'Slut Walk' Straw Men

We've avoided discussion of the worldwide "Slut Walks" because they are meaningless exercises in straw men-ery intended to justify the existence of the sexual grievance industry so that it gets more funding, and to transmogrify the real reasons women aren't believed when they cry rape.

First, the suggestion that rape claims aren't instantly believed by most people, regardless of the way the woman was dressed, regardless of the absence of supporting evidence, and regardless of how far-fetched the claim, is belied by the facts. Every absurd-on-its-face false rape claim we've reported here was instantly believed by most people when it was first made. That includes police and media. Can you say "Hofstra"? See here: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/p/lamb-to-slaughter-hofstra-false-rape.html

Second, to the extent legitimate rape claims are doubted (and these are in the minority), the principal reason isn't the way women dress, it's that false rape claims, which are common, diminish the integrity of even legitimate rape claims. Judges bemoan the effects of false rape claims in false rape case after false rape case after false rape case. You'd think someone would finally start listening to them. But instead of enhancing the integrity of rape victims by joining with us to try to eradicate false rape claims, women and men the world over have taken to the streets to insist that women aren't believed because of  . . . the way women dress.

It is as ludicrous as it is dishonest.

Let's briefly focus on one aspect of the slut walk "philosophy" to test its veracity.  It goes something like this: in our "rape culture," men are afforded a free pass to sexually abuse women who dress in a sexualized manner because men are assumed not to be able to control themselves.  Therefore, it's up to women not to dress in a sexualized manner.

I won't spend time trying to refute this inanity.  Yes, I am quite certain that, for example, parents across America admonish their daughters who claim they've been raped if those daughters have put themselves in situations where, common sense tells us, rape is more likely to occur. Usually the problem isn't the daughter's dress as much as other things, like drinking to excess at wild parties with men they don't know. Such admonishments, of course, are not "victim blaming," they are good parenting. What is often not mentioned is that those same parents do not, in any manner, give the rapist a free pass because he is supposedly unable to control himself. If given the opportunity, those same parents would castrate the young man and shove his testicles down his throat.

No sane and rational person in 2011 believes rapists should be given a free pass because of the way women dress, and to suggest otherwise is a vapid straw man. 

I note, in passing, the following interesting double-standard: while every sane and rational person believes that men have both the capacity and the duty to control themselves when it comes to rape, feminists don't seem to believe that women should be held to the same standard when it comes to false rape claims.  Rape culture, Amanda Hess claims, is the reason women falsely cry rape. Among the ways this manifests itself is when "the woman had desired the sex all along, but must defend her femininity by saying that she had been coerced into sex." See here.

Get it? Men who commit sexual assault = no excuses; women who make false rape claims = merely defending their femininity.

I must be honest: the most difficult part about writing this blog is that I am forced treat inane propositions as if they were legitimate just so I can expose them for what they are.