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[Starver]

Finally, you must realise that claims of male-on-female rape are still greatly biased against the victim and their reporting of the crime. Rape is emotionally traumatising, and it's no surprise that most victims choose not to report and instead hope to forget the whole thing (which usually doesn't work).

Look at information available on the -on-male rape estimated reporting rates (male-on- or female-on-, with overlapping, but also exclusive, reasons behind each).  It goes all ways. Including F/F (approx a third of self-identified-lesbians report unwanted attention by female 'partners', but that includes 'merely' stalking in those source figures).

Depressing, though, and I'm not sure anything said about this subject is helping anybody (post facto or as preventative) significantly, so I'm not personally going to go on about it.

[smjjames]

Could be worse I guess... we could be Japan.

Which I guess it isn't fair to pick on them... but I don't know enough countries...

Then again... I know some other countries have serious issues with what I shall call "Justice Mobs"...

So yeah the US isn't the worst country... but there MUST be more we can do.

You mean lynch mobs? Though I get your reasoning for calling them 'justice mobs' as 'lynch mobs' have rather negative connotations here in the states, especially in the south.

[Dunamisdeos]

I don't know why people argue about this.

There is a problem wherein a man can be accused of rape and is immediately assumed to be guilty.

There is also a problem where a woman who has been raped is ashamed or afraid to speak up, and therefore the rapist gets away to act again.

Both problems can and do exist simultaneously. People treat things like this as some kind of competition, like the one who gets the most attention wins the singular prize of legitimacy. All that does is stop us from addressing either.

[Reelya]

My theory is that any distortion of real data in fact causes more victims because you're not allocating resource efficiently when you model skews from reality. Resource allocation is only as good as your data.

A political example of that is the "wage gap". 77 cents per the dollar, but if you correct for hours worked etc, seniority etc then it's like a few cents to the dollar - and by some measures women are ahead at that level. Almost 100% of the wage gap is in fact related to women with children, so if you want to help, help women with children. Women without kids are on near parity with men. That actually means the pay gap for women with kids is much worse than the 77 cents, because this is merely the average pay gap. So not only are they misallocating effort, they are in fact severely underestimating the scale of the wage gap facing women with children, in order to "be good feminists".

So they pass laws aimed primarily at young childless Democrat-voting women promising to raise their paychecks by closely scrutinizing businesses to make sure they're not underpaying women for the same work as a man. But such a business practice would be extremely costly. If men cost 20% more than women for the same role, you wouldn't hire them. The wage gap exists between industries, not in single roles. And what is the new Equal Pay law going to do about industrial segregation? Probably nothing, and could even make things worse somehow. The model they're proposing is to make it easier to bring litigious cases against employers for wage discrepancies. And even if they're paying you properly, the mere hint of a lawsuit means they need to hire more lawyers just in case. People being "potentially litigious" makes their market value lower. It's a quantifiable risk, and businesses assess possible risk when hiring, and they deduct that from how much they're willing to offer you. That's not discrimination it's just sound business practice. So attaching more potential regulatory issues to hiring women might backfire.

 I've mentioned the Duluth Model of domestic violence treatment before. It ticks all the right "ideological boxes" so they proponents promote it as the "one true method" of rehabilitating male abusers. However, when you do controlled trials of it's effectiveness at reducing domestic abuse recidivism, it approaches 0%, because as even the creators admit "we saw what we wanted to see", rather than tailoring the approach to real world data and situations. It's probably worse than 0% however, because proponents of this treatment are actively hostile to alternative treatments that teach anti-stress, life, coping, anger management or conflict de-escalation skills to abusers. I.e. they are actively hostile to stuff that might actually help, because they believe admitting that teaching coping skills could reduce abuse is admitting that abusers have actual issues at play other than being a male asshole. So guys who are abusers and are seeking treatment are being denied access to programs that could actually be effective at helping female victims, because of smug back-slapping Duluth people who are just happy they kept "the program" ideologically pure.

Another example where only focusing on only one type of abuse hurts the intend people you're trying to help is in child abuse. There was some British research where they looked at cyclic patterns in child sexual abuse. You know the idea that if you're abused you become an abuser. Contrary to the media's perception there was about zero% effect from male abusers. The biggest effect was on male childhood victims of female abusers. The abuser group had a 1 in 3 chance of having been abused by a female perpetrator, and the non-abuser group only had a 1 in 9 chance of that. If that connection checks out, then turning a blind eye to female child abusers / male victims in fact creates many more female victims a generation later. So I'd argue that when you pick and choose victims you care about, you make everyone a victim. Treating gender as a competition is making everyone a victim.

[PTTG??]

And yet somehow I don't think that it's fair to chastise liberals when conservatives have no qualms of asserting that the women's march was organized by extremist Muslims.

