Am I Wrong?
Yesterday a post on Pandagon caught my attention. It started with a reference to a British advice columnist who gave some questionable advice to a woman who wrote this letter. Here's the short version:
She'd been married four years. She went on a business trip and when she came home she told her husband she'd been raped by her boss, but she didn't want to report the incident, nor did she want to quit her job. Two months later, after several medical tests and late-night talks, she told her husband she was pregnant. He drove her to a consult for an abortion and waited in the car because he didn't want to hear her talk about conception dates. Between that and the actual surgery date, she changed her mind and wanted to have the baby. The husband was gone around the time the baby was born. Her question was about whether she might be able to get back together with her ex seven years later.
I agreed with Amanda: he shouldn't have waited in the car. It was a dick move. The following thread, however, hadn't been posted for much more than an hour before posts declaring the ex-husband to be "worthless as a human being," "scum of the earth," and so on. The entire tenor of the conversation is that the guy clearly didn't love her or he would have stood by her, that he was only upset because his sex appliance was broken -- really, it pretty quickly crossed the line into stereotypical man-hating feminist territory, which Pandagonians are usually pretty good about avoiding.
So I posted my opinion:
I’ll offer my more temperate approach. I’m with everybody here on one point: the ex-husband is a douchenozzle for refusing to go into the clinic with her. I don’t think that makes him worthless as a human being or even a failure at compassion or whatever-not necessarily.
Imagining myself in his shoes, I imagine my (hypothetical) wife coming home and telling me that she was raped by a co-worker on a business trip and doesn’t want to do anything about it legally because she likes her job and doesn’t want to make waves. On paper I’m willing to support any decision she makes to help her get through this trauma, but fuck no! I’m really concerned for her if she thinks it’s a good idea to continue going to her job and seeing the man who raped her day in and day out, and I guarantee that somewhere between several and many arguments would be had over this. I’ll probably say some things that are wrong and some things that are inadvertently condescending (to be fair, of the two of us, I wasn’t recently traumatized), but I would be extremely dissatisfied if these conversations ended with her still in her job getting her paychecks signed by the man who raped her.
Then I fast-forward to the abortion clinic. Unless I’ve got something really important to do (it’s possible, but unlikely), dropping her off is a bad move. I’d like to think better of myself, but it’s possible that it’s the sort of bad move I might make if I was still grousing about the lack of pressed charges-even then only if one of those arguments was happening in the car on the way to the clinic, at which point it might be easy to convince ourselves that me holding her hand wouldn’t be of much help.
So combining a situation I find unacceptable with my own fuckup later on, then dropping the bomb that she’s going to keep the child? I’d leave. I wouldn’t be proud of it and I’d know I could have handled it better from the get-go. Would I want to go back? Would getting back with me be good for my ex-wife? I could raise another man’s child, but if that man was my wife’s rapist? I really don’t think so. I can put myself in his shoes and I can see myself, as a pro-choice feminist, making those mistakes. Of course, he might actually be a complete and total dickwad, entirely undeserving of my Devil’s Advocacy.
In any case, the columnist was way out of line for not reinforcing to the woman, “no, as you describe it, you WERE raped.”
For this, the only response I received was, "And thanks, nekouken, for making it clear that it really is all about you boys. Not a single moment’s consideration for anything but how it affects you."
I don't normally like commenting and being lost in the shuffle so that nobody comments on what I have to say, but I liked this even less. A dismissive mischaracterization of my entire post is also a dick move. Since I'm not fond of dick moves...
I did no such thing and it’s flagrantly unfair of you to insist that I did. This entire conversation has been solely in judgment of the ex-husband on the basis of his actions as described by this woman in her letter. My post was my take on the situation, and I can’t help but feel you didn’t really read it if you think that calling him out on certain actions and characterizing the man’s entire series of decisions as mistakes is just consideration for how it affects the men involved. What I wrote was my perspective on a series of actions taken by the ex-husband and imagined a possible series of corresponding emotions that might explain-not justify-his actions. I said he was wrong not to go with her into the clinic, and that in the unlikely circumstance that I, in his shoes, would have done the same thing, I would also be wrong.
In this particular case, I can’t do a similar treatment of the woman because she already provided it. The series of actions performed by the woman are paired with a corresponding series of emotions already by her. Unlike a lot of the men who have been called out on this in this thread, I did not in any way second-guess the woman’s description of what she was feeling or thinking at the time of any one of her actions. I, instead, took her at her word and constructed a consistent narrative for her ex-husband that at no time conflicted with her report.
