I don't support feminist movements

[PureX]

It's great when people are able to come forward and take action against their abusers. I've just never been in an opportune time or place for it. It's also the largest source of the PTSD I've had to deal with. I'm willing to talk about it, but I couldn't handle opening that can of worms again for real. People also tend not to take my side because I don't speak with any confidence. But I can at least share my stories so other people can learn from what I've dealt with.

You spoke out and got away from it. That's taking real action. And it helps other women to do the same. I think that's what the #MeToo movement is all about.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Are accounts from personal experience "hearsay"?

If you're presenting it as fact and there's no evidence that it happened, yes.

 

[Tambourine]

If you're presenting it as fact and there's no evidence that it happened, yes.

So victims who can't prove their abuse to the standards of a court of law should never speak publically about their abuse.
Which is, coincidentially, exactly what their abusers want to happen, and what potentially enables them to seek new victims at leisure.


If you can't see my issue with that then I don't know what to say, frankly.

 

[PureX]

Then they should speak about it, especially if the police won't help them. But just posting hearsay helps no one.

You seem to be a little confused, here.

How do they speak out about what happened to them without you calling it "here-say"? Do they have to file charges, go to court, and win the verdict before they can speak out about what happened to them? All just so we can avoid the rare instance when someone is wrongly accused in a public forum?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

You seem to be a little confused, here.

How do they speak out about what happened to them without you calling it "here-say"? Do they have to file charges, go to court, and win the verdict before they can speak out about what happened to them? All just so we can avoid the rare instance when someone is wrongly accused in a public forum?

I'm not confused at all. I'm talking about posting things online in public and making allegations against people and expecting people to automatically believe you when there's no proof. We should listen and look into it if we can, but we shouldn't automatically think it's all true. I don't know how to be any clearer than that.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

So victims who can't prove their abuse to the standards of a court of law should never speak publically about their abuse.
Which is, coincidentially, exactly what their abusers want to happen, and what potentially enables them to seek new victims at leisure.


If you can't see my issue with that then I don't know what to say, frankly.

You keep putting words in my mouth, so you seem to want to be scared but it's you doing it to yourself, not me.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I didn't say anything funny and misusing the "funny" rating like that is against the rules.

 

[PureX]

I'm not confused at all. I'm talking about posting things online in public and making allegations against people and expecting people to automatically believe you when there's no proof. We should listen and look into it if we can, but we shouldn't automatically think it's all true. I don't know how to be any clearer than that.

Freedom of speech means that we are free to make any allegation we choose. And it also means that we are free to believe or not believe those allegations as we see fit. If someone lies, and those lies cause harm to someone else, then there are slander laws that enable redress.

You are free to doubt these kinds of allegations all you like, but the women making them ARE free to make them, in public, and anyone who chooses IS free to believe them.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Freedom of speech means that we are free to make any allegation we choose. And it also means that we are free to believe or not believe those allegations as we see fit. If someone lies, and those lies cause harm to someone else, then there are slander laws that enable redress.

You are free to doubt these kinds of allegations all you like, but the women making them ARE free to make them, in public, and anyone who chooses IS free to believe them, as they choose.

Er, you can post anything you want, the question is should you? Anyway, I've said what I've had to say about this.

 

[PureX]

Er, you can post anything you want, the question is should you? Anyway, I've said what I've had to say about this.

If a woman feels that she has been subjected to sexual harassment, or worse, she has every right, and it could be argued even an obligation to speak out about it, regardless of any legal action.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

If a woman feels that she has been subjected to sexual harassment, or worse, she has every right, and it could be argued even an obligation to speak out about it, regardless of any legal action.

Yeah, if it actually happened.

 

[SomeRandom]

I’m curious, between all this handwringing over whether or not random blog posts are all verifiably correct or simply slander.
How many victims of sexual assault do not come forward due to stigma and shame from society? And I don’t mean online.
What’s the actual conviction rate of sexual crimes?
I of course prefer these issues be settled
in a court of law. It’s just more civilised, for lack of a better word.
But isn’t a common response by victims to try to clean themselves after such an assault, thereby unknowingly destroying evidence?
Aren’t a lot of sexual crimes in general based on he said she said?

MeToo I think is an example of instant reaction prevalent in today’s age of social media.
But it’s not like scandals which may or not be true hampering the careers of celebs is a new phenomenon. That goes back generations.
Ideally it would be innocent until proven guilty. But it’s a lot of like this cancel culture I keep hearing about. All the people supposedly losing their reputations are successful millionaires/billionaires with high profile friends, a safety net us mere proletariats can only dream about and a crack team of skilled lawyers that can likely get them out of even the most heinous of legal scraps.
Not saying I don’t empathise with people just because they are rich. They are still human after all. But it does have an air of “oh cry me a river rich boy” to it. Let the pleb give their side of the story for once

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

I wish there was an easy answer. If we look at rape statistics around the world we have 2 factors that we are measuring rather than 1 which makes things far far far more difficult to create a precise change. For example a country or population might have a very very very low rape rate. Though this is only because they aren't reported. Or we could have Sweden which has an extremely high rape rate but that is an all encompassing sexual assault statistic so its artificially inflated to the actual number of assaults.

I haven't looked it up but #MeToo might have even caused an increase in the rape stats because it encouraged otherwise silent victims to take action. So we don't have any numbers yet that we can point at that show us the real correlation to number of rapes. I would like to think yes. I really would and there is indirect evidence that supports harassment overall is down. Though again the place this has made the most impact is workplace sexual assault. Even if it doesn't bring down the total number of rapes if it destroys the normalization of minor sexual assault this will still be an overall benefit to society.

But again hopefully this does lower rape rates. The problem with abusers is that they know what they are doing is wrong and tend to have a belief that they can control their victims. Its why we have so many other forms of abuse that are clearly illegal and with less stigma still prevalent. Though we do know that the law can directly change the amount of abuse in other forms to a degree. For example Russia recently rolled back protections against domestic violence victims and domestic violence shot up immediately.

Dang! What the heck did Russia do that for? Terrible! Thank you for writing all that!

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I think secretly, males are like this inside, even if they don't admit to it, superficial, visually oriented, objectifying, with a desire to dominate and control, and that is all probably based (at least to a large degree) on their hormones messing with their minds.

I think that might just be why men don't like you. That, and everything else you said.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

BPD people are basically going around everywhere ruining tons of people's lives for their perceived insults from them and for revenge.

Whatever. A very good friend of mine has BPD, and while her fuse is maybe perhaps one micron in length before a nuclear blast of anger goes off, she's also one of the hardest working, most honest and respectable people I know, and I trust her more than I do almost everybody else. And more of than not, the strong hate has equal parts fear behind it, because their mind isn't friendly to them at times.
You're ramblings of crap do more damage to lives than what she has.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

What’s the actual conviction rate of sexual crimes?

In America, all crimes in general have low conviction rates. Sex crimes especially.
The Criminal Justice System: Statistics | RAINN
(It claims 995 out of 1000 offenders walk free)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If you're presenting it as fact and there's no evidence that it happened, yes.

There often times isn't any "hard" evidence.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

Whatever. A very good friend of mine has BPD, and while her fuse is maybe perhaps one micron in length before a nuclear blast of anger goes off, she's also one of the hardest working, most honest and respectable people I know, and I trust her more than I do almost everybody else. And more of than not, the strong hate has equal parts fear behind it, because their mind isn't friendly to them at times.
You're ramblings of crap do more damage to lives than what she has.

Well, the main thing is that a lot of people report being very badly traumatized by people who have Borderline Personality Disorder and leave them feeling that there may be an outburst of extreme anger at any moment for any or no apparent reason, which has damaged a lot of people growing up and living through knowing people or having family members or parents or relationships and spouses with this disorder. I don't think anyone cares about what I say luckily, so I think my ramblings or rants or whatever probably do less damage psychologically than a person yelling in your face and pulling out a knife and saying they are going to jab it into something in the next few seconds and other insane stuff I've heard from people who lived through crazed BPD outbursts (maybe your friend doesn't have it that bad, but its left a lot of people feeling very messed up and afraid for the rest of their lives, so I wouldn't take it lightly and the stigma doesn't really come from nowhere, but does come from lots and lots of stories of dealing with people with severe reactions who have or seem to have BPD or some kind of extreme issues with anger and violence and taking offense and difficulty controlling their outbursts and rages and even violence).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Well, the main thing is that a lot of people report being very badly traumatized by people who have Borderline Personality Disorder and leave them feeling that there may be an outburst of extreme anger at any moment for any or no apparent reason, which has damaged a lot of people growing up and living through knowing people or having family members or parents or relationships and spouses with this disorder. I don't think anyone cares about what I say luckily, so I think my ramblings or rants or whatever probably do less damage psychologically than a person yelling in your face and pulling out a knife and saying they are going to jab it into something in the next few seconds and other insane stuff I've heard from people who lived through crazed BPD outbursts (maybe your friend doesn't have it that bad, but its left a lot of people feeling very messed up and afraid for the rest of their lives, so I wouldn't take it lightly and the stigma doesn't really come from nowhere, but does come from lots and lots of stories of dealing with people with severe reactions who have or seem to have BPD or some kind of extreme issues with anger and violence and taking offense and difficulty controlling their outbursts and rages and even violence).

People are scared of mental illness. If you know how to handle it, know what you may be in for, and accept the person as they are, you can have good relationships with someone with BPD, or any disorder. I've often heard complaints about how people should not date those with Asperger's, because apparently we're selfish, incapable of caring, and will leave lovers feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled in their relationship. And just like with much of what you hear about BPD, it's based on ignorance and quite painful to hear people saying you are not worthy of love, friends, or companionship.
And consider this. You have apriori knowledge of BPD. You know what people have told you. I know by interacting with people who have it. Just like I know from first-hand dealings that those with schizophrenia are not overtly and explicitly dangerous people despite "common knowledge" of everyone with their stories of someone with schizophrenia.

 

[JustGeorge]

And, of course, you can't assume a person with a mental illness or other condition all present their symptoms the same, or even in a similar manner.

I have two sons with autism, and they are nothing alike. The way it manifests in them is entirely different.