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
@Allison
Cute that you’d donate to charity to annoy someone. And that you think we care if you think that *we’re* insincere.
@PoM
Thank you so much; certain bits of my brain are such liars. I hope that someday I’ll be able to stop fourth-guessing myself about when someone’s being dismissive. >_>
@andiexist
Hey, I’m mad. I know what it’s like to sometimes need a second opinion about my own emotions. There’s nothing wrong with asking for one if you feel you need one.
Andi: The “anytime” was me responding to sarcasm in kind. And why the hell shouldn’t you donate to charity to annoy someone? It’s a lot more constructive than many of the things people do when they’re angry.
@PoM
I don’t, far as I know, have an anxiety disorder, but brain likes to inflict random anxiety on me at night. Thank you for the understanding. 🙂
*internet hugs, if they are desired*
@andiexist
Well, now you have it from the horse’s mouth: it was a particularly assholish brush-off. Your instincts are fine.
@Allison
No reason you shouldn’t donate to charity to spite someone’s aims, but it’s a bit juvenile to act like it’s some big gotcha. Especially when it’s a charity that the person personally disliked but was not (as I gather, don’t know much about RIANN) diametrically opposed. *shrug*
I’m not surprised you couldn’t see the point for the sarcasm, though, as you’ve skirted the borders of tone policing several times. Care to address my point yet?
PoM:
Heh, looks like. 😛
(Some people really don’t seem to understand that sarcasm is like sauce — having it with a meal — a point, in this metaphor — doesn’t make it a meal on its own.)
Which point was that? The bit about throwing you under the bus?
If that’s it, I’m sorry. What I meant to say was that even if someone has a disability that interferes with their ability to defend themselves, that doesn’t mean they actually deserve to be victimised. And if your disability *doesn’t* interfere with your ability to defend yourself or others, then more power to you.
@AllisonW
I’m pretty sure you can be feminist and a non-left end of a political system. Feminism is more of a philosophical movement than a political one. And we’re talking about rape prevention which I think anyone, whether Liberal or Conservative, would be behind as long as they’re, you know, not a fucking asshole, so rape prevention is definitely nothing political.
It’s just there’s a lot of things that need to be considered when discussing this. It’s not enough to just one thing to prevent rape, there needs to be about a hundred million things (approximately) to be dealt with. There’s many ways people can be raped, so these many ways must be known. The best way to prevent rape of any kind is to teach people, not just that rape is wrong but that we need to respect people, we need to listen to people, we need to take people seriously when they say they’ve been raped. There’s a lot more things that can be helped through teaching people rather than arming people.
We will still need to arm people, unfortunately, but hopefully with teaching we will reduce the number of people will need to defend themselves.
We also need to give people the confidence to report. Reporting and dealing with rapist will reduce rape significantly since many rapes are done by serial offenders. And we also need to make rape survivor feel safe so that way other survivors can come forward.
There’s so many things beyond just making sure women can kick ass when the need arises, and that’s really what we have a problem with your ideas, Allison. You’re putting a bandaid on the problem and ignoring that everyone can be raped, whether man, woman, agender, whatever.
Really think about what you’re saying. Is it just a fantasy or a real solution?
Absolutely. I was thinking before I read your remark that a “left” leaning German or Australian wouldn’t even be on the political landscape in America.
Josh Miller,
If you happen to be a Josh Miller who knows a Lea from way back, we need to have a come to Jesus meeting. Txt me.
If you aren’t “my” Josh Miller, watch your ass. You’re shitting and falling back in it and no one here owes you anything. You come here with that trolling bullshit, you are going to be sent back under your bridge.
AllisonW,
It warms your heart to imagine a world where women and girls live in constant fear of torture and murder that motivates them to pack a firearm everywhere they go? WTF? That is a shitty world.
I never leave home unarmed. I would love to.
I forgot to add:
EJ! EJ! EJ!
Panda: “Let’s go Wild West and shoot all the rapists” is admittedly a fantasy, though one I absolutely have. I still like to entertain it from time to time, and anyone with evidence supporting the idea that such aggressive solutions could actually work in a modern environment would have my ear–for instance, the “Wild West” wasn’t nearly as “wild” as we imagine it to be, and the self-defense-oriented model actually made perfect sense in such an environment, even though that environment isn’t most of the modern world. It does still apply to some places in the modern world, like very rural environments where law enforcement is several hours away. And even where the police are closer… yeah. I hope it is not actually strange to have lost a great deal of faith in law enforcement as an institution after the events of the past year or so, even if it’s still true that the self-defense model just doesn’t apply to denser environments the same way it does to spread-out populations in practice.
