Go on... rape her... she won't report it... [UniLad magazine article]

[frogwoman]

I have a fuck off big bunch of keys on a short rope. If I have footsteps behind me, I stick my hand in my pocket and get ready to swing it if need be. If I ever need to go that far, the next step would be to try and incapacitate them via a well-aimed kick to the bollocks.

I've noticed that some men will cross the road before I have to, if they realise that it's intimidating them walking behind me. To all the men who do this, thanks!

i was coming back from the pub or something about a month ago and there's this sort of footpath leading off the road which goes straight into some woods. A man came out (I don't know what the fuck he was doing going for a walk in the woods that late at night, perhaps he was trying to look at badgers or something) and i panicked and started running. he was really apologetic and a felt a bit stupid

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

he was really apologetic and a felt a bit stupid

I don't see why you should feel stupid, fair enough that he was totally innocent, and a bit shook up himself by your reaction - but that doesn't mean it wasn't a justified reaction.

 

[equationgirl]

It freaks me out when I see women going about at night on their own with headphones in!

God yes, or on mobile phones.

 

[equationgirl]

i was coming back from the pub or something about a month ago and there's this sort of footpath leading off the road which goes straight into some woods. A man came out (I don't know what the fuck he was doing going for a walk in the woods that late at night, perhaps he was trying to look at badgers or something) and i panicked and started running. he was really apologetic and a felt a bit stupid

Be thankful your instinct was to run, even though the situation was innocent.

What if you'd have frozen?

 

[ViolentPanda]

i said it wouldn't surprise me if there were fewer assaults today, based upon the fact that today's culture is far more aware of what constitutes sexual assault and behaviours which are predatory and intimidatory are also less prevalent and acceptable.

i only said it because there seems to be some kind of assumption that things are getting worse, which is the basis of this whole thread, and which i just don't think bares any correlation with reality

To be frank, what we have today isn't a cultural evolution away from rape, it's an undermining and ignoring of the isue that's almost Victorian in it's repressive pointlessness.

Are things getting worse, with reference to rape specifically, and sexual assaults in general? If we're to believe the BCS, offences are pretty much static (although the BCS's current assessment base has only been in place for 3 consecutive surveys, so far). However, complaint and conviction rates are both falling.
So, in "holistic" terms, things are getting worse, for the victims, if not for the number of victims.

 

[killer b]

I've noticed that some men will cross the road before I have to, if they realise that it's intimidating them walking behind me. To all the men who do this, thanks!

i do this, with men as well as women. it's fearsome thinking someone's following you late at night.

 

[equationgirl]

To be frank, what we have today isn't a cultural evolution away from rape, it's an undermining and ignoring of the isue that's almost Victorian in it's repressive pointlessness.

Are things getting worse, with reference to rape specifically, and sexual assaults in general? If we're to believe the BCS, offences are pretty much static (although the BCS's current assessment base has only been in place for 3 consecutive surveys, so far). However, complaint and conviction rates are both falling.
So, in "holistic" terms, things are getting worse, for the victims, if not for the number of victims.

I was wondering when you'd pop in to the thread

 

[ViolentPanda]

well that's the whole point, the jokes emerge because it's less acceptable, because there's a huge social awareness of it hanging over people's heads and it makes people nervous... hence it being something which can summon an easy laugh. as i say, it's not completely unlike the laughter-trap you can caught in during a minutes' silence, or any situation where you're running the risk of getting a serious bollocking.

edit, to trashpony

You're conflating the acceptibility of airing the subject with acceptibility of the act. The former finds narrower acceptance, but there's little evidence that the latter does.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I was wondering when you'd pop in to the thread

Just got back to this thread after spending a couple of hours meandering around abebooks.

 

[frogwoman]

i also think that with some subcultures it's more acceptable if it's presented in stylised terms. some of the pictures that people have put with some of the songs on youtube that i listen to are so awful (but clearly - ish presented as a fantasy type thing) are so disturbing that i actually stopped listening to the stuff, especially cos there seems to be little or no condemnation of it. whether its "exploring the concepts" or not

 

[ViolentPanda]

And given the low successful prosecution rate it's one of the factors why they don't.

It's almost as if every successive revision of law pertaining to what the p-t-b now refer to as "intimate violence" in the last 40 years has made it harder to secure conviction. Nowadays, there's even a fairly repulsive expectation on the part of police services that a victim not bathe until she's been to the rape suite. Now, intellectually I can see what the police are seeking to do - secure the best possible evidence, including DNA, but they're asking that in direct opposition to the primary psychological impulse in such situations - to cleanse/purge/purify oneself.

 

[equationgirl]

Just got back to this thread after spending a couple of hours meandering around abebooks.

There was some argument dismantling earlier - made me think of you and butchersapron for some reason

 

[trashpony]

Some really interesting posts on here

On the subject of patriarchy being damaging to men as well as women, this TED talk by Tony Porter, who is an educationalist working to end violence against women, is worth a watch (10 mins)

 

[ViolentPanda]

i can't babysit you, just go read Down and Out in London and Paris or anything. i've just finished reading Joe Jacob's 'out of the ghetto' too, not too much specific detail in there but if you have some historical knowledge about the social context then you can figure things out, esp with relation to his siblings. also read Engels condition of the working class in England, what? loads of stuff. ffs

That's pretty crap. A couple of books whose raison d'etre was to shock about conditions, and one from at least a hundred years previous, all of which reflected material rather than moral conditions. Conflating the two is a bit stupid.

 

[equationgirl]

It's almost as if every successive revision of law pertaining to what the p-t-b now refer to as "intimate violence" in the last 40 years has made it harder to secure conviction. Nowadays, there's even a fairly repulsive expectation on the part of police services that a victim not bathe until she's been to the rape suite. Now, intellectually I can see what the police are seeking to do - secure the best possible evidence, including DNA, but they're asking that in direct opposition to the primary psychological impulse in such situations - to cleanse/purge/purify oneself.

