If you thought the “meat market” guy from a couple of days ago – you know, the one prattling on about the “market makers of pussy” — was risibly wrongheaded, here’s an even more insidious attempt to reduce the complexities of human sexuality to a question of “supply and demand.” Over on The False Rape Society blog, Pierce Harlan has a new post with the title:
False rape claims: increasingly a tool to skew the current economies of sex, where sex is cheaper than most women prefer
As you might imagine, the post itself is based on some fairly twisty blame-the-victim logic – with some feminist-bashing thrown in for good measure. Let’s wade through the muck here.
According to Harlan, the “cultural tenets governing sexual encounters” have gone all loosey-goosey in recent years, due to birth control, a general loosening of sexual mores and “the feminist-inspired norms that pressure young women to ‘party like the guys.’”
I assume you have all read Mary Wollstonecraft’s classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Get Totally Wasted and Fuck Some Dudes.
But, alas, feminists totally don’t understand the law of supply and demand –and that in the market of sex, they are the supply and not the demand (because it’s not like women ever really want to have sex themselves). As a result, the feminist-inspired young women of today are totally flooding the market with cut-rate pussy.
As Harlan explains:
The experts tell us that men have a much easier time obtaining sex than they did in days long gone. … Women who’d prefer to put a higher price tag on their sexuality are finding themselves locked out of the market.
The results are all too predictable. Women are having sex more often when they secretly are conflicted about it. We’ve frequently reported here about the proven gender “regret asymmetry” where young women have much higher levels of after-the-fact regret than men following sexual hook-ups. Regret too often is transmogrified into feelings of being used, and feeling used too often metamorphoses into a false rape claim.
Does Harlan have any evidence to back up this hypothesis? Yes. And it comes straight from his ass.
Having studied the false rape phenomenon closely for a number of years, it is my conclusion that young women are increasingly resorting to false rape claims as an inappropriate method of skewing the current economies of sex, which favors men and which makes sex cheaper than most women consciously or subconsciously prefer.
In other words: he has spent the last several years searching out news stories on false rape accusations to post on his blog. Because there are almost 7 billion people on planet earth, he has been able to find a fair number of such stories. So he’s concluded that there is some sort of “false rape epidemic” going on. In other words, his conclusion seems to be based almost entirely on what’s known as the “availability heuristic,” which, as Wikipedia puts it, “is a phenomenon (which can result in a cognitive bias) in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.”
Were I to start a blog entitled “The Dudes Peeing on Things You Shouldn’t Pee On Society,” guess what? I too could cite many examples, drawn from the newspapers of the world. Were I to do this for several years, my brain would be stuffed full of stories of men urinating on just about anything that can be urinated on, from prayer rugs to cough drops. This, through the power of the “availability heuristic,” might convince me that we faced an epidemic of inappropriately urinating men, and that this epidemic was getting worse by the hour. (I mean, before I started specifically looking for such stories I almost never heard about this terrible social ill.)
But back to Harlan and his argument, such as it is:
Women are pressured by feminist-inspired norms to make themselves more available to men than ever, but they have also learned that crying rape after-the-fact is a culturally accepted, indeed, feminist approved, antidote to sex they feel was too cheaply obtained. Instead of saying “no” up front, they are retroactively saying “no” — with false rape claims — after-the-fact. And society has given this backward state of affairs its imprimatur.
One solution? Women need to stop having so much sex — for the sake of teh menz. Or as Harlan, still working the creaky economic metaphor, puts it:
One cure is to enhance the value of female sexuality by decreasing the supply and thereby reduce both regret and false rape claims.
But, darn it, this won’t work, because women are out there marching in the street for the right to, you know, have sex when they want to with consenting partners without being shamed for it.
That, of course, can never happen in a society where “slut walks” are celebrated as liberating events, where colleges excuse women from underage drinking charges so long as they report they were raped, and where false rape claims are routinely excused and implicitly encouraged. In short, it can never happen in a society that encourages young women to be promiscuous and to then tell rape lies when that promiscuity results in an unfavorable sexual experience.
Harlan ends his piece with a call to lock up false accusers for a long time.
Certainly malicious false accusers should be charged. Women who identify the wrong guy in a lineup? No.
And it would be nice if Harlan extended the sympathy he shows for falsely accused men to real victims of real rape, a much larger group of people than the falsely accused. But instead he writes pieces like this one, and links in his sidebar to a host of misogynist blogs that, among other things, routinely joke about female victims of rape and murder, that urge men on juries in rape trials to vote to acquit the accused even when he’s clearly guilty, that claim that age of consent laws are inherently man-hating, and that think it would be great if sex robots and artificial wombs rendered women obsolete.
