Rape Culture

[exploited]

Well... teaching boys where the line is seems like a good idea. When I was younger I pressured my first girlfriend into fooling around. Not like physically, but with my words. I didn't really feel bad about it until years later... I think if we could teach kids about THAT, about how these situations could escalate into something worse, it might have an impact. I never got told it was wrong to pressure girls into it, and the line between guilting a girl into it and something like forcing her hands down your pants is small. Either way you are pushing limits and narrowing choices.

It strikes me that rape and sexual assault is best dealt with by teaching about not only what consent is, but how to obtain it in a safe and respectful way, how to recognize it, etc. I don't feel like I assaulted her, I just feel like I could have really used some guidance about it at that time in my life. Simply telling kids don't rape isn't enough. Teaching them how to interact with women is what it is going to take.

[exploited]

The question is how to design a program like that which won't reinforce the shit out of gender roles.

[Philly]

Do colleges still do the "every guy is a potential rapist" speech at orientation? They did that at mine with all the guys and girls in the room together. I mean wtf. Aside from it being a bit of fear mongering, why the hell was I and every other male student asked to attend that meeting?

[nordictruce]

[exploited]

I think you're mostly talking about your own past issues, Nordic. Too much respect for women is not how I remember high school lol.

[nordictruce]

I get around. I don't see a lack of respect for women whatsoever. Look at this guy who just killed all those people in LA. I actually read his entire manifesto Saturday night and not anywhere in that document does he approach, try to communicate with a woman or anything. He doesn't now how. No one ever taught him how. He not only hates women for not talking to him, he hates men who somehow figured it out and he didn't.

What you call disrespect is really self hate.


I'm not saying there aren't diresepctful guys. Yes there's gonna be the creepy guy at the bar or the guy who tries to slap you on the back side while you're walking down the street or the guy who just can't take no for an answer, or the guy who thinks because he is X or Y he can get what he wants every time from everyone. I understand what a creep is.


I'm saying, that's not the underlying problem. That is not "rape culture". First, you can't fix those guys even if you wanted to; as philly said above, these guys know they are creeps and they are okay with being creeps and thinking there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of a woman.


However, there is a problem you CAN address. The online forums lie puahate.com, the forum in which the shooter was a member, a site where women are basically treated like scum for being women would not be necessary if men in general had a fundamental understanding of how to deal with women. There are a lot of guys who DON'T KNOW HOW to deal with women and because of this 1. it reduces the number of viable options to women thus making them deal with riskier options in general and 2. it includes feelings of bitterness and range in sexually frustrated men. This CAN be addressed.


There are a lot of sexually frustrated men in america. Sexual frustration leads to bitterness, and "rape culture". "rape culture" as the OP describes it is a bunch of sexually frustrated men, sitting back watching women in the most liberal time of Western Civilization. 22 year old virgin men who sit back and watch 22 year old women have date after date after date can lead some men to have twisted thoughts because he doesn't know how to get a date. That's rape culture. It's not guys slapping women when they walk by. It's the exact same problem they have in India. EXACT same.

[exploited]

A fundamental understanding of how to deal with women? I don't really get what that means though. It's not like women are some alien species that require certain, sequenced cues in order to seduce, or get to know, or date, or have sex with. The problem isn't that guys are bad with women, or don't know how to talk to them, it is generally that they have far higher standards than they should, and get mad that the hot, smart, talented women don't want to date the ugly, stupid, boring men. Look at that retard who just killed all those people; that kid could have gotten laid easily, with no problems whatsoever, and that is despite the fact that he was a raving lunatic. That type of guy just isn't willing to accept that a retarded sociopath is only going to appeal to a certain type of woman, and that type of woman is generally not going to be a super model. They are really just lashing out at the fact that they aren't nearly as amazing as they think. The issue there is that they are self-entitled douchebags, and no amount of gender-based socialization is going to change that. That guy communicated with women his entire life. He communicated with his mother, with his classmates, with his teachers... and yet the hatred he shows isn't "women," it is quite specifically attractive, popular women. Why is that? How do we train that out of kids? I just don't think we can truly fix people like that. What we need to concern ourselves with isn't the retards like him, but the relatively normal men and women who nonetheless do really awful things to other people.

In the end, what we need to do is develop kids' emotional intelligence, so they can recognize when stuff is appropriate and when it isn't. We need to teach them what consent is, what it looks like, how it sounds. We need to shame those who act against those norms, just like we are currently shaming kids who terrorize their classmates or bully the homos. We need to do a far better job of teaching kids about what attractiveness really is, and how you can find it in people who aren't gorgeous supermodels. If we are going to blame any societal-wide tendency, the one I'd blame is the fact that we have largely created a world composed almost entirely of phoney, self-entitled twats, with expectations far beyond what they actually deserve.

[The Dharma Bum]

I think a couple of related social ills are pretty common in Japan as well. The nuclear family just isn't really imparting social skills to the next generation in many of the most advanced contemporary societies. I think has a lot to do with how many hours people have to work instead being with their family. Kids end up grow up internalizing a lot of superficial social "values" from TV and other media instead of engaging in actual social interaction with people on enough of a regular basis to learn how to do it well. Navigating society well is a learned skill and it requires hours of practice.

This is just not happening for a lot of kids today.

[nordictruce]

[nordictruce]