Only one gender is taught that coercing the other to have sex by any means is considered sporting and cool.
I must have been sick the day they taught that in my school. I feel like men are being taught that they've been taught it far more systematically than they're actually being taught it. The lesson in pop culture is overwhelmingly that rape is a special kind of evil.
Only one gender has major pop cultural, religious, and political figures who have admitted to (or continue openly!) to brutalize individuals of the other gender. And only one gender commits 80%+ of these crimes.
If I were to be pedantic, the 2008 NCVS actually has it at just under 80% - and this number is for all rapes and sexual assaults committed, so includes male-on-male crimes already. More importantly, the base rate for violent crime in general is also right around the 80% mark, so it's highly misleading to cite the 80% number as you have. The real story seems to be that men are - probably through both nature and nurture - more willing to use violence to seek whatever it is they want, sex being just one of those goals. If there's a cultural problem here, it's a "violence culture", not a "rape culture". The numbers simply do not support the proposition that sexual violence is systematically enabled/endorsed/encouraged in a special way beyond the baseline - or at least, if there is such a system, it fails to produce any additional actual sexual violence. There is a crime that's gendered beyond the base rate in the data, but it's robbery, for whatever reason.
There is some good discussion going on here, but I'm confused by the fact that most people seem to be ignoring the topic in the OP which is: the double standard of how men and women are treated when it comes to their behavior towards each other. Some have addressed it, but most of the discussion is centered around what happens to the genders rather than the response to it.
Yes, rape, sexual assault(like the above mentioned hazing), domestic abuse, etc. happen to both genders and from both genders. Yes, it's more common for men to be perpatrators in these scenarios. The problem lies in that there is a HUGE double standard in how the genders are treated. Like with statutory rape, if the underage person is a male student, he's unlikely to be called a victim except maybe in court. As was said above, he's considered to have gotten lucky. But if the underage person was a female student, there will generally be a whole lot more discussion of the girl being taken advantage of, tricked, needing therapy, etc.
In cases where men are the subject of domestic abuse, it's not frequently taken seriously. Like it's a joke or a lie. A woman who claims domestic abuse is more likely to be believed. If a man puts down a woman and slaps her in the arm over a insultive statement she made, it's usually declared abuse. If a woman does the same thing, then usually it's said the guy deserved it.
Rape is one of the worst things that someone can do to another person, and should be treated as such regardless of the genders of those involved. What we need to do as a society is not treat acts of any kind differently based on gender. Yes there are differences between men and women. But we are alike in that we all have choice in how we act, and we all have potential to be more than we are today. We should treat each other based solely on our actions and not at all on the things we had no control over, such as who our parents were or the gender we were born.
Only one gender is taught that coercing the other to have sex by any means is considered sporting and cool.
I must have been sick the day they taught that in my school. I feel like men are being taught that they've been taught it far more systematically than they're actually being taught it. The lesson in pop culture is overwhelmingly that rape is a special kind of evil.
Only one gender has major pop cultural, religious, and political figures who have admitted to (or continue openly!) to brutalize individuals of the other gender. And only one gender commits 80%+ of these crimes.
If I were to be pedantic, the 2008 NCVS actually has it at just under 80% - and this number is for all rapes and sexual assaults committed, so includes male-on-male crimes already. More importantly, the base rate for violent crime in general is also right around the 80% mark, so it's highly misleading to cite the 80% number as you have. The real story seems to be that men are - probably through both nature and nurture - more willing to use violence to seek whatever it is they want, sex being just one of those goals. If there's a cultural problem here, it's a "violence culture", not a "rape culture". The numbers simply do not support the proposition that sexual violence is systematically enabled/endorsed/encouraged in a special way beyond the baseline - or at least, if there is such a system, it fails to produce any additional actual sexual violence. There is a crime that's gendered beyond the base rate in the data, but it's robbery, for whatever reason.
The mark might also be so high because so many governments have adopted the Duluth model for domestic abuse, which pretty much stacks the deck against men in any sort of DA scenario, including sexually-based DA.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
If I were to be pedantic, the 2008 NCVS actually has it at just under 80% - and this number is for all rapes and sexual assaults committed, so includes male-on-male crimes already. More importantly, the base rate for violent crime in general is also right around the 80% mark, so it's highly misleading to cite the 80% number as you have. The real story seems to be that men are - probably through both nature and nurture - more willing to use violence to seek whatever it is they want, sex being just one of those goals. If there's a cultural problem here, it's a "violence culture", not a "rape culture". The numbers simply do not support the proposition that sexual violence is systematically enabled/endorsed/encouraged in a special way beyond the baseline - or at least, if there is such a system, it fails to produce any additional actual sexual violence. There is a crime that's gendered beyond the base rate in the data, but it's robbery, for whatever reason.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yes, rape, sexual assault(like the above mentioned hazing), domestic abuse, etc. happen to both genders and from both genders. Yes, it's more common for men to be perpatrators in these scenarios. The problem lies in that there is a HUGE double standard in how the genders are treated. Like with statutory rape, if the underage person is a male student, he's unlikely to be called a victim except maybe in court. As was said above, he's considered to have gotten lucky. But if the underage person was a female student, there will generally be a whole lot more discussion of the girl being taken advantage of, tricked, needing therapy, etc.
In cases where men are the subject of domestic abuse, it's not frequently taken seriously. Like it's a joke or a lie. A woman who claims domestic abuse is more likely to be believed. If a man puts down a woman and slaps her in the arm over a insultive statement she made, it's usually declared abuse. If a woman does the same thing, then usually it's said the guy deserved it.
Rape is one of the worst things that someone can do to another person, and should be treated as such regardless of the genders of those involved. What we need to do as a society is not treat acts of any kind differently based on gender. Yes there are differences between men and women. But we are alike in that we all have choice in how we act, and we all have potential to be more than we are today. We should treat each other based solely on our actions and not at all on the things we had no control over, such as who our parents were or the gender we were born.
The mark might also be so high because so many governments have adopted the Duluth model for domestic abuse, which pretty much stacks the deck against men in any sort of DA scenario, including sexually-based DA.