rigorousintuition.ca

My reply to that, below the line-break, with the part that's important to me helpfully highlighted in bold type, was:
_______________________

Stephen Morgan wrote:c2w, other post

I'd just like pause for a moment to note that your omission of the two words that followed the above-quoted comment ("As usual.") simply in order to level that accusation against me is a low and dishonest rhetorical device. Moving right along.

Accusation? I was agreeing with you.

Of course you were. And that's why your post read like this:

Stephen Morgan wrote:

c2w wrote:I'm also not in the mood to hear about how men are victimized by the false rape claims of women, even in passing. As usual.

I agree.

Stephen Morgan wrote:There are empirical studies, largely conducted by those who began believing the feminist orthodoxy, as did the more famous Strauss and Gelles in the field of intimate abuse. Kanin, for example, whose study can be criticised on two main ground, firstly a small sample size of only a few dozen cases and secondly that the only cases he counted as fake were those where the accuser recanted her testimony, confessed to lying AND took a lie detector test showing that she had originally been lying. It showed over forty percent of cases were false. There was also McDowell, who found a figure of over 60%, although this is doubtful in its application to larger society as it was conducted entirely on military personnel, active duty.

Kanin, as you note, uses too small a sample to be predictive. IIRC, the complaining witnesses all recanted OR took a polygraph. Which has implications in connection with one of the lesser grounds on which it can be criticized that you fail to note, which is that his too-small sample was drawn exclusively from one small Midwestern city, which makes it -- hmm, what's the phrase I'm looking for? -- doubtful in its application to larger society.

As you also fail to note, it happened to be a small Midwestern city in which the police used or offered to use a polygraph on all rape claimants as an investigative technique, on the basis that the first priority of law enforcement wrt crime victims filing police reports is to determine whether they're just making shit up. Sounds like a delightful town.

Oops! Did I say "crime victims"? Sorry. What I meant to say was "complaining witnesses in rape cases." Which do not by any means have the highest false-report rates among crimes overall. They also implied that they would bring false complaint charges against the woman if she failed. Incidentally, polygraph results are not conclusive under any circumstances; according to the International Chiefs of Police Association Manual on Investigating Sexual Assaults, in rape cases, they're contradicted by the investigative process; the polygraph protocols used by the cops in Kanin's study are unknown; the results they got have never been reviewed ; and neither has any other aspect of the study, since he won't identify the town. Can't really say I'm surprised that it appears to have a much higher rate of recantation of rape claims then most places do, though.

Finally, even if all that were not true or not relevant, Kanin is not a fucking empirical research study. Because he didn't do any research. He took it for granted that the police findings were accurate, no questions asked, then reiterated them without checking their validity. And that's just not social science, or any kind of science. It's being a mouthpiece for the cops. No matter what statistic you're trying to ascertain.

WRT to McDowell -- For fuck's sake. Obviously, women on active military duty reporting rape aren't representative of women reporting rape in general, because, among other things, women in general aren't reporting their claims to officers whose commands they have to obey and don't live and work in communities that are dedicated to training people to sacrifice individual interest for the good of the team.

Of course any such study can't take into account "false" rape claims which are false in the identity of the supposed perp, but where a rape took place.

Dude. My point was not that eyewitness misidentification leading to wrongful conviction in real cases of rape should be counted as a "false" rape claim. It was that there is a ton of rock-solid empirical evidence that many, many men are victimized in connection with rape cases by the police. Exponentially more than there's any reason to think are victimized by women making false rape claims. That's an outrage. As I'd imagine it would be to anyone who was sincerely interested in the victimization of men.

However, I was, in this case, merely hoping we could agree that when it happens, it's bad.

I agree with your quote that rape is probably under-reported to a significant extent, although I doubt that anything can be done about it. It would be nice to see justice done on the guilty, but for a crime such as this no amount of rape shield laws (which I hold to be unjust in themselves anyway) will make reporting it a pleasant experience.

I don't really know what to say. The strength of your objections to injustice fluctuates a lot more than mine does.

You're probably also right about the relatively small number of intentionally false rape claims which make it to conviction, as most false accusers ort a malicious bent (such as those in the Kanin study) recant earlier after enough mud has been flung at their victim and before they cause so much trouble for the prosecuting authorities that they feel the need to press charges, quite a rarity.

Please see above.

Mental illness can also lead to false accusations (and in some cases, where one woman, for example, cut her leg open and claimed two black men raped her as an excuse because she was late for work), mental illness and normal stupidity are hard to disentangle. In the now imfamous Duke Rape Case, the villain wasn't just Crystal Mangum, the stripper who made the rape allegation allegedly because she was looking to extort some money from them, but the electioneering DA Nifong who may have won the case, and the election, and evaded his own imprisonment if he hadn't picked on such well-known, wealthy, individuals.

What the fuck does that have to do with feminism or feminists? If I might be so bold as to inquire.

-------------

ON EDIT: added stuff about Kamin on edit, then decided to cut and paste it into a separate post.

Your turn! You're replying in part to my Kanin-debunking post, which I mention above but am not reproducing, since it's not relevant for present purposes. And...You also quote me from a post I'd addressed to OP ED, I just noticed. Fuck. Plus a post yelling at you for misunderstanding a story I'd linked to while making another point.

Oh, well. It's still more or less comprehensible. Also, it shows a little more of what a bitch I was being, which is as it should be, in all justice.

You wrote:
___________


c2w: Anyway. As long as we're on this subject -- it's also potentially problematic that there's no data at all on rates of false acquittal for rape

Have you never heard that it's better for a hundred guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted? There's no such thing, for any crime, as a false aquittal. If there's not enough evidence to secure a conviction, even after the machinations of law enforcement officials, there's no guilt.



c2w: Or....Scratch that. Do you literally simply not register the meaning of anything and everything that doesn't validate your own needs, your own views, and your own ego? Or do you have to make a conscious decision to overlook it?

As I didn't care about the case I was rather careless, you see I realise that individual cases are totally irrelevant to the argument.

Go here to see a case of man being ruined by false allegations. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the man falsely convicted, then repeatedly raped in prison? I can go toe to toe offering stories of suffering if you'd like, but it won't get us anywhere.

Also, have you ever noticed that your implacable opposition to the manifold evils of capitalist oppression is kinda more than just a little bit too on-again-off-again to really be described as "implacable"?

I don't remember saying implacable. But no, I don't. Have you ever seen me applaud capitalism? Is it just that I don't start every post with "this is another example of the evils of capitalism"?

You're not the only person on earth who's been kicked in the teeth for years or who's suffered severe deprivation or who's had a difficult life.

Isn't all of history a boot smashing down into a face for ever?

I decline to use my own little personal hell as either the centerpiece of my social identity or the sole criterion on which my principles and political convictions are based.

My views aren't related to my own plight, but to what i consider objectively best for society. Of course, I am a member of society, after a fashion.

while feminism is an ideology, it's not an ideology you're acquainted with. Because for one thing, according to you, it's not an ideology, but rather a capitalist psi-op aimed at women but directed by spooks and shirts. So, you know....

Well Obama is a psy-op, that doesn't mean he's not president.

...why not call it capitalism, if that's what you mean?

When I argue against low wages, do I say I'm arguing against capitalism, or low wages? One is the other, although the other is more than the one. So it is with feminism, if people put forward feminism, I put forward anti-feminism and what I dispute I call feminism, as do they (although feminists have a disturbing tendency not to recognise each other, such influential persons as Steinem being disowned to wriggle out of the truth over external influences on their movement). If I only denounced capitalism, people would assume I favoured feminism, which is very much not the case.

Kanin, as you note, uses too small a sample to be predictive. IIRC, the complaining witnesses all recanted OR took a polygraph. Which has implications in connection with one of the lesser grounds on which it can be criticized that you fail to note, which is that his too-small sample was drawn exclusively from one small Midwestern city, which makes it -- hmm, what's the phrase I'm looking for? -- doubtful in its application to larger society.

I said small, not "too small", it was accepted and published by a peer reviewed journal. And to be honest I don't regard that other criticism as valid. It's acceptably representative of larger American society, a small citty in Indiana. No study's perfect.

It's interesting to see you continuing to look for criticisms of the study, though, now that you seem to have given up on claiming he was merely biased due to anti-feminism (he was actually very popular with feminists).

Oops! Did I say "crime victims"? Sorry. What I meant to say was "complaining witnesses in rape cases." Which do not by any means have the highest false-report rates among crimes overall.

Actually they do have the highest rate. I don't suppose you approve of the judge who ruled that a complaining witness couldn't be called a victim in court because it would prejudice the case against the defendent?

The McDowell case, which found 27% were admitted to be false (and 65% false according to a panel of reviewers) found that most recanted when asked to take a polygraph, failing the polygraph wasn't seen as an admission.

Dude. My point was not that eyewitness misidentification leading to wrongful conviction in real cases of rape should be counted as a "false" rape claim. It was that there is a ton of rock-solid empirical evidence that many, many men are victimized in connection with rape cases by the police. Exponentially more than there's any reason to think are victimized by women making false rape claims. That's an outrage. As I'd imagine it would be to anyone who was sincerely interested in the victimization of men.

