My point is that, yes, the police should pursue the thief and he should be punished. But at the same time, the police – and I – have the right to say to you “You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?” – Camille Paglia
In her 1991 essay “Rape and Modern Sex War”, the ever-controversial Camille Paglia called for women to protect themselves from rape by being aware of its origin in male sexuality and avoiding situations in which it is likely to occur; Paglia’s point, with which I wholeheartedly concur, is that “Women who do not understand rape cannot defend themselves against it.” Mainstream feminists enthusiastically promoted classes which taught women to be aware of their surroundings, to avoid being alone in secluded areas, to refuse strangers entry to their houses, etc. But these tips are only helpful against stranger rape, the least frequent kind!
Paglia’s suggestion that women avoid doing things like being alone with men they haven’t know very long or getting drunk at frat parties in order to avoid the MOST common form of rape, that by acquaintances, was greeted with a firestorm of controversy and accusations that she was “condoning rape” or “blaming the victim”. She had, of course, anticipated this would happen and in the essay likened such risky behaviors to driving one’s car to New York City and then leaving your keys on the hood (culminating in the epigram above). This is not blaming the victim; it’s acknowledging reality. Women are not incompetent children, and must be aware of the possible consequences of our actions in order to avoid undesirable ones.
Whores who don’t know this in the beginning must learn it quickly if they’re to survive. I doubt very many in our community blame a sister if she’s raped, but at the same time we know that we’re responsible for our own safety and must therefore use caution, backup, screening, referrals, intuition and/or other preventative measures so as to lower the chance of rape (or other types of violence) as much as we can. A hooker who labors under the delusion that she can go unarmed and unmonitored into the home of a man she has never met without risking rape or worse is a fool and may very well end up a statistic; but amateurs blithely do this all the time, apparently under the same touching belief in the protective power of innocence which causes them to eschew proper condom use. I don’t care what a “good girl” you are or how “nice” he is, you can still contract syphilis or venereal warts, become pregnant or be raped. And if something awful does happen, no amount of finger-pointing (or criminal prosecution in the latter case) will undo the damage, so isn’t it better to use a few simple preventative measures you can learn from the pros?
The oldest of these is of course the referral; when my mother was a girl almost nobody would accept a date with a boy she had never met unless they were introduced by mutual friends. The sexual revolution changed all that, but at the cost of increased risk of acquaintance rape. I’m not telling you never to accept a date with a stranger, but what I am telling you is that if you don’t have any references as to his past treatment of women then, logically, you have no evidence of his probable behavior when alone with you. Most internet escorts ask for referrals from other escorts for exactly this reason; if he’s treated others well in the past he’s likely to treat the next girl just as well. As I mentioned before, some amateurs even use Date Check nowadays, just like pros do.
But even if you’re the sort with romanticized notions about “spontaneity” and a thing for stranger sex, there’s still a simple precaution you can take which will help ensure your safety in most cases: checking in and out. Any reputable agency knows exactly where a girl is going and requires her to check in by phone once she arrives and sees everything is OK; if she doesn’t call out by the prearranged time, the agency will call her instead. Even many independents have a friend or husband with whom they check in and out, and so can amateurs; it’s a simple matter to call one’s sister, roommate, mother or other interested party to report where you are and how long you’ll be there. Not only does a callout give one an excuse to escape from a situation which has become uncomfortable or potentially dangerous, it also sends a clear message to the man: People know where I am and how long I’m supposed to be here. Most of you have probably heard the saying “Locks don’t stop a thief, they just keep honest men honest”; this is the same thing. It’s difficult to stop someone who intends to commit a crime with malice aforethought; what basic protective measures do is to deter opportunistic crimes. Locks prevent morally weak people from being tempted to easy thefts, and the knowledge that others know a woman is with him might stop a man with poor impulse control from succumbing to the desire to rape her. It’s not foolproof, but it does work; I can remember a number of cases in which a “creepy” client’s demeanor changed when I checked in, or when a man who was slipping out of my control was shocked back into civilized behavior by the ringing phone signaling his time was up.
Ladies, this ain’t rocket science. Nobody’s suggesting you be a scared little bunny holed up in your hutch all the time, nor implying that you’re at fault if a man does something reprehensible to you. But honestly, is it worth it to you to endure a rape just to prove how independent and gutsy you are, or worse to further your political agenda? You wouldn’t leave your car keys on the hood; you wouldn’t leave your purse on a park bench; you wouldn’t leave your front door wide open while you went on vacation; you wouldn’t leave your cat alone with an uncaged hamster or a four-year-old with a big plate of cookies; and you shouldn’t trust your personal safety to someone who might be a wolf without taking at least basic protective measures. Whores deal with horny male strangers for a living, and we don’t trust them blindly; do you honestly think you should?
BRAVO! There should be a national call center for women who don’t have friends or family that know what they are doing IMO. Hell send me a text but just don’t forget to send a follow up text when you are done so I don’t send the dogs after you 🙂
Agreed!
Paglia is only controversial because her advice and commentary makes too much sense.
The only women in the sex industry that I ever had intimate relations with was a Korean (in Korea), who worked for an agency – story already related in a previous post.
We saw each other for about half a year or so, dating (not a customer). She told me lots of stories. She was a smart woman, but she’d gotten in serious trouble once.
She worked with a very hush-hush agency that did business parties, entertained foreign clients for businesses when they sent executives over, and politicians and the like. She’d been with some pretty famous people, from what I could gather; I work in media, so I told her not to tell me any names (don’t know if I could trust myself, really).
Businessmen were pretty much the stock in trade, though. Mostly Korean. One entertained another. It’s standard practice over there. What was amusing were the number of auditors who were kept happy (and silent) through the generous supply of karaoke girls and pretty young ladies. She saw one government auditor about four times in a year, massive coincidences, which they laughed about – always in the context of a different “meeting” or “gift”.
The agency tried to protect the girls, and had two massive 6’3″ Korean guys who did post-meeting “investigations” if the offenders were Korean. I presume this was “organized enforcement” -related.
1) But she told me stories about one girl who’d been badly beaten by an enraged, drunk Indonesian-Chinese guy from Motorola (She was liberal with the identifying info, btw, when the guy was an asshole – I remember the story really well). She was in the hospital for half a year, and it resulted in the agency looking after all of her bills.
2) Japanese guys: She was in terror of them. She requested not being sent to any meetings with them after one bad experience. A drunken group of Japanese businessmen broke up, and one guy raped her, though she says she’d have had sex anyway, but he made it painful and hard; then he called a friend in and it turned from painful to nightmare. She was supposed to be with him for the night, too, so there was no way out – she says it was one of the longest nights of her life. She said she was lucky she got them to use condoms. She came out of it with a broken wrist and a scar on the back of her head. She was 22; it almost put her out of the business, but the agency looked after her medical bills and the people involved with this guy were apparently personae non gratae after that.
She said that she almost left the industry permanently, but the long list of loser boyfriends her friends had and their utterly pedestrian lives pushed her back in – easier money, real money, and hobnobbing – in a sense, she felt some importance and power.
There was a guy who was always involved in the business transactions. If a company wanted, say, 3-6 young women for some meeting, there were some rules:
– No touching if that wasn’t on the menu (prearranged)
– Anything girls did off the menu afterwards was private. The girls were on their own. best to give up a % and do it through the agency, but she often broke this suggestion to keep the money.
– Violence was forbidden. There were vague mentions of potential “problems” customers would face.
She never experienced violence with Koreans, but she said the Japanese guys were generally disrespectful and assholes. She had virtually no Western customers. The one time she was with a black guy it was so short she didn’t remember it much.
But I remember her saying that even with the agency screening every guy that they let near their girls, violent ones got through sometimes.
Final note–
There were different “contracts.
If she was “entertainment” (usually with a couple of other girls), she was told that she was expected to “endure” some weird treatment. That was pretty normal. She’d get tossed around and might have to put up with some bad drinking and heavy fondling; one time it involved group sex, which she found distasteful and dangerous, and never repeated.
One bonus: She got the most money for this, because everything was on the table (often literally), but the men were almost always too drunk to walk by the end of the evening. So in practice, while it was humiliating, it was also usually easy. Those were pretty safe nights, too: multiple men around in a public-ish place (unless it was a hotel room) meant no real violence was going to happen.
BUT
She was told that she had to make sure the chief targets (clients) – the ones in the room who mattered, because sometimes there were some that didn’t count – were extremely happy. She said the largest amount of work were the guys who didn’t drink. These guys were often more serious. If she was lucky, she’d get invited “out” and could leave the space.
She later “graduated”: She became the personal “escort” for tonier clients. This was pretty coveted in her agency, and it involved one-on-one meetings with repeat clients who would request her specifically. Apparently, there was a lot of internal politics involved with this. She was considered “trusted” – not sure what was involved, actually, I was more interested in the salacious details, being her “companion” and a very slightly jealous male – but it also meant she was completely free from violence in those situations. None of those guys would ever step out of the rules.
But working for an agency definitely had benefits, I’m guessing. They handled almost all of the work.
I wonder what happened when things when there were leaks.
About two years ago, when I was visiting Seoul again, I remember reading about an “agency” that had been broken up because a young girl (18) had died of alcohol – I’m sure this was sanitized for the press, this is Korea and real details never get out – but the list of customers involved was a who’s who of bigwigs. it brought down the mayor of a city and devastated the careers of a few big suits.
I thought of “Mina”, but she was out of the industry, so she told me, by that time. She said there were a lot of messed up girls in the industry, and that she’d quietly heard stories like this that never made it to the press from time to time.
Her advice to other women:
— Don’t be messed up and be in the industry for a reason. She was doing it to get enough money to become a landlord, basically the top goal of most Koreans, to own an apartment in Seoul and rent it out. She was pretty much most of the way there when I met her. By 28, she said, you’d be washed out of the best parts of the industry. She was 24 when I met her.
She had a plan, she was careful and she had a good agency.
Honestly, Gorbachev, those stories don’t sound all that different from what goes on in university residences and Greek houses right now. My husband is a prof, and before I had children, I was one, too, so we have heard lots of these stories.
The thing that truly shocks me is how vulnerable women are willing to make themselves in today’s sexual arena. A woman will go to a frat party wearing lingerie, get shit faced drunk, go to a guy’s room, make out and grope like crazy and then cry rape when the guy proceeds to have sex with her, under the impression that this was signalled as OK. And the cries of rape don’t usually happen until the next morning, when the reality of “oops, I was a slut” sets in.
And a terrifying number of those young men end up with criminal records.
Whenever I hear these stories, I scream to myself JESUS DO YOU BITCHES NOT HAVE ANY FRIENDS? I did all those things in college. Out in lingerie, tequila shooters, hey that guy is so cute, let’s make out in the corner. The difference is that my friends would never in a million years have let me go back to the guy’s house/room/car. Because they knew perfectly well that I was trashed and in no condition to have sex with some random guy who wouldn’t look that hot in the morning. And when it was my turn to stay reasonably sober and play Cockblocker, I kept my girls safe. I have dragged many a friend off a guy, while telling him to put it back in his pants.
When I was in college, I didn’t know of any woman who didn’t have friends like this. It was our job. We expected the men to take advantage of whatever they could, we expected to get drunk and make stupid decisions, we expected to protect each other.
Escorts obviously plan on having sex, so they ought to take measures to protect themselves, but women who don’t understand that men in general are primed for sex with half-dressed women who kiss them are seriously deluding themselves.
And why is it that when women are drunk and make poor decisions, they are victims with no responsibility. When men get drunk and make poor decisions, they are criminals. That is just bullshit.
I like how Paglia says “women are not children”. This attempt to describe “rape culture” in which all men have responsibility at all times for everything that women do is seriously infantalizing.
Yes, we do stupid things. Yes we get in over our heads. Yes, we signal sex and then change our minds. Women who are truly your friends are there to step in and play wingman, and get you home semen free.
This is about women betraying other women. I wish I had some way to give an escort in my town my number. I would tell her honey, you check in with me. I can’t guarantee your safety, but I will at least care and check up on you.
Feminism has made women hate men, but more than that, it has made women hate other women. And that is just so sad.
{Applause} 😀
Andrea, you seriously need to do a blog yourself; I’d link you in a heartbeat.
My favorite part: “This attempt to describe ‘rape culture’ in which all men have responsibility at all times for everything that women do is seriously infantalizing.” I totally agree; feminism in general, and neofeminism in particular, have done more to lower women’s legal and social status in the past two decades than all the feminists before them did to raise it in ten. Feminists portray woman as stupid, helpless children who can’t make decisions, can’t say no and are such crybabies that a girlie picture or a clumsy pass can cause severe emotional damage. I’m sure you’ve heard the asinine slogan, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” That was certainly true in the ’60s and ’70s, but in the modern warped version of feminism this is the real truth:
Andrea
“The thing that truly shocks me is how vulnerable women are willing to make themselves in today’s sexual arena. A woman will go to a frat party wearing lingerie, get shit faced drunk, go to a guy’s room, make out and grope like crazy and then cry rape when the guy proceeds to have sex with her, under the impression that this was signalled as OK. And the cries of rape don’t usually happen until the next morning, when the reality of “oops, I was a slut” sets in.”
Andrea. Without going into details because I am writing in my real calling. I started a relationship with a western woman. Short story. In ‘getting to know each other’ she agreed to my invitation to go and stay at a lovely little secluded resort. One double bed. Big spa bath etc. You know the type of thing a man will invite a woman to in the early stages of a relationship.
In bed, because I was still a beta-father-provider-smuck-loser I allowed her to take the lead early on as I didn’t want to ‘rush’ her into anything. And, quite frankly, I was very inexperienced with a new woman and didn’t really know how to approach this anyway. My last ‘new woman’ was 24 years earlier. I had no experience at the early stages of a relationship that were worth a damn so I just decided to be ‘cautious’.
We get very ‘friendly’ when she suddenly says ‘no’ and decides this is ‘not the right time’. So I get up and take a sleeping pill. She asks what it was I took and I told her a sleeping pill. She went BALLISTIC. She was FURIOUS I took a sleeping pill and asked why. I simply told her that in the ‘condition’ I was in, with no alcohol in the place, I was not going to get any sleep. I needed my sleep so a sleeping pill it was. She was EVEN MORE FURIOUS. I was mystified as to why she should be angry. I asked what could possibly be her reason for being upset and she gave me some rubbish about ‘sleeping pills are bad for you’. Duh?
Next night? Same deal.
If I went through with sex after all the ‘lead up’ and then her ‘no’? I would be doing 10-15. So a sleeping pill it is.
This happened before I men my fav1. When I related this story to my fav1 she was INCREDULOUS that a woman would accept an invitation to spend 5 days in a secluded little resort for the EXPRESS PURPOSE of getting to know a man better and then do ALL the lead in followed by a rebuttal.
She then told me that this was a very typical thing women do to establish domination and control over men. She called it highly abusive and manipulative and labelled this woman some very severe terms on that basis. I was SHOCKED at the strength of her reaction. This was very early in my ‘awakening’ that women were not the ‘sweet angels and victims of bad men’ my mother made them out to be. My fav1 educated me on women FAR more than my mum or wife did!
I am very against this whole ‘false rape allegation’ thing. But I am also very against the idea that a woman would go to a secluded resort at the invitation of a man, with one lovely queen sized bed, for the EXPRESS PURPOSE of developing a relationship with BOTH parties have said they are looking for a new husband/wife, do all the ‘very intimate’ and friendly stuff and then say ‘no’ at the last moment with the threat of 10-15 if the man gets frustrated and ‘tries too hard’….or even goes through with sex only to accuse him of rape in the morning.
I have said that I can see a time when men will have a pad of ‘sex contracts’ and they won’t talk to a woman until she signs the contract and copies are in triplicate. Women are extremely dangerous people to have sex with now in the west. The threat of False Rape Allegation is one reason I simply will not talk to a western woman.
Did you ever think by not even talking to Western women you might miss out on 1 who is OK? Not all women men have sex with in the West are “dangerous” either. I know none of the 1’s I’ve been with would say that about me. I also know this of other women I’ve been friends, am friends with now, etc.
Laura
“Did you ever think by not even talking to Western women you might miss out on 1 who is OK?”
There is no shortage of eastern women to talk to where I live. So nope. If I could do my job never talking to a western woman ever again I would. Really.
To put it back to you. Have you ever wondered how much abuse women must have handed out to a man who adored girls since he ‘woke up to them’ at 12 years of age that he took the rational and reasonable decision to simply dismiss 500M or so of them as ‘the chances of finding a decent one is too low’ and turned to another source of 200M or so women where his hit rate is better than 9 of 10 for really good women?
Why would a man stupidly sift through the dregs of western women when he can pretty much pick any woman in a crowd, qualify her in minutes, and be 90% sure she will be a decent human being?
Western women seem to be completely oblivious to just how horrible they are to good men. I can tell you. I was amazed at the difference myself.
Case in point. My fav#1 and I split last October. My fav#4 was still in play. So I decided it was time to ‘look around’ and ‘put some in the hopper’ to find my fav#5 because fav#4 was going to quit sooner or later. I dated TWO, count then, TWO women a couple of times. Just casual. I told them what I was looking for. Both tried their best. One was not quite what I was looking for. Nothing wrong with her, just not what I wanted. The other one? She’s been willing to adjust a little to me and me to her. Now it’s April and we are getting along quite nicely. Of course, this is ‘just starting out’. As I feared might happen, fav#4 and I split a few months ago.
If I was dating western women my investment in MONEY, time and effort would be FAR greater for a much poorer result.
Simply put? EEW are cheaper and better. Western women have competition. They don’t like that one bit.
Frankly, I have to agree with one fellow I met from Kuwait a few years ago.
He said it was virtually impossible to distinguish between what whores did – and what modern college girls do in America.
The difference: The whores are probably smarter about it all.
In Korea, what was striking was this: everyone condemned the whole industry, but vast segments of the male population engaged it. The more power men had, the more they engaged it. That’s true everywhere, but there, the contradiction was just more obvious.
I dated women there who were, by more traditional standards, basically selling themselves in the hopes of getting something – gifts, attention, affection – but it was definitely a “sale”. The near-total obsession with female beauty and rank and status made whores of men and women.
Mina, in my opinion, was smart: She had something tangible out of it at the end, and even acquired a permanent BF who treated her well and was respectful and decent, and who would marry her in a heartbeat. It’s an odd relationship (as was mine with her ) – but fuck, what isn’t?
We’re all such hypocrites.
Modern college girls seem to have another major character flaw: They’re also stupid.
Not everyone is a hypocrite and this is a mentality that keeps people cynical and defeatist. It’s like saying all politicians are crooks, etc. That’s not true and it also keeps people in a cynical mindset that can lead to them not even trying to change things for the better in the world.
I want to point out that not all women in college are “stupid” (wish I could put an eyeroll here), drunk too much of the time or having sex left and right. I was a virgin for most of my college years. I did go to community college and lived at home so I didn’t meet the # of men I could have if I’d lived on a college campus. Anyway, I never had sex with anyone I met at college either. I met at least a few very SMART men and women when I went and when I say smart I mean they had common sense also. Thanks for listening.
I never had sex with any of the women I met at college. The women I had sex with I met elsewhere. Yes, there was the ex-girlfriend, but that was years later, and neither of us was in college anymore. But like you, Laura, that was a community college and I didn’t live on campus.
I remember reading that 90% of college women are sexually active, and thinking, “The other 10% attend here.”
Laura
I want to point out that not all women
Laura. The NAWALT line is dead. You can put it away. It has the lowest possible burden of proof because all that is required is one single woman to NOT be like that. It makes such a statement essentially meaningless and useless. To say ‘not all women are like that’ to try and make a point about OTHER women is essentially the same as ‘one man is a rapist’ to make some point about men.
NAWALT really should be destroyed and put away by the women. Certainly us men are sick of hearing it and rebutting it.
Can’t you think of something a little more intelligent to say?
The NAWALT argument (I will go out on a limb and assume that this means Not All Women Are Like That) does not in any way, shape, or form demonstrate that all or even most women are wonderful human beings. That is totally correct.
Then again, nobody is claiming that it does, so I have to wonder why you bothered disputing a point which nobody was making.
Of course, the old YCAFO (You Can Always Find One) argument is no better. For instance, I could claim that Eastern European MEN are just worthless. You could then give an example of a truly wonderful European man and, if I didn’t feel like acknowledging this (but I know I can’t deny that there are some), I could just say that well hell, there are MILLIONS of EEM, so the fact that you found one or two who are worth the time of day doesn’t really mean anything.
I could do that, but it would be a worthless argument.
I have a son and it has been a concern for me that he could very well fall victim to a gal that decided she was raped the next morning. I said the same thing. …how come the girl can get drunk and not be responsible for her actions but the boy, also drunk is suppose to not only be responsible for his actions but to also be a mind reader and discern that the half naked girl making out with him doesn’t want to have sex.
Thank gawd my son has had 2 long term girlfriends so the hooking up thing isn’t for him. I was seriously thinking of creating a form letter that the girl would have to sign consenting to sex. Talk about a mood breaker but it seemed a better idea than the possibility of some girl Monday quarterbacking her decisions.
I have been in similar situations and the next day I didn’t call rape, I dealt with myself making a stupid decision. And yes that’s how my friends were too. You take care of each other.
I’m not a sex worker (not even an amateur, though I’m into kink) What I am is a firm believer in self ownership, civil rights, and personal responsibility. So I find your blog to be utterly fascinating in how it can be such a universal voice despite the topics.
Most of my friends are male, including my closest and oldest. I’ve always related more to straight guys (platonic relations) than girls. Even now in my thirties I don’t have too many close female friends. So, thankfully, most of my understanding on how men “are” or can “be” came from the various males in my life. Very little came from the guarded gossips of other women, romantic lifestyle magazines or frilly self help columns. These guys have tended to be quite honest, sometimes brutal, sometimes sentimental, about who they are, what they want, and what they do to get it.
As to Paglia, she’s has always tried to make it clear that she doesn’t blame the victim. Her critics will say that she failed, and that’s precisely what she does. I really can’t see it since she so often writes out of the desire for women to take responsibility for themselves. Essentially, to take responsibility for their power as women and the same goes for men. Hell, I’d say that if she did anything wrong it’s to be a naive idealist. 😉 Either way, she always struck me as clearly acknowledging that “long ago” isn’t all that long ago and in some places, is very much still the here and now.
And that’s the thing. To go along with something like your car keys in New York analogy. At the beach, when we acknowledge and raise awareness of the jagged rocks and sudden riptides lurking below the waves it’s not done to put blame on the last drowning victim or to single out the ocean as “bad”. It’s done to try and prevent other victims. It’s also rarely a direct order to stay out of the water as everyone knows that there is no way to do so, short of putting us in a cage.
As adults we can all choose, and most importantly, should be free to choose if and when we go swimming. Pretending that everything is safe, that the dangers don’t exist, that signs shouldn’t be read, or that precautions needn’t be taken is reckless and down right immoral.
And that is what pisses me off the most about the “moral” and “social” crusaders who try to make everyone “A Victim” or who regulate our responsibilities away from us. They take away from us our ability to be aware and to use that awareness to live.
Beautifully said, Maria. Thank you! 🙂
“Can’t you think of something a little more intelligent to say?”-No, I’m a Western woman. D :
I wanted to put this D : (smiling head) and couldn’t even do that right on my 1st try! We Western women are so pathetic, horrible, and so many other bad things there’s not enough room for me to list them all!
LOL! 😀
There’s a couple of things I think make modern feminists want to excuse such foolish female behavior in all cases.
First is an oversensitivity to anything victim-blaming. Like some allergies, overexposure to this toxic meme has produced an overreaction in some. There are a lot of times when a rape occurs and people tend to focus on the woman’s behavior. While not unrelated, the fact that the accused is capable of raping is probably more important than anything the woman did, yet people often pile hate on the woman. Even when an 11-year got ganged raped a New York Times writer decided to blame her mother.
Second is that expecting women to enforce their boundaries might seem perfectly reasonable, but only really in a perfect world. In a perfect world every woman would stop and think about what she wants in any situation and tell others with certainty. Of course in a perfect world guys would always respect Women’s wishes too.
Meanwhile in this world women don’t always express their desires. They are afraid of confronting the large muscular man in front of them about how the evening should go. They sometimes even forget to ask themselves what exactly they want. Sometimes they even go into sex thinking it’s normal or romantic for the guy to be forceful.
Maybe you’ve heard of the “Twilight” series? Before the guy and girl even meet the guy follows her around and watches her sleep without any knowledge let alone consent. But instead of being treated as creepy stalking, it’s presented as a romantic gesture. Also a dozen other things feminists have explored in various articles.
I visit girlsaskguys.com sometimes, and once a guy asked “Should guys ask before they kiss?” and most of the women preferred men to not ask, i.e. to kiss without consent and hope for the best. So sex without consent = rape, kissing without consent = ???
I guess, raw naviete also plays a big factor. Young women just don’t see men as being out to get them always (or more precisely to get their vagina). Ironically, that’s only true in a perfect world.
Unfortunately, blaming women for rape, or not calling it rape just because the woman wasn’t feminist/empowered enough does not help.
Ironically though, it seems that the modern feminists (not quite the same as your neo-feminists) expect and demand men to not rape (though that doesn’t always work), while it seems to be up to Maggie and the archeofeminists to remind women that yes, men can and do rape. While practical and quite frankly necessary, this message paints you, Maggie, as the man hater. You might not hate men, but you have previously expressed certain beliefs about male sexuality that imply rape as being inevitable (with morally weak men and foolish women anyway).
Like Neofeminists or Archeofeminist the 3rd-wave feminist would like to be able to end rape. But because of the belief that our understanding of morality, how to deal with sex, and the morality of sexuality is ultimately a cultural thing, there is the potential to shift the culture and prevent most rapes. Towards that end, many feminists tend to focus on the idea that “Men should stop raping people,” (though at the expense of more pragmatic advice for individual women, though I did first here about ‘calling in’ from a sex ed site that was also feminist).
I apologize for the rant, but I have to ask, Maggie, do you see men and women’s behavior as potentially changeable? Could we prevent most rape with the right cultural change? If so, how do we do that, and how do we balance it with protecting women in the short term?
I think the most important factor in preventing rape is eliminating all the stupid cultural baggage Western civilization has encumbered it with, and the stupid political bullshit feminists have heaped on it, and recognizing forcible rape as what it is: a crime, just like robbery or assault. It’s not a special, mystical, magical crime but a crime like any other. But of course people always want to pretend that sex changes everything, which it doesn’t.
What is a crime? Ignoring nonsense like “victimless crimes” and “crimes against the state”, a crime is what happens when one person ignores another’s rights and wishes and crosses that person’s boundaries in some harmful way, by hurting him, taking something that belongs to him, etc. We don’t politicize theft or assault, so why do we politicize rape? Why do feminists proclaim that rape is “a tool of patriarchal oppression” when men and children can and are raped as well? Because they use it as an excuse for a power grab, is why. Culturally speaking, nobody pretends that a victim of theft or assault “asked for it”, but nobody pretends that everyone has the responsibility to protect his own possessions or personal safety, either.
But the majority of rapes aren’t forcible, but rather the result of crossed signals. So here’s what we need to do: Educate kids of both sexes about male-female differences instead of filling their heads full of neofeminist “we’re all the same” lies, because it’s the only way they’ll understand that we’re not working from the same script. Girls need to know that boys will interpret many things as consent whether intended as such or not, and boys need to understand that their hormones will color their judgment and skew their perception. And both need to learn responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Murder is also a crime that’s politicized a lot by many. 1 thing that’s horrible about this is there’s people who’ll take the time to be involved in this type of thing, but don’t do a thing for the MVS OR even sign parole protest petitions (most take less than 5 minutes to do). Instead they spend hours endlessly debating about the death penalty without a thought to the REAL people involved in EACH death penalty case. This is 1 example of it. Another is to automatically support any “hard on crime” candidate without bothering to check the person’s track record, background, etc. Too many of these hard on crime candidates could also care less about the real people involved in murder cases. As far as the term “crimes against the state” murder is 1 in the sense that in each murder there’s at least a few who are victimized besides the actual victim. Also, in serial killer cases there have been whole groups of victims in 1 state or several state areas. Thanks for listening.
If I felt like it, I could lease a top of the line red Mercedes convertible, put on my most expensive clothes, bedeck myself with jewels, withdraw $10,000 in cash from the bank, and then drive to the worst part of my local city blasting the radio and flashing my bling.
When I got robbed, mugged and/or beat up it wouldn’t be my fault, of course. It would be because of the city’s “culture of violence.” I’d have had an equal chance of being assaulted had I gone into the city quietly and modestly. Thus we see that people being victims has nothing to do with the way they actually behave, it’s always the other guy’s fault.
If the other guy is committing crimes, then, well, yeah. It is his fault. He made the choice to put a gun to someone’s head, no one – aha – put a gun to his head and made him commit the crime.
Women are not helpless twee idiots reliant on outside agency for their own well-being; conversely, let’s not exchange one condescending pose of adults-as-infants for another and excuse men of responsibility for their own choices.
Let’s instead assume we’re all old enough to wipe our own arses, and agree that people who twit around assuming they have an invisible force field protecting them from all consequences of acting like an idiot are, in fact, idiots with a lesson to learn, and equally that people who commit crimes are criminals and deserve all the consequences thereof.
The presence of genitals does not excuse the lack of brains. For either party.
Very well-said, Emily. 🙂
My comment was satirical, but I think I made the satire too realistic. I was parodying the feminists idea that no matter what the circumstances, women aren’t at fault and to claim so is “victim blaming.”
If I really did do the above, I’d have to share some culpability for my fate. People need to use their heads.
[…] the most dangerous lie that feminism spreads is their lie about rape. The Honest Courtesan speaks, In her 1991 essay “Rape and Modern Sex War”, the ever-controversial Camille Paglia called for […]
This discussion reminds me of a case close to home. An 11 y/o girl was (allegedly) gang raped by 18 males ranging in age from 14 to 27.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/14/texas.alleged.rape/index.html?iref=allsearch
Now supposedly, the actual rape is becoming NOT the issue. Rather some in the community are trying to put the blame on the 11 y/o and her mother and father. Saying that the girl wore makeup and that she didn’t dress appropriately for a child her age, that the mother and father should have been around more, etc.
To me, cases like this are cut and dry (was going to say black and white but wouldn’t want anyone to mistake a reference for skin color).
That one pisses me off so much. They all need to die in a fire.
What astonished me most about that was that some of the arguments used against the girl were the sorts of things one hear used in one-on-one, “he said, she said” rape situations. If the case was just the 11-year-old girl and the 14-year-old boy, and there was no evidence of force and the boy claimed it was consensual, we might be able to excuse a little of that sort of talk because they’re both kids with poor judgment. But that’s not what happened; this was a GANG RAPE! There is no way to spin this into a “he said, she said” or to pretend that the girl “asked for it”. None.
Some mental midget (a woman, yet) even said the girl “dressed like a prostitute”. Because obviously all prostitutes want to be gang raped for free. I won’t go as far as Emily, but…one wonders how many ape souls are running around out there dressed in human bodies. 🙁
Dressed like a prostitute pffffft. What does that even mean? You should see the way I dress, jeans (not even tight ones mind you), t-shirt (loose by the way), sneakers. Maybe we should start saying “Dressed like Brittney Spears” or “Dressed like Christina Aguilera”. They expose more skin not covered by painted on clothes than any hooker I ever met.
Yeah, that’s a pet peeve of mine as well. Talk about an ignorant stereotype! These doofuses need to read my column of August 15th. 🙁
Ah. Tee shirt with smart-assed captions, jeans and sneakers.
Or in my case, an ankle-length embroidered dress and sandals. Or since the incident occurred in wintertime, a sweater and skirt with boots.
I think the reason many feminists are so over-sensitive to this kind of thing is because rape is about the only crime in which the fact that the victim wasn’t absolutely cautious can lead to the predator walking free, and even change the roles so that the victim is seen as the predator. They think that reminding women about what they can do against being raped re-inforces this. Of course, the sensitive approach would not be to ban all advice for avoiding rape, but rather make sure that not following all those advices does not lead to a person being denied their right to sexual autonomy.
Exactly, Sina. Society recognizes a woman’s right to do other things which might be dangerous (skydiving, mountain climbing, auto racing), but as soon as sex is involved the busybodies either want to protect us from our own choices or to say “well, you had it coming so tough luck.” 🙁
What the hell does dressed like a prostitute even mean?
Ever been to a club recently? I live in a big East Coast city – and the clubs are filled with tarty looking girls who 10 years ago would have had to have been prostitutes.
I hardly think conclusions can be made by dress.
In contrast, the woman I keep mentioning (“Mina”) who I dated in Seoul who happened to be working for an agency was a stunning dresser: and never looked like a whore.
What she looked like was a stunning young woman.The city was filled with them.
Actually, amateurs have dressed far more “sluttily” than most whores since at least the 1960s, and to a lesser extent back to the 1920s. 🙂
My theory: Amateurs still think they have something to prove. As opposed to professionals, who have tangible grasp of the proof and the tax receipts to show for it.
Might also be that when one learns cleavage has no more inherent power than a well-timed wink, one goes with the wink and a comfortable shirt.
“Dressed like a prostitute” has bugged me for a while. Why not “dressed like she’s hot and she knows it” or “dressed like she knows youth is fleeting?”
Even given the greater visibility of streetwalkers (and the relative invisibility of the more numerous escorts), why does a woman (or a little girl, as the case of that poor eleven-year-old shows) being dressed like a prostitute have to do with anything? If she actually looked like a prostitute, guys should have been offering her money for sex, not taking it by force. Or do the people making these fashion cracks not know what a prostitute is?
Gorbachev
What the hell does dressed like a prostitute even mean?
It means better dressed and more skin covered than your average western woman office worker.
I went to the Reeperbahn in hamburg one time to just ‘look around’. It was a real seedy place. 4-5 street walkers offered me their wares while I was just looking around. Sure, they did have higher heels and shorter skirts…but I see more breasts in your average project meeting with western women. As I noted on spearhead….I really do wish women would put their breasts away in the office. We have work to do.
By the way Maggie. Where I live. There is a night club between the office and my apartment. We’ve had two warm days here. So the girls on thursday night were out again.
In the long summer months the girls get plastered so much that they often fall down on the street and need to be held up by an almost as drunk boy. They are dressed like sluts staggering all around the place but, for some reason, demand that they have a ‘right’ to be safe and not the object of some ‘sex attack’.
This would be the equivalent of doing a ‘bruce willis’ in Die hard 3 walking down Harlem with a sandwhich board saying “I hate niggers” and claiming I have a ‘right to be safe’.
Adults should have enough sense to know that there are some men (and women) out there who might rob you or harm you and that it’s a real good idea not to provoke them or give them too much of an opportunity. But this seems to be totally lost on the slutty teens I see every thursday/friday night at this club in the summer.
“Slutty teens”-NICE ASS-umption there! So you automatically think they’re having sex with everyone at any time PLUS they dress to show they are? Great! Right before this you say for people to not provoke crimes against them and right after talk about “slutty teens”. Again, nice ASS-umptions!
Uh-oh, somebody’s picking on the teenagers. I’m biting my binky now.
Long time reader, first time poster. You and your blog come to me highly recommended by Amanda Brooks.
On to my comment: THANK YOU! I found this post via your post on SlutWalk. I work as a writing tutor at a university in Chicago and I find far too many of my co-ed colleagues harbor the idea that any sort of advocation of street smarts to help protect against rape (or any other violent crime) is merely, and I quote one particularly obnoxious Gender Studies and Philosophy major, “giving into dominator society”. Gag me with a spoon. Since when is street smarts victim blaming?
I thought it was a generational thing as this major is all of 21 years old and I am 30 going on 50. While I know I am not invincible, I do know that having street smarts has saved me in many situations that could have ended up ugly for me. I HAD to have street smarts. My high school was located on the other side of the city, which meant there was a vast number of opportunities for me to become a statistic. The fact that I didn’t isn’t purely because of luck or good fortune as some like my colleague want to (need to) believe. It is because I knew that if I had to ride a late train home without my friends, then I sit in the front car, close to the conductor; that I don’t take the short-cut home when it’s past a certain time, no matter how exhausted I was and how many other times I had taken it before and everything turned out okay; that I don’t walk down the street with earphones blaring and I can’t hear someone walking up behind me to bop me over the head,etc. None of this would ever excuse a violent criminal, but I’m not willing to be harmed just because someone “shouldn’t” hurt me and the idea that somehow my anti-violence principles is a pointy sword that makes violent thugs run the other way in fear.
I was in a sorority when I went to college. I went to plenty of frat parties and got plenty smashed. BUT, my sisters and I watched out for each other. Always. If by some chance one of my sisters hadn’t been seen in a while, you best believe we put together a search party pronto. There were a couple of instances where we got into yelling matches with frat boys or even with another sister because we could see a disaster in the making.
Hi, Aspasia! “Dominator society”, yikes! The way some of these girls carry on I wonder if anything bad has ever happened to them; they seem to completely underestimate reality. 🙁
Same Aspasia here, had to log-in using Facebook for the first comment because I was away from my home computer.
Anyway, as far as I know, nothing bad has happened to them. But they also don’t travel too far outside of their protective cocoons. This may change soon as most of them are finally venturing outside of the upper middle-class suburban bubble they were raised in to go to grad school. The neighborhood in Chicago where the school is located is very suburban like, even though crime happens there frequently too. There’s an overall, “That won’t happen to ME” attitude among the students on campus. We’ve had a string of laptop thefts from the library for over a year and despite signs all over the place advising them not to leave their stuff unattended, people still do then they stand mystified and crying when they return from the bathroom and their $1500 Apple computer apparently had an app for legs.
I’m going to stop there because I’ll go on and on.
Exactly what I was thinking. People who see the world in such idealistic terms have usually never been hungry, poor, raped, betrayed by someone they love or any other thing that tends to wake a person up to the fact that the world isn’t all moonlight & roses.
[…] When theft happens, no one claims that in our country, there is a “bad attitude” towards the propertied class. It is not because people do not have a “bad attitude” towards the propertied class, or because the thieves do not share this “attitude”. They almost certainly do. But, we do not hear this argument. We know why men steal. But, I would say that we ought to know why men rape too. But, what if you were robbed because you kept the door unlocked in the night? Any sane man would say, “You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?” […]
[…] Do Indian men have a “bad attitude” towards women? Perhaps, but if people are moral retards, what we have to establish are the true proportions. When theft happens, no one claims that in our country, there is a “bad attitude” towards the propertied class. It is not because people do not have a “bad attitude” towards the propertied class, or because the thieves do not share this “attitude”. They almost certainly do. But, we do not hear this argument. We know why men steal. But, I would say that we ought to know why men rape too. But, what if you were robbed because you kept the door unlocked in the night? Any sane man would say, “You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?” […]
[…] for examination rooted in misogyny. The Female Matrix has claimed that any consequences, especially completely predictable ones, shall not be, must not be, can not be, ever attributed to the female’s action, nor does she […]
Reblogged this on oogenhand.
(nods) This isn’t an either-or situation. This is a both-and situation.
Guys, keep it in your pants, especially when she’s trashed. Gals, be careful out there.
Not either-or. Both-and.
(Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c) — well done, buddy. Ya dun guud. Frustrating? of course. But you did the right thing. The manly thing.)
I like Paglia’s statement; I like yours. “Locks don’t stop a thief, they just keep honest men honest.” Truth.
The one difference between the thief, in Paglia’s statement, and the male rapist — the one that tightens my jaw — is that the police probably *will* pursue the thief. But the rapist? Will they pursue the rapist?
Will they even call it “rape?”
*That’s* what torques my jaw.