Right you pesky feminists, which sort of rape is *worse* <Dawkins related>

[ladyblablah]

So Dawkins (self proclaimed ironic prophet) has decided that date rape is not as bad as a rape with a knife at your throat.

I have a question - what if the date rape includes a knife at the throat - what then - who wins at being the worst?

Is there a rule that date rape doesn't include knives? Do us feminists not know this rule for rapists?

He was using this as an example of areas where rational discussion is near impossible, moving on from a discussion on Israel. The responses on Twitter and on here suggest he is right that a large number of people are unable to either:

• read what has been said, rather than commenting based on imperfect knowledge
• have a rational discussion and abuse his POV, but just abuse him

It would be simple to point out that, in fact, the UK sentencing guidelines make no distinction between stranger rape and 'date' rape, but rape of an old women is 'worse' than the rape of a younger woman (over 18), which is less worse than the rape of a child.

Carol

Here's the tweet:

"Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think," one tweet said.

Why use date rape and stranger rape? If he'd used "rape" and "rape at knifepoint" then it would be clear that the differentiator was the aggravating factor. But by using the prefixes to rape, he's implying that, without the knife, stranger rape is worse than date rape.

So he started by talking about Israel, then went on to say that "date rape" and "mild paedophilia" weren't that bad and then was surprised when people didn't engage in "rational discourse" on TWITTER?

And responded by saying people were thick - where's the rational discourse there.

Man's a dick.

The hand-wringing about the lack of "rational discourse" comes from a man with emotional distance from the subject matter.

He knows that many of the people responding to him emotionally will be rape victims and / or paedophilia victims. And then he gets arsey because they don't have emotional detachment from the subject.

Honestly, the man's a total cock.

Well I assume he has emotional distance.

Even if he doesn't, and especially if he doesn't, it seems a bit harsh to berate a random cross section of the public for not meeting his standards.

AB He was putting forward a logical argument that you can say one thing is worse than another without supporting the first thing. He almost certainly was, (I don't speak for him) implying that stranger rape was worse than date rape, as I suspect most men would think if asked. When someone pointed this out and suggested that the trust issue may make date rape worse, he responded:

Of course, I readily see that. Just reverse my X/Y. Whichever you say is worse, it doesn't mean you endorse the other.

It is basically a version of the 1st world problem which arises on other threads.

seven at no point did he say date rape or mild paedophilia are not that bad, he just said there are worse things

Thing is - if he was any good at logic, he would know you have to be bloody careful with the examples you choose. There is a reason why there are standard simple examples to explain different forms of arguments.

He choose the rape example because it would be 'edgy' and further his own pr. I imagine he really didn't think much about the fact that the example doesn't even make sense.

Rape is rape, it is a violent act by itself. The only way the example makes sense is if you start talking about aggravating factors, which is okay I guess, but not helpful when you are supposedly just trying to explain a simple form of argument.

"Of course, I readily see that. Just reverse my X/Y. Whichever you say is worse, it doesn't mean you endorse the other. "

But either way, it's illogical. It's like saying it's worse for a left handed person to have their left arm cut off that for a right handed person to have their right arm cut off. It's not an absolute.

It's another reason to dislike the man.

If he just apologised and said he was wrong, it would help. Instead, a massive post about why he said it. My toddler knows to say sorry first, before even attempting to explain.

Wtf is mild paedophilia?

If you know there is going to be a shit storm, you either avoid it, or take proper cover. Being able to use 140 words only is not taking cover. It's inviting the storm to rage on around you.

But it's ok. He has an umbrella of logic.

Idiot

I don't know where he's got the impression that no one is talking about rape.
He's fucking nuts

he's talking about this argument form

The thing is, that he is trying to say that you can have the moral scale, x is worse than y - then completely ignore the part where you make a conclusion from that starting point.

I have read his article, and I think he is being completely disingenuous. Yes sometimes we might use extreme examples to really clarify our thoughts (is there a scale? Is there a line? Why is it there?) but the questioning is not the end aim, the end aim is to validate particular types of behavior. So when you say there is scale of rape (just that one act) you say there might be a line.

He still makes so many assumptions about 'date' rape it is INFURIATING.

Mainly, that date rape is devoid of violence.

His smug response has incensed me. 'Logic', my arse. Setting codes of conducts for himself. And what he can do cos he is reet intelligent

Richard Dawkins, for example, is a twat.

Richard Dawkins, for example, is a twat.

Let me just bold that up for you.

I commented on a blog about this, and about how men like to use rape when they are being all devil's advocatey and edgy and a bit shit

I was told that my endless ignorance merely proves his point.

I might have a badge made with that line on it.

And exactly what the actual fuck is mild paedophilia? Paedophilia is a mental illness, you either are a paedophile or you're not, there are no degrees of it. Being sexually assaulted, no matter to what degree, as a child, is a life changer. I have never met anyone personally or professionally who has been undamaged by being the victim of a paedophile or even a hebephile. Telling survivors that what they experienced as children has a spectrum and that the thing that changed their entire childhood is viewed as 'mild' is twattery.

I Agree that be is being disingenious. What is this Fabio he is takling about? It has only just started to be ok to aknowledge that rape and ongoing sexual abuse happens in marriages/relationships, så poliser to a man's right. I'm so cross and Yes hurt. Some men use that tactic to minimise their violence and it is not on.

Carol, rational discussion is perfectly possible, the problem is Dawkins chose an example to grab attention without bothering to do any research or even stop and think about whether it was a valid example. It is Dawkins who is being wilfully ignorant. And patronising when people who know rather more about it point out his limitations.

