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Don’t Worry, Ladies, There’s Always a Plus to Being Past Your Sell-By Date

Jill

According to John Derbyshire, you’re a whole lot less likely to get raped — because who wants to rape an ugly old bag anyway?

(That, coming from this).

Some of the most vituperative emails I have ever got came in after I made an offhand remark, in one of my monthly NRO diaries, to the effect that very few of us are physically appealing after our salad days, which in the case of women I pegged at ages 15-20. While the storm was raging, biologist Razib Khan over at Gene Expression (forget philosophers, theologians, and even novelists: the only people with interesting things to say about human nature nowadays are the scientists) decided to look up some actual numbers. Reasoning that a rapist is inspired to his passion mainly by the physical attractiveness of his victim, Razib went for rape statistics.

There’s your first problem: Rapists aren’t “inspired to passion mainly by the physical attractiveness of his victim;” he’s inspired to do violence against someone who is weaker and more vulnerable than himself. Many incidences of aquantaince-rape involve someone who was in a position of power over the victim. And while we know that rape is about both power and sex, it’s certainly not about an overwhelming passion that the rapist simply couldn’t quell. Ask any decent man you know if he’s ever been so “impassioned” at the sight of an attractive woman that he had to physically attack her, hurt her, and have violent sex with her. Rape is an act of violence and pathology, not passion or attractiveness.

But that’s not what the Derbs thinks (then again, this is the same guy who thinks that 15-year-olds are sexy.)

Now perhaps I’m just bitter, being past my sell-by date and all, but Derbs really got my creep-o-meter going off the charts with this bit:

He found a 1992 report (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation) from the National Victim Center showing the age distribution of female rape victims. Sixty percent of the women who reported having been raped were aged 17 or less, divided about equally between women aged 11 to 17 (32 percent) and those under eleven (29 percent). Only six percent were older than 29. When a woman gets past her mid twenties, in fact, her probability of being raped drops off like a continental shelf. If you histogram the figures, you get a peak around ages 12-14… which is precisely the age Lolita was at the time of her affair with Humbert Humbert. As Razib noted, my own “15-20” estimate was slightly off. An upper limit of 24 would be more reasonable. The lower limit really doesn’t bear thinking about. (I have a 13-year-old daughter.)


When I look at those statistics, the first thing that I think is “power.” Twenty-nine percent of rape survivors are under the age of 11. And Derbyshire wants us to believe that we’re talking about sexual attractiveness here?

Indeed, women “peek” around ages 12-14 — because when you’re most likely to be raped apparently corresponds to how totally hott you are. And he says this as the father of a 13-year-old. Eew.

Behind such sad numbers, and in the works of literary geniuses like Vladimir Nabokov, does the reality of human nature lie. It is all too much for our prim, sissified, feminized, swooning, emoting, mealy mouthed, litigation-whipped, “diversity”-terrorized, race-and-“gender”-panicked society. We shudder and turn away, or write an angry email. The America of 1958, with all its shortcomings, was saltier, wiser, closer to the flesh and the bone and the wet earth, less fearful of itself. (It was also, according to at least one scholarly study, happier.)

…why is “gender” in scare quotes? Does it not exist? Interesting. But yes, watch as Derbs pines for the good old days, when girls were married off before their first period:

One of the first media sensations ever to impinge upon my consciousness was the visit to Britain by rock star Jerry Lee Lewis in May 1958, four months before Lolita’s American debut. This was supposed to be a concert tour, but 22-year-old Jerry had brought his wife Myra along, and the British press got wind of the fact that Myra was only 13. This wasn’t an unusual thing in the south of that time; Jerry himself had first been wed at 15 (when he already had a drinking problem). Myra was his third wife, and also his second cousin once removed. Back then country people grew up fast and close to their kin. Neither Jerry nor Myra could understand what the fuss was about. He: “I plumb married the girl, didn’t I?” She: “Back home you can marry at 10, if you can find a husband.” (This was not true, even in the south, though Myra likely believed it. She also, according to the British press, believed in Santa Claus.) It didn’t help that Jerry’s new record was titled High School Confidential.

How long ago it seems! Nowadays our kids are financially dependent on us into their mid-twenties, and can’t afford to leave home till they are 35. Marriage at 13? Good grief! And so, while Lolita met with a fair share of disapproval in 1958, and was denounced from many pulpits, I believe its reception would have been much more hostile if it appeared now. It would also have been differently politicized. Back then the complaints came mostly from social conservatives, who I imagine would disapprove of Lolita just as strongly today. The Left, however, almost unanimously championed the book. Would they still do so? A woman! Who was also a child! Exploited by a man! And both of them from stifled, self-denying bourgeois backgrounds! Oh, that evil Patriarchy! It’s amazing how far this stuff has spread: There is a strong whiff of it in Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran (whose author went to college in the U.S.A.)

