Live data from Hacker News

The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

31–40 of 380 posts

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#31
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under Roman law, the paterfamilias (i.e., the eldest adult male of the extended family) had the right to kill any other family member, at his pleasure. He could also control who (or even if) they married, sell them into slavery, etc.

"Over time, the absolute authority of the pater familias weakened, and rights that theoretically existed were no longer enforced or insisted upon. The power over life and death was abolished, the right of punishment was moderated and the sale of children was restricted to cases of extreme necessity. Under Emperor Hadrian, a father who killed his son was stripped of both his citizenship and all its attendant rights, h…

Yeah, it obviously changed over time, and is no longer in effect today.

Hadrian was quite late in Roman history, far closer to its collapse than its founding.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200 years ago, it was unheard of That doesn't mean it didn't happen - I assume it happened more in the past and just almost never reported.

Why would you assume that one type of killing was reported more than another kind? From the evidence I have gathered from primitive societies existing today without conventional legal apparatuses, they find the concept of murder within the society almost unthinkable and have no memory of such events taking place. On the other hand, it is not typically seen as murder to kill an outsider.

On the other hand, I think it was common in a lot of places for a long time for families/clans to settle disputes internally - if someone was killed and everyone agreed it was justice, then it wouldn't end up reported/remarkable. This is probably the category that most intrafamily disputes would fall into.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#35
post #15

I think I remember reading (maybe in the book WEIRD) that in Western societies, as the "rule of law" spread and as society became more individualistic overall, murders shifted from being between strangers or weak acquaintances (ie a dispute, a robbery, etc) to being intrafamily (ie killing a spouse, parent, etc). Ie 200 years ago, it was unheard of, but now most murders are like that. Abuse might be different, I coul…

Isn't intrafamily killing more or less a staple of ancient literature? Cain/Abel, Romulus/Remus, Clytemnestra/Agamemnon, etc. There is quite a high local murder rate at the moment, but most of that seems to result from drug-business disputes, or simply the availability of firearms to settle neighborhood disputes.

It was. Every time I hear people grumble about criminals walking free (which, admittedly, is infuriating) and that we should be allowed to settle things "like we used to", I think back to how disputes between families could be so bitter that you might not even be able to leave your own home. And these disputes could last for generations.

Rule of law certainly has its benefits.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#37
post #32
post #3

I'm interested in this, but find it very difficult to read because of the topic.

Yep. Gift that keeps on giving. Was gotten to myself as a kid and 50+ years on it’s still hard to read this kind of thing

My freshman biology teacher was extradited to Australia and jailed for this, although I did not suffer any abuse. The church knew of his behavior and moved him around rather than dealing with the problem, and this definitely clouds my view of the Catholic church. Given the topic, their entire organization is a patriarchy.

It's hard for me to read because it is difficult to picture these girls being abused, knowing that my wife and daughters could very likely have to deal with this during their lifetime. It's just depressing.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#38

I find this to be the most telling stat: "In a few cases (N So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such testing. In his experience, amongst preg…

10%? It's sickening if it's true. If building more prisons is what is needed to deal with this actual pandemic, then I guess we should start building prisons.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Over time, the absolute authority of the pater familias weakened, and rights that theoretically existed were no longer enforced or insisted upon. The power over life and death was abolished, the right of punishment was moderated and the sale of children was restricted to cases of extreme necessity. Under Emperor Hadrian, a father who killed his son was stripped of both his citizenship and all its attendant rights, h…

Yeah, it obviously changed over time, and is no longer in effect today. Hadrian was quite late in Roman history, far closer to its collapse than its founding.

German Wikipedia refers to this authority as "closely watched" for abuse by public officials; there being reports of such abuse, but only a few of them; and it being a "mostly symbolic" right. There are fifteen cases of killings known to us, and in almost all of them, the punishment would also have been due to other legal constructs.

None of this contradicts anything you said, I'm just adding some context. Roman heads of family obviously weren't habitually killing relatives all the time.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patria_Potestas

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patriarchal civilizations only began to outcompete non-patriarchal ones with the relatively recent advent of grain agriculture. There were many hundreds of thousands of years where men were stronger physically and patriarchy wasn't dominant (I mean that some civilizations were patriarchal and others were non-patriarchal).

Always a fascinating Alt-History scenario to me: what if the patriarchal societies didn’t win out early on? How drastically different would history had become?

There's a fantastic (and quite funny!) French film "I'm Not An Easy Man"[1] that sort of explores this idea but from the perspective of what society would look like today if gender roles were flipped. I think it's available on Netflix.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Not_an_Easy_Man

Post reply on HN