So over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the top post at the moment (with more than 370 net upvotes) is a link to this image:
If I might hazard a guess: that’s because IT HAS YOU NUMBSKULLS.
Sigh. Let’s look at a little chart showing the striking decline in the incidence of rape we’ve seen in the last 30 years.
This is based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Some have criticized the survey’s methodology and say that it undercounts the incidence of rape, but even if that is true, the trend is clear: Rape has declined significantly over the past three decades, and I think it’s fairly obvious that increased awareness and understanding of rape, largely the result of feminist anti-rape campaigns, has contributed significantly to this decline.
Naturally, those who tried to point this out in r/mensrights found themselves downvoted.
@Leftwingfox: I haven’t thought about it like this before, and I wrote “rich person” rather than “rich man”, but I think you have a good point. I think the rich person in question is usually imagined as a MAN who shouldn’t go around flashing his Rolex and stuff since he might be robbed of his possessions, and the female equivalent is flashing your legs/butt/boob and get “robbed” of sex.
@leftwingfox
The analogy is also unhelpful in the fact that both robbery and rape are crimes. It doesn’t make it any better if the target is more vulnerable. Both scenarios are just used to take blame away from the one who committed the crime, when, in reality, they hold 100% of the blame! It’s stupid!
In my Justice Studies class we did an exercise where the professor gave us a short story about a woman leaving the house while her controlling husband is away to see her lover. When the woman returns home, she finds out her husband hired a man to kill her. She runs away, but everyone, including her lover, refuses to help. She returns home and is murdered.
After we read the story, we had to say who we thought was the most responsible for the murder… 90% of the students said it was the woman.
Also, how does one “flash” his wealth? I keep imagining a man in a Cadillac parking in a poor neighborhood, going up to the first person he sees and saying “check out my watch! It’s a Rolex!”
This whole “Flash your wealth” thing made me realize yet another layer in the double-standard onion.
Men are encouraged to “flash their wealth.” Showing off your possessions is encouraged in a lot of top 40, buying a really fancy car is a sign of prestige, and even designer sneakers can be used as a status symbol.
And yet, if some asshole shoots a guy for his shoes, I don’t hear anybody being like “Oh, well he shouldn’t have worn those shoes.”
Double standard onion. I like that. The manosphere should use this as a logo:
http://www.jlhweb.net/Boxermap/onion.gif
It also keeps focus on stranger rape being the ‘real’ rape problem out there, which is very reductive. The MINIMUM of rapes are committed by strangers on the street at night.
If we DO want to discuss stranger rape – the phone analogy still sucks. There are no generally accepted ‘bad rapist neighbourhoods’. There is just everywhere. Also, most women tend not to wave their vaginas around in their hands at all, whatever the neighbourhood. Furthermore, we cannot put our vaginas in our back pockets and try to convince someone we don’t have one.
I always suggest that the person giving the (entirely unoriginal) analogy tries to imagine living in a ‘bad’ neighbourhood, and having to walk around CONSTANTLY with a roll of cash stuck to their forehead. It is always there. And to remove it from your forehead, penetration of one of your bodily orifices must occur.Throughout your life even people you previously trusted have tried to grab it. And even if someone violently attacks you, and strips you and penetrates you, and steals it, it would just reappear. It is always there.
And thieves still know you have what they want. And sure, you could cover it with a hat or a burqa, but everyone still knows you have it under there. They don’t have to see it to know they want to take it from you.
And even if you ALWAYS stay sober, just to be extra vigilant, you know that they still might have a weapon or be stronger or have three other thieves with them, that all want to penetrate your orifices to get some of that money stuck to your forehead too. And even thought EVERYONE knows you have the roll of cash, if you do get penetrated and have it stolen, people wonder why you didn’t wear a woolier hat.
There is a massive difference between having a fancy phone taken, and having your orifices forcibly penetrated against your will by at least one rapist.
So yeah. Not the best analogy in the context of this ‘debate’ (WHY???). Ever.
