Comments On: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess by Cienna Madrid http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/12/21/morning-news-were-still-here-i-guess Comments On: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess by Cienna Madrid en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Tue, 21 May 2013 19:00:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Posted by persimmon]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:37:16 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Furthermore, I don't find the mugging analogy to be accurate. When you go to the police station after being mugged, the officers don't ask you why you were walking alone. They ask you what he looked like and when it happened and in what direction the criminal ran off. That is not the case with rape. How would it make you feel if you reported a crime and got a lecture on what you did wrong?
Posted by persimmon]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:26:26 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> I do not see the connection between common sense crime/victim prevention techniques and saying that women are "asking for it."

Okay, I'll make the connection. You're thinking about this backwards, by conflating muggings -- stranger violent robbery -- with stranger rape. Muggers mug because they want money. They don't care where they get it. The money is the point. So they are like roving sharks looking for the easiest prey. A lot of crime prevention tips are about not being the easiest prey, or avoiding the waters with the most sharks.

Rape is not like that. Rape is a psychologically motivated crime. Violent rape of a stranger -- especially the kind of extremely violent gang rapes that article talks about -- is more like a hate crime. So the same sorts of "common sense" crime prevention tips aren't necessarily relevant at all. Hate crimes cannot be prevented by the victim, they have to be prevented by society as a whole.

Further, such "common sense" crime prevention tips -- don't go out alone at night, have a male companion with you -- actually can do harm, for this reason: one of the motivations behind rapes, especially in highly patriarchal cultures, is to punish women for stepping outside of social boundaries. By reinforcing the idea of such boundaries (women shouldn't go out alone at night, women shouldn't dress that way, etc.) you are subtly reinforcing the idea that it's "okay" for men to punish women who step outside them.
Posted by McJulie]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 07:01:02 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Posted by thatsnotright]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:46:13 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
You could start by not making excuses for the obviously misogynistic Indian police commissioner. He lives in a country where men think it's acceptable to rape women to teach them a lesson, and you are fucking stupid enough to give him the benefit of the doubt? Or maybe you're just a rank misogynist.

Take your mansplaining elsewhere, asshole
Posted by keshmeshi]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:01:53 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Posted by Bauhaus I]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:07:40 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> I would love it if we could treat rape the same way we do other crimes against person or property, a world where safety tips would all be of equal weight. But society treats victims of sexual assault differently. The safety tips aren't just safety tips. Address the real problem, because I'm not being given "common sense advice" I'm being told that by just attempting to live my life in ways that YOU take for granted, that if I get raped I'm culpable. And that ain't right.
Posted by Lissa]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:34:45 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
Did you know that the women who report crimes and suspicious behavior are often summarily dismissed for more "important" crimes, or ignored? Or that women that try to fight offenders are more likely to be seriously injured or murdered during their attack?

How would you have suggested that woman protect herself?

I'm not saying don't take precautions. I'm saying that yes, thank you, it's been heard, great advice since 1980 and before.
Posted by goodjobguy]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:42:44 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
The only thing to do in any nation is spending the time trying to slowly change the culture. The problem is the existing power dynamic of the genders, the root of sexism. However, this takes generations, and is slowly working. Violent crimes of all types are going down, and women are getting to have a more equal footing in the world. This is the long game. This is how we protect our grandchildren.

What to do now? The same thing we do to prevent any crime. The fact of the matter is, the individual is the only person that can protect themselves. So, they have to do everything they can to mitigate the risk. People need to report crimes, report suspicious circumstances, and defend themselves if possible, because the sad fact is, no one can protect you. Unless we want cops on every street corner, which is not possible. As a society, we need to do everything we can to strike down the victim blaming, and the stigma associated with sexual assault.

It is the only option we have: because muggers gonna mug, killers gonna kill, and rapists gonna rape. Our society has not grown out of these behaviors. Hopefully someday we will.
Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:08:15 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
Funny story: I took a shortcut through a bad area once when I was in high school. Got smacked in the head by a brick, had my wallet stolen. Some people blamed me. Others did not. Some people said "hey, white kid walking through that neighborhood, who could blame [the mugger]? Easy target."

It was not my fault. But it was a bad idea to walk through that neighborhood. I can not deny that. I wish someone had warned me how many assaults happened there.

Things are not always as cut and dry as they seem, and the world is not limited to just your experiences.
Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:56:20 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
Given this information, what do you think we should be doing to protect women from rape?
Posted by goodjobguy]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:52:44 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> However, the list of proscribed behavior to avoid being raped is considerably longer, more restrictive and fungible than the list for say, being mugged.
No one will tell you not to ride the bus, and no one will blame you if your work requires you to do so after dark and you get mugged at the bus stop. The onus is on the mugger. No one would suggest that you should have made the effort to join a car pool because muggers gonna mug.

Posted by Lissa]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:39:33 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> now?

I never even came close to suggesting that any rape is the fault of the victim, but that is the strawman that has been constructed. No answers to my questions though.

How about this: long ago, when I was a freshman in college, part of our orientation was being sat down in a room with a group of other freshman and a local cop. The cop proceeded to let us know the dangerous parts of town, and warned us against places we should probably not venture alone or after dark. The group was both male and female, and the crimes we were warned about ranged from mugging to murder.

