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Men’s Human Rights Movement fights oppression with new oppression-fighting term “Rapetard.”
Our dear friends over at A Voice for Men, the thought-leaders of the Glorious New Men’s Human Rights of The 21st Century Human Rights Movement With Girl Writes What (GNMHROT21CHRMWGWW) have been trying to introduce a new word into the vernacular, as part of their broad-based campaign for the betterment of human rights. That word? Rapetard.
While the portmanteau word has been floating around for some time, with assorted definitions, it took on its modern, human-rightsy definition in mid-April in a little-seen YouTube video by a fellow calling himself “Dick Magnum,” who defined it thusly:
An individual who, for reasons related to intellectual, emotional or moral deficits, cannot distinguish between questioning [the idea of] “rape culture” and supporting rape.
It was picked up in an AVFM post titled “Beware the Rapetard Society” about a week after that. Soon other AFVM writers seemed to forget Mr. Magnum’s careful definition, adopting it as their go-to epithet for feminists they don’t like. Which is pretty much all of them.
In a post having nothing to do with rape or rape culture, Paul Elam talked about “dumbing things down so that even a rapetard could understand.” In the comments to that post, AVFM contributor Dan Perrins joked about “rapetarded quote mining expedition[s].” And in a post yesterday, AVFM’s “Andy Bob” attacked Australian comedian Catherine Deveny for an assortment of alleged offenses against decency — including using the term “retard” – in a post that referred to her as a “rapetard” four times, including once in the title.
You might think that combining the word “rape” with an ableist slur –“tard” – and applying it liberally to feminist women would be a step backwards in the campaign for human rights, but apparently that’s old-fashioned twentieth century thinking on my part.
Today in Rape Culture: More #Steubenville Awfullness on Twitter
The Public Shaming blog and Twitchy.com have been doing the world a service by documenting some of the worst rape apologist nonsense that sprouted up on Twitter in the wake of the Steubenville rape verdict. I thought I would add some more screenshots to the growing pile.
Zerlina Maxwell challenges rape culture on Fox News, receives rape threats on Twitter.
I’m still officially on my Man Boobz staycation, but I felt I needed to mention yet another example of a woman saying that men can stop rape … and getting rape threats in return.
Political analyst Zerlina Maxwell went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News earlier this week and made the terrible mistake of suggesting to a hostile audience that men aren’t really doing any favors to women by telling them to arm themselves against rapists. Instead, as Salon notes, she said this:
“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” She told Hannity, “You’re talking about this as if it’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” adding, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”
Indeed, increased rape awareness has contributed to a dramatic decrease in rape over the last thirty years.
But apparently a lot of men were shocked – shocked! – that a woman would suggest that their patronizing advice was less likely to prevent rape than rape prevention education aimed at the demographic group that is responsible for the overwhelmng majority of rapes. That is, men.
So, naturally, the angriest of these men decided they would show Maxwell just how wrong she was … by threatening her with rape on Twitter.
Here’s just one example:
Rape culture in action.
Maxwell’s supporters have stepped up to defend her and her remarks, and have started a hashtag — #TYZerlina — to continue the discussion. If you’re on Twitter, join in .
Here’s the Fox News segment in question featuring Maxwell: