Jezebel Continues Its Long, Slow Decline

You know what’s super-funny? Rape!

What’s that? You say rape isn’t funny? It’s a horrible act of violence, one of the worst crimes a human can commit? Well, what if I told you a girl raped a guy? Have you busted a gut yet?

No? You don’t think it’s funny if a girl rapes a guy? Indeed, you think that patriarchal expectations of men’s sexual appetites would instead make it difficult for the guy to deal with the attack? And you think that while we shouldn’t get too far into the weeds (women are still more likely to be raped then men, and men are vastly more likely to commit sexual assaults than women), you think that the gender of both perpetrator and victim is not nearly as relevant as the need for society to condemn sexual assault unreservedly?

Well, you’re no fun. And you’re never going to be able to write for Jezebel, which Saturday launched a truly reprehensible article about a man being raped by a woman. Its title?

German Woman Tries to Hold Sexhausted Man Prisoner in Her Apartment

It’s funny because after being raped, he was exhausted — and rape is about sex! Evidently, I guess!

Doug Barry headlined the piece poorly, but perhaps the article will improve. Do you think so? No, I don’t either.

It’s your typical modern liaison — a man and a woman meet in a Munich bar, get a little drunk because they still have some vestigial social hang-ups about casual sex, head back to the woman’s apartment, and do it. When neither of them falls asleep after the first go-round, they do it again and again and again until the man predictably says that he’s tired and probably should, um, leave or whatever. Except that he wasn’t allowed to just leave.

So…that seems disturbing. And no less so because they did it “again and again and again.” Though it’s a nice bit of victim-blaming (he consented! More than once!), it’s not really relevant; once he wanted to leave, he should have been allowed to leave. If he wasn’t, he’d been unlawfully detained, and that in and of itself was a crime.

What followed was rape.

According to a report in The Province, the 47-year-old hostess refused to let her 43-year-old partner leave the apartment even after they had intercourse “several times,” insisting that he continue to have sex with her, which he did even after his first escape attempt. When the woman barred his second escape attempt, the man fled to the apartment’s balcony, where he succeeded in alerting the police. When the police showed up, the woman allegedly made similar (though unsuccessful) sex demands of them and now faces charges of sexual assault and illegal restraint.

Yup. He was detained and coerced into a sex act he did not want. That’s rape, and a pretty black-and-white case of it, at that.

Or it’s kind of funny, right Doug?

There’s an obvious Calypso reference to be made here…

Well, yes, insofar as the guy, like Odysseus, was trapped by someone he’d initially been besotted with. But it seems a bit too light-hearted, no?

…and though it’s tempting to read this episode of sexual aggression lightly because of the gender reversal of popularly accepted roles, sexual assault is a bad, bad thing, not made any more innocuous by the fact that a woman was the aggressor in this instance.

Well, okay. I mean, I guess I’ll just ignore the headline and the fact that you did make a reference to Calypso and did a bit of victim-blaming. As long as the article ends here.

 By all accounts, however….

Oh, hell, it’s on now.

…the initial hook-up was consensual and, even after being stopped from leaving, the man had sex “several more times” with the woman who detained him.

Um, okay? So that proves…what, exactly? The guy is allowed to withdraw consent, you know. The fact that he had sex a couple times willingly doesn’t mean he’s going to be forever willing. And quite simply, the man didn’t “have sex several more times.” He was raped several times. Once he was stopped from leaving, once he was trapped there unwillingly, everything after that point is rape. That he chose to give in to his attacker in hopes of getting out of the situation is no reason to shame him; though the article is unclear how the perpetrator detained her victim, one can only speculate that he had reason to fear for his safety. If he acceded to the rape to buy him time to get free, it was a survival strategy — one that, not incidentally, worked.

It’d be interesting to see what becomes of these charges, and whether a German defense attorney chronicles this man’s entire sexual history in an effort to discredit his accusations and make him seem way too promiscuous in an effort to prove that it was his own fault in the first place for sleeping with a complete stranger. Can you picture a bunch of German talk radio hosts calling this guy a “slut” or suggesting that he was just asking to be held as a prisoner in this woman’s apartment?

