The Southern Poverty Law Center ... Men’s Rights Movement

[Abdul Alhazred]

Wow. A whole nother sexist subculture I’d never have heard of but for the internet.

The Southern Poverty Law Center notices the Men’s Rights Movement (http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/10/the-southern-poverty-law-center-notices-the-mens-rights-movement/)
PZ Myers et al

[Moss]

I have had a lot of my male acquaintances go through a pickup artist phase. (Oddly enough that label always makes me think pickpocket artist first. Which is somewhat less bad than the more appropriate label of "I wish my talking worked like roofies" dreamers.) Most of them got better. Still a lot of sexist drivel that comes with those "skills".
For some reason they seem unable to separate the men'r reproductive rights from wifebeating and rape fantasies. That makes me feel a bit awkward as a male.

[Redtail]

I have had a lot of my male acquaintances go through a pickup artist phase. (Oddly enough that label always makes me think pickpocket artist first. Which is somewhat less bad than the more appropriate label of "I wish my talking worked like roofies" dreamers.) Most of them got better. Still a lot of sexist drivel that comes with those "skills".
For some reason they seem unable to separate the men'r reproductive rights from wifebeating and rape fantasies. That makes me feel a bit awkward as a male.

On top of all of that they have the nerve to call their pickup techniques "game".

Its actually the exact opposite of game. Game in nothing more than confidence in who you are.

[Stylesjl]

Yeah the Men's Rights Movement is mostly filled with crass misogynists (you can get more details about this movement from this blog (http://manboobz.com/) if you like).

[epepke]

Talking about Men's Rights movement the way these people do is exactly like talking about Atheism in terms of Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Exactly, because of course, Hitler wasn't even an atheists.

Saying that it's mostly filled with crass misogynists is exactly like saying that feminism is mostly filled with clones of Andrea Dworkin.

As for the "sexist drivel that comes with those "skills"," which is really a swipe at the Seduction Community which is really another issue, there isn't any. I get annoyed with the Seduction Community people, too. But that's because I think they are stupid, and they only have a superficial understanding of something I have come to understand much better. In cultures like that of Italy and Greece and maybe France, when it is considered important to teach boys how to relate to women, the Seduction Community would be laughable.

But before you get mad at them, consider that they are the only people even trying in our sex-negative culture. If we had any sense, our culture would render it superfluous, and as an aside, get rid of that sexist and wooish drivel.

There is no sexism or woo in sexual socialization. It's in the way it comes to be taught, and the only reason people came up with that way of teaching is that is that nobody teaches it properly.

[tyr_13]

http://xkcd.com/1027/

It seems related.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pickup_artist.png

[Redtail]

Talking about Men's Rights movement the way these people do is exactly like talking about Atheism in terms of Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Exactly, because of course, Hitler wasn't even an atheists.

Saying that it's mostly filled with crass misogynists is exactly like saying that feminism is mostly filled with clones of Andrea Dworkin.

As for the "sexist drivel that comes with those "skills"," which is really a swipe at the Seduction Community which is really another issue, there isn't any. I get annoyed with the Seduction Community people, too. But that's because I think they are stupid, and they only have a superficial understanding of something I have come to understand much better. In cultures like that of Italy and Greece and maybe France, when it is considered important to teach boys how to relate to women, the Seduction Community would be laughable.

But before you get mad at them, consider that they are the only people even trying in our sex-negative culture. If we had any sense, our culture would render it superfluous, and as an aside, get rid of that sexist and wooish drivel.

There is no sexism or woo in sexual socialization. It's in the way it comes to be taught, and the only reason people came up with that way of teaching is that is that nobody teaches it properly.

What? No. Just no. I couldn't disagree more. Its not that no one teaches it properly, its that some people can't handle someone not being interested in them.

[crimresearch]

'Pickup lines' is one thing, rationalizing date rape and glorifying the rohypnol culture, which feeds into DV and the 'women and kids are filthy liars who hate real men' inflation of false accusations is something else. And it isn't 'seduction'

The 'Men's rights' movement may have started off as an expression of outrage over bad divorce judgements and men as unseen victims of DV, but the label has been coopted.

[bookitty]

Talking about Men's Rights movement the way these people do is exactly like talking about Atheism in terms of Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Exactly, because of course, Hitler wasn't even an atheists.

Saying that it's mostly filled with crass misogynists is exactly like saying that feminism is mostly filled with clones of Andrea Dworkin.

As for the "sexist drivel that comes with those "skills"," which is really a swipe at the Seduction Community which is really another issue, there isn't any. I get annoyed with the Seduction Community people, too. But that's because I think they are stupid, and they only have a superficial understanding of something I have come to understand much better. In cultures like that of Italy and Greece and maybe France, when it is considered important to teach boys how to relate to women, the Seduction Community would be laughable.

But before you get mad at them, consider that they are the only people even trying in our sex-negative culture. If we had any sense, our culture would render it superfluous, and as an aside, get rid of that sexist and wooish drivel.

There is no sexism or woo in sexual socialization. It's in the way it comes to be taught, and the only reason people came up with that way of teaching is that is that nobody teaches it properly.

Wow. This explains so much. Honestly, I don't even know where to start. Sex-negative culture? Generalizations about the machismo techniques of southern Europe? Only PUA's are trying to relate to the opposite sex?

The US is sex-obsessed. We're sexually free and sexually repressed at the same time. This does cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. Women who use birth control are "sluts" and responsible for their own well being. One night stands are both socially frowned upon and treated as fairly trivial. The idea of consent is both overplayed and completely ignored/misunderstood. The population is more accepting of gay marriage but our politicians are going apepoop. Sexual permissibility is so prevalent that it is experiencing backlash. It's sex, that makes it complicated. Far too complicated for over-simplification like "sex-negative culture."

I'm not even going to touch the gross generalizations of Greek, French and Italian culture except to point out that media is worldwide these days and there is a lot of cross pollination of ideas.

You say that the PUA's are the only ones who are trying but trying to what? Have one night stands? Find long-term partners? Fill the aching void that is the human condition? I can't see how any of those would be the sole purview of the PUA community. You're ignoring an awful lot of people who simply talk to each other without an agenda and discover, to their surprise and delight, that they are simpatico. Dating (like sex, like friendship, like business associations and all other human interaction) is multifaceted.

[Cain]

The wimminz are obviously evil bitchez, responsible for most of the murders, corruption and rapes. Men's rights!

Anyway, I hate Morris Dees, and I can't take the SPLC too seriously. But with that said, he is kind of my hero: I'd love to become a multi-millionaire by fighting poverty.

[bookitty]

The wimminz are obviously evil bitchez, responsible for most of the murders, corruption and rapes. Men's rights!

Anyway, I hate Morris Dees, and I can't take the SPLC too seriously. But with that said, he is kind of my hero: I'd love to become a multi-millionaire by fighting poverty.

Oh I dunno, any org who bankrupts the Klan is OK in my book.

[Naive1000]

Now, a proud member of the MRM.

[mortimer]

Wow. This explains so much. Honestly, I don't even know where to start. Sex-negative culture? Generalizations about the machismo techniques of southern Europe? Only PUA's are trying to relate to the opposite sex?

The US is sex-obsessed. We're sexually free and sexually repressed at the same time. This does cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. Women who use birth control are "sluts" and responsible for their own well being. One night stands are both socially frowned upon and treated as fairly trivial. The idea of consent is both overplayed and completely ignored/misunderstood. The population is more accepting of gay marriage but our politicians are going apepoop. Sexual permissibility is so prevalent that it is experiencing backlash. It's sex, that makes it complicated. Far too complicated for over-simplification like "sex-negative culture."

I'm not even going to touch the gross generalizations of Greek, French and Italian culture except to point out that media is worldwide these days and there is a lot of cross pollination of ideas.

You say that the PUA's are the only ones who are trying but trying to what? Have one night stands? Find long-term partners? Fill the aching void that is the human condition? I can't see how any of those would be the sole purview of the PUA community. You're ignoring an awful lot of people who simply talk to each other without an agenda and discover, to their surprise and delight, that they are simpatico. Dating (like sex, like friendship, like business associations and all other human interaction) is multifaceted.
I wish I could Like this post, ala Facebook. In lieu of that, I am forced to Nominate it.

[Naive1000]

SPLC — 2011 “Hate Map” — Another Year of Lies (http://rkeefe57.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/splc-2011-hate-map-another-year-of-lies/)
The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Now Writing About Pickup Artists as Hate Groups (http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/09/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-now-w)
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Creepy Mission (http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-southern-poverty-law-centers-creepy-mission/)
The Southern Poverty Business Model (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001573)
A Civil Rights Group Is Now Criticizing Random Jerks For Not Calling Women Back After Sex (http://www.businessinsider.com/civil-rights-group-is-now-criticizing-random-jerks-for-not-calling-women-back-after-sex-2012-3)


Also, note that PUA (pick-up artists) and MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) don't really like one another and lumping them together is just a ploy to tar one group using another. SAVE (http://www.saveservices.org/) was also on their list, for what ... wanting to make DV laws gender neutral and to get some federal money to go to men's shelters (oh, those evil people). Plus, anyone that believes Manboobz site is anything but bigotry and cherry-picking needs to hand in their skeptic card. I won't even go into all crap they got wrong. As a side note: the SPLC didn't even do the report they contracted out and refuses to tell who did (can anyone say obvious bias).

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Also, note that PUA (pick-up artists) and MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) don't really like one another and lumping them together is just a ploy to tar one group using another.

of course. Father's rights movement = so-called Men's Rights Movement = pickup artists, pedophiles, mass murderers...

The writer feels you are either a feminist or a misogynist. He attacked foreign marriages because the wives are too submissive. Feminist immigration is just fine. Why not just have re-education camps? And for their husbands too, of course. :)

[Galteeth]

Wow. This explains so much. Honestly, I don't even know where to start. Sex-negative culture? Generalizations about the machismo techniques of southern Europe? Only PUA's are trying to relate to the opposite sex?

The US is sex-obsessed. We're sexually free and sexually repressed at the same time. This does cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. Women who use birth control are "sluts" and responsible for their own well being. One night stands are both socially frowned upon and treated as fairly trivial. The idea of consent is both overplayed and completely ignored/misunderstood. The population is more accepting of gay marriage but our politicians are going apepoop. Sexual permissibility is so prevalent that it is experiencing backlash. It's sex, that makes it complicated. Far too complicated for over-simplification like "sex-negative culture."

I'm not even going to touch the gross generalizations of Greek, French and Italian culture except to point out that media is worldwide these days and there is a lot of cross pollination of ideas.

You say that the PUA's are the only ones who are trying but trying to what? Have one night stands? Find long-term partners? Fill the aching void that is the human condition? I can't see how any of those would be the sole purview of the PUA community. You're ignoring an awful lot of people who simply talk to each other without an agenda and discover, to their surprise and delight, that they are simpatico. Dating (like sex, like friendship, like business associations and all other human interaction) is multifaceted.

"The US is sex-obsessed"

The US is a filled with individuals and diverse cultures.


"The idea of consent is both overplayed and completely ignored/misunderstood."
Huh?

I'm interested in the ideas you're expressing, but I don't really understand alot of what you wrote. Could you clarify?

[KoihimeNakamura]

SPLC — 2011 “Hate Map” — Another Year of Lies (http://rkeefe57.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/splc-2011-hate-map-another-year-of-lies/)
The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Now Writing About Pickup Artists as Hate Groups (http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/09/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-now-w)
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Creepy Mission (http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-southern-poverty-law-centers-creepy-mission/)
The Southern Poverty Business Model (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001573)
A Civil Rights Group Is Now Criticizing Random Jerks For Not Calling Women Back After Sex (http://www.businessinsider.com/civil-rights-group-is-now-criticizing-random-jerks-for-not-calling-women-back-after-sex-2012-3)


Also, note that PUA (pick-up artists) and MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) don't really like one another and lumping them together is just a ploy to tar one group using another. SAVE (http://www.saveservices.org/) was also on their list, for what ... wanting to make DV laws gender neutral and to get some federal money to go to men's shelters (oh, those evil people). Plus, anyone that believes Manboobz site is anything but bigotry and cherry-picking needs to hand in their skeptic card. I won't even go into all crap they got wrong. As a side note: the SPLC didn't even do the report they contracted out and refuses to tell who did (can anyone say obvious bias).

Those links certainlly aren't biased either..

of course. Father's rights movement = so-called Men's Rights Movement = pickup artists, pedophiles, mass murderers...

The writer feels you are either a feminist or a misogynist. He attacked foreign marriages because the wives are too submissive. Feminist immigration is just fine. Why not just have re-education camps? And for their husbands too, of course. :)

And this is just wrong.

[Fishstick]

Talking about Men's Rights movement the way these people do is exactly like talking about Atheism in terms of Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Exactly, because of course, Hitler wasn't even an atheists.

Saying that it's mostly filled with crass misogynists is exactly like saying that feminism is mostly filled with clones of Andrea Dworkin.

As for the "sexist drivel that comes with those "skills"," which is really a swipe at the Seduction Community which is really another issue, there isn't any. I get annoyed with the Seduction Community people, too. But that's because I think they are stupid, and they only have a superficial understanding of something I have come to understand much better. In cultures like that of Italy and Greece and maybe France, when it is considered important to teach boys how to relate to women, the Seduction Community would be laughable.

But before you get mad at them, consider that they are the only people even trying in our sex-negative culture. If we had any sense, our culture would render it superfluous, and as an aside, get rid of that sexist and wooish drivel.

There is no sexism or woo in sexual socialization. It's in the way it comes to be taught, and the only reason people came up with that way of teaching is that is that nobody teaches it properly.

Ahahaha what? Out of all countries where the male population is supposedly on good terms with the female one, you pick Italy and Greece? Really?

[Galteeth]

Talking about Men's Rights movement the way these people do is exactly like talking about Atheism in terms of Stalin and Mao and Hitler. Exactly, because of course, Hitler wasn't even an atheists.

Saying that it's mostly filled with crass misogynists is exactly like saying that feminism is mostly filled with clones of Andrea Dworkin.

As for the "sexist drivel that comes with those "skills"," which is really a swipe at the Seduction Community which is really another issue, there isn't any. I get annoyed with the Seduction Community people, too. But that's because I think they are stupid, and they only have a superficial understanding of something I have come to understand much better. In cultures like that of Italy and Greece and maybe France, when it is considered important to teach boys how to relate to women, the Seduction Community would be laughable.

But before you get mad at them, consider that they are the only people even trying in our sex-negative culture. If we had any sense, our culture would render it superfluous, and as an aside, get rid of that sexist and wooish drivel.

There is no sexism or woo in sexual socialization. It's in the way it comes to be taught, and the only reason people came up with that way of teaching is that is that nobody teaches it properly.

This implies that there needs to be a set of taught social skills that are specific in relating to the opposite gender. I think this is true up to a point (like if you're a boy, don't pull down a girls pants) but for the most part socialization is a general thing, and people learn how to relate to different individuals. The problem with so many of these types of groups or programs or whatever is they assume there is some universal code to sexual relations that applies to nearly every member of gender. That's just not true, and how people relate to each other, especially in the realm of sexual and romantic relationships, varies and is highly individual.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Wow. A whole nother sexist subculture I’d never have heard of but for the internet.

The Southern Poverty Law Center notices the Men’s Rights Movement (http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/10/the-southern-poverty-law-center-notices-the-mens-rights-movement/)
PZ Myers et al

Why does the SPLC hate men?

[Galteeth]

Why does the SPLC hate men?

I guess this is sort of a tangent, but the SPLC infuriates me.

[AvalonXQ]

Men's rights activism is extremely important, because there is a lot of misandry embedded in our culture, as well as in our law enforcement and court system, that needs to be addressed.

But just as feminist circles are often a breeding ground for distructive misandrist attitudes, so MRA sites give cover for a lot of misogyny.

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.

[Mark6]

This implies that there needs to be a set of taught social skills that are specific in relating to the opposite gender. I think this is true up to a point (like if you're a boy, don't pull down a girls pants) but for the most part socialization is a general thing, and people learn how to relate to different individuals.

I very much disagree. Have you ever heard expression "men and women speak different languages"? As an Aspie, I have a certain amount of outside perspective, for as far as I was concerned at adolescence, BOTH men and women spoke (different) foreign languages. Both men and women used code words, unspoken assumptions, and non-verbal cues which were totally bizarre to me (like, men using insults as terms of endearment to each other? That's just insane).

Which does not mean I could not learn. I could and did. However, learning "men's language" got me at the time no discernible benefit, whereas learning "women's language" got me laid. Consequently I put far more effort into latter, and now at the age of 45 am much more comfortable communicating with women than with neurotypical men. But this an aside. My main point is, men and women DO communicate differently, yet it is something that CAN be taught -- but rarely is.

The problem with so many of these types of groups or programs or whatever is they assume there is some universal code to sexual relations that applies to nearly every member of gender. That's just not true, and how people relate to each other, especially in the realm of sexual and romantic relationships, varies and is highly individual.
Not having any experience with "these types of groups or programs", I cannot judge. And if they really do assume some "universal code to sexual relations" then they really are barking up the wrong tree. But if these groups teach men how to understand women, then it is an entirely legitimate -- and underserved, -- pursuit.

[leftysergeant]

[LIST] SPLC — 2011 “Hate Map” — Another Year of Lies (http://rkeefe57.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/splc-2011-hate-map-another-year-of-lies/)

Why do you think the blathering of an idiot who knows sod-all about small-cell terrorist operations has any value in this discussion?

[leftysergeant]

Men's rights activism is extremely important, because there is a lot of misandry embedded in our culture, as well as in our law enforcement and court system, that needs to be addressed.Prove it.

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.

Got any evidence that any exist this side of the line that rational humans do not cross?

[AvalonXQ]

Got any evidence that any exist this side of the line that rational humans do not cross?
True Scotsman fallacy. Everyone knows those people are crazy; it doesn't change the fact that they speak as feminists.
Characterizing a movement by its extreme members is generally inadviseable.

[AvalonXQ]

Prove it.

It's well-documented that family courts overwhelmingly presume the mother to be the more fit parent in custody proceedings, and the police officers presume the husband to be the violant party in any DV call.

Convictions for violent crime are even more disproportionately male than they are disproportionately black.

Which of these do you dispute?

[Lithrael]

(...)as far as I was concerned at adolescence, BOTH men and women spoke (different) foreign languages. Both men and women used code words, unspoken assumptions, and non-verbal cues which were totally bizarre to me (...) My main point is, men and women DO communicate differently, yet it is something that CAN be taught -- but rarely is.

