Pressing Onward

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Rape Culture Does Not Exist

One of the tenets of third-wave feminism that I find particularly objectionable is rape culture. Unless you are totally unacquainted with feminism’s current form (in which case I envy you) then you are likely familiar with it. The Women against Violence against Women website describes rape culture as “jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable.” Those who advocate the existence of rape culture believe that there is a concerted effort made by men to justify rape and violence against women. These feminists will have you believe that everything from the daily news to the nutritional information on the back of cereal boxes conveys implicit justifications for men to abuse women with impunity. I came across this article written by Zaron Burnett entitled A Gentleman’s Guide to Rape Culture. He makes some arguments about rape culture that I believe to be incorrect. In this post, I wish to address this article and explain why Burnett’s point of view is mistaken, as well as dispel the myth of rape culture in general.

Burnett begins his article by stating that all men are part of rape culture and perpetuate it with their mere existence. It doesn’t matter if you actually are a rapist or not. He claims that men commit ninety-nine percent of rapes, and thus it is largely men who “are the primary agents and sustainers of rape culture.” He then argues that because men do so much raping, women see all men as potential rapists, so men should take extra precautions around women to make them feel safe and secure. In elevators, stairways, or parking lots, men have a duty, according to Burnett, to make their presence known and to show that they are not rapists. What a load of bollocks this is. This mentality only goes to show the double standards inherent to feminist ideology. If men have an obligation to show women that they are not rapists, then it lowers them to the standard of rapists by default. Demanding that men have to accommodate the needs and vulnerabilities of women in this respect only perpetuates the notion that men are rapists.

Consider if you were to make a similar argument regarding Muslims as suicide bombers. Given that Muslims commit the majority of suicide bombings, one could argue that Muslims have the obligation to show that they pose no threat when they associate with non-Muslims in public. The reasoning follows that if men have to go out of their way to use submissive behaviour to show that they do not intend on raping women, Muslims have to let others frisk them to prove they are not wearing vests of dynamite. If women feel vulnerable around strange men, some non-Muslims may feel unsafe around those of middle-eastern descent, but if anybody should argue that the Muslims have an obligation to make others feel safe in their presence, then such a person would a racist. Given that a minority of Muslims happen to be terrorists, this should not entail any guilt or obligation on the part of Muslim people. Even if Muslims committed 100 percent of suicide bombings and men committed 100 percent of rapes, it does entail that non-rapists and non-bombers should carry any of that guilt. Teaching men that they are threatening to women and that they should make efforts to avoid women in order to make them feel safe will only perpetuate the notion of men as rapists. Such thinking only encourages an irrational fear of men by women and the notion that men are inherently sinful in their own minds. It is insane to hold an entire demographic of people responsible for the crimes of a select few.

Another point in Burnett’s article that I find objectionable is that he reduces all the complexities and nuances of human relationships down to broad-sweeping generalizations about men supporting rape culture and women being victims. Burnett writes “If you think that sort of stereotyping is bullshit, how do you treat a snake you come across in the wild? You treat it like a snake right? That’s not stereotyping, that’s acknowledging an animal for what it’s capable of doing and the harm it can inflict.” Get a fucking grip, buddy. There are 3.5 billion men in the world—all with different backgrounds, measurements, temperaments, interests, and values. How can the burden of rape culture, assuming it exists at all, rest uniformly upon a twenty year-old white frat-boy and a celibate nonagenarian monk from Tibet? For Burnett to reduce the condition of every single man on the planet to the level of some reptile you find in the forest makes me wonder whether the feminists haven’t already tied him up in the basement and castrated him.

You can still hear the screams.

Later in the article, Burnett offers a list of examples of rape culture. A few of these examples include “Sexually explicit jokes”, “Publicly scrutinizing a victim’s dress”, defining manhood as “dominant and sexually aggressive”, as well as gendered violence in movies and television. He also makes the grandiose claim that rape culture plays a central role in all the social dynamics of our time. Rape culture, according to Burnett is “part of all our social, societal, and environmental struggles.”

