Who’d have thought a Thread of Doom would develop over a small qualitative study of partner rape conducted by Womens Health Goulburn North-East– a small, rural organisation studying events at the coalface.
Sure, the little poem at the beginning of the report: it probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but nah. Bad poetry should be stamped out tirelessly, and probably doesn’t have any place in a piece of writing which needs to present itself as serious, because it’s just handing a weapon to people who want to mock and deride.
But Nick was much more troubled by the fact that it’s a qualitative, not quantiative, report – not many lovely statistics (except some basic breakdowns and information from other sources), no equations, bar graphs, oh noes! As a business writer and economist, Nick feels that this consigns the report eternally to the intellectual dustbin. But many commenters don’t agree.
…(T)he report itself seems to me a perfectly respectable piece of qualitative research. The methodology looks to be an appropriate way of eliciting the experiences and understandings of a particular group of people (spousal rape victims in Victoria’s Goulburn valley), existing research is decribed thoroughly and both the women and people from responding agencies (especially police) are interviewed thoroughly on an individual basis by 2 researchers and in focus groups, and later counselled/debriefed.
As others have noted, several of the comments seem to misunderstand the nature and purpose of this sort of qualitative research. The comment about a “hopelessly biased group of subjects” is especially misconceived. They are seeking to elicit the experiences and understandings of a particular group of women, so accusations of sample bias are by definition irrelevant.
and
There seems to be some confusion over what this report is about.
It’s not a piece of research for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but a self published report from a health NGO in rural Vic. For that, it’s not a bad effort.
As for a “hopelessly biased group of subjects”, I think someone is missing the entire point and misunderstanding the relevancy of bias.
But the thing about the report which really raised the Gruen ire was the opening paragraph of the Executive summary – a preamble to the report sort-a-thing. Here it is:
Women who are raped or who suffer domestic violence are somehow thought of in the popular imagination as a stereotype. According to this, the women are asking for it, dressed inappropriately, provoking it – responsible for it. While this is clearly uninformed, our sample provides yet more evidence that any woman is vulnerable to rape. We do not need to be a certain ‘type’ of woman, or to behave in particular ways, or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The vignettes which follow this Executive Summary provide the evidence for this. Further evidence is found in the diversity of women who participated in this research.
Nick parses this in a way I find somewhat fanciful:
So there you go – rape really is on the end of every wolf whistle. I guess, if I wasn’t tapping away on this keyboard, I could be raping someone right now, and unless there’s something wrong with the research methodology it’s overwhelmingly likely that I wouldn’t even recognise what I was doing as a crime.
In other word, Nick read the paragraph as saying that all women everywhere are at risk of rape at all times from all men everywhere, but particularly from Nick, who, along with all blameless family men everywhere, is the target of this insulting report!
It seems pretty clear to me that what the paragraph is trying to say is that (1) with respect to rape in general, there is a tradition of victim-blaming in our society, as well as most of the others of course, (2) therefore, by providing more evidence of rape within marriage, this report shows that women are at risk even when behaving “cautiously” within a nuclear-family norm; hence, “any woman is vulnerable to rape”, not just scantily-clad women out on the tiles.
So, the thread of doom unfolds. (Oh look over there! Lesbian violence!)
I’d commend Nick and some of his commenters to a couple of posts which are becoming classics in the blogosphere: Sometimes, Conversations with my Man are Instructive, by Ilyka Damen (a story about another Thread of Doom), and Dear Ladies, please stop getting yourselves raped… by Melissa McEwan. As well as that report, of course.
As for “find a worse piece of research”? That’s easy. Here’s lots. (H/T to Barista.)
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Nick Possum
Uncensor
Comments (81)
It’s not a fucking game
Isn’t it? I think that depends on perspective. Smellyloser, f’rinstance, has played you pretty comprehensively, whether you were aware of his game or not.
Actually, “it” is no more or less than a mere comment thread on a blog, and – apologies for my presumption here – IMO you’ve allowed it to upset you far more than it deserves.
