Also, one important step is that the parents must believe the child’s report of bullying. As opposed to e.g. thinking “this is an exaggerated version of something that is probably harmless”. (This was a mistake my parents were making all the time.)
Quick, what are your thoughts on the concept of rape culture?
Give me a reasonable definition, and I’ll give you my opinion. Without at least an approximate definition I try not to have opinion on things.
(Not that I couldn’t imagine some definition myself, but what’s the point if your definition may be something very different? I think rape is a bad thing, should be punished, and should not be made fun of. That includes also rape in prisons, or when a woman rapes a man, et cetera. On the other hand, I consider rape to be in average less serious crime than murder. Please note that this answer does not include the “culture” part, because that’s the part I don’t have a reasonable definition for.)
Please note that this answer does not include the “culture” part, because that’s the part I don’t have a reasonable definition for.
Oh! It’s ok, it sounds like you’ve simply never heard it explained. In a nutshell, my analogy here is that women in grown-up society who suffer some kind of sexual violation or threat are overwhelmingly likely to meet the same blind/wilfully ignorant/worse-than-useless response that is typical of adults overlooking bullying. (It sounds like you and me both have suffered from the latter.)
So yes, this is not all of what feminists usually mean by these words - but they often do bring up such attitudes in the same vein as your description of bullying here. Given that you’ve previously decried some stereotypical “social justice” issues, including anti-sexist activism, as pointless/dishonest/hypocritical (IIRC), I wanted to point out how, this time around, you’ve independently echoed a popular feminist talking point.[1]
Here’s another analogy, with a widely used contrast of robbery vs. sexual assault:
“So you’d been drinking. Are you sure you didn’t tell him he could take the money? You know, maybe you were feeling sorry for him, feeling bad about telling him you weren’t going to lend him money any more… Are you sure you didn’t give him one last bundle of cash, out of sympathy, but maybe you’re feeling bad about it today?” “Hey-” “Maybe you’d had a few too many and it’s all a bit hazy? Are you sure you didn’t tell him he could have the money, but you can’t remember it?” “No! He stole it from me-” “What were you wearing at the time, Mr. Smith?” “Let’s see. A suit. Yes, a suit.” “An expensive suit?” “Well–yes.” “In other words, Mr. Smith, you were alone and drunk late at night with someone you had previously given money to in a suit that practically advertised the fact that you had money, isn’t that so?”
Etc, etc. Disturbingly familiar in some regards, isn’t it?
[1] Sure, a bit passive-aggressive of me… but at least I’m trying to achieve something rationalist here by pointing out that your beliefs appear not to be at reflective equilibrium.
We didn’t have a political thread on LW for a long time, did we? Would be a more appropriate place for this discussion. On one hand, I do not want to ignore your question, on the other hand, I have no desire to make this a long off-topic thread. Unfortunately, political topics are usually heavily mindkilling, they have thousands of connotations, so unless one writes a full book about the topic, there are many ways to misinterpret their answer.
Here are a few things that would deserve a longer discussion, but I don’t want to have all of those discussions right here and right now:
1) Just because a word is used, even if it has its page on wikipedia, does not mean the concept is well-defined. To quote from the wikipedia page: “there is disagreement over what defines a rape culture and to what degree a given society meets the criteria to be considered a rape culture”. What I am trying to say is that I agree that rape is bad, and I also agree that if you write a victim’s report on a web page, you will find many comments blaming the victim. I agree with this completely. The part that I don’t know (and wikipedia says there is no consensus even among people who use the word frequently) is whether this deserves to be called “culture”, and whether that means that only some people have this “culture”, or the whole culture is guilty of having this “culture”. And I have no desire to spend my afternoon having a discussion about definitions. I am willing to talk only about things that somehow translate to expected experience.
2) You speak about “overwhelmingly likely [stupid] response”, but I think that the topic of rape has no monopoly on that. In general, people are idiots. Do you expect them to stop being idiots specifically when discussing rape? I guess this website is all about the hundred mistakes people make when they think. And that’s just about thinking, because that’s what we are obsessed with; we speak about how stupid people are even when they try to be nice, polite, and reasonable. But many people don’t even try. I don’t expect people in general to have reasonable opinions about rape, just like I don’t expect them to have reasonable opinions about anything. Some of them even talk with their invisible friends, for God’s sake! I share your pain; I too wish people would be more reasonable. But today, they are not. That’s not about rape, that’s about… everything. The only exception is when people are massively brainwashed into believing something that coincidentally happens to be correct. This is why most people will give you a correct answer for “how much is 2+2″. So, expending a similar amount of energy, you could brainwash them into having the kind of reaction about rape that you want them to have. Even then, they wouldn’t have that reaction because it’s the smart reaction; they would have it, because it would be what they were brainwashed to believe. It would probably be a good thing. The problem is on the meta level; just as you can brainwash people into believing good things, you can brainwash them into believing bad things. So there is a kind of Schelling point of not brainwashing people too much, even for a good thing. I don’t have a full utilitarian analysis of consequences of breaking this Schelling point.
3) What is the overwhelmingly likely response, depends on what kind of people you interact with. Some people would have this reaction, other people wouldn’t. This is what makes me uncertain about generalizations about a culture. Who specifically is this culture? Which specific subgroup? How many people must exhibit some behavior so we can label the whole culture as a rape culture? Is it about number of people, or rather about what appears in media, or...?
4) When you say something reasonable, it is likely that at least some feminist agrees with it, and at least one feminist disagrees with it. Feminists say a lot of things. Some of them consider prison rape or woman-on-man rape an issue. Some of them don’t. I was specific about my opinion. I am not sure whether majority of feminists agree with this variant, and I don’t consider that information relevant.
5) Whether something should or shouldn’t happen, and whether some behaviors are more risky than others, those are two differently questions. Misinterpreting opinions about one of them as opinions about the other, that’s just one of many rhetorical tricks frequently used in political discussions.
6..99) Really, we could talk about it the whole afternoon.
100) Speaking about an anology with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it. And no, whichever of the thousand connotations anyone thinks about immediately after reading this, if I didn’t write it explicitly, there is a chance I didn’t mean it.
Speaking about an analogy with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it.
Upvoted for making this specific distinction explicit. I think it’s important to note that A and B are not contradictory and should not be treated as if B->!A
Also upvoted the parent; the failure mode it describes is real, whether or not one subscribes to “rape culture” with the quotes.
Quick, what are your thoughts on the concept of rape culture?
Give me a reasonable definition, and I’ll give you my opinion. Without at least an approximate definition I try not to have opinion on things.
(Not that I couldn’t imagine some definition myself, but what’s the point if your definition may be something very different? I think rape is a bad thing, should be punished, and should not be made fun of. That includes also rape in prisons, or when a woman rapes a man, et cetera. On the other hand, I consider rape to be in average less serious crime than murder. Please note that this answer does not include the “culture” part, because that’s the part I don’t have a reasonable definition for.)
Oh! It’s ok, it sounds like you’ve simply never heard it explained. In a nutshell, my analogy here is that women in grown-up society who suffer some kind of sexual violation or threat are overwhelmingly likely to meet the same blind/wilfully ignorant/worse-than-useless response that is typical of adults overlooking bullying. (It sounds like you and me both have suffered from the latter.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
So yes, this is not all of what feminists usually mean by these words - but they often do bring up such attitudes in the same vein as your description of bullying here. Given that you’ve previously decried some stereotypical “social justice” issues, including anti-sexist activism, as pointless/dishonest/hypocritical (IIRC), I wanted to point out how, this time around, you’ve independently echoed a popular feminist talking point.[1]
Here’s another analogy, with a widely used contrast of robbery vs. sexual assault:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/01/03/the-rape-of-mr-smith/#comment-80958
“So you’d been drinking. Are you sure you didn’t tell him he could take the money? You know, maybe you were feeling sorry for him, feeling bad about telling him you weren’t going to lend him money any more… Are you sure you didn’t give him one last bundle of cash, out of sympathy, but maybe you’re feeling bad about it today?”
“Hey-”
“Maybe you’d had a few too many and it’s all a bit hazy? Are you sure you didn’t tell him he could have the money, but you can’t remember it?”
“No! He stole it from me-”
“What were you wearing at the time, Mr. Smith?”
“Let’s see. A suit. Yes, a suit.”
“An expensive suit?”
“Well–yes.”
“In other words, Mr. Smith, you were alone and drunk late at night with someone you had previously given money to in a suit that practically advertised the fact that you had money, isn’t that so?”
Etc, etc. Disturbingly familiar in some regards, isn’t it?
[1] Sure, a bit passive-aggressive of me… but at least I’m trying to achieve something rationalist here by pointing out that your beliefs appear not to be at reflective equilibrium.
We didn’t have a political thread on LW for a long time, did we? Would be a more appropriate place for this discussion. On one hand, I do not want to ignore your question, on the other hand, I have no desire to make this a long off-topic thread. Unfortunately, political topics are usually heavily mindkilling, they have thousands of connotations, so unless one writes a full book about the topic, there are many ways to misinterpret their answer.
Here are a few things that would deserve a longer discussion, but I don’t want to have all of those discussions right here and right now:
1) Just because a word is used, even if it has its page on wikipedia, does not mean the concept is well-defined. To quote from the wikipedia page: “there is disagreement over what defines a rape culture and to what degree a given society meets the criteria to be considered a rape culture”. What I am trying to say is that I agree that rape is bad, and I also agree that if you write a victim’s report on a web page, you will find many comments blaming the victim. I agree with this completely. The part that I don’t know (and wikipedia says there is no consensus even among people who use the word frequently) is whether this deserves to be called “culture”, and whether that means that only some people have this “culture”, or the whole culture is guilty of having this “culture”. And I have no desire to spend my afternoon having a discussion about definitions. I am willing to talk only about things that somehow translate to expected experience.
2) You speak about “overwhelmingly likely [stupid] response”, but I think that the topic of rape has no monopoly on that. In general, people are idiots. Do you expect them to stop being idiots specifically when discussing rape? I guess this website is all about the hundred mistakes people make when they think. And that’s just about thinking, because that’s what we are obsessed with; we speak about how stupid people are even when they try to be nice, polite, and reasonable. But many people don’t even try. I don’t expect people in general to have reasonable opinions about rape, just like I don’t expect them to have reasonable opinions about anything. Some of them even talk with their invisible friends, for God’s sake! I share your pain; I too wish people would be more reasonable. But today, they are not. That’s not about rape, that’s about… everything. The only exception is when people are massively brainwashed into believing something that coincidentally happens to be correct. This is why most people will give you a correct answer for “how much is 2+2″. So, expending a similar amount of energy, you could brainwash them into having the kind of reaction about rape that you want them to have. Even then, they wouldn’t have that reaction because it’s the smart reaction; they would have it, because it would be what they were brainwashed to believe. It would probably be a good thing. The problem is on the meta level; just as you can brainwash people into believing good things, you can brainwash them into believing bad things. So there is a kind of Schelling point of not brainwashing people too much, even for a good thing. I don’t have a full utilitarian analysis of consequences of breaking this Schelling point.
3) What is the overwhelmingly likely response, depends on what kind of people you interact with. Some people would have this reaction, other people wouldn’t. This is what makes me uncertain about generalizations about a culture. Who specifically is this culture? Which specific subgroup? How many people must exhibit some behavior so we can label the whole culture as a rape culture? Is it about number of people, or rather about what appears in media, or...?
4) When you say something reasonable, it is likely that at least some feminist agrees with it, and at least one feminist disagrees with it. Feminists say a lot of things. Some of them consider prison rape or woman-on-man rape an issue. Some of them don’t. I was specific about my opinion. I am not sure whether majority of feminists agree with this variant, and I don’t consider that information relevant.
5) Whether something should or shouldn’t happen, and whether some behaviors are more risky than others, those are two differently questions. Misinterpreting opinions about one of them as opinions about the other, that’s just one of many rhetorical tricks frequently used in political discussions.
6..99) Really, we could talk about it the whole afternoon.
100) Speaking about an anology with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it. And no, whichever of the thousand connotations anyone thinks about immediately after reading this, if I didn’t write it explicitly, there is a chance I didn’t mean it.
Upvoted for making this specific distinction explicit. I think it’s important to note that A and B are not contradictory and should not be treated as if B->!A
Also upvoted the parent; the failure mode it describes is real, whether or not one subscribes to “rape culture” with the quotes.