in the minority of the decent
After McLaughlin Group this morning was a show running a story about U.S. soldiers in the military raping other U.S. soldiers. After some initial statistics that were woefully unsurprising and some first-hand accounts, came a particular story of a soldier assaulted by a man she had probably called a friend. After all, they played sports together
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I just googled "rape culture" because I didn't really have a specific idea of what it meant, and this article was the third result. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to post it and see what you think. It's a little off-topic from military rape and victim blaming, but what's life without a little off-topic bickering?
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I think a lot of things about the article you linked to - arguably too many. But I will post them all anyway! Though I suspect it will require more than one reply box. In fact, it may require 4 or more.
In line with her view of rape as existing on a continuum of male sexual aggression, Koss also asked: "Have you given in to sex play (fondling, kissing, or petting, but not intercourse) when you didn't want to because you were overwhelmed by a man's continual arguments and pressure?" To this question, 53.7 percent responded affirmatively, and they were counted as having been sexually victimized.
Damn right they were.
"Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?"
Aye, this question's rather shakey. It's likely trying to get at instances where a man was deliberately giving a woman substances that erode her mental faculties specifically so he could take sexual advantage of her compromised judgement; which would indeed be rape. Though not a form best researched through interview alone, since the interviewee has to determine whether or not they think someone else had deceptive motives using memories acquired during a time when her mental acuity was quite likely sub-optimal. The question completely misses the ball on instances where a woman is somehow brought to unconsciousness and then raped. To start with, an unconscious person can hardly be said to have sexual intercourse, or for that matter easily be the subject in any active-voice English sentence where the verb isn't "slept" or something similar. An unconscious person does not do much of anything. Things are done to them.
Koss was quoting the Ohio statute in a very misleading way: she had stopped short of mentioning the qualifying clause of the statute, which specifically excludes "the situations where a person plies his intended partner with drink or drugs in hopes that lowered inhibition might lead to a liaison."
What a stupid qualifying clause.
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Damn right they were."
I disagree. Were some of the women who answered yes to that question sexually victimized? Probably. But definitely not all. There's a gray area here where it's hard to tell the difference between a guy who's being too pushy and/or persistent and an actual predator. I know that I'd personally have to answer yes to the above question, but trust me when I say that I was not raped or victimized in any way. I was pressured, sure, but not forced. Big difference. You can say no to pressure.
"Aye, this question's rather shakey. It's likely trying to get at instances where a man was deliberately giving a woman substances that erode her mental faculties specifically so he could take sexual advantage of her compromised judgement; which would indeed be rape."
And if the man was drunk too, would they both be guilty of raping each other?
Okay, seriously now, if the girl is passed out or too drunk to comprehend what you're trying to do to her, that is most definitely rape, no question, and it is not the girl's fault in the slightest because she has a right to expect that she not be taken advantage of no matter what state she's in. But if the girl is still conscious, she knows where she is and what's going on, and she clearly consents, she can't cry rape after she sobers up and realizes that she did something stupid. Now, if the guy forced her to drink or slipped her alcohol or some other substance without her knowledge, then that's a different story. But if the guy offers her some drinks and she accepts them, she has to accept some level of responsibility for her actions with it. Contrary to popular belief, you CAN think clearly when you're drunk. I've translated Latin poetry for homework while drunk before and gotten a perfect score on it. Then again, that is what we call Mad Skillz and it would be unfair to expect that from everyone. What I do expect, however, is some personal responsibility and recognition that until you get to the point where you can barely move and you don't know where you are, you CAN think clearly enough to consent to sex. I've had guys buy me drinks, and I have subsequently engaged in some drunken "activities" that I later regretted, but to say that I was raped just because I was drunk is retarded. I knew what I was doing at the time, I fully consented to it, I just wished I hadn't done it later. You can't withdraw consent in retrospect.
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Being too pushy should still register on the predatory scale. Low on it (comparatively), sure; likely too low to throw the actual word “predator” at them without sounding melodramatic. But “asshole” would still be apt.
I suppose a distinction should be made between being victimized and feeling victimized. If someone deliberately kicks you in the shin, you have been the victim of a shin-kicking, regardless of whether you can even bother to recall the event the next day. That such an event might not come close to registering as traumatic or even vaguely significant is perhaps to be expected. The shin-kicker, though, pending reform, should probably be out of your good graces whether you feel particularly victimized or not.
