Monthly Archives: April 2012

It’s amazing , the disgusting things people can think are OK to say, write, and do.

Just recently, the supposedly feminist blog (that is to say, they should have known better,) Jezebel, mocked a male victim of rape. Under a headline that actually had the never to describe the victim as “sexhausted,” Jezebel tells the story of a man who was kept prisoner in a and repeatedly sexually assaulted. Unwanted sex under duress is rape, Jezebel. I wonder if Jezebel would use the same charming terminology to demean female rape victims as well?

Closer to home, the great and wonderful Jessica Sideways wrote a post about domestic violence, with special attention to how not funny such crimes are. No, it’s not OK to joke about abuse just like it’s not funny to joke about rape. It’s horrid and absolutely unacceptable. This did not go well with entitled misogynist.

For Jessica’s “crime,” this blog was beset from hate-mail. We received everything from woman-beating apologetics (because women deserve to be beaten for angering men,) protestations that it is OK to mock the very real horrors that countless women (as well as men) face, to even people who obviously don’t understand the legal system threatening to sue us for making them accountable for their own misogynistic words, to a few internet tough guys who really thought they could threaten us with yet more violence. All this, I’ll remind you, for saying that abuse is not OK to do or make light of.

One particular comment reached a special kind of low, made no more forgivable by its failure. For the second time this year for me, someone tried to doc drop. A commenter apparently did some digging, and posted the addresses of Jessica and myself. Sure, the addresses turned out to be wrong, but that’s besides the point. It’s the attempt that speaks volumes.

For the crime of standing up and speaking out against not only domestic abuse, but the invalidation of domestic abuse through humor, someone has turned to an attempt to intimidate us by dropping our docs. Well, I’m not intimidated. Jessica is not intimidated. We’re taking this as a sign that we are attacking right where we need to.

In this culture of rape and violence, we’re prone to look at violence as only sort-of unacceptable. “She deserved it,” they say about abuse victims. “He really wanted it,” they say about male victims of sexual violence. And people will see both issues as laughing matters, so long as they aren’t the victim. It is exactly this kind of attitude that perpetuates the cycle, and creates an environment that breeds the perpetrators of such horrific crimes. Yes, these people who joke and make light of such crimes are partly to blame. That’s why every aspect of our rape culture needs to be addressed.Someone needs to stand up and say “No, that’s not OK.” And it’s a sad commentary on this culture that it does need to be said at all.

Here’s the interesting thing, rather than acknowledge that making jokes at the expense of victims of violence was wrong, and ceasing such behavior, out trolls are defensive. How dare we ruin their fun of mocking a group of people who already suffer enough? They obviously know they’re wrong, but they’re too immature to acknowledge and correct it. So they get upset that someone, somewhere still acts like a real adult, and exposes their behavior.

So, which are you? Are you a responsible, sensible adult? Or are you going to throw your hat in with people who viciously beat their victims, with little or no provocation, and make their home a place of fear, and with sick rapists who detain repeatedly violate them? If you’re in the latter group, then I sincerely hope you never become one of the victims that you now degrade, as what they’ve suffered is clearly a horror you do not understand.

STFU RAPE CULTURE