Richard Dawkins under fire for comments about rape

a reply to: Dark Ghost
Man...he could have chosen a better way to say what he said...a lot of people lack the critical thinking skills needed to infer meaning beyond the surface of a statement.

I, like many, find a lot of his ideas to be fascinating. He is a smart man and has a way with words (most of the time).

I, like many, think the guy can be a condescending prick at times. "Go away and learn how to think" is an example of that.

The man has a right to his opinion, as has been stated countless times in this thread. I know he's not concerned with 'pleasing the masses', but saying stuff like this is just going to turn more people away from reading/listening to his ideas.

That's the problem with being in the public eye (even though a big chunk of the 'public' probably don't even know who Dawkins is). You have to either be very selective in the way you word your statements, or you have to be able to withstand the repercussions of saying something that is worded poorly. I think in this case Dawkins will be just fine, I've never known him to care much about people's opinion of him.

a reply to: grainofsand
Hey, you're the one who brought it up in that way, so, what do you think?
Was your experience worse than if a male boss had forced himself on you?

I know what I think the answer would be if it was me, but I'm not in anyway suggesting you got off light or trying to downplay what must have been an utterly sh1tty experience for you and you really do have my sympathy. (For whatever that's worth).

a reply to: SprocketUK
I only brought my experiences into this thread to add a male perspective of being forced into sex by women.
Forced sex is of course forced sex regardless of the genders involved, but Dawkins is correct that there are degrees of how damaging the forced sex may be, psychologically or otherwise.
He is still a twat in the way he presents his argument though, in my opinion.

a reply to: grainofsand
I don't think many would argue your last point about how he presented his argument.
Thing is, as I've tried to say, the actual physical force or threat used is probably going to cause a tiny fraction of the long term harm that the rape will.
That's based upon my own experience of being in fights when younger.
Even the ones I lost meant nothing at all soon after, but everything I've ever read about victims of rape suggests a lifetime of some sort of trauma which is why I don't hold with one type of rape being lesser than another.
I think they're all equally foul and wouldn't have a problem with putting the perpetrators in the ground.

a reply to: SprocketUK
I'm with you, having been beaten unconscious a few times in my life. I just think there are also varying degrees of harm which forced sex can cause...with my own shared experiences being most certainly at the lower end of the scale.