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| Lara Logan, shortly before the attack |
There has been an astounding amount of vile shit posted on the internet about the reported sexual assault and beating of CBS reporter Lara Logan in Cairo’s Tahir Square. I spent a depressing hour or so the other night looking through hundreds of comments on the Yahoo news message boards; it was a virtual festival of misogyny, racism, victim-blaming and simple nastiness. A sample (each quote is from a different comment):
don’t put some nice white pu55y near crazy @#$% arabs. it’s like goddamn king kong
Kinda’ like sending a woman reporter into a locker room? Don’t ask me to feel any kind of remorse for her. Equal rights demands equal responsibility
it started as a revolution and turned in a black spring break! mwaa ha ha
She loved every minute of it.
I could multiply examples ad infinitum; the last I checked there were more than 1500 comments on the one Yahoo news story I looked at, and most were of this sort. The only slightly encouraging sign? Most of these vile comments have more downvotes from readers than upvotes.
You expect this kind of behavior from the Yahoo message board crowd, which has never been very big on civility, or even basic human decency. Typical anonymous internet assholery.
Leave it to the readers of The Spearhead, though, to take commentary on this sad case to an even lower low. Yesterday, Spearhead head honcho W.F. Price published his own, predictably victim-blaming, take on the subject — essentially blaming feminists for encouraging women to report the news in the same dangerous places that male reporters go. (When Anderson Cooper was attacked, you didn’t hear anyone suggesting that men shouldn’t be covering the events in Cairo.)
I think that’s a supremely tasteless way to use this tragedy to push an antifeminist agenda. But the comments to his article, roughly 270 of them at last count, are far worse — rarely bothering with even a pro-forma expression of basic human sympathy, some blaming and even mocking the victim, and most using the case to crudely push an assortment of their own misogynist agendas. Here are some of the worst; I present them without comment, as they pretty much speak for themselves. I have edited some for space reasons; you can follow the links to read them in their entirety.
Alucin explained about how rape allegedly benefits its victims:
When I studied in university a woman claimed to have been gang-raped. After telling the story, she acquired a certain authority. She was at the top of the feminist hierarchy …. Her word was gold because of her rape.
It was never even verified if she had in fact been raped.
It’s a harsh thing to say, but the woman at university gained immensely from the rape, or her rape story-telling, with this increased stature. She probably wouldn’t have gotten into that very small degree program without the rape story to tell to the admissions committee.
At school, no one, especially a man, could ever challenge her about any subject, however remotely related to rape. …
Rape against men or women is a tragedy, but I also find it sickening how “survivors” or their “friends and supporters” often use their status for personal gain. … It’s the same thing when feminists politicize breast cancer.
Opus added:
I agree with Alcuin: In my experience women wear RAPE like a badge of honour or military medal (as I presume Ms Logan will now do). I, of course, never believe word of it, and I notice most guys these days are equally sceptical. There may be an increasing Rape epidemic but no one I know is a Rapist. Funny.
Confused declared that he didn’t give a shit:
No group on earth is more privileged that American/western women.
I won’t waste my time any more worrying about their safety, or lack thereof, due to their choices.
intp took it a step further:
Don’t believe her. Don’t care. I hope the Arab guys didn’t catch anything from her.
That is what the non-stop lie called feminism has done to me. Vive la nihilism.
Rebel offered this highly original take on rape:
I don’t see the point here..
According to feminist orthodoxy, humpteen gazillion women are raped every day. This one is the humpteen gazillionth plus one for that day.
Women are raped if you have sex with them, women are raped if you don’t have sex with them, women are raped even if there are no men around. …
Every time two animals are copulating, a woman feels raped. There are more rapes on earth than there are hydrogen molecules in the universe.
To women of today, rape seems to be the highest achievement, the Royal Road to Success.
I’m laughing so much I might get a hernia, my belly is aching from the laughter.
Papa Smurf suggested the reported rape was a great career move, and ended his comment with a smiley:
she’ll be a CBS news anchor in no time. great way to get promoted.
I dont know if she genuinely didnt want what just happend or maybe feminism has affectivly blinded her and rendered her stupid. Blonde western women in the arab world are like all you can eat restraunts to fat people. Just help yourselves 😉
Troll King posted a long rambling diatribe against “western women” in the Middle East, of which these remarks are only a small portion:
*yawn*
Typical feminist/western woman(as if there is a difference) acts like her typical bitchy self in a place that won’t tolerate it. ….