Those actually interested in helping those falsely accused – rather than supporting Harlan’s retrograde agenda — would do better to support The Innocence Project, and to stop reading Harlan’s drivel.
Age of consent laws are man hating?! They count for underaged boys, too! Also- why not work on making is easier for girls to say no upfront- by teaching boys to not pressure them. Also? I knew of SO MANY guys in college who got their drinking tickets dropped because they were athletes! In high school, too.
Also, I’ll take this seriously when MRAs stop suggesting corrective and punishment rape.
I had to fake a coughing fit in my cube to cover up the laughter.
Way to miss the point of feminism, Harlan. Here’s a hint, it’s NOT about flooding the market with “cheap pussy.”
I’m sorry to state the obvious here, but people who reduce everything to a market transaction are fucking morons.
Due to triggers, and my not wanting to deal w/ them atm, I will talk about other things in this piece >_>;; (some might say I always talk about other things in every piece… XD )
So now the sexual economy doesn’t place high value women’s sexual organs, in fact it’s dirt cheap! Also now it’s about trading only on women, not on men, like the last guy said. o_o;;; Do these guys ever argue about this, I think it’d be fun xD Tho it’d be hard to argue w/ a ghost… he could just blink out of existence, and you can’t call it a flounce b/c it could just be that the clock struck midnight, or he had another house to haunt or something 😮
Also, now we know what to say to all the “where are the men’s studies!?” guys… “Dude, you’ve got Economics!” xD
Now I will go outside to play some basketball! :3 (and lament that the All-Ami-All-The-Time moment where I had all of the 5 “latest comments” slots is gone 🙁 I think the world is lesser for it… xD)
It continually amazes me that so many people still fail to grasp the idea that feminism advocates for anyone to be able to have sex if the want to and not have sex if the don’t want to. When feminist call out rape and abuse, they’re quick to call prude and claim old hags want to stop “vaginas under 25” from having sex. When feminist advocate for consensual sex without shame, this guy pops up and claims feminists are pressuring girls into having sex all the time. Or something.
Off topic: spell-check just informed me that the correct plural of vagina is vaginae. Blew my mind 0.o
I know that this is just falling victim to the availability heuristic myself, but I can’t help but thinking of all the women I know who’ve regretted sexual encounters but never accused anyone of anything. To my own vast regret, I have been a regretted sexual encounter (I was just coming off a relationship, emotionally confused, and changed my mind about seeing her again. For at least once in history, “It’s not you, it’s me” was entirely true, but it was not accepted), and there have been no legal repercussions.
The one person I’ve known who did lie about being sexually assaulted? A guy. Apparently setting up some sort of “if you tell on me, I’ll tell on you” thing with a girl he’d harassed.
I like Amanda Hess’ take on why women (pretty rarely) make false rape accusations. I quote: “Both rape and rape accusations are products of the roles assigned by rape culture. In the traditional seduction scenario, a woman is expected to not desire to have sex, and to only submit after the man has successfully coerced her into submission. When the preferred model for consensual sex looks a hell of a lot like rape, an array of fucked-up scenarios are inevitable: the woman never wanted to fuck the guy, refuses to submit, and is raped; the woman submits to the man’s coercion in order to avoid other negative consequences (like being raped); the woman had desired the sex all along, but must defend her femininity by saying that she had been coerced into sex.”
David, in your observation, do MRA types support and promote The Innocence Project? I’m curious because the reality of the organization’s work doesn’t really adhere to the narrative of regretful/vindictive woman who falsely accuses man because of she undersold her pussy.
And I appreciate you highlighting their incredibly important work.
But square holes! Round pegs! Scott Adams is still an idiot!
I just…I know so many women who never reported rape, and don’t get me started with sexual assault, I don’t think I know *any* women who haven’t experienced that!
I have regretted sex with several men before – but it wasn’t because I didn’t really want to have sex that night; it was because they treated me like dirt afterwards (if you ask a girl out after she’s dated a friend of yours, you lose the right to call her ‘sloppy seconds’ when, after *you* have dumped *her*, she dates a different friend of yours. If you ever had the right to call her that to begin with).
And when you take into account the numbers of women who go out to bars or frat parties to get drunk and engage in random hookups, it’s not a large % of the population. I think I’ve been to maybe three bar-parties my whole life, and one or two frat parties. Most of my friends prefer to descend upon campgrounds or someone’s house, where we all know everyone else. Granted, we are also a small % of the population, but my whole point is that there are more models of dating and sex than most MRAs seem to think of.
