Uh, where exactly am I talking about this? I think it behooves a person to take precautions to just about everything - that's part of the "real world" kick that you and Tiassa are on - but are you now going to accuse me of saying that if a woman does not take such precautions that it is her fault or something? I assume that this is your new target, so as to lawyer this thread to a particular resolution, that being strict conceptum quo ante?
Here is what I asked:
GeoffP said:
Well, when someone says that women should be taking certain actions to prevent being raped, such as watching how she dresses, what she drinks, who she talks to, what party she goes to, who she marries, what would you call that?
Can you show me where I am accusing you of it? I am asking you what you would call it.
Do you advocate rape prevention ideology as espoused by your defenders in this thread? Do you support it?
Well, shove your notice up your ass, I guess. :shrug: I haven't been asked about this previously, and I had no reason to, and my opinion is in no way discriminatory or controversial.
Shove it up my arse? Charming..
Umm I did ask you about it in the rape thread. I even warned you that making rape about biology and/or sex will more often than not result in rape prevention ideology where the onus is placed on the woman to not be raped - such as what some of your defenders are actually arguing for - that if she doesn't want to be raped, she shouldn't get drunk, she should watch how she dresses (that one was billvon's baby), she should watch who she marries, who she dates, who she speaks to, what party she goes to, etc.. And boy was I right.
But we did discuss this. For example,
I bring it up here as a concern that when people make it about sex or biology, that it will often come down to what the woman can do to prevent being raped. You respond to it and
declare that in no way should that happen, but then teamed it with a bizarre exposed meat analogy which one can only hope you were not comparing to women....
I do get though that this really is the next thing you'll accuse me of - I wondered about it before, but it was admittedly silly of me to think you wouldn't throw this at me also in retrospect as you lawyer your way through. Here's an interesting link I found in one of Trooper's posts that you'll later pretend you never read.
No, I'm asking you what you think of rape prevention theory and placing the onus on women to not be raped by demanding that if she doesn't want to be raped, then she should be responsible and not marry a man who could rape her, not get drunk, watch what parties she goes to, who she talks to, what she wears, not take her clothes off in front of a guy or get into bed with a guy, etc? What do you think of all of these rape prevention strategies, GeoffP?
http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html
Scan down. #48... hey, that's you! I'd never actually run across the term before, but it looks pretty apt, seeing what you're trying to do now. (See your comments above in this post in case you now decide to pretend not to know what I'm talking about.) Nice work.
I got a virus warning with the link. But ermm okay, I'll take your word for it.
Well, one of the things that prevents such an idiotic assumption is when a poster clarifies his position on the effect a dozen times in ten pages or less, characterising his stance as a indirect and far less than unitary effect. I mean; sure, I can understand how someone would miss that a dozen times. Just not if it were a central feature of someone's allegations. Then it begins to look more and more like lawyering. Which it is.
Is that what you call it?..
That certainly strikes me as extreme.
Well it's just sex, isn't it? "Illicit sex".
I haven't reviewed their comments. Is this what you wish me to do? If you ask, I will do so, but my suspicion is that there is a confounding of the theoretical expectations with the practical ones.
I see. Selective stupidity or blindness? The laptop comparison was posted just above one of your posts, as in your response came right after it. Do you often not read what people post in threads?
If one claims that people should take reasonable practical precautions as to safety, it would be hard to disagree with that. I don't go about downtown making it obvious that I possess money to hand. In some neighbourhoods I should not even venture out at night alone: or rather, there is a certain statistical risk that if I do so, I might be attacked. There is no practical reason why care should not be taken. I appreciate fully that it violates optimism; I am also offended by this fact. But it does still remain that risks exist. Is it manifestly - hugely - unfair to women, as I think Tiassa said earlier? Of course. The rules change all the time. Which ones should women know? On the other hand, preventative methods for all kinds of crime and for disease and for the risks inherent to every single kind of behaviour change also. I am particularly offended at the new and devious hurdles thrown in the way of women, but I am hardly surprised by it. But I don't believe that these terrible, terrible people (clearly!) ought to be immolated because they think a self-defense class would not go amiss.
