TheOtherDave comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (857)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 January 2012 04:58:53AM 8 points [-]

only females are encouraged to consider rape as a devastating or life-wrecking occurrence.

Wait... what?

I may not be tracking, here. Are you suggesting that as a class, men who are raped aren't as emotionally affected as women who are raped? Or that if they are, it's for some reason other than social encouragement? Something else?

Comment author: [deleted] 26 January 2012 06:48:26PM 2 points [-]

I was suggesting that men don't have the constant bombardment of "if you got raped, you should feel bad". There is some of that, but not as much and somewhat balanced by other parts of male culture like being looked down on for being emotionally affected by things: "man up and move on" and such.

On second thought, I don't know why I even wrote that, and it detracts form the rest, so I'll remove it.

Comment author: Mercy 31 January 2012 06:08:43PM 15 points [-]

Hang on a minute. This a prime hypothesis testing space! If you really think that anti-rape messaging makes post-rape experience worse, it surely follows that it must be worse for women than for men, this messaging being mostly aimed at women. So you can quite conveniently check your theory by comparing the incidence of ptsd, depression, etc in male and female rape survivors.

No need to keep this as a controversial suspicion or instinct, you'd be armed with real knowledge! Knowledge you can report back to us, and anyone else you may have discussed this issue with. Indeed I think you could cultivate a useful reputation for open mindedness and rationality if you went back to any place you'd seen this attitude expressed before, and shared your findings -positive or negative- with them.

Comment author: Alicorn 31 January 2012 07:15:31PM 12 points [-]

There are a lot of confounding factors hereabouts.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 12 February 2012 01:07:06PM 11 points [-]

Yea, and doing a proper double blind test would pretty much be the least likely thing ever to pass any ethics committee.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 January 2012 08:54:13PM 8 points [-]

Hang on a minute. This a prime hypothesis testing space! If you really think that anti-rape messaging makes post-rape experience worse, it surely follows that it must be worse for women than for men, this messaging being mostly aimed at women. So you can quite conveniently check your theory by comparing the incidence of ptsd, depression, etc in male and female rape survivors.

Not necessarily. If male rape is not acknowledged at all, it can be much harder to talk about it and heal.

Comment author: Baughn 03 February 2012 01:04:25PM 8 points [-]

Well, yes, that"s the point. To figure out whether this comes out positive or negative.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 January 2012 06:54:11PM 2 points [-]

Well, right, I understood that much. But you seemed to be arguing that such bombardment is causal to women feeling bad about being raped... that is, if it weren't for that bombardment, they wouldn't feel bad. So it seems to follow that you would expect men not to feel bad about being raped, since they don't receive that bombardment.

That's what confused me... your whole argument seems to hang together only if I assume that men in fact don't feel bad when they've been raped (which sure isn't my experience, not that I'm any sort of expert) so I was trying to confirm whether you were in fact assuming that.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 January 2012 07:21:07PM *  5 points [-]

such bombardment is causal to women feeling bad about being raped

Only partially. Obviously bad shit makes you feel bad, whether or not you have memes about it, but the hypothesis is that bad shit plus being encouraged to feel bad about it makes it worse.

So it seems to follow that you would expect men not to feel bad about being raped, since they don't receive that bombardment.

men don't recieve as much "you should feel bad and let it define your life" but as another user pointed out, it is also not socially acceptable to have been raped, so there is no chance to talk about it and heal.

your whole argument seems to hang together only if I assume that men in fact don't feel bad when they've been raped (which sure isn't my experience, not that I'm any sort of expert) so I was trying to confirm whether you were in fact assuming that.

Well I didn't intend that particular assumption, or at least I don't anymore. A better comparison to investigate would be how people react to being beaten or robbed.