Archive for the 'Rape Culture' Category

A few lite thoughts on rape and prostitution

Published by Twisty on January 31, 2012. 95 Comments

Note: After writing this post, I was obliged to jettison the vaunted Facebook experiment. Still on Twitter, though, @IBlame.

Since announcing the Facebook experiment I’ve done practically nothing but approve friend requests and wince my way through a bunch of untamed emoticons and lolz, but one patriarchy-blaming discussion did happen to catch my jaundiced eye. Through the haze of jacknut gas — I believe there is no way to contain jacknuts on Facebook, so this experiment may be coming to a swifter-than-expected close — I detected an argument worth making. This argument erupted when I asserted, as I so often do, that prostitution is a system under the auspices of which rape is legitimized by introducing the element of monetary compensation as a mitigating factor. I said, in other words, that prostitution is pay-per-rape.

You can probably guess what happened next. That’s right, it was the old sex-workers-(and clueless dudes)-vs-woman-hating-radfems type-deal. The scenario goes something like this (I excerpt from the [now-defunct] Facebook thread):

Sex Worker: I’m a professional dominatrix. Sex work is not equal to rape. It isn’t that sex workers don’t get raped, but rape is certainly not the norm. In fact, just the experience of being a sex worker, just as the experience of being an extremely active, healthy sexual person, has the unfortunate consequence of increasing the chances of encountering a sexually abusive person.

Sex worker supporter: In rape advocacy, the woman defines and names her experience because to behave otherwise is to insist that her experiences are less valid than an advocates’ interpretation. Calling sex work “rape” implies that sex workers are too ignorant to define their own reality. How is that respectful?

Some clueless dude: What do you mean it’s rape? In legal prostitution (like Amsterdam) the worker always has the right to say no. Prostitution is a service, like therapy or a massage. If our puritan society would quit demonizing it, it could be regulated and the stigma removed.

[Normally it isn't useful to accommodate clueless dude commentary in any discussion of prostitution, but I include this one for comic relief. Women have the right to say "no"? Ha! Good one! Our "puritan society"? Wha? Has this guy turned on a TV in the last 15 years? "Like Amsterdam"? Dude, if Dutch prostitution is so awesome, how come so few Dutch women heed its siren call? 75% of sex workers in the Netherlands, many of them children, many of them trafficked, are migrants from Thailand, China, Nigeria, and Eastern Europe. Legalizing prostitution in the Netherlands has merely given criminal gangs a leg up and created an invisible underclass of abused, marginalized, undocumented immigrants with no access to social services and no protections under the legal system.]

But I digress.

Savage Death Island recognizes that the word “rape” rankles those with a heavy investment in the status quo. It rankles the married ladies when I aver that marriage is institutionalized rape, because their Nigels are special guys. It rankles victim’s advocates who believe I’m making light of “real” rape. Likewise it rankles the prostituted ladies because they are sex professionals, not victims.

According to sex professionals with internet access, they don’t need a bunch of do-goody theorizers telling them what their experience is or isn’t. They don’t want any radical feminists all up in their shit telling them what they can and can’t do with their lives. They are empowered to make their own choices. They are themselves feminists, so shut up already with the paternalistic jibba-jabba.

I get it. It’s like when some dude shows up to explain feminism to me. So I’d better clarify a couple of things.

If a prostituted woman wishes to describe her experience as that of a trained professional working a trade, she will get no argument from me. I am not interested in telling her how to feel about herself or her work. I don’t deny that there may well exist a cohort of contented, fairly-compensated sex workers who freely choose to find personal fulfillment in providing what they believe is a valuable service. I don’t blame sex workers for choosing to do sex work. I don’t hate sex workers. I don’t even hate women. I advocate fully human status for women in the sex industry, as I do for all female persons in any sex-class industry (including the motherhood industry, the childhood industry, and the spinster industry). I don’t believe prostitution should be illegal. Like many sex worker advocates, I’m for decriminalization.

Oh, and while I’m at it, it should be understood that when I employ such colorful phrases as “men use women as toilets,” I am not describing my personal feelings toward women; I’m describing the institutionalized, enpornulated male contempt of the sex class, which contempt has been documented ad nauseam on this here blog by many professional patriarchy blamers. I do not regard prostituted women as toilets, but it is my contention that men who use them do.

To rephrase, if you are an empowerful sex worker and you don’t feel that your respectful clients and considerate bosses are raping/pimping you, congratulations! The contingency to which I allude — that prostitution is pay-per-rape — doesn’t apply to you.