Just… wow. And it gets worse:

Here you see one of the paradoxes of our strange times. Our women dress like sluts; our kids are taught about buggery in elementary school; “wardrobe malfunctions” expose to prime-time TV viewers body parts customarily covered in public since “the lamented end of the Ancient World B.C.” (Humbert); our colleges have coed bathrooms; songs about pimps rise to the top of the pop music charts; yet so far as anything to do with the actual reality of actual human nature is concerned, we are as prim and shockable as a bunch of Quaker schoolmarms. After 40 years of lying to ourselves, we are now terrified of the truth. Which is an unhappy thing, because the truth is bearing down on us fast.

I’m not sure what “buggery” is, and it definitely wasn’t explained to me in elementary school. Or high school. Or college. I suspect he means “sex,” but I really don’t know.

I also love the “our women” line. Whose women are we, exactly? “America’s”? John Derbyshire’s? No thanks.

And then there’s “the truth” that he keeps talking about. Which is… what exactly? That pre-pubescent girls are teh hottness and men rape them because they can’t help themselves? Thanks, Derbyshire. I think CPS needs to leave Britney Spears alone for a while and pay a visit to your house.

via Kos.

45 thoughts on Don’t Worry, Ladies, There’s Always a Plus to Being Past Your Sell-By Date

  1. I’m not sure what “buggery” is, and it definitely wasn’t explained to me in elementary school. Or high school. Or college. I suspect he means “sex,” but I really don’t know.

    substitute the word ‘sodomy.’

    As to the rest….I can’t even start. I really thought we were supposed to have tits and hips and things to be all sexy-like.

  2. According to the OED, he means that children are either being taught about “abominable heresy” or “unnatural intercourse”. He probably means the second, but should he ever crack a dictionary he’ll be kicking himself for not knowing the first definition.

  3. A woman! Who was also a child!

    A man! Who is also a moron!

    I would also suggest he (re)read Lolita; it is NOT an endorsement.

  4. Okay, have read the whole article, and I take back my suggestion. The man knows the book.

    What he is truly guilty of is ruining a perfectly good essay with a tacked-on ending designed to appeal to his conservative readers. Panderer.

    Have to say, I agree with him on this:

    Humbert Humbert is a monster and a sociopath. He was a human monster, though, and a human sociopath. His monstrousnesses are hypertrophied growths of our own flaws; and his sociopathy consists in breaking rules for which, if there were not some fairly widespread propensity to break them, there would be no need.

  5. This is a great idea. Let’s base our standard of female attactiveness on the tastes of our rapists and child molestors! Because they clearly know best. So badly thought out I don’t even know where to start. In the full article, does he ever address power relations, opportunity (children are more vulnerable), class, etc.?

    And what’s the “salad day” range for men, I wonder, in his opinion?

    Also, completely disturbing that a grown man with a teenage daughter believes that women are at their most attractive during the awkward teenage years. Most women I know have become more attractive with age. (Although clearly the pedophiles would differ in opinion.)

  6. I think dude’s bitter that “the left” won’t fight for his prepubescent-love the way it fights for the man-on-man buttsex. Which is perhaps understandable coming from someone who calls 11-year-olds “women.”

  8. Afrit, that may well be true, but it’s a little unreasonable of Derbyshire to expect “the Left” to champion the cause of pedophiles and rapists just because we don’t have heart attacks at the idea of two consenting adults with penises or two consenting adults with vaginas pairing off with each other instead of making babies. Perhaps Derbyshire disapproves of homosexuality because queer people are less likely to make babies, and with all those women losing their freshness and winding up on the shelf at 20, we need a continual supply of new girl babies. We wouldn’t want the rapists to be forced to lower their standards and attack women who are past their sell-by date, would we?

    So, if Derbyshire has a daughter, that means there’s a woman in this world who has actually had sex with him at least once. What an off-putting thought.

  9. I bet the age statistics on rape are more related to lifestyle than “attractiveness.” The reason that young adult women are likely to be raped is that they’re more likely to go out on dates or hang out with men who they might not know very well. Most sexual assaults are acquaintance (especially date) rapes. When women settle down (like at around 29 years old), they’ve hopefully found a partner who they trust and who won’t abuse them. Although I’d like to see how those age statistics might change if you factor in marital rape.

  10. Afrit, that may well be true, but it’s a little unreasonable of Derbyshire to expect “the Left” to champion the cause of pedophiles and rapists just because we don’t have heart attacks at the idea of two consenting adults with penises or two consenting adults with vaginas pairing off with each other instead of making babies. Perhaps Derbyshire disapproves of homosexuality because queer people are less likely to make babies, and with all those women losing their freshness and winding up on the shelf at 20, we need a continual supply of new girl babies. We wouldn’t want the rapists to be forced to lower their standards and attack women who are past their sell-by date, would we?

