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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   29635 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?

I don't think there's anything wrong with "the men" these days that wasn't wrong with them 50, 100, 200 or 500 years ago. Men have always done things analogous to this prior to the existence of dating apps or smartphones or even telephones. I think we have plenty of reason to believe that men are behaving much better today than they did in the past - I'm sure the Australian statistics for sexual assault over the last hundred years would bear that out. [EDIT: not over the last thirty years, per /u/AshLael. Would still like to see a chart of the last hundred years.]

I don't think the people behind this bill have exhausted every possible course of action to attempt to remedy this problem and are now throwing up their hands in defeat and trying to legislate the problem out of existence. I think these people are petty authoritarians who want the state to intervene and control every facet of human behaviour. I think trying to legislate the problem out of existence was a first resort for them, not a last resort.

Twenty years ago we would have said that a man who's overly pushy and bad at reading signals needs to learn a bit of empathy and improve his social skills - not locked up. From a rehabilitative perspective, I have a hard time believing that spending a few months in jail for the crime of sending a few rude texts would make a man more respectful towards women.

I think we have plenty of reason to believe that men are behaving much better today than they did in the past - I'm sure the Australian statistics for sexual assault over the last hundred years would bear that out.

Also, this is wrong. Data only goes back to 1993, but it's shown a clear upward trend in the 30 years since then.

Thanks for the source. Apparently Australia only outlawed marital rape in 1990. I wonder how much this contributed to the increase.

I'd have actually put "immigration from extremely misogynistic cultures" up on the list as as a much bigger contributor. There've been a lot of scandals with regards to explicitly ethnically motivated sexual abuse and I've even posted about some of them here on the Motte before as well. It got to the point that in the 2000s we actually had race riots over islamic sexual harassment in public places. To be honest I'd be rather surprised if we didn't have a proto-Rotherham waiting to be discovered too.

I hadn't thought of that. When I think about immigrants coming to Australia I immediately think of Chinese and Vietnamese, but I suppose there are a lot of Lebanese as well, aren't there? Would you happen to have stats on the most biggest immigrant groups by source nation over the last few decades?

The Lebanese were who I was thinking of with regards to the ethnically motivated assaults, but I don't have the stats on this front unfortunately.

Can we PLEASE try to stay SLIGHTLY connected to reality here?

No one is trying to

legislate the problem out of existence

No legislation has been proposed, no legislation is being drafted.

Likewise, there is absolutely no prospect of any man

spending a few months in jail for the crime of sending a few rude texts

What has happened is dating apps have been asked to write a code of conduct for themselves. This does not involve any legislation, it does not involve any penalties, and it CERTAINLY does not involve any new criminal offences applied to users.

No legislation has been proposed, no legislation is being drafted.

This is an example of the government laundering legislation through private entities by pressuring the private entities that if they don't obey, they will be faced with legislation. If they do obey, then the government can claim to have nothing to do with it because it's "just private entities, surely they can do whatever they want".

Are you sure? Because I can easily see this "voluntary" code including mandatory reporting to the government, so after Mr. short-pasty-and-ugly gets shot down (by different women) for the thirteenth time, he ends up facing cyberstalking charges.

If someone were to be charged with cyberstalking in New South Wales, it would be under section 13 of the Crimes Act:

A person who stalks or intimidates another person with the intention of causing the other person to fear physical or mental harm is guilty of an offence.

"Stalking" in this context includes "contacting or otherwise approaching a person using the internet", so you could certainly make out that sending messages on a dating app constitutes one element of cyberstalking. But, as I continually remind everyone, to find someone guilty of an offence you need to prove ALL elements of the offence.

In this particular hypothetical, that would include proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. short-pasty-and-ugly intended to cause the women he was contacting to fear harm. There is no way to prove such intent of a man who is just trying to get a date.

In short - you're talking out of your arse.

In short, you just agreed with me. I didn't say they'd be convicted (though I have less confidence in the Australian justice system than you do, and inferring the mens rea from the actus rea is something courts do all the time), I said they'd face charges.

No, I did not agree with you. The fact that such a person would clearly not be guilty of the crime you claim they would be charged with means no prosecutor would bring such an obviously doomed case.

Men nag women for dates already. Cyberstalking is illegal already. If you think men are going to be prosecuted for asking women on dates, why isn't that happening now?

I don't have a crystal ball. I don't even have the text of the demand sent from the government to the dating sites. But I am certain that if this comes to pass, those who say this won't happen now will be at the forefront of saying the defendant deserves it then.

Oh, certainly, if someone is later prosecuted for asking women on dates, Ashlael will be all over explaining how this isn't really being prosecuted for asking women on dates and besides he was warned. I'm less certain of you.

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Okay, fair enough, I was being hyperbolic.

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