I’m still officially on my Man Boobz staycation, but I felt I needed to mention yet another example of a woman saying that men can stop rape … and getting rape threats in return.
Political analyst Zerlina Maxwell went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News earlier this week and made the terrible mistake of suggesting to a hostile audience that men aren’t really doing any favors to women by telling them to arm themselves against rapists. Instead, as Salon notes, she said this:
“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” She told Hannity, “You’re talking about this as if it’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” adding, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”
Indeed, increased rape awareness has contributed to a dramatic decrease in rape over the last thirty years.
But apparently a lot of men were shocked – shocked! – that a woman would suggest that their patronizing advice was less likely to prevent rape than rape prevention education aimed at the demographic group that is responsible for the overwhelmng majority of rapes. That is, men.
So, naturally, the angriest of these men decided they would show Maxwell just how wrong she was … by threatening her with rape on Twitter.
Here’s just one example:
Rape culture in action.
Maxwell’s supporters have stepped up to defend her and her remarks, and have started a hashtag — #TYZerlina — to continue the discussion. If you’re on Twitter, join in .
Here’s the Fox News segment in question featuring Maxwell:
If you can’t get the article any other way, email me the cite and I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be offline for a while though. My email is my nym + gmail.
@Argenti
I find most of the ways of testing sexual orientation and preference pretty dicey. Is phallometric testing worse than most of those? Or maybe I should ask, do you think there is a good way?
Maybe there is something backing it up in the referral process?
Some Gal — eh…truly scientifically solid ways of testing preferences? Yeah, that’s pretty questionable in general. For less “you’re going to jail if you admit this” type preferences, self-reports are potentially best. Yeah there’s the usual issues with self-reporting, but trying to test if someone is “actually straight” is really questionable at face value. Due to the much larger benefit of lying about pedophilia, I’m less inclined to trust self-reports, but measuring genital activity is pretty questionable.
I’m hoping there’s something backing it up, but idk how that’d really work? Previous arrests for pedophilic crimes would at least confirm pedophilic tendencies, but couldn’t confirm a lack of such tendencies…lol, access to someone’s porn collection might be more definitive, but seems a bit hard to acquire!
Oh and obviously sexual orientation regarding your preferred adult partners is not the same as preferences for children. Ethical qualms aside though, the fundamental question in both cases is “wtf do you find attractive” — using “pedophilia is an orientation just like homosexuality” as an excuse to attempt to legalize it though? Someone cue Monty Pythn’s fish slapping dance, because that’s what I want to do everytime I hear that bullshit. /”oh fuck no” rant
@Argenti
I was thinking (hoping) they got at least some referrals through psychiatrists/therapists.
It is all about consent. There are similarities between the arguments for legalizing pedophilia because it is just an orientation and the guys whining about how women should sleep with them just because they are sexually attracted to women. Both seem to believe you have a right to the sex you prefer with the partner you prefer. You don’t. If you can find a willing, capable of consent partner, that’s great. Those partners just don’t exist for pedophiles. And if they don’t exist for a particular straight guy, he is out if luck too.
Exactly! GLBT/poly/kinky/whatever people can find consenting partners (well, some with more difficultly than others, I’m looking at you TERFs) — but it’s legally possible. Pedophiles just plain can’t, kids can’t consent, period.
I mean fuck, as I was saying the other days, minors can’t even consent to medical treatments without parental consent, which is part of the damned parental notification laws regarding abortion. But now I’m seriously digressing, and I have a date with a violin (that sounds questionable in this context huh? Scheduled meeting with my violin?)
that makes sense. I’m probably just going to be reading what everyone else here says about the topic, because it’s not something I know much about.
@Argenti Aertheri
Thanks for saying that, helped me clarify what squicked me out about the article, because the two are not the same. (I still don’t know if pedophilia is an orientation or not, but there’s the huge difference b/c of consenting adults idk I’m rambling. )
bleh, didn’t know that 🙁 Seems like it’d have to be a case by case thing, especially since lots of the minors getting pregnant would be in their teens, which is kind of where I start going ‘they can decide for themselves. :/
Personally, I think that once you are old enough to expect privacy with a psychiatric professional, you are old enough to keep your sex life from your parents. All pressing medical decisions, at least regarding sex and reproduction and drug and alcohol use should not require a parent’s consent. So, that would put it at about 12-14. Seems right to me. For non-pressing decisions, 16-18 seems fine.
@Argenti
Have fun! (I would nirmally add “with your violin!” but there was, as far as I could see, no way of conveying that without innuendo.)
Me and my violin are still on speaking terms, it and my neck and fingers not so much (fingers say “why must up play scales that go up to the D above C6?!”)
Oh topic, yeah, I’d personally do all medical decisions based on competency to make them // understanding of the consequences. Which means different ages for different people, but if we’d stop assuming that even pregnant adults are unable to grasp abortion without ultrasounds and graphics and all that shit…yeah, assuming adults can make that decision would help in determining whether a minor can.