Well, we're still arguing over the prevalence of false claims by wouldbe victims, and therefore their prevalence relative to those caused by the police, but otherwise I agree. You seem to have taken my lack of disagreement as evidence that I don't give a shit about male victims, when in fact I just agree and therefore don't comment. Is the issue under consideration suddenly who can be most effusive in their support for male victims?

I don't really know what to say. The strength of your objections to injustice fluctuates a lot more than mine does.

I was thinking more or less the same thing about you, your obvious abhorrence for rape but not for women who make false allegations for revenge and so on. Presumably this makes it most likely to be a mere error in human perception caused by the form of our debate. Barring a ranked listing of those persecutees I sympathise with at the end of every post, I can't really do anything about it.

What the fuck does that have to do with feminism or feminists? If I might be so bold as to inquire.

I was just talking about wrongful rape cases, not every single one of which has relevance to feminism, barring the social climate of somewhat extreme reaction against anyone accused of rape.

Now, on Kanin:

forbids police officers to use their discretion in
deciding whether to officially acknowledge a rape
complaint, regardless how suspect that complaint may be.

A feminist policy, along with mandatory arrests in DV cases and so on.

Second, the declaration of a false allegation follows a
highly institutionalized procedure. The investigation of all
rape complaints always involves a serious offer to
polygraph the complainants and the suspects. Additionally,
for a declaration of false charge to be made, the
complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is
the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.

Try this:

Second, the declaration of a false allegation follows a
highly institutionalized procedure. The investigation of all
rape complaints always involves a serious offer to
polygraph the complainants and the suspects. Additionally,
for a declaration of false charge to be made, the
complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is
the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.

So you were wrong before about a failed polygraph being enough to render a case disproved, officially speaking.

For what most people would call 41% of the total. And what Stephen Morgan calls "over forty percent."

Sorry, is my arithmetic faulty?

Now, bearing in mind that these officers professionally and zealously pursued every single case to conclusion, no matter how suspect, incredible, fantastical, or delusional they privately might have thought it was, and also that they made a serious threat -- oops, I meant offer to polygraph the complainants and suspects in every case

Have you thought of become a spin doctor, or perhaps a barrister specialising in hostile questioning? You can make anything sound sinister.

Second, not one of the detectives believed that an incident
of false recantation had occurred. They argued, rather
convincingly, that in those cases where a suspect was
identified and interrogated, the facts of the recantation
dovetailed with the suspect’s own defense.

I believe this would be considered corroboration.

Last, the policy
of this police agency is to apply a statute regarding the
false reporting of a felony. After the recant, the
complainant is informed that she will be charged with filing
a false complaint, punishable by a substantial fine and a
jail sentence. In no case, has an effort been made on the
part of the complainant to retract the recantation.

Do you not think such a policy would reduce the number of recantations?

Although
we certainly do not deny the possibility of false
recantations, no evidence supports such an interpretation
for these cases.

No evidence, seems accurate.

Although Kanin doesn't give percentages for the circumstances under which the claimants recanted, he does have occasion to mention en passant the cases of several -- "very few" of whom the police hadn't already concluded were lying, let's recall -- who did so either during the polygraph or when confronted with the prospect of the polygraph. Plus in one instance, upon being told that she'd failed the polygraph.

You're right that polygraphs are inaccurate, but most people don't know that. Failing one or being confronted with one is therefore likely to elicit a recantation from the guilty.

* 34 pieces of evil, verminous scum falsely reporting rape

Oh, I doubt they all worked at jobcentres.

In all seriousness: It's just not possible authoritatively to say what percentage of rape claims are wittingly false. Indications derived from the best available data are that it's somewhere between 3% to 8%. But it could be higher or lower. There's just no way to say.

Now I think about it, I haven't seen this "best available data" yet. Silly me, I've been too busy defending my data and my position that I haven't had the chance to pick holes in your pet paper. Pity you've finished with my bullshit so I won't get the chance.

I seem to recall you, in one of our earlier debates, defending Sheer Hite and her rape study, the one in which most of the "rape victims" she counted, when asked, claimed not to have been raped. Might not have been you, I've argued with a lot of people about this.

The Kanin study also only deals with forcible rape, false accusations and allegations resulting from regrets and misunderstandings are probably more common in date rape.

Some interesting parts of the study:

Not one complainant mentions forced oral or
anal sex. In contrast, these acts were included in
approximately 25% of the founded forcible rape
complaints. Perhaps it was simply psychologically and
socially more prudent for these women to minimize the
humiliation of sexual victimization by not embroidering the
event any more than necessary. This phenomenon has
been observed previously (McDowell and Hibler, 1987).

