Lauredhel had a post on Hoyden About Town on how the very language we use to describe violence against women erases male responsibility. Including the phrase “violence against women”, which implies but doesn’t actually state “male violence against women”. It’s interesting, because in journalistic writing, the first rule is to use the active voice as much as possible, which is to say make the agent of action the subject of your sentence instead of making the object of action the subject, for clarity’s sake. But this rule is thrown out the window when describing crimes acted upon the bodies of women.
When it comes to reports of men abusing and oppressing women, the passive voice prevails.
Women are discriminated against
Women are paid less
Women are objectified
Women are groped
Women are sexually harrassed
Women are exploited
Women are threatened
Women are assaulted
Women are abused
Women are rapedNo big deal, right? It’s just a bit of linguistic flipping, with neutral semantic effect, surely? No. This ostensibly innocent bit of subject-camouflage has real consequences. If you can’t see it, you can’t fight it, and you can’t blame it. The perpetrators of violence are rendered invisible. The culprits are shoved beyond the frame.
Part of the problem can be chalked up to the fact that the actual agents of action are often out of the frame and hard to pin down. The amorphous “men” didn’t rape the victim, and unless we know for sure who did, its safer to invoke the passive voice. This is often true of the reporting of murdering or mugging—it’s reported as “the victim was murdered” until we can say, “X person murdered Y.” With discrimination, the problem is that it’s often systematic. “Men” don’t discriminate against women so much as the system tilts in favor of men, and to phrase it otherwise is to do ourselves the disservice of forgetting Phyllis Schafly.
That said, Lauredhel is right about the epidemic of refusing to treat the perpetrators of violence and discrimination as perpetrators and in fact blaming the victim routinely for abuse enacted towards her. Even when we have perpetrators to point to, we still frame the responsibility for violence against women as belonging to the objects of the violence.
Example #1 from Twisty: Recently in northern Iraq a bloodthirsty group of men stoned a teenage girl to death with the excuse that it was an “honor killing”. Twisty has the video up so you can see how honorable “honor killings” are—the men throw stones at the girl while she flails about, and when she finally stops moving they get all excited and start taking clothes off. It’s a clear example of how shallow the excuse of “honor” is in these situations, because the real reason to stone the girl is because they’re misogynist fuckwits who get off on killing teenage girls because they hate them. The trumped-up excuse for group violence against women changes only slightly from culture to culture—in ours, victims of gang rapes are usually blown off because they’re deviants, as in they behave like 99% of women and have desires and thoughts of their own. So basically, the crime that gets you gang-raped or murdered is being female.
Actually, the excuse doesn’t change from culture—however men who rape and kill dress it up, the essential crime is being a woman with agency. What is distressing is the way the media buys into the idea that by being female and having thoughts and desires of your own, you invite violence into your life. As Twisty notes, the Daily Mail phrases this misogynist gang violence as somehow the victim’s fault for daring to make her own choice in terms of sexual partners by headlining it, “The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy”.
I know that she knows her shit about the newspaper business, so I’m not surprised that passive voice grabbed Twisty’s eye right away, because putting the object into the subject position in headlines is a real no-no. Even if we have a situation like I described above, where a murder is discovered but we don’t know the culprit, journalists will strain to keep the active voice in headlines by titling it something like, “Police find murder victim in park”. In this case, the Daily Mail knows who did it and has published the goddamn pictures. But because this was a round of patriarchal scape-goating and random violence against women to scare the rest of us into submission, they have to vaguely approve of it, so they posit instead that she brought it on herself for the high crime of having thoughts of her own. May the rest of you learn your lesson and maybe self-lobotimize or something. Twisty suggests an alternate, more accurate headline: “Mob of men tortured fellow human to death to engorge patriarchal godbag delusions.â€?
Example #2, from our country: Lindsay found a video of a PSA released by the Ad Council that shows a series of men and teenage boys harassing and stalking a teenage girl. In the course of the day, fellow students harass her, a coach harasses her, boys at the mall harass her, the guy selling tickets at the movies harasses her, and a waiter harasses her. If we lived in a remotely sane culture, the message would be, “Look at the way that relentless harassment really bothers women, men. Quit harassing women.”
As you can imagine, that’s not the moral of the PSA.
To parallel this with the earlier example, what we have here is male violence against women being framed in a way that validates said violence and posits that women are the cause of male violence against women. Just as in the honor killing situation, the men in the mainstream narrative are good guys, or at least enforcers of the moral code that demands that women have no internal life, no public life, and do nothing for themselves but instead live to be brainless automans in service to their male keepers.
Harsh, yes, when it’s clear there’s probably some good intention lurking behind this. But think of some other PSAs out there. For instance, if you saw a PSA where a guy had some illegal drugs or an illegal gun and the cops showed up and scared the crap out of him and arrested him and took him away, you would grasp that in this scenario, the cops are framed as the good guys, the unfortunate moral enforcers who have to straighten out the person who engaged in criminal behavior. The same narrative structure is in play in these two instances of group male violence/harassment against women. The men who go apeshit are enforcing the moral code against the transgressive women, and the women in these cases have committed the crimes of having their own sexual desires and thinking they have a right to participate fully in a trendy public forum like MySpace or Facebook. You know, the crime they’ve committed is thinking they have a right to exist in the world like men do. The message sent in both cases is that they don’t have such a right and there are a group of men out there who are willing to put you back in line, by force if necessary.
The fact that the bulk of misogynist energy is expended towards hating and abusing teenage girls is probably the theme of another post.
Ever since I read the post on Hoyden around Town I have very conscientiously (and sometimes a little obnoxiously) turned around sentences where I found the subject obscured to highlight the subject and ensure that the subject gets into the debate. It has been a serious exercise in subversiveness. The hostility I’ve encountered has been far more than I expected, even from people I thought knew better. I guess I am a feminist, and not the fun kind ☺
Interesting exercise. I’m going to try to be more aware of people’s reactions when presented with the passive voice that centers the female victim vs. the active voice that invokes male responsibility. I suspect your observations will be confirmed, as well.
That PSA is seriously fucked up. Who the hell do we write to? The Ad counsel? I love how it’s completely okay for strangers to harass that girl, because hey, that’s what you get when you post some pictures of your boobs (or whatever), slut.
The passive voice/active voice analysis is really interesting. I’m going to have to think about that and make sure to consider it in my own writing.
What happened in the PSA at the end, for those of us who cannot download video easily?
The girl learns her lesson about not putting stuff up on MySpace, because she got punished by the male harassers. You can complain to the Ad Council.
You missed the PSA where there’s a woman walking with a friend at night, taking a wide path around a parked van, clenching her keys between her fingers, etc., and then going home, flopping down on her couch and eating a piece of chocolate cake. The tag line is something to the effect of “You do everything else to protect yourself, why would you overeat, you bad, bad, woman!” (I’ll see if I can track it down).
Thank you for filling me in. That is really disturbing.
I wonder if the Daily mail would consider starting a headline “British soldier killed in Iraq for…”
I’ve been doing the passive-active voice experiment for about a year now, and I can tell you it seriously pisses people off. Actually, sometimes I’m literally afraid to do it. The system is predicated on men not being accountable for their actions with women, so even small ways of holding men accountable challenge the foundations of the system. The reactions I get pretty much give the game away. If you try it, definitely be prepared to not be the fun kind of feminist.
Of course, I encourage everyone to do it.
PSA’s sometimes have to walk a line between things as they should be and things as they are. The girl WOULD be harassed - perhaps not that much, but still.
The main reason to not be too open with yourself online is the evil fuckers who would do something with the info. Sadly, that’s always going to look like “blaming the victim”, because, no matter how you try to write it, it is.
As an intellectual exercise, try to rewrite that ad. Keep the “you have to watch out for evil fuckers” moral, and make it NOT blame the victim. I don’t think it can be done. I think using a boy as the lead character would’ve been better as it would’ve stripped away side issues leaving the point of the ad standing clear.
The very first response you’ll get is But Not All Men Are Like That!! And You’re Generalizing All Men!!
Do not let my above comment be construed as disagreement with the point of the post. I just got hung up trying to rework the ad.
I can’t stop seeing this everywhere I go, now. It’s been a surprisingly major revelation for me. (The link isn’t quite right, by the way - it’s here. You’ve linked to JoAnne’s thoughtful, insightful response.)
Several days after that post, a man sexually assaulted a woman while she was breastfeeding in a parents’ room in Melbourne. One article was headlined “Breastfeeding mum in sex attack”. And one of the followup news articles decided it was appropriate to say “Sex attack mum speaks out”.
You probably didn’t want to know about the the culprit, Mohamed Chkhaidem, blamed the assault on his girlfriend having an abortion. On account of you might blow an obstreperal lobe, and all.
(i didn’t watch the ad.)
everyone’s college aged. you see a couple of them interviewing for jobs. then they go out to celebrate how well their interviews went and they take pictures. then you see one person uploading the picture of them doing a keg stand with the caption “fuck monday mornings” or something. the other one discards a picture of a beer bong and crops out the alcohol in an otherwise good group photo and captions it “quiet night during the week”. then you show the people who interviewed say something like “did you run a search on those candidates? what did you find?” and then you show the person who didn’t upload the alcohol pictures going to work.
it would probably be a lot harder to do something like that with high school kids.
I was in fact thinking that using the active voice in talking about men’s violence against women would get you labeled as a “feminazi.” It seems slightly aggressive, and god knows how people treat aggressive women.
Lindsay suggested an ad where someone harasses the girl, and she reports it to the principal. I would go one further and show a girl telling guys to fuck off. But I suppose showing active resistance is really a no-no.
Hi, Hoyden cob logger! I just dropped by to correct the link as well. As Lauredhel wrote, this is the link to her Passive Aggression language post. The discussion thread and the responses about whether drawing attention to this linguistic quirk would alienate men is worth reading.
The other post, by our guest blogger JoAnne, is about realistic anti-rape advice to women. I’ve just added it to the Feminism 101 FAQ on blaming-the-victim.
Please excuse the blog-spruiking, Amanda.
the Ad Council’s got a lovely history with sneaking little bits of fucked up politics into their
helpful advice.
Here in the Triangle, they keep playing a radio PSA which is meant to encourage you
to give blood.
It starts with an earnest college student describing how he and his plucky friends noticed
that a nearby factory was polluting the river. So they protested and got the company
shut down [these are infinitely powerful student-activists!]. Then lotsa people lost their jobs
and everything was worse.
Moral (more or less explicitly stated in the PSA): it’s complicated to make the world better. So just
give some fucking blood and call it a day.
It’s good to give blood, just as it’s good to not get raped by crazy internet stalkers, apparently.
I love this active voice experiment - I’m going to try it this week. Though it’ll be difficult in meetings, as my office is so touchy-feely that we default to never assigning responsibility to anyone, for anything. Hmm.
The PSA is disturbing, although I think there is merit to the message about using caution with internet posting. The framing is really bad - good post, Amanda. I like rachel’s idea, though I’m not sure it would get through to the younger demographic.
The worst thing about the passive voice is how insidious it is. One of the nice things about teaching writing is showing young students how language works and the ways writers, advertisers, etc use it to fuck with their minds. The day or two we spend on passive voice is generally very eye-opening for them.
On a side note, I think we’d be a lot better off as a society if June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights” became required reading in school curricula. Here are the closing lines:
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
Oh, and what the hell is up with the coach in this video? Creepy movie theater guy, whatever. But showing a skeevy coach coming on to a 7th grade girl like it’s the girl’s fault? That’s where they lost me with this one.
One of the trickier points for me to “get” when I first read Starhawk’s Truth or Dare back in the late 1980s was that The Protector, as a socially defined role for men, was, as she showed, just as nasty and patriarchial a figure as the predator. Her general claim was that essentially all post-gatherer-hunting societies went through a patriarchial revolution about 4-5 thousand years ago, and reorganized society around a fundamentally militaristic model. Men as well as women have their independent identities and self-confidence broken down as in military boot camp, and are then offered roles that redeem them socially that depend on external standards. Men are taught that we are inherently predatory and competitive, but if we submit to social discipline we can baptize that violence into the service of Good, where Good basically equates to upholding social hierarchy. So we have the ideals of chivalry as the baptism of lawless warlordism. The good man is essentially a bad man, only he is on “our side” and obeys our superiors.
Therefore, journalists who need to talk about systematic social violence against women can’t simply say “A man raped a woman” since this impugns the honor of the Protector men. It used to be that we openly said there were bad guys and assigned that role to men low on the social totem pole, since Social Darwinism (or earlier versions of the same basic hierarchy based on notions of religious election or the like) assured us that certain categories of men, the important ones, were all a bunch of chivalrous Knights of the Round Table, and hence had authority and standing. In a supposedly democratic society that kind of hierachial finger pointing is hard to get away with as the official last word, but it is going on endlessly as muttering under the breath at the sham of social democracy by Protector types who think they alone stand between helpless ladies (who all too often are disgraced by their shameless agency into becoming the female category corresponding to scummy men) and total anarchic mayhem.
It was hard reading Starhawk’s chapters on The Protector because that was exactly the sort of role I saw myself as belonging to, or at any rate being called to whether I was up to it or not. In fact of course, one’s own patriarchy’s Protectors are rival community’s Bad Guys and vice versa, and as Protectors they set their hierarchy up as judge, jury, and executioner of all transgressors they see, so they look remarkably like Bad Guys to just about anyone not inducted into identifying with that community’s hierarchy. As long as men like myself saw the world in terms of conflicts between one hierarchy and other, rather than as a conflict between hierarchial principles and those of individual dignity of all people, we were guaranteed to perpetuate the basic oppression.
