The thing slightly more disturbing than James Dickson's article, "Viewpoint: Don't be afraid to challenge feminism," were the comments that followed. They completely disregarded rape as an issue and insulted the feminist movement that they obviously knew nothing about. God, how many articles in the daily can disregard feminism as some hidden conspiracy that hates all men?
I wrote this to James and all of the other asshole commenters that agreed with him:
Department of Justice estimates that between 1/4 and 1/5 women experience a rape or attempted rape during a 5 year college stay. Can you say this is not a real issue? The denial of rape culture in our society is an easy mistake to make, but it is certainly a large mistake. I agree, it's completely invisible and normalized in our society, so people think it doesn't exist. That's the problem, and one of the purposes of the "scary green fliers."
The Department of Justice also estimates that 3/4 of rapes are completed by somebody the survivor has had a previous relationship with. 60% of rapes occur in the victims OWN HOME. These are all legitimate Department of Justice statistics, nothing you can easily dismiss. Department of Justice statistics of course aren't perfect because of issues with underreporting, but it is still nothing you should disregard. Therefore, this is NOT an issue of a big scary man jumping out from behind a bush when somebody is walking home late at night. Rape is not an issue of having unsafe streets to walk in. It is an issue with our culture, with people not knowing the definition of consent, with people ignoring the sexual wishes of others because many societal norms excuse it.
It's fine to critique the way the F-Word is doing their campaign. If you think other tactics would work better, that is valuable insight. But do NOT say that rape is not an issue in our society. Do NOT say feminists are not interested in equality. Do NOT disregard feminist theory or feminists as being illegitimate or just wanting to "scare" you, because believe it or not, feminists WANT AN END TO SEXIST OPPRESSION. That's the bottom line. If you misinterpret that and think that feminists want superiority, to kill their husbands and take over the world by guilting and scaring everybody, you obviously don't know what feminism is.
You're also making huge broad generalizations about feminists. To make these stereotypes about feminists and what "all feminists" think, why don't you go ahead and tell me what all black people think too? White people? Those against racism? It is an insanely diverse movement with different viewpoints, and don't make uneducated statements that could really offend people.
Speaking so lightly of rape is a really harmful thing to do. Yes, rape of men in prison is a big issue. That's not what the campaign is about - I'm sorry a single campaign can't address every single issue. But 85% of rape is perpetrated by men toward women. 10% of men are rape victims (not including prison), and most of those rapes are even perpetrated by heterosexual men. I'm not saying that women don't rape, they certainly do. But you can't deny the department of justice statistics and our society's attitude about rape, as well as the negative stereotype feminism has, so nicely reflected in your article. Please do some research before making such a biased statement- you don't know how many readers you are hurting.
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