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Weiye Loh

Barbara Kay: Women are not always the 'gentler sex' | Full Comment | National Post - 0 views

fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...are-not-always-the-gentler-sex

Rape Gender Stereotype Feminism Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • McGill professor of Social Work Myriam Denov, who did her Phd thesis on female sex offenders, notes, as recently as 1984, a study proclaimed that “pedophilia does not exist at all in women.”
  • According to a 2004 U.S. Department of Education mass study of university students, 57% of students reporting child sexual abuse cited a male offender, and 42% reported a female offender. Interestingly, 65% of the survivors of female abuse who opened up to a therapist, doctor or other professional were not believed on their first disclosure. Overall, 86% of those who tried to tell anyone at all about their experience were not believed.
  • According to a 1996 report from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), about 25% of child sexual abuse is committed by women, but that figure may be low, because survivors are far more conflicted and shamed in admitting abuse by their mothers than by fathers.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In one study of 17,337 survivors of childhood sexual abuse, 23% reported a female-only perpetrator and 22% reported both male and female. A U.S. Department of Justice report finds that, in 2008, 95% of all youths reporting sexual misconduct by staff member in state juvenile facilities said their victimization experiences included victimization by female personnel, who made up 42% of the staff.
  • Dr. Paul Federoff, a forensic psychiatrist and Co-Director of the Sexual Behaviors Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, says that “there are a lot of women who do sexually abuse children, but they get away with it.” Daycare centres, schools and homes make propitious terrain for predators. One study found 8% of female perpetrators were teachers and 23% were babysitters.
  • There are three types of female sex offenders: those who are predisposed to it and will abuse very young children, exactly like men; those who are “male-accompanied,” like Karla Homolka (alive and well, and the mother of three children in Montreal); and the “teacher-lover” type, like the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau, who seduced and, after a stint in prison, married her former student.

  • Victorian chivalry and 21st century feminism would seem to make strange bedfellows, but in their equally unrealistic characterization of women as the always “gentler sex,” they condemn both male and female victims of female-perpetrated abuse to silence and second-class social status.

    To err is human. Are women fully human? Then stop treating them like saints or permanent moral infants.

  • While the first two types are universally detested, the third type is problematic, because it is often assumed, even by law enforcement, that older women cannot coerce sex, or that teenage boys are flattered and empowered by an older woman’s sexual mentorship. Boys do act out their confusion and anxiety differently than girls do, but that doesn’t mean many of them aren’t damaged by the relationships, or that the law should be applied to women abusers with any less rigour.
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12
     
    Most rapists were subjected to some form of sexual abuse in childhood. A startling amount is perpetrated by females. Peer-reviewed studies conclude that between 60-80% of "rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men" were sexually abused by a female.
Weiye Loh

When the rapist is a she - Sexual abuse - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...sexual_abuse

Gender Stereotype Rape

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • A 2001 report in Psychiatric Times found that female rapists "are most likely to use psychological pressure such as verbal pleading and arguments, emotional blackmail, and deception." Also common among cases of female-on-male sexual assault is taking advantage of an intoxicated man.
  • , it's tough to accurately estimate how common female-on-male rape is, because it's presumed to be greatly under-reported. That's due in part to the general stigma around sexual assault, but more important, to cultural assumptions about male and female sexuality. Men, we're told, always want sex from women and are happy to get it any way they can. This yarn is so strong that it's tragically woven throughout even cases where underage boys are molested by female teachers.
  • Just as with prison rape, female-on-male rape gets the comedic treatment.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • none of this answers the question of whether Kris Bucher was actually raped by the mother of his child, but it does mean that it's physiologically possible. It's up to the court system to figure out the rest.
Weiye Loh

Balderdash: Researching the Rape Culture of America - 0 views

gssq.blogspot.com/...g-rape-culture-of-america.html

Culture Rape Gender Equality Class Inequality

shared by Weiye Loh on 31 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • "There was some pressure-at least I felt pressure-to have rape be as prevalent as possible . . .. I'm a pretty strong feminist, but one of the things I was fighting was that the really avid feminists were trying to get me to say that things were worse than they really are"
  • One obvious reason for this inequity is that feminist advocates come largely from the middle class and so exert great pressure to protect their own. To render their claims plausible, they dramatize themselves as victims-survivors or "potential survivors." Another device is to expand the definition of rape...
  • The common assumption that rape is a manifestation of misogyny is open to question... American society is exceptionally violent, and the violence is not specifically patriarchal or misogynist... The incidence of rape is many times lower in such countries as Greece, Portugal, or Japan-countries far more overtly patriarchal than ours...
Weiye Loh

Balderdash: Negligence of Male Rape: what you get when you're obsessed by Privilege - 0 views

gssq.blogspot.com/...of-male-rape-what-you-get.html

Rape Victim Gender Equality Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Another commenter points out (in response to an affirmation that "the perpetrator class *is* monolithic. In these countries, in these war situations, it *is* exclusively composed of men, acting out masculinity's obsession with the use of sex as violence and power over"):

    "Women also use sex as a means of violence and power. Research conducted in the US show that 95% of male victims in juvenile detention centres are abused by women http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/mar/11/the-rape-of-american-prisoners/ and that another report highlighted that women raped in US prisons were more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted by another woman than a man"
  • when some UK Rape Crisis centres began to accept and help male rape victims they received death threats and even threats of having their offices fire bombed. Apparently these threats came from volunteers at other rape crisis centres
  • Of course there's someone accusing them of "liberal condescension, which habitually appears in their reports on developed countries", but that's another problematic matter...
Weiye Loh

The rape of men | Global development | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...the-rape-of-men

Rape Victim Gender Equality Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, insists in a statement that the UNHCR extends its services to refugees of both genders. But she concedes that the "great stigma" men face suggests that the real number of survivors is higher than that reported. Wallström says the focus remains on women because they are "overwhelmingly" the victims. Nevertheless, she adds, "we do know of many cases of men and boys being raped."
  • But when I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".
  • "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates 'female' with 'victim', thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability."
  • ...2 more annotations...

  • As part of an attempt to correct this, the RLP produced a documentary in 2010 called Gender Against Men. When it was screened, Dolan says that attempts were made to stop him. "Were these attempts by people in well-known, international aid agencies?" I ask.

    "Yes," he replies. "There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake." Dolan points to a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa.

    "I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female. He also recalls a man whose case was "particularly bad" and was referred to the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR. "They told him: 'We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.'"

  • wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."
Weiye Loh

Keir Starmer: Rape claims retracted out of fear should not lead to charges | Law | The ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-starmer-rape-claims-retracted

Rape Claim Retraction Victim

shared by Weiye Loh on 07 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 07 Jul 11
     
    Women who retract allegations of rape out of fear of violence should not face criminal charges, according to fresh guidance issued by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.

    His announcement is intended to help prosecutors distinguish between those who pervert the course of justice by inventing false claims and genuine victims in danger of attack from vengeful partners or assailants.
Weiye Loh

Strauss-Kahn case could deter reporting of rape, campaigners warn | World news | guardi... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...auss-kahn-sexual-assault-cases

Rape Victim Crime

shared by Weiye Loh on 07 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 07 Jul 11
     
    RT @LexyTopping: Strauss-Kahn case could deter reporting of rape http://bit.ly/m7sMYb with comments from @RapeCrisisSth and @EVAWhd
Weiye Loh

Shoot First, Mumble Later: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the TISS 'rape' - 0 views

girishshahane.blogspot.com/...trauss-kahn-and-tiss-rape.html

Rape DSK India

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 11
     
    We appear to have built a system where cops leak whatever information and speculation suits their case, but have no obligation to make the facts of a case public when the accused are innocent.
Weiye Loh

Strauss-Kahn and 5 other vexing sexual assault cases | Alaska Dispatch - 0 views

www.alaskadispatch.com/...er-vexing-sexual-assault-cases

Rape Politics Racism Law

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 11 - No Cached

  • #3 Hofstra University gang-rape case

    An 18-year-old Hofstra University freshman accused five men, including another Hofstra student, of gang-raping her after a campus party in Hempstead, N.Y., in September 2009.

    Four of the men were charged and a fifth was about to be arrested after the woman told police she was lured to a dormitory after a dance party. She said she was bound with rope while the five men took turns sexually assaulting her in a stall in the men's bathroom.

    Then a grainy and explicit cellphone video of the incident emerged, showing the sex was consensual. The woman recanted her story after the prosecutor asked her: “If there is a video, and I get that video, it's going to show me that what you're saying is true?”

