I thought the “husbands” remark was referring to the actual Steubenville and Panama City perpetrators. But I could be wrong.
I googled the incident and then went through a couple of dozen links. Most were blurred (some more than others). One had an unblurred shot of the crowd and it’s relative position to the incident. Another had less blurring than some of the others.
@Consolation, I was responding to your post, sort of. At least, my post was in part responding to what you said. What I thought of saying, and should have said, was that I didn’t think there was much daylight between our positions.
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Here What kind of husbands will they be? is an appositive (I think. I am not an excellent grammarian) of the boys in the Steubenville and Vanderbilt cases.
- Are these young men … decent loving husbands* is referring back to the Florida spring break case and the rapists on the beach.
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I am assuming the rapists are either middle class college boys who will eventually be husbands or a non-college criminal element. I deliberately did not gender either the victims or the not so good samaritans. When I reread, I wondered if I should have added that, of course, the hypothetical non-college criminals might also become hypothetical husbands.
Perhaps the very brazenness of the alleged gang-rapists protected them. Who would think that a group of guys would gang-rape a drugged or drunk woman in public? I wouldn’t.
That can excuse the bystanders, but it still leaves us with the icky feeling that there are more incidents, more brazen rapes, which didn’t happen to come to light because out-of-state police didn’t happen to be investigating a shooting.
Consolation, In my deleted post #432, I agreed with you that women need to intervene and suggested it is important to support women who push back against rape culture.
Then, on a little closer reading, it looked to me like you were addressing CF and not me, and since I try to break my terrible habit of interrupting, I deleted.
Honestly, it’s not a big deal. We all agree that the perps are miserable excuses for human beings and that those who stand by and watch and do nothing–male or female-- are severely lacking, assuming that they have any inkling what is going on. Those who actually film it, not with the intention of revealing a crime, but with the intention of passing around a titillating video, are worse than the mere bystanders.
I would say as a side bar that I am shocked by a world in which people having public sex with multiple partners is accepted as something that a person might just choose to do, but that’s another matter. Call me a prude if you wish. 
It’s an anaphor. They points back to the boys of the Steubenville and Vanderbilt cases.
Apposition is a different thing; it’s when you put a second descriptive noun phrase right next to the first one.
For example,
Those miserable slimemolds is an appositive.
I finally finished reading all thirty pages of this thread, and it is really very interesting (and upsetting). I am particularly intrigued by the tattoo question. But I did want to add one thought:
@CardinalFang is absolutely right that [too many] men in societies where they can get away with it, do force women (especially wives) to have sex against the women’s will. Tangentially, I was particularly upset also to read someone’s assertion that an “angry ex-husband” would be “more likely to rape” - what kind of thinking is this, that the expected outgrowth of anger toward a woman would be sexual violence?
The problem is that we’re essentially primates who are plastering over a billion years of evolution with maybe 20,000 years of culture. There are a lot of really bad impulses that human beings have, and this is why we need culture, laws, and frankly, internet discussions of big issues.
And my saying this, @Pizzagirl and others - doesn’t mean I know a lot of “bad men” or something. I love many men in my life from relatives to friends to husband. But I read a lot, and I talk to people a lot, and I have my eyes wide open about how primates treat each other.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with the barbarism of men shown towards women throughout the world that I think that the good men I know are good in spite of their inborn nature. Those are in my more cynical moments, though. Most of the men in my family and among my friends are really good, kind men. To my knowledge, I have never had a male friend who was violent towards women.
I think @ahl makes a very good point and one that should not be minimized or ignored. Many of us here on CC do live in a bubble. A bubble of privilege that tips the scales in our favor that we will be surrounded by the “good” men. For most of us that is all we have ever known and it’s all our daughters have ever known - the “good” ones who encourage, support, protect and love us in healthy ways. But we would have to be living in a cave to think that is the case for all women living in the U.S.
And when I say a privileged bubble I do not just mean economic. Many women of lower SES have had the benefit of growing up in strong family environments so know what a healthy relationship looks like. They can avoid the tragedy of staying in what turns out to be an abusive relationship. Others are not so lucky.
So do we all just say “yay for us” and convince ourselves the problem is not that pervasive? I don’t think so. My eyes are wide open as well.
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Tangentially, I was particularly upset also to read someone’s assertion that an “angry ex-husband” would be “more likely to rape” - what kind of thinking is this, that the expected outgrowth of anger toward a woman would be sexual violence?
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??
You’re surprised that an angry ex-H might turn to rape to express his anger at his ex-W? Really? Rape is about power. It’s not about sex. I think OJ would have liked to have also raped Nicole…he chose murder instead, but he very likely would have chosen rape as well.
(I certainly do NOT think most ex-H’s rape their exwives…I want to make that clear.)
@mom2collegekids - I wouldn’t say “surprised,” more like “outraged” that this statement passed without comment and analysis. The poster who said it had also said that most men would never consider rape, that we’ve all evolved, and that prostitutes “want to” have sex with johns. It sounded really incongruous and awful to me.
So, do we really think that there is a significant subset of husbands who wouldn’t be recognizable as rapist types, who would, upon becoming “angry exes” rape their former wives - in this day and age? That’s a much starker indictment of men than I read from @CardinalFang, or any of the other people who were tentatively saying, “maybe a spouse would put his needs first, inappropriately, in case of medical incapacity on the part of the other spouse”.
I also found it upsetting that until now, people haven’t felt the need to comment about the (100% correctly noted, @mom2collegekids) nature of rape as being about power. Certainly men have always used rape as a tool of oppression and repression of women (even as a war tactic).
