Richard Dawkins: you’re wrong. Deeply, profoundly, fundamentally wrong. Your understanding of feminism is flawed and misinformed, and further, you keep returning to the same poisonous wells of misinformation. It’s like watching creationists try to rebut evolution by citing Kent Hovind; do you not understand that that is not a trustworthy source? It’s a form of motivated reasoning, in which you keep returning to those who provide the comfortable reassurances that your biases are actually correct, rather than challenging yourself with new perspectives.
Just for your information, Christina Hoff Sommers is an anti-feminist. She’s spent her entire career inventing false distinctions and spinning fairy tales about feminism. That whole “gender feminist” vs. “equity feminist” thing? It’s like microevolution vs. macroevolution. It’s an allusion to a real distinction, mangled into an unrecognizable mess, and presented as a rhetorical tool to permit attacks on the whole idea: “Oh, I believe in X, but not Y”. Doesn’t this sound at all familiar to you? It’s the whole standard creationist set of tropes, repackaged to support a dogmatic status quo!
And yet you persist in presenting these anti-feminist caricatures as reasonable. You say you are a feminist, and even find feminism an undeniable virtue, but at the same time you parrot absurd anti-feminist remarks. Like this one, for example:
.@MhaskarChief With a certain kind of feminist, of course. Not with feminists who truly respect women instead of patronising them as victims
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) September 12, 2014
With a certain kind of feminist, of course. Not with feminists who truly respect women instead of patronising them as victims
Who are these mysterious patronizing feminists? They don’t actually exist. You are echoing a strategy of denial: you approve of feminists, but not the ones who actually point out sexist problems in our culture, or fight against discrimination, or point out that they’ve been raped, or abused, or cheated in the workplace, or any of the other realities of a sexist culture. This is what anti-feminists say: be quiet about the problems. If you mention the problems, you are perpetuating the sisterhood of oppression, you are playing the martyr, you are being a pathetic victim who must be treated with contempt.
But if no woman speaks out about the problems, how will we ever know to correct them? If we shame every victim for being a victim and daring to reveal her victimhood, it becomes very easy to pretend that there is no oppression.
I know. I’ve been there. At every revelation of the hardships women face, I’ve said “No! I’ve never seen that!”, at first. And then the evidence pours in. Women’s names on papers reduces their chances of publication. Women drop out of the science pipeline at a greater rate than men, and are underrepresented in the higher ranks of the professoriate. Conferences are held with all-male or mostly male speakers, and organizers say that they just couldn’t find qualified or interesting women to speak…sometimes right to the faces of qualified, interesting women.
And over time, “No! I’ve never seen that!” has slowly transformed into “How could I be so blind?” and eventually, “What can we do to change this?” My consciousness was raised. I started to realize that pretending the problem doesn’t exist perpetuates it, and that if I want to change the culture, I can’t do it by wallowing in the delusion that equality exists already. You have to confront it. You have to demand change. You have to stand up for a cause and speak out.
You know this. That’s the attitude that drove your outspoken atheism. I only hope that someday you wake up to this same need within feminism, and a day in which you don’t feel the need to qualify what kind of feminist you’ll support with a false claim that there are these weird radical feminists who don’t respect women.
And perhaps someday you’ll stop retweeting people who perpetuate that myth, that there are unsupportable “radical feminists” who must be ostracized because of some unspecified horror in their ideas.
@MhaskarChief @SetagayaGirl @RichardDawkins But radical feminism is now mainstream feminism.And so many ppl are afraid to confront it, sadly
— Miranda Celeste Hale (@mirandachale) September 12, 2014
@mirandachale @RichardDawkins @MhaskarChief @SetagayaGirl I'm a woman and I'm entitled to say that I find radical feminism ridiculous.
— Dörte Faatz (@Bitch2410) September 12, 2014
@mirandachale @RichardDawkins @MhaskarChief @SetagayaGirl I have to disagree, radical feminists are a vocal minority
— Sophie Reddy (@sophie_reddy) September 12, 2014
@sophie_reddy They are a minority, but they are at the forefront which is the problem @mirandachale @RichardDawkins @SetagayaGirl
— Zee Mhaskar (@MhaskarChief) September 12, 2014
Think about all the times you’ve been called a “radical atheist” or “radical” or “revolutionary” or “militant” evolutionist over the years. Did you ever stop and think, “Oh, my, I must have gone too far; perhaps I should be less outspoken in defense of my ideas.”? Do you even know what a “radical evolutionist” could be? Perhaps someone who actually thinks that no deity is required to explain the history of life on earth, and finds natural mechanisms enthralling and fascinating. Which is what you are.
It’s pretty much the same feeling I get when someone denounces me or my friends as “radical feminists”. It’s an attempt to tar a standard, rational position with an emotional word that has lost all meaning, other than to declare that the writer doesn’t like this feminism stuff, no sir, it’s too extreme.
Just a suggestion: read Amanda Marcotte’s take on “radical feminism”.
There is no such thing as a “radical feminist” anymore.
Don’t get me wrong! There was. In the 60s and 70s, there were radical feminists who were distinguishing themselves from liberal feminists. Radical feminists agreed with liberal feminists that we should change the laws to recognize women’s equality, but they also believed that we needed to change the culture. It was not enough to pass the ERA or legalize abortion, they believed, but we should also talk about cultural issues, such as misogyny, objectification, rape, and domestic violence.
In other words, what was once “radical” feminism is now mainstream feminism.
Read that second paragraph carefully. Is there anything you disagree with in that? If not, then welcome, you’re a radical feminist, too. And could you please stop supporting reactionary anti-feminists? Thanks.
yazikus (#492)
For anyone who doesn’t want to jump headfirst into those cesspits, I would recommend visiting We Hunted the Mammoth instead.
Ichthyic:
Oh my goodness.
First off, I really, really appreciate the women here who try so hard to get thought to people. I’ve learned so much from you over these (seven, is it?) years.
Secondly, thank you to the awesome men here who fucking get it.
That said, I’ve read everything here (as I do) and really don’t get what the push back is about. Feminism is about changing the gender specific roles we’ll all been forced into. This is good for women AND men, and everyone.
Men, if you want to be nurturing and the primary care-takers of your children, Yay!
If you want to break free of masculine “norms”, feminism wants you to, also. Radical feminism is breaking out of gender prisons and starting afresh. Be who you want to be! Support feminism.
(Anyone who really thinks MRAs are trying to achieve this, is either naive or delusional.)
Iyéska @499:
Thanks for the correction.
I am sad to see Dawkins get caught in this trap. But it is not a huge surprise: he is a product of upper class British society which can be subtly chauvinistic in a lot of ways. PZ has given him some good food for thought; I hope he acts on it and is not blinded by the subtle prejudices his class status can instill. I’ve given up on Sam Harris for a whole variety of reasons; I would hate to have to give up on Richard Dawkins, too. Have we atheists no outspoken advocates for godlessness whom we can unhesitatingly admire without having to qualify that admiration? It would be sad to think so.
Tonight, there was an extremely populat TV show on in Russia (where I’ve lived the last five years) that was all about young men trying to get a contract with Konstantin Meladze ( a famous music producer). Much like American Idol but much more sexist, if you can imagine.
Young men have to sing first in front of three women, who can’t hear them, but can only look at them. They give a yea or nay depending on looks alone. The men judges, meanwhile, can hear the guys singing and can’t see them. They vote on the voices. Totally fucked up.
One young man had long black hair and wore a lot of make-up. He was voted an excellent singer but the women, conforming to patriarchal norms, voted against him. Then when the men voters saw him they kept asking, “Are you a girl or a boy? A girl or a boy?!” I screamed at the TV, “Why is that any of your business and what the fuck does that even mean?” I also had friends in the room tut-tutting his unmasculine appearance. Which is when I tried to explain that WE are the ones keeping ourselves so unhappy. Policing gender makes no one happy.
This is feminism. Breaking down old-fashioned ideas of gender.
I can’t barely begin to get into the poor intersexed young man who came later. Why would they call out the fact he was intersexed? Ugh. “Hermaphrodite, hermaphrodite!” He made everyone feel kinda shitty, though, when they asked, “Boy or girl?!”
“Person!” Applause.
Tangent. Sorry. But my it’s toxic masculinity that makes this happen. Feminism wants to get rid of this.
Scott @5 (505):
People keep saying this as if it’s an excuse. Dawkins is not a static unchanging being who is incapable of learning, especially since he’s had people correcting him for years. He is deliberately not listening. He is choosing to not change. It has nothing to do with being a product of his environment and everything to do with someone who doesn’t want to examine his prejudices and biases.
Scott @ 5:
:Sigh: Dawkins does not care about what PZ says, he’s made that clear. Dawkins has been spreading misogynistic, sexist crap for the last three years, along with the occassional bit of racist and classist crap. Scott, this is the second page of comments. Please click on the <<Older Comments at the bottom of the thread, and read, because I don't think any of us can take any more excuses for his behaviour.
Argh, should be occasional.
Krasnaya Koshka #6
(hello, hugs)
The set-up of that talent show is … bizarre.
What are they trying to prove?
Russian pop music must be really boring, if everyone looks and sounds alike.
Trap? Since when is being an unrepentant sexist asshole any kind of trap? Dawkins could choose to shut-up and educate himself at any point, but he refuses to do that. It’s so much more ego-gratifying for him to shit all over feminism and then declare himself a victim of those evil feminists. Never once has he allowed that the bashing he gets is well earned because he is so above such frivolous things as true equality for women. His attitude is pretty clearly, “Oh you can vote so shut-up about rape because that doesn’t really happen/ never hurt me at all/ quit playing the victim/ dear muslima. He is pretty much transforming himself into the poster boy for clueless entitled gits.
So, I took the time to do some reading on http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/
I’m feeling a bit disheartened now, but it did make me glad I made an effort with Helen Pluckrose, even though she chose to turn it all into a lynching party.
Chigau @10:
They’re looking for the next Dima Bilan, is what I think. A young guy, can sing okay, looking manly enough. But heaven forfend if they look gay-ish.
Gender policing is strict here.
(And hugs back.)
@Iyéska
Maybe Confused Cats Against Feminism will help with being disheartened.
I don’t comment much here (more at B&W,Dana hunters and Mano singham blogs) but I’m regular reader and always read the comments. I’m a bit late to this one,last night I left the comments at 137 ,came in tonight and over 400.I’ve just caught up and although Jared Hansen seems to have left this comment is directed at him.I know I’m making points that have already been made but sometimes things just piss me off so much I have to say something.
Anyway,I want to show Jared two parallel universe’s.The first one is exactly the same as this one. Historically,politically,everything apart from one thing.The roles of men and women have been reversed,so as an example every prime minister in Britain has been a woman apart from one.
Below are three justifications for why men are treated differently from women.
Although men are allowed in the army,it would be harmful to let them fight on the front line.You see their testosterone levels make them far to aggressive and trigger happy,there would be too many civilian casualties and friendly fire.The army is about keeping the peace and protecting people,something women are fair more suited to given their natural nurturing qualities.
No ones saying some men can’t do maths but women overall are better at it due to their menstrual cycle and biological clock making them naturally in tune with the numbers of the universe.
Men generally get paid less than women,especially in managerial jobs because they tend to demand what they want to get paid. They need to be taught that a successful business is run on working together and good communication between workers. It’s been proven that when it comes to communication women naturally excel and they are more willing to learn from other people.Being a man doesn’t mean you won’t get the job but you will start at a lesser rate until you learn to listen to other people instead of barging in and making demands.In short learn to be less assertive.it’s not a nice trait in men it can lead to all sorts of trouble (see point one)
All of the above is of course ridiculous and sexist and it’s no less ridiculous when applied to women in this world.
You only been interested in certain tests being done on women or that certain biological facts effect women more than men shows what you really think – incorrectly – about men and women.It’s unfortunate that your beliefs are held by a great many people.
The second parallel universe shows what your starting point is when thinking about gender.
This other universe is where men and women are really equal, there’s no such word as sexist because it’s always been the case.They don’t make a big issue out of the differences between men and women because they don’t think there are that many,men and women both being human and all that.
But where differences are recognised they use the phrase ‘men and women are different from each other’. In our universe the phrase used by people like you is ‘women are different from men’. You might think that those two phrases say the same thing.No. the second one assumes that men are the default human and any thing that differs from the default is lesser.
That’s why I assume you think that women can be equal but not in equivalence.Some women may be blessed with hormone levels that make it possible to think like men but generally this isn’t the case.
Any way I don’t suppose you will change your mind but you never know. We are all effected by social conditioning but some people question it and want to change it but some people like yourself want to keep propping it up,probably because you benefit from the status quo.
tiko, you should comment more often. :)
This, exactly.
tiko @15:
I enjoyed your thoughts. You ought to comment more.
(I can’t even imagine what the world would look like with gender equality)
actually, using “monster” as a search term for Pharyngula pages turns up an interesting series of posts.
I find little evidence of PZ labeling all mens rights advocates monsters, though he rightly points out the movement does contain a disproportionate number of them, without, of course, actually using the term “monster” to describe them.
Is it possible the term has been used? sure.
is it meaningful in any way to claim this is significant?
nope.
well, unless you ARE a monster, I suppose.
Sam Winston @ 491
This is pretty fucking rich, when Dawkins responds to criticisms of his tweets as a “which hunt” and Shermer responds to criticism with a slam piece that doesn’t address the issue.
What?
I?
I am the Monster at the end of this thread?
I just went to his Twitter feed, and… wow. He’s really doubled down on the rape apologia. I’m not in a very good place to discuss this here (sorry y’all) but I did do a brief post on my blog, including screenshots saved for posterity.
http://museinvivo.blogspot.com/2014/09/dawkins-jumps-shark.html
I will definitely be back later to read and discuss.
*sends everyone in the thread lots of Jedi Mind Hugs*
Thank-you Carlie and Tony! The Queer Shoop. I’ll certainly try to comment more.
Muse142@21:
What Dawkins is saying there is awfully close to what accused rapist Cee-Lo Green said:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/02/cee-lo-green-it-isnt-if-the-victim-is-unconscious
@tiko:
add me to the commenters loving your debut.
Very different from the one we see, that’s sure.
And that’s the failing of the privileged mindset: they think it’s hard to tell when we have equality, because they’re so used to having their way and having their experience treated like “the default”, they think an equal world would be just like now except with more tokens.
For Scott and other people who hold out hope that a blinding light will burst into being over Dawkins, I give you this, from 2011:
CD @ 20:
Sorry, you don’t count. You’re a big ole lovable, huggable, fluffy cookie monster.
Ichthyic:
PZ:
Okay?
::strokes fuzzy chin, ponders “Jedi Mind Hugs”…decides on 2 thumbs up::
And thank you Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden. It means a lot to me to get the heads up from such freethought stalwarts.
nope.
so, this is all MRAs?
sorry, but no, my point:
stands.
quote got cut off, but you get the point.
the claim that PZ actually thinks that all MRAs are monsters is not supported.
A. Noyd:
Rats are more my thing, but thanks. :D
On a more serious note, I’m going to spend more time on that tumblr and other sites, because I’m seeing things that really disturb me, and I’m feeling some responsibility for some of the things I’m reading. I know that some feminists being truly shitty to people doesn’t rest on my shoulders, but…I’m wondering, there have been times I’ve been dismissive (to put it lightly), and I’m not feeling good about that.
Ichthyic:
I did not fucking say that. FFS, Tony thought PZ never called people monsters. I corrected that he did now and then. Think you have it now?
Ichthyic:
The ‘PZ calls people monsters’ thing was started by Stan Winston on the previous page @491. I responded to him with:
Iyéska corrected me @ 499:
Hope that clear this up.
Iyéska
If you are feeling that due to the exchange with Helen, I wouldn’t feel too bad. She is having a lovely chat on twitter about the evil, mean feminists with DJ Grothe and Christina Hoff Sommers. ( not linking to DJs twit feed, there’s too much shit splattered on the floor already)
I can haz moar tiko nao plz.
Tethys:
No, I don’t feel bad about my exchange with Helen, I did try to have a good discussion with her. It’s from reading http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/ – there are a lot of young women on there, who specify really shitty things said to them by someone identifying as a feminist. And no, I don’t have the benefit of both sides there, and no, I can’t be sure there wasn’t some sort of colossal misunderstanding, but I don’t think that matters much. There seems to be a fair amount of bitterness and hurt. That bothers me. I don’t want to be someone who has been dismissive to the point that whatever I said (or didn’t say) ends up on someone’s why I’m not a feminist list.
@36 Tethys
Who is Helen on Twitter?
Helen is Helen Pluckrose, who came here last night to whine without providing any links to what horrible events occurred that made her so disdainful of feminism. After reading through that tumbler linked by Iyéska, I just want to shout at all those addlepated young women who think that feminism = hating men. That particular meme was in fact started by misogynists as a way to discredit feminists. *sigh* I take some comfort in the fact that my 20 something nieces are in fact strong feminists, even if they do not identify with the label,
Helen also took it as a compliment that her arguments, regarding feminism “sounded like Dawkins”. That kinda says it all.
@38 (page 2, because freaking numbers) Iyéska
That is why I love you (again) dammit. (In a brotherly, muffin-headed way. Just saying.) By which I mean “thank you for saying exactly the kind of thing I would have expected you to say, while always being more than pleasantly surprised.
There was a colossal misunderstanding of the FUBAR variety. Emphasis on colossal. I’ve just spent the last 2 hours attempting to parse it. Because it pissed me off.
But now I’m just going to remember the quote I just quoted. And maybe get a tattoo.
Tethys:
What I focused on were list reasons like:
I think there’s room for me to be more thoughtful in future discussions.
Iyéska:
I just wanted to say that your comments @33, 38, and 43 are one of the reasons I greatly respect you.
Iyeska
There’s lots of room in feminism, there’s lots of discussion. Feminists argue with each other all the time. And some feminists have really shitty positions. Some have horrible positions on sex work, TERFS are horrible people, or the insufferable white women feminsim. And sometimes feminists say stupid things, or sensible things at the wrong time, like focussing on virginity when somebody has been raped.
And I hope we don’t shy away from these discussions and don’t shy away from calling out other feminists for perpetuating that shit. Kind of like actual critical thinking, or at least the imitation us women manage ;)
But Helen Pluckrose isn’t one of these cases, she’s been dishonest, misrepresenting the discussions and issues, making herself look like the *gasp* victim of evil radfems.
I am exasperated with Dawkins. I was reading his Tweets about Muslims this morning, laden with phrases like “these people” referring to all Muslims. And his comments about rape. I want to shout: “Woah, dude, step away from the microphone.” He has really painted himself into a corner. No wait, switching metaphors…
@Tethys @11: “Trap? Since when is being an unrepentant sexist asshole any kind of trap?”
Being caught inside a culturally-supported wrong idea can be very much like a trap. It is a trap of illusion. Standing outside the trap, you can see the exit; “Hey, you there inside the trap, the exit is right there! Just walk through it!” But from the inside, the trap looks very different. The exit is not visible, nor the external appearance of the trap. Your message is clear, but all they hear is the shouting. And if you try to make it all quiet and reasonable and academic (as they will certainly demand), they won’t hear anything at all.
Keep shouting. Eventually they can make out the words, and see the exit, and walk through. I don’t know what triggers the change in vision. But every wrong cultural idea I have ever escaped has been because of people standing outside it, telling me what was wrong about the trap and trying to draw my attention to the exit. Today I feel like I wasted large chunks of my life defending the walls of the trap.
@Tiko 15 – I hope you comment here more often!
Being more thoughtful is always a wise choice if you truly want to effect social change by reaching your target audience. If only RD would allow that truth past his ego. However, the actual radical feminists that he (and the vast majority of women on that tumbler) seems to battling are people like Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto. She has been dead for 26 years, and I do not think her very 60’s type of radical behavior was ever a well supported, mainstream strain of feminism. I wonder if any of those women even know who Andy Warhol was, beyond his more famous artworks, much less recognize the slogans and political stances that were common in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Do they know about The Factory? Do they have any idea what a social propagandist does? It irks me no end to see young women saying I am not a feminist because (insert really bad reasoning and ignorance of history) while gloating that they have all the rights that those feminists fought for.
Knowknot and Tony, thank you.
Giliell:
Yeah. There’s a lot of No True Feminist going on too, from what I’ve been reading, and all too often, a distinct lack of empathy.
We can really work the estrogen vibe thingy or whatever. :D Yeah, I think I’ve been remiss on paying close attention to some arguments, so it’s an area I need to be better in.
Oh, Helen. Yes, she’s deep in the feminism without victimhood stuff. I had no idea of just how much strength that has gained, so I suppose I was a bit shocked. And even though I was getting seriously frustrated with Helen, I would have liked to actually carry the discussion on for a while longer, to clarify my understanding, if nothing else. I’m not going to try and argue such issues on twitter, which I think is the worst possible platform for this sort of thing, and I don’t do FB. What I wanted to get into with Helen was a discussion of privilege, because from where I sit, I think that has to be a key factor in feeling that a patriarchal system isn’t oppressive and it’s not all that bad.
Bootstraps feminism. If women work hard enough and jump through enough hoops, eventually their virtue will shine through.
Which loses a lot of its edge as a rhetorical tool when you realize it’s pure fantasy, unlike the lobby to make women into broodmares and chattel which is a real danger.
You mean the forced meme promoted by MRAs and artificially inflated with paid models?
Vaiyt:
No. For the 40+ years I’ve been active in feminism, there’s always been some sort of anti-feminist women group. Seems to me that such a contingent has been getting bigger. It bothers me. I’m not saying it has to bother anyone else.
Iyéska
Absolutely.
Privilege, denial, and conditioning.
Especially young women are taught that feminists are horrible old hags who want to take away lipstick and they are actively rewarded for being “nit like them”.
Also, it’s much nicer living in a world where there’s no discrimination against women, where your career and life is only limited by how good you are and by your own free choices.
When you haven’t even started that career, people who are telling you that no matter how good you are, you are at a distinct disadvantage and that you’ll be judged for your gender and not your work, they are threatening, they are disheartening. If you keep your eyes open then lots of it comes with a bit of life experience, and when you speak out then you’Re back to old hags vs. cool “girls”*
*But I like being called a girl, stop saying there’s anything wrong with it, I’m not a victim!
georgewiman
your description of “the trap” is well put. from inside it is a maze . It is a social construct there are many maybe even numberless including religion and sex roles. One of the things that I find baffling is how some who can easily see their way out of one trap can not see any of the others they are ensnared in. They must feel comfortable and receive some form of social re-enforcement from accepting the rules of the trap.
It is very disconcerting to question ones self and I find these discussions often very disturbing. I am just not content to live in illusions unquestioning maybe “when you got nothing you got nothing to lose” because I sure as hell don’t have much of a social position to cling to.
Here I am confronted with life, the universe and everything with how little we really know and how much we thought was true and has been proven to be wrong. How can anyone not question every thing and assume anything without checking?
It sure looks like “the feminist agenda” is based on something like it says where there is smoke there is fire.
uncle frogy
Giliell:
Yes, this exactly. I’m thinking there has to be a better way to communicate ideas and concepts, because it’s this idea of feminism equals victim that’s all over the damn place. Of course, life experience does end up opening a lot of eyes, but then you have privileged women like Helen, who never seem to reach that point.
Calling women girls is a major peeve of mine, and I have run into a fair amount of young women who say just that – I’m okay with girl, I call myself a girl! In the future, when I run into that, I think it might be better to go with my personal perspective, and how my view of that has changed from when I was young, and didn’t exactly have a problem with girl either.
Iyéska
Oh, mine, too.
I have no problem with women calling themselves girls or with expressions where both words are used (in German “Jungs und Mädels”). I usually call people out who use “girl” for an adult woman, who is:
-usually not there
-often described in a sexualized way.
-or as helpless
I also remember that I was heavily invested in “rape prevention” being something that works. A perfect combination of conditioning and false safety. I mean, all those people wouldn’t have told me all those neat things all my life if they were wrong, right? And, if they worked then I was safe, right?
I was also pretty sure that there was something about these women that made them end up in an abusive relationship and sice I was not a victim like them this couldn’t happen to me.
It was only the last years that I realized that holy fuck, my mother had already done 70% of an abusive partner’s work and that the only reason I didn’t end up in an abusive relationship was sheer luck. That’s a scary thing to understand.
@UncleFrogy Yes, traps inside traps. Escape from one, Whew! Still inside another. They form different arrangements and overlaps.
That awesome. Thanks for sharing. =**)
Giliell:
This is the other thing I saw a lot of – young women confident in their ability to keep themselves safe. I don’t feel terribly comfortable tearing that down, and I can easily see how it could be characterized as “you just want women to be victims!” Fuck, everything always has to be so complex. I dislike framing, but this is one of those things that has to be framed right, to get it across without sounding like an idiot who is into victimizing women.
Realizing you are not safe is probably the biggest fucking shock there is for women, at least to those who have that realization. That got all twisted about with me, because from my childhood experience, it was home where I wasn’t safe. Consequently discovering that not home was equally unsafe was a bad time.
F.O. @ 56, you don’t understand what we’re discussing.
Iyeska @53:
That’s grown to be one of my pet peeves too. It’s taken some time for me to adjust my tendency to refer to women as girls. I do it much less than I used to, and when I do it, I almost always catch myself in the midst of it (if someone were writing my dialogue for a movie it would look like “Do you see those girls..er..women…over there?”). It’s been hard to shake, but I’ve been determined to do it, and I try to make efforts to correct others doing it (but not usually when people self-identify).
