Well there had to be one somewhere, right? Or several. It stands to reason. But anyway, there he is – the college kid who calls himself a “street preacher” and did a little impromptu “street preaching” at the University of Arizona where he is a junior; the message of his sermon was that women deserve rape. The Arizona Daily Wildcat reports.
A student holding a sign that read “You deserve rape” ignited outrage across campus Tuesday, on the same day of a sexual assault awareness event, but administrators declined requests to remove him or his sign.
That’s quite a message, if you think about it – it’s so sweeping. “You” – meaning what? Just everyone who reads it?
Actually no, it turns out that his sign is just stupid, because it doesn’t say what he means. Poor guy. I wonder how his grades are.
Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”
“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”
Saxton’s sermon came ahead of the “Take Back the Night” event held Tuesday night, which aims to unite people against sexual violence. He said his decision to create the sign and display it was tied to the event and to the fact that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
But see that’s where he’s so wrong, because “you deserve rape” doesn’t limit the people who deserve rape just to women who “dress like a whore.” It’s a wonder a bunch of football players (US football, with the huge guys like water towers) didn’t come along and punch him.
I don’t think he was ever in danger of that. The message was all too easy to infer.
I think because footballers would never think it was possible for them to deserve rape. That idea had never entered their minds, likely no one had ever suggested it to them. Whereas the idea that sluts deserve it is so widespread and so internalized, it doesn’t even need to be coherently said for it to be clearly implied.
Nothing the average man has done could possibly make him deserving of rape. For women, it’s totally the appropriate punishment for wearing the wrong dress.
But see that’s where he’s so wrong, because “you deserve rape” doesn’t limit the people who deserve rape just to women who “dress like a whore.” It’s a wonder a bunch of football players (US football, with the huge guys like water towers) didn’t come along and punch him.
I don’t know the culture at U of Az, but the Steubenville footballers have shown that they would agree wholeheartedly with the “you deserve rape” sentiment. After all, they seemed to feel that they fully deserved the opportunity to rape their victim…
I’d go up to him and start stripping.
“I deserve rape?”
“No not you personally, just the whores who dress like harlots.”
*takes off shirt*
“Okay, how about now? Now do I deserve rape?”
“Uh…”
*takes off pants*
“How about NOW? Surely NOW that I’m just wearing underwear and a bra, I deserve rape! I’m asking for it, so what are you waiting for, big guy?”
…eh. Probably not an effective public protest. Still. A nice fantasy.
I doubt the average football player thinks of “rape” as something that can happen to him. “Rape” is what happens to sluts, not Paragons of the Community like football players.
An update from “Brother Dean”: All women should wear a burqa, but with crosses embroidered on it so they won’t be mistaken for Mooslems. (Otherwise they would deserve a beating, natch.)
I’m guessing the “you” he had in mind were the women at the protest, and feminists generally.
This looks to be like part of a worrying trend – spearheaded by the Westboro Baptist Church – where controversy is quite deliberately courted in order to gain publicity. Lying For Jesus has become Being Offensive For Jesus.
“You deserve rape”
NO, YOU DON’T!
Is that so difficult to understand? No one, not even those slutty dressed-up sluts who act like slutty whores deserve to be raped!
They – and no one else – don’t deserve it, don’t cause it, are not responsible for it. And if they may make it “more propable” to be raped, then only because guys like this one have the no morals, no maturity and no sense of responsibility.
Brother… it is not their fault… it is YOUR fault!
@ ^ Stacy : I’m guessing you’re right. Of course he didn’t specify it but I’m pretty sure that’s right and I don’t think I’m overly keen to hear him explain exactly who he meant. Unless he starts with a blubbering apology for his hateful stupidity and a promise to never repeat that sort of excrement again.
@1.zibble : “Nothing the average man has done could possibly make him deserving of rape.
Except maybe getting arrested and going to jail?
NB. : NOTHING anybody does deserves rape.
@3. SallyStrange : Actually, I suggest this alternative conversation tactic if I may :
You (generic feminist you not anyone specifically.) : “You deserve rape?”
You Deserve Rape Guy (YDRG) : “Well maybe your a feminist so .. / That’s what the sign says ..”
You to YDRG : “Okay then – bend over and pull your pants down!” [Pulling out dildo, gag and chains.]
YDRG : “Wait! what!? ”
You : “Well that’s what the sign says and since you’re the one holding it I assume you are volunteering? So since you think I deserve it ..”
YDRG : “No! Oh no! That’s not what I meant at all!”
You : “Well the sign does say that I and other women like me are entitled to rape doesn’t it?”
YDRG : “Nooo! See its totally not .. um.. arrggh!” [Drops sign.]
You : “Don’t even think of writing women deserve to be raped – or, good for goose good fro gander, anyone else deserves that, you slimeball douchebag.”
YRDG : .. Whimpers..
You : “Not that I’m such a lowlife that I would ever rape anyone anyhow. Understand which makes me far better than you are. [Obi-Wan Kenobi Jedi mind trick voice.] “Now go home and rethink your life – and your priviledge misogyny and sexism issues.” [Obi-Wan Kenobi Jinn Jedi mind trick voice.]
