Rape Apologists: Old Testament, Black Panthers, Wikileaks, Hillary, Bernie… | Mickey Z.

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Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

Oct. 29, 2015

“A little bit of rape is good for a man’s soul.” (rape apologist, Norman Mailer)

In a recent article (10 Easy Ways for Men to Smash Gender Roles), I implored my fellow males to not be rape apologists and included a link to this video, as a recent example:

The appropriate reaction, I submit, is rage and (for the uninitiated) shock. After that, you may find yourself asking: How does a dude like Damon Wayans become such a proud, public, and unabashed rape apologist?

Well, of course, he might simply be a fan of the Old Testament. 

Deuteronomy, for example, teaches us: “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father 50 shekels of silver.” 

Then there’s Exodus: “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.”

Or this, from none other than Moses himself (Numbers 31:15-18): “Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

I could go on (and on) but… what if Wayans is an atheist? If so, he probably took his rape apology cues from the world’s most notorious non-believer, Richard Dawkins who tweets about things like “mild date rape.” (Like many other rape apologists, Dawkins doubles as a pedophilia apologist in his spare time.)

Then again, he could be a Trump supporter. 

Or a Hillary supporter. 

Or perhaps he’s merely Feelin’ the Bern!

Of course, since Wayans made his name in Hollywood, he could be swimming with the prevailing tide in La-La-Land. In doing so, he’d join the company of rape/pedophilia apologists like Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky,  Wong Kar Waï, Harmony Korine, John Landis, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Julian Schnabel, Barbet Schroeder, Martin Scorcese, Wim Wenders, and (of course) Woody Allen -- all of whom signed a petition, asking for the release of their colleague, Roman Polanski. Context: Polanski fled the United States to avoid jail time for drugging and raping (orally, vaginally, and anally) a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood in 1977. Another Polanski apologist in Hollywood is Wayans’ fellow Cosby apologist, Whoopi Goldberg.

Another possibility: With Wayans’ son under consideration to play a comic book character called “Black Panther” in a film, proud Dad could’ve gotten things mixed up and grabbed a copy of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice to learn more. If so, he would’ve discovered that the revered “revolutionary” viewed rape as “an insurrectionary act.”

“I started out practicing on black girls in the ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the evil of a day,” Cleaver boasted. “When I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically.”

Perhaps Wayans’ Black Power history readings then led him to award-winning poet, Amiri Baraka, author of gems like: "Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers' throats." (It should come as no surprise to see Baraka regularly lumped in with fellow Beat Generation creeps, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.)

Hmm… now that we’ve factored the misogynist and predatory Left (oops, am I being redundant?) into the equation, I have a new theory as to the roots of Wayans’ status as an unashamed rape apologist: he’s a friggin’ “progressive”!

Wayans would fit right in with Michael Moore and all the other lefties who lined up to defend Julian Assange of Wikileaks fame when he was accused, I mean “framed,” for all that “sex by surprise” stuff. 

Yep, says the male Left, you must question authority… unless it’s our authority, that is!

Which Side Are You On?

In case some of you are trying discern “the point” of this article, please allow me to introduce some clarity:

Rape is almost exclusively a male-on-female crime spree (99.8 percent of those convicted of rape are male) and rape culture is a top-down, class-based, patriarchal, phallocentric institution. So, before you fall back on a simplistic “not all men” excuse, ask yourself if you truly believe you’re doing enough by not being a rapist. I’m sure you know the answer, if you’re willing to confront it.

Every time you laugh along at a misogynist joke, harass a woman on the street, watch porn, pay for a prostituted female, disrespect physical or emotional boundaries, do anything that perpetuates the sex class hierarchy, or remain silent while your male buddies engage in any of the above, you are helping to keep rape culture alive and well. 

If you’re a man of the Left, such behavior is a betrayal of the highest order.

“Any man who is your comrade will know in his gut the indignity, the demeaning indignity, of systematic exclusion from the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, wrote Andrea Dworkin. “Any man who is your true comrade will be committed to laying his body, his life, on the line so that you will be subjected to that indignity no longer. I ask you to look to your male comrades on the left, and to determine whether they have made that commitment to you. If they have not, then they do not take your lives seriously and as long as you work for and with them, you do not take your lives seriously either.”

Whether we admit it or can even recognize it, we males are benefitting from the oldest, most foundational form of oppression. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: What am I doing -- every minute of every day -- to take female lives seriously, to learn and grow, to smash the patriarchy?  

In the struggle for women’s liberation, there is no neutral. 

Complacent = complicit. Which side are you on?

Mickey Z. is the author of 13 books, most recently Occupy these Photos: NYC Activism Through a Radical Lens. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, you can “like” his Facebook page here and follow his blog here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.