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This Time Syndrome

Ashley

I’ve been noticing a common theme lately. It’s what I’ve come to call “this time syndrome.” There are a couple of versions of it.

Version #1: Someone points out oppression in action, and person #2 responds by stating that although whatever is being pointed out is a problem, that’s not what is happening/they bear no responsibility this time.

A few examples:

“Rape is a very, very serious crime. I just think that this time she’s lying/it’s not rape because (insert minimization and victim-blaming here) /she just wants the money/etc. etc.”

“Certainly in the past there has been discrimination against (insert oppressed identity here). But this time they just weren’t qualified.”

“In the past I know biased scientists used their research to “prove” that various oppressed groups were inferior. But that doesn’t happen anymore! This time the finding that white men just happen to be better at everything in the world and that every gender stereotype is genetically hardwired is totally true!”

Version #2: Someone recognizes that what they are doing is sometimes inappropriate, but this time it’s okay.

“It’s usually racist/sexist to dismiss people of color/women who make anti-racist/anti-sexist arguments as ‘angry and irrational.’ Or to say that they are ‘overreacting’ to something that’s ‘not a big deal.’ But this time it’s true!”

“I agree that there is sexism, but me using a gendered slur wasn’t sexism, because I’m not sexist. This time is different.”

“I know it’s usually an expression of privilege to say that everyone should focus on the issue I think is most important, but my issue affects so many more people than anyone else’s! This time people should do what I say.”

The thing is, somehow, every time is this time.

64 thoughts on This Time Syndrome

  3. Everything before the ‘this time’ is a social construct, a prequalifier that we think we’re ‘supposed to say’. It is a way of expressing an opinion and being more civilized about it.

    It seems like its every time, because every time you hear that opinion, it is stated with one of those social constructs. When someone doesn’t have that opinion, you don’t hear it.

    Sure, its a white lie, but you knew that already. Being brutally honest, is, well, brutal. Getting along with other people means allowing them to ignore or dismiss things about you they might dislike (like an uncomfortable opinion) by giving them an ‘out’.

  4. And thus, anyone who suggested Ashley was incorrect on the other thread is not only wrong, but is a rape-apologist antifeminist. This time.

  5. “The thing is, somehow, every time is this time.”

    No, just those instances that get mentioned in a blog.

  6. And thus, anyone who suggested Ashley was incorrect on the other thread is not only wrong, but is a rape-apologist antifeminist. This time.

    I didn’t get from that thread that Ashley was saying that about people who disagreed with her. I got that her objection was that people were responding to the post and using catchphrases that are commonly used in order to entirely dismiss points made by women or people of color. That’s why she said this when she linked back to her post:

    “It’s usually racist/sexist to dismiss people of color/women who make anti-racist/anti-sexist arguments as ‘angry and irrational.’ Or to say that they are ‘overreacting’ to something that’s ‘not a big deal.’ But this time it’s true!”

  7. Oh, I just now got version one of this tiresome game…

    Well, no the invasion of Iraq wasn’t driven by racism. This time it was because people knew we already beat them once!

    Nonresponsive when I bring up all the other military interventions as a counterexample.

    Note: for your own sanity…DO NOT RESPOND if you get this kind of “This Time Response”, just accept that the person you’re speaking to is trying to decontext the conversation improperly.

    Not even if it’s “This time it’s different because housing in San Francisco NEVER goes down!”. This time is different is a favorite among wooden-headed people everywheres.

  8. Normally a blog post such as this one, made in the wake of being correctly called out for making a story out of nothing, would come off as incredibly chidish and self-defensive, but THIS TIME it’s ok because people hurt Ashley’s feelings on her last post.

  10. Holy fuck how did Ashley get “correctly called out” in her last post? She was very clearly talking about the tone of the article and people jumped on her for supposedly taking issue with the father’s words. Which she DIDN’T DO.

  11. “Certainly in the past there has been discrimination against (insert oppressed identity here). But this time they just weren’t qualified.”

    So funny. I deal with these kinds of people every day for my job and this is exactly what I think of them too. It’s so funny how everyone thinks their situations are so unique, and yet there are almost 7 billion people on Earth. Odds are, your situation isn’t all that different from anyone else’s and is only perpetuating the norm. But, then again I’m preachin’ to the choir.

  12. So how does this work? Next time someone believes a Muslim is being falsely accused of terrorism, she shouldn’t saying anything for fear of not wanting to play down a real problem–Radical Islam in this case–that affects and has claimed many victims– especially those from oppressed communities like religious and sexual minorities in the Islamic world?

