The discussion about the man who claims he can’t be a rapist because his penis is too large set me thinking about my own near-miss a couple of months ago. It feels odd to talk about rape in connection with an experience that was more irritating than traumatic, but technically I came close to being raped and escaped more through luck than through anything I did “right”.
I’d gone out looking for sex: a division of paratroopers were camping in the village for the weekend, and I knew one of them should be willing to give me sex with no strings attached. I met a couple of likely men in the pub – they’d been drinking all evening, while I stayed completely sober because of my pregnancy – and went with them back to their camp.
For a while, everything proceeded in a way that satisfied us all. In the darkness, I didn’t realise immediately that one of the men was no longer wearing a condom – whether accidentally or by design I had no way of knowing. I told him to stop, and offered him two options: he could find and put on another condom, or we could abandon the idea of having sex. For myself, I preferred the first option, but it did depend on the availability of another condom.
Neither of these possibilities suited him. He made several suggestions of his own, none of which adequately covered my objection to unprotected sex. I tried to reason with him, but I found that I had to keep my hand over my crotch throughout the conversation to prevent his attempts to penetrate me without wasting time on discussion.
At that point, I started to worry. He was physically stronger than me, and drunk enough to be deaf to reason. If he decided to force me physically, there was little I could do about it. I began to imagine the recriminations I would face if I had to report him for raping me. “You went in the pub looking for sex, you left with two soldiers and went back to their camp – what did you think would happen?” And although I believed my answer – I thought a grown man would be capable of using a condom properly – was a satisfactory one, I wasn’t sure it would satisfy others.
The fear killed my desire to have sex and I started to put my clothes back on. Luckily, he made no protest; perhaps he was too drunk. I left without incident, and the fear receded once I was away from the danger.
If he had persisted, if he had penetrated me despite my objections, that would have been rape. I had consented to sex, but I had made it clear that condoms were part of the deal. When the condom vanished, so did my consent.
It can still be rape even if she wants to have sex with you. It can still be rape even if she’s sexually aroused and apparently ready for sex. If she consents to this but not that and you make her do that, it’s rape. If she consents to any kind of safe sex and you make her have unsafe sex, it’s rape.
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here, but I hope that by telling my own story I can convince anyone who isn’t sure.
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Word.
And I can just imagine the defense: “But how was I supposed to know she’d stopped consenting?”
–Because she told you so, dumbass.
Thank you. This is a critical point. Men have no rights to have sex with us. Always and at every moment consent must be had. People have no rights to sex with each other. Always consent must be had.
And so many women have gone through the similar situations with so many different outcomes.
If this guy had decided to overpower you, this would have been rape. No contest. And if he had subsequently been arrested, tried and convicted he would have deserved it.
But you were damn stupid to put yourself in such a situation.
But you were damn stupid to put yourself in such a situation.
How so? Are you saying that it was stupid to find somebody to have sex with? Or do you just disapprove of her actions on a moral level? This may very well be the most atrocious thing I have seen you write to anybody.
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here
Not quite: there’s always RonF.
Thank you for telling your story, Nick.
I used to get myself into situations like this regularly and I consider myself extremely lucky I never got raped. Once when I was 17 I went off with two young men to fool around and I stipulated there would be no vagina-penis penetration.
After a time I saw from the corner of my eye that one man ‘made eyes’ at the other man carrying the meaning of , “you know what we could do, don’t you?” The other man subtly shook his head, “no”, and that’s how close I came to being gang-raped that night.
As with Nick, my sexual desire deflated fast and I asked to be taken home. I got home after a verbally abusive 10-minute car ride where every time I spoke the would-be rapist shouted at me, “Shut the fuck up, whore!”
I will never forget the look on that man’s face as he asked another man to help him rape me.
