You probably already know—or think you know—what happened on the night of September 25, 2017 between Aziz Ansari and an anonymous woman calling herself “Grace.” These are the accepted facts: she went on a date with Ansari, they went back to his house, and then had some sexual contact that left Grace feeling deeply uncomfortable. No crime was alleged, since Ansari did not force himself on Grace in any way, but this was clearly a nasty encounter for her. The next day, she texted Ansari telling him as much and he apologized for having “misread things.” Several months later, she published her account on the website babe.
For a few weeks following the publication of Grace’s story, the internet was awash with claims and counter-claims about the rights and wrongs of what had taken place. Every media outlet offered up its judgment on Ansari. To some commentators, he was the victim of a witch hunt, persecuted by an internet mob with no respect for due process. On the other side, many feminists argued that his behavior exemplified the aggressive, entitled, chauvinistic attitude that too many men show towards women. Others suggested that the reaction against Ansari was disproportionate—yes he had behaved badly, but that badly? Everyone had an opinion, not only on what he had done, but on what the incident revealed about sexual politics in the #MeToo era.
In the language of feminist theory, Ansari’s behavior fell somewhere on the “sexual violence spectrum.” This begins at one end with commonplace forms of sexual misbehavior (e.g., cat-calling, lewd comments, “microaggressions”) and extends all the way along to rape and sexualized torture and murder. The feminist claim is that everything on the sexual violence spectrum should be viewed as emanating from the same source, although some acts clearly cause more harm than others. While Ansari did not force Grace into sex, he did ignore her discomfort in a way that was arguably coercive. His behavior could therefore be placed somewhere towards the less severe end of the spectrum: worse than a misogynistic joke, but not as harmful as a sexual assault.
Now here is the paradox, and it’s something that I’ve often puzzled over during my years in feminist activism. Why do cases like Ansari’s receive so much attention among many feminists, particularly younger ones, while the most extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum is comparatively ignored?
This is not true across the board, of course. Sexual and domestic violence support services focus on victims with the greatest need, as do public bodies such as social services and the police. These on-the-ground organizations have (or at least should have) a clear system for prioritizing the victims of the most dangerous offenders. There are also plenty of committed feminist campaigners who take on the often thankless task of advocating on behalf of the most wretchedly abused women and girls. This isn’t the place to go into detail about the deep divisions within the feminist movement—suffice to say that the group of feminists who have most influence right now, the so-called “third wave,” are the group I’m concerned with here. These are the feminist voices that dominate the public sphere—newspapers, universities, social media—and it’s here that the paradox is most obvious.
Take the issue of campus rape, a key battleground in the ongoing culture war. In the last decade or so, sexual violence against university students has been one of the most high-profile feminist issues in the Anglosphere, particularly in the United States. Although statistics on sexual violence are notoriously hard to calculate, studies consistently show that, contrary to the picture presented in the media, young women not at university are actually more at risk than those who are. This is probably because of demographic factors, rather than anything peculiar to higher education. Young women who are poor, have an intellectual disability, or are from certain ethnic minorities, are disproportionately likely to be victims of all kinds of violent crime, including rape, and are also less likely to go to university. Campuses are rife with sexism, but they are not uniquely dangerous places when we look at the wider picture across society. Why, then, has the issue of campus rape become such a cause célèbre?
Compare this with the approach to the sex trade. The way in which the Irish feminist campaigner Rachel Moran has been treated provides a particularly clear example of the paradox. Moran was 15 years old when she first started selling sex on the streets of Dublin and during the seven years she spent in prostitution she experienced some of the worst forms of sexual violence imaginable. She has since written a remarkable memoir about her experiences. And yet, far from being greeted with open arms by third wave feminists, Moran and many of the other women who describe themselves as “prostitution survivors” (they reject the term “sex workers”) have faced a combination of indifference and outright hostility from the people you would expect to be their allies. Some self-proclaimed feminists even accused Moran of lying about having been in prostitution, forcing her to present evidence to defend her credibility—so much for #BelieveHer.
Whether or not you think that prostitution is inherently abusive (as Moran does), the women involved face some of the highest rates of rape and murder of any group. Despite this, you will very often hear third wave feminists downplaying the harms of prostitution and ignoring the testimony of survivors who speak about its horrors. There is even an influential coterie who insist that the existence of sex trafficking is a myth. The same people who argue that Ansari shouldn’t have made advances on Grace because she was obviously uncomfortable will defend the right of a man to buy sex from a woman who is only consenting because she needs to feed herself. How do we explain this contradiction?
There are several reasons for the paradox, one of which is fairly obvious: selection bias. The most prominent feminist voices within the media and academia are less likely than average to have experienced the extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum because they are disproportionately white, well off, able-bodied graduates. This is particularly true when it comes to prostitution, which almost exclusively affects women living in poverty. Although we’re all perfectly capable of extending compassion to people outside of our bubble, it’s not easy. We’re all biased towards prioritizing our own (to use the well-worn jargon) “lived experience,” so of course a group of women who all went to university are going to be particularly concerned with the phenomenon of campus rape, just as prostitution survivors are going to be particularly concerned with abuses within the sex trade. The difference is, there are no prostitution survivors with columns in the New York Times.
But that’s only a partial explanation for the paradox. There are other psychological forces at play too, affecting feminists and non-feminists alike.
The sad truth is there’s very little media appetite for stories about the extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum, and for good reason. When I say “extreme,” I really mean it—it’s almost impossible to exaggerate the depravity of some of the crimes committed by men against women and girls. In the U.K. alone (where I live), I could mention the woman whose eyes were gouged out by her boyfriend, another woman who was buried alive by her partner, the teenager branded with the initial of her rapist, or the baby girl raped at two weeks old. Did you know that, in the last five years, the number of women beheaded by British men in the U.K. is greater than the number of Britons beheaded by ISIS? This is happening in the Western world right now, on our doorstep, and the situation is even worse in other parts of the world. I know this doesn’t make pleasant reading—you probably won’t follow the links and I don’t blame you—but sadly that’s exactly why such cases usually receive very little attention in the national press, let alone international coverage. No one wants to read about such things. The normal human reaction is sadness, revulsion, and perhaps also a feeling of helplessness. There are things that can be done to alleviate the situation—most of which involve better funding for refuges and public services—but there are no quick fixes.
In contrast, reading about the Aziz Ansari case can be oddly satisfying, precisely because it involves controversy. Stories like this offer readers the opportunity to express their tribal loyalties—if you believe that the #MeToo movement has gone too far, you can use this as an example of feminists hounding an innocent man; if you think that Ansari’s behavior was a form of sexual violence, then you’ll be enraged by those who trivialize it. There’s pleasure to be had in that heady feeling of righteousness.
Added to this is the effect of the Iron Law of Institutions, a term coined by the writer Jon Schwartz. Put simply, the law states that most people care more about their position within an institution than they do about the success of the institution as a whole. The result is behavior that looks bizarre from the outside, but makes perfect sense to those within a particular group. Schwartz initially used the term to describe the internal workings of the Democratic party, but his idea can just as easily be applied to political movements as well as political parties—third wave feminism, for instance.
Within such activist groups, individuals gain status by demonstrating their commitment to the cause—showing themselves to be more pure, more radical, more woke than their rivals. The endlessly updating vocabulary is a manifestation of this: knowing that the correct nomenclature is “trans woman” rather than “transwoman” marks you out as a member of the woke elite, entitled to ‘call out’ those beneath you in the hierarchy. The website Everyday Feminism is an excellent place to view this ideological arms race. The site regularly publishes articles that are so extreme they’re almost beyond parody—for instance, insisting that it’s oppressive to expect activists to behave rationally, or scolding well-meaning supporters by telling them “your tears take up too much space.” This kind of message does no good for the cause, since it alienates would-be allies. But there is an internal logic to it.
Within the most intense third wave feminist circles, individuals can increase their standing by demonstrating not only that they’re purer than their contemporaries, but also purer than feminists who have gone before. I think this is where the perverse attitude towards the sex trade comes from—many young women associate anti-prostitution activism with the Christian Right, or else with older feminists they view as prudish old dinosaurs. Pro-prostitution activism therefore becomes a rational response, even if it is inconsistent with the rest of the worldview. Other horrors are defended for the same reason. Third wave feminists will often minimise the harms of female genital mutilation (the woke term is actually “cutting” rather than “mutilation”) because criticism of it is associated with the Right and therefore branded as colonialist. Even though FGM causes unbearable suffering to women and girls of color, sometimes resulting in death, refusing to condemn the practice is seen as anti-racist. Such behavior looks bizarre from the outside, but it makes sense to those within the movement.
It’s not that we should turn a blind eye to acts at the less severe end of the sexual violence spectrum. For what it’s worth, I think that Ansari behaved badly. I also dislike cat calling, sexist jokes, and other “microaggressions.” I even think that “manspreading” merits some discussion.
The problem is what happens at the other end of the spectrum, where the worst kind of sexual violence is too often trivialized and ignored by those who should know better. The Aziz Ansari paradox hurts the feminist movement, and therefore also hurts vulnerable women and girls.
Louise Perry is a freelance writer based in Oxford, U.K.
Feature photo by Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.
“Did you know that, in the last five years, the number of women beheaded by British men in the U.K. “
Can you define these British men other than citizenship? I ask because feminists tend to excuse Islamic practices.
