Publications
Partners
So here's the story. A 17-year-old girl is furious after being kicked out of her own prom. Her crime? Some men at the prom were perving over her and had complained about it.
According to Gawker, Richmond Va. high school student Clare was already uncomfortable after she had noticed a group of dads staring at her with obvious lust when she was told to leave because one of these "chaperones" (read: dirty old men) had complained about her.
The perverts, sorry, fathers, claimed that Clare's dress was inappropriate (her dress was well within the school's modesty regulations) and that her provocative dancing (her friends and her had been swaying vaguely to the music while they were talking to each other) was going to cause "impure thoughts", so Clare was asked to leave.
I don't know. If I discovered a group of men supposedly chaperoning at a high-school dance were actually perving over the under-age girls instead, I would eject them, rather than the girl whose prom it actually is, but then I've never understood society's absolute and idiotic acceptance of men as mindless sex-fiends with absolutely no capability for self-control.
The thinking seems to go along these lines:
Man sees girl >
Man is turned on by girl >
Man starts to fantasize about girl >
Man feels guilty >
Man externalizes blame on girl >
Not man's fault, is girl's fault! Girl is slut! >
Society backs man >
Society gives man sympathy >
Don't worry, man, we'll sort girl out >
Stupid slut girl >
Being slutty and seductive by being female >
Blame girl >
Punish girl >
Lecture girl on how all perverted thoughts from all men about her are all her responsibility and how she must manage them >
Wring hands and express genuine concern over how men are just so oppressed by the existence of girls.
I remember the first real misogynist I had ever encountered
I don't mean a sexist - this man seemed to actively hate women, and it was the first time I had come across it.
He was an elder in a fundamentalist Christian Church my family attended when I was a teenager, and his favourite topic was the disgusting morals of women.
The women he hated most of all were young, attractive women.
His favourite hobby was to complain about the way the girls in the church dressed. He would compare them to prostitutes regularly. Girls as young as nine were accused of being immoral and seductive for daring to wear anything less than three layers of clothing in the middle of summer.
As for women who were actively acting in a seductive manner on purpose: Britney Spears infuriated him - I still remember how he quivered with righteous indignation as he spoke about how vile and disgusting he found her Slave for You music video. (I shudder to think what he thinks of Miley Cyrus.)
In short, this man had a lot to say about how women dress and how they do it purely to lead men like him into sin. It wasn't just a topic he would mention now and then, he was obsessed.
Then one day, I found out that, before he was "saved", he had been a massive womaniser. That's when it clicked into place.
Of course, he felt guilty about it, but he wasn't willing to accept responsibility for his own actions, so he externalised blame on the women. It wasn't his fault - he's a man and can't help himself - it was those seductive bitches.
In his mind, his perving over all the women in the church wasn't his fault, it was those sluts' faults for the way they dressed.
This thinking is not unusual
Time and time again, when men commit acts that sexually victimize women, it's the women who are blamed, not just by men, but by a great deal of society - men and women alike.
As we saw in the MrCPT saga, many people really agree that a woman who wears a short skirt with no underwear "can't blame a brother for having a touch". Genuine belief that a man's actions can be completely absolved if he sees a flash of naked vagina.
In the justice system
Over and over, rapists, even when they are adult men, are given light or no sentences if it can be "proven" or at least made to appear that their victims, even when they are children as young as 11-years-old, are "slutty" or "provocative".
When Sir Young admitted to raping a 14-year-old girl when he was 18, Texan judge Jeanine Howard sentenced him to only 45 days in prison follow by a 5-year probation during which he, a known rapist, would perform community service at a rape crisis centre.
This is because, as The Daily Mail reports, the judge had decided the girl was slutty.
According to Times Live, a recent report found that South African judges are often unsympathetic towards rape victims.
In one case, a girl who was raped and impregnated by her 53-year-old neighbour was depicted by the judges as "the type of girl who is likely to consent to sex and is less worthy of belief".
She was 11 when the rape occurred.
