Interesting Links for 08-10-2012

[andrewducker]

• The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”
  (tags: society history RapeCulture sex )
• Chatbots are still not able to pass the Turing Test, even though porn spammers are clearly working on it.
  (tags: ai turing chat im porn spam )
• How To Steal The Space Shuttle: A Step-By-Step Guide
  (tags: funny theft shuttle space )
• The Nazis

Comments

[marrog]

They're helping to push society in a direction that arguably does, but this is *not* the same thing.

I think maybe the issue here is that people are being polarised by reaching for clarity of message. I think you're right in that there's a big gap between people who say "Oh come on, it was just a kiss!" and rapists, and that those people would never say that rape is ever okay, or that they would say the same thing about that kiss if they found out that the soldier then dragged the stranger into a back alley with him. Perhaps they wouldn't even make excuses, as others have, for Roman Polanski ('she doesn't mind now, so why should we?' - something said of Greta with ref to that picture that also happens to be true of the girl Polanski raped) or Julian Assange ('they didn't call it assault at the time'). But these behaviours belong in the same cultural box. They're sympomatic of the same pervading attitude toward sex, sexuality and yes, sexual assault. Rape is only a subset of sexual assault - the worst subset for the most part obviously, but a subset nevertheless. But 'sexual assault culture' is kind of a mouthful and besides, at the end of the day, rape is the end point, the ultimate display of men's ownership of women's bodies. Yeah, it's a harsh way of putting it when so many of the symptoms of 'rape culture' are 'eh, it was just a kiss' or 'oh, come on, he just wanted to buy you a drink, would it hurt you to be nice to him even thought he was creepy?' but it's only a tiny step from that to 'that's a really short dress, what did you expect?' You say it's a million miles away - I say it's not even crossing the road. Just shuffling closer to the kerb.

All that being said, while I'll sit happily enough on this side of the debate and even wade in and support it, apparently, in spite of my better judgement, I'm not really 'trying to do' anything with the term 'rape culture' - it's not actually one I use, particularly. I find 'the Patriarchy' serves the same purpose just fine.

[andrewducker]

I think "enabling" might be a better word than "condoning". Condoning, to me, suggests a person being sympathetic towards, or deliberately allowing something. There's intent. Whereas a person can enable something through omission or lack or understanding.

And I agree with you about the term "rape culture" - I don't find it gets its point across to people who don't already know it, so it requires a lot of explanation each time you deal with someone who hasn't encountered it before. There's an important point there that feels somewhat different (or possibly more specialised) than "patriarchy", but I haven't found a phrasing I like yet.

[marrog]

Sure, I'm happy enough with enabling. I think that it's clear here, at least, that neither I not Alex are suggesting any conscious intent, but you're right that enabling is a more accurate description.

[xenophanean]

Enabling, yes, I think they're definitely enabling a culture where sexual assault is acceptable.

[marrog]

I think I know why people use 'rape culture' though. It's borne I think of a frustration that folk are increasingly diminishing and minimising the trials that women all over the world and even in 'Western democracies' are still facing, and the use of terms like 'rape culture' is an attempt to give some shock treatment to that culture of complacence. I'm just not sure it works.

[andrewducker]

Yup, definitely. I've had to explain to people why a campaign for equality is called "Feminism" if it's not about putting women in charge (and have done so twice in the last year) - explaining "rape culture" is even harder, because of the reaction people have.

But I can totally see why people use it - because of the sharp shock, and the visceral reaction people have. It may be useful to people in the long term - once they get over the shock they can start seeing how it does lead to the enabling of rapists. But it's hard to tell over all the noise!

[xenophanean]

I don't think it's a million miles away, actually (or a shuffle across the road for that matter), I can see they're related, and moderately closely (so's hitting someone and killing them).

It's why I say that blurring lines is dangerous. A lot of people seriously don't know where the lines are, and implying that something like this is "alright, cos the guy had just come home from a war", they're opening up all sorts of situations where a guy's happy (say he's won a rugby match), so he can do what he wants, and a woman should be "a sport" about it. And yes, I totally think this attitude could increase the likelihood that someone is raped.

I think Andy's use of "enabling" is useful here. And we seem to agree on that.

[marrog]

Hurrah for consensus!

[xenophanean]

Hurray!