Well.. sort of. The point you don't want to miss is that this divide itself is also (at least partly) taught. Girls who grow up steeped in boy culture don't get any automatic insight into the girl culture they haven't been paying attention to, and end up finding interacting with most women as mysterious as the typical male does. With the added fun of trying to figure out which women have recognised your lack of 'getting it' and are trying to help you and which women have recognised same and are enjoying tearing your outsider butt to shreds while you can't quite tell what they are even talking about.

[leftysergeant]

It's well-documented that family courts overwhelmingly presume the mother to be the more fit parent in custody proceedings, and the police officers presume the husband to be the violant party in any DV call.Based on statistical probability and typical case histories, they would be right.

Out of a hundred DV homicides, how many were committed by the wife? As for custody, I know a lot of men who get custody.

Convictions for violent crime are even more disproportionately male than they are disproportionately black.

Which of these do you dispute?

I'm saying that your argument is non causa pro causa.

[leftysergeant]

True Scotsman fallacy. Everyone knows those people are crazy; it doesn't change the fact that they speak as feminists.
Characterizing a movement by its extreme members is generally inadviseable.But you suggested that you do not take SPLC seriously because they are not hunting down a conspiracy that exists only between your ears.

[Cleon]

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.

I'm sure they will get around to that right after they add the Sasquatch Supremacist League.

[crimresearch]

Men's rights activism is extremely important, because there is a lot of misandry embedded in our culture, as well as in our law enforcement and court system, that needs to be addressed.

But just as feminist circles are often a breeding ground for distructive misandrist attitudes, so MRA sites give cover for a lot of misogyny.

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.
And as soon as those groups actually show evidence of existing in any effective manner... say by concerted action, or publication of some manifesto, they stand as good a chance of making the list as anyone else.

But you knew that, and were just hoping that no one would call you on it, right?

[crimresearch]

It's well-documented that family courts overwhelmingly presume the mother to be the more fit parent in custody proceedings, and the police officers presume the husband to be the violant party in any DV call.

Convictions for violent crime are even more disproportionately male than they are disproportionately black.

Which of these do you dispute?
It is well known that Milli Vanilli were great musicians too... what's your point?

In the real world, gender based presumption has been eroded by BIOTC tests, and the actual percentage of custody awarded to females can no longer all be automatically assumed to be due to bias.

As far as police bias, I suggest you actually go through a police academy and learn how incredibly ignorant that comment sounds when compared to what police are really thinking while going into a DV situation.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Now, a proud member of the MRM.

fnarr fnarr:D

[AvalonXQ]

But you suggested that you do not take SPLC seriously because they are not hunting down a conspiracy that exists only between your ears.

I do not take the SPLC seriously because they color contrary movements with the "extremist" brush while ignoring/whitewashing the extremist views in movements they agree with.

Compare their treatment of the Tea Party with their treatment of Occupy Wall Street for an easy example.

Or, as I was attempting to point out in my earlier post, contrast their treatment of MRAs with their treatment of feminists.

[crimresearch]

I do not take the SPLC seriously because they color contrary movements with the "extremist" brush while ignoring/whitewashing the extremist views in movements they agree with.

Compare their treatment of the Tea Party with their treatment of Occupy Wall Street for an easy example.

Or, as I was attempting to point out in my earlier post, contrast their treatment of MRAs with their treatment of feminists.
So in this case, the extremist movement that wants to kill all men is what... battered women's shelters?

[bookitty]

"The US is sex-obsessed"

The US is a filled with individuals and diverse cultures.


"The idea of consent is both overplayed and completely ignored/misunderstood."
Huh?

I'm interested in the ideas you're expressing, but I don't really understand alot of what you wrote. Could you clarify?

The USA, for all it's sexual liberalism still has a very wide puritanical streak. Both sexual liberalism and sexual puritanism focus on sex (although you're right, obsessed was too strong a word.) This causes a cultural cognitive dissonance - conflicting, opposite ideas which are presented as fact. And may very well be fact depending on where one is standing or they might a be reactionary response to this discomfort caused by this dissonance.

Men's rights activism is extremely important, because there is a lot of misandry embedded in our culture, as well as in our law enforcement and court system, that needs to be addressed.

But just as feminist circles are often a breeding ground for distructive misandrist attitudes, so MRA sites give cover for a lot of misogyny.

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.

Please, give an example of a feminist group that is encouraging the death of men. I will be happy to send it to the SPLC and ask that they add it to their groups to be watched.

ETA: As a feminist, I am against harmful gender stereotypes because they are the greatest stumbling block to an egalitarian society. The bias of the court system is well documented and has been part of my focus for over 20 years for this very reason. The MRA's claim that feminists are perpetuating the stereotype of the non-nurturing male for their own ends.* This makes no sense.

*Because they apparently believe that the average amount of child support is enough to keep single mothers in mani/pedis and Cadillacs for life.

[Galteeth]

On the SLPC:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/southern-poverty-law-center-report-as-election-season-heats-up-extremist-groups-at

I am going to quote some things. See if you can spot the problem!


"The dramatic expansion of the radical right is the result of our country's changing racial demographics, the increased pace of globalization, and our economic woes,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC and editor of the new report.

“For many extremists, President Obama is the new symbol of all that's wrong with the country - the Kenyan president, the secret Muslim who is causing our country's decline,” Potok said. “The election season's overheated political rhetoric is adding fuel to the fire. The more polarized the political scene, the more people at the extremes.”


"The continuing tough economy appears to offer the best single explanation for the expansion of a major subset of the larger Patriot movement - antigovernment “sovereign citizens.” Sovereign citizens generally believe they are not obliged to follow most laws or comply with requirements for driver's licenses and vehicle registrations. They also typically believe that they don't have to pay taxes, that they can stop foreclosures with ease, and that with the right procedure they can extract millions from the government - all of which makes the movement especially attractive at a time of general economic hardship.

The FBI considers the sovereign movement dangerous enough that it issued a special bulletin to law enforcement officials last September describing it as “domestic terrorist,” and reported that six officers have been murdered by sovereigns since 2000....

The hate groups listed in this report include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, Klansmen and black separatists. "

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/active-patriot-groups-in-the-united-states

"Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist."

[Moss]

It's well-documented that family courts overwhelmingly presume the mother to be the more fit parent in custody proceedings, and the police officers presume the husband to be the violant party in any DV call.

Convictions for violent crime are even more disproportionately male than they are disproportionately black.



Do the assumptions differ from what is actual fact? If so, how much?

[AvalonXQ]

Do the assumptions differ from what is actual fact? If so, how much?

I find it interesting that this is the first reaction. That is, sexism is so engrained in society, particularly the "violent husband" and "deadbeat dad" memes, that the first question isn't "Why are we treating men this way", but rather "doesn't the evidence support our decision to treat men this way?"

[bookitty]

I find it interesting that this is the first reaction. That is, sexism is so engrained in society, particularly the "violent husband" and "deadbeat dad" memes, that the first question isn't "Why are we treating men this way", but rather "doesn't the evidence support our decision to treat men this way?"

Well, does it? What is the evidence either way? We know that non-payment of support by non-custodial parents is about evenly split by genders. This is important, it shows (among many other things) that non-custodial parents are less likely to feel responsible for the well-being of the child. It would be better to start there and to discover what other factors contribute. (mental health, income, etc)

We also know that women are more likely to be killed by domestic violence but that the indicators for DV are universal. Income levels, mental health, drug or alcohol abuse, past history of abuse, and other measurable factors are more useful for identifying and stopping DV than a focus on gender.

Making either of these issue solely about gender is counterproductive.

Also, what was the name of that feminist org that was calling on people to kill men?

[Mark6]

S.C.U.M.: Society for Cutting Up Men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

The only man S.C.U.M. attempted (unsuccessfully) to kill was Andy Warhol, which strikes me as a very strange choice of target.

[bookitty]

SCUM: Society for Cutting Up Men

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.

ETA: A fix for flawed memory.

[AvalonXQ]

Well, does it? What is the evidence either way? We know that non-payment of support by non-custodial parents is about evenly split by genders. This is important, it shows (among many other things) that non-custodial parents are less likely to feel responsible for the well-being of the child. It would be better to start there and to discover what other factors contribute. (mental health, income, etc)

We also know that women are more likely to be killed by domestic violence but that the indicators for DV are universal. Income levels, mental health, drug or alcohol abuse, past history of abuse, and other measurable factors are more useful for identifying and stopping DV than a focus on gender.

Making either of these issue solely about gender is counterproductive.
Right, and because there is a focus on gender, MRAs are right to point out and work to fight institutional and de facto discrimination against men in this areas.

And, in the meantime, men need to know what to do if their spouse becomes abusive -- because in many communities the standard support networks will be unhelpful (or openly hostile) to their appeals.

[AvalonXQ]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's?

Wait, how did all these women die around the same time?


;)

[bookitty]

Right, and because there is a focus on gender, MRAs are right to point out and work to fight institutional and de facto discrimination against men in this areas.

And, in the meantime, men need to know what to do if their spouse becomes abusive -- because in many communities the standard support networks will be unhelpful (or openly hostile) to their appeals.

Yes, harmful gender stereotypes harm everyone which means that everyone has reason to get rid of them. But doesn't it seem a bit strange that the men who want to get rid of gender stereotypes against men (lack of nurture, poor parenting skills) are at the same time embracing those gender stereotypes which are most harmful to women? (Sperm-trapping gold-diggers)

Also, what was that group again?

[bookitty]

Wait, how did all these women die around the same time?


;)

Here is the wiki entry on separatist feminism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatist_feminism), please point out any social group that is currently active. Of course Wiki is not definitive but this and the citations at the bottom should give you a place to start.

[AvalonXQ]

Yes, harmful gender stereotypes harm everyone which means that everyone has reason to get rid of them. But doesn't it seem a bit strange that the men who want to get rid of gender stereotypes against men (lack of nurture, poor parenting skills) are at the same time embracing those gender stereotypes which are most harmful to women? (Sperm-trapping gold-diggers)

What evidence do you have that this is generally true?

You personally strongly fight against the meme that feminists are generally misandrists; why, then, do you support the meme that men's rights activists are generally misogynists? Can you support the argument that one of these memes has more factual support than the other?

[Moss]

I find it interesting that this is the first reaction. That is, sexism is so engrained in society, particularly the "violent husband" and "deadbeat dad" memes, that the first question isn't "Why are we treating men this way", but rather "doesn't the evidence support our decision to treat men this way?"

That does not exactly answer the question.

[Cleon]

What evidence do you have that this is generally true?

You personally strongly fight against the meme that feminists are generally misandrists; why, then, do you support the meme that men's rights activists are generally misogynists? Can you support the argument that one of these memes has more factual support than the other?

I'm still waiting for evidence for the existence of those "feminist groups encouraging the death of all males" that you said the SPLC should put on a list.

[AvalonXQ]

That does not exactly answer the question.

You're right; it doesn't.

I think it's meaningful to point out, however, that the reverse would likely not even be asked here (or would be immediately flamed into oblivion if asked) -- "Are those who refuse to promote women really wrong, or is the 'glass ceiling' just an acknowledgement that women don't have the same drive and leadership skills as men?"

No, see, we begin with the assumption that people are equal, and we fight when we encounter evidence that they're being meaningfully discriminated against. When judges routinely assume the mother's custody unless overwhelming evidence is given to the contrary, when police procedures routinely use "he" to describe the abuser and police routinely arrest the man even if he made the call to the police and is the only injured party at the scene, the right question is not, "Doesn't society beat up on men because they deserve it?"

[bookitty]

What evidence do you have that this is generally true?

You personally strongly fight against the meme that feminists are generally misandrists; why, then, do you support the meme that men's rights activists are generally misogynists? Can you support the argument that one of these memes has more factual support than the other?

Well apparently that's a bit tricky. You see, if I as a feminist say something and call it feminism, one of our local lads will jump in with Andrea Dworkin, Valerie Solanas or some other dead 70's feminist and toss "No true feminist" at me. My words are not good enough.

If I don't spend the majority of my time searching out each and every blog post or article that may cause offense and then soundly rebuking the author publicly, I am "supporting" whatever has been said. Which means, again, that I can not represent "feminism."

This works both ways. If I were to link to any of the blogs, the MRA sites or the reddit MRA community and point to examples of misogyny, violent rhetoric and outright loathing for women, the same thing will happen. The cries of "no true MRA!" will go up. The authors of those articles will not be publicly denounced because they weren't "real" MRA's after all.

Apparently we are all free from the responsibility of our own words.

[bookitty]

You're right; it doesn't.

I think it's meaningful to point out, however, that the reverse would likely not even be asked here (or would be immediately flamed into oblivion if asked) -- "Are those who refuse to promote women really wrong, or is the 'glass ceiling' just an acknowledgement that women don't have the same drive and leadership skills as men?"

No, see, we begin with the assumption that people are equal, and we fight when we encounter evidence that they're being meaningfully discriminated against. When judges routinely assume the mother's custody unless overwhelming evidence is given to the contrary, when police procedures routinely use "he" to describe the abuser and police routinely arrest the man even if he made the call to the police and is the only injured party at the scene, the right question is not, "Doesn't society beat up on men because they deserve it?"

Can we have some numbers to back up these assumptions? For example, in the last 20 years, the issue of bias against paternal custody has become more widely known. How has this changed the rates of paternal custody?

[AvalonXQ]

Well apparently that's a bit tricky. You see, if I as a feminist say something and call it feminism, one of our local lads will jump in with Andrea Dworkin, Valerie Solanas or some other dead 70's feminist and toss "No true feminist" at me. My words are not good enough.

If I don't spend the majority of my time searching out each and every blog post or article that may cause offense and then soundly rebuking the author publicly, I am "supporting" whatever has been said. Which means, again, that I can not represent "feminism."

Right, and they're entirely wrong to do this, as you have repeatedly pointed out.

Yet it seems you're happy to do the same thing:
This works both ways. If I were to link to any of the blogs, the MRA sites or the reddit MRA community and point to examples of misogyny, violent rhetoric and outright loathing for women, the same thing will happen. The cries of "no true MRA!" will go up. The authors of those articles will not be publicly denounced because they weren't "real" MRA's after all.
I'm not sure how this is "the same thing" -- this is each of you doing what the other was doing. Now you're the one wanting to claim that the MRM as a whole is equal to its most hateful members, and they're correctly reminding you of your own arguments -- misogynist MRAs does not make MRM misogynist.

It sounds to me, though, like you're really making an argument of numbers. Your extremists are outliers that can/should be ignored; their extremists are really representative of the core message of the movement. And they believe the reverse, apparently.

[bookitty]

Right, and they're entirely wrong to do this, as you have repeatedly pointed out.

Yet it seems you're happy to do the same thing:

I'm not sure how this is "the same thing" -- this is each of you doing what the other was doing. Now you're the one wanting to claim that the MRM as a whole is equal to its most hateful members, and they're correctly reminding you of your own arguments -- misogynist MRAs does not make MRM misogynist.

It sounds to me, though, like you're really making an argument of numbers. Your extremists are outliers that can/should be ignored; their extremists are really representative of the core message of the movement. And they believe the reverse, apparently.


The majority of feminist extremists are dead. This does tend to reduce their influence somewhat. The majority of MRA extremists are high profile. They are the owners of websites and authors of blogs, not just the commentors and other unruly hordes.

There is an example in this very thread by the way. Naive says that manbooz is bigoted. The only thing that site does is report with commentary on what is actually said within the MRA community by both high profile individuals and the hordes.

[PhantomWolf]

Based on statistical probability and typical case histories, they would be right.

Actually according to the statistics based on a number of studies over the past 10 years, when it comes to DV the agressor is a 50/50 toss up with women being just as likely as men to be the one starting the attack. One of the problems with basing a decision of who is at fault on probability of past events is that you end up creating that probability. If the male is the one who is mainly arrested and charged with DV, regardless of the actual victim, then most DV arrests and charges are going to be against male. It's a vicious circle with of acting on the probability in the end resulting in the "probability" creating itself.

Out of a hundred DV homicides, how many were committed by the wife? As for custody, I know a lot of men who get custody.

One reason for the lower number of male deaths is that in general males can "handle" more damage, and females tend to inflict less damage. How many abused men would have been killed if the attack had been male on female and not female on male. Take the example of Ian McNicholl who along with other attacks was beaten with a metal bar and hammer. He suffered serve injuries and his ex-wife ended up in jail, but had this been a M on F, it likely would have been a fatal attak.

I'm saying that your argument is non causa pro causa.

Surveys and actual studies into DV are showing that a large percentage of men are victims of DV, with reported attacks now making up about 40% of all DV (and we know it's higher because there is still a major social stigma against reporting it and studies indicate the number is higher.) Yet most Police forces are still under the impression that in DV cases it is the male who is responsible and even have standing orders that in a DV case the male is to be removed from the scene regardless of who the victim is. I have even seen a number of cases where the male victim of DV was demanded by the courts to undergo anger management because they acted in self defence against a female aggressor, how many women would be sent to anger management for acting in self defence against a male attacker?

How is this not a case of misandry embedded in our law enforcement?

As for the court systems, when it comes to child custody there is a very clear bias again men, all a mother has to do is claim abuse or child abuse, and the father is screwed. In our education systems we are losing male teachers at a seriously major rate of knots because of fears of being accused of sexual inappropriateness since even an allegation of such is a career destroyer regardless of the truth.

The same with false rape claims, where innocent men have been imprisoned merely on the word of an alledged victim, who even when it turns out was lying through her teeth and all the evidence shows that no rape occured, is still accepted as a victim because she must have been attacked under different circumstances, and is then let off making life altering accusations with a slap on the wrist.

It didn't always use to be this way, 20-30 years ago it was way too far in the other direction, rape victims got blamed for it, beaten wives were ignored, men could divorce their wives and leave them penniless, heck it wasn't even an offense to rape your wife. That sucked major time too, and the pendulum was way too far in favour of men because Law Enforcement and the Courts were male run institutions fulled with misogyny, however in trying to fix that issue, all that has happened is that we have swung the pendulum right the way to the other end of the spectrum and now instead of favouring men it is bias against them in a fear of appearing to favour them.

Somehow we need to get it into the middle where Law Enforcement and the Courts can determine the results based on individual cases with an understanding that both men and women can and indeed are at fault fairly evenly and not just make assumptions that are quite faulty.

[PhantomWolf]

The majority of feminist extremists are dead. This does tend to reduce their influence somewhat. The majority of MRA extremists are high profile. They are the owners of websites and authors of blogs, not just the commentors and other unruly hordes.

There is an example in this very thread by the way. Naive says that manbooz is bigoted. The only thing that site does is report with commentary on what is actually said within the MRA community by both high profile individuals and the hordes.

Surely one of the issues is the age of the movement, one started 30 years ago, got hijacked, and now those that hijacked have passed on and left the moderate ones who were always there with a very valid message.

