{"id":31832,"date":"2015-06-28T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31832"},"modified":"2015-06-26T12:14:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T16:14:59","slug":"the-obsession-with-rape-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/06\/28\/the-obsession-with-rape-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"The obsession with “rape culture”"},"content":{"rendered":"

At sp!ked<\/em>, Ella Whelan<\/a> talks about Canadian reporter Lauren Southern’s public dissent from one of the main talking points of the feminist movement:<\/p>\n

Southern had previously sparked debate by posting a picture online of her holding up a sign that explained why she didn\u2019t \u2018need feminism\u2019 \u2013 a response to a popular feminist selfie campaign. Following this up a year later with a video entitled \u2018Why I am not a feminist\u2019, she called out feminism as a \u2018faux form of equality under a gender-biased word\u2019. In Southern\u2019s report on the Vancouver SlutWalk, she explained that she had attended the rally to \u2018challenge the fearmongering feminist narrative about men, women and violence\u2019. It is this \u2018rape culture\u2019 narrative, she tells me, which is really trivialising rape. \u2018Women are going to equate things that aren\u2019t rape with rape because they interpret guys whistling at them as rape culture\u2019, she says. \u2018The misuse of the word [rape] is very dangerous because it allows for false accusations.\u2019<\/p>\n

Southern sees feminists\u2019 obsession with \u2018rape culture\u2019 as a languishing in female weakness. \u2018I\u2019ve always thought that the main feminist issue was empowering women, in real terms; telling women to go out there, get the job, do what you want, not run around screaming \u201ctrigger warning\u201d and crying.\u2019 Her assessment of contemporary feminism is astute. Following her visit to the rally in Vancouver, Southern received a barrage of messages from self-proclaimed radical feminists who told her \u2018they were vomiting all night because they were so triggered\u2019 by what she had done. That\u2019s right, these women felt physically sick just because someone disagreed with them.<\/p>\n

This bizarre prizing of weakness on the part of contemporary feminists is, Southern explains, down to their refusal to engage in debate on a regular basis. \u2018It\u2019s not hard what they do. They go on to a street where everyone agrees with them, wearing their underwear, and get to show off for a day\u2026 They don\u2019t surround themselves with people who disagree with them.\u2019 This refusal to engage in debate was evident at the protest itself, with Southern having to climb up on to a plinth to avoid her sign being covered up by angry protesters.<\/p>\n

So where does this desire to portray weakness as a strength come from? Southern puts it down to an institutionalised victim culture in Western universities: \u2018Academia is obsessed with feminism. You\u2019ve got a protective narrative which screams \u201crape culture\u201d at the slightest thing and students just eat it up. Whether that\u2019s because they want good grades or not, this stuff doesn\u2019t get challenged.\u2019 As a result, she says, sexism becomes a \u2018self-fulfilling prophecy\u2019. \u2018If you\u2019re told that you\u2019re a victim as you grow up, you\u2019re going to have a confirmation bias when you\u2019re not hired for a job but a man is. You\u2019ll hear sexism in your head\u2019, she says. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At sp!ked, Ella Whelan talks about Canadian reporter Lauren Southern’s public dissent from one of the main talking points of the feminist movement: Southern had previously sparked debate by posting a picture online of her holding up a sign that explained why she didn\u2019t \u2018need feminism\u2019 \u2013 a response to a popular feminist selfie campaign. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[987,254,303,490],"class_list":["post-31832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-sexism","tag-vancouver"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8hq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31833,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31832\/revisions\/31833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}