Question for Pierce Harlan, the guy behind the False Rape Society blog: Do you really think this is the best way to fight false rape allegations?
The real problem here isn’t that he’s recycled an old rape joke; it’s that he’s pretending that rapists are somehow a species apart from ordinary men. His big complaint is that the PSA in question “passes off a criminal deviant as a typical guy.”
Pierce, what do you think rapists look like? They’re not villains out of some silent-movie melodrama, twirling their whiskers and cackling with glee. They don’t have giant R’s tattooed on their foreheads. No, they look like “ordinary” guys. Exactly like them. Rape prevention — and crime prevention in general — would be a lot more effective if criminals could be easily identified at a glance. But the world doesn’t work that way. Most criminals look pretty ordinary, actually.
But the problem with Harlan’s stance here go beyond that. The fact is that most rapists aren’t sinister strangers hiding in an alleyway; the overwhelming majority – something like 70% — are people known to their victims. As someone who writes regularly about rape, Pierce is presumably aware of this, which means either that he’s being completely disingenuous, or that he’s simply pretending that date rape (and non-stranger rape in general) doesn’t exist.
The PSA in question is far from perfect. Aside from the terrible acting, the main problem with it is that it it’s victim-blaming. Its depiction of a rapist as an ordinary-looking guy – and a friend of the victim — is the one thing it gets right.
To get an idea of the sort of person who reads (and agrees with) The False Rape Society blog, here are a couple of comments on the, er, “controversy.”
Here’s a comment from YouTube, posted by someone who obviously got there from Harlan’s blog (it appeared after the video was linked at the FRS; before the recent batch of comments, the video hadn’t had a comment for three years).
So the message is that if a guy is being helpful at a party, he’s probably a rapist? This is not a fair psa. It did better than some though, by highlighting the fact that the female friend ditched her.
Apparently, in this guy’s mind, trying to remove the clothes of a woman almost completely incapacitated by alcohol is just a way of being “helpful.”
Meanwhile, on the FRS blog itself:
Anonymous said…
Wow- just like TV- apparently the only people on earth who ever do ANYTHING wrong are white males- preferably fat ones to give feminists a little extra to hate.
While we’re on the subject of false accusations, here’s a strange bit of paranoid word-salad on the subject that I ran across recently from a Reddit Men’s Rightser.
Is it really possible that anyone – including the author and the people upvoting the comment — could actually believe this nonsense? If so, what a strange, sad world they must live in.
EDITED TO ADD: Holly Pervocracy just wrote a great and highly relevant post on what she calls “Slavering Beast Theory.” As she explains:
In the Slavering Beast Theory, there are two kinds of men. Two species, nearly. … There are ordinary guys and there are Slavering Beasts. And they are very, very easy to tell apart. They act different, even look different, to the point where any adult should be able to distinguish them in any casual social setting. …
This dichotomy is how someone can simultaneously believe that women shouldn’t go out after dark because rape is such a big problem and believe that tons of rape accusations are false. It makes perfect sense if you believe there are Slavering Beasts out in the dark, but if an ordinary guy is accused of rape, there must be more to the story. It explains why people are angered by rape prevention tips aimed at men–those are insulting to ordinary guys, and Slavering Beasts won’t listen. And it justifies the belief that abuse victims had it coming: either they were abused by a Slavering Beast and should have known better, or they were abused by an ordinary guy and must have done something terrible to provoke him.
Well, Pecunium, there’s always videotaping “consent” for these guys! 😉
This video was retarded. It’s the “Reefer Madness” of bad rape PSA’s. Strangely there is enough blame to go around.
Passed out girl: Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to get SO drunk that you pass out around a bunch of drunk people. Something either terrible or mildly funny will happen because of it (e.g drawing dicks on people with a sharpie vs shitty fuckhead feeling you up).
Girls friend: Seriously…who leaves when you have an unconscious friend. Talk about a shitty friend!
Black dude: Smart move there buck-o. I wouldn’t want to be you in this scenario. Although, I would have informed other people about what is happening.
White dude: Fucking scumbag…can’t get laid with you know…conscious women?
Oh, fuck. Did I summon it? Sorry, folks.
hellkell: Well, did you say his name three times in front of a mirror at midnight?
@KathleenB:
With a video camera in hand…
damn… that would have made more sense if you had said “He appears when you say his name three times…”
Exactly. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. For months now I’ve been trying to understand this phenomenon of the men on these and other boards who mock the very idea of consent. Who mock and deride the notion that women even want to be aroused by their partners. “‘Gina tingles”
How? How do you mock the very foundation of functioning sexuality, the very basis of good sex, the main thing that allows people to move beyond elementary to varsity level sex ? And consent is gender neutral.
They don’t believe in it.
Fuck… I really wish this wasn’t right after I said this was the sort of thing rape apologists say….
Passed out girl: Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to get SO drunk that you pass out around a bunch of drunk people. Something either terrible or mildly funny will happen because of it (e.g drawing dicks on people with a sharpie vs shitty fuckhead feeling you up).
See, she got drunk, so rape is what happens, and she ought to have known better than to have enough to drink that someone else would be able to abuse her.
Her fault, obviously.
What Would Brandon Do: A Comprehensive Guide to Preventing Rape and the Rest of Societies Ills
(For Ubermenschen Only)
More to the point… I don’t think the takeaway from that was supposed to be, “don’t get drunk”, but “don’t rape people, even if they are drunk.”
texaswildfire’s lack of punctuation is upsetting =(
Yea Kirby it really is 🙁 I mean, is it really that hard to get sex without making someone completely intoxicated they can’t think straight?