    So, if Derbyshire has a daughter, that means there’s a woman in this world who has actually had sex with him at least once. What an off-putting thought.

  12. It’s clear that women get stronger and more intimidating as they get older. Thus rapists target those who are weaker – again, power issues, not hawtness. Rape 101. Jeebus. Did he also look at pictures of the young raped women and agree that, yes, in fact, they were hawter than-your-average 30 year old?

    I imagine that most male rape occurs with younger, smaller, more easily intimadated guys…it must mean that a boy is at his sexiest when he is 16.

  13. I may be rusty on my logical fallacies, but it seems to me that in assuming that rapists are primarily motivated by the physical attractiveness of their victims (or rather, in accepting Khan’s premise that such is the case), Derbyshire is engaging in begging the question:

    Girls and women from ages 11-20 are at the peak of their attractiveness.
    Most women who are victims of rape are victimized before the age of 20
    Rapists are motivated by the attractiveness of their victims
    Therefore, girls and women 20 and under are at their peak attractiveness

    Even if we could leave aside the disturbing notion that we can use rape as a metric for sexual attractiveness in the first place, Derbyshire has offered no evidence for what motivates rapists. So, if he’s trying to use the 1992 report as proof of his assertion, he’s begged the question in order to do it.

  14. we are as prim and shockable as a bunch of Quaker schoolmarms

    Since I am a Quaker, I suppose I can be excused for being as prim and shockable as a Quaker, however prim and shockable that may be :-).

    In the full article, does he ever address power relations, opportunity (children are more vulnerable), class, etc.?

    The full article is about two thirds on target review of Lolita, and what is great about the book, and then the last third takes a sharp turn into discussion of how liberals are “politically correct” and out of touch with reality.

    Seriously, though obviously way more people than we’d like to think are interested in molesting eleven-year-olds, at the same time, I’d be willing to bet that I, as an ordinary looking over-40 woman, would get more takers for ordinary consensual sex (even among adult men who are younger than me) than the average under-eleven-year-old, however much more attractive a target the average under-eleven-year-old girl may be to rapists than a long-since-past-the-sell-date woman like myself.

    The paragraph about Humbert Humbert being a human monster is true, though.

  15. Rapists are all about the power along with the sex but I wonder if that applies to the date rapists. These are just horney guys and not psycho paths, per se, and just don’t realize, or just don’t care, that “no” does in fact mean “no”.

    I am a big fan of boobs and hips and such (thank you dragonsmilk for bringing that up) and I would also agree that women do get more sexy with age. For the life of me, there is unfathomable reasoning that young teenage girls are sexy. They won’t shut up, their bodies aren’t fully developed (alhtough they do seem to sprout a chest earlier than when I was a young teen), and how good can they really be in bed?

    The only thing younger women consistently have going for them over their seasoned peers is that gravity hasn’t takne its toll on the body. But I digress.

    I do have to agree with Derbyshire on the “Our women dress like sluts” comments, although I would substitute ‘women’ with ‘schoolgirls’. I see these 12-16 year old girls wearing the slut uniform as they walk home from school holding hands with Mr. Right-now and think “There go the future tax burdens of the state of Hawaii.”

    Don’t get me wrong, it is terrible and wrong and reprehensible for a person to rape another. At that young age of swirling hormones and unconcious boners why in the world would you let your daughter wear a miniskirt that barely covers her ass and chance an unfortunate circumstance?

    This isn’t an attempt to defer responsibility of the asshole doing the raping, just an observation.

  16. Hah. He knows nothing about what makes women attractive.

    I’m 50, and overweight, yet I’m dating three very nice men.

    And Knave, girls have been raped wearing overalls. Or jeans. Or any other kind of clothing. So don’t blame the victim here.

  17. or just don’t care, that “no” does in fact mean “no”.

    I kind of think “just don’t care” at all about what your friend actually wants is a form of being “all about the power.” I also think that people rape acquaintances, as well as strangers, at least partly out of anger (combined with a giant sense of entitlement).

  18. Trickish knave, are you asking these questions seriously or is this performance art?

    Rapists are all about the power along with the sex but I wonder if that applies to the date rapists. These are just horney guys and not psycho paths, per se, and just don’t realize, or just don’t care, that “no” does in fact mean “no”.

