r/news • u/MIngmire • Jan 09 '18

Dad turns in teenage son after finding child pornography on cell phone

http://www.kmov.com/story/37226711/dad-turns-in-teenage-son-after-finding-inappropriate-pictures-on-phone
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u/Shoobert Jan 09 '18 edited Jan 10 '18

it's the demographic here. Reddit is mostly men, and concerned with 'injustices' done to men as a group. That's why most rape headlines have to do with false accusations (unless its an immigrant/refugee doing the raping) regardless of what the statistical evidence points to.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

I mean-- regular rapes just don't rate on the news, hence why we only see headlines about the false ones.

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u/Wyandotty Jan 10 '18

Regular false accusations don't make national headlines, either. Reddit has an amazing ability to dreg up every local channel-4 coverage of maltreated high school quarterbacks.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

I'd argue that if reddit is mostly men, then it may not so much be "injustices to men" as the concern, but injustices in general, that happen to be personally relatable; men are (at least in many of our minds) more vulnerable to false sex allegations than we are to being sexually abused. So on a personal level, which is going to be more concerning? Something that seems like a realistic possibility or something that doesn't?

Our brains have not evolved for global connectivity and are still operating on a pretty small-minded sense of survival. Meaning, we tend to care most when something can be seen in a perspective that directly relates to us. Sometimes that expands to our "tribe" as well, which usually means family (if our family doesn't suck) or friends and maybe an ideological or fan group or two.

Some of us have managed to extend our sympathies to a global level by seeing the world as all part of the same "human" tribe, but that's usually more of an intellectual sympathy than it is an emotional one.

We're built to empathize with stories, not statistics.

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u/MontyBoosh Jan 10 '18 edited Jan 10 '18

To be fair, men are actually significantly more likely to be raped than falsely accused of rape. The fact that the latter is perceived as more likely is probably related to the fact that society doesn't take male rape seriously. There's also the fact that people tend to pay more attention to stories that pertain to injustice than tragedy. When somebody is raped it is a horrible thing, sure, but when someone is falsely accused it is unfair, and that tends to appeal more to our sense of justice.

There's also the problem of victim-blaming. This is just my impression of things, so feel free to correct or add on to this if you disagree. I think it's scary to think that someone could remove your personal autonomy and there's nothing you could do about it. In some way, with these kinds of crimes we almost need to feel like something could have been done to prevent it, because to admit otherwise is to accept that we could also be a victim. Society imagines rapists as creepy guys waiting in dark alleys for pretty young girls - and while that certainly has been known to happen, it's far far more likely that you will be raped by someone you know. With false rape accusations there's no such history of blaming the victims for their actions - the men involved.

One in four women and one in six men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

One in six women and one in thirty-three men will experience attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

Sexual assault is the violent crime that is least often reported to law enforcement officials. A 2000 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 28% of victims report their sexual assault to the police.

Only about 2% (Other studies suggest figures between 2-10%) of all sexual assault accusations reported to police turn out to be false. This is the same rate of false reporting as other types of violent crime.

https://endsexualviolencect.org/resources/get-the-facts/national-statistics-on-sexual-violence/

We can look at this from a mathematical perspective (obviously simplifying things significantly) to get some very rough figures, and see just how skewed perceptions are if the data is to be believed. We'll have to look at sexual assault, since data is not given for how many rape accusations are false. We also have to work a bit backwards, since the percentages presented look at two different things (percentage of people who are victims and percentage of accusations that are false - we don't know the number of accusations per victim, although we can assume that the average is above one).

In a population of 10000 women and 10000 men, 2500 women and 1667 men will be sexually assaulted, and only 700 women will report a crime. For false reporting (from women exclusively) to be as likely as male sexual assault, even using the higher figure of 10% false accusations, these 700 women would have needed to report an average of 23.8 sexual assaults each (if you use the 2% figure, this leaps to a ridiculous 119 assaults each!) If you add in the unreported assaults, this brings the total number of actual sexual assaults in our population of 10000 women to 53582 (1667 false accusations, 15003 reported assaults, 38579 unreported assaults, assuming false accusations are not used in calculating the percentages of unreported rapes), meaning the average woman has been assaulted more than 5 times, and the average sexual assault victim has been assaulted 21.4 times. Using the 2% figure gives us even more extreme figures: 1667 false accusations, 81683 reported assaults, 210042 unreported assaults. This equates to 291725 assaults - 29 per woman and 116.7 assaults per victim. This also means that for every false accusation, between 32 and 175 actual assaults occur. So even in a world where men are as likely to be falsely accused as sexually assaulted, I would still argue that the 32-175 actual assaults on women are more of an issue than 1 false accusation, especially if these cases are being properly investigated. Another thing to consider is that some of these false accusations may be aimed at the same person, or at women rather than men, adding to the number of actual assaults for every 1 false accusation aimed at men.

