Rape more Common than Smoking in the US

[thucythucy]

342. Ah me, where to begin?

"Driving drunk doesn't presuppose the listener is an evil beast, or likely to be one."

I'm not even sure what that sentence means. Driving drunk doesn't "presuppose" anything of any "listener." It's a crime, which used to be treated far more casually than it is today. After thousands of people had been killed and tens of thousands maimed by drunk drivers, a grassroots campaign (remember Mothers Against Drunk Driving?) began pushing for harsher penalties, more stringent enforcement, and a public media campaign--including mandatory presentations at high schools and colleges--on how drunk driving is illegal, and how friends and peers needed to act to stop it. In fact, you can still find PSAs with just this message all over the airwaves. "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." Never did I hear anyone express outrage that those receiving this message were being characterized as "dumb or evil," that to broadcast such a message, or to require teens to attend a lecture on the topic, somehow presupposed that all viewers and all teens are drunks. Not ever.

If, on the other hand, what you meant to say is "drunk driving isn't held in the same odium as rape" you may be right, although--knowing people with a family member killed by a drunk driver, and knowing other people disabled for life by them--I'd hardly say that drunk drivers are on any body's top ten most wonderful people in the world list. Certainly, a DUI conviction is generally not considered prime material for one's vitae. Would YOU want to be known in your community as a drunk driver?

How on earth you get to southerners (presumably white--though there ARE African-American southerners, you know? A bit of stereotyping there on your part?) being forced to read "urban Black poetry" is beyond me. Really, a total non sequitur.

"Should all Italians take a class on avoiding being in the Mafia?" Actually, the Italian government and Italian volunteers do run programs to educate Italian youth--especially in Sicily--on the destructive impact of the Mafia on young lives. This I suppose is roughly equivalent to programs we have here for urban youth on avoiding gang life. I suppose you object to these as well. Really, there's no end to what you'll find objectionable, once you begin arguing that men shouldn't be given information on what rape is, and told not to do it.

"It begs the question of Agency. Why does someone have the right to steer men's (as a gender, in classes, or even individually) education? This is Civil Rights territory." First off, I would have no problem having a similar session conducted for women as well--since sexual crimes can and are also committed by women (though the overwhelming majority are committed by men). As for having the "right" to steer people individually or as group into classes, orientation sessions, or what have you--please. In undergraduate school I was required to attend a three day orientation session (including a session on "responsible drinking&quot . As a grad student I had to attend a lecture on ethics in research, and another one on plagiarism--what it is, and what the penalties would be if one were caught. I suppose I should have walked out in a huff, right? "Oh my God, graduate students are all being stereotyped as plagiarists! Lordy Lordy Lordy, you're telling me I have no ethics! And undergraduates are all being categorized as binge drinkers!!!"

Finally, your attempt to link rape education to totalitarianism is simply extraordinary. Yeah, telling people--men in particular-not to rape, requiring them to attend a lecture on rape and sexual assault, all this is just one step away from Stalinism. What's next, a reference to "feminazis"?

Here's my take on what's been happening on so many of these threads. Men mostly don't think about rape, certainly not the way women are forced to. They don't generally plan their schedules, their socializing, their lives with the thought of rape at the back of their mind. To NOT have to think about rape is in fact a form of male privilege. And what we're asking is for you to give up that privilege, which of course you'd rather not do. So instead of honestly engaging the issue, you throw up all this crap about your hurt feelings and all this quasi-Libertarian nonsense about "Agency" with a capital A.

Living your life as a rape survivor, or having to constantly, on some level, be aware that you are a potential target of rape, is its own form of totalitarianism. Except, unlike your hyperbolic rhetorical flourish, this tyranny exists in the here and now, and impacts the lives of millions of girls and women in real life, in real time.

Put your hurt feelings aside for a moment, and consider what that means to the women in your life.