Human beings have been raping each other for a really long time. From the rape of Lucretia, which indirectly led to the formation of the Roman Republic in 509 BCE, to the rape of Rindr in Norse mythology, to Tamar from the Book of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, history is abound with rapes both ancient and modern, real and fictional. Rape, just like any other crime like thievery, murder, or arson has existed since time immemorial and I suspect that rapists, for reasons known only to themselves, will carry on raping until the sun swallows up the earth. Well before the existence of violent music and television shows, filthy jokes, and slut-shaming, there has been rape. Feminists are hard-pressed to demonstrate a correlation between the emergence of violent movies and the frequency of rape. I hope nobody will dispute the fact that rape is a particularly horrific crime and I support any measures that attempt to mitigate its occurrence. If we wish to stop rape or sexual abuse then I believe scientific research is necessary to determine the real causes and motivations for rape. The theory of rape culture does not offer any satisfactory explanations in this respect and amounts to little more than an elaborate feminist conspiracy theory. To believe that rape is the result of certain kinds of entertainment, or dirty jokes demonstrates a very narrow understanding of human motivations.

Although, the feminist depiction of our world would suggest otherwise, few people in our culture today seriously advocate rape. Rape culture conjectures not only that things like sexual jokes and violent movies normalize rape, but that they were conceived by men for that very purpose. In this way, rape culture resembles a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. There is no substantial evidence to suggest that men are conspiring to create entertainment or are disseminating ideas for the purpose of raping women. I am a man. Based on my experiences with others throughout my life, I can say with honesty that we are not conspiring to rape women. Most men, including myself, believe that rape and domestic violence are terrible. Wife-beaters and rapists are cowards. Only a minority of extraordinarily twisted individuals believe that raping or abusing women is a good thing. Thankfully, few people lend these views sympathy when they are expressed in public. The belief that men are all secretly perpetuating sexist norms for the sake of abusing women is absurd and stands testament to the paranoid and unscientific tendencies of feminist ideology.

I can already tell the feminists will be quick to counter my point by claiming that sexism is being conveyed to us implicitly through entertainment. Feminists like Anita Sarkeesian and Suey Park are always analyzing entertainment through a feminist perspective, revealing messages or “tropes” which they claim instil sexist attitudes into our minds. I have heard them claim that the shitty Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines justifies rape if you interpret the lyrics a certain way. I have heard them claim that the so-called Bechdel test reveals the poor representation of women in films. There are countless other examples of things feminists believe to be encouraging rape—from Twitter hashtags to photo memes. The problem with ascribing all these things to rape culture is that the attitudes which feminists find so offensive are the product of sexual dimorphism and not some patriarchal conspiracy. When a man portrays women as an object of his attraction and sexual desire, it is not because he was conditioned by some TV show he saw, but because of innate biological imperatives urging him to get laid. Men want to have sex with women. You don’t need some elaborate feminist doctrine to explain why men want to get their dicks wet. It’s just human nature. Sexually suggestive songs don’t explain why men objectify women any more than an advertisement for McDonalds explains why humans ingest food. I am afraid that if you actually believe Robin Thicke is a harbinger of unquenchable male lust, you may need to revise your calculations.

These women are clearly rape culture shills.

Then from whence cometh rape culture? If the tenets of rape culture do not stand up to serious analysis, then why do so many feminists and people like Zaron Burnett keep propagating it? As I have already argued in a previous post, many feminist doctrines such as privilege and rape culture are mechanisms by which to impose guilt on men. In this way, it is similar to the Catholic doctrine of original sin. If you can make someone feel guilty for something, you can bend that person to your whim if they believe it will absolve their guilt. You may or may not have actually eaten the forbidden fruit, but you still suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve. You may or may not actually be a rapist, but you should think of yourself as one. Just like receiving the Eucharist will keep you in the Pope’s good books, submitting oneself to the feminists will lessen one’s culpability in regards to rape. I can safely say that anyone who tries to make you feel guilty for something you have not done is not looking out for your best interests. Men like Zaron Burnett who willingly accept the guilt that feminists impose upon them are enlisting themselves for a perpetual and thankless servitude as sexually-emaciated peons. Rape culture is male guilt. Seeing as though feminists do not take kindly to men who dare question the existence of rape culture, this purpose should be clear.

