone like Appelbaum got away with it for so long. This is a perfect example of being part of the problem. I explain why women are very cautious about talking to men about this issue, and you respond by giving me enough of your CV to make the point that you’re someone important in that particular industry. I respond by saying that your response (which was NOT a response to anything I said, and did not even indicate that you’d read and understood my post) tells me you’re not the kind of person who would be turned to by the women in your industry with sensitive information, and that just by reading what you wrote I can tell I’d feel the same way. Your response is a sad bit of snark and VICTIM BLAMING.
6 Likes
I’m skeptical for any number of reasons, but let’s start with an obvious one:
- The authorities cannot intervene until a crime has been committed.
- By the time the authorities have intervened even if they are doing their jobs, someone will have been raped.
- Someone being raped is not a “good result”.
But more generally, how do we get from where we are to the point where “the authorities are doing their jobs”? It’s not as though activists aren’t already working on this. Are you aware of activism along these lines? Participating in it? Do you have any new ideas that haven’t been tried before? What are your solutions here?
Realistically, though, a working legal system will not always prevent or punish rape any more than a working legal system will always punish or prevent murder or theft. Perfection is simply not something we can realistically expect of any human system. You have to expect people to work to protect themselves in the margins where anything short of a perfect legal system will fail them.
@Brainspore made a good point about multiple accusations. Very rare are multiple accusations simultaneously false. But in a court of law, it’s completely plausible that not one of any number of multiple accusations will stand up, and with the presumption of innocence, that means that the number of accusations will not increase the likelihood of the perpetrator being held accountable, even though it does increase our confidence that he or she really did commit these acts.
First of all, I already know that social methods will help, have helped in the past, and I’ve sketched out why in detail above. Short version: people who listen can take actions besides not raping people that will help prevent rapes.
but more importantly, you have ignored what I said about the fact that “rapist” isn’t a property that’s inherent to a human being. People aren’t just naturally stamped “rapist” in their DNA. Rape is a social and cultural phenomenon and can therefore be affected by social and cultural measures.
And again, I’ve already sketched out how this works in pretty good detail above. Morals are contagious and you can promote moral behavior in your social circle by modeling and, to some extent, enforcing good behavior.
But let’s be clear here: unless the legal system can be fixed to punish rape in all circumstances (and I don’t think it can or should be), women will continue to use social and cultural means to protect themselves. It doesn’t matter how wrong or right you think or feel it is – it’s simply people responding to the incentives in front of them instead of the ones you think or feel should pertain.
4 Likes
I’m not having cheap debate games with “all women” here but one patronizing actor.
She’s not actually trying to help anyone. She is only attempting to win an online debate to justify her existing views at this point. This is sophistry. She can say whatever she wants and if I try to take it out of the abstract, it is talk about privilege and male arrogance, right? At that point, why should I take anything she says as meant honestly and not normal internet games?
3 Likes
I don’t want to start yet another fight. Suffice to say, i disagree with you. @anon67050589 is awesome and on the side of everything that is good and right. She seems like she’s getting a little frustrated, but from my perspective that is understandable in this situation.
This:
Don’t complain five years later that no one helped you when you never asked either.
does rather prove her right, too.
14 Likes
I agree to a large extent. But you will be judged by the caliber of the people you employee and give a platform to. When it’s brought to your attention that you employee a bully like Metzger, you should respond as soon as is practical, even if it’s to let the public know he no longer does work for you. Simply blocking requests for a response is not acceptable no matter who you are.
That said, the angry aggressive tone directed at Amy Schumer was not justified, and seems partly due to her being a woman and a bit of a feminist icon. I do understand her not wanting to reply to that kind of Twitter harassment. But a general statement should have come earlier.
3 Likes
Painting your opponents as would be rapists or rapist sympathetic is not an honest discussion tactic.
1 Like
I’m sorry I said something that implies that. I certainly didn’t mean to. Can you point out what so i can try to do better in the future?
2 Likes
You have to be interesting/funny enough to get people to remain engaged with you to hear you out for the actual logic buried under all of that.
That will help you with an audience.
Somewhat the same thing within the scene. There are working comics whom are unpopular as people but they get work and respect because they are funny enough to counterbalance their personality issues.
If you’re not that funny or clever then you’d better not be a dickhead.
1 Like
Yeah, he’s been an asshole for a while (which does make me wonder how she could be friends with him in the first place), but his previous comments were fairly obscure, and it was still this recent event to which people were responding and demanding immediate (practically retroactive) reaction and response.
I do not begrudge social measures. I just think it’s building a sandcastle to fight off a tidal wave and am puzzled why I keep seeing articles like this while only rarely do I see articles about organized, sustained protest against the police not doing their duty. That’s the extent of my objection. I do not know if the disbalance is in the act, in the reporting of it, or in my reading list, but it is very noticeable. Hence comment.
And I am not participating in activism because that would require me to travel to the United States which are unlikely to allow me in. I am participating in them in the country I live in.
Let me repeat myself, I fear something I wrote is causing misapprehension: I do not begrudge protest and social measures, I am puzzled that it is not focused more strongly on the police which is best positioned to do good. That is all.
3 Likes
