The problem with "Every man is a potential rapist"

[Dave-W]

Indeed, in many jurisdictions, females CAN'T legally rape a man.

In those jurisdictions the crime goes under a more proper name like "Criminal Sexual Conduct. "

 

[Dave-W]

Just another point about male rape. In Australia the largest percentage of male rape is of kids. There is a Royal Commission being held into these cases occurring in institutions. Some of the darkest people hid in full view and respect of the community

Yeah. Those guys need to be locked up in the general population and their convictions prominently advertised. (unfortunately illegal here in the US) They would survive maybe a few weeks.

 

[Gadarene]

90% of rapes are committed by men. Are 90% of terrorist attacks committed by Muslims? Are 90% of thefts committed by black people?

Again, what percentage of a crime must be committed by one group to justify profiling of that group entire? 90%? 80%? 75%? When does bigotry magically become pure-as-the-driven-snow-unbigoted common sense, according to you?

You're a skeptic right? Present your objective evidence to justify your bigoted stereotype, please.

(it's also not 90%, as I indicated with my post on the CDC figures, which is another reason why this sort of stereotyping horse pucky is dangerous)

 

[Gadarene]

Excuse me? When the vast majority of women face the exact same thing as me and even worse things than I have faced, and we point out the things we face and the unfortunate things we have to do to protect ourselves, you think it's not an excuse?

Can we say "male privilege"?

It's privilege to call out bigoted steretypes against your group? Who knew?

In the past, this sort of hysteria caused black men to get lynched, using the exact same "Well can't be too careful and besides I FEEEEEEELL scared" logic. Was that black privilege now?

No, sorry. I don't care what happened to you in the context of trying to rationalise bigotry. You have no excuse. You have no cogent or rational argument to justify your stereotyping or your arbitrary cutoff point that somehow prejudice magically becomes ok because you pulled a bogus stat out of nowhere. You are proposing bigotry, and I make no apology for calling that out.

And to turn round and say that being called out for your bigotry is somehow privilege on my part - another reason why this feminist garbage isn't worth the pixels it's written on.

The privilege is entirely yours - as with others in this thread, you think that just because you had something bad happen to you that somehow gives you the right to engage in prejudice. No dice.

 

[Gadarene]

I suspect it is a culture in which women are treated as objects rather than people and demeaned whenever they try to stand up for themselves. How often do we hear of women being threatened with rape and murder for professing a viewpoint that differs from that of men?

You hear about it a lot more. That doesn't mean it happens more, it just means we take mean tweets against women more seriously.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/

Men get more threats online. It's just not politically convenient for many to notice.

 

[Gadarene]

I think perhaps you misunderstood what KTS was saying. It is very very common for women in the public sphere to be threatened with rape by men who disagree with them. It is particularly common online (for example, as we saw in gamergate, or the predictable responses to women who are vocal in the pursuit of social justice

Ah yes, Gamergate. Where a pro-gamergate journalist received a knife and a syringe in the post, where women who posted in defence of gamergate were sent images of someone [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] on pictures of their faces - but Gamergate was the side committing violence and harassment.

Thanks for providing an example of how pathetically biased and one-sided the current dialogue on harassment is.

Clementine Ford comes to mind but I don't know how well known she is outside Australia).

Pahahaha, Clementine "#Killallmen" Ford? Yeah. This is exactly what I was talking about. Crappy human being makes that sort of statement, while whinging about receiving threats. This is why we have this situation where guys just get the same crap online and are expected to take it (and they do, they just get on with their lives) but oh wait u guise A WOMAN GOT A MEAN TWEET TOXIC MASCULINITY CHANGE IT AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT CHANGE THE ENTIRE CULTURE RIGHT NOW

Give me a break. Most of your examples can be explained by this incredibly apt image:

So it's not opinions held by all men, more some men who then feel entitled to respond by threatening rape.

And some women who think they are entitled to a monopoly on victimhood when it comes to online abuse.

 

[Gadarene]

I didn't mean that the threat wasn't serious, but I meant it wasn't most likely literal. It's here sometimes used as a figurative expression for beating the other guy up.

But why waste a good damselling opportunity to silence your critics and get page views?

 

[Jack of Spades]

Again, what percentage of a crime must be committed by one group to justify profiling of that group entire? 90%? 80%? 75%? When does bigotry magically become pure-as-the-driven-snow-unbigoted common sense, according to you?

I believe the most serious male-dominant problem globally would be that of being a dictator, regardless of the exact title. I can't name out of a hat a single female dictator. As a subgroup of regional dictators, I'm pretty sure 99-100% of African warlords who commit horrible crimes, are men. These people are known to commit military campaigns that include crimes against humanity.

Therefore committing a military campaign including crimes against humanity would likely be the crime that would have the biggest male perpetrator rate in the world.

Accordingly, if statistic-based sexist profiling is the new normal, I claim my right to be to first receive education and re-programming on how to not be a potential African tribal warlord and how not to run a military campaign that includes crimes against humanity, before we move on to less male-dominated crimes.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

For crying out loud.

A woman has a 1 in 4 chance of being raped.

You do not have a 1 in 4 chance of being murdered.

Dividing the number of women by the number of rapes gives you a percentage that's almost completely worthless. It is not true that every woman has a 1 in 4 chance of being raped. That's not how statistics work. The point in my last post was to show how misleading numbers without context are. My wife understands this, as she was a math major in college. That's one reason why she doesn't have a pathological fear of encountering men. She's said that people who push these statistics should be ashamed of themselves, because of the unwarranted fear it causes.

Even the "1 in 4" statistic is in question. The authors of the paper where that figure comes from have chastised the media for wantonly throwing it out without also mentioning this from the paper:

“An analysis of ... non-response bias found [that] estimates may be too high because non-victims may have been less likely to participate.”

