Deconstructing SlutWalk
San Francisco hosted its first SlutWalk on Saturday, August 6, and I — along with two fellow sluts — simply had to go check out this latest protest fad.
For those not familiar with the concept of a “SlutWalk,” this sign pretty much sums it up: Unwanted Exposure to Scrotum Is Never OK! At SlutWalks, feminist desmoiselles trying to look both sexy and intimidating gather in public for a communal howl against rape and victimhood. Sometimes — as in this example (one hopes) — they have a great sense of humor; other times, not so much.
The crowd assembled in San Francisco’s Dolores Park for a march through town. In case you’re wondering what’s so controversial about rape that it needs to be protested against — well, you accidentally just hit the nail on the head. Because, in truth, basically everybody on all sides of all political spectrums already thinks that rape is among the most evil of crimes. So: why a protest? For that answer, we must plumb deep.
The SlutWalk concept started earlier this year at a crime prevention conference in Canada (yes, Canada) where a clueless Toronto policeman, invited to instruct assembled students how to not become the victims of rape, concluded his talk with one extra bit of advice: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts.”
Result: Outrage. Implicit in his statement, the Canadian students felt, was the insinuation that rape victims who dressed provocatively are partly to blame for what happens to them. This Toronto constable opened a Pandora’s Box! A few months later, Canadian feminists organized the first “SlutWalk” to protest against the very principle of this “don’t dress like a slut” attitude, and from that day forward SlutWalks have erupted in cities all over the globe. The only surprising part is that it took four months to reach San Francisco. We’re not used to being this far behind the curve!
Dressing for a SlutWalk is a delicate balance. The goal is to be as enticing and as repulsive as possible — simultaneously. Sometimes this is accomplished by exposing as much flesh as you dare, while sporting angry man-hating political diatribes, often inked directly onto your body, as we see here.
Epic L.O.L.
Zombie, you just keep getting better…
Fantastic pictures Zombie!!
We had something similar in Norway about 10 years ago. A senior police officer made the mistake of suggesting that some of the rapes could have been avoided had the ladies been
1: not excessively drunk
and/or
2: wearing less revealing dresses.
Result? Outrage from feminist groups, civil right groups, animal right groups etc. You get the picture.
Fast forward 10 years. Massive immigration from areas with a certain religion and culture. Rape statistics skyrocket. And then, all of a sudden it becomes ok to mention the behavior of the ladies.
… and in both cases, despite all the outrage, the thing that needs to be said: the cop in question was not, as Zombie says, “well-intentioned” but “thoughtless”. He was, in fact, “right”.
I have to add one observation – if they were trying for repulsive, they succeeded spectacularly, mainly through natural talent. I’ll certainly avoid San Francisco.
(Brain hurt.)
But great reportage as usual!
Will Western society die from having its head so far up its derriere that it suffocates?
I take issue with your assertion that rape victim suffer no blame. You should really spend some time with a few rape victims. If you can’t manage to find any willing to help, read personal narratives. Google “blame the victim rape”. Look at message board comments discussing a rape case. Listen to what your acquaintances say when discussing a rape case. Look at media reports, like the one of the young teenage girl gang raped in Texas. The New York Times focused on how seductively she was dressed, until forced to issue a retraction. The New York Post ran a story that the DSK accuser was a prostitute without any proof. You could even read the complaint of Cioca v. Rumsfeld to see the type of treatment military men and women can face when they pursue rape charges. I would be interested to know what you consider “blaming a victim”. Perhaps you just have an impossible standard at which you measure such blame, leaving you convinced it just doesn’t happen anymore. I hope your readers will investigate what rape victims have to say about the subject. My standard is “does/will the victim feel as through he/she is at fault?”.
My standard is, “Does a jury feel as though the victim is at fault?”
Sure there are always a few cruel people in this world. There’s no way a victim will get 100% sympathy from 100% of people in every crime. But in my observations, rape victims generally are the ones getting almost all the sympathy almost all the time (as well they should).
You also should consider this: If we as a society make the act of rape one of the most serious crimes one can commit, then the false accusation of rape is necessarily also one of the most serious crimes one can commit. Being convicted of or even accused of rape brands a man for the rest of his life; thus, we need to investigate all accusations very very carefully. If we allow the merest whiff of an accusation to stand with no proof, then we are handing 100% of power to women in every situation. Any woman can in an instant destroy the life of any man just by accusing him of rape — that is under your scenario in which we always believe the woman’s accusation so as to not “hurt her feelings” by doubting her. There have been far too many false accusations of rape for this not to be a serious matter.
The world is not a cocoon in which we’re all protected from the cruel words of cruel people. Yeah, some rape victims will face doubt, or even insinuations. It happens to everyone every day in every way, not just with rape.
Yet we give women who are going through a divorce this same power. Women are “advised” by their soon to be lawyer, to press charges of violence, get a restraining order out on the husband and a personal protection order all to paint the husband as an physical abuser. I have even heard lawyers say that if the husband doesn’t clean the dishes and instead watches football, he is an “emotional” abuser. I have freinds who then have to go through counseling and the counselor will call the men abusers as if it a fact as opposed to a undeserving claim made by someone who wants to use the power of the law to manipulate and punish.
Any cop or lawyer will tell you women are the last person to believe the victim. Various theories but most boil down to ‘women don’t like to believe it could happen to them so the victim must have had it coming’.
I think a lot of the points you have made make sense, but I was left with one question. How much do you actually know about what goes on in a courtroom for a rape trial? I worked in a DA’s office in the Family Violence and Sexual Assault (FVSA) unit, and I can guarantee you that blaming the victim is still rampant in jury verdicts. Yes, the douchebag lawyers play that up if they can, but jury’s buy it *all the time.* Case in point- white college girls who are date raped or raped while drunk *very rarely* receive a guilty verdict. Women of color and women from underprivileged backgrounds have a better chance of getting a guilty verdict. There was one ADA in the homicide unit who had previously worked in the FVSA unit and was revered as a legend because he had a 70% guilty verdict record for his FVSA cases. In Homicide he had a 95% guilty verdict record. 70% is unbelievably high- most ADAs have a significantly lower conviction rate. The thing I hear most about the slutwalks message is “well no, women should not be blamed for wearing revealing clothing, BUT….(does not hurt to be safe, the reality is…. etc) That BUT negates everything that comes before it. Slutwalks has the goal of eradicating that BUT. And there is still a blame the victim attitude, it is just couched in cushy terms. The REAL reality is that rapists are not sitting around deciding who to rape based on their clothing. If a conservatively dressed woman ends up in the sights of someone intent on sexual assault, I highly doubt that they would say to themselves “I can’t go after her! look how chaste her clothing is! I will wait to find someone who has a little less clothing on”
Actually, dressing provocatively is a risk factor for being raped, but not because the clothing is arousing. Rather, it’s because the clothing is relatively easy to remove and not likely concealing a weapon. It’s not a slut vs. virgin thing; it’s a soft target vs. hard target thing. The more conservatively dressed you are, the more of a challenge (and potentially threat) you pose to the would-be rapist. It’s the same reason you put valuables in a safe rather than leaving them in plain sight.
Zombie I agree that false accusations of rape should be a severely punished crime. As a victim of rape, any one who cries rape when the accusation is a lie should face jail time. Those that do so make it harder for the true victims of such violence to be believed. I find them to be as evil,(false accusers) as those that actually commit rape. What I find to be a problem with this walk is that the majority of those present can’t tell the difference between sexy and offensive. How many are actual “victims?” I don’t know, but from the looks I would say that these are more politicos than victims.
I’m thinking in this case that the majority of participants are San Francisco feminist women and as such, have no idea what “sexy” or “slutty” actually look like. Evidently, they think those words mean “looking as grotesque as possible.” I wonder if that indicates how they feel about being sexy, slutty, or otherwise attractive to men.
I love your coverage of protests, Zombie, but Ania is right — you don’t know a thing about what happens in sex assault investigations and trials.
Cops have done a great job professionalizing their dealing with victims, but after the 911, every aspect of a victim’s life is still weighed by the prosecutor in deciding to go forward. I’m not talking about just “date” rapes (and there are serial date rapists among the most violent offenders). I’m talking about stranger rapes and child molestations.
I could name hundreds of serial rapists and molesters who escaped prosecution or conviction, some repeatedly, despite waterproof evidence and witnesses. Jurors imagining they’re Atticus Finch or extras in 12 Angry Men, routinely let such thugs go free — and that’s just in the tiny fraction of cases that make it to the courtroom. Every time a prosecutor brings a rape case, he or she has already considered the expense and probability of conviction, a choice that leads to dropping charges or investigations against many guilty-as-hell rapists and child molesters. Other offenders cut deals that would shock most people — probation for child molestation, for example, is not unusual. And still, jurors are a crapshoot and our perverse evidentiary rules often sink a strong prosecution — leaving the impression of false charges there too.
What happens to all the non-prosecuted crimes? In some studies, repeated in politicized forums, they get lumped together with “false accusations” by people who are either malicious or ignorant. So do unsolved rapes. And in places where there are problem police involved in taking reports, no statistics are reliable. Look up the Anthony Sowell case, for instance. But usually police are the only responsive part of the system, and victims know this.
So because of financial limitations, prosecutors try only their best cases and usually try serial offenders for only one out of many crimes. That doesn’t mean that they or anyone else actually thinks the thousands of cases with an identified suspect that get shelved or unfounded (record keeping is atrocious) automatically represent false claims. True, there is a class of sexual assault reports that end up being found to be false. But you are conflating thing like lack of prosecution or lack of evidence with “false accusation.”
If you want to know the truth about rape reporting and prosecution, you have to know something about the trial courts. I wish you would start doing some criminal trial-watching: it makes the freak show on the streets look like an Eagle Forum meeting, and you’re the right person to report it.
I also think you’re not nearly hard enough on Slutwalk types. For, when they’re not nudely dumping on The Man, they demonstrate no interest in actually convicting real rapists, because their leftist politics drives them to hate cops and corrections and see minority defendants as victims. I’ve never seen anyone from these movements advocate for a recidivism law or truth-in-sentencing, and I have seen them oppose these laws. They care only about blaming frat boys or men as a class, not holding individual offenders responsible.
It would be easier to stop rape if they would put on some clothes, shut up, and go away.
Well, I bow to your more extensive experience.
But I think the problem is not limited to rapes. All sorts of crimes get under-prosecuted and under-convicted. I once read an analysis someone did which calculated the number of murders in the city of Oakland per year, the number of those crimes which led to convictions, the average lifespan in the city, the average age of the typical killer, and various other factors, and came to the conclusion that 5% of the men currently walking the streets of Oakland were murderers, most of whom had never been convicted or caught! Using the same analysis, I wouldn’t be surprised that upwards of 10% of the male adult population in Oakland were unconvicted rapists.
You and I are the kind of people who don’t fit into SlutWalk’s worldview: people who are strongly against rape, and who seek a much higher rape conviction rate — but who also think that SlutWalk’s tactics are ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. They just don’t want to hear that, and generally dismiss all critics of their approach as being “pro-rape.”
I’ve been a jury member a few times in various types of trials, and no, I wouldn’t be surprised at what goes on in the courtroom. In one case, I was so disgusted by my fellow jury members that I wanted to stomp out in a rage. But to do so would gave resulted in a mistrial, so I kept my cool. (The eventual verdict was an egregious perversion of justice, however.) Lawyers seem to purposely seek out jurors who appear to be stupid and/or easily swayed, so they can twist the facts and not have anyone see through the bullshit.
My comments in the essay were more about overall societal attitudes, not about what goes on in the legal system. Rapists are almost universally hated; victim-blaming is a fringe position. On the other hand, there have been enough high-profile false accusation cases that people can be wary of a rape accusation until it is pretty conclusively proven.
Agreed. And it isn’t just rape — the chances of anyone, but particularly juveniles, going to prison for any amount of time for any violent or serious crime is and had been miniscule for half a century. We don’t spend nearly enough money to investigate and prosecute crime, and nobody wants to hear that.
Criminologists used to talk about this. Now they work overtime to bury the statistics.
And that’s why I don’t spend much time worrying about false convictions, or innocent men in prison, or any of the other themes that obsess the left and growing numbers on the right (Reason magazine, for instance). When something like <5% of violent offenders end up doing time, our problem is the other 95%, not the tiny, tiny, tiny handful of wrongfully convicted — tragic, yes — who are being blown entirely out of proportion, in numbers, and percentages (250 men over 35 bloody years with millions of rightful convictions and several aren't actually "innocent"). Causes for conviction are also widely misrepresented (lots of these cases involve criminal partners, or serial rapists popped for the wrong crime, which is wrong but not tragic in quite the same way).
Interestingly, regarding rape cases, as of the last time I checked, only one of the Innocence Project cases involved malicious false accusation of someone known to the alleged victim — all of their rape cases are "real" rape victims. And that's a span of 35 + years. So intentional false accusations resulting in false conviction is exceedingly rare.
I really enjoy your work and think you should do some court watching and report what you see. I know quite a few judges and prosecutors who would thank you.
Well, I have done one “court-watching” report, but it wasn’t a criminal case, but rather a federal trial about terrorism funding and Patriot Act powers, and because of that I was not allowed to bring a camera into the courtroom — even so, I did my best:
AL-HARAMAIN v. BUSH SURVEILLANCE HEARING
My problem is limited free time. There are a million things I could — and should — document and blog about, but I have a “real” job and a family and all sorts of responsibilities, so I’m not a full-time professional blogger like some of these dedicated folks around here. I just do what I can when I’m able to squeeze in a few hours. I’ll have to add court-watching to my list of “shoulda”s.
As to your other point about people being locked up for the “wrong” crime:
I know someone who worked for years as in “intake officer” at Santa Rita, the largest jail in Northern California. He said that all sorts of hardcore violent psychopaths and gangland hitmen were constantly shuttling in and out of Santa Rita. They all bragged about and were obviously guilty of innumerable heinous violent offenses. But when he checked their records, they were usually being locked up for other, trivial offenses — because that’s the only thing the cops could make stick.
For example, one guy was in jail for maybe 3 months for illegal possession of a firearm. But the reality of the situation was that he was caught red-handed with a murder weapon that just minutes earlier had been used to gun down three people. The cops had him cold, no escape.
Except… no one would snitch, and a devious lawyer was able to argue a case of “reasonable” doubt, claiming that the “real killer” had simply handed the murder weapon to our innocent guy moments before the cops tackled him. In the end, the DA felt he couldn’t get a murder conviction against this guy because of the no-snitching attitude preventing the eyewitnesses from squealing on him, so they instead compromised and charged him with the aforementioned trivial crime of possessing a firearm illegally — a 6-month sentence I believe of which he served 3, but better than nothing.
My friend said that basically every single person in Santa Rita had a similar backstory — factually guilty of murder/rape/drug trafficking/assault, but serving time for “resisting arrest,” or “domestic abuse,” or unpaid traffic tickets, and so on.
And the criminals just laughed about it, regularly threatened to rape and kill the guards’ families, and treated their short stays in jail like a visit to a rehab spa, to hit the gym for some good exercise, take a vacation from the street life for a short while, reconnect with old buddies, and freshen up for a big comeback into a life of crime once they got out.
The revolving door is spinning at top speed.
Thank you Tina.
Well, I take, by your comment that you believe that women should be able to drift haplessly through life without a single thought that there are bad people out there and without any effort to take control of their own personal security.
Heaven forbid that we acknowledge that even a victim of any crime still bears a certain amount of responsibility for preventing its occurrence! How come if I leave an iPad on the front seat of my car with the door unlocked, when it is stolen I would be lectured about securing my belongings, locking the door or keeping it out of sight, yet, if a woman goes running on a dimly lit footpath in the park after dark and gets raped, our culture chooses to absolve her of any responsibility for putting herself in that position?
Ignore the horrific nature of the rape and try to look at both people strictly as victims of crime. By your logic, I have as much right to expect that my private property not be violated as a woman’s person, yet it is perfectly acceptable the victim of a stolen iPad but not the rape victim.
Standards are applied inconsistently. In one case we rely on pathos and the other we rely on logos.
Saying that the woman should perhaps have taken extra precaution while running on the dim footpath (ie run with a friend, carry pepper spray) does not mean we are blaming the victim. It is reflecting on the lesson learned and not sticking out heads in the sand.
You said:
“see the type of treatment military men and women can face when they pursue rape charges”
You don’t know what you are talking about. As a military officer and an Army SHARP specialist that the military takes allegations of sexual harassment/assault very seriously and overwhelmingly favors the person who makes the allegation (to the point that adverse action is taken against the accused while the investigation is ongoing). I cannot say I agree entirely with the method and premise and, as a result, I intend to inform my command that I cannot continue to be an effective victim advocate. Here’s why:
Say a male and female soldier both get drunk and have sex. Then they wake up the next morning and both regret the decision knowing it could impact their work relationship and job. If one party decides to come to me to make a complaint, I am not allowed to analyze the situation. I am expected to accept absolutely that an assault took place because consent cannot be granted in instances where one or both parties were under the influence. That means, if either party has *just one* drink, they are considered unable to exercise good judgement. SO, if both parties regret their sex the next morning, both can decide to make a complaint of sexual assault and it ultimately boils down to a footrace so that the other guy is the one who is restricted, reassigned or has the restraining/protective order put on them…even if neither were legally intoxicated…
That’s wrong, but if I take a common sense approach, I am considered to be “blaming the victim”.
That’s stupid!
Ugh..sorry for some of the clumsy wording. I must have touched the trackpad at some point and some of my typing did not make it to the right place. I guess that’s what happens when one has to look at the keyboard and not the screen when they type….
Lemme tell you a little story. In my last days in the military I was as instructor, and part of my collateral duty was to work in the message center. One night the Command Duty Officer rushes in with a high priority message to go out. It was about a restricted barracks Petty Officer, and E-6 who had raped one the restricted female. That night the E-6 was in the brig. That night he had to make a call to his wife and say “honey, I’m innocent, but they are putting me in the brig for alleged rape of a female sailor.” That sailor’s wife had to languish for three days with the thought that her husband might actually be guilty. He was not. The girl admitted that she had lied about it in order to get out of the restricted barracks so she could go back to her apartment. She was a career troublemaker who was already in trouble for check fraud and theft, yet the Navy immediately came down on this E-6 like a ton of bricks at even the hint of an accusation. 90% of the General Military Training sessions we had on sexual harassment paraded in counselors who sounded like the Slut walk organizers. Men in the military guilty until proven innocent in the current military culture.
yep!
