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  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.