It is silly to think that is the main use of the word. They aren't exactly sly and it isn't like it is likely that anyone will be tricked by their, umm, slyness.

I am a great poster. Thank you for recognizing it.

You mean like a dog whistle? I'm quite sure that no one in real life is unaware that saying that someone being hysterical specifically means that there is an overabundance of emotion.

Also, don't say "alt right." Just say "white supremacist" or "Nazi." No need to use code-words.

Okay, but your ex had men call her and use her professional capacity to masturbate and she is not counting that? I mean, semantics aside, that would not happen to a man and that's the point. So she was not in imminent physical danger from the phone ****. What if she was threatened? What if they said they knew where she worked? Then would it count?

Yeah DS has a point. Yes tilted can apply logic to the subject in a sterile environment. But there is a valid reason not to do that when a literally oppressed group is finally getting a glimpse of support. And there are reasons to suspect the motives of people who do.

Could you quote where i said that and was being silly? Or is this just a silly box you are putting my views in?

Ok.

The best.

Um ok. Im sure very few think its not use to attack women with intent to say they are illogical. Sometimes.
I see them as varied and different terms with different meanings. So no.

Here ill quote the post that got me into the mess in the first place and i guess i should of quoted it and made the point with my link but im lazy mostly.

Now i dont think TiltedDonkey is using it in a way to say all women are illogical and crazy like some still do today. But when discussing sexual harassment, assault and rape statistics and Minnie Driver or others thinking sexual assault happens to all women. People might want to find other words to use to challenge that view. Take the advice or leave it.

I have no interest in relitigating the conversation, but literally no one said 100% of women have been raped.

The conversation began with Donkey saying "Driver said every woman she knows has been assualted. Shes obviously crazy. We shouldnt take anything she says serously."

Yeah i know. He said he misspoke and meant sexual assault there.

This is just a question of semantics. If you define assault very broadly (e.g., to include flashing), the percentage is going to be very high. If you define assault very narrowly (forced participation in some sort of sexual act), the percentage of course will be much lower.

Everyone should agree that the percentage of woman who have had to deal with some sort of unwelcome sexual conduct is very, very high.

So. Again. To be explicit why this is a problem.

Woman: general statement about a ton of women being raped and assualted.

Man: lol at you! Its probably only 20% actual rape and the rest is some degree of serious to minor sexual assualt! We need to debate these numbers in depth and make numerous distinctions in degree before we can do anything!

Woman: you didnt do anything before. And are actively getting in the way of us trying to do something now.

Man: no one can take you seriously.

Yeah so the question is, is it more helpful to throw everything into one basket, or is it more helpful to keep things distinct? I have mixed feelings about this, which is why I've avoided joining this argument. On the one hand, awareness of the sexual harassment women face is clearly too low. On the other hand, we have what I like to call the "Ray Rice problem", where he punched his wife in the face and got like 2 weeks' suspension until video emerged and people were like "oh, THAT kind of punched in the face. That's not cool!".

It's hard enough to get people to grasp what we're talking about with plain English like "punched her in the face". I've seen evidence in e.g. the Weinstein case that people no longer understand what is meant by "sexual assault". We had that guy come in here and be like "but he didn't rape anyone tho, right?". I had friends of mine discussing one of the cases in terms where it was clear they thought it was all some kind of game or misunderstanding. I feel like conflating "sexual assault" with other sexual misconduct is not going to help in getting the message across. Like I said, I'm not really firm in this belief, it's just my best guess.

No one in this thread is saying the bolded. This is a complete straw man.

For the purpose of identifying the conduct that we want to eliminate, we definitely should throw everything in one basket.

For the purpose of defining the scope of the problem, I don't think it matters so long as it is reasonably clear how you are defining the problem.

What is unhelpful, imo, is for advocates to be sloppy with their language. That diminishes the effectiveness of their advocacy and fuels skepticism about the seriousness of the problem.

I'm reminded of the joke about the mathematician who speaks of the sheep at least one side of which is black.

It's a difficult problem. When trying to communicate with those who respond in a different way it can be a mistake, from the rhetorical point of view, to insist on nuance and precision in use of language and making of arguments. Sometimes the problem is also that the same language is being employed with different meanings; the mathematically trained tend to assign very precise meanings to words, and to use particular words to communicate certain things, but when the listener is not making such precise assignments, or is making different ones, this can generate miscommunication. The issue is further complicated because even the mathematically inclined, super precise speaker sometimes writes in a different (let's call it lazy) way when posting anonymously on a message board.

Something like this is happening with terminology such as "rape", "sexual assault", "sexual harassment", etc. Different people are hearing different things. Sometimes that might be indicative of different underlying attitudes about gender (for example, that a man won't call a certain interaction "sexual assault" perhaps indicates a lack of understanding on that man's part, perhaps not) but other times it just indicates different vocabularies. Hell, not everyone posting is a native English speaker.

