WMC Women Under Siege

The topsy-turvy world of men who oppose anti-violence campaigns

At the start of this year, my friend and WMC’s Women Under Siege director, Lauren Wolfe, started a Twitter hashtag, #2013EndRape, to highlight the epidemic of sexualized violence against women. Its purpose was to up the online information campaign about this global scourge a few notches. While the hashtag has seen success, one of the unintended consequences has been its trolling and attacks on it by various “Men’s Rights Activists.”

These guys have decided that #2013EndRape is simply a space for “man-haters” (along with other such “evil” hashtags that draw readers’ attention to stories about rape, such as the commonly used #VAW—you know, that convoluted and surely insidious acronym for “Violence Against Women”).

A “men’s rights” group plastered these posters around the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton, Canada, at the beginning of July. Similar-minded men have been trolling our #2013EndRape hashtag.

Wolfe wrote to me today asking what kind of men would angrily rail against a hashtag that tries to gather stories about violence as a means to better understanding a universal problem. There are no tweets about hating men under it; there are tweets that cite facts and stories and global reasons behind sexualized violence—against both women and men.

As a man, I can see two types of people not liking #2013EndRape:

Ignorant men: 

I don’t think many men who oppose such initiatives actually come out of their close-knit circle of patriarchy to explore the world of violence against women at all. If they did, they’d learn quickly that women don't like being catcalled, or groped by strangers, or date-raped, or that spousal rape can be just as damaging as any other form of rape. That, in my opinion, is the lead cause of attacks on anti-rape campaigns.

Such men believe that all those facts are concocted by a minority of bra-burning, militant “feminazis” who want to exterminate the male “race.” They believe that the overwhelming majority of women are perfectly fine if their husbands forcefully have sex with them (read: rape them). Or, if you find a drunk woman passed out and penetrate her (read: rape her), it’s fine. 

The reason they believe that is because of the second group, which is motivated by hatred and fear of women.

Hateful/fearful men: 

Something about women being vocal about their experiences and demanding protection and legal action for the violence perpetrated against them threatens an antiquated and problematic masculinity. This either implicitly or explicitly requires men to have dominion over women. It leaves women reliant on men, controlled by them.

I wrote about one such controlling tactic when I tackled how the hijab—or head covering—for Muslim women is not a deterrent against sexualized violence by men. Muslim women keep getting told by these men that the hijab will protect them against rape, which it does not. However, none of these men perpetuating that myth is ready to put any effort at all into stopping sexualized violence against women beyond preaching for women to protect themselves with a magic garment. The reason is because they see sexualized violence against women as necessary in order to put them in their place—by making them too afraid to venture out of the house, or go to school or be independent in any form. And the heartbreaking part is that many of these people motivated by hatred are in leadership positions—so public policy catastrophes happen, such as the Texas law that bans abortion after 20 weeks while seriously harming women’s lifelong health all over the state.

I can only guess that another major motivator for publicly spitting on anti-rape campaigns is fear. The men who troll feminist and anti-violence forums often point to the “fact” that women wrongly accuse men of rape in wild numbers of cases. Here’s the thing: That’s just not true. According to the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women, false reports of rape in the U.S. are no higher than with any other violent crime (between 2 and 8 percent). Beyond that, very few rapes are actually ever reported. As researcher Amelia Hoover Green wrote here, “A conservative U.S. Department of Justice 2010 survey estimate suggests there were about 270,000 rapes in the country that year. Fewer than 85,000 were reported to police.”

Beyond fear of being falsely accused, maybe some men are afraid to look too closely at violence against women because it might highlight their own actions. Maybe looking squarely at what rape actually is will point them toward something they’ve done and didn’t think was wrong (or did think was wrong but tried to ignore).

Hate + fear + ignorance = attacks:

The dudes on social media hating on #2013EndRape are likely from the ignorant bunch, which, unfortunately, contains more than just dudes. I’ve met lots of women who feel the same way as these men do. Partly because they're in denial, partly because they are brainwashed in families that wholeheartedly believe that the rape epidemic is a myth and partly because they frequent a place of worship/are influenced by a leader that preaches this ignorance. 

It’s precisely this ignorance that leads to attacks on campaigns like #2013EndRape, and to the punishment of women who are actually raped.

So every time someone tells me, “Oh, god... how many more articles do I have to read about what constitutes rape?” I tell them the story of my friend “Mark,” who's in his early 30s. We were having a casual conversation one night last year about sex and such and for some reason I mentioned that sex with a drunk woman who is passed out is, by federal law, rape. 

He paused and said, “You know, not that I have had sex with a drunk woman because I’ve been with one woman most of my life, but I really honestly didn't know this.”

Online campaigns like #2013EndRape are necessary. They are necessary because people like Mark still don’t know what sexualized violence is. Who knows how many lives can be saved if we can just ensure that everyone is not only fully aware of both how prevalent rape is and how damaging the effects are on survivors, but what exactly constitutes it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I know that trolls are trolls and men are men and that rarely the twain shall meet. But…sharing information—education—is worth a shot, right?



More articles by Category: International, Online harassment, Violence against women
More articles by Tag: Social media, Gender bias, Sexualized violence, Men
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