I am not a parent. I don’t have children. I don’t have a daughter. As a non-parent that means that I am lucky enough to have gone through life without hitting that little bit of brain damage that makes you forget everything you thought as a teenager so that you can feel comfortable lying to your children. You know the lies I mean… well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you have children and so you’ve forgotten your younger years and don’t realize the lies. But I’m talking about the ones where you say “I never did that when I was your age,” or “this is for your own good” or “this hurts me more than it hurts you.” You know… Lies!
But that brain damage also makes you forget the one surefire truth you knew when you were a teenager. Parents are idiots and assholes.
I saw someone post a video to Facebook yesterday. The webpage link was the super enticing “He Is About To Rape A Girl He Met On Facebook. But Watch What Happens When Her Parents Show Up!” (yeah…. I know… lovely) and my Facebook friend’s accompanying status update was something like “this is powerful and every parent should show it to their children.” As I said, I have no children so I was like +5 on my d20 saving throw vs. click bait and I ignored it and went on my way. A little later I saw a second person (that the first person doesn’t know) link to it with a similar status update and so I realized “gee, I guess this thing might go viral. I suppose I ought to watch it just to see what it is.”
I’d like to say it’s what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would maybe be some really horrible skit starring Z-list “actors” where a girl was parking in front of her house after a date with the captain of the football team and maybe the boy was trying to get a little too fresh, but she’s not that type of girl, she’s saving herself for marriage, but he won’t take no for an answer and he gets all handsy but just then the parents show just in the nick of time. Maybe dad beats the boy up with some classic fight choreography just a little less realistic than Dolemite and in the end the would-be date rapist is overcome by the virtue of the young lady and her father’s love for him so he finds Jesus and devotes himself to becoming a better person by passing out Jack Chick tracts or bombing Planned Parenthoods or something. You know… the Lord’s work.
That would have been so much better….
Nope, instead I got this:
Yep… that was worse. For those who don’t want to bother to watch the whole video, let me recap the plot. There’s this DudeBro named Coby Persin, he came up with this wonderful idea to teach underaged girls the dangers of hooking up with strangers on the internet. He made a fake profile for himself where he claimed to be fifteen. Then he picked three girls, aged 12-14 and friended them with the express purpose of getting them to fall for him and lure them into his kidnapping/rape van. Don’t worry though, because he totally went and talked the plan over with all their parents first, and for some reason, rather than having him arrested immediately, the parents basically said “fuck yeah, catfish my daughter, Bro! Teach the little bitch a lesson! That will be awesome!” Then he spent a week flirting with the girls online (because that’s totally not creepy at all) until he gained their trust enough to get them to agree to sneak out behind their parent’s back so they could come to his rape van to bang. But when the girls get to the rape van it turns out not only is much older looking than in his profile pic, but there’s also a couple other people in ski masks in the back to grab the girl and give her a heart attack. Then, after she’s shit herself, they pull off the masks and surprise it’s mom and dad! And of course they’re super disappointed in her, so they yell at her and make her cry so they can post it to YouTube so that she learns her lesson and never puts herself in the position to be raped by talking to boys on the internet ever again! The End!
I was kinda disgusted by it, but at first I just kind of ignored it and let it go. Then I saw a third person post it. And again, with the same basic message “This is very powerful. I showed it to my kids tonight and so should you!” And yep, we’re totally in viral territory now. I did a check of the blogosphere and it seems to be making the rounds, especially on the mommy blog circuit. So I figured I might as well say the things that bother me about it.
First, I’ll I want to start with who Coby Persin is. I mean, beyond a 21-year-old DudeBro who just wants to keep your daughters safe. See, I recognized him from another video I saw on YouTube and I couldn’t figure out from where, so I went to his YouTube page and that’s when I remembered. See, this isn’t Coby’s first video. He’s a career YouTube prankster. And I remembered him making the rounds with this video a few months ago.
