Here’s a little one-question quiz to see how much you know about Reddit’s Atheism subreddit.
QUESTION ONE: A woman describes being raped by a “friend” while both were intoxicated (though she doesn’t call it rape). Do the r/atheism regulars:
a) Respond with sympathy and support
b) Attack her and furiously downvote her posts, with the assistance of one of the moderators of r/mensrights, then return to posting and upvoting rape jokes
BONUS QUESTION: True or False: Someone on r/menrights links to her comment as “an example of how and why many people believe that rape is everywhere… because their definition of rape includes every sexual misadventure.” The most heavily upvoted comment in the r/mensrights thread declares that the woman who was raped “sounds like a delusional sheltered teen.”
Yes, the correct answers here are the ones you assumed were correct.
Here’s the woman’s post describing what happened to her.
She gives more details on what happened in other, also-highly-downvoted comments.
One highly upvoted rape joke from elsewhere in the thread:
Hilarious!
Amazingly, despite all the jokes and the victim blaming/attacking going on, the thread also contains some highly upvoted comments lamenting the tendency of people to blame the victim in rape cases. Apparently, when a rape victim is drunk, it’s not rape, even when she repeatedly says “no” and gives in because she’s scared, so it’s fine to attack away, and even to accuse the victim of being a rapist too.
This enables Reddit Atheists not only to blame the victim of rape without feeling guilty, or admitting that this is what they’re doing, while simultaneously feeling self-righteous in their condemnation of religious people doing the exact same thing.
And because their rape jokes are also couched as jokes about religious people’s views on rape, they can feel self-righteous while making them too.
Sometimes the actions of Reddit Atheists cause me to begin to doubt just a teensy weensey bit that “atheists are a community that’s pre-selected for clear thinking and empiricism,” as one commenter in r/mensrights put it not that long ago.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks again to ShitRedditSays for highlighting this awful thread.
EDITED TO ADD 2: More SRS discussion, courtesy of Holly.
As someone who has had lots and lots of drunken sex; It is really not hard to have drunken consensual sex. Not the least because when one or both parties (or more) are too drunk to consent, they’re usually also not thinking/feeling very sexy, or the penis is not working, ect.
I’ve never been so drunk that I couldn’t tell the difference between engaged and happy and upset and disengaged/trying to get away.
I would love to see the keyboard for the typing horse.
I feel so sorry for what AppleGods went through at Reddit. I’m glad she found ShitRedditSays where she could find some decent, compassionate people to talk to.
It’s also sad that we live in a world where rape is described as a “misadventure”.
@Happy:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/selling-the-mrm.
@Happy: I keep trying to paste the link for you but neither of my posts are showing.
From the selling the MRM article:
“The comments here often prove to have as much or more substance and relevance than the feature articles.”
I don’t know why he’s insulting his own commenters like that. That’s our job.
makmonk: Pecunium: now calculate the odds that anyone would believe she was the initiator, even if she remembered and admitted to actions that constituted initiating sex or even forcible rape, let alone care.
Explain how that’s a problem with defining rape to overtly protect men too? Because your argument is the one that makes it less likely for men to be able to get any protection.
That’s not a problem with reasonable people’s definition of rape. That’s the result of social ideas that 1: If he’s erect, he’s willing, and 2: Only violence counts as rape.
It’s got fuck-all to do with the actual crime, and everything to do with the rhetoric.
pillowinhell: yes, consent and getting it does appear to be that hard. The funny thing is that women – including feminist women – actually seem to be really awful at dealing with consent and respecting their partner’s no too. It’s one of those things that’s attracted a certain amount of discomfort and hand-wringing in the feminist blogosphere every time it becomes obvious, but no-one’s actually tried to solve.
Citation sorely fucking needed. I spend lots of time in feminist spaces, spaces where sex is being talked about; some in which sex is being had. Consent is a solved issue*.
I’ve been to workshops about consent (google, “cuddle parties”), some just as plain workshops, some as prepratory events to sex-parties (and that means a week or two in advance of the party). Every such event I’ve been to, consent was part of the ground rules.
All the women I know (now, when consent is much more readily talked about issue) are just fine with the idea. It’s not a thing which has never been talked about. Google, “The Open Boob Project” and see a long (and heated, and widespread) discussion of what consent is all about, and how to get it, and what (most importantly) it isn’t.
That was all about the difference between opt-in/opt-out consent; with a huge amount of how to avoid social pressures which encourage grudging/unwilling “opting-in”.
This is far from something people aren’t trying to solve.
*where solved equals lots of perfectly good ways of making sure one has it exist, and are known; that lots of (mostly men) don’t like those solutions because they get in the way of, “fuzzy” rape is a different issue. That’s the one we are working on solving by raising the awareness of what rape is, and making the gray areas, where consent is hard to be certain of (see “enthusiastic”) things people refrain from doing.