    Right, because not caring that your date is saying no, and pinning her down when she’s struggling isn’t at ALL psychopathic behaviour. Rape isn’t committed by horny guys. Rape is committed by horny guys who don’t mind making other human beings suffer in order for them to get what they want. The horniness is incidental. If horniness was the sole criteria for becoming a rapist, then every teenaged boy in the world would be out committing rape on a regular basis. None of my high school boyfriends raped me, although if memory serves they were very horny and probably would’ve been very happy if I’d agreed to have sex with them. Strangely enough, many males, even when in high school and totally hormonal, can grasp the concept that if it’s saying no, you don’t put your dick in it. It’s not actually the most complicated idea ever.

    Don’t get me wrong, it is terrible and wrong and reprehensible for a person to rape another. At that young age of swirling hormones and unconcious boners why in the world would you let your daughter wear a miniskirt that barely covers her ass and chance an unfortunate circumstance?

    Uh huh. Ya know what? You might have done better to stop at the end of that first sentence. It was great. However, you didn’t stop. As I already mentioned above, boners may be uncontrollable for adolescent males, and occur at embarrassing moments. However, the action of putting said boner inside a crying, struggling fellow human being is pretty controllable. Have you ever done it?

    I don’t have kids, but I’d probably be fairly old-fashioned in terms of acceptable wardrobe choices if I did. However, remembering my own high school days, I have some memories of classmates from strict families who left home in the morning wearing clothes their parents would approve of, and no make-up, and arrived at home wearing the same clothes and no make-up, but as soon as they got to school, dashing into the washroom to change into the kind of clothes their parents disapproved of (having hidden their preferred outfits, their mascara, lipstick, etc in their bookbags underneath the algebra texts).

    In other words, teenagers can be very creative at circumventing rules they don’t like, and/or which they feel make them less cool than their classmates. i.e. If all young Sarah’s friends are wearing miniskirts and lipstick, she may use her babysitting money to get a miniskirt too, same as how many teenagers manage to procure alcohol in creative ways.

    Furthermore, a miniskirt is not an invitation to rape. It’s a short skirt. Miniskirts and cleavage do not equal a large sign saying “Free pussy available here. Get it while it lasts!” And even if a young woman were to wave a literal sign, she could still change her mind. When someone says no, unless it’s in the context of a BDSM game and they haven’t used the mutually agreed safety word, it means exactly what it sounds like. No doesn’t ever mean “I’m wearing a short skirt and a push-up bra, so even if I cry and struggle, it’s okay to pretend you can’t hear me, because I deserve to have a dick shoved in me against my will.” Again, not an especially complicated concept.

    How about not trying to come up with elaborate scenarios for how a guy can be a rapist but not be a psychopath (because raping girls you actually know is much nicer than raping strangers), or how short skirts mean the girl’s a slut and so a guy doesn’t have to listen to her, and rapists are just helpless victims of their out-of-control hormones. How about instead we listen to what women say, and assume that chances are they’re probably telling the truth. Why on earth would any woman tell her date to stop touching her if she didn’t mean it? What would it accomplish? Do women routinely lie to their dates about something as personal as whether or not they want sex? I mean, it’s a yes or no question. Life is a whole lot simpler if we just assume that except under very exceptional circumstances (and no, exceptional circumstances do not include either drunkenness or short skirts) people usually mean what they say?

    Here’s the thing that weirds me out about guys who say things like that (possibly because in my offline life I’m fairly picky and the guys I hang out with and/or have exchanged bodily fluids with are usually not psychos). How do you get from “Rape is a terrible thing” to “but sometimes guys just can’t help themselves.” Every guy I’ve ever known has been able to help himself. Admittedly some of them needed a firm reminder, but if rape is so easy for a guy to accidentally commit under the wrong circumstances, doesn’t that say something really horrible about your view of male morality? I do the men I know the courtesy of assuming they can understand plain English, and while I have friends who’ve been less lucky, none of these guys have ever failed to understand what no meant. Are the guys I know saintly, far above the norm?

    And how does the “walking hormones and unconscious boners” excuse apply when the VICTIMS are male? It’s summertime and you’re hanging out on the beach with some other guys wearing shorts and no shirt because of the heat. Or maybe because you work out and think you look pretty good when you’re not wearing a shirt (maybe both). If a hormonal gay male teenager tries to force you to have sex with him, what’s your response? Is it “Oh, I accidentally led you on, so I should let you put your dick in me even though I really don’t want you to” or is it “Get the fuck away from me or I’ll call the cops”.

  19. I do have to agree with Derbyshire on the “Our women dress like sluts” comments, although I would substitute ‘women’ with ’schoolgirls’. I see these 12-16 year old girls wearing the slut uniform as they walk home from school holding hands with Mr. Right-now and think “There go the future tax burdens of the state of Hawaii.”

    Whaddaya mean, “our,” Kimosabe?

    Who “owns” these women or schoolgirls?

    Also, if you’re surprised that women in a hot climate wear skimpy clothing, you haven’t been there long enough to learn not to look. Jesus.

