There’s a post on the AgainstMensRights subreddit today highlighting a comment from a Men’s Rights Redditor that offers some, well, interesting theories about why feminists are “obsessed” with rape and abortion, even though he thinks they are very ugly.
Actually, in his mind, it’s because they are very ugly, and secretly wish someone would be attracted enough to them to rape them.
I’m sure there are MRAs out there who would like to dismiss his posting as the ravings of a random Redditor. Sadly, it’s not. Despite the terribleness of his “explanation,” or perhaps because of it, it seems to be a common one amongst Manosphereians and Men’s Rightsers.
Indeed, in one notorious post a couple of years ago, A Voice for Men founder and all-around garbage human Paul Elam — probably the most important person in the Men’s Rights movement today — offered a much cruder version of this argument. [TRIGGER WARNING for some primo rape apologism. I have bolded the worst bits, and archived the post here in case Elam decides to take it down, as he has been doing with some of his more repellant posts].
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Isn’t it more than just a little fascinating that underneath all this hoopla about rape is a whole lot of women who, when thinking about some guy pinning them down in a kitchen and forcing a hand up their blouse, generally tend to do so with their own hand or a vibrator between their legs? …
And isn’t it also interesting that the most rape obsessive morons on the planet also happen to be some of the ugliest morons on the planet?
Consider this. If rape awareness was a religion, Andrea Dworkin was The Fucking Pope. The 300+ lb. basilisk of man-hate had a face big enough and pockmarked enough to be used to fake a lunar landing. Her body was roughly the size and shape of a small sperm whale.
And she thought of little else in her life other than rape. The subject drove almost everything she said and did.
She even claimed to have been drugged and raped in 1999 in Paris, an accusation that was never proven and which came under a great deal of scrutiny, apparently for damned good reason.
C’mon people, Dworkin’s problem wasn’t that she was raped. Her problem, and I mean all along, was that she wasn’t.
Oh, it gets worse:
Like a corrupt televangelist who only shuts up about sexual purity and morality long enough to secure the services of a five dollar hooker, Dworkin was the poster child for “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Or, in other words, she was obsessed with rape, quite possibly even creating the illusion it happened to her, precisely because her worth on the sexual market was measured in pesos.
Dworkin wanted to be raped, which in her mind meant being sexually desired, but didn’t have the goods to make that happen so she made a career of hating both the source of her rejection, men, and the source of her competition, attractive women.
In the end, the most narcissistic of all Men’s Rightsers concludes that rape is all about female narcissism:
The concept of rape has a lot of utility for women. One, it feeds their narcissistic need to feel irresistible. Two, if feeds their narcissistic need to feel irresistible. That level of irresistibility is the pinnacle of a woman’s sexual viability and worth. And for a whole lot of women, sexual worth is the only self-worth they know.
A Voice for Men’s domestic violence mascot Erin Pizzey seconded Elam’s argument during an appearance of hers last year on Reddit.
If you’re referring to Paul’s statement that many or most women fantasize about being taken, I’m sorry but that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean they want to be raped, but it’s a fantasy I think almost all women have. And I think he went on to say that feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were and are so obsessed with rape are really projecting their own unconscious sexual frustration because men don’t give them enough attention. Andrea was a very sad lonely woman like this
This is an “insight” that many other manosphereians keep reinventing and announcing to the world. In a 2013 post, for example, the “Red Pill” blogger and sometime Return of Kings contributor who calls himself TheMaskAndRose offered a very similar take on the subject.
Feminists are ugly women. They are fat, old, masculine, aggressive, hateful, sociopathic, unattractive, or any combination of those things. Attractive women tend not to be Feminists, so I encourage you to think about why that’s the case. So keeping in mind that they’re not the type of women who normal men desire or pay any attention to, here’s my theory:
Rape culture is the ugly woman’s rape fantasy. …
I think the true heart of a rape fantasy is narcissism.
I think it’s about the idea of saying NO to a man, over and over, but he throws caution to the wind and gives into the animal instinct to just overtake you–because you’re so attractive, so beautiful, so alluring, so irresistible that he just can’t help himself.
It’s about being wanted, more than anything else. Wanted so badly that a man would risk throwing his whole life away just for the chance to put his penis in you.
So, since Feminists and unattractive women generally don’t have men paying any attention to them at all–at least not the sexual kind of attention they crave but won’t admit to … they instead cast themselves in the role of heroine in a cultural narrative whereby men think they’re just so fucking deliciously hot that they can’t wait for the chance to rape them.
They project that insanity onto the world around them, and voila–“rape culture.” A world full of scary men so overtaken with lust and desire for these fat, ugly, manly cow-beasts that you never know when one of them is going to risk his career, family, money, and life outside of prison just to have sex with you.