The other is new and hasn't had time for natural attrition to take out the idiots and left the vital and very valid message that the moderates are trying to get out. By invalidating the moderate message because of the extremists, aren't you doing the same things those that have opposed and attacked all civil rights movements of the past 40-50+ years?

[Moss]

You're right; it doesn't.

I think it's meaningful to point out, however, that the reverse would likely not even be asked here (or would be immediately flamed into oblivion if asked) -- "Are those who refuse to promote women really wrong, or is the 'glass ceiling' just an acknowledgement that women don't have the same drive and leadership skills as men?"

No, see, we begin with the assumption that people are equal, and we fight when we encounter evidence that they're being meaningfully discriminated against. When judges routinely assume the mother's custody unless overwhelming evidence is given to the contrary, when police procedures routinely use "he" to describe the abuser and police routinely arrest the man even if he made the call to the police and is the only injured party at the scene, the right question is not, "Doesn't society beat up on men because they deserve it?"


The problem with that is that in the specific case is that statistics seem to hold up with those assumptions. Especially those about violent crime.
I'm only familiar with the German statistics. But the ratio of male to female in crime in general is 4 to 1. When it comes to violent crime the rate is somewhere between 10 to 1 to 15 to 1.
I agree with you that each specific case should be handled free of bias because the individual in question has the right to a fair legal process.
But on the other hand: those assumptions are not just based on a misandrist ideology for its own sake. Men are more likely to be violent than women. They are also better equipped to act their violent impulses. I'm not sure if this is bias or precaution.

[Mark6]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.

You asked a question, I answered it.

Does not mean the answer it relevant to anything today. :D

[jiggeryqua]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.


Well, books decades and centuries and millenia old written by men have kept alive ideas that damage all or some of humanity. Why do you suppose something written by a woman couldn't be just as harmful? You're a feminist, it can't be misogyny...

Someone earlier asked for proof of 'groups' dedicated to misandrist causes (the killing of all men, particularly). How deliciously patriarchal - if there isn't a registered group, in the traditional masculine model, then the thought doesn't exist. I've met plenty of women who support the idea, in moments of stress or sisterhood. Less radical ideas prosper - I no longer live on the 25yr old concensus commune that was once my paradise home. Someone decided 'as much power as everyone else, and less than no-one' wasn't good enough. After all, men had all the power for 4,000 years...

They succeeded, admirably, making an elderly couple homeless, driving off the guy who doubled our vegetable harvest (and me, and a couple of other people to whom equality mattered). They were building, so they told me, 'women's country' (from a mildy amusing misandrist fantasy novel by Sherri S. Tepper).

They didn't need to be a 'group'. They have no web page I can link to, with a man-ifesto (ty Mary Daly). There's no proof they ever existed. But they do, as do so many women like them (and some useful men cf Robert Graves), and their misandrist ideas flow through unrecognised channels. If it helps not jar your childhood training, feel free to call me a liar.

Women are the equal of men, men are the equal of women. That's equality. Feminism could have been, but isn't. You can't create equality by focussing on only one side of the equation. At best, we have a society like an amateur haircut, with each side being sequentially lopped off to try and balance it all up.

[bookitty]

Surely one of the issues is the age of the movement, one started 30 years ago, got hijacked, and now those that hijacked have passed on and left the moderate ones who were always there with a very valid message.

The other is new and hasn't had time for natural attrition to take out the idiots and left the vital and very valid message that the moderates are trying to get out. By invalidating the moderate message because of the extremists, aren't you doing the same things those that have opposed and attacked all civil rights movements of the past 40-50+ years?

This hijacking affects me as well. The moderates and I are in agreement, our activism is mutually supportive regardless of which gender receives the bulk of our separate focus. It deprives the drive towards gender equality of valued allies - specifically those men who are moved to make social change because of the harm caused by gender stereotypes.

If I were in support of civil rights 50 years ago, I would still have spoken out against groups who thought that violence or terrorism was a valid tactic.

[PhantomWolf]

Out of a hundred DV homicides, how many were committed by the wife?

Best I could find in a short look was reference to a DoJ study that had a 41%/59% split in spousal murders of the Husband/Wife. I doubt it only covered DV murders though.

[PhantomWolf]

This hijacking affects me as well. The moderates and I are in agreement, our activism is mutually supportive regardless of which gender receives the bulk of our separate focus. It deprives the drive towards gender equality of valued allies - specifically those men who are moved to make social change because of the harm caused by gender stereotypes.

If I were in support of civil rights 50 years ago, I would still have spoken out against groups who thought that violence or terrorism was a valid tactic.

I hope that in the end we can all meet in the middle and throw out gender as a factor in how someone gets treated either positively, or negatively. In the end it needs to be treatment on an individual basis for everyone. It's a dream, and likely a long way off though.

[jiggeryqua]

Out of a hundred DV homicides, how many were committed by the wife?

Out of a hundred DV homicides, how many people ended up dead? How many people murdered their partners?

Why does gender matter to you in this question?

Oh, and which one is the 'wife' when a gay guy murders his partner or a lesbian murders hers?

[PhantomWolf]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.

ETA: A fix for flawed memory.

I could be terrible and note that Ma'alim fi al-Tariq or Milestones was writting by Sayyid Qutb, who died in 1966, and one could ask the same question was quite a different answer. ;)

[bookitty]

I hope that in the end we can all meet in the middle and throw out gender as a factor in how someone gets treated either positively, or negatively. In the end it needs to be treatment on an individual basis for everyone. It's a dream, and likely a long way off though.

Very few dreams are achieved with violence. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, I'm familiar with (and personally experienced) some of the tactics used by the more aggressive MRA's but under different circumstances.

Operation Rescue has published the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors. When those doctors get shot, Terry Randall or some other faux-pious piece of excrement claims innocence. Their cause, you see, is so very important that they had to publish that info in hopes of getting the doctors to quit. Getting shot was just some lone gunman taking it too far. Too bad, so sad.

While working as a clinic escort* in Atlanta, I had my picture taken, watched people take down license plates, had notes show up on my front door. I've had people tell me that they would shut me down if I didn't step back, that they would make mother sorry she didn't abort me, that if I died no one would miss me. The goal was to make me fear for my life. The most effective way to do that is with proof that harm will follow. We have evidence that it can.

The MRA's are revving up to the point of personal confrontation with individuals. Right now they have a website that tracks women they disagree with and they post as much info as possible. I've seen this before. Except now there is an echo chamber of violent rhetoric in people can remain anonymous and therefore free to express every sort of ugliness.

Whether or not the MRA's as individuals condone beating, raping, and killing women, their spokespeople are not above using that imagery or implying that such actions would help their "cause."


* a volunteer who helps women past the demonstrators.

[ANTPogo]

I could be terrible and note that Ma'alim fi al-Tariq or Milestones was writting by Sayyid Qutb, who died in 1966, and one could ask the same question was quite a different answer. ;)

There are quite a few (and quite active) organizations today which are inspired by Qutb and his writings.

For Solanas, on the other hand, not so much.

[PhantomWolf]

Very few dreams are achieved with violence. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, I'm familiar with (and personally experienced) some of the tactics used by the more aggressive MRA's but under different circumstances.

Operation Rescue has published the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors. When those doctors get shot, Terry Randall or some other faux-pious piece of excrement claims innocence. Their cause, you see, is so very important that they had to publish that info in hopes of getting the doctors to quit. Getting shot was just some lone gunman taking it too far. Too bad, so sad.

While working as a clinic escort* in Atlanta, I had my picture taken, watched people take down license plates, had notes show up on my front door. I've had people tell me that they would shut me down if I didn't step back, that they would make mother sorry she didn't abort me, that if I died no one would miss me. The goal was to make me fear for my life. The most effective way to do that is with proof that harm will follow. We have evidence that it can.

The MRA's are revving up to the point of personal confrontation with individuals. Right now they have a website that tracks women they disagree with and they post as much info as possible. I've seen this before. Except now there is an echo chamber of violent rhetoric in people can remain anonymous and therefore free to express every sort of ugliness.

Whether or not the MRA's as individuals condone beating, raping, and killing women, their spokespeople are not above using that imagery or implying that such actions would help their "cause."


* a volunteer who helps women past the demonstrators.

I totally agree, and I don't condone violence, my message is don't tar all Men's Activists with the same brush. Just because there are morons out there that if they actually had a braincell it'd die of loneliness, doesn't mean that men's rights should be wantonly tramped all over and that anyone that stands up and objects should be painted as evil doers simply for doing so.

Sadly the same is true for other causes, because of the hateful idiots that have tarnished them, it has become far too easy to simply lump any real activists that do believe in equality for all and want to work towards it by being willing to stand up against so called reverse discrimination, with all the hateful morons as a way to discredit the message.

In the end what we really ned is equal treatment for everyone, and that means dealing with those that think that they should have priority based on a quirk of birth, regardless of which side of the debate they are on.

Yes denouce those people that are mixing hate into the message, but don't lose the real message in doing so. Running rough shod over anyone's rights, be they male or female, black or white, martian or venutian is wrong, so we all need to denouce all the haters, and not just the ones on one side.

Thus, just as those embracing the "evil woman" memes or thinking violence is acceptable are idiots and wrong and should be dealt with, however so are those that use such canards as that discussion on male victims of DV minimizes the effects of men who abuse women,and so actively attempt to supress such things (and yes I have seen that happen in NZ recently with Woman's Refugee blasting a documentary on Male victims of DV because it "Undermined and devaluded the cause of Female victims.")

Until certain groups (on boths side of the fence) understand and accept that anyone can be a victim, and that it is those victims that need help, and the abusers that need to be dealt with regardless of who they are, but instead want the pendulum swung right over their side, we're never going to get it right, and in the end, it's up to us moderates who want everyone's rights respected to get it there. You can't do that by appearing to take a side though.

[PhantomWolf]

There are quite a few (and quite active) organizations today which are inspired by Qutb and his writings.

For Solanas, on the other hand, not so much.

Though you made my point for me, once a manuscript exists, all it takes is a few idiots to band together around it and you have trouble. Mein Kampf would be another example.

[bookitty]

I totally agree, and I don't condone violence, my message is don't tar all Men's Activists with the same brush. Just because there are morons out there that if they actually had a braincell it'd die of loneliness, doesn't mean that men's rights should be wantonly tramped all over and that anyone that stands up and objects should be painted as evil doers simply for doing so.

Sadly the same is true for other causes, because of the hateful idiots that have tarnished them, it has become far too easy to simply lump any real activists that do believe in equality for all and want to work towards it by being willing to stand up against so called reverse discrimination, with all the hateful morons as a way to discredit the message.

In the end what we really ned is equal treatment for everyone, and that means dealing with those that think that they should have priority based on a quirk of birth, regardless of which side of the debate they are on.

Yes denouce those people that are mixing hate into the message, but don't lose the real message in doing so. Running rough shod over anyone's rights, be they male or female, black or white, martian or venutian is wrong, so we all need to denouce all the haters, and not just the ones on one side.

Thus, just as those embracing the "evil woman" memes or thinking violence is acceptable are idiots and wrong and should be dealt with, however so are those that use such canards as that discussion on male victims of DV minimizes the effects of men who abuse women,and so actively attempt to supress such things (and yes I have seen that happen in NZ recently with Woman's Refugee blasting a documentary on Male victims of DV because it "Undermined and devaluded the cause of Female victims.")

Until certain groups (on boths side of the fence) understand and accept that anyone can be a victim, and that it is those victims that need help, and the abusers that need to be dealt with regardless of who they are, but instead want the pendulum swung right over their side, we're never going to get it right, and in the end, it's up to us moderates who want everyone's rights respected to get it there. You can't do that by appearing to take a side though.

I agree. Give me the names of the three top MRA spokespeople/activists and (if they refrain from supporting violence and can see gender equality as something other than a zero-sum game) I will be happy to credit their views before those of louder, less egalitarian MRA supporters.

[jiggeryqua]

I agree. Give me the names of the three top MRA spokespeople/activists and (if they refrain from supporting violence and can see gender equality as something other than a zero-sum game) I will be happy to credit their views before those of louder, less egalitarian MRA supporters.

Let me start you off with Matt O'Connor, founder of Fathers4Justice, who appeared on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour to debate with a self-elected spokeswoman for women. He started out by calling for an end to the gender war, if only for the sake of the children.

"No", came the response. Not "No, there is no gender war" but "No. If women are to have more, it must be taken from men."

[bookitty]

Let me start you off with Matt O'Connor, founder of Fathers4Justice, who appeared on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour to debate with a self-elected spokeswoman for women. He started out by calling for an end to the gender war, if only for the sake of the children.

"No", came the response. Not "No, there is no gender war" but "No. If women are to have more, it must be taken from men."

http://fathers-4-justice.org, a good site. I look forward to delving more deeply. Father's rights have my full support and have for many years. It will be interesting to contrast and compare issues in the UK with the US.

I would also be interested in a full transcript of the radio broadcast. These sorts of things do tend to get edited for agenda.

[jiggeryqua]

http://fathers-4-justice.org, a good site. I look forward to delving more deeply. Father's rights have my full support and have for many years. It will be interesting to contrast and compare issues in the UK with the US.

I would also be interested in a full transcript of the radio broadcast. These sorts of things do tend to get edited for agenda.

Tried to find one afterwards and couldn't. It was several years ago now, but it stuck in my mind. I have a lot of respect for the BBC, especially Radio 4, which is the intellectual station, but maybe Woman's Hour was maliciously edited to make the woman look bad...

[bookitty]

Tried to find one afterwards and couldn't. It was several years ago now, but it stuck in my mind. I have a lot of respect for the BBC, especially Radio 4, which is the intellectual station, but maybe Woman's Hour was maliciously edited to make the woman look bad...

I doubt that. What you heard was very likely what was said. (I've heard stupider stuff from smarter people) But without context, it's not terribly compelling.

[jiggeryqua]

I doubt that. What you heard was very likely what was said. (I've heard stupider stuff from smarter people) But without context, it's not terribly compelling.

The context is as stated. Someone (I didn't recognise and don't remember her name) was invited on to national radio to represent women. When Matt O'Connor opened with a call for peace, she responded with a commitment to war. Because women can't create wealth, apparantly - it "must be taken from men".

[catsmate1]

I will take the SPLC seriously on this issue as soon as they add the feminist groups encouraging the death of all males to their list.
Such as? I'm not aware of any such groups, apart from Solanas and SCUM. If that actually existed as a group. Even Dunbar and Cell 16 didn't expose such views.

Why do you think the blathering of an idiot who knows sod-all about small-cell terrorist operations has any value in this discussion?
That blogger appears to have issue with SPLC in general; he posts the same comments around the web.

[PhantomWolf]

The context is as stated. Someone (I didn't recognise and don't remember her name) was invited on to national radio to represent women. When Matt O'Connor opened with a call for peace, she responded with a commitment to war. Because women can't create wealth, apparantly - it "must be taken from men".

It seems to be a strange belief, but there are a lot of people that believe that for them to have a right, something has to be taken from someone else, or that other, opposing groups, should not get the same rights.

I had a very good friend in Varsity who was advocating that all government representatives should be 50% male and 50% female. Sure it sounds good, but what happens when woman number 51 is way better then man number 50, why should he get the job just because he's a man and she miss out because she's not? In the end as we are both rational people we came to the conclusion the best way to get more women into politics is for women to take the game on and get themselves there showing that they are the best and for other women to vote for them. (Given that there are more women than men in most western countries, and that some men will vote for a women candidate, with a little effort, most western countries could easily be run by women, it's just a case of them getting it happening if they want it.)

The same for a lot of other things. Where there are obvious cases of discrimination, they need to be dealt with, but just because there is a percieved bias doesn't mean there really is one. (eg there are far less male nurses, that doesn't mean there is a real barrier to a male being a nurse, just less males are interested in doing it.) By getting out and working for what you want, whoever you are, you'll get it, but standing back and expecting it to be taken off someone else and given to you because there was some form of discrimination in the past and now it's pay back time, is just as wrong as the original harm.

[jiggeryqua]

Man 50 should get the job over woman 51, You just said so. 50% representation. What the impracticality of that should have prompted in each of you is the realisation that gender is irrelevant. If only feminists (for which we should, apparantly, read 'equalitists') had been preaching that, I expect you'd have got it.

Who represents 'women'? A.N.Other-Woman? I don't think so. QE2 doesn't represent anyone but an overprivileged class who think they're entitled to a royal yacht. Can a man represent all his constituents, regardless of gender? The answer is yes, of course, just as a woman could, but if you insist on 'no' then the answer is one male and one female member of parliament per constituency, not 'this constituency voted in a man, we'd best make sure the next one only has women to choose from'. But if you insist on 'no', then you're unlikely to opt for the sensible solution.

By the by, you accept that some men would vote for women, but gloss over the fact that, since emancipation, most women vote for men. Any country could easily be ruled by women (again, why does gender matter to you?) but look, they're not.

For the record, less men are nurses, that's not disputed. But you make a woeful assumption if you claim that men are simply uninterested. Men don't look for 'rewarding' (ie poorly rewarded) work, however interested they might be in it, because they know that (most) women are mostly interested in men with money, not compassion or principles. Gender assumptions, 'sexism', affects (you may need to sit down at this point) both sexes. It's not about women (and let's agree to call 'extremists' all the mainstream feminists who claim it is).

[TheJim]

The funniest part of this is somehow Amanda Marcotte is a victim of hate? Amanda Marcotte of

"I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and ********** her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair


and

"Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology"

fame.

[TheJim]

This is what got one site listed on their list of misogynist sites

An Associated Press article quotes, without comment, reaction, judgment, or irony, longtime Iowa residents Margaret Bickers and Mary Davenport. "Women are just more passionate than the men," Bickers told a reporter. "We need a woman who is not afraid to vocalize that passion and effect change."

"It takes a woman to get things done," Davenport chimed in. Both said they were inclined to caucus for Bachmann.

Regarding that last statement: I wonder if the news report would have been written the same way if the the person quoted had said, "It takes a man to get things done," or "a Jew," or "a Catholic," or "a Muslim."

[catsmate1]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.

ETA: A fix for flawed memory.
Not to mention that some people consider the manifesto a Poe or parody; "<the> SCUM manifesto parodies the performance of patriarchal social order it refuses" [Winkiel], "if we examine the text more closely, we see that its analysis of patriarchal reality is a parody" [Castr, who compares it to Swift] or "like other feminist satires, the 'SCUM Manifesto' attempts to politicize women by attacking particular masculine myths that are embedded in American popular culture" [Penner].

[iknownothing]

For the record, less men are nurses, that's not disputed. But you make a woeful assumption if you claim that men are simply uninterested. Men don't look for 'rewarding' (ie poorly rewarded) work, however interested they might be in it, because they know that (most) women are mostly interested in men with money, not compassion or principles. Gender assumptions, 'sexism', affects (you may need to sit down at this point) both sexes. It's not about women (and let's agree to call 'extremists' all the mainstream feminists who claim it is).