Though it’s obviously on a different scale from a mere kick to the shin, everything that fits under sexual victimization doesn't always necessarily leave a victim in emotional distress, either (nor, just to be clear, are there any offenses that a victim should always be able to “shrug off” - different people, different reactions). Not that “sexual victimization” is the best way to describe all such occurrences all the time, though. And since the language in these sorts of discussions already has enough (nigh-exclusive) focus on the victim as it is, I might suggest more commonly referring to acts like these by focusing on the perpetrator, using such colloquial phrases as them “being an asshole”, "being a fucking asshole", or "being a shithead". If referring to a specific event, one may also consider adding a declaration that the asshole/fucking asshole/shithead is "dead to me".
What I do expect, however, is some personal responsibility and recognition that until you get to the point where you can barely move and you don't know where you are, you CAN think clearly enough to consent to sex.
The general consensus seems to be, though, that drunkenness commonly makes people do things they would not have done sober. This makes it legitimate to ponder whether it's really you (or at least sober!you, which conventionally equals real!you) who was consenting, and thus whether you really consented. Fully accepting an answer of "no", however, would also open the door to drunkenness as a defense for criminal behavior. So yeah, rape probably isn't the word here, but "sexually victimized" in it's vastly vast vastness still applies. By either name I wouldn't suggest it should criminally prosecutable, though. Adequate social penalties (or the threat of them - neither of which currently exist) against people discovered to knowingly take advantage of other's inebriation-lowered inhibitions should be all that's necessary.
Not that such would be at all easy to discover. The essence of the wrong is when someone consciously knows, "If I accept this person's drunken consent, there is a good chance they will regret having given it once they are sober," and they decide any of:
• "There's a chance they won't regret it, too. It's worth the risk."
• "It's worth making them feel regret; I don't care what the chances are."
• "I just plain don't care; there's sex to be had!"
• Or anything else that amounts to "me getting sex > partner's well-being".
It is, of course, difficult to know every time such thoughts have crossed a person's mind, and thus difficult to reliably make an example of them. But that's where various forms of fiction can come to the rescue; committing whatever crimes against plot are necessary to impart the intended moral lesson, as has been done with fiction since the dawn of homo sapien.
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If they both also had the intent of taking advantage of the other's compromised judgment? Hmm. That's an interesting scenario. They are both certainly assholes, at least, even if their plotting against each other ended up turning into a warped form of teamwork.
I've had guys buy me drinks, and I have subsequently engaged in some drunken "activities" that I later regretted, but to say that I was raped just because I was drunk is retarded.
Real people do have mental disabilities, and/or care about people that do. No person likes seeing their existence, or the existence of their loved ones, turned into a casual means of deriding something.
Which also applies, at the very least, to my own use of "blindness" in the first paragraph of my final reply to the article, which I would now change if LJ allowed editing replies (or if it does, if I could figure out how). Regulars and random passers-by feel free to point out any other ableist words of mine you've spotted that I missed.
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"Real people" have mental disabilities? No. Way. Let me tell you a story. See, my brother Kevin is an awesome guy. He's kind and gentle, he laughs all the time, he knows more about baseball, videogames, and politics than anybody I know, and he pretty much adores his little sister. He's also autistic, and was not diagnosed as such until the age of 19 (don't even GET ME STARTED on how incompetent his doctors were). The condition itself, plus the psychological and emotional damage he incurred from years of being medicated for various conditions that he did not have, resulted in him being unable to live on his own, hold a job, go to school full-time, or even drive a car (he's 23). He has no real friends that I know of, he has serious problems with sleeping (even with the aid of sleeping pills), and his complete lack of interpersonal skills can be so impossibly aggravating that many times I have found myself yelling at him for things that I knew he couldn't control. But please, do enlighten me about these alleged "real people" whose loved ones have mental disabilities, because really, I have no idea what it's like to be them.
