It’s perhaps not altogether surprising that a writer at Return of Kings, a site run by someone who has openly admitted to raping a woman too drunk to consent, has come out in defense of Jian Ghomeshi, the Canadian radio personality recently fired from CBC in the wake of serious accusations of violent sexual assault from an ever-growing list of women.
For most of those who have been following the scandal, the fact that numerous women have come forward with strikingly similar stories of abuse at the hands of Ghomeshi only increases the credibility of the case against him.
Over on Return of Kings, however, writer Blair Naso dismisses this as “a common pattern with celebrities in unconfirmed sex scandals.” And then he sets forth one of the creepiest defenses against rape allegations I’ve ever heard:
One woman claims something and then several other groupies hop on the media whore train. People claim Bill Cosby raped 13 women, but do they have any idea how hard it is to rape just one? Thirteen is a large rape notch count. Even if it was all consensual, how would Cosby hide that much adultery from his wife? He isn’t a sex symbol like some politicians are.
Emphasis mine. Yes, that’s right, he actually wrote “thirteen is a large rape notch count.”
Mr. Nasi, you want to know how Cosby might have managed to get his “rape notch count” so high, even though he’s “not a sex symbol?” Well, you could always fucking read what the women making these accusations have said. (Hint: he allegedly drugged them first.) Generally speaking, it is probably a good idea to actually read the allegations against someone before dismissing them as nonsense.
If Ghomeshi, or Cosby, or any celebrity accused of rape were facing accusations from “only” one woman, the Return of Kings boys would no doubt dismiss her as some crazy, lying slut. But when the accusations seem to be corroborated by other similar stories from other women who have also been victimized, well, gosh, raping that many women would be “too hard” of a task for one man to pull off.
What the fuck.
Most of the commenters at ROK, meanwhile, think that even if Ghomeshi is being railroaded he is still getting what he deserves — for being a “white knight” who previously gave lip service to the ideals of feminism.
No matter what side they’re taking in this controversy, in other words, the ROKers are doing it for the worst reasons possible.
I think sometimes people lie to themselves and others by claiming an identity and calling it a day. They don’t make an attempt to live up it. If a misogynistic abusive man wears the title ‘feminist’ or ‘ally’ he doesn’t have to examine his behavior. He can’t possibly be sexist. He can’t possibly be a rapist. After all, he’s a feminist!
I see the same thing with a certain subset of – usually conservative – Christians. They identify as Christians, go to church once or twice a week and wear a cross pendant. Therefore they’re automatically good and moral. It gives them an excuse to act like an asshole most of the time.
“BritterSweet —
Waitwaitwait. Don’t these guys tend to say more often that *not* raping women is hard? What with the things they say regarding consent and clothes and stuff?”
*Everything’s* just really, really hard when you’re a white, white, cis fellow. Don’t you know that? /sarcasm
@Puddleglum Great article from Kiran Opal. I am totally adopting “feministy” as a term for that kind of Hugo Schwyzer type.
I also wanted to share this article from Vinay Menon:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2014/11/01/in_praise_of_the_court_of_public_opinion_menon.html
The second last paragraph obfuscates, which is the one flaw in an otherwise excellent breakdown of why these “court of public opinion” hearings are so important, especially when we think of Retaeah Parsons, Amanda Todd, or even Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
This kind of exposure is often the only “court” that these cases will ever see.
That should have been “white, straight, cis”. I don’t know how that happened.
And after thought, that was a horribly poor choice of phrasing. I would be willing to bet money that the commentor complaining about how hard it is to even rape one woman is light-skinned, but clearly, the only thing anyone needs to be a rapist or a batterer is their own false sense of entitlement
I dunno, I kind of liked the “white, white” descriptor.
OT, sort of. All the trigger warnings. Here’s blatant rape culture: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6089922?cps=gravity
When I was a little kid my whole family would gather in the living room every Thursday night at eight to watch The Cosby Show together. It was a special time. I remember feeling so excited to spend my own money to get my dad his book for Father’s Day.
I don’t want to live in a world where Bill Cosby is a rapist. It’s devastating. 🙁 🙁
Grumpycat – many people don’t want to live in a world in which Cosby is a rapist. Unfortunately, this has led them to insist that they actually DO.
I believe part of the problem is that some people think in categories. X is a good person. Rapists are bad people. Therefore, X cannot be a rapist regardless of what zie does. Anyone saying ‘X raped me’ must, categorically, be lying. This kind of thinking makes it easier to ignore consensus reality.
A person can be good as gold in front of the cameras and microphones, and bad as shit behind closed doors. The fact that somebody is sometimes good, doesn’t mean they can’t be sometimes bad.
In fact, I’m starting to wonder if charismatic public personae aren’t often a dead giveaway of something…icky. #NotAllCharismaticMen, maybe. But a shocking proportion of them, definitely.
I know all this, of course. It’s all a huge part of what makes it so horrible and depressing.
My take on it is that guys like this are huge narcissists that think of feminism as rules that apply to other men, not themselves.
So, I’ve been playing RuneScape, and avoiding all else, all weekend, for Double XP weekend. Now it’s over, and I come here, and the first thing I read is this.
YUCK.
Well, at least I was spared this for three days, and maxed my smithing skill. And maxing a skill is almost as hard as raping 13 people!
Or something.
Anyway, noping now.
@Jenora
My interpretation is that many rapists would be all for abortion rights, since it means that the women they “accidentally” impregnate can then abort, leaving the rapists free and clear from that awful, misandrist child support.
In fact, a lot of misogynists support abortion, I believe, even when they don’t support any other women’s rights, because if they can convince “their” women to have abortions, they never need to worry about unwanted pregnancies, and don’t have to bother with taking care of their own contraception.
Because as we all know, a man who never, ever, ever wants to father children still has absolutely no reason to get a vascectomy, and “bare-backing” it is the pinnacle of alpha male-ness.
Many women who have abortions do so because the men in their lives push them into it, not because they, themselves, want to end the pregnancies.
Of course, some men want to outlaw abortion, because they use pregnancy as a weapon against “their” women, and if “their” women were free to abort, they’d probably also feel free to leave. And since they are solipsistic jerks, what’s good for THEM must be good for EVERYONE ELSE, hence, no abortion rights for anyone.
Also – re Bill Cosby – Darn it! I was just talking with a friend last week about how I loved his old routines! Now it’s all tainted.
@schwadevivre
Ooooooh. I both love and hate this idea.
“but do they have any idea how hard it is to rape just one? Thirteen is a large rape notch count… He isn’t a sex symbol like some politicians are.”
Does anyone else see subtext in this of “If he could manage thirteen we all could have too, right fellas?” I want to be just reading too much into it, but that does seem to be one of the implications.
I AM sure that the exhortation to think about how hard it would be to pull that off is one more excuse for these guys to spend more time fantasizing about raping women.
I pretty much read it as “look at me, I try so hard and my rape notch count is still only 9”, tbh.
@Alais – Actually, I can think of one scenario where it might actually be rape for these people.
MRA and wife are at home, in bed. Intruder breaks in, and using a weapon, physically overpowers the MAN FIRST. He controls the woman by claiming that if she resists, he will shoot the man, so she stays still, to protect her man. Then he ties up the man, and makes sure that man cannot possibly escape. Then, he beats the woman to a bloody pulp, sticks the gun in her mouth, and orders her to submit to rape. AND, he has to call what he’s doing rape.
Also, he has to make a clean get-away, so that he cannot later be found, arrested, charged and convicted.
In that case, they might actually consider it a real rape.
@Michelle
Nope, they’d just say that both the man and the woman are making it up. The beta husband was cucked and doesn’t want to admit it to his alpha peers! The injuries? Bah, probably fell off the bed!
Michelle,
Even then, I’d put money on seeing these sorts of responses:
She probably set the whole thing up!
or
She should have fought back harder!
or
Why wasn’t that slut wearing her chastity belt?
or
What had she done to get this rapists attention and how did she use her mysterious wiles to manipulate him into committing this crime?