More realistically, I still do consider individual empowerment to have value alongside more collective answers. I’m not fantasizing, for instance, when I say that self-defense laws that don’t already include it should include domestic abuse as a potential justification for the use of force. Nor am I fantasizing when I say that our society should support women and girls in competition and in sports, including contact, combat, and strength sports (weight training, for instance, is highly beneficial but very overlooked, when it’s not being actively discouraged). When I’m fantasizing I wax poetic about that shit and play a battle hymn in the background or something, but I’m not… hold on, let me change Youtube off of Turbo Killer, there. I’m also not fantasizing when I agree that bystander education, consent education, and reform of law enforcement are essential, and I also hold no delusions that what a woman is wearing, for instance, has any effect on whether a rapist or abuser would target her: it’s entirely about whether an attacker perceives vulnerability.
Lea: in my twisted daydreams it’s anger, not fear, but I’m one of those people that regards anger as being necessary and precious, at least in people who use it better than I do.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/stir.gif
Yeah, I’ll just be over here not on Planet Murder, kthx.
I just got here and didn’t read all 300+ comments yet, so I am aware I may be very late to this and someone else most likely said it already.
This conflicts with their constant “false rape accusation” spiel since, correctly, *real* rape accusations are usually treated abysmally.
I can’t believe they really put on a sort of racial double standard on raping. Also, the comparison of women to children hints to me that they would be willing to rape children.
At this point, this:
…is just not plausible. They are simply embracing the evil.
Katz: eh, I’ve had worse receptions.
.
Pandapool: thanks for actually engaging with me (even if it seems like you might regret it), and actually venturing the faith that I didn’t come here for the purpose of trolling: anger drives me as much as it does them, and fighting with PoM bettered my day, but where those who come here to troll consider feminism a joke I’m actually sincere about hating male supremacism and considering the contents of the OP serious. It sounds like there are things we actually agree on, like that many solutions to preventing rape are necessary and to no small extent even what they are.
PoM: I can’t say I like you, but I want to thank you for sharing anger in a way that actually made my day better. That isn’t even sarcasm: my day was better because you were in it.
I’d like to thank people like PoM for existing. It’s easy for me as a privileged person to live in my own warm little bubble and not notice when I’m being an asshole. As long as people are willing to call me out, it cuts down the extent to which I’m unthinkingly assholish to people and helps me improve. Thank you, PoM. Your existence makes me a better person, and the fact that you don’t give me any slack helps me feel safer.
I’d also like to thank people like AllisonW for existing. You come from an environment where violence is socially more acceptable, and so you remind me that my happy little Western Europe bubble of middle-classness is a long way from being the human norm. Thank you, Allison. You help keep me intellectually honest and remind me that my pacifism is a privilege that I get to indulge in because I live in a safe society, and that preaching pacifism to you is not acceptable unless I do it as part of a wider program of social change.
I’d also like to thank Lea, because cheering fans make me feet ten feet tall.
I… wow. That was heartfelt, EJ, and I actually feel kind of warmer inside for reasons that have nothing to do with the negativity through which I usually relate to the world.
More intellectually, I was sitting here thinking to myself, “Wait, *is* violence really more socially acceptable in my society? It’s not just me?” And then I considered that I live in the United States and that for all the people we’re privileged in comparison to, you’re not kidding that we have a very different view of violence than Europe does; I’m an angry person from an angry family from an angry nation, and while even intellectually I think sometimes violence is necessary, emotionally I’m too quick to embrace what I should know is a necessary evil. (And I talk like a villain while I do it.) But it’s easy to do here.