Pecunium: Yea I see what you mean. I guess that’s why they are so outraged by false accusations and supposed shaming of men, yet they turn around and say women should expect rape if they dress like sluts/drink/walk alone at night. They insist rape is about sex and not violence or control. They deny a rape culture without even attempting to understand what it actually entails, and they are against rape awareness.
All this sounds like is them basically saying “deal with the fact that rape exists and that it might happen to you because we don’t understand consent, but keep your mouth shut and don’t accuse anyone ever.”
I get the anger at false accusations, I get angry when I hear about them too. But how is denying that rape is a problem and trying to bully feminists into shutting up about it going to help?
I wish there was a way to approach this topic without diminishing or pretending that rape isn’t that big a deal and trying to silence awareness about rape. From what I saw on the False Rape Society blog, false rape accusers are getting arrested and given jail time, so what more do they want?
And of course, the generalizing about all women being vengeful bitches out to harm men. I’m starting to see why some object to stories in the paper about false accusers. On one hand it’s important to know these stories exist, on the other hand it makes people like MRAs think all or most women are going to falsely accuse men and fosters hostility.
It’s funny how my brother went into ethylic coma at 19 and the results was that the people at the party got him urgently to the hospital instead of raping him.
It’s almost like young women aren’t supposed to do things that most men take for granted as part of their growing up rituals, but then that would imply that there’s a double standard, and who’s stupid enough to think that, huh?
@Pecunium: I always love that argument. It’s the “she got drunk so rape was inevitable” strawman.
There are two major things at play here:
1) The girl drinking
2) The scumbag groper/rapist
The girl can’t control the rapist, nor can anyone else. But she can control herself and her actions. I mean honestly, who would think that society is so loving and caring that one can drink to the point of passing out and not have one dickhead amongst the group not take advantage of that vulnerability.
As an analogy, say I was a journalist and I was in a war zone covering it. Do I deserve to get shot? Absolutely not. But I did put myself in a position that has higher risks of getting shot.
This girl made herself vulnerable. And while she isn’t to blame for getting raped. She is at fault for putting herself in that vulnerable spot.
This is the distinction feminists fail to see.
I think it’s disgust of female sexuality. They hate that women feel aroused by men that aren’t them thus they ridicule, slut shame and excuse rape because serves the bitch right for not sleeping with them.
Yet its completely normal and ok for them to express disgust at a fat or ugly chick, but then express peen tingles at a hot chick.
@KathleenB & Kirby: I did not say his name three times in a mirror while videotaping it, I swear.
LOL at Brandon saying he’d tell someone what was going on. I thought anyone outside his immediate circle (and even then, it’s a toss-up) was SOL and on their own in a shitty situation.
Brandon, the rapist in your scenario still chose to rape, I don’t care how drunk the girl is. Are you really this thick?
@Pecunium: I am not disputing the “don’t rape people, even if they are drunk.” issue. While it would be nice to have every person in the world follow that rule…they don’t. So one should be realistic and practical when out in society.
Something either terrible or mildly funny will happen because of it (e.g drawing dicks on people with a sharpie vs shitty fuckhead feeling you up).
Both those things are shitty, fuck-headed things to do in my book. The latter is way worse than the former, obviously, but neither is something you do if you aren’t an asshole.
Quackers: Part of it is what they consider, “false”. Any rape case which doesn’t end in a conviction = false.
All “false” accusations are assumed to be intentional, and malicious.
The difficulty in getting a rape conviction, is then used to show how much of a problem, “false” accusations actually are.
Then they do all they can to make it harder to get a rape conviction, and the cycle will continue, with “false” accusations becoming more prevalent.
What they think ought to happen in the event of a rape allegation that fails to result in a conviction is that the accuser be given, automatically, the maximal sentence the accused would have gotten; were he convicted. This, they say, will reduce the “false” allegations.
Due process? Actual proof of malice… unimportant.
Men, you see, can be locked up at the whim of a woman, so there is no need to assume any innocence when a man is not convicted.
This, you see, is fair.
You know this shit isn’t standard operating practice right? There are lots of people who manage to get fucked up with their friends and still manage not to draw on them with sharpie or rape them, right?
Yeah, drawing on someone who is passed out drunk rather than, say, making sure they aren’t dying of alcohol poisoning or something is pretty awful as far as I’m concerned.
After reading dozens of threads like this, I’ve come to the conclusion that guys who are paranoid about false rape accusations fall into two categories:
1. Guys with little or no sexual experience, who have only the vaguest notion of how sex works or how women normally behave. Sure, maybe most women don’t jump out of bed after sex, cackle wickedly, and run for the police station to see if they can get an innocent man thrown in prison…but maybe they do! How should I know?
2. Guys who have legitimate cause to fear being accused of rape, because they rape women, or engage in behavior that edges dangerously close to rape. Sure, that unconscious drunk girl probably won’t remember what I did to her, but why should I have to worry at all? I’m a nice guy!
Brandon: @Pecunium: I am not disputing the “don’t rape people, even if they are drunk.” issue. While it would be nice to have every person in the world follow that rule…they don’t. So one should be realistic and practical when out in society.
Which is why you only mentioned that the wages of drunkenness is being assaulted. Some of them are “funny” others of them are “bad” but that’s what you get.
And not a word, from you, saying that rape ought not happen, but rather, a question of the abuse being “funny” or not, and that it’s the reasonable expectation.
Me…I figure that people ought to be allowed to get drunk, and other people shouldn’t stop treating them well. But that’s me… I have some empathy for strangers.