What constitutes Misogyny?

[charlie meadows]

You refute Morgan; I refute you: Disputation.

I refute you thus.

<kicks rock>


Two or three defining misogyny: hugs and kisses.

Two or three defining misogyny: dogpiling.

[Stephen Morgan]

Several posts responded to in one, if you don't mind.

Can you understand that, Stephen? Women are regularly sexually assaulted by men. That's normal. Most people, male and female, do not believe it.

Add me to the list, I don't believe it. If most females agree with me, I'm quite glad. The supposedly overwhelming rape culture has obviously escaped their notice. I find it reassuring, as I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted, I've never even heard of an indecent assault and nary a physical assault, and none of them would know what a rape culture would consist of. Nor do I, for that matter, and I dare say I've read more about it than they have.

That's my only experience with a sex crime, in fact, a friend of mine, a woman, one of her associates had reported to the police that she had been raped. It was in the paper (not her name, of course, but the nature of the allegation), the scene of the crime was cordoned off with police tape, that sort of thing. Another of my female acquaintances also knew her and she is in fact some distant relation of mine through marriage and different generations or some such. Anyway, both of the female acquaintances of mine stated quite bluntly that they thought she was lying. Their arguments for this position seemed rather weak, but it showed a reassuring lack of gendered consciousness.

And that's because most people subscribe to a system of belief per which it's not normal for women to be regularly sexually assaulted by men. There's a very large subset of people for whom it's normal to not believe that they've had the real experiences that they know they did have, therefore. On a provisional basis, let's call that subset "many women." But let's not call their real experiences anything other than "real experiences."

I don't feel comfortable with anything which involves assuming people don't notice when they've been sexually assaulted. Although we're meant to be talking about rape, and I'm also not comfortable with the sliding scale of sex crimes which is equating rape with sexual assault with indecent assault with "real experiences" that "many women" haven't noticed being criminal sexual violations.

Okay? Because, you know:

(a) Baby steps; and

(b) Holy shit and goddamn, I could keep giving you an intimate blow-by-blow account of my innumerable experiences of sexual assault for another eighty pages, but it's not like thousands and thousands of women haven't already made hundreds of attempts to alert an implacable world to that little aspect of their normal experience via every conceiva. ble fucking form of conventional communication there is, including fucking writing it up on T-shirts, for pity's sake. Nobody really believes it. You don't. For all practical purposes, I don't.
__________________

I can't imagine that will ever change. I don't hope to change it. I know that the beliefs to which we commonly subscribe are false and destructive. I want to say so more than I want to avoid the socially punishing response that follows. And that's all. I want no other thing from you, myself or anyone.

Thanks in advance for your tolerance of that. More in a bit, I think.

I believe everything I believe "for all practical purposes". I apply my beliefs to my daily life. My religion, my political outlook, have shaped the way I interact with the world. I don't think any actions based on a sudden belief that the half of the race to which I belong is made up of deviant sex beasts would be possible.

what is more unpleasant than a gang of men yelling about No means yes and yes means anal.. and then a lot of them going around and acting on that?

If a load of them had been going around acting on it, that would have been more unpleasant.

So it would. Hey, you know what?

A load of them do go around acting on it, insofar as a load of them do go around sexually assaulting, molesting, and harassing female students:

Well, remaining in thrall to the text of the article, there had been less than a dozen, if memory serves, reports of sexual crimes, ranging from the nastiest of rapes down to debatable accusations of sexual harassment, in the year leading up to the article at Yale. That's complaints, not convictions or anything. So I disagree.

And when you denounce a description of men as basically a bunch of fucking rapists, then I'll take seriously what you think is a POS thing to say. What is vile and hateful.

Hm. Well, let me ask you something. Does this really read to you as a vile incitement to hatred of men?

Men are, generally speaking, largely a bunch of fucking rapists.

It does to me. I denounce it as vile and hateful. But....Hey, wait a minute!

How about this?

Honestly, I don't really care if people's feelings get hurt here about this. I know for a fact that if one in six women are sexually assaulted, the only real conclusion that can be drawn from that statistic is that men are, generally speaking, largely a bunch of fucking rapists. And until this attitude changes - men's attitude toward women - the nature of the state will never change, the wars will never end, the pollution will keep pumping, the assaults will keep happening, the prisons will get fuller, and on and on.

