What’s the difference between a lad mag and a rapist? Aside from one being a magazine and the other a person, albeit an reprehensible one, apparently not very much.
In a study soon to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers at Middlesex University and the University of Surrey showed people quotes about women from British lad mags (FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo) and from convicted rapists. Most survey respondents – men and women both – could not tell the difference between the quotes from the magazines and the quotes from the rapists. And most of the male respondents identified more with the quotes from the rapists than from the lad mags.
Here are some of the quotes the survey respondents were asked to react to. (You can find more at Jezebel.) Can you tell which of these are from rapists or lad mags?
Mascara running down the cheeks means they’ve just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.
You’ll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they’ll do it willingly.
Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?
I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.
In case you’re wondering, the correct answers are: Lad mag, Rapist, Rapist, Lad Mag.
Creepy, eh?
Lead researcher Miranda Horvath of Middlesex University explains why she feels this is so troubling:
Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist.
I would say so.
And so, you might wonder, how did the regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit react this this research? Take a look.
The comment with the most upvotes offered some nice juicy denial:
The comment with the second-highest number of upvotes completely missed the point:
And then there was this hot mess:
In case anyone is wondering, that quote from French is actually a quote from a character in one of her novels. And it’s pretty easy to distinguish it from things posted on Jezebel, because none of the writers on Jezebel ever say anything even remotely like that.
The Men’s Rights subreddit, responding to evidence of rape culture by going “la la la I can’t hear you” since March 2008.
zhinxy:
No. People can make mistakes.
For example, HellKell said that I said something when I didn’t. She then admitted that she had only skimmed what I had written and said “my bad”.
But other people in this conversation have absolutely put words in my mouth that I had never said (or is it put words in my fingers that I never typed). (Ithiliana being the prime example).
Shora: “Dan, in the future just avoid bringing up the false rape accusation conversation in the middle of the rape conversation, okay? Only bad things can happen.”
I do understand that. I typically do not bring up false rape accusations unless the topic of conversation is about false accusations as false accusation discussions are typically not relevant in discussions about rape.
The initial time I brought it up here was in an attempt to say that while (at the time) I rejected the idea of a rape culture, it was not because I was some moronic member of the MRA. And I thought that denying the MRA claim of a “false rape society” would help to back up that reasoning. Obviously that backfired and I got labelled as being one of them.
H.O. “Then they add very little to the discussion. You can’t then proceed to use them as building blocks for any other point.”
That is fine. I wasn’t intending to use those statements to back up much of anything. Just as an answer to the question about how I felt about false accusations of other violent crimes.
Anyone point out to Witless I mean Witman that one can get convicted of murder without a body?
I know he was a fly by poster but if he had any wits he would have known that it is quite possible to be convicted of murder without any dead bodies.
There is even a WEBSITE: http://nobodycases.com/cases.html
one of my pet peeves: the phrase my PERSONAL opinion.
I mean, how many of other people’s opinions are you spouting?
If you’re saying something that is YOUR opinion, you don’t have to redundantly identify it as PERSONAL (as opposed to impersonal, or other personals).
It’s just freaking irritating.
And that’s not even addressing the fact that opinions can be totally uninformed statements of emotion or prejudice or assumptions without foundation, and trying to slither out of a discussion by saying “it’s just my personal opinion geez why are you arguing with me” is also fucking irritating as hell.
But that’s just my opinion………………….
wtiman, you silly, and cowardly git.
The various things you say need to be present do need to be present, but that doesn’t change the actual aftermath of the accusation; which was the specific case in question.
It wasn’t a question of which is more likely to happen, it was the question of the actual effects of such accusation. But that was nice attempt to tar all accusations of rape as just the vengeful whinings of spurned women, as well as a clever dodge, pretending that the word of the accuser is somehow different in a rape case as opposed to a murder case.
In both the State is arguing that a crime took place. No need to call the character of the victim into question, nor does the onus to show a proof beyond reasonable doubt in one (rape) change the burden from that in the other (murder). The accused is always arguing the prosecution has it wrong.
The role of the trier of fact is to decide which theory of the case is more believable. The onus doesn’t change; much as you are implying it should.
lj4:
Sorry for the delay in reply, but I’ve been working NWO sorts of hours as Christmas approaches.
pecunium: I had to change the nature of your argument because your argument as presented was not an accurate analogy to the 1 in 6 rape problem. It is 1 in 6 women will be raped in her lifetime. In order for your murder analogy to be accurate you would have to have 1 in 6 men being killed as their cause of death. (Sorry for neglecting to mention why i changed that earlier).
Ding! Ding! Ding!.
That is precisely what I was saying. You changing it so that you can then dismiss it is why I don’t trust your arguments that you care so much about rape.
You may think I’m being disingenuous, you would be wrong because when you say:
To ME, when discussing false accusations of rape, it covers the broad spectrum. There is harm that can be done by the gossip. There is harm that can be done by bringing it to the police. And there is harm that can be done by the actual conviction.
You are equating a lot of things in that very paragraph. You are also changing the question; one might think because the answers to the specific question being asked are not useful to the hobby-horse you are riding.
That you take such exception to it being pointed out… see above about my thoughts on your motives.
You are also ignoring the relative rates of conviction. Rape charge, less than 50 percent. Murder charge, more than 90 percent. Just on that basis I’d rather be charged with rape than murder. To be more emphatic, I’d be better off charged with a rape I did commit, than a murder I didn’t.
“A bit of the old in and out”? My jaw literally dropped as I read that, considering I know quite a bit of Nadsat.