It does apply, however, to the unknowable legions of women and girls who have been coerced into the life by thugs and drugs and who remain abused and marginalized by misogynist cultural mores and antediluvian jurisprudence. It applies to all exploited women and girls for whom the bitter, grinding reality of misogyny as a human rights crisis cannot be glossed over with fantasies about women’s empowerment and delusions about agency and choice. Here’s my gist:

The patriarchal set-up has it fixed so that the practice of commodifying women’s bodies necessarily creates a rich and fetid growth medium for violence and exploitation. The persistent condition of women as an underclass of rape-receptacles (as per the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women) relies on this concept of bod-commodification. Abuses are not limited to prostituted women, but extend to the entirety of the sex class. Just the other day, for example, my own great state of Texas ruled that women seeking abortions must be forcibly pronged by doctors wielding vaginal ultrasound probes. That’s right, it’s state rape!*

Sex worker advocacy groups seeking to change this set-up to women’s advantage will not succeed, because patriarchy will never allow the liberation of the sex class.

Which brings us to the unfortunate disconnect between Savage Death Islandism and sex work advocacy. Though both yearn for an end to human rights abuses suffered by prostituted women, ultimately we are at cross-purposes. The Savage Death Island idea is to smash patriarchy entirely via revolution, thereby liberating women from the tyranny of the sex class, eliminating the vast power imbalance that lies at the root of fetishized and eroticized dominance, and obviating the demand for prostitution altogether. The sex workers, on the other hand, desire to make a living from patriarchal oppression. So there’s the rub: the feminist revolt scheme would ultimately put them all out of work, because, post-revolution, sex would cease to be a commodity.

Unless patriarchy is smashed, prostituted women will always be oppressed, because all women will always be oppressed.

_____________________
* The abortion sonogram law, which lawmakers passed last legislative session, requires doctors to perform sonograms and describe what they see, including the size of the fetus and the length of its limbs. The measure has been in court almost since it passed, with opponents arguing it violates doctors’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to disclose information that isn’t medically necessary and that the woman may not want to hear. [...] Gov. Rick Perry also praised today’s ruling, calling it “a victory for all who stand in defense of life.” — Texas Tribune

Posted in Rape Culture and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt forgets what year it is, starts yammering about RapeAxe again

Published by Twisty on December 2, 2011. 60 Comments

Jayzus in a jetpack. So much has happened since last we spoke that I’m just going to ignore it all and proceed straight to the latest installment of the Anti-Rape Device Chronicles.

You know the Anti-Rape Device Chronicles, right? A long and sordid history attends the battle for dudely control over the problematic human vagina. The timeline so far:

Middle Ages: Chastity belts are implemented by jealous brutes to enforce feminine purity against other jealous brutes. Or are they?

1996: British historians debunk as myth the notion that medieval chastity belts ever existed as anything other than 19th century “curiosities for the prurient or jokes for the tasteless.”

Cheesy BDSM-wear, only 500 bucks on eBay.

This dude writes a scholarly analysis of the mythology. The chastity belt naturally finds its niche as a corny prop in the BDSM community, where it is anything but an anti-rape device.

2000: The “killer tampon” is invented by South African septuagenarian Jaap Haumann. Quoth he, “I designed a hard cylindrical plastic core which contains the spring blade, which slices when pressed against. […] When the rapist attacks the woman and penetration takes place, the point of his penis will touch the section containing the blade and it (the penis), or at least a part of it, is sliced off.” Haumann notes that South Africa is the rape capital of the world.

2005: A now-defunct website announces “FemDefense,” a spike-equipped vaginal insert reminiscent of, but slightly less disfiguring than, Haumann’s dick mutilator. The imaginary FemDefense and its faux marketing campaign turns out to be a conceptual art project by Swedish artist Leif Lindell; the “product” is never manufactured but makes the rounds on the feminist blogosphere, prompting a profusion of whataboutthemen whingeing. Photo here.

2005 again: Sonnet Ehlers, a South African activist, invents RapeX (later changed to RapeAxe). This is a hollow vaginal insert with lined with barbs. “When the attacker attempts vaginal penetration,” says Ehlers, “the barbs attach themselves to the penis, causing great discomfort. The device must be surgically removed, which will result in the positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest.”

2006: Production of Rapex “delayed” by squeamish dick preservationists.

2010: The newly renamed RapeAxe is in the news again when Ehlers announces plans to hand out 30,000 of them for free at South Africa’s World Cup.

Today: Blamer Sandi emails me (thanks, Sandi!) with a link to the 2010 Gizmodo story; I fail to notice the date and commence writing this post as though it were breaking news, quite forgetting that we discussed the subject last year in the comments of this post.

Well, untimely though it be, you get this post anyway, because it’s the one I wrote.

So. Consider a minor shift of focus in the wonderful world of rape culture. First there is this imaginary chastity belt, which leaves nothing to the imagination in terms of the 19th century woman’s moral status: a whole mythos erupts around the idea of medieval dudes asserting ownership of their women by literally locking up the only thing about them that matters. You can still rape, though, you just need a key.

