It is not often that people get to see the kind of attitude that advocates for male victims have to deal with, but I stumbled across an example. The post was a very long-winded rant about males checking their privilege. It was nothing different from the typical rhetoric, with exception to the last part about rape. Generally feminists will stick to framing rape as women’s issue and telling men not to be offended for being called a potential rapist. Rarely do feminists acknowledge male victims and I have never seen any directly attack male victims speaking about their experiences as a demonstration of “male privilege.”
That is until now:
The absolute last words you should ever say in a discussion of sexual assault are “men can be raped too”.
Or “but men can be falsely accused of rape”. Or, well, pretty much anything that attempts to shift the focus of the conversation, subtly or not-so-subtly, away from women’s problems and onto men’s problems [...]
[M]en are the group with the privilege, every conversation, if not stated otherwise, is assumed to be about men’s worldviews and men’s issues. And for a woman (who’s used to running smack into that default assumption a hundred times a day), finding that she’s in the middle of a very good conversation about something that matters to her in a place where her worldview is being given due weight and consideration can be so tremendously uplifting that to have someone come in and (in essence) say “Whups, just kidding, let’s restore that status quo, it’s still all about me” is either a). very frightening, or b). very enraging.
Co-opting the conversation like that is a rhetoric-specific form of Point #1 all the way back up there. By coming into a conversation in that fashion, it does not matter what your intention is. There is a much-greater-than-nontrivial chance that the women who are listening will view it as an expression of entitlement and a manifestation of your privilege. And in a predominantly-female space, there is a much-greater-than-nontrivial chance that the women inhabiting that space will feel empowered to tell you to sit the hell down and shut the fuck up.
Sometimes it is not about you. If you have ever received a LiveJournal response anywhere along the lines of “your life, so hard”, or “let me tell you, internet, it is tough being a white man”, or “get off the cross, we need the wood”, this is a sign that you have been That Guy.
Does this make you angry? Does it make you feel upset? Do you feel like your right to speak, like your right to be heard, has been silenced?
That’s the space many women live in all the time. And we can’t put it down and go back to a place where that silencing doesn’t exist the way you can. Because for us, the conversation you just took over was that space, and we are sick and tired of repeating this fact over and over and over again.
The poster attempted a half-hearted backtrack that only makes the initial attack on and disregard of male victims appear intentional as it takes a severe leap of faith to believe that such a sentiment would have gone unnoticed:
In framing #6, I have accidentally displayed a case of being That Guy myself. My point in saying “don’t bring up male rape” was aimed at men who don’t have that experience, and in using that example here I unconsciously uncovered a prejudice of my own — assuming that men reading this wouldn’t have that experience. I apologize to anyone whose personal experience I’ve accidentally invalidated by framing the point in that fashion.
To clarify, from my comment to one of the threads that made me aware of my fail:
In trying to say that, my point was more that sometimes it’s okay to just concentrate on one piece of the massive seething puzzle of sexism and racism and ageism and ableism and classism and everything-ism that we swim through. Because everyone’s got some privileges and lacks others, and a lot of times, a discussion that focuses on one set of privileges (or, more to the point, a discussion among people who lack one particular privilege) will get co-opted into a discussion about all sets of privileges.
I was aiming more for a generalized point of: when you’re a person with a particular privilege, and you’re in a discussion about that privilege, composed primarily of people without that privilege, it’s a good idea to avoid mentioning ways in which, in your experience, that privilege isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
There is not much I can say about this kind of blatant sexism other than repeating the comment I left on the blog: It is incredibly amazing that one managed to completely disregard male rape victims. One’s apology sounds rather empty given the above comments about privilege. As others have stated, once a person dismisses the rape of boys and men, that is when I simply stop listening. I say that as someone who works with male victims and as someone who has had those kinds of experiences. And it is truly worse that so many of the feminist posters here seem to agree with one’s position that male victims do not have the right to be angry, to speak and that male victims should remain silent and somehow deserved their abuse because they are “privileged”.
This truly sad and disgusting and I hope that one never tries to help any male victims because one’s comments (and those of many of the posters) border on condoning sexual violence against boys and men.
The level of entitlement that so many feminists have goes well beyond anything that they attribute to men. It takes a substantial amount of ego, narcissism and general apathy to the above statements and feel in any way that one had not just chosen the wrong phrasing bu that one was justified in making them. The hypocrisy is so astounding that I can neither speak, type or think fast enough to keep up with the rush of words and comments that come to mind.
And so while I normally I would be more civil, the sheer and utter inanity of such comments compels me to suggest that synecdochic should take his/her own advice and “sit the hell down and shut the fuck up.”
This is just an example of how one particular feminist seeks to have an ideological cocoon where she is never challenged. She expresses dismay at having such a space defiled by opposing viewpoints. That makes me think that MRAs ought to get out of their own forums once in a while, and invade such feminist cocoons, and do a little housecleaning.
John, I would not advise that. People who prefer to associate mostly or only with those who agree with their positions are not likely to respond well to having their space invaded. Also, to do so would be akin to walking into a lion’s den. Very little good will come out of it and one would not be in any position to assure that one’s opinions would bot be barred, blocked, deleted or edited.
That said, I am co-blogger on Feminist Critics, a site dedicated to having critical discussions about feminism with feminists. To date, we have had much trouble getting feminists to engage us in open discussion despite a moderation policy that favors feminists. There are a few feminist who frequent the site, but most mainstream feminists like McEwan will not post there and the few that have either made drive-by posts or left when their views were criticized. It should be noted none of the bloggers have been uncivil or disrespectful.
I’m pretty disgusted by the above attitude, and the worse thing is that this only reinforces the already-present societal bias towards denying the existence of male victims. Feminism is supposed to work against such currents, and for the greater good (in theory anyway), I find it more reproachable when the police commits infractions knowingly than when a common thief steals bread.