littleericpkt:

The slutwalk is fucking moronic and I’ll explain why.

Anti-rape advocates fall under the same category as the pro-life bitches, they’re people you wouldn’t wanna fuck in the first place.

• If you dress like a plumber, expect people to ask you to unclog shit.
• If you dress like a maid, expect to be asked to clean shit.
• If you dress like a WHORE expect to be TREATED like one.

I’m not condoning rape, by any means, no means no.  But if I am EVER witness to some woman dressing OVERLY promiscuous and bitching at someone for making off-color remarks towards her I will punch that bitch’s cunt until she cries.

And newsflash to all you dumb fucking bitches who ADVOCATE the slutwalk, please heed the following MYTHS/FACTS from The University of Minnesota:

Myth: Sexual assault is an impulsive, spontaneous act.

Fact: Most rapes are carefully planned by the rapist. A rapist will rape again and again, usually in the same area of town and in the same way.

Myth: Rape is a crime of passion.

Fact: Rape is an act of VIOLENCE, not passion. it is an attempt to hurt and humiliate, using sex as the weapon.

Myth: Rape is an impulsive, uncontrollable act of sexual gratification. Most rape are spontaneous acts of passion where the assailant cannot control him/herself.

FACT Rape is a premeditated act of violence, not a spontaneous act of passion. 71% of rapes are planned in advance. 60% of convicted rapists were married or had regular sexual partners at the time of the assault. Men can control their sexual impulses. The vast majority of rapists are motivated by power, anger, and control, not sexual gratification.

Source: The University of Minnesota

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html

So sorry, I don’t know who is telling you that any man is capable of rape and will use your attire as an excuse, but they’re using a small percentage as an example.

I’ll take “Missing the Point Completely” for $2000, Alex.

Slutwalks began because of the prevalent theory that women can prevent rape by “not dressing like sluts.”  A Toronto police officer actually gave that out as a rape prevention tip.  And you, yourself, have just disproved his point: women don’t get raped because they dress a certain way or act a certain way. People get raped because someone raped them.

As for your opening statements and paraphrasing of a Dave Chappelle bit I’ve never been a huge fan of, wow.  That’s a ton of misogynist thoughts and language condensed into such a small space.  Why do you feel that way?  What in our culture has encouraged that sort of thought in you? 

Why do you attack the physical appearance/fuckability of a group of people you disagree with? 

What do you define as “OVERLY promiscuous?” What is the cut-off for that?  Do you think that is some kind of universal definition? Who gets to decide what is “OVERLY promiscuous?”

Why did you feel the need to threaten violence, specifically aimed at female genitalia (“I will punch that bitch’s cunt until she cries”), against someone over a disagreement?

I ask you, and those that agree with you, to examine your own statements, thoughts and feelings and consider that maybe they are part of why we feel the need to organize and participate in slutwalks, and consider how your attitudes contribute to a rape culture, even while you claim to be against rape.

(Originally published in a slightly different form on Buzznet.com.  I begged Gwen Artax to allow me to republish it here)

So, a review of (the “musical” group) BrokenCyde spawned a discussion on rape. I’ve held my piece for a while, a few times in discussions about the Rhianna/Chris Brown incident, I’ve rolled my eyes in disgust and walked away from them, I have a history, I don’t like flaunting it, and its not how one deals with a debate anyhow. Garnering sympathy is something that one does when one’s stance is not based in logic. And I’ve walked away from discussions about rape for the same reason. Until I read this:

But I feel like there are women out there who set themselves up to be put in that situation! This world is a dark, dirty place, and you always have to watch your back. If you act like a slut, more than likely someone will treat you like one (and the consequences are heart-breaking).

Of course, 98% of the women in this world don’t deserve it, but there’s that other 2% who just act like they can do no wrong and get away with anything…and then something bad happens. I’m really not trying to be a jerk here. I’ve just seen it happen before.

This thought is why it took so long for there to be comprehensive rape legislation. In Medieval Times it was thought that conception could only happen AFTER a female orgasm, as well as a male one, and that orgasms only came with consent. So, if a woman became pregnant after being raped, the courts would figure she consented (I don’t remember where I read this, I think it was on a poster at Planned Parenthood years ago).

In Germany during the 100 Years War, if a woman became pregnant from a rape the rapist was forced to marry her, and help to pay for her children’s up-bringing and care for her. Somehow this seems like an absolutely terrifying thought to me.

For years a woman was found at fault if she smiled at a guy, inviting him to rape her, so to speak. And there were little to no legal repercussions for it, and the social ones were placed on her, not him. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that it became no longer admissible to bring up a girl’s sexual history as part of the legal defense in rape cases.

So what does this have to do with anything? There are people on this site who are helping to perpetuate these 12th century ideals on what is or isn’t rape. Girls who are looking at another girl, maybe one who’s had one too many, maybe one who wears a short skirt and going “she so deserved to be raped” instead of seeing her as another woman, and as part of a larger group of women who didn’t deserve it.