So Ron, you believe grown men are so immature and stupid that they really don’t know how to use a condom properly? And that Nick should be wise to this?
these words echo in my mind because of a “situation” i put myself in several years ago. the words come from inside me, even though intellectually, i know that they are false.
i was walking from my apartment to my car – maybe a 10 yard stretch, when this guy rides by on his bicycle. we started chatting, and after a while, i invited him into my apartment for coffee. frankly, i thought he was kinda cute, and meeting him like i did was quite different from my usual fare for meaningless sex, the local club scene. yes, i freely admit that i was interested in sex with him.
after fooling around for a while, i decided that i wasn’t having as good a time as i had imagined i might. at some point, i told him to stop. he was on top of me, and stronger than me, and i found myself unable to push him off of me. he had my arms pinned down. he was using his finger, as he was quite drunk by then and was unable to use his, ummm, other body part, and he was hurting me.
after yelling for him to stop, and a bit of crying, i finally managed to position one of my legs inbetween us, and pushed him off of me. i suppose that snapped him out of it, and soon after, i managed to get him to leave.
i totally blamed myself.
the incident was the topic of several therapy sessions, and even though my therapist tried to convince me it wasn’t my fault, i never believed her. in my heart, anyway. as i mentioned, intellectually i know she’s right. i also know that i probably got off easy – the incident could have been much, much worse, especially if he wasn’t so drunk.
i’m not so legally enabled that i know if this incident could be called rape. i tend to think it wasn’t, though a few of the people i spoke to about it thought otherwise. certainly, it was assult, and it remains as one of my most unpleasant memories. i’ll never forget the feeling of helplessless and violation with that guy on top of me, and unable to do anything about it.
i’d like to believe we live in a world in which a woman can say no, even after she says yes, and have that respected. and have the rest of society support her choices, and put the blame where it belongs – on the person engaging in the violation. unfortunately, i feel i have to be “smart” enough to avoid “putting myself in certain situations”.
thank you for sharing your story, nick. perhaps eventually, we can all believe that it wasn’t our fault.
Can I go out on a limb and see if I can guess what Ron is suggesting?
Let me preface this by stating that you are right, Nick, if he had decided to penetrate you without a condfom it would have indeed been rape.
I’d guess Ron’s point is that your statement of assumption “I thought a grown man would be capable of using a condom properly” isn’t completely accurate. The more complete statement describing the assumption you made would be “I thought a random, drunk, grown man, whom I’d never met, and about whom I knew nothing other than that he was willing to have No-Strings-Attached sex with a random woman, would be capable of using a condom properly, and would not attempt, once he had me alone, naked, and away from any accesible help, to try to force me to do anything that I had stated in advance I didn’t want to do in any ways that I had initially stated I didn’t want them done.”
Should you be able to make such an assumption? Of course. Does anyone have the right to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, no matter what situation you put yourself in? Of course not. But, is it a particularly wise assumption? I’d go out on a limb and say no. THIS IN NO WAY NEGATES YOUR RIGHT TO SAY NO. IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU RESPONSIBLE IF SOMETHING IS DONE TO YOU AGAINST YOUR WILL.
Still, it’s not a situation I’d ever advise anyone to put themselves in.
and I would say to you ADS is that you assume men just can’t help but rape women, given the right mix of circumstances. But if we were to say that all men benefit from rape… oh, lordy how the mens would howl. Your de facto standpoint is that all reasonable women should expect to be raped, and because the expect this, they are reasonable. You do realize that, don’t you? You’ve completely excised male responsibility from the scenario.
Who is doing the acting here? Who is the subject? “Something” cannot be done without there being a someone doing it. How can you have so neatly removed the man and his actions by the time you got to the end of your post?
And for the record, nothing, ever, ever “negates” a woman’s “right to say no.” Nothing.
No, I never said any such thing. Nor do I believe it. All I said was that it’s not a situation I would ever advise anyone to put themselves in. And I’m not sure how you can take my oft-repeated and capitalized statements about how if anything were to have happened to Nick, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG, AND RAPE, AND NOT HER FAULT, as excising male responsibility from the scenario. She SHOULD be able to assume that nothing would happen to her. However, it’s not an assumption that I would personally feel comfortable making, if it were me.
If you want to discuss what this means for women, and male privilege, etc., then by all means, let’s discuss it. But please don’t suggest that I must be saying the exact opposite of what I actually did say.
Yes, Q. I agree with you. That’s why I said that it doesn’t negate a woman’s (or anyone’s) right to say no. I’m sorry if I phrased my statement too passively: it was not my intention. However, I think I made my point very clearly, and I think you’re ignoring it.
ADS, I’ve seen dozens of commenters on lots of feminist blogs try to do what you’re trying to do: to disclaim, “I’m not saying she would deserve it .. it would still be rape”, but couple it with helpful advice about how not to get raped.
It’s a fool’s errand. It can’t be done. Any time you presume to tell women what they could do better or smarter to avoid rape, you’re going to run smack into the wall of how many women get raped in how many circumstances by how many men — and there’s no magic peice of advice to avoid it all except living in a fortress without men.
