Apr 16 2008
The US does not have the monopoly on completely insane public officials
Londonist: “Rape is Like Being Force-Fed Chocolate Cake” Blogs BNP Official
Yeah, you read that right. A grown man, a man who was a candidate for the London assembly (the operative word there being “was”) stated in a public forum that rape that is not violent (because being forced to have sex alone is not a violent act in this crackpot’s mind) is akin to “being force-fed chocolate cake.” Because see, if women like sex, then they won’t mind if you make them have it.
“Rape is simply sex (I am talking about ‘husband-rape’ here)… Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal…To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.”
If you are anything like me, you stared at that quote for awhile, your mind completely blanked by the wonder that such pure ignorance could exist. Mr. Nick Eriksen, the author of those lovely narrow-minded words, has since been fired by the British National Party (oh yeah, they’re just a tad nutty, themselves).
One of my favorite parts about this story, though, is that man clearly know very little about the Internet. Once the story started getting picked up, he shut down his blog. There are currently only two posts on it now, both wailing about how he’s been taken out of context and smeared by the media (because, you know, if the media is truly taking you out of context, the best thing you could do is to remove the context). But see, the man may have failed to realize the existence of such resources as Google Cache or the Way Back Machine because you can read the full context of the post right here. I did and, you know what, I still think he’s a completely batshit crazy misogynist and that the quotes had plenty of context. I mean, as best as I can tell, the man believe that if you are with a man in any spectrum, whether you be on a date or married, you have basically consented to have sex with him whenever he wants and if he forces himself on you when you don’t want it, your just a whiner. The only real rape is when someone you don’t know forces themselves on you. See what I mean, BATSHIT!
I hope that instances like this will illustrate to good folks that believe that this world is getting better, that misogyny and racism and other types of discrimination only exist among a small population, that these things are still a problem. Yes, things are better than they were 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago. But before we go patting ourselves on the back about how much more enlightened we are than the generations before, we need to recognize that there’s still a lot of hate and severe lack of empathy out there and we cannot just dismiss those people as nuts, because they have just as much power to exact change as the rest of us.
Eriksen made the comments when he was a Conservative councilor, in 2005. The media are clearly keeping this fact quiet because they prefer bashing the BNP. Ken Livingstone gave open support for Sinn Fein in the 1980s, when the IRA were terrorising people across London. Note that the BNP sacked Eriksen, while Livingstone is still in Labour.
And if the BNP are nutty at least they aren’t encouraging the decimation of their own people and culture, in their native country. Only the lunatic ‘mainstream’ parties could endorse something like that.
Yes, if you click on the link I provided to the Google Cache version of Eriksen’s post, it clearly has a date of August 2005. That being said, I don’t think that the date he expressed these opinions has any real bearing on the analysis of those comments. What Eriksen said is outrageous, regardless of whether it was said 3 hours ago, 3 years ago or 3 decades ago. It’s not like people viewed rape any differently in 2005 than they do now. That argument might work with some issues, but with this one, not so much.
And to your other point, being from the other side of the pond, I admit to ignorance about the inner working of the British political parties (that’s why I provided a link to the Wikipedia page on the BNP, so as to provide my source for my comment). What I read on that page, and on the BNP’s page smacks to me of some xenophobia and racism: they are an all white political party and their pet issue is immigration reform. Your perspective seems to be that this okay because there are other political parties that have bad policies, too. Well, as an outsider, I don’t have to pick or choose one party, so I’m not judging the BNP compared to other parties. I’m judging the BNP on who they are, and frankly, from what they’ve told me about themselves, they are, in my very professional terms “nutty.”