What is "Rape Culture"?

Damn it, how am I supposed to find my prince?

 

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Well, apparently there's "no harm in telling another person they are beautiful. People need to find an avenue to connect. If you see a woman (or man) for whom you feel attraction, eventually you must approach her (or him) and express it."

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

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Why apologize? Can you imagine if the "gay panic" defense gained wide legal traction? Would society accept a "rape panic" defense?

It does occur to me that I come from a generation that is conditioned to the proposition that a man hitting on another man who is not clearly identified as homosexual is a potentially mortal endeavor.

The threat of mortal retaliation really does work.

I just ... don't think that's the kind of society we want to live in.

 

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Oh, wow, that’s real. I had no idea. There was even one who called himself the "Rainbow Warrior".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

 

From the same source above:

Critics complain that nature-culture dualism is an undesirable Cartesian legacy (perhaps also a Christian or Greek one). The "versus" in the title of this entry frames the connections wrongly. Nature is the milieu of culture, and supposing our cultures to be in exodus from nature is at the root of our environmental crisis. Culture remains tethered to the biosystem, and the options within built environments, however expanded, provide no release from nature. An ecology always lies in the background of culture; no nurture is adequate that forgets these connections.

Yet many religions do express the anti-rape rules/commandments. Rules recognized for thousands of years across many (if not most) cultures. While I/we many not agree on those rules now (example: women being forced to marry their rapist), the position of a 'rape culture' (the topic) existing seems far fetched.... unless you are an invading force.... a piece of that (at least several) cultures defined by nature?

Animals have rules. They have territories that they mark, declaring to others of their kind, This Is Mine. Packs and herds have rules with alpha male/female rulers.

Rather disturbing video wasnt it? I cant decide which one I find more painful to watch. Your video from the Stuebenville High School rape or the laughter/jokes of the children as the Chimp Raped a Toad.

Like the source of 'rape culture', a prison setting subjectively ruled, ultimately, by that large scale civilization. Are you saying that chimp learned that behavior by watching people, or as I think, the chimp made the choice on its own, driven by its own nature? Clearly that animal was too young to venture off on its own in the wild, so it is not that aspect (seeking to become the dominant male of the troop- not sure what the dominant male chimp is called).

Interesting how easily you can joke about animal rape, in a thread about a rape culture.

 

Yes, they were both disgusting. Disgust probably plays an important role in our morality. A response to undesirable things from an evolutionary standpoint, such as rape, incest, or frog fucking.

Are you saying that all men would be rapists if not for rules, laws, and regulations? What about the men who want to be wanted? You know, the ones who prefer consensual sex. Are they unnatural?

 

I havent made any such claim. But you avoided the question. Heres the whole thing in context:

The chimp lives under subjection as do prisoners. Dont deflect with questions of a different aspect. Were you saying the chimp learned that behavior by watching people or as I think the chimp's choice was driven by its own nature?

 

I'm sorry to interfere in this lovely corner of the discussion, but it seems worth reminding that all of fifteen days ago↑, our neighbor asserted:

The term 'Rape Culture' is a false flag easily recognized by simple, hey, wait a minute. Most men are not rapists and I dont support portraying them that way i.e. rape culture and I will ridicule attempts made to do so.​

Because while it is true he is not the first↑ to denounce his own caricature of rape culture, I admit uncertainty about how to view his offering; I had already pointed↑ to the prevention advocacy, such as we have discussed at Sciforums before, that obliges women to suspect all men. And it's true I put the IPA question↑ to Milkweed; I admit I might be overlooking something, but I'm not seeing a direct response.

And all this I mention because I'm trying to figure out a variation of the puzzle you noted.

If our neighbor "[doesn't] support portraying them that way i.e. rape culture and I will ridicule attempts made to do so", then why woud he argue in such a fashion↑ as to indict all men↑?

Or ... what am I missing↑, here?

I mean, he's really determined↑ to make this argument.

Even as a farce, I'm uncertain what it means.

 

Laughing Into the Abyss

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​

You know, Melissa McEwan↱ has been trying to explain this for years:

The first time I listened to it, goosebumps raised across my flesh and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. The hatred of women is palpable; the urge to dominate and destroy. Fuck that bitch to death. And then we come to the Queen, who, as she is a “horse-faced looking bitch,” is tellingly not threatened with rape—because, you see, being fucked to death and punched in the face by a piece of shit called Homeless Charlie is a compliment. Rape is only something that happens to attractive women.

Isn't that just fucking hilarious?

