For a certain subset of horrible men, there are few things more infuriating than the fact that women they find undesirable can turn down men for sex. For this upsets their primitive sense of justice: such women should be so grateful for any male attention, these men think, that turning down even the most boorish of men shouldn’t even be an option for them.
Consider the reactions of some of the regulars on date-rapey pickup guru Roosh V’s forum to the story of Josh and Mary on the dating site Plenty of Fish. One fine December evening, you see, Josh decided to try a little “direct game” on Mary.
That’s what the fellas on Roosh’s forum call it, anyway. The rest of us would call it sexual harassment.
Josh started off by asking Mary if she “wanted to be fuck buddies.” She said “nope,” and the conversation went downhill from there, with Josh sending a series of increasingly explicit comments to Mary, despite getting nothing but negative replies from her.
After eight messages from Josh, with the last one suggesting he would pay her $50 to “come over right now and swallow my load,” Mary turned the tables, noting that she’d been able to deduce his real identity from his PoF profile, and asking him if he wanted her to send screenshots of the chat to his mother and grandmother. He begged her not to.
As you may have already figured out, from the fact that we’re talking about this story in public, Mary did indeed pass along the screenshots, and posted them online.
Poetic justice? Not to the fellas on Roosh’s forum. Because, you see, Mary is … a fat chick.
While dismissing Josh as a “chode” with “atrocious game,” Scorpion saved most of his anger for the harassed woman:
Look how much she relishes not only shooting him down, but damaging his reputation with his own family. She’s positively intoxicated with her power. Simply spitting bad direct game is enough to unleash her vindictive fury.
“Bad direct game.” I’m pretty sure even Clarence Thomas would consider what Josh did sexual harassment.
At any point, she could have pressed a single button and blocked the man from communicating with her, but she didn’t. She didn’t because she enjoys the feeling of power she gets from receiving attention from guys like this and then brutally shooting them down. It makes her feel much hotter and more desirable than she actually is in real life. She’s not there to meet men; she’s there to virtually castrate them for her own amusement.
I’m guessing here, but I’m pretty sure that nowhere in Mary’s profile did she encourage the men of PoF to send her explicit sexual propositions out of the blue. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t hold a gun to Josh’s head and force him to send a half-dozen sexually explicit harassing messages to a woman he didn’t know.
Athlone McGinnis also relies heavily on euphemism when describing Josh’s appalling behavior:
I don’t think its primarily the revenge she’s after, its the validation. She is enjoying the power she has over this guy and wielding it brutally because it shows she can maintain standards despite her weight and the doubtless numerous confidence issues that stem from it. In blowing up this guy for being too direct in his evaluation of her sexuality, she affirms the value of her own sexuality.
Oh, so he was just being “direct in his evaluation of her sexuality.”
In short: “I am wanted, but I have standards and can choose. I have so much agency despite my weight that I can go as far as to punish those who approach me in a way I do not like rather than simply blocking them. I’m teaching them a lesson, because I’m valuable enough to provide such lessons.
So apparently in Mr. McGinnis’ world women who are fat aren’t supposed to have agency? They’re not supposed to be able to choose? They’re supposed to drop their panties to any guy who offers to be their fuck buddy or tells them to “suck my dick?”
Also, I’m a victim bravely standing up against online bullying/harassment-look at me!”
Yeah, actually, she is. Get used to it, guys, because you’re going to see a lot more of this in the future.
This isn’t just a laughing matter for her. She needs to be able to do this in order to feel worthwhile. She has to be able to show that even she is able to maintain standards and doesn’t have to settle for just any old guy asking for any old sexual favor simply because she resembles a beached manatee.
And it’s not a laughing matter for you either, is it? You’re actually angry that a woman said no to a sexual harasser — because you don’t find her attractive. And because Josh — from his picture, a conventionally attractive, non-fat fellow — did.
Mr. McGinnis, may a fat person sit on your dreams, and crush them.
Not to mention that the anti-rape advice ignores that it’s not theft, it’s not taking stuff for money or whatever; it’s an attack on you, on your body, your personhood. You can’t leave those safely locked up when you go out.
Obligatory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv5pjSRSLGQ
I get a 404 error with that page, Howard.
Who’s the new dude in you avatar, btw?
Was it Wanda Sykes and her “detachable pussy” bit? I love that.
It was indeed that particular sketch. Let me try again. (trying to link without actually clicking on the Youtube link myself… tricky) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_7KWGGAbgA
That’s Ryan O’Neal, from the screwball comedy with Barbara Streisand, What’s Up Doc?, from whom I have borrowed the name Howard Bannister.
My nymsake, if you will.
Oh, I see the problem. Firefox isn’t copying the HTTP:// portion of the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_7KWGGAbgA
Infuriating.
Don’t know if anyone remembers this, but Operation: Cookies has been a success, despite the road crew accidentally cutting off my water midway through. My mood has improved somewhat, as well.
