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Feminist confuses Faux News host by suggesting that we teach men not to rape. Of course, that host was Sean Hannity, who probably gets confused when he tries to figure out how the cream gets inside of a Twinkie.

His solution to rape is that women should be armed at all times. If that's the best defense against rape, why is rape an "accepted job hazard" in the US military? That means that if you're a woman and you join up, you're basically told "Oh, bee tee dubs, you're probably gonna get raped at some point. No suing!" That aside, this is what feminists are talking about when we talk about "rape culture": that instead of telling women to constantly pack heat, or never drink in bars, or never walk after sunset except in packs of a dozen, or wear a burqa, or basically NEVER LEAVE THEIR HOUSE, we should instead be telling men "It's not cool to rape women, regardless of the context". The onus of rape shouldn't be on what the victim was doing, or wearing, or drinking. It should be on the rapist.

If you are a man and you already know this, then congrats, you are a wonderful and enlightened person and "teach men not to rape" doesn't apply to you. But you are still part of the problem if you refuse to accept that hundreds of thousands of men in this country alone don't know those things, because we live in a rape culture that is not invested in teaching them. You are still part of the problem when you scoff at the phrase "rape culture" and pretend it's a paranoid invention of hairy-legged man-hating feminists, instead of a thing that exists. You are still part of the problem when you pretend "teach men not to rape" translates to "all men are violent animals who would jump out of bushes and assault random female passers-by unless women smacked them with a rolled-up newspaper when they tried to do it".

What "teach men not to rape" actually means is that we need to repeat, over and over and over again, until EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS WORLD ACTUALLY GETS IT, that skirt length does not determine the level of a woman's culpability in her own assault. That having sex with a woman too drunk consent is in fact rape. That terms like "date rape" and "grey rape" and "acquaintance rape vs. stranger rape" are meaningless prevarications. That just because you didn't knock a woman down and hold a knife to her throat, you could still be guilty of rape. It means a hundred different things, and none of those things is "all men would rape if they could get away with it".

And I think most of the men making this accusation know it, on some level. Believe me, I get privilege. I've identified as white my entire life (recent revelations about my ancestry aside), and I'm familiar with the gut lurch that comes with being told that you are benefiting at someone else's expense. You need to get over it and accept that people who belong to other genders or racial groups probably know what it's like to be a member of that gender or racial group more than you do. You need to listen to their experiences and not dismiss them because they make you uncomfortable.

And the people scoffing that something so simple could never work: rape in Canada dropped 10% soon after that country began its "Don't be that guy" ad campaign. Teaching men not to rape--fighting back against rape culture--does work. It's the ONLY thing that's been proven to work.
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Amanda Marcotte has an excellent post up about this execrable new meme of "young men writing signs extolling the joys of 'natural' beauty and taking photos of themselves with these signs, complete with wounded expressions conveying the pain they feel because the women of the world get dressed in the morning without thinking first of the preferences of these guys' specific cocks."

She hits all the salient points, the most obvious of which is that this is just more of the same ugly "ladies, men know what's best for you" misogynist attitude. Scratch a Nice Guy, find a sexist. One who would run screaming from a woman with bed head, stubbly legs and greasy skin. They want us to have glowing skin, toned muscle and shiny hair--but hair-free bodies!--and be able to pretend that it all happened solely with the power of their love, and not with any help from slut-enablers like Revlon and the neighborhood gym.

Also troubling is the narrative that women only wear make-up--or do anything, really--so we can get a cock stuffed in us. But only if it leads to marriage and a hundred babies! Because women never fuck just for fun, like it goes without saying men do. It seems to be a completely alien thought to Nice Guys that some woman might wear cosmetics because they're fun.

I know some of my female friends don't like or use make-up, and I absolutely have no argument with that. Like anything else we do with our bodies, that is 100% a personal choice that is none of mine or anyone else's business. But just know, eschewing it does not make you a better or more of a feminist than I am.

I've had problems with certain kinds of make-up in the past, like nipple blush. The problem with cosmetics is that at some point, society decided that only women got to use them, at which point it became another weapon against them. A better solution to this problem is not to try eliminating cosmetics--which, like pornography, have existed virtually as long as human civilization and are probably not going anywhere--but to once again make it socially acceptable for all genders. Which it has been for most of human history: cosmetics have until recently been a mark of class, not gender. They shouldn't be a mark of anything now. I look forward to the day when a man can say "I don't care to wear make-up".

ETA in case the above post is TL; DR:

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"Read Backlash or I'll chew your face off!

Pilot: Okay, there were 2 women in this thing — live ones, anway — they had exactly one scene, and only one of them displayed any kind of personality. And that personality was “Make half-hearted attempt to stand up for something you believe is right; capitulate immediately to the alpha male and go make out with him in the forest”. But okay, it’s the pilot, you really shouldn’t judge shows by them.

Episode One: Why are they making the woman whose idea it was to look for escape via the sewer wait on the roof while two dudes who know nothing on the subject crawl around in the tunnels? (The cartoonishly racist character played by Michael Rooker was also offensive; not because he was racist but because it suggested that all racist people are really oafish and obvious in their racism. We all know that nowadays, the more subtle forms of dogwhistle racism are much more corrosive.)

Episode 2: Okay, WOW. Apparently women’s job in the zombie apocalypse will be laundry. And cowering in the bushes whenever a zombie shambles into camp.

Episode 3: Oh look, women got to do something besides laundry: fish! You know what, too little too late. Peace out, show.

Look, my problem with this show is not that some of the characters are sexist. It’s that the show itself is sexist. It assumes that when civilization collapses, everyone will just blindly fall back into these rigid, archaic gender roles. And except for some token grumbling by them uppity kollij-edumacated wimminz, this will be accepted as just and meet. It treats the notion that women are human beings as some kind of silly indulgence of effete civilizations that will just naturally fall by the wayside when the shit hits the fan.

One of the things I’ve always liked about end-of-the-world scenarios is the theme of people rising above, of finding strength they didn’t know they had. World War Z is a great example of this; as is the classic doomsday comet novel from the 1970s Lucifer’s Hammer (although we'll have to ignore, for our purposes here, the parts of that book that are horribly racist).

People that can contribute to the group are going to be treated well for it, and what they’re packing between their legs is secondary. Sitting on your ass all day, like that wife-beater; or freaking out and maniacally digging graves until you get sunstroke and have to be tied to a tree? Hit the road, you wastes of skin.

Not to succumb to internet tough guy-ism here, but I really don’t see myself finding a man to take care of the scary monsters for me when the dead rise from their graves. I’ve read The Zombie Survival Guide. I’m going looting at Academy Sports in Lafayette (picture a super Wal-Mart with nothing but guns and other weapons and sporting goods) and TCOB myself. Plus, I know how to pickle (and theoretically, preserve meat). Dude, I would totally make it.

I’ve heard from people who read the graphic novels that the television show made some improvements, and hooray for them, I guess. But there’s always gonna be something that’s more sexist. It doesn’t mean I have to accept things that are a little less sexist.
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