[wazoox]

> they are murdered by random people far less often than men, representing only 21% of victims.

Murder is an incredibly rare occurrence in most countries and social environments. On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims, and this is not exceptional: 5 to 10% of all women are sexually abused at some point (depends upon the country, again).

> Perhaps the focus of all these stupid gender articles should be on encouraging young women not to alienate a large subset of people.

Perhaps the focus of people like you should be to think about your attitude, just like this article conveniently talked about? Your arrogance and close-mindedness are astounding. Oh, before you ask, I'm a white, straight male too.

[jcnnghm]

Murder is an incredibly rare occurrence in most countries and social environments. On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims, and this is not exceptional: 5 to 10% of all women are sexually abused at some point (depends upon the country, again).

Rape makes up only 6% of violent crimes, and men are much more commonly the victim of violent crimes than women. In fact, excluding rape, as the severity of violent crimes increase, so does the probability that the victim is male.

And couldn't I also say that, while rape is relatively rare, men are over twice as likely to be the victim of severe physical domestic violence (the ratio of murder to rape and rape to severe physical domestic violence is the same). Or that perpetration rates for physical violence as a whole are significantly higher for women than men.

I personally think that these are all bogus arguments because they trivialize rape. At the same time, trivializing murder is no better than trivializing rape, unless you believe that men are expendable.

Perhaps the focus of people like you should be to think about your attitude, just like this article conveniently talked about? Your arrogance and close-mindedness are astounding. Oh, before you ask, I'm a white, straight male too.

Nice ad hominem.

[wazoox]

> Rape makes up only 6% of violent crimes, and men are much more commonly the victim of violent crimes than women.

Most victims of violent crimes are known offenders or their relatives. An overwhelming majority of offenders are male (see the proportion of male vs female in jail).

> Nice ad hominem.

It's ad personam if you want. You go straight to the usual tactic of pretending that it's the victim fault. Take some time to imagine yourself in the situations represented before being a judgemental jerk.

See this post for a good explanation: http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2004/09/guilty_unti...

[jcnnghm]

You say that I am blaming the victim, then in your link, the related story is as follows:

First of all, the obvious point is that women's intuition, while not entirely the stuff of myth, is not so powerful that it can automatically separate "good guys" from the bad. No woman can walk down the street and as she passes a man, know with certainty that he isn't a threat. Given the high incidence of rape and assault and harassment and other forms of mistreatment, a woman would be a fool to leave herself continually vulnerable. The old adage "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" seems to apply here. When a simple smile is so frequently misunderstood and construed as a sexual invitation, American women generally do have to operate on the assumption that men are guilty until proven innocent.

Is this really an acceptable story that somehow illustrates your point? It seems like it could trivially be rewritten into something incredibly racist. If that is the case, than isn't this actually very sexist. But really, why would anyone expect random women to smile at them?

And how are women the victim? Because some products are not designed for them, but are instead designed to appeal to teenage boys? What if I feel bad because the quizzes in Seventeen magazine do not appeal to me, and instead give teenage girls ideas about the way men should be that I disagree with. Do you think this quiz (http://www.seventeen.com/fun/quizzes/celebrity/summer-movie-...) is sexist?

[wazoox]

OK, I give up. I won't convince you from across the oceans and through the internets that white patriarchy is a reality; you apparently live in the nice world where oppression of the poor, the black and women doesn't exist or at least doesn't matter, and I must live on a different planet than you. That won't be much more than a sociological experience I guess.

[philwelch]

> On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims

No one is even going to listen to a man complaining he has been raped, so I very highly doubt the validity of those numbers.

[wazoox]

Men are a significant minority of rape victims (5 to 10%). However more than 99% of perpetrators are males.

[philwelch]

And my contention is that rapes against men, and woman-on-man rape in particular, are incredibly underreported and hence your numbers are invalid.

[wazoox]

How do you know? What allows you to believe that?