And:

Second, although the literature liberally refers to various
extortion scams as responsible for false rape charging
(Comment, 1968; MacDonald, 1973), no such cases were
encountered or could even be recalled by members of the
police agency. This type of case may very well be a period
piece, or perhaps it was even then the exceptional case.
Extraordinary attention would readily have been
forthcoming since this theory nicely meshed with the
position of prevailing authorities who stressed the
omnipresent threat of female cunning and stealth. One
authority, (MacDonald, 1973), for example, cited a 1918
article (Bronson) to illustrate a blackmail case since he
never encountered one himself. In a similar vein, no
apparent case of pseudologia phantastica surfaced. The
earlier view of a deluded complainant, tenaciously
affirming her victimization, just does not appear here.
These women were not inclined to put up a steadfast
defense of their victimization, let alone pursue it into the
courtroom. Recantation overwhelmingly came early and
relatively easily.

I would say both of these quotes, if backed up elsewhere, would have an impact on the likelihood, or rather otherwise, of dissimulation in claimed SRA cases. The normal debunker claims of delusion, dishonesty, that sort of thing, don't appear here amongst the false allegations. SRA cases also generally involved exotic and humiliating sexual activities, which again Kanin found not to happen in false cases.

But that's neither here nor there.

Now, studies, for starters:

Widely divergent viewpoints are held regarding the
incidence of false rape reporting (Katz and Mazur, 1979).
For example, reports set the figure from lows of 0.25%
(O’Reilly, 1984) and 1% (Krasner et al., 1976) to highs of
80-90% (Bronson, 1918; Comment, 1968) and even 100%
(see Kanin, 1985). All of these figures represent releases
from some criminal justice agency or are estimates from
clinical practitioners. The extraordinary range of these
estimates makes a researcher suspect that inordinate
biases are at work.

Feel free to look up the high numbers ones.

Also, if you look at the Addenda to the Kanin study you'll see a reference to a study by Jay and another study by Kanin himself, this time on University women and without the polygraph which reached a conclusion that 50% were false.

"rape is an accusation easily to be made, hard to be proved, and harder yet to be defended by the party accused, tho' never so innocent" -- Mathew Hale

One in four rape reports were unfounded in a 1990 and 1991 Washington Post investigation in seven Virginia and Maryland counties. When contacted by the Post, many of the alleged victims admitted that they had lied.

[url=http://www.americandaily.com/article/5075]That false allegations are a major problem has been confirmed by several prominent prosecutors, including Linda Fairstein, who heads the New York County District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit. Fairstein, the author of “Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape,â€

eyeno wrote:

seemslikeadream wrote:

The newspaper offered kind words for Clinton and said it respects all government officials, but that religious considerations prevent it from showing images of women.

"In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status," Der Zeitung said. "Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive."

Surely this has some sort of symbolic meaning. Rubbing Hillary out is no small deal. What ya reckon it means?

Or, is publishing photos of women really that big of deal in Israel? I have no idea...

It's a Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper Der Zeitung and they rubbed out 2 females, not just Hillary

Last post on the subject, by me, for the tone of which I apologize:

____________________

Dude, I'm on my way out of town. But you're willfully misreading me. I am outraged by the plight of men wrongfully accused of rape. That's why I pointed out that thousands and thousands and thousands of them are IN PRISON RIGHT NOW, owing to THE HUGELY GREATER LIKELIHOOD THAT THEIR FALSE ACCUSERS WILL BE THE POLICE, WHO ROUTINELY EXERT ENORMOUS PRESSURE ON EYEWITNESSES TO MAKE AN ID, USING COERCIVE PERSUASION TECHNIQUES. THEY ALSO EXTORT FALSE CONFESSIONS.

THAT'S A TITANIC AND CATASTROPHIC SOCIAL INJUSTICE AFFECTING MEN, ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY.

I don't base the 3% to 8% figure on ONE study. It's an estimate that's derived from ALL THE RELIABLE STUDIES I CAN FIND OR KNOW OF. WHICH ARE STILL INCONCLUSIVE. AS I SAID, IT COULD BE HIGHER.


MURDER HAS A HIGHER FALSE ACCUSATION RATE THAN RAPE BY ALMOST TWO TO ONE. AND ARMED ROBBERY HAS A HIGHER FALSE REPORT RATE THAT'S GREATER THAN MURDER BY TWO TO ONE I think. I haven't double-checked because I have to pack. But they're both much higherDO YOU EVEN LOOK AT WHAT I WRITE? OR TRY THE LINKS?

