The Bechdel Test!

Here I do agree with AVCortez: I think these kinds of discussions, as long as kept civil like here, are very entertaining and good brain exercise to boot when you have to consider different ideas, compare them to your own, and see if your arguments still hold water etc. It's all in good fun.

Being maced repeatedly while you're cuffed, e.g. is very different from getting one faceful and while you're rubbing your eyes, the girl is taking a hike. Unless you're restrained, say, with handcuffs, it's actually possible to function after getting maced if, for some reason, you get maced unprovoked in some place where you can't run away (like in a bus e.g.). It's possible to disarm the person with mace if necessary. Some self-defense groups actually train for this (though understandably not that frequently).

Scenario A: Shit happens. Shouldn't have wolf-whistled. In that sense, the guy is at fault because he was the one who instigated the situation: if he hadn't acted like an ass, he wouldn't have gotten his dumb skull cracked.
If a guy grabs a girl despite her verbal protests, and she pushes him away, he slips, cracks his skull, and dies... no witnesses, no CCTV, she gets prosecuted for manslaughter... it happens. What was she supposed to do? Let him do to her whatever he wanted?

That's what the world is like: a girl can fight off her rapist, and he can sue her if she can't prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was, in fact, trying to rape her. But what's the alternative? Turn the other cheek every single time when a man harasses a woman? Or accept the fact that, yes, accidents do happen. Then again, parents should teach their kids that if you do dumb shit (like harass a woman), you can get hurt. If all men understood that and didn't harass women, they'd get to keep their skulls intact, yes?

Why would I call a female victim of domestic abuse a dumb bitch or any other insulting name? But yes, she should leave the prick. Or do you think otherwise? Just like men should leave abusive women.

I've always believed every man should know how to fight (women too, but that's beside this particular point). If you do, you can defend yourself against the majority of girls without getting hurt and without hurting them. BJJ & SW are great for subduing an assailant without hurting them (unless you want to). And once the girl has calmed down/you get a window to escape, escape and then dump her (via phone call if she's been violent before). Unfortunately, most women are unable to restrain violent men in a similarly peaceful manner.

That's how it goes in self-defense as well: if someone attacks you, run away if you can, if you can't, resolve the situation with minimum necessary violence, then run away. The same applies with domestic violence.

A guy once compared mace to an eyejab in a can: sometimes it drops them, sometimes they just shrug it off and keep coming. She better have something more serious to back it up with if the guy can push through the pain of getting maced and still come after her (happens more often than people think). If the attack is ferocious enough, she should skip the OC and go for whatever it takes to stop the guy.


Shadowwalker, do you think it's okay if pedophiles catcall and wolf-whistle after children? They wouldn't be inciting violence and words don't hurt, or...?

What about the other punishments ChickenFreak suggested? Fines? Being barred from the area?

Btw, punishable sexual harassment can be verbal. People lose jobs because they verbally harassed someone at their work place. Do you think that's wrong?

A milder example is how pupils are punished for mouthing off at teachers: they get detention or their parents are notified etc. Is this wrong as well?

Edited to add: sw, you may not be fazed by a guy whistling after you (or even by more creative verbal "compliments"), heck, there are women out there who even like the attention, but I remember when my sister was 13 and how creeped out she was when a guy in his 40s had whistled and winked at her or when 2-3 years later an older man in a suit had whispered sexual suggestions on the street. She didn't dress trashy, btw, and had had no prior contact to either creep. Personally, I think both guys would've at least deserved fines.

 

Who?

Perhaps someone who picked a market, wrote a book filled it with ideas and information.........WA-LA.

Might just be correct for a sub-group of readers. Similar to talk shows. There was Johnny Carson and Jerry Springer. From one group at night to another group much different for day.

 

Again, words - sticks and stones. Sexual harassment is more than just one comment, legally. It's a continued pattern of harassment. Now, management may take it a step further, but that's their prerogative, to set the rules of conduct within their business. Same with students being disrespectful of teachers. Those are 'in-house rules', not law.

