What’s the difference between a lad mag and a rapist? Aside from one being a magazine and the other a person, albeit an reprehensible one, apparently not very much.
In a study soon to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers at Middlesex University and the University of Surrey showed people quotes about women from British lad mags (FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo) and from convicted rapists. Most survey respondents – men and women both – could not tell the difference between the quotes from the magazines and the quotes from the rapists. And most of the male respondents identified more with the quotes from the rapists than from the lad mags.
Here are some of the quotes the survey respondents were asked to react to. (You can find more at Jezebel.) Can you tell which of these are from rapists or lad mags?
Mascara running down the cheeks means they’ve just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.
You’ll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they’ll do it willingly.
Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?
I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.
In case you’re wondering, the correct answers are: Lad mag, Rapist, Rapist, Lad Mag.
Creepy, eh?
Lead researcher Miranda Horvath of Middlesex University explains why she feels this is so troubling:
Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist.
I would say so.
And so, you might wonder, how did the regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit react this this research? Take a look.
The comment with the most upvotes offered some nice juicy denial:
The comment with the second-highest number of upvotes completely missed the point:
And then there was this hot mess:
In case anyone is wondering, that quote from French is actually a quote from a character in one of her novels. And it’s pretty easy to distinguish it from things posted on Jezebel, because none of the writers on Jezebel ever say anything even remotely like that.
The Men’s Rights subreddit, responding to evidence of rape culture by going “la la la I can’t hear you” since March 2008.
To elaborate on my point, when people are operating under rape culture, they look at things that are very obviously rape, and they just can’t see rape. They look at a video of an obviously unconscious woman being violated with lit cigarettes and pool cues, but way in the back of their mind there’s the assumption “slut=unrapeable,” and it breaks their ability to detect rape when they’re looking right at it. They don’t say, “well, rape is morally acceptable in this case,” they say, “I dunno, it doesn’t really seem like rape to me…”
If you were to ask those VERY SAME JURORS whether they think it’s okay to rape a woman just because she is promiscuous and uses drugs, I am certain they would say no. But that is not evidence that they aren’t unknowingly participating in rape culture.
“So that is why to me, frequency does not matter.”
In this case it does. Higher frequency means bigger problem.
mamral, I agree with you on the burden of proof. Furthermore, the mark of the rape culture is visible when “innocent until proven guilty” become “accuser is guilty/a lier until the accused is proven guilty” or “accuser is guilty if there wasn’t enough evidences”
Once again, that’s something you almost only hear about rape.
Kathleen:
They don’t?
MRAL:
So you came here to point out you don’t have time to come here?
kilo:
“A woman who wants to have sex with you is likely to wear sexy clothes” is not the same thing as “a woman wearing sex clothes probably wants to have sex with you.” I could go outside right now and find half a dozen women dressed in a way I find sex who, when they got dressed, were totally unaware of my existance, and certainly hadn’t formed any opinons about me or my desirability or given any thought to gaming my tastes.
dan:
Except people do believe that.
kirby:
I think he thinks the words don’t mean anything, just, since they are used by people who are disagreeing with him, they must be bad. So he’s talismanically using them right back at us in the hopes of them having the same effect.
He’s not eating our brains to try and get our rhetorical skills, though, so I’m happy.
Slavey:
That’s not actually anyone’s definition except yours. Or, as you would call it, a “biological fact.”
Slavey:
Put in a trial and I’d be totally fine with that. I’m opposed to anyone being imprisoned without trial, no matter what they’re accused of, even if they’re guilty.
Brandon:
I don’t know if someone should necessarily be put in prison for that, depending on the circumstances — I think that would be impractical as a rule. Is it rapey behavior? Hard to say. I certainly couldn’t say with certitude that it’s not.
Slavey:
Um, yes? Partially. When the victim is a woman. She’d have the opportunity to testify. At a trial. Which would be held to determine if the accused should be punished.
How is it that you can find the law that abolishes trials even though that never happened but you can’t see the word “consent” in the thing you yourself cited?
Other than that you assume words have magic properties rather than meanings, I guess.
Stephanie:
In Brandonia, no one who’s had sex on video can ever be raped.
Actually, I’m going to guess he’ll say no because if she weren’t a slutty Slut McSlutterson who wants all the sex, she wouldn’t have let anyone make a sex tape to begin with.
dan:
Why? Victims are just as failed either way.
dan (“pardon me for breathing” apology redacted):
When you put it out there like that, of course people don’t explicitly agree. But at the same time, on the whole, people don’t behave as though they disagree.
