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:
I think Beloved would be pretty offended if I tried to hand him a medal for being a decent human being.
Evveryone likes to be appreciated, but when the comparison is an MRA, that’s no compliment.
These guys make a 17th century misogynist look like a proto-feminist.
Like the guy earlier who was all “I don’t want to rape my daughters – cookie now?”. No, no cookies for meeting the minimum standard for basic human decency.
He posted some stuff that made more sense on the other thread – I’m not sure what was going on with that arglebargle, bad wording or what, but I’m not sure we’re talking troll with that one. Not yet, anyway.
Not a troll, I don’t think, just not very bright and a bit anti-feminist.
Seems likely.
Argh, it’s 1am. I think I’d best drag myself to bed. Eyelids vs Gravity: gravity is winning! Niters, all.
http://jezebel.com/5924069/hey-lets-make-a-video-game-so-we-can-beat-up-a-female-critic-of-video-games?tag=anita-sarkeesian
People harassing Anita Sarkeesian?! Nooooo!!! I love Anita Sarkeesian!!!
No man rapes women because he thinks there’s nothing wrong with it. The entire “teach men not to rape” is simply idiotic. If these geniuses haven’t figured it out yet: They’re doing it on purpose.
Ahahahha: “all of the images are attacking my gender or presumed sexuality and rely heavily on pre-existing sexist stereotypes”- Anita Sarkeesian using her analytical superpowers to analyze her harassers into dust. This woman is the bomb.
Saying that women should carry guns to prevent rape is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
It’s never going to be a conversation we have in the UK for obvious reasons, thank god.
But sticking to the idea of them preventing stranger rape, if someone comes up behind me and pins my arms to my sides how am I going to get at my gun? If they hit me over the head with a brick to knock me out how do I get at my gun? What if he grabs the gun off me and uses it to threaten me?
And what happens if I shoot I guy who I thought was going to rape me and it turns out I was mistaken?
What you’re going to see is women being dragged into court on charges of murder and manslaughter because they shot men who they thought were a threat to them.
Women get enough shit when they refuse to be merely polite to men who they consider a potential threat.
Remember women are supposed to be polite and sweet to all men but magically known when they are definitely about to murder and rape us and then and only then can we exercise caution and defend ourselves. And if we didn’t magically know that this guy was about to rape us then we have only ourselves to blame.
And as anyone with a modicum of intelligence and common sense knows, the vast majority of women are raped by people known to them. Are you telling me that women should keep a gun in their holster while in their own home and be prepared to use it against their boyfriends, husbands, fathers, friends? Should we keep them on us while we are engaging in sexual activity? While we are in bed asleep?
It is all a load of bollocks.
Bad Marie is commenting before she finishes reading the thread.
Anyway.
@quantumscale
I didn’t know people stopped their daughters from getting the HPV vaccine so they wouldn’t have sex O_o All that happened when I got it (had to get three shots total) was my mom and doctor talked to me about it and asked me if I wanted it, and they just tacked it on to appointments we went over for there anyway. (I go to the doctor a lot…)
@roscoe
Nobody wants your protectiveness. There are only two dudes I’d trust not to hurt me (dad and brother, and that’s just because I have relatively decent family relationships) and only one I’d actually debate trusting to protect me (sort of), my dad.
Has it ever occurred to you that you’re not the kind of person women would want “protecting” them? We aren’t helpless, we’re adults, and we can take care of ourselves. I don’t want your condescension.
/rant
@pillow in hell
🙁 That’s horrible (I mean, it’s good that you weren’t, but that it was so common).
@pillow in hell
QFT
@cassandrasays
Compared to roscoe my dad looks like a feminist :p. I mean, at least my dad seems to get that women can take care of themselves. His main problem is he has an ingrained case of girly things=bad.
John the Otter weighing in on this, or something. It’s quite a rant. http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/why-yes-i-am-a-little-angry/
Of course the outrage over the ‘absurdity’ of the idea that just telling people not to do something will cause it to end doesn’t extend to premarital sex. Because if you tell kids not to have sex, and tell people not to have sex before marriage, well that’s the only way to prevent teen and unwed pregnancy, am I right?
