Aegis, what part of “5 times greater” do you not think is “massively different”?

We are talking about a small victimization rate for both sexes (in 1998: 7.5 in 1000 for women, and 1.5 in 1000 for men). Is there some reason to say that the 7.5/1000 victimization rate is cause for cynicism towards every single member of the opposite sex, but a 1.5/1000 victimization rate isn’t anything to worry about? If women are going to judge all men as a potential victimizer based on this data, then it seems to me that men would be justified in at least a small degree of cynicism towards women. Is this more clear?

Thomas said:
Aegis, are you making an empirical claim about the prevalence of (1) female on male DV; (2) false accusations of rape or DV; or (3) paternity fraud? The first, you admit is rare. The last is largely impossible given current technology. So your empirical claim is, what, that the reality of rape is balanced by false accusations of rape? Or of DV (presumably, what, with faked medical evidence to back it up)?

First, paternity fraud is perfectly possible if the child isn’t tested until too late (or not at all). Yet I will mainly talk about (1), because it’s easier to find reliable data on it.

According to the DoJ: “Women were victims of intimate partner
violence at a rate about 5 times that of males,” and “Of the 1,830 persons murdered by intimates in 1998, 72% or 1,320 were women.” This means that 1 in 6 victims of inimate partner violence and 1 in 4 victims of intimate partner homicide are male. Unless all the violence against men is in same-sex relationships, there is a non-trivial amount of violence against men by women going on. This violence may be of a lesser degree, but it still exists. Yes, the victimization rate is higher for women, but not, in my opinion, so much higher that men shouldn’t be at all cynical of women if women should be cynical of men. Or would you interpret the figures differently?

So your empirical claim is, what, that the reality of rape is balanced by false accusations of rape? Or of DV (presumably, what, with faked medical evidence to back it up)?

Or are you claiming that the mere possibility that these things could happen to a man makes male paranoia about women as prudent and justified as some women’s decision to treat all men as potential rapists?

I am not suggesting that the Bad Things which happen to men balance out the Bad Things that happen to women (in fact, the Bad Things that happen to women are obviously worse). What I claim is that unless the chances of a being a victim of a Bad Thing by the opposite sex are massively different for each sex, then if one sex has reason to be cynical, then the other does too, especially if the chances are very small in the first place. Also, if it is ok for one group to judge another group by the worst actions of its worst members, then why can’t the second group judge the first group by the worst actions of its worst members?

Ampersand said:
However, just because we’re all sort of equal in that way - no matter who you are, you can suffer (although being privileged certainly lowers your odds), and every one dies - it doesn’t follow that all white, male, straight, class, nationality, etc, privileges are “eclipsed.” I don’t think that privilege and suffering are simple mathematical equations, in the way that your suggestion implies.

Sure, everyone dies. I am not talking about deaths by natural causes or “health issues,” but rather violence to men which homophobia, misogyny, and the construction of masculinity contributes to. As that system supposedly advantages men over women, I must point out that men who die partly because of this system may not be deriving much net benefit from it. Or are you implying that we can’t tally up any kind of “net benefit”? Note: I agree that privilege and suffering aren’t simple mathematical equations, yet doesn’t the argument that males are privileged over females require some method of judging male advantages and female disadvantages to be more significant than female advantages and male disadvantages?

Even though men are much less likely to be victimized to a high degree in rape, they still have plenty of reasons to distrust women, such as a (relatively lower, but still non-trivial) risk of DV, false accusations of rape or DV, or paternity fraud.

Aegis, are you making an empirical claim about the prevalence of (1) female on male DV; (2) false accusations of rape or DV; or (3) paternity fraud? The first, you admit is rare. The last is largely impossible given current technology. So your empirical claim is, what, that the reality of rape is balanced by false accusations of rape? Or of DV (presumably, what, with faked medical evidence to back it up)?

Or are you claiming that the mere possibility that these things could happen to a man makes male paranoia about women as prudent and justified as some women’s decision to treat all men as potential rapists?

Nick Kiddle said:

A man who has been assaulted is benefiting from being a man in our culture in ways unconnected with the assault.

Yes, that is true. Yet it seems to me that if he got killed or badly injured in the assault, that it would eclipse those benefits, no?

It’s a universal truth that everyone suffers and everyone dies. I’ve known wealthy white straight men who went through mind-boggling agony due to health issues; nothing in this world is a guarantee against suffering or death.

However, just because we’re all sort of equal in that way - no matter who you are, you can suffer (although being privileged certainly lowers your odds), and every one dies - it doesn’t follow that all white, male, straight, class, nationality, etc, privileges are “eclipsed.” I don’t think that privilege and suffering are simple mathematical equations, in the way that your suggestion implies.

Nick Kiddle said:
A man who has been assaulted is benefitting from being a man in our culture in ways unconnected with the assault.

