In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure. While cultural conservatives would disagree, this attitude gives men license to patrol — in some cases with violence — women's hopes for controlling their lives and bodies.Fighting ideology with ideology.
January 6, 2013
"A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture."
Asserts E.J. Graff in The American Prospect.
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NAH. Its more like fighting idiocy with idiocy.
I'm not quite sure how we got from an atrocity committed in India to a call for the enactment of a federal statute.
But I'm proud of myself that I was able to figure out that the author is a married lesbian.
That's important to know.
Any opportunity for a progressive feminist to blame what happened in India on all Republicans, must be taken.
Here's the key point: It is not acceptable that more than 50 percent of the world’s population live in fear of violence solely because they are female.
I'm quite certain that the other 50 percent of the world's population, namely males, also live in fear of violence because they are male. Particularly in places like India, where so many men are dirt poor, completely uneducated and, often, living in the streets.
Appealing to chivalry for women may be the practical way in which we can attempt to reduce this violence. We are not inclined to feel much sympathy for men.
But, the basic dishonesty and manipulation of the author's language still annoys and repels me.
Ah, in the leftist world order, black is white, good is evil, and up is down.
The end of our society is coming soon, kiddos...thank a leftist.
Is this rape rape culture or just rape culture.
A culture that reduces the average number of sex partners is a culture with less disease, fewer unwanted pregnancies, and fewer broken families.
But never mind, it's really all about fun.
What would a lesbian know about heterosexual culture? Who is she do decide what hets like or don't like?
She should just stick to her fish tacos and butt out of a culture she doesn't understand nor belong to.
I've met people like this, usually skeezy guys looking to score. She's mad because the other girls she'd like to fuck are being told not to have sex until they are married, thus cutting her out of the deal entirely.
She wants slut culture, because it gives her more opportunities for seduction of single women, just like the PUAs.
That she is a typical female supremacist is just par for the course. Men are far more likely to be victims of violence, but she only thinks about women.
Her humanity is broken, like most female supremacists who fancy themselves "feminists". She only thinks women are important. Sexist pig.
So I assume she supports concealed carry...
Or it is a culture that expects people to marry young.
Suppose that culture also expected men to remain virgins until marriage.
Then each partner would be able to add to their marriage, and gift to their partner something special - something never given to another, or rarely given to another.
but I suppose such a culture is unimaginable to the shrinking view of the writer.
She can barely veil her hatred of men.
"Her humanity is broken"
Um...have you read your own posts in this thread?
Much of India's tension is coming from their development from a Scratchy Blanket Culture to an Itchy Blanket Culture.
Article witten by a man-hating bulldyke.
So what else is new?
Being of the left, of course her misandrony is enshrined as a "powerful voice" which gets her journalist gigs at various progressive media organs.And despite her weak academic record - a teaching post at a leading progressive jewish university and a nice plump load of grants for her "research: on why men are so evil....
One of the things that drives me crazy is how feminists condemn the purity culture. What they forget is that women are the root cause of that, and, in particular, their cheating on their spouses and bearing other men's children as their husbands'. Turns out that women cheat on their husbands almost as much as men cheat on their wives, and that has some evolutionary advantages. That gives the women that do it a beta husband to support her and her children, and alpha genes for those children. But, that has a huge cost to the beta husbands, who end up squandering their valuable resources raising someone else's children, when they should have been spending those resources on their own children. And I would suggest that it is this theft of critical resources by women cheating on their official mates that is the real source of the purity culture.
Heard yesterday that there would likely be genetic testing to see who was the father of one of the Kardashian's pending offspring. And, we went through this with Anna Nicole's kid. This is one of the solutions to the paternity problem. The other is less benign - turning young women, at least in much of the developed world, into Julias - wards of the state, where the taxpayers, instead of husbands, have to support women and their children.
Hilariously stupid.
When assertions are made in terms of absolutes (for example, 'men' - not just 'some men' but the all-encompassing 'men') it's clear that the writer is taking a ludicrous position with the intention to shock and provoke.
