Rocks fall, everybody dies.

[kiya]

Okay, I blogged this already, but I must WTF to a larger audience.

A couple of shock jocks think it's a real trip when one of their guests suggests that he'd really like to rape a woman to death.

The hell is wrong with people anyway?


Time to curl up with a bottle of Woodchuck and just hide from the universe. What a capstone to a complicated evening coming across that shit was.

Comments

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I wonder, not really knowing for sure, whether the biological imperative plays into it at all. The deeply-entrenched need to procreate, to pass on one's genes. And the recognition, at some primal level, that women have an enormous amount of power to decide whether or not *your* genes get passed onward.

Women have an enormous amount of power in general, I think. It gets twisted and perverted and abused and denied. But I think that if women *didn't* have so much power, "the patriarchy" wouldn't go nearly so far out of their way to try to deny all that power from them.

Speaking as a member of the male gender, although I certainly hope I'm not one of those chest-thumping neanderthals, I can tell you that I'm quite honestly terrified of women. But I tend to deal with that by hiding, rather than by thumping my chest and making tasteless jokes.

In the classical dating scenario, the man is always the supplicant. Unless you're an Alpha Male, of which there are few, then your role in the game is to approach the woman and bare your throat before her, so that she may accept or deny your petition. Rejection can be a very powerful event, in that scenario. Especially when you run the whole thing through with sexual tension and the aforementioned biological imperative.

I ramble, because it's 1 AM, but I hope I contribute something useful to your theory.

[kiya]

The problem with the "classical dating scenario" as you present it is that the woman only has the power to say 'yes' or 'no'; she does not have the power to select a mate.

One of the major reasons I developed a geekflirt habit was that I didn't want to be stuck with the creeps and assholes who expressed sexual interest in me, and I didn't want to be alone.

Only being able to accept or reject is not a powerful situation at all -- keep in mind here that I'm speaking as someone who was sexually harassed through early puberty, and the only person who approached me with reasonable politeness later went on to attempt to rape me. These are not happy options.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Well, the classical dating scenario, as I use the phrase it, is fraught with peril and inefficiency from both ends and all levels. Which is part of why I'm seeing it less and less as Match.com slowly takes over the world.

In the biological model, the woman has some limited power to select a mate. She displays her plumage, as it were, hopefully attracting a large number of suitors, and then has the power to choose among those suitors. The man has some limited power to choose which women he will court, but has no power to choose which one of them will choose him in return.

Which, really, leaves both ends feeling dissatisfied with the process.

For a long time I thought that that was the only correct way in which to obtain a girlfriend. Too much exposure to TV when I was a child, or something. And I was pretty much resigned to never participating in any of it and dying alone, because it was a *terrifying* prospect.

Which is not to cast aspersions at all on how sucky it may or may not be on the other end, but to lend credence to the idea at the top of the thread about how rape really *is* about the sex, and the suppressed and transmuted fear that the man has of the woman gets turned into the rage and anger instead.

it's not complicated

[(Anonymous)]

One of the most complete psychotic breaks I've ever seen was in response to (paraphrased) "you don't seem like the type to get many offers of free samples". (Tangentially, age and treachery beat shrieking berserk fits about as reliably as youth and enthusiasm.)

The fear is simple -- if women are aware that they have the choice of saying no, if society is structured so that there are other things to do and to be than wives and mothers, these guys are never going to get any. No one will want them.

The difference between a geek and a jock is that the geek responds to the certain knowledge of being unattractive with either resignation (frequently way-some-lots resigned resignation) or a decision to change, and a jock responds by trying to compel, directly or indirectly, an assertion that they are-so attractive. (Sometimes through enormous efforts to define the consensus notion of attractive as them.)

Methods applied to either response vary widely, of course, but this is what it all comes down to. Do I change, or do they change? (No change is only fine if you're basically happy.)

If women are people, not only can they say no, they will say no. Always. So women can't be people.

If it's alright to be gay, if the scope of choice expands so far, then not only is it alright not to need a man at all, it's alright not to need a woman, either, and masculinity stops being measured by which woman you got, and that takes away the interest on the part of the rest of society in enforcing the whole structure of "you must" rules.

Rape gets tangled up in such extreme hostility because it is, aside from the vile nastiness of the moment, also an admission that, yep, never going to get a willing yes. (Either from this person or in general.)

Part of the cultural catch-22 is the idea that being able to force someone is of value; this breaks under they're-people-too models. Which is yet another reason there's so much intensity about the ongoing change of model; change the model, and the retrospective basis of self-image changes, too, and the ones with vision and courage have for the most part already changed. (Or are young and were raised wrong.)

-- Graydon, who thinks that the appropriate cultural message on the "are women people?" question is "yes. change as necessary or die."

Re: it's not complicated

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I always enjoy it when someone else comes along behind me and says the thing that I was trying to say, only with better words. H'ray for the internets, and smart people, and stuff.

Well, I can't say that's *exactly* what I was trying to say, since I hadn't thought it all the way through, but it's in the general direction that I was aiming at.

Thank you for your words.

Re: it's not complicated

[(Anonymous)]

Glad you found it useful!

Couple other points, then --

That classic dating model? It produces results where each guy winds up with the highest status woman who will say yes to him when he asks, where each gal winds up with the least unacceptable choice out of those have have asked and net yet been refused. (since you don't know who is going to ask tomorrow, two weeks from now, or later tonight, this is a terrifically difficult optimization problem on the "asked" side.) One should note that this is in no way a symmetrical situation.

What that dating model does in an environment where the female-type people don't feel compelled to wait to be asked isn't worth the trouble of its strictures.

You might-maybe want to think about your choice of language around "obtain a girlfriend", too. Generally speaking, for a relationship of equals, "some things we have chosen to do together" models (with the things being specifically negotiated, rather than left to social default) work much better than mutual possession models. (Non-mutual possession models are right out!)

-- Graydon