Now, to be consistent in your viewpoints, you must think this was a horrible, patronizing injustice. And if you do not, why is this different from what we are discussing? Is it because there were both men and women involved? Was it because the crimes being discussed were not limited to rape?

I am genuinely curious.


Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:07:11 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> The city will begin hosting women-only swim times at four local pools in March.

Sorry, but that's just fucking stupid. If your religion doesn't allow you to swim with men, women, blacks, Asians, infidels, or people wearing speedos, than swim in a private fucking pool or don't fucking swim.

@Lissa - You trolling, troll.
Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:57:11 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Whiner.
Posted by Lissa]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:47:53 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
La Grand Illusion


The Divine Right

The Singular Cause of the Rise and Fall of Empires

Pseudo-Reality

There is but one cause, one reason for the endless strife, never-ending wars, religious turmoil and troubles, the historic battles between the religionists and the monarchies, the royalty and the people, the religionists and the bankers, the bankers and the royals and today, the bankers and the people.

The sole reason, the singular cause is the “divine right” to create money. It is truly that simple, although it exists as an abstraction difficult for most of us to grasp since we’ve been indoctrinated from birth to think and believe otherwise, to be confused and bewildered beyond belief!

This isn’t unique to America, but exists across many societies and many cultures.

That group which has seized that divine right of money creation: historically the kings, sultans and monarchs, the religious rulers, etc., and today the private bankers, enjoy special and endless wealth and power, for they declare themselves the recipients of free wealth from the rest of us!

They create the money or currency from nothing, by fiat as it were, and then receive wealth in the form of interest paid on that miraculously created money.

To increase their wealth, there must be ever greater debt created, for with more debt comes ever more interest payments --- hence the growth of empires!

These empires grow until overextended, of course, since phantom wealth creation --- and extraction (bleeding the masses dry) --- is their goal, and with overextending comes the predictable collapse of those empires, and all empires eventually collapse.

These obvious truths must forever be obscured and hidden: our so-called news cycles are filled with the same mindless and nonsensical drivel of constantly repeated memes: Mayan end of the world, and news on entertainment --- gun control after the most recent mass murder, and news on entertainment --- this fiscal cliff and that fiscal cliff, and news on entertainment.

There is no fiscal cliff, of course, just as there is a derivatives canyon --- the money lenders, or more accurately the money masters, have packaged that debt and sold it, then repackaged the debt from that and sold it, then repackaged the debt from that and resold it . . . . . (And that’s why we are experiencing the Great Deleveraging: the central banks have been buying up those worthless derivatives --- their own banks created --- further enriching the uber-rich while further starving the rest of us.)

Aren’t you the least bit suspicious when the spokesperson for the US State Department under a supposedly democratic administration, Victoria Nuland, is the wife of one of the founders of that most ultra-conservative of former rightwing groups, PNAC --- or the Project for a New American Century (Dick Cheney & Company)?

And that the supposedly democratic president, Barack Obama, has professed admiration for her husband’s writing?

If you aren’t the least bit interested or suspicious or wary, it simply indicates how well you’ve been indoctrinated.

It’s all staged, to keep us confused and bewildered!

Suggested links for further enlightenment:

http://www.jayhanson.us/page134.htm

http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1689

http://www.webofdebt.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_I…

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish…

[Thus ends the Doom Chronicles......Sayonara!]
Posted by sgt_doom]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:31:46 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Posted by jzimbert]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:28:02 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
I have relatives on Long Island, and this video couldn't have been a more perfect representation of them in every possible way.
Posted by make dir]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:07:50 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> You live in a bubble if you are unaware that society has no problem what so ever informing women of the steps we should take to avoid rape. Over and over and over all of our god damn lives. We can't do what you take for granted, like taking the bus without having to remember that if we get raped, some how it will have been our fault.
Posted by Lissa]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:01:43 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> Bob's Burgers.

How unfortunate that he shares his name with a dick on the US Supreme Court. Do a Wikipedia search, and you get the dick. You have to go to the disambiguation page to get the talent. On the other hand, I once met a grocery store manager named Charles Schwab who said that he sometimes got special treatment on airlines (free upgrades, champagne, etc.) because of his shared name. I hope the same thing happens to the good John Roberts.
Posted by PCM]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:31:07 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
The point here is that women are inundated every goddamn day with how they need to prevent their own rapes from happening, but we have yet to address the issues of why they are taking place in the first place and why this behavior is continuing (helpful hint: "male nature" is not the answer).

Posted by goodjobguy]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:19 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
Or answer me this one question: why is it acceptable to teach the public steps to avoid all crimes except rape?

Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:05:46 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
I really wish people would quit repeating the ridiculous "asking for it" meme; no one cares about those sluts opinions.
Posted by Unfortunately, Someone Probably Believes This]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:49:09 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]> in fact we have ANOTHER 5000 years of this shit! NO!
Posted by Sargon Bighorn]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:48:48 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Morning News: We're Still Here I Guess]]>
They should institute a curfew on men. Men aren't allowed outside after 8pm or so, unless they have a legitimate reason (e.g., work) and a police escort. Violators should be jailed.

Might not solve the problem, but it could help.
Posted by Urgutha Forka]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:46:00 -0800 The Stranger