@ lydia00
“Did you know that, in the last five years, the number of women beheaded by British men in the U.K. , is greater than the number of Britons beheaded by ISIS?”
I agree. That’s a pretty egregious line. Louise Perry has linked to an anti-male violence blog for it, which in turn links to a lot of guardian, huff po, and other news sites, its not a particularly reputable or well researched source.
Does Louise Perry seriously believe that more beheading have occurred in the UK than in the IS caliphate? seriously? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIL_beheading_incidents
Louise I think that bit should be edited from the article or cite a decent source, it undermines an otherwise interesting piece.
Pretty sure she said ‘within Britain’ but still, I’m assuming it’s not an effective means to conclude that men in general are worse than ISIS. And obviously one beheading is way too many, of course. But to touch on that paragraph, I’m cautiously optimistic that people are actually hesitant to leverage a war of sorts against half the world’s population, and in a time when the concept of gender is so willfully misunderstood. Condemnable as it may be to dial it in a little more to race, religion, etc., that would still be slightly less apocalyptic if acted on. And again, not to excuse the worst stereotyping. But it would very much behoove us to avoid splitting the world cleanly in half. There’s literally no greater discrimination than that. The next click out is simply ALL PEOPLE, at which point you’re no longer discriminating, obviously.
@WH
you’re right I’ve misread what is written. your first line is a better way of stating the point i wanted to make.
What is said, is true, if those numbers at the Wikipedia page are correct. I count no more than three or for Britons among the (many) victims of ISIS, whereas the blog mentions seven women who have been decapitated. So if we focus on British subjects (which is how media often view the world) it’s odd that these beheadings don’t get at least as much publicity as the ISIS victims.
That’s not what she said at all. She said Britons beheaded by ISIS which sounds pretty accurate. Not all people beheaded by ISIS which is probably in the 1000s.
These are not “British” men in any sense whatsoever except the purely technical. Then again, practically no male alive today in the UK is a British man in a form that could be recognized by anyone who lived there throughout the past 1500 years or so.
@ Steve
Why aren’t they?
Amin, Magna Carta. (Wink)
Oh pls…
All country-specific “ethnicities” are going away in the western liberal nations (where all the racists are we’re told). What does it mean to be English/British/Irish/American/German/Greek/Italian/French? These terms once indicated a look, but clearly they are only forms of nationality in a free, modern world.
That’s a strange thing to say. Can you explain that? Like 80% of us are white British.
Those totalitarians, always trying to create “the New Man”— and they always start by trying to destroy the old. Pity their children.
Not British men in the least, and it is a horrid slander to British men to call them such.
Lydia – whenever I see a statistic like that with no other details, I can be certain that more detail will always reveal undesirable information such as 98% of the “British” head choppers share a variation of the name Mohammad M. Muhammad. Which is likely also the reason that all those white upper-class feminists rarely want to discuss on the darker side of sexual depravity, because the demographics of the perpetrators will almost never support the “diversity is a strength” and “open border” mantras of the Left.
@E. Olson
A nasty thought: Do you suppose that the reason the radfems are such ardent supporters of Muslim immigration — when common sense would seem to indicate that the opposite would be the case — is that they know that Muslim immigration will provide them with more instances of men behaving abominably, which is their bread and butter? IOW far from wanting to minimize instances of females being brutalized, they rather want them to increase, thus adding fuel to the boiler that powers their agenda. That’s not a very nice idea, is it?
EOlson, I kind of figured it was the same tactic the Swedes use in reporting violent crimes such as the massive increase in rapes since mass immigration of Muslim men. We can’t fix such horrible problems when we refuse identify them whether PC or not. PC kills.
Thank you.
Some of us read the Daily Mail, if only because that paper can be relied upon to publish the names and photographs of the “British” men who commit these atrocities.
To say that “British” men are chopping off heads without making a reference to Arab immigration is to invite, at the very least, skepticism about some of the author’s intentions.
You are too kind. Even to someone that flunked high school, as I did, it appeared to be obvious.
It is becoming more obvious as these articles scroll by in whole or in this case in part that just because some readers find it necessary to use a dictionary to decipher some of the almost forgotten or never used words that being truthful is of little or no concern for so called authors to attempt to integrate their shadow by such means. Just because you can does not mean that you should.
For those who feel it necessary to parse my long sentence, knock yourself out.
BAZINGA ! This was the sentence that struck me as being the most disingenuous and smarmy politically correct sentence in what was generally a pretty good piece.
How about we all cut the BS about “British men” ? I don’t think we are talking about Hugh Grant/ Dudley Moore types here.
This site really, really needs a like button
Interesting that you think that what makes a British man “British” is not his citizenship, but some unrealistic stereotype of a white, dry-witted, posh-accented, flouncy-haired semi-dandy. So I suppose you subscribe to the jus sanguinis line of thinking? A brown-skinned man can be born in the UK, to parents born in the UK, and will never be British enough for you, right? Or at least not as British as the white man. Shame on you.
Stella C,
Is a white person whose family has been in Africa for many generations an African person?
Or in Japan, a Japanese person?
Yes. They’re African. Just like the black americans that stayed in Germany after ww2. They’re grandkids and great grandkids that are still there are German. There’s a short documentary somewhere on YouTube from years ago about the white kids of Japan. Their grandparents stayed after ww2 and they were born and raised in Japan. They don’t speak a lot of English but they’re white.
hmm I wonder how many beheadings occurred in Britain if we were to go back, say, 35 years? I wonder what’s drastically changed in the meantime…
If we were to go back 35 years, perhaps we’d find an incident of John Cleese accidentally knocking someone’s head off with a rather large pike, but I suspect that’s about it.
if you go back 500 years you’d find that beheadings were quite common.
The article quoted:
https://kareningalasmith.com/2014/09/04/beheaded/
Was written in 2014 and details murders prior to that date not the five years previous to the publication of this article by Louise Perry. Also the cited article doesn’t mention ISIS.
Well, don’t know about the UK, but here are some beheaders in the USA in the last year or so:
“Yoni Aguilar… took the granddaughter to a separate location … decapitated her.”
“Kenneth Lockings Jr….held the sword with both hands using enough force to leave Jernigan nearly beheaded.”
“Jacob Gonzales is the prime suspect in connection to the beheading of his girlfriend Katherine Cunningham. ”
Not a single Muhammed.
Kent – the fact that you know there names are not Muhammed is exactly the point. If it is a white guy (or white Asian or white Hispanic) who commits a terrible crime you can be sure the mainstream media will quickly and efficiently not only broadcast the name, but also provide a picture to make sure everyone knows how racist, hateful, etc. that white people are. And if the white criminal is a Leftist/Democrat, you can be sure that the media will “mistakenly” describe him as Republican/Alt-Right.
I admire the thrust of the article, very interesting; but on Aziz, i think the shame of Perry’s judgment that Aziz acted badly is that the claims against him are untested (and now untestable) and arguably don’t belong in the public sphere at all. If “Grace” remained upset about her evening out why didn’t she just contact Aziz again privately and argue the toss with him – surely that is sanction enough? Instead, while she didn’t have the guts to name herself, she was happy to go at him with both barrels, in public, stir up bile against him, and leave him unable to respond without drawing additional attack. I think conducting a complaint like Grace’s in the media is to end any discussion and reconciliation about what happened. I think it was a matter that really the rest of us aren’t entitled to know about — and aren’t really entitled to have an opinion about unless we are content to have completely uninformed opinions.
Well stated, Mr. Thomson. This is the crux of the social media morass: everyone gets to air their dirty laundry grievances and score points wherever they can get them, whilst remaining anonymous many times, and get those little dopamine hits. Meanwhile, the folks on the receiving end of criticism are in a winless situation: no matter how they respond, they get bombed from somebody.
This page needs a ‘like’ button. I agree with Burns. The guys dismissing her noncommittal to the act in the moment are mistaken, in my opinion. There are so so many times we all halfheartedly go with something and then later think that we actually didn’t want it, but just forced ourselves to go along with it to impress or ingratiate or for some other favor like that. One can easily do this with a recruiter for an opportunity one really wants, or with a romantic interest one really likes. But, as Burns says, we all don’t have the details to judge. Better to stay on the fence for this one.
Ok, but with whom does the responsibility lie in your scenario? If you do happen to force yourself to go through with something you don’t really want to do, there is no basis for assigning blame to any participating party for that decision.
The Aziz scenario does not require any fence-stting. The basic facts are agreed upon by both parties. The issue lies with “Grace”, and her failure to explain why Aziz should be held responsible for her “non-committal” acquiescence. If she compelled herself to go along with something she was uncomfortable with, that was her decision entirely and therefore the responsibility for any subsequent feelings of regret lie entirely with her. More egregiously, she felt it appropriate to transfer this responsibility onto Aziz, as if her participation in the act as an individual possessing free will was of no relevance.
Because Grace was after someone with fame…her intentions were never genuine. People, use the term loosely, use passive aggressive behaviour to achieve their utterly selfish aims while diligently portraying themselves as not only ‘innocent’ but victims.
Thank you, Louise Perry ,for writing this article, and thank you Burns Thompson, for dealing with the main point (I know “thrust” is accurate, but…). I agree that the public accusations against Aziz were not for the purpose of educating men or even obtaining an apology from Amin. I think Jonathan Haidt’s diagnosis of the “call-out culture” applies here.