    One should focus on the larger historical narrative, not the particulars, we are told. How then does one expose a Joe McCarthy under this disposition?

  13. Look, the fact of the matter is that every case is different, and thus we must evaluate events on a case by case basis. It is human nature to generalize, but to arrive at the Truth, we must overlook this natural tendency and carefully examine each case on its own merits. The Truth is too complex to be adequately described in blanket statements. It takes a lot more effort, but it is the only way to come to the objective Truth.

  14. What I find interesting is how all these racist/sexist/religionist tropes end up getting mapped into our political discourse. And this is another case where this happens: people claim “I certainly would vote for a Democrat, except not this time” In fact, when polled they’ll support the generic Democrat over the generic Republican, but once you put a name to the Democrat (heck, it could be John Smith*), they will say “except not this time”.

    And people wonder why ethnic/religious minorities and women might tend to be leary of the right wing?

    * I actually had a prof. in undergrad named John Smith. And I thought my name was too generic (if I hadn’t already published under my name, I’d take my wife’s last name as it is far less common than mine … but then I’d have the same last name and first/middle initials as a famous writer … but maybe that’d be ok?)

  15. Most of the time when a blogger tries to invent a self-congratulatory catchphrase encapsulating a Grand Social Theory that allows them to weasel out of addressing a specific argument, it’s because they know they’re wrong and have made themselves look foolish, and want to distract everybody from talking about that by pointing to a Bigger Issue.

    But not this time!

    Oh wait, this time too.

  17. “Normally when a successful woman is viciously attacked for trivial matters, for false accusations, and for being successful and ambitious, we call it for what it is; misogyny. But this is Hillary Clinton, so not this time…”

  19. Ouch! I don’t know if I’m really blind or something, but I really don’t get why posters I really respect (sophonisba–awesome name btw, mnemosyne, mythago) to name a few, were offended by what Ashley wrote.

    I became aware of the whole male-avenger-centeredness of certain dialogs about rape once while watching that damn Bronson movie, and I lost my shit, and my husband’s first reaction was what ON EARTH was I talking about, but when I gave example after example, he got the point. About how the already male-centered movie world managed to use rape of women to develop the male character, and all of those women (and others) out there who wanted to know about the victim or who found such callous use of graphic rape scenes to make this same damn point over and over again really disturbing just didn’t matter.

  20. But sometimes people do act like stereotypes. Why isn’t okay to call them on it?

    What am I missing?

  21. Ismone: It’s perfectly understandable when someone notices a trend of awful things that makes them so angry that they express the full force of that anger, but at an example that doesn’t actually fit that trend at all on a more than superficial level. Anyone who really cares about an issue has done the same thing Ashley did. Your anger is justified but you take it out on someone or something that is not an appropriate target. I do it all the time.

    But what you do, when this happens, is you say, Okay, this is not the best example, so I withdraw the specific attack, but the trend I talked about really does exist. Let’s still talk about that, but with some better examples. You don’t say, well, everything Ashley said. You can’t run away from the specific into the general, and you can’t say ‘but the REAL issue is’ until you acknowledge that you went off half-cocked in the first place. No need for a big groveling apology; just, you know, say it.

    You especially don’t react to a long string of feminist women disagreeing with you by acting like you are the only feminist in the argument, and that everyone’s criticism is Secret Code for Hysterical Woman. That’s offensive to me, and insulting to feminists and feminism both. Every feminist on here has had to do battle with bigots who think they can shut women down by calling them irrational and illogical. For someone to run around deliberately ignoring logic and reason because she’s a feminist and seem to have the idea that being one means nobody will call her on it, that blows my mind and makes me angrier than anything on Feministe has in a while, and I am not the biggest fan of Feministe these days, either. Logic and reason are feminist values. They are some of the highest feminist values I know.

  22. Ashley, please list the words you’d like people to avoid using when responding or critiquing your posts to avoid offending your delicate sensibilities and being branded an anti-feminist. I know irrational is on the list. Oops, I’m guessing “delicate” would be, too.

    A good argument should consist of a series of statements connected by a explanations. Posting an article, saying this reminds me of purity balls, and finishing with “ICK!” does not an argument make. You can’t come back at the end, in the comments and say, I have a lot of experience that readers don’t have and that’s why this made sense in my mind. You have to spell that stuff out explicitly. Thus far, you haven’t been guilty of being irrational but you have been a shitty writer.

    I said this before and will reiterate it: A feminist blog should not be a logic free zone. Your arguments have to make sense to readers, including ones who don’t live in your head. If people call you out, it’s not because they are tools of the patriarchy or sheep following the mainstream press, it’s because you have connected the dots.

  23. The problem was that the original poster stopped responding to criticism in a well thought out manner, and just started going on about how everyone wasn’t listening to her because she’s a woman! Or a feminist! Or whatever.

    Look, I’m a woman and a feminist, too, but that doesn’t mean that I respond to all critique by taking an “OMG, I’m a victim of the patriarchy!” stance.

    Ashley, if you feel that your post is valid, for heaven’s sake, refute the critiques. Enter into a debate. Don’t just say that people are calling you hysterical and irrational when they actually said they felt your post was illogical. It’s a post. It’s not YOU. People can disagree with a post or an idea or an essay without it being a personal attack on YOU.

    And Ismone, for myself, I wasn’t offended by the post. I didn’t agree with it, but my basic reaction was “Well, okay, that’s her take on it–that’s interesting, and everyone’s entitled to a different view,” and then I got to the comments and said “Aw, this is tiresome.”

  24. And Ismone, for myself, I wasn’t offended by the post. I didn’t agree with it, but my basic reaction was “Well, okay, that’s her take on it–that’s interesting, and everyone’s entitled to a different view,” and then I got to the comments and said “Aw, this is tiresome.”

    I feel the same way. I didn’t agree with Ashley’s original post, but I read blogs so I’m exposed to a variety of feminist voices. I like learning from other people’s experiences and seeing where they are coming from. However, I had a huge problem with the condescending and patronizing way Ashley responded to people who disagreed with her. Ashley, you are not the ultimate feminist authority. People who disagree with you are not automatically anti-feminist or equivalent to racist voices, as you suggest. And it’s not just because you are so incredibly enlightened, as you suggested at the end of the comment thread (do you really think you’re the only one who’s worked with a lot of SA victims/survivors?). IMO, no one said anything outrageous or offensive, until you decided to put down other feminists who had differing views.

  25. Well, I wasn’t crazy about the original post- I saw that as just a father being rightfully outraged about what had happened to his daughter- the sort of thing we should be encouraging.

    But I also saw the offending comment and thought it (like a lot of the comments on this post) was pretty out of line. And I think it’s pretty cool that you’re calling it out like this, and I enjoyed this post even without knowing the context. So good work.

    I think that what many people in this thread need to realize is that while this is a free country and you can go ahead and call Ashley irrational, PMSing, overreacting, too emotional… you can say she’s just lashing out because her feelings are hurt. Go ahead. That’s fine. But if you do that, you need to take responsibility for your words. You need to understand that they perpetuate harmful, anti-feminist ideas of women, and that you might not have chosen that word if a man had written it.

  26. Like it or not and as annoying as it is sometimes the “this time” logic is right. Some times the rape victim really is lying, sometimes it really isn’t discrimination, sometimes “irrational” is the right word.

    Obviously it’s wrong to claim “this time” every time, but it’s equally wrong to reject it every time.
    —

    And let me destroy this “irrational” nonsense. The only person to call Ashley “irrational” was Ashley herself. Nobody called her “angry and irrational”, if you doubt that go to the old thread and search for yourself. It didn’t happen.

    Furthermore irrational is a non-gendered and excellently descriptive word. It is used commonly in math (irrational numbers), game theory and economics. (Irrational actors) Irrational actors in game theory are not presumed female.

    If we can’t use words like “irrational” and “illogical” then what the hell can we use? If something lacks logic or is not rational I have to invent a new term on the spot? Or maybe we should just say “sucky” for everything – voting for a third party candidate with no chance of winning is sucky! Wow that really gets the point across quite finely.

    I don’t believe that women have delicate sensibilities that must be protected lest they have fainting spells. I don’t understand why someone is working hard to convince us otherwise, that women can’t take part in normal adult conversation.

    I get words like “hysterical.” That has baggage inseparable from sexism. But both men and women can be “angry and irrational.” John McCain can be “angry and irrational.” Jesus, if I google for “angry and irrational” the first result is a blog post about stock trading.

    Sometimes words have some devious sexist coding and sometimes words are just words, used because they are good descriptors.

    The original post rubbed me the wrong way as it seemed to condemn the father. Subsequent comments by Ismone and others made a lot of sense. But why not just edit the post and admit it was written poorly? It happens, there is no shame in writing a confusing post. (Check out my blog!) But doubling-down and playing victim is just silly.