Comment on the gun thing:
When I was taking a martial arts class, I was taught that at close range, a gun is much easier to counter than, say a knife. A gun is unidirectional, whereas a knife, if your wrist is grabbed, you can flick around and cause damage.
So this “guns will prevent rape” thing is double confusing, because if someone is close enough to be raping you, they’re also close enough to redirect the gun in your hand away from them, or simply take it away. Even a jumping out of the bushes rapist would still be in arms reach.
Of course, I’m sure Pecunium can correct me on this.
Male protectiveness of women is useful when it is aimed at *other men* to change their actively harmful behaviour, rather than to change the not hurting anyone behaviour of women.
Rather than telling a woman not to get drunk, how about you tell the guy who was thinking about going in and raping her while she’s having a nice lie down that it’s not fucking on and, yes, it is actually rape-rape, not just a prank.
Where did this post get linked to bring these “oh so reasonable. we just care so much” ignorant mansplainers out of the woodwork?
gah, that was poorly phrase. It is past my bedtime.
should be “to change men’s behaviour at times when it’s actively harmful, rather than the behaviour of women, at times when it’s not hurting anyone.”
Really, this line of …”gun advocacy” doesn’t surprise me. I haven’t been paying much attention to politics back home. It’s a luxury, given the relatively toxic stalemate that has been status quo. However, I can detect a hint of something that is almost logical in it.
Republicans have had a difficult time appealing to many women for, at a bare minimum, the past few years. This past election, unless I am really messing up the post election analysis, that problem has been getting worse.
Now a recent topic has been gun control, and it happened right around the time that the VAWA was shut down by republicans. So, their solution to bad pr and chronically failing to see the point – combine their problems into a sandwich of epic stupid.
And, I can imagine that the line to sell it is like, “See women, we care about your safety. We want to empower you to protect yourselves,” I haven’t really tuned in to much news lately, but I have heard the talking points before to have a guess where their debate is headed. It’s an easier route than reevaluating the policies and positions of the party.
Have I said I glad I am to be overseas at the moment?
@Argenti Aertheri I think you nailed it, actually. We do control the behavior of toddlers, because they can’t possibly know better, so we put the bleach behind locks. Adolescents can be told not to touch the bleach, and can understand that if they do they can get burns or be made sick by drinking it, etc. Grown people can be trusted to handle bleach carefully while valuing it for its usefulness because, after all, it’s just a chemical. A dangerous but useful chemical that stays in its place next to the washing machine or under the sink. It’s not as if the bottle of bleach were just sitting and waiting for a chance to dump itself in our eyes or down our throats.
And that’s the thing that so many people like Roscoe seem to miss. Rapists have agency and make choices. Women’s behavior (or children’s behavior, or even the behavior of “protective” men) makes no difference because rapists are predators who are going to find someone to prey on if they can get away with doing so, and nothing is going to stop them except knowing that they will not be permitted to get away with it. And all the talk about dressing or behaving “properly” to avoid danger, or placing ourselves under the protection of some authority figure, contributes to creating a context where we are evaluating everything (anything) other than the rapist’s choices and actions.
Rapists prey on the vulnerable, and there will always be vulnerable people. Sure, we (adult human beings of all gender identifications) ought to look out for those among us who are vulnerable and try to help keep them from harm, but we do that because we are human beings, not because our gender identification gives us some automatic privilege or authority.
@Cassandra Yeah, the whole “Teh wimminfolk need to respect mai benevolent, protective authoritay sos I can keep ’em safe and clean” kinda made me throw up in my mouth a little.
I completely agree. Any opposition to dehumanization is, in effect, an opposition to rape culture.
What unique qualities? That men are, of average, larger and stronger than women? Because that is the only one I can think of and, frankly, I find the idea that I should pick a male partner based on his ability to beat other guy’s up absolutely disgusting.
My grandfather is very protective of me (he helped raise me) and he doesn’t let that protectiveness interefere in how I live my life. He also, being in his nineties, probably would fare about as well as I would in against a physical attack, and I would fare pretty badly. So, is my grandfather lacking this unique quality of men?
What are the other qualities?
The only other thing that I can think of is that men are in unique position to help put an end to rape culture. That isn’t really a quality of men, though, it is a quality of a society that privileges men above women.
Otherwise, what are men that women are not? Please tell me as I would hate to go another day without knowing that some random person likely finds me not feminine enough and the boyfriend not masculine enough.
Today in trollspotting, I found a BuzzFeed article on the SxSW panel on Reddit that quotes Anthony Zarat:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/reddits-victim-complex
Uh-oh. I think one if our curses worked too well.
Whenever I hear our lego curse I think of a scene in the Kate Daniels series (which is an urban fantasy series) when Curran says that the wolf alpha can’t be there because he was injured tripping over a LEGO on the stairs.
LEGOs: strong enough to take down werewolves.
@moreorlessdan – a couple of state-level Democrats have also put their feet in their mouths over the gun issue when it comes to rape, which gave the Republicans an opening. IMHO both Democrats were attempting to be realistic, that rape is usually a crime perpetrated by someone known to the victim and carrying a gun wil not help, but they mangled what they said badly.
@Roscoe – let me pose a question. Say you’ve got a daughter. What do you teach her about drunk driving? “Don’t do this ever. You could hurt someone, even kill them, or yourself.” Right? The message is telling her not to engage in that behavior because it’s wrong and dangerous. That’s a logical piece of “protective” advice to give a kid. Your message is not “Don’t ever drive around after dark, and don’t ever drive down a street where there’s a place that sells alcohol, because someone could be driving drunk, and if you go there you’re asking for trouble.” Because that would be ridiculous right?
When it comes to rape and sexual assault, though, that’s what you teach your daughter. You teach her how that it’s her responsibility to avoid becoming the victim of someone else’s decision to engage in a criminal act. Even if you do that out of genuine desire for her not to get hurt, because it’s the only thing you know to tell her, it’s not protective. It’s 1) completely ineffective and b) insulting to your daughter.
The entire point Zerlina Maxwell was making was that we have to stop teaching women how to avoid being the victims of crime and instead teach the perpetrators of those crimes not to do it. Men are vitally important to that work, so I’m not sure where you get the idea that men don’t have a role.
Or if you’re attempting in that pile of words to ask “But shouldn’t men remind the women they care about of how dangerous the world is and try to protect them?” No. THEY KNOW. I guarantee you, the women in your life already know far, far more than you do about how dangerous the world is. They do not need you to educate them on what it’s like to be a woman in this world. If you genuinely care about them, shut up and listen to what they tell you rather than trying to assert your narrative about your protection over them.
If your point was “I don’t like feeling like I’m wrong for wanting the women I care about to be safe” – okay. It’s an understandable desire. We all want the people we care about to be safe. Here’s where the problem is: you’re demanding an exception be made because you know in your own mind that you genuinely care about a woman’s safety. So do all the other guys who get mad when women talk about how careful we are around men. 70% of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. Those guys do not have a giant R on their foreheads (if only). They look just like you. They talk like you, they act like you. They work in the same office as you, they shop in the same stores. RAPISTS ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE REST OF THE POPULATION. That’s what makes them so dangerous. Women need to exercise constant vigilance because of this, because if we don’t and it turns out Dude X is in fact a rapist, the first thing everyone including you will do is start blaming her for not knowing that. And guess what? We don’t know for certain that you’re not a rapist until you don’t rape us. Until that moment, we have every right to protect ourselves
You’re not wrong for wanting the people in your life to be safe. You’re wrong for demanding that women relax their vigilance, which they undertake for their own sanity and self-protection, because it hurts your feelings and disturbs your comfortable mental image of yourself as the valiant protector. Which makes your personal fee-fees more important than the feelings and actions of the women around you. If you can’t see how shitty that is, you should spend the rest of your life walking on LEGOS.