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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   24817 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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Is this a full blown victim blaming in the most influential printed medium by decorated feminist? Or am I overreacting?

New York Times: There’s a sentence in the new book that I was curious about, and this goes back to the questions about the trickiness of generalizing and of using a certain kind of rhetorical style: You’re discussing the rarity of false accusations of date rape, and you write, I’m paraphrasing, that there are mentally ill or damaged women who will make those kinds of accusations, and the only thing a young guy can do is not have sex with damaged or mentally ill women. That’s a bit of a flip way of addressing that problem, isn’t it?

Caitlin Moran: That’s possibly my most overt piece of feminism. Obviously #NotAllMen, but I have experienced enough men where the thing at a party is that you’re hunting for the girl on the edge of the pack who’s a bit drunk, bit needy. I can remember dads telling their sons in pubs where I come from, “Crazy bitches are always the best [expletive].” It’s just saying to men as a kind and loving mother with some wisdom that if there’s a woman who is mentally ill, disturbed or needy or unhappy or really drunk at a party, leave her alone. The last thing she needs is a penis. If she’s an upset, needy person and you [expletive] her and then the rumor starts going around school, she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.” You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing.

nytimes.com: https://archive.ph/tZn3B#selection-457.82-457.95

How is this different from "You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing by flirting with that guy wearing that dress"?

As others have noted, the sexual revolution is slowly being reversed, even though the proponents of this reversal (mostly) don’t understand what they’re doing. Before the sexual revolution, if you ‘improperly seduced’ (‘took advantage of’) a girl of reasonable social standing and this behavior was revealed (by her or others), you’d answer to her male relatives. Now you will answer to the government (this in itself is not a new phenomenon, the same shift from responsibility of the tribe to responsibility of the state has happened with welfare, policing, consumer fraud protection etc).

In the end, it is likely that some arrangement between men and women will be reached. Until then, Moran is right to warn men that the age of unimpeded sexual libertinism and rockstars fucking their 15 year old groupies without social sanction has drawn to a close.

It feels like you're conflating situations here. Are you suggesting two intoxicated people having sex is "unimpeded sexual libertinism"? It's certainly only comparable to rock stars fucking 15 year olds in the most uncharitable view.

I’m saying that Moran’s imploring “don’t stick your dick in crazy, you might get falsely accused of rape” is - in effect - saying “be very careful around casual sex”. Obviously one night stands are sexual libertinism, sure.

That is an inherently sexually conservative message, even if it perhaps unfairly places the burden of avoiding promiscuity on men.

One-night stands are one thing, but arguably a different thing. The one-night-stand is never intended to extend past the morning. Drunk coupling isn't always the same. I'd argue, like Seinfeld, that alcohol actually is what brings a lot of people together.

Men the world over know the saying "Don't stick your dick in crazy," as you are aware. It's not something we need to be told by Moran. What she seems to be saying is that men are predators, that the women who have sex with them are the weak and wounded. Otherwise presumably why would they be doing so? I take issue with this.

Or, more to the point, we are none of us particularly rational when it comes to sex--or, perhaps we can be, but only when imagining it from afar, as we are doing now.

Of course I live in a dramatically different universe as far as sexual mores go. I am not sure what's going on in the US. Less and less do I recognize it as a place I understand at any depth.

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