What evil anti-sex society is killing these girls?

[thebuttdance continues]

I'm beginning to wonder if the sexualisation of teen girls in porn is one of the underlying causes of the belief system that it isn't a really big deal a girl got raped and bullied and she should have known better.

I remember reading a poll about porn, teen is the #1 searched category by far. Is it possible that men / people with these views only have contact with teen girls trough watching these videos ? And possibly they assume all teen girls are aching at the chance to screw their high school teacher or get gang banged by a group of 40 year old men ? Is this creating a distorted view on the actual lives and desires of actual teen girls ?

Just a thought.

I think you have a valid point of inquiry there. The sexualization of young "teens" in porn is probably related to older men misperceiving that real teenage girls in society are generally spontaneous and willfully promiscuous. Then this concept complements a sick fetish and distortion that older men feel this is a normal thing, getting this narrow notion only from their feed of porn videos and their creepy outside observations of teenage girls. It's a demand and supply for teen porn, so there are a lot of old man pervs out there unfortunately.

I really hope that doesn't translate to people thinking that teenage girls (or anybody) deserve a criminal sexual act because "they were asking for it" or that they were at fault because someone believed another dressed like a "slut."

 

[Tugela]

Where in any of these news stories does it say that these girls knew that they were in the company of rapists?

You can be sure that those girls knew damned well that those boys were bad. That was why they were hanging with them, for the thrill.

Anyone who is a "bad boy" is a potential rapist. It is their mindset. They break the rules, and don't give a fuck about anyone else beyond their own pleasure. They have no respect for others or property. You know the type. For them rape is just another rule they can break and probably get away with.

Usually these people don't make their attitude a big secret. There might be some exceptions, but not many.

The problem is that many girls admire these sorts as "real men". Until they get drunk of course, then they find out what these "real men" are really made of. And it happens over and over and over.

I think it really says a lot about society and the lessons we teach our daughters (I'm not including sons, because the "men" who think like that are beyond help).

Rape is something that is done by relatively few men, but the damage those few do is immense. Why spend time educating the vast majority of boys who are not going to do this sort of thing in the first place, and ignore educating the vast majority of girls who are potential targets for these people? I'm sorry, but IMO that is just plain stupid. You educate the people who could be hurt, not the few who would hurt them, because those few don't give a fuck about your attempts to educate. They laugh at you.

If you have a killer wandering the streets, do you spend time educating potential killers not to kill, or is your time better spent educating potential targets not to be targets? I mean, really? Is this that hard to understand?

Solutions: First of all, stop glamorizing these assholes. Why wait until they hurt someone before demonizing them, when we already know they are demons in waiting?

 

[Tugela]

The act of rape is damaging enough and then, to combine that with bullying and public ostracization will drive one to ponder suicide.

-A victim would feel shame.-

Their self-esteem would decrease and they would feel like the world is there to hurt them, especially when they don't receive the proper support after such a traumatizing incident such as rape. And maybe people would tell you that you instigated it. Wouldn't you feel helpless too?

"This attitude of making a big deal out of sexual matters on the part of trusted adults totally makes these girls lose perspective and breaks their hearts" ---the victims were violated; that's what they felt individually, uniquely, and humanly. It's Not an effect of a dogmatic social influence and it's Not about a sexual conscience observed in society. It's about violation and the trust that one's trauma is recognized. The psychological trauma, the loss of trust, etc. Wouldn't you feel traumatized if you were violated in such a personal way? Healing is another matter.

It boggles my mind. And there are people here disparaging the harmful effects of a few "sexy photos and bawdry rumors [circulating] about them" (SEXY to whom?) which the victims did not consent to and is ridiculed for.

And society is "sex-negative"?! What would do you want it to be like?? Not everyone fits into your misconstrued and oversexed fantasy worldview.

We live in a society where we hope we can trust our fellow man (or woman) to keep us safe from harm. We can argue if it is naive, but it is an ideal.

Being educated about bullying by everyone is a preventive solution.

http://www.imaginenobullying.ca/

You don't get it. The reason these girls are killing themselves is not because of what other people are doing/saying, it is because they blame themselves in one way or another. That is the mind set that results in the suicide. If they didn't feel that way themselves, life might be uncomfortable for a while, but life would go on. When they kill themselves, they are punishing themselves.

Trying to change that is a hard thing to do, because deep down these girls know that they made a mistake, an error of judgement, and everything anyone else says cannot alter that in their minds. That is the part that people around them have a tough time with, just blaming someone else is not addressing what is going on inside these girls souls, it is no consolation, it is not helping them live with themselves.

 

[Tugela]

I'm beginning to wonder if the sexualisation of teen girls in porn is one of the underlying causes of the belief system that it isn't a really big deal a girl got raped and bullied and she should have known better.