It’s funny, reading your posts; I had apparently mistakenly thought that feminism was meant to create a scenario in which men are the equals of women, not the lesser. Both genders, in my experience, are capable of poor judgment, especially in situations that are fraught with emotion as I can only imagine this one was. In the situation where the woman was raped but refuses to press charges, find a new job or abort the pregnancy, however understandable any one or all of those decisions may be to an outside observer, you seem far too willing to strip the husband of his right to even have an opinion on the matter or even the slightest single selfish impulse. I’m all about it being her body, her life and her choice, and I, as a guy at his computer reading a letter am unwilling to say that she’s wrong on any count-I don’t know; I would have advised against all of her decisions had she sought my counsel, but she seems happy with the outcome, so what the fuck do I know?-but as he’s also someone with an emotional investment in the family they were building together ostensibly as partners, I’m not all about him not having the right to end the relationship if he feels his trust has been betrayed or his feelings are being ignored. This is heat-of-the-moment stuff and you’re condemning him to the trash bin of humanity for something he did when he was probably feeling angry and hurt because you’re unwilling to risk hurting the feelings of any rape victim who might be reading by saying that it’s understandable-not reasonable, not right, but understandable-for the husband of a rape victim to feel he has an emotional interest in how she responds to it. Sorry, but we’re people, and we do stupid things all the time.
So, of course...
"Nekouken, have you had your stupidity measured? Because that’s breathtaking. “Oh, you won’t do what I want to even though you’ve experienced a horrifyign sexual attack that almost always is done by men to women, but Nekouken won’t mention that because, hey, in his little universe, no details like that muddy up his straw feminist clear waters.
You tenderly give the hubbie all this benefit of the doubt right here and ignore that there’s a simple Occam’s Razor explanation: he’s an asshole. His wife was now damaged goods. He doubted her. You don’t want to deal with that, or with reality, or sexism, or the fact that women might be better judges of mens’ behavior than other men, simply because we have to survive said behavior.
No, go right ahead, though. Your denial is sort of....entertaining."
My response:
Actually, this is pretty fucking muddy. See, one of the things about being attacked is that it’s traumatic. Is the value of an independent woman’s sense of unbridled autonomy tantamount in this situation, or should the fact that she entered into a familial partnership with someone perhaps enter the picture and bring us to the conclusion that sometimes a woman-one who has been traumatized or is in shock-needs the man in her life to step in and help the woman even when she doesn’t want it, just as the man might occasionally need the woman to do. That’s pretty muddy from a feminist perspective, but it’s something I’m willing to admit does happen and has to happen from time to time, because equality doesn’t mean every exchange in every relationship happens with both people on an equal social footing, but that there’s a give and take involved. The right response to every situation in a partnership is NOT “whatever you think is best, dear,” and showing support for someone in crisis doesn’t always mean giving them their space.
“You tenderly give the hubbie all this benefit of the doubt right here and ignore that there’s a simple Occam’s Razor explanation: he’s an asshole.”
Occam’s Razor says that the husband is a human being with complex emotions and justifications, just like his wife. Human beings, in my experience, can make bad decisions without being unrepentant assholes. He was an asshole when he did what he did, but why? People do things for reasons, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge that, even though we’re talking about a situation where the woman is admittedly traumatized and confused, but the man’s actions have no underlying explanations. You can imagine him swilling beer in front of Manchester United in response to hearing his wife tell him she was raped, jerking off into a sock when she tells him she’s pregnant and teaching himself the banjo while his wife is in the abortion clinic, but I prefer to have him do things that make sense in my scenario. “He’s an asshole” reduces this person to a singular descriptive noun, but if we’re going to judge him for his actions in this scenario, that’s the worst possible thing we can do.
“His wife was now damaged goods. He doubted her.”
That’s possible. Or maybe he doubted her when she didn’t want to press charges and wanted to keep working for her rapist because she liked her job. That’s not a position I can imagine anyone having a problem with, unless you include EVERYBODY. It may have been the end result of a lot of hard conversations, but even if it turns out to be the best possible course of action, do you expect everyone to be happy with it? You’re denying the human experience just so you can call the ex-husband an asshole.
