> "But he also said that, in some cases, both female guards and the boys they molest share some responsibility.
> “There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the guys in prison are very persuasive and some of the women are very persuasive,” Wilkinson said."
I guess we are still have a very long way to go on the cultural part of defining victim and perpetrator.
I know it's uncool to do this, but I'm gender-swapping it and I simply can't imagine someone making a statement like this regarding statutory rape and being able to keep their job afterward:
> "There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the girls in prison are very persuasive and some of the men are very persuasive,"
These boys are being raped. It doesn't matter if they're perceived to be instigators, it is incumbent upon the staff to show them that there are boundaries that should not be crossed.
At the very least, juvenile victims of sexual assault are more likely to become adult perpetrators. Tolerating rapists operating as guards in male prisons will likely result in the creation of future rapists.
Thanks for pointing it out. The fact that it’s “uncool” to do this also points out that there are a lot of ways that men are oppressed by gender stereotypes and the victim-perpetrator narratives that our society has barely begun to reckon with.
I don't think it's uncool, there's still a double standard about sexual abuse of boys by women in media, and it plays into gender roles that harm women as well as men.
A man in my antenatal class informed Police about being sexually abused by his dance teacher as a child, and never mind their backward mindset, it exposed a flaw in our laws where women were not perceived as being capable of being sexual predators.
At the very least, juvenile victims of sexual assault are more likely to become adult perpetrators.
Do you have a citation for that?
I'm aware of head injuries playing a role in a lot of terrible crimes, but I've not heard this assertion before that victims of sexual assault are at greater than average risk of becoming rapists themselves.
While a history of sexual victimization seems to be one of the risk factors that predispose an individual to commit sexual assault, it does not provide sufficient explanation for most instances of this type of assault.
There is relatively little evidence that the victim-to-perpetrator cycle is a major factor in sexual assault.
These boys should be protected from being raped because they shouldn't be raped. Period.
> Experts maintain that, in the case of males, being sexually abused in childhood is an important risk factor for committing sexual assault later on in life, but that it is not the only risk factor that plays a role in the perpetration of sexual assault.
I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I spent a lot of years reading all the research I could find.
Victims of abuse of any kind fairly often get additional baggage heaped on them that they are now damaged goods and monsters who are highly likely to abuse others because of what was done to them.
I used to see the statistic that about 30 percent of children who grow up in abusive families will go on to abuse their own children while only 5 or 6 percent of "normal" people abuse their kids.
I generally like to turn that around and say "So you're telling me that in spite of learning all the wrong lessons, two-thirds of victims will be good parents and with no justification whatsoever, five or six percent of normal people will abuse their own kids for no real reason."
I am also hearing subtext for "We shouldn't let boys get raped because men are inherently bad people inclined to become rapists. Think about da womenz. These boys should be protected to protect women from them in the future."
I don't think it adds anything of real value to this discussion of the very real issue of boys being sexually assaulted while in legal custody. Boys already face more shame and stigmatization than girls without being told "And now we expect you to become a rapist!"
I've seen comments by male victims over the years on HN about how much baggage they deal with. It's generally much worse than what I had to wash off and it was mostly men who helped me wash it off.
So I don't much like seeing this minor factor talked about in this way given all that context.
This is uncalled for. dleslie made a factual claim and you asked for documentation, which he/she supplied. You seemed unable to understand that dleslie had supported the claim, so he/she pointed out to you that the document did, in fact, precisely support the words used. Now you are raising moral and emotional objections to the pointing out of simple and relevant facts.
It’s fun to think in black-and-white terms like this but surely you can understand that there are (infrequently) gray scenarios that come up where your simplistic morality falls apart.
I agree with your theory but I would never blindly convict someone based on it in practice.
The fun in the sentence points to “thinking in black and white terms” not about the morality of rape. It captures a larger set of all “thinking in black and white” instead the subset of what the specific instance was. English is funny that way.
Very true. I'm a survivor of woman-on-boy sexual assault, and it's hard to talk about with people because the typical response to it is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hdbns1Xdk0
Watching this adult, who I grew up watching on TV when I lived in the Dallas area, be able to openly talk about his experience and show emotion about it is what finally allowed me to start dealing with what happened to me.
