Part the Second
Meanwhile, shall we go down to the strand and yell at the tide about where the waves should break? Because one of the things we men tend to do when faced with the realities of rape culture is start demanding women answer the sorts of questions no one person can necessarily answer.
Like your poke-war question. I'm presuming some manner of workplace, academic, or other formal or quasiformal setting, and in that case, well, do you want Bells' assessment as a woman, a survivor of harassment from coworkers, or an attorney, and if the latter are we splitting hairs 'twixt sides of the ocean?
Do you understand what I mean about women doing to you what you're doing to Bells? When the subject arises, we all turn to our nearest rape survivor for comfort:
Tell me, please, I'm not as bad as those men!
If I want to know what women think, I ask women; again, you can try to be sarcastic, but this is actually a more difficult point than it needs to be, so, yeah, it's a matter of priorities.
Because I can ask Bells, and she can tell me. And then I can ask one of my longest friends, and she can tell em. And I can ask my mother, and she can tell me. And now I have a data set of three samples; I can tell you a bit about what these three people think; what I cannot tell you is what "women" think.
So consider your poke-war inquiry. What difference does it make? Certes, it makes some difference in your understanding of certain aspects related to these issues, but
what difference? Because you now have precisely
one data point about that. And, sure, it is what it is, but a drop of water compared to the torrent washing over our society is, as much as I appreciate my friend, a drop of water. As a human witness, she is beyond any appraisal of value; as a woman, she tells me about things I need to understand in order to get along with my fellow human beings. As a societal analyst, an attorney, an international, a fellow Sciforums member, a staff colleague, or any of that, she's one of the brightest stars in the firmament. But there is only so much she can do.
I can't ask her to absolve my sins. Do you get it? That's not Bells' job. It's not her job to make me feel better about any of it.
But that's what we do to women, as a society, and, yes, as men.
So, this time we don't get to ask if the accuser is certain, or how she knows it isn't a misunderstanding. So next thing we do in order to confound her is start laying out our own fears and asking this or that woman to resolve the conflict or absolve our sins.
And what we get out of it is a change of subject, a redirection of the discussion toward traditional ineffectual excuses, and precisely
one data point from a person we've just gone out of our way to insult.
To be as cold as fucking possible,
what is the ROI?
So let's start for a moment with Iceaura, because part of the problem leading to this dispute in the early pages has to do, quite honestly, with the focus on partisan politics. To wit, your post at
#149↑. Look, I'm not going to begrudge you the point about "conservative Christians" ... but ... okay, I know it seems like a digression, but you might be aware I have that thing going on in another subforum about how much people understand about what they criticize, and the thing about that particular subject matter making it relevant is that, as you might imagine, there is an aspect by which you're preaching to the choir. So, to be a little blunt:
Question One—What does it matter? And then:
Question Two—What is the threshold defining the difference?
So, yeah. Roy Moore is acting just like a rapist. I'm sorry, but he is one of many powerful political officials I've been aware of who disdains recognizing the relevance of consent in sexual intercourse, as it interferes with his political goals to do so. By the way, there is a guy named William Pryor on the bench in the Eleventh, and he's just the same, and my two Democratic female U.S. Senators voted to give him a bench on the grounds that a president nominated him.
Think about that for a minute: When George W. Bush was nominating judges, rejecting the relevance of consent to sexual intercourse was not disqualifying.
Kittamaru, this
is Rape Culture. This is it. What you're looking at is a
very high profile mask of rape culture being dragged kicking and screaming into the sunlight.
There is nothing new about what is happening, and while it is true, "conservative Christians", and it is true, "Republicans", it is not exclusively true, and we do humanity, both at large and our own, disservice trying to contain it as such.
And remember that one of the stories about Christ that didn't make the Bible was the one where the Apostles went off on Him for getting on a prostitute and loving her more than He loved them, and the problem was that they religious charismatic using His position to oblige a woman who believed He saved her life to have sex with Him.
So, I mentioned
Iceaura↑, and this might make the point well enough:
"Both the women initially speaking about Franken voted for Trump, apparently. Is that part of their message?"
As delicately as possible:
¿Are you fucking kidding me?
(Notice the lack of block caps, exclamation points, and additional, more pointed profanity. Like I said, as delicately as possible.)
I fucking dare
anyone to justify that.
And you? Okay, so, just work with me here: Do you have any idea how many questions I need to ask before I have a grasp on your poke-war context so that I can offer some answer operating in the orbit you intend? And, hey, Bells is a lawyer; she'll just ask more.
So, please, I need you to think about the effect:
Wait, wait, wait, what about this? Okay, well, what about this? If there's a clear-cut principle at stake, it isn't apparent, and if you're burying the lede, we might wonder why. Thus, we might foresee a point at having hashed it out with you, and what have we accomplished? Well, now you have one data point that means nothing compared to the actual scale of the phenomenon, but at least people are talking about what you'd rather be talking about.
Generally speaking, you needn't worry about style, sir. The problem has to do with what you put it toward.
(postscript: Please note, for instance, the title I'm using in the work cited, below; it's derived from an old MLA format for Twitter that disappeared long before the two-eighty shift, which in its own turn renders the current standard unusable. More to the point, it ends up being a pretty brutal title, doesn't it? However, consider occasions when we want to believe that someone didn't mean something to be so godawful as they said it, like Iceaura's line about the Franken accusers. But just like Iceaura gaffed that formulation, we can rest assured that someone in the sphere of men pelting Caroline Orr with inquiries and retorts has used the phrase she put in quotes. And what I cannot stress enough is that we're not going to do that; and as much as you're going to want to tell me that's not what you're on about, okay, fine, but in that case then please wake the fuck up enough to recognize that is actually the form you're accomplishing.)
____________________
Notes:
Orr, Caroline. "I keep hearing people say the recent flood of sexual assault allegations has men 'looking over their shoulder' and wondering if they're next." http://bit.ly/2i38jdM
―Fin―
