Another Weasel Apology

Except we aren't talking about rape.

The Rape of the Lock. The cutting of the female's hair was metaphorically linked to rape. No, it's not the same, not quite, but it is easy to draw comparisons. They involve similar victim blaming mindset. It's disconcerting to think that anyone is broadcasting the wrong message. I think it's more what message is being *perceived* by the aggressor.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Except we aren't talking about rape.

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All rape is battery and assault with a good deal of shaming from other parties on the side. Much like gay-bashing.

Opty said:

That sounds like the same type of "blame the victim" nonsense some people use when talking about rape. The girl was in the wrong bar, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong skirt (i.e. "did you see what she was wearing / how she was looking? She was asking for it.")

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Not really, at least not in context. It, to me, reads more like a circuitous way to say "There's nothing wrong with you. It wasn't your fault. You just happened to be there." Bad things happen to good people, too.

Does that make sense?

Shadow_Ferret said:

Except we aren't talking about rape.

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Willibee said:

Not really, at least not in context. It, to me, reads moer like a circuitous way to say "There's nothing wrong with you. It wasn't your fault. You just happened to be there." Bad things happen to good people, too.

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No, but the POV of blaming the victim is similar. It's the inclusion of the phrase, "broadcasting the wrong message" that, to me, gives it a blame-the-victim tack.

Just as it's not the rape victim's fault for the supposed "provocative" or "sexy" image she's "broadcasting" for how she dresses (or any other number of lame excuses I've heard or read about from people who blame the girl), likewise it's not the bullying victim's fault for how they dress, or look, or act, or their sexual orientation...or, as dave put it, that they're "broadcasting the wrong message." The underlying implication in both cases is that the victim some how deserved it or brought it on him/herself.

If only she hadn't been drinking around strangers and wearing that skirt.

If only that kid hadn't grown his hair out and gone around acting all gay.

Characterising it as the "wrong" message that they're "broadcasting" puts the blame on the victim, insinuating that they were bullied for how they look, act, etc. and that they were "broadcasting" these things, which implies that it was intentional on the part of the victim because they were somehow acting "wrong."

Yeah, sorry. I should have addressed that. "broadcasting the wrong message" I don't get. Unless you are meaning "just appearing weaker. appearing to the bad guy like you might be a target of opportunity."
That perception is still all in the head, and the intent, of the bad guy.

It's that circuitous thing I was trying to relay -- bad things happen to good people. That a person is raped, robbed, whatever, because they happened to be the person at that place, at that time, and a bad person took advantage of it, doesn't make the victim at fault. Not at all. In it's own weird way, pointing out [edited] the wrong place, wrong time thing is a way of saying that it wasn't their fault.

Now, once it hits the courts and the media and the spin starts to twist that simple truth-- then we get folks blaming the victim. And that's just crap.

ETA: There's also that thing in our heads that tries to find ways to assure ourselves that "they must have done something wrong and that's why it couldn't happen to me!" -- because we're human and we are weird like that.

*puts soapbox back in the corner*

Xelebes said:

All rape is battery and assault with a good deal of shaming from other parties on the side. Much like gay-bashing.

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You're either minimalizing the horrific nature of rape or trying to raise a blanket party haircut up to that status. I can't go along with either.

I do, however, agree with the sentiments said about the nature of blaming when the problem isn't with the victim sending anything but with the aggressor perceiving something... Something that might only be in his own head.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Maybe as a woman you're more inclined to be effected by such behavior? I don't know. Plus, he's got 30 years on you in which to have those memories fade.

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Well, I'm older than Romney, and I can still remember clearly a few things I did to other, weaker, targets of opportunity in high school. Nothing as serious as holding someone down and cutting their hair, but things I feel guilty about to this day. And I'm not a woman.

To me, the point is not what he did all those years ago. The point is, why not stop the silly giggling and grinning about it, and just say something like, "This was an outrageous thing of the kind that teenagers are likely to do and then regret when they mature. I regret it and sincerely apologize. I can only say that I am a far different person today than I was as a high school kid."

I am by no means in Mitt Romney's corner, but if I'd heard him say something of that nature, my immediate thought would have been, "Good for you! I admire your guts." Instead, it was, "There he goes again with a typical Mitt response."

Shadow_Ferret said:

You're either minimalizing the horrific nature of rape or trying to raise a blanket party haircut up to that status. I can't go along with either.

