Today I’m going to talk about Janet Bloomfield — AKA JudgyBitch — and her bizarre attack on the original Don’t Be That Guy anti-rape posters in Edmonton. But I’m going to take a bit of a detour first, so bear with me.
I recently picked up a copy of Arthur Koestler’s The Case of the Midwife Toad, a nonfiction account of a scientific feud that provided me with some diverting travel reading and put me in the mood to read more of Koestler’s nonfiction.
But doing some rudimentary Googling I made a rather horrifying discovery about Koestler, whom I’d admired since reading his bracing account of breaking with Communism in the classic The God That Failed anthology: according to a recent biographer, Koestler was a serial rapist and abuser of women.
While some doubt the evidence of rape, even his supporters have had to acknowledge, as one reviewer has written, that Koestler’s “treatment of the many women in his life [was] – even without the ‘rape’ – deeply unpleasant. He was manipulative, demanding, sexually voracious and utterly faithless.”
Koestler himself doesn’t exactly make a persuasive witness for his own defense, having once written to his second wife that “without an element of initial rape there is no delight.”
But in some ways as eye-opening as these revelations has been the response of some of Koestler’s defenders. Case in point: Michael Scammell, the author of a nearly 700-page biography of Koestler. After detailing many instances of Koestler’s mistreatment of women, he writes of the accusations of violent rape:
The exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction wasn’t exactly uncommon at that time … The line between consensual and forced sex was often blurred.
Hey, it was the 1950s. EVERYBODY raped women back then.
The sad fact is that, while this is no defense of Koestler’s alleged behavior, there is an element of truth to Scammell’s claims. The line between consensual sex and rape was often blurred back then. Women were often cajoled, pressured, manipulated, and forced into sex by more physically powerful men. And neither party necessarily recognized what had happened as rape.
The fact that the line between consensual sex and rape is a lot clearer today — and that the rate of rape has declined markedly in the past several decades — is largely due to feminism. Feminism challenged older attitudes and definitions of rape and worked at changing these attitudes through education and awareness campaigns.
Feminist activists worked on teaching — and reteaching — both men and women what is and what isn’t acceptable sexual behavior.
It’s an ongoing process, which continues in awareness campaigns like this one, the Don’t Be That Guy campaign launched in Edmonton (and elsewhere):
It’s pretty clear that there’s a lot more work to be done, as the reactions to this campaign have pretty clearly shown.
Anyone who has read much in the so-called manosphere — on MRA and PUA sites alike — will have noticed a lot of alarmist nonsense about the alleged difficulties men have in determining if a sex act with a woman is consensual or not, as if it is simply impossible, if there is any confusion, for men to open their mouths and ask. MRAs and PUAs act as if obtaining consent “the way feminists want it” would consist of some complicated legalistic procedure that would ruin sex forever.
This is patent nonsense. Clarifying issues of consent about (and during) sex — making anything that’s blurry clear — can be done in less time than it takes to read this sentence.
“Do you like this?” “Yes.”
“Do you want me to [incredibly dirty thing]?” “Yes.”
But, as I said, the MRAs and PUAs complaining about the alleged difficulties of consent don’t really seem to be interested in making things clear. They would, it seems, rather have things as blurry as possible.
And that’s because a lot of them want to return to a world in which, to paraphrase that quote from Scammell above, the exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction isn’t exactly uncommon, and in which the line between consensual and forced sex is often blurred.
They would prefer to return to a world in which it’s considered fair game to “take advantage” of seriously drunk women. One in which all accusations of date rape could be dismissed as the result of a fickle woman changing her mind later.
And that, I think, is why MRAs have such a problem with date rape awareness campaigns like Edmonton’s Don’t Be That Guy campaign — which they try to both ridicule as unnecessary and denounce as an exercise in Nazi-style anti-male propaganda. Sometimes both at the same time.
Consider, for example, Janet Bloomfield/JudgyBitch’s recent A Voice for Men post on the Edmonton poster controversies. Bloomfield — who apparently likes to think of herself as one of those no-nonsense women who can get by just fine without any help from feminists, thank you very much — begins by trying to ridicule the original Don’t Be That Guy posters as simple-minded, obvious and utterly unnecessary.
Referring to several specific posters from the original campaign, she writes:
No, obviously, you should not be having sex with a woman so drunk she is passed out face down on the couch with her ass in the air. …
Obviously, helping a drunk woman home does not entitle you to sex.
And in what is going to come as SHOCKING news to everyone, if someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, you should not have sex with them.
I’ll give you a while to process that information, because I’m sure that until this clever campaign came along, you were all busy screwing comatose girls at parties and gleefully hailing cabs so you could help ladies home and then rape them.
That would be very witty and pointed but for the fact that, guess what, men do attempt to “have sex” with women who are passed out or asleep, and that there are plenty of men who seem to think that this counts as a sort of “no harm, no foul, no rape” situation.
Take a look at the discussion whenever this topic comes up on Reddit, for example. Or consider all those supporters of Julian Assange who pretend that the issue is women changing their mind after sex when in fact one of the things he’s been accused of is penetrating a woman sans condom while she was sleeping.
And as for “taking advantage” of seriously drunk women, well, there are plenty of men who think this is perfectly fine — and some who make this the centerpiece of their “seduction” technique. Indeed, one prominent PUA — Roosh V — has confessed to doing just that with one woman who was clearly too drunk to consent:
While walking to my place, I realized how drunk she was. In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she legally couldn’t give her consent. It didn’t help matters that I was relatively sober, but I can’t say I cared or even hesitated. I won’t rationalize my actions, but having sex is what I do.
Somehow this confession — boast? — hasn’t, to my knowledge, earned him any condemnations from manosphere or MRA bloggers, or even, it seems, cost him any fans.
Meanwhile, on the very site Bloomfield is publishing her post, Paul Elam blames drunk women for being sexually assaulted, writing (as I pointed out yesterday) that women who drink with men are, “freaking begging” to be raped,
Damn near demanding it. … walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.
After dismissing the Don’t Be That Guy campaign as so much silliness, Bloomfield makes a sudden 180 degree turn and declares it the virtual equivalent of Nazi propaganda against Jews.
Which would be offensive if it weren’t so manifestly absurd. The Don’t Be That Guy campaign isn’t directed at men, per se. It’s directed at men WHO THINK IT’S OK TO RAPE WOMEN and/or MEN WHO MAKE EXCUSES FOR RAPISTS.
A good number of these men — and some women with similar beliefs — seem to spend much of their time reading and/or writing for manosphere sites like Roosh V’s blog and A Voice for Men.
Well, as I recall, de Beauvoir based this assumption on famous women at the time (not merely French) telling her/the world about their sex life in biographies and the like. My impression was that just as a wife couldn’t be raped by her husband according to the views at the time, “radical” women or “party” women or what-have-you couldn’t be raped at all. And I think the idea that you were a “mental virgin” unless you had been raped by an older man had something to do with that whole “abandon” idea, like, you haven’t truly had sex until you’ve been completely helpless before a raging sex beast of a man. So, so fucked-up.
Also remember reading Huxley’s “Counterpoint” (as I think is the English title, I read it in Swedish) from the 1920:s… The hero at one point rapes a glamorous “party girl” who he’s in love with, and it’s treated as a completely normal thing to do.
“Participation in Jewish genocide – Don’t be that goy.”
(Drawing witty parallel between rape apologism and Holocaust denialism)
Is it not massively fallacious reasoning to try to discredit someone’s opinion by attacking the opinions of people who are not the original post author? Bit of a straw man, no?
If you look at intellectual and literary life at the time de Beauvoir was writing, some of the biggest cultural influences were Freud, Jung, D H Lawrence and the like. The idea of female “abandon” was very strongly advanced by male writers and taken for granted by women intellectuals – and that “abandon” was a difficult state to achieve. (I remember a remark in a 70s piece where a formerly anti-feminist woman said that she had previously believed that a feminist had to sneeze to have an orgasm – because she couldn’t abandon herself to sex with a man in the approved Freudian fashion.)
And let’s be honest, a lot of women’s only experience with sex would count as rape in modern parlance. After the Zimmerman thing today I’m not in the mood for going there … but it’s a hollow, horrible place a lot of people don’t realise is there.
