After reading this discussion on Feministe, it should be readily apparent that what most feminists really want is not true liberty, but rather the right to be a libertine. The common excuse that is used is "the boys do it, girls ought to be able to do it too." Better women than these immature little girls have always asked the more appropriate question, why are the men allowed to do it (whatever "it" is in a discussion about morals).
Like it or not, but women are frequently the party that loses one way or another in any manner involving sexual or substance immorality. This is just the way the universe works, and we can all value equality, but the real world doesn't operate that way. Women cannot be players because women get pregnant and are more prone to getting infected with sexually transmitted diseases than men. It's not a matter of whether men like this or not, it's that this is the way things work. One might as well gripe about the chemical composition of the air that one breathes.
Women are not as strong as men in the ways that count for battle. Go ahead, assert your right to not be raped in front of a man who would rape you and see how quickly the universe imposes your rights upon his evil heart. You will become a victim, and a very stupid victim, if you allow yourself to be put into a position where you might have to go one-on-one with a healthy young man that wants to rape you. What have you gained by not respecting your physical limits and recognizing the dangers they expose you to? That's what I cannot understand about feminists today. What do you gain by risking a confrontation with an enemy that you know you probably cannot beat, when you have no reason to do so? Go ahead, wax shrilly about how men can be safe in these situations, so women ought to be able to as well. Your indignant protests will not change the fact that you, as a typical woman, cannot be safe in many of the situations that a man who is in decent shape could be safe in.
There is no moral authority in victimhood, except when one is victimized willingly. It is revolting that Feministe and many of her readers would have the audacity to compare Sister Karen Klimczak, the Catholic nun who was murdered by a convict while she ran a halfway house for recently released felons, with a typical preppy, bar-hopping white girl who gets raped while engaging in some less than upstanding conduct with strange men. If you have to even ask why these two women are totally separate classes of victims, a separation not due only because of the different criminal acts involved, I doubt you would be able to fully grasp the explanation.
It's only really white middle and upper class girls who even think along these lines. There are precious few run-of-the-mill feminists in the ghetto, in the warzones of the Congo or in the shantytowns of India. The average woman in these places would be shocked to see the abject stupidity of women who are allowed some of the best education in the world, yet are so daft that they'd put themselves in harm's way because they "shouldn't have to worry about getting raped by a man they just met." That's all well and good when you have a sisterhood of like-minded mental midgets, a comfortable family life to fall back on and a college degree that will win you inroads into corporate life. In Africa that typically means a death sentence as a fresh load of AIDS condemns a rape victim to death.
Evil exists and it's not going to go away. The experiment of human civilization has tried to reach utopia in the metaphorical sense, and only ended up reaching that destination in the literal meaning of the word. It takes a stupid or incredibly naive person to actually believe that evil is a state of education as opposed to a state of moral being. Ironically many of history's most prominent villains have been incredibly educated by modern standards. Is it so hard to conceive of this evil "other" state of existence, wherein one is in fact incapable of caring about right and wrong? Dismiss it as insanity, but some of the clearest words about the world have come from breath-takingly evil men and women.
muppet.
Wow. This is just amazing. Do you really not understand that the genesis of feminism is in exactly the facts about women's social inequality that you have cited? The difference between you and feminists is not that you know and we don't that women have no choice but to live as second class citizens in order be safe. The difference is that you seem to be perfectly willing to treat that as an acceptable status quo and we aren't.
Feminists see that the world is run badly and say, "We need to fix this." And then we go out and work on doing just that, whether it's by changing the law, changing the economy, or changing the tone of social discourse.
You see that the world is run badly and say, "Well, what am I supposed to do about it? You ladies should just wear your burkas and stay in your father's courtyard until your husband comes to claim you. If you venture out and something bad happens, don't expect me to feel sorry for you."
Tell me, which of these positions is immature and shrill, and which is adult and sensible?
Anne,
The immaturity rests on the side of the feminists. No one is advocating burkas or the equivalent for women in this country. What I am saying, and what many others are saying as well, is that women need to accept reality which is that evil cannot be legislated away. You already have legal protection in rape cases and all other violent criminal cases. There is nothing unequal about the protection you enjoy there as a woman.
