Victim advocates applaud Craigslist rape verdict

[Threedifferentones]

71. Your post illustrates the "so what" quite well, and the nuances of oppression are what you ignore.

My earlier post was worse than unclear, it was inaccurate, but I have already admitted this. The point is that if I understand what rape culture is, then women are clearly also complicit. If women are not complicit in rape culture, I do not know what rape culture is. Hence the Steubenville example.

According to you, growing up under a patriarchal system does not excuse someone for being oppressive, but it does excuse someone for not realizing she is being oppressed. The models on the front of a swimsuit cover are innocent because they grew up in a system which encouraged them to see themselves as beautiful objects and discouraged them from developing other talents. However, the men who grew up under that same system will not be excused for being trained to believe that seeing women as a sexual resource instead of full fledged humans is okay, even though many of the women around them behave in ways that reenforce that belief.

That logic is not consistent. Either people's incorrect beliefs and harmful assumptions are excused by their upbringing and their culture, or they are not. Men also play the role expected of them in order to fit in with the people around them, to be "accepted into the club."

This becomes especially important to realize in light of what you call the "domino effect," which I call a vicious cycle.
If all the models of the world suddenly refused to indulge the male gaze, little girls would no longer have those role models to shape their perceptions. And if all the men suddenly realized how many women feel demeaned by being reduced to a set of body parts, and how much talent we are wasting by oppressing or ignoring the thoughts of women, maybe we would probably stop producing all that BS. But we are stuck in a cycle.

Boys grow up seeing that in order to be "cool" and "manly" they need to be the strongest and the richest to "get" a lot of women. And girls grow up seeing that their highest ideal is sex appeal, and that they will know they have it when they are being pursued by a strong/rich man. Unfortunately, by the time we are adults many of us are unable or unwilling to see what a crock of shit that really is, and so the cycle continues.

I hope I have not given the impression that I don't know that patriarchy sets men up as primary and women as second class. In that sense it benefits the men of today, with things like higher wages etc. But many times it seems this group (HOF) in particular is framing struggle against it as men vs. women, instead of feminists vs patriarchs, liberated thought vs. antiquated tradition. That dynamic ignores all the ways in which violence, dominance and hierarchy are created, accepted, and perpetuated by people. It ignores the ways in which accepting one form of oppression, like rich and poor, reenforce accepting other forms, like sexism and slut shaming. IE in our society people will blame a sex worker for being assaulted, an unemployed worker for being laid off, or a homeless combat vet for being traumatized. Thus blaming the victim is not an issue that is exclusive to rape. The point of this example is to demonstrate that sexism is not a societal problem unto itself, but rather one manifestation of how violence and hierarchy are fundamental to our culture.

When a person means to say all people then she says people. Jefferson did not see anything wrong with continuing to exclude women, so he wrote "all men," just like all his peers. The OP likewise excluded women from complicity by specifying "men," just like many of her peers. I for one am an exception in that regard, though I'm certainly not alone. This becomes very obvious when statements like the OP's get made in the less sheltered arena of GD.

Please don't take that to mean I don't realize ya'll get plain ole trolled in GD, such as the posting of the aforementioned swimsuit cover and a million other examples I can't recall offhand. Still, if the OP had just left out that comment, or changed men to people, then I could have had something to cheer about. Instead I have to pick at her comment. You may feel this is just nit picking, but IMO the struggle for justice requires unity, not exclusion, which is why this particular nuance (men or people) is an important discussion.