Hellz yeah.

We'll see if Dan gets as much disrespectful shit for this as Cienna.

I still can't fathom why they don't just get in bed with the Taliban. Same beardy god 'n' all.

Unfortunately, the Republican congress is squarely in the hands of the rape culture. Women must keep fighting for a greater say.

Exactly right on, Dan. And I agree with Sandiai @2. Weird how the same truth coming from a man is treated more deferentially in some camps.

Hey, y'all - the Bie-bull done sayed that if'n you's ain't a virgin on yer hunnymoon, then y'all need to be kilt. (Dooter-on-nomee 22)

Also, Dan, your Chastity Bear link is buggered (concatenated with a strangertickets one).

http://slog.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/m…

That's a harrowing tale of woe. Everyone should read it even though it didn't make me feel good at all and brought up some stuff I'd rather forget.

On a side note my sister who wears a purity ring seems on schedule to marry a guy who sets off 95% of my gaydar (she triggers it at about 50%). Her dad (my step-dad) recommended Exodus International to our brother, who rocks just the way he is.

Grrrrr: I think that Babs once sang "People, who needs people?" time to shift focus for a bit.

Legally the definition of rape has evolved to "sexual assault." Rape used to be limited to penis-in-vagina; now "sexual assault" is any un-consented-to touching of genitals or secondary sexual characteristics (ass, tits, etc) by another person, not just the act that would have rendered a potential child of uncertain parentage.

At the end of the day, old-fashioned rape and contemporary purity culture are all about property (if I may channel Charles) and inheritance rules. Daddy only wants his own son to inherit his economic and other forms of capital. Making sure that a woman's child is the blood of her husband requires virginity till marriage and sex-with-husband-only after marriage. Before DNA testing, it was always Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe, hence patriarchal policing of women's bodies.

This is what The Scarlet Letter is all about, by the by.

I think Cienna might get shit because she has been overly focused on the subject. Same thing again and again. Kind of like Goldy and guns/Seattle Times. Plus she is queen of troll bait, of course she has her merry band of trolls following her from post to post.

To be clear, chastity is not celibacy. A married woman can be chaste if she only has sex with her husband.

@10: OVERLY focused? God. You are obtuse. She is troll bait because she is a woman on the Internet. That is literally all it takes. Add that to speaking on this topic, a topic that effects Every.. Single.. Woman.. On.. The.. Planet ( not to mention many many men as well) and well, it's open fucking season!
I mean seriously! Overly FOCUSED?
Christ!

Cue overwrought reaction.

Overly focused, as in the majority of all of her articles lately have been about this one topic. It's not just her; the SLOG has become obsessed with just a few pet causes, imo. Hell, the only person with truly original stuff these days is Charles.

As for troll bait, you can blame the patriarchy all you want, but it is pretty known that Cienna loves to add little jabs to her articles to get people talking in the comments. A practice which brings out the trolls. Ask her herself , I'm sure she will admit it.

I don't agree that someone who believes in purity culture automatically believes non-virgins deserve to be raped. Just like someone who believes in god doesn't deserve to automatically be lumped in with Westboro Baptist lunatics. I think the purity things is misguided, but it's not that misguided. And while I'd love for prudes to get more realistic about sexual health, I don't agree that this kind of hyperbole will help bring them around.

These people are just god-fearing. And check out why they are afraid of god's punishment: http://youtu.be/YxT_EOO4BTg

Shorter @10, @13: Cienna's just asking for it. What a fucking troll-slut.

@13, you're right. Slog is on the verge of becoming as much of a howling echo chamber as any wingnut blog, which is a shame. Mudede may be just as much a troll-baiter as Cienna or Goldy (Christ Goldy, you and three other people read the Seattle Times editorial page, give it a rest), but at least he's got fresh topics once in a while.

@13 Jesus, don't most people on this blog do that? If you're not adding some commentary then all you're doing is posting a link, you know?

To you it might seem like forced "little jabs." To me it seems like (justified) anger manifest in words over some truly sickening shit. So I suppose we can call it a matter of perception, and the fact you see it as just "troll bait" says something about the importance you personally assign to these issues.