So that you don’t have to bother to watch that one all the way through, the storyline there is that he’s walking around the city in standard DudeBro attire and he walks up to some random girl on the street who is minding her business and doing her homework. He sits down next to her and asks for her number and asks him out. She uses the “I’m sorry, I have a boyfriend” defense to ward off his advances and he leaves. Then Coby comes back, with a change of clothes to a nice suit, with his hair styled in a lovely rockstar pompadour, riding in a limo and with an entourage of half a dozen other DudeBros in black “SECURITY” T-shirts. He gets out of the car and is swarmed by a bunch of extras who have his 8×10. He signs several of them and poses for selfies with people. Study girl, seeing all the commotion comes over to investigate and once she sees that he’s a celebrity asks for a selfie herself. He agrees and she kisses him to take the pic. He says he likes her approach and asks if she wants to come to his hotel and hang out. She says sure, so he asks for her number. She gives it to him and he says “but don’t you have a boyfriend?” and she tells him no. BOOM! “I got you! I was just over there in different clothes and you asked for your number and you said no. But now you want me because you know I’m famous. I don’t like gold diggers! Later!”
The lesson: “Bitches be trippin’, yo!” How dare a woman turn down a DudeBro, lying to him about a boyfriend, and then be willing to go out with a celebrity! She must be a gold digger (she ain’t messin with no broke n— go head girl, go head get down!), because you know, it’s not like there’s anyone out there who just doesn’t DudeBros. Everybody loves DudeBros!
Oh, and he made this video
where he teaches you to get hot girls to let you borrow their phone, so you can “call your friend” since your phone died, but you actually call yourself, so now you have their number. It works all the time, because “Bitches be stupid, yo!”
And he also made this video
where he teaches you to get any hot girl on the street to make out with you. All you need is a single $50 bill and two trick double-sided coins and a video camera. Then you go up to random hot girls and offer them a bet. If they can correctly guess heads or tails on the next coin-flip they get the $50, otherwise they owe you a kiss. Since the coins are fixed they never win and you get all the kisses! Cuz you know, “bitches be greedy… and stupid.”
But you know, he wants to help you protect your daughters. There are predators out there. I mean, he’d know… he basically is one. Seriously, in five years, he’s totally going to be walking up to her on the street and trying to shame her into hooking up with him and his fellow DudeBros to avoid being shallow or tricking her into letting him shove his tongue down her throat because she lost a coin flip bet. After all, it’d be a shame if they were so traumatized by a childhood date rape that they were unwilling to hook up with random DudeBros once they are legal.
The thing is, I think the people calling his message “powerful” have their hearts in the right place. Maybe even Coby does… but Coby had his heart in the right place with the Gold Digger video too. Sort of…. I guess.
The problem is, as I said in the beginning, having children apparently damages your brain and makes you forget what it was actually like to be a teenager. If you’re old enough to have a teenaged daughter right now, that means you’re at least in your 30s, if not your 40s or 50s. So if you think back to when you were a teen in the 60s-90s, you’ll remember that you were forced to watch stuff like this too. It’s just that it wasn’t about internet predators. Because you’re fucking old, and there wasn’t an Internet back in the stone age. But the specific message behind the video isn’t really important. It’s essentially a “scared straight” video.
We’ve all seen these. Remember back in health class? We watched these videos that told us the dangers of drugs, alcohol and sex. We learned the horrible terrifying consequences of drugs. If you ever ever ever ever EVER take one hit off a joint, you’ll end up doing heroin within a week and the next thing you know you’re blowing homeless dudes in a back alley for enough chain to buy some baking soda to snort before you turn to a life of crime. Nancy Regan wants you to “Just Say No!” Or maybe you saw the ACTUAL Scared Straight!, where a bunch of convicts with names like Viper, Bloodskull and T-Bone yell at teens to frighten them onto the path of the straight and narrow by telling them if they don’t they’ll end up behind bars with them, which will be just great, because T-Bone totally needs a new bitch and you have a nice tight little ass! Even if you never saw the original Scared Straight, that’s fine because Maury and Sally Jessie did an episode with this same basic plot once a week (sometimes it might be a drill sergeant that was going to sodomize you instead of a convict… because you know, gotta keep things fresh for sweeps week).
You remember those! And afterwards, you and your friends went home to hang out in the basement and share a joint while laughing about it before you went out to try and find some girls and get laid?
See, scared straight videos don’t work. Because teenagers are smart and they know parents are idiots and assholes. In the history of the world, no one was ever scared away from the dangers of drugs, sex or alcohol by one of these videos. Either you made fun of them while getting high, or you didn’t experiment with any of those things because you were a nerd. But even the nerds knew the videos were ridiculous. They just talked about the ridiculousness over Dungeons and Dragons games instead of weed. (By the way, Yes, I know this is a false dichotomy… you can tell by the way I made the saving throw joke before.)
