DoucheArt

Between each and every single one of these messages the person who received them let the sender know that she wasn't interested or flattered by his messages at all, but as you can see, that didn't stop him.

This is an aspect of rape culture and even though we have the option to block people online (and have been told that's what we should do instead of making DoucheArt), it shouldn't come to that nor can we block street harassers, sexual assaulters, and rapists.

These messages translate to real life even if it makes you uncomfortable to admit it, even if you've never seen it or experienced it, and even if we can block people like this from sending us more than one message.

There's a problem when, in our culture, no doesn't mean no, not interested doesn't stop the messages, and people feel entitled to detail these sorts of intimate actions without consent. By the time we actually block the messenger, it's already too late. That's like telling us to file a restraining order against a masked person who flashed us in a parking lot. We've already seen (or read) and can't unsee or unread. The person has already gotten off on sending the message in the first place just like the flasher gets off on the act of flashing. And, in the case of the internet, the pervert already has your username. If he chooses (and sometimes they do...it has happened to me), he can make profile after profile so that every time you block him, he can look you up. Even if you change YOUR profile, he'll still be able to find you.

As much as we like to joke around and poke fun at the idiotic things these people say, it's a sign of a deeper problem, a problem that needs to be addressed in a major way. --jenniy

This week an enlisted Navy sailor, Nicholas Lord, decided it would be cool if he got wasted and made comments about rape on Facebook. It didn’t end there, however. This “man” decided he would then go onto a woman’s photo, a woman wearing a Navy shirt who said she had recently enlisted, and make the following comment:

"You’ll end up pregnant real soon you fucking whore. If I could, and I knew you I’d hold you down and rape you."



We all do idiotic things when we’re drunk. I get that. But, rape is a serious matter, and as the old proverb says A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts. Threatening to rape someone even via social media is actually assault per the law. Under American common law, assault is defined as creating fear of imminent harm or offensive contact with a person. If she had any information on her profile regarding her location, assault charges could be and should be possible. The longer we take shit like this as less than a serious matter, the more rape culture continues to exist.

I know that people think it’s funny to joke about rape and will argue that this is the case here (an idiot drunkenly joking about rape on the Internet), but is there ever a time when making a rape joke is actually
funny to the people who live with the threat of rape all the time? I don’t think so personally, and I doubt many women find rape jokes to be incredibly funny and appropriate. Victims of rape really don’t give a shit that you think it’s funny to joke about it like it’s not one of the most horrible, vicious things a person can do to another. If the roles were reversed and women were suddenly making jokes about things that men were more often the victims of, I’m sure that men wouldn’t think they were supposed to “have a sense of humor” and get over it. Women would be the usually crazy bitches that we are when we do things that don’t mesh with the views of the men around us (or at least some of the men…yes, I know it’s #notallmen, but keep in mind that it is most definitely #yesallwomen—whether it’s all of men or not, we all still experience the same fucked up shit as women because we’re women).

Our Douche of the Week posts have often concerned rape in the past, and unfortunately, this week is no different. I wish there were a plethora of other subjects more prevalent than this one, but it's a conversation we keep coming back to because rape culture in our society is such a driving force that people consistently and fully promote an acceptable attitude of violence towards women and victim-blaming ultimately landing them a spot here as a Top of the Line Douchecanoes.

This week, it's 20 year old Brandon Vandenburg, a former football player at Vanderbilt college in Tennessee who was kicked off the football team last year after he and some of his fellow teammates were charged with raping an unconscious female student. This week, Vandenburg submitted a 128 page document to the court to have his case dismissed on the grounds that the female student in question had a questionable history filled with promiscuity and drinking.

In the early morning hours of June 23, 4 young football players took turns having sexual intercourse with the victim while she was passed out in Vandenburg's room. The 4 were subsequently charged with 5 counts of aggravated rape and 2 counts of sexual battery.

Mr. Vandenburg here, however, feels that no crime took place simply because the victim obviously liked to have sex and drink. It doesn't matter that the victim had no chance to say yes to being plowed by 4 men who lined up to have unprotected sex with her. She absolutely might have done so. But, the big thing here is that SHE WASN'T GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO SAY YES OR NO. She was not given a choice to be in control of her own body because these 4 assclowns saw fit to take what they wanted. She liked football players anyway, right? She liked to drink and fuck, right? So there's no way she would have said no. Might as well fuck her and video and take pictures of it for their own benefit.

This is the entitlement aspect of rape culture.

Men feel that since a woman has had sex, she will have sex with any man who ever wants to have sex with her, and even if she is completely unable to say yes, it's fine because she would have said yes anyway.

It concerns me that this douchebag's attorneys would even file this document. Rape shield laws are in place to protect victims from having to answer any questions whatsoever about their sexual history. Because *NEWSFLASH* a woman who has had sex isn't going to have sex with every dick we can find. We're not roaming the streets after becoming sexually active unable to control ourselves and jumping on the drunken homeless man sleeping in the dumpster behind 7/11. We're not bending over on the bus and letting the guy with horrible B.O. and 2 teeth stick us from behind. Rape shield laws are in place BECAUSE SAYING YES ONCE DOES NOT MEAN GIVE MEN THE BLANKET AUTHORITY TO GIVE "IT" TO US AT ANY TIME THEY CHOOSE. We're not asking for it by saying yes. We're not incapable of saying no just because we've said yes. This girl's supposed "promiscuity" does not at all diminish the fact that she passed out in a dorm room and was then violated by 4 different "men" who thought it would be great to treat her like a human blow-up doll.

Who the fuck can possibly defend their own actions when they're actions clearly show that each one of them took turns having sex with an unconscious girl? A douche, that's who.

