(First, kudos to Amanda Marcotte whose comment and link here in the Daily Kos Kerfuzzle thread served as the inspiration for this post)
How ingrained is our culture’s prominent “past-time” of ‘guilt tripping the sexual assault/rape victim for the attack’ in our psyches–especially the victims’? Whenever we begin to talk about the perpetrator (usually a guy) it seems as if we just throw up our hands in surrender and say, “yeah well, he’s a guy. Guys do that so watch out ladies.” Once again we slam the victims and women with all the responsibility for the attack, as if they raped or sexually assaulted themselves. When we list whose to blame for the attack and crime, we list everyone, including the victim, but rarely–if ever–the attacker. Or he’s at the bottom of the list and is portrayed as the least responsible for the attack. It’s the “we can’t help what guys do, but women should bear all the burden when it comes to prevention of sexual violence,” mentality of our culture. Rape Culture 101; guys are entitled to get sex on demand, to sexually harass, commit sexual assualt, and rape. And it’s all your fault if it happens to you. Guys can’t help themselves after all.
No one–I’m certainly not saying that women shouldn’t take precautions to protect themselves, but that’s a mere ‘band aid’ solution to the problem. The root of the problem here is that we barely or don’t at all take steps to educate young men about sexual violence prevention. While girls and young women are lectured on what not to do in certain scenarios in social settings, what do we do with the guys? Why are we so afraid to lecture them on “why they shouldn’t rape or sexually assault?” Why do we keep making up excuses for their behavior and crimes, but continue to scold the female victims for their attack? Boys will be boys; a tenet of the Rape Culture. Steve Gilliard’s post on the missing young woman in Aruba and his comment are prime examples of how we make up excuses for guys’ behavior towards women, and expect women to foresee their own attack. Never mind the guys’ responsibility in the attack at all–that doesn’t count.
I don’t think it’s not so much that “she got what she deserve”, but a media refusal to look at their conduct and say these girls were placed in a less than optimal situation. I would also bet no one had an honest discussion with them about acting like adults and making adult choices. Of course not. It was a “Christian” school. So they could get drunk, fuck any cute boy and no one would say things like:
“Be careful. Don’t just go off with any cute boy. He may not act that cute when you’re alone.”
“Carry condoms and lube”
“When you get drunk, you tend to make shitty decisions. So stick together and don’t let someone go off alone.”
Now, I’ve always been confused as to why a girl would go off with three guys. Was she going to pull a train? Or did she have two spare sex organs for them to use? Because otherwise, that sounds like a really bad decision. One which she should have been warned against. Boys in groups tend to do things they wouldn’t do alone. And the expectation of sex must have been high.
And we continue to gloss over the perpetrators and focus our blame squarely on the victim. Yes she didn’t make very good decisions but how does that warrant rape or sexual assault? How are rape and sexual assault “okay” decisions for guys? It’s okay to rape or sexually assault if the young woman made a poor decision? Is that what we tell guys? And his comment…
[…] Because you can’t tell someone to not brutalize women. Most men won’t do that, but if they do, you can’t say “hey, you know rape is wrong”. Most guys know that. The ones that don’t aren’t going to listen to a lecture.
The best we can do is say “look, some guys are assholes and you need to watch out for them.”
Now, you can tell boys that it isn’t OK to screw the drunk or hit women, but most guys aren’t going to do that anyway. But the problem for women is the guys that do and dealing with them.
[…]
I think women have a more idealistic view of men than men do. Chris Rock summed it up: “if a man comes up to you over the age of 13 and asks you if you want help, he’s saying ‘you want some dick with that?’
Women tend to resist the idea that most men size them up sexually. I can assure you that if there’s a boy in your daughter’s life and he’s a “friend”, he’s either not interested in her, or is just biding his time. But the idea of sex has crossed his mind.
The same applies to all your coworkers and opposite sex friends. If they’re straight, they have either thought about having sex with you or reasons why they shouldn’t.
But the issue is on the table.
Have you ever been out with a friend and then suddenly he got grabby or romantic and you didn’t expect it. Now, you might have written that off, but it happens because men rate women sexually, and that one time might be the time he actually acted on his feelings.
So when I say men will do anything for sex, I’m not just saying that. It’s observed behavior.
We continue to ignore the elephant in the room whenever we talk about sexual violence and prevention. We conveniently forget all about the perpetrator and focus on the [female] victim, and lecture them on why it’s all their fault. So much for those karate lessons and pepper spray–it’s still your fault. Gee, why don’t we just come out and say, “well if you didn’t have a vagina you wouldn’t have been attacked.” That’s the hint if you really think about.
And here are some questions about violence to ponder, that ties into our rape culture. Via V-Day: Until The Violence Stops…
What frightens you about giving up violence?
What are you afraid of losing?
What do you secretly like about violence?
How will sex change when there is no more violence?
What stories will you have to give up when you give up violence? what parts of your past will you have to release?
Why do you think ending violence is impossible?
Do you know anywhere in the world where there is no violence? describe.
Do you know anyone who truly lives non-violently? describe.
What is violence?
Where does it come from?
Do you believe violence is part of human nature?
Do you believe violence is taught?
What is the relationship of violence to patriarchy?
Do you think violence has to do with race, class, a particular place?
What would have to change in the world in order to end violence?
What would have to change in you in order to end violence?
What makes you violent?
What stops you from being violent?
Who has been violent towards you?
How did this change who you are?
Do you believe it is possible to end violence? why? why not?
Pingback: Pandagon
Pingback: Nostariel
Ay.
1. When a woman goes with a man, she trusts him.
2. It’s not a crime to trust someone.
3. Most men don’t abuse that trust. Men know the code. We women know that they do better than some men do, because we are the ones who go with men.
4. If you are a man, and you don’t know the code, you have the problem.
5. It’s insulting to tell women that they are fools to consider men their friends. We know who our friends are.
6. We consider men sexually ourselves. Even our friends.
7. You can be friends and respect someone you have “considered sexually”.
The root of the problem here is that we barely or don’t at all take steps to educate young men about sexual violence prevention. While girls and young women are lectured on what not to do in certain scenarios in social settings, what do we do with the guys? Why are we so afraid to lecture them on “why they shouldn’t rape or sexually assault?”?
Not sure who “we” is. I was raised with lectures on what not to do in certain scenarios, and I was inculcated with sexual ethics, personal responsibility, no-means-no, and all that good stuff.
Maybe some representatives of the morality-is-just-code-for-controlling-women crowd dropped a car off the parenting train somewhere.
Men need to teach each other not to rape. This is laughably obvious but even suggesting it is treated like setting a fucking house on fire. I’ve done more to teach men not to rape than any man I know simply by challenging these bullshit beliefs that women are always responsible when shit goes wrong. It’s tiresome.
It does beg the question as to whether or not the same kind of warnings would be seen as necessary if it were three young women and one young man. I’m inclined to believe that he’d be high-fived, and not chastised for putting himself in danger.
So Steve and his ilk are saying that men are evil and cannot be trusted.
And we’re the manhaters. . .yah. ‘Kay.
Someone being naieve does not mean she deserved it. And for fuck’s sake, most sexual assaults are committed by people the victims’ know.
Sheeit. I’ve gone out with three of my guy friends. Who knew that the basic assumption was that I was planning on pulling a train? Here I was thinking it was dinner. I’d better tell them next time that they are dangerous and vile beings who only want me around to ogle me sexually. You know, fit the feminist stereotype Steve and Kos and their merry band of misogynists cling to with such tenancity. And then they can whine about how we hate men.
It’s irony week in the blogosphere.
Steven Gilliard is tiresome on women’s issues. I wonder how he’d feel if I wrote up his ideas but replaced sex with race.
You know, it’s not hard to think of scenarios where even “careful” women would “go off with three guys” she has no intention of having sex with, and I’ve been in that situation. For example:
1. She knows or works with one or more of the guys and
2. They “go off” to go smoke a joint/go to another club/get a cup or coffee or something to eat.
Like I said, it’s not hard to imagine very innocent scenarios where a woman who has a normal amount of common sense and trust in people might be in that situation. I don’t know the particular situation with the missing woman in Aruba, but to infer that any woman who “goes off with three guys” is, if not “asking for it”, being “stupid” is expecting and unreasonable amount of clairvoyance on that woman’s part.
Not sure who “we”? is. I was raised with lectures on what not to do in certain scenarios, and I was inculcated with sexual ethics, personal responsibility, no-means-no, and all that good stuff.
Same here, but I think they did (at least in my case) a really half-assed job. “No means no” got pounded into my head through sex ed and after-school specials, but it was the late 80s/early 90s form of “abstinence only”; no certainly did mean no, but there was never any example of what an honest, consensual “yes” would be. Which I’d think would be a rather important part of teaching men what constitutes consent.
I think the reason for the emphasis on the behavior of the woman is this:
Most people, upon hearing this story, think:
How do I make certain that this does not happen to me?
or alternately: how do I make certain that this does not happen to my wife/daughter/sister, etc.?
