Penny Arcade and 'The Mike Problem'

[Duckay]

...with respect also being given to not pair people together where either side might experience sexual attraction?

By this, do you mean, if a sexual attraction starts to form on either side, the workload should be shuffled, or that people who are attracted to men should not work with male clients and vice versa? Because while the former makes sense, the latter would mean that, for example, bisexual people couldn't do it at all.

As I'm sure you can see, it gets complicated quickly.

[JayBlanc]

Nice job of “breaking down further.”

But why stop there, eh? 80% of murders in our culture (which for the record are the lowest they’ve been in almost 50 years - In only 5 years since 1910 have they been lower: 1955-59; despite the ever-growing amount of fear being promoted) are committed by friends and family.

Now, you said 21% of murders had a female victim male, yes? So 21% of the 80% of murders that were committed by strangers are man on woman, that equals 16.8%.

Now, the most recent stat I could find on how many total murders were committed in the states was 13,636 in 2011. I do know, however, that the number was lower last year; so we’ll use this as a liberal guess, eh?

16.8% of 13,636 is just under 2291. Out of approximately 150 million women living in the united states. That’s about .001527333 of women murdered by strangers. That means there is less than .0016% chance that a woman will meet a man that will murder her.

Congratulations. You just justified sexual discrimination based on a less than .0016% chance that a woman might meet someone that will kill her. For that you’re willing to exclude nearly 150 million people who have absolutely no connection to said murders other than sharing the same genitals.

nice.

Wow. First, we ignore that focusing on homicides was just to highlight the highest profile kind of violent crime. So we can limit it down to that number, which reduces the apparent threat a whole lot. Then we arbitrarily decide to further cut the figure down by only counting murder by strangers, no reason given for why that is done. Then this tiny number is claimed to be the sole reason for having Women Only places.

Do you seriously think that's how statistics work, just keep mangling them till you get something you like and present it in isolation from anything else? I chose the DOJ study on homicides, because it was the clearest cut crime definition with small likelihood of under-reporting, had a broad data sample, and included the suitable cross-breaks. Why did you decided to drill down to only include women killed by strangers, and claim I was saying that it's only homicides that matter?

PS - you bring up poverty. You know that 80% of homeless people are male, yea? I guess having no choice but to live in cardboard boxes on the street is our…”privilege,” eh? Because I notice that you took poverty into account when talking about why racial segregation was wrong, but you don’t seem to be mentioning it when it comes to sex discrimination. Funny how that works.

Men do make up more of the homeless on the street. But do you understand the awful reason *why*? There are two reasons, first is that those that do stay on the street die earlier than the men do. The second is that homeless women are the primary target for forced sex-worker trafficking.

Nothing mentions the disproportionate murder rates of blacks to their population in the US. If you want to look at facts, you will have to look at all of them.

You will find that the study I was citing explicitly does support my claim. There simply is not a higher risk of being a white victim of a black perpetrator. Instead black people are at higher risk of being the victim of a black perpetrator. And the obvious causative link is that if you're black, you're more likely to live in poverty, and be surrounded by people in your neighbourhood who are in the same circumstances. The cause isn't directly race, but the indirect harm that racism has done by reducing opportunities and earning ability, and doing so over generations and by concentrating the affected populations into the same circumstances and areas.

It is not prejudiced to recognise that institutionalised, passive and overt racism has meant that many more black people are in poverty and can't access the same level of opportunities as white people. Again, this is what acknowledging "privilege" is about.

The more important issue is why can blacks be covered by the veil of poverty, but that doesn't work for males? When in poverty males are the ones that often find themselves in gangs and other trouble. There's lots of gangs of many races, but they are predominately male. But that's just due to poverty right? It's an both or none situation.

Because being Male is not correlated to being in Poverty. You even have to use "When in poverty" to introduce poverty into the equation.

[Lyinginbedmon]

...with respect also being given to not pair people together where either side might experience sexual attraction?

By this, do you mean, if a sexual attraction starts to form on either side, the workload should be shuffled, or that people who are attracted to men should not work with male clients and vice versa? Because while the former makes sense, the latter would mean that, for example, bisexual people couldn't do it at all.

As I'm sure you can see, it gets complicated quickly.

Indeed, but to not pay any attention to the subject at all could cause a lot of problems too. Assuming for example a pair of heterosexual individuals were placed together as client and employee, in a male-female configuration either way, then there's firstly the possibility of sexual advances being made as well as the possibility of a sense of humiliation to either side. Although, depending on the individuals in question, humiliation might transpire either way.

