One reason so-called Nice Guys ™ seem so creepy to so many people is that it’s easy to see the rage and the bitterness and the weird sort of self-hating entitlement that is so often lurking underneath – and sometimes not that far underneath – the “nice guy” exterior.
Consider the gutwrenching case of Jill Meagher, an Irish woman who was raped and murdered in a suburb of Melbourne Australia last September by a man who accosted her on the street as she was walking home from a bar. A man who later told police that he had only approached her in the first place because he was “trying to be nice.”
In a lengthy interview with police, in which he confessed to raping and strangling Meagher, Adrian Ernest Bayley explained that he had only approached Meagher because she “looked distraught” and he thought he could “help.” And he only became angry at her when she rebuffed his kind offers.
“It wasn’t really my intention to hurt her, you know that?” he told police.
I spoke to her, you know and said, look, I’ll just – I’ll – I’ll help you, you know. … She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was trying to do a nice thing. You know that? …
I was just – I was trying to be nice and – she kept going from being nice to nasty, to nice, to – you know what I mean?
Earlier in the evening, Bayley had reportedly argued with his girlfriend about his “jealousy and possessiveness issues.” The girlfriend returned home, where she reportedly told her landlady that she was “hiding from Adrian.”
The newspaper The Australian paints a picture of a man with rage issues and very little self-awareness.
Mr Bayley was working for a drainage company until his arrest six days after Meagher went missing. The workmate he had been drinking with that night told police Mr Bayley would become “angry and aggressive” after fighting with his girlfriend.
“He had a very short fuse and didn’t like to be told he was in the wrong,” he said. “In the times that I worked with Adrian, he was often talking about women. He would say he couldn’t understand how men could hurt women or be abusive towards women.”
None of this is to say that all Nice Guys ™ are harboring killers inside of them, or anything even remotely like that. But those who most loudly proclaim their “niceness” often turn out to be pretty awful, in part because they think that women owe them something for being so insistently “nice.”
No. We should assume nothing. You know what they say about that, oh great mansplainer.
Aw, chewy couldn’t hold up under snark. Poor chew toy.
FYI, I wanted to get an upper bound here, so I didn’t care for jail sentences and lumped all non-prison sentences together and set them to zero. When RAINN claims something like “only 3 of 5 convicted rapists spend even a day in prison” it’s not like Argenti Aertheri (and probably many people?) understood it, that only 60% get a custodial sentence. If you look at the sources, 80% get one.
And I fear, though ze studied psychology, Argenti Aertheri still doesn’t know what correlation means in statistics. I agree with zir though, that if you look at the chart, you see it’s unlikely that Megan’s law had a huge positive effect on sex offenses.
And I fear
, though ze studied psychology, Argenti AertheriJaro still doesn’t knowwhat correlation means in statisticsanything.FTFY
*dies laughing* I really do need to hire a Greek chorus to sing “correlation is not causation” because Jaro, dude, you can’t have a causal relationship between a factor and a result that started before it was relevant. Obvious thing remains obvious.
And since when does “length of sentence actually served” imply “without ever being in jail” — yes, all my math applies to rapists sent to jail (or not). When did you say that you weren’t using the same metric. More importantly, why’d you correct 40% to, what was it, 34%? If you we using a different metric entirely?
Thank you for getting both my pronouns and nym right though.
Off topic — “2 + 2 = 22” “2 + 2 = 100” “22” “100” “fish” “binary” — things that just happened in my room (my brother’s the one who resorted to fish…and is kinda right that 22 = fish)
@Jaro
You were looking for an upper bound…on the average…to prove that rapists don’t get light sentences…
Speechless.
Again, I will say that if I thought you were smart enough, I would think that you were deliberately trying to get numbers that match your guess, but I don’t.
Now, we can argue about if 4 or 5 or 8 or 14 year sentences are light, if you’d like. I have a feeling you’ll lose that argument just due to numbers though. It is rather obvious that you don’t consider 8 to be light and at least a good number of us do.
According to the ever correct wiki answers /sarcasm — at least in Michigan certain types of arson face higher penalties.
http://t.answers.com/answers/#!/entry/what-is-arson-and-how-many-years-of-prison-time,4fb29ee5ecb7a0e66f8f6a9b/3
And I’m not going to bother researching the draconian penalties for drug crimes (you know, the ones that generally involve consenting adults?)
@Argenti
I’m not sure it makes sense to compare too heavy sentences to rape sentences to prove the rape sentences are too light. It would be a bit like taking the upper bound of an average to prove the opposite.
(That will never not be funny to me.)
