Not just women, but children. I was aware that I could be sexually assaulted/harrassed and what to do about it by the time I was 5, and I started getting uncomfortable comments in person around age 11. I'm also exceptionally lucky and have never actually been assaulted.
Not particularly relevant to most people here, but some of you will have daughters, so.
Edit: Also relevant potentially to your colleagues and co-workers, since one reason I stopped participating in tech spaces while I was a teenager (I still coded, just only alone or anonymously) was because I felt unsafe being a 13-14 year old girl who was the only female in a room/space with dozens of men, some of whom were 2-3 times my age. I don't think I can overstate the danger alarm bells, especially given how rampant homophobia was back then and I was also gay.
At an early age, about 5 or so I was exposed to sex, with peers, male/female. Later I was raped through coercion by two older children at 10-ish, male/female. Additionally none of this was ever reported until adulthood.
As a male I've repeatedly been put in positions that I could describe as uncomfortable (though I don't, usually), pressured intimacy, catcalling, sexually forward girls/men...
Having gotten feedback from female peers in adulthood, I've gotten to wondering about the way that society tends to articulate sex and rape to women. The summary of framing that I've gotten from one of my intimates, is that at an early age women are given the impression that sex is their single lever in a relationship or socially. Sex is the only way which a woman can gain approval. Which, to me, seems like it would drastically amplify the experience of rape. There's also the puritanical considerations of virginity and slut shaming, etc... But I don't know that it's really a running theme in individual women.
And then there's the proactive modality. At the time of my rapes, I was not informed on rape or consent, and so the context wasn't that of violence, but simply commonplace arm twisting, and because it was as such I only ever saw that it could be framed as a traumatic episode much later. On the obverse, having been informed of such things as detestable, as violent, as traumatic and serious and driven to reporting it, I could imagine that it would escalate my feelings, and I suspect so would dealing with it externally with strangers and institutions and perhaps having some artificial narrative constructed by interlopers either directly or indirectly. I mean, consider having to talk to parents, police, social workers and so on it's implies a considerable escalation from the day-to-day. Especially as a child. Of course this seldom happens. I wonder if it's a sort of funeral psychology where you feel compelled to cry and mourn because that's what's implied, even if you don't feel the need.
But as a male having gone through these situations, without the framework being described, but rather having the privilege to describe it myself, it simply never evolved into a trauma. And I think this might be borne out by the statistics wherein boys/men simply do not report rape, just beyond the fact that it may happen less frequently. But having direct perspective on it, I wonder if I'm an oddball, or if trauma resulting from female rape is sort of amplified by the way women are socialized and informed.
quite a few times I have experienced unwanted sexual advances/touching/groping in public spaces from women I considered friends, in front of our other friends. I don't consider those events traumatic, but certainly uncomfortable at the time. I never knew what to do, so I would just freeze and pretend it wasn't happening. once I actually went through with it and had sex with the person because I felt I had led her on by allowing her initial advances (dumb of me in hindsight).
perhaps one important difference is that I was physically stronger than every one of those people. I could have resisted, but didn't due to (possibly imagined) social pressure. like I said, I don't think there is any lasting trauma over these events; I think of them more as misunderstandings than assaults. but at the same time, all of these women were otherwise quite vocal about feminism, consent, etc. I wonder what they would have called it if I'd done the same things to them.
Only because of the context.
If this were a conversation behind closed doors you could say what you wanted, people could disagree and eventually mutual understanding of people's opinions could be reached despite initial clumsy or imprecise wording.
But this is an internet conversation where if you pick the wrong words, speak too broadly or fail carpet bomb every sentence with carve outs for exceptions and special cases some jerk will swoop in and post a low effort rebuttal for the easy karma and off the rails it goes from there.
I can't speak for all eras and populations, but I suspect that that anecdote is an outlier.
> I wonder if I'm an oddball
If I may be so bold, you seem emotionally detached from the incident. That itself might be a response to the trauma.
EDIT: Also, many comments testify to it in this discussion.
It's a hypothetical, I'm not intent on stating anything as fact.
>Look at the victims of the Catholic Church and other well-known situations.
