Shailja Patel is an “acclaimed poet, playwright and activist,” and “was born and raised in Kenya, has lived in London and San Francisco, and now divides her time between Nairobi and Berkeley. ” She’s an opinion writer for the Guardian, BBC, and Al-Jazeera.
Given that illustrious biography, you can imagine what kind of insufferable progressive she is.
She decided to voice her opinion on Twitter about why concealed carry is bad and rape is a tool of the patriarchy (unrolled for easy reading).
When you tell women and girls to learn self-defense, or carry weapons against rapists, you’re not reducing rape. You’re just saying “let him rape someone more vulnerable.”
Stop calling for dystopias. Start working to end patriarchy. Make a world BEYOND RAPE.
Patriarchy wants us to believe that rape has always existed and always will. That rape is intrinsic to masculinity. This myth serves patriarchy by transferring all consequences of rape, including shame and blame, onto victims. Patriarchy stays unaccountable.
Rape culture is how patriarchy sustains the hegemonic myth that rape is a given, an unchangeable condition, of all human societies. So men never have to hold themselves or other men accountable. Rape is a women’s issue.
Rape serves patriarchy by keeping all women scared, ashamed, scrambling for a non-existent safety, and available to men on the most unequal of terms. Patriarchy tells women their best hope of survival lies in being chosen by powerful men who’ll protect them.
So many responses think it’s entirely reasonable to expect all women and children, regardless of age, health, disability, life conditions, to be armed and trained for combat 24/7, even in their own homes. But completely unreasonable to imagine and call for a world without rape.
So many responses ignore the reality that men rape their own daughters, granddaughters, nieces. Men rape their wives, in-laws, girlfriends, dates. Their sisters and cousins. Their colleagues and employees, their constituents and congregants. Men rape their domestic workers.
Should women have guns in bed with them, when they sleep with their partners? Should girls take guns to school to shoot rapist teachers? Should women take guns to church for rapist pastors? To work, for their colleagues and bosses? To family gatherings, for creepy relatives?
I can’t convey through words how absolutely hateful and vile this line of thought is.
Rape is evil. Evil exists as part of humanity. Evil people do evil things. Good people stand up to evil and stop evil from happening.
This idea that rape is not an evil carried out by evil people, but is inherent to men and is used by men against women assumes that all men are evil and is nothing but anti-male bigotry.
As a man, I believe it is my duty to protect and defend women from rape and to empower them to defend themselves from the same.
I was never taken as a child into a room full of men and told that I needed to rape women to keep them in line. I know of no man, at least in the Western world, who was. The Islamic world is a little bit different…
There is no conspiracy among Western men to rape women to subjugate them.
As per the idea of “we need to teach men not to rape, not teach women to defend themselves.” One of the most important lessons of the bible, as well as of philosophy is that evil exists. In the book of Genesis, there were only four people on earth, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Able, and it turns out, one of them was a murderer. Miguel wrote a post a few years ago that still gives me chills, about a truly evil human predator and the futility of trying to educate evil people against rape.
So not just does this insult the majority of men who are not evil and not rapists, it creates a false sense of security (and superiority) that evil men can be educated.
While it is true that some evil men to hurt those around them, pushing the paranoia that every husband, father, grandfather, uncle, boyfriend, etc. is a potential rapist and inherently untrustworthy is viciously mean and disturbingly hateful.
Lastly, one thing I never see any of these types of feminists talk about is the high rate of female sexual abusers who target children they are in the care of or the prevalence of young female teachers who have sex with younger male students. This would destroy the narrative that rape is a male thing used to abuse women and not an evil thing used by evil people against those who are powerless to defend themselves.
Everything about this is thread is terrible. She states that all men are inherently awful rapists but women should not lift a finger to protect themselves and that women are forced to rely on men to protect them but no man is trustworthy enough to not be a rapist.
This is what happens when hatred of men, being woke, and rejecting the responsibility of self-defense combine. You get a nonsensical screed that insults men and puts women in danger.
Off topic, and ENTIRELY Pedantic, but…
14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that ***every one that findeth me shall slay me.***
15 And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, ***lest any finding him should kill him.***
…unless Cain was afraid his own parents would be the ones to kill him, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Able were NOT the ‘only’ four people on Earth.
Either God made more people (A&E simply being the FIRST), or Adam ‘Knew’ Eve a *****LOT***** better than the bible documents.
Adam and Eve lived a long time and had many other children (Gen 5:4)
There is no timestamp on the murder of Abel (and ancient writings did not adhere to a strict chronology), so the reasonable assumption is that when this event occurred, there were many brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces out there hence Cain’s fear of retribution.
@Phssthpok: Depending on which Biblical commentator you read, there are a number of possibilities.