    There was some good content there that just came out wrong, I can buy that, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors by claiming anyone turned off by what you produced must hate teh wimmenz. And devoting another post to a thinly-veiled passive-aggressive defense isn’t helping matters. Neither is bristling at wholly invented slights.

  28. Thanks sophonisba, I hear where you’re coming from, but even going back and rereading the thread, that’s not what I see. I see a bunch of people respectfully disagreeing (at first) and Mnem asking whether it is the dad’s reaction or the article that creeps Ashley out, and Ashley talking about her uncertainty over that (which is a valuable discussion to have) and then CM telling Ashley 2x over that what she observed simply isn’t there, and then Ashley objecting to her being told she’s just flat wrong, and way downthread, CM apologizing for perhaps being a little too critical.

    I always read what she wrote as a critique of the writer, not the father, and when the issue was raised with her, she did clarify, so I really don’t understand why people are getting so cross and snarky about it (I am not including you among the snarky.) And yeah, sometimes when people use stereotyped language to dismiss what I say, I would be tempted to make a crack, too.

  29. And 21, if she feels like she is being dismissed for stereotyped reasons (and the comment was very dismissive) why does she need to state in advance all the different ways people can tell her she is just wrong instead of saying they just don’t hear where she is coming from?

    I really don’t get the pileon. I don’t thing some of y’all are giving eachother the benefit of the doubt.

  30. The one thing that seems to be missing from these comments is the realization that when you are attacked here it makes you feel like chum set loose in a school of shark. People circle and circle pointedly looking for the jugular heedless to your explanations of your post. It isn’t really about discussion, it is about participating in group think. Should someone dare to have an opinion that is different from the rest, people loose all sense of propriety and decency and attack. At what point do we start to respect intent? At what point will people show the integrity they claim to own in their self righteous responses? You think that it is okay to just call someone a troll, or belittle them because they think differently than you, and you claim to be evolved feminists. I see plenty on line that I don’t agree with, the difference is that I respond with grace and courtesy always acknowledging that in my disagreement I may not necessarily be in the right. Not a single one of you vitriol throwing women has a patent on correctness and perhaps you should remember that when you decide to attack someone for their point of view. There is a difference between disagreeing and attacking. So much for safe spaces in the feminist blogosphere. I get where you are coming from Ashley.
    I am sure that someone will turn around and say I can’t believe this is feministe, I can’t believe I have to explain myself here..yeah, yeah, heard it, ignored it once before and I intend to ignore it again…let the plaintive wails begin ( note I really meant it that way, this time)

  31. Those who followed on over from another post—this current post was truly in the making for quite a while (like, months), and didn’t have much to do with that other post, except for the fact that a good example happened to present itself there.

    While I thoroughly disagree with some of the comments here (particularly the one stating that I should “apologize”), I really don’t care to talk about another post here. Direct comments about that post there. Keep comments about this post here. ‘kay?

  32. Thanks, Renee. I’ve been watching some of the response to your posts and I think the fact that we’re guests makes people feel like we’re less “real” than the regulars, since they have sort of a relationship with them (in that weird internet way).

    For the record, I thought your posts were great.

  33. Some people…are rather incredible.

    Another dang thread being derailed? Ashley brushes off CM and Sensible on an older thread, perhaps justifiably so (especially in CM’s case)…

    And we have people saying (in a newer thread) that Ashley was telling off everyone who disagreed with her in that thread saying that she’s more feminist than thou or something. When that didn’t happen.

    Guess the bad mojo must get spread about, no?

    Geez, is this Mean Girls, and we aren’t really aware of the rules, or something?

    One last thing. Demanding apologies truly needs to be a bannable offense. No one gets anywheres by demanding apologies other than furthering the growth of hypocrisy.

    Substitute Teachers rule!

  34. I have a serious question.

    Is something sexist if it’s ture?

    I struggle with this because so many of our deroggatory words are gendered. Is calling someone a bitch sexist, if she IS a bitch? Would it be better to call her a bastard? Obviously it’s RUDE, and not nice. But is it sexist?

    Obviously things like Slut etc refer to specific behaviour. Technically bitch does too. I don’t mind very much when people call me a bitch – as long as they know me. I mean, I am a bitch, I behave in a bitchy manner – I’m a bitch.

    I am hoping someone can help me. This is something I consider to be really important because I make a point of calling my friends on sexist (and racist) behaviour. Tot eh extent that I have been introduced as ‘this is Kate. You know, the one who is always bringing up gender’ (I always point out that it was them bringing it up, with their judgemenetal behaviour. I just call them on it.) But it’s becoming a thin line for me to walk.

