Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA17879 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:55:07 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745931@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Memes and sexuality Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:53:16 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Just to interject here,
You don't have to go that far back in history to get to a time when marital
rape wasn't illegal, and as such wasn't constituted as 'rape' at all. Given
things like that, it's no wonder that the incidence of sex crime appears to
be on the increase.
IMHO, the important point relates to the discussion about taboos that
Kenneth and I have been engaged in. What is clearly different in
contemporary society is the notion that sex, including sexual abuse (whether
rape or incest), as a subject to be discussed in public has gone from being
an almost absolute taboo, to something more evidently accepted. With that
acceptance has come a big explosion of reports of sexual abuse on women and
children- note that the male rape incidence remains very difficult to
measure (as stated in the webiste you mention). In the UK, male rape was
only named as a criminal offence in the 1990s (their were related crimes in
the past, but not actually named in this way). As if reflecting that,
whilst TV soaps in the UK have covered rapes of women and child abuse on
many occasions, the first ever male rape story to appear in a UK soap
occured this year (in the teen-soap 'Hollyoaks', and has been handled with
reasonable sensitivity).
The behaviours do not go away, even in times of extreme taboo, all that
happens is that they are either openly discussed or not. That discussion
does often seem to ellicit changes in attitudes, e.g. at the time of the
famous Dirk Bogarde film 'Victim', in the 1950s, homosexuality was a crime
in the UK, whilst at the moment it is fast approaching the same level of
legal acceptibilty as heterosexuality (apart from some anomalies like clause
28 I mentioned in an earlier post, and the rights of same sex couples to get
married, and the famous case of the gay men who had surrogate children in
the States but had trouble getting registered as the legal parents in the
UK).
The strategies for trying to pretend such things don't happen can have long
terms consequences of course. Am I right in saying, for example, that one
intepretation of Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex is that it stemmed
(at least in part) from his inability to accept the possibility of
widespread sexual abuse of children by polite Viennese society as reported
by his female patients?
Of course, the further back you go, the more difficult it is to measure the
incidence of crimes of any kind, let alone sex crime where all sorts of
social factors mean that people can claim all sorts of strange things other
than acknowledge the most plausible explanations (e.g. the 'virgin' birth-
whatever the truth of Jesus' conception, whether out-of-wedlock, adultery,
or rape there's the probability it breached some kind of taboo). So there's
no way for certain to know if sex crime is significantly more prevalent then
in the past, and therefore highly unlikely that we could then work out why
(if it is).
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Wade T.Smith
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 3:59 pm
> To: memetics list
> Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality
>
> On 07/17/00 10:00, Austin Docking said this-
>
> >Sorry, Wade but could you share with me an explanation as to how you know
> >that abuse is on the rise. I would accept that 'reported' abuse may have
> >increased, in line with the availability of authorities to 'report' it
> to,
> >but no more than that.
>
> Also this-
>
> http://www.ama-assn.org/public/releases/assault/action.htm
>
> - Wade
>
> ===============================================================
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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