Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Subway Groping Really A Big Deal In Japan?
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Might also depend on the person doing the groping, or the manner in which it was done. Regardless of the implications of that chart shown earlier, police data does demonstrate these people are choosing victims who they feel are unlikely to threaten them, which means there is kind of a thrill to seeing their victims in fear. If it was stabbing someone with a pencil in panic, they might continue to do it in spite of the pain just for the pleasure of seeing their victim in fear. That instance of the elbowing, however, sounded more like a nonverbal threat to the pervert, which was most certainly the opposite of what he wanted.
That'd be pretty neat, or at least a campaign to socially ostracize any confirmed pervert on public transportation. From what I can see, it IS considered socially unacceptable in Japan to grope someone else. Since there is pressure on individuals not to stand out, perhaps there can be some anonymous reporting system, like what we have in the United States for suspicious packages. |
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MajinAkuma
Posts: 1199 |
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That reminds me in a scene of the Love Hina Christmas Special. Motoko was molested by a dude and she beat the shit of the guy (with her bamboo sword I guess) and everyone in the train looked at her as if she was the one doing wrong. She even got scolded by the police in another scene for it. I found it weird back then.
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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On the other hand, you have that scene in Parasyte where someone tries to grope a woman not realizing she's been taken over by a parasite, she quickly and effortlessly breaks his limbs, and everyone on the train applauds. There was also a scene in Speed Grapher where this guy gropes one of the main characters, and an acquaintance of hers follows the guy out of the train, then pins him to the floor and repeatedly stomps on the guy's nuts, with onlookers watching in a "Whoa, this is horrific but he totally deserves this" kind of way. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Again, please don't blame this on public transportation. New Yorkers use public transportation as much as people in Tokyo do (if anything, our trains are probably less efficient, and therefore, our commutes are probably longer) and we don't have nearly the same amount of groping as Tokyo. In fact, you're more likely to see a guy with his privates out ("public lewdness") than feel a grope...which is its own grossness, but at least it doesn't involve another person! And yet, last year, NYC started a crack down campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation, including introducing an app in which you can send a picture or video of an unwanted act and send it to the MTA (which is a great idea that I didn't know about until I looked up the stats for this discussion, Tokyo should start it up, too!) Read more here: NYC Subway Riders Fight Back Against Groping, Grinding, and Lewd Acts TL;DR: groping should not be an expected part of anyone's commute no matter where they live or how crowded their local public transport is, and cities can take steps to eliminate it. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Let's be crystal clear about something here: if a man is grabbing a woman's arse against her will, and she shouts at him to stop grabbing her arse, that is not the woman committing any kind of abuse. If the man's so sick of hearing so many women telling him to stop grabbing their arses, maybe he should stop grabbing women's arses. edit:
I get your point, but as someone living in a country where we get by just fine without guns, feeling that one is necessary does seem a bit nutty. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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But bears!
As someone from a city that has better gun laws than most, I never got the appeal, but hunting is extremely popular in most parts of the United States. So much so that in some states (maybe most states, now that I think about it) it's easier to get a gun than a driver's license. I'll never forget the conversation I had with a blind kid who told me that back home he's allowed to hunt with guns as long as he has a sighted person with him. That's pretty entrenched gun culture right there. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber
Posts: 2471 |
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To be fair to gun owners/enthusiasts (which I am avowedly not), scientific evidence linking gun ownership rates to murder, violent crime rates, etc tends to be highly murky and mixed (although I believe the evidence is rather clearer when it comes to gun ownership's link to suicide). In the absence of evidence of a need to regulate a freedom it seems understandable that many people do not want it highly regulated (although this is not the way that objection is typically framed, of course).
It would also be very difficult and costly to implement gun regulation reform in the US that could make much of a dent in the total supply of guns in the US. Gun buyback programs, for example, look a lot less practical when your country has the highest per capita gun ownership rate in the world with the closest competition at still one-half your figure. I imagine it'd take decades for even the most enthusiastic efforts to reduce US gun ownership per capita noticeably (although the average is no doubt raised by families with their own bona fide weapons cache, and it'd probably be considerably easier to make a dent in suicide risk by discouraging gun ownership by families that currently just have a gun or two). |
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redranger
Posts: 271 |
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I will never understand the idea of being to ashamed to do anything while being groped. "Someone's fondling my ass. Let me just stand here and do nothing!" The Japanese are a strange people....