Because I'd say you'd have to go pretty far out of your way to understand that as a vile incitement to hatred of any kind. Indeed, you'd have to willfully misconstrue it like you were Etta James covering "It's a Man's, Man's World," as far as I can see.

I disagree completely. Just in that passage he decides he doesn't care about hurting "people"'s feelings, which he simply wouldn't say about the feminist contingent, obviously accepts what I consider a dubious proposition about the number of rapes, then to make men look bad seems to assume that all rape are gang rapes, inflating from the alleged number of rape victims (1 in 6, about 17%) to 25% of men (more, he says, although you've not included that in his quote) who are rapists, no rationale provided (I can think of no reason someone who thinks 17% of women are raped would conclude that > 25% of men are rapists, other than as a slander). He then blames men and their alleged attitudes toward women (which in my experience comes somewhere between submission and worship) for literally all of the evils in the world (I'm extrapolating a bit there).

So, yeah, I think that's a vile and hate-filled slur upon men.

But hey, ignore that. Go and read barracuda's other posts, it's all much of a muchness. I think that's why I sometimes agree with C_w and yourself, maybe not often, but I can't think of any agreement I've had with barracuda. His entire position is based on the idea that men are a collective.

And that's just as it stands. Once you factor in all the material that preceded it in context, I'd say it makes about as much sense to focus on the vile and hateful appearance of that sentence in isolation as if it had meaningful implications for the post as a whole as this would:

Woman is the nigger of the world.

Ugh, that looks vile and hateful, and then vile and hateful again! I'd certainly denounce it if I didn't know it was a part of this:

Yeah, barracuda wasn't saying that men are largely a bunch of fucking rapists in a nice way, as "nigger" was meant to imply "oppressed" rather than "them damn dirty niggers" or whatever. He didn't mean "men are a bunch of rapists" as in "men suffer from the ruining of their reputations if acquitted", he meant "man can be characterised by a common impulse towards and sympathy for sexual violence".

But I do know the context, in both cases. And I sincerely don't understand how either can be read as vile and hateful.

Well, if I was black I'd find the comparison between "nigger" and "woman" somewhat offensive. But that wasn't meant as a slur on either group, whereas barracuda's statement was pretty clear and unambiguous.

May I redirect the innocent, non-rancorous, not-hostile request for elaboration wrt barracuda's post that I initially made to norton ash your way?

I accept all questions, more or less.

Same ground rules, no wrong answer, etcetera. I really just don't get it. And if there's an "it" there, I want to.

Thanks.

Well, as I say, I struggle to understand any position which attempts to portray the statement that men as, in essence, just rapists (a rather common feminist statement, to be honest) as anything other than a pejorative and groundless accusation leveled against an entire birthgroup. It is exactly structurally identical with the claim that "niggers are just a bunch of criminals". The context, of that statement and the body of barracuda's posts in this thread as a whole, merely make it more incriminating, as barracuda has long since abandoned any notions of equal treatment for a blanket denunciation of men.

I'm almost positive that's the facile argument people use to dismiss the 1-in-4 study not the 1-in-6 study, honey. Are you sure you're not getting them mixed up?

I'll go check, I guess.

You're quite right, in that I was wrong. I was thinking of 1 in 4. I've also heard 1 in 3, 1 in 5, 1 in 7, and so forth, I've never gone through studying them all.

Not that I accept the six figure, though.

I feel kind of bad about doing it, considering the sheer overwhelming volume of massive studies that have been finding male-on-female rape/attempted-rape prevalence rates that are perfectly and thoroughly consistent with it for years and years and years by now, but:

Really? Gosh. On what basis do you reject all the studies that support it?

I'm specifically going to address the 1 in 6 survey, as representative.

Well, there's a few reasons I find it suspicious, none of which necessarily make it wrong. The incredibly high number of crimes reported, for starters, mostly crimes against men (although it was actually trying to measure crimes against women, but asked men similar questions), which is odd. I simply don't believe that many crimes to have taken place as the study states. It also finds great discrepancies between domestic violence by men and women, which doesn't resemble the picture painted by most studies of the subject. And, of course, it comes up with the high rape number which resembles the numbers from disreputable sources like Shere Hite.

I suppose my inherent resistance to the idea is that I just don't believe it. Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, and the idea that 1 in 6 women are raped I regard as pretty fucking extraordinary, while I regard the evidence as inconsistent and broadly unreliable.

The figure from the equivalent English study (from the BCS) is 1 in 20, incidentally, with the same methodology (as far as I could discern from the documents I could find on the web, at least).