Again, I ask you - who will decide what can and cannot be said? What if someone is put in charge of 'correct speech' and they decide that your words make them "uncomfortable" and they can throw you in jail? Or mace you? Or tell you you can't go on certain streets? Or go to the library? "Oh, but I wouldn't say anything like that!" you claim. Doesn't matter. They think you did, and that's all that matters.

Sticks and stones.

 

I've got to agree. The law is not meant to make people moral; it's meant to stop people from being immoral. The recourse for emotional distress is to sue. Crime is a more serious category.

 

I find myself torn between the old days of my father and the modern day of "equality". I mean 50 years ago, if you bad mouthed a woman for no good reason, some observing man was going beat you into a bruised banana. Most likely he got charged or sent to jail, but he was upholding that "chivalrous" ideal. He'd probably be cheered by his friends.. But it makes women appear weak like they can't defend themselves (and some want to be defended..). In modern day, some people believe the same ideal, but there can be a whole backlash when something like that happens coming from both sexes. You switch the situation around where you have a woman defending a man and the situation becomes humorous. But why can't women be strong in a situation without humiliating a man?

It's just the way the world is atm, and there's not much anyone can do about it but bring the problem to light. So yeah, I find good from both perspectives of the old and modern ways of thinking about this. I have no idea wth I'm talking about anymore, just wanted to say something.

I guess the discussion has merit. I think I only meant the test itself was pointless. Carry on..

 

This 'rape culture' business is the reason I hold nothing but seething contempt for militant feminist types. It's holding all men responsible for the actions of a depraved few. I'm someone who has devoted a lot of my own time, sanity, and faith in humankind to taking care of my girlfriend - who's been through this sort of thing more times than she even knows - and fought against literally everyone involved, including female members of her family, to make sure she gets the care and attention she needs, at great cost to myself, my work, my uni career, and my relationships with my own family. I choose to deal with PTSD, depression, bipolar, and split personality disorder throughout the day as a result of what other men have done, and then someone points to their philosophy textbook and says that because I was born with a penis I'm somehow responsible for their actions and should feel ashamed.

That's what feminists often forget when they're having nice chats about the patriarchy; that every man is a husband, father, brother, or lover, and in almost all instances would give their all to protect the ones they love from abuse. Then feminism comes along and tells them that they're actually to blame for promoting and allowing that abuse in the first place. Oh, and if the men complain they're 'chauvinists,' 'misogynists,' or 'dinosaurs.' It's really not hard to see why feminism garners a hostile reaction.

For the record, by the way, my girlfriend tells rape jokes. It's one of her coping mechanisms. If someone came up to her on the street and said that, hypothetically, she shouldn't do that because it's 'condoning' the act, they'll wake up with a non-hypothetical half an ibex in their rectum.

More than likely, if it even affects them (a friend in America reported being sprayed with tear gas during riots and remaining completely unaffected - he's not exactly hard), they'll 'escalate' the situation by reacting violently. As they should, considering someone could've blinded/killed them with a thoughtless, paranoid over-reaction. If it ever does become legal to use Mace in such an absurd situation, where does one draw the line? Next you'll have women's rights 'champions' calling for it to be legalised in event of unwarranted chat-up lines or brushing against someone's chest in a club for making them feel 'unsafe.' That's not a product of my imagination, either: that's the stuff that the politics society here at uni discusses on a regular basis.

 

Well put!

You place an exceedingly low value on human life. Imagine that guy is your best mate, your brother or your father; someone close to you. That person's death is going to ripple through whatever community he's from, even the parents of assholes don't deserve to bury a son over something so petty.

I'd call them incomparable. Firstly, if both cases were told truthfully in court, she could be convicted of manslaughter in my scenario, but could claim self defence in yours. Secondly, if a man tried to rape a woman and she killed him, there would be a lot less (if any) emotional strain on the woman, than if she had have accidentally killed him over wolf-whistle.

That was almost a direct quote from a guy I used to work with. And I've told girls in that position to do so; they rarely do. To paraphrase the epic lameness that is the perks of being a wallflower people accept the love they feel they deserve. Victims in abusive relationships suffer from a disease that you or I (people who are in stable, good relationships) can't possibly comprehend. If it were that simple domestic violence wouldn't be a thing.

