The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive is on! Please consider donating through the PayPal button below. Thanks!
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?
I love all the people going
“they just don’t see it as rape because it doesn’t occur to them that addressing the women’s fathers/husbands equates to failing to get consent from the women they want to fuck”
and
“they don’t see what they’re saying as threats of rape”
and
“people have a hard time with the term rape culture because they just don’t perceive there to be a problem”
and so on.
Yes, boys, yes. We understand that, thanks. That’s entirely the point. The entire fucking point is that dudes will speak of women as if they’re the property of the men in their lives with no say in who fucks them. They don’t see consent as a necessary component of sex. People completely fail to notice how everyone always finds a way for rape to be the victim’s fault. These things you’re pointing out to us as if they make those banners not a problem ARE EXACTLY THE PROBLEM!
On the subject of is it deliberate? I think sometimes yes. I think there’s a core of people who are actually rapists actually consciously employing these rhetorical tactics to derail the conversation. But I also see it as a behavior that people engage in on all kinds of topics. They like and admire someone (possibly themselves) and don’t want to believe they said/did/believe a horrible thing so they’ll accept any rationalization, however flimsy. People are capable of holding all manner of contradictory beliefs in their heads at the same time.
I was going to comment something about the dichotomy between people’s need to see themselves as Good People and their desire to live comfortably with their own privilege, and how it’s often easier to deny reality than it is to relent on either of these two points; but then PolicyOfMadness made that point better and more powerfully than I could have.
The thing that strikes me about the two sets of banners is how the women were happy to be photographed with theirs but the men weren’t. The sexy poses, low-cut tops and duckface of the women make me believe that the banner is just another aspect of them playing slutty-dress-up (which I’m told can be a fun thing to do) rather than a genuine desire to have sex with whomever comes along. By contrast, the men are absent, carefully avoiding any hint of social context or actual personal involvement with their banner. None of them wanted to pose invitingly next to it. It’s not dress-up for them, just a reminder to the world to be afraid of them because they get off on the sensation of being feared.
I think the weird cognitive disconnect might be even worse – “it CAN’T be rape if her father consented…- therefore the banner can’t be rapey”
@sevenofmine:
Do we need a corollary to Lewis’s Law for this? “The responses to a mention of rape culture demonstrate rape culture” or something like that.
@Grettir:
But the thing about property is: You can do to and with it whatever you want. If the “property” doesn’t want something done to “it” this doesn’t matter because it is only property and you can treat it how the hell you want. and if you allow someone to use your property, this person can do to it whatever you allowed them to do to it, regardless of the property’s wishes for “it”self. So if someone talks about a person as someone else’s property in a sexual context, this is always rapey. He might not explicitly mention rape, but he does implicitly. And I doubt the frat guys don’t know that, they just think joking about raping women is hilarious and that the people in power do think so, too. So they think they will get away with it. I hope they won’t.
No. It’s a really messed up way to joke about rape. And I really, really do think it was intended as a rape joke.
It’s like Tara the Antisocial Social Worker said:
@sevenofmine
Please do not use the term “boys” in a condescending tone when you don’t know the gender identity or age of the people who you are talking about, thanks.
In any case, the post asked a question, which is why people are rape-culture-deniers. Uh, because they don’t believe rape culture exists. Yes, it’s that simple. There’s many reasons for that for individuals, however, which don’t boil down to a simple formula.
Well, if you can’t distinguish between sex and rape…. yeah, the distinction you’re making would appear baffling. I’m guessing she and others like her think of questions like this as between the points of view “sex is bad” and “sex is good”. That the issue is consent is not in their frame of reference.
I mean, I don’t think either the frat or the sorority is winning any awards for class or high standards, but only one invites.
Good call. I’m sorry.
Some ramblings that attempt to get across something that’s been stewing in my mind after seeing all these denials and literal-minded apologists. Long post.
