I actually wouldn’t have read this SMH article about the release of the iPad were it not for the quote on the link to the story from the front page, which, as it turns out, is also the headline: “Like a gorgeous woman”. I decided to go looking for context. It was worse than I expected:
James Stuart trekked to Seattle from Canada, where, like Australia, the iPad won’t be on sale for another month – too long, in his mind.
“It’s like a gorgeous woman – you just want to touch it,” he said.
And that, people, is rape culture.
I was expecting “It’s like a gorgeous woman – it’s so beautiful” or something like that. That would have been bad enough, constituting objectification and all.
But no, the concept that a gorgeous woman is just there for you (you being a straight man, of course) to touch – what she wants appears to be irrelevant here – well, people, that’s rape culture. Right there.
Wallaby 
Is that the message modern feminism wants to send out, that feeling sexual attraction towards someone without consent is rape? It’s like all the worst bits of Christian doctrine. Lust after your neighbour’s wife—regardless of whether you might act on such feelings—and you are a sinner who must atone, atone, ATONE!
I’m more than willing to stand up and declare that when I see a gorgeous woman, I probably want to touch her. I might even be imagining what it would be like to touch her. My forefathers who didn’t feel that way were much less likely to pass on their genes to future generations.
However, an entirely different set of survival characteristics that allowed our ancestors to thrive in communities, protect each other and help each other pass on their genes through cooperation have bestowed me with a moral sense that tells me touching someone without their consent (or, in my current situation, without the additional consent of my girlfriend) is wrong.
What’s better? To pretend that perfectly natural feelings (experienced by both sexes, I may add) are wrong, that those who hold them should repress them and feel guilty for even having them despite having no control over them; or to accept such feelings are natural and instead glorify our capacity to transcend them and be moral, social animals?
I knew there was a reason I titled the post as I did. Shorter Charles: What rape culture? I don’t see no rape culture!
Charles, first suggestion: take your ev psych bullshit somewhere else. (Actually, a better suggestion would be to get rid of it entirely, but I sense you’re rather attached to it. At least if you take it somewhere else, I don’t have to clean up the mess.)
Apart from the ev psych rubbish, there are a number of misconceptions in your comment:
(1) I don’t speak for feminism. I don’t even speak for modern feminism. No individual does. In order to get an idea what “feminism says”, I suggest you go do some reading. My blogroll is a good place to start. There are some good blogs there. Some of them even deal with Feminism 101.
(2) You have mischaracterised what I said and apparently completely ignored the context.
I have no problem with people being attracted to each other, and I have no problem with consensual sexual touching between adults. It’s fun! As I said in my post, my problem is with the idea – the objectifying, rape-culture-y idea – that women are there to be beautiful (for (straight) men), and beautiful women are there to be touched (by (straight) men).
It’s not the idea that some random guy quoted in a newspaper article wants to touch beautiful women that bothers me. It’s that (1) he compared a fucking iPad to a beautiful woman and (2) the fact that he wants to touch beautiful women is apparently with complete disregard to whether or not they want him to touch them.
That is rape culture, and that was the point of my post.
You know, the point your comment entirely missed.
Hey,
I was cleaning up my WordPress subscriptions and I came across this comment, and all I can say is “Holy shit. Was I really this knee-jerkingly ignorant, this recently?
Thanks for taking the time to respond to an idiot.
Thanks Charles!