“You don’t want to deal with that, or with reality, or sexism, or the fact that women might be better judges of mens’ behavior than other men, simply because we have to survive said behavior. “
You’ve proven a terrible judge of my behavior so far, so perhaps there’s a third possibility. Like that some situations in an equal partnership, taken out of context, might look sexist because you’re cherry-picking for the moments when the man has to be supportive. If that man, just a week before, needed his wife to console him because his attempted home business failed, you can’t even imagine it even though it’s an entirely realistic possibility, or the week before when his mom died, or the year before that when he contracted walking pneumonia. Maybe he’s not asserting his right as master of the house, but stepping into a support role because his partner has been traumatized.
Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I probably am, truth be told, but maybe I don’t need to imagine that because this entire thread has been nothing but scenarios in which the husband can never be forgiven for the one thing we know about that he did. Which is so completely and totally useful, I might add.
Here's where it gets really weird:
"familial partnership" Please tell me you’re not talking about the rapist here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, give the hubbie the benefit of the doubt. Except he hasn’t earned it but by God people---meaning men---are doing their damndest to give it to him. Actions speak louder, etc., etc., You’re making excuses for a guy who dumped his wife when she was raped. I bet you make excuses for rapists, too.
Seriously; what is this woman doing here (it's actually two women; the first response was Gypsy Lee and this is ginmar)? Amanda's feminist writings are so far removed from this anti-man garbage that I don't understand how she could find it appealing.
ginmar: “familial partnership” means what the words in the phrase mean: it means a partnership of a familial nature-a husband and wife coming together to build a family. So no, I’m not talking about the rapist, but honestly I shouldn’t have had to tell you that.
Your position at large comes from a bizarre place; you’ve taken me to task for addressing the question posed in Amanda’s post: what kind of dickwad is he? I disagreed with the growing sentiment declaring him the “dickwad for the sake of being a dickwad” kind of dickwad, and decided to investigate the question from the only position I can: what if it was me? I concluded that while I wouldn’t be likely to do it, it’s not impossible, and if I did what he did I would, from my lofty, objective perch here in the non-hypothetical, consider it a mistake. I’m unclear how this constitutes making excuses in any regard.
“I bet you make excuses for rapists, too.”
Tough talk, coming from someone who writes Holocaust slashfic. I know you probably don’t, but I pulled that from the same orifice you pulled yours, so we’re even.
That's where it ended, but I really don't understand what happened here. I'm sympathetic to the fundamental philosophy, and I identify as a feminist. Are these just bad apples, or am I missing something?
She'd been married four years. She went on a business trip and when she came home she told her husband she'd been raped by her boss, but she didn't want to report the incident, nor did she want to quit her job. Two months later, after several medical tests and late-night talks, she told her husband she was pregnant. He drove her to a consult for an abortion and waited in the car because he didn't want to hear her talk about conception dates. Between that and the actual surgery date, she changed her mind and wanted to have the baby. The husband was gone around the time the baby was born. Her question was about whether she might be able to get back together with her ex seven years later.
I agreed with Amanda: he shouldn't have waited in the car. It was a dick move. The following thread, however, hadn't been posted for much more than an hour before posts declaring the ex-husband to be "worthless as a human being," "scum of the earth," and so on. The entire tenor of the conversation is that the guy clearly didn't love her or he would have stood by her, that he was only upset because his sex appliance was broken -- really, it pretty quickly crossed the line into stereotypical man-hating feminist territory, which Pandagonians are usually pretty good about avoiding.
So I posted my opinion:
I’ll offer my more temperate approach. I’m with everybody here on one point: the ex-husband is a douchenozzle for refusing to go into the clinic with her. I don’t think that makes him worthless as a human being or even a failure at compassion or whatever-not necessarily.
Imagining myself in his shoes, I imagine my (hypothetical) wife coming home and telling me that she was raped by a co-worker on a business trip and doesn’t want to do anything about it legally because she likes her job and doesn’t want to make waves. On paper I’m willing to support any decision she makes to help her get through this trauma, but fuck no! I’m really concerned for her if she thinks it’s a good idea to continue going to her job and seeing the man who raped her day in and day out, and I guarantee that somewhere between several and many arguments would be had over this. I’ll probably say some things that are wrong and some things that are inadvertently condescending (to be fair, of the two of us, I wasn’t recently traumatized), but I would be extremely dissatisfied if these conversations ended with her still in her job getting her paychecks signed by the man who raped her.
Then I fast-forward to the abortion clinic. Unless I’ve got something really important to do (it’s possible, but unlikely), dropping her off is a bad move. I’d like to think better of myself, but it’s possible that it’s the sort of bad move I might make if I was still grousing about the lack of pressed charges-even then only if one of those arguments was happening in the car on the way to the clinic, at which point it might be easy to convince ourselves that me holding her hand wouldn’t be of much help.