Tony:
Yes, it’s really difficult to shake, I have a hard time with it myself, it’s just so societally ingrained that you use girl to mean girl, and girl to mean woman, unless you’re talking about an older woman.
Mostly, it’s the usage of girl in books that annoys me half to death. If an author uses boy along with girl, I don’t mind, but that doesn’t happen very often.
Iyéska
I can attest that it’s fucking terrifying. I remember that it’s you folks who ripped me down, in the usual gently Pharyngula way…
It’S difficult because most people who give such advice are actually well-meaning. They are technically on our side, they want girls and women to be safe, but they don’t understand that they’re putting the cart before the horse.
@Iyéska, #(5)60:
Actually, I don’t think that’s it. I think we use girl to use to girls or women whom we consider to be of lesser power than us…or sometimes equal power to us if we ourselves identify as girls.
There’s an age at which an older women can come across as a strong woman of authority and wisdom and knowledge. Age a little more and you’re an “old girl” again.
You don’t call your mom a girl. You don’t call your commanding officer a girl (unless you mean it as a slur that she doesn’t deserve her authority).
You call a woman a girl when, power-wise, you see the men in your life as more powerful. The side effect of certain ages being more likely to have women addressed as women isn’t really about age per se.
Or at least that’s how it comes across to me.
I know that, for myself at least, I was actually uncomfortable calling myself a woman until I was in my mid-twenties because I still *felt* like a kid. I certainly didn’t feel like a grown up. Hell, I don’t really feel like all that much of a grown up *now*, but I’ve definitely grown up a lot since the time I felt that I was, indeed, still a girl. I’m going to be 32 in 2 weeks, and sometimes calling myself a woman still weirds me out.
So I wonder how many of those young women who are okay with being called girls still feel like girls and get defensive when called on it. *shrugs* Who knows.
That said, it really bothers me now to be called a girl, or ‘young lady’ by anyone outside my family because I do feel like I’m being belittled.
Iyéska @ #58
I think F.O. is referring to Krasnaya Koshka’s post (#6)
Well, the fascist asshole Rush Limbaugh has been broadcasting that exact message since sometime in the 80’s. It’s not surprising that some people believe and parrot his propaganda, especially if they have been hearing those opinions for their entire lives. I have found a few interesting links between him and that tumbler, and by interesting I mean very suspicious.
Crip Dyke:
One of the problems I have in comics is with grown women being called girls. The prime example is Kara Zor-L, aka Power Girl. She’s a grown woman that’s been going by Power GIRL since the 70s. There could likely be an interesting explanation given if a writer took the time to do so (something referring back to her feminist roots; perhaps she’s a character that seeks to challenge men’s expectations of women and the power dynamic-she calls herself a girl, but she’s possessed of tremendous power, which ties into your comment about women in the military).
Ze Madmax, thanks. Sorry, F.O.
From Iyéska‘s quotes in #43:
:tentatively raises a hand: This happened to me. That specific story was not told by me, but I had that happen when I turned to a feminist space to try to talk about being molested as a child and raped and my feelings of missing important cultural rites of passage. I don’t have a first kiss. I don’t have a “first time” story. Those things will always feel like something I lost.
Recognizing that, yes, virginity is a socially constructed concept and reinforces shitty purity culture doesn’t make it better. It just makes me feel shittier, because it means I feel like I can’t talk about how this socially constructed concept still hurts me. It means I feel like the only people I could talk to about this aspect of things would be those who are already going to be less sympathetic because of being steeped in purity culture.
Telling me my virginity never existed isn’t going to ever make it hurt less or make me feel like I didn’t “lose” something. It’s just going to make me shut up.
I don’t argue against the need to deconstruct the concept of virginity. I feel that’s really, really important. It’s just also a subject that’s pure misery for me and always worries me about hurting someone else who might feel that same loss I do.
Tethys:
Y’know, I remember when I was young, feeling strong. Feeling confident. Feeling capable. There was a natural resentment to the idea that I was unable to fend for myself; bristling at the idea of being unsafe, or a potential victim. In my case, it didn’t take long to be disabused of such thinking, but how I remember that feeling. I didn’t want to be warned, I didn’t want to be told, I didn’t want to listen to stories. I wanted to be free, and the people with the warnings and the lessons and the stories all looked to me like they were holding out a pretty birdcage.
I haven’t thought about that in a very long time. Maybe I’m too fucking old to talk with young women about these things. I don’t know.
TMM @ 68, thank you so much for that, and I am deeply sorry that happened to you. I really want to make sure I never do anything like that to someone else.
Mellow Monkey I am so sorry that your abuse was trivialized. It is horrible that your rights of passage were stolen and people who should have offered you comfort decided to use your experience to shame you further. Please accept all the *hugs* you want.
TMM:
Another thing I haven’t thought about for a very long time. Also being someone who didn’t have any virginity to lose (in the standard accepted way), I managed to incorporate it anyway. When having those conversations that wandered into losing your virginity territory, I simply shifted things in my head, so that my first consensual sex was my “losing my virginity” experience/story. I always knew it was a lie, of course, but I was terrified to tell the truth, to anyone.
Iyéska
Yeah, I did the same thing. Luckily, that’s not really something my peer group talks about at this point. Now all they want to talk about is kids. Still not a conversation I have a place in, but at least there they don’t expect me to offer anything!
Tethys:
I’m a little confused here, Tethys. You were angry (and probably frustrated by) at the women on the tumblr, including the woman who had an experience like The Mellow Monkey’s. So, did you not have any sympathy for the woman on the tumblr? If I’m reading you wrong, I apologize.
Iyéska, Giliell et al.
I really need some help here, because I am more lost than lost. I’ve been biting my tongue for quite some time now, thinking that things would sink in, that there would be some magic phrase, that some cloud of denseness in my head would clear and…
nope.
I’m going to state my personal problem as simply as possible, which admittedly may result in mass confusion due to oversimplification:
– – – I do not, in any way, understand the resistance to “rape prevention” as “opposed” to rectifying the abhorrent attitudes and behaviors of men who : commit rape, openly promote or condone rape, fail to act defensively or suppotively in the presence of rape, fail to speak against rape, or carry, disseminate OR fail to question the attitudes, preconceptions, biases (etc) that lead to acceptance and ignorance regarding rape (or more accurately… women’s agency? the nature of consent? that fact that coerced sex is a violent – even if psychological – and catastrophic attack on a person? … ???)
Here’s the thing. People get drummed out vigorously for saying things, asking questions, and reacting to responses* in a manner that I likely would myself if I were just a little less circumspect, or a little less agile with words, or a little less sensitive to words and how they might be percieved, or a little less free of the crap I grew up in… (on and on)
NOTE that I am not attempting to excuse any instance of beligerance or trolling or anything else. If anything, and in this instance, I am simply saying that if the underpinnings and effects of both sides of an interaction can’t be viewed dispassionately at some appropriate level then we’re all fucked. In a way similar to the way, as a historian whose name I can’t pull up said (paraphrased), “In the end, the problem with Lutheranism was that it was a non-Catholic religion for good Catholics…”
Here’s the thing. Apart from more general concerns, I have two daughters. I’ve tried very hard to raise them so they don’t carry fear, while at the same time understanding that things happen, with and without known precedent, and out of the blue without respect to any understandable factors.
HERE’S THE CONTENTIOUS BIT: If there is anything that will improve their chances of NOT being harmed, and if it does not, in effect, cause them overriding anxiety or cause them to feel that any negative events are their fault, or potentially lead to a sense that the world “is what it is” and the only hope is to stockpile defenses, then they are going to get it. And in extreme circumstances (possibilities which currently do not exists for them) even some of this is malleable.
They will never, without any resistance I can provide, be presented with actions or apparently appropriate statements or circumstances that make a case for “men gonna (man things),” inasmuch as I can influence circumstances. They’re already pretty clear that this view is wrong, as much as is appropriate for their ages.
So, I don’t know what this makes me in this debate. I honestly don’t. Because I hear and read interactions that, to me, look very much like struggles over how these things are stated, how much is understood from either side, with attendant vitriol at simple lack of articulation leading to complete misunderstanding.
Maybe that’s because I’m already on the wrong side of things. But I will say this: There are a lot of intelligent people out there who have considerably more trouble than I do parsing the sorts of knots that appear in interactions on these issues.
And if I am an example of the lowest comprehending denominator in all of this, we are in serious trouble.
