• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

So, Apparently 'Birth Rape' Is A Thing...

radcen said:
Equating birth to rape is destructive hyperbole. The physical aspects *may be* similar, but the intent, and especially the emotional impact, is not. Rape is far more than merely physical. By equating the two with words you are actually cheapening the emotional impact of rape, and dismissing the victim's concerns.

Generic 'you'.
Click to expand...

So, I want to make this clear, they are not comparing birth to rape. There are million, nay, billions of births all over the place all the time that are not "rape-esque". What this article is complaining about is the notion that a bunch of strangers grabbing you up and messing around with your genitals in a painful and frightening scenario can feel very much like rape in the sense of an intimate violating assault. That is not the intent of the doctors, and the article isn't even claiming that is the intent, but that by pushing women through assembly line style and treating the human woman attached to the womb as just an object and an inconvenience and not keeping her informed and making sure she is aware of what is about to happen to her before you do it, that this results in a violating and painful and scary experience and is quite rape-esque.

So for the great number of women out there who have the means to acquire a higher level of care while giving birth, this is not a problem, but for many women, particularly those pushed through crowded and understaffed hospitals, this is the reality. It is not birth that is being compared to rape, it is the inadequate/insensitive/forceful care provided during birth that is being compared to rape. I need you to be able to separate those out if we are to productively dialogue on this.

Now I am going to carry forward assuming I have made the above point very clear and move to other points.

I find this statement to be highly problematic: The physical aspects *may be* similar, but the intent, and especially the emotional impact, is not. Rape is far more than merely physical. And I will explain why.

You are always on poor ground when you start trying to dictate to someone how something felt to them. Damn near everything in this world is relative. If someone tells me that a hike was really tough and grueling for them, I don't second guess their assessment of their personal experience, or try to tell them they are wrong that it felt grueling, because it doesn't seem like it would be to me. If someone says they went to a bad part of town and they felt very unsafe, then I am not going to try and tell them that no, they didn't feel unsafe. I can maybe try to tell them that they were not actually unsafe, try to inform them or change their opinion, but I am certainly not going to dictate to them how they felt at that time or chastise them for saying they felt a certain way.

It is like that with this situation. If a woman tells you that she felt afraid and hurt and violated and that it felt like rape, you are certainly in no position to dictate to her that no it didn't, that she has a wrong assessment of her own subjective experience. That doesn't even make sense. And when you tell then "Well, maybe it hurt and was scary, but you shouldn't say it felt like rape" then you are doing either one of two things, either you are telling her that it, in fact, did not feel like rape (in which case you are dictating to her what her own subjective experience was, which you cannot do) or you are saying that it is possible that it did feel like rape to her, but she shouldn't use that term because it makes you uncomfortable, which is a ****ty thing to tell another person to do.

Now I am not trying to say there is no such thing as an exaggeration or a person who is prone to hyperbole. That does happen, those people exist. If someone said that they had to give their weight at the DMV for their driver's license and that violation felt like rape, I am likely to roll my eyes at them and call that nonsense. But It is not at all a stretch of the imagination that when you are hurt and scared and a bunch of strangers start proding and/or cutting your genitals without asking you if it's ok or telling you what is happening that such an encounter might feel a bit like rape. That doesn't make me roll my eyes. Even the most basic of human empathy and common sense allow me to see how for some women with impersonal assembly line style care it might come off like that. That's not crazy or some far flung ridiculous stretch.

So, if you are with me so far, if you can at all on even a very basic level empathize with what I have said above, then surely you can't object to an article about that kind of experience existing, and it being asked that steps be taken to make the experience less that way.

Certainly it is not at all productive to stick a finger in the face of women who say it felt like rape and tell them they are wrong about how it felt to them. You can't do that, that's not how subjective experience works.
 
CLAX1911 said:
I still take exception to what you said.

I still took exception to something you said regardless of this.

sure.
Click to expand...

OK, well like I said your reply was very confusing and not clear to me. Can you tell me what I said that you took exception to exactly?
 
jimithyashford said:
So, I want to make this clear, they are not comparing birth to rape. There are million, nay, billions of births all over the place all the time that are not "rape-esque". What this article is complaining about is the notion that a bunch of strangers grabbing you up and messing around with your genitals in a painful and frightening scenario can feel very much like rape in the sense of an intimate violating assault. That is not the intent of the doctors, and the article isn't even claiming that is the intent, but that by pushing women through assembly line style and treating the human woman attached to the womb as just an object and an inconvenience and not keeping her informed and making sure she is aware of what is about to happen to her before you do it, that this results in a violating and painful and scary experience and is quite rape-esque.