Parents don’t know this is ridiculous. Coby’s cat fishing video has gotten over 13 million hits (and 63,000 likes) in the past two days since he posted it. The story has been picked up by dozens and dozens of news outlets around the country. It has taken the mommy blogging world by storm, and in fact I was only able to find one mommy blogger who was critical of it, and even she didn’t seem to bother to see what Coby’s other DudeBro videos were about. She was more concerned with the ineffectiveness of it.
There’s been tons of psychological research into Just Say No/Scared Straight programs. Best case scenario, they are completely ineffective. Worse case scenario, they actually make the kids much more likely to fall victim to the things you’re trying to scare them away from, possibly up to 30% more likely. There are lots of reasons for this. For one, teenagers are not adults, but they aren’t children either. Logically speaking most 15-year-old boys that you meet on the internet are not secretly 21-year-old BroDude rapists. Certainly more of them are than there should be, but most aren’t. Teens know this. And really, if you play the law of averages, most of the time it probably turns out ok. Obviously, the one time it doesn’t is really bad, and that’s what parents are worried about. But when it doesn’t happen 99% of the time, it calls into question any video like Coby’s that makes it look like there’s a rapist waiting to abduct you around every corner. So the fact that your parents believe there is (because they must since they showed you this video) really reinforces the belief you already have that they’re idiots.
Second, is the underlying message of this video. At the end of the day, no matter what the altruistic intentions were, what these parents actually did was set up their daughters to be catfished by a 21-year-old BroDude and then helped him set them up for a traumatizing rape scenario, berated them for being stupid enough for falling for it, and then posted the whole thing to the internet where a million mommy bloggers reforwarded it as an example of good parenting. In other words, OH MY GOD PARENTS ARE FUCKING ASSHOLES!!! If I were thinking about putting myself in a situation which maybe was raising a red flag, or worse something bad like a rape actually did happen to me, the parents in this video are the last people I’d want to talk to about it, and frankly, I wouldn’t be jazzed about talking to parent who showed me this video either.
Of course, I don’t have kids… so what do I know…
As a parent, I can safely say: What. The. Fuck. I’m at a loss for words. That is the most horrific thing I’ve ever read.
Which part? My stance or what he did or the fact that he did it at all? Or are you on his side and I’m the horrific one? (I know you well enough to assume no here)
Good assumption.
I found some words: If you’re a parent, and your teenage daughter is meeting up with complete strangers that they’ve met on the Internet like this, and you are in collusion with the strangers, you’ve failed as a parent, you have only yourself to blame, you have no business getting mad at your daughter, and instead should find someone who’s actually capable of being a parent to raise her properly and completely remove yourself from her life, with the exception of sending birthday and other presents, and paying for college tuition, because you owe her that much.
yeah, I mean, it’s not like I think a parent should go “fuck it, I give up… let them rape my daughter.”
But I can’t help but think that if these girls have these parents who think that this is a good idea, then maybe they don’t have the best upbringing in the world to start with.
Granted, good upbringing or bad upbringing isn’t a guarantee one way or the other. I’m just saying that there are clearly other problems going on.
That said, I’m really amazed that people are liking the video so much. Again, I don’t have kids, but I just can’t see how there aren’t a ton of parents being just horrified by this.
I’ve been trying to hammer on the like button but apparently that’s “not possible” and “a waste of time”, thanks, facebook
It’s probable that they didn’t click on the link to begin with.
Nah… the video has been watched 13 million times (as of when I posted this… probably way more now…. yep… 17 million) so people are definitely watching it.
I actually thought there was hope for this video until the very end of the first scenario. If the father hadn’t immediately raged on his daughter, I think a good strong point would have been made. When he later hugged her and said they had to talk, I had a modicum of hope that he might actually be a pretty good guy that got caught up in the moment.
Then the next two videos got worse and worse and I just shuddered.
I’m sorely conflicted on this because I’m not sure that the same video using a much gentler approach wouldn’t actually be effective (at least for the kid in question).
The ugly truth is, no matter how well you teach your kids, this is the kind of thing they are likely to do. Part of it is because they are teenagers (thus rebellious and stupid) and part of it is because they don’t really believe that they can be tricked. The same reason that people still fall for the Nigerian Prince scam is basically the reason that kids (and adults) fall for fake Facebook identities (and dating site identities, etc.).