Also, I'm not sure how it qualifies as facile to accept a woman's word as to whether she has been raped, rather than imposing your interpretation on the events of her life. Might as well add "women are a bunch of fucking idiots" to barracuda's "men are a bunch of fucking rapists" if you're going down that road.

I assume you're referring to the Koss study. Are you? Because if so, the answer is that it doesn't. It qualifies as facile to characterize that study as one that unreasonably or wrongly concluded that women had been raped according to its own madcap feminist beliefs on the subject. Once again, I find it almost impossible to see how anyone who'd read it could understand it that way, really. In the event that you have not read it, but merely read of it, may I tell you something?

I'm going to go an fucking well read it now, after I've hunted it down, alright? Then I'll come back and tell you what I think of it.

Excellent. Here we go:

You're an incomparably more astute, agile and accomplished thinker/writer than Christina Hoff Summers or Warren Farrell (or whoever wrote the account of the Koss study that led you to believe it was something it wasn't) will ever be on his or her best day, imo. And, oh, man, do I ever root for the day to arrive on which you know that as thoroughly as I do.

Because those losers are holding you down, my friend. They're dead weight. Just pitch 'em over the side, I say.

Never actually read anything by Warren Farrell. Something suspect to me about a man who used to be on the board of NOW. Hoff-Summers ain't too bad. I like Donna LaFramboise. Canadian, I believe.

So this is what freshmen women entering the most prestigious university in America, and possibly the finest in the world,

I thought we were talking about Yale.

So. A Harvard man, are you?

Open University at the moment, generally considered one of the best in the country and run mostly through distance-learning. That is to say it's done over the internet, with essays being uploaded, but with regular in-person tutorials to which one is not obliged to attend. Which is good, because I hate the fucking things. I'm not fond of the whole process, honestly, I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about and I've come to the conclusion that a mentally deficient chimp could be coached through the process. I've put about two hours work into each essay, done no other work related to it, and come nowhere near failing any of them. Might've done quite badly on the poetry analysis: an interdisciplinary arts course was probably a bad choice, if convenient for my laziness. I can't believe there are people who parlay this into full-time activity. It's just reinforced my well-established contempt for formal education.

Now, I'm going to look for that Koss study.

[Stephen Morgan]

"I can see how that would be a difficult position for women, and I'm interested to know more about..."

Not to beat about the bush, that's not really something I've had to ask about.

or
"Hey, I don't agree with <member of same 'side'>

I've never really thought of anyone else as being on my side. I honestly don't think there is anyone on this board with whom I broadly agree on matters of sexual politics.

[brainpanhandler]

... that side has NOT ONCE spoken out against another member of that 'side' no matter what has been said - how offensive or wrong. None of 'that side' has said anything like,

"Hey, I don't agree with <member of same 'side'

Speaking strictly for myself I am reluctant to speak on behalf of women in this thread when I agree with their objections to the men in this thread. I get the uneasy feeling of taking on the role of "protector of women". Although in real life that's how I feel and act. I can't help it. I still open doors for women. Besides, the women on this thread have not needed my help, except perhaps where I have been able to reflect on my own views. That and perhaps fear. But sometimes you have to get involved:

A few years ago now I was awoken at 4 am. I lived in a small apartment nestled among a number of other flats. I had just moved in and was sort of already awake when a screaming argument between the couple next door roused to me to full wakefulness. I had already met both of them on separate occasions and thoroughly disliked the guy. His name was David. The argument began to escalate even further. I could not quite make out what was being said as they moved off toward another part of their apartment and then suddenly I heard the female voice scream Help! at the top of her lungs. Over and over she screamed Help and then burst out her back door, ran across the parking lot and out into the street. Now I was fully awake. I ran in to the kitchen where I could see out into street. David had the woman by her shirt and was trying to drag her back across the street as she was screaming help as loudly as she could. I was faced with one of those situations one hears about where no one does anything and I wasn't going to be one of thise people. I opened the window and screamed David's name until I got his attention. He stopped dragging the woman (I'm sorry I don't remember her name. She moved shortly after this incident and strangely enough seemed sort of cold to me afterwards. I never got so much as a thank you) across the street. I shouted that I had called the police and they were on their way. That was a bluff as I had not been able with a quick search to locate my cell phone. As it turned out it was in my car. This seemed to slow him up for a moment, but then he grabbed her again and continued draggung her across the street. I realized there was not time for any other action except to go out and confront David myself. I grabbed a 4 pound practice club I used for golf (essentially a small mace) and proceeded out the front door. By this time David had ripped her shirt off and had her almost back across the street. I yelled his name and told him to let her go. He let her go and turned his attention on me. I was holding my club and made sure he saw that I was armed. He got very agitated at being confronted and started jumping around and making feints at me. Each time he moved toward me I raised my club, ready to smash him over the head if necessary. We were stuck in this stalemate for what seemed like an eternity until suddenly I felt something hot on my legs. I turned to see a police cruiser that had pulled up behind me. I was so intent on the situation that I had not even heard the cruiser, which did not have it's sirens on, or noticed the lights, which it did have on. I was so relieved. The officer did not immediately get out. I assume she was assessing the situation before her. There was a shirtless woman sitting on ground, a wild eyed agitated man jumping around, and me, holding a club. Luckily she guessed the situation correctly and figured out who the criminal was. She got out ( she was alone and did not have a partner) and approached David. I backed off, utterly relieved. I could not quite hear what was being said. They moved over to the sidewalk. The lights were going around and around. It was all rather surreal. Suddenly David starts attacking the officer, trying to kick and punch her. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Why didn't he just run? I just wanted him to run. Instead, as she backed away, staying out of reach of his attempts to assault her, he followed and they came toward me. We swiveled in the street and now she was facing toward me and him and he was facing toward her and I was behind him. There was a bried pause. I could not see her as David was in the way. When I looked around David to see what the officer was doing I discovered she had a weapon pointed at David, and also essentially me! I quickly stepped out of the way and the officer immediately shot him with a taser, the kind with the barbs and the wires. Arc after arc of electricity shot down the wires. David screamed in agony but did not go down. He continued to pursue the officer. She backed up and coninued to actuate the taser over and over. Not looking where she was going she tripped on the curb and fell and David jumped on top of her. Holy shit! I thought. I'm going to have to rescue this officer. I approached feeling like I had no option but to brain him with this club. Just then the officer scrambled back to her feet. David ripped the barbs out and started running. But before I could feel any relief that he was finally fleeing, he runs around the front of her still running cruiser, jumps in and takes off down the street. We watched as he roared down the street, lost control and smashed into a tree. To the officer's credit she remained preternaturally calm and called in the situation. She asked if we were ok. I gave the woman my shirt. The officer asked me to stay with her. Sirens started up from all over town and descended on the scene. To my astonishment the victim started pleading to no one in particular to not hurt him (the perp). "Don't hurt him" she said over and over, while I thought to myself "Kill the motherfucker". David was apparently not ready to give up and officers had to shoot him several times, although not fatally.

[vanlose kid]

I believe this sums up a lot of the thoughts in this thread.

i believe it sums up more than the thoughts. it brings up an aspect to this that doesn't really get covered that often. i'll try to explain.

the OP is about misogyny, and a lot of the learning or academic studies on this somehow root things in some sort of biological/cultural/genetic innateness and seek to trace this back through cultures and centuries, which is fine, but a lot of what makes up and transmits misogyny in western cultrue is exclusively (in the sense of "particular to") western culture and specifically western notions of knowledge and science.

in this thread PW and i had a short exchange re Freud that to my thinking might as well have been brought up here. first the exchange:

Justdrew, I'll say something radical, If you have a stored trauma response from the incident, any good, client-centered trauma therapist can help you with it as well as subsequent reactions, grief, etc. The difficulty is finding a good one.

I'm truly sorry that you or any other male was subjected to that kind of mutilation.

And, no doubt, Freud's turnabouts negatively impacted several generations of trauma survivors.

re Freud's "turnabout", i tend to think it had to do with the services he provided to the ruling classes of the empire: a way to keep their uppity women and men (the questioners and doubters) in check, cf., hysteria. – it's amazing the things you can get away with if a professional quack is willing to certify your victim and lock her or him up without trial. Freud wanted success, so he toed the line. simple.

Anna von Lieben's case provides a good example.

*

Freud wanted success, so he toed the line. simple.
*

Yes. He did not have the fortitude nor did he aspire to take on the role of whistle blower. On the contrary, he was a social climber whose scientific discoveries and ambition, unforeseeably, made war with one another. So despite what his discoveries told him was the truth, he did indeed, ultimately, toe the line.

