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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll

When we first heard about the Toronto Police officer labeling women and people most at risk of sexual assault as “sluts”, we thought about making noise and demanding for more than an apology. We have a constitutional right to a freedom of expression and a freedom of assembly so we’re using it. Putting that into action, we wanted to go right to Toronto Police Service’s front door at 40 College St. with impassioned numbers uniting against these damaging stereotypes. Thus SlutWalk Toronto was born. We are taking our frustration to the streets – literally. Join us for our walk.

Date: 2011-03-31 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/

is this where your poll earlier about police snipers ties in?

Date: 2011-03-31 04:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com
No, that happened during a rally opposing police brutality.
Edited Date: 2011-03-31 04:56 pm (UTC)

Date: 2011-03-31 05:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pperiwinkle.livejournal.com
Yay for them! Yay for sluts!

Date: 2011-03-31 06:08 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
"Women and people most at risk of sexual assault" is an odd construction. It seems to imply that either women are not people, or the people most at risk of sexual assault are not women (which would probably mean the cop is referring to young children as sluts).

Date: 2011-03-31 09:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rpresser.livejournal.com
Why am I suddenly reminded of The Eye of Argon?

"Enough of this! Away with the slut before I loose my
control!"

Date: 2011-04-01 06:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scott-sanford.livejournal.com
"Enouhg indeed" ,he growled loudly, "sluts and other poeple begone3!" Witha valiant shrug Grignr waved away the sults and other people, didding them begone.

(It's hard trying to include enough typos and other offenses to language to carry off the tone of Eye of Argon.)

Date: 2011-04-01 10:50 am (UTC)
ext_6388: Avon from Blake's 7 fails to show an emotion (Default)
From: [identity profile] fridgepunk.livejournal.com
Oddly enough, the latest storyline in Oglaf (NSFW) (http://www.oglaf.com/nightfall/2/) is coming to mind;

Slut Update!
Some say the slut has gone
–but this could be false!
Stay Alert!
He may be capable of:
  • Cunninlingus
  • Crunt-Knockling
    (both front and rear knockle)
  • Self-Saucing
  • Various Flavours
  • Combat Ejaculations
  • Nipplotism
  • Erotic Massage
  • Flang.
  • Date: 2011-03-31 07:19 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Do you have a link to "Toronto Police officer" actually doing what SlutWalkToronto is protesting? Who exactly are the "people most at risk of sexual assault" whom this unnamed police officer called "sluts"?

    Date: 2011-03-31 07:32 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com

    A police officer (http://www.thestar.com/news/article/940665--police-officer-to-apologize-for-sluts-comment) who suggested women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like “sluts” has apologized, saying he is “embarrassed” by the remark and that assaulted women are “not victims by choice.”

    “I made a comment which was poorly thought out and did not reflect the commitment of the Toronto Police Service to the victims of sexual assaults,” Const. Michael Sanguinetti wrote on Thursday to Osgoode Hall Law School where he made the comment.

    “Violent crimes such as sexual assaults can have a traumatizing effect on their victims. . . . My comment was hurtful in this respect.”

    Date: 2011-03-31 07:47 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Not to defend the policeman, but SlutWalk Toronto made it sound much worse than it is. First, he did not call women "sluts", he said they "dress like sluts". There is a difference. More importantly, unless you define ALL women as "people most at risk of sexual assault", that particular line puts him into really unfair light. To me at least, saying someone labeled people most at risk of sexual assault "sluts" implies he was talking specifically about women living in shelters, or daughters of violent alcoholics, or something like that. Which really would be grotesque -- except he did not say anything like that.

    forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-03-31 08:01 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] firstfrost.livejournal.com
    To me at least, saying someone labeled people most at risk of sexual assault "sluts" implies he was talking specifically about women living in shelters, or daughters of violent alcoholics, or something like that.

    Well, if what he said was "women can avoid assault by not dressing as sluts", that does sound like he meant "the people *I* think are most at risk for assault are the ones I think are dressed as sluts". It's not that he's trying to malign the people who are most at risk in real life, it's that he's wrong about who they are and is trying to malign a different group entirely.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-03-31 09:28 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] sethb.livejournal.com
    In that case, he's just wrong. Women who dress "respectably" may be at lower risk than the same women, in the same circumstances, dressed "sluttily"; but the risk is non-zero in either case.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 02:37 am (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] mollydot.livejournal.com
    And from what I hear, what you wear makes no difference anyway.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 12:40 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    I heard that too, but I suspect it is PC BS.

    It comes down to this -- can a woman do ANYTHING to minimize her risk of being raped? Not "avoid assault" completely (obviously impossible), but to minimize the risk? Either rape is completely random and nothing woman does increases or decreases her chances of becoming a victim, or it is not. In the latter case, why is it such a terrible idea to identify risk factors and make them known? And by "identify", I mean scientific study of actual cases, not "dress respectably" folk wisdom.