You have to go so far through the looking glass to think of something too absurd and awful for an MRA to say.
Something about this reminds me of when I first got my own apartment. My mother drilled into me the rules of propriety, and made me promise never to be alone in my apartment with a man. Two men? OK, but not just one man. Also, my family are all teetotalers, thanks to our Mormon faith.
She told me, “The rules of propriety protect us from our own stupidity.”
NOT “protect us from the men,” but “from our own stupidity.” In short, if I didn’t put myself in a position where it is even possible to break my vow of chastity, then I would not stupidly break my vow of chastity. I might still be raped, but I would not SEDUCED. Big difference, because being a victim of rape is not a sin, but willingly having sex outside of marriage is a sin, in my religion, particularly if you have made covenants to obey the law of chastity.
As a benefit of this life-style, should I ever be raped, I am SLIGHTLY more likely to be believed, for two reasons. One – the defense attorney would have a really hard time tearing my reputation to shreds, saying I was a slut who really deserved it, and it wasn’t rape, anyway, because I wasn’t a virgin. Two – a rape against me would not be drunk-non-consent, but would have to involve physical violence or “real” drugs that show up on a tox-screen and are clearly illegal.
The bad news is that I am hence more likely to die from a rape attack, either from the violence involved or else bad drug interactions causing fatal effects.
But at least if you are beaten to death, the press generally believe it when the M.E. says there is evidence of rape.
I do not need to worry about being told that it was just “bad sex,” or “regretted the next day” reporting, or anything like that.
Oh, wait.
There are people who would say that, anyway. But at least I would not have any doubt on the matter, myself.
Yay.
I know women who are plagued by doubts, because they hear enough victim-blaming that it soaks their souls, and they wonder if it really was “just bad sex,” or “just regret,” or something like that.
It’s not. Rape is rape.
And consenting adults are jolly well ALLOWED to consent, darn it! I only hold MYSELF to the chastity rule, because I chose that vow. All other adults are allowed to have sex if they want it, and I will not judge them for it! And neither should defense attorneys or rape apologists.
And consenting adults are allowed to consent to one type of sex and not another, or to making out but no further, or even to change their minds during the act and say “STOP NOW!” and have their partner actually STOP. No one should be told that their rape did not count, because they consented to some other act, or be told “you were alone with a man, what did you expect?”
However, judging from what I’ve read about this Jian guy, at least the encounters started out as consensual, most of the time. So, if you never have consensual sex, at least you don’t have to worry about that consensual sex turning into a non-consensual beating. So, yay me.
Bleh. It’s little enough to be grateful for, really. But the fact remains that those invisible stairs do exist, and thanks to my “rules of propriety,” I have actually dodged a few bullets. More often, though, I’ve missed an opportunity for a jolly-good time.
In a perfect world, rapist would have naturally-ocurring tattoos across their noses (really hard to cover that up with facial hair or hair-style), that warns women not to have consensual sex with these guys, at all, so they could avoid it becoming a nonconsensual beat-down-rape, including the type of sex you don’t want, like forced anal stuff. Thus, women could safely have consensual sex with all the non-rapists of the world. YAY!
But this is not a perfect world, and Schrodinger’s rapist is alive and well.
PS: I know I’m writing from a gender-binary, man-rapist/female-victim thing here. I took a pain pill, and am fast getting too fuzzy to police my language. Sorry. I’m still learning how to actually write gender-friendly language, and I have to re-type all my words two or three times, to make this clear, as it is. I hope I don’t offend.
PPS: Tox-screen keeps being changed to fox-screen in auto-correct, and I am really curious what the heck a fox-screen is.
@Bina
QFT!!!
Doing everything “right” doesn’t prevent it, and I’ve seen cases of gang rape, where the victim was literally a bloody pulp, and she did everything “right,” and there were STILL a few ^$#@#$%^$#$!!!!! who blamed her.
I have no words for that.
This seems apropos:
Screenshot 2014-09-24 00.20.20
Feh.
/Users/michelleyoung/Dropbox/Screenshots/Screenshot 2014-10-03 19.41.47.png
One last try:
?dl=0