Odd example. Nurses make good money. My impression was that men are more worried about being seen as too feminine (by both men and women) to work as nurses. (Like all the jokes about male nurses in Meet the Parents.)

And it's interesting that you make your little "you may need to sit down" comment. Are you talking to Bookittyor someone else? If I wasn't on my iPad, I'd go back to quote the times on this thread alone that she has said that sexism is bad for both genders.

[leftysergeant]

When judges routinely assume the mother's custody unless overwhelming evidence is given to the contrary, when police procedures routinely use "he" to describe the abuser and police routinely arrest the man even if he made the call to the police and is the only injured party at the scene, the right question is not, "Doesn't society beat up on men because they deserve it?"Documentation?

[jiggeryqua]

Odd example. Nurses make good money. My impression was that men are more worried about being seen as too feminine (by both men and women) to work as nurses. (Like all the jokes about male nurses in Meet the Parents.)

And it's interesting that you make your little "you may need to sit down" comment. Are you talking to Bookittyor someone else? If I wasn't on my iPad, I'd go back to quote the times on this thread alone that she has said that sexism is bad for both genders.

The example may seem odd to you - take it up with the person I was clearly responding to (their post was immediately above mine, my post started by referring to their particular comments on 50% representation, and so on). It wasn't Bookitty, though it's certainly gallant of you to leap to her defence.

[iknownothing]

The example may seem odd to you - take it up with the person I was clearly responding to (their post was immediately above mine, my post started by referring to their particular comments on 50% representation, and so on). It wasn't Bookitty, though it's certainly gallant of you to leap to her defence.

Hah, yeah I missed the third paragraph in that post. I do try to read everything before responding, but sometimes I miss something.

However, I wasn't leaping to the defense of Bookitty in particular -- I often see women, yes even feminists, talking about how bad sexism is for both genders. So it frustrates me when anti-feminists come up with that, as if that's a disagreement with feminism instead of a point of agreement.

[jiggeryqua]

Documentation?

This (www.familytx.org/research/Control_DV_against_men.pdf), by Charles E. Corry, Martin S. Fiebert, and Erin Pizzey, makes the claim several times, but doesn't helpfully indicate where in the extensive References section we can find detailed statistics. It's hardly an extraordinary claim though, is it? Men are violent, we all know that, and if you lock up women what happens to the kids? And so on.

I'm sure the situation has improved some in recent years, and in my own experience police will often not arrest the man, but it is almost always the man that they remove from the situation and bring to the homeless hostel at which I work, on the understanding we will give them a bed for the night.

A google search found several early entries claiming 'women more likely to be arrested in DV cases', but it turns out they're not more likely than men to be arrested, it's just noticeable that they're being arrested more than they used to be. A promising sign of progression towards equality, I'm sure you'll agree.

This (http://www.nij.gov/publications/dv-dual-arrest-222679/ch1/findings.htm), from the US National Institute of Justice, a mere 4 years ago, shows some further progress:

Men and women were equally likely to be arrested in incidents involving intimate partners or strangers as long as the circumstances were similar (e.g., equally serious offenses were committed).
Men were more likely to be arrested in domestic violence incidents that did not involve intimate partners and incidents involving acquaintances.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

A manifesto written in the late 60's by a woman who died in the early 90's late 80's? Please explain what threat it could possibly pose to society today.

ETA: A fix for flawed memory.

Maybe she had kids?

[crimresearch]

This (www.familytx.org/research/Control_DV_against_men.pdf), by Charles E. Corry, Martin S. Fiebert, and Erin Pizzey, makes the claim several times, but doesn't helpfully indicate where in the extensive References section we can find detailed statistics. It's hardly an extraordinary claim though, is it? Men are violent, we all know that, and if you lock up women what happens to the kids? And so on.

I'm sure the situation has improved some in recent years, and in my own experience police will often not arrest the man, but it is almost always the man that they remove from the situation and bring to the homeless hostel at which I work, on the understanding we will give them a bed for the night.

A google search found several early entries claiming 'women more likely to be arrested in DV cases', but it turns out they're not more likely than men to be arrested, it's just noticeable that they're being arrested more than they used to be. A promising sign of progression towards equality, I'm sure you'll agree.

This (http://www.nij.gov/publications/dv-dual-arrest-222679/ch1/findings.htm), from the US National Institute of Justice, a mere 4 years ago, shows some further progress:

Men and women were equally likely to be arrested in incidents involving intimate partners or strangers as long as the circumstances were similar (e.g., equally serious offenses were committed).
Men were more likely to be arrested in domestic violence incidents that did not involve intimate partners and incidents involving acquaintances.

It is a sign of evolving away from the 50s/60s standard of 'Don't make us come back here, keep it quiet so the neighbors don't call', or the 70s/80's, 'Ma'am, you'll have to come down to the magistrate and file a complaint, and then we can do something', to the 90s PRIDE and other programs aimed at taking everyone in based on physical evidence, and letting the courts sort things out.

[bookitty]

This (www.familytx.org/research/Control_DV_against_men.pdf), by Charles E. Corry, Martin S. Fiebert, and Erin Pizzey, makes the claim several times, but doesn't helpfully indicate where in the extensive References section we can find detailed statistics. It's hardly an extraordinary claim though, is it? Men are violent, we all know that, and if you lock up women what happens to the kids? And so on.

I'm sure the situation has improved some in recent years, and in my own experience police will often not arrest the man, but it is almost always the man that they remove from the situation and bring to the homeless hostel at which I work, on the understanding we will give them a bed for the night.

A google search found several early entries claiming 'women more likely to be arrested in DV cases', but it turns out they're not more likely than men to be arrested, it's just noticeable that they're being arrested more than they used to be. A promising sign of progression towards equality, I'm sure you'll agree.

This (http://www.nij.gov/publications/dv-dual-arrest-222679/ch1/findings.htm), from the US National Institute of Justice, a mere 4 years ago, shows some further progress:

Men and women were equally likely to be arrested in incidents involving intimate partners or strangers as long as the circumstances were similar (e.g., equally serious offenses were committed).
Men were more likely to be arrested in domestic violence incidents that did not involve intimate partners and incidents involving acquaintances.


A trend toward arresting both parties in DV cases is a positive. As I have already pointed out, there are many factors beyond gender which contribute to violence in the home. For some of those factors, like poverty, there is no short-term solution. For some of the others like substance abuse or depression, treatment options may reduce incidences. Anger management can be helpful. Either of the partners may be in need of these services.

If the couple does not live together, they should have the option of filing mutual restraining orders (which is to say that if one partner wants one, the other automatically receives the same.)

Right now our response to DV is to figure out which partner is the monster. This is not helpful, it doesn't treat the cause and it makes it more difficult for both parties to get the help they need.

ETA: iknownothing was able to miraculously read past the word "feminist" to what I had actually said. As this is the barest, most basic form of courtesy on a forum, it hardly counts as gallantry. Although it was greatly appreciated.

Maybe she had kids?

Ha! And I'm guessing you don't. Although we do tend to pick up a lot of ideas and attitudes from our parents, very few people go for intellectual nepotism.

[AvalonXQ]

Maybe she had kids?

I bet she did.

And I bet she found them delicious. :boxedin:

[jiggeryqua]

ETA: iknownothing was able to miraculously read past the word "feminist" to what I had actually said. As this is the barest, most basic form of courtesy on a forum, it hardly counts as gallantry. Although it was greatly appreciated.


And what I actually said wasn't directed at you, or referring to you, in any way. As I actually said, later, after the gallantry. I thought it amusing that he should have leapt to the assumption that it was addressed to you. That's not courtesy, that's kneejerk gallantry....with just a hint of mud-slinging, especially when he implies I'm an 'anti-feminist', as if that meant anti-equality. If I had an iPad, I'd list all the times I've said I'm very much in favour of equality, very much in favour of removing gender from any discussion where it's unhelpful to that goal. I'm not particularly in favour of feminism, for reasons also clearly stated previously - including that much of what claims that umbrella term is bigotry, and that much else attempts (or perhaps only attempted) to create 'equality' for one group, often at the expense of 'equality' for the other. Oh, and the experience of DV and the response to it of society at large. And being thrown out of paradise so some bigots could form Women's Country, of course.

I know, they were not 'True Feminists', and what happens to me doesn't count, it's academic research that matters (though you may recall that early feminists decried patriarchal academic 'proof' and valued the anecdotes of women).

Equality doesn't really need an '-ism' (especially one so unfortunately named..) You either do it, and demand it, or not. It needs laws - we have them, in the UK & US certainly. It needs time - and the last decade or so has shown real progress in social attitudes. It needs willingness to change - which is equally difficult for women in their relationships with men as vice versa.

[bookitty]

And what I actually said wasn't directed at you, or referring to you, in any way. As I actually said, later, after the gallantry. I thought it amusing that he should have leapt to the assumption that it was addressed to you. That's not courtesy, that's kneejerk gallantry....with just a hint of mud-slinging, especially when he implies I'm an 'anti-feminist', as if that meant anti-equality. If I had an iPad, I'd list all the times I've said I'm very much in favour of equality, very much in favour of removing gender from any discussion where it's unhelpful to that goal. I'm not particularly in favour of feminism, for reasons also clearly stated previously - including that much of what claims that umbrella term is bigotry, and that much else attempts (or perhaps only attempted) to create 'equality' for one group, often at the expense of 'equality' for the other. Oh, and the experience of DV and the response to it of society at large. And being thrown out of paradise so some bigots could form Women's Country, of course.

I know, they were not 'True Feminists', and what happens to me doesn't count, it's academic research that matters (though you may recall that early feminists decried patriarchal academic 'proof' and valued the anecdotes of women).

Equality doesn't really need an '-ism' (especially one so unfortunately named..) You either do it, and demand it, or not. It needs laws - we have them, in the UK & US certainly. It needs time - and the last decade or so has shown real progress in social attitudes. It needs willingness to change - which is equally difficult for women in their relationships with men as vice versa.

Did you read anything I wrote on DV? or did you merely use the PS of my ETA as a jumping off point for this little soapbox?

[iknownothing]

As I actually said, later, after the gallantry. I thought it amusing that he should have leapt to the assumption that it was addressed to you.

Actually I'm a she, not a he. :) Why did you assume "gallantry"? I asked if you were addressing Bookitty because I was seeking to clarify. No need to read more into it.

just a hint of mud-slinging, especially when he implies I'm an 'anti-feminist',
...snip...
I'm not particularly in favour of feminism

? I didn't say you were anti-equality. What I think is that you are incorrect when you think feminists in general are anti-equality.

And being thrown out of paradise so some bigots could form Women's Country, of course.

That story sounds like a kind of commune experience? What the leaders of that particular group did doesn't reflect on anyone except themselves (and the other members who went along with it).

I know, they were not 'True Feminists', and what happens to me doesn't count

No, but that sounds like an unusual group to begin with...I would have to understand a lot more about that to know what I think.

[jiggeryqua]

Did you read anything I wrote on DV? or did you merely use the PS of my ETA as a jumping off point for this little soapbox?

Ah, the little man has a little soapbox. To be fair, that may be run-of-the-mill belittling with no awareness of gender...

I am at a loss as to why you believe your first question to be relevant (the answer is yes, by the way).

I 'merely' (there you go again) responded to your ETA (which is now also a PS, apparantly, so everyone knows it wasn't important and I'm over-reacting).

Your ETA suggested a miracle - I don't think you believe in them, and what you meant was that I had failed to do the simple thing that he had done: to read what you "actually said". Given that we'd just established my earlier remarks were not addressed to you or about you, either you didn't perform the miracle of reading what I actually wrote, or you didn't need to read it because your gallant friend had told you what he erroneously thought I'd said.

I did, as you cattily noted, continue a train of thought from that response to your ETA. If you consider any of it egregiously off-topic, do the right thing and report it.

As for it being from a 'soapbox', I don't need one, I'm not preaching an -ism.

[Galteeth]

Maybe she had kids?

She did not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Solanas

[Naive1000]

...[snip]... Please, give an example of a feminist group that is encouraging the death of men. I will be happy to send it to the SPLC and ask that they add it to their groups to be watched. ...[snip]...

Have you contacted the SPLC about "RadFem Hub" who were calling for the elimination of boys, selective male abortion, the subjugation of all men, and the killing of all MtF transpeople? I had a thread about it if you remember, but they were a "fringe group" even though it was shown some were feminist government lobbyists pushing for gendered laws. Also, unlike the MRM they meet and organise once a year at the "SCUM convention" (held last year in Perth).


ETA: A word on Radfems, the SPLC and ugly hypocrisy (http://www.ofmb.org/2012/03/word-on-radfems-splc-and-ugly-hypocrisy.html)

[Cleon]

Have you contacted the SPLC about "RadFem Hub" who were calling for the elimination of boys, selective male abortion, the subjugation of all men, and the killing of all MtF transpeople?

I'm going to stop right there and call BS.

[Naive1000]

I'm going to stop right there and call BS.

Go look at the thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=224369) -- the comments were linked, and clearly readable. Ask bookitty she was part of the thread. Also, the link I posted has screen shots.

[Cleon]

Go look at the thread -- the comments were linked, and clearly readable. Ask bookitty she was part of the thread. Also, the link I posted has screen shots.

No. Just no. This is your claim:


Have you contacted the SPLC about "RadFem Hub" who were calling for the elimination of boys, selective male abortion, the subjugation of all men, and the killing of all MtF transpeople?


And the evidence you offer that RadFem Hub calls for all of these things etc is blog comments? Not just blog comments, but blog comments that your link has creatively added their own "interpretations" and summaries to.

Pure BS.

[Naive1000]

No. Just no. This is your claim:



And the evidence you offer that RadFem Hub calls for all of these things etc is blog comments? Not just blog comments, but blog comments that your link has creatively added their own "interpretations" and summaries to.

Pure BS.

And what do they offer for r/MensRights ... comments. Also, look at the orginal RadFem article and the response from the author talking about a biological solution to malehood.


PS: Likely my last comment on this today - my internet lines are being worked on so my connection keeps going out.

[bookitty]

And what do they offer for r/MensRights ... comments. Also, look at the orginal RadFem article and the response from the author talking about a biological solution to malehood.


PS: Likely my last comment on this today - my internet lines are being worked on so my connection keeps going out.

No. Paul Elam, of a Voice for Men and one of the granddaddies of the MRA has asked his followers to try to get on jury duty to acquit rapists even if they are obviously guilty, has said many times that fear and pain is the only way to get the respect he feels the MRA deserves, and has a long history of violent, explicit, and graphic rhetoric against women. Of course, the comments on his site are even worse but he's always happy to jump in and encourage it.

[Galteeth]

I would say both of these groups (A Voice for men and RadFem) are hate groups.

[TragicMonkey]

I think the men's rights movement would be taken more seriously if all of its major proponents didn't have messy divorces in their past. It's hard not to think of people grinding a personal axe when they arrive in a cloud of axe-shavings.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I think the men's rights movement would be taken more seriously if all of its major proponents didn't have messy divorces in their past. It's hard not to think of people grinding a personal axe when they arrive in a cloud of axe-shavings.

With roughly 50% of marriages ending in divorce, this is a specious line of argument on the face of it. But even moreso, there is also the fallacy that someone is not allowed to propose things they would benefit from: eg Slaves cannot argue for freedom, since they would benefit from it. Pot smokers can't argue for decriminalization. Etc.

Divorce means child custody battles which traditionally had been won by women with the men paying child support, alimony, or both. The Father's Rights movement (not men's rights) fought for more equality in custody among other things. So it is especially illogical to criticize the men who fought for father's rights because they had a reason to.

That's the father's rights movement. This author's "mens rights movement" is a fiction of the author, but we all know it is bad because it incluides pick up artists and pedophiles and people who marry asians.

[Galteeth]

So, this topic got me interested, and I did some looking around. Apparently there are some "feminazis" so to speak (the posts regarding radfem was really the first time I have heard about this.)

The thing is, for some reason, and in its own way it may be sexist, the feminist hate groups don't strike me as threatening in the same way the male hate groups do. The radfem people just seem moreso insane then scary to me

This article from radfem is a pretty good look at the craziness.
http://radicalhub.com/2012/02/08/its-the-trauma-bonding-talking/

[rustypouch]

With roughly 50% of marriages ending in divorce, this is a specious line of argument on the face of it. But even moreso, there is also the fallacy that someone is not allowed to propose things they would benefit from: eg Slaves cannot argue for freedom, since they would benefit from it. Pot smokers can't argue for decriminalization. Etc.

Divorce means child custody battles which traditionally had been won by women with the men paying child support, alimony, or both. The Father's Rights movement (not men's rights) fought for more equality in custody among other things. So it is especially illogical to criticize the men who fought for father's rights because they had a reason to.

That's the father's rights movement. This author's "mens rights movement" is a fiction of the author, but we all know it is bad because it incluides pick up artists and pedophiles and people who marry asians.

Besides these issues, there's a sizable number of young men out there with the impression that society in general just doesn't care about them, and that their opinions and concerns are ignored or disregarded. Some young men do try to speak about this.

[leftysergeant]

Divorce means child custody battles which traditionally had been won by women with the men paying child support, alimony, or both. The Father's Rights movement (not men's rights) fought for more equality in custody among other things. So it is especially illogical to criticize the men who fought for father's rights because they had a reason to.

Had fewer of the turds I met who take this position not been caught doinking around, I might concede that you had a point.

[bookitty]

Had fewer of the turds I met who take this position not been caught doinking around, I might concede that you had a point.

Screwing around isn't relegated to gender. Nor does having an extra-marital affair make someone a bad parent. Fidelity is between the parents, not between the parent and child. I can't see any reason why the issue should be raised in a custody battle and I don't think it should be used to penalize anyone.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Had fewer of the turds I met who take this position not been caught doinking around, I might concede that you had a point.

Ha ha - that's hilarious. They're all pedophiles too, right? This right here sounds like something Hitler would say. :rolleyes:

I love manipulative ad hominem/poisoning of the well attacks: Fathers rights advocates are infidels. Really - yer crackin' me up here. Obviously, infidels should have no rights. :)

You know what is so deliciously ironic about this attack is that the law protects us against people like you that would impose a moral tyranny over us. The victims of that kind of tyranny will be of all genders and ages - men, woman, and children.

[leftysergeant]

Screwing around isn't relegated to gender. Nor does having an extra-marital affair make someone a bad parent.But it does raise the possibility that the man is a self-centered dimwit. The children almost assuredly will suffer financially. All things being equal, I see no reason that a woman whose husband cheated on her should pay child support to ease the horndog's load. Seems like a subsidy to depraved conduct. Certainly, we woulod be better off if the children had a role model for moral conduct in matters of personal relationships. It seems only natural that we would want people to realize that sleazy conduct has consequences.