The shrillness on the feminist side comes from the screaming "if men would just stop raping, rape would stop." Do you realize how stupid that sounds to anyone with a sobre grasp of reality? If people would stop murdering, there would be no murders. If people would stop stealing, there would be no theft. If evil people weren't attracted to government, governments wouldn't kill their own people by the thousands or even millions.
Well, all of that obviously still happens, doesn't it? If the French with their welfare state cannot stop theft, do you really think that these crimes have to do with the faux-clever explanations for them such as income inequality? The only part that feminists have gotten right is that real, hardened rapists are about power and that's not something you can change.
As Vox Day said on his blog, don't you think that plenty of people told Ted Bundy to note murder? Didn't exactly stop him. The average feminist, in my experience, cannot embrace this precisely because her worldview is juvenile and irrational. You cannot educate away evil, only teach evil how to be more efficient at what it wants to do.
And, before I forget, the issue of women not being safe in these bad areas of town has nothing to do with social status. It has to do with basic facts of animal behavior. The men you have to rightfully fear are predators every bit as willing to hunt as a wolf or tiger. Predation is from the law of the jungle and in that moment of confrontation, Anne, the only two laws that exist are his will to power and your will to power. I would highly suggest that if you aren't capable of dominating him and crushing him, which most women are not capable of doing, that you avoid the areas where these men are known to prowl.
I don't like it anymore than you do. Do you really think that people like Ann Coulter and I really like a world that isn't 100% safe and stable? The difference between us and you is just that we look at history, see that it's never been safe and stable, and realize that it never will be. We've had over 5,000 years of history to get it right. We're not even close. Just accept reality and at least carry a gun out in public if you're going to go to these places alone.
Over five thousand years of history? Please tell me you're not a creationist and you're instead just making some vague handwave at how long there've been cities or something.
Anyway, see, here's the thing. Society isn't perfect now, as you so correctly observe, but in some places it's at least way better than it used to be. The end of slavery, the civil rights and women's rights movements, democracy, etc. all show that social progress is possible to some degree, even if that progress is necessarily imperfect and halting, so I don't think it's sensible to argue that improvement can't happen.
And rape is very much a social issue. Far more women are raped by dates, boyfriends, husbands, and, for underage women, relatives, than are raped by these tigrish superpredator strangers you're almost pornographically obsessed with. Ted Bundy is a strawman — the only reason his case was so memorable and sensational is because it was also very unusual.
Your victim blaming does not help make women more aware of the dangers of being female in this world. I assure you that most women are already very much aware of those dangers, and we live with that awareness every moment of our lives. Instead, what victim blaming accomplishes is to reinforce the sense of entitlement that so many men have that tells them that if a woman "asks" to be raped by being attractive and vulnerable, then she is at fault when they go and rape her. And it reinforces the shame that so many rape victims feel about coming forward to accuse their rapists — if it was genuinely her "fault" then by coming forward, she opens herself to vile victim-blaming of the sort you spout, and few people, male or female, have the fortitude to weather such a storm.
On a larger scale, this overemphasis on superpredators and treatment of female independence as blameworthy is also an attack on women's ability to function as independent human beings. If merely by being alone at night, a woman is putting herself at grave risk of being raped by a stranger, then how can a woman safely live her own life without a man always standing by to protect her? We can't have our own homes or our own jobs if we can't walk the streets with a reasonable expectation of safety. Living always dependent on the protection of others is no kind of life, and that you carelessly treat this situation as the immutable facts, as "just the way things are", says more about your indifference to women as human beings than it does about the actual possibilities for change.
This first issue is why feminists consider it vital to emphasize that all blame for a rape falls upon the rapist, and why we find responses such as yours and Ms. Coulter's so disgusting. No matter how "daft" or "naive" or "irresponsible" someone's behavior, the fault, criminally, tortiously, and morally, lies with the perpetrator of the crime, not with the victim, and anyone with a scrap of human decency will recognize and respect this.
The second issue is why we emphasize the realities of rape. In reality, a woman who walks alone at night, or hangs out with strangers at a bar (in America, at least) is not irresponsible or daft. In fact, on average she's probably safer walking alone down a darkened deserted street than being escorted home by her boyfriend, since she's far more likely to be raped by him than by a stranger. The same holds true for a woman who lives alone. If you remembered and emphasized these issues in your discussion, I'd be much more likely to believe your protestations against burkas and courtyards.
Anyway, the bottom line is that of course everyone should be responsible and play safe and protect themselves, but there is still no excuse for rape, and no fault is accrued by being raped. And I just can't convince myself that anyone with a genuine concern for women's safety and rights would spend so much energy and effort defending brutalization of women as part of the natural order, when clearly the whole point of human civilization is to find a way to not have to live like that. So tell me, why are you so invested in defending the status quo instead of seeking to improve it?
Good heavens, Anne, what makes you think that I am not sympathetic to the women victimized in these scenarios? The point of this post was to address the feminists who refuse to protect themselves. The ones who on Feministe said that I was "pro-rape" because I said that women ought to actually take precautions like not getting drunk off their asses alone in a seedy section of town at 3AM (where hardened rapists are more likely to be) or be alone with men they just met.
If a woman clearly says "no," then it's rape. Capisco questo, e capisci questo. You cannot get rid of rape, though, and that's because it's a fact of life like murder. What you can do are the following:
1) Prosecute without mercy when there is physical evidence or at least one good witness.
2) Improve forensics techniques.
3) Allow women to sue for restitution on top of seeking criminal charges so the rapist gets hit on both ends by the courts.
If we lower the burden of proof, which is what people like Feministe seem to want, then that only further hurts women. Only this time, it's the government doing the hurting. No physical evidence and no witness? That sounds a lot like the olden days where a black man could consider it a privately issued death sentence if a white woman got cross with him and cried rape, only more civilized because the lynch mob is on a public payrole.
I'm also suggesting that you CANNOT find a way to live like that, except to teach our daughters to not fear weapons, to know how to use them and be willing to use them. Violence can only be put down with violence because anyone who is willing to bring violence without provocation is not going to respect passive resistance. If you want to make things better, encourage more women to be armed in public and create a legal environment where the courts cannot second guess their decision to shoot a would-be rapist dead unless it looks like cold-blooded murder. So what if the rapist is a family member? Ain't her fault that the rapist just happened to be her dad, uncle or brother instead of a stranger or hookup at a college party.
The issue of being raped by a boyfriend could also be lessened if more women were trained with and comfortable with firearms or bladed weapons. Face it, it is far more practical to suggest that a woman face her boyfriend with a loaded 9mm with hollow points than to just let herself get raped or wait the 20-45 minutes for the cops to arrive and stop the rape. You cannot stop all cases that way, but neither can you stop every example of a given crime. Some crimes are just unpreventable.
If you want to blame anything for why the rape rates have gone up, I'd suggest that you blame two things: the sexual revolution and the public attacks on the right of self-defense. The sexual revolution was only a revolution in the sense that it further objectified women in the eyes of men. It's never been easier for men to get laid without having to care about the woman. Not even the promise of a marriage in most cases. She's just a quick fuck. Add in the culture which teachs women to be so weak as to fear a little .22 handgun and you have a recipe for women becoming not only sex objects, but ones that usually too afraid of the very weapons they need to present a credible self-defense. My daughters, when I have children, will be given at least a .38 when they turn 21. There is nothing like a loaded gun in your face to tell you to back the fuck off or the consequences for not accepting that "no" really means no will be swift and permanent.
And as for the creationist thing, I am, but I reject young Earth creationism because the Bible never actually says that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. That claim is based on a poor calculation. If you are so inclined, this blog post on Evangelical Outpost.com explains why there is no biblical basis to assume that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. In fact, the Bible itself never makes any statements about just how old the Earth really is.
Another thing, I think you have a bit of a naive attitude toward the "superpredators." They are very few and far between, and they're not the ones that you are going to be likely to run into in the seedy section of town. However, a woman is probably more likely to be victimized in a far worse way in those bad areas that she should avoid.
A lot of this would be non-issue were it not for sexual or substance immorality. As much of a voting libertarian I am (nearly straight tickey baby!) I don't like the drug or alcohol cultures. Same with the hookup culture. The bottom line is that the people who avoid these vices are less likely to become victims than those who don't.
And this brief aside to Anne N. --
"...anyone with a genuine concern for women’s safety and rights ... clearly the whole point of human civilization is to find a way to not have to live like that... [not] defending the status quo..."
