Sober Thread: Dalhousie University Dentistry Suspensions

Rape is different than murder is several substantive ways that might help explain why people react differently to it.

1. It's more common. The numbers vary, but even the most conservative estimates suggest that far, far more people have been raped -- and are in danger of being raped -- than have been murdered.

2. It's nebulously defined. Sure we can all agree that it's rape when a stranger jumps out of the bushes, and a woman fights back, and he overpowers her, and she's sober, and she's wearing a nun's habit, but those cases represent a tiny fraction of rapes. There's an entire grey area (especially including coercion, alcohol, drugs etc) that makes prosecution far from cut and dried.

3. This is the big one, in my opinion -- the victims are numerous, and they come from every walk of life, and you can't tell who they are. Would you make that same murder joke if you knew there was a good chance somebody who's child had just been killed would overhear?

Making a rape joke isn't like making a Holocaust joke. It's like making a Holocaust joke in 1939, in Poland. Make it if you have to, but don't be surprised when there's much harsher scrutiny of it.

 

I think the over-reaction to this situation is because Canadians have been watching scandal after scandal hit American universities, and we've been waiting for our own, and this might as well do. The Rolling Stones story, while discredited, is still making news headlines, and I honestly think that people have taken a lot of their anger from other stories (like that girl from Columbia University carrying her mattress around campus) and moved it onto this one. Listening to the CBC on the ride home from work, people really are conflating what these guys did (i.e. making inappropriate and unprofessional jokes) with actually committing those acts. People have been calling for the resignation of the dean of the faculty as well as the university president because of the environment they allow to fester. I don't get it. If the environment at Dal is so toxic and sexualized violence so pandemic, you'd think we would be able to dig up something a little bit worse than a private Facebook group sharing tasteless jokes. Yet the students who were discussed on the Facebook group are referred to as "survivors". Jesus.

I've been known to engage in a lot of gallows humour. Through school, and still now. I never wrote things to the effect of "I want to hate-fuck Classmate Jane Doe"... but I've made jokes in the past that some could consider to be in poor taste (and which, for that matter, I don't make anymore). I remember one drunken St. Paddy's Day where we had some hijinks with a real human skull that a med student took home to study with. I can't help but wonder, in an environment like this, if the national media saw those pictures, would they start saying I was unworthy to graduate from university because of moments like those? We had a silly "student code of conduct" or whatever that the student government published (which was, of course, different from being published by the university). It was written by the then-student body president who was always the most embarrassing drunken mess of the entire faculty. I'd hate to see an idiot like that running around deciding who was and wasn't fit to graduate or taking part in a "restorative justice" process.

While there wasn't anything like this (to my knowledge) going on while I was in school, I do see a lot of it in my workplace, though. People telling me things like, "I don't understand how you can focus at work when [so-and-so] works for you. I'd be so distracted!". The constant need of various men around me to discuss which coworkers they think are hot, trying to bang every coworker they lay eyes on, being unable to watch women walk by out of earshot and comment on her ass, looking through photos from the work Christmas party and using it creep on new coworkers. This is all, of course, the kind of odious behaviour that people want to get rid of that exists on the same spectrum as what these students were doing. Crucifying these students might - might - encourage people to do a better job of hiding these sorts of things. I think the real goal is to change minds so that people don't have thoughts that need hiding, but that's much harder to accomplish.

 

Jokes are loved and hated by all no matter what kind of joke they are. I could tell a "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke and some people would laugh. Some people wouldn't think it was funny. Some would think it was hysterical comedic gold.

Some would be sorely offended by it.

They'd say "Chickens often don't cross roads you dumb ignorant city boy! They avoid them, and if you knew anything about the country you'd know that! Bunch a cidiots!! (city-idiots)" Hell, now someone might just respond to this post calling me names because I might be making country folk seem like they take offence at stupid things. And then someone else could accuse me of being intolerant because my previous sentence said what they were taking offence at was stupid. It's a vicious cycle, really. But that's been the way of humor since the beginning of time.

Know what I don't get?

