#RapeCulture: Did Anybody Notice This?

Posted on | April 4, 2014 | 72 Comments

Donald Douglas has mentioned how radical feminist Professor Caroline Heldman is stoking “rape culture” paranoia at Occidental College. Meanwhile, the violent oppression of women continues:

A Lynwood gang member was sentenced Monday, March 31, to 30 years in federal prison for running a sex-trafficking ring that recruited girls from Inland high schools.
Paul Edward Bell, 30, pleaded guilty in January to federal sex-trafficking charges. Federal authorities said he kept seven teenage girls captive after luring them into prostitution.
Bell used other prostitutes to recruit girls between the ages of 15 and 17 from high schools in Riverside and Moreno Valley, authorities said. . . .
The girls worked as prostitutes in the Compton area and lived in motels off Long Beach Boulevard. If they didn’t perform or deliver as much money as was expected, they were verbally and physically abused, prosecutors have said.
Bell held a gun to one girl’s head and locked two girls inside his apartment, prosecutors wrote in a brief recommending Bell receive the maximum sentence. He would hit the girls with his fists, a cane and a shoe. He also pepper sprayed one girl in the face, prosecutors wrote. . . .
The lead prostitute, Kimberly Alberti, 20, of Riverside, promised the girls lavish lifestyles with money and clothing for working for a pimp, according to a plea agreement that led to a two-year federal prison sentence.
Alberti and two other prostitutes — Kristy Harrell, 22, of Riverside, and Javiya Brooks, 21, of Lynwood — have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and racketeering.
Samuel Rogers, 23, and Gary Rogers, 25, both of Moreno Valley, and Christopher Weldon 24, of Compton, previously pleaded guilty to sex-trafficking charges. Su Yan, 31, a Chinese national in Rosemead, pleaded guilty to interstate transportation in the aid of racketeering.

Girls as young as 15 were being pimped out, beaten and threatened with death, right there in Southern California, within driving distance of Occidental College. But it’s so much easier for feminist academics like Caroline Heldman to gin up campus “rape culture” hysteria — in some cases, counting dirty text messages as “sexual assault” for the sake of statistical exaggeration — than for them to pay attention to teenage girls suffering this kind of horrific violence.

Occidental College has something in common with pimps like Paul Edward Bell: They both recruit naïve girls from high schools. Parents should warn their daughters about pimps and liberal arts colleges.

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism, Sex

Comments

72 Responses to “#RapeCulture: Did Anybody Notice This?”

joethefatman
April 4th, 2014 @ 7:32 am

Well since it doesn’t serve to oppress and demean men, specifically white men, they will willfully ignore all such crimes that do not fit the narrative. No matter how horrific the crime they ignore, the narrative must be maintained.
tahDeetz
April 4th, 2014 @ 7:49 am

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM #RapeCulture Did Anybody Notice This? http://t.co/6RxZCGCmH2 #TCOT
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 7:50 am

An obvious but thus-far unasked question: are the attacks on coeducational institutions as promoting the rape culture being made to try to funnel young ladies considering college into the 48 women’s colleges in the United States? Bryn Mawr wants you!
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 7:51 am

I have been thinking about issues of diversity and sexism, and this has been a valuable process for me. Some of my thoughts have not cooked enough for me to be ready to share my perspective yet, but some thoughts I’ll put forth now.

Oppression of women is still going on in extreme ways within non-Western cultures. I wonder how this affects women in general, and I wonder at the silence of both men and women in the cultures subject to this oppression as well as the less oppressive cultures who turn a blind eye to what is going on.

Follows are some of what is happening on our planet, in these times:

* SE Asia — young girls of of impoverished families being sold into prostitution.

* China and India — a shortage of women of marital age due to selective abortion (aborting of female fetuses) — there are 10s of millions more Chinese/Indian males than females as a result.

* Somalia — the practice of infibulation, an extreme form of female circumcision, performed by women on young girls without the use of anesthesia, for purposes of changing female physiology and removing the possibility of women experiencing sexual pleasure. Other cultures in Africa and the Middle East also practice various forms of female circumcision.

*South Africa — the practice of marrying girls who are in the earliest stages of puberty. Some of the girls become pregnant years before their bodies are mature enough to safely carry a child.

I’m not sure why, but it seems to me that women who “own” their sexuality in a powerful way may be an important counter-balancing force for the sexism that is so entrenched in recent human history.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:08 am

It stands to reason that if women are exploited and discriminated against, then society does use them ‘as whores’ or ‘prostitutes’ in many professions, (underpaid, overworked, abused, no promotions) and it is patriarchy that actually causes ‘the sex trade’ (which is much more than selling sex and nudity in the sex trade, but it is using children in the home by males who abuse them, it is forced marriages for women, it is women earning less in the workplace, etc.)