It is sad that anyone feels a need to defend his/her ideological bona fides before making a good faith argument because it signals that the discussion has moved away from discussion motivated by curiosity and learning to one motivated by proving ideological purity, and that's never productive or constructive.

In nearly any context, the mere fact that a study indicates a percentage (of whatever) far higher than most educated, reasonable people would guess based on their everyday experiences suggests that the study is crap or at least misleading.

In this particular case, 75% is obviously off by at least an order of magnitude if one understands as "sexual assault" something typified as such in the criminal code. What's harder to say is whether it is off by 1, 2, or 3 orders of magnitude, and the response might depend a lot on how one defines "sexual assault". If, on the other hand, one interprets "sexual assault" to include a very broad spectrum of behaviors (e.g. catcalls, unwanted invitations in the workplace), then the 75% number might even make sense, at least as to its order of magnitude. Generally speaking most men don't understand "sexual assault" as including such behaviors as catcalls, but some women do, and part of the communication problem lies there.

Of course everything has to be contextualized too. There are probably parts of the Congo (and other similar areas in states of war) where 50% of the women have been victims of a rape.

Bolded the part of your post that actually represents something I said. If you are just going to make **** up, make the poster's name up as well.

Even bolded is kind of misleading, as only being interested in discussing the fringes is not the same as only caring about the fringes.

Exactly, which is why it's pretty weird that it freaks you out so much.

Dude, her response doesn't confuse me.

Yeah, I just think that viewpoint was illogical and crazy, nothing to do with all women being illogical and crazy or anything like that.

I see your point though.

The people ITT who assume I would behave the same way towards a woman who told me she was sexually harassed as I would toward random dudes arguing about this on the internet, while simultaneously accusing me of being socially unaware, are either:
(a) complete idiots
(b) just arguing dishonestly to attempt to get me to stop posting what I am posting
(c) (a) and (b)

I think the answer is mostly (b), and I think they believe it is a noble pursuit. Maybe they're right, who knows.

Tilted. I'm sure you care about sexual assault. On the list of things I give a flying **** about getting you to stop posting here is way down...no doesn't even make it. I understood what you meant when you said you found the fringes more interesting to discuss and you understood that's what I was referring to exactly as well. You are confused by what driver is saying if you don't get why she is upset about what Damon said and prefer to say she is wrong about scale of offense and he is right as if that was the point she was making.

OK

I'll put you down for (a) then.

I never said you didn't understand, I said that the way you put it was misleading.

Regardless, that was the portion of your long paragraph I said was correct. The rest of it was just made up bs.

Huh?

First of all, Minnie Driver being wrong and Matt Damon being wrong are not mutually exclusive conditions.

Secondly, I can simultaneously understand why she is upset and think her quote is nonsense. Why would you think differently?

I've no opinions about you at all. I don't know you or keep track of what you type into the forums, so I can't put you into any sort of box.

I was simply responding to the specific posts that I was responding to. Bringing up the etymology of a word is silly.

Good lord. Dude. I don't think we can really boil this down further. You care that she said some things that if you interpret them one way are off. For example, the part of her quote saying there is no scale for pain a woman feels based on the incident. Yeah that sounds crazy if you take it at face value, because there is no way in hell that she would rather be gang raped than being shown a dick. Since this is a crazy notion you can either accept that she meant she thinks they are equally bad or you understand that there was a different meaning behind the statement. In fact, you would have to be crazy to pretend she thinks that. You. Not her.

The further rub here is to further explain why her statement is crazy the way you interpret it because, like, that's what she said and all, and then actually try to prove it wrong by explaining how there are different degrees of assault is the exact phenomenon that she tried (unsuccessfully to some) to make a point about.

I apologize for any misrepresentation I made about you perceived or real. If you don't understand why people care that you want to do this even here, out of sight of victims afayk, it is because it is a damaging line of thinking that is employed by apologists. If you are not one and just like the excersise you are in their company even if your motives are pure. Every time someone says these kinds of things and someone else doesn't say--dude that's not important--it feeds it regardless of where it happens.

I'm not telling you you can't do it. You can't tell me to let you do it without protest either.

You told me what i think its main use is. I dont think that and its a box you put me in. Or more an opinion you gave me to slap down as silly. You also assumed i posted my link to make a point about etymology. I didn't. I posted it for the reason i gave. People sometimes use the word to attack women today so in a thread about their abuse there might be better words.

Sigh.

This is basically a repeat of the same thing you've been doing all thread. According to you, Minnie Driver is on the correct side and so I need to reinterpret any dumb thing she says to be a non-dumb thing that she probably means. Meanwhile, you take many of my posts at worse than face value.

