Letters to the Editor
fetboy
Published Letters: 1226 Editor's Choice: 22
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To leftychris
[Read the article: Is Bill O'Reilly sorry now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The lack of compassion for male victims and the victim-blaming directed at them are society-wide problems that aren't restricted to one gender."
Considering my own extremely violence past, I have a theory that addresses your concern, and it is that I actually take a bit of pride in the violence that was inflicted upon me (Bill O has said similarly when he references his own violent past).
Men suffer considerably more non-sexual violence than women do, there is no denying that, but few men will claim victim status based upon the amount of non-sexual violence that they have suffered. It took me years to acknowledges that my violent/abused past actually had a deep (and negative) affect on my psyche. Both men and women write off abuse inflicted upon men as part of being a man, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that boys and men a lot of time actively search for fights. In the military we have the phrase "beer muscles," and fighting just for fun is a popular past time for military personal, even among friends (in fact such violence is typically glorified).
However, violence committed against women appalls everybody. The real (and only) reason why women are not trained to be combat soldiers, is that Americans are still not ready yet to drape the American flag over too many caskets holding female combat casualties. Female combat casualties make war mongers, sitting thousands of miles away, look really bad.
Sexual violent against either men and women appalls everybody, but as a society we feel a need to protect women more from sexual violence, I believe, primarily because we know a raped woman or girl could possibly have become impregnated through the ordeal, and we are really saddened when hear of a woman or girl having lost her virginity in that way.
They are double standards LeftyChris, you are right about that, but those double standards were created by the patriarchy
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Female Prisoners!
[Read the article: Is Bill O'Reilly sorry now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Leftychris you wrote; "Many people are perfectly sanguine about the often horrific sexual violence suffered by male prison inmates, for example."
That is a very true, but you omitted that society (almost every society on the planet) is more sanguine about the horrific sexual violence that women suffer in prison. I don't know the numbers or figures showing which sex suffers more in prison, but rape on female prisoners committed by male guards is disturbingly common place, yet rarely fretted over. On the social totem pole female ex-cons are on the lowest rung (pretty much everywhere in the world), and nobody, for the most part not even feminists, listens to them. A female ex-con's word has almost no weight, and in most places in the world men know they can get away with mistreating or even raping ex-con women with no questions every being asked.
A study on the female penal system, and its affects on women, shows that has little has changed since the dark ages. Which is another reason why women don't commit crime as often as men do.
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To Leftychris
[Read the article: Is Bill O'Reilly sorry now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And why stop at pregnancy? What about disease? Aren't males (of any age) who are raped by males at far greater risk of contracting HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C than female rape victims? Why wouldn't that qualify them for greater public sympathy?"
I'm not so certain that female rape victims receive more public sympathy than male rape victims do, and one often hear Right Wing Talk Sleaze blaming female rape victims for the clothes they were wearing, intoxication level that they had, and the fact that they were out at night at the time that they got raped (Bill O has made such blame the female rape victim statements before).
However I will agree with you that the sympathy expressed to male and female rape victims is different, but that is because male rape victims are less inclined to talk about their trauma. Neither sex ever wants to talk about their rape ordeals, but men are less inclined, because it is often seen as confirming a level of homosexuality.
But, Society does feel more of need to protect women from rape, but that protection is often at women's detriment.
"Fetboy, I'll agree with you on this--they are double standards and they have been largely created and supported by patriarchal attitudes. It's time for those double standards to be tossed in the wastebin with all the other rubbish."
I am with you 100% my friend, but to change the status quo will require a lot of tax dollars, changes to a lot of education practices, changes to a lot of our customs and traditions, and take years if not decades to accomplish. But I think it will be worth in the long run.
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Social Power
[Read the article: Is Bill O'Reilly sorry now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I also disagree somewhat about adult women having no social power."
Leftychris, AKA Smith did say women had no social power, but until 50% of congressional representatives (both in the House and in the Senate) are women, and half of all CEOs are women, then you can't really make an argument that women have equal social power to men. AKA Smith was making the argument that women don't have an equal level of social power, yet. And I often make the argument that the feminine charms of resourcefulness, genuine compassion, ability to communicate across all boundaries, and budgeting will eventually give them the edge over the male advantage of physical strength. We need more college grads, and less security guards, but women actually make better security guards (as the Indian women in Liberia are proving), because they don't rape.
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I beg your forgiveness!!!
[Read the article: Is Bill O'Reilly sorry now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So sorry AKA Smith.
I meant to say "Leftychris, AKA Smith did NOT say women had no social power. The "Not" does fit in with the rest of what I was trying to convey.
I humbly beg your forgiveness for my typo.
You did NOT say women had no social power.
And I thank you for catching my slip up.