If these people would just put some of this energy into their jobs, this economy might be in a better place.
Whatever would lead you to believe that they have jobs at all?
What!?!?!? And give up whatever government check they are living on? Never gonna happen.
Looks like a dress rehearsal for the Democrat 2012 convention.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
Cognitive dissonance on a massive scale.
I think racism thing needs to be reconciled with that girl in Haiti who was raped by one of her charity cases…and she blamed it on some sort of racism that forced the guy to do it to her. So, head explode time, is the rape of white women by black men which is due to historical racism against black men by white men ok?
I suspected that’s what they were talking about: The claim that racism “causes” rape because black men have been so abused that the only way they know how to cope with their low self-esteem is to rape people. Or something like that.
The other possibility I pondered is this claim: Due to their internal unconscious racism, white women generally only have sex with white men, so black men then feel frustrated and excluded, thus the only way black men can get to have sex with white women is to rape them. This can be forestalled by encouraging white women to have sex with black men voluntarily. (Yes, I’ve seen that argument made in radical publications.)
Either way, as you say: head explode time.
At this point I’ve come to learn that it usually isn’t even worth one’s time trying to decipher the cockamamie worldviews of these people.
So, maybe they should just put an asterisk on the poster.
” *=unless your raping to overcome patriarchy or racist pasts.”
Also, what a bunch of bowsers.
Finally, what about the danger of false rape allegations damaging the real ones, were there any shows of solidarity for the Duke Lax team?
Rape is used in some places as a weapon of subjugation for racist/genocidal reasons, but that is an act of entire armies, not individual criminals. It is recognized as a crime against humanity.
True, but that’s a completely different issue (ethnic-cleansing rape). The people at SlutWalk (and American women in general) are not in danger of being raped for genocidal purposes — they’re in danger of being raped by individuals who have their individual “motivations” (if you can call them that. This is not Kosovo or the Congo or Rwanda or wherever.
Individual rape in peacetime is horrible in the extreme, but it is a crime against an individual, and not what the UN was referring to when they classified mass-rape as an act of ethnic cleansing.
Many of these women have always been eye-repellant, and thus safe from scrutiny from the other sex (for you in San Francisco, that means men).
The remaining minority of women ask the impossible. Men are hard-wired to be attracted to you. Hell, you women have always known this and have used it to your advantage. If men were rational, why would they strap themselves to one woman and a mind-numbing job for life? There had better damn well be some attraction to keep the opposite from flying apart. And I don’t mean a covalent bond.
You who ask for nature to be ignored to suit a wacky demand are asking the impossible, even in San Francisco.
I’m pretty sure this whole idea was started not by Toronto feminists but by a couple of 15 year old high school guys thinking of some way to get a bunch of dumb woman to dress up as their fantasy girls.
Sorry, Over50, in my world, albeit a gentler place than San Fran or Toronto, the 15 year old boys are more kind, thoughtful, and respectful of women and girls than any people of the babyboomer generation — men or women. And the majority is pro-life which, when thoughtfully embraced alongside consensual sex, is very “pro-women”.
It’s not our young and emerging men that are the pigs.
Unwanted exposure to scrotum is never OK? Is she saying that men shouldn’t dress provocatively? Or does she just hate male nudists?
Male and female are attracted to me everywhere I go-and I reject them because I am a happily married,conservative heterosexual.I know-most of S.F. is “off limits” for me. However, how about
complaining about “unwanted T and A “- or unwanted exposure to
offensive tatoos, unwanted exposure to pierced bodies-lots of gross stuff
unwanted body odor, unwanted displays of vulgarity, I hve a long list..
Move to Disneyland.
Just don’t go during GAY DAYS. Every year at Disney parks.
GAY Days at Disney
Protests that women should not be “blamed” for getting raped (and slutwalk is a very long way from being the first) are always based on a simple moral confusion. If you leave your keys in your car and it gets stolen, in what sense if any are you “to blame” for the theft? Clearly not at all in the sense of reducing the thief’s responsibility. The thief is just as morally culpable as he would have been if you’d locked the car and he’d stolen it. But you are to blame in the sense that you took a risk that you should have been able to foresee would increase the risks of getting your car stolen. Do you want to be reminded of that ? Does it make you angry when someone implies you are “to blame” ? Of course. And ditto with rape. If you take risks that increase the chances that a bad person will steal your car, people feel free to criticise you for being stupid. So why not for rape ? Because it’s much more hurtful, obviously. But that doesn’t make it a less valid criticism. When policemen advise women to behave in various ways to minimise their chances of getting raped (a typical one is when there have been a series of rapes on campus and the police advise women not to go out at night alone) they are not saying
(a) if you disregard my advice and get raped, the rapist is not to blame
(b) it is right and proper that society is so ordered that women who go out at night alone sometimes get raped
any more than when they advise you not to leave your keys in the ignition, they are suggesting that the thief who steals a car is less culpable, or that it is a good thing that people who leave their keys in their car tend to get their cars stolen. They are just advising you on what they regard as the possible consequences of particular courses of action. They are attempting to predict the future (on a statistical basis.) The only reasonable criticism that can be made is that their predictions are faulty – eg dressing slutty and going back to the apartment of a man (or two men) you don’t know very well, going out alone in particular neighborhoods after dark, going to parties and getting very drunk do not in fact increase the chances of getting raped. If that’s the criticism, then let’s see the statistics.
(I recommend Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s excellent autobiography “Infidel” – because it’s a fascinating story, but also because it’ll give you some insights into things you didn’t know about. Including an answer to the mystery of why some Muslim societies blame women for getting raped.)
Exactly. It baffles me why so many people find this so hard to understand.
Yep, the “blame the victim” meme is almost always brought out due to ignorance of the difference between morality and probability.
The “blame the victim” and the “don’t dress/act like a slut and you won’t get raped” mentality has deep cultural roots (in all major cultures) and is largely the result of a lack of forensic science back in the day.
Without forensics, an accusation of rape is just most often just a she-said, he-said situation which no system of justice can resolve. Prior to 20th century, courts and the public could only determine if a rape took place if there was significant and obvious physical trauma. That is why many cultures required that a woman violently resist her attack and acquire injuries doing so if she wanted to make an accusation of rape.
There is also the problem that the state or community cannot protect people where it cannot see them so there has also been a cross-cultural tradition that women should not be alone with men who aren’t their spouses or family. Women who did put themselves in such a situation where assume to have accepted responsibility for doing so. (Also, older women didn’t want younger women stealing husbands so they discouraged any unsupervised interactions.)
Technology has changed a lot of these circumstances. It’s now much easier to determine if someone was violently sexually assaulted but a lot of basic problems still exist in determining objectively if a rape occurred.
But modern Feminist don’t want to hear about practical problems of a real-world justice system. Like all Leftists, they believe a perfect society can be willed into existence if only everyone was as intelligent and morally perfected as Leftists. This leads Feminist to believe that fact that rapes continue simply indicates that to many people in society want them to happen. That is why they are so angry.
… but also why they are so ineffectual. These “marches” do nothing to prevent rape. They are just exercises in leftists vainglory.
The funny thing is, I agree with that Toronto police officer. Was he saying that its the woman’s fault she got raped? No. Was he saying that a woman who dresses slutty is more likely to attract a rapist into attacking her? Yes, and that is only common sense. He probably also said things like “Don’t walk alone at night in dimly lit areas” and other pieces of good advice. A woman is not inviting a rapist to rape her by disregarding this advice, but, at the same time, she is more likely to be raped. There is a difference between saying “To avoid rapists, do these things” and saying “You got raped because you wanted it.”
These girls fail to understand the concept of “poor risk assessment.”
It reminds me of a programme that was attempted at a few colleges a few years ago. It being generally recognized that young women crossing the campus alone late at night were vulnerable to attack, rape being the most feared, and that without question all rapists are men, the proposed solution was to impose a curfew on all *men* on campus. No man would legally be allowed to walk the campus at night between, say, 11pm to 5am without being escorted by a campus security officer to keep an eye on him.
I don’t think any of these programmes lasted very long, for obvious reasons.
Zombie -
I’ve enjoyed your work for several years now and commented on many of your pieces. This one is brilliant. Perhaps your best work. Keep up your outstanding political and social commentary.
A devoted fan.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
Aw, shucks — thanks!
Not all lawyers are douchebags, and and the accused has a right to a defense. If this means that the previously suspect activities of the victim might come into play to uncover the thought process of the accused, then they should by all means be explored. Or maybe we’ll just cut off the right of the accused to confront the accuser because it might make them “douchebags.”
Rape is a serious crime; it’s also a serious accusation. Does this mean that lawyers should waltz into court and use “slut” as a defense? No. Does it mean that mixed messages from the accuser might be germane to the defense of the accused and should be used judiciously but with all vigor by a lawyer doing his damn job? Yes, most definitely.
Yes, to a certain extent I agree — as I said in reply to an earlier comment:
“You also should consider this: If we as a society make the act of rape one of the most serious crimes one can commit, then the false accusation of rape is necessarily also one of the most serious crimes one can commit. Being convicted of or even accused of rape brands a man for the rest of his life; thus, we need to investigate all accusations very very carefully. If we allow the merest whiff of an accusation to stand with no proof, then we are handing 100% of power to women in every situation. Any woman can in an instant destroy the life of any man just by accusing him of rape — that is under your scenario in which we always believe the woman’s accusation so as to not “hurt her feelings” by doubting her. There have been far too many false accusations of rape for this not to be a serious matter.”
I probably should have included this sentiment in the essay itself, come to think of it!
So one question. Do any of these people actually reproduces?
Hopefully not. . . . .
I don’t see how they could – how many blind men with no sense of smell could there possibly be?
The real reason behind sperm banks?
I generally agree with the main point of these protests. Rare for me. Hopefully, they won’t evolve too far beyond the original intent.
I posit that “the original intent” of SlutWalk is to overthrow Western culture.
The whole rape angle is just an hook to lure you in.
No lawyer would try to blame a rape victim, or attack her in order to gin up sympathy for the perp. It won’t work. But remember that a large portion of all reported rapes are fake. Rape has the distinction of being both the most under-reported crime and the most over-reported crime, as women frequently make false accusations of rape. Women’s rights groups on college campuses have expressly encouraged women to falsely accuse men of rape, just because they deserve it anyway.
The surest way to make a false rape charge stick is to gather evidence by engaging in consensual sex with the victim. Bingo! DNA match! So how does the falsely-accused rapist prove consensual sex? By showing all of the facts and circumstances, which may include the accuser’s sexual history and such matters as what the accuser was wearing at the time and what she did and said. If the accused testifies that the accuser “jumped in my car and begged me to do her in the back seat,” that’s not very believable with some women, but it becomes more believable if the accuser was wearing a miniskirt and crotchless panties and has a history of such behavior.
So is the accuser’s attire and sexual history off limits? By what rationale can a valid defense be taken away from a defendant?
Love your stuff.
Glad you said all that. Now I don’t need to say it!
People have indeed already criticized SlutWalk from your point of view and using your examples.
But in this essay, I wanted to criticize it from the inside on its own terms without even challenging its basic premise.
Do tell Zombie…how did you dress as part of “the inside”?
My friends and I were the sluttiest sluts in Slut Town.
I’d ask if these people thought this through… but it looks like they didn’t.
Not one sign blaming Bush? In San Francisco?
Obama is really in trouble.
Now with SlutWalk the new meme is:
How dare you blame it on my bush!
Snort!
And a good job of it, too.
I take exception to only one thing in this analysis: that the Canadian policeman was incorrect in his advice. The only mistake he made, as far as I can tell, is sinning against political correctness. But his advice, the reaction against which apparently spawning this whole silly protest movement, is basically sound: women should take precautions against rape, which includes not dressing like a slut. I fail to see how this *practical* advice can be reasonably construed as blaming the victim. Is it too bad that in our imperfect society women might have to think twice about dressing scantily for fear of attracting unwanted and potentially dangerous attention? Of course it is. But that does not render the advice inaccurate? It is no different than advising travelers not to carry too much cash in places where pickpockets target tourists, or avoiding taking a walk after dark in certain sections of town. Good heavens, we live in a world where common sense is vilified.
A pretty good summary of this argument is linked to at the wikipedia article about SlutWalk:
I understand that the policeman had a point. But for the purposes of this essay, I wanted to become a slut and embrace the protest on its own terms, and analyze it from within, and not from the common sense angle.
Becoming a slut: not only education, it’s fun too! ; )
I didn’t mean to come off as picking nits. A great piece as usual.
Leftist ideology and common sense do not often match. It is the emotional immaturity of the liberal-left that allows them to demonize simple risk management.
We had our own Slutwalk here in Seattle.
I hang with a crowd that exemplifies a lot of these values– some of them took this quite seriously and passionately. But to me also the logic of the event was just completely muddled. They tried to get me to participate but the final straw was the vague generalized anti-male attitude you allude to: they scheduled the walk on Fathers Day, for chrissake. I couldn’t help feeling that this was on purpose and just to be a slap in the face to the ‘white male patriarchy’. “Let’s appropriate their Oppressors holiday!” Yeah, right. Lost me.
I remember that. I remember thinking, “Why aren’t you with your fathers on Father’s Day? Fathers are the best rape deterrent. Instead of marching, try honoring thy Fathers.”
I still cannot get my head around it. That tells me this is just a cover for something else. This is more sly re-education.
Apropos of nothing, I love that you caught Frank Chu in one of the pictures. It can’t be a real SF protest without a “12 Galaxies” sign.
So where are the islanic counterprotesters? I mean, there’s the fatwa about the cat meat. The science is settled. Sluts ask for it.
Sid Vicious was a serial domestic abuser of his girlfriend Nancy Spungeon, eventually murdering her.
So, is the gal who chose to wear the Sid t-shirt on the slutwalk being ironic, or just ignorant?
Ya but you can be a cool thug – I’ll bet there were some Che t-shirts out there too.
Fortunately this does not portend the end of Western Civilization. A good protest in the sunshine is invigorating as sinz54 pointed out. Breathe a little easier and ignore these little mobs, but the article and comments are appreciated.
When you mix violence and sex, you get an explosive subject. Rape and false accusations of rape are very serious crimes that should not be trivialized. Bad people exist in both sexes.
I believe the guy on the last page is wearing a kilt. Skirt-like, yes, but a kilt.
You say kilt, I say skirt –
let’s call the whole thing off.
How about a compromise, (similar in principle to the neologism man+purse = murse):
skilt
( = a vaguely effeminate kilt)
I concur that a gun is the best defense against rape, or indeed any violence against your person. A gun is not enough, however. Martial arts training is an indispensable complement to training with and carrying a sidearm: sometimes you wont be carrying, sometimes you wont have the time to draw, sometimes you will be forbidden by fascist law from carrying at all (dont get me started on the California law _allowing_ you to carry an unloaded sidearm).
So you need training.
Martial arts training takes years, dedication, hard work, and solid teaching to be effective. I know. If these girls were serious (yes, _girls_. They are not, and may never be _women_), they would have been encouraging the crowd to start carrying a sidearm. No dice. Or advocating to bring down the unconstitutional laws against carrying in Cali. Not a chance.
At the very least, they should have been saying “Get some training! Muey Thai or Uechi-Ryu. Southern Crane. Anything! And work at it!” But they did not. 20 seconds of talk and 3 reps of a couple of possible moves was enough for them.
_That_ tells you everything you need to know about them. They are not serious about women defending themselves. They are serious about a political agenda, but not about women defending themselves.
They dont give a damn about women. If they did, they would lay aside their prejudice and encourage women (and men!) to get the tools to defend themselves.
Some problems have a long-term political solution. Others have an immediate, violent, and very personal solution.
You cant get raped by a dead guy.
The best defense against rape is neither gun or fist. It is dealing with the real world in a common sense way-
1- Always go out with and return with friends you can trust.
2-Never go out on a first date alone and never agree to a second date unless you have some proof of ID from your date.
3- Always let a family member know your itinerary and your dates info. Check in after you return.
Few men have a chance against a 6’2′ ,230 pound wrestler in his prime and a 110 lb, 5’2 woman has no chance at all despite decades of training. A gun is the great equalizer but that also has drawbacks- it can lead to overconfidence, you can miss, you can drop your weapon, you can hesitate, you can wound and enrage.
The mind will always be your best defense.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
One other reason for training – in a blitz attack, you will never get to your weapon.
Train. Train hard.
No – they’re TOTALLY SERIOUS, AND DELUDED ENOUGH to really believe their little “bird beaks” will keep them safe.
Note the TOTAL seriousness on the face of the little cutie in pink…
I’m a crippled former hard-case, suppl below average height. My daughter came home from college all full of herself after an hour our so being taught such similar “magical-thinking” BS.
I asked her to show me some of what she learned, then made her swear to pull no punch, to defend against me as if I were a real rapist. I pinned her in under 10 seconds, which REALLY rocked her world – after all, if her semi-invalid Dad could proper her so easily, what chance did she have against an average YOUNG GUY?!
Thankfully, this was enough for her to close her mouth, open both eyes and mind and accept the lessons I’d tried so many times to teach…
I pity the young male (not MAN) who tries to force her into anything… Simple horseplay with her boyfriend got ugly (for HIM) when she did a simple hip-throw and slammed him on the ground… She had no idea how hard she’d dropped him, not how horribly it would bruise his EGO as it happened in front of his friends…
OTOH, word got aground quickly and she’s since got a trepidation for being some serious “martial arts” girl
That’s probably the best protection she could have on campus under the circumstances…
Somehow, espeically the women writing on themselves, this all reminds me of old “Laugh-In” bits. I’m sure there are deadly serious women taking part in these — but it strikes me more as (emotional) juveniles looking for a reason to play dress up.
If a man walked into one of these things wearing chaps and exposing himself, what do you think would happen to him? After having ripped him apart and stomped on the bloody pieces, would any woman there condone the idea that he should not have dressed that way and been in that place.
Risk reduction works. Women aren’t to blame for being raped, but they *can* do things to lower the chances of it happening to them. IMHO, YMMV, etc, etc, etc.
There used to be a concept called temptation that was universally recognized thousands of years ago until today. It is one reason Muslim women wear the Burqa and until the 2nd decade of the 20th Century, Western women wore concealing clothing.