The phenomenon of... saying stupid quotes are stupid? Again, this all relies on your negative reinterpretation of my words and your assumptions about the motives behind them.

It's not about being out of sight of victims. It's more about dumb exchanges like this one, from earlier in the thread (paraphrased because I don't feel like quote hunting, but I can quote if someone disputes my account):

Me: You think 100% of people are sexually assaulted?

rugby: Yes, close, if you count x, y, and z, like my friend who was followed home by some dude.

Me: lol being followed home isn't sexual assault

rugby: lol?? it's good to know you think my friend's bad experience is funny!!!! I'm sure if you saw here you'd tell her that to her face etc etc.

---

Like above is especially egregious, but it is similar to the way the subject seems to be approached by you guys in general.

Man I don't want you to stop protesting, I just want more intelligent and/or less dishonest protesting.

---------

For real, and I'm going to preface this with an obligatory "I don't think anything that happens on this forum actually matters so none of this matters" but people like you, rugby, and Minnie Driver do not do anyone any favors with this kind of bull**** if the goal is actually to create positive change.

You guys (generally) are obviously in vigorous agreement that there is a huge problem and aggressive action needs to be taken about it. Obviously this agreement is not universal, otherwise there basically wouldn't be a problem by definition. I assume you (again, the royal you) make hyperbolic statements about it in an attempt to convince people it is a problem and not just because you like to hear yourselves talk.

Obvious, stupid hyperbole works against you. Someone who doesn't already agree that there is a big problem (presumably your target audience!) is not going to hear Minnie Driver say "all the women are sexually assaulted" and think "wow, so many sexual assaults, I guess there really IS a problem". They are going to think "wow, that's obviously dumb and wrong, I'm going to stop listening to this person now".

Some previous Sklansky posts about how saying any obviously incorrect thing will make everyone discount the rest of your argument are pretty relevant here.

I don't think skalanksy said what you claim, but regardless-not everyone will discount the rest of your argument if hyperbole is used, just those who choose to because they have a desire to use it as an out. If that is your personal criteria for accepting new information you will have a rough go of it in this age of discourse. It isn't though. It's just hyperbole on your part.

You can sort through your own posts and find the dozens of times you have used hyperbole, you can find the dozens of time you chose to ignore hyperbole and respond in good faith despite it. This is a bull**** statement and a cop out.

Now watch this next part: I do see what you are saying about people being less inclined to take you seriously if they can find a flaw in your arguments, so being precise and presenting your position well is good advice.

Mind blown?

As for the rest of it, I'll refer you back to your own choices of a, b, or c when it comes to what your disposition is here. I suspect you are pretending to be misunderstood and misunderstand at this point when you know damn well you are exactly understood and really do understand.

He's posted about that a bunch of times. Not referring specifically to this thread.

nh

No dude. People with "a desire to use it as an out" are like people entrenched on the opposing side, and for this issue that is going to be a relatively small group of people. The "pro rape" lobby is pretty small.

Many (?)/most (?) people will absolutely filter information by the quality of the source, and doing so is logical unless you have time to personally research literally everything everyone says to you.

Torching your credibility will absolutely cause people to discount things you say afterwards.

I admit my post is poorly worded. Let me clarify:

All hyperbole is bad, credibility torching stuff <= not my position

Using grossly, obviously inflated numbers when trying to convince people that something is a large problem is going to torch your credibility <= my position

Cool.

No?

Dude what?

Even if I am "exactly understood", how the **** would I know that without reading your mind? Again, I don't posit that exchanges like the one with rugby mentioned above stem from any honest misunderstanding of my post.

Regarding "misunderstand" I haven't claimed to not understand or misunderstand anything so I don't even know what the hell you are talking about. It's certainly possible someone made a post I misunderstood but I won't know that unless it is pointed out to me.

I don't know what to tell you. Ironically you have exaggerated the danger of using hyperbole in order to make your point. A reasonable person will not discount everything someone says based on bad hyperbole or even willful overstatement if they are having a good faith discussion. Also, not only people who are entrenched in a position like lolpro-rape engage in bad faith arguing. That is also hyperbole. I still will look for value and merit and figure out your point in the face of these exaggerated claims because I'm not engaging in bad faith with you at the moment. That's pretty standard and more common even in heated debates. When you opt to extend that courtesy and when you just get too annoyed to see he forest for the trees is a personal line. You are right that being more careful is likely more effective with more people, but it's still partially up to the listener/reader to want to get it.

Johnny, I really disagree with this statement. A lawyer doing a jury trial would never encourage a witness to give sloppy or hyperbolic testimony. Because when normal people hear that sort of thing, they have a tendency to quit listening, even if they started out inclined to favor your side. Hyperbole may not be a death blow, but it's rarely helpful as a tool to persuade.