I've always thought that the reason this country is so irrationally fearful of everything (men, blacks, Muslims, etc.) is because the media tries to scare us, and we fall for it.

The completely untrue statement "all men are potential rapists" is just another manifestation of this.

 

[Gadarene]

Ha, and I just remembered something. During the heady days of Elevatorgate in the skeptic community - that was where I first heard about Schroedinger's Rapist. It was also the start of my journey towards nonfeminism.

So it's good for one thing, at least

 

[Gadarene]

I believe the most serious male-dominant problem globally would be that of being a dictator, regardless of the exact title. I can't name out of a hat a single female dictator. As a subgroup of regional dictators, I'm pretty sure 99-100% of African warlords who commit horrible crimes, are men. These people are known to commit military campaigns that include crimes against humanity.

Therefore committing a military campaign including crimes against humanity would likely be the crime that would have the biggest male perpetrator rate in the world.

Accordingly, if statistic-based sexist profiling is the new normal, I claim my right to be to first receive education and re-programming on how to not be a potential African tribal warlord and how not to run a military campaign that includes crimes against humanity, before we move on to less male-dominated crimes.

http://mylolface.com/assets/faces/happy-i-see-what-you-did-there-clean.jpg

 

[smithed64]

Every man is capable to rape..just as every woman is capable to prostitute themselves.

The world is lost, fallen, sinful, lustful, prideful and unrighteous.

Sin is sin. And we are all capable to commit it and would say we do so many times. The bible tells us that if we say we have no sin we are liars.

We who are Born Again, do have the fix. We tell people about sin,and we spread the Gospel...Law to the proud, grace to the humble.

We get out there and sow the seed of Christ. God will reap it.

 

[Jack of Spades]

http://mylolface.com/assets/faces/happy-i-see-what-you-did-there-clean.jpg

I can see you're clearly a heartless person since you don't think about the victims of those horrible campaigns, since you, as a man, refuse to share the guilt and acknowledge your subconscious tendencies that will one day make you a tribal warlord.

What is needed here, is that you as a man, give away your right to not be discriminated against, or not be profiled, so we can focus on real problems in the world.

But just keep in mind that we are not allowed to recognize the fact that those warlords tend to be all African, because that would be bigoted of course.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Every man is capable to rape..

I'm not. Being "capable to rape" entails more than just having a penis...

 

[Gadarene]

I can see you're clearly a heartless person since you don't think about the victims of those horrible campaigns, since you, as a man, refuse to share the guilt and acknowledge your subconscious tendencies that will one day make you a tribal warlord.

What is needed here, is that you as a man, give away your right to not be discriminated against, or not be profiled, so we can focus on real problems in the world.

But just keep in mind that we are not allowed to recognize the fact that those warlords tend to be all African, because that would be bigoted of course.

Why does society deny the existence of warlord culture *smh*

 

[smithed64]

I'm not. Being "capable to rape" entails more than just having a penis...

Your human right?
Then you are capable to do anything that is sinful. Didn't say you would just capable. Just as your capable to be gay, straight, bi, or celibate.
We are a fallen race. We are separated from God, by sin. And these sins are what sends us to Hell.

Even being Born Again. We are still fallible and have to place our Trust in Christ, read our bible and pray daily. Asking God to guide us, sanctify us (other words change us completely to be more like Christ who was sinless)

It's all about God, not us.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Your human right?
Then you are capable to do anything that is sinful.

To be capable of any action, you have to have a potential desire to do that action.

I have quite the opposite of a desire to rape anyone. So no, I'm not capable of it.

 

[smithed64]

To be capable of any action, you have to have a potential desire to do that action.

I have quite the opposite of a desire to rape anyone. So no, I'm not capable of it.

Okay, I'll back up a min.
Here is the definition of capable.

adjective
1.
having power and ability; efficient; competent:
a capable instructor.
Idioms
2.
capable of,

1. having the ability or capacity for:
   a man capable of judging art.
2. open to the influence or effect of; susceptible of:
   a situation capable of improvement.
3. predisposed to; inclined to:
   capable of murder.

Nothing about desire. You may desire to do something and not do it. But just because you don't do it...doesn't mean your not capable to do it.
The same as if you desire not to do something.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Okay, I'll back up a min.
Here is the definition of capable.

adjective
1.
having power and ability; efficient; competent:
a capable instructor.
Idioms
2.
capable of,

1. having the ability or capacity for:
   a man capable of judging art.
2. open to the influence or effect of; susceptible of:
   a situation capable of improvement.
3. predisposed to; inclined to:
   capable of murder.

Nothing about desire. You may desire to do something and not do it. But just because you don't do it...doesn't mean your not capable to do it.
The same as if you desire not to do something.

If I don't have any desire to do something I don't have the capacity to do it. And if I don't have the capacity to do it, I'm not capable of doing it.

But I don't see a reason to bring up semantics if the end result is the same.

 

[WolfGate]

Okay, I'll back up a min.
Here is the definition of capable.

adjective
1.
having power and ability; efficient; competent:
a capable instructor.
Idioms
2.
capable of,

1. having the ability or capacity for:
   a man capable of judging art.
2. open to the influence or effect of; susceptible of:
   a situation capable of improvement.
3. predisposed to; inclined to:
   capable of murder.

Nothing about desire. You may desire to do something and not do it. But just because you don't do it...doesn't mean your not capable to do it.
The same as if you desire not to do something.

But the OP didn't say every man was "capable" - it was about the statement every man is a "potential" rapist.

I'll grant you your capable definition and agree that essentially every man has the equipment and capability to be a rapist - me included. However, I am not a "potential" rapist as I do not have the desire/temptation/anger- whatever catalyst it is that would be behind a man committing rape.