I approach what happened to me not from a victim or a survivor stand point. I don’t see it as something I survived. It is just another thing which happened, sure, its effected me differently than that time I accidentally dyed my hair the color of Cheetos, and it has made it as hard for me to trust men as my boyfriend when I was 20 cheating on me with everyone he met, but in a lot of ways I feel like I’ve “lived” through rape, more than I “survived”. I wasn’t stranded on a desert island, I didn’t make it out of a burning air plane alive. I had something awful happen to me, as have way too many other girls.

We are taught as young women to believe that if we educate ourselves enough that bad things will never happen. We are taught that abusers have a beer gut and that rapists will be foot ball stars or the overly nice guys in the bars we go to. Especially rapists. They will buy us drinks and slip us something, they’ll be that too charming guy who offers you a ride home, or the handsome guy who might be just too good to be true. I’m sorry, none of that is true.

Although wouldn’t it be nice if they had to wear special hats and distinctive clothing? Wouldn’t that be easier? Sure, but its never going to happen.

The thing is, girls saying things like “some people deserve it” and “if you’re too drunk its going to happen” or “girls who flirt/wear short skirts/talk to boys will so get raped” not only is sad and misogynistic, but also removes the blame from where it should be squarely placed: On the guy who raped her.

Look, I was sober when I was raped, I was wearing pants that night and had known the guy and trusted him for years, when it happened. But I’m a flirt, I wear mini skirts (some people buy shorts, some people don’t, I’m of the second kind), I can (sometimes) approach the guys I like, and I’ve been known to knock back a few. I’m also 25. Does this mean I “deserved it”. That in some way my behavior means that I shouldn’t expect the guys I’m with to treat me with respect? Because from the criteria I’ve seen on this site, I deserved to be raped, which, guys if you think that, I hope you rot in hell.

We as girls and as a society need to stop blaming girls who had it happen to them and start saying “how do we prevent this? How do we help her?”. I’m sick of being a survivor. I never wanted to be a victim. But today? I think I’ll be an advocate.

In the past week I have seen young women (several of them, of different age groups, social groups and backgrounds) do the following:

• Blame a victim of abuse for her abuse, because she may have done something at some point to anger her abuser
• Claim that certain kinds of women “deserve to be raped”
• Fawn over a convicted criminal who is flirting with his fans from behind bars, saying that it’s so sweet that he called his female fans “hot.”

This is the tip of the iceberg of the things I see from young women these days.  And by that I don’t just mean all you young ‘uns running around Buzznet, I mean from my own age group as well.  I see this disturbing trend where-in women are more than willing, even eager, to blame our own gender for problems, to call ourselves weak and stupid, to find ourselves incapable of surviving on our own, to turn on each other over body image or boys and to “put each other in our places.”

In other words: the patriarchy can sit back and relax, they’ve trained us to rip at each other’s throats enough that they don’t have to work to maintain the status quo of “social norms.”

And girls, it hurts me.  It seriously hurts me.  Because being a girl is something that seriously kicks ass, it’s fucking fantastic, and the fact that it almost seems that we’re being taught that it’s something shameful, or something that you can only do in a “particular” way…that’s messed up.  It’s selling ourselves short.

And yes, yes, before any of you start screaming “OMG, BUT THINK OF THE BOYS!  BOYS HAVE IT BAD TOO!!!!  IF YOU DON’T THINK OF THE BOYS, YOU’RE OPPRESSING THEM!”: you don’t think social norms and gender roles hurt men, too?  You don’t think the same sort of stereotyping that feminists fight against isn’t anti-male?  Because feminism, as I’ve ranted before and will rant again, is about equality.  No matter what propaganda you’ve been handed otherwise, no matter how the media has portrayed it, no matter how many female supremacists masquerading as feminsts you’ve met. Feminism is about equality.

And so I did some thinking.  And while I was looking up information on women in music, I came across a bunch of information on the Riot Grrl movement.  It was women who were sick of the sexism rampant in the punk scene who took matters into their own hands.  Via their own bands and home printed ‘zines, these girls called for a movement, for a literal girl riot. The “grrl” spelling is meant to refer to a growling sound: the sort of vocals you hear in punk music and/or the sort of growling that needed to be done about the situation.

One of the things published in these underground ‘zines was a Riot Grrl Manifesto.  After looking it up, I found a few points made in it that all of us girls, even if you’re not into the Riot Grrl music, really can and should take to heart:

• BECAUSE we want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments, in the face of “authorities” who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US and
• BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.
• BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary “reverse sexists” AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.
• BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock “you can do anything” idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their own terms, not ours.
• BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.
• BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.
• BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.
• BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self defeating girltype behaviors.
• BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

And now, if I might add one of my own:

BECAUSE the girls of the past, the girls of the present and the girls of the future are worth it.