Two excellent pieces on the Duke Rape case from two of my favorite penis-free bloggers: first, the always-interesting neoneocon, who reflects on the changes in rape law and the attitudes of society towards rape and personal responsibility over time; and second, the marvelous Gail Hapke, who breaks out the literary allusions to deconstruct those who use pet sociological theories as a quasi-religion.
Granted, these two women are suffering from the kind of false consciousness and denial that afflicts so many women not enrolled in women’s studies courses, so cut them a little slack. A brutal, patriarchal winter kept them trapped inside for months without hearing a sister lecture on Hélène Cixous, and so they forget to use their bodies to express themselves—becoming trapped in a masculinist mode of discourse that leads to the kind of deplorable vertical logic exhibited in their respective pieces.
The poor dears.
I have read their postings. I have listened to my mother’s stories of going to university in the mid-1950’s.
I agree – for every liberty we create we create more danger. Girls were safer then because they would not often be exposed to the situations which could lead to rape. Being shielded by the rules of society and the university, the chances of a rape occurring were reduced.
I had always laughed at ‘Take Back The Night’ demonstrations, because they were always trying to take back what never was. Female college students did not fear the night because they were not out at night; they were locked in. The demonstrators want the security that females had sixty years ago without the restrictions females had sixty years ago. They want freedom without responsibility. (Note: I am not excusing rapsits or louts) If you want to move freely at all times and all places, please remember you expose yourself to thugs at those times and places. There are certain places I will not go (me, a white male, sturdily built) after dark – or in the full light of day.
Again, I do not argue that such crimes ought not be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I just say that the US Coast Guard has a program called TCT – Team Coordination Training. The idea behind TCT has people evaluate a situation before rushing in, to cut down on material and personnel losses; to recognize danger and evaluate where they are and what they have.
This goes beyond rape; all persons, male and female, should use TCT to drawback from those situations that feel bad. The only person interested in self-preservation is yourself; don’t give in to peer-pressure, to cheap jibes against your courage.
Human nature is human nature, and all the greatest ideas and programs cannot change that. If you do not want the society forcing you to take care of yourself, forcing you to be safe, then you must do so yourself; and if you refuse to do so, well, that is the price of liberation, isn’t it?
Again, not an excuse, just an observation – the ‘patriarchy’ may have had another idea in mind than senseless oppression.
So what are you trying to say here Mike?
That we should think before doing stupid things?
That we should take personal responsibility for our actions?
How DARE YOU take away my freedom!!
Hmmmpf, if guys like you had been around me early in life, I’d have never gotten the chance to discover that a Superman cape doesn’t counteract the force of gravity.
I think the entire movement is based on the idea that if you just talk fast and loud enough, the sharks won’t eat you.
Whereas my version of the anti-rape movement would include shooting rapists as they attempt (and fail) to rape.
The freakin’ Barbary Pirates didn’t stop raiding because they got bored, you know.
If you can’t get someone to protect you, you have to do it yourself. Here’s a hint – the whole someone-else-to-protect-you model doesn’t work.
We live in this illusionary world where there’s someone magical who can stop the bad guys and you never have to get your hands dirty – and if the bad guys get to you, then it was obviously the magical protector’s fault.
Sorry, kiddo, YOU don’t get to choose whether there’s a war, YOU don’t get to choose whether there’s a crime, YOU don’t get to chose whether someone gets hurt… but sometimes you get to choose who.
Honestly, I’m supposed to listen to Gail? She may have the correct genitalia, but she bought into the metanarrative of the patriarchy and married one of those penis-owners.
Chances are great that she’s never even had an abortion. YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR ME, you sellout.
I may not have a penis, Carin, but at least my logic is vertical.
And don’t go around telling people I’m a breeder. We try to keep that kind of thing under wraps.
Look, you outed yourself as a breeder. I just gave up that you married a penis-owner. Be careful, or I’ll bring up that you’re a godbag.
Not that, Carin. Anything but that.
Goldstein:
penis free bloggers
Jeff, I believe the proper term in non-penile.
Damn, Jeff, first you find an inauthentic black man, now you find TWO inauthentic women! Where the hell are you hanging out on the internet?