If this ploy was done in the right way, I think you could really convince some kids that, no matter how internet savvy they think they are, they can be tricked by a scam artist that is trying to hurt them in some way (physically, mentally, socially, sexually, financially, etc.). Pulling them into a rape van and giving them a heart attack is NOT the right way.
Maybe, as a social experiment… There’s a news show called “What Would You Do?” that sets up situations like this (usually not with horrific outcomes…. but as you say, a little less crazy.
But even then, it’s more as an informative message to parents than a tool to scare the kids straight the way this one is being used. As the psych studies I linked to in the blog say, Scaring Straight doesn’t work. It never has. And it often does far more harm than good, even in controlled situations.
Mav, you are totally missing out. Think of all the things you could program into your kid before they figure out you are an idiot. And then get to hear about them at teacher conferences.
oh sure… just like I had this one idea way back that when your kid is first learning to talk and feed himself, you should feed him exclusively ice cream and cake for dinner and then make him finish it all to have desert of brussel sprouts and broccoli… Then sooner or later they’ll just crave it and be sneaking veggies left and right!
Dang! Now I need another kid… except my kids already love broccoli and green beans.. more so than the meat on their plates.
some might argue that this logic is why I don’t have children.
I am a mother, grandmother and great grand. Maybe I have watched to many times what can happen to young person boy or girl to me the skit had some merit, I think it scared these girls and I doubt that they would do this again for fear that it might be real or it might be their parents again. If I were the parents I would be scared to death. Because as you say, you have no children so you have no idea what a parent would to try to keep their children safe.
No, I understand…. what I’m saying is that it doesn’t actually work. It turns out that studies say that kids subjected to these kinds of things actually are MORE likely to get into trouble than less. People do it because it feels like “this should work!” but teen brains actually work the exact opposite way.
Teen brains, heck, HUMAN brains.
Well yeah. But especially teen ones.
The psych article about just say no talks about that. You don’t develop the part of your brain that lets you abstractly associate consequences at all till like 16, and it’s not “done” till your 20s. So even if a 14 year old can intellectually learn “I might get raped” from an experience like this can’t really emotionally “feel” it. They’re literally not capable. It’s why teens “think they’re immortal.”
However, unlike younger children they are capable of reasoning outside of parental upbringing. So they don’t fear bogeymen.
A 6 year old doesn’t do stuff because mommy says “someone will hurt you” because of blind trust. By 14 you don’t have that trust because you have enough empirical evidence to know that sometimes mommy is wrong. Even if a friend get raped or killed by an Internet stranger, a teen doesn’t really make the leap that “oh my god, that happened to Cindy, it could happen to me” the way a 20-something does.
What teens can do is associate direct trauma with fear. So if something bad happens, they’ll be more careful. Unfortunately, that means that if they’re actually raped, they’ll be really hesitant in the future. But in a situation like this, since they can’t abstract “mom and dad tricked me” to “it could have been a real rapist” instead they learn that “mom and dad are evil assholes who try to scare me, so next time I sneak out, I better be more careful so they don’t catch me.” Hence the scared straight kids being 30% more likely to go into crime than those who never went through it.
That’s why I disputed Mary’s claim that the girls probably learned their lesson. In actuality, the girls likely learned totally the wrong lesson.
Then there’s the credibility issue with Mr. DudeBro that I addressed in the rest of the post.
Public shaming as effective teaching went out of fashion generations ago (for many good reasons). I also saw this video posted but chose not to select it; quite glad I passed. I believe it’s illegal to proposition the young online … if not, it should be. These parents are complicit in so many terrible, trust destroying, morally suspect choices. Ugh
it varies by jurisdiction, but yes… theoretically an adult propositioning a 12 year old online is illegal. The Dateline: To Catch a Predator stings were based on that.
He’s probably “legally” fine since he had the parents’ permission. But morally its pretty bad, and as the links I left point out, the damage from the trauma that the girls received is probably REALLY harmful and likely to make them counteract in more self-destructive behavior.