I had a debate not long ago with someone who said that we need to keep fighting to keep girls from drinking too much and making themselves vulnerable to these kinds of attacks, but the fact of the matter is that whether she had too much to drink or not doesn't diminish the fact that cultural attitudes ensured that these men would take advantage of the opportunity. Every woman in this country could absolutely refuse to drink for the rest of their lives and we'd still be raped. We'd still be victims. Had she not been drunk, the chances that she would have been overpowered and raped by 4 guys who thought she owed it to them (obviously) to fuck them all are pretty fucking high. The drink just made their job easier....it didn't suddenly turn them into rapists. The mentality was already there.

What needs to happen is for this asshole to be laughed out of court with this idiotic motion to dismiss, and each one of them needs to spend a lengthy time in prison. The statistics show that 97% of rapists never spend any time in jail and that just speaks to the cultural influence at work. That needs to change and idiots like this need to be the example. When the mentality that men are entitled to give women what they're asking for is changed with imposed prison sentences, when rapists aren't given carte blanche to repeatedly force themselves on women to the complete acceptance of the system and society, we'll see less of this kind of crime. --jenniy

We almost had to name ourselves Douche of the Week again. After stating "if I never hear another Climax joke, it would be too soon" while sharing an earlier post from this week on my personal Facebook page, Ash and I proceeded, in fact, to make several more Climax jokes. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, though, there was a much more obvious choice.

Thanks, George Will, for taking the heat for us.

If you’re not the keen follower of rape culture news that I am, you may have missed the uproar about George Will’s column in the Washington Times this past week. If you didn’t catch it, here’s a recap: Good old George feels that the current examination by the White House of Title IX complaints of more than 50 campuses across the nation is unwarranted and a waste of time. The law itself encompasses equal treatment of the sexes on college campuses and specifically requires schools to thoroughly investigate rape and sexual assault claims. The schools under investigation have had complaints filed regarding the school’s handling (or often lack thereof) of sexual assault cases. George also feels that this epidemic of “sexual assault” (yes, he actually used condescending little quotation marks) is making real education impossible and is giving “victims” some sort of privileged status that comes with benefits and social recognition. It conveys that being a victim is something to be coveted, he says. It creates an environment where victims proliferate and the accused are the true victims as campuses cater to the mixture of “hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults” without regard for academia or due process.

The first thing to note here is that George Will has obviously never been raped. Anyone who had gone through the nightmares, the panic triggers, the crying, the shame, the unexplainable guilt, the loss of friends, the loss of happiness, the turmoil, the pain, and the suffering that comes from being sexually assaulted would never, ever be able to minimize what victims go through the way this asshat did. It’s not a fucking cakewalk. It isn’t as simple as getting drunk, banging, and the regretting it. When a woman says NO, she motherfucking means NO. When that isn’t respected and a man takes what he wants anyway even if she has said YES a thousand fucking times before, it is still rape. It is still a violation. And, yes oh yes she is still a victim.

There most certainly IS an epidemic of sexual assault across this entire country especially on college campuses but it has nothing to do with any benefits rape victims receive. It is most certainly because old, privileged white men like George Will—the people with truly coveted and benefited status--have no respect for women. They have no idea what it means to be afraid—to fear that every man you go on a date with will use force to get what he wants or worse. He has no idea what it’s like to be slapped in the face by rape scene after rape scene in movies, television, and books for entertainment value. And, he apparently has no idea that more times than not sexual assault is completely ignored or the victim is outright shamed for her behavior making it impossible to actually gain any of these fucking privileges he speaks of. Coveted status? If coveted means lower than dog shit on the dean's shoes, then oh yes, victim status is coveted. Men like him are the reason that rape culture in this country prevails because they deny. They deny the effects of rape, the culture of rape, and the very existence of rape. It doesn’t affect them personally at the end of the day (unless they happen to know someone who IS raped and even then, it’s not one of their own orifices) so why get all worked up over it?

As long as we have people who blame sexual assault on what a woman wears, where she was, what she had to drink, and whether or not she loved to have sex, we’re never going to see any changes in this very real epidemic. The blame is not on victims. It’s on the rapists—the people who feel entitled to take what they want from another person. We live in a culture where the shame and guilt are placed on the victim, where the victim has to answer for her actions and not the other way around. The guilt certainly should reside with rapists, but right there with them are their partners in crime--men like George Will who perpetuate this culture of violence through sheer, unadulterated, privileged fucking ignorance.
I'd say that the only way George Will will ever understand the experience of rape and what it puts you through...how it kills a part of you...is to be a victim himself, but having gone through that at 13 without a single fucking benefit to show for it, I wouldn't wish it on the biggest of douches--even him.

There’s nothing funny about a rape joke.

No, seriously.

There is absolutely no comedic value in making a mockery of a crime in which one or more persons completely and violently invades someone’s body without permission by body part or object. There is nothing funny about overpowering someone and taking what you want. There’s nothing funny about someone having that done to them either. In fact, the way we treat this crime globally by making a mockery of it is part of the reason it’s not handled as seriously as it should be.

Not taking this seriously contributes to rape culture here and abroad. It continues to ensure that the vast majority of rape victims are too ashamed to report the crime to police, men and women alike. It ensures that when a victim does make a report, he or she is the butt of the joke and no real investigation ever happens. And, it ensures, unfortunately, that most rapists never spend time in prison. In fact, the estimates here in the United States are that 97% of rapists never spend even a day behind bars and are free to rape over and over and over again.

Just to be clear—they do. It’s not a one time thing for most of them. In most studies, people who admit to forcing themselves on a partner or date or another person do so more than once. More than twice. Repeatedly. They leave multitudes of victims in their wakes and continue to escape punishment.

That is why the Douche of the Week is none other than Miley Cyrus.