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:
Poxy’s also got a bad case of “people who do bad things aren’t normal people.” You should have a doctor look at that.
@marinerachel
Sorry about your pain 🙁
Is paedophilia an orientation? I mean, I don’t know much about it. I mean obviously if someone’s a decent person they wouldn’t be abusing kids anyway, but I always figured it was more of a power thing. (disclaimer, I don’t actually know much about this topic, so there’s a chance I’m very wrong).
Everyone’s cat stories are making me envious. Luckily I have my guinea pigs to keep me company, but I just trimmed one’s toenails/claws, and she was biting me the whole time.
@nerdypants
That coincides with my experience, though that is only a single data point. The child molesting pediatrician I mentioned earlier had a habit of teliing other people that baby girls mastrubated and even told his mother-in-law that his baby daughter enjoyed mastrubating on his knee. No one took any action until someone saw him molest an infant in the ICU and even then the only action taken was to tell someone else, the end result being one of his partners started beating him in the hospital lobby.
If the issues of molestation had not been so underground in american society in the 1960s, perhaps action would have been taken earlier based on his public statements.
Some Gal – LOL! That fits right in with the cat thinking of “most desirable napping spot = one that inconveniences humans most”. Smack in the middle of a doorway is Mads’s favourite with that trick. Choosing the toilet mat is a very impressive effort.
Nerdypants – I read an unfortunately brief discussion in an old thread here of whether pedophilia could be called an orientation or more of a fetish. I think part of the problem (if I’m reading my Wiki correctly) is that not all child abusers are pedophiles in the strict diagnostic sense. Not that it makes much difference: the object of desire is a person unable to give consent, there’s an end to it. I made the mistake of looking at Paraphilia forums and the self-justification in just a few comments there was nauseating.
Paedophiles don’t necessarily engage in paedophilia, do they? Just those who are rapists in addition to being paedophiles? I imagine there are people who rape children who aren’t paedophiles but use it for the sake of achieving power over someone vulnerable.
@Poxy – you really should read up on this subject before posting again or asking questions. When you flat out say “I don’t know anything about this” while commenting, it comes off as “educate me!” RAINN is a good place to start, FYI.
@moreorlessdan – A Colorado rep was attempting to make the point that arming all women in order to prevent rape meant a much higher risk of women shooting people by accident, and said it very, very badly (and also demonstrated some serious ignorance of the “most rapists are known to the victim” reality):
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/joe-salazar-rape-guns-colorado.php
Granted, I give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s a Democrat, and because he wasn’t denying rape happens, just was wrong on information. I’m drawing a blank on what state the other one was in and frankly, Googling without it scares the crap out of me.
Men fighting rape culture is mostly about calling out other men who perpetuate it. In general, men listen to other men very differently than they listen to women. A woman who complains, even politely, about something being misogynist will not be heard. A man who turns to his buddy and says, “Dude, not cool” will be. One man telling another one to knock off the comments has (unfortunately) much more impact than all the dissertations women can and have delivered on the subject.
If direct confrontation isn’t your thing, feigning ignorance is a good tactic, especially when jokes that dehumanize other people come up. When everyone else laughs, frown and act confused. “I don’t get it.” Make the dude who told the joke try to explain it. Multiple times if necessary. Because those jokes always break down to “X is not really human” and once the “humor” gets peeled away that becomes apparent. Dude will probably think twice about telling that kind of joke in front of you again.
For Dan or any other lurkers or people feeling like they want to know more about these issues, I would suggest these three posts:
http://www.shakesville.com/2009/08/terrible-bargain-we-have-regretfully.html
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/
http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/another-post-about-rape-3/
@joanimal
that’s…really disturbing. 🙁
@kittehs unpaid help
on one hand I’m kind of curious what they were. On the other hand I’d probably rather not know.
OT, but did you tell me to abbreviate your name to kittehs? I think I remember that, but it takes a while for me to drill names into my head.
Kittehs is fine, Marie! 🙂 Or whatever variation comes to mind. I got called Kittehserf once – soooo true, I’ve been tempted to change my handle to that ever since.
The comments were of the “It’s my natural orientation, waaaah” variety with one or two adding their personal kinks about underage girls for good measure. Not bottom-of-the-barrel horrible, but I definitely wanted to get out of that forum on the first page. Adults who want sex with children, for whatever reason, and whatever their diagnosis would be, talking in self-justifying terms =/= something I want to read.
@joanimal: What a horrifying story. And I imagine that his paediatric knowledge fed into the cognitive distortions he used justify his actions.
I was watching a doco about Savile and they interviewed this parade of people who saw or heard something amiss, but somehow didn’t realise the gravity of the situation and didn’t respond appropriately. It’s horrible, because it seemed to me that they sincerely didn’t understand what they were meant to do, and now everyone has to live with it.
@The Kitteh’s: I’m not sure what the difference is between an orientation and a fetish. What made me say that it was an orientation was this article [trigger warning: detailed description of a grooming, starting in the first sentence]. The relevant quote:
I gather that they have other correlates that indicates that how they are is deeply rooted in the structure of their brains (e.g. a tendency to left-handedness), that it is something that was determined in utero.
@marinerachel: I think there might be other correlates with paedophilia (low IQ?) that makes it more difficult for them. That said, I remember ages ago Dan Savage fielded a letter (it’s also mentioned in the article above) from what he calls a ‘gold-star paedophile’, someone who has the orientation but has never acted upon it.
Most people who study pedophilia now agree that it is an orientation. However, not all pedophiles abuse children, and not all those who abuse children are pedophiles. This is a pretty decent summary of what is and isn’t known about treating pedophiles. Like rape, the incidence of child sexual abuse has declined.
Well, thanks for the answers on pedophilia. I just hadn’t heard as it reffered to much as an orientation, so I was a little confused.
@kittehs
Okay, kittehs it is 😀
umm, what? O_O
@Marie
Here is one paper that looked at pedophilia and found a correlation between it and lower IQ. (I am linking to this one because it was attempting to determine if the previously found correlation was genuine or artificial, that is a true correlation or one only found because of the sample used.)
@some gal
thanks for the link. The phrase just seemed kind of..skeevy to me :/
@Marie
There are numerous problems with IQ tests and plenty of things that correlate with lower score. It does indicate that pedophiles are likely to be dealing with at least one challenge (economic, troubled upbringing, etc.) in addition to their orientation.
@cloudiah: Thanks that’s useful.
@Marie: Paedophile offenders have lower IQs on average, 10 points less than those who commit offences against adults. It’s from the article mentioned above (trigger warning).
@nerdy pants.
I get it know that I read the article (some gal’s like, haven’t gotten around to the one on the gawker yet, and given the trigger warning idk if I will). Just without seeing sources I assumed you were making an assumption :/ Sorry.
Um, I’m confused. I was responding to the comment “if someone’s a decent person they wouldn’t be abusing kids anyway”. My reply was that if it’s generally true that they have lower IQ, and that IQ is both directly and via covarying factors related to someone’s ability to make good choices, then someone who already has the paedophile orientation is more likely to have these additional difficulties fighting their urges.
@Marie: The Gawker article is really interesting and I recommend it. If you want to read it without being subjected to the description of a grooming and rape, what you could do is skip the first 3 paragraphs before the “***” divider where it is written.
Um, ok, now I’m just really confused. I don’t think I followed the conversation. :/
@Marie: My fault, I should hit reload before replying 🙂 The short of it is that having a pedophile orientation not only means an attraction to children but a bunch of other cognitive deficits that make it harder to resist acting on that urge.
Ok, well, I think I’ve got it now… I hope :p
Checking out that article now. (well I was already in the middle but I’m not a fast reader)
Since Poxy doesn’t believe in education, the irony is lost on them.
So this thing with Zerlina Maxwell made it to ThinkProgress (a US progressive news/blog site), and there’s a FemRA all over the comments whining about “misandry” and “but female perps!” and it’s really pissing me off. TP ate a couple of the replies I made to her (I’m the one with the terribly misandric userpic, shamelessly stolen from David’s post on vintage anti-suffragist postcards), and I really need to not go back in and post them again because the more I post, the madder I get.
Anyone got some brain bleach? Bonus points for adorable birdies.
@emilygoddess