In complete and total honesty, I never meant to have a vendetta against Pandagon. Or Amanda Marcotte. In fact, I used to fucking love that blog. i would even say that for baby-feminist-college-me, she/that blog was fucking FORMATIVE. I read the shit out of that blog. I had my fucking EYES OPENED by posts on that blog, back in the day.

And you know, whatever. I was over it. I stopped visiting daily. I stopped refreshing obsessively. I was down. I was done with it. It was over. BUT EVEN SO, I CANNOT ESCAPE HER FAIL. IT IS FOLLOWING ME. ACROSS THE INTERNET. ONTO MY FAVORITE BLOGS. JESUS WEPT. SO DID I. (ACTUALLY, MY HEAD EXPLODED. SAME DIFFERENCE.)

See, apparently there is this thing called “birth rape” (I apologize for the scare quotes). This refers to rape that occurs during the birthing of ones child, usually performed by medical professionals. Apparently, this definition is controversial, because what if a medical professional decides they need to do something the the in-labor mother doesn’t want them to do, but it is OMGNECESSARY, because all medical professionals ever have the best interests of their patients at heart, doncha know?!??!!!ELEVENTY! Which, okay, I completely disagree with, but that, at least, comes from some area of brain-existence with which I am familiar.

What has BLOWN MY MIND, was the section of a post by Amanda Marcotte quoted on Tiger Beatdown: SEXIST BEATDOWN: Nation of Whoopi Goldbergs Edition.

Now, before getting into the MIND=BLOWN segment of today’s performance, I’d like to share a few things I learned about rape and childbirth from this excellent and amazing blog post (and the comments, linked blog posts, etc)!

1) “But he (the doctor) just wants what is best for the baby!! So it isn’t rape.” READ: BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN. HE DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT YOU. HE LOVES YOU, BABY. YOU MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG TO MAKE HIM HURT YOU LIKE THAT.
2) “But it’s a doctor!” READ: MEN IN POSITIONS OF RESPECT AND POWER CAN’T BE RAPISTS, FYI
3) “But rape has to be sexual, and this isn’t” Ummmmmmmm… I thought it was about power? I thought we had decided that a while ago. Learn something new every day, eh?

Suffice it to say, I don’t think this was Tiger Beatdown’s finest hour. Though, at the end, I did get:

SADY: Right. Dear Pregnant Ladies: I Can’t Tell You What To Call Your Experiences, It Turns Out! But I can say that apparently the word rape is very important, which is why every single time a person uses it we have to put it past a judging committee, and otherwise act like a nation of Whoopi Goldbergs, it would seem?

So hurray for that! You can call your nonconsentual penetrative and traumatic experiences what you want!

BUT (and now we are back mostly on topic) before that, in the very first paragraph, Tiger Beatdown quoted this golden gem from Amanda Marcotte.

The problem is that actual rapists have completely different motivations than imperious doctors who inadvertently traumatize their patients by pushing them around in the birthing room. Actual rapists want to traumatize their victims—getting off on the power they have over their victims and the fear it instills in them is the whole point of raping them. (Don’t believe me? Here’s some evidence to ponder on this subject.) Doctors who push around their patients are rarely doing so out of sadism so much as contempt for the intelligence of their patients… If the social definition of rape is rooted in the trauma to the victim and not in terms of what the actual rapist did and why, we’ve lost our main tool in stopping rape from actually happening.

In the eternal eloquence of ONTD: WAT.

Like. How does a person even TYPE THOSE WORDS. WITH THEIR FINGERS. ONE AT A TIME. EACH LETTER.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe that’s it. She DIDN’T. She has acquired a brain implant that allows her to write blog posts while unconscious, and this was actually a nightmare. That is the only thing that makes that fucking paragraph (and entire blog post, for that matter) make any fucking sense whatsoever.