  20. “Our women dress like sluts; our kids are taught about buggery in elementary school; “wardrobe malfunctions” expose to prime-time TV viewers body parts customarily covered in public since “the lamented end of the Ancient World B.C.” (Humbert); our colleges have coed bathrooms; songs about pimps rise to the top of the pop music charts;”

    I don’t get it. Aren’t all these things just as much “human nature” as rapists targeting underage girls is? Because: they happen. Why are sluttery and pimpery and body parts bad in Derbyshire’s view- don’t they exist to satisfy men’s desires as much as those 11-year-old girls do? As for co-ed bathrooms – okay, I don’t have a clue what that means or why they’re either natural or unnatural.

  21. our colleges have coed bathrooms

    They do?

    No one told me about this. I attended a very liberal university for four years.

    Unless he meant the bushes behind the frat houses, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  22. When I look at those statistics, the first thing that I think is “power.” Twenty-nine percent of rape survivors are under the age of 11. And Derbyshire wants us to believe that we’re talking about sexual attractiveness here?

    The mistake you (and, clearly, Mr. Derbyshire) make is assuming that rapists represent a random sample of human males. They don’t; you must see this in your point about asking any decent man whether he’d like to rape someone. Because this is true, discounting, or dismising (as you seem to), sexual attractiveness is impermissible, logically. What evidence could there be that a (excuse my judgmentalness, if you would) perverted sexual interest is not the motivation? When a man rapes an 11 year old girl, he does so because he finds doing it sexually exciting. Whether this is related to power is beyond our ability (thankfully, perhaps) to discern. I don’t see what’s gained even if you’re successful in splitting sex from power. Unless the problem with rapists is their political philosophy, rather than their actions, what difference should it make?

    Are you saying that you want men not to rape girls because they internalize gender-equity? They rape other men, presumably without finding the victim’s sex inferior. Sexism isn’t necessary for rape. It doesn’t deter it, and it’s otherwise abhorent, and that’s plenty. Not all bad things stem from sexism, or privilege, or power.

    All that said (I do go on. . .), I could be completely wrong. It could be that sex and power are seperate motivations, whatever that would actually mean (anybody want to diagram that thought pattern?), so the absolute limit of my arguement is that nobody knows. All claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Also, “gender,” is in scarequotes because Derbyshire belongs to the school of using, exclusively, sex in its place. He makes the exception here to take an extraneous shot at what has, widely if lately, been imputed to the word gender. I won’t carry his banner on this point, either (I don’t for a moment believe you disdain him any more than I do), but it’s important to understand the objection.

  23. In my distracted zeal, I neglected to make the point which inspired me to comment at all. Derb commits a crime against math (his chief area of claimed expertise) in drawing the conclusion he did. It’s a sampling error. Though the laws vary by state, many, if not most, of the rapes reported by minors will be “statutory rapes” (scare quotes here indicate that I’m not making any moral arguement, just trying to draw a practical distinction). All rape is evil; I’m not at all unclear on this point. The motivation for an eighteen year old who has what he interprets to be consensual sex with a fifteen year old (or thirteen–I’m trying not to put my thumb on the scale in any way) whose mother finds out and has charges pressed is different from the motivation of the forty year old (or the same eighteen year old) forcing himself on an unmistakably unwilling child.

    Since there’s no way to properly weight the numbers (which already don’t include the unreported rapes, which are projected to be anything from a third to ninety plus percent of the total–with no way to guess their distribution; rape statistics, as statistics, are endlessly maddening), no conclusion can be supported by them, even stipulating to Derb’s central thesis, that rape is the most authentic form of the male sexual impulse.

  24. I have heard that Weslyan(sp?) has coed bathrooms. Emory seems to have one and they might have more(they only have one stall, as having more might shock our morality)

  25. Perhaps Derbyshire disapproves of homosexuality because queer people are less likely to make babies

    I’ve never been able to figure out Derbyshire’s views on homosexuality, actually. On the one hand, he seems to confound homosexuality with an orientation toward underage boys, and has used the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal as an argument against same-sex marriage. On the other hand, he seems to also confound heterosexuality with an attractive to teenage girls, so, what the heck? Evidentaly what certain Catholic priests have been doing to boys is the same thing that heterosexual men normally want to do to teenage girls, which should be an argument against allowing opposite sex marriage?

    And, finally, he’s said that he suspects that some of his own teachers, when he was young, had pedophile inclinations, but they didn’t act on them sexually, and were fine teachers, which seems to suggest that he thinks gay people are quite capable of controlling the pedophile inclinations that he seems to think they all have. Except that, for some reason, they’re more likely to act on such inclinations if their homosexuality is out in the open than if it’s closeted. Although apparently the same argument doesn’t apply to all the straight men who are mainly interested in teenage girls under the “sell by” date.

