Zerlina Maxwell challenges rape culture on Fox News, receives rape threats on Twitter.
I’m still officially on my Man Boobz staycation, but I felt I needed to mention yet another example of a woman saying that men can stop rape … and getting rape threats in return.
Political analyst Zerlina Maxwell went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News earlier this week and made the terrible mistake of suggesting to a hostile audience that men aren’t really doing any favors to women by telling them to arm themselves against rapists. Instead, as Salon notes, she said this:
“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” She told Hannity, “You’re talking about this as if it’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” adding, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”
Indeed, increased rape awareness has contributed to a dramatic decrease in rape over the last thirty years.
But apparently a lot of men were shocked – shocked! – that a woman would suggest that their patronizing advice was less likely to prevent rape than rape prevention education aimed at the demographic group that is responsible for the overwhelmng majority of rapes. That is, men.
So, naturally, the angriest of these men decided they would show Maxwell just how wrong she was … by threatening her with rape on Twitter.
Here’s just one example:
Rape culture in action.
Maxwell’s supporters have stepped up to defend her and her remarks, and have started a hashtag — #TYZerlina — to continue the discussion. If you’re on Twitter, join in .
Here’s the Fox News segment in question featuring Maxwell:
Posted on March 8, 2013, in harassment, hate, irony alert, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, rape, rape culture and tagged #TYZerlina, fox news, rape culture, Zerlina Maxwell. Bookmark the permalink. 701 Comments.
Well, I for one am shocked.
No, wait. The opposite. These guys are entirely too predictable.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m NOT on Twitter, save for using it as a convenient log-in for sites I care about. I just have no desire in an unmoderated communication medium, and their Terms of Use simply don’t cut it. That image should be immediate grounds for Twitter giving the guy in question a hundred-pound banhammer, one that even deletes all of his old posts.
I wish this was a joke.
Actually that’s a good point. Why does Twitter allow clear, direct threats?
From what I’ve seen, Twitter leaves it to the relevant country to deal with. There’ve been various cases in the UK where people threatened on Twitter have reported it to the police. And there have been prosecutions.
No idea what happens when it’s international, though.
What the fuck? How does this asshole think threats about rape are a good idea?
Thanks for proving her point about rape culture, dipwad.
OK, do the men who make these kind of threats or spout the kind of stuff about cutting out the voice boxes of baby girls have no mothers, sisters, or other women in their lives? How do you carry that much dissonance?
It has never made any sense to me that rape, uniquely among all other crimes, is treated as something that cannot be reduced by targeting preventative services and programs at those most likely to commit the crime. Instead, programs are all targeted at altering the victim’s behaviour. Not even to reduce incidences of the crime, but to instruct the woman in how to make sure she is not the one the rapist picks to be his victim.
I firmly believe that our society has no desire to see rape reduced, it is too powerful a tool for fathers, husbands, and boyfriends to control women’s behavior. Using the threat of rape allows them the ability to monitor women’s locations, demand a say in their clothing choices, and easily veto their activities like partying and going out. Girls grow up expecting to be monitored and tracked in this way, “for their safety.” If rape threat went away, so does virtually the only reason women accept this control over them. Men and families could no longer pretend the control of women is benevolent. I think society has no desire to give up this control and I think the backlash against those who want to move rape prevention techniques away from the victim’s actions and onto the perpetrator is deliberate and purposeful.
WTF. Just… WTF.
@ ashley
Exactly. That’s a great way to put it.
Aye. Those guys making the rape threats. May they step on all the legos.
Of course that means that Twitter makes no distinction between “illegal” and “inappropriate.”
I can understand how Twitter justifies it to themselves. Kind of like “we’re just the paper you choose to write on, you are completely responsible for what you write”. Moral cop-out, of course.
Happy International Women’s Day.
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc080313A.htm
I’d say this is ironic, except irony relies on their being some unexpected result. And let’s face it, is anyone surprised?
The rape advice DOESN’T work. Just… grah.
Outside of the US, the concept that everyone should be walking around with a loaded gun appears very strange.
..to most people.
Yes, I can just imagine how my walking around in Canada with a loaded weapon, to prevent rape would be seen.
Do they also recommend that I announce to everyone in my vicinity that I have a gun for that purpose every thirty seconds?
“I have a gun so I won’t get raped. I have a gun so I won’t get raped. I have a gun so I won’t get raped. ”
Of course, that advice will soon stop when men realize how uncomfortable trying to date or pick up women is. That really has to be a boner killer, having a constant background hum from all the women around you chanting “I have a gun…”
Appears pretty strange to people in the US, too.
