Thoughts
Legalise Rape and a "girl will protect her body like her smartphone."
Thursday, February 04, 2016
I'd had
an idea to write a post called 'The Problem with Pick Up Artists' for a little
while now. My intention was that this would lead on from a previous article ('Negotiating Gender Roles with the BBC') with a more refined
focus on the attitudes that pick up artists tend to exhibit. As it turns out,
these pick up artists are worse than I initially thought. Although I do not
want to allow him the publicity by dedicating a post to his cause, Roosh V's
marches to legalise rape under the guise of the innocently-named 'international
meetup day' - due to take place this weekend (Saturday 6th February 2016)
- urgently needs to be addressed. Despite announcements on Return of Kings that
the official 'meet ups' have been cancelled, there is no guarantee that those
who were intending to gather without Roosh's attendance will decide against it.
As such, I urge anyone in big cities across the globe to be cautious this
weekend, especially if you do not present as a straight cisgender male.
To offer some context, Roosh V publicly proposed the legalisation
of rape in a blog post last year in an attempt eradicate rape culture and
'solve' the problem which ensues when lives are crushed by rape allegations,
false or otherwise. When confronted in Reggie Yates's documentary 'Extreme UK:
Men At War,' he laughingly claimed that this was satire but this is not
easily deduced when read from the website upon which it appears. Roosh writes: "by attempting to teach men not to rape, what we
have actually done is teach women not to care about being raped, not to protect
themselves from easily preventable acts, and not to take responsibility for
their actions... I thought about this problem and am sure I have the
solution: make
rape legal if done on private property. I propose that we make the violent taking of a woman not punishable by
law when done off public grounds" (full article here). When
this paragraph is taken as a discrete fragment of the whole article, the entire
proposition inevitably sounds absurd but Roosh's writing is nuanced and the
justification which follows almost seems palpable. He foregrounds the article
by evoking an image of his sister and highlighting the fact that he would not
want her to be raped. As a result, he conjures the idea that his argument is
considered and compassionate in lieu of his sibling, inviting readers to agree
because they do not want their family members to experience rape either.
Roosh
continues his hypothesis by stating: "if
rape becomes legal under my proposal, a girl will protect her body in the same
manner that she protects her purse and smartphone. If rape becomes legal, a
girl will not enter an impaired state of mind where she can’t resist being
dragged off to a bedroom with a man who she is unsure of—she’ll scream, yell,
or kick at his attempt while bystanders are still around. If rape becomes
legal, she will never be unchaperoned with a man she doesn’t want to sleep
with. After several months of advertising this law throughout the land, rape
would be virtually eliminated on the first day it is applied." By emphasising
women and girls as the issue because they fail to “protect their bodies,” Roosh
normalises victim-blaming whilst also ignoring the fact that men are raped too –
which you would have thought would be a priority for the figurehead of
neomasculinity. In addition, Roosh eliminates the possibility that men and
women can be merely friends in a heteronormative society. Women are thus
objectified in the bodily comparison to a smartphone, reducing their bodies to
something which is asking to be raped if it isn’t looked after properly,
as a phone is asking to be stolen when left unattended.
The most problematic part of his argument, then, is
that his writing is compelling because it masquerades as logical. Moreover,
using the internet as his platform means that his audience is vast and
ever-expanding. With attitudes like this online, he can easily penetrate the
minds of insecure young men who have had their confidence knocked by
relationship-related issues, and this is when it becomes dangerous. Return of
Kings and Roosh’s own website are ultimately broken manifestos exuding intense
hatred for women which perpetuate the notion that misogyny is okay. It would be
both naïve and futile to suggest that we can do anything to stop Roosh and the
allies he rallies with his persuasive writing style, but what we can do is
ensure that we are careful this weekend whilst we endeavour to create of a
safer, more harmonious society.
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