Horse-laughter ensues.
Why would rape be getting more prevalent (assuming that it is, and hasn't been redefined to appear such)?
One reason could be that more and more males are being deprived of sex for longer and longer periods of times. The basic problem is that when women are free to choose their sexual partners, and are unconstrained by the problem of raising any resulting children, they tend to mate with alpha males over betas, or at least those capable of appearing to them as alphas (and, hence, the pick up culture in this country - betas learning to pass themselves as alphas in order to get increased numbers of sexual partners).
So, we have some males having a lot of sexual partners, and some having none, with the latter category continuing to increase as the age of marriage rises and more women become Julias. In cultures like India's, many of these males may face never having a female mate, and that puts evolutionary pressure on them towards rape.
I think that the problem manifests itself somewhat differently in this country, since it is more a question of delay, at least so far (in other words, outside the lower classes here, the Julia culture hasn't had enough time yet to affect male behavior), and, we have the slacker generation as a result. A lot of males who would have settled down and gotten married in an earlier generation, are essentially playing well into their 30s, as their sexual partnering remains limited, and that has implications in national productivity.
Why would rape be getting more prevalent (assuming that it is, and hasn't been redefined to appear such)?
I don't know whether rape has become more "prevalent."
But, if you're looking for the cause of roving gangs of predatory men in India, you might look to the huge numbers of "excess" men created by selective abortion of female fetuses.
This is horseshit. This preposterous thesis implies that rape was rampant during the long period in this country where women were reasonably chaste. You might turn it around and posit that the absolute decline in values, the complete loss of judgement, the discarding of moral absolutes has led certain groups of poorly educated and socialized men to turn to rape to fulfill their sexual desires which are fueled every moment of the day by popular "culture."
Is anyone suggesting that the US culture circa 2012 is one in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage?
If so, what's their evidence?
Is anyone suggesting that the US culture circa 2012 is one in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage?
If so, what's their evidence?
Question: was date rape (college campuses come to mind) more or less prevalent before men felt assured that and/or entitled to women having sex with them more or less immediately?
Finally, at least in the developed world, ease of divorce, esp. by women, who typically get the advantages of marriage, without the costs, plays a part in the purity culture.
Divorce has always been problematic in society, which is one reason that it was somewhat condemned. We have seen first hand, with the deterioration of the Black family, esp. since LBJ's War on Poverty, the effects of fatherless families on society and the children of such families.
One of the interesting things about my kids' fairly expensive private school was that almost none of the kids there grew up in broken families. Maybe 5%-10% of the kids lived in families where their mother had been divorced - until sometime late in high school, where there was a run on divorces (presumably because the last kid was almost out of the house into college).
Point here is that intact marriages, to a single spouse (and not serial monogamy) is one of the things that is highly correlated with economic success of both the parents, and ultimately the children. Only at the very top financially does this break down, mostly, I would suggest, at a wealth level where supporting multiple families is not a financial drain.
We are, to some extent, seeing a resurgence of the purity culture, at least in parts of the middle class, and I think that it is only partially related to religion. Females who are less likely to be promiscuous are also less likely to dump a marriage, and males instinctively know this. The result is that chastity has always been attractive, and is again become more so, as more and more males realize the one sided nature of most divorces. Maybe not complete purity and chastity until marriage, since that has been pushed into the mid 20s for the upper middle class, but at least much less sexual activity on the part of the women most likely to marry these males.
Is anyone suggesting that the US culture circa 2012 is one in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage?
No - but parts of the unmarried portions of our society, and esp. females, appear to becoming less sexually active. I don't think that many expect them to remain virgins through their first decade or decade and a half of sexual maturity, but the number of young women who seem to be minimizing the number of their sexual partners and eschewing sexual hookups seems to be increasing at a decent rate.
This is again part of the culture war that we saw so vividly in the last election. We saw all those Julias, who want sexual freedom, and society in general to pay the price for it, either in the form of government handouts or child support from some guy. And those who pay for it.
Well, that certainly explains the high prevalence of rape in the Amish and Orthodox Jewish communities as compared to the spring break crowd.
I refuse to embrace the progressive jews and liberals "Julia narrative" as a debate starting point where concervatives accept the narrative and divide women as Democrats want, into Julias and non-Julias.
Similar to how the same forces invented the artificial Hispanic, NA, and Pacific Islander "races" now enshrined in affirmative action and accepted by nearly all as valid "markers" in race and gender and class preference initiatives.
Never questioning how the two jewish lawyers LBJ appointed to develop EEO guidelines determined that NA stopped at the Mexican Border and NAs south of that joined their white and black counterparts as "hispanic race". Or why if a white person born South of the US and who speaks Spanish is an instant hispanic - why a Filipino born in the Philippines or born in Hawaii or a white born in Hawaii or NZ isn't a "Pacific Islander".
Don't want that groundless "official designation" repeated, because we were all foisted with AA and it's regulations without a single vote on it by Ruling Elites in government, academia, and by lawyers wearing robes.
Don't want to have forms to fill out on how many Julias and not-Julias were hired
I would say this woman should be gang raped by a bunch of "Obama voters", but I doubt even those "vibrant" sub-humans would want to pork her ugly old ass.
You might turn it around and posit that the absolute decline in values, the complete loss of judgement, the discarding of moral absolutes has led certain groups of poorly educated and socialized men to turn to rape to fulfill their sexual desires which are fueled every moment of the day by popular "culture."
Which is the chicken and which is the egg? You are positing that this popular culture is the source of the problem, and not a symptom of it.
I would suggest symptom, since the worst parts of it come from the parts of society most affected by societal breakdown of the nuclear family. I am not talking the Kardashians, but rather the Black ghetto culture where women are called "hos" (for "whores") and men routinely brag about how many women bear their children, without them having to support said offspring.
That is not to say that there isn't some feedback here, but we are rapidly devolving into two Americas - one of middle class nuclear families and the one where the norm is for women to raise their children out of wedlock.
"We saw all those Julias, who want sexual freedom, and society in general to pay the price for it, either in the form of government handouts or child support from some guy. "
I think the formula to Democrats winning every subsequent election is to have Republicans talking about rape (or even just about Julia) every day. Throw in some discussion of ethnic demography if you're going for landslide territory. Go Althouse go!!!!
If lesbians had penises they would never use them for rape, not one, never. They would only use their penises for good, or maybe not even at all. Except for urinating, which will be done sitting down to avoid any appearance of oppression, thank you.
When they spoke with their non-penis-equipped lesbian friends they would tell how it doesn't have to define their existence, how sometimes they forget its even there at all, its still OK to shower together.
Furthermore they would refuse to wear underwear: underwear unduly creates constriction that sublimates rage, a rage better ventilated through simple honesty of expression and creative jewelry-making.
Sure, they have to fight off the tendency to segregate themselves socially with only other penis-bearing lesbians, but once they realize that this is an artificial construct of patriarchy they can
open up to outsiders such as non-penis-bearing lesbians, no problem. I am just like you, but with a penis: we are equal. My penis does not make me special.
Of course, some of the non-penis-bearing lesbians now seem to have unresolved issues with the penis-bearing lesbians. How can one truly be an oppressed lesbian when they now have the tool of oppression between their legs?
Look, the penis-bearing lesbians say: you were not castrated by God, he just chose to not give you a penis. Don't make such a big deal about it, we can still go bowling.
It's sad when even penis-bearing lesbians and non-penis-bearing lesbians can't find common ground anymore...
I think the formula to Democrats winning every subsequent election is to have Republicans talking about rape (or even just about Julia) every day. Throw in some discussion of ethnic demography if you're going for landslide territory. Go Althouse go!!!!
You may be right... But,
How do you propose to manage the slide into bankruptcy and economic suicide this will engender?
Do you really have so much enthusiasm for i t?
