The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Paging Jill Filipovic

Posted on | February 16, 2011 | 69 Comments

Please tell me what I am permitted to say when a gang of Egyptian men celebrates the end of the Mubarak regime by sexually assaulting an American TV news reporter:

Maybe Egyptians could use one of Filipovic’s pious lectures about “no means no” and “stop means stop.” I’d probably be accused of some sort of thought-crime if I were to suggest that the spontaneous outburst of savagery against Lara Logan of CBS News says anything about the future course of democracy in Egypt. Yet I will risk recalling how on Jan. 27, in my first post about the Egyptian crisis, I employed this quote:

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.”
– Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

How often have Aayan Hirsi Ali and Phyllis Chesler warned feminists about the brutal subjugation of women in the Islamic world? Here we have that phenomenon distilled to its most raw and ugly essence, and what are feminists saying? Echidne of the Snakes is less concerned with the crime itself than with Internet comments:

The loathsome comments are of two major types: The first type describes Muslims or Arabs as animals and so on. The second type, the one I’m going to analyze here, consists of victim blaming. It is Logan’s fault if she gets assaulted, in short.
There is a third type, too, which is about the desire of the commentator to join in with the gang rape of various too uppity women in the public eye or a wish that some other female celebrity had been assaulted instead.

Do you see what it is that annoys me about this type of discourse? Rather than focus her wrath on the perpetrators of a gang-rape, or to engage in an examination of the cultural factors that might make a blonde American woman particularly vulnerable amid a Cairo mob scene, instead Echidne wishes her readers to focus on the terrible insensitivity exemplified by anonymous Internet comments. What this is really about:

There is only one acceptable way to discuss sex, and feminists are the self-appointed arbiters of the discussion.

There is a sort of tournament among feminists, in which they compete for prizes by striving to excel their rivals in the denunciation of misogynist scapegoats. And because feminism is a phenomenon of the Left, it’s preferable if the scapegoats can be somehow linked to the Right.

This was what made the Duke lacrosse rape hoax so irresistible to them: Here you had a bunch of affluent white athletes accused of raping a black woman — the entire gamut of archetypical race/sex/class oppression embodied in a single crime — and that was sufficient ideological incentive to trump any presumption of innocence toward the accused. (Note that the people who were prematurely certain of the guilt of the Duke lacrosse players tend to be the same people who use “McCarthyism” as an epithet, despite the fact that Sen. Joe McCarthy never falsely accused anyone of being a Communist.)

Echidne begins her discussion of insensitive comments by threatening to cast into outer darkness anyone who might be tempted to see the crime against Lara Logan as having a distinct cultural component. That would categorize you as the “loathsome” type who “describes Muslims or Arabs as animals and so on.” Scroll through the comments at I Own The World and you can see that these “loathsome” sentiments are actually quite common. To be counted among the bien-pensants, however, you can’t think of such things. No, says Echidne, you must ignore the specific context of this crime — a blonde American woman raped by Egyptians during a revolutionary demonstration — and instead focus all your wrath on the terrible sexism and insensitivity of anonymous people leaving crude comments on a Web site.

Because sexism and insensitivity are the real problems, you see.

What an amazing act of intellectual prestidigitation! And if you call attention to the element of distraction involved in Echidne’s magic trick, if you describe what she is actually doing as opposed to what she claims to be doing, your criticism will be cited as further proof of the looming menace posed by insensitive sexists. And constant vigilance against that menace is the raison d’etre of feminism.

Stipulate that the men who gang-raped Lara Logan are insensitive sexists. But she was not raped by the anonymous commenters whom Echidne denounces. So far as we know, these commenters have never raped anyone. They’re just being scapegoated for someone else’s crime, so that Echidne can invite her readership to admire her as a fierce feminist.

