Rules for a Gentleman in 2025

[GuiltyCowboy]

Man v. Bear is interesting, sort of, but it's REALLY an illustration of how a cultural milieu can make people choose irrationally.

Yes, completely irrational: all the bears I've met have just been perfectly nice men who aren't that interested in women.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Man v. Bear is interesting, sort of, but it's REALLY an illustration of how a cultural milieu can make people choose irrationally.

Obviously, and I mean obviously, if you are going purely on statistics, if you are a woman in the woods your odds of being at risk of personal danger are greater encountering a bear than encountering a man. Most men are not criminals, not rapists, and not dangerous. ALL bears are potentially dangerous. If a man wants to attack you in the woods, there are many things you can do to protect yourself. If you encounter a bear and it wants to attack you, you are pretty much shit out of luck.

The other thing that's interesting about this choice is that it ignores the upside; the focus is entirely on risk, not benefit. There's literally no benefit, ever, to encountering a bear in the woods, unless you just happen to enjoy bear encounters. But if you are a woman walking in the woods and encounter a man the odds of the encounter being beneficial dramatically outweigh the odds of it being harmful. You might need directions, or want to know the time, or where the nearest water is, or advice on a good campsite, etc., or just want to chat with a human.

The fact that so many women choose "bear" rather than "man" is interesting in what it says about our culture, and our perceptions, and our focus on danger and fear and the negative, but it's not a reflection of statistical reality.

Plus, as somebody who has spent a lot of time backpacking and hiking in the woods, I know that most people in the woods are not dangerous. The dangerous people tend to hang out in the cities.

You're not wrong, logically, but somehow the banjo from Deliverance started playing in my head once I got a couple of paragraphs into your post.

 

[Statius]

Is that true of all the simple courtesies?
Does opening the door into the restaurant imply she can't do it?
If you pick up the tab at dinner with a friend, does it imply he couldn't afford it?

I dated a girl once who did not like me opening doors for her to restaurants etc, and another who demanded it.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Probably the single most weirdly ignored or unknown statistic is that the crime rate in the USA has dropped like a rock since 1993. It hasn't done so at a consistent steady rate, but the crime rate today is lower than it was then, or when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. You're a lot safer today walking down a New York City street, or taking the subway, than you were in the 1970s. Yet somehow this (easily provable) fact escapes many people, and I've personally found that many people are astounded and incredulous when this is pointed out to them.

Well, we're getting a little political here but reporting about crime often (usually?) goes up when crime goes down. There are several reasons why the police have large PR departments.

 

[onehitwanda]

So is the US outside a few cities, and if you aren't involved with illegal drugs in anyway those places are much safer than the media would have you believe.

New York City is safer than London.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=New+York,+NY

This is crowd-sourced data, skewed by who actually bothers to respond to a survey. This UCL study is more in-depth.

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183479/1/global_cities_crime_benchmarking_2021.pdf

I'm honestly not surprised that London has a high number of assaults - pub / club culture and football culture contribute to this. What would be very interesting is seeing a breakdown at the level of:

* assault
* assault where alcohol was a factor
* assault where sport was a factor
* assault because Kev called our Shaz a slag

Also, the lower homicide rate in London is likely partly down to knives being (slightly) less lethal than guns.

 

[Statius]

This is crowd-sourced data, skewed by who actually bothers to respond to a survey. This UCL study is more in-depth.

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183479/1/global_cities_crime_benchmarking_2021.pdf

I'm honestly not surprised that London has a high number of assaults - pub / club culture and football culture contribute to this. What would be very interesting is seeing a breakdown at the level of:

* assault
* assault where alcohol was a factor
* assault where sport was a factor
* assault because Kev called our Shaz a slag

Also, the lower homicide rate in London is likely partly down to knives being (slightly) less lethal than guns.

Don't you Europeans tread on my gun rights!!! How dare you!!! ( Just kidding, I'll say it, I'm anti gun).

