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antifeminism mansplaining men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny MRA oppressed men playing the victim rape rape culture

James Taranto of the WSJ: Drunk women who are raped may be as guilty as their rapists

James Taranto, saying something annoying
James Taranto, saying something terrible

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto is probably the closest thing to an authentic Men’s Rights Activist there is operating in the mainstream media today, by which I mean he regularly puts forth “arguments” on gender issues that are breathtaking in their backwardness.

His latest, er, contribution to the gender debate? A column in which he suggested that drunk women who are raped on college campuses by drunk men are as guilty as their rapists. No, really. Here’s his argument, such as it is:

If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn’t determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver’s sex. But when two drunken college students “collide,” the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him.

Huh. I’m pretty sure we determine the victim of a rape not on demographics but based on WHICH PERSON RAPED THE OTHER PERSON. Much in the way we would charge a drunken person who shot another drunken person with shooting that person, rather than simply throwing up our hands and saying, well, they were both drunk, so no harm no foul, right?

For a longer take on the issue, check out this piece over on Media Matters.

Media Matters has also assembled a nice, and mercifully rather brief, media montage of some of Taranto’s other pronouncements on gender issues. See if you can make it to the end without pulling out all of your hair.

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titianblue
titianblue
10 years ago

Had she awakened the next day feeling regretful and violated

Oh, because she felt regretful, felt violated. Her silly little fees-fees. Not because, you know, she had been raped!

she could have brought him up on charges and severely disrupted his life.

OMG, we must all think of the rapist’s disrupted life . Because noone ever does that, at the expense of the rape victim. Sorry – Steubenville? Never heard of it. /sarcasm

titianblue
titianblue
10 years ago

By way of brain bleach, witchy kitty is enjoying the calm after the storm

http://instagram.com/p/kW5I9AF-wo/

xfire
xfire
10 years ago

Oh good yet another cis gendered white man using his status to talk about how “WE REALLY ARE THE MOST OPPRESSED SERIOUSLY!” Because we don’t have enough of those already. Just keep on dragging the rest of us cis white dudes down with you. You repugnant asshole.

If anyone needs me I’ll be over here head butting the wall.

Sorry I know there a bigger issues at work here but this kind of bullshit gets to me so much.

Skye
Skye
10 years ago

The sad thing is the Onion did a bit on how a rapist refused to be defined by his raping someone & it wasn’t that different from what some people actually believe & say with complete sincerity. This guy would probably think that was a real story (if he didn’t notice it was the Onion)

leftwingfox
10 years ago

Taranto is the only person I ever tweet shouted at. He’d mocked an article about the lack of gender diversity on an ethics panel because it pales in comparison to FGM and foot-binding.

maria serena
maria serena
10 years ago

if you’re drunk and don’t drive you’re not guilty at all….when a drunk woman gets raped is the same:she doesn’t drive,but the guy ‘s taking his car and decides to crash her….grandissimo idiota di merda!

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

I hate this narrative that there are all these multitudes of false rape accusations happening. Because the shame of having an ill advised consensual one night stand is so great that it’s just so much easier to go to the hospital and get an invasive rape kit, file a police report and be interrogated about what happened, have every body you know (and possibly the media)debate whether you were asking for it and testify at court where you have to relive the event yet again and look the person you are accusing in the eye.
Yep. It’s much easier to file a false rape charge than it is to just move on with your life and forget the bad sex occurred.

Why can’t MRAs ever grasp the concept that it’s no picnic to report a rape and pursue charges against a rapist? Women don’t pursue rape charges as a fun hobby!

Bina
Bina
10 years ago

Matt Martel [was on] a taxi ride home with a friend and a very drunk woman they’d met at a UMass party. “The two of them were touching, cuddling, it was obvious she was down for whatever,” says Mr. Martel, a junior. “She’d lost her inhibitions to the point that it really seemed like a good idea for her to go home with this guy she hardly knew.”

Oh, shame on you, Matt, you cock-blocker, you! She was so bombed that a bad idea seemed good! That means it was okay! How dare you get in the way of that?

Mr. Martel got between them to take her back to her dorm. “I said, ‘Dude, come on, she’s hammered,’ ” he recalls. His friend was angry. “It was outright awkward,” Mr. Martel says. The next day the girl thanked him, but Mr. Martel didn’t take a lot of pleasure from it. “I could tell she didn’t remember what she was thanking me for,” he says, “but someone told her she should, so she did.”