    I always hold that just because someone is , doesn’t mean you have to like them. You have to treat them right, be polite, even fight for their cause. But there are people you aren’t going to like, ever, and pretending to like them just because they are I find a bit insulting.

    So why is it wrong to state that you think someone is a bitch (it’s not sexist because it’s true! This time!). And yet… I kind of feel like it is…

  35. “Not a single one of you vitriol throwing women has a patent on correctness and perhaps you should remember that when you decide to attack someone for their point of view.”

    Wow. Vitriol throwing women? Okay, I wouldn’t have gone there if I was trying to elevate the conversation. Why not just call us bitches?

    Again, this isn’t about Ashley’s post, although you could argue (I would) that it was a little lacking. She could have fleshed out her point of view a bit more. This is about Ashley’s response in the comments, which was rude, dismissive and gosh, dare I say vitriolic? No, no, let’s not go there. Let’s just stick with ‘kind of general and not directly applicable to the critiques.’

  36. this is a free country and you can go ahead and call Ashley irrational, PMSing, overreacting, too emotional…

    Care to cite anyone using the two genuinely gendered slurs you slipped in there (PMSing, too emotional)?

    Besides logic and rationality, I would like to point out “honesty in argument,” also known as “not lying, even by implication,” as one my favorite feminist values. I mean, while I’m here.

    Renee: That was so hilarious I kind of love you for it. And they say performance art is dead.

    Not a single one of you vitriol throwing women has a patent on correctness

    Tsk tsk! Careful now, “vitriol” is a classic code word used to diminish the apparent legitimacy of an angry woman’s argument!

    I am sorry that you and Ashley feel so beaten down by the high and lonely destiny that accompanies the hallowed position of Feministe Guest Blogger, but you do know that half the commenters here have blogs of their own, right? Very few of us here are total strangers to being disagreed with in public by groups of angry, “vitriolic” women.

  37. Mythago, I read it the same way you did

    Ashley, people will disagree with you. This doesn’t make them anti-feminists.

  38. The point is not about squashing disagreement the point is the tone that the disagreement takes…the moral authority that commenters claim to own…seriously get off it. Very few of you are willing to acknowledge intent for even a moment. Debate quickly descends into representative politics obscuring all other issues. You are not unique, and the world does not revolve around you.

    Discussion is supposed to help people grow, and expand their feminist theory work, but if you attack an ally like this what incentive do they have to continue on the journey of admitting their biases and overcoming their privileges. Telling someone that they may have over looked something, or perhaps suggesting that they examine the issue through an intersectional lens, but to swarm like a bunch of angry bees creates an UNSAFE SPACE. it is SILENCING. The fact that a group of women who claim to be feminist cannot see that, this kind of behavior as counterproductive astounds me.

  39. Ashley, you’re the one who brought in the other post by linking to it. Since people are talking about the other post in the context of this one because of your link, telling them to stop talking about it seems disingenuous.

  40. Except that among reasonable people, every time *isn’t* this time.

    I have wanted to see a woman elected President of the United States since I was a small child, and I am still angry at Hillary Clinton for betraying her *own stated beliefs* often enough that I couldn’t in good conscience vote for her when there was a more progressive, less hypocritical alternative. This didn’t prevent me from being enraged at the sexism thrown at her during the campaign, and I used my position as a known Obama supporter to try to talk to male Obama supporters who were being sexist to try to make them see what was wrong with their arguments and why they were being sexist, but my problem with Hillary had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with the same problems I had with John Kerry (I supported Dean last time around.)

    So, yeah. I wanted to elect a woman President of the United States, but not this time. Give me a woman who isn’t a war hawk and doesn’t sell out children in order to get donations from credit card companies, and I’ll vote for her.

    Likewise, I am pretty much always initially inclined to believe a woman who says she was raped. But if there’s no physical way the people she says raped her could have done so, then I’m not going to say she was lying but I’m going to say she was wrong. That doesn’t mean I default to assuming that women are wrong when they say someone raped them; it means I listen to the evidence before I make up my mind.

    I can simultaneously believe that many American boys are over-medicated for ADHD that they don’t really have, and that *my* son really needs his medication, because I live with my son and I *see* how severe his problems are and what medication does for him, while at the same time I also hear stories of people I know who were overmedicated as children. I don’t have to believe that *all* children who are medicated for ADHD don’t actually need the meds, nor do I have to believe that *all* children who are medicated for ADHD *do* need the meds. It can go either way depending on the situation.