So here’s my advice … to you. When you get the urge to tell women how to do better for their own good, just don’t. Keep it to yourself.
Never make assumptioms about anyone else’s abiltiy. You stated
I wouldn’t trust someone drunk enough to be deaf to reason to hold my book but you trusted him to put on a condom correctly. You may think he’s had sex before but maybe no one wanted him before. He might not have known, or he, being too drunk to be reasonable, may not have cared.
Just because it would have been rape doesn’t mean that it wsan’t foolish on your part to have acted that way.
Look, if I turned my car over to a complete stranger and they stole my car, it would still be theft. But it would still be pretty stupid of me to give it to them. And if they crashed it, objecting that I thought an adult knew how to drive is equally foolish. I first should have at least checked for a license.
Or if you want to make it a more virulent crime; I hand my child over to someone else without checking references to see if they are a reliable person or not. They harm my child. They are guilty, but I was still stupid.
This story, and the comments, make me really, really angry. Stories like Samantha’s — woman goes off someplace secluded with two guys to fool around, because she thinks she can trust them to accept limits — are the story of my life. So many of my good sexual experiences have been either BDSM or multi-partner, some with women who had never had PV intercourse (calling them “virgins” would convey the wrong impression), etc. So many of these experiences required that everyone involved respect limits. Lots of women, despite obvious awareness of some risk, are willing to trust male sex partners to listen.
And some guys are doing their damnedest to fuck that up.
I don’t know Samantha, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that experience at 17 put her off mmf threesomes for good, and might have scared away some of her friends, too. Who is better off for that?! Certainly not Samantha, and not any of the men in the world who might have been parties to those experiences.
Q Grrl has pointed out above that men don’t like to talk about how the culture of rape benefits them — and it sure does. But it also costs us. (I don’t want to go into a general PHMT digression here, because it’s off topic.) I’m focussed on one effect of rape and the fear of rape: it destroys the sexual culture that I want — one of enthusiasm, consent and experimentation.
Look, if I turned my car over to a complete stranger and they stole my car, it would still be theft. But it would still be pretty stupid of me to give it to them. And if they crashed it, objecting that I thought an adult knew how to drive is equally foolish. I first should have at least checked for a license.
Or if you want to make it a more virulent crime; I hand my child over to someone else without checking references to see if they are a reliable person or not. They harm my child. They are guilty, but I was still stupid.
Yes yes. THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. That’s not your fault, but that’s the fact of the matter. If you don’t want to be raped, murdered, beaten, robbed, there are things you ought to do to protect yourself. If you don’t do them and get raped, murdered, beaten, robbed, whatever, the perpetrator is still a bad person, and you are the victim. You’re morally right.
But is that supposed to make it OK?
If you’re more interested in preventing bad things from happening than being morally right necessarily, you’ll take precautions.
I wonder how much of this we’d hear if a guy went off with a woman for a one-night stand, and ended up getting forced into performing specific sex acts he didn’t want to. Like maybe he thought he was just going to get missionary-style sex, but she pulled out a gun and forced him to go down on her?
Would we tell him that he was stupid for being in such a situation? I’m thinking no, since it’s seen as totally okay for men to fuck casually.
Okay, here is the problem that I have with the, “It would have been rape, but that was a stupid thing for you to do,” answer. What would you suggest that Nick do differently in order to have sex? Remember, that was her goal. Any time a woman is going to have sex with a man she will be placing herself in a vulnerable spot. So, is your answer that she shouldn’t have had sex? If so, you are making a moral judgement.
A person has the right to seek sex without rape being a consequence of that search. Gah! It’s infuriating to hear the same thing again & again. “Not to pass judgement, but…”
Yeah, Sheelzebub, one day I’ll write out the story my ( mild, but extremely frightening to me) sexual assault story & we’ll see the reactions I get. I bet you that none of them will tell me what a stupid thing I did. Maybe later this week when I have the time to write it properly…
And again, Susan and Rachel Ann seem to think that men just *have* to rape, given certain circumstances. And that women are responsible for men’s inability to control their wild sexual natures. And that women should just keep their legs together, because, well, that’s reasonable and doesn’t send the wrong message. Because we all know that men are incapable of parsing out the subtle nuances of the word “no.” Whatever.
