Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Types of Tornado Alert (July 3) From xkcd.

2. Chip Off The Old Block (July 1) "I’m not claiming any of this is smart or interesting. I’m claiming he constantly says whatever he’s thinking about to anyone around him, no matter how irrelevant and repetitive, and that this is of course the first sign of a future great blogger."

His kids are about the same age as my daughter, and yeah this whole post is what it's like.

3. On Christianity and Aliens (cont’d.) (June 29) "Your faith can be shattered not just by visitors from Vulcan and Vega, but by visitors from Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. It is existentially threatened by the idea that God might also love anybody who isn’t you."

4. Platner formally withdraws from Maine Senate race and Democrats announce process to name new nominee (July 11) "The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied."

And: The Banality of Misogyny (July 7, via) "It’s just occurring to me, she says, because I’ve never told anyone he assaulted me, I don’t know how I would ever get anyone to believe me if I needed to down the line. So I wanted to tell you, just in case."

And also, about Graham Platner, there are some corners of the internet (for example) which are discussing the fact that the victim apparently had texted him to say she needed a "glute massage", and he said he was coming over, and she told him not to. Discussing whether this means that it's not really rape.

I'm kind of thinking about this from 3 different angles. First, there's the modesty/ purity culture angle, which says that if a girl/woman does anything that might inspire a man to think about her body in a sexual way, well, men just aren't able to control themselves. From that point, whatever he does is not his fault. She should know that.

There's also the "it was a misunderstanding" angle. Whenever there's a big news story where a victim comes forward to talk about being sexually assaulted, and we hear the details of the story, there are always things that people will point to and say "she was sending mixed messages" and how could the perpetrator have known that the victim didn't want it? If she doesn't want it, but she doesn't tell him that directly, and she just goes along with it, then from his perspective it's consensual, and he is utterly shocked to later find out that she feels it was not consensual. I don't think this applies to the Platner case because the victim says she directly said no (here's the link to the Politico article that broke the story), but I've seen it in other cases.

I think there's quite a difference between "mixed messages" and "literally how could he have known that she didn't want it, there were no signs." And I think it's very normal that there would be [what people call] "mixed messages" leading up to a sexual assault, because the reason the perpetrator was able to get that close is because the victim does like them / trust them / is attracted to them, to some extent. Calling it "mixed messages" assumes that the only 2 possibilities are "she wants to have sex with him, specifically in the way that he wants" or "she doesn't want anything to do with him at all", and when we categorize her actions into these 2 categories, wow it's so puzzling how some of them fit into one category and some of them fit into the other one. Mixed messages. 

Like, uh, maybe she actually wanted something else, and the problem is that we're trying to force it to be one of these 2 specific things.

And then there's the "playing social games" angle (not sure what to call it, but we'll call it that). Basically, there's sort of a set of rules for social interactions between people, and you can manipulate people to get what you want- as long as you stay within the rules, no one can blame you. For example, if someone says "no", then you have to stop, and you can't have sex with them. But if you ask them over and over, and you manage to catch them in a state of mind where they don't say "no" because they don't have energy or they're not thinking clearly- ha, they didn't say "no", that means you *can* have sex with them and you can't be blamed. You've played the game and won, that's how it works.

You see this same kind of thinking when kids annoy each other playing the "I'm not touching you" game. One kid is hovering in the other kid's personal space, but because they are not *actually* touching, they are still acting within the rules, and they claim that the other kid therefore can't complain about it. It's a line of thinking based on "see what I can get away with", where the standard way we interact with other people is that we try to get what we want, we try to do things to people that they don't like, and it's just a matter of being clever enough to do it within the rules that society has prescribed.

So then when people talk about rape and consent, and say things like "drunk people can't consent to sex," for people who are coming from that "playing social games" perspective, it comes across like a slight modification in the rules of the social games. Like, now instead of targeting drunk people, in your efforts to do things to people that they don't want, you can maybe try getting your victim to drink a little bit but not enough to "count" as drunk under the societally-recognized rules.

And for the people arguing "it was a misunderstanding"- maybe we shouldn't take that to mean "if you, as an objective observer, witnessed the entire sequence of events, you genuinely might not realize that this person didn't want it" but rather "this person said something flirty, therefore the rules of social obligation say that the other person is *right* to expect that they are going to have sex. Why are you feminists suddenly trying to change the rules? This is so unfair." The "misunderstanding" is about whether the victim said something which does or does not belong to the category of "flirty things that mean they want to have sex"- if it does fit in that category, then they *do* owe the other person sex- the "misunderstanding" is that the victim believed it did not fit in that category, but the perpetrator thought it did. Rather than the "misunderstanding" being about "I paid attention to all of your behavior and I actually had no idea that you didn't want it."

But the real solution is not about closing loopholes, defining the rules perfectly so that there's no opportunity for rapists to rape while still carefully following all the rules. What we actually want is consent culture. A cultural norm where people own their own bodies, and you cannot do something to someone that they don't want. Like, genuinely, it's not about keeping within society's rules; it's about not doing things to people that they don't want.