OK, if you don’t think the original posters are offensive, then why are the new ones? Women do falsely accuse men of rape and I would suggest it happens at least as often as rape itself. There are, after all, almost no consequences for doing so. The same is not true for rape. As a man, I find the original posters offensive and I certainly am not a rapist. And yes, the line between rape and non-rape is blurry and it will always be. Consider: if I go to a car dealership and a slick salesman sells me a car I neither need nor want, who’s fault is that, mine or the dealers? Most people would say it’s mine, but in the case of sexual relations, the feminists seem to be pushing towards saying it’s the dealer’s and I find that even more offensive than the posters. The MRAs are right in saying that it robs women of agency.
Also, I have relatively little experience with women (because it is, after all a minefield–I could get accused of rape) but I know two things: 1. if you constantly ask for permission before proceeding to the next level, you will probably never get laid and 2. a large proportion of women enjoy a certain amount of violence in the bedroom (I know this from personal experience)–what is BDSM than simulated rape?
You appear to be suffering from a dellusion of rational cost-benefit analysis. By which I mean to infer that the statement that “Almost no consequences for doing so” (With the hint being that there is plenty to gain) isn’t enough of a reason for most people to do something.
You do not perform an action just because there’s few consequences for doing it. A false accusation is not a lark people haphazardly engage in because, hey, worst come worse the gain will be less than they expected. That is a sham, and silly. And its just as silly to hint that “Rape” is avoided merely because the consequences of it are severe. Nice rethorical flourish though.
Rape is avoided by most people because, duh, you’re raping someone! False accusations are avoided by most people, because, and this is an important point, most people do not randomly choose to attack others for personal gain. We have this thing called “ethics”.
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If you’re sold a car that’s slick by a salesman that’s slicker, and you regret it, upon finding out you find yourself with a banana, and no car, then yes, buyer beware. If someone lies and manipulates you into enthusiastically sleeping with them, then yes, buyer beware.
If a salesman gives you two bottles of vodka before showing you the car, then takes your wallet and replaces it with a car key, and then magically teleports his entire car dealership into another dimension so you have no legal come-backs, then no, never, it isn’t buyer beware.
You cannot mean this.
Your attempt at conflating a mere question of lies and deciet with something so fundamentally different as abuse and rape is trite, egregarious and also borishly trolly.
In fact this screw the other ten paragraphs I had planned. You don’t mean any of what you just said. This is some drive by “Ha ha! Silly feminists!” you engage in for the fleeting pleasure of displearing someone else. I adamently refuse to believe that just because two people like to tie each other up with silk straps and engage in mutually pleasurable activties with a wombat, then some car salesman in Missouri can sell me a banana while claiming its a pineapple and if I don’t catch on to that, then it’s my fault.
( This is a joke. It’s mean to illustrate how utterly incoherent your professed belief system is )
—
There once was a poster named Petey
Who on the Internet got quite seethe-y
Damn those feminists dare!
to put on those airs!
And by the way, I don’t know much about women except that for rape they’re needy
And thus he would offer
With many thousands of lies as a buffer
Some statement approaching fact
but lacking in tact
and not merely that
but more asymptoptic to the measure of reality
That is, approaching, but never reaching
Or crossing that line to remove it from a realm of make believe stuff
That someone can spew when they can’t reason enough
To think that selling is the same as stealing is the same as sarcastic wit
So the come back must be this:
Twit.
You can suggest that all you want, but you would be wrong. There was just a big discussion about false rape accusations and how often they happen; the most reliable figures put it between 2-8%, comparable to false reports of other crimes.
Also, your car analogy sucks. The posters show situations where the victim is passed out, or where he or she is physically overpowered. A better analogy might be, what if the salesman threatened to hurt you if you didn’t buy the car? Or what if he found you passed out and forged your signature?
It is obvious you have very little experience with women. It is very easy to ask for permission and get laid.
And simulated violence that both parties discuss in advance and consent to (in other words, BDSM) is not at all the same as actual rape. The fact that you consider them even in the ballpark makes me glad that you tend to stay away from women. Please continue to do so.
I’m just amused that trolly failed to find the thread before this one, which has all that talk about the new posters. So he is either disingenuous or too inept to operate a blanket.
Petey, your suggestion that false accusations are as prevalent as rape is laughable because the evidence does not agree with you. Your assertion that there are no consequences for falsely accusing another of a crime is also laughable. I refer you to my link to a CPS report from earlier in the thread. There are indeed consequences for lying to the authorities.