For the record, most mental health professionals do not use the term "retarded" anymore. To me, "retard" no longer connotes a mentally disabled person unless it is specifically leveled at a person with a mental disability (which is totally unacceptable, just like it would be if you called that same person "stupid" or a "dumbass"). As far as I'm concerned, "retard" is just an obsolete term for a developmentally disabled person, much like "idiot" and "moron" were in the past. Nevertheless, if it upsets you when I use those words, I'll make sure I don't use them around you in the future. Just so you know, though, I frequently call Republicans retards in front of my brother, and he thinks it's hilarious.
Really, I'm not trying to be an ass about this, but this has happened to me more than once. I use the word "retarded" with some degree of frequency, and I have had people tell me that I am "disrespecting" mentally handicapped people because of it. These are usually the same people who talk to the mentally disabled in a high-pitched, "soothing" voice and think that they're showing how tolerant and open-minded they are. I'm not saying you are one of these people, but I have dealt with so many in the past that it's become kind of a touchy subject with me. I apologize if you feel like I'm lashing out at you.
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Extending the benefit of the doubt even to a complete stranger requires assuming someone using ableist slang has divorced the slang meaning from the original and isn't intending to slight disabled people. But it isn't about what the word means to the speaker, or just any one listener's demonstrated reaction to it; but rather all the reactions and all the possible reactions of all the people who ever hear the speaker's words, in past, present, and future. While I shouldn't have said "nobody likes" (darn the appeal of generalizations), it is certifiably true that large numbers of people are personally hurt by the use of certain ableist slurs; such that it is nearly inevitable for a single person regularly using even just a single such word as slang to eventually hurt someone with it. If not several times. A day. (Depending on the word.)
While it's good (compared to the usual attitude, very good) that you're willing to accomodate another person's feelings about your word use, it won't always (if ever) erase all the hurt caused by the first offense, and it doesn't do much good at all in a situation where the hurt party doesn't speak up (which is an understandable choice given the strong and even hostile resistance they're likely to have come up against in the past). And of course it doesn't help in situations like this one where the issue is being raised by someone not personally affected but concerned for those who would be. When preventing the hurt in the first place is as simple as taking an easily-replaced word out of your vocabulary (except perhaps when in the private company of people you know aren't bothered by it - and you trust don't harbor prejudices that could be unintentionally reaffirmed by your use of the word), there's little reason not to do it.
I apologize if you feel like I'm lashing out at you.
Neh. A single event served as the immediate impetus, but you're lashing out at an entire phenomenon. *shrug* Everyone finds themselves doing that, sometimes. So long as you can recognize when you're doing it (takes me a while, sometimes), it's quite permissible.
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Granted, I don't use obviously offensive words like racial/homophobic/sexist slurs (unless you count my best female friends and I calling each other skanks and whores, but those words basically function as terms of endearment in that context) because I know the hurt they cause is widespread among many different groups of people. If you feel really strongly that "retard" and its various permutations are so universally offensive that they should never be used in public, I'll try my best to remove them from my vocabulary when I'm in public.
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Well, yes and no. First off, words/phrases/statements used to offend only those you specifically intend (eg: "You are stupid"/"That robot is stupid"/"Fanatical religious conservatives are stupid") are, of course, fine. Accidental and incidental offense is the problem. And I'm sure you knew that, but I can't help considering the distant possibility of malleable minds unknown to me reading these words.
Second, one only need avoid words/phrases/statements that you can reasonably predict could cause offense. Someone being offended by the word "macaroni" is not something you can reasonably predict. Someone taking offense to the word "stupid" without being its target is also not reasonably predictable, since the word is not based on any reference to inherent mental disability; on the contrary, it evolved from reference to an entirely temporary state (1535-45; stup(ére) - to be numb or stunned) and has since then regularly carried an implication that the target's apparent lack of intellect is a result of their agency, and entirely within their power to amend.
Fat, on the other hand...If I'm in a dressing room with my best friend and I comment that the dress I'm trying on makes me look fat, that could be offensive to the obese person in the next stall who overhears me.
Very true. Plus, the dress doesn't make you look fat (to state the obvious: while it may be unflattering, no single article of non-novelty clothing can make someone look genuinely fat - only being fat can do that). You have reasonably predicted that saying this could offend someone unintentionally (not to mention it reinforces the beauty myth); thusly, you shouldn't say it.