@13 - Overwrought reaction? @12 was spot on in her denunciation of your claim. Overly focused? All you need to do is scroll back to see that your claim is baseless. And besides you cannot "overly focus" on something as hideous as our rape culture. If you think Cienna is overly focused on this topic, you sir, are part of the problem, and you should examine that.

Cienna doesn't read the comments anymore, and I commend her for it.

@16 Trifecta! Lack of reading comprehension skills, canned outrage, and militant stupidity. Slog Newbie, 2013.

@13: Dude, she could do nothing but blog about kittens all day and she'd still get trolled. True. Fact.
Sorry the topic is such a drag for you. It must be hard to endure being so bored and uncomfortable. Can we get you anything? A cushion? Maybe a little glass of water? How about a poke in the ass with steel pipe until your intestines pop out?
Oh, oops! Sorry, sorry! There I go being overly focused! Wouldn't want you to get overwrought thinking about such things.

Snark aside, you are part of the problem. Solve the problem and we'll stop talking about it.

Hernandez, I respectfully disagree. Personally , I have always thought that Cienna goes out of her way to push buttons to get a reaction out of people.

Also, you have no fucking clue as to what importance I assign to this issue, so there is that. As a matter of fact, I don't think I have said anything on the topic, I was just suggesting some reasons why people give Cienna shit. And no where did I say she was wrong or that I disagree with her.

@15, I love that Russian(?)-accented young lady's commentary, especially since Russian evangelical immigrants have some committed some horrific hate crimes here. Two quick links:

http://www.elisanders.net/godwaswiththem…

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/16/…

@10,

You think that Dan isn't king of troll bait? Oh right, but he's a man, so he's not asking for it.

A few years back, when ECB was still here, she posted a story about an elderly man who got in trouble for spying on his single female neighbors with binoculars, and specifically she criticized the writer of the article for blaming the victims. She got endless amount of shit in the comments with a majority of male commenters saying that the bitches were asking for it. A few days later, Schmader posted the exact same article, with almost exactly the same commentary. No shit, no abuse of women in the comments. If you think women don't get shit on for being women, you ARE part of the problem.

In short, fuck off.

@23 Unlike, say, you? What with the 666 in your handle?

From the indications you have just given, Hernandez and the rest of us have deduced that you don't in fact think rape is a serious enough issue to discuss in a sustained manner. So if you do think differently and for some reason care what we all think, give us a reason to think so.

@23;
Read Cienna's chicken post and the comments on it to get a clue. And that fact that you think anyone here is overly focused on this incredibly horrible subject tells me that you really don't assign much importance to this issue.

@14: I am sure ig you asked 99% of people involved in purity culture if non-virgins should be raped, they'd say 'of course not." But as a woman who left the purity culture pointed out on her blog, the hyper-focus on complete sexual purity shifts the focus from sex being consensual to sex being allowed (ie: within the bonds of matrimony). Under this system, rape is seen as just another sexual sin, in the same category as entirely consensual and loving (but non-married) hanky-panky, or even just sexy thoughts at the extremes.. Additionally, purity culture commonly also emphasizes that women shouldn "tempt" men by dressing in what they have decided is an 'immodest" wayt, which makes the woman responsible for the man's emotions and actions.

Tl;dr Purity culture can be the basis for rape culture, even if individual people wearing purity rings aren't running around screaming "rape the sluts!":

Valuing purity and chastity does not encourage rape. It is cultural values that treat women as less than men that cause both these things. The statement "a culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture" is false. Prizing purity and tolerating rape share correlation, not causation.

In the modern world, it is perfectly possible to value chastity as a form of self-control without thinking that women are worth less than men and therefore without encouraging rape. In other words, if you see a Texas schoolteacher talking to girls about chastity, don't immediately assume that she's making it more likely for these girls to get raped. Lots of those programs have many things wrong with them, but this isn't one of them.

@21: Oh please. Read what you said at 10. You said Cienna gets trolled because she is asking for it. Which is pretty fucking ironic on a post about rape culture - a prime tenet of which is that women who get raped are asking for it.

Of course, if I find trolling and bullshit rape jokes offensive, I must be a newbie, right? After all, someone who has been on the Intertubes for a couple of decades could not possibly be disgusted by that particular stream of masculine arrested-adolescent behaviour. That's just the way things are. If it pisses me off, that's my problem.

Jesus fuck.

Bequine @29, I was just thinking about that this weekend--if sex-outside-of-heterosexual-marriage is a sin, period, then there's no distinction between doin' it with your very willing girlfriend, and forcing your unwilling girlfriend to do it. So once you've determined to "break God's law," you might as well do the latter if the former isn't available. Blech.

@30: why don't you just go light a candle to Maria Goretti ok?

@10 - You are so blinded by your sexism that I don't think you can even troll this topic properly.

@30 - You are an idiot.

@Lissa - I am so glad that you take the time to engage in these comment threads, I value your voice and thank you!

Y'all fucking retarded. For the record:

I was just suggesting some reasons why people might give Cienna shit, in reply to @2. I never put a value myself on what she was writing. You can add all the emotional baggage you like on my comment, it doesn't change what I said. Kind of hilarious that I am now the SLOG poster child for Rape Culture.

Thank you Kesmeshi, for putting words in my mouth. You will always be a cock, in my opinion.

Lissa, thank you for letting me know I am part of the problem. I will make be sure I inform my daughter I am a proponent of rape culture, since you deem it so.

Backyard Bombardier, we could not have made it
this far with out your thoughtless knee-jerk reactions.

Hernandez: When I refer to Cienna's use of "troll bait" I did not mean the topics themselves, but the barbs she sticks in her articles specifically designed to get a reaction from particular groups of people. Hopefully that will put my statement in a better light.

Sahara29: The 666 is refers to my stupid infantile internet handle I used when I was a kid. I specifically use it on SLOG
because it apt due to my belief that grown people arguing with each other anonymously is stupid and infantile. It is meant to be Ironic. Thanks for showing interest.

@31 THIS

@35 They aren't putting words in your mouth. They're comparing aggregate responses to her posts vs. (for lack of a better term) control group as male posters of the same material with the same commentary. Perceiving a "barb" is very subjective and part of the problem.

Welp, Rotten, when you say that a writer is overly focused on a subject, it implies you think the subject isn't worth the time the write is giving it. There have been a couple of rape-related stories hitting the international news recently, and it's not unexpected that one or more SLOG writers will address the subject.

Describing a woman's reaction as 'overwrought' when discussing rape culture doesn't exactly make you Feminist of the Year. Someone having a daughter doesn't mean they can't be a jerk; it doesn't grant a get-out-of-jerkiness-free card.

If you think Charles doesn't know his way around a troll, you're sorely mistaken.

Rotten, your dismissive attitude characterizing Cienna as "overly focused" on this issue is indeed a problem. If you wish to change the culture in which your daughter lives, and by extension free this blog for those topics you find more worthy of discussion, then please, I beg you, put up or shut up. Are you doing anything about rape? Since your own child is at risk? Or are you content to let it slide, and call my concern, Cienna's concern, keshmeshi's concern etc etc etc overwrought? Because, for true my dear, if you aren't part of the solution then you *are* part of the problem.

Go look your daughter in the eye and tell her which it is.

@37 I never was talking about differing responses to male/ female bloggers. That has absolutely nothing to do with my comment. I just suggested that she has a narrow focus; rape trolls and anti women trolls are going to get a lot more mileage if she keeps on writing about rape and women. I don't see what the fuck is so controversial about that comment. I don't see how that is an endorsement of rape and sexism.

As for barbs, please for the love of God someone has to back me up that Cienna has a very controversial in your face writting style.

Well, he has a daughter. That certainly settles it.

@14 TheBigRagu,

I don't understand why whenever something like "rape culture" or "purity culture" is discussed, someone assumes this means that all participants in the culture automatically support rape.

Being part of the "purity culture" does not mean everyone thinks that non-virgins deserve to be raped. Nor does being part of "rape culture" mean that all men want to rape women.

However, both cultures define women's value based primarily on their sexual relationships. A woman does not control her sexuality; she is valuable socially if she is virgin and valuable only for sex if she is not. Rape becomes the ultimate aggression; it strips the victim of all value. Worst of all, the culture encourages both the aggressor and the victim to believe it.

@40: Oh I see. She should just stop making such a fuss and be nicer. Then things would be fine.
God help your daughter.

