Some commenters here have started discussing the Ariel Castro sentencing — and the remarkable, delusional, self-pitying, victim-blaming statement he made before being sentenced — in the Minter Meltdown thread. Because so much of what he said — and so many of the issues raised — are potentially triggering, I thought it would be good to open up a separate thread for this.
Here’s a piece at the Daily Beast with some of the most astounding quotes from Castro’s statement today.
Consider this whole thread to have a TRIGGER WARNING on it for discussions of Castro’s rape apologias and victim blaming.
Hey, auggziliary, have you tried making sourdough pancakes and waffles? I switched to sourdough a while back, and it makes all bread products more flavorful without a lot of salt and sugar. And when I do need to add sugar (as with pancake batter), substituting honey works just fine.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIGH OH DEAR LORD WHY DID I CLICK THAT LINK
HELP ME GET MY SKULL OPEN SO I CAN POUR THIS CLOROX IN
Industrial strength brain bleach, coming up!
…
wha…..?
They probably do know that, but what “asking for it” means, fundamentally, is that the person saying it believes their desires trump everyone else’s. There are a million ways to be “asking for” something, and those are always in the eye of the beholder. What it means is they want something and you do not get to say no. Everything else is malleable, irrelevant. The key, the core, is denial of agency.
Rapists, of course, do this as a matter of course, it is an attitude embedded in their approach to the world. They want, and it doesn’t matter what they want, what matters is that no one is permitted, in their eyes, to say no to them. Rape apologists, on some level (either conscious or not) agree with rapists that autonomy and agency can be revoked at the will or whim of the aggressor. Some of these individuals believe this because they agree that the person whose agency is being denied has a lesser claim for that agency because of race or gender or sexual orientation or, or, or, etc. Some believe it because it insulates them and allows them to offset their own fear by believing that there is some magic formula to agency: behave properly and your integrity and agency will be assured.
Sadly, these people don’t understand that once they accept the framing of agency as contingent, they in fact are forfeiting their own agency, because they have accepted the bedrock correlate of that assertion; that the ‘privilege’ of agency is maintained by the aggressor, not the individual being acted upon.
In other words, once you accept that “she was asking for it”, you are implicitly accepting that you, too, can/will be seen as “asking for it” based on the assumptions and biases of a potential future aggressor.
Integrity and agency are an absolute property, either you and you alone possess the right of autonomy, agency and integrity (which can only be revoked in the most extreme circumstances, such as after the commission of a crime where the severity of that crime determines how long you lose the right to determine the course and details of your life, and even then the respect for agency requires that some minimum level be retained by the individual, so that rape, or medical testing, or torture, etc. is out of bounds) or it’s a free for all, because there is always someone willing to make a claim against your own agency based on their ideological biases.
Ugh, sorry about that blather. It didn’t seem that loooooooooooooooooong when I was typing, but I’m on my second day of no sleep (or is that third day, since it’s two nights of no sleep, but there was that first day before the night I didn’t sleep…) and self control, I does not has much of it.
*snorgles kitty*
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
Apparently tumblr dude is actually tumblr dudette. Which only makes it more boggling to me.
She’s trying to persuade me that my experiences of being trans obviously should make me understand the deep emotional harm being perpetrated on the male gender by pretty boys in fandom.
I… I really have no idea what she’s nattering on about. Something about how drawing boobs=feminine so that’s totally natural, but drawing femme GUYS is totally unnatural and therefore the entire male gender is being shamed and overborne by the immense tide of bishounen.
I mentioned the Greeks, the Romans, Tom of Finland, and two webcomics I read that involves men kissing. She told me that was the minority, and that she got her assfax from 16 years in fandom, okay, on sites like DA and LJ. I dunno, apparently the classics don’t count because they were all made by men. Or something.
Um, I will admit to admiring my share of breasts that have been lovingly rendered by male hands, as well as by female hands; and a fair number that have not prospered for it, as well.
Honestly, I thought it was a truism that it’s guys who have nips on the brain. Maybe I’m misunderstanding. Does she think it’s harmful for women to draw prettyboys?
It absolutely does, you just start with whole wheat flour when developing the starter.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/05/creating-your-own-sourdough-starter-the-path-to-great-bread/
Once you have a good colony of starter, you park it in the back of the fridge, feed it once per week, and make as much bread as you want by feeding up a bit of starter for your intended recipe: take out a half cup of starter, add a half cup of flour and water, mix really well and let it sit for 12 to 18 hours. Then, measure what you have and add water and flour in equal parts to double it (is this totally unclear? If you have 100g of starter from your first feeding, mix roughly 50g each of water and flour and add this to the starter). Repeat at least three times or until you have enough for the recipe you want to make.
