Recently in the news, and on social
media in particular I've started a notice a nasty little trend
cropping up time and time again, that rape just isn't so horrifying anymore.
Let me be clear, I'm not saying that
people think it's a-ok to rape, far from it, but that there seems to
be an underlying feeling that in certain circles it seems to be an after thought, not a problem,
and that there's even an opportunity for profit from it.
And I've never felt sicker.
It kicked off for me today when I
noticed there was a lot of people on my Twitter feed, retweeting
about a Kickstarter campaign for a guy's book on how to
pick up women becoming a reality.
On the surface it seemed pretty
fucking harmless. What else is new? A guy that seemingly has all the
answers on how to pick up fit women in bars and clubs? What average
Joe wouldn't want to know that? Then there's some of the
passages I read, however. They left me feeling horrified. Since this morning, these passages on reddit seem to
be temporarily down (weird eh?). However, here are some of those
passages transcribed (taken from this blog post):
”5) Get CLOSE to her, damn it!
To quote Rob Judge, “Personal space is for pussies.” I already told
you that the most successful seducers are those who can’t keep their
hands off of women. Well you’re not gonna be able to do that if you
aren’t in close! ”“All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.”
“Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.”
“Sex
Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.”
Charming, eh? Even if I did posses the ability to
have groups of women flock to me, I wouldn't fucking dare do either of those to a
woman, because a) forcing women to sit on your lap is just wrong and
b) forcing women's hands on to your dick is just a smidge wronger.
He's not the only one though trying to earn some money. Remember
those t-shirts which were being sold on Amazon earlier this
year? In the 'keep calm and carry on' style? Keep Calm And Just Rape Them? Those hilarious t-shirts which only set you back a tenner? God
they were dead funny those, weren't they?
About as funny as they were trendy, to
be honest. If I was a woman and saw a lad wearing one of them I'd be
thinking, 'Keep Calm And Crack Him In The Bollocks'. They've been
taken down, thank god. Still makes you wonder, who thought those were
a good product to sell?
The shameful thing is there seems to
be a few in society who think rape really isn't that big of a deal.
Earlier this year, in Steubenville, Ohio in America, a girl was raped
at a house party by two college football players. They were convicted
and sentenced to prison time. However the reactions from some however
was beyond the pale. CNN's attitude seemed to give no sympathy
towards the victim, but a bit of sympathy towards the convicted
rapists.
Seriously, who gives a crap about the lasting effect on them? They're rapists! Who cares about the tags they're gonna have to live with? They made
their choice when they did what they did.
A sad amount of tweets from the
general public in the aftermath of the verdict are a depressing read.
I don't know about you, but when I go to a house party I fully expect
to get smashed (guilty, as charged), but I don't ever really expect
to get raped. Society wouldn't expect me to either, they'd be
horrified if it happened to me, a man. So why don't women get the
same treatment?
To be honest it doesn't help when you've got
strong, technically-gifted, female sports-stars saying that she "shouldn't have put herself in that position". It beggars belief.
The final thing that got to me is a
campaign which a friend I follow on Twitter posted a couple of days
ago. About blocking the access to 'rape pornography' sites. Now to be
honest, I've visited 4chan (once and only once), I've seen the dark
depths the internet, but I am still genuinely amazed that these are a
thing. Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against pornography
('A single lad likes porn?! Shocking!' said nobody, ever), but this
is beyond twisted. This stuff needs to be banned. Pornography is
brilliant. Rape porn however is not. It's sad that I'm even having to
type that.
So what's the point of all this then
you may ask? Well it just seems to me that it's horrifically wrong
that we as a society seem to give less and less of a shit about rape
and its culture as a whole. When did this start being ok? You can't
obviosly stop this from happening but we as a society can say that
it's not fucking cool, and it's not fucking okay for certain
cretinous dicks on the internet making some dollar off it.
Go to the bottom of the Kickstarter page and get this project killed off:
And the link to that petition to get
get rape porn sites blocked here in blighty:
