Hofstra Gang Rape Hoax

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

I agree with you. We live in a culture with different mores for men and women. The woman in this consensual scenario went much further outside the rules of culturally sanctioned behavior than did the men. That doesn't mean she's right or wrong, crazy or sane...it just means we have to look at her behavior in that context when we try to understand what happened.

Consider a non-sexual example. My sister, a social worker, was trying to help a family in the projects. One very troubled child in the family was eating the cockroaches in the apartment. Now it turns out that cockroaches are edible, they are considered food in some cultures, and the child wasn't in immediate physical danger from eating them. But that's not really the issue. Our culture says that cockroaches are disgusting vermin, not food. This child's violation of the cultural taboo was a strong signal that something was terribly wrong -- that the child viewed herself as lowly like vermin, or that she was going to extremes to disgust and offend her family. You couldn't understand what was going on in that family in the absence of the cultural taboo.

I see what you're trying to do here, because I tend to use extreme analogies, but it's really not comparable to what UGA was trying to say.

When most people talk about differences between men and women and what women "should and shouldn't do," they are typically not talking about socially created subjective norms. People are often coming from the "it's not acceptable because it isn't what women tend to DO (read: it isn't natural for women)" standpoint, which is complete crap of course.

If this woman chose to defy socially constructed gender norms and have a train run on her, that's her business and, like KSig said, we wouldn't know had those fools not taped her and she had not accused them of rape. There's a difference between analyzing the notion that she's defying gender norms/the men are conforming gender norms versus appearing to say "SOMETHING IS WRONNNNNNNG...maybe it wasn't consensual because women don't DO this...or maybe it was consensual but only because she's craaaaaaaaaaaazy...but either way the men are at fault for either raping her or taking advantage of a crazy woman."

ETA: And on that note, most of the women on this board are defying gender norms in their personal and professional lives. We do it because WE CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT TO. It is both a conscious defiance and a subconscious defiance. But, instead of questioning why we defy them, it makes more sense to challenge why these garbage gender norms (for men and women) are taught, in the first place, and work on tearing them down. That is one of my life's purposes. Amen.