How Ted Bundy’s VW Beetle Will Help You Not Get Raped and Murdered
As this is not Ted Bundy's actual VW Beetle, it will be of no help to potential rape victims.
It's officially Ludicrous Sexual Assault Prevention Tips day on the Sexist! Next up: How to avoid being raped and murdered by a notorious serial killer—by shelling out $19.95 to glean some valuable safety lessons from Ted Bundy's meticulously preserved 1968 VW Beetle.
Today, I received my media invitation to the "First-Ever Public Unveiling of Ted Bundy's Deadly VW Beetle." The gruesome car show will occur at D.C.'s National Museum of Crime and Punishment next Wednesday. Special extra for the ladies: Bundy's car is being converted into an invaluable "teaching tool" that can help you not get raped and/or murdered. From the NMCP's press release:
With last week’s move of the John Dillinger 1933 Essex Teraplane getaway car to the Southwest terminal at BWI Airport, the National Museum of Crime and Punishment (NMCP) is welcoming a new vehicle to its main lobby floor. The media is invited to the first public opportunity to view the car of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy’s 1968 VW Beetle, the automobile used in a slurry of women’s murders from 1974-1977. The car, purchased by a collector and stored in a private collection until its arrival at NMCP, will serve not only as a unique artifact but also as a teaching tool for museum visitors to learn how to avoid becoming victims of vicious criminals such as Bundy.
Come to satisfy your macabre fascination with a notorious rapist; stay for the public safety tips.
Photo via Ivan Cabrera, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0
11:58 am
Trying to take the "ick" out of macabre curiosity by giving "public safety" tips? I feel funny about that...
12:13 pm
"slurry of women's murders"?
This calls to mind some sort of mud-wrestling/murder fest, involving many women plus Ted Bundy, which went of for years.
Pretty sure the word they are searching for is "flurry."
Heh.
12:25 pm
K, maybe they meant a "slew of murders"?
I hate the Museum of Crime and Punishment.
12:34 pm
I can see the thinking there:
"How should I characterize Ted Bundy's career as a serial killer?"
"Slew seems like a good choice, you know, 'slew of murders' or something?"
"No, someone would make a pun out of that. I know! 'Flurry'!"
"Eh, that seems too trivial for a killing spree... if only there was a word in-between..."
"Hey, what about 'slurry'?"
"Oh yeah, perfect! That means a somewhat large amount, does it not?"
"Yeah, it seems like it must."
"Perfect."
12:58 pm
@Amanda Hess. So are you arguing that we shouldn't have museums that have artifacts of famous criminals or that such museums shouldn't also be teaching people how to avoid such criminals? If you are arguing the latter, then how does this differ from a holocaust museum teaching people about how to combat anti-semitism?
1:19 pm
@Banyan:
I'm arguing the latter. (I'm not above perusing some serial killer memorabilia once and a while myself).
However, these "safety tips" (examples of which you can find on the museum's Web site) are not targeted at reducing rapes by teaching people how to combat the attitudes that further rape culture. These tips, instead, are targeted specifically at women. They are instructing women to modify their perfectly normal, human behavior in order to avoid the (extremely unlikely) scenario of being raped and killed by a stranger.
To take the Holocaust Museum example, this would be akin to showing an artifact from the Holocaust, and then instructing the museum's visitors on how best to hide in a neighbor's home in order to avoid the highly unlikely possibility of being targeted and killed by a modern-day anti-semite. That "advice" does nothing to combat the problem of anti-seminism. And the musuem's advice does nothing to combat the problem of rape.
1:48 pm
@Amanda Hess
Does Huffington Post having pictures of nipples contribute to the culture of rape? Does porn contribute to the culture of rape? Does spanking my girlfriends butt contribute to the culture of rape? In your worldview rape is so so omnipresent. The guy who calls one "sugar" at work is just on hop skip and a rapey jump away from raping. It's really rather frustrating.
1:48 pm
Man, where is this slurry of bad assault prevention tips coming from today?
1:55 pm
@Banyan
Yes, Depends, and Probably Not.