“Cracking rape threads”
Wow. That’s just disturbing. This isn’t some abstract issue that’s useful for a bit of point scoring -it is our experience or that of people we know. Getting ‘upset’ is not only understandable it is necessary if we want things to change.
Still ‘n’all, through all the mutual dickheadedness (including his), mel has a point. The abstract clearly says that the popular stereotype “in the community” is that women who are raped are “asking for it”. mel asks for evidence that this statement is true – and no-one can provide it. No doubt it is true of partner rapists, but they are not the community. Abstracts should not begin with demonstrable untruths.
And bad poetry is offensive in iself, whatever its context. Neither god nor man can stand it.
But gee, people, what a lot of hot air over a minor study.
Our friendship is over Fyodor.
Can I keep the horse?
OK enough Fyodor. Talking about “cracking rape threads”, while it might seem funny on the blokey cheezel-dusted group blogs, is actually a bit sociopathic to those who retain some of the sensibilites of the real world. Laura represents the reality-based community here: Rape isn’t something to joke about.
Still ‘n’all, through all the mutual dickheadedness (including his), mel has a point. The abstract clearly says that the popular stereotype “in the community” is that women who are raped are “asking for it”. mel asks for evidence that this statement is true – and no-one can provide it. No doubt it is true of partner rapists, but they are not the community. Abstracts should not begin with demonstrable untruths.
There’s plenty out there but you choose to ignore it. I also find claims of “you didn’t come back to me on line with 100s of references therefore you are so pwned hurh, hurh” completely worthless since Tigtog and I have lives (aka work + family) and run our own blogs, as opposed to snarking on other peoples’, so of course our time to spoon feed our hostile commenters (who we know will either ignore what we find or twist it in some unlikely manner) is limited.
The Amnesty International study which Steve quoted gives the number of respondents assigning some measure of blame to the victim in rape as 1 in 3. That’s about the same odds as contracting cancer. I don’t see anyone posting about how cancer is all in wimminz imaginations and it’s all overblown anyway.
Read the UK compensation story in the daily mail. The writer is conflicted but after a bunch of mixed messages, ends up weakly saying that well, what can we expect when we get drunk. Yes, most of the comments are anti. That is a good thing. But the premise of the article is that drunken women are at least partly to blame for their own rape. This BBC article, which is of course less sensationalist, kind of makes the same point made in the study we are discussing. You say “of course no one thinks a woman should be blamed for rape any more!” but the article, based on the study, says no such thing and continues the theme of definition:
When I brought up the example of the KBR rape, rocket-scientist JC had this to say:
In other words, JC think it’s unreasonable for a woman to go to work in Iraq and has only been able to do so because of unnatural legislation; as a result, she is raped. Get it? If she had stayed in her proper sphere, according to that sentence, she wouldn’t have been endangering herself. So, what can the company possibly do!
In other words, while claiming no-one blames the victim for rape any more and that cannot possibly happen, he’s doing it on that very thread. Ass.
Here’s another study from the US Department of Ed.
Here’s another study.
But gee, people, what a lot of hot air over a minor study.
Yes, NG’s hissy-fit was entirely unseemly. However the regulars on the blog have done a sterling job of bolstering the OP and each other and smearing the dissenters. Well done.
A little perspective would be helpful here. This thread is not about rape; it is a meta-thread discussing the conduct of another thread, on another blog, in which a report on rape was discussed/debated/snarked/whatever. You started the meta-discussion with, I might add, more than a dash of jocularity, and I think it’s a little rich for you to proclaim that I am divorced from Teh Reality for following your lead.
Anyhoo, that’s all from me. The cheezels await.
“A little perspective” = “wimminz being irrational again”.