I remember reading a poll about porn, teen is the #1 searched category by far. Is it possible that men / people with these views only have contact with teen girls trough watching these videos ? And possibly they assume all teen girls are aching at the chance to screw their high school teacher or get gang banged by a group of 40 year old men ? Is this creating a distorted view on the actual lives and desires of actual teen girls ?

Just a thought.

Nice theory, except for one small problem....this has been going on for a lot longer than porn has been around. And it was much worse in the old days, so much so that girls generally kept quite when it happened. Unless they got pregnant, then they would have to marry the guy who did it, or "go visit relatives far away".

The only reason you hear about it more now days is that kids have cameras.

 

[mimi]

Tant, if your hypothesis is correct then it must stand the test of being applied to all rape cases, not just young women. Substitute a loved one in the situation and see if you still have the same perspective.

If your mother was actually raped would you smile and tell her that she must still be attractive enough to have caused these men to submit to their natural hormonal desires? Would you remind her that sex is a natural act and her body is beautiful and worth desiring?

"......What really made these girls kill themselves, I believe, is a pervasive sex-negative social ethos that shames these girls for having been involved in consensual or non-consensual teenage sex or publicly exposing certain parts of their anatomy. "

Non consensual teenage sex is called rape.

Is it somehow less repellent if the victim is a teenager?

".....when all the ruckus surrounding these events would soon disappear into the mists of time, and they could have lived out their lives just like anyone else."

No, not ever. Even before the internet was capable of blasting these images to the world, women who were victimized did not recover and live like anyone else. They lost trust, they often struggled to enjoy sex with their partners. Their ability to talk, in a positive way, to their children about the changes of life and puberty can be diminished.

Three of my friends from high school were raped as teenagers, and two coworkers. They were average, quiet, bookish women. They struggled to maintain close personal relationships with men....that is sad! When a human cannot enjoy the natural closeness of sex with a partner, enjoy being a sexual person, because that part of them is closed away with the memory of that event. Something precious is stolen when a person is raped. It is a theft.

My great Aunt was raped at the age of 80. She had been a vibrant, active and youthful woman who was loved in her community. She hardly looked older than 68. After the rape her family watched her dissolve before their eyes, dying within two years of the event. She could not leave the house, she could not sleep at night, and even after her body healed, her soul was broken.
The accused was out on bail with a history of sexual offences. He befriended her while she gardened, a charming man, offering to help with the removal of gardening debris with his pick up.

None of the neighbours knew his history and he was not 'the bad boy' by appearances. In fact, many pedophiles and rapists rely on charm as it is much easier to fool their prey and find opportunity.
I doubt anyone could have convinced her that she had been duped by society into believing sex was shameful, and that was the source of her pain.

Tugela, you are correct in your statement that victims reflect on their part in the event. There are always the "if onlies". If only I hadn't opened the door to that knock, if only I hadn't gone up to the room with that one fellow (not knowing more would arrive), if only I had crossed the street....what could I have done differently?

Someone made a very good point by asking whether it was clear the young woman knew there were rapists at the party. Excellent comment.

Assuming that rapists always dress and act to advertise their intent is a strange assumption. I have met scary looking dudes in leather and studs who wouldn't hurt a flea, and I have met college preppy sweet looking men (mmmm...Ted Bundy types) who were very dangerous.

 

[thebuttdance continues]

You don't get it. The reason these girls are killing themselves is not because of what other people are doing/saying, it is because they blame themselves in one way or another. That is the mind set that results in the suicide. If they didn't feel that way themselves, life might be uncomfortable for a while, but life would go on. When they kill themselves, they are punishing themselves.

Trying to change that is a hard thing to do, because deep down these girls know that they made a mistake, an error of judgement, and everything anyone else says cannot alter that in their minds. That is the part that people around them have a tough time with, just blaming someone else is not addressing what is going on inside these girls souls, it is no consolation, it is not helping them live with themselves.

You're rephrasing your fallacious reasonings. You cannot infer knowing what these victims truly felt. What a Shame.

 

[VanessaofBC]

 

[Unpossible]

You can be sure that those girls knew damned well that those boys were bad.

No, I can't and neither can you.

 

[crunkory]

Sex is beautiful, its fun....

...I would suggest that cyber bullying makes you re-live the event over and over making it quite hard or impossible to heal and get on with your life.

Two different points of discussion, but checkmark for both

 

[tantalizeme]

No one has all the answers

Id feel bad for any SP who gets a visit from Tugela, Tantemize, or anyone who posted sympathizing with those views.

Hey, brother—no need to heap abuse on Tugela or myself, or on anyone else who speaks to this topic.

We're all sincerely concerned to understand what caused these teen suicides—and what could minimize the risk of similar tragedies in the future. If you've some bright ideas, why not share them?