Most people are not thinking: How do I make certain that I don’t victimize someone?
So most people want to be able to focus on things that the victim did wrong, so that they can reassure themelves it won’t happen to them.
Steve has made it quite clear how he feels when it’s race instead of sex. He did a post today about lynching where he pointed out, rightly, that whites share collective guilt over lynching. He did not examine whether or not the young men who might have flirted with or whistled at white women somehow set themselves up when they knew that white people cannot be trusted not to go a-lynching. That’s insane. Rape should be treated the same way.
Men know damn well what it’s like for women to be afraid to move about freely. Every time my boyfriend leaves me alone he yells, “Make sure all the doors are locked!” We all know why. Men know.
You know what really puzzles me about this? What do you want to bet that Steve, Kos etc have in fact hung out with women without planning to get laid? I mean, they presumably went to college. Did they never have female classmates who they studied with? Female co-workers who they went out for post-work drinks with? I just can’t imagine a scenario in which any man who grew up in America hasn’t found himself in a non-sexual social situation with women. Watch TV and you’ll see male and female friends hanging out without and assumption of sex to follow (I’m not a big fan of Friends but a lot of people did seem to watch it). Unless these men grew up in Iran or Saudi Arabia, I guarantee that they’ve hung out with women platonically at some point.
So, how can they ignore their own life experience? How does the “script” end up overriding reality?
One question I’ve always wanted to ask, which might work better in an anonymous forum like this than in person. Why do perfectly decent men, men who have never raped or assaulted a woman in their life and never will, still have such a knee-jerk reaction to this topic? Why do they react as if any discussion of rape is an accusation aimed at them personally? Any of the guys on the board want to take a shot at explaining this?
Another question for the guys while I’m at it. Why are they so unwilling to talk to other guys about this, and so very willing to excuse friends when they display this kind of behaviour towards women? Why don’t the guys who know damn well that this behaviour is wrong educate their less-enlightened brethren? I’m not trying to attack the guys who post on this board, I really genuinly want to know why the decent ones don’t speak up about this. Because honestly, women can talk about this till the cows come home, but the only way it’s ever going to change is if men start imposing real social sanctions on EACH OTHER for behaving badly towards women.
Yes, Amanda. That’s exactly why I find him tiresome. I don’t even read his posts on gender anymore. He just doesn’t get it. In his world certain things are “just the way it is” but other things should be changed. Depending on which side of the fence he happens to find himself.
It’s too bad. He’s a good writer on many issues.
Brit, you are so right. Steve writes all the fucking time about women without getting sexual, but he, like so many men, is so damn afraid to drop the “gotta have it” mentality lest he actually be held accountable that he plays like he feels that way. Whatever. The most frustrating thing is he writes about his girlfriend constantly and he clearly admires and respects her, but it doesn’t quite carry over to changing his mind. I like it when he writes about Jen–they seem happy, reminds me of me and my boyfriend, a genuine respectful partnership. But it just doesn’t translate. I guarantee that if someone fucked with Jen, he’d get fluff up his nose, but still, no larger understanding. Like I said in the comments, it’s a wonder to watch a guy who claims men can’t help it determine real fucking quick that men can help it if they “can’t help it” in the direction of a beloved wife or girlfriend or daughter.
I’m frustrated because I feel a sort of kinship with him and it just tees me off. He had the fucking nerve to ask if a guy has ever been “inappropriate” with me–uh, like at least twice a week, duh. I go out alot, I know a lot of men, I’m into a counter-culture scene. A guy who gets in your space and gets wandering hands is out of line, but it is not the same thing as someone who chooses to rape a crying, screaming woman. I think the reality of rape just isn’t real enough for some men. I don’t know how to make it real to them.
Oh, and as for “why”, Brit. Steve linked a man who has wandering hands to one who rapes and strangles a woman and throws her in a harbor, though I doubt that was his intention. They get defensive because on a certain level they know that the one and only way to stop rape is to give up male privilege. And once that is gone, they will either have to stop objectifying women or be objectifyed openly themselves. Either choice makes them squirm.
Also, here’s another thought. Why do we use “consent” as the baseline for when it’s appropriate for sex to happen? From a framing point of view I think that furthers the sexist idea of women as passive objects who aren’t really interested in sex and are only doing it to please their man. From a semantic point of view it reinforces the idea that sex is something that is being done to us rather than something that we’re equal partners in. Wouldn’t “enthusiastic participation” be a better benchmark? To me “consent” doesn’t really imply that the woman is at all happy to be having sex, just that she isn’t screaming and trying to run away. Surely we can set the bar higher than that.
Amanda, I’m actually a big proponent of the idea that maybe we should objectify men a bit more openly, so that maybe they will start to get a clue about how it feels to be on the receiving end. I’m actually in the process of trying to write a novel (slow and painful process) dealing with attraction, dating etc from a woman’s point of view. One of the reasons I want to write it is because there’s so little out there in the culture describing the way that women look at men sexually, how lust works from our point of view etc (although there’s plenty of the love and romance variety). Funny thing is, several guys that I’ve shown some of the intial drafts to have been deeply freaked out. I’ve heard a lot of “but women just don’t look at men that way! They’re so much more emotional…”. I think the issue is that if men accept that they are being evaluated in a sexual way just like women are, they also have to accept the idea that they might be found lacking or undesireable, and that’s pretty scary if you’ve never had to think about it before.
“You know what really puzzles me about this? What do you want to bet that Steve, Kos etc have in fact hung out with women without planning to get laid? I mean, they presumably went to college. Did they never have female classmates who they studied with? Female co-workers who they went out for post-work drinks with? I just can’t imagine a scenario in which any man who grew up in America hasn’t found himself in a non-sexual social situation with women. Watch TV and you’ll see male and female friends hanging out without and assumption of sex to follow (I’m not a big fan of Friends but a lot of people did seem to watch it). Unless these men grew up in Iran or Saudi Arabia, I guarantee that they’ve hung out with women platonically at some point…”
You and me both, Brit. I thought along those lines while reading Steve’s spiel about young men as brainless, unstoppable fuck machines. Uhhh… I guess by that criteria, no man gets past eighteen years of age with his virginity still intact. I guess he either loses it by that time or falls over dead in the attempt. :/
Of course, I notice that at least a few overgrown frat-boys in Kos-land like to insult young Right-wing guys by using “virgin” as an epithet. [snort] Yeah, it’s really of primary importance in a political discussion –even one totally unconnected to sexual issues– whether you’ve dipped your wick yet or not, Junior. I guess by that standard, we should all be ritually deflowered before being allowed to vote. You know, just to make sure that we’re qualified. Shit.
And, yeah, I too had the thought that it’s weird guys can eat Steve’s schtick up and then call feminists “man-haters.”
Alsis
Yep, whenever I hear men like Steve trot out the “man as nothing more than ambulatory gonads” tripe I start to wonder if maybe I actually like men a whole lot more than they do. I certainly seem to have a higher opinion of their intelligence.
So Steve and his ilk are saying that men are evil and cannot be trusted.
I really wonder if Steve realizes what he’s saying is that he would rape if he thought he could get away with it.
And I add to the comment thread by directing you to:
http://www.laddertheory.com/
Enjoy, as you see fit.
“I really wonder if Steve realizes what he’s saying is that he would rape if he thought he could get away with it. ”
I wonder what he’d say if you e-mailed him and pointed that out.
BritGirl, I think the contrast is you’re talking about human beings who are “men,” and they’re talking about “men” as the gender construction, less than fully human. Only, they’re not thinking of it as a construction.
I really wonder if Steve realizes what he’s saying is that he would rape if he thought he could get away with it
No, he’s saying that men are evil. In fairness – I’ve never heard of the guy, let alone read him, and nothing I’ve seen here inclines me to change that status. But using my Jedi Inter-male Telepathy power, I fathom that what means by that is that he is aware that his own nature inclines toward evil “by default”. The easiest path isn’t always evil, but the evil path is often easy. He sounds like he doesn’t know much about women – and so he’s not saying that they are similarly inclined, because he doesn’t know for sure.
I am inclined to evil. The option is always there. Perhaps it is different for you. I won’t presume to speak for half the species; just this 1/6 billionth of it. The fact that my actions are not universally evil is due first and foremost to grace (grace = God cutting us some slack), and secondarily to my own conscious decisions to act in a good manner. I regretfully report that that last factor is not impressive in its magnitude, and delightedly report that the first is something to be thankful for.
Would I rape if I thought I could get away with it? Well, I believe that I can’t get away with it where it counts, so the hypothetical is moot. But my answer would have to be “I don’t know.” The only way to know is to find out; I pray never to undergo such a temptation. But even if I did undergo such a temptation, I would be aware that “getting away with it” was not on the table.
“Would I rape if I thought I could get away with it? Well, I believe that I can’t get away with it where it counts, so the hypothetical is moot. But my answer would have to be “I don’t know.”? The only way to know is to find out; I pray never to undergo such a temptation. But even if I did undergo such a temptation, I would be aware that “getting away with it”? was not on the table. ”
Robert, I’ve disagreed with you before but always thought that you were a decent person. This is the first time that I’ve ever genuinely disliked you. Are you actually saying that you might consider raping someone if you didn’t know that God would judge you for it? Because that’s what it sounds like.
I came to the conclusion long ago that I think that men are much smarter and more capable than most people give them credit for being. If I were male, I’d find all the excuses for stereotypical male behaviour positively insulting.
And BritGirl, I’m all for objectifying men more ;)
Porn, as it exists now, bothers me not because it’s sexual, but because it’s pretty much only men’s fantasies. So our own sexuality, not just our physical appearance, is idealised in terms of male desires, and to top it all off, this ideal is often accepted as fact. It’s understood that not all women look like porn stars (although there is the assumption that we probably ought to) but too few people think of women’s sexuality in ways that don’t fit into the images found in most porn – or the majority of mass media.
Thus, you get 18/19 year old guys lecturing women on female desire and guys of all ages screaming prude! when anyone dares to call a particular ad objectifying. Not to mention the blaming of rape victims instead of rapists. After all, if she didn’t want it she shouldn’t have blah blah blah – ’cause apparently, not only are all guys untrustworthy sex fiends, but it’s just not possible for women to “want it” but not want it from every guy in existence, or only want it at certain times, or in certain ways, or…..well, pretty much “want it” in any way that contradicts male fantasies.
I’m beginning to think that certain aspects of the feminist fight are ripe for a refight. Especially after I went and read some other, less feminist threads on this topic. There is an enormous amount of victim-blaming going on, for example. Nary one poster notes that a victim is not the criminal here.
Makes me sad.
BritGirlSF: “This is the first time that I’ve ever genuinely disliked you.”
I just want to point out that you asked the question and got the answer. It may not have been the answer that you wanted, but it was the answer. If women want to understand men, they cannot berate them when they expose their minds.
Men don’t excuse guys for acting on their desire to have unconsensual sex. We all know it is wrong. For men it is a matter of self-control. There are few of the “hide in the alley” men out there. I think what Robert was talking about was the “my friend is on my bed and I am pretty drunk guy”. Date rape convictions have given men more pause in these situations, but many are still overcome by their Id — which come out in full force after three or four funnels.
Talking to young men will not help them supress their Id. We think differently than that. We need physical punishment perhaps death or castration as an adequate deterrent. That way, when the little guy is saying “she is so hot” and the other guy above our necks is saying, she is your friend he can add to the little guy — “and if we touch her you will be cut off at the hilt”. Men will listen then. Guaranteed.
BritGirlSF:
Funny how things work. I’ve actually disagreed with Robert a lot, and I’ll admit that I’ve disliked him occasionally. However, his comment now seemed very sincere and even brave. What I’m finding very common is the curious double standard about rape, as in saying “boys will be boys” when dismissing cases of rape, but same people have (in my experience) in other occasions completely dismissed it as something done by “others” (as in privileged frat boys,sicko bush rapists, foreigners, etc. usually people have some pet scapegoat groap), and have been very quick to announce themselves as people who would never rape (never is a strong word, decent people have, in wars for example, turned into amoral murderers and rapists, and It’s far too easy to either blame in ot the situation or say that those people just were doing what they would have done before if given the change[I’m certain that most such people would have never thought of doing such things, but I can’t really know their minds so I’m not sure]).
My personal take on the issue (as a straight male with slight liberal and libertarian beliefs) is quite similar: I know I have occasionally wanted to commit horrible acts. I can’t truly know whether I would do those acts in different circumstances, both fear of punishment, my personal moral values (respecting the rights and integrity of other people), and my slight idealism (I think honesty and respect does have it’s benefits) refrain me from doing bad stuff (also I don’t simply want to, sometimes). I have passed up opportunities to lie, cheat, steal and in other ways fo harming other people in the past because of my morals (though I have also slipped from my morals, especially if I thought I could gain something by doing so too often that I would like). I don’t know if I would wan’t to rape subconsiously. I know only that I think it is wrong, against the basic rights of a sexual self-determination, and that I would consciously resist such an urge (and I think and hope I’d be succesful in resisting it). Whether It’s not wanting to rape, God, belief in human rights, or all of them that guides a person in doing the right thing and not raping is no big difference to me, if the end is same (not raping).
On the issue of Steve Gillard: I think his position appalling and hypocritical. He’s saying It’s not about blame and then immediately finds things he can use to blame the victim with. Do these folks realize how much the possibility of rape must affect the life of an average woman, and how much must a woman self-regulate behaviour that men take for granted (going out alone after dark, inviting co-workers and friends of opposite sex in the apartment, getting drunk) because men generally don’t have worry about the risk of rape?
“so that maybe they will start to get a clue about how it feels to be on the receiving end.”
Most “average guys” would love to be objectified like your “average gal”. When is that parade starting?
I used to live in DuPont Circle and found out what it was like to be objectified by men. When you say objectified — do you mean in the way men do it or will women have their own way? I was walking in the safeway in DuPont and this guy picked up a cucumber and made licking motions and a pretty impressive tongue flutter on it. He was dissappointed when he saw my wife — “make sure you keep him close honey — we are watching him” he said to her. I was pretty uncomfortable with that situation. Not the conversation, but the tongue flutter on the cucumber. If that is the kind of objectifying you are talking about, I am not really on board with that. But if it is having Chippendales sell Venus razors I am all for it.
scapegoat group, not scapegoat groap. Typo…
I applaud Robert for his honest response; a response I was expecting to hear. IMHO rape as a crime can be likened to stealing – EVERYONE has the impulse or idea to steal, but for a number of reasons which vary considerably from person to person, most of us don’t end up being thieves. Would you chastise someone who DIDN’T commit a crime, but simply because the crime occurred to them? Asking someone to transform their psyche somehow through criticism, self-analysis, insult and degredation is UNREALISTIC. Not going to happen – so just be happy that whatever prevents so many men from acting on the impulse to rape WORKS.
We need to deal with how this self-intervention FAILS in rapists, and not divert our attention to express our disappointment in those for which it is working to prevent rape.
(Before you go off at me about gender and the oppression of women, let me assure you I understand rape is a more complex crime with more complex motivations than stealing, but I was simply using theft because of its illustrative value)
jstevenson, tuomas
Please note that I was asking Robert to clarify his statement – just because I read it the way I did does not automatically mean that’s what he meant.
However, just because I asked for a response does not mean that I am obliged to like the response I get. Note that I did not tell him “you can’t say that”. Robert is free to express whatever opinion he wants, and I am free to say that I find his opinion unpleasant or even appalling if that’s what I feel. As long as we’re both being polite and not resporting to name calling (and given that both of us are typically polite and reasonable people I’m pretty sure that can be managed) I’m not seeing why we can’t disagree.
Tuomas
“Men don’t excuse guys for acting on their desire to have unconsensual sex. We all know it is wrong. “. I’m not sure that this is true. I’m fairly sure that it’s true of MOST men, but I’ve also heard men state pretty clearly that they think that rape is justified in certain circumstances.Have you never heard someone say “she was asking for it”? Or read the transcripts of a rape trial? I wish I hadn’t, but I have.
Also, I see your point about everyone occasionally wanting to do terrible things. I’m sure that anyone who’s ever had a job has thought about killing their boss at least once (I know I have). But the thing it, there’s a big difference between thinking about something and saying that you would do it if you thought you could get away with it and/or if you didn’t think that God would punish you for it. The reason I’ve never actually killed my boss isn’t because I’m afraid of going to jail, it’s because I think it’s wrong and, once I actually simmer down a bit, I don’t actually want to kill him at all. There’s a big difference between having a moment of pure rage/having you id predominate and actually acting on that rage/id. I think the difference is actually realising the impact your actions are going to have on other people.
jstevenson
By “objectify” I meant openly lust over/comment on men’s desireability the way men do with women. I didn’t mean perform obscene gestures with produce. That’s not objectifying, it’s harrasment. You should have told him to F@#$ off.
Also, “date rape” is exactly what I want to talk about. Stranger in an alleyway type cases account for only a tiny percentage of rapes, and frankly I’m not sure that any ammount of talking to those guys would get them to modify their behaviour.
What I do want to know is what the hell is going through someone’s mind in the “drunk and lying in bed with friend” scenario. If you call someone a friend, doesn’t that imply that you care about her feelings? Or is it that men don’t consider this to be rape?
Actually this is the crux of what I’m trying to get at in opening this discussion in the first place. I suspect that men may have an entirely different idea of what rape IS than women do. I think that a real discussion of this is of huge value. However, for any kind of worthwhile discussion to happen the guys have to accept that the women have a right to be upset, confused and even angry about some of the things the guys might say. Otherwise everyone will just end up either censoring themselves or screaming insults at each other, and neither of those would be particularly productive.
