A "feminist" rape rhetoric

The intemperate attack on Heather Mac Donald for her LA Times and City Journal articles on the campus rape crisis myth continues unabated. Typical characterizations of Heather MacDonald and/or her writings have been stupid, disgusting and “asshole”. Now the dankprofessor has become the subject of this tirade. Such is indicated in the following posting from the Astraea’s Scales blog.

The disgusting editorial by Heather Mac Donald in the LA Times has been making the rounds and is being used by rape apologists already. All the more reason to write the LA Times and tell them how irresponsible it was to give a rape apologist so much space in a major newspaper.

Some examples (not linking, you can see for yourself and challenge them if you’re braver than I):

Asshole Michael of 2blowhards.com uses it to justify his anti-feminism in a January 26th post:

It’s funny, isn’t it, the way some people claim that Political Correctness (or Sexual Correctness) never existed, isn’t it? Of course it did. I’m reminded of the way some people, when thinking back to (or remembering) ’70s-style feminism, say, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad.” Sure it was.

And super asshole dankprofessor at dankprofessor.wordpress.com twists it around to a rather creepy personal issue in a Feburary 25th post:

Ignoring of women’s own interpretations of their experience sounds quite familiar to the dankprofessor. Such is familiar since in the feminist framework regarding student professor sexual relationships, the student is never able to consent since the feminist axiom is that differential power precludes consent. In this framework students are never asked if they consented. Their interpretations are of no import unless they reflect a feminist orthodoxy. Female students who protest that they did consent are simply ignored.

The campus rape myth and the predator professor/female student myth come from the same source – anti-sexual campus feminists.
This is exactly why giving legitimacy to people like Heather Mac Donald – who works for a conservative think tank and has no previous experience with sexual assault or rape issues – is so dangerous. It reinforces widespread misconceptions about rape and gives rape apologists ammunition.

So such is the manner in which too many campus feminists deal with their critics, name-calling and degradation. No place for reasoned debate here.

What the dankprofessor finds ironic is that the writer of this post has an attitudinal framework which is similar to the psychological framework of many rapists. Rapists attempt to psychologically degrade their victims. If such degradation is successful, the rapist ends up creating victims in their own image- victims who feel angry, hurt, powerless, guilty*, fearful and vengeful. Such is often called passing the sting.

It is no easy task to transcend this vicious cycle of degradation. If victims are to get beyond their victimage, such is more likely to occur in a situation of empathy, and empowerment, not one characterized by anger and hostility.

Another rapist dynamic is impersonality and dehumanization. For rapists, their victims are faceless; they use their victims for their own psychological gratifications; any personal knowledge of the victims is irrelevant. A victim is just another asshole. And for the writer of this Astraea’s Scales blog, there is no need to know the dankprofessor; I am faceless, just another asshole; just another rape enabler.

I suggest that the writer of the Scales blog consider the possibility that her rhetoric is a rhetoric of rape.

*I want to make it clear that I am not indicating that rape victims have anything to feel guilty about. Survivor guilt is a common feeling of survivors of violence- whether the survivors be rape survivors, Holocaust survivors, military combat survivors, et. al.

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Barry M. Dank aka the dankprofessor^TM
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