I mentioned no tribes by name here, or political parties, or the quantity of folks that I believe think this, but if you haven’t heard equivalent vitriol targeted at undocumented immigrants, I’m jealous.
I’d link to the rest of the references, but it might be easier for you to just use my google key word, and take a little look-see at the wonderful world of ignorance you seem to have somehow avoided… “objection to HPV vaccine promiscuity”
The highest profile person who lobbed the “payola” bomb at Perry was Michelle Bachmann (known genius and truth-teller) who also made insane claims about mental retardation caused by vaccines. And honestly, the only reason that bomb-toss was effective is because it was just so shocking that a fellow conservative would support a public health initiative in the realm of reproductive health for girls (she might be on to something there…)
" Older women are often targets of rape because they’re usually less
able to run away or fight back. Remember, it’s not about sex, it’s
about having power and control over someone else."
I know this far better than anyone who has “worked with” rape victims; I am a 53 year old woman and no longer in good shape. However, I will not be cowed by self-congratulatory, self-appointed doyens of proper speech, in this or any forum. I was very clear in my original comment as to the power aspect of rape and other acts of sexual coercion.
The responses to both my comments here have little to do with promoting truly righteous or helpful thinking about rape; they are about power dynamics within this forum – like speech policing always is. You, ethicalcannibal and Boundegar are intensely patronizing, to both me and the general readership, and you need to be called out on that basis.
Buff and polish your halos on other peoples’ time (if they will put up with it.). Not here. Not now.
How? It read like you’d supposed any discussion of degree in re sexual coercion was a dismissal of rape entirely. As you can see from some of the responses… this was not a farfetched take on your words.
My mistake, I was unclear. I think “necessarily violence or forceable rape” are two popular ways of minimizing rape - and meant to ask: who benefits from this?
Overemphasis on the distinction between overtly violent acts of rape and “mere” verbal coercion is of use to those who would like to maintain the status quo (or bring back the status quo ante). That’s made obvious every time some anti-choice politician gives his opinion about who ought to be allowed to have access to abortion.
This post was about the abuse of female migrants during their time in transit. Specifically, the original article covered the abuse of Central Americans – who spend much of their time transiting through Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. It is the first time I’ve seen press coverage of an issue I’ve wondered about for decades.
Watching it hijacked for PC gamesmanship (masquerading as righteousness) is… irritating. The distinction between violent assault and coercive demands for favors is real; they’re both ugly, but the former creates a much higher incidence of permanent physical injury. Most of us who’ve knuckled under to coercion from time to time can work out our psych problems over time. Recovering from an untreated fistula is… less doable.
To pretend otherwise is to ignore the physical realities of human existence in order to keep one’s beautiful mind clean and one’s pretty lips pure. We should leave that sort of crap to Barbara Bush.
Actually there is statutory rape, where both parties can insist the act was consensual (even enthusiastic) but the law still prosecutes it as rape due to age of consent laws. (In some jurisdictions BOTH parties can be found guilty of raping the other) There is no reason that this type of rape would need be violent (unless you’re one of the sort of people who considers all sex to be violence, in which case… just don’t frighten the horses okay?)
Also there is rape by deception that I guess some might argue technically doesn’t require violence… but I’d say even if it doesn’t involve what the law considers violence (as that requires force), it is a ‘violation’ and injury to the rape victim and should be considered the same thing by decent people.
Remember, everyone, if you don’t have an untreated fistula it wasn’t really rape-rape, just verbal coercion. No biggie. And once you turn 40, you’ll be smart enough to avoid any sexual assault against you.
OK, seriously…
Women are emigrating from a very dangerous situation, through another dangerous situation, trying to get to freedom and safety. They do as much as they can to prepare for the crimes which are likely to happen to them, knowing that their lives are on the line. They have to figure out in the heat of the moment whether they are more likely to survive the attack if they fight back or not. Any rape victim who makes the smart, defensive choice to not enrage his/her attacker further by fighting and lives through the experience, by definition has done the right thing. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sexually assaulted if they don’t need to be hospitalized after the attack.
And sadly, the PTSD for victims who do not fight back is often harder, because they second-guess themselves. If you end up with obvious physical wounds, everyone believes you and supports you and takes care of you. If you don’t, you start believing those people who say it wasn’t really rape, and besides you just weren’t smart enough to know how to stand up to the coercion.
This is a form of victim blaming, and is both wrong and damaging.
I’m not surprised at all by the numbers. Migrant workers won’t be much better off once they arrive. This article tells one woman’s story. It also contains a link to a UC Santa Cruz study that found that nearly four out of 10 migrant working women had experienced sexual harassment or rape.
Unfortunately, those numbers are only as good as a guess. Because they are undocumented, many migrant workers won’t talk about their cases. They never get reported, and the women go on suffering.
I used to believe this as well but the body of research implies the motivations are more complex and include sexual gratification.
Most rapists do not have a preference for rape over consensual sex.[11][12][13][14][15][16] In one study, male rapists evaluated with penile plethysmography demonstrated more arousal to forced sex and less discrimination between forced and consensual sex than non-rapist control subjects, though both groups responded more strongly to consensual sex scenarios.[17]
Yikes, thanks for sharing. I’m failing at being the devil’s advocate for Felson. There’s just so little of what he says that makes any sense.
Ok, here we go:
He does admit that the woman’s “offensive behavior may not seem offensive to the observer and it may be trivial by any objective standard but it is the offender’s perspective that counts.”
Emotional abuse is hard to detect for an observer. My father was emotionally abusive. It can be extremely frustrating, damaging, and invisible. Violence is not the appropriate response, but I can understand how it could happen. When you wind someone up and know their triggers, you can cause serious harm with trivial behavior.
The block I quoted above was not researched by Felson, and there’s quite a few citations for preferring consensual sex over rape if the option was there. I find that rather compelling evidence that while power may play a role, sex is the primary motivator for most.
Not only that, once they get here and work in such fields as agriculture they totally have a good chance of being raped if they managed not to be raped on the way here. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rape-in-the-fields/ Oh, I see Catgrin already covered that. Carry on!
“Remember, everyone, if you don’t have an untreated fistula it wasn’t
really rape-rape, just verbal coercion. No biggie. And once you turn
40, you’ll be smart enough to avoid any sexual assault against you.
OK, seriously…”
OK, seriously… you don’t get to use someone elses comments section for repetitive libel – not without facing some pushback. I did not state, insinuate or think this. To repeatedly imply that I have is to lie.
I have been abundantly clear about the violence AND coercion that women face when crossing through Mexico (and both were covered in the Fusion article). Your responses to what I’ve written here have been abusive and manipulative in the extreme, and you have been using your putative position as a defender of the weak to avoid the condemnation that your tactics deserve as a matter of course – regardless of the topic in discussion.
You want power over this discussion; you want to dominate on this matter, and you have repeatedly used lies to obtain that dominance. You are doing nothing here to advance the interests of migrant women; you are serving your ego, and little else.
You can certainly continue buffing and polishing your halo in public. I should not have demanded that you stop. However, every time you do it, I will point out your tactics, and highlight what it is that they’re employed for – until they shut this comments thread.
