Facebook supports rape?

[MotherPanda]

Have we a thread on this yet?

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/04/facebook-hate-speech-women-rape?newsfeed=true

I am really shocked.

Lenin - I agree re. those words. I think, as with elements of misogyny, there are always elements of prejudice people/societies choose to discount and see as 'not really bad'. People who once would have accepted a husband's right to beat and rape his wife, would not be shocked by it. But a large proportion of people would still not really believe that some of the scenarios described in this thread are 'real' rape.

Likewise with those words - so many people who would think they are not prejudiced and who would be horrified at, for example, the idea of sending disabled children to make baskets instead of educating them, will still be sufficiently prejudiced to use words like that casually.

I think we can all agree that we live in a sexist society, right? I'm just checking.

Well what is rape apologism if not misogynist? These facebook pages that joke about rape are misogynist. The whole point of Cath Elliott's article is that the wider culture tolerates misogyny, and this culture of misogyny provides a conducive context for rape.

Ok and I agreed with her point. What I disagreed with was that this is a view that is held by the majority as implied and that rapists are no different from the average man in the street.

See we are now back to square one. Which is why I copied and pasted the arguments made by other posters at the beginning of the thread.

Now that we've come back full circle, I'm hiding this thread so I can get some work done.

I think so, proles, and I would think it's not really something you could deny (I'm not saying anyone on here has, btw). But then, if we accept that we do live in a misogynistic society, we must accept that not everyone does live by the same moral code we would all like to see everyone live by.

To me, I'm sorry, but saying that rapists are not ordinary men is both flying in the face of the evidence, and an attempt to pretend that the above is not true. It is true. None of us has to like it, but prejudices are accepted in our society. And our society tries very hard to make us believe that this is not so. And so people want to believe that rape doesn't really happen if you stay within the moral codes. We want to believe it so much that society generates rape myths, so we can pretend the rapes that happen so often aren't 'real' somehow.

This doesn't make anything better. It is a giant, collectively supported lie.

"What I disagreed with was that this is a view that is held by the majority as implied and that rapists are no different from the average man in the street."

I don't believe that these things were either implied or explicitly claimed in the article (and yes this thread is now going round in circles).

But racism and homophobia are socially acceptable.

The BNP is a legal political party and people openly support them.
A christian couple recently went to court because they thought they should be allowed to deny access to a gay couple at their BnB.

If these attitudes were genuinely socially unacceptable these things would not come up. The people who hold these views are ordinary people.

Things which really are socially unacceptable - like people don't say that they think child abuse should be legal, or that people should be allowed to open their back gardens up as cemetaries. These things are not socially acceptable, and anyone who thinks these things would not be considered normal by society, and would likely be shunned.

Ella - I agree that rapists often look like ordinary men. But to me, ordinary means that which I am used to, which I have met and experienced in my life, and have observed to be the norm in the groups of which I am a part - and by that definition, rape is not ordinary, nor is the attitude that rape is in any way acceptable.

I have a question, for those whose knowledge of the history of feminism is greater than mine. I have seen it quoted in the past that some feminists say all men are rapists. Is this something that feminists have actually said/believed, or is this part of the caricature of feminism that is used to discredit it?

"Many people are shocked and horrified at Facebook, many large companies have withdrawn their ads, that should stand as an example that the views held within those groups are not considered 'ordinary'."

Is there a link for that? How fantastic I would love to read about it.

No Proles, implied on here.

And Ella, you misunderstand the points we were trying to make. A rapist might not appear to be any different from ordinary men just as child abusers cannot be spotted or murderers. They don't have horns and a tail. The point we were making, and why I pasted the quotes as they said it much better than I, was that there may be characterists that all rapists shared that are obviously not seen by others.

I think we can all agree that a rapist - even a date rapist - is likely to feel a sense of entitlement, is likely to view women as lessers and is likely to be selfish. These are the things I was talking about. So that yes, rapists appear ordinary but they have characteristics that differ because not every man is prone to rape and some men even campaign against it, work with rape victims and dedicate their lives to stopping sex slavery and so on. So it appeared to myself and other posters that tainting men with the same brush was not fair and that is what Elliott appeared to be doing with that sentence.

SQ here

I didn't misunderstand, rhubarb, I just disagreed.

Rhubarb said, "We are not talking about other parts of the world, we are taking about the UK and in the UK it is no longer socially acceptable to be racist or homophobic."

I seriously beg to disagree. I have been in far too many social settings to count where racist and homophobic statements, remarks or jokes were made and not challenged by others present. That doesn't mean all the people present agreed with the statements, but they didn't feel strongly enough to say or do anything about it. If others remain silent, the speaker may take silence as an indication of agreement with their views. Therefore, the silence demonstrates that those views "are" socially acceptable, or at least not so unacceptable that folks are prepared to overtly challenge these.