That video is just screaming for an edit job.
I confess, I get how these are all harassment except for the first one. Didn’t the guy just say “Hi Sarah”?
Unless the idea was that he was a stranger who knew her name and face, I suppose. I didn’t get that at all from the video though - just looked like a classmate greeting another classmate to me (i.e. they both knew each other).
Did I miss something in there?
-MH
We’ve got PSAs around here that are produced by the Mormons. Those people aren’t even trying to be sneaky. My two favorites involve a man making a big flaming deal about how taking his wife out to dinner is a big treat for his kids, which wouldn’t be so bad if the wife’s role wasn’t so swoony and depressing (Me? Really? Oh, honey) and a second in which a girl confesses to her dad that she was glad he talked her out of dating her boyfriend, which pleases the dad to no end until he realizes that she’s looking at another guy he might not approve of, so he schedules another long hike during which to brainwash her. Both end with the tagline “Marriage (or, Family) isn’t it about….time?”
The only thing that drives me more insane on the radio is that dog food commerical that suggests you should buy your dog expensive food so that it will love you, and then when it is gazing upon you adoringly you can project onto it all of the validation you wish you’d been getting from your ungrateful family. Not a PSA, sure, but still really grating.
On the other hand, there’s a really good one that I think was done by the ad council about violence against women, in which a father tells his son that he’s not going to tell him how to treat women, so maybe it’s best if the son get his ideas from other sources, like bad TV or ‘irresponsible older boys’. That one is actually pretty well done.
The very first response you’ll get is But Not All Men Are Like That!! And You’re Generalizing All Men!!
Or, better yet, the NO TRUE MANLY MAN defense. NO TRUE MANLY MAN would ever do such a thing, so, obviously, the vile perpetrator is not a MAN but some other creature, like a slug, or something.
” ‘If we lived in a remotely sane culture, the message would be, “Look at the way that relentless harassment really bothers women, men. Quit harassing women.’ ”
So we can look at Sarah’s MySpace page and think, “Nice tattoo, Sarah!” - we just shouldn’t say “Nice tattoo, Sarah!”. Especially not to Sarah!
I have to think, however, that women are conscious actors, and if Sarah’s putting her tattoo on her MySpace page she’s proud of her tattoo and she wants me to see it. Otherwise… she wouldn’t!
“The amorphous “menâ€? didn’t rape the victim, and unless we know for sure who did, its safer to invoke the passive voice.”
Have we learned something from a recent highly-publicized case?
“I confess, I get how these are all harassment except for the first one. Didn’t the guy just say “Hi Sarahâ€??”
It wasn’t that he said, “Hey, Sarah!” It was the way he said, “Hey, Sarah!” He said, “Heeey, Sarah!” It totally creeped her out. He shouldn’t have invaded Sarah’s personal space by saying anything at all - if she wants him to speak to her, she will speak to him first.
I’d start remaking that ad by changing the genders. Make it a guy on the football team who likes playing with his cousin’s two-year-old. But of course that wouldn’t be right because the guy wasn’t doing anything wrong by having pride in his actions. (Or at least no one hating such an ad could admit that they think it’s wrong for a guy to like taking care of toddlers.)
Things have gotten subtly worse over time — at least when Golda Meir suggested a curfew for men, the men had the decency to shut up instead of going off to produce PSAs.
Life’s great when you’re a movie usher. You can say shit to young girls and nobody will fire your ass. Being a waiter or a gym teacher’s good too. The girl won’t complain, cause she won’t know what to say, cause it’s not like there’s a PSA about how to get some dickwad in trouble for on the job harassing.
Ah yes, J, your harassment of women is a “compliment”. Heard it. Unsurprisingly, men like you who enjoy harassing teenage girls on the sidewalk also think that the victim in the Duke case didn’t get raped. Didn’t get raped or it doesn’t matter because you’re not really against it? No matter, off-topic, not interested in a real discussion, openly enjoys harassing women for the high crime of existing, so banned.
That ad pissed me off so much that I sent an e-mail to the Ad Council about it. I usually just froth at the mouth and bluster incoherent curse words for twenty minutes, but I’m fucking tired of seeing misogyny normalized and justified every freakin’ day.
I think motherhood may yet make an activist out of me- I don’t know why but having a son has radicalized me as a feminist and makes me want to change the world he is going to grow up in.
JSmith: you’re an asshole and a misogynist.
Banned? Sweet.
Shorter J: If women don’t want to be harassed, they should probably avoid existing. How can we (Us Men) not harass women when they’re THERE?
On the topic of the PSA: there was this email that got mass-forwarded a year ago from a girl to a guy she’d been with, telling him his spunk was “yum” The guy forwarded to five friends, and so on round the world.
The girl was internationally humiliated and her name became well known, published in newspapers, etc.
Nobody remembers the name of the allegedly yummy-spunked guy who broke her confidence and forwarded a private, personal, sexual email about his own penile secretions to all his mates. That made me furious. He’s probably even been able to get laid since then, because people aren’t going to go “Oh, you’re THAT guy” and run off. If I knew his name I’d put it in here. I was never, ever able to understand how her behaviour had been the aberration and not his; but hers was the name that stuck to the story.
Why did I say a year ago? it was much longer than that, and I knew it was. Weird not-quite typo type error there.
How about a PSA showing the barely teenage boy being complimented on his tighty-whiteys by the neighborhood p*doph*le?
I keep asking myself how a woman being objectified after presenting herself as a sexual object is different from the same thing happening to, say, some porn star. Then it occurred to me that the star of the PSA is uncomfortable because the situation has basically escaped her control. Right? So, there is the social context in which men and women interact, and she has changed that context but not on purpose.
The only way I can see that this PSA is like men stoning women to death is that in both cases, the men should have ceded back to women that social power that lets them control the social context. Other than that very broad and vague statement I think the comparison is horribly off.
Quote Jsmith’s; emphasis mine. Comment unnecessary.
PSA make me sad. I write to Ad Council.
What would this sentence look like if written in the active voice?
Personally, while I get how the passive voice can be used to obscure male responsibility, I’m not convinced that simply switching to the active voice is a very sensible solution, since statements like “men rape women” are problematic for several reasons that Amanda brought up. Rather than focusing on whether we’re implying or not implying male responsibility, I think we should be actually talking about male responsibility, specifically and explicitly. If it isn’t actually brought up, it’s left an ambiguous, unexplored concept regardless of how language is manipulated.
If you ever reacted to news about a woman being targeted by harmful, hateful or degrading comments on the internet by saying “what did she do to set that off?�, go sit in a corner and think a bit more.
Unsurprisingly, men like you who enjoy harassing teenage girls on the sidewalk also think that because the Attorney General dropped charges against the three men accused in the Duke rape case that no man raped the victim. No man raped the victim or it doesn’t matter because you’re not really against it?
How’s that?