    So *this time*, maybe the reason the person says “well, this time is different” is because… this time is different. I know of a guy who always believes the same thing given the same general category, who doesn’t feel he has to inspect the facts or change his mind after it’s made up, and I think everyone but the trolls on this blog are in agreement that he’s the biggest moron who ever made it to high political office in the US. If you can’t say “no, really, this time *is* different”, then you have a rigid mind that’s not susceptible to facts.

  41. Oh, for goodness sake. Ashley did engage with the people who engaged with her, including several who disagreed with her post. She responded to arguments several times in the thread. There were only two people she was dismissive of – not everyone who disagreed with her, not a whole string of commenters, TWO PEOPLE. And those two people were being rudely dismissive of her post, and doing so using anti-feminist frames. (YES, accusing someone of looking for things to be offended about and of trying to shoehorn things into their “agenda” is an anti-feminist frame. I disagree that “illogical” is, but dismissing someone’s argument as “poor and illogical” is rude as hell, and I wouldn’t engage with that either).

    Ashley, I’m sorry for continuing this after you asked us not to, but it just really frustrated me to see people misrepresenting what happened. Feel free to delete it if you think it’s counterproductive.

  42. Well, I haven’t read the previous post, or the comments – and out of that context, this post is sensible and interesting. And a lot of the offended comments in reply sound a bit defensive.

  43. Katherine, you should reeeeeeally read the previous post and the comments. It puts this post in a completely different light.

  44. Margalis

    Women lie about rape roughly about 3% of the time…

    Some times is a real exaggeration sometimes…

  45. YES, accusing someone of looking for things to be offended about and of trying to shoehorn things into their “agenda” is an anti-feminist frame.

    It’s an anti-ideology frame. Sure, its anti-feminist in the sense that feminism can be an ideology, but feminists who shoehorn things into their agenda are being treated no different than libertarians, conservatives, marxists or any other ideologue.

    To frame this accusation as anti-feminist, assuming you mean sexist by that, is to protect the ideologue from criticism, dismiss criticism as a form of bigotry, and ultimately make feminism even more of a closed system.

  46. Yep done that – sorry, but I still don’t see how that invalidates this post. Tell me, which part of this post is so wrong wrong wrong?

    For the record, on the previous post, I could, believe it or not, see both sides of the argument. Apparently, this is not the case for most people. I see a load of knee-jerk defensive reactions, and not a single considered response. You’re all perfect and immune from a life time’s social programming are you? Well, I call bullshit on that. Disagree if you like, disagree with this post if you like. But to see no attempt by anyone to wonder if a reasonable point is being made, and consider whether they fall into the classes of This Time Syndrome presented above… well, that’s just disappointing.

  48. Wow, this stuff is really getting tiresome. *sigh*

    1. Linking to the old post and then getting mad for people responding to the old post doesn’t seem quite right.

    2. On to what I think was the intended topic of this post…Alara Rogers raised some really good points. While I can see that despicable behavior can often be defended/dismissed as “just this time,” does that mean that everything has to be thought of in black and white categories? I think that can be a dangerous way of thinking. For instance, whatever the incidence of false rape accusations is (I think it’s about 2%, but everyone can throw numbers around that they want), that does mean there are some times when the “victim” is lying or not being truthful or whatever you want to call it. While I am VERY much inclined to believe the victim in any case, when there is enough compelling evidence for me to change my mind, I will (this has only happened once in my life), since I think the false accusers are very far between). Does that make me anti-woman? I think it is just being able to make my own decisions.

    There are other examples, especially around the words “illogical” and “irrational.” I don’t think those words are automatically off-limits if used to convey a point (i.e., not just screaming that someone’s being irrational without trying to convey what exactly they think is irrational). I think these words are often needed in discussions because they usually relate to the argument being presented, not just name-calling.


  49. Women lie about rape roughly about 3% of the time…

    Some times is a real exaggeration sometimes…

    I’m not sure what you are getting at here. On occasion “this time she’s lying” is correct. If someone says that every time, or 50% of the time, they are probably full of shit. If they say it now and then they could well be right.

    I understand the intent of this post but believing everything all the time is not a great approach either. Sometimes a word is just a word with no coding, sometimes a guy loses out on a job just because of qualifications, etc etc.

    I don’t know how to evaluate things other than on a case-by-case basis. That can be unintentionally flawed but the solution can’t be to assume that *everything* is racist and sexist and to believe every allegation no matter how flimsy.