Viscaria:
In other words, if you know 30 women you almost certainly know a rape survivor.
Dan, you’re not the first person to come in here and say “I had a terrible experience undreamt of in strawfeminist philosophy.” Yours isn’t even the most terrible. And it doesn’t make you right either.
@lj4adotcomdan
“I guarantee you that you would flip out (and rightly so) if an anti-choice embryo lover said that rape statistics in abortion do not matter because they do not happen at a large enough frequency. Right?
So that is why to me, frequency does not matter. If it is wrong, it is wrong.”
Do you really not understand the difference between that, and the 500:1 ratio of rapes (unreported and reported) vs. false rape accusations? We’re talking apples and oranges here.
As I said before, false rape accusations ARE wrong.
The equivalent of a pro-lifer claiming that no abortions should be granted even if the woman was raped (if we assume the same ratio) would be more like… all rape accusations should result in the immediate imprisonment of the accused, even if its a false accusation. Which is not what anybody is advocating here.
Dan: Why are you trying to make it seem like Stephanie’s comment was at all discounting the pain felt by those affected by false rape accusations? That’s just weird. You come here and say that you were falsely accused. No one questioned it. In fact, you got a bunch of people saying that they were really sorry that happened, that it was a shitty thing, that it was wrong. And now you’re pretending that one of those people who sympathized with you “discounted” the pain felt by people who have been wrongly accused? That’s really shitty, Dan.
In case it wasn’t clear, I was expressing shock at the fact that anyone wouldn’t consider 17% of women prevalent, not agreeing with it >_>
The more Dan writes, the less credible I find him.
“So that is why to me, frequency does not matter. If it is wrong, it is wrong.”
I am sure there are people here with more educated opinions on this than I have, but I think in this particular case, frequency does matter, because unfortunately people being wrongly convicted inherent to our process. The only way to bring it down to zero is to stop prosecuting crimes at all, which our society has decided is unacceptable. The only thing we can do is try to minimize the number of false positives without having too many false negatives, which means we should look at frequencies. Maybe some crimes have an abnormally high rates of false conviction, and maybe that can be addressed by reforming the process, or by refining the tools that investigators use. It seems that the rate at which people are falsely convicted for rape is so low that the only way to improve things would be to stop prosecuting rape altogether. I’m sure you understand why nobody here finds that desirable.
@stephanie
Honestly, I think they they do more damage because the media jumps all over the cases and present the accused as if they are guilty… and then when they turn out not guilty it puts a huge case into the minds of the general public where a woman did lie.
I do not see much info on MRA other than on their own blogs and on those blogs that criticize them.
Kyrie:
That is a very logical argument in support of the idea of a rape culture. Let me think about that some more. Very convincing argument.
@lj4adotcomdan
well you haven’t been talking to enough MRAs then. Whenever somebody challenges the MRA claim that false rape accusations are happening all the time, an MRA always cites the Duke case.
Have you ever read the comments under those articles that “the media jumps all over”? Almost every single person commenting on those articles blames the victim. Especially when the accused is somebody high-profile, or white.
Bee: My intent was to speak more generally and not specifically at Stephanie. If that is how I came off, I am sorry.
@lj4adotcomdan
“That is a very logical argument in support of the idea of a rape culture. Let me think about that some more. Very convincing argument.”
Here’s something else to think about:
http://feministphilosophers.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/tumblr_lrecnkv6kg1qd5p7ho1_500.jpg
stephanie: Maybe it is a good thing I havn’t spoken to enough of them.
Stephanie: Do we have information on how many rape interviews include the horrific lines of questioning?
Hearschle: “Dan, you’re not the first person to come in here and say “I had a terrible experience undreamt of in strawfeminist philosophy.” Yours isn’t even the most terrible. And it doesn’t make you right either.”
I never said it was undremt of nor did I suggest it was the most terrible nor did I say it made me right on any other issue.
@lj4adotcomdan
That is exactly how rape victims are treated by the police, by the entire legal process.
I’m thinking of a really good article about this but I can’t seem to find it at the moment.
By the way, if you want to understand how rape culture affects women, just go through the comments on this article:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/10/feminism-101.html
Women fear rape, and alter their daily movements because of it in a way that you do not. Read those comments.
@lj4adotcomdan
Found it. Here you go.
http://community.feministing.com/2011/07/05/one-man-cried-wolf-women-cry-rape/
excerpt:
“However what is not reasonable is the method they can use to investigate, focusing on whether the woman is “crying rape” rather than whether the perpetrator is guilty or not. Joanne Holder knows from her experiences working with victims that the police “definitely question and doubt when victims tell them of any situation that might not be a stranger [rape] scenario” – acting on the myth of ‘real’ rape being committed by a stranger and anything else being viewed as suspicious, even though in reality only 8% of rapes are committed by strangers. This cultural and societal reaction along with the victims own confusion can make it very difficult to be taken seriously and treated the same as any other rape victim.
