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.
Cassandra: How is continuously calling me a troll refusing to engage? Seems rather passive aggressive to me. But it is engaging.
So are you saying that you are denying my story that I shared about my encounter with that woman?
Dan: If it hadn’t been for my mom, I would never have said anything about the guy who tried to kidnap me – I was convinced that it was somehow my fault, that no one would believe me. I was twelve years old. I’d had all the usual ‘don’t talk to strangers’ training and the ‘don’t be afraid to say something’ stuff that kids of my age got, and I was still convinced that I had done something to make that guy try to snatch me and then expose himself to me. This shit is pervasive, you don’t realize quite how deep it’s gotten until you start to question some of the assumptions society makes about sex and consent and rape.
He confessed, plead guilty, and got something like four months in jail. It’s been over twenty years, and I still get panic attacks when the local news reports attempted kidnappings. He got his jollies, I got a lifetime of trauma.
She’s not saying that at all.
Cassandra: I asked people who believed in it because after the research I had done I had not been convinced. Someone here has given me information that, along with my personal experiences, has pretty much convinced me (honestly I am too emotional right now to make a logical and rational decision so i cannot say for certain).
But you keep driving that stake in… why?
You are being called a troll because you are behaving in a trollish way. Including by saying that I’m denying your story right after your supposed moment of revelation, which was entirely dependent on a comment that I made that assumed that your account of your experience was true.
zhinxy: If I am a “troll”, why would she believe anything I said?
“But you keep driving that stake in… why?”
Because what you are doing here is hurting other commenters who have been victims of rape. Stop it, right now, or go away.
lj4adotcomdon: Rape is not prevalent.
prev·a·lent [prev-uh-luhnt] adjective
1.widespread; of wide extent or occurrence; in general use or acceptance.
2. having the superiority or ascendancy.
3. Archaic. effectual or efficacious.
Origin: 1570–80; < Latin praevalent- (stem of praevalēns), present participle of praevalēre to prevail. See pre-, -valent
You said one in six. That’s almost 17 percent. I’d say that’s pretty fucking widespread. If one in six people were burgled in a lifetime the country would be up in arms. But rape… who cares about that, only one in six (which is to say with five sisters I’m really damned lucky that one of them hasn’t yet been a rape victim).
You are being wilfully blind. When you say that rape isn’t a massive (imagine that one in six people were beaten to unconsciousness) prevalent you are suborning a rape culture. Not a subculture, but a culture.
It doesn’t matter if the real numbers are much less than that. You are willing to say that one in six isn’t prevalent.
Rape is a much more dangerous and much more frequent crime than the crime of making a false accusation of rape. The crime of rape deserves much more attention and much more of an effort in prevention than the crime of a false accusation of rape. That I believe the crime of false accusation of rape deserves more attention than it currently gets in no way makes me a rape apologist.
Bullshit. Given the disparate effects of the two, and the difference in response when prosecutions are actually performed, rape deserves far more attention than it gets. Rape, when brought to trial has a pathetically low rate of conviction. Because of how prosecutors are evaluated (percentage of presented cases which result in conviction) we can be reasonably certain the cases brought to trial are the strongest, but rape has the lowest rate of conviction.
So (see above about rape culture) a false accusation has a far smaller effect than an actual rape, and has a higher rate of conviction.
Your concerns are misplaced and support the rape culture you deny.
ithiliana: @Bee: At one time in one of the last Troll Discussions of “omg how horrible false accusations are they hurt so many men,” someone here (Pecunium I think! but don’t quote me) had a really good post about the percentage of false rape accusations (i.e. they are no more prevalent than the false accusations of other crimes), so to single them out as somehow MORE prevalent and MORE painful and MORE likely to end up with the innocent men in prison, is, as we say in academia, problematic (meaning wronger than shit and stupid dickbiscuit move). When he (or the person who did post it if I’m wrong) joins us again, he might be able to repost. It was a useful post.
Might have been me. I’ve posted on that subject, and to that effect. Sadly my posts tend to be first draft and (mostly for reasons of proper indexing) I don’t save them.
@KathleenB: Wow, I am so very sorry you went through that. And yes, you are right. Sometimes you do not realize certain things until you start to question certain things.
Polliwog: To be more precise about decimate, it was a punishment in the Roman legions and it meant “punish by making a group kill one in ten of their number by lot.”
What I am doing here, right now, is reaching an agreement with them. How on earth is that hurting other people?
If my asking questions about the issue was hurtful in anyway then I do apologize as that was not my intent. But I honestly was looking for answers. I got them. They are satisfactory. How is my saying that WHILE sharing my own personal stories hurtful?
lj4adotcomdan, I think the fundamental issue is that you’re defining “culture” (and “prevalent”) in a way that doesn’t actually make sense. By the definition you seem to be espousing, there are no negative aspects of our culture whatsoever, because most people, if asked, would say that they are not at all racist or sexist. But those self-same people will get a little more nervous walking through a “black” neighborhood at night than they would walking through a “white” neighborhood. Without really considering why, they’ll be more likely to hire someone named “Roger” than someone named “Shaniqua,” even if Shaniqua is just as qualified for the job. They’ll be less likely to buy products if the people in the ads for them are of a different skin color, and they’ll find it startling – and possibly downright upsetting – if a commercial for Barbie shows a little boy or a commercial for Hot Wheels features a little girl. They’ll mostly be friends with people the same color as them. They’ll criticize a female politician, employee, or coworker’s clothing, hairdo, physical fitness, and general attractiveness as if those are relevant to her ability to perform her job, while not even thinking about the same qualities in a man. These are all thing the average person does – generally not consciously or maliciously, and even the best of us does some of them, because racism and sexism are so deeply ingrained into our culture that they pretty much can’t be completely escaped.
