Femme Fatale or Date Rape Victim?

CIARAN_BOYLE · 20-06-2014 9:41am

Potatoeman wrote: »

That can be pretty broad though. You might sleep with someone when you are both drunk, that you would not normally sleep with. Arent both responsible in that case?

Women often claim date rape in that case, under the basis that 'men can't be raped'.

Not trying to trivilise rape here just don't like the term daterape or its use.

Recondite49 · 20-06-2014 5:12pm

Potatoeman wrote: »

That can be pretty broad though. You might sleep with someone when you are both drunk, that you would not normally sleep with. Arent both responsible in that case?

I think from a moral perspective you're spot on Potatoeman but from a legal point of view your reputation could still be ruined if a woman who regrets sleeping with you tries to claim it was rape.

The government in the UK backed down over anonymity for men accused of rape, on the basis that it might encourage other women to come forward and claim they'd been raped by him too.

As such I've always recommended to my male friends that it's best not to be alone with women you don't know well. Some of them have reacted angrily as they believe this to be a masculine form of "victim blaming" - the moral onus is on the woman not to lie, not for them to avoid being accused, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Black Swan · 21-06-2014 2:38am

diveout wrote: »

So if the rapes are that high at 27%, why are women going to co-ed colleges?

If you don't want to accept the conclusions by the US National Institute of Justice and other studies cited, discussing percentages becomes problematic; e.g., it can become 2-sides of a fruitless Darrell Huff argument.

Putting percentages aside, do you believe that forced rape occurs on college campuses in America, Ireland, and other countries? Yes or no?

If yes, how many real (indisputable in your mind) forced rapes on college and university campuses per nation have to occur per year before you think women should seriously take precautions? One forced rape? Two? Ten? Hundreds? Thousands? How many before it becomes of concern to you? Please give us a number.

biko · 21-06-2014 4:07am

Black Swan wrote: »

This launched a controversy with some women's rights activists, where they accused Nia Sanchez of blaming the victim. For example, why should women have to learn self-defense, or martial arts (that would take years to master) when they were not at fault? And if women did not master SD or MA, to what extent were they to blame for allowing themselves to be victimized?

This to me is a logical fallacy. Not knowing how to defend yourself is not equal to "allowing yourself to become a victim" in the same way as bringing a knife to a gunfight is not "allowing oneself to become a victim".

Pat Mustard · 21-06-2014 7:32pm

diveout wrote: »

I would be very interested to see by the way any studies done on the effects of martial arts on the fight, flight or freeze response.

The OODA loop is something which has been written about by military strategist, John Boyd. The idea is that the decision making process can be described as a recurring cycle or set of interacting cycles, whereby people Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

This concept can be used to attempt to understand why people freeze during an assault.

Rory Miller, a jail guard and martial artist (with a degree in psychology), writes that he has been in hundreds of real life physical altercations in his book; "Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence." He also writes about the OODA loop and people freezing during assaults.

He writes that time is typically lost during the two middle steps (Orient, Decide). He also writes that decision making can get caught in a repeating cycle in the OODA loop, as people observe that blows are raining in, and orient that they are being attacked (for instance) and before any action is taken, further blows are observed and oriented to in a similar manner, resulting in no action being taken during an assault. The person freezes.

At p.36 he writes that:

Operant conditioning (see Section 5.4) is critical in self-defense because it is possible, in certain situations, including surprise attacks, to cut out the middle two steps and develop an automatic, reflex-level response.

Not knowing much about psychology myself, I just take the man's word for it.

What he is essentially saying is that you can train for an automatic response to these situations.

Miller also writes about the effect of the adrenaline dump on the body in a stressful situation, how fine motor skills become compromised, but gross motor skills remain largely intact. This can improve the effectiveness of an attack by an unskilled fighter. However, a trained fighter will find that his attacks become less effective than they would be without the effects of the adrenal dump. He loses more because he has more to lose. Miller talks about exposure to violence reducing the effect of the chemical cocktail on the body, and also writes about various tactics/strategies for dealing with and training for such situations.

