By David Futrelle
The idea that women secretly, or not so secretly, want to be raped isn’t exactly a new idea, and it’s one that remains popular among the sort of men who think that rape laws are just too damn strict.
So it’s hardly surprising to find a post on Return of Kings asserting that “Feminists are hysterical about rape because no man wants to rape them.” RoK is, after all, a site presided over by the infamous Roosh Valizadeh, a man whose pickup guides seem an awful lot like how-tos for date rape.
What is perhaps a little unexpected is to see how much energy the post’s author, one Len Goddard, puts into concocting an evo psych justification for this nonsense notion.
Goddard starts off by asserting that feminists who talk and worry a lot about rape don’t do so because rape is common — he offers some dubious stats, unsourced of course, as “proof” that it is quite rare. No, the real reason
these types are adamant about manufacturing stories about sexual assault and rape is because they are trying to prove they are desirable. It plays to their ego to think that there might be some testosterone-fuelled barbarian out there who would find her suitable enough for a forced session. These women want to punish men not because of a fear of being attacked, but due to a bitterness of not being approached, considered, acknowledged, and on the more extreme scale … not being a target for forced sex.
So far he has not gotten beyond a popular antifeminist insult, frequently pulled out of a hat by misogynistic men losing arguments online, suggesting that feminists are all “too ugly to get raped.” (Indeed, later in the post Goddard, clearly thinking himself very clever, literally suggests to his readers that they use this rather threadbare insult on any feminists who challenge their misogyny.)
But before he gets to that point Goddard decides to tell a little evo psych “just so” story in an attempt to prove that feminists are indeed too ugly to get raped, and that this fact makes feminists feel very bad.
In fact, as Goddard sees it, getting raped by “some testosterone-fuelled barbarian” alpha male is basically a “biological imperative” for human females.
“Let’s rewind to the days of Vikings, global conquests, and crusades, where raping and pillaging were common,” Goddard writes, taking us back in time to what he seems to imagine was some sort of rapey golden age (and one with a decidedly Northern European feel to it).
When these Vikings or raiders would invade, they would indiscriminately rape the women. Now, as brutal and as terrifying as it was, this helped these women indirectly fulfill their biological imperative—which is to pass on the strongest genes possible to her offspring. These genes were forced upon them by the, proven, bigger, stronger, smarter men who likely just decimated the local men of breeding age.
In other words, the Viking rapists were not only giving these women what they secretly really wanted, at least in Goddard’s mind; they were infusing the cultures they invaded with their superior genetic material, uplifting the entire human race by making better (white) babies.
Some of the Vikings’ rape victims, he writes, were kidnapped and “absorbed into the tribes of the invaders where they likely had long and successful—biologically speaking—breeding lives.” As Goddard sees it, these were the lucky ones; the rest were left behind to fend for themselves.
Contemporary feminists are even less lucky, Goddard argues.
“Fast forward back to today,” he continues. The “feminists and fat women (undesirables)” in contemporary society are essentially
the equivalent of the low-born and peasant women of yester-year. But those ancient women would have still had exposure to top-tier men—the best genetics–whether it was consensual or not (not).
Forget the emotional and physical trauma of rape; in Goddard’s twisted imagination rape was a good thing for these women and the human race in general, an opportunity for “low-born” women to have “exposure to top-tier men” and their golden sperm. In his scenario, the problem faced by contemporary feminists isn’t that they get raped; it’s that they don’t get raped often enough.
Today’s undesirables don’t have that “option,” if we can call it that. Do you think the likes of Chris Hemsworth or Brad Pitt are lining up to fuck a woman like Lena Dunham? Never in a million years.
It’s always about Brad Pitt for these guys, huh? I think he’s a bit old for Lena Dunham, who I rather suspect has little trouble finding dates.
Top-tier-women of today are the only women who get exposure to the top-tier-men. Fatties and feminists cannot fulfill their biological imperatives directly (seducing a top-tier man) or indirectly (being raped by an aggressive, dominant man).
Today’s sexual marketplace is discriminate against the laziness and repulsiveness of fat women and feminists whereas the sexual marketplace of the invading hordes was indiscriminate, driven only by raging emotions and carnal urges.
Despite the utter awfulness of the views he’s espousing here, it is sort of cute that Goddard and the rest of the losers associated with Return of Kings see themselves as being “top-tier” anything.
Goddard continues by asserting that feminism is little more than a cry of “sour grapes!” from sexually frustrated women who hate “the male-feminist, soy-boy-cucks who orbit them” and long for the sort of macho lady-hating dude who thinks the Vikings were super-cool because they raped so many women.
In order for these unfortunate ladies to escape their misery, Goddard argues, they will need to abandon feminism and “embrace the lives that will lead them to the men they want, and therefore, the lives they want.” Only then will they be able to “command the respect of a good man.”
The writers at Return of Kings wouldn’t know a good man if he punched them in the face.
It, and the Viking raid on it, were featured in “Time’s Tapestry” series by Stephen Baxter, IIRC.
So according to these guys Viking hordes raping women was good because rapist genes are best genes, but the alleged Muslim hordes invading Europe and America and raping “our” women is bad because…?
