Oh dear lord: Ladies, You Should Know Better: How feminism wages war on common sense.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about rape for some time, because it’s all over the feminist blogs. When preppy white boys are accused of crimes that far too many people think are only committed by “sociopaths” or blond girls go missing in Aruba, the media has a field day. There have been some pretty shitty rape cases in the media lately (why now as opposed to, say, every day as it happens, well, anyway) – Duke being one, the woman who was videotaped being gang raped and had obscenities scrawled on her being the other.
And now we have a great opinion peice of the usual “blame the victim” sort.
Apparently, feminists “rarely discuss what to do to reduce the likelihood of a rape. Short of re-educating men, that is.”
Because re-educating men so they know that rape isn’t OK would be a bad idea?
WTF? What planet is this woman from?
“But just as sociopaths exist on the Lower East Side, they exist on college campuses.”
Rape – particularly gang rape and even more so gang rapes done by members of sports teams – are socially constructed events. They exist to “bond” team members together, to assert power and masculitity. It’s not about overpowering erections that overwhelm a man into thinking that forcing himself into someone else’s body is cool. That’s why you see so many men substitute things other than penises to force into women’s bodies, particularly during gang rapes – they can’t get it up. They aren’t terribly turned on by it, or they don’t cum, and they risk looking like “pussies” in front of their “friends.”
But teaching men that rape isn’t OK surely isn’t the answer. The answer is teaching women that – unlike men – they aren’t allowed to get drunk at parties, or go out drinking alone. They aren’t allowed to go out after dark and go jogging – if they do, they’re asking for it! They’re being stupid. Going to big college parties is part of the college experience, but women shouldn’t go, and shouldn’t drink. They shouldn’t hang out with men at all.
Might as well slap on a veil and start enacting a curfew for women, cause all those women wandering around at night are just too much a temptation. The fact that you’re born a woman means you deserve whatever power-hungry act is committed against you.
Fuck that. Fuck you.
The best way to change this fucking behavior isn’t to hunker down under your sofa and hide. The best way to change it is to get the fuck out there and assert yourself. Fight back. Be bold. If you hide away, you’ve already accepted the fact that you’re a born victim cause you’ve got a vagina.
Take precautions? Sure. Stop going to parties because all the men are going to rape you?
No fucking way.
Teach men not to rape women. Fight back if they do. Stand up and make the charges. Know where your boundaries are. Make sure the men know it, too.
Raise your sons not to be rapists.
Raise them to be decent human beings. Raise them to heroes.
And raise your daughters to fight back.
In a survey conducted two years ago by the Harvard School of Public Health, one in every 20 women reported having been raped in college during the previous seven months. Rape statistics are notoriously unreliable, but the kicker rings true: “Nearly three-quarters of those rapes happened when the victims were so intoxicated they were unable to consent or refuse.” And those are just the ones who admitted it.
And the reaction of a man to an overly-intoxicated woman?
Rape her!!!!
Whatever.
Here’s an idea: how about we teach young men not to rape women? And yes, that includes women who are passed out.
Gee, that’s an idea.
I got drunker than shit in college – usually with groups composed almost exclusively of men.
I once stumbled back through the snow to my dorm at 2am while hopped up on enough tequila and orange juice that I don’t remember key incidents of the night – like when I barged into my neighbor’s room and apparently started undressing and fell into her roommate’s empty bed. She managed to usher me to the RA, who helped me retreive the keys I’d locked in *someone else’s* room, and got me into bed where I promptly passed out and spent my entire Thanksgiving hung over to all shit.
I developed a taste for 7&7. More of the alcoholic 7 than the other one. I learned to mix drinks that tasted like jet fuel. I once happened to end the night with a guy who suggested we have sex. I said no. He suggested we make out for awhile. A couple drinks later, that sounded OK, so we did. When he suggested we start taking off clothes, I left. He never pushed, and apologized the next day because he felt he’d pushed too much by asking if we could make out.
I went to a packed house party and downed vodka straight and some guy grabbed my ass. I hit him.
I went to a cabin in the woods with a bunch of guys, drank 8 beers and 5 vodka and cranberry juices and projectile vomited over the porch and made out with one of the guys. When he suggested sex, I laughed at him and said I only had sex with people I loved. We stayed up all night smoking and talking about lost loves.
I was very fortunate in my college days to hang out with good guys who – even when just as rip-roaring drunk as I was – backed off when I clearly said no. Yes! It’s true! Men can have common sense and decency! Drinking and making out were fun, but I drew my lines very clearly, and they respected that.
It also helped that I was in one-on-one situations, and I’m very clear about my “no”s. Groups of guys – again, particularly those involved in sports – are going to be more likely to bully. As a member of the group who suggests you back off, who says “maybe this isn’t right” might get you branded as some kind of “fag” (oh, for the day when that’s not a *bad* thing!), but it will also mean standing up for human decency. Not enough boys and men speak up in those situations. Too many go along with the group, too terrified, too cowardly, to say no.
I had two guy buddies who – throughout high school – had a “rule” that no matter how drunk they or the women they were with got at parties, they wouldn’t go past the making-out stage. No sex. This meant one of my guy buddies had made out with so many women by the time he was 22 that I felt terribly intimidated by his count, even if he was still a virgin (that ended soon after – non-drunkenly [so far as I know] for him), when the Love of His Life jumped on him.
There are good men in the world. There are men who know what the boundaries are. They know right from wrong.
So for somebody to tell me that the “problem” with rape is that women are just stupid is offensive to both women who enjoy going out and getting drunk and the men who strive to be good, decent human beings by respecting sexual boundaries.
There’s lots of fun to be had between men and women (and etc), and it’s the fuckers who aren’t taught where the lines are or who are too cowardly to decide on their own who are the problem – you can’t blame a woman for her brutal rape and/or death at the hands of a bunch of gang-rapists because she chose to go jogging at night. That would be insane. That’s saying we live in a society where men aren’t responsible for the crimes they commit because they can’t “control” themselves. We’re going back to the old “Crimes of passion” defense.
Give me a fucking break.
The radical-feminist message was of course wrongheaded–most men are harmless, even those who play lacrosse–but it could be useful as a worst-case scenario for young women today. There is an alternative, but to paraphrase Miss Manners: People who need to be told to use their common sense probably didn’t have much to begin with.
To sum up: Woman, you were raped because you’re stupid.
Not because the men who raped you are assholes.
Who writes this fucking drivel?
I want to see an article that tells men to “use common sense” when deciding whether or not to have sex with a woman. You know, common sense like:
1) if a woman is passed out, don’t rape her
2) if a woman says no, don’t rape her
3) if a woman only says yes after you hit her a bunch of times, you’re still raping her.
Dumbass.
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