Trigger warning: content references sexual abuse
Towards the end of March, CNN released a report about an ‘online rape academy’
that allows men to share techniques on how to sexually abuse women, and has
attracted a powerful and global network. The site, eerily titled Motherless.com, hosts
videos where men demonstrate techniques for abuse against their partners whilst
they are unconscious, usually due to being unknowingly sedated.
Undeniably, the existence of this site and an unfortunate number of others like it is a harrowing reflection on just how pernicious rape culture is today. And this is exactly what I
expected the main discourse to be in response to the exposé. However, this was not
quite the case. When the news broke, instead of focussing on the huge and terrifying
threat to women’s safety, attention quickly shifted to the fact that some social media
users were erroneously claiming that 62 million men had visited the website in one
month, when it was actually 62 million individual visits. I don’t know about you, but I
have seen far more videos and posts talking about the confusion in statistics than
the actual significance of the news story. And whilst fact-checking and accuracy are
always important, especially with such a serious subject matter as this, the
obsession with the statistic did plant a rather worrying question in my mind. Why are
we more concerned about exactitudes than women’s safety, and why are we so
adamant on playing devil’s advocate with blatant and dangerous misogyny?
Sadly, the reasons why many people find themselves more triggered by a
misinterpretation of numbers than the abuse of basic human rights are many. First of
all, a good chunk of it comes from male defensiveness; obviously men who know
that they are in some way guilty of misconduct or abuse, even if not to the extremes
demonstrated on the exposed website, desperately wish to convince themselves that
they have done nothing wrong, and one way to do this is to trivialise the issue
altogether. By incessantly highlighting that there were 62 million visits as opposed to
individual users, attention is successfully drawn away from the violation of women’s
rights, and instead redirected to delegitimising the real story. When a mistaken detail
is brought to the foreground, the individual is able to imply that the whole story can’t
be trusted at all, as if they messed up on this detail, how can we trust anything they
say? It is a cunning and subtly effective tactic that allows guilty men to pretend that
the silly old women are just being dramatic again, and making a mountain out of a
mole hill. Despite the fact that 62 million visits, or really any visits, is still definitely a
mountain we should be paying attention to.
Then, there comes the people who really are innocent, but just cannot bear to accept
the truth. In my view, the majority of men, and some women, who I have seen
downplaying the severity of the CNN story probably haven’t frequented the website
themselves, and hopefully have never enacted any abuse themselves. But then if
they are not guilty, why are they so hellbent on denying that there is a problem? Well,
it all stems from the concept of herd mentality. Human beings have a tendency to
identify as part of a group, which is not necessarily a bad thing, until it comes to
admitting that their group may have some faults. This is to say, when an article
criticises the normalisation of sexual abuse of women at the hands of men, even
men who have nothing to do with said sexual abuse feel attacked. They feel as if we
are saying that all men are sexual abusers, rather than just drawing attention to the
ones who are.
Of course, we have seen a similar phenomenon in white people, who
declare ‘All Lives Matter’ due to a failure to understand that a critique of systemic
racism does not equate to a personal attack. When someone highlights a flaw of a
community we are part of, there is a definite tendency to go on the defence, even if
we know the claim holds weight. But a lot of the time, and certainly in this instance,
the defence just comes across as heartless. When you read that there have been
millions of visits to an online rape academy, your first instinct should be to think how
awful that is, and potentially what could be done to make women and
female-presenting people’s lives safer. If the first instinct is to fact-check to the highheavens and critique every line, then some inward reflection should be warranted.
Indeed, the devil’s advocate can play an important role in certain circumstances: if
there has been a falling out between two friends, it’s often useful to think of the other
point of view, even if it doesn’t come naturally. However, there are some situations
where it’s really not necessary, and is downright offensive. This is one of them. Facts
and accuracy will always matter, but never as much as the safety and basic
protection of female rights. And it’s hard to argue with that.