Just so that it’s more obvious, for those viewing on FB and those who couldn’t tell where the psych research was from the text on the blog. Here is some of the relevant research on why scared straight and just say no programs don’t work (these are from popular magazines for lay people, though they reference the actual psych studies for those who want more details):
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/redirect/201203/scared-crooked
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/11/26/scared-straight-not-really/
http://www.breakingthecycles.com/blog/2013/06/23/why-just-say-no-typically-doesnt-work/
Has anyone tried doing the opposite? Making videos to convince them that they ought to try drugs and do crimes?
Hollywood?
I think you’re drawing too narrow of a conclusion from this video Mav. The problem is not that PARENTS are assholes. If the internet has taught me anything, it’s that PEOPLE are assholes. More specifically, in any sufficiently large population you will find a number of assholes, and perhaps even more relevant to this viral video, a bunch of people too lazy/busy/stupid to think enough about what they’re doing to realize that the person they’re copying/quoting/linking/liking is an asshole.
Well, yes… I am certainly making a generalization in order to make the post work. Obviously, MOST parents don’t actually catfish their children. Thank God…
I do think many parents, maybe even most, still think that scared straight/just say no tactics actually work, which is why programs like “DARE” and anti-smoking campaigns like “The Truth” exist at all even though pretty much all research shows that at best they are completely ineffective and at worst counterproductive and harmful. People WANT to believe that they work, because they want to believe that they’re doing something.
As for the people forwarding the video… again, I certainly can’t really say it’s MOST. But it’s certainly a lot. 13million views in 2 days is phenomenal for any youtube video. He’s being linked to by tons of news sites, and its clearly people who think he’s helping their kids because there are relative few articles complaining about him like mine do… and almost none of them talk about his other videos and make the association I’m making.
So yeah, part laziness…. but I think mostly ignorance. You and I certainly know more about how the internet works that Joe/Jane User.
But anyway… I wasn’t really saying that parents are assholes… I’m saying that teens think parents are assholes… And behavior like the three sets of parents in the video, pretty much reinforces that.
Can’t argue the fact that the video makes parents look like assholes. Also you’re probably right that it’s more ignorance than stupidity that leads so many people to share this video. As for the feeling that you need to be doing SOMETHING, that perpetuates the use of these sorts of tactics, I guess the trick is to find something else that’s more effective for the parent to do that still feels like you’re doing something. The problem of course is that the sorts of things that you can do that are likely to be effective(like actually talking with your kids frankly, frequently, and non-judgmentally about what’s going on in their lives, and yours) are hard, and boring, and take a long time to work, and don’t have the visceral payoff of seeing your kid react to a shock video.
and they don’t make good TV!
I don’t understand why people think this is okay to do….
Another supporting study … analogous although it addresses academic rather than social misdeeds http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2015/08/warmth_not_punishment_helps_mi.html
Here’s what occurred to me: how many real pedophiles will now try to envoke this senario to avoid being caught. “I was trying to scare her into not doing this, like Coby Persin?
Actually I should probably say, “how many MORE,” because I’m certain many caught predators have thought of the excuse that they were really attempting a prevention tactic. They were merely interrupted before *not going through with the rape.
My other thought was: are these the only three that Coby tried? Somehow, I doubt it. I think it would have been interesting to see if there were cases when the girl did not follow through. Would the parents boast about their daughter and their own parenting?
Third thought: (probably most outlandish) what if the girl had friends watching her back and set up for her to meet this 15 year old boy with them nearby as back-up? I’m imagining a scenario where the girl’s friend or even a brother or cousin is nearby and ready to help if it goes south. Then she screams and this friend/relative comes out guns blazing (either literally or figuratively). Imagine the chaos and harm that could cause.
As a matter of fact, in the third scenario, she’s screaming in the van. They’re in a neighborhood. Then it calms down and they talk to her. Now imagine you’re a neighbor who somehow catches a glimpse of this from outside. You see your neighbor’s daughter go out to a strange van. As she gets in she let’s out a scream and the van shakes briefly from a struggle. You grab your phone to dial 911. Or maybe you’re an open carry type citizen.
Actually, I think I just came up with some decent CSI, Criminal Minds, or Blue Bloods episode hooks… hmmmm
Mark: I also wondered how many tries and fails he did to get these three.
Your other two points are good too. Really, what he’s doing isn’t new. There have been TV shows that do this for ages. Dateline: To Catch A Predator is basically the exact opposite of this (actresses playing teen girls used to set up would-be pedophiles) and there’s the show “What would you do” that sets up uncomfortable situations to see how random people around react. Most recently, there was an episode where actors pretended they were drugging another actresses drink at a bar.