I also thought that this excerpt was interesting, in relation to the effect of the adrenal dump on an aggressor or potential threat (pp. 63-64):

Some people get big, red and loud. Their face flushes; they swell up and try to intimidate with size and voice. They are trying to intimidate, pure and simple. They have more in common with the Monkey Dance than predatory violence. They are usually not a problem.

Small, white, and pale indicates a threat in a pretty advanced stage of adrenalization. His blood has pooled to his center and he is on the edge of panic. If something sets him off, he will go frantically insane. He will hurt you, much like a cornered animal.

Some go “flat” when the adrenaline hits. They seem emotionless, alert. Eyes widen into a thousand-yard stare. In general, they are experienced with the adrenaline state and can and will hurt you. They will retain a large percentage of skill. They make ugly opponents. On the good side, of the three types, these are the ones that can still communicate. You can talk to them.

He also discusses a number of other issues such as where, when and why violence occurs. There is a chapter on predators. It's an interesting book from a man with with decades of experience of violence.

P.s. I see that the entire book can be viewed for free on scribd.com if you google it. I didn't post a link to it, because there is also mention of a torrent there.

Black Swan · 21-06-2014 9:53pm

diveout wrote: »

I would be very interested to see by the way any studies done on the effects of martial arts on the fight, flight or freeze response.

The Mustard wrote: »

At p.36 he writes that:

Operant conditioning (see Section 5.4) is critical in self-defense because it is possible, in certain situations, including surprise attacks, to cut out the middle two steps and develop an automatic, reflex-level response.

Not knowing much about psychology myself, I just take the man's word for it.

What he is essentially saying is that you can train for an automatic response to these situations.

Cognitive psychologist RE Clark at University of Southern California has researched, published, and taught this type of human behaviour for decades. Behaviour that is learned through thousands of repetitions is called procedural knowledge, and the response that occurs as the result of such knowledge exhibits automaticity; it occurs automatically without thought.

Picture someone first learning to drive. They are very self-conscious of all the things they must do, and make mistakes driving. If you disrupt their concentration during this time, they tend to make even more mistakes. Yet after years of practice (thousands of repetitions) they can drive without thought (action has been proceduralised). They can now simultaneously drive, chat with a friend in companion seat, adjust the radio/CD, look for an address, check out the cute lad or lass in another car, drink coffee, and if someone unexpectedly hits the breaks immediately in front of them, they can hit their breaks and stop without thinking.

This is one reason why there are thousands of repetitions in MA. Through repetitions over time the actions (e.g., quickly step back while blocking and immediately striking offensively in combinations) becomes proceduralised, and when a triggering action occurs (e.g., attacked; or car in front unexpectedly breaks), and the counter occurs immediately without thought exhibiting automaticity.

In addition to the automaticity that results from proceduralisation, MA (that is taught well) includes extensive simulation learning over time; i.e., simulated combat that occurs while sparring in both dojang/dojo/studio and in tournament fighting (especially in tourneys with advanced level/full contact). The Social Learning Theory of cognitive-behavioural psychologist Albert Bandura of Stanford University demonstrated that learning was enhanced through observation, imitation, and modeling. When social learning is combined with procedural knowledge/automaticity over years of MA training and sparring experiences, the chance of freezing when attacked is greatly reduced.

As for the "flight" response, it may be the most appropriate thing to do in a potential conflict situation, if feasible. Risk avoidance, especially if you are smaller, lighter, and not as strong as your larger opponent may be the best response. Even if you temporarily discourage or otherwise knock down your attacker, the next best move may be to walk or run away.

After having said this, the "flight" response has been a matter of psychological and physiological debate for decades. For those interested, there has been extensive debate and disagreement over this issue. See the opposing James-Lange theory and Cannon-Bard theory. The bear in the woods metaphor by James-Lange was both instructive and amusing.

