by Connie Chastain*
Rape culture is a term used within women's studies and feminism, describing a culture in which rape and other sexual violence (usually against women) are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or encourage sexualized violence. (Wikipedia)
In my approach to the study of the mentality behind claims of rape culture, Wikipedia's entry is a good place to start. The term, "within women's studies and feminism," effectively eliminates most everyone else; i.e., you don't often hear normal folks talking about rape culture.
At least part of the mentality you find "within women's studies and feminism" is that of victimhood. Let me give you an example.
A couple of years ago, somebody posted in a chat group a link to an article titled "Misogyny, the Hatred of Women, Is Pervasive in US" by David Whitfield. Originally published in The Olympian, which appears to be the daily newspaper of record for Olympia, Washington, the article had been reprinted in an ultra-leftist e-zine, truthout.
If you can get past the breathtaking effrontery of the title (American women enjoy perhaps the cushiest female existence on the planet, created and supported almost exclusively by men), the article is still posted at truthout, in all its emotionally manipulative glory, for those who want to slog through it.
A couple of things you notice right away when reading this sort of propaganda. One, there's no balance (not a syllable about the 60/40 female-to-male ratio on college campuses; not a word about boys victimized by the educational system; no acknowledgment that divorce and child custody laws are slanted in favor of women; no mention of men dying earlier). Two, what happens to women is overwhelmingly bad (abused by boyfriends or husbands, tied down with children during their most productive years, denied advancement in their jobs and, of course, raped).
In other words, women are victims; men cannot be victims because they are victimizers. These are prerequisites for belief that rape culture exists.
Now. A disclaimer (not needed for thinking folks, just for the kneejerk emotionalists): Acknowledging that most American women enjoy the highest quality of life in the world does not negate the reality that some of them suffer negatives in their lives (as do many men). Similarly, acknowledging that rape exits doesn't negate the reality that false rape accusations occur -- except, perhaps, in the minds of those who accept the notion that rape culture exists, and we live in it.
Links to pages referenced in this piece:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
http://www.truthout.org/article/david-whitfield-hatred-women-is-pervasive-us
*Connie is a regular contributor to FRS. Her principal blog is http://conniechastain.blogspot.com/
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i.e., you don't often hear normal folks talking about rape culture.
****
Ain't that the truth. Also: you rarely hear anyone over the age of nine discussing Santa Claus.
"Loretta Francis' study found that a woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country" (from the truthout article)
so that's approximately 154,585,917 women not being beaten every nine seconds in this country.
Not bad odds, I'd say
The biggest flaw with the rape culture theory is feminists' inability to provide solid evidence for its existence. The very things feminists cite as proof show the opposite of what feminists claim.
No media outlet condones, normalizes, excuses, or encourages sexualized violence against women. The majority of people abhor sexual violence against women, with the public sentiment being reflected in our laws.
The feminist argument for rape culture is simply an extension of their victim mentality, which may explain why they fail to acknowledge male victims and female perpetrators of sexual violence.
Rape hysteria, and the Rapeklan marches and parades on universities around the country are no longer about protecting women from rape..it is more about the POWER AND CONTROL, it gives the marchers.
The Klu-Klux-Klan asurped alot of power from their Rapeklan Rallies, and now the Gender/Raunch culture seem to be the latest marchers to be "EMPOWERED".
The Victim mentality far exceeds the realm of the rape culture. It is everywhere and of itself, has become a social "pandemic". The underlying issue with the victim mentality is that it is a vehicle used to completely alleviate women of any and all responsbility in society.
"In other words, women are victims; men cannot be victims because they are victimizers."
This is chivalry, pure and simple. It's misandrist BS.
"The biggest flaw with the rape culture theory is feminists' inability to provide solid evidence for its existence. The very things feminists cite as proof show the opposite of what feminists claim. "
In fact by the feminists' defintion of rape culture, what mostly closely fits that defintion is the permission women have to force sex on men in the US. When is the last tiem you saw a woman prosecuted for sex with a drunken man?
As for what feminists really mean by that term, the only answer is picture anfter picture after picture of lynched men. There's your rape culture.
