Feminism’s ‘Rape Culture’ Insanity

Posted on | April 29, 2015 | 152 Comments

Does anyone else remember the “Culture War” of the 1990s? Conservatives like Bill Bennett and Robert Bork argued at the time that the decadence of popular culture — as evidenced in everything from gangsta rap to video games to Quentin Tarantino movies — was corrupting morality, inciting violence and sexual perversion. Here we are, two decades later and feminists are saying basically the same thing.

This is part of what the whole “rape culture” discourse is about. Whereas most of us think of rape as a criminal act perpetrated by individuals, feminists want to indict culture — or “misogyny” or “male supremacy” or some other way of blaming larger societal forces beyond the act of the individual rapist. Therefore, feminists now adamantly insist, it’s the way we talk about sex, or the way sex is depicted in advertising, movies and TV shows, which causes rape. So now the Speech Police patrol the Internet, ready to denounce as a “rape apologist” anyone who contradicts the feminist narrative. No one can be permitted to express doubt toward the Scientific Truth of the Feminist-Industrial Complex. After Christina Hoff Sommers spoke at Georgetown University, the student newspaper published an editorial that accused the College Republicans (who hosted Sommers’ lecture) of having “knowingly endorsed a harmful conversation on the serious topic of sexual assault.”

Merely to have a conversation is harmful on the 21st-century campus.

What sort of conversations are students permitted to have? Feminists apparently had no problem with the Foucault-influenced postmodern gibberish spewed by Emma Sulkowicz in a “Sexual Assault Awareness Month” event at Brown University:

“There does not exist a scientific way to prove non-consent. . . . When it comes to sexual violence, scientific proof is impossible. . . . If we use proof in rape cases, we fall into the patterns of rape deniers. . . . When a person claims that their theory is a science, they disqualify other types of knowledge. . . . Let’s change the question from ‘Did she consent that night?’ to ‘Did she have the power to consent that night?’ . . . This is not about physical strength. . . . This is about historical power. . . . Seeing is the origin of interpretation. Interpretation is the origin of knowing. . . . If truth is scientific, then art cannot access truth. But perhaps there is something beyond the truth.”

Uh, “something beyond the truth”? Something we might call a lie?

This is pretty much what Paul Nungesser’s federal lawsuit says: “Emma Sulkowicz Is a Vindictive, Dishonest and Crazy Slut — Allegedly.”

Far be it from me to presume to know what transpired between Nungesser and Sulkowicz on the night of Aug. 27, 2012. She claims he held her down, choked her and forcibly sodomized her. There is no evidence at all to support her claim, however, while Nungesser says that everything between them was consensual and quotes Facebook messages from her that would appear to suggest that Sulkowicz was quite enthusiastic about sodomy (see paragraph 16 on p. 5 of Nungesser’s lawsuit). As for a possible motive for Sulkowicz to lie, Nungesser’s lawsuit offers a credible explanation in paragraphs 30-31, p. 10:

As is evident from Emma’s Facebook messages to Paul during the summer prior to their sophomore year, Emma’s yearning for Paul had become very intense. Emma repeatedly messaged Paul throughout that summer that she loved and missed him. She was quick to inquire whether he was in love with the woman he was seeing abroad.
Thereafter, she continued pursuing him, reiterating that she loved him. However, when Paul did not reciprocate these intense feelings, and instead showed interest in dating other women, Emma became viciously angry.

“Hell hath no fury,” etc. This is an entirely plausible scenario, if you are familiar with a certain kind of high-maintenance young woman — what I call the “Daddy’s Precious Darling” type — who believes herself to be so special that she deserves to have whatever she wants. If Sulkowicz thought her hookups with Nungesser were about love, and if he treated this as just something casual? Yeah, you could see how she would feel herself to be “the woman scorned” and decide to avenge herself by falsely accusing him of rape seven months after the night in question.

