You Are Advocating Crime
Milkweed said:
What exactly is my position other than I dont agree a 'rape culture' exists?
Your position is that a straw man you invented for your personal convenience "doesn't exist".
Which is fine, insofar as you are denouncing your own fantasy.
However, in terms of refuting actual advocates who denounce rape culture, you're batting straight zeroes, and advocating rape culture,
Look, dude, think about someone you know and, well, actually care about. When and if it's their turn, will you resort to half-witted politicking?
I would hope not. But if you have any integrity, and you actually believe the shit you're saying, that is exactly what you're obliging yourself to.
You know, in any number of issues it is easy enough to point to the converts and say, "It's because it was one of theirs." Nancy Reagan on stem cells? Dick Cheney on lesbians? Rob Portman on his own son? And, you know, it's always a tough call; we're happy for their support but sad for the circumstances that brought them. And the question that never gets answered is why. Because it really is a tough one to ask.
But you and Bowser and Tali are trying to denounce various "rape cultures" of your own invention and then hold other people accountable for them.
This is dishonest, to say the least.
And by its intended effect, to suppress any real discussion of genuine rape culture, it is rape advocacy.
You know, dude, when it's someone I know, I fight tooth and nail. If it's ever me, though? I don't know every goddamn thing under the sun but one thing I do know is I have no clue what I will do if it's ever my turn. I would hope to stand and fight to the bitter end. There's at least a fifty-fifty chance that I will curl into a ball and ride it out until I convince myself the memory is contained. There is a statistically significant chance it would outright destroy me. That much I can tell you with confidence, but if it really came down to having to deal with it?
Look, in my circles I know more and have seen more than anyone else in the role of witness to the damage this crime does. But I also know that after all these years and
too goddamn fucking much practice that none of that means anything in the moment that the next time arrives. That I have seen and learned what I have doesn't mean I know a goddamn thing about how to deal with it.
Your
American Enterprise Institute advocate, Ms. Kitchens, is just like you; she can't answer a genuine proposition of rape culture. What rape culture is she refuting?
Her argument is that some sexual assault isn't assaulty enough, and therefore shouldn't count.
That is rape culture.
And you're advocating it.
You're pushing it.
In order to denounce your own straw man.
Do you have any idea what this thing is? This "rape" that we are discussing? Do you have any fucking clue under the sun what it does to human beings?
Do you actually have any clue what it is you're saying?
Because here's the thing about what if it's ever my turn.
It could be in a fucked up place like Louisiana or Kansas, and
I will see justice. Because no matter what they think of me as a queer, in those backwaters
you do not do that to a man.
If it's a woman? Well, it's not too hard for them to look for an excuse.
Now, DV ... that's an issue where queer men are just as screwed as women in "family values" country, but I'm never going to be treated like Kendall Anderson was. They might find a way to give me my own hell, but in places like East Baton Rouge, they will not have it said of them that they had a chance to throw a faggot in jail and passed.
And there are widespread, deep-seated, even
religiously entrenched beliefs and behaviors in every societal culture on this planet contributing to and empowering rape. We can't pretend that what happened to Ms. Anderson is a one-off. Nor Ms. McInerny Purmort's experience in which the response to a woman who does not appreciate sexual harassment is to threaten to rape her.
Think of Gamergate. They chased a woman and her husband out of their home because she dared to speak against the denigration of women in entertainment software. There was a nearly hilarious episode in which a
gunman ... Skyping from his car ... driving to Ms. Wu's house ... in order to―(yes, really)―
"challenge her to a street race" ... managed to crash his car while Skyping, whereupon he kept Skyping while he threw a temper tantrum while explaining that she must have known he was coming and sabotaged his car.
That all went on during a time when my daughter went to Girl Geek Con. For all I criticize SPD, they did their damn job that weekend. We didn't find out until
afterward that our daughters were there under a fucking bomb threat against Anita Sarkeesian.
And I'll tell you this:
Add the word "Allah" to what they're doing, and they're terrorists. But barring that, it's "just women", so our society regards it more lightly.
Threaten to rape a woman to death? Harassment, maybe.
Threaten to rape a woman to death in the name of Allah? Terrorism.
RAINN says conscious decisions, but you construe them as pretending those decisions occur in a vacuum. Indeed, it's an interesting letter, because they do a damn good job of letting you think that.
But if that many decisions to rape are occurring in a vacuum? Somebody please explain how that works.
Furthermore, given the frequency, over the years, of men not knowing they were committing rape, even to the point of winning acquittal, where does this idea come from? How was it okay in the first place? If he
really didn't know,
why?
This describes an observably impossible condition, that the one time acculturation plays exactly no role in the psychosocial structures outlining how any given individual makes a decision just happens to be when men rape women.
It's complete bullshit.
And it's why the line you're taking is rape advocacy.
You are trying to preserve and protect the beliefs and behaviors within a societal culture contributing to rape, and their continued acceptability.
You are a rape advocate.