Perhaps it is insensitive of me to make Echidne the sole object of this scrutiny. She was merely the first feminist blogger I saw linked in the Memeorandum roundup. There are plenty of people engaged in lecturing us in similar manner, even a Salon article with the title, “What not to say about Lara Logan.” That article seems to have been provoked mainly by L.A. Weekly writer Simone Wilson, who described Logan’s “Hollywood good looks” and wrote:

“In a rush of frenzied excitement, some Egyptian protestors apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.”

However insensitive that may be, is it “victim-blaming,” as Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams asserts? Did Simone Wilson mean to say that good-looking blonde women deserve to be raped? Or was she simply saying that rapists’ choice of victims is not entirely random and that, ceteris parabus, rapists prefer sexually attractive victims?

Such thoughts are impermissible, because feminists have declared that rape is not a crime of sex, but of violence. According to feminist ideology, the rapist isn’t motivated by desire, but rather by hate, and his crime is a typical manifestation of misogynistic oppression.

Politicizing rape in that manner permits feminists to ignore facts and to make tendentious generalizations without fear of contradiction because, if you disagree with them, you can then be discredited as someone who is “blaming the victim” or engaging in “rape apologism.”

Arrogating to themselves the exclusive right to speak on behalf of women, and insisting that rape can only be discussed on terms acceptable to themselves, feminists thereby transform rape into a political symbol which they exclusively control.

How convenient!

As with all leftist ideologies, feminism is collectivist in nature. Rape is therefore not a crime perpetrated by specific criminals against specific victims. Rather, rape is men’s collective crime, of which women are the collective victims: All men are therefore complicit in every rape, and all women suffer when any woman is raped.

Collective guilt and collective victimhood are, as Richard Weaver might have observed, ideas that have consequences. And one consequence is that people are constantly enraged at each other over distant events beyond their control. Merely say the wrong thing about some item in the news, and you are accused of complicity in evil deeds that you neither endorse nor advocate. Terrorism likewise requires the collectivist mentality: The Indonesia suicide bomber who slaughtered tourists in Bali thought of himself as avenging the collective wrongs that Westerners had supposedly committed against the collective Muslim world. The bomber himself need not have suffered any personal wrong, and the tourists he killed need not have engaged in any wrongdoing. The bomber was demonstrating his collective solidarity with fellow sufferers by killing people whom he viewed as collectively responsible for their suffering.

Collectivism absolves individuals from personal responsibility for their actions. Instead, all that matters is what group you belong to and, insofar as it is possible to choose your own group identity, collectivism impels you to signify your allegiance. As an American, you are guilty of belonging to a society that is sexist, racist and homophobic. So you must denounce sexists, racists and homophobes or else be complicit in their sins. The collectivists impose no such requirement on Egyptians because Egyptians are pre-emptively categorized as victims (unless of course, like Hosni Mubarak, they make the mistake of being pro-American).

Not coincidentally, this same sort of collectivist thought process has been evident in commentary about the Egyptian revolution from the start. Shepard Smith of Fox News memorable chose the occasion to lecture us about the Declaration of Independence (because we all have a collective stake in the human rights of Egyptians, you see) and Nicholas Kristof declared: “We are all Egyptians.”

OK, so if we’re all Egyptians, then all of us — including Nicholas Kristof — are guilty of raping Lara Logan.

This is the conclusion to which the collectivist syllogism inescapably leads us and, if we wish to dispute the conclusion, we must re-examine the premises of the argument.

There are profound and fundamental flaws in feminist ideology, flaws which this outrageous crime in Cairo might help us to understand, but we will never achieve such an understanding if we permit feminists to control the conversation. And one way they exercise that control is by threatening to cast into outer darkness anyone who, in seeking the truth, incautiously says the wrong thing out loud.

What we ought to be saying out loud, as Michelle Malkin reminds us, is prayers for Lara Logan.

It’s probably just a matter of time before liberals denounce Malkin for trying to impose her religion on others. But I’m sure she sympathizes with Lara Logan: Malkin herself has some experience with frenzied mobs of savages, and she also knows what kind of cruel things liberals say about women they consider right-wing “war mongers.”