This amazing concept posited that men were weak and would act according to base impulses if tempted.It is one reasons the prisons are full of criminals ranging from Bernie Madoff to rapists to murderers. Now that we’re all post-Christian and all, those ethical strictures have broken down and are applied selectively. There is no underpinning of morality in taking any stand except one’s own conscience.
When a society incorporates an anything goes morality, anything does go. Relativism just doesn’t offer the philosophical structure upon which one must construct a legal philosophy.
Well, I think that the time has come that we should expect better of ourselves. To that extent, I do agree somewhat with the original SlutWalk concept.
If I, me, saw someone accidentally dropping their wallet while reaching for change, I’d say “Hey, you dropped your wallet!”
But sadly, half the population would silently pick the wallet up and take pleasure in extracting the money inside.
If I was walking down the street and saw someone had left their front door open, and a brand-new laptop computer was sitting inside right next to the door — I’d walk on by.
But sadly, a smaller percentage of the population would step in and steal that computer.
If I were a man, and a drunk girl flirted with me and then passed out half-undressed, no way in a million years would I then have non-consensual sex with her.
But sadly, a small percentage of men would not be able to resist.
In my moral universe, everyone should have the rectitude to resist temptation. And if they don’t, they deserve blame.
There’s nothing wrong with striving to achieve that kind of society where even the average person would resist doing any crime or moral misdeed. I don’t regard that as moral relativism; perhaps overly optimistic, but not moral relativism.
Like others have argued, the girl in the above scenario was foolish to put herself in the kind of situation where she was very likely to be raped, just as foolish as the person who leaves his front door open with a computer visible inside — but it is the person who does the stealing or raping who bears ultimate responsibility.
The old-school/Muslim attitude really does take it one step too far: Women are blamed for creating “too much of a temptation.” Sure, they can be criticized for making foolish choices, but they should not have to be assigned actual blame, as happens in Arab culture (and pre-20th century Western culture).
If SlutWalk has just closely limited itself to this point, I’d be in agreement with them (though it would remain an essentially trivial issue that doesn’t rise to the level of a social movement). But intead they use this valid point as merely the starting block for a vast raft of ridiculous additional political agendas. And that’s where I draw the line.
“In my moral universe, everyone should have the rectitude to resist temptation.”
No, the situations you described do not represent temptation when you have a proper moral code. You do not have to resist something that is not even a temptation.
The girl you are with passes out. She now becomes your responsibility. Did she come with a friend? How do you get her back to her home safely? Failing that, you take her back to your place and put her on the couch and cover her. Put a pot next to her in case she has to vomit. You care for her. She is not a sexual temptation. She is your responsibility.
The unguarded laptop is not a temptation to an honest man. Nor is a running automobile. In fact, it may be your responsibility to guard it for a short time.
The dropped wallet is not a temptation. It is your responsibility to tell the man he dropped his wallet. A moral man has an obligation to his fellow man. He feels it strongly. There is no temptation to exploit his fellow man. He is not tempted at all. It never occurs to him.
The women in this march are foolish. They think they bear no responsibility at all for being raped. Yes, they do. They have a moral responsibility to look out for themselves. They are demanding that others be moral and not view them as overwhelming temptation, yet are not willing to exhibit a bit of morality towards themselves and thus towards others by being more modest and careful. They view the moral responsibility as totally on the other guy, none on themselves. In a perfect world, with perfect humans, they would be right. In the real world, they are wrong, and possibly dead wrong.
This march gives women a false sense of safety. It takes all the blame off themselves. It reinforces the problem, rather than helps solve it. If the signs said that a moral man is not tempted to rape, then it could be a very positive thing… but that is not what it is about, is it? It is more misandry masquerading as feminism.
But if I understand Christian theology, man is a fallen creature. Doesn’t that mean that many, if not most, will NOT be the honest chap you describe?
You don’t understand Christian theology. I suspect you don’t understand Buddhist, Islamic or any other theology. One cannot take things out of context and hope to make sense.
Yes, man is a imperfect creature. But it does not mean that he cannot rise above his base. There is free will and that does not mean he can only choose to be base.
Read “The real George Washington”. It will help you to understand.
The vomit pot is first aid, but what you really need to do is call 911. Passing out drunk is a medical emergency, and needs to be treated as such. Even if uninjured from collapsing, you don’t know how much the person has had to drink, nor if any substances besides ethanol were consumed. Any time you find someone passed out drunk, you must regard it as an overdose and get the victim medical attention immediately.
Slutwalk isn’t behind the curve, the Canadians were behind the curve – way behind.
This is an old “outrage”. From the late 90s to the mid aughts there were annual “take back the night” meetings on the UC campus’s that used just these issues. These were intense anti-male teach-ins and cultural revolution type evangelical feminist meetings. Since the Obamanation, their ardor had cooled and were in need of a re-boot. Like Hollywood, they’ve found their hook for the remake.
Bingo.
Some years ago I sat in on a plea bargain in a rape case. The perp, a nasty little piece of work, had sexually assaulted a fellow-student in one of the staircases of the high school both attended. The perp first denied performing the rape, then said it was consensual—which is the usual pattern in cases of this sort.
While the defense attorney was working out the plea deal, I talked with the perp’s family. They were terrifying. The father was a postal worker, the mother had some other low-mid level city bureaucratic job. They, and their other children, all exuded a simmering rage. The father was pointing out to the mother that every person in the courtroom save the bailiff was white, which which was proof that the justice system was racist. The father then said that what he would like to do is stand outside the court with a machine gun and kill everyone leaving it.
It was clear that the default level of interpersonal violence in this family was much higher than anything I had experienced growing up. It suggested to me that “consent” meant something very different to someone coming from this milieu than it would to me; that “consent” probably meant something very close to “if I can take what I want from you, you have consented, because otherwise you would have stopped me.”
Which takes us, alas, back to the issue of “dressing like a slut” and “asking for it.” Someone dressing in a provocative way is almost certainly not asking to be assaulted. But the problem in such situations—and yes, I know that rape is not confined to the young, the sexy, the provocatively dressed, but it is of them that I am speaking—is that the person dressing provocatively has no control over who is going to see that “provocation,” how they will interpret it, or how they will respond. The person of gentle upbringing who thinks it is amusing to dress in a highly provocative fashion is often unaware, until it is forcibly brought to their attention in tragic fashion, that there are lots of people in this society who do not abide by the same assumptions or mores or patterns of conduct that they have been reared with, and that their protected upbringing has not fitted them for dealing with this reality.
Oh, the young rapist? His attorney got him a very good deal, bargained him down to a misdemeanor sexual misconduct with a minor penalty—but he ended up rejecting the bargain because he would have had to allocute to what he had done in front of his mother.
But Buzzzzzz, didn’t you see the sign that says “racism causes rape?”
By pointing out that thug culture and underclass default-violence spanning the generations are the actual root cause of most rape in America, and that the real issue here is the “culture clash” between law-abiding middle-class folks who presume everyone shares their values vs. the “take-what-I-can-grab” resentment-based underclass, you are only perpetuating the stereotypes. How can these people escape from their behavioral rut if you keep pointing it out? Thus, you are perpetuating the racism, and thus you are personally responsible for most rapes.
/SlutWalk mode OFF
Very well said. I was just watching images from the London riots and something in your post reminded me of a snippet of the coverage. We all seek to get into the mindset of a criminal to try to understand their motivations – and at one point during the riots a smallish boy (maybe a fellow rioter) was down and bleeding and some of the other rioters came over to him and appeared to be helping him. At this point you begin to think “ok, they are basically just good kids in a bad situation because they are showing compassion to one of their own” but then the little bastards took things out of the injured kid’s backpack while he was down!
The difference between normal citizens and those who would willingly engage in violence of any type is to a large extent impossible to bridge or understand. Can you reason with those thugs? Can you reason with someone willing to rape?
Secondarily, the riots in London also call out another aspect of these Sluts and their little protest. Self Defense. If you watch BBC coverage you will be struck by how many times citizens there complain that the police weren’t there to protect them. Since no one can own guns, citizens are literally impotent to protect property and their person. Criminals can freely run up and down the street and do absolutely anything when police aren’t physically standing within 10′ of them. Suggesting that women use the funky chicken to stop a rapist would be laughable if this wasn’t such a serious topic. Suggesting that shop owners can’t use anything stiffer than harsh language against rioters is similarly laughable. And yet, serious people are advocating the policies that directly imperil fellow citizens in both of these situations…
Isn’t it interesting how many people fail to realize how many areas of life the idea that there are actors which you have no control of applies to? From ““consent” probably meant something very close to “if I can take what I want from you, you have consented, because otherwise you would have stopped me”” to the idea that it’s a good idea to use appropriate safety equipment in motor vehicles because while you may be the best driver on earth, you can’t stop a drunk driver whipping around a corner and plowing into you, it’s a good idea to try to do things that maximize your own safety, and not do things that minimize it.
All I see there is a bunch of women going out to enjoy the weather and take a nice walk in the sunshine. They seemed more interested in having fun (note the smiles) than in the usual type of angry fist-clenching chants and slogans. CA makes that easy.
I live in the Northeast. I don’t regard any political activists as serious until they demonstrate a willingness to hold their protest demonstration during one of our famous winter nor’easters.
Now for dedicated feminists, THIS is weather for a SlutWalk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIr8Nl22eoE
You’d never know from this demonstration that the incidence of rape has actually dramatically declined! And this is attributed to internet porn! http://www.impactlab.net/2008/01/06/internet-porn-shown-to-decrease-incidence-of-rape/ “there were 2.7 rapes for every 1,000 people in 1980; by 2004, the same survey found the rate had decreased to 0.4 per 1000 people”
Re the Communist pamphleteers: to at least one person, Communism and feminism are closely joined.
“A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution _promised_…” – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806
Does anything have higher value in the market than a young woman’s young womanness? The question answers itself. And young women know that. But they’re also made uneasy by it. Because they want to be loved, each and every one of them, for myself alone. So they get caught up in these offering/not offering themselves exercises. And of course men, with their tongues on the sidewalk, go along. What else can we do? They’re mental but s-o-o-o desirable.
“…goal is to be as enticing and as repulsive as possible — simultaneously”
They need to work on the first part. The second part…they’ve mastered that.
See, this is how the world’s cultures diverge.
The most exalted islam says women who dress like that are uncovered meat and will be raped.
Square that circle. Anyone? Bueller?
Maybe we can ask Whoopie Goldberg. If it’s not rape-rape, maybe it’s not meat-meat.
Hi there!
First off, thank you for taking such a good picture of my sign! In most photos, the sign wasn’t legible.
Secondly, thanks for telling people not to ask me for casual sex. I’m not into that kind of thing. Not because I hate men, but because I’m actually pretty conservative when it comes to my own personal choices.
I’d just like to point out, though, that being an “angry feminist” is not synonymous with being “anti-men.” I don’t hate men–quite the opposite, in fact. I do hate rapists, but as we would probably both agree, not all men are rapists. Few are. (And women can be rapists and men can be victims, too.)
My sign, which was supposed to be slightly tongue-in-cheek, may have been taken a bit more seriously than intended, but I dislike it when I hear people say “she was asking for it,” or “she’s a slut, what did she expect,” or similar sentiments about rape victims. I have nothing against men in particular. After all, women are some of the most judgmental members of the “society” to which the sign refers when it comes to other women’s dress.
For more information about the aims of SlutWalk, you can visit slutwalksfbay.org. We’re not all anarchists, and most of us greatly appreciate the police and their efforts to help rape victims. We just want people to stop telling us that our attire should count more than our voice when we say “no.”
P.S. “Color” is spelled with a ‘u’ in the UK and its former colonies. The sign-bearer who had spelled it “colour” is from Australia.
Thanks for joining in the discussion!
You didn’t make clear exactly which sign was yours. Are you referring to yourself in THIS picture? : http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/files/2011/08/IMG_1038.jpg
If so, I commend you for having a sense of humo[u]r. You were among the few who not only realizes that humor is important in protests like these but you also were able to pull the joke off — most of the other attempted jokes fell flat.
Yes, it was hard to get a clear picture of your sign, because you weren’t holding it up for easy photographing. Next time, hold it UP, not down!
I think that most men who hear the words “angry feminist,” even if only said half-seriously, will indeed run for the hills. Understandably.
Anyway, I’m glad you dropped in, and gave us the perspective of a participant!
when I read “angry” in that context, it implies generalized anger. If you have particular anger, that’s fine, but there’s never any excuse for a general chip on the shoulder, and that’s precisely what it means to me when someone talks about anger without any qualifying context.
That makes all the difference in the world. If you’re pissed off at mosquitoes, I can relate. If you’re pissed off at a bird crapping on your head, I understand that, too. When you describe yourself as an angry feminist, that rather directly announces misandry, and all the post-hoc backpeddling in the world isn’t going to convince me that she isn’t just an old-fashioned man-hater.
Better to think about clear communication before you open your yap, than try some of this “some of my best friends are…” bullshit later.
If you carry your wallet in your front jacket pocket, pull it out often and flip through it, and talk about how much money you’re carrying and how heavy your wallet is… you’re more likely to be robbed.
Now I’m not bigoted against rich idiots, and mugging them isn’t legal, acceptable, nice, or reasonable. But if you’d prefer not to be mugged there are things you can do to lessen the chance.
Not “avoid”, leaving home gives at least some chance of mugging no matter how much you play it smart; but you can drop the chances a lot of being the victim of a very unpleasant crime.
Is it rude of me to mention this? I’d prefer a world where you could carry your gold-plated wallet full of $100′s in your hand, showing it off to people, and nobody would even think of robbing you… but it ain’t this world.
And ladies; the same applies to dressing like sluts. I’d prefer a world where your chances of being molested was zero regardless of what you wore… but that isn’t this world either.
I agree wholeheartedly with that woman carrying a sign that says “What causes Rape . . . Rapists!” Their embrace of moral agency is refreshing!
I’m sure she would support the statement “Guns don’t cause violence, people do!” Right? You know, moral agency?
Whatever. My brain hurts from too much pink hair dye.
Thank You so much for “trying” to explain what this “movement” is supposed to be about! I’ve seen clips of these walks and for the life of me, couldn’t figure out what they hoped to accomplish, not sure I’ve figured it out now but I may be a little closer. LOL
Good Lord Zombie, still at it after all these years.
Good pics. The cops should just leave that city.
Well, the frequency of my photo essays has fallen dramatically in conjunction with the drop-off in size and frequency in political protests since 2008. But hey, on occasion, I still got my camera, and the locals still erupt in entertaining shenanigans every now and then, so yep, I’m still at it.
If it wasn’t so much fun, I would have stopped long ago!
Zombie,
Your most coherent, well photographed piece ever! I’ve been impressed with how your text is lucid and wise, juxtaposed with well-composed and clear photos that tell a story. You show the lack of linear thought underlying the unthinking Left. Your reporting has been a delight since your Breasts, not Bombs days, and I will look fro more goodness in the future. BTW, your Bush and the Left photo essay leads to silence from my remaining leftists friends. You demolished their meme so much that they just don’t bring it up around me anymore. Thank You.
Wonderful to hear. That was exactly my goal. Mission accomplished!
Zombie this is a classic piece of work destined to live long as a prime example of muddled leftist thinking and doublespeak.
Well researched, reported, and extremely well pictorially documented article. I sympathize with rape victims and wish them every available avenue for justice but these women in the photos for the most part don’t look to be in any danger, lol. I agree with your assessment that the majority were just looking for any kind of attention, however they could get it.
Thinking about it, those guys wearing skirts and the like at the Slut Walk in order to meet women were pretty ingenious. The idea would’ve struck a much younger, more hormonal me like a Charlton Heston movie moment, complete with burst of blinding light and celestial choir. I had no shame or self-respect in that regard. Neither do they. Some things never change.
The Liberal mind at work,just looking for some impudant thing to do.
Just another excuse for overpublicized San Francisco street theater. The Bay Area feminists insist on fighting a battle that they won years ago and which wasn’t really much of a battle to start with. (Well – Old soldiers love to revisit the fields of their former triumphs.) Contrary to the overheated fantasies of paleo-feminists there is no “pro-rape” lobby and “real men” regard rape with horror. The purpose of all of this is to put men on the defensive on a host of “women’s issues” in addition to rape prevention. Like most of this stuff it’s already been done to death. When will they get some new material?
Fantastic photo essay, Zombie!
Someone needs to tell these “sluts” that rapists themselves use the excuse that women who dress like sluts are “asking for it” and are women that they consider easy marks.
I don’t think that the cop who told women not to dress like sluts was blaming the rape victims; he was just stating the obvious. It’s a fact that as a white American woman, I would be a fool to vacation in northern Pakistan – I would be an easy, visible target for Taliban kidnappers who would use me as a political pawn. In the same vein, if I dress like a slut, I can expect to draw the attention of men who have little respect for me as a person and are likely to believe they can use me for their sexual pleasure and “power” trips.
Another incredible piece of work. Your photo essays are remarkable because you capture EXACTLY what’s going on. There’s no “taken out of context” foolishness, just a simple chronicle of what they think, who they are, as honest a journalistic presentation as I’ve ever seen. While your comments are great and spot-on, they are almost un-necessary because the pictures say it clearly enough.
I really don’t know how someone with your obvious intelligence and common sense can live in the Bay Area. How you can chronicle these San Francisco nut case events without either rolling on the floor howling in laughter or running away in horror from these people is beyond me. The way you blend in and get them to just be themselves is amazing.
Again, great job. As you can tell, I’m a big fan of your work. From back in the BCJSSRE* days of LGF. * Before Charles Johnson Started Seeing Racists Everywhere
If I didn’t live here, I’d quickly run out of entertaining buffoonery to document!
I need to live in the Bay Area the way an alligator needs to live in the swamp: because this is where all the good huntin’ is.
I see your point. It is very entertaining. But your essays make it even more so. Keep up the good work.
The only surprising thing about the deep contradictions in this movement’s outlook is that anyone finds them surprising. These women are grappling with female sexuality, which is by nature riven with conflicts and contradictions. Women want to be objects of male desire–but not objectified; to drive men to distraction with their beauty–yet be able to hold men’s attention with their words and thoughts; to have men throw themselves at their feet–and sweep them up in their arms; to be every man’s choice–yet be the one who chooses; and so on and so on. That men are annoyingly simple, and women maddeningly complicated, is a timeworn cliché.
