[2Wycked]

After creating this thread about a feminist book reading club, I stumbled onto this interview in People magazine in 1975 with Susan Brownmiller.



First off, would you bang? As you will learn, she is an active heterosexual but sees all men as rapists.

Brownmiller published the book "Against Our Will" in 1975. It was a revolutionary work, but not in a good way. The only good thing that came out the movement she sparked was that rape wasn't the victims fault.

As with any movement started in this time, they don't understand America's psychological history. Where feminists see misogyny, I see moral puritanism. Americans typically saw people with psychological issues, addiction issues, victims of crime, etc. as failings on the part of the afflicted individual. What feminists leave out is that rapists aren't accepted or praised, but that individual is also punished severely for their perceived moral failings.

These sorts of thinkers in this era birthed American narcissism. The fact her key thesis is that all rape is 100% about power and not at all about sex shows her the burgeoning narcissism. Notice every conclusion feminists make is about power. Only narcissists think all that matters in the world is power.

This was one of her most famous quotes about rape:

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...[rape is] a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.

Let's comb the article, shall we?

Out of the gate, Brownmiller states:

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Rape is an historical condition that underlies all aspects of male-female relationships

And you claim that you are not anti-male and don't hate men?

She is asked, "Why write the book?"

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First, to provide rape with a history. It's a part of women's experience that hasn't been considered important enough for the history books.

This why she claimed to have written the book. Reminds of me a classmate who thought he threatened his Property Law professor because the professor dismissed his comments on Marxist critiques of private property. He apparently thought he frightened his professor with his enlightened analysis when we were 1L's trying to wrap our minds around the "Rule Against Perpetuities."

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I'm only anti the male ideology of rape. I don't see that writing a book outlining male hostility has much to do with my hating men. My personal life is markedly free of any kind of hatred. Far from being a lesbian, my record on heterosexuality is quite public.

Yeah, calling us all monstrous beasts with a world-wide proclivity to violently harm women is "markedly free" of hatred. Not buying your shit.

When asked about major misconceptions about rape:

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Those of anyone growing up in the liberal New York City milieu. To me, rape was a screaming vindictive white woman and a framed black man.

When asked about stats on rape, she responds:

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That most rape is black on black, that it is basically an intraclass, intraracial crime because of opportunity. But there is a definite rise in the percentage of interracial rape.

This is interesting, as I have started glancing through some older liberal works from the FDR era. Whether the liberals on the forum want to admit it, one of the primary reasons white liberals extended public education to blacks was to socialize them out of their backwardness. Like the Irish, they thought blacks were all low-IQ, knuckledraggers whose women were horribly oppressed by their abusive husbands. They thought that these creatures didn't need "reading, writing and arithmetic" education, but an education that heals the whole person - they saw education as a project to cobble together a civilized citizen. Eventually, they thought it was such a shining success, so they extended it to white kids. I will eventually do big post on this, but this is the off-the-cuff, bare bones of it.

That being said, this is a vestige of the idea that all black people are violent. The theory shifted from biological to cultural as biological explanations for racism fell by the wayside - especially after Hitler. Somebody like Brownmiller probably believes that "blacks are so culturally deprived that they don't know any better." It is simple extension from beliefs that black people are biologically inferior to whites. The skull measurers in anthropology simply moved to sociology departments.

When asked about the worst myth about rape, Brownmiller states that it is that a woman cannot be raped against her will.

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Men perpetuate it because they would like to believe it. They had me believing it for years. The story of Potiphar's wife—a man unjustly accused by a vengeful woman—is the Bible's major rape parable. Every society has a similar one.

She blames the fact every culture has "myths" about false rape accusations by bitter, jealous women. No shit, Sherlock.

She defines rape as:

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Rape is defined as forcible entry by the male penis at least one inch into the vagina, against the woman's will and without her consent.

When asked if men can be raped, by either men or women, she responds:

On women:

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I think it's a biological impossibility

On men:

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Rape is strictly a crime of men against women. In prison, when men "rape" men, it is oral or anal, and technically sodomy. But it is a prime reflection of the same male aggression and anger: they womanize the object.

When a man gets raped, it's still about women? What a cute opinion, sweetheart.

Just who are these rapists, Ms. Brownmiller?

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Not the Freudian stereotype with a domineering mother or frigid wife. He's young, under 19, a violence-prone punk out of the general criminal population.

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A basic anger and hostility towards women, particularly if he's in a group. Forty percent of all rapes are gang rapes. It's a progression from stealing hubcaps to purses to rape—to murder.

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No. A rapist is usually working up his courage as he goes along.

This is where feminists get the ridiculous notion that a man who gropes a women or steals Skol Light from a Seven-Eleven is a potential rapist. Every anti-social act is -- in their mind -- the buildup to the man eventually violating them against their will.

Wait, do women fantasize about rape?

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Most women live in fear of rape. In my research I found there is less provocation on the part of rape victims than any other crime of violence.

You mean you wanted to find that women are the most innocent of victims. I wonder what her data was on that? Do murdered people engage in activities that increase their chances of being murdered? Robberies?

For that matter, what can women do to prevent being raped?

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Learn to see the warning signs earlier. Learn to resist unwelcome advances and not to put themselves into situations that can turn dangerous.

Wait, women put themselves in dangerous situations and aren't wary enough?

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Not nearly enough.

Imagine a feminist icon saying that today.

Finally, on the "new masculinity" men are embracing:

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What does impress me is the new gentility in young men. They're getting rid of jock notions of masculinity. They have a gentleness I'm charmed by.

And a passive-aggressive gentleness that turned off a generation of women. All those divorces and shared-parenting schemes that resulted generation of children in therapy at age seven and on anti-depressants by age 28.

What a fucking success. Congrats, feminists. You really trolled -- I mean helped -- women.

The concept of rape culture has some certainly rotten roots. I do plan on picking her book up from the local library - expect a ROK writeup sometime soon.

[Statsi]

Interesting review 2wycked. When you say she was the creator of rape culture I assume you mean she missappropriated it first? I thought rape culture was originally used to describe the reasons for the prevalence of sexual violence in American prisons?

I love the contradictions in from your review alone, I can't imagine how inconsistent the entire book is. I don't hate men, only that all men systemically use rape to intimidate and oppress women. I wrote this book because rape isn't considered important enough to be included in any history books, rape parables appear in every culture throughout the entirety of time. Rape victims are the least responsible of any victims for being targeted, here's all the things women don't do that puts them at risk of being raped. Rape is a black man raping a white women, rape is a black yo black crime.

It'd be hysterical if it wasn't for the harm done by those who believe this intellectually vacuous, racist, sexist bullshit.

[2Wycked]

(02-08-2014 05:15 AM)Statsi Wrote:  

Interesting review 2wycked. When you say she was the creator of rape culture I assume you mean she missappropriated it first? I thought rape culture was originally used to describe the reasons for the prevalence of sexual violence in American prisons?

I love the contradictions in from your review alone, I can't imagine how inconsistent the entire book is. I don't hate men, only that all men systemically use rape to intimidate and oppress women. I wrote this book because rape isn't considered important enough to be included in any history books, rape parables appear in every culture throughout the entirety of time. Rape victims are the least responsible of any victims for being targeted, here's all the things women don't do that puts them at risk of being raped. Rape is a black man raping a white women, rape is a black yo black crime.

It'd be hysterical if it wasn't for the harm done by those who believe this intellectually vacuous, racist, sexist bullshit.

I haven't read enough on rape culture to know when the term got appropriated, but you are right. Brownmiller never used the term in the article, but it is clear that her book and rhetoric was used as the foundation for modern feminist approaches to "rape culture."