Miscellaneous

In Which Commenters Make My Case

By Fannie

Perhaps some of you have noticed the recent comment in response to this post, about an alleged female serial groin kicker.

I wrote many things in that post, the thesis of which was an examination of how gender-based violence against men are framed compared to the much more pervasive gender-based violence against women. At no point did I condone violence against men or excuse the serial groin-kicker's actions. Rather, a key point of my post was that, because woman-hating and is so pervasive and acceptable, male-on-female rape is rarely framed as the gender-based hate crime that it is; whereas serial groin kicking perpetrated upon men is quite easy to for people to perceive as a gender-based hate crime, because it is so rare.

A couple of recent commenters have visited Fannie's Room to aptly demonstrate both the paradoxically pervasive, invisible nature of misogyny, the male entitlement to violate women's boundaries, and the sexist narrative that posits that any woman who points out anything having to do with Rape Culture is a man-hating feminazi cunt. Or, as "Guest" opined:

"What a supid [sic] nasty man hating cunt you are.

A rape in the dead of night is the only chance you EVER have of getting fucked."

One of the reasons I let comments like these stand, as hateful and violent as they are, is that... well, isn't there something resonating about these slips of the masks of civility? Here, rather than a Concerned Man coming here saying that he's worried about my "tone" or some such silencing tactic, we have a man who doesn't hide his misogyny and desire to silence women.

Two, like his brethren, or possibly himself, who physically attack women from behind and in otherwise predatory ways, he harbors fantasies of feminists getting raped "in the dead of night," an admission that directly counters the claim of so many who say that this sort of aggressive male entitlement to traverse women's boundaries is a mere figment of the over-active feminist imagination.

Third, it is worthwhile to note yet another case of patriarchal projection. Anti-feminists often claim that feminists are basically frigid fuglies who can't "get fucked." Note the passive voice. By "get fucked" they mean, of course, "get fucked" by men, which in Rape Culture is the only type of fucking that counts. Yet, counter to Guest's reversal, the reality is that I and every other woman on the planet, basically, could actually choose to "get fucked" by a man very easily by visiting a bar at closing time or, say, posting a sex-seeking ad on Craigslist as a woman seeking a man, to which we would by the end of the day have at least dozens of offers for sex by men desperate to fuck.

But then, dear readers, the plot takes a predictable turn when Guest's Concerned Male Commenter, with the moniker Toysoldier, chimes in. His comment is an exercise in Making Shit Up that, unfortunately, men like him sometimes believe is convincing due to the weight of their Authoritative Male Mansplainer Voices. So eager to find me guilty on the count of Not Caring An Iota About Female-On-Male Violence, he constructs out of thin air the conjecture that the purpose of my post was to "mock" male victims, to "speculate" that the male groin-kickee "deserved it," and to accuse male victims of "whining."

Because my post actually, literally said "While acknowledging violence is wrong [insert thesis of my post regarding Rape Culture]", Toysoldier seems to base his conclusions on the fact that my observations about this matter were centered around around a subject other than men and their feelings.

Again, a worthwhile comment if only to demonstrate how men's rights types who are so very concerned about female-on-male violence are over-eager to view feminists as Not Caring Enough about men that they disregard our actual words and arguments. Toysoldier came here looking for a Feminazi Cunt Villain Who Doesn't Care About Male Victims and so he found one, no matter what the actual evidence demonstrated. As for the very real verbal violence that his friend "Guest" inflicted by calling me a "cunt" who basically deserves to be raped "in the dead of night," he was resoundingly silent.

That, my friends, is Rape Culture. It is men who demand that every conversation remain centered around men and, if a conversation strays from that oh-so-important topic, it is evidence of man-hating or "puts you on the same level as racists and child lovers." It is men who, in a conversation about gender-based violence's greater impact on women than on men, tells you that you getting raped "in the dead of night" would basically be doing me a favor, all because you have the audacity to de-center men from a conversation. It is men who, because misogyny is so rampant, expected, and accepted, fail to see, comment upon, or condemn misogyny and veiled rape threats that are in plan sight.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).