Tag: Victim blaming

Look at all the wonderful victim blaming (Also: MRAs disgust me)

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Ah Reddit, how expectedly misogynistic of you…

So, a woman get raped and the judge gives us this brilliant quote

Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar called Rhodes a “clumsy Don Juan” who may have misunderstood what the victim wanted when he forced intercourse along a darkened highway outside Thompson in 2006.

I don’t think a simple “WTF” can even express my reaction at this. But anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. People who read this blog probably know already that “Blind Justice” is notoriously privileged.

However I do want to point out the Shit Reddit Said when this story was posted around.

From /r/women:

Am I the only one thinking that “Hey, Maybe if she would’ve taken responsbility for her actions, by saying ‘no’ and leaving this would have never happened” ?

Yes, because yes first “No” when he tried to kiss her didn’t count and anytime a woman is alone with a male, is an obvious consent to sex. What is this? Saudi Arabia?

First she says no, then she returns his kisses. She’s dressed like a whore and drunk. Flirts with him, leads him on, continues to go into the woods with him for some skinny dipping, then gives in. Maybe the next day she regrets her drunken actions, and doesn’t want to be associated with this dope, and cries rape to save face with her friends/family.

Poor guy, he was led on by her whory flirting. FALSE RAPE ACCUSATION!

Terrible ruling. However, what was this woman thinking? There is a big difference between blame and using responsibility- and while I’m not suggesting she is at fault (blame), I have to seriously question her sense of personal responsibility for getting drunk and driving into the woods with strangers. Unfortunately, she learned the hard way that a man’s hormones aren’t something to fuck with.

Men can’t control themselves you know? That’s why the best method to avoid rape is for women to wear burkas and stay next to a male eunuch at all times. What was that woman thinking? Everyone knows that single women are consenting to sex. I tried to educate this particular rape apologist but I just couldn’t take more than 2 replies.

I’m starting to think there is an automated response for some women in a rape situation, and it doesn’t involve a lot of struggling. After all, if the woman would be fighting tooth and nail and screaming bloody murder, most guys would actually stop.[…]

But in most of the world this is not the case anymore. So I ask you, an obvious Feminist, shouldn’t we educate women to do more in this kinds of situations? To yell, at least, if not fight?

Because if women don’t struggle, it’s an implicit consent. Nevermind that some might be too terrified, stressed or shocked or just shamed to react violently. No, we, as males should educate all those foolish women on the best way to prevent rape.

Unfortunately I also did the mistake of trying to argue with this fool, but something tells me I didn’t get through:

I’d rather prevent rape by any practical means, whether it fits a feminist agenda or not. Plus, if a woman would tell women to fight and scream in a rape attempt, would you still find it offensive?

Moving on to /r/2x, perhaps there will be less disgusting shit there:

I don’t know about this case since I wasn’t there, but guys are dumb and sometimes don’t catch signals that are sent. I have also known girls who cried rape when it really wasn’t.

You can’t honestly expect guys to control themselves ((Hey, isn’t it a common trope to call males as “logical” and females as “emotional”? I wonder what happened to this concept here. Hmmm….)) , plus don’t forget how common false rape accusations are!

There are other shitty sentiments expressed in there but they’re usually spread out within Walls of Text so I wouldn’t do them justice.

In /r/canada:

The judge here doesn’t seem to be saying “She was dressed slutty, so she was asking for it” but rather that given the circumstances (they had been partying, the guys were invited to go skinny dipping, he had kissed her and she reciprocated etc.) the man may have reasonably thought he had consent.

If she said no, resisted physically, was passed out etc., then by all means, send the guy to jail. But isn’t it possible that at the time things were a little more ambiguous?

Because what the man thinks is enough of course. Any time you reasonably think that the woman might have implicitly consented, go for it! If she doesn’t resist physically, you know she wants it.

I had a girlfriend break up with me, come back to my apartment to have sex with me and then proceeded to tell me that she would call the police and claim rape.

To this day, I didn’t understand why.

Crazy-ass bitch.

Wait wat?

And the best piece of blatant misogyny

I see nothing wrong with this. Let it be a lesson to the girl… The next time you dress like a slut, get drunk with a stranger, and then suggest that you go off alone, into the woods to go skinny dipping, odds are the guy is going to assume he is getting laid.

Fortunately the poster was downvoted to -10, but still. Still…

And finally, my favourite, the comment on the /r/mensrights repost:

Heavy make-up . . . no bra . . . high heels and tube tops??!! WTF? Did he pick up some drag queens?

What is this, I don’t even.

She kissed him back, she went in the woods with him, it sounds like she skinny dipped with him, it sounds like she accepted his advances and the judge wasn’t convinced that she said no.

In fact, it sounds like she never said no. It just sounds like he misunderstood her body language and was non-threatening. It sounds more like regret than anything.

This comment is of course not surprising coming from the Goddamn Batman of the MRAs, but it is archetypical of the lot.

Um, they wandered into the woods? Who the hell follows a stranger into the woods?!

Not sure if the alleged victim was actually raped, but she was pretty clearly an idiot.