The difference is when you have a TV show, you have access to authorities, lawyers, psychologists, etc… you have the tools to try and make sure you’re doing no harm. Even then, I don’t know that you aren’t (especially in Scared Straight cases, as the research points to)
The problem with the advent of the internet is that Coby basically sees himself on that level. In the best case, he’s a “guy with a show trying to bring awareness.” But he doesn’t have parents or shrinks or cops or lawyers helping him. So really, in a way, he IS just like the real pedophiles using this as an excuse. Even if his heart is in the right place.
Thank you for blogging this. I have way too many friends who have young newborn daughters and are worrying about this like it’s just around the corner. Don’t they know that their kids are going to be getting date raped IN the Internet while they’re jacked in with their cybernetic implant filled brain and the parents won’t be able to do anything about it because they’re just in meatspace.
Thank you for blogging this. I have way too many friends who have young newborn daughters and are worrying about this like it’s just around the corner. Don’t they know that their kids are going to be getting date raped IN the Internet while they’re jacked in with their cybernetic implant filled brain and the parents won’t be able to do anything about it because they’re just in meatspace.
Thank you for blogging this. I have way too many friends who have young newborn daughters and are worrying about this like it’s just around the corner. Don’t they know that their kids are going to be getting date raped IN the Internet while they’re jacked in with their cybernetic implant filled brain and the parents won’t be able to do anything about it because they’re just in meatspace.
+10 points for the cyberpunk allusion.
+10 points for the cyberpunk allusion.
+10 points for the cyberpunk allusion.
hahahaha…. A well educated sailor!!! I love that! that’s like totally the best way to describe me ever.
For bonus points, it reinforces victim blaming as well, because clearly it is their daughter’s fault for putting herself in a position to be raped, or at least humiliated on film.
A parent should go along with it, but then have a dozen people in SWAT gear or a vigilante mob roll up to scare the piss out of DudeBro. Our give their daughter a pistol with blanks. Because lulz work both ways.
Pointing out that someone was careless is not necessarily “victim blaming”.
If these girls got offered a motorcycle ride, jumped on without a helmet, crashed and got hurt, regardless of how it happened and who was involved they would still bear some responsibility. Even if the person in control was doing wheelies at 80mph while the passenger screamed for dear life, the driver would not be the only one responsible for what happened. The would be directly responsible for the act(crash). But unless they forced the passenger to go along with their crazy ride, some blame does in fact fall on the victim.
And that is a lesson to be learned. One of personal responsibility. Teaching people that their actions have consequences. And their decisions are all the more important, because you can’t know who or what will be encountered at any given time.
Some lessons are presented better than others. They could have just as easily had this guy reveal himself on skype as opposed to the stupid abduction scenario. They could have had it done with the parents consent but just between him and the girl so that she would not be embarrassed publicly.
They is no real need for public disgrace of victims, but that in no way means they are not without some culpability in situations where their decisions end in sadness.
But that is victim blaming. You even use the phrase “some blame does in fact belong on the victim”
Did the girls do the safest thing? No. But they really didn’t do anything THAT dangerous either. It’s not like they were trying to hook up with older guys. They were talking to another 15yo.
The point is that the video places the onus of the crime entirely with the girls.
Yes, SOME blame. The phrase “victim blaming” is generally nothing more than a means of shutting down conversation, as it implies that looking at the actions of the “victim” somehow negates the culpability of the assailant. So while that might be true in regards to how some people view victims, that is not necessarily true when people question the actions of someone who was victimized.
Point being, as stated above, they were responsible for their OWN actions no matter how the scenario was set up. Does that make what the parents or the guy did right? No, as I said, there are better ways in which the exact same message could have been presented. Just like the girls could have made better decisions. No one in this scenario is without fault.
And the reason the onus is, and probably should be placed on the girls, is the fact that they were the ones who left their homes, met up with the guy, and got the crap scared out of them. In the scenario presented, right up until the van door opened, they were in complete control of their own fate/actions.
It’s not as if the guy got their address and then broke into the girls bedroom(with parental consent of course). I think that scenario would support the position of this being akin to “scared straight” better than what actually occurred.
Scared straight, don’t do drugs, etc. They are all trying to use potential outcomes as a means of discouragement. This generally fails because most people do not believe that THEY will fall victim to XYZ.