This bit from that article made me laugh
Elam: “AVfM is now very, very close to becoming one of the top 100,000 websites on the world wide web.”
Soon, we will have almost as much traffic as catgifspage.com and Etsy! The world will be ours!
I’m fairly sick of this argument. If someone gets drunk, smashes in a shop front, sets fire to a dog and pisses on a policeman, they should be let completely off the hook cos they were drunk. Please!
And half of those hits Elam’s so proud of are probably from me going to find what crazy shit Elam just said and then laughing at it back on Manboobz.
makomk: Pecunium: now calculate the odds that anyone would believe she was the initiator, even if she remembered and admitted to actions that constituted initiating sex or even forcible rape, let alone care.
Now, lets look at the flip side. How many cases where a woman says she was raped have ended up being reported (and believed; by the cops, the jury, the public at large) as cases where she was the initiator; even when she says she was raped?
“I thought she wanted it”, or, “She went up to his room, what did she think was going to happen?”, or, “She’s just ashamed of who she slept with.”, or, “She was drunk, and she doesn’t remember saying yes.”
I could go on.
Pecunium: that’s a problem with defining rape to overtly protect men too in this way because not only does it not actually protect men, it actually puts up another obstacle to male victims by allowing a definition of rape that in practice excludes and harms them to masquerade as a happy, gender-neutral, feminist-friendly one. (I actually had a really frustrating conversation with a feminist blogger over at the Daily Kos the other day who completely and utterly conflated initiation with penetration in a widely-read piece. Wasn’t fun. It looks like she’s since quietly made it disappear without a correction, but amongst other things it recategorized men who’d been violently raped by women into men coerced into raping said women and argued based on this that women never raped men. Not a nice piece, and she claimed to use a similar gender-neutral male-friendly definition of rape.)
An example of how being drunk can lead to someone being raped:
My first “boyfriend”, when I was 13 was 17. He took me to a party, I had never drank alcohol before. What I can remember is feeling dizzy and asking if I could go lay down, I remember falling asleep. In the morning he was beside me and apparently we’d had sex. Before this as far as we had gotten was necking in the teen long term relationship of a month or so.
This was over 30 years ago. I don’t suffer trauma from it and at the time there was not a thought that it was rape. Really the only way I’ve remembered it was it was a shitty way to lose my virginity. But in hindsight the guy fucked a passed out person. He did rape me.
I can’t for the life of me understand how this couldn’t be considered to be rape. I remember falling asleep, that’s it.
As an adult when someone drinks too much around me thats the time to take care of them not take advantage of them. It’s pretty easy to tell when someone has drank too much, and a pretty easy concept to understand we need to be kind to others instead of pumping away on their passed out bodies.
So you’re problem is… that the social understanding of rape isn’t fair to men (I agree), and your solution is…
That’s the part I don’t get. The “feminist” solution is to make rape (as defined in a gender neutral way) socially unacceptable. You don’t like that. Then you mention a piece no one can look at, and imply that the problem is the definition (gender-neutral), not the person (whom you said, “it recategorized men who’d been violently raped by women into men coerced into raping said women and argued based on this that women never raped men.
If anyone argue women never rape men they are wrong.
Did you expect me to say anything different?
From what I’ve seen, the feminist solution doesn’t though. It defines rape in an ostensibly gender-neutral way, true, but then goes on and tries to make certain kinds of rape socially unacceptable – for example, by sex education that teaches young boys not to rape and young girls to know what rape is, but not the other way around – on the assumption that this is enough to wipe out rape in a gender-neutral fashion. This assumption seems to be sadly uncontroversial. (There was some controversy over one variant of this and whether it could turn boys into rapists and trigger female victims, but none over the gender-based assumption and none over the fact that it was triggering boys who’d been sexually abused and who unlike the girls didn’t get to opt out.) Basically, as I’ve said the definitions are neutral but the assumptions used when applying them are fundamentally gender-based.
makomk: You aren’t answering really answering the question, and you are conflating things.
There are some other flaws in your analysis.
1: You are alleging that SexEd curricula are written by feminists. That’s so not true it’s almost a lie. It further presupposes the people teaching the classes are feminists, and therefore the pedogogic choices are reflective of feminist ideas.
2: You assume teens are stupid, and that the definition (no consent = rape) is dependent on the teaching done about it.
3: Again, you are repeating the idea that the usage is fundamental to feminism (see my comments above about the woman you discussed on DailyKos).
