Going through my endless backlog of unfinished posts I found this great extended excerpt from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon about rape culture that (not surprisingly) meshes well with my theory of women as the “no-sex” class. (Clue: the culture of rape apology blames women for even imaginary hints of sexuality; absolves men as helplessly unable resist “opportunities” to commit rape.)
Rape culture demonizes sexuality. This was the big idea underlying Yes Means Yes, and I think it’s a valid one. It’s clear that secular rape culture demonizes female sexuality. Rape apologists argue that women are dirty sluts but ashamed of their slutty behavior, so they “cry rape”. Rape culture looks the other way when men use sex to humiliate women, from cat calling to men talking trash about female bodies to score points with friends. Rape culture also demonizes male sexuality. While officially condemning rape, rape culture portrays male sexuality as inherently mean-spirited, aggressive, and out of control. No distinction is made between a desire to fuck a woman and a desire to humiliate and overpower her. Rape culture is one where men who have consensual sex with women are encouraged to see it as somehow getting one over on her. Rape culture talks about men “scoring”, as if women are the opposing team, and while overt force is officially condemned, rape culture thinks it’s cute when men try to overcome women’s opposition to intercourse through lies and other forms of coercion.
Needless to say, the Catholic church completely agrees that sexuality is shameful and dirty. When you think of sex as a bad thing, it’s a short leap to seeing it as a way to dominate and hurt others, including children.
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Rape culture is less a result of female oppression per se, and more the result of the exaltation of male dominance. Men are encouraged to see dominance as the defining trait of masculinity, and since sexuality is tied up in our gendered images of ourselves, sex itself becomes an expression of male dominance for some men.
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In a culture where male sexuality is assumed to be domineering and debasing, then some men will, for various reasons, skip right past raping women on to raping children.
I’d just add that to encourage men to exalt dominance rape culture is also to nervously admit that men in turn are dominated by their own unthinking and unthinkably bestial reflexes. Which necessarily implies that to whatever extent rape apologists claim they either hate or “love” women they also both hate and fear men. One more reason men should prefer feminism. Especially contemporary feminism which at its core is the startling proposition that women, and men, are neither property nor animals but human beings.
I do not have any real
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Tue, 2010-05-25 22:32.I do not have any real experience dealing with “rape apologists” so I can’t say what it is that they would prefer. But (just to play devil’s advocate) there is a difference between believing that something is true and wanting it to be true. There may be many or even most “rape apologists” who believe that most men are dominance-obsessed, out-of-control sex maniacs, and there is nothing (or at least nothing ethical) which can be done about this aside from encouraging women to protect themselves, but they’re still not too fond of the way things are.
I say this because I’ve seen people who predicted disasters (whether the disaster actually came about or not) being accused of wanting bad things to happen because they “like seeing others to get hurt” or “need to be right at all costs” or both. (Most of the time, I seriously doubt that this is true.) The point is that you shouldn’t automatically subscribe negative motives to negative beliefs.
(Of course, if someone does have some compelling evidence that most rape apologists do indeed like “the way things are” in their view, then never mind.)