Still loving Ziggy, although he may be "off the hook" in real life, too. Although I've long thought of him as heroic to Buffistas(not just because "he's" well-endowed, but because his character took a moment during a murder confession to pick a word that "just sounds better, you know?") We would do that. If we didn't know to lawyer up early and often after opening fire in an electronics store, that is.

Not all subhumans are men and not all men are subhumans.

My ethic doesn't allow me to designate some people as subhuman, no matter how loathsome they may be. That's bad philosophical mojo for me (and Buber, I guess). From what I've gleaned from history this kind of behavior is entirely human and pretty fucking common at that.

Y'all are free to designate anybody subhuman as your conscience dictates, of course.

I just don't want to feel more outraged for a woman victim simply because I identify more with her, or because women are more often the victims of rape. I feel like that means there's less outrage for other victims.

I don't think anyone has said there should be more or less outrage based on who the victim is. And, frankly, in the U.S. there is significantly MORE outrage if the victim is a child or elderly than if it is a woman.

Is this a gendered problem from the victim's side? I say yes because the victims are usually women. Should it be is another question. And, no, it shouldn't be. It should be a human problem, but it realistically isn't.

I think this may be it. I might be looking at it from a sort of detached idealist point of view. Curse of an education in anthropology, I suppose.

I don't actually think your friend should have been charged, based on what you've said, but that's a different story.

I think he was charged because he was young, fit (oh, VERY fit), and he won quite dramatically. I don't see it going very far, but it's an incredible hassle even if he's found innocent.

Is this a gendered problem from the victim's side? I say yes because the victims are usually women.

Hmm. Part of me is thinking that it's a problem for the women that were attacked. It's a potential problem for me because I may be more likely to be attacked (or maybe I'm no more likely than the average guy to be attacked--there are things that can mitigate one's potential victimhood--is it still a gendered problem for me then?). It's a problem for men because they are affected either as being painted potential attackers for no reason other than sharing a gender, or because even though they're not the primary victims the reverberations will ripple out past the woman who was raped.

My ethic doesn't allow me to designate some people as subhuman, no matter how loathsome they may be. That's bad philosophical mojo for me (and Hannah Arendt). From what I've gleaned from history this kind of behavior is entirely human and pretty fucking common at that.

Very much in agreement. I dont like to distance myself from behaviour like this too much, because that's when I start thinking it's not my problem. I live in the same world they do. It is my problem.

Also, ita, I like your logic.

Every time I start to post something, I click "refresh" first and find that Dana has said it, only more concisely and eloquently.

This.

And also, I want to be clear that this is something that makes me feel sick, that I've found myself more often than ever wondering what is going on behind the eye sockets of men, and feeling angrier and more distrustful. So I'm not making the all men are scum accusation. I'm making a "so many men think of women as subhuman, that I'm in a constant state of anger" statement.

South Dakota pushed me pretty hard. And then the women who can't drive or go out in public without men in the Middle East. The shortage of girls because they are so devalued as to be aborted in favor of boys. Then the boys who got off without a scratch having assaulted an unconscious girl with objects and writing obsenities on her body.

Now this, too. It feels like it's getting louder. And my trust of men dwindles. I wonder because, if entire nations exist where the bootheels of men are permanently stomped into the throats of women, that can't just be a few bad men. That's an entire nation of men. SD is an entire state.

but he would certainly say the most demeaning or shocking thing he could about women. That would have some currency in his culture, indicating that he's not some pussywhipped PC girlyman.

The fact that it has currency is reason #584698 why I feel like a second class citizen.

That's an entire nation of men. SD is an entire state.

Is every man in that nation wielding the bootheel? Every man in South Dakota preventing women from having abortions? If not, it's not an entire nation of men any more than it's an entire nation of women (assuming voting rights) (similarly for state of men vs. state of women).

I just don't want to feel more outraged for a woman victim simply because I identify more with her, or because women are more often the victims of rape. I feel like that means there's less outrage for other victims.

I don't feel less outrage at any individual victim, or that they deserve less justice or care or whathaveyou. I don't necessarily feel that men or white people who genuinely are discriminated against have been any less wronged.

Where it matters in in the approach, in what you do about it. And pretending that the numbers don't skew terrifically one direction, or that that doesn't or shouldn't tell us something about the roots of the problem - well, I just have a hard time with that.

[Okay reading the above, "pretending" comes off way more inflamatory than I meant it to be, but I have to run for a minute and I don't have time to think about it. So, um, I didn't mean it that way.]

I don't think anyone has said there should be more or less outrage based on who the victim is. And, frankly, in the U.S. there is significantly MORE outrage if the victim is a child or elderly than if it is a woman.

And now I am ChiKat.