MOD NOTE: Please note the following part of the forum rules:
The initial OP posted below covers it well enough: the premise of this thread is that men's issues exist. Don't bother posting if you don't believe there is such a thing.
Here's hoping this isn't considered too redundant. I've noticed that our existing threads about sexism tend to get bogged down in Oppression Olympics or else wildly derailed, so I thought I'd make a thread specifically to talk about discrimination issues that disproportionately affect men.
No Oppression Olympics here, okay? No saying "But that's not important because women suffer X which is worse!" And no discussing these issues purely in terms of how much better women have it. Okay? If the discussion cannot meaningfully proceed without making a comparison to male and female treatment, that's fine, but on the whole I want this thread to be about how men are harmed by society and how we can fix it. Issues like:
- The male-only draft (in countries that have one)
- Circumcision
- Cavalier attitudes toward men's pain and sickness, AKA "Walk it off!"
- The Success Myth, which defines a man's desirability by his material success. Also The Myth of Men Not Being Hot, which denies that men can be sexually attractive as male beings.
- Sexual abuse of men.
- Family law.
- General attitudes that men are dangerous or untrustworthy.
I could go on making the list, but I think you get the idea.
Despite what you might have heard about feminists not caring about men, it's not true. I care about men. Patriarchy sucks for them as much as it sucks for women, in a lot of ways. So I'm putting my keyboard where my mouth is and making a thread for us to all care about men.
Also? If you're male and think of something as a men's issue, by golly that makes it a men's issue fit for inclusion in this thread. I might disagree with you as to the solution, but as a woman I'm not going to tell you you have no right to be concerned about it. No "womansplaining" here.
Edited by nombretomado on Dec 15th 2019 at 5:19:34 AM
. . . Really? That's what you got out of everything I just said? Seriously?
Did you skip over the parts where I specifically said that we should call attention to these issues, because we need people to understand that they happen? In case I wasn't clear enough, I don't have a problem with simple "this problem exists, let's fix it" dialogue. What I do have a problem with, however, is "this problem exists, which is what should be focused on to the exclusion of everything else". Which I was specifically saying is the conclusion I got from that blog.
I'm just getting more than a little frustrated with people only hearing me say what they want to hear me say.
The Mistress
Forget it.
edited 17th Sep '14 6:13:43 AM by SaintDeltora
"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!
Just like everyone is focused on if envelopment is in the description while blantently disregarding the continuing definitions of the CDC would classify even a blow job as rape regardless of if the guy came or not, that the FBI also considers envelopment and forced sex acts as part of rape. Hell, the FBI has even used their terms to go after people who force other people to just watch other sex acts as a form of assault.
We are making great strides in getting the legal terms together to build better cases.
Now instead of screaming about definitions, how about we focus on ways to help men report these assualts, education geared to men of what constitutes assualt, that they have rights, they have legal resources? Shelters, programs, rehabs, all this good stuff can't be built unless there are the stats to back it up.
Yes, you can get a restraining order against that crazy bitch. Yes, it is abuse if she hits you or tries to manipulate you. Yes, you are still a man even if you have been assaulted. Yes, you can go to counselling and get the help you deserve. Yes, you can sign over your parental rights with various levels of conditions.
This should be the conversation.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur
No, the other one.
The problem with those kinds of definitions is that they work to silence the men who need that kind of help, because that's how they're apparently used. It's still important to bring it up. Deflecting it because "there are more important issues" is kind of the same kind of problem those definitions perpetrate.
![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
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As long as this thread is restricted to prioritization, and not deflection, there shouldn't be a problem.
Just so long as people remain aware of the difference between the two.
And yes, these definitions are working:
Yes, some women are strong enough to hold down a man. Yes, this man did the right thing by going to a hospital and reporting her ass. No, he is not any less of a man.
And yes, the cops are able to go after her at a higher charge thanks to this man preserving the DNA evidence.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur
No, the other one.
While I'm fundametally against posting pictures of people who're not yet convicted (unless I misread the words), it's otherwise good. Relatively speaking, considering what led to it.
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Nemesis
Are you against it for all crimes, Another Duck? Because it strikes me we publish pictures of people charged with other crimes quite a lot.
A brighter future for a darker age.
A nice butterfly
Not that rare to think of a woman overpowering a man. I am pretty certain the average woman could smack me down.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
No, the other one.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
In a nutshell, yes. And it's less about people in this thread as it is about media in general. I've mentioned it before, but I usually don't. It's related to how I think people are way too quick to judge people based on accusations before they're proven.
Jupiterian Local
The point being made here is that by separating "rape" and "made to penetrate" into separate categories, the statistics reinforce the notion that only men are rapists (whether they rape women or other men) even while the statistics themselves show that this is not true.
The 2011 lifetime numbers show 1,971,000 male victims of rape and 7,610,000 male victims made to penetrate. It also says that 79.3% of male rape victims had male perpetrators, while 82.6% of males made to penetrate had female perpetrators.
In other words, if you count "made to penetrate" as rape (and you should), then the 2011 lifetime numbers for male victims were 2,887,000 male perpetrators and 6,694,000 female perpetrators. Now, that's a total of 9,581,000 male rape victims compared to 24,008,000 female rape victims — so women are more than twice as likely to be raped than men in the first place, and female victims were raped almost exclusively by male perpetrators, so it's definitely not the case that there are as many, or even anywhere near, as many rapes by females as their are rapes by males.
However, if you're male, you're more than twice as likely to be raped by a female than you are a male — which flies in the face of the idea that rape is something that men to do other people (be it men or women), rather than an issue for both sexes.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
No it isn't. Hitler Ate Sugar is comparing an unrelated or trivial thing to the same thing done by a bad person. An argument being hijacked by bigots for bigots is not trivial in the slightest.
No. I'm complaining about the focus that a specific blog placed on it, as said blog was brought up in this topic. Focusing on it in this topic is not what I'm complaining about.
No, that was pretty much what the blog was saying, which was my point.
In other words, if you count "made to penetrate" as rape (and you should), then the 2011 lifetime numbers for male victims were 2, 887, 000 male perpetrators and 6, 694, 000 female perpetrators. Now, that's a total of 9, 581, 000 male rape victims compared to 24, 008, 000 female rape victims — so women are more than twice as likely to be raped than men in the first place, and female victims were raped almost exclusively by male perpetrators, so it's definitely not the case that there are as many, or even anywhere near, as many rapes by females as their are rapes by males.
However, if you're male, you're more than twice as likely to be raped by a female than you are a male — which flies in the face of the idea that rape is something that men to do other people (be it men or women), rather than an issue for both sexes.
More than twice as likely to be raped in that specific way, or raped period? There's a difference.
edited 17th Sep '14 1:56:06 PM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
No, the other one.
The article, unless I read a completely different one, pretty much said that male victims were downplayed or ignored. It left out most thoughts about female victims, but where that was included it was mostly in terms of actual prevalence. That wasn't the focus of the article, at any rate.
I find that reading it as if it said that the male victims are important and female victims are not is just reading what you want to hear. Mentioning one problem does not automatically imply other problems aren't important.
Check out my fanfiction!
Whether or not female rapists are a thing is not what's in question.
An association fallacy would require me saying that talking about female rapists in any capacity is bad because misogynists do that. Which isn't what I said.
The main thing that set off red flags for me was his response to public action. The public action segment of the study was focused on broad strokes to reduce the number of rapes in general society. They were specifically referencing the disproportionate statistics of rape in every category, which predominantly affects women. If they were speaking solely of rape, I'd agree with that conclusion, but they weren't. They were talking about the disproportion that 63.2% of women experienced some form of sexual violence, in any form, compared to 25.1% of men. It only said that these factors needed to be taken into consideration for prevention efforts—NOT that they should focus only on male perpetrators. It only asked that the disproportion be taken into account in prevention efforts.
His response, however, is to immediately jump to the conclusion that they "don't give a shit about men", which not only isn't what they said, but specifically downplays the disproportions of the numbers to focus on male victims.
There's other minor stuff, too. Things that kind of just seemed "off", but I can't really say much because it's technically true. One egregious example is his statement about a "pretty large increase in the ratio of female perpetrators against men and a smaller increase in the ratio of male perpetrators against women". Which is extremely loaded language, considering that the latter number is ninety-nine fucking percent. That increase wasn't going to get much higher. Why did he even need to mention the "smaller increase"? What purpose did that serve except to minimize the ridiculous disparity?
In case I'm not being clear, I'm not saying that he isn't right in that being made to penetrate should be considered flat-out rape. I think he very much is. I'm saying that I find hints of minimalization in the blog here and there.
Okay, thank you. I honestly didn't put those figures together the first time.
edited 17th Sep '14 3:30:59 PM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
Zeal, it comes off like you're saying "men being raped by women is a problem, but women being raped by men is a bigger problem, so we should focus on the latter instead of the former".
This is wrong.
It's not a zero-sum game. You can work on both problems at the same time — but only if you acknowledge that both are problems worth working on. The study focuses on the problem of women being raped by men, so the blog post says "hey, wait, women raping men is a problem too!". Yeah, he's over the top about it, but that doesn't make him wrong.
If the goal is "ending rape" and everyone trying to achieve that goal is talking about men raping women, then pointing out that women rape men as well is not a bad thing. It's not trying to take focus away from women, or saying that male victims are more important than female victims, or somehow damaging to women in some way. It's raising awareness of an under-represented part of the problem.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
To quote you: the hell you say?
Nowhere have I said that. I've made it pretty damn clear several times that that is not what I'm saying, nor is it close to my opinion. Apparently, I wasted my time in those first two paragraphs of post #11075.
Him being "over the top about it" is exactly what the problem I'm talking about is. I've never stated anything about him being wrong, and have flat out said he's right several times. But, he uses very dangerous language that I find damage to the message as a whole. That's my entire damn point. Awareness of the problem is fine (if we're keeping score at home, I also said that several times). It's the way he frames his conclusions, along with completely inappropriate and loaded language here and there, which I find to be really insidious.
This is expecially considering the original question that Odin asked, which (one more time) I said was "Right For The Wrong Reasons".
edited 17th Sep '14 3:58:15 PM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
You're repeatedly referencing the amount of focus on the issue versus the size of the issue itself. You take exception to the blog post focusing on the male side of the issue. You take exception to the blogger "downplaying" the amount of females raped vs males raped by focusing on the latter. If you think he's focusing too much on the male side, then the flip side is that you think he should be focusing more on the female side of the issue. I don't see how your comments can possibly be taken in any other way.
For starters, they could be taken without cherry-picking. As I said in post 11075, the specific way he frames his focus (the "story" he wants to tell with it) is where my complaint lies. I should also note that the main two reasons I get this impression are for the two times (posted above) that he brings up the disproportionate number of women and immediately undercuts with with "Yeahbut". Ninety-nine percent of female rape perpetrators are male, yeahbut look at how much more the female perpetrators number has grown while the male perpetrator number hasn't moved all that much. The CDC finds that women are by far a majority of sexual violence cases of all kinds and that needs to be considered for future, yeahbut that means you don't care about male victims at all even though that's not what you said!
The thing is, if his article is about female perpetration and the fact that the CDC didn't count most examples of real rape, he could have made that point without offsetting his point versus the disproportion statistics, but he didn't. He brought it up twice (by my count, I can't check it now because I'm on a mobile device) completely offset by the focus on men. That's what I mean by "minimization".
Further, he could have easily framed the former in a way that didn't do that. He could have said something like, "This data demonstrates that a disproportionately high number of perpetrators for both genders are men, and we have to do something about that. Clearly, something has gone wrong for so many of us to be reported perpetrators, and this is soemthing that is destroying too many lives, regardless of gender. I still have reservations about the final accuracy of these numbers, but regardless, this is something that desperately needs addressing. However, I also hope the CDC gets its shit together and next time includes being made to penetrate as actual rape. We may be the highest number of perpetrators, guys, but we aren't the only ones by a long shot".