I urge you to read Campbell and Manning’s paper “Microaggressions and Moral Cultures” in which they talk about the emergence of a new type of moral culture, in which aggrieved parties turn to third parties for “help”, attention, status, etc. (vs both dignity culture and honour culture). It’s a fascinating read.
Golly, this place has become the magnet for radfems suddenly. We’ve had TERFs for a while and now the SWERFs emerge. They all have pow-wow and decide to groom the conservatives?
The framing techniques you’re using are too transparent – I’m about to eat supper, so I’ll come back later to address how the writer workers to manoeuvre, or manipulate if you prefer, her reader. You may think conservatives are stupid, but c’mon now, have some respect. Anyway, we’re happy to tolerate the far left’s pariahs, social outcasts, misfits, and lepers. You’re good for a laugh.
The most prominent feminist voices within the media and academia are less likely than average to have experienced the extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum because they are disproportionately white, well off, able-bodied graduates. This is particularly true when it comes to prostitution, which almost exclusively affects women living in poverty.
Needs stats for these assertions, and not from a radfem activist NGO. I don’t dispute street walkers live impoverished lives, often due to drug abuse and the need to support an expensive addiction, but there are women who choose to work in the much more lucrative end of the sex-work spectrum too to finance their studies, earn a significant amount of money in a short period of time, or even because they like both sex and money. Often they are single mums who prefer to be involved in their children’s lives and invest in their opportunities, and sex work is far more lucrative per hour -more bang for the buck, so to say. To be successful one needs to be polished, fit, well coiffed, etc., all of which requires know-how, attentiveness, ambition, and investment. This doesn’t necessarily exclude poor women, but it does appear to be unattainable to those nearly incapacitated by hard drugs such as heroin and chasing the dragon.
The best option for women who choose to work the sex industry is the New Zealand solution. Allowing sex workers, both male and female, to form co-ops and run their own brothels with security removes the control and money from the underwork whilst providing a safer work environment. Is it perfect? No, but no job or workplace is.
ga gamba — I generally respect and admire your input here, but man unless you have direct experience in the world of high-end prostitution (I do) then maybe reign it in a bit. Brilliant men can be undone by a lack of humility.
@Steve – I’d be interested to read your take. Seems a bit unfair to respond as such to ga gamba without providing said examples. Just stating that you have direct experience and implying ga gamba is wrong doesn’t help him or us gain any potentially useful insight that you might be able to offer via your anecdotes.
@Dark Matter
Ditto. I have zero experience with prostitution (the idea turns my stomach), but I have seen a great number of various women and documentaries that make it very clear that many prostitutes are the opposite of victims, they are paid more than the highest end lawyer or doctor, often enjoy their work, and use it to make a huge amount of cash very quickly.
@Dark Matter
Here’s my take on the matter. I have known many prostitutes as… friends? protection? idk. We sold drugs out of their motel rooms between johns and kept an eye out for them for about a decade. I also know several pimps and their women.
FWIW I agree with the statement that women in higher education experience a lesser degree of sexual violence than other women, especially prostitutes (every prostitute I knew had *many* stories of sexual violence including out and out rape or beatings). This is mostly due to lack of options. Prostitutes (including the ones that are in it for tuition or their kids benefit) have to do it because they have no other options. They accept the violence partly because it’s part of the job and partly because they have no recourse through the police here (Canada).
I disagree with the statement that most prostitutes are not ‘well off’. The vast majority of prostitutes I have known were doing pretty well for themselves despite the high incidence of drug abuse, mental illness, and childhood sexual trauma (I would say ~70% of the prostitute I knew experienced childhood sexual trauma and were willing to talk about it,, probably leading them to view sex as currency).
I think it’s cute that gg thinks that college students seeing 10 to 30 johns a night for 40-80 bucks each are polished and fit. High end prostitutes probably make up *way* less than 5% of prostitues. Anyone who could be a high end prostitute can make similar money through tips or pay to party or similar, making prostitution just a side job them; they don’t have to do it, they have options, and they can go to the police and be believed. Lastly, no one likes having sex with dirty older men they just met 2 min ago, there is no romance and no pleasure for the women. Make no mistake they are objects, both to the men and to themselves; they see their body as an asset separate from themselves that they can sell. Encounters are as short as possible because both parties want it that way.
Addressing the issue of drugs, I haven’t met a clean prostitute, ever. They don’t like what they do but they have to do it and drugs get them through because they don’t care as much when high. Even when they start clean they will start using quickly because everyone else uses and frequently clients will request ice, hard, soft, etc. which is extra money that can be made.
I also agree that legalization and mitigation of risk is important for the well being of these women, not only because it will give them a modicum of self respect but it will give them access to police services and other options.
I know that this is all anecdotal, but it reflects my (limited) experience. Take from it what you will.
@Steve
I too would be very interested in your experience with high end prostitute because mine is limited and the women I know that could be high end prostitutes just do modelling and pay to party mixed with promotion, selling products or similar cash gigs.
I think it’s cute that gg thinks that college students seeing 10 to 30 johns a night for 40-80 bucks each are polished and fit. High end prostitutes probably make up *way* less than 5% of prostitues.
I think it’s the cutest that you think I wrote that. How would a uni student get her courses done by seeing 10 to 30 punters per day? That said, if your high estimates are accurate $80 x 30 punters = $2400 for one day’s work. Do so twice a month and it’s $57,600 per annum, presumably unreported to the tax authorities.
Still, thank you for proving my point. We don’t know how many of each type of sex workers exist. You guess 5%, I guess 80%, and someone else guesses 52.7%. We have assertions, and that’s about it.
We know the internet has transformed sex work, making it easier for sex workers and their customers to find each other without the need to stand on street corners soliciting and in cars crawling the kerbs.
You, me, and Ms Perry are all shooting in the dark for places where it is illegal, and because it still carries a stigma where it’s been decriminalised, a lot of sex workers keep it on the down low. Some of our best data comes from New Zealand, but it’s far from complete and I wouldn’t call it representative of the entire world.
This opinion piece, by a retired call girl, explains the statistics and the agendas.
Ray and Asema, thank you both for your thoughts!
We first need to understand Ms Perry’s objectives. There are two: depict the choice feminists unsympathetically and build support for anti-prostitution activism and laws. For the sake of clarity, choice feminists are those who take a more libertarian view that prioritise women’s individual rights and freedoms; radfems, who often call themselves “gender critical”, are collectivists who accept the need to curtail women’s individual freedoms to protect the group of females from harm.
To call choice feminists third wave is a mistake – they are women such as Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers who have been around for decades and don’t fall for most of the intersectionalist double standards of the third wavers.
One of the key disagreements between these two camps is the right of women to do sex work, appear in heterosexual pornographic films, and model provocatively in ways that appeal to the so–called male gaze. Choice feminists extend “my body my choice” further than the collectivist radfems would allow. That’s contradiction number one.
The second is even more astonishing. Amongst most all feminists is the notion that women should be able to go anywhere without fear. Not only does this include a jog in the park, but even into unlit alleys of the most dangerous parts of the city women should be free to venture – places that even most men wouldn’t dare to go. That women ought to be cautious or take protective measures is to engage in a type of victim blaming. Yet, the radfems will argue that heterosexual sex work is too dangerous for women always, so unlike everything else everywhere else, this must be forbidden.
Aziz Ansari is the hook to catch our attention. I think most here would agree the allegations were an over-egg, an example of #MeToo going too far. Ms Perry uses him to build rapport with the reader. She would have us believe this wronged man was wronged by the choice feminists who attack men for minor issues whilst disregarding women suffering worse crimes.
Yet, did radfems not attack Ansari too? I haven’t seen a poll done, but by perusing radfem hangouts such as Reddit’s r/GenderCritical we find those who associate with radfem ideas and causes were also angered by Ansari: Men turn into murderers. Women don’t get second chances to find out which men will react normally to “no”.
Not only did they attack Ansari, they also attacked other feminists: To my shock, I found that a lot of the ”feminist/progressive” types, who’re usually so strong about consent and all that, blasted at Grace for being weak, not understanding that Ansari isn’t a mind reader, that she should’ve stood up for herself more, how can Ansari be blamed? She’s just weak!
But the Ansari incident was even more messy than Perry would have us believe. At The Atlantic, Caitlan Flanagan wrote: I thought it would take a little longer for the hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men [Ansari]. I had assumed that on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they’d stay laser focused on college-educated white men for another few months. (Source: theatlantic(dot)com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/)
On the flipside, Rae Grey at Bitch wrote: Apologist Asian men and opportunistic white women quickly jumped to his defense by crying foul and playing down Ansari’s coercive behavior. Apparently, accusing Ansari is just a bridge too far for the #metoo movement. Ansari’s feminism has always been one of the funniest things about him. Sure, his unconventional humor and identity informs an underrepresented Tamil/Muslim perspective in the predominantly white comedy world, but it’s also important to acknowledge just how limited, minimizing, and white his feminism is.
(Source: bitchmedia(dot)org/article/aziz-ansari-white-feminism-south-asian-women)
Same event, yet two wildly different interpretations of the aftermath focusing on the racialised aspects of it. White women were unjustly attacking brown-bodied Ansari whilst concurrently unjustly giving brown-bodied Ansari a pass. That’s some top-tier time-and-space shifting voodoo, white ladies.
