RawStory has a piece up highlighting The top 5 rape apologist reactions to the Steubenville rape verdict. It’s well worth reading. As the author of the piece, Emily Mullen, notes:
The Steubenville guilty verdict spawned nearly as much rape apology as the original news of the case did, highlighting the point — made by feminists like Zerlina Maxwell and Jaclyn Friedman — that America has a long way to go before it gets past blaming victims and sympathizing with rapists.
I haven’t yet run across any reactions in the Manosphere to the verdicts, but I’m sure we’ll see some in the next few days. If you run across anything especially awful, in the Manosphere or outside of it, please let me know.
Men’s Rights Redditors, currently silent about the verdicts, were up in arms the other day because Reuters was identifying the accused — now the convicted — rapists, while not identifying the victim. Or, as MRAs prefer to put it, the “alleged victim.” Now, as RawStory points out, she is getting death threats.
EDITED TO ADD: More victim blaming online, as catalogued on the Public Shaming blog: First post, second post with more.
Below, Several examples borrowed from Public Shaming. TRIGGER WARNING for rape apology.
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Maybe the mrm really is a ‘movement’, maybe they’ve just been lulling us into a false sense of security by being utterly laughable. Maybe their repulsive views are gaining more momentum. I’m scared. =(
Not helped by finding this comment:
Yes, a Warren ‘incest is great’ Farrell quote deposited under an article about a tv show written, created by and starring men. At first I laughed but now it just feels like they’re everywhere. It’s not even funny. *Shuts curtains and curls into fetal position*
link to misandrist article
And this girl’s getting death threats. The media may have shielded her name but everyone in her community knows who she is.
https://twitter.com/sadssoswagg/status/313360314177560576/photo/1
I just have no idea what the hell is happening. My brain just refuses to process this.
So the next time a teen boy slut gets drunk at a party: drug him, violate him, take lots of pictures, take him from party to party even when he’s vomiting, carry him around like a dead hog, make a video about how his penis and rectum are dry used up and his parents will wish him dead….share with everyone. When he cries “rape” later on, blame him for his foolishness in drinking and his sluttiness. Observe how his sexy clothes show that he was just asking for it, that he was giving consent. Heck, he’s male. He is supposed to be always willing and able and won’t turn a fuck down. He was obviously asking for it because he’s male and has a penis.
Does this sound about right? I don’t endorse this, by the way. It seems to me that if the situation would be flipped around that nobody but a few would care. The girls in this hypothetical situation are star athletes with bright futures and felt they could do no wrong. But would they get away with it? Or is this “unladylike behavior”? It’s all about the girl, not about the boys’ actions. If my son did this? Yeah, his future would be fucking ruined because he did this. Not the girl. Not his friends. He did it.
One more thing: women probably aren’t going to resort to this kind of behavior because we know better. It’s degrading. It’s insulting. It isn’t fun.
Not sure how I feel about the guilty verdict.
Finnish journalists and news sources have just published articles about how the news in USA are taking a very weird, emotional and backward approach to the case and ignoring the victim’s perspective completely. They specifically mention the CNN report of the trial.
Here, have a Super Mario Kitty brain bleach.
You know the whole “this is molestation not rape thing” makes sense* if you think about the two presumptions that underlie it:
1. That rape is about sex
2. That the perspective of the rapist is all that matters
There are plenty of people who consciously or subconsciously actually believe both, so they think if the guy couldn’t get off, it must be something different.
Luckily for the victim, the law looks at it from the victim’s perspective. It doesn’t matter what penetrated you, what matters is consent.
Also, it really weirds me out when people point this out as though they know better than all the actual people involved with the trial. Sure the boys had defense lawyers, and there was a judge, and tons of media attention….but only a random internet commenter figured out it was the wrong charge!!!
*as in “can follow the train of thought” not “actually literally makes sense”
Ugh, so much this, everywhere.
Two people who’ve never hurt anyone in their lives.
@Falconer
They’ve made pregnancy and childbirth painless now? =p
*I joke. Awesome babies. Much like those poor future football stars whose live have been ruined…nope, can’t even joke about it.*
Sideliner, you hit the nail on the head. The US law looks at it from the victim’s perspective. Almost gives one hope.
This isn’t the case in all countries, though. In the UK, the Steubenville charge would have been sexual assault. I think some of the quibbling over the charge is because of this. Sadly, too much of the quibbling is to distract from the real issues around the case.
In the UK, I think professional football (soccer) is our equivalent to the US school/college football. There are so many horrible reflections of the Ched Evans case in Steubenville.
@Falconer – they’re beautiful!
