Ugh. No jokes this time, just an appalling little exchange on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit. First, a Redditor called xbyiu offers some unsolicited, and pretty pig-ignorant, thoughts about SlutWalks. The basic thesis:
Personally, I think a lot of feminists just don’t care about rape victims. They’d much rather see women as a whole being a victim of the patriarchy and fight against that sort of abstract idea then deal with the reality of rape, which can be fought against with simple tips on how to protect yourself.
Hold on; it gets worse.
To this the r/mr regular EvilPundit replied (in a comment that, last I checked, had gotten three times more upvotes than downvotes):
I’d go even further, and say that many feminists love rape. For them, it’s a perfect way to demonise men in general.
If rape didn’t exist, feminism would invent it. In fact, feminism does invent a lot of rape, with its imaginary statistics such as “1 in 4”, and so on.
In other words, feminists don’t really want to prevent rape. But most rape is imaginary. So feminists are trying to not prevent something that doesn’t much happen anyway. Brilliant.
A note on the “1 in 4” thing: EvilPundit’s insinuation that it’s an “imaginary statistic” is a common MRA talking point. It’s not imaginary, but it’s not quite accurate either. The one-in-four number comes from a study conducted in the 80s by researcher Mary Koss: based on a detailed survey of college women, she found that roughly one in four of her respondent had been a victim of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14. This is often simplified – and distorted – into “one in four female college students are raped while in college.”
In fact, Koss’ survey found that one in eight college women answering her survey, not one in four, had been the victim of completed rape. Other studies have reported numbers not far off from this. The National Violence Against Women Survey, for example, found that roughly one in six of female respondents reported being the victim of rape in their lifetime.
The fact that some people have misrepresented Koss’ study doesn’t mean that her findings are “imaginary.”
I’m not even sure why I’m writing all this, given that as a feminist I presumably don’t care at all about rape.
Pic above taken from here.
EDITED TO ADD: EvilPundit’s comment has gotten some downvotes since I posted this, but it still has more upvotes than downvotes.
You know, now that I know you like homoerotic subtext as well as anime, I’m kind of amazed that I haven’t run into you in JRock circles yet, given that the crossover between people who like that kind of anime and manga and VK fans seems to be about 75%.
(Watch everyone else on manboobz have no fucking idea what I’m talking about.)
I think I have some idea. VK is Visual Kei, right? (Also, did I spell it correctly?)
Yes, and yes you did. That was unexpected.
I’ve got a few friends who were and/or still are into it.
Huh, small world. The guy I was interviewing yesterday makes costumes for a lot of the bigger bands (as well as a lot of other non-costume apparel).
That’s cool. I think a lot of the costumes involved can be pretty impressive, from what I’ve seen.
I have a lot of Visual Kei images on my computer but wouldn’t have instantly picked up on the acronym regardless. I’m waiting to use them in a The World Ends With You game I’m hoping to start when my home life gets somewhat less random.
The level of detailing is pretty cool. Most of that stuff is much too frilly and elaborate for my tastes, but you do have to admire the craftsmanship. Also, the designer gave me a shirt, and when I got home and tried it on it fit perfectly even though he never asked me what size I am or anything similar. Any designer who can determine fit that well just by eyeballing someone really knows their stuff.
It’s kind of weird, but I’m not super active in a lot of that stuff for some reason. I watch anime and read manga and fanfic, but otherwise I’m a lazy lazy fan. :p
I would have thought that fans of anime and homoerotic subtext would just gravitate towards yaoi and shounen-ai.
(By shounen-ai I’m referring to the more American meaning of “non-explicit,” not the, I am told, more Japanese meaning of “pedophilia.”)
That’s pretty amazing, Cassandra. And yeah, it’s completely impractical but even if it’s not something I think I could pull off it’s fascinating to look at.
Shit, I really need some sleep. Nice talking to all of you! 🙂
It makes sense to me that there’s crossover just because there’s so much VK that has an clearly homoerotic subtext, especially the stuff from the mid to late 90s, plus the focus on men as objects of desire in a very open and direct way in general. Plus a lot of VK bands have done anime soundtracks, so I guess anime fans get exposed to them that way.
There’s also some fetishy racist stuff going on too, though, hence my comment about how the female fans can be just as weird and socially inappropriate as male otaku sometimes. I’ve seen VK fans do stuff that’s just outrageously creepy in terms of how they relate to the bands in a way that I never see from young female fans at, say, emo or alterna shows with bands that are American or Euro.
I get that, but personally my overwhelming reaction to VK is “weird Japanese thing.” It’s just so flamboyant and over-the-top; I like my bishie guys (at least real-life ones) more all-natural.
I think the flamboyance is part of the appeal? I think for the ones who aren’t being fetishy and weird about it they just really love the whole over-the-top thing, and there aren’t very many bands in the US or Europe who have that kind of stage persona any more. It reminds me of flashy 70s glam rock in a way, like T Rex, Kiss, all that kind of stuff.
In all honesty I think that a lot of the music is crap (though again, the 90% of everything is crap rule applies to most genres), but I love androgynous men in eyeliner and flashy goth clothes, so I like some of the darker stuff from a visual pov. For me it’s the cutesy stuff that’s offputting, and any attempt to link cute and sexy tends to give me hives.
I’ve seen Fight Club, and Inglorius Basterds, and Moneyball, and I absolutely could not describe Brad Pitt. That may be why I’m not jealous.
Oldfeminist:
I suspect most straight/bi women are each only attracted to a relative handful of men, if only because each man is unique. I further suspect there’s overlap, and collectively women are attracted to pretty much all men.
Is that a low number? That’s around 33,000 women just in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
Eurosabra:
That sounds like a weird sort of tall-poppy self-loathing. “I really wanted to be poor but honest, but the quest for unavailable pussy has forced me to improve myself!”
I’d love to speak φ languages, even though it probably wouldn’t help me get laid.
Cassandra:
I see you’ve met Eurosabra.
Hold on here, Eurosabra:
So, you’re not normal:
You’re depressed, you’re an introvert, you’ve got a blue-collar background, and you disagree with what a lot of Americans believe about the politics of the Middle East.
That’s OK. But it means you’re not conventional.
But now you’re whining about how the women who want you aren’t normal either?
Fuck you.
What he failed to mention is that all the depressed girls only became that way after they had to put up with him for more than a minute. Poor bastards. 🙁
Eurosabra – nature’s antidote to Zoloft.
And yet despite being an anti-anti-depressant, he still somehow results in a decreased libido. Huh.
“Lithe”? Seriously, “lithe”? Eurosabra, you gotta lay off those old Seinfeld tapes.
The side effects of Eurosabra include depression, lowered sex drive, and apparently death by fake vampire.
*thinks back to times of untreated depression* Hmm, maybe he means “lithe” as in “draped bonelessly over a couch all day doing nothing”? Hawt.
Eurosabra should only be used while under supervision by a medical professional. Not to be combined with fun, affection, or high self esteem.