I wonder how many men blame the victim in cases where men are the rape victims?
Aside from the rest of the post this seems to me the most striking bit: The same applies to all your coworkers and opposite sex friends. If they’re straight, they have either thought about having sex with you or reasons why they shouldn’t.
And that never happens to women? Not to the same degree?
What about individual differences? Are all men thinking about sex the same way, and on the other side, all women think of sex in their own different way?
That’s what seems to be implied in that statement.
The way I see, that kind of passing thought or fantasy about people you’re not really even attracted to is there, or can be there, for anyone, women or men, unless they’re just not interested in sex at that particular time, or in general, as a personality.
Not everyone is aware of their unconscious thoughts in the same way, but they’re there all the same. A passing thought or minimal degree of sexual friction is there even among platonic, same-sex heterosexual friendships. We can’t help it. We’re all sexual beings even if we all don’t think of sex in the same way, thankfully, or we’d all be robots. I do think those involuntary thoughts and fantasies are the way our brain processes who we are attracted to and who we aren’t; it’s a sort of mechanism of asking the question regardless, to refine the answer, so to speak.
But what the fuck does having even ‘automatic’ sexual thoughts and responses have to do with rape?
It’s not even on the same level. It’s like comparing normal sexual desire with necrophiliac tendencies. I just cannot understand how heterosexual men can connect the two things – sexual attraction and rape – and not realise how pathetic and degrading it is for them in the first place, nevermind for women. Men who think like this must think of themselves as incapable of normally attracting sexual desire from women. How else could they relate sexual drive with rape?
The link between forcing sex on women and sexual attraction should be as evidently bizarre and sick as that between forcing sex on corpses and sexual attraction. That necrophilia is abhorred by everyone but the necrophiliacs, while rape is so often explained in terms of simple sexual exuberance or “the occasion was too tempting” is what’s wrong about the whole mentality. It’s an idea of male sexuality as sick to the core. It confuses rape with the desire to pursue and conquer the sexual interest of another, which in itself is normal. It also confuses fantasies of domination, which any man or woman can have, with actual rape. Embracing that kind of confusion is just so pathetic.
Also, for Tuomas, in the interests of keeping this discussion open and honest (can’t ask that of other people if I’m not willing to live by it myself)
The reason I responded to Robert the way I did is because hearing or even thinking that a man (one who I generally find to be reasonable and sane even if I disagree with him on most political issues) might consider raping someone if he wasn’t worried about being judged by someone (even if that someone is God) scares the crap out of me. I think it scares the crap out of most women, because it implies that the man/men in question don’t really care about how we feel or whether they’re harming us, that all we are to them is a body. And that’s pretty damn disturbing.
Robert – just to be clear, I’m not accusing you of anything. If I’m misreading your comment please feel free to jump in and correct me. I’m not a Christian so God talk tends to confuse me.
I’m not sure where that came from? The thing in between ” -marks wasnt written by me (and isn’t endorsed by me, because “we all” don’t certainly know It’s wrong, surprisingly many people excuse rape, in not thinking it’s really rape, if it’s done by a buddy, is after a date, is done to a girlfriend etc. but I do think it’s a rape, btw) …
The rest of your post I agree with (I’m also more concerned about date/acquintance rape than stranger rape, because the first kind is much more common, and many men indeed do not recognize all nonconsensual sex as a rape with comments like “It’s not like he was holding a knife on her throat, or beating her” in a case of a very nonconsensual-sounding situation I heard from, but not from the people involved, whom I don’t really know), though I’m probably a bit more pragmatic on the fear of punisment/recognizing the consequences -angle, as some people just don’t care about the consequences to other people, and need selfish incentives. I’m even pretty sure most very unselfish-seeming intentions have a degree of selfishness in them.
We can of course disagree, but I didn’t really read Robert’s comment as “God will punish me if I rape, therefore I will not rape”, more like “I have these morals coming from my belief in God, and I try to act on them by not raping for example, and I don’t know whether I would rape without this faith but I hope not”. That’s all.
We cross-posted, BritGirlSF, and seeing your new comments I have few disagreements with what you said.
Tuomas
Oops, the comment came from jstevenson. Sorry, my brain’s starting to shut down for the night.
One question – can you see why the pragmatic “whatever works” argument as opposed to men not raping because they know that it’s wrong might be scary and disturbing for women? Ie, why the idea that there are a potentially a bunch of guys out there who would rape if they thought they would get away with it is alarming? I’m not trying to pick on you, just trying to get a sense of how you’re thinking about this.
I have passed up opportunities to lie, cheat, steal and in other ways fo harming other people in the past because of my morals
Tuomas, that is different though. I have lied, I have cheated and I have also stolen, sometimes. Morals didn’t stop me when I had something to gain. I didn’t pass the opportunities, as long as I could get away with them and as long as the harm being done was not superior to what I wouldn’t really mind having done to me. So I never really went beyond a basically harmless limit of lying, cheating and stealing, because I didn’t even feel the need or wish to do any of that to a serious degree, not because something I’d learned stopped me. (Well, I’d love to rob a bank or a casino, without anyone even getting hurt, like in that film with Cate Blanchett and Bruce Willis whose title I don’t recall now, but that’s such a remote, childish, romantic fantasy I don’t even bother to think about it. It only happens like that in the movies anyway).
If I have never murdered or tortured anyone, it’s not because of the thought of not getting away with it, or because of learned morals, but because I really cannot even entertain the thought.
Sure, I’ve had the occasional murder instinct when getting angry; I’ve fantasised about painful retribution for people I was mad at; in the realm of hypotheticals, I could probably kill someone, in a rage, in the heat of absolute mad fury, if I got in a fight and I lost complete control of my senses (and even then, I’ve never ever got the point where fury takes over so completely, and the most I did in the grips of blind fury was smash inanimate objects…), but I couldn’t seriously say I’d ever be able to even think of it in cold blood. It would be like thinking of having sex with a corpse, again, and sorry to bring up that image. Just the thought disgusts me. If I picture myself torturing or murdering someone, I picture a version of me that is so disgusting to me I’d rather kill myself than do any of that. Even if I could get away with it, I couldn’t get away from my mind and my memory.
So I don’t think the question here has anything to do with the difference between fantasies and actual enactment of them.
I think it has to do with the very source and nature of those fantasies, and how come some people can even picture themselves raping anyone, and picture a version of themselves that they could live with (and please note I’m not even talking of remorse strictly speaking). That, aside from considerations on the victims, of course; even assuming total disregard and lack of empathy for the victims, the question is still, wouldn’t that kind of act kill your very sense of self? Unless your sense of self is constructed, personally and socially, to allow for that kind of act.
Gangsters who kill people don’t care about victims and live very happily with their crimes unless caught, because killing people is an added bonus for both their personal sense of self and social status within their gang environment. They’re tough and respected the more people they intimidated and killed. They do have morals; they’ll even genuinely care for their own children and family; it’s just a separate set of morals based on prevarication and belonging to one gang vs. another.
Men who put rape and sexual drive on the same level are saying that because in the typical frat-boy mentality men are tough and respected the more women they fuck, rape becomes another means by which that fucking comes about. Sex is in the fucking itself, fucking is a one-directional action, and so it happens that rape is directly or indirectly justified even as it is apparently condemned. Rapists must think of themselves in the same way gangsters do. They have their own mentality of what sex is and their own set of morals, based on their being part of a gang, not of humanity as a whole.
Divisions of human beings into gangs is where group violence and/or group condoning of that violence starts. (Not a coincidence that rape is so often part and parcel of ethnic conflicts).
BritGirlSG:
No harm done. :-)
And to answer your question: I suppose it’s scary thought for women. Hell, I think it’s scary thought for anyone as there are women involved in my (and probably every man’s) life, and to think that there is a bunch of guys just waiting for the right time to rape them is disgusting and scary. And even when discussing women not involved in my life. However, I’m all for making sure that time is never by advocating for better education about rape to men (as in telling what really is rape [this probably would be closer to “women’s idea”] and why it is always wrong, thus making the “bunch” smaller, perhaps), and making sure the rest don’t get away with it by advocating for better prosecution and more resources allocated on bringing rapists to justice (reducing the opportunities to get away with it).
“We need physical punishment perhaps death or castration as an adequate deterrent. That way, when the little guy is saying “she is so hot”? and the other guy above our necks is saying, she is your friend he can add to the little guy … “and if we touch her you will be cut off at the hilt”?. Men will listen then. Guaranteed. ”
Dude, are you seriously suggesting that feminists should advocate castrating rapists? Because I’m sure that that would do WONDERS to improve our public profile.
I wonder how many men blame the victim in cases where men are the rape victims?
Lynne, if the victims are gay, then it’s more or less the same. Because gays, like women, are not part of the gang of the heterosexual men for which rape is a kind of extreme-sport version of sex.
OK, I really need to get some sleep before I completely forget how to type but one more thing I’d like to throw out there first.