I have a 7 month old son, and he was up a few times last night with a nasty cold. At around 3am while I was rocking him back to sleep I started thinking of this whole story. I don’t pray often, but last night I spent a long time praying that I’d have the wisdom to know how to teach him to respect people and to be kind, and to never ever ever do anything like this or to stand idly by while someone else did this.
This is one mama who plans on taking Zerlina’s advice and teaching her boy not to be a rapist or to enable them!
What bothers me is how many people are focusing on the fact she was drinking underage to excuse the rape. Should she have been drinking underage? No, we have a minimum drinking age for a reason. Last I checked though that is not an invitation to be violated and it’s certainly not consent. Those boys still made the decision to rape her while she was unconscious.
Dang you, blockquote monster. I spit at thee. Hisssss.
Oh, and sideliner, thank you!
I actually do feel sad for the rapists in this case. I just wish they’d felt as badly as they do now when they raped the victim. They really have screwed up their lives in a big way. It can’t compare to what they did to the girl they raped though.
You know, I used to get quite drunk with other friends, male and female, who got quite drunk. I was never sexually assaulted. I think the worst thing that ever happened to anyone while unconscious was getting one of their eyebrows shaved off, which was pretty bad, admittedly, but not sexual assault. Usually passing out drunk meant you’d wake up with a picture of a dick drawn on your cheek with marker, or you’d just wake up hungover as usual. It never even OCCURRED to me at the time that sexual assault was a possible outcome, because these were my friends. I have a lot of thinking back on those memories to do now, apparently.
I think I’m more angry at society than anything. We raised these rapists. We told them that they were entitled to whatever they wanted, that noone would object, that the law would blink at them, because they are special , because they are young, male, athletic. Their parents, their teachers and coachers, their teammates and mentors all said that this is acceptable behaviour, something to boast about and put on twitter and laugh about afterwards. How many before them have done exactly this sort of thing and it been fine for them because society said they get to do that, that girls don’t matter and can be used and discarded? No wonder they cried at the verdict – we’d all told them it was fine to do as they did.
They must feel betrayed. /rant
I get uncomfortable with the description of these perps as “rapists” because it sears in our mind this pervasive myth that rapists are monsters and monsters are rapists. These boys are a product of rape culture. Just like the graph shows, it all starts with misogyny. Seeing women as things. Once a person is no longer considered a person, it is very easy to treat them like a thing. These guys got the message loud and clear they’re whole lives from the media, peers, role models, everywhere. The outpouring of sympathy towards them and suspicion of the victim continues this message. Until we as a society raise our boys that does not involve abusing or degrading women, we are going to continue to see otherwise promising young men perform heinous acts of violence. Everything else we do is just reactionary. These are not big bad rapists. They are ordinary people, taught from a very early age that women are things, they exist to please men, they have no agency. It is no surprise that men are raping unconscious girls and the world is not only not horrified, but the blame is put squarely on the victim’s shoulders. That being said, the majority of men are not violent, and I am in no way excusing these two boys’ actions.
I can’t even this without going incoherent in rage. Those boys deserved what they got and more. To hell with everyone mourning for their futures. They did something unspeakable to another human being. They deserve their punishment.
@Falconer
Your babies are so sweet! Looking at them, I can’t wait for my second to arrive in September. Give them all the cuddles!
@Nitram-
I think the degree of sympathy people have for these two boys is exactly why it’s helpful to describe them as rapists. The media outpouring, Twitter posts, Facebook posts, etc. pretty clearly demonstrate that a lot of people think this is something that just “happened” to these boys, and now their lives are over. But they were active participants in this, and I think making a point to show what they are – and they are rapists – is a step in correcting our discourse about rape.
Ugh. Love how when Mays apologized, he did so for not only passing the photos around, but that they had been taken at all.
(because, of course, if there were no pictures, it would be her word against theirs, and she had forgotten most of the night)
In other words, “Oh, boohoo, I regret taking the pictures that made this such an open and shut case and kept me from getting away with treating a human being like a piece of furniture…”
I guess I mourn for the boys they could have been, for the potential at birth that was lost, yet agree with everyone saying that they did something horrendous and deserve their punishment.
But enough about the boys from me. I shall reserve my sympathy and concern for Jane Doe and her future.
@reginaldgriswold
I agree that it needs to be made clear that these men raped this woman. The passive language needs to stop (headline reads “woman was raped”, rather than “man raped woman”). I think that can be done without using the word “rapist” as if it is the whole of their identity, NOT for the sake of being fair to the people who raped. For the sake of being honest about how complicated and wide spanning this rape epidemic is. In short, “rapist” sort of neatly categorizes the problem. “He’s a rapist”, that’s what he does. Why are otherwise good people doing heinous acts? Why are we not horrified? I hope I’m explaining this clearly.