Misogyny For Halloween. Or Charlotte Allen's Trick Or Treat.

Charlotte Allen is the female woman-hater extraordinaire who a few years ago wrote a long rant about how dumb women are. All women. And Washington Post published it.

Her new misogynistic screed is published by the Los Angeles Times. It begins as it plans to go on:

A faux-ho dressed (or mostly undressed) for Halloween might want to be careful where she turns tricks or treats.

What do "SlutWalks," the anti-rape demonstrations that have been held in nearly every major city, and Halloween parties have in common? A lot. Both feature phalanxes of females flaunting scanty clothing that typically involves lingerie.

Mmm. Read the rest of the piece. Note the totalizing language. There is hardly a woman out there wearing something not faux-ho. Note, also, how Charlotte knows why women participate in Slutwalks: They want to flash tits and ass to admiring men:

As illustrated by Valenti's remark, the SlutWalk feminists are in denial of a reality that is perfectly obvious to both the women who favor "sexy" for Halloween parties and (although perhaps not consciously) the SlutWalkers themselves. The reality is that men's sexual responses are highly susceptible to visual stimuli, and women, who are also sexual beings, like to generate those stimuli by displaying as much of their attractive selves as social mores or their own personal moral codes permit. In Victorian times that meant flashing an ankle every now and then. Now, it means … whatever. It's no wonder that SlutWalks have quickly outstripped (as it were) Take Back the Night as anti-rape protest. Women get another chance besides Halloween to dress up like prostitutes!

Did I already mention the totalizing language? "Women" get another chance to dress up like prostitutes.

The rest of the piece is mostly word salad. First, we are told that men are highly susceptible to visual stimuli, that faux-hos should be careful where they turn their tricks and so on. But next we are told that of course men don't rape women just because the women show a lot of leg! Even though rape IS sex, whatever boring feminists argue, and men are highly susceptible to visual stimuli. But no, men don't rape women who go out in lingerie. Still, women better be careful about what they wear when they go out. So they don't get raped.

Of course Charlotte doesn't cite any studies on whether the way a woman is dressed exerts an independent effect on the probability that a man will rape her.

Despite the wealth of interesting bits and pieces in that word salad, I want to focus on her mini-rant about the link between rape and sexual desire:

The other reality that feminists tend to deny is that rape and sexual desire are linked. Rape, in that view, is a purely political act of male dominance. This ignores the fact that the vast majority of rape victims are under age 30 — that is, when women are at their peak of desirability.

That first sentence in the quote is so revealing of Charlotte's inner landscape (which ain't pretty). Read it again if you didn't notice anything odd about it.

The term "sexual desire" is not qualified. The way it reads, she might be talking about women's sexual desire! But what she really means is that rapists get a hard-on and decide to rape someone to get rid of that. Instead of masturbating, say.

Likewise, "women at their peak of desirability" leaves "desirability" oddly undefined. What she means is "women at their peak of desirability for men."

All that might sound like nit-picking but I don't think so. It tells us how Charlotte's mind works, which people count in her world and which people do not.

And what about the argument that rape is based on rapists' sexual desire because most rape victims are under thirty, the age group where women are "at their peak of desirability?" Who knows. But before we can study that we should also note younger women are more likely to go out at night, less likely to own a car or afford cabs and also more likely to date. All this puts them at a higher risk for rape. Or put another way, a rapist must go to much more trouble to rape an older woman, on average. Still, women (and men) of all ages, from childhood to old age, have been raped.

I don't know. Charlotte's way of talking about the relationship between sexual desire and rape makes me think of excusing cannibals by saying that they were hungry.