So in addition to all the radfem censorship on reddit …
I posted the following on the AskMen subreddit:
Why do men rape?
That’s my question. Seriously. Why do men rape? I just wrote a novel answering that question, Impact, but I’d like to hear from men. (And perhaps should’ve posted here BEFORE I wrote the novel. Didn’t occur to me.)
I immediately received the message:
Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/AskMen.
Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose.
I assumed it was an automatic removal, and I assumed that it was the word ‘rape’ that triggered the removal (which in itself would be telling—they anticipate getting, or do get, a lot of ‘Which way do you like to rape cunts the best?’ queries … ?). So I sent a note to the moderators, asking them to please read my post and reconsider.
Then I see received another response:
Your post has been flagged as trying to figure out a specific person’s or group of people’s actions or thinking.
Seriously? It’s taboo to try to understand people’s actions or thinking? WTF.
I decided to experiment and posted the same question on the AskWomen subreddit.
It was also removed. Reasons:
Graceless generalizations are not permitted
– People are not a hive mind.
– Speak only for yourself.
Do not
– generalize across all people of a gender, race, or ethnicity
– ask for mind reading
– ask for us to defend/justify other people’s behaviors
– assume that all people in a gender, race, or ethnicity do/think something
– ask for ‘male equivalent’/’female equivalent’ as these would not exist for most things due to different cultural processes
– exceptions: discussion of cultural norms; quotations
Woh. First, notice the difference. The women’s response is SO much better. More detailed, more explanatory … It is, in a nutshell, indicative of superior thinking.
And yes, I agree. The way I’d phrased the question was assuming a hive mind and generalizing across a sex. I could rephrase it: Why has rape become normalized in our culture? That would clearly fall into the exception of ‘discussion of cultural norms’ …
Even so, I wonder at the ‘Speak only for yourself’ rule. Limiting oneself to anecdote is no way to acquire knowledge. Are we to assume no one knows anything but their own subjective experience? Could no one have referred me to, say, Smithyman’s 1976 research, recently mentioned in The New York Times? Or the NFB film, Why Men Rape? Not to mention Neil Malamuth’s work … And why is it a problem, as it was for the men, to ask for mind reading? Do people not know their own minds? Have we become so incapable of introspection? Or is it, in the second case, that I was asking women to read men’s minds? Even so, can’t we speculate? With good reason and evidence?
