Last year, I wrote about a repellant little “community” on Reddit: the PhilosophyofRape subreddit, devoted to promoting what it called the corrective rape of “filthy, unmitigated, sluts … [t]hat badly need to be punished. Badly.”
Reddit being what it is, the subreddit remains up to this day. And now the folks behind it have taken their repugnant “philosophy” to the web. Earlier this week, one of the subreddit’s numerous moderators, a veritable cauldron of bigotries who calls himself European88, announced the grand opening of a new Philosophy of Rape website. He urged his fellow “philosophers” to “[s]ubscribe and submit your rape tips … !”
Like the subreddit before it, the site declares war on “harpies,” “hussies,” “[d]ecrepid filth, dressed like hookers and reaking like vodka” and “Belligerent. Entitled. Selfie taking, Tindr-whoring, Teenage-walking-herpes-sores.”
The “philosophers” also take aim at “vain, vile, venemous, femenist, filth,” particularly
[t]he kind who get conferences to talk about mens suicide rates shut down. The type of hussies who have lobbied effectively to remove due process from proceedings against men on college campuses.
In a post titled “Why is Rape Necessary,” the site sets forth its case for “correction.” (I’ve bolded the worst bits.)
1) Rape did serve important, healthy, and natural biological purposes historically in limiting the extent to which female bad behavior can go.
2. Women in many ways are like children, and most can not self-regulate very well, so in the absence of something like parents or a natural limiting force like rape, they just run amok and destroy their selves and everything they touch.
3. Because rape is so completely arm-barred back by the state, and feminism has grown to be this infestation that caused even the social consequences for female behavior to dissappear, we find ourselves in a precarious situation. Unbridled female sluttishness, entitlement, narcissism, vileness and destruction gone viral.
4. Such women need to be Corrected. Humbled. Brought back down to a healthy place and realistic mindset. For their own good as well as that of those around them. That particular corrective action is quite clear, the one that used to naturally limit the behavior: rape.
5. We are here to provide encouragement and advice how to do that and do it safely. Regression analysis to find out which variables make it less likely to get into legal trouble. Very few women report the rapes, what can you do to make it even less likely? Example: remind the victim that “no one will believe them”. When they orgasm (which is actually very common during rape, Google it) speak up and let them know that you are aware of it and that it will come out during trial if they reported it.
Yes, that’s right. After complaining that the feminist “infestation” has enabled “unbridled” female awfulness by drastically reducing the “natural limiting force [of] rape,” the rape “philosophers” acknowledge that most men who rape women face zero consequences for their action. Indeed, in another post, one “philosopher” declares that
We want to teach men that although it may be easier than ever for an innocent man to be convicted of rape when a consensual partner has buyers remorse, it’s also easier than ever for a guilty man to get away Scott free – so long as it’s done the way we advocate: actual rape-rape, as in dark-alley, ski mask, stranger rape.
Emphasis mine. Some of the rape “tips” offered on the site are wholly unoriginal:
Tell the harlot that you come from a rich family and that she will never successfully convict you of raping her in court. Tell her that, if she tries to sue you, you will counter-sue for a huge amount of money that will bankrupt her.
Pretty sure that one’s been used before.
Tell the harlot that, if she tells the police about the rape, you will kill her entire family. If she has children, tell her that you will rape her children before killing them.
That one too.
Other tips are little more than sadistic fantasies:
Put sugar into the harlot’s vagina to give her a yeast infection. This will be a mark of shame on her that she will be unable to forget, and she will have to relive the rape every time she seeks treatment for it. …
After raping the harlot, steal her clothes and write “WHORE” on her chest with a red marker. She will be forced to walk around naked with “WHORE” written on her chest, and it will be extremely humiliating for her.
Whether these rape “philosophers” are actually living out their repellant philosophy, I couldn’t tell you. They insist that they’re quite sincere.