Nobinayamu, they mention The Innocence Project once in awhile, but basically the answer is no, they basically offer no support or publicity. Harlan does link to it on his blog, but it’s buried in a long list of links off of the main page, unlike the MRA/misogynist blogs he highlights in his sidebar.
Also, I sure wish MRAs would make up their minds about feminists. One day we’re old, ugly, hairy-legged, anti-sex Dworkinite man-haters. The next day we’re slutty bad-boy-chasing harlots who pressure all women everywhere to have promiscuous sex.
Can one of you kind gentlemen please tell me which it is? I need to decide whether I’m going to the all-ladies armpit-hair-braiding-and-man-bashing party tonight, or to a bar to get wasted and pick up a dude or three to help fulfill my monthly feminist-mandated promiscuity quota.
That’s a shame. And a wasted opportunity.
When I was younger, I was reluctant to call myself a feminist because I felt that the 2nd -and to some extent- 3rd waves of feminism had failed to be truly inclusive of women of color. It took time to for me to study, gather information and reconcile all of my thoughts and feelings about modern feminism, womanism, black feminist thought, etc.
Coming out on the other side of that process led me to a place, very similar to Ozymandias’ post about men’s issues. And where I see some legitimate issues raised by Men’s Right’s group I see the same failure to consider the lives and issues of men of color* from their movement. Such as it is.They’re happy, of course, to cite statistics about increased rates of incarceration and sentencing discrepancies as applied to gender. They seem completely unwilling to look at these numbers when broken out along demographics of race.
So, I wondered, David, and thought I’d ask you.
*The Innocence Project, of course, does not limit it’s work to men of color but as they are a disproportionate number of men incarcerated, they become a disproportionate amount of men exonerated through their work.
Also, WTF does Harlan even mean by the “price tag” on woman’s sexuality? Am I to believe that most woman who regret sex don’t reallregret having sex with a guy who treated her like dirt during and after, they just regret not charging dinner and a movie for it?
The whole fear of “she’s afraid of being slut-shamed, ostracized, kicked out, etc so she might accuse you of rape” thing actually would be fought and lessened by what feminism is fighting for, which is a culture that doesn’t slut-shame, or demean how a woman acts, dresses, or if she has sex. : Or moralize about women’s sexuality. (this doesn’t lessen any culpability from ppl who do lie about criminal acts maliciously of course, just like fighting rape culture doesn’t lessen the culpability of rapists, but if this is rly what these ppl believe happens all the time, it would remove a social factor and narrative to the scenario they laid out and believe is an epidemic) : (was thinking of this cuz i had just written a post about something similar from a piece on movie/game censors categorizing consensual sex as more adult and scary than rape >_<;; )
Nobinayamu, I agree that the MRM is pretty much oblivious to issues of race (aside from those MRAs who are themselves explicitly racist; there’s a degree of overlap between MRA circles and the “alternative right” today).
There’s a lot of complaining amongst (white) MRAs not only about how hard men supposedly have it these days, but specifically how hard white men supposedly have it.
Similarly, MRAs complain that women get shorter prison sentences for committing the same crimes as men (which is true, though the gap is much less than they seem to think), but they never talk about the similar gap in sentencing between blacks and whites. Whites get as much of a “honky pass” as women get a “pussy pass,” and that’s not even counting the disparities in sentencing in drug crimes (crack-related offenses mean much stiffer sentences).
And the concerns of MRAs about false accusations don’t seem to extend to anyone accused of anything but rape. Nor do they seem to care about prison rape (which affects more men than women because more men than women are incarcerated) in anything but a rhetorical way; I’ve seen far more serious stuff about prison rape on feminist sites actually. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a link to Just Detention on an MRA site.
What I find interesting is that from reading MRA comments and posts, you would think that they would be pretty sympathetic to what many Asian men in the US and Canada complain about (some of them fairly so, some of them slip into scary Nice Guy(tm) territory, I knew quite a few like that in HS and it can get pretty frightening : ) on the stereotypes they face, on their lack of presence in the media, and in fiction esp, the lack of them being shown as strong, or competent, or sexual, on how ignored they feel, or disadvantaged in dating, b/c of being marginalized by racism etc etc… (as I said, this can range from anti-racism activists talking about the way Asian men are portrayed or ignored to “WHITE GIRLS SHOULD ALL DATE ME AND ASIAN GIRLS ARE TRAITORS” )
But you would think that they’d be big allies. But much of the stuff I see about Asians on MRM sites are arguing about whether Asian women ARE actually better than Western women, or that they are, that we’re submissive and understand how to treat men and etc etc… and that it’s even better b/c we’ve never met a real men. The only time I’ve seen (and maybe I haven’t seen all there is xD I fully admit that) mention much of Asian men, is about how small they are, how like women they are, or how they are naturally feminine or etc, and what poor competition they are for white men, but you would think there would be way more Asian men in the MRM… or they’d want to be allies (if not w/ the anti-oppression anti-racist Asian male activists, then w/ the other ones I listed above : tho white MRAs and Asian MRAs I guess would just hate each other accusing the other of taking their women >_> ) But it always struck me as curious, cuz I know a lot of guys who would be v happy to join up if they didn’t keep reading the racist, Asianphile or anti-Asian male stuff that you see on like the Spearhead.
