The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Dorchester Doofus

Posted on | July 6, 2014 | 65 Comments

The Boston Globe last week published an op-ed column about “rape culture” by libertarian author Cathy Young. Her column prompted several letters to the editor, including this piece of spectacular idiocy:

As a man in my 20s, I find absurd Cathy Young’s assertion that “the overwhelming majority of men need no teaching that rape is a repugnant crime” (“Rape in the real world,” Op-ed, June 29). The flurry of catcalls that women encounter as they walk to work or school and the constant objectification of the female body should be evidence enough that our culture of harm exists apart from the most extreme acts of violation by a small set of psychologically sick offenders.
How many males have heard and truly understood stories of terror from women who have been followed blocks from the subway, waitresses who have been forced to accept harassment to make tips, and girls who have been complimented in ways that make them feel sick?
The status quo is derogatory not only to women but to men who are cued to choose power over love, stoic silence over honesty.
We should hold individual perpetrators accountable for their actions, but we cannot expect to solve a crisis of rape culture until we shift from the stigmatization of the mentally ill to the stigmatization of patriarchy and our complicity in it.
I am willing to risk anxiety to see that change come about.
Joel Wool
Dorchester

What you see here is the deliberate conflation of offensive behaviors — catcalls on the street, “harassment” of waitresses, unwelcome compliments — with the felony crime of rape.

There are many things which are widely recognized as offensive which are not crimes, yet the aggregation of feminist pet peeves into a collective category called “rape culture” permits a sort of rhetorical abracadabra where everything leads to a discussion of rape. Why? So that feminists can expand the Victimhood Zone. The woman targeted by wolf-whistling construction workers and the waitress dealing with a lecherous customer are thus included as victims of sexism (“the constant objectification of the female body”) and everyday hassles — offensive, but not criminal — are made analogous to rape.

So “rape culture” (a large and amorphous cluster of feminist grievances) is a “crisis,” and the solution offered is a “shift . . . to the stigmatization of patriarchy and our complicity in it.”

Would this proposed “shift” actually reduce the incidence of rape? I doubt it. Rapists probably don’t spend much time reading op-ed columns — or letters to the editors, either. As a matter of fact, I doubt that men who hassle waitresses or shout crudities at women on the street are habitual readers of op-ed columns.

It is within the cohort of Men Who Don’t Read the Boston Globe that one will find not only a vast majority of rapists, but also most men who engage in Offensive Non-Criminal Sexist Behavior. So the discussion of “rape culture” among the intelligentsia is just a lot of empty rhetorical posturing that won’t do anything to improve women’s lives.

Speaking of The Constant Objectification of Women’s Bodies . . .

On this Sunday’s episode of Botched we meet Renee, who after six months of silicone butt injections began to have health issues.
She explains, “I wanted the volume and the fullness back at the top of my butt.”
However, the silicone spread throughout her body which caused major health problems.
Although her doctor wanted to go a different route, Renee got butt implants to replace the fullness that the injections were providing.

There’s video at the link. I, for one, denounce this abhorrent practice.

 

Category: Feminism

Comments

65 Responses to “The Dorchester Doofus”

  1. NeoWayland
    July 6th, 2014 @ 6:18 pm

    Adult role modeling. And fathers teaching their sons respect, period.

  2. Quartermaster
    July 6th, 2014 @ 6:29 pm

    Heh! Hit a nerve. Hard! The definition isn’t my opinion, but from a dictionary. If it were a matter of opinion your reaction might be, slightly, justified, although the language is not.

    Ob the contrary, you were shown to an ignoramus.

  3. Daniel O'Brien
    July 6th, 2014 @ 6:55 pm

    “I like big ….” , never mind, you know how it goes…

  4. Art Deco
    July 6th, 2014 @ 6:56 pm

    Just out of curiosity, has anyone heard a catcall or wolf whistle out of a construction site or any other locus in the last 30 years??
    —
    While we are at it, I imagine RSM or others here have daughters or wives who waitress? What are their complaints? The waitress in my proximity has never complained about being hit on. (She is divorced and middle aged but handsome and well-preserved, someone who would attract attention particularly from men of a certain age). She had this to say, “I hate to say it, but the worst customers are women my age. They are bad tippers and they have to have everything just so, and they tell you.”

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 6th, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

    If we could run cars on sockpuppets and trolls, we would have that magical alternative energy source that Al Gore wishes for.

    Trouble is they are full of “hot air” of the type that you get in a “dutch oven.” It stinks and it is a green house gas worse than CO2.

  6. Mike G.
    July 6th, 2014 @ 7:55 pm

    ISWYDT.

  7. Mike G.
    July 6th, 2014 @ 7:57 pm

    Sounds like to me it’s a well embellished resume-If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullsh!t.

  8. john s
    July 6th, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

    OK well I have known a few waitresses and a fair number of them dress provocatively in order to get bigger tips. Certainly this is the case in every bar in Canada. There are conservatively dressed servers, sure, but we don’t ‘harass’ them.
    As for the cat calls in the street, well I have long noticed that women like such attention from the right men, and complain about inappropriate or ‘creepy’ behavior when it is coming from men they are not interested in. If I were a rape culture specialist i would want these women punished for enabling behavior but as a reasonable person i would suggest that people just get over it and get a hobby.

  9. Federale
    July 7th, 2014 @ 2:04 pm

    Typical homo.

  10. Quartermaster
    July 7th, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

    She could also avail herself of the products of Nabisco or Little Debbie.

  11. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 9:38 pm

    “…Perhaps a searchlight with a silhouette of a vagina.”

    That’s already been done…

    http://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/114/7b042560-85fc-0131-274a-1661ea77f52d.gif

  12. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 9:42 pm

    It’s in the casting call. They all want to be famous, after all.

  13. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 9:48 pm

    I think folks are misspelling Dork Hester.

  14. CruisingTroll
    July 8th, 2014 @ 1:59 pm

    “shift . . . to the stigmatization of patriarchy” = stigmatize men.

  15. CruisingTroll
    July 8th, 2014 @ 2:07 pm

    “Given that the overwhelming majority of men do not loose flurries of catcalls at women, follow women for blocks from subways, ”

    Well, I DO follow women for blocks from subways. Okay, I don’t, but that’s only because I’ve never ridden a subway in my life. I DO follow women for blocks from bus stops though. And it pisses me off slightly that they keep looking back and giving me the stink-eye like I’m some sort of stalker, instead of somebody GOING IN THE SAME FRIGGIN’ DIRECTION. We’re in a CITY lady, not on a deserted, dead end country lane with your fairybook castle at the end of it.