Indeed, in a posting on slutHATE, one rape “philosopher” assured skeptics that
The Philosophy of Rape is as serious as a heart attack. We are a movement of angry, fed-up men – much like you – who have decided to take matters into our own hands. The simple fact of the matter is, simply sitting around and complaining about sluts on the Internet isn’t going to change anything. We need real-world action to correct the slut problem. That’s why The Philosophy of Rape was created. Sluts need real-world punishment, and we want to train an army of holy warriors to dish out that punishment. Your chances of getting caught are already slim, and we will teach you how to make 100% sure that you don’t get caught.
In another comment, he reported that while
I can’t openly admit to how many harlots I’ve corrected, but let’s just say that I do indeed practice what I preach.
He offered this lovely bit of advice to anyone thinking of following in his (alleged) footsteps:
It definitely helps if you build up to the act. Keep edging closer and closer to rape until you’re finally ready to do the deed. For example, send a harlot an anonymous message telling her you’re gonna rape her, then write “HARLOT” on her car, then finally rape her when the moment is right. Build up your courage by first committing smaller acts.
He urged others to take up his peculiar fight for, er, justice:
We are going to build an army of holy warriors to correct harlots and feminazi whores around the world. All it takes is a few Elliot Rodger types to get the ball rolling. What do you have to lose? Enlist in our rape army today, and we will teach you how to correct a new harlot a week and get away with it.
Apparently unafraid of legal consequences, the person posting all this gave what he said was his real name, claiming to be “Brother” Dean Saxton, a campus “activist” of sorts who several years ago caused a stir after holding a one-man protest at the University of Arizona, holding a sign reading “You Deserve Rape.”
In another thread, “Brother Dean” explained why he felt this slogan was so effective in angering feminists: .
NOTHING pisses off feminazis more than reminding them that they are filthy harlots who desperately need to be – and, deep down, WANT TO BE – raped.
He went on to explain why the kind of rape he advocates is the most public-spirited of all the different varieties of rape:
N*ggers rape because they are feral animals who cannot control their primitive biological urges. We rape because we are holy warriors on a mission to correct harlots and purge society of unmitigated female entitlement. The Philosophy of Rape is, ultimately, about fixing society. The only way to correct harlots and feminazis is by raping them.
If “Brother Dean” is European88, he’s kept himself busy since his college protest as a moderator of 157 of Reddit’s most loathsome subreddits, including /r/CoonTown, /r/WhiteRights, /r/nazi, /r/GasTheKikes, /r/Chimpout, /r/StormfrontForums and the lovely /r/N*ggerSafari.
Some of the slutHATE regulars dismissed “Brother Dean” as “disinfo” and “just another frustrated virgin in his basement spreading shit.” frenchy91, for his part, noted that
while i really don’t give a shit who you could rape as long as it’s not my girlfriend, nor familly member, i think you op should get raped by a group of n*ggers, just to know how it feels, then you could objectively speak about who diserve it or not. for now, you just sound like a desperate mysogincel
This is apparently what passes for a “moderate” position on slutHATE. Others there found Brother Dean’s message inspirational. A commenter calling himself mvp wrote that
i definitely support this movement
its time to fight back
“Fuck it,” wrote another. “I’ll rape a bitch for you.”
It would be easy enough to dismiss all of this as nothing more than the ridiculous fantasies of “frustrated virgin[s]” or the work of trolls. I really hope that’s all it is.
But we should remember that slutHATE is essentially a reincarnation of PUAhate, an online forum that was frequented by a young man named, yes, Elliot Rodger, who posted similarly hateful and similarly implausible-sounding comments there before setting out one evening a little over a year ago, intending to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut” in a popular sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
H/T — MoonMetropolis
What do you mean by “men’s use of force” and “women’s use of force;” what do you mean by saying a man’s use of force is privileged over a woman’s (I’m not disagreeing with this, but I need to know how you’re using the term so I’m on the same page); and how would you fix this disparity?
In my opinion, patriarchy and violence are entwined. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t get rid of one with the other. A truly egalitarian (and I don’t mean in the anti-feminist pretending to be neutral troll way) society would have little violence. Little violence from citizens and little violence from the state. While I’m not a complete pacifist and am okay with force when it’s necessary to protect oneself from violent crime or an oppressive government, I think we need to move toward a non violent society to rid ourselves of kyriarchy, and we need to rid ourselves of kyriarchy to rid ourselves (mostly) of violent crime and warfare.