Part of what I conjectured was that the system itself is potentially traumatic. And that (naive) interventions might hypothetically be damaging. Again, one is potentially braving a number of institutions, not just family, but police, case workers, mental health professionals. Not to mention in the case of familial abuse considerable transitions, up to foster care, itself from what I've heard is frequented by pederasts. Perhaps a window for a form of gaslighting, wherein the victim is induced to believe they're traumatized.
That is to say, that any well-known case, perhaps especially well-known cases would be outside the scope.
I'm both homosexual and visually impaired (I was legally blind until I was four years old), which overrode a lot of female/sex-specific messages. Women who are attracted to men may have received that message, but that's not the message as I interpreted it. As a young, conventionally-attractive (at the time, I'm old now) lesbian woman, sex was framed to me as something that men were always going to want from me and that I:
a.) could do nothing about this and
b.) got nothing from it; the most I could hope for was that it would be limited to comments
On the other hand, I was online as a kid and both age and sex/gender presentation were pretty fluid and what you're suggesting does track with how people approached sexual topics with me when they knew I was female versus when I was assumed to be a young male person (there are no girls on the Internet, remember).
One thing I find interesting in how male versus female victims discuss their assaults is that both focus on how traumatizing it is to be helpless, but the women who are traumatized usually focus more on the physical helplessness, while men who are traumatized usually focus more on the social helplessness. Neither is to be dismissed.
As to the long-range effects, I don't really have a high resolution reference point pre- and post-incident, and history being what it is I've no control to compare against so I don't know how, if at all my behaviors are and were adjusted.
Since you mentioned you were aware of the danger when you were as young as 5 - when and how would you suggest one could help let their daughter know about these risks without inducing some much fear and anxiety that will end up making her avoid too many positive experiences?
I'm assuming you have a neurotypical, potty-trained 3 year old; it's more complex when things like toilet-help are involved, I know.
Perhaps reach out to Darkness to Light or your local (regional) children's advocacy center. Many states have more than one. Not sure about the status internationally, but in the US, I know this is the case.
In my 20+ years doing public policy advocacy on a number of issues related to children, I came across too many organizations that had the potential to harm children and families, through using poor prevention models, infidelity to the model, not understanding issues, thinking that doing something was enough. While I'm generally a fan of doing something is better than doing nothing, that is absolutely not the case with this topic.
Good luck!
And we back that up, forcefully. If my kid doesn't want a hug, they will not be getting a hug. If they don't want to share, they won't.
My kid's autonomy is worth way more than those relationships. Period.
And it's worth it. Your kids will naturally share when they feel comfortable doing so. They'll share affection when they feel comfortable. And longer term this extends into topics they're not mature enough to tackle at 3
Agreed with this, I (woman) started getting regularly cat-called on the street every time I left my house around 12-13.
I was a young looking child to boot.
The jury has to judge how a reasonable person would act in a certain situation, who is lying and who is telling the truth.
Off one end, we have victim blamind and rapists walking free, off another end, uk had "serial liar" who invented false rape allegations and sent 9 innocent people to jail.
Which I consider a larger problem. Since so much abuse is hidden, the perpetrators also can sit on juries related to sexual assault cases. Delightful.
And they should do this by weighing the evidence impartially, not emotionally.
I don't know if we should (or even can) aim to have a victim included on any set of jurors, but removing them altogether seems like a very bad strategy.
The jury has to have basic grasp of the situation so that they can decide who is lying and who is telling the truth (and witnesses called by prosecution do lie).
Imagine being tried on sex abuse by people who never had a relationship, or an employment dispute judged by people who never had a job. It would be disaster.
Why? my professor asked.
Because you don't listen to the lawyers or the judge, he was told. "Big brain" people try to play Matlock and solve the case themselves, or invent theories in their imagination, or get into absurd arguments in the jury room. They screw up the whole process that's designed to bring a high level of rigour and fairness to the situation--what should and shouldn't be considered, how the law applies, etc. They're wild cards that turn trials into a game of chance instead of an orderly adversarial confrontation that's heavily regulated.