So for the great number of women out there who have the means to acquire a higher level of care while giving birth, this is not a problem, but for many women, particularly those pushed through crowded and understaffed hospitals, this is the reality. It is not birth that is being compared to rape, it is the inadequate/insensitive/forceful care provided during birth that is being compared to rape. I need you to be able to separate those out if we are to productively dialogue on this.

Now I am going to carry forward assuming I have made the above point very clear and move to other points.

I find this statement to be highly problematic: The physical aspects *may be* similar, but the intent, and especially the emotional impact, is not. Rape is far more than merely physical. And I will explain why.

You are always on poor ground when you start trying to dictate to someone how something felt to them. Damn near everything in this world is relative. If someone tells me that a hike was really tough and grueling for them, I don't second guess their assessment of their personal experience, or try to tell them they are wrong that it felt grueling, because it doesn't seem like it would be to me. If someone says they went to a bad part of town and they felt very unsafe, then I am not going to try and tell them that no, they didn't feel unsafe. I can maybe try to tell them that they were not actually unsafe, try to inform them or change their opinion, but I am certainly not going to dictate to them how they felt at that time or chastise them for saying they felt a certain way.

It is like that with this situation. If a woman tells you that she felt afraid and hurt and violated and that it felt like rape, you are certainly in no position to dictate to her that no it didn't, that she has a wrong assessment of her own subjective experience. That doesn't even make sense. And when you tell then "Well, maybe it hurt and was scary, but you shouldn't say it felt like rape" then you are doing either one of two things, either you are telling her that it, in fact, did not feel like rape (in which case you are dictating to her what her own subjective experience was, which you cannot do) or you are saying that it is possible that it did feel like rape to her, but she shouldn't use that term because it makes you uncomfortable, which is a ****ty thing to tell another person to do.

Now I am not trying to say there is no such thing as an exaggeration or a person who is prone to hyperbole. That does happen, those people exist. If someone said that they had to give their weight at the DMV for their driver's license and that violation felt like rape, I am likely to roll my eyes at them and call that nonsense. But It is not at all a stretch of the imagination that when you are hurt and scared and a bunch of strangers start proding and/or cutting your genitals without asking you if it's ok or telling you what is happening that such an encounter might feel a bit like rape. That doesn't make me roll my eyes. Even the most basic of human empathy and common sense allow me to see how for some women with impersonal assembly line style care it might come off like that. That's not crazy or some far flung ridiculous stretch.

So, if you are with me so far, if you can at all on even a very basic level empathize with what I have said above, then surely you can't object to an article about that kind of experience existing, and it being asked that steps be taken to make the experience less that way.

Certainly it is not at all productive to stick a finger in the face of women who say it felt like rape and tell them they are wrong about how it felt to them. You can't do that, that's not how subjective experience works.
Click to expand...
I disagree. I get the point that is being attempted, but the attempt is falling flat on its face. If you're using the same or similar words, you're equating the two. Long-winded explanations not only don't change that, the longer-winded they need to be actually reinforces that.

Again, generic "you", not you specifically.
 
radcen said:
I disagree. I get the point that is being attempted, but the attempt is falling flat on its face. If you're using the same or similar words, you're equating the two. Long-winded explanations not only don't change that, the longer-winded they need to be actually reinforces that.

Again, generic "you", not you specifically.
Click to expand...

Complex issues require complex discussions. If you aren't down with that you might be on the wrong forum.

But I will try to pair this down. Do you acknowledge and agree that for some women, who are not exaggerating or to being hyperbolic, in circumstances of rushed and impersonal medical care, that the situation might feel very violating and painful and rape-esque? Do you concede that that perception might exist and that it is understandable how a person might reasonable feel violated in that way during such an encounter?
 
CLAX1911 said:
I already did in post #71
Click to expand...

You mean this: I took exception to where you said that if a woman claims to have been raped you would believe her.

But that's not what I said....I said I would believe a woman if she said something felt like rape to her. That is a very important difference. We use similes all the time when describing things. "I felt like I was going to die" "This pulled muscle hurts, it feels like I've been stabbed." "I started to panic, it felt like the walls were closing in" "I felt like my whole world was ending" "it felt like a war zone" etc.