[Duckay]

Is it worse to put a client and employee together where sexual attraction could theoretically occur on one or both sides, or have to refuse to work with a client who identified as bisexual for fear that sexual attraction could theoretically occur?

I'm not trying to criticize, just point out what I mean when I say that it's complicated and there may not be any exactly right answer.

ETA: I don't want to get too derailed down this example, in any case. My point was to illustrate that there is a point, I think, where it genuinely becomes ambiguous, or at least difficult, to discern between discrimination and best practice.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Is it worse to put a client and employee together where sexual attraction could theoretically occur on one or both sides, or have to refuse to work with a client who identified as bisexual for fear that sexual attraction could theoretically occur?

I'm not trying to criticize, just point out what I mean when I say that it's complicated and there may not be any exactly right answer.

There would certainly need to be some kind of protocol for bisexuality, but I'm also not sure it's entirely sensitive to ask a client's sexual preferences in order to purposefully steer them away from anyone they or that might cause arousal.

Whilst I'm certain there exists a suitable solution, this might be a circumstance where it neither presents itself readily nor ends up being straight-forward.

[Wraith]

Wow. First, we ignore that focusing on homicides was just to highlight the highest profile kind of violent crime. So we can limit it down to that number, which reduces the apparent threat a whole lot.

I used what you provided as evidence. It was enough evidence for you to base your argument on, but apparently, me shutting it down was just skewing the facts.

Seems legit.

Crazy idea: next time, if you don't want to hear "your justification is pretty damn weak?" Then come at me with a stronger justification.

Then we arbitrarily decide to further cut the figure down by only counting murder by strangers, no reason given for why that is done.

Seriously? You don't see the significance in that? If the person who's going to kill a woman already knows her, then what difference does it make if he's allowed in the same club as her? You think he's going to say "oh man, I'm not allowed to go to that club, so I guess I won't kill her?"

Then this tiny number is claimed to be the sole reason for having Women Only places.

All I did was take the numbers that you provided as the sole evidence for your case, and boiled them down to the relevant numbers.

Again, you don't like when I put your evidence in perspective? Come at me with better evidence. If it's good enough to base your case on, you don't get to bitch when I make my case on it.

Do you seriously think that's how statistics work, just keep mangling them till you get something you like and present it in isolation from anything else?

Works for you. You're just mad because you don't like being on the other end of the numbers game. The truth is that statististics never tell the whole story. But our options are to use them, or to make generalizations. Neither is ideal, but you chose statistics, so I went along.

I put you in check and now you hate chess? That doesn't work. If you don't like the game, don't setup the board.

I chose the DOJ study on homicides, because it was the clearest cut crime definition with small likelihood of under-reporting, had a broad data sample, and included the suitable cross-breaks. Why did you decided to drill down to only include women killed by strangers, and claim I was saying that it's only homicides that matter?

I drilled down because if a woman's killer already knows her, has already decided to kill her, the fact that she's going to a womans-only club isn't going to change that. Ergo, the only threat from going to a club where men are is that she'll encounter a stranger that decided to kill her.

And I claimed that you were saying that it's only homicides that matter because that was the only evidence you supplied or eluded to.

For the third time: if you don't like me calling your evidence weak, then come at me with better evidence. This is basic debate principle.



Tell you what, you want to toss out the stranger stat? Let's look solely at YOUR numbers, in the context of population. In 2011, there were 13,636 murders. YOU said in YOUR evidence that 21% of them were male on female. That means that 2,863.56 murders were male on female.

Now, we'll ignore for the moment that the murders numbers have DROPPED every year since 1993, which means that the murder number last year was even LESS than that. We'll also ignore the fact that there were SEVERAL incidents of multiple murders, and just stick with what we know for sure. So we'll take a VERY liberal estimation of 2,863 men murdering women last year.

So the justification that you provided for discriminating against 150 million men was that .002% of them murdered women, and the rest of them happen to have the same genitals.

Weak. Weak. Weak.

[JustAName]

Wraith, the club isn't supposed to be a way to prevent someone from killing her, it's just a space where she'll feel safe in general.

[JayBlanc]

Again Wraith you decide that only murders count, which is something only you are saying. I was simply using murders as the most indicative of and most clearly recorded of violent crimes. But you are entirely hung up on that, and want to construct your straw man...

Also, "Women Only Places" are not, in the main, just social clubs. They are things like special night buses, crisis centres, half-way houses...

Particularly the most vital "Women Only Places" are places to which women seek refuge from domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is not caused by strangers.

