You get this a lot when you're a feminist, even on a progressive site, where the progressive and privilege-examinations stops as soon as a feminist points out that some dudes are saying some very hateful, bigoted things about women indeed.
And so, being a good little optimist, you try. After all, they said to educate, right?
And you know what? A funny thing happens.
The people who you're trying to educate refuse to listen, refuse to be educated, or shout louder, or just flat out say that they don't need to be educated.
Congratulations. IF you're one of those guys, progressivism ends at end of------
your dick.
In order to be educated, you have to shut up and sit down and listen.
So for starters, do you go someplace where there are a large number of Jewish people, and tell them they're really greedy? Are you silent when other people use numerous stereotypes against them? Do you tell yourself that they didn't use the word 'greedy' so it's different? Do you dismiss criticism of stereotypes of Jewish people by saying that if they would just listen to you----you're not Jewish, by the way-----then all their problems would be solved? Your advice, of course, requires that you do absolutely nothing, change nothing about your life, not even think about anything new. It's all on them.
Do you go to a place where there are a great many of African Americans, say, discussing racism and how it results in people making up photoshops of the White House as being surrounded by watermelons, and tell them, what's wrong, it's true?! Hey, Michelle Obama planted a garden. Same difference, right? What do you think the response would be? Your advice, again, requires that you change absolutely nothing, do absolutely nothing, and basically tells African Americans that it's on them if they don't avoid the fruits aisle at the supermarket lest they feed into the stereotype about watermleons. Again, it's all on them, while you have to change absolutely nothing, do absolutely nothing, challenge absolutely nobody, and not do anything at all. It's all on them. Your advice doesn't fight stereotypes or racism at all. Your advice leaves you and guys like you in the same place as before: living your life the way you want to, changing absolutely nothing and make it all about the victims. As a bonus, sometimes you then get to claim victim status when they point out that your advice is shitty, you yourself are quite possibly full of shit, and that at best you are useless in any fight for justice.
Discussions about rape everywhere, even on progressive sites, boil down to guys whining: "But I don't want to change one single thing about the way I live, and you're asking me to think hard thoughts and read books and think about women! And talk to them!" (Conversations about birth control and abortion get particularly frisky, as you cannot get a straight answer to the question, "Did you use protection?" or the way the question is avoided indicates that the guy in question didn't so much as speak to the woman with whom he had sex.) Talking to women! But....but....she might say no! If you ask, you'll spoil the mood. I got news for anybody who thinks this is seduction: if the mood is that fragile, you ain't got it. It's hard not to think that these guys are so unaccustomed to sex that they seize, desperately, the slightest opportunity, probably because if they open their mouths their sexism sends women fleeing. And seeing as how sex is the only thing sexist guys value women for, well, they aren't going to get any, because being treated as a vagina is not exactly a turn on for most women.
One of the most popular complaints----these guys think they're clever----is that feminists are big horrible meanies who want to do away with the pleasures of drunken sex. Yet these guys with this attitude repeatedly lump any and all sex undertaken after imbibing alcoholic beverages as an innocent pastime and then accuse feminists of saying that all such sex is rape. But the fact is, if you're only having sex while so drunk you can't drive----or if that's how you pick your sex partners----blackout drunk and staggering----then you're committing rape or something awfully close to it. If your date blackouts, then you're raping her. If your date is so drunk she's slurring her words and reeling, guess what? How hard is that?
Now STFU and read that again because I can already see the trollls shouting, "HEY! She....." Exactly what I didn't say. Notice where I drew the line? Right. There.
And let's talk about blackout sex. Yeah, don't try and tell me your magical stories of your or your spouse's magical booze drinking capabilities. Seriously. Don't. I could give a shit. And don't whine about how some woman you know 'changed her mind afterward.' That's called consciousness, your moron, not lying about rape, and if you're going around raping unconscious women, well, you should be grateful that harsh language is what you're getting. When she woke up---you know, after being unconscious, she put two and two together. If she's unconscious, it's rape. Period. What kind of guy wants to have sex with an unmoving, semi-conscious, unenthusiastic partner? Hm?
And as for the whole "She only said no afterward," this is a myth, because the guys trotting it out so successfully ignored all the signals beforehand. Why, yes, Sparky, there is such a thing as body language and you can't have it both ways. If you're sober enough to drive then you're sober enough to pay attention. Lack of resistance does not mean the same thing as---or is s substitute for----actual consent. One guy spat out resentfully that women remove consent before during and after. Sounds to me like he resented the first two very much. The question is, how much? That's resenting something you're not entitled to resent.
If you're arguing about how bothering to give a shit about your date----or your pickups, tricks, whatever----will seriously reduce how much you get laid, then stop being such a jerk. You're trying to sneak sex in without verifying consent, and if you get charged with rape for not getting clear consent, well, in the words of many a so-called progressive guy, that's just like walking down a street waving your Rolex around. You're getting very close to rape by the simple fact that you ridicule the notion of getting clear consent.
It's not hard---if you're not an asshole, that is. If you give a shit about your partner, you're not going to want to do anything to her that she doesn't want.
Here's a fun little fact about the human memory, for all you losers who claim that this one psycho bitch that one time said no afterward and whatever. Trauma tends to cause the memory to come back a bit at a time. If it's bad, the memory comes back in pieces or flashes. Your brain just can't deal with it all at once. And sometimes people willfully suppress it.
So you say you want education. This is straight out of derailing for dummies: the educational gambit, whereby people claim they want education, but in fact what they want to do is to fuck with people because you're not listening.
STFU and take notes. STFU and spare me your sexist bullshit. STFU and listen. All that shit you hear from your buddies about their bitch ex wife, their bitch ex girlfriend, that bitch that lied about rape that one time, that bitch that lied about your brother, that bitch that lied about somebody you knew when and where and you didn't doubt because you know your buddy, he'd never do anything like that? Guess what?
A lot of guys treat women a lot differently than they do their male friends. Bros before hoes. I'm sure some people might have heard that a few times. Ask any woman about this. Ask a woman how often men just talk throughthem, how they interrupt them, how they ignore their questions, how they shout them down, how they ignore them when they have an idea---and then seize the idea for themselves. I've personally seen this happen at one meeting. Don't tell me women need to be more assertive, louder, more aggressive. Once again, that advice leaves men to keep doing whatever it is they do, while women adapt to them.
Guys that meet my parameters---as expressed throughout this post and on other posts, so don't try any bullshit with me about how I labelled all men thusly--- do that all the time. Normal guys. Great guys. Fine, upstanding citizens. I really don't give a shit what one guy says about another guy, especially if said first guy is whining one of these common bigoted statements:
1. She asked for it.
2. She shouldn't have been wearing that.
3. Women just need to take a few simple precautions about rape and then they'll be safe.
4. Well, gee, there's always going to be some rape, get used to it, protect yourself. Oh, gee, too bad, sucks to be you, girls. Shut up about it already and let us talk about lying bitches who make false accusations, okay?
5. She lied.
6. Well, um, she was a crazy bitch so that means it couldn't be true.
7. Do you go walking around bad neighborhoods wavings wads of cash around and wearing a Rolex? Huh? Do you?
I have to say this again and again and AGAIN: this 'advice' imagines that rape---notice not 'rapists' because the culture trains us to keep the rapist hidden------is so common that women have to be on guard against it all times, through a variety of simple strategies that are so simple in fact anybody but a complete moron would already be using them. This advice ignores the reality of rape. YOu cannot get these guys to STFU and acknowledge that most rapes are not alley rapes.
AND AGAIN: This advice requires nothing of men, not even thought. They do not have to do anything, stop doing anything, read anything, or think anything at all. Their own advice allows them to live in confidence and maybe claim to be heroes because hey, they gave you advice, right? This advice keeps women afraid. This advice is designed to frighten women. It's supposed to keep women from being adventurous, uppity, independent, rebellious, or angry.
All of these things---and many more that I have covered in my previous posts about rape----amount to a few things, which I'm saying again, because some people aren't getting it:
1. They focus attention soley on the victim, and on a fictional victim at that.
2. They make the rapist disappear. What's left is "Rape", which somehow happens to women, and which can be avoided. Men who rape? Oh, those never get mentioned.
3. Instead, some guys---conservative or supposedly progressive------are obsessed with the idea of false accusation. They claim they are likewise obsessed with false accusations of shoplifting, burglary, and so on, but rape is really important because OMG the guy's life is ruined. Yet one sees revolting men who positively brag about all the false accusations they know of. Ten bucks says they didn't get the woman's side of it. Oh, and by the way? "She' s a crazy bitch" does not mean it's okay to rape her. It does not mean that she cannot be raped, either. Rape does not lessen in seriousness the more you dislike a woman. Rape is rape. It does not depend on the character of the woman. It is a reflection on the character of men who commit this act---and on the other men who refuse to shut up and listen when women talk about it.
4. In previous posts I've pointed out another thing that nobody else wants to discuss: the false accusation of a false accusation. Nobody wants to address the idea that----shocking concept, i know------that men might have a motive to lie about the rapes they're committing. Men have more of a motive to lie about rape than women do. As previous posts here have proven, many progressive men will neither listen to a woman, nor have any real interest in sexism, nor any kind of understanding of it. With all that, the idea of asking men to pick up the sword and fight the battle alongside one, well-----ask some of the women who comment here, who've seen the way If a man lies about rape, he gets off. He gets the sympathy of his buddies, who rub their hands together with glee at the idea that AHA! they have a date rape story to tell those hussies NOW!
If a woman tells the truth about rape, she gets called a liar. She has to go through an invasive---literally---and degrading police exam, often while skeptical cops say things like, "I am betting that nine times outta ten if a woman asks to speak to a female cop, she's lying." That guy right there? He's a cop in the sex crimes unit of the NYPD, which is mostly male. Can't you just imagine how sensitive he is to victims who dare to ask to speak to another woman about an intimate violation? Guess what? If you go around peddling myths about rape and refusing to listen to women who tell you otherwise, if you refuse to read books about rape, then STFU when women land on you with both feet and call you out for what you are: a rapist apologist.
Rape is so common in this country that many women on this site are themselves rape victims or know many women who are. Because reporting rape is such a horrifying ordeal, many victims do not report. You know what that means? Those guys got away with it. They're walking around free. You might know some of them. Now think, moron. Do you think that guy's gonna boast about how he raped a woman----or several---and got away with it?
There is no such thing as accidental rape. Over and over again, when one talks about rape, one finds a certain type of faux gressive guy-----progressive in everything except this one subject, which affects more than half the human race------who is devoted to the notion that seemingly talking to his sex partners beforehand would 'spoil it' somehow. These are the guys who worry about false rape accusations, probably because they know that they're not really false. "But why do I hafta get consent? It'll spoil the mood!" Where the hell did you learn how to talk about women? Harlequin romance novels? IF you get 'swept away' it's okay?
If these guys were so certain about consent, they wouldn't be whining about it. There's been more than a few guys I've encountered in discussions who claim that women are so evil---though they won't come right out and say precisely that----that in their quest for world domination they leave men no choice but to tape sexual encounters so they can prove that they didn't commit rape. Dude, I think it's safe to say that at that point, you need to check yourself in somewhere and get some serious help. Pack a lunch. Hell, pack a suitcase. You'll be there a while.
There is no excuse for this level of ignorance on a progressive site. Let's put it this way: you want our votes? You want us to be on your side? Then why aren't you on our side? How fucking hard is it to shut the fuck up and get some books form the library? And don't even try and use any MRA bullshit, either.
And this is something to consider: rape is about boundaries. Rapists and guys who don't want to think they're rapists don't respect womens' boundaries. Like, for example, when a woman tells them to stop saying ignorant bullshit about rape, they refuse to consider that maybe a woman growing up in a rape culture might know a tad more than some dude who got his 'information' from his frat buddies.
Guys like this don't listen to women, they don't want to listen, they want to shout out over and over again their beliefs that women are stupid, women ask to get raped, that nothing can be done about rape----thus giving control of huge areas to men alone----and that rape just happens, like it's not connected to men at all. They want to have it both ways. They want to cling to myths where women are in danger whenever they leave the house or walk down the street or go out at night, yet they don't want to get slammed with the implications of those beliefs: rape is so common that women can't do anywhere, or do anything, huh? Then you're saying that rapists are so common that they're everywhere, huh? What are the implications of this belief? Why do you resent it so much and avoid it so hard when people point out the flaws in this belief?
Don't tell me my tone is shrill or that I need to use more honey to catch flies. Do you go around telling any other group of people that? (It's like telling a woman on the street to 'Smile." Go fuck yourself, dude, seriously, if you do that. You don't know squat about that woman, so you don't have any right under any given circumstances to tell her to grin at you.) Don't tell me I need to educate people who refuse to be educated.
And don't you dare criticize me or any woman who gets annoyed at these losers who say all these incredibly sexist, revealing things about women, and then don't say one word about the sexist things they say.
Telling women they need to be 'civil'----meaning, usually, not swearing at sexist losers----while ignoring men who oh-so-civilly repeat hateful stereotype after hateful stereotype about women, who repeatedly ignore the boundaries that those women have set---which gets really disturbing in rape discussions---and not demonstrating that you have womens' backs in fights against basic stereotypes indicates that you're no ally of women. If you feel the need to defensively claim that you're incredibly feminist and blah blah blah then.....think about it. It shows. People who are blabbering about how much they are really feminist are obviously suspicious that they're not fooling anybody. Let me remind you here that Christina Hoff-Summers calls herself a feminist.
A final word about civility: It's easy to be civil when you're talking about issues that don't affect you. When you're hearing the same stereotype and hateful language coming from men who think they're liberal, and the women are the ones who are enjoined to be polite, you have to recognize that those stereotypes are in themselves uncivil and telling women they have to tolerate them with superhuman strength is letting men off and doubling the pressure on women.
It's another double standard, and it benefits men. When so-called liberal men act in the ways that I've detailed in this post---and many, many others----they're indistinguishable from many other groups of men with whom liberal men would ordinarily be loathe to associate themselves. The time has come to stop talking the talk. If you walk the walk, then you don't need to protest about how liberal and progressive you are. Your actions speak for themselves.
If you say you want to be educated, STFU and get educated. Don't expect women to be your mama, or your own private teacher, or in fact demand that they stop what they're doing and educate your grown ass self. Anybody who's older than thirty has not excuse for being ignorant about more than half the human race. Especially here. Especially now, with womens' rights under attack from all quarters---including from supposed allies.
Edit: Well, we have a new tactic. Apparently, listening to women is so offensive and so unfair----never mind all the talking that we have to listen to form men, which I mentioned in the post-----that the new whine is that women are demanding the right to 'lecture'----you know, to a resentful captive audience.