Student targeted by anti-rape mattress-carrying protester sues university. http://t.co/uUdNGg0MKK pic.twitter.com/Y6gDJGjyfE

— The Independent (@Independent) April 25, 2015

Starting to come around to the idea that a woman who became famous for carrying a mattress around campus isn't the picture of mental health.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 25, 2015

All of that, however, was a preamble to this: Robby Soave at Reason magazine wrote an article with the following headline:

Student Accused of Rape By ‘Mattress Girl’ Sues
Columbia U., Publishes Dozens of Damning Texts

A fair summary of the case, but when it was posted to Tumblr.com, a certain segment of feminist readers went berserk, including one 22-year-old who unleashed this:

Okay, I have something to f–king say about this sh*t, as someone who was raped and isn’t the “ideal” victim.
Like, yes, they had an ongoing sexual relationship.
However, he forced her to have anal sex against her will. Rapist seems to think that previous discussion of anal sex = consent. It is f–king not. You can be having sex with someone and if you start to do something to them they didn’t consent to, that they don’t want, that’s f–king rape.
She still texted him afterward? With “yearning” messages? Oh, wow. I can’t believe real humans who experience emotions are pegging this as evidence that she’s a filthy liar. When you have an established relationship with your rapist, it’s very f–king complicated. I allowed my rapist to torture me for 2½ years. We were dating. I loved him! Maybe, just f–king maybe, this woman continued to care about the man who raped her. That is NOT uncommon at all. And society tells women that when you care about a man, you have to please him. I would send my rapist “sexy” messages because I thought that’s what I had to do to get him to continue caring about me so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about the rapes and have to cope with it.
f–king f–k all of you, holy f–king SH*T

Do you see the problem here? This anonymous Tumblr blogger says she was tortured by a rapist because she “loved him!”

Maybe I’m hopelessly naïve. Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life.

Maybe the world has changed in the past 30 years, and maybe there are lots of young women who date rapists and let themselves be tortured for 2½ years. “I loved him!”

Or maybe these women are crazy.

Also, maybe, conservatives were right about the Culture War. Maybe raising young people with no religious faith, letting them fill their minds with violence, noise and graphic sex is a bad idea.

Furthermore, the British Independent reported in August 2014:

A study on why teenage heterosexual couples may engage in anal sex has revealed a climate of coercion, with consent and mutuality not always a priority for the boys who are trying to persuade girls into having it.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine interviewed 130 teenagers aged 16-18 in three sites across the country to “explore expectations, experiences and circumstances of anal sex among young people”.
The qualitative study found that anal heterosex appeared to be “painful, risky and coercive, particularly for women”, while males spoke of being expected to persuade or coerce reluctant partners.
“Anal sex is increasingly prevalent among young people, yet anal intercourse between men and women—although commonly depicted in sexually explicit media—is usually absent from mainstream sexuality education and seems unmentionable in many social contexts,” the study, published on BMJ Open, says.
It found that some young people normalised “coercive, painful and unsafe anal sex,” in an issue that needs to be addressed by health workers and schools in sex education.

Guys: DON’T DO THIS. Stop watching “sexually explicit media” (i.e., porn) and remember that sexual fantasy is called “fantasy” for a reason. All that weird and kinky stuff — especially stuff that is painful, degrading and unsanitary — is not what she wants.

Or if she does want it, she’s probably so crazy you don’t want her.

See paragraph 16 on p. 5 of Nungesser’s lawsuit.

Also, notice the footnote at the bottom of p. 7: Chlamydia.

Feminism and porn are both bad ideas. Butt sex? Bad idea. False rape accusations? Bad idea. You know who likes bad ideas? Crazy women.