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3768 |
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Well federal research on gun violence has essentially been blocked since 1996 with the [url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)]Dickey Amendment[/url], so some of the insufficient evidence is by design (of the NRA who lobbied for the amendment). Your characterization of the available research is correct, and really gun suicide is the greater problem anyways, with about 20,000 of the annual 30,000 or so annual gun deaths being suicide. I leave it at that as this is neither here nor there with regard to the topic. |
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NeverConvex
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Posts: 2471 |
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Yeah, the Dickey Amendment ranks up there with some of my other favorite legislation, including federal treatment of marijuana research and federal refusal to use its large market power to negotiate Medicare prices. We've got some truly zany, self-injurious legislation on the books. I had forgotten that suicide accounts for 2/3 of US gun deaths per year - that's an important point. In light of that maybe I should reevaluate my position on the issue, mmm.
And yeah, I'll leave off on the gun control issue here as well. I couldn't help myself with the first reply, but even then my better angels were trying to stop me from encouraging the continued dive off-topic. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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How one reacts to sexual molestation is incredibly complicated. Shock, disbelief, denial, discomfort, anger, shame, arousal and shame for feeling aroused, traumatized, even disconnection from reality--those feelings are within the range of typical responses to sexual assault. It's very much unique to the individual and the situation as to what the victim's response will be, and it's hard to understand if you've never experienced it. Suffice it to say that while culture plays a part, these feelings and reactions are universal and its hard to teach people, especially kids and teens, what to do in said situations. It's definitely not unique to Japan not to know what to do during an attack. That's why sexual assault and harassment are under reported world wide, as many in this thread have pointed out. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11543 |
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Yeah, no. Slander and libel are already public acts by definition, so kinda hard to under-report that. |
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#Verso.Sciolto
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The article has the following topical question:
"Is Subway Groping Really A Big Deal In Japan?" Why are the majority of thread participants seemingly having such a hard time typing a line or two like this: "Yes, groping on buses, trains and subways really is a big deal in Japan."? Here is one of the earliest surveys conducted specifically among school children by a team of researchers under Sachiko Nosaka, published in 2004. http://www.awf.or.jp/pdf/0161.pdf Answerman was asked to address groping incidents such as those depicted in Ore Monogatari and Kuzu no Honkai, both series set in Tokyo. This research applies. Page 42 of the PDF includes: 問4-Q3.無理やり、体を触られたり、抱きつかれたことがありますか 男女別 被害率 : 女子 37.2%、 男子 13.6% 「触られた」場所は、女子は「電車内」と「その他」(路上・外)。 男子は「学校内」がほとんどである。 強制的身体接触は、女子のほうが多く、学年が上がるにつれ被害が増加。 おもに、電車内での痴漢行為であり、路上などの屋外で知らない人から 触られるという状況も多い。 一方、男子は、学校内で友だちから触られる性的ないじめが考えられる。 37.2% of the girls in the survey reported being touched without their permission, compared to 13.6% for boys, and while boys were likely to experience this unwanted touching at school from their peers, girls were far more likely to experience unwanted touching on public transportation during commutes to and from school. Can "you" at least acknowledge something like that before "moving on"? |
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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It seems incredible people who would say groping is not a problem in this thread. It's a public enemy in Japan...
As someone who has a 2-hour mass transit commute to NYC everyday, I am going to say you are maybe 95% wrong. First: http://www.railway-technology.com/features/featurethe-worlds-top-10-busiest-metros-4433827/ NYC ridership is about half of Tokyo metro ridership--if every subway you've ever been on had twice as many people, maybe you get a closer idea as to how it is in Japan. Second, based on anecdotes of many people I know in Japan who has even longer commutes than I am, their statistics sometimes aren't even counted in these surveys because they live off the commuter rails that takes them to nearby prefectures where cost of living is much cheaper. There are probably twice as many of these people as they do in the NYC area. What's more, there are actually train services for these folks. People who live far from NYC usually don't have this option and have to rely on driving or buses. Now the whole groping situation is obviously not only one thing's fault, but the crowded system is a problem. It's much harder to get groped if the train isn't crowded! But the problem with blaming it on the crowding is that there is really no recourse. The train system is pretty much maxed in certain parts of the city. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Thanks for the link. You're right, I should have looked at these statistics first before making assumptions about ridership.
So Tokyo (in 2013) had 3.334 billion riders, compared to NYC's 1.708 billion riders, but only have 13 lines and 290 stations compared to NYC's *34 lines* and 468 stations? That kind of blows my mind! NYC has less riders and more trains, and is therefore less crowded. I completely concede that point, and according to this article from 2013 New Yorkers have an average commute time of 34.6 minutes one-way, compared to Tokyoites' 67 minute one-way average, so I concede that point, too (it is worth noting that New Yorkers have the longest commute, on average, of any other city in the United States). I don't concede that public transportation is the reason predators grope people, but I think we agree on that. Most people can tell the difference between a purposeful grope and merely being squished together by the crowd. The crowd makes it easier to get away with (the culture does, too), but they do not cause the behavior. |
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