What We Have In The US Isn't "Rape Culture" But Witch-Hunt Culture
Panties in Oregon were wadded over a teacher's thoughtful three-page paper on so-called "rape culture" -- which, yes, exists, but only in some Muslim countries and cultures.
Some clerics blame rape on the woman. Australian Sheik Feiz recently said a rape victim "has no one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world... to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature." Even his successor, who was brought in to mitigate the backlash, compared unveiled women to "sweet pastries" tempting hungry men. One of the world's most respected Sunni scholars, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, recently told an audience on his al-Jazeera television show that "To be absolved from guilt, the raped woman must have shown some sort of good conduct."Dr. Abd al-Aziz Fawazan al-Fawzan, a professor of Islamic law said that "If a woman gets raped walking in public alone, then she, herself is at fault. She is only seducing men by her presence. She should have stayed at home like a Muslim woman."
This was echoed by the imam of a Salafist mosque in Cologne, Germany in the wake of the shocking sex abuse rampage by recently arrived Muslims on New Year's Eve in 2015. He explained that "the events" (which included rape) "were the girls' own fault because they were half-naked and wearing perfume."
When it came to light in 2016 that a 13-year-old British girl had been abused by a dozen Pakistani rapists, certain members of the Muslim community said they believed the victim "played her part."
In 2013, Syria's chief Mufti, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Ali al-Dala, issued a statement that gives soldiers religious permission to rape the women they capture.
Or, as it could be put: WWMD -- What Would Mohammed Do?
Meanwhile, the teacher, David Lickey, wrote about so-called "rape culture" (link is to his PDF I uploaded):
"I have never met a person who believes rape is anything other than a heinous crime."
I think most of us share that experience -- and that opinion.
But his sharing it, along with some other thoughtful opinions has led to outrage in the school.
This is the state of schools today. Instead of debating the issue -- perhaps with a panel discussion -- they apologize profusely and offer "support" (counseling?) for the poor teenagers who are apparently too emotionally frail to consider the information in his piece.
Allan Brettman reports on the story in The Oregonian.
On Friday night, Grant High Principal Carol Campbell sent a message to families.The document, Campbell wrote, "included some statements that run counter to the way we approach this important subject. The perspective of the teacher does not reflect nor support our approach to educating students on sexual assault. A strong contradictory argument should be accompanied by counter arguments from credible sources.
"In this case, the document was shared with many students and staff with very little context. We apologize for any harm or negative impact. We are working with students and some staff members to organize listening sessions and opportunities for adults and students to get support. It is our primary goal to ensure Grant is a safe place for all."
Note the principal conflating physical safety with being emotionally safe from ideas.
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Bob in Texas at May 8, 2017 5:32 AM
There will be a large group of Millennials, perhaps 20 million, who will be incapable of functioning in a free society and will have to be institutionalized. Keep this in mind when you are considering government spending priorities.
Data on how many people are institutionalized in the U.S. is surprisingly hard to find. I found a report from the National Institute of Mental Health (source) that says that 9.8M adults in the U.S. have a "serious mental illness". Not all of these people are institutionalized; at least some of them are capable of functioning at some level. If we guesstimate that 50% of them are institutionalized,, that's 4.9M. I found another article from ABC News that claims that 1.6M elderly are in nursing homes. There is probably some overlap between those two groups, but for the purpose of argument, we'll ignore that, and call the total number of people institutionalized (ignoring the very small number of non-elderly adults who are institutionalized due to physical impairments) 6.5M.
So adding 20M people over the next two decades or so will roughly quintuple the number of institutionalized. I doubt that that's going to work, without economy-killing levels of taxation. Something very bad is going to happen mid-century. I'm not sure what.
Cousin Dave at May 8, 2017 7:15 AM
I see them repeat the shibboleth about 1-in-4 being sexually assaulted in the margins as a counter to the factual position that the safety on campus is better (and still, we're talking about differences in the 1/1000 or smaller).
How horrible must you be as a human being to believe that statistic and send your daughters to college?
If you were told she had a 1-in-4 chance of being in a serious car accident in a 4 year span, you would never let your daughter have a driver's license.