...

the exchange itself centered on Freud's desire for success and his placation of the "powers" who could grant him success. but that's only part of it.

the other part has to do with the specifically "scientific" dogma that made notions such as hysteria (a "disease" that only women suffer from) acceptable.

we can talk all we want about how far western culture has come since then when we congratulate ourselves for being "better" than whatever Other du jour but as far as i can tell its mostly, if not entirely, talk (cf., Yale, above).

so, that screenshot is relevant and pointed.

think about "our" concepts of "rationality", "science", "objectivity", and how how they apply to men and women (as essential characteristics of ideal species or whatever) how even women today buy into the "women are more emotional" as opposed to men who are it is claimed "more rational" by nature or genetics or whatever. (race theory functions along the same lines.)

personally, to me it's all BS. the problem is, the BS is paradigmatic and has been with us since at least the end of the renaissence.

you can't find it in the Greeks unless you read it into the Greeks.

rationalism, the scientific paradigm, is a product of the west and as such favors men. now that is genetic (in Nietzsche's sense).

i've been thinking about taking up a subject that sort of started this whole thread off to begin with: Otto Weininger. if you don't know who he is then he's the basis for the site C_w linked to in the OP. i don't have time for it but hope i'll get round to it, because i think he is a genius, problem is very few people got what he was doing, or trying to say, or show, really. it's a tragic work.

having read Weninger, let me just say this, and i have it on Wittgenstein's authority: S&C is a work of genius and misunderstood. the way to read it as to see the book as a statement "P" only negated.

Weininger argued the case for rationalist, essentislist, racist science and philosophy to absurdity. and only by reading it and understanding it can you see the conclusion. the entire book is nonsense, and as you know the negation of nonsense results in nonsense. the thing is much of western science and philosophy is nonsense. the problem is that most people take it seriously.

here's a sample, in the book he proposed to construct a "scientific" theory (reflecting the thinking of his time) of sex (as in gender) and character (good and bad traits) by way of idealized and rigidly defined types: M and F. what's more, he states, explicitly, that these do not exist anywhere in reality. and from there he drives off the cliff. it's serious and darkly humorous, but expressive of much of western science and philosophy. i wish more people would actually read it. then again, some people do read it and start up sites like the one linked to in the OP, so maybe they shouldn't.

*

from personal experience (someone somewhere has probably already thought of this): men have periods. i have them. they're cyclic. mine are related to the lunar phases. only i don't have the gift of blood to tell me when one comes around so i have to keep an eye on myself. this is fact.

*

rimbaud, another outsider, once wrote in a letter to Izambard "i is an other" (je est un autre [sic]). this to me says a great deal about what it is to know oneself. to have a self. and a lot about empathy.

the basic idea is that part and parcel of what "i am myself" means is precisely this: "i am an other".

to explain that i'd have to wade into nonsense, so i'll leave it.

*

the way women are treated has a lot to do not with the fact that they are women, but with our scientific rationalist conceptions and definitions of "woman". this is part of the heritage. it colors things -- thinking, social interaction, sciences, culture, institutions.

*

this is a drive by post. if it doesn't make sense then accept my apologies.

*

[Searcher08]

Here they all come, eager to jump into a fight and NOT discuss misogyny.

I'm not a 'they'; I am not interested in a fight ; I am discussing the subject

One of the purposes of this board is to hopefully contribute to better communication between it's members, my post is on-topic.

[Burnt Hill]

No one "on your side" (fuck, why?) took issue with his position.

I wonder about this also.
Initially, I totally avoided posting to this thread, just an ugly topic.
Then it hit some sort of critical mass and felt I had to take a side, unusual for me.
Wallflowers statement encompassed my views.
Silence means approval.
And all men are not rapists.

[Canadian_watcher]

I have enjoyed reading your posts BPH, VK, Burnt Hill and have things I want to ask/respond to about all of them - really great stuff here.

I'm stuck for time but I will get back to them sooner than later, hopefully.
cheers

[Nordic]

Stephen Morgan wrote:

I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted,

Really? In my world that's highly unusual. I'd say more than half of the women I know well enough to be told such things have been raped or sexually assaulted, some repeatedly.

I mean, it's so common with the women I know I almost take it for granted that by the time a woman is 30, she's probably had at least one assault of some kind, even if it was just a guy who refused to say no and she had to use physical force to get away.

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this thread .....