“Someone told her she should”? Yeah, someone who cared about her well-being. How dare women look out for each other when one is incapacitated? And how dare men do the same for women? No one’s ever gonna get laid at that rate! How could she thank you for being a cock-blocker? Dude, that’s so fucked up.

The question arises here: Whom exactly did Martel save from danger? The answer is quite possibly both the young woman and his friend. Had she awakened the next day feeling regretful and violated, she could have brought him up on charges and severely disrupted his life. Both of them were taking foolish risks, and it seems likely that he as well as she had impaired judgment owing to excessive drinking.

Oh yeah, because HE’s the only one whose life gets ruined if drunken date rape happens. And if she gets depressed, loses her job, can’t finish school, tries to kill herself, etc., she’s just a crazy bitch, that’s all. She’ll deserve whatever bad things happen because she’s a slut who’s “down for whatever” while drunk. And her suffering won’t have anything to do with what he did to her. Nope, nope, nope.

The logic of male privilege, folks.

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

If MRAs (and I’m counted Taranto, whether he identifies as one or not) were so concerned about men being charged with rape, they would advocate for better sex ed that teaches you people what is and is not consent so people don’t think it’s OK to force yourself on a drunk person.

It’s pretty clear they just want men to be able women with impunity.

Let’s not pretend like they care about male victims either. They don’t notice those who were victimized by other men. They just want to dig up instances of woman rapists to “prove” that women are evil rapists and there is no misogynistic rape culture.

Not that I’m saying anything you all don’t already know. This stuff just makes me rage so much!

cloudiah
10 years ago

It’s so worth it to watch the end of that clip, by the way. So worth it.

And actually, the part where he refers to himself as Tarantosaurus Sex, also cringe-worthy.

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

RE: Lili Fugit

The last thing I read on the WSJ was a screed explaining that poverty is the wages of sin and wealthy people are wealthy because they are morally superior.

Sure, buddy. You just keep thinking that while we serve your food, answer your phones, and scrub your floors. I’m sure your morally superior self would be totally fine with doing all that work yourself.

RE: BreakfastMan

he (very) briefly touches on a potentially interesting discussion in that essay (what happens when a man and a woman who are equally drunk consent and have sex with each other? Are they both sexually assaulting each other?)

This is actually a common red herring, because if this were to happen, NOBODY would accuse the other of rape! They would have a good time and then go about their lives as though nothing had happened. So it’s totally bogus anyway–if neither of them sexually assaulted one another, there would be no complaints at all! It’s a bogus argument. (Unless your bring in false accusations, which are a small minority of claims and if parties are drunk, tend to get dismissed ANYWAY. So it’s still bogus.)

RE: takshak

Marriage is a product of that “natural” monogamy,

O_o Really? I thought polygamy was more common in human society than monogamy. Can you cite something for that?

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

RE: weirwoodtreehugger

Let’s not pretend like they care about male victims either. They don’t notice those who were victimized by other men. They just want to dig up instances of woman rapists to “prove” that women are evil rapists and there is no misogynistic rape culture.

They don’t notice men who were raped by ANYONE, unless it very specifically serves their agenda. (See ToySoldier.) They’re only interested in using male rape victims as a beating stick on people they don’t like. I have been completely unimpressed by their “activism” for men like me.

Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Okay, his ‘drunk drivers’ analogy is loaded with fail in a way that I feel the need to tear into.

Because, yes, both drivers may be drunk. True!

But what about the accident? Is it possible one of them is at fault and the other is not? Like, one person ran into the other person’s car? And will be held fully responsible for it? And their insurance too?

Yes.

Even though the other driver was drunk?

Yes.

Because even if I am on the road when I shouldn’t be (which is to say nothing of the difference between drunk driving, a dangerous thing that ENDANGERS OTHERS and the mere audacity of EXISTING AS A WOMAN AND DARING TO HAVE A DRINK THIS ANALOGY IS FULL OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME ANGRY) I am still worthy of the protections of society.

Also, drunk drivers elicit a bile and rage inside of me. My father had to go through years of pain and anguish and PT and still isn’t one hundred percent whole, all because of drunk drivers. Don’t even get me started.

Bina
Bina
10 years ago

Tarantosaurus Sex

AAAAAUGH MAKE IT STOP NO NO NONO NOOOOOOOOOO….

