Were you in an abusive relationship? Kansas says "TOO BAD!"

[frotaz37]

"Historically, domestic abuse of women has been inadequately addressed and prosecuted for various social reasons. In need of reform, "

"The Dallas Cowboys are a bad football team."

"Bush did 9/11."

"Medieval social practices influence present day policy-making more than the events of the last century, for some reason."

"Jews control the world's banks and are the reason poverty exists."

"Women just have to accuse you of being a space alien and then the government locks you up in Area 51, I heard it from my buddy's friend's cousin. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME, trust me."

"I am the world's greatest writer; I just haven't written anything yet."

"A woodchuck would chuck all the wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

"One plus one equals two."


Everything I just wrote consists of "words on a forum". And yet, the truth, objectivity, and credibility of each statement varies greatly. It's a simple matter to discern which statements are reasonable provided you have certain amount of relevant, unbiased knowledge on the topic at hand, which also varies.

In other words, accept things as fact if it sounds good and you happen to agree because you think you already know things about it?

-____-

Ah, that's mature. Take not even a complete sentence out of context and throw an asinine little barb in there.

The burden of proof in an alarming hypothesis such as that eighteenspikes's story is not only common, but common enough that it is the norm in domestic battery investigations, falls to the person making it. There are no studies that suggest this to be the dominant trend, and only two things can explain that -- either the idea is completely preposterous, or sufficient studies to suggest as much either don't have enough exposure to be widely read and studied or (more likely) don't exist. As things stand, the complete sentence of what I said is indeed a fact, as far as facts exist outside of mathematics and scientific laws. If you would like to debase that position, you have to do it with more than a little bit of internet snark.

Do you realize you have no idea what the norm is because you CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW? You have no idea what REALLY happened in ANY domestic abuse case, especially ones that aren't well documented (which makes up almost all of them). Saying "what happened to eighteenspikes is not the norm" insinuates that you know intimate details about every single domestic abuse case. You don't. It's not fact. Do you even know what a fact is? ... And the statement "there are no studies to support X position" is a cop out argument. You can say that there ARE studies to support X position, because then you actually have something to work with. Saying the opposite is just saying "You're wrong, and here is non-existent evidence to prove it" which is nothing more than "I'm right and you aren't".

Think about the proof you're asking for in this situation...studies that show what REALLY happened in a domestic abuse cases and if one of the people involved was discriminated against because of their gender? Right.............it's like when black people complain about racism in the judicial system, are you going to ask for studies that prove it? Sure you can point to studies that show that black people are more likely to be convicted of crimes and receive harsher punishments, but then one could just say "Oh well it's because they commit more crimes and the ones who get convicted just happen to be extremely dangerous". See where I'm going with this? The only way to form an opinion about such a thing is through personal experience/anecdotal evidence. Am I saying that what eighteenspikes went through is the norm? No, because nobody factually knows what "the norm" is in this kind of situation. Obtaining facts on such things is borderline impossible, so saying that one thing is the norm is no more ridiculous than saying it isn't. You're both arguing about things neither of you can possibly know.

Ah, that classic strawman. And as infantile as they come. For future reference, this is only a valid snark point if the person is actually trying to leverage themself as some kind of all-encompassing renaissance genius for having one degree, or they majored in like, Studies or some equally useless/irrelevant ****.

Or if it's completely irrelevant to the conversation? If you have facts to present, present facts. Bringing up your level of education does not make what you're saying seem any more legit because any ****** can get a degree. Why not say "I've studied these topics extensively" instead? Saying what you said just comes off as bragging every single time.

So, no. I am not automatically smarter, superior, more knowledgeable blah blah strawmanstrawman than someone else. However, it is a (teehee) fact that I know a whole hell of a lot more about these specific subjects that I have studied than people who have not studied them. And with what do these people fill in their views? The media, which I've addressed as inherently flawed for such study, and their own anecdotal experiences and network of information, which is statistically insignificant.

And people on here are just supposed to know that you've studied these specific subjects? You realize how many people come on the internet and say **** is fact when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about? You're basically expecting people to give you credit and believe what you say because it sounds good. Nothing you said in your first post that strife responded to (or the response to that one, for that matter) suggests that you are any more qualified to be speaking about the topic than anyone else in the thread. Expecting people to just change their views and believe you because you say so without even explaining why you think you're a credible source of information on the topic is giving yourself way way way way way way way too much credit.