It was so mind-blowing to me to learn about boundaries- the idea that the bedrock truth is that I own myself, my body, my money, my feelings, etc, and the challenge of navigating the social games of what to say in a confusing situation is just a superficial external layer, rather than a game that I need to win in order to escape the prospect of people doing things to me that I don't want. 

Like if a pushy salesperson keeps telling me I should buy their product, and I tell them I don't want it, and they explain to me why my reasons for not wanting it are not valid, and we go back and forth, until I don't know what to say anymore- so, that means I have to buy it. Under the "playing social games" logic, that's what it means. The salesperson is better at the game of staying within the appearance of having a polite conversation while also pushing me into something I don't want. But, no, let's not look at it that way, let's look at it from the "boundaries" perspective. My money is mine, and nobody has the right to *make* me buy something- and that's true regardless of my ability to think of a polite/convincing response. "No" is a complete sentence. You don't *have* to explain your reasons. Sure, it's good to be polite about it- it's a little rude to just directly say "you can't make me do this, you have no right"- but that politeness is just a surface-level thing, that's just a layer you put on the top, while the bedrock truth of it is nobody has the right to make you do something you don't want. If you can't think of a polite response, that doesn't mean you lost the social game and now people have a right to do things to you- it means you are allowed to be a little rude, to say "no" even though people might think that level of directness is a bit outside of the rules of the social games.

It's like I said in this post, Welcome to Purity Culture, Today We are Overanalyzing Hugs, where I responded to an article that included a section on what to do "If his hug makes you feel uncomfortable" that gave some tips about how to avoid a hug while still staying within the rules of the social games- for example, "When he reaches out to hug you, turn and give him a side hug rather than a front-on hug." Sure, these can be useful suggestions, but I didn't like how it was framed like, here are some strategies for playing this social game, hope this helps you win. Rather than, like, you have an absolute right to refuse a hug, and here are some tips for how to spin your refusal in a socially-acceptable polite way, but at the end of the day, if someone doesn't get the hint and they're still trying to invade your space, they are the one in the wrong, and you are allowed to be rude.

Anyway, something I've seen on the internet, where people talk about consent and explain it as, literally you should only have sex with someone who wants to have sex with you. It's not about memorizing more and more detailed rules and staying within them while also manipulating people to get what you want. No, it's way simpler than that- it's about whether the other person *genuinely wants to have sex with you*. And then there are replies from people who finally got that that's what "consent" means, and they're incredulous. They reply and say 'this sounds totally unworkable. I can only have sex with someone who genuinely wants to have sex with me? That doesn't sound like something that would ever happen- you feminists are saying I can never have sex at all.' This really says something about them- maybe they haven't technically raped anyone (?), but their entire approach for all of their previous sexual experiences has been about manipulating people into things they may or may not want. Like, approaching dating/sex more as a game theory thing than as a "we both actually want this" thing.

Playing social games vs actually caring about what the other person wants. If someone says she wants a "glute massage", then by the rules of the social games, you can probably get away with claiming that she was asking for it. And, from the "playing social games" perspective, that's what matters- rather than genuinely caring about what the other person wants or doesn't want.

5. Sunday reading (July 5) "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him."

6. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, dies after a brief and unexpected illness, his office says (July 12) "Graham appeared to break with Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” But the senator returned to the fold and remained close with the president during his second term."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Two-hundred-and-fifty years in, Justice Jackson is doing the work that is needed from our leaders (July 5) "On this Fourth of July, I am thinking about how important it is for the United States that we have leaders willing to speak forthrightly about our past and ambitiously about our future in order to make it through the treacherous present."

2. The Wet And Wild Freedom Day Catastrophe (July 7) "The only place for these tens of thousands to go, realistically, was the streets outside the event, which is exactly what happened: a crush of bodies clustered at the entrance points and choking off traffic for blocks. Everyone is just as exposed to the elements out here as we were in there, except now we are angrily bunched together with nothing to do but endure the storm and stew about the stupidity of it all."

Donald Trump Throws Miserable Tribute To Himself On America's 250th Birthday (July 6) "The Trump team claims it had planned for the weather, but the slapdash look and feel of the tents, the free-for-all of water distribution from pallets, and the general lack of common sense and guidance in dealing with (increasingly) extreme weather suggests otherwise."

3. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo shot and killed by ICE agent in Houston, authorities confirm: Live updates (July 11) 

Men who witnessed deadly Houston shooting say ICE statement is false, attorney says (July 10) "But the three men who were riding in Salgado Araujo’s work van told attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra the version of events presented by ICE is false: 'At no point did they use the van to ram into the ICE agents and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,' the lawyer said in a video posted to his Instagram."

4. GOP governor signs bill forcing trans inmates to detransition (July 6) "The bill does not allow those who have already begun treatment to continue and does not offer any plan to wean them off the medication. Experts say forcing them to stop at all, let alone cold turkey, will have disastrous mental and physical health consequences."

5. The Christian Past That Wasn't (June 30, via) "There are many stories like this that invent a grand narrative about the Christian past of our nation— a Christian past that, put simply, wasn’t. Some of these stories are false. Some contain a measure of truth, but they are exaggerated in such a way that they become mythical. Those who believe America was or is or should be a Christian nation use these fabrications to create myths about America from the days of the first European arrival to the present."