What do men actually think is and is not rape? What do women think is and is not rape? Do both sets of ideas about what the word rape actually means match up, and if not, what can all of us (both men and women) do about it?
Last thing I wanted to add: when Tuomas writes about educating men not to rape, or teach them it’s wrong. Well, I do think Steve above was right in this particular statement: ‘Most guys know that. The ones that don’t aren’t going to listen to a lecture.’ The education and social, cultural, mentality effort against rape is not to take a bunch of men and telling them what rape is and that it is wrong. It’s about disconnecting the link between sexual drive and rape. It’s about dismantling the sick notion of sex as a one-directional active-on-passive action. Defusing all the clichés about the supposedly diametrically opposite sexual drive and behaviour of women and men. Defusing the notion of gender as a sort of gang one belongs to. Defusing the notion that all in life including sex is about competition and aggression and prevarication. And so on and so forth. It has to be a lot more pervasive. Otherwise it’s just a lot of paternalistic useless self-serving crap.
And this wider cultural effort that seeks to dismantle unhealthy notions of sex and relations between the genders already exists. It’s called feminism. No need to reinvent the wheel. If someone hasn’t noticed the wheel has already been invented, it’s their problem.
” If someone hasn’t noticed the wheel has already been invented, it’s their problem.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t really true. It’s our problem. And I don’t think we can educate boys and young men enough that rape is wrong. It’s like all of the drug-war propaganda says – talking about it once isn’t going to stick.
OK, I lied
Lynn, in my experience I only know one man who was raped (by a group of 5 guys). The guys who attacked him saw it as gay bashing (ie they thought he was gay) even though he is actually straight. How this works is mind-boggling to me (if these were supposedly straight men why did they want to fuck another man? This would seem to support the traditional view that rape is about violence, not about sex). The guy (my ex) who was raped didn’t tell any other men for several years because he was afraid of how they would react, and it turns out he was right to be afraid. Most of the guys he told flat out blamed him for the attack by saying that he shouldn’t have been dressed the way he was (in classic eighties glam rock style) in such a bad neighborhood late at night, or if he was he shouldn’t have gone alone, and if he did he should have “tried harder” to fight the guys off. Now this guy is about 6ft 3, but to expect him to fight off 5 guys? That doesn’t seem realistic to me. So, to answer your question, the blame the victim reflex seems to operate just the same when the victim is a man. The only difference I can see is that it made other men question his sexual identity ie some of them reacted as if they thought that the reason he didn’t “try harder to fight them off” was because maybe he actually wanted it because he was gay.
noodles:
Maybe I was a bit unclear, because I couldn’t agree more. Seeing sex as competition, and men’s values determined by how many or how beautiful women they are fucking, (while simultaneously devaluing women for number of men they are fucked by) is a huge problem. The sick ideas about sex as man as the fucker, woman as the fuckee should be dismantled, the sooner, the better. And put more equal system in place that doesn’t value people on their sexual activity or lack of it.
That’s what I meant by education, not just “this is rape, and it’s wrong”, certainly it has to go deeper than that.
Oh, and to add to the example addressed to Lynne RE male rape victims, in the case I’m talking about rapists repeatedly said to the victim “so, you think you’re a woman huh? well then let’s see how you like being treated like one” or something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing here – this all happened about 15 years ago. So, it seems to me that he was being “punished” for steeping outside his “proper” gender role.
Noodles
I’m totally in agreement with the fact that dividing people into “my gang” and “everyone else” is one of the root causes of this. However, I don’t think that we can just write off anyone who isn’t already onboard with feminism. The reason being, their beliefs and attitudes have an impact on everyone else around them. Men who hold these beliefs will continue to rape women. They may also spread their beliefs to other men, pass them on to their sons etc. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but I don’t think throwing up our hands in despair is the answer, no matter how tempting it might be.
Tuomas, I should have understood that’s what you meant too, sorry!
It’s just, I don’t believe there’s any men who don’t know the difference between sex and rape; the problem is that there’s men, and groups of men, who don’t care. So that’s what I was responding to basically, the idea that there has to be a specific education in that sense, that assumes that rape is down to some kind of ignorance or incapacity.
noodles:
Again, no harm done.
But I do think there are men who don’t know the difference between rape and sex, or maybe consider rape okay in some situations (they don’t call it rape, of course, and those guys might not do it personally but still think it’s okay sometimes), and writing of rape as insane (only sick men do it, the accused isn’t sick, therefore he isn’t a rapist) is bit troubling too (as in comments about how shocking it is that a sane man might actually consider that there is tiny, subconscious change that he might have an urge to rape in some conditions).
Definitely. That is the second part of my cunning plan, allocating more resources on apprehending them. (And if there is a cultural change that trashes the “boys will be boys” – attitudes along with other sexist crap, rape trials will probably be much easier, and rapes much less frequent, IMHO)
BritGirl: I agree, and don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t suggesting writing off anyone who isn’t onboard with feminism! People who don’t overtly identify themselves as feminists or pro-feminist aren’t going to be all overtly anti-feminists either.
I simplified, what I meant is, the challenge to the mentality that sex and rape are in the same category of behaviour is already there (besides, it’s not just feminism alone that has made that challenge); it’s in turn challenged by stereotypes that are hard to die, but it’s there already.
When people like Steve say a lecture won’t do, well he’s right, strictly speaking, but the thing is, it’s not a lecture that’s going to change that mentality that encourages or condones rape; that mentality is not just something that some isolated individuals have and others don’t. What’s interesting in his comment is, of course, he ends up following the reasoning at the root of that very mentality that condones rape, and yet, he’s telling us rape is all a matter of some men do it, many others don’t. He’s ignoring or dismissing any social or cultural approach as if was a matter of giving ‘lectures’, and not seeing how his own view is influenced by cultural and social stereotypes that he takes for granted and instead, need some questioning.
I think that Gillard’s ideas — which also showed up in many of the comments in the various pie fight discussions — are really much more insidious than the reprehensible blaming of rape victims.
The belief that it is inevitable and immutable that men will view women not as human beings but as things with a specific utility (fuckable or non-fuckable) is just another way of saying that women are not and can never be equal to men because the power to decide and to dismiss rests with the male.
People who have this attitude will find it reasonable and right to relagate women’s concerns to the ‘unimportant shit’ that doesn’t require attention until men’s needs have been taken care of. And they definitely are not going to react well if women step out of their natural role, demanding not only to speak but to be heard.
Noodles
I think you’ve got a good point there. Why is it that Steve and his ilk can take the argument so far along, almost up to the point where it reaches it’s logical conclusion, and then somehow they just seem to hit a mental brick wall? That was part of why I was soliciting opinions from the guys – I’m hoping they can help me (and other women) to understand why that happens. Why does someone like Steve, who is perfectly capable of making logical inferences up to a point, suddenly default back to the “blame the victim” script?
BritGirl,
Those with privilege are not inclined to self-accept blame and they are even less inclined to accept it from others. The lynching resolution is an excellent example of this — the resolution couldn’t get through until everyone in authority who were actually at fault were no longer around to have to acknowledge what they had done and still there were 19 senators who couldn’t bring themselves to accept even that minimal effort.
Tuomas, I understand what you mean but I disagree on the knowledge thing.
But I do think there are men who don’t know the difference between rape and sex, or maybe consider rape okay in some situations (they don’t call it rape, of course, and those guys might not do it personally but still think it’s okay sometimes)
See, that’s not lack of knowledge. It’s condoning, or minimising, or being used to see it as a particular extension of sex.
and writing of rape as insane (only sick men do it, the accused isn’t sick, therefore he isn’t a rapist) is bit troubling too (as in comments about how shocking it is that a sane man might actually consider that there is tiny, subconscious change that he might have an urge to rape in some conditions).
Well I’m not writing off rape as insane, the comparison with necrophilia is in the nature of the act as seen by the perpetrator, in how sex is reduced to a narcissistic act of abuse, where the other person is reduced to an object that may as well be inanimate or dead. But it is obviously different in all other respects, and I didn’t mean a rapist has to be insane, as in, not know what they’re doing, or have some completely sick compulsion like a necrophiliac has.
That said, I guess we are talking of a different notion of subconscious urge and/or fantasy.
My idea of subconscious urges/fantasies is of things I’d actually enjoy doing. Yeah, I have involuntary thoughts about scary things too, but that’s another thing, it’s fears, not fantasies.
So I’m wondering, how can anyone have a subconscious urge to rape someone, how does he picture it? How can he entertain the thought of it being satisfactory and of being satisfied with himself at the end?
Or do you mean, subconscious thought instead of urge? Because in that sense, it’s completely different. We can have subconscious thoughts about things we really find disgusting as well as wrong. I can think of myself drinking a gallon of dirty water from the sewers, but that thought doesn’t exactly make me question the fact I’d never feel the urge to do it. It’s not my idea of pleasure. That knowledge of one’s sense of pleasure/disgust is at the level before morals, before knowledge of right and wrong. In my mind, forcing someone to have sex, absuing them, (ie. not consensual bondage or S&M scenarios or anything like that) is similarly disgusting; it’s just not something I could even conceive enjoying. I can picture myself doing it, but I just don’t see the appeal.
