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So yesterday I posted about the repulsive, rapey banners that some frat guys hung from the balcony of their frat at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Banners that were so obviously problematic that the school administration immediately suspended the frat to investigate.
Here. as a reminder, are the banners in question:
I also quoted Amanda Marcotte, who noted that, when faced with clear evidence of rape culture like these banners, rape apologists like to
suddenly pretend they are aliens from another planet and only learned human language last week and therefore are incapable of picking up on humor, implication, non-verbal communication and nuanced language. They pretend to ascribe to a form of communication so literal that even the slightest bit of metaphor or implication, to hear them talk, sends them spinning into a state of confusion.
After I put up my post yesterday, several rape culture deniers wandered into my Twitter mentions, as if to prove Marcotte’s point, posting pictures of banners put up by sorority women at the school and demanding to know why I wasn’t attacking these women for their alleged promotion of rape culture as well.
@DavidFutrelle HOW HORRIBL- … wait, what happens if i look to the right? ohhh i see … nice try :^) pic.twitter.com/ViClZV0RBu
— Dragunov (@NkDragunov) August 25, 2015
https://twitter.com/WoolyBumblebee/status/636343927914786817
I suspect most of you are as nonplussed by this as I was. Because these banners don’t actually promote rape culture. And not because the people holding them up are women, not men.
The frat’s banners have a creepy, predatory edge to them. They are addressed not to the incoming freshmen women, but to the fathers of these women. They strongly suggest that any woman who walks through their doors — or is “dropped off” by dad — is going to be shown a “rowdy … good time” whether she’s “ready” for it or not.
They don’t explicitly use the word “rape” but given how completely they erase the agency of the young women in question they might as well just do that.
The rape threat is implicit, not explicit, but it is clear enough that most people seeing these banners can understand in an instant what they “really mean” and what the problem is.
The banners held up by the sorority women are a different thing entirely. They don’t put forth the message: “we are going to do things to you (whether you like it or not).” They are playful, not threatening, and tell prospective dates “we like sex, and if you get with us you might even get to do ‘butt stuff.'”
The first banner only asks that men pull out before they come; no one wants any babies. The second tells men they are “welcome” to use the back door, nudge nudge. Instead of saying “we will do things to you,” they say “you can do things to us.” Presumably in the context of consensual sex.
Just as rape =/= sex, talking about sex =/= talking about rape.
Is it creepy that when new freshmen men arrive on the campus they’re greeted with giant banners aimed at them and laden with sexual innuendo? Maybe, but it’s nowhere near as creepy as banners greeting freshman women (and their mothers) with not-very-subtle threats of rape.
I tried to get this point across to one of my Twitter interlocutors, the antifeminist Youtube gadfly WoolyBumblebee; it didn’t take. Some excerpts of the ensuing “discussion.”
Rape threats, even implicit ones, are rape culture. Mentions of sex aren’t. You’d think this wouldn’t be hard to understand.
Does WoolyBumblebee really not understand that if someone says “you can put it in my butt” they are not threatening to rape you?
It might not be the appropriate thing to bring up at, say, a dinner party. And if you say it repeatedly to someone not interested in sex with you, it would be sexual harassment.
But it wouldn’t be a rape threat.
WoolyBumblebee more or less conceded this point shortly afterwards. And returned to claiming (or pretending) she didn’t see the threat in the banners posted by the frat guys.
Around and around we go!
Or we would have if I hadn’t gotten off the internet to watch an episode of Mr. Robot.
The question I am left with, as I generally am in the wake of “discussions” with those who seem to be incapable of understanding the basics of human language, is this: Are these people really this literal-minded and obtuse, or are they just pretending?
If the former, how exactly do they manage to even work a computer? Did they make bird noises at their laptop or into their phone for weeks on end before someone explained that’s not how Twitter works? Do they understand the difference between filing their nails and filing their taxes?
It’s gotta be an act, right?
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3.
Well anyway, my apologies if joking about the Quebec thing was insensitive; if it was, it was entirely due (on my part) to being an ignorant American who knows fuck-all about the politics of other countries.
4
Either David finds this troll amusing or both his cats are throwing up giant hairballs and he’s busy cleaning them up.
@Paradoxical Intentions
Good call, sorry. What I meant was “where they should be treated like innocent victims.”
Vetarnias, I don’t know what you’re actually trying to argue (again, your comments are a fucking mess), but I don’t see your telling people they are only allowed to form their opinions based on the decisions of a(n undoubtedly biased) court of law to end well. FYI.
Or he’s sleeping because it’s past midnight where he is.
5
Uh, thanks? But I don’t think I quoted you anywhere…?
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Wasn’t there some of sort of Americanesque shooting spree that had a Quebec separatist as the perp? Either way, I buy the argument that it could be insensitive to mock them, but it’s not racist. French isn’t a race and ethnically French people are definitely white.
Now, have a Joannie Rochette video. She’s from Quebec and seemed perfectly happy to skate as a Canadian.
https://youtu.be/Fkfa_F2RcdA
I just like figure skating, like Rochette and wanted to post a skating video. Definitely better than the troll.
All right, I’m curious, just what would qualify as a disgusting purpose? I can’t think of too many medical procedures for which the person undergoing the procedure provides informed consent for it that could be considered as such, aside from the general disgustingness of bodily fluids and organic matter whatnot. Obviously forced or falsified medical procedures would be wrong, but those can be done just fine with the current level of technology.
Though, consent isn’t apparently a large consideration for you, so you must have a different objection to it. Arguing that it’s unnatural, perhaps?
“Disgusting purpose” means “anything having to do with naughty bits.”
7
There’s enough support for it that there have been votes in Quebec put forth mainly by the Parti Quebecois, and it really wasn’t that big of a margin that it got voted down by. There was even a fringe group the FLQ that used terrorism and even kidnapped and murdered a government official (but that was in the 60s).
I think the main justification by separatists is that 1) the French settled in Canada first and were conquered by the British and 2) they have a distinct culture that they want to preserve and I guess if you are part of a largely anglophone country your interests might not be given the same priority.
That’s about the extent of my knowledge on the issue though. To me it seems a little ridiculous, there is pretty much no support for it outside of Quebec.
Objecting to being marginalised always seems a little ridiculous from the outside.
“Disgusting purpose” means “anything I’m uncomfortable with for any reason,” I suspect. This is the same person that wants a government crackdown on speech, with the tacit understanding that their speech is unlikely to be hit as hard as their political foes.
and 8!
@cupisnique
Yeah, putting it like that makes me feel bad for what I said earlier. If a country isn’t providing for you what your area needs and wants, whether it’s by ignoring the need or whatever – and what you need doesn’t involve being racist, homophobic, dipshits – you have every right to want and secede from your country.
Especially if it involves British shit.
To clarify I think it’s ridiculous because I don’t think they are being marginalised, I have yet to hear an explanation for how they are being oppressed by being part of Canada. I also just don’t have particularly strong sentiments towards nationalism, national pride is all just socially constructed and it seems to me that is the main reason for wanting to annex from Canada. Plus, it seems just ridiculous to me that we would be arguing over whether they have a right to their own country because they were here first before the British, when there are also a lot of Native Americans that live in Quebec that identify as Canadian.
@Pandapool
Oh sorry I didn’t refresh before posting. . . what I wrote earlier is more their justification for wanting to annex. . . whether they are actually being marginalised I think is debatable, and as I mentioned in my second post annexing from Canada would put the Native Americans living there in an interesting position and it seems to me they have more of a right to sovereignty than anyone else.
@Vetarnias
I’m going to correct one of your misstatements even though it’s pointless since you seemingly have a boundless enthusiasm to discuss things you misinformed about.
He wasn’t fired, he resigned. Also, Mozilla is not a typical tech company.
That’s from an excellent New Yorker article about the Brendan Eich controversy.
Now carry on blathering until David blocks you.
@cupisnique
Well, if they ARE being marginalized, yes, they should. If they aren’t and just having a piss then fuck them.
And it’s fucking Canada. Do you know what the hell happens in Canada to Native Americans? The same shit that happens in the United States with Native Americans. If Quebec is gonna make things good for the Native Americans they can secede all they want but Canada as a whole better get their shit together. They have socialized medicine and fucking legalized gay marriage ten years before the US, they should be miles ahead on this shit.
Canada, do you really want to be as shitty as the USA? Because you’re, like, right on the cusp of that shit if you don’t get it together.
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10 and SAVE!
Having no weight in making the federal laws that we follow is not the worst kind of oppression, but it shouldn’t be dismissed just because you don’t die from it.
We had our agricultural sector ravaged by reforms that suited farmers of the West but didn’t work nationwide. We objected to the trade agreements that ruined our factories and forced us on the Race to the Bottom like the rest of capitalist nations, but what’s under a quarter of MPs to do against them? We legalised euthanasia under provincial law, the federal government immediately outlawed it. We nationalised daycare, the federal government established fiscal incentives not to use it, since it wasn’t possible to just dismantle it. As long as we’re represented together with Canada at the UN, “we” vote against Palestine in front of the world, again and again and again.
It’d be nice if the federation worked, but as things go, a province only has as much power as it’s given. Why want a country? Because we want a government that doesn’t exist by charity. We know pretty well it’s not magic, all the problems we currently have would still be there, what we want is the freedom to address them.
In the interests of honesty, I totally have not caught up on the thread at all. I have no clue why you all are number ninja-ing. No clue at all.
I think that might be okay, because I should really go to bed.
Ugh I’m really not good at explaining things.
I tried to answer about the “why” of the independence movement, in the main lines (some factions obviously have more specific aims), but it ended up a long confused post I’m embarrassed about.
Going back a bit… I don’t understand how mocking him for getting angry at the word “Canadian” is racist. If anybody had posted assholish anti-French “Jokes,” sure, that’d absolutely be racist… But “Quebec is still a part of Canada”?
(Serious question.)
I suppose it’s more about the fact that he said PLENTY of nasty, toxic shit, including in the latest round apparent transphobia and heteronormative “but it’s not natural” bullshit, but people were in some cases picking at the Quebec thing, and I can understand that it could make someone bristle.
I had almost no knowledge of the situation with Canada and Quebec, and still have relatively little (but more than I started with – thanks Dodom! Your explanation made sense to me). Is it, as Pandapool says, actual marginalization or just “having a piss”? From what Dodom says, it does sound like the former.
And yes, Canada perhaps has more serious problems going on; multiple people have pointed out how badly that country treats Native Americans, which is also a huge (and yet barely discussed) problem here in the US as well.
Yet, if someone who lives in Washington DC talks about how unfair it is that they still have taxation without representation, I, as an American citizen, would never tell that person “Hey, shut up, that’s not real oppression, there’s bigger shit going on.” Even though, when you think about it, it’s kind of true, to a degree – there IS bigger shit going on. But that doesn’t make the issue unimportant, not worth discussing, and (most of all) it doesn’t make it right to dismiss someone who lives there and is actively trying to make noise about doing something about it.
I believe the same applies here.
To be fair, also, Vetarnias presented the whole “I’m not Canadian, I’m Quebecois” idea terribly, as he did every other thing he’s tried to say, which didn’t help the situation any.
Re: this numbers game or whatever the hell that was – I haven’t a clue. XD