As Prolesworth says, our culture, yes right here in 21st century UK, is very tolerant of misogyny and in one could say it is institutionalised. Not challenging or questioning the views of many people (whether in the majority or not) that women are at least in part to blame for being sexually assaulted is a function of that misogyny.

SD - I think that idea is a misquotation from Dworkin, who said it wasn't what she had said at all.

I've never met anyone who thinks that (and don't want to!).

But Rhubarb this is what you said:

"Rapists do not rape because they can. They rape because they are socially disfunctional (does that sit better?) and cannot perform unless they feel in control and powerful. "

"I didn't just mean in the bedroom SQ - I meant in life. Rapists dominate women and use them to satisfy their own needs. Therefore in life rapists are usually social wankers who like to feel powerful."

"Rapists are social wankers who usually take advantage of other situations. "

These are very specific character traits that should be fairly easy to spot. It seems a it different to what you are saying now - have you changed your mind?

AFAIK the 'all men are rapists' thing which is often quoted as an example of 'what feminists believe' comes from something a character says in Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room. Obviously it's not what feminists believe though: that's an anti-feminist myth.

Wow that is great that people are withdrawing advertising

No SQ, I still think that rapists like to feel dominant over women and I have said that in my last post. That they feel they have a right to sex and view women as the lesser sex.

At that point in the thread we were discussing rapists in general until someone mentioned acquaintance rapists and said that you could not profile an acquaintance rapist.

To which I replied that every group of people has characteristics in common according to sociological principles. And acquaintance rapists are a group of people along with domestic abusers.

I think I get it that you disagree. But my argument has not changed.

This is a bit of a tangent, but this discussion is reminding me of a rl discussion probably 15 years ago about violence against women.

I think it was sparked by an article (absolutely no idea where) that suggested that not all men have to beat their wives or rape to benefit from the actions of those who do.

Some men choose to use emotional, physical and sexual abuse to control women, to get them to do what they want and not do what they don't want them to do.

And, because this action isn't roundly condemned in society, it contributes to a wider "climate" in which even those women who aren't abused may be fearful of violence from men. As a result, they may behave in ways they think will help them avoid violence (e.g. deferring to men, being passive and servile, putting themselves down, not speaking out, submitting to sex when they don't want it, etc.)

So, even men who don't choose to be violent can still gain control over women as an indirect result of that wider culture of fear of violence amongst women.

It is only when they refuse to comply with that culture, stop colluding by staying silent and speak out against violence against women that they actually throw off the male privilege and stop benefiting from violence against women.

Isn't there a similar thread here related to Mr Average Joe who doesn't see himself as a rapist, has no attributes that distinguish him as a rapist, probably would never consider forcing a woman to have sex, but who tolerates the words and behaviours of other men who do?

"At that point in the thread we were discussing rapists in general until someone mentioned acquaintance rapists and said that you could not profile an acquaintance rapist."

But all rapes are committed by rapists in general. The conversation at that point was not talking exclusively about stranger rapists. It was talking about rapists in general ie all of them. Most people are raped by someone they know. So I don't understand what you are saying now?

So you still hold these views:

"Rapists do not rape because they can. They rape because they are socially disfunctional (does that sit better?) and cannot perform unless they feel in control and powerful. "

"I didn't just mean in the bedroom SQ - I meant in life. Rapists dominate women and use them to satisfy their own needs. Therefore in life rapists are usually social wankers who like to feel powerful."

"Rapists are social wankers who usually take advantage of other situations. "

Is that right?

There is a list of characteristics in Lisak and Miller's influential 2002 research paper 'Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists' (VERY well worth reading):

"Among the common characteristics shared by many incarcerated and undetected rapists are high levels of anger at women ... the need to dominate women ... hypermasculinity ... lack of empathy ... and psychopathy and antisocial traits" (see the original paper linked above for citations)

They go on to say that one other common characteristic is repeat offending.

So I don't think it's wrong to say that rapists exhibit certain characteristics, and nor is it wrong to say that these characteristics aren't shared by all men (obviously). What is very worrying is that these characteristics are supported by a culture that tolerates misogyny and that's what Cath E is saying in her article, as I understand it: that rapists rape because they can, because a culture that tolerates misogyny provides that conducive context for rape to happen. Most of those characteristics are not unusual in a misogynistic culture. And it's revealing and extremely worrying that 'hypermasculinity' is listed there, suggesting that one of the characteristics of rapists is some sort of amplified or extreme version of 'ordinary' masculinity. The point about rapists being 'ordinary' men is that characteristics like those listed are not easy to spot in a culture where misogyny is so unremarkable. In the kind of culture feminists have fought and are fighting to bring about, those characteristics would stand out like a sore thumb.

What is a "social wanker" BTW?

Someone who masturbates in public?