Just blame feminism for female sex offenders
| August 29th, 2005This post was removed by request of the author.
34 Responses to “Just blame feminism for female sex offenders”
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August 29th, 2005 at 10:49 am
(sigh) Which is it, mainstream press? Feminists either want to castrate young men or jump their adolescent bones. Can’t be both.
Germaine Greer and I have had our ups and downs, but she’s not a damn pedophile. As I understand it, ‘The Boy’ is a reversal-reversal: an attempt to point out that being objectified has not always been the sole province of women and girls, and that, historically, young men have been presented in much the same way that young women are now. The male body was the site of a different kind of sexuality than the brittle, rapacious Schwarzenegger variety. It’s something that any student of art history takes for granted–Caravaggio, for God’s sake–but something that people afflicted by an ahistorical culture tend to forget.
I’m sure that Greer isn’t attempting to _equate_ male and female objectification, or to assert that women were the ones doing the objectifying, or to applaud this kind of objectification for any gender; the anthology has a more complex rationale than that. It’s definitely not, “Live! Nude! Underage! Boys!” though.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Don’t feminists do this as part of their critical analysis, though? (”This” = assigning blame for crime on social movements or trends, occasionally but not always eclipsing the actual individual perp.)
IE, rape is bad, and [some particular rape] was bad, but we have to look at the “rape culture” and the social constructions that make some males think its OK to act in this fashion, and so on. Political/sexual/moral movements are certainly social constructions. (And, generally, I think there’s a lot of validity to this approach. It DOES matter what the violator learned and was taught and believed.)
In other words, your criticism of this article seems unreflective. You’re critiquing the general phenomenon without reconciling (or acknowledging) that the general phenomenon is one you use. If it’s appropriate to inquire whether masculinism factors in to a man’s rape, it’s certainly appropriate to inquire whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia.
That doesn’t determine the answer, of course; I haven’t looked at Greer’s book and don’t plan to conduct personal follow-up on the question these articles raise; a little too inside-baseball for this crabby empiricist. But you seem to be trying to foreclose a line of inquiry, and you don’t really have standing to do so.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:03 am
What piny said, also, Germaine Greer’s never been any kind of representativ feminist as you say, Ps-A). She is though of course an important writer; Minette Marin is just another shoot-mouth-off commenter (she wrote an atrocious piece blaming “multiculturalism” for things that hadn’t even happened… ).
I can’t remember what the reviews I read of _The Boy_ said, but here’s one I just found:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2004/01/the_boy
This comment was written by jayann.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:12 am
(Sorry, “representative feminist”. )
Robert,
If it’s appropriate to inquire whether masculinism factors in to a man’s rape, it’s certainly appropriate to inquire whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia.
1. “masculinism” and “feminism” seem to me not analogous, 2. ” whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia” is different from whether “feminism” has brought about a rise in paedophilia, assuming that is that there is such a rise, 3. I’d be interested to know how you think you think such an inquiry should be conducted.
This comment was written by jayann.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:18 am
1. They don’t need to be analogous.
This comment was written by Robert.2. True; I’m speaking pretty broadly, however. Feminists both inquire whether rape culture increases the incidence of rape, and examine how the rape culture factors into a particular rape.
3. Beats me; see the comment about crabby empiricism.
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August 29th, 2005 at 11:19 am
4) What Jayann said. Maintaining a power imbalance will cause the people on top to abuse the people below: power - accountability = abuse. Can that be said of a movement whose purpose is to end hierarchies like this? A movement whose leading thinkers have said many, many times that sexual abuse is evil and that no one is owed sexual gratification?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
It’s a push poll sentence.
This comment was written by QrazyQat.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:36 am
Can that be said of a movement whose purpose is to end hierarchies like this?
Oh, come on. You can have the best ideals in the world, that doesn’t mean that you’re automatically living them. I’m a Christian, albeit a bad one; can I use “but we Christians are opposed to unfair treatment of employees” to defend myself against a charge of mistreating an employee?
Precisely because pedophilia is such a gross violation of power relations, I think the presumption ought to be in favor of openness to explanations and approaches, regardless of whose ox is being gored. If someone suggests that economic conservatism leads to pedophilia, I want to see their ideas.
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
True, but so? Both questions are interesting and valid.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 11:49 am
>>Oh, come on. You can have the best ideals in the world, that doesn’t mean that you’re automatically living them. I’m a Christian, albeit a bad one; can I use “but we Christians are opposed to unfair treatment of employees” to defend myself against a charge of mistreating an employee? >>
No, but you could use, say, Ourbodiesourselves.com to defend against the charge that feminism wants to disempower women with regard to their bodies. And you could use feminist writings about rape, sexual molestation, and predatory sexuality to counter arguments that feminism lends itself to pedophilia, forgives pedophilia, or encourages pedophilia.
>>Precisely because pedophilia is such a gross violation of power relations, I think the presumption ought to be in favor of openness to explanations and approaches, regardless of whose ox is being gored. If someone suggests that economic conservatism leads to pedophilia, I want to see their ideas.>>
What if they’re arguing that Catherine MacKinnon supports rape?
>>Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.>>
The analogy you made would be valid if the article were asking the latter. The former is, as QrazyQat said, a “push-poll” sentence. And speaking of openness to explanations and ideas, it’s not a question designed to start a deep analysis of feminist thought and its effect on male and female sexuality. It’s designed to make readers scared of those nasty older viragos and their unnatural appetites–that’s why the writer made it sound as though Germaine Greer were stalking the Uffizi with one hand groping for the marble flanks of Greek heroes and the other fumbling under her skirt.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
A lawyer’s defense of her client hardly constitutes feminist thought, and it is unfair for the author of the piece to imply that it does. If anything, feminism and the resultant awareness of rape and unethical sex has led to prosecutions of female offenders, not the proliferation of them. I confess I used to think girls were more vulnerable and needed more protection until the famous case of that woman who went to prison for having sex and children with her student when he was 13 (forgot her name). They ended up married when she left prison, but not before she made him a father at a very young age and not before he was (reportedly) into substance abuse. I really believe she stole his youth away from him.
And as an aside, why can’t feminists be concerned with the needs of boys who need protection, or men for that matter? That’s as grating as a black man dismissing a white woman’s mistreatment because he can’t be concerned with the needs of whites.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Robert:
No, but no feminist I know accepts rape culture as an excuse from the rapist, either.
Now, if you’re asking me, can you defend Christianity on the grounds that Christianity opposes unfair treatment of workers, the answer is, “maybe, it depends on the substance.” Then we’re in a discussion of the various kinds of Christianity and Christians and how they operate in the world.
Your point seems the be the procedural meta-point about whether one ought to inquire about how a social movement or structure influences a particular kind of crime or abuse. I agree that such an inquiry is generally appropriate.
However, I say the substantive answer is a ground ball. Is there a stripe of pedophilia in feminism? No. This journalist seems to be trying mightily to invent a trend by selecting one work, misinterpreting it, and generalizing it to feminism.
Now, unless you disagree with the conclusion that there is no good argument that feminism has a strain of pedophilia, it’s awfully technical of you to go out of your way to make what is, essentially, a point of procedure.
If you think that feminism has a strain of pedophilia, don’t beat around the bush. Make your point and get it out on the table.
If you’re just making a technical point, then I agree, but I don’t think it’s all that fertile an area for discussion.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
They won the debate, we’re discussing this on their terms.
This comment was written by Lilith.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
It strikes me as trivially obvious that as any group (however defined) gains more power, more members of that group will abuse that power. A perfectly equal society will have perfectly equal distribution of criminality. The fact that when men and women and equal, there will be just as many female as male rapists, doesn’t mean that anyone is encouraging rape, anymore than wanting more women in the boardroom implicitly encourages insider trading by females — which would surely follow.
When Cedric the Entertainer called the D.C. Sniper “the Jackie Robinson of serial killers”, the joke was exactly that — when the races are truly equal, there should be an equal percentage of crazy black serial killers. In that sense, the D.C. Sniper was a hallmark of advancing race relations.
But it was a joke (rather than a racialist manifesto) precisely because he doesn’t REALLY cheer “bad advancements” the way he does “good advancements.” The truth underlying the joke is that they really are in many ways inseparable. An increase in female paedophilia is a sign (albeit a very small one) of female advancement just as much as a black serial killer is.
Assumedly, in a perfectly equal society, rapes by men will drop much more than rapes by women increase, and there will be many fewer disguntled serial killers of any race. But the evening out does imply an increase of underrepresented criminals.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
The author of the Times pieces seems to toss out bombs as bon mots. “Is there an element of paedophilia in today’s feminism?”
“But I was _just_ asking a question?!,” he shrieks as feminists respond, “hmm no dirty-dishwater-for-brains…”
The asking of the very question suggests, as PsA points out, the author’s lacking of understanding regarding feminism and his smug disregard for feminists {and maybe even all women except the waitresses at hooters.}
I am struck by the regressive nature of privleged. Yet again, a man attempts to debase and dimish feminism to make up for the pedophilia amongst our man-loving, masculinist masculinism loving culture. “See feminists do it too.”