“Unsurprisingly, men like you who enjoy harassing teenage girls on the sidewalk also think that no one raped the victim in the Duke case. No one raped her or it doesn’t matter because you’re not really against it?”
Not really the point of the whole active/passive thing, but there you go. What’s your point?
I think Amanda’s right: the commonality between the PSA and the “honor killing” is that in both cases, random men in society are given the “job” of punishing young women for making mistakes. And the mistake in both cases is her assumption that she has free will or “rights” and stuff.
I also agree that the passive voice is very often used to protect the subject (the classic “mistakes were made” BS). But I do know several men personally (who don’t harrass and don’t support it in others) who may feel personally accused by constant repetition of “Men did this” and “men did that”. I think this is where a lot of Rush’s “feminazis hate all men” support comes from, and I think that hurts the overall issue in the long run. “Some man did this” or “A group of men did that” maybe? That gets into the “NO TRUE MAN” dodge, though, doesn’t it?
I’m also wondering about those cases where women are the patriarchal agents of punishment to merit consideration (my mother springs immediately to mind. Any suggestions on rephrasing to the active voice that handles either one of these issues?
As far as the old “harrassment or compliment” question, here’s a handy guide for distinguishing between the two.
In a perfect world, Sarah could post whatever she wanted and wouldn’t have to worry about harassment.
But until that happens, Sarah should be careful online, which is the point of the PSA. I did not see the PSA as justifying the actions of the men as much as taking a neutral stance toward them. If you post personal information online, it’s no longer personal and you may get unwanted attention, which is a good message for everyone, not just teenage girls.
No, it isn’t right, but that’s unfortunately the way things are.
I don’t know about that. The ad would have still “blamed the victim”, but the victim would have been male instead of female.
Those boys were cleared on all charges. I am not quite sure what you mean by this.
The problem with many of the laws against harassment and even rape, especially date rape or marital rape is that the charges have to be proven, and in many cases, they are difficult or impossible to prove due to the nature of the crime.
For example, if a man makes an inappropriate, harassing remark to a woman in private, then what happens? If she reports him, he will deny it, and she will not be able to prove anything. It’s “he said/she said”. On the other hand, if the system always believes the woman, then what is to protect the accused from false accusation? He can’t disprove anything either.
I don’t think that changing a news story from “Last night, a woman was raped . . .” to “Last night, a man raped a woman . . .” is blaming all men for everything, though. It’s really different from saying that “men rape women.” That’s what I think that we’re talking about. The woman didn’t “get raped.” Someone actually did the raping.
Men who get all knotted up about “men rape women” because it doesn’t apply to all men usually have no trouble with “women have babies” even though this doesn’t apply to all women. I wonder why?
Snore, wayward. No one said that Sarah shouldn’t be careful of the “imperfect world”, aka men who stalk and harass girls. We just said it would be nice if those guys were called out for their behavior, instead of treating male abuse of women as something that can’t be changed.
Oh, Sniper, don’t you know that women are rapists too? Forcefully sitting on an erect penis is every bit as much rape as ramming an erect penis into a vagina. Or so the argument goes. For every instance of “men rape women,” true and frequent though it may be, they’ll want at least one “women rape men,” rare and debatable as that may be, to give the illusion of “balance.” If merely 99% of rapes are committed by men, that is in no way analogous to the 100% of births given by women.
At least I think that’s it. I’m not as well versed in the tortured logic of misogyny as I could be.
To everyone wanting to write the ad, or saying that the ad could not exist in a “blame the victim way:
The ad should actually should be, like Amanda said, aimed at men to say “harassing women is not okay, don’t be a creepy predator” not “women watch what you do, because you’ll probably be harassed.”
If they want the message to reflect the importance of not sharing too much personal info, they should have shown a variety of different kids of different sex, race, etc. (therefore saying that it’s not just “slutty little white girls” who get this treatment and deserve it) being unwittingly harassed on their myspace pages and through email (since I think the vast majority of this type of harassment occurs online). Then it could say something like “while most people you meet online will probaby be good, you never now who the creeps are. You should watch your own back and be careful who you trust.” Preferably it would be written in a more eloquent manner, but hopefully you get the idea.
oops, that first sentence is supposed to say “could not exist in a non “blame the victim” way”
I’ve been doing the active voice thing for a while; it exposes you to incredible hostility. Men are supposed to be shielded from the consequences of their actions.
Wait, what?? would be harassed for WHAT, using myspace? i use myspace, i’ve never been harrassed about it.
There are very serious safety threats when it comes to 7th grade boys or girls posting information on the internet. But instead of focusing on safety they focused on slut shaming.
And the men who sexually harassed Sara were never reprimanded at all. I think they really could have worked this ad differently, showing young men and women applying for a job, or getting in trouble with a teacher because of things they posted online. They could also have shown how some people get stalked fromputting their information online.
I wrote an angry e-mail.
And the men who sexually harassed Sara were never reprimanded at all.
Or fired, or jailed. Apparently what used to be called “the stronger sex” cannot bear to be accountable. Bad behavior counts as “youthful indescretion” for a man up to middle age, but a woman is supposed to be the soul of foresight and discretion from menarche on.
“i use myspace, i’ve never been harrassed about it.”
You’re part of a privileged minority. Statistics show that 82.3% of people who have blogs are harassed about the content on a weekly basis. I myself can’t walk down the street without somebody getting assy about a typo or factual error in a post less than four days old.
Seriously, though, this could have been handled so much better. The people who put this together and the people who put the pot-IM radio ad together need to be slapped with a marketing textbook or two.
On the other hand, if the system always believes the woman, then what is to protect the accused from false accusation?
The restraint of women?
No offense, but assuming only two alternatives, I’d rather the reputations of men depended on the restraint of women than have the lives and safety of women depend on the restraint of men - just based on the numbers. False accusation of rape almost never happens, while rape is fairly common.
I’d rather that there was more than those two alternatives, of course, but the one we seem to have picked right now - where we rely on men to not rape women - seems to be the worst of two alternatives (unless you’re a man.)
On the other hand, if the system always believes the woman, then what is to protect the accused from false accusation?
Chet, I think your response is pretty good but how about, I don’t know, the legal system?
A trial is what prevents people from going to prison or jail if they are falsely accused since our justice system is based on an innocent until proven guilty model.
Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, what is the deal with people forgetting that the court of public opinion is not, you know, actually a court.
:sigh:
If JSmith had said, “If Sarah’s putting her tattoo on her MySpace page she’s proud of her tattoo and she wants the whole world to see it”, would that have changed the way you read his post? There are a lot of people who forget, or don’t realize, that My Space and Facebook pages are accessible to almost anyone, anywhere who has an Internet connection. Anything you do online, whether it’s expressing an opinion or flaunting a tattoo, you essentially do in public.
I sent a highly-pissed off email to the Ad Council. WTF were they thinking?
