Hey guys! Vacation was fun. Stuff, unfortunately, Kept Happening while I was gone, which was deeply insensitive of it, so I’ll just round up the shit that happened with my commentary.
1) Chick-Fil-A, in a move that surprises no one, fucking hates gay people. The Jim Henson Company has severed all ties with them! So that’s good. Yay Muppets! And Chick-Fil-A is blatantly lying about why it was severed, which is less good and more fucking hilarious.
2) Scotland is introducing gay marriage. I’m rejoicing with you, Scottish LGB people!
3) TW for rape of children. Our culture moves, slowly but surely, into one where it is generally considered not okay to cover up child molestation! Monsignor Lynn becomes the first Catholic priest convicted of covering up child molestation by priests, while the NCAA sanctions Penn State in a way that leaves a lot of assholes whining about how the football program is hurt. Maaaybe they should have thought of that before they covered up the rape of children.
4) Clarisse Thorn has a dissection of a (TW for descriptions of rape) rapey PUA lay report and a conversation about the gender politics of erections.
5) Racialicious talks about the weight of being a young and successful black man and about developing an ethical manhood.
6) More on objectification in Magic Mike. I swear I’m linking to every article on objectification in Magic Mike I can find just so I don’t have to watch that damn movie.
7) Massive TW for descriptions of rape from the point of view of a rapist. The Reddit thread where rapists share their experiences of being rapists. I haven’t read the whole thing (God, I would vomit) and I was very conflicted about posting this. There’s a horrible element to this of “it’s so brave for the rapists to share their stories, and it’s in the past so they don’t owe a debt to the law or anything,” a lot of self-congratulatory rapists, a centering of rape around the rapist as opposed to the survivor, and I do not want to ignore or downplay that. However, I do think the number of men who are all “I hate rapists I will kill them all” is very interesting (shades of Knight/Beast dichotomy) and also I found it somewhat interesting how this entire thread is evidence that feminist theories of what rapists are like and how rapists act are, you know, entirely true. As sad as it is, there is nothing that surprised me in the portions of that thread I managed to read, although there was quite a lot that made me want to take a shower.
8) A grocery store creates a “man aisle.” The items sold include ramen, snack foods, condiments, beer, and condoms. Siiiiigh. The idea, however, is based on the good news that the percentage of men who shop for their families has more than doubled in the last thirty years. Equality is coming!
Chick-Fil-A has been semi-openly homophobic for some time now. I wonder why it doesn’t seem like people started really to pay attention to that until fairly recently. Did they do something really stupid that I missed, was it because the Mayor of Boston said “nope, not in my town” and it kind of snowballed from there, or something else?
Ozy I’m interested in your comment about the knight/beast dichotomy and men who harbor vitriolic hate for rapists. Mainly because I am pretty good at harboring vitriolic hatred and rapists tend to be some of my main targets of hating. (It’s gotten to the point where I wonder if I am getting ironic.)
However, it has been a very long time since I harbored any vaguely Knight-like thoughts for myself.
Archy- I see where you’re coming from, and when I browsed the thread (I didn’t read every post), I was struck, in several cases, that rape seemed to enter into the picture when the traditional gender roles meet up with alcohol. What I mean is this: woman doesn’t say yes or no clearly (or says yes, but then decides no, and the man reports not getting that no relayed to him), and the guy presses on because sex, then notices that she’s freezing up, or upset, vel sim., and stops. In those cases, NOONE seemed to think that communication was… Read more »
I think sometimes, just sometimes (don’t shoot me for this!) rapists have no idea what is going on and truly believe consent exists still. It seems alcohol could do that, if you’re so into sex but you’re drunk it may mess up your minds ability to truly focus on the others body language, misread stuff, hyperfocus on the act of sex alone, etc. It seems a verbal no is a quick way to realize consent is removed but in a few of those cases there wasn’t any verbal No’s, so the rapist was under the impression it was all ok.… Read more »
RE: Number 7. I actually feel bad for some of the “both drunk, one went too far” cases. It doesn’t excuse their actions but it is pretty damn sad that they actually thought everything was going ok and to then find out the person had passed out. It’s good to see they are showing remorse and have that sick feeling once they realize. I hate rape, I hate rapists, but some of the cases described in that reddit thread are pretty damn vague, there are both men n women there talking about in a few cases where they were both… Read more »