America talk following:
On the other hand, I don’t feel as bad observing again that we’re a lot more spread out than Europe is. We have a lot of very rural areas, especially in regions like Alaska and the Midwest, where law enforcement actually *is* several hours away, and people that live in those places frequently argue quite vehemently that self-defense is especially important in those regions. I accept this as true. (Rural Alaska, as an example, has an especially bad sexual assault rate, and I’ve encountered women who live there that are very firm on the necessity of guns for self-defense in their region.) I live in a small town that gets police support provided by a neighbouring town, so it’s not quite as bad right here, but one of the like two or three cops over there is still a tool that chases people around the convenience store “playfully” threatening to tase them. And I’m *white*. I don’t like to think too hard about how much worse my experiences with cops would be if I weren’t. And even though I’m white, the very recent goings-on in Ferguson and Baltimore have hurt my trust in police as an institution even more than reading Stone Butch Blues did. My views on self-defense were, in fact, changed as a result.
That rural-urban divide I mentioned is actually critical to debates about violence and guns even within America. Rural areas are usually pro-gun rights not because of anything about ignorant redneck stereotypes, or even just because people in rural areas often hunt as a hobby, but because they’re often much further away from law enforcement than people who live in cities. Americans in cities actually frequently regard guns as a tool with which crimes are committed.
So yes, my support for self-defense as not *merely* a necessary evil but as a right to cherish is quite possibly one of those American things, for a whole complex of geographic and cultural reasons related to our sheer size on the map, our appallingly corrupt police, and a cultural history which is also very rural in many ways and includes a successful violent revolution that led to the creation of America as we know it. I’m a pretty bad American, as demonstrated by my frequent use of British spellings, but I’ve nonetheless been affected by growing up here.
It may also be that feminism being associated with the Left (primarily represented by the Democratic political party) is also an American thing, because the right wing (primarily represented by the Republican political party) in the United States is presently engaged in, uh, we’ve actually called it the “war on women” here in the US. *Multiple* right-wing candidates actually got sacked in the past few years after saying things like pregnancy as a result of rape just being one way that God can create life, and the right wing is attacking things like the right to choose nationwide by increasing restrictions on abortion providers in deliberate attempts to keep them from practicing. In Colorado, the Republicans even shut down a massively successful program that provided low- or no-cost IUDs to women and that massively reduced teen pregnancy rates while saving the state several times the money invested in it, on the grounds that it was “subsidizing sex.” Feminism is an extremely political issue here in the United States; I’m glad there are nations where that doesn’t have to be the case.
The above isn’t news to anyone who lives in the United States, but it might be to some people who don’t live here.
Just a side note, without defending Zimmerman, and without suggesting that guns prevent rape (they obviously don’t help much when the rapist is an acquanitance, a date, or a spouse). IF YOU ARE going to carry a gun for self defense, then you need to know the law. Self defense is legally regulated.
YOU CANNOT, FOR EXAMPLE, leave the scene of the confrontation, arm yourself, come back, and then start firing warning or any other kind of shots. Once you are away from the scene of the threat, you are out of danger; you are expected by law to stay out of danger, call the cops, etc. If you RETURN to the scene, you are initiating a NEW confrontation, and you are not allowed to use deadly force to end a confrontation that YOU STARTED.
YOU ALSO CANNOT FIRE WARNING SHOTS, PRETTY MUCH EVER. That’s a TV myth. Shooting at people is illegal; self defense is an affirmative defense in which you admit to a crime but then argue that it was justified. Justification requires an immediate danger to your life or another’s. If the danger was insufficient to justify shooting the attacker, then self defense doesn’t apply–but if you felt able to fire warming shots, then you must not have yet been in immediate mortal peril. Although there are some exceptions in case law, the rule is: don’t shoot at all unless you’re in immediate mortal peril, and then shoot the attacker until the threat is ended. There is no legal justification for warning shots, nor, for that matter, for brandishing.
Disclaimer: I am law enforcement trained, but I am not a lawyer.
I mention this because both sides of the gun debate are riddled with ignorance of things like what the law actually says. This woman who fired “warning shots” after going out to her car DID break the law, based on her own story. The warning shots are never justified, one, and leaving the scene of the confrontation initiates a new confrontation, with her as the aggressor, when she returned. If she agreed correctly, and she may have, then she needed to tell that story instead of the one she told. E.g., if she was attempting to rescue her kids (who were endangered by her “warning shots”), then she needed to tell that story. If that, or something like it, we’re the real story, then her lawyer was incompetent for letting her tell a story that obviously did not fall under the terms of justification.
Even if we think both verdicts were wrong, morally, most of us make bad arguments about it, because we don’t understand the law and substitute myths from TV and westerns.