So I’m wondering, are we talking pure speculations, or fantasies or hypothetical urges?
Most “average guys”? would love to be objectified like your “average gal”?. When is that parade starting?
Yeah, most people say this. I don’t buy it. I think the “average guy” assumes that (i) she’ll lust specifically after him; (ii) he’ll still be in control of when/where/how, and will be able to turn off the objectification if it’s unwanted; (iii) the “average gal” who’s doing the objectifying will be someone he finds attractive; and (iv) there will be no repercussions – that is, he will still be treated exactly the same otherwise.
“Men need to teach each other not to rape.”
Amanda, you seem to imply that all that is needed to stop rape is merely some character education initiatives. But men have been teaching each other not to steal since the dawn of civilization, and we still steal; men have been teaching each other not to kill since then as well, and we still kill. And we still covet our neighbor’s wife, and we still dishonor our mother and father, and the meek still have not inherited the earth, and you may insert a thousand teachings of Hammurabi, Moses, Christ, or the Egyptians or Greeks here. If human nature is in these ways imperfectible by mere instruction and teaching, why do you believe it to be perfectible in the case of rape? I sincerely hope you will reply.
noodles:
…That is true. It isn’t exactly knowledge. Point taken. (Also, my insanity point wasn’t exactly directed at you, it was a random thought I had following the discussion with BritGirl about Robert’s comment, and something I’ve heard often, my apologies)
Also the distinction between thoughts and urges is to the point, and it is quite sad (but true) that rape fantasies and one-way sexuality are probably linked. Also, could be that some rapists believe, or fool themselves into believing that the rape is what the woman wants, too. Lack of empathy follows from objectifying for personal satisfaction, or is it the other way around (can’t answer this myself)?
AndiF:
And good point about the welcomeness of being objectified as a man, I have similar thoughts about the issue. I’ve observed (straight)men getting totally freaked out by women who objectify blatantly (goes against social norms, I suppose).
Sorry, AndiF and Jeff, it was directed at Jeff actually.
Yeah, most people say this. I don’t buy it. I think the “average guy”? assumes that (i) she’ll lust specifically after him; (ii) he’ll still be in control of when/where/how, and will be able to turn off the objectification if it’s unwanted; (iii) the “average gal”? who’s doing the objectifying will be someone he finds attractive; and (iv) there will be no repercussions – that is, he will still be treated exactly the same otherwise.
Exactly, Jeff.
Very interesting thread, all.
What Jeff said. My office is near the red-light district in the city, and many of my male coworkers admit they don’t like walking near the GLBT section because of the unwanted attention they get from “customers” – they are actually offended that just being out in public in that part of town gets them treated as sex objects.
Tuomas,
That’s okay — I’m not above accepting undeserved praise :)
Yeah, if men like being objectified, explain the issue of gays in the military to me again. Shit, the barest likelihood of being treated ‘like a woman’ is such a matter of terror for men that they can’t even deal with sharing a barracks with gays.
And that fear kind of amounts to acknowledging just what they do to women, doesn’t it? I don’t think a guy who didn’t do it to women would fear it so much himself.
Yeah, I don’t buy that men are okay with being objectified. I think there’s a significant difference between how men react to gay men and lesbians, and I think most of the greater hostility to gay men is the fear that straight men will be viewed as sex objects: viewed, pursued, categorized, depersonalized and made a canvas for someone else’s fantasies.
Now, I’ve been cruised by gay men in lots of situations — including marches and other activist stuff where my presence contributed to the assumption that I was gay. I’ve found I’m not bothered by any approach that isn’t outright harrassment. But then, I have the privilege of being a guy, and a certain physical confidence about my ability to defend my boundaries comes with that. I simply cannot imagine the combination of being aggressively cruised, the lack of physical confidence that comes with a smaller and weaker body, and the absolute lack of understanding or assistance that society offers to women in defending their own physical boundaries. I cannot imagine it, but I know women experience that as a matter of course.
The only similar situation I think most men can imagine is being surrounded by physically imposing gay men in an environment where they were isolated, and where they would be assumed to be looking for sex with men by their very presence. Most straight guys would concede that the thought of such a situation scares them witless.
On the whole, I don’t think that women being forthright in how they view and judge men is a mirror image of male objectification of women, because of the other factors I have discussed. However, I think it might do a lot of good anyway. It might help some men see women as sexual subjects, real people with desire and agency, instead of objects. It might change the active-passive dynamic that Noodles discussed, if very slowly. It might also be just uncomfortable enough to get men thinking about what women have to deal with.
Finally, I agree with Noodles and others that men who rape don’t lack understanding of the difference between sex and rape but rather don’t care. However, I’m not sure that lecturing doesn’t work. What I expect these guys to learn by being lectured is not that rape is wrong, and it’s not what rape is. I expect them to learn something they really don’t know, and which is too often not their experience: that lots of men will not support them and make excuses for them when they rape. That not every guy will be quick to draw distinctions between their acquaintance rapes and “real rape.” That their targets might get some support. I don’t think I can change whether they think rape is wrong. I do think I can change whether they think I’ll be on their side if they do it.
I can’t even deal with that thread anymore, guys talking down to me–“Amanda, we know rape is a crime. Do you?” type stuff. They think women are stupid and then also think that we should know what’s going on in every man’s head and determine if he’s going to rape us or not.
Yeah, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If men really felt that objectification would give them power, they’d all be quitting business school to become strippers. They know better than that, despite the customary disingenuousness on the subject. “Women wouldn’t like to see naked men straddling an oiled pole in a dingy bar” blah blah blah. Well, some women wouldn’t, and others would fear societal disaproval if they did express a liking for it. But in our market-driven society, that’s hardly the point. Marketing can get large numbers of people to consume and covet any object it feels like hawking– so long as the pitch is done right.
And you don’t even need such a crude and dopey example as oiled naked jocks in a strip bar. If the fashion industry wanted to persuade businessmen, for instance, to wear see-through mesh shirts and nipple-rouge under their blazers by telling them that they’d get “power” from it, you can be damn sure a lot of men would try it. That is, they’d try it if it were marketed the way that light beer was: With an unrelenting parade of manly-male icons talking about how much more of a man you’d be if you tried it.
Next season, the fashion industry would say that mesh shirts and nipple-rouge were out;Now the big thing is shiny-knee length trousers with slits over each ass cheek. And so on, and so on. It would happen IF men really believed that being one of the women relegated to the status of animatronic mudflaps (ie– the pie-fight ad) was some kind of desireable, permanent power with no meaningful drawbacks. But (with a few exceptions in the gay community) the admen don’t, the businessmen don’t, the male jocks don’t, the male bloggers don’t. They’re smarter than that, but they think that women are too stupid to notice the bogus and transitory nature of this “power” ourselves.
Yeah, most people say this. I don’t buy it. I think the “average guy”? assumes that (i) she’ll lust specifically after him; (ii) he’ll still be in control of when/where/how, and will be able to turn off the objectification if it’s unwanted; (iii) the “average gal”? who’s doing the objectifying will be someone he finds attractive; and (iv) there will be no repercussions – that is, he will still be treated exactly the same otherwise.
I know that a lot men squawk at this–for instance, in the earlier Kos thread at Gilliard’s I made a completely off-the-cuff remark about my smoking hot boyfriend to an ally in the thread and 100 comments later, those guys were still gnawing on it and telling me under no uncertain terms that it was unacceptable to say things like that. And these were guys defending the pie fight ad. And, if I weren’t a good feminist, this is the point where I would say, “Didn’t their mommas raise them better?”
Still, I think it’s for this reason alone that turning the tables is an extremely effective strategy, far better than simply telling them to quit objectifying women. Teach men that they too are objects of desire, that they too have to consent to sex with a woman. Treat them as the Keepers of the Cock like women are treated as the Pussy Oversoul (thanks, zuzu!) and maybe they’ll learn that it’s not fun to be treated like you have something that has to be gotten out of you by trickery, rape, cajoling, whatever.
Sex is consensual on the part of both parties, or else it’s rape. It’s pathetic that we have another generation of young men that don’t get this basic fact.
Why do Gilliard, jstevenson, etc. say that men think about sex all the time, that all men think of all women in sexual ways, etc.? Because they have been taught to do so since early childhood. Dad shows Junior “Playboy” when Junior is 5. Dad tells Junior how women are different than men (on the rag, a slave to cock, etc.). In school, Junior’s playmates (who have been taught the same things) reinforce not only these beliefs, but the need to act as if women are a different species. In highschool & college if you don’t talk about how you’d like to fuck this girl or that, you are suspect. When you enter the workforce, on your breaks the guys will ogle women and say things like, “I’d do her.”
In real estate the saying is, “Location, location, location.” In stereotypical views of men and women it is, “Gender roles, gender roles, gender roles.”