I think you'll find that they are the minority. As I said prior, it affects people in different ways. I can't stand it, of the many painful things I've experienced mace rates near the top of the list.

Invariably I'm coming up with the same response; it's not what arming one woman would do, but what the laws would do the community as a whole. Give women legal right to carry guns or knives and they will rob, shoot and stab. Just as man would and do.

Scenario D: A woman is catching the last train home from work, she gets off at her station at about 1am. About five or six others get off with her, but all disperse except for one. He follows her. She keeps looking over her shoulder, getting more and more uncomfortable, they walk for ten minutes and he's still following her, looking at the ground. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a can of mace. Turns on him in the dark and tells him to stop, he keeps coming towards her. She shoots the guy, he drops to the ground and she runs off. Freaking out she's so scared. The guy lived two doors down from her on the same street, was listening to a bit of iron maiden on the way home from work, as a bartender.

Pretty much this exact story has happened to me a number of times (minus getting shot). Given that a woman gets raped within a KM of my local train station a couple of times a month; she's much better off feeling uncomfortable but having me (or any other normal person) walking ten meters behind her, than being alone. Do I deserve to get maced or shot because I live near women? Hell no. This is exactly what would happen if women were given free reign to assault any man who made her feel uncomfortable.

If everyone acted with a cool head, all the time then this would not be an issue - We could give every man and every woman a gun, mace, or a blade and be perfectly happy. But it's not the case, there's a reason we ban weapons; people get upset, they use them; they regret it.

 

Your dead on with pretty much everything. There needs to be law surrounding harassment, which is defined as repeated incidents intended to cause distress. But not banter. Not to mention that what is said between lovers could suddenly become a law suit during the heat of a break up. If any common sense is used by judge (and or jury), it won't go very far, but it's a waste of a lot of peoples time.

EDIT:

That's an interesting thought, take my scenario above - the guy gets maced, charges and bashes the woman because he thinks he's being mugged.

 

I wouldn't put too much faith in that. There's about as much sense in judges and juries when it comes to this sort of thing as there would be on a Germaine Greer Society pub crawl. If all sexual remarks could be counted as 'harassment,' then some woman turning round to a police officer and saying 'he once said my boobs were small; I still have flashbacks' would actually be a serious issue.

If women are allowed to use pepper spray because they have an inkling that the guy behind them is up to no good, there'd be tens of incidents like this every match night. Especially considering how paranoid society is generally about people following them. I've actually thought to myself that I should cross the street in case the woman a few meters ahead thinks I'm an attacker, and I know I'm not the only one. I remember some comedian saying the same thing on Live at the Apollo, a couple years back.

 

Just to be clear: I don't believe it'll ever become legal anywhere to mace anyone for catcalling, so this particular discourse is just for the sake of exercise. Granted, if I were a dictator, I'd legalize it 'cause we three-legged bastards can take one for the team now and then.

As they should? Really? So if some girl does mace you for a reason you don't think good enough, you'll knock her teeth in? Because the OC could have blinded/killed you in case you happened to be one of the very few who are hyper-sensitive to it? I'd rather take a hike and lick my wounds, but that's just me.

Anyway, yeah, OC doesn't work on everyone and some of those it does work on, can fight through it. In case it happens to be such a guy, and he turns out to be the kind to take such offense from getting maced that he'd beat the girl to a bloody pulp, she should carry a gun too, of course.

Death sucks, I know, but what can you do? My mates/dad could end up in a car crash/slip in the bath and crack his head/spontaneously combust/whatever. Of course it would suck, but then again, it's kinda hard for me to picture any of the men close to me get so messed up by a girl with a can of OC that they'd commit suicide by pavement. They tend to keep an eye on things around them instead of walking around wearing headphones and staring at their feet, so they'd see trouble coming. Another thing that makes it unlikely is that because they're self-defense/combat sports enthusiasts, they know how to fall without busting their melons open. I once tripped a buddy from midrun and he just did a forward roll. Hence the scenario is a little... far-fetched with them in question.

