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Y'know, I, well, I dunno.
On the one hand I can see, perhaps, some merit in juxtapositional usernames, given that my own username fucking is one, but on the other hand I would never in a million fucking years call myself Sensitive Rapist.
Now, why is that? For one, I don't think you can actually be a sensitive rapist. It's a juxtaposition too far. My own username is based on the idea that you could, just possibly, generate a concept of 'nice' vandalism, i.e. unauthorised attempts to glamorise one's surroundings, as opposed to purely wanton destruction. But I don't think you can rape someone in a sensitive way. Rape, by definition, is an unwanted invasion of someone's personal space purely for one's own gratification: there's nothing sensitive about it. So I don't think it works on that level.
There is, then, the argument that it's meant to be a sort of operation mindfuck combination. But the thing here is that you have to still have some kind of reason for it. I could, for example, set up a band and call it Pagan Jesus Freak, partly because it would be a cool name, but the philosophical idea bundled behind that would be the idea of removing the figure of Jesus from a purely christian context. But even here, I'm still trying to get people to think in a certain way, I'm throwing a little bomb of content at people in order to get them to think differently about a subject. But again - how does the name 'Sensitive Rapist' in any way encourage people to think differently about rape? Are we, perhaps, supposed to think that the embattled rapist may not get a fair deal in our sick and twisted society? Hmm, no.
Or maybe it's just meant to be total nonsense. Let's say I call my hypothetical beat combo above the Sumo Lightweights, instead. Now, that's clearly nonsense: the two words are purely antithetical and there's no kind of reconciling-of-opposites behind it, it's just a laugh, it's silly, it's nonsense. Right? Right.
Except that even if I intend it as nonsense, other people are going to read things into it. Some people might even come up with really deep readings of it. Now, I'm not responsible for those readings, but I do have to take into account that my silly name will cause these kind of associations for people.
Now, if my name was 'Sensitive Rapist', what I would have to do was take into account that people would be very offended by the associations they'd make with my silly, nonsensical little joke name.
The point is, I can think of no way in which this juxtaposition - the concepts of 'sensitivity' and 'rape' can be married successfully without offending people horribly. I just don't think it works, really. You say there's a message behind it, but clearly the way you're trying to get that message across is hampering your delivery of that message and, when that happens, if you believe you have an important message (and I'm not sure you do; I see very little androphobia around me in my daily life), then you need to find a new way of getting it across.
In summary, then: change your name. Tom will help you do it, and there won't be any of this bother. And then we can all have a grown-up discussion of this 'androphobia' you think you've seen and whether or not anyone outside of Andrea Dworkin actually really believes all men are rapists. Yes? |
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