Rape culture is not a reliable framework for understanding or dealing with rape. Its premises are not corroborated by evidence apart from the narrow feminist worldview and it imposes guilt on all men for their sexual desires. Rape culture does not attempt to mitigate the occurrence of rape at all, since those individuals who commit most of the rapes are not likely to be persuaded by feminist theory. Sexual assaults should be investigated and prosecuted like any other crime, instead of attributing their occurrence to vague patriarchal power structures. To those women whose opinion of men has been warped by the notion of rape culture or by feminism in general has my sincere apologies.

Monday, June 9, 2014

California Gun-Control Bill is Completely Pointless

"My hard-on for gun-control is this long." -DF

Always looking to capitalize on the latest tragedy for political support, Democratic senators from the state of California—Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have proposed the “Pause for Safety Act”. According to this article, the bill would allow people to take out “temporary gun prevention orders” on those they suspect are unstable or potentially threatening. Under this bill, courts can issue orders allowing for the seizure of firearms by those who are deemed dangerous. With the Elliot Rodgers case and several other recent spree-shootings still fresh in everyone’s minds, it is no wonder the gun-control crowd has yet again seen fit to exploit the victims of these tragedies as a means to push their own agenda.

At first glance, it might seem like this bill does not infringe on the freedom of a law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms, but in practice it may not be as innocuous as it appears. First of all, had this law been in effect already, how many spree shootings would it really have stopped? If the bill requires someone to file a temporary gun prevention order against someone they believe to be a threat, then I fail to see how this would have stopped any of the recent spree shooters. It takes a certain kind of disturbed lunatic to open fire on a crowd of innocent people. Those who are bent on doing harm to others are not likely to obey gun laws in the first place. In fact, the majority of firearms involved in murders in the United States were purchased illegally. This bill effectively does nothing to eliminate the thousands of illegal firearms already in North America, which aren’t going away regardless of how many laws are passed. It is naïve to think that homicidal lunatics are going to relinquish their firearms just because Dianne Feinstein said so. Mentally unstable criminals are not thwarted by temporary prevention orders.

You might be saying, “Well, maybe this bill won’t actually prevent any crimes, but it still sounds like a good idea, right? I mean, who wants to let potentially dangerous people own guns?” The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is not always easy to determine whether someone is a potential threat. Whenever one of these spree killers goes out and shoots twenty people, we always look for red flags in their behaviour that would have allowed us to prevent the violence beforehand. Sometimes it is quite obvious that somebody is a threat, as in the case of Elliot Rodgers, but oftentimes you can't tell that someone is violent until they've acted out. How then, is a court supposed to draw the line between someone who is a legitimate threat or just a well-meaning eccentric? To me it seems as though there is no accurate criteria by which we can label somebody as a potential threat. Without any reliable criteria in that respect, how are the courts in a position to issue warrants allowing for the seizure of people’s property? If this bill becomes law, then I predict that there will be many gun-owners who will unjustly be labelled as “potentially dangerous” and have their weapons seized by the government. Maybe the guy who lives on your block doesn’t like you face and decides he’s going to file a gun prevention order on you because he feels “threatened”. Or maybe a manipulative wife files a prevention order against her husband on a whim because she got mad at him for some reason. If you have a decent imagination, you can probably think of scenarios when a law like this could be abused.

This is a classic example of a group of misinformed politicians fishing for votes by the proposition of well-meaning, albeit completely useless legislation. It’s all about making things sound good on paper. Those who support this bill have not made an effort to look past their knee-jerk reactionary instincts to gun violence to consider the ineffectiveness of controlling firearms. Taking guns away from anyone will not prevent violence, it will only encourage it.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Nietzsche Club Banned at University College London

University College London has banned a Nietzsche club from holding meetings at the school on the grounds that the philosopher’s work encourages right-wing and fascist ideas. UCL’s student union barred the club as it believes “fascism is directly threatening the safety of the UCL student body.” According to This article, the action banning the club from campus was part of a wider initiative at the school called “Fight Fascism”, wherein “a united front of students, workers, trade unions, and a wider labour movement… [fight] the root cause of fascism—capitalism.”