Being one of the Pale Penis People, I probably have to agree to some form of sensitivity training before commenting on this, right?
Oh, crap.
What do you mean inauthentic, GMG?
Neoneo’s porn story was hot! A steaming cross between Madame Bovary and Animal House:
We girls knew the rules, and they weren’t just empty meaningless exercises. I recall being on the terrace of a fraternity house in my college days, at a party, and hearing some raised voices upstairs, one of a woman, quite drunk. A female head with long blond hair (a fellow student from my dorm whom I knew, although not very well) poked out from one of the windows on the upper floor (where we were not allowed!). She yelled some slurred words to raucous laughter. Just as quickly, her head was withdrawn, but she didn’t come down, and all of us girls knew what was going on.
No mention of whether the drunken frat boys bothered to open the window before thrusting her friend’s hed through it, though.
Sheesh Sean, no nude beaches near you? No private tanning booths?
I haven’t given my opinion on the Imus kerfuffle, so I will now. A few observations:
-Who cares?
-Elisabeth Hasselbach is hot, and if you compare her to Rosie you can plainly see why I voted for GWB.
-Alan Colmes wants to bone Elisabeth, but that won’t happen in a million years. I just might have a chance, though.
I plead non compos penis.
None that I know of, but were there any, I’d do everybody a favor by giving them a very wide berth.
Elisabeth Hasselbach, Chairman?
What about Sandy Belle?
Careful, I actually snorted some Haagen Daaz through my nose while watching her video at LG&M.
I hope it wasn’t rum raisin, Alphie. That could be painful.
Gail,
Please do not engage the Talking Telelphone Pole. That is all.
It was actually Caramel Cone, gail.
The pain was worth it.
Looks like the pro war crowd has a new rodeo queen.
There is no comparsion. The Duke 3 were instantly villified; while nobody with a brain conflated Mr. Stern’to crap.
Me, I’d take up a very wide berth, except for all those earnest unshaven ladies from Greenpeace who keep trying to drag me back into deeper water…
OT, but terrible news has just cleared the AP wires: Don Ho (“Tiny Bubbles”) has just passed away. I don’t know if his wife was nappy-headed or not, but my thoughts and prayers go out to his children, Gung and Heidi.
Carin, did you just call Gail a breeder?
HAAAAAAAAAA!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..snort, giggle……….
I am a Poor Dear too…
I just can’t get down with a group who has two places for Anita…Hill is a victim, Boderick is a dirty Ho that asked for it – and by the way should’ve been grateful:
Patricia Foulkrod film producer and Code Pink activist has to say about it.
I know you won’t believe it, but I was listening to “Tiny Bubbles” as I first read it on the net. It was freaky.
You know, I’m STILL only on page 41 of Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m sure either the patriarchy or the white man is to blame somehow.
Well, Thomas Pynchon is a white man, if a decades-old photo is accurate.
But keep plugging away. It took me more than a year to read Gravity’s Rainbow for the first time. I’ve read it about once a year since, and I’m still not quite sure how it ends.
Action Chimpâ„¢;
Penis envy precadillos prostrate vaginistic excentricities. Clamoring cavemen gekko wide, wide profundities waiting for godbags.
Gibberish in = gibberish out
Trip the light mediocre?
I on the same page of Gravity’s Rainbow! I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose my spot, so I carefully folded over a corner, and put it firmly back on my bookshelf. So,my placement is safe and secure. Perhaps, forever.
I could work through it, but then I’d have less time to read PW.
Gail’s output may be less than five, Craig, but it still qualifies her as a breeder.
It took me more than a year to read Gravity’s Rainbow for the first time. I’ve read it about once a year since, and I’m still not quite sure how it ends.
Oh!God! It was bad enogh living through the 70s without reading through them.(figuretively speaking)
-Many of the German charachters names are actually names of parts of the A4-
Personally I thought V was the better read.
I may not be a favorite, but I occasionally blog.
And my penis is free for the asking.
Is that anything like a rugby queen? Because if it is, what a fantastically sexist thing to say.
You’re my new hero.
LMC,
As an old second row, I would rather not think about that…
I’d feel sad for someone who could only keep a cowboy on her for eight seconds.
