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From: jha@lfcs.edinburgh.ac.UK (Jamie Andrews)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: "Off Our Backs" magazine cover
Message-ID: <10752.9006051016@subnode.lfcs.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Jun 90 21:20:09 GMT
Lines: 46
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu


     What I find uncomfortable in the oob graffiti, and in
Ellen's and Amy's responses to Dave Gross, is not the anger but
rather the narrow focus of that anger.

     I feel that anger against rape and rapists is justified
and should be acted upon.  Part of this acting-upon is to
strengthen rape laws, to encourage victims to complain and
police to prosecute, to provide shelters and post-rape relief
for rape victims, and to educate the public about rape myths.
However, the slogan "Dead Men Don't Rape" and Ellen's comment

>  Johnson
>finds the shock value of the graffiti empowering, and the anger a message
>to both women and men that rape and murder will no longer be tolerated
>by women, that women refuse to be victims any longer.

seem to imply that things like this are sufficient.

     The implicit belief seems to be that we can stop rape by
stopping the rapists from "doing what they want".  This belief
in turn seems to be predicated upon the idea that men "do what
they want" all the time and the only social conditioning they
receive is that they have a right to "do what they want".  This
belief is disturbing to me (as a men's libber), but it also
makes me (as a pro-feminist) despair that people who hold it
will ever achieve their ends -- because I believe it's so
misdirected.

     At least some of the anger about rape should be directed
against society and the media establishment, for insisting on
men being hypersexual and violent and all combinations of those
things, and for denying men sex, love, comfort and basic human
respect when they fail to be those things.

     Slogans like "Dead Men Don't Rape" not only miss these
points, they even appropriate the language of the tough-guy
movies to load men with yet another burden of individual guilt
and responsibility for what is a systemic, societal problem.

     Dead men don't rape; live men who rape should be punished;
but live men who have not been warped and conditioned by our
society -- these men have no desire to rape.

--Jamie.
  jha@lfcs.ed.ac.uk