This doesn't even get into how many rapists are ever actually charged with a crime, or the lengths of their sentences: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/11/male-female-rape-statistics-graphic

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

Damn. Nice work with the detail.

I do agree that odds of man being raped are higher. It occurred to me as I was writing that it's probably just a perception, so I stuck that part in.

And yeah, nobody wants to believe that they can be raped and not having any control over it happening. As far as victim blaming goes, I remember reading this book a while back that was talking about the difference between blame and contribution.

Blame being a value judgment and contribution being a detached observation of what your actions were without any implication of fault.

I think that some (not all) victim blaming comes across as blaming, when it's meant as an assessment of contribution.

For example, if a person keeps finding themself in abusive relationships, it's possible there's something to that trend; that some behavior they are doing attracts predatory people. In other words, it's possible that something they are doing is contributing to the odds of the occurrence. And if an assessment finds that there's something they could change that would lower their odds of it happening again, that might be something they'd want to do.

On the other hand, the assessment might find that they are just unlucky.

Either way, they aren't to blame for being abused. But their actions might have contributed to it occurring.

It's a bit weird wrapping one's head around, but I think it's a really important part of examining one's own life and trying to improve it.

I would never comment in such a way (blame or contribution) to someone who's just been a terrible victim though because it's just rude to come off like that right away while they're hurting. So in that sense, no victim "blaming" is what I'd call nice.

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u/MontyBoosh Jan 10 '18

Oh yeah I totally agree. I think there's a major difference between looking at a situation with the benefit of hindsight in order to think of ways to minimise risk in the future, and actively saying that a victim shares part of the guilt, and is therefore in some way less deserving of sympathy, justice or basic decency.

I think the first is the kind of basic risk assessment that everyone (including, and likely especially the victim) goes through in their head when something horrible happens and, as I mentioned, I think it is related to how agency and fear work in the human brain. If you can feel like there is a way for you to avoid the same fate then you don't have to feel afraid. That said, while it may be perfectly fine to think that, voicing it is something entirely different. No matter how nicely you word it, for the victim it will sound like blame, and act as a reminder of the event. I don't think there's really a good way in the English language to express that risk could have been minimised through (A), (B), (C)... without implying that the person who didn't do (A), (B) and (C) is at fault.

I think the second option merely takes this same thing to an extreme. I think for some people it is an extension of fear, whereas for others these positions may be effected by personal and societal biases and stereotypes. For example, people are far more likely to be raped by people they know - partners, friends, family... - and yet society focuses almost exclusively on the rarer rapes commited by strangers.

There's also the fact that when comparing it to other crimes, rape (stranger rape in particular) is overwhelming a crime committed against women, and is violent in nature. In order to avoid being victimised by rapists, we are advised to limit our personal freedoms, and expected to do so under threat of societal blame if we refuse to do so and something bad happens to us. And since rape is gendered, so too is this limiting of personal freedom and the negative impact it has on quality of life.

It's not at all the same thing as the risk minimisation involved with theft, for example; if you are likely to be a victim of theft you can always lock your door - the only negatives involved being the cost of the lock and the time it takes to lock the door. Everyone has a house and, while some areas may be more prone to theft and people generally can't move away just to avoid theft, the effort involved in securing the house doesn't detract significantly from one's quality of life. I'm sure most people would agree that if you were robbed and didn't expend the two seconds of effort required to lock the front door then you are a bit of an idiot. It doesn't mean you are to blame for the theft occuring, or that I won't pat you on the back and show you sympathy, but I will certainly think of you as irresponsible.