 

[TheLobster]

Probably the single most weirdly ignored or unknown statistic is that the crime rate in the USA has dropped like a rock since 1993. It hasn't done so at a consistent steady rate, but the crime rate today is lower than it was then, or when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. You're a lot safer today walking down a New York City street, or taking the subway, than you were in the 1970s. Yet somehow this (easily provable) fact escapes many people, and I've personally found that many people are astounded and incredulous when this is pointed out to them.

It didn't "drop like a rock," it was a steady decline that had basically mirrored the previous growth:


It's also all pretty relative, as mid-90s were clearly the period of highest crime rates ever. Plus, as you can see, the decline seems to be flatlining and is nowhere near the lowest rates in the 60s.

So I wouldn't say that "crime dropped a lot since 1993" is a statistic that is 'weirdly' ignored. It is given exactly the attention it deserved, i.e., not much at all. US cities are still pretty unsafe overall.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This is crowd-sourced data, skewed by who actually bothers to respond to a survey. This UCL study is more in-depth.

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183479/1/global_cities_crime_benchmarking_2021.pdf

I'm honestly not surprised that London has a high number of assaults - pub / club culture and football culture contribute to this. What would be very interesting is seeing a breakdown at the level of:

* assault
* assault where alcohol was a factor
* assault where sport was a factor
* assault because Kev called our Shaz a slag

Also, the lower homicide rate in London is likely partly down to knives being (slightly) less lethal than guns.

But that doesn't change the fact that outside of murder, London has a higher crime rate.
The rate of rape is 8 times higher in London than NYC, based on the data you linked.
Not sure we can excuse that as "pub culture".

 

[onehitwanda]

But that doesn't change the fact that outside of murder, London has a higher crime rate.
The rate of rape is 8 times higher in London than NYC, based on the data you linked.
Not sure we can excuse that as "pub culture".

I didn't call rape a result of pub culture, I said that pub and football culture contributes to the high rate of assaults in general.

I would also caution that this is the reported crime rate, and that the Metropolitan Police have been doing a lot of work on trying to reach out to minority communities who were previously (for very good reason, as it turns out) intensely distrustful of any interaction with the Met.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I didn't call rape a result of pub culture, I said that pub and football culture contributes to the high rate of assaults in general.

I would also caution that this is the reported crime rate, and that the Metropolitan Police have been doing a lot of work on trying to reach out to minority communities who were previously (for very good reason, as it turns out) intensely distrustful of any interaction with the Met.

I didn't say you were calling rape part of pub culture, but you seemed to be chalking up the majority of other violent crime as simply "pub culture". I suspect that most of the assaults and other crimes aren't a couple of drunken blokes in the pub.

 

[onehitwanda]

I suspect that most of the assaults and other crimes aren't a couple of drunken blokes in the pub.

I said that pub and football culture contributes to the high rate of assaults in general.

One of these things is not like the other thing.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

But that doesn't change the fact that outside of murder, London has a higher crime rate.
The rate of rape is 8 times higher in London than NYC, based on the data you linked.
Not sure we can excuse that as "pub culture".

Given that NYC and London are so similar as to be practically identical (size, diversity, wealth, global reach etc) it strikes me as extremely unlikely that one would be 8 times higher in any metric than the other.

The only thing I can think of is that the police are pretty damn unpopular/distrusted in NYC - which would likely affect how often victims of sexual assaults would report to them. But still...

Did Londoners suddenly develop a taste for violent sexual assault shortly after 2007 - more than tripling its rate? But NYers did not? Doesn't really pass the smell test.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Given that NYC and London are so similar as to be practically identical (size, diversity, wealth, global reach etc) it strikes me as extremely unlikely that one would be 8 times higher in any metric than the other.

The only thing I can think of is that the police are pretty damn unpopular/distrusted in NYC - which would likely affect how often victims of sexual assaults would report to them. But still...

Did Londoners suddenly develop a taste for violent sexual assault shortly after 2007 - more than tripling its rate? But NYers did not? Doesn't really pass the smell test.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/research/neighborhood-policing-study-community-survey.page

Doesn't seem like they are that unpopular, and certainly not enough to explain an 8x difference.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

One of these things is not like the other thing.

Now you are just quibbling.