UPDATE: When you care enough to send the very best . . .

UPDATE II: My reply to Amanda Marcotte.


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Category: Crime, Egypt, Feminism

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  • Ginger

    the left’s answer to this is called “The Vagina Monologues”.

  • Anonymous

    Interestingly her blogroll exudes sensitivity the only names in it I recognized are Ezra Klein and Alternet the latter being unknown to me until yesterday.

  • Garlic

    Please tell me what I am permitted to say when a gang of Egyptian men celebrates the end of the Mubarak regime by sexually assaulting an American TV news reporter:

    Perhaps, you can just repeat the comment you made in the context of Swedish feminists’ who were alleged raped rape-ished, “you bought the ticket, sweetheart, enjoy the ride”?

    But that would paint you as pro-forced-rape, which you aren’t, right? You are merely pro-raaaaape!

  • http://twitter.com/Dandapani Dandapani

    According to Sharia Law, the victim is at fault for going unveiled. She ASKED for it. They are not responsible. In fact, she is luckly to not be stoned for adultery. Just sayin’.

  • Joe

    This is a horrible. I wish Lara Logan a speedy recovery. But there is no speedy recovery from this sort of brutality.

    Without more information, this appears more a situation of mob behavior than anything else. Ms. Logan was reportedly saved by Egyptian women and some members of the Egyptian army. I am not blaming Ms. Logan, but reporting on situations like this is dangerous. She was detained by the Mubarak government just a week before. She goes back after Mubarak falls and is attacked by what appears to be a mob of men without any particular political direction (other than being anti Mubarak). Let’s just say it does not bode well for the future of democracy in Egypt.

  • Joe

    This is a horrible attack.

  • http://kingshamus.wordpress.com/ KingShamus

    AlterNet is cool because their race-hate on Herman Cain is just so adorable!

    [sarc/]

  • RG

    Women are a Class III victim group in the liberal hierarchy, muslims are Class I. Feminists know their place.

  • goinggoing

    This kind of mob behavior is not uncommon to a lot of underdeveloped and developing countries of all kinds; regardless of national, political ideologies and religious identities.

    This attack is a sexist thing, not a religious one.

    I suspect there are more number of sexual assaults/population that happen in the US than in Egypt, any given day. And most of the rapes that happen in the USA are disproportionally committed by black men, and to argue that “blackness” has something to do with “rape mentality” is pure racism. Similarly, to argue that this attack represents Islam would be pure bigotry. Plain and simple.

  • http://twitter.com/AmPowerBlog Donald Douglas
  • RG

    “A network source told The Post that her attackers were screaming, “Jew! Jew!” during the assault. And the day before, Logan had told Esquire.com that Egyptian soldiers hassling her and her crew had accused them of “being Israeli spies.””
    http://tinyurl.com/4cbe9br

  • hmt

    A report published in 2005 by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said that “journalists in Egypt suffer numerous forms of discrimination including unfairness in legislation, judicial prosecution of journalists for their writing and opinions, assault and death threats, and sexual assault of female journalists.”

    http://cpj.org/2006/02/attacks-on-the-press-2005-egypt.php

    Feministing: When rape is a risk that comes with the job

    “Do reporters like Lara Logan and Mac face greater threats to their safety than male reporters do in similar situations? Yes. But do they also, by dint of their gender, gain greater access to certain sources — and arguably do their job better? Sometimes, yeah. I have a hard time believing that rape survivors in Haiti would have been as open with a male reporter as they were with Mac. Doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of women reporters — and supporting them unequivocally when that safety is threatened or violated — isn’t just important on feminist grounds. It’s important on journalistic grounds, too.”

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Joe, I’d be willing to bet some serious money that it was Muslims who raped her. This fits their MO.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Call me a bigot then gg.

  • hmt

    And reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded becuase he was a jew. So i guess that makes all muslims bigots. Nice try.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Of course she would as she is bat s–t crazy.

  • RG

    Work on your reading comprehension skills. Your statement makes no sense whatsoever.

