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That awkward moment for dudes when they realize that they are indeed living in a patriarchy…
I’m not sure what the author of the review was thinking… Actually, on second thought I might have an idea – this is the liberal left dude deciding to be ‘edgy’ and take on an issue that feminists, especially radical feminists, like to rattle on about. One would hope that with a title of a book like ‘Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth – From Steubenville to Chad Evans” one might, at the very least raise a cursory skeptical eyebrow at the presumptive nature of the work. Perhaps this is just my own bias showing through, but I think that it would be a good idea to least familiarize oneself with the topics at hand before presenting a review that would have worth to someone outside the liberal circle of ‘progressive’ dudes who think that they ‘get it’ and can speak with authority on the topic(s).
So there are two dimensions to this review of a review, the tone deafness of the review and the astonishing amount of cluelessness posited by the author of the book in question. Both will be tackled as the cocksure nature and faux-authoritative pronouncements being made about the experience of women in patriarchal culture – as interpreted by men – in this ‘review’ sadly illuminates how far we have to go to becoming a decent culture, and one that doesn’t rely on marginalizing half of the population based on their private bits.
The RPOJ cometh for thee.
The Red Pen of Justice has been under wraps for a very long time now and has been agitating to let loose once again on the blogosphere. I cannot deny the RPOJ discontents anymore, so gentle readers, suit up, sit back and prepare for a radical feminist analysis of the important words going on over at David Marx:Book Reviews.
“It has sometimes been said that sex and intimacy can mean what we ultimately want them to mean; which, for all intents and self-gratifying purposes, can more often than not entail the go-ahead (regardless of one hundred per cent consent). The ‘go-ahead’ that is, amid a resounding variant of ways in the eyes of the law, not to mention society at large.”
*Blinks* On first reading I have no idea what the fuck he is saying. Let’s look again… Okay, this requires further parsing.
“”It has sometimes been said that sex and intimacy can mean what we ultimately want them to mean; […]”
Who said this and when? I think this defaults to what David Marx thinks on this particular topic, as no references are made to any relevant sociological source. This could be interpreted as David, with artless academic-ese construction, trying to authoritatively make a point.
My eyebrow raised because it looks like David is making the case for non-consensual relations somehow being a-fucking-okay because we can define consent out of the occasion. Funny how a review about the purported mythological status of rape culture is actually affirming its existence.
“The ‘go-ahead’ that is, amid a resounding variant of ways in the eyes of the law, not to mention society at large.”
Sentences missing objects/clauses don’t make sense. Charitably, I think David means that the ‘go-ahead’ or consent is somehow related to what is agreed on in society.
“Either of which can, and often does trigger dire and detrimental consequences.”
I’m done playing parse the sentence fragment – make your best guess here – thanks Dave for being unfathomable in your writing style.
“That we live in a society, where so-called honour killings (usually by men) are on the unfortunate rise; and a vacuous dirt-bag of Tunisian descent feels it’s in his right to attack a mother and her two daughters with a machete at a summer resort in France – because, in his eyes ”they weren’t wearing enough clothes” – is a both a sad and a very, very serious indictment of today’s moral fabric.”
Almost always by men, as they are upholders of honour/subjugators of women. Why mention that the killer dude was Tunisian? One should try to curtail the impulse toward xenophobia and racism in a serious review. And how is this one incident a serious indictment of anything other than horror we all know and love as organized religion; the big three and the various tributaries of fail almost always reinforce the patriarchal status-quo. Name the problem Dave.
“The fact that such vile and callous behaviour is entwined with varying degrees of religiosity, only accounts for the latter being something of an idiosyncratically laughable indictment.”
So you spend the words to make a point and then dismiss it as ‘idiosyncratically laughable’ in the next paragraph? Coherence is a thing Dave, more of it would make what you’re trying to say easier to understand.
“Yet as Luke Gittos points out in Why Rape Culture Is A Dangerous Myth – From Steubenville to Ched Evans: ”The argument that we live in a rape culture encourages a deeply harmful notion of inherent vulnerability, which adds to a worrying problematisation of intimacy in wider society. This is likely to have a significant effect on the young, who are often taught that intimate relationships are potentially dangerous”
What? A Jaw dropping non-sequitur after a word salad of an introduction, this review has legs!
Let’s look at the content after you massage your jaw for a bit, I should have warned you gentle reader, limber up those oral hinges it only gets worse from here.
“”The argument that we live in a rape culture encourages a deeply harmful notion of inherent vulnerability, which adds to a worrying problematisation of intimacy in wider society.”
The fuck it does. The argument we live in a rape culture threatens the status-quo notion that women should always be sexually available to men. Rape culture threatens the normative idea that women are not really fully autonomous, that they do not share the same rights to their personhood and autonomy, rights that men, under patriarchy enjoy by default.
