Sexual assault, and why men don't get it

http://lepid0ptera.livejournal.com/78344.html

by araneae • 16 years ago

44 40 16 years ago

lepid0ptera.livejournal.com

xentronium6• 16 years ago

    I am 25 years old, and I have had sex with 50 people.

Dunno, why, but I find that really, really amusing. Because, you know, men are filthy animals, right?

falsestprophet• 16 years ago

  I am 25 years old, and I have had sex with 50 people.

As an exercise for the men reading this, instead of imagining yourself in that situation, imagine that it's your wife or your girlfriend. Better yet, imagine it's your daughter.

ugh6• 16 years ago

I accidentally upvoted you. It goes without saying that the disgusting crap you wrote there should be downvoted.

(Edit: And now I don’t get why I’m being downvoted. What’s in any way amusing about having sex with 50 people? Sex is fun and sex is normal, why shouldn’t everyone have as much as he or she wants to? She never said that men are filthy animals if they have a lot of sex. She never said that she ever assaulted anyone – that’s what she criticizes, not sex. Sex is not the same as assault. I thought that was obvious.)

Dylan168072• 16 years ago

> why I'm being downvoted

Your comment was at first a quick snipe, without any reason expressed in it. If you vote incorrectly, you should either leave it or explain your opinion properly, as you have now done. It looks like you've now been upvoted back.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

I'm not disgusted. The irony is that the essayist seems to be assuming all men are sex-hungry primitives, and 'keeping score' is exactly the sort of thing that makes male chauvinists so annoying. Although her points are completely legitimate, they're obscured by the generalizations and condescending tone.

xentronium6• 16 years ago

Some guys are serious to death.

First, I am not afraid to call a woman who sleeps with 50 men in ~5 years a slut. Even if it costs me karma on HN, lol.

Second, I dunno what happened there, and if there was an incident, the victim should have gone to police and that'd be it. She could have even written a post about how she made a stand for all the women rights. As of now, whole case looks like pure attention-whoring.

Third, I am not a goddamn rapist, and I am quite sure that we, men, should protect our women.

P.S. I found another gem:

    It hurts and is potentially embarrassing and SCARY,
    because it is a prelude to rape, which in turn is a 
    prelude to death and/or babies.

Wait, what? SCARY babies, oh my gosh.

kls• 16 years ago

Even if you are the type who's fine with abortion, like me, trust me, I spent a good day and a half throwing up every 20 minutes while popping codeine while I experienced agonizing cramping as chunks of bloody goo were expelled from my crotch. (I recommend going the surgical route instead for anyone who's considering the medical abortion)

Well when you offset it with that statement, from her own blog it shows an utter lack of personal responsibility. Sex is fun it also has consequences. I am all for free love and lots of sex, but if you are going to chose a lifestyle with a high volume of partners, it needs to be offset with some level of personal responsibility, for the choices you make. I see it no different than drinking. You can choose to have sex or drink and no one should have any say in that choice, but if you take irresponsible action like driving drunk or having sex without the proper safeguards if pregnancy is not the intended goal, then you should take personal responsibility for your choice to drink and drive or have unprotected sex. When you don't it profoundly affect other peoples lives.

gdl• 16 years ago

I don't see how this is being upvoted. She said that she has had sex with 50 people, not that she has sexually assaulted 50 people. She never says anything bad about sexuality in general, only the unwillingly forced kind. There is no amusing irony or hypocrisy here unless your sense of morality doesn't differentiate between the two acts, which I thought we got over as a society quite a long time ago.

_b8r0• 16 years ago

I really didn't understand why she felt the need to say that, I'm not really sure what the relevance was to sexual assault.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

All good points. Men really don't get this issue from the female perspective.

But umm, showing up on a male dominated board, picking a few admittedly lame comments and then busting on the entire group for their cluelessness?

I also saw a great deal of support for Noirin, a great deal of concern for the state of the tech community and some really good discussion on how the problem might actually be fixed.