You’re supposed to be on vacay, Mr. Futrelle. Or are you feeling reenergised?
I’m still as tired of these creeps as ever. Gang rape? Do they have no fresh material at all?
Twitter is probably using the idea of “common carrier” status, which is the equivalent of AT&T not being liable if someone uses their phone network to plan a bank robbery, or to send harassing phone calls.
However there are different degrees of responsibility that AT&T would have if those things happened – cooperating with police investigations, providing tools to individuals to help end misuse of their services, etc. The “block” feature on Twitter IMNSHO is not nearly enough on their end to meet those responsibilities.
And as Maxwell points out, this concept of the “rapist” as a stranger who jumps out of the bushes and attacks a woman on the street is not what usually happens, so most rape prevention techniques are not applicable.
Also, the comments at Salon are fucking vomitous. Sample:
He goes on to argue that suggesting that men participate in rape prevention is a “feminazi agenda.” And then brings up abortion. Because, natch.
RE: blitzgal
you know what else might help in ending rape? if girls started give up the snatch often for as many guys as possible, that will solve the problem permanently !
I’m disgusted by the number of people who believe this. (Including my own rapist.) If you were just a mindless robot with no boundaries, I wouldn’t violate them, now would I?
I really can’t wrap my head around that tweet. The best I can come up with is that jones17doug is implying that she doesn’t understand the magnitude of rape, that she ought experience it herself to teach her that lesson. Which is doubly bizarre considering that she implied she was a rape survivor herself.
The general conservative reaction to her comments of dumbfounded incredulity (e.g. here) makes a bit more sense if you take into account their likely assumptions and knowledge-gaps about the topic. The gun-carrying proposal itself implies that they believe that rape is likely to be stranger-rape. I think conservatives conceive of most rape in this way, as outsiders and psychopaths on the street. So the idea that simply talking about not raping or changing the culture to prevent rape is absurd to them, because one can’t reason with a psychopath. As Hannity himself put it: “Criminals are not going to listen to that”. With that misunderstanding in place, it makes sense that conservatives would be angered by her comments.
It’s apparently really horrendous of me to have any expectations of any kind of life other than opening my legs to any guy I come across. I’m not sure why I have a brain at all, in that case.
I mean, it’s not like the rest of my life resembles “Clan of the Cave Bear”. Why should my sex life resemble it?
Yep. Which is handy for them, since many of them oppose abortion even in cases of rape. Given that, by this definition, the vast majority of rapes aren’t “real” (i.e. stranger) rapes, it makes the need for abortion following a rape vanishingly small. And given their incorrect belief that “forcible rape” like this, done by a stranger, almost never results in pregnancy, it almost completely closes the highly popular “loophole” allowing abortion.
After all, if you knew the guy/had sex with him before/had sex before/weren’t at home in the nunnery/got pregnant, it couldn’t be “real rape” by their logic. So the entire idea of teaching men not to rape is, for them, silly.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
*barfs*
@nerdypants – You really do get the impression that there are a lot of people who envision a rapist as one of the zombies on “The Walking Dead”: some lurching, rotting creature you can see coming about 20 yards off.
I think I’ll have to get a crossbow a la Daryl Dixon…
I hate how you can’t win.
The guys who say: if women would put out more rape would be solves are also the ones that say she got raped because she was a slut.
Besides it is my body and I will choose who I want to have sex with or if I want to have sex at all.
@drst: Maybe. I think – and it’s just a theory of mine – but I think that their difficulty with this concept might be mostly a consequence of the conservative personality itself. Conservatives score higher than liberals on ingroup/outgroup thinking (Jonathan Haidt), and they’re more likely to think in dichotomous terms in general. The idea that a rapist – a criminal – is most likely to be someone known to them is difficult to square with their instinct that the people they know are part of the ingroup. Thinking of the people you know as potential rapists blurs the notion of good guys and bad guys. And if one’s ingroup is also part of one’s self-identity, then it might also impinge upon their own self-concept.
@ellix24:
It’s funny, but I have some sympathy for those who make that mistake. I remember when I first learnt of the statistic – that a rapist is most likely to be someone known to the victim – and it was a bit of a revelation to me. And this is after the fact of having known several friends in highschool who had been raped, and who had all been raped by someone known to them.
We live in an intensely weird age. So many things are getting better faster than they ever could before, but the loudest sound we can hear is people vying to be the biggest assholes the human species has ever witnessed.
“I firmly believe that our society has no desire to see rape reduced, it is too powerful a tool for fathers, husbands, and boyfriends to control women’s behavior. Using the threat of rape allows them the ability to monitor women’s locations, demand a say in their clothing choices, and easily veto their activities like partying and going out.”