Ugh, Wayward. Yes, of course, in a perfect world, lots of crap wouldn’t happen. Instead of saying “but until that happens” (because, frankly, I don’t see harassers just “happening” to stop their harassing), why poopoo the idea to go after the harassers to stop harassment? It seems rather sensible to me.
“If you post personal information online, it’s no longer personal and you may get unwanted attention, which is a good message for everyone, not just teenage girls.”
First off, watering down “harassment” to “unwanted attention” is yet another way to minimize the crime (he didn’t harass her, she merely received attention that was unwanted).
Secondly, I “post” personal information in the public sphere all of the time. It’s called walking out of the house. It’s like my 2-dimensional picture comes to life! And talks! In public! I guess I should just stop walking out of the house, so that men don’t interpret my “posting of personal information” as a message that “unwanted attention” should be given to me (like a present without wrapping paper!).
“Statistics show that 82.3% of people who have blogs are harassed about the content on a weekly basis.”
Which is why it’s such a bad idea to use your Real Life indentity on the internet.
Very few of the commenters here use a full name and many use a pseudonym. It’s a good idea to be protective of one’s identity online whether you’re male or female.
“On the other hand, if the system always believes the woman, then what is to protect the accused from false accusation?”
how about, I don’t know, the legal system?
A trial is what prevents people from going to prison or jail if they are falsely accused since our justice system is based on an innocent until proven guilty model
I think the legal system provides more protection than that: isn’t filing a false police report itself a crime? And slander or libel charges may come into play, also, as well as extortion, obstructing justice, or harrassment, depending on the circumstances.
Maybe the lawyers on this board can provide more detail, but I don’t think that anyone who willfully and knowingly files false charges against someone gets off scot free. (”I’m going to say he raped me because I hate him” is world’s apart from “Someone raped me, and I think it was him.”)
Sometimes I wonder if the false charge fear stems from the cases of black men being falsely accused of raping white women and dealt with by mob justice. Is it possible that MRAs read those chapters in history and conclude that it was sexism (against men) at the root rather than racism?
To the ‘if you post personal stuff online you get unwanted attention crowd’, think about this. Would you really react the same way if the harassers were lesbian women? What if the poster were a straight male who body builds and was trying to show his buddies how ready he was for the body building contest next week, but a bunch of gay guys picked up on it and reacted this way? Would your attitude maybe bleed over into, hey, those chuckleheads don’t have any right to mess with her over a few pictures on the internet. Then the ad would show the harassed person calling the cops and saying I am being stalked by crazy gay people, who would then have to register as sex offenders.
Haven’t tried to load the ad (I’m on dial-up, I’d be here for an hour) but since I read the comments, I have been thinking a little bit about how to convey the message, “Please don’t post personal info, there are creeps in this world,” without implying, “you stupid slut,” in any way. It can’t be too hard.
For example, my first (cheesy and overdramatic) thought: First scene shows a nice, happy high school girl uploading a picture of her tattoo while talking about it, very normally, on the phone with a friend. “Yeah, I was worried about it at first, but honestly, it turned out great. I’m putting it on myspace, you can take a look . . .” Cut to a different computer screen, in the dark, where a never-completely-shown creepy guy is printing out the picture—along with the girl’s name and address, because this is about posting safety. He pins the printout to the “stalking wall” that Hollywood tells us all serial killers have. (You know the deal: a sort of Collage of Obsession covered with snapshots and possibly newspaper articles about all the nasty things he’s done.) He circles the address in red marker. Fade to black, with the slogan, “Please post safely,” and any further tips the advertisers feel really need emphasis, like, “do not put your name and address on your webpage.”
That wasn’t hard. In fact, that barely took any thought at all. And I think the emphasis is on the predatory, voyeuristic nature of Creepy Guy rather than any wrongdoing on the part of High School Girl.
I keep trying to type, “Surely, a professional advertiser can come up with something along similar lines, only less cliche-ridden and lame,” but then I think of some of the advertisements I’ve watched and I just can’t finish the sentence with a straight face.
Irene
if Sarah’s putting her tattoo on her MySpace page she’s proud of her tattoo and she wants me to see it
Quote Jsmith’s; emphasis mine. Comment unnecessary.
Which isn’t going to stop me from making it. J, she’s not showing it to you, honey. You’re a slug. No one cares what a slug thinks of their tattoo, so if you tell them, don’t be surprised if it grosses them out.
“The restraint of women?”
Just curious; should rape be the only crime where a victim is automatically assumed to be telling the truth, or for all crimes where a woman is the victim?
I understand the problem with low conviction rates for rapists. But, as great many of these crimes are he said - she said situations with no other witnesses or evidence, how can that be changed without removing the protections that all accused of a crime are entitled to?
Should those accused of rape be treated differently than those accused of other crimes?
I always thought that liberals believed in the theory that it better to let 100 guilty go free than to imprison one innocent (I know I do). Why doesn’t this apply to rape?
Sometimes I wonder if the false charge fear stems from the cases of black men being falsely accused of raping white women and dealt with by mob justice. Is it possible that MRAs read those chapters in history and conclude that it was sexism (against men) at the root rather than racism?
I think it is because the media publicizes false (or more often mistaken) accusations to the nth degree.
I don’t really understand why people don’t understand that distinction between a mistaken ID (happens all the time sadly) and a FALSE accusation. The two just aren’t equivalent.
And given that crimes against women are underreported it is hard to understand where the fear comes from.
I think it links back to the patriarchy and men’s fear of having their power “taken” from them by some “woman” –men found guilty of rape react as if they never did anything actionable in the first place. It is this sense of entitlement to treat women as less than autonomous human beings by virtue of being female that is the benefit of being male in a patriarchy and then being outraged at being held to account for it by other men.
It is kinda beyond fucked up when I start thinking about it. Ew.
Irene, I don’t think frightening teenage girls with serial killers would help. Kids are already taught to be terrified of living, so there’s not much reason to make them paranoid about a far more remote threat. And being harassed by random men is a real threat for most women. The problem is what the ad says we should do about it.
If Jsmith had said, “she’s proud of her tattoo and she wants the world to see it”, would that change the way you read the sentence? Because that’s effectively what a posting on a public website is: a message to the world. And some people that you would rather not see it may still see it anyway.
Fade to black, with the slogan, “Please post safely,� and any further tips the advertisers feel really need emphasis, like, “do not put your name and address on your webpage.�
That wasn’t hard. In fact, that barely took any thought at all. And I think the emphasis is on the predatory, voyeuristic nature of Creepy Guy rather than any wrongdoing on the part of High School Girl.
I think you failed. The onus of behavior is still on the girl, which means that you’ve still put forward a message that basically says “Don’t want to be slut-shamed? Then don’t be a slut, stupid!”
If the moral of your story was “Hey, jackass, don’t be a creepy stalker who cuts out the names and addresses of girls in your neighborhood”, then you would have successfully shifted the emphasis to Creepy Stalker Guy. But so long as you portray Creepy Stalker Guy’s behavior as a constant of the universe, as a force of nature that it’s useless to do anything but take defensive actions against, you’re still making it about how it’s women’s fault for getting abuse.