Where did we...as Jane and John Doe decide we have the right to know exactly what happened, what was said, who said it, and just what in the blue fuck is someone going to do about it? I get that shit happens, the news reports it, and we're interested. But now we (the general public) are calling for, no demanding, the names of the people who said this atrocious shit. And even calling for more. Why? That does what exactly? Allow the media and general public to what...convict them in the court of public opinion of virtual rape and drugging women? To pass judgment on some "Name" to make ourselves, what? Feel better? Feel superior that we can say how wrong they were? I wonder if everyone who thinks all this shit should be made public would allow Dr. Who to whisk through their time-line of life and record every single thing they said, when they thought they had privacy, and then play it back for all of us in the world to hear. How many people are completely and 100% innocent of saying terrible shit whether serious or joking or even just pandering to an audience?

These kids did something stupid. Nothing illegal that I know of, but stupid none the less. I'm not defending that. However, the university is taking care of it in a way they see fit and I AM defending that. They found out about it and they are taking action. We don't need to know the names of these people. No one does except the people who already know and are doing something about it. When did we become so arrogant as to believe that WE, the general public, should also be appeased? That somehow our opinions, half-baked (at best) or not, should be taken into consideration when dealing with these guys? Even the university president was quoted as saying consequences faced will be “based on a just process – one that complies with the law, is consistent with university policies, and supports the rights of everyone involved.”

Why isn't that good enough for us? Do we not believe him? If not, why not? Because other university people have lied about stuff? Blaming everyone in a certain position because of the poor actions of a few? That's an ugly can of worms... Why do people seem to be bursting at the seams with the desire for mob justice? I wonder how many of these people would be singing the same tune if THEY were in the hot seat for something?

*ehem* Focus: I don't know enough about dentistry school to form an educated opinion on what should happen to them, but I'm certain the University will do what they feel is proper based on their findings, and they're now under the microscope enough for that to be good enough for me. As though they need my approval...

 

What fucking locker rooms are you people hanging around that even jokes about raping a woman? Let alone with someone who actually has access to the anesthesia.

Having said that, they didn't commit a crime or violate any policy. What are you going to do? Let them continue to pay tuition and not graduate them, ever? Fuck off. People say some pretty horrible shit in private. This shaming/poutrage silliness needs to go away; save it for people who actively try to destroy lives. I think the tweeting/facebooking public just really loves righteous indignation. Find a hobby.

Having said THAT, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near these fucktards' dentist chairs with my mouth clamped open.

 

So, if you're going to take issue with people making jokes like "Does this rag small like chloroform to you?", I'm going to point your attention in this direction:

http://theidiotboard.com/search.php?key ... mit=Search

A teacher wrote:

Boy, I'd bet you'd just refuse to let any of your children be taught by that fucktard.

And how about this guy?

You'd be ashamed to ever be associated with him.

Or this guy:

Or how about the time we had a whole fucking thread entitled Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?

Or this:

Or that time that you made what I assume was a humourous response with a .gif to a chloroform joke here (but since the .gif is down, I guess I can't prove that it wasn't a .gif showing moral revulsion).

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you shouldn't be throwing rocks about chloroform jokes on account of the glass house you're living in.

For what it's worth, I know a few dentists socially (unfortunately). I'm not sure I really want any of them to anesthetize me. One of them has a copy of mein kampf on his bookshelf (for shits and giggles) and watches snuff videos. Another's evening plans involve getting drunk alone and going to the movie theatre. Nevermind the fucked up personal lives of some of the doctors or nurses or whatever other profession. If you're going to say that you never want the guys behind the facebook page to deliver medical care to you, well, you probably don't want to know any more about the personal lives of just about every health care professional you've ever dealt with.

 

You must have just skipped over the rest of my post where I said who gives a fuck.

It is simple. Our banter is *obviously* hyperbole. And we're way funnier. None of us actually have access to chloroform either... except you.

What exactly are you trying to deflect??

It might be semantically the same, but one of us saying we are using chloroform is different than "I'm going to fuck an unconscious chick lawl." One is funny, the latter is just fucking weird and creepy. The acceptability of the joke is in the delivery. Which these guys have no talent for.

