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.
Pillowinhell: Fantastic beautiful post! More, please!
M. Troll: the problem is people – including an awful lot of heterosexual women – who don’t want to let go of their assumptions.
There are problems with people not letting go of assumptions–the problem is your assumption that “people” = “feminists” or even “hetersosexual women”=feminist.
I call troll on your rape apologist and attacks on “feminists” that you claim are doing X without any fucking citation.
Plus, rape is not limited to interactions between men and women–it can happen in same-sex couples as well.
I don’t want to play with you, and your posts are boring. Pls to either be more entertaining and wacky, or go away.
AntZ: The vast majority (~90%) of rapes are committed by repeat rapists (about four percent of the male population*); only about six percent of the male population has committed rape. And yes I do want women who have sex with a sleeping or too-drunk partner to go to prison.
As long as I’m in charge of the justice system, I propose (a) strong anti-rape education that reduces the likelihood of rape and (b) freeing up space in prison for all the rapists by ending the drug war.
Makomk: Why don’t you look at the sex ed that exists when feminists get to run it? Scarleteen, for instance.
*Unfortunately I am unaware of the percentage of rapists in the female population.
Antz
Please tell me you’re not that stupid.
“Simple non consent” is nothing like simple assault. If someone slaps me in the face, then really other than anger at being treated that way all I have to deal with is a bruise until it heals. Rape is something a person deals with their ENTIRE LIFETIME. Rape is a LIFE altering experience. Ask anyone who was raped how their life was changed.
You do realize that you are essentially giving pedophiles a free pass? That most men were raped as boys and that in many cases it required no beatings to do? That men have been raped as adults, with roofies and or alcohol and although no bruising occured they are suffering horribly? You realize that regardless of gender, those experiences leads to suicide, substance abuse and criminal behaviours as the survivors of rape try to cope?
Given the research about men and how they try to cope with rape (and how women try to cope with rape), dealing with rapists by locking them up to prevent further harm and teaching the rest of society about consent and positive sex practices is the best way to deal with lowering the prison populations. Along with ensuring the wrongfully convicted are set free and tweaking the judicial system/police policy so that no one is wrongfully accused. It means recognizing that boys and men can be victims. It means recognizing that women can be perpetrators. It means recognizing that victims deserve to be heard, that they deserve justice and that perpetrators should be dealt with and punished regardless of gender.
Ozy
I’ve read that rapists occur in the general population in roughly the same numbers. I believe it was stated that 3 to 4 percent of the general population are rapists, there is gender parity in this crime (ugh!). Sorry I can’t give you the citation, read it before I started collecting info for my blog.
@Anthony Zarat
a) the average length of a prison sentence for rape is not 20 years. I don’t know where you’re getting that number. According to a study made by the Department of Defense the sentence is closer to 10 years, but the time actually served is around 5 years.
Source: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/PSATSFV.PDF
b) even if lack of consent is the norm, as you say, that is not an excuse. Measures must be taken to make it STOP being the norm, not excusing the people who do it.
In other words, you pulled that out of your ass.
ithiliana
Thanks! And you ninja’d me on the response to assumptions…
Nothing burns my bra faster than people who refuse to understand consent and use their refusal to justify rape or mitigate the consequences away!
Pecunium
That is a very cute kitty! Thanks!
@Lady Zombie: Yeah, I remember that Youtube debacle. Thankfully, TheraminTrees was on the side of right, but otherwise the whole thing was…ugh. So disgusting.
pillowinhell: Best comment ever.
Lady Zombie: What really gets me about the evopsych-bullshit “men are genetically programmed to rape women” crowd is that it’s so obviously untrue, based on the number of men I see/talk to/walk past every day who do not rape me. If men were “genetically programmed” to rape women, I shouldn’t be able to leave my apartment, right? Yet I can be within visual/hearing range of literally hundreds of men in a single day without a single one even trying to rape me or any other woman.
…And they say it’s feminists like me who hate men. I’m not the one assuming they’re all incapable of rational thought and self-control. 😛
Darksidecat
Sorry if you think I’m just pulling numbers out of my ass. I know how much people love their citations and how necessary they are for informed discussions. I’m not trying to assert that the figures are the Truth, I’m just saying its what I read somewhere. I’ll take a look and see if I can locate it.
Was it just the lack of proper reference that bothers you?
Is it just me, or is this thread less coherent than usual?
What’s to mistake? They mean the same thing. They are synonyms. If someone is assenting to have sex with you, they are consenting to have sex with you. The problem here, Mr. Zarat, is that (as usual) you don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word(s) you’re using.
Happy, a couple of your comments about AZ were over the line. Stick to arguing with what he says, stay away from those sorts of personal attacks.
AntZ:
Sorry, I misunderstood you. My mind, however is still boggling at how you could possibly consider that your rapist deserves only 3 years gaol and much less with good behaviour. You say that the rape was still affecting you decades later and frankly the penalties you propose are little more than a slap on the wrist. In twelve months she could have been out and victimizing other children.
Toysoldier has written about the discussion here, in his typically dishonest way. He thinks our criticisms of AZ for calling for light sentences for rape is … somehow comparable to what happened on Reddit.
Here’s the link:
http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/quiz-how-did-manboobzs-feminist-commenters-respond-to-a-mans-account-of-rape/
Here’s the response I tried to post there (it’s in moderation):
Really, Toysoldier?