Similarly, everyone has a body that could potentially be misused sexually. Statistics show that women generally are at a higher risk of this (although it should be noted that figures are similar for men and women when looking at incidences of rape in children and intimate relationships) and this is something that we generally cannot change. However protecting oneself from rape is not as simple as locking a door. Is it enough to simply watch your drink at a club, or should you be forced to drag a group of friends with you everywhere you go? Is it enough to be simply wary of strangers or do women have to adopt a "code of conduct", including remaining "einearmlänge" (an arms length away) from any unknown men as the Mayor of Cologne infamously and controversially suggested following mass sexual assaults on the streets of Germany last New Year. Is it enough to merely be conscious of the lengths of our skirts or are we required to wear a burqa? Is it enough to avoid dark alleys or should we just not leave the house at all? Some of these probably sound a little extreme, but there certainly are people - including those in positions of power, and other women (the Mayor of Cologne for example) - who see no problem with expecting women to give up major freedoms of expression, movement, association and choice just to attain the level of security that most men take as a given. Women who fail to act the part of the perfect victim are so often penalised for not submitting.

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u/odel555q Jan 10 '18

Statistics cannot be applied to individual cases.

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u/TheInfected Jan 10 '18

False accusations are real though, you can't just say "injustices" like it's not really happening.

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u/Shoobert Jan 10 '18 edited Jan 13 '18

That is a fair point and perhaps I should not have been so snarky. False accusations most certainly are real and should be taken seriously, my point is that Reddit would have you believe that there is an absolute epidemic of false accusations and that they are commensurate to the issue of rape in our culture (perhaps a bit hyperbolic I know, but that is just my observation). I think that one conversation does not exclude the other, but Reddit sometimes seems to act as an echo chamber that men are being persecuted in a way and at a rate that is just markedly false.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

While they do get a lot of attention, false accusations were also a huge thing a year or two ago. There were several big cases like mattress girl and Ghomeshi that ended up not being rape cases, and yet the guys accused had their reputations tarnished forever and lost their job/schooling. It was a pretty big deal to have the most publicized rape cases turn out to be made up.

Things then started to shift away from that after Cosby was found guilty, and all the accusations that flooded in after Weinstein. I think the false cases were necessary to show that it is a real problem, but the numerous real cases also show that we shouldn't dismiss accusations. Feels more balanced now thanks to all the mostly true accusations lately.

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u/Ace_Masters Jan 10 '18

Ghomeshi was a scumbag, just maybe not a full blown rapist

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

Of course. But being a dick and engaging in consensual sex with someone isn't grounds for termination or accusations of rape/assault. Whether or not you like the guy, he was hung up as a monster, and then it turned out that the accusers were just working together to sink him for petty reasons. The media didn't really cover that aftermath nearly as much, but to those who saw it it was a pretty big deal.

We should certainly do everything we can to help victims and persecute attackers, but those cases showed us that maybe our current system has some major flaws that are being exploited.

Of course, there are also some dicks who insult any woman who says anything, and I'm not defending that mentality.

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u/GutterMaiden Jan 10 '18

Petty reasons? Too many women were warned about Ghomeshi for years for him not to be a monster.

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u/GoggyMagogger Jan 10 '18

A whole bunch of Jian's behaviour was non-consensual. Multiple reports of "surprise" attacks during otherwise normal dates. Like he'd get alone with a date, begin to make out then WHAM out of nowhere he'd punch choke hit etc. It appears he sometimes got consent but eventually his behaviour escalated to blind violent attacks.

Not that any of this could be proven effectively in court, but that's a whole other story right there.

The guy 100% deserved to lose his job. If he wants a career he can always move south and rebrand himself as some alt-right proud boy men's rights shock jock or something. His days as Canada's premier male feminist are over.

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u/Ace_Masters Jan 10 '18

isn't grounds for termination

What world do you live in?

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

A world where plenty of people are kind of jerks and have sex, but still have jobs. Unless you're such a dick that you're making the workplace unproductive you're unlikely to be fired, and your sex life isn't really something that most people share with their employers.

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u/Ace_Masters Jan 10 '18

"Planet Rape" I guess

Look up "at will employment"

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u/AndaliteBandit Jan 10 '18 edited Jan 10 '18

It was a pretty big deal to have the most publicized rape cases turn out to be made up.