As to your statement that the line between rape and consensual sex is blurry (and will remain so) I would point you to those posters. They seem to be an attempt to educate others about what is appropriate, consensual sex and what is not. You are confusing the unexplained with the unexplainable. Even if all the possible factors of what constitutes rape are unclear at this time it’s unreasonable to assume that it will always be so.
Now, by your own admission you have little experience with women and as such I think it’s a leap of faith to assume that asking for consent will ruin the mood as a rule.
As for “a large proportion of women enjoy a certain amount of violence in the bedroom”… I have to ask why you believe that. Again, is that belief based in fact? Or is that an unfounded opinion?
Fuck off, Petey. You’re wrong, go crawl back in your hole.
Almost, but I think you need more double-binds. For example, while you correctly note that “women who don’t want to have kids anger der Fuhrer with their lesbian poopyheaded lack of commitment to the future of the Reich,” you neglect to point out that women who DO want kids are obviously selfish gold-digging poopyheads who just want a piece of that sweet, sweet child support money. After all, proper MRA rhetoric must not allow for any scenario in which a woman could be a non-poopyhead.
“I would suggest” is the new “and that’s real.”
I would suggest that honeydew melons sneeze just as often as humans, given that there are almost no consequences.
http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/research/perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf
My apologies. It was deep in another thread. Here’s the CPS report. Read through it, Petey.
“the most reliable figures put it between 2-8%”
Footnote: the FBI 8% is unfounded reports, not false reports. Yes that includes false reports, but it also includes things like “doesn’t meet the legal definition of rape” (which appears to still be limited to penis in vagina in some places and anal rape not being illegal there might make the claim “unfounded” but it sure doesn’t make it a false report!)
So yeah, it’s less than 10% of reports, definitely, and probably on the lower end of 2-8%.
Which makes it mathematically impossible for it to be as common as rape, cuz hi obvious thing! If 8 out of 100 reports of rape (8%) are unfounded, that means the remaining 92 reports were deemed to be cases where a crime occurred…but of them, less than 10% will see a day in jail (citation)
Since that stat isn’t limited to the 46% that get reported, let’s round to 50% get reported, cuz easy math. So then, out of 100 reports, 6 rapists will go to jail, and, at most, 8 reports will be unfounded (not false, unfounded).
But the bigger problem here is that there are a handful of false reports among the unfounded reports, not that only a handful of ACTUAL FUCKING RAPISTS ever go to jail.
—–
I’m not even going to attempt to tackle how “I’m not comfortable having sex with you when you’re this drunk” robs women of agency. Like, dude, you can say no for whatever reason you want. The flip side of this claim would be that since saying no to women robs them of their agency, any woman asking for sex must be given it, which, um, would make it impossible for women to rape men. You really want to go there?
“the most reliable figures put it between 2-8%”
I don’t believe these figures. I don’t know what the actual figures are–there is too much partisan speculation to get any kind of objective feel for them–but I suspect they are much higher. It only makes sense: I mean consider the relative severity of the two types of crimes. One is an act of severe violence while the other is just a lie. And you will not find a single survey that does not show that a large proportion of women lie constantly.
“The posters show situations where the victim is passed out, or where he or she is physically overpowered. A better analogy might be, what if the salesman threatened to hurt you if you didn’t buy the car? Or what if he found you passed out and forged your signature”
As I’ve already pointed out, the people with this type of mentality will give these posters not the slightest heed. Someone who does such things has already demonstrated a level of amorality that something as banal as a poster will do nothing to disway. So who, then are they directed at? The only logical answer is that they are directed at the rest of us to shame us for being men.
If you disagree and say that the original posters are not offensive, then how can you say that the parodies are offensive? It does not compute: it is a double standard that is all too common in todays feminist dominated society.
You can go on saying that women are not privileged in today’s society. I can give you two examples that serve as a litmus test and set dangerous precedents towards a world completely biased in favour of women. The first is Wimbledon. Women receive the same prize money, even though they need only play 3/5 the amount of tennis and their level of play is at a much lower level. Equal work for equal pay? I don’t think so. The second is partial birth abortion. Induce labour in a pregnant woman and stick a rod through the newborn’s skull and you have just committed murder. Reverse the order of those two actions and it’s “a woman’s right to her own body.” To abort a fetus that would be viable had you not stuck a rod through its skull before inducing labour is murder, pure and simple and we are licensing women to commit murder. Not just of their own children, but elsewhere–women killing their husbands and getting off with nary a slap on the wrist and yes, women killing newborns without consequence.