And, in case you guys haven’t read that post she links to (it is actually really good!) in the middle of her Paragraph Right Out of Her Nightmare, THAT IS NOT WHAT IT SAYS AT ALL. That is a blog post on two academic papers that were looking at rates of unreported rape. THERE WERE NO QUESTIONS OR CONCLUSIONS ABOUT WHY RAPISTS RAPE. The only thing that comes even REMOTELY near that is the fact that of the unincarcerated men who admitted to forcing or attempting to force sexual encounters, a vast majority of the rapes were committed by a very few men. Many of these men used drugs and raped acquaintances, because this is the kind of rape that is least likely to be reported and successfully prosecuted. So what does that tell us? Like most of humanity, rapists don’t want to go to jail. WHOA, SHOCKING NEWS IS SHOCKING, FILM AT ELEVEN!!! (Up sometimes that is not Now: Watch me froth at the mouth about Scientific Overinterpretation! Now with MORE WRONG ADDED BY NON-SCIENTISTS!)

OKAY, sorry for that GIANT DIGRESSION, BACK ON TOPIC. According to Amanda Marcotte: Rape is only rape if it was motivated by the desire to hurt the victim.

BUT WAIT. IT GETS BETTER!!!

If the social definition of rape is rooted in the trauma to the victim and not in terms of what the actual rapist did and why, we’ve lost our main tool in stopping rape from actually happening.

Ummmmmmmmmmm…

Yeah. She typed THAT.

See, I understand that in our legal system, which I have not and never will study in any academic or in-depth fashion, we devise laws that are based on three things:
1) VERIAFIABLE OBJECTIVE FACT (This thing happened)
2) HOW THE VICTIM FEELS ABOUT IT (Emotional suffering!)
3) HOW THE PERP FEELS ABOUT IT (premeditation, remorse, probably some other stuff)

The idea, as near as I can tell, is that by taking into account things besides the action itself, we can devise more just punishments for those who break the law.

But! She’s not even talking about the LEGAL definition of rape. She’s talking about the SOCIAL definition of rape. Like how you say you’ve been robbed, when legally, you’ve been burgled. And this social definition, which will be used to magically stop all the rape ever, depends on the motivations of the RAPIST?!!!!!!! I CALL SHENANIGANS.

See, here is why I’m a feminist. BECAUSE WOMEN MATTER. WE ARE IMPORTANT. So. Here is a protip. From me, to you Amanda Marcotte dear internet:

RAPE IS DEFINED BY HOW THE VICTIM FEELS ABOUT IT. IT IS RIGHT THERE IN THE DEFINITION. WE USE THE WORD NONCONSENTUAL. THAT MEANS THE VICTIM DIDN’T WANT IT. Nowhere ever has the definition of rape EVER included how the rapist feels about it.

Because, see, if it was consensual, that’s called sadism, and there are folks who like being hurt, and that’s called masochism, and there are like, clubs or something for that shit. So, you see, sadism isn’t actually a defining characteristic of rape. LACK OF CONSENT IS THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF RAPE.

… And you thought it was over? OH NO, THERE’S MORE.

If we want bad doctors to cut it out, we have to define what they’re doing wrong accurately. In most of these cases, they just don’t respect their patients. That’s the problem that has to be worked on—getting them to the point where they listen to and respect their patients. Approaching them like they act out of sadism is simply going to turn them off.

So, lack of respect, you say? Would you perhaps say lacking respect for the woman as an autonomous human being and instead viewing here as simply a baby incubator? A problem to be solved? Maybe even an OBJECT?

WOW, THAT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE HOW OPPRESSIVE PATRIARCHS FEEL ABOUT WOMEN!

OH WAIT.

LACK OF RESPECT FOR THE HUMANITY OF WOMEN IS A DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF THE PATRIARCHY.

WHICH IS WHAT CAUSES RAPE CULTURE, WHERE RAPISTS FEELINGS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT MATTER.

WHICH IS WHAT CAUSES RAPE, WHERE RAPISTS EITHER FEEL THAT THEIR WANTS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAT THEIR VICTIMS, OR WANT TO EXERT POWER OVER THEIR VICTIMS, BECAUSE THEIR VICTIMS DON’T COUNT BECAUSE THEY AREN’T REALLY FULLY PEOPLE.

SHIT SON. SHE WENT THERE. OH YEAH SHE DID.

