Is November “National Blame The Victim Month” or something? No, I mean seriously. First it was Nick Kiddle’s post on hir near-rape experience and the discussions that followed it, then there was the McDonalds thing, and the British poll, and now some idiot who I’ve never heard of before now (Vox Day) believes that rape is a man’s right because women are his property. No joke.
Shit like this makes me lose what little faith I had left in humanity.
Update for all the Vox Day supporters: I don’t know what, exactly, drew you lot to my blog, since I was careful not to link the original post and I didn’t have my pingback notification on, but if you’re going to comment please be advised that while there are many kinds of comments I tolerate on this blog, flames, personal attacks, and victim blaming are not acceptable and are grounds for editing or deletion of your comments. And please don’t bother to point out that my policy is hypocritical because I have no problem calling the victim blamers “idiots” or telling them to fuck off. It’s my blog; you don’t like it, don’t post here.
Didn’t you get the memo? If at any point during the evening you’re looking for sex, then even if you stop wanting it, you still got what’s coming to you if someone rapes you. Women who look for sex are dirty whores and that’ll teach them to like and want sex.
By that logic, I’m way overdue.
A majority of sexually active women I know, and even several who are not active, have been raped or physically abused by a partner at some point in their lives. I cannot help but wonder when it’ll be my turn.
Apparently not. Maybe I should get a slave boy-I mean, personal assitant-so I don’t miss any future news of import.
>.< Hopefully never.
It shouldn’t amaze me that people react this way. I mean, a link to a link to a link that refers to something Vox Day’s commentators wrote? Come on. I read Vox every day, and you and the other bloggers are missing the point entirely because you falied to go to the source. It’s like he says; it’s “the telephone game” in kindergarten. But keep up the hearsay…we’re all having a great laugh over there.
Just because I refrained from linking his bile (in a failed attempt to keep his idiot commentors off of my blog) doesn’t mean I didn’t read it. The property quote comes direcly from Vox himself (hence the “posted by Vox @ 11/25/2005 12:25:00 PM” at the bottom of the page).
The point here is that Vox is blaming the vicitms of rape and that came across loud and clear in his post:
Now I’m going to ask you kindly to take your privileged attitude and fuck the hell off, because you obviously don’t have anything worthwhile to add to this discussion. I don’t tolerate victim blamers, or victim blamer apologists, on this site. This is your one and only warning.
[Administrator notice: This comment and all the links have been removed. Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog.]
Why should anyone give you the slightest bit of credence if you are unwilling to do what even that “blithering idiot” Vox Day does, which is space to let the targets of your missives respond? I am not exactly one of his defenders, and most of his fans know that, but good God, if you cannot provide at least the same courtesy that he does, how are you any better? Do you honestly think that a casual passerby will be swayed by anything you say if you cannot be bothered to let the targets of your missives speak freely here, so long as they aren’t being profane or simply resorting to a long string of ad hominems?
I am one fence sitter that you just pushed over a little more to Vox’s side. I’ve seen and heard of date rape cases that fit both sides (girl was really raped, girl cried rape after she went “ewwww” the next day). What you’ve done is simply added another example of someone who proves Vox right by not responding to him clearly and calmly.
But, as you said, it’s your blog so feel free to delete this and gloat over how I’m some stupid neanderthal who couldn’t make it through high school. I’m sure it’ll be comforting to you, but it’ll just prove to other fence sitters that Vox really is more rational than those who disagree with him. And yes, anyone who cannot respond to an argument they disagree with with a semi-coherent, civil response is an idiot. A pure idiot whose powers of articulation are only mildly less lacking than their committment to reason.
While I’m certainly no victim blamer apologist, I am curious as to what you consider worthwhile additions to this “discussion”. Further personal attacks on those individuals who disagree? Shallow and/or sarcastic comments? I have, with varying degrees of disgust, been watching this Vox Day/rapist issue as it has bounced around the ‘sphere, and I must say that what I have seen has yet to constitute anything even vaguely resembling a “discussion”.
Discussions are activities that mature individuals engage in without having to resort to finger pointing, name calling, mud slinging, or vitriolic language. With the amount of shit that’s been flung, it would be more accurate to call it primate poo-poo playtime.
