Sure sounds like a conservative rant to me.

Dude, your brain is, like, in another dimension or something. You’re reading things in that only exist in the unique dimensionality of your own mind.

Reading things into this? Sorry, I’m not reading much more into it than another conservative crybaby’s rant, or at the very least, a smartass remark. Brain’s right here in this dimension, dude, thanks anyway.

Breklor:

As for the “sex vs. power” argument, even if rape is about sex for a particular rapist (let’s play Devil’s advocate here), it’s still about his power to take his sexual pleasure from someone who does not choose to give it to him.

It is an exercise of power, sure. I’m not clear precisely what meaning to attach to the word “about” that would make it “about” power. Bank robberies are also exercises of power, yet we do not hear people insisting that they are “about power” is if this were some profound statement of truth.

Moreover, rape, like any act of violence, is also an act of terrorism. Terrorism says, “I have the power to hurt you if you don’t do what I want.”Rape says, “Women had better stay in line and give men what we want if they know what’s good for them.”

I don’t agree that all violence is terrorism. To assert that, is to deny any difference in meaning between the two words. I think that acts such as 9/11, and similar atrocities have a particular character not shared by all acts of violence, one worthy of being designated by a word.

That character is that terrorism is 1. violence, 2. perpetrated by an individual or group, 3. against civilians, 4. with the intention of instilling terror in the wider population, 5. for the purpose of bringing out political change.

Rape generally fails criteria 2, 4, and 5. It’s not committed by any group (except “rapists”. Feminists like to blame “men”, but most men are not rapists, some rapists are not men, and men – half the world’s adult population – are not a cohesive group capable of perpetrating anything,) and there is no evidence, contrary to feminist claims, there is any political goal.

This is not to deny that some rape is terroristic, war rape, for example, where sanctioned by the military command.

Again, that’s not about sex; it’s about power. Fear of rape keeps women from walking outside alone after dark. It keeps women checking their drinks in nightclubs in case someone’s put roofies in there. It keeps women from being alone in a room with a man for fear that he’ll just… take what he wants.

Fear of various things influences people’s behaviour. Fear of car-theft keeps people locking their cars, fitting steering immobilisers, and in some cases not parking in places perceived to be unsafe. Yet we do not call car theft “terrorism”, largely, I suggest, because like rape it’s not perpetrated by a cohesive group and lacks the intent and purpose of terrorism.

In respect of the specific points you make: Women’s actual risk of street rape is very low, and generally of street violence is lower than men’s. It’s true that they are generally more fearful than men, perhaps because of hyperbolic claims of “epidemics” and “tides of violence” made by feminist organisations. These claims would seem to meet every one of the criteria for “terrorism” except the first.

My own experience is that women are generally not afraid to be alone with me. Of course there are some women who are afraid of men (and some men who are afraid of women) A rational approach is for men and women to identify the characteristics of dangerous people and avoid them.

Strangely you don’t see feminists doing this. “Fear men!” appears to be the message.

I agree that roofies are a particular danger for women that men don’t face, though I’m by no means sure how significant a risk it is. There are other dangers that afflict men only, or moreso than women. Men have to be careful not to stare directly at another man or (appear to be) pointing at him.

And I see some people apparently implying that a man’s need for pleasure is somehow a mitigating factor.

Do you? Perhaps I’d see the same implication if I went back and carefully read through all the responses, which I’m not inclined to do. I’ve see some people put sexual desire as an alternative motivation for rape (construing the vague “about” to mean “motivated by), which in no way implies that this is a mitigating factor.

I, like a doubtless significant portion of the readership of this blog, am an overweight, geeky guy, and have had some long dry spells in my love life. At no time have I seriously considered that as justification for me to demand, let alone take, pleasure from anyone who wasn’t willing to give it to me. Does it suck? Yeah. Have I been upset, even depressed, at times? Hell yeah. But that’s nobody’s problem but mine.

I agree that it’s not a justification to demand or take. The idea that it’s “nobody’s problem but [yours]” is a value judgement. One of the more persistent unexamined gender-norms in our society, is that men are presumed to be self-reliant while women are not, and consequently that women’s needs are recognised and serviced, while men’s are not.

For me, “depression” does not even begin to describe the black pit in which I spent the last few years of adolescence, and the first dozen of adulthood. Yet in all that time, I was never able to articulate the kernel of my distress in the face of the overwhelming societal message that my needs were invalid.

I focus on men and boys as victims in an effort to protest against and compensate for their almost complete effacement from the discourse, both mainstream and feminist. I don’t object to a focus on women per se. This was an important article. I’m glad it was written. I’m glad that Tuomas drew it to my attention. But when I ask “what about the men?“, when I complain about how the “genocidal cull of […] males takes place in the blink of an eye“[*], I do so in the knowledge that nowhere else on MSNBC is there an article that focusses on them. Were the men tortured before they were killed? How many men were injured? How many of them have been rendered incontinent by their injuries? I don’t know because the media doesn’t tell me.

Nor does it tell me about the vast numbers of men who were sexually victimised, which, like you, I didn’t know about when I wrote that. I agree with the “Silence is the Enemy” campaign that the Central African War (of which Liberia is just a small part), including the mass rape of women aspect of it, receives scant attention from the media. But compared to the profound silence about the mass victimisation of men, both sexual and non-sexual, the coverage of the rape of women is a deafening clamour.

But I’ve also got to say this, QUASAR: being obnoxious in other people’s spaces is not the way to win their hearts and minds, nor does turning up with a washing bill of complaints unrelated to the matter-at-hand help to endear you, or our cause, to the good people here.

A statement attributed here to Major Patrick Cammaert former UN Peacekeeping Operation commander in DR Congo. Exactly what metric and what data, if any, he based that statement on isn’t clear.

My own investigations show that, if the metric is prevalence of sexual victimisation, then it’s a lot worse to be a soldier in Liberia than a woman, and no worse to be a woman than a man. See the trackback immediately above for citation and analysis.

At no point did I imply that he did.

???

How you even begin to justify that every social evil must be dished out with an appropriate cry for the oppressed conservative is beyond me.

Dude, your brain is, like, in another dimension or something. You’re reading things in that only exist in the unique dimensionality of your own mind.