There is a story I came across writing a recent post which just... stuck with me. I knew as I read and re-read the post, trying to figure out why it remained on my mind, there must be a reason. When I compared it to recent events, and recent discussion, I realized the detail which had been tugging on my attention.
At one of the links, a woman describes her experience of, after telling a man no, being beaten and subdued by him, forced onto a table, her legs tied apart, being drugged, and having foreign objects and his hands inserted into her vagina against her will.
The story came out in 2011. I only learned about it recently as I dug into the story I was highlighting in the post, about that man's lucrative business endeavors and their relationship to feminist activism on a specific topic.
So, there's this story, out in 2011, describing this horrendous experience which is obviously violent, forcible rape. It made national news - ABC published it. I have not seen a single blog post, comment, call to action... nothing from feminists.
Total. Radio. Silence.
Why? Why let something so heinous slip by? Where is the outpouring of support for this woman? The calls for prosecution? The demonization of the perpetrator and anyone with anything in common with him, as feminists tend to do with such cases?
There won't be any. This woman's experience does not follow the rules. It isn't something they can use to further their agenda without hurting another agenda which is apparently more near and dear to their hearts than preventing rape.
This rape happened to involve an abortion, one the patient didn't want.
Family members brought her to the clinic against her will. She was in the treatment room when she told the doctor the truth. This is a physician, accountable to the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. This doctor, whose job it is to help the patient, instead violently forced her onto the table, stripped her, restrained her, drugged her, and performed the sexually invasive surgery against her will. And not one feminist organization has stood up to protest that behavior. No organized support has been offered to the victim. No organized effort has been made to ensure that this type of atrocity is not committed again.
Feminist groups support victims whose experiences they can use to further their political goals. When a victim's experience doesn't do that, these groups are more than willing to leave her by the side of the road and continue on their quest for political power.
Similarly, feminist groups only descend upon and demonize an individual or group in the context of their advocacy or ideology when doing so provides a springboard from which to further their political goals. Their hatred and ire are reserved for those upon whose broken sociopolitical 'bodies' they can stand in order to feel that they've elevated themselves to a more persuasive position, from which they can more effectively lobby for the enactment of law and policy that suits their political agenda. When an individual or group's dysfunction or malevolence cannot be used in that manner, feminist groups are not averse to cooperation with them, sometimes even willing to offer them some protection, sometimes to the point of sacrificing the interests or well-being of those for whose benefit they are claiming to advocate. They'll compromise everything to prevent said dysfunction or malevolence from staining the image of the feminist crusade.
This is one reason among many why the men's rights movement must not fall for the claims, often made by individual feminists, that the two ideologies are opposite sides of the same coin, one benevolently fighting the good fight to end discrimination against men, the other fighting the good fight to end discrimination against women. It's not true - mainstream, active, real-world-affecting feminist groups do not give a rat's ass about ending discrimination against women. They care about political issues, and they're willing to be as ruthless, heartless, and sexist as it takes to further those goals.
If MRAs start losing sight of that fact, and begin trusting this two-faced, backstabbing, pathological frenemy that keeps trying to invade and control the evolution of the men's rights effort, we'll allow into our midst the equivalent of Tolkien's Grima Wormtongue; a living poison whose only goal is to subdue and control the movement's activism for its own gain, ready and willing to turn on any ally the moment our efforts are in even the slightest conflict, or even just whenever we cease to seem useful to them.
At one of the links, a woman describes her experience of, after telling a man no, being beaten and subdued by him, forced onto a table, her legs tied apart, being drugged, and having foreign objects and his hands inserted into her vagina against her will.
The story came out in 2011. I only learned about it recently as I dug into the story I was highlighting in the post, about that man's lucrative business endeavors and their relationship to feminist activism on a specific topic.
So, there's this story, out in 2011, describing this horrendous experience which is obviously violent, forcible rape. It made national news - ABC published it. I have not seen a single blog post, comment, call to action... nothing from feminists.
Total. Radio. Silence.
Why? Why let something so heinous slip by? Where is the outpouring of support for this woman? The calls for prosecution? The demonization of the perpetrator and anyone with anything in common with him, as feminists tend to do with such cases?
There won't be any. This woman's experience does not follow the rules. It isn't something they can use to further their agenda without hurting another agenda which is apparently more near and dear to their hearts than preventing rape.
This rape happened to involve an abortion, one the patient didn't want.
Family members brought her to the clinic against her will. She was in the treatment room when she told the doctor the truth. This is a physician, accountable to the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. This doctor, whose job it is to help the patient, instead violently forced her onto the table, stripped her, restrained her, drugged her, and performed the sexually invasive surgery against her will. And not one feminist organization has stood up to protest that behavior. No organized support has been offered to the victim. No organized effort has been made to ensure that this type of atrocity is not committed again.
Feminist groups support victims whose experiences they can use to further their political goals. When a victim's experience doesn't do that, these groups are more than willing to leave her by the side of the road and continue on their quest for political power.
Similarly, feminist groups only descend upon and demonize an individual or group in the context of their advocacy or ideology when doing so provides a springboard from which to further their political goals. Their hatred and ire are reserved for those upon whose broken sociopolitical 'bodies' they can stand in order to feel that they've elevated themselves to a more persuasive position, from which they can more effectively lobby for the enactment of law and policy that suits their political agenda. When an individual or group's dysfunction or malevolence cannot be used in that manner, feminist groups are not averse to cooperation with them, sometimes even willing to offer them some protection, sometimes to the point of sacrificing the interests or well-being of those for whose benefit they are claiming to advocate. They'll compromise everything to prevent said dysfunction or malevolence from staining the image of the feminist crusade.
This is one reason among many why the men's rights movement must not fall for the claims, often made by individual feminists, that the two ideologies are opposite sides of the same coin, one benevolently fighting the good fight to end discrimination against men, the other fighting the good fight to end discrimination against women. It's not true - mainstream, active, real-world-affecting feminist groups do not give a rat's ass about ending discrimination against women. They care about political issues, and they're willing to be as ruthless, heartless, and sexist as it takes to further those goals.
If MRAs start losing sight of that fact, and begin trusting this two-faced, backstabbing, pathological frenemy that keeps trying to invade and control the evolution of the men's rights effort, we'll allow into our midst the equivalent of Tolkien's Grima Wormtongue; a living poison whose only goal is to subdue and control the movement's activism for its own gain, ready and willing to turn on any ally the moment our efforts are in even the slightest conflict, or even just whenever we cease to seem useful to them.
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