Not Joking About Rape
Apr. 16th, 2012 10:18 amDr. Science over at Obsidian Wings has an article about Being That Dad, the one who brings up uncomfortable subjects and confronts the status quo at his child's schools and social events. The subject he brings up is rape culture: the expectation that "boys will be boys" and "teenage boys joke about rape as a way of figuring out sexuality," and how this topic is Not Cool.
I know how he feels. I have two teenage daughters now, and as they get older I get more and more nervous about the fact that one in eighteen college men admits to using excessive alcohol and/or the threat of violence as a way of getting sex, and are comfortable describing it as long as it's not called "rape."
The other day I was bored and hanging out on a few porn Tumblrs, and I followed a link to a guy whose taste in women got progressively, disturbingly younger the closer to the present time I went. Just as disturbing was the language he used: "I can't wait to ruin a chick like that," "I can't wait to tear some chick's shit up." It reminded me that we live in a viciously rape-accepting culture: when Slashdot runs an article about brogrammers as guys who are "cool" because their employers provide "naked chicks in the hot tub," or when Don't Ask Don't Tell advocates claim that "unit cohesion depends upon a unified mindset that sees sexually conquering women as an important aspect of the soldier's persona," you're seeing a world where men look to other men for Iron John qualities and quantities of emotional validation and source of self-esteem, and see women as good only for sexual relief irrespective of their value as human beings.
Dr. Science has a nifty definition of this kind of sexual identity: subtractive masculinity, in which being "a man" is defined by being "not a woman": if women are socially smart, men must be socially dumb; if women are beautiful, men must be either slovenly or at least purely utilitarian; if woman are moral, men must be evil. The brogrammer thing upsets me especially because it's basically creating a Last Bastion of Male Privilege: a confluence of concentrated wealth, privilege, and a century of "girls can't do math" has all added up to a hyper-insulated culture dedicated to Keeping The Subhumans Out.
If you have a subtractive view of masculinity, as long as women keep demonstrating that they can do what men do, then eventually there will no masculinity, and no men. Guys who buy into this mindset are primed to be rapists: both their frustration with a system that is failing them and their inability to see women as fully human excuses what they do.
There's a reason I wear a kilt and the Tony Stark beard. There's a reason I can talk My Little Pony and bench press 230lbs. There's a reason I have a pink cell phone cover and a working knowledge of both handguns and the Bible. I hang out with my daughters and their peers all the time, volunteering regularly for chaperone duties, and I usually take the kilt: I want to demonstrate to the young men and women in their peer group, if only for a moment, that masculinity is not predicated on avoidance but instead relies on cultivating and building on courage, industry, resolution, self-reliance, discipline, and honor. You know, the human virtues.
If you can, help Jim Hines raise money for rape and battery shelters. But more than that, don't listen to jokes about rape and be silent. One in eighteen men admits to having used force and/or deliberate excessive intoxication as a way to coerce sex from an unconsenting victim. Rapists believe that all men rape, but the ones who don't get caught are just smarter at it. In any group where someone makes a joke about rape, if you don't speak up, that one guy in eighteen thinks you're on his side.
( Postscript: )
I know how he feels. I have two teenage daughters now, and as they get older I get more and more nervous about the fact that one in eighteen college men admits to using excessive alcohol and/or the threat of violence as a way of getting sex, and are comfortable describing it as long as it's not called "rape."
The other day I was bored and hanging out on a few porn Tumblrs, and I followed a link to a guy whose taste in women got progressively, disturbingly younger the closer to the present time I went. Just as disturbing was the language he used: "I can't wait to ruin a chick like that," "I can't wait to tear some chick's shit up." It reminded me that we live in a viciously rape-accepting culture: when Slashdot runs an article about brogrammers as guys who are "cool" because their employers provide "naked chicks in the hot tub," or when Don't Ask Don't Tell advocates claim that "unit cohesion depends upon a unified mindset that sees sexually conquering women as an important aspect of the soldier's persona," you're seeing a world where men look to other men for Iron John qualities and quantities of emotional validation and source of self-esteem, and see women as good only for sexual relief irrespective of their value as human beings.
Dr. Science has a nifty definition of this kind of sexual identity: subtractive masculinity, in which being "a man" is defined by being "not a woman": if women are socially smart, men must be socially dumb; if women are beautiful, men must be either slovenly or at least purely utilitarian; if woman are moral, men must be evil. The brogrammer thing upsets me especially because it's basically creating a Last Bastion of Male Privilege: a confluence of concentrated wealth, privilege, and a century of "girls can't do math" has all added up to a hyper-insulated culture dedicated to Keeping The Subhumans Out.
If you have a subtractive view of masculinity, as long as women keep demonstrating that they can do what men do, then eventually there will no masculinity, and no men. Guys who buy into this mindset are primed to be rapists: both their frustration with a system that is failing them and their inability to see women as fully human excuses what they do.
There's a reason I wear a kilt and the Tony Stark beard. There's a reason I can talk My Little Pony and bench press 230lbs. There's a reason I have a pink cell phone cover and a working knowledge of both handguns and the Bible. I hang out with my daughters and their peers all the time, volunteering regularly for chaperone duties, and I usually take the kilt: I want to demonstrate to the young men and women in their peer group, if only for a moment, that masculinity is not predicated on avoidance but instead relies on cultivating and building on courage, industry, resolution, self-reliance, discipline, and honor. You know, the human virtues.
If you can, help Jim Hines raise money for rape and battery shelters. But more than that, don't listen to jokes about rape and be silent. One in eighteen men admits to having used force and/or deliberate excessive intoxication as a way to coerce sex from an unconsenting victim. Rapists believe that all men rape, but the ones who don't get caught are just smarter at it. In any group where someone makes a joke about rape, if you don't speak up, that one guy in eighteen thinks you're on his side.
( Postscript: )
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