People will go to any lengths to blame abuse on the abused instead of the abuser if it means they don't have to make changes to society :(
The tendency of some to frame this sort of thing as good for boys (a sign of maturity, manhood, etc) makes it worse, kids of any gender should feel safe and not be pressured by adults into doing something they don't want to do or aren't ready for.
Women and men are different and in many cases men will not feel raped but rather that they "scored" with the warden. We need to focus on cases when men actually get raped by wardens or other inmates rather than trying to prove some false feminist talking points.
A groomed twelve year old girl will sometimes also feel “lucky” her 35 year old “boyfriend” is having sex with her. It’s still rape, the trauma just manifests later.
> Surely you see the problem here? If still not, then replace "Women" with an ethnicity or race in that statement.
This doesn't make any sense. The comment is talking about how society treats women (and implicitly, men), not about some quality inherent to women. The analogous racial statement would be "white people get treated preferentially in a number of ways by society". This statement obviously isn't problematic under the leftist mores of "polite society", and probably isn't even that controversial all the way to the center-right.
The "halo effect" that women enjoy is well-established, in fact much, much more strongly than the racial bias in my analogue statement.
(That isn't to say that there aren't flipsides to gender roles that benefit men, obviously. The best way I've heard it put is that society entitles men to respect and women to compassion.)
Could you clarify which part of the comment qualifies as a "flamewar", so I can avoid doing so in the future? Is it simply the editorializing about being "revolting and dehumanizing", or is there an issue with the semantic content of the comment?
I'm not asking this to be difficult, but just want to understand where the bounds here are. I don't have any interest into getting drawn into irrelevant culture-warring, but discussion of society's downplaying of female abusers seems centrally relevant to a thread entitled "Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them".
I would say what crosses the line into flamewar is when it's combined with denunciatory language. What you posted wasn't nearly as bad as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28350724, but "I'm soundly rejecting this framing; in fact, I find it utterly revolting and dehumanizing" definitely counts, and in any case it takes two to tango.
The proper thing for this entire subthread would have been to flag it at the root (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28350724 - yes I know that was posted by someone else) and move on.
> Surely you see the problem here? If still not, then replace "Women" with an ethnicity or race in that statement.
You can also do this with all the negative statements made about men every day. You'll quickly get banned from HN. Women already get special treatment.
And by "ethnicity or race" I assume you mean "ethnicity or race that's not acceptable to make fun of", because people make negative statements about whites or asians/indians all the time.
I didn't see their comment making any "right wing" statement. Maybe it is a viewpoint that correlates with right wing politics, but I think that's pretty off topic here, and we're supposed to "reply to the best possible interpretation of what's said" on HN. We should avoid sinking in to the political tribalism that puts every issue on a left vs. right axis.
I don't think it's a very useful statement to say "women get away with too much" simply because of how general and broad it is, which would have been my complaint, if I thought it was worth engaging on.
>we're supposed to "reply to the best possible interpretation
The commenter made the statement: "Women get away with too much in our society."
What's "the best possible interpretation" of such a sweeping condemnation of a group of people?
>I didn't see their comment making any "right wing" statement. Maybe it is a viewpoint that correlates with right wing politics
What's the difference between making a right-wing statement and expressing a viewpoint that correlates with right-wing politics?
>We should avoid sinking in to the political tribalism that puts every issue on a left vs. right axis. I don't think it's a very useful statement to say "women get away with too much"
The effect of what you're doing here is playing down this hostile, openly right-wing statement as something benign by declaring that it is simply "not useful" and that it only "correlates with the right-wing" (as if that's somehow different from actually being right-wing). Then, you're suggesting that the one who pushes back on the author of that clear political expression is the one engaging in political tribalism.
> What's "the best possible interpretation" of such a sweeping condemnation of a group of people?
The best possible interpretation, to me, would be that they think women get away with too much, for whatever unstated reasons. It doesn't mean interpreting their post as good or true, but it does mean laying aside assumptions about what they mean and haven't said, like that they hate women, or that women shouldn't make as much money or have equal protections under the law, shouldn't be allowed abortions, or something like that.
> What's the difference between making a right-wing statement and expressing a viewpoint that correlates with right-wing politics?
