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  1. The Weekly Standard5/4/1522 min
    10 reads5 comments
    4.5
    The Weekly Standard
    10 reads
    4.5
    You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • turtlebubble4 years ago

      Yeah total fucking garbage. A bunch of anthropological and academic fluff attempting to frame a sexist, regressive, heteronormative agenda.

    • courtney4 years ago

      I almost couldn't finish this article because I was so infuriated. Let’s first start with virginity as a social construct, because the author clearly didn’t do any primary research himself. The idea of virginity as a construct does not mean that women view sex as meaningless. It is a rejection of the narrative that your virginity is tied to your purity, your self worth, and once you ‘lose’ that, especially if it’s not in a way that’s deemed special, you are seen as less valued. As women, we are told we must ‘lose’ our virginity to the right person––an unequal pressure that you rarely see portrayed with the same gravity to the opposite sex. Saying virginity is a social construct is a way for women to reclaim their decision without the pressure that’s been projected onto us since puberty.

      “The fictional rape crisis on American campuses” I’m sure we’ve all heard the statistic that one in five women in college experience sexual assault. 11.2 million women attended college in the fall of 2018 so we’re talking about 2.24 million women that will be sexually assaulted. This is not fictional to me. Not to mention that 4 out of 5 college women don’t report their assault to authorities. Why? Because when they do assholes like this author tell them it is ‘fictional.’

      My guess is the author has never actually spoken to a sexual assault survivor; they aren’t obsessed with the idea that they were assaulted or raped. They want to forget, they remain friendly with their abusers because doing otherwise would mean accepting what happened to them.

      The author frames consent as a buzzword, as some murky area that is impossible understand. It’s not. We need to stop perpetuating this attitude that consent is something that’s difficult to learn or ask for. If asking someone if they want to have sex “ruins the mood,” you were probably the only one in the mood in the first place. Great video explaining consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8

      Again, can’t stress how much I hated this piece and think the author's attitude towards consent and female sexuality are actively harmful to women and sexual assault survivors.

      • erica4 years ago

        YES - I was about to make a very similar comment, but you articulated this better than I could have. I almost didn't finish it either. I'm so angry.

        This line: the rape culture, which might better be called the “false accusation culture” How DARE you.

        Not only mind blowing in how offensive it is to women, but he references a book by a white man called The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. My jaw dropped for that entire paragraph. He makes it sound like African-Americans are the ones who "formed a social system that discourages stable pair-bonding" instead of acknowledging that the system of slavery in which families were torn apart and forced to watch each other suffer is responsible for discouraging stable pair-bonding among African-Americans.

        • bill
          Top reader of all time
          4 years ago

          Whoa! I have a lot to process here. I'm looking at the "8" I gave this one and trying to figure out what went so wrong. (Changed to 5.) I don't think it makes sense for me to reply to the stuff in your comments that I agree/disagree with, but most of all I'm just really thankful, courtney and erica, that you finished the piece (despite the anger!) and commented. Learning experience for me = unfair for you.

          What women and black people have to endure is basically the ultimate moral crime of all of civilization. I think about it all the time, but more importantly I try to act accordingly, to reduce the impact of my privilege. Last month I spent a day reading The Souls of Black Folk at the childhood home of W. E. B. Du Bois in Great Barrington, Mass. I first read that (and Malcom X) in high school (a conservative school in a conservative town) and the books changed me. They offered a perspective that exploded my worldview. More recently, I've read Men Explain Things to Me (the book) twice, two years apart, and it inspired me to read pretty much everything ever published by Solnit. I'm not saying all of this to give myself permission for fucking up, but I'm trying to provide some context about why I'm so genuinely confused/concerned about how I had such a different cursory reading of this piece, and why it's still so hard for me to resist the urge to go point-by-point on some of the less important stuff. Overall, this piece definitely isn't worth defending - for the reasons that you both pointed out. That's what "peeved" me from the very beginning. I shouldn't have brushed past those glaring issues ("peeve" isn't a strong enough word) for the sake of a few tertiary points that I still think are really quite interesting.

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Whoa. Thought-provoking. There were a handful of sentences that really peeved me, but overall I think this is a valuable contribution on an important topic. It shoots arrows at the conventional/liberal narrative, that’s for sure. I’d love to know what others think.