    BTW, my ex-wife "minimized her risks" by carrying a long thin dagger whenever she went ANYWHERE alone. She did have to use it once.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 12:49 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Now that I think of it, the kind of study I described falls under definition of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimology]victimology[/url] -- "scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system — that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials — and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements." The link I posted describes it in more detail, and also goes into why the very concept of victimology is controversial -- especially with regard to rape.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 12:50 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Sorry. Forgot can't use square brackets on this board. Here it is again:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimology

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:30 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] mollydot.livejournal.com
    Argh! Tab explosion!

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:24 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] mollydot.livejournal.com
    concept of victimology is controversial -- especially with regard to rape

    Sorry, I don't see that. Is it on the same page, or a link off it?

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 03:00 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Indirectly. I meant chapters which start with these paragraphs:

    "One of the most controversial sub-topics within the broader topic is victim proneness. The concept of victim proneness is a "highly moralistic way of assigning guilt" to the victim of a crime, also known as victim blaming.[3] One theory, the environmental theory, posits that the location and context of the crime gets the victim of the crime and the perpetrator of that crime together."

    "Victim facilitation, another controversial sub-topic, but a more accepted theory than victim blaming, finds its roots in the writings of criminologists Marvin Wolfgang. The choice to use victim facilitation as opposed to “victim blaming” or some other term is that victim facilitation is not blaming the victim, but rather the interactions of the victim that make he/she vulnerable to a crime."

    Neither chapter talks about rape explicitely, but rape is one crime where both victim blaming and accusations of victim blaming are most prevalent. Which makes applying victimology to rape controversial in and of itself.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:18 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] mollydot.livejournal.com
    Perhaps, but I suspect that "don't ever worry about a man's feelings and the backlash you might experience from that" would come higher than "dress respectably". Even the dagger comes into that - I can see that being helpful in dark alley rape, but at what point do you produce it in a date rape situation?

    You & I disagree on whether clothes make a difference, but neither of us have evidence. But we're just talking in a comment thread. He was actively giving advice as an authority. Did he have anything to back that up besides a hand-me-down opinion?

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:24 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Hey, I already said he is an idiot! :)

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:55 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] mollydot.livejournal.com
    Perhaps avoiding men who took part in in aggressive high school sports could reduce risk!
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16617170

    So, if we could come up with a list of indicators of increased risk of raping, we could create a simple questionnaire for women to ask every new man they met. I can't see any problems coming out of that :-)

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 03:03 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Study title: "Dating aggression, sexual coercion, and aggression-supporting attitudes among college men as a function of participation in aggressive high school sports."

    Someone needed a study to demonstrate a correlation between aggressive sports and aggressive behavior in general?

    Can I have a big grant to study a correlation between hunger and energetic chewing?

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 07:29 pm (UTC)
    From: (Anonymous)
    I think one could make a colorable argument that by releasing aggression in a controlled and monitored fashion, i.e. sports, overall aggression might be lowered. So to be the study doesn't seem pointless.

    Isn't that the point of your putative hunger study? I'm guessing occasional bouts of very energetic chewing reduce overall hunger, so an experimenter that prevented subjects from having occasional bouts of very energetic chewing would see subjects experiencing increases overall hunger.

    -- NPH

    (Alternate humor explanation: self-selection into sports that involve a great deal of sweaty close physical contact with other males may correlate with men that are less sexually aggressive towards women. If You Know What I Mean.)

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-04 03:38 am (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] sethb.livejournal.com
    I have (anecdotal) evidence that it does make a difference, under some circumstances.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-03-31 09:47 pm (UTC)
    ext_28663: (run lola run)
    From: [identity profile] bcholmes.livejournal.com
    It's also worth noting that, according to witnesses to the original incident, he explained that he'd already been told that he shouldn't say stupid shit like that, and said it anyway. I have no sympathy for him.

    Re: forensic linguistics

    Date: 2011-04-01 12:35 pm (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] ilya187.livejournal.com
    Yes, he is an idiot

    Date: 2011-03-31 10:34 pm (UTC)
    ext_3718: (Default)
    From: [identity profile] agent-mimi.livejournal.com
    Not to defend the policeman, but

    Heh.

    Date: 2011-04-01 01:47 am (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] kithrup.livejournal.com
    How old is he?

    I had a very strong image of an older guy complaining about the kids these days, with their drugs, and their "rock and roll" music.

    Date: 2011-04-01 04:16 am (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] roseembolism.livejournal.com
    Or it could be one of the young ones who cut their hair in military style, and wear aviation style sunglasses. Either way, there's no justification for spouting crap like that.

    Date: 2011-04-01 04:22 am (UTC)
    From: [identity profile] kithrup.livejournal.com
    Indeed, there should be no prejudging someone based on their appearance.

    Date: 2011-04-01 07:30 pm (UTC)
    From: (Anonymous)
    And yet, humans prejudge others based on their appearance all the time, partly because it as a very useful heuristic.
    -- NPH

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