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:
Because “protecting”, like a lot of rape, has been about men owning women, not women being entitled to special treatment.
I was wrong. The data Pinker has (1975-now) only spans the time for which lead was already declining (1970-now, from here).
It’s a good idea, but it’s difficult for us to do here and now using these graphs alone.
The point about societal attitudes might be better. Perhaps cross-cultural studies showing a correlation between aspects of rape culture and rape incidence would be a better place to look.
@nerdypants
Does the graph control for expanding definitions of rape?
@marinerachel
huh. I didn’t know that about the shots. For some reason needles don’t bother me that much, so all I noticed was it itched a little afterward. (and then things I get all the time, like back pain and headaches, bother me so much 🙁 life, why can’t you be convenient?)
I don’t know. It says it’s taken from the FBI National Crime Victimization Survey, which suggests that it’s self-reported, which suggests that the answer is ‘no’, which implies that the decline is a conservative estimate (i.e. declines are in fact steeper than shown).
It’s possible however that corrections were introduced for those factors.
@Some Gal:
Some Gal, sorry, my last post sounded curt. But I don’t think that I’m JAQing off, or do you really think that I’ve asked a loaded or leading question? I also understand that you don’t have to educate me about facts that are easily googled. But that’s not the case here.
@nerdypants
I (obviously) don’t know either, but that would be my guess. And, of course, rape awareness is responsible for expanding the definition of rape, which would make it important even if it had no effect at all of the number of rapes.
I think the reason that we always get trolls on these types of posts JAQing off about how we can’t possibly know that rape awareness campaigns successfully reduced rape are really just trying to make sure that feminists (and the other groups who were/are part of rape awareness campaigns) don’t get credit for actually doing anything.
@Poxy
I don’t have to educate you about anyfacts, easily googled or not. The question you raise has come up pretty much anytime the assertion is made. I think there is a reason for that and so, yes, believe that you are either asking a leading/loaded question or you are JAQing off. You obviously have a reason for asking or you wouldn’t have asked. That you can’t or won’t articulate it isn’t a sign that you are here with good intentions.
FWIW, I don’t believe that Poxy is trolling because the exact same thought came to my mind as well (i.e. that if the lead hypothesis is true, then its effects will be difficult to disentangle from temporal trends suggesting the success of rape awareness).
Though I’d say that rape awareness is good regardless, as at the very least it empowers women to know what happened to them for what it truly is.
I shouldn’t be procrastinating on manboobz right now, but there are a bunch of links on the Wikipedia page for rape culture to studies of the concept. Somewhere amongst them there has got to be a cross-cultural study that would answer the question more directly.
Correction: “it empowers people to know what happened…” :-/ Sorry. I’m working on it.
Going way back to the painful-to-walk-on part of the thread: ball of foot landing on pointy bit of kitty litter while carrying heavy bag of kitty litter. Not in the Lego range but oww anyway.
@nerdypants
Fair enough. I just feel like we’ve had this conversation before, always initiated by people who are trolls, but the trolls might just stick out in my mind more. If you find a study, that would be great and make it a lot easier to deal with it when it comes up again.
Agreed on your point about rape awareness. Being able to name something can be extremely empowering and can help with coping, finding a community of those with similar issues, etc. Definitely a good thing.
@The Kittehs’
What with stealing stuff so we step on it, needing painful litter, nibbling on feet, using claws on them (even when meant nicely), and occasionally running over feet and leaving deep claw marks, cats might be a greater threat to feet than Legos.
(My cat has recently decided that nibbling on my toes when I sit on the toilet is a really nice bonding activity. So I might be a teeny bit bitter.)
I think maybe we don’t even need to go to that much trouble, if the underlying question is ‘do societal attitudes and understanding influence rape incidence?’, we already know that this is true. For example, going way back to the Old Testament, we know that because they viewed women as a kind of property, the idea of rape as a crime against the woman herself did not occur to them. It was acceptable for women to be taken as part of the loot during warfare, and the rape of a betrothed girl was considered crime against her father (the rapist had to pay the father and he was forced to marry her). We’ve got examples from modern religious subcultures where male authority creates a climate where it is easier to abuse children and get away with it. And with the expanding understanding of the definition of rape, it naturally follows, if one doesn’t know that they’ve been raped, they are less able to get help, and if one doesn’t understand that what they’re contemplating is rape, they’re less likely to stop.
Ha! And the funny thing is he’s butting his head against part of the problem. The conventions that female characters usually follow are really boring! But they don’t have to be!
I get shots all the time so I had something very recent to compare the discomfort of Gardasil to. I didn’t faint but I did notice it stung worse than a lot of vaccines. I hate that pre-filled syringe it’s distributed in too. It’s noisy.
But yeah, I’ll take the pain of Gardasil over the discomfort of chronic back pain or nausea or cramping any day. Those are things that get to me. Right now I’ve got wicked piriformis syndrome on the left hand side (ALL my musculoskeletal issues are on the left – my spine twists to the right) and it’s driving me NUTS. I can’t sit on firm surfaces without discomfort. I hate feeling asymmetrical.
Some Gal – I’m starting to think Lego might be a good name for a cat!
Your kitty doing toe nibbling when you’re trapped on the loo is just ebil.
You don’t need to wait for it. Read the classics:
The Female Man, 1975, as well as any work, fiction or non-fiction, by Joanna Russ
Tomoe Gozen (fantasy trilogy), 1981 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Amazons! (anthology of fantasy short stories), 1979 edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Amazons II (anthology of fantasy short stories), 1982 edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
One of the cats puts their front paws on my knees and stares at when when I’m peeing.
@Some Gal:
The point is, that I don’t have that much faith in educating people. That’s all there is to it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to give anybody credit who tries.
I admit that I’m not the most informed person if it comes to rape of adult women, but it’s different with child sexual abuse. If I extrapolate from what I know about that, I don’t have much hope. The cognitive distortions those people suffer from are pretty much unimaginable for a normal person. I don’t see anything in western society that could cause such beliefs.
@marinerachel – Hadji loved to come in and watch while we were on the loo. He’d sit and stare, walk around and check the fittings, or sometimes jump onto our laps. We said it was really good to have Help while there, though I’m not sure how the Help was helpful. He also liked sitting in the loo when it was unoccupied.
@Poxy
You don’t think there have been any improvements in how we as a society handle child sexual abuse? You don’t think there have been improvements in how we deal with that aftermath? Do you think child sexual abuse has increased?
@The Kittehs’
My cat camps out on the rug in front of the toilet even when we aren’t in there. It is one of her five favorite napping spots. (She likes the bathmat too, but it isn’t as fluffy so it doesn’t crack the top ten.)
I think the consensus (?) is that paedophilia is an orientation, so it’s not something that can be reasoned out of someone, though I don’t know what proportion of child sex abuse is caused by actual paedophiles (or how many are able to reason past their orientation for that matter).
Though on the flipside, even if the paedophile themselves cannot be reached, the systemic issues that permit them to act often rely upon the mistakes of others in the system, and they are people who can be educated. And the potential victims.