I am sickened by statements like, “We think differently than that. We need physical punishment ….” Maybe you think differently than that, but don’t lump me in with you, you twisted soul. Women & men don’t think differently. They, as a class, don’t think differently than one another because they’ve got different genitals. Keep pushing the “differences” and you keep pushing fear & hate & superiority/inferiority.
“We think differently,” indeed. You know you can substitute race in there and it’s something you hear all the time from racists, right?
Here are some things that boys (where I grew up) hear a lot:
Men and women can’t just be friends.
Women are different.
I’d fuck her.
I wouldn’t toss her out of my bed.
Women aren’t rational.
Are you gay?
Yeah, men just want sex all the time. Welcome to the world of the Mentors — “Find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em.”
Maybe I’m just unimaginably far from the norm, but you guys seriously creep me out.
jstevenson wrote:
“…Date rape convictions have given men more pause in these situations, but many are still overcome by their Id … which come out in full force after three or four funnels…”
[slaps forehead]
Oh, bullshit. Just above this you decry excuse-making. Then with this quote you turn around and say that alcohol, a fucking DEPRESSANT, is a crucial factor in turning nice guys into sex-crazed monsters. Please. Would you also argue that “three or four funnels” would make a man’s Id lead him to rob a bank or commit some other non-sexual crime ? WTF ?
I’ve gone drinking with male friends intermittently throughout my adult life. What “three or four funnels” of beer or whisky usually does is make us all groggy and inclined to make a lot of trips to the bathroom. Yeesh.
I know that a lot men squawk at this”“for instance, in the earlier Kos thread at Gilliard’s I made a completely off-the-cuff remark about my smoking hot boyfriend to an ally in the thread and 100 comments later, those guys were still gnawing on it and telling me under no uncertain terms that it was unacceptable to say things like that.
Amanda: I got the impression that was just ideologicalal judo – they were trying to deflect complaints about their own offensiveness by wilfully missing the irony, calling you a sexist and acting offended.
Amanda – “Keepers of the Cock” – I love it! Too bad it won’t be used in a national advertising campaign. I can see it now – billboards! bus stops! magazines! TV! radio! newspapers! Superbowl! bobbleheads! (OK, now I’m getting a little giddy.)
Yeah, Amanda, lots of guys are full of shit, even with themselves, about sex and power and being on the receiving end. It’s easy to talk a good game about taking any offer, but lots of men get freaked out when pursued aggressively.
When I was a teen, I remember one young woman, a few years my junior, with whom I had had one pretty nice encounter. Now, I was a senior in high school, and because of the age difference I might have expected to be accused of corrupting her. We went somewhere to be alone — we were both, in fact, looking for sex — and she reached down my pants with no preliminaries and no warning and grabbed my cock and balls rather roughly. It hurt a little, but as many readers here know, that’s no downside for me. But it really shocked me because it was invasive, and it blew the mood, and we never hooked up again. Now, I did in fact want to fuck. With her. Right then. If she had asked me to pull my cock out, I would have. If she had just moved slowly enough that I knew where she was going, it would have been fine. But as soon as I felt that I had lost the ability to defend my own boundaries, it freaked me out. I’m not sure I understood why at the time, but I realize now that, as a guy (and at the time a serious martial artist), I really took for granted my ability to control access to my body. When that assumption was challenged, it killed the hard-on, and the encounter.
Now, I’m different enough when it some to sexuality that I don’t always assume my experience can be generalized to other straight men. However, I really question this self-aggrandizing bullshit story some men tell about their own responses to objectification.
Add “Riders of the Storm” soundtrack to above advertising.
Also, could be that some rapists believe, or fool themselves into believing that the rape is what the woman wants, too.
Tuomas, that’s a very good point, for a rapist to get a kick out of it it he has to entertain the notion that women like to be subjugated and passive and that no actually means yes and all those ideas that basically women are a different species (and a slightly subhuman one too) so you can just use them for your own pleasure. It’s more than objectification, it’s scorn, hatred, and a boundless sense of ego.
In the end it goes back to what is the nature of that pleasure, of seeing rape as something that you can get a kick out of. The kick has to be in that subjugation, in the nature of abuse and coercion. That, I don’t think it’s something one can normally fantasise about but refrains from only for moral reasons. It essentially has nothing to do with sexual pleasure. How can there be sexual pleasure without the other person actively and gladly participating in it?
For any man to even see rape as an extension of sexual pleasure, without seeing themselves in the process as a sick freak, a stalker, a psycho, they need to believe in a series of things about themselves (and the male gender) and the other person (and the female gender) that allows them to rape and get away with it in their own mind and that of their ‘gang’ who will condone or excuse or even boast about that act. So it’s impossible to look at rape without looking at the social and cultural mentalities that influence it. Even if the responsibility of each rape is ultimately individual, it’s impossible to reduce it entirely to individual inclinations. Yes, if it was only a handful of rapists a year, then we could consider it literally like necrophilia, something that is so removed from any common social mentality, something that is so universally taboo, that it would be literally a case of ‘most men don’t do it, only a very few sick men do it, so no social or cultural approach is going to have any effect’. But it’s a lot more widespread than that. That’s why the ‘we know it’s a crime already’ responses are so pathetically missing the point.
Lee: that’s going to be stuck in my head the rest of the day.
“Like a key without a lock, or New Kids on the Block…”
Ask an honest question, get an honest answer.
Why do perfectly decent men, men who have never raped or assaulted a woman in their life and never will, still have such a knee-jerk reaction to this topic? Why do they react as if any discussion of rape is an accusation aimed at them personally?
Because, with the article and so many of the replies, I feel like perfectly decent men are being lumped in with the rapists, scumbags, and murderers of the world. I don’t know if it is a concious thing on the author’s part, but I’m just saying what I feel.
Am I responsibile for the actions of murderers? Kidnappers? Why am I being held responsible for rapists? Why is it my duty to educate them? I don’t even know who they are!
Why are they so unwilling to talk to other guys about this, and so very willing to excuse friends when they display this kind of behaviour towards women?
First of all, none of my friends display this kind of behaviour toward women. If they did, they wouldn’t be my friends. I don’t want to hang out with people like that.
The only example I can think of that’s remotely applicable is something I didn’t even see, but heard about (because we do talk about this kind of stuff, thanks for the stereotype). My friend was with his boss at a bar, and his boss was really drunk. He was grabbing the behinds of almost every woman in the bar. Totally over the line, asshole behavior. Well, he’s my friend’s boss — what’s he going to do? The best he could do was get the guy out of there, apologize profusely, because he can’t lose his job. And now he avoids hanging out with his boss at all costs, and everyone in our circle knows his boss is an asshole.
Any attempt he would have made to educate the guy a) probably wouldn’t have worked, since obviously someone much earlier down the line screwed that part up and b) could have very possibly gotten him fired or in a fistfight or both.
Why don’t the guys who know damn well that this behaviour is wrong educate their less-enlightened brethren?
Again, other than educating my kids about how to respect others (men and women), what exactly am I supposed to do? I can’t be held responsible for the behavior of other grown adults that I don’t know, or barely know, male or female.
Flame away.
But as soon as I felt that I had lost the ability to defend my own boundaries, it freaked me out.
That is so exactly the point.
Thanks for that detailed illustration, Tuomas! :)
Imagine if you had been made unable to re-establish boundaries at all, and she (maybe easier to imagine it with a HE) hadn’t stopped there.
If a woman does overstep boundaries, it’s rightly seen as an uncomfortable thing that freaks you out. If a man does it, or even more than that, we start to ask if maybe the woman had given him ambiguous clues and perhaps he thought she was really into it and misunderstood so he thought it was ok to ovestep those boundaries, like uncertain situations are enough of a justification for unwanted moves (chanelling Aegis!). Then we even deny there’s a mentality behind it!
Jeff, that completely ruled. You are awesome.
Now, I did in fact want to fuck. With her.
I was taking a long walk and thinking these issues over this morning and realized how it really is critical for men to address our rape culture by thinking about how they model sex. And Thomas, your use of “with her” is a great example of how to chip away slowly at this. I said on Steve’s blog that sex is fucking a girl who likes it. But I think a better phrasing is that sex if fucking a girl who’s fucking you back. And that’s gonna make a lot of men squirm.
noodles:
I think your analysis on the (non)validity of rape fantasies is quite true, but I’m also clinging to the perhaps hypothetical idea that there are men who do consciously refrain from raping, even though they would want to rape (okay, maybe they aren’t exactly “normal”). But I do think that most rape is in some way “cultural”, and is linked to beliefs about gender differences.
And about the alcohol thing by jstevenson… Alcohol does indeed remove inhibitions and lessens perception, rational thinking and sexual capability . But I, as a man, am a bit insulted by the suggestion that after a couple of drinks I might date-rape, and by the claim “it’s just that a thing that we men do”. If there indeed is person who knows that he might very likely (if given the opportunity) rape (or commit a crime of similar magnitude, and this goes for women too) after a couple of shots then it would truly be the height of irresponsibility to drink alcohol at all (and such people after committing crimes when drunk, probably will vehemently use the “but I was drunk” -defense). I’m guessing such people might get drunk for the purpose of doing things they couldn’t live with if they did them sober.
