The overwhelming experiences I have had with the boys and men I have known have been by, and far positive. Nice, curteous people. But I hear about instances of gang rapes and I know that if rapists were pathological anomalous rarities among the human population, then gang rapes would happen with far fewer frequency than it does. It would not be committes by groups of high school friends or neighborhood boys, or soldiers who were thrown together by some office administrator somewhere…people brought together randomly by circumstances, and it chills me to think than at least some of the boys and men I’ve known and loved may have the capacity to rape or even desire to do so.

I just don’t understand. It’s completely foreign to me.

There’s plenty of assault in the military, “roughness” that’s excused by the fact you’re going to a war and its “tough out there”, etc… if people are going out to kill, torture, or wound others, they might rape people too, unfortunately. An Adult of mine did a paper on this sometime recently.

There’s also the thoughts that some people that are attracted to war are immoral and what to do awful things to people. I said SOME people. Not all, not most.

And I have come across psychopaths who said they went there for some action and killing training.

So yeah, my conclusion is that rape is increased in these situations due to general immorality of the people going out to “combat” (combat is a euphemism. Call it what it is. A killing game. Rape is awful, and so is killing and torturing people. Anyone who dares criticize me for not approving of either ugly moves is guilty of them in attitude.)

Rape and war disgust me.

“Encapsulates the general academic level level of the whole “Rape Switch” series of threads.”

Umm, Eamon, have you actually read much in these threads? Because while the discussion has gotten quite heated, that is a completely unfair and absolutely untrue characterization of the discussion that has ensued on any of Greg’s threads here, Stephanie’s threads at Almost Diamonds, Jason’s on Lousy Canuck or the one on my own blog.

I’ve only looked at Greg’s threads.

As for the characterisation – I guess that would depend on what your cultural background says about expletives and denigratory remarks. Mine (Northern Irish) doesn’t consider such to be neccessary in reasoned discourse.

Yes, there has been a great deal of disagreement. Yup, there has even been some rather vitriolic responses – some justified, others not so much. But to even begin to claim that it has generally been on a par with what that one sick fuck has to say, either betrays your lack of reading comprehension, that you haven’t actually read much of the commentary (and I grant that there is an exhaustive amount to read), that you have a very strange idea about what “general” means or that you’re simply being disingenuous.

Well, I haven’t read each and every comment – due to the two factors of there being so much, and also because, as I live in Japan, I get a mad splurge of replys piling up while I am sleeping. This may also be a factor in my impressions of the threads – as I check the last ones first these usually have most expletives and denigratory remarks.

Or maybe you just wanted to engage in hyperbolic bullshit yourself…

Nope. That is something I almost never do. Of course, your viewpoint may differ. 😉

I come from the amp that any amount of rape is an unacceptable horror and that some sort of solution must be found to the problem, but I have no idea what the actual numbers are because the only numbers I’ve ever encountered are at best guesswork. From here, well the gap between “It’s ok” and “It’s not as a big a problem as you suggest” is pretty much same, only I don’t think the people in the first camp are saying “It’s not as big a problem as you suggest.”

If my statement that the numbers are unreliable (which they are, and the quote in the OP says as much in the first sentence) was conflated in your mind with someone else else said about them being completely false or at least dramatically inflated, well, I’m sorry for the confusion.

In short, to clarify any remaining confusion there might be to my stance: Rape is bad, the numbers are unreliable, there are no reliable numbers, I wish there were reliable numbers, I think people should be more careful how they generalize. If I left something out, I’m sorry, and I’ll try to clarify if it comes up.