Monday, December 12, 2011

Rapists & Lads Mags Not Too Similar It Appears

A few years ago there was a quiz inviting respondents to guess whether a particular phrase had been written by Al Gore or the Unabomber. The more alarming quotes were generally by Al Gore.

Fun though it was to point the similarities out, you didn't get very-serious-people in newspapers and academia arguing that it proved that Al Gore literally was like Ted Kaczynski or that he created a swamp in which the Unabomber could thrive.

That's because media and academic types basically approve of Al Gore. They do not approve of "lads mags" like Nuts and Zoo*.

So here the superficial similarities between cherry picked phrases uttered by rapists and those in the magazines is treated as though it means something by Britain's most hysterical newspapers (the Guardian and the Daily Mail). This is despite the fact that reading between the lines reveals some interesting findings:
A separate group, including women, the participants were asked to rank the comments on how derogatory they were.

The results found the magazine descriptions more demeaning than those from the sex offenders, reports the British Psychological Society's British Journal of Psychology.

If the comments by actual rapists were less derogatory than those by the non-rapists who write the magazines then doesn't that demonstrate that those kind of obnoxious quotes aren't indicative of being a rapist?

* Nor do I really, they revel in their stupidity and lack any redeeming wit that they originally had in the 1990s.

4 comments:

JuliaM said...

"A few years ago there was a quiz inviting respondents to guess whether a particular phrase had been written by Al Gore or the Unabomber. "

There's also a pictorial one out there that asks 'Programmer, or Serial Killer?'...

Ross said...

Serial killers may be failed programmers.

banned said...

Earlier this year Jeremy Vine had a discussion on his Radio 2 show.

One of these mags had printed an article which seemed to suggest that it was fine for a jilted bloke to attack and disfigure his X so no-one else would want her.

One interviewee was the mags editor who grovelled apologetically and explained that this should never have got through his three stage editing process and that the writer was a temp and had been sacked.

Fair enough.

The other contributor was a squeally feminist who raged in general about these mags concluding that the article "proves that ALL men are Rapists who only see women as MEAT!"

She thus lost an the debate with a majority of callers siding with the editor.

James Higham said...

I'm so offended by your derogatory treatment of the derogatory, Ross.