I just love it when right-wingers are mocking the perceived stupidity of left-wingers because it always boils down to the notion that ideas beyond the scope of their ideological indoctrination are simply to be called stupid. I have always admired the graceful simplicity of this cognitive pattern. A very abstract example would look like this:
Liberal: "2 + 2 + cos(0) = 5"
Conservative: "What? 2 + 2 + 0 = 5 ? Man, you're sooo stupid!"
Liberal: "You know, the cosine of..."
Conservative: "Oh, not again! Yet another brainwashed idiot who buys that Marxist nonsense about triangles!"
If only you substitute the idea of trigonometry with the concept of social justice or any other thing which arises from the philosophical paradigm of Humanism, the story becomes much less abstract. Not so long ago there was a female rape victim called Zerlina Maxwell showing up in a notoriously wingnut program of Fox News where she tried to present the "liberal position" on rape and how to prevent it. The "conservative position" was this time less inclined to instruct women on behaving modestly and staying at home, but instead it was instructing them to carry guns. Nah, logisch! "We are the real progressives", the rightwinger may proudly extol! Those goddamn liberals want to push our women back into the role of fragile victims by taking away their precious firearms. Yeah, sure! Well, first of all I might say gun control is not necessarily the act of taking all kinds of guns away from everyone, but this really is another story! Why? Because the thing is that women are most likely to get raped by someone they know and trust: friends, friends of friends, co-workers or relatives. It's not some hooded stranger jumping out of nowhere in a dark alleyway. Even if the victim is a proud gun-owner (which is probably not the case), the device will most probably be out of her reach at that very moment.
All right, here comes the liberal position: what if, instead of putting all the responsibility on the women and telling them what to do, we would try to focus just a little bit on the men? Why don't we ever tell the men what to do? For example, not to rape! How about that? Well, this is where the rightwinger stops listening. Sure you can't just walk up to a criminal and exhort that he shouldn't commit his crime, now can you? This is why the whole idea seems so painfully absurd to a rightwinger that he doesn't care what you actually mean. This is where the cosine gets lost...
But let's just assume you're a polite and patient rightwinger, so what do I mean? What's the problem with your position? Well, the problem is that you're going back to your false image of the rapist in which he's some kind of ugly and dirty hooded mongrel jumping out of nowhere in a dark alleyway. Like I wrote above, this is most often not the case. The rapist is most probably someone you know and trust. He's not a complete stranger. He is someone you assume to be a normal person and I tell you what: except for being a rapist, he is indeed completely normal. So what's the catch? What is this thing called "rape culture"? Well, instead of listing all the examplary manifestations of macho ideology including all the pseudo-scientific clichés about male instinct, I would like to say just one word which kind of tells it all: Steubenville.
That's rape culture. It is a culture where rape is considered normal. Or to be more precise, where rape is considered not rape. It is a culture where the "bright future" of some arrogant and selfish youngsters is more important than the right of women to own their bodies... But no, these youngsters were not particularly arrogant and selfish - at least not compared to the average young alpha male from those United States. They just didn't know what they were doing because nobody actually told them. The only thing they ever heard is that they must be strong and determined with the girls because those fickle young girls don't really know what they actually want. They only heard that it's okay to get a bit rude and forceful because that's just how the instinct of a healthy young man actually works. They only heard that having sex with as many females as possible is a sign of power and success. Every tiniest bit of the culture surrounding them was totally saturated with the most brutal form of social darwinism which only the culture of Nazi Germany was able to surpass.
So how do you tell men not to rape? Well, you tell them that girls are no more fickle and ignorant than boys. You tell them that being rude and forceful is no more instinctive than being patient and kind. You tell them that having sex with many women is not a good thing per se. Last but not least, you tell them that the "survival of the fittest" is an outdated ecological concept and its application to human society was championed by America's deadliest enemies.
To be honest, I must tell you that I was much less shocked and disturbed by the gang rape in Delhi precisely because I saw other people, namely the general public in India being shocked and disturbed. Of course I was totally disgusted and disturbed after reading the story, but to see the pure outrage of Indian people breaking out like a huge vulcano in all those mass demonstrations and the beatings of MP's who were known to be rapists, all that was a great deal of solace and rejoice. On the other hand, to see the exact opposite happening in the United States about Steubenville? The huge torrent of victim blaming on Twitter and Facebook, the victim receiving death threats after her name was outed by Fox News, the outpouring of sympathy towards the rapists coming from no smaller players than the CNN? Now this is precisely what makes me very disturbed and shocked. If the society of a nation is unable to get shocked and outraged by its inherent cruelty, that society has no future.
That's rape culture. It is a culture where rape is considered normal. Or to be more precise, where rape is considered not rape. It is a culture where the "bright future" of some arrogant and selfish youngsters is more important than the right of women to own their bodies... But no, these youngsters were not particularly arrogant and selfish - at least not compared to the average young alpha male from those United States. They just didn't know what they were doing because nobody actually told them. The only thing they ever heard is that they must be strong and determined with the girls because those fickle young girls don't really know what they actually want. They only heard that it's okay to get a bit rude and forceful because that's just how the instinct of a healthy young man actually works. They only heard that having sex with as many females as possible is a sign of power and success. Every tiniest bit of the culture surrounding them was totally saturated with the most brutal form of social darwinism which only the culture of Nazi Germany was able to surpass.
So how do you tell men not to rape? Well, you tell them that girls are no more fickle and ignorant than boys. You tell them that being rude and forceful is no more instinctive than being patient and kind. You tell them that having sex with many women is not a good thing per se. Last but not least, you tell them that the "survival of the fittest" is an outdated ecological concept and its application to human society was championed by America's deadliest enemies.
To be honest, I must tell you that I was much less shocked and disturbed by the gang rape in Delhi precisely because I saw other people, namely the general public in India being shocked and disturbed. Of course I was totally disgusted and disturbed after reading the story, but to see the pure outrage of Indian people breaking out like a huge vulcano in all those mass demonstrations and the beatings of MP's who were known to be rapists, all that was a great deal of solace and rejoice. On the other hand, to see the exact opposite happening in the United States about Steubenville? The huge torrent of victim blaming on Twitter and Facebook, the victim receiving death threats after her name was outed by Fox News, the outpouring of sympathy towards the rapists coming from no smaller players than the CNN? Now this is precisely what makes me very disturbed and shocked. If the society of a nation is unable to get shocked and outraged by its inherent cruelty, that society has no future.
No comments:
Post a Comment