@WWTH: I don’t think there can be any real question that male aggression and violence are strongly linked to the traditional male gender stereotype — what we call “Toxic masculinity.” So in the long run, the best answer to rape culture is not to socialize boys and young men to be unemotional, aggressive, and violent, and to feel that if you don’t have those qualities you can’t be a Real Man(TM). I would like to believe what MildyMagnificent says about the trend to reduced violence in at least some Western societies, but in the short run there is still a big problem. One of the big problems is that it’s terribly difficult to get a conviction in an acquaintance rape situation where there are no significant physical injuries, because of the “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden. I don’t think arming women to the teeth is a viable solution but beyond feeling that self-defense and assertiveness training probably have some value, I have no clue what is the solution — beyond the long-term one of not socializing boys to be overly-aggressive and to feel that they have a right to women’s bodies.
PoM: literally, force used by men and force used by women. Not differences in how they use it, even, just differences in *who* is using it. Similar to how pushing people around is frequently tolerated in boys, but girls will get shit for being “bossy.”
As for fixing the disparity, there are multiple possible approaches. I imagine you would favour attacking the angle where men’s use of force specifically is privileged; I wouldn’t disagree with this. The angle I’m inclined to attack is the one where women’s use of force specifically is stigmatized. This doesn’t just apply to illegal uses of force, but also to legal uses of force, like self-defense, contact and combat sports, and in occupations like law enforcement and the military. Male dominance of the use of force benefits individual male rapists, abusers, and other assorted would-be patriarchs on the individual level, and advocates of male-supremacist narratives on the societal level. If you’re talking about the specific means of attacking the stigmatization, the bloodthirsty animal in me says to treat people who stigmatize women’s use of force while privileging men’s use of force like shit, while the civilized part of me thinks the new Mad Max is great and more of this kind of thing please. Also, updating self-defense laws that were written to address situations where men are likely to need to defend themselves but not to address situations where women are likely to need to defend themselves. Just as a couple of starters.
As far as possible negative consequences of decreasing stigmatization of women’s use of force: overall violent crime has been going down since within a few years of 1970 anyway and this trend isn’t reversing. As long as overall violent crime goes down, even the civilised part of me can’t be assed to care if women start to make up a larger proportion of offenders.
WWTH: When you say patriarchy and violence are entwined and cannot be separated, how are you defining patriarchy? The definition I use, and have been using, is specifically male dominance and favouring of men over women. Like, we live in a patriarchy because a very strong majority of holders of political, financial, and technological power are men, and because the men in power tend to favour other men over women when making decisions (for instance, both big businesses and smaller tech startups are dominated by men and discriminate against women frequently enough to create and maintain a widespread power imbalance, on top of advertising execs bombarding the populace with male supremacism as a product-marketing strategy, including when marketing to children). Are you using a different definition of patriarchy, or is there a different reason?
Encouraging violence to be met with even more violence doesn’t lead to a less violent world. This should be obvious, and rape is a form of violence. The score doesn’t end up being Asshole: 1, Me:1, the score is Violence: 2, Peace: 0.
A world where it is taboo and unthinkable to assault someone else’s body in any way would have a better track record at minimizing and persecuting rape than one in which you’re expected to grievously wound someone who has provoked or threatened you, at least in my opinion.
Also, proritizing rape-avoidance strategies for women is really just saying “Make sure the rapists victimize some other woman”. Because there is always going to be someone more vulerable, less prepared, less aggressive, more drunk, etc.
*sits back and waits for the “But I never SAID that!!” reply*
I could say “I never said that,” but instead, I’ll just say that I flat-out said I’d accept a world that’s more violent if it were also less male-supremacist. I disagree with your argument about the score, because I don’t regard all violence as being morally indistinguishable.