“See black people are racist, too.”
Unable to take responsibility for male privilege combined with a need to silence “those harpies” our boorish author makes him look like a fool.
Different day. Same Old Stuff.
Thanks PsA for another great post.
This comment was written by Jay Sennett.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Heh. Jay beat me to it.
I’ll apologize for Greer the day that the patriarchs apologize for Plato and the rest of the holy canon they’re always shouting about. :p
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
The irony here is that feminism’s probably more responsible than any other social movement for the fact that we now consider it a serious crime for an adult woman to have sex with an underage boy.
This comment was written by nolo.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
The book is at Amazon.com. Load this page:
First page.
Click to advance to the second page. See the pedophilic art! Click again. More horrifying art!
Admittedly, we can’t make a full diagnosis from 2 pages. Did The Times (UK) provide page number for the actual porn?
This comment was written by lucia.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
I’m almost certain that these high profile cases wouldn’t have been prosecuted pre-feminism/ rape awareness days. And I know that rape counselors take sexual abuse of boys and men very seriously- perhaps more so than the rest of us, since they are on the front lines and don’t see it as a dirty joke. One aspect of feminism that can contribute to the confusion is that I think femism acknowledges that women are sexual, and that we don’t all lust after aging rich men because we “find power sexy”. Literature has acknowedged forever that very young teenage girls are appealing to some men, and now the shameful secret is that some women find very young teenage boys appealing too. They get off on the same erotic power trip the men do. I’m sure there have always been women who do this. At least they’re not starting a religion about it.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
August 29th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
Disgusting crime of pedophilia? Don’t you watch Oprah,PsA? It’s not pedophilia when women do it; then, it’s “forbidden love.” It’s only a crime when men do it.
This comment was written by DP_in_SF.As for Germaine Greer, I agree with piny. It’s inconceivable to me that she’s some sort of pedophile. About the only thing one can hold against her is the fact she’s a Chicago Cubs fan.
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August 29th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
The ghost of the damned phrase “contributory negligence”, idle since it was rightly exorcised from rape-case courtrooms
Uh, unless UK law is substantially wackier than in the US, the writer is an ignorant twit.
“Contributory negligence” is an old principle of Anglo-American tort law. There has never been a “contributory negligence” defense in criminal law. I assume what the writer was fumbling around for was the idea of blaming the victim. That idea comes from other sources–namely, old laws that required a victim to defend herself against rape ‘to the utmost’, and from social views that had nothing at all to do with the law. (Kind of the way that “he’s an asshole” is not a defense to murder, but many defense lawyers take the tack of persuading a jury that the victim needed killing and the defendant was the man for the job.)
“Contributory negligence” has, virtually everywhere in the US, been replaced by varying levels of “comparative negligence.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2005 at 3:33 am
You know, I’m thinking here of the way some men pop up during discussions of sexual harassment to boast about how they harassed their wives into dating them and now they’ve been married thirty years! That just proves sexual harassment is stupid and an over-reaction. Same thing happens with age-of-consent laws: some dipshit always pops up and says his sweetie was fifteen when they met, they’ve been married for thirty years, what is he, a sex offender? And also with teacher/student relationships—-but only if the teacher’s male and the student’s female. Having power over women is always appropriate, even if you have to stack the deck by preying on women who are barely women.
I’ve yet to see a woman do this. If we were talking about a teacher/student pairing here that involves the genders switched, and if the girl were just shy of the age of consent, I bet you’d see that phenominon. Women just aren’t allowed to have power over male adolescents the way men are encouraged to takepower young women. Male power to exploit is A-okay but when women do it, it’s awful and disgusting.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2005 at 5:09 am
Whtvrkthx. This is along the same lines as the folks who blame feminism for a supposed increase in husband-battering by women. Of course, nothing to do with our contribution to a climate where everyone - male or female - is more able to be open about what is happening to them, and where problems like sexual abuse and domestic violence are actually acknowledged rather than swept under the carpet and ignored. Now if only the mainstream press could get as het up about these things happening to women and girls as they are about men and boys…
This comment was written by Nella.PS this preview thingy is really weirding me out. blame it for any typos above.
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August 30th, 2005 at 6:55 am
Picky, picky, Nella. Next I suppose you’ll be wanting the media to pay tons of attention to how the Catholic church has covered up widespread abuse of women by priests, too.