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Trust me, I know what it is like to be swarmed and beat into the snow (a beating alike this lock-rape). It does leave the same remaining marks as rape does. The shaming after the fact is the kicker.

AncientEagle said:

The point is, why not stop the silly giggling and grinning about it, and just say something like,

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I suspect that the lame apology Romney did issue was a deft bit of political theater. It's now public knowledge that in his youth he did a bit of gay-bashing, and he's not really sorry for it. I suspect that will play well with a good chunk of the Republican base, and he didn't have to explicitly say much of anything.

Ever wonder what the reaction would be if a credible account surfaced about Obama indulging in such behavior?

RichardGarfinkle said:

I never had anything that serious, but I did get a fair number of teachers and camp counselors explaining to me why my behavior and way of talking lead to being ganged up on.

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Yeah, bullies don't react well to greetings of "Na noo, na noo!"

rugcat said:

Ever wonder what the reaction would be if a credible account surfaced about Obama indulging in such behavior?

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By us, or by the media?

I dunno. Obama's admission of substance abuse while he was in school was pretty much a non issue, as it should have been. But speculation about how people would react to a bullying event in his past would be just that--speculation.

rugcat said:

Ever wonder what the reaction would be if a credible account surfaced about Obama indulging in such behavior?

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My guess is that the public (including me) would be a lot more disgusted.

It's a matter of expectations based on their public persona.

To me, Mitt is like GWB, they're both kind of like arrogant frat boys who would go around picking on weaklings. Thus, a story about Mitt being a bully just doesn't shock me as much.

Barack is a like Jimmy Carter, they project an image that they're nice, sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful guys. Thus, the same story would be a much bigger betrayal. A greater hypocrisy here.

This is just one more tiny nail in Romney's coffin. And when the screws of scrutiny start to tighten in the coming months, there will be many, many more of them, IMO. I guess that's a classic mixed metaphor, but still ... can a guy like this really thrive beneath the spotlight? (Is that another one?)

I'm sure Karl Rove is furiously searching for something he can spin into a story about Obama and his Muslim buddies picking on some preacher's kid.

Opty said:

That sounds like the same type of "blame the victim" nonsense some people use when talking about rape. The girl was in the wrong bar, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong skirt (i.e. "did you see what she was wearing / how she was looking? She was asking for it.")

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No, as stated, the blame still falls on the attacker. In the case of a rape -- any rape -- the victim usually does nothing wrong. But she's in the wrong room, at the wrong time, being the wrong person (quite literally, anybody other than who she is at that moment).

That's not her fault. No victim of a bully deserves to be bullied. But they are. It doesn't matter what they're wearing or how they're acting. As the previous poster said, it doesn't absolve the perpetrator from the responsibility of acting appropriately.

Opty said:

No, but the POV of blaming the victim is similar. It's the inclusion of the phrase, "broadcasting the wrong message" that, to me, gives it a blame-the-victim tack.

Just as it's not the rape victim's fault for the supposed "provocative" or "sexy" image she's "broadcasting" for how she dresses (or any other number of lame excuses I've heard or read about from people who blame the girl), likewise it's not the bullying victim's fault for how they dress, or look, or act, or their sexual orientation...or, as dave put it, that they're "broadcasting the wrong message." The underlying implication in both cases is that the victim some how deserved it or brought it on him/herself.

If only she hadn't been drinking around strangers and wearing that skirt.

If only that kid hadn't grown his hair out and gone around acting all gay.

Characterising it as the "wrong" message that they're "broadcasting" puts the blame on the victim, insinuating that they were bullied for how they look, act, etc. and that they were "broadcasting" these things, which implies that it was intentional on the part of the victim because they were somehow acting "wrong."

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On a previous forum, Opty, certain posters broadcast loudly that they were targets for flaming. I know you know that. We participated equally in those flame wars. That person could have stated her message differently. She could have responded differently. In either case, the result would have been different.

What happened there is no different than what happens behind backstops or bars.

No one's saying they were acting wrong. I'm saying that the aura they presented was one of a victim. Predators find their prey. Acting the victim invites the crime. Again, that does not absolve the predator one iota. It just goes toward helping identify why *this* person was the victim, but *that* one wasn't.

