Monday, March 11, 2013

A Troubling Pattern in Rape Discussions

Okay, I Have Noticed A Pattern that pisses me off, and I want to talk about it. There's some more swearing ahead (and behind, I guess. Oops.), so you've been warned.

First, take a look at this image:



In case the image is no longer on Imgur by the time you're reading this, I'll sum up it up for you: 

A men's rights group posts an image discouraging false rape accusations. The image has a lighthearted tone (telling people to use a "buddy system", asking a friend before making a false rape claim), and is clearly done in the style of PSAs that offer tips on rape prevention. However, it makes clear that this is a serious issue, stressing how being falsely accused of rape can negatively affect his reputation, and possibly ruin his life, for years to come.

The left-hand side of the image presents a series of Twitter posts reacting to this image, mostly from one woman. How, pray tell, does she react to this sensible admonition against slandering innocent men?

She FLIPS THE FUCK OUT. A sizable fraction of the tweets are literally her expressing a desire to VIOLENTLY MURDER the person(s) who put together the image. A handful of other users add their two cents, and in the massive shitstorm of blood lust we are treated to maybe two corn kernels of coherent thought, both centering around the idea that anyone who disagrees with them is a rapist. Seriously.

Firstly, the idea that the only people afraid of being accused of rape are rapists. This is clearly bullshit, and I direct them to the word "false".

Secondly, the idea that the image stressing how bad false rape accusations are is an attempt to scare women away from reporting when they're raped, so that the people behind the image can continue raping people. Again, emphasis on FALSE accusations.

Yes, there are always idiots on Twitter. Social media doesn't create idiots; it just gives them a soapbox. That's not the problem.

The problem is they're actually somewhat mainstream.

By now, everyone and their cat knows about Todd Akin and his "legitimate rape" comment. If you've been living under a rock, or are somehow reading this from 2011, Todd Akin was GOP candidate who was questioned on abortions in the case of rape. Because he's a politician and not a philosopher, he didn't respond by explaining why he thinks that an unborn child has a right to live, and how that right even applies to people conceived in rape. Instead, he dodged the question with a short soundbite, stating that pregnancies from rape are rare because "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down".

Now, some people have been calling him stupid, but I'm not sure that's the case, because the oft-repeated audio clip omits the beginning of the sentence, which is along the lines of "What I understand from doctors is…". Overly credulous, maybe, but not stupid.

People such as Jon Stewart have been mocking this quote by making mention to "vaginas that can repel rape sperm", but what he's actually suggesting is that the woman's body will suppress ovulation. But whatever. This is still not true, and the odds of getting pregnant from rape are the same as the odds of getting pregnant from any act of sex. Why do I care, and what does this have to do with the start of this post?

People are calling Akin a misogynist. 

Is he a gullible fool? Yes.
Should he be on the Science Committee? Of course not.
Is he a misogynist? No. 

These people seem to be operating off of a very common (but incorrect) definition of the term. Misogyny is the hatred of women. That's it. There seem to be three main reasons people have for him being a misogynist.

1: He's white/male/Republican, and all whites/males/Republicans hate women.
2: He's against abortions, and therefore hates women.
3: He used the words "legitimate rape".

1 is clearly stereotyping and an ad hominem attack, so I won't discuss it further.
2 is also an ad hominem, but it's a circumstantial ad hominem (also known as Bulverism), which are often not recognized as fallacious, so I'll go into a little more detail here.

A circumstantial ad hominem is where you attack a person's motivations, rather than their arguments. It goes like this: "You make claim P. You only claim P because of X. Therefore, not P."

In this case, the argument is that Akin (and, by extension, any prp-lifer) is opposed to abortion because he hates women. Whether this is true or not has not effect on the truth of his claim, but when asking if he's a misogynist this is irrelevant; he could be correct and still be a misogynist. However, this is most likely NOT the case. I can't read minds (thank Celestia),  but most pro-lifers oppose abortion because we believe that a human embryo or fetus is just as entitled to protection under the law as any other human being. It has nothing to do with hating women, and in fact women are essentially just as likely as men to be pro-life.

But we're getting off track. Let's get back to 3, which ties in with what this post was supposed to be in the first place.

Akin said "if it was a legitimate rape", and this has a lot of people's knickers in a twist. They start screaming defensively about how "RAPE IS RAPE" and how he's "delegitimizing" some rape, or creating different classes of rape. Some say he's contributing to a "rape culture*".

But Akin never said that some rapes were more rape-y than other rapes. These people seem to think that Akin was replying that some women who are raped are raped illegitimately, and thus their experience wasn't as bad. This is simply false. Anyone actually listening to what he's saying and using common sense can tell this is false. According to Akin, EVERY WOMAN WHO WAS RAPED WAS LEGITIMATELY RAPED. Who was illegitimately raped? NO ONE. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. "If it's a legitimate rape" means the same as "If she was (actually) raped". So why include "legitimate" at all?

BECAUSE NOT EVERY WOMAN WHO SAID SHE WAS RAPED WAS ACTUALLY RAPED.

This should not be a controversial statement. Not all women are prefect, flawless, sinless angels. Sometimes, some of them lie. Acknowledging this fact does not delegitimize anyone's traumatic experiences BECAUSE IT ONLY PERTAINS TO THOSE WHO HAD NO SUCH EXPERIENCES. This whole mentality seems to rest on the assumption that false rape claims never happen (which is demonstrably false), and that therefore anyone who claims they do is saying someone who was raped "wasn't really raped" in the figurative sense, meaning their rape wasn't as bad.

NOT ALL WOMEN ARE PERFECT. IT IS NOT MISOGYNIST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THIS.

That sentence is more or less the take-home lesson for this blog post. It's importance has been highlighted by being in all caps. 

This sort of thing happens because people like this have a knack for interpreting things in the worst possible way, even if it means taking them completely out of context (e.g. the "some girls, they rape so easy" quote), because they're looking for things to be offended by. They want to feel like they're doing good, so if their pet cause is winning/has won/never had any opposition to start with and there's nothing for them to do to help, instead of being satisfied with this, they start looking for (or making up) bullshit to be upset about. If you dress up as a geisha for Halloween, you're a "racist". Liking sexy Halloween costumes is "objectifying women". Derpy Hooves is "offensive to disabled people". Not liking sexy Halloween costumes is "slut-shaming". But I digress; I could write a whole article on this kind of people, and I will, but it would just make this post even ramblier than it already is. 


*(I should make clear that "rape culture" is not a thing that exists, at least not in Western countries. Society as a whole farther dislikes rape, which is why it's illegal. This "rape culture", like "the patriarchy" is just a histrionic term used by tumblr SJW types to label anyone who disagrees with them as part of some massive misogynist conspiracy.)

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