  • "The men did nothing illegal, but that doesn't make the behavior any less despicable," wrote Newsday columnist Joye Brown about the case. At the same time, "one woman's lie could have sent five innocent young men to state prison for up to 25 years."
Weiye Loh

Strauss-Kahn sex assault case 'close to collapse' | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...kahn-sex-assault-case-collapse

Politics Rape Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • The sexual nature of the encounter between the French politician and the maid has never been questioned by either side. But the New York Times report suggests that police and prosecuting lawyers have concluded that the 32-year-old Guinean-born maid has lied repeatedly.
  • police recorded a telephone conversation between the woman and a man in prison on the day of the alleged rape in which the woman talked about the possible financial benefits that could come to her as a result of pursuing charges against Strauss-Kahn.
Weiye Loh

Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html

Politics Rape Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • they “have problems with the case” based on what their investigators have discovered, and will disclose more of their findings to the defense. The woman still maintains that she was attacked, the officials said.
  • the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
Weiye Loh

News of Turnaround in Strauss-Kahn Case Stuns France - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...02france.html

Rape Politics Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached

  • Before his arrest, Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been widely expected to resign from the International Monetary Fund to run as the Socialist candidate against President Nicolas Sarkozy next year. But after his arrest he was forced to quit, and the fractious French Socialists embarked on a potentially draining quest for a new candidate.

    All that changed Friday when France awoke to reports that the case against him was crumbling.

  • “People are not going to forgive him. At a political level, he is dead,” said Agnès Bergé, 44, who works for a law firm. But Sophie Leseur, 50, an artist, said the saga could turn Mr. Strauss-Kahn into a “martyr.”

  • “His reputation is tarnished forever,” said Marie Chuinard, 25, a legal adviser. “I think he can come back to French political life, but internationally he is burned.”

    His arrest had also led to soul-searching about the treatment of women in France, inspiring what some see as a new readiness among women to challenge male dominance.

  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the case risked stoking anti-American feeling with the impression that the New York Police Department had deliberately humiliated Mr. Strauss-Kahn. “We were made to believe he was guilty, we dropped him, we really bought this,” Mr. Randé said. “I’m shocked that they didn’t take more care.”
  • Marie Nury, a boutique owner, expressed dismay at the speed with which the news seemed to persuade some people that he was blameless. “I don’t know if he’s guilty or not,” Ms. Nury said, “but this doesn’t prove he is innocent.”
  • Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11
     
    Before Mr. Strauss-Kahn's release from house arrest, two well-placed law enforcement officials in New York said that the case against him was on the verge of collapse because of major questions about the credibility of his accuser, a hotel housekeeper who said he had sexually assaulted her in a suite at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in mid-May.
Weiye Loh

DSK case a boon for women in French politics? - CBS News - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...main20076239.shtml

Rape France Politics Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11
     
    The Strauss-Kahn case, it was said, was so embarrassing it would finally change the gender landscape in French politics.

    "The way we interact in France with women, in particular the political circles, and it's true some people did say. 'maybe we don't treat our women as we should do,' so that may be the positive outcome of the story," said Christian Roudait, a correspondent for Radio France.
Weiye Loh

