Spoiled Little Prince

by Shaker Sunless Nick

Via Marcella Chester, I came across name of Aaron P. Taylor, who seems bent on achieving the platonic ideal of rape-apologism. (Trigger Warning: In fact, because even the title of the piece—even the URL—merits a trigger warning, I will not link directly, but you can find the original post via Marcella).

The post is called: "Advice 4 Women: How to NOT Get a 'Deserved' Raping," and it's the story of Aaron's experience in a club, in which a woman danced suggestively with him and then refused his attempts to kiss her, leaving him sexually frustrated and full of advice for women about how to avoid getting raped—because not all guys are "nice" like he is.

Naturally, he engages in the initial disclaimer about how women don't deserve to be raped BUT… Then, just as predictably, he follows it with a couple of dozen paragraphs explaining how they totally do—he can't quite decide whether this is because they don't understand men properly, or because they are lying teases.

On the one hand:
Now, for you girls out there that may not be aware, when you dance with a guy over and over again, and get more and more suggestive in your intentions via dancing, a few things happen in the male psyche:

1. His brain sends blood from his head to his "little head" and gives him a boner

2. He starts to think: "I know we're just dancing…but DANG, she must REALLY want me to give it to her right!"
As far as 1 is concerned, erections are pretty autonomic—but I've never found that they remove my abilities to think, or to moderate my actions, or to exercise my conscience. As far as 2 is concerned, I've also not found them to remove my capacity to ask things instead of just assuming them.

Which brings me to the other hand:
What about the fact that this girl, who didn't have any REAL interest in me, simply teased me to rile me up in the hopes of boosting her own ego? What about the fact that this girl grinded her ass on my penis not once, twice, or three times, but several, SEVERAL times??
So Aaron assumed that a [woman] who was interested in a hot dance must have seen it as a precursor to sex, just as he did. And when that assumption fell short, it made her a liar and tease. His assumptions defined the truth, and he defined her by whether she fell in line with them. Later, he brings his two themes two together:
Understand something, ladies: men are creatures that are very easily stimulated via visually-pleasing images and certain touches. We get off on seeing erotic images – it's the reason girlie magazines and adult movies exist in the first place. We also get off anytime any girl even goes so far as to brush up against our private parts, especially in the frontal region.

So, when a girl comes along who is actively (read: not from a distance, not while sitting somewhere by herself, unaware that guy is looking at her, but actively) performing certain actions or saying certain things that signal sexual interest…

WHAT ELSE IS A GUY SUPPOSED TO THINK, other than: "This girl want to give me sex!"
Bringing us back to the old idea that we men have no self control; that our responses must be managed by [women] lest we run away with ourselves. Yet somehow, this mindless inability to control ourselves doesn't translate into it being a good idea to ask a [woman] what she's after—instead, in we should be left to jump to our own conclusions, and any [woman] who dares not to match them is a lying tease.

But [women]! He's still afraid you might not get it, so he resorts to one more argument:
Hmm… I see some of you ladies may still not get it. How about this: doing these sorts of things to a guy is akin to finding out about a sale at your favorite shopping store. If the place advertised all week long that they'd be having a midnight sale where everything in the store was going to be 50% off, and all during the week they assured you of getting such a great deal

…wouldn't you be a bit pissed off if, upon the day of the "advertised" sale, you discovered that instead of lowering the prices by half, they actually INCREASED the costs of their goods by double or triple?

It would almost make you want to say "screw this" and rob the store to get your promised discount, wouldn't it? Hmm, sounds like the thoughts of someone wanting to "take" what they were having teased in front of them…
As if [women's] bodies are comparable to a shop's wares—whether in the sense of being things, or of being available for him to own. As if a [woman] being interested in a dance was a promise of sex that she was then breaking—as if, once again, his mistaken assumptions make her a liar.

Aaron doesn't spend any time on what men can do to about this. Which is odd, seeing as how men have a very simple way of navigating this labyrinth: Ask; it's amazing how quickly the "mixed" or "misleading" signals will be cleared up. But Aaron's type doesn't like to ask. They want to live in a world where their impulses and passing thoughts are gospel truths, because any woman that doesn't match them is a liar, a slut, or a tease—where they need take no responsibility for their actions, because anything can be blamed on the women who failed to manage them properly.

A woman who acted this way would be dismissed as a spoiled little princess. So I guess that makes Aaron a spoiled little prince. Whom I cordially invite to get the fuck out of my gender. And species.

Shakesville is run as a safe space. First-time commenters: Please read Shakesville's Commenting Policy and Feminism 101 Section before commenting. We also do lots of in-thread moderation, so we ask that everyone read the entirety of any thread before commenting, to ensure compliance with any in-thread moderation. Thank you.

blog comments powered by Disqus