As a father of two daughters…you just generalized rape. Yeah, I want my kids to be raped. I wanna rape ‘em both. Who cares that they’re four and seven years old, I wanna rape them. It’s the only way to keep them in line. I want rape to be legal so all us dudes can have the same privilege.
No, wait. That’s not right at all. Come to that, I wanted to throw up a little when I typed that.
It’s absolutely astounding to me, though, that even with “no means no” being part of sex ed curricula (hey, they did it at my school, and my graduating class was a whopping 35) reported rape is still 20% of the U.S. female population. What. The. Hell? Do these guys have no freaking self-control? I thought my drive was unusually strong when I was younger, but bloody hell, I never assaulted anyone because of it.
What do you think will happen if a sizable population of women did get guns to prevent being raped, and used them? I don’t think the stand your ground laws envisioned this scenario.
I doubt the NRA would want to supportive of men being shot when the guys can say “I was just trying to get a date” or “we were just making out”.
I doubt any man would be comfortable in this environment where a woman could shoot him on suspicion of preparing to rape his date, friend, current lover,wife, related family member.
It would give a whole new meaning to “creep shaming” though, and the men who whine about it would actually have something to seriously worry about.
@regeya: I think what ashley’s saying is not that everyone in society wants to rape, but that the threat of rape is used by society, consciously or not, as a way to control women.
happy international women’s day!!
Many schools still practice abstinent only education.
My school didn’t even address rape…..
Regeya, its not that most men want to rape their daughters. Its that the threat of your daughters being raped means you get to grill them on who they are with, what they are doing, where they are, what exactly are they wearing, how late they are out. It means teaching your daughters to be fearful of meeting new people, going to new places on their own, to fear being out at night, to be fearful of consuming alchohol, of giving their phone number to the cute guy they just met, o having sex. The list of things women can’t do in a desperate attempt to avoid rape is astounding. And it is power to controlling parents nd boyfriends or husbands. Most people don’t blink when their sons/ male friends are out, late, with people the parents don’t know, at an unspecified location. And boys start doing this in their teens. Girls are far more closely watched.
And just when we needed an illustration of rape culture regeya showed up to imply that rape is a result of some men having a high sex drive.
OT, but isn’t Zerlina such a cool name?
RE: Kim
Zerlina sounds like the name of a fairy tale sorceress to me. Or someone from Oz. It’s awesome, and obviously intended to have some kind of title appended to it, like Zerlina the Magnificent or something.
She deserves a medal for not turning into Zerlina the Merciless in the face of all this crap.
regeya sounded like a more literate NWO, but still batshit.
regeya, it’s like the HPV vaccine. No one considers themselves to be pro-cancer, and no one wants their daughter to get cervical cancer, but people still won’t get their daughters vaccinated because they want the threat to be there. To prevent them from having sex. Which it won’t.
So anyways, Part 1 Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women” just came out. I haven’t seen it yet, but I hear it’s pretty good. Also, there are a good deal of dudebros complaining about it, obviously, although now, they actually have something to complain about rather than just something that doesn’t exist yet. Their complaints basically say “I don’t like her tone.”
Who wants to have a contest for worst tantrum in response to that new Tropes vs. Women vid? Well, anyway I’ve started one.
regeya—that wooshing sound was the point going right over your head. The next time you find yourself getting upset at something that seems over the top, take a moment and read through it again.
@Cthulhu’s Intern: don’t forget the complaints about, say, her calling Shigeru Miyamoto sexist (even though she doesn’t).
There’s a massive Shit Reddit Says thread about Tropes VS Women being released, some of which covers reddit shitlord responses:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/19vk8v/meta_anita_sarkeesian_releases_her_first_video/
And for anyone interested, here’s the video:
Some folks are mad about the fact you can’t comment (one jerk said she was silencing dialogue), but after what she went through with folks when she announced it…..
Death threats, threats of rape, spam reporting her social networking, trying to hack her email, leak her personal information (where she lived, her phone number), made pornographic rape game with her image, made a game where you could beat her image up, ect. This attack was on a grand scale and made to silence her.
I think Terroja “The Amazing Atheist” has already taken the cake as far as shitty responses to Sarkeesian go. I don’t have a link, but on his tumblr he said that Sarkeesian has no right to feel unsafe because of rape/death threats because he can’t think of any feminists who have been assassinated. That from the guy who did this just a year ago. I have no idea how a guy four years older than me (he’s twenty eight now) is so stunted that he can go around acting like such a giant evil shitbaby, but there you have it.
What a chuckle duck.
@Great American Satan: It does feel like that side has gotten even nastier. (Just check out the Fox News Forums). Reading this, I couldn’t help thinking what would happen if the anti-rape song, “Holder Her Down,” was done today. It’s told through the eyes of a man who finds the act disgusting and gives his sincere empathy to the victim. He’d be flamed as a mangina who is part of the evil “PC/femnazi conspiracy” even by the females of those groups.
I forgot, the link to the song is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok_7wwrk_DI
I can’t say or type The Amazing (Not) Atheist’s pseudonym without amending it to something more accurate. That man is such an ass pimple.
Far from being amazing, he’s just another virulent misogynist – they’re a dime a dozen.
I agree with the premise of the OP, and of Zerlina Maxwell, that parents, role models and others who are in positions of authority can fight effectively against rape by emphasizing the values of kindness for others, empathy, respect especially for those who are most vulnerable. In the OP, David credits this kind of rape prevention strategy for helping to reduce the incidence of rape in recent years. I agree with Zerlina Maxwell that it’s reasonable to begin the discussion with potential perpetrators about preventing rape by emphasizing empathy — and, presumably, protectiveness — toward potential rape victims. In my book, there’s everything right about emphasizing what is in the heart, and fostering a sense of love and protectiveness.
This is why it is so disturbing to me to read several of the comments in this thread. These comments foster a sense of suspicion against those who seem to be motivated by such a protective instinct, particularly as it applies to fathers and husbands. The sense of protectiveness toward a woman by a father/husband/boyfriend is maligned by some here as though it were actually motivated by a desire to control and dominate. And so the male protector is now lambasted as just another threat to a woman’s well-being.
Whatever feelings of love a male protector might have, whatever worries he might feel about the safety of a female loved one, whatever measures he takes because he cares, these are all denigrated by several commenters here as ultimately non-admirable. I wonder about how rape prevention campaigns are supposed to be effective, if boys are portrayed as potential rapists on their way in the door, and after experiencing the campaign, they’re derided as stifling and controlling to women’s freedom on their way out the door.
I think that what’s missing in this conversation is an appreciation for the unique qualities that men have to offer for enhancing the quality of the human experience, especially (in this case) as far as women are concerned. A man’s uniqueness is not limited to his rejection of violence; he also can be a protector and compared to women he can be exceptionally effective in that role. If boys are to be properly educated, then why not tap into that instinct in them, to help them aspire to protect those who they love (and even to protect total strangers)?
To illustrate my point, I cite the following comments from this thread:
ashley
Marie (agreeing with ashley’s attack on the motives of protective fathers, husbands, and boyfriends):
nerdypants
pillow in hell
quantumscale
Tulgey Logger
Tulgey Logger cites the Youtube video “Tropes vs. Women: Damsel in Distress: Part 1″ from which I have transcribed the quote below:
Time index: 10:22
If patriarchy derives its power from a protector assuming a protective role and thereby a sense of authority. Obviously this sense of authority can be and has been abused throughout history. When protectiveness becomes the means to an authoritative end (rather than the other way around), obviously it should be reigned in. But in my opinion, it is a mistake to characterize the protective instinct itself (especially when exercised primarily by a man) as flawed at best and malicious at worst.
Roscoe, for all those quotes, you’re missing the point. This protectiveness is still focussed on changing and limiting women’s behaviour, as if rape is something that just happens and that women can avoid. It does not acknowledge that rape is a deliberate act by the rapist, and that the whole responsibility is on that person (of whatever gender), not on their victim.
Also, wtf “Obviously this sense of authority can be and has been abused throughout history.”? It’s one thing to talk about parents of small children having authority over them, but men automatically having authority over women is the outcome of what you’re talking about. Feeling protective of someone does not give you authority over them. It doesn’t give you any right to control their behaviour.
Nobody is saying men are all malicious in wanting to protect loved ones; the problem is that our society has the male ownership of women as its default, and controlling our behaviour is insidious, infecting even such positive feelings. As for flawed – well of course it is, humans are flawed, duh. We have an extraordinary ability to fuck up even the best of intentions or ideas.
Telling grown women that they really shouldn’t get too drunk, and definitely have to watch their drinks … totally the same as putting the bleach out of reach of a child.
Actually, I’m failing to come up with a good example of merely protecting a child, and not controlling, and failing. That should probably say something, but I suspect the point will be lost on Roscoe.
Roscoe’s comment is especially funny when you consider how clear he’s making it that in his case any “protective” instincts actually are deeply flawed. This in particular…
Oh, hey there, very familiar way of looking at gender relations. I remember you from the time I spent living in Saudi Arabia.