Of course, nobody's perfect, and sometimes (if not frequently) we will say something we know we shouldn't have, or later become aware we shouldn't have. So we say "Oops," or "Oopsie," or maybe "Holy jumping mother of Jesus in a sidecar with chocolate Jimmies and a lobster bib, I didn't mean to say that" (though that might be slightly over the top...and offensive to Christians), and then apologize to anyone hurt, inwardly reaffirm our desire not to say such things in the future, and move on. It's rather like accidentally stepping on someone's foot: Even as we generally put in an honest effort to watch where we're going, we know it's likely to happen eventually anyway, in which case we're fully prepared to apologize for it.
A handy really-not-all-that-long list of words to avoid, accompanied with suggested alternatives: http://forums.theirisnetwork.org/viewtopic.php?t=271
The Snopes article equity officer's, "the point is - the word offends," is a valid argument for case-by-case basis, provided it was verified that the word still did offend members of the staff and/or student body even after the real origin became known - and I suspect that may not have been done. "Outing", though, when applied to homosexuals does not mean something nearly as awful (if consistently bad at all - I imagine it rather depends on whether the outing was voluntary and how well it was received by friends and family) as the hypothetical dinner-and-a-lynching attributed to picnic, and furthermore was used in a manner far preceding and entirely unrelated to this additional modern use. Not that the homosexuals' offense, if real (which, yes, I am doubting), should be dismissed, but from my admittedly privileged perspective (and hoping that privilege isn't affecting my judgment, but I can't be sure) some kind of compromise would be necessary seeing how "out" is a fundamental part of the English language and inordinately difficult to constantly find an alternative for.
And speaking of privilege, though it comes short of outright dismissing minority concerns the tone of that Snopes article nonetheless reaks of it.
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Same idea with "nagging" - the substitutes don't have the right connotation. Complaining and whining are totally different from nagging. According to dictionary.com, nagging is "[annoying] by persistent faultfinding, complaints, or demands." "Complaining" doesn't do the trick because if my mom is constantly asking me whether or not I've done the dishes yet, she's not "complaining," she's...well...nagging.
Likewise, try finding a substitute off the list for "lame" in the sentence, "That's a lame excuse." I suppose "pathetic" is pretty close to what I'm going for, but even then, it's not exactly right. Compare:
Me: "Hey, you didn't show up Saturday night, what happened?"
Person: "I'm sorry, I realized last minute that I had to finish that paper."
Me: "Dude, that's a lame excuse, you could've at least called."
VS.
Me: "Hey, you didn't show up on Saturday, what happened?"
Person: "I'm sorry, I realized last minute that I had to finish that paper."
Me: "Dude, that's a pathetic excuse, you could've at least called."
Maybe it's just me, but when I read that, the latter example sounds mad instead of mildly annoyed. "Lame" just tells the person that their excuse was weak and insufficient, "pathetic" tells them that it was "miserably or contemptibly inadequate." In the first example, it's fairly clear that I'm just slightly irritated at the person, but the second one indicates contempt. I suppose I could say, "Dude, that's a moderately weak and insufficient excuse," but I really don't have the patience for that, just like I don't have the patience to say, "Hey, I do believe that this dress makes my midsection look significantly larger and more conspicuous than I generally perceive it to be!" in the aforementioned dressing room example.
Call me lazy and insensitive if you want, but I am not willing to take "nagging," "lame," or "crazy" and its various synonyms out of my vocabulary. I will do so when talking to you because I now know for a fact that it bothers you, much like I would if I found out that somebody was inexplicably offended by the word "toaster" (not that your objections are that ridiculous, but you know what I mean). I'm doing my best to stop saying "retarded" because I actually have met people who were offended by that word, but like I said, it never even occurred to me that the above words could possibly be offensive and I have truly never met anyone who was the slightest bit offended by them. As far as I can tell, there is only a very small group of people who take offense, but their issues with those words don't seem to be common enough to warrant taking them out of my vocabulary. Unless you can show me that a significant number of people are genuinely offended by these words, I'm not going to alter my everyday vocabulary to accommodate their objections.