In every human society, elaborate social customs and traditions have evolved to resolve and arbitrate these contradictions in coherent, practically workable ways. Of course, modern feminists and other “progressives” dogmatically reject all social customs and traditions as unjust and oppressive. But without them, the contradictions borne of human nature remain, nakedly and painfully unresolved.
So, let’s see here: Unwanted exposure to scrotum=bad (I agree), but unwanted visual exposure to women showing all sorts of skin=good. Got it. Glad we got that cleared up. I’ll go tell my husband he can stop being embarrassed by all the slutty college girls running around this town.
“One of the Foxes 4 Sexual Freedom wore a furry fox outfit, which she purposely left open…”
Nasty.
That’s what we chauvinists call a “sag hag”.
Hunh … you learn something new every day. Well, I’ll put my scrotum away, but I still say it’s your loss.
“Well, I’ll put my scrotum away, but I still say it’s your loss.”
I’ll cope!
Now I’m even more convinced that zombie is female. Why? Because no man would have been able to see past the shaved head and absence of makeup and awful politics of that Planned Parenthood girl to notice the world-class beauty underneath. Almost all men would have recoiled and been blinded by her successful attempts at “uglification” and not seen that she was really was super-model material. Men notice the surface, the makeup, the clothes, the hair, the expression. Women are more able to see through to the potential. Zombie’s right: With a total makeover (and three months for the hair to grow out), Miss Planned Parenthood could easily be on the cover of Vogue. She’s more gorgeous than anyone else at the rally by several orders of magnitude. Very very perceptive of zombie to have picked up on that. What they call “a woman’s eye,” which is why almost all the top scouts and judges for the lead modeling agencies are women themselves, and not straight men as you might expect.
Zombie’s all man. He’s a “man’s man”, too.
Just a big hunk of “burnin’ love, I tell you!!
Tell ‘em, Zombie. Zombie rides tall in the saddle!!
Mousehouse, you are letting fantasy get the best of you.
There are millions of women “out there” just waiting
to be discovered. Aah, beauty. It’s everywhere.
Funny thing. I grew up in a Southern state. You know, one where all the white guys were facist, racist, sexist pigs. Rapists were prosecuted very vigorously and when they were convicted (remember we were all facists) they wound up in the general population of one of the toughest prisons in the state. Average life expectancy was about six weeks. BTW, You with the “Sexy Woman” sign. You aren’t if you say you are.
You really must be from a southern state. Your Trannyvision isn’t up to snuff!
I thought it was obvious, but in case not:
10-to-1 Ms. “I’m a Sexy Woman” was born with boy parts. That’s the whole point: only desperados announce how sexy they are.
That was snark. “You aren’t if you say you are” Is true about almost everything people tell you.
“I’m a non conformist” Probably not.
“I’m honest” If you are you don’t have to tell people. They’ll know.
And my classic, “I never had sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky” Knew you did right then.
BTW Good post.
Notice the Reddit alien in that one pic? Redditors obsessed with identification as redditors like her are just more reasons to stay away from the place where it is known when the narwhal bacons (don’t ask).
Apparently, it’s all about fashion and I have a lousy fashion sense. Thanks for the mammoth attempt to explain things.
How unfortunate that skank walk and slut walk fell on the same day this year.
Dolores Park?
Really?
Does nobody here remember Seinfeld? Where he couldn’t remember the woman’s name, only that it sounded like a body part, took the whole episode to clear up?
Dear zombie, I loved this one; the contradictions made my head spin.
Your “self-defense” video made me cry, though.
You wrote: c. Increasing women’s self-esteem and hand-to-hand self-defense skills
I do not give a flying toss for self-esteem, and never have. However, I practice martial arts. What was shown by those…women…was utter nonsense.
Those are people who teach “skills” that will get you pounded to a bloody pulp.
I strongly urge every woman to learn to fight, and I mean to really fight, for keeps, your life matters more than your attacker’s. That’s not a weekend course, that’s going to the dojo or dojang or whatever the Art you practice calls the mat. In all honesty, I do not care what Art you decide to follow, by the time you’ve reached level 2 (whatever the belt is in your form), you can stop most attacks.
Those women showed things that might discourage an over-enthusiastic date or drunken idiot. Nothing more. They belong in jail, if they are claiming that will do a damned thing about a serious attack.
Not sure if you remember this, but I’ve actually seen pictures of you in martial arts training! (Or was it a belt ceremony?) I thought even back then: Dianna = badass.
Thank you!
Those pictures from a couple of my tests are hysterical to me – in one, I was throwing the master of the dojang, and his resigned expression was absolutely priceless.
The best one didn’t make the website, though. It was me (5 – 3 and about 140 pounds then) dragging a 225 pound man across the mat. I was just a little adrenalized.
Dianna/Zombie,
You both are uninformed about what this organization does and has been doing in the Bay Area and World Wide for the last 26 years. It was founded by a woman who was a trained martial artists. She was brutally assualted and raped and NONE of her martial arts training kicked in. She completely froze. As a result of the questioning as to why a trained martial artist couldn’t defend herself against this attacker as she had done many times on the mat in a dojo, she (along with several others) developed a form of self defense that incorporated aspects of martial arts, krav maga, military and police training as well as training from mental health experts..AND incorporated adrenaline management and learning to deal with the “freeze” response many victims exerience in an attack. It is not just about preventing sexual assault. The majority of the instructors from the Bay Area chapter are in fact trained martial artist. this organization also empowers their students (women,men and children) to know they have a right to set boundaries and a right to fight back when attacked by bullies or other perpetrators of violence. And it’s not all physical self-defense. They teach students how to verbally de-esculate potentially dangerous situations. They empower students to stand up to bullies and to intervene as a by-standar…like one of the event organizers did here and stopped Jane Doe from being gang raped. This group is legit and they help women, men and kids all over the world. They empower, build confidence and in many cases, enable their students to write a new ending to something bad that has happened to them in the past if they so choose to do so. This style of self defense is endorsed by all kinds of groups from law enforcement to trauma therapists. It’s not for everyone but I ask that you at least do your own research before passing judgement based on a 4 minute demo at a rally and Zombie’s uninformed comments in this article. This style of self-defense is about creating choices for their students if they choose to use them while creating a safe space for their students to heal if they need too. The human body is a powerful tool. You don’t need a gun or a knife or pepper spray to defend yourself if you choose not to use those things. Sometimes all you need is your voice and if you end up in situation where you have to poke your attacker in the eye, it will probably be enough for them to release their grip on you so that you can get away to safety. And if the attacker is holding your hands so you can’t poke their eyes out, you will be able to use a different technique taught to you in this course. OR you can choose to do nothing. It’s about choices…not exact answers. Please take some time to research or Zombie…I know this will be a new concept for you as a self-proclaimed “blogger” vs investigative journalist… but why don’t you contact them and ask to take a course and THEN tell us how you feel about it. It is a not-for-profit organization and they do offer scholarships if you need one. I will even give you a coupon for $95 off if you need one. You might even find an actual investigative journalist in your class…there was one in mine. She came in as a skeptic as to what she would gain from the course and left with a very positive perspective and she wrote about it. Imagine that…someone who conducts research, observes, experiences and THEN reports. Seems like a good idea to me!
I was not there to investigate the background of all the speakers. I was there to attend a protest. All I know is what I saw, and the self-defense speaker was totally lame in her presentation. The video speaks for itself.
Maybe she comes from a good organization, but if her presentation at the rally is anything to judge by, then she needs a lot more training. Her lecture was quite obviously more about boosting the feelings of the students, as each practice strike was concluded with clapping and praise and self-esteem comments. Ask Dianna or any person who takes martial arts — the class does stop to clap for itself every 30 seconds.
By the way, demanding that writers spend more and more and more endless time researching the background of every little thing is itself a known tactic for trying to silence critics.
If your message isn’t clear, front and center, then you’ve done a bad job of messaging. 99% of observers are not going to research anything for one second. They’re just going to glance at you and/or your sign, get an instant first impression, and then move on to other things. If you insist that their first impression is wrong, and that the observer needs to devote time and energy to dig up more background info, then you’ve already lost your audience.
Besides which, I actually did do plenty of research about SlutWalk, and discovered a great deal of unflattering and unsavory info which I kindly chose to not discuss here. The more I dug, the worse it got. You should be glad I just limited my presentation to what was plainly visible at the SF rally itself. The underlying socio-political agenda of the original founders is somewhat more disturbing.
So…I’m not going to pile on criticizing the speaker’s efforts. These women are volunteers supporting women’s empowerment and an organization they believe in so I will respect their efforts.
What I really want to know is….Will you agree to take an Impact Bay Area Defense class or not? Or did you want to continue to make assumptions and provide commentary about who I am and what I am about and whether or not I can handle the wild world of the bloggers or the internets?
Again, Impact offers scholarships if you are financially strapped. Also, there is a coupon for $95 off the Basics Self Defense class. Just mention that you heard about them at the Slut Walk.
One thing you should seriously consider before taking the class is that there is a certain level of confidentiality required. You are free to blog about or share your personal experience, things you learned, things you liked/did not like, thought were useful or not useful, etc… about YOUR experience but Impact asks all students to respect the confidentiality of their fellow classmates and not share other’s personal experiences, trauma history, stories, etc.. If you feel you can respect your fellow classmates wishes, then I would recommend taking a Basics Course. If not, maybe a private class is better for you (and affordable if you have a group of friends take it with you). One of the first things you learn at Impact is to not only set your own boundaries and stick with them but also to respect other people’s boundaries as well and that starts with student confidentiality/privacy.
And here’s something JUST FOR YOU ZOMBIE…if you can agree to respect the confidentiality of your fellow classmates AND will attend and complete the entire Basics Course, I will sponsor you to attend an Impact Basics Self Defense class. That’s a $495 gift just for you Zombie. What do say? I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is on the benefits of this course. Are you? You have my email so I’ll be waiting for your response.
If I were to take a class, I would never “document it” or turn it into a blog post or violate anyone’s privacy or confidentiality.
Why not? Because that would be a private class, and the people attending had no expectation of having their picture taken. I don’t do things like that.
Public protests are a different matter. There is a presumption of “consent” to be reported on, because the whole purpose of a protest is to get media coverage.
As for me taking a self-defense class: At this stage in my life, it isn’t a priority, frankly. I’m either a. Too tiny and feeble to stop a rapist anyway, no matter what my training; or b. Too old and invisible to be even noticed by a rapist; or c. a big burly bad-ass dude. But the real reason is that I’m too busy to do stuff like going to classes. I only blog very part-time and barely have enough hours to do what I do writing-wise; taking classes is just not on my radar. My life is over-full; I’ve got 39 hours of stuff to do every day.
Thanks for the offer anyway. Maybe other commenters here will see your promotional text and decide to sign up for classes! Ya never know. And if they do, I certainly hope that the instructors are more hardcore and effective than the presenter at the rally, who seemed more like a women’s therapy group counselor than a martial arts master.
I highly suggest any class you offer require reading “Meditations on Violence” by Rory Miller. It is an excellent disection and analysis of violence, predatory behavior and how you can avoid being victimized.
It is offered in Kindle format if that’s anyone’s preference.
Bill – Agreed! Excellent book! Lots of great stuff from Rory Miller. Impact is a BIG advocate of Rory Miller and his writings. They quote him often in their course work and a few instructors have worked with him personally and have taken his workshops. It really is a great book for ANYONE! “facing violence” is another good rory miller book.
Sarah, if that woman speaking was an instructor, she should be in jail, and I’m bloody well not kidding. I don’t care how good her organization is, or how admirable its goals, if that’s an example of the instruction, the students should get their money back right now.
She was not on balance when she was standing at the mic, and her “strikes” are a bad joke. No, they’re not even that; nothing came from the center, they were timid and frankly useless. If you really want to piss off an attacker, go right ahead and do what she showed in that video. I’ll visit you in the hospital and give you some cards for some real training.
Some people are always going to freeze. It’s part of human nature – not all of us react correctly, even with extensive training. I’m sorry as hell it happened to her; it’s an awful feeling and my heart aches for her. But please, do not mistake, as you appear to be doing, good intentions for effective training.
Dianna – No one needs to go to jail over a video demo. That is just plain silly…She is not an instructor. She is a friend of mine and volunteers for Impact…she was asked to speak about the Impact history and give a quick demo of a couple techniques…she is not a paid or trained instructor. Speaking with her after the event, she said she got nervous and was told not to go over time so she hurried through the demo and left out many things. Regardless, she is not advocating only these specific techniques that she demo’d in a few minutes will keep you safe. She said none of those things. What she did say is that research shows that often “a single act of determined resistance” is enough to stop an attack. Again, please contact them if you have questions or want more information. Many people (especially people with martial arts training) tend to criticize this organization and what they are doing…however, 99% of the time, these critics change their mind after taking a course themselves. And several martial artists have chosen to become instructors with Impact after taking a course AND many more have offered up their dojo’s for Impact to use for classes. Not sure where you live but maybe there is a chapter near you…they are usually looking for more instructors
My point is…before you pass judgement, please check it out. Don’t feel like this small video clip provides a complete picture. That was not the intent. Don’t take my word for it and don’t take Zombie’s word for it. Go take a class and see for yourself.
Zombie – I am sorry you are unable to take the course at this time. There are lots of people who blog about their Impact experience within the parameters of confidentiality and are able to share a rich experience with their readers. Your multiple choice of who you might be is funny…and ironically you listed several of the sterotypes and myths about self-defense. Personally, it took me 4 years to finally sign up for this class after a friend suggested it to me. I thought it was ridiculous and a useless waste of time when I first read about it so I blew them off…but my friend was persistent and I eventually took it earlier this year. It was and continues to be the best $495 I have ever spent on myself. You are correct…it is much more than just self-defense. Impact does give students the emotional space to address the complex psychological and emotional issues that are the result of violence. It’s unfortunate the speaker was not able to convey ALL of the things this amazing organization does for it’s students during a quick informational demo. I really do hope you will one day take one of these courses…regardless of who you are within your list of multiple choices
Sarah,
Look, this is a conversation over a blog post, which isn’t really workable. To say that I was disturbed and upset by what I saw in the video is putting things far, far too mildly. It’s not merely that I am in martial arts, it’s that I’ve been exposed to too much touchy-feely junk disguised as “training” that damn near got me killed.
You write like all the grant proposals I see; I do not see any way of getting across the difference between what I practice and what you’re an advocate for. There’s a reason martial artists react badly to the Impact program – for too many of us, if clearly emphasizes the wrong things. Frankly, it would require me taking you to my dojang, and you’d probably run crying before you got through the white belt curriculum. I know I damn near did.
The organization, after reading through the grant narrative you posted, has the world’s best intentions. With a really good, tough-minded instructor, more concerned with effective action than making participants feel good or “heal” (a concept that makes me cringe taken on the mat, whatever benefit it may have somewhere else), I can see the curriculum doing some good. But dear heavenly day, woman! The mat’s the mat. You don’t “heal” there, you learn, in all humility. I have never cried on the mat (and I cry easily), and I’ve actually managed not to throw up on my master (though once I came really close). But outcomes on the mat are what you can achieve through technique and ki, not good feelings, and I have no time for “training” that isn’t about producing competent practitioners.
Your friend should have refused (if not an instructor) to demonstrate anything; she should have confined herself to urging the audience to 1) check out the program; and 2) informing people that violence can be answered in any number of ways (which it can – I am a firm believer in talking my way out of pretty much any confrontation; my master’s constant injunction to us is “Smile and calm down.”). No one who is not an instructor has any business teaching any technique; I certainly would not take it upon myself to do more than urge someone to seek training (I’m not qualified to teach).
I would love to continue this conversation – I think you are mistaken in many of your positions, but at least you understand that a person must be competent to defend him/herself – but zombie’s blog is not the place to do it.
It was founded by a woman who was a trained martial artists. She was brutally assualted and raped and NONE of her martial arts training kicked in. She completely froze
And thus you suggest that women take self defense classes to help them in an assault situation.
The martial artist was raped. Despite her skill, despite her training. She was real good in tournaments. But not in life.
Ladies, buy guns. Practice. Hunt. And Hunting is important–because, if you need to use that gun to stop an attacker, you want to be familiar with killing something.
Zombie, ‘The Blogmocracy’ has declared your slutwalk commentary “Pure Awesome”:
http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2011/08/09/1967-pure-awesome/
(B.T.W., ‘The Blogmocracy’ is where all those who were banned from Little Green Footballs ended up).
“Awesome” is good! Thx.
Not all, Fritz, not all. Plenty of people who fled the Madness of King Yertle ended up at Ace of Spades, Babbazee’s, Correspondence Committee, and here at PJM—or some combination thereof—in addition to, or in preference to, Blogmocracy.
The diaspora is broad.
The sadness of the participants is overwhelming. Tragic really. Great work as usual Zombie.
Absolutely, Menachem. I am glad they are not my daughter(s).
Pity their mothers too..
“Unwanted exposure to scrotum is never OK?”
Man; these women better not go to SF pride events. I didn’t realise gay men hated women so much…
This group came to Salt Lake about a week ago. I’m glad you wrote an article about it, I was hoping someone would. I enjoyed your list of contradictions. It is confusing to dress in a revealing outfit, but then get upset when a man is attracted to it. A lot of the women in these pictures were repulsive though.
zombie, you are becomming one of my favorites, just don’t take it the wrong way bub!
speaking of hollywood, with all the space invader pix coming out, i have an idea for a funny, yet serious new one.
1st scene: alien craft descends on white house lawn and scary alien (potential rapist) climbs out. soon out of the front door of the w.h. emerges a page with a note and a map showing them how to get to san fran.
cut to next scene, near end of movie.
aliens scrambling for safety of spaceship with nancy p. and 10k screaming feminists chasing them with a bill in her hand for them to sign saying “you don’t need to read it ….”
i’m still working on the in-between scenes. couldn’t sleep.
“Early SlutWalks had more semi-nudity, but over the months they seem to have mellowed”
What?! Sell-outs! You have to OWN your slut-itude! If you don’t show more skin, the rapists will have won!
Zombie is one brave man to attend this demonstration, i wouldn’t.lol.
If you men don’t wear a skilt,we won’t see your scrotum.Problem solved?
I gotta say: how you dress can not be blamed for the crime of rape but dressing provocatively is asking for attention and it’s not always what you are looking for.
