well BoingBoing comments are okay… mostly. but then they let me comment here so what do I know.
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I would never read a message board that allowed me to comment on it?
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In the context of the rest of his minimizing commentary, that is exactly what he meant. Even if you drop that line his selfish and antisocial justifications are how he raised that man to be who he turned out to be.
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funny thing about people who don’t understand consent… They absolutely never understand boundaries. Because it’s the same coin.
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It’s the philosophy i should be following, naturally. Groucho was prescient!
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I think everyone is a part of the problem. Attackers for their lack of self control and everyone else for enabling them*. As a society we have to all say “this is not acceptable” and everyone needs to take responsibility for their own actions.
*By enabling them I mean:
- Acting like other people are sexual objects instead of people with their own feelings and insecurities. Every time someone says something akin to “I’d tap that” or “wow look at that _____”, that should put up flags that you are treating someone else as an object.
- Women (mothers, daughters, and sister) are just as bad at promoting/dismissing the “boys will be boys” attitude as men. Both men and women need to not accept the “boys will be boys” behaviour and call the boys out on it. Girls are expected to be responsible for their actions (and somehow magically the actions of everyone else). Boys should be expected to take responsibility for themselves as well.
enough preaching. Here’s a kitty.
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Here’s a take on the issue of statements like this given on behalf of the defendant, and what they accomplish:
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How did they ever manage to behave so selfishly? [/s]
Pretty sure there are a lot of men that meet or exceed your expectations when it comes to shooting down the sexism and misogyny of the men around them. I think your blinders (brought about through vileness that was out of your control as they may be) may be too firmly fixed to see them. Pity. You’d probably have an army of allies in your cause to change men if you stopped painting them all with such a broad brush.
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[quote=“donaleen, post:92, topic:79193, full:true”]
And do you speak up when you see/hear men mistreating women?[/quote]
I get physically involved, I also avoid dive bars.
Do you laugh at sexist jokes?
I laugh at the funny ones, because the funny ones discount the concept of sexism.
I could ask a million other questions, but that should be enough.
Depends on your goal.
Most men are not very brave about standing up to other men.
Most people are not very brave about standing up to other people.
Even good men are not very brave.
Good men are also human.
Are you?
Am I good man or a brave man? Don’t know. I know I’m a person who doesn’t have much of a crap to give about the opinion of those who discount me because other people discount other people. I know I’ve got into physical altercations and intervened in at least 5 situations that looked very very rapey from the outside. But that’s me. A man being a man. I think I’d have done the same if I had different chromosomes, but who can say?
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Most of us are damaged, some beyond repair…
line from a song by Thad Beckman.
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@TobinL, I promise you, if you read further down the comments on that link, you’ll go all a bit Law Abiding Citizen.
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The rest of your comment stands well on its own, but the remark about dive bars got me thinking.
I’ve gone to dive bars, one in particular, which felt nearly as safe as my own home. The one in particular was run by two older, burly men who put up with exactly zero crap of any kind from any of the patrons. The washroom was one of the scariest I’ve ever been in, no-one ate the bar snacks except on a bet, but it was completely safe.
In contrast, all of the locations where I’ve ever been groped – including one memorable occasion where a guy stuck his hand up my skirt and grabbed my crotch while his girlfriend was standing right beside him, telling him it didn’t look like I was into that – those were all “nice” bars, cafés, pubs. The pub where I met the guy who raped me was the local neighbourhood hangout in an area that would have been called “yuppie” back when that was a current term – lots of double-income, professional households.
That’s one of the things this case is exposing. Economic class is no indicator of safety or behavioural expectations. If anything, there’s evidence – like Stanford’s overall reported rape rate – which indicates an increased risk with higher economic status, given that higher-status people can also feel more entitled.
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