In the Reddit case, a woman described how a man had had sex with her after she clearly told him no. Those who responded to her said that this experience wasn’t rape; several people, including a mod at r/mensrights, actually suggested that she had raped him.
On Man Boobz, the main point of contention was that AZ thought that rapists, including the woman who raped him, deserved only light sentences. The commenters thought that she (and all rapists) deserved much LONGER sentences, and that his advocacy of shorter sentences wasn’t doing male rape victims any favors.
If some people were a little blunt with him, that’s because we’ve had numerous discussions with him before; he’s been equally blunt with us. The fact that someone is an abuse victim — and many of the commenters on Man Boobz are also abuse victims — does not mean that no one may challenge them about anything.
Also, I explicitly warned Happy to lay off the personal attacks on AZ.
For such a one-note movement, the manosphere always blindsides me with their complaints.
Fugly guys should be mad when you talk about how hot celebrities are, right? Wrong! They get mad when you DON’T talk about celebrities being hot!
Men’s rights activists should be happy when women get jailed for rape, right? Wrong! Rape sentences are too long!
So those weren’t intended to be factual statements?
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/381484/april-12-2011/jon-kyl-tweets-not-intended-to-be-factual-statements
“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.”
This may well be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen anyone say on the internet. Congratulations, Antz – you have successfully outdone 4chan.
You better get on with the plan to build sexbots, because you really shouldn’t be interacting with any sort of living being in a sexual way.
So was sati.
I’m not sure I am going to be able to read this without going to the next atheist meeting and raging at atheists smart enough to avoid Reddit.
Your mind is about to be blown. You’ve bought into this cultural framing of heterosexual intercourse as a conquest, something that the man must take from the woman. This is exactly what Andrea Dworkin meant in that famous passage you MRAs just looooooooooove to quote.
A huge part of the problem here is that our society’s shame and furtive relationship to sex provides a fucking lovely hiding place for rapists. When so many young people are so terrified of making their true desires known because they run counter to our society’s myths about sexuality (women only want twue wuv or they are dirty sluts, men are up for it ALL THE TIME) there is a much greater chance of them using alcohol and other bad decision making processes to kill the terror around getting what they want.
There’s not anything inherently problematic about tossing back a drink or two and having teh sex. The problem is that when people are using alcohol as a coping mechanism for fear around expressing their desires, it creates a hotbed of scared people making shitty decisions. This allows rapists to point at other people making shitty decisions that are NOT rape and equivocating the behavior.
How do we fix this? Comprehensive sex education and changing the culture such that people feel comfortable discussing their desires in an open and honest way. Then there will be far less ground cover for the rapist assholes.
makomk: I see. What you are arguing is either feminists are lying hypocrites, or they are in charge, and failing to live up to the things they say.
darksidecat: Of the 1.270.000 women raped the last 12 months(2010) ( including attempts) 98% reported male perpetrators.
Of the 1.267.000 men “made to penetrate” the last 12 months(2010) (including attempts) 79% reported female perpetrators. (NISVS 2010 Report from CDC p.17-19 and 24). (Go read the report yourself if you doubt this numbers. The definition used for rape and “being made to penetrate someone else” is on page 17.)
Not quite parity, but a lot closer than many women like to consider. Yet they should.
I must also correct a misconception Shore is strengthening when s/he in an earlier comment said:
This implies that an erection (which is what I presume is meant by “working”) is a sign that the person is sober enough to consent. This is false – whickey dick is not a given and using that as a sign of being able to consent is exactly like using the presence of vaginal lubrication as a sign of being able to consent. Just not right.
A working penis is not a good enough sign that the owner is capable of consent!!
“The reason AppleGods faced so much hostility from MRAs is that most men live in fear that they could wind up wrongly accused of rape because they unintentionally over-played their assigned role as “sexual persuer” after mis-interpreting signals from the “sexual persued”. Until you understand what I meant by that last sentence, you don’t understand shit.”
Misinterpreting signals? How about ASKING.
@Tamen, unlike you, I am capable of actually reading reports, the report lists 17.5% of women as the victim of attempted or forced penetration (and 1.4% men, but as this is a very ciscentric report, it is a fair assumption that these men were deemed to be penetrated by men). This compares to 4.8 of men listed as forced to penetrated (it is also not impossible that cis men are perps in some of these cases as well, as oral and anal penetration counts, so forced oral on anal sex of a man by a man could be listed her as well) with 6.0% attempts, making it 10.8%, however, it is worth noting that this number removes the fairly high rate of use of alchohol and date rape drugs, which brings the forced penetration of women up to 25.5%, more than double, even assuming, which is not the case at all (I will get back to this, it is included in the study), that ever man who was forced to penetrate was the victim of a female perp. Also, if you remove that 10.8% from “other sexual violence” of men and put it in rape, the discrepancy of other sexual violence against women vs that against men further widens, resulting in 44.6% of women as victims of other sexual assault (many of which are, de facto, rape, but not listed as such, such as “sexual coercion”) vs 11.4% of men, which is pretty staggering.
In addition, of women who had been raped or sexually assaulted, they were more likely to have experienced it from multiple perpetrators than men:
Moreover, men were far more likely to be the pepetrators against other men than women against women, making a significant portion of perpetrators of assaults against men also men:
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
Reading, math, and statistical analysis how the fuck do they work? e_e