It must be a daily barrel of laughs attending a school run by such Marxist stooges as those at UCL. Contrary to what they are saying, banning the Nietzsche club really has nothing at all to do with “fighting fascism” and everything to do with publicity. It’s about covering their asses. When a university such as UCL is publically funded and takes in tax money, it has to maintain a semblance of political correctness, otherwise squeaky wheels like Timur Dautov or Suey Park will bitch and complain and the school will lose its funding. Universities such as these will not tolerate any clubs or associations that do not tote the party line or could be possibly perceived as offensive by someone, somewhere. Don’t let their rhetoric fool you. They don’t give a fuck about fascism. It’s all about money.

Those columns weren't built out of free speech, you know.

All of that aside, I bet you that the people who spearheaded these idiotic initiatives can’t even tell you what fascism is all about, or even why it is still relevant in the year 2014. If the stooges at UCL had a genuine concern about its students being corrupted by fascist ideology, then they should encourage an open discussion about the tenets of fascism so the students can learn for themselves why fascism is immoral and why it should be avoided. Just as banning books makes people want to read them more and censoring music only makes it more popular, decreeing that a Nietzsche Club cannot have meetings will only make people more interested in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Banning information is thought control; it is unethical and will not eliminate the thoughts in question. If Nietzsche’s or anyone else’s ideas really were poisonous, then hiding them only gives them an allure. It will attract people to them if only for the fact that they are hidden. I’m sure the students who attend UCL are intelligent enough to think for themselves and they don’t need some douchebag Marxist administrator determining what is appropriate for them to read.

As the article on Thedailybeast already points out, Friedrich Nietzsche was not a fascist. His connection to Hitler and Mussolini stems from an erroneous interpretation of his ideas which was promoted by his sister,who had a poor grasp on his philosophy to begin with. An in-depth examination of Nietzsche’s writing goes beyond the point I am trying to make in this post, I do not believe his ideas are particularly dangerous that they should be discouraged. However, just because someone’s beliefs are immoral, does not mean they are not worth examining. If UCL really had a substantial argument against the philosophy of Nietzsche, then they would present it and allow it to be judged on its own merits. Only weaklings censor works they disagree with. The banning of the Nietzsche club by UCL really goes to show the moral cowardice inherent in the standards of political-correctness today. If merely being exposed to ideas that are deemed unattractive is enough to corrupt a student body, then perhaps it is what is attractive that is truly corrupt to begin with.

In other news, UCL's Book Burning Club just got a new endowment fund.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Why Nobody is Bound By Poverty

It's The Socialist Party headquarters.

Whiney Socialists who rail against capitalism on the internet always have a difficult time hiding their seething envy of the rich. In this article I found entitled Meritocracy is a Myth, James Bloodworth doesn’t just fail to hide his envy, he revels in it. His entire exposition is a scathing rant against the rich and successful and the “obscene privileges” they enjoy. The main argument of the article is that because wealth is unevenly distributed, it is impossible for people to rise out of poverty. Bloodworth fails to cite any evidence of this, other than asserting that “a disadvantaged child will nearly always and everywhere become a disadvantaged adult” as well as offering an out-of-context quote by Karl Marx. The notion that anyone is perpetually bound to poverty is absolutely false and there is no shortage of billionaires or people in your community who have risen out of poverty and are living rebuttals to Bloodworth’s nonsense.