I think it adds to the trauma.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm glad you've come to that conclusion youself and without the arguments of the women on this thread.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This - I'm sure student campuses were far more clued up on these sort of issues in the 80s.

Bear in mind how de-politicised the NUS has become since then, then add in the factionalism that identity politics caused to campus solidarities, and you can pretty much track the "clueing down".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Even in the 90s when I was a student, during the lad resurgence, you wouldn't have thought you could get away with publishing that sort of thing publicly. However, I could see the backlash growing.

I'd contend that the whole "lad" phenomenon wasn't a "resurgence" so much as a concentration of the least savoury aspects of post-war male behaviour into a loose subculture.

 

[Das Uberdog]

obviously far too much for me to come back on but one more before i'm out. very little of what i said in my original point has been addressed by anyone (with the honourable exception of one or two) which was mainly about the manner in which jokes and social humour develop. it was also an observation (which pretty much everyone seems to accept in one form or another) that society has generally better standards of behaviour towards women today than in the past. the issue over rape jokes is premised in terms of them causing a regression in the prevailing cultural trends and norms, and i argued that actually it was a result of them. on all the substantial points about whether or not people believe that people making the jokes actually do individually believe that rape is Ok, no-body has challenged anything i said.

the issue of statistics isn't one i ever made a substantial point about. delving into the reasons for spikes, fluctuations and other such phenomena in them could warrant its own thread enitrely.

 

[trashpony]

Right. How mean we all are to pick up on the really holey bits of your post. Anyone would think we were marking your university essay. Are you studying 20th century history by any chance?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I ignored the rest of your two cents because you haven't bothered to check your facts. Paddick is running on a 'make the police investigate rape properly' as his central policy. He was asked to do a review of how rape was handled - found that reports had increased by 18% over 5 years in the early 2000s, but that the proportion recorded as rape had fallen by the same amount because the simplest way to improve the clear up rate is to record the complaint as 'no crime'. He was made to tone dowh his report and then Fedorico buried it.

And in 2005/2006 the way the BCS (British Crime Survey) changed it's assessment procedure on sex crimes where, no doubt entirely coincidentally, there has now been no recorded growth in such crimes since then.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I'd contend that the whole "lad" phenomenon wasn't a "resurgence" so much as a concentration of the least savoury aspects of post-war male behaviour into a loose subculture.

Yah, there is truth to this, in that it wasn't a specific revival of anything but a reactionary, er, reaction, which grabbed a lot of different cultural items which weren't necessarily contemporary at all.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Right. How mean we all are to pick up on the really holey bits of your post. Anyone would think we were marking your university essay. Are you studying 20th century history by any chance?

you only picked apart your own minds

 

[equationgirl]

obviously far too much for me to come back on but one more before i'm out. very little of what i said in my original point has been addressed by anyone (with the honourable exception of one or two) which was mainly about the manner in which jokes and social humour develop. it was also an observation (which pretty much everyone seems to accept in one form or another) that society has generally better standards of behaviour towards women today than in the past. the issue over rape jokes is premised in terms of them causing a regression in the prevailing cultural trends and norms, and i argued that actually it was a result of them. on all the substantial points about whether or not people believe that people making the jokes actually do individually believe that rape is Ok, no-body has challenged anything i said.

the issue of statistics isn't one i ever made a substantial point about. delving into the reasons for spikes, fluctuations and other such phenomena in them could warrant its own thread enitrely.

When you participate in a discussion, that includes answering any questions posters make in an attempt to explore your arguments and points further, and not whinging or whining about things people haven't picked up on because you've stated them poorly. Your profile says you've been on urban for a few years, this is basic urban etiquette - for the politics forum in particular.

People have challenged your points - you just didn't like the answers.

 

[ViolentPanda]

sorry, but bollocks.

i remember seeing a documentary about pre ww2 women farm workers and from the descriptions they gave, rape by the men they worked with was almost to be expected. few discussed it at the time because of the expectation they would be told it was their fault.

the idea that ordinary women were chapheroned is bizarre. you think working class young women were chapheroned on their way to work?

Oddly enough, I've read a few papers over the years (only a few, mind) that have made a case for there being quite a sharp divide in (higher) rural rape and sexual assault rates against (lower) urban ones, with the main contributory factor for a lower rate being presented as population density. I'm not sure that I absolutely buy it, though.

 

[equationgirl]

you only picked apart your own minds

No, it was your arguments that were picked apart, and you didn't like it.

 

[equationgirl]

Oddly enough, I've read a few papers over the years (only a few, mind) that have made a case for there being quite a sharp divide in (higher) rural rape and sexual assault rates against (lower) urban ones, with the main contributory factor for a lower rate being presented as population density. I'm not sure that I absolutely buy it, though.

Interesting.

Like you I'm not sure if population density is such a contributory factor, or if the divide is so marked.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

you only picked apart your own minds

I was sympathetic, until this. Grow up.

 

[ViolentPanda]

For a lot of working class and lower middle class women in service, not only did they need good references, they also required a good 'character'. To be dismissed without a good character effectively meant the end of their ability to work in that sector. Any allegations of rape made by a servant against a man, whether of that household or not, would have been career suicide.

One of my paternal great-grandmothers was a skivvie at a boarding school, and was raped by a pupil. For her pains she was sacked, nicked and had her virtue questioned.

 

[trashpony]

I was sympathetic, until this. Grow up.

Ahh, let's be kind. He's only 22 and I can remember thinking that I was really, really right the entire time when I was that age. He's probably gone to drink lager and snap the tips off Gauloises in intense discussion