Send two of these to Ms. Allard’s sons. Maybe add, “by my mother.”
There’s nothing quite like using a nationally followed publication to declare your own sons misogynist, insensitive pigs because they have not properly absorbed the feminist cant they have apparently been fed their whole lives. Jodi got her revenge by publicly attacking them in a Washington Post column.
I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these. Men who deny rape culture, or who turn a blind eye to sexism. Men who tell me I’m being too sensitive or that I don’t understand what teenage boys are like. “You don’t speak out about this stuff, mom,” they tell me with a sigh. “It’s just not what teenagers do.”My sons are right about that much. Teenage boys, by and large, don’t speak out about slut-shaming or rape culture. They don’t call each other out when they make sexist jokes or objectify women. It’s too uncomfortable to separate themselves from the pack so they continue to at least dip their toes into toxic masculinity. In their discomfort with action, they remain passive, and their passivity perpetuates the same broken system that sentenced Brock Turner to only six months in jail…No matter how often my sons remind me that they are good men, they don’t understand that being “good” is an action. You don’t earn the honor by simply shaking your head when you hear about Turner and other rapists being given lenient sentences. You earn it by acting to end rape culture, and by doing it even when it’s awkward and uncomfortable as hell.
The rest of her column proceeds accordingly. One of her sons, we learned in a previous article, is clinically depressed and has been suicidal in the past. I bet being called out by his mother in a newspaper read and quoted coast to coast is just what the doctor ordered. Both sons are teenagers—minors. To their mother, however, they are just convenient symbols of woman-abusing mankind, and fair game for shame and denigration.
I’d guess that these teens have rejected their mother’s values because they resent having been indoctrinated their whole lives by an obsessed feminist scold. I grew up (allegedly) decades ago, and I never accepted the values Allard’s sons (she claims) are defending, because of the way I saw my father treat my mother, and the role model for manhood he provided every second of his life.. An accountable, responsible parent would privately question her own parenting skills rather than impugn her sons’ character for a newspaper fee.
Allard’s article has since been reprinted by the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, the Bangor Daily News, and the Charlotte Observer. Nice job, mom.
Meanwhile, is it ethical for any of the papers involved to assist a mother’s humiliation of two children who assumed they were having conversations with a parent they could trust, and not a vicious ideologue willing to tar her own boys as enablers of rapists to make a well-worn point? Is circulating such standard issue feminist cant really worth being an accessory to child abuse?
____________________
Pointer: The Daily Caller
Ethics Alarms 
The bright side is that the kids will get hours of laughter out of the name “Bangor Daily News.”
Wow! I don’t know. Maybe its just me but she sounds like a horrible mother. She told her sons all about her own rape and sexual abuse to help them? She is disappointed because they do not Support her. This woman has her priorities backwards.
She as their mother should be supporting them. Not preaching about how terrible her sons are to anyone who will listen.
I won’t go so far as to say she is responsible for her depressed sons ailments. But you can bet that this kind if article and the way she seems to treat them are not helping him any. Poor boys.
No, it’s not just you. She’s horrible. If the sons really do end up misogynists, we’ll know why.
I object to the whole rape culture idea as presented by women like her…we have laws on the books for rape, we punish rapists. No one thinks rape is jolly fun for a Friday night except for sociopaths. This for me is a huge problem, assuming all men would rape if given a chance, even one’s own sons. She’s been nagging them their whole lives, they’re well sick of hearing it over and over, I’d imagine. What exactly does she expect them to do about Turner’s sentencing? What is she doing about it, besides nagging her kids about it?
There are going to be an awful lot of depressed or otherwise affected males in this generation. How can there not be, when they’re told they’re potential criminals just for having male genitalia? It’s offensive enough in the media, it must be horrible to live with your own mother watching your every move.
Have you ever heard of the trope Then Let Me be Evil
While this mother is horrible, it is foolish to think a rape culture doesn’t exist.
Here’s one of my favorite examples:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/st-marys-university-chant-rape_n_3879903.html
How does that prove a national “rape culture?” That chant wouldn’t have lasted for five seconds at my school. That’s a single school asshole culture, and nothing else. Many Red Sox fans started chanting “Yankees suck!” in the 70’s. It’s disgusting, but it doesn’t prove a fellatio culture in Idaho.
Christ, S.!