It is actually the simplest human societies where rape is likely to be common and go unpunished, and these societies are also the most lax about sex generally. For example, the Mehinaku Indians of Brazil would carry on numerous sexual relationships at once, something no one had much concern about. Men would also pay women for sex (using fish), threaten women with sorcery in order to get them to comply, or rape them (called "dragging off"). And as long as men raped unmarried women, they were not punished. Of course, there may be different kinds of "rape cultures," and some of these may emphasize female chastity, but it's absurd for people to make these confident declarations about rape cultures and their causes without any kind of knowledge of the array of human cultures.
It is actually the simplest human societies where rape is likely to be common and go unpunished, and these societies are also the most lax about sex generally. For example, the Mehinaku Indians of Brazil would carry on numerous sexual relationships at once, something no one had much concern about. Men would also pay women for sex (using fish), threaten women with sorcery in order to get them to comply, or rape them (called "dragging off"). And as long as men raped unmarried women, they were not punished. Of course, there may be different kinds of "rape cultures," and some of these may emphasize female chastity, but it's absurd for people to make these confident declarations about rape cultures and their causes without any kind of knowledge of the array of human cultures.
Ann, thank you for posting this article. It fits well with the mindset of today, even in this country of evolved rule of law and general health and well being. Why? just a few days ago, a commenter here thought he was 'shaming' certain women in Chicago because they wore too short a skirt on New Year's eve and his complaint among others, they were too fat to wear that. When I protested his comment, he ended the thread by saying 'I have to stop slut shaming'. Look at the words he is using. In places like Afghanistan and India and the ME, this same mentality makes men shame the 'sluts' in a dangerous way. How dare she lead her life in freedom and be in control of it? That is the essence of this article. Women should be afforded safety and security everywhere and any time of day, period.
"How do you propose to manage the slide into bankruptcy and economic suicide this will engender?
Do you really have so much enthusiasm for it?"
No enthusiasm for it, in fact. Which is why I made the statement I did.
Yeah, it is written by a lefty and he shoots himself in the foot by bashing 'cultural conservatives'. However his larger point is that the onus of protecting women falls largely on the women themselves and that is twice the penalty and punishment for having been born a female in some of these countries -- it gives men control over women and also escape recrimination and punishment. The mentality becomes, she was asking for it, she deserved it, she is a 'slut' and so on. In the end it limits women from how they can live their life, their mobility, their security, their life, period. You guys may just brush it off as feminist ideology, but having been in those parts of the world, it is a tough life. Life here on this side the Atlantic is not all that rosy either for women.
Back when women were expected to stay pure until marriage, we executed rapists - all of them.
Graff, as always with people of her ideological persuasion, trivializes tragedy and ugly cultural realities by the desperate need to convince herself and everybody else that "really, men in the West are just as bad! No, no, worse!". (And best not to cogitate upon who might be doing a disproportionate share of all that raping in the West, anyway. It's the frat boys, right?)
There's a great deal of interest to be said about how notions of purity and ownership can deform the lives of women. But nobody who seriously believes that there is only a slight difference in degree between how these things play out in Denver and Delhi, has anything to contribute to the discussion.
pm317: You guys may just brush it off as feminist ideology, but having been in those parts of the world, it is a tough life. Life here on this side the Atlantic is not all that rosy either for women.
As I was saying...
Maybe the part that's worth thinking about wouldn't get brushed off as "feminist ideology" if you stopped claiming (vide supra) that telling a woman her skirt is too short is just a slippery slope to being cool with gang-raping unaccompanied women.
Many women want it both ways, especially the feminist supremacists.
They want the complete freedom from "patriarchy" to use their vaginas as a rec park and they want all the old societal deference shown to female sensibilities under the Old Dead White Male notions of chivalry.
They want freeedom when they demand it (it's my body)and they want to be kept (I want free birth control or money from others if I decide to keep the baby)when they demand it.
They certainly aren't for true equality. Otherwise they'd be demanding and end to male-only Military draft laws and one sided family law that views men as sperm banks with an ATM card.
If people were taught to value each other there would be no rape culture.