Everywhere around us (it is breaking up slowly) you see institutionalized discrimination against women. Government, business, stock market trade, etc. The literal ‘sex trade’ is the bottom line — where those in it are basically ‘cast off’ and ‘untouchable,’ depending on the degree of their poverty and exposure to scrutiny. (Any such person landing in a court of law for any reason you will discover has less rights.)
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:08 am

http://images.cryhavok.org/d/2355-1/Tshirt+No+Means.jpg
robertstacymccain
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:20 am

I am convinced that the “rape culture” hysteria is a ginned-up agitprop campaign that is being incited not only by activists seeking political advantage, but also by tort lawyers seeking contingency fees for class-action suits.

I urge anyone interested in understanding the origins of this to read Daphne Patai’s 1998 book Heterophobia: Sexual Haraassment and the Future of Feminism. Read it carefully, and notice the extent to which accusations of sexual harassment serve to provide work for tort lawyers, both for alleged victims and for their accused harassers. Colleges and universities (like major corporations) are “deep pocket” targets and, even if the accusation is entirely without merit, it can costs many tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees to defend such a case. Therefore, many such cases never go to trial because there are enormous incentives to settle out of court: “Go away money,” as it is called.
AnanoFem
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:28 am

Blaming feminists for crimes of prostitution? How low can you get?

This is a battle between the demonic and God. We must fight this battle. You have won your hollow victories before, only because few feminists would take the time, effort and energy to answer your insanity. What was the result? Stalemate? It is unfinished business. Obviously God always prevails in the end. What others began we will finish, in the name and by the power of God! We will route you! We already have, you are conquered. By the Cross we have conquered! Death to self! The Blood of Jesus, was it wasted? No…..it is infinite, eternal Blood. All have Its Power when they have LOVE OF GOD.

Good luck, feminists.
Quartermaster
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:41 am

Anamika is nuts
Quartermaster
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:42 am

You are nuts. In a traditional western society women owned their sexuality.
Traveling SAP
April 4th, 2014 @ 8:47 am

Wait that all sounds like empowering sexual behavior according to Ms. Weeks. So these women werent empowered?
GVK
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:14 am

You remind me of that poor lady in the crowd who was yelling at the first person in contact with her, making her responsible for the pressure coming at her from 300 people at a cultural event last summer, she was looking that one person in the eyes: “Can’t you see i can’t breathe, just give me some space” if you had seen the desperate, scared look of the paralyzed “bully” in the front accused of being the author of a 300 people pressure on the little lady just because she was 2 inches taller than her alleged “victim”.

And so it is with the game between men/bully/testosterone and women/cute/estrogen, first you need to want to separate the world into those two categories, second you need to want to see the place where a whole ocean “visibly” applies power on the shore, as the sole male responsible for the movement of the whole ocean behind it … a bit reductionist doesn’t it seem?

Yet feminists are insisting on that terrible biologic male flaw and willing to accept that there is no counterpart female biologic flaw to it.

So i feel sexually discriminated in my minority identity and by this post i “fight” for the rights of my buddies, although none of them will help me i know; ’cause we are a selfish gender in addition to be vehement, impulsive and brutal swines.[How about this for a male punch!]
Bozikek
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:20 am

Too nutty, didn’t read.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:27 am

Yet feminists are insisting on that terrible biologic male flaw and willing to accept that there is no counterpart female biologic flaw to it.

It’s not so much a terrible biologic(al) flaw, as seen from here, as a locus of unconsciousness which has far-reaching consequences if unexamined. Male elk, moose, etc bash antlers. Lions kill zebras. It’s part of the natural world, it’s okay.

It is not okay when these tendencies get out of control to the point of global suicide. If we cannot do that even here then there is no hope. The systems “out there” are riddled with patriarchal (testosterone) poisoning, like stage IV metastatic cancer. Let us cleanse ourselves here at least a little.

(It is not that male values/tendencies are like cancer, but that left unchecked, the imbalance creates a cancer. Checks and balances are needed, and for way too long, male privilege and values have run amok. Checks and balances. Or, in a word, diversity.)
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:30 am

So i feel sexually discriminated in my minority identity and by this post i “fight” for the rights of my buddies, although none of them will help me i know; ’cause we are a selfish gender in addition to be vehement, impulsive and brutal swines.[How about this for a male punch!]