The fact is that women, western cunts, think they can go into a culture and act how they want and treat the poorest of the poor not just like “help” or a but like a slave that should be lashed for simply flirting. I bet these rapists look who do this probably thought she would act towards them the same way white women act towards brown and black men on western tv. Like he was a stud….
But, umm, like yeah dude. That is so hurrible I might go and cry a river.
The Contrarian Expatriate took victim-blaming to a new low:
Sounds like she got what she set herself up for. You can yell, “I am woman, hear me roar!” all you want in the Anglosphere, but step into the 3rd world behaving that way and they will pound you (no pun intended) back into your place.
Again, as is generally the case with the comments from The Spearhead that I quote here on my blog, these are not weird outliers in the discussion there. Unlike the comments from Yahoo I quoted above, all of the comments I quoted from The Spearhead got multiple upvotes from readers there, in most cases several dozen; none had more than a handful of downvotes. Alucin’s comment about the benefits of rape — a comment surprisingly similar in spirit to an infamous quote on false rape accusations from Catherine Comins, an assistant dean at Vassar, that still raises hackles from antifeminists two decades after it was uttered to a Time magazine writer — got more than 80 upvotes. There is more than a little irony here.
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>why should I nick? every time someone here tries to explain anything to you you turn it back around and say that it is somehow something that we did wrong, instead of listening. You think that our responses are dumb, by your own admission. You just don't like admitting that you have privilege that you refuse to accept and that is why you never get laid.
>Sandy,I think the logic runs thusly1. Kave admitted to attending an admittedly strange piece of performance art.2. Kave is a feminist.3. Other feminists defended the concept of performance art in the abstract.4. ????5. Ergo, Kave and all other feminists totally enjoy watching guys masturbate while milk is being poured over them and this is yet another reason why feminism is bad.Presumably, profit is soon to follow.
>""theclementine said…I'm fairly certain that the whole point of feminism is that women don't need men to rescue us."Absolutely right. Just ask Lara Logan. "If you got your news from somewhere other than Fox you might have heard that the first to begin pulling the guys off her were a group of Arabic women.
>"Can you please give me a validated and logical argument how the middle class white male is privileged?"Whoa! I just passed out from laughing so much. Damn, only here can you find such ridiculous and hilarious statements. Whoever said this, stay batshit insane bro. Your woman-hating whining bullshit never ceases to amaze me. Oh my gosh you are a walking punch-line.
>The reasonable argument simply is that it's absolutely ludicrous.No. You fail again. It's like me saying that it's okay to start masturbating over animals in a zoo and/or it's okay for me to enjoy watching other people masturbate over animals in a zoo. And if you simply say it's ludicrous as it truly is, it's not a validated argument.Umm, sure, dude. You might get in trouble for public indecency, but if that's what lifts yer luggage…. Try this:"Masturbation is supposed to be a private and personal act. Putting it up on stage devalues it, because it transforms into a public act instead of a personal one." There. That's a pretty good argument about why it would be wrong to stage that kind of performance. "The body is inherently sinful. We should be constantly trying to grow our spiritual side at the expense of the body. Celebrating the body, especially the sexual nature of the body, is sinful and should not be tolerated." I certainly don't agree with *that* argument, but it's been a perennial favorite for several millennia now. "Innocent cows were exploited to bring you that milk!" Also a little weird, but still legit. There? You see what a little logic and intelligence can do? I totally just did your homework for you, you can thank me later by not being a total choad in your next three comments.
>they won't lady vic, these are people who think that raping a journalist is a good thing
>Nick, about time you finally point out that some things that these guys were saying were the wrong things to say.Pallid as it was, it was a condemnation. Therefore you get a cookie and some milk too. As for the privilege you assume is not there-when you walk down the street at night by yourself, do you ever worry that someone is going to rape you?
