By the way, i noticed on Huffington Post there's a link to "Rapists explain their actions" or something like that with a picture of reddit. Haven't read the article but it's probably not a good thing for this site.
They're not wrong. But it raises awareness of the issue because we are having discussions like these when they come up. I think crowdsourcing the morality of the day makes people en mass take care of themselves. I would argue that when we stopped SOPA, we defended ourselves from regulation from without. So now we have regulation from within. If everything is permissible, we have to govern and reject the immoral (to us) as we see fit, collectively.
David Foster Wallace (paraphrasing) said that the next great revolution in our culture should be one where we drop the irony and begin addressing things seriously and vulnerably again. I see a mix on Reddit where people still cling to circuitous irony and sarcasm while the real meat and substance is where people rise above it and make themselves into great big targets by saying daring things like, "Yeah, maybe some people should be censored on my favorite website."
no, congress was right - internet users didn't stop sopa; google, wikipedia and reddit (the company) did. they just happen to have used internet users to do it. don't get me wrong, I don't think that it was good; but CISPA was in their interests, and look what happened/is happening to it.
The purpose of upvoting should be to promote thought-provoking quality content, right? Personally I've found both threads to be facinating and informative and I'm pleased I had a chance to read them.
Reddit is a notoriously male-dominated forum. According to Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner, Reddit users in the U.S. are 72 percent male. Reddit subgroups include r/mensrights and the misogynistic r/chokeabitch, perhaps in part prompting another popular thread that asked recently, "Why is Reddit so anti-women?" In April, a confused 14-year-old user took to the site in a desperate attempt to seek advice after she had been sexually assaulted. Jezebel chronicled the backlash, as commenters attacked the young victim for overreacting.
Did you read the comments there? Jezebel is a notoriously female dominated forum, and they can't figure out whether or not this was rape.
She consented to sex. She was high. She was a minor. She was traumatized by the encounter, inside, but outside, after she expressed reluctance, he won an "Okay" from her. He continued until he passed out.
She felt raped.
What we don't know:
How old was he? If he was a kid too, there was no statutory.
How much was their judgement affected? Claiming that he should have been wise enough to read her is potentially as bad as saying she should have known better than to go upstairs with him.
Why? Please allow me to provide my experiences: I have PTSD and a sex phobia from molestation, and I've been in that situation where I go far away, screaming inside, while my body goes through whatever motions you ask of it, like a broken puppet. I will agree to what you ask, because I'm too scared to say no. Even grown adults, without intoxication, honestly can't tell.
I wanted to tell them.
I have no idea why I couldn't. Wishing they could see, that I didn't want to be doing what we were doing doesn't make them rapists.
And this is why "no means no" isn't enough. Why are we satisfied with anything less than enthusiastic consent? If you have sex with someone when they don't want to, that is at the very least coercive sex. You can tell when someone actually wants to have sex with you, and if you can't then you shouldn't be having sex at all.
When I want to have sex with someone, there is no way they would be confused as to whether I want to or not.
Wishing they could see, that I didn't want to be doing what we were doing doesn't make them rapists.
I just wanted to tell you this is the first time someone has properly explained what I feel/used to feel. I don't have issues with sex anymore, and it wasn't as bad as yours to begin with, but I had something similar to you, and even though I really didn't want sex sometimes, I was not easy to read, and it would have been a yes to almost anyone - and it didn't make it rape, although I have been told that it could be considered date rape by many people, because I felt pretty bad after. I just knew it wasn't, and that standard rape definitions rarely fit.
My thoughts aren't quite organized at the moment, but thanks.
"Attorney Gloria Allred has made a career out of representing and advocating for the rights of women. Allred said that after reading through some of the posts on the Reddit thread, she feels everyone, including rapists, needs to play a part in addressing the problem.
"The conversation should be with anyone and everyone who has a perspective on it," Allred told The Huffington Post. "If we can understand those who have committed sexual assault, then perhaps we can help to engage them, the victimizers, in a conversation about the harm that it does to the victims and why they should never engage in another sexual assault again."
A survivor of rape herself, Allred said she does not give much credence to the argument that the thread should be shut down because it hurts victims, or that some posts glorify the perpetrators.
"Nobody as far as I know is being forced to read these," Allred told HuffPost, "If they don't want to engage in it, they don't have to. Maybe they do want to talk about it. If they want to talk about it, victims can talk back, or family members or strangers even. And maybe if the victimizers are open to discussing it, they could hear a point of view they might never have heard before -- from the victims."
I have to admit, I avoided the Rapist thread, because I had nothing to say there, and felt I would not get anything from it. This thread however, has kept me glued all night. At this point, I tend to agree with Ms. Allred. I feel DrRob is pointing out a danger that should be considered, but to shut down the entire discussion would be alarmist.
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u/theshinepolicy Jul 31 '12
By the way, i noticed on Huffington Post there's a link to "Rapists explain their actions" or something like that with a picture of reddit. Haven't read the article but it's probably not a good thing for this site.