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories4/122702_women.htm
Etc, etc…
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2005 at 10:53 am
What ginmar said. I find it both amusing and repulsive that the mainstream media, which is constantly offering up underage young girls in the most leering, prurient way (the Olsen twins, Britney, Charlotte Church et al. were all shown & discussed in a highly sexualised light well before reaching the age of consent–and don’t even get me started on Brooke Shields), as if grown men whacking off to 14 year olds were the healthiest thing on earth, is suddenly up in arms when it’s older women and young boys.
Not that I want to excuse any woman who fucks an underage boy. It’s just the damn double standard, and everyone’s absolute refusal to acknowledge it. Plus the fact that the whole woman/boy thing happens with so much less frequency than the man/girl thing.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 4:37 am
We had a case up here with, I think a twenty-four-year old woman and a seventeen-year-old boy. When the roles were reversed, it was a fifteen-year-old girl with a thirty-year-old teacher who,as it turned out, wasn’t really a teacher. Guess which two people got slammed and slammed hard by the court? The paper felt it was acceptible to report what the defense attorney quoted from the girl’s diary, and the female teacher was treated like the Whore of Babylon and The Wicked Witch of the West. If it had been 24-year-old male and 17-year-old female, people would just shrug.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 5:46 am
I think we all a have to acknowledge that the idea of old men with adolescent girls is widely accepted as wrong. It does no good to pretend that these old attitudes still prevail, because they don’t, except for perhaps in Colorado City. And if it’s more common for older men to take advantage of girls, older women with boys is probably way more common than we realize.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 8:16 am
I also think part of the problem is that we treat young people as adults in sexual matters (age of consent, age to marry, etc.) at different ages than we do for other things (voting, drinking alcohol, car insurance). Even driving a car, which is a pretty mature and responsible thing to be doing, is set at 16 in most states. It would be a lot easier for many people to understand April-September hanky-panky (regardless of the gender of the older perpetrator) as wrong if the “coming of age” age was the same one for everything - either you’re a legal adult or you’re not, basta.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 11:47 am
Anyone remember “Hot For Teacher”?
Actually, there is an element of very real sexuality that is rarely discussed in secondary ed. I may address this in a post of my own.
This comment was written by Lauren.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 11:57 am
Yes Alsis, that would be nice. Dangerous idea, hmm? :-/
This comment was written by Nella.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Dangerous, indeed. I’m old enough to remember all the people that wanted Sinead O’Connor burnt alive for the “crime” of ripping up the Pope’s picture on TV. Ho hum.
CrysT wrote:
Yup. That’s definitely been true in the fine art world, too. Just look at the fuss over the iffy talents of a painter like Balthus. If a guy painted that many fruit bowls or landscapes that dully, nobody outside his hometown would ever have heard of him, I’ll wager. Also, I wonder who painted or commissioned all those supposedly sexy paintings of adolescent boys that lucia linked to ? I’m pretty sure that those weren’t –by and large– woman painters, nor woman patrons;Though we can always count on misogynists and their rah-rah girls to zero in on one exception and use it to debunk– not prove– the rule.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2005 at 8:38 am
I think we all a have to acknowledge that the idea of old men with adolescent girls is widely accepted as wrong.
“Old men” with younger women is treated with eye-rolling, perhaps, but not as “wrong.” It’s certainly not widely accepted that grown men with teenage girls is “wrong.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:59 am
Elana writes:
i would have to disagree with you on this. most of them turn abused boys and men away, citing that the women there would feel uncomfortable with the presence of men. many rape centers have little to no information on male victims, and usually can’t even direct them as to where they could go for services. i deal with male survivors often, and i am one, and this is something even professionals often take issue with. certainly there are some rape centers that do reach to males, but most do not.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2005 at 5:56 am
Lauren, I was thinking about “Hot for teacher” and also that silly pop hit from last year, “I’m in love with Stacey’s Mom” - isn’t it pretty normal for kids to have crushes on their teachers, it is just not quite so normal for the crushes to be acted on. Also, no one brought up that LeTorneau woman, and I think you guys are Oregonians, for shame! As for the Germaine Greer thing, I do not get what art has to do with teachers and kids having sex. Next they will say that Michelangelo was a pervert for painting naked cherubs.
The really salient point in all of this is what Lilith upthread said - if you RESPOND to this sort of silly argument and waste time over it, haven’t the anti-feminists already won? It’s so stupid it doesn’t deserve your time. However, there were some very funny and great comments about it, particularly the ones from ChrysT, Ginmar and Jay.
This comment was written by Anna in Cairo.Report this comment to the moderators