Take a look at the book mentioned above, Anne,
and especially the Torah. Ultimately, the whole point of the BIBLE was "not to live like that", and the problem with the status quo is that the further we have moved from Biblical standards (where, yes, "patriarchs', be they fathers, brothers, husbands had a responsibility for protection, rather than "strong women" who "don't need no MAN, I can take care of mysself...") the worse our status quo qets.
That, of course, then becomes an excuse for moving even FURTHER away when the inevitable downward spiral continues.
[One other example? See what the Torah says about "theft", "prison" [hint: not], and (surprise!) "restitution", even "slavery" - where a thief [or rapist!] was held responsible to their victim.]
Well, Mike, some of the above really helps bring into focus the reason why I think the "patriarch/marriage" discussion, from a Biblical perspective, is so important.
The self-professed "feminist" won't see it, but the root of that entire field of idolatry is paganized goddess worship (including self-worship in the "I am woman hear me roar" vein.) And pointing that out is about the only way to ensure a more visceral denial reaction than observing that unarmed victims are more easily raped.
To make the case well takes more than a single blog comment...
If you haven't already seen it, take a look at J. W. Stiver's ebook, _Eros_Made_Sacred_ :
http://www.nccg.org/fecpp/Stivers-Preface.html
http://www.nccg.org/fecpp/Stivers-Intro.html
Mark,
1) They won't learn how to use guns.
2) They won't learn how to use them.
3) They won't avoid obvious dangerous spots in town.
4) They insist on endangering themselves by going out with men they've just met.
5) They'd rather reduce the burden of evidence to get a conviction than to eliminate the laws that prevent women from using deadly force against rapists in self-defense.
Those are five good reasons why their views of law and order are fundamentally divorced from ours.
Oh my. Innocent little me seems to have wandered into a dangerous den of male-privileged smugness. Whatever will I do without my gun. Woe is me. This is what I get for being so daft as to follow trackback links, and so childishly naive as to actually try to talk to the swamp-dwellers I find at the end. (Or was I just grumpy and looking to pick a fight? It's so hard to remember, with my midgety female mentality...)
Anyway, where to begin? Let's start with the Torah and the Christian Bible. Those may have been prescriptions for how to how to try to make a better society, but even the newest bits of the newer of the two prescriptions were written down a couple thousand years ago. I'm willing to believe humanity may have had a few better ideas in the interim, especially since things like how it's bad to own slaves, force people from other cultures into second-class status, and treat women like chattel weren't actually written into either of those books (and weren't practiced two thousand years ago), even though they're now critical parts of our modern ethics. Oh, and there's also the bit about shrimp being an abomination against god. What is up with that?
Anyway, I guess I'll go in semi-reverse order here, so second, let's talk about pagan goddess worship. Ah, yes. Pagan goddess worship. If this wasn't so funny and so ancient a canard, I might almost be irritated by the implication that if somebody doesn't worship your god they must therefore worship some strawman (or I guess strawwoman, in this case) antagonist to your religion. Actually, I'm an atheist, thanks. And, to forestall any more ignorant canards, "atheist" simply means I'm not a fan of supernatural explanations in general, and that I've never encountered any particular one that seems likely to be true. Any replies that say, "You must hate god, how could you deny him when you know His Capitalized Truth in your heart," or some similar ridiculousness, will be laughed at heartily. But maybe you'll just accuse me of immorality instead. I can't wait to find out, it'll be just like Christmas!
Anyway, on to the main subject of disagreement. Reading your replies, Mr. T, I get the sense that I have still not managed to convey my point to you, or perhaps that you are willfully ignoring it. The whole issue here is that women mostly already know about these threats to our safety. We hear about them every day, from well-meaning parents and relatives and teachers and media figures, and, well, from people like you and Ms. Coulter, whose motives seem to be less generous. This is how it is all the bloody time — everybody's got an opinion about how women should live, and if we don't live the way they want us to, they feel perfectly justified in coming along and saying, "I told you so," if something bad happens. And, see, here's the thing: even if an "I told you so" is correct, and I don't agree that it is in this case, but we'll ignore that for a second, even if it's correct, the person who immediately whips out "I told you so" in the face of something bad happening is, well, I don't have a polite term for what that person is, and I don't know your comments policy on cursing, so I'll refrain. "Jerk" is too mild a term, but we'll let it stand in for the one I mean.