In this scenario, the girls ACTIONS are demonstrated to cause an outcome. She did go online, she did meet up with a stranger alone, she did in fact get ambushed.
There is nothing potential about it. These things DID happen. So while I question the methodology. I do think pushing the “blame” or responsibility back to the “victim” is appropriate in this scenario.
And there’s Vic with the misogyny. I figured you’d show up and shit in the punch bowl. Apparently leaving your house, walking outside, using the internet and meeting people are all activities that should invite shame, blame and scorn upon those of us with vaginas. Let’s all remember girls, you should never leave the house without a male relative and permission. It’s just safer that way.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means, but whatever.
Beyond that, the rest of what you wrote is pure nonsense as nothing I said in any way condones that way of thinking. I know it seems that way to someone like you, but I can assure you that is not what was said, nor was it the point of my post.
Misogyny, that’s funny. Here, let me join in: “Patriarchy baaaad, feminism goooood.”
It’s not Germany and a traffic accident- you don’t have divy up the percentage of blame that goes around. Women who use the internet to meet people should have every right to assume they won’t be raped by said person in a van with two or three other people. People meet people on the internet every day, for all sorts of reasons. I have contacts on Facebook and other places I’ve never met in person, but I don’t consider them strangers. I’d love to meet several of them, maybe grab a beer at a bar even. This does not in fact make me responsible or complicit in any one of those people actually raping me. Saying women should be safe, or think about safety, is saying women have some responsibility to ensure they are not somewhere a predator will be, that women are somehow responsible or at fault for not taking enough precautions in life. Fuck that, how about you hold rapists accountable for their actions. All 100% of the blame on them! and let women get about doing life.
Anyone who uses the internet should hope that the people they meet mean them no harm, there is nothing special about women in this regard.
Our level of trust in regards to the people we encounter is a decision that we make, based on our criteria for personal interaction. No one ever expects the people they “know” to do bad things to them, that however does not mean people are not responsible for the situations they put themselves in. Nor does it mean that responsibility negates the culpability of anyone who would do you harm. Getting hurt in an accident with a drunk driver while not wearing a seat belt does not make you responsible for your injuries, but someone then saying, you might not have gotten hurt as bad if you wore a seat is also not akin to victim blaming.
Yeah, if the driver had not been drunk you would not have gotten hurt. But also, if you had been wearing a seat belt your injuries might not have been as severe.
And we already hold rapists accountable for their actions. Lot’s of laws on the books that do just that. Telling women, men or whomever to be safe is in NO way condoning the actions of a criminal. Not one bit.
Feel free to “do life” as you see fit. Just realize that having a vagina does not protect you from the aforementioned life, and you, like the rest of us are ultimately responsible for your own well being. Thinking otherwise is dangerous and foolish.
Just got out of an all day meeting, so catching up:
Out of order:
Vic: She knows exactly what “misogyny” means… like myself, Brenadine literally has a degree in teaching this subject matter. It’s just like when you say we don’t know what “institutional racism” means because you don’t like the definition… There’s a difference.
What you’re really trying to say is “that I don’t agree that this behavior is bad.” But because that behavior is commonly called “misogyny” you object to the term. It’s more obvious on the “victim blaming” term. Where you literally said “it’s not victim blaming…. some of the blame must lie with the victim.” Rhetorically speaking, I have no problem with the latter half of the argument. The first half simply sets you up for poor debate. I know you don’t see it. That’s why you said it. But it does. It’s contradictory language. Rhetorically, we call this a naturalistic fallacy.
That said, logically your argument falls apart because you’re making a faulty equivocation. Most specifically:
“In this scenario, the girls ACTIONS are demonstrated to cause an outcome. She did go online, she did meet up with a stranger alone, she did in fact get ambushed.”
Well, yes…. The girls’ actions demonstrated AN outcome, but not an IMPORTANT one… and not at all a relevant one. Sure… if the girl had never left her house, she would never have been fake kidnapped/raped. If she had never gone online at all, she would never have been fake kidpnapped/raped…. that’s not causality. If her great grandfather had been aborted, she would never have been fake kidnapped/raped! Abortions are good because they stop kidnappings and rapes!!!!
