Friday, December 24, 2010

Rape Culture

I've learned a lot this past few days, amazingly. I've definitely gotta better bead on hardline feminism, for which allegations of misogyny are the new racism. The ultimate in misogyny is not to take rape allegations seriously, or even if you do, to be a conservative just "pretending" to take them seriously. And while reflecting earlier, I remembered Miss Olga at STFU Sexists. Perhaps she had something on this? Well no, actually, at least not specifically on the Michael Moore thing. But I wasn't disappointed, considering the ubiquity of the left's "rape culture" meme. Miss Olga links to Melissa McEwan, who last year posted another one of those progressive feminist dissertations, "Rape Culture 101." And to be clear once again, rape is not okay, and rape allegations should be taken seriously, but that becomes difficult when the rape culture itself is defined so comprehensively as to include anything that progressive feminists simply don't like. For example:

Rape culture is encouraging male sexual aggression. Rape culture is regarding violence as sexy and sexuality as violent. Rape culture is treating rape as a compliment, as the unbridled passion stirred in a healthy man by a beautiful woman, making irresistible the urge to rip open her bodice or slam her against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, or pull her by her hair, or shove her onto a bed, or any one of a million other images of fight-fucking in movies and television shows and on the covers of romance novels that convey violent urges are inextricably linked with (straight) sexuality.

Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality. Rape culture is privileging heterosexuality because ubiquitous imagery of two adults of the same-sex engaging in egalitarian partnerships without gender-based dominance and submission undermines (erroneous) biological rationales for the rape culture's existence ....


Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that a rape victim who reports her rape is readily believed and well-supported, instead of acknowledging that reporting a rape is a huge personal investment, a difficult process that can be embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, frustrating, and too often unfulfilling. Rape culture is ignoring that there is very little incentive to report a rape; it's a terrible experience with a small likelihood of seeing justice served ....

Hmm ...

That last passage sounds eerily familiar. (And reading it again, notice that someone who really does take it seriously doesn't get the benefit of the doubt anyway, i.e., you can't win --- the culture covers every angle, foreclosing avenues of redress even, astonishingly.) Perhaps rape culture is when two women find out they've both been had by the same progressive sleazebag and then getting dicked around about it by the left's top cinematic propagandist? Yep, I'd say those women have been raped.

(Lot's more at the link, FWIW.)

RELATED: "Imagine There's No Rape Culture — It's Easy If You Try!"


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