“That’s a single school asshole culture, and nothing else.”
Thank you, Jack. If there is a “rape culture,” then there is also a “false-accusation-of-rape culture.” Deal with it, “Spartan.”
That’s one of many, many examples. And it’s hard to say that it is an isolated incident when a group of people decided that this was a good chant to perform, practiced it, and then did it.
So you actually had to go to a Canadian school to find something? All this talk in the US, and you had to go to another country to find something meaningful? That pretty much shoots down your argument right there alone.
Oh good grief.
You know my name, “Spartan?” Well, go figure, I was a MSU grad (I wasn’t clever enough to think of another name and I was unduly influenced by TexAgg.) Anyway, during my orientation there (fourscore and seven years ago), one of the principal things covered was date rape. According to my university (at least at the time), we had one of highest — if not the highest — reported instances of date rape in the nation. Go Spartans! We were taught about rape whistles, pepper spray, and all of the special “date rape” phones — there were tons of them — all over campus.
I know, I know. Probably all of those women were making it up. We feminazis like nothing better than to bring false accusations, put ourselves and academic futures into jeopardy, and then be labeled a whore. It’s super fun. In my own experience, I have been been given the date rape drug at a bar (I only had a single drink the whole evening), was attacked by a friend’s boyfriend in my room (I managed to escape), and was attacked by my own special stalker boyfriend once. I also had another stalker — non-boyfriend — during college. He mysteriously disappeared after I put my 6’5” friend on the case. For a while, I actually thought that something really awful happened to him — but he showed up a few years later with only minimal scars. But you know what? I’m sure all of those things were completely my fault. I never reported any of these instances either, because I was smart enough by then to know that nothing would happen except damage to my own reputation.
Wait, I’ll save you the trouble of typing. Yes, there is a discredited Rolling Stones story about a UVA rape that never happened. So, that proves that there must be no rape culture at all in the United States.
I don’t think culture means what you think it does, S. MSU may have a rape culture. The Hell’s Angels may have a rape culture. Some fraternities may have a rape culture. But the US definitely does NOT have a rape culture. We do have a gun culture. Here’s the difference:
In popular culture, US heroes use guns. Heroes do not rape. Bad guys rape. Did John Wayne ever rape anyone in a film? James Stewart? Tom Hanks? Harrison Ford? Humphrey Bogart? Errol Flynn? Elvis? Burt Lancaster? Clark Gable rapes Scarlet in GWTW, I’d say, but that’s the book, and one film does not a culture make. If this was really a rape culture, would there be such a dearth of rape in our entertainment? Who enjoys rape?
Gun culture, sure. Being able to shoot a gun is considered a skill. Being able to have romantic relations with women without resorting to rape is a skill; rape is proof of desperation, incompetence and abuse.
A candidate who used a gun to protect a fellow citizen would gain respect and support. A candidate who raped a woman would be shunned. There are literally no signs in the US that rape is admired, tolerated, encouraged or accepted anywhere, except mutant sub-cultures…unless attractive young women rape teenaged boys….or unless Democratic future Presidents engage in it, in which case the same people accusing the nation of having a rape culture turn away in denial.
Formidable clear-sightedness. A very clear demonstration of incising through dubiously-constructed perception to show *what is* from *what is not*.
Such clear sightedness is much in demand these days.
I see. You only see “culture” as including good things. Culture can include bad things as well.
“There are literally no signs in the US that rape is admired, tolerated, encouraged or accepted anywhere …” Except that there are. So, one of us is crazy and/or wears rose-tinted glasses. This is where the argument must stop because there is no point.
“There are” is not even a response. Show me anything in the US culture that is pro rape. Culture is what a group decides is right and wrong, good and bad, worth encouraging, or discouraging. A rape culture is pro-rape: rape is good. That is not US culture. What is it you are seeing or think you see?
Sorry you went to what is listed as the highest incident of date-rape, but all that shows is you’re in an outlyer situation, not in a standard one. Warnings, the phones, and all just show it is not approved though, not that there is a culture promoting it. I get calls every day about home security, warnings to lock your car and house door, and even automatic alerts to security companies if someone breaks into my house. That doesn’t mean there is a “home invasion culture” out there. It’s frowned upon.
