Some good news, for a change
“Today’s opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively,” read a statement from Lively’s lawyers, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb. “This ‘$400 million’ lawsuit was a sham, and the Court saw right through it.”
Oh thank God. He had the same legal team as Johnny Depp. I’ve seen on Reddit the attempts to discredit Blake Lively; it’s pretty obviously bots commenting on every fashion post she’s featured in and anything related to the case. I’m so glad that this case is not moving forward.
I’ve been single for several years now, and one of my biggest concerns is my safety as I explore new relationships. I decided to connect back with a very good friend of mine from college who has always wanted to date me, but never did. A big factor in this is knowing that he is safe.
Even though my therapist has done a good job of saying, “You can be a good picker,” I think their own focus on interpersonal relationships blinds them to the ways that society pushes men to value other men. I think it blinds them to how the apps are used by rapists to seek out victims, and how the apps encourage and promote that through bots and financial incentives.
Julie Valentine has treated hundreds of rape victims over her 17-year career as a forensic nurse. Starting around 2014, Valentine and her colleagues noticed something was changing about these patients. Increasingly, they mentioned that they had met their assailants on dating apps.
Valentine and a team of researchers began analyzing the forensic records of sexual assault victims in Utah between 2017 and 2020. “What we found was really profound,” says Valentine, an associate dean at Brigham Young University’s nursing school. “And pretty terrifying.”
Their research showed 8 percent of the victims had been assaulted during an initial meetup arranged through a dating app. It’s not an outlier. A similar report from the UK found that roughly 1 in 10 victims of serious sexual crimes met their attackers on dating apps; 47 percent of suspects reported to the UK authorities for sexual offenses facilitated through online dating had previous convictions. Valentine believes the real percentage of survivors who connect with their assailants on dating apps could be even higher, since many sexual assaults are never reported. Valentine’s study was also limited by the type of information requested on hospital examination forms, which usually don’t identify dating app–linked rapes that occurred after the first date.
Yet her findings were startling, despite the limitations of the data: Even though the major dating apps require users to be 18 and over, Valentine’s team found that many survivors were minors. Further, the injuries the app victims sustained were more severe: 32 percent were strangled, versus 22 percent of non–dating app victims. Dating app victims were nearly twice as likely to have injuries to their breasts, and they had an 11 percent higher rate of injuries to their genitals. Sixty percent reported they struggled with mental illness. “Violent predators,” Valentine says, “use these dating apps as hunting grounds for vulnerable victims.”
I think a lot right now of how certain fraternities at my college were training men in the art of rape. There was one fraternity in particular that was very aggressive. The women had this cute name for it, “Machers,” which really meant that the men were rapists - but, you know, in a cute way. Mach was also a verb, as in, “Joe is maching on Jane” (meaning he is trying to trick her into screwing him). This frat had a lot of wealthy, handsome men in it who were into sports, particularly rugby and soccer. They had a lot of wealthy international students, like ambassador’s sons. They were the typical Big Man on Campus types. So, they were extremely attractive to women, particularly inexperienced Freshman who didn’t know much about the fraternities, and were actively prevented from learning about them at the start of school because Rush was set up to stop people sharing information about the fraternities. (This fraternity is now banned from Tulane because of their illegal rush activities; actually, a good number of the ones that were around when I was there are now banned for similar reasons.)
It’s dangerous for a woman to date and men seem completely unaware of what we are dealing with or how to signal to us that they are safe. When I speak with men about my personal experiences with rape and assault, they don’t have opinions or seem to care much about what is going on in a wider context. Me Too was interesting in alerting men to a bigger problem, but seems to have fizzled out now and had its own backlash. The so called Good Men have their heads in the sand. Not actively seeking a solution is still hurting women by letting the rapists continue to harm.
We had the same thing where I went to college. I would say there was a more public reputation about them, though, that may have reduced the damage somewhat? But that doesn’t help their victims. This is the same frat that destroyed irreplaceable, historical, century-old oak doors and did things like threw beer bottles into bathrooms in upper floors of other residence halls while morning drinking on the weekend. They were eventually kicked off campus and banned, but that response took WAY too long.
The excerpt you’ve shared is eye opening. That is chilling. WTF is wrong with people!?!
My take on some of the good guys is that they can’t be taken at face value, i’ve known of guys that presented personas of being allies, and safe guys to be around when in reality they were toxic men but were wholly unaware of it themselves and would hold onto female friendships with the hope that these friendships would come around to being something more. Which on its face is not bad, but trivializes female friendships into being unimportant. The goal is the imagined relationship.
Of course it goes without saying not all guys are like this, but knowing that some nice guys still objectify women and are better at hiding their misbehavior and toxic traits is something to be aware of.
The way i went about it was i treated the women in my life as equals, i wanted their friendship. The relationships i ended up in over the years were basically initiated by them because i was shy but mostly really clueless about them being interested 
but i kind of prefer that because i want the ladies in my life to know that i see them as a whole person and not something to be had.
^^THIS^^
Good men in a patriarchy prioritize the needs of other men over women, too.
There are some who avoid other men who they know commit crimes (or places / parties where predators are known to be active), other men might help a woman being victimized (vs. the ones who aid and abet sexual predators), and what seems to be the smallest group of all - those who actively work to change laws or educate other men about consent.
Too true. We only have to look at the reactions of men to the Manosphere, the Pelicot trial, and any number of assault cases involving college or professional athletes to find those who will first think of the “poor men” first, while women are an afterthought.
I have grown increasingly jaded in my attitude towards my own gender. I am not a big fan of that, but I am so glad my daughters (eventually) found men worth their time, after some seriously fucked up (and in one case abusive, to the point that I got a shotgun in case he came to the house) relationships. And the fact that so many women do not have supportive homes to fall back on just breaks my heart. I see so many cases where a kid gets seriously ill and the dad “just can’t watch them go through that” and bolts, leaving mom to carry the load. These are dads I would have classified as “good guys” until the pressure came. Currently I am filing it under “the fucking world is fucked,” but eventually I am going to have to find a better place to put it. Just more fury fuel, which I really do not need right now.
Uh, that makes it sound like raping women and destroying physical property are equally bad. In fact, it makes me wonder if the reason they were kicked off campus was due to damaging things rather than committing violence against people.
There have been several high-profile members of the GOP who did this with their wives. It’s the opposite of the view @Grey_Devil mentioned here:
In places where men are viewed as more important, anyone not a man can be treated like an object that men own or control. This is why we have cases of women and children being used, abused, traded, bought, sold, killed, or otherwise discarded / abandoned by men who believe that’s NBD.
Don’t get me started on the penalties for property crime being more harsh than those for rape (and all the other abuses I mentioned above). 
I’ll believe women are viewed as equal in society when our laws (and sentences applied for violating those laws) meet that very low bar.
I’m definitely not equating them. Just making a point that they were generally bad actors. The raping was the worst of their deeds and the pillaging came along for the ride.
Without going into detail, the raping was unquestionably why they were kicked off campus and banned as a frat. It was a very public situation that unfortunately many people didn’t get the right lesson from.
Most of the fraternities that are banned at Tulane were banned for illegal and tasteless Rush activities. Like, there was one (actually my dad’s fraternity) that had this really racist event at Thanksgiving where people went in red face. And they just wouldn’t stop doing it, even when it was long past being seen as a little harmless fun.
There was a fraternity and a sorority involved in a point shaving scandal with the basketball team that got them put on suspension.
There were the Dekes. These guys:
(blog post on the Debutramp Ball and their ouster: American Zombie: The specter of Jim Crow still haunts the South's fraternity row)
(EDIT: The significance of them carrying lighted flambeaux - during Mardi Gras, only black men carried these. It was a way for them to participate in the still highly segregated Mardi Gras parades. Before electrification, parades were lit by these giant gas flaming devices. In the 80’s, some of the more elite and all white parades still used flambeaux; for example, Rex and Comus. It was pretty weird in the 80s to see a parade where the white people were riding the floats and then black men were on the ground, walking the entire route, carrying these dangerous devices, but the men were really proud to do it and it was the only way a black man could participate in the elite parades. New Orleans if very much a contradiction around race and it’s hard to know how to feel about the flambeaux tradition. When they desegregated Mardi Gras in the early 90s, none of the parades were lit by flambeaux. Now there are a few parades that are adding them back in as people revisit the art of carrying it and the significance of it to the black culture. Anyway, in the 80s white guys in black face carrying flambeaux was super duper racist.)
But, I never heard of a fraternity that was banned for raping women, even though there were several who were known for it. There was a bathroom where women would write the names of their rapists and that was the network at the time for warning other women about men. I guess no one at the administration could have figured out what those names were about or followed up on any of it?
My daughter’s college had had this terrible murder where the guy was stalking the victim for a long time. It was all known to the college. They allocated funds to Title IX and made a big deal about how they’d never let that kind of thing happen again.
Well fuck them. My daughter’s roommate was raped and had to spend the rest of her time on campus in a separate facility near the police station. Her rapist was never even brought to a school trial. She was from a culture where losing her virginity is a big deal. AND she is just the sweetest, nicest girl ever and my heart breaks every time I think about how the university failed her.
We had a frat house with this reputation that got kicked off campus because of hazing. Dark shit finally got the law engaged. But everything up to that was just… Party on.
I have a lot of gymnastics in my YouTube feed. I’ve seen tons of those videos where male gymnasts try to do not just Simone level skills, but any level of women’s gymnastics, like balance beam, which isn’t a men’s skill. The men are universally in awe of Simone Biles’ abilities.
This is one of my favorite. Here they tried to do her training routine. So this is not them trying to do the specific skills, but to do all the strength and flexibility training moves she does in the gym. It is unreal what she does.
If its the guys in the thumbnail that makes sense. They look like gym bros or typical weight lifters, and if that’s the case they just aren’t going to have the conditioning required. Assuming they don’t compete in gymnastics I would be interested to see male gymnasts try to keep up with Simone. I’m sure she’s a beast no matter who tries to go against her 
There’s a ton of videos of male gymnasts attempting her skills. However, male gymnasts don’t train on the same skills as she does. So, it’s like asking someone who is a soccer star to try to play football at a professional level. It takes time to train up on specific skill sets. I liked this video because they are gym bros and the things she is doing is similar to cross-fit training or other exercises in the gym that could apply to a lot of different forms of sports.