Scroll down to the 21st century. Haumann, Lindell, and Ehlers’ devices are more victim-oriented. They don’t prevent rape, but they do suggest instantaneous unpleasant consequences for rapists. Therefore they are controversial.

But why should that be? Are we, as a society, pro-rapist?

Heck yeah we are.

Historically, society tolerates rape because it is more or less consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women, but the idea that rape might conceivably involve violence against rapists is just too shocking. Judging by the many comment threads discussing RapeAxe, a significant contingent of Internetians believe that women possess neither sufficient personal bodily sovereignty nor sufficient personal integrity to be trusted with such a device.

Concern trolls pretend to worry that dick-blood might harm the rape victim (more than a rape, apparently), or that the device might make the rapist madder than he already is, or that it’s sending the wrong message and promoting the dreaded “victim mentality” to tell women to be prepared for rape at any moment. The squeamish dick preservationists object that dick mutilation is “just wrong,” that RapeAxe is “vindictive,” and of course that women are evil and will surely be unable to resist using it to injure innocent men who prong in ignorance.

The objectionable violence is interpreted as originating, not with the rapist, but with the vengeful woman who has deployed the barbaric peen-shredding RapeAxe.

Pah. The thing that would prevent any and all peen-shredding is the thing that nobody can fathom: keeping it their pants.

I’ve commented before that this RapeAxe thing is a pretty compelling little gizmo. It can’t prevent rape, but at least it theoretically improves the chances of a conviction. And of course the agony it inflicts on the rapist is conceptually satisfying and poetically justical. And it dovetails so neatly with my wacko consent scheme. Theoretically, anyone equipped with one of these little dealios abides, unlike you or me, in a persistent state of having said “no.” Only removal of the RapeAxe can switch on consent. No ambiguity. Simple as that.

But alas, after considering it lo these many years, I can’t say I have high hopes for its efficacy. Enterprising rapists could easily game the system. For example, it would be the work of an instant for a dude with a gun to force his victim to remove it. In the end, whatever measures a woman takes to keep assholes from assaulting her, some chumpass perv will figure out how to circumvent them. Women can’t prevent rape.

Like the feminist email forward says: preventing rape is easy: just don’t rape anybody, stupid.

Posted in Rape Culture and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

LecherWatch ‘11

Published by Jill on August 22, 2011. 140 Comments

What hotel maid wouldn't wannna get pronged by this sexy grandpa?

Well knock me over with a feather. Leering French fuck Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s gonna walk.

The hotel maid’s lawyer had predicted prosecutors would tell her Monday they were dropping the case. The attorney, Kenneth Thompson, told France’s RTL radio on Sunday that the woman, Nafissatou Diallo, “feels abandoned by the Manhattan District Attorney.” The questions raised about her credibility have made her feel “that she’s being investigated more than Strauss-Kahn,” he said. [AP]

That’s right, ladies. In the United States of America, in 2011, if you’re a woman with a “past,” it’s open season. If some old white perv violently attacks you, your bad reputation simply cancels out his criminal behavior.

Oh, and your looks are totally relevant.

“Nafi” Diallo is not glamorous. Her light-brown skin is pitted with what look like faint acne scars, and her dark hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head, but she has a womanly, statuesque figure. When her face is in repose, there is an opaque melancholy to it. [Daily Beast]

In other words, a rich white guy wouldn’t have to rape such an unattractive menial, but he might want to fuck your melancholy, statuesque figure. He was merely using you as the toilet you are, which is perfectly legal and consistent with Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women (under the Bitches Who Aren’t Virgin Saints Are Just Asking For It clause). So he flits back to France to resume his career as a nationally beloved dashing rake, while you get to spend the rest of your life as the gold-digging liar who cried rape, or simply the “DSK Maid.”

__________________
Photo: AP

Posted in Rape Culture and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt casts jaundiced eye at scepter of passion

Published by Jill on August 10, 2011. 200 Comments

When Kubrick was making the film “Lolita” he was crabbed out that the prudey production code wouldn’t allow him to enfilthen 13-year-old actress Sue Lyon with all the dude-pleasin “eroticism” in Nabokov’s icky novel. He intimated that the godbag-enforced lack of explicit child porn is what caused the film’s initial lukewarm reception and prevented it from soaring on wings of dudely prurience to the pinnacle of cinematic greatness for which Kubrick yearned. Naturally, because — thanks, Internet! — modern audiences know exactly what to fill in the blanks with, the film eventually became the iconic classic of noble ephebophilia we know and love today!

That’s right, I said ephebophilia. You know how when a practice becomes widespread and established, one of the first things its aficionados do is codify it and quantify it and describe it and assign its variations to categories and invent endless sub-categories for the more subtle variations that increasingly are meaningful only to the experts? Like with wine. Most people can just have a glass of wine, but oenophiles are deeply sensitive to nuancy variables, like the varietal, the region, the chemical composition of the vineyard’s dirt, the amount of rainfall during the spring of its production year, the color, which of 12,687 potential aromas it expresses, and, of course, the vintage.