Naturally, I'll be called a humorless feminist. Fine. If not laughing at a bunch of men sitting around talking about fucking women to death makes me a humorless feminist, then I wear the badge proudly—because I'm not just a humorless feminist; I'm a bitch who was nearly fucked to death. Isn't that just fucking hilarious?

I'm a bitch who tore out her fingernails by the roots in the carpet trying to crawl away from someone who nearly fucked me to death. I'm a bitch whose face was smashed against a stone fireplace because I fought back, leaving me groggy and bleeding from one end—and with a permanently chipped tooth as a souvenir—while I got torn apart at the other. I'm a bitch who was left lying in a pool of her own blood, which I later cleaned up so my parents wouldn't find out, because I was 16 years old and scared and ashamed and grew up in a culture that tells bitches who nearly get fucked to death that it's their fault. Isn't that just fucking hilarious?

You know what it feels like to be nearly fucked to death? It feels like your insides are being ripped out of your body. It feels humiliating. It feels like the intangible thing that makes one a person is being irreparably broken. By the end of it, you feel as though death would be relief from the pain and the shame and utter, wretched brokenness of self you feel. And, being lucky enough to be only nearly fucked to death, you get to live with that for the rest of your life, and, perhaps, on your thirty-third birthday, you might realize that this is the year when you'll have lived longer with those scars across your skin and your soul than you lived without them.

Isn't that just fucking hilarious?​

____________________

Notes:

McEwan, Melissa. "Rape is Hilarious". Shakesville. 11 May 2007. Shakesville.WordPress.com. 25 November 2015. http://bit.ly/1BOm8wh

 

Here's my quote: "Outside of you being obviously the product of a rape culture, which I did support, and not of sound mind in your posting, which I did support, you have not managed to ask me about a single claim that I have actually posted. You have asked me to support claims you invented for me to have made, but that is not at all the same thing. "

Repeating the inventions, or pretending no support was offered for the two accurate, is a failure to deal with the post.

No, I supported it by quoting you, as you - for example - described a extended video of street harassment as men simply saying Hello, how are you. That was you, not me, pointing to scenes of sexual harassment on the public street as normal, just guys saying hello, in your culture.

I quoted a chunk of your responses to some of my posting - quoted fairly, in context, and in order, and without significant editing. They were incoherent, aberrant, nonsensical, screwball incomprehensions. Do you not see that?

No, I didn't.

That's a lot closer. It's not hopeless: All you have to do now is use my qualifiers - some or many or it's common or whatever - and you'll have something you can read and attempt to comprehend before replying.

You should always quote. You are not capable of reliably accurate paraphrase.

And you are not alone in this: the inability to read for meaning, to follow implication and reason, seems closely connected with the inability to recognize social structures of assault and threat. Somebody once defined sanity as the ability to punctuate - a core of truth, there.

 

Your question is almost irrelevant to the thread. What difference would it make? We don't know whether the chimp "learned" or was "instinctive" or as is almost universal among higher vertebrates a combination of both. None of that has any bearing on the thread topic.

 

So I haven't asked you to support the claims you made, but you did support the claims you made that I asked you to support? Your mental gymnastics is quite a spectacle.

I refer you to your post here, where you attempted to elaborate on what a theft culture would look like if it were composed of the elements that made up a rape culture. You remarked that:
"And an outside observer does not see your own culture's ordinary conversation and public discourse larded with robbery jokes or featuring discussions about whether a local teenage boy's unauthorized acquisition of his unwilling neighbor's car was a "legitimate theft" (by contrast, your culture's most esteemed political representatives have been observed making rape jokes from the podium, and being re-elected anyway."

So you claim that outsider observers can easily recognize rape cultures, but that they do not see a number of components that make up such cultures (which one would reasonably assume would be necessary for recognizing a rape culture). Perhaps you'd like to clarify this apparent contradiction, instead of pretending it doesn't exist?

You never quoted me describing an extended video of street harassment as men simply saying 'Hello, how are you', and I challenge you to show otherwise. What I did say was that the video included several examples of men giving simple greetings such as 'Hello, how are you', which it did. I demonstrated this by actually listing the time points on the video where the innocuous greetings and comments occurred. You've conveniently chosen to ignore that post, instead continuing to misrepresent my views even after I further clarified them for the deliberately obtuse. However, if you can quote me saying that *all* of the incidents in the video were examples of men simply saying 'Hello, how are you?', then please do so. You've got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

I'll also point out that you have chosen to ignore my observation that it's fallacious to assume that my personal views are indicative of what other people in my society believe. You're welcome to show otherwise by posting evidence that a sample size of 1 can be used to make valid statistical inferences about millions of people, but I suspect you'll dodge the issue once again

So quoting posts is part of a clinical test to assess for a mental health condition? Which clinical test would that be? More importantly, what qualifications do you possess that provide you with the knowledge and skills to administer such a test? I think it's fair to assume that you're not approaching the question of my mental health as a health professional concerned about my well-being, but as a transparent attempt to take a cheap shot at my expense. The fact that you continue to rationalize your disgusting behavior is hardly surprising to me at this point.