    The one thing I’ll grant him is that I don’t think that adult men of any sexual orientation who are particularly attracted to the age range after puberty and before (or only slightly after) legal majority are all that small a group. Probably a distinct minority, but not a terribly small minority.

    On the other hand, there’s a market for MILF porn as well as barely legal porn.

  26. Wesleyan indeed does have co-ed bathrooms in at least some dorms; my brother went there and I remember him telling me to be sure to knock and announce first. They were pretty blase about the whole thing.

  27. I missed that line about “Our women dress like sluts” the first time I read his “Lolita” rubbish. Wow-ee, now I definitely want to kick this jerk’s ass.

    Number one, he can stick that “our” where the Sun don’t shine. Thanks to Honest Abe and the Fourteenth Amendment, this stupid bastard doesn’t own even one woman, less all of them.

    Number two, this perverted son-of-a-bitch is talking about my daughters! Because my daughters dress attractively and fashionably, he calls them “sluts”! That’s it, motherfucker, we’re goin’ to Fist City!

  28. I went to Oberlin and there were coed bathrooms, but only by a unanimous vote by the people who use that particular bathroom (i.e. the whole floor or the whole hallway or whatever). So there were coed bathrooms if nobody had a problem with it, but if even one person did have a problem with it, there were separate bathrooms for men and women. (And voting was done anonymously so nobody had to feel the peer pressure of being the only person who wasn’t cool with coed bathrooms.)

    They also started allowing coed roommates in one dorm a couple years ago.

  29. The most revealing bit is when he starts frothing about our “feminized.. mealy-mouthed culture.” Until then, the whole thing was apologetic, almost demure. Then all the sudden, the anger, the pent-up frustation bursts out.

    Poor poor oppressed Derb. Like a typical pedophile, it’s all about control and he feels powerless.

    What we need to keep in mind is that we’re dealing with moral degenerates here. Whether it’s Derb, Gibson, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc.

  30. I went to a small liberal arts college in southern Wisconsin, and our dorms had co-ed bathrooms mainly because if you happened to be in one wing of the building and the bathroom on your side was for the other sex, it truly sucked having to wander through the hallways and lounge area in order to make your way to “your” bathroom at three in the morning if you woke up having to pee. But here’s the thing–at the first floor meeting of every year, the co-ed bathroom issue is voted on by residents of that floor. If ONE person was uncomfortable with the idea, then that floor did not have co-ed bathrooms. There were no communal showers (they were private cubicles), and I never once walked in on any sort of sexual exploits going on in there. I really don’t understand what’s the big deal about pissing in the stall next to a guy. I grew up in an open door household anyway.

  31. There were kind of co-ed bathrooms in some of the dorms of the university I attended. (Not in campus buildings.)

    What it actually was: some of the dorms were L-shaped and set up in “suites” with one bathroom & five rooms (some single, some double) per suite. There were four suites per floor–visualize an A and B suite along each leg of the L. On each leg of the L, sometimes one suite was male, one female. (It could also be set up with one leg both suites female, one leg both male–the configuration seemed pretty random from year to year.)

    The suites could flip male-female from year to year (some years A would be female and B male, and some years the opposite), so all the bathrooms were identical–three toliet stalls, two shower stalls, three sinks. No urinals. If you were hanging out in the suite of the opposite sex, nobody blinked if you decided just to use the bathroom there rather than walking to the next suite. (And nobody blinked if that didn’t feel right to you, and you just did walk to the next suite, to go into the bathroom of the “right” sex.) The bathrooms were primarily for whatever sex inhabited the suite that year, but we were all pretty casual about it.

  32. Deciding that rape is tightly linked to physical attraction and then stating that the victim’s age data supports this conclusion? I believe that Derbyshire and Khan are “begging the question”.

  33. Lesley,

    I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought that (see comment #13), though you said it far more succinctly than I did.

  34. Whaddaya mean, “our,” Kimosabe?

    Who “owns” these women or schoolgirls?

    Just quoting the article, or did you bother to read it? To suggest that I was inferring that women are property by using the word “our” makes you look like an idiot.

    Like I said in my post, it is not ok for people to rape, use whatever motivation you want (sex, power), but because there are so many assholes in the world, why would you let your daughter wear something skimpy and dress like a whore, possibly lending to the act? That’s all I’m saying.

    I can control myself, as can thousands of men who watch scantily clad women. I wave a dismissive hand at the assumption my comments were made because I don’t have that capacity. “just look away, Jesus!”

    I am not shifting blame to the victim, as you would love to believe, but what better fun than to shit on a guy, right? To use the weather as an excuse for a young teens to wear skimpy clothing is comical at best.