I think it bears more analysis and discussion, the idea of what is “marital rape” - do we think it’s more like the “angry ex” scenario? Do we think it’s more like husbands described a bit here as not being satisfied with “no” who pressure their wives over spoken objections but little physical resistance? Do we think it is men who are just clueless about what sexual response should be in a woman, who are culturally really divorced from knowing women’s reality at all? (@Hunt - this last one is what I thought about when you asked about Ultra-Orthodox Judaism; I’m Jewish and recently have been reading about some of the sexual issues among Ultra-O married couples.) Do we think it’s something else altogether?
My guess is that it’s all of the above, and more. People are so variable, and our feelings are so variable - the same person could consider a continued back-rub erotic or skin-crawl-inducing, from the same person, on different days!
I read some posters as saying that the default between certain relatives would/should be snuggling; others say sex; others say no physical contact unless specified. I think these are all completely normal human feelings. (And I realize this is an important, but tangential, issue to what happened in the particular case that the thread was begun to discuss.)
It reminded me, of all things, about breastfeeding babies. Obviously the default is that a breastfeeding mother will nurse her baby. But does that mean that she is always a willing participant? Can she place restrictions as to time, place, manner (to borrow from the SCOTUS)? One of the things that I, as a nursing mother three times over, always tried to communicate as my babies became toddlers, is that any physical interaction needs to be about both people being ok with how it’s happening.
Would we allow a baby to breastfeed from his/her comatose or dementia-suffering mother? Would we pump milk? I guess this doesn’t come up too often.
Regarding the impaired older woman who still gets pleasure from sex but doesn’t understand it - I think if we’re using the pleasure as the reason to permit this to occur (or to interpret things as her “right” to carnal activity), then I think it is the same for her to be having the sex with any partner (random visitor, husband, old bf, etc.). At least, I think if the sexual pleasure is the motivation to allow it.
I disagree with the assertion that the husband has more “right” to have sex with her if she doesn’t recognize that he is her husband. The relevant fact that must be considered, before I start to agree that the husband is different than the others, is if she made it clear before becoming impaired, that she permits herself to have sex only with the husband and no one else, and believes that to be an important part of her lifestyle and a lasting part of her lifestyle. And I’m not sure that this is necessarily an ingredient in every marriage in the world.
Human variation is apparently endless, and I guess we have to do the best we can with laws to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
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Would we allow a baby to breastfeed from his/her comatose or dementia-suffering mother? Would we pump milk? I guess this doesn’t come up too often.
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that is interesting.
If a mom gave birth, breastfed, then had some kind of stroke where she was unconscious, (if it were possible) would it be ok to have her continue to breastfeed.
I would hope that if that were me, my H would say, “m2ck would want the baby to breastfeed, so let’s continue.”
But…legally? I don’t know.
Great hypothetical–I wish I’d thought of it.
How about this one: mother is in an irreversible coma, but is not brain-dead and is not in danger of dying any time soon. Her child needs a kidney transplant to survive, and mom is the only plausible donor. She has left no directions about such things. Taking one of her kidneys probably won’t kill her, but there is some risk. So, who gets to decide whether to take the kidney or not?
I think what these examples suggest is that we all have gut reactions about what a person would have wanted–and they are based on what we would want (or think we would want) in that situation. But how confident should we be in projecting those ideas onto other people?
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Her child needs a kidney transplant to survive, and mom is the only plausible donor. She has left no directions about such things. Taking one of her kidneys probably won’t kill her, but there is some risk. So, who gets to decide whether to take the kidney or not?
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Great question.
Again, I would sure hope that the hospital would allow my H to sign those papers because he would know that is what I would definitely want. H knows that I’d give my right arm for my kids, so a kidney? no brainer.
How about this: married couple has been trying to have a baby. H is in an accident and in an irreversible coma. W wants to harvest sperm. Yes or no?
Your post confused me, so let me ask some questions. There are certainly many parts I agree with but I do not understand what was so incongruous or awful about the statements.
I gather from your quote that you think most men would consider rape. I find that much more awful a statement than the opposite (which the facts and statistics support).
The statement wasn’t that we all have evolved. It was that in general society has evolved.
Also, if you had read the statement about prostitution carefully you would have seen that I said that prostitutes may not like their profession but that their choice to engage in it means that they want to do it. It is a matter of semantics. Most probably do not “want to”, when you define “want” as it is commonly used. I think I was pretty specific in my example of how I was defining “want”. I defined it as something that someone may not like but that they feel compelled to do after weighing the pros and the cons (my example was a painful medical procedure). You would apparently say that I did not want to have my leg cut off (and in your use of the term you would be correct). In my use of the term I did want to have it cut off because that was better than the alternative of the infection killing me.
I agree with you that rape is commonly about power. In that case I am surprised that you find fault with my statement that an angry ex is more likely to commit rape against his ex-wife than a current spouse is against his current wife. Again, not saying that the latter doesn’t happen, or that the former happens often, just that I would think one is more likely to happen than the other, YMMV.
You bring up some interesting questions. It reminds me of the Greys Anatomy episodes where Dr. Webber’s wife had a relationship with someone else after forgetting who he was. I think a similar thing might have happened with Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband???
As for your penultimate paragraph: I think it is very thought provoking and I totally agree with you (although I also assume that the impaired spouse would have considered those factors before making their advanced directive). For spouses without that prior agreement I think you have an excellent point.
This is a good example of what I mean by our own personal reactions. My gut reaction to this one is “no” without some clear statement of intent by the person (while it is “yes” for the kidney). But I can well imagine that other people might think the “obvious” answer is yes.
^^interesting… My absolute answer is yes to both. And I promise you that my spouse would agree.