[Cain]

Screwing around isn't relegated to gender. Nor does having an extra-marital affair make someone a bad parent. Fidelity is between the parents, not between the parent and child. I can't see any reason why the issue should be raised in a custody battle and I don't think it should be used to penalize anyone.

Although I'm not a breeder, I've read/heard/seen that one of the best things a parent can do for their kids is show s/he loves their spouse. Infidelity especially affects children, and not just because it leads to divorce and broken homes.

Sex is important. There's that old saying about how you first have kitchen sex, an impulsive kind of love-making. Then you settle into a routine and, for a long while, you have bedroom sex. Then you have hallway sex, which is when you pass each other in the hall and say, "**** you." Finally you get to courtroom sex, where everyone watches you get screwed over.

[ponderingturtle]

I think the men's rights movement would be taken more seriously if all of its major proponents didn't have messy divorces in their past. It's hard not to think of people grinding a personal axe when they arrive in a cloud of axe-shavings.

That is exactly my problem with gay marriage. If it was not gay people arguing for it it would be more convincing but they clearly are just axe grinding.

[ponderingturtle]

Screwing around isn't relegated to gender. Nor does having an extra-marital affair make someone a bad parent. Fidelity is between the parents, not between the parent and child. I can't see any reason why the issue should be raised in a custody battle and I don't think it should be used to penalize anyone.

Because how else are you supposed to weaponize children in a divorce?

[ponderingturtle]

But it does raise the possibility that the man is a self-centered dimwit. The children almost assuredly will suffer financially. All things being equal, I see no reason that a woman whose husband cheated on her should pay child support to ease the horndog's load. Seems like a subsidy to depraved conduct. Certainly, we woulod be better off if the children had a role model for moral conduct in matters of personal relationships. It seems only natural that we would want people to realize that sleazy conduct has consequences.

See it is not at all about the chills best interest but how to use them to hurt parents you take issue with an aspect of their behavior unrelated to being a parent.

[TragicMonkey]

That is exactly my problem with gay marriage. If it was not gay people arguing for it it would be more convincing but they clearly are just axe grinding.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. We must never question the motives of anyone. When a billionaire argues for tax breaks on the rich, there's no possibility he's doing it for his own interests. We must accept all arguments at face value in order to be Most Skeptical People Ever...although that does sound like exactly the freaking opposite, doesn't it?

And to use your rather stupid example, you find more people besides just gays arguing for gay marriage. You don't find, however, prominent figures in the "men's rights movements" who haven't been in messy divorces, which was the point of my remark.

But never mind. Clearly this is one more men vs women thread, in which everybody acts like jerks and hyperbolic caricaturization is the rule.

[ponderingturtle]

Yeah, yeah, I get it. We must never question the motives of anyone. When a billionaire argues for tax breaks on the rich, there's no possibility he's doing it for his own interests. We must accept all arguments at face value in order to be Most Skeptical People Ever...although that does sound like exactly the freaking opposite, doesn't it?

And to use your rather stupid example, you find more people besides just gays arguing for gay marriage. You don't find, however, prominent figures in the "men's rights movements" who haven't been in messy divorces, which was the point of my remark.

But never mind. Clearly this is one more men vs women thread, in which everybody acts like jerks and hyperbolic caricaturization is the rule.

We can question their motives all we want but it is more effective to question their claims. Like here the point is attack the argument not the person.

So the billionaire who does not want to pay taxes, it is better to question his claims of what effects that will have, or argue with his moral arguments than dimply say he is rich and therefore wrong and only after more money. Being aware of bias and dismissing them because of it are not the same thing.

[leftysergeant]

See it is not at all about the chills best interest but how to use them to hurt parents you take issue with an aspect of their behavior unrelated to being a parent.How is it in the child's best interest to be raised by an amoral, immature, self-centered, undisciplined and insensitive SOB if the mother dispalys no moral defect?

Why should the person who works emotional harm on the other be the more financially comfortable?

If he hurts their mother emotionally, can you really trust him to show the proper love and care for her children?

Why should anyone trust him?

[AvalonXQ]

A whole lot of parents, male and female, cheat. I have no concern using it as evidence of parental fitness, but it's only one piece of evidence.
Assuming a mother is unfit simply because she cheated on the father is almost certainly over-simplifying.

Are you familiar with the studies showing a much lower level of reported remorse among female adulterers than male? Would you agree that this is also evidence of a cheating spouse's moral character?

[ponderingturtle]

How is it in the child's best interest to be raised by an amoral, immature, self-centered, undisciplined and insensitive SOB if the mother dispalys no moral defect?

Why should the person who works emotional harm on the other be the more financially comfortable?

If he hurts their mother emotionally, can you really trust him to show the proper love and care for her children?

Why should anyone trust him?

Because the dynamics of a sexual relationship and a parent child relationship are very different. There can be all kinds of reasons and motivations for infidelity some of which would reflect badly on the other partner.

You have a very simple narrative that you expect to fit all situations. And if infidelity was such an issue them it would play against women more often.

There is at least in part a sexist narrative to infidelity to many people. If the man cheats he is a bastard if the woman cheats it is because of failures in her husband.

[AvalonXQ]

There is at least in part a sexist narrative to infidelity to many people. If the man cheats he is a bastard if the woman cheats it is because of failures in her husband.

This goes both ways. For some, if a woman cheats it's because she doesn't care about her husband, and if a man cheats it's because his wife wasn't paying attention to his needs.

[bookitty]

How is it in the child's best interest to be raised by an amoral, immature, self-centered, undisciplined and insensitive SOB if the mother dispalys no moral defect?

Why should the person who works emotional harm on the other be the more financially comfortable?

If he hurts their mother emotionally, can you really trust him to show the proper love and care for her children?

Why should anyone trust him?

There are amoral, immature, self-centered, undisciplined and insensitive people who cheat. Those people also tend to have difficultly in other aspects of life (and/or they are bankers. :D)

There are also perfectly mature, loving people who cheat on a spouse because long-term relationships are really damn hard and a lot of people don't figure it out right away. They end up doing something that might (or might not) affect a marriage that they really care about.

It's people so it's automatically complicated. Custody court, where the actions of the cheater will be looked upon with bias from the start, is no place to sort out those complications. Cheating has nothing to do with child support payments for the care of the child and it has nothing to do with the spouse's ability to be a parent.

[leftysergeant]

It's people so it's automatically complicated. Custody court, where the actions of the cheater will be looked upon with bias from the start, is no place to sort out those complications. Cheating has nothing to do with child support payments for the care of the child and it has nothing to do with the spouse's ability to be a parent.At the same time, it is absurd that the injured party should be the one to suffer the greater loss in the resolution of the problem.

[AvalonXQ]

At the same time, it is absurd that the injured party should be the one to suffer the greater loss in the resolution of the problem.

That depends entirely on the purpose of the resolution. If one parent is clearly the only member of the couple that is suitable to care for a child, that should drive the decision about who gets the child.
Child custody isn't about parents suffering losses -- as a matter of fact, the insistance on viewing it that way (seeing child custody as a carrot/stick for parents, as a way to "punish" parental behavior, or as a negotiation tool in divorce proceedings) is a big part of the problem.

[cornsail]

Funny how MRAs tend to hate feminists and feminists tend to hate MRAs. I think a lot of that is a result of trying to play the oppression olympics and some genuine misogyny and misandry on both 'sides'. It shouldn't be a competition.

[leftysergeant]

That depends entirely on the purpose of the resolution. If one parent is clearly the only member of the couple that is suitable to care for a child, that should drive the decision about who gets the child.

But, if both are equally fit, the one with the zipper control problem is supposed to take the hit.

Being betrayed hurts. Maybe the problem with the men's "rights" activists is that they cannot grasp that fact.

[bookitty]

But, if both are equally fit, the one with the zipper control problem is supposed to take the hit.

Being betrayed hurts. Maybe the problem with the men's "rights" activists is that they cannot grasp that fact.

Dude, women cheat. And for all the same reasons that men do including random horniness. The damage is just as bad. Betrayal sucks for everyone. If there's one place where all gender is equal, it's vulnerability in love.

Putting women on some purity pedestal isn't realistic. In fact, it's a little archaic.

[AvalonXQ]

But, if both are equally fit, the one with the zipper control problem is supposed to take the hit.
No; if both parents are fit, both parents get equal preference in custody rights.

Being betrayed hurts. Maybe the problem with the men's "rights" activists is that they cannot grasp that fact.
Child custody is not about "revenge" for "betrayal" -- it's not about the parents at all.
Apparently one of the problems with reforming the court system is that too many misandrists see child custody as a weapon against bad men. That's not what it's about.
Parental rights are not a proper avenue to punish cheaters. Once you figure that out, we can talk about child custody issues like adults.

[leftysergeant]

No; if both parents are fit, both parents get equal preference in custody rights.If both are fit, then neither should put the other at a disadvantage by demanding child support.

But, if child support needs to be paid, it should not be a burden on the spouse who did not misbehave.

Al;l other things being equal, the spouse who did not misbehave is a better role model.

[AvalonXQ]

But, if child support needs to be paid, it should not be a burden on the spouse who did not misbehave.

Again, you appear unwilling to accept the simple point that child custody isn't about punishing cheaters. Neither is child support; if both parents are deemed fit for the child, then the parent that makes more money will pay child support to the other.
Again, this isn't about punishing cheaters. Being a parent isn't about being "fair"; if you don't want the state taking your money, don't obligate yourself to the welfare of another human being. Your duty, financial as well as moral, persists regardless of how crappy the other parent treats you.
Now, if you want to talk about cheating and other emtional/physical abuse on a spouse mitigating alimony payments, that's a different issue.

But stop treating kids like possessions or weapons. They're people, and child custody is about their needs, not yours.

[DavidByron]

The main issue I had with the SPLC commentary was that seemed to imply that when MRAs make comments about the prevalence or rape that the SPLC disagrees with then that means the MRAs are a hate group.

This was especially daft because as it happens I am familiar with the study that was the source of dispute and I knew the SPLC was wrong on the facts (that study, the NISVS, has a very misleading summary document).

Political hatred is not usually defined although I have seen some attempts and I myself have come up with a definition which required a six part set of characteristics... I couldn't find any sort of definition or criteria list at the SPLC web site and I really wonder who on earth concludes a group is a hate group based on such flimsy reasoning.

But I am more interested in the rape data itself because it seems such a "game changer" that it should either completely shock people and change their minds, or lead to a complete dismissal of the survey data (or misrepresentation of it in this case).

Has this been discussed? This really well done "gold standard" government survey on sexual violence, the NISVS (National Intimate partner and Sexual Violence Survey) reported that when it asked 16,000 odd people about sexual violence that 1.1% of women had been raped in the last 12 months and the same proportion (1.1%) of men had been raped in the last 12 months too.

The survey also recorded that 79.2% of the men raped said they were attacked by a sole female attacker (not a man or multiple attackers).

It seems like the survey people themselves were somehow ashamed of their own results and refused to call the male rape victims "raped", saying instead that they were "made to have sex" and saying that basically men can't be raped so we should call it something else. This has probably been a contribution to a lot of denial about the results, possibly including the SPLC's misrepresentation.

Anyway it seems to me that this is a very shocking result that people are not talking about. This result says men are probably raped more often in the USA than women are (the survey doesn't include prison rape) and it also says that women are very large number of the rapists, or possibly even a majority -- we basically just don't know because of the problem of how many different victims a single rapist is attacking isn't known for men.

The feminist approach which our society has endorsed for decades now is built on the presumption of male guilt and woman as victim and the facts appear to be that this view is false. I think this is going to be a very hard thing for people to get their heads around so I was wondering what a skeptics board had to say on the matter.

I've actually not seen anyone confronted with this data who has been able to cognitively accept it. The SPLC reaction is probably a bit extreme but denial and anger are typical reactions.

Btw this is NOT that surprising a result for people who have kept an eye on the data and the research over the years. But most people have really had no idea this was coming.

[Galteeth]

The main issue I had with the SPLC commentary was that seemed to imply that when MRAs make comments about the prevalence or rape that the SPLC disagrees with then that means the MRAs are a hate group.

This was especially daft because as it happens I am familiar with the study that was the source of dispute and I knew the SPLC was wrong on the facts (that study, the NISVS, has a very misleading summary document).

Political hatred is not usually defined although I have seen some attempts and I myself have come up with a definition which required a six part set of characteristics... I couldn't find any sort of definition or criteria list at the SPLC web site and I really wonder who on earth concludes a group is a hate group based on such flimsy reasoning.

But I am more interested in the rape data itself because it seems such a "game changer" that it should either completely shock people and change their minds, or lead to a complete dismissal of the survey data (or misrepresentation of it in this case).

Has this been discussed? This really well done "gold standard" government survey on sexual violence, the NISVS (National Intimate partner and Sexual Violence Survey) reported that when it asked 16,000 odd people about sexual violence that 1.1% of women had been raped in the last 12 months and the same proportion (1.1%) of men had been raped in the last 12 months too.

The survey also recorded that 79.2% of the men raped said they were attacked by a sole female attacker (not a man or multiple attackers).

It seems like the survey people themselves were somehow ashamed of their own results and refused to call the male rape victims "raped", saying instead that they were "made to have sex" and saying that basically men can't be raped so we should call it something else. This has probably been a contribution to a lot of denial about the results, possibly including the SPLC's misrepresentation.

Anyway it seems to me that this is a very shocking result that people are not talking about. This result says men are probably raped more often in the USA than women are (the survey doesn't include prison rape) and it also says that women are very large number of the rapists, or possibly even a majority -- we basically just don't know because of the problem of how many different victims a single rapist is attacking isn't known for men.

The feminist approach which our society has endorsed for decades now is built on the presumption of male guilt and woman as victim and the facts appear to be that this view is false. I think this is going to be a very hard thing for people to get their heads around so I was wondering what a skeptics board had to say on the matter.

I've actually not seen anyone confronted with this data who has been able to cognitively accept it. The SPLC reaction is probably a bit extreme but denial and anger are typical reactions.

Btw this is NOT that surprising a result for people who have kept an eye on the data and the research over the years. But most people have really had no idea this was coming.

Wait a minute. Sole female attacker? This seems extremely difficult to believe. I mean, how are we defining rape here?

[tyr_13]

Wait a minute. Sole female attacker? This seems extremely difficult to believe. I mean, how are we defining rape here?

Ummm, you first. What about that is difficult to believe?

EDIT: Not that there aren't some hard to believe and surprising things in the post that I'm skeptical of, but that a lone woman being able to rape a man just isn't one of them in my view.

[DavidByron]

Well the NISVS doesn't go into that much detail but it does say that as with female rape victims most of the attackers are current or former partners of the victim or otherwise acquaintances.

So my guess is that a lot of these people are in relationships with psycho women who threaten to stab and hit them or attack them in their sleep or hurt the kids or make other threats if the man doesn't "prove his love" with sex. That's all pretty common but yeah people never talk about it.

The survey included attempted rape and "rape because drunk" in the rape figures for both sexes so sure the numbers might be inflated but the point of real interest is not the numbers but how both men and women are effected by this issue in such similar numbers. THAT is the big news.

But "raped because drunk" happens to guys all the time. You're not one of those people who thinks "erection equals consent" are you I hope? that's just not true physiologically. It's like saying "it wasn't rape if she was wet".

[Galteeth]

Well the NISVS doesn't go into that much detail but it does say that as with female rape victims most of the attackers are current or former partners of the victim or otherwise acquaintances.

So my guess is that a lot of these people are in relationships with psycho women who threaten to stab and hit them or attack them in their sleep or hurt the kids or make other threats if the man doesn't "prove his love" with sex. That's all pretty common but yeah people never talk about it.

The survey included attempted rape and "rape because drunk" in the rape figures for both sexes so sure the numbers might be inflated but the point of real interest is not the numbers but how both men and women are effected by this issue in such similar numbers. THAT is the big news.

But "raped because drunk" happens to guys all the time. You're not one of those people who thinks "erection equals consent" are you I hope? that's just not true physiologically. It's like saying "it wasn't rape if she was wet".

Ok, i see what you mean about the drunk thing and coercion. Thinking back on it I have actually had two similar situations in my own experience (that didn't lead to me being raped) but where someone was not taking no for an answer and in one case i was seriously ********** up, the other in their car miles away from where I lived. It also occurs to me that if it had gotten to a point where I had to physically resist, those individuals could have called the police, and "but she was trying to rape me" wouldn't be a good excuse.
The point is I guess, that yes, the erection thing does matter, because it's hard to get an erection when you're afraid. And the whole physical business of sex, anatomically speaking, is much harder for a female to force on a guy.

However, I'd be interested in knowing how these surveys were conducted.

EDIT: Like on the drunk thing, if you're defining it the "can't legally consent because drunk" way then BS on the whole thing. Cause if then it would be close to 100 percent of both men and women who've been raped.

[leftysergeant]

But stop treating kids like possessions or weapons. They're people, and child custody is about their needs, not yours.That is still not an argument against my point. Where custody is given to one parent or the other, the ability to act in an ethical manner should be a consideration when considering how well the custodial parent can fullfil the duties attendent thereto.

[tyr_13]

Ok, i see what you mean about the drunk thing and coercion. Thinking back on it I have actually had two similar situations in my own experience (that didn't lead to me being raped) but where someone was not taking no for an answer and in one case i was seriously ********** up, the other in their car miles away from where I lived. It also occurs to me that if it had gotten to a point where I had to physically resist, those individuals could have called the police, and "but she was trying to rape me" wouldn't be a good excuse.
The point is I guess, that yes, the erection thing does matter, because it's hard to get an erection when you're afraid. And the whole physical business of sex, anatomically speaking, is much harder for a female to force on a guy.

However, I'd be interested in knowing how these surveys were conducted.

EDIT: Like on the drunk thing, if you're defining it the "can't legally consent because drunk" way then BS on the whole thing. Cause if then it would be close to 100 percent of both men and women who've been raped.

You're relying on a couple of outright myths about rape and male sexuality to draw your conclusions.

First, an erection is a physiological response to stimuli. It's not an emotional temperature gauge. Men can, and do, achieve erections and even orgasm against their will. Men can get erections in basically any emotional state. That's not to say they will of course, but who says that a man needs an erection to be raped? A woman penetrating a man with any object would be rape. A woman coercing a man into oral sex would be rape.

Secondly, you're relying on the myth that most rape is violent physically (it's always a form of violence). Rape isn't mostly some guy jumping from the bushes and holding a jogger down, or even a couple of slaps across the face. Often times mere threats of violence or other coercion is used for compliance. 'Have sex with me or I'll tell everyone you raped me,' and, 'have sex with me or I'll hurt myself,' are just as much rape as, 'have sex with me or I'll shoot you.'