Other than a social gathering,the whole event seems a mass of contradictions,attention seeking and shock value.
I don’t exactly understand the sex workers union being there.Of course they are exposed to rape,job hazard, but was it only to protest laws/police?
Uhhh words of wisdom: don’t share your panties with a tranny,they stretch them out every time.
My head hurts.
The sluts in the “Slutwalk” look like unfeminine lesbians who choose to dress
slutilly? Most appear as sweathogs? Is NOW, NARAL and Planned Parent Hood
running out of feminine women? Unfeminine feminist’s are destroying the great
mystery of sexually attractive females. Younger and younger women are becoming single mothers–evidently females are raping America but demand victimhood status? A real woman is not seen in the pictures?
I think is was Rush Limbaugh who said something to the effect: “Womens groups are how ugly women get power.”
Pretty women don’t need them.
“Men are men: some are violent, some are frustrated, some hate women, and some are psychotic, and it doesn’t matter how society is organized — some small percentage of these assholes will commit rape.”
Actually, I know of some cases in which lesbians sexually assaulted other women. Feminists generally don’t like to talk about these cases, of course.
Rape scenarios are a prominent feature in lesbian erotica.
But that’s…okay. Apparently it’s nor rape if the penis is made of silicone.
Sign for counter-protest: “If you don’t want to be raped, then carry your gun. If your government won’t let you — whose fault is that?”
Who would have thought that testosterone driven males would have to apolegize for being attracked to semi-naked females?
Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
To paraphrase Alfonzo Rachel at PJTV, just looking at most of these, uhm, girls, makes my prostrate go on strike.
No outrage from these “feminists” over “honor” murders?
Please remove the picture of the “7 year old” immediately. She is extremely upset her photograph has been used in this post.
Next time, don’t give the poor kid a sign. What on earth is the matter with you?
You should be ashamed of yourselves!
This is really a fashion show for the Salvation Army bargain basement. And it looks like the actual mannequins, too.
“Derelicte. It is a fashion, a way of life inspired by the very homeless, the vagrants, the crack whores that make this wonderful city so unique…”
I can’t help it…I love it! Women are doing for the word “slut” what African-Americans did for “nigger”.
P.S. Zombie, while we’re making progress there are still plenty of people who think a woman wearing a tank top is “asking for it.”
*signed*
Conservative Slut
Absolutely Rocks, Zombie.
It’s Mikey Moore
There is good research showing that women who are closer to ovulation wear more revealing, sexier clothes when going to nightclubs. This makes perfect sense in light of evolutionary biology, which predicts that any behavior which increases the probability of obtaining sperm from a higher ranking male would be selected, especially when that sperm can be most useful reproductively.
But this little factoid also points to another aspect of this Slutwalk thing which no one has mentioned so far. Namely, it is not the sexual attention of males that these women object to, so much as it is the sexual attention of LOW RANKING, UNDESIRABLE males. As the above finding suggests, revealing clothes have a purpose, which is to win an alpha male. Unfortunately, there is no way for women to use this tactic without also attracting the attention of beta (and lower) males, a certain percentage of whom will inevitably turn out to be rapists. As others have pointed out, this higher risk is simply a fact of life which has nothing to do with law or morality, and pointing this out obviously does not endorse rape. A revealingly dressed woman is just statistically more likely to be raped, for the same reason that someone holding a steak near a hungry dog’s mouth is more likely to be bitten than someone keeping their distance.
Implicitly, what the slutwalkers are asking society to do is the following: we want you to create a situation where we can use the sexy-clothes tactic whenever we wish to entice the high-ranking male that all of us (save the lesbians) want. At the same time, we want you to ensure that none of us will EVER experience any of the negative consequences that this tactic can trigger, ranging from being hit on by losers, to rape. In other words, what the slutwalkers are asking society to do is IMPOSSIBLE. It is a self-contradictory fantasy scenario that has no relevance to the real world whatsoever. The women might as well carry signs asking for perfect weather everywhere they go, or to have rainbows and romantic music playing as they walk down the street. In fact, in some ways their demand is the female counterpart of male fantasy scenarios like porn films (where every woman is willing and undemanding) or the “42 virgins” heaven of Islamic suicide bombers.
The similarity to many other leftist demands, as well as the essentially infantile and irrational nature of the minds that make such demands, is very apparent.
I also note that the slutwalkers case has many parallels to the whole sexual harassment debate of the 90s. As best as I can determine, back then, sexual harassment was defined as UNWANTED attention, in other words, sexual advances from a low-ranking male. Yet the same women who complained about sexual harassment insisted on the right to enjoy the attentions of high-ranking males at the same time, and in the same location, i.e., the workplace. Unfortunately, as every man knows, it is essentially impossible for a man to tell whether a given woman at a given time will be receptive to his advances or not (male intuition is far inferior to female intuition); and in a practical sense, this forces men to either make occasional unwanted advances, or remain celibate. So, just as in the slutwalkers case, activists were making impossible, self-contradictory demands, tying society in knots for the sake of their never-ending quest for ripple-free lives devoid of any unpleasant experience.
What you said!
Wow! Very well-stated, old boy. That was/is IT in a nutshell, pal.
I don’t know who taught you to speak -hey, preach on- you
need your own show. Better than Dr. Ruth…
Zombie-JohnParker -remember that kid. He hit it out of the park!
You mentioned research. Could you give me citations? This is exactly the sort of stuff I love throwing at people and when it’s been published, it’s almost impossible for them to refute without looking foolish.
Sure, Phil. A few minutes’ googling turned up the following:
Ovulation, Female Competition, and Product Choice: Hormonal Influences on Consumer Behavior
Kristina M. Durante, Vladas Griskevicius, Sarah E. Hill, Carin Perilloux and Norman P. Li
Journal of Consumer Research
Vol. 37, No. 6 (April 2011), pp. 921-934
Free download at:
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/students/perilloux/OvulationandProductChoiceFinal.pdf
I have to say that for academic research, this paper is quite a gripping read, well worth the time, especially if you are single.
Key passage here:
“Findings showed that near peak fertility (the time around ovulation characterized by a hormonal spike in estrogen and LH), women chose sexier clothing and other fashion accessories. The current study shows directly that the effects of the ovulatory cycle extend to women’s deliberate product choices, extending previous findings in which ovulating women sketched sexier outfits to wear to a party (Durante et al. 2008).”
Durante also reviews previous findings re: the effects of ovulation on female behavior, which makes rather jaw-dropping reading, especially if you are a typical left-wing feminist who still believes that gender identity is “socially constructed”. (The real scientists dropped that hypothesis decades ago.)
“Several empirical studies have borne out predictions derived from the Ovulatory Shift Hypothesis. Regarding mate preferences, for example, near ovulation women do indeed prefer men with symmetrical and masculine faces (Penton- Voak and Perrett 2000; Thornhill and Gangestad 2003; Thornhill et al. 2003), men who display greater social dominance (Gangestad et al. 2004), men who possess deeper masculine voices (Puts 2005), and men who possess creative intelligence rather than inherited wealth (Haselton and Miller 2006). Women near ovulation are also more motivated to cheat on their current romantic partner, especially if their current partner lacks indicators of genetic fitness (Gangestad, Thornhill, and Garver 2002; Garver-Apgar et al. 2006). Evidence also indicates that ovulating women are motivated to be more social and appear more attractive at social events (Durante, Li, and Haselton 2008; Haselton and Gangestad 2006; Haselton et al. 2007). For example, in a laboratory task, ovulating women sketched an outfit to wear to a party that was sexier and more revealing (Durante et al. 2008). Parallel to making a greater effort to appear more alluring at high fertility, lap dancers at a gentlemen’s club earn significantly more in tips near ovulation (Miller, Tybur, and Jordan 2007). Consistent with the hormonal underpinnings of ovulatory effects, all ovulatory shift effects are “turned off” when women are using hormonal contraception (e.g., the pill, the patch, vaginal ring). Because contraception disrupts the normal fluctuation of hormones across the menstrual cycle, it predictably erases the shifts associated with normal ovulation (see Fleischman, Navarette, and Fessler 2010).”
More recently, Durante along with coauthor Sarah Hill published an even more fascinating paper entitled: “Courtship, Competition, and the Pursuit of Attractiveness: Mating Goals Facilitate Health-Related Risk Taking and Strategic Risk Suppression in Women”. This paper is directly relevant to this article and the whole slutwalkers phenomenon, so much so that one would like to send copies to Zombie and the slutwalkers organizers, and I for one would love to sit in on a conference call with Durante and these women. Essentially the paper finds that when women are aware of mating opportunities and sexual competition (ie the presence of other competing women), it increases their willingness to engage in risky behavior. Durante mentions tanning salons and diet pills as behaviors that have obviously negative health effects but may increase mating success. However, IMHO, it is rather obvious that wearing sexy clothes and thereby incurring an increased risk of rape is fully consistent with Durante’s hypothesis.
Link here:
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/37/3/383.short
Huh.
Well, whatever. I’m a proud sexy conservative-feminist woman. When my daughters get older, they will dress like girls. When they become teenagers, they will never leave my house dressed like sluts. They will also never date a boy I have not had over to dinner first, and said boy will become acquainted with all the alpha males in my family who are ready to give them a beat-down if they so much as glance down our young ladies’ shirts. Will this keep them from getting raped someday? I hope so. It will certainly reduce the chances.
These chicks don’t get it. The cop wasn’t saying it’s the victim’s fault; he was instead pointing out that predators look for the easy marks to take down. If you dress like a slut, guess what? you’re sticking out as an easy mark. Of course dressing modestly won’t stop rape! But it might keep you from becoming the victim, just like not drinking to excess in public or going places with men you don’t know well.
he was instead pointing out that predators look for the easy marks to take down.
Imagine if the misogynist SOB really crossed the line and said something like “don’t get drunk at frat parties.”
Telling young people not to be stupid is not the same as blaming the victim or exonerating the victimizer.
Words mean things.
Margaret Thatcher once said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
`nuff said, sluts.
When you’re drunk and horney what a godsend to come across a really slutty chick. Allah akbar.
Go wash your mouth out with soap, you sick freak!
I would like for you to put my picture down ASAP. You are a jerk, you did not ask for my profession. I am not a prostitute and you missed the whole point of the march. SHAME ON YOU! I am not a Latina Prostitute, I am a professional woman with a radio show and if you do not take my picture down I will take another measures. You are so unprofessional and full of shit. People like you is the reason I have a radio show. Que cabron!
If you tell me which photos you are in, I will fix them and/or the captions. You didn’t specify!
Are you the person with the devil horns and the PUTAS and the Marcha de las Putas signs?
Well, you never wrote back, so I just had to assume that your were indeed the devil-woman with the PUTAS sign.
Per your request, I have now changed the caption and removed my speculation that it referred to a prostitututes’ union. Now, there is nothing in any of the captions that implies that the person carrying the “PUTAS” signs is a prostitute or in any way associated with a prostitutes’ union.
As for removing the pictures entirely — sorry. If you go to a public political protest and carry signs, you do so with the expectation of public exposure and media coverage. This has been confirmed by the courts many times.
If you don’t want your picture associated with SlutWalk or with the word PUTAS, then don’t go to a SlutWalk and carry a sign that says PUTAS! Seems like a simple solution to your problem.
Oh, one final note: Thanks for calling me “cabron”! It will boost my credibility at the next “CabronWalk” march I’m organizing.
Cabron and proud!
Count me in, a conservative “cabron” and a proud one too…
You mean that the sign was merely personal bad taste?
How charming.
In the early-mid 90s, I was stationed in the Bay Area and we used to have to deal with protestors of various stripes and craziness from time to time. One of my more sage supervisors looked at them one time and said to me “I guess it gives their lives some meaning.” I couldn’t add a thing to that-it summed it all up almost perfectly. Zombie, loved the comment about staying there cause that’s “where the good huntin’ is”. Funny. Me, I left after my tour ended, though my sister lives there- a “closet conservative”. She enjoys all this stuff-thinks it’s a hoot, but won’t let her kids anywhere near it.(sigh) I haven’t been back in a long time. Too crazy-I get scared when I think that most of them can vote!
You are such an asshole that you don’t even put your real name. Vales CACA!
Why? So you could attack him/her/personhood with slander? So they couldn’t document your actions in public?
You’re the one hiding behind language. Insult in English.
“Like a ring of gold in a swine’s snout so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.” Proverbs 11:22
It’s pointless quoting the bible because these people are atheists. How could you believe in God when you’re born Ugly AND Stupid.
Well done Zombie! Probably one of the finest you’ve written. The following quote I found somewhere on the intertubes and would credit it appropriately but I can’t remember where, so here goes:
“Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound”.
No matter how may Islamic women are publicly stoned to death because they were raped and/or accused of adultery, no matter how many Islamic women are murdered by Islamic men in honor killings, no matter how many Islamic women are publicly beaten by men entitled to beat them for leaving their homes, going to school, testifying in court, working, not wearing their filthy berquas and/or talking to a man without their Islamofacist fathers, husbands and uncles permission, no matter how many Islamic women die in child birth because Islamic women are forbidden medical care, no matter how many Islamic women are civilly and religiously dead under Sharia not one sign, not one little peep, not one painted forehead or berqua is held up in protest for the billions of Islamic women demeaned, enslaved, tortured and murdered everywhere there is Islam. Even here in the USA, Islamic women are forbidden under Sharia to enjoy the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution. Christianity doesn’t condone, encourage, permit or endorse rape, enslavement or murder of women. Islam not only condones it, it codifies it.
Are the slutniks so scared and so stupid that they protest against Christianity instead of Islam because Islam might retaliate. By targeting innocent Christianity macho slutniks endorse the largest, richest and greatest institutional misogynists on the planet who codify women as nothing but womb factories. Under Sharia and the Queran women’s sexual organs belong to none other than Islamofascist men. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, “You can lead a slut to water but you can’t make her think.”
Aye, aye. Praises to you for mentioning that, Arlinda.
Doesn’t compute in their brain, though.. This is a “fad”
more than a real issue. A way to express their frustration,
confusion, ignorance and lack of meaninful life..
Comments have been approved since my first comment, which requested you remove the photo. Why not approve the comment and/or delete the photo?
The photo has now been blurred at your request, so the seven-year-old is anonymous and cannot be identified.
I also added this caption: “[Update: Face of underage person blurred at the request of the person foolish enough to bring her to a SlutWalk in the first place.]”
Also: Your initial request was made at 5am. Editors gotta sleep too!
Why was a sign attached to the child?!
Not your bad, parental bad. Of course, it’s never mommy’s fault, somehow.
I understand why you capitulated, Zombie, but I think it was a mistake. This woman shouldn’t be allowed to get away from the fact that it was entirely her own bad choices that put her daughter there to be photographed at a public, sex-themed media event.
Like I said, I did it for the sake of the daughter, not for the mother. Assuming the mother is telling the truth, the daughter herself didn’t want to be in the picture — so I shouldn’t punish the daughter for the bad decisions of her mother. The daughter didn’t have any choice in the matter — her mother brought her. So it’s not the daughters’s fault.
Hopefully the mother will learn a lesson from this experience and next time get a babysitter instead of bringing her daughter to a potentially traumatic event.
Ahh… “Idiots, doing idiot things, because they are idiots.”
Here’s the qualifier: I agree with Zombie. “I want them to execute rapists.”
Here’s the statement: Stupid people who don’t bother learning anything about human nature or watching a simple documentary on predators and prey and then bitch when someone states they should be more aware of the dynamic, might want to take in to account that it might be advice to prevent the occurance from, you know, occuring again.
Dude…did you talk to any of the speakers or organizers or sponsors? If you had, you would have realized that the photogenic one you so singled out as the one the organizers chose to carry the banner leading the walk, was actually an organizer herself AND she is one of the brave women who rescued “jane doe” from being brutally gang raped. Did you also not realize that “Jane Doe” herself was there and spoke publicly for the first time since her trial? Sure there are lots of different types of people w/ different agendas that show up to things like this but you missed the biggest “scoop” of the day by failing to recognize the real Heros in Lauren ChiefElk and “Jane Doe”. If minimizing everyone else’s experience makes you feel better about yourself and drives advertisers to your site, good for you but next time, some actual fact finding and basic research would give you a legitimate perspective. And regarding self defense, research has proven that a single act of determined resistence is often more than enough to stop an attack. Again, go do some research. Contact the sponsors. Try learning something new vs tearing others down.
My point about the photogenic march leader still stands. There were a lot of organizers. Only one was chosen to carry the banner.
I reported on the aspects of the event which I found noteworthy. The person named Jane Doe — with whom I entirely sympathize, by the way — did not speak into the microphone, and no one at the rally could hear a word she was saying, except maybe a few people standing very close to her. Sorry.
I’m not minimizing everyone’s experience. You had your experience, and everyone else there had their experiences. That can’t be changed. If you enjoyed the march, then that’s what happened for you.
Reporters/journalists/bloggers are not required to repeat or agree with the purported narrative of any protest. I present here what I think was the actual narrative. That is my legitimate perspective, whether you agree with me or not.
Out in the rough-and-tumble real world, every single person who hears a speaker or who sees a protest will have their own impressions of it and their own opinions of it. Sometimes those opinions are harsh.
That’s reality. Deal.
There has been a lot of criticism of SlutWalk coming from all directions, both left and right. And a lot of that criticism has been much more harsh than mine. I at least totally accept the premise that women are not to blame for becoming victims, and I say so in the report.
I learned a lot of new things at SlutWalk. And I didn’t tear anything down — it tore itself down. As you can see from the comments here, most people agree with me that your message was muddled, ineffective, and counter-productive. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but don’t blame the messenger.
Actually, two organizers held the banner, and we attempted to have 4. But whatever, hater’s gon’ hate.
Haters = people who don’t parrot your narrative.
The real world is not a mutual congratulation party or a self-esteem-boosting conference.
In this real world, people disagree with each other all the time, and have their own opinions. That does not mean they are “haters.”
And by accusing me of being a hater, you yourself are a hater — of me.
But whatever, haters gon’ hate.
Apparently, you are not required to actually do any research or fact checking either. Going forward, I’ll count in you in the blogger column since journalist are actually supposed to investigate, dig deeper, interview people AND gain permission to publish photographs and video which you have not done.
You are free to regard me as a blogger, for that is what I am.