As for barbs, please for the love of God someone has to back me up that Cienna has a very controversial in your face writting style.

<crickets chirp>

@34: thank you Soupytwist. You are very kind.

@44 I will never understand why you continue to willfully misinterpret my statements.

@40: Yeah, those barbs? They exist entirely in your head.

Doh! I meant @44.

No, wait, I didn't. What I think I meant is that I should go take a nap.

Which one is Cienna's chicken post?

Well thanks for playing TVDINNER.

All in all I probably could have done something more constructive for the last hour and half while the kids were sleeping, but I have to admit this thread has been pretty illuminating.

Oh and Jeremy, since I know your lurking, I'm coming out to the pub tonight.

@40 Rotten666

Yeah, she loves to say little things at the ends of her posts like the following:

But I'm sure some wise (male) Slog commenter will explain to me how these women could've avoided their brutal gang rapes or, better yet, what they did to provoke these men into gang raping them.

I agree that you are wrong about her being "overly focused" (evidence). She *is* more likely to post about rape and woman's issues than other writers, but it is not her focus. She writes on lots of other stuff.

I don't think you meant anything by it, though.

@47: You have said Cienna is overly focused on rape and you feel her style to be controversial and in your face. You state that Slog spends to much time on this topic.
I understand you perfectly, we all do.

We might as well be back in the days of Catharine of Aragon. Sigh.

PS, the quote in my last post (@53) is from here.

@47, there's a difference between saying: "Ciena gets a lot of trolls because she addresses issues such as rape and feminism and that really brings out the haters," and saying:

"I think Cienna might get shit because she has been overly focused on the subject. Same thing again and again." plus "Cue overwrought reaction."

If a bunch of people are telling you that they read your remarks a similar way, you might want to check yourself.

@53, @57, @58

Thanks for your constructive criticism and level headed comments.

@29
Purity culture can be the basis for rape culture, even if individual people wearing purity rings aren't running around screaming "rape the sluts!"

Yup.

Also, any time somebody talks about what female victims ought to have done to prevent rape -- even if such things come under the seemingly rational guise of "crime prevention tips" -- it constitutes a tacit agreement with the use of rape as a tool of social intimidation against women acting as freely as men do.

Rape is a hate crime. Perpetuating the hate perpetuates the crime, even for those who don't explicitly endorse the crime itself.

Thanks for the link! Yay chickens!

Rotten666,

I'm willing to trust that your first response has been partially misinterpreted and that you are not trying to dismiss the topic or Ms. Madrid. I do think that your wording intentionally, or not, intended to blame her for the garbage comments that have been made towards her person. Of course, there are many reasons for troll comments, but excuses do not justify actions. The vitolic commenters were in the wrong. Perhaps, defense is not your besr path here? How about an acknowledgement that your first comment can be legitimately interpreted as dismissive and express your regret? For bonus points you can try reading your comment through the eyes of those of us here; rape and sexual assault survivors who are distressed about the news and the vitrol that has been directed towards Ms. Madrid. Would you try to grasp that many of us are extremely sensitive, with good reason, to the topic of rape, Internet bullying, the demise of the Violence Against Women Act, et cetera...?

Kind regards.

Ignore @62, please. The point has been made already.

I haven't been paying attention but I vote that purity balls be banned for the semi-pedophilic functions they are--they take patriarchal sexual agency and introduce a twisted perversion that's just creepy.

In other news, let's pile on rotten. He's no Mister G (he may even just made an error of ignorance or tact--imagine that!--rather than being a truly vile trolling asshole) but we can have our dose of smug, self-righteous indignation for the day.

I also wonder if drunk culture is also rape culture (research ostensibly indicates binge drinking is at least corellated to rape). The Stranger loves them some drunk culture. Are they then also "part of the problem?"

@41 I happen to agree that one way to tell whether a purity culture is misogynistic or not is to watch whether it is only girls who are told to limit their sexual activity or whether it is girls and boys.

However, you will notice that I did not say that only girls get schooled by Texas schoolteachers. I said that a Texas schoolteacher teaching about chastity is not necessarily making it more likely that these girls will be raped and that it is not valuing chastity itself that causes these destructive attitudes toward rape.