On the other hand, what a ride!
So neoneocon’s piece is dismissed as porn and Sandy Belle is hilarious. As low as my opinion of alphie is, he is still able to stun me with his idiocy.
I think that’s why he’s still around.
Jeff has an almost mystical ability to see the potential idiocy in everybody, and is all to eager to allow alf’s idiocy to come out.
Gushing, squirting, pulsating out, in alf’s case.
Cause, you know, Jeff’s a giver, and he wants all of us to reach his or her potential.
hmmmm, perhaps she could buy some “breeder credits” from you to even it up.
I think you have that backwards, Maggie. I am the one who needs to buy credits from a non-breeder. I need children offsets.
Jeff, I don’t think this has been posted, but if you’re wondering what the lovely Ms. Marcotte thinks of the Duke case result, she chimes in in the comments of this blog.
http://www.slanttruth.com/thoughts-lacrosse#comments
Frighteningly, her comments aren’t as bad as the blog owners’.
Interestingly, the blog owner has let stand comments which show up his own stupidity.
So in that respect if in no other, he scores over Amanda.
I am overwhelmed by the humming irony that pervades this and other comments about this case.
Here we are, described by others as neocon, chickenhawk, war monger racist cheerleaders for the patriarchy (or, in the cases of Darleen Maggie, Carin et al, gender Benedict Arnolds) arguing at length the various turnings of this case, questioning the veracity of evidence, pondering the actions of Nifong, waxing poetic about the perceived injustioe of the “gang of 88.” Our musings and ramblings clash with same from those mentioned above. Their dialogue examines the same issues from a decidedly different slant. Some would say a more “enlightened, educated” understanding less concentrated on the individual and more invested in the “cause,” wielding gender and race history like a fraternity paddle.
And yet…
Does anybody doubt the truth that all of the regular commentators on this blog, had the charges against the boys been credible and proven in a court of law, would stand and condemn those 3 and call for harsh punishment. I don’t.
The irony, of course, is that the “enlightened, educated, progressives” can’t let go of the race and gender paddle even when the NC District Attorney declares them innocent!” This is a function both of immature arrogance and idealistic message imprinting. Admitting that one has unfairly smeared three young men (on the specific charges for tom’s benefit,) not only damages the crusading ego but also, in some way, scars the crusade itself. Notice the number of references to the future of “attitudes towards black women” or “it will be harder for women to come forward” and the like. These snorting idealists, wrapped in the slogan cocoons of their protest world, can’t seperate from the movement long enough to have a human moment; a small, short, bright period of reflection and humbleness.
Why bother when those that are White, Male and middle class deserve no such “human” moment and are only worthy to be tools of the mnovement.
Want a truly shocking look at how ideology and hate can blind people? Makes Marcotte look reasonable.
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/i-believe-her-all-i-need-to-know-about-the-duke-rape-case-and-how-imus-figures-in/
Make sure to read the comments as well.
BJ, these are people who are incapable of thinking in anything but caricatures. Bill Whittle can walk you through the psychosis of these conspiracy theorists.
Watch it, Rusty, you’re on that slippery slope back to Siddartha.
When we form the Protein Wisdom kazoo-and-jug marching band, can we adopt this as the name? It’s pretty damn catchy.
(But seriously:
Remember the old saw about breaking a lot of eggs to make an omelette? White, male and bourgeois are the eggs.)
Percy;
(from the press release)
War Monger Racist Cheerleaders of the Patriarchy
An activist Jug and Kazoo band dedicated to oppressing the poor, females, all non-white races with a special focus on young, poor, hard working black strippers who cry rape. The band’s goal is to insure the mass killing of brown people in the Middle East and to continue the Transcedency of the Patriarchy, Global Environmental Annihilation, Corporate Economic Totalitarianism and The Privilage Hegemony.
Available for weddings and Bar Mitzvas!
I’m Portuguese so I think that I’m exempt from being an egg, especially in New Jersey!
Pablo:
Thanks for the Whittle link. That is just awesome! Here’s my favorite money quote:
Bwaaa hahaha! Sublime!
Actually, Rusty was quoting me, from earlier in the thread. I was the one who said it had taken me a year, etc.