Quick Hits: those little one-liners and examples that win arguments

There’s a brilliant scene from “Scrubs” in which Elliot and Turk are debating who has it worse in the medical profession: women or black men? A black female doctor walks past, and they both acknowledge her. Then, completely missing the point, they go right back to their debate. This is such an awesome example of:

–Defaulting to whiteness (“women” means “white women”)
–How the debate over whether “[white] women” or “black men” have it tougher is a great example of privilege among the oppressed. A black man’s male privilege may well be trumped by his race oppression, and my white privilege may (at least sometimes) be trumped by my femaleness, but we both have privilege in comparison to a black woman.

LOL, I very often don’t understand bigoted remarks because they tend to develop regional shorthands which people who’ve lived in one place all their lives assume are universal. So, as someone who moved around a lot through childhood, I would make them repeat it, possibly spell it, explain the significance (which was often as obscure as Cockney rhyming slang), and then make them explain the stereotype behind the slur. At which point I of course end up observing that I’ve rarely or never (or no more often than with anyone else) noticed a member of the slurred demographic performing that particular stereotype, and ask for examples where the person sees this activity happening and so on. It was pure ignorance on my part, but it does point to a really good way to deal with this stuff.

Additionally, I once attended a communications in the workplace seminar, and they actually advise this if someone says something rude or nasty. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” They usually “never mind” it, but if they do repeat it, then you ask what they mean or “Are you saying X?” to get them to publicly own what they’ve just said. As with family, they will sometimes stick to their guns and you still have to be at least superficially on good terms with them (some corps will fire the anti-racist who “can’t get along with” the racist employees), but at least you’re not just nodding and chuckling uncomfortably like half the rest of the staff does just to “get along.”

If you CAN memorize statistics, it helps a lot. But also remember to turn the stats question back on them when you know they can’t possibly have stats against you. I.E., if they ask for stats on how many women are in Congress, “I don’t have it with me, but I know it’s well below 50%. Do you have stats that prove otherwise?” And I would’ve made excellent use of the president part: “I’m sorry, you need STATS to prove there’s never been a female president? Okay. 0% of presidents were women. Seriously?” Shows they’re just being jackasses.

But don’t try this tack when there are bogus stats that contradict you, i.e., the false accusation thing. There are bullshit stats that count every non-conviction as a “false accusation”, so that’s a whole different conversation.

But for your reference: the FBI thinks false rape accusations are about 2%. Same as other felonies, and I’d credit them with a more unbiased sense of it (outside DC, anyway) than local law enforcement with local ties.

And 17% of Congress was female a couple of years ago. If it’s changed some, it won’t be by much. That’s nowhere near 50%, which is all that matters.

Towanda,

Oh, please. From our rape statistics page: http://thehathorlegacy.com/rape-statistics/

* Little research has been done on male rape, so statistics are fuzzy. But here is what is known:

- 1 in 10 rape victims are men. (Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus, 568)
- In a survey answered by hundreds of rape and sexual assault support agencies, they estimated that 93.7 percent of male rape perpetrators are male and 6.3 percent were female. (Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, 575)
- Many people do not believe that male rape by a female exists. However, penile erection can be achieved under emotional duress such as anger, fear, and pain even if the male does not wish it. (Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, 576; Lips, 234)

I don’t think 10% of men is an insignificant number. It’s lower than the 25% estimate for women, sure, but it equates to a huge number of men.

And I bet you nowhere near 10% of all men have *reported* being raped in their lifetime, at least not to the police or any sort of officials. Researchers are totally aware that all rape is under-reported, and they’ve obviously trying to arrive at guesstimates through other methods.

Side note: in my experience with men making arguments similar to this one, many are just misogynists bent on proving that women’s issues are crap and the status quo is best for everyone. But a few seem to genuinely believe rapes of men are being ignored, and just telling them, “Yes, we realize 10% of men are raped” seems to break down a barrier. I suspect this latter group may be victims of unreported rapes themselves, who feel deeply isolated.

Sylvia Sybil,

Oh, my bad – I’ve been stressed and trying to do many things at once lately. Here’s a better one – it’s more like 3%:

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

And I concur with the suggestion that 3% is low, because some sources rate the number of boys who’ve been molested higher than that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#United_States_and_Europe), which I find totally plausible:

http://www.aest.org.uk/survivors/male/myths_about_male_rape.htm

Heterosexual males can be, and are, also raped in very large numbers. An F.B.I. statistic put the number of males that will be raped as an adult at 3 %, a number most organizations think is very underestimated. Of this 3%, over 40% identify themselves as exclusively heterosexual.

In the mid 80′s it was thought that only 3% of boys suffered childhood sexual abuse where as now it is accepted 1 in 6 are; so the 3% for adult rape will probably rise in the next few years as well as more males start to talk about it.