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Comment by _euvw | Hacker News Reader

> rape town!

The amount of assumptions and fear in reactions like these worry me way more than those refugees themselves.

May I suggest looking up statistics on rape in Norway and Sweden before you formulate your next answer? It has been rather well documented - even though both Norway and Sweden tend to try to hide ethnicity (especially when a non-native is involved, leading to the suspicion that absence of information on ethnicity implies foreign origin of the perpetrator) - that the large majority of rape cases (Sweden: 85%, 2006 [1], Norway 'all reported rape cases committed by non-western immigrants', 2007-2009 [2]) in these countries involve non-western immigrants or their first-generation offspring. This problem will not be solved by looking away. Now that these people seem to be there to stay it is adamant that this problem is solved - not by ignoring it but by acting decisively. Denying a problem does not equal acting upon it. Blaming the victim does not do so either. Trying to mollify the circumstances is counterproductive.

[1] https://www.bra.se/bra/publikationer/arkiv/publikationer/200... [2] http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/04/15/nyheter/voldtekt/innenrik...

Shouting 'rape town!' helps though, gotcha!

That is what you get when a normal, level-headed discussion on a subject is not allowed. Merely breaching the subject in public invites accusations of racism, xenophobia and discrimination. That is not helpful as it is clear that the problem does exist. That problem needs to be solved, not ignored or hidden under a false blanket of understanding. A crime is a crime, no matter whether the perpetrator is a native-born or immigrant.

'Rape town!' is not normal level headed discussion on the subject. If you want serious debate I'd suggest you can start by not defending the comment that's clearly overstepped the boundary on what constitutes serious debate.

The poster who originally wrote those words, wrote them in context of a much larger post. (That phrase was 0.8% of the entire posts by word count). That post was written in response to a propaganda article [0] that got 130+ upvotes. You can't expect a response to propaganda to not include at least a little rhetoric.

And as far as the quality of discussion, the point it really went downhill was when this responder seized on that one small sentence (0.8% of the post!) and responded with pure empty rhetoric: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225065

> If you want serious debate I'd suggest you can start by not defending the comment that's clearly overstepped the boundary on what constitutes serious debate.

No. If you want serious debate, don't defend a comment that skimmed a thoughtful contribution to cherry-pick the most potentially objectionable bit of rhetoric and then posture off an out-of-context quote of it. And, don't repeat that same mistake.

[0] http://www.carryology.com/bags/whats-in-my-bag-what-refugees...

TeamCarryology: @Brad, I think you've missed the point entirely. Through this piece, and by using 'carry'as a thread, we're able to bring this 'serious' and dire crisis to the attention of our 130K + readers, in the hope that they may take interest in these people and visit the International Rescue Committee to learn more.

Yes but you can't say that because we have built such a PC hugbox of a world that nobody wants to hear it.

> Sweden: 85%, 2006 [1]

You're citing a report from december 2005 for statistics from 2006?

No, the report says nothing like that. It says that immigrants have a 4.5 times higher possibility of being suspscted of rape. This does not mean that 85% of all rape cases are committed by non-western immigrants. This is of course troubling though.

unfortunately the documented behaviour of the last waves of immigrants on their way to Germany does little to appease these fears

Please stop the FUD. It's true that immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics, but that is both as victims and perpetrators, and it must be understood in the light of their socioeconomic status.

Regardless, >99% of the people who are coming to Europe right now are not future rapists.

Denying a problem does not solve it. Please read up on those statistics before you start wielding terms like 'FUD'. The 'U' in this case in not justified as it is known that non-western immigrants are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics. Neither is the 'D', for the same reasons. The mere fact that a large part of the immigrants will not commit crimes does not mean you should ignore or talk down the crimes perpetrated by those who do. Which leaves the 'F' for fear. That fear is fed for a large part by the fact that discussing these issues immediately leads to outcries of 'FUD', 'Racism', 'Discrimination' and 'Xenophobia'. Not being allowed to discuss something does not make it go away. It makes it grow in the minds of those subjected to the censure. It also does not help in solving these problems since they have to be visible and understood before they can be solved.

No one is saying don't talk about the issue. People are pointing out that "rape town!" poisons the well on serious debate. Come on.

Would I have been better off if I just said "(rape!)" (i.e. remove "town")? Just saying "sex market imbalance" felt too P.C. when the real consequence I was trying to emphasize was yeah, guys are going to behave sexually aggressively towards women when they're economically starving and there are more guys than there are women to go around.

I believe "rape!" is nearly as bad as it's still just charged invective. A more neutral construction would be something like, 'leading to an increase in <crimes>' and I would have no objection to that.

Why not call problems by their name? Does calling rape an increase in sex crimes helps the victim? No, it waters down the problem so some people can keep living in a fantasy bubble, which could pop when facing pointy, definite words like rape, that just happen to describe the problem

People don't like being raped even if you've got a socioeconomic explanation for it :-P

> 99% of the people

according to whom? you don't get to claim FUD and make up bullshit in the same argument

The problem is, 1% of rapists is an awfully high number considering the severity of problem that is rape.

"<1%" suicide terrorists as passengers on your B747 means you're dead.

If a society is not able to reduce this "<1%" to at least strict 0,001% by filtering and background checks, it should probably reject the remaining 99% too. This isn't fair to the rest of immigrants but otherwise it will not be fair to your own citizens.

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