As I mentioned above, the courts have ruled repeatedly that people at public protests are presumed to be giving (here’s the magic word) consent to be photographed, and that no one is required to get “permission” to take or publish photos of public protests.
You know as well as I do that on the Internet there are hundreds of photo essays about SlutWalks, both of this event in SF and other events around the world. And you aren’t complaining about those — because those photo essays aren’t part of a critique. You only deem this one illegal because you don’t like its point of view.
If I had published the exact same photos but as part of a complimentary essay that said “Look at these wonderful people with their wonderful protest! Wonderfulness!”, then you would be thrilled to see coverage of your event getting a wide audience.
It’s not the photos you disapprove of, it’s what I say about the photos.
If you don’t like the way your protest came off, then maybe next time do a little “message control” so it isn’t so muddled and self-defeating.
I am not your enemy. Think of it as constructive criticism.
I am not an organizer. You posted photographs of MANY minors on your blog without their consent…and pretty sure the courts do not allow this. You are absolutely free to express your opinion and free to mold your blog to fit your agenda which in this case appears to be that the slut walks had good intentions but came across as unorganized and muddled message. Fine, if that is your opinion. Personally, I prefer an opinion founded in research. You wonder why a woman is asking you not to take her photograph, why do you ask her and get a quote from her instead of mocking her? You couldn’t hear “Jane Doe” speaking, go up and ask her for a comment. You wonder why a certain photogenic person was carrying a sign leading the walk, go up to her and ask her for a comment on why she was “chosen” (as you say) to carry the sign. You wonder why one women chose to spell “colour” like they do in the UK then go up and ask her. You want to understand more about a self defense demo that you question, go up and ask the speaker for more information. I wouldn’t all what you posted here constructive criticism…it is more like passive aggressive ranting.
Each person has her or his point of view. That’s what democracy is all about!
You are free to describe my essay as “passive-agrressive ranting.” In fact, you could write a whole book describing my essay as passive-aggressive ranting. It’s a free country.
And other people are free to characterize the SlutWalk however they want. This is what they call free speech.
Being (as you seem to be) over-sensitive and outraged by any criticism only confirms the impression that many people have of SlutWalk as being prickly and thin-skinned, which drives people away from your message.
The Internet is a wild and woolly place. If you can’t handle the comparatively gentle and somewhat sympathetic and humorous ribbing contained in my essay, I don’t think you’re quite ready for the flamewars and savage attacks that occur daily in the political arena.
As for the minors at the protest (I didn’t see many, but if you insist) — if anybody should be taken to court over that, it should be the parents and guardians of those kids for taking them to totally inappropriate events where people use words like “cunt” and “orgasm” and “slut” and “ass” and all the rest — and not the person who (unintentionally) documented this abuse.
Why not crop her entirely out? There were multiple children there, but only one had to stand with the mobile sound while her mother ran around asking multiple organizers, one of whom happens to be very conventionally attractive, to carry the front banner.
Why not? Because I think it was newsworthy that someone thought it was OK to bring their young child to an inappropriate sexual-themed event. I want to document that fact. And it’s even more noteworthy that, per your comment, the child was left alone and unattended (however briefly) at a sexual-themed event.
As long as the child is completely blurred in the photo, she is then anonymous and can’t be identified. No one knows who she is or what she looks like.
Don’t like it? Then don’t bring your daughter to inappropriate public sex protests! The Supreme Court has ruled that people at public events cannot prevent photographs being taken or having those photographs published. The whole purpose of the event was to attract media attention. Well, you got it. I anonymized your daughter as a courtesy to her. But the photo is legal, and newsworthy, so it stays.
She has asked to be taken out. Please remove her entirely. Just because something is legal, does not make it ethical.
“Just because it’s legal does not mean it’s ethical”
You might want to turn that shiny little spotlight back on yourself there, cupcake.
As a favor to her, I’ve now cropped her form out the photo completely, even though she had already been anonymized.
Gone.
Also, I removed any reference to the bad parenting in the caption. Now there is no reference to her in any way, visually or textually.
Refresh the page and/or empty the cache of your browser to see the updates.
At your request, speaking on her behalf.
Zombie, you’re too nice.
If someone uses her child as a protest accessory, anything else is on her. For pity’s sake, what is wrong with people?
“…as enticing and as repulsive as possible…”
As usual, previous generations have already nailed this down. Dress like a girl and carry a firearm.
2 buses later and carrying 2 bags of clothes and supplies, because I did plan on getting laid later, I arrived at Dolores Park from the Outer Richmond. Greeting some dear friends who had also gathered to support and participate in the Slut Walk, I pulled out an outfit from one of those bags that I consider to be powerful and slutty. I could go in to greater detail about that, but suffice it to say that it’s not an outfit generally considered to be ‘sexy’ unless you like fur. Dolores Park is where I spend many a weekend, it is usually a safe space for me and on many occasion I am topless. Being able to bare one’s breasts without repercussion is sadly not an option in this culture, but I like to take a stand anyway, and it makes for fewer tan lines. Listening to some amazing, powerful and heart breaking stories, hugging my friends who had tears in their eyes, there was a gentleman who in my opinion was creeping around my group with a camera. He appeared to single me out from my group and take my picture. I used the international sign for “hey buddy, stop what you are doing to me with that camera”, and told him that it was polite to ask first before taking a picture. I wasn’t there to have my picture taken or have any particular attention; the attention of everyone else there was on the speakers as it should have been. Instead of focusing on those speakers, he chose to take a picture of me and perpetuate the view that because I was exposing my breasts and wearing a ‘crazy’ outfit that I was there for attention and I quote “She obviously did this so people would look at her. And naturally the photographers sought her out.” It was at this point that I realized that I must have been reading a satirical piece, for there was just too much bloody irony for such a statement in a blog post on a protest that started because some Wanker said that women shouldn’t dress a certain way if they don’t want the attention.
Cheers, and now time for a nice cup of tea. Perhaps Zombie dear, you should have a one too.
Sorry, you got the wrong person — I was in a group of three, and I am no gentleman. You probably did not notice us or distinguish us from any of the other SlutWalkers there. As the photos in the report show, there were plenty of photographers focusing on you — though you may not have noticed them all. You were actually gesturing not at us but at the person whose camera is visible on the right edge of the photos shown here (photos which were actually taken by one of the other members of our group).
As to the rest of your comment, I will let it speak for itself — kind of perfectly exemplifies and confirms my “Contradiction #2: Look at me / Don’t you dare look at me!” thesis.
I stand by my contention that if you wear a furry outfit and expose yourself at a political protest swarming with photographers, you are expecting to get attention.
Next time, if you really don’t want any attention, you should run down the street naked yelling “I demand privacy!” Really, how else would anyone know that you wanted privacy?
These exhibitionist mind games don’t work on me. Sorry.
“…he chose to take a picture of me and perpetuate the view that because I was exposing my breasts and wearing a ‘crazy’ outfit that I was there for attention…”
Go figure.
Such cognitive dissonance REPLY should be more painful!
Sadly, this springs from the same Lefty sickness that’s bringing us the flash-mob violence from “youth of an unspecified race.”
We’ve spent the last ~4 decades teaching “flaunt your sexuality – but you have every right to be angry if some guy looks at you!”
It’s really not one bit different than dragging a flashy lure through the water then being based if a fish takes a bite!
And it’s not just our young women either…
My wife is an especially attractive, mature woman. One morning I noticed she was REALLY dressing provocatively for work – lots of cleavage, wonder-bra, high skit skirt, 5″ stilettos – the whole bit. Naturally, I noticed and was curious…
“oh… I have a meeting with the (deleted) manager today… We kind of have an unspoken understanding _ he gets to stare at my t!+$ for a half hour or so, and then I get whatever I want.”
A few weeks later, she came home REALLY shaken up – it seems the manager in question had caught her alone and tried to make a move, and was really confused when she “flipped out on him…”
She stated she was going to report him to HR – “THAT’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT!!”
MY response? No – you sticking your boobs in his face every time you want something from him? THAT is sexual harassment!
LOOK – we’re GUYS! and YOU’RE HOT! Every man you work with its sneaking looks at you all the time! (note – like most women, she knows this, it’s been happening since she was 12 our so…)
What she apparently DIDN’T know was that this guy damn well DID NOTICE the pattern that she always dressed more provocatively whenever she had a meeting scheduled with him! WHAT THE FRICK WAS HE *SUPPOSED* TO THINK?!
And now you want to rob him of his job and probably end his career because he drew the obvious, logical conclusion from your repeated pattern of deliberate behavior?!
Naturally, her conclusion from this conversation was that *I* was a complete jerk and a horrible husband – I was “punished” soundly for this… But at least I stopped her from ruining this poor guy’s life…
WOMEN: IT’S SIMPLE… IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SEEN AS A WHORE, DON’T WEAR THE FRICKING UNIFORM!
That even who’s have the right to say no, that rape victims are not to blame, etc its OBVIOUS – SO MUCH SO THAT IT SHOULDN’T MEAN TO BE SAID.
Still, that does not give you the right to sexually-harass MEN and expect them to be punished for noticing.
If you drag a steak through a pack of dogs, you know what will happen.
Dressing provocatively around men is no different.
I SHOULD be able to leave my car unlocked and my wallet on the seat – but we all know what will happen if I do! Does this mean the thief is blameless? Of course not – and neither is it all my fault, but it still could not have happened if I’d exercised a but of common sense…
Dress like a slut if you wish, but if you do you have no right to be mad when you catch a guy looking at what you’re put out there to be seen!
In short, GROW UP!
Ah, but Dedicated Dad, “growing up” is exactly what so many of these left-feminist types cannot, and will not, do. Because, after you strip out the self-serving rhetoric, what they ultimately want is the benefits of being male (status, wealth, power), without the costs (physical danger, financial risk, emotional trauma).
It reminds me of that great quote by the Jack Nicholson character in the film “As Good As It Gets”. A female fan asks him how he does such a great job of writing female characters. He responds: “Simple. I imagine a man, then remove reason and accountability.”
I can’t get through all the idiotic comments, but Zombie, you miss the point, if a woman says no (pictures) and you take them anyway and publish them you are saying “she wore short skirt and deserved it.” Going to a protest FAIL. NO means NO.
Reporting on a public protest designed to get media attention is the equivalent of raping someone?
Interesting.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you are thinking it means.”
No expectation of privacy in a public space. Get a grip.
If I’m on the street, and someone catches me picking my nose, it’s not their problem, it’s mine.
The protest was held in a public place.
The protest attempted to get the attention of the public.
People were dressed provocatively in a public place.
Photographs were taken in a public place.
I don’t see any wrong in it. Neither does the law judging by the success of those “Girls Gone Wild” videos. It doesn’t matter how embarrassed you are by it now, you can’t retcon what you did in the public eye.
And really — why wouldn’t you be proud of it? Isn’t being found attractive the ultimate affirmation of being a slut?
I had a talk with a Toronto Police Officer in a Domestic Violence Unit.. They know about the muslim threat..
That means that the officer offering the advice to be aware of one’s own image was all about the growing muslim threat in Toronto..
They know.. that’s all I have to say about this..
“Unwanted Exposure to Scrotum Is Never OK!”
But I’m exposing myself in solidarity with the SlutWalk Sisters!
“Unwanted exposure to a scrotum is never okay!”
Nor is looking at your disgusting, hairy, obese, sagging body. Yet there seems to be no shortage of these provacateurs about…
A little reciprocity goes a long way.
Zombie, I’m impressed you can keep so calm in your responses. I’d want to shake these idiots. They bring a seven year old to a sexually themed event and then complain that she’s had her picture taken? They’re an utter failure of a parent to do that in the first place. What kind of screwed up perspective do you need to even contemplate that action?
I’m reminded of the old Bill Cosby routine, “Come here come here come here get away get away get away”.
Not that I want to agree with stereotypes propagated by those horrible old-fashioned male chauvinist pigs, but those SlutWalkers sure seem intent on proving them right…
Thank you.
I think that there is something to be said about both sides of this debate. There are a lot of nasty men out there but there are also a lot of nasty women. Both men and women need to be able to recognise when they are in a dangerous situation or even the possibliity of a dangerous situation and take defensive action. This may mean avoiding areas and groups of people hanging around and it may also means dressing appropriately. This last statement applies to both men and women. As an example, I ride a motorcycle and I got myself into a bit of trouble and a beating from some gang members by wearing the wrong attire. I am not saying that this is right as I am in my 60s and it is not fun to be attached by several strong men, just pointing out the reality. We do live in the real world and it will never be a perfect utopia.
If you care to do some research and get the actual statements made in Canada you will find that this is all that the policemen was talking about. To exagerate it up into some massive crusade that totally distorts the original meaning is a typical bully tactic of the leftist socialists.
i don’t know if anyone here reads Chateau Heartiste (blog) but this was covered very well…and this guy despises feminists.
Read and enjoy.
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/sluts-march-for-right-to-be-easy-lays/
I love this part:
“As we all know by now from reading this blog, rape is about sex primarily, and only secondarily about power, if it is about the latter at all. The boner doesn’t lie. A man has to be sexually aroused to commit rape. If it were about power, as the feminists like to claim, Donald Trump would pop wood every time he closed a deal, and Warren Buffett would jizz in his pants when his portfolio fattened. Judging by Buffett’s success, that would be a lot of jizz. As far as I can tell, no photos of Buffett exist with telltale jizz stains on his crotch.”
“C’mon, it’s the 21st century. The kind of “blame-the-victim” mentality against which SlutWalk rages has not been an acceptable attitude for many decades — at least in Western culture. (In the Middle East, it’s a different story — we’ll get back to this point later.) So, one Canadian policeman made one thoughtless offhand remark. For this, all of society must make reparations?”
i think if you would take a moment and browse around on the comments on just about any news article involving rape or abduction, you’ll see how absolutely wrong you are. it’s mindblowing how many (seemingly well meaning, sympathetic) people (men and women) immediately jump to the conclusion that a woman who is out late at night, or a woman who walks home alone, or was young and pretty, etc, was doing SOMETHING that made it impossible for her to not be able to make it home unmolested.
“And I would argue that we “conservatives” (as you characterize people like me) actually hate rape more than the feminists do”
this is so incredibly offensive. you hate rape more than someone whose probably been raped. why? because you want to get revenge after the fact and they want to prevent it from happening by teaching a little bit of self-defense? this article is just one arrogant privileged statement after another. it must be incredibly awesome to not have to deal with the reality of this very serious issue every day of your life.
First, you are misrepresenting what Zombie said. I guess that your righteous indignation about rape trumps reading comprehension.
Second, “someone whose [sic] probably been raped”? First time I’ve come across that definition of a feminist.
Third, how about counting to a million, taking many deep breaths and then thinking about what unwarranted sexist assumption(s) you are making in your comment? (You can then reflect on the irony of you accusing others of offensiveness.)
first of all, i am directly quoting what ‘zombie’ said. i’m not misrepresenting anything. if zombie doesn’t want rape victims coming to that conclusion, he might try choosing his words a bit more sensitively and carefully. (i won’t hold my breath.)
secondly i wasn’t defining a feminist as someone who’s been raped (talk about misrepresenting…) take a random sampling of the women who’ve participated in slutwalks, or a random sampling of feminists, or a random sampling of women. check out some rape statistics, you’d see that, unfortunately, i am not incorrect.
thirdly, i’m basing my ‘sexist’ (hahaha!) assumptions entirely on the tone of zombie’s essay, which is ridiculous and privileged and sexist, and so are just about all of the supportive comments on the article. i wish i’d never read any of it.
and finally, i am not far enough removed from rape to view it with anything other than righteous indignation. maybe someday.
1. You are not just quoting Zombie, you are drawing inferences: “because you want to get revenge after the fact and they want to prevent it from happening by teaching a little bit of self-defense”. This inference is not just unsupported by the article, but is flatly contradicted by it. Reading comprehension fail.
2. So if I take a random woman, she was probably raped? Even the most extreme and ridiculous “statistics” don’t support such nonsense. (Also, see point 3.)
3. And once again, in this comment, you repeat a sexist assumption. You are providing a lot of laughs to people who know Zombie.
4. “i [sic] am not far enough removed from rape to view it with anything other than righteous indignation”. I sincerely hope that one day you reach a point where your indignation does not overwhelm reading comprehension and reasoning ability.
1.blahblahblahblahblahblahblah
if you’re going to quote me, quote me correctly. i was asking a question about that statement, not making my own assertion.
i quoted zombie’s words. i am a feminist and a survivor and zombie is a conservative. zombie claims that he/she hates rape more than i do. i asked for clarification. i don’t actually believe that either of us hates rape more than the other, just that it was a strange thing to say. so i asked a question of zombie (not sue, the prez of zombie’s fan club)
instead of attempting to insult me repeatedly, you could just copy and paste the part i missed where zombie ‘flatly contradicts’ what i’ve said. i’m not perfect, it’s possible that i missed it, what with all my righteous indignation and inability to comprehend the written word!
2. like i said, take a look at some sexual assault stats and you’ll see that i’m not wrong. just telling me that i’m speaking nonsense doesn’t make it so.
3. i’m amused that you keep saying that i’m being sexist. i don’t know whether zombie is a man or woman, so that’s not actually true. but you can keep repeating it if it makes you feel better, i don’t mind. also, it’s really baffling that you’d feel like laughing while discussing something as damaging and awful as sexual assault. but that supports what i was saying about privilege.
4. it’s a real bummer that you’re callous and petty enough to add the “[sic]” there. it speaks volumes about your sincerity, and about how seriously you take the plight of rape/assault victims. your response shows up right under mine. there’s no real concern that someone’s gonna think you typed anything incorrectly (god forbid!)
(Response to Peggy @ 7:29)
1. Of course! You were only asking questions! Disingenuous much?
2. Just to be clear: you are actually claiming that 50% or more of women have been raped?
3. Jumping to stereotypical assumptions regarding people’s gender is not sexist? Live and learn… And do you think my oh so offensive (and privileged!) “laughing” comment might have had anything to do with a certain someone’s “hahaha!”?
4. Oh dear, I do feel so very bad about bumming you out. How insincere of me to disassociate myself from unconventional spelling! And what does it say about your sincerity that you are using rape as a get-out-of-patriarchal-spelling-rules card?
Sue, “prez of zombie’s fan club”
Don’t write nonsense.