Social services should protect children from such reckless parents.
El Verde Loco at May 8, 2017 8:59 AM
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/04/21/german-judge-acquits-turkish-man-of-rape-after-4-hours-of-forced-violent-sex/
"She refused, cried "stop" after he had grabbed her, and then finally she gave up."
Well, there you go. She wanted it.
Bob in Texas at May 8, 2017 10:31 AM
Cousin Dave: "...9.8M adults in the U.S. have a 'serious mental illness'... If we guesstimate that 50% of them are institutionalized, that's 4.9M."
Nowhere near half of people with serious mental illnesses are institutionalized. In this state I live in there are about 292,000 people with serious mental illnesses, including children and adults. Maybe 25,000 of those spend one or more days hospitalized for mental illness during a year. The average stay is about 9 days. Most of those are hospitalized for mood disorders, mostly major depression, and the next most have schizophrenic disorders. The state psychiatric hospitals in this state, where patients might stay for months or years, have about 1,100 beds total.
This is not counting the elderly institutionalized in long term care facilities - dementia and Alzheimer's are serious mental illnesses. And it doesn't include inmates with serious mental illnesses institutionalized in prisons and jails.
I think there are more people with serious mental illnesses who are homeless than there are living in institutions. But that's just based on my own observation over the last 20 years.
Ken R at May 8, 2017 11:25 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/12/protest-migrants-gang-rape-woman-wheelchair/
"as the victim allegedly did not do enough to fight off her attackers, according to prosecutors."
Beginning to see a pattern here.
Bob in Texas at May 8, 2017 12:26 PM
Here's another part of the pattern:
https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/05/06/girl-scout-who-confronted-neo-nazi-admits-immigrants-may-rape-her-says-shell-get-over-it/
It's like liberal, progressive, feminist Europeans are intentionally developing an actual rape culture.
Ken R at May 8, 2017 12:34 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51-hepLP8J4&feature=share
What were you wearing? - Tracey Ullman's Show: Season 2 Episode 6 Preview - BBC One
Bob in Texas at May 8, 2017 12:51 PM
"I have never met a person who believes rape is anything other than a heinous crime."
_____________________________________________
Trouble is, just because HE thinks it's a horrible crime that merits jail time, Regardless of Who the Victim Was, doesn't mean that other people are dumb enough to disagree out loud if they have very different opinions - and people like that exist everywhere. (As in "he shouldn't have to go to jail if she wasn't a virgin or if he paid for three restaurant meals in a row - or if he was white and she wasn't.")
I admit the only differences in LAW that I know of from 30 years ago or more have to do with the age of consent and marital rape. E.g., it wasn't until 1987 that the age of consent in New Mexico was raised from 13 (yes, 13) to 16, thanks to a bill by Senator William Vandergriff. I doubt any parent of a daughter today thinks that was a bad change.
And, from Wikipedia: "By 1993, all states had withdrawn the marital rape exemptions, the last states to do so being Oklahoma and North Carolina (both in 1993) or the exemption had been declared judicially to be unconstitutional."
However, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't so many decades ago that, because of sociey's MORES, a woman brutally attacked could only hope to get a rape conviction if
1. She was a virgin (and preferably still living with her parents) and he was a stranger
2. She was married and he was a stranger
3. She was a widow.
Note that divorced women aren't on the list. Why? Because the victim had to be "chaste." I have never heard of a divorced woman, real or fictional, referred to as "chaste" by people who actually use that word, unless she was already in a convent. Divorced women were commonly called sluts.
My point: While I dislike using political nouns of any kind, I can't blame people for wanting SOME term for a culture that is part of any little or not so little community (such as evangelical ones like BJU) where women and teen girls who have even one premarital affair or get divorced (or are simply not chaperoned) are more or less officially seen as "damaged property" and are therefore fair game for harassment or worse. So while "rape culture" may not be as well organized as, say, redlining is, it does exist, I dare say.
