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.
Of course.
And if she finds she can’t control herself when she’s under anaesthesia, and wakes up to find her anaesthesiologist fucking her, then maybe she shouldn’t see a medical professional.
And if she finds she doesn’t make good decisions about who to allow into her room when she’s too mentally disabled to live on her own, then maybe she shouldn’t have become mentally disabled.
And if she finds she can’t physically fight off an attacker because she has CF, then maybe she should have avoided inheriting those genes.
Fuck off.
If you aren’t a rapist Petey: Why are you trying to justify rape? Why do you actively try to blur the line of consent? (stupidly) etc. If you weren’t a rapist clear boundaries, understanding and cutting down justifications would be in your best interest as it would minimize the chance of false accusations. So you are either at least a wannabe rapist or too moronic (probably because of wounded sense of privilege) to understand what’s good for you.
1) has anyone emailed the dark lord about Mr. Justifying rape
2) “Show me these surveys that show women lie constantly, please. You made the claim; back it up.”
I seem to recall that study…the one that said most people admit to having told some sort of lie…including shit like “sorry, I’m too busy to come [to that thing I could come to if I actually wanted to, which I don’t]”
Why?
That isn’t a glib question, it’s an actual question I ask you and I would love for you to answer. Why, in this specific case, is the incident the woman’s fault? For what other reason than some lingering bias against women and their actions can you really say that this is the case?
Let’s review.
In your conjecture, she’s too drunk to consent. She can’t remember what happened. Did she consent? Was she raped? What happened last night? She doesn’t know, it’s a black out incident. If anything awry went down, you say, it’s her own fault.
Why?
What about the man she was with? What part, if any, of the fault of any actions fall to him? Remember, it takes two people to do any mutually consenting action. I’m not claiming that she did not forget she slept with someone – I’ve woken up drunk next to someone myself, I know it happens – I’m asking you, why is it her fault and her fault alone?
Because the men always say yes, and go for sex? So it can’t be their fault?
Because a man will jump on anyone, at any time, because it’s Just The Way He Is, so it’s someone else fault? They shouldn’t be offering a target?
Of the two people involved in this activity, you place blame 100 % on one of them, and the one who has the most to lose in that case, even. Because it”s not a case of “Slept with a broad”, “didn’t sleep with a broad”, it’s a case of “was raped against ones will”, “had mutually consenting sex”.
That’s the root of your gatekeeper mentality, the idea that women control sex, that men will always go for things if offered, that if you don’t want something bad to happen to you you need to Act Responsibly. Congratulations! You’ve made an action of two people into a natural reaction of two chemicals! You’ve turned an activity between two sapient creatures into nothing more than an indifferent law of reality. You get drunk, you get laid, it’s your fault. Not the guy you got laid with. Not the person who raped you. Not the person who pressed you against the bar and fucked you. No no, your own fault, because, hey, rape happens. It’s a natural force, not an event.
Petey?
… Nope. Fuck that.You are incorrect.
The blame lies with the person committing the deed, as it always does.
No more, no less. Try again.
Petey,
A) LMAO, partial birth abortions are not legal in Canada. They aren’t illegal, but they aren’t explicitly legal either. And they’re impossible to get in Canada, you have to go down to the States to find any doctors who are trained to do them. The reason why abortion up until the moment of birth isn’t illegal is for logistics reasons – if you give two people rights, and their interests conflict, it’s impossible to deal with an emergency where either might die, because you have to convene an ethical committee to decide who gets to live. Prioritizing the rights of the mother over the “rights” of the fetus is based on being able to deal with emergencies in a timely fashion without a conflict of interest. I work in obstetrics, so fuck off if you make any more claims about it without solid evidence to back that shit up.
B) Why do you think that people [read:women] lie just for the heck of it?
Where is your evidence suggesting that false reports are so much higher?
Why do you think that??
Why do you think/where is your evidence to suggest that women lie in large numbers?
C) BDSM is consensual sex of a certain nature, similar to having oral sex, or anal sex, if anything in it is forced on you, it ceases to be sex and turns into rape.
D) Women who drink: [sighs, I can’t leave this one alone]
A few disjointed thoughts on the matter:
If you got yourself plastered, and went out and walked on the edge of the road and someone ran you over with their car, is it your fault that they ran you over? If they are drunk themselves, does that mean they are absolved of running you over?
Your statement about whether a woman is drunk and has sex and a man is drunk is poorly phrased. This is how it should go: If a woman is too drunk to consent and someone has has sex with her, is she raped? If a man is too drunk to consent and someone has sex with him, is he raped? The answer in both cases is an EMPHATIC yes! Yes they are! The person initiating the sexual encounter is the one who has to ensure the person they are trying to have sex with is not too drunk to consent and is consenting. If the person initiating the encounter is even the slightest bit uncertain whether both those things are happening, they should assume the answer to either is no. If anyone is too drunk to consent, and yet still fucking throwing themselves at you when you’ve initiated an encounter, and you can tell they are too drunk to consent, you probably shouldn’t have sex with them. Which is worse: Missing out on potentially consensual sex? Or becoming a fucking rapist and raping someone?