Whether or not it’s a direct “rape threat” per se, it’s still gross, dehumanizing, and entitled. Which is the point. It doesn’t have to be a sign that says, precisely and unambiguously, “We Will Rape You!” to contribute to (and demonstrate) rape culture. As Paradoxical Intention pointed out, there are plenty of men who will admit to rape when it’s not called that. Sentiments like this are still part of the problem, even if they are not “direct.”And as more than one person has pointed out at this point, context matters. History and precedent and prior experiences matter.
And it all ties into a bunch of other shit that happens to women, devaluing them, speaking over them, the “friendzone”, all of these things that are part of the overall environment we live in when it comes to the oppression women still face. The common thread is dehumanization and entitlement. It all contributes to “rape culture”, because “rape culture” is NOT some kind of binary, or a mathematical calculation of how likely a woman is to actually be raped in a specific scenario. If these signs make women feel fearful, unsafe, dehumanized, leered at, preyed upon, then THAT BY ITSELF IS STILL PART OF RAPE CULTURE whether or not an actual rape subsequently occurs in this specific case. You don’t have to tell someone “hey man, rape is perfectly okay!” in plain language to contribute to an environment that – implicitly, and with much more subtlety than that – sends basically the same message.
re: the signs the sororities have in the photos – eh. I can’t say I’m a big fan of them, there is something a little bit off about them. As others have said, it’s not exactly a great way to present a welcoming, safe vibe to a newcomer. Here, too, context matters: sororities are hardly free of problems. There’s history there of prejudice and pressure, whether it’s “hazing” or just peer pressure to be “part of the group”, which can result in these young women doing terrible things to each other. Based on my understanding of them, I’m very much not a fan of fraternities OR sororities, just in general.
But it is absolutely not the same thing, and not anywhere near as harmful or gross, as the signs hung by the Old Dominion frat. Because (and again, I am not even close to being the first one to bring this up here) rape culture has little to do with a question about “is sex good or bad”, and has EVERYTHING to do with consent.
Yep.
Wasn’t there a study in which about 1 in 20 of the men interviewed admitted to rape when it was phrased as ‘sex with someone who was too drunk to say no’ and similar? So yeah, I can buy that these men might not have thought of themselves as making a rape threat, because part of what rape culture does is allow rapists to deny that what they’re doing is rape in the first place.
Of course, it also offers plausible deniability to rapists who know exactly what they’re doing, so the fraternity might have been well aware that they were making a rape threat.
Oh, Paradoxical Intention already put it much better and more accurately. Never mind.
Can’t stop laughing.
Considering that the fraternity in question has been reviled throughout the media for these banners, aren’t you a bit hasty in talking of an insidious “rape culture”?
It’s precisely this rushing to the rape-culture conclusion that gave us that botched Rolling Stone story. Why, when rape accusations are so sacrosanct that they must go undisputed, to even double-check it would have been too much. When someone like Jessica Valenti suggests that the magazine should have done so, when blaring out against rape culture the rest of the time, how much can be believe that she would not have railed against Rolling Stone if it HAD double-checked?
Let’s also not forget that there is a moral-conservative position against rape (or was it precocious second-wave feminists who went against Fatty Arbuckle back in the day?), but nobody ever talks about that. I wonder why. My guess is that nowadays the moral conservatives are too busy arguing for the primacy of the rule of law, since those who fervently argue that there exists a rape culture are, at their worst, impossible to differentiate from a lynch mob that finds the legal system too harrowing (can’t let the rapist have a defense attorney to carry out counter-interrogations, can we?), too slow, too ineffectual to be bothered with. And let me make that plain: If alleged rapists like Allen, Cosby et al. are to be dealt with, it is through a court of law, and nowhere else.
Also, you know what place undoubtedly, unabashedly has a “rape culture” these days? The Islamic State, that’s what. Yet how many of those who rail in online publications about “rape culture” from the safety of their home would do something so dangerous and unfitting of them as, say, join a Kurdish militia or whatever or even their own country’s military? Barring those who can’t — that would be my case, for medical reasons — how many would that leave? There, go fight against rape culture — and maybe save some architecture while you’re at it.
