Rape is never the victims fault

[theatokos]

Women say some rape victims should take the blame

WHAT? I don't even need to read this entire article to know that women have internalized the hateful misogony of the patriarchy and suffer from self-loathing ideology. Why do women hate each other like this? Rape is NEVER the victim's fault. Even if you're comatose from drinking or you're walking naked down the street. Women make loads of stupid decisions all the time. And there are other consequences of the above actions: alcohol poisoning and the flu, perhaps. But rape? It is not a man's duty to 'punish' me for my stupid actions. Women and men may judge women who make stupid choices and think 'they got what they deserved', but that's not what it is about is it? No. It's about men thinking women are sex objects, that any woman who is passive enough is theirs for taking, that women are sub-human and do not have the dignity that men have. In cases of rape the blame is ALWAYS on the assailant. It is the perpetrator who cannot keep his hands (and other bits) to himself. It is HIS lack of self-control and his lack of honor for other living creatures.

I was date raped when I was 20. I take responsibility for my stupidness. I acknowledge that I was weak and had poor boundaries. I did not report it because it was so.... murky. I was up for fooling around. I was not up for sex. I said no. He didn't listen. We were in my bed. Am I to blame? If you say yes, defriend me right now.

Comments

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in reading that but the link didn't work.

I know you're right about this, and yet for some reason I'm annoyed. Can't explain why. Either I'm annoyed because you're right and I'm being stubborn, or because I'm trying to explain something that isn't coming through. It's the problem of trying to type responses while a toddler is asking me to read Green Eggs and Ham for the Nth time.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Tested the link and it works. However, the post also comes up if you Google/Yahoo "kyriarchy"--it's a blog called "My Ecdysis" and the title of the post is "Accepting Kyriarchy, Not Apologies." There's a good discussion of the same post here (http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/04/kyriarchy_not_p).

I hear your annoyance. I think we are using different lenses. It seems to me that you feel I am bringing issues into the discussion that aren't pertinent, and I keep doing it, and I bet that's frustrating. But I can't help it because intersection is my lens. It's not a separate issue for me, it's the context in which I see every issue, and so I can't think about gendered oppression or feminism without using that lens. Especially when the issue is woman-on-woman oppression and women failing to be good allies for each other, which is pretty hard to make sense of through a radfem lens.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Link worked. You know, I use patriarchy and mean kyriarchy, turns out. I do think that men *in general* hold the patriarchal power, but I think systems of oppression do exist and therefore it's not *just* men, or even all men, who are the oppressors. In some ways, 9 times out of 10, when I buy new clothes I'm probably oppressing some one some where. For a weak example.

I also think to be a radical feminist is to be, by and large, working for post-gendered feminism. I don't equate radical feminism with separatism, or womyn-only space. What's radical about that? Nothing, in my eyes.

The post (which feels like ages ago and lost in the sands of time) was about women hating women, and about rape in general, but I think some where along that way that got very, very lost. I blame Gwydion. ;) (Look at me use an emoticon to indicate humor! See, I learned!) Ultimately, I think you and I do agree. In fact, I know we do. I don't know what's happened with this post, but I'm about ready to render it null and void.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

I don't think it got lost. I think the discussion that's occurring is productive. It just didn't go where you expected.

Maybe because there's not much to say about women hating women. Yeah, that's sad. And it happens a lot. We can all agree on that. Rape is bad. We can all agree on that. Survivor-blaming is terrible and compounds the initial violation of the rape. I don't think anyone here has disagreed with your premise. We can all be angry about that, but for me at least, anger makes me tired. There's just too much for me to be angry about right now, personally and politically. I guess I'd rather talk theory and problematize and challenge existing paradigms with the hope of creating some new ones. Maybe that's my bad, my defense mechanism, and I should have kept it to myself or taken it to my own journal.

It sounds like you're upset about how the discussion proceeded, so I'm sorry if I contributed to that. I know I can be dogmatic and pushy when I get ahold of an idea that interests me. I was told a long time ago that arguing with me was like arguing with a brick wall, and it's probably still true.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

You're awesome.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

No u!

IDK, I think I was kind of faily in this discussion, the more that I think about it. :-P I've been doing that a lot lately. Think it means I should shut up and listen more.