Additionally, (re: “Remember: you are feminists. You are searching for equality, or so you claim.”) no one here is going to tell you that if someone has sex with a man and he is too drunk to consent to it it’s not rape. Sorry to burst that “Gotcha!” bubble there – we do believe you can rape a man and we do hold the same standard to women. Just because we recognize it doesn’t happen as often, doesn’t mean we’re claiming it never happens.
Plus, after any kind of incident like this, how are you going to prove anything?
Proving something, something being shown to be true under the law, is not the same as something being morally repugnant. Many cases of rape are not provable, for many different reasons. It’s still rape, and it’s still horrific. The posters are designed to make those cases of rape easier to prove by providing clear understandings of what constitutes consent. Let’s not make it easier for rapists to get away with raping people, shall we?
I notice you didn’t respond to my charge about the posters empowering bystanders to interfere either, presumably because you can’t really say shit about it.
E) If, as you claim, you have no evidence to back up your piss-poor thoughts on rape stats, then why are you so certain about them? Are you basing that on “common sense” ideas? Are you basing it on what you would do if you thought you could get away with it? Are you basing it on what you want to be true?
Maybe, and this is just a thought, you should withhold judgement on something until there is evidence for it? And once that evidence has been provided, which I see people have provided upthread but I can certainly add to/link again if you want, you should take that evidence as the evidence that it is? If this is not your direction, why not? What would it take to convince you that this evidence we’ve provided is true? (No seriously, I’m asking, what would it take?)
F) Why are you here? Why are you arguing when you dismiss evidence and make unsubstantiated claims? What is the purpose of your visit to our site today and why do you desire to argue with us about it?
If you’re serious about this conversation, answer my questions as well as dismissing my charges. I suspect you can’t answer them in a consistent, coherent, and valid manner, because the answer to them all is Feminism.
If you’re not serious about this conversation, please, feel free to fuck off.
@Argenti, I totally believe that. I really doubt that there exist many people who have never lied. It’s not a gendered thing, though…*people* lie, not just women.
@GNL, feminists talk about what consent looks like all the damn time. If you haven’t seen it, then you haven’t been paying attention.
GNL
Uh. Yeah? Only Yes means Yes has been a campaign for a while. Feminists came up with the slogan. There are posters. The reason why it’s primarily directed at men is because men are the large majority of rapists, of all genders. As far as I know, there are a few gender neutral ones, and there are many directed at LGBT relationships as well. The problem is that people are still saying, “Oh, but I thought this other thing here was basically the same thing” and what we’re saying is, “no, they aren’t the same thing, consent has to be given, it’s not automatic unless revoked. Only yes means yes.” It’s not us making this into a complicated issue, or trying to find ways around that by saying “Oh, but what about this hypothetical scenario???”.
Also, holy fuck, I just realized how long my other comment was, sorry >.<
Petey, I’ve had sex many thousands of times. There was not one single instance, across the entire quarter-century that I’ve been sexually active, when I wasn’t absolutely certain that enthusiastic consent had been given by both parties.
If you regard your partner as a fellow human being from the outset, this really, really shouldn’t be hard to tell.
“I suspect they are much higher.”
Based on what evidence?
Here’s a study which deals with false rape accusation.
Kelly, L., Lovett, J. & Regan, L., 2005, “A gap or chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases.”
That study places false accusations at 8%. Please point out why this particular study is not valid or why we should disregard the results. I would love to hear your reasons.
@SittieKitty
This lack of clear definition seems to align with fact that some people still get it confused and end up raping someone without consciously intending to.
I really need to get better at block quotes.
GNL, first get better at being a decent human being, then get better at constructing a logical argument, then worry about the blockquotes. Priorities, dude.
Just to be very clear. There is some simulated rape in BDSM, but it is a small subset. Plus, even simulated rape scenes are difficult to be too fearful of, what with all the unintentional laughter, grins, and spacey-goofy smiles.
I have scenes and demos where I continually ask for consent and I have no problem getting people to continue with a scene. I don’t always get to do the things I want to do, but I still get to have a lot of fun. More than just that though, I make sure not to pressure people into a scene. I don’t withhold affection, companionship, or other types of scenes to get the scene I want. I have lots of fun with the negotiated scene. People see this and I get more people who want to play with me.
Oh yeah, my scenes don’t typically involve penetration. In fact, a lot of BDSM includes the whole body as an erogenous zone, the most erogenous zone being between the ears. I get to play with people who are or are not partnered. It’s been a wonderful experience.
I sincerely hope the Petey here is not in the BDSM scene. There are already too many assholes who do what they want to do to women and call it BDSM. A lot of bottoms, who are men AND women AND various genders, enjoy the feeling of fulfilled trust from BDSM. As a top, I get the lovely feelings of people willing to trust me and who enjoy the things I want to do. A mutually enjoyable event is the goal, not one person fulfilling something through another person without consent. I get a charge out of the bottom enjoying what I do, a lack of consent would ruin the scene for me as well.