The fictitious 'Rape Culture' is contrived by academic feminist separatists with the goal of re-engineering society by redefining heterosexuality as heteropatriarchy, thus separating men and women.
This video was popularized in after the Hofstra incident, where there was no rape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv3Kz_CluTE
""Loretta Francis' study found that a woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country" (from the truthout article)"
Then Ms. Francis has worse arithmetic skills than some non-humans.
And we're supposed to swallow the every nine seconds myth, as if America didn't have the highest incarceration rate for accused men on the planet.
Connie, excellent piece!!
I often wonder if there is an even greater evil at work beyond false rape claims and feminist-created rape culture.
If I were out to globally control and reduce the world population generally, and shift money and resources into higher and tighter hands, I would set men and women against each other, destroy the family unit, and create a xenophobic paranoia that can only be countered by State and National action (thereby forcing the majority to give up more of their rights, sovereignty, and privileges in exchange for "security" and safety). Benjamin Franklin said that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Also, as I had written in a comment here back on 16 February:
"....we continue to deal with racial and gender prejudice and mob mentality, but now our problems stem not only from the opprobrium of those who rush to judgment, but also from the very corrective measures originally designed to bring equality and end prejudice. To afford the rights of one group at the expense of the rights of another group is a violation of our Constitutional protections and guarantees. False Rape Accusations are now the bane of all men, regardless of race and age. This is a civil rights issue. " [ I should have said "regardless of race, sex, and age" because women are subject to false accusations too ]
It took state and national action by feminist lawmakers and their enablers to put us into the situation we're in, and it will take more state and national action on the part of critically thinking, fair, independent, equality-minded, US Constitution-loving men and women to correct our course. If this is to happen, we must look at the financial and political incentives that have brought us to this point and reinforce the status quo and then provide compelling alternatives.
Until then, Follow The Money and ask the questions behind the question, the most important ones being "who benefits?" and "what is the ultimate intent?"
As a general rule, whenever you hear constantly about how disadvantaged or hardly done by a particular group is it usually means the exact opposite. That is, it normally means the group in question has enough influence to get their grievances and interests widely publicized and taken seriously.
When a group is genuinely oppressed in a society, complaints normally get ignored, suppressed, ridiculed or punished. People soon learn that complaining is futile and it is better to simply shut up and cop it sweet.
This will astonish you!
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@ Nick S
You mean, like Fathers 4 Justice, who have to don a superhero costume and fondle a billabong on a Judge's roof to get 2 column inches in a local rag?
"If I were out to globally control and reduce the world population generally, and shift money and resources into higher and tighter hands, I would set men and women against each other, destroy the family unit"
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it would explain why feminism is largely funded by the plutocracy. Well, someone posted a couple of links to articles that reached that conclusion, but I have not researched it myself.
"The Coalition of Labor Union Women said in 2005, women were paid 77 cents for every dollar men received."
And why would you believe them? That "truthout" article doesn't have much truth in it.
Such a claim denies the most basic principles of economics. If women did the same work for 77% of the cost, then as employers hired more and more women to in order to reduce the cost of labor, demand for women workers would increase, and therefore the price of female labor would increase until it equaled the price of male labor. The idea that competing businesses would be willing to pay 30% for the same thing is absurd.
Perverts who are now running our country into the ground love the "Women as Victim" hysteria construction.
For if this hysteria construction is loud enough, it drowns out all other issues of real importance to Americans..Like why these perverts are robbing this country blind, and morally bankrupting its children.
Deviants fill our legislatures by getting elected solelly on the "women-as-Victim" construction.
History will note this...and history will note that while these perverts were being elected over and over, and over,from exploiting this "women as victim construction"...American Women were the most "liberated" group the world had ever witnessed.
An Australia man was acquitted of rape Friday when a jury ruled there had to be "collaboration" to remove the woman's tight size six skinny jeans.
Nicholas Gonzales, 23, admitted to having sex with the 24-year-old accuser, but insisted it was consensual.
The woman said Gonzales pushed her on his bed and held down against her will, the Daily Mail reported.