And as has been noted many times before, the issue with rape prevention theories is that they are preaching common sense and applying a system whereby it puts pressure on women and often, the result is if they somehow failed to comply with particular prevention strategies, then she may have wanted it. And this is often how the law operates. Women feel shamed if they went to a party and got drunk and are raped. So they do not report it. It also sets a particular behavioural expectation on women in particular, that if she does not want to be raped, then she won't get drunk, she won't talk to guys, she won't get into bed with a guy, she wouldn't have worn that mini skirt, she wouldn't have danced suggestively with a guy on the dance floor, she wouldn't have let her rapist into her house, etc. I hope I am making myself clear here.
When people like billvon declare that women should simply be more responsible and not marry men who can rape her.. Ermm okay.. Because women go out of their way to marry a guy who will rape her one day? How can you know who is a rapist? When people make such claims and then in the same breath declare 'that of course, if she is raped, it's not her fault'.. So she should act responsibly and not marry a guy who could rape her one day, she should somehow know who a potential rapist is, but if she's raped, then it's not her fault.. Okay.. But it creates a conflict. Because if we take the first part of the sentence, then she will believe she was irresponsible. And who's going to believe her if she's irresponsible? After all, if she truly did not want to be raped, she wouldn't have married him. If she was truly a responsible person, she wouldn't have married him. It's like when people declare that what a woman wears can affect her chances of being raped, that she was asking for it because of what she is wearing. Which could be anything in particular.
Lastly: I remind you that it is possible for Palmer and Thornhill to be right about something, as we've already reviewed. The supposition that because they said it, it must be wrong is called ad hominem, typically. Naturally I would disagree violently with placing fault on women. The fault is that of the attacker. Always. Excuses are those conjured in the minds of the legal profession, with the possible exception of Palmer and Thornhill. One of these days, I'll read their complete book.
And as I noted, I'd rather believe the people who studied hundreds of rapists over the guys who studied the sexual behaviour of scorpion flies.
Yes. That's what I just wrote. Stands to reason. Or are you just looking for any excuse to argue?
Me? Perish the thought.
I'm afraid that it is. The biological evidence of forced copulation and sexual violence - which must extend into infanticide and group protectionist strategies - is irrefutable in mammals and other groups. Whether this extends into
humans and to what extend are very different issues, as our silly prefrontals create complex, sometimes counter-intuitive structures for behaviour. It is like a cloud, obscuring what would otherwise be simple biological objectives, eradicating some altogether, or re-couching still different objectives in ways that seem objectively benevolent or wise. The behaviour occurs in many mammals, including several primates (three of the four that have been mentioned, not including humans). If it does
not occur in humans, the natural suspicion is that it has been driven to extinction by social selection mechanisms against forced copulation as a strategy, so that only psychological 'repertoire' remains. However, humans exhibit numerous behaviours that are also couched in psychological terms: murder and theft being among these. Have we really lost all biological 'taste' for violence and evil? It seems likely to me that some residual impulse regarding each of these behaviours persists. Also, I think there is some behaviour 'room' for this to apply in humans: date rape, for example. The perpetrator drugs, incapacitates or sometimes just forces the victim. But in the former two, is that a power structure issue? That doesn't seem like the primary motivation.
You mention sex attacks on females of non-reproductive age, and on males. These you describe as power issues also, but I'm not sure that they strongly support the contention of absolute power. How much power can be exerted over the infirm/elderly, for example? Or is it a side-viciousness to another crime? Regrettably, I think that's as far as it can be questioned at the moment, owing to Coyne's warning.
I disagree. You are applying a standard by which you believe all rapists are simply trying to spread their seed. I disagree. There is more than enough evidence that rape is more about power and domination and not just a biological urge to breed. Certainly, there may be some who do get a kick out of the thought that the woman he just raped might get pregnant, but once again, this is a power issue, a control issue over her body, that he still maintains that control over her. As for rape of females ofnon-reproductive age and males. Why do you think it happens? You don't think power comes into play when the assailant has absolute control and violently rapes an elderly person or a child? You don't think humiliation comes into it?
LATE last November, an 84-year-old widow was asleep in an armchair in her house in Camden, north London, when a man broke in. He threatened her with a carving knife, then beat and raped her. He left her trapped in a wardrobe which he turned door-side down on to the floor, piling furniture on top of it; she was only freed when a neighbour became suspicious about a smashed window and called the police. A 17-year-old has been charged and will be tried in the summer.
Exactly a week later, a 71-year-old woman in Daventry, Northamptonshire, was woken up and raped at knifepoint by an intruder. Two weeks after that, on Christmas Eve, a man visiting his 83-year-old spinster aunt on a council estate in Southwark, south London, became concerned when there was no reply to his knock on the door. He called the police who broke in and found the woman also trapped in a wardrobe, having been sexually assaulted.