There exists an enormous asymmetry in power between men and women when it comes to sex, and so it generates equally large asymmetry in consequence when it comes to accusing men of misdeeds. This causes a great deal of fear and mistrust from both sides, which leads to huge differences in perspective. (Sorry to go Yoda there) To say this causes lively debate is somewhat of an understatement.

TomOfTTB• 16 years ago

I'm sorry but this whole discussion has been beyond obnoxious as far as I'm concerned. It started with people taking one drunk jack ass and extrapolating that to slander the whole male tech community and now we have someone taking one insensitive comment and extrapolating it to slander all of HN (the other comment she quotes just pointed out it would have been a better idea to go to the police)

Does the author really believe anyone in their right mind would think it was ok for a man to stick his hand down a woman's pants uninvited?

xentronium6• 16 years ago

    Does the author really believe anyone in their 
    right mind would think it was ok for a man to 
    stick his hand down a woman's pants uninvited?

That.

Even more, she cites a comment which really explains everything:

    I'll probably get downvoted for asking, 
    but I'm curious, would everyone be as upset 
    over this had it been a drunken female guest
    inappropriately grabbing a guy's package? And 
    if the male blogger had then written a similar 
    blog about being sexually assaulted at a party, 
    naming the female who grabbed him?

    I'm not endorsing this sort of behavior obviously, 
    but the public shaming element here seems fairly
    twisted. If a sexual assault occurred she should go
    to the police about it and press charges. 
    Not start an internet witch hunt.

You feel ashamed? You're getting abused? Go to police and social services for god sake.

ugh6• 16 years ago

One comment and at least 31 other people who upvoted the comment.

cowpewter3• 16 years ago

There was at least one person on the thread for the original blog post that argued that the incident as described did not constitute sexual assault, and when the actual statutes demonstrating that it was were given to him, he said basically that while it may be sexual assault in the letter of the law, he did not think it was that a big a deal or that what was described should be illegal. He received plenty of downvotes, but plenty of upvotes too.

I know that arguing that something should not be illegal is not strictly the same as arguing that it's not 'not okay', but it is close enough to make me uncomfortable.

grovulent• 16 years ago

I don't pretend to know what it's like to be a woman - nor really how situations like this are to be resolved positively for both parties.

However, one thing that strikes/confuses me is that while some women may wish to paint the current poor girl's reaction as some kind of universal truth - I've heard of zillions of yarns where it went exactly the other way... i.e. the guy and girl end up having a night of great sex because he was bold enough to go all in (pun a little bit intended).

This schism in results tells me that only one thing can be known for sure. If you're going to go stampeding for the crotch, make sure you've picked a girl that's up for it. Don't know how to pick such a lady? Don't know if you know how to pick such a lady?

Buy her flowers then... and we can all be spared these excruciating discussions on a place where we'd all feel much more comfortable chatting about code.

cowpewter3• 16 years ago

I think it can definitively be said that if you kiss a girl and she shoves you off and tells you she's not interested that she's not 'up for it'.

lokeshverma• 16 years ago

This is bad :(

dkarl2• 16 years ago

First point: the entire post rests on invoking a double standard. Imagine how it would feel if it was your daughter... in some parts of the world a raped woman's life is ruined.... Um, bad intro, really bad intro. Sure, the idea that any kind of sexual experience devalues a woman shapes a woman's experience of sexual assault. However, asking men to get in touch with their patriarchal, proprietary attitudes toward women's sexuality is not a good way to further a discussion about sexual assault. Leading into my second point....

Second point: the male response to a story of rape is really their response to an imagined scenario in which they're falsely accused of rape. This says a lot about men's difficulty identifying with women. They find it easier to identify with the man in the story, even though he's the villain and acted in a way they never would. Since they're unable to identify with the woman, they identify themselves with the man, and since they themselves are not sexual predators, they imagine a scenario in which they have been accused of rape because of an innocent mistake.