If you’re portraying abuse of women by men as something like tornadoes or tides - something that it’s useless to try to prevent, it’s just going to happen anyway - then you’re shifting the onus of behavior to the victims, rather than to the perpetrators. Girls don’t get stalked on the internet because they post pictures of tattoos in their underwear, they get stalked because creepy stalker guys are stalking them, and nobody seems interested in doing anything about convincing men not to choose to do that.
Make sense?
“For example, if a man makes an inappropriate, harassing remark to a woman in private, then what happens? If she reports him, he will deny it, and she will not be able to prove anything. It’s “he said/she saidâ€?.”
Awww, just kick him in the nuts and be done with it. If he reports it, it’s “he said/she said.”
Kidding.
Maybe.
Of course, I once punched a guy in the throat after he grabbed my ass and then sneered at me, as if to say, “Whatcha gonna do about it, little girl?”
Not surprisingly, he never touched me again. His hyena friends, who laughed when I confronted him (I gave Ass Man one chance to apologize), slinked off like the losers they really were.
Raging Dumbass:
should rape be the only crime where a victim is automatically assumed to be telling the truth
It sure as fuck shouldn’t be the one crime where a victim is automatically assumed to be lying, as it currently is.
“Just curious; should rape be the only crime where a victim is automatically assumed to be telling the truth, or for all crimes where a woman is the victim?”
Mmmh, the underlying assumption of this question is that law enforcement automatically thinks a victim is lying for all crimes reported? I don’t think that is always the case.
If Jsmith had said, “she’s proud of her tattoo and she wants the world to see it�, would that change the way you read the sentence?
Of course it would. J specifically assumed his own right to leer at a teenage girl and not be thought a slug. If he had attributed that right to “the world” instead, it would still have been obnoxious, but somewhat less like pointing at your own erection with a lecherous grin on your face.
And some people that you would rather not see it may still see it anyway.
Sure they will. And if they start bragging about how hard it got them, I’ll tell them how sad and gross I think they are.
Of course, I once punched a guy in the throat after he grabbed my ass and then sneered at me, as if to say, “Whatcha gonna do about it, little girl?�
I’m glad that turned out well for you, but most women aren’t going to be so lucky, so that’s not a helpful suggestion.
Just curious; should rape be the only crime where a victim is automatically assumed to be telling the truth, or for all crimes where a woman is the victim?
Let’s stick with rape, for now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the historical principles of our justice system, having evolved as they did in a time when rape was essentially considered a kind of property crime, might have developed a certain “blind spot” for dealing with rape as we are now beginning to come to understand it.
Should those accused of rape be treated differently than those accused of other crimes?
Sure, why not? Assuming we can prove that intercourse took place. I’d set that burden of proof, at least. But what’s the harm in accepting the woman’s account of her own consent as privileged over the man’s account of his own ignorance?
Unless, of course, you believe men have a right to have as much sex with women as they can get, and that actually believing women when they say they were raped constitutes a chilling effect on a man’s ability to get sex in “grey-area” situations.
Come to think about it, I don’t see what would be so bad about that. Where’s the harm in forcing men to achieve enthusiastic consent before they decide it’s not too risky to have sex?
I’m just throwing things out there, I guess. But I don’t really see that putting the burden of proof on a man asserting that he didn’t rape someone he had sex with would bring about an apocalypse for men. I notice that the vast majority of men who have consensual sex with women who are equally enthusiastic about it never face false accusations of rape from those women. If you’re having sex with women who you suspect, later, will level accusations of rape, maybe it’s time to ask yourself - am I a rapist?
This is an excellent point.
The fact remains that the girl objectified herself and is uncomfortable with being an object when it’s thrown in her face. The men should not act in such a disrespectful and immodest manner towards her–I get it. But are we supposed to gleefully endorse all women’s choices?
I have a longtime friend who is trying to become “something more” but I’m not interested because she really is very promiscuous and this is a turnoff for me. Am I just playing my role as masculine enforcer of unspoken moral codes? Or on some level do I actually get a say in this sort of thing, and if so, where?
Without some kind of guiding principle this is less about women being respected and more about them just having power.
Awww, just kick him in the nuts and be done with it. If he reports it, it’s “he said/she said.�
That’s exactly what you have to do. When I was in 5th grade, before I even had nubs with with to attract such attention, a group of boys saw fit to do run-by “breast” pinchings. The girls who were assaulted and went directly to the teacher saw no justice. They were simply told that boys would be boys. When the boy who’d pinched me ran to the teacher to complain that I’d punched his glasses across the gym, I listened with cocked eyebrow while he had to explain exactly why he’d been punched. He was the only boy in the bunch who was chastised by the teacher for that little bout of kiddie sexual assault.
As far as rewriting the ad, I think the right thing to do would be to drop the girls’ name from it - and just have a bunch of creepy, leering men going “Heeeeey sexy, what color underwear are you wearing?”
The real discussion I’d like to see the ad facilitate is the priviledge men assume they have to comment and discuss women’s bodies in public - an attractive teenage girl would probably be getting that kind of attention regardless of what they posted on MySpace, and I definitely think a “get that scumbag in trouble with his boss!” PSA would be actually appropriate.
The fact remains that the girl objectified herself and is uncomfortable with being an object when it’s thrown in her face. The men should not act in such a disrespectful and immodest manner towards her–I get it. But are we supposed to gleefully endorse all women’s choices?
I have a longtime friend who is trying to become “something more� but I’m not interested because she really is very promiscuous and this is a turnoff for me. Am I just playing my role as masculine enforcer of unspoken moral codes? Or on some level do I actually get a say in this sort of thing, and if so, where?
Are you familiar with the concept of “your rights end where I begin?” Obviously you get a say in whether or not someone else gets to have a relationship with you. The fact that women have the same right as men to decide who gets to sleep with them is what bothers a lot of men. The unspoken moral code is that only men should have that right. If you don’t want to date someone because they’re “promiscuous,” that’s your own loss, but they still don’t get to fuck you if you don’t want them to. Not complicated.
And it says a lot about you that you think a girl posting pictures of herself is “objectifying herself.” Just because you think of her as an object doesn’t mean she does.
“The fact that the bulk of misogynist energy is expended towards hating and abusing teenage girls is probably the theme of another post.”
My guess would have something to do with a combination of the fetishization of innocence and the widespread sexual interest held by American males in girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen — not the frank pedophiles who are few in number, fewer still when you only count the ones who believe there’s nothing wrong with wanting to fuck children, and fewer yet when you count the ones who’ll say it out loud even on the Internet, but, rather, most American men.