I’m an urban educated white male Afrikaner of German ancestry who was brought up in Calvinist religion. If there is evil in the world, then the chances are that I will be perpetrating it rather than being its victim. Consequently, when people start talking about arming me and people like me, I back away because historically that has ended in tears. I would rather be helpless than face the prospect of doing evil myself, because the sensation of helplessness isn’t real to me.
By the sounds of it, you’re the opposite. Your own helplessness is something that’s very real to you, and so you’re willing to risk the possibility of being the perpetrator of evil actions if it means that you get to sleep soundly at night.
Neither of these is the right answer, of course. We both have some distance to travel before we’re morally perfect deities.
Interestingly, I had this selfsame discussion with a friend of mine who lives in Delhi and is active in the Womanist movement there. She made the same point: that to her the prospect of being a victim is very real but the prospect of being a perpetrator is academic, whereas to me the prospect of being a victim is academic but the prospect of being a perpetrator is very real. However, neither is good: I end up paralysed by the fear of doing something wrong and so end up not doing things I should, whereas she ends up revelling in her own power and not noticing when she’s doing something wrong.
Oi, EJ. I appreciate it, but when you put it that way i actually do start to think I’m just a really angry person, because in a whole lot of ways I’ve been *very* fortunate.
As far as evil goes, in some ways, I’m almost fatalistic. I’ve come around to accepting that evil lives within all of us, to greater or lesser degrees, as a consequence of our genetic legacy as the most predatory species to walk the Earth, and that means it’s in me, too. I’m also part of a psychological grouping (very disagreeable people; that’s an actual psychometric) that’s more prone to violent criminality, even though I have a clean record. So honestly? I, personally, probably shouldn’t be the one to hold that kind of power either. I think that’s why I’m so vocal about it: Being born angry, and raised in an angry family in an angry nation, and being on a medication that lists hostility as a side effect, *I* understand anger intimately, but I don’t want to keep it to myself. I want to nurture the power of anger in people who aren’t already swimming in anger like I am, perhaps in some vain hope that they’re really better people than I am and that they could be trusted more, but now that I look at it that way, I start to see how while I regard anger as important and valuable, they could just as easily see it as a burden. (This internalisation of evil is also one of the reasons I consider fear of retribution to be important in keeping many people civil: I know I would be a worse person if I knew I could act with impunity, and this is true of *many* people. Many rich and powerful people, for example. There are “undesirable” behaviours, like survival crime, that are difficult to deter with fear of punishment, but it works well against people like me. It worked against that one violent guy in my family, too–my last therapist told me violent abusers are notoriously difficult to “fix” when I told her the story, but the fear of retribution fixed his wifebeating tendencies overnight.)
Of course, Allison the thinking person is on the line right now, not Allison the bloodthirsty animal.
As far as helplessness: the whole “helplessness” thing is one of the reasons why I still think the use of force can’t be treated as beneath consideration. It’s still there even when all the “legitimate” levers of power have been denied to people who are marginalised–it is a way in which people who aren’t given a voice *aren’t* helpless. For all that I’m so eager to cheerlead for it, it comes at a terrible price, but when people to whom the legitimate levers of power are denied talk like it can never be justified, just, fuck. It’s one of the reasons I philosophically conflict with pacifism: when the legitimate levers of power are denied, encouraging pacifism is tantamount to encouraging compliance.
And yet now I’m sitting here thinking, “Am I really helpless? Is it true? I find myself wondering what I can do a lot, being out here in the boonies and all, but *helpless*?” Eh, I’ll chew on it.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had such experiences, Allison. My hugs go out to you, unless you’re touchphobic in which case my best wishes go out instead.
I’m from a pretty angry background too. (Pull up a wikipedia page and do a search for a man called Eugene Terreblanche. That’s my tribe.) I grew up being taught that violence is something that men use to protect their women and children and to impose justice. I’ve had to manually relearn to not be that person any more.
You’re among friends here. We might disagree with your stance on violence, but we do not feel that you are a bad person or an evil person. You are not under attack.
If I may ask, have you ever done mindful awareness therapy? It really helped me. Learning to spot my own emotions and to spot those things which caused them was really helpful in learning to step outside of them and to live without just being a puppet of my feelings; and finally to take control of my feelings instead of them taking control of me.
If you ever need to talk to someone and you have nobody else to talk to, please feel free to talk to me.