When we allow some people to exploit others without repercussions we get all kinds of bad things.
@Shouting Thomas: Perhaps Kchiker embraces Cloward-Piven strategy. It's a horrific endgame but would explain many of the lefties here too like harrogate, ritmo, somefeller...
OT but I just did a keyword search on the little box (top left) on Althouse for Cloward or Piven. Though they have been mentioned in the past by commenters, apparently Althouse herself has never written the words in a post (or my search is in error). Odd that because she has mentioned other discredited theories associated with Obama for example Critical Race Theory.
"Gun Control: The belief that a woman lying raped in an alley, strangled with her own pantyhose, is morally superior to that same woman explaining to the police how that dead man got those bullet holes in him."
And that is all I'll say here about the empowerment of women.
How many of you know of Ohio gang rape that happened recently? Is there a difference between that and Delhi incident? Just different men but the attitude is the same.
"Is there a difference between that and Delhi incident?"
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this comparison, but other than the fact that a rape occurred, I don't think there are any similarities at all (not the least of which is the murder aspect).
Girls aren't prized in India, females aborted, males go w/o sex for longer periods.
Fewer women, more war.
The modern first world has extended adolescence unnaturally. We are living so out of tune with our nature. We should all get married at the onset of puberty.
Re post title, it's also a culture of men with small penises...who don't want women to have comparative experiences.
I've always said, who lost the Sexual Revolution?
Men with small penises.
pm317 said...
How many of you know of Ohio gang rape that happened recently? Is there a difference between that and Delhi incident? Just different men but the attitude is the same.
That is stupid, unless you ape the feminist moron chant "Rape is Rape".
One involved an organized conspiracy of 6 thugs, animal savagery with iron rods, ripping out intestines, beating until the animals thought the woman was dead.
The other is two drunk 16-year olds that fucked a drunk 16-year old at a party. Who may or may not have been willing. Or was willing, but passed out during her tryst and they "did not stop!"
Quite a difference unless you are a progressive Jew or a leftist hellbent on establishing moral equivalency.
After I googled cloward-piven I laughed.
Deficit discussion Is for another thread, though.
But.... one of my former students was complaining about the 'rape culture' in America, and there's really no expectation of virginity anymore... virginity is now counter-cultural and weird....
(Which is part of the reason, I think, for the Boomer/Youth division in the Catholic Church... they think they're being all 'counter-cultural' and don't realize that they've BECOME the dominant culture that the youth(who increasingly embrace tradition) rebel against......)
The woman who wrote this article is supremely confused.
She quotes Sen. Henry
rape ..."was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”
And then extrapolates from 'chaste' to "In other words, only virgins can be raped".
Words mean things and chaste does not always mean virgin. When yo don't know the meaning of words and you make wild leaps of logic, you are not worth the pixels on the screen or my time to continue to read.
It is also like one of those children's puzzle books. "One of these things is not like the other" A brutal gang rape on a train in a cesspit of a country is not the same thing as valuing chasteness as a lifestyle or the gift of virginity (man AND woman) as a part of the solemn ceremony of marriage.
You know...high mileage men and women just have such innocent, tender, love-ready hearts that bode well for a happy marriage and family life.
/sarc
Bruce Hayden: One of the things that drives me crazy is how feminists condemn the purity culture. What they forget is that women are the root cause of that, and, in particular, their cheating on their spouses and bearing other men's children as their husbands'.
Well, yeah, Bruce. Anybody who isn't a propagandized nitwit knows why there is a sexual double-standard and a universal concern with female "purity" - verifying paternity. (Yes, yes, I know we're talking about someone who thinks Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte are brilliant intellects. I mean, non-idiots.) That doesn't negate the fact that this natural and universal concern manifests in some really ugly ways in some cultures and some places, it can make life hell for women, and we ought to be able to talk about the thing itself without everybody saddling up their favorite hobby horse.
Yeah, in an ultimate evolutionary explanatory sense it's all about women cuckolding their mates. Well, all right then. No need to tarry over that rape-evisceration in New Delhi or the complaints from Indian women about how harrassed they are going about their daily business. (Hey, if they'd all stop being such cuckolding whores the put-upon men could leave them in peace!)