KANIN IS A PIECE OF SHIT. IN EVERY WAY. HE DID NO RESEARCH. HE CHOSE A POLICE DEPARTMENT THAT HAD A POLICY THAT TOOK THE POWER OF OFFICER'S TO USE THEIR OWN JUDGMENT WRT TO THE TRUTH OR FALSITY OF A RAPE CLAIM AWAY FROM THEM. DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY? OR WHY THEY ONLY HAD AN INTIMIDATING AND INHERENTLY UNRELIABLE POLYGRAPH POLICYONLY WRT COMPLAINING WITNESSES WHO WERE REPORTING RAPE AND NOT CRIMES WITH MUCH HIGHER RATES OF FALSE REPORTING, SUCH AS ROBBERY AND MURDER? WHICH HE WRITES UP IN HIS INTRO AS IF IT WERE A METHODOLOGICAL IDEAL NOT A METHODOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE AND YOU FUCKING FALL FOR IT?????

I've shown plenty of concern for the plight of men. If you were capable of reading impartially, you might have noticed that when it comes to the plight of men facing criminal charges, I'm about 100 times better informed than you are, which is -- guess what? -- the natural consequence of the natural interest I take in the subject, owing to the strength of my objection to the brutal inhumanity with which they're treated in enormous numbers on a daily basis. I mean Jesus Fucking Christ:

Stephen Morgan wrote:I was thinking more or less the same thing about you, your obvious abhorrence for rape but not for women who make false allegations for revenge and so on.

Do you base that on my having gone out of the way to say that "bad" was not a strong enough word to describe something that was, in my view, more likely to be hellish? Or on my statement that when it came to false rape claims that resulted in wrongful conviction one would be too high a number?

Injustice is abhorrent to me. And that includes the injustice suffered by men falsely accused of rape. Which is -- as far as can be determined, which isn't that far -- a significant percentage of all men accused of rape. Let's randomly double the highest percentage rate for which there are reliable numbers available and say that it turns out to be an appalling 16% of the total. Oh my god. That is a horrendous prospect. Now let's bump it back down to 8%. Oh my fucking god. That is just a HORRENDOUS prospect. And potentially an egregious miscarriage of justice. But also plenty bad enough if it's aggravated harassment. AND IT CANNOT STAND.

IT IS PART OF AN INCALCULABLY GREATER INJUSTICE SUFFERED BY MEN, AND IT'S ALSO CAPABLE OF THE SAME SOLUTION. WHICH IS TO HAVE A POLICE AND PROSECUTORIAL SYSTEM THAT DOESN'T RANDOMLY FUCKING LOCK PEOPLE UP TO INCREASE THEIR OWN WIN-LOSS RATIOS AND CLEAR THEIR IN-BOXES, BUT INSTEAD IS INFORMED AND SENSITIVE TO THE REALITIES OF THE CRIMES THEY'RE INVESTIGATING AND HOW BEST TO INVESTIGATE THEM. LOOK AT THE FUCKING STATS AT THE LINK I SENT YOU. IF THE COPS DID THEIR DAMNED JOBS, AND IF COPS AND EXPERT WITNESSES DIDN'T PERJURE THEMSELVES, MEN FALSELY ACCUSED OF RAPE WOULD NOT HAVE TO FEAR THAT WHEN THEY WERE, THERE WOULD BE TRAUMATIC CONSEQUENCES, BEYOND THOSE THAT YOU CANNOT AVOID OCCASIONALLY IF ALIVE, WHEN YOU SOMETIMES DO RUN INTO CRAZY PEOPLE.

ODDLY, THE SAME SOLUTION WOULD ALSO TAKE CARE OF THE ISSUES OF HOWEVER MANY RAPE VICTIMS, MALE AND FEMALE, DO NOT REPORT RAPE OR DO NOT PRESS CHARGES FOR IT. WHICH IS PROBABLY MANY MORE THAN EIGHT PER CENT. WHICH DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL IN A MY-GENDER'S-MORE-VICTIMIZED-THAN-YOUR-GENDER CONTET., BECAUSE EIGHT PER CENT IS A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER AND STILL WAY, WAY TOO HIGH. THE ONLY REASON TO POINT OUT THAT IT'S PROBABLY MORE LIKE THIRTY-FIVE TO FIFTY PER CENT (FOR WOMEN) AND ASTRONOMICALLY HIGHER THAN THAT FOR MENIS THAT THERE'S NO WAY TO DEVISE A SYSTEM THAT'S JUST UNLESS YOU'RE ABLE AND WILLING TO DO THE WORK TO UNDERSTAND WHAT'S WRONG, FOR WHOM, TO WHAT DEGREE, AND WHY ACCURATELY AND IMPARTIALLY.

Otherwise you're just rearranging deck chairs on the et cetera.