[Wraith]

Wraith, the club isn't supposed to be a way to prevent someone from killing her, it's just a space where she'll feel safe in general.

From the .002% of men that murder women. And that justifies discrimination against the 99.998% that don't.

OK.

Again Wraith you decide that only murders count, which is something only you are saying. I was simply using murders as the most indicative of and most clearly recorded of violent crimes. But you are entirely hung up on that, and want to construct your straw man...

Again Jayblanc you decide that the only evidence you provided to support your argument is not sufficient to support mine.

Debunking your opponent's evidence is not a strawman. It is basic, relevant debate. I've said this multiple times: if you don't like me exposing the weakness of your evidence then provide better evidence. That's your responsibility as the person making the argument, not mine.

Particularly the most vital "Women Only Places" are places to which women seek refuge from domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is not caused by strangers.

No, it's not. It's caused by partners. Not that the men who make of 40% of domestic violence victims have safe places to go. Boys age 12 are denied access to shelters because they're "women safe spaces" which mean no males allowed. And 12 year old boys can't exactly just go to a hotel, now can they? But you bring up the concept of a men's domestic violence shelter and you get swarms of angry feminists protesting.

[JayBlanc]

What I said was about disproportionate Violent Crimes, of all kinds, against Women justifying the existence of Women Only spaces. Because Women do not have access to the same level of safeness that Men experience by default.

Your rebuttal to my argument is "You are saying that the .002% of men that murder women justifies discrimination against the 99.998% that don't."

I suggest you investigate what "Straw Man Argument" actually means.

[Wraith]

What I said was about disproportionate Violent Crimes, of all kinds, against Women justifying the existence of Women Only spaces. Because Women do not have access to the same level of safeness that Men experience by default.

Your rebuttal to my argument is "You are saying that the .002% of men that murder women justifies discrimination against the 99.998% that don't."

I suggest you investigate what "Straw Man Argument" actually means.

Yes, but the only evidence you brought to support your claim was the murder rate. That's all you had. If there were better reasons to support your argument, you should have used THEM. If there WASN'T better evidence, then there was no reason for me not to use it as evidence to support MY arguments.

A straw man argument is claiming that someone made an argument that they did not. I used the EXACT argument you used. Again, you're bitching because I took the evidence - ALL of the evidence - that you provided, and put it in proper perspective to show just how very weak your argument IS. That's rational debate 101. Don't like it? Next time make a better-supported argument.

[Duckay]

Wraith, since you're the one in this thread who is demanding better evidence, can you provide a citation on male domestic violence victims, or on the "hordes" of angry feminists who would disapprove of domestic violence / rape crisis centres for men? I am not saying I disbelieve everything you're saying, but if you're demanding better evidence from others it seems only fair.

Also, to be entirely fair, while I agree that under the circumstances it may not be the best choice, a 12 year old boy could go to a youth crisis refuge.

[Wraith]

Wraith, since you're the one in this thread who is demanding better evidence, can you provide a citation on male domestic violence victims, or on the "hordes" of angry feminists who would disapprove of domestic violence / rape crisis centres for men? I am not saying I disbelieve everything you're saying, but if you're demanding better evidence from others it seems only fair.

More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals

Domesticviolencestatistics.org: Men: The Overlooked Victims of Domestic Violence

National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted by the CDC: more than one in four men in the U.S. experience rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and one in seven men experience severe physical violence from an intimate partner.

As for the men's shelters; I confess, I heard of it once, but cannot find the reference. Now I can only find evidence of 4 shelters that accept males over the age of 12; so there aren't really that many opportunities; but I digress, due to lack of evidence, I will withdraw said argument.

In lew of it, however, I will point out the instances of feminists protesting any attempt at discussing these issues, such as the much-documented events at The University of Toronto, including the " big red, incident, or when Professor Janice Fiamengo gave a lecture on the problems with gender studies. These protests have become common place for anyone attempting to even discuss the ideas such as men's shelters.



Also, it should be noted that I'm not really demanding better evidence. I'm absolutely fine with what was provided, because it makes my job that much easier. All I'm saying is that IF you're going to use that as the entirety of your evidence, you don't get to bitch when I point out that it's weak evidence. I didn't say "you need to provide better evidence." I said "IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO SHOOT DOWN your evidence, then you need to provide better evidence."


And hey, while we're tossing together evidence and chatting about domestic violence and what you call "privilege," let's take a good, hard look at how society treats incidents of domestic violence against men, shall we?