1:59 pm
@Ms. Hess, if you don't mind me calling you that for short, how does porn or HuffPost nipple pics contribute to that culture?
2:01 pm
yes; depends on the porn in question; probably not, assuming she consents. Very simple really.
I had a cashier at Giant get all cutesey with me last night, he even called me baby at one point. He also refused to let me type my phone number into the key pad and instead made me tell it to him and typed it in himself. If my CURRENT phone number were associated with my Giant card, I would have seriously considered forgoing the $5 I saved. Is he planning on raping me? I don't know, probably not but given the dynamics, it's possible (certain men are very put-off by "snotty" women who have educations and like to buy their groceries in peace, and, in these assholes minds, need to be taught a lesson...so it's POSSIBLE). Did he have a right to make me uncomfortable for just being a lady who buys groceries? No.
Aw, damn...I just remembered I bought wine, and he checked my ID. THAT has my current address on it, and it's awfully close to that grocery store. This is how bad it really is...I have to consider whether it's worth harassment to (a) buy groceries and (b) inform said harasser where I live in order to purchase some of those items...
2:19 pm
@Banyan
Huffpo nip-slippage: We're literally talking about women's body parts being put on public display, in a sexualized context, without their consent. How does this NOT contribute to culture that tolerates rape?
2:35 pm
@Banyan It's Ms. Hess if you're nasty.
I can't go too far down the comment-field rabbit hole today because I'm on deadline, and I'm really really really busy this week, but I'm happy to discuss this stuff generally. In short, it's all about consent. (You can search through my archives for commentary on all this stuff, if you want to know more).
HuffPo has built its business model off publicizing stuff like these accidental nipple slips, which in my opinion exploit a woman's body without her consent. This is tied to what many feminists term "rape culture" because it is an example of an entity with a lot of power literally taking ownership of a woman's body and turning a profit from it, without her consent. HuffPo's nipple slips are a pretty PG-13 example of this phenomenon, but the trend is there. I'd use the same argument against publishing or consuming Carrie Prejean's masturbation video, which was a private video never intended for distribution beyond its recipient; I'd use the same argument against publishing or consuming the Erin Andrews peephole video, which was filmed entirely without her consent. You could argue that many of the celebrities in the HuffPo nipple slips are public figures walking down the red carpet or are in some other public space, and so they deserve whatever is coming to them when one of the 1,000 photographers circling around them happens to find an angle where he can zoom in on a nipple and then circulate it around the Internet. However, I hold news publications to a higher standard than the basest celebrity paparazzi photographer looking to make a buck, and I believe the Huffington Post deserves criticism for profiting off of this practice. Also, many of these women aren't on the red carpet---some are just, like, swimming at the beach when their swimsuit accidentally gets knocked down slightly by a wave. And I think people who capitalize on that extremely human experience are contributing to the idea that women's bodies are not under their control, and they are up for consumption by anyone with an Internet connection.
As for porn: I do think it's problematic that the vast, vast majority of mainstream porn does not incorporate scenes of consent before, say, staging a rape scene where a woman is kidnapped by a bunch of men and then forced to perform various sex acts on these men. I find these types of scenes disgusting, personally, but if that's what you get off on, I'm not going to come over and clip the cables to your Internet connection. I would, however, support setting up industry standards to require a scene of consent before the staged gang-rape goes down. (Many feminist or kink porn providers do something like this). But again, I'm not interested in banning porn that doesn't include consent, just criticizing and contextualizing it in my little corner of the Internet.
As for the term "rape culture"---I could take it or leave it, to be honest. It's evolved into an easy shorthand for these kinds of things that you see everywhere, so that's why I use it.
I'm sorry that tirelessly discussing all these little ways that rape culture can function has frustrated you. Rape culture frustrates us, too.
3:24 pm
@Amanda Hess @Banyan:
...To take the Holocaust Museum example, this would be akin to showing an artifact from the Holocaust, and then instructing the museum’s visitors on how best to hide in a neighbor’s home in order to avoid the highly unlikely possibility of being targeted and killed by a modern-day anti-semite. That “advice” does nothing to combat the problem of anti-seminism. And the musuem’s advice does nothing to combat the problem of rape
As a Jew and a Feminist...thank you for being awesome. And really fucking smart.
