Highest Rated Comments


ILikeNeurons172 karma

The legal system: Throughout their contact with legal system, victims are asked to recount the assault many times. During this questioning, they are often asked victim-blaming questions about what they were wearing, their prior sexual history, and whether they responded sexually to the assault (Campbell, 2005, 2006; Campbell & Raja, 2005). In self-report characterizations of their psychological health, rape survivors indicate that as a result of their contact with legal system personnel, they felt bad about themselves (87%), guilty/self-blaming (73%), depressed (71%), violated (89%), distrustful of others (53%), and reluctant to seek further help (80%; Campbell, 2005; Campbell & Raja, 2005). The harm of secondary victimization is also evident on objective measures of PTSD symptomatology. In a series of studies on victim/police contact, Campbell and colleagues found that low legal action (i.e., case did not progress/was dropped) and high secondary victimization were associated with increased PTSD symptomatology (Campbell et al., 2001; Campbell & Raja, 2005). In tests of complex interactions, Campbell et al. (1999) identified that the victims of nonstranger rape whose cases were not prosecuted and who were subjected to high levels of secondary victimization had the highest PTSD of all—worse than those who chose not to report to the legal system at all.

It's pretty ugly. As a society, we really need to treat victims better.

ETA: Because from the responses it's clear people really don't get it, please have a look at this before you type a response here.

ILikeNeurons62 karma

On that note, I'm curious as to how your ratings of charity organizations take into account climate change. For example, would an organization that seeks to educate the most polluting nations on climate change be considered a good altruistic investment (or perhaps even a better, if more risky) investment than one that directly gives aid to flood victims? How do you weigh the necessity of national policies against the probability that they succeed, and compare that to lives saved by, say, directly aiding victims of climate change after the fact?

ILikeNeurons34 karma

The principle stance they've taken is that carbon pricing is the most important climate mitigation policy and everything else is secondary.

As representatives of a non-partisan organization, they don't want to give answers which will be seen as partisan.

And have you seen what their policy does to nuclear? At that point, what does it matter if they have feelings about it one way or the other? They decided to let the policy do its thing.

ILikeNeurons34 karma

Thanks for this response. I agree, though I think part of the problem is that even scientific studies will restrict their scope to personal lifestyle changes, which IME, can leave the larger, systemic changes off the public's radar.

What is the single best piece of evidence you could provide that, say, lobbying is more impactful than having one fewer child?