No, not all of the women are making it up. But that doesn’t mean there is a culture promoting and encouraging rape. There’s not. No one, leaving out the rapists, likes rape. It’s a disgusting, immoral act that is one of the, if not the, most looked-down upon crimes in the country. Even in MSU, while there, most people there were not, and did not, condone it. Or were you saying your 6’5 friend was really just setting you up to rape you himself, since that’s the culture there?
Yes, there was. Does that mean there is a “fake claim rape culture” too? Since it happens sometimes. Obviously no as well.
Michael Ejercito’s ‘Then Let Me Be Evil’ reference is interesting. I wonder how one could be begin to think on this matter? It seems that a large part of what everyone (mostly the men so far) is speaking against is the way that women are framing men. Establishing a view, framing an issue, and controlling how it is used, is always part of a controlling process, isn’t it? One starts with the idea that ‘rape is bad’ (which it surely is). And then one builds a case where the responsibility is laid onto the entire gender. It becomes a tool in the hands — is it mostly or only ‘feminists’? — who seem to seek a much larger agenda of social control, of control over men, how they are, how they act. Since no one can say ‘Rape is Good’, and rape is only carried out by men, this becomes a powerful tool in their hands. It seems to function like other similarly broad *accusations* such as sexism, racism, et cetera.
I think that one forgets that, at least at a certain level, women have a giant complaint about their *condition*. This is existential and also bio-existential. They are the one’s with the reproductive system, and they are the ones who must bring forth the children to continue the race of man. In the largest picutre they have no choice in this matter. In a pure state of nature they are *absolute victims* of Nature in this sense. Their young women (girls) would be driven to reproduce as an edicts of Nature. It is actually man’s culture that allows for different outcomes. Left on her own woman would be, as she was historically, ‘barefooted and pregnant’.
I have often seem feminism, at a deeper. Psychological level, as a sore complaint not so much against men or a specific man, but really against Nature. And even, depending on a woman’s view of divinity, against God. Against the one who set this all up. If this is so, then women consciously but more importantly unconsciously resent *the world of nature* for what it does to them, yet the closest entity against which they can rail and complain (and beat with their rageful fists) is the man standing close to them. In my mind this explains at least some part of a couple of hundreds of years of our history.
Do you mind sharing how you feel you yourself, as a woman who researches and writes, fits into this framework?
*fit, not fits. So much for my God-given brain.
“You don’t speak out about this stuff, mom,” they tell me with a sigh. “It’s just not what teenagers do.”
This quote rings false. If I were forced to guess, I’d say it was paraphrased at best, and complete creative license at worst. I wonder if she started out by writing “You can’t speak out so bravely about this stuff, mom. Don’t you know the risk you’re running by being so bold and unorthodox? You can’t just challenge the system like that! Martin Luther King and Jesus died for doing that kind of thing!” But then she thought it was a bit much, and toned it down.
Has the appropriate jurisdiction’s Child Protective Services or similar department been out to investigate this woman? Do these boys have a father? At home?
It’s become one of my hobby horses (and maybe these kids are the children of an intact marriage), but I think the effect of divorce on children is one of the most under rated social phenomena going. How can kids have any belief in long term relationships or stability when they’ve grown up amidst a divorce? I just don’t think there’s anything more valuable a person can do for his or her children other than show them the benefits of a good, stable, lasting, life long marriage.
They do have a father, but she’s been divorced three times (shocker there!) so he’s not there now.
You know… It’s funny. I’m gay… I wouldn’t deign to tell straighties how to have a good relationship, I have no fucking clue how that works… Which is why it always blows my mind when these lesbianic spinsters coming off their umpteenth failed relationship talk about the relationship between men and women and anyone bothers to give them the time of day.
The real rape culture is in ISIS-land.
Fifth columnist governments in Europe are importing millions of migrants from these rape cultures.
How many feminists are speaking out against that?
We are supposed to speak out against the people who are fleeing a rape culture?
They are bringing the rape culture with that, as many girlsd and women can attest.
Good grief! They’re not fleeing a “rape culture;” they’re PROPAGATING it!
Well, I agree that there are many bad apples among the good, but you can’t really say they are propagating it, can you? Didn’t you just criticize me for relying on an example as proving the theory?
