Martin S Pribble, an Australian atheist blogger sent me his article on recent rape cases.I always like when men write for women’s rights and freedom, and protest against oppression of women. Martin wrote:
..It has been said that we live in a pornografied society, where porn is available at every laptop, on every phone and tablet. Far be it from me to make a judgement on whether porn is bad or not, much of the porn being circulated these days is based on an idea of “pleasure for men”. Men’s faces are rarely seen, just as we don’t see our own faces unless looking in the mirror, and it often ends in an act of seeming domination over the woman in the piece, having her face covered in semen. No doubt the Steubenville boys have seen plenty of this kind of porn, and it seems that this domination over women is being normalised to an extent in the way they treat members of the opposite sex. Take this out of the porn-theatre, and look around at the way women are portrayed in the mass culture. Much of the advertising industry uses pornographied images of women, designed to entice us, tantilise us, and subdue us, making psychological connections between consumption of goods and the reward of sex. It is all around us, and the mass media knows how this moves and motivates people to consume. This does not justify any acts of violence against women, nor does it place the blame for these boys’ actions upon their upbringing. It only serves to highlight the society in which we live, and the culture that emerges from this. When it comes down to it, these boys must take responsibility for their own actions..
In any situation, we take responsibility for our actions. In a conscientious society, we give heed to the rights of others in an empathetic and thoughtful manner. In both the Steubenville rape case and the case of the Swiss woman who was gang-raped in India, these men have removed themselves from the what is acceptable in a modern world, and given in to their own selfish urges. There is no situation where “no” means “yes”, and there is no excuse for them as sex-objects, but respects the rights of women in the same manner as that of men. This should be our aim, and if successful, while we may not stop the violence completely, we will at least stop blaming the victims of rape for the actions of others.
Do they really remove themselves from the what is acceptable in a modern world, and given to their selfish urges? Or just they drown themselves in a patriarchal world and learn that women are just sex objects, are inferior to men, are shy, but lie, provoke, their ‘no’ means ‘yes’, and men should be proud of their masculinity, should not be afraid of doing hard things, and should take risks in life? I do not think people ‘blame the victims of rape’, they actually blame ‘the women’. If people blamed the victims of rape, they would have blamed boys or men who get raped. But they don’t. Victims are blamed only when victims are women. Misogyny is deeply rooted in society. In so called civilized society misogyny is more privately practiced, and in uncivilized society it is practiced both privately and publicly.