I MEAN, DO YOU THINK IT"S AT ALL NORMAL FOR POLICE TO SUBMIT VICTIMS ALLEGING ANY CRIME TO FUCKING POLYGRAPH EXAMINATIONS? IS THAT A PRACTICE YOU HEAR ABOUT VERY OFTEN? DOESN'T IT STRIKE YOU AS, PERHAPS, NOT EXACTLY THE MOST COMPLAINANT-FRIENDLY APPROACH CONCEIVABLE? IF YOU GOT ASSAULTED, AS I'M SURE YOU CAN TELL ME HOW MUCH MORE LIKELY YOU ARE TO BE THAN I AM OWING TO YOUR GENDER, WOULD YOU THINK THE COPS WERE JUST DOING THEIR JOB IF THEY GAVE YOU A POLYGRAPH? WHICH ISN'T EFFECTIVE AND IS INTIMIDATING TO MOST PEOPLE? AND SORRY, NO, THERE IS NO GOOD DATA THAT SUGGESTS FALSE REPORT RATES FOR RAPE ARE HIGH ENOUGH TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT EXTREME ANY MORE OF A GOOD STANDARD PRACTICE FOR PEOPLE CLAIMING RAPE THAN IT IS FOR PEOPLE CLAIMING TO HAVE BEEN MUGGED.

You just hate women. That's all there is to it. I have to go pack now.

Then blah, blah, blah, not long after that, I called you a misandrist, and we went our separate ways. But feel free to read or quote stuff yourself, if I missed out anything you feel should be there. The thread is, again, right here.

My problem with you and Plutonia regarding prison rape is basically that you're both being misandrist, as a matter of fact. And classist. To say nothing of at least giving the impression that you're motivated, wittingly or unwittingly, by misogyny.

I'll come back and explain why I say that shortly.

compared2what? wrote:

Stephen Morgan wrote:Well, maybe not prison rape quite so explicitly ruled out, I must admit that if you exclude most of the men who get raped, who happen to be the most oppressed and disadvantaged men of all, then the number of women being raped would probably dwarf the remainder.

Wait! That's an even better example of the thing I object to than the one I was going to use. I very much hope you won't take my objection personally, though. I also tentatively trust that you won't, since we actually had quite a nasty spat ovr a different iteration of the same issue once before, back in the good old days when we didn't waste time being amiable to one another.

I honestly don't see why people takes things so personally. I mean, as far as I'm concerned on some level the feminists here are all motivated by gender-consciousness and will to power, aimed entirely at causing negative consequences for the birth group to which I belong, but I don't take it personally.

But you probably remember those days as well as I do, since we were still in them at the beginning of this thread. In any event. I refer, of course, to the Great False Rape Accusation Debate of '09, during which....You know what? It was pretty bad, but it does illustrates the point that I want to make in connection with your approach to the issue of prison rape at least as well as anything I'd be able to do starting over from scratch. And maybe better.

I do however think you've gone totally insane to be dredging things up from the distant past, woman.

So I'm just going to haul the pertinent part of the exchange over here, then do a same-goes-double-for-prison-rape post. After which, we can all move on to whatever pastures appear inviting to us, each in accordance with his or her tastes and interests, and all will be harmonious delight, I'm sure.

Is there a reason a link wouldn't have done just as well?

Please accept my belated but nevertheless sincere apologies for having yelled at you in one of the posts I'm about to reproduce, btw. That was very rude and unfriendly of me, which I regret.

It's fine.

Honestly, in retrospect, I have absolutely no idea what could have gotten into me. I must have mistaken you for somebody else. Or perhaps I was under the not-actually-fully-justified impression that you'd just indirectly called me a piece of evil verminous scum. I don't recall. It was something more or less like that, though.

I'm sure you mostly took it on the chin, whatever it was. I mean, you say "evil verminous scum" like it's a bad thing.

But whatever the case, I'm sorry for it. I really am.

I'll be right back.

Right, I've got a busy day, but I'll get around to addressing the torrent of succeeding posts.

First of all, to whatever extent my first reply to Plu on prison rape might read as if I'm saying that prison is so horrible that prison rape is not: That's not what I meant at all. It would be more accurate to say that everything that happens to people in prison does what rape does to people, whether what happens to them includes rape or not. Interpersonal transactions that involve a brutal and dehumanizing exercise of power on one side and a complete (probably continual) state of self-abnegation, terror and humiliation on the other aren't the exception in prison, they're the rule.

In short: Being in prison just isn't about consent in any way. It's a form of torture.

That's not acceptable for anyone, obviously. But it's an extra-specially raw deal for the very large number of people who end up spending some or all of their lives in prison for the crime of once having been indigent defendants rather than whatever they were convicted for but didn't do.
_________________

The reason I know that is that is that the oppression (slavery, really) of prisoners, both male and female, is among the outrageous injustices in which I take an active interest. Because despite the frequent characterizations of feminism as (more or less) a form of female supremacism dedicated to imposing an irrational female hatred of men and love of pointless complaining on the whole damn world that you (Stephen Morgan), Plutonia, Roy F. Baumeister and others evidently feel so secure in making that you never bother providing any examples of them, my political concerns aren't limited to issues that affect me and others like me.