@62 I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most eloquent writer. And I won't deny my initial statement was ham-fisted. I tried to clarify my position, but once people decided they knew my intent, no amount of explaining could move that mountain. I thought @23 would do the trick, then again @35, and @40.

Thanks for your input.

@63 He deserves at least as much support and constructive criticism as vitriol, don't you think?

And once again the conversation becomes about how butthurt the men are that women call this culture what it is and don't acquiesce quietly to their mansplaining objections. Way to go, guys.

@ Rotten666, what would really help is knowing your opinion about the topics being put forward, like what you think about rape culture. Is it real? Are claims about it exaggerated? Is rape like other crimes that are universally reviled, or are some victims likely to be assumed as deserving of it?

Regarding your efforts to clarify, I'll remark that you only get one chance to make a good impression. That said, I'm willing to take your comments as meaning just what you say they are - an explanation of why Cienna gets trolled. I personally disagree; the reaction she gets is out of all proportion to things like Charles posts about crying, for example.

Cienna may be blunt like Dan, as ECB was, but Dan doesn't get any vitriol from anyone other than unregistered homophobes and the occasional self-righteous registered troll (Ecce Homo, SB, etc). Cienna (and ECB before her) get sexist crap from longtime Sloggers who should know better.

@69 As @41 and I were discussing, the difference seems to be that the CDC advocates abstinence for both men and women. It is unlikely that the form of purity promoted by the CDC or that promoted by non-messed-up chastity rationales stems from the sort of misogynistic underlying values that encourage rape.

Hmmm. Very interesting how much of this comments thread was Meta; about comments and their contents, about Cienna and other writers, and not so much about the . . . content of the post and its importance. Not echo chamber exactly, but not precisely grappling with the issue.

Prisons are built with stones of Law,
Brothels with bricks of Religion

@3:
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/ESQ0107de…

@74: We can't seem to have a conversation here about rape culture, because we can't seem to even agree it exists.

@71 FOR THE WIN

Nice meta-meta @74.

Nice point, @65. But I'm sure that those liquored-up hipsters that we see on DotW aren't *that* type of man/boy.

Perhaps. It's deeper than the Stranger, but our collective immaturity is far more deleterious than purity culture proper. I honestly don't know really. My question was sincere.

It all did get pretty meta didn't it? And all about Rotten666. I lost my temper, and I apologize for that.
The point remains that rape, and the culture that supports it, is endemic. Brushing it aside is not acceptable. It is a form of slavery, an attempt to control women's bodies and autonomy. Dressing it up in pretty white dresses as the Purity Movement doesn't mitigate that aim one tiny bit. It's still about controlling women and their bodies.

Sloggers, I need advice. This post is very timely for me, as the other day I received my World Vision newsletter with an update on a couple of children I sponsor. The newsletter talked happily about how wonderful it was to be witness to a beautiful purity ceremony for the young girls in the village.

I was truly appalled and disgusted by this (and by the crappy hippy-dippy way the ceremony was described as some sort of pretty unicorn-coloured marvel) and have spent the last couple of days wresting with whether to withdraw my contributions - I don't want to penalise the children I sponsor, but this is absolutely insupportable. Of course if I withdrew I'd redirect my money to another charity; it's just that this funding is specifically supporting two actual and existing children.

I'm certainly going to write to World Vision and express my disgust and concern (and now I have this excellent article to link to), but I suspect they are going to send me some anodyne form response defending their position - and then what do I do?

@Rotten666, in all my college journalism courses, I was never told that it was bad form to write about something often. I've never heard anyone accuse war correspondents of being "overly focused" on war.

Trolls and all, I'm glad that the concept of rape culture has entered the mainstream, international media/dialogue. The paradigm can't shift if people that don't "get it" aren't presented another option.

@14 @30, while maybe not intentional, putting value on virginity/purity rings (slut-shaming) does promotes rape culture. When women are considered "bad" or "soiled" when they've had sex they are silenced and demoralized. They question their responsibility when they are raped. They end up not coming forward about it, and not talking about it openly. This gives men (primarily) the green light to rape women (primarily). If you don't believe this may I present evidence exhibit A from that awful rape thread on reddit earlier this year: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/commen…

"So, anyways, after a while it became boring to go after the sluts and sorority girls that would easily throw their cunt after you. I wanted the thrill of the chase, and that's what led me to forcing myself on girls. "

@Rotten666, in all my college journalism courses, I was never told that it was bad form to write about something often. I've never heard anyone accuse war correspondents of being "overly focused" on war.

