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Comment by nollidge | Hacker News Reader

Do you legitimately think we could remove gender from the situation and it would've played out in the same way?

Cases of men being stalked do exist.

So do zebras. But in this case, if you hear hooves behind you, bet on the horse, not the zebra.

Exists != happens systematically. Something like fully 1/3-1/4 of women are harassed or raped during the course of their life. ONE IN FOUR. Can you imagine, one out of every four men you know in tech being stalked, harassed, or abused? While men being stalked is terrible, it simply isn't on the same scale as the stalking of women.

The question was if a similar scenario could have played out for a man. I don't know what your answer has to do with anything. I am as sorry for women who have been raped as the next guy. Wish I could help prevent such things happening. I actually started researching that a bit. I grant that I am not yet convinced of the 1 in 4 statistics (see http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html for example), but in any case women do have too many bad experiences, and every rape is one too many.

To be honest I really despise this mobbing attitude that seems to surface here. Somebody has been wronged, so now people on the internet have to be hated that have no connection to the event whatsoever. Just because I didn't join the chorus of "it's all the fault of sexism"?

Edit: also, with respect to the 1 in 4 number, have studies about what men experience even been conducted? Since most of those rapes occur for young people, a lot of men could be affected, too (raped as kids). Also men appear to be much more likely to become victim of violence than women, from what I have found so far.

"Could have" is reaching out into the hypotheticals… as other commenters have said, "let's focus on what has happened." I'm not trying to mob on you, but this branch of hypothetical thinking is always brought up in response to this kind of story, usually by men. It is problematic because it distracts attention from the main issue: systematic harassment of women in our community.

Bringing up this hypothetical is a distraction/derailment tactic used by what I will call 'agents of the patriarchy,' un-wittingly or no. So when you say it, just understand why feminists get annoyed…

I'm sorry, but it was actually you who brought up the "derailment tactic": you asked specifically if it seems conceivable that a significant number of men are being harassed. And earlier the question was "would such a scenario be imaginable for a man" and your answer was "but 1 in 4 women are being raped".

I assume you are not aware of it, but it seems very twisted to ask for some aspect and then condemn the mentioning of said aspect.

Also how is the story here relevant to systemic harassment of women by "our" community - how common is it that a women in the community gets flooded with fake nude photographs, and how is that the communities doing (except for providing an online forum)?

With respect to the 1 in 4 figure, surely you are aware that most rapes occur in relationships (relatives, spouses, acquaintances)?

Also I only researched that figure of violence against men yesterday, but for Germany. In the German police crime statistics severe violence against men is much more frequent than severe violence and rape against women. So there is at least one data point.

1/4 is just dishonest. Its like saying that 1/4 of ALL children starve to death (which is statistics wrapped to the point of uselessness, even without then claiming that 1/4 of all children of people in IT starves to death). When using statistics, please use some kind of reference and try to include what the shortcomings of the said statistics are. At least start with something like <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics>; which gives the reader a starting point.

No, not really. It's a rough estimate; given that the "Rape statistics" page on Wikipedia you reference puts rape attempts on women in the US at 1 in 6 (meanwhile, the same article puts rape attempts on men in the US at 1 in 33, largely accounted for by prison rape), adding in sexual assault, street harassment, etc can only increase that number. And 1 in 4 is a meaningful thing to visualize. Think of four women you know.

I'm not claiming that for the statistic for the US at large is 100% representative of the tech community. But unless you have a good reason to believe it to be different, it seems like a reasonable starting point.

Men and women commit rape and are raped in roughly equal numbers, and that is not including prison rape. When do include that, men are the majority of the victims.

The CDC's 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which looked at society at large and excluded the prison population, found that 1.1% of women and 1.1% or men surveyed were raped in the prior 12 months.

98% of women who had been raped identified a man as their attacker and 80% of the men who had been raped identified a woman as their attacker. This works out to men being 60% of rapists and women being 40% of rapists.

Here is an analysis with all the calculations laid out and tied back to the data tables in the NISVS report: http://www.genderratic.com/p/836/manufacturing-female-victim...

Here is a link to the data tables with the relevant figures circled: http://imgur.com/a/aw0eU

Now, the NISVS's executive summary does not tell this story. It tells the usual story of rape being something men overwhelmingly to do women. The way it does that is by defining rape to be 'being penetrated against your will', excluding 'being made to penetrate', which is what a female rapist would do to a man.

Nevertheless, the study does track how many men were made to penetrate (which it categorizes as 'other, sexual assault'), so it is possible to correct the definition of rape to one that doesn't erase female on male rape ('made to have sex against your will'), and when you do, rape ceases to be a gendered crime.

So yes, I can imagine what it would be like for men to be raped as often as women are. Now, can you imagine what it would be like if female rape victims, like male rape victims, were defined out of existence, and offered no recognition, or help?

>>Men and women commit rape and are raped in roughly equal numbers, and that is not including prison rape. When do include that, men are the majority of the victims.

Statistics have very little meaning without context.

From your first link:

>Men are the vast majority of rapists and women are the vast majority of victims because rape was defined in such a way to make sure that this was so.

Exactly. This is so because the context is that we live in a patriarchal society where it is much easier for men to use their power and dominance to take advantage of women.

You see, that's what rape is about: dominance. It doesn't have anything to do about penises or vaginas or anuses. When Person A rapes Person B it is because they want to establish their dominance on Person B. Men are disproportionately classified as rapists because they are exploiting their already dominant status in society at great harm to the other person. And if we were living in a matriarchal society, it would be the exact opposite.

If men as a group took advantage of women as a group, then why would men define rape to deny their own victimhood? That is not acting in the interests of men.

I agree that the narrative of men being strong serves the interests of the men at the top of the power structure, but that is a tiny percentage of all men.

The average man has no more power than the average woman.

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