"The Face of Rape Culture"

[TygrBright]

7. The point here, is the purpose/intent of this thread.

Which is not "do you believe he's guilty?"

Here's another great comment to underline and emphasize the discussion this thread was created to evoke:

It took *that many women* to have weight with your average “let’s not get carried away without the evidence” type, but even most of them are starting to believe it. But there isn’t a nice, neat, “well, we’ll put that monstrous aberration in jail and tell women to be more careful of monstrous aberrations” wrap-up to this one.

In my opinion, it’s because this entire pattern indicts society as much as the individual responsible. We dismiss and ignore women until we have no choice, so routinely that 46 different women can be saying the same thing for decades and be dismissed and ignored. We create hero cults around powerful men and protect them at all costs. We treat female attention and female bodies as the natural rewards of male success. We have behaved as though excellence outweighs error, even error this egregious.

We have so routinely sacrificed issues that are seen as “women’s issues” and silenced women’s voices “to get to more important things” that we literally have no idea how to proceed when we all but have to center women’s voices and experiences.

But yanno what? I'm ready to give up. No one seems to want to discuss those issues at all. We'd much rather trot out variations on "Of COURSE he's guilty, but..." and zero in on exactly how this specific case is anomalous and therefore has no larger implications that might indicate it would be a good idea to overhaul the culture.

So... ::flaps hand limply:: carry on... Yes, I'm so glad you agree he's probably guilty. Thanks.

wearily,
Bright