3:32 pm
You're right. I hate those guys who feel that harassing women while on the clock is cool (it shouldn't happen off the clock either!). When there are people in this world struggling to find jobs in this economy, fools like the guy you dealt with are taking jobs away from those who'd really appreciate it and who'd act professionally while on the clock. Those on-the-clock harassers kill me!
3:49 pm
@Amanda Hess
I had a professor who argued that because the right to life is the most basic of all rights and abortion violates that right, then anarchy is the logical conclusion. Assuming for a second that what he is saying about abortion is true it still doesn't follow that abortion leads to anarchy. There is a distinction between logical and causal consequence.
Similarly a culture whose acceptance of rapey pictures logically entails that they would accept rape, need not actually accept rape. Indeed, we don't accept rape. Very few are arguing for the softening of the punishment for rapists or even for the increase of evidential support for women who accuse men of rape. I mean isn't this how a culture determines the seriousness of an act?
Our culture has tremendous amounts of violence depicted in cinema, and this violence is often almost exclusively directed at men. Does this somehow increase the amount of violence that there is in the country? In conclusion if our culture is so rapey, why do we ultimately treat rapists so harshly?
3:55 pm
Because we really don't treat rapists very harshly. There's a very narrow segment of rapists who everyone abhors and calls for them to rot in jail or even get the death penalty...while the actions of the vast majority of rapists are written off as "boys will be boys" or "she had it comin'."
If a man with a knife jumps out of the bushes and rapes a virginal white 10-year-old on her way to ballet class, there's a huge public outrage.
But acquaintance rape? Date rape? Rape of a woman of color? Rape of a woman who isn't the perfect picture of virginal purity? Rape perpetrated by someone who's generally a good guy? None of these are taken seriously. They hardly ever make it to court at all. The fact is that less than 10% of rapists ever serve any jail time at all. And the victims can be conveniently blamed for what happened to them because they failed to adhere to the "rules" and "got themselves raped."
3:55 pm
Banyan, I would argue that our culture only treats certain rapists harshly and only condemns certain rapes. Few would argue that the "masked man jumps out of the bushes to rape the modestly dressed white virgin walking to church in the afternoon" type of rape is wholly condemned. But any deviations from that model leads to victim blaming and rape apologia. Even when the victim is a child, such as Roman Polanski's victim, there is a sizeable portion of the public eager and willing to justify and minimize the actions of the rapist.
4:03 pm
Our society expects rapists to be all-around bad people. And visibly so. Like...you'll know who the rapists are, because when they're not raping someone, they spend their time kicking puppies and taking candy from children. Obviously.
But that's just not the case. Some rapists do come off as evil to the casual observer...but many of them don't. Many of them are generally upstanding people with families and friends. They might go to church. They might be volunteers in their communities. They might be straight-A students. There seems to always be something in someone's record that makes people believe "no, he couldn't POSSIBLY be a rapist." And those rapists who aren't "obvious" don't get taken seriously or treated harshly at all.
4:07 pm
@Jenny
I don't think this is true. Very few people in Hollywood defended Roman, and the ones who did received a tremendous amount of flack. People were also misinformed about the details of the case. Yes he raped her.
4:14 pm
Check your facts.
http://www.altfg.com/blog/politics/petition-for-roman-polanski-signatories/
4:16 pm
@Banyan
Let's say our culture DOES take rapes seriously. For the sake of argument. As I'm sure you know by now, I'm not solely interested in eliminating rape. I'm also interested in criticizing the parts of our culture that do not involve actual rapes, but nevertheless treat women as objects up for public consumption. The guy who grabs a woman's vagina on the Metro may never rape a woman. I'm not interested in making a slippery slope argument there---I just want him to never grab a woman's vagina on the Metro, ever. I don't care if the guy who watches the Erin Andrews tapes turns around and rapes somebody. I don't want any woman's non-consensual peephole video to be streamed on YouTube, ever. I don't argue that reading HuffPo encourages guys to rape women; I just don't want a seemingly "progressive" news Web site to get away with blatantly objectifying women in a sexual context without their consent, with no one so much as noticing the hypocritical game they're playing.