Problematisation? Is problematic too ordinary a construction for you? Jeezus. A dudes ability to fuck females with impunity is not synonymous with ‘intimacy’. Luke Gittos is riding high on the Misogyny Train, and a decent review would call his shit out for what it is.
Tell me Dave, how is treating a woman like she has rights and a full human being a fucking problem with regards to intimacy? It’s only suffers from ‘problematisation’ if you are in favour of the current toxic environment that women are forced to inhabit.
“If such is the case, which, throughout various parts of the world it most certainly is, does this mean intimacy and ultimately love, should be denied?”
If love and relations can only be had with the shitty patriarchal overlay that shafts both men and women, then yes it should be denied. But you are not arguing that, are you Dave, your faffing on with Gittos about how denying women their agency (consent) is making it hard for dudes to feel intimacy. This is a primal man-baby argument – if we can’t have sexy times *my dudely way* then everything is wrong with the world and the feminist sponsored end times are here.
“Immediately prior to the above, Gittos also writes: ”Recent decades have seen the expansion of the law around rape to cover many new areas of sexual behaviour. The impact of the hysteria around rape has been the shutting down of debate around this expansion and the demonisation of anyone who seeks to question it.”
Hysteria? Man-children really can’t help themselves when it comes to patriarchal tropes. But let’s get back to what he’s saying – the broadening of laws to protect the integrity and autonomy of women is making his boner sad. Gittos (emphasis on ‘git’) is also sad that he gets shit on for harkening back to the good ole’ days where beating and raping your wife was just the norm and everything was hunky dory – if you happened to be in the same class as Gittos…
“That the ”hysteria around the rape has been shutting” down it’s ”debate,” is surely cause for alarm, which to a certain degree, these 140 pages do tackle head-on. But, as Graham Matthews recently wrote in Will Self and Contemporary British Society: ”The language used in rape cases is of the utmost importance since, according to Lyn Higgins and Brenda Silver, ‘whether in the courts or in the media, whether in art or criticism, who gets to tell the story and whose story counts as ”truth” determines the definition of what rape is.”
Why in a review of the GIT are you talking about Will Self and Contemporary British Society? Is foisting non sequitur after non sequitur on your reader a stylistic choice? It’s a bad one, let me assure you.
“There again, as Luke Gittos has categorically stated in Why Rape Culture Is A Dangerous Myth’s Introduction: ”this book is not about rape. It is not about the hideous criminal offence that takes place every day, and is the subject of arrests, court cases and prison sentences up and down the country […]. This book is about the contemporary panic around ‘rape culture’ that […] often bears little resemblance to the reality of rape.”
Translation: The idea that rape culture exists and is working in my favour is unpalatable to my sensibilities, thus the problem must be with the hysterical women and their risible claims… *facepalm*
“The argument of the book is that intimate life is suffering under the panic around rape and rape culture. This panic has arisen in the context of a society which is less sure of the parameters of intimate life than ever before. “
Oh consent is necessarily a roaring tempest filled with vapours purposefully designed to confuse the man-brained. The idea that women are struggling toward agency is an affront to needs of the ‘peen and patriarchy and must be done away with because my male right to unfettered access to female bodies is at stake – and this unfettered access – is what is important.
“As old narratives of intimate life die away, what has replaced them is not a new, individualised sense of what intimate life is, but a ream of laws, regulations, guidance and expertise about how we should conduct the most private aspects of our lives. This presents a serious challenge to the status of individual judgement about intimacy and, accordingly, the future of intimate life in general.”
I thought it couldn’t get worse, but Dave also seems to aspire to the swaggering, self-aggrandizing pile of mule-feces that Libertarianism is. Where white males are the only ones who can have the *true* feelings of oppression while simultaneously wielding power in society. If you cannot handle intimacy with a female that has autonomy and full human being status – then the only females of the blow-up variety will fit your particular bill. So go forth, find your inflatable Sally, and kindly fuck the hell off.
“Herein lies something of a literary juxtaposition, surely?”
*rolls eyes* – Dave, sounding smart and being smart have never been so clearly demarcated.
“For as pronounced and well analysed as this resoundingly tough and rather taurine book is, rape will always remain what it fundamentally is. Rape.”
A fucking equals A? This is the epic conclusion mic-drop you’ve assiduously been setting up. Step aside Machiavelli, Word fucking salad Dave is in the house! You are brought this review to close with a tautology? I have another for you, hold on it is earth shattering level of awesome – “stupid people are stupid people”.
And do you know ‘taurine’ means? It is a goddamn amino acid. Another meaning, common in the 17th century is ‘of or like a bull’. So is this a bullish book on rape culture, or did your thesaurus go to the dark side and led you astray with it?
“Regardless of judicial interpretation, sexual intimacy or, dare I say it, ”individual judgement.”
Did you eat alphabet soup and are just burping this shit up and then writing it down?