Don't we have more important issues to talk about, like those roving hordes of white male rape-gangs American women have to flee from every time we step out of the house? Or the 99.9999% of husbands who are unknowingly raising cuckoo's eggs? Or the PTSD suffered by that poor slut-shamed woman who was politely asked not to flash so much cleavage at work? Or the millions of betas who aren't getting any because of those 10 alphas monopolizing all the action in the world? And...what the hell. Heigh ho!
The article reads like the author has just taken two things she does not like (traditional sexual mores and rape) and drawn a straight line between them.
But how would we test the assertion? We could track rape rates before and after the sexual revolution, and see how the rape-rate for different perpetrator groups is affected. If her thesis is correct, you would expect that perpetrator rates from traditional subcultures would jump more than among the population as a whole.
For examples of the former, Hasidic Jews and Mormons, have very traditional sexual mores (though the Hasidim are somewhat more extreme than Mormons), and existed both before and after the sexual revolution of the 1960's (I would exclude evangelicals, because my perception is that evangelicals' attitudes became consciously oppositional to that 60's ethos, though of course I did not live through it so that may have been a much later development).
Anyhow, you'd want to control somewhat for opportunity, etc., so you'd be best off limiting to a single region or city. NYC is the obvious choice (not sure how many Mormons there are, but there's certainly Hasidim). So the test would be, say, tracking rapes by perpetrator group every year from 1955 through 1970, and seeing how the ratio of rapes to perpetrator groups (controlling for age) changed for each of the groups vs. the population as a whole.
The data set is probably too small to draw any conclusions, but I suspect that her thesis would not be supported by the data. There are probably cultural mores that do affect the incidence of rape, but I doubt so-called "purity culture" is one of them.
That is not to say that there isn't some feedback here, but we are rapidly devolving into two Americas - one of middle class nuclear families and the one where the norm is for women to raise their children out of wedlock.
Don't look now, we're already there.
Hint: Someone compare the voting patterns of intact two parent families and single parent families. The Julia video wasn't an accident.
I think the formula to Democrats winning every subsequent election is to have Republicans talking about rape (or even just about Julia) every day.
Repeal the 19th Amendment.
Much of rape is about the male controlling, but it is typically about controlling to have sex, so it is misleading to say that rape is about control rather than sex, as though that were an either-or situation. Women who have been raped or, more especially, forcibly sodomized tend to feel humiliated. Because sodomy has addictive and terror-causing properties (imoo due to chemicals in semen, especially prostaglandins), it behooves those who have been sodomized to not accept as natural whatever feelings are felt as a result of having been sodomized. Feeling humiliation probably causes the victim to more want to forget whatever feelings were felt during the abuse, beyond what is necessary for the sake of justice, which is useful. (I have noticed that people who have doubts about the purity of themselves tend to mumble shallowly about what happened, by way presumably of encouraging justice without reliving the emotions, an ideal approach, in my opinion.) Humiliation is a defense emotion--it is the last thing a rapist would want a victim to feel about the rape act itself. What rapists do tend to do is to try to make the victim feel that she deserved what she got as evinced by her tendency to feel the screwed up emotions caused by his addictive semen chemicals. The violent, torturing rapist, in particular, will need some sort of morally plausible justification for his torturing and harming. It's a small step from saying that a girl naturally wants rape to saying that she deserves torture because she is so bad as to have naturally wanted it.
The homicidal rapist, who goes beyond torture to murdering his victim, is just a fool stupid enough to believe as true the hype the torturing rapist uses both to make himself more scary and to justify his behavior by pretending the victim be an evil bitch or whatever.