I've already explained why I think your "I told you so" is incorrect (and I'd just like to note here that you're the one who brought the superpredators to the party, not me), and I've also discussed what harm I think it does beyond the "jerk" factor. I don't really think you've answered the issues I've raised. Just as an example, I doubt any sane woman can transition from normal family interaction to gun-wielding self-defense in the same instant it takes her father/boyfriend/husband to transition from wheedling to forcing, or to grab her while she sleeps. It takes a major change in mindset to be able to shoot someone you've previously cared about, and it just doesn't happen that quickly. So a gun does not actually provide a remotely useful defense in most situations of trust-based rape. And as far as stranger rape goes, having a gun does no good if the stranger himself has a gun and/or the element of surprise (as I would expect is frequently the case), or if he's slipped her a roofie. Guns are not the be-all and end-all of self-protection. Finally, as I said before, because of the fact that most rapes are committed by a person the woman knows, "playing it safe" in one's choice of social interactions is hardly sufficient protection either.
You've still not made a case that your response to this situation is consistent with respect for women as independent human beings, or, indeed, that a response of, "You're asking for bad stuff to happen to you if you don't live the way I tell you to," is anything other than condescending paternalism based on fear-mongering, misunderstanding of the issues, and overconfidence in the power of guns. To some degree it's probably a waste of time arguing with you, since it's clear that your perspective is so dramatically skewed that it's probably beyond my power to affect. But it's been somewhat amusing at any rate, so I may continue for a bit longer yet, if I'm looking for a way to slack, and if I don't find myself banned. ;-)
Anyway, in conclusion, be assured that anything I haven't addressed remains unaddressed primarily because it's so jaw-droppingly irrelevant to the issue that discussion seems worthless, and it didn't amuse me enough to bother to pursue it for other reasons. Nice meeting y'all.
Additionally, the behavior that I was referring to was the sort that was being discussed in the post I pinged with a trackback. The "I should be able to get drunk, get in a car with a bad boy in the worst section of town and not get raped" behavior. That is the argument that started this blog post.
I admit that there is no easy solution to the "otherwise good guy boyfriend" or the relative other than to try to get a conviction in court. I also don't see what that kind of situation has to do with the blatantly irresponsible behavior that I was originally talking about. We've been... perhaps... arguing at cross purposes.
Anne,
Again, some crimes are just unpreventable. However, a woman who is comfortable with a firearm is less likely to be a victim. It makes her more confident in herself and willing to defend herself.
The same woman could go from being nagged and pushed into sex to being beaten up. The fact of the matter is that life does suck and there are things which neither the justice system nor anyone else can prevent.
See, the other thing that would make women more confident in defending themselves would be having fewer rape apologists in the world who respond to rapes with, "I told you so," and, "You should've been less of a weak girly irresponsible slut, slut." It would also help if there were fewer guys walking around with the sense that they're entitled to sex when women "make them want it". These things would even help women be protected from trust-based rape, believe it or not. My point is that there is a solution to these issues, and that you and Ann Coulter are actually part of the problem.
I know what the post you were linking to said, and the fact that you don't get that "I told you so" harms all women, not just the "immoral" ones who dare to flout your idea of how women should be allowed to behave, shows that you still haven't gotten my point at all. We're not talking at cross-purposes, you're just not listening to me.
Anne,
I know you don't want to hear it, but the sexual revolution is to blame for a lot of the popular male attitudes toward women. Being easy with their sexuality is not in any woman's interest, and the real beneficiaries of the sexual revolution were young men who suddenly found that they didn't have to work to get laid. It didn't use to be the way. Now many of them have reached the point where they think that something is wrong with a woman if she doesn't put out before marriage. The devolution of sex from something special and/or sacred into an almost platonic act like eating together is where a lot of the problems come from.
You are an ideologue on this issue, it would seem. I am hardly a rape apologist. I have in no way said that I think that rape is ever justified. All I have said is that not all victims are created the same. When you say that they are, you are tearing down the victimization of the responsible women who take care of themselves and play it safe.
The "I told you so" is relevant because I'm saying that they knew it was a very possible outcome and they were warned. That's a far cry from saying they got what was coming to them as though the rapist was doing something that wasn't outright evil. Wouldn't you say, "I told you so" to someone who barely makes it out alive after they ignored your warnings about jumping into a jungle cat exhibit at the zoo to take a close up (people have actually done things that stupid)?
Then men who actually excuse men who are clearly mostly sober of rape are evil at heart. You cannot educate that out of them. Would you care to show examples of large numbers of men excusing the actions of the men who rape women who are clearly not consenting? Nothing vague, just show me where in our popular culture it is considered morally acceptable for a man to rape a woman.
Now, let me ask you this. If a woman can charge a man with rape for having sex with her while intoxicated, even though she didn't resist or say stop, on the grounds that she was too out of it to consent, how can a man who is equally drunk be presumed to understand consent? Just curious. It's a double-edged sword and any fairness in the equation would be bad for both parties because the only outcomes would be to make it illegal to have sex drunk or to make drunken rape legal.
And one last thing. You can condemn a woman's judgement and feel little pity for her while being completely opposed to the crime. One need not feel any pity for the victim to feel that the crime was unjustified. Do you feel genuine pity for a gangsta who gets gunned down in the middle of a fight with a member of a rival gang? I don't. Wouldn't stop me from giving the death penalty to the person who shot him. Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because a woman was irresponsible, doesn't make the rapist right. You can call out both wrongs without giving any leniency to the criminal.
Anne, I think what Mike and others are objecting to is the idea that this is a uniquely feminist issue. I'm a smaller guy who's never been in a serious fight, and the issue of differential strength and avoiding potential threats is just as much an issue for me, except that it's my material belongings rather than bodily assets that are the motivating factor. I don't go alone into bad neighborhoods, I don't get intoxicated in public (actually, ever, but if I did drink I wouldn't do it in public without knowing someone with the requisite abilities had my back.) and I'm wary about strangers. I shouldn't have to be in a perfect world, but reality isn't perfect. Men get mugged, beat up, killed etc., in our town's entertainment district all the time, and there's just as much condemnation of those whose behavior could reasonably be seen as foolishly increasing their risk. Far from being the result of some grand patriarchal conspiracy, such violent crime against both men AND women is a matter of opportunity and probably the moral relativism of the current culture.
I personally believe that anyone, male or female, who gets intoxicated in public is asking for trouble. The greatest weapon/tool/asset any human has is their mind, and to be out at large without one's mental faculties at full operational status, in a world of competing human interests, is to surrender one's own interests to those who keep their wits about them. As Mike hinted at, this isn't a gender issue so much as an issue of the harm alcohol and other mind-altering substances visit on society.
My car got stolen. It happened to be the most stolen make/model in North America. When I went looking for another of the same make and model, my girlfriend said, "if you do that, and it gets stolen again, I'm going to laugh and say 'I told you so'" and I admitted that I would have that coming. Like it or not, again, it's a world of conflicting human interests, and there's nothing bigoted or hateful about acknowledging that those who fail to use their native intelligence to guard their own interests will often end up with their interests being subordinated to the interests of others, often in illegal and quite harmful ways.
It's easy to take a differential of vulnerability and personalize it, characterizing it as an issue uniquely 'owned' by a class of people. As a motorcyclist, I see various biker organizations make a big deal about drunk and distracted drivers as if it's only our issue. A Congressman in South Dakota kills a motorcyclist while driving like a maniad, and the American Motorcyclist Association starts pushing for special legislation to up the penalties for killing a motorcyclist or other "vulnerable road user." Next time a biker without a helmet is killed, listen to what people say about his complicity in his own demise, and imagine if some activist started yelling about his right to go without a helmet, and about blaming the victim. I'd find it ridiculous and so would you, but shouldn't we have at least as much right to expect other motorists not to get drunk and ram us as a woman has to expect men not to rape? Isn't drunk driving just as much a symptom of cultural malaise as rape?
" [the Bible is incomplete, she says, and...] humanity may have had a few better ideas in the interim..." - AN
"You can be like God", eh? We've heard that before. As for "...bad to own slaves, force people from other cultures into second-class status, and treat women like chattel..." you didn't actually READ that Book for content, did you? And shrimp? The owner's Manual says you'll be healthier if you don't eat 'em. (Ever heard of mercury?)
" Actually, I’m an atheist, thanks..."
Remember Gomer Pyle? "Well, Sooprize, soohprise, SUPRISE!" That explains why the concepts espoused by the Other Team are so unwittingly part of your vernacular.