Dems win big! The Incels subreddit is banned! Celebrate in this open thread

“You know, George Takei WOULD be a prime target for a false flag at this time,” is not “innocent until proven guilty.” I may be wrong, but I’m not playing those particular games.

And forget George Takei for a second – like I said, I could absolutely be wrong and I’m honestly not too attached to being right about Takei per say. What I am worried about is rape apologists pulling this tactic and how likely it is that we’ll play right into their hands if they do.

If I’m right, and this is really a thing we need to be worried about, it’s an opportunity for a deeper interrogation of exactly *how* rape culture manipulates us out of seeing reality for what it is.

I think that believing survivors as a rule, rather than believing them because they are believable (as they nearly always are), is a band-aid solution for a gaslit world , and one that we need to start to outgrow.

I find that *most* survivors expect to be believed at first because they are telling the truth, and that nearly all liars use tactics like this in anticipation of not being believed, because they are lying.

Where are you getting these statistics from? I didn’t report the first time I was raped at 16 because I had already internalized rape culture so much that I *knew* I would be blamed and shamed and doubted. Does that make me a liar, according to you? None of my friends who were raped or assaulted ever reported anything either, for these reasons. Are they liars, too?

I realise that these are anecdata, but I’m sorry, but I think your assertion is full of shit and actually really triggering. Wtf.

The Adjunct –

I hear you. I’m sorry. I was really on the wrong track today and it’s super eye-opening for me because I haven’t been on the wrong side of this conversation since I was super young, naive and not really a feminist. I need to do a lot of thinking now about why I made this mistake because I honestly thought I was beyond the kind of idealizing of “good men” that makes it possible.

I imagine it’s probably super especially triggering and disturbing to have someone doing this kind of apologist crap who isn’t usually the type.

@Nidoqueen the Big Scary Female MGTOW fears
If it helps what I am currently doing involves one part exposure therapy, one part hypothesis testing of Tourette’s Syndrome related natural aptitudes in social conflict, and one part role-modeling of social behavior. I think there are more parts but there are no good instructions for turning brain science into personal assumptions about what one is capable of.

I’m weirdly able to chop up the interactions into kinds of respondents and relationships during a text based social conflict. For example I’m amused by a group of secondary respondents that did not like how I was making the first four look bad and have used personal insults only. I see texting about farts and focusing on a mangled metaphor in a tangential comment about the fart mocker. It’s fun because now I can question them about the underlying feelings.

I’m looking for useful cultural archetypes to use as templates but my own heritage is both risky depressing from my perspective, demons. I’ve seen others I like but I’m unsure about being respectful of the inspiration for the Heyoka for example. I’m trying court jester combined with the demons whispering in crowds thing.

My name is a reflection of my first fandom and it’s convenient bait for aggressive people intolerant for deviation from gender norms, the rest is that demon thing, my favorite horror series and mockery of “SJW”. I’m symbolically obsessed.

It’s hard to responsably practice and enjoy social conflict when ones perception is biased towards a kind of “group voice” for intense language and I have to make sure I am fighting for someone else’s reasons and not mine.

@Shadowplay
I know those but thank you anyway. I’m thinking mazes and tunnels at human social interaction height at the moment.

More later, I have to clean the house.

“I trust my own ability to spot liars but I can’t ask anyone else to.

You really shouldn’t trust your ability to spot liars. Absolutely all of your evidence is false assumptions at best, and flat out rape myths at worst. Sorry but you’re very misguided.

Examples;

“Only if you don’t actually understand trauma. If you do, or if you’ve been assaulted yourself, people’s real reactions make more sense to you.”

Sorry but there is no such thing as a “real” reaction to trauma. Literally everyone handles it differently.

“I have not. Not before the actual denial from the accused happens. I find that *most* survivors expect to be believed at first because they are telling the truth, and that nearly all liars use tactics like this in anticipation of not being believed, because they are lying.”

This is just rediculious. You know even outside of rape/rape culture, there’s a tendency to not believe accusers. It’s human nature to want to keep things calm and not want the boat rocked. To believe means that you have to do something, to deny means that we can all go about our buisiness.

Like you’re doing right now. I don’t know who you are or what you’re on about, but how dare you hold “I won’t be believed” against the victim when you’re not believing the victim right now.

ETA: Ok, I see you backtracked. I’ll leave this up since I already posted, but I’m not looking to dogpile. We all make mistakes.

@mrex, @Laurel

Whats this? Changing opinion in light of new facts, apologising, and apology being accepted? No doubling down? No “but I’m rights?”

Who swapped our internet with multiverse 7’s? 😛

Seriously – impressed.

Shadowplay – I have to be good at taking my foot out of my mouth. I put it there so often.

@LaurelG, good on you for backtracking and listening. That’s a really hard thing to do.

My reaction to abuse is certainly very, very far from “tell other people about it,” regardless of how much I think they’d believe me. It’s much more along the lines of getting distance and rebuilding. Being told that I am supposed to behave in a certain way just makes me bottle harder. (Not to mention that it cuts like a f’n knife, but hey, I can bottle that too. I’ve got a whole root cellar of bottled feels.) So, yeah, fairly triggering to be blindsided by it, to use the terminology. S’okay though, life is a bumpy ride.

Alan is a great person to talk to when you want to understand varying reactions to trauma, incidentally. I won’t tell his stories, but he’s seen trauma from all sides while at a professional distance, letting him understand the interactions more objectively. He’s also been personally, voluntarily exposed to all sorts of getting-beat-up-for-fun, if you’re interested in self defense. So if he says that people have all sorts of reactions to abuse, I’m inclined to believe him.

Gotta point out a thing on this:

I think that believing survivors as a rule, rather than believing them because they are believable (as they nearly always are), is a band-aid solution for a gaslit world , and one that we need to start to outgrow.

I mean, technically this is true – we should be using truth. But we’re nowhere near where we need to be for that, so to even suggest it right now is really damaging. It’s not a band-aid – it’s a tourniquet, and it’s keeping us from bleeding out. Don’t take it off until we’ve patched the wound.

Keep learning, my duck. We all are.

@ LaurieIG

That’s so awful; my heart goes out to you. There are others here who are in a much better position to understand what you’ve been through, but if you have any specific points you’d like me to address I’d be happy to do so.

With regards to the societal myths about sexual assault generally, I’ll just stick this up. It’s interesting reading but I suspect for a lot of people here it’ll be stating the obvious.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/societal_myths/

Mrex: “The more contact I have with humans, the more I learn.”
Beautifully put! That summarizes the last twenty years of my life succinctly.

“I hope you will be able to find support that takes the nature of your trauma into account. It must be especially hard to sort out all the gaslighting and lies if you never had the chance to experience a “before” where these things where not common. All the best to you.”

Thank you.

It’s made all the worse by the fact that I don’t have any narrative memory of the abuse, yet, and there’s still a very live “debate” in therapeutic circles about whether repression of memories of childhood sexual trauma actually exists or if people are just making up stories to get that sweet, sweet, victim status. So I don’t even know how to find a therapist who won’t sweetly, gently, “respectfully” tell me that it didn’t happen “for my own good.”

Frankly, I think our ability to understand rape culture/abuser enabling as pertains to children and incest is years behind the progress we’ve made for adult survivors.

Here’s the Hank Azaria clip I previously mentioned.