In this case, the assumption is “look, doing this behavior caused kidnapping.” But she wasn’t. She was entrapped in a completely fictitious situation that the parents and Coby THOUGHT might happen. It doesn’t actually prove anything…
In reality, only 3% of all kidnappings are by strangers. Only 18% of rapes are by strangers. The vast majority of people on the internet are NOT rapists. Generally speaking, meeting a boy that you met on the internet for a date is relatively safe. Even of those 3% and 18% MOST of those have nothing to do with the internet at all. The most famous kidnapping/rape case by a stranger of recent times is Elizabeth Smart. She was abducted from her bedroom while she was sleeping.
Parents make the assumption that internet meeting has raised the danger to kids. Studies actually show the exact opposite. Since most social networks have some implicit tracking of identity (if trivial) AND because kids are far more likely to interact with peers who are geographically distant and associable mostly on shared interests rather than convenience, its actually LOWERED the incidence of abductions.
In other words, the likelihood of you getting kidnapped/raped because of typical teenaged behvior (making friends on the intenet) is not even remotely substantially raised… and in fact actually lowered. What these girls actions actually resulted in was them being caught in an artificial sting set up by their parents.
Here is the equivalent sting:
• Parent tells 5-year-old daughter “Cindy, I want you to never wear blue jeans. Always wear courdory. Denim increases the livelihood that a stranger will run you over by a car.”
• Cindy doesn’t wear denim for most of her life. Then she gets to be 13 and realizes that maybe her parents are idiots and so she starts wearing denim in secret.
• Cindy’s parents and a random guy they met online hang out in an unmarked van three doors down and wait for Cindy to start walking to school in the morning. They see her walk down out of the house and immediately upon her getting to the sidewalk, they floor the gas and ocme barrelling owards her while a guy across the street films. Cindy is terrified and starts running and screaming and shitting her brand new jeans.
• The van comes to a screeching halt five feet from a terrified Cindy. The parents jump out and scream “What did we tell you about blue jeans?!?!?! What if we weren’t strangers. You’d be run over and dead right now!?”
This is exactly the same “proof” that they example shows.
Oh I like that one…
And people wonder why there are those of us who give little credence to the social “sciences”…
I hold no disdain for women, quite the contrary, I see them as 100% equal in regards to men. Thus if you are making the claim that anything I have said is misogynistic, then you either don’t actually know what the word means, or, which is always more likely in your case, you use the term incorrectly to describe any position that does not align with yours. Same goes for bigot, racist, homophobe, whatever.
The point that I made was in regards to the usefulness of the lesson. All of your social science, progressive, feminist nonsense is of no concern to me as everything you say, backed up by a degree or not will be based primarily on the opinion of you or someone who thinks just like you. I have come to not expect much insight from you or your friends.
Because the girl was directly involved in the outcome, her culpability enhances the potential lesson learned. There was no need to abduct her to get this across but in the end no harm no foul.
And you discount “social science” purely because it doesn’t say what you want.
You don’t like the term misogynist (or racist or bigot or homophobe) because you know they have negative connotations. But ignore the word. What we are saying is that you are exhibiting….let’s call it Vic-like behavior.
I specifically ignored feminist theory in my response to you just so you couldn’t make that claim. If I had used feminism it would have been much easier.
Instead I gave you the psychology. And the psychology simply says you’re wrong. I linked to like 4 different articles that say scared straight doesn’t work on teens. It doesn’t help learn the lesson. Quite the opposite. Particularly in this instance where the teen can see that the logic in the scenario is bad.
Denim does not cause car accidents!
I’ve got a two year old daughter and I do think about all the things she’s likely to deal with, rape, misogyny, racism, weird dude bros with Asian fetishes, the Christian Taliban, global warming, falling off the back of the couch, eating markers (shit why do you try to eat markers, are you actually literally retarded? do we need to take you to the pediatrician? Are you developmentally delayed? What are the developmental milestones for two? Why can’t you tell the difference between yellow and blue? Why are all the colors blue? Are you just fucking with me? You can count in three languages – why don’t you know YELLOW?) but one thing I no longer worried about is how I am going to handle talking to her about the internet and stupid people. I plan on showing her this video, that should take care of both issues. People are really truly stupid. People are on the internet.
I think I’ll start saving Vic’s posts to go over entitlement, privilege, and misogyny later on.
I agree completely – I haven’t watched the video because I had a feeling i’d be something like that – dumb.