>covers ears, bangs head against desk until unconscious<

Skye
Skye
10 years ago

Poor Tyranosaurus Rexes, totally extinct & can’t defend themselves from associations with vile people

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

Thanks, howardbannister, you pretty much summed it up. Drunk driving is one of those things that really piss me off, because it’s so stupid, has such awful consequences, and is entirely preventable. Seriously, nobody HAS to drive home drunk. If you have the car in the first place, worst case, you can sleep in it.

fromafar2013
10 years ago

I can even engage in a discussion of that shit. I can’t even.

So instead, Imma post a picture of what the picture of him reminded me of.

http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2678025.ece/ALTERNATES/s1023/Mudskippers-MAIN-2678025.jpg

Much better.

hellkell
hellkell
10 years ago

And actually, the part where he refers to himself as Tarantosaurus Sex, also cringe-worthy.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Erica
Erica
10 years ago

I could swear that about halfway through he says, “Are you really equal if you have to have your ovaries punctured?” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Is he referring to ovulation? And why would that be relevant? So confused.

Robert
Robert
10 years ago

Fromafar, thanks for the mudskipper photo. I’m going to sing the Muddy Mudskipper theme song (from Ren and Stimpy) and go back to bed.

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

Fromafar2013, they look like they’re singing!

leftwingfox
10 years ago

Howard:

I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but it’s relevant.

A few years back, shared an apartment with 4 other people. We were celebrating the birthday of one of the roommates by getting very, very drunk. Despite the fact that we were all “home”, at 4 in the morning, the last man standing got it into his head that he needed to go home to his mom’s house, an hour away. On the road, he fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into a police call box, wrecking his truck. He survived without injury, truck was totalled, and he was arrested.

At the time, I figured this for a freak accident. Nothing we roommates could do, because none of us were awake to stop him, or expected him to anything that stupid.

The more I thought about it though, the more I remembered that before the accident, he would still drive after a couple beers. That justification when sober became justification when drunk as hell. Perhaps if we’d been zero-tolerance back then, he wouldn’t have done something as ridiculous as he did that night. Indeed, social intolerance to drinking and driving cuts back a lot on those people who try to drive, despite being too drunk to know they’re too drunk.

Which brings us back to rape culture. We build a lot of narratives about excuse and justification when it comes to being drunk and hooking up, which makes honest misunderstanding far more likely, and give cover to the rapists using the narrative of “misunderstanding” to sexually assault drunk people.

Bina
Bina
10 years ago

Hello, Mr. Taranto? Sex just called. Says it doesn’t appreciate its good name being tarnished by association with yours. Also, that you don’t deserve to get any, EVER. And to fuck the hell off, into nameless oblivion.

tedthefed
tedthefed
10 years ago

LBT: “he (very) briefly touches on a potentially interesting discussion in that essay (what happens when a man and a woman who are equally drunk consent and have sex with each other? Are they both sexually assaulting each other?)

This is actually a common red herring, because if this were to happen, NOBODY would accuse the other of rape! They would have a good time and then go about their lives as though nothing had happened. So it’s totally bogus anyway–if neither of them sexually assaulted one another, there would be no complaints at all! It’s a bogus argument.”

I have to disagree with this (on a moral level; not necessarily a legal one), because A: A rape/sexual assault can happen if nobody accuses anyone of it afterward, and B: A rape/sexual assault can happen even if nobody involved feels bad about it afterward.
The first is self-explanatory. As for the second, it’s horrible for ten million reasons to merge the heinousness of a violation with how bad someone feels afterward.

If you can’t consent, you can’t consent; there’s no other way to think about it (the only way out would be to say that if you are in no state to consent, then you’re in no state to obtain consent, and holy shit that would be terrible). I mean, this is a super-rare kind of situation, because usually one person is much drunker than the other, so there is that.

Eh, this is too abstract for just typical MRA stuff. They kind of obliquely imply a social problem like that male gender roles are such that men are assumed to always want sex and so consent doesn’t need to be obtained from them…. and then they remember “oh wait, feminists are the only people who care about that shit,” and start just defending rapists.

Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Which brings us back to rape culture. We build a lot of narratives about excuse and justification when it comes to being drunk and hooking up, which makes honest misunderstanding far more likely, and give cover to the rapists using the narrative of “misunderstanding” to sexually assault drunk people.

Yes. This. All this.