There are no figures for the numbers of sexual attacks on the elderly because the Home Office does not categorise its rape statistics by age. We may imagine that the rape of elderly women is a rare, horrible and peculiarly unnatural crime, but it is not. Looking at newspaper cuttings covering the past two or three years, it becomes clear that the rape of older women is not only commonplace but that the number of reported incidents are increasing.
On Christmas Day 1991 a severely disabled 70-year-old woman was raped in Sussex. In January 1992 a man was jailed for nine years for raping the 66-year-old housekeeper of a Catholic priest. The following month a Worcester man was jailed for life after sexually assaulting an 88-year-old, punching her in the eye and mouth and slitting her clothes from the chest down. He had already served an eight-year sentence for raping a 50-year-old woman. In April 1992, Manchester Police investigated what the police authority's chairman Stephen Murphy called 'the worst case of its kind I have ever heard of'. An 88-year-old widow was left with a fractured skull, two broken ribs and other injuries after a four-hour attack in which she was kicked, battered and bitten by two men who raped her three times, forcing her to carry out what newspapers called 'a series of perverted sex acts'. In June of that year, a 16-year-old was convicted at Norwich Crown Court of the rape of a woman aged 100.
What do you think is the biological imperative?
WHAT of the rapists themselves? Little if any work has been done on men who rape elderly women. Dr Mezey says her interviews indicate that they are very hostile to women and feel belittled by them. Since Susan Brownmiller's landmark study of the mid-Seventies, Against Our Will, it has been understood that rape is not about sex but power. One theory put forward in an American study holds that older women symbolise an authority figure over whom the offender wants control or an actual woman against whom he wants to avenge himself. The desire, in such rapes, is not for sex but for the degradation, hurt and humiliation of the victim. 'How did he get an erection?', we guiltily wonder. The arousal may come from rage, nervous excitement or fear, as is suggested by the evidence of rapes in wartime. Others argue that these rapists are simply woman haters, and older women may just be easier to attack because of their vulnerability.
The extent of sexual violence against older women may be far greater than press reports suggest. Earlier this year a report appeared in an American social work journal on sexual abuse of the elderly in Britain. Its author, Malcolm Holt, a Northumberland social worker, wrote to all the medical and social work journals in this country for cases of sexual abuse of the elderly by carers. By the time he wrote the report a year ago, he had 90 cases of sexual abuse by family members. The numbers have now grown to the hundreds. The most frequently reported abusers, 55 per cent, were sons. 'Frail, dependent elderly people, who suffer mental impairment, are very attractive as potential abuse victims' Holt wrote. Who will believe what they say? he asks.
When Holt began his research, there was scepticism about the need for such a study. One GP questioned what harm could be done to a victim who had been raped by her son, since she was old and confused. It was colleagues who remembered the early days of uncovering the extent of child sexual abuse who encouraged Holt to continue with his research.
Why does it happen? 'The issues are the same, whether it's abuse in the home or rape by a stranger,' Holt argues. 'It's about wielding power, leaving the victim totally shocked and humiliated and not willing to give evidence because they are confused and the evidence is unreliable. An American study says that sex offenders can move from children to old people. If their source of victim is denied, they find another.'
I agree with them.
There is more than enough evidence within the human species that would make rape a non-viable means for breeding. Since a rape is wholly unpleasant and an awful experience for the female, the chances that she will want to care for any off-spring from that rape drop dramatically. The males in her surroundings (or community, family, partner, etc) will also not want to provide protection to an off-spring that is not biologically theirs. Current abortion rates for rape victims support this. Only about 32% or so choose to keep the child (this was mentioned a few pages back, I'm sure you can scroll back to find it), the majority choose to abort, others choose to put it up for adoption (not that high of a percentage) and a fairly highish percentage found out they were pregnant after the 24 weeks cut off point, so whether those who choose to keep it did so voluntarily or because they were unable to access an abortion earlier remains unknown. We also see similar behaviour in primate species, where the male will kill off the offspring from other males. So from an evolutionary standpoint, it can hardly be seen to be successful, since the majority of off-spring from rape are either aborted or put up for adoption.. ie the mother does not want to have anything to do with it. Amongst primates, it would probably be killed by other competing males.
