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| This post tackles sensitive subjects. |
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I don’t have an opinion on “rape culture,” a made-up
word meant to attempt to instill guilt in teenage gamers who say “damn, you got
raped,” in reference to getting killed in a first-person shooter by another
player? Obviously I have ‘privilege,’ white
privilege, even, and my lack of comparable upset to the ‘feminist’ means I
don’t care about women, or wink at rape. It’s an offensive insult, as I care
very much about honoring and protecting women, but my way of accomplishing this
is not reducible to screaming at someone for violating my private banned-words
list. Instead, it shows itself through modeling actual chivalrous behavior, and
confronting guys who have wrong views of women, sex, relationships, etc. Don’t
get me wrong, I don’t think actual rape is a funny thing and I am certainly
angered when someone actually jokes about sexual assault without any show of
seriousness. But the word ‘rape’ on some level simply means a violent
domination of someone against their will. The word definitely applies to, say,
getting chainsawed through the back, as may happen in the Gears of War video
game series. One could make the distinction that it’s a virtual rape. And I
don’t think that the use of that term necessarily diminishes it, and if a
person does have a blasé view of sexual violence, I maintain that simply using
the word in a fantasy-violence context isn’t what made them have that view.
Rather, their attitude towards sex was already present and the way they used
the word was an outgrowth of that unconcerned attitude.
Simply looking at the
words someone uses or is okay with hearing on occasion does not validate the
conclusion that they disregard the seriousness of sexual assault or have a low
view of women. The nicest, kindest, most soft-spoken men you know could harbor
violent urges and secretly hate women. How would you know? You can’t know a
person’s thoughts. You may know something
about them by the words they say, but you can never know everything.
Consequently, this works for people who use harsh words, too. Guys who cuss
might be otherwise responsible and respectful; there is then simply a
disconnect between the character they know they ought to have and the one which
they present to others. Are guys supposed to feel guilty over having the “privilege” to not live in fear of being
raped, so that they have the opportunity (whether they act on it or not,
whether they choose to be a jerk or whether they choose to have empathy) to not
view rape as deadly serious business to the point of being afraid to say the
word? Some modern feminists would answer affirmatively. This is one of the
reasons why I can’t respect modern feminists. People who are innocent of crimes
that are committed by others who have nothing to do with them are not guilty
and should not feel guilty over it. IT
IS NOT THEIR FAULT. This is the linchpin for the fight I have with third-wave
feminists over the issues of “male privilege” and other made up concepts
designed to give man-haters an outlet and an excuse to practice misandry and
get away with it. Well, whether you follow my logic or not, now you know my suspicion,
and why I don’t trust those making the accusation.
I
should, in fairness, point out that the 3rd-wave feminist would
dispute that they’re attempting to place the guilt, blame and shame of
male-on-female rape on law-abiding, responsible young men without the slightest
tendency of violence toward women, in word or deed. Instead, they would claim
that by their words (to recap, using “rape!” as an interjection when being
virtually killed by a computer game) somehow affect other boys/men to the point
where their accumulated words create a “culture” of irresponsible unconcern for
women that somehow is supposed to imply to those who go on to be rapists that rape
is apparently okay, because those other guys seem to talk about it like it’s no
big deal. Apparently. Yeah, I don’t buy that argument.
First, I agree that
every individual bears some responsibility for the community because they do in
fact influence it. But this is not an enforceable responsibility, which they
can be punished for failing to uphold according to someone else’s arbitrary
opinion about how they should or should not conduct themselves. Second, I defy
the claim that the 3WF is just talking about increasing civic responsibility,
and hold that she is indeed attempting to pin the blame for actual rape on
those who are innocent. (My experience with seeing how they argue bears this
out, their self-serving objections to the contrary.) We’ll call these
‘gentlemen,’ for future reference. Guys who behave themselves as they should.
The fundamental underlying thing that angers me about the way the 3WF goes
about the problem (does anyone deny that rape is an actual societal ill?) is
that their modus operandi in
“rectifying” the fact of women being attacked is to retaliate by attacking men.
And not even the men who attacked women, but the guys whom the feminista
derangedly thinks aren’t doing “enough” to stop rape from happening. As if any
individual man has both the power and opportunity to stop the FACT of rape.
It’s egregiously illogical, and to be showered with words intended to produce
guilt over something that I bear no culpability for is, bottom-line, unjust. Nothing frustrates me quite as
much as wrongful punishment.
