Sexism and Men's Issues

True but, if that man was innocent, then even that (much needed) wake-up call wasn't worth losing his life.

edited 5th Mar '15 4:00:26 PM by LogoP

I can agree with you on that. Nonetheless, perhaps the Indian authorities and their justice system will start to take notes.

I don't like the idea of mob justice because it completely defeats the due process in a civil society.

With him being guilt or not, it was the job of the court and jury of his peers to make the judgment, it isn't up to the people to make justice with their own hands. This opens a lot of room for horrible mistakes like the very real chance of lynching an innocent and throws innocent until found guilty clause out of the window and into the trash.

Even if he is guilty, the manner lynch mobs kill suspects is plain cruelty.

This complete disregard towards the law doesn't only indicate that the failure of the proper application and safeguarding of the law for the accused and the victim, shows a society with a clear disregard towards the rule of law. This can be seen in the rape cases where the perpetrators aren't afraid of the repercussion of their acts and the mobs who completely ignore trial by jury.

Rape is a horrible crime but fighting injustice with more injustice doesn't solve the issue.

It's not about whether or not a death being a wake up call is a good thing. It's about making something good happen from a negative thing.

It's a shame that many people don't know the difference between the two.

@Quag

Yeah can't agree with any of that. The ideas of the Revolution were important, sure, but you could have had the ideas without the brutality and madness. If anything, the horror show that the Revolution devolved into made it more difficult for people to accept the ideals of the Revolution, and delayed the development of genuine democracy in France by more than half-a-century. If the violence there had stopped with the overthrow of the King, France would probably have been a better place than it ended up.

Frankly, even less good is likely to come out of this, because "rapists should die painfully" is neither a new idea, nor for that matter, necessarily a good one. You could separate the ideas that drove the Revolution from the violence and brutality. In this case though, the idea in question was violence and brutality.

@King Zeal

I rather doubt that anything positive is going to come out of this, though. Do I want something good to come out of it? Yes. Do I hope something good comes out of it yes? Do I think something good will come out of it? Not particularly.

You forgot to take into account the several nations under the royal families' control that made a coalition to invade France. Mob justice came from both a desire to dismantle part of the systemic privilege that had been present for at least a thousand years and siege mentality. The siege mentality part is often overlooked. It wasn't just about the king (though he was an important part, since he failed to become competent, and tried to flee the country).

No, you couldn't, because the nobles and the clergy would have none of those 'silly ideas of equality and sovereignity'. The political system that existed before the Revolution was not in favour of the vast majority, and focused on a vote per state (hence why the Third Estate wanted a more substantial and effective representation), not on a vote per person.

And, again, when you're under attack by half of Europe, you're not gonna bother with the niceties. The Revolution had to be terrible so that people in the future wouldn't have to be that way.

I think I'm derailing the topic a little bit, so I'll stop for now. You can either continue this here later or through PM's, if you want.

edited 5th Mar '15 4:42:22 PM by Quag15

And what, pray tell, does resisting an invading army have to do with murdering people in the streets? That's where your argument is going wrong. You're conflating fighting the royalist invaders (which yes, absolutely had to be done) with the mob executing people in the streets (which was completely unnecessary). War to resist an invader is one thing, but mass murder of people within your own country is quite another. I've said similar things in discussions of the Russian Revolution. Fighting the Whites? Justifiable. Turning the Secret Police loose on your citizens? Not justifiable. As for a siege mentality that may explain things, but it doesn't justify them; frankly I'm not sure there ever is a justification for mass murder.

In your first post on the topic, you tried to separate the original wave of mob violence from the Reign of Terror (which I give you credit for, since you're trying to justify a far smaller series of executions; I've met some people who actually try to justify everything Robespierre did), but I don't think you can honestly do that. The Reign of Terror was a natural and predictable outgrowth of unleashing the mob in the first place.

To tie this all back to the original topic of discussion, that's what makes me doubt that the mob execution we're talking about is going to go anywhere good. Sure, it could be a wake-up call. But it's just as likely to convince people that anytime there's a verdict they don't like, or a prosecution is going too slowly, that they can take matters into their own hands. And suddenly the problem isn't with India's godawful judicial system and its unfair treatment of women, but with the mob.

I remember when I first heard news of the rape. Everything I read about it pointed towards raping being a serious problem in India, because gangs of young men felt like they could get away with it, and often did. And that this particular one made the news because it was done so blatantly. A mostly criminal environment was what I imagined.

Criminals responsible for these problems often do what they do due to a sense of impunity, either because society tolerates it (usually due to fear), or because the justice system is failing (either because it is ineffective or corrupt. Or both). When I read about the mob lynching just now, literally the first thing I thought was "The Indians are absolutely done with tolerating that shit". I think this is an important message, as this should be the message any other potential rapist in the country should get (same goes for the law enforcers).

I don't condone mob justice, I'm only hoping that the message (that normal folk aren't going to be apathetic about this issue) is heard loud and clear.

I cannot condone it at all. I'd rather see a guilty person go free than risk an innocent person get killed.

Not to mention that the message that gets sent is less "we're done tolerating rapes" and more "we're cool with vigilante murders". Which in a society that has as many problems as India is deeply worrying. The next lynch mob might get it into their heads to kill a rape victim instead of an accused rapist.

Okay. In the wake of the Gulf oil spill, a lot of people were talking about how we can use the incident to open up the dialogue about alternate forms of energy. I guess this is like that.

The problem is that, as Ambar mentioned, I'm not sure that "rape is unacceptable" is going to be the only message that the public takes away from this.

edited 6th Mar '15 2:18:35 PM by TyeDyeWildebeest

I agree with you, for what it's worth. But something positive should at least try to be learned from it.

I saw a news story saying that part of the motivation for the lynching was that he was an outsider, an immigrant, and that certainly has a good likelihood of being important.

So it wasprobably less how dare you violate a woman's consent and more how dare you using our "property"? -_-

You expected anything more?

The kind of people that hold an individual's rights in high regard don't do lynchings.

edited 8th Mar '15 2:24:07 PM by Ninety

India's got a bit of a violence problem period, if we're being honest. A big reason for it (IIRC) is that the police force outside of the major cities is often times horribly incompetent, corrupt or both. If you go to a police officer and say "X raped me!" they might shoot you down because you dress to "western" or your from a lower caste then the person who raped you. So instead you get a crowd riled up and march over to the dude's house. Or if you've got the cash you can just hire a small mob to beat the shit out of 'em.

Just to be 100% I am not condoning mob violence, I am simply trying to deliver some context. For every rapist that's lynched there's a dozen more rape victims, adulterers, LGBT folks, atheists, anyone-not-part-of-our-preferred-religion-or-social-group-seriously-even-the-Buddhists-have-a-bit-of-an-attacking-outsiders-issue and so on.

I remember this particular story on NPR who would take in raped and abused women in a sorta woman's shelter/commune type thing and also try to get justice for the women. When this often failed they'd generally go have a "chat" with the offender and even try to intimidate police officers who were protecting them. India is a weird place my friends.

Male intimacy and Final Fantasy XV

I rather like that. There's a general discontent in the FF fandom (in some spheres I've seen, anyway) about the focus on male friendships in XV, but it's something I really don't see much.

Yeah that looks like a cool concept that doesn't get explored much even beyond games.

Really? The road trip story is a pretty well-established and popular concept, and they're generally about a bunch of male friends exploring the world together. Male intimacy may be less common as a theme in games, but a good chunk of that is because games rarely do interpersonal intimacy in general.

I mean male intimacy, specifically. There's the occasional Gilgamesh/Enkidu or Frodo/Sam bromance, but I honestly don't see that much anymore, possibly because now everyone assumes they're a couple.

Again, check out any given road movie. It's a staple of the genre.

Wasn't the word 'bromance' created specifically to design friendships with great chance of porking and loving?

The word 'sismance' is not used as often, perhaps because female intimate friends is considered to be more natural and less sex thoughts-inducing than the male equivalent, especially nowadays.

People have forgotten the word 'camaraderie'.

edited 8th Mar '15 7:03:17 PM by Quag15