The Purple Pill Debate subreddit is a strange little corner of the internet, a place where intrepid Blue Pillers try to logic Red Pillers into giving up their repugnant ideology, and vice versa.
The main problem with this strategy is that Red Pillers don’t really understand logic as you or I do. They’ve got their own version, and it’s pretty … weird, as one recent post in r/PurplePillDebate makes abundantly clear.
The proposition being debated: “If you expect a man to date a rape victim, then you should be willing to date a pedophile.”
Wait, what? The Red Piller advancing this, er, argument tries to explain in more detail what exactly he means:
Rape victims often develop a variety of serious psychological issues, including depression, borderline personality disorder (aka borderline insanity disorder), self-harm, alcohol and/or drug addiction, and PTSD.
People who have these serious psychological issues are at a higher risk of joblessness, homelessness, and divorce. They tend to have unstable and chaotic relationships.
Now, of course it isn’t a rape victim’s fault that they were raped, but that still doesn’t mean that it is a good idea to date a rape victim.
So far, not so good. All of the sources the poster cites as evidence for these claims about rape survivors are behind paywalls, but a quick scan of the abstracts suggest that he didn’t read them very carefully. One of the papers he cites, actually looking at the effects of childhood sexual abuse rather than rape per se, reports that, contrary to the poster’s claims,
there is insufficient evidence to confirm a relation between a history of childhood sexual abuse and a postsexual abuse syndrome and multiple or borderline personality disorder.
That said, there’s no question that rape (or any kind of sexual abuse) can be extremely traumatic, with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. These can certainly cause issues in relationships.
But every relationship has issues, and there is absolutely no evidence that rape survivors — or the survivors of any other serious trauma — are incapable of having healthy relationships.
At this point, our Red Pill poster goes completely off the rails:
Dating someone who has serious psychological issues is risky. To illustrate how risky it is, would you date a pedophile? Pedophilia isn’t a choice. However, pedophiles have unstable lives and wouldn’t make good romantic partners.
So, if you expect a man to be willing to date a rape victim because “it wasn’t her fault,” then you should be willing to date a pedophile because “it isn’t his fault.”
Wow. There are at least two gigantic problems here. First, of course, is the inherent offensiveness of suggesting there’s some sort of moral equivalency between pedophiles (potential if not necessarily actual predators) with rape survivors (people who have themselves been victimized by predators).
Second, there’s insurrectono’s if-then logic, which is utterly inappropriate when it comes to matters of the heart, where “should” shouldn’t go.
No, Red Pillers, no one is telling you that you are obligated to date rape survivors — or, for that matter, cancer patients, or Billy Joel fans, or indeed anyone in any particular category that human beings fall into.
Indeed, if your first thought upon hearing that someone us a rape survivor is to think “ick, she’s probably all messed up,” guess what?
No one really gives two shits whether or not you’re willing to date her. Because she doesn’t want to date you. Because you’re a petulant asshole with no empathy for other people. And that makes you pretty damn “risky” as a romantic partner.
H/T — r/TheBluePill
EJ,
I know sufferers have actual real life issues that can cause problems in relationships. I think I should have made myself a bit clearer in stating that my red flag is raised when BPD is used as an excuse to badmouth an ex. This really is a thing, I’ve sat at the listening end many times and it hasn’t come off as sincere “I need to get this weight off my heart” but just bitter ranting.
I’m allergic to that sort of use of someone’s [possible] diagnosis.
I’ve also had guys diagnose their ex as “probably bipolar” in order to clue me in on how much of an abusive monster she was. They are of course blissfully unaware of my bp diagnosis. Awkward.
Hey, coming in from a general medical background and as a child of a BPD parent, and as the wife of someone with PTSD… BPD is closely associated with early trauma. The psychiatrists and psychologists I’ve worked with taught me that there is some thought that BPD may also be a “feminized” expression of antisocial personality disorder. Guys are outright aggressive so they get flagged as APD, whereas women tend to be more passive aggressive (due to socialization), so they get their BPD diagnosis. I’m not aware of it falling out of favour as a diagnosis, at least locally. I saw a young woman in the Emerg with a recent diagnosis of it just yesterday.
That being said, any mental illness can be a breaking point for a relationship, or it can be something you work through together. The fact that these guys flake at even the idea that a woman be imperfect show just how unprepared they are for reality.
ETA: I didn’t mean to imply all BPD individuals are aggressive, only that there is a subset of women diagnosed as BPD because sexism when they are more accurately APD
@Leda:
I’m with you now. Yeah, as Shaenon said upthread, I think a lot of men will diagnose people with all sorts of stuff in order to avoid facing the reality that they were just shitty boyfriends.