Conservatives believe in the autonomy and sanctity of the individual; that is the starting point of conservative philosophy. There is little that anyone will ever encounter in the modern world that is more of a violation of autonomy, freedom, and the sanctity of the individual than rape.
Of course conservatives abominate rape, whether male or female, raped or unraped.
Just as a heads up, any countries that speak British English, including , for example, India, spell “color” as colour.
So victim blaming isn’t an issue? The reason slutwalks were started is a response to a comment by a police office that women should not dress like sluts in order to avoid be raped in response to a question about a rape case in San jose, CA of a 17 yr. The women who rescued “jane doe” forced themselves into a room full of men who were standing over a 17 yr old female who’s pants had been pulled down and left dangling on one ankle and her top partially pulled off and hanging off one arm. The witnesses gave statements to police that they saw the victim lying on her back on a mattress and covered in her own vomit while one man was on top of her missionary style and another man was at her head trying to get her to perform oral sex. The women who entered the room said the victim was trying to turn her head away from the man seeking oral sex and barely had her eyes open. When the women went to her side to help, the victim simply said, “help me.” She was carried out of this room by 3 by-standers who thought it was not right that an unconcious person was being assaulted regardless of if she intiated the contact. “Jane Doe” was barely conscious and on the way to the hospital the women who rescued her feared she would stop breathing. Someone please tell me when it is EVER appropriate for ANYONE to physically or sexually assault someone who is barely conscious and covered in their own vomit. EVEN IF they were consenting to sex or other sexual acts prior to throwing up and passing it, is it still okay to continue to have sex with them AFTER they vomit and pass out??? The entire trial was about what the victim did to provoke a gang rape. It was about her FB pictures and who she had dated in the past. They accused her of having a personality disorder and blamed her for being assaulted even though she was unconcious or semi-conscious. It was not about the perpetrators who continued to carry out sexual acts on a 17 yr minor who was too drunk to stop what was happening to her. Victim blaming is a real problem and the reason many women don’t come forward. Regardless of what Jane Doe did at this party prior to vomitting on herself and passing out is irrelevant. Once she lost consciousness, she lost the ability to consent. This is just one of many trials in which the ONLY thing a defense attorney can do to protect the perpetrator is to paint the victim in the most negative light possible….this distracts the jury from what really happened. In this case, 17 yrs old…got drunk at a party and was taken advantage of sexually AFTER she was no longer able to consent.
We agree on all points — except one.
Regarding your anecdote above: Yes, I think she was gang raped. (Duh!) No, I don’t think the boys had the right to rape her. No, it was not her fault. And yes, I think the trial lawyer’s tactics to discredit her were awful and sleazy.
We agree on all that!
Where we disagree is how commonplace in society this attitude displayed by the trial lawyers is. As I said in my essay, sure the lawyers for the rapists try to blame the victims, but that doesn’t mean that society in general agrees with the lawyers. Every single person I know think that the way the victim was slandered in that case was an awful thing for the lawyers to do. But no one said, Gee, I guess the rapists’ lawyers had a good point! There’s a reason lawyers are the most hated profession in America — because they do stuff like this.
Like I said, it’s not that SlutWalk is promoting an unpopular concept — the problem is that SlutWalk is promoting a concept that is SO popular that just about everyone already agrees with. You’re getting all worked up over a battle that’s already been won.
Here’s an idea instead — let’s have a big protest against slavery in the southern states! Yeah!
Or maybe we can complain about how women don’t have the right to vote!
Or even better — let’s try to overturn Prohibition! (What??? You don’t like beer???)
Recounting the horrors of a rape scene, and pointing out that the rapists had an agressive amoral lawyer — that doesn’t prove anything about how we in America (or Canada or wherever) have a “blame-the-victim” culture. Exactly as was the whole point of my essay — you’re tilting at windmills that don’t even exist.
if you can point to some Gallup poll or something that says “68% of Americans think rape victims deserve it,” then you’d have a point. Where is the proof that we live in a blame-the-victim culture?
Zombie, sorry about that…I forgot that you mentioned that you do not really do your own research but instead just observe, I am happy to provide you with some information about victim blaming being a larger problem in society.
First…for the polling/surveys and scientific research you specifically requested, see below:
A majority of women believe some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened, a survey suggests.
Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.
One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker’s house for a drink. The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims. More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8515592.stm
For the actual survey itself, click here;
http://www.thehavens.org.uk/docs/Havens_Wake_Up_To_Rape_Report_Summary.pdf
Info from the academics:
http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip/vb.html#journalarticles
http://www.zurinstitute.com/victimhood.html
The “Just World” Theory:
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html
More from academics on “Just World” theory:
http://www.brocku.ca/psychology/people/Hafer_Begue_05.pdf
Now for some recent media coverage which includes interviews by the public:
NY Times blames 11 yr old victim for gang rape:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/us/09assault.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=gang%20rape&st=cse
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/ny-times-defends-victim-blaming-coverage-of-child-rape-case_b24236
Law-maker blames victim:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/16/republican-lawmaker-blames-11-year-old-victim-of-alleged-gang-rape/
This is a great article with several links to more information (surveys, research, academic articles, etc…) regarding the prevalence of victim-blaming in our society:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/08/882464/-Blaming-the-victim-of-rape-is-wrong-Dont-do-it-Make-sure-others-dont-do-it
Another great article with headlines from media and interviews from public blaming victims:
http://www.jimchines.com/2011/04/rape-victim-blaming/
Judge writes book on victim blaming. Rapist will not go to jail b/c victim sent signals that “sex was in the air”:
http://feministing.com/2011/02/25/canadian-judge-writes-the-book-on-victim-blaming/
Sexual assault victims confirmed to have been denied assistance from Nevada’s Victims of Crime Compensation Program because of Nevada State “contributory conduct” rule:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/aug/17/rape-still-crime-where-victim-can-share-blame/
In 2 Gang Rape cases, communities blame the victims:
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/08/in-2-gang-rape-cases-communities-blame-11-year-old-victims/
Child victim gets blame in Mardin rape case:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=reduced-sentences-given-to-men-in-mardin-rape-case-2011-02-21
Here is the text on a leaflet that was handed out in Tennessee after a publicized rape case of a 19 yr old:
“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed. Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged? Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin. By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”
http://news.change.org/stories/disturbing-rape-victim-blaming-pamphlet-handed-out-in-tennessee
Now lots talk about some legal stuff…event he laws that are supposed to protect victims have been changed to allow for victim blaming the name of defense of the perpetrator:
Rape Shield Laws:
“In the United States and Canada, rape is unique in that it is the only crime in which there are statutory protections designed in favor of the accuser. These were enacted in response to the common defense tactic of “putting the accuser on trial”. Typical rape shield laws prohibit cross-examination of the accuser (alleged victim) with respect to certain issues, such as his or her prior sexual history, or the manner in which he or she was dressed at the time of the rape. Most states and the federal rules, however, provide exceptions to the rape shield law where evidence of prior sexual history is used to provide an alternative explanation for physical evidence, where the defendant and the alleged victim had a prior consensual sexual relationship, and where exclusion of evidence would violate the defendant’s constitutional rights”
Law Professor Finds Police Manuals blame victim in rape cases in order to elicit a confession:
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2007_spr/coughlin.htm
Thanks. I’ll let the readers peruse all your links. Maybe they’ll be illuminated. I don’t have time to dissect each one, but a cursory inspection seems like there’s some exaggerating and twisting going on.
For example, in your link titled “NY Times blames 11 yr old victim for gang rape,” I read the whole article, and didn’t see any part in it where she was blamed for the rape. One paragraph includes interviews with the neighbors who said the girl dressed like an adult, but there is a huge leap between that and “blaming the victim.” And it wasn’t the NY Times who said it, but a neighbor — and nowhere does either the neighbor nor the Times assign blame. Your second link on the topic from Media Bistro contains the Times’ reply to the accusation thrown at them, and it seemed like a spot-on rebuttal.
Your first link from the BBC was a survey of WOMEN, so if that’s the case, then SlutWalk should be directed at women‘s atitudes, not men’s attitudes. Furthermore, the part of the survey where a majority of British women think victims played a role in their own victimization involved cases where the victim voluntarily climbed into bed naked with a man. C’mon. I’m surprised the percentage who thought that unwise was only 71%.
What SlutWalk seems to be demanding is that woman have 100% total power in all interpersonal intimate relationships. The insistence that men control themselves is extending further and further along the voluntary trail to consensual sex. By linking to the survey disapprovingly, you imply that, in your opinion, yes, if a woman voluntarily and consensually climbs naked into bed with a man, and gets him aroused, and he’s about to stick it in, and she suddenly says “No,” not only should the man stop (which I agree with — he should stop), but moreover she should have absolutely no responsibility for putting herself in that situation if he doesn’t stop.
There is a difference between “assigning blame” and “acknowledging that there are contributory factors.” Look at it from this angle:
Who is more likely to end up having nonconsensual sex?
a. A drunken woman who climbs naked into bed with a drunken man and kisses and fondles him, and then at the last second changes her mind about intercourse;
OR
b. A nun in a convent alone in her cell reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?
I wager that 99% of respondents would say “a.” But then SlutWalk would cite the survey as proof that “99% of people blame the victim for rape.”
But those 99% aren’t saying that the victim bears the blame — they are merely saying that certain circumstances are more likely to end in nonconsensual encounters, and that if you consciously and voluntarily enter into those circustances, then you shouldn’t be totally shocked that it happened. Because everyone knows that if you habitually climb naked into bed with men, and then say no to sex, some of those men are not going to be happy about it and try to have sex anyway.
I understand that SlutWalk is saying “But this fact ought not to be true! Men shouldn’t be such bastards!”
And here we are getting to the core of the matter. SlutWalk seems to think that by protesting against men’s genetic proclivities, they can somehow change men and their behavior. And this is the kernel of the difference between the SlutWalk view and the general societal view. Most people think that humankind’s behavior, attributes and genders and personalities are genetically determined in-born traits. The SlutWalk (and general left-leaning academic) view is that you can mold better people by means of behavioral or social revolution — or re-education, or however you want to phrase it.
I have to say that I agree with the majority view here: Not only are men bastards, but they always have been and always will be bastards. Just as you can never train a lion to be a vegetarian, you can’t train a (straight) man to not have strong urges to copulate with every woman around him, especially those whom his genetic encoding tells him are attractive and/or available. Men are just hardwired that way.
Additionally, men are hardwired to have the capacity for violence. They’re also hardwired to seek domination in most interpersonal encounters. They’re also hardwired to deposit their semen in every fertile orifice in the vicinity. Add that all up and you can bet your bottom dollar that rape will be with us forever.
Do I wish as much as you that this wasn’t so? Of course. But I must face reality and concede that it is so. And if SlutWalk conceded that same reality, they wouldn’t see “blame-mongering” under every rock, and wouldn’t misconstrue every statement made by anyone anywhere that didn’t parrot the radical feminist marching orders.
Other links in your post — the Christian fundamentalists handing out the flyers, and the overly aggressive police manual, the tactless lawmaker — again, those are anecdotes about “bad apples.”
It would take me several days (time that I don’t have) to scour each link and digest it and assess its accuracy, so I’ll leave that up the readers, and let your comment speak for itself. But the more I peeked at each one (like the DailyKos article, and the academic papers), again I see over-reaching headlines that exaggerate or misrepresent the actual results of the studies.
I wil reply with only one link, a book that very entertainingly discusses the different worldviews — nature vs. nurture, essentially:
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker. Highly recommended.
Zombie – read the actual study (not the article). I provided both links. It is a pdf file and it’s pretty straightforward. It surveyed men, women and children…peoople who were survivors of sexual assault.
You attended SlutWalks. A themed costume event. Many people attend these events and dress in costumes (as your pictures show)…it is a spoof of a real issue. It’s unfortunate you do not understand satire. It’s also unfortunate you did not take the opportunity to speak to any of the organizers or the speakers. Especially the victim herself who attended and spoke at the event. I’m sorry you were not able to hear her speak but you could have walked up to her and talked to her yourself. It’s also unfortunate that you ask for information or proof of “victim blaming” and even stated that if I provided a poll or some sort of survey showing that people believe victims are responsible for their attacked and I provide it to you and you refuse to read it in it’s entirety (it’s only 10 pages). And if you need further proof of victim blaming…look no further than the result of rape trials across the world. A very small % results in a conviction. I won’t provide that link for you since you won’t read it anyway but if you are interested, a simple google search works wonders for information. Sticking your head in the sand seems to be working out great for you so I can understand why you wouldn’t want to change your methods or listen to anyone else. Clearly you already know everything you will ever need to know.
Zombie, this was the one point in your essay I have a serious quibble with. Not that there aren’t sleazy lawyers using “bad” tactics to defame someone’s integrity for there surely are but that has been negated a lot by so called “rape shield” laws.
Laws that ultimately take away a defendant’s rights to face their accuser. If one truely believes in the notion of innocent until proven guilty, then sadly innocent women (or men) will have their characters impugned as a dirty tactic by a lawyer defending their client any way they can (vigorous defense). Rape shield laws can protect the innocent victims but they also make it hard for anyone to defend themselves against such allegations. The defendants character is on trial but not the accuser. The Duke Lacrosse or Hofstra university cases being prime examples. Same with sexual harassment lawsuits. Most will just take the word of the woman complaining and fire the man.
I think you are missing something here. Your assumptions are;
1. It is never ok to sexually assault anyone. I am with you on that one.
2. It is never ok to have sex with someone who cannot consent. You got me there too.
3. Blaming the victim is bad. Yep…thats true.
4. People are all people and worthy of respect and should be responsible and considerate. (unspoken)
Ok, on #4 I cant sign on. Everything that looks like a person isnt. Some of them are predatory monsters, not people.
I think what the Canadian Officer was trying to say, admittedly in a poor way, ” Do not attract the attention of monsters who will eat you.”. If he had said “Do not go into that neighborhood wearing a rolex.” or ” Do not park your lexus on such and such a street after dark.” I dont think people would have disagreed with him.
To exaggerate, I will say, ” If you are a lamb, dont go where lions hang out, pour gravy over your head, and begin bleating loudly. You WILL get eaten.”
In the case you mention, the victim is guilty of nothing but poor judgement. But the outcome is not unexpected. The perpetrators, the monsters, should be shot.
You are correct…the monsters should be shot. But in the case of “jane doe” (the case that sparked the slut walks), NO criminal charges were brought up. 2 prosecutors (including the current governor of CA, Jerry Brown) decided NOT to press charges. They felt there was not enough evidence. While no one denied what took place in that room, the prosecutors felt they could not prove it was not consensual. This still baffles me b/c she was 17 and CA, that is statutory rape. “Jane Doe” also lost her civil case (where the burden of proof is much lower than a criminal case). A 12-person jury deliborated for 4 days and came back with a not-guilty verdict b/c they couldn’t prove it wasn’t consensual sex. The civil trial was entirely about “Jane Doe” character, personal life, etc…key pieces of evidence and testimony by key witnesses was not even allowed. The defense successfully blamed the victim for her own attack and nothing is going to happen to the perpetrators. They will suffer no punishment from their actions that night.
Wait–the ‘Jane Doe’ case lost–twice?
Given the particulars, all I can think is that there’s something we don’t know. Something was said in court that made the question of consent so shaky that the juries had no other option. Even the civil case. Damn.
Azathoth – No, there was only a civil case. No criminal charges were ever filed. You only have to read the comments on these articles to see how society feels about victims. Here are few links about the case:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/05/BA1710H8L3.DTL
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6118735
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=7446157
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=8058991
I just found this posted 15 hours ago on local abc news. It shows a video of the jurors in civil trial. It also states the new district attorney may decide to file criminal charges as no criminal charges were filed before:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=8302757
http://thecurvature.com/2008/05/11/a-complete-travesty-of-justice/
http://thecurvature.com/2011/03/10/de-anza-rape-trial-filled-with-victim-blaming-slut-shaming/
Dude, If you played your cards right it’d be so easy to get laid at events like these. That’s if you had the stomach for it of course.
Brilliant photo essay.
It’s nice finding someone else who lives in this area of the world who looks even a millimeter into this sort of thing and then shakes his head, laughing.
What I personally wish is that someone would get Spike TV or Howard Stern or any one who claims to have a finger on the pulse of what “men” want and put up a show telecasting these sorts of protests. Preferably with men doing the commentary and rating each girl on a scale of 1-10.
It’s a confusing world we live in and I count myself lucky to have found a pretty girl in this area who seems to have her head glued on straight and doesn’t bite my head off for opening a car door for her.
You open the car door for her?
Obviously, you only do that because you are expecting some kind of payment in return, you bastard. And we know what kind of payment that is — sexual favors.
The whole concept of marriage is based on the same imbalanced power relation: Men financially support their “wives” only so that these enslaved women have no choice but to nonconsensually allow the men to rape them nightly, because our sexist society denies the woman any other economic opportunities, and so in order to survive she must degrade herself.
Every time you open that car door, you are reinforcing the patriarchy. “Chivalry” is itself a remnant of medieval mores in which Lords maintained the right of prima noctis (look it up, chauvinist). Chivalry is part of the problem!
/See, I’m really getting the hang of this whole SlutWalk thing!
Um, zombie, I hold doors for women in public and expect nothing in return sexually, but I’ll accept a “Thanks” or “Thank you” anyway. It’s called courtesy! If I didn’t hold a door for a woman, I would leave her with an impression that I didn’t care about women or people in general and the world is truly a cruel place because of my insensitivity and anti-social fascist behaviors!
Great photo-essay, zombie! Would you think the majority of women involved in the SlutWalk protest are beta women, the kind of females that most alpha males wouldn’t sought out if there aren’t enough alpha women out there for them? (thinking about what johnparker posted in his comment, no 78, 6:22 am). Given their contradicting positions and statements, would you say they are intellectually deranged or misguided, even they are objecting to the whole male domination culture?
Red Dress here. Apparently your “keen eye” did not notice the wedding rings on me or my wife’s hands. My message of “sexual assault is not your fault” is not exciting enough that surely I would not have been featured on your blog sans dress. So I consider it a success to have so many photos taken of me during that march. I support women, I support gun ownership, and I support the freedom of speech that you use to anonymously and cowardly bash others. Thanks for the pics.
And I support your freedom of speech to anonymously and cowardly bash me. See? We’re in agreement.
Except that…I didn’t bash you.