Wibbs · 23-06-2014 10:34am

Black Swan wrote: »

The US National Institute of Justice reports (26 October 2010): "The most recent and methodologically rigorous studies show that sexual assault still occurs at rates that approximate those first identified more than 20 years ago when Koss, Gidycz, and Wisiewski found that approximately 27.5% of college women reported experiences that met the legal criteria for rape."

The Koss study(and I use the term broadly) was the one that kicked this "one in four" stuff off and the methodology was so full of holes it would pass fair muster as a colander. It has since been repeated so often it has become a "fact", even a meme. Indeed some go further and now reference "one in three".

US gov led studies(PDF) into the reported incidence of sexual violence* in the wider US shows at worst 5 in a 1000 women in 1995(the rates of what they term "completed rape" actually dropped from nearly 4 to under 2 per 1000 women from 1995-2010). These are averages taken over two year periods. So how do we get that figure up to one of 250 per 1000 women? Unless we want to believe that US colleges are rape centers of a level that would suggest you sending in the national guard to control it. Interestingly, the colleges themselves by law have to compile and provide reported crime stats on campus - Example 1/Example 2 - and their stats reflect the wider national stats the government study found, not within an asses roar of "one in four".

Let's take another government study(PDF) that seems to back the high figure up. As an exercise take out all other criteria of sexual victimisation and just look at the stats for completed rapes. This comes to just under 2% of those surveyed. 2% is still far too many BTW.

However even looking at that 2% of would be defined in the common mind as "obvious rape" the report states;

"In each incident report, respondents were asked, “Do you consider this incident to be a rape?”. For the 86 incidents categorized as a completed rape, 46.5 percent (n = 40) of the women answered “yes,” 48.8 percent (n = 42) answered “no,” and 4.7 percent (n = 4) answered “don’t know.”".

So of the women in the study whose experience was considered to be clear cut, no question rape, nearly half of them didn't consider it to be. Now of course sexual assault is a minefield of horrible emotional upset and people can easily blot out an incident or pass it off at the time, but when half of a survey of people who apparently fit the bill of full on rape state that they don't consider it such other questions have to be asked. In the original "1 in 4" Koss study this figure was even higher. 73% of those women didn't consider it rape(and 40 odd per cent of them continued sleeping with the same guy).

Black Swan wrote: »

If you don't want to accept the conclusions by the US National Institute of Justice and other studies cited, discussing percentages becomes problematic; e.g., it can become 2-sides of a fruitless Darrell Huff argument.

Not really, or at least that's an easy cop out. You may as well throw out all stats, both in support of the 1 in 4 argument, or against it, or just pull figures out of the air for fun.

Putting percentages aside, do you believe that forced rape occurs on college campuses in America, Ireland, and other countries? Yes or no?

Of course. Empty question really. Rape occurs full stop. The question is does it occur at a significantly higher rate on college campuses? If one is to believe some stats, rather the loose interpretation of same, then it's occurring at a rate that wouldn't look out of place in a full on warzone. It might even be safer in some warzones.

If yes, how many real (indisputable in your mind) forced rapes on college and university campuses per nation have to occur per year before you think women should seriously take precautions? One forced rape? Two? Ten? Hundreds? Thousands? How many before it becomes of concern to you? Please give us a number.

Specious argument TBH. With a side order of the emotive. While one rape is too many, like any risk of harm in any crime it does depend on the actual real world level of said risk. To take your example, there is a huge risk difference between one and thousands in a given population. Shootings occur regularly enough in Ireland, particularly in Dublin with its high population. Am I at risk of being shot? Yes, but the risk is incredibly low all things being equal.

Of course the risk of sexual assualt and rape is higher than the risk of being shot, and such crimes do go on all too regularly, but fudging figures to heighten that risk and shouting "rape culture" helps no one.

*This runs the gamut from rape through unwanted fondling to verbal threats of a sexual nature.

Henry9 · 01-07-2014 9:11pm

http://www.soci270.carvajal.ca/documents/KossTheScopeofRape.pdf

Koss study

Femme Fatale or Date Rape Victim?

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