Thornhill and Palmer equate it to being about males raping because they would not normally be able to have sex or copulate. One would assume that the females are partnered with more dominant males or stronger males able to protect her and her subsequent off-spring - especially amongst primates. In such a case, her off-spring would more than likely be killed by the more dominant male - again, hardly an evolutionary trait that would be passed on through the generations and hardly beneficial from an evolutionary perspective.
And if you think that drugging someone so she can't fight back and raping her is not about a power issue, then really, you know very little about the subject. It's about absolute domination over the other. You know, having sex with someone you know would have refused you, for example? The rapist takes the control the victim has over their own body by incapacitating them and violating them.. So the victim loses all control, has no say, cannot say "no" and her body is used and abused and she can do nothing about it? You don't think that's about power and control? I think it is very much about power and control. The after effects of it definitely point to that. Look at cases where women who report being date raped or drugged and how they are treated, labeled as being sluts, sometimes the rape is even taped and posted online, or photos of her being raped while unconscious is shared amongst many. The humiliation and control continues even afterwards.
Of course. That's implicit in the making of the statement. Nothing is ever absolute, and particularly not in the case of my supposition.
"OMIGOD!"..
I'm going to savour this moment.
I think you're getting too defensive about this. I have cited a list of reports, above, and time permitting I may examine them. Mind, further contributions to this thread strike me as dangerous, so I may or may not return to it.
Contrary to popular belief, I am not an irrational female.
I've just seen too much of this crap to have much patience for it.
I do note that the guy studying the rapists went on to write books for law enforcement. This suggests objectives of his own. However, I would be happy to review his larger sample sizes if you have links to them.
Does that invalidate his research?
I only have his books, but I will look into it and see if I can find it.
If you insist on ignoring it for the sake of rhetoric, I cannot - or rather will not - help you.
Oh no, I am curious.
I am ignoring the faults of my supporters, apparently. I see. Perhaps you could be more specific in your witch-hunt?
Oh witch hunt now?
Gets better. I am curious as to your opinion on rape prevention ideology as espoused by various members who have rushed to your support in this thread.
And that is a fucking lie on two counts. First, I have not commented on your experience, because it doesn't matter to this discussion and because I cannot verify it: I do not know you, Bells. At all. I cannot verify any personal facts you care to present, and I do not wish to. Secondly, I never characterised your experience as anything of the kind, and you know it. You have lied yet again. And it just keeps going on.
I say I am a victim of rape. While certainly, your defense of the rape is sexual and biological did not touch on my experience, I responded with my personal experience, as well as scientific studies to support my contention that it's more about power and control. And you know what, you are correct. You utterly dismissed my experience because my being raped does not matter and does not apply to a discussion about rape.
I have attempted, again and again, to treat you civilly in this discussion. What I encounter in nearly every post of yours is the accusation that I belittle either the experiences you allege, or women, or sexual assault, or that I am protecting rapists, or encouraging them, or supporting them, or being an advocate for them, or for those that do the above. This is lawyering.
"Shove your notice up your ass"...
As I noted, your sociobiological argument always revolves around what the woman should have been doing to prevent her rape and it always involves whines about the feminist movement, and about women in general. When you bring it down to being about sex and biology, it creates an out, an excuse and it completely and utterly removes the victim from the equation. She ceases to matter. Rape is a very horrifying experience to the victim. When you ignore her experience and make it about biology or sex, you quite literally remove the "rape" from the equation. You change the language. You try to call it something else. And in doing so, you change the terms and make it into something that is just about "sex". You know, 'he just wanted sex', 'he had a biological imperative to breed'. Rape involves a complex series of emotions during and after the event. Fluttering your hands in the air and dismissing it to be about just sex or biology, you quite literally alter the event itself and diminish why it is actually so awful and horrific. And more often than not, it becomes an excuse. And then you always get people commenting that well, if it's just sex, it wouldn't be so bad if she just learned to enjoy it (as per Thornhill and Palmer, for example), or Pinker and his complaint that raping a girl too drunk is now even classified as rape while blaming feminists for this.
And as I repeatedly said, if research into rape is done with an agenda, then it will fail, because as we saw with Thorhill and Palmer, they tweaked the results to support their contention that it's really about sex and then blamed feminists as to why it is not.