Which part was foolish? That Nick insisted on a condom? That Nick DISCUSSED options with this man but still had to hold a hand over hir crotch? Nick was actively talking with this man and he was attempting penetration the entire time. Wouldn’t you say instead that the man was foolish, and not Nick? And damn foolish at that? Didn’t he even *think* for one minute he could get prosecuted for that? Serve jail time? Risk repurcussions to his military career? He put a damn lot on the line just to try to get a leg up… he indeed was the fool, not Nick.
Not seek out to drunk fools who are too drunk to reason with.
Find or found a club that supports that life style so anytime she wants it she can have it.
Set up a couple of partners that she can call anytime free of conditions.
Yes Sheezlebub, if a man goes off with a woman who he doesn’t know and the woman robs him or ties him up or does something untoward to him he was still robbed or assaulted or whatever, but it doesn’t mean because he was the injured party he wasn’t the stupid party either.
I can make moral judgements but Nick would neither care nor want to hear them. We don’t live in a perfect world. And I didn’t say I wasn’t passing judgement, I obviously was: He was a jerk, and she was stupid. Or is it that I can only judge him and not her?
The perfect world isn’t out there, though it would be nice to have. In a perfect world I could put my purse down on the table in the food court and go off to the bathroom and come back and I’d still find it there. I wouldn’t expect not to. But that isn’t the world we live in.
Sheelzebub, I’ve got a better example for you. I’m a sadomasochist. I’m often a submissive bottom. I like to do things that are sometimes near my physical or emotional limits. I have to be able to trust my partners to respect my limits. If I meet some woman at a BDSM club, and I spend an hour or so talking with her, and we have the same things in mind, I might say, “you know, I like to have a knife traced over my body, but I don’t want to be cut,” or “I can take a 2″ dildo in my ass, but only with a lot of lube and warm-up.” So, if she takes me back to her place, ties me up, makes hamburger cuts all over my chest, rams a dildo into me with no lube and tears my rectum, what will I get?
“You know, I’m not saying she was right to do that to you, but you are an idiot who brought in on yourself.”
No Qgirl, that she assumed drumk men she didn’t know at all were reliable sex partners.
And where is it that I stated that men have to rape? That some men do rape is a given or we woudln’t be having this disucssion. That any man could be a rapist is another; friends can be foes. Drunks are not reliable. And again, she feared he was to drunk to listen to reason. And yet it doesn’t seem foolish of you to trust this type of person with one’s body?
>Would we tell him that he was stupid for being in such a situation? I’m thinking no, since it’s seen as totally okay for men to fuck casually.
Speaking just for myself personally, and just describing my initial emotional reaction, rather than a well-reasoned logical one, I think I’d probably be more willing to tell a guy friend that he was being stupid about this than a female friend.
I’m sure that there are a few reasons for that, fair and unfair, that I’m trying to puzzle out.
—Myca
There’s reliable and then there’s putting on a condom. Especially when there are condoms in the room/setting. Nick made no assumptions about reliability; Nick did, however, explicitly state to both men what the parameters were. I still do not see where she was foolish. The man was foolish to think that he didn’t have to listen to her.
You have a very low threshhold for reliability if it can be summed up by a man putting on and keeping on a condom.
Yep, he was foolish as well. But drunks are not relable people in general. And they were unknowns to her. Being a paratrooper in no way guarrantees good ethics. Turning up dead could have been another outcome.
Thomas, I would think that one would need generally a bit more than an hour for such an interview, but I wouldn’t call you foolish if the woman weren’t drunk/drugged and you and she had reached such an agreement. Also, if you were part of a club that vetted people to some extent that would also suggest to me that the person could reasonably be deemed reliable.
Now if you had gone into a pub and picked out two drunk women I’d give you the same answer that I gave to Nick. A crime, an appaling crime, but you were acting stupidly.
Thomas,
The only reason I said anything at all is because people were attributing what I felt to be unfair of implications to Ron’s statement. I would normally not have said anything, because if a person shares a personal story about an attack or a near attack, I’d consider it bad manners to tell them that they’d done a stupid thing. I was just frustrated by people’s reactions to Ron’s statement (which I did feel was also in poor taste, but not as atrocious as some people seem to be suggesting).
My ultimate point is simply that the fact that a person has a right to refuse anything at any point does not mean that I’d recommend to my little sister that she do what Nick did. If people feel that I can’t make that statement without suggesting that Nick would have deserved being raped if it’d happen, then I’m sorry, but I’m not the one who’s suggesting that “less than wise decision = you deserve what you get.”