Even if you do have psychological diagnoses, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or (necessarily) a bad girlfriend. It just means that people need to act in an understanding manner towards you and avoid being selfish when you’re in their life. That’s probably why manospherians object to it so much.
@leftwingfox
That comparison doesn’t quite work because cheating and raping are both actions. Pedophilia is an attraction. People can control their actions but have very little control over who (or what) they are attracted to.
WTF?!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doctor-charged-with-ejaculating-on-patients-face-surrenders_us_569e98dce4b04c813761bc2f?cps=gravity_5059_1668811557259967563
And I just had to scroll down to see #misandry (yes, hashtagged) somewhere in the first comments. Also “just as many women predators” or summat.
I’m done with internet. Gonna go see the new Tarantino movie. Ciao!
I agree with sbel. Pedophilia is an attraction, and I believe about as much about reeducation helping with that than about gay “reeducation”. A least a decent amount of the pedophiles would be horrified to act upon their fantasms.
@Leda Atomica, @Pandapool
Oh, sorry about that. It’s really distressing. But I’m glad that this woman was brave and determined enough to report him.
TW (sexual assault by an MD) for Kat’s “WTF?!” post four messages above.
This is got to be one of the most disgusting things I have ever read. Fucking douchenozzel! How dare he compare victims of rape and abuse with the perpetrators of rape and abuse! I hope women who have been victimised are able to stay clear of this guy. Hell, every women should stay clear of him. We all deserve better than him.
Perhaps we should condemn the offender to a thousand years of suffering in the lego pit.
@Three Snakes
The Lego Pit is too good for them!
?
Holes in all his socks, including the brand-new ones. In perpetuity.
The power of this punishment is often underestimated. Holes around the toe are painful all day long.
Wow, that was…horrifying.
@Kat
There’s one thing that’s worse than holes on the toe of your sock, and that’s when the fabric of you sockliner gets torn, rolls up and presses on the sole of your foot while walking. That might be a bit specific, but that’s what I wish upon this guy.
And jail.
Wow, that sleezebag doctor!
Smart and brave woman. She’s probably saved a lot of women from experiencing this, or worse if the doctor’s behaviour escalated.
@Bernardo Soares
Excellent recommendations, both of them!
@Moggie
I was pretty surprised that this assault survivor was able to preserve his semen and give it to the police. Maybe it was like the famous stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.
Well, you’d want to preserve it, wouldn’t you? Spooge from a high-status guy like a doctor? LIQUID FUCKING GOLD, that.
I think part of the non-professional diagnoses some men make in their ex-girlfriends is an extension of how men are socialized to think about women. Men who date women all seem to have “crazy” ex girlfriend stories. Women who date men all seem to have “asshole” ex boyfriend stories. Really, it’s just that most people who date will have an asshole ex at some point, whatever the genders involved are. But men are socialized to view any woman they have trouble with as crazy. For some of them, it’s a pretty short leap from viewing their exes as generally “crazy” or “psycho” to actually proclaiming diagnoses.
Liquid fucking gold jokes never get old, do they?
Ew, and just now I read on a German site that a train conductor is being accused of sexually assaulting a 17 year old who didn’t have a ticket, saying “we can talk about this” and then attacking her in the train toilet.
@HistoryNerd
You’re actually right about that. It’s the same idea that causes prison rape. It’s not about attraction, it’s about dominating someone.
Claiming a victim is the same as a child rapist who creates victims while feigning being free from issues and better than those who have them? I think David just found the worst human being in the world.
WWTH:
I blame that Sarumanic dramatic reading for etching that line into my memory. But I probably shouldn’t joke about this.
Yeah, I’m 100% convinced that if I were to wake up from anesthesia after needing a medical procedure done, only to discover that I had ‘precious bodily fluids’ deposited ON MY DAMN FACE, I wouldn’t need to worry about which doctors my insurance plan works with ever again (I’d be busy getting myself a lawyer) and the doctor wouldn’t need to worry about his genitals being attached to his body anymore.
WTF!? ….#&*%^!@
I’m wondering if it would make me seem like a slut if I put together a ‘crime scene evidence preserving kid’ in my purse while trying to market that idea as a buusbessv
My ex used to tell stories about his ex to me. It usually sounded like pretty normal behavior to me, so I would respond by saying things like, “oh, it sounds like she didn’t feel like you were hearing her out” and such. He would look at me like I’d grown an extra head when I did this. I guess I wasn’t supposed to empathize with her because she was the “crazy” ex and this story was supposed to make me feel sorry for him or something, but those stories just made me realize how immature he was to think perfectly normal interactions were somehow disordered. It wasn’t long after that when my perfectly normal reactions to things started getting blown out of proportion by him, but at least I had some foreshadowing. 😉