Both Perry and I present anecdotal information, though I’m not bigging mine up to create a paradox: Why do cases like Ansari’s receive so much attention among many feminists, particularly younger ones, while the most extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum is comparatively ignored?
Is this a serious question? The pardox on which the article hinges? It’s because he’s a famous celebrity. No more, no less. Perry herself uses him because he captures interest. Would Kevin from accounting behaving the same way get the same attention from the press?
Perry “could mention” (oops, she has, hasn’t she?) the emotive power of ISIS to make a point – it’s worse for women in Britain than in the Caliphate. Personally, I’m unsurprised more beheadings of Britons occur in Britain because few Brits are running around in the land of war controlled by these terrorists. I leave it to the Scandinavians to holiday in the wrong places. And Max Smith commenting here makes the point Perry misunderstood her data.
Perry writes: “… the worst kind of sexual violence is too often trivialized and ignored by those who should know better.” Is this true? Do choice feminists let slide serious crimes perpetrated? Though asserted, this is unsubstantiated. I’ll take the risk of going out on a limb here and say almost all people, including choice feminists, don’t let slide murder, beheadings, eye gouging, and other violent crimes. I’d wager that most also don’t approve of non-violent crime too.
But, if we really want to examine this, who was amongst the first to publicise the rampant grooming of girls and serial gang rapes being perpetrated in the UK by mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men? It was neither camp of feminists. It was Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League. Everyone in power as well as the pundits accused him of making it up because they loathed the idea a person they found repellent might be right.
Now, how does sex work fit in with all these crimes? In the UK, sex work is legal. Associated activities such as kerb crawling and keeping a brothel are not. Odd that Perry fails to mention this when she’s listing off all the crimes happening. This is not to say sex workers don’t suffer from crime, but then which group is immune from crime? Hell, even the Queen herself found she was face-to-face in her bedroom with a
homepalace invader years ago.For men and women alike, some jobs are more dangerous than others. We don’t ban construction, deep sea fishing, and farming do we? No, we legislate improved safety measures. New technologies are introduced to mitigate risk. We hold employers accountable. We allow workers to unionise, if they choose, and campaign freely for their rights. Yet, for all these improvements, has death ceased? No.
Sex workers deserve the same type of work protections we give to the dustmen, roofers, and hazardous waste handlers.
I don’t think prostitution ought to be sanitized. Unlike construction or deep-sea fishing, it contributes nothing of value to society. It is premised on the female body, in it’s most intimate aspects, being a commodity, an attitude that should be rejected at every opportunity. It is inseperable from sex and drug trafficking, and so will always be a hotbed of crime.
Legalised prostitution serves only to take advantage of desperate women and satisfy entitled men. That kind of moral downgrade is not something the state should have any part of, let alone tax revenue on!
Unlike construction or deep-sea fishing, it contributes nothing of value to society.
We can see fish caught and buildings built as something tangible. Still, there will be some who argue that some tangible things have no value.
Trickier is the service providers. There are some who assert psychology and religion provide no value. Others assert certain types of art provide no value. Same too with professional sport.
For example, I’m no fan of rap music. I find no value in it. I could even view it through the feminist lens and mention its misogyny. I could criticise it for other reasons too, such as its celebration of criminality. Yet, I don’t seek to ban it. I’m content to live a life of allowing each and every person to find value in things that I don’t value.
Now, just as certainly there are women who have been trafficked into sex work, there are others who have chosen it for themselves. They don’t view it as you do.
Human trafficking is not exclusive to sex work. It’s found in all kinds of occupations, from agriculture to fishing, garment making to food preparation. You assert, though don’t substantiate, sex work is inseparable from human trafficking, yet New Zealand has done more to separate the two than where sex work is illegal. Further, as you well know, there are those who choose sex work and are not trafficked into it. Is New Zealand’s legalisation of sex work implemented perfectly? No, because nothing is perfect anywhere. Yet, certainly where sex work is illegal human trafficking exists. And because illegal activity is conducted underground, it’s far more difficult to analyse the situation as well as provide aid to those who want to escape. If you are genuinely opposed to trafficking, it’s very peculiar you prefer policies that makes it more likely to happen. I suspect the trafficking angle is a pretense. I read enough of radfem strategy discussions to know that years ago they decided to focus on trafficking as the tactic to use to attack sex work because they deduced attacking sex work directly was a loser.
Grace didn’t write her own story in Babe. It was written by another adolescent some time after the event after Grace had shared it with friends and then the writer. How did the published story compare with Grace’s feelings after she left Ansari’s flat or even the morning after. How much of it was rationalised and polished in the telling and retelling and tailored to meet the writer’s hopes of a #MeToo scoop taking down a man with a public reputation of sorts? We’ll never know. But Ansari must have the empathy of a stone if he didn’t pick up Grace’s alleged discomfort with the removal of her underwear and the performance of a sex act which would have required cooperation on her part. Ansari used no force. How did Grace’s underwear get removed in the first place if she was indicating her objections as she surely must have done. If Ansari wasn’t prepared to admit her account was true and there was no way that Grace or Babe could corroborate it, it should never have been published. As far as the beheaded women in the UK are concerned, where do I go for the stats? They’re not on Google or published by the Femicide Census as far as I can see.
Actually, the story compared well with her feelings. She probably thought she wouldn’t get doxxed, but when she was identified as Abby Nierman, her social media was heavily scrutinized and if anything, her tweets indicate she was even more angry, and vengeful. On 3 occasions, at least, she or her friends openly discuss damaging Ansari. Her friend in November tweeted about clearing their calendar to enjoy watching the Ansari takedown. So it was a lie that seeing him wear the “Time’s Up” pin was the trigger, that occurred only a week before the article which was already deep in the production phase. I blame Katie Way for publishing such a hit piece, but not for exaggerating Nierman’s sentiment.
It’s a shame because Abby Nierman is otherwise quite fuckable. Good face, good legs, all she had to do was not be dumb enough to date an Indian. It’s like she’s never been online before; the “show bobs and vagene” meme seems quite real.
Is there no moderation at all for these comments?
Shame on me for discussing such a low impulse as sex in the hallowed halls of the Quillette comment section, where great minds gather to try out their bons mots and have lively debate on the subtleties of the latest campus non-issue.
The Privy Council surely deserves better than to have such a rogue as I, the court jester—nay, the bedraggled tramp with nary a whit of self reflection—such a rogue as I come to disrupt the mental titans at the height of reasoned enlightenment with my ribald repartee and my concern for such animal functions as coitus and excrement.
‘Tis but a shame, alas! My heart sings for thee, O noble commenter Good Grief, the dragoman of the wretched.
@Good Grief, Where is the issue?
Phil, he’s just a White Knight who’s pissed that I considered the Ansari girl as a sex object. Check my URL for a photo of her posing as a sex object, quite successfully I think.
The only “crime” of this whole debacle was that according to the original Babe account, Ansari tried this weird thing where he shoved his fingers down her throat or some other such nonsense.
All he had to do was take charge and love her well, stopping if she gave a firm “no.” But it’s not like most Americans will ever know good sex, most men being circumcised and most women having circumcised lovers.
Par for the course. Only news because Ansari is a starlet whose “comedy” routine seems to be, “So my friend related an exploit with a girl and I said, ‘Hey man, not cool, that’s toxic masculinity LOL.'”
apparently not
There should not be but Mamsplainer is an idiot troll who should get a job and a life.
No. You want moderation? You may find it just about every where else.
May your eyeballs and mind the safety they deserve. Elsewhere.
The “sexual violence spectrum.” is clearly nonsense as it is defined as including things which are not violent and contain no threat of violence. It is intended to support claims that sexual violence is extremely common by including non-violence as violence. Anyone who uses the term is being manipulative and deceptive.
The Aziz Ansari reports are an example of misandric propoanda. An entirely consensual sexual encounter was later regretted by the woman. Instead of accepting responsibility for her own actions she launches a savage attack against the man causing significant damage. The account make sit clear that the man has done anything wrong at all, simple some ex post facto self justifications which that he had not been as considerate as he could have been. Her behaviour is unambiguosly dreadful seeking to publically humiliate someone using the details of a sexual encounter. If the sexes were reversed the situation becomes clearer a man who published a story about a unsatisfactory sexual encounter with a woman in which he sought to shame and humiliate her would be seen as an unacceptable. When a woman does it she is lauded.
@AJ – The “sexual violence spectrum” is also a means to demonize all men. The idea implicit in inventing such a spectrum is that ‘all men are rapists, even if some of them manage to keep it more or less under control’.
I realize this article is about what types of incidents get the most attention, and not Ansari specifically – however I do believe that many of these people having “post event dissonance” foist responsibility onto the shoulders of others. Leaving was always an option to her, but she chose to stay. If I were Ansari I would be pursuing defamation of character action.
> In the language of feminist theory, Ansari’s behavior fell somewhere on the “sexual violence spectrum.”
In the language of feminist theory, saying “hello” falls somewhere on the “sexual violence spectrum.”
