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Wow, just wow. It's almost as if you didn't read what Randall wrote. He's not saying "all men are ogres". He's saying "ogres exist and some women wish to avo

by Steko 15y ago

Wow, just wow. It's almost as if you didn't read what Randall wrote. He's not saying "all men are ogres". He's saying "ogres exist and some women wish to avoid them". "I take great offense to my culture being defined ..." Total straw man, he didn't define any culture as this, he noted that it's one characteristic of our culture. "Yes some people do that, but VERY few." That's irrelevant. Baghdad is still a dangerous city for Americans to walk around alone at night despite an overwhelming majority of the populace not being insurgents. Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone? "As to being bigger and stronger, perhaps we should look to the nation of Japan and the feats its military was able to achieve with men roughly the size of north american women" Maybe in this context you should look at Japanese men and women and find that in this case, as in pretty much every culture, men tend to be bigger and stronger then women and violence from one to the other is heavily weighted in the same direction. "Women are perfectly capable of defending themselves." Nonsense, they are not "perfectly capable", hence the omnipresent criminal justice systems in modern societies. "Also, keep in mind that a man is twice as likely to be assaulted as a woman so from a statistical perspective it is men who should be fearing for their safety as they post their gender online." Really you're quoting generic bar fight/domestic statistics when stalking (esp cyberstalking) is obviously far more relevant? Easiest thing to find showed women as 3-1 more likely to be stalked: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf

olalonde 15y ago
> Total straw man, he didn't define any culture as this, he noted that it's one characteristic of our culture. From Randall's post: Our culture's relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them [...] > "Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone?" An American man's likelihood of getting killed in Baghdad is a couple of magnitude higher than a woman's likelihood of getting killed by a sexual predator in NYC. In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers.
- saulrh 15y ago
  In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers. That's true. However, if I'm doing my math right, the statistics for rape and sexual assault are an entirely different story. The US isn't on both of these lists[0][1], so we'll take a proxy and compare: Germany has 6.5/100k deaths/year in accidents and 8.9/100k rapes/year. Note that that's per 100k people, not per 100k women. Then note that, in the US, we have 28 rapes per hundred thousand people, more than three times the rate in Germany. Then note that something like half of rapes are never reported to the police [2]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over-reporting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over...
  - olalonde 15y ago
    Right, but I was really objecting the "American killed in Baghdad" vs "woman murdered/raped in the US" comparison. What I meant is that the risk of a woman getting raped/murdered in the US is much closer to the risk of getting killed in an accident than of walking at night in Baghdad. I'm still sure there are far more than 8.9/100k deaths in Baghdad.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - Duff 15y ago
    Great statistics. What is the point? Are you suggesting that knowing the gender of people is a risk factor for rape? It seems like a few people are making this odd connection between assault, stalking and rape with knowing somebody's gender. You do realize that most humans can sit on any street corner and identify the gender of passers-by with a high degree of certainty, right?
    - 15y ago
Duff 15y ago
The same logic is applied by extremist religious groups to "protect" women from lecherous men. Enter the burka or the nun's habit. If you have a service where you publish your name, link people together into social networks, engage in video chat, post pictures, post status updates and converse with people, gender will become obvious very quickly, regardless of whether the male/female box is ticked. Since you seem to believe that posting your gender online is analagous to walking around in downtown Bagdhad, and that women are incapable of conducting themselves in modern society, what other measures do you recommend we take? Should my wife have to wear a Nixon mask while video-conferencing? Does she need to censor parts of photographs that would allow people to determine that she is a woman? Should she be not allowed to join groups or follow people of interest to other women?
- iron_ball 15y ago
  So privacy is either impossible or mandatory? The slopes sure are slippery around here. I shouldn't have worn my dress shoes.
  - Duff 15y ago
    Not at all. I just don't think that hiding gender is meaningful beyond making some people feel good. It's a false set of security -- gender and identity are linked. It's a social networking application. Knowing what people put on social networking sites, my guess is that if you couldn't see someone's name/alias or gender, you could identify the gender of a user with a reasonable degree of confidence. The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying victims. If a woman (or man) is actually awware of a specific risk of a stalker getting info about them from a social networking site, she/he shouldn't have a public profile, period. Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security.
    - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
      "The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying WILLING victims." There, fixed that for you. "Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security." It's even worse. Exploiters and stalkers build a relationship with a delusion. Maintaining ongoing contact using a mystery persona gives their imagination free rein, ungrounded by contact with reality, building up a fantasy relationship that does not exist. The solution is to use your real persona, and end all contact the moment you start getting creepy vibes.

by Steko 15y ago

olalonde 15y ago

> Total straw man, he didn't define any culture as this, he noted that it's one characteristic of our culture. From Randall's post: Our culture's relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them [...] > "Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone?" An American man's likelihood of getting killed in Baghdad is a couple of magnitude higher than a woman's likelihood of getting killed by a sexual predator in NYC. In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers.

saulrh 15y ago
In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers. That's true. However, if I'm doing my math right, the statistics for rape and sexual assault are an entirely different story. The US isn't on both of these lists[0][1], so we'll take a proxy and compare: Germany has 6.5/100k deaths/year in accidents and 8.9/100k rapes/year. Note that that's per 100k people, not per 100k women. Then note that, in the US, we have 28 rapes per hundred thousand people, more than three times the rate in Germany. Then note that something like half of rapes are never reported to the police [2]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over-reporting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over...
- olalonde 15y ago
  Right, but I was really objecting the "American killed in Baghdad" vs "woman murdered/raped in the US" comparison. What I meant is that the risk of a woman getting raped/murdered in the US is much closer to the risk of getting killed in an accident than of walking at night in Baghdad. I'm still sure there are far more than 8.9/100k deaths in Baghdad.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- Duff 15y ago
  Great statistics. What is the point? Are you suggesting that knowing the gender of people is a risk factor for rape? It seems like a few people are making this odd connection between assault, stalking and rape with knowing somebody's gender. You do realize that most humans can sit on any street corner and identify the gender of passers-by with a high degree of certainty, right?
  - 15y ago

Duff 15y ago

The same logic is applied by extremist religious groups to "protect" women from lecherous men. Enter the burka or the nun's habit. If you have a service where you publish your name, link people together into social networks, engage in video chat, post pictures, post status updates and converse with people, gender will become obvious very quickly, regardless of whether the male/female box is ticked. Since you seem to believe that posting your gender online is analagous to walking around in downtown Bagdhad, and that women are incapable of conducting themselves in modern society, what other measures do you recommend we take? Should my wife have to wear a Nixon mask while video-conferencing? Does she need to censor parts of photographs that would allow people to determine that she is a woman? Should she be not allowed to join groups or follow people of interest to other women?

iron_ball 15y ago
So privacy is either impossible or mandatory? The slopes sure are slippery around here. I shouldn't have worn my dress shoes.
- Duff 15y ago
  Not at all. I just don't think that hiding gender is meaningful beyond making some people feel good. It's a false set of security -- gender and identity are linked. It's a social networking application. Knowing what people put on social networking sites, my guess is that if you couldn't see someone's name/alias or gender, you could identify the gender of a user with a reasonable degree of confidence. The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying victims. If a woman (or man) is actually awware of a specific risk of a stalker getting info about them from a social networking site, she/he shouldn't have a public profile, period. Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security.
  - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
    "The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying WILLING victims." There, fixed that for you. "Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security." It's even worse. Exploiters and stalkers build a relationship with a delusion. Maintaining ongoing contact using a mystery persona gives their imagination free rein, ungrounded by contact with reality, building up a fantasy relationship that does not exist. The solution is to use your real persona, and end all contact the moment you start getting creepy vibes.