 

[XerXesXu]

But that doesn't change the fact that outside of murder, London has a higher crime rate.
The rate of rape is 8 times higher in London than NYC, based on the data you linked.
Not sure we can excuse that as "pub culture".

The methods of collecting data are very different and not really comparable. In NY, 25% of rapes reported to the police result in conviction for rape, many others are plea-dealed down to lesser offences. In the UK 1.4% of reported rapes result in conviction. Since the definitions of the various forms of homicide and rape differ, the offences actually committed can't be compared.

We old folk remember New York in its heyday, 70s to 2000 when the level of crime approached that of Washington. There was a crackdown on crime and it's now one of the safest cities in the USA.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The methods of collecting data are very different and not really comparable. In NY, 25% of rapes reported to the police result in conviction for rape, many others are plea-dealed down to lesser offences. In the UK 1.4% of reported rapes result in conviction. Since the definitions of the various forms of homicide and rape differ, the offences actually committed can't be compared.

We old folk remember New York in its heyday, 70s to 2000 when the level of crime approached that of Washington. There was a crackdown on crime and it's now one of the safest cities in the USA.

There is certainly some nuance in definitions, but that becomes irrelevant when you are talking broad categories as the data used here does.

New York might have 27 varieties of assault and London may only have 16, but if we are categorizing all assaults that nuance becomes irrelevant.

Same with homicide, for example New York stares definition of 1st Degree Homicide is radically different than most other states in the US. That doesn't mean we can't compare the murder rate between NYC and Chicago (or London). Count the bodies...simple enough.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Constantly asking for consent and thus announcing every single thing you want to do during sex seems ridiculous to me. Reading body language is a valuable skill in lovemaking.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I dated a girl once who did not like me opening doors for her to restaurants etc, and another who demanded it.

Yes, different people can have different preferences.

 

[XerXesXu]

There is certainly some nuance in definitions, but that becomes irrelevant when you are talking broad categories as the data used here does.

New York might have 27 varieties of assault and London may only have 16, but if we are categorizing all assaults that nuance becomes irrelevant.

Same with homicide, for example New York stares definition of 1st Degree Homicide is radically different than most other states in the US. That doesn't mean we can't compare the murder rate between NYC and Chicago (or London). Count the bodies...simple enough.

Bodies are simple to count. Homicide is 4 times higher in NY. Conviction is irrelevant. Rape's a different matter; you can count complaints or convictions.

(Rates per 100,000) Slightly more people are convicted of assault (as defined) in NY than London though the reported number of complaints is lower. London has a broader spectrum of assaults to complain about and fewer convictions.

 

[alohadave]

It didn't "drop like a rock," it was a steady decline that had basically mirrored the previous growth:

View attachment 2568158
It's also all pretty relative, as mid-90s were clearly the period of highest crime rates ever. Plus, as you can see, the decline seems to be flatlining and is nowhere near the lowest rates in the 60s.

So I wouldn't say that "crime dropped a lot since 1993" is a statistic that is 'weirdly' ignored. It is given exactly the attention it deserved, i.e., not much at all. US cities are still pretty unsafe overall.

What does the Y-axis represent? Is this showing total crimes or per capita? Why does homicide and aggravated share the same color-which is which?

 

[StillStunned]

Isn't the number one Rule for Gentlemen not to drag threads off their tracks and bludgeon them to death with pointless back and forth arguments?

 

[alohadave]

Isn't the number one Rule for Gentlemen not to drag threads off their tracks and bludgeon them to death with pointless back and forth arguments?

That is the Prime Directive of the AH. No thread shall survive derailment.

 

[onehitwanda]

That is the Prime Directive of the AH. No thread shall survive derailment.

Or Star Wars references.

 

[Bamagan]

Or Star Wars references.

Tis a silly place. We must be cautious.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

This one made sense decades ago, before power door locks, when not opening the passenger door first meant your date would be left standing by the door, potentially in the cold or rain, until you unlocked it from the inside. Now that all of the doors can be unlocked with a push of a button before you get to the car it seems kind of condescending, implying that your date is somehow incapable of opening a car door.

I didn't know this!

But if that's why you would open the door for your passenger to enter, what about opening the door for your passenger to exit? How did that develop?