One is like you say: Adam “knew” Eve much better than is described. One factor of that is, if you go by only what is told, God created A&E, and then the next day they ate the forbidden fruit (commonly depicted as an apple, but which was really probably something more like a pomegranate). There is no timeline given; the Bible states later that their sin introduced evil and death into Creation — in a world without death, A&E could have (and likely did) lived in Eden for a hundred years and had several generations of kids who grew up and left the Garden, before the serpent tempted Eve. They could have had many other children after Cain and Abel, too.
Another possibility is that Eve was Adam’s second wife. The first, Lilith, was like Adam, created from the earth, but having equal standing she was disobedient to both Adam and God and was kicked out of the Garden. If so, there’s no telling how many kids they had. (Lilith is the namesake of “Lilith Fair”, a highly-misandrist annual celebration of uber-feminism. Men are barred at the door unless escorting a woman.)
I’ve had Bible purists tell me that the Bible doesn’t leave anything out; if it’s not mentioned, then it didn’t happen, so neither of these possibilities can be true. But personally, I think that view is highly flawed. In the Gospels, Jesus is depicted as a child of perhaps 10 or 12, and then the next chapter starts His ministry as a full adult (not to mention, they tell of His birth, and then the next chapter He’s that child of perhaps 10 or 12 reciting Scripture from memory and interpreting it better than the priests). Where did all that intervening time go?
Ditto for the Old Testament. Adam, Noah, Isaac, Abraham … all the old patriarchs lived for hundreds of years, yet most only get a chapter or two detailing a few significant events. Even King David, who had multiple books devoted to him, only has the highlights covered (granted there were a LOT of significant events in his life, mostly stemming from his own mistakes!). The Bible as a whole reads more like a historical framework than an exhaustive analysis.
So who’s to say Adam and Eve didn’t have more than two children, or that Adam didn’t have another wife (or wives) before and/or after Eve and have children with her (or them)?
Or even more simply, who’s to say that God, after creating A&E as His perfect template for humanity inside the controlled setting of the Garden, didn’t replicate it 10,000 times outside?
Look at the other message being sent: Do not learn to defend yourself.
This is also a huge point in current culture/media. The only people that should know how to defend/fight should be the government and those that have been inducted into the government.
Take your son to the range, they might get banned for “threatening behavior”. Teach your daughter how to defend herself and “you are supporting the patriarch”
This isn’t just men are evil. This is whole sale removal of the very idea of self reliance and self defense.
In much of Europe the idea that self-reliance and self-defense are bad has already conquered.
One of the most bizarre bits of human behavior I’ve ever seen is negative reactions to preparing for disasters. It has to be a relatively new attitude, because people could not have survived a pre-industrial winter without preparation, but these days the popular attitude is that being able to get through a week without electricity is as bad as going out and cutting the wires yourself.
I wonder if she would also say we need to just teach people not to do/sell drugs, take care of their children, and stop using their upbringing as an excuse to do all manner of things… I doubt she would.
A point re teachers preying on young mean. I think that is not as widely acknowledged and held in the same way because there is an asymmetry in the response by the involved parties. I think some of it is cultural and some of it is biological. I think many, likely the majority, and possibly even the vast majority of young men who have a consensual relationship with a teacher are extremely unlikely to think of it as a bad thing and they all seem to get caught because they can’t keep their mouth shut, not because they reported it as an assault. I think more young men/boys would be happy to participate than young women/girls would be. I could be wrong, but that is my take based on the stories I’ve read in the news. This point is not made in any way to excuse such behavior but to say I think we consider the subjects differently for a couple of reasons.
Society has a whole thinks like that. The evidence shows that the boys, many of whom are young teens, end up severely psychologically damaged by the interaction. However, everyone assumes that the boys are into it and so it’s not treated with the seriousness that it should be.
In essence the assumption is “teen boys like sex so they aren’t really being abused and taken advantage of” which is a very ugly and biased way to look at the situation.
100% agree, I recall quite a while ago a years after interview with a guy who was in one of the more famous relationships of this sort and he spoke of regrets and other issues.
IIRC H3H3 had a podcast in which they discussed this issue and did it some proper justice as well.
This essay is a fine piece of writing.
Thumbs up
Illustrative example here:
When you are driving and you come to an intersection where the cross traffic has a stop sign (you do not) do you blindly drive into the intersection? Or do you check to see if there is a car approaching and prepare for defensive actions if the other driver is not paying attention?
Yeah, I am pretty sure that most people, including Patel drive defensively.
So, why the “do not bother defending yourself, teach men not to rape.” crap? Would she say do not bother checking your mirrors, everyone was taught not to get into accidents? Doubt it.