“No one else too”? …. language fail before coffee. I hope you get what I wanted to say.
^ NOTE Scenario at a end of #8 is a daydream. I do NOT condone rape threats in Real Life ever – even to scum, like YDRG although in this case a sarcastic and clearly not serious “So I or a woman deserve to rape *you* for holding that sign?” then ju-usst might conceivably be okay?
Sometimes in teenage movies the actors drop their trousers and show their buttocks to other people. I gather this is called mooning. Anyway, when I read this, this is the first time ever when I thought this would be an appropriate thing to do, and something I could actually do if I encountered this guy with this sign. 😉
A bikini is what women wear to the beach. Grandmothers. Little kids. It isn’t an invitation to anything. The same goes for nearly any attire, and the way one chooses to dress isn’t actually risky, because rape isn’t the result of men being overcome by lust. It’s odd that this idea is so commonplace, since it’s refuted by everyday experience.
“It’s a wonder a bunch of football players (US football, with the huge guys like water towers) didn’t come along and punch him.” Seeing he is obsessed with it perhaps the footballers could think of something else to do to him.
TRIGGER WARNING
The headlines lately have me reminiscing about my college experience.
I went to a small, supposedly safe, Kentucky school.
We had a street preacher who came to our campus once a year and yelled stuff like that at women. “You’re begging to be raped!”, he’d yell at women wearing shorts on their way to class. The campus would do nothing to get rid of him. He scared some students so much that they would skip class rather than walk by him and be harassed. He told me I needed a man to whip me into submission when I yelled back. I invited him to come give it his best shot. Oddly enough, he declined. Cowardly shit.
We got him off the campus that day by refusing to leave him alone and frankly, I think we scared him more than a little. He just came back the next year.
Later that same year, I had a stalker in one of my classes. I carried a body alarm and was afraid to go to night classes. Another student had been raped right outside the dorm by her stalker that year. (He was acquitted. Even though the police knew he had stalked her and that she often had to have friends and security guards escort her to her dorm. He had even broken her wrist trying to drag her off a sidewalk one day. The judge said that since he had a movie ticket stub, he must have been at the movies when the rape occurred. ) That woman dropped out. There was a guy slashing women with a box cutters when they were walking alone. I was scared. I turned to the school for help with my stalker and they told him I ratted him out. I left campus. Soon after, I dropped out. He just picked a new target and continued stalking. He was not kicked off campus until he made a suicide threat. He moved off campus and continued to hang around and creep on the ladies.
Our football team gang raped a student. The coach bailed them out (1994, this shit never changes!) The judge said it was her word against theirs and there were 8 of them and only one of her. That woman dropped out.
Last night the news reported that a man in a truck had twice attempted to strangle women from behind and drag them into his truck on that same campus. That is progress. At least it made it to the news this time and there was no attempt to shame and blame the women. The same school advertises that it is the safest school in the south. It isn’t. But if all the rapists are acquitted or never reported, it appears to parents shopping for a school for their kids that the campus is safe.
I can’t believe society has not gotten beyond this hateful crap. It makes me rage inside. Knowing that in order to get an education, my daughters will have to be subjected to this terror and degradation, (as if it is a penalty for women seeking education and financial independence that our culture is totes OK with) makes me want to edit the endings of “The Woman” and “Death Proof” in a loop and watch it until I feel a little better.
“… administrators declined requests to remove him or his sign.”
Presumably on some misguided understanding of the First Amendment. Would they have been so sanguine with someone preaching that “Black men deserve to be hanged” or “Jews deserve to be in concentration camps”? I very much doubt it. But hey! He was only talking about women, and wrapping it up with God and the Bible.
Hate speech is hate speech. Because of its lack of action, the University is culpable as well as this nutter.
@ Martin C
Regarding public protests like the ones pioneered by the Westboro Baptist Church, I have to say that as upsetting as their disgusting signs were, I suspect that the net effect of their protests was somewhat positive because they proudly exposed the “dirt” that more polite religious types gloss over. On some level, I wouldn’t mind for more people who think like this guy to be loud and proud and consequently, offend the general public into thinking about rape culture.
This guy deserves to get punched in the face.
I understand your inclination, everyone feels it, but no.
This man deserves to be pointed at and laughed at, not taken seriously….or maybe in a more perfect world he should be taken seriously and his speech considered a threat, because that is what it kinda seems like it might be.
When people say things like “You deserve death,rape, violence…”. Personally I feel this to be a direct threat, its a shame our laws do not seem to agree.
Ahh my comment is in moderation, I assume it has to do with all the idiots who share my name. I posted under my real name linked to my real identity, a big step for me, which I have decided to do in large part because of Ophelia and all the crap she takes from anonymous trolls.
It’s out now!
What about “I wish there was a hell so that fuckers like this guy could go there”? Not a threat, since *I* don’t think Hell exists, but this “preacher” probably does.
So this preacher would have thrown the first stone when Jesus tried to stop the stoning of a prostitute and actually treated men and women’s sins without a double standard (which was pretty revolutionary, even for our times, if it actually happened).
“Let’s reject utterly the notion that boys will be boys and girls must work around this assumption or pay the price.”
~ Desmond Tutu – Salon.com