What would I like to see? More studies on what motivates a rapist. And yes, I would love for there to be genetic studies on rapists, studying the family history, the conditions in which the rapist was brought up, how he or she was brought up, any sexual abuse in the family, the chemical reaction in the brain of a rapist, the sexual response tests to certain sexual scenarios, from consensual sex to control, power and dominant sex scenarios and seeing what arouses them the most. In short, I'd like to know why a rapist decides to rape. And so on and so forth. So far, all research on rapists point to domination and power and control issues. There is no genetic evidence of rape in our genes, in so far as it being a trait we inherit, for example.
First, I must seemingly put in yet AGAIN that I have never, nor do I now, consider that sexual assault of any type is entirely, primarily, largely or even in a plurality about arousal, or sex drive, or biology. I am forced to say this because your recognition of this statement - delivered, I think, maybe a score of times or more throughout the thread - has been ignored at various instances from you, probably when you feel that weaseling language on the subject will win points in the discussion. Here it is one more time as we clear this paragraph so that it cannot be... 'forgotten': I have never, nor do I now, consider that sexual assault of any type is entirely, primarily, largely or even in a plurality about arousal, or sex drive, or biology. I would prefer not to have to mention these occasional instances of... 'forgetting' so explicitly, but they do crop up and experience is reluctantly teaching me something about things around here. Fifteen times bitten, eventually shy, some might call it.
Then perhaps you should stop dismissing issues of power and humiliation and control as you have repeatedly done so, and in your response to James, you even declared that you did so to advance your theory.
Now for the counter that was coming, eventually, but which I hesitated to consider for fear of your reaction: in that such drugs have presumably reduced such drive in paedophiles, sickening as the entire discussion is, does this not suggest that even such 'evolutionarily inept' behaviours have in some cases a 'biological' basis? One would argue that those affected by such drugs were expressors of such a system. Those remaining would then be presumably those with a more 'psychological' disposition to such evil.
It only primarily works on paedophiles who are sexually attracted only to children.
So it works on sexual predators who are sexually attracted.. Such as those who are sexually aroused only by children, for example. It does not work on rapists who date rape, for example, or violent rapists who break into the homes of an elderly woman and violently rapes her, as another example, it does not work on most rapists actually. It's usually on sexual offenders who.. ermm.. show a constant state of arousal and sexual attraction towards their victims, such as paedophiles. And in such cases, certainly, sexual attraction is biological. But a heterosexual rapist who rapes a young woman and is imprisoned and then goes on to rape a man in prison to assert his position in prison hierarchy.. Would the same apply? I don't think so. And the drugs do not work on such individuals. Which tells you what?
That as said suggests that most of the behaviour is biological or has some biological connection. However, I would doubt this, as the existence of the psychological overdrive - and I forget whatever the hell whatever psychologist has coined for this, superego or ego or id or whatever the hell it is - necessarily implies that such behaviours must be transmitted through the forebrain's filter, as it were. That is, whatever motivations or impulses exist, they must pass psychology itself to be expressed. Furthermore, Graph above describes the entirety of sexual assault as heterogenous: that is, with many bases and many forms of expression, and I could not agree more; this is part of the warning of Coyne. A thing is not necessarily a thing because our legal apparatus has a single term for it and under which it is prosecuted. Such a thing may be of many different and/or associated pathways, with partial independence in each sub-behaviour. Do paedophiles, for example, attack elderly women, or reproductive women, or other men? Not usually, is my understanding.
Interesting answer.
I do believe in the legal term that rape is rape - in other words, sex without consent.
I vehemently disagree with sociobiologists and social scientists who enter the fray with a distinct complaint and agenda who then go on to whine about what even classifies as rape or make ridiculous assertions about women in general in the process (such as the individuals discussed in this thread), which sets the tone of rape apology and making excuses, which some of them even do. Most importantly, I disagree with sociobiologists and commentators who apply such opinions but disregard and even dismiss the fact that a large proportion of rape victims are not fertile women of child bearing age. I would like to see studies on actual rapists. Certainly, studies on primates can provide a lot of insights, but we are further evolved and the evolutionary tree split quite a few species ago, so relying solely on their behavioural patterns as proof.. Ermm okay. I think until there is absolute evidence to the contrary, people should not be making definitive statements. There is proof from studies of hundreds of rapists which indicate power, dominance and control ranked quite highly. Until I see proof and studies of rapists which indicate otherwise, then I'm sorry, but I won't change my mind. And I do disagree with attempts to rename rape and dismissing how it affects the victims, which is evident in a lot of these discussions. It is rape because the victim did not or could not consent. I think removing the victim from the equation dismisses the seriousness of the offense.. And that to me is a major problem.