Thirdly, there can be an age difference. A woman in her late twenties or thirties can easily be a physical match for a young teenage boy or earlier, but they don't tend to need to be as making the victim feel like they have no choice is more effective when there is a huge social power imbalance.

These are things that don't get talked about a lot in public, so there are a lot of harmful misconceptions and myths out there around all sexuality but especially rape.

[bookitty]

The main issue I had with the SPLC commentary was that seemed to imply that when MRAs make comments about the prevalence or rape that the SPLC disagrees with then that means the MRAs are a hate group.

This was especially daft because as it happens I am familiar with the study that was the source of dispute and I knew the SPLC was wrong on the facts (that study, the NISVS, has a very misleading summary document).

Political hatred is not usually defined although I have seen some attempts and I myself have come up with a definition which required a six part set of characteristics... I couldn't find any sort of definition or criteria list at the SPLC web site and I really wonder who on earth concludes a group is a hate group based on such flimsy reasoning.

But I am more interested in the rape data itself because it seems such a "game changer" that it should either completely shock people and change their minds, or lead to a complete dismissal of the survey data (or misrepresentation of it in this case).

Has this been discussed? This really well done "gold standard" government survey on sexual violence, the NISVS (National Intimate partner and Sexual Violence Survey) reported that when it asked 16,000 odd people about sexual violence that 1.1% of women had been raped in the last 12 months and the same proportion (1.1%) of men had been raped in the last 12 months too.

The survey also recorded that 79.2% of the men raped said they were attacked by a sole female attacker (not a man or multiple attackers).

It seems like the survey people themselves were somehow ashamed of their own results and refused to call the male rape victims "raped", saying instead that they were "made to have sex" and saying that basically men can't be raped so we should call it something else. This has probably been a contribution to a lot of denial about the results, possibly including the SPLC's misrepresentation.

Anyway it seems to me that this is a very shocking result that people are not talking about. This result says men are probably raped more often in the USA than women are (the survey doesn't include prison rape) and it also says that women are very large number of the rapists, or possibly even a majority -- we basically just don't know because of the problem of how many different victims a single rapist is attacking isn't known for men.

The feminist approach which our society has endorsed for decades now is built on the presumption of male guilt and woman as victim and the facts appear to be that this view is false. I think this is going to be a very hard thing for people to get their heads around so I was wondering what a skeptics board had to say on the matter.

I've actually not seen anyone confronted with this data who has been able to cognitively accept it. The SPLC reaction is probably a bit extreme but denial and anger are typical reactions.

Btw this is NOT that surprising a result for people who have kept an eye on the data and the research over the years. But most people have really had no idea this was coming.

Here is the link to NISVS
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/

I am having difficult finding the aspect of the report which discusses the previous 12 months. If there is some other factor involved (intimate partner violence, age group, etc) can you please let me know.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

'Have sex with me or I'll tell everyone you raped me,' and, 'have sex with me or I'll hurt myself,' are just as much rape as, 'have sex with me or I'll shoot you.'


Etc.

I learned something from this thread. The equivalency of "not rape if she got wet" and "not rape if he had an erection" is quite an insight too.

[AvalonXQ]

I'm rather strongly convinced that any male student who never felt significantly pressured to have sex, independent of his own preferences and consent, never went to an American university.

[bookitty]

I'm rather strongly convinced that any male student who never felt significantly pressured to have sex, independent of his own preferences and consent, never went to an American university.

Many people experiment with their idea of "self" during the late teens and early 20's. This includes adopting strong, near-fanatic, devotion to political or social causes, playing with the idea of gender or sexual attraction, casting away or developing stronger religious beliefs and so on.

This can also include negative social interaction - power plays, preemptive victimization (especially among those who were abused) or dehumanization. Sex is a convenient tool for these and among the easiest to abuse. Being in college affords only more interaction with others who are same-aged, it doesn't necessarily create an environment for abuse.

[DavidByron]

I am having difficult finding the aspect of the report which discusses the previous 12 months. If there is some other factor involved (intimate partner violence, age group, etc) can you please let me know.

Full report:
(I can't post the link to the thing because I've not been here long enough so just look for the link to the full report on the page you linked to already please).

Table 2.1 and table 2.2 on pages 18/19. Because the survey is deeply sexist against men and takes the view that a man cannot be raped by a woman it describes the rape of men as the man "made to penetrate" so you need to look at the first row "Rape" on table 2.1 (women victims) and the 4th column there (Weighted % over last 12 months) to see 1.1%

Then table 2.2 look at row 6 "made to penetrate", same column same figure, 1.1%

If you look at the definition of rape and "made to penetrate" on page 17 you can see they are pretty similar with the genders swapped about. The only difference I could see was that it is not clear if drunk sex counts for the male definition.

Not to say it's impossible that men get raped by penetration or women raped by being forced to penetrate someone else but the survey doesn't include figures for areas where less than 30 respondents said yes. So that's what? about 0.3% to 0.4% out of the 8000 (of each sex) asked? It's likely that men are raped by penetration in a little less than that rate but the numbers are not recorded here. The NVAWS (National Violence Against Women Survey) did record I think 0.1% per 12 months and the equivalent for women penetrated was recorded at 0.3% in that survey but it didn't include "drunk sex" and for other reasons didn't record such high rape numbers as the NISVS. The NVAWS is the sort of precurser of NISVS from about ten years ago.

You can see that because the survey results falsely only record men as raped if they are penetrated in the manner normal for women to be raped, the summary gives a false record of how many men are raped in the USA. That is the result the SPLC used to "refute" men's rights groups and thus "conclude" they were hate groups rather absurdly.

Although bookitty, you are a feminist I see you've been trying to present a picture of feminism as being reasonable so I assume you'll denounce this deliberate attempt to minimize male rape victims by your fellows and agree that a man is raped if he is forced to penetrate someone (or have sex in any way at all)?

[bookitty]

Full report:
(I can't post the link to the thing because I've not been here long enough so just look for the link to the full report on the page you linked to already please).

Table 2.1 and table 2.2 on pages 18/19. Because the survey is deeply sexist against men and takes the view that a man cannot be raped by a woman it describes the rape of men as the man "made to penetrate" so you need to look at the first row "Rape" on table 2.1 (women victims) and the 4th column there (Weighted % over last 12 months) to see 1.1%

Then table 2.2 look at row 6 "made to penetrate", same column same figure, 1.1%

If you look at the definition of rape and "made to penetrate" on page 17 you can see they are pretty similar with the genders swapped about. The only difference I could see was that it is not clear if drunk sex counts for the male definition.

Not to say it's impossible that men get raped by penetration or women raped by being forced to penetrate someone else but the survey doesn't include figures for areas where less than 30 respondents said yes. So that's what? about 0.3% to 0.4% out of the 8000 (of each sex) asked? It's likely that men are raped by penetration in a little less than that rate but the numbers are not recorded here. The NVAWS (National Violence Against Women Survey) did record I think 0.1% per 12 months and the equivalent for women penetrated was recorded at 0.3% in that survey but it didn't include "drunk sex" and for other reasons didn't record such high rape numbers as the NISVS. The NVAWS is the sort of precurser of NISVS from about ten years ago.

You can see that because the survey results falsely only record men as raped if they are penetrated in the manner normal for women to be raped, the summary gives a false record of how many men are raped in the USA. That is the result the SPLC used to "refute" men's rights groups and thus "conclude" they were hate groups rather absurdly.

Although bookitty, you are a feminist I see you've been trying to present a picture of feminism as being reasonable so I assume you'll denounce this deliberate attempt to minimize male rape victims by your fellows and agree that a man is raped if he is forced to penetrate someone (or have sex in any way at all)?

I have only just seen this post and have not looked at the stats yet. As to the highlighted part, of course. Anyone who is forced to have sex against their will by coercion, by threat, by violence or any instance in which they can not give consent is a victim of rape.

As a feminist, my main focus are gender stereotypes which cause harm. The idea that a man is always ready for sex, will always be pleased to have sex and is so primarily focused upon sex that the idea of consent is meaningless, falls under harmful stereotypes.

ETA: I have given up on trying to speak for all feminists, and to defend or denounce them. There simply isn't enough time in a day. I am a feminist, these are my beliefs, make of that what you will.

[DavidByron]

I have given up on trying to speak for all feminists, and to defend or denounce them. There simply isn't enough time in a day. I am a feminist, these are my beliefs, make of that what you will.

The question is whether you can legitimately say that. Or is that a very recent decision? Because in other places in this thread you said things like, "As a feminist..." and you obviously are defending the movement and claiming the label of feminist.

At any rate I thought it might be interesting to post the survey's own reasoning behind it's decision to falsify the number of male victims of rape, at least so far as I can find it. This paragraph is from page 84 of the report (again I cannot yet post a URL):

As an example of prevalence differences between the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey and other surveys, the lifetime prevalence estimate of rape for men in this report is lower than what has been reported in other surveys (e.g., for forced sex more broadly) (Basile, Chen, Black, & Saltzman, 2007). This could be due in part to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey making a distinction between rape and being made to penetrate someone else. Being made to penetrate is a form of sexual victimization distinct from rape that is particularly unique to males and, to our knowledge, has not been explicitly measured in previous national studies. It is possible that rape questions in prior studies captured the experience of being made to penetrate someone else, resulting in higher prevalence estimates for male rape in those studies.

(my emphasis)

So it's not really an explanation. They simply state their opinion that if a man is made to penetrate then he is not a rape victim of any kind. Although the odd phrasing implies some sort of action by the man, in fact the man could be entirely unconscious and not "made to do" anything at all. What's really happening is that the woman is enveloping the man. She is the actor. The word choice is presumably intended to make it sound as if the male victim is an active participant.

You would refuse to denounce this because it was made up by a feminist? This really looks like a government agency deliberately fabricating its data by manipulating how it is presented. And it has the effect of hiding what appears to be a very significant and shocking finding. I would claim this deception is backed by the feminist movement. What do you think? This whole issue seems like something right up feminism's street. Why are they silent on this or else repeating the fraud? In fact the results of the survey that helped the feminist framing on gender were popularly reported on feminist sites at the time. They all went on about how "one in five women are raped". As the SPLC example shows, feminists are all over this topic and very keen to slam down alternate opinions.

The survey btw is part of a series that was lobbied for by feminists back in the 1990s and part of the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) which I would say was the biggest issue that feminists lobbied on in that decade. So this isn't some random survey. It has feminist movement fingerprints all over it. Having said that it's a lot less sexist that it's predecessor the NVAWS (National Violence Against Women Survey).

I'd like your response "as a feminist", but I do understand that you may not have had time to think about all this yet. I am NOT trying to pick on you or try and tell you what you think.

[tyr_13]

As a feminist, I'll denounce that 'distinction' of rape. I'll have to look into this more later, but it does raise some red flags.

What does this have to do with this thread?

[DavidByron]

I recognise you from that other big thread on feminism. Are you really a feminist? You're not just ... I don't know ... being ironic? I've never seen a feminist criticise feminism the way you have done in that thread.

This thread is about a series of three statements published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which accused men's rights groups of being hate groups. One of those three articles was about how men's rights groups distort facts about things like rape. The SPLC article's "proof" that men's rights groups were wrong, referred to the NISVS which I am now discussing and showing how the survey itself distorted its own findings. It is not clear if the SPLC knew that or not but I am sure it has been pointed out to them since and I very much doubt they will issue any correction.

(can't post link to that article yet because I am a newbie here: sorry)

This particular factoid about rape however, to my mind, goes way beyond this incident in importance as it seems to me that rape stats and the myth that women are raped more often than men in the US is a sort of ideology of feminism, and that to admit this factoid would lead to a sort of monumental freak out. And I think that's why there was this bizarre over the top reaction to it. For reasons I wont go into right now, I think rape figures have a strange ideological hold on the feminist movement.

For example I am just reading that big 25 page thread on feminism from February and I see bookitty defending feminism as a movement by saying (falsely, though probably unwittingly) that men are raped far less often than women. And you might think, "what the heck has that got to do with feminism and equality?" She raises this as a comment out of nowhere in response to someone who hadn't even so much as mentioned rape.

So I am quite interested in gauging how feminists respond to this data, and I ended up here after Googling where the topic was being discussed.

Are you suggesting I acted inappropriately?

[tyr_13]

I recognise you from that other big thread on feminism. Are you really a feminist? You're not just ... I don't know ... being ironic? I've never seen a feminist criticise feminism the way you have done in that thread.

I'm not being ironic. I believe in many of the goals of feminism and recognize the huge and important impact historically in fighting for gender equality. Women really are mistreated in various ways because they are women. That doesn't mean I don't think the same can be said about men.

And I have heard basically all of the criticisms I've leveled at various feminists and feminists theories from other feminists as well. Actually, I am indebted to the many feminists who, after I had argued and debated with other more radical feminists in person, would come up and reasonably debate the points, and support many things I had said. Without them, I might not be able to call myself one.


This thread is about a series of three statements published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which accused men's rights groups of being hate groups. One of those three articles was about how men's rights groups distort facts about things like rape. The SPLC article's "proof" that men's rights groups were wrong, referred to the NISVS which I am now discussing and showing how the survey itself distorted its own findings. It is not clear if the SPLC knew that or not but I am sure it has been pointed out to them since and I very much doubt they will issue any correction.

(can't post link to that article yet because I am a newbie here: sorry)

Ah, that makes more sense. I guess I lost track of the fact that the NISVS was the specific report the SPLC cited.

This particular factoid about rape however, to my mind, goes way beyond this incident in importance as it seems to me that rape stats and the myth that women are raped more often than men in the US is a sort of ideology of feminism, and that to admit this factoid would lead to a sort of monumental freak out. And I think that's why there was this bizarre over the top reaction to it. For reasons I wont go into right now, I think rape figures have a strange ideological hold on the feminist movement.

For example I am just reading that big 25 page thread on feminism from February and I see bookitty defending feminism as a movement by saying (falsely, though probably unwittingly) that men are raped far less often than women. And you might think, "what the heck has that got to do with feminism and equality?" She raises this as a comment out of nowhere in response to someone who hadn't even so much as mentioned rape.

So I am quite interested in gauging how feminists respond to this data, and I ended up here after Googling where the topic was being discussed.

Are you suggesting I acted inappropriately?

Oh no, I thought you were trying to derail this thread. I'm glad you clarified for me. Keep reading those feminism threads, because they do get interesting. You'll see the discussions of male rape do raise some of the same concerns you have.

Welcome to the boards.

[bookitty]

I recognise you from that other big thread on feminism. Are you really a feminist? You're not just ... I don't know ... being ironic? I've never seen a feminist criticise feminism the way you have done in that thread.

This thread is about a series of three statements published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which accused men's rights groups of being hate groups. One of those three articles was about how men's rights groups distort facts about things like rape. The SPLC article's "proof" that men's rights groups were wrong, referred to the NISVS which I am now discussing and showing how the survey itself distorted its own findings. It is not clear if the SPLC knew that or not but I am sure it has been pointed out to them since and I very much doubt they will issue any correction.

(can't post link to that article yet because I am a newbie here: sorry)

This particular factoid about rape however, to my mind, goes way beyond this incident in importance as it seems to me that rape stats and the myth that women are raped more often than men in the US is a sort of ideology of feminism, and that to admit this factoid would lead to a sort of monumental freak out. And I think that's why there was this bizarre over the top reaction to it. For reasons I wont go into right now, I think rape figures have a strange ideological hold on the feminist movement.

For example I am just reading that big 25 page thread on feminism from February and I see bookitty defending feminism as a movement by saying (falsely, though probably unwittingly) that men are raped far less often than women. And you might think, "what the heck has that got to do with feminism and equality?" She raises this as a comment out of nowhere in response to someone who hadn't even so much as mentioned rape.

So I am quite interested in gauging how feminists respond to this data, and I ended up here after Googling where the topic was being discussed.

Are you suggesting I acted inappropriately?

Oh dear. You're quoting something written on a 25 page thread with no link, no way to judge context or any of that. I understand that you're new and can't post links. That isn't your fault. Everything you have written so far indicates an honest desire to explore this subject with good will. I take it on faith that you're not trying to find some bit of minutia to argue to death.

But I've written a lot about feminism here and I've learned a lot because I've had my own views on gender challenged. (None of us are free from bias, myself included.) The idea of going back and forth over old ground, explaining single sentences pulled from multi-paragraph posts, and all that. It just seems too exhausting.

Back to rape. The studies are finally focusing on lack of consent by the victim instead of the act of rape by the perpetrator. This is a recent and significant change in the way that we study sexual assault. It was only this year that the FBI expanded a definition of rape that had been in place since 1929. All of this is very positive.

There are social attitudes in place that lead to sexual assault. Understanding these, and seeing the true results of these attitudes should help us address them. Physical autonomy, respect, and freedom from harmful stereotypes have always been a focus of feminism. These tools are still useful when addressing rape, regardless of gender.

[Astrodude]

Male rape by fraud victims are numerous and they are wrongfully convicted of statutory rape.

[Moss]

Male rape by fraud victims are numerous and they are wrongfully convicted of statutory rape.


And we know that because...?

[bookitty]

Male rape by fraud victims are numerous and they are wrongfully convicted of statutory rape.

Could you please expound, with data. Thank you.

[Astrodude]

And we know that because...?

We know that because the courts and prosecutors have recognized that they were tricked into having sex with underage girls by fake IDs but the prosecutors simply ignored this, even though the written law usually recognized rape by fraud.

[bookitty]

We know that because the courts and prosecutors have recognized that they were tricked into having sex with underage girls by fake IDs but the prosecutors simply ignored this, even though the written law usually recognized rape by fraud.

I'm having a really hard time with this. I've volunteered at shelters for at risk youth, primarily LGBT teens who are on the street because their parents tossed them out. Many of these kids have engaged in survival prostitution. A lot of them are young, so young that it is heartbreaking, and they look it. I've never been able to understand how someone can look at a 14 year-old who needs help and see only a sexual opportunity.

Outside of prostitution we have numerous studies which shown that precocious sexuality is related to abuse. The response of an adult should be to protect them, not exploit them.

[Moss]

I think what Astrodude alludes to is this (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=964686) scenario (http://www.law.arizona.edu/events/criminal_law/RussellChristopherPaper.pdf). But I'm not sure how common that is. I suppose my google-fu is too weak to actually find much more about it. It really does seem like a bad situation.

[Astrodude]

I'm having a really hard time with this. I've volunteered at shelters for at risk youth, primarily LGBT teens who are on the street because their parents tossed them out. Many of these kids have engaged in survival prostitution. A lot of them are young, so young that it is heartbreaking, and they look it. I've never been able to understand how someone can look at a 14 year-old who needs help and see only a sexual opportunity.