I once heard - via historian Richard Shenkman? - that while the Mob is run more or less the same way in cities across the country, that doesn't mean any individual mob knows what those in other cities are up to, which is good for them, since that way they can't testify against each other. I.e., if some people think some women should always be fair game to be forced into sex, they don't necessarily talk about it, even to each other.
lenona at May 9, 2017 10:30 AM
"However, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't so many decades ago that, because of sociey's MORES, a woman brutally attacked could only hope to get a rape conviction if ..."
lenona,
Being 65 and capable of remembering stuff from "decades ago" I think this is overkill UNLESS you are talking about women from the "wrong side of town".
This stigma and powerlessness has been true since man walked earth. Otherwise, not so much.
Bob in Texas at May 9, 2017 10:56 AM
If the man was in a much more powerful social position than the woman (such as being her boss), it comes to the same thing. In the same vein, I have very seldom heard of really old cases of black men attacking white women (cases proven true, that is), likely because black men knew all too well that they could get lynched on a whim, anytime, even when no white woman actually made an accusation. Of course, it also depends on what part of the country - even within a state - you're talking about.
Another unpleasant factor is that the average woman has always wanted to believe that SHE was too smart to get raped. So if some OTHER teen girl or young woman allowed herself to be alone with her boyfriend and nothing illegal happened, she could still be considered a "good girl," but if she did get raped and could prove it (preferably with lots of bruises), she'd likely get labeled a slut by other females - or as blameworthy in some way.
From the late conservative Democratic Tennessee state senator Doug Henry in 2008, on the floor of the Senate chamber (he was 82 at the time):
"Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it’s simply, 'Let’s don’t go forward with this act.' "
Btw, if you'll pardon the ghastly humor, to get back to my first post, I remembered a movie scene (not sure which movie) in which a fictional film tycoon gets arrested and yells, incredulously: "I'm under arrest for shooting a WRITER?!"
lenona at May 9, 2017 12:16 PM
lenona: "just because HE thinks it's a horrible crime that merits jail time, Regardless of Who the Victim Was, doesn't mean that other people are dumb enough to disagree out loud if they have very different opinions - and people like that exist everywhere."
How would you know that people like that exist everywhere when none are dumb enough to say so out loud? If that disagreement is so prevalent what makes it dumb to say so?
"it wasn't until 1987 that the age of consent in New Mexico was raised from 13 (yes, 13) to 16"
And now today, in this state and many others, the age of consent is 16 or 18 - and graphic educational pamphlets and booklets full of "facts" about sexual activity, presented in a values-free context along with free condoms, are encouraged and made available to 12 and 13-year-olds in schools and clinics; and any girl 13 years or older can get any type of birth control, including hormones and abortion, without the knowledge or consent of her parents.
"if she did get raped and could prove it (preferably with lots of bruises), she'd likely get labeled a slut by other females - or as blameworthy in some way."
Today, in these progressively enlightened times, this is more common and worse than it was several decades ago when I was a youth becoming an adult. I work with adolescent girls every day who've been sexually assaulted, abused, molested, pimped out, and even gang raped... and if a girl had the courage to complain then she has to deal with law enforcement authorities who take months to act, if they ever do at all; and with child welfare and school officials who seem indifferent or even annoyed by her complaint while still requiring her to attend school and even sit in the same classroom with the shit stains who abused, injured, degraded and continue to harass her. And all this while being labeled a slut and socially ostracized and abused, sometimes even assaulted, by other females.
Modern, progressive, Trump-hating adolescent boys and young men pay lip service to the PC values of gender equality and equal rights, opportunity and safety for women; but then they act like they don't believe a girl is even a human being. And so many girls seem to concur and accept their place.
When I was growing up it was drilled into my head, and into all my male peers, not just by our families but by teachers and coaches, TV and movie heroes, sports heroes, scout leaders - any adult men we lived, worked or socialized with - that our girls and women are precious and desirable, and not physically strong like men, and therefore it was our duty as men to be the body guards and protectors of any woman or girl within our range of action, and not just the ones we love... even sluts (if all men are the protectors of all women then the women we love will be safe anywhere as long as there are men around) I was taught that a man who fell short in this - who didn't step up - lost face and was ashamed.
