thanks for the blog link, iris.
"Here’s the thing: We live in a culture that is highly tolerant of rape. To maintain that tolerance, our culture is also highly resistant to any attempts to chip away at rape-tolerance and replace it with something, you know, less rape-y. That resistance crops up in a myriad of ways. One of those ways is by re-phrasing anti-rape-culture viewpoints and arguments as somehow patently ridiculous and therefore obviously wrong. The argument, “Jokes that justify, glorify, or trivialize rape are damaging, ignorant, and shitty,” doesn’t sound too radical, and might cause individuals to re-examine their use of or involvement in those jokes, which could also lead to individuals noticing just how many of these jokes exist as a part of casual culture, which could lead to an increased awareness of this whole concept of a “rape culture,” which is sort of a gateway drug into a lot of things that sound eerily like feminism.
So, we rephrase the argument into “DOUR-FACED ANGRY FEMINIST THINKS RAPE JOKES ARE NEVER FUNNY.” It’s real easy to knock that argument down, because it’s full of unkind characterizations that nobody would like to be associated with, and it’s full of logical fallacies of the “all” and “never” and “always” variety. So, take that argument and copy/paste it over the original, and now you can conveniently knock down an argument that might have required some inner turmoil to resolve and replace it with an argument so ludicrous it bears no consideration at all."
http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/
Fuck, this is so true and it's something I've been trying to articulate for years.
So, I've been reading this fantastic blog (discovered by iris!) for the past hour or so. It really confronts a lot of the "shh-not-polite-to-talk-about" issues of everyday sexism, mostly 'rape culture', in a very direct and unapologetic way.
I think the only way to really, truly learn, is to have your own subconscious/deep down/socially engrained beliefs and privileges challenged - and to ALLOW this to happen without resistance and self-defence. I think so many people never really listen to other people because they think they know everything already. I know I have been guilty of this as well. It's ego-driven, it's an almost 'natural' feeling reaction. There is so much to learn from other's experiences. We just need to get over ourselves, and listen.
So, we rephrase the argument into “DOUR-FACED ANGRY FEMINIST THINKS RAPE JOKES ARE NEVER FUNNY.” It’s real easy to knock that argument down, because it’s full of unkind characterizations that nobody would like to be associated with, and it’s full of logical fallacies of the “all” and “never” and “always” variety. So, take that argument and copy/paste it over the original, and now you can conveniently knock down an argument that might have required some inner turmoil to resolve and replace it with an argument so ludicrous it bears no consideration at all."
http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/
Fuck, this is so true and it's something I've been trying to articulate for years.
So, I've been reading this fantastic blog (discovered by iris!) for the past hour or so. It really confronts a lot of the "shh-not-polite-to-talk-about" issues of everyday sexism, mostly 'rape culture', in a very direct and unapologetic way.
I think the only way to really, truly learn, is to have your own subconscious/deep down/socially engrained beliefs and privileges challenged - and to ALLOW this to happen without resistance and self-defence. I think so many people never really listen to other people because they think they know everything already. I know I have been guilty of this as well. It's ego-driven, it's an almost 'natural' feeling reaction. There is so much to learn from other's experiences. We just need to get over ourselves, and listen.