The price of pussy is too low? Ha! That’s a laugh!
Alpha and Beta bitches only go for Alpha dudes; with their height, rippling muscles, chiseled faces, throbbing…where was I? Oh yeah: bitches! They all reject Omegas like me because I’m an inch or two shorter than the ideal height for men, and I have squinty eyes – even though an Omega was one of the founders of Gallifreyan society!
Why just the other day I was walking down the street, and this hot Alpha bitch who was walking towards me just walked right past me without unzipping my pants and sucking my dick! I was so angry I wanted to rip off her skull and spit on it!
Bitches don’t date me because of my squinty eyes, and only slightly above average height! That’s clearly the only reason! FUCK ALPHA BITCHES!!!
Now everybody stop what you’re talking about and pay attention to me!
Actually, they could collaborate 😮 The extreme white guys like that can help Asian guys on dating white women (who the white guys hate, but the Asian guys want), and the extreme Asian guys like that can help white guys date Asian women (who the Asian guys hate, but the white guys want) and all will be good w/ the world! It’s win win and harmony has been restored to the global sexual economy! (I do wonder about if the markets are divided too… is there a NASDAQ for like, white girls or something? Or a Hang Seng or TSE for Asian girls? xD )
Hey commie’s, I’m back. Yippie! Man lotsa peeps out here doin all kinda regrettin, havin sex with them bad ole men. I guess men never regret sex cause all you ladies are perfect. Who the hell is gonna regret havin sex with one of the perfect ones?
Still regurgitating the same ole mantra of a very small amount of accusations are false I see. Used to be women never lied about that shit. Ahh well baby steps I guess. It’s prolly good to pour all that hatred on men. Lotsa accusation, even fakey one’s help men learn stuff. Or so many of your commie leaders tells us.
The best part is women rarely get even a smack on the back of the hand. Whew! Plus the bonus of men losing their jobs, being ostrasized, commiting suicide or going to da big house. The dead and incarcerated can’t even retaliate, haha, losers. Your State sponsored deity is gonna make everything alright.
MRAs don’t link to Just Detention? Don’t they regularly cite the reality of prison rape as one of the reasons that women are not disproportionately affected by sexual assault?
Never mind. Given the constant allusions to “the ghetto” and “Harlem” that get tossed around in this comments section, I don’t know why I’m remotely surprised. The “alternative right” indeed.
But hey, thanks for the insight. Something else to consider.
I’ve had sex I regretted… I suspect I’ve been regretted a few times (and not just the sort which comes of regretting getting into a relationship which ended ugly).
I used to worry about being accused of date rape; because the stories I heard about it were that women were changing their mind, or being convinced afterwards that sex they didn’t like = rape.
But gee… no one every accused me of rape, even when we decided it had been fun, but not worth repeating. Go figure. Even when I was callow and didn’t know how to act around them afterwards (or when they were looking for a relationship, and I thought it was just a romp). All those chances for someone to “get back at me” and none of them did.
Kinda makes you think maybe the women who say they were raped were, you know, raped.
I was going to quote you, NWOslave, with a “[citation needed]” after every single one of your statements of unsupported facts. Then I realized that it was needed about every sentence and a half.
So just consider this a giant “[citation needed]” to your whole post.
I always get the strangest feeling that you’re actually engaging commenters elsewhere on the internet, and your comments are somehow getting simultaneously posted here by mistake. You go on like that as if you’re mocking views the regulars here have espoused at length, while in reality I can’t think of anyone here who’d agree with what you’re saying.
Did anyone say that men don’t sometimes regret sex? I’m going to go out on a limb here but, don’t most adults who’ve been around the block a few times have a night or two where they wish they’d just “done the was by hand”?
I think it’s safe to say that occasionally regretting a consensual sexual encounter is pretty much gender neutral.