A Dose of Stupid v127

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept.

Case in point:

My teen boys are blind to rape culture

Of course they are. They were raised by a feminist mother who likely never shuts up about “rape culture”. I write that having only read the title.

I already know where this is going: This author has spoken to her sons about “rape culture” for years, and they largely ignored her. Now that they are old enough to understand how utterly moronic her logic is, they simply will not put up with her discussions anymore. Despite all her efforts, this feminist’s sons are swathed in misogyny and are at risk of continuing “rape culture” themselves. They may even become rapists. The only fix is more feminism, and a large dose of women’s stories so her ill-minded sons can know the terrors of “rape culture”.

That is my speculation just from the title. Let us see how close I am:

“Oh boy,” my son said, rolling his eyes. “Not rape culture again.”

That makes one. Let us continue:

We were sitting around the dinner table talking about the news. As soon as I mentioned the Stanford sexual assault case, my sons looked at each other. They knew what was coming. They’ve been listening to me talk about consent, misogyny and rape culture since they were tweens. They listened to me then, but they are 16 and 18 now and they roll their eyes and argue when I talk to them about sexism and misogyny.

“There’s no such thing as rape culture,” my other son said. “You say everything is about rape culture or sexism.”

That makes two. And:

I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these. Men who deny rape culture, or who turn a blind eye to sexism. Men who tell me I’m being too sensitive or that I don’t understand what teenage boys are like. “You don’t speak out about this stuff, mom,” they tell me with a sigh. “It’s just not what teenagers do.”

That makes three. All that is left is for Jody Allard to accuse her sons of being rapists and claiming that more feminism is the fix and will have nailed this. And we are barely three hundred words into the article.

One must wonder what type of person does this to their children. I do not only mean blatant indoctrination, misandry, and fear-mongering. I also mean writing about their children in a negative light in an international newspaper. It will take little effort for people to find out the names of her sons. Why would Allard do something like this, knowing how brutal people can be on social media? Allard gives us a clue:

Teenage boys, by and large, don’t speak out about slut-shaming or rape culture. They don’t call each other out when they make sexist jokes or objectify women. It’s too uncomfortable to separate themselves from the pack so they continue to at least dip their toes into toxic masculinity. In their discomfort with action, they remain passive, and their passivity perpetuates the same broken system that sentenced Brock Turner to only six months in jail.

This passivity argument would work better if four men did not intervene to stop Turner and hold him at the scene until the police arrived. It would also work better if there were not dozens of men armed with guns standing outside of Turner’s home threatening to kill and rape him (in no particular order). It would work best if men’s collective response to this case had not been utter outrage.

Allard cannot argue that men and boys are “passive” when it comes to sexual violence against women and girls when we just witnessed the opposite reaction.

She is correct that boys and men are not going to call each other out on “slut-shaming” and “rape culture”. That is because the vast majority of them do not think the latter exists and they understand the former is wrong in certain contexts. In their circles, a girl who gets drunk and has sex with every male she can find is a “slut”. A girl who gets drunk and then someone takes advantage of her or rapes her is a “victim”.

Boys already know it is wrong to have sex with someone so drunk they cannot remember who they are. The ones who do those things simply do not care. That is not a reflection on other boys.

The same goes for consent. Boys already understand that if the girl does not say “no” she can still indicate her unwillingness non-verbally. Feminists, for reasons they cannot explain, seem to think this non-verbal communication should not count. They concoct the notion of “enthusiastic consent”, in which the male must repeatedly ask for consent at every stage of sexual activity. This logic does not apply to females. They do not have to ask for consent, nor do feminists suggest they should. Allard tried this logic on her sons, who proceeded to give the perfect response:

When I first talked to my sons about enthusiastic consent, they laughed at me. “No one is going to ask a girl before having sex with her,” they said. It’s too awkward and uncomfortable. Besides, they reassured me, you can tell whether a girl is consenting without having to ask her.

Out of the mouths of babes. Allard has a response to that:

But then one of my sons texted his sexually active friend to ask him whether he got consent from his girlfriend before they had sex. His friend quickly replied that he had to “encourage” her to do it a lot before she finally agreed.

My son didn’t call out his friend. He didn’t remind him that lack of enthusiastic consent means there is no consent. He didn’t say a word to him about consent at all, other than to ask the initial question, and that inaction hung heavy in the room between us.

Except the friend got consent. He had to repeatedly ask for it, but he got it. Feminists will argue that the girl was “coerced”, yet there is no reason to assume that. By women’s own admission, at least 40% of the time they say “no” when they mean “yes”. It is possible that this girl behaved in the same manner.

But let us not interfere with Allard trashing her own sons:

My sons, who are good boys and who know all about consent, do not speak out about consent. Not when it’s uncomfortable. Not when it might jeopardize their social standing. My sons who hate hearing about their own privilege nestle inside it like a blanket and accuse me of making up its existence.

My sons are part of the problem.

And whose fault is that? Allard is there with her sons, shoving her ideology down their throats from the moment they could ejaculate. It is unlikely that they would care more about their social standing than the morals their mother taught them if those lessons were a positive influence.

Yet that is not what Allard likely did. What she likely did was push a narrative that tacitly blamed her sons and all men for women’s problems and her own. She likely never let up, instead browbeating them with her feminism whenever a case appeared in the news. She likely presented herself as a victim, and expected her sons to act as saviors and protectors. She also likely reminded them that they cannot be victims of this.

To that point:

I’m a survivor of rape and sexual abuse. My sons know this like they know I was once a reporter and I love curries and coffee. But they have never been sexually abused, and they can’t fathom what it’s like to stand in a scalding hot shower trying to burn away the touch of a stranger’s hands. I’ve told them why dismantling rape culture is so important to me, but they will never truly understand how survivors feel.