"I struggled to try to get up for a while and then he undid my jeans and he pulled them off," she testified.
Gonzales' lawyer pressed her, saying it would be "difficult for skinny jeans to be taken off by someone else unless the wearer's assisting, collaborating, consenting."
"I would disagree," the woman replied.
The skinny jeans defense has become more common in rape trials all over the world.
In 2008, a Seoul, South Korea jury overturned a rape conviction for the same reason.
An Italian jury upheld a rape conviction in 2008 when lawyers brought a skinny jeans defense, saying "jeans cannot be compared to any type of chastity belt."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/05/01/2010-05-01_jury_acquits_accused_rapist_rules_womans_skinny_jeans_so_tight_she_must_have_hel.html#ixzz0mi39wuA0
"Loretta Francis' study found that a woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country" (from the truthout article)
That still only equates to about 2% of the female population of the US each year.
The point about the so-called earnings gap is that not only is the difference between average male and female earnings not due to discrimination or unequal pay for equal work, but also that all the extra money men earn ends up being redistributed to women anyway in the form of private transfers and public spending and government transfers that favor women.
If you add up private consumption as well as things like public spending on services that women access more, then it is clear that women consume far more resources in total than men.
So essentially men are privileged because they get to work more and die sooner in order to pay for women's lifestyles.
Nick
Notice that you never hear of the "spending gap".
The spending gap is how much more money women SPEND than men.
That is a topic that is never covered in the MSM.
"If I were out to globally control and reduce the world population generally, and shift money and resources into higher and tighter hands, I would set men and women against each other, destroy the family unit, and create a xenophobic paranoia that can only be countered by State and National action"
While I am not usually a fan of conspiracy theories, I have often thought along similar lines myself. That anyone wishing to undermine society would find that driving a wedge between men and women to be a good way of achieving that end.
Another thing is that women tend to be more submissive than men. In the event that society is under threat through an invading enemy or totalitarian control or something similar, the survival of society depends largely on the willingness of men to actively resist and risk their safety if necessary. Ensuring that as much of the male population as possible is marginalized, demoralized, devalued and lacking any stake in society is a good way of guaranteeing that you have a docile population that will not resist the agendas of any would-be tyrants.
"That still only equates to about 2% of the female population of the US each year."
Which would be a huge problem, about four times the total violent crime rate.
Why is the "spending gap" never covered in the main stream media??
Because the spending gap is not part of the "hysteria construction" that breaks patriarchies.
But you see not all patriarchies are being broke equally.
This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors.
Rape hysteria is a very dangerous phenomena.
The Klu-Klux-Klan, were "EMPOWERED" by exploiting Rape hysteria, and they massed hundreds of marchers for their RapeKlan rallies.
Now its the Gender/Raunch communities that are marching and being "Empowered" from their RapeKlan marches.
Gender/Raunch know that if law enforcement started charging false rape accusers...the most significant thing that would happen is that these gender/Raunch feminists would lose all their cultural hysteria "Empowerment".
Is it even constitutional for law enforcement to be (in effect) "Empowering" the gender/Raunch community by "manufacturing missinformation".
By not charging false rape accussers, they are in effect "manufacturing missinformation".
The Gender/Raunch community is abusing their "Empowerment", so its time to Break the Alliance that is "Epowering" them.
@ Anon
"This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors."
On the contrary, from my own case alone, I could prove, by means of official documents all bearing the seal of the Court, that False Rape Accusations actively support and conceal the action of actual paedophiles, and serve to protect said paedophile from the Law.
I am not suggesting that is the DELIBERATE aim of the False Rape Accusers, but that is the FACTUAL and REAL result, so frankly it is the same thing.
Since you are so violently against anything that attacks the evil that are False Rape Accusations, I can only assume that you are yourself an active paedophile.
Anonymous - "This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors."
Hey, moron! Did you bother to read any of the many posts about stories wherein women ADMIT to lying about rapes? What of those? Should INNOCENT men be charged, their lives ruined, their life savings depleted, and even imprisoned just so as to not have women's lies exposed? Is That what you think?
Do you operate from a basis of nothing more than such hatred for men as a gender that you'd actually believe that innocent men do not need protection? That men are merely expendable?
I'm sure that you'd like to think of yourself as a "good person"; but, how can someone who would actually prefer to see injustices done to men still believe themselves as "good". The desire to see innocent people harmed, and to see them suffer is just plain evil. Think about it!
"This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors."
FUCK YOU! You chivalrous moron!
Gender feminists have a disproportionate amount of peodophiles amongst their ranks. These deviants understand intuitivelly that in order to get the most access to children, they must get hetero-sexual men out of the way.
"This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors."
Wrong on all counts except for your being shocked and appalled. Your polemic and ipse dixit aside, I hope you actually read the entire blog before commenting again. You have no idea what you are talking about and need to be educated. Start here and read thoroughly:
http://falserapearchives.blogspot.com/2010/01/false-rape-primer.html
Perhaps you will learn to cease and desist from your own false accusations.
It would perhaps be better if everyone didn't respond to the kind of nonsense posted above. It just achieves the very objective of derailing the thread.
This is a perfect example of a 'hit and run'. This is when the poster has no interest in arguing anything of substance, but simply posts something obnoxious in order to stir people up, derail the thread and then pisses off.
Our opponents have to resort to this kind of hysteria and ad hominem nonsense, as this is all they have left. They know the evidence is mounting up and their worldview is in deep trouble.
I am not sure if the plutocracy is primarily behind feminism. I think it is primarily government bureaucracies and social engineers who wish to increase their control over society. Business probably benefits to some degree from having more female workers and consumers, but business still pays a high price in things like sexual harassment lawsuits, being pressured to hire and subsidize inept women due to affirmative action, not to mention all the other goodies like paid maternity leave that feminists want business to pay for.
I think that big business has actually been sold a pup, when in reality the feminists are largely interested in shaking down business for all they are worth.
Although to a large extent feminism is, and always was, an elitist movement designed to benefit the upper-middle class at the expense of the working class. A lot of the policies they propose are designed to benefit dual-income professional couples the most. While destroying the livelihoods of male breadwinners and encouraging more single motherhood and dependence on government has devastated many working-class communities in a lot of countries.
Indeed, the Independent Women's Forum has pointed out that a lot of feminist policies such as the ludicrous 'comparable worth' wage fixing are motivated by good old fashioned class snobbery. They think it is not right that men who work in blue-collar occupations earn more money than women who go to university.
Yeah
You never hear any feminists complaining about not being "equally represented" in mining and military combat and construction work and any other job that actually requires work and has a lot of fatalities.
"It would perhaps be better if everyone didn't respond to the kind of nonsense posted above. It just achieves the very objective of derailing the thread."
Possibly. Better yet, our new moderator should simply delete such hit-and-run posts.
Anonymous - "Better yet, our new moderator should simply delete such hit-and-run posts."
While I agree with Nick S. that these are just hit-n-run posts, I am never-the-less concern about leaving them as the last comment in any thread.
If they are deleted as entirely immaterial to the discussion, entirely inaccurate, completely dishonest (or, as in this case, all three); that should also suffice to prevent them from having their desired negative effect.
"Better yet, our new moderator should simply delete such hit-and-run posts."
Haha. I've been away all weekend ... only just got back home now.
Nice piece, Connie ... short and sweet ;)
Speaking for myself, I say let the liars come in here and think they've won by getting the last word. Most of the time they're just putting their irrationality and lack of character on display for us.
"This type of blog is clearly produced and followed by pedophiles and rapists who contribute to the current rape culture in America. I'm shocked and appalled by this blog and the authors."
****
There is nothing "clearly" about this scurrilous comment, and "clearly" such a blatantly untrue claim is actionable.
Are any of us convicted rapists or molesters? Many of us are innocent men who have been exonerated by the legal system, and some of us have seen our false accusers convicted. Others have never been accused of a crime.
But this is an excellent example of a nifongist/feminist's utter lack of respect for common decency or for the truth. False accusations flow are freely from your mouths as water from a faucet.
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