By the way, you still have to adequately address the following:

- That I live in a rape culture.

- That rape jokes are evidence of rape culture, whereas Holocaust jokes are not evidence of an anti-Semitic genocide culture.

- That I'm lying when I claimed I haven't heard anyone in my culture tell a rape joke, and explain how your assertion is relevant to me eating hamburgers.

- Clarify who is qualified to identify a rape culture, when you have claimed that people both within and outside of a rape culture may have trouble identifying it as such.

- You need to explain why the prevalence of rape is irrelevant when attempting to determine whether a rape culture exists, and why you claimed I was the only one discussing these statistics when it was another poster who posted them to fuel discussion of how common rape is in the United States.

- You need to provide evidence of organized gangs of rapists in places you deem to be rape culture, as well as evidence that officials systematically protect them.

- You need to demonstrate that theft is taken more seriously than rape by the police, and that convicted thieves are given longer convictions than rapists.

- You need to demonstrate that convicted rapists aren't blamed for raping individuals.

 

Animals have instincts and follow rules, but humans are not limited to instincts, and we can distinguish between is and ought. There’s a reason we are the dominant species.

The biological component that you’re asking about is a given but evolved sexual desire doesn’t explain or justify rape. You cannot reduce us to a self-portrait of a monkey? Animals are not role models?

I do, however, think that evolutionary theorizing can yield some useful information. See here.

Tiassa asked me, "How do you count as a reproductive strategy the murder of the offspring?"

Unfortunately, the thread was closed and I wasn’t given the chance to answer. There is, however, a lot of evidence supporting the sexual selection hypothesis. It not only increases the parental investment towards their own young but also allows males to gain reproductive advantage through earlier conception. The loss of a suckling infant leads to the onset of estrous.

The question that I would have liked to see Tiassa ask, though, is "Can we be better than we are?"

As far as culture is concerned, we know that men are less likely to be violent towards women when it’s generally not tolerated, socially unacceptable, and punishable.

Maybe we should change our sentence structure. Instead of saying, "Mary was raped by Bill," we should say, "Bill raped Mary."

If we look at the number of sexual assaults, not just rapes, then I do think we have a problem here in the United States. If you look at the attitudes, the way men think of us. Like the frog, we too, are just tools, at times. The ownership; mine-mine…be mine. The reduction to a body or its parts. The objectification, the violability, the denial of subjectivity. It’s everywhere in the United States. We are still a very religious country. Do the pious in America continue to place women in subservient roles? Absolutely!

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, whom the Encyclopedia of Islam calls the most influential authority after Mohammed himself, agreed with Jews and Christians that Eve was the original source of all sin. Because of Eve’s offense, Allah ruled that every woman must be punished in various ways in addition to bearing the “sorrow” of childbirth. (Source)

AND because of this, across the globe, we have daughters begging their fathers for forgiveness for adultery before being stoned to death. AND then...they proudly profess, "We hope that this will serve as a lesson for other women."

 

On the Metrics of the Discourse

When something like Christopher Frizzelle's retrospection on Charles D'Ambrosio's "Up North"―

It takes work to appreciate fiction. It's taken me 10 years to see that "Up North" isn't snowy descriptive extraneousness plus a really good hunting scene. It wasn't until last summer, reading "Up North" in a hot square of sunshine in my apartment, that a deeper significance revealed itself, as if the snow that had been distracting me had finally melted. It turns out that every detail in "Up North" points to a vast subtext about men and women and how they express (or don't express) sexual shame. The story's true subject is how men and women torture each other and how gender roles inflame that pain. In my dwelling on the supposedly "best" scene in the story, the hunting scene with the men, and seeing nothing much else of value in the soft, subtle, full-of-birds story, I was ironically enough taking sides, without knowing it, in the gendered conflict the story explores.

