Reddit reviews Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It

Its honestly a very complicated topic that I just can't fit into a reddit post. I can give you a book recommendation though. https://www.amazon.com/Asking-Alarming-Rise-Culture-about/dp/0738217026

If I were you I'd try to make modest, concrete arguments. If you open with "rape culture doesn't exist" then people won't listen because they're already committed to the idea, and because it's such an abstract question (what is "rape culture" exactly?) that it's hard to really argue over in a way that will win anyone over.

I also think specific examples from personal experience, or clashes with other values people hold, can help.

It would help to strike the right balance between asserting arguments, and not making yourself the center of attention. If they're going around the seminar with everyone saying their views, or if people are called on, just wait your turn and then say some stuff you think. If it's all volunteering, start by volunteering on small, specific items where you have a concrete answer. People will be more likely to listen to you that way, vs standing up and delivering a monologue that starts with "I am against feminism!" which to them may as well be saying you're pro-Ebola.

If you do this, you can later decide to either stop speaking up, or really get into it. Just by making a small objection you might be holding yourself out as the most anti person there. If you can make a concrete, specific, contained point rather than seeming like you're ranting, then people will listen, and other potential dissenters will be emboldened. You want the moderates in the room to think "I'm not so sure about all this, but I feel like I can't speak up, I'm glad that kid's there to make some good points", not "ugh that MRA is ranting again."

For me, I'd cite things like:

• for all the talk of how we should "teach men not to rape", I have been "told not to rape" many times in life, and was told this again as an incoming freshman.
  
  
• for every "rape myth" (or whatever) the book mentions, I see nothing but people decrying it on the media all the time. What "culture" are you talking about that doesn't believe those things?
  
  
• From the reviews online, there is this:
  
  > Perhaps most importantly, Harding isn't just a champion of women and rape survivors. She admonishes society for giving men so little credit: of course men aren't tempted to rape because of what a woman is wearing, and of course most men aren't so ruled by their hormones that they won't accept "no" for an answer.
  
  Point out how it's feminists who spread the idea that many men want to rape, for example making up BS studies that claim to show that some huge % of men would rape if they could. It's feminists saying if a man is accused it must be true. It's feminists who characterize men as conniving abusers but women would never lie or anything.
  
  
• On a University like this, due process for accused kids is imperiled. Lots of reasons, one example being that if both people are drunk, the man is a rapist by virtue of the woman being drunk, but not the woman. They claim it's because the man "initiates", but sex doesn't even necessarily have an initiator, and it's clearly just a way to use gender norms to nail the guy with an allegedly neutral rule. Be familiar with BS cases that have happened, of which there are many. Maybe read stuff from feminists who are skeptical of this stuff, like Janet Halley, Jeannie Suk, and Nancy Gertner, all of who signed on to that letter from 28 Harvard Law School Professors about this stuff and have written other things about it, so you can cite them.
  
  
• If the book talks about "redefining what it means to be a man", then talk about how people saying this don't accept men who are masculine, for example boys who are masculine have different ways of learning in school which are disfavored which is why so many boys drop out of high school and college - and the more feminist those places get, the bigger that gap gets. Approach it this way because their normal reaction will be to not care since boys are allegedly "privileged" - point out how boys are worse off. If this stuff was in your high school, use personal examples.
  
  
• As another example of the above - if someone says we should do away with the phrase "boys will be boys", point out that boys get harsher punishments than girls for the same offenses in school. Same with men vs women in the criminal justice system. It's the same thing as above - pointing out boys' disadvantage - with the added benefit that you can say this ties into the "school to prison pipeline", "zero tolerance policies" and other such things. Bring up, for example, the Scared Straight program as an example of "getting tough" on boys, i.e. psychologically torturing and physically threatening them.
  
  For some specific claims that might come up:
  
  If they bring up "2-8% of rape accusations are false" say that those numbers are cases proven false, essentially where the person recanted. The UVA Rolling Stone story would not be included as false by that statistic. You could pivot to how all these stats floating around these days are BS, a huge % of studies fail to replicate, methodologies are questionable, etc.
  
  For the 1 in 4 claim, point out how most women counted as rape victims in that stat don't consider themselves as such. They'll say that's because those women are ignorant of what is really rape. Respond that it's one thing to say this about some women, but when you're saying 75% of women don't consider it rape, how can you just summarily tell them all they were raped without knowing the exact situation, based on some vaguely worded survey with an overly broad definition? Especially since they're always telling people to "listen to women's voices".
  
  Point out that that number first debuted 30 years ago, that the crime rate (including for rape) is way down since then, and yet that number hasn't changed. If you want you could cite feminist authors who have said the rape rate has gone down 80% in the last 30 years, which totally contradicts the 1 in 4 number.
  
  If they explain it away by saying the rape rate is higher on college campuses - there's no evidence for this, they just care more when it's in a college and happens to people like them. Surveys that ask college and non-college people similar questions show that non-college people are at higher risk.
  
  If you are gonna say rape on campus is a moral panic, point out feminists' support for the Satanic Ritual Abuse Daycare scandal/witch hunt of the 80s.
  
  If they say that feminists are the ones helping men, have specific examples of how they don't. Good example = National Organization for Women (huge group, 500k members) and their opposition to shared parenting laws.
  
  If they say that the man-haters are only a few extremists, analogize to race: there are extremist overt racists, and there are far more numerous, subtly racist people. It would be odd if there were no kinda-sorta racists, only totally race-neutral people, and then a few people totally out there, with no middle ground. Same here. People can be subtly sexist, and that's what you're claiming about feminists. Saying feminists can't be sexist because only a few of them scream that men are pigs, is like saying America can't have racism because the Klan is tiny and hated.
  
  If they say "if you believe in equality, you're a feminist", say that the dictionary definition doesn't matter, what feminists do matters, and you know that because of how the people there would define "racism" and "sexism" (i.e. contra the dictionary). Point out that even many feminist authors, including one of those I cited earlier, define the word differently.

I suppose we'll have to disagree. Would you like me to support the title's wording using the article? Please address these passages, then.

>In our culture, men are shown that they are valued if they are comfortable with and able to participate in violence and stand up for themselves in a physical way. Being “a man” in the traditional sense means distancing oneself from compassion and empathy, and these rough and tough characteristics in turn foster more violent actions against others.

and

>Eating meat, after all, has long been associated with masculinity; since pretty much the dawn of advertising, commercials have explicitly linked meat-eating to desirable manliness. To name but a few of the most egregious examples from the last few years, there was the Carl’s Jr.’s ad depicting X-Men’s Mystique morphing into a ripped manly man after consuming a bacon cheeseburger (with the tagline “Man Up”); Burger King’s “I Am Man” commercial, in which a guy sings about not settling for “chick food”; and the Taco Bell “Guys Love Bacon” campaign.

and

>Moreover, men are told that they should be sexually dominant toward women, pursuing them in a sport-like manner. These sexual and behavioral dynamics are at the root of rape culture in America, where one in five women report having been sexually assaulted with approximately 98% of rapes against women perpetrated by a man.

and the coup de grace:

>It’s not just the bodies of other people that men are told to oppress and domineer; animals, too, are seen as theirs to dispassionately dominate. Ninety-one percent of hunters are male — and of course, it’s men who are told that eating meat, even to their health detriment, is the manly thing to do.

It is not I who am mistaken. It is you, and this ridiculous article. The only thing I could perhaps challenge about the title is the use of the word "directly", but as you can see from the article, the author attempts to provide a causal path from carnivorousness to damaging male behavior. No, I think the title was worded just fine.

Or maybe he presumes women split in two like worms.

P.S. Your comment is pathetically stupid bullshit. Lets see, "most of the world" having free contraceptives is just false. Laws dont prevent rape in the first world, let alone the third. The rape rate in the US is one in five women get raped. Culture? In the US women who are raped are constantly blamed for it having happened to them. Rapists are consistently given a pass legally. Fucking read a book:

https://www.amazon.com/Asking-Alarming-Rise-Culture-about/dp/0738217026