Yes, that is true. Yet it seems to me that if he got killed or badly injured in the assault, that it would eclipse those benefits, no?

I admit that I should have come out and said this without being snarky, and for that I apologize.

I don’t know whether you’re having genuine difficulties with comprehension or are just pretending to misunderstand to prolong the argument. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re stupid.

Nick, if you don’t want me in this thread (or your threads in general), all you have to do is say so and I will leave. Otherwise, please spare me petty remarks like the one I quoted above, which was simply uncalled for.

A guy gets assaulted, but somehow he is benefitting from the culture? Pardon me for sensing a contradiction here. For someone who is so vehemently against victim-blaming, you are quick to make excuses when the victims of violence are men.

I don’t know whether you’re having genuine difficulties with comprehension or are just pretending to misunderstand to prolong the argument. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re stupid.

A man who has been assaulted is benefitting from being a man in our culture in ways unconnected with the assault. His being assaulted is in no way a good thing, but he has the advantage of not living in a culture where his assault is likely to be treated as no big deal and his own fault anyway.

ginmar said:
Jesus Christ. Maybe you don’t think being forcibly penetrated is any big deal, Aegis…Oh, wait.

ginmar, it’s obvious that being raped gives women a reason to be cynical about men. If you go back and read my post, you will see that I asked a very different question: why does specifically victim-blaming in our culture give women more of a reason to be worried about being victimized by men? I am not saying that it does or it doesn’t, only that I would like to hear the reasoning for it.

Men get attacked by other men; it’s a patriarchal culture, and they’re its primary beneficiaries.

A guy gets assaulted, but somehow he is benefitting from the culture? Pardon me for sensing a contradiction here. For someone who is so vehemently against victim-blaming, you are quick to make excuses when the victims of violence are men.

What’s obscene is complaining to women about it and trying to imply that men deserve more pity because the chickens came home to roost.

You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? Show me one place where I’ve said anything like that (though I don’t understand your reference to chickens). The point of my posts in this thread are to show that if women have reason to be cynical about men, then men also have reason to be cynical about women. That’s not necessarily anything to do with pity. Even though men are much less likely to be victimized to a high degree in rape, they still have plenty of reasons to distrust women, such as a (relatively lower, but still non-trivial) risk of DV, false accusations of rape or DV, or paternity fraud. Maybe cynicism is necessary and well-grounded in some circumstances, but I think it’s important to understand what it means, and what its consequences may be. If women should be cynical towards men, why not men towards women? Why not blacks to whites and whites to blacks? Where does it stop? As far as I can tell, the natural conclusion of this kind of thinking is a world where nobody trusts anyone, especially people who aren’t a member of their sex or ethnic group. Is that really the world we want to live in?

Remember where I told you to start listening to women? This is the part where you start doing that instead of second guessing them and saying that you’re not sure their responses to stuff you have no chance of experiencing are somehow unwarranted.

Listening is a two-way street, ginmar. Many of the abuses in history have come where one group was so convinced that they were right that they silenced another group and told them to just shut up and listen.

Honestly, what makes you think I would ever want to listen to you considering the way you addressed me above? If you want me to listen, then cut out the patronizing attitude. You seem to think that if you yell at me and try to shame me enough that I will eventually roll over and play dead, but trust me, that isn’t going to happen. I am not interesting in being the target of your anger and hatred, no matter how well-founded you think they may be.

Even if everything you were saying is true, and everything I was saying was wrong, then getting pissy at me would still be counterproductive. It would prompt me to dismiss your words and become entrenched in my ignorant positions because I wouldn’t be able to see why you were right. If, on the other hand, your goal is to vent at me, then by all means keep doing what you are doing. Or we could simply agree that neither of us is at a place where they can hear the other, and stop trying to communicate…

Jesus Christ. Maybe you don’t think being forcibly penetrated is any big deal, Aegis—Oh, wait. That’s right. Stay out of prison, and it’s not something you have to structure your life around.

Remember where I told you to start listening to women? This is the part where you start doing that instead of second guessing them and saying that you’re not sure their responses to stuff you have no chance of experiencing are somehow unwarranted.

What rediculous insensitivity.

Cala said:
It seems that your point is that training women to treat all men as potential rapists is needlessly cynical, and at odds with how we generally live our lives in other cases; we shouldn’t, for example, treat all new acquaintances as potential thieves or murderers, even though we’re at just as great a risk (for some suitable defintion of risk.)

I’m actually not sure what my point is, or how I feel about about the cynicism some women may have due to rape. Personally, I’ve found that paranoia towards any situation where I might get hurt is not the way I want to live my life. But maybe other people have reason to feel differently. The reason I am having this discussion is so I can figure out where I stand.