I'm not the only reader who missed the feminist subtext. A year after it appeared in the New Yorker, "Up North" was published in The Dead Fish Museum, and when Meghan O'Rourke reviewed that book in the New York Times Book Review, she didn't mention sexual shame or the fraught terrain of heterosexual relationships. Her review was titled "The Man's Guide to Hunting and Fishing," and it described D'Ambrosio's stories as "hypermasculine" in the mode of Hemingway, "full of hunting and fishing and drinking," and as traversing "Carveresque territory," specifically "the charged relationships between fathers and sons, drifters and workers, in the outskirts of the American Northwest."

She, too, missed the ways in which D'Ambrosio admits (and regrets) the boy's club nature of short-story writing, and uses Daly's character to challenge the stereotype of the hypermasculine Pacific Northwest minimalist. But I should talk; I made exactly the same mistake as O'Rourke did. She and I were both distracted by the overt masculine symbols and conflicts, and focused on them because they were recognizable and easier to digest.​

―can seem relevant to the discussion at Sciforums, I will be impressed. Or something like that. You know how people worry about "feminazis" and all that? When we deal with the real issues of misogyny in modern cultures, there does, in fact, occur a range in which certain feministic argument really does become annoying. And this ain't it. Seriously, the discourse has to crash from there.

Nor is that to say Frizzelle is necessarily correct; still, he's navigating well-mapped waters, and I wonder if it is possible that a more general societal discourse, or even something as larger-than-one as Sciforums, can actually achieve such a context.

'Tis a far cry from where we are to the point where the discussion can actually be enlightening.

Just sayin'.
____________________

Notes:

Frizzelle, Christopher. "The Hidden Meaning in a 10-Year-Old Short Story in the New Yorker About Thanksgiving". The Stranger. 18 November 2015. TheStranger.com. 26 November 2015. http://bit.ly/1HqZVP2

 

I have not nor will I justify rape. What I do not agree with is 'rape culture'.

It is now, all of those things, not tolerated, socially unacceptable, and punishable. I dont think anyone here has said its ok or acceptable.

Those are two/three separate issues, and not necessarily related. Again, no one has argued that rape is ok or to be celebrated, something needed for it to be culturally ingrained.

And the frog video was in direct response to a challenge to show that these things happen in a vacuum. It does and they do. Prison rape is another example. Most instigators of such crimes, on release, do not continue with their homosexual rape/victimization patterns. Are there homosexual rapists, yes there are. Does the homosexual community condone that rape, I dont think so. There is no homosexual rape culture. There are individuals who commit those types of crime, and its source is the individuals nature.

So its islams fault women get raped in the usa, in Stuebenville? Women are being stoned in the usa?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning

And how is that evidence of a rape culture? Seems to be correlation of an anti-sex culture.

 

I wonder if there is a deep-seated fear men have of women or even a jealousy. Sure, men are needed for procreation but the majority process falls on women. The profound power to 'create' or give life is how its perceived and men may feel strangely left out, impotent, afraid..of extinction. This fear would be greater in men due to their ego/expansive/active principle vs the female submissive/inward/receptive one. Therefore a drive to control women, be invasive as possible. By golly, she has the power to give life or NOT (she has the power to abort on her own, not take care etc) and pretty much in control of the majority of it. Too much independence in women on some levels is viewed as threatening. Whose going to nurture/raise the next generation or have the time? Of course, the whole knight in shining armor, romanticism (probably a male invention/ruse) is quite often left wanting after and then often improvisation after control of reproduction has actualized and the 'idea' in her head is planted to carry it to completion. Duty and devotion. But he may falter beyond it, therefore the dance/game/power struggle/negotiation ensues with 'women wanting to be men'/feminazi. Why should she bear the weight of its responsibility by herself?

The tired adage that men desire only to seed the world doesn't correlate to evolutionary advantage. Males that provide for their offspring have. So what is going on? He's counting on her further enforced subjugation by male dominance as well as 'social' caretaking sphere of females and the corporate/structure (his playground) of male-produced 'general' society to provide. See? Look at all he's built, invented etc just for every female (oops, for you) and your needs . Now go be somebody, the trail is cleared and make sure you dont notice him running off to have fun while you are actually left with all the work in the maze-work of the society he's built for himself ( oops, for you) to his advantage and that would also include concepts you've been brainwashed with and ingrained in your bosom as an identity. He's been the puppet master defining everything his way (I mean for your best interest). That power struggle? He still has got the advantage with all the women being so needy and all, in every way more than males. Of course you're not another molded invention/second-class citizen ( oops, power disparity) to suit the male vision to conform to its needs as well as its limits/faults (oops, thats your weakness of course). You should be grateful. After all, he is the king and must provide for his harem and cohorts (oops, I mean you darlin).

