Activists in Jerusalem marched over the weekend in the city’s fourth annual “SlutWalk” — a demonstration against blaming a woman for her rape because of what she was wearing at the time of the attack.
But Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, a Jewish activist and writer, has had enough.
“Where is this flurry of rape-apologists everyone is up in arms about?” Hernroth-Rothstein wrote. “I can’t see them anywhere, but what I do see is a furious mob cutting down a straw man on the altar of common sense.”
Hernroth-Rothstein was specifically referring to the alleged rape apologists who blame women for what they were wearing. I’ve seen this accusation lumped in to a general “victim-blaming” strategy – that is, it’s tantamount to blaming the victim to tell a woman that it’s unwise to get blackout drunk or to wear a longer skirt. The inclusion of the clothing argument makes the speaker look more sexist than he is and creates a straw man argument that wasn’t previously made. I haven’t seen any mainstream arguments that include not drinking so much and wearing more conservative clothing. I’ve only seen the former. But by claiming people are also calling for women to cover up, activists can negate the argument against such heavy drinking – which is the main factor in many of today’s rape accusations.
Hernroth-Rothstein makes the argument that such use of a straw man hurts men and women alike. It hurts men by telling them they are just one step away at any given moment from being a predator. And it hurts women by labeling them “as victims from birth” and assuming that all women must fall in line with prevailing ideology.
“How is this the feminist view, how is this freedom, how is this progress in any way?” Hernroth-Rothstein asked.
She goes on to discuss how the same strain of modern feminism that applauds SlutWalkers also tells women how to act and what to think:
“The feminism I was trying so hard to belong to told me that I was a victim. Me? I never saw myself as a victim. Ever. Not once did it occur to me that there was something I could not do because of my gender. That is, until feminism told me that I was a slave to the patriarchy and that the men I saw as equals, fathers, brothers and friends, were always one false move away from being predators. The feminism I saw came with a built-in political ideology, and while chanting that I had to liberate myself and be free, the so-called sisterhood took it upon itself to define what a ‘good woman’ was, and that a conservative, religious prude like myself did not make the cut.”
The modern outrage brigade has essentially become the fabricated “Good Wife’s Guide” – a set of rules a woman must follow if she wants to be accepted.
Hernroth-Rothstein then hits the nail on the head by writing what the current rape culture enthusiasts are really doing.
“To me that seemed like less of a women’s movement, and more of a political movement, profiting off women, and that real political issues were being called women’s issues, thus making them untouchable and unfit for review or critique,” she wrote. “Making it so that if I was pro-life, I automatically became anti-women, and suddenly the entire political conversation becomes infantilized and intellectually dishonest.”