Gifts of Speech - Camille Paglia - 0 views

gos.sbc.edu/paglia.html

Academia Liberal Conservative Feminism Science Nature Rape Victim

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Jun 11 - Cached
  • if people are trying to critique from within the academic establishment, and they're getting tarred with the word "neoconservative," you keep on doing that long enough, people will get used to hearing it about themselves, and they will become conservative
  • a lot of people have been driven toward the neoconservative side by the failure of the liberal academic establishment to critique itself. So rather than blaming The New Criterion or Roger Kimball for all the problems of the world, it's time for the liberals of academe to critique themselves, to reform it from within.
  • my career has been a disaster. And before my book was finally published at Yale Press, it was rejected by seven New York publishers, I could not get published throughout the Seventies and Eighties, I was completely poor. For the first time in my adult life I'm out of debt as of three months ago. I've been on the unemployment line. I have taught in factories. I'm probably the only major voice right now in academe who's actually taught factory workers. As opposed to these people who are the Marxists [makes prancing, dancing, hair-preening gestures], oh yes, these Marxists, like Terry Eagleton at Oxford. Do you know what he makes? Do you know the salary that man makes? Oh, it just disgusts me. This is why he has to wear blue jeans, to show, "Oh, no, I don't have the money." These people are hypocrites! They really are. It's all a literary game. There's no authentic self-sacrifice, no direct actual experience of workers or working-class people. It's appalling, the situation. It's everywhere, it's everywhere in the Ivy League.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • You know, I'm really happy there wasn't all this talk about sex changes back then, since I probably would have gotten this fantasy that I was a man born wrongly in a woman's body, and I think I might very well have become obsessed with the idea of a sex change, which would have been a terrible mistake. Because I think I absolutely am a woman, but I was just a woman born ahead of my time. I was a kind of pioneer, and decade by decade I've acclimated myself to my sex role--thanks to my friendships with gay men and drag queens! Drag queens have influenced me enormously. Their analysis of the mythology of male and female, and the theatre of gender and so on,
  • My sense of time-frame is so vast compared to that of people in English departments. When I think about sex, when I think about anything in culture, I'm thinking about a 10,000-year time span, you see, and this is what causes a communication problem with feminists, because most of them, as far as I can see, tend to have their specialties in the late eighteenth century or following. There are a few who have training earlier, but they tend to be very narrowly focused even in that one area. I think my broad expanse of learning and my already world-consciousness
  • There was a point where feminism and I agreed. I was thirteen though. It was 1960, okay? That was a time when I said, "Men are terrible. The sexes are the same. Men must change. Society must change. And all the problems between the sexes are coming from the fact that men are so awful."
  • That's an unevolved position. It's thirty years later, girls! Let us move on! Oh, God! So I continued studying and, at this point, I became notorious in Syracuse, New York, where I was going to high school, for my Amelia Earhart obsession. The newspaper actually reported this. For three years--this looks forward to Sexual Personae--for three years, I did this Amelia Earhart research. The biographer of Amelia Earhart told me I had done more research in the primary sources than he had! I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime. Amelia Earhart to me was an image of everything a woman should be. It remains that for me. Amelia Earhart, my obsession. She is woman alone. Not woman hand-holding in a group and whining about men. Woman alone! Okay, all right? Woman goes up in a plane. If she crashes, she doesn't go, "You men did this to me!" She knows that she is responsible. It's her skill, her preparation. And then nature. Something that's not in her control can be her opponent: nature!
  • No one wants to talk about nature now. Meanwhile, the entire student population of the world is thinking about nature, the environment, they're thinking globally, but our faculty are off in their little corners talking about social constructionism. They haven't thought about nature in twenty years, okay, they are so behind. You mention the mere word "nature"--"Essentialism!" That's it. What--? I mean--! The thing about the Sixties is that we had a comprehensive world-view. We saw the injustices of society, and we wanted to remedy them. We focused our negative energy against society to change it. At the same time we saw the enormity of nature. And we honored the enormity of nature. It is appalling, the situation now, that you could think about talking about sex without thinking about nature. That you could claim that you are an expert in gender without knowing about hormones!
  • The contempt for science that's going on among humanists is contemptible.
  • It's this combination of the sciences plus the arts. "Impossible," you say, today? "Impossible--we're too specialized for that, we're too expert." No, this is exactly what we need. We have to bring this back, this idea of all of culture integrated. This is what we must do for the next generation of students. We must do this. We must make radical reforms of undergraduate and graduate education, to give students this kind of comprehensive vision of culture.
  • . When you destroy young people's ability to take pleasure in beauty, you are a pervert! So I stood up, I was very agitated--and she was such a good sport. I mean, here was this maniac she never heard of, my book had just come out, and I was waving my arms around. I said I didn't mean to condemn her, because I understood that what she was doing was the result of ten years of feminists doing this. But nevertheless, I asked, why is it, why is it that feminists have so much trouble dealing with beauty and pleasure, I said, to which gay men have made such outstanding cultural contributions? Why--if gay men can respond? This is why I get along so well with gay men, and I don't get along with lesbian feminists. This is why my sexuality is a complete neuter! I don't fit in anywhere! I'm like this wandering being, the Ancient Mariner--it's just awful.
  • You cannot just suddenly open a magazine and look at a picture of a nude woman and then free associate, using Lacan. You cannot do that! Because fashion magazines are part of the history of art. These are great photographers, great stylists--and gay men have made enormous contributions to fashion photography. Anyway, I made a huge statement that night--the whole audience gasped. I went, "The history of fashion photography from 1950 to 1990 is one of the great moments in the history of art!" And everyone went, "How can you say that?" Because obviously fashion is an oppression of women.