In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that the right-wing fetishization of innocence, and the other kind which is rather less abashed about wanting to destroy that innocence, aren’t all that different — maybe even the same impulse, just expressed differently. After all, the right-wing style is the ‘Protect the children! Keep them pure and untainted!’ stripe — I was going to say that the fetishization of virginity here is only implicit, but the whole purity-balls movement is making that less and less implicit every week — anyway, the right-wing innocence fetish isn’t about protecting girls, but rather protecting their virginity, and what good to men is virginity, after all, except as a guarantee that no other penis has been where you’d like to put yours? Pedophiles are just a bit more direct about it, is all.
While I’m taking the time, if you do end up writing the ‘nother post about how misogyny tends to be directed most hotly at teenage girls, I wonder whether you’d find it worth your time to include an unpacking of the term ‘jail bait’. That phrase seems to embody a great deal of the misogyny you mention that’s directed toward teenage girls, being as it is an epithet on the order of ’slut’, and structurally incapable of applying to anyone other than teenage girls.
Without some kind of guiding principle this is less about women being respected and more about them just having power.
And God forfend that should happen.
For Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin, meaningful consent is impossible: all intercourse is rape.
justicewalks, if it makes you feel any better, a boy caught doing that in my school would be called to the office to have a little chat with our Community Police Liaison Officer and would face at least suspension for a first offence, possibly a fine as well, depending on his age.
For Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin, meaningful consent is impossible: all intercourse is rape.
If that were true, and not a myth, I guess you would have a point, troll.
For Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin, meaningful consent is impossible: all intercourse is rape.
Well then, don’t have sex with them. See? ITS EASY.
“Mmmh, the underlying assumption of this question is that law enforcement automatically thinks a victim is lying for all crimes reported? I don’t think that is always the case.”
Neither do I. But I have a few friends who are cops, and they tell me they were trained to be skeptical about all accusations, treat the accuser with respect, and to investigate to see if the accusations are true. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
“If you’re having sex with women who you suspect, later, will level accusations of rape, maybe it’s time to ask yourself - am I a rapist?”
Or you yourself were falsely accused of rape, or know someone who was. My brother’s ex-wife accused him of raping her while they were in the middle of a child custody dispute. I know it was a false accusation, as I was with him when it was supposed to have occurred. Thankfully, the police were skeptical about the claim, and that their investigation showed that the accusation was false.
A great reminder of why an accusation alone is insufficient for a conviction.
Hold on there, hoss. I’m only pointing out that (theoretically, since we don’t know what the girl posted) she presented herself as a sexual object. The men have seen her in her undies, they know that she has tattoos somewhere covered up by normal clothing, etc. So they are reacting to her as a sexual object.This is fine in situations where the woman still maintains some level of control–as I noted in an earlier post, men would probably react the same way if they met a famous porn star, with lewd comments and so forth.
The source of the drama in the PSA is that the girl is NOT in control and finds herself in a situation where she is powerless. She has men treating her as a sexual object whom she does not want to treat her as a sexual object. The men have the power, and they are abusing it.
So, the PSA is saying “Don’t give up this power over yourself,” which is good advice, and the point of the blog is “Men, if you have this power, you don’t have the right to abuse it.”
Capisce?
For Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin, meaningful consent is impossible: all intercourse is rape.
Yeah, I totally believe that you have read those authors.
For Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin, meaningful consent is impossible: all intercourse is rape.
Oh yes, let’s conflate the legal definition of rape with feminist criticism of the patriarchy.
Oh yes, because they are the same, but no they really aren’t. Intellectual honesty anyone?
As for gaining a woman’d enthusiastic consent I propose that men. don’t. rape.
It isn’t about “getting” consent, it is about not committing rape. Why is this so hard to understand?
Reputation? Try “freedom”. Rape carries a rather long prison sentence.
I don’t think the ratio of false accusations to unreported rapes is because women are any more or any less restrained than men as much as it is that the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused.
If there were a way to more accurately determine which charges were true and which were false, that would be great, but I don’t think changing the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is the way to do that.
I’m only pointing out that (theoretically, since we don’t know what the girl posted) she presented herself as a sexual object.
Or a sexual being. Which all humans are supposed to be, except, of course, women.
Aaron, the discussion of the “honor-killing” of women is a great example of men having arbitrary power without justification. I should think that if it’s Bad Mmkay for men to do this, then it is so for women as well.
I also think it’s statements like yours that lead many men to believe that feminism is less about empowering women than about empowering them at the expense of men.
My brother’s ex-wife accused him of raping her while they were in the middle of a child custody dispute.
Now that’s what I call impressive multitasking.
You can switch “object” for “being” or “manner” and not change the intent of my post.
If I’m abusing the language, by all means, let me know.
And the plural of anecdote is not data.
I personally think believing all women that say that a man has raped them as a default position is a very feminist position to take.
Historically women’s claims of rape (and hell, contemporarily) have been marginalised, dismissed, and turned back on women themselves. Women’s claims of rape were as a default not believed (we aren’t talking scepticism here, we are talking complete denial) and so knowing such, and the strength it THEN takes for a woman to NONETHELESS say she has been rape, takes so much power, so much courage, that I can only but take as a default as position supporting women doing such. Maybe in supporting those that do come forward, some of those huge numbers that wouldn’t otherwise might instead do so as well.
Yeah, sure, in very rare cases my believe in a woman won’t be justified. But I’ll EASILY live with that and not apologise for it.
But I do know several men personally (who don’t harrass and don’t support it in others) who may feel personally accused by constant repetition of “Men did this� and “men did that�. I think this is where a lot of Rush’s “feminazis hate all men� support comes from, and I think that hurts the overall issue in the long run. “Some man did this� or “A group of men did that� maybe? That gets into the “NO TRUE MAN� dodge, though, doesn’t it?
Sure it does. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the ‘NO TRUE MAN WOULD DO THAT’ excuse actually means ‘I WOULDN’T DO THAT’ — the assumption that the speaker is a True Man is implicit, at least in every such case I’ve encountered.
As far as I’m concerned, though, and speaking as a man who has in the past, before I gained a clue, felt personally accused and blamed when hearing women say things like ‘all men are potential rapists’ — I’ve got something to say to men who feel that way:
Use those vaunted, cherished testicles of yours to put on some big boy pants and get the fuck over it.
You do share responsibility for the behavior of your fellow men. You think you’re better than that? You think it’s unfair that you should be tarred with the same brush? You think that women ought to live with the constant tactical calculation that men make necessary, that’s just fine, but you are different, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether women might find you trustworthy — you feel you ought to have the benefit of the doubt, in spite of everything?
Well, great. Stop whining and start finding something to do about the men who’re dragging your ass in the mud. And y’know what’d be a great start on that? Stop letting your buddies slide when they say things that make you wince on the inside. Yeah, you know you do it. I do too. It’s a bad habit either way. Cut it out.