People mock jurors routinely, especially the ones who explain their reasoning in interviews afterwards. But studies routinely find that judges agree with the jury's verdict about 80% of the time.
But here's the thing: their decisions, ideally, should be made on the basis of the evidence presented to them, their judgement of the credibility of the witnesses, and the instructions of the judge in how to map the facts as they determine them, to the law as described to them.
We shouldn't be okay with a juror voting guilty because of the defendent's race; we shouldn't be okay with someone who says "I'm just going to flip a coin"; I'm not sure it's a bad thing to exclude people who, in the experience of the lawyers trying the case, don't pay attention and invent their own rationales out of whole cloth and make an irrational decision by the standards of the legal reasoning the trial is supposed to provide.
Except for cops. Cops certainly like to have fellow cops on their juries. There is an old joke about removing Manhattan jury cases to Staten Island. All the NYPD cops seem to retire there. So if the case involves potential police wrongdoing or even just police testimony, one side wants a Staten Island jury as many jurors will have at least some familial connection to the police.
With a jury of only lets say strong white males that have never been abused or abuse adjacent, but have had several experience where they felt woman didn't give them enough respect are we that would seem a lot worse to me. Obviously this sounds like an extreme example, but the reality is that such a large part of the population has been the victim in abuse situations that you are going to disqualify into a situation similar to this.
This, and being more objective / less emotional (due to not seeing it personally) would probably make me a better juror in such a case than someone who's personally experienced it.
Jurors should be professionals who are trained in being jurors: who, for one thing, thoroughly understand topics in critical reasoning such as fallacies, and cognitive biases.
They should be properly paid, and so are not sitting there on a Saturday morning, socking it to the defendant out of spite for being dragged out of their regular lives without adequate compensation.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...
Only if the defendant is a fool. People being the way people are, are just as likely to resent the defendant as the root cause of why they have to be there at all as the are to resent the system (and side with the defendant out of spite for the system).
The latter will likely only happen in a trial that is between the defendant and the system (i.e. the state).
In, say, a criminal trial in which the victim isn't the state, reluctant, resentful jurors will sock it to the defendant. If there is any uncertainty in the decision, that sentiment may sway it.
Resentment of the jury duty concept will predispose jurors to cave in to their social prejudices. Oh, he must have done it; he's a tattoo-covered, prematurely-aged chain smoker with three gold teeth. Everything about this guy says "criminal". Fuck this asshole for making me be here on a Saturday.
Time is an issue. People who are impatient and just want something to be over will not do a good job of sifting through things to get to the truth, which takes time and patience.
Maybe someday we can simulate human brains well enough to run the markovs on governance ideas to see if it's worth it.
Wouldn't the same logic reject professional judges and attorneys?
We can't choose our laws, but we can choose when and how our peers are punished under them. Participating in a jury is the one place in the system where regular citizens have direct influence in the process. It means we can refuse to convict people under laws which are unjust. It means we can hold members of our communities accountable to laws we consent to live under.
I wouldn't be so eager to give that power up.
Of course judges are not always good as well. In the US they are often elected by a blood thirsty population. If they are not elected that has other issues in that the will of the people is not held by the judges.
In the US, juries typically decide questions of _fact_ that are not already agreed upon by both parties (i.e. are in dispute). Judges handle questions of law.
If a fact is not known, how can some random person produce it? Out of what.
E.g. in the situation of a crime: only activities like crime scene investigation, and interviewing of witnesses can produce anything that can be called a fact.
Now so from all that have some collection of real facts from the investigation which do not add up to an absolute proof that some particular defendant "dun it".
The next best thing you could do is use some sort of probabilistic reasoning.
Well, what training in probabilistic reasoning do the these random people off the street have?
Probabilities should be quantified in concrete numbers. Instead of some flaky "shadow of a doubt" nonsense, there should be some 99.99% (or whatever standard level) confidence which is somehow calculated.
Yes, it might be better if jurors were all acquainted with Bayesian reasoning and it would definitely be better if things like expert testimony and so forth came with confidence estimates.
And yes, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is pretty qualitative.