You have a very low threshhold for reliability if it can be summed up by a man putting on and keeping on a condom.
As I said earlier, I’m still trying to figure out precisely what my reaction is to all of this, but I do feel that this statement is rather an unfair summing up of their stated position.
I am a tall, healthy, physically imposing man, and I don’t go to bars.
One of the reasons is that I don’t trust drunk men and women I don’t know not to harass me or my wife, start a fight with me or my wife, or attack me or my wife physically due to some slight real or imagined.
Not engaging in random belligerency or physical violence is such a basic precept of society, and yet . . . that’s not something I can trust drunk people I don’t know not to do.
I found the operative part of the objection to be the “drunk/I don’t know them” part as much or more than the “male” part.
Ignoring that part in summing up their position seems intellectually dishonest.
I’m NOT saying that that puts any responsibility whatsoever on Nick for what happened . . . or that it doesn’t. Like I said, I’m still thinking. I’m just saying that to argue and ignore that seems like arguing against a straw man.
—Myca
But here’s the thing, ADS: we are always, always getting a lecture or a sermon on what we should have done or shouldn’t have done. What we could have done differently. Whatever.
Look, I know plenty of people who have done things that were unsafe, and I told them my concerns before they did it (or after the fact–and nothing bad happened). It went along the lines of “I’m really worried that something awful could (have) happen(ed) to you when you do/did X because of Y. It scares the heart out of me.” And they’d either take heed, or they wouldn’t and tell me I was being too uptight (or once, that I was a manhater). But I sure as fuck wouldn’t go telling them that they were being stupid if they got assaulted. They’d be telling themselves that.
My definition of reckless or stupid doesn’t include having a casual sex fling. It doesn’t include thinking that a guy who said he’d wear a condom and who understood you abseloutely wanted that–or no nookie, period–would keep trying to penetrate you after his condom slipped off.
The time someone ripped off $60 from my purse–I didn’t get any preaching about what I should have done. I didn’t get the third degree about what I had done to encourage this. I didn’t get the “you were really stupid for putting yourself in such a situation” lecture. Or “you were really stupid for leaving your purse out/leaving your locker key accessible for fifteen minutes/having that much money on you/working at a place with total degenerates” blah blah blah.
You know what I heard? “Holy shit, that sucks.”
And for all of the insistence that of course we don’t blame you, and of course we would hold someone in a different situation just as responsible, I have yet to see it in real life.
Not seek out to drunk fools who are too drunk to reason with.
Find or found a club that supports that life style so anytime she wants it she can have it.
Set up a couple of partners that she can call anytime free of conditions.
I will guarantee you, if she was assaulted under those conditions, she’d still be told she was being stupid. Because after all, if she didn’t want to engage in a sex act, why join that kind of club? If she didn’t want to engage in that kind of sex act, why get with these partners?
Jeez–do you think that strangers are the only ones who push the limits? Do you really think that a partner you know–or a boyfriend, or a husband–is automatically safe? Do you really think that following these “rules” would put her beyond reproach from the peanut gallery if she got assaulted anyway?
Think again.
People, and overwhelmingly women, get raped all the time, in too many different circumstances to describe. In each of these cases, there are a dozen things that could be called “but for” causes — necessary conditions without which the events would have gone differently. We could all pontificate about what we would have done differently — for every rape. I wouldn’t have been with a drunk. I wouldn’t have been alone at night. I know self-defense. I wouldn’t have been in jail. I would have known the person better. I would have had someone standing guard while I slept it off. Whatever.
That’s always 20/20 hindsight. If every women did everything she would have to do to avoid being raped in every situation, she’d have to live in seclusion. And then, if someone hiked up to her cabin and raped her, people would ask why she didn’t live in a neighborhood where neighbors could come to her aid.
Rachel Ann, I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t have sex with partners who are drunk, so if you could sell your argument to anybody, you ought to be able to sell it to me. I’m not buying. This guy was apparently sober enough to talk to Nick at the pub, go with Nick, agree to use a condom, take one out and put it on (or at least attempt to do so). He obviously understood what was required of him. As far as I can tell from the story, he was only drunk enough to be disinhibited and to consider taking what he wanted without consent (I took “deaf to reason” to mean willing do what he wanted even over protest, and not to mean literally unable to understand what Nick said).
