Facebook supports rape?

Actually I am not being paranoid. You have Dont and Amor congratulating each other every time one of them has a go. Then smilies at others who correct my points and applauds. Also the continous repeat of the fact that I alluded to this thread on another and the repeated accusations that I am a rape apologiser (because yes, saying I blame rape victims and don't believe them is saying I am worse than a rape apologist).

Would any of you be happy to be called those things and not even have an apology - but instead a repetition. Would you be happy to not take that personally?

JV and Uppity. I will gladly engage in such a debate but I feel my presence on this thread is not conducive to such a debate.

JV I have agreed with many posters here even, surprisingly enough, those who have so vocally disagreed with me. If you want to start another thread then I will explain my opinions and debate with you as I have quite a lot of time for you and your opinions.

But today I have given enough time to these people. My children are home from school, I have work to finish and I am going to do that.

But Rhubarb hasn't said that rapists should be easy to spot and avoid - she's said the opposite to that at least once on this thread. She did say that rapists are different to other men - other people said that that meant she is blaming rape victims for being raped - and then tore her apart for it. That's unfair and wrong. She has never said that rapists are all evil brutes either - unless I missed her post where she said that.

People have, for understandable reasons, read things into her posts that she has said very clearly, over and over, were never in her mind - and then they have ripped her to shreds for that. I'm sorry but that sickens me.

Hmm, I think it's a bit dodgy to talk about men being "predisposed" to rape by their upbringing and family environment.

All of us are capable of learning and growing as people and going beyond our upbringing and family environment. Thousands of people have really dysfunctional, abusive parents and go on to become good parents becuase they learn and rid themselves of the deeply held assumptions their childhoods taught them. I think men are perfectly capable of throwing off the assumptions of their upbringing and family environment. So if their fathers were misogynists and their mothers were handmaidens, they can still learn how to view women as full equal human beings and to respect them as such. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in the capacity of human beings to learn and heal.

Well, they're obviously not easy to spot and avoid! They do look and act like most other men. Isn't this a given?
But they are different because for some reason they have not been taught (or if taught, have not made it part of their belief system) that women are separate, sentient human beings worthy of respect and that no means 'no'.

SDTG- I guess the flip side to that though is that people who have been raped or know others well who have, will get annoyed or upset in a way which is personal to them, when somebody tries to argue that rapists are always "other" and should therefore be easy to spot and avoid. It feels very minimising.

I think there could have been a more constructive discussion if Rhubarb had been prepared to concede the point earlier that many rapists do not fit the stereotype of evil brutes.

LeBOF - I would take it personally if what I said was misinterpreted, and as a result of that, I was told that I didn't believe rape victims or that I blamed them for being raped.

Rhubarb - I asked because i think its at the root of your whole argument. I'm trying to understand what your argument really is and I honestly cant.

I wonder if you have just become determined to hold onto your position (and i can understand why that might be) despite actually agreeing with the details which make up the opposing argument.

By 'pre-disposition' I mean pre-disposed as a result of upbringing and family environment rather than an innate thing at birth.

Rhubarb, you have been disagreed with, that's all. I think you are taking this too personally. And I don't really understand why you got so very angry, because it seems to me that we have come full circle and that if you look at what the article said, without making the knee-jerk assumption that all men were being characterised as rapists, then there is actually little to disagree with in it. You recognise that there is an attitude of entitlement which some men have which could lead them to rape, even though they might not call themselves a rapist.

The only difference I can see is that you believe they know themselves to have crossed a line, but many other posters are trying to point out that our entire culture is steeped in rape myths and male entitlement to the point where many men who rape DON'T think what they have done is wrong.

Was it Naomi Wolf (I may have that wrong) who talked about women's experience of date rape as sometimes just a "bad Saturday night"? Whoever it was was rightly vilified, but it does point to the prevalence of rape, and the ability of many people to minimise it.

Well, I can't disagree with that, LeninGrad, but in what circumstances does a man who is conditioned to respect women and their bodies as being separate sentient beings (truly conditioned so that it is part of his belief system) commit rape?
Doesn't the pre-disposition have to be part of them just waiting to be sparked off by outside influences that reinforces his belief that women are lesser beings to be abused if the circumstances are right?

Because that's all I was trying to say with my (clumsy) analogy.

Goodness rhubarb your posts are bieng picked apart because that's what the feminist section is for isn't it? Examining our dearly held attitudes and debunking them.

You seem to have some kind of belief that people are arguing with you just fro the sake of it, rather than arguing with your arguments, IYSWIM.

I think some of your arguments are good (the entitlement stuff) ad some are bad (the determination to categorise rapists off into the "other" corner, as if they arn't the product of our society)

Thank you for clarifying, Uppity. The rest of us knew what you meant. :)

Am I still Amor? Really?
Wow.

Last post on there was about 1pm I think.

And I have every right to go onto another thread for support.
I am leaving to pick up my son now. If your entire arguments centres on just picking on my arguments then that's a bit low, even by your standards.
Read back through the thread. My posts have been picked apart, my character torn apart and the valid points made have been lost. I have tried to engage in a stimulating debate but you obviously just want one thing - to get me off the thread and discredit me.

You may not agree with me, but I have tried to reason with you and engage with you. Now I realise how pointless it is and how much of my day I have wasted.

Let it go ffs. You are sounding pathetic.

Nobody is saying that the average man thinks he is entitled to sex "whenever he likes".

You've either misunderstood what people are saying Rhubarb, or you're just being careless about how you present what people are saying. You can't really have an honest discussion with someone unless you really try and understand what they're saying. If it's more important for you to win the rgumenet than to get to the bottom of what people are saying, then that is really sad and quite boring.

Have you looked at the Ray Wyre link? Entitlement isn't about thinking you can have sex "whenever you like" not even the most extreme rapist would think that.

Oh and I deliberately used the term extreme feminist rather than radical, because radical means getting to the root of something (just to clarify a mini row of a few posts back - it's hard to keep up)

Thank you, AmorY

Talking of male mumsnetters, where is Pan?

I believe that if a man thinks he is "intrinsically entitled to sex", and may become an "opportunistic rapist", as you say, Rhubarb, then surely we are back to the contentious line in the article we are discussing, aren't we? A rapist rapes because he can.

Uppity - I do not believe the average man thinks he is entitled to sex whenever he likes.
That is the big difference. Perhaps Elliot does.
I think that most men know the difference between consenual sex and non-consensual sex and that most would never dream of having the latter.

Ella - why not invite some male Mumsnetters over and see what they say?

Dont, I'm full thanks.

wamster, the examples that have been given were about ordinary men without any disposition to rape. And following your argument, Uppity, as someone tempted to wake her lover up sexually, would have been dispositioned to assault. What the men did was wrong and was rape but the reason wasn't because they were dispositioned to do it, it was because they didn't think of it as rape.