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> That seems a bit of a generalization. Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position? "Yeah, I heard it's not so

> That seems a bit of a generalization. Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position? "Yeah, I heard it's not so bad", is probably one of the most careless, senseless, benevolent quips you can possible make to someone who has been raped. No wonder the judicial system is so flawed when it comes to the victims of this horrible crime. I am so sorry to topoligel who has to read your comment. I'm so sorry to topoligel, just in general. I wish there was something I could do myself, to make things better, other than be a kind, caring, empathic person, and try to do as little harm in my life as possible. I am so sorry the above comment was even uttered. No rape victim needs to hear something like that again

topoligel 11y ago
Thank you for your response. I have developed the strength to be able to respond back to comments like that, or to ignore them. I have heard them all my life. People like you existing and continuing to have the strength to exist like that is enough. I try to be a person like that too. Make sure that you are kind, caring and empathetic to yourself.
aswanson 11y ago
Thanks for articulating what I felt when I read that comment. I would have responded, but just about everything I came up with would have violated the site guidelines.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Well, have you been raped... I know this is a popular anti-intellectual position, but it's simply wrong. It's possible to reason about the world even without having experienced a specific phenomenon. I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it. The fact that some people have a negative emotional reaction to certain ideas is unfortunate, but ultimately the onus is on those people to avoid centers of intellectual discussion like HN.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Being able to reason about matter is another thing entirely to being able to reason about what it is like to have a particular (very negative) personal experience. We're not talking about an abstract negative emotional reaction to an idea we're talking about a concrete emotional reaction to an experience. Why do you feel like you have to show people the door because they don't agree with your particular concept around 'intellectual discussion'?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Enimodas is discussing people's reaction to it, in entirely objective and measurable terms. His specific, empirically checkable claim: some people respond differently than topoligel. The emotional reaction I was referring to is to enimodas ideas. Specifically, if some people are unable to handle certain ideas (such as the ones enimodas expressed), it's not the responsibility of the world to suppress those ideas.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Yes, he was. But you're not. You're labeling those that challenge him to verify he has that particular experience as either anti-intellectual and/or simply not welcome here.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Yes. The people challenging whether he has had a specific experience are attempting to distinguish a privileged group of speakers/thinkers, and and wish to deny the right of anyone not part of this privileged group to use their intellect on this topic. I don't know how else to categorize that as anti-intellectual. See also, "only priests/prophets/etc can reason about theology" or "only muslims suffering the shame of being related to a rape victim can reason about honor killings". Same idea - if you aren't part of the privileged group, your intellectual reasoning is somehow suspect.
        11y ago
resentful 11y ago
>Well, have you been raped Yes, I have. There's a certain resentment that comes with this question. Because it means that to comment on this issue my rape must in turn be deemed legitimate for my words to be legitimate. To be short on details for reasons that I hope a compassionate person might understand, it first started with things that probably don't fall under the category of 'rape' so much as molestation. Sexual assault is the legal term. But I was a child and had to live with this person for years, one half of the family knew and the other half denied everything. I spent years locking my door every night, because if I didn't I had to worry about them coming into my room, waking up with their leer hovering over me. I've definitely been traumatized by this aspect. To this day I'm afraid to sleep with the door open. I rationalize it to myself as a fear of malevolent spirits but it's fairly obvious what the true fear is. That's probably not good enough for you, and for that I resent you further. Ultimately upon reflection I find that it wasn't so much the molestation itself that was particularly bad, at one point in high school I noted to myself that I'd rather re-experience it once every three days than experience three days of school. (I wasn't particularly bullied, I just despised school itself that much.) What was absolutely traumatizing was what happened after. The denial, living with this person that's not being held accountable for their actions. Having to deal with the fact that you're not allowed to talk about what happened or you're a dirty liar, or you'll start a huge argument, or this or that will happen. The one thing you want most is validation, and validation is in short supply. Even for the victim of a more 'traditional' rape we can see this in action. How your friends are forced to take sides because of the huge weight of what a big deal this is. (http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/everyone_at_school_talking_about_my_rape_need_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/ever...) I didn't want things to be a big deal, I just wanted them to acknowledge what happened and take steps to make sure it didn't happen again. (As a final note of pedantry, that's not what benevolent means.)
enimodas 11y ago
>Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position? Do you mean anecdotal evidence triumphs statistics, or for lack of being able to find statistics about this, the difference of human experience? >"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad", You must have misread. I did not diminish her experience anywhere, I only said others can have different experiences, and quoted one. Next to that, I asked a question. I know most people interpret those kind of questions as a more 'polite' way of saying something they already believe, but I seem to be in the minority of people who don't make judgement calls about everything and anything, and I don't know of some special sign (like the irony sign or a /s) I can put after my question to let the reader now it's an honest question.
- topoligel 11y ago
  People might have multiple ways of thinking about their own experiences, and some of these ways are collected from people around them, the culture they grew up in. Some of these ways are truths that reside within themselves - their own feelings. The truth that an individual knows inside of the themselves can only talk about themselves, it can not describe how another individual feels about their own self awareness. People may share empathy between similar feelings, but this does not mean that one person should try to project their way of having emotions onto another person, as if there is a 'right' way to have emotions and a 'wrong' way to have emotions. Emotions are not actions, they are emotions. For me, as a rape victim, being raped affected my feelings in a way that was traumatic. No one else can tell me what my feelings were from the experience I endured. So now that we can take this as a fact, instead of an opinion, we are getting somewhere in understanding how to define rape objectively, using subjective (but qualified) terms. The reason I feel those feelings is because I was raped. You don't have to make a judgement call. But some things can only be known on an individual level, and it is up to you to decide whether you believe that person, and that is all you can do as far as 'knowing' anything about it without experiencing it. From that, you can direct your life and how you interact with and understand the world. But that is the limitation you are at. I do not know what it feels like to be a rape victim who does not feel like it harmed me significantly. I do not know how I would communicate with them because I have never had to. I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.

topoligel 11y ago

Thank you for your response. I have developed the strength to be able to respond back to comments like that, or to ignore them. I have heard them all my life. People like you existing and continuing to have the strength to exist like that is enough. I try to be a person like that too. Make sure that you are kind, caring and empathetic to yourself.

aswanson 11y ago

Thanks for articulating what I felt when I read that comment. I would have responded, but just about everything I came up with would have violated the site guidelines.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Well, have you been raped... I know this is a popular anti-intellectual position, but it's simply wrong. It's possible to reason about the world even without having experienced a specific phenomenon. I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it. The fact that some people have a negative emotional reaction to certain ideas is unfortunate, but ultimately the onus is on those people to avoid centers of intellectual discussion like HN.

jacquesm 11y ago
Being able to reason about matter is another thing entirely to being able to reason about what it is like to have a particular (very negative) personal experience. We're not talking about an abstract negative emotional reaction to an idea we're talking about a concrete emotional reaction to an experience. Why do you feel like you have to show people the door because they don't agree with your particular concept around 'intellectual discussion'?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Enimodas is discussing people's reaction to it, in entirely objective and measurable terms. His specific, empirically checkable claim: some people respond differently than topoligel. The emotional reaction I was referring to is to enimodas ideas. Specifically, if some people are unable to handle certain ideas (such as the ones enimodas expressed), it's not the responsibility of the world to suppress those ideas.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Yes, he was. But you're not. You're labeling those that challenge him to verify he has that particular experience as either anti-intellectual and/or simply not welcome here.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Yes. The people challenging whether he has had a specific experience are attempting to distinguish a privileged group of speakers/thinkers, and and wish to deny the right of anyone not part of this privileged group to use their intellect on this topic. I don't know how else to categorize that as anti-intellectual. See also, "only priests/prophets/etc can reason about theology" or "only muslims suffering the shame of being related to a rape victim can reason about honor killings". Same idea - if you aren't part of the privileged group, your intellectual reasoning is somehow suspect.
      - 11y ago

resentful 11y ago

>Well, have you been raped Yes, I have. There's a certain resentment that comes with this question. Because it means that to comment on this issue my rape must in turn be deemed legitimate for my words to be legitimate. To be short on details for reasons that I hope a compassionate person might understand, it first started with things that probably don't fall under the category of 'rape' so much as molestation. Sexual assault is the legal term. But I was a child and had to live with this person for years, one half of the family knew and the other half denied everything. I spent years locking my door every night, because if I didn't I had to worry about them coming into my room, waking up with their leer hovering over me. I've definitely been traumatized by this aspect. To this day I'm afraid to sleep with the door open. I rationalize it to myself as a fear of malevolent spirits but it's fairly obvious what the true fear is. That's probably not good enough for you, and for that I resent you further. Ultimately upon reflection I find that it wasn't so much the molestation itself that was particularly bad, at one point in high school I noted to myself that I'd rather re-experience it once every three days than experience three days of school. (I wasn't particularly bullied, I just despised school itself that much.) What was absolutely traumatizing was what happened after. The denial, living with this person that's not being held accountable for their actions. Having to deal with the fact that you're not allowed to talk about what happened or you're a dirty liar, or you'll start a huge argument, or this or that will happen. The one thing you want most is validation, and validation is in short supply. Even for the victim of a more 'traditional' rape we can see this in action. How your friends are forced to take sides because of the huge weight of what a big deal this is. (http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/everyone_at_school_talking_about_my_rape_need_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/ever...) I didn't want things to be a big deal, I just wanted them to acknowledge what happened and take steps to make sure it didn't happen again. (As a final note of pedantry, that's not what benevolent means.)

enimodas 11y ago

>Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position? Do you mean anecdotal evidence triumphs statistics, or for lack of being able to find statistics about this, the difference of human experience? >"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad", You must have misread. I did not diminish her experience anywhere, I only said others can have different experiences, and quoted one. Next to that, I asked a question. I know most people interpret those kind of questions as a more 'polite' way of saying something they already believe, but I seem to be in the minority of people who don't make judgement calls about everything and anything, and I don't know of some special sign (like the irony sign or a /s) I can put after my question to let the reader now it's an honest question.

topoligel 11y ago
People might have multiple ways of thinking about their own experiences, and some of these ways are collected from people around them, the culture they grew up in. Some of these ways are truths that reside within themselves - their own feelings. The truth that an individual knows inside of the themselves can only talk about themselves, it can not describe how another individual feels about their own self awareness. People may share empathy between similar feelings, but this does not mean that one person should try to project their way of having emotions onto another person, as if there is a 'right' way to have emotions and a 'wrong' way to have emotions. Emotions are not actions, they are emotions. For me, as a rape victim, being raped affected my feelings in a way that was traumatic. No one else can tell me what my feelings were from the experience I endured. So now that we can take this as a fact, instead of an opinion, we are getting somewhere in understanding how to define rape objectively, using subjective (but qualified) terms. The reason I feel those feelings is because I was raped. You don't have to make a judgement call. But some things can only be known on an individual level, and it is up to you to decide whether you believe that person, and that is all you can do as far as 'knowing' anything about it without experiencing it. From that, you can direct your life and how you interact with and understand the world. But that is the limitation you are at. I do not know what it feels like to be a rape victim who does not feel like it harmed me significantly. I do not know how I would communicate with them because I have never had to. I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.