There! I just brought up that disproportion without making it "about women", without mentioning how bad women have it, or implying that the CDC doesn't care about men simply because it says that the disproportion "needs to be considered". They're fucking right that it does, and that has nothing to do with the rest of the point he was making. He didn't even need to bring up the disproportion at all, really, but if he was, that would be the way to do it.
edited 17th Sep '14 6:00:40 PM by KingZeal
A procrastination in of itself
Well done Zeal, in a statment about the issue of men being raped by women being ignored by society (as shown by how the most common form of female-on-male rape is not considered rape by the CDC) you've managed to fail to actually mention the problem, the fact that men who are raped by women have their experience treated as "not possible" and "not realy rape" by important and influenctual organisations like the CDC. I mean come the fuck on, even your mention of the CD Cs having issues is a "however" at the end, a bloody afterthought, instead of the main point when it's the main bloody problem.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Jupiterian Local
Five sentences, only one of which was about female-on-male rape, and even that doesn't mention it directly. If you honestly think that that's bringing up the subject without making it about women, then you're only proving the blogger's point. Men raping women is a widely discussed problem. Women raping men is not. He's trying to raise awareness about women raping men being a thing that actually happens, because people don't know about it. Saying that he's putting undo focus on the issue because men raping women is a bigger problem is entirely wrongheaded.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Did either of you actually read the damn context of the post?
I said: "If he chooses to mention this, which has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH HIS POINT AND THUS COULD BE OMITTED ENTIRELY, this is how how he should mention it." That entire paragraph was specifically about bringing up a topic that is completely unnecessary to the the rest of the post in a way that does not make a comparison between men and women. Aside from "both genders", women are never even mentioned in that paragraph, so I have no idea what the hell you're even talking about, Jovian. And your "point by point" was such a slanted reading of what I said that it's pretty damn annoying.
Again, cherry picking and only repeating segments of my post instead of the whole damn thing in context. What. The. Hell?!
edited 17th Sep '14 6:43:37 PM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
We're obviously talking past each other, so let's try to back things up for a second. If you're not saying that he's focusing unduly on male rape victims despite the fact that there are more female rape victims than male, what are you saying? The only concrete thing you've said about the blog post is that it's suggesting our attention should be on male rape victims more than or instead of female rape victims, which is flat-out untrue. He never says, implies, or suggests anything of the kind — quite frankly, I have no idea where you got the idea. If you could quote a particular part of the blog post that makes you think that?
As I see it, the blog post has several points:
- The CDC is not using their own definition of rape consistently, because they classify "made to penetrate" as separate from rape, despite it meeting their stated definition of rape.
- Female rape of males (ie, males being made to penetrate by females) is a thing that's happening, and happening consistently. (This seems to be a response to people suggesting that the 2010 data for female rape of males was a statistical aberration or a fluke; the 2011 data shows that the amount female-on-male rape increased, rather than decreased, which appears to disprove that idea.)
- The percentage of females raping males (by the report's definition of rape, not including made to penetrate) just about tripled between 2010 and 2011 — in 2010, 6.7% of male rape victims were raped by females, and in 2011 it was 20.7%, suggesting that this is a growing problem.
- Despite the fact that female-on-male rape is happening at an increasing rate, the reports recommendation for rape prevention efforts focuses entirely on male perpetrators. This is extremely problematic, as it ignores a significant and seemingly growing part of the problem.
- Nitpicking specific issues with the report's statistics.
- The consequences of the above is that the problem of male victims of female rapists goes ignored or unnoticed by the media, with a series of examples.
Now, where in any of that does it say that female-on-male rape is a larger or more important problem than male-on-female rape, or that we should ignore male-on-female rape in favor of dealing with female-on-male rape? It calls attention to the fact that female-on-male rape is an existing (and apparently growing, though judging trends on just two years of data is probably premature) problem that's receiving virtually no attention from officials. That's it. "This is being ignored and that's bad", not "we should ignore other problems and work on this one instead" or "this is a bigger, more important problem than other problems". Just "this is a problem and it's not getting any attention at all".
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
I've answered all of that in previous posts.
This right here is why I have a problem with you Zeal. You consider discussing the rape of men in the Men's Issues thread to be to great a focus on the issue. I simply don't understand why you come to this thread, you seem to fundermetaly see the idea of a Men's Issues thread as placing to much focus on Men's Issues.
edited 17th Sep '14 6:04:20 AM by SilasW
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran