Blogger Sofia points to a piece by Hugo Schwyzer at Role/Reboot titled “Why Women are More Often Right”. About what? was my initial response. His only clear example is this:
Here’s an obvious example: rape and parking lots. Both men and women are intellectually aware of the reality of rape. Most understand that it is men who almost always do the raping and women who are generally the ones attacked. But because of his privilege, a man can walk into a parking lot by himself at night and forget about rape, because his maleness affords him the luxury of remaining unobservant of the possibility of sexual danger. A woman walking alone in a parking lot at night will have a different experience, rooted in her vulnerability as a member of a class targeted for sexual violence. Not only is she more vulnerable, but her very understanding of the issue is superior to that of a man walking in the parking lot. He has the privileged luxury of ignorance; she’s forced to reflect, constantly, on rape and its threat to her. That means that when the discussion of women’s vulnerability to assault comes up, women ought to enjoy “epistemic privilege” in the conversation.
Some women will play on men’s innate desire to protect and defend. We’ve all seen sadistic women who will test men’s mettle. Sometimes they shroud their treachery by reporting back to men what another man might have said or done. “He looked at my tits!” and the defender is thrown into a fight he otherwise might not have wanted. I experience this a lot when I go out to the local bar district. I feel like a shepherd. Not only am I charged with being the driver, but I am implicitly charged with being the protector. It’s not because I’m a tough guy or especially big. But I, like most guys, am better equipped to deal with a situation that might arise. And almost zero women recognize their safety and their ability to move freely without ultimate consideration to their safety (in general) as privilege. And this often spills over into their writing a check that the guy they’re with is unable to cash.
Because he does lead quite a privileged existence, Schwyzer doesn’t consider these types of social interactions. He’s probably never seen a parking lot rape go down, but he’s probably also never seen a guy get attacked for no good reason. Even though he’s seen neither, parking lot rape is more likely to be in his field of vision because its more germane to his occupation.
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What interests me is the phrase “because of his privilege”. “Privilege” is socially constructed, isn’t it? “His maleness affords him the luxury”. “A class targeted for sexual violence”.
It’s all pretty arbitrary, isn’t it? “Privilege” is by definition (I think) arbitrary and unearned, right? In Hugo’s world, it could just as easily be women targeting men for sexual violence, if the power structure were organized differently. Perhaps at the stage of primitive capital formation, that was an equal possibility, but the cards just happened not to be dealt that way.
Then he goes Full Non-Sequitur. Never go full non-sequitur:
Yeahhh… So we should “privilege” what women have to say about why rape happens, and disregard what men have to say. Because… why? To help the poor little darlings feel better about themselves, I guess. Which for some reason outweighs boring irrelevant concerns like, for example, helping them not get raped. WTF…
Yah, and muggings never take place in garaged parking lots. What an idiot. Any dark enclosed area that is poorly lit and secured is a danger to everyone. Not just women. I bet with a little research we could find that more men are robbed in garages, then women are raped. So where does that privilege fall than?
Maleness is biologically innate, and hence isn’t a privilege. Being sexually desired on sight by the opposite sex is by an large an advantage for women, though it has it’s downsides, including vulnerability to rape.
Women used to depend upon close family members, generally fathers and then husbands, and sometimes brothers, to protect them from rape. They no longer want such dependency, or at least to give it much credit, with obligation being the price. They want an ever larger state, paid for mostly by men, and endless indoctrination, which tends to belittle men as the price of a more docile world for them.
@Mike – Men have significantly higher odds of being the victim of a random, violent assault. Most attacks on women fall under the ‘domestic abuse’ label.
I’m convinced that this clown is putting on an act. He’s playing “sensitive and respectful” to gets dat ass.
Please ignore him from here on out.
As Matthew Walker says, the politicized language that this guy is using is not a good fit. It isn’t ‘privilege’ to not be in danger of rape inasmuch as being a man is something that is rather immutable…privilege is something that could feasibly be changed, so if this is a privelege then what conclusion is there other than that privilege is nothing to worry about? He wants to use privilege because it is a buzzword that elicits instant nods of sympathy from goopy liberals, and because it is an automatic pejorative in America to be privileged in any way.
There is something to what he is saying in that women have to fear sexual assault and think about it and men generally don’t. However, his example errs in that men are hardly blissfully unaware of the fact that they could be attacked in a parking lot at night–I’m led to believe he has never himself walked through one.
On another case of rape hysteria:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?632966-James-Desborough-and-rape-culture&p=15581932#post15581932
“Okay, you know what? Fuck this.
My friend was assaulted last night. It wasn’t the first time this has happened. Hell, it wasn’t the fifth. It wasn’t even the first time it happened this year. She got away, but she’s shaken, and scared, and having flashbacks to all the other times.
The man who assaulted her is a member of the geek community. The guy before that was too – pretty high standing in the local scene. And the guy before that. And the guy before that. This is a problem. The second time I went to a local convention, another nerd stalked and raped me. For months. When I finally got over that and went to another convention, another nerd raped me. When I tried to report it, the whole convention treated it like a joke.
And now, when I try to do something to stem the rampant misogyny that provides an environment in which sexual assaults are so sickeningly normal, I get rape threats non-stop. I haven’t slept in a week, because I am waking up every hour and having to clear rape threats out of my inbox. I am averaging between ten and twenty-five an hour. That is a minimum of two-hundred forty rape threats per day on a slow day. I cannot physically stay on the phone with the police long enough to report them all.
So fine. I’m taking down the petition. Because I care about my friend and I want to be there for her, and I don’t want to have to worry about some sick fuck attacking her to intimidate me. Because she’s had enough pain in her life already.
You want to talk about silencing? This is what silencing looks like.”
Stalked and raped for months? So….a rape dungeon?
Honestly, nerd culture dating is so filled of nerd queens stringing along a half dozen of guys or more, than on the very very VERY rare case of one of the guys saying “fuck this” and putting his man wrench on her she-place (which, again is an extremely rare occurence given that nerds, specially nerds that go for being such a pathetic orbiter are pussies), I honestly can’t give a fuck.
Females are a majority of rape victims only if you assume ‘rape’ is severely under reported (and there is absolutely no reason to assume this) and you define ‘rape’ as something other than forcing someone into sex. You then also have to define it in such a way that a man can do something that doesn’t involve forcing a woman into sex and qualify as rape but a woman doing the exact same thing to a man not qualify as rape.
Back in the real world where rape means forced sex the majority of victims are male.
Regardless, Schwyzer’s logic is tortured. Even if women were the more likely victim of rape that doesn’t mean we should extend them any room in the conversation at all. Schwyzer is basically saying that getting raped or not getting raped is gender based per se; that it is just a matter of socially constructed privilege. If there is no inherent quality that either men or women possess that makes them more or less likely to be the victim or perpetrator then everyone should logically wish to hear from the people least likely to be victims on how not to be victims, not those most likely to be victims or previous, especially the frequent repeat victims that feminists trot out. If someone has been raped, especially more than once, then the only thing we need to hear from them is what not to do; which is of course ‘victim blaming’ so we never actually hear any viable rape-prevention tactics from this crowd.
This is an entire societal bias though where we give undue weight to recalcitrant fuck ups that portray their own bad decisions as impersonal cosmic forces that act upon the world in which this poor individual has unwitting wandered into, as if getting addicted to drugs, or getting expectantly mugged, raped, or ripped off by all the usual suspects is akin to having walked into the Twilight Zone.
On a further note on not listening to what women have to say here, is what they are currently saying in ‘teach men not to rape’. The problem with this prescription is that it’s a demonstrable fact that the more involvement a father has his with his son the less likely he is to be a rapist. If anyone is teaching anyone not to rape it is is men. Those boys who were raised by women without the influence of men grow up to be responsible for virtually every single rape in the country.
So even when you buy into their bullshit it still doesn’t logically follow. The idea that women are more often right and that all people are equal regardless of gender are mutually exclusive. Of course the syllogism itself is no doubt a part of our ableist, white supremacist, patriarchal, hetero-normative, cisgendered privilege.
Are rape fears remotely rational? I don’t live in a constant state of fear of being mugged, or getting rear ended by a semi. Is rape any more likely?
Replace the word “she” with “White” and “he” with “Black” and “rape” with “insert crime here” and suddenly alight goes off above countless DWL heads.
Okay, probably not.
And speaking of a privileged class victimizing the vulnerable, how about abortion and who’s responsible for 100% of that?
I find it way easier to simply disregard everything that progressive/feminist/liberal mindsets puke up on the page as the statistical odds of them ever hitting the nail on the head are close to nil.
@ alexamenos
perhaps it’s because men are not conflicted by a “mugging fantasy”.
Here’s a great video from GirlWritesWhat. Basically she’s saying that the safer women become, the greater lengths to which they will go to justify their innate fears and suspicions. This includes expanding the definitions of violence, abuse, danger, threat, etc. And this triggers the white knight reflex in men who, like women, are generally much more concerned with female life and safety that male life and safety.
“Look at me! Look at me! Look how men can’t take their eyes off me! Look how they can’t control their essential MANHOOD! I can make them violent AND hard! In parking lots!” I’m not going to speak to the statistics, the “epistemic privilege” crap, the Male Feminist angle etc. The womyn’s movement irrational “rape fears” campaign is the only way for feminists to experience the desire of the modern man without betraying the Sisterhood.
Can we agree that it is not psychologically normative to obsessively think about being a victim of any kind? The Movement is getting SOMETHING out of all the crying-wolf…a little tingle and the approval of civilazation poisoning man-haters.
Most men, myself included, have experienced an ass kicking first hand. Most women I know have never experienced anything like that.
Men, on average, have much more direct experience with personal violence in a way women can’t comprehend.
@compost:
Good point.
Aperaspera is completely on the mark. A lot of rape talk is women stroking their own egos, trying to prove to others how desirable they are. Most of what women do is done to raise their status in some way.
It truly is good to see The Blogger Sofia back posting her wisdoms under the protective wing of a male patron. It’s delightful to see a guy treat a girl like a lady,
You know, I do agree with standpoint theory in that privileged groups are less likely to recognize their advantages than disadvantaged groups. And quite possibly this manifests itself in increased knowledge of the subject in question for the disadvantaged groups.
My real disagreement is that I think men and women are roughly equally privileged (albeit in different ways).
So women might be more knowledgeable about the risks of being raped. But men are more knowledgeable about the risks of being mistaken for a rapist. And men are more knowledgeable about the risks of being mugged in a parking lot.
So women aren’t “more often right”. Perhaps women are more often right about some things, and men are more often right about other things, so it really makes sense to look at the data hard and find the best fit to remove personal bias.
I would say that most of what “people” do is to raise their status in some way.
@Retrenched –
Basically she’s saying that the safer women become, the greater lengths to which they will go to justify their innate fears and suspicions.
Camille Paglia wrote a great essay about this. As a college professor in the early 90s, she noticed that girls from blue-collar backgrounds would take appropriate precautions to stay safe after dark, but they rarely bought into the feminist panic. It was the girls from safe, affluent suburbs who fell for Take Back The Night rhetoric — having never dealt with real danger, they combined an outsized sense of fear with a lack of confidence in their own ability to defend themselves. No doubt this is still the case today.
This particular feminist obsession (“I must always be vigilant, because rapists lurk around every corner!”) strikes me as a socially acceptable way for liberal white women to express otherwise taboo anxieties about urban crime.
If they get nervous in dimly lit parking lots — and they probably should — they’re not really reacting to the threat of rape so much as a generalized fear of urban predators. That man lurking in the shadows could just as soon be a mugger as a rapist.
But they can’t admit that, even to themselves, without raising uncomfortable questions about why certain places are less safe than others. By hyperventilating over “rapists” (who, as every Law & Order fan knows, are invariably white male bourgeois Christians), they can verbalize a legitimate fear without slipping into crimethink.
Women supposedly have superior knowledge of rape due to their constant awareness of their vulnerability to it. And yet there are countless stories of women suffering from “avoidable” rapes — i.e., they did not stay out of the parking lot. If female awareness of rape does not translate into practical action — avoiding risky situations — then I question whether they are truly constantly aware of their vulnerability (if they were, why didn’t they take action on it?) and I reject the idea that such oblivious imbeciles should enjoy “epistemic privilege” in any conversation about the subject.
An even more hilarious example of this is with nerds literally preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Does it strike anyone as authentic that these social justice-believing suburban dwellers are actually buying guns and fortifying their homes because of the likely threat of hordes of reanimated corpses that will come swarming out of the cities in the near future?
Women have evolved to ‘tend and befriend’, their radar for danger is unreliable, so they can mate with brutes, when desired. Men have evolved to look to the horizon to search for potential danger(and to be hostile to outsiders).
A few decades ago back in my teens, our female company(emboldened by liquor) would have us barging down streets that would make the males among us balk. You may call this a ‘shit test’. I think they had little clue about the potential dangers, and anyway it would be the boys who would draw the flak. “Let’s you and him fight over the princesses.”
Do you think that the Saiga 12 will be useful when the Zombie Apocalypse happens? Will I need garlic in my OO buckshot?
Why are you bothering with that wanker Hugo Schwyzer?
Schwyzer has trained himself to see the world in an extremely limited way – he has a distinct pair of glasses on, and he wears them well. he never takes them off.
He actually exercised his male privilege far more than most other men in his little world – like a kind-of Alpha Male of Feminism. He’s being derided for much this reason by his former cultmates.
Good for him. he deserves it.
On another note, Schwyzer never fails to fail.
“Schwyzer has trained himself to see the world in an extremely limited way – he has a distinct pair of glasses on, and he wears them well. he never takes them off.”
Pretty much.
In his mind men are privileged and woman are oppressed.
Honestly i don’t understand why people even bother with this guy
If women are the only ones qualified to talk about rape, why is Hugo Schwyzer yapping about it?
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“If women are the only ones qualified to talk about rape, why is Hugo Schwyzer yapping about it”
‘cuz donchya know, he almost killed one of his ex-girfriend’s in a drug filled rage. Oh, and he bragged about banging students on his desk. I suppose he is Alpha ™
I never understood women who played the “let’s you and him fight” card. It’s clear she doesn’t care about her man’s safety if she’s putting him in harm’s way just because someone looked at her tits. I appreciate that my husband is naturally protective of me, but 9 times out of 10 I’d try to talk him down from fighting another man. It doesn’t matter how bad ass you think your man is, you have no idea who’s carrying what when you instigate a bar fight; I know someone who got shot dead in such a situation. I’d MUCH rather feel temporarily disrespected than have my husband maimed or killed.
And I don’t get the rape hysteria either. Yes, rape is a threat that is usually unique to women, but there are threats unique to men as well, like bar fights and dying in combat. Of course I’m concerned about rape when I walk through a dark parking lot. I’m also concerned about being mugged or hit by a car or attacked by a stray dog. That’s why I try to avoid wandering around parking lots, or getting sloppy drunk around strange men. You can’t “teach men not to rape” any more than you can teach them not to rob or kill or drive too fast. It’s a dangerous world and some people are just predators; the most any of us can do is mitigate risk and get on with our lives. I’m not sure why rape in particular would be a political issue. Most of the women who are the most hysterical about being raped are white, middle-class, liberal American women from gentrified neighborhoods – women who are statistically the LEAST likely to be raped as adults if they take even the barest minimum of safety precautions. Meanwhile there are other countries where rape is an immutable fact of life (I’ve lived in a few), and these women don’t get any airtime from the “look at meeeee!” slut walk crowd.
“Some women will play on men’s innate desire to protect and defend. We’ve all seen sadistic women who will test men’s mettle. Sometimes they shroud their treachery by reporting back to men what another man might have said or done. “He looked at my tits!” and the defender is thrown into a fight he otherwise might not have wanted. I experience this a lot when I go out to the local bar district.”
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Hugo Schwyzer writes some stuff that has some huge logical leaps.