    Why isn’t it so hard to take in that wearing skimpy clothes could increase the risk of date rape? To think that horniness does not play a factor, at least in some way, is ridiculous. Although most teenagers would just take the girl home and take care of their blue balls in the privacy of their own room, there are the jackasses who, by hook or by crook, get what they want. I just dont think that all date rape is caused by mentally deranged boys.

    Maybe I should have just come out and said, “slutty looking young female teenagers probably shouldn’t dress that way around horny young male teenagers”. I’ll dumb my posts down so that you don’t have to take anything I say in my posts in context or actually follow my train of thought.

    That being said, there are some great thinkers on this site and to those of you who “got” my post I apologize for the last statement in the previous paragraph.

  36. To Trickish Knave (#34)

    Like I said in my post, it is not ok for people to rape

    That’s probably the one sensible line in your entire post.

    because there are so many assholes in the world, why would you let your daughter wear something skimpy and dress like a whore, possibly lending to the act?

    Two points. One: a rapist will rape no matter what the victim is wearing. The “short skirt” excuse is just that — an excuse, as if a miniskirt suddenly absolves a criminal for his crime. What a powerful talisman that piece of clothing is! Two: even if someone does sell sex, if they don’t consent to you having sex with them, that’s still rape. So even dressing like a “whore” doesn’t mean someone is fair game.

    I can control myself,

    Thank goodness for small favours.

    I am not shifting blame to the victim, as you would love to believe

    Actually, you are. Side note: facts aren’t things you “believe.” Delusions are. As in, you believe that clothing has the power to turn a blameless man into a rapist.

    but what better fun than to shit on a guy, right?

    Well, truth be told, the fun we’re having here is on shitting on an idiot, but I digress.

    To use the weather as an excuse for a young teens to wear skimpy clothing is comical at best.

    To use skimpy clothing as an excuse to rape young teens is psychotic and criminal at best.

    Why isn’t it so hard to take in that wearing skimpy clothes could increase the risk of date rape?

    Actually, you might just possibly be right, because a rapist will think, just like you do, that since she’s wearing skimpy clothing, she waives all rights to not being raped. Congratulations. You think like a rapist.

    To think that horniness does not play a factor, at least in some way, is ridiculous

    There are plenty of men who get off sexually on overpowering an unwilling victim. They are known as rapists.

    I just dont think that all date rape is caused by mentally deranged boys

    I’m sure plenty of it is caused by products of a society that tells them, “‘No’ means ‘you haven’t convinced me yet/yes but I’m worried about looking like a slut if I say yes'” Or, “A miniskirt means she’s fair game.” Or, “If she’s ever said ‘yes’ to sex to you, or even anyone, before, she doesn’t have the right to say no.” You know, normal parts of growing up a boy, and boys will be boys! That’s not psychotic at all. That’s normal!

    Maybe I should have just come out and said, “slutty looking young female teenagers probably shouldn’t dress that way around horny young male teenagers”

    You need to finish your sentence: “…because horny young male teenagers are budding rapists looking for a socially acceptable excuse to force sex on someone and the skimpy clothing is exactly what they need.” There we go. It makes more sense now.

    I’ll dumb my posts down so that you don’t have to take anything I say in my posts in context or actually follow my train of thought.

    There’s a bit of a problem you’ll have with that: you’ve already hit rock bottom as far as stupidity goes — you can’t possibly go any further.

    That being said, there are some great thinkers on this site and to those of you who “got” my post I apologize for the last statement in the previous paragraph.

    Oh, we “get” your post. You’re saying you believe clothing is powerful enough to turn a man into a rapist, even if the same man would not have raped the same girl in the same circumstances if she’d been wearing a long flannel shirt and baggy jeans, and you want us to believe that when this happens, it’s the fault of the clothing, not the man. See? Reading comprehension good!

  37. To use the weather as an excuse for a young teens to wear skimpy clothing is comical at best.

    Because nobody ever wears less clothing when it’s hot.

    I just dont think that all date rape is caused by mentally deranged boys

    Nor do I. Violence, willingness to assert power, a giant sense of entitlement, and total disregard for the feelings of your victim don’t have much at all to do with psychosis. Though they may in some cases have a good deal to do with sociopathy.

  38. Trickish Knave, you live in Hawaii. I’m sure you’re aware that the native Hawaiians wore very little in the way of clothing prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries. They thought nothing of their near-nudity, but the missionaries did, because the missionaries associated lack of clothing with sin.

    So there’s nothing about clothing or lack thereof, in itself, that “causes” rape. It’s the value system that places all the pressure of preventing rape on victims rather than on rapists, where it belongs, that makes clothing an issue.