And also: Subjects, what the fuck are they?
The double shot of tautology and quasi-coherent sentence structure ends this review with an unsatisfying, stultifying dribble that offers offence not only to feminism, but the English language as well.
RPOJ out.
Another reversal post just to illustrate the keen difference between what men experience and what women experience in society.
Stopping the replication of patriarchy begins when people can actually see it in action. So now you see it. Will you act to stop it the next time?
The Zika virus has been with us for more than a few decades. Here are the highlights from Wikipedia –
“Zika virus (ZIKV) is a member of the virus family Flaviviridae and the genus Flavivirus.[3] It is spread by daytime-active Aedes mosquitoes, such as A. aegypti and A. albopictus.[3] Its name comes from the Zika Forest of Uganda, where the virus was first isolated in 1947.[4] Zika virus is related to the dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses.[4] Since the 1950s, it has been known to occur within a narrow equatorial belt from Africa to Asia. From 2007 to 2016, the virus spread eastward, across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, where the 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic reached pandemic levels.[5]
The infection, known as Zika fever or Zika virus disease, often causes no or only mild symptoms, similar to a very mild form of dengue fever.[3] While there is no specific treatment, paracetamol (acetaminophen) and rest may help with the symptoms.[6] As of 2016, the illness cannot be prevented by medications or vaccines.[6] Zika can also spread from a pregnant woman to her fetus. This can result in microcephaly, severe brain malformations, and other birth defects.[7][8] Zika infections in adults may result rarely in Guillain–Barré syndrome.[9]
In January 2016, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued travel guidance on affected countries, including the use of enhanced precautions, and guidelines for pregnant women including considering postponing travel.[10][11] Other governments or health agencies also issued similar travel warnings,[12][13][14] while Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Jamaica advised women to postpone getting pregnant until more is known about the risks.“
The CDC has a few fun facts as well –
We continue to learn about Zika virus, and we are working hard to find out more about these cases. Here is what we do know:
- Zika is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito (Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus).
- A pregnant woman can pass Zika virus to her fetus during pregnancy or during birth.
- Zika virus infection can cause microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects, and is associated with other adverse pregnancy outcomes.
- A person who is infected with Zika virus can pass it to sex partners.
- Many people infected with Zika virus won’t have symptoms or will only have mild symptoms.
- No vaccines or treatments are currently available to treat or prevent Zika infections.
As of July 27, 2016, 1,658 cases of Zika have been reported to CDC in the continental United States and Hawaii; none of these were the result of local spread by mosquitoes. These cases include 15 believed to be the result of sexual transmission and one that was the result of a laboratory exposure. This number does not include the four Florida cases likely caused by local transmission.
Zika, at least from the North America media’s point of view really isn’t a big deal. With proper measures and prevention Zika really isn’t a big deal, but my paranoid side twinged onto an notion that I really cannot put to rest.
Mosquitoes are a near perfect biological weapon. Given that their natural habitat spans much of the globe much of the human population is exposed to mosquitoes and the potential illness they harbour.
I’m itchy already. :/
This really is tin-foil hat territory, I fully admit, but let’s consider a possible if improbable notion. The Zika virus could be a ‘dry-run’ for a more virulent and calamitous disease just waiting in the wings. Zika can be transmitted via the mosquitoes themselves or by sexual contact – having more vectors of attack for a bio-pathogen is always a good thing. Plus, once introduced into the environment nature will take its course as mosquitoes (even ones not carrying the original strain of virus) will bite multiple people and thus continue introducing more carriers into the human population.
If I was Captain-Superbad Pants, I would be developing a more potent strain of Zika one that would incapacitate people for months, while concurrently developing a vaccine to counter said effects. Killing people with Super Zika would be inefficient, being sick for a long period is much more efficient and increases the chances that carriers will infect others and keep the outbreak going. The goal isn’t mass murder, but rather economic terrorism on a large scale. Epidemics and counter-epidemic measures wreak havoc on the workforce – people being sick, isolated, and afraid are not productive members of society. It would cost countries billions in lost productivity.
Of course, for a small fee, a vaccine could be provided that would provide limited immunity to Super Zika. Captain-Superbad Pants (CSP)would be the benevolent supplier of said remedy. Everyone wins, people are healthy and CSP would make a princely sum for all the R&D necessary in finding a ‘cure’.
It sounds like a corny Sci-Fi/thriller plot, but it does beg the imagination, given the advancements we have made in genetic modification and what not. Also I’m thinking the role as the nefarious CSP might be a nice change of pace. :)
Let the crime spree begin…
This is a funny/not funny example of what women are faced with when it comes to the circumstances surrounding rape and sexual assault. Kinda sounds like a crummy deal doesn’t it? So, if it is improper when it comes to robbery, why is it ‘a-okay’ with rape?
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…