So combining a situation I find unacceptable with my own fuckup later on, then dropping the bomb that she’s going to keep the child? I’d leave. I wouldn’t be proud of it and I’d know I could have handled it better from the get-go. Would I want to go back? Would getting back with me be good for my ex-wife? I could raise another man’s child, but if that man was my wife’s rapist? I really don’t think so. I can put myself in his shoes and I can see myself, as a pro-choice feminist, making those mistakes. Of course, he might actually be a complete and total dickwad, entirely undeserving of my Devil’s Advocacy.
In any case, the columnist was way out of line for not reinforcing to the woman, “no, as you describe it, you WERE raped.”
For this, the only response I received was, "And thanks, nekouken, for making it clear that it really is all about you boys. Not a single moment’s consideration for anything but how it affects you."
I don't normally like commenting and being lost in the shuffle so that nobody comments on what I have to say, but I liked this even less. A dismissive mischaracterization of my entire post is also a dick move. Since I'm not fond of dick moves...
I did no such thing and it’s flagrantly unfair of you to insist that I did. This entire conversation has been solely in judgment of the ex-husband on the basis of his actions as described by this woman in her letter. My post was my take on the situation, and I can’t help but feel you didn’t really read it if you think that calling him out on certain actions and characterizing the man’s entire series of decisions as mistakes is just consideration for how it affects the men involved. What I wrote was my perspective on a series of actions taken by the ex-husband and imagined a possible series of corresponding emotions that might explain-not justify-his actions. I said he was wrong not to go with her into the clinic, and that in the unlikely circumstance that I, in his shoes, would have done the same thing, I would also be wrong.
In this particular case, I can’t do a similar treatment of the woman because she already provided it. The series of actions performed by the woman are paired with a corresponding series of emotions already by her. Unlike a lot of the men who have been called out on this in this thread, I did not in any way second-guess the woman’s description of what she was feeling or thinking at the time of any one of her actions. I, instead, took her at her word and constructed a consistent narrative for her ex-husband that at no time conflicted with her report.
It’s funny, reading your posts; I had apparently mistakenly thought that feminism was meant to create a scenario in which men are the equals of women, not the lesser. Both genders, in my experience, are capable of poor judgment, especially in situations that are fraught with emotion as I can only imagine this one was. In the situation where the woman was raped but refuses to press charges, find a new job or abort the pregnancy, however understandable any one or all of those decisions may be to an outside observer, you seem far too willing to strip the husband of his right to even have an opinion on the matter or even the slightest single selfish impulse. I’m all about it being her body, her life and her choice, and I, as a guy at his computer reading a letter am unwilling to say that she’s wrong on any count-I don’t know; I would have advised against all of her decisions had she sought my counsel, but she seems happy with the outcome, so what the fuck do I know?-but as he’s also someone with an emotional investment in the family they were building together ostensibly as partners, I’m not all about him not having the right to end the relationship if he feels his trust has been betrayed or his feelings are being ignored. This is heat-of-the-moment stuff and you’re condemning him to the trash bin of humanity for something he did when he was probably feeling angry and hurt because you’re unwilling to risk hurting the feelings of any rape victim who might be reading by saying that it’s understandable-not reasonable, not right, but understandable-for the husband of a rape victim to feel he has an emotional interest in how she responds to it. Sorry, but we’re people, and we do stupid things all the time.
So, of course...
"Nekouken, have you had your stupidity measured? Because that’s breathtaking. “Oh, you won’t do what I want to even though you’ve experienced a horrifyign sexual attack that almost always is done by men to women, but Nekouken won’t mention that because, hey, in his little universe, no details like that muddy up his straw feminist clear waters.
You tenderly give the hubbie all this benefit of the doubt right here and ignore that there’s a simple Occam’s Razor explanation: he’s an asshole. His wife was now damaged goods. He doubted her. You don’t want to deal with that, or with reality, or sexism, or the fact that women might be better judges of mens’ behavior than other men, simply because we have to survive said behavior.
No, go right ahead, though. Your denial is sort of....entertaining."