I do not hate to say this as I think it must be said: Allard’s sons face a one in six chance of being sexually abused. It is entirely possible that one or both of them have been abused or are being abused. They simply may not have told this to Allard, and one need not wonder why. Allard does not strike me as someone who would care if a man or woman raped her sons. She is too caught up in her own head and ideology to consider other people’s feelings.

So instead of exercising cognitive appreciation for other people’s experiences, Allard projects her experiences onto her sons and boldly declares they cannot possibly understand.

To the best of my knowledge, my godson has not been sexually abused. Yet his lack of experience does not affect his ability to empathize. Part of the reason is because I, unlike Allard, do not act entitled when I talk about my experiences. I try my best to help my godson and anyone I share my experiences with to understand what I went through, what I felt at the time, and how I process it now. The last thing I would ever say to anyone I wanted to listen to me is “You’ll never truly understand”.

Saying something that idiotic removes any reason for the person to attempt to understand. The better response would be to pick something traumatic that happened to the person and use that as a method to help them understand your trauma.

Allard proves she is one of the worst parents I have ever encountered, and she does not let up:

I wanted to believe that sharing my experience with them would make them understand. And even more important, that understanding would breed action; but that’s where the disconnect arose. My sons understand, as best as teenage boys can.

I live with teen boys, and they are quite capable of understanding other people. Blaming teen boys for one’s inability to convince them of accepting a man-hating ideology reveals a deep arrogance. It is not their fault Allard was sexually abused, it is not their fault that some males commit sexual violence, and it is not their fault they cannot understand the nonsense coming out of Allard mouth. Allard does not even know what she is saying:

But they aren’t willing to sacrifice their own comfort for my sake, or for anyone else.

These are her teenage sons. They do not have a responsibility to sacrifice their comfort for her. It is supposed to be the other way around.

I must ask again, what type of parent is Allard? Who thinks their children should be their protectors?

When it comes to speaking out against rape culture and questioning their own ideas and behavior, they become angry and defensive. Not all men, they remind me, and my guts wrench as my own sons mimic the vitriol of a thousand online trolls.

Yes, reminding their mother that all men are not rapists, misogynists, or whoever it was who abused Allard is absolute vitriol. It is so hateful to say, “I’m not that kind of person”.

No matter how often my sons remind me that they are good men, they don’t understand that being “good” is an action.

And whose fault is that? Is it not Allard’s job as a parent to teach her sons what what being “good” means? If they fail to understand, we need only look at their mother’s passive aggressive tactics. If this is how she treats them, it is no wonder they pay her no mind.

Allard continues with her stupidity:

You don’t earn the honor by simply shaking your head when you hear about Turner and other rapists being given lenient sentences.

What are her sons supposed to do? They are not legislators. They cannot even vote. They have no power outside of protest, and that will not necessarily result in changing laws because the state generally does not care about children’s opinions.

You earn it by acting to end rape culture, and by doing it even when it’s awkward and uncomfortable as hell.

Abstract concepts do not mean much if they are just random stupidity pulled out of one’s ass at a moment’s convenience.

Allard continued to thoroughly hate her sons:

My sons are good boys, just like thousands of other good boys in America. They understand consent and they won’t rape an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. But they aren’t allies in the fight against rape culture because they refuse to acknowledge their own culpability when they call a girl a slut or a whore, laugh at a sexist joke or remain silent when their friends talk about their own questionable sexual behavior.

Not once in the article does Allard consider men and boys can be victims of this “rape culture”. She rather blithely claims her sons were never sexually abused, something she cannot know. Outside of that one reference, she does not acknowledge male victims at all.

This makes me wonder whether any of her conversations with her sons included teaching them to protect themselves. Did she teach her sons that no one had the right to touch them without consent? Did she teach them that they have the right to say “no” to any sex? Did she teach them that just because someone if female does not mean they cannot be abusive?

As for Allard’s mangled point, the problem is not that her sons laugh at a joke or do not speak up every time someone utters the word “slut”. The problem is that Allard and feminists like her expect these boys, along with all other men, to hold themselves culpable for other people’s actions. They are their brother’s keeper in the broadest sense, and how dare they think that their own actions should be proof enough of their character.

Granted, Allard and feminists like her do not do this themselves. The moment a woman lies about rape, Allard is not going to hold herself culpable for every time she believed a false accuser. The moment a woman rapes a boy and falls back on the “it’s not rape because he got hard” trope, Allard is not going to hold herself culpable for every time she did not counter someone saying the boy “lucky” for being raped. There are dozens of examples of these situations in which Allard and other feminists will never see themselves as culpable.

In most instances, that would be fair. We cannot stop people from making jokes. We cannot control whether someone will lie about or manipulate other people. All we can control is whether we engage in those things and call other people out when they commit those acts. Yet that does not mean we must react to every utterance of “slut” or “he got lucky” in a Pavlovian tantrum. That does not help anyone. It instead puts people on defensive, as Allard’s son demonstrated, as they try to protect themselves from a rabid ideology.

Allard may not like that her sons do not follow her ideology. Yet if the child is not buying your indoctrination, maybe you should rethink your doctrines. If it is so obviously wrong that a child can see it, there is a problem. The solution is not:

It’s not enough to teach our sons about consent; we have to encourage them to have the courage to speak out against rape culture, too.

The solution is discarding the doctrine. Allard’s sons heard what she had to say and they are not convinced. It has nothing to do with a lack of courage. Her ideas are moronic and abusive. No right-minded parent would inflict this on their children. Yet it takes a special kind of narcissism, arrogance, entitlement, and hate publicly humiliate your own children for click-bait.

What an absolutely horrible parent.