It’s so telling the way they constantly conflate “being attractive”, “being found desirable”, and “being raped”, as if all three are the same thing. It tells you what’s going on in their minds as they’re looking at teenagers and young women.
Two words: sperm bank.
Oh, and just like in real life, sperm banks quickly weed out biotruth-spouting, women-hating MRAs. Their intake staff are well trained at spotting guys who are only in it for revenge, beer money, or the competitive high of “outbreeding” other men, and showing them the door. Despite their self-broclaimed superiority, rapey jerks aren’t in demand for assisted reproduction, for some strange reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So no, it’s not a successful mating strategy.
Even when women seeking AR can literally pick any type of mate they want from a catalogue, when they’re free to indulge their wildest fantasies, they often skip right past Chad and go for beta qualities: kindness, intelligence, altruism, artistic talent, a stable profession. Because they’re going to be the ones raising these kids. They don’t want kids who violate boundaries, think rules are for other people, and have trouble forming healthy adult relationships due to weird archaic notions that we should all be acting like Vikings or bonobos or lions or anything really except 21st century human beings.
“I’m a failure as a person because in reality I’m a wolf born in the wrong century” has to be the most pathetic excuse ever.
@Pie
I stand corrected
Rape also seems just really impractical. Especially since humans don’t go into heat when fertile and there’s no way to tell by looking at a cis woman if she’s likely to become pregnant after sex. It’s possible for a pregnancy to occur after one time, but it is far from guaranteed. Even though most rapists don’t go to jail, even in our supposed gynocracy, a woman will tend to avoid her rapist as much as possible. Women also tend to warn other women about predatory men. The whole missing stair thing. So if you’re a rapist, there’s a good chance that more women will avoid you than they would if you were a decent guy. So even if you take morality, empathy, and treating women like humans completely out of the equation, it seems like my just sheer numbers, you’ll get more mating chances if you can find women who will consent to sex with you on multiple occasions than you would if you just raped women from time to time.
Plus, y’know, sticking around to help raise the kids will greatly inmprove their chances of making it to adulthood. Apparently these guys think the reproductive strategy of sunfish is the way to go.
And, of course, women can just “shut the whole thing down” so no pregnancy need result /s
I love, too, the attempt to reframe a violent, nonconsensual act as something that provides *more* choice for women. These dudes are so thirsty, so single-mindedly ruled by their penises, it’s warped their morality beyond recognition. “Oh, your home was burned and your family driven away and now you’re spending the rest of your life in slavery, but THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU GOT TO HAVE SEX.”
It reminds me of that time the Wall Street Journal referred to people living in extreme poverty as “lucky ducks” because they don’t pay taxes.
I would be willing to be that Len Goddard is anything but pro choice, unless he actually doesn’t realize that one of the biggest arguments for legalized abortion is how inhumane it is to force women against their will to carry their rapist’s baby to term. Only an extreme sadomasochist might like getting raped, and even than I would have my doubts that they would actually enjoy it. Rape is a horrible act of violence against anyone whom it is perpetrated against.
It also says a lot about Goddard, that he seems to value strength and ones ability to force their will onto other people above everything else. There’s a reason why the vast majority of people in our society today find that kind of behavior to be morally abhorrent. Most people have far better ethics than this sicko.
I hate how these douches make these ridiculously broad generalizations about history just to prop up their bullshit arguments. There’s zero chance this guy ever even touched a history book to make his “arguments.” It’s all conjecture.
I have read a few of the Icelandic sagas, though only in translation, and the earliest known versions were a long while after the events they recount. I suspect they end up picking what made a good story.
And they’re not just about violence, though if you changed the names, Burnt-Njal could easily be a Mafia Godfather in the mix of violence, honour, and legal conflict.
The Vikings certainly seem to have been a bit sensitive about their manhood, though it is arguable that that is something exaggerated to make a good story. There are quarrels, and attempts to find a settlement, and then something trivial is taken as an insult, and the whole bloody feud restarts.
A couple of centuries later, and are those stories intended as dreadful warnings?
Well, I’m from northern England, and the Viking influence lingered. I’m old enough that media such as radio and TV hadn’t yet killed off the dialect words where I grew up, and I don’t need a subtitled version of When the Boat Comes In.
Maybe that matters. Maybe the Vikings are, to me, real people and not slogans. We have our own ranting bigots in England, but we have seen them learn, seen them choose peace, and had to live through their journey.
A few years ago I would have wondered why so much of this seems to come out of the USA, but what I see now, we seem to be heading the same way. That scares me. I’ve always felt that England had a better sense of history, a myth that wasn’t just about the conquest of a frontier.
The history is still uglier than our myth, and our ranting bigots today still believe their rather ridiculous version of the myth.
I think I can still call myself a Hobden, but these days, they’ve stopped listening.
Zeuxis108,
I also don’t know of any historical accounts of women, or anyone for that matter enjoying it when a foreign army invaded their homeland and raped them. His bizarre idea that feminists secretly want to be raped is not only extremely misogynistic, its beyond absurd.