Dvärghundspossen: One more to add to your excellent comment:
“Rape-prevention tips” aren’t. That is, they don’t prevent rape. Rather, at best, they redirect the rapist to find an easier target–because that’s how predators operate. They establish the most vulnerable targets they can perceive and go after them. So all you’re really doing with ‘tip’ lists is telling a particular person that they can change the odds of the predator selecting them, as opposed to someone else.
Thing is, these tips have a diminishing rate of return as they become more commonly adopted. Predators rarely, if ever, decide that no available target is suitably undefended, so they’ll just go home. Instead, if a particular defense is so ubiquitous that they cannot escape it, they’ll adapt their approach to work around that particular defense.
Thus, as women became wise to the dangers of letting other people mix your drinks out of sight (because predators would mix them extra-strong, if not slip in a drug), the douchebags developed the ‘ever-full glass’ technique–which occurs in full view of the woman, but in such a way as to be subtle about how much she’s had to drink until it’s too late.
DireSloth: Excellent, and glad to hear it! Hope things continue to look up for you.
Three cheers for cookies and mood improvements!
DireSloth, Glad your cunning plan worked! And you get cookies! 😀
@freemage
The parallel I always found particularly nonsensical was telling women not to wear short skirts, etc. and comparing that to telling people not to show off cash or expensive possessions in a poor neighborhood in order to avoid the attention of muggers. You don’t even have to know that interviews with convicted rapists show that most of them have little to no recollection of what their victim was wearing to see what’s wrong with that analogy, yet people keep on using it even after having the difference explained to them. That’s how pervasive the notion that rapists are just regular guys who lose control of their urges is.
Also a terrible metaphor because if you didn’t flash the money around, they wouldn’t know you even had money, whereas they’re pretty sure you have a vag whether or not you show it off.
I don’t really like the notion that there are literally no useful rape prevention tips for women. I would say that if you look purely at effectiveness, there are a few classes of such advice:
1. advice that’s not useful at all
2. advice that prevents individuals from being targeted
3. advice that saves you after being targeted
Of course there is an important note that all such advice can play into the hands of victim blaming, so you really have to make a cost/benefit analysis.
In any case, looking at those three classes, #1 really has no positive benefits and is purely harmful.
#2 will be proper in some cases, prevention will sometimes only force rapists to pick their secondary target, but sometimes there won’t be one and then there will be less rape. Not all rape might be based purely on opportunity, but certainly some of it will. In those cases, reducing opportunities will be effective prevention.
#3 seems very useful, since it will also deter rapists from attacking women since it will increase the risk factor of getting caught. However, they can still change tactics. Using the example of self-defense training, maybe rapists will now start to carry weapons to more easily overpower victims, increasing violent rape. However, rapists are not some group that come together to theorize about how to best rape people and there really is a limit to how effectively they can adapt their tactics.
This can be generalized from advice to general anti-rape policy.
My main concern with this is that I followed some classes on Security in terms of it being an academic discipline and it’s easy to see rape as something that can be sought to be prevented with security policies. It’s common to see people handwave any advice away as ‘oh they can just change tactics’ or ‘they’ll just pick someone else’, but that’s sloppy thinking from an academic standpoint. And I think that if you leave this sort of thing to professionals with proper training that they can come up with policies that are well thought out in terms of cost vs benefit and that can reduce instances of rape.
I think one of the reasons that claiming that not drinking will reduce instances of rape is so offensive is that it really matters who is saying these things. If some politician claims this to be true then he’s giving inappropriate advice since he should rather address the culture that allows so many women to be raped and that makes them so fearful to trust authorities to follow up on it. It’s patronizing, but that’s also due to his position and the context of the situation. Women don’t need his advice, but I don’t think that means we should stop giving advice altogether. We still teach children about the dangers of alcohol and how it’s important to take alcohol in a safe environment and I don’t think anyone worries about how that’s dangerously patronizing and we should stop doing those things.
@katz
Exactly.
It’s an assumption that needs to die – especially when considering there’s plenty of men who, day in and day out, wouldn’t do such. I doubt most rapists became rapists just because of “urges”, it’s like saying murderers become murderers because people push them to the edge (rather than, y’know, considering the fact they’re either mentally unstable or just a sociopath).
I’m sick of how most of the rape prevention advice I hear puts all the responsibility on the person who was sexually assaulted, while never bothering to consider the perpetrator should bear even though…well, they’re the one who committed the act. Maybe if such advice admonished those who have a lax attitude towards rape and how they’d be punished for doing such – there might be less of it happening than expecting the victims to be on alert 24/7 (given they aren’t fucking psychic and can somehow predict when it will happen).