They often have no idea they are only 14 or 15, especially when a fake ID is used. In the case of prostitution, which I wasn't discussing previously, the johns likely don't know of the prostitute's situation, particularly if it is via escort. Puberty isn't an exact stage of development. Some people who are 15 can easily look 19 or even 20.

I think what Astrodude alludes to is this (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=964686) scenario (http://www.law.arizona.edu/events/criminal_law/RussellChristopherPaper.pdf). But I'm not sure how common that is. I suppose my google-fu is too weak to actually find much more about it. It really does seem like a bad situation.
Nicely done Moss! I've seen this paper and it's a great way to potentially end strict liability in statutory. This paper only addressed a handful of cases that have come up. One arrest and conviction when ID is shown is too much injustice in itself.

To make matters worse, they treat the people they convict the same way they treat regular rapists usually and effectively give them a life sentence by banning them from ever living near schools, attending schools, working at most places, and living in several neighborhoods. They're placed on the sex-offender registry right next to your John Wayne Gacy types.

[bookitty]

I think what Astrodude alludes to is this (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=964686) scenario (http://www.law.arizona.edu/events/criminal_law/RussellChristopherPaper.pdf). But I'm not sure how common that is. I suppose my google-fu is too weak to actually find much more about it. It really does seem like a bad situation.

It's a situation that needs to be judged on a case by case basis. There will be the occasional teen whose sexual precociousness is innate and does not stem from previous abuse. There will also be cases in which the older party had reason to believe that teen was young and is only using the teen's fake ID as an excuse. Without definite numbers, it is impossible to tell how often this is actually prosecuted or what the usual outcomes are.

My guess is that guilty verdicts for a perpetrator of statutory rape who was fooled by a fake ID are few and far between. There was a case a while back, an 11 year-old who had been gang-raped. Her actions and dress prior to the rape were used to excuse the rapists. We live in a society which falls back on "asking for it" too easily.

But as I said, I have personal experience with the worst case scenario. This has created a bias which is very difficult to overcome.

[Moss]

It's a situation that needs to be judged on a case by case basis. There will be the occasional teen whose sexual precociousness is innate and does not stem from previous abuse. There will also be cases in which the older party had reason to believe that teen was young and is only using the teen's fake ID as an excuse. Without definite numbers, it is impossible to tell how often this is actually prosecuted or what the usual outcomes are.

My guess is that guilty verdicts for a perpetrator of statutory rape who was fooled by a fake ID are few and far between. There was a case a while back, an 11 year-old who had been gang-raped. Her actions and dress prior to the rape were used to excuse the rapists. We live in a society which falls back on "asking for it" too easily.

But as I said, I have personal experience with the worst case scenario. This has created a bias which is very difficult to overcome.

To be honest I too am biased against "I thought she was an adult" as an excuse. But then again: how can you differentiate between the excuse and the actual belief? I believe such situations would warrant a fine comb to go over but on the other hand that might discourage actual victims because they get the feeling nobody will believe them. That's exactly the kind of situation where I don't want to be the one that has to decide either way.

[bookitty]

To be honest I too am biased against "I thought she was an adult" as an excuse. But then again: how can you differentiate between the excuse and the actual belief? I believe such situations would warrant a fine comb to go over but on the other hand that might discourage actual victims because they get the feeling nobody will believe them. That's exactly the kind of situation where I don't want to be the one that has to decide either way.

Adding to the whole mess is the sexual precociousness of teens in general We live in a sexually permissive society which places great emphasis on sex appeal. Sexual curiosity and sexual feelings are a very natural part of the teen years. This makes teens particularly susceptible to exploitation.

I am fully in support of same-age sexual exploration combined with comprehensive sex education and access to birth control and prophylactics. Same-age sexual interaction places both parties on equal footing. With a greater age difference, that balance can be lost and there is a greater chance for exploitation and harm.

[Astrodude]

To be honest I too am biased against "I thought she was an adult" as an excuse. But then again: how can you differentiate between the excuse and the actual belief?

When a fake ID is being used, I think it's more than reasonable to think the person was sincere. That's where I draw the line. In many cases, prosecutors have acknowledged that the "perpetrator" was duped by fakes.

Another, related issue, is the lack of Romeo and Juliet laws and the extreme lack of gradations in the severity of the offense.

[Astrodude]

I am fully in support of same-age sexual exploration combined with comprehensive sex education and access to birth control and prophylactics. Same-age sexual interaction places both parties on equal footing. With a greater age difference, that balance can be lost and there is a greater chance for exploitation and harm.

I'd favor allowing two-year difference from ages 12-14, a four year difference from ages 14-18, and no age difference restrictions beyond that with those numbers represents the age-range of the youngest party. However, I still would never apply strict liability in these cases! Also, I would never consider breaking these laws to be acts of rape by itself. It would be a serious crime, but it wouldn't be considered rape.

[bookitty]

I'd favor allowing two-year difference from ages 12-14, a four year difference from ages 14-18, and no age difference restrictions beyond that with those numbers represents the age-range of the youngest party. However, I still would never apply strict liability in these cases! Also, I would never consider breaking these laws to be acts of rape by itself. It would be a serious crime, but it wouldn't be considered rape.

It is considered statutory rape, meaning that the younger part was not old enough to grant consent. A 12 year-old can not legally consent to a sexual act with a 21 year-old. The difference in life experience creates a situation in which exploitation is too great a possibility.

This is also the last I will say about this. I have already dealt with a forum member who only wanted to discuss statutory laws in order to sate their own sexual fantasies. It was very disturbing and I would prefer not to repeat the experience.

[DavidByron]

Oh dear. You're quoting something written on a 25 page thread with no link, no way to judge context or any of that.

Maybe I shouldn't have said it was you because I come across as making this personal and that's the last thing I want. I don't know if it was conscious or not but your reply contained reference to your volunteer work as if to say, "Please don't call me nasty names because I am a feminist. I am a nice person and do good work." And I have seen you do that before, and many other feminists. And not without cause because many of these discussions revolve around discussing how nasty the feminist movement is, which has got to come across as a personal assault... and blah blah blah. I get it, and I am probably going to be about the worst offender for setting those bells ringing because I have about the most negative view of feminism you ever heard of (probably), BUT I don't dislike YOU.

This is going to be a permanent tightrope walk between expressing how I feel about the movement and trying to not make it sound personal. It's going to involve some falls. I warn you I am not going to be an easy person for you to talk to.

Enough disclaimer.....

Back to rape. The studies are finally focusing on lack of consent by the victim instead of the act of rape by the perpetrator. This is a recent and significant change in the way that we study sexual assault. It was only this year that the FBI expanded a definition of rape that had been in place since 1929. All of this is very positive.

I disagree. I think the definition change (which was brought about by feminist lobbying btw) was extremely sexist against men. And this ties in very closely with the distortion of the NISVS data because it's the same issue. Namely defining rape so as to exclude male victims. Legal definitions of rape have for a long time been worded in a genuinely gender neutral way - for decades. The FBI's UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting) definition of rape was not a legal definition but a definition for statistical reporting. The sort of stuff that feminists love to quote to try and demonstrate women are oppressed. The old definition was also sexist against men because it was old. When it was updated it would ordinarily use a modern gender neutral definition like the other 51 definitions of rape (or "aggravated sexual abuse" or "first degree sexual assault" or whatever phrase is used) in the country as law. But instead feminists lobbied to keep the antiquated sexist definition avoiding men as victims. Why do you think they did that?

The studies are finally focusing on lack of consent by the victim instead of the act of rape by the perpetrator

That's a terrible idea of course and I don't think that happens in any other area of law does it? basically you're saying something should be a crime or not according to the state of mind of the victim - which the alleged criminal has no way of knowing for certain. In any other case the law says that people can commit what would otherwise be crimes by accident. Unless the crime is very serious indeed then usually mens rea - malice that is - must be proven. And that includes if someone is simply reckless. If the crime is very serious like killing someone then there may be a lesser crime for accidentally doing it. But rape is uniquely (?) made to be strict liability. If you accidentally have sex with someone thinking they consented when they did not that's rape. And it's beyond absurd.

Take for example a wife who decides to wake up her husband on his birthday with a blow job. She is a rapist because the husband (being asleep) cannot consent (not even if he says OK ahead of time). It's absurd. And it is absurd precisely because of the concentration on the state of mind of the "victim" instead of the state of mind of the "criminal".

I believe this issue is also at play with the issue raised by Astrodude.

Another example would be two people getting drunk and then having sex. According to feminist theory and some laws now, this is rape by both of the people of each other. In practise of course only the man would be accused of rape which is just the way feminists want it -- sex discrimination in law. And it is absurd.

[bookitty]

Maybe I shouldn't have said it was you because I come across as making this personal and that's the last thing I want. I don't know if it was conscious or not but your reply contained reference to your volunteer work as if to say, "Please don't call me nasty names because I am a feminist. I am a nice person and do good work." And I have seen you do that before, and many other feminists. And not without cause because many of these discussions revolve around discussing how nasty the feminist movement is, which has got to come across as a personal assault... and blah blah blah. I get it, and I am probably going to be about the worst offender for setting those bells ringing because I have about the most negative view of feminism you ever heard of (probably), BUT I don't dislike YOU.

This is going to be a permanent tightrope walk between expressing how I feel about the movement and trying to not make it sound personal. It's going to involve some falls. I warn you I am not going to be an easy person for you to talk to.

Enough disclaimer.....



I disagree. I think the definition change (which was brought about by feminist lobbying btw) was extremely sexist against men. And this ties in very closely with the distortion of the NISVS data because it's the same issue. Namely defining rape so as to exclude male victims. Legal definitions of rape have for a long time been worded in a genuinely gender neutral way - for decades. The FBI's UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting) definition of rape was not a legal definition but a definition for statistical reporting. The sort of stuff that feminists love to quote to try and demonstrate women are oppressed. The old definition was also sexist against men because it was old. When it was updated it would ordinarily use a modern gender neutral definition like the other 51 definitions of rape (or "aggravated sexual abuse" or "first degree sexual assault" or whatever phrase is used) in the country as law. But instead feminists lobbied to keep the antiquated sexist definition avoiding men as victims. Why do you think they did that?



That's a terrible idea of course and I don't think that happens in any other area of law does it? basically you're saying something should be a crime or not according to the state of mind of the victim - which the alleged criminal has no way of knowing for certain. In any other case the law says that people can commit what would otherwise be crimes by accident. Unless the crime is very serious indeed then usually mens rea - malice that is - must be proven. And that includes if someone is simply reckless. If the crime is very serious like killing someone then there may be a lesser crime for accidentally doing it. But rape is uniquely (?) made to be strict liability. If you accidentally have sex with someone thinking they consented when they did not that's rape. And it's beyond absurd.

Take for example a wife who decides to wake up her husband on his birthday with a blow job. She is a rapist because the husband (being asleep) cannot consent (not even if he says OK ahead of time). It's absurd. And it is absurd precisely because of the concentration on the state of mind of the "victim" instead of the state of mind of the "criminal".

I believe this issue is also at play with the issue raised by Astrodude.

Another example would be two people getting drunk and then having sex. According to feminist theory and some laws now, this is rape by both of the people of each other. In practise of course only the man would be accused of rape which is just the way feminists want it -- sex discrimination in law. And it is absurd.

Consent isn't really a vague notion. It's not intangible. Specific situations with predetermined consent aside (the husband and wife example you gave, BDSM play with safe words, etc) people who engage in non-consensual sex are not doing it by accident.

Much, much more importantly, people in general are not engaging in non-consensual sex. There is a small percentage of people who are actively seeking opportunity. Focusing on that group, figuring out how to identify them and the social attitudes which create opportunity and decrease the chance of prosecution would be far more productive.

The feminist movement has been trying to get the legal definition of rape changed for decades now. The FBI finally capitulated but did not go far enough. Tossing this back on feminism is kinda ridiculous unless you can show that the FBI has a feminist agenda.

[DavidByron]

Consent isn't really a vague notion. It's not intangible.

It literally is intangible. So I assume you meant some other word? It seems to me that if you are defending consent as a basis for defining rape then you must defend the wife / blow job as being a rapist and also defend the two drunk people as both being rapists. But you didn't offer a defence. It's as if you're saying "oh well that doesn't count". So are you saying police should just take a "I recognise it when I see it" approach to prosecution?


Much, much more importantly, people in general are not engaging in non-consensual sex.

Many people I talk to this about say "If having sex when drunk makes you a rapist then I've mutually raped people hundreds of times" or something like that. I take it from this that it's a very common scenario indeed. Do you think anyone who has had sex while mutually drunk should be placed on a sex offender list after first being sentenced to years in jail as a rapist?

The feminist movement has been trying to get the legal definition of rape changed for decades now. The FBI finally capitulated but did not go far enough. Tossing this back on feminism is kinda ridiculous unless you can show that the FBI has a feminist agenda.

Again this was NOT a change to a legal definition of rape. I have to say that a million times it seems on every forum :) The FBI UCR is a statistical definition. It's so they can gather data from many different jurisdictions with various different legal definitions of rape. If a woman rapes a man she is going to risk jail regardless of the stupid sexist UCR definition.

That's kind of my point here. People have had genuinely neutral definitions of rape for decades now. Ordinarily the change would have made the definition neutral just like in all 50 states (OK I haven't checked them all) and the federal code. Feminist groups have claimed responsibility for the change and the government has credited it to them so I think it's actually, YES, pretty reasonable to blame feminists for the sexist language.

ETA: no linky because I am newbie blah blah - what is it 15 posts? but it wasn't hard to Google. They're proud of what they did.

Especially as it matches exactly what happened with the NISVS which we're talking about here.

And the motivation for feminists to misrepresent data about rape is clear isn't it? It's horribly bad for the feminist brand name if people ever find out that men are raped more often than women are. And it's not even like this is the first time this sort of thing has happened. Feminists covered up the equality of domestic violence crime for over forty years to such an extent that you have the researchers writing academic papers on why is it that nobody seems to be taking any notice of the research results that say men are equally victimised?

I am not picking on you but in the same defence of feminism where you said (falsely) that men were hardly any of the victims of rape you also said men were hardly any of the victims of domestic violence. And again nobody had even mentioned domestic violence. You chose to bring that up entirely out of nowhere. I am not picking on you. Your behaviour there was extremely typical of feminists. (So pointing out that you did it is if you like a rhetorical device to illustrate that the practise is common within the movement) These falsified statistics are generally used to defend the movement.

And of course it's a lot of money in federal funding for sex segregated shelters which is largely channeled to feminist women within the movement. So there's a monetary motivation as well as an ideological one.

[bookitty]

It literally is intangible. So I assume you meant some other word? It seems to me that if you are defending consent as a basis for defining rape then you must defend the wife / blow job as being a rapist and also defend the two drunk people as both being rapists. But you didn't offer a defence. It's as if you're saying "oh well that doesn't count". So are you saying police should just take a "I recognise it when I see it" approach to prosecution?



Many people I talk to this about say "If having sex when drunk makes you a rapist then I've mutually raped people hundreds of times" or something like that. I take it from this that it's a very common scenario indeed. Do you think anyone who has had sex while mutually drunk should be placed on a sex offender list after first being sentenced to years in jail as a rapist?



Again this was NOT a change to a legal definition of rape. I have to say that a million times it seems on every forum :) The FBI UCR is a statistical definition. It's so they can gather data from many different jurisdictions with various different legal definitions of rape. If a woman rapes a man she is going to risk jail regardless of the stupid sexist UCR definition.

That's kind of my point here. People have had genuinely neutral definitions of rape for decades now. Ordinarily the change would have made the definition neutral just like in all 50 states (OK I haven't checked them all) and the federal code. Feminist groups have claimed responsibility for the change and the government has credited it to them so I think it's actually, YES, pretty reasonable to blame feminists for the sexist language.

Especially as it matches exactly what happened with the NISVS which we're talking about here.

And the motivation for feminists to misrepresent data about rape is clear isn't it? It's horribly bad for the feminist brand name if people ever find out that men are raped more often than women are. And it's not even like this is the first time this sort of thing has happened. Feminists covered up the equality of domestic violence crime for over forty years to such an extent that you have the researchers writing academic papers on why is it that nobody seems to be taking any notice of the research results that say men are equally victimised?

I am not picking on you but in the same defence of feminism where you said (falsely) that men were hardly any of the victims of rape you also said men were hardly any of the victims of domestic violence. And again nobody had even mentioned domestic violence. You chose to bring that up entirely out of nowhere. I am not picking on you. Your behaviour there was extremely typical of feminists. (So pointing out that you did it is if you like a rhetorical device to illustrate that the practise is common within the movement) These falsified statistics are generally used to defend the movement.

And of course it's a lot of money in federal funding for sex segregated shelters which is largely channeled to feminist women within the movement. So there's a monetary motivation as well as an ideological one.

:jaw-dropp

Very busy, can't go into every aspect but this. But wow. Shelters offer monetary motivation? Please, please back that up with some numbers.

[DavidByron]

:jaw-dropp
Very busy, can't go into every aspect but this. But wow. Shelters offer monetary motivation? Please, please back that up with some numbers.

Is that controversial? There's a lot of federal funding at stake. The big victory of the feminist movement during the 1990s was the passage of VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) which was mostly a bill to fund various feminist activities relating to domestic violence. It was and remains billions of dollars worth of funding. It gets renewed every so many years.

At the time the wording of the law was explicit discrimination against men - proving the lie to the idea that feminists want equality of course - although I think there were legal challenges and my impression was that the explicit sex discrimination in law was removed around 2005 (I'm guessing there). I constantly hear MRAs saying VAWA is still sexist which I doubt - at least explicitly. Obviously the entire thing has the objective of being highly sexist but I would guess the wording is now neutral.

The reasons stated by the feminist legal lobby group for changing the FBI UCR definition was that feminist run rape shelters and services wanted a new definition to boost the reporting of the rape of women so they could get more federal funding.

Now that is not sinister in itself. That's an obvious thing for any advocate to do. What's sinister is that they chose to hide male rape victims even though on the face of it you'd think male victims would also increase their funding too. So why hide male victims? The answer is because of the sex segregationist view that feminist movement supports.

By the way do you support sex segregationist shelters to? I don't think I have met a feminist who hasn't but tyr_13 might not given how much of an anomaly he is ;-) Again I ask only as a rhetorical device as an illustration that support for sex segregationism is very broad within the feminist movement.

At any rate because of the sex segregationism feminists figure they won't benefit from data saying men are victims -- that's my supposition btw. I don't have any "secret feminist documents" saying that. Still it seems like the most obvious answer to the question as to why feminists want to define male rape victims out of existence (beyond simple bigotry of course).