My response:
Actually, this is pretty fucking muddy. See, one of the things about being attacked is that it’s traumatic. Is the value of an independent woman’s sense of unbridled autonomy tantamount in this situation, or should the fact that she entered into a familial partnership with someone perhaps enter the picture and bring us to the conclusion that sometimes a woman-one who has been traumatized or is in shock-needs the man in her life to step in and help the woman even when she doesn’t want it, just as the man might occasionally need the woman to do. That’s pretty muddy from a feminist perspective, but it’s something I’m willing to admit does happen and has to happen from time to time, because equality doesn’t mean every exchange in every relationship happens with both people on an equal social footing, but that there’s a give and take involved. The right response to every situation in a partnership is NOT “whatever you think is best, dear,” and showing support for someone in crisis doesn’t always mean giving them their space.
“You tenderly give the hubbie all this benefit of the doubt right here and ignore that there’s a simple Occam’s Razor explanation: he’s an asshole.”
Occam’s Razor says that the husband is a human being with complex emotions and justifications, just like his wife. Human beings, in my experience, can make bad decisions without being unrepentant assholes. He was an asshole when he did what he did, but why? People do things for reasons, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge that, even though we’re talking about a situation where the woman is admittedly traumatized and confused, but the man’s actions have no underlying explanations. You can imagine him swilling beer in front of Manchester United in response to hearing his wife tell him she was raped, jerking off into a sock when she tells him she’s pregnant and teaching himself the banjo while his wife is in the abortion clinic, but I prefer to have him do things that make sense in my scenario. “He’s an asshole” reduces this person to a singular descriptive noun, but if we’re going to judge him for his actions in this scenario, that’s the worst possible thing we can do.
“His wife was now damaged goods. He doubted her.”
That’s possible. Or maybe he doubted her when she didn’t want to press charges and wanted to keep working for her rapist because she liked her job. That’s not a position I can imagine anyone having a problem with, unless you include EVERYBODY. It may have been the end result of a lot of hard conversations, but even if it turns out to be the best possible course of action, do you expect everyone to be happy with it? You’re denying the human experience just so you can call the ex-husband an asshole.
“You don’t want to deal with that, or with reality, or sexism, or the fact that women might be better judges of mens’ behavior than other men, simply because we have to survive said behavior. “
You’ve proven a terrible judge of my behavior so far, so perhaps there’s a third possibility. Like that some situations in an equal partnership, taken out of context, might look sexist because you’re cherry-picking for the moments when the man has to be supportive. If that man, just a week before, needed his wife to console him because his attempted home business failed, you can’t even imagine it even though it’s an entirely realistic possibility, or the week before when his mom died, or the year before that when he contracted walking pneumonia. Maybe he’s not asserting his right as master of the house, but stepping into a support role because his partner has been traumatized.
Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I probably am, truth be told, but maybe I don’t need to imagine that because this entire thread has been nothing but scenarios in which the husband can never be forgiven for the one thing we know about that he did. Which is so completely and totally useful, I might add.
Here's where it gets really weird:
"familial partnership" Please tell me you’re not talking about the rapist here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, give the hubbie the benefit of the doubt. Except he hasn’t earned it but by God people---meaning men---are doing their damndest to give it to him. Actions speak louder, etc., etc., You’re making excuses for a guy who dumped his wife when she was raped. I bet you make excuses for rapists, too.
Seriously; what is this woman doing here (it's actually two women; the first response was Gypsy Lee and this is ginmar)? Amanda's feminist writings are so far removed from this anti-man garbage that I don't understand how she could find it appealing.
ginmar: “familial partnership” means what the words in the phrase mean: it means a partnership of a familial nature-a husband and wife coming together to build a family. So no, I’m not talking about the rapist, but honestly I shouldn’t have had to tell you that.
Your position at large comes from a bizarre place; you’ve taken me to task for addressing the question posed in Amanda’s post: what kind of dickwad is he? I disagreed with the growing sentiment declaring him the “dickwad for the sake of being a dickwad” kind of dickwad, and decided to investigate the question from the only position I can: what if it was me? I concluded that while I wouldn’t be likely to do it, it’s not impossible, and if I did what he did I would, from my lofty, objective perch here in the non-hypothetical, consider it a mistake. I’m unclear how this constitutes making excuses in any regard.
“I bet you make excuses for rapists, too.”
Tough talk, coming from someone who writes Holocaust slashfic. I know you probably don’t, but I pulled that from the same orifice you pulled yours, so we’re even.
That's where it ended, but I really don't understand what happened here. I'm sympathetic to the fundamental philosophy, and I identify as a feminist. Are these just bad apples, or am I missing something?