#safetytipsforladies: A hashtag about how tired women are of being told to do stupid, ineffective, unrealistic things to avoid being raped.
Trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture.
Zerlina Maxwell offers ways to prevent rape without making women responsible for the crimes committed against them
I took part in a recent debate on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show about whether women should just get guns in order to prevent rape. There I said the following:
“I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.”
As a rape survivor, the conversation about how to best combat rape and domestic violence is personal and can be very challenging. Rape culture is a pervasive part of our society because of social conditioning. Yet we struggle to find ways to avoid patterns of victim blaming and many of us would rather advise women on the precautions they should take to avoid being raped as opposed to starting at the root of the problem: teaching men and boys not to be rapists in the first place.
When I said that “We can prevent rape by telling men not to commit it,” I wasn’t expressing some simplistic, fantastical worldview. There are organizations like Men Can Stop Rape and Men Stopping Violence that are already doing the work to train men from a young age to understand and challenge rape culture. Interestingly enough, many who disagreed with my argument chose to send me rape threats, insults, and dismissive remarks that in many ways proved my point.
We need a cultural shift NOW. In hopes of getting a conversation started, here are five practical ways by which we can teach men not to rape…
heavy trigger warnings for rape.
all right, I’ve calmed down enough to post this, and hell fuckin’ no I ain’t blurrin’ out names.
hi my name is rachael, and this is why feminism is still needed. I have nothing else to say.
I cannot even. Like I can’t even think of the words. How fucking. How are these people alive and this fucking despicable? I think we need to forward this to their parents immediately. They will be fucking ashamed that they have raised such vile creatures. (Honestly, if anyone can figure out a way to do this, I really think it should be done.)
OP, I can only feel for you. I wouldn’t have been able to stick it out nearly as long as you did. You are a much stronger person than me, and I am sending you all my respect and solidarity.
ETA: She’s blanked out the names now. Apparently people were sending them death threats…
"The difference between “all men are rapists” and “a woman cannot tell by looking at a man whether he is a rapist” is vast and readily discerned. And I am really tired of reading rape apologists conflate the two, as if they are easily confused. Failing to distinguish between the two is not a mistake; it’s an agenda."
Austin area comedian Curtis Luciani on the fact that there is even a debate over Daniel Tosh
Let’s imagine a world in which women cut men’s dicks off. Like, frequently. To the extent that one in five men has had his dick cut off by a woman or had a woman attempt to cut his dick off.
(I apologize immediately if it sounds like I’m being flip. I am not being flip. Imagine the pain and shame and humiliation of someone cutting your dick off. Imagine it in earnest.)
Sometimes it’s a clear-cut case where a woman attacks you in the street, out of nowhere, and cuts your dick off. But more often it’s a situation where you actually know the woman, maybe you trust her, maybe you think everything’s okay, and then one day she cuts your dick off.
Still with me? This is going to take a while. I’ll tell you when I’m done. (And if you think I’m being insufferably self-righteous: Good news, you don’t have to read this!)
Okay, now let’s also say that the shame and guilt around having your dick cut off is so strong that many dick-cuttings go completely unreported. After all, someone is likely to raise the question of whether or not you were “asking for it” in one way or another. And if you do accuse a woman of cutting your dick off, you can expect to see people (quite naturally) rally to her defense and slander your character in response.
You can expect to see her friends… who are maybe also friends or yours… shrug their shoulders and say “Well, I don’t know, it’s complicated… it sounds like something was just happening between the two of them and maybe it got out of hand. I dunno. But I know that Sarah’s not a bad gal. I know she would never, like, MALICIOUSLY cut a dude’s dick off.”
So, a shitty state of affairs for the men-folk of our imaginary world, yes?
Now imagine that in this world, something like 90 percent of professional performing comedians are women. And they’ve accepted that there are certain codes of behavior when it comes to comedy. Most people who “like comedy” generally accept the premise that there are no subject areas that cannot be somehow given a comic treatment, but it is also accepted, as a practical rule, that as the subject gets more troubling, more intense, more painful, a more skilled approach is necessary to find the humor in it.
However, it is also accepted that people are people and they are going to have authentic responses to things. It is accepted, for example, that you probably should not go in front of an audience that contains several black people and start tossing around the n-word unless you have an EXCEPTIONALLY sophisticated and road-tested routine built around it, one that you are confident will overcome the very significant risk you are incurring. If a comedian did this and did NOT overcome the risk, no one would be shocked if the audience shouted her down and stormed her out of the club, nor would anyone be particularly eager to defend her.
HOWEVER, there’s this ONE thing. Many of the comediennes of this world have this ONE little sticking point. One little thing. It just IRKS the hell out of them that they can’t seem to make jokes about cutting dicks off without some whiny pussy male in the audience throwing a shit fit about it!
Now, sure, there’s a few comediennes at the top of their game who can pull it off. Their approach is skillful, and they somehow make the joke without minimalizing or trivializing the actual pain involved. But then the rest of them think, “Well, geez, if they can do it, why can’t I? It’s not fair, darn it! I should be able to work with the same material as someone much better than me and get the same result and not make anyone hate me or say mean things about me on the Internet! Waaaaahhh!
“I mean, after all, do that many men REALLY get their dicks cut off? I’ve heard the statistic, but that’s probably overblown. And I bet a lot of them were asking for it. I mean, in any case, there’s a lot of grey area. I know one thing for sure: none of the men I KNOW has ever had his dick cut off. If they had, they would tell me, right? I mean, right? And besides, there’s a principle at stake here. I AM AN ARTIST. I should be able to say whatever shitty thing I want, and people should be able to suppress their authentic response to it!
“And if they DON’T suppress their authentic response to it: why, that’s censorship or something! Besides, I know this and that example of a time where a comedienne I know made a joke that wasn’t even ABOUT dick-cutting, and some whiny pussy dude got upset about it anyway! It’s just these humorless masculinists! They can’t take a joke about anything anyway. So, since I can think of examples where a comedienne was unfairly criticized by someone without a sense of humor, this must be what happens in all cases.”
Okay, I think we see what I’m getting at here.
Fine, yes, WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER. I will concede the following points that every comedian wants us all so badly to concede:
1) Theoretically, there is no subject that should be considered off-limits for humor.
2) There will always be some example where a performer of extremely high skill can take something very painful and make it work.
But…
Here’s what YOU need to understand:
1) Rape is way, WAY more prevalent than you seem to think it is. Are there more than five women in your audience? You do the math, and then you run the little fantasy scenario that I just put together in your head, and you tell me how it feels.
2) I ain’t buying any of that “If I can make jokes about genocide, why can’t I make jokes about rape?” Horseshit, unless you made those genocide jokes during a gig at the Srebrenica Funny Bone. You got away with making a joke about genocide because your odds of having a holocaust survivor’s kid in the audience were pretty fucking low.
And if you did happen to have one in the audience, and he heckled you, walked out, and wrote something nasty on the internet… would you be more likely to be a human being and say “Wow. I can understand why that person’s authentic response to what I was doing was so emotional and negative. Maybe my genocide material just isn’t good enough to justify the pain that it inflicts. Maybe I need more skill in order to pull this off.” Or are you gonna be a lousy piece of shit and say, “Yeah, I apologize, I guess, IF YOU WERE OFFENDED.”
Offended hasn’t got anything to do with it, moron.
People have wounds, and those wounds are painful. That doesn’t have shit to do with the weak concept of “taking offense.” If someone talks about Texas being a shitty state, I might “take offense” at that. Fine, whatever. All of us who like comedy are generally in agreement with the idea that “taking offense” is lame, and a comedian should be willing to “offend” whenever he or she wants to.
But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies.
Malvina Reynolds - The Judge Said
The judge said “Screw ‘em!
Boys, you’re only human.
They brought it on themselves
By being born a woman.
Like a mountain’s there to climb
And food’s there to be eaten,
Woman’s there to rape,
To be shoved around and beaten.”
The judge took his position,
The judge he wouldn’t budge,
So we’ve got out this petition,
And we’re going to screw the judge.
Now if you beat a horse or dog
Or violate a bank,
Simonson will haul you in
And throw you in the clink.
But violate a woman,
Your equal and your peer,
The judge will slap you on the wrist
And lay the blame on her.
The judge took his position,
The judge he wouldn’t budge,
So we’ve got out this petition,
And we’re going to screw the judge.
To draw a true conclusion
From what Simonson has said,
Woman has to live in fear
And cover up her head.
She has to dress in purdah
And lock herself in cages,
And this kinky judge in Madison
Is from the Middle Ages.
The judge took his position,
The judge he wouldn’t budge,
So we’ve got out this petition,
And we’re going to dump the judge.
In 1977, Judge Archie Simonson said during a juvenile sexual assault case in Madison, Wisconsin that “given the way women dress, rape is a natural reaction”. He argued that the three juveniles being prosecuted in the case should not have to be punished for ‘reacting normally’. This led to the development of a group called Committee to Recall Judge Archie Simonson, who were borne out of an already healthy community of feminists working against sexual assault. Recent changes to the legal status of sexual assault, and a high number of recent cases of rape in the area meant that this issue was likely quite present already in the minds of both media and public when Simonson made his infamous remarks.
We might see some parallel between these events and the recent rise of the Slutwalk, inspired by the remarks of one Canadian policeman, Constable Michael Sanguinetti, who recommended women “avoid dressing like sluts” if they don’t want to be sexually assaulted or raped.
It’s something I’d like to look into more, but hopefully you will enjoy the awesome Malvina Reynolds and her take on the Simonson recall in the mean-time.
EDIT: Just re-reading, and want to clarify that I don’t know if Malvina Reynolds thinks that everyone dressed in “purdah”/burkas/hijabs etc. is being oppressed, but I don’t. I think her point is that we aren’t allowed to ‘dress slutty’ so-to-speak, according to Simonson, but she could probably do that in a way that doesn’t perhaps diminish some women’s choice to wear head-coverings.
imagine the transformative potential of responding to sexual assault differently.
I am working for the day where this is how the media handles sexual assault reports.
Sometimes I have the time and patience to get from an idea to a fully fleshed-out, penciled, inked and coloured comic.
Sometimes I don’t.
VICE WRITERS
Music Reviews
Rating: X(((((((
Ladies, imagine being a Vice writer. Just walking around everywhere with your entitlement and ennui and midlength penis all gently bouncing in step; wearing a male tank top or a waxed mustache or some shit. Imagine having an ironic, retro-sexist dudebro-voice and getting together with a couple of other white guys and some cocaine and making your not-at-all-different voices all sync up as tautly as your nihilistic senses of humor, then snuggling all up together (no homo!) in a big Bushwick loft of partially employed trust-fund kids while something noninformative is happening on the Internet. What a life. I guess there’s the whole “everyone in the world thinks I’m an asshole” thing to deal with, too, but let’s not split hairs here: Vice writers got it pretty fucking made.