There is, of course, a much simpler explanation for why feminists tend to be “obsessed” with rape: because it happens all the fucking time.
@Sunnysombrera: Aaaaages ago I watched “who’s that girl” with Madonna. It was probably fairly terrible… As I recall, Madonna plays some kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, although slightly edgier I guess since she’s an actual criminal. Anyway, she meets Boring Normal Man, yada yada, and in the end Boring Normal Man is going to marry his Boring Normal Fiancé and Madonna’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl character rushes into the church with her crazy clothing and demeanor and shouts that the groom actually loves her, and he’s like “uh, yeah, I do!” and then they run off together.
But I can’t think of any more gender-flipped examples…
I’m reminded of an off-hand discussion several years ago. My mother’s a bit of a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan. (And, let’s be honest, their song ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught’ is a significant commentary on race relations, all the more so for being written in 1949 and them sticking by it at risk of getting the whole production shut down.)
But we’d been watching State Fair, and my father and I ended up briefly discussing the double-standard of the Good Girl taming her Bad Boy who reformed to be with her, but the Good Boy lost the Bad Girl who said she wasn’t good enough for him and ran off. Along with the fact that the double-standard in question isn’t entirely dead, either, seventy years later.
Yep! I knew that. You can also tell by how Guen’s gender keeps changing in that first trilogy. First she’s a he, then an it, then a he, and then finally he settled on her for most of the rest of the series, with occasional its thrown in for flavor.
Or maybe Guen was just his first gender fluid character. I can totally see Guen pulling that off. Or, maybe Drizzt just is a really lousy ranger and can’t figure out how to determine a cat’s sex, and Guen is just way to patient to sit on him every time he gets it wrong. Regardless, I love Guenhwyvar.
…yes, I might read more for Guen’s 3 paragraphs than for the main character…
I’d forgotten about Guen’s inconsistent pronouns.
I dunno why Drizzt has to be a ranger, except it’s more exciting than “Fighter Five Thousand and Three.” But if he can’t tell if Guen has what the Internet has come to call “harbles” he’s a pretty poor ranger.
I got more concerned for the safety of that dumb cat than I ever did for any of his two-legged friends.
My Best Friend’s Wedding was almost a gender flipped example. Except of course, she doesn’t get the guy. Because trying to break up a wedding is not romantic. It’s stupid and mean. Same thing with Friends. Rachel is going to break up Ross and Emily’s wedding but ultimately decides it would be wrong. There’s definitely a double standard. A man pursuing a woman hard is romantic. A woman pursuing a man hard is seen as crazy.
A lot of Nice Guy types complain that women expect men to make the first move, but everything about our culture tells us that we’re crazy, slutty, or unfeminine if we are assertive and I’m sure a lot of these guys would be put off if they were actually pursued by a woman.
I read a decent urban fantasy novel a while back, “A Madness of Angels” by Kate Griffin. It follows the pattern of ‘our world, but with hidden magic’.
Regarding rape fantasies – since women can have fantasies about being raped without actually wanting it to happen, would it also happen that men could have fantasies about raping without actually wanting to do it? I haven’t heard about it, though.
If you want to trust your safety to a person who has fantasies about raping people on the assumption that they probably don’t really want to do it, then that’s your call, but I wouldn’t, and I would strongly caution other women about doing so too.
Would fantasizing about consensual non-con scenes count or perhaps wanting to play out rape fantasies in those contexts? Granted, I’d still be very cautious about someone who said that they fantasized about committing rape.
By definition if both parties are consenting then it’s not rape.
Robert,
I think so. After all, the men and women who like to play out those fantasies play them out with partners who I assume get off on the fantasy too. If there are people who like to play at being flogged and people who like to play at flogging them…
The difficult part is knowing who is playing something they’d only do in a scene and who is not.
What Robert said. Obviously consensual non-con scenes aren’t rape. However, do the people who want to play out those scenes fantasize about raping people but are only willing to play them out during consensual role-play, or do they just fantasize about playing consensual non-con scenes? That was what I wondering.
Lea – very good point. A man I used to know years ago was very into race-play, and told me that he had had some very questionable hookups. Apparently, some of the guys weren’t actually role-playing. Ick.
More to the point, if someone tells you that no, of course they don’t really want to do it, it’s just roleplaying, do you believe them? In what circumstances do you believe them? How well do you know this person? And are we really going to pretend that fantasizing about raping someone is the same thing as fantasizing about being raped?
I guess that the difference would be if someone just said, “I fantasize about raping people,” or if that person said, “I’m interested in being the dominant partner in a consensual non-con scene” (or some phrasing more like that). The second implies that they’d only be okay playing out rape fantasies if their partner was actually consenting. The first doesn’t.