Wait, why the fuck am I even arguing this? Fuck off.

 

Um, this is exactly what was said:



I really don't think this is markedly different from some of the things that have been said around here. The top comment crosses into creepy territory, but the others are quite in line with the jokes we make. I'm not sure why what we say is obviously hyperbole and what they say isn't. The only thing that would be different is if (as has been reported in the media) these comments were made with specific reference to women in their class. If that's the case, it definitely crosses a line, but that's something for the university to handle.

Also, I don't have chloroform. Nobody does. It's only used as the punch line for jokes anymore. Most dentists don't put people completely under - it takes specialized training or an anesthetist to do that.

 

I really can't believe some of the people posting in this thread...

"I'm funny and know comedic timing so therefore the things I say are funny and ok, but these guys, they are douches and aren't funny so string em up."
Do you some of you really think that highly of yourselves?

There is ZERO difference to what's been posted on this board or the other board 99% of us came from and what was posted in that Facebook group. ZERO.
If you try to rationalize it, you're kidding yourselves.

With that said, this is a non-story. Anyone who is "outraged" about this is wasting their breath.

 

Please note the gigantic difference.

 

I wasn't using your post Net, just the general tone of most posts claiming that these guys are shitty people for the things they said when there has been far worse said on this board.

For your most recent post, from what I've read so far that's been reported, I haven't seen anyone being singled out by name that they wanted to do criminal acts to. I could be wrong, but most of the things that are being said is, "I'd love to hatefuck so and so" which isn't even close to any kind of threat of violence or misconduct.

From what it sounds like, these weren't public statements, it was a private group you needed to belong to. Granted, real names were used once you were in the group, but it's not like these guys were posting this on the school's facebook page. Beyond the anonymity of not having to use my actual name on this board, it wouldn't be difficult to tie most of the users to a real person if someone dropped into this place and was outraged at some of the things we post. I know I would be beyond pissed if I lost a job or worse over a post on a message board. Especially if it was cherry picked out to make it look terrible. That doesn't mean that I'm going to monitor what I post and say here, because nothing I post I have a problem with, but the fact that someone else could have issues and use it to basically ruin my life, that's not right.

Think about that for a second. Some of these guys have spent the past 7 years in schooling for a career and a possible life that would vanish because they said they wanted to hatefuck a classmate? Because they made a crude joke? You'd be okay with handing down that sentence?

Again, I haven't seen anything revealed where there were specific threats against people, and when I say specific threats, I mean something that would hold up in a legal view as being a specific threat against a person.

 

I think the University is "handling" it well (not giving up the people's names is huge!), but I honestly don't know what they are handling in the first place. I've read they've had this info since early December, so if you haven't figured out what to do as of now, I don't know what they are waiting for.

It's a pretty cut and dry decision. Did these guys do anything that is illegal or against the school's code of conduct? No? Then that's the end of it, story is over and the new story becomes the school adjusting their policies to cover boorish behavior in online forms if they feel they had no recourse but something should have been done.

 

I agree with what Psychodyne said and along with Popped Cherries. The other point is that these students were dicking around, blowing off steam. The whole "These people are going to have access to anesthetics, we can't have people making these jokes with access to this stuff!" Well, the people who handle anesthetics are different than dentists.

Also, I love the calling the girls mentioned victims. How about we not tell them bad things were said about them? Just say "Bad things were said about female students." Hold those names as well. Because telling them is where the damage comes in, if we don't want to cause emotional stress, don't get into that either. I do hope some female students read those comments and thought "That fat fucker wishes, it would be the most hateful 2 seconds of my life."

 

A bunch of young, probably privileged adolescents liked shock humor and lacked empathy. Let me clutch my pearls.

That said, I'm not necessarily against releasing their names. There's only one right - the right to do whatever the fuck you want. There's only one responsibility - the responsibility to eat the consequences. If you don't like people being outraged at you, mind your tongue. Or, tell people to fuck off with their tiresome moral outrage and get used to your reputation as a dick. Don't be a pansy and try to have it both ways.

Of course, there's a reason I'm under a fake name on Facebook. Plausible deniability isn't just for presidents.