It's an extremely common conversational device to compare one experience to another to express to someone who has not felt what you felt how it felt using a benchmark they might be able to better interface with or that is more commonly known of and acknowledged.

The women in the article are not saying they were raped, they are saying it felt like rape in terms of how violating and scary and painful and confusing it was. And if a woman goes through an experience like that and tells me that it felt like rape to her, then I am going to believe her that it felt that way.
 
jimithyashford said:
You mean this: I took exception to where you said that if a woman claims to have been raped you would believe her.

But that's not what I said....I said I would believe a woman if she said something felt like rape to her.
Click to expand...
Other than that not being the exact same words, how is that not the same meaning?

That is a very important difference. We use similes all the time when describing things. "I felt like I was going to die" "This pulled muscle hurts, it feels like I've been stabbed." "I started to panic, it felt like the walls were closing in" "I felt like my whole world was ending" "it felt like a war zone" etc.
Click to expand...
So if a woman says "It felt like rape to me" that's figurative for some other meaning, or does it mean she actually felt like she was being sexually assaulted? I don't know what else feels like rape besides rape.

It's an extremely common conversational device to compare one experience to another to express to someone who has not felt what you felt how it felt using a benchmark they might be able to better interface with or that is more commonly known of and acknowledged.
Click to expand...
I understand that but I don't think that is what is happening. Now when a man gets a prostate exam he may say he felt violated, but we all know he wasn't. Is that what this is? It feels like rape but really isn't and the woman is being overly dramatic in order to get a few laughs or convince others she didn't like it?

Or is this really saying that it felt like they were actually being sexually assulted?

I think you have gotten into the rough. The way I take the concept of birth rape is that these women are saying they felt like they were sexually assaulted. Not that they were using sexual assault as a metric to explain their experience.

The women in the article are not saying they were raped, they are saying it felt like rape in terms of how violating and scary and painful and confusing it was.
Click to expand...
I don't think so. You can use anything else as a discription for something being violating and scary. Rape doesn't convey violating and scary, it conveys sexual assault and I think that was exactly what they were wanting to convey if not they wouldn't have used that word.

And if a woman goes through an experience like that and tells me that it felt like rape to her, then I am going to believe her that it felt that way.
Click to expand...
How would something feel like sexual assault but isn't? If it feels like sexual assault and the victim is of sound body and mind than by definition it's sexual assault.

Wouldn't you say that rape or sexual assault is defined by unwanted nonconsensual sexual contact with another person? If that is exactly what is going on, how did it feel like rape but wasn't rape?
 
CLAX1911 said:
Other than that not being the exact same words, how is that not the same meaning?
Click to expand...

Um.....I assume we are both somewhat educated adults, so I feel very weird having to explain that yes, a single word or small phrase can alter the meaning of something to a substantial degree. For example, "I got shot" and "I felt like I got shot" have a very significant and meaningful difference, "I was raped" and "I felt like I was raped" are also different in the same way. I mean....that's obvious right?

CLAX1911 said:
So if a woman says "It felt like rape to me" that's figurative for some other meaning, or does it mean she actually felt like she was being sexually assaulted?
Click to expand...

Both? Dude, you should have learned about Simile's in grade school, this is not a complicated concept. You compare one thing to another thing using the words "like" or "as" to highlight similarities between the two for explanatory purposes or to make a point. In other words you are both saying that it felt like Rape in a number of ways (painful, scary, violating, objectifying, involving the genitals) while also not meaning that is actually was rape. Just like you might describe an injury as feeling like you got shot (sudden stabbing pain, localized, radiating numbness after initial shock) even if you were not actually shot.

I feel very disoriented in this conversation with you that I seem to have to spend so much time like defending the validity of the basic concept of a simile and trying, bizarrely, to explain how having a bunch of strangers messing around with your genitals without informing you of what they are doing or making sure you are ok with it when you are frighted and in pain might, just might, maybe, feel like rape.

Like, I really don't know what to do in a conversation where I am having to defend basic common conversational norms and repeatedly call for extremely basic empathy. I am kind of at a loss for where to go if I can't even get you onboard with these most basic concepts.

CLAX1911 said:
the woman is being overly dramatic in order to get a few laughs or convince others she didn't like it?
Click to expand...