@14 @30, and other detractores--While maybe not intentional, putting value on virginity/purity rings (and slut-shaming, which, in my experience goes hand in hand) does promotes rape culture. If sex is considered bad, or to be avoided rape victims are silenced and demoralized. They question their responsibility when they are raped. They often do not come forward about it and won't talk about it openly. This gives rapists the green light to rape. If you don't believe this may I present evidence exhibit A from that awful rape thread on reddit earlier this year: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/commen…

"So, anyways, after a while it became boring to go after the sluts and sorority girls that would easily throw their cunt after you. I wanted the thrill of the chase, and that's what led me to forcing myself on girls. "

Ms F - You appear to have missed the letter from the Virgin's Fiancee (Who Wasn't). He had Walked the Walk; she had let him assume she had as well, but, once the extent to which he required a virgin bride became clear, wanted to excuse her past in a way that reminded me of Ms Noonan defending her own particular divorce while attacking the institution in general - it was only two, and she wasn't a S***. Vile. She came in for almost as much negative commentary as he did.

I know where you're trying to go, and it's not without some value for some people, but the mechanism is too broken, and you can't get there from here that way.

Abstinence-before-marriage Culture is Begin-marriage-by-a-rape Culture.

Telling females that not themselves, but society should allow when they have sex and with whom (through a wedding day), totally destroys their individual right to consent.

When consent has been ceremiously given away by society to the husband, can the new virgin wife stop sex all by herself if she's afraid on the first night ? Or if she feels some pain and she'd rather try it again some later time ? Or must she go through with it, despite wishing she could stop it ?

It's well known that abstaining from sex before marriage leads to the rape of the wife on the wedding night. It's a minor theme in 19th century litterature - a time that did put extra emphasis on virginity before marriage - especially in Balzac's writing.

But Purity Culture is much worse than Abstinence-before-marriage Culture.

First, calling "pure" those females who have surrendered their right to consent to sex to society, is calling "impure" other females. It's drawing a target on them. It's calling for hate crimes on them.

But even more perniciously, asking women to wear symbols of their "purity", like "dressing modestly", is a very dangerous thing for both males and females.

"Dressing modestly" means nothing else than making sure that the man who's looking at the woman is not getting aroused. Not only do "pure" women have to give away their right to consent, they are also asked to somehow supress the sexual interest of males in them.

Putting the onus of males not getting aroused on female behaviour is absolute bullshit. Science tells us that arousal is involuntary, but can be somehow curbed and managed by the person experimenting it, the older the easier. And arousal is not linked to sexual desire. Nor to the circumstances being sexually appealing in nature.

Sex-negative cultures consider arousal as shameful, just like anything that's sex-related. Telling men that their boners (shame !) are provoked by females not dressing modestly enough, is opening wide the door for them to rape anything in sight as soon as random arousal hits.

So "dressing modestly" really means that everytime a man gets a boner and a woman is around, the said woman is perceived by that man as not dressed modestly enough (since he does have a boner), so... she's fair game. Any man feeling arousal at a woman's sight will caracterize her as impure, however virginal a woman may behave and dress.

"Dressing modestly" is an integral part of Rape Culture.

A rapist saying that his victim "asked for it" means just that : he believes that the woman is magically responsible of his own arousal, and that she made his arousal happen in an intentional way. Males raised in a "purity culture" that puts shame on arousal and sex will feel violated by their own arousal, and thus will blame the woman for it, and punish the woman through a hate crime.

Of course, asking girls and boys to abstain from sex before their sexual majority is good. They have to know that sex is something that should only happen between consenting adults, and as long as they are not adults they are not strong enough to resist to external pressure towards having sex despite not really wanting to.

But there is nothing "pure" in that. Nothing is "impure" in sex. It has potentially dire consequences, just like voting, so it must be restricted to adults, who hopefully are mature (and informed enough) to have sex without the consequences of unwanted pregnancy or fatal illnesses.

