"Let's Talk About Rape!"

Since The Counter-Feminist is not a typical blog, I reckon it's high time to do something typically bloggish in order to join the club. Now, posting articles from other sources and then commenting on them seems like a classic blogly thing. So here goes:
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This recently in from the Isle of Albion:

Article about drug-assisted rape.

Police: Drug rape is a myth
by DANIEL BATES - Thursday, November 16, 2006

Use of date-rape drugs is far less widespread than previously feared, police say.

Tests on 120 rape victims showed that none had been given the powerful sedative Rohypnol. Just two tested positive for a similar drug, GHB, also known as liquid ecstasy, an official study showed. By comparison, all but one of the 120 were found to have been drinking alcohol "in some cases to dangerous levels " and a third had taken drugs.

However, anti-rape campaigners accused police of using the research to try to switch the blame for sex attacks on to the victims.

The study was carried out by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which said it wanted to put the incidence of Rohypnol date-rape 'into context'.

The drug is only available on prescription but has been linked to a series of well-publicised cases. Victims willingly drinking alcohol is a far higher risk factor, ACPO said. Its statistics show 22 of the 120 women were two to three times above the legal drink-drive alcohol limit when they were attacked. More than one in three admitted taking drugs as well as drink before an assault.

But Chris Green, from White Ribbon Campaign UK, said: 'The focus of this report typifies the "blame the victim ideology" which is unacceptable in dealing with rape cases.Instead of concentrating on how women behave in clubs and bars, we need a much greater emphasis on changing the behaviour of men.'

Report author Dave Gee insisted last night: 'The police will continue to take any allegations of this nature very seriously.'
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Nothing in this UK article should unduly surprise us. For at least 8 years now, we've been hearing mentally diseased horndog tales of the drug-rape genre. You know, slipping her a mickey so you can slip her the salami? Well clearly, whoever commits any such act is a moral cretin who crawled out of a septic tank. Still, the stories themselves are nothing new. This is not to say that their oldness or newness makes a grain of difference on the scale of moral evaluation. What I'm seeking is the element of novelty, and I'm not finding it there, at any rate.

What is new is the conclusion of the police report: It's high time somebody came straight out with even the mere suggestion of such a thing! Granted, this conclusion does not comport well with the politically correct template regarding female victimization, but seriously: How many rohypnol rapists does the world really contain? I mean, are these stories subtantially true? With enough statistical mass to justify the sheer volume of hyperventilated moral screeching which has been hoisted on us?

Are such things equivalent to an OCEAN, with scattered islands composing the exception? Or is it the reverse, with such things being merely scattered ponds upon the face of an otherwise solid landmass? Heaven help me, I shan't pretend to administer the last crumb of infallible evidence on this subject, although I strongly suspect—almost to a certainty—that the scattered pond model is the truth. But I am entitled to live in peace with my considerable doubts, and to voice skepticism if so inclined. How's THAT for entitlement?

The British police organization mentioned in the article has done us an excellent service—or at least those of us who wish to live in a fact-based reality. As a certain legendary cop was fond of saying, "just give me the facts." And I mean all the facts! For now, at long last, we have some "facts" from a side of the fence that is routinely ignored. So is it scattered islands, or scattered ponds? More fact-finding from the less fashionable direction would be gratefully recieved.

But again, nothing in the article ought to surprise us. It should come as no surprise if perchance drug-assisted rape is not the lurking social epidemic which the merchants of moral panic have sold to us. Speaking of facts, I will state for a fact that you can meet millions of women everywhere you go who have never, but never, gotten anywhere near to such a ghoulish experience, and never will. Fear not! Innocence is alive and doing fine, and like hope, it springs eternal!

The ACPO study gave us important information that is worth having, while the anti-rape campaigners showed themselves to be sadly unintelligent asses by their ideologically driven knee-jerk reaction to the report findings. I wish I could count how many times I have witnessed the very same response pattern by similar people. They behave as if they wish to keep something in the dark, as if the obscurantist motive trumps all considerations of balanced, fact-driven public policy. But I find nothing surprising about their behavior, which runs true to type.

I like the idea of putting the issue "into context", both for the sake of everybody's mental health, and in order to put the issue, well . . . . into context. Context can give us a clue. Frequently it's a clue that we'd jolly well better take on board!

I also like the idea of "blaming the victim". (Shocked expressions of apoplexy and outrage!) Yes, in the real world it often happens that people are the architects of their own eventual outcomes, with behaviors that are scripted, in a manner virtually guaranteed to effect the fruition of certain consequences. I'm not making this up; it happens all the time, and sometimes the connection is outrageously clear to all concerned other than the operator.

I say that I like the idea of blaming the victim, but saying that you like an idea is not the same as urging that idea in practice. In the present case, I mean that the "blame" need go no further than to candidly acknowledge, in the sanctum of our own minds, what our candid observation has made generally clear to us. So let us bluntly aver, that in the varied imbroglios of human transaction people very often DO draw victimhood down upon themselves in a way fittingly deemed self-inculpatory, disreputable or at least unflattering. Intellectual honesty demands no less from those who wish to understand how the world really works.

I don't recommend blaming the victim in a court of law (assuming that the victim has broken no law), but I do recommend blaming the victim in the court of private opinion IF the victim is genuininely blameworthy. That is a very important stipulation. You should nod sagely to yourself, and admit that the true phenomenology of victimhood is tricky, complicated and replete with gray zones. Nothing about this ought to surprise us.

However, as an eternal pivot point, we should always blame the perpetrator. Note this well. Even if this individual cannot be identified, some portion of blame (likely the larger portion) belongs to him in all cases. Truly, he was the one who had the choice, to commit the act or not commit it. So again: always blame the perpetrator. Yes, any male citizen who drugs any female citizen into unconsciousness in order to obtain sexual favors without her consent, is the first deserving of blame—in a court of law or private opinion. This thought is my one ton anchor, and upon this point I am of one mind with every feminist on earth.

So much by way of personal disclaimer. Now let's have another look at the article. We find this:

"However, anti-rape campaigners accused police of using the research to try to switch the blame for sex attacks on to the victims."

I find this interesting—very! Significant too. Moreover, we read the following:

......Chris Green, from White Ribbon Campaign UK, said: 'The focus of this report typifies the "blame the victim ideology" which is unacceptable in dealing with rape cases. Instead of concentrating on how women behave in clubs and bars, we need a much greater emphasis on changing the behaviour of men.'

The police association wanted to put the incidence of Rohypnol date-rape 'into context'. Good on them! But here I wish to examine the context, or rather subtext, within Chris Green's mind when he made the statement cited above. What Mr. Green has given us is standard boilerplate ideology straight from the indoctrination manual. I realize that the article is brief and that more words on both sides were spoken, but the article is all I've got to go on, and go on I shall!

What troubles me about Chris Green and people of his ilk, is that they appear to lack any true concern for the complete facts that would shed a nuanced light upon the situation. One might be forgiven for concluding that their foremost concern is to uphold their dogma, rather than to process the difficulty in a fully informed manner.

The police report suggested what, exactly? At least two things. 1: That rohypnol rape is much less common than we've been led to believe, and 2: That a lot of rape victims have been drinking or drugging prior to getting raped.

The first item ought to be welcomed as good news, and a cause for celebration. Most people would see it that way, but if you wanted to use 'rohypnol rape' as a propaganda club to beat men over the head, you mightn't be so happy to lose your weapon. Which is about how Chris Green sounds—not so happy.

And Chris sounds equally unhappy about the second item. Not only has a tabloid-worthy male guilt vector apparently vanished, but to this has been added a clear suggestion that women who get raped often pave the way by their own indiscretion. There is a world of difference between the victim-administered brand of drug-assisted rape, and the perpetrator-administered kind, but they are both significant. To shine some light upon the former for the sake of a balanced investigation shouldn't be classified as "blaming the victim". It is simply a full disclosure of relevant information that could eventually help the victim—or prevent victimization in the first place—if it generates a more informed analysis of the problem in its holistic etiology.

None of which seems to matter to Chris Green, however. Chris is just plain unhappy, and he is so because the report does not focus specifically upon blaming MEN. Yet from what I can tell, the report doesn't even play the blame game at all. Rather, it tries to cast objective light upon the problem as a whole, seeking the best possible solution in the context of a more connected way of knowing . On the face of it, I see no evidence that the police report is blaming the victim, whether ideologically or otherwise. Such a conclusion can only be reached interpretively. Well Chris Green has provided the interpretation, and the interpretation reveals much about Chris himself. Much that is predictable, and unsurprising.

Chris shows where his head is really at when he says, "we need a much greater emphasis on changing the behaviour of men."All right, fair enough. But I'd like to interrogate this a little bit, by posing the very fundamental question of why. Why ought we put a greater emphasis on changing the behavior of men? Why?

Changing their behavior would most likely mean instructing them not to act a certain way. However, a difficulty immediately crops up: The proposed remedy would be wasted upon those who don't already manifest the offending behavior. It's preaching to the choir. And a related difficulty follows hard upon this: Instructing "men" not to do X is unpardonably insulting and ill-mannered toward those who don't even do X in the first place. If these men have any mettle whatsoever, they'll straightly instruct you where to get off. And quite right!

For example, you could very likely find studies proving that the majority of bank robbers are male. I don't doubt that such information can be had. And you could start a social campaign around the theme of "bank robbery is unacceptable", and establish massive government-funded programs to educate MEN and reprogram their destructive bank-robbing ways. The trouble is, that most of this money and energy would be wasted—maybe all of it. Real bank robbers will mock you as a fool. So too will the overwhelming majority of ordinary men, the ones who would never come close to robbing a bank in all of their days. Why, it's even possible that a few of these men will actually go out and rob a bank for no other reason than pure spite! Thus, your campaign will have made the problem worse.

Granted, sexual violation has a unique emotive poignancy which bank robbery hasn't got. But that's no excuse, and it makes no difference. If you discard the emotionalism, my analogy is unalterably valid and ought to enjoy prime consideration when laws, policies, and programs are being formulated. If there is a moral to be extracted from this, it would be: don't blacken the name of an entire birth group.

Nothing that I've written in the last few paragraphs is either unique, surprising, original, or profound. Most of it is only common sense, you would say. Well, sense at any rate. But I'm starting to wonder about the "common" part. Maybe the cynics are right: Common sense isn't.

Let us turn now to women, and their behavior, and how they exercise formative agency by means of it.

Despite what women's advocates tend to say, women DO sometimes contribute to rape scenarios (drug-assisted or otherwise) by means of their negligence, their indiscretion, and in many cases their personal psychopathology. Averse though we might be to blaming the victim, it would be remiss not to take these factors into account in our analysis, and to conclude that female behavior in an aggregate, global, statistical sense does indeed contribute to the genesis of such situations, and to their eventual outcome—possibly as much as does male behavior. And that if therefore we would place any weight of blame upon the behavior of men in a "global" sense, methodological consistency dictates that we should factor in the "global" behavior of women as well, and that failure to do so is, moreover, sheer moral hypocrisy—a brass-faced double standard! Women are part of the social ecology too, and it would be downright unecological not to credit them for their role in the myriad interplays of causation. How else could we hope to understand how the world really works?

In sum, Chris Green's statement is male-bashing straight up and simple, and Chris himself is motivated by something other than wanting to understand how the world really works. My prime objection at the moment is not to his male-bashing, but rather his omission of an equal but opposite female bashing by way of counterpoise. If you mean to do a global analysis, don't do it by halves: Be globally global! If you aren't, then shut the hell up about "men", and confine your remarks to a particular man who can be shown to have commited the offense in question, or if more than one man be at fault, provide a list of names.

EITHER treat people as individuals, OR treat them as globalized abstractions. But whatever your choice, make it apply to men and women equally, straight across the board. One standard for both. Consistency!

Chris Green's White Ribbon Campaign immediately makes me think of the White Feather campaign during the World War One years. That comparison is nothing new. But here is something possibly new: the White Ribbon Campaign also brings to mind the yellow stars which the Jews were made to wear in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Both the white ribbons and the yellow stars served a similar purpose—to stigmatize an entire class of people. And yet, the white ribbons are worse, because the wearers have been duped into self-betrayal by wearing them. Just imagine if the Jews of the 1930s had been recruited to wear those yellow stars voluntarily in order to protest "Jewish violence against Gentiles" or something of the sort, and encouraged to feel virtuous for doing this. How many Jews do you think would have actually done this? And if some of them in fact had done this, what do you suppose their fellow Jews would have called them? Traitors? Idiots? Slimebags? Worms? Collaborationists? Do you think that such names would have been reasonable or justifiable? Do you think it would have been "hate speech"?

Personally, I'll settle for ribbbon worms. You like that one? Anyway... let's get back to the main discussion!

All things considered, it suffices to admit that if women refrain from behaviors X, Y and Z, their chances of getting raped will decline dramatically. To this, your typical feminist will in effect reply that women should be free to do ANY DAMN THING THEY PLEASE and incur no rape risk. Now, might I be forgiven for wondering out loud whether this line of thinking is entirely rational, or even entirely responsible? I wonder if I might put a notion in their heads. Do they seriously believe that the universe gives a fig about their political sentiments?

The world contains a variety of dark alleys, as I like to call them, and it contains also a variety of people whose proclivity is to set foot in these alleys. And it is all for naught to warn them of the dangers awaiting those who venture down such alleys; they'll have none of your wise counsel; venture they will! And until better evidence arrives, I make free to assert that the world will always contain such people, and such alleys, and that all the floodlights you care to install, and all the admonitory lectures you might deliver, won't change a bit of this.

The world additionally contains time and chance, which "happeneth to them all." Or in today's vernacular, "shit happens!' Sometimes, things crash upon us unexpectedly, out of the blue, irrationally as it seems. The world does not always make sense, and life is not always fair. But this, in its own way, is all the more reason not to argue by ad miseracordium from personal experience, or to universalize from such experience—be the pathos never so compelling! Nor will such arguments sway the political stance of the present writer, which too is compelling, and embedded in a network of larger considerations that spread far afield.

One way or another, there will always be "men who rape", and there will always be ways to boost the odds of an unfortunate "date" with such a one. And women have no more "right" to neglect reasonable precautions against such a mishap, than they would have any "right" to sit on a hot stove and not get burned. Sexual predators are a wild card in the social ecology, a force of nature if you will, a given. The universe spawns them, and we can only wonder why. And "men" either individually or universally, bear no innate responsibility for their existence. Let us take this fundamental lesson to heart, and we'll all be healthier and happier for it. Understand that the world does not stop turning every time somebody gets raped, nor even when you personally get raped. All right, maybe your world stops turning for a while. But expecting the rest of the world to operate in sync to your world is merely fatuous. Please, please, please... do get over it! I don't mean to sound callous, but consider the alternative to getting over it.

And remember that blaming half the human race for what might have happened to you, or even might someday happen to you, is irrational and counterproductive. If you send a metaphorical cloud of poison to brood menacingly over every man on planet Earth, I positively guarantee that it won't solve anything. Not only that, but poison gas is famous for not staying put; the wind will shift, it will circulate through the social ecology and yes....it will choke you too!

Take these thoughts under consideration, and peace be with you.