Off topic, but this is fantastic and you should all read it: Nick Chater, a psychiatry professor, talking about what a human personality actually is.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/01/revolution-in-our-sense-of-self-sunday-essay
@EJ
I like that article very much. This is why certain post structural thinkers made immediate sense to me when I first read them. And why I was so happy when my new psychiatrist talked about the stories we tell ourselves as we navigate our way through life. The stories are not fake – but they’re not true either (as we’d normally define “true”).
We are all like little Ships of Theseus in some ways ?
I appreciate you sharing this, as I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
Always happy, Mish. I’ve learned a lot from you, so I’m pleased to be able to hand something back.
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Morality should never be out the question though. Values, principles and morality being “void” and out the question leads to a destructive oppressive society. With the main victims being women.
If rape is so impractical why do men do it? Sense of power? Lack of morals? They realise that the only way they can have sex is to rape as they feel unwanted? I think our society which allows scumbag men and PUA’s to get away with disgusting shit makes rape “more practical” sadly
What an utterly horrid excuse for a human being. I hope he gets run over by something.
In spite of the fact that I’m “undesirable” according to shits like this, I have been sexually assaulted. The more recent occasion was in 1997 on Halloween by my ex-boyfriend. He wasn’t a “Chad.” These creeps probably would have labeled him a beta.
I broke up with him because he was an asshole, but I had very low self-esteem (also undiagnosed type 2 bipolar disorder) and thought the right thing would be to keep him as a friend. So I took him to a Halloween party that a co-worker was throwing. I was really drunk, but I drove him back to my apartment anyway so he wouldn’t start a fight with a co-worker that he got incensed with because said co-worker was flirting with me.
Back at the apartment, I thought he had left, so I went to bed with all my clothes on. I woke up with my clothes off and him on top of me. I told him to stop, but he didn’t. I was too drunk to fight. When he was done, he said “well, now we’re back together.”
I didn’t go to the police because I knew they would blame me for being drunk.
I had horrible panic attacks repeating throughout every day for the coming year. They started when I woke up. When I eventually became exhausted, they would stop. I didn’t want to go to sleep, because I didn’t want to wake up and have it start all over again.
My family told me I would “get over it” like I did the last time. (I was also sexually assaulted when I was 18. That guy came back and told me he hoped I was pregnant so we’d have to be together. I wasn’t, thank whatever powers there may be, but I did get an awful infection from him.)
As to dropping feminism to leading me to “the man I want”, I do not want anyone alive on this planet at this time, and certainly I don’t want some vile shitbag in my bed. As it is, I prefer sleeping on a twin bed or a couch, and if I sleep on a bigger bed, I put stuff on it so the space becomes more confined. I also sleep up against the wall. It makes me feel safer somehow.
@The Real Cie
I hope you don’t mind, but:
<3 Cie. That's awful, and you didn't deserve any of it. (I sleep the same way as you do, as it turns out)
Your family's response is terrible.
@Feministguy
Rape us not just an interesting philosophical debate topic to a good number of the people here. Fucking stop. If you want to learn more about why men rape, pick up a fucking book.
@Cie
I hear you on the feeling safe while sleeping thing. I tend to sleep under the bed quite frequently when I’m decompressing from being outcountry. Feels much safer there. Enclosed, back to the wall, and only one small approach I can see and defend.
Also got wind chimes above the bedroom door. I know they’re there, and that they’ll make a noise when the door is opened. Gives a little extra peace.
Cie,
?
Cie:
http://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article5989955.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/PAY-owlpussycat.jpg
Brad Pitt was married to Angelina Jolie, a famous feminist and campaigner/leaturer against sexual violence!!!
With the dubious history covered further up-thread, I think it’s worth pointing out the mindset that brings about the Brad Pitt comparisons, because it undergirds a lot of thinking of not only the odious “Incel” community, but also the hideously misogynistic spree killers like the perpetrator of the Isla Vista killings (not using his name). In fact, it may undergird a lot of insecure and sexual frustrated men (I even felt it in the back of my mind during my awkward college years).
Culture has trained men very well that your relationship is a status symbol, so if you’re conventionally attractive, you attract those of similar conventional attractiveness. 4s with 4s, 7s with 7s, 10s with 10s, that kinda thing. The only way to interrupt this dynamic (that exists only in pop culture) is with some other power element, such as money or status. Popular media is rife with this trope. So in the minds of these guys, the only way a hot woman would be with an ugly guy would be to be rich. And only hot women count because how else could you show off how successful you are without arm candy?
This was Isla Vista perp’s whole thing. This is also why the incel guys ignore women that don’t meet their definition of “attractive” despite women having just as much angst about sex as men do. They feel entitled to the adulation from other men that “possessing” a conventionally attractive woman brings.
Gotta love that toxic masculinity, huh? /sarc
@The Real Cie,
Here, have a large purring cat to comfort you.
https://youtu.be/nPMi136tURg
(See if this works now.)
Large purring cat is at a giant feline sanctuary, so the bits of his story shown in his video might be a tad upsetting to read. Doesn’t keep him from making sure the human scratching him knows exactly where the itchy spot is at, so will you please direct your hand to that area please?
ETA: Not sure how to embed videos here, but at least that link should work.