Even if she did consent, having sex with an 11-year-old is, in most countries (including this one,) legally defined as rape for good reason - and yet even at 11 this child is expected to be able to fully understand and accept sex with a person who is both clearly manipulative and in a position of power, before an adult man over four times her age is expected to show some self-control and not rape a child.
In the media
Journalists often also express concern for rapists over their rape victims.
After the infamous Steubenville rape, during which teenage boys tweeted about and shared pictures of a girl while they were gang-raping her at a party, while other teenagers ignored them or sat around laughing about how she's being raped, how they'd peed on her, and how she was probably dead, CNN's report on the guilty verdict focussed on how it had "ruined" the "promising lives" of the rapists.
When an 11-year-old girl was repeatedly gang-raped by 18 men and boys, (the oldest being 27,) The New York Times published a heavily victim-blaming article that expressed concern at how the community was affected by the gang rape of a child because the poor rapists would have to live with it for the rest of their lives.
The same article talks about how the girl dressed "older than her age", and that she wore make-up.
Later, one of the rapists' defence attorney Steve Taylor likened the 11-year-old girl who was gang raped by 18 people to a spider luring in a fly.
When the witness he was examining, former Cleveland Police Sgt. Chad Langdon, stated that he wouldn't call the child a spider, just an 11-year-old girl, Taylor snapped that he hoped "nothing like this" would ever happen to Langdon's teenage sons. (Source: The Huffington Post.)
He genuinely tried to paint the gang-rapists of an 11-year-old girl as her victims.
Even though the rapists were much older than the victim, even though some of the rapists involved were adults over twice her age, even though sex with an 11-year-old is rape no matter how the girl dresses or how much make-up she wears, the expectation is not on men to control themselves, it is on girls, even children, to prevent men from wanting to have sex with them.
Because when a man or boy wants to have sex with someone, they're treated as absolutely unable to control themselves. They're treated like natural rapists, who can only be kept under control by preventing them from becoming aroused.
And so, in an attempt to keep them safe, we cover up our women and girls, warn them against appearing too sexually appealing, disgrace them if they appear too sexy or "slutty", and constantly remind them that, if they do not at all times seem "pure" and "modest" and, in many cases, simply not female, then they deserve whatever they get for victimizing those poor men.
Why do we think so little of men, and hate women so much?
How has our opinion of men sunk so low that even anyone believes it's more reasonable to expect an 11-year-old to always have the confidence and ability to reject the sexual advances of much older men than to expect men to be able to control themselves?
How has our opinion of men gotten so bad that we feel we need to keep temptation away from them because they're literally unable to control themselves when faced with it?
How has our hatred for women gotten so intense that even when children are raped, we blame those children for bringing it on?
How has our hatred for women consumed us so much that, when men are turned on by them, harass them or rape them, we blame the women and girls for victimizing the men by being "seductive".
Why is it that, when we feel men really cannot control themselves, we punish the women? We expect the women to stay at home, to cover up, to not even attend their own proms.
If we treated children the way we treat men
Most parents will know what it's like to shop at a grocery store with a small child. The queue to the check-out is surrounded by sweets and chocolates, and that child will want one.
If parents treated children and stores the way society treats men and women, they would not expect their children to be able to learn how to show self-control.
We know nothing is going to stop the child from wanting chocolate, so when the store chooses to obviously display chocolate in a tempting way, how can we blame the child if they take and eat a chocolate without the store's permission?
It's the store's fault, really. I mean, they put it right where we have to wait in the queue. If they don't want people to steal chocolate, they should pack them in the back where we can't see them.
What? Expecting children being able to learn they can't just take what they want? Don't be ridiculous.
Tragic story: This child has to live with the fact that he stole a chocolate because the viciously evil store put that chocolate in a place where he can see it. That damn store. Don't worry child.
...
Conclusion
If a four-year-old can be expected to learn not to steal a chocolate, is it really so ridiculous to expect men to be able to learn to control themselves?