It’s easy to talk a good game about taking any offer, but lots of men get freaked out when pursued aggressively.
Or even when you take their “men want it all the time” seriously. I’ve occasionally responded to that braggadocio with “Really? Okay, let’s go fuck now” and have always been met with stammering excuses.
noodles:
I’m sorry, but that was Thomas , my angloamerican (I suppose) namesake. I can’t take credit for that :(
But I agree it was to the point :)
Myth, as usual, you completely rule. It’s so true–the flipside of the women got it, men want it belief is that when you, as a woman, make a pass at a man, and get shut down it’s completely devastating. If he doesn’t want sex with you and men will take all comers, you figure that you must stink or something. I’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s a little remarked upon result of these stereotypes.
I think your analysis on the (non)validity of rape fantasies is quite true, but I’m also clinging to the perhaps hypothetical idea that there are men who do consciously refrain from raping, even though they would want to rape (okay, maybe they aren’t exactly “normal”?).
Tuomas, then I would also agree, with that added clause. There has to be something slighly warped to be able entertain that fantasy as a pleasant scenario (as opposed to having a passing thought about it).
Thanks for the interesting back and forth!
Tuomas and Thomas – sorry for the confusion! :)
Is Tuomas the version of Thomas in which language?
Finnish version. Damn, now that we agree I can’t suddenly think of anything relevant to say… Oh well. I suppose I could use a little break anyway :).
Would I rape if I thought I could get away with it? Well, I believe that I can’t get away with it where it counts, so the hypothetical is moot. But my answer would have to be “I don’t know.”
This admission seriously upsets me.
If I ever had the opportunity, no, I would never rape or maim or kill an innocent person. Even if a little corner of me wouldn’t be opposed to it, even if we were at war, I wouldn’t do it. I tend to believe–as many conservatives, including Robert (or so I thought), tend to believe–in a little thing called “personal responsibility.” If you can’t know how you’ll act when it comes to as terrible and as violent a crime as rape, I posit that you can’t know anything about yourself at all, and you might as well abandon all pretensions of morality.
And I have this weird opinion that men will not stop raping as long as they believe that they might. Robert didn’t say that a part of him might want to rape a woman, but his conscience would stop him. No, he said, “I pray never to undergo such a temptation.” How can we ever make the point that RAPE IS BAD as long as people continue to believe that it’s no more than a temptation?
I have to agree with Brit’s original comment: Until this point, I could take Robert or leave him, but now he’ll always be “that guy who might rape me if he could get away with it.” Anybody else want to jump in and make the world a little darker?
If women want to understand men, they cannot berate them when they expose their minds.
Yeah, we should all just go around praising someone who says that he might rape a woman for his courage and honesty in speaking up. We should award medals to every man who says something that horrible, because, hey, he’s just a stupid man, he can’t be expected to actually think before he speaks.
I thought you weren’t supposed to post on rape threads, jstevenson.
Thanks Hestia, for bringing Robert’s comments up again. My question is where did Robert go? He basically said, “I don’t know if I would rape if I could get a way with it. I hope I’m never tempted.”
I think that’s seriously and totally fucked up. I think it comes across as “brave” because so many men don’t admit to this. I don’t care if you admit to it or not, recognize it as a seriously fucked up thing to think then.
And to all the other men on this thread, how would you answer that question? Do you feel the same as Robert? Do you not know what you would do if you could get away with it?
And be sure to apologize like hell for the answer if it is yes. Just because someone says something nobody is willing to say doesn’t make it noble. It’s disgusting.
HC
Great thread.
I’m on a national coordinating committee with a man who does anti-rape education in schools and he said when he gets requests to do a one-day workshop he turns them down. In his 20 years of experience, he has found that a one-day workshop actually makes boys attitudes worse than no workshop at all because it is not enough time to build a relationship and get to the place where real progress is made.
A one-day workshop leaves the education incomplete but their minds are charged on the topic of gender so what do they do? Talk about it with their adolescent friends in peer-group situations where constructing masculinity is the goal and rejecting what ‘suits’ say and repeating an Eminem lyric reaffirms their masculinity in opposition to girls (the above-mentioned ‘gang/group’ theory).
Two years ago I started something I call “$5 Dicks.” I was at Oregon Country Fair (quasi-hippie festival) and even though nudity is acceptable I didn’t see any penises, real or artistically representated. However, I was quite literally surrounded by almost invariably pretty topless girls and portraits of breasts, breasts and more breasts. One man in a loincloth dancing near a stage was mercilessly ridiculed by a mixed group of teenagers sitting near me who were disgusted at his near-nudity.
This was bugging me, and then I saw it. A booth of fairy figurines was 99% female fairies but there was one male fairy- and he had a little clay penis! I rushed up to the booth and thanked them for showing me the first and only penis in a sea of breasts, but I think they were disappointed I didn’t buy anything.
A few weeks later I was handing out condoms at the Alberta Street Artwalk and there were no topless women but painting after picture after portrait of naked women and not a penis in sight. This was bugging me, and then I saw it. A man who drew comic book fantasy art had drawings of dragons and other creatures displayed and, of course, his mermaids, she-unicorns, and she-yetis had enormously huge breasts with finely detailed nipples. He had one picture on display of two yetis, one male and one woman, but where the male yeti penis should’ve been was a tuft of blue hair.
me: “Where’s his dick?”
him: “Under the tuft of hair.”
me: “Is your dick hidden behind a tuft of hair?”
him: “It’s just a picture.”
me: “I’ll give you $5 right now if you can show me a drawing of a penis in your art collection. I only ask because I can tell from the naked women you drew that you’re a man who’s comfortable with naked human bodies.”
him: “Come back next time.”
I’m still willing to give $5 to an artist I come across with a penis in their art, but so far I haven’t seen another since the fairy.
Robert: are you really saying that you can reduce a woman down to something that you get to rub your penis in, if you can get away with it? That the only thing standing between your utter dehumanization of a woman is your prayers? Are you also saying “getting away with it” is *not* contingent on a woman stating “no?”
I’m pretty sure you got your knickers in a wad during the “all men benefit from rape” threads. You didn’t want to be classed with men who raped. You thought it unfair, manhating, and begged for proof. But just months later you write that you would rape, given certain circumstances. When you have the discussion about sex-ed with your daughter, are you going to include this informaton? If not, why? Shouldn’t she know that “even men like daddy” are capable of only seeing her as a cunt? Shouldn’t she have this bit of ammunition in her arsenal? Shouldn’t she know that despite what *she* might want out of life or human interaction is meaningless when compared to a man’s intimate relationship with “god” and “temptation”?
Up until this point I’ve disagreed with your politics.
Now, you sicken me. You have read countless threads about how women feel about rape and how it socializes women. Yet you can still be “honest” and “admit” that you would rape, if only…
Of all the “hypotheticals” for you to equivocate on, this is the most telling about your moral fibre and the value you place on women’s humanity.
I had a guy on my blog who said that men had uncontrollable sex drives, women had no sex drive, and that men should be commended for not doing more damage or something. The gist was that men deserved to be praised for, you know, not hurting more women with those uncontrollable sex drives.
He called himself a feminist.
Samantha – Check out “In the Night Kitchen.” Admittedly kiddie lit, but since it’s not an educational book, it might fit your criterion.
Amanda, “[w]ith her” served two functions. Mostly, I meant to point out that the fact that I was horny and wanted sex was not the same as wanting sex with just anyone. While this may seem self-evident coming from men, our culture refuses to make this distinction with women because it refuses to respect them as subjects. It also served to make the point of mutual interaction, which is just so obvious to me and just so not obvious in our culture. That’s one area where I think my experience really is different: doing S/M, the mutuality of the experience is no subtext. It’s the text.
HC: “And to all the other men on this thread, how would you answer that question? Do you feel the same as Robert? Do you not know what you would do if you could get away with it?”
My answer is a solid, “NO!” No, I would never rape anybody. There are no circumstances under which I would rape anybody. I do know what I would do if I could get away with it, and rape is not one of those things. If Robert were my friend and admitted to such a thing, I would advise him to get some counseling because there is something seriously wrong if you think you might rape somebody if you could get away with it.
Perhaps it’s because I knew from a very young age what it is like to be physically overwhelmed and powerless? I can’t say for sure.
HC, Robert’s comment made me angry. I don’t fantasize about rape. Not that I’m a pacifist or even uncomfortable with violence. I just don’t find sexual interaction with someone who rejects me at all enticing.
Again, maybe having an outlet to deal with power dynamics in consensual sex makes me different from some other men. But it also gives me lots of personal insight into vulnerability and fear. Not that I know what women have to deal with, but I know enough to know that I’m glad I don’t know.