If you would prefer that I not include your picture in my report, then I’ll take it out.
No wait, you’re glad I included you in the report.
But you’re angry that I included you in the report.
But if I had left you out of the report, you would have been angry about that too.
But thankfully you wore a red dress so you attracted my attention and put you in the report.
But curse me for noticing you — it just proves how shallow I am! Because I wouldn’t have noticed you without that red dress.
But at least it got your message out to a wider audience.
But me publicizing your message this way counts as “bashing” you.
And round and round and round it goes, on the SlutWalk merry-go-round of self-negating contradictions.
To quote: “Contradiction #2: Look at me / Don’t you dare look at me!”
But I repeat myself.
You mention missing th point alot but I do have to wonder if maybe you are missing (at least partially) the point yourself, then again after the fad has been through so many countries I think the protesters are missing the point as well.
This is not a protest about rape, everyone knows rape is bad as you said, this is about the attitudes of the public towards the victim in certain cases. It is not just the lawyers who rip them apart, stories get out people gossiping with their friends saying well the way she was dressed she was asking for it or what was she doing walking alone at night she should have known better, people who have never met the victim will say to their friends “I’m not surprised I heard she was always a bit of a slut,” that is what this is about. Sure she may have been wearing a slightly too short skirt and should have known better than to walk home alone but that does not mean that it was her fault, she did not ask to be raped and no one should judge her for the outfit she happened to be wearing when it happened.
Sure some protesters are crazy, and it is usually the loudest ones, so the point does get muddled along the way but at heart it is very simple.
A woman has the right to dress as she likes and no one has the right to judge her for that, especially after a traumatic event like rape.
Don’t forget that it is a prejudice, unlike race or gender you can easily change the length of your skirt to avoid being branded as a slut but no one should have to.
So — SlutWalk is a protest against people gossiping with their friends? People say mean things when they gossip, and by golly, that’s just not fair, and we will put an end to all that by carrying around signs that say “Cunt” — is that the point, you say?
At the end, you write, “…you can easily change the length of your skirt to avoid being branded as a slut but no one should have to.”
And that’s it right there. You’re protesting against a fact of existence that simply can’t be changed. It is a true fact that dressing sexily will get you attention, unwanted or not, from men. And not all of those men will be nice men. You think that fact should not be true.
But as I said in a comment above, it is true, is always has been true, and it always will be true. This attitude is not a “social contruct” that can be changed — it is basically a biological imperative. In response to you, I can’t do better than quote my previous comment:
“I understand that SlutWalk is saying “But this fact ought not to be true! Men shouldn’t be such bastards!”
And here we are getting to the core of the matter. SlutWalk seems to think that by protesting against men’s genetic proclivities, they can somehow change men and their behavior. And this is the kernel of the difference between the SlutWalk view and the general societal view. Most people think that humankind’s behavior, attributes and genders and personalities are genetically determined in-born traits. The SlutWalk (and general left-leaning academic) view is that you can mold better people by means of behavioral or social revolution — or re-education, or however you want to phrase it.
I have to say that I agree with the majority view here: Not only are men bastards, but they always have been and always will be bastards. Just as you can never train a lion to be a vegetarian, you can’t train a (straight) man to not have strong urges to copulate with every woman around him, especially those whom his genetic encoding tells him are attractive and/or available. Men are just hardwired that way.
Additionally, men are hardwired to have the capacity for violence. They’re also hardwired to seek domination in most interpersonal encounters. They’re also hardwired to deposit their semen in every fertile orifice in the vicinity. Add that all up and you can bet your bottom dollar that rape will be with us forever.
Do I wish as much as you that this wasn’t so? Of course. But I must face reality and concede that it is so. And if SlutWalk conceded that same reality, they wouldn’t see “blame-mongering” under every rock, and wouldn’t misconstrue every statement made by anyone anywhere that didn’t parrot the radical feminist marching orders.”
And I will add — the mean gossiping you don’t like derives from everyone’s assumption that we all share this awareness of bad men’s aggressive and sometimes violent sexuality, and the average person assumes that the average girl should and does know men are like this, so when she does something foolish, there are going to be uncharitable people who say, “You dumb girl! What were you thinking! You should have known better.” And all the protesting in the world isn’t going to change that either.
“The girl says, ‘Wait a minute! Just because I’m dressed this way does not make me a whore!’ Which is true. Gentlemen, that is true. Just because they dress a certain way doesn’t mean they are a certain way. Don’t ever forget it. But ladies, you must understand that is fucking confusing! It just is.
Now that would be like me, Dave Chappelle, the comedian, walking down the street in a cop uniform. Somebody might run up on me, saying, ‘Oh, thank God. Officer, help us! Come on. They’re over here. Help us!’ ‘OH-H0H!!! Just because I’m DRESSED this way does not make me a police officer!’” – Dave Chappelle
and here’s the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OBPaenkxdg
Sir, you dishonour that lady by spreading the rumour of the mispelling of her placard, laboured and humourless as her message may be.
response to sue!
1. no, i actually was just asking a question because zombie’s wording sounded offensive to me!
2. i never claimed anything of the sort. i asked you to go look for some statistics. you came up with that number on your own. *shrug*
3. I never jumped to stereotypical assumptions regarding people’s gender???? you do understand that both men and women are capable of being sexist, and that there are lots of forms of privilege? i’m not sure what assumptions you’re making, but i wasn’t ever talking about gender.
4. again, what a crappy thing to say. congrats on catching my mistakes, i guess!
you keep making really wild leaps to make me look like i’m making claims that i’m very clearly not making. keep trying!
1. “this is so incredibly offensive. … this article is just one arrogant privileged statement after another. it must be incredibly awesome to not have to deal with the reality of this very serious issue every day of your life.”
2. Take “a random sampling of women. check out some rape statistics, you’d see that, unfortunately, i am not incorrect” in stating that any woman is “someone whose probably been raped”.
3. “it must be incredibly awesome [for Zombie] to not have to deal with the reality of this very serious issue [rape] every day of your life.” … “if zombie doesn’t want rape victims coming to that conclusion, he might try choosing his words a bit more sensitively and carefully.”
Quotes by Peggy (her spelling throughout).
sueeee:)
1. again, i asked a question! then i restated it as i understood it (which i’ve already admitted could could be wrong!) and then i gave my opinion of the WHOLE article and the comments. as i read more and more comments (as well as links posted in the comments) i realize that i never should have commented at all. what you want is an echo chamber, not other points of view. my apologies for not realizing that immediately!)
2. “PROBABLY”
aaaaaaand Nowhere did i say 50%. that was your figure that you pulled out of thin air. annnnnnd yes, i’d assume, based on my experience, and the people i talk to, the friends i have who have attended these events – that if i were dealing with a feminist who bothered to participate in this event, that it’s likely she’s a survivor of some sort of sexual assault, or that she’s been affected by this issue personally and is protesting in solidarity. i didn’t say every single participant in the slutwalk events, every feminist, or every woman. i was telling you to take a look at rape statistics among those groups of people. it’s also not a terrible idea to just assume that you’re dealing with a survivor, so you don’t say something insensitive. i realize that not everyone cares about being sensitive, but it’s something that matters to me.
3. yes i said he and his instead of he/she and his/her by accident (gasp!) i meant to fix it but i didn’t. regardless, i can assure you that while i was reading the article and zombie’s responses to comments, i was not clear on his/her gender. i’m not lying to you, but it’s ok if you don’t believe me! and yes, i stand by my statement.
if you disagree with what i’ve said, that’s ok. i’m not going to respond anymore because it’s getting tiresome. your responses have consistently been “you’re wrong. here’s me making up something or twisting your words to say something you weren’t actually saying. butttt i don’t have an actual counterpoint. ps you’re wrong. ps you can’t spell.”
have a nice day, sue. i’m done now! xoxo!
Peggyyy!
1. Embedding a question within offensive statements is not a particularly good way of convincing people that you are merely asking them for clarifications in order to further a constructive dialogue.
2. “‘PROBABLY’ aaaaaaand Nowhere did i say 50%.”
“Probably” means above 50%.
“it’s also not a terrible idea to just assume that you’re dealing with a survivor, so you don’t say something insensitive.”
(i) If Zombie had gone up to some of the participants and said: “Why are you dumb sluts [/irony] so much easier on rapists than I am?”, I would indeed consider that insensitive. But surely you’re not saying that we can’t have an after-the-fact discussion here, because it might be offensive to someone?
“i realize that not everyone cares about being sensitive, but it’s something that matters to me.”
(ii) This brings me to an irony I was hinting at earlier: for all we know, Zombie might have been “affected by this issue personally.” Think about how hurtful some of your comments would be in such a case.
3. Of course I believe you! But that’s exactly what makes your assumption sexist: you immediately jumped to the conclusion that someone who doesn’t share your exact opinions on this issue is a chauvinist male.
Sexual assault is bad. One is too many. There is yet room for much educating on the subject. But your behavior here (that “righteous indignation”), even if understandable, is not particularly helpful.
4. You misspelled “butttt”.
I hope we both will now find more constructive things to do. Let me know if you want to help me with the onerous duties of the Zombie Fan Club.
(Zombie, what the heck is going on with the commenting system on this thread?)
If you drive a Mercedes SUV in San Diego you are FAR more likely to have it stolen than if you were driving a 1970 Plymouth wagon in Kansas. — OOOO! Someone protest that with a Mercedes parade. Dopes.
Great article, Zombie! Thank you for this!
To the commenters lamenting the way rape victims are interrogated or “mistreated”:
This is an unfortunate necessity in a lot of cases. Why? Because there are a lot of vindictive women who actually DO falsely accuse men of rape simply to destroy their lives or to protect their own reputations. (“I can’t believe I slept with him! I’ll just say he raped me and then my friends won’t make fun of me.”) Granted, this doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen often enough that all accusers do need to be investigated and checked to make sure they really are victims. Otherwise, a man’s life could be irreparably destroyed for no valid reason.
I, personally, know several women who did try to accuse men of rape for exactly the superficial reason I stated above. It does happen. Luckily, one of my male friends that was accused of rape, had actual video evidence that proved his innocence. That evidence led to the woman being convicted of filing false charges, perjury and a couple of other charges. I also get upset with the double standard that gets a lot people convicted of date rape (as would have happened in the above case). When both people are intoxicated, why is it almost always viewed as the man’s fault when the couple has sex? If one person’s judgement is severely impaired – enough that she “could not logically be expected to have been able to be a willing participant” – why would the man’s judgement also not be accepted as being severely impaired? Isn’t it just as logical to say that he either didn’t understand her when she said “no” or that he couldn’t discern that he should not be having sex with anyone while under the influence? If the man was sober and the woman was drunk, then the story is completely different.
On the other hand, I also have close friends that actually were raped and I know how much a person’s life can be destroyed by that. My problem is that rape cases are not always cut and dry and anyone who thinks they are is delusional. In the US, defendants are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. It’s not supposed to go the other way. If the victim has to testify, she needs to be prepared for the interrogation. The defense attorney would not be doing their job if they didn’t do their best to get their client acquitted – whether he’s guilty or not. This means that they do have to ask tough – and sometimes humiliating – questions of the victim. Not everyone is telling the truth and a trial is meant to serve the purpose of finding out who is.
Nice tour of Fleischacker Zoo, Zombie.
I lived in California many years ago and learned all about militant feminists first hand. I use to go to a ballroom and knew how to ballroom dance. Nothing you can imagine is harder than trying to do a waltz with a militant feminist. The fact that all the ballroom dances were created before the advent of feminism was a real problem. Back then the man led all the dances and was expected to make the woman look good even at his own expense. I finally gave it up, as trying to lead a feminist in a dance was considered the peak of sexism. I finally got weary of the insults and degredation.
I still hope to see Gloria Steinem on dancing with the stars. I can just imagine the outcome! Any of the women featured in this story would be acceptable as well.
If I tell a homeowner to make sure to cancel the newspaper when going on vacation, set some lights on timers, and to close the blinds, am I saying if they don’t do that a robbery is their fault?
The entire scandal seems to revolve around a stupid (it’s always stupid) use of the world “slut” in a speech.
And speaking of “hard-wiring,” I’ll wager rape has forever been a reproductive strategy for certain males of the human-ape family. The egg doesn’t care how the sperm got there. Which in no way makes rape less wrong, of course.
Though your report was better, I still thought you might like to see Hotair’s report on Slutwalk: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/20/slutwalk-comes-to-south-africa-where-rape-is-on-the-rise/
I’m intrigued by the picture of the woman waving her hand and saying that she doesn’t want pictures taken of her.
This woman made her boundaries clear–she was consenting to have certain body parts seen, but not photographed. You decided that, because she was exposing her body, you had the right to do things to it that she wasn’t consenting to (photograph it). You did this in order to make the point that people don’t victim-blame, and that consent is so well-understood that it’s pointless to talk about it.
Restated: you were trying to make the point that victim-blaming doesn’t happen. That people don’t do things to women against their will with the justification that they were dressed like sluts, so they had it coming. You chose to make this point by doing something to a woman against her will, and felt justified in doing this because she was dressed like a slut.
I think you just proved the need for this sort of demonstration.
And I think she just proved my point about absurd self-contradictions.
The purpose of rallies is to get media coverage. Don’t want to be covered in the media? Don’t go to the rally.
Doing something sexual to a woman against her will is illegal. Photographing political protesters at public rallies, even “against their will,” is legal. I do have the right to take her picture there. Look it up. It’s not the same as rape.
Making everything a parallel to rape is right out of the radical feminist playbook, and exactly the reason why the average prson thinks SlutWalk is counter-productive.
How about this: Intentionally sending mixed messages, and then blaming random people for not being able to sift through your intentional mixed messages — that is what feels like being violated.
It is not an absurd self-contradiction to say “You my do this to me but not that.” Filming an event is not the same as singling somebody out and deliberately trying to focus a camera inside their clothing.
And even if it was exactly the same, it doesn’t matter: she stated a boundary. She told you exactly what she was consenting to and what she wasn’t: “No pictures.” “No.” And you did it anyway, because you felt justified, given the sorts of clothes she was wearing and the place where you found her.
The point of these things isn’t “look at me, don’t look at me.” It’s “People have the right to have control over their own body. No matter how I’m dressed, or what I’ve said you may do with my body, up until this point, I will always have the final word on what you may do with it in the moment.”
Certainly it isn’t illegal to do *anything* to a woman against her will. Or a man, for that matter. If somebody says they don’t want to talk to you, and you chase after them and try to keep talking, you’ve violated their consent, but it isn’t illegal, and it isn’t “like rape.” I never said what you did was like rape. I said that you violated her consent, which you very obviously did, regardless of whether it was legal or not.
She said no. You did it anyway. It’s that simple.
It’s all about the setting.
Say, for example, I just ran up to you and knocked you to the ground. That would be unexpected, unethical, and illegal. You could rightfully say, “Hey, I didn’t ask for you to knock me down!”
But if, immediately prior to the incident of me knocking you to the ground, we both had been on the playground and someone had said, “C’mon everybody, let’s play tackle football!” and both you and I had agreed to play football with all the other kids, and then in the middle of a play, you’re trying to run with the ball and I tackle you.
In that case, I did the exact same thing — I ran up to you and knocked you to the ground — but in this case, you don’t really have the right to say, “Hey, I didn’t ask for you to knock me down!” Because, you see, you put yourself in a situation where you are essentially “asking for it,” where knocking you down is an integral part of the expectations of the setting.
The same is true of public political rallies. The entire purpose people engage in them is to get media coverage. When you go to them, you have created the expectation of being covered by the media — and that includes photographed. Without the media, the entire exercise is pointless — there was practically no “audience” of members of the general public observing the SlutWalk — everyone who saw it was one of the participants, except for a few pedestrian passersby later in the walk. The goal of SlutWalk is to get media coverage so the message reaches the world. Thus, when a person goes to SlutWalks, or to any public political protest, you are voluntary entering into a setting where you have announced your intent to be covered by the media, and thereby essentially “given your consent” to be photographed.
If that person truly didn’t want to be photographed, then she would not have gone to a public political protest. Her little mind-games (of trying to get attention in a media coverage setting and then demanding that no one pay attention to her) is just a way of trying to assert control over those around her.
Imagine a football game where the ball-carrier, in the middle of the play, pauses and announces to a pursuing tackler, “I respectfully request that you not tackle me.” And then when he gets tackled anyway, he whines, “But I didn’t give consent!” People would laugh him off the field. That’s basically what happened here.
One final note: As I pointed out in a comment above, it wasn’t even me that took that picture, but rather one of the people I went to the event with. And furthermore, the woman in the fox outfit was not speaking to my photographer, but rather to the guy on the right edge of the photo, whose camera is visible. So the whole discussion is moot anyway. But even if it wasn’t moot, my point still stands, and I still say that her controlling mind games just sum up the whole reason why SlutWalk creeps most people out. This woman was PURPOSELY sending mixed messages and then getting all huffy when her mutually contradictory message are not obeyed.
As for “that is what it feels like to be violated,” there are many ways to be violated. I’ve known some people who miscommunicate and then blame people for not understanding them.
I don’t hang out with them anymore.
If you can’t understand somebody’s boundaries, then just stay away from them–whether it’s your fault or theirs, you’ll both be better off for it.
Nobody made you go there, and nobody made you take pictures, and the woman saying “No, don’t take pictures of me,” *definitely* didn’t make you take the pictures anyway, or do anything else that would diminish your responsibility.
The enthusiastic consent model is actually the simplest idea ever. It’s summed up in a single, easy to remember question:
“What do you want?”
So, you’re saying that the organizers of SlutWalk would have preferred that neither I nor anyone else covered or documented their event?
It just seems that over and over you’re proving my point. “Everybody come here and listen to our message and spread it to the world!!” becomes “Nobody made you go there, and nobody made you take pictures.”
What you and the SlutWalkers are really demanding is sympathy and agreement. If someone praises the message, then media coverage is OK. Is someone is critical, then media coverage is not OK. It’s that simple.
Divorce = scam.
Zombie, you’re kind of a moron FYI. Your argument is stupid because you could say the same thing about having your picture taken by simply being out in public. “Oh you’re not in a private property so you clearly want your picture taken”
Stop using sports analogies you aren’t equipped to use properly. You’re a complete moron.
People in public protests DO want to have their picture taken. Why otherwise would they engage in the protest, if not to garner attention?