And idiots clearly deserve to be raped…

The point is “Innocent until proven guilty.” What differentiates this particular allegation from another case, where the man was honest-to-god innocent, but due to extenuating circumstances the woman falsely accused him?

You can bet your ass that in a thread about women being raped, any present MRA will bring up the awful epidemic of False Rape Accusations. Like fucking clockwork!

This is yet another shining example of how the Men’s Rights movement attracts the worst kind of males (much like the White Rights movements attracts the worst kind of White skinned people).

That’s all folks. Your weekly dose of misanthropy has been delivered. Enjoy!

This is what rape culture and male privilege looks like

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Should rape victims deserve to be accused of lying? Should males be praised for not dumping their girlfriends after they were raped? You tell me.

A woman made an IAmA/AMA ((For those not in the know yet, IAmA/AMA stands for “I Am A [insert trait, description, experience here], Ask Me Anything)) about her experience with being raped, keeping the child and her current boyfriend staying with her and marrying her eventually. The story of how it happened was quite interesting to read since for a change it does not come from a “Western Nation” but rather from a “Developing Country” which has still quite backward social norms. And one of those that immediately jumped out at me was the crass rape culture that exists.

The 5th day, I finally called the police. I live in an asian country. You have to understand that the culture is different here and that when a woman accuses a man, the police always assume that the woman was lying. Except in my case, I wasn’t. They came, I told them what happened and the police was less than helpful.

This whole part of the story is in fact quite interesting in a horrifying sort of way in giving us a glimpse into the post-rape mindframe of a rape victim. How she was feeling so guilty and unsure that it took her 5 days just to report it and by then, much of the evidence is gone and the rapist has enough time to secure an alibi. And then, the police will immediately assume you’re lying. This isn’t just “too much” for the victim of a type of assault that completely destroys you emotionally, It is overwhelming. Is it any wonder why so many rapes go unreported? If it takes a week, or even a month to get emotionally stable enough to even speak about the event, who wants the first reaction to it to be an accusation of lying and victim blaming?

As a privileged person (male and have not been raped), I can’t even begin to feel what it must be like but even the thought of having to deal with such a traumatizing event and then have the whole world distrust me because of it, downright horrifies me.

This is what a rape culture looks like and the immediate distrust of rape survivors coupled with victim blaming is why rape is still so widespread. And this particular point, the fostering of distrust of the experiences of victims of rape is why I especially despise those who align themselves with the “Men’s Rights” movement which continuously agitates on the platform that false rape accusations are frequent and that being  falsely accused is just as bad as being the victim of rape (Yes, this was an actual position someone stood by).

The Men’s Rights crowd will of course claim that they only want the “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine be used, but in practice this boils down to treating anything the victim claims as lies until conclusive evidence is presented in court. When someone points out that treating rape survivors as liars at worst or dishonest at best is not exactly the best way to foster an attitude where rape victims can come forward, they strawman your argument as you are pushing for a “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine. A ridiculous strawman setup just to shut down any discussion by enraging their opponent and then derailing due to that.

That’s the first point, the second point I wanted to talk about can be seen by looking at the comments of the reddit post. Go look at them and tell me if you can see it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. Did you see anything troubling?

Well, let me put it out clearly: Of the 15 best comments in the post ((“best comments” being the default sorting algorithm that reddit uses)), 10 are praising the male. Of the best 3 comments, all 3 are about praising the husband. To put this into context:

In a post about the personal story of a rape victim who ended up getting pregnant because of it and her husband decided to stay with her, 2/3rds of the responses are all about praising the male.

Does it seem just a bit odd to you that in a story about the rape of a woman who opens her heart and allows for some Q&A, a male who is not even there would be getting praises in large amounts, just for being a decent human being?

This is what male privilege looks like. The fact that so little is required of you due to your gender, that even basic human decency is grounds enough for gushing adulation. It’s the sheer mentality of “I could act like a dick if I wanted to, but if I don’t, then goddamnit you’d better recognise it and give me the appropriate praise“. And this permeates everything. Woman doing the housework all week? No big deal. Man cleaning the toilet over the weekend without being asked to explicitly? OMGWTFBBQ Best. Husband. Ev4r!

In this case it just really really irked me the wrong way. Here we have a woman who had one of the most traumatic experiences a human can go through and ended up in a life changing situation (being pregnant). She nevertheless had the courage to report it, even though she knew she would be treated with distrust by those who were tasked with “protecting her”. She went through hell and came out alive and the boyfriend deserves all the praise for not dumping her on top of it?! I’m sorry, I just can’t wrap my head around this mentality. The sheer fucking absurdity of it…

It could be in part due to how much the woman herself is promoting her husband as deserving the lion’s share of the praise for sticking with her during these bad time, but for fuck’s sake people, this is the time to point out that most of the credit belongs to her. For being courageous enough to report it. For managing to overcome crippling psychological damage enough. For not taking her own life! She is the strong , wonderful person in the story here and she doesn’t seem to know it, given on how she attributes her whole recovery on her husband. You shouldn’t be reinforcing this. You should be pointing out that she is putting herself down far too much.

Argh!

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