[Astrodude]

It is considered statutory rape, meaning that the younger part was not old enough to grant consent. A 12 year-old can not legally consent to a sexual act with a 21 year-old. The difference in life experience creates a situation in which exploitation is too great a possibility.

You said consent is not a vague notion. If it is not, how does life experience create a situation where consent is impossible. Also, that does not relate to issues of strict liability where age differences are commonly closer and the "perpetrator" has been defrauded into thinking that the consent is legitimate.

Statutory rape is considered rape and it's perpetrators are treated no differently even when they were in fact victims of rape by fraud. They get life sentences on the sex-offender registry just like a real rapist. I agree that it should be illegal for a 21 year old to have sex with a 12 year old, but that's where strict liability would probably be irrelevant since the 21 year old's knowledge of the child's age would be beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, if the child were made to somehow look 18 and had presented a fake ID, I'd consider the 21 year old a rape-by-fraud victim and charge someone else with a crime. In this unlikely scenario, it would be easy to tell who to charge. I would probably charge the parents, or possibly, a surgeon who made her look 18 knowing why she wanted the surgery.



This is also the last I will say about this. I have already dealt with a forum member who only wanted to discuss statutory laws in order to sate their own sexual fantasies. It was very disturbing and I would prefer not to repeat the experience.
I don't oppose the laws criminalizing statutory "rape" like I said, and I consider your insinuations above to be quite prejudiced and even bigoted against victims of rape-by-fraud.

[Lamuella]

oh awesome, we have someone using scare quotes around the word rape. This thread is definitely going well.

[DavidByron]

Keep reading those feminism threads, because they do get interesting. You'll see the discussions of male rape do raise some of the same concerns you have.

Welcome to the boards.

Yeah I feel I have some obligation to read up on what has been recently discussed to avoid obvious repetition but it's a long long slog. I'm half way through that 25 page monster. At the moment all I know is that it's probably a bad idea to try and talk about R*b*cca W*tson and Elev*torgate.

You come across best so far. About half way through you asked a question that would perhaps have been better as the start of a new thread:

People critical of feminism, let's say that men do have unfair accusations leveled at them and that feminism over-reaches. What do you want done about it? What specific actions could help lead to that goal?

Feminists, let's say that gender inequality exists and it is much more severe for women. What do you want done about it and by who? What specific actions could help lead to that goal?

At some point I'd like to issue an answer but it might be best to start a new thread about it. I think two feminists and zero critics responded.

[DavidByron]

oh awesome, we have someone using scare quotes around the word rape. This thread is definitely going well.

Is that remark a joke?

Because the scare quote usage was legitimate, right? If rape is defined on the basis of the state of mind (consent) of the victim then if we outlaw statutory rape by saying that minors cannot meaningfully consent then logically all sex between minors is two people raping each other. This is another example of an absurdity in the law but this one is usually (but not always) corrected in law by explicitly saying that if the two minors are more or less the same age then no foul.

That's arbitrary. It's basically saying that we don't really buy the whole "consent" definition but we don't want to have to arrest every pair of teenagers who make out. In practise of course the rules are rigged to only criminalise the boys because our society is incredibly sexist against men -- and that bias even pre-exists feminism.

You came across as someone taking a pot shot at someone on bogus grounds. But maybe you were just 100% joking. It sounded like you were joking on the square though.

[Lamuella]

Is that remark a joke?


in the sense that this thread isn't going at all well when people start to define screwing children as not rape, yes, it was a joke.

[bookitty]

in the sense that this thread isn't going at all well when people start to define screwing children as not rape, yes, it was a joke.

That happens a lot around here. Any conversation even remotely related to feminism will eventually focus on those poor, poor adults who have been rooked into having sex with those aggressive little Lolitas/Lolitos.

it's really weird.

[Astrodude]

in the sense that this thread isn't going at all well when people start to define screwing children as not rape, yes, it was a joke.

Really?
Charging a rape-by-fraud victim for accidentally committing rape is like charging an abortionist for murder. If you lie about your identity to the extent that your lies change the sexual act that a person is performing in the eyes of the law, you're committing rape because the person cannot then consent to the act. It's that simple.

It's rape when one person has sex with another person who doesn't understand the sexual activity, and the other person knows or suspects that the partner cannot consent due to ignorance. Strict liability is the big issue. By 14, people should be expected to have a reasonable understanding of what sex is. I'd probably criminalize sex between 21 year-olds and 14 year-olds, but I wouldn't consider it rape because consent is given. Most civilized, Western countries in the world have the age of consent at somewhere between 14 and 16.


I'm the one in agreement with the Model Penal Code on this issue. Everyone else here is going against the accepted norms and standards pretty much everywhere else that had the legal systems updated post-WWII.

[Astrodude]

That happens a lot around here. Any conversation even remotely related to feminism will eventually focus on those poor, poor adults who have been rooked into having sex with those aggressive little Lolitas/Lolitos.

it's really weird.

The fact remains that those little Lolitas are committing rape by fraud and you're endorsing it. If a 14 year old girl took a gun, shot an adult, and then performed oral sex on the victim lying on the ground, then your logic would have the clear victim charged with statutory rape.

When someone uses a fake ID for sex to lie about their age to seem over the age of consent, the other person cannot consent to the criminal act. It's just a fact.

[Lamuella]

you do know that when you say "the fact remains that..." you actually have to be reiterating something you had previously established as a fact, right?

but maintain your fantasy of there being an army of duplicitous children conning innocent guys into having sex with them if it helps your argument, I guess.

[Astrodude]

you do know that when you say "the fact remains that..." you actually have to be reiterating something you had previously established as a fact, right?


Moss and I established it as a fact in the report that Moss linked above. You can't consent to sex if you have no reasonable way to determine the partner's age beyond identification. Many people, both male and female, are defrauded into breaking the statutory rape laws. The legal interpretation used here by judges and prosecutors is downright evil!



but maintain your fantasy of there being an army of duplicitous children conning innocent guys into having sex with them if it helps your argument, I guess.

This isn't fantasy. This is reality and it happens more than you'd like to think. Besides, even if it happened once, it's still an outrageous abuse of the law and an egregious violation of the eighth amendment of the Federal Constitution.
http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/virginia-statutory-rape-laws----over-18-and-unknow-74746.html

[DavidByron]

That happens a lot around here. Any conversation even remotely related to feminism will eventually focus on those poor, poor adults who have been rooked into having sex with those aggressive little Lolitas/Lolitos.

it's really weird.

I guess I see it another way. Context: I've been debating feminists for twenty years and this is the first time I've seen this argument made. I've been reading through that 25 page thread on feminism on this board and not seen this argument come up there either.

So my interpretation is that I am seeing a feminist attempt to shut up a male critic by making fraudulent accusations or implications that he is some sort of sexual pervert or criminal. THAT is something that I have seen more times than I can recall.

I don't know if that's going on here but it does "smell" a lot like it.

I remind you that it was you who moved this conversation that was about rape statistics (male vs female victims) and the fraudulent definition used by the NISVS, towards talking about the role of consent in the definition of rape when you said,

Back to rape. The studies are finally focusing on lack of consent by the victim instead of the act of rape by the perpetrator. This is a recent and significant change in the way that we study sexual assault.

These comments about so-called "rape fraud" seem very much on topic for the topic you shifted to when you decided you didn't want to talk about the NISVS or it's deceptive definition of rape any more. I don't know this guy and you might be right that he just spams feminist threads with this but if so you gave him a gold plated invitation this time and I for one have never heard it before so I am glad you did.

[bookitty]

Is that controversial? There's a lot of federal funding at stake. The big victory of the feminist movement during the 1990s was the passage of VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) which was mostly a bill to fund various feminist activities relating to domestic violence. It was and remains billions of dollars worth of funding. It gets renewed every so many years.

At the time the wording of the law was explicit discrimination against men - proving the lie to the idea that feminists want equality of course - although I think there were legal challenges and my impression was that the explicit sex discrimination in law was removed around 2005 (I'm guessing there). I constantly hear MRAs saying VAWA is still sexist which I doubt - at least explicitly. Obviously the entire thing has the objective of being highly sexist but I would guess the wording is now neutral.

The reasons stated by the feminist legal lobby group for changing the FBI UCR definition was that feminist run rape shelters and services wanted a new definition to boost the reporting of the rape of women so they could get more federal funding.

Now that is not sinister in itself. That's an obvious thing for any advocate to do. What's sinister is that they chose to hide male rape victims even though on the face of it you'd think male victims would also increase their funding too. So why hide male victims? The answer is because of the sex segregationist view that feminist movement supports.

By the way do you support sex segregationist shelters to? I don't think I have met a feminist who hasn't but tyr_13 might not given how much of an anomaly he is ;-) Again I ask only as a rhetorical device as an illustration that support for sex segregationism is very broad within the feminist movement.

At any rate because of the sex segregationism feminists figure they won't benefit from data saying men are victims -- that's my supposition btw. I don't have any "secret feminist documents" saying that. Still it seems like the most obvious answer to the question as to why feminists want to define male rape victims out of existence (beyond simple bigotry of course).

I really hate to interrupt because you and straw-me are having such a lovely tête-à-tête but I thought you might want to look at some real numbers.


Campaign for Funding to End Domestic and Sexual Violence (http://www.nnedv.org/docs/Policy/FY13Approps_Chart.pdf) It's the funding for VAWA, and as you can see it is aprox 400 million a year. Which sounds like quite a lot but is spread over shelters, outreach, education, and services for both victims and at-risk youth.

Hardly worth creating a feminist conspiracy over.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

YES, pretty reasonable to blame feminists for the sexist language.

Interesting, thanks.



I am not picking on you but in the same defence of feminism where you said (falsely) that men were hardly any of the victims of rape you also said men were hardly any of the victims of domestic violence. And again nobody had even mentioned domestic violence. You chose to bring that up entirely out of nowhere. I am not picking on you. Your behaviour there was extremely typical of feminists. (So pointing out that you did it is if you like a rhetorical device to illustrate that the practise is common within the movement) These falsified statistics are generally used to defend the movement.

They're relentless energizer bunnies though and choosing to deal with them is tedious, exhausting work. So much deception and manipulation to endure. Lying for Jesus.

One can say "why bother" but when they are out there working their agenda for changing laws punitively against men; taxes, program spending, etc. I guess you need to be informed. So thanks.

[DavidByron]

I really hate to interrupt because you and straw-me are having such a lovely tête-à-tête but I thought you might want to look at some real numbers.

First of all thanks for confirming what I said about the billions spent on VAWA over the last few years.

Secondly, I don't think I've seen you use this "straw man" thing as an easy excuse so I am going to guess you really think I misrepresented you. Sooooooo could you maybe tell me where / how I did that in your view?

Third, you have no comment on that whole falsified results of the NISVS by misrepresenting the number of men who were raped? I think I saw you quote those misrepresented rape figures on one of the other pages. Presumably you were blissfully ignorant that the figures you quoted were wrong but now you'll start saying men and women are raped at equal rates?

[Galteeth]

This thread has gotten really off topic.

[Astrodude]

This thread has gotten really off topic.

How did this thread go off topic? This thread was about men's rights. Rape by fraud is not prosecuted at this time when a person is deliberately deceived into mistaking the age of a sexual partner. Instead, the person is prosecuted for statutory rape even though he is the victim of rape by fraud. This issue affects many men and results in their intense persecution. It also affects women, but it predominantly affects men.

The state courts are determined to ignore both the eighth-amendment, by treating the "strict liability rapists" like the real rapists, as well as ignoring the Lawrence decision. Strict liability is simply a violation of rights to not be held accountable for an act not willingly committed. To see how the courts continue to ignore the Lawrence precedent, see this report:
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=aulr and the cited court quote:

[b]y interpreting such public welfare offenses to require at least that the
defendant know that he is dealing with some dangerous or
deleterious substance, we have avoided construing criminal statutes
to impose a rigorous form of strict liability.


The courts, and users like bookitty and lamuella want to persecute people, predominantly men, with strict liability even when documentation is shown.

[Astrodude]

oh awesome, we have someone using scare quotes around the word rape. This thread is definitely going well.

One more thing; bookitty put the word statutory in italics to imply that she distinguished it from rape too, but she just wanted to throw the rape-by-fraud victims in prison and then persecute them for life by making them go on the sex-offender registries.

[KoihimeNakamura]

ITT: Straw, straw everywhere.

[Astrodude]

ITT: Straw, straw everywhere.

Perhaps the vitriol might make it seem like straw, but simply read their responses.

[KoihimeNakamura]

Perhaps the vitriol might make it seem like straw, but simply read their responses.

I have. Straw everywhere.

[leftysergeant]

I find it hard to believe that any significant number of men are being unjustly charged with rape, as compared to the number of them who get away with actual violent rape by intimidating the female victim.

I remember one of my superiors when i was in the Air Force, back in the 1960s, who got a DD for rape. He spent a good part of every working day while he was waiting for his paperwork to be finished complaining about how it was not rape, and that he was being abused by the system.

The victim was his 14 year-old step daughter.

I might have had more patience with his crap had he not tried to get me an Article 15 for saying that his training tests were badly written and nearly worthless. He was a treacherous old sack of fail.

Kind of reminds me of some of the sick puppies cited way back up-thread.

[Jekyll's Guest]

I find it hard to believe that any significant number of men are being unjustly charged with rape, as compared to the number of them who get away with actual violent rape by intimidating the female victim.

I don't have numbers either way, but what you do or do not find hard to believe is completely irrelevant. I find the popularity of jersey Shore hard to believe, yet it exists.

Secondly, if it's 1 man or 100 men unjustly having their lives ruined then we should care and look in to ways of fixing the problem. This is another one of those "never mind the men, the women have it much worse!" arguments we've seen mentioned in the Why Do People Hate Feminists thread.

[Astrodude]

I find it hard to believe that any significant number of men are being unjustly charged with rape, as compared to the number of them who get away with actual violent rape by intimidating the female victim.


I agree with Jekyll's Guest that the numbers are 100% irrelevant. Since this happens to more than one person, it is enough to demand change in the law.
Even if it only ever happened to one person, it is enough to demand change in the law, or rather the courts' interpretation of the law.

[mijopaalmc]

Adults refuse to act like adults, blame children, ITT.

[mijopaalmc]

double post

[Astrodude]

Adults refuse to act like adults, blame children, ITT.

How is being defrauded after using every viable option to determine someone's identity, acting childish? If an ID is shown and the state doesn't offer ID verification, how is it reasonable to always expect an individual to know the age is false?

I understand that the justification for strict liability; it's too hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no mistake in age. However, when reasonable action is taken to determine the age, the law should punish the individual.

I guarantee that at least 90% of private citizens in the country between the ages of 18-25 who is seeking a girlfriend or boyfriend could be tricked into committing strict liability statutory rape if a normal 14 year old got plastic surgery, wore makeup, had a fake ID, and had false witnesses asserting an age of 20. Some mature-looking fourteen-year-olds could easily convince 90% of Americans that they're 18 and legally frame a 20 year old for rape without any of that.

The law potentially criminalizes consensual sex even within marriage now if one party was defrauded concerning the age. It creates a reverse lottery in which people are essentially selected at random to unwillingly commit statutory rape.

The logical consequences of the judicial interpretations of this law is that anyone who isn't celibate is legally capable of committing rape despite having good intentions and rational behavior! I say "judicial interpretation" because the law usually recognizes that a rapist must have the mental capacity to commit the crime and No One outside without access to government databases has the mental capacity to expediently determine that specific, well-done IDs are fake when the government won't verify them. Even then, a real person's identity could be used, and if the physical resemblance is strong enough, there's really nothing that an individual could possibly do.

[mijopaalmc]

Uhhh...Astrodude, ignorance of a person's incapacity to consent to sexual contact can be an affirmative defense against a charge of a sex crime (see e.g., the New York State Penal Code Title 130).

[AvalonXQ]

Uhhh...Astrodude, ignorance of a person's incapacity to consent to sexual contact can be an affirmative defense against a charge of a sex crime (see e.g., the New York State Penal Code Title 130).

Doesn't work in this case. The Penal code specifies that lack of knowledge is a defense for all of the categories of incapacity except being underage.
Here's a lack-of-consent list:
3. A person is deemed incapable of consent when he or she is:
(a) less than seventeen years old; or
(b) mentally disabled; or
(c) mentally incapacitated; or
(d) physically helpless;
And here's the affirmative defense:
1. In any prosecution under this article in which the victim's lack of
consent is based solely upon his or her incapacity to consent because he
or she was mentally disabled, mentally incapacitated or physically
helpless, it is an affirmative defense that the defendant, at the time
he or she engaged in the conduct constituting the offense, did not know
of the facts or conditions responsible for such incapacity to consent.
Notice what's missing?

[mijopaalmc]

OK, so the New York Penal Code doesn't explicitly offer ignorance of the complainant's age as an affepirmative defense, but the point still stands that other states do.

You do understand that "e.g." means "for example"?

[AvalonXQ]

OK, so the New York Penal Code doesn't explicitly offer ignorance of the complainant's age as an affepirmative defense, but the point still stands that other states do.

On the other hand, many states treat underage incapacity according to a strict liability standard.


You do understand that "e.g." means "for example"?
Yes. Do you understand "assertion without evidence"?

[mijopaalmc]

AvalonXQ-

What I about the ignorance of the incapacity to give consent to sexual contact being an affirmative defense in New York is correct. You were the one who appended, without any evidence, the idea of age to what I had said.

[AvalonXQ]

You were responding to Astrodude, who was talking specifically about the application of strict liability in the case of statutory rape due to age.

I pointed out that your statement didn't apply to the instance under discussion.

Rather than trying to insist on being "not wrong" in some abstract sense, you should concede the point and find a better example, if you have one.

[Astrodude]

OK, so the New York Penal Code doesn't explicitly offer ignorance of the complainant's age as an affepirmative defense, but the point still stands that other states do.


That's not much of a point. That's like telling Trayvon Martin's family that the police's interpretation of the "Stand Your Ground" law isn't a big deal because other states don't have it.

[mijopaalmc]

You were responding to Astrodude, who was talking specifically about the application of strict liability in the case of statutory rape due to age.

I pointed out that your statement didn't apply to the instance under discussion.

Rather than trying to insist on being "not wrong" in some abstract sense, you should concede the point and find a better example, if you have one.

Because I should not be responsible for how you choose to interpret my posts. By the way you chose to insist that an omission constitued a prohibition. In other words, you assumed facts not in evidence.

[AvalonXQ]

Because I should not be responsible for how you choose to interpret my posts.

Ah, so it's more important for you to be right (which you're not) than to say something meaningful, relevant, or useful. Thanks for the clarification.