  • Joe

    The odds alone make it likely it was mostly Muslims. I assume you are right. And if there was chanting of her being “a Jew”, I am not sure if that happened or not but if it did I am sure that contributed to things. I am not on garlic and goinggoing’s side, but bad things often happen when you place a lot of men in a mob and fire them up. Did Islam have a part in all of this? Perhaps. But then again, those women who saved her were likely mostly Muslims too (as were the soliders).

    Having lived in Egypt for several years, I can tell you emphatically that sexual abuse of this nature was very uncommon. Far rarer than in the States. That said, there was always a creepy undercurrent that Western women were easy and a hell of a lot of learing that would never be tollerated if directed to an Egyptian girl.

  • hmt

    @RG

    F__king hilarious, you don’t see the irony in what you just wrote.

  • Joe

    hmt/gg it certainly makes KSM and his al Qaeda henchmen who killed Pearl bigots. And of course, cowardly murderers.

    I am not sure this crowd that attacked Logan was motivated by Islam. But if they were motiviated because they thought she was Jewish, that certainly makes them bigots and cowardly rapists. The proper reaction should have been shooting the most culpable of them dead on the spot.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Simone Wilson refers to Logan in her LAW blog as the Iraq War “It Girl” so plainly she had it coming.

    And have you ever read the LA Weekly past the middle pages? Nothing but ads for strip clubs and hookers of every persuasion, like pretty much every big-city ‘alternative’ paper. If Wilson had an ounce of integrity in her convictions, she would be ashamed to cash a paycheck paid out of the earnings off exploited, victimizedn women, but she has no problem with it.

    And a principled feminist like Echidne should be ashamed to associate with her.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Sorry, Bob, but EVERYONE who’s ANYONE just KNOWS it was a bunch of Israeli provocateurs and Coptic Christians run amok…

  • hmt

    @Joe/”Joe”

    I’m with you there on bringing the guilty to justice, my objections are simply to the attempts to use such examples (of “religious bigotry”) as an argument to extropolate the blame to entire nations, populations and ethnicties.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Joe: Apologies – I should have made myself clearer as I was certainly not
    lumping you in with the trolls. I agree that a hyped-up mob will
    sometimes do awful things, but throw Mohammedin thinking on women [fear of
    them, IMO] and you pretty much can bet that rape, especially of Western
    Women, will happen. I think any news organization that sends a woman into
    that kind of situation is sacrificing Common Sense to PC ideology…..but,
    hey, ideas mean more to the Left than actual living, breathing human beings
    do.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Joe: Apologies – I should have made myself clearer as I was certainly not
    lumping you in with the trolls. I agree that a hyped-up mob will
    sometimes do awful things, but throw Mohammedin thinking on women [fear of
    them, IMO] and you pretty much can bet that rape, especially of Western
    Women, will happen. I think any news organization that sends a woman into
    that kind of situation is sacrificing Common Sense to PC ideology…..but,
    hey, ideas mean more to the Left than actual living, breathing human beings
    do.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Those Joooz, I’ll tell ya, always causing trouble.

  • gg

    Having lived in Egypt for several years, I can tell you emphatically that sexual abuse of this nature was very uncommon. Far rarer than in the States.

    I haven’t been in Egypt, but i have something common with you; i stayed in an Oberoi Hotel.

    I agree with you, sexual assaults in general are less common in countries like Egypt as compared to the US.

    That said, there was always a creepy undercurrent that Western women were easy and a hell of a lot of leering that would never be tolerated if directed to an Egyptian girl.

    True again. This is common to many conservative societies in developing nations irrespective of religion. And this is not just pertained to western women, but native women who are more sexually liberal in their attitudes. In India for example, young fashionable women from big cities, celebrities in the entertainment industry etc are seen through sexually immoral eyes by majority of people. Bottomline is that this is a cultural problem and a problem with law and order in under-developed nations. It has a religious angle, true. But not with any particular religion as such. Take India again, as to my experience, Hindus and Christians would be more culpable of such attitudes than say Muslims, in general. (Disclosure: I’m an atheist.)