 

[GoldShadow]

frotaz, it's not like the stuff EE is referencing is super secret and esoteric. All it takes is some basic research skills or a little time in a library to see if what he's saying is true. Everything he's said has confirmed and echoed what I've read on the subject in the past, and I'm by no means an expert on the topic--but I've learned quite a bit about it passively from reading articles/excerpts over the years.

In fact, he even went and provided a few sources in his last post.

I also do not see where he was bragging, seeing as he was rather rudely attacked, and then brought up his course of study to show that yes, he has in fact studied these topics extensively and he does know what he is talking about.

Do you realize you have no idea what the norm is because you CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW? You have no idea what REALLY happened in ANY domestic abuse case, especially ones that aren't well documented (which makes up almost all of them). Saying "what happened to eighteenspikes is not the norm" insinuates that you know intimate details about every single domestic abuse case. You don't. It's not fact. Do you even know what a fact is? ... And the statement "there are no studies to support X position" is a cop out argument. You can say that there ARE studies to support X position, because then you actually have something to work with. Saying the opposite is just saying "You're wrong, and here is non-existent evidence to prove it" which is nothing more than "I'm right and you aren't".

Think about the proof you're asking for in this situation...studies that show what REALLY happened in a domestic abuse cases and if one of the people involved was discriminated against because of their gender? Right.............it's like when black people complain about racism in the judicial system, are you going to ask for studies that prove it? Sure you can point to studies that show that black people are more likely to be convicted of crimes and receive harsher punishments, but then one could just say "Oh well it's because they commit more crimes and the ones who get convicted just happen to be extremely dangerous". See where I'm going with this? The only way to form an opinion about such a thing is through personal experience/anecdotal evidence. Am I saying that what eighteenspikes went through is the norm? No, because nobody factually knows what "the norm" is in this kind of situation. Obtaining facts on such things is borderline impossible, so saying that one thing is the norm is no more ridiculous than saying it isn't. You're both arguing about things neither of you can possibly know.

Way to spit on the hard-won research of thousands of people who spend years studying this topic and related topics, compile data and investigate the facts, write articles for academic journals, publish papers on their areas of expertise, pen textbooks on the subject based on real numbers and real cases, and are largely responsible for the body of knowledge on domestic abuse.

You want EE to provide facts yet you argue that the only way to "know" is through personal, anecdotal experience, as opposed to believing the thousands of people who have spent their professional lives researching and writing about the subject--people who know a lot more about domestic violence than you or I?

Why don't we wave a hand and dismiss whole other academic fields while we're at it... poof! I hereby vanquish the study of economics and supplant it with my opinion.

 

[frotaz37]

Yes, clearly I am saying that no research is viable for anything related to domestic abuse and every study that has ever been published in regards to it and anyone who has ever researched it deserves to be completely discredited.

Oh wait, I'm not saying that at all.

Try again when you decide to stop putting words in my mouth and pretending like I'm saying things I'm clearly not saying.

Oh and you can stop acting like saying "You are wrong" followed by an explanation of why (even if it's not correct) is a rude attack. A rude attack? Are you kidding? If all he had said was "You are wrong" then maybe, MAYBE it would be a rude attack. But he clearly stated why he felt like Evil Eye was wrong. There was nothing rude about it in the slightest.

 

[Strife]

First of all, that's not quite what chivalry is. Chivalry is a relic from the middle ages with strong roots in Christianity and military knighthood. Chivalry is not the same as just being nice to women. It is probably one of the most misused terms around these days.

More importantly, it's entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. The reason crimes of abuse or sexual assault by women are less prosecuted than those by men is precisely because of what EE said earlier. It's an institutional bias that was brought about by overreactive laws. Generally speaking, domestic abuse is (and was) more commonly committed by men than by women. In the past, the laws (and the system) weren't very responsive to the domestic abuse of women. It was only when some battered women, left with no other recourse, eventually took it into their hands that the system took notice--because the system was now faced with murdered, abusive boyfriends/husbands.

It was sort of a wake up call for the system. So laws/changes were enacted that made it easier for women to have legal recourse for domestic abuse than it had been in the past. And that's where the institutional bias has stemmed from, a steady overreaction to spousal abuse problems (specifically, man on woman violence). What needs to happen now is that the institutional bias has to be corrected.


