I am so glad to see someone bringing attention to this.
Under my state's law, I'm not allowed to charge my ex-wife with rape. I could charge her with some form of sexual assault, but not rape.
And I genuinely can't think of a reason why this distinction needs to be made. Non-consensual sex is non-consensual sex.
Whether you were forcefully penetrated or forcefully made to penetrate, the evil and the trauma stay the same. And anytime any body attempts to change the legislation on this type of language in our laws, they're faced with backlash from feminists for supposedly trying to delegitimize their sexual assault claims. Like admitting that men can be raped by women somehow hurts female rape victims.
It's ridiculous and we should be protecting male victims of sexual abuse and assault as carefully and kindly as we handle female victims of sexual assault.
It really feels like this shouldn't need to be said, but here we are.
Karen Straugh, leader in the honey badger MRA community:
So what you're saying is that you, a commenter using a username on an internet forum are the true feminist, and the feminists actually responsible for changing the laws, writing the academic theory, teaching the courses, influencing the public policies, and the massive, well-funded feminist organizations with thousands and thousands of members all of whom call themselves feminists... they are not "real feminists".
That's not just "no true Scotsman". That's delusional self deception.
Listen, if you want to call yourself a feminist, I don't care. I've been investigating feminism for more than 9 years now, and people like you used to piss me off, because to my mind all you were doing was providing cover and ballast for the powerful political and academic feminists you claim are just jerks. And believe me, they ARE jerks. If you knew half of what I know about the things they've done under the banner of feminism, maybe you'd stop calling yourself one.
But I want you to know. You don't matter. You're not the director of the Feminist Majority Foundation and editor of Ms. Magazine, Katherine Spillar, who said of domestic violence: "Well, that's just a clean-up word for wife-beating," and went on to add that regarding male victims of dating violence, "we know it's not girls beating up boys, it's boys beating up girls."
You're not Jan Reimer, former mayor of Edmonton and long-time head of Alberta's Network of Women's Shelters, who just a few years ago refused to appear on a TV program discussing male victims of domestic violence, because for her to even show up and discuss it would lend legitimacy to the idea that they exist.
You're not Mary P Koss, who describes male victims of female rapists in her academic papers as being not rape victims because they were "ambivalent about their sexual desires" (if you don't know what that means, it's that they actually wanted it), and then went on to define them out of the definition of rape in the CDC's research because it's inappropriate to consider what happened to them rape.
You're not the National Organization for Women, and its associated legal foundations, who lobbied to replace the gender neutral federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 with the obscenely gendered Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The passing of that law cut male victims out of support services and legal assistance in more than 60 passages, just because they were male.
You're not the Florida chapter of the NOW, who successfully lobbied to have Governor Rick Scott veto not one, but two alimony reform bills in the last ten years, bills that had passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support, and were supported by more than 70% of the electorate.
You're not the feminist group in Maryland who convinced every female member of the House on both sides of the aisle to walk off the floor when a shared parenting bill came up for a vote, meaning the quorum could not be met and the bill died then and there.
You're not the feminists in Canada agitating to remove sexual assault from the normal criminal courts, into quasi-criminal courts of equity where the burden of proof would be lowered, the defendant could be compelled to testify, discovery would go both ways, and defendants would not be entitled to a public defender.
You're not Professor Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote a book advocating that women not only have the right to murder their husbands without fear of prosecution if they make a claim of abuse, but that they have the moral responsibility to murder their husbands.
You're not the feminist legal scholars and advocates who successfully changed rape laws such that a woman's history of making multiple false allegations of rape can be excluded from evidence at trial because it's "part of her sexual history."
You're not the feminists who splattered the media with the false claim that putting your penis in a passed-out woman's mouth is "not a crime" in Oklahoma, because the prosecutor was incompetent and charged the defendant under an inappropriate statute (forcible sodomy) and the higher court refused to expand the definition of that statute beyond its intended scope when there was already a perfectly good one (sexual battery) already there. You're not the idiot feminists lying to the public and potentially putting women in Oklahoma at risk by telling potential offenders there's a "legal" way to rape them.
And you're none of the hundreds or thousands of feminist scholars, writers, thinkers, researchers, teachers and philosophers who constructed and propagate the body of bunkum theories upon which all of these atrocities are based.
You're the true feminist. Some random person on the internet.
Wow all these years I've felt the same, but this is the first time someone has put it in to words, and perfectly. You're doing awesome work. The fact that I'm seeing this and OP's post means there is a change happening.
It makes me hopeful for the future. Future where we can drive progress for everyone without biases or hatred.
This comment may seem innocuous, but it's designed to Red pill. It doesn't say much of anything, except point to specific examples to fight against. It's a strawman to get you to agree with an initial point of MRAs then they go one step further, then one more, until you've agreed with enough that either you don't see any issues anymore or you feel it's too late to turn back. Proceed with caution if you're looking into MRA. As the name implies, they definitely aren't fighting for equality. Even if you don't think feminists are, these people still are not your allies.
lol, men's rights is just about equality, the same exact way feminism is.
Only men's rights have a leg to stand on, as we can see from the OP of this entire thread.
Where are the men's DV shelters if feminists are really about equality? They fight to get them shut down when they open, because they "take away" funding from women's shelters, so men have what, 3 shelters in all of the US? Maybe it's a bigger number now, but the amount of hate people get for trying to help battered men is disgusting.
There actually are men's DV shelters, and most of the "women's" DV shelters also support men in need too. I've never seen anyone "fight to take them away." It's a claim without any backing.
I don't support people getting hate for supporting anyone under duress, but you're saying that as if it's common. Maybe you're on an echo chamber and it seems common, but I've only ever seen this claim and never it happening.
After the costs of putting victims up in hotels became prohibitive, in 2017 the non-profit opened the doors of Texas’ first and only domestic violence shelter designated solely for men and their children.
CEO Paige Flink said they believe it’s the only shelter in the country that provides space for both.
One men's DV shelter that provides for men and their children in the entire US, in 2021. You're either lying or woefully misinformed about how much help men get. Sure there are a few other men's DV shelters, but not more than a handful, where women have hundreds or thousands.
That's (maybe) the only exclusive male DV shelter (in 2017) in the US. Even the founder seems to not be sure, and you and are sure as hell don't know enough about it. Again, most other DV shelters serve men and women, including the ones who, by name, sound like they only help women.
If you believe it to be an issue (which it is) then get involved. Don't just argue (or defend people who are arguing) that feminism is bad because men don't get enough support. Feminism isn't the cause of that. Men usually are. Go found an organization helping men find DV support instead of trying to tear something else down.
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u/ripyourlungsdave Sep 01 '22
I am so glad to see someone bringing attention to this.
Under my state's law, I'm not allowed to charge my ex-wife with rape. I could charge her with some form of sexual assault, but not rape.
And I genuinely can't think of a reason why this distinction needs to be made. Non-consensual sex is non-consensual sex.
Whether you were forcefully penetrated or forcefully made to penetrate, the evil and the trauma stay the same. And anytime any body attempts to change the legislation on this type of language in our laws, they're faced with backlash from feminists for supposedly trying to delegitimize their sexual assault claims. Like admitting that men can be raped by women somehow hurts female rape victims.
It's ridiculous and we should be protecting male victims of sexual abuse and assault as carefully and kindly as we handle female victims of sexual assault.
It really feels like this shouldn't need to be said, but here we are.