@ C Young
lol yeah i think your right there, an unsolicited greeting is equivalent to rape.
in the language of feminist theory = in the land of make believe
Most feminists are female, and their innate solipsism warps their estimation of the urgency of different problems. To a middle-class undergrad, the false specters of the campus rape “epidemic” and the supposed “wage gap” loom larger than real problems in the third world like sex trafficking and ritual genital cutting.
I’m talking about female genital cutting of course, because male genital cutting is quite acceptable and even encouraged by certain tribal factions in the U.S. and Canada.
If feminists had any perspective, they’d all be intactivists instead. Maybe there’d be less sexual violence and more sexual satisfaction if men’s first sexual experience wasn’t extreme trauma and mutilation that fundamentally alters the mechanics of intercourse?
Fundamentally alters? As a circumcized man I sired children, never raped anyone, have no trouble with sexual satisfaction and do not consider a loss of foreskin as a baby to be equivalent to a woman’s clitoris being removed without anaesthetic while she is in puberty. The density of nerve endings and permanent alteration applies in FGM but not to circumcision. If anything I have reduced risk of infections.
This is a strangely US-centric article from somebody living in Britain.
Mainstream media in Britain absolutely concentrate on horrible crimes, especially horrible crimes committed by men against women.
Whereas I’ve never heard any claims of a high incidence of rape on British campuses and I’ve never heard of Aziz Ansari.
“Why do you rob banks?”
“Because that’s where the money is.”
“Why, then, has the issue of campus rape become such a cause célèbre?”
Because that’s where the feminists are.
“When I say “extreme,” I really mean it—it’s almost impossible to exaggerate the depravity of some of the crimes committed by men against women and girls. In the U.K. alone (where I live), I could mention the woman whose eyes were gouged out by her boyfriend, another woman who was buried alive by her partner, the teenager branded with the initial of her rapist, or the baby girl raped at two weeks old. Did you know that, in the last five years, the number of women beheaded by British men in the U.K. is greater than the number of Britons beheaded by ISIS? “
Go the extra mile and tell the whole truth. The reason the UK media has no appetite for these horrid stories are mostly committed by Muslims. Wonder what was the number of female Brits beheaded 30 years ago? In Britain it appears easier to be arrested for reporting on who is committed sex crimes than it is for committing the crimes. Have British born men become more sexually violent in a generation? The reason these crimes are not reported is because such reporting would lay bare the liberal policies that initiated said criminal conduct.
Now here is some cold truth to be considered. This wonderful article opens the door to looking at scale and -as condescending as it is- possibly readjusting feminists so they are addressing the real problem which you point out. This, not long after I was surprised to read research about drugging, prostitution / exploitation of young white women by muslim men in the north of england … something that had been going on a long time before it was discovered by law enforcement – because keeping stats about race/criminality was frowned upon. A very ugly situation that saw many of these men apprehended and their photos posted. but the problem persists.
Every photograph I’ve seen of Aziz Ansari reminds me of a deer caught in the headlights. His agent should not let him date strange women.
That said, I’ve been considering the following proposition:
Have sex with a woman one time and you have handed her the power to destroy you.
I’ve been searching for a hypothetical where this cannot ever be true. So far, I have not succeeded.
Even within marriage, if there’s a contested divorce, an accusation of sexual violence is so common as to be generally accepted by the news media without question.
Obviously, sexual violence against women does happen.
But equally obvious is the increasing willingness of a woman to destroy a man’s reputation out of mere annoyance. There is no downside for her.
Ansari is one example. Brett Kavanaugh, another (and in his case, there is no credible evidence that he was ever in the same room as his accuser).
It’s a bad time for young men to be dating.
What was considered a creepy inappropriate pass in my college years is now considered assault. These snowflakes need some time with some seasoned women to grow up and learn to be clever. Clever is not sex on the first date. That’s stupudity.
Exactly. Where has personal responsibility gone? As we grow from gormless snowflake to adult (and some of us don’t make the transition), we learn how to unwind a situation before you do something you will regret later. Unfortunately the gormless snowflakes seem to have embraced the victim narrative and don’t mind destroying peoples reputation. Not talking about the men who deserve it. Not getting that Ansari forced himself on her or abused his power. She just regretted her actions later and made Ansari pay for it with a character assassination.
Easy. Because Aziz is how the “good guys” behave. Most men aren’t violent sexual rapists. But all men have degrees of creepy, non consenty behavior. 1 in 3 women will be sexually assaulted, but 100% of women have experienced creepy behavior from a dude who didn’t really get consent. Women know the really predatory violent dudes are beyond help. Women care more about the men they feel they can reach. The “good guys” the minor offenders.
Whereas 9 out of 10 feminists will post misandric nonsense in one or more web fora.
Don’t bother with the apologetics. Feminists hate Ansari because he’s, in far-right lingo, a beta cuck. No amount of rationality can change the fact that they’re women and they evolved to be viscerally repulsed by such weak pretensions as “male feminists” have.
It’s like everyone forgot the whole Nice Guy trope about beta losers “identifying with” women, only to become passive-aggressive bitches when they inevitably get denied. Usually the feminists need little more than to have the college propaganda kissed away.
So what if someone is creepy. Unless there is a credible threat of physical danger just roll your eyes and walk away. Has all this empowerment been for nothing?
Sez google:
According to a March 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1995 to 2010, the estimated annual rate of female rape or sexual assault declined 58%, from 5.0 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older to 2.1 per 1,000.
2.1/1000 is a long way from 1/3, baby kangaroo.
Sez google:
According to a March 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1995 to 2010, the estimated annual rate of female rape or sexual assault declined 58%, from 5.0 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older to 2.1 per 1,000.
2.1/1000 is a long way from 1/3, baby kangaroo.
“Why, then, has the issue of campus rape become such a cause célèbre?”
Because it financially supports a huge Title IX apparat, because it concentrates power in this apparat (and who doesn’t like power?), because of the heady power of knowing that this apparat is available to punish a man on your say-so/whim (which you might wish to do for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to buying cred with the current boyfriend by punishing the prior one, or self-dramatisation, or building cred with one’s feminist friends)?
It’s a cause célèbre because it suits so many agendas. And if there’s some collateral damage, well, this mostly affects men so it’s not feminists’ job to solve it (and besides they had it coming, after oppressing us for millenia).
Attention. That is why women do it. I’ve had to distance myself from friends who have made up rape claims just to get attention from guys.
@Caligula – bingo
And the only way to keep it working long term is to continually loosen the definition of assault and violence. The radical feminists know that they become superfluous once their goals are attained, so they have to redefine the targets and create new bad guys in order to stay relevant. Making discrimination illegal wasn’t enough, equal opportunity wasn’t enough. So they had to invent “micro-aggressions” and “toxic masculinity”, equate words with violence, and associate “male gaze” with rape.
The good news – maybe I’m an optimist – is that this crap is so far past reasonableness that they are alienating more and more people every time the move the goalposts. Eventually the woke whites will realize this and that’s when the party is over.
@GrumpyBear, I suspect moving the goalposts is the aim, not the means. Sure, a lot of people will be alienated – they will be able to say “I’m not like those extreme, man-hating feminists” and then in the next breath talk about “white male privilege”.
@AMcguiness
You may be right, but as I said maybe I’m on optimist. In my case, all the BS eventually hit critical mass, and once I rejected some of it, I found myself rejecting all of it – to the point where any loony right-wing outrage rant started to sound appealing. If anything I’m having to watch myself from swinging back too far.
Yes, me too. Before all this nonsense of reaching back to excoriate people for things they did sometimes even decades ago, I might have had some sympathy. Now I tend to view reports as an abdication of personal responsibility with a side of character assassination.
“Campuses are rife with sexism”
Are they? What is this statement based on? Women are the majority in colleges. There are more female-only clubs on campus than male-only clubs. Can the author point to a female-centric equivalent of largely held academic theories such as toxic masculinity?
There seems to be a good number of these questionable statements peppered throughout this article. I won’t even touch the “British” beheadings nonsense.
The women are the cause of the sexism they see.
@Nick, I don’t get it either. Many colleges now have a 60/40 or 70/30 ratio female to male. My daughter’s friends who graduated ahead of her are always complaining about the lack of males whether it’s for a play or some other event.
In north america it is a phenomena that has been explained as men dropping out of higher education as a result of not wanting to exist in a toxic environment where they are classified as being on the spectrum of sexual violence.
Good points and questions.
Maybe she was making the point that campuses are rife with anti-male sexism (which would be correct) but I doubt she was.
@Nick. Yeah, I reacted to this too. Given that the author, by her own admission, believes that “‘manspreading’ merits some discussion”, I’m reading it as that any activity a man may undertake short of sitting quietly in a very small cell constitutes sexism.
@Mark Beal
Given that I’ve ridden a public bus to and from work nearly every weekday for the past three years and have never once seen even a single instance of “manspreading” despite having been on the lookout for it since the term started getting attention, I’m thinking that it really probably doesn’t, in fact, merit any discussion.
I catch the tram to work everyday and could share an album of photos of woman-spreading in crowded trams, where women need to take up two seats so their handbags can have a seat of its own.
@mark beal
Yah, the“‘manspreading’ merits some discussion” caused the whole article to burst into flames.
The first time I jokingly used that idiotic description with my woman, she wouldn’t believe me that it was real until I proved it online with some articles and videos.
Her response was, “so when we’re making love, I am women-spreading?”
I almost fell off my chair laughing.