It’s the same thing with raping children. Because raping children is such an established and widespread practice, PsychiatryNation has devised handy categories describing the various spins its practitioners can put on their “sexual preference”.

When a preference is based on a specific child vintage, it is called a chronophilia. One such chronophilia is crowd favorite pedophilia — raping prepubescent children. Then there’s hebephilia, which is a preference for raping pubescents. Ephebophilia describes a preference for raping post-pubescents. Girls must be 14-16, but for boys it’s 14-19. Spinster HQ concludes that this age disparity obtains because after 16, girls age out into common slutdom (the default state for all women). Once they’re sluts, the desire to screw them is no longer considered a special psychiatric disorder, but rather a normal dudely activity consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women (see Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and one of humanity’s finest hours: when the entire dudernet participated in that pervy countdown to the Olsen twins’ 18th birthday).

To explain male preoccupation with teen rape, I found this guy on the Internet. He is Frederick S. Berlin, M.D.,PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Director of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; and Consultant to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse. This eminent upholder of dudelionormativity notes that ephebophilia is the default dudelionormative state.

“Most men can find adolescents attractive sexually, although, of course, that doesn’t mean they’re going to act on it. Some men who become involved with teenagers may not have a particular disorder. Opportunity and other factors may have contributed to their behaving in the way they do.”

Opportunity and other factors? Opportunity, such as when adolescent girls are permitted out in public? Other factors? Such as that fucking Lolita narrative, which has seeped into patriarchal consciousness, been transformed into internet porn and Thylane Blondeau’s fashion spreads, and tells everyone that female children are sexual cyphers just waiting for men to use them as toilets?

Nabokov apologists, do your worst, but this novel isn’t some kind of veiled anti-perv cautionary tale about what can happen when a dude thinks with his dick, or the consequences of acting on desire. Nabokov was totally a perv or he couldn’t have written this huge and convincing paean to pervy desire. He would have made Lolita a person rather than a voiceless toilet, and he would have skipped the gratuitous erotica. The novel is merely an attempt to make art out of kiddie porn. The hero is himself a child molester and murderer who kidnaps, drugs, imprisons, and serially rapes a 12 year old child for chrissake, and then writes a dreamy, poetical memoir about it. Check this shit out (but do it on an empty stomach):

“Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.”

The scepter of his passion? Gag-a-mag, it makes your boob scars shrivel.

Even though Humbert Humbert may be tormented and an unreliable narrator, and even if Nabokov was himself a paragon who completely pulled this Humbert character and his criminal obsession with “nymphets” from thin air (hah!), Lolita is just an articulate excuse to dudelionormatize the same infatuation with female children that our sexpert Dr Berlin, above, asserts is common to most men.

Is it art? Sure, why not? But it stinks.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Mass Media, Rape Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and all old movies suck. Bite me, Chad.

A bit of lighthearted fun

Published by Jill on July 18, 2011. 188 Comments

This morning I am delighted to take the opportunity to bloviate on the notion of consent as it pertains to the sex class in a male-dominated society. As longtime readers are painfully aware, I trot this topic out for an airing semi-annually, because nothing says “patriarchy isn’t just some dull academic idea; it actually obtains in your most real life, girlfriend” like the notion that our social order renders consensual sex between straight people impossible.

Today’s excuse for the Consent Lecture is a discussion that erupted on a recent post. Let’s join it where blamer Jezebella says to blamer yttik:

“Are you suggesting that any woman who has consensual PIV sex, even with contraception, is a victim of…. what? disrespect? Really?”

To which yttik replies:

“Darn right I am. The majority of men don’t even begin to comprehend the health risk, indeed, even the potential death to a woman, that creating a pregnancy can cause. If inserting my penis into somebody’s vagina had the potential impact of causing something as minor as a root canal, I’d make sure I was a whole lot more careful on account of her biological vulnerability and the potential harm I could cause. In fact, if men could get pregnant, causing one an unwanted pregnancy would probably be viewed as criminal negligence.”

To which Jezebella, now exasperated, rejoins:

“Oh, fer fecks’ sake, it is absurd to posit that all women who engage in consensual PIV sex are victims of some dude’s rapey disrespect. Give me a break, lady.”

To which I say, check the weather reports in Hell, because I think I’m sort of agreeing with yttik.

For it is the stated position of the Savage Death Island Chapter of Spinster Aunts International that, in a patriarchy, “consensual sex” (between women and dudes) doesn’t even exist. This is because, in a patriarchy, agency is not conferred equally upon women and dudes. This untoward circumstance creates a contingency wherein the notion of consent is, for women, entirely non-substantive, a figment, a desperate fantasy invented to obscure the true nature of women’s status as the sex class. The true nature of our status as the sex class is, by the way, that we are imprisoned in a rape continuum. This continuum ranges from the “voluntary” performance of femininity (which quantifies women’s usefulness to men), to compulsory heterosexuality (which ensures availability to men), to pornography (which eroticizes inequality), to violent sexual assault (which is at the apex of the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women).