He could have made his technical point about logic without derailing his argument. He chose not to. Why would someone who claims to be intelligent do that?

petula - seems to me that what he said was entirely clear - whether you may think abhorrent thing A is a shade better or worse than abhorrent thing B in no way implies you think that either is OK. Anyone given to thinking that their bad behaviour is justified by not being the worst should be given no comfort at all from that - quite the opposite. Can we just state that clearly in case we have your hypothetical person lurking who thinks Richard Dawkins said it's ok to date rape his girlfriend (or attack a stranger in an alley) that he actually meant the opposite ?

Trying to convey this via twitter - where it's so easy to lose context - was what's wrong. Avoiding talking about all difficult issues which affect real people is a cop-out - but it needs to be done properly. (and doing it at this time of night via MN probably isn't too clever either.

I am not defending his choice of medium - I think my first post suggested that Twitter was not the right place. I will suggest that you ought to be able to have a discussion about logic on any subject however - people ought to learn this stuff at school.
He is correct that we do have degrees of rape (not in his example) - the sentencing guidelines I linked to earlier states that raping an old women or a child (under 16) demands a greater sentence than a middle age women. Society currently says that being raped at 17 or 40 is better than being raped at 16 or 80. This is worth discussing.

I've had wine so will keep this short. But it was Dawkins who suggested standard sentencing for all rape (ie life imprisonment) in his response to this - not me, not a pp. just wanted to make that clear.

We have standard sentencing for all rape - 5 years for first offence with women over 16.

Monty, the idea that a man who is right next to a woman, can hear her voice, her breathing, feel her responses and even her heartbeat can't tell whether that woman is enthusiastic or not boggles me. Men don't go around stuffing cake into people's mouths because they can't tell whether those people want cake or not, do they? Reading someone's signals is not hard at all, we expect people to do it competently all the time. And yet when it comes to sex suddenly men become blind, deaf, insensate and unable to simply ask "are you ok?" Why is that?

Cailindana, I have had sex with women who were enthusiastic about having sex, even pushed one off me who decided to insist on it while she preferred I stay asleep. But I have also been with women who pretended enthusiasm. I became aware of that only with hindsight by dint of experience. The last woman I was with, before I met my wife, I straight up asked her why she was pushing herself to have sex she did not want. She looked at me like I had dropped a bomb on her. None of them were girls, they were older women who fell into some form of trap of providing sex rather than sharing it, on the basis that if they did not do so they would not get what they realy wanted. Not a mercenary action, they traded sex they did not expect to enjoy for the possibility of real intimacy. They wanted the warmth of a man in their bed more than they wanted the warmth of a cock in them. Thats one example of the fallacy of obvious enthusiasm for sex. Others, one woman I was with was like a traffic light, literally 'touch me' 'dont touch me'. Disturbing. Other women who would say things like 'You would be good for me.' or 'You should have tried harder (to have sex with me)'. Argh.

I would like it to be just as clear as you think it is, that's why I was teaching my daughters principles of enthusiastic consent before feminism articulated it as a term. But trying to do that on a personal scale while, on a societal scale, I seem to be fighting against not only men but women avidly consuming billions of Millls & Boon, Shades of Grey and Twilight. Its hard, damn hard. All of that societal crap with its underlying themes of the confliction of desire and the erotisation of consent, with the heroine not knowing what she really wants, with sex as her gift to be surrendered despite herself. None of it helps my daughters, none of it helps sons.

dad

That is complete bollocks - did you ask on the first shag, or continue raping her for a while until you asked why she pushed herself?
If she is not interested, then stop and have the discussion, no real difficulty.
When you offer soemone cake, you put it on their plate if they diffidently say yes, at no point do you force them to eat - you discuss at the initial resistence why they are not eating, not force it down their throat a few times then ask.

What on earth are you reading in to what I wrote? I did not have sex with either the woman I described as 'touch me/dont touch me', which disturbed me because it was a cycle she repeated. Nor did I have sex with the woman I guessed was pushing herself into it. She started crying and asked me how I knew.

You know what's really depressing about the whole thing? RD knew damn well that the people who would actually read his tweets wrong, are not the feminists. rape survivors and decent people who are challenging him on his tweets, but the knuckle-draggers who are absolutely delighted that a so-called champion of logic and rational debate, appears to have come down on their side vis a vis rape.

RD is an intelligent, educated man. One of the things about being a man, is that you get to spend time with other men without women present, so you learn the truth about how much contempt men as a group have for women; there is always at least one man in every friendship group, who hates women and the others accept him as part of the group. RD is perfectly aware that there are millions of men out there who have the instincts and values of rapists and that those men are the first ones to jump up and promote the interests of rapists because they hate women. He knows they're out there, he knows they'd jump on his tweets as further succour and support for their misogyny and he chose to tweet that anyway. Because he's a fucking horrible misogynist.

Does anyone remember his outrage at the idea that a woman can critique a man's behaviour as creepy, if he propositions her in a lift at 1AM after a conference? He was mocking and dismissive about the fact that women operate in a context where we live with the permanent threat of a 1 in 4 chance of a man sexually assaulting us. As with this row, he brushed off any critique and just dismissed it as illogical.

What is it with misogynists and logic? They come across as incredibly stupid, like they've got this huge blind-spot where all their previous logic just falls apart, because if you refuse to acknowledge actual context, then all your arguments are just meaningless, however beautifully logical they may be.

Nail on head, Basil.

Maybe it's already been mentioned but a lot of people on this thread seemed to counter that they thought date rape was worse.

Were they not doing the same thing as Dawkins, just coming to a different conclusion? They seemed to pass without comment though.