So basically what I am getting from all this is that rape isn’t rape if it is performed by a medical doctor in the context of childbirth, because it is motivated by the same lack of respect for the autonomy and humanity of women that motivates rape and characterized by the same (if not greater) power imbalances between rapist and victim. And (from the rest of the blog post that I did not quote here, and her comments on the post) somehow telling doctors who do not care about their patients’ humanity that they are hurting their patients will make then care about the patient and treat them like full humans, despite ages of people telling rapists that they are hurting their victims and the rapists continuing to rape. OKAY THEN.

So in conclusion, I’m actually done with Pandagon 4realz now. NO REALLY. And I’m going to learn how to scroll. SCROLL SO HARD. And maybe even use my back button. And now I’m going to go scrape the fragments of my exploded skull off the walls and see what kind of food I can scrounge up. Blind rage followed by head-explosion always makes me hungry.

I read Pandagon.net for a feminist analysis of the world around me. This analysis is often combined with general pop culture. Today we got a post about the soccer and the World Cup which is about to go down soonish which much of the non-USA parts of the world Really Really Care About.

That’s nice, I think. Then I read the comments.

Thing that Actually Happened:
A commentator, oldfeminist, posted a list of links to feminists talking about the problematic aspects of soccer culture in general and the World Cup in particular. Namely, that like most mainstream sports endeavors, most of the people involved in high-powered soccer in general and the World Cup in particular are misogynist dicks.

Wow, you say. Since I am a reader of a moderately advanced patriarchy-blaming blog, I am not shocked by these developments.

OH BUT WAIT FOR IT.

COMMENT THAT WAS ACTUALLY POSTED: (emphasis mine)

Wow, can’t have fun without someone being humorless all over it. For a good example of how to acknowledge that this is a tremendous thing for South Africa while not forgetting the problems of the country and the corporatism of the tournament, check out some of the coverage in The Guardian. They don’t go enough in-depth but it’s a good start. Or look at the work Grassroot Soccer is doing to fight HIV and teach life skills to youth in South Africa.

Personally, I’d rather celebrate the good while acknowledging that more work needs to be done. Football needs more women to participate as fans, administrators of the game, and players, not less. But if you’d rather piss all over other women’s enjoyment, more power to you. I’m going to watch a few games outdoors in Dupont Circle tomorrow and enjoy myself while cheering heartily for England. Thanks for bringing footy to Pandagon, Amanda and Marc!

Comment #27: elena on 06/11 at 12:03 PM

LOLWUT?!?!?! Did someone with a rather female-sounding name just tell another someone who I also presume is female that they were being humorless? As in “A Humorless Feminist”? As in, one of the accusations that is constantly being thrown at feminsists? Was a feminist who was pointing out that there are some pretty ugly problems with the international soccer community being told to sit down and shut the fuck up and stop spoiling our fun by pointing out that it has very ugly problems associated with it?!?

OH YEAH, THAT JUST HAPPENED.

Thankfully, later in the comments, oldfeminist and elena seem to kiss and make up and agree that they were talking past each other. Which doesn’t really excuse Amanda’s multitude of comments defending the misogynist-dick-loving-lets-ignore-it-when-people-bring-up-stuff-we-don’t-want-to-think-about-right-now crowd, but whatever. This is me, wearing my whatever face.

And for the most delicious icing on this shit cake, I leave you with this one final gem:

The World Cup is probably the only thing the brings the world together (hope I don’t sound too idealistic). So criticizing it is kinda tacky/uncalled for/doesn’t help your cause/etc., that’s how I view it, anyway.

Comment #56: whiskeytangofoxtrot on 06/11 at 06:45 PM

Wow, its like there isn’t this other GIANT Sporting Festival that happens every two years, but instead of focusing on just one sport it showcases lots of other sports from around the world, is attended by people from around the world, and countries from all around the wold send athletes to compete. Now, if I could only remember what it was… OH THAT’S RIGHT. THE OLYMPICS. WHICH JUST HAPPENED. But maybe that’s too American-centric, what the fuck do I know.

What I do know is this: It’s also tacky to point out that your neighbor is beating his wife, that the nice upstanding pillar of your community also likes raping little girls, and that you would really appreciate it if your boss would stop looking down your shirt, staring at your tits, and ‘bumping into’ your ass. It isn’t polite to criticize things, unless you have a penis.

Fuck that with a stick.