Few love a fool

Or a foolish victim

First of all, don't lecture me about the harm verbal abuse can inflict. I was my school's designated outcast/scapegoat from maybe 4th grade on. I am intimately familiar with sustained verbal abuse and the damage it can cause. It has affected everything from my self-esteem to my career choices-I've always avoided any career that might involve even limited public speaking, for example. I can't stand to be the focus of attention of a group of people-some part of me still expects to be told I'm ugly, weird, etc...It crushed me. But I would never try to equate my experience with that of someone who has been sexually assaulted,whether they are female or male. That's a different category of ugliness and violence. Also, since I was verbally abused by both boys and girls, I never saw it as a gender-related issue. I don't think it is. Both genders are quite capable of being hateful.

As far as guys being accused by their girlfriends of rape, well, I'm going to be charitable and assume you do realize that no means no, whether you're dating, married or whatever. No level of commitment gives you unlimited rights over someone else's body, period. So, I'm going to assume you are referring to women making false rape accusations as a way of revenge. I'm sure it happens, but you seem to think it happens all the time, and that real rape is the rarer event. Do you have statistics to back that up? Link to them, please.

As far as the "1 in 4 women have raped at some point in their lives statistic," I've generally found that to be true whenever I'm with a group of female friends that have shared their experiences. In almost all cases, charges were never filed, so these weren't cases of women trying to get back at men. I don't believe there are that many women willing to get up on the witness stand and lie about their sex life just to ruin a man. I'm sure it happens, and those women who make false accusations are despicable specimens. They make it harder for the many women who have been molested or raped to be taken seriously.

As as equating upskirting with rape...I wouldn't say the two experiences are the same, but they seem to be part of the same continuum of behavior-taking something from a woman without permission as part of a quest for sexual gratification, a power trip, or a mix of the two. The way I see it, it's basically Peeping Tom-ism...your skirt, as long as it is long enough to cover the goods, is like a portable house. If you parade naked in front of a plate glass window in your house, you can't blame people for seeing what you've put out there. That's exhibitionism. That isn't what the debate is about...it's about people trying to train a camera into the area underneath your skirt, into the textile equivalent of your 2nd story bathroom window, where you should have an expectation of privacy. The reason people are comparing upskirting to rape on this thread is that in both cases, the women aren't willing participants, and they are being treated as sex objects, violated and not given the right to say "no" and have their voices respected.

Basically, if you're exposing your underwear in the same manner you would your face or another public body part, you lose the expectation of privacy. If you're keeping it covered, you shouldn't have to worry about pervy creeps sticking a camera between your legs and posting the pics on some pervy website for other pervy creeps to perv over. As AKA Smith pointed out, there is no shortage of porn on the internet, including pics of women who willingly bare their panties for the world. Look up their skirts, please, and leave the rest of us alone!

And really, why do you think that females run the world and conspire against men...you must have read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" one too many times, my friend!

Some never listen;

they could be struck by lightning

and still deny it.

I was wondering why so many men are so sexually twisted. What adult man could actually stoop so low, literally and figuratively, as to secretively take an upskirt photo of a total stranger? But then, I ask myself that every time I learn of a new sexual fixation that entails hurting non-willing participants, such as the sickos who enjoy watching women crush insects and small animals with their feet (I don't forgive the women, but with the men, there's the added sick element of sexual excitement). The internet, for better or for worse, not only introduces people to fetishes they've never dreampt of (in all my wild fantasies, I never thought of crushing), but it encourages and fosters the perpetuation of evil acts, ranging from upskirt photos to crushing to child pornography, and perhaps worse that I've thankfully not come across online. "Hostel," anyone?

I can only conclude that the human animal, especially the male half, has a congenital mental deformity that does not allow it to experience sex in a healthy way, at least not without a great deal of discipline and social engineering. I can't address women's problems, but ladies, it is very hard to be a man. We've got issues to deal with that wear us down, beginning in boyhood. The trick is to not let those issues get the better of you, but I am sympathetic to those who lose the struggle, even if I despise their actions and want to see them punished severely if they ever hurt another being, human or otherwise, in pursuit of sexual gratification.

I think of the scene in Blue Velvet where the father has a heart attack and crashes to the ground, and then the camera follows him to the ground and continues on into the ground, until it reaches a grotesque nest of bugs. When I think of the minds of people who photograph women under their skirts, I think of those bugs, and I shudder.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. Spare a turkey and go veggie this year!