This is exactly what they're talking about. Those weren't the most publicized rape cases of the past year or two, but you wouldn't know that if Reddit is your primary source of news.

For example, the UMass college gang rape case, Vanderbilt college gang rape case, Darren Sharper celebrity serial rapist case, and the Daniel Holtzclaw serial rapist case all resulted in guilty convictions. And those are just some of the extreme cases of serial and gang rapists that made national headlines in the timeframe you mentioned.

If you heard more about Mattress Girl than a celebrity admitting to drugging and raping women in four states, that's on you.

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u/kragshot Jan 10 '18

Uh...Cosby wasn't found guilty of anything. Of all of the accusations leveled against him, only one went to trial and it was declared a "mistrial." And with six months remaining before the prosecution loses the window for a retrial, it looks like it isn't going anywhere. Constrand's lawyers have not filed any preliminary paperwork stating an intent to appeal the decision.

Furthermore, only a relatively small number of the Hollywood accusations have been revealed as having been legitimate; mostly due to the actual admissions of (probable) guilt from the men so accused (i.e. Franken, Louis CK, Spacey, etc...). We supposedly have photographic/video evidence against Weinstein and NYC is claiming to be in the process of an investigation into one of the accusations. And then there's Matt Lauer and his "magic locking door"...'nuff said.

But in fact, a lot of the Hollywood/Big-business accusations are just floating in the void and there is nothing being done. Corey Feldman is starting to name names, but it's going nowhere real fast. Terry Crews' accusation is not even being taken seriously by the Hollywood pundits (even to the point of talk show hosts claiming that he had no right to even make an accusation). Jeremy Piven and most of the other men accused are flat out calling "bullshit" on their accusers (Piven has openly declared that he will take a polygraph test regarding his accusation...for whatever that is worth).

And then, there are the three or so women that have been openly accused, whose stories have been subsequently kicked under the proverbial rug because "this is supposed to be a triumph for women; straight men need not apply."

All of these accusations...from women and men; should have been taken seriously and actually investigated instead of turning into a "witch hunt with feels." If that had been done, then would have most likely been a great thing for everyone that had been victims of abuse/harassment/rape.

But as it stands now, the whole thing is about to unravel like a badly knitted winter scarf. And when it does, the regular people; men and women alike, are going to be the only ones that will end up paying the price.

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u/Cereborn Jan 10 '18

I'm honestly not sure what point you're making here. Are you saying you think Cosby and Weinstein are totally innocent?

Also, do you have any sources about these women who were accused, or who said that quote?

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u/kragshot Jan 10 '18

As I wrote, there appears to be substantial and solid evidence against Weinstein that confirms the accusations against him.

As for Cosby...I am very certain that he is innocent of a significant number of the accusations leveled against him. There are plenty of items of contextual and historical evidence that back his innocence.

First off, until the mid 80s, all of his accusers are White women. Several of them were high-profile enough that if they had openly accused Cosby when the alleged rape was supposed to have happened, we would not be having this conversation now. Let's be real about this. Black men...especially black male celebrities were not even running the shallow risk of getting into a situation where they could even be suspected of improper contact with a white woman. Sammy Davis Jr. was the most prominent black male celebrity in that time period and he didn't fuck around with white women in that manner.

In fact, if one of those white female celebrities like Janice Dickinson or Louisa Moritz had actually reported Cosby to the authorities when their alleged rapes supposedly happened, in about three or four weeks from now, we would be seeing a PBS documentary about how an up and coming young comedian named Bill Cosby had his career ruined or was seriously injured/killed due to the false accusation of a white woman accusing him of rape.

Furthermore and in regards to Moritz's accusation of Cosby...historical record invalidates her account of the events. Moritz claimed that Cosby forced her to blow him while they were in the green room for a taping of the Tonight Show. In fact, Cosby wasn't even there that afternoon. The comedic talent on the show when she was there was The Poet Laureate of Hollywood Squares himself, Nipsey Russell. Cosby was performing on the East Coast that night and had been there the whole day.

There is much more in depth information about Cosby being innocent of nearly all of those accusations. But the primary reason for the accusations leveled against him was that just before all of them jumped off, he was about to make a bid for a controlling interest in NBC/Universal. Which was almost the exact thing that happened to Michael Jackson just before he was going to make a bid on Sony.