Oh, what, you’re not willing to do that? You’re afraid you’ll lose friends over it, and you don’t feel you should have to pay that price, and it doesn’t occur to you that maybe a friend who doesn’t really see women as human isn’t really anyone you’d want to call a friend, after all? Well, that’s fine too. Just don’t expect me to take you seriously when you come and start whining to me about how those mean, mean women don’t give you enough credit. Not unless you really do enjoy the sound of a tiny violin.
And, while you’re listening to the faint, sweet strains of ‘My Heart Bleeds For You’, you want to maybe think about why it is that men get so defensive so fast about this stuff. It’s not like accusing someone of pedophilia, where the accusation is equivalent to instantaneous conviction and at best ostracism — calling somebody a rapist, or a potential rapist, or saying that men rape women, doesn’t have anything like the same moral-panic-witch-hunt effect, you’re not going to lose a job or go to jail just because some random person who doesn’t even know you said that she thinks you might possibly not be instantly worthy of complete trust. So — why so wrought up about it? Why the instantaneous defensive reaction? Why don’t you examine yourself and your reaction before you scramble and sprint to blame anybody else you possibly can? It smacks of avoidance, that.
Hold on there, hoss. I’m only pointing out that (theoretically, since we don’t know what the girl posted) she presented herself as a sexual object. The men have seen her in her undies, they know that she has tattoos somewhere covered up by normal clothing, etc. So they are reacting to her as a sexual object.
Maybe that’s the automatic reaction if you’re eleven years old and still think it’s funny that girls wear bras and panties, man. Or maybe you’re right, and she did post those pictures because she wanted to show people how sexy she is, and was inviting them all to tell her what they think of their tattoo. That doesn’t mean harassing her for it doesn’t make you a giant wanker, and if she doesn’t know that, she needs to be told.
The whole idea of men who harass women having “power” is a joke. Yeah, sure you’ve got power, because you can make women uncomfortable and beat them up and rape them if they don’t like it, and they can’t do a damn thing about it. What a stud. I think the best thing we can do for these guys is point out what utter losers they are, and ask them how the hell they can avoid falling apart from sheer self-loathing.
Reputation? Try “freedom�. Rape carries a rather long prison sentence.
What part of “the court of public opinion is not the legal courts” do you not understand? Nobody here is advocating eliminating the legal principle of the presumption of innocence.
Oh you most definitely are.
“Object” means the person is something less than human, “being” or “actor” means the person has agency and power. Word use is specific for a reason.
I also think it’s statements like yours that lead many men to believe that feminism is less about empowering women than about empowering them at the expense of men.
They are being empowered at the expense of men. Men won’t get to rape women and beat them up and insult them and hate them without suffering consequences. A lot of men just can’t have that.
As a man, I get pretty personally offended by a lot of presumptuous statements all the time. But it’s not feminists who are making them.
So if you can sit through a typical American sitcom but not deal with the active voice, there might be other (almost certainly unconscious) issues there.
Aaron -
That post actually made me want to stand up and cheer. Kickass.
“Aaron, the discussion of the “honor-killingâ€? of women is a great example of men having arbitrary power without justification. I should think that if it’s Bad Mmkay for men to do this, then it is so for women as well.”
Sure, Pete. Because, yeah, there are so many instances when women have slaughtered men because they didn’t like the choices those men had made. You know, it’s right up there with female-on-male rape, in terms of social crises.
Seriously, though, on a level playing field, your argument might have some merit. As the situation here in the real world stands, though, and given what I’ve seen of your previous comments, I’m going to assume that you know better than to think your argument’s worth addressing on its merits.
“I also think it’s statements like yours that lead many men to believe that feminism is less about empowering women than about empowering them at the expense of men.”
As I see it, feminism is about empowering women at the expense of men, because men hold an extremely disproportionate share of the power in this world; as such, any gains women make are going to have to be at the expense of men’s ability to run the world as they like it. I don’t have a problem with that. Why do you?
Or, better yet, the NO TRUE MANLY MAN defense
Hee. I’ve gotten that. Counter it with “Ahh, the no true Scotsman fallacy” and walk away.
I have never been wrongfully accused of rape, but I have been wrongfully accused with harassing someone.
A girl said that I had been following her around campus and that I had been up to her dorm room when she wasn’t there. This came as a complete surprise to me. They wouldn’t even tell me who my accuser was, because after all, I should know.
It turns out the girl was the suitemate of a girl I knew. We had several classes in the same area at the same time, so it probably appeared that I was following her around campus. I had been up to her room when she wasn’t there, but I was looking for the suitemate. It was just a series of coincidences that understandably freaked her out.
What was particularly frightening is that the school officials assumed I was guilty. This girl had no malicious intent and I only dealt with school officials, not legal authorities, so it could have been far worse. The misunderstanding was cleared up and she later apologized.
The fact remains that the girl objectified herself and is uncomfortable with being an object when it’s thrown in her face.
You can’t objectify yourself. Period. Oxymoron. As Sara pointed out:
In the ad, men and boys objectified the girl. Period. They had a socially approved reason to do so (punishing her for thinking she had an equal right to use the internet that men enjoy), but it doesn’t change the fact that they are the ones who are negating her humanity by treating her like shit.
Again, I have read Dworkin and Brownmiller. Do not conflate what is being talked about here rape, as in the felony defined by law and feminist criticism of the patriarchy.
Rape is a tool of the patriarchy to enforce women’s obedience to the system that oppresses us –follow the rules and you won’t get raped, stoned to death or murdered. And you know what, there are no rules to prevent that, because the rules aren’t made by women, enforced by other women sometimes, but we sure don’t make them.
A great reminder of why an accusation alone is insufficient for a conviction.
RagingTrollerate, who here, or anywhere in the debate about believing women who say that they have been raped, has ever suggested that an accusation should be enough for a conviction?
A complaint of rape should be enough for a thorough investigation, and people (including journalists and jurymembers) should be very aware that a mistaken ID is not the same as a false accusation of a rape that never happened.
(insert standard comparison to mis-ID of burglar doesn’t mean your TV never got stolen here)
(NB: were I a police officer, or a jury member, I would, while treating the accused with respect, automatically be skeptical of any alibi provided by a family member for any crime unless it was independently corroborated)
As I see it, feminism is about empowering women at the expense of men, because men hold an extremely disproportionate share of the power in this world; as such, any gains women make are going to have to be at the expense of men’s ability to run the world as they like it. I don’t have a problem with that. Why do you?
I’d see feminism as freeing the vast majority of men and women at the expense of a few assholes.
In the case of sexual assault and stalking, a world where there was none would be a world in which men could express interest in a woman without fearing coming off as creepy or threatening. This isn’t the primary reason men should be working to end it, of course, but it does mean that they have nothing (collectively) to lose from doing so.
Dworkin didn’t say intercourse couldn’t be not-rape; but as most intercourse is currently understood, it certainly is.
So what? Dworkin wrote a lot about how heterosexual sex is construed by society, so feminists are crazy and you shouldn’t feel bad about harassing women?