Do I see similarities between these actions and rapes? Of course I do! Do I think that engaging in these less extreme activities will eventually lead a person to rape someone? I have no interest in making that argument, because I think these other activities are objectively bad, no matter where they might lead.
4:20 pm
Yeah - hardly anyone makes excuses for what Roman Polanski did. Celebrities and ordinary people alike...
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/28/common-roman-polanski-defenses-refuted/
4:22 pm
Banyan, I personally read hundreds of comments on articles from the LA Times, Salon, HuffPo and other news outlets that ranged from "well the girl wasn't a virgin anyway" to "what did she expect going over to his house?" to "she made the whole thing up."
4:23 pm
@thinly disguised jfc
Way to miss the point. As usual.
4:26 pm
@Amanda Hess
Yes and there are similarities between yelling at someone and killing someone. But I would be immensely fucking pissed if someone accused me of exhibiting the "murder culture," and saying how murderey I was being. NOT COOL.
4:26 pm
Wake up, we're not anti-male, we're anti-rape. I venture to guess that at LEAST 90% of men are not rapists. So you figure us to be anti-male...how, exactly?
4:28 pm
@Banyan
What are the similarities between yelling at someone and killing someone?
4:30 pm
That logic only works if you classify rape-tolerant behavior as typical male behavior. Maybe we just have more faith in men than you do.
4:31 pm
@Melissa
I can hurt someone because I want to.
4:35 pm
Think about your analogy carefully though. That's a rather distant relation. The distance between the casual treatment of women's bodies as property and rape is much narrower.
Like Amanda said, is it necessarily a slippery slope? No. But there is most definitely a direct correlation between the cultural attitude that our bodies are literally "up for grabs" (pun intended) and the subsequent excusing and rationalizing of rape. The concept that "if I want to hurt someone I could yell at them...or murder them" is just not really parallel.
4:38 pm
#34
By that logic, I've implicated the entire state of Virginia because I know a mean person who lives there.
In fact, while we're at it, throw Iowa in too.
There are a lot of rapists who are college students. Therefore all college students must be at fault, right?
4:42 pm
The yeller sees the other as a object for the release of his anger. The sexual harasser sees the other as a object for the release of his libido. There both bad and both very different from rapists and murderers.
4:46 pm
But the yeller doesn't objectify other people constantly. He only sees them as objects when he's angry. Furthermore, he doesn't see only a specific type of people as an object for the release of his anger.
The sexual harasser constantly views women as objects.
4:46 pm
Banyan, I don't think most harassment or groping has to do with libido at all. Like rape, it is motivated by a desire for power over another person. Harassment keeps women marginalized in society. I'm not aware of an epidemic of yelling that has the same effect.
4:47 pm
Maybe you should read some of the groping series Amanda's been doing. For the most part, libido has little if anything to do with why sexual harassers harass. The problem we rail against is the culture that excuses the actions of people from harassers to rapists by saying that it has to do with libido, as if that suddenly makes it natural or unavoidable.
4:55 pm
@ Jenny
Yelling creates a toxic work environment and allows the abuse of power by superiors that creates psychological distress and perhaps depression.
What is common in all violative acts is the belief that we can do to other what we wish.
5:01 pm
"What is common in all violative acts is the belief that we can do to other what we wish."
Banyan, you hit the nail on the head with this one. Our society (and to a certain extent human nature, although I don't think nature accounts for nearly as much of this as people tend to think) has this attitude that some people are inherently more valuable than others. And if you deem someone "below" you for WHATEVER reason, they're fair game. You can do whatever you want to them. They don't matter. By trying to draw this parallel, you've inadvertently drawn attention to one of the many facets of rape culture: because women are devalued (and if memory serves, you've agreed with that point on other threads, but correct me if I'm wrong on that), it becomes much more acceptable for their bodies to be used. It's all connected.
5:04 pm
@Dorothy
"But the yeller doesn’t objectify other people constantly. He only sees them as objects when he’s angry. "
He could think whenever I'm angry I can yell. So no. He could also think I can only yell at dumb people.