[Searcher08]

bph,

That was a scary story - I wondered whether the guy was on PCP...
What happened after it? Was he jailed? It is a dangerous situation that because I have heard so many stories of non-intervention leading to disasters AND intervention leading to scary scenarios too - guy beats up girlfriend, other guy intervenes, girlfriend switches sides and bad guy calls in mates etc
It was through R.I. that I first heard of the Kitty Genovese case - it made a big impact on me and I think especially these days it is a really important social psych phenomena to be aware of and good for you for doing the right thing.
Was there any longer term fallout for you, in terms of your attitudes?

+++++++++

I'm interested in your take on the communication loop I see happening on RI and this thread in particular, posted above.

It was seeing the exchange that you had with Willow that crystallised it for me, because it was very similar to one I had had earlier with her - it was like I was watching the same dynamic and from the moment you posted I could predict how it would go - and it did according to this. I felt bad because it didn't end up being a good experience for either of you. Does what I describe in terms of the communication looping match what is going on here in your opinion?

If it does, then maybe there are three ways to break the loop.

The first way is for the Men-Empathy side to be addressed. This certainly hasn't been happening in the 'Validation' thread which seemed to be ignored or treated academically.
The second is for the Female-Argumentation side to be addressed. This was highlighted by many responses where arguing from that 'side' = OK; against that 'side' = MODS!!!
The third is to 'dis-solve' the issue and a Forum dedicated to this and similar issues would be a contribution to that.

[Searcher08]

Stephen Morgan wrote:

I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted,

Really? In my world that's highly unusual. I'd say more than half of the women I know well enough to be told such things have been raped or sexually assaulted, some repeatedly.

I mean, it's so common with the women I know I almost take it for granted that by the time a woman is 30, she's probably had at least one assault of some kind, even if it was just a guy who refused to say no and she had to use physical force to get away.

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this thread .....

I noticed that the number of ex's of mine who told me about at some point experiencing a sexual assault would have been about 20%. It seemed to be very career area dependent. I've never come across a women in the IT world who was assaulted, however the number of nasty things that happened in the NHS (medical and nursing) that I was aware of was horrendous. Geek grrls seem to be accepted more than nurses who are often treated very poorly - seen as gratification tools by some doctors, and treated very poorly by their own nursing organisations when they seek redress (along the Catholic Church style lines of hushing things up)

[JackRiddler]

Stephen Morgan wrote:

I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted,

Really? In my world that's highly unusual. I'd say more than half of the women I know well enough to be told such things have been raped or sexually assaulted, some repeatedly.

I mean, it's so common with the women I know I almost take it for granted that by the time a woman is 30, she's probably had at least one assault of some kind, even if it was just a guy who refused to say no and she had to use physical force to get away.

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this thread .....

"All the women I know" probably number many hundreds or a couple of thousand. Give me a memory drug and I may be able to name a thousand, but I obviously don't know all of them equally well. I submit that neither does Stephen Morgan know "all the women" he knows equally well. Out of the three dozen women or so whom I've known in my life well enough that at some point they might have spoken freely with me about experiences of rape or of abuses in childhood, more like half have, in fact, related such experiences. As for close calls or credible-seeming scares: all of them. As for harrassment: usually daily.

I don't go to work or take the subway or visit a bar and talk to a hundred women in a week for one reason or another and then assume, since none of them tell me their rape story, that they've therefore never been raped. It would be easy to just be oblivious to the reality and always to assume that anything I'm not hearing about doesn't exist. That is what most men do, but most women cannot possibly do that because they know better from their own experiences and/or are well aware of the precautions they take on a daily basis.

.

[Stephen Morgan]

I won't be reading that Koss study, they want money to provide it, if you can believe that.

Stephen Morgan wrote:

I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted,

Really? In my world that's highly unusual. I'd say more than half of the women I know well enough to be told such things have been raped or sexually assaulted, some repeatedly.

I mean, it's so common with the women I know I almost take it for granted that by the time a woman is 30, she's probably had at least one assault of some kind, even if it was just a guy who refused to say no and she had to use physical force to get away.

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this thread .....

Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner. The police crime map shows no sex crimes and only a few dozen violent crimes for a population of about 40,000 in the last three months.

[charlie meadows]

Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner.

Is this where I'm supposed to tell Stephen he's out of line?

[Searcher08]

Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner.

Is this where I'm supposed to tell Stephen he's out of line?

I thought he was drily commenting on the difference between US and rural UK crime stats? I thought he lived "Where Men are Men, and Sheep are Nervous"?