Blog or Plotz

Jacob Clifton on rape, in his latest recap for The Good Wife. 

It’s the same kind of thing that makes me get so weird about the fatuous internet argument about whether or not women raping men is the same thing as men raping women. The absolute privilege of seeing these things as interchangeable, because you don’t actually live in the world of social or sexual reality.

What men and dumb internet girls don’t seem to be aware of is the fact that situational awareness is baked into the cake of being a woman.

The less-than-one percent of real-life sexual assaults committed by women against men notwithstanding — and cry me a river — will never make two genders the same thing, it’s a ridiculous way to try and tout equality, and you’re not being progressive when you scream about it on the internet. Just naïve and silly and trivializing actual abuse because you’re too busy trying to win the social justice game by finding something new and interesting and hypothetical to be outraged about. Rape is a male offense, committed against both men and women, and you’re in dangerous trouble when you do the math wrong simply because you are a child.

Which, whatever. Go be an otherkin, I don’t care. But the reason that it’s upsetting is that it’s the same privilege and nonsense warping of obvious concepts that’s playing out here: Were you scared enough? Were you almost getting raped long enough without any breaks to where you were just kind of almost getting raped? Was this rape legit?