Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Steve Parks,
To be fair, the silliness in that exchange started with Bob’s analogy with the DMC.
And while I was making a serious point, I was operating on the presumption that it went without saying that no rational or decent person would suggest the victims of terrorist attacks on public transport bear at least some responsibility for their fates. But it seems to be perfectly OK - nay! simple common sense - to pull this shit on abused women every damn day. Oh, and young black men committing the unspeakable sin of wearing hoodies in the eye lines of paranoid, unstable armed white men. And every butch dyke, swishy queen or transperson who had ever got the shit kicked out of them for daring to exist at all.
I'm happy to have the conversation about "civil" discourse, but some folks better suck it up and get used to being told a lot of things they don't want to hear.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Dean Papa,
@Helen Marie:
Thanks for talking about some really difficult shit with candour, clarity and respect.
@DeanPapa:
Thanks Craig for confirming exactly what I said. Ah, what a pleasure it is to engage in civil conversations here at Hard News!
I thought I was more than fairly characterizing Bob’s contributions to this thread and that was perfectly clear from the context. I don’t know whether you’re just missing that, or wilfully working your way through the derailing playbook, but I seriously think you might find it useful to grow a layer of skin or two.
I actually find it more of a pleasure to get busted when I make bad arguments, am defective on basic matters of fact, or fall short of the basic standards of civility I expect from others. Oh, and as I’ve discovered, Public Address isn’t a place where the long-form flounce gets much sympathy. Good luck with that, mate. But, hey, if none of that is your bag different strokes for different folks, and I’m sure you’ll find something more to your liking elsewhere on the internet.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Dean Papa,
Hard News is a closed shop, anyone with a dissenting view is quickly dispatched. I wanted to say more on this subject, but I am intimidated by the angry and judgemental feminists. I fear I might unwittingly say something that turns out to be “triggering”, and I do not want to be labelled an insensitive clod!
Or, you know, just don't be an insensitive clod who obtusely insists on repeatedly telling people who've talked about their own experiences of rape, partner abuse and child molestation that any rape victim is asking for it. Anywhere. Ever.
And I don't want to presume to speak for Bob, but if he really thinks Auckland's public spaces are seriously analogous to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, I'd respectfully suggest he should think a little harder about whose fault that is.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Bob Dobelina,
Absolutely not. But that’s like saying you should go walk into the DMZ between North and South Korea for world peace. Go ahead but if you get shot no one will be surprised.
No, Bob. What you keep saying is that the 52 killed (and hundreds injured) in the 7/7 bombings in London should have known better than to make themselves vulnerable by using public transport at rush hour in the first place. They should have protected themselves against the forseeable, right?
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Gee,
If the only rape jokes you’re hearing are like this though, then I’ll give you a pass.
Funny thing is that I've never read that monologue as a 'rape joke' (standard caveat: plenty of folks disagree, respectably, but I'm not comfortable linking in this context), but... well, you know a African-American woman talking frankly about her experience. It's not without flaw ("You could go visit a professional ball player's hotel room at two in the morning. Sex? My pussy's not even in the building!" - m'kay, sorry for more 'jargon' but that's a metric fuckton of problematic) but what's refreshing is the general absence of slut-shaming, victim-blaming or the idea that silencing someone you dislike with a rape threat is intrinsically hilarious. That the kind of 'rape joke' I don't have time, patience or tolerance for from anyone, ever.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Danielle,
Honestly, it couldn’t be harder to get through to these people if they were actually enclosed in brick walls.
Oh, try getting told with sublime confidence how the streets are clogged with wheezing, plague-ridden corpses in horrible countries with "socialized medicine" no matter how many silly, ignorant foreigners tell them -- often in astoundingly intimate detail -- that they're wrong. Really, it would be perversely amusing if it wasn't so thoroughly condescending.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Harry Musgrave,
It may well be that the legislature can ‘legally’ decide to prioritise their spending and thus choose to avoid a default BUT there is a question as to whether they can techincally do it.
As I understand it, any such "prioritizing" would be done by the executive branch. While it would be amusing to see the Tea Party getting a brutal reality check on their masturbation fantasies -- slashing military spending to keep making interest payments on US bonds would (arguably) delay an immediate sovereign debt crisis. But I'm not sure making the Tea Bagged GOP squirm is worth the risk.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Russell Brown,
It does seem that de-normalising violence, and making it clear that not everyone does it, was very important.
Couldn't agree more - and a non-trivial part of the It's Not OK campaign was "de-normalizing" the idea that violence is the preserve of (let's be blunt) poor/working class and/or brown people. I'm not kissing your arse, Russell, but it really did matter that you were speaking up not just as a man, but one who didn't look or sound like you'd wandered in from Outrageous Fortune or One Were Warriors.
To paraphrase another public heath campaign, it's not just that we "normalize" violence and abuse, but how we do it.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
You don’t think that hearing a message that, in a way boils down to “we expect men to rape” emboldens those who do and normalises things for them?
No, what actually emboldens and normalises abusers is the idea that nice white middle-class tertiary-educated First World blokes like me – and Bob Jones – don’t rape. We don’t commit domestic violence or partner abuse. We’re somehow magically above and beyond a culture where violence against women is routinely dished up as entertainment; and a legal system where victims of sexual violence are put on trial, not their abusers. (Of course, anyone who decides not to go through that trauma is just proving their abuse never happened, right?)
THEY do all of that. Not US.
And it’s a lie. Do I think every man (myself included) is a rapist? No, but it's dangerous and profoundly dishonest to act as if we don't live in a rape culture. And, yes, as a man in that culture I do think that I'm entirely capable of committing rape and getting away with it. That's hard to hear, let alone accept, but what's downright impossible is changing anything from a place of denial.
[ETA: Edited to remove material that might have been distressing/offensive to some PASers.]
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Russell Brown,
The one we might want to look at is the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which saw the upper house in a bicameral system refuse to pass appropriation bills.
Which was particularly bizarre, because as far as I’m aware Whitlam had more than sufficient grounds to call a double dissolution, which is a constitutional (if politically risky) mechanism to break such deadlocks.
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