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... I don't have the patience to say, "Hey, I do believe that this dress makes my midsection look significantly larger and more conspicuous than I generally perceive it to be!" in the aforementioned dressing room example.
BUT THAT WOULD BE AWESOME
In fact, the only way it could be more awesome would be if you said it in biblical language - add a few lo's, behold's, and/or verily's. Or, say it in Spanish in highly dramatic fashion as if having discovered great treachery (and let it be the only thing you know how to say in Spanish at all whatsoever).
... it never even occurred to me that the above words could possibly be offensive ...
That is frequently our privilege as abled* people. As I too-vaguely implied in the previous reply, often the bigotry of a word won't occur to us on our own. Often we will lack the personal interest necessary to even give a word a second thought, let alone stop to consider the entirety of its historical use and the evolution of its meaning, and what that history says about society's attitudes towards a particular group; and how the use of the word can then serve as a blunt reminder of those attitudes to the members of that group - a single action that, for them, can evoke the entire phenomenon of their oppression.
Upon learning the reason why even just one person finds a particular word/phrase offensive, and finding that reason to be understandable, and finding it to be not all that personal but rather a reason that would make sense for many people who have certain general traits in common with the offended person, you can then reasonably predict people taking offense to the word/phrase. Following that, here be a small collection of testimony from people bothered by "crazy" and "lame" for the understandable and easily-shared reason of the words' bigotted meaning/history: http://forums.theirisnetwork.org/viewtopic.php?t=437
The number of offended cannot be the criteria to determine what expressions should be avoided. Where would the threshold for "enough" people offended be set? What non-arbitrary logic could be used to determine this value?
Call me lazy and insensitive if you want
Well, I wouldn't say I want. With the willingness to at least accomodate on a case-by-case basis your sensitivity is already above average (though it is of course my position that in this matter it could be higher still). And the alternatives list originally linked was (and likely still is) short a few things. Though on the other hand, just the second entry for "lame" at thesaurus.com provides a fantastic list of alternative choices for the critiquing of mediocre excuses. And to make such alternatives even easier to find (provided you're at a computer with Firefox installed): a Thesaurus.com search plugin
*For "crazy" and "lame", anyway; "nag" being sexist rather than ableist.
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In other news, I don't know if you've been following this whole situation, but The Wreckers broke up, the WMB has been taken down after some kind of Huge Dramatic Thing, and a new MBMB has been put up in its place at michellebranch.com. So yeah, you should go register if you feel so compelled. It'd be cool.
Oh, and get on AIM once in a while. Grr.
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If zie believed I was watching my words just for zir, yes, zie quite possibly could, but if it came up I would explain I always try to avoid bigotted words regardless of company and who they're bigotted against; thus, zie isn't really getting any special treatment from me. Though I might concede zir history makes me more aware of when I slip up around zir.
Incidentally, holy crap do I say lame a lot
Never realize how much until you try to stop.
I had not been following that whole Wreckers situation, though from the way things were going last I was paying attention, I would think Michelle is a hair's breadth from declaring, "Fuck you, capitalism; I'm going home to make music in my garage." And by her garage she would of course mean Adobe Audition or something similar, but you get the idea. Record/publishing/every-other-worthless-middlefeeder companies have become obsolete.
AIM. Yes, that's something I should try fitting into my routine, just as soon as I have one up and running. I have recently discovered that time can be divided into units smaller than "day", which will surely be of great help in this endeavor.
Which reminds me of something I've somehow completely forgotten to mention: I have a job. For the moment. Yay.
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...Join MBMB? Pleeeeease?
AIM is good too. Yay AIM.
And you have a job? Pshhh. Way to stick it to The Man, Radish. What's your job?
Wowzers I'm incoherent right now.
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Livejournal overhauled their styles, which I discovered while fiddling in the configurey pages pondering whether to change the name of my journal to "A Whole Bucket of Mud - And it's mine, all mine." While the name did not change (though a fierce battle between classic LucasArts quotes it was indeed), I did find a new style I liked, evoking a typical blog layout. I then proceeded to brake it several times honing my CSS skills before bringing it to its current form.
Oh, and I also stole a bunch of swirly fractals and shit from the internets and layered them all fancy-like in Photoshop to create yon title graphic.
I like it, too.
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