It’s no wonder I love her so much….
Why does all media not use Grace’s real name, Abby Nierman. The evidence is well established. There is no legal gag order. She is simply a source. Before a source can be deemed credible, the credibility of her story has to be tested, and the media have not approached her to test elements of her story. Similar to the Title IX debacle, many cases are being thrown out because the accuser was not adequately questioned or cross-examined, I don’t understand why the media, or even yourself, is giving Nierman a pass? Is her anonymity fair given she made this a public issue and she did not seek charges (the only case where anonymity is protected). Is her character not relevant to how she perceived the encounter? By protecting anonymity for dubious cases like this, are we not encouraging more written revenge porn?
Sorry, stopped reading you call out third wave feminists who only address issues that affect people like them…when you only addressed sexual violence perpetrated by men towards women. It’s talking out of both sides of your mouth.
“For what it’s worth, I think that Ansari behaved badly. I also dislike cat calling, sexist jokes, and other “microaggressions.” I even think that “manspreading” merits some discussion.”
I don’t think “manspreading” merits discussion. But since you brought it up…
“Manspreading” is a misandrist term used by persons so utterly self-absorbed that they can’t even begin to try to understand why men do it. Perhaps those woke feminists complaining about it have never even seen a cock and balls.
However, if you would like to discuss it, perhaps we could also discuss fat spreading? And other ways in which people gratuitously take up space.
As for “microaggressions” that you also dislike, thanks to feminists, our workplaces have become veritable minefields when it comes to social blunders that now get run down to HR by bitches on wheels.
The utopia these ideas are designed to create are actually creating the opposite. I’m female and have been dreaming lately of a swift return to the dreaded “patriarchy” (which I don’t even believe existed as feminists would have it.)
These terms belong in the trash. No discussion necessary. Bye bye.
@House of Shards
Okay, but I’ve got to say your handle is terrific, and I hope to see it again.
Maybe they do it because they have so little to argue.
I mean, the horrid crimes are obviously bad, with nobody justifying them because they are actual, true, clear crimes. They are also rare.
Soft “bad behavior” is commonplace and more easily open to suggesting they are a similar problem when they are not even related. Men wanting sex from women is nature; women wanting to provide sex to men is nature; boorish behavior may not match your preference or style, but they are not on a sexual violence spectrum.
The bad actions they misidentify as being on a sexual violence spectrum is focused on the weakest crimes because they are not crimes and they are common among men and women who, by nature, seek sex with each other. Everyone agrees that the actual crimes are bad, so there’s no need to discuss them. They are just trying to coerce all behavior to match their bias.
“Grace” got totally naked of her own violition. Pro tip to women getting completely nude with a man signals to him you want to have sex. Its will over-ride any other signal short of saying something clearly. If you are uncomfortable in the least don’t get naked. A lot of young people today, and I use young people loosely meaning basically anyone under about 35, are like elongated children.
Grace also fellated him at two different times. Another pro tip: putting a man’s penis in your mouth will almost certainly get him thinking that you actually want sex.
Pingback: The Aziz Ansari Paradox | 3 Quarks Daily
“The same people who argue that Ansari shouldn’t have made advances on Grace because she was obviously uncomfortable will defend the right of a man to buy sex from a woman who is only consenting because she needs to feed herself. How do we explain this contradiction?”
Can someone explain to me how this is a paradox? I do not see how the two are connected together at all, but maybe I am missing something? What I know is that I do not share the assumption that a woman is consenting only to feed herself. There are other professions to feed yourself too, are there not? Is every prostitute in this world uncomfortable when having sex?
Klaus, the premise is that the prostitute has little choice. The other jobs they might have available to them cannot sustain them and their children, or they are not capable of (low-IQ). Very often if prostitutes don’t have a drug addiction going in, they develop one to cope with the soul-crushing nature of their work. These are expensive habits to keep.
Prostitution essentially preys on the most vulnerable, destroys their self-worth, and leads them to chemical dependency to numb the pain. How it isn’t obvious that that isn’t far, far worse than having an awkward sexual encounter after a date is inexplicable. But modern feminists aren’t too bright, and some innovative man has convinced their thought leaders to adopt positions that only benefit men.
You lost me at manspreading. There’s no hope for modern day feminists. You are all insane.
The problem with this article is that the media absolutely does focus on lots of sex crimes of far greater severity than campus rape. In particular the media as a whole is obsessed with “sex trafficking,” so great is their desire for more “trafficking” stories that whenever the police bust prostitutes the media will try to portray them as “trafficked,” regardless of whether or not they have been coerced into their profession or not. The reason people question the how widespread sex trafficking is because the evidence for its being widespread is weak, not because they have some sort of bias.
As for why people care more about the Aziz Ansari story than prostitution, I think a way to help think about it would be to replace the sex in the story with some other activity, since every time people talk about sex they seem to lose 30 IQ points.
So let’s replace sex with carpentry. Let’s imagine you get some sort of acquaintance of yours to remodel your deck for free. They remodel it, but they do a crappy job and are really rude to you while they are working. That’s a story you might find upsetting and want to share with other people. The fact that there are lots of people who do carpentry for money isn’t really relevant. And if I went through that experience I’d still be willing to defend someone’s right to hire a carpenter, even if the carpenter didn’t really like their job and was only doing it to feed themselves.
(This, incidentally, is a problem with SWERF rhetoric. The lots of people hate their jobs and are only working because they want to feed and otherwise support themselves. Prostitutes are no different. It’s not possible to argue against prostitution without arguing against jobs in general.)
“…every time people talk about sex they seem to lose 30 IQ points. ”
A far more interesting paradox than the one discussed in the article is why so many adults are incapable of talking about adult things in a grown-up way.
To be fair, if your balls are so huge than you need to keep your legs splayed apart, you probably have testicular cancer and are therefore emasculated. But yeah, my female office mate is an obnoxious mansplainer, and fat.
“Campuses are rife with sexism, ” If by that you mean that men are denigrated, targeted and subject to kangaroo court tribunals when accused of sexual assaults then yes I would agree, campuses are rife with sexism.
“Grace’s” real name is Abby Nierman.
I’ve noticed this paradox! I can think of two recent incidents here (in NZ) that got little more than a short mention in the newspapers, but were deeply shocking:
(i.) A senior airforce officer abused an underlying, to the extent of locking her up in a cage even. He had previous convictions of raping his own (biological) daughters. But not only did he get off, but she had to pay him damages ….AND it was the airforce that pursued her for these costs.
(ii.) A middle aged man who is a “well respected academic” in a nursing home sexually assaulted an elderly woman in her bed who was incapacitated from a stroke.
Two mind-bendingly evil cases. But barely a whisper about them publically. And yet, a few teen boys were outed for having a facebook site where they bragged about sexual conquests caused a storm that lasted for years, to the extent that the boys were on suicide watch for a time.
Madness
The link to support the statement that “the women involved [in prositution] face some of the highest rates of rape and murder of any group” has no statistics at all, and, as far as I can see, not even the claim that is attributed to it. It does have this unsupported assertion: “Female, male and transgender sex workers face high levels of violence, stigma, discrimination and other human-rights violations.”
@Andrew Mcguiness
I have become very tired of web articles that post links that purportedly support something in the text only to find that they do no such thing.
The authors do themselves no favors.
>he did ignore her discomfort in a way that was arguably coercive
>campuses are rife with sexism
>british beheadings
>there’s very little media appetite for stories about the extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum
>proceeds to link to multiple MSM stories about extreme sexual violence
The entire article is a series of declarative statements with no supporting logic or evidence. This falls well below Quillette’s usual standards
Agreed. I would be happy to see a serious argument for feminism in Quillette, but only if it is actually a reasoned argument. I have never seen a feminist argument that actually addresses the best arguments put forward against the feminist concepts that are defended.
Agreed. I would be happy to see an argument for feminism in Quillette, but only if it was actually a reasoned argument. I’ve never seen a feminist argument that actually addresses the best arguments that have been put forward against the concepts it defends.
“Did you know that, in the last five years, the number of women beheaded by British men in the U.K. is greater than the number of Britons beheaded by ISIS?”
This is the article cited:
https://kareningalasmith.com/2014/09/04/beheaded/
It is from 2014 and deals in murders prior to that date and not the five years prior to the publication of this article.
“Why, then, has the issue of campus rape become such a cause célèbre?”
Because feminism has always been about middle-class educated women.
Feminism is basically about the First World Problems of high-status, well-connected women. This is why they go nuts over who’s admitted to golf clubs and how many Fortune 500 CEOs are women and caddish celebrities, but couldn’t be bothered about FGM, lower-status women suffering horrific abuse, or the truly awful lot women in many non-Western countries still suffer.
There is no paradox when the actual agenda of the current feminist movement (3rd wave as referred to by the author) is recognized for what it really is: one of supremacy agenda rather than equality.
Serious incidents of actual sexual assault/violence as ‘classically’ defined are committed by a small minority, have clear victims, and are already subject to established legal processes. Further attention on these types of incidents will not garner additional power.
However, by redefining sexual assault to include ‘unwanted’ advances and comments and wielding concepts such as micro-aggressions, feminists can now have disproportionate power over the majority, the every day guy who is just trying to pursue a mate as has been done forever.
Ya see?! Ya see what Megan Murphy articles have done to my Quillette!