I’m definitely going with “both” on this one. Because for all the who-knows-how-many frat brothers who think this is all in good fun, and come on, lighten up, it’s tradition, and “Geez, of course we don’t mean it like THAT”—statistically speaking, there is almost certainly at least one who DOES mean it like that. He gets to comfortably hide under the “hardee har har frat jokes” blanket as if he, too, is just another dude making TOOOOTALLY non-sinister gross-out humor because that’s just how college dudes do things.
No matter how many of the frat members really, truly would never do anything untoward to an incapacitated and/or unwilling person, all it takes is one who would to make the campus an unsafe place for women. And thanks to garbage like this, he’s got the whole fraternity, along with a bunch of talking heads on the internet, defending him.
Anyone who genuinely does not know better (or perhaps more appropriately, has convinced themselves not to know better) enables and empowers the guy who knows exactly what he’s doing.
It’s the same kind of, frankly, impressive circular logic that makes people say “None of my living relatives are a chimpanzee, so evolution doesn’t exist!” or “It’s snowing in August, so global warming doesn’t exist!” or “The president is black, so racism doesn’t exist!”
Considering that the fraternity in question, despite lots and lots of national discussion about the amount of sexual assault that takes place on college campuses, thought it was okay to fly these banners from their balcony, then no, it’s not hasty at all.
The fact that there are also lots of people rushing to the defense of these banners, claiming that it’s just boys being boys, also means it’s not hasty.
If Rolling Stone had done proper journalism, then they may not have written the article at all, or at least would have written it very differently, and therefore it’s pretty darn difficult to predict what Jessica Valenti would have had to say about it, assuming there was even an article to comment on.
Firstly, Allen and Cosby have both admitted to doing pretty terrible things, so even if we were to choose to disbelieve every single one of their accusers (now over 50 of them, in Cosby’s case), we’d still have reason to think ill of these men. Secondly, nobody is trying to imprison or kill either of them. People are allowed to think ill of them, and people are allowed to say that they think ill of them. People are allowed to choose to no longer support their careers due to thinking ill of them. People are allowed to believe their accusers. No court of law is required for any of that.
This has nothing to do with whether it’s okay for fraternities to make campuses feel unsafe for women in the United States, or whether it’s okay to defend those fraternities.
Vetarnias: Please zip up your pants and wash your hands.
@ Vetarnias
Right here is where I stopped reading.
Seconding CCD and hentropy, I’m not sold on the sorority banners not being rape culture. They’re not about rape directly, granted, but they do reinforce the idea that women are the sex class. They’re not morally reprehensible, at least not in the way being predatory is, or in the way using one’s privilege to perpetuate the oppression of others is. But I don’t think they’re harmless and I don’t think they’re not rape culture.
“We know our place! We’re the good ones! We understand and accept that we only exist for you to have sex with us. We’ll let you do what you want! Maybe then you’ll respect us. We know the real rewards in society are not for us, but we’ll gratefully take the crumbs that come along with receiving your penis like an obedient little fuckhole.”
To me the banners are very clearly not about their joy in their own sexuality, but about subjugating themselves to men.
Yet ya’ll seem to be agreeing the sororities are not promoting rape culture. Is the distinction just about the level of directess, or is there something I’m missing or confusing here? Is rape culture supposed to be about rape very specifically, and seen to be as a separate issue on top of the wider problem of the (sex class) status of women in society?
@ Policy of Madness
I don’t think it’s an act. Rather, it’s a completely unexamined double-standard.
Very well put. Lying about one’s beliefs would be strange and more cynical than most people are capable of. Given that people have a nearly endless ability to rationalize away the weaknesses in their beliefs, it’s not necessary either.
@ Vetarnias
We can fight against rape culture more effectively at home. Violence is rarely a good solution to any problem. ISIS exists as a direct result of US military intervention.
@Vetarnias:
you’re a very good example of the question David poses: are you arguing in incredibly bad faith, or are you really that obtuse?
The problem with the Rolling Stone-story was not that that magazine is so extremely strawman-feminist that it just believed a rape story, because it didn’t want to question the narrative. The problem was that a career-oriented journalist threw considerations of journalistic standards over board, and her editors wanted the scoop so much, or were so busy with other stuff, or whatever. They didn’t do their job well and let the story through without ticking all the boxes a journalist and editor should have ticked, because it was such a good scoop. That’s why there was a thorough academic investigation into editorial culture at the magazine. Had they double-checked the story, it would not have been published, so nobody would have even heard of it, therefore no one would have accused RS of not believing a survivor.
And yes, the story fit into a narrative about rape culture, especially on colleges. That doesn’t mean that the narrative has no base in reality. There are enough proven cases of rape at colleges and the abysmal way of administrations to deal with them.
You obviously refuse to understand what people mean by “rape culture”. Because we’re not talking about actual rapes here, we’re not accusing the fraternity of being rapists. We’re saying that these “jokes” and the way they normalize behaviour that doesn’t care about clear and enthusiastic consent, lead to many people not being clear about how to have consensual sex, and to men becoming effectively rapists, because they have been taught that when a woman says no, or when she is incapable of saying yes, that doesn’t mean they should stop.
The Islamic State argument is precisely why we have a different definition of rape: you seem to think that rape is a stranger forcing women by gunpoint in a dark alley or in a “savage land” (because, let’s be honest, this argument is incredibly racist). White frat boys making disgusting jokes about women as property to be raped are not excused by pointing at other areas of the world, of which you have heard one thing through the media and basically know nothing, and saying that those primitive assholes are much worse.
How the fuck should we, who have no knowledge of any of the languages or cultures, join the Kurdish militia? And why do you think they even want a bunch of First World idiots with no useful knowledge about territory, military situation etc. in their army? There was a group of German sectarian communists (tbh, they are effectivley Stalinist) who went to Kobane to “help” and basically had to be shepherded by members of the militia that had much better things to do. By the way, Kurdish culture is not superfeminist either.
@mola, CCD and hentropy,
thirded. In an environment in which several fraternities have marched around campus chanting “No means yes, yes means anal”, “backdoor” jokes aren’t really sexually empowering but tell young women that they should be comfortable with sexual practices not everybody is comfortable with. The women of this sorority are “cool” with it, so why aren’t you?
@ mola the ocean sunfish
You kind of answered your own question there. The sorority banners are a symptom of a misogynistic culture, play into toxic ideas about men always being ready for sex, etc. But they’re not rape-y. Because consent. The women are addressing the male students directly and inviting them inside whereas the frat signs address the female students’ fathers with the implication that neither they nor the women’s fathers care what the women themselves want.
People who argue against rape culture are doing it because they want to preserve their innocence, for lack of a better word. They grew up believing in a world where sexism has been dealt with, a misogynist is someone who beats his wife, a rapist is a man in a ski mask waiting in dark alleys etc. They also believe in a culture where the cure for any such things happening in the world is to publically shame or incarcerate the perpetrators.
The idea that not only are all these things systemic in culture but that he might be a part of them makes him panic, because he only knows the latter ways of dealing with them and is terrified they’ll happen to him (hence the false rape allegation phobia). Anyone who tells him this scares him, not because they’re completely convincing him but because they instil a tiny, niggling doubt in the back of his mind that maybe they might be right, and he’d rather shout them down and go back to living in his protective fantasy land bubble than contemplate the idea because if the are right, what does that say about him?
There’s a great Youtube series on this mindset called ‘Why Are You So Angry?’, which was created to directly critique GamerGate but applies to pretty much all these mindsets:
Yes!
@Kootiepatra:
Right?? Rolling Stone blunders ahead and runs a story they never should have run, which ends up being bad for EVERYONE involved, and this event is somehow used by Vetarnias to rail against feminists and anti-rape activists. Fascinating.
That aside, you and others have done an excellent job gutting the “arguments” made by Vetarnias, which were mostly just grandstanding with a lot of twenty and thirty-dollar words thrown in there to make the anti-feminist, first-world racist schlock underneath it look good. There’s a moral conservative position against rape? OoohhhoOOooh what a gotcha! Rape culture is over! Just like how the moral-conservative position against innocent people being shot to death has curbed American gun violence, right?
Merciful Leviathan, you guys weren’t kidding in that other thread when you chastised me for my WHTM comment section naivete.