Some victims who report rapes and especially acquaintance rapes are still treated in insensitive ways; their morals and sexual history are put into question even though they are irrelevant. Antonella explains that she felt the police judged her not on her account and evidence she provided but on her sexual history and because she was wearing lingerie during the rape. Rape cases are notoriously difficult to reach court as it has to be proven beforehand that a ‘guilty’ verdict is likely before a trial is allowed. Even though she had a letter in which he confessed to physically assaulting her and additional forensic evidence, her case never even reached the court room. She describes that “I couldn’t even explain myself, the police just had made their minds made up”. In partner rape cases there can be a strong argument that the rapist did not realise sex was not consensual just because they were already in a consensual relationship with the victim. Screaming “no” is not clear enough, struggling is not clear enough. What would be extremely clear in any other case, is not clear enough when a partner rapes the one they are meant to love. Antonella describes her own experience of this, “they said to me yes it’s non-consensual but we have no proof that he knew what he was doing was wrong.” She also feels that she was not in a fit emotional state to make a statement but once she had made one, they “twisted” her words against her; “I said I wanted to take control meaning I felt I had no other choice. I was trying to see how I could control my safety and make it stop. They twisted everything, saying I wanted to take control meaning I was consenting.”. Antonella’s experience with the police strongly echoes that of many other survivors. It is disturbing to know that this treatment is so widespread. It is not a one off.”
I’ve sat in on quite a few rape interviews, and the “rape analogy” that Stephanie linked to isn’t far off from what’s happened in every single one of those interviews. And in those cases, it’s not that the officer is being an asshole; it’s just that those are issues that are going to be brought up if the case goes to trial, or the answers to those questions are going to establish the elements of the case.
Worse, if the victim is young or mentally disabled, the officer usually lectures her on her decision-making. What was she doing out so late? With a boy she met on the internet? Do her parents know she was drinking? Is she going to change her behavior in the future? Etc. To a girl or a woman who was raped only hours before.
So, I dunno what you consider “horrific.” I’d say most of the time it’s done in a way that’s fairly insensitive to the reality that they’re dealing with a victim of trauma. And again, part of that is that the officer is trying to get information, and he’s not not representing the victim, he’s representing the state. Sometimes it’s because they’re undertrained or unaware of what is relevant in a rape case and their idea of what might be relevant is informed by culture. And sometimes it’s because they don’t like the case and they don’t like the victim, and they don’t believe her story. (I’ve seen this happen to homeless people, in particular.)
I remember one particularly lovely case I read about in college where a victim in London wasn’t even allowed to get dressed after her rape. The police walked her around identifying locations, etc, wrapped in a blanket, and then questioned her. While she was naked and surrounded by strange men, right after being raped.
This is one on many reasons why I have no patience at all for our skeptical friend here. He needs to shut up and go read some trial transcripts, and then get back to us.
@Casssandrasays: I’m with you. Even if you limit yourself to what is available on the internet as opposed to the more limited access research, there’s a huge amount out there to use in self-education. At some point, a man demanding that a group of poeple, many of them women, take their time to educate him for free, especially after spouting some bullshit, is engaging in a less obvious but still TROLLING fashion. So yeah, TROLL demands.
@ithiliana
“At some point, a man demanding that a group of poeple, many of them women, take their time to educate him for free, especially after spouting some bullshit, is engaging in a less obvious but still TROLLING fashion. So yeah, TROLL demands.”
Yeah, its getting annoying. I’m not posting any more links for him, he can do his own homework.
I’m still giving him the evil eye for the claim that 1 in 6 is not enough to be counted as prevalent. That’s so ridiculous it’s just not even worth engaging with. There is no other crime in which people would go, oh, it happens to one person in every 6? That’s not particularly prevalent then.
I totally get it, but (a) I like talking about rape (sometimes — in a weird way). It’s something that I know a lot about. It horrifies me that people have all these weird ideas about rape, even as they claim to be well-informed. And (b) talking about Dan’s misconceptions about rape is more entertaining to me than either milkslave or Meller on the other living threads, who are both fucking dull as fucking dull people.
We need a better troll. I vote for amira (again).
I still think Meller is the most entertaining troll of all time. He’s Steampunk Timecube Gor man.