Just in case you haven’t been persuaded yet:

A woman diagnosed with herpes at the age of 20 has written an emotional essay about living with the common condition to fight the stigma surrounding it.
Ella Dawson, now 22, said she had never had unprotected sex and thought she “wasn’t the sort of person STDs happened to” when the symptoms first appeared during her time at university in the US.
She found the diagnosis days later devastating, feeling a “tidal wave of shame” hit her in the student health centre. . . .
Six months after being diagnosed, she decided to start telling more people she had herpes to help herself get over the mental block.
Ms Dawson says she never had a negative reaction dropping the “herpes bomb” at parties and in class discussions at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Wesleyan University, annual tuition $47,972. Ella Dawson graduated last year with a bachelor of arts in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in feminist media analysis.

There is a word for this, and the word is crazy.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools …" Romans 1:22 (KJV) https://t.co/cdkP3qkJJV

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 29, 2015

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Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

152 Responses to “Feminism’s ‘Rape Culture’ Insanity”

RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:24 pm

Quite the philosophical conundrum. The former restraints imposed upon behavior by patriarchal society were stifling to individuality. Thus, we had to get rid of the restraints. Now we have arrived at the end point, and those who advocated eliminating Christian beliefs and mores don’t like what they see. Yet, I suppose we’ll be waiting a long, long time before any of these worthies admits the error of his/her ways.
RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:27 pm

Marginally on topic: Query whether Ms. Sulkowicz is/was planning on wearing white at her wedding? Having children? Doing any of those things which most people desire? Is there any male in the universe who would consider taking her home to meet the parents?
robertstacymccain
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:37 pm

They make a ruin of their own lives and then, predictably, expect us to listen to their plans to change the world.

Did I mention they’re crazy?
RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:45 pm

At some point, when she truly understands that her text messages in all their pornographic glory have been published on the internet and will never go away, she will wonder where all those people who cheered her on in this “project” are to support her. It’s one thing to be a “hero” on an Ivy League campus and among anonymous Tumblr-ites. It’s another to try to live a normal, quiet, life in, oh say, Evansville, Indiana.
Quartermaster
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:48 pm

You’re crazy, they’re insane. There is a difference.
Sean Patrick Murphy sr
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:50 pm

Make a ruin of their own lives, dupe some fool into marrying her and have children(bat shit crazy, like her) driving him crazy. How many crazy people are we left with? Depends on how many kids she has.
JeffWeimer
April 29th, 2015 @ 7:52 pm

Merely to have a conversation is harmful on the 21st-century campus.

Well, a viewpoint is terrorism to a certain Presidential candidate, so yeah, sure; conversation is harmful:

“We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a view point that terrorizes the majority of people,” Clinton said during a CNN town-hall event.

http://thehill.com/regulation/other/239934-hillarys-2016-bid-energizes-supporters-of-gun-control

These people will not stop until they circumscribe all thought into their preferred modes.
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:07 pm

“I allowed my rapist to torture me for 2½ years.”

“Allowed.”

She “allowed.”

Do I really need to bust open Webster’s to see that that word is “consent”?

“Allowed,” people! She “allowed” it.
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:08 pm

A dissolute young man at work told me that he likes performing anal sex on women BECAUSE it’s degrading to them.

I fled from that conversation like it was an open jar of monkey pox virus.
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:09 pm

A billion thumbs up.
robertstacymccain
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:12 pm

“A dissolute young man …”

As a young man, I was rather dissolute myself (a Democrat), but can say I never harbored any urge to oppress or degrade women.
RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:13 pm

That sort of conversation became philosophically inevitable the moment sex ceased to be tied to marriage and family. At that moment, it ceased to be moored to morality. Is it any wonder we find ourselves in a place where young people know no boundaries for their behavior?
Dana
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:31 pm

It is quite true that just because a couple has an ongoing sexual relationship does not mean that both have consented to a particular instance or kind of sex. Trouble is, it’s awfully hard to prove that a particular instance of coerced, non-consensual sex occurred somewhere in the middle of that relationship. (It’s easier if the last sexual episode was rape, and the victim went to the police.)

And that’s the problem for the feminists: they want the standard of proof changed to become guilty until proven innocent. In the end, nothing less will satisfy them.
reader
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:38 pm

For your files on the feminist-academic-industrial complex you can add the recent paper “Teaching the lesbian feminist graphic novel in a Catholic university”:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=ZYihCAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA79&ots=VZBuRsCicu&sig=9ApLgizQpsTswHaTH_PEiqQh5NE#v=onepage&q&f=false
Adobe_Walls
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:43 pm

But it’s our job to oppress womyn.
RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 8:53 pm

Quite. See, e.g. Shakespeare, William.

(From back when a literature degree actually meant something.)
darleenclick
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:18 pm

When Universities host “sex positive” weeks that are only slightly more discreet than Frisco’s Folsom Street fair, why are people surprised that too many young people look at sex as little more engaging than tooth brushing?

Reduce human sexuality to animal rutting, animal rutting is what you’ll get.

That *is* a feature, not a bug, about Leftism. The isolated, unconnected to spouse or family individual is more easily controlled.
Julie Pascal
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:32 pm

Hey… all he has to do is say he’s sex-positive and into sub-dom stuff… him the dom. Then it’s not “degrading”, it’s liberated.

/do I really have to /sarc there?
Fail Burton
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:32 pm

I think we’re seeing fairly persuasive evidence that gender feminists are literally insane. We have the same indications from the women who started this movement a half century ago. They spend years cherry-picking European intellectuals and come up with these meticulously constructed paranoid fantasies that men have been after them for thousands of years.

Using the magic word “oppression,” that stuff is mainstreamed into weak-minded women like Anita Sarkeesian and actress Ashley Judd who just appeared on a panel discussing internet harassment while Judd is throwing around words like “patriarchy.” Meanwhile they don’t notice every single bit of tech used to present their discussion wasn’t invented by them, including the bonded polymers in the plastic chairs they’re sitting in.

Gee, why would anyone harass women who claim all men benefit from sexism and rape? Let’s have a panel discussion and figure this mystery out. Somehow they couldn’t figure out these mysterious harassers aren’t harassing normal woman, just gender feminists. Are harassers going after Christina Hoff Sommers? No? Gee, why not – they’re men. Could there be some mysterious connection between group defamation and pushback against that group defamation?

What about a panel discussion where Ashley Judd and Anita Sarkeesian discuss how they experience a distinct lack of thirst immediately after drinking water? How about the strange phenomenon where the closer they put their hands to a fire the warmer the sensation they experience?

Tune in to feminist TED talks in the future while they unravel the mysteries of the universe while the non-patriarchal segment of humankind fails to invent one civilizationally useful thing for a record 18 kazillion years stretching back to pre-history – another mysterious winning streak for which they’ll have a panel discussion called “Historical Excuse Notes for Teacher: Archimedes Ate My Homework.”

Next week: How Come I Call 911 and Men ARE 911?
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:33 pm

And that’s the deal: If it was rape, then go to the police. If it was sex that you didn’t like, then work that out with the guy – what you dig and what you don’t dig – or leave the guy and call it a lesson lesson learned.

It’s amazing to watch people carry around mattresses and scream about the entire culture where the rest of us would just shrug and go, “I ain’t doin’ THAT again.”
Fail Burton
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:35 pm

I’m guessing this occurs in statistical 0% of “relationships.”
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:37 pm

Unfortunately, in a world gone mad, “/sarc” is a must.
Julie Pascal
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:42 pm

I’m gonna take “Women are bat sh*t crazy” for 500, Alex.

No matter what reason you have for staying with your “rapist” or staying with a man who beats you… and women do stay…

YOU have a mental problem. Kind people can sympathize with your problem, but it’s YOUR problem. Kind people can try to help you with your problem, but it’s still your problem.

