@AJHenderson Definitely. But, knowing quite a few men who were in abusive relationships of some sort, it's a really dangerous route. It just furthers them not being taken seriously whatsoever in their claims.
The thing is, I've seen quite a few of these studies use questions like "Did you regret a sexual encounter?" and factoring that in as well. Or being utterly strict with the defintions and then including things that, while technically indeed valid, were consensual, accidental or simply misunderstandings.
(Though that last point of course also opens up the door for "Ah, but I didn't mean it!" excuses, but where I'm going with this is really that this is really hard to quantify, and I'd take it all with a grain mountain of salt.)
A few years ago, I would've agreed on that. Now I'm more cautious, because a lot of this has turned into very loud mudslinging and I'm not particularly convinced by what's going on.
point still is that objectification of women is a huge problem and it naturally leads to a great many other problems, and our society really doesn't have much of an interest in seriously dealing with it
@FEichinger I guess for me, I've been in the trenches of dealing with it before, so I have a lot of first hand experience with abuse victims
including many who were hard to get out of their shell
I do still give the rape statistics far more reliability in my head than the sexual assault ones though
since it is so much more ambiguous to people what is and isn't sexual assault
@AJHenderson Definitely. Although, having seen one of those infamous fake rape claims in action myself, I have some issues with those as well. But they're definitely a lot closer to the truth more reliable.
Yeh, I prefer your phrasing. mine comes across a bit too dismissive there.
@FEichinger personally, in my experience, the worst thing is the emotion trauma and if I could reliably measure amounts of emotional trauma, I would set that as the standard for how severe a sexual assault is
because that's the other thing with the sexual assault stats, in some cases it is things where the women have objectified themselves a fair bit too and didn't really care emotionally, they just were angry or disgusted by the guy
not that those cases should happen
but they aren't really particularly damaging either
but in other cases, the exact same behavior does have a scaring impact
These studies and statistics are, essentially, worthless for their actual subject matter. They're very interesting as a view on the society they stem from as a whole, but not so much for what they're actually asking about.
@FEichinger it does depend on the study too, some of the more clinical ones are trying to evaluate the problem for clinical reasons, but even in those, there is some desire to inflate it because making people feel like they aren't singled out and that it isn't there fault is a big part of healing
so having statistics over-inflated is preferable to under, but reliable, exact statistics is all but impossible
and yeah, the much, much deeper problem is that our society as a whole has no interest in addressing the underlying problems
@AJHenderson That said, I'm not entirely sure about that point. Marketing and entertainment are pretty even on objectifying men and women alike, depending on who they're trying to reach. It definitely factors into gender roles in some way, but I'm not sure it's that deeply a problem.
Or, phrasing it differently, I don't think abandoning the "sex sells" model (both ways) is going to help much.
Not just because society wouldn't really care (or, heck, oppose it), but because I don't think the model itself is that badly a problem.
@FEichinger I didn't mean to say that it is out of balance gender wise in causing objectification, but when you see people as objects to be used, abuse is far easier
for men, it is using their brute force to take what they want, for women it is using their sexual attractiveness to get what they want from men
point is that abuse isn't really possible if you see the subject of the abuse as a valuable human being
the strongest argument that marketing and entertainment don't cause it would be to argue that people objectify each other even without the aid of entertainment and marketing
which may be true
but encouraging the objectification still isn't helpful compared to trying to encourage relationships
@AJHenderson Removing the existing objectification, though, one could easily argue that "X gets Y thanks to X's traits." actually makes Y an object of desire - which would indeed be valuable. The "human being" part is the more important one here, which I really can't blame the media for.
It tends not to be marketing that degrades people - implicitly or otherwise - but other people.
I think it's not so much the objectification itself that's the problem with marketing and entertainment. It's more the "ideal" it paints that causes these problems. That degrades people of all sorts. The ones who don't fit that ideal, because they don't, and the ones that do fit the ideal because they're now supposedly desired by everyone.
@FEichinger yeah, but it also paints a picture of drunk guys going after too skinny women to have as many of them as they can as "the cool thing"
but the chicken and egg problem still remains of, is that because that's what people do, or wish they could do, or does it also partially cause the acceptance of that way of thinking
@AJHenderson Which is the second part of my last sentence, really. It's causing a "competition" of sorts, because this ideal is supposedly desired by everyone.
And, yes, it certainly boils down to a chicken/egg problem (boils down, hah.) - did society create this ideal for itself, or did marketing implant it?
@FEichinger well, it is certainly a natural thought as history shows, the question is if marketing and entertainment make it worse by glorifying the behavior
@Adnan I utterly sympathise. So far, to renew our daughters' passports (a 3 week turnaround, apparently) it has taken 6 weeks; they have lost; found; lost the forms; argued; promised to call 9 times (actually called once); told us we'd have to reapply; sent us one passport back successfully, while insisting it was lost; eventually appear to have a team who has a clue (after I contacted the Home Secretary, Which Consumer Magazine and others)
they are intensely and actively rubbish at what should be really simple
The daftest bit - because they messed up for so long, our eldest daughter has turned 12 so now they require another form with her signature......
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr
@kalina hmm - I disapprove of this. How about 'all men under the age of Rory'
@RoryAlsop No i meant the bureaucracy. They deliver a package to the bureaucracy home world where, in line, a man waiting for his birth certificate dies of old age.
@badp You beat me to it, but for some reason the flag doesn't wanna dismiss. (I'm assuming since you handled it, it can be now?) Yet the blue tabby thing remains
Wait for uPlay to start up -> Press "Go offline" -> Wait for uPlay to start up again -> Press "Go online" -> Ram my head into the wall for being so stupid.
@kalina Not knowing the actual game you are talking about, I note that in the days of Doom, playing in utter darkness with confusing flashes was the way it was supposed to be done.
A good Doom player played by the sound, not the pictures.