The stuff you're talking about, that there's a different societal standard for how men should treat women and how that's wrong, is valid (ie, I think a lot of people agree with you that there's no reason men should give women preferential treatment)... but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

{Sourced from dictionary.com} Chivalry: 2.courteous behaviour, esp towards women. It hardly matters what the initial literal definition is, in today's world it has a strong connotation in reference to the extreme respect and regard in which men are expected to treat women. Don't make a counter argument by being overly technical, it's dumb.

You're mistaken if you think the institutional bias in today's society is only because of over correction. I'm annoyed that people stressed my points about domestic violence and sexual assault, as I was far more concerned with child custody cases and criminal sentences. Statistically(by a frightening amount) the overwhelming majority of child custody cases are won by the women, in the legal system they say that ''judges usually award custody to the mothers'' and however you want to look at it, that is bull****. That is not the case of over correction, that is the case of a cultural bias in favor of women. Women identify with one another and men are sympathetic towards women, both sexes hold the rights of men with less regard in this manner. It's the same in the legal system, statistically women are far more likely to receive a lighter sentence for the same crime committed by a man. This is all common knowledge, anyone saying they are unaware of this is just feigning ignorance(I suppose it's possible that they are just very uninformed).

And this has everything to do with the issue at hand, there is a problem with American culture that favors women. Domestic Violence, Skewed Child Custody wins, and educational philosophies like ''girls before boys'' are just examples of the problems at hand, they don't define it.

I feel kind of silly saying this now, but I didn't bring up that domestic abuse policies apply equally [in principle] to men as to women because I took it for granted that everybody would understand and be aware of that. Rereading... I'm not so sure. Silly EE. You mod these rooms, you should know better!

Strife your talk about chivalrous attitudes was, as Goldie said, completely irrelevant to the discussion. The depths of your misinformation actually astound me if you believe that the "women first" social quirks like holding a door open for a lady have more to do with the evolution of the related criminological and sociological trends. I gave you a timeline of facts, and you said "you're wrong" and proceeded to offer a social insight founded completely on your own opinion and speculation. Well, ****, man, I wish you told me how little I know about this subject area before I spent like eight grand on this degree I'm just finishing.

As a man myself I'm obviously not going to condemn my own sex to the depths of hell for the way society turned out, and as any open-minded sort tends to be, I try to look for cultural and developmental explanations of social behavior before I start playing a lazy blame game. But society ended up in a bad way for the womenfolk in pretty much every way they might intermingle with men, and so you have patriarchy. You wanna talk about legal privilege? Back in "the day" women would get tossed to the curb after a divorce with no car, no house, no kids, and no job skills because they've been keeping house for sixteen years.

Men used to get to beat all kinds of hell out of their wives, too, and when wives ended up dead, the police would investigate a homicide, not a social problem. When the shoe went on the other foot and husbands started dying, they began to appreciate that there was a problem. Feminist movements didn't hurt things, either. And it wasn't all willful ignorance on the part of the cops, either. Often-times the cycle of abuse thing (which was so thoroughly scoffed earlier, fair though that was to do in that one case alone) is very much a reality.

I'm a bouncer. Sometimes when couples get drunk they start to lash out at each other. Pull an abusive husband or boyfriend off a woman and you might have red fingernails lashing out for your eyeballs, much to your surprise. There's battered woman syndrome, and it's the reason police have an obligation to push forward with spousal battery investigations even when a battered spouse does not want to press charges or insists nothing is wrong. Props to Nino for providing an example with the gender roles reversed. Anecdotal evidence or not, it at least shows that you have some consistency with this activation of policy, and that it's not all about sex.

The fact of the matter is, unfortunate stories such as eighteenspikes's are not the norm. They are unfortunate, and they're certainly more common than they should be, but that does not make them the standard practice. What a lot of people forget is that when their knowledge of a subject comes from personal experience, telephone-game-gossip, or sensationalized news reports, you're not exactly getting reliable information. Personal experience will forever taint your view on related subjects, regardless of how common your experience actually was. Your cousin's uncle's brother-in-law may have had a rough divorce with a ballbuster of a biased judge, and the media maybe be reporting about, hell I don't know, some woman that concocted a crazy story to get her boyfriend incarcerated because she wanted to have the house to herself for a while and is cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

You hear stories likes this, but you never, ever hear the stories about everything going exactly as it ought to. Not unless you're really looking for it, which you don't -- not if you have a particular opinion you don't want to be colored away.

