#FireRickRemender and Rape Threats Online

I was going to stay well out of the #FireRickRemender debacle because frankly I don’t read Captain America nor do I have a strong opinion on Remender as a writer in either direction. But now someone has pissed me off.

I was sent this piece on Jezebel last night. They invoke what happened to me…

366 Songs 110: Stayin’ Alive
How House of Cards Handled Rape Better Than Downton Abbey
“The term “sexual entitlement” was used in 2012 in reference to sexual assaults by Boston University’s hockey team, though you can find earlier uses of the phrase. I first heard it in 2013 in a BBC report on a study of rape in Asia. The study concluded that in many cases the motive for rape was the idea that a man has the right to have sex with a woman regardless of her desires. In other words, his rights trump hers, or she has none. This sense of being owed sex is everywhere. Many women are told, as was I in my youth, that something we did or said or wore or just the way we looked or the fact that we were female had excited desires we were thereby contractually obliged to satisfy. We owed them. They had a right. To us. Male fury at not having emotional and sexual needs met is far too common, as is the idea that you can rape or punish one woman to get even for what other women have done or not done. A teenager was stabbed to death for turning down a boy’s invitation to go to the prom this spring; a 45-year-old mother of two was murdered May 14th for trying to “distance herself” from a man she was dating; the same night as the Isla Vista shootings, a California man shot at women who declined sex. After the killings in Isla Vista, the term “sexual entitlement” was suddenly everywhere, and blogs and commentary and conversations began to address it with brilliance and fury. I think that May 2014 marks the entry of the phrase into everyday speech. It will help people identify and discredit manifestations of this phenomenon. It will help change things. Words matter.”
Random, (Mostly) Unfiltered Thoughts on Hits, Quality and Online Writing

Leave a Reply Cancel reply