And it’s REINED not REIGNED. As in reining in a horse.
That always bugs me.
I dunno, given is belief that male authoritarianism is totally legit as long as you can justify it as “protective” I’d say “reigned” is less of a typo and more of a Freudian slip.
And of course I made a hilariously obvious typo in my own comment, because irony.
LOL!
It’s apt here, but it’s a typo that invades All The Things and it always irritates me.
BTW random but since I know we have multiple tea lovers here, this one? Is the best vanilla tea I’ve found. Normally vanilla tea tastes too artificial to me, but this one isn’t like artificial vanilla flavoring, it’s like what happens when you leave vanilla pods in sugar and then bake with it.
http://www.mightyleaf.com/loose-tea_flavored-black-tea/vanilla-bean-black-tea/
I’m hanging out for when it’s going to be cool enough to drink tea again … another week of high 30s weather on the way.
/random weather grumbling
Roscoe, you can go on about how wonderfully protective men are, but most men have zero clue as to where the hidden dangers are or how to avoid them. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had male friends blithely try to walk into dangerous situations. And when it comes to the threat of rape, its always assumed that just having a man there is sufficient to prevent the rape.
Men like you don’t realize that it is the men who are supposed to protect us that are most often our rapists.
Case in point, I was molested by my grandfather, who was supposed to be giving me a ride because the place I wanted to go was considered too far away for me to safely walk. All this restrict womens movements thinking does is give predatory men easy access to the best victims of all, the ones men can stick around to control and manipulate so their victim won’t tell what happened. The kind of victim who won’t be believed, because no one wants to believe that grandpa/uncle/father so and so is a rapist. The kind of victim that is going to hurt so bad just thinking about how it will impact the family, and nothing gets said.
I’m the first woman in my family to not have been raped by a male family member in generations. So yes, I have very good reason to be suspicious of men who try to protect me by controlling and restricting my life.
That is just … a staggeringly awful history. Even worse that it’s probably not that rare. :(
I agree with everything that pillow in hell just said, but honestly? Women don’t need specific reasons to reject the idea that they should defer to men’s “protectiveness”. “I don’t want to” is a good enough reason.
Cassandra, I totally agree with that thinking.
Another reason to reject “male protectiveness”? Life happens, and quite often there isn’t a suitable male relative or husband around to help.
As an ADULT, I have certain requirements to ensure that I have a place to live and food on the table etc. As an ADULT, I’m the person best able to determine what I need to do, and how to get it done. The vast majority of women do not have access to the wealth required to ensure that they never contravene the exhaustive list of rules to prevent rape. Like a car, like a job that ensures she’ll be home before dark (which is 4pm in the winter), like living in a pleasant suburb with no bars, large parking lots, undeveloped land, or rows of closed stores where people will be potential witnesses if someone should attack her. Like having the funds to quit her job if a co worker or boss is sexually harassing. Also, dating. Dating was started by poorer folk, who didn’t have the means (wealth) to properly arrange a courtship and marriage.
Roscoe, the “rules” prevent the vast majority of ADULT women from even taking on the responsibility of supporting their families. And you know what? The vast majority of men have never been able to support their families without the help of their wives and daughters.
There is however, one rule that absolutely stops rape in its tracks. DON’T RAPE.
Also, the implied blackmail is pretty distasteful. So either women allow men to “protect” us or we just accept rape as a fact of life? No, I do not accept those as the only options, and neither does Maxwell.
It takes a pretty twisted mind to interpret “teach men that it’s wrong to rape people” as “yay authoritarianism, it’s what’s best for women”.
DING DING DING DING we have a winner.
I haven’t had a male relative in my life since I was fifteen. Even when I did, neither would have been any use at all as a “protector” – just the opposite with my brother; the only violence in the family came from him.
Plus relating to what Cassandra said: not every woman wants to be protected or to have a man in her life. I’ve never wanted contact with my father or brother, and I have no involvement with men other than Mr K. How am I supposed to play by the rules of these so-benevolent protectors? Go out and find me some random dude to marry JUST BECAUSE?
I have no objection to someone feeling protective of those they love. Mr K and I feel that way about each other. But protectiveness does not give you the right to keep someone in perpetual childhood. Men do not have any right to authority over women – it really is that simple.
And again, all this is talking as if Teh Strangerz are the ones who commit most rapes. They aren’t. It’s those oh-so-protective men who are doing it … the fathers, the brothers, the partners, the friends, the ones the women trusted, who are responsible for the majority of rapes. Where then this “let us protect you!” message?