There seems to be a weird belief that crimes are inevitable, and that if you don’t take all possible measures to avoid becoming a victim, you’re at least partially to blame. This is not not a good way to look at things.
We shouldn’t always have to expect the worst. If we did, we wouldn’t ever leave our homes.
All of this seems to go double for MRAs and rape. Here’s a good idea: BLAME THE CRIMINAL!
What does it say when Eoghan is the most reasonable commenter on an AVfM thread about rape jokes?
Apparently, rape jokes are funny as long as (a) they’re not about actual people, and (b) they’re not about actual rape (actual rape being defined by MRAs, of course). Also, jokes about black people are funny; they’re not racist. Lighten up. Feminists have no sense of humor.
At least, those appear to be the takeaways.
Yeah but that’s cos racism doesn’t exist any more, and rape is false and whatnot. Do NOT joke – EVER – about a less than perfect father figure thought because MISANDRY
*though, because MISANDRY
dagnammit
I look at rape and race joke the same way I look at all controversial humor: If you don’t have anything actually clever and funny to say, don’t say anything.
Case in point: Daniel Tosh’s now famous rape joke and Dane Cook’s Aurora theater massacre joke. They weren’t clever or funny, and they just ended up looking like assholes.
Double Standard Onion
Soooo this may be a thing that just happened:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/766/mranion.png
I’m not sure when exactly the idea that just being an asshole is hilarious came into favor, but I really hope that we as a culture get over it soon.
A lot of comedians want to be controversial just for the attention, regardless of if they’re writing actual jokes or not. Thankfully it backfires a lot. but you’ll still have those people who are impressed by it.
@inurashii
That’s completely hypnotic. @_@
@inurashii That’s, like, really hard to read.
As for controversy as humor, goddamn, I hate it how much people misinterpret the humor of something that’s both irreverent and funny as being funny because it’s offensive. Please, learn what satire actually is, people.
Urgh, I hate that. “Sure he’s a racist, misogynist, all around horrible human being, but at least he says what’s on his mind!” THAT IS NOT INHERENTLY A GOOD THING. There’s a REASON there is a delay in between thinking and speaking.
I got so sick of hearing that excuse in comics fandom tat II actually made a video addressing what comedy is and what it isn’t (I do cosplay videos because I’m a dork like that):
Uh, “that I actually made.” I can type, I swear.
This is still what gets me in trouble. I like the absurd, and sometimes threats can seem absurd enough to be funny to me, if they are bizarre, improbable, or wacky enough (I’m going to cut your heart out with a spoon!) or come from a completely unexpected source.
Unfortunately, what’s absurd to ME may be horrifyingly likely for someone else. =/
‘”Sure he’s a racist, misogynist, all around horrible human being, but at least he says what’s on his mind!'”
THIS! Seriously! I can’t stand that. Reminds me of what my parents always say about my asshole brother. “Well, at least he says what he thinks.”
Honestly, I think that’s what makes racist/sexist jokes so pernicious. The laugh comes from the wordplay, or twist, or absurdity, but the justification for the racism in the joke comes from the laugh.
‘
Ugh, that’s the third time someone’s linked to that article and it was bullshit in the first place. He’s taking his own shallow, self-serving attitudes and projecting them on everyone else as truth, framing anyone who disagrees as a loser to disarm criticism. It’s in the vein of a Randroid saying “Ayn Rand is the best writer ever and if you don’t like her it’s because you’re not smart enough to understand her!”…very similar, in fact, since the objectivist-style belief that no one has value unless they’re specifically doing something to benefit you underpins the whole thing.
Nope. That’s the point. They’re supposed to make some people feel bad so that other people can point and laugh at them and feel superior.
Allow me to present an alternate truth: You do have value. You have immense value simply by virtue of existing and being yourself, and nothing you could ever do will make you lose that value.
John Cheese is my least favorite Cracked writer, and I couldn’t articulate why until you said that.
Wait, that isn’t one of Cheese’s articles. Okay, ignore me. I do dislike Cheese for exactly that reason, but that isn’t his work.