Well, I don’t know about the Germans, but the American bloggers are certainly happy to do so. That Barry tosses in a half-hearted nod to the fact that he was raped is irrelevant; Barry spends the entire article declaiming the man for having casual sex more than once and, notably, giving in to demands for sex after he was detained. That certainly sounds like slut-shaming to me.

Now that would be quite the gender reversal.

A gender reversal? Yes, it is, at least given what we usually expect. But in one major respect, it’s not a reversal at all. We have yet another victim of sexual assault being blamed for their actions, having their motivations questioned, and having it insinuated that they really wanted it, no matter what they said. The genders are irrelevant; the pattern is the same. Doug Barry, like so many, is quite happy to blame and shame victims of sexual assault for failing to live up to an arbitrary level of purity. And that is both disappointing and enraging.

This entry posted in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Sexism hurts men. Bookmark the permalink. 

21 Responses to Jezebel Continues Its Long, Slow Decline

  1. 1
    Ashley says:

    Remember the time when Jezebel editors decided it would be a good idea to post shots from a video of a woman being raped? It happened!

  2. 2
    Timid Atheist says:

    I’d stopped reading Jezebel awhile back anyway. But now I don’t think I’ll even bother clicking on links to them anymore. This is seriously out of line and I’m at a loss on how to handle it beyond simply boycotting their site and making others aware that I’m doing so and why. Not that all their writers are bad, but they do still seem to have some issues with some of their writers putting down things that are unacceptable.

  3. 3
    mythago says:

    What they said. There’s stupid, and then there’s ‘no, I really don’t want to pollute my corner of the internet with you anymore.’

  4. 4
    Tamen says:

    Jeff: I am sure that you have read the NISVS 2010 report from CDC, in particular the numbers for the last 12 months (tables 2.1 &2.2 p18-19).
    Then consider this quote from the report:

    For three of the other
    forms of sexual violence, a majority
    of male victims reported only
    female perpetrators: being made to
    penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion
    (83.6%), and unwanted sexual
    contact (53.1%).

    I wonder exactly what your definition of vastly is? Because to me your use of that word seem to imply that the likelyhood of women attempting sexual assault is very small, almost negligibly (which happen to be an antonym of vastly) and at least the NISVS 2010 strongly suggests that’s not the case.

    NISVS 2010: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf

  5. 5
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Tamen – all your quote indicates is that *if* the victim is a man, *and* the assault fell short of rape (by the CDC’s definition), then the perpetrator was more likely to be female. That’s not particularly informative as to the overall ratio between male and female perpetrators unless you consider the relative likelihood of male and female victims.

    I also find it interesting that you cut out the previous sentence, that states that The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators.

    I’m not going to cite all the numbers here, but even a cursory reading of that report shows that:

    – In any form of sexual violence, the percentage of women victims is considerably higher than male victims. The *closest* percentage is non-physical coercion, where the percentage of female victims is double that of male victims.
    – In any form of sexual violence with a female victim, male perpetrators form a distant majority.
    – If the victim is male, and the nature of the sexual offence unspecified, then it’s more likely that the perpetrator was female. However, this is a smaller likelihood than the likelihood of a female victim having a male perpetrator.

    So yes, I’m pretty sure the use of “vastly” is justified – I didn’t calculate the exact numbers but the report clearly indicates that there are many male perpetrators for each female perpetrator. Which isn’t to say that female perpetrators don’t exist or should be ignored, but citing one statistic out of context in order to pretend that the numbers are anywhere near similar demonstrates either ignorance of how statistics work, or a very clumsy attempt at distorting the facts.

  6. 6
    Tamen says:

    Eytan Zweig:

    all your quote indicates is that *if* the victim is a man, *and* the assault fell short of rape (by the CDC’s definition), then the perpetrator was more likely to be female. That’s not particularly informative as to the overall ratio between male and female perpetrators unless you consider the relative likelihood of male and female victims.