Rape is far from a trivial issue. It is among the upper echelons of human evil, and those who perpetrate it bear witness to the depravity of which human beings are capable. But it is precisely because the issue is so vile that we must discuss it. Like the Holocaust, or Cambodia’s fields, or Saddam’s torture chambers.
And this is not an academic issue for me: a close friend of mine was raped 3 months ago. I take the topic very seriously.
Why is it then, with such an important topic, one that deserves serious and mature reflection, do purported adults resort to playground tactics rather than rational discourse? Just once, I would like to see someone respond to this Vox Day bloke on an intellectual level and not an emotional one. I would love to see someone in the ‘sphere be able to move beyond his or her knee-jerk disgust and attack Vox Day’s comments with reason, maturity, and class.
And if this makes me a “victim blamer” or an “apologist” in your eyes, well then you’re right: I don’t have anything to add to your vaunted “discussion”.
[Administrator notice: Edited to blockquote the quoted text for mercury_rising]
Note: that first paragraph is supposed to be a quote.
[Administrator notice: This comment and all the links have been removed. Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog.]
General Notice:
1) Don’t fucking go trolling the blogs of my commenters. One of my regulars just asked me to delete her comment because some trolls followed her back to her personal blog and tried to post flames. That is not cool.
2) What part of Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog. is so hard to get? If I have to delete any more inappropriate posts I will just close this thread. I have no interest in turning into yet another blog that has a bunch of victim blaming comments on it.
Mike and mercury: I’m more than happy to engage in many debates as long as the commenter isn’t too rude. Frankly, I should have deleted nyc007’s comment right off the bat instead of responding because he walked the line of personal attack. I don’t normally launch into ad hominem attacks, but I am really, really sick of the victim blaming and to have some random person come to my blog and be an ass to me about that subject didn’t really help things.
And Mike, don’t blame me and my stupid little post for “[pushing you]over a little more to Vox’s side”. Like, seriously. I’m not even a blog that you read regularly (nor do I think you’ll continue reading me after this post), it’s a little premature to give me that kind of power in your life.
Also, that last part of your post was toeing the line between snarky and inappropriate. This is your one and only warning.
mercury said:
Not very much. This particular area (rape/abuse/victim blaming) is one area in which I don’t want to hear a “dissenting” viewpoint. There is no excuse for blaming a victim in my book. And I don’t want that shit on my blog, either. In most cases I’m willing to host the dissenting point. In this case, I am not.
I’m fine with having a discussion on rape under certain circumstances. Like the legal definition and how it is (and is not) applied in actual cases, the way that society views rape and rape victims, and even in some contexts the grey areas of consent and how we as a society and individuals should treat them.
However, entertaining victim blaming in any way is like entertaining (to borrow from your first analogy) people who refuse to admit that the Holocaust happened. You can’t have a real discussion based on that kind of rhetoric, and frankly my blog isn’t here to entertain misogynists who want to tell me a thousand and one reasons why a woman was “asking for it” or how “date rape” is just sex that the girl regretted.
Read some of the actual posts on Alas about Nick’s rape story that I linked. They aren’t in direct response to Vox’s post, but they explain very rationally the problems with victim blaming in a rape culture.
Personally, I’ve talked about this issue more than I care to and furthermore it’s a highly personal one with a lot of bad feelings attached to it, so I don’t exactly want to go in to “analyze and dissect” mode, especially since I know that all it would do is attract even more trolls, as rape is apparently a subject that can never be put on the internet without victim blaming posts. If a throwaway post like this can garner such attention even after I went through pains to keep it off people’s radar, well… I shudder to think what a full-blown post on the subject would bring with it.
I respectfully submit:
1. Vox posters are varied in pro and con and under the commonly held
usage of the term public domain re the internet, and their published opinionsshould not be considered synonymous with the opinions of Vox.
2. A moderatly comprehensive reading of the selection from the whole article at
Vox’s site should reveal that the argument presented is about moral relativism
in regard to property issues, with rape as an example.
3. Previous to the selected quote, the Vox Rape Myth article clearly stated
that those who actually commit rape are in fact rapists.
I hope I have been clear enough to assuage people’s fears.
Thank you for your indulgence.
Let’s look at this from a simpler POV. The phrase date rape has many meanings, so let’s agree to go with the one closest to the purest concept of rape: a person going out of their way to intoxicate someone specifically for the purpose of making them incapable of fighting back. You, Vox and I would agree that this is not really any different than rape in “hold them down, rip their clothes off as they kick and scream and then screw the hell out of them” type of rape which no one would debate.
The problem comes in when “date rape” is expanded beyond drugging someone and then taking advantage of their being passed out or so high that they couldn’t possibly be even remotely coherent. IMO, and apparently in Vox’s opinion too, if a man and woman are both very drunk, the woman goes back with him to his bedroom while acting flirtatiously then that is not rape. And let’s be clear about this because both of them are drunk or stone off their asses. I fail to see how a man can be called a rapist if he’s drunk if a woman cannot rape. Both rape and consent to sex require, logically, that one be able to rationally make the decision.
Believe it or not, but I have had an experience in the past that fits into the same category as most “date rape victims.” I was a freshman, drunk off my ass at a party and a girl that I would never have been interested in, drunk or sober, tried to push herself on me. I would also most assuredly NOT call her attention flattering, and it was every bit her demeanor as her looks so no jokes about me being perfectly willing if she were gorgeous.
I consider myself as responsible for that as she was because I put myself in that position, knowing that it COULD happen. It wouldn’t no more seem right to prosecute her for rape than it would be for me to shoot a caged tiger after I reached my arm into its cage and punched it in the face and it bit my hand off. We have a responsibility to ourselves and society to not put ourselves in blatantly dangerous positions, and many party-going girls do just that. They get shit-faced around guys they know are looking to score and then wonder when things get out of hand. It’s not right, but victimhood implies that you didn’t nonchalantly put yourself in harm’s direct line of sight.
The problem that being so liberal with the definition of rape is that it lets people abuse it. A lot of girls in college for example will go hook up, regret it and then cry rape, even though they consented. This in turn causes a lot of men to be skeptical when a woman claims to be really raped. The end result is that the rape laws gets liberalized or less rigorously enforced. If irresponsible behavior that leads to regretable results isn’t separated from rape, then women will lose because the rapists will be given the benefit of the doubt.
[Administrator notice: This comment and all the links have been removed. Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog.]
“I would love to see someone in the ’sphere be able to move beyond his or her knee-jerk disgust and attack Vox Day’s comments with reason, maturity, and class.” – Mercury_Rising
Do that and that is exactly what you’ll get back. Very few ever attempt such though. Sad.
I will say this one more time: Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog.
That includes insults to my or my readers intelligence, name calling, and posts that are for the express purpose of being inflammatory (such as mocking me or calling me a jerk). You want to insult me? Do it on your on blog, please.
Condescending posts, or posts that treat me as if I’m an idiot are borderline and it’s up to my discretion whether to delete them or just give a warning.
If I have to delete just one more post, I will close this discussion.
Mike,
First off, and I address these later on in the post, there are a few comments you made that were borderline to full-blown victim blaming. I am in no way, shape, or form interested in turning this into a thread where I discuss victim blaming with commenters. Because you’ve been mostly polite and you seem interested in real conversation, I won’t delete this comment, but if I see any more victim blaming in future comments I won’t hesitate to remove the entire comment in question.
I disagree with your likening of human beings to beasts. Although I’ve never seen it applied to a woman, that kind of rhetoric has been widely used in Western culture to get men off the hook for rape of all kinds, among other things. Leaving off the fact that it’s insulting to state that men (or, in your case, women) in that instance are reduced to beasts lead solely by their hormones, it’s a harmful precedent to set.
The only real difference in the “acceptable” definition for date rape and the “unacceptable” one is that in one case only one party is drunk and the other case both are. And because in terms of the kind of date rape you’re talking about one of the hinges of consent is level of intoxication (ie. whether or not the victim was mentally capable of giving consent), I could understand taking that into account when determining the situation.
However, you are treading dangerously close to victim blaming by your assertion that the drunk woman in the “[not] date rape” hypothetical situation was “acting flirtatiously”. 1) Who gets to decide whether or not the girl was “acting flirtatiously”? I know that I, for one, have been accused of flirting with guys on many occasions when I was just trying to be friendly; and 2) Even assuming attraction, flirting, and going back to the guy’s room that doesn’t mean that sex is a given. They could be making out, groping each other, and giving each other hand jobs and sex still wouldn’t be a given.
It’s an easy thing to say that women should avoid “nonchalantly [putting themselves] in harm’s direct line of sight”, but the reality of that statement is that it is totally subjective. Even with your experience of sexual harassment (and, yes, that kind of predatory behaviour is often a precursor to sexual assault and/or rape), you don’t really understand what it is to live in a culture where strangers think it’s their business to tell you how if you do this or that you’re “asking for” sexual violence.
I don’t know if you intended it, but you’ve just perfectly illustrated part of the rape culture we live in: the myth that all men are, at all times, willing to fuck a “gorgeous” woman. The fact that you wanted to preempt any jokes speaks volumes as well; it is a given in our society that any man who would pass up sex with a remotely attractive woman is deserving of ridicule.
That fear of ridicule not only works against men who are victims of sexual violence (both perpetrated by women and other men) by shaming them into silence, but it also serves to reinforce the “boys will be boys” myth that is an intrinsic part of rape culture.
Actually, I’d say that most people being ignorant on the actual facts about the basic definition of rape (ie. non-con sex), the actual number of fake reports, and the actual legal definitions of rape (and what is, and is not, acceptable to bring up in a court of law) have a lot more to do with making men, and women, skeptical of victims of aquaintence rape.
Even in this day and age, most people assume that the majority of rape is stranger rape. They perpetuate the myth that women are more likely to be raped if they’re attractive, or wearing “provacative” clothing, or walking around in “bad” neighborhoods.
You talk about the “liberalizing” of rape laws. Cite exactly which states and their laws, please. Washington, the state I live in, defines rape primarily as “sexual intercourse between persons without consent” (which is the most basic definition of the word) and further allows for degrees of rape, carrying different penalties.
The only “liberalizing” of the laws that I know of are when they were expanded to include things like spousal rape.
The first part of that is victim blaming. See above statement on the subjectivity of “irresponsibility”, and I will also take the time to point out that you levy the complaints on the victims (and alleged victims) but not the rapists (and alleged rapists). Where is their responsibility in, I don’t know, not putting themselves in a situation where the woman they were with was legally unable to give consent. If women should know better, the men who have sex with them should as well.
And the second part assumes that, right now, 1) women aren’t already, and haven’t been, losing; and 2) rapists aren’t given the benefit of the doubt. Vox and his commenters aside, read the other posts and comments that I linked in my original post. There’s a lot more time devoted to telling women not to get raped than there is telling men not to rape them.
Those types of people make make me sick!
Although once i look past the anger I kind of feel sorry for not only the women around them but also for them because they must have horrible ‘unresolved issues’.
Not that it excuses the behaviour!
And as for the angry commenters, it kind of reminds me of the days where i used to post regularly on veggieboards, when flamers would attack the thread daily thinking they had some new original idea that would sway vegetarians back to meat eaters or just to get a response. Get a life people!
I’m wondering…why should anyone go to the effort of attacking the comments of either an obvious troll or a complete idiot with “reason, maturity, and class” when he doesn’t exhibit said qualities himself — and especially when his defenders rarely do? There’s no point in wasting your energy doing so for someone who cannot, at base, give you at least the courtesy of allowing that your feelings and experiences might just be valid.
[Administrator notice: This comment and all the links have been removed. Flames and personal attacks by commenters are not allowed on this blog.]
True Watson, apparently my urging that the induhviduals (to use Scott Adams adage) here to at least read the original source material before formulating an opinion on it constitutes “Victim blaming, flaming, or personal attacks”. I think Kristy’s comment of “Those types of people make make me sick!” typifies the typical reaction to anyone who disagrees or tries to require them to defend their assertions. So perhaps we should all just leave and let them go back to their “Lolz man what idiots” posts.
OMGWTFBBQ, your calling me an idiot constituted a “personal attack”, actually.
This thread is now closed. I have absolutely no interest in continuing to deal with trolls coming on this site specifically to call me names or defend Vox.