Monday Miscellany
Thanks to everyone who entered to win a copy of The Secret History of Moscow [B&N | Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by Ekaterina Sedia. Of the 37 entries on my various blog mirrors, Random.org has chosen temporaryworlds as the winner. Congrats, and I’ll be contacting you shortly to get your mailing info.
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I was going to do a separate post about this, but you know what? Stupid doesn’t deserve a full post.
Last week, another random anonymous commenter popped up on one of my old rape posts. He followed the typical pattern, explaining how only one in a thousand women are really raped. I guess the rest are just part of the Great Rape Conspiracy. And then, as so many of these guys do, he added the tired old line: I don’t know anyone who’s been raped.
If you think this proves your point — if you can’t distinguish between “Nobody I know has been raped” and “Nobody I know has chosen to tell me they were raped” — then you need to get off the computer and go back to school. I recommend remedial logic. Because if you’re the kind of person who goes around commenting anonymously on strangers’ blogs to explain that rape isn’t a problem, that the True numbers are minuscule, and the rest of those women are just making it up for their own misguided or malicious ends … is it any wonder people don’t choose to talk to you about having been raped?
Don’t be that guy.
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Finally, fairy tale in LEGO: scrat_ has done an impressive rendering of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale The Little Match Girl. Click the pic for the full set.
KatG
December 13, 2010 @ 11:44 am
My immediate reaction to males who are deeply emotionally invested in trying to prove that crime statistics are wrong, that stuff in Africa is not happening, and rapes don’t really happen much and “I don’t know anyone who has been raped” is to guess that it’s very likely that they have date raped someone or otherwise used sexual force. It’s not a fair reaction to have on my part, but the desperate need to declare women to be liars shows the sort of anger towards women, belief in women as sexual tormentors, the need to control and the rationalization of violence and force that are the hallmarks of rapists. Even the gay guy at Yale was it? who tried to call out women as worthy of being raped if they get drunk and go back to someone’s dorm room — it wouldn’t at all surprise me if I learned that he had date raped a guy. I’m not saying he did, I’m just saying it wouldn’t surprise me if this was discovered about him.
But what really surprises me about these attitudes is the utter irrationality about it. Women risk everything when they come forward about rape. Their lives are destroyed. They are not only accused of being whores, but of crimes from assault to extortion, even if they were attacked by a stranger while perfectly sober. They get nothing out of it except maybe, sometimes, to see their rapist go behind bars if they are willing to run the gauntlet and the invasive tests and the time spent in courtrooms. Why some men think that lots of women would willingly chose that over simply being embarrassed over a bad decision hook up makes no rational sense, unless perhaps they are trying to justify the use of force in their own lives.
When my sister and her friend were jogging (they were about fourteen,) they were grabbed by a group of teenage guys and shoved into a car. They fought frantically and were able to escape the car and run home. The cops never caught the guys to my knowledge. If they hadn’t made it out of the car… And that was a long time ago, when the cops didn’t take rape as seriously.