Now, clearly, if some guy is *beating you up*… then he’s got a problem, too, and is a criminal abuser. If he’s *beating you up while having sex with you*, he’s clearly a criminal rapist… and you’re bat sh*t crazy. If you’re having sex and he’s NOT beating you up, and you’re not liking it, and you STAY with him and have sex with him again… he might very reasonably think that his attentions are welcome BECAUSE YOU WELCOME HIS ATTENTIONS…. over and over and over. This does NOT make him a rapist. It makes you bat sh*t crazy.

And hopefully you find a way to be strong and not dependent and learn not to be bat sh*t crazy and you break up or leave him… and when you do… he’s *still* not a rapist, it’s just that you’re not crazy anymore.

It’s a *good* thing.
RS
April 29th, 2015 @ 9:48 pm

The problem with these stories is that words like “torture” and other extraordinarily provocative terms no longer have the same meaning when used by these people. Is it possible the young lady claiming 2.5 years of “torture” was, in fact, physically abused for that length of time? Sure. Is such a story suspect nevertheless? Absolutely.

And feminists have only themselves to blame for demeaning language in the interest of scoring political points.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:04 pm

I went to the Folsom Street Fair…once. Let’s just say it was not wholesome.
wbkrebs
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:34 pm

Well, I can imagine her repenting and mending her ways, but it would be long, hard road back.
wbkrebs
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:36 pm

Of course, the icing on the cake is that she loved him so because he was so strong and manly.
wbkrebs
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:37 pm

Credit part of this to the societal normalization of sodomy.
wbkrebs
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:39 pm

Yikes! Even the thought gives me cold shudders.
History is Cyclical: College Campus Sex | Batshit Crazy News
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:47 pm

[…] TOM: Feminism’s Rape Culture Insanity […]
Jim R
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:50 pm

I’ve often remarked that I first read about this sort of thing years ago in Playboy magazine. Feminists had no idea what a disservice they were doing to women with the “Sexual Revolution”, ending the “Victorian hypocrisy” about sex, dating and courtship, and making casual sex into some sort of feminist merit badge. Wish I’d kept that article, as the writer was a friggin’ prophet.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:50 pm

History is Cyclical And specially check out Donald Glover’s spiel on women…
Jim R
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:50 pm

There’s a sucker born every minute!
darleenclick
April 29th, 2015 @ 10:58 pm

I saw Zombie’s pix … that was quite enough!
Finrod Felagund
April 29th, 2015 @ 11:06 pm

“Crazy” is a term of art: “Insane” is a term of Law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
RKae
April 29th, 2015 @ 11:13 pm

And probably had “a touch of that bad boy about him” that always makes stupid girls giggle in delight.
Mr. Saturn
April 29th, 2015 @ 11:22 pm

It’d be pretty awkward to carry around that mattress to the wedding, reception and honeymoon.
Finrod Felagund
April 29th, 2015 @ 11:28 pm

I’m guessing she got herpes via oral sex, not sex or anal sex. An astoundingly large number of people think as long as they use condoms for sex and anal sex, they’re safe, but disease can be transmitted orally as well; it’s just less common.
K-Bob
April 30th, 2015 @ 12:01 am

It’s beginning to look a lot like divorce is going to include an all-encompassing set of law-enforcement issues for the years of rape.

Sort of an ex post facto finding that the entire marriage, having been dissolved, instantly means all sex that took place was non-consensual, therefore illegal. Offspring will become illegitimate, and …

Oh, never mind. Marriage doesn’t mean anything anymore under the law, so it’s all pretty much rape all the time. I guess the good news is that these lunatics have watered down rape so it’s about as meaningless as the word “heckle”
Adjoran
April 30th, 2015 @ 12:31 am

Bitches do be trippin’, all right.
Larry Sheldon
April 30th, 2015 @ 1:44 am

Given
that the preponderance of webby stuff indicates that being a woman is
Really Bad, and being a man is Really Good (in terms of being on the
Powerful Side of things).