It's not "impure" either to vote. Call non-voting before one is 25 or married "pure", call for a special dressing attire to indicate that one doesn't vote yet, and you'll get hate crimes on early voters (and non-early voters taken for disingenuous early voters), as stupid as it sounds.

Purity culture is rape culture. They both promote the idea that women are responsible for men's behaviour. Purity culture teaches a girl to dress modestly so as not to tempt boys and lead them down the wrong path; rape culture tells women that they 'get raped' because of what they wear. The language that's used strips the agency from the men doing the raping, turning rape into a natural phenomenon like inclement weather, something that women can guard against simply by dressing properly or staying indoors.

thanks for posting this, Dan. It'll be interesting to see if even a mild focus on rape culture in your blog exposes you to the same violent rhetoric that all women, ever, are exposed to for discussing the same issues (SPOILER ALERT: yes, it will, because the defenders of rape have no scruples, obviously, and also not enough enemies)

So purity is rape. God help the poor organic cucumber, that horny and relentless bastard.

By the way, has anyone noticed that the Stranger doesn't do any local reporting these days? A lot easier to sit in some room and add their snarky observations to whatever they found on the Internet. Hey Stranger, your readers are the ones to do that, not your writers.

Purity rings and Christianity are not the only offenders.

Burqas also contribute to misogyny, submission of women, and a rape culture. Time to point out that vile garment for what it is, rather than apologizing out of fear for political incorrectness.

93: What the fuck are you even talking about? Find me one comment on any of these threads that has apologized for misogyny under the guise of political correctness.
Here, if it will make you feel better:

Burqas are a manifestation of the patriarchy and rape culture.

Happy?

91: The connection isn't as ridiculous as you're trying to make it sound. Purity and "rape culture" both stem from viewing women as property that switches ownership from fathers to husbands. Cultures with this outlook tend to believe that this property should be "pure" so that the husband gets the full value. A culture that views women in this way isn't going to take rape as seriously as they should; to such a culture, rape is property damage at worst, and fitting punishment for impurity at best.

If a culture views women as full human beings, they're not going to make a big issue out of women's purity because why would they? There's no future owner requiring her to be appraised using such criteria. They're also more likely to see rape as the brutal crime it is and less likely to rationalize it as having anything to do with the victim's value. So you'd be hard-pressed to find a culture obsessed with women's purity that doesn't also have issues with rape.

And even as cultures evolve, vestigial attitudes stemming from these will still affect how women are perceived even when they're no longer considered legal property.

But #95, what about dolphins, the gang rapists of the sea? Everyone still wants to swim with them. Why do they get off the hook? Is their smile the secret to their success?

@95 I think that what @91 is trying to say--and I agree--is that it is possible to value purity and sexual restraint without also making light of rape or treating women like objects. Whether or not any real-world cultures has ever done this is a separate question. The way to tell seems to be whether the systems values chastity in male and female people or only in female people.

@97 - The word "purity" itself is a problem for your argument as it attributes perceived worth. Go back and read @87's comment. The idea that you place value (which you are doing by using the word pure) on someone based on sexual history is demeaning to the person, and dangerous to society. Encouraging responsible behavior is the preferable alternative.

I have more to say, but my hangover is making it difficult.

98 is right DRF. Purity is a loaded word, and you are being disingenuous to suggest that any culture that uses it in a sexual context applies it equally to both genders. That is simply not the case.

97: Going by his other posts, what 91 actually seems to be trying to say is "lol rape! Take THAT, Seattle 'progressives' " (He's not the brightest bulb around, even by Slog standards).

@100: Yeeeeeeeh I've gotta agree with you there.

#29, #43, #83, #84: Very thought-provoking responses. I was and am having a hard time figuring out what is 'purity' culture. I get the extreme side better now (don't 'encourage' bad behavior in men in what you wear, etc)...and there I more easily see your points. And I think on the moderate side you have the folks that say "Wait until you are married to have sex". There I didn't see as clear a connection between purity culture and rape culture. But your points help me see that a little better now. The idea that sex is shameful, especially for unmarried women, can create an atmosphere that is more intimidating for someone to report a rape. And it's generally not intentional on the part of those who have that 'shame' perspective, but it's a sad effect of it.

So thanks. Good points politely put and I concede. And apologize if my initial response was insensitive.