I disagree strongly with your extremely distorted picture of what was going on with that comment, and I don’t think it’s Laura or I who lacks perspective. Your phrase “cracking rape threads” was tone deaf, inasmuch as it was presenting a thread on rape as something funny and enjoyable and an opportunity to pwn and be pwned. While I enjoy online argybargy as much as anyone (as you know), that’s kind of offensive given the topic. As Laura said, that’s beyond the funny-game category, and some readers might well be actual rape survivors who are triggered and upset by treating it as a joke. it might be better to enjoy the cut and thrust of sophistry on other topics. THat’s part of the “civility” thing.
I like Nicholas Gruen and I’ve never considered him to be particularly representative of the general background feel of Troppo. A blog I find to be something of a bastion of teh patriarchy and as such, increasingly *somehow* anachronistic. It is extremely popular with many many . . . . men.
” The closest thing to 19th Century Gentlemen’s Club,” someone said. Oh, how I agree.
I think the point behind Nicholas’ post was, as the title suggests and was intended to be more concerned with bad research than with the subject of the paper. The biggest mistake he made was in choosing the wrong piece of research to illustrate his point. A choice which made him appear flippant on the subject (which I don’t really think he is). All he really achieved was to misrepresent himself–badly on a subject that he clearly hasn’t given much thought to and one in which he was clearly out of his depth on.
Having said that, (as they say) I didn’t read the paper and I didn’t read all the comments. But knowing something of Nicholas, I didn’t find the post in and of itself particularly offensive, until I started reading the comments, and then of course everyone was being offensive, offended and offending. Including me. Yippee.
Caroline, I’ve been the target of some glancingly anti-feminist (not anti-woman) snark from Nicholas in the past, in a discussion about a movie to which I had contributed some brief and obvious Feminism 101-standard interpretation or other. Someone else, let’s call him/her X, called me on it, along the lines of “Vat’s stu-pid, vat is” — the usual response of the hostile to any kind of cultural interpretation, especially if it’s feminist in its angle — and then Nicholas turned up saying ‘Thank you, X. A bit of sanity.’
That is, he was calling me mad — on the basis of this brief, mainline and, to many, obvious and basic feminist interpretation — but he did not choose to address me, or the point, directly.
I remember this so clearly because I thought it was incredibly strange. Judging by this and many other instances en blog over several years, I think Nicholas simply has it in for whatever he thinks feminist theory is (presumably like most anti-feminists he thinks there’ s only one), and that the framing of that rape study just pushed some already very hot buttons.
Holy crap I just read the troppo thread, it’s something else.
One little observation I don’t have the time to get into in that extensive bunfight, but the quote up the top talks of a discrepancy between the law and the understanding of it held by males. There is an aspect of the way that’s worded that sounds like a generalisation over all men… but, interestingly, a couple of the most offended and indignant reactionary commenters in the thread then go on to express views that show they clearly don’t share the view of the law.
That is, in respect of them, the quote was clearly correct. I’m thinking of the ‘no isn’t necessarily no’ bit. I’m surprised this didn’t cause a couple of their colleagues to back off a bit.
Helen, you raised the law over there, yes the provocation changes have been passed successfully. Other relevant reforms (by our A-G who for his faults should be recognised as one of the best reforming A-Gs in the country, and a pretty progressive male as well) out of the sexual assault task force work include:
- Further clarifying of the need to obtain consent, ie further distancing the law from the ‘no isn’t necessarily no’ school;
- Better provisions for victims to be able to give evidence remotely, including making this mandatory with most child victims;
- Preventing self-defending accused from directly questioning victims… and so on.
And I agree with your take on many lawyers finding the classic way of doing things pretty awful.
Ran into Nabs this morning, working in the same building as blogolalia’s funniest flamer is an honour.
Steve Munn’s still gamely holding out that really, we have refused to provide any evidence that rape myths still exist.
Hey, when they really do die out, I’ll be the first to raise a glass.
Now he’s moved on to “manipulative women making false rape allegations”.
Club Troppo is turning into a MRA site.
Oh, and describing comments from excellent thinkers/writers like Laura and Pav, Kim, Tigtog et al as “squeals, hisses, oinks, screeches and yips”. Awesome. Way to claim the high civility ground.