Death Wizard said:

This is just one more tiny nail in Romney's coffin. And when the screws of scrutiny start to tighten in the coming months, there will be many, many more of them, IMO. I guess that's a classic mixed metaphor, but still ... can a guy like this really thrive beneath the spotlight? (Is that another one?)

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I fear that he doesn't need to thrive or it won't matter how many nails there are, because there are just too many anti-Obamanites, too many birthers, too many who think he's Muslim, too many who won't care about romneys character...

rugcat said:

Ever wonder what the reaction would be if a credible account surfaced about Obama indulging in such behavior?

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http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51455

...let us turn to the pages of Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama’s autobiography, which apparently lies unread upon the cocktail tables of every liberal media figure in America. Here we find Obama’s first-hand account of how he ruthlessly bullied a little girl:

“I’m not her boyfriend,” I shouted. I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove; she staggered back and looked up at me, but still said nothing. “Leave me alone!” I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class.

Earlier in the book, Obama describes Coretta, the “only black person in our grade” before his arrival, as “plump and dark and didn’t seem to have many friends.”

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The source site is, of course, not credible. But the story is in Obama's book. I heard that portion from the audio version of the book.

'Course, it's not on the same level as what Romney is accused of doing. But then, neither incident comes close to what ol' Ted Kennedy was accused of, or what Bill Clinton was accused of (rape). The latter two managed to survive politically. More or less.

Do you know what the penalty for Drunk Driving in the state of Massachussetts is?"

"Reelection to the Senate?" -- Emo Phillips

RichardGarfinkle said:

I hadn't meant to imply that the list of "feminine" characteristics was anything but a present day thing with variations from culture to culture.

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Ah, I know. Just wanted to make the point. I think it probably has something to do with sexual behavior transforming from "acts and preferences" into "being and identity."

But that's neither here nor there.

I think the flux of identity is a change from a culture-defined identity culture to an individual-defined identity culture. In the former other people told us who and what we are. In the latter people work to create their own lives and identities within the society.

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I agree. I think there's a lot of tension due to the fact that women's roles and identities have expanded much more than men's have. In other words, women have gone through most of the hard stuff (the redefining of what it means to be a woman) already, and it was easier for us anyhow because female identity (as the non-ruling class) hasn't been quite as exclusive, rather like how upper-class roles and mores are stricter than working-class roles and mores.

Perhaps.

The cultural backlash going on right now seems to me to be people demanding the right to tell other people who and what they are and what they get to do.

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Yeah, I agree - whether that's gender or what it means to be an American or whatever. I'm mostly just wondering why. Novel stuff, you know.

Xelebes said:

All rape is battery and assault with a good deal of shaming from other parties on the side. Much like gay-bashing.

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Totally agree. The main difference between rape and the OP and what you guys are talking about is the difference between aggravated and simple assault and battery. The felony kind versus the misdemeanor kind. It's a difference in degree, not in nature. IMO.

Also, I'd like to make the note that there's a big difference between clocking someone, even if it's for a silly reason, and engaging in predatory behavior. Just like there's a difference between being mean to someone at school and making their life living hell via every means you have at your disposal.

The first are kids being kids, and the second is bullying. Assault and battery in the former case and stalking in the latter case.

And I still think the biggest problem is that Romney appears to find those things funny. Same with the dog, same with laying off all the employees at a factory.

RichardGarfinkle said:

Actually, it was my use of the phrase, "Quote/Unquote"

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I think Opty was teasing ya Richard Hey, I thought it was "quote/endquote." I said that all the time. I was lucky enough to go to a school where bullying was rare and very mild when it did occur.

/very un-liberal opinion tangent

My school system practiced streaming, and I think that helped keep bullying at bay. Other than in junior high, which was a free-for-all, I had the same classmates in high school that I did in 3rd grade (with many additions, of course).

And we were nerds. Nobody ever got made fun of for being smart - being smart was a virtue. Gender roles were only enforced at the loosest possible levels. For example, there was a kid that was occasionally teased for being gay (and I'm pretty sure he is actually homosexual) in elementary school, but everyone still liked him and was usually nice to him. He's doing quite well now - last I heard he was at Cambridge, studying... I dunno, law or science or something like that.

I think it worked out pretty well because we all came from and had similar value systems, in other words. Nerdy ones.

/end un-liberal opinion tangent