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Australian boys make spreadsheet of girls attractiveness, national media, federal minister and state premier rush to condemn them. I'm pretty surprised this got any media attention, doesn't it seem trivial? This all happened on some discord server, it's not like they were parading it around. Does anyone think this would happen in their country?
I can't see how 'unrapeable' could possibly be a threat. Saying someone is vulnerable could be a threat, calling someone invulnerable is not... OK it's very rude, suspend the ringleaders - do police need to be involved? There's a certain level of hysteria here, you get the sense that the male principal fears for his job unless he takes this as seriously as humanly possible.
It would be pretty crushing to be labelled unrapeable or 'get out' by your male peers, though I don't see how a counsellor could help.
Context: Australian media and govt have been panicking about male-on-female violence for a few weeks now. We recently had a mass stabbing by a mentally ill man, who targeted mostly women. Accordingly, male on female violence has increased statistically and the government has thrown a lot of money at various NGOs.
Additionally, there has been a lot of concern about Tate corrupting the minds of the youth. So this lets the media hit two talking points at the same time.
A related matter - youtuber argues that ranking women's attractiveness upsets the Byzantine system of female intrasexual competition, where every queen is praised as a 10/10 regardless of ugliness. I found the video pretty decent albeit a few minutes longer than it needed to be. It features the infamous Gorlock the Destroyer claiming to be a 10/10 (sarcastically?), which does make you think. There might be something to it - ranking women by attractiveness seems more dangerous than one might naively imagine.
In the male-dominated patriarchal society of the distant past, accusing men of being bastards or having incorrect lineage was a very serious matter. Legitimacy and preventing cuckoldry was deeply important to men, it informed the whole structure of European politics, inheritance and succession. Perhaps in the emerging future it's female sexual dynamics that will take priority and we'll see more of this kind of thing.
Premier (woman): "This pattern of violence against women — not only does the act of violence have to stop, but these displays of disrespecting women. Like, it's just disgraceful."
Lèse-majesté: an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state or of the state itself.
Why is this more offensive than ranking people according to academic or athletic ability? Why is this considered offensive, but describing an individual woman's attractiveness is not? Why is putting multiple women onto a single list to compare them worse?
I find this somewhat baffling. There are numerous references to violence against women and sexual assault in the article as though the connection, which I cannot identify, were totally obvious. As fast as I can see, this list is totally innocent and their right to freedom of speech gives them the right to do this.
What’s different in this instance is the systemization of it. Sure, everybody knows men find women varying levels of attractive, but I think keeping a logbook of all the women you know and their rating would generally be considered ‘freak behavior’. (Think of Don Giovanni.)
There are many things that are not inherently bad, but signal some maladaption, and they often involve specifically codifying vague norms. If you found out a friend keeps a ranked spreadsheet of everybody he knows, and writes down his judgements of all their actions, that would be understandably off putting. Sure, it’s something we all do unconsciously, but the very act of making it explicit causes problems.
The connection to sexual violence likely comes from the ‘unrapable’ label. It’s clearly implying that the boys are contemplating the ‘rape-ability’ of their classmates. Even if it is an edgy joke, it’s absolutely unacceptable from a school’s (and likely parents’) perspective. The same spreadsheet ranking them from 1-10 would still warrant action by the school, but likely wouldn’t reach national news levels.
Like what? I agree that it's weird, but I don't see anything wrong with it.
Because it prevents you from having a normal social connection. That type of thing is best mediated through interpersonal contact, because that’s how we evolved to deal with it.
It’s one of the reasons people behave radically differently online than they would in person.
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