To whit, how much of a reaction do you think there'd be if Mike had made jokes about a real-world incident where a woman had her genitals mutilated or her breasts cut-off because she asked for a divorce? But apparently when it happens to a guy, it's hillarious. Where's massive outrage over that?

Or how about if a mad was beating on a woman in a park, and 163 people just walk on by, including a cop with several men actually cheering on the abuser, assuming she had done something to deserve it? Not terribly likely, but that exact thing happened to a man when 20/20 performed an experiment. Because that's what happens when women beat on men. You see a woman smack a guy in a bar, everyone assumes he said something skeezy and deserves it. You see a man smack a WOMAN in a bar, you rush to her aid. By the logic of most in this thread, this would mean that "the right to not be totally ignored or blamed when someone of the opposite sex beats them in a public a place is female privilege."

So hey, next time you want to to talk about men and domestic violence? "Make sure you check privilege."

[Duckay]

I admit, I can only name one refuge in my area that accepts males over twelve (and as I used to work there, I will not name them in this forum; I hope that is understandable). I am not in a position to research that in more detail right now, but I feel sure I have heard of at least two others. Granted, you could argue in turn that the ones I can think of are for youths, not all men, but...

[JayBlanc]

From the Guardian article linked:

The 2008-09 bulletin states: "More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims."

Beware "studies" selectively headlined by campaign groups.

No one is saying there are no male victims. What they are saying is that there are substaintailly more female victims than male ones. And what they are saying is that those females are much more likely to have been denied resources to be able to get away from the abuse themselves. For instance, home ownership or lease being in the male partner's name. Primary income being held by the male partner. Institutional sexism meaning courts have been reluctant to intercede on a woman's behalf. Women's Crisis Refuges are there because of that, and operate Women Only policies to counter privileged positions of males who may attempt to continue the harm.

And no, none of that means that Men's refuges don't need to exist as well. They do. But there are fewer men who don't have their own incomes, and don't have their name on the lease/home ownership, and can't get a court order.

You are coming from this with the idea that "We must treat them equally! And then they will be equal! So for every good thing we do that benefits Women, we must give those benefits to Men too!" and ignoring the entire historical and current burdens that mean they're not getting equal treatment at all. If a boy has two apples and a girl has one apple, giving them both an apple doesn't make the number of apples they have equal.

[JackSlack]

More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals

Scottish government statistics place the ratio at 4:1 with male perpetrators and female victims; although they do note the percentage is shifting downward.

Incidents with a female victim and a male perpetrator represented 81% of all incidents of domestic abuse in 2011-12 (where this information was recorded), the same as in 2010-11. This percentage has gradually decreased since 2002-03, when it was 89%. This is mainly the result of an increase in the proportion of incidents with a male victim and a female perpetrator, which has risen from 9% of all incidents (where this information was recorded) in 2002-03 to 17% in 2011-12.

The England and Wales reports are fucking maddening to look through, but I did finally dredge up at least stats for 2010/11. They found 2,774 cases of domestic abuse against men, against 4,840 against women. That's closer to the 60/40 ratio claimed, but it's still more 65/35, roughly.

Irish stats are much better, if still frustrating to push through. 2011/12 (there are live 2012/13 stats available, but that's a year still in progress): 2,665 male to 6,724 female victims, or roughly 28% to 71%. (The missing percent there is in cases where the victim's gender is unknown.)

What have I learned from exploring this? The male percentage is indeed higher than I'd have expected, but it's not above 40% in any of the UK countries. Actually, looking at the report, even they don't seem to be saying that. (If I'm reading it right, the Parity report argues for 38%.) So I don't know where the Guardian gets its headline. Scotland is an odd outlier. But at least you can find stats easily for Scotland.

ETA: Tried to find the Australian stats.

And I thought the England & Wales stats were hard to find.

[Duckay]

Also, as for the last point, Wraith, which either I completely missed at first or you edited in while I was typing:

I might as well ask you about the Steubenville rape case or Kitty Genovese or many others (I will find more citations if you ask, once I am at a computer not on my phone). People stand by and watch bad things happen sometimes.

ETA: Fuck, that didn't copy/paste correctly and I didn't notice. I'm very sorry.

[Drecon]

No one is saying there are no male victims. What they are saying is that there are substaintailly more female victims than male ones. And what they are saying is that those females are much more likely to have been denied resources to be able to get away from the abuse themselves. For instance, home ownership or lease being in the male partner's name. Primary income being held by the male partner. Institutional sexism meaning courts have been reluctant to intercede on a woman's behalf. Women's Crisis Refuges are there because of that, and operate Women Only policies to counter privileged positions of males who may attempt to continue the harm.

