I’ve been seeing an increasing number of articles and social media posts with the “Men can stop rape” theme. There have been some variations, like the popular “Teach men not to rape” and/or references to “Rape culture” (well, the popular, feminist definition of rape culture, rather than how our culture actually views rape… but that’s another topic).
All of this is to further the connection between “rape” and “men” in people’s minds. It’s been a pretty textbook example of saying far more than what is explicitly mentioned. Usually, at least unless pushed, the journalists, protesters, and others promoting this feminist rhetoric don’t outright say that “All rapists are men” or that “All men have a duty to protect women”. They don’t need to. When someone says that they “Jewed” someone in a deal, they don’t need to say that they believe Jews are greedy. The implication is plenty.
I’ve often considered what if other groups were targeted in the same way, and I’m not the only one. I’ve asked myself, “What if, instead of looking at the rates of convictions, and concluding that violence has a masculine face, we looked at the rates of conviction according to race, and concluded that violence has a black face?” The answer to that question, of course, would be that we would not do that (In this case, “we” being people who are relatively well-adjusted, and not racist), since people who would say such a thing would be racist. They’d be ignoring that the higher incidence of convictions for violent crimes by blacks is a result of a “justice” system that sees people color coded according to their guilt (Black = most guilty, then Brown = also, quite guilty, White = not all that guilty, and Yellow = mostly innocent).
In fact, when we look at incarceration rates, and see blacks are locked up at higher rates than whites, we don’t conclude “Well, that just means blacks are inherently more violent” (well some of us do, but they are correctly singled out as bigots). Instead, we understand that blacks statistically are more likely to live in poverty, be denied educational opportunities, factors that lead to criminality (desperate actions arise from desperate situations). That’s not to say blacks are the only ones, since I have personally known whites struggling to live day by day in poverty, just that it’s more common. We also acknowledge racism in sentencing.
The problem, though, is when we read about statistics for male vs. female sentencing, we (again, “we” being our society) conclude that it’s just that men are more violent than women. We acknowledge that juries view blacks as more guilty than whites, and more often, and we acknowledge that this is racist. However, we don’t acknowledge that juries view men as more guilty than women, and more often, and that this is sexist. We don’t acknowledge this even when the sex disparity in sentencing is worse than the race disparity.
MRAs, have, occasionally, used the racial angle as a means of demonstrating bigotry. We’ve commented that singling out a sex for violence is as bigoted as singling out a race.
Here’s the thing, though, all the “What if we just replaced ‘men’ with ‘blacks’ in these slogans,” or “What if, instead of women’s groups clamoring about men’s violence against women, and claiming the need to take back the night from violent men, a white group clamored about black’s violence against whites, and claimed the need to take back the night from violent blacks?” conjectures were purely hypothetical. Well, until now [1].
The White Student Union has been making claims about the “very large problem of black-male-against-white-female crime”, and using this as reason/justification/excuse to go on very visible patrols, ostensibly to protect innocent whites (and especially, white women). No word yet on if they suggest white women also dress as “sluts” while walking on patrol.
It should come as no surprise to any MRA how much the rhetoric from this group matches the speech from feminists. Remove the racial element from the White Student Union, or add a racial element to feminists, and it would be hard to tell where the quotes came from.
For example, take this quote: “Violence against white women is the single greatest human rights violation of our generation.”
Feminist, or racist? Actually, that was said by Patrick Stewart (minus the racial angle) in his white knight campaign to end violence against (you guessed it) women. [2]
How about: “We always knew when we took on the issue of violence against white women, that somehow our opposition would come after us.” Was that said by a racist, or feminists?
Actually… Patricia Ireland (again, just insert “white”, and it could just as easily be from a racist group. You don’t even have to remove “women”).
There’s also “The virtue of white Christian womanhood is under attack at Towson University by degenerate criminals seeking to rob our women of their God given innocence.”
That one would be racist.
Side note: “Feminist Or Racist” could be the next big party game.
This group is claiming that black criminals preying on white victims justifies demonizing an entire race, in pretty much the same way that feminists claim male criminals prey on female victims, and demonize an entire gender. Honestly, if someone were to write a satirical story, a work of fiction meant to demonstrate the bigotry in feminism by comparing it to racism, it would fit with the reality of what is going on at this moment almost perfectly.
It is important to note the similarity in this group’s rhetoric to the feminist rhetoric, how targeting a race as suspect of criminality and violence is as abhorrent as targeting a sex for the same. However, also important to note is how the group uses white (no pun intended) knighting to further itself. They don’t just protect whites from blacks. No, they protect white women from black men. It’s as though they realized that they would have a pretty hard sell with the whole “White group stereotyping blacks, and claiming that all blacks are violent criminals” deal, and so decided to go with the selling point of protecting women. After all, the focus of the group is stopping violence against not just whites, but white women (or so they say, and they say repeatedly). Who can argue with ending violence against women? It’s the same attempt at legitimacy used by the Klan back in the day. Hate groups used to use the “Scary black man” [4] image to justify fearing black men, and when you fear a group, you can more easily justify hating that group. After all, you’re not the bad guy, picking on innocent victims… you’re resolutely standing up to the forces of evil.
It’s an old, and widespread pattern. The Klan was justified, you see, because blacks were scary, and attacking white women, so the Klan was just protecting the innocent, right (note: inconvenient things like facts and reality could be swept aside. All that matters is that enough people believed the story). The Jews were responsible for Germany’s poverty and downfall. Anti-Westerner racism in China is justified because problems are caused by “Foreigners, trying to undermine harmony”, and accusing groups as using religion to “split China and cause disharmony” justifies attacks on Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and any other religion that the government doesn’t approve of (which is pretty much any that isn’t the government’s official religion, or obsequious enough to the government). Wars in the Middle East are justified because scary Arab terrorists are trying to blow up America, so we need to kill them all.
The scary black man image might not be acceptable to the majority of America, but remove the racial element, make it about scary men of all races, and it’s easily used by feminists. Fearing (and then hating) men because they’re men might not go down so well, at least with the less gullible male white knights so valuable to feminists. However, fearing and hating men because men are a threat to all women, and do such horrible things to women… well, that’s justified. Then, misandry is merely defensive. I’m not saying that hatred of men based on irrational rationalization might lead to violence against men. I’m saying it will, because it has. Black men weren’t lynched solely because they were black. They were lynched because they were black males. Black women weren’t murdered for whistling at white boys. Unfortunately, we’re more than willing to look at the racial angle, but very hesitant to look at the sex angle.
This isn’t limited to just the US, either. Yang Rui, a host for a Chinese government TV network said, “The Public Security Bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash: To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to concentrate on the disaster zones in Wudaokou [student district] and Sanlitun [nightlife district].” [5] If any audience members were not sure about hating Westerners simply based on being the wrong ethnicity and/or skin color (“Foreigner” is used interchangeably with “Westerner”, or people not of Asian decent, in China, and usually in a disparaging manner), then protecting the innocent flower of Chinese female virtue makes it justified.
A Romani camp was attacked (well, the men… women and children were warned to leave) by an Italian mob [6] all due to a false rape accusation by an Italian girl. The Romani men weren’t solely attacked because of their ethnicity, but ethnicity plus gender.
And adding yet another layer to this, just a short while before the story about the White Student Union broke, Zerlina Maxwell penned an article for Ebony [3] offering her help on teaching men not to rape (how nice of her). Just put an anti-black spin on it, focus on black men raping white women, rather than just men raping women, and she could have written this as a gift to the Ku Klux Klan.
[1] http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/03/26/white-student-union-claims-towson-has-black-on-white-crime-problem/
[2] http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/patrick-stewart-million-men-violence-women-011042478.html
[3] http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebony.com%2Fnews-views%2F5-ways-we-can-teach-men-not-to-rape-456%23axzz2NvsB7wpO&h=DAQHG9RwT&s=1
[4] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScaryBlackMan
[5] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-21/chinese-lash-out-at-foreigners-amid-turmoil#p1
[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/11/italian-girl-rape-claim-gypsy
If other groups were targeted like men…