[MrRoboto75]

But extremist Muslims probably don't even like women all that much

[Greiger]

Exactly why it just boggles my mind why any americans still vote for either of these two parties when they both have a clear monopoly only powered by the fact that we are still stupid enough to vote for them.  If it wasn't for this fucked up winner takes all voting system I'm pretty sure they would have stopped existing in the 80s. Capitalism runs on competition.  So why don't the people in power want to have to compete with groups that are not so staggeringly incompetent as they are? 

Oh right, it's because dems and republicans both know they would get stomped into the mud where they belong.

Not to say that 3rd parties don't have problems.  But it sure as hell wouldn't be as blatant and obvious.

[MrRoboto75]

If you want to pass election reforms, it has to get passed the people in office who wouldn't get elected by those reforms.

[Greiger]

Indeed, but the current system does allow 3rd parties into positions of power if people would just vote for them.  I'm extremely skeptical if the system would allow for a third party president to get elected straight up, even though it should technically be able to happen, I don't think the EC would let it.  But we can still get congressmen and sanators.  And if we get tnough of them, even if the prez vetos voting reform it can still get passed by overwhelming majority.

Maybe I've just been watching too much CGP Grey

[Powder Miner]

Oh right, it's because dems and republicans both know they would get stomped into the mud where they belong.

Not to say that 3rd parties don't have problems.  But it sure as hell wouldn't be as blatant and obvious.

It can be a bit easy to assume that the two parties don't have popular support when you're having a conversation on the internet, as the internet's demographic is one that tends to be heavily disenchanted with the overall political system and you've got a lot of the kind of people who don't loke the existence of either party -- but the reality of the matter is, I think, that in a more parliamentary-like system of parties (in other words, proportional), the Republicans and the Democrats would still be fairly dominant, because they do have fairly solid voter-bases. Like Les Republicains and the Socialists in France, probably.

Now, it should be noted that usually these parties are more flexible arrangements than the parties in the parliamentary countries (hence the Freedom caucus kicking the shit out of Ryan), so it isn't quite all bad.

[Frumple]

... I'm entirely sure we would still have the two parties around had FPTP been broke apart a few decades ago, though probably either as part of, or having transitioned into, an explicit coalition. People seem to like to forget that the two parties aren't actually entirely hot air, and a lot of what they offer and provide are what the electorate actually wants.

Capitalism may run on competition but this ain't a business and gods alive do we not want to run it as one -- chunk of the reason we're having the problems we are is because competition between political entities have slipped the metaphorical chain. In any case, y'know, the major parties are competing with third parties. They're just winning, because the third parties we manage to dig up have even bigger and more obvious problems than the major ones do. Not much of a surprise considering the big ones are already sitting on the major policy points and all that's left if you're going to be something besides a name change is stuff further in one direction or the other than our population wants to go. We could make it easier for 'em to have more seats or whathaveyou (and don't get it wrong, it'd probably be nice barring the explicit white supremacists or whatev' that would end up in congress and whatnot), but you'd still be seeing the same ideologies and policy platforms driving the country.

And ninja'd a fair bit. Eh.

[Powder Miner]

whoa shit, Frumple and I are on the same page

[PTTG??]

There is a conceivable future history that would result in third parties playing a major role in American politics.

If the Republican party fractures, it will likely be something like a conservative party and an insane radicalist party. If the radicalists take the Republican name, then many former Republicans and republican voters would likely join the Democratic party, which the Democrats would capitalize on by moving further to the right, probably in gun rights and neoliberalism. The already fractious lowercase democrats would probably split at this point, resulting in the formation of a new liberal party or the awakening of the Green party.

At this point there'd be:

Liberal party -- Bernie Sanders voters.
Democrats -- Republicans with Single Payer.
Republicans -- Republicans but against healthcare, everything else.
Apoplectic party -- Anarchists in suits.

Each group would hate the two on the other side for being Stalinesque, but they'd hate the one on the same side even more for being uncompromizing traitors.

At this point, a third (fifth) party would have a very good chance of getting votes from everyone else.

[Greiger]

Yea maybe I'm overthinking it.  I just really don't think people should be backing a political party just because they hate the other party more.  More people becoming viable options just increases the chance someone will more closely align views with their voters instead of this whole binary situation.

For example, I think we should be protecting the environment when feasible and moving forward technologically, as much as to protect the environment with better methods of doing things as improve human standards of living, and I'm pro choice.  But I'm also pro guns, and I'm for experimentation on animals (including humans with provisions I could write an essay on) if such experimentation is to serve the betterment of mankind, and I am pro GMO.

I typically struggle to find any politician I can agree with on a majority of issues.  And that seems like a failing of the system.

[Frumple]

... if you're struggling with those views, I think you may not actually be looking. You just described a good chunk of the democrat politicians.

E: Hell, barring the pro-choice it probably catches some of the more moderate republicans, too...