The article New York Daily News: 'Save the males': Ho culture lights fuses, but confuses by Kathleen Parker is a useful read because she does a great job of articulating the rationalizations of sexual harassers and rapists and those who rush to defend them. Her premise is that boys and men who cross ethical and legal boundaries are almost always victims of those girls and women they offend against.

This is nothing new.

In 2006, Parker wrote a column defending a convicted rapist because of her judgments about the victim in that case so this article and her book, Save the Males, simply give more depth to explain exactly why she so easily decided to defend a rapist and view him as a victim who exemplifies the highest moral values.

From her latest article:

Such males may be forgiven if they're not sure when greeted by a comely lass whether to grab a sword or a sheath-of the latex variety. Or perhaps a shield. To walk down any street in almost any town or city today is to be taunted by a parade of approaching midriffs featuring pierced navels and retreating "tramp stamps" — tattoos that rise like bait from too-tight, low-riding britches.

I've walked down many streets and I've seen attractive women with bared midriffs, but I've yet to see a bared midriff taunt men or boys into physical or sexual violence or into fear for their safety. Same goes for tattoos. I've seen plenty of them, but I've never seen one taunt men or boys. However, I have seen men and boys actually taunt girls and women based on a variety of excuses or for no reason other than gender.

But thanks to Parker, I now know those men tell themselves that they are morally superior hapless victims expressing their confusion and their powerlessness in reaction to taunts directed at them.

So if a man sees a "lass" who turns him on (taunts him in Parker-speak) and he responds by sexually assaulting her, he may be forgiven. Exposed midriffs, "tramp stamps" and anything else these guys see which they are told are sexual become billboards of universal consent. Kathleen Parker told them so.

Apparently, these males which Parker wants to save are incapable of having inter-gender social skills and they are incapable of understanding that individuals have boundaries which aren't the same as what has been laid out for them by people like Parker.

It isn't those who look sexual who are responsible for any confusion, it is people like Kathleen Parker who have decided that they have the right to declare certain girls and women 'ho's and to offer up these girls and women for the taking and then to offer up a pre-packaged defense for the rape of those Parker disdains.

She even provides rationalizations for pedophiles and gives them someone else to blame -- moms.

Edgy 4-year-olds can opt for T-shirts that say, "Baby Porn Star" or "I Faked It." Budding tartlets can find bustiers, stilettos and "pleather" pants in toy stores, as well as itsy-bitsy lingerie sets of lacy panties and bras. [...] More curious than an infant girl wearing a shirt declaring that she faked it are the mothers who participate in their children's sexualization. Somehow I don't think many dads are pimping their baby girls as orgasm fakers. As a rule, dads don't do the shopping for little tyke wardrobes.

Parker is calling mothers pimps while excusing all fathers because on average dads don't do the clothes shopping with their children. The many men who create or profit from products which sexualize young girls are blameless and in Parker's universe they simply don't exist. "In 2003, girls ages 13 to 17 spent more than $157 million on thong underwear." But not a single boy or man has any responsibility for this. Amazing.

Same goes for the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit. There can't be a single man employed at the company which makes this product, VS International LLC, and not a single boy or man has ever purchased such a product. Parker makes it clear that men are always the victims of products such as this.

This approach of blaming women and girls while ignoring the deliberate actions of boys and men mimics the rationalizations of rapists. Pedophiles have been offered these children by their mother/pimps. Can't you imagine the jury listening sympathetically as the child rapist testifies, "But she was wearing a thong under her clothes as she toddled toward me! I know because I went through her underwear drawer the day before. If anyone should be convicted, it should be her mother because mothers generally do the clothes shopping."

Parker mentions Jon Benet Ramsey and manages to turn my stomach by her reference to this murdered girl's "Lolita eyes." That is nothing more than a sick projection. But of course of all the women who are blamed for violence against girls, Parker herself is immune from accountability even as she blatantly excuses a murderer by making this person not be the cause of an innocent girl's violent death.

Other little girls who look nothing like Jon Benet and who fit none of the sexy stereotypes listed by Parker are also targeted by sexual sadists so the idea that a certain look is the cause of sexual sadism has been proven to be false. But that idea is so handy that many people keep it protected like a valuable antique handed down through the generations.

Parker has no interest in doing anything except finding examples which allow her to blame someone besides the boys and men who choose to harass or be sexually violent. In doing so she creates the illusion that sexual harassment and sexual violence didn't exist before g-strings came in child sizes.

The trend of scantily clad has been a marvel to behold to those of us weaned on Hepburn & Hepburn in the Age of Absolutely Not. That's what parents used to say when a girl wanted to wear makeup to school, or ditch her white socks and shave her legs too soon, or wear too short a skirt.

The point she ends up making with this example is that the habit of blaming girls' clothing and grooming choices for sexual harassment and rape are things Parker grew up with and accepted eagerly.

For Parker, the lack of prosecution for non-stranger rapists in decades past was as it should be and she is nostalgic for those good old days when those like me were raped and scared into silence by all those shaming messages which threatened to put a target on our backs if anyone knew we weren't virgins and therefore no longer safe from the accepted sexual harassment we saw directed at the girls who were labeled as easy.

If Parker, as a girl, heard about some other girl being forced into unwanted sex, she would blame the other girl if that girl wore makeup, ditched her white socks, shaved her legs too soon or wore too short of a skirt or if she could find some other way to blame the girl. Then as a respectable girl, Parker would be able to label that other girl as a slut while thinking only good thoughts about that girl's rapist.

What a high moral standard.

In less than a generation, girls went from sitting with their knees glued together, ankles cross demurely, to displaying their wares with the pride of a first grader showing off a new tooth. By the turn of the millennium, America was populated by a generation of girls whose knees had never met, even casually.

So now girls who don't sit with their knees glued together are asking for it. Disgusting, but not surprising.

Here's the last sentence of Parker's article:

Once women sexually objectify themselves, it becomes harder to insist that others not.

This sentence is overflowing with both illogic and the rationalizations for sexual harassment and rape.

If this sentence were logical then men who wear clothing which can make them look sexy (for example, wearing pants which don't hide their erections) are sexually objectifying themselves and therefore women are justified in commenting on their erections -- even in the office.

Further, women who see men with erections are justified, by Parker's own logic, in grabbing those men's crotches and going on from there without the man's express permission because universal permission has already been granted. That man has sexually objectified himself so it becomes harder to insist that women not take actions which sexually objectify him. Parker's own logic tells us so.

Every behavior done by boys and men against girls and women which is excused by Parker must be excused when the genders are reversed if Parker's logic is sound. But from what I've read of Parker, she would be disgusted at the thought of having her logic used to justify a girl or woman's treatment of boys or men. That occurrence would likely be given as proof that we are living in an evil 'ho culture rather than being seen as proof that living in a Kathleen Parker culture contributes to rape.

Here's my rape prevention tip. Avoid everyone who agrees with Kathleen Parker and avoid those who look to those people as their moral guides. You may not know until too late what clothing choice, visual cue or movement gives them permission to proceed without the need to get your consent.

Hat tip: Shakespeares Sister

Technorati tags: rape crime politics sexual violence sexual assault feminism

Labels: prevention, Violence Against Women