I ramble, TLDR: Fuck Petey for not understanding BDSM. Consent makes it hotter.
GNL, there isn’t any male bashing hate speech in that poster campaign. It’s saying that what you think is consent is not consent. It empowers bystanders to speak up against predatory behaviour by giving them language to do so that abides by social contracts (ie: “Don’t be that guy” is less likely to cause a very violent/angry/defensive reaction than “Hey, you’re acting kinda rapey”). It empowers bystanders to get involved by creating a narrative external to the two players.
And I’d like to point out, much of the “You’re doing consent wrong” rhetoric on here is because a) Only yes means yes is pretty straightforward and people who come to troll tend to focus instead on “But she didn’t say no and b) the rhetoric has been reframed by the MRM as being about how “talking ruins sexytimes!”, or exploded to a hyperbolic “Oh, so I have to get a notary public!” level of ridiculousness. Much of the backlash against people saying something as simple as “Only yes means yes, you should always ask” takes one of those two forms and is often, sadly, used to reframe the argument by saying that somehow, asking a partner if they like what you’re doing and/or want to do something more “ruins” the moment and somehow flips a switch from “Yes, we’re having sex, I’m turned on” to “OMG YOU ASKED ME A QUESTION GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME RIGHT NOW I’M NOT GOING TO SLEEP WITH YOU WTF WTF WTF”. It’s a really weird thing, but unsurprisingly, very common.
[random and mostly inarticulate cursing, blasphemy and general vulgarity]
Okay, now that that is out of my system. GNL, what the fuck are you on about?
If your sole aim in having explicit guidelines for consent is knowing when you are justified in telling someone to “quit bitching” then may I offer you a heaping bowl of ‘fuck off you rape apologist fuckwad,” because you seem to have failed basic humanity.
Consent is agreement, and that’s the definition feminists use. If someone agreed to have sex for whatever reason, ze consented. If not, then ze did not consent. No ambiguity whatsoever.
Since most people have an idea of what consent looks like in some situations, it follows that we need to focus on what consent isn’t because of the rife attitude regarding victims who don’t express their non-consent through fighting back, saying no, etc.
Finally, I’ve read enough of your writing to know with confidence that you don’t know shit about what constitutes male-bashing. Bashing rapists is not bashing men, and you know that.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t read any recent feminist literature or heard about recent feminist attitudes towards consent.
Also, here’s a fluffy Pallas cat:
See, Petey, THIS is why you’re a total fucking failure that no one needs to take seriously.
Why don’t you and GNL fuck off and be terribly humans together somewhere else.
Yeah, but when you’re a rape apologizing fuckwad, it makes dudes uncomfortable, because who knows what kind of sketchy shit they’ve done. Hence GNL and Petey’s freakouts over consent.
Just noticed this:
Uh, you do know that consent can be withdrawn right? Consent can be withdrawn at any time by either person and its withdrawal should be respected. This isn’t to say that you can withdraw consent retroactively (and the converse is also true, consenting retroactively still means that the actions was done on an unwilling body). But you can withdraw consent after you’ve given it.
Oh, and the “Only yes means yes” thing might be confusing to you. It’s an enthusiastic yes. It can’t be a yes because the person is scared of what might happen if they said no, and it can’t be a yes that’s given because they’ve been so gaslit and browbeaten that they feel their only option is to say yes.
“Feminists dance around what is consent all the time. Almost never is there a clear enough definition to tell someone “Quit your bitching, you consented” based on the definition.”
Uhh…guys?
I think he’s whining that women can retract consent once given.
OMG Ally, it’s like a bear crossed with a lemur crossed with a kitty. So fucking cute.
Seriously, this. Consent has many forms and varieties. A poster series trying to capture the full range of what consent could look like would be almost infinite.
Despite the obfuscation of rapists, apologists and their enablers, lack of consent is relatively simple. Is some factor of force (physical, emotional, economic, legal, chemical, etc.) being applied to compel someone to submit to sexual activity when they would otherwise choose not to? Simple, there is no consent and the act is rape.
Physical restraint? Shaming and manipulation? Threat of reprisal or retaliation? Drunk or drugged to a stupor? No consent. It doesn’t matter what the gender of either person is (no, it’s nowhere near as prevalent but women can and do rape). If they are not free and able to walk away (at any moment – consent absofuckinglutely CAN be revoked) without consequences, then the act is rape.
Hey, Petey, if you think that the behavior modeled on any one of those posters is perfectly okay by you, then you SHOULD be ashamed. Decent human beings, when informed that something they may have been doing, however unintentionally, is harming or offending or upsetting other people, respond by adapting their behavior to behave with decency and respect for others.
This can sometimes be a painful and embarrassing process. We all experience some degree of privilege and most of us have, at one point or another, had to come to grips with the way our behavior has been considered insensitive or hurtful, even if we never intended for it to be. An adult human being, when informed that they are acting in a way that hurts other people, amends their behavior.
Only predators and petulant children insist that their own desires and feelings are more important than causing pain to others. Which are you?
Jinx