Right now, a lot of us view men as less capable and trustworthy than children, and that has to stop.
Follow Laura on Twitter.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
According to Gawker, Richmond Va. high school student Clare was already uncomfortable after she had noticed a group of dads staring at her with obvious lust when she was told to leave because one of these "chaperones" (read: dirty old men) had complained about her.
The perverts, sorry, fathers, claimed that Clare's dress was inappropriate (her dress was well within the school's modesty regulations) and that her provocative dancing (her friends and her had been swaying vaguely to the music while they were talking to each other) was going to cause "impure thoughts", so Clare was asked to leave.
I don't know. If I discovered a group of men supposedly chaperoning at a high-school dance were actually perving over the under-age girls instead, I would eject them, rather than the girl whose prom it actually is, but then I've never understood society's absolute and idiotic acceptance of men as mindless sex-fiends with absolutely no capability for self-control.
The thinking seems to go along these lines:
Man sees girl >
Man is turned on by girl >
Man starts to fantasize about girl >
Man feels guilty >
Man externalizes blame on girl >
Not man's fault, is girl's fault! Girl is slut! >
Society backs man >
Society gives man sympathy >
Don't worry, man, we'll sort girl out >
Stupid slut girl >
Being slutty and seductive by being female >
Blame girl >
Punish girl >
Lecture girl on how all perverted thoughts from all men about her are all her responsibility and how she must manage them >
Wring hands and express genuine concern over how men are just so oppressed by the existence of girls.
I remember the first real misogynist I had ever encountered
I don't mean a sexist - this man seemed to actively hate women, and it was the first time I had come across it.
He was an elder in a fundamentalist Christian Church my family attended when I was a teenager, and his favourite topic was the disgusting morals of women.
The women he hated most of all were young, attractive women.
His favourite hobby was to complain about the way the girls in the church dressed. He would compare them to prostitutes regularly. Girls as young as nine were accused of being immoral and seductive for daring to wear anything less than three layers of clothing in the middle of summer.
As for women who were actively acting in a seductive manner on purpose: Britney Spears infuriated him - I still remember how he quivered with righteous indignation as he spoke about how vile and disgusting he found her Slave for You music video. (I shudder to think what he thinks of Miley Cyrus.)
In short, this man had a lot to say about how women dress and how they do it purely to lead men like him into sin. It wasn't just a topic he would mention now and then, he was obsessed.
Then one day, I found out that, before he was "saved", he had been a massive womaniser. That's when it clicked into place.
Of course, he felt guilty about it, but he wasn't willing to accept responsibility for his own actions, so he externalised blame on the women. It wasn't his fault - he's a man and can't help himself - it was those seductive bitches.
In his mind, his perving over all the women in the church wasn't his fault, it was those sluts' faults for the way they dressed.
This thinking is not unusual
Time and time again, when men commit acts that sexually victimize women, it's the women who are blamed, not just by men, but by a great deal of society - men and women alike.
As we saw in the MrCPT saga, many people really agree that a woman who wears a short skirt with no underwear "can't blame a brother for having a touch". Genuine belief that a man's actions can be completely absolved if he sees a flash of naked vagina.
In the justice system
Over and over, rapists, even when they are adult men, are given light or no sentences if it can be "proven" or at least made to appear that their victims, even when they are children as young as 11-years-old, are "slutty" or "provocative".
When Sir Young admitted to raping a 14-year-old girl when he was 18, Texan judge Jeanine Howard sentenced him to only 45 days in prison follow by a 5-year probation during which he, a known rapist, would perform community service at a rape crisis centre.
This is because, as The Daily Mail reports, the judge had decided the girl was slutty.
According to Times Live, a recent report found that South African judges are often unsympathetic towards rape victims.
In one case, a girl who was raped and impregnated by her 53-year-old neighbour was depicted by the judges as "the type of girl who is likely to consent to sex and is less worthy of belief".
She was 11 when the rape occurred.
Even if she did consent, having sex with an 11-year-old is, in most countries (including this one,) legally defined as rape for good reason - and yet even at 11 this child is expected to be able to fully understand and accept sex with a person who is both clearly manipulative and in a position of power, before an adult man over four times her age is expected to show some self-control and not rape a child.
In the media
Journalists often also express concern for rapists over their rape victims.
After the infamous Steubenville rape, during which teenage boys tweeted about and shared pictures of a girl while they were gang-raping her at a party, while other teenagers ignored them or sat around laughing about how she's being raped, how they'd peed on her, and how she was probably dead, CNN's report on the guilty verdict focussed on how it had "ruined" the "promising lives" of the rapists.
When an 11-year-old girl was repeatedly gang-raped by 18 men and boys, (the oldest being 27,) The New York Times published a heavily victim-blaming article that expressed concern at how the community was affected by the gang rape of a child because the poor rapists would have to live with it for the rest of their lives.
The same article talks about how the girl dressed "older than her age", and that she wore make-up.
Later, one of the rapists' defence attorney Steve Taylor likened the 11-year-old girl who was gang raped by 18 people to a spider luring in a fly.
When the witness he was examining, former Cleveland Police Sgt. Chad Langdon, stated that he wouldn't call the child a spider, just an 11-year-old girl, Taylor snapped that he hoped "nothing like this" would ever happen to Langdon's teenage sons. (Source: The Huffington Post.)
He genuinely tried to paint the gang-rapists of an 11-year-old girl as her victims.
Even though the rapists were much older than the victim, even though some of the rapists involved were adults over twice her age, even though sex with an 11-year-old is rape no matter how the girl dresses or how much make-up she wears, the expectation is not on men to control themselves, it is on girls, even children, to prevent men from wanting to have sex with them.
Because when a man or boy wants to have sex with someone, they're treated as absolutely unable to control themselves. They're treated like natural rapists, who can only be kept under control by preventing them from becoming aroused.
And so, in an attempt to keep them safe, we cover up our women and girls, warn them against appearing too sexually appealing, disgrace them if they appear too sexy or "slutty", and constantly remind them that, if they do not at all times seem "pure" and "modest" and, in many cases, simply not female, then they deserve whatever they get for victimizing those poor men.
Why do we think so little of men, and hate women so much?
How has our opinion of men sunk so low that even anyone believes it's more reasonable to expect an 11-year-old to always have the confidence and ability to reject the sexual advances of much older men than to expect men to be able to control themselves?
How has our opinion of men gotten so bad that we feel we need to keep temptation away from them because they're literally unable to control themselves when faced with it?
How has our hatred for women gotten so intense that even when children are raped, we blame those children for bringing it on?
How has our hatred for women consumed us so much that, when men are turned on by them, harass them or rape them, we blame the women and girls for victimizing the men by being "seductive".
Why is it that, when we feel men really cannot control themselves, we punish the women? We expect the women to stay at home, to cover up, to not even attend their own proms.
If we treated children the way we treat men
Most parents will know what it's like to shop at a grocery store with a small child. The queue to the check-out is surrounded by sweets and chocolates, and that child will want one.
If parents treated children and stores the way society treats men and women, they would not expect their children to be able to learn how to show self-control.
We know nothing is going to stop the child from wanting chocolate, so when the store chooses to obviously display chocolate in a tempting way, how can we blame the child if they take and eat a chocolate without the store's permission?
It's the store's fault, really. I mean, they put it right where we have to wait in the queue. If they don't want people to steal chocolate, they should pack them in the back where we can't see them.
What? Expecting children being able to learn they can't just take what they want? Don't be ridiculous.
Tragic story: This child has to live with the fact that he stole a chocolate because the viciously evil store put that chocolate in a place where he can see it. That damn store. Don't worry child.
...
Conclusion
If a four-year-old can be expected to learn not to steal a chocolate, is it really so ridiculous to expect men to be able to learn to control themselves?
Right now, a lot of us view men as less capable and trustworthy than children, and that has to stop.
Follow Laura on Twitter.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