Men “help” and stand up for each other in countless ways, though they are mostly unconscious, via support of male-bastion institutions, unconsciously repeating patriarchal patterns, etc. You know the rap.
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:37 am

You know that a comment is not to be taken seriously when you read the words “riddled with patriarchal (testosterone) poisoning.”
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:38 am

I’d say that your problem isn’t that “Men “help” and stand up for each other in countless ways,” but that women are each other’s worst enemies! Y’all really don’t try to help each other.
Nina
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:40 am

“So i feel sexually discriminated in my minority identity”

GVK, your complaint reminds me of my husband’s complaint about our local YWCA where he goes to exercise. Printed boldly on many surfaces of the gym is the slogan of this YWCA: “Empowering Women and Minorities”. Poor husband is beside himself with the injustice of it all — and feels understandably out of place and even, gasp, discriminated against. It is a good thing exercise calms the savage beast, lol.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:43 am

zzzzzzz…..
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:43 am

zzzzzzz……
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:45 am

Shakespeare had it right, then.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:46 am

Nutty AND boring!

zzzzzzzz…..
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:46 am

It does not invalidate analysis of patriarchal systems to notice that women collaborate in it, but it does rather complicate it. Still, it also illustrates why such complicity should be considered and examined, as we cannot blame men for everything.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:50 am

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your attention during the closing arguments. I pray that you will return a guilty verdict against AnanoFem on the charge of “Willful Obtuseness”,

The prosecution rests, Your Honor
How to you say “child rape culture” in Delawarian? | Batshit Crazy News
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:52 am

[…] Rape Culture Conference (did anyone […]
GVK
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:57 am

Good points Anamika. Just this one about reductionism that you might have wanted with a question mark:

For all very valuable and accurate your observations are, they seem to me like epiphenomena and external expression of our society; so “reductionist” is meant in the sense that one would reduce one’s assessment to the part when the whole is in synergy, as in blaming the front visible surf hitting the shore while ignoring that a tempest stems deep from the apparently surf-less middle of the ocean.

If you saw Jurassic Park there is an interesting thesis that rings true; in the absence of a male element in a totally female population, the male element would have to emerge anyway from among them, spontaneous generation.

In our current discussion it would mean, create a world with no testosterone if you wish, the mind will enact its outer aggression “ex nihilo femina”; or say, in an all girl boarding school, male archetypes emerge born by females, thus vested by the collective unconscious with the patriarch, the warrior, the self-righteous father, … functions. We are actors wearing masks, not animals triggered by irrepressible hormonal urges. All features are latent waiting for external conditions and niches to express themselves: male/female, kindness/aggression, envy/generosity, etc.
GVK
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:01 am

Oh wait, i just remembered an analogy, it would be worth checking on the net, maybe from “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Hofstadter, i can’t remember; there is an alternation in any society between times of doves and times of hawks, when at one point there are too many hawks, predator behavior is not the fittest anymore and doves start successfully gaining ground; and vice versa between doves and hawks at other periods.

Anyway congratulations Anamika in your cat herding attempt, i don’t know if female cats are easier to herd than males, i tend not to know the difference, neither in cats nor in humans, except when they mate, the one on top if possibly the male as Pete seemed to imply earlier today.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:06 am

Bien sur. I’m not sure from which place the sun never shines you have conjured up the idea that i wanted to create a world with no testosterone.. I was talking about balance, not swinging wildly to another extreme of a hierarchical pendulum.

The world as presently constituted has been shaped in an unbalanced way, by males systematically repressing female energy. Making it balanced does not imply doing away with male energy, just reducing its out-of-balance proportion.

It looks like some men cannot bear the idea of surrendering even some of the fairly ridiculous parts of their self-image, as if letting go even a little of it would invalidate their whole edifice. Sort of like Christian Fundies clinging to the literality of Genesis and its 6000-year version of science.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:10 am

…except when they mate, the one on top if possibly the male…

No idea who Pete is but snidery noted.

Regarding mating, this is one area where humans have used their creative gifts and gone beyond the limited possibilities of most animals. But some still want to insist on “men on top.” That’s their loss, and most likely their partner’s, though we can’t be 100% sure of that.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:19 am

It does not invalidate analysis of patriarchal systems to notice that women collaborate in it, but it does rather complicate it. Still, it also illustrates why such complicity should be considered and examined, as we cannot blame men for everything.
Kirby McCain
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:24 am

And these women who own their sexuality do they care? Hell no.
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:06 am

You cannot blame men for anything! As that great American philosopher, Jimmy Buffet, said, “There’s a woman to blame.”
Scatmaster
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:11 am

and of course those checks and balances will be done by feminists. You are sick.
Rob Crawford
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:13 am

Nope. I think it changes as the song progresses, but eventually it goes:

“Some people say there’s a woman to blame… But it’s my own damned fault”
Rosalie
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:39 am

Feminists stick together, don’t they? But then they’re indoctrinated so it doesn’t count.
Rosalie
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:48 am

Aren’t most of the politicians in DC lawyers?
Lunatic Feminist: Meet Mary Daly | Batshit Crazy News
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:50 am

[…] Rape Culture Conference (did anyone […]
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:52 am

Mythbusters proved that you can’t herd cats.
Dana
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:53 am

The line I quoted is the only important one.
robertstacymccain
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:57 am

“Blaming feminists for crimes of prostitution? How low can you get?”

