Apoplectically Linked: Rape, Rape Apologists & Patriarchal Patronising
It has seemed these past few weeks that there’s a certain something in the air, some reason to grimace through the news of every passing day. It’s not that this is overly unusual; the news is almost always full of unjustifiable horrors, but the prevalence of men talking indefensible and nonsensical bullshit about rape seems even worse than usual.
First, as Julian Assange continued to cower in the Ecuadorian embassy a Republican candidate for the upcoming elections decided to drop some prehistoric misinformation about rape and pregnancy into his similarly archaic opinions…
Matt Williams: ‘LEGITIMATE RAPE’ RARELY LEADS TO PREGNANCY, CLAIMS US SENATE CANDIDATE
Then George Galloway, returning attention to the matter of accused rapist Julian Assange and his refusal to stand trial for those allegations, decided that he could redefine the very word “rape”…
Jerome Taylor: GORGEOUS GEORGE JOINS THE ASSANGE BACKERS WHO DON’T THINK RAPE IS RAPE
Then the distantly half-remembered reality show winner Steve Brookstein chipped in with similarly awful opinions expressed in a more nakedly boorish manner, in some places to a blogger whose work I can’t recommend enough…
Stavvers: FAILED POPSTAR EXPLAINS WHY RAPE CULTURE WORKS FOR HIM
The differences between George Galloway’s horrendous redefinitions of rape and those of Steve Brookstein arise from a difference in their vocabularies and a small amount of what I’m sure he’d consider political savvy on Galloway’s euphemistic part. Both are assuming an authority which is not theirs in order to move the boundaries between consensual sex and rape closer to their own preconceptions and to positions which don’t cast themselves as possibly having perpetrated rape.
But none of this is more than a précis of events that anyone vaguely news-conscious is already aware of. What is behind this sudden rush to claim the word rape as a more complicated concept or nuanced violence than it really is? Rebecca Solnit’s article about the patronising attitudes men sometimes/often have in unnecessarily imparting “wisdom” to women may give us some clue…
Rebecca Solnit: WHY “MANSPLAINING” IS STILL A PROBLEM
Or the more uncomfortably phrased look at how being politic fails when politics become a disagreement between genders…
Jonathan Freedland: WHAT GALLOWAY AND AKIN SAY ABOUT RAPE SAYS SO MUCH MORE ABOUT THEM
The argument is not that rape is a crime of which only women are survivors, but that the vastly disproportionate numbers of women affected indicate a skewed slant to the status quo which casts the autonomy of female sexuality as something moveable in a way the male equivalent seldom if ever is. We’ll finish then with some thoughts on the male misappropriation of the definition of rape and its subsequent obfuscation, with another perspective on why many men might wish to move the definition in a manner privileging their own sexuality. The author’s personal experiences mentioned here bear details which will be distressingly familiar to a depressingly large number of people…
Laurie Penny: IT’S TRIGGER WARNING WEEK
Part of the problem is that ‘rape’ *is* an umbrella term referring to a wide range of scenarios. This should be addressed by seeking to educate (both genders), prevent, question and/or indeed punish as appropriate. The stranger with a knife and the partner/date with the priapic sense of entitlement are both beasts, but they are different beasts, but they’re both beasts, and on and on.
Instead, people on one side (and they’re not all men) assign degrees of severity or “legitimacy” and blame, and lose sight of the fact that lack of consent is lack of consent regardless; and those on the other side lump all the beasts in one basket. Neither of which I think helps anyone. Why the former is toxic is pretty well documented; the latter can hopefully be refined in discussions of ‘rape culture’.
Psychos lurking in dark corners can’t be dealt with by education, the pervasive male sense of sexual entitlement and the female response to it should. Education is never a popular answer though, which is a shame, because teaching boys that their dicks have no right to rule them or the people around them would also solve the issue of prostitution and burqas in one fell swoop.
Last sentence – issues plural. Mental note: WordPress does let one edit comments…