Peace is a potential means to the end of eliminating male supremacy. It might even work, for some values of “peace” and “work” that would leave a whole lot of people unsatisfied. But peace is far easier to maintain in a situation where the consequences for abusing others are significant, meaning you still need people willing to use force to stop and punish abusive behaviours, and we go right back to square one with at least some amount of force implicated in any possible outcome, whether in the form of abusive behaviours or used to suppress abusive behaviours.
I gotta say, the world being less violent could just be women agitating for equality less and accepting their role as subservient. That’s not an improvement.
So less violence certainly isn’t necessarily a marker of progession towards equality though a progression towards equality may be correlated with a reduction in violence.
I can no longer tell if AllisonW is spouting rape apologia or spouting “Kill all men” without irony.
If it’s the former: Nobody’s saying that women shouldn’t know how to defend themselves. Of course we should! We’re saying that we shouldn’t be put in that position in the first fucking place. That violence should be our last line of defense, not our first and only. That rape culture around the world needs to end yesterday. That law enforcement needs to start taking rape seriously. That society needs to teach men to not rape instead of teaching women to not be raped. That we shouldn’t be blamed for not fighting back hard enough when self-defense inevitably fails. That violence only makes it worse for victims who aren’t rich, cishet, white adult women. Do I need to use smaller words?
If it’s the second: Gotchas don’t work here. You might have figured that out by now
“Former” and “Second.” Sigh. Change it to “Former” and “Latter” or “First” and “Second” while I get a coffee. =P
I’m not spouting “kill all men,” with or without irony. Seriously, where did you get that? Not even “kill all rapists,” which would at least be somewhat closer to what I was saying, and a hashtag I’d probably be fine with retweeting–you somehow got “kill all men” out of it? *How*? Because I actually do not know.
I also don’t know which of your statements is supposed to apply to me, considering at no point have I *even implied* anything like “women should be blamed for being raped if they can’t defend themselves from a rapist,” nor at any point have I *even implied* that men in general should be killed. Nor have I even implied belief that rapists are masked men in the street, as opposed to usually known to their victims, and oftentimes close to them. What I did say–not imply, say, and without irony–is that I can sympathize with fantasizing about a world where would-be rapists live in fear that if they rape they’ll get killed, and get killed if they do rape, because I fantasize about it fairly often myself. Is that actually a wrong fantasy to have and to understand? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course.) Because I’m not the only person here who has it, as I am certain you have seen. Well, that, and the part where I consider fear of retribution to be an important component of morality, but I don’t think I’m completely alone in that either.
On the other hand if you just wanted to stuff words in my mouth after I did it to PoM, touche.
@Allisonw You’re righting an uphill battle here and you need to rethink some things.
1. You’re making an argument which sounds suspiciously close to some trolls. You’re gonna get all the side-eye. People are waiting for the other shoe to drop where you invoke an argument founded in a “just world” fallacy which blames rape victims for being raped due to leaving themselves vulnerable.
2. Because of those shoe drops, people have come up with arguments which cut off “self-defense as the first step” at the pass. You’re going to get 0 traction on your troll-adjacent arguments.
3. Self-defense arguments are a sad failure in general. Several people more familiar with these arguments have brought up many reasons for the inadequacy of self defense as a strategy. I don’t intend to rehash the arguments because the people here have already done a better job than I could. (I am totally gonna steal some of the excellent points made.)
You seem to agree that rape culture and patriarchal power structures are the fundamental issue. It’s like you are suggesting people carry guns to help protect against being robbed by brokers and bankers. The proposed solution misses the mark so hard people have trouble taking the person making it seriously.
Awesome. I love auto correct. Fighting and probably many more off words.
Yeah, do yourself a favor and stop imagining what I might want or do. If I haven’t said it outright, ask me. Don’t put words into my mouth.
You are literally saying here that you want to remove stigma on women’s illegal use of force. What the fuck, dude? You’re advocating here for Wild West-style showdowns in the street. You honest to fuck believe that’s going to lead to less rape? Women are not actually stigmatized for participating in a contact sport, so the only change you want to make here is to remove the stigma from assault and murder. Fuck that.