Naturally they recognize this is different from the original story, but they are so unable to empathize with the female protagonist that the alternative story they conjured, in which the man is a victim, is much more compelling to them. They know it's a different story, but it's so scary and real to them that they simply must discuss it. The original story of rape is so unreal to them that they simply push it aside.

This lack of empathy for victims of rape is what needs to be overcome so that men can have a more evenhanded response to stories like this. Instead of asking men to imagine themselves as a patriarch whose honor and property have been marred, ask them to imagine themselves as a woman. Ask them to put themselves in the place of a woman and imagine the experience of a man shoving his hand into their pants and groping them.

Empathizing with women does not come naturally for men, so men need to practice and take a self-conscious, self-critical approach (as anyone would when attempting to empathize with someone different from themselves.) They need to be careful to balance their perception of the story. They should not automatically replace the man in the story with themselves and let that perspective define their response. If they easily imagine the man's point of view and feel the intense emotions they would feel in his place, they should work until they can imagine the woman's point of view and feel her emotions just as vividly. Women can assist by describing a woman's experience. Actually, I would say that guidance is essential, and men should pay close attention. There's no lack of material available; we must simply avail ourselves of it.

Again, it's the woman's experience that we should focus on. It's a bad idea to invoke the brother's or father's response. Sure, every guy can imagine the sense of shame, violation, and powerlessness they would feel about their sister or daughter being raped -- feelings that may be analogous to the shame, violation, and powerlessness felt by a rape victim -- but the fear in the heart of every loving high school boyfriend approaching the door of his girfriend's house betrays the assumption that his girlfriend's brother or father would be similarly outraged by the idea of her having consensual sex. The brother's or father's outrage does not depend on empathy and may be in contradiction to the woman's own feelings. In this day and age, their reaction seems pathetic and ridiculous, an atavistic twitch.

So the empathy must be with the woman herself. To have a balanced response to the story, a man must identify with the woman as easily as with the man, and should not simply project himself on the man but instead realize that the man might have behaved in a way that they themselves would not. Until that is achieved, men will respond to a very different story than the one told.

logic2• 16 years ago

Your second point, I think, too easily dismisses the fears men have.

Lacking evidence which suggests the guilty party, we are left to our own natural sympathies. Women may have more sympathy for the narrative of a woman assaulted, men may identify more with the story of a man falsely accused.

These are both perfectly natural responses, as long as we recognize our personal biases, and can accept evidence which contradicts them when it becomes available. I can't see how it is productive to undermine either point of view: they are both legitimate emotional responses.

dkarl2• 16 years ago

they are both legitimate emotional responses

... and people of both sexes should strive to feel both responses, instead of reacting solely from the perspective that comes naturally to them.

logic2• 16 years ago

There seems to be a bit of "talking past each other" going on here, because nobody is stopping to consider the real motivations involved. In particular, while I think lepid0ptera has defined her side of the discussion well, I think she may have completely misunderstood a strong motivator on the other.

Many responses on one side have been along the lines of "that kind of behavior is reprehensible, but we have no idea if it happened here without an impartial inquiry", perhaps going so far as to suggest that she was irresponsible to name him publicly.

Responses on the other end of the spectrum have echoed the idea they understand how horrible the experience was, because they've either experienced something like this themselves, or know someone personally who has; again, many going so far as to applaud her bravery in both coming forward and being willing to name her assailant.

Consider perspectives.

One side is terrified of the idea of an assault like this (either on themselves, or on a loved one), which informs their view of the situation. They put themselves in the shoes of a potential victim, they empathize, they appreciate the emotional and potentially physical harm that could occur. This gives their reaction to a post like the one made earlier essential context: they believe a woman was attacked, with no witnesses, leaving her in a uniquely helpless situation that she'll relive in her mind for the rest of her life, but at least she has the courage to name the man who did this to her.

The other side is terrified of the idea of being falsely accused (either themselves directly, or someone they care about). An accusation of sexual assault can end careers, take away essential freedoms, mark them for life in both a professional and personal context. They empathize with another possible victim here: someone falsely accused. This also gives their reaction essential context; they are watching someone's career and personal life dragged through the mud, accusations and discussion threads that will live online in perpetuity for future employers and lovers to see regardless of the outcome forcing them to relive this experience for the rest of their lives, without any kind of due process for the accused.