  • Joe

    Debbie Schlussel is entitled to her own opinion, but I disagree with that conclusion of hers. Her overall article, in my opinion is wrong and unhelpful to the cause she says she supports.

  • gg

    BTW did someone claim responsibility for the attack (which seems like a planned one) on a Jewish US-journalist?

  • Joe

    I agree that CBS was reckless in sending female reporters into that situation.

    And no apologies needed Bob. I did not take your comment as really grouping me in with gg and his/her/its various schizoid personalities.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Oh shit I knew it. I was mocking this very meme on Bob Belvedere’s site, explaining how it just HAD to be an Israeli/Coptic Christians Gone Wild moment.

    Congratulations, GG! You are now OFFICIALLY too stupid to parody.

  • Anonymous

    Right: Consciousness-raising will “empower” women, and then there won’t be any rape.

    It takes a special kind of stupid to be a feminist.

  • gg

    I was thinking of the involvement of possible Islamic extremist orgs, and as surprising as it might seem to you, the Coptic Christian angle never occurred to this librul.

    Now that you bring that up, no Muslim is innocent until someone is proven guilty, right?

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  • Lindsey

    Are you aware of how often women are raped in the US? To say this had anything to do with Muslims is pretty intellectually lazy. Just blame it on the brown people, right?

  • http://saberpoint.blogspot.com Stogie Chomper

    Bob, you are right. Muslim men think they have a right to rape (1) infidels, especially (2) those who are unveiled. Anywhere Islam holds sway is a barbarian hell-hole.

  • http://twitter.com/AmPowerBlog Donald Douglas
  • mojo

    To find the functional IQ of a mob, add up the individual IQ’s of the participants, then divide by their number. This rapidly approaches zero as the crowd grows.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    -Just blame it on my *raaaaacism*, right?

    -Hey, Mensa-Breath: the Mohammedin population of the world is over one
    billion and encompasses all colors of people [white, brown, black, yellow,
    (are they any others you Progressives have created lately?)].

    It’s Leftist Zombies like you who love to categorize people by their color.
    Islam encourages all of it’s males to treat women like slaves, half-human,
    which is license to beat, rape, brutalize, murder them at will, without
    sanction by their ‘spiritual’ leaders.

    -As for being lazy: go clean up the basement before your mother gets home.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Dead Solid Perfect, Stogie. The West had better wake-up, and wake-up soon.

  • wtl

    Jill is obviously does not want to be your BFF.

    I never heard of Lara Logan before today. Her interviews with Charlie Rose that I have listened to today are really interesting. She’s a smart lady with journalistic integrity. After listening to several of her Charlie Rose interviews, it seems she was not unaware of the great risks pursuing her profession with journalistic integrity and ideals posed for her and others. I’m glad I took time to listen to her interviews..very informative and thought-provoking.

  • Anonymous

    Ya can’t have Islamic Radicalism with out Islam.
    The problem with Islamic Fundamentalism is the Fundamentals of Islam.
    http://thesuperjesus.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the-problem-with-islamic-fundamentalism-are-the-fundamentals-of-islam/

  • Dan

    Was she actually forcibly raped, {id est, actually penetrated} or was she aggressively groped?

    All kinds of different accounts are circulating.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Yes, GG, that was your first thought, ‘Muslim Extremists’, you raaaaacist you.

  • Dejlah

    It takes a special kind of stupid to blame rape on a feminist.

  • Anonymous

    Your not supposed to capitalize what one refers to she’it as. it is never a proper anything, because sometimes etiquette trumps grammar.

  • Anonymous

    “That’s the way the minds of these medieval males work.”

    From the link, the operative word is medieval.

  • Malclave

    Just be aware, that according to feminists, gang rape is only funny when the victim is a conservative. I think that’s the “Sandra Bernhard Rule” of comedy.

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