I’m tired of talking about this. There are multiple reasons why your ideas are bullshit, and the only reason you’ve been able to give for why it’s not bullshit is that it satisfies your personal sense of poetic justice. Legal systems are not based on poetry, let alone AllisonW’s personal idea of what constitutes poetry. Go the fuck away. You are not a thinker.
@opium4themasses
Actually, it turns out that AllisonW’s argument is that turning cities into outlaw zones where nobody feels even slightly bad about committing assault or murder is somehow going to lead to less rape. Because failed states with non-functioning governments, combat zones, and areas dominated by mob rule and violence are waaaaay safer for women than orderly societies, at least in AllisonW’s empty head.
Fair point. This reminds too much of “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. I enjoyed the book, but that society is just a utopian dream. Heinlein is problematic.
Jesus Allison, do you really not fucking get that putting the onus on women to defend themselves from rape EXACTLY IMPLIES that we’ll be blaming women who get raped for not fighting hard enough?
That’s the entire reason you’re getting flak, and the fact that you don’t see it is fucking galling.
Seriously. If an armed society is a polite society, the US wouldn’t have such a high rate of violent crime compared to all those European and Asian countries with stricter gun control laws. Remember that on the same day as the Sandy Hook massacre, there was also an attack by an adult on young school children in China? Nobody died in the Chinese attack although several people, including children were injured so it was still horrible. The reason nobody died? The attacker had a knife. Most people don’t have guns in China.
A gun in the home increases the risk of dying in a gun related homicide or suicide in the home. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
In the US, states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than states that don’t. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates The threat of violence, is not a deterrent to violent behavior, clearly. In fact, the only low murder rate country I can think of right now that has the death penalty is Japan.
I just can’t see how either more guns or more violence can possibly lead to a better and safer society or more equality.
The threat of any kind of penalty for crime only works when the potential criminal is behaving as a rational criminal, accurately judging the risk of encountering that penalty, the severity of the penalty, and the expected benefit of the crime.
People are generally not rational, however. They misjudge the benefits. They misjudge the severity of the penalty. They misjudge how likely it is that they will encounter that penalty. A lot of crime is committed by young people, whose brains are not fully developed in the regions that are needed to do the rational-criminal calculus.
Much better ways to prevent crime include attacking the reasons why people frequently commit crime (such as poverty or gang culture, or rape culture) and instilling a moral respect for the law. This won’t eliminate crime, but nothing can. It’s far more effective, however, than the available alternatives.
I woke up to my cat climbing all over my laptop. Since we haven’t near enough brain bleach in this thread, I shall present cats sitting on laptops.
http://deemable.com/media/2012/09/kitten-on-laptop-if-not-for-sits-why-is-it-made-of-warm.jpg
http://cdn.themetapicture.com/media/funny-cat-sitting-on-laptop.jpg
http://c1.thejournal.ie/media/2013/02/cat2-2-630×452.jpg
Ah, yes, I can see where my argument could be viewed as saying this. I wasn’t only speaking about violence in the physical sense. A society in which a lower caste of people is kept downtrodden “only” by threats, cultural oppression, and economic clout is still a violent society. Violence is not just a matter of physically harming someone. Rape without physical force is still violent. There is lots of non-physically aggressive racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, that is clearly abusive and oppressive. I’m not saying the solution to this is to just lie down and take the abuse to decrease the overall amount of violence in society. That would not create any kind of peace, or change anything.
But I’m also not saying that the large scale solution is to get a gun and murder your oppressors. For one thing, unless you murder literally everyone who cares about that person, there’s going to be people who will be angry about that murder, and since we’re apparently in a society where people are encouraged to resolve their grievances by physical violence, this means they’re going to be coming after you. So the end results would be either: 1) Entirely wiping out whatever class of people was deemed to be oppressive, or being wiped out yourself, 2) Continuous civil war and strife, 3)One class ‘beating’ the other class and forcing them into their place by constant threat of physical retribution, or, best case scenario 4) mutually assured destruction means that no one is violent and society is perfectly fair to everyone, so long as EVERYONE can restrain themselves from tipping the delicate balance. None of those sound terribly attractive to me.
