This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The solution to America’s rape crisis is to…..ban male only spaces. I will declare that I believe in male only spaces. I believe in female only spaces. I think both sexes have significant psychological differences that they both tend to find benefits to have some organizations that are segregated by sex. Both sides socialize differently when segregated and it has real benefits.
My broad understanding is that when male only places begin to allow female membership they tend to disappear a decade later. I read an interesting paper in the last year that when a college major gets about something like 30-50% female it then quickly becomes 100% female. Biology did this. Veterinary science did this. I think Law will survive but it’s going thru this process now.
The other major development on college rape crisis is an incident at FIT. In this case 19 year old drug dealer gave the two FIT students fentanyl while claiming it was cocaine. Then proceeded to rape them. One of them died. Many posting on Twitter leave the part out that this was brown drug dealers doing the raping and really bad stuff and show this as evidence of bad smart male rich kids.
I am 100% in favor of executing these drug dealers. Also 100% in favor of executing anyone selling fentanyl as it’s really bad stuff. I am also in favor of deporting and denaturalizing basically everyone of these kids background. This is sort of an interesting case where the left can use it as evidence of the bad stuff they claim is happening by leaving out details and then the right can come in while adding details and saying we have policy proposals to deal with this issue.
I am only in favor of this if at the same time we execute those who falsely claim rape.
Female anti-social behavior is just as destructive and socially corrosive as male anti-social behavior; you are posting about the results of that now, yet are still only willing to punish stereotypically-male bad behavior.
The reason sex-segregated spaces work is because most men are psychologically/evolutionarily incapable of holding women to the same standards: removing themselves (and forming a mirror image, though not a copy, of a sorority) is simply the lowest-effort, highest-return strategy.
And it's fine to criticize the lowest-effort for being lowest-effort (and indeed, early 20th century boarding schools are famous for being lowest-effort), but when the average human being isn't capable of constructive criticism... well, that's the ur-justification for censorship, isn't it?
Sure in theory, but only if the claim is proven false, which I suspect is practically never. Even if the accused has a perfect alibi, the "victim" may have misremembered or misspoke the location; you'd have to find multiple obvious fabrications, but if you report finding one, they may suddenly not remember much else, which is not unusual genuinely after a traumatic event. The problem is that many women who are actually raped don't report, fearing getting mislabeled as a false accuser, and judicial consequences will worsen this.
What should happen, obviously, is that people accused of rape should be minimally affected unless and until solid evidence. Which is obviously not completely possible, but can be mitigated a lot by providing extra (financial and emotional) support to them. Look at it this way: the people who hating the falsely accused cannot be coerced into not hating them, locking up the "victim" would only and surely increase their hatred. Also, we can teach women to not only avoid dangerous situations, but (if they want) entrap potential rapists with real evidence, because who's defending someone who would actually rape?
(Ok, that last part they have to ensure the person is unambiguously planning rape, otherwise we get more "teenagers beat up random guy they assumed was a pedophile" and we just had Primetime, not to mention the woman must be careful for her own safety...so it's not actually a good idea in general. But I can't let go that it may be worth it for someone accused of serial rape, to also vindicate them if they turn out OK, because an ambiguous rape hurts both parties' reputations.)
“ The problem is that many women who are actually raped don't report,”
My gut says approximately 0% of rape rape goes unreported.
It’s the rape that many people don’t consider rape that goes unreported. For example I don’t believe a husband can rape their wife. But by US law they can go.
Black grab grabbing a white girl and dragging her behind a building a raping here has a high report rate.
So if a woman calmly and reasonably says "no right now," with a good reason (perhaps an injury or disruption to the specific anatomy), and makes it clear that she considers it important to the point where she will divorce her husband and take the kids away if he violates her clear express wishes..... that's not rape?
Historically before marital rape was specified as a crime and after states had the capacity to intervene in domestic violence cases, pretty much all marital rape was de facto criminalized under battery statutes. I’m not sure if de-facto things changed after marital rape was declared a specific crime, but there is a stable morality that states spouses owe each other some degree of sex but at the same time abuse is unacceptable. From what I can tell, mid 20th century marriages were not necessarily hyper abusive relative to now. They probably had higher rates of abuse, but I suspect the exact legal status of marital rape wasn’t the driving factor.
Don't have any objection to this idea, and in general to an idea that consent is a more complicated construct in the setting of marriage, but that isn't what OP is saying.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No.
I think husbands should be good husbands. I do not believe a husband should have sex with her wife when she has legitimate pain or other issues. But I do not believe that is rape. Vows were exchanged. Both sides should follow their vows. But I do not believe the law should be involved in the relationship of a married couple.
I would never convict a man of raping his life because I don’t think the government should be involved in the relationship of married people.