Moreover, you keep making unsubstantiated claims of controversies where “feminists” have done these things which make the gender-neutral definition really a sham, and a way to somehow attack men. That’s the riff I’m getting from you. The idea that “feminists” don’t really believe what they say about rape being a lack of consent, but really it’s that rape = lack of female consent, and if it’s a male who didn’t want sex, who cares, it’s just a man; Screw him.
So, unless you are going to back up these allegations about women are out there saying that men being raped is no big deal, it’s just that, you telling us what “feminism is all about”.
The same way you are unsupported claims about the lack of attempts to address consent, or the “unkind assumptions” male feminists have about men.
As to, “the feminist solution doesn’t do that,”, what do you propose. Instead of a gender neutral definition of rape (and advocacy for it being interpreted as written), what do you propose?
r/Atheism is cesspool. There is some good stuff there but mostly it’s just a dudebro subreddit for atheists. As an atheist woman, I refuse to go there.
A couple of years ago there was an Youtube clusterfuck in the atheist community over the issue of rape. Some atheist guy made a video talking about a female friend who got drunk and was raped. He basically said she asked for it because she allowed herself to become intoxicated in a place where there were men so what did she expect.
Well!
The ensuing whirlwind split the Youtube atheist community down the middle. On one side were the people who made videos about how no one “asks for it” and how rape is never okay and pointed out the victim blaming that was going on.
The other side was overwhelmingly male. They went from 0 to Evo-Psych in 6 seconds. I swear, I have never heard such slimy rape apologetics until that point. I mean we heard all about how rape is an evolutionary reproductive strategy and how men are just hardwired to rape or at the very least, to be sexually aggressive and we wimmenz had just better get used to it because it’s just nature n’ science n’ stuff. How dare women expect men to refrain from raping them when, don’t you see, they can’t help it!
It was at this point when a little bit more of my faith in humanity died. Here I thought atheists and the so-called freethinkers and skeptics were supposed to be better (as a whole) than the religious people who use god as a justification for their bullshit and whacked out beliefs.
Nope. There is no group or subculture that is completely free of it. And that truly sucks.
Makomk
illowinhell: yes, consent and getting it does appear to be that hard. The funny thing is that women – including feminist women – actually seem to be really awful at dealing with consent and respecting their partner’s no too. It’s one of those things that’s attracted a certain amount of discomfort and hand-wringing in the feminist blogosphere every time it becomes obvious, but no-one’s actually tried to solve.
Consent is not a difficult concept to understand. Once you realize that what your comfortable with doing is also what the other person is comfortable doing, and that the pacing of the sexual activity will be the same for both parties IS AN ASSUMPTION!, you see the need for checking to make sure the other person agrees and how much they want to participate in that activity.
Consent is easily understood once you realize that sex IS NOT ONE MONOLITHIC LUMP OF ACTIVITY. Sex can be broken down into a variety of activities ( for example kissing, stroking various body parts, oral which can be broken down to which body parts do you feel comfortable with my mouth being on, ect)
Consent is easily understood when people realize that talking about sex isn’t dirty. That talking about what activities you’ll do together doesn’t necessarily involve a prewritten checklist ( although very advisable for certain activities). That it can be very sexy. So, I might say to a potential partner “you know, I’d really love to know how moonlight through my window would look on your skin… Is it okay for me to remove your shirt/ would you like to go to my place and explore that? And I give him my trademark mona lisa smile but make sure I gave him enough space to not be intimidated while making that decision.
Consent isn’t difficult to grasp when you understand that along every point of the way you want to hear Yes! Or I’d enjoy that! Or I’ve been longing to… And their face shows genuine pleasure, their body is relaxed and they maintain closeness or move closer.
Consent isn’t difficult to grasp when you realize that every part of the sexual interaction is pleasurable, so if your partner is only comfortable going so far or would prefer another activity that’s great! Because you’re still having fun.
Consent isn’t difficult to grasp when you realize that getting turned down flat isn’t the end of the world and isn’t a reflection on you. It isn’t hard to grasp when you realize that trying to obtain consent under certain situations isn’t wise, because the situation may be influencing how safe that person feels to say STOP in any form, or there’s a power imbalance or the person has been drinking or under the influence of drugs etc and may be prone to deciding to do something now that they may regret tomorrow. So either wait until the person is sober to try again, be patient enough for them to relax and come to the conclusion that they’ll enjoy what you’re offering on their own, or move on to someone else who will enjoy your attentions and does desire you. I recommend staying away from serious power imbalances.
Consent isn’t difficult to grasp when you realize that any person of any gender or sexuality has every right to say no at any point for any reason. And they don’t have to explain why to you.
You know where consent is difficult? Its the part where you realize that you may have to try obtaining it from many different potential partners in order to find someone who wants the same sex acts at the same time as you do. It can be frustrating, it can disappoint and hurt to keep being turned down.
Its the hurt feelings, the fear of judgement, the fear of making ourselves vulnerable in any way and our societies’ contradictory and screwed up opinions about sex that makes so many people run to say that consent is hard. its what glues our mouths shut when we resort to non verbal communication, and why it takes courage to be open with our partners.
I sometimes struggle with the talking about what I want, because I fear sounding like a dork saying it. But if I’m not willing to talk with my partner about my desires, if I’m not willing to extend a little bit of trust, then maybe I shouldn’t be having sex with that person? And if my partner isn’t comfortable enough to say yes! and especially if they don’t feel comfortable saying slow down or stop! Then that’s not a person I want to have sex with.
There are several feminist blogs, including this one that believes and supports a mans right to consent or not is every bit as important as a womans.
Um yeah…I think I’ll post this one on my blog *sheepish look* sorry about the undue length.
Nothing undue about it.
Pecunium: I propose actually following through on that supposed gender-neutral definition. Don’t just say “oh, I have this neat definition of rape, aren’t I great and non-sexist”, actually apply it to things. Act according to the definition, think about the world from its perspective and what needs to change, look at things like sex education and rape prevention strategies based on what helps to spread that gender neutral understanding rather than using gender-based assumptions. (An example of the problem: where would you consider each of these most likely to cause controversy: (a) a woman being arrested for having sexual intercourse with a man too drunk to consent, (b) a man being arrested because a woman too drunk to consent forced him to have sexual intercourse with him? (Notice that I don’t mention force in option (a); assume that it’s there but trivialized or not publicized in the press.) Now which is more objectionable according to the feminist definition of rape?)
One decent, though fairly small, first step was this Feministe post from a while ago.
Also, re-read my post. The issue isn’t just the sex ed curricula, it’s how the feminist community reacts to them – what they see as worthwhile or in need of fixing – and the huge difference between the way people treat rape when judging solutions to it and the definition of rape they claim to use.
pillowinhell: the problem is people – including an awful lot of heterosexual women – who don’t want to let go of their assumptions. They don’t want to let go of the assumptions that their boyfriend is always up for sex, or that his sex drive will always be much bigger than their own, or that if he turns down sex it must be because he’s not attracted to them and not because he’s not interested, or that they don’t have to worry about him saying “yes” when he really means “no” for fear she’ll think he’s not actually attracted to her anymore.
Here is why we society must temper firmness with compassion when dealing with this issue:
Table 2.1: 12 month prevalence of sexual violence – NISVS 2010
Women:
Completed forced penetration 0.5% (620,000)
Attempted forced penetration 0.4% (519,000)
Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration 0.7 (781,000)
Tota;: 1,270,000
Men:
Made to penetrate: 1.1% (1,267,000)
If the penalty for simple non-consent with no further violence or harm is 20 years in prison, we will have [ (1.267 + 1.270) X 20 ] = 50.74 million additional American men and women in prison in the year 2031, when the first offenders are released from their 20 year sentences. At a cost of $121,000 per year, this means that we will spend $6.139 trillion per year on incarceration costs, which is 39% of the $15.495 trillion annual US GDP.
Simple lack of consent with no further violence or harm is not the exception — it is the norm. You can’t punish the norm with 20 years in prison.
How many of you want 1.267 million young women thrown into prison for 20 years during 2012, because they “did” a drunk or sleeping man?
In the cases where a perpetrator does not know that he/she did anything wrong, the punishment must be exceptionally lenient, maybe two weeks in jail, community service, a fine, and getting scared out of your skin by a judge.
If you do not agree with me, then how do you propose we treat the 1.27 million men and 1.267 million women who in 2012 will be perpetrators of simple non-consent with no further violence or harm?
Gray area? You know, if you aren’t certain what you are about it to is rape or not, may I suggest not fucking doing it?
Also, on the “drunken rapist problem”, I don’t see an actual problem here. It’s not as if a drunken person rapes a sober victim we say “oops, perp was drunk, time to let them go scott free, put the victim in chains”. This isn’t an attempt to discuss whether people who have been drinking can or cannot adequately consent, this is an attempt to distract from the issue by victim blaming victims who have been drinking.
Did Antz just make a post without using the word bigot? Great, now his only identifying factor is his misrepresentation of statistics. Our trolls are slipping as of late.
Makomk
If sex ed was written the way feminists and the LGBT community wished, and taught the way it was written, you would be astounded and shocked. In Canada, McGuinty tried to make those changes to our sex ed classes. The entire damn thing was scrapped, because it was such a dramatic departure from what little is currently taught now. And the Catholics united to have it quashed.