There are indeed nasty men who like to humiliate girls without having had sexual purposes for the latter. Those typically be men who are trying to impress older women who have become addicted to nastiness as a result of something horrible inflicted upon them when young. These nasty men tend to be more successful than males who corrupt girls (males who forcibly sodomize girls are basically the most worthless males there are), so it is an effective approach of such men to appeal to rational selfish reason in order to separate the fallen woman from her past (but not nastiness). Part of this approach is to deride young female sexuality at every opportunity, even in perfectly clean uncorrupted instances (nay, especially in perfectly clean uncorrupted instances).
The nasty male who goes after fallen older women will tend to minimize the controlling aspects of his nastiness. Girls, not having had much opportunity to observe their own sexual nature, are easier for rapists to sexually confuse, which makes them easier for rapists to control. But it is much more than that. To the extent girls have sexual desires for a male, they have a much greater sexual need (compared with women) for the male having loving emotions. Accordingly, if a girl does want sex, she is easier (compared with a woman wanting sex) for a male to control by way of regulating the loving emotion. Real men attracting merely because they are worthy want females to want them from themselves, because it is much more impressive to be loved by girls being themselves--using their own evaluation feelings--than by one of those gaggle of girls imitating each other so much it's like a reverse feedback situation where any random evaluation sound or sign in any girl is going to be amplified into some sort of ear-piercing monstrosity, because no one in the group actually is thinking for themselves appreciably. It can often be pretty cool and appropriate for males to try to force girls to be themselves (using clean methods).
Anyway, the nasty male victimizing a fallen woman will tend to convince his victim her past bad choices were due to her having been young and easily controlled rather than from having had nastiness inflicted upon her. He can't argue that the nastiness be bad, because that could cause difficulty in his using nastiness to addict her into finding him attractive. And since he is likely to be more successful than the (probably extremely worthless) male who corrupted her, he may well plausibly convince her that indeed her past feelings were merely a result of girls being incredibly stupid and weak, and thus easily controllable. The feminist author accordingly is extremely wrong--the men who wrongly humiliate girls without having had sexual purposes for such girls are in fact the men who are most against controlling girls (and in public they are against controlling women, but using seduction and nastiness they in fact do try to control women).
Female sexuality also tends to be derided in cultures where moneyed males have too much power. Especially is this the case in polygamous countries, where money can be used to buy extra wives. Naturally if a selfish male can attract females especially with money he will more tend to express support for a culture where male reproductive success is determined more by how many females the male can afford to buy in marriage and less by what females find sexually attractive.
Woops, meant to say "positive feedback" rather than "reverse feedback".
Nobody has a license to patrol women's hopes, because there is no such thing as women's hopes.
Individual women have hopes, women as a group do not.
Some women hope to abuse you, some women hope to be abused by you. Don't mix these separate souls together with regards to what you assume are their hopes solely because they have a vagina. Now, if you want to group them together because they have a vagina, do so, but do not extrapolate your groupings to include false findings of the group's hopes.
Extremely powerful people close to Obama seemingly believe nearly all white people are going toHell by virtue of their race. I hope my hopes aren't racist hopes like their filthy, evil racist hopes are.
By this I intend to convey a message: don't you dare say racists and I share the same hopes, because I will not be grouped in with racist persons even if, perhaps especially if, they are some of the most influential people ever to walk the Earth, like Obama and his friends/religious influencers.
Graff isn't saying anything new regarding rape. Everyone knows rape is an act of control, rage, anger, control rage and anger. Not new.
She dips into the standard lefty boiler plate. Government must pay for a program.... evil Republicans are blocking it... Akin Murdoch Murdoch Akin blah blah blah.
Then she manages to equate the culture in India with ours when in fact there is a vast cultural difference.
I doubt women in India would dress like Beyoncé and waltz down 5th Avenue.
I would expect this commitment to be mutually respected. The man and woman should perceive their relationship as an investment in each other and their children.
As for the male and female body, they are indeed primarily intended for reproduction. Fortunately, this obligation is fulfilled in the process of living a comprehensive life, before, during, and after contributing to evolutionary fitness. To ignore the comprehensive nature of our existence is to reveal an extremist or fanatical perspective of reality, both objective and ideal. It suggests the author possesses an ulterior motive to present a distorted perception of the real world.