  • And beauty, according to, um, Miss, um, Naomi Wolf, is a heterosexist conspiracy by men in a room to keep feminism back
  • We had this huge fight about the song "Under My Thumb." I said it was a great song, not only a great song but I said it was a work of art. And these feminists of the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band went into a rage, surrounded me, practically spat in my face, literally my back was to the wall. They're screaming in my face, "Art? Art? Nothing that demeans women can be art!" There it is. There it is! Right from the start. The fascism of the contemporary women's movement.
  • What I identify with is the prewar feminism of Amelia Earhart, of Katherine Hepburn--who had an enormous impact on me--that period of women where you had independence, self-reliance, personal responsibility, and not blaming other people for your problems.
  • I don't feel less because I'm in the presence of a beautiful person. I don't go [imitates crying and dabbing tears], "Oh, I'll never be that beautiful!" What a ridiculous attitude to take!--the Naomi Wolf attitude. When men look at sports, when they look at football, the don't go [crying], "Oh, I'll never be that fast, I'll never be that strong!" When people look at Michelangelo's David, do they commit suicide? No. See what I mean? When you see a strong person, a fast person, you go, "Wow! That is fabulous." When you see a beautiful person: "How beautiful." That's what I'm bringing back to feminism. You go, "What a beautiful person, what a beautiful man, what a beautiful woman, what beautiful hair, what beautiful boobs!"
  • We should not have to apologize for reveling in beauty. Beauty is an eternal human value. It was not a trick invented by nasty men in a room someplace on Madison Avenue.
  • I say in Sexual Personae that it was invented in Egypt. For 3,000 years at the height of African civilization you had a culture based on beauty. We have two major cultures in the world today, France and Japan, organized around the idea of beauty. It is so provincial, feminism's problem with beauty. We have got to get over this.
  • Obviously, any addiction--like if you're addicted to plastic surgery--that's a problem. Of course it's a problem. Addiction to anything is a problem. But this blaming anorexia on the media--this is Naomi's thing--oh please! Anorexia is coming out of these white families, these pushy, perfectionist white families, who all end up with their daughters at Yale.
  • All this "Let's unmask Big Daddy"--this obsession with the weaknesses of big figures. This is infantile. It's infantile. You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your I.Q., okay, they open up brain cells you didn't even know you have.
  • a politics which blames all human problems on white male imperialists who have victimized women and people of color. This view of history is coming from people who know nothing about history. Because when you think of the word "imperialist," if you automatically just think "America," then you don't know anything. Because someone who's studied the history of ancient Egypt knows that imperialism was practically invented in Egypt and in the ancient Near East. If you want to talk about imperialism, let's talk about Japan or Persia or all kinds of things. It's not just a white male monopoly.
  • we cannot have this scenario being projected of male rapaciousness and brutality and female victimage. We have got to make women realize they are responsible, that sexuality is something that belongs to them. They have an enormous power in their sexuality. It's up to them to use it correctly and to be wise about where they go and what they do. And I'm accused of being "anti-woman" because of this attitude
  • people say to me, "Oh, you're always talking about feminists as if they're monolithic. We're not monolithic. We're very pluralistic. We have so many different views." No, excuse me: the date-rape issue shows that I am correct. Because there is one voice speaking about date rape from coast to coast, one voice, one stupid, shrewish, puritanical, sermonizing, hysterical voice. And where are all these sophisticated feminists supposedly out there? Where are they? Totally impotent, locked in their little burrows wherever they are, whether they're in the East Village or Harvard. Wherever they are, they're impotent. There's not one voice raised to bring some sense into this hysteria. Now, I am an experienced teacher. I sympathize with the problems of freshmen, and so I believe that date-rape awareness is an excellent thing to do when students arrive, not only for the men, to warn the men that breaches of civilized behavior will not be tolerated, but also to warn the women, because unfortunately to me what's happening is that we have a white middle-class problem. I don't notice so many Hispanic women and African-American women going around and carrying on like this.
  • The girl has met the guy once before, this is the second time she met him, they were at a party, she invites him back to her room, its three A.M., she falls asleep, and then suddenly something happens, and she charges him with rape.
  • We cannot have this, these white middle-class girls coming out of pampered homes, expecting to do whatever they want. They don't understand what's going on, that there's a sexual content to their behavior, that maybe there's a subliminal sexuality, a provocativeness in their behavior. "Don't say 'provocative'! Because then you're blaming the victim!" Well, women will never be taken seriously until they accept full responsibility for their sexuality.
  • the sexual ideology of current feminism is reactionary and repressive and puritanical and phobic. And it's being produced by many of these women who have succeeded, you see, in the women's studies programs and who don't understand the degree to which their own careerism, their own opportunism is enwrapped with these ideas. They don't understand. They're not sophisticated women, many of them. They're not. They're not cosmopolitan women. To talk about sex, you have to know about literature and art. Literature and art are the best way into the psychology of mankind, because of the ambiguity and mystery. Because that is where you feel the flux, the flux of our sexual desire, the way our spirit is not in these rigid categories of oppressor and victim. Everything is flowing. Fantasy and imagination and all these things, they're always flowing. That's why Freud has been so useful for me, because of the way he is able to study the dream process and to find words to articulate these ambiguous nonverbal phenomena. It's a very, very good exercise for anyone trying to talk about sex. So the present situation is just appalling--just appalling. The language that is being used by these people, the way social-welfare issues have taken over the agenda. We cannot have this.
  • what's so ridiculous about this is that these people want "multiculturalism," they want to talk about various ethnic groups. At the same time they want to deny there's any difference between those ethnic groups.
Weiye Loh