And no, we’re not pretending that fantasizing about raping someone is the same as fantasizing about being raped. The first has the potential to be much more harmful.
Sorry that it’s coming across that way.
First I think it important to point out that a fantasy about being the victim of a crime without including heroically overpowering the perp and “winning” the scenario is very rare. Fantasies where the protagonist is the perp are usually heavily loaded with justifications. The most common being revenge.
The rape fantasies women have are rarely rape and the rape fantasy men have are rarely called rape.
I suppose if you consider the rape torture and abuse that men masturbate to when watching porn you would have to say yes. They fantasize about being the rapist. No way of knowing if they restrict themselves to porn or if they are rapists, given the rape culture we live in.
I’m not convinced that everyone in this conversation is grasping the distinction between “fantasizes about potentially sketchy scenario with self in passive role” and “fantasizes about potentially sketchy scenario with self in active role”. Someone who fantasizes about being raped (or about being the racially degraded person in a race play scenario) presents no danger to anyone else at all. The person fantasizing about doing those things to other people, though? I’d be asking a whole lot of questions.
I’d agree with that. I’d also guess that people who would only carry out such fantasies with a consensual partner would only fantasize about doing those things with a consensual partner.
Also true. You also definitely have to take into account girls and women who are only comfortable having sex fantasies if those fantasies involve rape because of slut-shaming. Libby Anne has a good piece on it here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2011/11/the-purity-culture-and-sexual-dysfunction.html
sorceressensorcelled:
Lea:
Awesome summaries!
It’s been sometimes noted that you can’t technically fantasize about being raped, because that’s against the definition of rape, so “rape fantasy” is really a fantasy of enjoying sex passively and submissively. Then again, I wouldn’t know if this logic applies to, say, rape survivors.
Aside from the passive sex fantasy angle, it’s certainly possible to be sexually titillated by the idea of “just some woman” being either truly raped or consensually submissive. I understand this is very common in men, who don’t necessarily imagine themselves as being the rapist or dominant partner.
Considering how women’s bodies, women’s submission and sexual violence against women are sexualized in our culture, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has a widespread effect on (heterosexual) women. When women read erotica about a female character being raped or submissive, do they generally associate themselves with that character? I don’t know, but even if they don’t, it could still be easily chalked as a personal rape/submission fantasy.
This makes me want to go live on an island with waters patrolled by sharks.
It really disturbs me that the idea that some women might read those stories, empathize with the victim, and react with skin-crawling horror rather than arousal apparently wasn’t considered as a possibility.
It’s an uncomfortable train of discussion, honestly, but then again desire is rarely tame or logical, and sometimes it can be highly problematic.
That said, a partner that I’d been with for a while mentioning to me that they had dominance fantasies, and asking if I’d be willing to discuss them and perhaps even talk about role playing them would get a fairly positive reaction from me. Unfortunately, it’s been my experience that any guys who want to talk about “rape fantasies” (especially in public, or with women they are not currently in a relationship with) are in fact just more or less your bog standard boundary-pushing assholes.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the framing of these as “rape” fantasies, because it’s been my experience that what we talk about when we talk about “rape” has little or nothing to do with the actual content of the fantasies themselves, which I think of more as submission or surrender fantasies. Women in tv and the movies (with male writers, if we’re being really on point about it) have “rape fantasies” while the women I’ve met in the real world have these incredibly specific submission or surrender fantasies, usually with more or less elaborate but always fairly precise scenarios that go along with them. The men I’ve known with similar kinds of fantasies (at least the ones where I didn’t go screaming off into the night immediately) were more interested in (similarly) having someone surrender to them, which is a pretty powerful statement of trust when you think about it, than about overcoming resistance or overpowering someone else.
The (mercifully very very few) guys I’ve known who seemed interested in the kind of dominance that comes down to simply overpowering someone revealed themselves as essentially wanna be rapists though more than just the fantasies themselves, though pushing the hell out of everyone else’s boundaries and buttons by wanting to talk about their fantasies at length and in detail was certainly part of what clued me in.
Cassandra:
Sorry, I meant specifically “when women enjoy erotica about” and should have written that.
If someone tells me that he has rape fantasies I’m going to follow the Gift of Fear principle that when a man tells you something about himself, believe him. If what he actually means is something that isn’t rape at all, well, he needs to say that instead (and learn to have enough empathy towards women to recognize that saying “oh hey, I fantasize about raping women” might not be the best way to establish trust and comfort).
It would be nice if we could also recognize that not all women are submissive.
Aren’t the majority of these bodice rippers horror stories? I know the Gothics are but I wonder about the rest. Cartland writes Cinderella over and over. I have not read many, except the classics, and I thought they were for the most part horror stories with happy endings.