Abortion, sterilization and long term day care have destroyed the male/female dynamic. All these nuanced little philosophies aren’t going to change anything.
Legalize prostitution.
I wrote the following some time ago. The book in question is Krackauer – Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. Has anything changed since I originally wrote the words below? Yes, the situation has gotten worse.
In considering this book a couple of very basic facts need to be considered. First, there is no rape epidemic. The overall incidence of rape has fallen (not risen) dramatically in recent years. Second, college campuses are not exactly hotbeds of sexual assault. The overall incidence of rape on college campuses is somewhat lower than society as a whole.
For anyone who cares about “facts”, consider all of the following from “New DOJ Data On Sexual Assaults: College Students Are Actually Less Likely To Be Victimized” (http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/11/new-doj-data-on-sexual-assaults-college-students-are-actually-less-likely-to-be-victimized/). In case, you aren’t inclined to believe The Federalist (a conservative web site), the data is actually form Obama’s Department of Justice (www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf).
“A new report on sexual assault released today by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officially puts to bed the bogus statistic that one in five women on college campuses are victims of sexual assault. In fact, non-students are 25 percent more likely to be victims of sexual assault than students, according to the data. And the real number of assault victims is several orders of magnitude lower than one-in-five.”
That’s actually wrong, “several orders of magnitude” would have to be at least 100 fold. The data shows that the incidence of rape is roughly 30 fold less than “one-in-five”. Quote
“The full study, which was published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division within DOJ, found that rather than one in five female college students becoming victims of sexual assault, the actual rate is 6.1 per 1,000 students, or 0.61 percent (instead of 1-in-5, the real number is 0.03-in-5). For non-students, the rate of sexual assault is 7.6 per 1,000 people.”
Figure 2 from the same DOJ report shows that overall incidence of rape has fallen by at least 50% since 1997.
Why then is America is wracked with accusations (some of them hoaxes) of a “college rape epidemic”? Several reasons come to mind. The first is the most obvious. Colleges may not be hotbeds of rape (they aren’t), but they are certainly hotbeds of radical feminism. Conjuring up a mythical “college rape epidemic” gives power, authority, and a (bogus) legitimacy to radical feminists who might otherwise be simply ignored.
Perhaps the best way of understanding this is the history of McCarthyism. There certainly were communists in the U.S. government in the 1930s and 1940s (including a few highly places ones). See the Venona project for details. However, by the time McCarthy launched his crusade, the era of large-scale communist influence in government was over. His anti-communist campaign might not have been factually based, but it certainly game him and his supporters considerable power and publicity before it crashed down upon itself.
Like it or not, today’s radical feminists are using the same tactics, the same methods, and the same distortions as Joe McCarthy more the 50 years ago. Hopefully, there fate will be every bit as miserable.
While the above observations are well substantiated. There is clearly more to the story. Any reading of the history of recent rape accusations shows that they are being used for ethnic politics as well as sexual politics. Stated directly, they are being used to vilify a class (the dreaded, much feared, and generally terrifying “middle-class non-minority male”) irrespective of the facts. The UVA and Duke rape hoaxes were obviously (and in the UVA case admittedly) motivated a political agenda. By contrast, the terrible Vanderbilt case (where the defendants were found guilty on all charges and in some cases don’t deny them) has attracted almost no national interest. The even worse UVA case where the victim (Hannah Graham) was raped and murdered has attracted almost zero publicity.
If radical feminists really cared about rape and rape victims (for reasons other than how they can be exploited to advance a political agenda), they would focus on non-college, lower-income women who actually more likely to be attacked. Of course, the attackers in those cases would also be less likely to serve the PC agenda, making such a course of action unthinkable.
Overall, this is a poorly timed and arguably ill-considered book, particularly given that the core factual premises are simply wrong. There is no rape epidemic. There is no college rape epidemic. There is however, an epidemic of rape hoaxes of late. This observation is not based on any statistics and may not be correct. However, after the University of Virginia rape hoax, the Duke rape hoax, the fraudulent charges against Julian Assange (who is clearly a sleaze, but not a rapist), and the very questionable accusations of Emma Sulkowicz. Krukauer’s book probably won’t get the attention it once might of. Of course, a book telling the truth, that the crime of rape is in decline and not centered on college campuses wouldn’t get any publicity at all.
Campuses are rife with sexism”. Hahahahahahaha. Next.
“Campuses are rife with sexism”. Hahaha. Next.
I’ve read all the comments pertaining to this article (I like to be thorough) and nowhere do I find reference to the core of the problem. Men want women to love them but they are so bemused by the many contradictory attitudes expressed by feminists that they just don’t know how to go about it. Never mind all the sub-sets, feminism overall is just a power play and the male sex drive is the lever feminists use against men to attain domination. Feminism RELIES on the male sex drive for its very existence. If male lust could be diverted so that women were unnecessary for sexual satisfaction imagine how that would impact the incidence of sexual offences. I’d like to see a male sex toy that delivers explosive orgasms at the touch of a button. Women have hundreds of such toys available to them which means they need never be desperate for sex. Time for men to catch up. Get your freedom-wanker today! And notice how unprepossessing women are when you don’t want to shag them. So much for sex. Now, love is different matter . . . .
@Jezza
Astute comment.
Haha…
I remember when the articles about the robot “brothel” in Japan came online.
The feminists blew their nut’s over it.
So this woman had sex and regreted it. Grow up lady and make better decisions next time. Shame on you for dragging his name through the mud. Own up to your own mistakes.
Speaking of feminism and the darkening tempo of the times I quite like the work of Carol Gilligan and David Richards via their books Darkness Now Visible, The Deepening Darkness,
And her book with Naomi Snider Why Does Patriarchy Persist.
I also quite like the work featured on this website by the author of the marvelous truth-telling book The Roosters Egg http://madlawprofessor.wordpress.com
99% trivial comments. Not a lot at all on the main point, just a lot of quibbling over pet peeves.
That’s it. Goodbye Quillette. I’m outta here until comments are disabled. Turning into just another cesspit.
Oh no, please don’t go. We promise we’ll shut down all discussion on this site. Just please don’t leave us.
Here’s a solution: don’t read the comments, idiot. Btw you type like a girl.
@Don Ron
Just don’t scroll down after the article?
Yes, that’s the courageous way to handle life.
Here’s wishing for the safety your eyeballs deserve.
@don ron
Toodles…
What great articles and comments. Happy to finally have come here.
The author makes the eminently valid point that trivial incidents get massive press while truly tragic crimes are ignored. That’s correct and it is all proper third-wave feminism. Since Quillette targets the Anglosphere, the following article is a quite appropriate reference to the degeneracy of contemporary feminism.
“Who will speak for the Huddersfield girls?” by Brendan O’Neil. Quote
“Britain is a country where a politician putting his hand on a middle-class woman’s knee causes more outrage than the sexual abuse of scores of working-class girls by men from Pakistani backgrounds.
This is the conclusion we must draw from the #MeToo scandals of the past year. Or rather from the striking disparity between what becomes a #MeToo scandal and what doesn’t. A posh journalist having her knee brushed by a politician causes media meltdown, Twitterstorms about ‘the patriarchy’, and soul-searching in parliament about men’s wicked behaviour, while the exploitation and rape of working-class girls in towns like Huddersfield provokes little more than an awkward tut of disapproval.”
Why? Because he’s famous.
I feel like I witnessed the beginning of the sexual revolution in my teens and its death in the teens. Sure glad I was inoculated along the way with a good dose of Sigmund Freud, Norman Mailer, and Camille Paglia — the hothouse of politicized foreplay is a breeding ground of delirium. Get well soon.
@Tersitus
The 1960s may have been the high point of freedom in the West.
Another reason that they go after men like Ansari is that the violent rapists are dangerous. Ansari is harmless. There will be no repercussions from harassing him.
Looks like people here are only open minded until you dare bring them to the limbic/irrational level and engage them there. Then they lash out because they think they can fight it, but they can’t.
The ruthless fact of American sexuality is that most men were tied down as infants and had the most exquisitely sensitive part of their bodies cut away, usually without anesthesia, in the name of an ancient Jewish blood sacrifice.
Until you make sense of circumcision, you won’t begin to understand anything about American sexual dynamics. But continue wasting your time with mental masturbation, surely it gratifies the ego.
Seems to me you’ve given considerable thought to circumcision (amongst other things)… so mansplain female genital mutilation for me please. Umbilical severing? Playing doctor?
I’ll let the World Health Organization do the talking. In the second link, replace “female” with “male” because the underlying psychological mechanism is the same: an ego-investment in genital cutting for the purposes of sexual control, that compels you to perpetuate the crime due to the realization of your own inadequacy.
Classification of types:
https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/overview/en/
Overview of cultural/religious justifications:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation
So… if we did a comparative study of all the worlds’s males dividing into the circumsizeds and the uns, we could reasonably expect the uns to come off as discernibly more … what? Psycho sexually happy? Sexually more performatively capable? And larger cultures of the “intact” demonstrably more advanced in terms of gender relations? By what measurable evidence (apart from length)?