I certainly can, and will, and will continue to, say that the invaders being dumped into Europe are propagating a culture of misogyny, including the conviction that rape (of females and males, maybe animals too) is a natural (“Allah-ordained”) part of a (human) male’s entitled and privileged status. YOU, Spartan, are the one who is insisting on being selective about an example proving one of your theories. MY “theory” is PROVED – TRUTH.
Well, you used lots of capital letters, so you must be right…..
Well, I always raise my type size when I am raising my voice…but especially when I am right…
Are you seriously comparing a school chant with the Rotterdam cases? Honest?
Cologne. Jesus. The local women were raped by refugee rape gangs, and that’s what you come up with?
Actually. There’s a neat thought.
If we have such and awful, awful, nasty rape culture here in the West, can you point to a single instance of a refugee raped by a national?
I’m sad that you aren’t aware of this. The fact is that vulnerable groups are always the targets of sexual violence — whether here or worldwide.
http://medicalkidnap.com/2016/02/04/government-investigation-confirms-children-are-trafficked-in-the-u-s-modern-day-slavery/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2612793/The-women-know-theyre-going-raped-Female-immigrants-sneaking-US-taking-birth-control-avoid-unwanted-pregnancies.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-04/turkey-business-refugee-smuggling-sex-trafficking
And why go national on foreign at all, when good old domestic sex trafficking is up as well? https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41878.pdf
So just to be clear… The answer to the question of “Can you cite an example of a refugee raped by a national?” Is “No, the closest thing I can come to is the rape of illegal immigrants.”
Not to excuse that, it’s still a travesty… but when you compare it to say… Rotheram, where something like 1600 teenage girls were systematically groomed into an actual gang-rape culture…. Or if you were to juxtapose these cases against the soldier who was dishonorably discharged for saving an Afghan boy from being raped (bachi bazi) because quote, “it’s their culture, and it isn’t a soldier’s job to interfere.” Your examples just don’t compare. I think that perhaps Americans haven’t quite come to the travesty that is Islamic rape culture because quite simply, you don’t have a whole lot of Muslims in America as a proportion of your total population, the ones you already have are on average more integrated than the international Muslim community, and you have a staggering ability to ignore things that happen outside your borders.
I’m not excusing American rapists. I’m just truly confused, if you’re going to call America a “rape culture” because of a couple of outliers, what the heck kind of label do you have to conjure up to accurately and contextually label middle eastern rape gulags?
It’s all a spectrum, and some cultures are better than others. Would I rather live in the US than Saudi Arabia or India? Of course. Does that mean that the US doesn’t have a rape culture? Of course not.
Wow, so you’re solution is essentially that everyone belongs to a rape culture… just some rape cultures are way less bad than others.
Phenomenal.
Actually, Tex, that is exactly what I am saying. There is extreme violence against women and children in every country. And the more vulnerable the group, the more likely that they will harmed. That doesn’t mean that the United States isn’t one of the best countries out there for female safety, but it also doesn’t mean that we should shut our eyes to the problems that do exist.
My stories (and note that I don’t paint myself as a victim) are not unique. Every woman — and I stress every woman — I know has faced similar issues during college, grad school, internships, first jobs, etc. It’s part of being a woman. Black boys get “the talk” about how to deal with the police. Teenage girls get “the talk” on how to avoid date rape and how to deescalate (if possible) dangerous encounters with boys and men. What I am waiting for — with bated breath — is “the talk” with teenage boys and young men about how to respect women, not to abuse them, and to learn that “no” really does mean “no.”
I got that talk, S., and the vast majority of teenage boys do. See, everyone has a mother, and a lot of boys have sisters. This makes the Golden Rule especially easy.
Yes, many communities and sub-cultures within the US enable and encourage rape. U.S. culture as a whole, however, does not, and in fact does the opposite.
I’ve been robbed; so have a majority of citizens at some point. That doesn’t mean the US has a theft culture. Exaggerating a genuine problem and claiming it is systemic and endemic is a popular strategy ( no, blacks are not systematically oppressed, but individual bigotry is still a problem), though I don’t know why. It sure makes me a critic of efforts at reform that could count me as an ally if the would just stick to the facts.
“I’ve been robbed; so have a majority of citizens at some point. That doesn’t mean the US has a theft culture.”
Actually, I don’t think that’s true Jack — although I am sorry that happened to you.
And I’m glad you got the talk, but I don’t know how you can support your point that the “vast majority” of boys do.