  39. To use the weather as an excuse for a young teens to wear skimpy clothing is comical at best.

    I love words like “skimpy” — they’re kind of like “slutty” and “promiscuous” in that how we define them is always in the eye of the beholder, and usually means “more than I do.” i.e., someone’s clothes are skimpy when they show more than mine do; someone is slutty/promiscious when they’ve had more partners than I have.

    So what’s “skimpy”? Skirt and a tank top? That seems pretty reasonable in warm weather (indeed, that’s what I wrote last night). Miniskirt? Shorts? Halter top? Sports bra and spandex at the gym? V-neck shirt?

    There isn’t a singular standard for what’s “skimpy” or “slutty.” And I’m sure you’ve noticed that clothing can be quite sexy and provocative without showing much skin at all. See examples here, here and here.

    So perhaps it’s not so much about the clothes but the bodies in them.

    (Female bodies, that is).

  40. All I’m saying is that isn’t there some element in the clothes a woman wears that becomes a trigger for some horny teenager? I’m talking about the young kids that I see in my neighborhood.

    Jill, I’m not a prude who thinks a tank top and shorts is slutty looking. I think it is slutty when a young teenaged girl is wearing a pair of tight shorts that has butts cheek hanging out the bottom or a miniskirt that is so short it looks like it came out of a porno.

    Hawaii is one of the best places I’ve lived for the eye candy; beautiful women are everywhere and I dig the way they dress.

    I guess to add to your comment not so much about the clothes but the bodies in them I would have to agree to some extent. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a 13 year old girl to be wearing shorts that prominantly displays her camel toe.

    Lynn, excellent point. Excuse my ignorance of of the soft sciences and the terminology (it has been a wh ile since my few psychology classes), but socipathy is the word I was looking for.

    zuzu, good comparison with the natives when Cook and the missionaries showed up and the lack clothing, however, I think you might have contradicted yourself. You weigh in on the value system of people and I think the missionary value system is a lot different than the tards who rape women. I don’t think the native women were in much danger from the missionaries; the problems came when drunk sailors showed up.

  41. If a rapist decides not to rape me because I’m not wearing a short skirt and the girl twenty feet behind me is, then she’ll get raped instead of me. If neither of us are wearing short skirts, he’s not going to take his balls and go home. There’s no way to win here. Someone’s going to get raped, and everyone who doesn’t is going to have to be afraid that next time it might be them. The idea that anyone becomes a rapist because someone else is wearing a short skirt is too fucking ridiculous to be entertained, so I won’t bother doing so.

    I think if more people would come out and admit that they don’t think young girls or adolescent girls or grown women should dress “slutty” is because it makes them uncomfortable for whatever reason, not because they’re worried for the women’s safety. If more people would just say that they think they should have a right to tell women what to do without the patronizing bullshit frosting, I’d be able to respect them a tiny bit more. Not enough to stop thinking they’re dumb jackasses, but just a bit.

  43. Yeah, if you’ve ever taught Bible study you’re neutered, everybody knows that.

    It’s not like there’s ever been any sex scandals with ministers, priests, bishops or popes now, is it?

  44. Here from Pandagon.

    Unfortunately, Trickish knave is partially correct. He’s talking about 12-16 year-olds, remember? And they certainly do have a Slut Uniform. Here’s my post about teenage Slut Uniforms, derived from interviews with a 17-y.o. informant. What my informant emphasized was not that the girls are dressing like “sluts” (a term with great social weight in that age group), but that it is a *uniform*: all the girls in a certain broad social group wear very similar clothes. I’m sure the Slut Uniform in Hawaii differs from that here in NJ, but yes, there is a Uniform. And since that Uniform is all about (a) conformity (b) to men’s perceived desires, how can it *not* be anti-feminist?

    What is revealing is that Tk sees the Uniform as a provocation of rape, when it is *by definition* worn by the girls who are trying to conform. This is what feminists mean by a “Rape Culture”, gang.

  45. So, TK, if a guy is wearing a speedo, does that mean all the guys who are not heterosexual would be justified in raping him? That Speedo guy has provoked their desires and is therefore complicit in his own rape?

    When a two year old plays naked in her backyard, does that mean her 14 year old neighbor is justified in raping her? How about if he peeked through her window to see her naked? Justified then? After all, he’s a horny teenage boy and she provoked his desires.

    And as for horny teenage boys: they are actually pretty blase about what the girls wear, because most girls dress in the same type of clothing. I taught middle school for a year and this is one of the things I picked up on. Boys can be horny and still in control and able to pull away when a girl says no. By saying that boys or men cannot control themselves, you are doing a serious disservice to most males.

    Rape is about dominance and power and getting what you want at the expense of someone else. You wouldn’t excuse a shoplifter even though stores of full of bright shiny stuff that is just lying there; why would you excuse someone who causes great personal harm when you’d condemn someone who causes only minor economic harm?

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