"The sexual harasser constantly views women as objects."
He could only harass when he's sexually frustrated. He could only harass women that he believed to be inferior for some irrational reason.
5:06 pm
He could also rape women for those exact same reasons.
5:09 pm
@Melissa
I think where we see things differently is that you see the devaluation of women by culture as the driving force in rape and I think the devaluation of people by greed and callousness to be the driving force in all violative acts.
5:10 pm
I believe they both exist and interact.
5:11 pm
@Melissa and the murderer could murder for his/her reasons as well.
5:12 pm
And furthermore, if you believe that the devaluation of people is the driving force in all violative acts, than why don't you believe that the devaluation of women (who are people) is the driving force in rape (which is a violative act)?
5:15 pm
@Melissa
Sorry I believe it's greed and callousness.
5:16 pm
You said the devaluation of people BY greed and callousness.
5:17 pm
Sorry I should be more specific. If you believe that the devaluation of people by greed and callousness is the driving force in all violative acts, than why don’t you believe that the devaluation of women (who are people) by greed and callousness is the driving force in rape (which is a violative act)?
5:18 pm
@ Banyan
There's a lot of "coulds" going on....I think your line of argument isn't quite working out for ya.
5:20 pm
I made an error. I meant that greed and callousness is the driving force causing people to do evil. Culture plays a secondary role.
5:21 pm
@Jbird
thank you.
5:26 pm
But none of this explains how you can logically divorce rape from its "lesser cousins," if you will.
Do you not think that if our culture did not send messages like "women's bodies are always available," rape would decrease?
Do you not think that if our society didn't reinforce views like the idea that a woman who dresses a certain way or flirts is "asking for it" that people might be less likely to blame rape victims and more likely to condemn rapists?
5:53 pm
@Melissa
Rape, Yelling, Murder...etc. all exist on the same spectrum of abuse so I'm not logically divorcing them.
My view is that the rapist has distorted views of women driven by society and his own personal experience with women, but he also is a greedy unkind person.
So yes we could reduce rapes by changing society.
5:58 pm
So you concede that culture and distorted views of women play a real role in the prevalence of rape, but you take issue with the concept of "rape culture"?
7:04 pm
@Melissa
Yes. A culture that portrays women as objects contributes to many abuses to women, rape being one of the more severe ones. Feminists choose "rape culture," as opposed to "groping culture" or in Ted Bundy's case "rape and murder culture" because they like to catastrophize. In addition, it "evokes," the notion that rape is chiefly caused by culture, when it is my (flexible) belief that rape is chiefly caused by bad genes and bad personal experiences with others.
7:23 pm
@fetid
To me you will always be jfc.
7:29 pm
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
8:03 pm
@Melissa
I read that article. The problem of rape in our culture is much larger than I thought.
1:47 am
Oh look, it's jf1 being completely illogical again!
In this case, I think he's arguing that 'rape is bad' leads to girls being buried alive.
Um. Not sure how that's supposed to work.
11:18 am
jfc1, no matter how many "witty" new names you post under, it's obvious that it is you. As regards your completely uninformed statements on "maybe she really wanted it" incest, I recommend you do some reading on this topic. A great introductory text is "The Tale of One Bad Rat" by Bryan Talbot. It is a comic, so you may find it easier to understand than academic studies on the same subject.
Victims of incest, like victims of any kind of rape, come from all ethnic, socio-economic, and cultural backgrounds. But they all display depressingly similar symptoms: depression, suicidal feelings, substance abuse as adults, and above all a conviction that the abuse is because they are "bad children" and is somehow their fault.
This is because children cannot process being betrayed by someone they love & trust in the same way adults can. Since they cannot see the abusive parent as bad, they assume they themselves are bad. This self-loathing is present in *all* cases of child-parent incest, and is a major reason why it can go unreported for years.
Before you fly off on another straw-man flight of fancy, note that I am talking about non-consensual child-parent incest, not supposedly consensual incest between adults.
...And what the fuck, may I ask, does any of this have to do with Ted Bundy's VW Bug?