Feminist rape apology when it comes to male victims of rape, and especially victims of female perpetrators, comes in various forms.

And by the way, feminists are not at all alone in employing these forms when they make their rape apologist statements or lapse into their rape apologist silence in the face of rape apology from other feminists. No, they share several of them with mainstream society. Some of them are thoroughly tradcon. They didn’t invent this stuff, and they are certainly not alone. They have lots of company. It’s called the “patriarchy.”

“Men are just getting what they deserve after the way they have oppressed women.”

Men deserve rape? Rape victims deserve rape?

And you wonder why we are calling you rape apologists?

And this kind of rape apology — hell, rape enthusiasm is not rare or anomalous. It’s quite common to hear people opine that criminals get what they deserve in prison and that includes rape. That’s the kind of company these rape apologists keep.

“But it’s just men raping other men.”

Another is that most men are raped by other men (all without evidence because actual data on rape incidence is impossible to get, but why let that get in the way of an expression of dogma?) so these rapes don’t matter. Nothing to see here, move along. This one is especially dehumanizing and it is explicitly objectifying—it is a claim of fungibility, since it involves lumping all men into a borg doing all this rape to itself.

“It’s worse for women.”

Then there is the old “Well, rape is worse for women than for men” ploy, that has never once, that I have seen, avoided rape apology because discounting the harm of rape is one form of rape apology.

Irrevocable Consent

Then there is the irrevocable consent dodge—”Well, he’s a guy, so he must have wanted it.” One aspect of so-called “toxic masculinity” is Mr. Ever-ready. This is the reason erectile dysfunction is such a taboo for a lot of guys, as we see in the careful way that advertisements edge up to the whole issue.

Oh, and if a guy just stands his ground and insists? This cultural expectation usually gets backed up by an accusation of misogyny because a man can only refuse the feminine awesomeness of Teh Pussy any time any place by anyone if he hates all women, amirite? That, or a big helping of gay-shaming.

Oh, and “I bet no one ever asks a man what he was wearing when he was raped!”—Gotcha there, motherfucker! Actually, not quite; they never ask because it never matters; a man is presumed to always want sex whatever the circumstances, no autonomous choice in the matter whatever he may or may not be wearing. There’s your rape culture. At least that question presupposes that a woman might not want sex.

One way you see this attitude expressed is in hyperagentic weasel-wording, in which male victims, say boys, are not said to be “raped” but rather are said to have “engaged in sex” à la [saloppe apologiste de viol] Adèle Mercier. The presumption of agency and therefore of consent is just too hard for these rape apologist bigots to shake—feminists like Jaclyn Friedman, who even when directly confronted refuses to condemn Mercier’s rape apology, even as she pontificates in print on the rapey horrors of US college campuses.

It’s shit like this, feminists—shit like this is why we call you rape apologists.

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