Pregnancy though? I’m of the school that if you’re old enough to get pregnant one of two things is true: you’re too young to have a child, either physically, mentally, or both, because you yourself are still a child; or you’re old enough to make your own damned medical decisions. Basically, either CPS should be involved, or you’re old enough to consent to sex, and thus abortion too.
This is, of course, in ideal land, where pregnant adults are assumed competent with regards to abortion, teens are judged on competency for all medical decisions, pre-teens are treated as children and CPS called if they’re pregnant. Because fuck, 12 is a goddamned child, biological able to get pregnant or not, the other party is usually an adult, which isn’t legal, and 12 is way too young to give birth safely. (That’s not personal option, child birth is just plain dangerous if under 15)
Over 15 is very probably competent to make medical decisions, under 15 is child birth is more dangerous…get a damned child advocate for the latter group?
Oh and sex ed, so that anyone old enough to get pregnancy does actually understand how that happens and how to prevent it (should I get out my gif? I think I should) — condoms!
Can you tell I get crisp about child abuse?
@Argenti Aertheri
oh, ew, somehow my brain wasn’t thinking about/remembering all the ultra sound stuff. 🙁 ugh.
That’s a good way to put it, if they’re old enough to have birth safely, they’re probably old enough to decide for themselves :/
@nerdypants:
Yes and I am horrified, as who can not be.
But I don’t think arguments of desperate defense attorneys (or excuses by family members of perps, for that matter) are good evidence for societal beliefs.
11 is even a bit on the old side for a true pedophile.
I don’t really know what this has to do with sexual orientation. If pedophiles can’t be educated not to rape children, the same must be true for men, who for some reason are unable to get consensual sex with adult women.
Imho a lot of people can never be reached because they are simply evil. If someone (I don’t dare to say his name) is very educated about sexual violence and experienced the suffering of survivors at first-hand and still offends, gets convicted, gets SO treatment and still re-offends, there seems to be a biologically given barrier in what you can achieve. And that’s also the reason why I believe that evidence is important. Without it you may choose inefficient strategies that only limit people’s freedom.
Misogynistic jokes, stereotypes, anonymous rape threats, catcalling, harassment, victim blaming, etc etc should be combated because they are bad in their own right. But you have to admit that with children all of that is at least enormously reduced. And then you’ve got something like ‘Dreamboard’ = epitome of evil.
It may indeed be the case that getting rid of rape culture and sexism also makes those evils go away, that it’s indeed just a “power thing”. Maybe, yet it’s still just another assumption.
@Some Gal:
Still, there’s a difference between this whining and believing in some sort of natural right to have sex.
@drst:
“not the most informed” != “don’t know anything”. OK?
Can we just never use winky emoticons in discussions of child sexual abuse?
@Poxy
Nope. You don’t whine that women are in the wrong (morally and otherwise) when they behave as though they own their own bodies unless you believe that they don’t. Or wish they didn’t. Looks the same to me.
@Viscaria
I would have thought that was a given, but then you never know with the people who show up.
Way late in asking, but what does TERF stand for? I can’t find anything relevant via Google.
Trans-exclusionary radfems.
@Viscaria:
I cannot tell you how stupid I feel for that, and already expected that someone would call me out for that. It was completely unintentional, I missed it. I would’ve caught it if there was a preview function. I would’ve edited it, if that were possible.
@Poxy, I’m glad to hear it wasn’t intentional. I’m sure we’ve all made unfortunate typos.
Poxy, I went ahead and removed the emoticon from your comment.
Thanks for the explanation, Viscaria.
“I don’t really know what this has to do with sexual orientation. If pedophiles can’t be educated not to rape children, the same must be true for men, who for some reason are unable to get consensual sex with adult women.”
Are we doing this again? Because it looks like we’re doing this again. Anyone got a good citation for how rape is not thwarted by consensual sex / how the goal of rape is not just to get laid.
Considering the number of adults, gender moot, who think stranger jumps out of bushes = most rape, yeah, education has a point. How many of the “I had sex with someone too drunk to walk (but don’t say I raped anyone)” crowd actually realize that that’s rape and not just a way to “get what you having coming to you” or “show ’em who’s boss” or whatever?
Goddamned that was one hell of a run-on sentence, sorry!
Viscaria — thanks for covering that explanation.
Not to mention that most rape is not only not stranger rape, it’s by people who are known to or intimates of the victim. Rapists are as likely to be in sexual relationships (with the victim or anyone else) as not – the idea that rape is committed by men who “can’t get sex” is simply wrong. It’s like the ideas about who child molesters are … contrary to myth, they’re mostly married men.
Rape is a deliberate crime of sexualised violence, not an expression of frustrated sexual desire.
Bloody hell, Poxy! You’re seriously positing that hetrosexual men rape women because “for some reason [they] are unable to get consensual sex with adult women” ?
Fuck off!
Are you fucking stupid? These people do not exist outside of society, you exquisite dipshit.
Kindly take titianblue’s and my invitation to fuck off.