Image via WikipediaValdosta State University's remarkably inept recent posting of Rape Prevention Tips for Women triggered a number of blog posts on Rape Culture in which the bottom line was as follows: There is only one cause of rape, and that is the presence of a rapist. Tips for preventing rape, therefore, should be targeted at rapists. (Anna posted a great one in the Comments section, here.)
Personal Failure at Forever In Hell was one of the bloggers responding to the VSU gaffe. In response she got, perhaps inevitably, the usual mansplaining troll who took her to task for her "tone", among other things. He criticized her for being angry and anti-male. Fannie, of Fannie's Room took him on, and her post is so right on that I feel compelled to reproduce a goodly chunk of it, verbatim, here. (The last time I asked someone to attempt such a flip-flop, I got totally flamed. I hope she does not, because seriously, this is really good.) I would ask every man who does not believe that we live in a Rape Culture to try this one on for size:
"A good flip-flop comparison would be to imagine a world in which women routinely kicked men in the balls really hard for no reason at all, so much so that men wore protective cups on their genitals at all times and, if they didn't, they knew full well what they were asking for. One wonders, how would men react if the ball-kicking led to the formation of Ball-Kicking Prevention Tips that advised men to never walk alone at night, to avoid dangerous neighborhoods (especially where groups of women congregated), and blamed men for Getting Their Balls Kicked if they chose to move in the world like how people got to move?
It's not so much that the tips are not useful. Some of them are. But wouldn't the men rightly be angry about living in a culture that seemed to focus more on all the ways men could limit their lives to avoid getting kicked in the nuts, as opposed to how we could make women feel less entitled to attack men in the first place?
. . . .
Welcome to Rape Culture, Joe."Right on, Fannie! There's really not much I can add to that.
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2 comments:
Virginia,
I linked over from Fannie's Room, and lifted the nifty badge off your sidebar. Cool!
Thanks.
Ginny,
Why is it that some men automatically assume one is a "man-hater" or lesbian if one complains about the behavior of a few men? Could it perhaps be that they are a member of the subset being complained about?
Just because I dislike/complain about the behavior of part of a group, it does not necessarily follow that I hate the entire group. There seems to be a disconnect in the logic here, and don't men claim that women are the ones who are "illogical?"
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