So. Can anyone explain or point to an clear explanation? Please?
* In a recent example, someone on a threat made a statement that would have sounded like at least a potential threat if directed toward my daughters. So it seems reasonable to me that someone else might. And even given the sensitivity to similar language and triggers here, the response to a stated sense of threat was essentially “get over it.” (???)
Iyéska
I am not at all bothered by being asked to clarify. I am bothered by the women on the tumbler who think that being a feminist means hating men, or used Valerie Solanas as the reason why they don’t need feminism. ( I thought I had been quite specific…apparently I was mistaken) That doesn’t mean I am not sympathetic to women who have been insulted by people in the name of feminism. Your points and the links you provided were all examples of people who had valid reasons for offense and not identifying with the label. However, the vast majority that I read through seemed to be under the impression that feminism means hating men and motherhood. I think modern feminism needs a image revamp to disassociate it from the likes of both Valerie Solanas, and to drown out some of the noise coming from the Rush contingent. It is an unhappy realization for me to understand that his multi-decade anti-feminism hate campaign is the face of feminism for a large segment of the population.
knowknot:
Good luck with your project.
Knownot, there are three problems with the idea of centering prevention:
(1) A lot of the “prevention” tips are predicated on the idea of rapist-as-stranger, and thus the tips have as a major effect the curtailing of women’s lives.
(2) Given our societal rape culture, all of the tips can be used as weapons against women who are raped, e.g. “So someone roofied and raped you? Why weren’t you wearing that new nail polish?!”
(3) At best, most of the tips are predicated on the idea that the rapist is going to rape, but let him (most of the tips also assume a male rapist) rape someone else.
If, if a rape-prevention thing could (1) work and (2) not fall into one or all of those pitfalls I outlined above, then it might be something useful. But that’s a big if.
@77 ChasCPeterson
?
Seriously, ?
If by “good luck” you mean “I hope you are able to clarify the issue for yourself, or for others,” then thank you. I appreciate it.
If the brevity of the phrase indicates what it usually indicates (which is sarcasm), then then there’s an issue. Because either:
– You have attempted some similar clarification and had success… in which case I’m concerned that you didn’t share it, given the importance of the issue,
– You have attempted some similar clarification and did NOT have success… in which case I’m concerned that the issue isn’t important enough to you to state the issues you experienced in the attempt,
– You have scanned the issues, been unclear, and don’t particularly care; in which case you’re likely just whining or pointing a finger at other people’s failures to communicate or think clearly, or
– You just flat don’t care that much.
So, “thank you” or “please clarify” or “what” or “shut the hell up.”
If I have not satisfied you with a potentially appropriate response, please let me know.
However, by choosing to focus on victim-centered prevention your voice is going to be added to the victim-blaming background noise. Your daughters may know you mean well, but everyone else’s daughters not so much.
Moreover, considering the low effectiveness of victim-centered measures (that assume a series of uncommon circumstances), will only have any effect at all if they’re not offset by the negative effects of an illusion of security and false confidence.
I have a cousin who happens to be conventionally attractive. She already had two close calls just this year; once she was stalked after leaving school, and last month she was accosted in the parking lot and had to call her parents in tears. I get terrified and pissed just thinking about it, because my own fucking mother was questioning her wardrobe choices in both cases. This is what victim-centered thinking leads to – my oh-so-empathetic mama, animal lover, charity donor, condemning her niece for daring to be a pretty girl in public.
@78 Esteleth is Groot
(I’m going to have to take this bit-by-bit; otherwise it will take forever. Also, doing this all-at-once would allow me to compound any number of initial confusions to reproduce exponentially.)
So, if I understand, the question is one of whether “prevention” is to be the main focus in attempting to (ideally) eliminate rape.
If so, I’m a little confused as to how it is a question, given that I do not understand why it is not possible to do whatever is possible to avert rape, or lessen the probability of rape whatever circumstances possible AND make it clear that, given an effective enough predator and unfortunate circumstances there is no adequate “defense” AND making it clear that the wrong and harm is IN ALL CASES caused by the rapist AND that it is impossible to support any expectation of adequate “preventative measures” (for more reasons than I can begin to list exhaustively).
(Also note that I will be clumsy and inelegant formthe duration due to the fact that I am intentionally avoiding metaphors… they’re lovely and fun, but quite often only the choir understands them, and, also quite often, they muddle and confuse in any case.)
I understand that the presumption of available and effective “preventative measures” is a horrifying issue both legally and socially because the mere suggestion of a failure to take such measures is used to establish doubt regarding consent. But I have trouble seeing any way to fix this, given that regardless of focus a mere “did you leave the room” is used as an argument / weapon, and that the same is true of something as ephemeral and deniable as a verbal statement. So, in effect, I don’t understand how anything other than an effort to place the onus on the attacker can be any real help. Meaning, any claim to “implied consent” is categorically denied.
I’m certain there are legal issues and hurdles I can’t possibly guess at involved in all this. But… it seems to me that any societal change, which is really what we’re after, will have an effect on the law in the end, and that there is always a relationship between the social environment and the law. And if that’s true, the question of how a particular approach will work under existing law becomes somewhat moot, since any profound societal change is likely to be hindered by a legal structure created prior to that change.
(The rest will follow as soon as I can manage. Thank you…)
No one is opposed to rape prevention generally.
We have a lot of tactics available to us to prevent rapes. From mandatory penectomy and chastity belts to billboards that say, “I hope you didn’t hit anyone on the head with a crowbar and then rape your unconscious assault victim. That wouldn’t be so good,” or “Don’t bat your eyes. Batting your eyes means ‘yes’ to sex, you slut.”
….darn it, have to finish this later.
@80 vaiyt
I hear you, thank you.
I am NOT ignoring your response, but I think I’m attempting to clarify my lack of understanding regarding the same issue in the first part of my (response? questions? babble?) to Esteleth.
And I am sorry for your cousin and aggrieved in her stead. I hope you and others will be able to allay that wound.
@82 Crip Dyke
Thank you. I hope so so, because, um…
knowknot:
Just ignore Chas.
WRT your concerns, I’ll preface this by saying I’m not a parent, and I’m sure you know I’m a guy (just for an understanding of my perspective which won’t be as informed as others).
On an individual level, rape prevention tips might work. Think about the claims of rape apologists.
“If you hadn’t gone to the frat party, you wouldn’t have been raped.”
“If you hadn’t worn that cosplay outfit, you wouldn’t have been raped.”
“If you hadn’t invited xim to your room, you wouldn’t have been raped.
I’m sure you know that’s victim blaming, as it literally blames the victim for the actions of the rapist. But remember that that victim blaming occurs everywhere. The message that there are things people can do to avoid or prevent rape is projected from the valleys to the mountains. It’s heard on tv, in the movies, at work, at school, at church, at home. It has insinuated itself into the foundation of society such that it’s become the default response from a great many people when they hear about someone being raped.
Now, we know that’s not right. But what about the people who don’t know that’s not right? What about the people who don’t understand or even know about Rape Culture? They’ve been living in this culture like the rest of us and have soaked in the harmful Rape Culture ideas, but haven’t heard them refuted. For many of them, they may think there is indeed something they can do to prevent getting raped.
They might wear more clothes.
They might choose to not go for that jog at night by themselves.
They might opt to use drug detecting nail varnish.
On the individual level, that’s perfectly fine. If someone chooses to take steps to make themselves feel more secure, GO FOR IT.
But culturally, from the perspective of society at large? It’s not going to amount to a hill o’ beans, bc rapists find ways to rape. And they use all manner of tactics. Getting someone drunk is not the only way. In fact, as I was trying to get Helen to understand upthread, the nail varnish isn’t going to do a lot of good for the youth under 17 who are sexually assaulted.
Also, as I mentioned upthread, even if potential victims were to use the nail varnish and they detected the presence of drugs, what does that do? It might alert them to the possibility that someone is trying to drug and maybe rape them. What then? Tell the owner or manager of the bar? Call the cops? Remember that we live in a Rape Culture where victims of attempted and completed rape are routinely not believed. Chances are the potential victim will not be believed and the rapist will still be at large. All they’re going to do is find another way to rape. Or they’ll find another target. Or both.
The other problem with pushing the idea of using so-called rape prevention tools is that it shifts the discussion away from the perpetrators of rape. Instead of talking about educating people about consent and respecting the boundaries of others, the conversation becomes “do this and your chances of being raped drop”. That doesn’t affect the wider culture. It doesn’t target the people who are doing the rape. It doesn’t change minds.
Another way to look at it-people often say “learn self-defense’. Ok, great. What if every person concerned about rape learned self defense*. Remember how many intimate partner rapes there are? There are countless stories of women and men being raped by their partners. This isn’t stranger rape we’re talking about where one’s guard might be up. This is people they know, and trust that are violating them. How effective are self defense techniques going to be against people they trust and/or love, when they’re thinking they won’t be harmed by them?
Also, as I alluded to above, attempting to protect oneself from rape is quite understandable. But does that stop rape from happening period? Or just send the rapist elsewhere? Should we push and suggest rape prevention methods that just shift the rape onto someone else? Does that work to lower the overall incidence of rape? No. It doesn’t. At a guess, I’d say many people not only don’t want themselves raped, they don’t want others raped either.
Which means efforts to reduce rape need to target the people who are responsible for rape: the rapists.
*and remember, there are going to be many people with limited mobility for whom self defense classes won’t work
@knowknot (#75)
Well, like others have said, the rape “prevention” tips are actually rape deflection tips. They don’t keep rapists from raping, so someone is inevitably going to get raped. If not your daughters, then their peers. In order to improve your daughters’ odds, you’ll have to be better at teaching them the tips than the parents of their peers.
You said you’d do anything, right? Well, why play fair with stakes so high? Why stick with defenses? There’s a limit to how successful you can be at instilling the tips, but you could take a few of your daughters’ more peripheral friends aside and pass on some false tips—sabotage them so they draw the rapists off!
No, I don’t think you’d do that. I’m 100% sure you don’t want their peers or anyone else to get raped in their stead. But that’s where the “prevention” tips strategy eventually has to take us.
knowknot @81:
Let’s follow through on the first part further (emboldened). What does it mean to do whatever possible to prevent rape? Recall that rapists have:
-targeted people who were fully clothed or nude. Changing one’s style of dress is not likely to affect their chances of rape.
-targeted people who were stone cold sober and passed out drunk. How does one know what level of sobriety they should maintain to reduce their chances of being raped?
-targeted people at the mall, at work, at church, at the supermarket, at the convenience store, at the mosque, at the synagogue, in the park, at home, and anywhere else you can imagine. What location affords the greatest protection from being raped?
-targeted people they know and love. How does someone judge which people in their lives they need to stay away from to lower their chances of being raped?
-targeted people at 10 am. 1 pm. 5:30 pm. 11:30 at night. How can someone determine which time of day will lower their odds of being raped?
There’s no way to know any of that. There’s no formula to figure this out. There’s no magical time of day someone can leave their house and not be raped if their significant other is the one who rapes them: at home. One could cover every inch of their body and still be raped. One could drink nothing for a year and still be raped.
You can’t prevent something you have no control over.
sorry, knowknot – my laptop is functioning only on outlet power right now, and, well, kids in the house. So nothing saves from one session to the next and I had to send what I had.
So. Prevention.
Like many others here, I am interpreting “prevention” in the context of a history of “prevention” campaigns that were victim blaming. I can consciously choose to assign a broader definition (anything that prevents rape) at which you sometimes hint, but I think that the reasonable reading is that you are, in fact, talking about these “rape prevention tips” that are aimed at people that society sees as “valuable (potential) victims”.
It seems like you’re saying that where harm reduction and eradication don’t conflict, why not harm reduction?
I don’t disagree. Nor do I think does any other regular on this thread. We do, however, have people that have worked in anti-violence movements for years here amongst the Horde. A great many of these people have seen these “tips” go out to the public and then heard the stories from victims about the public blaming the victims for not following one or another “tip” as it were a rule.
It’s easy to judge effectiveness vs. harm with mandatory penectomy (given the massive harm). It’s easy to judge effectiveness vs harm with billboards congratulating everyone who didn’t violently rape another today (given the utter lack of effectiveness).
Most proposed policies (unfortunately not all, sheesh) are harder to judge. But the anguish that we rape survivors have felt combined with the gross ubiquity of victim blaming creates a strong aversion to “tips” that target potential victims.
This aversion – sometimes hatred – of tips campaigns is expressed differently at different times. Maybe a tip catches someone on a bad day. Maybe a tip comes in the wrong thread. Whatever.
I’m not willing to tell any of the people that are outraged at tips campaigns that they should be more polite.
But there is one, difficult area on which you’ve landed.
Break here…back soon.
re: prevention
Like others have said, they don’t really prevent anything in a general sense, they just prevent it happening to you because the kind of rapist they’re effective against will just rape someone else instead. Maybe. If the rapist you happen to encounter happens to be someone who is deterred by the particular tips you followed on that day. If not, you get raped anyway and then you get asked by all and sundry why you failed to follow the right tips. They’re, at best, treating the symptoms and not the disease and, at worst, they’re used as a weapon against victims.
And that’s how prevention campaigns have historically been used: as weapons against victims. As a way to prevent the conversation from ever getting around in any meaningful way to the subject of convincing rapists not to rape.
So, to echo others, if an individual feels safer wearing drug detecting nail polish? More power to them. Do what you feel you need to do. But if you want to have a conversation about how to prevent rape and not just deflect it from yourself? Then get away from me with your nail polish and your policing of what people wear and, so on.
Popping in to say that this conversation is extremely interesting (to me). It’s rare to get an opportunity for actual discussion of these topics that isn’t asshole-driven.
Seven of Mine, Crip Dyke, Tony!, vaiyt, Esteleth.. in your comments you’ve condensed thousand-comment-thread ragefests* into concise, easy-to-read tutorials. I kind of want to ask PZ to front-page your comments as a summary. I will say I’ve bookmarked this conversation for future reference, because it will help me to discuss these issues with people even less informed than I am!
Thank you.
Also, fuck off Chas. Seriously. I may not be quite up to speed, but you’re just a saboteur.
* By ragefests, I mean conversations sparked by truly despicable people. It’s very hard to learn when wading through verbal diarrhea.
Thank you all. I’m not at all sure that there’s more to be drawn from my attempt at stating the question… so I’ll be digesting what I’ve gotten, intricately as possible.
but… Crip Dyke, please do add the next bit when you can.
Blessings and respect.
Something I just thought of as an analogy:
It’s kind of like Digital Rights Management (DRM) on computer games. A lot of games require you to be online even to play single player, you have to purchase the games directly through their system (like Origin) and so on. The problem is, none of that stuff is actually a deterrent to anyone who really wants to pirate the games. Anyone with the knowledge and inclination can get around it trivially easily. So you don’t prevent anyone at all from pirating and you’ve made it considerably less convenient for legitimate users to access your products.
Likewise with rape prevention. The rapists will either target someone else or take a different approach to the same victim. So you don’t prevent the rapist from raping, but you do end up curtailing the freedom of innocent people.
Iyéska @60:
Even with older women … my hairdresser (50-something?) refers to all her clients as girls, including the seventy, eighty, ninety-year-old ones. When she talks about her apprentices, they’re the young girls.
I think she’s doing it in a sort of “all us together” way, but it sets my teeth on edge.
Rowan VT
Personally, I’m 12, sometimes.
That’s why I usually don’t argue with people who use the word for themselves. I certainly do in some situations (like “the girls are coming over for dinner”). I object against people using it for grown women to denote, as you put it so well, that they’re of a lesser status.
Or that they’re fuckable, in which case I will react with “you’re into children?”, because I think that this is an especially problematic use since it blurs the lines between “person able to give consent” and “minor unable to give consent”.
Oh, and I will jump at everybody’s throat who uses “girl” as an insult. It drove me furious that my BFF would use the phrase “I don’t want to sound like a girl, but…” when she wanted something to be more comfortable (like, could you close the window, or that she didn’t like camping where you have to share bathrooms) in front of her own goddaughter
MM
*hugs*
It shouldn’t be hard to understand that even though there’s no meat to “virginity”, first times are usually considered important. Would anybody tell a parent that the first time they held their child wasn’t an important moment in their lives? That sucks. We need to stop that. We’re not going to have sensible discussions about this if we dismiss that such points DO have actual importance in people’s lives.
knownot
The problem with fucking rape prevention is that it doesn’t work in the grand shape of things and that it shifts attention to the wrong people while at the same time gicing them a false sense of saftety.
What actual rape prevention is working against the most common forms of rape, which are intimate partner rape and date rape? What advice do you give children? Don’t be one in the presence of adults?
Do you understand the resistance to “homeopathy” and “anti-vaxxers”?
Also, lots of rape prevention is a game of privilege. Call a cab? Don’t walk alone at night?
Yes thank you!
I work at an institution for adult learning, which is in a place where few people are on the street after 8pm. I am usually, and have been for the last 5 or 6 years, the last person to leave the building on a certain night a week. I even park my car in a place I’m not supposed to car so I don’t have to walk to the totally unlit carpark on the other side of the street.
It would be trivially easy for somebody to attack me. I’m as predictable as a well working clock. What rape prevention is there except “don’t work late at night?”
Here’s a little story: Some time ago, there was this little problem at my university: A guy tried to kidnap a woman in the carpark. Now, it’s quite certain that he wa sthe same guy who had spent months(!) harassing and terrifying women on and around campus (like throwing water in their faces. Yeah, I know, it’s just water. It’s not like women have ever heard of men throwing acid into women’s faces). The university’s response: “Dear women, don’t walk around alone after dark (this was winter term, dark meant 4pm), especially not to the carpark. Always be with somebody. We could probably provide more campus security, but we won’t. Good luck, don’t get abducted, raped, killed or any combination of the above”
To follow that advice would have meant “drop out of college” for me and I guess many other women.
And as others have mentioned, “rape prevention” is something taht mostly “works” retroactively: If you, dear victim, hadn’t, then you wouldn’t. Because you can always find something they could have done. That’s because quite a lot of it is:
-contradictory (like wehere we’re actually supposed to park our cars in order to be safe)
-near impossible (like wearing our hair in any way that would allow a rapist to grab it and hold us by it)
@92
And just like with piracy, there are A LOT of people who are too eager to accept the phenomenon as an inevitable thing. It’s surreal how many people look at rape as a fact of life, just these thing that’s in the background and will always be. I think that plays a huge part in why people focus so much on preventive meassures….it’s basically the idea that someone is going to be raped, just make sure it’s not you, and as long as that’s the case, oh well…what are you going to do, right?
One big glaring flaw to the drug-detecting nail polish, straws, glassware, etc, is bottled beer, which is actually what I am most likely to order at a club or dance venue. (The bottle helps prevent spills while dancing!) When I first heard of these products, I immediately thought that the only way it could be at all effective is if a given bar– or, better yet, all bars– used the glassware.
On the subject of the idea of rape deflection: I remember being horrified by one particular line in This Is The End, an otherwise fairly boring circle-jerk of dudebros: in an apocalyptic LA, the group of men are barricaded in a house with a stranger asking to be let in. “What if he’s a rapist?” asks one. “He can’t rape ALL of us!” counters another. I was absolutely appalled by the line, and the fact that it’s supposed to be humor. Apparently to some people, deflecting a rapist (toward a friend!) is a perfectly sound strategy… ugh.
Rape deflection is one of those principles feminist-bashing atheists would no doubt loudly abhor, in certain contexts.
@The Mellow Monkey @68 —
I’m so sorry that happened to you.
@knowknot —
Regarding your fundamental question, the best way I can think to put this is unfortunately to bring in a drunk driving analogy (I’m speaking in terms of social change, not comparing the act of rape to driving a car). When activists began to push for social change on the problem of drunk driving, they had to raise awareness of the problem, then once people were aware, they had to work to get people to stop doing it. Their targets were people who were likely to drive drunk and bystanders. There was a coordinated campaign to remind people that it was a crime to drive drunk that would bring severe penalties and that people were dying because of it. There was a similar campaign to raise awareness among the population that we are all responsible for keeping someone else from driving while drunk.
Notice what the anti-drunk driving activists didn’t do: they didn’t start telling people how to personally not be a victim of a drunk driver. Because the problem was individuals making the choice to undertake a dangerous action they knew was illegal and harmful to others, and bystanders seeing them undertaking that action and not stopping it, not that other people were not driving defensively enough.
Rape prevention has been going on for several decades, the same lists of “how to avoid being chosen as the target of a rapist in certain situations” circulated over and over. New tools added, same message, for years. Everyone knows about prevention tips. Those of us who have been raising awareness of this issue are very very tired of prevention being the only thing to do. We have been asking “How do we really change this across society?” To effectively attack the problem requires going after the people doing the raping and the people enabling the raping, not concentrating on individuals avoiding being victims. That is how we change this across an entire society and it is, I suspect, where the resistance to “more new tools!” for prevention comes from.
I’d like to know what would’ve prevented it from happening to me. Thing is, you don’t know a fucking thing about me or what happened. So where do you even begin? Let’s hear it. Lay it out. You have all the time in the world — give me every detail and all the best advice you can muster, as if you really give a shit about me and not just about how you feel.
What should I have done differently? What’s the “risky” behavior or situation that I could’ve avoided? What could anyone have possibly told me ahead of time that would’ve made a difference? What could they (anyone) have done to change it — with the sole exceptions of not being a rapist, not encouraging rape culture at every opportunity, and not trying to shift the burden onto the victims where it doesn’t belong?
I think it’s entirely fair that you’ll get zero information about me and what happened: that is exactly what you’ll have when you talk about something that hasn’t yet happened by giving someone advice about what will supposedly “prevent” their rape in some unknown situation in the future that may never (and hopefully never does) occur. You don’t know, and you can’t. So what the fuck do you think you’re supposed to say, which would actually be helpful, and not just be about making yourself feel better after the fact for having tried “your best” to “prevent” it from happening to your loved ones? The best you can do is still to stop rapists from raping. Beyond that, what the fuck else is there?
drst #98
That’s one of the few driving analogies I’ve seen which actually made sense. Thank you.
Knowknot, Tony and others have pretty covered everything I would have said. Also, please pay attention to CR, who makes an excellent point. I do want to add a bit about things like Forced Teaming, Charm and Niceness.* Do you know about those tactics? There isn’t a single prevention tip which will help in those cases. My biggest problems with the prevention laundry lists is that they don’t prevent, they deflect, and the inherent victim blaming of them. There’s also the problem of prevention tips / gadgets / whatever leading to a false sense of security, and having the effect of making people look away from the actual elephant in the room, rape culture.
*Forced Teaming. This is when a person implies that he has something in common with his chosen victim, acting as if they have a shared predicament when that isn’t really true. Speaking in “we” terms is a mark of this, i.e. “We don’t need to talk outside… Let’s go in.”
Charm and Niceness. This is being polite and friendly to a chosen victim in order to manipulate him or her by disarming their mistrust.
Too many details. If a person is lying they will add excessive details to make themselves sound more credible to their chosen victim.
Typecasting. An insult is used to get a chosen victim who would otherwise ignore one to engage in conversation to counteract the insult. For example: “Oh, I bet you’re too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me.” The tendency is for the chosen victim to want to prove the insult untrue.
Loan Sharking. Giving unsolicited help to the chosen victim and anticipating they’ll feel obliged to extend some reciprocal openness in return.
The Unsolicited Promise. A promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for; this usually means that such a promise will be broken. For example: an unsolicited, “I promise I’ll leave you alone after this,” usually means the chosen victim will not be left alone. Similarly, an unsolicited “I promise I won’t hurt you” usually means the person intends to hurt their chosen victim.
Discounting the Word “No”. Refusing to accept rejection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear
Also, Knowknot, one of the things brought up with Helen was how do prevention tips help in the case of children and men being raped? When you don’t focus solely on women being raped, it brings you smack up against the need to dismantle rape culture.
If someone wants to use special straws, nail polish, and all that, fine. I don’t have a problem with anyone using those things personally. I simply don’t think they are of any use in dismantling rape culture, and focusing on prevention devices ultimately leads to both complacency and victim blaming.
azhael @95:
THIS↑↑
drst that’s an excellent analogy – a great rarity, when most of the analogies and metaphors so often trotted out on this subject are evil garbage. Thank you. ::saved it::
knowknot:
I’d like to thank you for asking your questions, bc it has allowed us to have a productive discussion about Rape Culture and rape prevention.
Also, drst @98: I agree with Daz, that was a very good analogy. Thank you.
I’d also like to thank drst for that analogy. I’ve bookmarked #98 to refer back here again.
drst:
Yes. I’d really like to see the Don’t Be That Guy Campaign across the States, not just posters, but talks, magazine ads, and television adverts.
Tony and Azhael: I think the “assume and accept that rape is unchangeable constant” element to this is a spot on observation. That seemed to be precisely what was poisoning the thinking of Helen and the other obsessive fans of drug detecting nail polish. In fact, Helen and her Twitter friend both explicitly MOCKED the idea of attempting to change the incidence of rape itself. Like it is an insurmountable force of nature or something.
Thanks everyone.
Iyeska @ 107 – I would love to see that as well. One of the witnesses to the Steubenville rape actually said that he knew about taking keys away from someone who was drunk so they wouldn’t drive – he even quoted “friends don’t let friends drive drunk” – but claimed he didn’t know that he should intervene to stop the assault. Head meet desk.
