by Connie Chastain*
As I've noted here before, I think rape culture was invented at some point in the early phases of second-wave feminism because smearing men with patriarchy didn't get enough traction to suit feminists movers and shakers.
Patriarchy wasn't total evil, at least, not to everyone. People were capable of looking back in history and seeing that women could have it pretty good in that system (provided for, protected, etc.) and that it could be awful for men (because protecting and providing could, and frequently did, involve losing one's life).
Complaining about women having to cook and clean, give birth and nurture children, while men's roles involved self-sacrifice, just looked childish and petulant. Ah, but rape; there's no upside to that. So they took a horrible crime committed by a tiny number of men and morphed it into a pervasive, culture-wide tool used by all men to keep all women subjugated.
Problem seems to be, only feminists and malleable minds under their influence really believe in it. Among thinking folks, it still doesn't have much traction. We look among our husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, bosses, co-workers, friends, neighbors and find few if any rapists, and conclude, quite rightly, that the claim of rape culture is exaggerated at best and black-hearted misandry at worst.
I know this is a theme I keep hammering, but it's truly perplexing to contemplate. How do the minds of rape-culture true believers handle the fact that the vast majority of men do not rape, just as they vast majority of men are not abusers? What do they do with the fact that that most men are good and decent, and that the world works because men make it work, sometimes at great cost to themselves?
Is it tunnel vision? Do they focus only on what they want to see and blot or blur out everything that contradicts it? Do they acknowledge the decency and accomplishment of most men, but deprive it of significance? And how do they deal with a philosophy, a worldview, an ideology or whatever feminism is, that requires them to maintain such a dishonest, or at best incomplete, view of half the population of the planet?
Feminism, of course, isn't the only aspect of human existence that requires or utilizes the ability to maintain a double standard. Religion, politics, education, even science can create such ambiguities. But the relationship between male and female is so fundamental, so crucial to the very survival of our species, you have to wonder what sort of mentality would deliberately foster in one sex such hatred for the other.
*Connie is a regular contributor to FRS. Her principal blog is http://conniechastain.blogspot.com/
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18 comments:
I love it, Connie!
You ask: "How do the minds of rape-culture true believers handle the fact that the vast majority of men do not rape, just as they vast majority of men are not abusers?"
Well, for one thing, they tie rape in with all manner of lesser and unrelated male "offenses" so as to widen the net to include men who would never dream of raping anyone (i.e., the vast majority of men) as "part of the problem" -- those men are the ones who allow, foster, and foment the "rape culture." They do this by concocting "rape continuums" and a culture of supposed hyper-masculinity that they claim breeds rape and other crimes against women.
This world view can't separate (1) a brutal act of rape -- forcing a woman to have sex against her will, and (2) a college guy without a date on Saturday night picking up a Playboy Magazine. Or a couple of guys laughing over a sex joke. It's all part of a "rape continuum," you see -- dehumanizing women, etc.
Now, the fact is, this is total nonsense. A rapist is a criminal. A kid who looks at Playboy Magazine might be better off with a girlfriend, but it's a harmless outlet (I don't condone it, but it's not rape or harmful to "women"). A prof. in Texas determined that an increase in porn consumption has a correlation with a decrease in rape, but the hardcore feminists don't want to hear it.
Feminists don't handle facts -- at least not without putting on rubber gloves first, to avoid any direct contact with them.
A rapist is a criminal.
***
Exactly. There is so much statistical evidence backing this up that it's ridiculous.
Men who otherwise obey the law don't rape.
Perhaps we should bring back witch trials.
Esp as most of those accused of being witches would today be diagnosed as suffering from cluster B personality disorders...
One of my friends recently became a police officer.
He said that part of his training was to "not forget that most people are not criminals".
He was repeatedly told that only 3% of the population engages in crime.
He was told this - because - police officers deal with criminals all day long, and - in that environment - it is easy to "see criminals everywhere" eventhough they do not exist.
Anyway, lets say that all 3% of these criminals were rapists - that would mean the other 97% are NOT rapists...
Rape is a terrible crime, but it is not an epidemic as the feminists would have us believe...
You don't 'condone' it? Anyone who doesn't like Playboy is unpatriotic.
I didn't say I didn't LIKE it . . . .
OT- This article made me sick:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/CreateaPlan/why-women-will-run-the-economy.aspx?ucpg=6&ucid=38087245#uc2Lst38087245
"She-conomy" sounds like some kind of bad cable-TV reality series. But in fact, a series of significant changes are adding up to a new financial reality for American women, who wield more economic power than ever before:
Women control about $4.3 trillion of $5.9 trillion in U.S. consumer spending, calculated the authors of "The Female Economy," a study published in the Harvard Business Review in 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1284038/Twilights-Kristen-Stewart-apologises-rape-remark.html
@AfOR
"Perhaps we should bring back witch trials.
Esp as most of those accused of being witches would today be diagnosed as suffering from cluster B personality disorders..."
Ah, but just think of what Henry VIII would have done!
Today, the best we could do is to create a "Cluster B" registry where those who have been diagnosed/identified must register with the state, similar to sex offenders, or better yet, IPP.
I'm a slowly recovering feminist who recently discovered your informative site lol.
I believed in feminism because I am from a muslim african culture and as a young woman the message of feminism (as I had understood it) had appealed to me because of some of the unjust and chauvinistic attitudes to women in my community.
Even so, I had my misgivings about feminism from the beginning because their fundamental message that men want only to harm women-their wives, daughters and so on was so obviously untrue. Even in my traditional patriarchal community, men wanted the best for their female folk in their own paternalistic clumsy way, especially concerning their daughters. These men were not evil or selfish, they were at most misguided and behind the times.
My final break with feminism was when I realized how the rape hysteria they have unleashed on the world has been especially destructive to African and African American men.
Please look into the case in Arizona about 4 young Liberian boys accused of "raping" an 8 year old. Luckily the judge seems like a humane person and has released the 9 and 10 year olds.
In this story, 4 boys ages 13, 12 10 and 9 were accused of sexual assault and kidnapping an 8 year old girl. One of the boys is her cousin and the families all know each other and live in the same apartment complex. The girl was never raped, but you would never know it from the media. There was NO sexual intercourse. Basically the two bullies (13 and 12 year old) tricked her to a shed and half took her clothes off. The girl escaped running and screaming. In a normal society that has not been dehumanized by rape hysteria, these boys would have been severely punished by their parents, warned and that would be the end of it. Instead a neighbor called the cops and everything went downhill from here. The cops took the girl to the parents. The parents were annoyed at the girl for "getting herself into trouble" probably because they might have assumed she did something wrong if the cops came to them. They did not understand that in America they were supposed to react hysterically and insist their daughter was raped! They did not understand that they were supposed to point fingers at the boys they have known all their lives and cry "RAPISTS" So the cops immediately told the media that the parents have ostracized their daughter and blaming her for he "rape". The mother keeps saying "no one touched my daughter". The father said nothing should be done to the boys as he did not want to destroy the boys lives for a not so uncommon child misbehavior.
Yes, this African family clearly did not get the memo about destroying boys and men with charges of rape.
So the media went into a feeding frenzy. Conservatives and liberals wrote about a backward family that come from a rape and shame based culture where boys rape and women are shamed. So in other wards, since the family came from an African country where there had been a civil war, and where some soldiers raped women, therefore, all African boys everywhere, including the 9 and 10 year old are used to raping. Thus you have bigotry and rape hysteria and feminism all in a toxic mix.
The girl was removed from her parents and placed in a foster care. Apparently she is weeping, and has tried to run away because she wants to go back home, but the state has kidnapped her and will not let her return. So in fact the state is traumatizing her more than the alleged sexual molestation. The state has also kidnapped the younger boys and placed them in foster care.
Not content to simply demonize the parents, the state has arrested them as and is now charging them for child abuse.
Has this country gone mad?
Zee
"....slowly recovering feminist"
Your story alone should be enough to become an immediate cure.
Zee: yes, I'm afraid that it has. Also, I don't blame you for becoming interested in feminism, considering where you grew up; it is to your credit that you are challenging feminism in an objective way.
Your analysis of that case is the most insightful that I've seen.
Now let me state the obvious: the equalitarian utopia that the feminists have been promising for decades still hasn't happened. It never will happen.
The choice is not between patriarchy and equality, but rather between patriarchy and misandrist tyranny, with all of the social diseases (broken homes, crime, big brother legalism, etc) that go with it. Of the two, patriarchy is the lesser evil.
There is a discussion of this topic here:
http://www.fathersforlife.org/feminism/utopia.html
Rape Hysteria was the main instrument that "Empowered" the Klu-Klux-Klan.
Rape hysteria is now the Main instrument that "Empowers" the Gender / Raunch community.
This would seem silly if it were not the truth!!
The only true feminist..is a lesbian!!
The Gender / Raunch communities goal is for the upper class males to be irresponsible, educated, elite, homosexuals..while the uneducated males are the workers. They then want the fammily unit to be lesbians, and these lesbian fammilies will be state funded.
But you see folks..this Gender/ Raunch utopia will collapse.
Scott can't spell very well.
http://www.jspell.com/public-spell-checker.html
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