>Psycho sexually happy?
yes
>Sexually more performatively capable?
yes
>Demonstrably more advanced in terms of gender relations?
yes
Damn, just look at the rate of STD transmission and sexual violence in Europe vs. America. This isn’t even a debate. Whether or not circumcision “causes” high STD transmission rates and a culture of sexual violence, you can’t consider the American state of things without considering circumcision. It’s a significant part of the backdrop of all hetero- and (male) homosexual relations in this country.
Also, the umbilical cord naturally falls out. There’s no reason to cut it. The simple fact is that American men are conditioned into a surgery-happy culture of genital cutting within 1-2 days of birth, when the extreme trauma of sexual torture and mutilation corrupts their limbic firmware forever.
I wouldn’t even be posting about this if I didn’t know it wasn’t deadly serious. I’ve actually known for several years and have been only just now getting loud, because I follow the news and know it’s time. People are waking up and we’re in for a bumpy fucking ride.
Maybe I missed it, but your links pretty much minimize the psychological effects relative to the physical— I took the former to be the point of your diatribe. And my question marking umbilical severing — presumably, a hypersensitive area and an even earlier experience of pain? How much would we increase overall human happiness by adopting a radical intagtivism? It seems to me the likelihood of permanent damage to an undeveloped ego is considerably less (more on the order of spamming the bottom to stimulate first breath, or baby’s first assault by light and sound)—considerably less than that of the pain inflicted on a girl of several years and some sense of self, of body and world and the sources and instruments of fear and pain.
Sorey, Quidditch’s lash of u edict button is yet agervatte. I meant— may even have actually typed— “intactivism” and “spanking the bottom.”
Intactivism— spanking. How ‘bout an edit button, Q? Or just disable Robothink.
There’s strong evidence to suggest that the younger an infant is, the more exquisitely they feel pain. The scream of circumcision is totally distinct and unlike any other sound emitted by the human animal. This despite the fact that doctors simply refused to believe that infants felt pain until the 1980s.
You should watch a video of it being performed. Then you can see the obvious distress of the newborn and the state of shock as he withdraws into the psyche and disassociates. Is this really what we want to be doing as parents, and for what reason? Because Jews and Victorian Anglicans are degenerates?
You are only half right. Third-wave feminists are actually against *voluntary* prostitution (which is why they are trying so hard to outlaw it in Nevada), but they don’t give a rat’s a$s about sex slavery, because that’s beyond their power and (as you rightly point out) main target of concern: upper-class, genuinely privileged women in rich countries, particularly in the anglosphere.
The reason why third-wave feminists in America are so much against the mutually consensual act of an adult woman giving sex to an adult man in exchange for money is simply that this undermines their struggle for a total monopoly on sex. It is the power struggle of the privileged American woman to have utter and unrivaled control on mate selection. If voluntary prostitution was made legal in America, feminism would disappear in a matter of weeks.
Strong piece. Very strong.
My oversimplified version of “shorter Perry”:
Why do relatively well off and safe young and not so young third wave “feminists” eschew difficult and devastating forms of sexual violence and degradation?
Because it’s easier to.
Strong piece. Very strong.
My oversimplified version of “shorter Perry”:
Why do relatively well off and safe young and not so young third wave feminists eschew hard cases of devastating sexual violence and depredation?
Because it’s easier to.
Gee, I guess saying it twice makes it twice as emphatic.
Should I go for three..
No, Itzik— once was enough. But to your question— Because, perhaps, for many the only way to claim victim status is to lower the bar of offenses til it covers a whole range of garden variety flirtation, foreplay, and unwanted attention misdemeanors. Because being triggered or microaggressed is really about oneself, not others. Because taking offense is now a political act — it substitutes for actually doing something meaningful. It also substitutes for seriously working through the whole dating/sex/relationship thing. Because crying wolf is so much more psychodramatically satisfying than telling someone “I’m just not that into you.”
@Tersitus
Bingo!
Don’t disagree, Terst.
Aziz Ansari is an anti-white racist and a misandrist (at least in terms of his public persona, but this case suggests that in private he might have some sympathy towards male sexuality). Perhaps those factors, in addition to his being non-white, provided him some degree of buffer zone in this case so that he was not as thoroughly condemned as he might otherwise have been for having consensual sex with that woman.
Also this article was pretty unnecessary as everyone does take extreme sexual crimes very seriously but they are relatively rare and the feminist narrative is that women are constantly being oppressed by men every second of every day, and hence the need to focus on mundane interactions between men and women as forms of sexual violence, etc.
WOW. Becoming a radfem grievance blog the last while. WTF is happenning at Quillette lately?
This is really really bad. Like rad-fem buzfeed level bad. Has something happened at Quillette?
Quillette gives prominence to writers and speakers who attack mostly Progressive ideological positions. This makes Quillette pieces appear to be just cases of battling ideologies, no different the competing views of Christianity in the early 100’s. Truth is the objective. Demonstrating the lack of good faith and intellectual integrity of the other side is.
In the so-called Ansari Paradox, there is a simple explanation for the difference in responses to an Assari-type situation and a sex worker type situation. First, is the question of choice. Modern feminists give high priority to choice. In the sex worker case, she is consenting to sex. The economic motivators of that choice are not considered esculptory by modern feminists since similar analyses can be used to excuse men in some circumstances they wish to condemn.
The second factor is feminist puritanism. The modern, post-free-love feminist is deeply puritanical about sexual choice. Some of them even try to medicalize promiscuity, asserting that it is a behavioral expression of deep psychological problems and others have invented the completely spurious mental illness of sex addiction. They may continue to use the earlier label of “sex workers” for prostitutes. But their attitude towards prostitution is radically different. They don’t see it as a desperate response of economically disadvantaged women. But although they will not use stigmatizing language to describe it, they deeply disapprove of it.
Given these clearly ideologically consistent explanations for the differences in feminist treatment of the different situations, I think that delving into the morass of psycho-social explanations is ill-advised. Although it is true that feminism has always been most focused on the issues of upper-middle class white women, psycho-social explanations are so easily turned to say what people want them to say, that unless backed by mountains of research data, are largely useless.
Every human trait varies widely. In fact, some of them vary by orders of magnitude. People’s personal sense of responsibility and fair play are among the latter. Offer a unsupervised or loosely supervised forcum to the general public, and it is bound to be misused. It is bound to be misused for attention seeking and retaliation.
Just imagine the absurdity of an unknown person creating a national debate over having a bad date. There was no violence. There was not even a claim of intentional harm. This where you when the line between what passes for press and a group of drunks shouting at each other in a bar has completely disappeared.
Lost me at “college campuses are rife with sexism.” Unless you mean against men then you may have tangential point.
Am I the only reader who finds this guy’s photo creepy? Please, Quillette, find another photo to illustrate this article or take the article off completely. Just looking at his eyes send shivers down my spine.
Friend, that’s just your ego-investment talking. Circumcision removes 1/3 to 1/2 of the penis skin, including all of the most sensitive parts. This permanently changes the mechanics of intercourse and it caps the tactile sensory input you are capable of feeling.
Equating male circumcision in the rabbinic style with full clitorectomy is ignorant and dishonest at best. Did you know that there are 4 styles of female circumcision, and that 99% of reported cases involve nothing more than a prick in the clitoral prepuce? American/Jewish circumcision is one of the most damaging and widespread forms of genital mutilation on the planet, period.
The fact that you can sire children is completely irrelevant because that’s the whole point of circumcision: to encourage sex for procreation purposes only. You also don’t have a reduced risk of anything.
You’re a victim of brainwashing and normalized sexual dysfunction on a mass-societal scale. Sorry your mental fortitude is too fragile to handle the ugly truth. That’s why you’re quick to bring out the justifications characteristic of a trauma victim in denial.
@Elwood
One of the big reasons prostitution is dangerous is that it is illegal so that the girls cannot get legal protection. catch-22
I am in favor of legalization–it was legal over most of the US until WWII and later (we had a cat house where I went to college in the 70s and everyone knew where it was).
Good article, leftist comments about British beheadings and manspreading aside. It’s quite a shock to see so many Quillette commenters side with prostitution. Perhaps it’s that same reflexive animus towards a perceived feminist position , or pure self-interest?
Prostitution is intimately linked with sex trafficking, slavery, and the drug trade. Even that permissive utopia, the Red Light district in Amsterdam, has been curbing that scene for years trying to get rid of the crime. The demand of low-status males for sex greatly exceeds the natural supply, even considering the number of low-IQ or drug addicted women who could service that need. As women rise in society, rising chemical dependence or slavery will be necessary to meet the demand.
Governments should have no part in that, and instead should focus on cleaning up victims and preparing them for the legitimate job market. It does not serve society’s interests to nurture the notion that women’s vaginas are commodities. Nor does it serve national interests to remove the motivator for low-status men to improve themselves sufficiently to find a woman actually willing to have sex with them. Time for a moral stand.
The author asks: “Why do cases like Ansari’s receive so much attention among many feminists, particularly younger ones, while the most extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum is comparatively ignored?” … my first thought was that perhaps young feminists can relate to -and therefore respond to- the actions on the milder end of the sexual violence spectrum and have no experience at all – therefore do not relate at all – to the more extreme end.
Western feminists have been greatly concerned with alleviating the suffering of women associated with prostitution and curbing illegal trafficking for decades. In Sweden, for example, this has lead to legal policies that criminal buyers of sex rather than sellers. One can debate the merits of this approach, but this idea that the problems of sex workers are off their radar is absurd.