“… a couple of the most offended and indignant reactionary commenters in the thread then go on to express views that show they clearly don’t share the view of the law.
That is, in respect of them, the quote was clearly correct.”
Word, armagny. But they would go to their deaths denying it, quite genuinely unable to see the connection. That’s why I’m trying to stay out of this one; there’s no point.
Where’s Zoe? Hugs!
Kim, I’ve been having an ear operation. I rate the experience as very slightly less pleasant than reading Troppo.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Not that I think there’s no point in anyone else engaging; just that I’ve sure lost the drive.
There’s a larger issue that always butts its way into the back of my mind when personally engaging with gleeful, frothing rape apologists and deniers online, and that’s that – for all they might vigorously deny it in text – I have no.fucking.way of telling which of them are potentially physically, real-world dangerous.
The joys of feminist blogging – or, what Paul Norton said, above. “men fear having their blog comments moderated by women; women fear being killed by men.”
If they want to cast me feeling that way as a big win for MRA-kind, and whoop and holler about pwning me? That says more about them than it does about me.
Sorry to read that, Zoe!
*hugs!*
Going back up to the discussion about Nicholas Gruen, this weird comment from Jack Robertson is to the point:
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/08/21/name-a-worse-peice-of-research-troppo-competition/#comment-309900
Apparently Gruen thinks that blog threads can’t broach topics without descending into “orthodoxy”, “default positions”, etc.
He doesn’t appear to have noticed that hatin’ on teh wimminz is a default position.
Yep, by the time they’ve finished, rape won’t exist at all. It’ll just be the evil women making false accusations. Not a fun place to hang out. And with moderators who don’t seem to be taking any repsonsibility for what’s being posted.
“He doesn’t appear to have noticed that hatin’ on teh wimminz is a default position. ”
Such a sophisticated and disinterested reading of that thread, Kim.
For someone who likes to come the raw prawn about red herrings, you sure do dish them up.
But I’m intrigued why no-one has bothered to address Helen’s obviously erroneous criticism of Gruen. She says:
“But Nick was much more troubled by the fact that it’s a qualitative, not quantiative, report – not many lovely statistics”
Um, no. Here’s what he said re the qualitative nature of the study:
“No problem with a report about the nature of women’s experiences. With qualitative research. (In that context) I have no problem with the poem. I have a problem with the way in which a qualitative exploration of women’s experiences is an excuse for rattling off a pretty much random bunch of slogans – so much so that the slogans don’t even match the occasion.”
[link to the Club Troppo post which has already been linked to - Snipped]
[Ad hominem-snipped]
Steve, I think I and others have made it pretty clear what we find wrong with Nick’s account of the report, and I’m not going to spend my Sunday night re-hashing it. If you have nothing better to do, you may do so on your own blog.
Oh, and I should add for balance, lest I be accused of being a hata of teh wimminz, the point that carpet-biters such as m’self are also not immune from relationship violence.
Melaleuca, after that thread, I have zero interest in what you think about anything. So don’t bother addressing further comments to me.
[...] Blogger on the Cast Iron Balconey takes a look at a Club Troppo thread of doom and finds gosh, men can’t seem to discuss an innocent little qualitative study on rape without getting awfully defensive and pompous. 2 B Sophora finds a convenient naivety in the advice given to women experiencing domestic violence “just to leave”. And The Hand Mirror niftily summarises the proposals being considered in New Zealand for improving sexual violence legislation, [...]
Um so, TTOD just went and got a little LESS classy. Yeah, I didn’t see that coming either.
I saw that too. *splorf*
It seemed to have come shuddering to a halt with with Observa happily chattering away to himself posting news ltd links. He’s very safe when doing that all on his own.
But yonder, is that Greenfield over the ridge? What pith doth he bring forth?
The train wreck has life in it yet!
I heart it. Amanda’s comment remains in top spot.
[Deleted ] Mate, you’ll have to do better than that. A Blogspot blog “proving” that women are all liars, even though you admit he’s a fruitcake? Please fuck off. Thanks, CIB admin