So if a man beats his wife while she screams no please stop until she loses her voice and then he penetrates her and she spends the next three days crying and covered in bruises and bleeding from a torn vagina no crime was committed?
This was the law of the land until the 1970s. Sorry I have old school Christian beliefs.
I also do not believe a husband should do this to his wife.
He can burn in hell for treating his wife poorly.
I want you to imagine your sister being brutally raped and assaulted by her husband, beaten within an inch of her life, torn up inside, even if she gets a divorce she won't be able to have children again or walk ever again.
And what you aren't going to be mad about it because she was married?
If that's what marriage is to you then the majority of the country will demand it be banned.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's not really true. A 2016 meta-analysis of seven studies found that around 5% of sexual assault accusations reported to police were confirmed false, with estimates varying between studies. That's actually in roughly the same ballpark as the percentage of reported rapes that result in criminal convictions in some studies.
For example, a large British study from 2005 found that around 8% of reported rapes resulted in convictions, while around 9% were initially classified as false accusations by police.
Of course, this tells us very little about the actual proportion of true and false accusations. It mostly illustrates how difficult these cases can be to establish conclusively in either direction.
There is also a third category where the claimant is legitimately claiming rape in her mind but is factually mistaken or misconstrued what the legal standard for rape is (eg I got drunk and had sex with him).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's certainly true that a very high number of rapes go unreported, but I don't think that it's because women are worried about being labelled a false accuser. In the UK for example, rape accusers get lifetime anonymity. The press literally cannot print their names, ever. We don't seem to have more or fewer rape accusations than peer countries as a consequence.
I think rape victims who don't report it do so because they don't want to relive the experience again and again, that they are doubtful that anything will come of it (often true due to the nature of the crime), that they blame themselves to some degree or that they think that putting the rapist behind bars won't undo what happened (which it won't, of course).
You're missing a really-big one, namely "the woman doesn't actually want her boyfriend to be subject to the immense penalties for rape". Because yeah, a very-large chunk of rapes are "girlfriend says she's not in the mood tonight, boyfriend fucks her anyway, she doesn't put up a fight because she doesn't think it's that big a deal" - and a rape conviction is definitely a big deal.
The mistake a lot of people make when thinking about rape is to picture the modal rape as a marauding molestor on the street forcing himself on a screaming woman. Aggravated rapes like that are rare. When you talk about "rapes" - as currently legally defined in the West - you're mostly talking about drunk hookups and "not in the mood tonight"s.
Yeah but having a statute of limitations of 'the rest of their lives' on awkward sexual encounters potentially being redefined as 'rape' is corrosive
Sure. I'm not seeing why that's a "but", though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Of course, but these dynamics are in effect for literally every other crime.
Rape is not different, you generally have evidence that isn't just "black eye" like it is for every other type of assault, and the demand for rape [to punish] vastly exceeds its supply.
Men have to suck up "living through it" when they report assault or theft. Since women are equal to men, the notion they're "too re-traumatized" is special pleading.
They are not equal in this sense. Women are in general much weaker and lower in fortitude than men.
Well, not really. The issue here is that I would have to admit to being beaten, and the admission is just as bad for men as it is for women in the spheres men and women are "supposed" to dominate.
You really want to fuck [the distaff counterpart of] a man who just got home from being mugged or losing a fight, even if in the moment they enjoyed being in the fight (worse if they rated the experience positively re: bike_cuck.jpg[1])? Can't imagine that's particularly attractive; really, a man being robbed or beaten is probably about as much a turn-off for women as a woman being raped is for men.
They're both instances of being required to admit you're a 'failure' of your gender, as having to revisit it requires you tell a bunch of strangers that you were easily tricked or bullied into giving away the resources that [the other gender instinctively believes] yours is supposed to guard.
Thus, I believe either one constitutes a task of identical emotional difficulty (and exposing the same liability), and men are simply underrating the negative effects being stolen from (or not reacting to having been stolen from) has on women in the same way, and for the same reasons, that women tend to underrate the negative effects of body count (including and especially due to rape) on men.
Which is why I can't accept "well, women are inherently less able to do this because gender"; the burden of having to overcome one's own instincts to submit to the legal system that depends on evidence rests in equal measure on the shoulders of all.
Remember, privilege is simply the mechanism by which one escapes this mismatch between instinct and duty/fairness. Let's take the Clancy case- your instinct tells you to kill your children, and your privilege would let you get away with it, so the tension coming from you needing to deny your instincts is gone and you may kill at will. What relief from the burden of resisting yourself.
(And to think men believe women have less emotional fortitude, when women are infamous for using everything they think men care about to manipulate men into granting women more privilege. That is why they scream "racist" and "sexist" at you- women don't truly care about those things, they just know that men can be convinced to, and men fall for it time after time after time. To state you're completely immune as a class to the way women observably function is arrogance at best and stupidity at worst.)