I still see elements of this mos, or at least the idea that men shouldn't physically harm women, in a lot of boys and young men today. But then I see all of those who aren't ashamed to coerce or force a woman, or molest a girl who passes out drunk, or physically assault a woman for something as asinine as "disrespecting" him, while other people stand by watching and video-recording, and then proudly talk about it and post video on the internet.
What the hell is going on? I don't remember it being that way a few decades ago. Or were the people in my little part of the world so different from everybody else?
I attribute the difference to the increasing dominance of liberal-progressive morality and thinking in schools, media, entertainment, government, churches and homes.
Ken R at May 10, 2017 3:02 AM
How would you know that people like that exist everywhere when none are dumb enough to say so out loud? If that disagreement is so prevalent what makes it dumb to say so?
_________________________________________
Simple. Evangelicals, for one, are powerful in their own way, but they're still a minority. So most are smart enough to know when to keep quiet about their beliefs - especially when talking to outsiders. Same goes for those who grew up in Klan neighborhoods and who sympathize with most of what they say, at least, but vaguely understand that they can't say so to outsiders - so they don't. Same goes for any community that's very backward with regard to women.
And there's no shortage of old movies where the "hero" doesn't understand that the blame should go to the rapist, so that indicates something serious about the times they were filmed in. Two I can think of, offhand, are:
"Wedding in White" (1972, in WWII-era Nova Scotia, starring Carol Kane and Donald Pleasance as her brutish father) in which there's no such crime as rape - only being raped. Especially when the rapist (her brother's friend) is a WWII soldier - how could THEY have it in their hearts to do any wrong after spending a few years killing people?
"Who's That Knocking At My Door?" (1967, by Martin Scorsese, starring Harvey Keitel). In it, his character's girlfriend tells him that years before she met him, she had been raped, and after struggling to compose himself for a second, he says "Oh. Well, I forgive you". And then HE doesn't understand why SHE suddenly gives him the cold shoulder.)
From a 2014 thread:
...if you want proof that "educated" adults still have trouble believing in punishment for rapists - or watching sons for signs of dangerous mental disorders of any kind AND holding them responsible of any resulting behavior - check Google News for Boz Tchividjian (Billy Graham's grandson and the leader of a nonprofit called Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment). He's been investigating how Bob Jones "University" handled sexual abuse cases.
From the Christian Post:
"Two years after the rape, Landry (former BJU student and a Mennonite) said she recognized that she needed help and sought it from BJU and was referred to Jim Berg, the dean of students at the time.
"After telling Berg her story, Landry said he asked her if she had been drinking, smoking marijuana or had been 'impure.' He then asked her about her 'root sin.'
"He goes, 'Well, there's always a sin under other sin. There's a root sin,'" Landry recalled. "And he said, 'We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.' And I just ran."
From the same thread, here:
Not that we shouldn't also be educating girls not to twist the law whenever it suits them, just because they can get away with it. As Dan Savage also says, along with many others, regret is not rape. That does not mean that we can presume to know what is mere regret and what isn't when she DID say no.
From a 2016 thread:
And even when there's no doubt that a rape took place, as with Elizabeth Smart, plenty of people still have pretty warped attitudes. I was appalled that, when she was rescued, a bishop felt the need to spell out to his congregation that Smart had not become impure, damaged property. WHY should any adult congregation need that spelled out - unless they'd been raised by the church to believe something a little different?
From the Straight Dope forum, by Dogzilla:
"Flash forward a few years and this poor girl, Elizabeth Smart, gets kidnapped and raped at the same age I was. I cried for that kid every day, especially after they found her. Then I heard her bishop say, on CNN no less, that she was still pure in the eyes of the Lord. Apparently, the Lord plays favorites with his rape victims; some are forgiven and still considered pure and others are punished and considered dirty and broken. Shortly after that press conference with Ed Smart and his bishop, I went from merely being an inactive, nonpracticing, nonbelieving mormon to being a fully resigned apostate. I sent a letter to Salt Lake City and formally quit."