I think it would do everyone good to take a deep breath, try very hard to set aside their own prejudices, and understand why the other side is reacting the way they are. I'd like to think, especially here, that most participants are trying to act in good faith. Perhaps a little perspective would help.

nailer• 16 years ago

Does anyone have a cache of the article?

http://blog.nerdchic.net/archives/418/ is down, and I'd rather read whatever happened directly from one side than from a third party.

Edit: relevant part (they're at a pub):

"And then I went to the loo, and as I was about to go in, (name), who had been speaking in the Hadoop track, called me over, and asked if he could talk to me.

I’m on the board of Apache. I’m responsible for our conferences. I work on community development and mentoring. If you’re at an Apache event and you want help, information, encouragement, answers, I will always do my best to provide. So this wasn’t an unusual request, and it wasn’t one I expected to end the way it did.

He brought me in to the snug, and sat up on a stool. He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling."

OK I'm going to agree with the author here (assuming this is true). If you're escalating without complaint, there's nothing wrong with putting your hands down a woman's pants. If she's indicated she's not interested though, it's being an asshole.

cowpewter3• 16 years ago

Someone pasted the content of the post in the other thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875865

DjDarkman• 16 years ago

> It hurts and is potentially embarrassing and SCARY, because it is a prelude to rape,

Agreed. It is also highly unprofessional.

> which in turn is a prelude to death and/or babies

I think this is a little bit over the top, there are short-term birth control pills and most rapist do not kill their victim, and this is no longer the case:

> Fathers have killed daughters for getting raped, husbands have killed or abandoned their wives for getting raped.

Accusing someone with rape has been used as a weapon for a long time now, I don't think it's that surprising, that a lot of people are skeptic.

Lewisham• 16 years ago

I think the talking past each other is largely because the argument was polarized before it begun:

Women - Think men don't understand the seriousness of sexual assault, know women who've been victims

Men - Think there are women who cry wolf on sexual assault, know men who've been victims of that

...and so we inevitably reach this cross-talk where men are saying "where's the proof?" or "innocent until proven guilty" (which is largely what I saw from HN), and women are responding with "why aren't you treating this seriously?"

Drunken louts are not just a feature of tech conferences, they're everywhere. It is only coincidental that the last time I told a guy to "shut the fuck up and leave. Now." was at an academic conference after he made some particularly offensive comments to a married woman. I think most men are aware of thing like this, and do what we can.

HN attracts a more thoughtful/passive/insensitive (depending on point of view) approach to most things, so the "innocent until proven guilty" line seemed to be the general vibe I got from the commentary. I think that's the most even-handed such an issue can get.

johnl87• 16 years ago

I kind of stopped reading at the 50 dudes in 5 years part. She pretty much lost all credibility at that sentence.

nkurz3• 16 years ago

Lepid0ptera ---

A think you may be concentrating on a different subset of the commentary than I am. I see a lot of different viewpoints:

1) Wondering if we should trust only one side's account without knowing all the details.

2) Wondering if she's being irresponsible by _not_ escalating it to a police matter.

3) And yes, wondering if she's making too much of a deal about nothing.

I'm most interested in the second. I feel like she's getting push back from people who feel that by trying to handle the matter herself, she's not properly adopting the socially acceptable role as a passive victim. I think you might miscounting some of these responses as being in the dismissive category when they are actually something else.

Or maybe I'm miscounting the 3's as 2's. Or maybe I'm misconstruing her response as being extra-legal --- for all I know, she's decided to file charges AND name names. In any case, I find the HN discussion more useful than silence, and better than most of the internet discussions I see elsewhere. Certainly a greater variety of viewpoints would be help this process. You're bold and write well --- if you're not already here, come and join us rather than pointing out the lack of diversity from afar.

Sexual assault, and why men don't get it

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