I've just skim read that whilst waiting for my food to be ready and looks very interesting. Will defo read properly.
I was actually on a thread the other day where people were talking about the modern need to put everything in boxes and in some ways I find this applies here too, in that people often take an extremely reductive view of very nuanced topics. Sometimes I feel it's not in good faith as it's very easy just to call somebody a bigot rather than intellectually engage, and it's also sadly an effective tactic as it can often snowball.
I remember a case at Warwick uni a few years back which caught my attention as I live nearby at the time. The guy was called George Lawlor and he was a bit of a pompous twat but was massively piled on in a way which I remember thinking was disproportionate to his actual misdemeanours - this was when I first became aware of cancel culture.
He basically wrote a snarky article in response to being invited to 'I Heart Consent' training, saying he didn't need to be told not to have sex without consent. He said:
"I don’t have to be taught to not be a rapist. That much comes naturally to me, as I am sure it does to the overwhelming majority of people you and I know."
He included a photo of himself holding up a sign reading 'This is not what a rapist looks like'. Now he was defo being a bit needlessly pompous with some of his comments about 'there are real people who need your help', but the way he was hounded out of his lectures was an eye opener for me.
He apparently had people screaming 'rapist' at him on campus and was repeatedly threatened with violence by other men when out at night (they obviously believed he was some kind of sex offender) to the point where he stopped attending lectures.
Yes, he came across like a bit of a self assured knob, and yes he might've foreseen this not ending well, but the guy was far from being an actual rapist. His whole point was that most men understand consent and I'm inclined to agree.
I'm not as invested as him and I think there is defo value in speaking to younger teenagers about coercion/social pressure etc, and not being afraid to say 'no'. But do I believe that students smart enough to get into Warwick University need to be told that you don't shag somebody unless it's clear they're also up for it?
I'm pretty sure it's stating the bleeding obvious and in fact I'm more inclined to think it obfuscates the real problem when we make out that rapists are just confused men who were never told that it's wrong to have sex with unwilling partners. The real problem IMO is deviant men who know what they're doing is wrong and don't care. It's them we need to focus on.
I sometimes feel similarly about male violence and the way many women seem to think that if we remind men enough it'll 'trickle down' and make them suddenly realise that violence is wrong. In reality, it's a hugely complex issue and the average guy isn't the problem. It's not IMO something that can be resolved by telling people "violence is bad, m'kay?"
God, I've gone on a proper rant but cancel culture is something that similarly fascinates and reviles me. Interestingly, me and my brother used to do experiments to see how people would react to us both saying the same thing. Invariably, I always seemed to be able to get away with much more as a woman. He'd put forwards arguments I'd previously expressed and people would react with much more hostility most times.