    There is a lot of value in illustrating how well-intentioned people can fall into traps. For example the experiments where names are removed from resumes, or performers audition behind a curtain. But the fact that someone on the internet calls something sexist doesn’t mean I have to believe that without question.

    The implicit argument in this post seems to be that if you *ever* say “this time” that makes you one of the bad guys. I don’t even know what color Ashley is so I feel pretty safe in saying that “this time” I’m not dismissing her because of her color.

  50. dananddanica,

    I got the statistic from a feminist website that I followed some links through Ashley’s college campus sex issues website.

    Upon your challenge, I then googled for more info…

    This website’s thread seems to have all the angles involved…

    http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2004/12/2_false_rape_st.html

    In any event, I don’t…actually pull stuff out of my ass. I pull them out of my head, and I put *good* stuff, when I can, in my head. Go challenge someone else. I don’t BS.

  51. I have a serious question.

    Is something sexist if it’s ture?

    I struggle with this because so many of our deroggatory words are gendered. Is calling someone a bitch sexist, if she IS a bitch? Would it be better to call her a bastard? Obviously it’s RUDE, and not nice. But is it sexist?

    Obviously things like Slut etc refer to specific behaviour. Technically bitch does too. I don’t mind very much when people call me a bitch – as long as they know me. I mean, I am a bitch, I behave in a bitchy manner – I’m a bitch.

    Well, I have also heard racist white people say that it’s okay to call some black people the n word, you know, “when it’s true.”

    The question is, what does it mean for a slur to be “true?” In the case of the word “bitch,” it generally means that a woman is not acting in a way that is considered socially acceptable, and that others deem unpleasant. It’s all pretty subjective, and therefore highly impacted by our ideas about how men and women should act. Sometimes a woman is called a bitch for acting truly unpleasant, but the underlying message is that, in particular, a woman shouldn’t act that way.

    I’m not a fan of any gendered insults, particularly, and I don’t throw around terms like “dick,” just out of a sense of fairness. But in a patriarchal society, the gendered insults associated with femininity carry a particular message about women’s place. So there really is no male equivalent of the word bitch, just as there is no white equivalent of racist slurs. For men, you’d be more likely to see slurs questioning their masculinity than associating negative behavior with it. In other words, if they act in a way that others don’t approve of, they are likely to be verbally associated with femaleness (e.g. “pussy”) as a way of expressing the inferiority of their actions.

    My take on gendered slurs is that they’re about policing people’s gender expression and expressing the cultural belief that maleness is “better” than femaleness. Normalizing these words by using them gives others permission to do the same, often in very hurtful and sexist ways. I don’t want to feed into that system, so I choose other words. It actually lets me be more creative with language, and I like that.

  52. Ashley, that is one of the best explanations of the issues around words such as “bitch” that I’ve seen. Thanks, I’ll remember that when my mind automatically goes to such words.

    But please – tell us some of these creative alternatives of which you speak!

  53. Margalis, I just thought that the rape example was in poor taste.

    Look, the “This time” logic that Ashley is pointing out has a negative impact because the phrase is used quite a bit more than occasionally in some topics. Like in various forms of sexualized assaults, or in, say, workplace discrimination. It uses a truth that some women will cry rape, and that some women will be unqualified for a job, some part of the time, and spread it to *all* times outside of *blatant episodes*, and sometimes not even then. A different excuse might happen, like “asking for it”.

    Here’s the thing. When a woman reports a rape, a policeman should utilize the kit and send it in for testing. When a women reports pay discrimination, a company should be forced to explain any pay discrepancies (and we should not have pay scales behind veils of privacy). “This Time It’s Different”‘s *primary* use is to *short-cut* the exploration of a topic by giving out a facile explanation in place of a what is feared to be a poor justification for a behavior that then reduces the public face of the offender.

    If you actually read the thread, Ashley was primarily pissed off at a poster called CM, who *did* act in the typical no-evidence blowoff of her point. That, and Sensible then changed the tone of the thread into something other than what Ashley actually posted in the blog, and none of her claims registered with the people who were bashing her as oversensitive, despite the fact that all of the reason-heavy and fact heavy responses supported Ashley’s point. Just about all of the people who responded to Ashley in a negative fashion were working off their *own* emotions, and their *own* feelings of what they’d actually do, and not really working from within the framework of the people and incident described in the newspaper story.

    “This Time It’s Different” is used all the time, because it’s a damned effective tool. It channels the observer’s narcissism into leading the narrative away from what really happened.