I’m not saying that self defense shouldn’t be practiced, or that everyone needs to be a pacifist. But self denfense should be the LAST line of defense. Having the only deterrent to rape be: “Don’t rape, or the woman/man/child you are attempting to rape may shoot you in the face” just means that rapists will either go after people who are incapable of using a weapon, or people who are unwilling to use lethal force against them. Having a culture where rapist sentiments are viewed as abhorrent, where consent is clearly understood by everyone and taught to children when they are growing up, where these shitbuckets don’t have the camoflauge of a rape culture wherein drunk/scantily clad/promiscuous women are fair game, ‘normal’ guys laugh at rape jokes, and rape victims are afraid to bring charges against their rapists because they either won’t be believed or will be villainized as ‘ruining the poor guy’s life!’, etc etc etc, THAT would go a long way further to reducing rape and male supremacy, compared to the “well just shoot them then!” sentiment.
Interestingly enough, my friend was roommates with a girl who was briefly dating (yeah, that didn’t last long) Brother Dean. Evidently, some of what he says, he says to get a reaction, but some of it he truly believes…. Apparently he got into a car accident and his personality changed supposedly. Not that that makes anything better about him, but I thought it was interesting.
“Go away”? I’ve been using WHTM as a news site for updates on the movements of the Redpill Right for a long time now and have no intention of not using it as such. If you’re telling me not to talk to you anymore, fine. I don’t think we’re going to get along, and there is probably no purpose in us speaking to each other. I will continue to engage with other people.
Opium: Now that you put it that way with the adjacency to just-world types, I can see it. Where I overlap with them is that I don’t have a lot of faith in the inherent goodness of humanity, but where I differ is that while they use excuses to keep themselves happy and complacent, I come by my aggressive views because the world *isn’t* just, and because it’s difficult to have trust in people and institutions, or to ask anyone else to put their trust in other people or institutions, when I know people have evil in them because I have it in myself–I don’t go out and hurt people, but I do intimately know the desire to pay evil unto evil. There are a lot of people I sure as hell have no desire to make peace with.
As for carrying guns to protect against brokers and bankers, uhm, I’d actually argue that a lack of fear of violent leftism is one of the reasons that the 1% can act with impunity (and they’re also a perfect, textbook example of how people who don’t face consequences for their actions will basically do whatever the hell they want). I’m not even a radical where economics are concerned–I favour near-left solutions like a mid-20th-century-style mixed economy as opposed to anarcho-communism; the most radical thing I believe economically is that mincome might be a workable alternative to things like unions and the minimum wage, especially with automation poised to decimate job availability even more than it already has–but the fact that the American left wing is so peaceful means that the fat cats don’t have anything to be afraid of. They’re like, what are the proles going to do, protest some more? But no, there’s no longer any threat of workers turning to violent communism. The fear of violent communism gave workers real, sharp teeth that forced the rich to negotiate with unions. But then, Reagan, and the fall of the Soviet Union, and yada yada. (Also, it scares the piss outta me that the right-wingers are the ones with all the weapons; there’s a reason I don’t mind Bernie Sanders being red on gun control while he’s deep blue on everything else.) Then again, I keep company with people like angry Marxists who would defend the French Revolution if you asked them about it, so eh. Anyway, it’s a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to address that particular observation of yours.
To clarify, that first paragraph was addressed to PoM, who told me to “go the fuck away,” along with assorted insults.
WWTH: Well, I wouldn’t be more deterred by the death penalty than life in prison. If I had to receive one or the other, I’d choose the death penalty. This isn’t because I don’t think the death penalty is something that would be frightening, or that the threat of the death penalty wouldn’t have deterrent power against me, but because I think life in prison would be worse than dying. At least the punishment ends sooner with the latter.
signed the petition and posted on tumblr to get more signatures. This is serious we need to do everything we can to put a stop to this.