It is dissociation of risk which causes corruption. It is dreams of instant (or immediate) gratification which motivates its progress.
Cedarford said...
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yeah, in your eyes, the Delhi guys were some third world neaderthals and the Ohio guys were well fed football players from the first world. I wonder what those Ohioan 16 year olds grow up to be. In your eyes, the 16 year olds were doing what you expect them to do, get drunk and rape another 16 year old.
Isn't this piece conflating regular rape (somebody forcing himself on somebody else to get off) and assault targeting the crotch area? I know that sounds strange, but isn't it different? One guy rapes because he wants to have sex with the woman he's raping. Another guy, as in the article, purposely murders a woman by attacking her vagina. I don't think those acts are the same.
There's even a third category: sexual bullying. The football players written about there obviously weren't trying to get off or kill the girl, but certainly they were bullying and degrading her. There are many ways to do that. Using sex is one.
The writer wants to make all of these acts the same type of act because, according to her, they are the same type from the perspective of the victim. But I don't think that's true at all.
Maybe it's easier to understand if you remove sex from the equation and look at it another way.
A man punches another man because he wants to fight.
A man punches another man in an attempt to beat him to death.
A man punches another man in order to make him look weak and humiliate him in front of a crowd.
Isn't there quite a difference between each of those acts from the perspective of the victim?
This is just a lie, right? Or, equally likely, fluffbrain nonsense from someone who didn't go to law school and didn't learn to think critically. I don't think women in Harlem are expected to remain virgins, but it's hardly a low rape culture.
I'm surprised Prof. Althouse links to such drivel. Some days I feel like her critical faculties are deserting her.
I wonder if rape culture is anything like gun culture. In America's gun culture, armed felons are, in a way, the true victims of our gun rights. If there were no guns in America, they would not be armed felons and would instead work out their true destiny of becoming organic farmers. In like way, it is not the rapists who are truly to blame, but rather the rape culture......Interesting diversity note: the Steubenville rapists were a racially mixed group. American has really taken huge strides in integration. I thought racially mixed gangs of criminals only happened in Hollywood movies.
One online feminist actually claimed it was "rape culture" that the show Lost didn't have rapes of any of the women, even though rape would have been very possible many times on the show.
Yes, seriously.
hey, do a quick comparison of rape rates in India vs the USA. We have WAY MORE.
A rape culture lies at the extreme end of the spectrum opposite from that which fosters peer friendships between men and women. But peer-friendships-across-the-sexes cultures are the historical exception, and most of them (comprising Western Civ) are routinely demonized by the gender feminists. What (if any) cultures do gender feminists hold up as being enlightened with regard to male-female relations?
'AprilApple' said, "I doubt women in India would dress like Beyoncé and waltz down 5th Avenue."
Perhaps not, but when I was in Bangalore I saw lots of women walking by themselves, out and about in public places and showing no apparent fear.
I noticed this because I use it as a proxy for "This is a reasonably safe neighborhood." I don't really know how culture-bound this is, but when I see pedestrians only in large groups, or in groups with men all on the outside of the group, I figure I might be in a place that might be dangerous for those walking by themselves.
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In any case, I always have trouble with those who assert that enlightened, modern people should be/ must be beyond sexual jealousy. Perhaps there are some who can truly be comfortable with 'open' sexual relationships, but all too often these "enlightened" people, those who are just so sure they left all that nastiness behind, are in for an unpleasant surprise when their reptilian brains suddenly assert themselves and they find themselves experiencing a wholly unexpected rage when sharing "their" sexual partner.
Just as the New Soviet Man was a failure so, too, the project to build a newage enlightened male who has no sexual jealousy is likely to be a failure, as both deny certain hardwired human characteristics.
Is a culture in which promiscuity is widespread and in whiich sexual relationships are fluid and mostly of short duration truly going to be one in which sexualized violence is less common than one in which most sexual relationships are durable, presumed to be exclusive, and publicly recognized?
Unless the men are also expected to remain virgins until marriage...
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