My point was that if you are expecting your jurors to have a deep understanding of the law, you are definitely doing it wrong.
Not true, since no abusers came back in tears and were removed from the jury.
Or do you consider abusers impartial but abuse victims biased?
Are these not to be a jury of my "peers". Are not all humans biased in one way or another. If being abused creates bias, why wouldn't NOT being abused also not create bias. We don't have perfect access to information. Sometimes in order to be considered impartial, jurors are basically expected to have no familiarity with basic fundamental news stories. Are people so disconnected from reality really "peers"?
Ultimately, I guess, it's the best we can do.
Put another way: there wouldn't be a point in deliberation if we didn't have biases. Our justice system trusts and (weakly) attempts to enforce the gap between those biases and prejudices that would actually interfere with the court's duty.
Vulcans might not have a problem with this, but humans so obviously do that pretending otherwise is impractical.
Sure, we can't get a perfectly impartial jury. But someone with a past trauma probably won't be able to judge the case for its merits.
This appears to be binary thinking. There are nearly infinite degrees of bias. Strong emotions are one way to ensure that someone is heavily biased. That's what the jury system is trying to avoid.
So someone who has never been abused can still be biased in literally any way. But the presumption is that without having such an emotional personal experience with it means they are less likely to be heavily biased. They'll be more likely to be swayed by the testimony in court rather than their experience outside of the court room.
The jury selection was completed without ever calling those people in for private explanations. No one who had raised their hand for that question was selected.
As far as impartiality goes, I certainly felt some bias against the accused just based on the nature of the crime and his courtroom demeanor. But I was resolved that I would keep that in mind if I was selected and treat him as fairly as possible despite that. Impartiality is the ideal, and you usually have to make the effort to make it happen. In some circumstances where you have personal experience with similar crimes, that may be too much to ask.
Every one of them had a personal tale of assault to tell. It was as tense in the deliberations as you can imagine... like 12 Angry Men [1] but even more harrowing.
I am convinced that the only reason we were able to arrive at a just verdict is because one of these jurors also had the courage to discuss the case of her beloved relative who was falsely accused of rape and was exonerated only many years later, after his life had been destroyed.
We were able to focus on the evidence. But it was not an easy deliberation.
They also don't mess around with jury duty... one of our jurors went missing on the walk from the jury gathering spot to the courtroom, and the judge was PISSED. Sent the bailiff looking for them to hold them in contempt.
I've been called for jury duty any number of times. Not once has anyone ever called me, personally, out of one room and into another - always as part of a group of selectees heading to a courtroom or voir dire or whatever. Between that and everything else, it doesn't seem like a leap at all.
Not really. In abusive relationships, the abuser often controls every aspect of the abused person's life and there are not opportunities to seek help without the abuser knowing. It's why there are sometimes signs in the bathrooms of women's health clinics informing the patient to initial their sample cup in red marker if they are being abused or have something that they wish to discuss in private. This may well have been one of her only chances to speak with someone without an abuser knowing.
She was the only one called back when the selection was complete. I've been called for jury duty several times and this has never happened while I was there.
This happened in a courthouse, not a hospital. I think the context of the discussion behind closed doors could have just as easily been "that is so bad you really need to consider reporting it" or even something more mundane. In any case, seems a little farcical to assume that meant she was actively being abused though it certainly seems like a decent one of many possibilities.
I'm not saying your theory isn't plausible. I'm saying you're getting tunnel vision on the first plausible thing you came across.
I hear hoofbeats and I don't think that it's zebras.
Especially given how little interest court personnel typically take in individual panelists, why assume everyone with whom you're putting so much effort into arguing is so probably wrong in our analysis of what this interaction likely was?
Out of a few dozen people, seven women left the room to explain why they could not be impartial, some of them returning in tears. They weren't gone for a short while, either, many of them took 20 or 30 minutes before returning to the court room. One of them was called back out of the room at the very end, and my wife suspects that she was actively being abused and this was an opportunity to seek help without the abuser being present.
This isn't something that I have to personally worry about if I'm by myself, but it's something that so many women do have to worry about all the time. I can't even imagine the burden that women must carry.