Every time I hear advice about how to dress, I want to smack the person who gave it and remind them rapists don’t care how their victim is dressed. Even if the victim was wearing thick clothing that covered them almost completely – that’s not going to prevent someone from attempting sexual assault. Same goes with drinking and ignoring the shitty behavior of men when it comes to their drunkenness. So, as far as I can tell, all the advice is “don’t dress up, have fun, or go outside – it’s your fault if you do and it happens…unless you’re a guy, then it’s totally fine. That’s not hypocritical, like, at all…”
I think the best rape prevention advice is “don’t rape people.” Period, full stop.
misery: The strongest rape-prevention advice out there is “Teach rapists that rape is wrong.” There’s a few ways to go about this.
1: Education campaigns, like the “Don’t be that guy” posters from awhile back. They actually seemed to reduce the number of cases where young people (mostly young men), confused about where the ‘consent’ line actually occurs, take a course of action that leads to becoming a rapist without ever actually thinking of themselves as such. It did this by teaching about consent, and by making sure that people understood, “If you aren’t sure if you have consent, you’re taking the chance of waking up and learning that you’re a rapist. Is it really worth it?”
2: Actual enforcement and penalties; supporting victims and pursuing offenders. If education is the carrot approach, this is the stick. Again, it targets the actual source of the problem.
Personal conduct tips to potential victims really don’t help. They might, in areas of universal compliance, lead to a short-term dip in the frequency of rapes, but every bit of evidence we have makes it pretty clear that that’s all it is–look at Islamic countries where all those tips are followed, not by choice, but by actual legal enforcement: prohibitions against being alone with a man, against ‘immodest’ dress, against intoxicants, enforced as a criminal matter against any woman who engages in that activity. And yet, somehow, Islamic nations are not rape-free paradises. Instead, they happen, and happen frequently.
One thing that can be targeted to potential victims is not prevention tips, but rather awareness campaigns about their right to not be assaulted. It’s sad that such a thing is still needed, but they are, and they can be very useful. A woman who has been taught clearly, “Getting drunk is not consent” will be more likely to report the morning after; if she’s in a culture that supports that basic notion, she’ll be more confident in being taken seriously and treated compassionately.
Yeah, I’m pretty jaded about those ‘rape prevention tips’ too. But that’s because I come from a family with child molesters, and because even though we followed those steps religiously, we STILL didn’t make it to adulthood unraped. The only way us or our family members could’ve avoided that rape was to have no familial or romantic relationships whatsoever… and most people would consider that, if not impossible, a miserable way to live.
Also, hey, katz and perchta! We Are The Revolution won the bonus sketch poll!
It’s still putting the onus on victims, not on changing the culture, on changing bystander behaviour, on changing the default acceptance of rape as just “something that happens if you’re not careful” like it was an avalanche or something.
Also I found the line “sloppy thinking from an academic standpoint” REALLY offensive. This isn’t some hypothetical or mind game or abstruse academic problem.It’s real people’s lives.
The only causal factor of rape is being unlucky enough to be in the presence of a rapist.
I think it a pretty standard way of thinking in the US that “you can’t do anything about a criminal’s actions.” You hear it all the time in gun legislation battles; if you make guns illegal, the only people who’ll have guns are criminals! Basically, it’s just a known fact that criminals will do what they do no matter what, and there is nothing you can do to change this.
I feel like something about this encourages people to act in a way so that, as long as they don’t get caught, they get rewarded for bad behavior…
“Rape prevention” tips aimed at women follow the same pattern. Rapists will do what they do; literally the only thing you can do is try to make sure they don’t do it to you (and cue the bad and misleading advice as well as the “welp, don’t go to parties or drink” stuff). But of course, rapists can be taught not to rape, because most rapes are the result of not know what rape is, or that rape is a permissable thing to do to get laid.
No it’s not. These kind of rape prevention suggestions happen in the context of reducing the number of rapes, yet if a rapist just picks another victim or changes tactics, the number of rapes isn’t reduced.
Yeah, I uh really don’t give a fuck how “academic” it sounds or not. In addition to putting the onus on the victim, none of the advice actually works all the time, and you have no way of knowing which advice is going to work and when.
I could dye my hair blonde tomorrow and it might keep me safe from rapists who specifically fetishize brunettes. On the other hand, it won’t save me from one who doesn’t care, and might make me the victim of one who prefers blondes. I could stay in my apartment tomorrow and be safe from any rapist who selects victims on the street or at the coffee shop, but I’ll be screwed if there’s a rapist around who’s good at breaking into apartments and chooses mine.
Fact of the matter is, none of these scenarios happen often enough for me to change my behaviour to avoid them. But because sexual assault can come in many different scenarios, I have been sexually assaulted multiple times in my life. I can’t exactly have been not a child incapable of protecting herself. I’m not a mind-reader, so I couldn’t have known one of my friends was going to assault me. I suppose I could have not gone to my best friend’s party, but that would have been shitty since I had no prior reason not to. I could have not used public transport, too, but then I couldn’t get to work.
You can call it not academic, you can say we handwave “advice” off, but in the lived experiences of a lot of us, this shit just doesn’t work. As others have said, it just redirects.