 

That offered some plausible answers. It was good. Thanks!

Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, "They are afraid women will laugh at them." When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, "We're afraid of being killed." [Source]

We're just not understanding each other...at all.

Good day to you, Milkweed.

 

I focus on the 'children' aspect because it's a comparison you continually make that isn't appropriate. I've asked you numerous times to explain how an adult saying 'Hello' to another adult (male or female) in the street is symmetrical to an adult loitering outside of a school to say 'Hello' to children, and you've deflected by pointing out that you also compared women to men. What does you comparing women to men have to do with you comparing women to children? Are you claiming that since your comparison of women to men is reasonable, then your comparison of women to children is also reasonable? Do you know what you are actually contending, or are you just making this up as you go?

You attempted to equate a man standing outside of a school to say 'Hello' to children to a man saying 'Hello' to a woman passing by in the street. I'm asking you to justify that comparison, and you're choosing to avoid the issue by claiming that you also gave a scenario where a man says 'Hello' to another man.

You did. You didn't use the word, but your description of how the man behaves in your hypothetical scenario (ie. waiting outside a school in order to say 'Hello' to passing children) fits the definition of 'loitering'.

What 'sexual harassment' are you referring to? Are you claiming that every comment made by a man in the video is sexual harassment? Furthermore, you haven't explained why the examples I listed here constitute sexual harassment. Are you going to address this any time soon, or shall I just chalk this down as another one of your claims that you have run away from supporting?

Who are you referring to when you say 'they'? I'll also note that you've avoided my question for what must be the third time now. And that is, how can you know the men who greeted the woman passing by don't also do likewise to passing men? Are you privy to a video I'm not aware of?

Where? I've asked you a number of times how the seemingly innocuous statements I cited from the video were sexual harassment, and you evaded the issue by mentioning unrelated comments from other men in the video.

What 'context' am I failing to see when the man at 0.40sec says "Have a nice evening"? Are you saying that men should walk down the streets with their eyes downcast, and only speak when spoken to?

You quoted me saying the exact opposite of what you stated I was contending. Your initial claim was that I defended the behavior of men who engaged in street harassment, and then quoted me condemning such behavior as 'rude', 'poor etiquette', and even harassment. It's gotten to the point where I don't even need to rebut your arguments, since you argue against yourself far more effectively than I ever could. That's the weakness of your rhetorical tactics. Misrepresenting your opponent's views makes you appear credible at first, but the more you keep talking, the more you reveal how insincere you are.

Mmm, I'm not too concerned about what you think, given that your idea of a reliable source is a left-wing opinion piece with 'echochamber' in the URL.

 

1) I was contrasting the visibility of the rape culture you belong to with the invisibility of the robbery culture you do not belong to. You "misread". Again.
2) Even rewriting to match your misreading: No, that's not a reasonable assumption. Both of my claims would be standard, ordinary observations under that reading, without contradiction.

Nope.

You are in error in claiming your time points showed innocuous greetings and comments, illustrating the source of your false claim that the video showed men "simply saying Hello, how are you" - your culturally inculcated notion of "normal".

Your attempted support for the false claim further confirms that the video showed incidents that are normal in your culture. You can't tell what's wrong with them.

But it's not wrong. That's because it's an inference from pretty good evidence.

That is false. I have addressed the lot, completely and thoroughly, by noting that two of them are false claims about a lack of support for claims well supported, and the rest are idiocies you invented that I have no reason to bother with.

The matter is not one of "agreement", but visibility. It is invisible to you.
Like this:

A general tolerance of sexual harassment, imposition, and at least minor assault, is documented in the video Tali discusses above, and in the descriptions of that video here and elsewhere by some. The idea that threatening women, harassing them, imposing on them by force, coercing their attention and behavior, etc, is somehow not tolerated by a society in which:

it is so prevalent as to be easily documented by casual passersby on random public streets in the middle of the day amid crowds of ordinary people;
it is so normal that even video documentations followed by entire threads of dozens of posts are insufficient to bring it to the recognition of many posters;

is silly.

And it gets even stranger, harder to credit:

There is no such "homosexual community" involved. What you have used for illustration is prison subculture, and you have posted strong evidence that prison subculture in the US is a rape culture - you have insisted that the "nature" of the perpetrators is not the key factor, but rather that the culture of US prisons is the important matter. Hello?

Now throw in the prevalence of prison rape jokes and threats among the larger public - normal conversational fare throughout the US among the rougher crowd, in TV and movie scripts, on comedy stages, etc - and the general situation should be getting more clear.