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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38752 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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A lie repeated over and over becomes truth, that adage is self evident too, given that there is no evidence that Goebbels actually said anything of the sort. This my favourite rebuttal of this myth. An excerpt to add on to what you've described in the 2nd paragraph:

Furthermore, if rape or sexual harassment were indeed motivated by the desire to feel powerful, then one would expect them to be less common among those who already feel powerful, and that they would more often go against the power gradient rather than along it; that is to say, raping or sexually harassing someone more powerful would have greater appeal than sexually abusing someone less powerful.

There's something similar on stalking as well, its often not due to any consciously learnt behaviour as it is an act of impulse and primal instinct.

I think that while most(?) people do take this as fact, despite the efforts to "unlearn" the supposed entitlement have yielded no tangible results, a part of the effort is to regurgitate this trope that "men in power" is always a bad thing, even dangerous and predatory towards women.

Furthermore, if rape or sexual harassment were indeed motivated by the desire to feel powerful, then one would expect them to be less common among those who already feel powerful, and that they would more often go against the power gradient rather than along it; that is to say, raping or sexually harassing someone more powerful would have greater appeal than sexually abusing someone less powerful.

I find this paragraph to be incredibly naïve at best and kinda dumb at worst.

Of course people who are already powerful, who have had a little tase, will want to express that urge throughout their life. It is blindly obvious when you look at how the elite operate.

Of course raping someone who is of lower status than you fulfills this urge more perfectly; the lower status makes it better, not worse.

This whole passage seems to come from someone who has never actually had a fraught social interaction in their life.

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