Bloodworth writes: “We insist on telling children that they can be ‘whatever they want to be’, knowing full well that crushing disappointment lies further in their future”. Essentially, this is just a variation of the oft-repeated argument that the poor are perpetually poor and the rich remain perpetually rich. “A disadvantaged child,” Bloodworth argues, “will nearly always and everywhere become a disadvantaged adult”. However, this is simply not true. Social mobility is alive and well in North America, regardless of what Bloodworth and his ilk would have you believe. Of all the billionaires on last year’s Forbes 400 list, 273 started with less-than-wealthy beginnings[1]. For example, when Shahid Khan, a Pakistani immigrant, arrived in the US at the age of 16, he earned 1.20$ an hour as a dishwasher, but through hard work and dedication, he started one of the largest private companies in the US, Flex-N-Gate. Khan is no exception. The founders of many successful companies—from Howard Shultz of Starbucks to Oracle founder Larry Ellison, were born into circumstances described by Bloodworth. However, poverty did not stop these people from starting multi-billion dollar companies and achieving their dreams. They could do it, so why can’t you?

The fact that one can improve their economic standing through hard work is not just true of a few select billionaires, but with most people in western society. Through 1996 to 2005, the US Treasury Department conducted a study in which they observed the wages earned by individuals over time. The data they collected shows that the incomes of those individuals in the bottom twenty percent increased on average by 90 percent over that time.[2] Whereas, the incomes of those in the top 20 percent of wage-earners only saw a 10 percent increase over that same time. What does this tell us? It shows that people’s incomes fluctuate over time. Most people who are earning shitty pay at a given instance (usually because they are young, inexperienced, unskilled, or just unlucky) will be earning more sometime in their future. There is no consistent “1%”. In North America at least, it is the norm that people earn more money in the 30s and 40s than they did in their teens. Anybody who is a hard worker and has a skill that is valuable in the market can move up the ladder, so to speak, and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Relevant.

Bloodworth argues further that children of rich families are more privileged than the poor because the rich can afford to send their kids to University. “Around 10 percent of young people at the bottom rung of the social ladder go to university compared with over 80 per cent of those from professional or managerial backgrounds”. While I do not dispute that statistic, I fail to see how this is an argument against meritocracy. If someone has worked hard their whole lives and made an honest living, they have earned the right for their families to live comfortably. Rich parents can afford to hire tutors for their kids. They can afford books, calculators, pencil-crayons, private-school fees, and of course college tuition. Kids from rich families are certainly more privileged than the poor in this respect, but I believe the old adage “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” should not be forgotten. All the financial support and tuition fees in the world won’t educate someone who is unwilling to help themselves. Even though more rich students are enrolled in university than poor students, they are still held to the same standard. I personally knew many students throughout high school who were borderline retarded but only got into university because their parents were rich and would accept no other option for their jewel-encrusted offspring. However, many of these students were the first ones to drop out once they found things difficult. Even if you are born spoiled rotten with wealth and privilege, you still have to work in order to maintain it. Those who are born into poverty, whose business sense and work ethic are stronger than average, can only increase their economic standing over time. Whereas, someone with no desire for work who is born into a rich family will only lose his money over time.

“Equality”, when used in the context of Bloodworth’s article is not about equality of opportunity, where everyone is held to the same standards and expectations, but about equality of outcome. Although he doesn’t explicitly say so, Bloodworth wants equality to be mandated and enforced by the state. He advocates a world in which people are truly not free to improve their economic standing through hard work and effort. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are mutually exclusive. If individuals are not free to succeed or fail by their own efforts, then they are not really free in any meaningful sense.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2013/09/18/by-their-bootstraps-billionaires-who-started-from-scratch/

[2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB119492157951090886

Saturday, May 17, 2014

The Consequences of Increasing the Minimum Wage

I have written previously about the minimum wage and the effect this price-control has on the unemployment rate. Many economists are in agreement that raising the minimum wage has negative effects on employment, particularly among workers who are unskilled or inexperienced. By raising the wage above a given amount, the government makes it harder for those workers whose labour is worth less than that amount to find employment. That is why most victims of minimum wage legislation are typically the poorest and the youngest. However, this belief is not unanimous among economists, and I came across this article the other day by Jared Bernstein that argues in favour of raising the minimum wage. Some common misconceptions are espoused in the article and I will try to explain why they are incorrect.