And as for the emotional scars of the woman who maced the guy suddenly in love with asphalt, well, carrying a weapon does offer some security (as long as you know how to use it), but it also shoves more responsibility on the shoulders of the carrier. Hence I believe women, too, should know how to defend themselves, especially focusing on situational awareness, pre-assault cues (so they can read the subconscious bodylanguage of the man walking towards them and make an educated guess whether he's going to be trouble or not), de-escalation, the 400m dash etc. If she just grabs a can of OC, sticks her head in the sand, maces everyone and his dog, and ends up killing an innocent guy, she deserves the guilt even if she avoids a sentence in court.

It is simple. The reason domestic violence is a "thing," is because acting on the simple solution is hard. But it's still simple. Hence it's important to promote awareness of domestic violence (against all members of the family), organize support groups, peer support groups, shelters for victims of domestic violence etc. etc. Wait... how did we end up talking about this?

You're dead wrong about that, I'm sorry. Here's why I think your argument doesn't hold water: there are plenty of countries like Finland, Norway, Germany, Italy, Greece, some USA states like New York, Washington etc. etc, where private gun ownership is legal (with permits), but carrying guns is illegal (carrying for self-defense, that is; we are allowed to transport unloaded firearms to the shooting range etc). Whenever someone in such countries suggests that we should be allowed to carry for self-defense, your argument comes up.
But here's the thing: I have a legally owned pistol and a holster. How difficult do you think it would be for me to put on the holster and gun, hide them under a jacket, go out, and shoot a bunch of people? It'd be a walk in the park; nobody would even know I had a gun until it was too late. We don't have random pat-downs or anything like that, so as long as I didn't draw the gun, I could walk around wearing it every day of the year for decades, and nobody would ever know. So since carrying guns without any repercussions is already perfectly possible, how come I and others like me haven't gone on bloody rampages?

Let me ask you this: if you were given a gun, would you immediately start shooting people with it? Would you wait a week and then go on a killing spree? Or would you still abide by the law because you're a normal, law-abiding citizen?

Also, it's legal to own firearms in most European countries and in pretty much all of USA, but not nearly everyone owns guns. If carrying guns was made legal in one of those countries/states, why would everyone suddenly buy guns and start shooting people?

It's pretty simple: people don't "snap" when they grab a gun. Most people don't want to own much less carry guns or weapons of any kind. Why would something that is already easily done, but illegal, suddenly change if it was legalized? I'd be willing to bet that if we asked every member of these forums whether they'd buy and start carrying a gun if it was legalized in their country, the majority would do neither.

Btw, I hope nobody minds us veering this far off-topic...

Why does he keep coming towards her after she told him to stop, obviously terrified? Why doesn't he raise his hands, back off a bit, and explain calmly that he lives there and there and is coming home from work? Why doesn't he offer to go an alternate route or allow her to walk home first and then go home himself after waiting for a few minutes?

Plenty of times I've come home from a night in town and ended up walking behind a girl in the dark so that nobody else was around. I'd notice her looking over her shoulder, trying to walk faster. I always changed my route because all it cost me was 5-10 minutes of sleep. I think it's a lesser evil than forcing a girl to wonder if I'm gonna rape her or not for the duration of the walk home.
I wonder, doesn't every normal guy do that?

Btw, if macing guys was declared a legal past-time for the ladies, by changing my route a bit, I'd avoid that too in addition to letting the lass walk home without me breathing on her neck. And if you're concerned about her safety, just give her a longer headstart and stalk her without her knowledge. Or, since that'd be creepy, just vote for less strict self-defense laws so she could carry the items that would allow her to take care of herself against pretty much any man.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "those who would give up liberty for safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Or something along those lines, but you get the gist. I'd rather accept the fact that maybe some lunatic might blow my head off for whatever reason if it allowed everyone the right to carry concealed weapons (not that the majority would, but it's the principle that's important, the freedom so they could if they so chose). I know that's not the be all and end all of humanity's problems, but it'd be a start. Sure, there would be deaths and violence, but there are deaths and violence now. It's just that nowadays it's only the crooks who are armed. I'd prefer a level playingfield.

 

I wonder, considering your previous declarations about attacking people for exercising their freedom of speech, you understood the true irony here.