Every single person who claims to oppose feminism on the grounds that (at best) it fails to address society's oppression of men whom I've ever heard, read or encountered always, inevitably either:

(a) mentions prisoners as an example of said oppression;
(b) brings up the rape of male prisoners as proof that male-on-female rape in society at large doesn't say anything about men, women or society at large that's indicative of a bias against women.

None has ever showed the slightest sign of knowing anything about the criminal justice or penitentiary system at all apart from the half-dozen factoids commonly cited in rebuttal to alleged acts of social discrimination against women. Not once. In fact, you (Stephen Morgan) sometimes happily admit that you don't have the slightest idea about this or that aspect of it.

I submit that if you cared about the massive human rights abuses committed against male prisoners in themselves and because they are genuinely outrageous injustices, you'd have taken the trouble to find out more about them than what you picked up while reading anti-feminist pro-men's rights literature. I also submit that anyone who cared about the gender-based social oppression of men in itself -- for whatever reason, and views of feminism notwithstanding -- would logically be just a little less exclusively interested in the plight of heterosexual men. As long as I'm at it.

Anyway. As an advocate of justice for the oppressed, I very strongly object to the casual use of male suffering in prison as a club to beat feminists and/or women with. If you care about it, do your homework.
_________________

Plutonia, that thing you linked to on prison rape is a forty-year-old piece of alarmist right-wing propaganda the original purpose of which was to scare white kids away from smoking pot. All reputable data on prison rape almost certainly understates the numbers. Same as all reputable data on any kind of rape, basically. But that's no excuse for lying down with dogs. So I thought you'd want to know.
_________________

My apologies again. But you're doing your best impulses a grave disservice. I hate it when that happens.

compared2what? wrote:Then blah, blah, blah, not long after that, I called you a misandrist, and we went our separate ways. But feel free to read or quote stuff yourself, if I missed out anything you feel should be there. The thread is, again, right here.

Yes, it's very interesting, but what am I supposed to do with it? Do you want replies to those posts, to have the discussion again? Because I'm not enthusiastic for that. Doesn't really seem to be anything there about prison rape, or C_w's decision that rape in some sense only really counts if it doesn't happen to children or prisoners.

My problem with you and Plutonia regarding prison rape is basically that you're both being misandrist, as a matter of fact. And classist.

An odd conclusion, please feel free to elaborate. From my point of view disregarding rape victims because they aren't women is misandrist, as is the spell-checker which doesn't recognise that word (or the word internet, this board's spell-checker is whacky) and assessing the position of women by how many are on corporate boards and in the legislature is classist.

To say nothing of at least giving the impression that you're motivated, wittingly or unwittingly, by misogyny.

"I imply, you infer." -- Lisa Simpson

I'll come back and explain why I say that shortly.

I'm just going to ignore all those long quoted posts for the moment, then.

Stephen Morgan wrote:I do however think you've gone totally insane to be dredging things up from the distant past, woman.

I'm pretty sure that I was just responding to a last straw named "Roy F. Baumeister" with a single-minded love of justice, albeit indirectly.

But maybe.

compared2what? wrote:The reason I know that is that is that the oppression (slavery, really) of prisoners, both male and female, is among the outrageous injustices in which I take an active interest. Because despite the frequent characterizations of feminism as (more or less) a form of female supremacism dedicated to imposing an irrational female hatred of men and love of pointless complaining on the whole damn world that you (Stephen Morgan),

Plutonia, Roy F. Baumeister and others evidently feel so secure in making that you never bother providing any examples of them, my political concerns aren't limited to issues that affect me and others like me.

what sort of examples would you like? I gots 'em. Trouble is whenever I produce one all I get is lots of talk about how feminism isn't monolithic and it's most prominent spokespeople, and the most famous feminists and the laws that feminists have lobbied for an so on are in some way not representative.

Every single person who claims to oppose feminism on the grounds that (at best) it fails to address society's oppression of men whom I've ever heard, read or encountered always, inevitably either:

(a) mentions prisoners as an example of said oppression;
(b) brings up the rape of male prisoners as proof that male-on-female rape in society at large doesn't say anything about men, women or society at large that's indicative of a bias against women.

Well, feminists will keep banging on about this rape business.

None has ever showed the slightest sign of knowing anything about the criminal justice or penitentiary system at all apart from the half-dozen factoids commonly cited in rebuttal to alleged acts of social discrimination against women. Not once. In fact, you (Stephen Morgan) sometimes happily admit that you don't have the slightest idea about this or that aspect of it.