In the same way, your instincts tell you not to seek redress for rape or theft because it'll be difficult and embarrassing, and your privilege to turn any accusation into an instant conviction lets you escape that difficulty. (And a "double standard" is an area where you get to let your instinct override duty in [implied] exchange for letting your counterparts' instinct override duty in a different area that's not mentioned in the initial complaint, but accumulating a social shortfall owed to the truth in the direction of the party that got the worse deal.)
[1] Men attach negative sexual valence to being stolen from or defeated because they aren't generally thinking about the effect it has on female attractiveness when it happens, even if it ultimately means nothing to give away victory. Men also haven't fully figured that out; ironically it was their mothers, not their fathers, who failed to properly teach them about women.
Women treat casual sex the same way when there are no other negative consequences for the same reason; slut-shaming is [among other things] an evolved intra-female (and to a point, male) reminder that men don't like that kind of conspicuous consumption. It remains an evolved response for women because 60 years of contraception doesn't erase the "sex = death" instinct that thousands upon thousands of generations stamped into their brains.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is. Sex isn't illegal, but sex without consent is illegal. That doesn't apply to e.g. murder or battery. Rape almost always happens in the privacy of a bedroom, whereas most crimes of personal assault happen publicly. Consent is also extremely hard to prove or disprove.
In the UK about 85% of rapes go unreported, when comparing police reports to the victim of crime survey, which is the gold standard for measuring actual prevalance of crime. There is plenty of supply.
You seem to believe that the two statements:
...are mutually exclusive. But they're not. They both can be (and I believe are) true.
Again, my answer is "lol, lmao even".
Women are always believed, unless the rapist wasn't a native, in which case the police don't care (I figured I'd need to mention that specifically because this is the UK you're talking about, but it's not like it's that different anywhere else).
Nonsense: you "consent" to a bar fight, you're perfectly within your rights to claim it was an unprovoked offense retroactively when you regret it the next morning, or when it doesn't buy you the entrance to the in-crowd you were hoping for.
Just like sex.
"But diseases, emotional trauma, and the risk of an 18-year-long injury" also apply in the same measure to losing a bar fight- sadly, there's no Plan B or DNA matching for black eyes.
Guess we'll have to let that inequality slide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
lol, lmao even. The "victims" in this case tend to leave evidence that they didn't believe it was rape until it was a convenient cudgel to wield, as in the Cornell case, or leave evidence of active collusion, as in the Ghomeshi case (the aftermath was to make that evidence much more difficult to use, by the way- it embarrassed the privileged).
Every rape case that makes it to national media is false.
Half the country defended a child-killer simply because she was a woman, including 11/12ths of the jury on that case. This is just a proxy for "who's defending someone who is male?", and the answer is, well, apparently nobody.
She has the privilege of tens of millions of simps; why should she be careful? Even the notion that she should be careful is offensive, and you don't even believe that anyway [why would someone want to put themselves in harm's way to "entrap potential rapists with real evidence"?].
Ann Coulter had a piece talking about rape cases on campus that failed to capture the zeitgeist. They frequently involved black men raping (violently) white women.
I think this is largely the result of anti-Southerner liberal narratives. The accepted line of thinking among the Blue Tribe faithful regarding this matter is that Jim Crow laws, lynchings, anti-black racism in general etc. in the South both before and after the Civil War were mainly driven by the sexual anxiety of angry and frustrated white men regarding the inclinations of their women and the prowess of black men, the main manifestation of this being accusations that horny black thugs are always looking for opportunities to rape clueless white women (this being the usual justification for lynchings of blacks). The average white liberal is soaked in this propaganda and thus reacts with willful ignorance, eye-rolling, incredulity and disdain to reports of black-on-white rapes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You are, by defending false accusers. The largely ignored part of the false accusation discussion is that threats of accusations of sexual impropriety are used as a means of social control by women over men, including use as coercion to "unwanted sex".
I’m not defending false accusers. I’m defending real victims who can’t prove themselves, protecting false accusers in the process, only because we can’t separate them. It’s the classic hypothetical “will you spare one innocent person if it means sparing 100 guilty ones?”
Obviously, sparing 100 murderers who will probably reoffend is not worth the life of one innocent. But false accusers are not murderers (and don’t actually ruin one’s life), nor do they avoid social consequences that make it hard to reoffend - in any somewhat-democratic system that could legalize execution in the first place.
Moreover, the above hypothetical is what defends false accusation victims, since allegedly the ratio of false accusations is very low. In general, I believe the legal system shouldn’t interfere in ambiguous situations, because it makes some people distrust it and reduces incentive to avoid them. Protecting both (ambiguously) false accusers and victims makes everyone somewhat unhappy, but kills no-one, while the alternative makes one group much unhappier.
No, you are prioritizing one group of "real victims" (ie, women) over another.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link