I suggest, however, that this is how we generally treat others to some extent. We lock our doors, indicating that we think there is a reason to lock them. We usually don’t let strangers enter our houses; we don’t give out our bank PINs to new acquaintances at the bar. I could go on, but it’s rare that we assume that a new person we meet is wholly trustworthy. We assign greater and lesser degrees of trust to people depending on what is at stake and what we know of a person, and what the likelihood is that we could come to harm.

True. People do watch out for theft and fraud from casual acquaintances to some degree. Though still, most people don’t treat their casual acquaintances as possible assaulters or murders. Well, I don’t at least. So, treating men as potential rapists and murderers still seems inconsistent and paranoid to me. Though that’s not to say that women (especially women who have been victimized in the past) shouldn’t be paranoid. If they need to be paranoid to feel secure around men, then so be it. Actually, I think that is the strongest argument in favor of women being paranoid about rape or violence from men. We just shouldn’t forget that this is paranoia, considering how low the actual incident rates are (at least according to the figures I cited).

This sort of catch-22 just doesn’t occur in other cases. To take your taxi example, if a cab driver gets shot by a criminal, few would blame the cabbie for having picked up a dangerous fare. If your college roommate logs onto your computer while you’re away and uses the cached credit card information to purchase himself a stereo, people will say, ‘He’s a thief’, not ‘Well, you were asking for it.’

Yes, I agree that lots of people will aim extra cynicism at female victims or rape or DV.

If the response to a murdered pregnant woman is to say, “She should have known better and picked a better father”, isn’t it a little disingenuous to criticize other women for being a bit paranoid?

I’m not sure what connection you are trying to draw between these two. If being paranoid about rapists is at odds with the way people usually conduct their interpersonal interactions, then how do the negative attitudes displayed towards victimized women change that? Those attitudes don’t actually raise a woman’s risk of being victimized (though I suppose they may decrease a woman’s chance of receiving support if she does get victimized). Why does that negative cultural response give women a mandate to be extra cynical about men?

I suggest, however, that this is how we generally treat others to some extent. We lock our doors, indicating that we think there is a reason to lock them. We usually don’t let strangers enter our houses; we don’t give out our bank PINs to new acquaintances at the bar. I could go on, but it’s rare that we assume that a new person we meet is wholly trustworthy. We assign greater and lesser degrees of trust to people depending on what is at stake and what we know of a person, and what the likelihood is that we could come to harm.

What makes this frustrating is that when a woman is raped, or murdered by her husband/boyfriend, the instant response suggests that it’s her fault because she was too trusting, or should have known better. If she responds to that threat by becoming less trusting, she is derided as being cynical.

This sort of catch-22 just doesn’t occur in other cases. To take your taxi example, if a cab driver gets shot by a criminal, few would blame the cabbie for having picked up a dangerous fare. If your college roommate logs onto your computer while you’re away and uses the cached credit card information to purchase himself a stereo, people will say, ‘He’s a thief’, not ‘Well, you were asking for it.’

If the response to a murdered pregnant woman is to say, “She should have known better and picked a better father”, isn’t it a little disingenuous to criticize other women for being a bit paranoid?

someone brought up the concept of “casual sex”, and when sex (and especially sex that can lead to pregnancy) is treated casually, you are treading close to just such a thing.

Men get to treat sex casually with no adverse consequences though, that’s the trouble.

What’s obscene is complaining to women about it and trying to imply that men deserve more pity because the chickens came home to roost.

Thomas said:
Are you kidding me with this? Are you postulating some alternate universe where women are the ones raping men?

No, because rape isn’t the only way people can harm one another (so it isn’t the only reason for cynicism between people).

Outside of male violence against women and male violence against male domestic partners, I can’t think of too many circumstances where one is at great risk of bodily harm from one’s acquaintances.

Think again. Male stranger violence is going to be bigger than either female or male intimate partner violence.

The National Crime Vicimization Survey found that males experience almost twice as much violence from acquaintances/friends as women experience from intimate partners (17.2 per 1000 people vs. 9.4 per 1000). Same with violence towards men by strangers (19 vs. 9.4). According to these figures (which are at the bottom of the study), males are more at risk of violence in their encounters with others. Also notice that these incident rates don’t show that anyone is at “great” risk.

Anyway, physical violence and rape aren’t the only way people can do harm to each other, so they aren’t the only things to be cynical over. There are other ways someone’s reputation and livelihood can be ruined, such as false accusation of DV or rape. I’ve heard some MRAs say that they avoid associating with women because of that risk, and I’ve often seen women and feminists take offense at that stereotyping of women. Would you advise them to grow a thicker skin?

Wow, what an asshole. People don’t blame the victims; who knew? All the women I know, all the books I read, all the people who became feminists because they got blamed by assholes when another asshole attacked them—-none of that happened! Nope, people don’t blame the victims at all. How do I know this? Some guy arrogantly says so.