  54. Hey Katherine,

    Heh. Well, I try to avoid calling anyone names in seriousness, but when joking among friends, I’m fond of telling people I hate them and their ass face, a la “Waiting for Guffman.”

    On a related note, I love to use the word “rad” to describe something I like.

  55. good stuff shah, I’ve linked to that website many, many times. It doesnt marry up to your 3% claim nor do the doj numbers. So why post the 3% number at all?

  56. I got the % at a different place, and that site did mention a book that cited that figure. I linked to the googled place because I wanted to know more about the data I got. Found that place, and liked how the different viewpoints of the levels of false reports are.

  57. Here’s the thing: we know that the rate of false reports of sexual assault is very low. Different stats are out there, but the rate of false reports is generally recognized to be the same as any other crime (in the single digits, percentagewise). When people quote higher percentages, they are basing that on the number of reports that were not pursued by police or did not get a conviction. I think us feminists are on to the fact that there would be, um, problems with using that as a test.

    Despite the fact that, statistically speaking, the likelihood that a given sexual assault allegation would be false is quite low, I have heard someone accuse rape survivors of lying every single time I have seen a survivor come forward. The only exceptions I’ve seen have involved extreme torture or near-fatal injury.

    So every time is this time, when it comes to sexual assault.

  58. Wow, Shah8, that’s an awful lot of men in those comments talking about the lying women. It was kinda disturbing.

    I think my favourite comment was that rape accusations in court lead to a 100% conviction rate. That’s… wow.

  59. Ashley,
    Good point and I would agree in general the likelihood of a sexual assault allegation being 100% false is low, somewhere around the single digits if it can even be measured, that number does goes up a whole bunch depending on the context though. A sexual assault allegation connected to a family court dispute? Much higher chance of being totally false. As much as a rape culture does exist, the word of a woman is worth more than that of a man when it comes to sexual assault, especially among the less well off. Women and men are intelligent, a lot of the women in my socioeconomic group have found that sexual assault based allegations are an incredibly powerful tool and lacking a lot of other tools, due to being oppressed, they use it quite often.

    Whenever someone has the power to allege a crime that carries significant penalties and at least initially can rely only on their word there is a high potential for abuse . Including the fabrications with the unresoleved/non convicted is indeed the wrong thing to do, as you pointed out but even for those of us who parse the numbers somewhat correctly, calling out the bullshit that sexual assault allegations are either always true or only false (made up) 2% of the time is just something that needs to be done.

  60. anna,
    Saying it leads to 100% conviction is indeed silly but it does lead to conviction far more often than it should, which would be 0%. Similar to statutory rape charges for men vs those for women, people react to that and wonder why? Why is the word of a victim so sancrosanct? There are surely many abuses still heaped upon sexual assault victims of both genders but the way it is now, a person can be ruined with accusations and that creates fear. We all know the highest profile cases but there are many more, in our own towns that dont get nat’l pub. Of course some people claim that fear is a good thing. Who knows.

  61. dananddanica,

    Do you have any backup for the claim that women in a specific socioeconomic group are more likely to make false allegations? Or that allegations in family court are more likely to be false?

    It is true that women with less money are more likely to make accusations, but I think there are a few possible reasons for that: they don’t have the kinds of resources middle-class or upper income women have to get counseling or deal with the assault in some other way, there is more pressure on women with high status to keep the status (and hence not bring up allegations that are often considered “shameful”), and, most importantly, marginalized communities often have higher rates of sexual victimization.

  62. dandddanica,
    In addition to Ashley’s questions, I wonder how you come to these conclusions:

    the word of a woman is worth more than that of a man when it comes to sexual assault
    …
    Why is the word of a victim so sancrosanct?

    If the word of a victim were indeed sacrosanct and the word of a woman worth more than that of a man in sexual assault cases, it seems to me that both the reporting rate for rapes and the number of rapists that see jail time would be higher than what is reported by RAINN (39% of rapes are reported; 16.3% chance of jail time). How do you square these numbers with your own evidence?

  63. Usually calling the congressional democrats a bunch of spineless pussies is an insulting use of a feminine pejorative to women. But with the case of telecom immunity this time it’s an insult to pussies.

  64. Very interesting post… I was reminded of an article on (I think) feministing that talked about anti-choice women having abortions. Something like “Every other abortion is wrong, but mine is right because of X mitigating reason.” It’s, admittedly, not quite the same as what was talked about in the above post, but it did remind me of it.

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