Wait. What?

The issue of consent — or, more precisely, the idea that women are considered by both custom and law to abide in a persistent state of always having given consent — is the absolute crux, nub, hub, axis, polestar, and epicenter of women’s oppression. The thing is, women can’t freely give consent because women can’t freely withhold it. “Consent” is a meaningless concept in the context of women’s reality.

In a patriarchy, women are, at essence, considered to be giant vaginas with the word “YES” stamped all over’em in red. Because of the sex-based power discrepancies inherent in our social structure, members of the sex class — that is, women — are always “yes” unless they specifically, adamantly, and in front of 3 witnesses with video cameras, say “no.” But even when “no” obtains, other (subjective and arbitrary) factors are almost always seen as mitigating it into a “yes.” Such as not saying “no” loud enough, not fighting back physically, being the dude’s girlfriend, or wearing a tight sweater.

Thus, as I have written elsewhere, “consent” in the context of bumpin’ uglies is nothing but a binding contract the terms and conditions of which exclusively describe male use of women as receptacles. As we have seen, the tactics that may be used to obtain this contract do not exclude coercion, drugs, or fraud. Once obtained, the contract is non-revocable.

Not your Nigel, though, right? It is absurd, as Jezebella suggests, to posit that all women who do it with dudes are “victims of rapey disrespect,” right?

Well, if your enlightened, feminist Nigel has never coerced you, then your Nigel, in the sweaty throes, has never said to you, when you were ready to stop, “no, wait, I’m almost there.” Or you’ve never closed your eyes and thought of England because you knew you’d hurt his feelings if you said no.

Lucky you.

But maybe you have complied in such situations, only you don’t consider those little things “coercion.” Maybe you think you were just doin’ him a solid. Letting him use you as a toilet shows how much you love him.

OK, but if one agrees that male privilege exists at all, and that this privilege is conferred upon every male person by law and custom and is his identity, and that this privilege afflicts all other aspects of human interaction, it would be nonsensical to assert that sex is the only behavior that escapes the taint. Rarely, if ever, does there saunter along a dude-paragon who never wields his privilege.

And you know one of the provisions of this privilege dictates that dudejaculation is the only natural and lawful fulfillment of the consent contract “negotiated” with a giant Yes-vagina.

The “rapey disrespect” to which Jezebella alludes may be thought of as male privilege that is brought to bear whether or not the male in question specifically intends to bring it. One aspect of this privilege is, as yttik suggests, the cavalier attitude dudes assume when it comes to pronging women. And as we have seen, privilege expressed by the privileged is experienced by the non-privileged as oppression. And often, sadly, interpreted by the non-privileged as love.

Many straight women — especially those with substantial emotional and fiscal investments in the hetero-nuclear family scenario — fling turds at this analysis because it’s so bleak they just don’t want it to be true. I feel ya, but I’m not the one asserting all this stuff. Your male supremacist culture asserts it; I’m just a lone patriarchy-blamer who happened to notice.

So if you’re bummed, let me suggest a spot of feminist revolt; it’s the only cure for patriarchy.

Posted in Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Same shit, different day: Part the Second

Published by Jill on July 5, 2011. 111 Comments

In which I say pretty much the same thing I said yesterday, only with bigger words and longer run-on sentences.

Mark my words. Malignant narcissist Dominique Strauss-Kahn will get off scott-free, scattering in his smug, entitled wake a bloody trail of ruined lives torn asunder.

Powerful elite white dudes simply don’t go down for rape. The Global Accords Governing the Fair Use of Women guarantee that assaulting disenfranchised hotel cleaners and young women whose mothers have political agendas is entirely consistent with the purpose for which these (and all) women were designed.

Then again, most rapists in general simply don’t go down for rape. Rapists are always set free to roam the countryside because their violent actions are invested with the sovereign authority of established patriarchal principles. One of these principles is that women are responsible for base male impulses. She wanted it, she was a tease, she was a prostitute, she fucked me last week, she’s my ex-wife, she was walking alone at night without a flame-thrower and three trained attack dogs, she was drinking in a bar, she was wearing high heels, she didn’t fight back too hard, she said she likes it rough.

Another of these principles is that women are liars. That’s why rape victims universally suffer from “credibility issues.” Strauss-Kahn’s hotel victim isn’t Joan of Arc’s saintlier twin, so she’s got “credibility issues” that conveniently allow prosecutors to look the other way. Likewise, Tristane Banon is obviously making shit up just to derail Strauss-Kahn’s political career:

Banon describes “his fingers in my mouth, his hands in my pants … [He] grabbed my hand and arm, I asked him to let me go … He pulled me toward him, we came down and we fought on the ground for several minutes … He was violent. When I realized he really wanted to rape me, I started to give him a kick with my boots, I was terrified and I told him: “You’re not going to rape me?” And then I managed to free myself, I ran downstairs …”

The author of the Slate article from which I nicked the above quotation, by the way, urges the reader not to take Banon’s word for it. It is Banon, not the Great Seducer Strauss-Kahn, who “deserves” to have her story gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Meanwhile, it will come as no surprise that I’m not done with the aforementioned established patriarchal principles. As the world’s foremost authority on the adjudication of rape cases, you can take it from me: Established Patriarchal Principle #1 is that women legally and culturally abide in a persistent and perpetual state of consent.

This means that the essence of women — that is, the primary property possessed by women, the very foundation of our being, our ‘constituent substance’, the ‘indispensable and necessary attribute’ without which we would not even be women — is: fuck-toilet. Women don’t have sex, women are sex. By universal decree, getting fucked is what women are for, therefore women are unrapeable; you can’t rape a thing the primary function of which is fuck-toilet, and you can’t take by force something that by definition is already freely available.

Rape laws only exist because of male vanity. Men don’t want to think of themselves as filthy stinking rapists; they prefer to imagine that they’re James Bond, idealized versions of themselves as noble protectors of their females’ honor, so deeply imbued with charisma and magnetism that women voluntarily acquiesce to them. So, to distance themselves from rape, dude culture invented some special circumstances — the most non-negotiable of which is that the victim must be of absolutely unimpeachable saintliness in word, deed, and costume, and be willing to undergo no small quantity of public humiliation — under which only the most deviant, dissipated pieces of human filth may occasionally be deemed by the courts to have crossed that vague line between consensual boinking and sexual assault.

With this ingenious victim-blaming system, only the occasional debased douchebag is a rapist. Convicting an insensate monster every once in a while leaves the rest of Dude Nation free to not be “that guy,” and to enjoy with impunity their birthright as frat boys, pimps, rakes, ladies’ men, Great Seducers, predators, bosses, college advisers, boyfriends, husbands, fathers, heads of international monetary funds, and creepy uncles.

It is, incidentally, a direct result of the mainstreaming of stupid shit like BDSM that the claim “she said she likes it rough” is ever even considered a plausible defense in a sexual assault case.

Posted in Men Hate You and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Same shit different day

Published by Jill on July 2, 2011. 63 Comments

No time to post, but dammit, I called it back in May, when I predicted that this Dominique Strauss-Kahn excresence would walk. Naturally, because I am the world’s leading authority on New York jurisprudence, that’s exactly what’s happened.

Why is he walking? Because the victim of his assault apparently lied on some old tax forms and employment applications. In the United States of America, it is settled fact that women who lie on old tax forms and employment applications cannot legally be raped as long as the rapist is rich and famous enough. Pronging such women in New York hotels, as well dislocating their shoulders and hitting them in the face, is an old white dude’s right. Luckily for American justice, a handy old dirtbag French politician happened to be on the spot when this particular woman needed her punitive yet “consensual” pronging, which was so “consensual” that the dirtbag felt compelled to try to flee the country immediately upon completion of his Great Seducering.

I am disgusted that the DA’s office is letting this slide, but, dammit, not surprised.

Posted in Politics and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: rapist is asshole

Published by Jill on May 17, 2011. 69 Comments

Dear Twisty,

Please Jill! Cast the jaundiced spinster eye apon the recent IMF rapist? I need your unique perspective.

redpeachmoon

Dear redpeachmoon,

What luck! I just happen to have handy just such a perspective on the IMF rapist. However, you might not interpret it as particularly unique. It goes like this:

That guy is a fucken tool.

Sure, I’ve got a little more, but that’s pretty much the gist. So if you’ve got something else to do, go on ahead. I won’t mind.

Meanwhile, if, unlike blamer redpeachmoon, you serenely abide in your cloister under a self-imposed news blackout, you may not have heard of the IMF rapist. No great loss. If you’ve heard of one IMF rapist, you’ve heard of’em all.

This particular IMF rapist is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, pink-faced captain of industry and managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Dominique Strauss-Kahn went on a little spree in Manhattan last weekend and assaulted a hotel employee. According to the first link I clicked on Google, this is how it went down: Strauss-Kahn “emerged from the bathroom naked and dragged [the hotel employee] through the suite from room to room in a violent sex attack.” He then high-tailed it to JFK, licketty-split, but was yanked off his flight to Paris just before takeoff, brought back to “a police cell in Harlem,” and denied bail as a flight risk. [cite]

The woman Strauss-Kahn attacked is being referred to as a “maid” or “chambermaid.”

Maid is a creepy-ass word. No matter what, a maid is not a good thing to be. In days of yore the term was used to denote a mythical female who had so far escaped — but would soon be forced into — getting pronged by some entitled prick. Denoting females thusly was of vital importance back in yore; owing to a lot of macho-religious nonsense that equated women with sex, as-yet-unpronged ladies were worth more than pronged ones. Intact virtue could make or break your career.

Nowadays maid still refers most commonly to a member of the sex class, but with less emphasis on purity, and more emphasis on the flipside of the misogyny nickel — suitability for interaction with other people’s filth. It means “low-status servant who cleans up after high-status assholes.”

Some high-status assholes make themselves feel like magnanimous benefactors by calling their maids “housekeepers,” paying them “more” than the maids would make back in the Dominican Republic, and treating them “like” family. Oh please. The job is fucking cruddy. It’s so cruddy that dudes are never, ever maids. If maids were actually paid what the work is actually worth, dudes would get all the maid jobs.

Also, your maid already has a family, Your Highness.

Anyway, in the narrative of IMF rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the victim’s status as a sub-human hotel cleaner is an important detail. Apparently this Strauss-Kahn shitsack is a celebrated rapscallion, rake, and ladies’ man. Boys will be boys! His nickname in the classy world of international finance is reportedly “the great seducer.” So it makes titillating how-the-mighty-have-fallen news copy to depict him, not as a suave Casanova jetsetting around with supermodel heiresses, but as a privileged fiend predating a powerless, lower-caste menial. In a world where it’s generally considered OK to use women according to their universally-acknowledged purpose (sex), it is sometimes permissible to use them, as long as patriarchal prurience is served, for other stuff, such as, in this case, leverage in toppling a poobah. As for the actual woman herself, nobody gives a rat’s ass about her. She is merely a symbol of a towering potentate’s descent into ignominy, frothily recounted by patriarchal media. Like the virginal maids of yore, hotel maids are also receptacles for male disdain.

Anyone who goes around calling himself “the great seducer” is undoubtedly a serial rapist, so naturally other women are beginning to turn up with accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s abuses. One of them, a young journalist who had previously publicly recounted her assault (with Strauss-Kahn’s name redacted), now describes his behavior during her attempted rape as that of a “rutting chimp.” Not surprisingly, the woman didn’t press charges at the time. She didn’t want her career to be permanently stained with “she’s the girl who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.” Which is exactly how rapists get away with it: fear, humiliation, and shame are superb silencers.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will undoubtedly get away with it, too. He has retained Michael Jackson’s lawyer.

Speaking of entitled white patriarchs who use domestic employees as toilets, California ex-governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently fathered a child with “a longtime member of their household staff.” Wife Maria Shriver, an original member of the long-suffering-stand-by-your-political-man wives’ club back in aught-three while candidate Arnie was at the center of a groping scandal, has finally left the schmuck.

Internationally powerful, white, rich, successful, married to heiresses they famously cheat on at every opportunity — these dudes are patriarchy’s poster-boys. You don’t become a global financier or a steroid-poppin’ muscleman California grope-ulator by being an enlightened sweetheart of a guy who doesn’t rape the maid.

Hugs,
Twisty

Posted in Hugs, Twisty, Men Hate You and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Toronto activists take back the slut

Published by Jill on March 31, 2011. 163 Comments

SlutWalkers say it loud and proud on April 3

Canadian blamers have just hipped me to SlutWalk. Thanks, Canadian blamers!  On April 3rd, Toronto anti-rape activists will be protesting the reification by law enforcement of the bogus cultural construct “slut.” The protest march was ignited by this remark, recently uttered by Toronto cop Michael Sanguinetti as he addressed a class of law school students:

“Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

Michael Sanguinetti has apparently been reading those helpful rape-avoidance email forwards that counsel weak, defenseless women on how not to convey the message that we want men to rape us. He knows that men’s behavior is totally our responsibility! In a twisted dude-centric culture that sees nothing amiss in defining women as the receptacles for dudely incontinence, it is unsurprising that the Michael Sanguinettis of the world should also conclude that when men behave accordingly, it is women’s fault.

In addition to calling bullshit on the Toronto police for perpetuating a misogynist myth — they’re literally marching to the police headquarters’ front door — SlutWalk is going to try to do that thing that many an activist group has tried — and failed — to do for a while now, which is to reclaim a debasing epithet.

Aimed at those who are sexually promiscuous, be it for work or pleasure, it has primarily been women who have suffered under the burden of this label. And whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word is always to wound, so we’re taking it back. “Slut” is being re-appropriated.

They’re not joking around, either. They’ve got SLUT buttons for the SlutWalkers to wear. This is what a slut looks like, etc.

I couldn’t call myself a spinster aunt if I didn’t offer a critical analysis of the SlutWalk concept, so here goes.