My favorite bread recipe is super simple:
2 1/2 cup starter
3 1/2 cup flour
1 to 1 1/2 cup water at about 110 to 115 degrees (make the dough nice and wet, you can kneed in more flour as necessary)
1 to 1 1/2 tsp salt
Dump it all (go easy on the water at first) in the bowl of a mixer and use a dough hook to really work the dough until it’s nice and stretchy and all in one neat ball. If you don’t have a stand mixer, add more water, stir as long as you can and then keep kneading until it’s soft and smooth and the gluten has developed. If you use the mixer, you only need about five to ten minutes to get to that stage; without, you might need up to half an hour.
Divide in two loaves, put in greased baking pans, slash the top and cover with a damp woven cloth to let it rise till it’s about doubled (2 to 8 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen – experiment a little and you’ll hit on the right ratio for your conditions) then bake at 400*F until crusty brown outside and 210*F inside (about 40 minutes in my oven).
Make sure you have a good, stout stick to beat people off with, because the smell will bring hoards of hopeful nibblers flocking for a slice.
‘Cause if she thinks it’s bad for women to draw prettyboys nobody tell her about CLAMP.
LBT, can you link to the Tumblr discussion if you don’t mind (assuming that it’s public)? That’s just bizarre.
@LBT, I wouldn’t mind reading that thread either. It sounds mind-boggling. I mean, with all the hyper-masculine portrayals of men in media, wouldn’t portrayals of femme guys actually be a good thing?
@augg, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about why property crime analogies to rape fail (in addition to the obvious odiousness of comparing a woman to a piece of property). A mugger or a car thief or a burglar usually commits their crimes for material gain primarily, with the thrill of it as a secondary thing. If a rapist was really just interested in getting off, he could masturbate or find a willing partner. The crime itself is the motivation, not simply a means to an end.
Eh, joyriding is way less horrible than rape, so the “doing it for the thrill” doesn’t quite work. Doing it for the thrill of using another person?
I always found the worst “rape as property crime” analogy to be “Wearing a short skirt is like flashing a fat wallet in a bad neighborhood.” First of all, “bad neighborhood” always implies “ghetto,” so right off the bat you’ve got racism and classism on top of the sexism. Second, the reason it would be foolish to show off your wallet with likely muggers around is that it tips them off that you have something they want. But as soon as a rapist sees a woman, he knows she has something he wants. It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing as long as she’s visibly female.
RE: Ally
The discussion is here, here, and here.
RE: Falconer
Maybe I’m misunderstanding. Does she think it’s harmful for women to draw prettyboys?
I DON’T KNOOOOW. *sobs* She seems to think that fantasizing about boobalicious girls means fantasizing about femme girls, which is good, but fantasizing about femme guys is bad, and hurts all the poor butch men who feel unattractive and I DON’T KNOW. Maybe you can get more out of it than I did.
RE: Karalora
Also, it completely ignores that the vast majority of rapes are committed by someone the person KNOWS. It’s not like walking into a neighborhood and flashing a wallet, it’s like someone getting close to a person WITH THE INTENT of robbing them.
Also, you know, if I rob a dude, I can use that money for something. If I rape a dude, there is no practical gain for me. I ain’t going to pay the rent in Rapebucks.
There are so many differences between the anti-rape advice women get and other kinds of advice on how to reduce the risk of crime…
1. Women are asked to redirect their ENTIRE LIVES and constantly, forever, think about the risk of getting raped. Whereas putting your wallet in your front pocket rather than back pocket or locking your car is just momentary, simple actions that you don’t have to constantly perform.
2. Advice of not showing your valuable stuff is very much not analogous to not showing legs/cleavage. If you don’t show your valuable stuff, thieves might not guess that you have valuable stuff, whereas rapists know you’ve got a hole they can stick their dick into even if you dress in a burqa.
3. Most advice on how to reduce the risk for other kinds of crimes is usually pretty sensible. Although I haven’t seen any statistics, I bet that people who put their wallet in their front pocket really do run less of a risk of getting it stolen compared to people who have it sticking up from their back pocket, simply because taking a wallet out of a back pocket is easier. However, the only so-called anti rape advice that I imagine may have any effect whatsoever is the “don’t get too drunk”, since being super drunk increases your risk for pretty much everything. But the idea that a woman would run a higher risk in a short skirt, that’s really just based on the assumption that men rape because their libido becomes uncontrollable when they see too much female leg, and that’s just not true. Overall, all anti rape advice is based on the idea of stranger danger, whereas we know that most rapes are committed by men you know.
4. Finally, if someone carries zir wallet sticking up from zir back pocket and a pick pocket steals it, people may blame the victim for being so sloppy, but nobody would suggest that zie actually wanted to give zir money away. And there has to be some really obvious sloppiness for victim blaming to kick in – people don’t desperately look for reasons to blame the victim regarding other kinds of crime.
So overall – anti rape advice and other anti crime advice are VERY different from each other, and that’s why people who go “Why is it wrong to tell women how to reduce the risk of rape? We do tell people how to reduce the risk of other crimes!” are idiots.
Ninjad!
So…her basic argument is that masculine and non-feminine depictions of men aren’t prevalent enough.
Whut
Off-topic: Can’t I go ONE DAY without someone joking about killing an animal? Trigger warning if you love animals.
Excuse me, I’m going to smash ALL THE THINGS. And email Slate’s editorial staff.
Yeah, I don’t get it.
I think (and I’m throwing this out there as a prompt more than as something I’ve throught through very carefully, so I welcome thoughts about it) it’s fine to have masculine “lumberjack” types (Hugh Jackman as Wolverine) alongside more lean, lythe athletic types (Clive Owen, Bradley Cooper), and even alongside younger, “teen idol” types (Zac Efron, Ryan Gosling for a while) and older, more mature men (Harrison Ford, Hugh OMG Laurie), the same way I think it’s fine and dandy to have non white men (Mekhi Phifer, Naveen Andrews, Denzel Washington, Daniel Dae Kim, Javier Bardem, and, and, and…) and those with non-idealized physiques (John Goodman, James Gandofini, Philip Seymour Hoffman) represented as sexy and sexual beings alongside many others.
The problem is not necessarily with any particular depiction, but when one and only one body shape/physical profile/skin color is considered acceptable. The boobs problem in comic art, for me, is the fact that all the women look alike. Young, old (unless it’s Aunt May, of course, who isn’t supposed to be seen as anything but part of the set decoration), ethnic background, what have you, it’s all Barbie in body paint.
I think everyone should be able to see people who look like themselves portrayed in the media as, you know, people. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes confident and on top of the world, sometimes awkward and insecure, always entitled to feel happy and comfortable in their own skins and free to explore (or you know, not) the sensual and sexual possiblities of their bodies.
Is your interlocutor suggesting that, for the sake of the “fragile egos” (as zie seems to be constructing them) of more ‘masculine’ (always the caveat that masculine and femininte characteristics are the cultural interpretations of physiology, not the physiology itself) looking men, those men with more ‘feminine’ bodies should hide away in shame? Should people who find more ‘feminine’ body styles attractive force themselves to reject what they desire in favor or what culture and society tells them they are permitted to be attracted to?
This seems to me like a classic “free speech” problem in which the answer is not censorship of one particular approach but the enlargement of the debate to encompass many, many more perspectives and possiblilities.
I wonder what she thinks of Armstrong from FMA, a muscular manly man… who sparkles.
So, I know I’m always the one beating this particular drum, but what about the femmey or androgynous guys? They exist, and irl they take a lot of shit (and, sadly, often physical abuse from other guys). Don’t they deserve a self-esteem boost too?
LBT’s new friend seems to be arguing that her pet subculture should be required to support gender norms, which, um, no, that’s not how that works. And if it’s manga-style art that she’s expecting that from, lol, talk about trying to roll a boulder uphill.
But, to expand, I think this is why this argument exists. Because all you need to create manga is imagination and a pen/pencil (ie the barriers to entry are very low), and a lot of women create manga, what you end up with is probably a more representative sample of what women as a group (or at least a certain group of women) prefer in men than you’d get from the mainstream media, which is mostly controlled and produced by men and thus feeds every a bunch of men’s ideas about what they think women should find attractive. So in a lot of way the existence of bishounen stuff really is subversive (in the West – in parts of Asia not nearly so much, since their mainstream media produces lots of similar imagery).
Basically what bothers some people about the prevalence of bishi imagery is that it indicates that what’s assumed to be most attractive to women may not actually be what’s most attractive to women, and that a lot of women seem to be attracted to stuff that doesn’t really align well with traditional ideas about masculinity. Which if you’re a person who’s desperately clinging to a simplistic understanding of gender can be kind of threatening. At least that’s the impression I always get from these arguments.
And then there are the guys who’re just pissed off to realize that they don’t meet the idealized standard and that only a few people ever will, in which case all I have to say is welcome to the world that women already live in, dudes.