Let’s go back to the
point I made about not knowing whether a guy is a ‘bad guy’ or ‘good guy’ based
on how they speak. The verse “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaks,” came to my mind fairly easily. It’s a good thing to consider. So that
I’m not misunderstood, I don’t mean to say that a guy can have a severe
potty-mouth and be perfectly fine. On some level, the heart isn’t right, because otherwise he
wouldn’t be saying those things. But it would be a mistake to conclude that
because a guy presents himself very well, that this means that he has a good
heart. Another verse is “man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at
the heart.” What the mouth speaks, while being ‘out of the abundance of the
heart,’ is still part of the ‘outward appearance,’ and is therefore deceptive.
I think the appropriate way to understand the first verse is that a person who
talks like a jerk is, fundamentally, a jerk on some level, but this is all you
can conclude. You can not conclude anything about what you do not see. If someone does not speak, then you cannot know what is
in their heart. So the point of the verses together is to say that you can draw
conclusions about a person based on what you see, but you cannot draw
conclusions based on what you do not see, and therefore you should be careful
to judge by what you see alone. In other words, you should be careful how you
judge someone by their actions, and if you cannot be careful, it’s better to
avoid judging at all in the first place, because you’re pretty much guaranteed
to come to the wrong conclusion. And that’s third wave feminism in a nutshell.
So, what is my view,
then? It’s easy to disagree with someone. One can look very impressive by being
perpetually critical of others, but unless you have an alternative position
which you are willing to defend, you’re either an ignorant fool (if you don’t
have one) or a coward (if you’re unwilling to defend it). Either way, you’re
criticizing someone else’s ideas without putting forth any of your own, and
that is the behavior of an intellectual terrorist. You only tear things down,
you don’t build anything yourself, only destroy. But I am not such a person. I’m
not criticizing for the sake of criticizing, but because I have a
well-developed view which third-wave feminism contrasts with. On those points
of difference, I find reason to object, and therefore offer criticism. I’ve
hinted at a few things I believe already. One, individuals of any genographic
group (in contrast to demographic. Demographics concerns religious beliefs,
political affiliations, cultures, social status, etc; Genographics concerns
national origin, sex, ethnicity(skin color/shade), birth language, age, etc)
bear no culpable (guilt, fault, etc) responsibility for the actions of any
other member of that genographic group, or any member of any other group, for
that matter. Two, all individuals have some responsibility to act in a certain
way for the betterment of their society – but here’s where I differ from 3WF –
this does NOT mean that if society deteriorates, you can trace this back to
some error on their part. In other words, I have a responsibility to honor
women. If someone in New York City rapes a woman, that did not occur because of
some failure on my part to honor women. That’s my thesis. This is where I knock
heads with third-wave feminism. Furthermore, I assure you that I have not
misrepresented my opposition at all. I have had repeated interactions with
others to this effect, and the people I have spoken with have not been one-off
aberrations, but highly educated women holding positions as representatives of
the present feminist movement on multiple levels. They all say the same thing,
so I’m justified in characterizing the movement as promoting this view.
The solution to rape,
according to 3WF, is to find something to scream at, because that’s just so
productive, isn’t it? Since screaming at random guys is insane and makes you
look like a crazy sociopath, the feministas decided that they needed to invent
something to be a convenient target, or excuse, for the venting of their anger
and frustration. So “rape culture” was born, which is simply one of the newer
buzz-words that essentially mean the same as the catch-all, “male privilege.”
Basically it’s a philosophy that says that as a man, if you’re not a
woman-hating criminal, you’re part of the problem. Read that again, I didn’t
mistype. It’s a complicated roundabout excuse for man-hating women to scream at
random guys after all. It’s what they wanted to do, and with a little bit of
crackpot philosophy, it’s possible for them to behave outrageously and get away
with it, all while making themselves look smart to each other by talking about
the newest “gender theory” that explains why women are so awesome and guys are
lame and stupid. And mean jerks.
Can you tell that I’m a bit emotionally
invested in this? I notice that my tone became more severe through the course
of writing, but despite the bitter
sarcasm in the last few hundred words, I maintain that my accusations are
valid. Far from saying that all women who consider themselves “feminists” are
necessarily the way I describe, I nevertheless insist that the movement as a
whole is misandrist – man-hating – and nothing more than an elaborate
pseudo-scholarly façade which sole purpose is to give angry women an outwardly
legitimate reason to spew vile invective, disrespect, patronizing insults and
unwarranted accusations toward people who don’t deserve any of it. And why are
they angry? Well, why do some men hate women? You answer that question, and you’ll
have the answer to why some women hate men. I suspect the pathology is quite
similar and presumably much more of a personal issue than anything involving a
conspiracy to diminish the seriousness of sexual crimes.
If 3WF’s “solution” to
rape isn’t really a solution, then what would be the solution? Contrary to
feminism’s solution of putting men down, I propose the simple alternative of
raising men up. Not over women, mind you. Just out of the gutter where they’ve
been left to fester for the last several decades while the “Women’s Movement”
has produced a real “culture” of systematically ignoring the needs of boys and
in fact privileging young girls,
resulting in disproportionate levels of men entering any area of life. I
suppose some statistics here would be helpful, but I’m not connected to the
internet right now. I do know that roughly 60% of Baccalaureate degrees go to
women, and considering that the ratio of men to women is much closer to 50:50
than 40:60, and furthermore considering the notion that the goal of the Women’s
Movement was to achieve equality, hasn’t the time long ago come for spending
more effort helping boys so they can be equal to girls? The fact that even as
women make up a sizeable majority of college students and college graduates,
the Movement keeps pushing ahead while ignoring the men and boys being left
behind reveals that it was never about “equality.” It was about superiority,
plain and simple. And the worst part about it is that this isn’t even helping
women. But talking about how the “Women’s Movement” has failed women is a 3,000-word
subject in its own right. I can’t divert to talk about that now. Forgive me.
But based in part on some arguments that won’t fit here for lack of time, I
believe that modern feminism has both created and fostered the “culture” of misogyny
that it ironically rants about. You can’t promote the “right” of young girls to
engage in pornography and then complain about women being degraded in the
culture. There’s no consistency there. If your hope is to encourage people to
respect women, why would your every action be directed at disrespecting women?
The third-wave feminists have themselves created the “culture” of chauvinism
that permeates the places they frequent, and the maddening irony of this is
that the very thing that they accuse innocent men of – creating a culture that
degrades women and subjects them to violence – is what they themselves are guilty of! This is what most frustrates and
angers me about the whole thing.
Feminism has had its chance. Now, instead of
letting a bunch of sexist women dictate how men should behave, while refusing
to put any limits on how women should behave, I suggest that the time is nigh
for men to take the initiative themselves. Don’t be tempted to take advantage
of the culture that the feminists created. Allow me to explain. This is what
many guys do. I’ve seen this everywhere I go. The vast majority of males LOVE
what feminism has produced: hordes of uninhibited young girls who will drink
and lay and on top of it, if they mess up and get pregnant, they’ll get an
abortion, absolving the guys of any and all consequences of their own
irresponsible actions. What’s the best way to stop date rape? Might I suggest
not promoting that girls view drinking and ‘hooking up’ as “fun,” but rather
something to avoid? Shocking. I can feel the feminist anger rising against me.
But the truth tends to insult people—that’s how it lets them know they don’t
have it. However, as I noted, since the change is not going to come from the
female side, since the girls are squarely in the grips of the perverting
influence of 3WF, the change needs to come from the male side. These same guys
who are living it up, taking advantage of the easy access to sexually
unrestrained girls and women, are the same guys who need to be the ones to say “stop,”
and to resist and reject the very thing that they find so enjoyable.
Sounds impossible. How
would this be accomplished? There’s a couple of answers to that question. The
first: slowly. There is no quick fix to any problem in society. You can’t just
throw money at something, as politicians are wont to do, and you can’t just hold
a conference to “raise awareness,” as academia is wont to do. The only way to
change a large group of people is through grass-roots mobilization, a bottom-up
approach, rather than a top-down one. You can’t simply command people to behave
a certain way. For the record, rape is already
illegal, not to mention deeply morally wrong. For somebody to commit rape,
they’re not going to hesitate because somebody told them not to do it. The
mentality that can rationalize a violent sexual act against someone else’s will
is not one that submits to moral authorities, be they legal, familial or theological.
The person in question needs more than merely deterrence – he needs to have his
entire way of thinking changed. And THAT is something that culture can effect
(that’s not a typo, either). The best way to prevent crime is not to be able to
intervene at all times wherever the criminal may strike. This doesn’t solve the
problem. The criminal is still a criminal at heart, even if the crime wasn’t
committed that time.
The best way to stop crime is to destroy criminals – by turning
them into law-abiding citizens. How do you do that? You change their
perspective. You convince them that the sexually gratuitous lifestyle is not
satisfying, and ultimately destructive. You convince them that exercising self
control and serving the good of others prior to the pleasure of the self is a
superior way to live. When the guys who go out looking for someone to have sex
with no longer feel compelled to do so, the chances of someone being taken
advantage of in the service of someone else’s lusts greatly diminishes. And I
could devote more words to elaborating on my point, but I think it makes enough
sense to not need many examples. Simply put, you need to perform “inception” on
all the males in America. Quite like the movie, that’s why I’m referencing it.
The idea is to plant an idea, or multiple ideas, in their mind that then take
root and lead to changed behavior in their lives. Instead of making demands,
get them to understand why they would want
to change their ways. When you show them that your alternative is not only
right but also more appealing, you’ll have a better result. Granted, some will
resist your attempts to model real manhood and insist on taking advantage of
loose girls just because they can. These boys are too far gone for you to have
any success with the ‘carrot’ approach. They’re going to have to experience
punishment before they “get” it. That’s not your responsibility, it’s not our
responsibility – it’s law enforcement’s. Or his parents’, or some other
authority. Our goal is to work with the receptive minds that are out there and
confront them with the fact that there’s an alternative way to be, and they’re
making the wrong choice by not choosing it. This is what’s going to change the
culture, and produce true harmony between the sexes. And I feel compelled to
add, if this approach is rejected, in favor of the tried-and-false method of
the feministas, then I assure you that things will get worse and worse. You can
take my solution or leave it. But there are consequences to doing the wrong
thing.
I would be remiss if I
didn’t addend that the only way to really change a person’s heart is by the
transformation of the Holy Spirit that is called the “new birth.” Christianity
is more than just a belief system. When a person is saved, God begins to
transform them on the inside, changing their very desires. Remember how I said
that law could only punish but wouldn’t make the criminal a non-criminal at
heart? Well, that’s what the Gospel has the power to do. It not only justifies
a person in the sight of God, but it changes his heart so that the things he
used to love, he begins to hate, and the things he used to hate, he comes to
love. Only a total spiritual transformation of the soul can accomplish the feat
of turning a rapist-at-heart into a man who loves and honors women. And the
only way that can happen is if the Gospel is preached to them.
So the solution
to the problems faced by feminists, not just rape but EVERY problem stemming
from the sinful human heart, is the love of God available through Jesus Christ.
The solution is for the Gospel to be preached. Consequently, then, ignoring God
and avoiding dealing with the profound spiritual issues at the heart of
societal ills such as rape and misogyny will not accomplish anything but
exacerbating the symptoms and perpetuating the decline in man’s interaction
with himself. But don’t mistake me for peddling the Gospel as a pragmatic
solution to temporal dilemmas. The Gospel is so much more. First and foremost,
it is a reconciliation of man with God, forgiveness of sins and the offer of
salvation and eternal life. Even if this was “all” there was, it would be
enough for me. But God isn’t content merely to promise future things. He’s
intimately involved with us and everyone who comes to Him not only receives the
promise of eternal life, but they receive a life full of Him even until then.
And a life filled with God can never defy God’s commandments to such an
egregious extent so as to result in rape. A more harmonious society is just a
side effect, one of the many wonderful blessings that by no means must happen,
but which God lavishes on the nation who honors, loves, and seeks after Him.
I
want the Gospel to be spread so that my countrymen can avoid the wrath to come,
and be saved. But second to that, I know that millions of Spirit-filled men and
women have the power, God’s power through them, to bring peace and blessing to
this country of a magnitude yet not seen. Why wouldn’t I want to see my nation
prosper? So, in more ways than one, the answer to every thing is God. It is His
Gospel. And the choice is ours. If we want to have peace in the next life, we must accept the Gospel for ourselves. And
if we want to live in peace in this life (no guarantees, though!), we must
spread the Gospel to others. Not to mention that your efforts might be the only
chance they get to take hold of eternal life. Love your fellow men and women. Don’t wait.
~ Rak Chazak
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