Jesus dude......ok we're done.
 
jimithyashford said:
Um.....I assume we are both somewhat educated adults, so I feel very weird having to explain that yes, a single word or small phrase can alter the meaning of something to a substantial degree. For example, "I got shot" and "I felt like I got shot" have a very significant and meaningful difference, "I was raped" and "I felt like I was raped" are also different in the same way. I mean....that's obvious right?
Click to expand...
I don't believe it makes a difference when discussing the words I was discussing. If you feel like you were raped (barring a n esoteric meaning of the word "raped") you likely were.



Both? Dude, you should have learned about Simile's in grade school, this is not a complicated concept.
Click to expand...
I did. But I'm having difficulty understanding what could be similar to rape without being rape.
You compare one thing to another thing using the words "like" or "as" to highlight similarities between the two for explanatory purposes or to make a point. In other words you are both saying that it felt like Rape in a number of ways (painful, scary, violating, objectifying, involving the genitals) while also not meaning that is actually was rape.
Click to expand...
So explain to me how something can feel like sexual assault with out actually being sexual assault please.

Just like you might describe an injury as feeling like you got shot (sudden stabbing pain, localized, radiating numbness after initial shock) even if you were not actually shot.
Click to expand...
See above and explain.

I feel very disoriented in this conversation with you that I seem to have to spend so much time like defending the validity of the basic concept of a simile and trying, bizarrely, to explain how having a bunch of strangers messing around with your genitals without informing you of what they are doing or making sure you are ok with it when you are frighted and in pain might, just might, maybe, feel like rape.
Click to expand...
Sounds to me like it feels more like an exhausting medical procedure based on those discripions.

I think you're disoriented because you're trying to force this simile thing. Perhaps it was just hyperbolic to say it was like rape.

I have no idea what can be similar to rape without the sexual assault. That is all there is to rape.

Like, I really don't know what to do in a conversation where I am having to defend basic common conversational norms and repeatedly call for extremely basic empathy. I am kind of at a loss for where to go if I can't even get you onboard with these most basic concepts.
Click to expand...
Is really quite simple. Explain how something can be considered "like rape" wile completely missing the definition of rape.



Jesus dude......ok we're done.
Click to expand...
So you admit calling it "birth rape" is hyperbolic nonsense meant to focus attention on something verses it being a simile?
 
CLAX1911 said:
I don't believe it makes a difference when discussing the words I was discussing. If you feel like you were raped (barring a n esoteric meaning of the word "raped") you likely were.



I did. But I'm having difficulty understanding what could be similar to rape without being rape. So explain to me how something can feel like sexual assault with out actually being sexual assault please.

See above and explain.

Sounds to me like it feels more like an exhausting medical procedure based on those discripions.

I think you're disoriented because you're trying to force this simile thing. Perhaps it was just hyperbolic to say it was like rape.

I have no idea what can be similar to rape without the sexual assault. That is all there is to rape.

Is really quite simple. Explain how something can be considered "like rape" wile completely missing the definition of rape.



So you admit calling it "birth rape" is hyperbolic nonsense meant to focus attention on something verses it being a simile?
Click to expand...

I feel I explained the concept to a sufficient degree that any reasonable person could get it. If you are really and utterly incapable of understanding how that experience might feel like an intimate assault and violation in a similar manner to rape, if you just flat out do not get it, cannot have empathy with that sentiment at all, then we are at an impasse. But at least concede that it does, in fact, feel that way to others even if you personally just cannot wrap yourself around how it might.
 
jimithyashford said:
I feel I explained the concept to a sufficient degree that any reasonable person could get it. If you are really and utterly incapable of understanding how that experience might feel like an intimate assault and violation in a similar manner to rape, if you just flat out do not get it, cannot have empathy with that sentiment at all, then we are at an impasse. But at least concede that it does, in fact, feel that way to others even if you personally just cannot wrap yourself around how it might.
Click to expand...
No, you haven't. It's really simple.

Rape is sexual assault. How can something feel like sexual assault without being sexual assault?

That's all that needs to be explained. That is the only part I don't understand. If you have explained it to a degree that a reasonable person could understand it than I would. I'm not a cat that was trained to type.

I'm saying if it feels like rape and you're a sane person than it was ****ing rape. I don't understand how something can feel like sexual assault without the sexual assault part. That's all there is to it. Thats like having a tire without the round black part or eating a chicken leg workout the meat or bone. It's nothing.

You can stop with the condescension, I have you in a corner and I know it. Your silly little attempts at insults won't distract me. I know people do that when they are losing the argument.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom