Women Can Stop Rape By Staying Sober According to Some Useless Lawyer

Trigger warning for sexual assault

This week, one of my favourite radio hosts, Jian Ghomeshi, thought it prudent to host a segment debating rape culture. He devoted valuable airtime to a woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.

“Is the term accurate or just plain alarmist?” Jian wanted to know. Jian, I thought I knew thee! There’s no debate: we live in a culture where rape is far too common, and its perpetrators are carelessly excused far too often with “she was asking for it” type logic. Despite this, Jian’s guest didn’t seem to think discussing rape culture as a reality was warranted, and she proceeded to rattle off every rape myth in the book as fact.

In happier news, many women of colour have found a new role model in Lupita Nyong’o—but some spaced out white people still don’t quite get it.

And last week, I didn’t quite get it. I made a mistake while furiously writing about no makeup selfies. Keep scrolling to read my apology.

But first:

Women: Stop Getting Raped! Why Don’t You Try Going Out On A Date Instead? Screenshot via.

It’s 10:03 a.m. A pot of strong coffee is brewing in my apartment, Radiohead’s Planet Telex wafts through the room, followed by Jian Ghomeshi’s lovely, velvety voice that he used to deliver a speech upholding rape culture.

Jian’s guest, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, came on Q to refute the widely cited stats that indicate one in four women will be sexually assaulted at some point in her lifetime. According to Heather, this metric represents “a fantastical claim,” and she scoffed at the notion that this stat is the primary evidence of rape culture on air.

“If there were, let’s say two rapes, actual rapes at the parking lot of a campus medical centre. There would be signs saying to women: stay away from that area at night.”

I ask the same thing of her as I did of Margaret Wente on International Women’s Day: Why does she want to deny the prevalence of sexual assault?

Mac Donald says if women don't want to get raped, we should stop getting so damn drunk all the time, taking our clothes off, and hopping in bed with men! If we don’t want to get raped, we should just try making men get dressed up in suits and give us flowers and take us out on dates instead!

Mac Donald, who dominated the vast majority of the conversation by hollering rape myths and praising the gospel of the patriarchy, said some truly hateful things on air the other day, and I’m shocked that Jian let her prattle on with so many loathsome comments for a full 20 minutes.

I want to be clear here, and say that Jian did try to step in, and he did begin his show the next day by being fully open to readers’ angry feedback, and by sharing their letters. He took responsibility for the effect the show had had—and I understand that journalists make mistakes. I made one last week (again, apology forthcoming). Jian did the right thing after the fact. But I still wish something had been done sooner to stop Mac Donald for saying so many hurtful things.

On Q, Mac Donald made an uncomfortably awful distinction between “rape” and “actual rape,” which is deeply problematic. First of all, this puts Mac Donald in a position of unjustified power that makes her the judge of what defines an actual rape—that takes the power away from the person who was raped in the first place.

It’s not on women to avoid having penises forcefully inserted into the orifices of their bodies. It’s on people who have penises to avoid shoving those appendages where they are not wanted. People with penises are not base beasts who can’t avoid raping.

I was always taught if you don’t know anything about a certain topic, either be quiet, or ask questions to learn more about said mysterious subject. For the sake of all that is holy, Mac Donald, what were you taught? Read something before you open your mouth. Read this piece on how it’s time to stop denying that rape culture exists, by Katie Heindl. Read this primer on rape culture for the naysayers from HuffPo. Or this piece by me, where I explain what rape culture is, after I was sexually assaulted many times throughout my teens and into my 20s. Or Christ, just Google “rape myths.”

On Jian’s show, the other panel participant was Lise Gotell, chair of the department of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta. She was way too Canadian about the whole debate, and actually apologized at one point for interrupting and correcting the monstrous Mac Donald. She politely explained that Mac Donald was dead wrong, that she was spouting rape myths, and needed to learn a thing or two about statistics. I loved what she had to say; she provided some much-needed sense to the conversation. I just wish she had been fiercer.

Mac Donald needed to be called out. She said if this “tsunami of sexual violence” on campuses were really an issue: “We would have seen a stampede to create and demand alternatives.” Some of those included private tutors and all-girls schooling.

Right, because most people have the money for private tutors, and the public purse can sustain a demand for gender-segregated schools! Smart idea, in a time when large chunks of mainstream society are finally coming around to the fact that gender-segregated washrooms are discriminatory.

There is no excuse to do so much flapping of one’s gums in order to accomplish little more than attempt to shame, blame, and humiliate women. The show was just full of what felt like supreme satire. I could not invent a more perfect misogynistic rant.

To sum up the sentiment that was aired that day, The charming Mac Donald also cited one (1987) study she found very faulty, because it stated that many women go onto have sex with their alleged rapist again. She said if someone comes into your window to rape you at knifepoint, “the idea that you’d have sex with him again is unthinkable!”

Most rapes take place at the hands of men already known to the women who are raped. So Mac Donald is totally inept: she at once claims that women are raped because they’re drunken strumpets, and should get themselves out of the public eye, safe at home—but then, that rapists will crawl right in your window, even if you are a good girl!

She contradicts herself. Two seconds later she says: “Women can stop it overnight, themselves, by not getting drunk… Until I see the proponents of this concept of rape culture sending an unambiguous message to all girls saying ‘do not get yourself drunk, because we want to protect you,’ I am not going to believe that they really are certain that this is rape.”

So there you have it. Stay at home, ladies, in your lumpiest, frumpiest sweater, under the covers, wearing a chastity belt to protect your precious pussy.

Careful How You Treat Lupita

Screenshot via.

I’ve been following the rise of Lupita Nyong’o’s career for the past while. I’ve briefly considered writing about her, but wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say, or even if there was anything for me to say. Obviously, it’s stupid for me, as a white woman, to write a piece about what inspires black women. Aside from that, I also had a strange, creeping feeling about the particular way in which Lupita is discussed and lauded, but couldn’t quite put it into words or define exactly what it was that bothered me.

VICE Canada contributor Muna Mire then posted an article on Facebook, though, which basically says it all about the problems with the way Lupita is treated, namely by white America. “A Seat at the Table: Lupita Fever and American Pathology,” by Nyle Fort, was posted on Black Girl Dangerous, and it’s a must-read. A small excerpt for you:

“Lupita’s celebrity, not all that different from Obama’s presidency, is being lifted up by (white) liberal America as an example for black folk to follow and an exception for white liberals to manipulate. Lupita’s reported “beauty,” “eloquence,” and “professionalism” has less to do with her and more to do with a larger, mythological narrative of black progress vis-à-vis black exceptionalism. There is the idea that black people must be doing better since we have a black president and now a black Hollywood sensation. However, exceptions aren’t new, and nor are they sufficient.”

Exceptions aren’t new, and nor are they sufficient. Absolute perfection.

Mea Culpa Re. No Makeup Selfies Screenshot via.

Well, I feel stupid. A socially conscious meme I bashed last week, namely, posting nude-faced selfies to raise awareness for breast cancer, has raised £8m in six days. Last week, I wrote that the selfies were silly and implied they wouldn’t raise money.

Well, they did raise money, and I was kind of an asshole, in retrospect. I’m sorry.

That said, I still don’t like the particular method of fundraising, as outlined in the other piece. I think the tactic serves to feminize and trivialize the cancer. Cancer isn’t cute, and the selfies make fundraising as much about the poster’s need for self-affirmation as it is about the cancer itself.

I’m not sorry for saying that, but I do apologize for ignorantly insinuating they wouldn’t raise money or be useful in any way.

@sarratch