A critique...of my critique of SlutWalk Singapore? Try again. - 0 views

www.facebook.com/note.php

Rape Gender Equality Feminism Victim

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • The core of my writing is my research. I refer to Marc MacYoung, Rory Miller, and Gavin De Becker amongst others fairly extensively when I talk about self defence. I posted quite a few links to MacYoung's website in my article, because amongst the three MacYoung conducted the most research into the behaviour of rapists. These men have spent their careers understanding criminal psychology and developing personal safety tactics, and are widely-recognised experts in their fields. I don't recognise any of their ideas in your work, so I would like to understand who and what informs your arguments. I don't want to assume that you're a straw feminist drawing from straw feminist theories, but I don't sense any concepts drawn from criminal psychology or personal safety in your article, which I sense should underscore any discussion on criminal behaviour - including rapists.

     

    Nicholas Liu has brought up his quarrel with Benjamin's sources, so I see no need to restate those points. You can view the thread here (http://benjamincheah.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/slutwalk-noble-but-misguided). The reason why Benjamin does not 'sense any concepts drawn from criminal psychology or personal safety in my article' is simple: I unequivocally reject how these concepts inform his conclusions, and the import he happily attributes to them. Nor do I think it is necessary for me to cite who exactly informs my understanding when I am perfectly capable of understanding - and seeing through - things myself. A note of advice from myself: one of the first things we learn, as philosophers, is that citations do not undergird arguments; it's what you do with available concepts, ideas already on the table, that matters.

  • SlutWalk believes that society pins all the ‘blame’ of a rape on the victim instead of the rapist. On the surface, this is only logical. A rapist committed a rape, therefore the rapist is to blame. But this is a shallow way of looking at rape – the rape probably occurred because the victim didn’t look after herself.

     

    Most rapes occur because a woman took a risk, and got burned. She took a risk by walking down a dark alley, by ignoring the three young men lined up against a wall, by leaving a charming handsome stranger alone with her drink, by continuing to live with her abusive husband, and she paid the price. But these are avoidable risks. Most crimes occur this way. It’s controllable, even eliminated in some cases.

     

    If this isn't victim-blaming, I don't know what it is.

  • it's true that saying a rapist is responsible for a rape doesn't ensure that other people don't get raped. The last I checked, however, nobody wanted to waste time arguing that rapists were responsible for rapes (we thought it was self-evident, we really did!) until they realised people were going around saying that victims were responsible for their own rapes. If anything, it's essentially a counter-point. Not to mention, I did state that arguing against victim-blaming is perfectly compatible with encouraging personal safety. We do not have a problem with encouraging personal safety. We have a problem with the notion that a person caused her own rape because she wore certain articles of clothing, got drunk, or ventured out late at night, a notion so embedded in our culture that it can reduce rapists' jail time (a reduction that, I may add, Benjamin once argued for - so much for not joining the victim-blaming team).
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It doesn't take a lot to see the hurt and injustice victim-blaming imposes upon rape survivors, by telling them they were asking for their own rape; that it was through their own negligence that they got raped. SlutWalk unites both survivors and supporters alike and proudly stands against victim-blamers. It affords them a loud collective voice to stand up for each other.
  • Earlier, when I defended my anger, I mentioned that there is room in argument for emotion. This is because arguments do not take place in objective spaces but between people with values and intentions attached to them. And I cannot help but wonder why many people invest so much effort in proclaiming that rape victims are responsible for their own fates, whether it's in essays, speeches, or everyday conversations. If Benjamin wanted to emphasise personal safety, all he needed to do was write a safety manual for women, on what he thought were the best ways to avoid being raped. Yet his article sets out to claim so much more than that. There seems to me something very unnecessary and dishonourable about the entire exercise of victim-blaming. It implicitly says: hey, you! Weakling! You're the type of person that brings ugly fates upon yourself - unlike me! I don't want to bring politics into this, but to me it seems startlingly similar to the smug, secure, self-satisfied sentiments frequently expressed by economic libertarians, contingent on the suffering of others: hey, you! Laggard! You're the type of person that brings poverty upon yourself - unlike me! My guess is, these people often have little to no real understanding of - or sympathy towards -  the events and experiences that their objects of criticism endure. They feel that it could never happen to them, but this is often circumstantial, rather than a direct result of their conduct (it's no coincidence that the majority of victim-blamers I've encountered are cisgendered male).