From the HuffPost, in 2013:
...The publication of the Canyon sex education documents comes months after activist Elizabeth Smart -- who was abducted from her home in 2002 at the age of 14, sexually abused by her captors and was found nine months later -- started speaking out against abstinence-only education. According to Smart, now 26, abstinence-only education makes sexually active females feel worthless. She has also said that after being sexually abused by her abductors, the abstinence-only education she had received prior to her kidnapping partially informed her decision not to run away.
“I think it goes beyond fear for so many children, especially in sex trafficking," she said in May. "It's feeling like 'who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.'”
...From Jon Krakauer's book "Under the Banner of Heaven":
“Being brought up as (Smart) was made her especially vulnerable,” says Debbie Palmer, who is intimately acquainted with the coercive power of fundamentalist culture from her own upbringing in Bountiful. “Mitchell would never have been able to have such power over a non-Mormon girl.”
(end)
It all goes back to the ideas that a woman's body isn't really her property, it's society's property, that a non-virgin (or a rumored non-virgin) is only useless "damaged property," that all men are naturally-born rapists (hardly a fair conservative's attitude to men), that a woman's sacred job is to protect that public property, even when the cost is her own life (literally or otherwise) and that failure to do so is a crime. Which, of course, is why Shakespeare's Lucrece commits suicide afterward.
lenona at May 10, 2017 11:42 AM
It all goes back to the ideas that a [man's] body isn't really [his] property, it's society's property, that a non-[providing/married male] is only useless "damaged property," that all men are naturally-born [workers] (hardly a fair conservative's attitude to men), that a [man's] sacred job is to [provide] that public [duty], even when the cost is [his] own life (literally or otherwise) and that failure to do so is a crime [and evidence of cowardice and childishness]. Which, of course, [is why male suicide rates are more than thrice that of women].
I've decided that, rather than argue with lenona's insane anti male rants, I'm just going to copy them and flip the genders
lujlp at May 11, 2017 7:25 AM
Or, to give a shorter version of my last post, if we're agreed that official, racist organizations exist all over the U.S. (and are at least somewhat discreet about their existence, aside from the more notorious ones) it would be foolish to assume that there aren't also plenty of people who believe, secretly or not, that forcing a woman into sex shouldn't be a felony under certain circumstances - especially when the rapist is of a higher status.
For starters, anyone who belongs to or sympathizes with the KKK is not very likely to think that a white male should go to jail for raping a black female. (I know about the anti-miscegenation laws, which no doubt the KKK supported, but only those over 60 or so remember when those laws were actually enforceable, so the KKK is not about to demand the jailing of a white rapist today - again, if she was black.) Also, Phyllis Schlafly (and her followers?) didn't have a problem with marital rape and didn't support the laws against it. Then there were quite a few people in the 1989 Glen Ridge, NJ case who fiercely supported the rapists, presumably because they were well-off, popular jocks (though they already had a reputation for bad behavior, like drunk driving) and because their victim was a mentally disabled girl who wasn't popular. (One father in the case said something like "why does anyone expect boys, with their raging hormones, to control themselves? It's not fair." Maybe that just means boys need to be chaperoned and parents should be punished when they don't?)
Btw, luj, I think you've already damaged your reputation a number of times - especially in this thread (along with other posters):
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/06/17/25_years_on_the.html
I can't imagine why anyone would think that any married man has an obligation to take a seriously dangerous job unless he wants to do so, since no one wants to see him become dead or disabled. (Plenty of blue-collar women are expected to do just that, in factories, etc., often for minimum wage, but I digress.) If a man doesn't WANT to marry or have kids in the first place, conservatives like Kay Hymowitz (author of "Manning Up") should lay off. If you are single with no kids but you're not qualified to do any safe job that pays well, that's YOUR problem. Male or female.
lenona at May 11, 2017 12:50 PM
If by damaged my reputation you mean I thought the person who lied should have been punished rather than the person she lied to, I'd have to agree.
But then, my standards are the same regardless of the gender of the parties involved, where as a gender bigot such as yourself always tries to blame men for everything
lujlp at May 11, 2017 9:46 PM
Re second paragraph: Funny how you're pretty much the ONLY person here who thinks I believe/do that. Not to mention that you hardly EVER complain about male behavior.
lenona at May 16, 2017 1:19 PM
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