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.

Women are second-class citizens in much of the world, but that doesn't mean your distrust and anger towards the men you actually see every day is a healthy response. Taking an individual man and pre-judging him as a member of a group which has some horrific members is no different than seeing the high incidence of black people who are involved in the drug trade and suspecting every black person you see is a criminal.

I don't like to judge too harshly societies of which I have no experience. Women may be second class citizens in those socities to us, and their situations may be untenable to us, but that is their culture, and they have the very same human right to live their culture as I do mine, whether I agree with it or not. I can't impose my own ideals onto their culture, no matter how much I might think it's 'better'.

Again, curse of education in anthropology.

I agree with Brenda. The fact is, most rapists are men. That's not saying most men are rapists. Yes, women molest, and it's aberrant, too, but not as often, and it's not fair to pretend otherwise.

You know, these guys really hit the asshole jackpot, when you think about it. They're a gang of white, possibly-rich men, on a sports team no less, using their status markers to make an individual (black, poor, female) feel small. The only way I can think of for them to accrue more asshole points would be if their victim had been a minor, or if they'd used nuclear weapons.

In my mind, rape is a gender issue, despite the conviction that rape is a power-crime rather than a sex-crime most of the time. There's just too much history there, too many systems of symbolism and signification that rely on the female=lesser=victim concept. It's too much a part of culture to pretend it's not in play.

you've seen my friend Johnny's er...

My god. Of all the things to be famous for. How does somebody write that casting sheet??

in the U.S. there is significantly MORE outrage if the victim is a child or elderly than if it is a woman.

I agree with child. I don't agree with elderly. I have no stats to back that up, however.

Another wiggly factor is that the child (and some of the elderly) abuse is to be reported by people other than the victim. I'm sure that messes the stats up royally, making it much harder to compare.

Except if the vistim is a pretty blonde woman--then the outrage is ALL OVER the crime.