As for the women accused of "bad behavior," we have sports blogger/writer Ryan Schultz who was accused of harassing women online back in November. Well, once it was revealed that Ryan Schultz was actually Becca Schultz (she was posing as a man to get the gig...wait...isn't that "sexual appropriation"), then that story went away real quick.

Also, nobody is talking about Andrea Ramsey who was running for Congress in Kansas until a harassment accusation surfaced about her. She dropped out of the race almost as quickly as her story dropped out of the press.

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u/CuckedByJaredFogle Jan 10 '18

I agree with what you are saying, but I do not think this is a reddit problem or even a male problem, different groups contain different biases and that is a good thing so long as all opinions can be heard and discussed. The way you wrote the first comment, you made it seem like all men on reddit (or at least most of them) are viewing this issue through the same lens.

More so than male/female biases (although those do exist) I tend to find that different subreddits all have there own biases. I know this as a male who frequents both conservative and liberal subreddits. I would tentatively predict that political orientation and scores on psychometric personality tests would reveal more about a persons views of social issues than the persons gender.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18 edited Nov 03 '20

[deleted]

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u/kragshot Jan 10 '18

Men have always listened to women, especially in regards to accusations of male sexual misconduct.

Men listened to women in Tulsa OK in 1920.

Men listened to women in Rosewood Florida in 1922.

Men listened to women in Scottsboro, AL in 1931.

Men continued to listen to women in Groveland, FL in 1949.

Men also listened to women in Money, MS in 1955, much to young Emmitt Till's "misfortune."

They also listened to women in NYC in 1989...five young men got caught up in that hot mess.

The only time that people don't "listen to women" is when it is not politically convenient for them to listen.

Just like they didn't listen to women in Abbeville, AL in 1944, when Recy Taylor was ignored.

Men (and women) didn't listen to women in Kalamazoo, MI in 2008, despite solid DNA evidence linking Calvin Kelly to a rape. Shawana Hall said "#metoo" but both men and women said "no...not you."

It took three years before men began to listen to women about the shit Daniel Holtzclaw was doing to them in Oklahoma City back in 2013. And even then, those 13 women were almost not listened to about what they suffered.

How about we try something different; we listen to everyone? How about for once, we actually try and hear both sides of each story and not claim that one side doesn't have a right to be heard.

Or, is that too much to ask?

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u/TheInfected Jan 10 '18

People do listen, that's why false accusations happen. Look at the high profile false accusations, they wouldn't have happened if no one was listening like you claim.

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u/Get-Twisted Jan 10 '18

No one says they don’t happen. But false accusations are far less common than real ones. Most if not all women have a personal story of some form of sexual assault. For many men, it’s that they read story’s and become scared.

Just to be clear, I am a man, and I am mostly friends with men. I have never known anyone who has a personal story about a false accusation. But I know many women who have been sexually assaulted.

I guess the point is yes they both happen and they are both extremely fucked up actions, but the frequency at which it happens is very different

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u/Ace_Masters Jan 10 '18

I've never known anyone to be falsely accused. I know a ton of people who have been raped. If you're worried about false accusations that's your Id talking

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

Are you intentionally ignoring the point of the comment?

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u/theAnalepticAlzabo Jan 10 '18

Shhh. Don't break the status quo-jerk

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u/conquer69 Jan 10 '18

I'm a man and I'm concerned with all justices, not just those that apply only to men.

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u/mattyoclock Jan 10 '18

Are you though? How much time do you give to the injustices happening in the Sudan, or Myanmar? The simple fact is that although you might be on the side of all justice, you are only going to be concerned about the ones that you see. The ones you see are by far more likely to be the ones that either impact your life or the lives of those closest to you.

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u/m0nk_3y_gw Jan 10 '18

Reddit is mostly men

The 5th most traffic'd site in the US, and 7th in the world ( https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com ) is mostly men?

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u/PaulTheMerc Jan 10 '18

have to do with false accusations

I don't think I've seen one yet where the person who made a false report was as a result prosecuted...

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '18

unless its an immigrant/refugee doing the raping

in which case they're censored immediately, because we can't talk about those poor minorities who just dont know any better because "different culture".