  • Situation: Two girls, X and Y, are in a bar. There is a rapist hanging around waiting to spike the drink of the first girl who leaves hers unattended. X holds on to her drink all night, never letting it out of her sight. Y goes to the toilet and leaves it on the counter in plain view. Y gets spiked and raped after.

     

    This example, while fictional and by no means representative of how rapes usually happen, seems to illustrate Benjamin's beliefs. I cannot deny that, causally speaking, had Y taken some kind of action, she could've avoided rape in this particular case. Yet, are we necessarily led towards Benjamin's overarching assertion that rape victims are responsible for their fates? No, simply because the opportunity for avoidance and moral blame are two different things. Rape didn't follow as a natural consequence of people not holding on to their drinks all night. It happened because a person hung around in a bar deciding to illegally drug a girl and penetrate her against her will. Y was vulnerable to him, but she played absolutely no role in forming the decision to rape. She only became vulnerable because something she did was consciously exploited by a rapist. It is only in the presence of his decision that her behaviour becomes subsumed into a damaging causal chain. Y failed to follow advice that many girls who frequent bars are given and thus could not avoid the intended rape, but her rape is no less the result of a rapist's decision than a girl who learned 10 different kinds of martial arts, wore locked leather onesies, never consumed alcohol, and still got raped.

Weiye Loh

A critique of SlutWalk Singapore? Try again. - 0 views

www.facebook.com/...10150219878858774

Slutwalk Feminism Rape Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • The heart of SlutWalk’s stance on rape is its attack on ‘victim-blaming’. SlutWalk believes that society pins all the ‘blame’ of a rape on the victim instead of the rapist. On the surface, this is only logical. A rapist committed a rape, therefore the rapist is to blame. But this is a shallow way of looking at rape – the rape probably occurred because the victim didn’t look after herself.

     

    What did I tell you? Can a deep, incisive, correct way of looking at rape point us back to (gasp) victim-blaming? If you can bear to, let's read on.

     

    Predatory rapists like to ambush their targets. The key word is ambush. They wait in dark, secluded areas, and assess everybody who walk by. As soon as they see a target, they strike. Predators can be avoided by going where they can’t hide and not provoking an attack. Personal safety is beyond the scope of this blog, but for more information, there are plenty of books and websites available. I favour Marc MacYoung, Gavin De Becker, and Rory Miller. While geared towards an American audience, much of what they say applies across cultures and borders. More importantly, they make sense, and their tactics work.

  • Most rapes occur because a woman took a risk, and got burned. She took a risk by walking down a dark alley, by ignoring the three young men lined up against a wall, by leaving a charming handsome stranger alone with her drink, by continuing to live with her abusive husband, and she paid the price. But these are avoidable risks. Most crimes occur this way. It’s controllable, even eliminated in some cases.

     

    Now, two things. I first need to point out how ludicrous the second paragraph is. So, to avoid being raped, I am responsible for developing an internal Rapist Detector that enables me to systematically de-friend any rapist that could inhabit my friendspace. What's more, Cheah claims that they're "not that difficult to spot". I would love to personally introduce him to all my friends, just so he can tell me, afterwards, who is most likely to rape me - lest I suffer the consequences. It's easy! Cheah also conveniently ignores the fact that many rapists are people that you cannot easily disassociate yourself from with the click of a button - what about family members? Work superiors? Husbands you have young children with? Is it my fault that I am raped, or is it their fault for raping me? No prizes for the correct answer.

  • Secondly, being strongly against victim-blaming doesn't mean that we can't encourage people to be careful. There is a reason why I avoid walking alone in the dark by myself. It is perfectly natural for me to ask a female friend to send me a text when she reaches home safely. Before I left for university my mother gave me a flashlight/alarm hybrid that I was supposed to set off if someone tried to assault me (I never used it). The problem arises, however, when we say, not only that rape happens because we fail to do these things, but that we, as Cheah implies, have it coming.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • I am an amateur sailor who decides to go boating in an extraordinarily violent storm. No doubt, I am taking a risk because I choose to go boating in a storm. If I drown as a result, it will be my foolishness at fault, even if no one will say it at my funeral. How is this different from a woman who takes a risk by walking down a dark alley that might be populated by rapists? The key here, which so many people fail to grasp, is agency. Storms have no agency, but rapists (hopefully) do. A storm will continue to rage no matter what, but rapes happen because rapists actively decide to rape. A woman who does - or fails to - do x is in no danger of rape if men do not choose to rape. If we blame the victim and not the rapist, we are assuming that rapists, like storms, are an uncontrollable constant we should accept as a fact of life. Men rape. That is normal. They can't help it. If we believed this, I seriously think it would be a huge insult to men in general.