Although I'm kind of scared to jump into this thread I'll do it anyway in the case of fairness.
Because I do need to ask:

How sure are you that the men who experience domestic abuse are the same ones that own the homes and jobs in the relationships?
It might be just the other way around?

I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying we don't know.
Just saying that men generally control the money does not mean they do so in every relationship. Your argument seems unfair and uninformed.

[Lyinginbedmon]

We're also discounting males who are being abused domestically and as a result are unable to force their partner to leave the building, even if they do own it.

[Avistew]

I think unless the people are abusing each other, it is pretty likely that the victim of abuse, regardless of gender, will not be the one in control of housing and income. Isolating your partner and making them unable to leave you easily are notorious techniques used by abusers. While I would imagine that a female abusing a male would also have other "safeguards" such as "nobody would believe you" and "I'll tell them you're the one abusing me and I was defending myself", I think it's safe to say that in at least some of the cases, the abuser will have control over the abused's banks account and/or the lease, including when the abuser is female and the abused party is male.

[JackSlack]

I'm still trying to gather more stats. Here's what I have.

The Australian stats are comprehensive, and that means horrifying to work through. The Australian Bureau of Statistics keeps a whole fucking directory of information on the subject from all the various sources that document it. This means trying to get a single definitive stat is out of the question. Of the sources available, however, the Crime Victimisation Survey probably wins out for the best national level survey that also does simple, easy to digest discussion of sex and relationship to offender. From this, I come back with the following numbers: Men were victims in 10,200 incidents of domestic violence in the year of the survey. Women were victims in 63,000. There's some admitted leeway in the evidence for men, so take that with a grain of salt. (The grain of salt being about 25%, apparently.) This puts the Australian ratio at about 6:1.

The American data is again, fragmented. One key report is the NISVS 2010 Summary Report, released in 2011. It found that, looking at physical intimate partner violence, there were likely 7,485,000 cases of domestic abuse against women in a twelve month period. Not kind. But it also found 7,332,000 were likely to be inflicted against men. That's basically a statistical tie. That said, this survey also goes into the level of violence, which few others do, defining violence as either "Slapped, pushed or shoved" or "Any severe physical violence". These numbers back up a common refrain in a lot of the research: Women are frequently violent... but are less likely to cause injury. Limiting to "any severe physical violence" instead produces numbers of 3,163,000 for women against 2,266,000, which would still be about 53% vs. 47%. Basically, the US numbers show no difference. This bears out in their wider claim: Roughly 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will report having been a victim of severe physical violence from a partner.

I admit, I was surprised by the numbers.

[Sieg Reyu]

Here's a fun bit of something to think about. If these levels of "social justice" existed back in the 70's, Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail as well as everything else they did, and the careers of the troupes members probably wouldn't exist. Have you people seen Flying Circus? Like, all of it, not just the good bits? Shit's hella racist. Not in a extremely hateful way, like "Japanese people are evil and should die," but in the "Japanese people sure do sound weird. They sound like this. 'Herro prease.' Isn't that funny?"

Food for thought.

[JackSlack]

Wait, you're suggesting there isn't racist comedy on TV, film and stage today?

While acknowledging there were racist elements in plenty of individual Monty Python sketches, to suggest that so much of it was racist that the careers of the troupe 'wouldn't exist' beggars belief. Their humour stretched numerous bits, jokes and routines with a wide range of approaches. We would not have certain sketches of theirs, but we'd still have Python.

[Duckay]

I'm not entirely certain what it is that you're getting at, Sieg Reyu. I've tried to formulate a response, but it's tricky to get my head around the appropriate wording when I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at.

I mean, on the one hand, I agree with JackSlack that that kind of thing still exists in media today. On the other hand, I do note there's been a significant (not earth-shattering, but notable nonetheless) culture shift in more ways than one in the last 40 years. So I'm not certain.

[Sieg Reyu]

What I'm getting at is, if right now at this very moment, you were whisked away to 1971 and to London. You're watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, because what else are you going to do without the internet? You're sitting there and a sketch comes on where Eric Idle is in blackface and John Cleese is made up to look like he's Japanese and he's pronouncing all his L's as R's, and in walks Micheal Palin as Gumby, a character which is seemingly making fun of the mentally handicapped. Considering what you know now, how would watching this sketch make you feel? Would you feel compelled to do something about it? Would you send a letter, would it be angry? Would you call for a boycott of the show on behalf of all those who were mocked?