A good comparison is all the controversy that has sprung up over police officers using Tasers. People cite the news as evidence enough that something is institutionally wrong with this weapon and its deployment, but ask yourself this: Would a newspaper sell a lot of print with a headline like Man resists arrest; officer makes use of force; situation is defused without issue?

No. And that's the point. Something that goes off without a hitch and is entirely mundane is not a story. The men in your family don't pass stories from one household to another about how their friend Bob had a nice, clean divorce, still lives in the house, and maintains perfectly split custody with the kids. Newspapers don't sell headlines and evening news programs don't achieve ratings with slice of life stories that don't have some form of scandal.

Stories don't get told unless they at some level contain bull****.

Think on all that and ask yourself if you're really all that well-versed in divorce proceedings or spousal battery investigations. I bet you aren't.

It's hard to respond to such long posts. Also I'm in a rush so I'm sorry if I miss somethings.

A lot of your post annoys me. ''You wanna talk about legal privilege {and then an explanation as to how women were ****ed over in the past}'' I understand that you're not so dumb as to suggest that the fact that women were ****ed over in the past so hard is a justification for how men are treated now, I'm also going to assume that you're not saying that because women were ****ed over so badly that what's happening to men now ''isn't so bad'', although I get that it's not the core of your argument, you have certainly phrase it as a counterpoint and on someone level it seems likely that you believe that notion to be true, and that is just ********. It really doesn't matter how badly women were treated, that is irrelevant to how men should be treated today.

I'm aware that what eighteenspiks said isn't the norm(at least I hope it's not) but the examples I gave myself are the norm, and it's examples of how screwed American institutionalism is. You're just being naive or outright stupid if you're going to say you cannot see the correlation between notions such as ''men must hold the door for women'' and ''boys should allow girls to leave and enter the room first'' and the institutional and cultural biases in today's society. It's the same underlying problem in all cases, WOMEN ARE TREATED WITH MORE REGARD THAT MEN. Don't tell me that the education system instilling this philosophy in the minds of children isn't harmful; from the beginning children are taught that females should be treated with greater respect that men. What is ok about that?

Lastly I'm well aware that the media can't be trusted(I hardly watch news actually), and I'm versed enough on the topic. I have done research and projects about this. Don't assume you know more than me on this.

 

[El Nino]

Well, I'm not knowledgeable in custody cases, and I think that most fathers should get parental rights as well as mothers, but even if that is an example of bias in favor of women, in how many other sectors of society do we see this bias? Society favors women in custody cases, and that's probably because women are largely identified by their reproductive abilities due to historical reasons. In terms of sexism, this is a double edged sword. Although women may be favored in custody cases, their own reproductive rights with regards to abortion are often put up for debate. I'm not saying that this justifies how fathers are treated in divorce cases, but when we're talking about sexism in society, I don't see that judicial bias towards mothers as being an indication of an overwhelming degree of institutional sexism against men. There are many other sectors of society in which men are favored over women.

I also have to note that, in purely biological terms, a mother's parental investment is much greater than a father's. Men simply cannot get pregnant and will never endure that burden. This should not exclude fathers from parental rights, imo, especially if they provide for the child, but if there is a reason why society tends to favor mothers in custody disputes, that would be the most logical explanation as to why.

Also, with regards to preferential treatment of women as a common courtesy, I don't see it translating into institutional practice. For instance, women are not necessarily hired more readily than men when applying for a job, and they are not usually paid more than a man for doing the same type of work (I think it's usually the opposite). A guy may hold the door for her to get into the building, but that's pretty much where it seems to end.

Furthermore, that preferential treatment can also be seen as a double edged sword, as it would hinder some women from entering more physically strenuous or dangerous occupations, even if they are capable of and have a desire for it.

In short, I think you're right about custody cases. But I don't think it's fitting to apply that to the rest of society and say that we are now sexist against men on the larger scale.

 

[frotaz37]

But I don't think it's fitting to apply that to the rest of society and say that we are now sexist against men on the larger scale.

Yeah, this. I feel like the justice system is really the only part of society where sexism towards men is a problem, and it's really only the case in first world countries. Everywhere else, sexism towards women is still a much, much bigger issue.