Why is it the the preponderance of publicly announced “gender changes” is from “male” TO “female”?
Fail Burton
April 30th, 2015 @ 2:31 am

Chlamydia, Chlamydia, have you met Chlamydia?

Chlamydia The Slut-Rat Lady.

She has a [redacted] that folks adore so,

and a [redacted] even more so.

Chlamydia, Chlamydia that encyclo-pidia.

Chlamydia a rectal-fondue.

On her back she’s The Battle of Waterloo.

On her stomach Uranus too.

And above it all she stinks like a stew.

You can get a lot from Chlamydia!
Zohydro
April 30th, 2015 @ 4:58 am

Especially buggery… Thanks, Cosmo!
Dana
April 30th, 2015 @ 5:20 am

And I’m guessing that it happens more frequently than that. Start throwing in caveats such as not being legally able to consent due to intoxication and it can happen a lot more often.
robertstacymccain
April 30th, 2015 @ 5:58 am

YOU have a mental problem. Kind people can sympathize with your problem, but it’s YOUR problem. Kind people can try to help you with your problem, but it’s still your problem.

Trying to get people to take responsibility for their own lives is an uphill battle in a culture where the entitle mentality is pervasive.

Often times, people find themselves in bad situations — money problems, job problems, relationship problems — and are unable to solve their problems because they refuse to accept the reality that they are part of their own problem.

You’ve got a lousy job and your boss is an asshole? Why don’t you quit? Aren’t there other jobs you could do, other companies you could work for? Why do you feel “stuck” in this particular job? How is it that you found yourself in this situation? What did you do (or not do) that left you with no alternative except to keep working at this job you hate?

Same thing with relationships. There are 7 billion people on this planet. Not all of them are abusive assholes. If you are in a relationship with an abusive asshole, why?

People just don’t ask those questions. They don’t think that way. Instead, they want to throw a pity party with themselves as the guest of honor and, if you decline their invitation — if you deny them the pity they seek — they act as if you have done them wrong. How dare you not feel sorry for them? How dare you not indulge their self-pity? How dare you suggest that they analyze their problems rationally and take control over their own lives?

Feminism feeds into the sense of helplessness that many women feel by telling women that they are victims of a patriarchal conspiracy. Whatever bad happens to any woman, well, there’s a feminist theory to explain it, and that theoretical explanation always amounts to the same thing: BLAME MEN!

In other words, feminism is about relieving women of any sense of responsibility, so that she need never examine her own actions and ask whether she has contributed to her own problems. And so the woman under the influence of feminism continues to follow this map she’s been given until she’s a middle-aged cat lady and why has her life turned out so sad? Two words: BLAME MEN!
robertstacymccain
April 30th, 2015 @ 6:04 am

People ask me, “Stacy, where do you find all this crazy stuff?” As you see, however, the craziness is everywhere nowadays.
theBuckWheat
April 30th, 2015 @ 6:51 am

When a person demands” “Let’s change the question from ‘Did she consent that night?’ to ‘Did she have the power to consent that night?'”, they are moving the focus from one based on principle to one based on power.

Liberals reject the role of concrete principles in shaping thought or action. Because of this power is the controlling consideration. That is exactly why the above is phrased the way it is. That is exactly why liberals are enemies of truth. Every aspect of their lives and the world around them become the raw material from which they construct and maintain the common lie of the moment. Where truth or principle is acknowledged, it is only to the extent that they are useful at the moment to advance the broader lie. The instant that they hinder the desired lie, they are cast aside and disparaged.
Quartermaster
April 30th, 2015 @ 6:53 am

Condoms don’t stop herpes. You can get through skin contact during sex.
Quartermaster
April 30th, 2015 @ 7:00 am

Picky, picky. Insane is actually a medical term adopted by the law.
Toastrider
April 30th, 2015 @ 7:28 am

Does light bondage count? Especially if you take turns being the one tied up?