“Too ugly to be raped”? Whatever! Let’s talk about MY feels!

[T]hree years ago, I participated in a blogswarm set up to raise money for rape victims of the war in Liberia. I tried to do a little more than just raise money, to talk about why rape is and should be an expected consequence of going to war.
[…]
Anyone who has ever in the history of the internet talked about Schroedinger’s Rapist knows what happened next. We didn’t. That post hadn’t been written yet.

The first thing people did, of course, was deny at length and with many attempts at diversion that we should be talking about rape at all. There were demands for statistics, demands for the sources of statistics (which had already been given), demands that we talk about women exactly the same way we talk about men despite no evidence that female soldiers do the same thing.
[…]
Why am I bringing this up now? Because those people who are totally not unhealthily obsessed with FtB in general and me as one of many in particular are also talking about this three-year-old set of blog posts.

And the commenters do their damnedest to erode any faith in humanity I’ve ever had by diverting the topic of discussion to their own feels instead. Get over there and fix that, please.

I was involved in that blogswarm too, by the way — talking around the concept of Schrodinger’s Rapist before that particular blog post was written and began making the rounds. I did what I usually do, taking Greg Laden’s educational oversimplification of the question and put a shit-ton of nuance back into the example (by making the analogy well over-complicated just to try to beat down some of the common troll tropes — making it less than useful as an analogy).

I mention this only because I drew the specific “soldier” Stephanie refers to, off of those topics and onto my own blog for two days, and he revealed that his “true” purpose for trolling was to drum up hits for the blogswarm. Well, I don’t know how much of anything he’s ever said was true, considering he once pretended to be dying to evoke sympathy from the Skepchick commentariat.

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“Too ugly to be raped”? Whatever! Let’s talk about MY feels!
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13 thoughts on ““Too ugly to be raped”? Whatever! Let’s talk about MY feels!

  1. 3

    Surely Kevin, you were turned into a newt by someone who said that men are sometimes newts! If only nobody would say things like that, this community’s great rifts would all be resolved!

  2. 4

    Jennifer, get a fucking life already. You are accusing Stephanie of lying? Yes, sexual assault is such an hilarious issue and should be made light of at any opportunity, and people just say it happened for the sympathy they get…except, wait…they don’t!

    There are so many example out there of women and girls being blamed for getting raped and get no sympathy, here’s one:

    http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/main/article/male_sex_abuse_and_female_naivete/

    An exerpt:

    “Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal— especially the male animal— craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun— and, of course, guns haven’t disappeared either.

    “Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid.”

    He wrote this in response to a female reporter being gang raped while on assignment in Cairo. He said “having stumbled across a CBS publicity photo for Lara Logan, I can’t help thinking that women also need to take sensible precautions before they’re victimized.

    “For example: Don’t trust your male friends. Don’t go to a man’s home at night unless you’re prepared to have sex with him. Don’t disrobe in front of a male masseur. If you take a job as a masseuse, don’t be shocked if your male customers think you’re a prostitute. And if you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, don’t pose for pictures that emphasize your cleavage.” He thought a dress she wore once to an awards dinner showed too much cleavage. Therefore, I don’t know, it gave the message to men in Cairo that they should gang rape her.

    The author eventually apologized sort of I guess. But his publication decided to post responses both for and against his article. *Yes, they posted the pro-it’s women’s fault they get raped letters as if they were equally valid.* Now tell me where you’ve ever seen “pro-you deserved to be mugged” articles or letters to the editor, anywhere, let alone them being given equal time with the pro-stealing is illegal and morally and ethically wrong letters?

    Oh, and then there’s this apply titled? “Pegs and Holes” blog post (see what he did there!) by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert cartoons.

    “If a lion and a zebra show up at the same watering hole, and the lion kills the zebra, whose fault is that? Maybe you say the lion is at fault for doing the killing. Maybe you say the zebra should have chosen a safer watering hole. But in the end, you probably conclude that both animals acted according to their natures, so no one is to blame. However, if this is your local zoo, you might have some questions about who put the lions with the zebras in the same habitat….”

    “The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?”

    And:

    “The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way. Things just drifted in that direction.”

    Yep, there’s no such thing as rape culture…

  3. 6

    Oh shit, sorry Jennifer! I was thinking of another Jennifer who regular posts some real nonsense on these blogs. Ugh, stupid, stupid!!

    I posted those articles exerpts originally on Almost Diamonds and thought it deserved a repost here. Just ignore the first part by me… 😐

  4. 8

    no worries, callistacat 🙂 Sorry you wasted such a righteous rant on me! The tragic fact is, the world just has too many Jennifers. I posted as ‘Danio’ for many years until I decided to come out from behind my pseudonym –funnily enough I was more identifiable in my anonymity than I am under my real name. *

    *The exception being last year when the super-sleuths at the slymepit found me and polluted my gmail account voice-mail with some lovely spam.

  5. 9

    “he once pretended to be dying to evoke sympathy from the Skepchick commentariat.”

    This is too funny! What did he say afterwards? Did he go to Lourdes?

  6. 10

    @Jennifer
    LOL, it was a righteous rant completely wasted! (jk) I never heard about that fake dying story, so it sounded like you were saying Stephanie was being fake when talking about what happened to her.

    Yeah, there are so many Jennifers in the world, it’s really hard not to rant at every Jennifer I meet. Got to learn to curb that habit.

  7. 12

    Jason, why do you emphasize that there are so many examples of women and girls getting blamed for rape? I’m sure you aren’t ignorant of the fact that men are blamed when they are raped as well..so I don’t understand what the sex-specific distinction is for, other than to imply that it’s only bad when victim blaming happens to women and girls.

    There are also plenty of examples of guys being blamed, or dismissed. If they aren’t blamed, they’re ALSO told to “get over it” or “it’s been enough time” or “man up.”

    It’s purely horrifying and disgusting when it happens to either sex, so I need to know why you’re being so sex-specific.

    Same thing with those that are always talking about women/girls being “sluts” or “whores.” (ughhh.. I came across that shit today. Stop thinking about what other people do with their bodies, people!) They are most likely sexist in their judgments. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be talking about girls doing it all the time. It is also a well recognized fact that men are also sexually promiscuous.

  8. 13

    If you aren’t sexist, and it was just that a specific situation came up when it was a girl… and someone was saying that doesn’t happen.. fine.. but I can’t think of any other reason to be sex specific other than sexism, unfortunately.

    I am totally open to hearing your explanation, so don’t automatically go off on me. You have to realize how that looks.

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