    So, can I presume that you agree with CDC definition of what constitutes rape and that “being forced to penetrate someone else” falls short of rape? Please take the effort to read CDC’s definition of rape and “being made to penetrate someone else” on page 17 before answering.

    Because if one takes that view then, yes, the difference in male and female victims of rape is larger and the difference in perpetrators are larger.

    I, however, do consider “being made to penetrate someone else” as rape and I did not state that outright because I thought that view were the common view in these circles. If one do consider “being made to penetrate someone else” as rape then the last 12 months figures for female and male victims (as can be read from tables 2.1 and 2.2 on p.18-19) shows that the rate of female and male victims of rape/attempted rape are pretty close in numbers.

    1.1% of women were raped/attempted raped in the last 12 months (table 2.1)
    1.1% of men were “made to penetrate” in the last 12 months (table 2.2)

    The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators.

    I left that out because for the last 12 months this category were too small to be measured with any confidence – which can be seen in table 2.2.

    If the victim is male, and the nature of the sexual offence unspecified, then it’s more likely that the perpetrator was female. However, this is a smaller likelihood than the likelihood of a female victim having a male perpetrator.

    So “being made to penetrate someone else” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view? “Secual coercion” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view? “Unwanted sexual contact” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view? You don’t seem to know that the NISVS 2010 Report do provide definitions of all of these terms on page 17 – making these categories in fact pretty specified in this context. Perhaps you shouldn’t constrain yourself to a cursory reading of that report?

    Since you defended the use of the word vastly can you give a percentage range for what vastly more is? Is 60% vastly more? 80%? 90%, 95%?

  7. 7
    Eytan Zweig says:

    I have expressed no opinion on the CDC’s definition in my comment above. It was you that brought up the NISVS report as an authority. I was just saying that that report doesn’t say what you claim it says.

    I actually think that being forced to penetrate someone else is usually rape. But that doesn’t change the statistics in that report.

    So “being made to penetrate someone else” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view? “Secual coercion” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view? “Unwanted sexual contact” is an unspecified sexual offence in your view?

    What does that even mean? When I said “the nature of the sexual offense unspecified” I meant that you include *all* sexual offenses regardless of how you label them.

    Let me stress that I share your outrage about sexual assault of all types, against all victims. But that doesn’t change the basic fact, that if you total up all the sexual perpetrators in the US in the period covered by that report, the men outnumber the women by a large margin. I don’t have time to do the specific math right now, but I’m happy to do so if you dispute that fact.

    I’m also not sure why the burden of giving a precise definition for “vast” falls on me. What ratio would you think constitutes a vast difference?

  8. 8
    mythago says:

    Tamen, you’ve selectively cited a report to make points that aren’t true, you accuse someone who disagrees with you of being a rape apologist, and having disputed the word ‘vast’ you now insist it’s someone else’s job to prove you wrong. What?

  9. 9
    Jeff Fecke says:

    Tamen —

    At this point, you’re derailing. I think it’s obvious that I think men being assaulted is abominable irrespective of who they’re assaulted by; that said, I think statistics are clear and compelling that yes, vastly more men are perpetrators of sexual assault than women, even if there are some sub-categories of assault that women are more likely to visit on men than men are.

  10. 10
    LaQwana says:

    I really liked this article and the way Jezebel made her point. Rape is rape once I person no longer on consents to the action. Many people one look at a women being rape by a man when really it goes both ways. One the man decided that he was done and that he wanted to leave he should have been allowed to leave. By the women focusing him to stay and making him keep having sex with her she was basically raping him. He did not have a choice to. The fact that he had to escape also shows that it was not something that he wanted to do instead he was forced, which makes it rape.

  11. 11
    Tamen says:

    I’d consider a vast majority to mean almost all – to be 95% and above. Vastly to me implies that even though it’s abhorrent that men are victims of sexual violence from female perpetrators it’s so seldom (an antonym of vastly is negligibly) that it’s no point in putting in the effort to do any prevention work for those cases.

    The last 12 months numbers for sexual violence in the NISVS 2010 Report (p.18-19) does not show a 95-5 distribution of female/male victims of sexual violence. And when male victims report a majority of female perpetrators in three categories (one of which constitutes rape) of sexual violence against men I just have to say that based on that I disagree with the use of the word vastly to describe the majority of male perpetrators. I would not have had any problem with, “majority” or with “large majority”. The number of female perpetrators of sexual violence, although fewer than male perpetraters, is not negligible – which is implied by vast. I asked Jeff and Eytan what they consider vast in case they had a different definition of it than I, hopefully a definition where the antonym is not “negligibly”.

    I did not intend to accuse Eytan or other commenting so far here to be rape apologists. I think I can see where Mythago thinks I did that and, although this issue cuts close to home for me, I should have phrased my question about Eytan’s opinion on CDC’s definitions as an open question rather than an question containing an assumption. I apologize for that.

  12. 12
    Eytan Zweig says:

    I guess we just interpret the word “vastly” differently – for me, a vast difference is a matter of context. If I have 5 cents and you have 95 cents, I wouldn’t consider that a vast difference in our fortunes. If I have $500,000 and you have $9,500,000 I would, even though percentage-wise the ratio is the same.

    In the case of perpetrators of sexual violence, I really don’t know how to quantify what I would count as a vast difference. Without concrete statistics (I had written a long post trying to deconstruct the CDC report and see what can be deduced from it, but decided it would be a massive derail) it’s hard to really say. And to be honest, I think focusing on that single claim by Jeff is really missing the point of his post, which is that rape is rape, and not to be taken lightly regardless of the genders and sexes of the people involved.

  13. 13
    Devan Harrington says:

    I’m quite pleased to see that someone has been charged with this crime. so many times I’ve heard a cop, or a judge say that there is no such thing as a woman raping a man. clearly, if he orgasms, he liked it.

    here’s the deal, a man can come if he isn’t into “it.” sure, it takes a while, but it will eventually happen for him.

    just because the end result is the same, doesn’t mean the act was wanted.

  14. 14
    John Markley says:

    “It’d be interesting to see what becomes of these charges, and whether a German defense attorney chronicles this man’s entire sexual history in an effort to discredit his accusations and make him seem way too promiscuous in an effort to prove that it was his own fault in the first place for sleeping with a complete stranger. Can you picture a bunch of German talk radio hosts calling this guy a “slut” or suggesting that he was just asking to be held as a prisoner in this woman’s apartment?”

    What an asinine-albeit typical- remark by Barry. If defense attorneys and media jackasses were routinely attacking male rape victims with tactics like this, that would represent a significant improvement over the current state of affairs- it would imply that getting people to write off a man who had been raped by a woman actually required saying more than “He’s a man.”

  15. 15
    Rachael says:

    Love (and by “love,” I mean “hate”) how the word “rape” didn’t show up once in that article.

    No, Jezebel isn’t a feminist website, but it has a large feminist readership. And frankly, rape shouldn’t just be a feminist issue. That writer should be fired, or at least suspended.

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  17. 16
    Aerik says:

    On most days, MRAs will whine and piss and moan about being defined as anti-feminists.
    Yet in response to this article, they say Jeff is a closet-MRA. Why? B/c he disagreed with an alleged feminist website.
    If the MRM isn’t defined by anti-feminism, then how does the acclaim follow?

    Gotta love the dimwitted hypocrisy of the MRA clique.

  18. 17
    mythago says:

    John @14: Funny that a remark made by Jeff is, in your mind, “typical” of Barry. But those non-MRAs, they all look alike, amirite?

  19. 18
    Jebedee says:

    mythago – the remark isn’t by Jeff, it’s a quote by him of Barry i.e. Doug Barry, who wrote the original article (not Barry Deutsch).

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