Blaming Men For The Crime Of One Man
Excellent piece in The Australian by Quillette's Claire Lehmann on the rape and murder of a young woman down there -- and the response in its aftermath. (The murderer has turned himself in to police.)
In the aftermath of this brutal crime we have seen calls to action from Malcolm Turnbull to "change the hearts of men", from Bill Shorten to "change the attitudes of men", and from Adam Bandt that "we (men) must change the way we act", as if there were some kind of unspoken bond between the person who committed this crime and the politicians who govern the nation.Such utterances, while potentially comforting to those who are acutely distressed, are overly broad in their attribution of blame. Whether such broadness is intentional or not, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of evil, and betrays the liberal principle that no person should be held accountable for a crime they did not commit.
The notion of "toxic masculinity" is part of this -- the idea that being a man is itself poisonous. It's just a ridiculous notion. There are plenty of toxic women out there -- but they get to be taken as individuals, not presumed to be guilty.
But deeming being male some sort of pre-crime allows for pre-punishment (at least of the social kind) -- for anything resembling, oh, a joke.
The focus on sexist jokes and "everyday sexism" seems disproportionate when weighed against the evidence. You wouldn't know it from the amount of times the myth is repeated by media commentators, but there is no evidence that links the telling of jokes to sexual assault or murder. On the contrary, in the psychiatric literature, losing one's ability to laugh (anhedonia) is a recognised sign of psychopathology, and a general sense of humour is considered healthy.The fashionable idea that all men are somehow responsible for a culture of rape and violence is not supported by the evidence either. Crimes in general, including crimes against women, are committed overwhelmingly by a minority subset of the general population. In Sweden, for example, a population-based study that looked at more than two million people from 1975 to 2004 found that only 1 per cent of the population were responsible for 63.2 per cent of all crimes recorded -- nearly twice as many as the other 99 per cent combined. That's a tiny percentage of the population responsible for the vast majority of offending.
This is the correct view, the evidence-based view -- the one that, sadly, does not enable what feminism to often is these days: a path to shaming of men as a group and unearned power over them by those pushing this view of men as toxic and criminal by nature.
What goes around comes around. I'm a decent enough guy, but truly despising women get easier all the time. You go, grrrls!
Jay R at June 24, 2018 9:22 PM
Masculinity is not toxic. Victim culture is toxic.
Patrick at June 25, 2018 2:03 AM
I enjoy it when morons blame all men, I point out a CDC commissioned study that shows women commit nearly half of all sexual assaults and then ask them why there are never any call to teach women not to rape, or to change the attitudes of women
lujlp at June 25, 2018 2:06 AM
Let's begin by avoiding trite, trendy language
...
For example, "toxic."
Crid at June 25, 2018 4:41 AM
Let's begin by avoiding trite, trendy language
...
For example, "toxic."
Agreed. I'd like to add "problematic."
I'm sure we could add to this list.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at June 25, 2018 5:54 AM
> I'd like to add "problematic"
Exactly. (And for high school graduates who don't like big words, "fake news.")
Apparently it's natural to think that fashionable language represents the best of human thinking. The precise opposite is true.
Crid at June 25, 2018 6:53 AM
Demonizing and blaming the "other" for a host of problems is not new. It's practically human nature. However, its prevalence in our formal political and cultural discourse has coarsened society.
When phrases like "toxic masculinity" are uttered without irony by university officials and social scientists, and government-sponsored re-education is the accepted solution. we've entered dangerous territory.
Identity politics is toxic, masculinity is not. We can disagree with each other without criminalizing the existence of people who are not like us.
Conan the Grammarian at June 25, 2018 6:53 AM
Human thinking as opposed to, y'know, salamander thinking.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9cQCVGDKs
Crid at June 25, 2018 6:56 AM
I've not raped nor murdered anyone.
So...I should change my heart and my attitude? I've wondered how it would feel to spit on my hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats. And I be permitted to enjoy some rapine and intaking??
Oh, right: pillage then burn.
Wut? not what was meant? oh.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 25, 2018 6:59 AM
Crid:
Fine. I'll find different words when describing you, Crid. Picky, picky, picky.
(You laughed. Admit it.)
Patrick at June 25, 2018 7:03 AM
the liberal principle that no person should be held accountable for a crime they did not commit.
How quaint that she thinks this is still a liberal principal. From what I've seen collective guilt is much more in vogue as a guiding principal for modern liberals.
Shtetl G at June 25, 2018 8:46 AM
One fellow, on seeing a poster that said "Men Rape" responded "Women Overgeneralize".
Karl Lembke at June 25, 2018 10:15 AM
From what I've seen collective guilt is much more in vogue as a guiding principal for modern liberals.
That's because they're not actual liberals in the classic sense of Voltaire. They're progressives, whose ancestry include the progressive movement from about 100 or so years ago.
Those are the same people that openly admired Mussolini, Stalin and to a lesser extent, Uncle Adolph. When those people became an embarrassment due to certain mass murdering and/or aggressive war waging tendencies, the progressives rebranded themselves as liberals.
And unlike Hubert Humphrey, they will not defend your right to free speech. And so we've come full circle, and they've let the mask slip and are embracing the term progressive again.
Still the same state-sponsored nannyism.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 25, 2018 10:32 AM
"change the attitudes of men"
and
"we (men) must change the way we act"
They have already succeeded in those two. Just not they way they expected.
There are many decent men now who will NOT reach out and help when they see a woman in distress (whether it be because of the situation she is in, such as a flat tire; or being harassed by her boyfriend) because the left/feminists have said "we" (that is men) are the problem.
So, if *I* am the problem I'll just go away and let her sort it out for herself. There. problem solved.
charles at June 25, 2018 5:31 PM
There is in fact inherent in human nature the capacity for violence. We are the most dangerous predator on earth. Primitive man used to hunt mammoths for God's sake. The same violent nature is what causes Antifa to riot and internet mobs to try to get people fired as it is for men to be violent. In fact studies I saw showed that domestic violence is MORE often initiated by women (ie they hit first) but they are largely unable to hurt their husband due to strength differentials.
The solution is NOT more hateful rhetoric against men but an emphasis on courtesy, self-control, decorum --you know, all the stuff the Left has thrown overboard.
cc at June 26, 2018 9:18 AM
"There are many decent men now who will NOT reach out and help when they see a woman in distress."
In the AED training that I took several years ago, one thing they emphasized to us is that if you are administering AED treatment to a heart attack victim, and said victim happens to be a woman, and her bra is in the way of placing the chest pad over the heart, the bra has to be moved out of the way even if it means exposing her breasts. But doing so could open me up to a charge of sexual assault. So now I wonder how I would react to such a situation. Would I try to get a female bystander to move the bra and place the pad? Would I just wait and try to keep her comfortable until the EMTs arrived, and let them handle it? Or would I walk by and not get involved at all? Doing that last seems like giving up, but... I've been reviewing various states' Good Samaritan laws and I can't find anything one way or the other.
Cousin Dave at June 27, 2018 10:05 AM
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