I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the Steubenville rape case, but I do want to say this:

When it comes to discourse on rape, murder, public shaming (whether sexual or otherwise), stoicism is NOT a virtue - if anything, it is a privilege. It betrays a disconnect from the situation, a lack of personal involvement. That is not virtue, that is circumstance.

People are allowed to have a visceral and/or emotional response to rape stories without their opinions being rendered invalid, biased, or somehow less objective. Humans are wired to respond emotionally to events and stories that involve some sort of trauma, even when we have not experienced that trauma ourselves. I think our ability to become invested in another person’s pain is such a unique, inspiring, and amazing gift that humans have, and it shouldn’t be buried under the guise of rationality, but instead used to effect positive change.

The fact that we would consider a stoic, clinical opinion more valid than the opinion of someone with an emotional investment in rape dialogue is perhaps part of the reason that rape culture exists. We make excuses for it. We play devil’s advocate. The victim’s story becomes our plaything, and in removing their emotions, our emotions, we strip humanity from the dialogue of rape, even though humanity is the precise thing that’s under attack.

I am so tired of people responding to stories of rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, etc with a cold, clinical approach, and subsequently trying to discredit more emotional responses. If you can read a story about rape, murder, physical abuse, etcetera without getting emotional, you are lucky. Not right. Lucky.

Every time I read a feminist/women’s issue post on Facebook, no matter WHAT the topic is, I assume it will end one of two ways:

• People complaining about their tax dollars going towards abortions
• Men complaining that they are falsely accused of rape

Firstly, investigations were launched into Planned Parenthood and it was proven that tax dollars were not being used to fund abortions. (but even if they were, there are a hell of a lot of anti-life things that my tax dollars pay for that I don’t support - the war in Iraq, capital punishment, etcetera)

Secondly, no one denies that men don’t falsely get accused of rape - but the laws in general are heavily weighted in man’s favor. Honestly I know many women who have been raped, none of whose accusers have been convicted, and I know ZERO men who have been falsely accused of rape. Supposedly 1 in 6 women are raped; even if we halved that statistic, just to estimate on the lower end (say for, accounting for 1 man who raped several women), 1 in 12 men do not serve prison time for rape. (The amount of people in prison is 1 per 200 residents.) I’d say on the whole, most of them do not receive punishment for their crime - at least not at the level the victim does. And we are still talking about men who are falsely accused?

I am so tired of these magical unicorns of political talking points coming out in serious discussions about women’s rights. Dear men: no one is trying to take your freedoms away.

I am also tired of men wearing “anti-feminism” as a badge of honor. I can understand why some people who don’t feel represented by the movement would decline to associate themselves with it. But for men who are just trying to look tough and resolute in their beliefs, you just look like a douchebag. I saw one guy on Facebook complaining how he had to take a feminism course and how he thought it was wrong that any class would try to change one’s “political” beliefs, which just betrayed the root of the problem. Women’s rights are civil rights, not political leanings, and it’s really a shame that they’ve become politicized issues.