Alcohol is the social drug of choice in most of the world. If the standard folks want to create is that no woman can seek sex unless both she and her partner are sober, that’s as radical a change in the world as the one I’m asking for.
And by “that sex act” I mean unprotected sex, or any specific sex act that she didn’t want and/or changed her mind about.
One thing that disturbs me about a lot of these comments is that many people are assuming that you can protect yourself from rape by not putting yourself in stupid situations. Personally, I was almost raped by someone very close to me who I completely trusted. When I was 17 I had been dating a guy for about 7 months, one time when we were having sex he said he wanted anal sex, when I said no, he pinned me down forcefully and tried to force himself on me. I only escaped by throwing burning candle wax in his face. So please… rape isn’t the fault of the victim, it can happen to anyone in any situation, and I think everyone needs to be a bit more compassionate. There are a lot of shitty people who do good things, and there’s a lot of good people who do shitty things. We’re all people and you never know what you’re going to get.
The sad thing is, that Nick probably thought she was “preaching to the choir”, and yet, look at the number of people just on this thread who think that if a woman is sexually active, it’s her fault if a man rapes her. (Well, okay: four, maybe five. But some of them commented more than once to tell Nick that.) Urk.
My first reaction to the story of a women agreeing to go off with two strangers was to be startled. I mean, it’s risky behavior. Then again, if we never, ever went off with strangers or even people we sort of know, none of us would ever experience the fun of making out in the dark with a new guy (that’s about as risky as I ever got, but whatever floats your boat).
I think that all of us, men and women have put ourselves in stupid, dangerous situations where something terrible might have happened, and for most of us, it didn’t. I mean, if we women didn’t take the leap and trust men in a lonely dark room every once in awhile, no one would ever have any fun.
This happens to men too: I know a gringo who was robbed blind in S America because he invited a woman he had met once into his apartment for a drink. She gave him the date rape drug. And yes, everyone said what a dumb ass he was for inviting a woman he barely knew in.
Nick, I have questions.
First, did you present as unambiguously female when you went looking for a guy for sex? I know your gender is neither binary nor congruent with your female anatomy, but you didn’t say anything about the trans aspect.
Second, you went back to camp with both men, but then you only talk about one. Was the other guy present during the crisis? Was he a participant at all? Did he understand what was going on?
I don’t mean to pry, but these were things I’m not sure I followed.
RonF – I’m probably not the first to call you out on this but hey, judgemental much? What exactly gives you the right to tell Nick that her behaviour was “stupid”? And why is going out looking for sex “stupid” anyway? Because they were soldiers? Because she went back to their “place” rather than taking them to hers?
Bottom line is, there’s a sexist double standard at work here. Men who go out looking for sex may be called a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. Women should not have to assume that every guy they meet is a potential rapist. If the guy in question does turn out to be a potential rapist, that doesn’t mean the woman is stupid to have trusted him, it means the guy is an asshole. End of story.
Nick,
I am glad you and your baby were not hurt.
I spend tons of time in “risky” urban areas with folks many think of as dangerous; never been hurt or threatened. I was abused as a kid by a family friend on a ride in the country. Blessings.
Judging another’s behavior as “stupid” and “too risky” is setting your life choices as the only acceptable standard for smart behavior. What makes you so special? We all make different choices in life. I make the choice to leave my windows open at night. If you close your windows, should you call my behavior stupid? Or should you be called stupid for not locking your windows as well? Who decides? Getting out of bed in the morning puts me at risk for thousands of things. Eating at a restaurant puts me at risk. We make choices that work for us. Closing my windows is not worthwhile to me. I would miss the breeze, run up the energy bill, all just to avoid being called stupid after an outcome that somebody else did not experience.
This is why I oppose risk-reduction education. It implies that there are smart and stupid behaviors as opposed to different options that will fit some lives and not others. It also assumes we should mold our lives around those who would cause us harm. They are not worth that to me. I deserve the freedom to save money on a cab by walking home. I deserve the freedom to feel the breeze coming through my windows. These are not stupid behaviors, despite what some may judge. They are a result of a rational choice not to allow rapists to dictate how I’ll live. Why should they get that power? And relating back to the original post, why should they get the power to dictate how we choose our sex partners? Besides, if I could somehow live a life that would get everybody’s “smart risk-reduction” approval, rapists would simply find somebody else. I guess then I could call that somebody else’s behavior stupid, right?
