The Curvature has a very special commenter this week, going by the name of Hugh.
Hugh muscled his way into “Rape Article Offensive-Off”, a post railing against the language of rape in the media. Cara’s particular targets were the report about a man who was said to have planned “to have sex with a 5-year-old girl”, and the article about women “leaving themselves vulnerable to rape or serious sexual assault because of their binge drinking”. (A blogger after my own heart, she is.)
The thread morphed into a general discussion of rape culture, then Hugh stumbled in, blustering about how he didn’t believe in “anecdotal evidence”, and commanding that Cara produce objective proof in the form of statistics and surveys so that he could examine the evidence. He would magnanimously consider believing women’s own experiences, possibly, you understand, because he’s such a nice guy and all, but only if they produced and explained specified statistically-significant data for him on demand. And must insist to be allowed to make his point about how downright “pissed off” he was about this thread, in which women were talking about their own anecdotal, subjective, non-representative experiences and feelings. This was just not acceptable feminine behaviour for young Hugh.
All that? Not really that big a deal. There are ignorant prats all over the place. But it went on. And on and on and on.
Then, this comment is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
Look the difference between all the evidence I was given up till 3 posts ago was that up till then I was given maybe 100 examples of rape-apology, in a society of millions of people that isn’t enough but if a survey has more than say 200 000 people involved which it probably does then I can take that as evidence.
[…]
My only crime here is ignorance which probably stems from the fact that I live in a fairly progressive part of comparatively proggressive Australia and I don’t think we’ve ever had a rape here.
Aaaand… that’s where my head exploded. I don’t think I was the only one.
Categories: gender & feminism, violence
Grabbing somebody is Assault, and sexual touch makes it Sexual Assault. Stop minimising this. #rapeculture101 
Quicklink of the Day #2: #DestroyTheJoint excludes voices of women with disabilities 
Quicklink Of The Day #1: Transgender Day of Remembrance 
Friday Hoyden: Gillian Triggs 
Hoyden About Town 
Hehehehe. That is a great picture.
It made my head explode, but then I just about died in a fit of laughter when he called me a Nazi, because I . . . well, I’m not really sure why. But it was hilariously bizarre nonetheless.
I know, right? I missed the Nazi comment – I think it was modded before I got to it.
You’ve gotta love these guys who tch and sigh that they are so nice, would have been such wonderful allies, if only we could have presented a stronger case for feminism, and that we really only have ourselves to blame for poor feminist marketing, Nazi icecunt whorebags that we are.
WHAT?????? What the fucking bloody buggery bastard hell??? He clearly doesn’t live in any part of Australia that I or anyone I’ve every known has lived in.
He is quite correct in the first three words of the bolded sentence, though.
And `comparatively progessive Australia’. Huh? I do not think those words mean what he thinks they mean. Progressive? Not with wankers like him here we aren’t.
I think I love you.
I can explain it all. He is clearly living in an alternative universe, where women don’t get raped (at least in Australia) and his comment has somehow slipped through a rift in the fabric of space-time to *our* universe, where he has ended up sounding like a complete pratt on a blog. Really in his *own* universe he is a caring, progressive, pro-women type individual.
I loved the bit where he tried to explain himself by basically saying that rape needs to captured on video before it’s *real* rape.