Eh, fair enough on drug sentences, the 10~ years for arson, considering the factors that get that level, seem comparable. Idk, maybe not, I was looking for things that should get worse sentences but don’t, found that, and got distracted by my brother tossing my new timbuk2 bag at me. (T-1 *freaks*)
@Argenti
I think comparing arson and other property crimes is good. And I think it says very not good things about our society that we “care” about drugs more than we care about rape, but it isn’t as though we can just split the difference. 🙁 What about domestic violence? I’m guessing that comes in lower than my opinion says it should.
Hooray for you new bag! And good luck with the psych. 🙂
it’s not nice to live under the tuttle bridge….. yeah it’s not nice to rape someone too. WTF?
…why? US and UK are different countries. Like, really dude?
@cassandrasays
I’m horrible at judging sentences, so I can’t judge. Also young, so lots of years sound like a lot. I certainly don’t think 8 years is too much, I just don’t have much comparison 😛 (people’ve been posting more though, which is helping)
@jerkwad
wait…probation means you don’t go to jail, right? so, you’re excluding people who are guilty (and actually found guilty) from your numbers…why? I mean, I’m not a math person and this seems wrong.
Marie sighs wearily, a good thing if the troll leaves, but a bad thing too, as she has had a very fucking hard day and needs a nice chew toy. (Also, she desires to rant about this…not that I am begging or anything. I mean, I kind of am 😉 but I don’t want to interrupt an actual conversation, just the troll, if he’s still posting.) /third person.
I was happy to see more cactus curses 😀 They are under-rated.
I see there’s a bunch of math stuff going on that I don’t understand, but I’ll actually trust the math people on that, instead of troll boy.
@some gal
if it makes your autocorrect feel any better, my brain read it as the same word 😉
O_O I hate the world.
@Argenti Aertheri
You got mine right 😀 Thanks for asking though.
@jaro
I’m having a really hard time believing you. Show your damn work. I trust Argenti Aertheri’s math a buttload more than yours for a couple reasons: 1) zie’s not trolling. 2)zie isn’t being purposefully unclear. 3)ZIE SHOWS THEIR WORK! It is not that hard!!!!
somehow that didn’t hit me XD jaro, you suck.
@Some Gal:
Sorry, I typed that in a hurry, I meant lower, of course (because of the topic of the discussion I had something like “an upper bound how bad = light the sentences are” in in mind, yeah… I know 😉 ). If you think about what I wrote, you’ll see it’s correct. In those 3X% numbers jail sentences are included, but I set them all to zero, so if I calculate the weighted average I get something that should actually be lower than the real average sentence.
Arson threatens lifes so it is not just a property crime.
Also just because I compared a single feature in both crimes (few rapists and arsonists get convicted) it doesn’t mean it’s a great idea to compare them otherwise (just one thing: is pyromania about power and control? Or an ICD as the WHO claims? psych 101 ;-)).
Why not accept that the nature of the crime plays a major role? Rape, because obviously, consensual sex is not a rare phenomenon, and arson because fire destroys evidence (only in 10% of arson cases an arrest is made, only in 2% a conviction is reached).
I don’t care, if you’re honest, you know how I meant that.
The thing I’ll never understand though, is, how one can really blame culture for rape while simultaneously believing revenge should come down like the “fist of an angry god” and there should be no possibility to redeem yourself. Of course I don’t have hopes that I’ll get a good answer (other than snark).
Why not mainly blame the legal system? The inconsistency is everywhere, you have extremely harsh penalties for some non-contact sex offenses, too (Daniel Vilca).
@Argenti:
Again, I still wrote correlation, not causation. And the second sentence is wrong too, because one could claim the decrease would’ve not continued as strong without Megan’s law (not that this is plausible). Also you used the offenses known to law enforcement not the vitimization rate.
Btw, do you know inferential statistics or just descriptive statistics?
Was it different? I looked at the studies which were quoted by RAINN. So I saw that RAINN added jail and probation together (that were these 3X% numbers) rounded it up to 40% and then said “Only 3 of 5 convicted rapists get even a single day in prison”.
@Marie:
Yeah, because if you write something like “Rape sentence are laughable, especially in america” it’s just the worst thing ever to use examples from the UK.
Correct me if you wrote “I don’t know about other countries, but in the US”?
Well, too bad, because actually I’m one of the few people here, who understands weak convergence or knows what MLE stands for. 😉
btw, you have pretty broad definitions of troll here.
@jaro
Um, it’s not the worst thing ever to use examples from the UK, just like, technically wrong. As in they actually are different countries. With different laws. Also, from what I’ve heard UK does sound better from a feminist prospective (not that there’s only one) especially with birth control, and seeing all the blatantly pro-rapist senators last election in the US, I’m going with definitely a huge rape culture here. And I have heard some about other countries, just not enough to make a huge judgement. Still haven’t heard of magical matriarchy land where all the rape laws are flawless, but if you have send me a link 😉 And I deeply, deeply apologize* for not using the exact phrasing you thought was appropriate.
*I do not actually apologize.
I’m gonna let other people call you on your math, but if you want me to stop thinking you’re a troll, stop whining about how the poor rapists get so high sentences.
No, they’re pretty narrow and clear, really. Misogynists specifially, given the nature of the site, and bigots in general – the racists, homophobes, transphobes and so on. Doesn’t matter if they’re being disingenuous or believe all their shit – we’ve had a lot of those. You fit the bill with your “won’t someone think of the rapists” crap. If you’ve bothered to read these threads at all, you know there are people here who’ve survived horrific experiences. That makes you insensitive at best, or possibly just a douchebag, or possibly something worse.
I repeat: go fuck yourself with a cactus-embedded lego.
Jaro: we may have a different, broader definition of troll here, but trust me, you’re hitting all the high notes with your smug mansplainations and general asshole behavior.
Did he just not go to bed? Dude’s stubborn AND smug, not a great combination.
Especially when he’s got nothing to be smug about.
I see Jaro didn’t bother to address that he used a very narrow definition of rape and so found an inflated number. It is like he decides he is right, reads just enough of the conversation to respond with vaguely relevant insults, and fucks off.
He’s worse than Diogenes (who I was just thinking about on the other thread). At least Diogenes’ claims were over-the-top lies. Jaro seems to prefer trite ones.
I admit to the smugness charge, but that just happens if you try to be nice to people who have more like a shock and awe approach to discussions (I guess that sounded smug too ;-)). Regarding the defending-rapists accusations, no, that’s just a severly biased interpretation of what I wrote.
@Some Gal Not Bored at All:
I didn’t start working with that numbers, you supplied them to me.
But you’re right about the narrow definition of rape, on the other hand, including all sexual assaults makes the definition too broad, I guess. Also, jail sentences are again not counted.
After all, the claim was, that rape sentences are laughable, that’s a pretty strong claim.
You never insulted me?
I feel like an anthropologist.
“Observe the creepy weirdo in its natural habitat, trolling the comments on a feminist blog. Watch as it flings the goalposts around with gleeful abandon, with no apparent purpose other than attempting to annoy women who don’t think rape is no big deal.”
Do you not know or not care what rape actually does to people? Did you read anything of the threads here, of what survivors have said? Anyone saying it’s a “strong claim” that rape sentences are laughable is pretty much denying the seriousness of the crime. Is that what you’re trying to do, or are you the other sort of oxygen thief who trolls for the lulz?
@Jaro
And the numbers were never misrepresented. You decided they meant something they didn’t mean and attempted to use them in ways that weren’t warranted.
And that claim has been more than proven to our satisfaction. What you don’t seem to understand is that the claim wasn’t that they’d be laughable to smug misogynistic asshats, but that an average person would find them laughable. Average people don’t troll.
Not vaguely. My insults were incredibly specific. I wasn’t complaining about the insults, you poor fool, I was complaining about their quality,
I don’t know where to begin, what with the dancing goal post game and all. Seeing how I haven’t had my coffee yet, let’s just go with —
Hey Jaro, you care to respond to all that math about sexual assault sentencing, or just going to hand wave it away by saying you consider the definition “too broad”?
Did I provide definitions or just link to them? Hm, let me provide them in case I didn’t spell it out yesterday. BJS definitions:
Oh and you know your correlations so well? Ice cream must prevent the flu then right? All violent crime followed the same trend, and started decreasing before Megan’s law, and followed the same curve (gods do I wish I could spell, because that is not the technical term I want) — unless you want to argue that Megan’s law caused murder rates not to go up?
Even pre-coffee to odds of “Megan’s law prevented an increase in rape charges” looks ludicrous.
As for arrests versus reports, oh I’ll dig up report rates if you really care, but it follows the same trend. Been here, done this, with too many trolls to count. One’s with neither math nor research skills who’ve insisted that self-reports are always de facto false because of “people lie”. You know so much math though, you must know the standard issues with self-reported anything.
And now I need coffee!
Cassandrasays
This description probably amused me way to much XD I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything. I admit, I am disappointed Jaro started to ignore me. /weird mood, chew toy want.
Marie — try the thread filling the recent comments? If you haven’t yet that is, I’m still catching up on that one!
…I just figured out who this is.