  • With the aid of another analogy:

     

    Either: To stop rape, women take EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE PRECAUTION to make sure they don't get raped. This includes, as Cheah suggests, wearing clothing that is difficult to take off (like thick leather onesies with conspicuous locks on) and fine-tuning their aforementioned Rapist Sensors. Disappointed, potential rapists give up and go home.

     

    Or: Potential rapists stop themselves from raping.

     

    Either: To stop ourselves from being hit by drunk drivers, we make sure we TAKE EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE PRECAUTION to make sure we don't. We wear fluorescent clothing and refuse to cross roads, ever. Otherwise, it is our fault for being hit.

     

    Or: People stop drink-driving.

     

    Which looks more sensible? I leave it to the reader.

  • Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11
     
    Today I came across a blog post titled "Slutwalk: noble but misguided" by Benjamin Cheah (http://benjamincheah.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/slutwalk-noble-but-misguided). I am personally for Slutwalk and am pleased that it's coming to Singapore, but as I believe it's important to critique the things we support, I decided to read it.
Weiye Loh

Culture, Power and Sexual Violence - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...-culture-power-and-sex-collide

Relativism Sex Culture Rape Gender Stereotype Gender Equality Power

shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The more thorny question is whether relativism is relevant to those domains we generally want to put in the non-benign category: harassment, sexual coercion, even sexual violence. Could it be that offensiveness is relative to the perspective of the recipient, based on her own cultural sensibilities? More troubling, could it be that our very experience of an encounter might be significantly affected by our background, upbringing, culture, ethnicity, in short, by what Michel Foucault called our discourse?
  • date rapes, statutory rapes, and many instances of harassment can be subject to multiple interpretations, which has given rise to the new term popular on college campuses — “gray” rape. The writer Mary Gaitskill famously argued some years back that the binary categories of rape/not-rape were simply insufficient to classify the thick complexity of her own experience. In this netherworld of ambiguous experiences, can understanding cultural relativism be useful?
  • Whether workplace pornography is experienced as threatening or a reminder of the sexual power of women is simply relative to one’s expectations and prior predilections, some might say. Those who take offense are simply operating with the “wrong paradigm.” This has the danger of returning us to pre-feminist days when women’s own first person reports and interpretations of their experiences were routinely set aside in favor of more “objective” analyses given by doctors, psychiatrists, and social scientists, inevitably male.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The slide toward a complete relativism on these matters can be halted on two counts. First, there is the question of the physical body. Sex, as Lenin correctly argued, is not akin to having a glass of water. It involves uniquely sensitive parts of the body around which every culture has devised elaborate meanings, from adulation to abomination. The genitals are simply unique in the role they play for reproduction and physical ecstasy, and no discourse can operate as if this is not true. A light touch on the shoulder and a light touch  on the genitals elicit distinct sensations. The body is not infinitely alterable by discourse.
  • Second, there is the question of power. Differences in status and the capacity for economic self-sufficiency — not to mention the capacity for self-regard — compromise the integrity of consent, no matter the culture.  Status differences can occur along the lines of age, class, race, nationality, citizenship and gender (all of which apply to the alleged rape by Strauss-Kahn of an immigrant housekeeper). Power differences alone cannot determine whether something is benign or harmful, but they do signal danger. It cannot be the case that cultural context can render power differences completely meaningless. Obvious power differences in sexual relations  should raise a red flag, no matter which color one’s culture uses to signal danger.
  •   Sexual violations should be universally defined, and universally enforced.
  • Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 11
     
    The recent events swirling about the ex-next-president of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has revived old tropes about how culture affects sex, including sexual violence. Before this scandal, many continued to believe that Americans are still infected by their Puritan past in matters sexuel, while the French are just chaud lapins: hot rabbits. The supposed difference consisted of not only a heightened sexual activity but an altered set of conventions about where to draw the line between benign sexual interaction and harassment. The French, many believed, drew that line differently.

    One needs to be a cultural relativist to know when one is being hit upon.
    The number of women speaking out in France post-scandal calls into question this easy embrace of relativism.
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