There’s a meme going around the anti-feminist loons, and like their most popular memes, it makes no sense at all.
But…but…we do teach drivers not to hit people. I had driver’s ed way back in high school, but it can’t have changed much: they taught us this thing called “defensive driving”, in which we were supposed to recognize that we were tooling around in a dangerous hunk of metal at high speed, and that we needed to watch for dangerous situations before we got into them; that we were supposed to be responsible for what we did with our car; and there were lots of useful tips, like to never ever drive when your judgment was impaired, as, for instance, when you’d been drinking. They also showed us terrible graphic videos of the consequences of reckless driving.
My kids went through it several years ago, and it was pretty much the same story — be responsible, be careful, take this business seriously, and by agreeing to drive, you basically agree to the risks and consequences. It was drilled into us that you, the driver of a ton of steel, had safety obligations that were far greater than those of pedestrians, too — didn’t you ever get the lesson about the ball rolling into the street, and that you were supposed to know as a driver that you must be able to predict that there might be a child following behind?
There might be some modern differences. I guess nowadays the instructor yells at you about the stupidity of texting while driving; we didn’t have that concern in the 1970s.
Of course, the analogy also fails in some places. Never, in the history of humanity, has a man been at risk of a woman leaping out of the bushes and accidentally impaling herself on his onrushing erect penis.
well and of course…that driver is SUPPOSED to be on the road and is doing nothing wrong when the pedestrian puts herself in danger…but even if a woman walks alone at night and puts herself in danger…one isn’t SUPPOSED to try to have sex with her without her consent. seems like a poor analogy…
Even if a pedestrian was a dumbass and jumped out at a car, it’s still the driver’s responsibility not to hit them.
Why did God create so many people who are obviously assholes?
The stupid, it burns!
I presume this too comes from supposedly “rational” ans “skeptical” people? Yeah, right. They are ready to laugh at logical fallacies when they are commited by creationists and someone carefully hand-picks them for them. But somehow, in their Vulcanish emotion-free intelectual superiority, they lack the deeper understanding of said fallacies and therefore are unable to recognise textbook false analogy when it confirms their biased hate-on on feminism.
Would you be surprised to learn that it is Thunderf00t proudly disseminating it on Twitter? No, you would not.
Clearly the creator of this meme has never been to Boston. The pedestrians own the streets there.
This was more or less my reaction to the statement on the bottom.
Also, if there was a pervasive societal attitude that deliberately running people down in the street was normal or acceptable and that people who were run down were “asking for it” by standing on or near a roadway, then yes, we damn well should be teaching drivers not to hit people.
I also note that the analogy implies that not raping someone is as difficult as controlling over a thousand kilograms of metal moving upwards of fifteen metres per second. And yet it’s feminists who supposedly think men are unable to control themselves.
It has been my contention for a few years now that pedestrians should have the default right-of-way, no matter what, at least within cities, and that this would reduce injuries, so the above image makes as little sense to me as it is possible for anything to make.
Since my son started learning to drive, I have repeatedly told him to obey all the traffic rules, but not to assume that anybody else is going to obey them. I mean, how much is it going to matter that you technically had the right to be driving where you were driving, if you struck somebody with your car and they died? They’ll still be dead. You’ll still have killed them, legal fault notwithstanding.
I’ve been using the defensive driving analogy since the whole elevator thing started. Never thought about the idea that anti-feminists have that men are just minding their own business, and women are reverse-raping them to make false claims and ruin their lives or whatever.
more and more, I see this cartoon when I think about bigotry
link
Think about it. If I (a big dopey white guy) hold up a liquor store, I’m a criminal. If my (young African American) neighbor holds up a liquor sore, black people are criminals. If I can’t drive I’m a bad driver. If my neighbors (young, Korean) wife can’t drive then Asians and/or women are bad drivers. You can always find examples that prove your prejudice but that is exactly the wrong way around. it isn’t the group it’s just that one person. To think you can extrapolate to every member of that group because of that one person is just stupid.
At least in the US, this is already the case.
This I’m less certain of; the extreme, open-ended version of it promoted seems to make pedestrians cocky and negligent, and Newton’s laws supersede those of all 50 states.
(This is to say nothing of the significant proportion of cyclists who feel entitled to pick and choose from Pedestrian laws and Vehicle laws when it suits them.)
@ledasmom:
Default right-of-way exists in almost every jurisdiction, but it’s never enforced. It is law in DC that you must stop for pedestrians entering a crosswalk. I work near a crosswalk with bright yellow signs (http://parkviewdc.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/img_0480.jpg like this, but there’s a “$250 fine” under it) and it’s still a crapshoot as to whether a car is going to stop in it. I’ve been halfway across the damn crosswalk and a car still barrels past me.
Thunderfoot logic:
…*
*cause there is no such thing.
Umm. So a woman being anywhere near a possible-rapist is the same as a woman walking straight out into traffic. Because rapists, presumably, are as easy to spot as fucking gert lumps of fast-moving metal.
Uhuh.
It was more than just drivers’ ed – I remember they were running anti-reckless driving advertisements on television a few years back that were about a person who had driven recklessly and killed a pedestrian.
I see “don’t text and drive” commercials all the time. I’ve never seen a “wear NASCAR protective gear while driving to prevent injury from other drivers texting.” So somehow we expect people to control their texting, but we can’t tell them to not rape people? T-footie is a fucking dope.
Yeah, because rape is like somebody hiding in the shadow of a truck and then running into a busy street.
They clearly think that men are uncontrollable beasts who simply will rape a woman if certain conditions are met by no fault of their own the same way a car will hit a pedestrian if certain conditions are met with no fault of the driver.
In reality rape is more like somebody who’s standing at the red traffic light waiting patiently until the pedestrian is in the middle of the street and then speeding up.
Oh, btw, in Germany, in terms of insurance, you’re always to blame if you hit a pedestrian.
Regardless of right-of-way laws I think most people would agree that a pedestrian unexpectedly darting in front of a speeding car would likely result in an unavoidable disaster and, further, that the pedestrian is at least partially to blame. As an analogy for rape this is idiotic. What part of any rape is unavoidable? I think a better analogy would be a driver who stops and waves to indicate that a pedestrian may cross and then guns it when they get in front of the car.
You should expect to get run over, wearing sexy tire track clothes like that.
I’m pretty sure that every single fucking time it’s some random bullshit churned out of an auto-meme-generator or whatever the fuck they’re supposed to be called, it counts as anti-logic. But I get that “anti-feminist anti-logic” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The obvious next steps are to slap this “argument” (or this horribly stupid … thing) on an actual billboard, find some youtubers to video it and write their ever-insightful comments, then get a few more idiots to rant at each other on Twitter. Should be easy enough. If it’s good enough for Aristotle, then it’s good enough for us.
Actually, a proper driving-to-rape analogy would be a driver purposefully and with full intent going off the road onto someone’s property and running them over. The crux of the analogy here being that a person’s body is their property, so the driver would have to be on the victim’s property.
Yes, I misused the word crux.
Why are cars and driving the default analogy for shit-tastic arguments?
You have the gun nuts babbling about cars killing more people than firearms — which just opens the reply: car ownership and use are heavily regulated.
Now we have…that. As with the gun argument, cars =/= guns because there is a non-lethal purpose (arguably a necessity in our culture) to car ownership; similarly, what is the analogous utility provided by pre-assault behavior that makes the assault a unfortunate but unavoidable side effect?
In other words, when someone gets hit by a car, the person driving may be doing something useful or necessary. When a person is sexually assaulted…don’t know how that blank gets filled.
Why do I have this feeling that at least one (if not, then many) people who have shared this meme defended it by saying: “It’s a joke! It’s supposed to be funny!”
Grr…edited for better grammar:
Why do I have this feeling that at least one person (if not, then many people) who shared this meme defended it by saying: “It’s a joke! It’s supposed to be funny!”
If they want a comparison between riding cars and what is happening I think this one is more appropriate.
Note that we keep the roles the same, they are in the car. And I think that even if you can’t understand dutch the tone of the voice combined with what you see should make it understandable.
VVN PSA on youtube.
And they think _we_ hate men. I, as a feminist, think men are capable of rationally overruling their Boner’s insistence. Thunderf00t obviously thinks otherwise, or is having a probably dangerous to the public level of object confusion, if he can’t tell the difference between a two-tonne automobile and a particular pound (or so) of flesh. Or he’s been watching too much CGI porn – have any new Michael Bay movies come out recently? ;)
@12: It’s definitely a individual culture thing. In San Francisco, I drove through a designated crosswalk after someone had crossed and still got yelled at by a passer-by for not stopping until they had reached the sidewalk. Sheesh.
In New York, jaywalking is an art form and drivers are expected to deal with it. Most do pleasantly enough, but there’s the occasional jerk who will turn in front of you, even when you’re legally in the crosswalk with the light, close enough to make you stop or get hit. Those guys (and it’s always guys), I bang the flat of my palm on their car — makes a horrendous noise. Stops them for 2 seconds. Then I give them a salute of the single-finger variety and send them on their way.
It’s because they’re a bunch of sadistic fucks with no sense of humor.
Ladies, if you see a one ton penis moving down the road do not leap in front of it.
@CaitieCat:
The Power of Boners is strong.
Skeptics and atheists on rapists:
“They’re a force of nature! Can’t do anything about them but modify your life to avoid them!”
Skeptics and atheists on theists and wooists:
“If we go to enough conferences and yell at theists and anti-vaxxers online we can educate the dumb out of everyone!”
I get it – Thunderf00t is saying that any *man* in an allyway is a potential rapist and the woman has only herself to blame if she inadvertantly impales herself on his penis. Or something. Or that if women avoid all men they won’t get raped?
Wait no it goes even further! If I take this to the logical conclusion, Thunderf00t is basically saying that all sex is rape! The only result of a car hitting a pedestrian will be the death or wounding of that pedestrian, so in reality we have to teach women to avoid all contact with men as they will be raped while men should not blame themselves for any sexual encounters they have because it will all be rape and the woman should have known that.
Or something.
So they think rape is an accident? Or they think hitting pedestrians is OK? Either way its a major analogy fail. A better analogy would be to walking in a bad neighborhood and getting mugged. But then they’d have to admit that rape is a crime and the rapist is to blame.
As for guns and cars, its not the lethal purpose* of guns that dooms the analogy, but the fact that in our social calculus the advantage of having cars, and the deaths that come with them, over having neither is a slam dunk case. For guns, not so much.
* This is a bad, question-begging argument. Purpose for who? Lots of guns are bought with no intent to kill anyone with them.
So that meme is supposed to reflect feminist logic? Just last week some rape-victim-blaming doofus on youtube spouted the old Thunderfool line,
I responded,
It’s incredibly surreal to now see this meme, where that argument is projected onto those who explicitly refute it.
The parallels in the meme are already grotesque and absurd, but let me ad absurdem it a bit further.
How’s this as a paraphrase of the meme — men have a lot of momentum and don’t like to brake hard, so stay the fuck away from them!
The meme has got to be only Thunderfoot’s “idea”.
Wow. Of course, when I drive out on that lonely road I immediately expect someone to jump out. Of course.
Another angle* on this might be referencing the hate and bile that gets generated when someone like Anita Sarkeesian (or Rebecca Watson, et al) speaks out.
That is to say, they are implying that feminists are deliberately walking into the street in front of traffic (posting inflammatory and inaccurate content) and then complain when they are hit (rage blogging for the clicks).
* Different angle, same bullshit though.
*spits*
scienceavenger
And that analogy is correct on the exact same level as rape prevention: it passes the shit bucket to the person who cannot avoid being there. “Don’t walk home at night, take a cab!” is only valid advice if you can afford the fucking cab.
And no cab saves you from your intimate partner, so it completely fails on that level, too…
Because men are basically high-speed transporters of erections and automatically jab anything that steps in their way.
That’s a pretty high opinion of men, you got there.
Also, isn’t this a lot like those kids who walk around punching the air saying, “I’m going to walk like this and it’s your fault if you get in my way.”?
Highly philosophical discourse, this lot.
ok, screwed part of that comment up*. let me try again:
That is to say, they are implying that feminists are deliberately walking into the street in front of traffic (posting inflammatory, inaccurate content and/or rage blogging for the clicks) and then complain when they are hit (become targets for hateful bigoted responses).
*toothache making it hard to formulate comment is my currently favored excuse.
This makes no sense whatsoever! I understand that “getting hit by a car” is meant to be equivalent to “getting raped”. But then what is the equivalent to “crossing the street”? Being born female? Leaving your house? Partaking in social life? How do you avoid any of these things, in the same way in which you can (at least in principle) avoid crossing busy roads?
It is in Berkeley.
Imagine my shock when I first moved here in the 90s and wandered up to a streetcorner, just thinking about whether to attempt to cross, and the drivers saw me on the sidewalk and stopped.
It’s a little bit less like that now, probably the population growth and influx of “newer” newer people…
Contrast that with St. Petersburg FL, where you could have the crosswalk signal telling you to cross, and drivers would still literally play chicken with you with their SUVs… deliberately trying to to hit you for crossing when you had the “walk” light… and I do mean deliberately, sometimes accompanied by shouting.
But, wait … stepping in front of a man’s penis is basically consent, then?
Douchebag should be more specific:
1. What’s the left-to-right margin of error there?
2. What about men with curved erections?
3. What’s the “consent zone” radius in front of the penis?
I think it’s only fair that women should know how close they can get before their consent is assumed.
scienceavenger #34
No, it bloody hell would not be better analogy. It would still be a false one, because: 1) stranger rape in dark alley is not the most prevalent form of rape and not the form against which the campain “teach men not to rape”, which this ridicules, is aimed. 2) there are no “bad neibhorhoods” with regard to rape, women are raped everywhere. And even if there were bad neighborhoods, putting it like this 3) would be a form of victim-blaming.
No, it is not question-begging. You are, however, playing old switcharoo (equivocation) with words, where you swich between default/design purpose of a given thing (weapons are designed for killing), its alternative purpose for which it can also be used (sport), and its intende purpose for which it was purchased (f.e. collecting). Although all three have “purpose” in them, it is not the same purpose in all cases. And it is the first one, the default, which is discussed when comparing weapons to cars in such debates.
Basically, I agree with your sentiment, but you are showing the same poor reasoning for which T-f00t is getting such a flak around here and which this bad analogy demonstrates.
On the one hand, they want women to “protect themselves from rape” and at the same time they don’t want women to treat anyone like a potential rapist? Basically setting up a no-win situation where they and their buddies can excuse or even commit sexual assault while claiming it wasn’t assault because the women don’t do enough to stop them AND to blame women when they are sexually assaulted by other people. Works out well for misogynists and ruins the world for everyone else.
Joe
Yep.
Schrödinger’s Rapist is misandrist, but daring not to live your life as if everybody is allowed to rape you is stupid…
Why do I have this feeling that at least one person (if not, then many people) who shared this meme defended it by saying: “It’s a joke! It’s supposed to be funny!”
It would be a fine example of Schrödinger’s asshole in the wild.
Aaaand I just found Adam Baldwin’s Twitter through all this mess.
Good fucking god. I did not know it was possible for him to make every character he has ever played more likable than his actual self. And he always plays an asshole.
I learned to drive this spring, PZ, and I can affirm that one still gets the lessons about minding pedestrians. On one of my practice runs, I even had to stop for a blind man crossing the street against traffic*, and was reminded to give a motorcyclist in front of me extra room because they can stop quicker than I can. (Cyclists of all sorts are also on the ‘don’t hit them’ list, since they go faster than pedestrians AND have about as much protection from me in my car.)
So, yes, it is a flawed analogy on many levels. Hell, I was hit by a car once, and I can guarantee I got less shit and skepticism than your average rape victim (or even Women With Opinions on the Internet). (No broken bones, thank goodness; just a lot of scrapes and month or two in pain from muscle damage.)
* Not his fault; the light had just changed (so no road noise) and I doubt we had audio crosswalks at that intersection.
Has nobody actually considered exploiting these idiots’ obvious insecurities or at least throwing them in their face?
Matt Forney of the infamous bit of stupidity ‘The case against female self-esteem’, for example, is notably overweight and at least in my opinion has a screwed-up face. Nobody’s tried to get this guy fired from whatever job his fool self works at since he’s stupid enough to put his real name and face online?
When someone takes their insecurities out on others, the right thing to do is to cripple them with their own insecurities.
The reckless driver symbolizes a rapist, and women are represented by pedestrians going about their daily lives. Feminist logic is portrayed as saying the onus ought to be on the rapist not to rape, rather than on telling women how to avoid it. This is A Good Meme.
Awesomeness.
Though, what with the existence of Rule 34….
–
The rule of the road here is rather simple: “Never hit a pedestrian, ever!”
There is nothing that will excuse breaking this law. Worried someone might wilfully leap in front of your car? Take the bus.
I seem to remember that the pedestrian always has the right of way, legally.
But it’s my RIGHT to run over pedestrians if it seems like they want it…
If you people had your way, you’d end traffic accidents completely!
I keep trying to think, but nothing happens.
If rapists were visible, with running lights and a requirement that they use turn signals, all potential victims (except perhaps the very young or the mentally impaired) would do a much better job at avoiding them.
Or if purposeful rapists as well as ‘accidental’ and reckless/careless rapists were restricted to known routes (roads) and never went off-roading, that would be a almost a trivially easy subset of reality to cope with.
“It’s a joke!” is a magical incantation that identifies the object as sacred, and any subsequent criticism of it as blasphemy. It’s not the only magical incantation common to speakers of Atheistic/Skepticismic, but it’s one of the more popular ones. Similarly, when a speaker of Atheistic/Skepticismic wants to grant themselves sacred status, they use the construction “I’m a rationalist”. Variants include identifying an interlocutor as profane (“You’re not rational!”).
These are dialects rich in mythoreligious terminology.
The only way that meme can be remotely realistic s if we lived where Death Race 2000 is our collective reality.
Also, ThunderingFool is hardly the only “rational” man who creates bullshit scenarios that attempts to mock “feminist logic”.
Interestingly, if you figure out some about the lives of these inane fools they’re not exactly what you’d call successful or on the way to such…
Oy. The idiocy keeps getting more idiotic. It’s always the same thing: “Hey, if you women weren’t always being so uppity, and kept your proper place, bad things wouldn’t happen to you!!1!”
I agree that the analogy made by the picture isn’t a good analogy. To the extent that it is a good analogy, I don’t see a contradiction in simultaneously saying that drivers shouldn’t hit pedestrians and also that pedestrians should look both ways before they cross the street. Likewise, I don’t see a contradiction in saying that men shouldn’t rape woman, and also saying that it’s a really bad idea for a woman to hang out with drunken frat boys. There are certain types of parties that strike me as more analogous to a pedestrian trying to walk across a busy interstate in which cars are speeding by at 80 miles an hour, and expecting miraculously to walk across six lanes of 80-mile-an-hour traffic unscathed. Some things are just plain predictable.
acetylcholine:
Which has jack and shit to do with anything. The misogynistic foundation underlying such thought is very old, and embraced by people in all walks of life. There are highly successful people who happily believe such shit, and have no qualms about saying so. Systemic sexism is everywhere, and the backlash against women is not solely populated by other (those you are dying to assign to losers), and these attitudes are very common.
People have had to fight tooth and nail to try and get the focus where it should be when it comes to rape – on the rapists. This is fighting uphill all the way, because people find it much easier to place blame on someone who didn’t, in their eyes, take proper precautions. A whole lot of people still buy into the “yes, it was the victim’s fault they were raped, after all, they didn’t do the incredibly long laundry list of precautions, which of course would prevent any rapist from raping!” crap.
eeyore @ 63
Because drunken frat boys are totally analogous to cars speeding by at 80 mph. Fuck off.
eeyore #63
Fuck. Off.
Rapists are not a force of nature.
Oddly enough, just the other day I was about to cross the road, but there was a car approaching pretty rapidly, only slowing down just before reaching the crosswalk, then stopping. For some reason, as I started across the road, I imagined the driver feeling indignant that I waited until they came to a complete stop before crossing. “Does he think I’d actually run him over?” I imagined them thinking as they fumed over this perceived slight. Of course, this was only my imagination, but the thought occurred to me, “Schroedinger’s hit-and-run.”
From the first time you hold someone’s hand to walk across the road, you’re told to look both ways, and not to cross until any approaching vehicles have come to a complete stop, similar to the way many women have grown up being given various advice on how avoid potential rape situations. One big difference is that every driver was once only a pedestrian, too, and usually still finds themselves occasionally on foot, providing, one hopes, enough experience and empathy that few would actually feel outrage that they had to come to a complete stop before the pedestrian started across.
Doesn’t work quite the same way with the sexes, however, which might be why there are so many guys upset that a woman, to whom they are a perfect stranger, may see them at first as a possible rapist; they’ve never been standing on the curb, waiting to see if that car is going to stop or not.
further to my 65
I think, if drunken frat boys find not raping people such an insurmountable task, it’s a really bad idea for them to hang out with women.
Likewise, I don’t see a contradiction in saying that men shouldn’t rape woman, and also saying that it’s a really bad idea for a woman to hang out with drunken frat boys.
This is such a shining example. This archetype should not be expected to be able to have sex with women jst because the show up at their parties. And they should not expect to be protect not coddled by college and university administrations. But it is just expected that they will act in this way and often, there is just a knowing nod.
What is the term for this?
So, you’re saying that young women can’t expect to party in college… it’s a privilege that only guys get.
And you’re saying that you should EXPECT the average 20-ish male to be a violent felon, it’s just predictable… or at least, if you are a woman and you hang around average 20-ish college-going partying males enough, it’s predictable that you’ll have a violent crime committed against you?
You know what? Your “advice” is shit.
You sure don’t expect much of men.
Just like cars on a superhighway might not be unable to avoid hitting you, they might unavoidably rape you, huh?
A guy might absentmindedly rape a woman while swerving to avoid a hazard, huh?
Too much noise, too much distraction, slow response time, he just raped her because he didn’t see her in time.
Slammed on his dick brake too late?
Maybe it IS predictable that drunken frat boys will rape women.
Maybe that’s because shitheads continually excuse them for doing it and tell women it’s their responsibility to prevent it.
Maybe your advice gives rapists a pass to be rapists.
eeyore:
No. Nope. Wrong. So fuckin’ wrong. Any woman* should be able to be naked and passed out in the middle of a room and have nothing happen to her outside of someone covering her with a blanket and letting her sleep. Any man* should be able to be naked and passed out in the middle of a room and have nothing happen to him outside of someone covering him with a blanket and letting him sleep. Any child should be able to be naked and passed out in the middle of a room and have nothing happen to them outside of someone covering them with a blanket and letting them sleep.
Jadehawk has a story about hanging out with frat boys, who were drunk, and she was drunker. She points out that she was not raped. You should be able to hang out at a party, frat or otherwise, and not be raped. You’re still putting the condition on the woman/women. Yeah, men should be able to have a drunken party, why not? Oh, but women…no, you shouldn’t be a party, and you sure as hell shouldn’t be drunk, why, that’s asking for it! Here’s a bit of news: no, it isn’t asking for it.
The answer is to educate people, and to keep raising awareness to counter the toxic sewer of sexism we all swim in. No one is entitled to sex. Women are not things, they are human beings. Women are not animals of convenience, they are human beings. The answer is to shift focus from “hey, women, your fault if you don’t…” lists, and make it very clear that rape is wrong, full stop. To make it very clear that it is still rape even if you avoid that pesky ‘r’ word.
Seven of Nine:
seconded.
Also that said drunken frat boys cheer each other on for running over pedestrians, take and share triumphant images of each other running over pedestrians, get pedestrians drunk so they’ll be less able to evade the speeding cars, and cultivate an image of themselves as clean-cut, careful drivers who would never make such a terrible “mistake” *cough* as speeding at 80 mph towards pedestrians that they had invited to cross the street.
Also that they run over an average of 6 pedestrians each.
Fuck off, indeed.
Isn’t this the same logic used by Islamic fundamentalists when they argue that wrapping women up in burkas is for their own protection? So they don’t inflame the passions of men who are incapable of controlling themselves? Because rapists are a force a nature that can’t be stopped, only avoided. A better analogy would be of a car being driven up on the sidewalk. Hey, if you get run over it’s your fault for looking down at your phone! You can’t expect us to teach people not to drive on sidewalks! That’s insulting to all the drivers who stay on the roads! So, never look down at your phone while walking on the sidewalk or you’re just asking to get run over.
So the men spreading this meme think of themselves as being dangerous machines capable of raping the careless and that the world exists for them to move through without any concern for who else may be “on the road” (in fact people not like them do not belong “on the road”) and if a woman (who they clearly understand is more vulnerable, thus she is not shown in a vehicle of her own) gets in their way they can’t be reasonably expected not to rape them?
They think this is an argument against feminism?
QFFT
Also, because idiots like eeyore always conveniently miss this: Women get raped. Men get raped. Girls get raped. Boys get raped. Infants get raped. Elderly people get raped. Don’t go stuffing people into the “only certain people in certain situations get raped” box. That’s stupidity squared.
Stopping-distance in a car at 80 mph, 400 feet.
Stopping distance of a penis at 0 mph, 0.
Is “oxymoron” the right word to use with regards to the title of this here blog post?
So…do they think men should be required to carry a licence issued by the state before they can go out on their own? That’s what we require of drivers who drive on our roads. Should they be required to carry rape insurance? Should police watch their interactions with others as carefully as they do our highways?
Nobody hates men as much as misogynists.
And because these might be needed:
Rape Culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
Rape Culture 101: https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/rape-culture-101/
Victim Blaming: http://victimblaming.tumblr.com/
Meet the Predators: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
Predator Redux: https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/predator-redux/
If men being rapists were as inevitable as these disgusting wretches would like everyone to believe, feminists would be justified in seeking to pass a law requiring every man to be fitted with a shock-collar, and every woman given a universal remote for same.
Fortunately, they’re completely wrong, but I really wish they’d fuck off, already.
There are two things wrong with this photographic analogy. 1. The woman needs to be portrayed in a painted crosswalk. 2. Most (if not all) states have a law against “demanding the right of way.”
And a bit more:
Rape Prevention Aimed At Rapists Works: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/01/08/rape-prevention-aimed-at-rapists-does-work/
Arguments from Analogy: http://freethoughtblogs.com/nirmukta/2013/10/12/arguments-from-analogy-in-victim-blaming
And since drunk driving is illegal, “drunk being male” should be too, apparently.
I guess that IS Eeyore’s message: “drunken frat boy” = “drunk driver.”
Ok then, let’s pass that law.
As I was reading PZs description of driver’s ed training, I couldn’t help but think how much better it would be if states required a good sex ed course for every teen the way that they require driver’s ed classes.
magistramarla @86, thank you for making my day just that much more depressing, given the state of that in the country. :P
What percentage of drivers even hit a pedestrian, really? Is it less than 6-13%? And what percentage of pedestrians get hit by cars? Because if one out of every five or so pedestrians were getting hit by cars (some of them multiple times) we might have, y’know, instituted safety regulations such as curbs, crosswalks, speed limits, licensing and age requirements…
Most pedestrians are run over by drivers they know. Often their own family members. *nodnod*
http://youtu.be/tX5tOX6vA-0
Pteryxx:
*nodnodnod*
But isn’t this stupid analogy going to backfire? After all, we teach people not to drink and
drivehave sex.“Yes, your Honour, I was drunk when I hit that pedestrian. But the pedestrian was also drunk.”
“Oh. In that case, a conviction would only ruin your life and destroy your future. Acquitted.”
ahah, now I might have to actually get serious about making a “why do people lol at thundefoot” series.
Magistramarla @ 86:
While that would be lovely and very helpful, it wouldn’t be all that great in rape prevention unless that was a specific class too, in which societal attitudes are covered, complete with sexism 101. Even though rape prevention programs which target potential rapists have been shown to be successful, here in the States, rape prevention continues to be a laundry list of dont’s for women, refusing to acknowledge women as full human beings, who have the right to live their lives without an ever lengthening list of don’ts, with the sword of blame dangling overhead.
That meme works with EVERY car. EVERY car will hurt you if you step in front of it. So is it “#yesallmen” after all?
And a distinguishing characteristic is that almost any victim can see the car coming, i.e., you can identify the “rapist”/car that will injure you. ‘Tain’t necessarily so w/r/t identifying human rapists.
magistramarla #86, I admit I laughed. Now I’m picturing graduated sex ed licenses where teenagers’ first 50 hours of sexual experience has to take place under the supervision of a licensed adult over age 21. (And only 10 hours of the 50 can take place at night!)
“Mom, can we borrow the car?” “Sure thing you two, just use protection, remember consent, and don’t leave the garage.”
(mostly for illustration and humor purposes):
Illinois teen driver safety
So, in this analogy, having a penis is like operating a machine that weighs a ton or more and is capable of moving at very high speeds. And interacting with men is like wandering in traffic, and getting raped is just as inevitable and predictable as getting hit by a car when you’re crossing the street. Expecting men not to rape you is as silly as not looking both ways before you cross.
Shock collars aren’t going far enough. The clear implication is that we need concentration camps for all men. With day passes and constant surveillance for the well-behaved ones. We may have to simply kill off a large proportion of the male population to get this to work. It’s harsh, but, well, Thunderfoot said it and everyone knows how logical and rational he is.
to clarify, I agree with Iyéska at #94. In my view, anti-rape education and consent should be part of comprehensive and fact-based sex education, to which everyone should be entitled as a human right. Too often what passes for sex ed actively subverts that goal.
*quote-mines SallyStrange @97 and wanders off to start a MRA group.*
@acetylcholine
Yeah they’ve considered that and we even have a term for it. It’s called “being an insufferable asshole”. Sounds like you have something against fat people and you just couldn’t wait to bring it up.
I’d also like to register my dissatisfaction with the automobile driver / pedestrian binary.
Iyeska @ #94
Sounds like a great idea. Perhaps if there were an open discussion about consent, respect for other people, what rape is, etc during the teen years there wouldn’t be so much awful stuff going on. However, we first have to get loggerhead parents not to block the mandated (in California) sex ed class in the first place, as occurred with my son.
I see I’m seconding Ptyerxx here and offer my own *nodnod* to #88.
The more MRA groups, the stronger the case for concentration camps for men! It’s all part of my grand plan! MUAH HAH HAH HAH HAH
acetylcholine @ 51:
I’m not sure how I missed this earlier, perhaps my brain curled over my optics in distaste. No, that is not the right thing to do. That is an extraordinarily shitty thing to do. If it’s not right for them to be doing such things in the first place, it’s rather obvious it’s not the right thing for others to do.
Also, where do you get the idea that retaliation is some sort of goal? That gets you nowhere, except smack in the middle of an escalating war. The goal is change societal and cultural norms. The goal is to challenge attitudes and beliefs. The goal is raise consciousness, to further awareness, to bring about the radical notion that women are human beings to every day acknowledgement and acceptance. To bring all people to the understanding that all human beings be accorded agency and autonomy.
This is in response to that anti-date rape nail polish and the feminists who pointed out that, while it was well-meaning, it was a misguided attempt at helping. All I could think when I saw people talking about it was “Oh you had your drink spiked? Why weren’t you wearing your special nail polish?”. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/colour-changing-nail-varnish-isnt-going-to-stop-rape-or-the-vicious-culture-of-victim-blaming-9694121.html
So of course they’re missing the point of the criticism completely, it’s kinda what they do.
Really? There are parties where men’s penises are traveling in a straight line with 2 megajoules of kinetic energy?
When you put it that way, it actually sounds kinda hot.
…
Ahh, shit! I did ask for it, didn’t I! Now I have no one to blame for my inevitable assault but myself.
Rumtopf @ 105:
I hadn’t even heard of that. I feel rather obligated to acknowledge that it was a nice try, but totally missing the elephant in the room, guys! Ms. Hamilton was spot on in that article.
One of the tactics that the special drinks straws and nail polish don’t address is the very common alcohol loading, which wouldn’t cause a twitch of colour change. So, we’re back to where we always are, desperately trying to change the focus when it comes to rape and assault.
A better (but still flawed) car/rapist metaphor that comes to mind is the Anti-Jaywalking Vigilante. Whenever he sees someone cross the road in a fashion that isn’t his private definition of perfect, he uses those imperfections (dressing ‘provocatively’, getting drunk, etc.) as a license to intentionally run them over, which he planned to do, anyway. His rules are just a formality to ease his conscience and shift blame. He gets popular support and media pundits making excuses for him, because those pedestrians ought to know better than provoke a guy like him. So he can run over anyone he feels like and they’ll be blamed for not meeting his impossible standards of proper road crossing procedure.
The people who blame the victims are thus asking pedestrians to live in constant fear of this vigilante and to center their life around accommodating his arbitrary and unknowable sensibilities. We, on the other hand, suggest the vigilante be held responsible for running over people and that pedestrians should have some reasonable expectation of not being run over if they feel like going to a party across the street.
Of course, the fatal flaw with the analogy is it assumes all car/pedestrian collisions are intentional. I can’t imagine any sort of accidental rape.
OK, since nobody seems to have gotten my point, let me try again. When a guy does something stupid, and gets injured as a result, nobody (not even him) expects him to get any sympathy. If I go into a bar with a reputation for having a crime problem, and I get mugged, the first question I’m going to get asked is why was I in the bar. Nobody seriously thinks that my being in the bar gave the mugger the right to roll me, but nobody is going to be all that surprised that it happened either. And the reaction I’m mostly going to get is that it was my own stupid fault for putting myself in harm’s way. That, in this society, is what happens to guys who do stupid things. Why should women who do stupid things expect to be treated any differently?
Yes, a woman should be able to be naked and passed out without anything bad happening to her. No, that is not the way things are likely to play out in actual practice. And the notion that there are no consequences to stupidity does a huge disservice to women. Maybe there shouldn’t be, but there are.
eeyore,
How about if it was every bar?
And every other place where alcohol is served, including a friend’s or family member’s home. Hell, even your own home.
If a penis leaves Dayton at 4:34 am heading east at a speed of 110 MPH…
eeyore, read the educational links Iyéska posted, you are embarrasing yourself.
No, fuck you. We GOT your point. We also concluded that it was complete bullshit.
eeyore@110:
Please list the “stupid things” women do that cause them to get raped.
*gets popcorn*
The only way I could see this analogy even coming close to being analogous is if they changed it completely and made it a drive-by shooting rather than hitting a pedestrian. As in, no longer an unfortunate accident, but a vehicle-based deliberate violent crime against a person who is just going about their business and doing nothing wrong.
Kind of undermines the idiot misogyny of the false analogy, though.
Eeyore, put the shovel down and stop digging.
eeyore #110
Yep. And that reaction is the wrong reaction. whether at people being raped for “being in the wrong bar” or for people being mugged for “being in the wrong bar,” that very common reaction is the reaction we want people to be taught not to make.
Welcome to progressivism. Have a nice day.
Thunderf00t’s a bit behind the times. This identical trope, with a photo of schoolchildren crossing by a crossing guard, was bouncing around six months ago, and Amanda Marcotte had a wonderful skewering of the logic’s idiocy at Pandagon. I cannot find an archive-search function there, however, so I don’t have a URL handy. If anyone else can did it up, please cut and paste here — as ever, the stupid, it burns.
eeyore @ 110
Le’ts list the places that have a reputation for having a rape problem, shall we?
1. Everywhere
2. Everywhere
3. Everywhere
4. Everywhere
Do you see where I’m going with this yet?
I always thought that the “walking through a bad neighborhood” was a good analogy. The reason why is just as a woman should be able to dress how she wants without fearing rape, I should be able to take a walk without fearing death. If a person shoots me in a bad neighborhood, the person isn’t somehow less guilty because the neighborhood had a bad reputation in the first place.
The unfortunate fact is that there are men out there who think that revealing clothing is an invitation to harassment and even rape. Our goal as a society should be to educate them so they know that’s wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of these men are not getting the message, and people should be aware of that. This, however, doesn’t lessen the blame of the rapist (or give any blame to the victim).
@116 Buffybot: I recall one of Marcotte’s analogies now: Don’t Tell Construction Companies To Fence Off Projects, Or Not To Drop Cement On People’s Heads, Tell People To Wear Hardhats On Their Walk To Work.
eeyore@110:
Do you really think that the crux of the problem with sexual assault is women undressing themselves in public, then passing out, and later complaining that they were touched? Is that even 1/1,000,000 of the sexual assault cases? Deal with reality, not unlikely hypotheses, and you might see the problem with your logic.
eeyore,
Is it “stupid” to criticize Islam? Was your reaction to Theo van Gogh’s death “well, he knew what would happen”? If Ayaan Hirsi Ali is murdered, will your reaction be “stupid woman, what was she thinking? She knew the penalty for apostasy!”
eeyore, you’re making a classic mistake.
you are asserting that rape only happens in certain circumstances that people see coming a mile away, and that is so incorrect.
the problem isn’t getting drunk at a frat party, but you’re trying to make it seem like that is the problem. The problem is there, but you’re missing the point.
It is everywhere.
The problem doesn’t just happen when you’re drunk. it happens in every circumstance of consciousness, up to and including death.
The problem doesn’t just happen when you’re a certain age. It happens in every age group.
Try wrapping your mind around it. It doesn’t matter where you go, “good” places or “bad” places. It doesn’t matter how sober/impaired/conscious you are. It doesn’t matter how you’re dressed. It doesn’t matter if you smile and talk or turn away. None of these things you’re trying to make the problem about are the problem, because it’s bigger, wider, and much more pervasive than your scenario of an old house with plywood greek letters nailed on it and an abundance of alcohol.
You can never go to a frat party ever once in your life, that doesn’t matter. You can never set foot in a bar of any sort. You can never go out alone after dark at any time, anywhere. you can dress in a way that covers your body from neck to wrists to ankles. you can have never experienced any sexual activity at all, and you’re still at risk for rape, and you will be blamed for it. no matter the circumstance. no matter what you do or don’t do or never have done. You’re still at risk.
When I finally faced that reality, that there is no amount of respectability that will actually protect you from rape, I had to wonder. If that’s true, then whose fault is it?
I thought it was pretty simple. the fault is the rapist’s.
I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand.
And, the bar with bad reputation/dangerous neighbourhood/dark alleyway thing is bullshit. Can only be defined as such in retrospect, if the focus is solely on somebody who was unlucky enough to be victimised by a criminal there.
All of us get off a bus at night, and walk from the stop to our respective houses. One of us is assaulted. Who made the bad decision to do something dangerous here? None of us, including the one who was unlucky enough to encounter somebody with criminal intent along the way.
I fail to see why anyone would take seriously the social analysis of an obsessive ignorant motor head as being remotely interesting or relevant . As a springboard for discussion though it is OK.
I would think that real sex-ed. would include much more than just how to get pregnant or how babies are made. It would have to be much more than one semester in the 6th grade. We are a very sexual animal sexual imagery is everywhere. Any really good education should take that into consideration, all the cultural implications should be considered and explored including how to’s.
It would have to include plenty on relationships what are they and how do they work, with plenty of emphasis on healthy coping skills.
We don’t do that instead we hear incredible crap from self important ignoramuses.
It is just a sci-fy utopia dream I do not really expect to ever see come to pass.
uncle frogy
Literally, unless neglecting friction. >.>
eeyore:
Oh, we got your point. I suggest you stop digging.
@Eeyore:
People who get raped, be they men or women or children, most frequently get raped
IN THEIR OWN FUCKING HOMES
eeyore @ 110:
So, you’re a rape apologist as well as a gun apologist, then. As you seem to have severe comprehension problems, I’ll put this simply: you are putting the onus of being raped on the victim. The onus should only and always be placed on the rapist. Full stop. It’s really that simple.
Now, since you want to talk about bars, let’s have a list of all the dont’s as they apply to men, shall we?
With regard to eeyore, when a man passes out naked at a frat party, should they expect to be sexually assaulted?
Why or why not?
If you answer that they should, then there would need to be some explanation as to why women are the targets of “don’t drink if you don’t want to be raped” messaging.
If we menfolk rightly have an expectation that our state of inebriation shouldn’t result in sexual assault, then you need to explain why women shouldn’t also have this expectation.
I find it very difficult to believe that a man assaulted at a frat party would be met with, “sorry bro, shouldn’t have tossed back all that jaeger.”
eeyore:
:Laughs: Oh my. You’ve obviously never worked as a rape advocate. If you had, you’d know the incredible level of shit rape victims face from those who are supposedly on their side. People a lot like you, who will find a way to blame the victim no matter what. The majority of people who are mugged are never subjected to such abuse.
I’ve related this so many fuckin’ times, but for the nth: when I first met the D.A. who would be prosecuting the man who raped and tried to murder me, the first thing he said to me, after looking me up and down, was “what the hell were you thinking, being out after dark, in a dress?” I was 16 years old. Think about that, because that’s the kind of asshole you are being.
eeyore – I think that the problem is this:
“Why should women who do stupid things expect to be treated any differently?”
What exactly qualifies as “stupid things” in this context? Getting drunk to the point of passing out? I agree that’s stupid, but only in the sense that it’s bad for your health. You should have free reign to critique anybody who does that on the basis of them not taking very good care of themselves.
Let’s put it this way though – what if this person got drunk in his/her own home and passed out. Then, people came in and robbed the house, and since the person was passed out, he/she was unable to do anything about it. Is the problem getting drunk or that there are thieves?
If there were no thieves and rapists, the people in both scenarios would only have to deal with a massive headache – the only sort of punishment where it’s legit to say: “You should have thought about what you were doing.”
I have yet to see anyone say that there are no consequences, or that women should not put any effort towards personal protective measures. I’m certain you’re imagining things.
Interestingly, in industry, personal protection is the last step in protective measures. If there’s a hazard, efforts are supposed to be made to remove the hazard entirely or, if that is not feasible, reroute the hazard away from anyone: labs have fume-hoods and ventilation to remove fumes from various chemicals; mines put massive planning into their ventilation infrastructure. Areas where there’s loud machinery are often cut off from the rest of the workplace. All of these things could be addressed by personal protective measures: gas masks, ear plugs, etc. Yet we don’t do that: eliminating the risk is a much better and far more reliable solution than demanding everyone take responsibility for themselves, particularly when there are no reliable measures short of not leaving your home and not letting anyone in.
Nowhere in my drivers’ ed book did it say that the rules applied to the Wicked Witch of the West, nor anyone wearing her clothes.
Checkmate, feminists!
Some examples from those in my life:
My partner was raped by her previous boyfriend, in her own bedroom.
A friend of mine was sexually abused by her then boyfriend (incidentally, he was a friend of mine; before then I would have vouched for him in any matter).
My brother was sexually abused by his friend, in his friend’s home, while my other brother and another friend watched.
Wherein lies the stupidity?
eeyore, #63
1. You’re focusing just one example of a situation in which rape is committed. Your analogy is also hopelessly flawed. A pedestrian not looking both ways before walking out has created a situation for the driver in which he/she will have a harder time avoiding the pedestrian. Are you seriously comparing that to a girl existing in the same room as some male college students?
2. Yes, sure it can be a bad idea to hang out with drunken frat boys. But hanging out with drunken frat boys is not a wrong-doing. The wrong-doing is the act of rape. If I had a daughter and she went out alone to a dangerous part of town at 1 am, I would do my very best to advise her not to. But if she is raped while out, the blame is 100% on the person who did it. She will not be told, “you shouldn’t have gone out.” Why? Because she is not doing anything wrong by going wherever she wants, whenever she wants. Just like you can go wherever you want whenever you want.
Making an unwise decision like this is absolutely not the same as sharing the blame for the outcome, or deserving it, or asking for it.
Think about what the word “rape” means and answer screechymonkey’s question:
Seriously. We want to see an answer.
http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/
Note again the misandrist assumption in all this. Men are uncontrollable forces of nature, without human agency, mindless machines like runaway cars, who cannot be expected to moderate their own behaviour.
Iyéska,
Fantastic! I gotta use that sometime.
Wait… I don’t mean I need those tips, ahhh you guys know what I mean.
Jackie @ 79;
Exactly – they whine about the imagined misandry of feminists, but they bolster their hatred of women by cultivating and promoting a mindset about men that casts penis-havers as being essentially subhuman creatures so bereft of anything approaching self control or a capacity for empathy or moral action that they can’t be held accountable for their actions at all, and so women must bear the blame when those effectively ‘morally insane’ men commit rape. In their rush to try to excuse rape, they wind up dehumanising the very men they imagine they are championing, adding incompetence to nauseating bigotry.
It is monstrously twisted, and ironically vastly more misandrist than anything the vast majority of feminists would ever consider saying.
If a pedestrian was careless and gets hit by a car, the internet does not go on a rampage blaming him (well, if it is a her, they might do it) for not looking both ways.
If a drunk driver hits a pedestrian, “but the pedestrian didn’t look both ways before crossing” does not ever work as a legal defence.
eeyore
I put it as simply as I could. Read. Absorb.
Amphiox:
I think it’s more a reaction against the idea that men should, in any way, be restricted in what they want to do. This is why (at least here in the States), we still have one laundry list after another of don’ts for women (check a police rape prevention list sometime, it’s fucking depressing), while there’s zero interest in focusing on the potential rapists. Men get the agency and autonomy, women get the “obey or else!”.
Daz @ 144, very nice!
Iyéska
Thank you.
eeyore, I was raped in my own home, on the couch where I watch tv, while wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater dress, in mid-afternoon, by a “friend” who I had invited over to drink tea and play Magic: the Gathering. But obviously I should have made smarter choices, right?
This is the world women live in. Note that I have invited friends over for cards and tea on many occasions, and most of them have not raped me. How are women supposed to make decisions that will help them avoid being raped when rapists can invade literally any space?
@eeyore
–
You make an analogy in which visiting a venue with a “reputation for having a crime problem” and subsequently becoming a victim of crime can be interpreted as being the fault of the victim. There are some fundamental problems with accepting this approach and the main one is that the crimes under discussion require criminals to commit them. Consider that most ordinary people, when they encounter someone who is vulnerable or compromised in some way, would probably attempt to help them or, if unable to do so, will likely seek help from someone who can, or may possibly leave them alone and hope someone else who can help will come along. Under ideal circumstances, this means that someone who gets completely drunk on a night out can make it to a place of safety, such as their home or a friend’s home, and can then sleep it off, sustaining nothing worse than a hangover the following morning. If they come across a criminal and as a result are mugged or attacked, it is only the criminal’s actions that have deviated the victim from this ideal trajectory; the victim carries absolutely no responsibility for the crime. None whatsoever. Note that the gender/age/ethnicity/occupation/clothing/religion/political ideals/other of the victim is completely irrelevant to the fact that a crime has been committed against them. And it shouldn’t matter which bar they went to.
–
Another few points to consider: why is it acceptable for a bar with a “reputation for having a crime problem” to exist? Why has this bar been allowed to become part of the landscape and the crime committed within in to be normalised? Why has being the victim of crime by attending this bar become accepted by society as the default outcome? Is this right? Should something be done about this bar? Should preventative measures be undertaken to prevent other bars from becoming like the one in your analogy? Should something be done about the attitude of blaming the victim, given that the problem is that there are criminals?
–
Think about it. And I hope you’re reading the other posts in this thread and accessing the information that has been linked to extensively.
@eeyore, if there was a particular alleyway full of muggers, and lots and lots of people walking down that alley get mugged routinely, what would be the PUBLIC reaction?
While, in private, lots of people will avoid that alley, and tell their friends and loved ones to avoid that alley, do you see a cavalcade of youtube videos blaming mugging victims for walking down that alley?
No, you do not. What you see is a local outcry to get tough on crime, crack down on the muggers, and clean up the neighborhood. You get politicians running on that platform. You get community advocacy groups forming to fight for that. You get angry letters sent to the POLICE to DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM, rather than harassing letters to mugging victims.
There is a difference between private and public blame. I have no doubt that any victim of any crime spends a lot of time blaming herself or himself, second guessing his or her decisions, and wondering if they could have done anything to have avoided becoming the victim of that crime. Private blame is intensely personal and we the public have no business interjecting ourselves into it. This kind of blame is irrelevant to this ongoing discussion, which is about public blame.
This is one of the many critical distinctions that thunderf00t in his dishonesty, and his many apologists in theirs, deliberately ignore.
Let’s turn the focus on men for a bit. A positive focus. How about the bystander effect? When men engage, this is a very effective measure in rape prevention. This involves men, who are out and about, at bars, parties, restaurants, etc., paying attention to what’s going on around them, and making noise when they see dodgy stuff going on, like a guy alcohol loading someone’s drink, and so on. This involves men who see another man in a position to take advantage and prevents it. (Women are already doing this, so keep this particular focus on men.)
In the homosocial sphere, men listen to other men. Men care about what other men think, of them and things in general. Don’t let rape jokes slide by in silence. Speak up. Other men will speak up too, once the silence is broken. Don’t let misogynistic talk slide by in silence. Speak up, refute it, and refuse to carry it. Make the point that women are human beings, and emphasize it. Men can be out and about and having a good time without tacitly sanctioning sleazy, immoral acts by turning a blind eye. Talk about consent. Talk about the best thing to do when drunk is sleep it off. Men know what to talk about, but a lot of men don’t want to take on that responsibility. When you take the view that we are all human beings, that responsibility rests on all of us.
@eeyore #63
I’ve been to quite a number of parties over the years. At none of the parties I’ve gone to have I expected them to be full of rapists. In fact if I had known or suspected a rapist to be present, I would leave, after recommending other people to leave and warning them of the rapist, or perhaps try to get the rapist shown the door. If I suspected someone at a party was going to rape an intoxicated partygoer, I would try to intervene and get that person safely home. In fact I tend to try to help any intoxicated person get safely home or look after them if they sleep it off at the party and am very happy when people do the same for me. In fact, I expect the same courtesy all around. I look after drunk you, you look after drunk me, even strangers.
That is the message to take away from any kind of analogy like that, not “women shouldn’t drink or go to parties”. Because you can’t tell which are the “rapist” parties. It may be a surprise, but many rapists pass as perfectly ordinary men (and women), they don’t have an eye-patch or hook or anything. You can get raped at a small party for friends in your own home just as in the most night-club. The interstate is not the problem – it is the individual drivers who take pleasure in trying to run you over.
@eeyore #110
That’d be victim blaming, the thing everyone is saying is bad (from this comment you obviously see it is bad). Me personally the few times I got clocked I’d blame myself a bit for not trying to deescalate/saying something abrasive. My friends always said: “the bastard, he had no right to hit you!”
So, two potential situations.
Situation 1: I’m driving along and a pedestrian walks out into the road. I have no time to react and/or my only way of avoiding them is unreasonable (e.g. driving off the edge of the roadway and over a 100ft drop). I hit the pedestrian. Depending on the tort laws of the state and the specifics of what happened, I might still be in some trouble, but none of that’s really important. It’s not important, because unlike potential accident scenarios, there is no situation where I, as a man, cannot avoid raping a woman. In fact, using the word “avoid” isn’t even appropriate like it would be in the accident analogy. I’m not avoiding anything, I’m simply not doing it. You know, because I’m not a fucking asshole. So that analogy is invalid.
Situation 2: I’m driving along and a pedestrian walks out into the road. I have plenty of time to stop and/or plenty of room to avoid them. I choose to continue driving at my current speed straight down the road and I hit her. Guess who’s in trouble? It’s not the pedestrian. Regardless of whether the pedestrian should have been in the road, the fault is ultimately mine because I had clear, simple choices and I chose the option that resulted in injury to another human being. Men have a clear, simple choice: Rape cause injury to another human being, or don’t rape. There are no situations where that’s not the choice. There are no situations where there are valid consequences for choosing the “don’t rape” option. The choice to rape is that of the rapist, just like the choice to cause harm in this example is that of the driver, and ultimately it’s those individuals who are to be held accountable.
=8)-DX:
It’s not a matter of passing. They are ordinary people. Whether you know it or not, most people have at least a passing acquaintance with someone who has committed a rape. For those who haven’t read them, please read the Meet the Predators and Predators Redux linked in #80. A study found that if the word rape was avoided, a lot of people would admit to forcible sex.
The problem, which lies deep, is in rape culture. A culture with far reaching roots in the history of misogyny. A culture in which women are not viewed as full human beings, a culture which views rape as a “eh, well, sex” through the lens of boys will be boys. Even in child rape, which is generally viewed as heinous and wrong, there is a tinge of “oh, she is damaged goods now” when it comes to female children, and a tinge of “oh gods, I hope this doesn’t make him gay” when it comes to male children. When it comes to men being raped in prison, which is often horribly brutal, a whole lot of people shrug it off with a “well, they shouldn’t have been doing something which would land them in prison.” All people are running about with a whole lot of sexist bias, it takes work to become aware, and to stay aware of them as they surface.
@#22 Saad
Also in #21 “purposefully” (resolvedly or determinedly), when, IMO, purposely (intentionally) is called for. Though this seems to be happening more and more, and for all I know more recent dictionaries may already define purposefully as “also meaning: intentionally”.
Would everyone mentioning the stupidity of traveling through ‘bad neighborhoods” please give us a detailed description of a “bad neighborhood” and how to avoid them?
Do they have any suggestions for women and girls who live in these “bad neighborhoods’ or any proof that rape only happens in certain spaces, presumably inhabited by poor people?
The “Bad neighborhoods are where rape happens.” trope is just “Rich white men never rape.” reworded.
Buuuuulllllshit.
Jackie @ 156:
On the personal anecdote level, every time I’ve lived in a neighbourhood deemed ‘bad’ by other people, I’ve found them to be very safe, because people look out for one another, pay attention to what the fuck is going on outside their door, and talk with one another.
Jackie:
Heh. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, anyone?
Actually, i was thinking about this recently when watching muslim couples where she is covered head to toe in wide, flowing garments: They’re existing and living in a society where summer temperatures mean that many women wear less on their whole body than the muslim woman is wearing on her right arm, but still he manages to walk by, leaving these women who are supposed to cause him to have uncontrollable urges alone. I also don’t hear much about more conservative muslim men suffering lots of heart attacks or nervous breakdowns from having to restrain themselves from raping scantiliy clad women in a European summer.
Seems to me like they’re perfectly able to control themselves as long as there is a culture that clearly tells them that these women have a right to exist in public while wearing only two fat quarters.
I’m wondering if that might work on fratboys, too…
+++
Also, people, please stop using the “bad neighbourhood” analogy. Because people have to fucking live in “bad neighbourhoods”. What you’re actually saying is “be privileged enough to be able to live somewhere else.”
*snicker*
To paraphrase the Doonesbury character Mark, “Guilty-guilty-guilty”
Jackie
In my experience, it means ‘one where more than ~30% of the residents have a skin tone darker than pale tan’. In the absence of such neighborhoods, substitute ‘ones where there is a significant presence of non-English speakers’. If neither of those are present, the ‘bad’ neighborhood will be the one where the median income is the lowest.
I always laugh at “bad neighborhood”. I live in a mixed neighborhood. Many folks consider it a bad neighborhood. Which in this area, means white, black, Hispanic, and oriental living on the same street. When I left for work this morning, it was raining, and I must have activated the garage door opener trying to keep the door open while I was trying to retract the umbrella. Got home this afternoon, garage door wide open, and nothing missing from a quick glance. Been there, done that before, and nothing has been missing.
Whereas in Dah YooPee, we lost some stuff from the garage to the local teen-aged thief, an only son of a couple of college profs, who was lacking for attention, and stole to get that attention. He did get that attention, and last I knew was doing time in Marquette for his crimes.
xavierninnis4191, #155
Ah, crap. Two strikes in one thread.
*reads post over and over before clicking “Post Comment”*
Oh, my own neighbourhood is considered one of the “less good”. Lots of subsidized housing. Lots of people with accents. Love it here.
The one time my car got broken into was while Iived in the most attractive area of the city…
Hitting a pedestrian: unintentional
Rape: deliberate
False analogy is a logical fallacy. Aren’t skeptics supposed to care about those, thunderf00t?
The way I see things, even if I did buy into this magical assumption that there are clearly defined “bad places” that only required common sense to avoid, well, how long are the safe places going to remain safe? If they can’t lure in victims, where do you think the rapists will go to find them?
Thumbs up to this.
– This is such a shining example of the idiocy Thunderf00t enshrines in his (whatever). Even if he’s only distributing this, the callousness, ignorance, inability to see its inappropriateness and just plain pathetic sense of humor (or its complete lack) are… what? Epic? Stunning? Depressing?
– I was so completely knocked back by this… I really wanted to have something huge to say. But words completely failed to match the effect.
But there were some truly wonderful reponses. These were the ones I caught, quoted for truth and wonderfulness for the casual reader.
@ 7 Snoof
@17 Giliell, professional cynic
@23 doubtthat
@42 phlo
@71 Iyéska
Plus, proof that whoever is maximizing the stupidity in ANY analogy is ALWAYS the woman (though I couldn’t find the original Thunderf00t attribution):
@35 Ivy Shoots
[…] some rape-victim-blaming doofus on youtube spouted the old [Thunderf00t] line,
“If I’m drunk and behind the wheel of a car and I pass out, and kill someone, I’m still responsible.”
And the takeaway, the one great, corrected lesson:
@30 tsig
Right, so, this charming little bit of “humour” is basically saying that rape is the kind of thing that just happens when somebody isn’t paying attention to their surroundings. Dudes are just going to be walking around trying to fuck things, and if you let your concentration lapse when you’re at a party or walking to your car or having a drink with a guy you like, then it’s your own silly fault for ending up impaled on a penis.
Gee, thanks, MRAs and assorted associated man-children, not only are you still defaulting to blaming victims of violence for their own mistreatment, you’re also throwing your own gender under the goddamn bus by removing every shred of agency we’ve got, depicting us as mindless fuck-bots and our sex drive as inescapable forces of nature. “Penis goes in, penis goes out – you can’t explain that!”
What a very revealing Taliban-esque view of things you have there. Go fuck yourselves (and only yourselves – it’s probably the safest option for everyone).
All those watch for pedestrians signs seem to agree that, yeah, drivers should be told not to hit people.
Furthermore, getting hit while jaywalking isn’t comparable to being raped while female.
These guys don’t have brains though. :(
what if it’s cleverly disguised as a weinermobile?
http://blogs.orlandoweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/OscarMayer_Wienermobile.jpg
…how does one tell the one ton penises from the mild mannered weinermobiles.
Is there some kind of radar?
a class you can take?
some innate sense that will allow you to detect the evil one ton penis?
no?
PZ @ 5:
No, I am not, and that is why I have decided to label him the Poster-boy for Misogynist Stupidity™.
Why do people laugh at Phil Mason’s repeated demonstrations of his irrational fear and loathing of feminists and his complete inability to fully comprehend anything more complex than DERP, BIBLE NOT TRUE? Only Phil doesn’t know.
Ah, if only cars and penises drove themselves – this might actually have been a decent analogy.
Except of course they don’t, so it’s not only not, it’s laughably stupid. So of course it’s no surprise at all to see Phil “The Lion, The Wasp and The Youtube” Mason endorsing it wholeheartedly.
Hank_Says:
There is one point: a car is considered to be under the direct control of the operator. It might have occurred to the Teafoot set that a penis is considered to be under the direct control of the operator as well. Of course, that implies that people with penises do have control, and responsibility, which they don’t want mentioned at all.
The most delicious irony in all this is that Tf00t keeps calling these people “professional victims” all while still playing the victim card from his brief time on FTB from 2 years ago. Y’know, the time where he got booted for acting like a fucking child in a fight that he picked.
Hank_Says:
I think it’s worse than that. The image gives off the notion that women are just throwing themselves on penises of innocent men everywhere, how awful! It’s rather amazing they aren’t all cringing with embarrassment.
I’m reminded of Wednesday’s Halloween “costume” in the Adams’ Family movie. “I’m a serial killer. They look just like anyone else.”
The problem with rapists is that they also look like regular people. They aren’t all generic cartoon thugs wearing prison striped shirts or ratfinks twirling handlebar mustaches.
eeyore @110 (how dare you shame that glorious name with such silliness):
Which is entirely the problem, because mugging people is against the law and a violation of your personal autonomy and material security, wherever the fuck it happens and whoever the fuck it happens to. And I’d have strong words for anyone who blamed you (implicitly or otherwise) for your assault, just as I would with anyone who did the same thing to a rape victim.
I’m actually pretty uncomfortable with the image of the woman being hit by a car not just because it’s an image of someone being hit by a car but because I know it’s giving a lot of these guys wood.
What abysmally low standards you hold society to, eeyore.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
How’s this for an analogy:
You’re riding in the passenger seat in a car. The driver is a friend, or an acquaintance, or a relative, or your spouse or lover, or a taxi driver or just a stranger who offered you a ride. Maybe you’re wearing your seat belt, maybe not, maybe you’re drunk and/or naked, maybe not, maybe you’re arguing, or sleeping, or joking around, or just staring out the window…. Suddenly the driver swerves intentionally so that the car hits a light pole on your side of the car.
So (applying anti-feminist “logic” here), clearly you shouldn’t have been in the car, right?
Also, because Eeyore (and those of similar mind) need these:
AND
I think I found that one ton penis moving down the road: http://m.imgur.com/xzTJcHt
I am on the side of right in the face of all those who are comfortable doing wrong. I am on the side of the voices who have been stilled by those who take being able to abuse as their right. I am on the side of all those who have been hurt by those who believe they have a right to twist their power and by those who believe they have the right to other people’s bodies. I refuse to back down when confronted by all those who howl in favour of the status quo.
To all those harmed, I stand with you. To all those standing firm in the face of wrongdoing, I stand with you.
If you find yourself itching to append a “But…” to any of that, you are not helping, you are part of the problem.
Maybe the apologists for this idiotic hit ‘n’ run analogy want us to assume that the valet parking dudes stole their dick and took it for a joyride.
Iyéska, #186
First and foremost, fuck yeah.
Secondly, just took a quick look at your blog. Don’t want to sidetrack this thread, but I’m a photography fanatic too. Hope to see you in the lounge sometime to discuss all things photography. :)
How exactly is walking around with a penis analogous to driving a car? The danger posed by cars is their mass, materials, speed, the limits of human driver reaction time, and the car’s inability to be safely and effectively stopped on a dime. Men are not being hurled through the world at top speed with their erect penises hanging out, unable to break and prevent a collision with the stationary or oncoming orifice of another person. To say that men are like cars and women are like pedestrians*, that women have to be careful when ‘crossing the street’ sends the message that men think the ‘street’ (the world) belongs to them, that women are simply not being careful enough and only ‘get raped’ when they ‘get in the way’ of men.
*Or more generally, that rapers are like cars and potential targets for rape (of all sexes and ages) are like pedestrians.
Saad @ 188, I hang over in Thunderdome, I’m rarely in the lounge. Feel free to talk photography there. /derail
I always imagine anti-feminists who post those images deserve a similar one with a car driving on a sidewalk with the complaint, “Anti-feminists: These damn pedestrians think they OWN the sidewalks and can tell ME where I can’t drive!”
I know I’m late for the party, but I’d like to say I want a Magical Homing Penis.
Funny how they have to use a meme analogy where the stand in for the rapist is someone rightfully doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing in the space specifically designated for them, and actually can hit a person crossing at the wrong time despite their best efforts in many situations.
It’s tricking their puny un-skeptical minds with, as others have said, blatant false analogy.
There are good reasons to tell people (especially children) when to cross streets. But they haven’t come up with anything to suggest the same is true for people who don’t want to be raped.
And I agree with ck, it is far more similar to cars driving on sidewalks, or violating safety rules in other ways. Like, duh. And this analogy also shows why their “advice” is so ridiculous: such advice (well stop using sidewalks) instructs people (mostly women) to give up things they should have a right to.
And it’s THAT ridiculous even before we get to the part of the analogy where even someone you think is your friend might plow their car through your house wall and crush you without warning. And so many more likely situations than the “stranger rape” scenario.
that would be especially useful if also detachable…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRs6KWDsc0&feature=related
er, in case it wasn’t obvious, that last was @ 192.
The driver of the car in the meme-photo up-top didn’t even try to brake.
Couldn’t they have been arsed to shop in some skid-marks?
chigau (違う) wrote:
Well, the car in the meme-photo up-top was probably motionless when this was taken (i.e. it looks like a stock photo), so there’s probably little point in the driver braking.
Actually, I just realized I’ve heard this shit analogy before. When I was younger a friend dragged me out to a popular Christian meeting for youths, and the pastor (or whatever-the-fuck-he was) trotted out this shit.
Between this and pushing conspiracy theories about what the “professional victims” are planning to do, Thunderf00t has demonstrated himself to be intellectually and ethically on par with creationists and all other conspiracy theorists.
Ooh, just wait until he compiles all his shitty videos together with unlicensed material into an in depth “documentary” of how the evil feminists are pushing honest, hard-working men out of various fields or censoring them.
ck
yabut
Couldn’t they have been arsed to shop in some skid-marks?
brianpansky:
Lose the scare quotes on stranger rape. It is not the most common type of rape, however, stranger rape does happen – it happened to me, and seeing someone scare quote it leaves a bad taste in the brain.
@Iyéska #153
Yes, of course, that was just a bad turn of phrase =).
Iyéska
Only that of course there are scenarios in which the driver loses control over the car with no fault of their own, and we accept that. There’s no such scenario for rape.
gmacs
That’s because the only significant difference is the justifications for their misogyny. And the lack of hope that they will drop that shit when they realize god isn’t real.
I just had the worst image ever of a man being controlled by a rampant penis, running after women willy-nilly, to his great dismay…
While the meme is full of fail, the thread is full of win…
I’m pretty sure someone has mentioned this before – not that that ever stops me – but it’s worth noting that hitting a pedestrian is the failure mode of driving a car, whereas hurting a woman is the success mode of misogynistic behavior.
To put it another way, if you can’t drive around town without hitting a few dozen people every time you leave the garage, maybe you shouldn’t use a car.
If you can’t post stuff to the internet without victimizing women, then, well…
Lastly, to eeyore, it’s a small thing, but it might help your thinking to make one tiny change in the way you write and think about these things. If you must use hypothetical examples, don’t say a woman “was raped”, say “someone raped” a woman. Rape doesn’t just happen. It’s not like weather. It’s a deliberate act.
It kinda helps you understand why folks might find what you say silly, thusly: “If a woman goes into a bar, and someone rapes her, what should she have done differently?” It might help you focus on who’s actual fault the rape was, and who’s behavior should actually change.
@rq (203):
Intentional or no, I see what you did there. :)
Two things. One, that has been quite thoroughly dissected by the commentariat already, is that the creators of this meme are making the claim that rape is an accident, when it is anything but. Two, they are also insinuating that rape is something done to the unsuspecting rapist via the supposed carelessness or arrogance of their victim. Not only is this meme saying “look what you made me do to you” it is also saying “look what you did to me.” It’s denying rapists their agency, placing them into the categories of both offender and victim. It is saying, “I had no choice but to rape her, officer, she didn’t want to have sex with me right in front of me and I had no time to react.”
As for eeyore. Lessee. The locations in which I have been sexually assaulted or raped include:
The playground of my middle school, broad daylight, during recess
The halls of my middle school, between classes
The weight room of my high school, during class
My living room sofa, while half asleep, by the friend of my sister’s boyfriend
His house, when we stopped to “pick something up” on our way somewhere else. I was 13
A public park, by my then-9th grade boyfriend, as we were taking a “romantic” walk
While camping with friends, when I left to pee, by my then-husband’s best buddy
At work, by my boss, in front of customers (I was then fired for yelling at him)
The doorway to my boss’s vehicle, in front of my co workers and kid
Do tell me which of those places was a bad neighborhood and how exactly I was supposed to avoid them. Keep in mind the first incidence listed took place when I was barely 10 and the last when I was 28. Most, fwiw, were sexual assaults, three were attempted rapes, and one was a rape. What they all have in common is A) they happened to me B) no one intervened, even adults in charge, even when they saw what happened and were asked for help C) I was blamed for each and every assault D) there were no consequences of note for any of the people who assaulted me.
Places I have not been sexually assaulted or raped:
“Bad” neighborhoods
While hitchhiking– even by truck drivers and salesmen who picked me up thinking I was a sex worker
While walking to or from work at night
While walking to or from a nightclub at night
The government housing complex in which I lived
While riding the city bus to or from my “bad” urban neighborhood
At parties, drunk or sober, awake or asleep
Given my personal anecdata, what criteria should I use to determine what are or are not dangerous situations for me to be in, and when I am or am not being “stupid?” Do those criteria apply universally? Why or why not.
Also do keep in mind, my family of origin contains at least one child rapist who, while he has not assaulted me, personally, has assaulted at least two family members and one of his kids’ teenaged friends, and despite those assaults being widely known, is still actively protected by my family to the serious detriment of his victims.
As far as I can tell, the least risky activities in which I can engage are hitchhiking, walking alone in the dark, living in “bad” neighborhoods, attending parties, going clubbing. While the most risky activities are attending school, having boyfriends, growing up in a family, having a husband who has friends, and being employed. How ought I to avoid those things?
Now I have this incredibly silly vision of a chorus-line of willies in rainbow-coloured pedal cars, singing “You can’t die from a bon-er” to the horribly repetitive tune of something I can’t get out of my head, because, being a total non-follower of popular music, I don’t know where it comes from. So I can’t even replace it with the real words, whatever they might be. :-(
Anyway, the meme is a horrible analogy. Are the MRAs claiming that because a car cannot stop suddenly, despite the driver almost certainly wanting it to (“Physics!!111!!!”), that a rapist’s penis cannot stop either, despite the wishes of the rapist attached to it (“Biology!!111!!!”)? Do they all have rq’s image at 203 in their heads?
Onamission5, I’m sorry – I took too long to post that last comment, and didn’t refresh the page first.
I am sincerely sorry for posting what I did after your comment. :(
@Tigger_the_Wing, asking “Where’s the justice?” #209:
‘S okay, really. I have been appreciating the context-appropriate levity in this comment thread as a means of balance against the horrible”joke” in the OP (who says feminists don’t have a sense of humor, again?) and your humorous statements don’t detract at all, IMO. It’s laugh or cry, sometimes, and occasionally both. We’re good.
Thanks for that, Onamission5.
Your list got me thinking – and I realised I could make a very similar list.
I’m worried that so could an enormous number of other people.
The places that I have been least safe have been school, work, family, shopping.
The places I have been most safe have been parties, walking alone at night, being the only female-bodied biker in a group of motorcyclists, public transport and driving a rural taxi for ten years.
Where is ‘safe’ for people wanting to avoid rapists?
Anywhere a rapist isn’t.
All we have to do is find a way of labelling rapists and we’re good to go, right?
When I first saw this meme, I didn’t even realize that it was anti-feminist. Because “Don’t tell when to cross the street. Teach drivers not to hit people.” makes sense.
Antiochus: That was my thought too. Hence my reference to A Good Cartoon up there at comment 52. I guess it’s fractally wrong.
One of the big de-sheltering things I had to learn was that, if anything, rape is more common in supposedly safe places. Rapists often gain access to victims by creating a safe, respectable facade. When a victim speaks up, they get numerous defenders with an investment in an organization’s appearance or in hero worship. We’ve seen it with the rape and molestation of children: Coaches, teachers, priests, and so on. The notion that rape only happens with obviously shady individuals or obviously unsafe places seems to assume rapists aren’t intelligent enough to take advantage of those preconceptions.
BD@214: not just gain access. It’s also used to provide cover for the rapist after the assault(s), by making use of our tendency to think of rapists as ‘not nice’ people – and the leap to ‘nice people can’t be rapists’.
Which is why we’re giving shit to people making these bullshit memes and excuses, because their apologia literally provides cover for rape. It’s reprehensible behaviour, and deserves all the opprobrium we can send.
onamission 5
Yes, I could create a similar list.
I did all the wrong things in my life, from hitchiking to passing out drunk and nothing bad happened in those occasions. Doing “normal life stuff” like having a phone seems far more dangerous…
I think that with the MRA’s you have to use an extra-slicey version of Occam’s Razor. Don’t try to interrogate the logic because there really is no logic. They simply want to see a woman being hit by a car. It should be understood on that level.
re Antiochus@212:
But, but, but… BOTH. Part of my current Automobile Strategy is to go beyond “Defensive Driving”, to expand it into “Cooperative Driving”; in the literal sense of “co operate”. It is hard to describe the difference from “defensive” driving, but it is a lot of attitude more-so than specific actions.
—back to “both” —
Yes, Tell Me When To Cross the Street (when drivers are told to let the peds cross the street) AND tell me when NOT to cross the street, so the motorheads can concentrate on driving and less on avoiding peds. Teach the motorheads to be aware of peds-to-avoid at all costs, and teach the peds to avoid the vehicles, let them go by easily. i.e. cooperate; don’t challenge, nor oppose, nor defensively hide away…
-enough derail…
I agree; this is a totally lame analogy to the supposed “Feminist Attitude”. Not an analogy at all. If THEY think that this is a fair analogy, then I doubt reason can help modify this attitude into something practicable.
[more automobile quibbles|WARNING]
I was taught that Automobile-hitting-Pedestrian the Driver was GUILTY automatically. Even a little kid running from between two parked cars too close to stop the car, the driver would still be faulted. Similar to Rear-End-Collisions, the one in back is ALWAYS at fault. Thus the insurance scam of being stopped at a traffic light and suddenly backing into the car behind, puts that guy automatically at fault.
– . – . – . – maybe that’s part of the “analogy”: the Car represents the guy, and when a pedestrian[woman] is hit by a car [has sex], the driver[the man] is automatically at fault[automatically accused of rape].
-writing that out makes it even more clear what a weak pseudo-analogy that is.
Unsafe:
*walking home from school at probably 3:30 in the afternoon when I was about 12
*in the apartment of a person with whom I had been close friends for nearly a decade
*on crowded public transit in the middle of the day as an adult (multiple occasions)
Safe:
*lots of independent roaming (including via public transit) as a child
*several drunken parties during frosh week (closest analogue to a frat party as I’ve encountered)
*many times out drinking at bars and clubs, some even in “bad” neighbourhoods
*several parties that verged on becoming orgies
*several Pagan camping festivals where nudity was optional and casual sex not unexpected
*travelling alone in my twenties in Italy, Hong Kong, and Macao, including a couple of times hitchhiking
*walking alone at night in urban areas, parks, parking lots, across campus too many times to count over the course of decades
Of course any of the places I listed as “safe” could have just as easily turned out to be “unsafe”. Just add a sexual predator or abusive asshole present and picking me instead of someone else. But that’s the point. Safe/unsafe are not determined by environment or circumstances, other than the circumstance of the presence of someone who decides to assault, molest, threaten, or rape you.
Oh, and should I not have been allowed to do all those things in my “Safe” list? Or should I have voluntarily denied myself from participating in all those things (including walking outside while female in the dark–which can be as early as 4 o’clock in the winter in some of the places I’ve lived) because it was “stupid”? But that wouldn’t have spared me. So it’s the “Unsafe” list I ought to have avoided: going to school as a girl, having a friend, being with another person in their apartment, going places by bus or subway. Right? Right?
A thought that always occurs to me when ever these “drunken party” scenarios are brought up is why shouldn’t girls entertain the idea of meeting someone to have casual sex with? Suppose a girl does go to a party with the intention of getting drunk and finding a hot guy to have sex with. Does that make her a slut? Why is it okay for guys to do that but not women? Does such behaviour grant license to spike her drink or invite all your buddies to take turns with her or post degrading pictures of her? If some PUA got drunk & passed out at a party does that mean it’s okay to strip him naked, take turns sodomizing him, photograph him, etc?
The idea that, if sex was initially consensual, then any or all following actions are automatically allowed by default seems to be accepted or at least rarely challenged. I’m not suggesting at all that any percentage of “remorse rape accusations” fall into this category but, so what if they did? Even if a woman was initially willing but changed her mind (for ANY reason) is she obliged to “deliver” regardless of circumstances?
I guess I just feel that any talk about avoiding bad neighbourhoods or not dressing like a slut or analogies as mentioned above all seem to imply that there is a point beyond which the victim just has to accept some of the blame. And it seems to be a short hop from the victim being partially responsible to the perpetrator being completely exonerated. At the risk of making another bad analogy, if my neighbour agrees to lend me his car, and I use it pull up tree stumps and just generally thrash the shit out of it, am I off the hook because he didn’t think I would turn out to be an asshole?
Blondin
1. Girls should neither drink alcohol nor have sex, because they are children.
I understand that there’s no ill intend here, but it’s part and parcel of a sexist culture to use terms for women that imply that we’re less than capable adults.
2.
Hell NO. Consent can be revoked at any time for any reason. Consent to A does not imply consent for B.
It’s that easy.
3. WTF is a “Remorse rape accusation”?
The elusive Unicorn where women have fully consensual sex and then claim rape the next morning because they regret it or because he was a bad lover?
Giliell @202
Shit, the realization that god isn’t real isn’t even a prerequisite to realize the fundamental concept of consent. I know plenty of sex-positive, feminist theists. It’s just a matter of what bullshit ideology you wrap your privilege in to defend it.
Giliell,
Re: 1. I wasn’t even thinking about age or age of consent. I used the word ‘girls’ to mean ‘young women’. I didn’t realize it implied less than capable adult but, in a way, that was kind of the point I was trying to make: women who go out looking for a ‘good time’ don’t deserve to be slut-shamed any more than men who do so.
Re: 3. Yes, that is the scenario I was referring to (as depicted in some of the “Don’t be that girl” memes).
gmacs
Well, I think it has become very obvious over the last years that “do you believe in any god?” is not a particularly good litmus test for “are you a decent human being?”
Blondin
I think that’s quite easy since those women don’t actually exist.
CaitieCat:
A very noteworthy point. Once someone obtains an aura of respectability, it can close a sort of loop where his actions no longer become relevant to how he’s perceived. That’s one big reason why rapists get away with it, and why rape apologia is so insidious.
Giliell:
Yeah, I’d expect it’d be a “unicorn”. It might sound plausible if one doesn’t think too deeply, but given that being raped causes far greater scandal and shaming for the accuser, it doesn’t make sense. Fear of such abuse is why actual rape is under-reported in the first place.
Even in a world where we treated actual rape victims with compassion, why the fuck would anyone’s response to regretted sex be to ensure that the entire fucking world knows about it? That trope is absolutely breathtaking in its idiocy.
Yet another case of horrible human beings using shitty analogies to reinforce their biases and excuse their apathetic or active advocacy of the status quo.
@ eeyore
Interesting…so you’ve identified a group so awash in rape culture that women should just expect to be raped whenever they’re around. Yet your solution isn’t to do anything about this cesspool of felony activity, send in undercover agents, or get a warrant for surveillance, as law enforcement would if it were a violent gang, for example. No, we should just leave them alone, and blame woman for going near them.
@eeyore
So… if one is a “frat boy” you have the privilege to hang out with others who are partaking of alcohol, creating social bonds that you can depend upon for current support and enjoyment, and perhaps networking opportunities for your career in the future. If one is a woman you can never do these things and you will forever remain an outsider, because hanging out is a “really bad idea”.
Why aren’t you telling “frat boys” not to hang out and drink with each other because it’s such a “bad idea”? Oh, it’s only a “bad idea” for women? Why is that I wonder?
Blondin:
Let’s drag this nonsense out into the yard and kill it with fire, shall we? Please, think about the reality of what a woman goes through once she reports a rape. It’s not fun. It’s not enjoyable. A woman gets a fucktonne of shit tossed at her, a wealth of looks, seriously rotten questioning which looks to blame her at every word for what happened. Then she gets to deal with the reactions of family and friends, which doesn’t always go well either.
Do you really think that having regretful thoughts about fully consensual sex is worth all the above to a woman? Generally speaking, when a person (regardless of gender) has sex with someone, and they aren’t happy about that, the response is to forget it and put it behind them. Putting themself in a spotlight, legally and personally isn’t what someone would do over something they’d prefer to forget.
Misogynists and garden variety sexist assholes love to play the ‘false accusation!’ tune, because it fits in with their idea of women being vengeful, castrating bitchez. And while there are, indeed, an exceedingly low number of false accusations, believe me, they are not fueled by a desire to forget an incident of regrettable sex.
Blondin:
Let’s drag this nonsense out into the yard and kill it with fire, shall we? Please, think about the reality of what a woman goes through once she reports a rape. It’s not fun. It’s not enjoyable. A woman gets a fucktonne of shit tossed at her, a wealth of looks, seriously rotten questioning which looks to blame her at every word for what happened. Then she gets to deal with the reactions of family and friends, which doesn’t always go well either.
Do you really think that having regretful thoughts about fully consensual sex is worth all the above to a woman? Generally speaking, when a person (regardless of gender) has sex with someone, and they aren’t happy about that, the response is to forget it and put it behind them. Putting themself in a spotlight, legally and personally isn’t what someone would do over something they’d prefer to forget.
Misogynists and garden variety sexist assholes love to play the ‘false accusation!’ tune, because it fits in with their idea of women being vengeful, castrating witches. And while there are, indeed, an exceedingly low number of false accusations, believe me, they are not fueled by a desire to forget an incident of regrettable sex.
False rape accusations as a solution to regretted sex!
Because one walk of shame just isn’t enough when you could have months’ or even years’ worth of walks of shame.
For the love of Pete and Pete, these people don’t seem to get one very simple concept. I’ve just now thought that maybe the bleedingly obvious may have not even occurred to us, to explain this one basic thing.
So here it is MRA types: Women ALREADY get and give this advice on how and where to avoid dangerous people. They ALWAYS get it, all the time. It IS useful, and it DOES help protect. None of us disagree with that! It isn’t news!
What gets us is that you think you’re some prophet on high coming down to enlighten women on these things, as though saying “shouldn’t have done that” after the fact helps in ANY way. THAT is what it means to blame the victim. We aren’t talking about women playing on oil machinery or near an electrical transformer. We’re talking about women being raped, meaning, you know, a perpetrator. The ONLY reason that such advice as “don’t accept drinks from strangers” is useful is because some strangers are trying to DRUG women, to RAPE them. No one’s saying that heeding such advice wouldn’t help protect women, what we’re saying is that it is DEPLORABLE that women NEED such advice to begin with, and maybe changing the culture a bit would prevent them from having to heed it, because after all, maybe, don’t you think perhaps women should be able to live in a world where they don’t HAVE to worry about that, that they should be free to drink with strangers, say, without fearing the very real possibility that this one might be a rapist? If a woman doesn’t heed your advice and something bad happens, and this is important, THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT HER FAULT! This is basically what we’re driving at here.
What I’m saying is this. The very fact that your unoriginal advice IS useful is in fact a damnation OF the culture that creates the need for such warnings! That’s as succinct as I can make it.
One in 10 girls worldwide have been raped or sexually assaulted by the age of 20
@235
I think it would be really eye-opening if instead of all the time hearing about what percentage of women and girls ‘have been’ sexually assaulted (note the agent-less passive voice here), we heard more often about what percentage of men and boys have sexually assaulted. But then, I suppose, we’d have to confront the reality that the men who do most of the sexual assaulting are our brothers and fathers and sons and friends and partners, and men would have to start admitting that the sexual assaulting that goes on isn’t perpetrated by just a handful of anti-social, violent, perverted strangers who lurk in dark alleys.
Protip, guys: If you think a woman might falsely accuse you of rape, don’t have sex with her. Don’t be alone with her, don’t have drinks with her, don’t flirt with her, don’t dress provocatively around her.
Sorry, this was just going to be a suggestion that guys do a bit of getting acquainted, even courtship, instead of expecting consequence-free sex. But it made me think that all the bad advice that guys give to women on how to avoid rape, well, it could be given right back to them as directions on how to avoid false accusations of rape. Huh. Gonna think about that one a while.
Mostly just wanted to agree with the comment above: Guys, women don’t need your help in figuring out ways to reduce risk, or to be told what to do. They are smart, and they communicate. Guys, you need to listen.
loopyj @ 236, most of us here do bring up the percentages of children and men who are raped, however, your standard apologist skims right over those in eager apologia, and the other standard response is “you feminists don’t care about prison rape!”. In a culture where people scoff at the percentage of women raped, you have to keep repeating for it to sink in.
Also, adding to mine @ 238, incidences of boys and men being raped are hardly rare. It happens a hell of a lot more than most people think.
@ Iyéska
I believe loopyj was talking about men who have committed rape, not been raped. The answer is still pretty much the same though. We do often cite statistics about how many men rape, usually in the form of surveys where scary percentages of men will admit to doing things that are rape as long as you don’t say the “r” word.
The last sentence in my 240 was directed at loopyj. I’m sure Iyéska is already aware of those stats.
Ah, thanks Seven of Mine. The best reading I’ve come across in that regard are the Predator studies, which are linked @ #80. Those get linked all the fucking time. If I had a magic way to make people actually click and read…
Another recommend is Guyland by Michael Kimmel, which explores Guy Culture, and the deep entitlement therein.
These rape apologists are always trying to create a stereotypical victim, in some scenario where they think they can assign blame, because if they make the entire conversation about that, they can attempt to ignore the realities of rape.
Most people are raped by acquaintances, not strangers who drugged them at a bar. People are raped by spouses, partners, friends of partners, coworkers, bosses, professors, doctors, police officers. People are raped in their own homes, in parking lots, in cars, stairwells, hospitals and bathrooms.
People are raped in prisons, war zones, refuge camps. People in comas are raped. People in wheelchairs are raped. Elderly people are raped in assisted living facilities. People are raped in the storeroom at work.
Children are raped by parents, uncles, older siblings, kids in the neighborhood, priest’s offices, church camps, schools, malls. People with severe mental health problems, homeless people, elderly people, and physically disabled people are at particularly high risk, because of the ease with which they can be taken advantage of.
But I notice they never want to talk about those victims, even though they’re far, far more prevalent.
The one thing that is guaranteed, however, is that someone will want to know why they didn’t protect themselves better, respond better, report better, fight better. Someone will always be there to critique the victims’ attempts at survival, and inevitably find them somehow lacking.
Looking at that idiotic poster/picture up top, I want to recaption it to say something about drivers not being allowed to deliberately run over drunk people. And not telling women how to live their lives.
Does anyone ever see, alongside the incessant “Don’t get drunk, women, you might get raped!” the opposite stated? “Don’t get drunk, men, you might rape someone!”
I’m guessing the answer is no.
@ timgueguen
Of course not, because then we have to have an epic bout of poutrage about #notallmen.
I can’t come up with any other angle to use against rape apologists, so here’s a little something for my mathematical friends.
Theorem 1.1. Rape is the rapist’s fault in all cases of rape.
Proof. Since there are two parties involved in rape, we will consider them individually.
Crap! I meant to remove those blockquotes before posting. Here we go:
Theorem 1.1. Rape is the rapist’s fault in all cases of rape.
Proof. Since there are two parties involved in rape, we will consider them individually.
The rapist. If there is sexual contact and there is consent, there’s no rape. If there is no consent and there is no sexual contact, there’s no rape. In other words, for rape to occur there must exist a party forcing sexual contact in the absence of consent of the other party. Thus, the rape is contributed to by the party forcing sexual contact, i.e. the rapist.
The rape victim. For the rape victim to be responsible for the rape, they must have intent to get raped. In other words, they must consensually be involved in the activity. But that contradicts the definition of rape since every case of rape lacks consent from the party being raped. Therefore, the rape victim is not contributing to the act of rape.
Thus, only one of the two parties (the rapist) is contributing to rape and therefore is at fault for it.
Corollary. A rape victim cannot be “asking for it”.
Proof. Since “asking for it” in this case means desiring or wanting sexual contact, it implies consent. But that contradicts the definition of rape. Therefore, there exist no rape victims that were “asking for it”.
timgueguen @ 245:
Yes, in just about every bloody discussion we’ve had here about consent / rape / sexual assault, because of the overwhelming amount of people who want to argue that drunk means not rape, on the part of the both people involved. Those arguments were fast and heavy on the Grenade thread, to the point we were about typing our fingers off, repeating over and over and over on the issue of consent. It was that all too common discussion which resulted in hashing out the CCC.
Mmmmmmph, the link in 249 is the wrong one. The CCC was worked up in this thread.
Say, why don’t we look at this with the coldest, purest, most basest, most utilitarian logic:
Problem: Reducing and/or eliminating rape.
Proposed solution class: getting women to alter their behavior to reduce their risk exposure
Features of this solution class:
– Rapists cannot be identified on sight, so no amount of situational awareness by women can eliminate rape entirely.
– Rapists are not limited to any geographic distribution, so no amount of mobility self-restriction by women can eliminate rape entirely.
– Rapists may or may not take advantage of chemicals to exploit their victims, so no amount of precautionary self-restraint by women on the inbibing of mind-altering substances can eliminate rape entirely.
– Rapists have attacked women wearing clothing and makeup of all styles, in all modes of dress or undress, so no amount of self-imposed modesty of dress or makeup (or behavior) can eliminate rape entirely.
– Evidence pertaining to the actual real-world effectiveness of each and every proposed women-centric behavioral modification suggested within this class is uncertain at best, or non-existent.
– The proposed individual behavior modifications are a mixture of positive and negative actions, with varying direct costs in time and treasure. (For example, women must pay to learn self-defence, or buy a gun, and there is an opportunity cost for women to avoid going to certain locations, both personally and professionally)
Conclusion: Within this solution class, no individual strategy is likely to reduce a woman’s likelihood of being raped by more than a few percentage points from baseline. Any successful deployment of this solution class will require multiple simultaneous interventions, the aggregate of which will result in significant and serious self-imposed limitations to a woman’s freedom of movement and autonomy of action, and there is the potential for a significant direct and indirect cost to the women in time and treasure. Even a fully successful deployment will not be able to eliminate the risk of rape entirely, merely reduce it by an indeterminate percentage, even in a best case scenario.
Solution class 2: Getting rapists to stop raping.
Features of this solution class:
– if rapists stop raping, there will be no more rape. Total elimination of the problem will be achieved.
– the behavioral modification that constitutes this class is wholly negative. All that is required is for rapists to do nothing rather than something. This results in a cost savings for the rapist, who is now free to spend his (or her) time and treasure previously expended in the act rape on other activities that can positively impact his (or her) quality of life.
Conclusions: This solution class affords the possibility for total elimination of the problem, and the net cost of it is negative (ie it pays for itself).
Summary: In logical, purely utilitarian comparison of solution class 1 (behavioral modification by women to avoid rape) and solution class 2 (behavioral modification of rapists to stop raping), solution class 2 is both more effect in absolute terms, and more cost effective in relative terms.
Thus, in deciding, with pure and cold utilitarian logic, on which of these two solution classes one should expend more time and energy advocating on the internet, the logical choice is clear.
Solution class 2, getting rapists to stop raping.
To be fair, at local university campus there is a sexual assault awareness campaign that uses the “don’t be that guy” posters, and includes one that goes “it’s not sex when she’s wasted. Sex with someone unable to consent = sexual assault”.
So it is said. A tiny voice in the wilderness, but hopefully, growing louder.
Yeah, that poster has turned up in washrooms on the University of Saskatchewan campus as well, which is a good thing.
Actually, many of us do.
Because the way it works is that doesn’t actually reduce the incidents of rape, it just means that you’re not the one who’s getting raped. Which I won’t fault the individual for, mind you. You don’t have a moral duty to get raped so somebody else doesn’t.
But it gets you into exactly the wrong sort of discussion and assumptions: That there are behaviours that will protect you, and that if you still get raped you must have missed something you could have done. You watched you drinks but got attacked by the friend who walked you home so you wouldn’t have to walk alone through a “bad neighbourhood”? Well, you should have agreed beforehand with a female friend! Don’t have such a trusted female friend? Well, what did you think you were doing, going out partying with all those guys? Didn’t go out at all but got raped by your boyfriend? You should have known he’s no good…
We know that they go for vulnerable people, that they groom their victims.
To add further: The whole idea of “rape prevention” is why those people who are so in favour of it need to thorougly ignore the rape of children.
What advice are they going to give them? Don’t be born into a family where your father/grandfather/cousin/uncle/good family friend is going to rape you?
Don’t dress in provocative diapers?
Watch your porridge?
Don’t toddle through the garden at 3pm?
I’ve seen some religious types who don’t ignore child rape. They often claim the child was the one who initiated sexual contact and that the rapist was unable to muster any self-control against the sheer power of youthful wiles. Given what I’ve seen in recent years, I suspect there are atheists who’d also do this.
So, does Tf00t even chemistry anymore?
Where does he find time to make so many videos?
Bronze Dog:
The three year old me must have had Amazing Superpowers of Seduction™ winging out from my bed as I lay sleeping. Yep.
The “wiles” that the pedophiles cite are usually normal child behavior, like climbing into laps, playing in a bouncy manner, playing “house,” and squirming.
@254 Giliell
That is an excellent point that i wish more people would understand. Even if certain meassures prevented one individual from being raped, that doesn’t prevent Rape. The problem has not been solved or even improved in any way whatsoever….
@ Bronze Dog
Hell, in a Women’s Sociology class I read a case wherein a judge claimed a sexually abused five-year-old was unnaturally “sexualized” for her age, and therefore, the perpetrator was less responsible. Five fucking years old.
I have also read opinions from numerous people claiming the women held as prisoners for years by that lunatic in Cleveland, could have left if they really wanted to, and therefore, must have been in a consensual relationship with him.
As I said above, there seems to be no such thing as a sexual crime serious enough to stop people from disparaging the victim.
Ugh. It’s bad enough knowing the public contains such apologists. I’m not surprised there are judges who have done crap like that, but it’s unnerving to have suspicions confirmed.
Gah. This reminds me of a rapist’s attempted self-defence I read in the papers years ago, about how his victim wanted him to sit on her bed, she patted the covers inviting him, made it obvious what she wanted, and so on. He was talking about his four-year-old granddaughter.
Giliell, you’re right on all counts. I’m only adding one more point against the constant “advice” swarm, that it’s old news, that women are well aware of these ways of avoiding dangerous situations, and that we’re not arguing that such methods don’t help prevent it (though as you said, mainly only for individuals, someone else somewhere is probably going to be a victim instead, and also as you said, these precautions are far from foolproof), we’re arguing for a massive culture shift that sidesteps precautions entirely in favor of eliminating, or at least massively reducing, rapists.
All other points in this thread about how such advice only applies to very small percentages of real-world rape incidents are also entirely correct. I’m just sick of hearing MRAs try to claim we are ignoring their “advice” when we aren’t. I figure it’s the first line of defense against such ignorance. “Yes, we know about that, we generally give each other that advice too, but frankly it’s not our responsibility and it masks the bigger problem.”
Giliell,
100% agree with you as well. That thinking IS the problem in society.
Interesting that there aren’t any condescending burglary protection lectures that are doled out pedantically to victims of burglary. No one says to them, “tsk, tsk, should have had a dog” or “see what happens when you have a basic security system but nothing to detect a window breaking in the basement?”
I hate victim-blaming in all its disgusting forms.
Saad, it’s sad but such people do exist (I posted this mainly for that pun). They aren’t nearly as prevalent, but that attitude does exist. Generally, they say if you get mugged you “shouldn’t have been in a dangerous neighborhood” or “that’s what you get when you live in the city”. If you accidentally left your door unlocked, well, that’s what you get. If you parked your car in a dark area far away in a parking lot, that’s what you get for having it stolen.
Heck, it goes further. There are people who will blame, say, a man, for being punched because he “provoked” it with his “fat stupid mouth full of stupid breakable teeth” (paraphrasing). The most egregious example would be the black youth getting gunned down again and again, and the constant victim blaming going on there.
The problem with using this analogy is that there’s strong overlap among those who blame victims. Someone who blames women for being raped is very likely going to be the same sort of person who blames a black teen for getting shot or blames someone in the “wrong neighborhood” for being mugged.
This doesn’t make the rape victim blaming any less, it just depressingly makes the overall social problem even worse…
Ugh, why did I do that?
I’ve said this elsewhere, but making any attempt at reading MRA forums is like entering a brand new circle of hell. Misogyny was always terrible, but MRAs seem to bring it to the level of hate group. It’s just… a whole new level of awful. PZ, I must say it’s time to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. There’s no point offering them “real” examples of male bias to work against. They never cared to begin with. They just picked a civil-rightsy-ish name, but they’re the KKK of misogyny. Of that I’m now convinced.