Wake up people. I will continue to side with the MRAs not because I am a man, but because I believe in what is right. I am sick and tired of being demonized because I am a white man. There is a cruel irony here because it was white men who were primarily responsible for the whole morality of equality, it was white men who granted women the vote and who created anti-discrimination legislation.
I can’t be bothered to tear apart the rest of this idiocy, since I’m sure other people will do a great job of that, but I just had to address this little gem.
As someone who is both a submissive/masochist and a sexual assault survivor, I’m pretty well equipped to answer the question of how BDSM is different from rape. The answer is pretty much exactly the same as the answer to the question “how is a grilled cheese sandwich different from getting hit over the head with a brick?”
What is BDSM other than simulated rape? It’s consensual activity that may or may not be sexual, but is explicitly intended to be fun for everyone involved. It’s a thing all participants do because they enjoy it. It’s a thing that may in some cases involve role-playing non-consent, but suggesting that “blurs” any lines for honest people who aren’t trying to justify rape is like suggesting that it’s really hard to be sure the cast of Grey’s Anatomy can’t REALLY perform heart surgery.
(That’s not, to be clear, to say that rape cannot happen in the context of BDSM – I of all people know that it can – but that suggesting that BDSM is evidence that consent is a fuzzy unclear thing is a giant load of horseshit.)
Pity the poor, oppressed white man who can’t make a logical argument to save his life. Also, the poor, oppressed white male tennis players, who are literally suffering a kind of holocaust, right Petey?
“If a salesman gives you two bottles of vodka before showing you the car”
If he give them to me or forces them on me? Women who get drunk typically do so of their own volition. Again, lets try not to rob women of agency. If they get drunk and do something they regret, it’s nobody’s fault but their own.
“As someone who is both a submissive/masochist and a sexual assault survivor”
Indeed. Sounds like someone has some issues that need to be dealt with seeing as she feels the need to repeat the experience ad nauseum. Very healthy I’m sure…
“Also, I have relatively little experience with women (because it is, after all a minefield–I could get accused of rape) but I know two things: 1. if you constantly ask for permission before proceeding to the next level, you will probably never get laid and 2. a large proportion of women enjoy a certain amount of violence in the bedroom (I know this from personal experience)–what is BDSM than simulated rape?”
I can’t stop laughing. “I have almost no experience but I know most women want this because experience!” I’m going to pretend to take it seriously for a minute, though. Point one, when dudes *ask* for what they want, it’s fucking hot. It’s not a guarantee they will *get* what they want (boundaries and all), but it’s fucking hot when they talk about it. Point two, wow, I know fuck all about BDSM, and even I know your “simulated rape” theory is fucked up. Rape means that the woman has absolutely no say or control. None. BDSM is *consensual* (you might want to look that word up, it seems to be missing from your vernacular).
And, just to head off the inevitable “but rape fantasies JENGA”, in a fantasy, the woman (yeah I’m keeping this gendered) *is in complete control*.
Petey, seriously, the fact that you think a woman could drink two bottles of vodka and still have sex under her own volition makes me very glad that by your own admission you have very little to do with women.
Here, let me slow this down for your tiny brain: The drinking part might be under her own volition. What you seem to want to do to her when she is unconscious would be rape, as she would not be capable of volition in this scenario.
Not raping people is really not difficult or challenging, except for rapists. Any time I meet someone who pretends it is difficult or challenging, I know immediately what camp to put them in. Petey, there’s a good reason you’re afraid of being accused of raping someone, and it has much more to do with you than you are capable of admitting.
“I don’t believe these figures. I don’t know what the actual figures are”
Orly? The rest is TL;DR.
Petey – reading comprehension is your friend. Practice it, it may help make you less of a fool.
If women get drunk and do something they regret, it is nobody’s fault but their own.
If women (or anyone else) get drunk, and somebody rapes them, it is nobody’s fault but the rapist’s.
See, simples.
QFT
It’s like Typhonblue, arguing over on r/mr that juries in rape cases should be allowed to consider evidence that earlier the woman was making out with the dude in a taxicab, so clearly that means she consented to sex. Why all the misters don’t immediately identify typhonblue as a potential rapist and stay far away from her is just astonishing to me.