TMM:
Aye, me too. There’s a lovely lesson in there for all those who think Prof. Dawkins is terribly brilliant, too. This was Dawkins’s idea of using drunk driving and rape.
drst:
There are times I sit and stare at words, desperately trying to block their terrible import from sinking in. That was one of those times. It’s rape culture, 60 feet high, in blazing neon, FFS. So yes, I would really, truly, deeply like to see such a campaign, everywhere.
Much like MADD’s campaign, it would take time for it saturate, and it would take time to sink in, and it would take time for people to start accepting it. Eventually, though, the heavy hitters, like booze companies, would take it onboard, and it would be everywhere. Yet, it remains difficult to talk about this, because of all the focus on prevention, and that’s rather infuriating in light of things like don’t text while driving are in ads, billboards, etc., but rape? Nah. That brings out the super cynic in me, too. You can get money for anti-drunk driving campaigns, you can get it for anti-texting campaigns, because some people got it through the right heads that all those car accidents and death were costing the government money. Then we have rape…with very low report rates, low conviction rates, and low sentencing when there is a conviction, so no one cares much, and we’re back to prevention laundry lists.
Adding to mine @ 111:
We go back to prevention laundry lists because it’s always easier to blame a victim.
Thinking about all these things brought to mind a comment by SallyStrange:
That could be turned into a righteous ad campaign.
@105 Tony! The Queer Shoop
It has been productive for me, and I’m far from done. If it was productive for anyone else, I’m pleased and at peace with it. In both cases I’m thankful to everyone who has contributed so far for the entirety of what makes it so.
And, selfishly, for the sake of future discussions, a clarification:
I wasn’t asking for advice regarding my daughters (though such responses are helpful in other ways as well, and though anything learned would hopefully be helpful to them), I wasn’t arguing for prevention as a flying wedge, I wasn’t suggesting that there are any real “preventative” measures, and I understand victim blaming altogether too well (but still far from well enough).
I am only trying to find a way (if there is one) to unbuild a wall (if it is possible), or at least some tiny part of one, without respect to my limited skill in doing so, zero cred, and enough ignorance to view from space. And I’m completely OK if that’s judged to be a fool’s errand.
@108 anteprepro
I get this. I do. Or at least some of it. Open to judgement.
But, as a result of my own conversations with survivors of rape, rape, which I may have misinterpreted beyond all recognition, it seems to me, as me, alone, that this is a sense / view / type of despair one might have in the aftermath. For as long as one might have it. For whatever reason pne mightbhave it.
And something which is perhaps a separate issue, but that I believe very strongly due to personal and close experience: mockery is often, if not usually, a shield.
This metaphorical and hypothetical map ends here.
Aggghhh and apologies. Corrected version of the previous post:
————————————————
@108 anteprepro
I get this. I do. Or at least some of it. Open to judgement.
But, as a result of my own conversations with survivors of rape, which I may have misinterpreted beyond all recognition, it seems to me, as me, alone, that this is a sense / view / type of despair one might have in the aftermath. For as long as one might have it. For whatever reason one might have it.
And something which is perhaps a separate issue, but that I believe very strongly due to personal and close experience: mockery is often, if not usually, a shield.
This metaphorical and hypothetical map ends here.
Knowknot, in all honesty, the best advice you can give your daughters – anyone – is to trust their instincts. Teach them that if a situation/person is giving them that iffy feeling in their gut, to trust it.
The other thing that you can teach them – and this is paramount – is that you trust them, that you value them, and that if they come to you and say that something happened, that your first reaction will be to support them and offer them help. Don’t question if whatever-it-was happened, don’t cast doubt on their perceptions. Support them.
Lots of win in this thread.
Recently I’ve been seeing with increasing frequency among anti-feminists the assertion that feminists want to treat both* genders EXACTLY equally, and that such an idea is worthy of scorn. In their minds, to treat every human exactly equally based on gender would be absurd, because clearly there are differences. Exhibit A is Jared Hanson in the previous episode of this comments page.
These same people eschew the label “feminism” based on a overly literal interpretation as promoting women over men, so their preferred term is “gender equality”.
So, they want gender equality, but we shouldn’t treat genders exactly equally, because obviously they’re different? Clearly, what they are pushing for is separate-but-equal—protected gender differences.
(Perhaps they should categorize favorite protected differences as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered so they know which ones to work harder on. /snark)
* Their types usually prefer the gender binary.
Knowknot, if you haven’t read it, I recommend
by Gavin de Becker. It would be a good gift for your daughters, too. I don’t agree with everything de Becker says, but for the most part, it’s right on the money.
I remember a long-ago thread where I was a newbie, and used the drunk driving analogy as a counter to some MRA that claimed that his hobby of getting young women inebriated and then having sex with them wasn’t rape because he was drunk too. (bleeeech) It sparked a long and ferocious discussion about clear, conscious, consent, and how alcohol is used by rapists to create plausible deniability. I can’t find that thread, because I can’t remember that particular slimeballs ‘nym, but I did come across the Your name is Tucker thread. I miss so many hordelings there that don’t comment anymore, but the jokes following the banning are just too fun not to share. Banhammer falls at #153, hilarity starting at #160.
The Gift of Fear is a good read, if you skip the chapter on domestic violence. Hooboy.
Also, let’s talk for a moment about what happens or would happen if women practised “rape prevention”.
One public meassure is that in many car parks there are spaces reserved for women, near the entrance, in the light, where there’s still a public so they can park their cars safely.
Now, instead of men being horrified that such a thing has to exist because of the things other men do to women, men usually mock women, “joke” about how those places are there because women can’t park cars anyway and to protect the real car parking dudes from having to deal with silly lady drivers. The problem itself is completely denied. Unless you park in a dark corner and something happens to you…
Can you even imagine what would happen if women openly did “rape prevention”?
No, thank you, I won’t come to your party, because young male students are a danger to me.
No, thank you, I don’t want you to buy me a drink because you might slip me a roofie and rape me
No, thank you, I don’t want to drink alcohol because I’m afraid one of you would rape me when I’m drunk.
No, thank you, I don’t want you to walk me home because I don’t want to risk that you’ll rape me when we’re there.
Well, yes, I have a loaded gun in my pocket so I can shoot you if you try to rape me.
I can hear the howls of misandry already.
We’re simultaneously expected to treat every guy as a potential rapist and protect ourselves while also being expected to not even consider the idea that any given man might be a rapist.
I wrote this in another thread, some months ago:
I still want to see the focus change. I want men to start speaking up and speaking out.
@knowknot
This may have already been addressed, since I’m still trying to catch up on the thread, but this attitude you immediately display is a big part of the problem I personally have with your questions. People have every right to respond with annoyance and sarcasm when you start asking questions that make it clear that you haven’t made any effort to learn the basics of feminism, as well as the raging debate over how we discuss and address rape, that has been going on for some time now. Even if you are well-intentioned, it isn’t the responsibility of everyone else to catch you up on the basics when you wander in with questions.
When it comes right down to it, not everyone has the emotional energy required to answer these questions for the ten thousandth time, and that does not mean they have some problem they need to correct. That you think it does, is the very type of entitled and dismissive attitude that is making them too exhausted to explain it again in the first place.
Here’s an explanation of The Spoon Theory that might help you understand what I mean. http://history-herstory-scubanurse.blogspot.com/2012/01/feminism-101-spoons-as-concept.html
rabidwombat @ 124, you have the wrong end of the stick this time. Chas is the last person who would explain anything to do with feminism, it was just a case of someone being an ass.
And for the record, I don’t mind Knowknot’s questions. It’s better someone asks, than makes an erroneous assumption.
Don’t know of the Chas situation. :) Thanks for letting me know. And as I read the rest of the thread, the questions didn’t seem to slide into rampant misogyny, as they so often do. I’m just always immediately put on edge when people start asking why there’s anything wrong with discussing rape preventative measures, since this seems to require an underlying assumption that women aren’t already doing everything they can to prevent rape. Like the idea of protecting themselves is some new concept that needs to be presented. Women already do those things.
This article seems on point: https://medium.com/theli-st-medium/10-things-the-internet-told-me-when-i-wrote-about-my-rape-1829701b5854
Rabidwombat, Chas tends to drop nasty one liners into feminism threads, which is why most of the people just ignored him and kept talking. Knowknot is a regular here, and one of the good people, so no one minds questions, after all, people need to learn somewhere, right?
Oh I see. Didn’t realize that. I still don’t recognize lots of names that well, since I’ve only posted here on a few threads so far. Thanks for the heads up though! :)