Attitudes that allow, condone, and sometimes outright promote rape are similarly deeply ingrained. Very few people go around saying, “I support rape,” just like very few people go around saying, “I support racism” – but they keep right on calling Roger instead of Shaniqua for an interview, and they also keep right on quietly, tacitly condoning rape without really recognizing that that’s what they’re doing. That’s what rape culture means – not some consensus of people openly saying, “yay, rape!” or even THINKING “yay, rape!”, but the myraid of ways, subtle and overt, in which rape is excused, condoned, and overlooked by people who honestly believe they’re anti-rape even as they’re saying, “But how could you have expected him to stop just because you told him to? You’d gotten him all turned on, and he had to finish!” or something similarly repugnant.
How have you been treated like garbage? Because people got, quite rightly, tired of you repeatedly asserting despite dozens of real life ancedata, real culture, and real statistics that there is no such thing as a rape culture. And because they have, once again quite rightly, gotten tired of it and started pointing out that you are not doing anything more then concern trolling, this means you are being treated like garbage?
You claim to be open minded yet you keep saying that “no, that in depth explanation of rape culture that includes your own personal story, your friends’ stories, the statistics on the issue, the evidence in the media, the evidence of jurors’ reactions in rape trials, the books that have been written on the subject, the number of women in the US alone that have been raped, and my own personal story that evidently shows I was not only coerced into sex, I also have been taught to doubt that is what happened, that pile of evidence does not show that there is a rape culture. Because uh…well there is this one thing that people said when I told this joke some frat brothers said once. They all said they disliked it.”
Because you are willfully ignoring the vast majority of evidence that you have been rather kindly been provided with to cling to a point that even goes against your own experience with a woman.
So stop it. Because you are trolling and you are not open minded on this topic at all.
peniculum:
The false accusation made against me made it more likely for me to be victimized again by a woman who refused to take me home unless I put out.
So sorry if you think the impact of false accusations is not worthy of your note.
@Polliwog
that is a brilliant way of putting it. If he still doesn’t understand, I don’t get how that’s possible.
PosterformalyknownasElizabeth: How on earth can you say I am not open minded when I have pretty much confirmed that I am changing my mind on the issue?
Person A disagrees with a topic.
Person B provides logical argument in defense of the topic.
Person A changes mind and now agrees with topic.
Doesn’t sound like Person A has a closed mind at all. But hey, what the hell do I know. I am a fucking MRA rape apologist who is like Sarah Palin. (just a couple of the choice things said about me in this discussion that I take as being treated as garbage)
lj4adotcomdan
Are you saying that you actually “believe” in a rape culture now?
I think I need to stop posting for the night. Allow the people making comments to catch up to more recent comments, and then respond again tomorrow once people have caught up.
YES Stephanie! Someone made a logical argument that I cannot refute, and then the bringing up of my personal experience being raped (and why I felt it was not worth it to come forward) helped to cement it in my mind.
“What I am doing here, right now, is reaching an agreement with them. How on earth is that hurting other people? ”
They have told you that what you have been saying during this thread is hurting them. If you are too self-focused to notice or care, that is an issue with you, not them.
lj4adotcomdan
well, if that’s true then that’s nice. I think you should also go over the links that were given to you by many people, including me.
I think a lot of guys can’t fathom a rape culture because they are usually not victims, they definitely don’t have to alter their daily movements because of a fear of sexual assault, and they are most likely not rapists themselves. So if they can’t connect it to their personal lives, it doesn’t exist. Maybe you understand it now because you were able to connect it to your life.
lj4dotcomdan: So sorry if you think the impact of false accusations is not worthy of your note.
So sorry if you didn’t distinguish between the prevalence of rape, and the prevalence of false accusations.
1: I’ve been raped. It was my partner. It was nonconsensual sex. It’s (going on 25 years now) not yet stopped having effect on my life.
2: I’ve been falsely accused of stalking/assaulting someone.
3: So I’ve seen both sides of the coin. I feel for you, but you are clueless about the level of prevalence of the one versus the other.
Taking a break for the night sounds wise, Dan. Process a little. I get the impression you hadn’t thought of your experience as rape before now; if that’s true, maybe it would be good to find a safe space where you can talk about it. I don’t know if that’s here, because you’ve either triggered or annoyed a number of commenters. But there are communities that might be good resources for you.
Stephanie: Honestly, I accepted it because of the logical argument made and not because of the connection to my personal life. I tend to try and deal with issues using logic and reason. So when someone made an irrefutable argument, I had to accept it as true.
(That I can connected it to a life experience helps (and I am sure would help others).
Cassandra: I really did not get that people were getting hurt by what was going on on this thread. Nobody said “what you post hurts me because I am a rape survivor”. So I really do not know how I was supposed to have known what I was saying was being hurtful.