A bit about "potential rapists".

[Silent3]

178. Please point out where I refer to "men's feelings".

Last edited Tue Dec 4, 2012, 10:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Point it out. Other than, of course, where I talk about you saying that I talked about that.

Here's every word I had previously posted in this thread, conveniently gathered together, up until before where you chimed in about my posts:

Should I assume (or at least consider) that a concealed gun *could* be pointed at me...

..by every human, male or female, who approaches me?

Schrodinger's Mugger? Schrodinger's Terrorist? Schrodinger's Psychopath?

I can't, after all, tell by sight alone that someone isn't a mugger or a terrorist or a psychopath.

Reducing a situation to is/is not, could be/couldn't be carries the risk of encouraging a flaw in the way many people evaluate risks, which is to treat anything with two possible outcomes as 50/50, as if the two outcomes are equally likely simply because there are two of them. A lottery ticket may or may not win you the jackpot, but that doesn't make it a 50/50 chance you'll win just because you can cast the situation as having two and only two outcomes.

Isn't the real question what the odds are, real and imagined, that a stranger is a rapist or mugger or terrorist or psychopath? How much worry and how much preparation to make in light of those odds, and how much empathetic leeway we should grant for levels of fear which may or may not go beyond real risks?

If you're talking about risk/cost analysis...

...nothing I said went against that idea. In fact, I'd say the need for better risk/cost thinking was strongly implied, so I don't know what it is from my post that you're denying that you do.

Most people do a terrible intuitive job of risk/cost assessment. Fear of flying vs. fear of driving is a prime example. Familiarity and the illusion of being in control make people feel far safer when they drive their own car than when they ride on a plane, even though it's the driving which is riskier. People buy guns to fend off imagined home invaders, inviting a greater risk of homicide or suicide by someone who lives in their home than they likely face from potential intruders.

So are they what?

I have a different idea of what each what is?

Could you try using a few more words and a few fewer unclear antecedents? I could guess what you mean and answer based on that, but I'd rather not.

So you want me to do an open-ended search on "risk analysis"....

...until such time as I feel I have become worthy of your effort to impart your great wisdom unto me?

Get over yourself.

Yeah... so?

You have told me nothing that surprises me, nothing that was not taken into account in what I have written. Downside cost of getting raped is high. It's also high for being murdered. "Stranger danger", whether for rape or murder, is low.

Downside cost of mugging is lower than rape or murder (not that it can't be very traumatic, especially armed robbery), incidence of mugging is higher.

Downside risk of dying in a car crash or dying in a plane crash is equal -- dying is pretty much dying. Emotional reactions to the risk of dying in a plane crash is (often) higher than for a car crash, but the actual risk (either per trip or per mile travelled) is lower.

So... your point? What's the oh-so-special way you evaluate these things that escapes me?

If "education" means that empathy is not only needed...

...but that empathy must supplant all other concerns in all contexts, that there's no room for dispassionate, objective discourse, that comments can't be made on the subject of rape if there's the slightest chance those comments don't simply add to the cause of empathy, then that's an "education" that should be rejected.

If someone says, "The odds of a woman being raped are 99.8%, and 75% of men have or will commit rape" my response is NOT going to be, "Well, I know that's inaccurate, but I'm sure some women feel that it's that bad, and to show my empathy I'm going to keep quiet and allow the emotional release of these wildly inaccurate claims to go by unhindered, chalk if off to a coping mechanism or a healing process, maybe even play along and join in on jumping on the fool who does question those crazy statistics, certain of the fact that any attempt to correct the statistics must actually be an attempt to justify rape and perpetuate male dominance over women."

You responded to the post above talking by about "men's feelings", and ONLY THEN, in responding to you, did I use those words, and only talking about you using those words to say that I DIDN'T talk about "men's feelings", nor anything even close to that.

"Tiresome bullshit", indeed.