Are you illiterate, insane, or both? There is a vast gap between what I actually wrote and what you seem to think I wrote. Perhaps I should start footnoting my blog posts, including supplemental material to explain at a fifth-grade reading level every opaque analogy or figure of speech.

It has been my habit to assume a minimal level of intelligence and sanity among readers.

Maybe I should re-think that assumption.
Southern Air Pirate
April 4th, 2014 @ 12:09 pm

You understand that modern Feminism rejects your god as it is part of the patriarchal oppression of the women. From God spoken word on the hate of lesbian relationships to the use of God as anti – contraception. So your invocation of God here is wrong and proves you are not a feminist.
FeministsAreWrong
April 4th, 2014 @ 12:09 pm

Explain to us how men should go about creating this balance, and “surrendering their self image”? In my experience, when women say this it usually means that everything men say is wrong, they have to turn themselves into male feminists, and subjugate themselves for what women want. Look, I’m sure they antelope wants to be a lion, but that’s just not how it is, so women need to accept who they are and stop whining that they don’t possess male power.
FeministsAreWrong
April 4th, 2014 @ 12:12 pm

When you are talking about patriarchal system’s It’s not “analysis”, it’s bias. Glad I could help correct that for you. Nowhere is the observer effect more powerful than in the mind of feminists when attempting an analysis of modern society.
Rosalie
April 4th, 2014 @ 12:23 pm

They have to be militant, hateful, and obnoxious. I think of someone like Palin. Look at all she’s accomplished and she’s done it without anomosity towards men. And she has also done it in spite of men and women who tried their darndest to destroy her.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 4th, 2014 @ 1:38 pm

You see my point, then.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 1:55 pm

For all very valuable and accurate your observations are, they seem to
me like epiphenomena and external expression of our society

Yes, we can say that in the greater cosmic scheme of things, these
“epiphenomenal” considerations of mine don’t amount to a hill of beans.
GVK
April 4th, 2014 @ 2:09 pm

I meant epiphenomena exactly as it is, a side effect mistaken for the cause: you have rightly found aggression in the world, rightly decided that something could be done about it, but one doesn’t “teach” a stressed husband/family man to well behave with his gigantic SUV on the road by giving him a ticket, you got to address the wife and the kids at home who want more, more, more, if you want the guy to slow down and not see a challenge in every car in front of his SUV. And every woman or man IS this guy with his SUV and a heart that says “more-more”, if she is clever she can act out the SUV part smoothly or by proxy on a husband, and no one will ever suspect her of greed, possession or manipulation. Another example is the clever, smooth mannered wealthy in society as opposed to the rough hillbilly, but there is the same amount of domestic violence regardless of class or education; some people have past the barrier of the 100 Emotional Quotient and have learned to safely act their violence off the radar screen. A little training of the emotional radar shows that there is as much violence in all gender, age and classes; for example the teacher, who will educate the rough neck, is another trickery of the mind for “i will dominate/eliminate you” but socially acceptable. If education is — behave i can use force in last resort or — i let you believe you are free but i constrain you knowing that you won’t dare shake off the chains.. Then the good intention to ‘amend’ another person is polluted by power and violence.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 2:39 pm

Actually the Hawks-vs-Doves game theory material did a better job than the above of dealing with whether something could be done about it or not, at least in regard to individual manifestations of aggression.

I am not on a campaign to stamp out all aggression nor do i believe that all aggression is “bad.” But i object to institutionalized forms, including unexamined internalized “norms,” and do my little bit in my little turf.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 2:44 pm

[…]if she is clever she can act out the SUV part smoothly or by proxy on a
husband, and no one will ever suspect her of greed, possession or
manipulation.

Looks like some sideways assigning of blame to women but maybe it works for you, or maybe you’re just trying to illustrate something about epiphenomenon.
Anamika
April 4th, 2014 @ 2:47 pm

Another example is the clever, smooth mannered wealthy in society as opposed to the rough hillbilly, but there is the same amount of domestic
violence regardless of class or education; some people have past the barrier of the 100 Emotional Quotient and have learned to safely act their violence off the radar screen.

Perhaps you are treating aggression and violence as the same thing. In my view, violence is just an extreme and largely unnecessary form of aggression outside the world of animals. Aggression is more pervasive, and more the unavoidable half of a whole dialectic, but can be channeled creatively. Violence is aggression channeled unconsciously.