>briget said"You just don't like admitting that you have privilege that you refuse to accept and that is why you never get laid."How can I admit privilege when I have NONE to begin with? You still can't explain what privilege I have. Don't you realise your stance makes you look like a raven idiot?Come on, beat me in an argument and prove to me that I have privilege. I am the middle class male. I feel absolutely no privilege over any woman what so ever. Not even to the slightest, not even one little tiny bit. Nada, NONE.What have you got to say about that you dumbass femitwit?“You just don't like admitting that you have privilege that you refuse to accept and that is why you never get laid.”Ahahaha I can get laid and I do get laid on a casual basis. Would this make feminists angry as this is an example of a man getting what he wants from a woman?That said, this type of stance is completely chauvinistic. You are basically expressing that women hold superiority over men with sex. And if we don't obey women and agree with women on anything, we won't get to play with the almighty superior pussy.You are just as bad as the chauvinist cave men that women have complained about. But chauvinist attitudes are no surprise within the feminist movement.keiko44 said:"Whoa! I just passed out from laughing so much. Damn, only here can you find such ridiculous and hilarious statements.Whoever said this, stay batshit insane bro. Your woman-hating whining bullshit never ceases to amaze me. Oh my gosh you are a walking punch-line."This is funny because if I was to start complaining about women being privileged, I would be deemed as a woman hater.Can you see the double standard? But of course, today's feminists are shameless hypocrites.If any man refuses the assumption that his gender is privileged over women, he’s sexist. If a woman accuses men of being privileged, she’s not sexistIf women refuse they have privilege, they are not sexist. If a man accuses women of having privilege, he’s sexistWelcome to feminazism 2011. The biggest hypocritical idiots on the planetLady VicI am over going in circles with this particular argument. The bottom line is that it’s ludicrous and the feminist stance is that it’s okay to be ludicrous. That’s pretty much what it all comes down to. Its pointless going on and on with this. I am not going to waste my time.
>Elizabeth “As for the privilege you assume is not there-when you walk down the street at night by yourself, do you ever worry that someone is going to rape you?”How can this be a privilege? This doesn’t make any sense. There are far higher chances of being mugged than there is to be raped. Both men and women are equally targets in this.Saying that women get raped and men don’t is not a privilege. It’s simply a certain amount of idiots doing a horrendous crime. Either gender are victims of crime.It’s as silly as me saying that just because men are likely to be victims of prejudice in family court, that makes the female gender the privileged gender as a whole in society.
>Actually the issue is that when you walk down the street you may be concerned that you will be mugged but you are not worried that you will be raped.For you, the fear of such a thing is not there. It is a privilege for you to not have to worry that you will be violated this way. That is something directly tied to your being male. As a man, there is no reason you would think that could happen. But a female does have to worry about it. She cannot blithely wander around without having to take care to pay attention to her surroundings in a way you never would have to simply because you are a man, and not a woman.It is a privilege that is so simple and obvious it is easy for you not even see it is there. Because it is not something that a guy thinks about.
>Lady V. wrote:I totally just did your homework for you, you can thank me later by not being a total choad in your next three comments. Nick's next comment:Don't you realise your stance makes you look like a raven idiot?Quoth the raven: nevermore.
>I think the point of having privilege is that those who have are usually blind to it.
>*walks into the nearby wall* Yep, indeed.Or they do not see their privilege as such but those without do.
>No Elizabeth, it's not privilege, its called paranoia towards men. I think there is more of a chance to get into a car accident than there is to be raped on the street. But thank your own movement for this ridiculous paranoia. If men had the same level of paranoia and distrust towards women, they would be deemed as misogynists. But feminazitwats will always be shameless hypocritical two faced bigots to the end.
>then go away nick. Fine if you are actually going to listen, you have the privilege of being able to read for one thing. That makes you more privileged than 16% of the population of the world. As a man you can walk down the street alone without the fear that someone is going to rape you. That is a privilege that 51% of the american population cannot claim. As a middle class citizen you are likely to own at least one car. That means that you are more privileged than 11% of the american population. You had access to far superior schools than those in a lower income bracket than yourself. I presume you are able bodied (if I am inaccurate in that statement please feel free to correct me and if you are not then I apologize) which means that you can find a job much easier than 54 million people in this country. As a man you have the privilege of bodily autonomy (meaning that the state isn't allowed to write arbitrary laws regarding the function of your body) That is just a short list I could go on if you would like me to
>"Or they do not see their privilege as such but those without do."—ElizabethWhat I see are feminists refusing to acknowledge that there are reasons for promoting men's rights because there are not many priviledges for most men.
>Actually if men and women were not so messed up on purpose as a result of society conditioning us to be so towards sex, men would probably never have any desire to rape women.Then again, I have always thought that we should be more like bonobos and not like chimps anyway.
>Briget, this might make his attitude clearer but Nick is from Oz.And Wytch-the reason you see that is because you want to see it that way. Reality reflects something different.
>The problem is, nick (and I say this as a man who's not a feminist), some paranoia towards men *is* justified. From my perspective, as a small, pudgy, unassuming guy, when I go out at night I'm much more afraid of strange men walking up to me and mugging/stabbing/busting a cap in me than I am of a strange woman doing the same. It's simply a fact, and we can argue about why that is, but regardless of whether you're male or female, if you're going to be the subject of violence from a stranger, that stranger is much more likely to be male than female.On the other hand, however, there's some reason to be skeptical of the whole "privilege" thing too. It's not as if men really don't have to worry about being raped, especially by people supposedly supposed to protect them–take the case of Abner Louima, who was sodomized (i.e raped) by a group of police officers for just getting into a scuffle at a nightclub. I admit getting raped isn't something a lot of guys think about, but you could argue that it's because a lot of guys don't do a very good job of keeping their eyes open and knowing this kind of stuff happens as opposed to "privilege."(in b4 triplanetary accusing me of trolling. Trust me, if I was, I would have bust out the image macros and reaction images by now)
>C'mon nick, don't hold back, tell us how you REALLY feel!!I think David mentioned something about custom t-shirts in a previous article. Perhaps he should consider a "Raven" line of t-shirts… Raven Idiot, Raven Feminazitwat, Raven Femicow…. the possibilities are ENDLESS!!
>pam, I'm seeing a raven wearing a hitler costume with vulvas all over it
>briget, that new Raven line would sure be a hit, dontcha think?
>A final word about performance art:A good friend of mine whom I also do a great deal of business with is a very large contributor to the arts programs at our local university. Occasionally my wife and I will accompany him to exhibits put on by the school. This particular piece left all of us in stitches, combined with a resounding “what the heck did we just see?”It’s funny you call me a feminist, (I’d consider myself to be a equalist). You mra’s complain about the problems men have but do nothing about these problems.My wife made her money in real estate, a number of years ago she started buying up crack houses in bad neighborhoods, renovating them and reselling them to my workers (almost all men) who are in a large part immigrants. She finances their mortgages without interest and has quite honestly transformed streets. Her largest project started three years ago after she met the director of a homeless shelter for men. There are many programs in place for aboriginals in our city, or for men wanting help with addictions but for others very little. If it wasn’t for our families connections and yes wealth my brother would be one of those men. My wife purchased an apartment building and converted it into a forty-five-unit apartment for men who were homeless. It has a communal kitchen that she keeps stocked with essentials and once a week a nutritionist comes in to help prepare meals with the men who wish to participate. The block has a full-time caretaker who was one of her first residents, and his wife who provides cleaning services for those men who do not take care of their apartments on their own (at first this was a fulltime job but the vast majority take great pride in their apartments now). A psychologist friends of ours volunteers a half day a week of counseling for those that feel they will benefit. She also covers their costs of prescriptions for medications that welfare will not cover if needed. A couple of times a month she meets with her tenants and asks them if they are in need of anything. Because she chooses who are her tenants and rarely allows treaty Indians in (because they have their own programs) she does not run it as a non-profit. So no government money goes into her endeavor. She also will not speak to the press, in fact only our close friends know about the project. Except for issues that would affect the safety of the other residents she imposes no restrictions on what they do in their own space. Most people here will understand why I can’t help but look down on our mra friends and their ridiculous notion of how the world is against them. In a heart beat I know if they came across my wife they would label her as a feminist, she has little patience for men who need to feel superior to women. She’s also done more for men then any mra I have ever come across. Myself? I give to two organizations. One is the John Howard foundation; the other is a live in treatment facility for high-risk youth. I realize that not everyone has the means to do what we do, but anyone can volunteer to pick up a ladle at your local men’s shelter
>I do. Vulva's all over all the wonderful animals we have been called. So there's raven loons, raven leeches, raven cows, I'm also thinking a raven handbag with a witch hat on top and penises coming out the side of it. Any other's you can think of pam? David when you open your store my entire paycheck is going to go away from buying shirts
>@ Kave:Your wife is awesome!