Well, to begin with, the vast, vast majority of men never rape anyone.
All that means is we live in one of the better rape-oriented cultures. That’s all.
I can well imagine what it’s like to be Allard’s husband as well as her teenage boys. This woman needs psychotherapy (preferably with a woman therapist who likes and understands men) much more than a platform to shame her boys.
The Brock Turner case, when I reviewed it, read the police report et cetera, seemed to me a near perfect example of mass social hysteria in operation.
It does not matter if she consented to him or not, what matters is that it got framed in a certain way, that it got broadcast for consumption by very thirsty readership suffering in subjective social sentiments about which it is VERY HARD to get to the bottom of (to describe). In my view I would place this hysteria within a sick culture, a declining culture and one that is disgenic and getting worse, and I’d suggest this hysteria is similar to that within the BLM cutlure. One must notice that this is *female hysteria* and not the result of cold, hard, sincere, broadminded and tempered reasoning. (See Otto Weininger’s ‘Sex and Character’).
This is infection and contamination. It seems that it will have to run its course as there is no force that can hold it in check. I have the feeling that this is also part of a disgenic process that is a result of multicultural mixing. That is what my intuition tells me though it would be hard indeed to back it up ‘scientifically*.
Having been raised in a sexually conservative culture and having avoided almost everything having to do with unrestrained liberality in that area, I have a general critique of the extreme superficiality and ‘voluptuousness’ that is broadcast through all media, at all times, in all contexts, more of less 24/7/365. Your kids are exposed to this and there is no way for them to resist it. Sex is the most insidious tool for corruption insofar as it bypasses *the rational man*.
There are then two opposing trends: One that rushes headlong into the lifting of all restraint, and the other which, in strange and misplaced Puritanism, seeks to villify what *the culture* is invoking, teaching and instilling constantly. Eventually, that will lead to social psychosis. It seems this is a recipe for tremendous dissonance within people. And it would seem in young people, as in the news story that Beth (Spartan) posted.
But the most important thing, so it seems to me, is not the specific behavior, but that the entire culture is manifesting a sort of uncontrolled, unrestrained, unrecognized social sickness. One is asked to sort things through *ethically* (I do not just mean here on this blog) and yet, and in very fact, there is not much of a standard for ethical conduct that is available. Not in the sexual arena given what actually goes on.
I think these are symptoms of the beginning of social failure at the level of the Republic. These are symptoms of the loss of *cohesion* and agreement, and aquiescence, to basic principles. The actions to destroy the relationship, the link, with such principles was successful and we get all the horrible enjoyment of living in the outcomes. (That is one of those statements — complaining — too easy to make and yet I just made it! To get to the bottom of Why and How is a philosophical, a spiritual and an ethical problem, but there is no agreement in these areas, and so the dissolution will continue).
It is something like psychological breakdown but on a massive, culture-wide level.
Brock Turner was convicted
Obviously. How else could he have gone to jail?
That conviction came about in a California court and through the application of specific California points of law. While she was messing around with her, when they were both tipsy and having a fun time, he penetrated her with his finger. Later, when he was questioned by the poiice, and because he was being honest and upright (and in retrospect stupid), he described his encounter with her which was consensual. He thus cooked his own goose.
The girl had a history of drinking and blacking out. And she drank, messed around, and later blacked out. Had Brock not told the police what had happened, there would have been no evidence of penetration, and he did not have intercourse with her.
She only heard about the incident later, having no memory of any of it. A ‘rape crisis councelor’ instructed what happened, helped her organize a narrative, and all her deep and unfathomable angusih was layed on over the event.
That’s the case itself, as I understood it.
What I was writing about are matters that are related to this phenomenon of women choosing to find men as a source of evil for them, and the psychology of mass-accusation, fueled by twitter campaign and social media hysteria.
I meant to write: “While she was messing around with HIM…”
This woman treats her sons like that, but still expects to be trusted to have a clue as to what must be done to “end rape culture?!” Fat chance, Jodi Allard!
On the other hand…maybe it takes a proven expert in “smear culture” to do something constructive about our false-accusation-of-rape culture…
Formidable clear-sightedness. A very clear demonstration of incising through dubiously-constructed perception to show *what is* from *what is not*.
it is one very enviable and emulable quslity and talent.