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Notes -
Whenever the subject of feminist narratives comes up on this forum, one of the recurring arguments is that feminist messaging is ineffective, self-defeating even, the usual reason being given that it doesn’t reach the men it’s supposed to reach, and only reaches men who don’t need feminist messages in the first place because they’re pretty much acculturated in a feminist milieu anyway. (I know all this doesn’t necessarily sound fair or unbiased, but let’s ignore that for a moment.)
The most fitting example of this that is usually mentioned is the message that “we need to teach men not to rape”, which is supposedly a favorite of feminist activists on college campuses, corporate HR boards and elsewhere. Apparently they promote essentially the same idea as a great tool to combat sexual assault and harassment.
I don’t think I need to explain in detail why this argument sounds so dumb to the average man. Even when I come up with the most benevolent interpretation of this tactic that I can think of, it still seems misguided and, well, dumb. But then it occurred to me: the message makes 100% sense if we start from the assumption that modern feminists, eager to right cultural wrongs of the past that they perceive, really want to make sure their messaging never ever entails even a hint of the notion that women need to exercise any level of agency in order to avoid rape, assault or harassment of any type i.e. avoid bad men, because in all cases that would be “victim blaming” and horrific etc.
From that perspective, it all makes sense, sort of. Am I correct, or is there something else going on as well?
This is asserted a lot in spaces like this with a kind of nerd-smugness but I don’t think it’s true. Why would one expect the proverbially socially adept frat bro who never heard of /ssc/ to have worse social awareness than the only-rarely-interacts-with-women loser who receives this messaging? My Bay Area female friends/fwbs/hookups/etc have showed me plenty of receipts from respectable seeming nerds who very clearly need some social education.
They are not raping her. They are revealing their interest in her without being sufficiently attractive themselves, which is a big difference.
Fortunately none of them were raped, but it goes way beyond the MRA strawman of “trying to flirt while being unattractive.”
Being autistic is very literally not rape. Saying creepy shit out of social awkwardness is worth discouraging, but it's not an indication that a man is about to commit rape.
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