I don't generally claim greater knowledge than I have, although I have been a donor to the Howard League and am currently studying the law.

I submit that if you cared about the massive human rights abuses committed against male prisoners in themselves and because they are genuinely outrageous injustices, you'd have taken the trouble to find out more about them than what you picked up while reading anti-feminist pro-men's rights literature.

Most of what I know about prisons has come from cursory readings of reports from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, specifically that Anne Owers that ran it, and from scandal sheets like Private Eye.

I also submit that anyone who cared about the gender-based social oppression of men in itself -- for whatever reason, and views of feminism notwithstanding -- would logically be just a little less exclusively interested in the plight of heterosexual men. As long as I'm at it.

I'm not particularly interested in the gays, but any disadvantages under which they labour due to being men will obviously be remedied by the remediation of those injustices. I mean I'm interested in all injustices, but those against men being the most widely accepted gain the most of my attention.

seemslikeadream wrote:

eyeno wrote:

seemslikeadream wrote:

The newspaper offered kind words for Clinton and said it respects all government officials, but that religious considerations prevent it from showing images of women.

"In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status," Der Zeitung said. "Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive."

Surely this has some sort of symbolic meaning. Rubbing Hillary out is no small deal. What ya reckon it means?

Or, is publishing photos of women really that big of deal in Israel? I have no idea...

It's a Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper Der Zeitung and they rubbed out 2 females, not just Hillary

In addition to illustrating one of the ways in which females are treated as a separate class this photo also informs us as to why we cannot rely completely on history texts as sources of information about women in our past. Should someone come along and find that photo years from now, what would they take away from it if they failed to look more closely?

Historians specializing in women's history and the history of oppressed people in general have to do painstaking primary source research to get to the truth.

Another place for a daily dose of misogyny...
Just check the comments left below a story about a judge who found a man not criminally responsible for sexual assault.
Even in the face of "victory" the woman hating is fast and furious:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... s-defence/

Both the legal finding and the commentary are examples of the reality and the rhetoric women live with every day - it informs and reinforces in our minds that we are seen as villains & second class citizens.

Even though I know that these viewpoints are not shared by all people or hopefully even nearly all people, it hurts to see it. And I see it all the time, everywhere I look.

compared2what? wrote:Plutonia, that thing you linked to on prison rape is a forty-year-old piece of alarmist right-wing propaganda the original purpose of which was to scare white kids away from smoking pot

Yes, sorry about that. I reacted to a taunt from C_W and posted thoughtlessly. A misstep you've made great use of.

I now understand why the discussion of the rape aspect of the misogyny question has been so persistent and fraught. At the risk of being chastised again, I'll say that I happen to see a connection between boys being raped and women being raped (one being that rape victims might just grow up to be rapers) and therefore worth looking at.

And I take issue at being characterized anti-feminist, c2w? because I've been so careful not to be oppositional, and because I also consciously positioned myself within the great tradition of the feminist's critique of feminism. What I have said is that I think Identity Politics is divisive, which surely has been demonstrated here. And that I don't think that "mere inclusion" in the institutions of the dominant culture is a workable or attractive solution. Where I come from that's called assimilation.

I'm an original thinker. Perhaps that's a problem here.

narcissism in its one of its many possible incarnations is the problem here.

It seems to me that the problematic personae in our culture are given to believe the following:

"I know that I am better than most of those who surround me, although I am not quite sure of the points of difference between myself and them, still I know that I am much better than them. Other people seem to be weak, vulnerable and helpless. A large amount of them fail to make it, the preponderance of them are stressed out and the rest don't know where life will take them.

I'm not similar to these people and that's why I must be on the top, that is why I must be in the center of attention and that's why I should outshine them"

Yes, it's all about 'me' Never about 'you' or 'them', except as second-rate beings."

from here: http://www.articletrader.com/society/da ... ation.html

Volokh wrote:But even if this is true -- and I strongly suspect that it is -- this is entirely consistent with the possibility that a substantial fraction of rape reports are false. Let's say, for instance, that only 2% of all women age 16-19 could ever lie about rape; and that any particular year, only 2% of that tiny fraction actually do falsely report a rape to the police. So 98% of all women (including relatively young and not very mature women) would never lie about rape, and even of those who might under the right circumstances, most never will. (I use the 16-to-19 age group because the risk of rape is highest there; the same analysis could apply, though, to other age groups.)

Funny you should use that 2% figure, it just reminded me that I've recently heard quite a lot on the MRA circuit that 2% of people have borderline personality disorder, which is characterised by the habitual making of false allegations.