Bernstein writes that minimum wage laws are integral to the functioning of the economy, much like laws against child labour, discrimination, wage theft, and overtime without extra pay. While I agree that discrimination and wage theft are generally bad for the economy and I support legislation that attempts to eliminate them, the absence of minimum wages laws in many developed countries suggests that we could easily survive without them. Despite having no minimum wages laws, Switzerland has a prosperous economy and a very low unemployment rate. While Hong-Kong was still a British territory, it had no minimum wages laws and its unemployment rate was only 2 percent.[1] However, in 1997, while under Chinese rule, employers in Hong Kong were forced to hire more workers and pay increased wages and benefits. This law had the predictable effect of raising the unemployment rate. In 2002, it was 7.3 percent, nearly triple would it was under British rule. In 2003, unemployment in Hong Kong hit an all-time high of 8.3 percent.[2] This example illustrates that legislation that attempts to artificially raise the wage rate has the effect of increasing supply and decreasing demand beyond the equilibrium level. When there is excess supply of a good, we call it a surplus. When there is excess supply of labour, it is called unemployment. The real minimum wage is always zero dollars, since you have to be employed in order to receive it. Unlike laws that mitigate workplace discrimination or wage theft, the minimum wage is an artificial price control that does not make workers better off than without it. Bernstein is being misleading when he claims that such wage laws are integral to the functioning of the economy.

Bernstein paints a rosy picture of how minimum wage laws came into existence. He quotes FDR and Frances Perkins, both proponents of minimum wage on the basis that it would establish an equal plane of competition and would prevent market failures. The first minimum wage in the United States was set at 0.25$ per hour in 1938 with the passing of the Fair Labour Standards Act. A previous attempt to establish a minimum wage in 1933 was declared unconstitutional (and rightfully so). However, wage controls were proposed earlier than that, namely in Canada and South Africa as early as 1920. The goal of these policies however, was not to raise the living standard of workers. People supported these laws with the explicit intention of keeping undesirables like blacks and Asians out of the workplace. [3]As I have already stated, the biggest victims of minimum wage legislation are typically low-skilled workers or those without previous job experience. Since most blacks and Asian immigrants to Canada in the 1920s fit those criteria, the racists of the time knew that enforcing a minimum wage would make such people unemployable. It is fortunate that these laws never came into existence, but the fact that they were advocated for this reason shows that even before they existed, people were aware of the inverse relation between minimum wages and employment.

Many social liberals like Bernstein advocate a high minimum wage so that those who receive it may live comfortably or even support a family. While you should seriously refrain from starting a family if you make 7.25$ an hour, the majority of those earning the minimum wage are young single people who still receive financial support from their parents. According to the Wall Street Journal, 42 percent of minimum wage earners still live with mommy and daddy. Only 15 percent are actually financially independent.[4] The condition of the working poor is a transient one. Most people do not work minimum wage jobs their entire lives; they work at McDonalds for a few years in high school, and as they gain experience, qualify for higher-paying jobs. This is corroborated by evidence. According to the US Treasury Department, the incomes of those individuals in the bottom 20 percent rose 91 percent from 1996 to 2005, while the incomes of those in the top 20 percent rose by only 10 percent in those same years.[5] This shows us that the wages earned by individuals fluctuates over time. Someone who is in the bottom 10 percent of wage-earners may be in the top 10 percent sometime in the future. This is why minimum wage legislation is so harmful—because it robs young people of the opportunities to gain work experience and qualify themselves for higher wages in the future. The poor are similarly affected. Therefore, when people advocate a “living wage” so that the poor can live more comfortably, they really are incurring misfortune upon the very people they claim to help.

Contrary to what Bernstein claims, market failures have never been caused by the absence of minimum wage laws. As I have shown, they are responsible for more failures than they attempt to mitigate. In an economy without a minimum wage, workers would not be paid in pennies (as Bernstein writes). Any business that paid their employees like that would not be in business for very long, as nobody sane would want to work for them. An excess supply of workers in relation to demand is only caused when there is interference in the economy. Workers must be allowed to earn whatever wage is determined in the market and employers should be legally permitted to pay it to them.