 

I know freedom of speech is a sacred cow to many, but more than once I've swallowed my words (even though I knew I had the freedom and the right to say them) when all I would've accomplished with them would've been causing distress of one kind or another to someone. I don't regret any of those incidents, but can recall many occasions I do regret when I did exercise my freedom of speech and only managed to hurt people (who sometimes didn't even deserve it). Besides, people often make too small a deal of mental/social/psychological violence and too big a deal of physical violence. For instance, I'm fairly sure many people who were bullied badly enough in school as kids (even if it was never physical) would say sometimes a slap hurts far less than words/psychological/emotional violence (which catcalling can be to some of its recipients).

I think it's a bit narrowsighted to chant "sticks and stones" as if it was some absolute. I could name plenty of occasions when I would've preferred to be beaten badly (or maced) instead of hearing some words spoken to me. Things aren't always black and white and there are exceptions to almost every rule. The same applies to the hallowed "sticks and stones."
Besides, you can always fight to obtain the freedom of speech if it has been taken from you. As long as you're healthy and alive, that is, but even then you need the capacity to fight (figuratively and sometimes literally) and defend your beliefs and freedoms. Too often societies strip people of this capacity in the name of safety and the public's peace of mind.

 

Every single friend you have is a martial arts expert incapable of falling? You should start a MMA circuit. As with all hypotheticals - the point is not in the detail. Don't think about whether or not it would happen, but what if it did: How would you feel if your father was subsequently killed because they introduced a law that allowed women to mace the area whenever they felt uncomfortable.

The fact you rationalized it rather than directly answered, tells me you'd be pretty upset. Give me an honest answer here; could you rationalize that it's ok that your father's dead, so long as society saw a decrease in catcalls? If so, extremely low value on human life.

Because allowing a woman to mace a man for catcalling would open up a loophole regarding male victims of domestic abuse. You just listed three extremely complicated things:
Support groups: Requires the person coming forward.
Peer Support groupds: Requires the person telling their friends and neighbours they're in an abusive relationship.
Shelters: Requires people leaving their homes and moving to a shelter... Nobody wants to feel displaced. Hypothetically, lets say this is the only option; 99% of people would stay out the abusive relationship than move into a shelter.

Not to mention there are a million different factors; Kids, house, shared assets, money. Those are just the tangible things. There are so many mental factors to take into account it's not even funny.

This is something we are never going to agree on, ever. EVER. Because, you are wrong (haha, the old switcheroo)... But mostly because gun regulation is one of the most important legal advancements of the modern age.

If the reason we had laws to to inhibit good, law abiding citizens, we wouldn't need laws. Criminal syndicates don't get licenses for weapons and thanks to gun control it's much harder for them to attain weapons, which curbs crime. Not to mention I am of the strong opinion nobody needs a gun for self defence. Why T.T.? Who you gonna shoot? Zi Germans, are zi Germans coming?(that was a Snatch quote, in case you are unfamiliar with the film) Worried about your own protections; take up a martial art and don't walk around bad neighbourhoods late at night.

The good outweighs the bad here, this is represented in the fact pretty much every western country is working toward stronger gun control laws.

1) Now, no, I wouldn't. I've spent the last two years working through various depressive disorders and I'm currently pretty stable. Less than a year ago I was an depressed alcoholic, and rarely had a clear thought. Give me a gun and after a bottle of whiskey I would be very liable to go on a killing rampage, ending with myself. So to answer your question; no, but plenty of people would.

At no point have I been arguing that logical, law abiding people would go berzerk as soon as given a gun - the point is there are insane, and criminal women out there, who, if where allowed to own a pistol for self-defence, would use it to rob, steel and kill.

Scenario E: Guy dumps dumps a girl, she drinks half a bottle of scotch and blows a hole in his melon at point blank range. Why'd she have a gun? Because a bandaid law to stop the minority within the male community who rape women was introduced.

2) I am very anti-firearms in the general populace. While I've never actually fired a gun (aside from an air-rifle), I like hunting (have been on a number of hunts, one in norway, but never done any actual animal slaying) and when I'm older I will almost cer certainly own a weapon.

Legalize guns, more people start carrying them. Allow people to own guns for self defence and gun salesmen will target people with advertising. People who had never even contemplated owning a weapon will suddenly be lead to believe an they need one. It starts a chain reaction. More and more people are buying weapons, wearing them out.

Five years time and the majority of people have guns, suddenly me (anti-guns) is counted amongst the minority and does actually have a need for a gun. I am no longer safe unarmed.

We are night fighting any wars in Australia, Norway, Finland, the US. We don't need high powered tools for self defence.

3) The mainstay reason behind all of this is, as with everything I have said so far: not what law abiding citizens will do. Loosen gun control and you put weapons capable of maiming and killing in the hands of career criminals, petty thieves, inevitably children, the clinically insane, drunks, junkies, mentally retarded, people with social disorders. The list goes o.

He's listening to Bruce Dickenson wail out run to the hills and not paying attention. It was from the woman's perspective, not the man's. He doesn't know, he doesn't care. He wasn't out to rape anyone, he was just on his way home. I'd say a good 80% of the walks from the train station to my house I barely even remember. I know exactly where I'm going it's driven mostly by force of habbit, so I'll be thinking about what i have to do the next day, if there's anything i need to do when i get home. I'm not alone in this, it is a quite common phenomena regarding repetitive tasks.

Your proposition is basically reverse-sexism, which is actually pretty sexist. Women aren't fragile little creatures we should have to tip-toe around to make sure they feel comfortable at any given minute. Where do we draw the line? Should men not be allowed to walk around in groups? Perhaps men shouldn't be allowed to socialize, after all, that's how pack rape starts; a group of men together.

Your not a woman so this is more for arguing the point and not a blanket statement about feminism, but, if women want gender equality they can't ask for men to cater for their every little discomfort.

I don't feel great when a guy is a following me home, but I rationalize he probably lives in my area (given he got off at my trainstation), should he re-route to make sure I don't feel uncomfortable?... Or should I just mace him?

Yes, I think that you are right in most conscientious, good natured men would do this; but, not doing shouldn't be illegal, or carry the mandatory sentence of a legal, physical assault exacted by a vigilante.

You're turning real NRA on me here, man. First of all, I would feel much less safe if more people were carrying guns than I do now. As it stands, in australia, if somebody kicks off a dust up with me I can 99% sure they're not carrying a gun. Because of stricter knife laws, I'd say 80% sure they're not carrying a blade. I'd call that an even playing field.

There are a LOT of criminals who presently don't carry guns; if you made firearms and knives legal, almost all of them would. It would also inhibit police in apprehending and prosecuting criminals by removing a charge. By your own statement not every law abiding citizen would carry a piece. So if anything; you are shifting the playing field in favour of people who want to do wrong.

-------​

As brain sharpening as this is, I think we're gonna have to call this pretty soon. I just realised this post took me almost forty minutes to write. While I probably wouldn't have done anything more constructive, I should have at least acted like I was . Also we're well and truly off topic... Not that the original topic was really that interesting; whereas this is.

 

This thread put me in mind of a quote. I have Phillip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect at home - excellent and terrifying read. In it he says "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can sometimes kill you."

I kind of see it as relevant to a few sides of this discussion. Of course it isn't okay for men to habitually speak and think about women as if they are walking, talking sex toys - if cat call are an indicator of that sort of thinking then they are not okay regardless of time of day or how threatened or otherwise the recipient may feel. Women are feeling, sentient human beings and speech that reduces them to objects has had a dreadful effect over the years.

Equally, it is not okay to start down a road that may make more women feel like more men are a threat to them. Arming women with mace and encouraging them to use it if they have sexual comments directed at them because those comments may lead to rape is, IMO, a very bad idea. Of course most men would stop with the cat calls under those circumstances - but it wouldn't stop them from making similar (or worse) comments to their work mates. In some situations it's possible that the frustration of not being able to make cat calls for fear of mace in the face would lead to an anger so intense that a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time could be raped.

The situation would be little better for women. Many women would go from being irritated at being shouted at in the street to terrified that every man she came across and didn't know was a potential rapist and that she'd best be ready with her mace. Imagine going around with that sort of fear (actually, lots of women already do). In fact, the vast majority of other human beings are sweet individuals who are no threat to anybody walking past them - even in a dark alley late at night. Of course, any one of us could be unlucky and come across somebody unpleasant who is a stranger but it's vastly unlikely.

Women are far more at risk of harm from their partners or exes. Children are at far more risk of harm from their parents or somebody that their parents trusts to look after them. The guy that sidles up to you in the street at night, says you have a nice arse and asks for your phone number is likely just drunk, out with his mates and no danger to anybody. If you are a woman, it's the guy at home you want to look out for.

T

 

This implies that some men have some sort of innate need to make cat calls, a need that we shouldn't thwart for fear of dreadful consequences. I assume that you're not really saying that, but I do want to say that if the only thing between a particular man and raping someone is the ability to make un-hampered cat calls, that's a man that needs to be in a locked-door mental health facility.

 

Lot of talk about men making catcalls. Round where I live, the only catcalls I see come from girls. And I am not exaggerating when I say it happens all the time.

 

What I've followed so far, this has so not been what people have discussed here, especially what T.Trian, AV, and ChickenFreak have talked about.

I'm sure you know freedom of speech doesn't work like that. But maybe I just misunderstood what you meant.

ETA:

I actually feel kind of bad that you tie "this rape culture business" so strongly to something as extremist as militant feminist types (I call them feminazis. Yeah, mace me. Sometimes I call myself a feminazi if I have a bad day).

I also apologize if you have felt this way in this thread. You didn't directly say so, but in case you meant it, I'm sure there's no one here who, again, has this black-and-white mindset that they'd hold you responsible for what some shitheads have done out there to women (and men).

By the way, would you shout after a girl passing by what a nice ass she's got? And if not, why not? [asked in a non-accusing/snarky/angry tone]

I do wonder what kind of conversations you've heard. This here? To me feminism is about equality and, to a degree, about womanhood/women's issues/empowerment and support, not about attacking men or blaming them. I'll take a gander and say most feminists are straight and in relationship with a man.

This is different. Would she be amused if men started cracking rape jokes at her expense? Would she laugh with them? People cope with trauma differently. One of my favorite bands is Dog Fashion Disco. I really like their song 'Rapist Eyes', and I'm sure it's been misunderstood by some people. I'm sure it might make some other girl break down and cry. Me? No, au contraire. We all cope differently.

Anyway, it's great you've looked after your girl, I'm sure she appreciates it immensely. An ex-friend of mine left his girl cos she was so effed up over having been raped. I'm sure that didn't make her feel much better. But all the best to you!

 

Yeah, I'd say I'll write one more response to your post and then call it quits; I'm pretty sure that one's gonna take at least an hour and if we go on, we'll wind up writing page-long posts that take half a year to finish. Alas, I gotta work on a translation job (subtitles for a fishing show, of all things), so I'll have to apologize and get back to you on Friday. It's so annoying when menial stuff like work gets in the way of the important things, like forum discussions.

 

Sorry - didn't mean to imply that at all.

I think that the making of cat calls comes from a wider issue - that of women being considered to be less than human and more like mobile sex toys. The cat calls are a fairly obvious outward manifestation of that sort of thinking (although again, things are more complicated and I'm sure that loads of men on building sites behave like that because of social pressure from their peers).

But - taking the group who make cat calls as an outward manifestation of their inner thoughts and feelings, then I think that on balance, it's better for those feelings to be expressed even if the expression of them is unpleasant than repressed - one of the risks of simply repressing behaviour without changing the feeings behind it, is that the person can sometimes find other, less pleasant ways to deal with their feelings.

Of course, those who are only making cat calls because of peer pressure would likely feel relieved by not having to do it any longer so things would be better for them.

It's kind of similar to the people who deal with a growling dog by hitting it and end up with a dog who bites hard with no warning at all. This doesn't by any means happen with all dogs - loads of them just put up with it. But the risk is very real and people are injured every day because they or somebody else who cares for the dog in question has been hitting it when it growls rather than dealing with the reason for the growl.