I think too many things are ascribed to a left or right political leaning. Couldn't a Marxist conceivably say and believe the same thing? ...that society is too lenient towards women? I believe it's wrong to make assumptions about every political opinion someone holds based on one stated opinion or even a few of them.
Why? People are constantly trying to bin me as ingroup or outgroup based on their perception of where some specific opinion lies on a single axis, and they get it wrong both ways. I'm not some stereotype of a centrist either. I have a complex model of the world that draws from a lot of places. Real people are defined on very many axis, not one. Even if the majority of people just found their spot on the left-right axis and adopted every belief they thought belonged there, it's wrong and reductive (and harmful) to assume everyone is that way. Political tribalism or hyperpartisanship or whatever you want to label it is a toxic thing, like a societal disease in need of management, and I try frequently to help other apparently intelligent people see my perspective on it.
> The effect of what you're doing here is playing down this hostile, openly right-wing statement as something benign.
Sorry, no. I engaged you on what you said. I didn't engage them on what they said because it didn't seem worthwhile to me at the time.
>The best possible interpretation, to me, would be that they think women get away with too much.
>it does mean laying aside assumptions about what they mean and haven't said
My point is that the plain interpretation is problematic in its own right. It's overtly and unduly hostile towards women, so there's no need for additional assumptions. It's regrettable to me that you don't see this, but many don't. It's pernicious, which is exactly why I was compelled to comment.
Because, here we have a group of people that have traditionally had to fight for equal rights in our society and are still engaged in the same. Recasting them as the villains in society or otherwise suggesting that they hold some outsized power that they're abusing is absurd and is part of a pattern of demonizing historical out-groups whenever they seek equality.
Once the narrative becomes, "the real problem in our society is that women get away with too much", then what should society's response be? At a minimum, there's no empathy for their struggle or even acknowledgement that they are deprived of any rights. In fact, they are the problem and need to be somehow checked or curbed, which is a framing that can be used to deny their rights and keep sacrificing them to the political machine.
This is how language shifts the narrative. If the OP had left out that sweeping allegation and just stuck to the narrow topic of differences in the treatment of women and men WRT sexual abuse, then that's a very different, on-topic, and valid conversation. So, ask yourself what the point is of instead broadening it to this general statement about women.
>I think too many things are ascribed to a left or right political leaning
That's a laudable sentiment and I agree. Unfortunately, however, there is a pitched battle being waged by very vocal groups that have dominated our politics and culture. In this process, the right has targeted groups that it uses as political fodder to pit against "traditional society". Pretending that's not happening doesn't make it less true.
>Couldn't a Marxist conceivably say and believe the same thing?
It's not about traditional political definitions involving Marxism, etc. To your point, there's nothing that's necessarily inherently left or right about hostility towards women. However, again, the right in this country has chosen hostility towards certain groups (including women) as a political strategy. And, they would suggest that the left has chosen hostility towards white men as a strategy. So, the right has taken up the cause of "under-siege white men who require protection".
Whether you agree with any of these positions or have a judgment about who's to blame is irrelevant. The fact is, that's where we are. So, in a strict sense, you're right: it's not about traditional notions of left and right. But, it is about the causes that those who've defined themselves accordingly have chosen to elevate.
>Sorry, no. I engaged you on what you said.
In fact, this is the first time you've engaged me. My statement was referring to your reply to shephardjhon.
No worries and likewise. I appreciate the discussion.
One of the things I noted from your comments is how little room there is for earnest political positions these days (i.e. actual policy-preferences vs identity-based).
I know that's part of the general point you were making, and you're essentially suggesting that folks just not take the bait of splitting themselves along this binary axis.
I completely agree that engaging in that way is part of the problem, but I'm frankly not sure how to manage down the real harm being done by those practicing the "other kind of politics" without addressing the harm they're causing or the pernicious ideas they're spreading. But addressing it runs the risk of promulgating it. Therein lies the trap.
What’s your opinion on adult male prisoners who initiate sexual relationships with female prison workers, often for favors or sometimes even for help escaping [1]? Do you also see them as victims?
I am somewhat shocked at this question as I feel like you didn't even try to make a good showing with it (such as by trying to at least argue that the prisoner wanted the interaction for something other than a tit-for-tat way to alleviate their court mandated suffering)... yes, 100% absolutely: someone who is in a shitty situation (being in jail) that someone who has some power over them (a guard) is parlaying into "have sex with me and maybe you will get a favor" is a victim.
encouraging male teens to understand such sex is, in fact, a crime, that it is never really consensual
Statutory rape. Something a lot of people have difficulty comprehending as actually rape.
Of course, the world still tends to imagine rape as a violent crime. In many cases, it's not. Date rape is another variation of this problem.
women forcing males into sex does not comport with society’s conventional definition of rape.
Last I checked, in far too many cases, the legal definition of rape literally makes it a crime that cannot be committed by a woman. Though hopefully that's changing.
< Last I checked, in far too many cases, the legal definition of rape literally makes it a crime that cannot be committed by a woman.
Or by anybody, unfortunately. But this is also the institution never wanting to be accountable for its errors. These people place is a jail. Will see if they consent to have sex with their own prison guard.
“ Drawing on their sample, Justice Department researchers estimate that 1,390 juveniles in the facilities they examined have experienced sex abuse at the hands of the staff supervising them, a rate of nearly 8 percent. Twenty percent who said they were victimized by staff said it happened on more than 10 occasions. Nine out of 10 victims were males abused by female staff.”
It also puts the famous kickbacks for jailing kids in a whole other, revolting light.
One person is literally a caged minor and the other person is an adult with unilateral power over them including legal authority to use violence against them or even write a report that extends their sentence.
It seems like it'd be incredibly difficult to obtain accurate data through a mass survey. I know in work places "anonymous" surveys are often given where employees know/think the data is not truly anonymous and as such do not provide honest input.
I'd imagine this survey could be impacted similarly, either by underreporting because of shame/fear or falsely reporting in an attempt to get their detainers in trouble.
This is interesting and important, but seems off-topic and has already devolved into a fruitless culture war in the comments. Going to go ahead and flag it...
Completely irrelevant when the conversation is about the relationship between the powers of the state and the protections afforded citizens who've been accused or proven guilty of crimes.
It seems that they are saying the prisoners apparent consent, which is being denied outright, should not be denied. If so, it would be relevant, since the entire discussion of abuse hinges on it being abuse.
This seems analogous to the manipulator thought experiment in the free will debate. Imagine a scenario such that, should you choose or intend to choose X, some advanced manipulation will kick in and force you to choose Y. But in fact you chose Y and the manipulation did not kick in. Are you responsible for choosing Y?
If you think you freely chose Y in the above scenario, it seems one can freely consent even in coercive contexts. The issue is the law adjudicating between consent and coercion in such scenarios. However, if the presumed victim is not contesting consent, I find it hard to see a problem.
Yes, but GP's assertion is that it's sexual abuse when a third party interferes to prevent consenting individuals from participating in sexual activity.
But it's not nearly as clear-cut as your original statement. Like, there's no story that would convince me that refusing sex with someone is somehow sexual abuse (well there is marriage, but the accepted recourse there is divorce). And, generally, preventing other consenting individuals from having sex would would fall under 'being an asshole' at worst not 'sexual abuse', but maybe there's some circumstance where the former could be elevated to the latter. My point is that the implied certainty of your statements higher than warranted.
It isn’t sexual abuse for a jailer to not fuck the people they’re jailing. Describing it as abuse because of the logic that people who are in prison can’t reasonably non-coercively consent to sex with the people who are controlling every aspect of their life doesn’t make sense in the context that it isn’t abuse to not have sex.
That's not at all what the original comment said. It said, to paraphrase, that denying teenage boys their sexual agency is itself a form of abuse. I have no idea where you even got your original idea.
Basic idea is, yeah it feels a very wrong and likely to cover up lots of serious abuse to say that jailers are allowed to have sex with their inmates. But if you're in custody in a same-sex facility and jailers are the only people of the opposite sex you're ever in contact with, it seems also a little wrong to effectively say you're not allowed to have any sex with anyone ever (presuming you're not homosexual of course).
Well if two people are stranded for some time on a deserted island and one is male and the other is female then they will probably have sex. For the boys they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards. As any male who has been through puberty knows, juvenile delinquents are probably old enough to want those opportunities.
For some of the guards the situation might not be that different.
I'd be very hesitant to just go after these guards as rapists. The way to solve the situation would instead be to do the obvious thing and simply require male guards for male prisoners, as old-fashioned as such a provision might be.
If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?
If we were talking about 13 year old girls in detention having sex with adult male guards, and someone said "for the girls they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards.. for some of the guards the situation might not be that different", would that be okay with you, or would you consider that rape?
Because I'd argue that there is only one word for a guard having sex with a 13 year old who is their prisoner, and that is rape. The sex of the guard or the prisoner should be irrelevant.
When it comes to statutory rape, it is the 'informed' part of consent that is missing; as a society we have agreed that people under a certain age have not developed the skills or life experience to identify and understand a coercive relationship, or to recognise that they are being taken advantage of.
So even if the victim is an enthusiastic participant, the reason we as a society consider this rape is because these are children who don't have the life experience or maturity to make an informed decision, and that full-grown adults should not be taking advantage of them.
When you add in the outrageously unbalanced guard-prisoner power dynamic, it is extra inappropriate.
> If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?
I understand there is a variant of feminism that would consider this flip a no-op that leaves the whole situation unchanged. This viewpoint is that of the famous "rape" book, for instance, which in my opinion completely fails to substantiate this viewpoint with convincing arguments when data to the contrary abounds.
Replying with throwaway because this is a contentious topic, but the issue with the approach to consent in English speaking countries isn't as nuanced as it should be. Most people would agree that a 13 year old having sex with an adult is unacceptable, however, maturity is different when someone is closer to 18 (17 for example) and isn't that different from a prison guard who might be 22. While the majority of cases in the article might involve guards well past 18, we don't know that for sure. Also, while in theory the sex of the victim shouldn't matter, especially in the society we live in today it certainly does.
My view on it is quite different. You have this idea of yours, you have the historic idea that children are still property of parents in an important way, there's the historical guarding of female chastity/purity and you have the idea that its a protection against very likely abuse of power. I don't take a gender neutral view on this issue either so a male doing this would be quite different. But society unnecessarily creating these circumstances would still count as alleviating.
Not OP but probably because it's prudent not to ignore the obvious gender differences. Promoting gender neutral views surrounding situations that are very gender relevant is willful ignorance.
Not for any single reason. There's the law of the excluded middle, a principle from logic. There is evolutionary thinking. There are anecdotal accounts of transexuals of the difference in sex drive. There's the physical size and strength differential. There is the historical thing of protecting women. I take all of these into account and try to form some sort of guess of what is likely.
It is the responsibility of an adult not to have sex with minors that they have complete control over, even if the minor is trying to flirt with or otherwise attempts to solicit sex. If they cannot do this, the adult shouldn’t be allowed to be employed where they will be in close contact with minors that they are responsible for.
The counterpoint (not that I am saying everything is fine) is that there are often many minors the responsible adult can try to have sex with, at least one of which will probably be receptive. It's not clear that in every case there is coercion as most people would observe and define it which is why it's taken so long to start a discussion about female on male rape.
100000BC to the 1980s would like to have a word with you?
My point here isn't necessarily to defend it but to demonstrate that you need to be trying harder to avoid dogmatic thinking. Parts of the world still happily practice child marriage, how are you going to convince them?
I would be inclined to add, "in modern society" to that phrase and leave it at that. No need to excuse or condemn the past or cultures that still haven't gone through the humanitarian enlightenment of western society.
It's pretty interesting to assert that ~100k years of doing things a certain way is wrong. Do you have the evidence to assert such a thing?
The posts above talking about reversing the genders are kind of right, but that does already exist: it's pretty common for lower class middle school/highschool aged girls to sell their bodies for drugs, alcohol, or just money. This is tolerated in those communities and is seen as "the thing you do while growing up."
It's impossible to be perfect but what matters is changing the odds. Only around 1.5% of the population is lesbian gay or bisexual. If that translates to prison guards we should see a pretty major improvement.
Or perhaps a better system in which rapists in positions of power aren't routinely given poorly supervised access to children. I think I'd prefer that, rather than just hoping that a job involving poorly supervised access to children doesn't attract people who'd take advantage of that.
> “There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the guys in prison are very persuasive and some of the women are very persuasive,” Wilkinson said."
I guess we are still have a very long way to go on the cultural part of defining victim and perpetrator.