"The" cause for why these 3 girls committed suicide is not any one thing: there're a number of factors involved. And surely there's room for good people to disagree on which factors are most crucial?

Tant, if your hypothesis is correct then it must stand the test of being applied to all rape cases, not just young women. Substitute a loved one in the situation and see if you still have the same perspective.

Mimi, I sincerely appreciate your perspective.

I agree wholeheartedly—having just read Naomi Wolf's chapter "The traumatized vagina" in her new book Vagina—that a raped woman's emotional scars tend to be deep and lasting. But motivations for rape differ. Naomi Wolf writes that in Africa, rape and vaginal mutilation are often used in war to demoralize the enemy by killing women's joy of sex and joy of life.

Obviously, the rape of your 80-yr-old great Aunt is an entirely different matter: I agree, shame played no role in sucking the joy out of her life. And in her case, the perpetrator wasn't a drunk 16-yr-old boy with no real capacity yet for moral responsibility.

So without, even for a moment, belittling the potentially lasting effects of rape, I wanted to stress the additional impact of cyberbulling as a trigger for these girls' sucide. Amanda Todd, for example, wasn't raped—just cyberbullied.

Take away the cyberbullying, and it's highly doubtful these girls would have killed themselves. Cyberbullying of young women wouldn't work if portrayals of sexual activity were not considered to be "disgusting and depraved" by certain segments of society (just as pooners or SPs couldn't be cyberbullied by threats of outing them if pooning or sex work were not considered shameful).

All I'm saying is that the cyber-shaming of these girls due to society's sex-negativity—and irrational guilt and self-blame they felt as a result—played a likely role in these girls thinking, "The whole school knows, my life is ruined."

Being raped is a terrible wrong. But do you really think the subsequent cyber-bullying would have driven the girls to suicide if having sex were regarded, in their social environment, as no more shameful than brushing their teeth?

 

[vancity_cowboy]

actually, health canada statistics rate male youth suicides as 3+ times higher than female youth suicides

the following is from an older study but still VERY interesting

http://fathersforlife.org/health/cansuic.htm

us statistics also indicate that although young females are twice as likely to 'attempt' suicide as young males, the males choose more lethal methods and are therefore 4 times more successful at it

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/youth_suicide.html

our societies are gripped by a 'culture of death'. the word 'kill' has been adapted into common slang and can have MANY different meanings (7 pages of slang expressions using the word 'kill' in urban dictionary):

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kill&page=1
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kills

many young people now are infected with a distorted view of reality brought about by the channel changer on the tv set; i.e., if you don't like what is happening in front of you right now, don't bother with changing your life, that takes too long! simply change the channel... and keep changing it until you find something more to your liking

unfortunately, for many, there aren't enough channels, so they think of death as the ultimate channel changer, rather than the ultimate terminator

decades ago, i read in MAD magazine that suicide was the severest form of self criticism, and i thought that was some crazy funny shit typical of MAD magazine at the time

now i'm not so sure... now i'm beginning to think they were right

 

[thebuttdance continues]

.......if having sex were regarded, in their social environment, as no more shameful than brushing their teeth?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enjoying consensual and pleasurable sex is not a shameful act (a joy in fact!), but perpetrating rape is (it's not "having sex"). Rape and subsequent bullying causes many profound life-lasting negative effects on their recipients which also include the feelings of shame.

- You got it right that rape or some sexually-related aspect is not the direct cause of the suicides discussed, but it is from the feelings of pain (which is uniquely personal to the victim) and helplessness that causes suicidal tendencies- How a victim feels is not a socially constructed response; it is a natural human response.

As in these cases, it is not the extreme of rape and the unwanted circulation of sexual images that have directly caused the victims' fatal outcomes... it is the harmful psychological and mental effects that bullying causes to their recipients AND the lack of social support received during or in the aftermath of their incident(s) that will lead them to end their pain:

"just cyberbullied."

12 year old Amanda Todd thought she would take a dare to reveal herself to a grown man over the internet. Being young and naive, one can be so trusting of others- for the wrong reasons. The man extorted and threatened her saying that he would circulate the picture if she did not reveal herself more. She did not follow, and he circulated her picture anyway. Her school mates found out, now it's even all over the internet. The teasing, ostracized by her friends. You can imagine the humiliation and shame she felt. Those she sought for help did not take her seriously. How alone and helpless she must have felt. -all because someone on the other end asked a young person to reveal her "sexy photos" (tantalizeme), for his own pleasure. Is that "sex-positive"? How do you think Amanda Todd really felt? R.I.P.

Society is not sex-negative, but you are delusion-positive. Your extreme-hedonistic desires and weird, deluded sexual fetishes are getting in the way of solving the real dilemmas at root. The negative effects caused by rape or sexual harassment has nothing to do with a "sex-negative environment" as you suggest; those actions have always been viewed as uncivil and unethical in our Western society to keep people safe. As you mentioned, pity you were pleasure deprived as a youth (whatever that means), but this is plain wrong.

I know this is a business site for reviews, but sometimes there are important social topics discussed in this forum. It's a shame (word of the day) that there are not more well-minded SPs and gents voicing their opinions on such an important topic such as this because they may be worried that it will effect their reputations.

Respect Yourself and Respect Others. Empathy. Don't lose site of the real issues. That concludes all I want to add.

 

[perbertwilly]

You don't get it. The reason these girls are killing themselves is not because of what other people are doing/saying, it is because they blame themselves in one way or another.

I've a bright idea. Blame the people who do not support the raped or bullied when they cry out for help. Be there for them when they need your help.

Blame the perps who bully and rape. If you can't rehabilitate them, let's all go on a rapist-hunt.

 

[Master69]

I doubt this issue will ever be sorted out here. The social psychology of those involved, and of contemporary society, and the individual psychology of the victims and even the perpetrators, is a complex thicket that only experts may possibly hope to unravel over the course of long examination.

Certainly many components of these tragic stories are as old as time. For me, the fascinating and disturbing contemporary twist is the role of the Internet and mobile phones and their often unpredictable effects upon our collective social psychology and individual psyches. As McLuhan said: "The medium is the message", this observation is as binding upon us today as a law of physics. Nothing can accurately predict or control the message the medium ultimately sends, and sometimes the results are very ugly indeed.

 

[perbertwilly]

I've a bright idea. Blame the people who do not support the raped or bullied when they cry out for help. Be there for them when they need your help.

Blame the perps who bully and rape. If you can't rehabilitate them, let's all go on a rapist-hunt.

Master66 you're over intellectualizing and philosophizing the discussion with social science/humanities 101 terminology, mocking it with flowery wordiness, and secondary sourced opinions and concepts. It's time-wasting to mask a diplomatic answer to this important discussion with such abstractness and ambiguity. There is a standard right and wrong on this issue based on civil morality and the welfare of the individual. No quotes from any published Ivory Tower academic is required to unravel this thicket and one does not need to be an expert to make a judgment on this issue. I'll repost.

 

[Master69]

...... let's all go on a rapist-hunt.

Yeah, advocate mob rule and lynchings. That has always worked soooooo well for society, hasn't it: Germans gassing Jews, Russians starving Ukrainians, Kmer Rouge killing Cambodians, cowboys hanging rustlers. All sought to impose their view of justice........and it all ended in disaster.

 

[sevenofnine]

You know
Its tough I can't imagine what these girls have gone through.

I think its sad that they didn't have the strength to go on. The will to go on.
At some point you have to. Dig deep and find the will to go on.

And bullying after all is said and done. At some point you have to stand your ground, fight back.
Its sad that these girls couldn't find that in them, and family and friends couldn't help them get through it.

There will always be challenges to face assholes out there, They are never going away.
It is a sad comment but I think true there will always be assholes trying to bring you down.

And at some point you have to find the will to go on the strength to hold your ground.

 

[perbertwilly]

Yeah, advocate mob rule and lynchings. That has always worked soooooo well for society, hasn't it: Germans gassing Jews, Russians starving Ukrainians, Kmer Rouge killing Cambodians, cowboys hanging rustlers. All sought to impose their view of justice........and it all ended in disaster.

Wow, you really went all aggregate in this Mother. Except the perps I was referring to are present day criminals and people that cause harm to others ---polar-opposite and extremely dissimilar to the scapegoats and innocent civilians deemed as perps by said dictatorial regimes of yesteryears. Or was that by you?

 

[perbertwilly]

..schools should be teaching kids at a very young age the reprocussions of posting things online. These kids don't understand that nothing ever leaves the internet.

I think that's a good point. Internet is a super technology for communication, but I think also that kids need to be more aware of what that means. Just like the concepts, "social media identity" and a "social media footprint". Parents obviously should be aware of what their kids are looking at on the Internet.

I remember the days, (15 years ago!) as a young kid, I'd have to sneak in to the bookstores to see the playboy mags hidden up top the shelves/. Now a 12 year old can just google a porn site and view their entire archive for free! The future negative implications are wide open...

 

[gpchillin]

Its sad but honestly if a little bullying makes you want to kill yourself you were probably not going to last anyways. The world is not all puppies, rainbows and unicorns its a harsh place where any minute something horrible can happen if you cannot deal you cannot survive. It would be a hell of a lot easier to help people learn to deal when something bad happens to them then to try to stop everything bad from ever happening in your lifetime because that is a just not going to happen and so when something bad happens your thinking ill kill myself is an answer to me thats natural selection working as intended weed out the weak from the gene pool.
Sorry but that's just how I feel.