Ladies Against Women: The Next Generation?

[Norseman]

So I was mucking about the blogosphere when I found this little gem. Now untill I watched this I had always considered myself somewhat to the right, not to mention leaning towards the "Nature inclines, but does not determine" point of view. Then I watched this video and for a moment I wondered if I was back in the 1950s. Maybe it's just the woman being interviewed being incredibly annoying, but something about this whole thing just repells me.

So is this sort of thing common to American conservativism or what? Do I fail to grasp some subtext due to being a decadent socialist European?

[SirNitram]

I keep seeing it. Did you know an Ohio group had a 'game' where you're supposed to figure out who was telling the truth in a report of rape. The guy who raped a girl on a date, the girl on a date, and a friend of them both. The girl on the date had a 'reputation' for putting out and was 'slutty'. Therefore, whose story is the least credible?

The girl who says she was raped, because she's a slut. Questionable decisions, reason to lie, reputation for being loose... Hey, whore got it coming!

Yes, they took it down. But this was acceptable.

Pay for your own rape kit? Acceptable.

Rape jokes about how Obama's administration is acting by conservatives? Acceptable.

Hey, just look at all the anti-abortion arguments: A woman's life and happiness is not worth a potential life. After all, that life might be male, and therefore have worth beyond being an incubation chamber..

(I'm cynical, yes. And I'm referring to the arguments made in legislature, as they see fit to dictate to all women they can.)

[The Minx]

So is this sort of thing common to American conservativism or what?

Yup, I'm afraid so.

Do I fail to grasp some subtext due to being a decadent socialist European?

Nope, I'm afraid not.

Rape jokes about how Obama's administration is acting by conservatives? Acceptable.

I must have missed these.

[SirNitram]

Montage of the rape comparisons.

[General Havoc]

In fairness, I literally do not know one person, liberal or conservative, who has not made a rape joke at one time or another. Including my parents. Including my grandmother. Including myself. They are in terrible taste, yes, but sometimes we all have terrible taste. It is not at all uncommon for people to compare any kind of situation wherein someone is doing something unpleasant to someone else (especially if the person being done to is oneself) to being "raped". Granted, I find the comparison absurd, and it is not the sort of thing one would hope to see from legislators, but it's nothing that the rest of us don't do.

In addition, I'd like to know more about this Ohio game thing. What was it? A study of people's perspectives on rape? Was it intended to be a lesson on how rape should be perceived? If so, that would worry me greatly. But I have to say, being presented with only the evidence you cited, I would also consider the woman's testimony to be the most suspect (tied with that of the man's). It has nothing to do with who is and is not a slut, but with the fact that in a he-said/she-said situation, one must look to factors other than the say-so of the participants.

And finally, that is a very strong mis-characterization of anti-abortion arguments. One might as well turn around and say that arguments in favor of abortion are all rooted in the notion that children are all evil crotch-spawn with no value who should be culled lest they impede one's own personal well-being. While there are no doubt people in existence who believe this (as there are those who believe that women have no purpose save as incubators for male children), it would be highly inaccurate to describe that as the root of all pro-choice activity. Similarly, most people I know who oppose abortion are motivated by notions that no person has the right to kill another person for their own convenience. One can argue the accuracies and inaccuracies of whether or not abortion is such a case, but most people who oppose abortion are not doing so because they hate women. Indeed, most of those that I know who oppose it, are women.

I do not know this NEW group from the video, and the people who were discussing it are incredibly stupid, at least from the perspectives I could see. I have to say however, that I don't entirely disagree with them. The right wing ideology that this crap usually devolves into is unfortunate, but the fact that they are right wing crackpots (that much appears to be clear) does not make them wrong about a number of factors. The notion of "liberal party lines" on college campuses, while usually used as a sound byte for conservative talk radio hosts, is actually not entirely inaccurate, at least not on many of the colleges out here in the West Coast. I knew professors at my college, for instance, who were denied tenure because of their non-liberal political views. Prior to the 2004 election, the school issued a policy notice that active support for so-called "regressive" political parties, including the Republican party, would be considered a "fault-establishing factor" for any acts of assault or violence that occurred on campus. Meaning that if it was known that you voted Republican, and you were beaten up by other students for it, the campus would consider the voting patterns of the participants as determinant for who was at fault. A friend of mine who was (and is) a republican was in fact assaulted on election night (two distraught democrats set on him with their fists and beat him up as a known right winger), and the school refused to so much as investigate it upon learning that it was politically motivated. And all this took place shortly after the Kerri Dunn Incident.

Now, this is just personal anecdote from one school, so take that for what it is (not much). A lot of people at a lot of schools however have told me much the same, and I believe it speaks to something a bit more systematic. There are many schools in the country wherein deviation from a prescribed political theory is punished, in many cases quite severely. I understand of course some of these schools have an entirely reversed dynamic, where republicans set the rules to make democrats feel unwelcome. I believe however, given the general political affiliations of academics as a whole, that this is not the majority, save perhaps in some areas of the south.

I'm not saying I agree wholeheartedly with these women. I do not. But whether or not I agree with their politics, there is something to their claim that many colleges are hostile to any sort of mindset that opposes their own pre-set views on the way of the world, and choices made by the students or faculty that do not coincide with those views are often penalized quite harshly. I also do not see anything particularly objectionable with most of the actions they described as having taken (such as 'gentlemanly conduct awards'), though I grant, I had technical problems with this video player, and parts of this video I could not see. If there was something horrible that I missed, please let me know.

[Norseman]

I think we all agree that academia is full of liberals, that's not really the point, nor is this place really a hotbed of left wing thinking. Nor do we question that feminism (so-called) may have degenerated into screeching lunacy in some areas. I think the point is that just because people in the 1950s were in fact right about a great number of things, doesn't mean I want to go back to those days.