 

When I was a kid, I was called a lot of names - nasty names. And yeah, it hurt. But I'm an adult now - I can recognize when someone I know is trying to hurt me, when someone I know unintentionally hurts me, and when some stranger is just being a jerk. Guess which one is the easiest to ignore and not let get to me? As adults, words can only hurt if we let them. Looking at the source typically ends any angst for me. Frankly, life's too short to worry about the jerks.

 

Take your time/don't worry, I've got three graphic design gigs and bucket load blog stuff I have to do. As skint entrepreneur (lol), I tell my gamer friends "I'll have time video games when I'm rich, but until then I gotta work" - Maybe I should apply that to forum discussion as well haha.

 

huh?

is that meant to be a bad pronunciation of 'voila' [the french word for 'there!'... vwah-la... 'v' is only almost silent, but is still said/heard]?... or is it an acronym for something?

 

But would we do the same thing for other ugly thoughts and feelings? For example, as someone else mentioned, would we let people make inappropriate sexual remarks to children? Or let them tell people of other races how much they hate them? Or is it only women that are expected to take on the burden of degrading public remarks, for the sake of society?

I don't mean to sound rude here, because I'm quite confident that you're not advocating disrespect for women. But I nevertheless want to point out that if we wouldn't tolerate those other remarks, but we do tolerate cat-calls, then we are saying that those other remarks are utterly unacceptable, and that degrading remarks to women are, at some level, more acceptable.

And I do want to make a distinction between "remarks to" certain people and "remarks about" certain groups. A racist demonstration, or a demonstration in favor of NAMBLA, or a demonstration declaring that women have no value beyond their value as sex objects, or many other forms of communication of dreadful thoughts about a group _in general_, is constitutionally protected speech. Accosting a specific person with degrading remarks is a very different thing.

Yes, people who have those thoughts need to do something about them. But requiring that the individuals who are the subjects of those thoughts tolerate the expression of the thoughts when that expression is directed at them is not, IMO, the "something" that should be done. I'm not advocating mace, but I am, again, advocating ticketing and fines, ticketing and jail for extreme or repeated offenses, being escorted away from the area, being banned from returning to an area, termination of employment when the remarks are made in the context of employment, and so on.

 

Then I would pose the same question - who decides what can be said? Who decides what's inappropriate, what's rude, what's actually a punishable statement or word? And who decides when it's not only speech, but gestures? Someone cuts you off in traffic and you give them the finger - does your license get suspended? Not allowed to drive that road any more?

Maybe I'm too old to live in this new "I'm going to be treated with respect no matter what the cost, dammit" world, where people actually think that there should be legal remedies for rude and obnoxious behavior. That's what's scary.

 

Yes. I have a policy known as 'self-defence,' where if someone randomly assaults me on the street I am liable to punch back. I couldn't care less about their calcium intake; the second they run off, I stop. Not before.

I hope to God it's nothing to do with less extreme types of feminism. If this is part of mainstream feminist thought, then I just became the biggest anti-feminist known to man.

No, I wouldn't. That's just acting like an a***. I doubt the girl would be overly bothered by it, though. It's possible that she would, and that's another reason that would prevent me, but it's not the main one.

That's part-and-parcel of believing in the 'rape culture,' though: the implication that all men are responsible. Some feminists moderate it and say that male-dominated society is responsible, but that's a fig-leaf of difference and the underlying concept is the same. If you believe in the dictionary definition of rape culture, then you hold the view - implicitly, perhaps not even deliberately - that all men are somewhat responsible.

That's actually true from what I've seen. Unfortunately there's a tendency amongst 'amateur' feminists (i.e. e-activists) to equate empowering women with downsizing men, and they often do this in grossly offensive ways, the shtick about 'rape culture' being one of them.

At her expense, no. But she has told rape jokes in the company of me and my friends before, and was in fact the only one who laughed at first before we realised she wanted us to join in.

Really? Please punch him the next time you see him, and say it's from me. These immature, selfish cowards really grind my goat. It may not have felt like it at the time, but all things considered she'll be better off without a little wimp like him hanging around.

Thank you