The spinster aunt must question, as an objective for any kind of walk, slut- or otherwise, the necessity of “re-appropriating” a sexist slur. My concerns are several, but time is short, so here is a quick summary:

Does changing the context of the word change the word? It might, but only so long as that context persists. Context is how Dave Chapelle could nigger it up on his TV show for laughs, but in the mainstream ‘nigger’ is bleeped out or re-issued as “the N-word,” confirming its status as one of the most offensive words in the English language.

In an attempt to disenvenom the word ’slut’, SlutWalkers can slut it up for their SlutWalk, wearing, as Toronto Sun columnist Heather Mallick says, “whatever it is that people wear as they go about their lives not asking to be raped,” but once the march is over, ‘Hey, I’m a slut!’ is unlikely to have the desired consciousness-raising effect. The sex class will still exist.

This notion of re-appropriating ’slut’ suggests that women, possibly in some happier time, had previously a-ppropriated it for our own benefit. But in no wise was there ever a culture in which women’s solidarity compelled us to define ourselves by the number of men we’ve pronged and how closely we conformed to pornographic dress codes when we did it. When you’re standing up against your own oppression as a member of the sex class, it is problematic and of questionable revolutionary efficacy to stamp yourself and your comrades-in-arms with the mark of the oppressor.

In other words, calling yourself a slut, in the middle of a flippin’ patriarchy, can only have the effect, as Germaine Greer noted, of reinforcing men’s sense of their own superiority.* If you’ll permit a personal anecdote:

I confirmed this firsthand when, at the apex of the Riot Grrl “movement,” I, too scrawled ’slut’ on an undershirt and wore it at gigs with my all-girl punk band. Was our audience a bunch of feminists shouting “you go, girl!”? Ha! If only. Even now the memory burns. Our audience was, in fact, a bunch of straight dudes. Leering, drunk straight dudes who saw a woman on stage with the word ’slut’ smeared across her chest and did not say to themselves, “Wow, I should really re-think the meaning of the word ’slut’ and reflect on my male privilege.” What they said to themselves (and, come to think of it, to me) was, “Slut, eh? Shit, I’d hit that.”

It turns out that ’slut’ isn’t just an adjective. It’s a character. A fictional character, beloved of patriarchal culture, who encrapulates eons of virgin/whore-fueled misogyny, and was invented to absolve violent dudes of rape behavior. Sluts are women deemed by the angry dude-mob to have so ineptly handled the duties of femininity that they must be shamed, mocked, and of course, fucked in perpetuity.

By which I mean, you may say “patayto” and I, “patahto,” but in the end it might be more advantageous to dismantle the slut rather than claim it. “Everyone’s a slut” just doesn’t have the same oomph as “nobody’s a slut.”

None of which is to say that Savage Death Island doesn’t wish SlutWalk the greatest possible success. Here’s hoping the Toronto police department responds with something more potent than the usual lip-service about “sensitivity training.” Nothing would tickle the spinster boob scars more than if The Slut were to disappear altogether from the cultural narrative.

By the way — speaking of rape-prevention email forwards — I can’t resist reprinting this satirical re-gendered version, originally sent in by a blamer in 2009 and gently adapted for Savage Death Island by me.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work

1. Don’t put drugs in women’s drinks.

2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone.

3. If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, remember not to rape her.

4. If you are in a lift and a woman gets in, don’t rape her.

5. When you encounter a woman who is asleep, the safest course of action is to not rape her.

6. Never creep into a woman’s home through an unlocked door or window, or spring out at her from between parked cars, or rape her.

7. When you lurk in bushes and doorways with criminal intentions, always wear bright clothing, wave a flashlight, or play “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)” by the Raveonettes on a boombox really loud, so women in the vicinity will know where to aim their flamethrowers.

8. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If it is inconvenient for you to stop yourself from raping women, ask a trusted friend to accompany you when lurking in shadows.

9. Carry a rape whistle. If you find that you are about to rape a woman, you can hand the whistle to your buddy, so s/he can blow it to call for help.

10. Give your buddy a revolver, so that when indifferent passers-by either ignore the rape whistle, or gather round to enjoy the spectacle, s/he can pistol-whip you.

11. Don’t forget: Honesty is the best policy. When asking a woman out on a date, don’t pretend that you are interested in her as a person; tell her straight up that you expect to be raping her later. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the woman may take it as a sign that you do not plan to rape her.

In other words, the best way to prevent rape is to not rape anybody.

_________________
* Greer, Germaine. The Whole Woman (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1999) 198.

Posted in Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

P.S.

Published by Jill on October 26, 2010. 18 Comments

Sexy Chilean miner costume.


Photo from purveyors of Patriarchy2K-compliant dudefantasy receptaclewear yandy dot com.

Posted in Femininity, Rape Culture and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.