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The problem is, in terms of many social problems, risk reduction *works*. The term is most familiar to me in the context of STD prevention, especially HIV. Yeah, saying “use a condom” passes judgement on those who don’t, but if we want fewer people getting sick and dying prematurely of a disease that can be prevented by condoms…duh.
In a perfect world, no one would have to curb their reasonable behavior because of the unreasonable behavior of others. But we’re not living in that world and I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask people to use their brains and their education to avoid as many bad situations as possible.
The “what do you expect” people are off their rockers. Last time I went off with a man just to have sex with him, I ended up being with him for nearly 5 years. I took the risk of rape, ended up with a case of being in love. No one likes to talk about that “danger” of casual sex.
Thanks for telling your story.
So, Lilith, does that mean you’re going to accept getting your ass handed to you because you chose to be a self-righteous, judgemental fuck to an almost-rape victim? Because you had a choice and you picked the one that enabled you to be cruel, thoughtless, judgemental and just plain fucking assholish. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have expected it or anything
For fuck’s sake already. So, what do you bet it’s like for women who aren’t on feminist blogs? Because the reception here has been so fucking sensitive
Virginia expressed distaste for *all* risk reduction schemes, in general, on principle. I’m all for seeing the social factors for what they are, but I am also all for those who are able using their goddamned brains as needed.
Um, what exactly did Lilith say that was so offensive? It seemed to me that she was speaking in general, not blaming Nick at all for what happened to her. I don’t think any of the commenters on this post, except perhaps RonF, have blamed Nick or implied that rape is a woman’s fault. In fact, most of them have bent over backwards to make clear their sympathy for Nick and their belief that rape is never a woman’s fault or justified in any way, yet they are still getting attacked.
Many of the commenters here seem to be missing the concept that a person can make a bad choice yet not be at fault for the result of that bad choice. Nobody deserves a crime to happen to them, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try to avoid situations that would make a crime likely. It’s just common sense, and it applies to both genders. Of course different people have different views of what constitutes a bad choice, but that would be another discussion.
I would like to share my story as well, because I think it bears some resemblance to Nick’s, and I think it points out a key fact that many people here are missing (despite its having been explained to them repeatedly).
When I was 16 I was at my boyfriend’s house. We had been together for about a year and that point, and had been having sex for quite some time. The afternoon in question we were fooling around on his bedroom floor. We weren’t having PIV sex at that moment, not out of any desire/need not to, just because we weren’t. At some point he goes to put his penis in my vagina. I say “wait”, again not out of any objection to the act in general, just because I didn’t feel like it at that moment. He ignores my asking him to wait and just goes ahead with it, before I even have a chance to move. It’s not that he didn’t hear me, he just chose to ignore it. How do I know this? Because after he’s finished he asks me if something’s wrong. I just give him a look, like “oh, give me a break”. His response? “Yeah, I know, but I really wanted to.”
Why did I tell this story? Because I think that aside from the trappings, it is exactly the same story as Nick’s. Being with someone who I loved and had reason to trust, and who I thought loved me, did nothing, NOTHING, to protect me from being raped by a man who thought his wanting to have sex outweighed my right to control my body.
Telling Nick that hir behaviour was stupid is ignorant and counterproductive.
Well, I guess that answers my question. When in doubt, be an insensitive ass because those opportunities to stomp on someone when they’re down in real life would get you a lot more than a verbal bitchslapping. If it’s so okay to do it to a rape victim, I guess we’ll just have to apply the principle all over.
Now, about those guys that refuse to wear condoms and still whine that they can’t force women to have abortions or give up the silly concept of child support….
I’d also like to add my thanks.
Count me as one of the “choir” who is always grateful when someone shares such a personal story in order to help show how ridiculous so many of our attitudes and assumptions are.
I don’t think anyone here is denying that rape can happen in totally unexpected situations, with people you know well and trust. The stories shared on this thread are horrible, and oof course none of the victims are to blame for what happened to them.
But the possibility that someone you know and trust could hurt you doesn’t make it smart to put yourself in a position where a stranger could do the same. The goal is overall risk reduction; of course one can never be safe from all risk, but that doesn’t make it wrong to try, and that doesn’t make it blaming the victim to suggest that in general, people should try to avoid risky situations.
Uh huh. And if the vast majority of rapes are committed by people who are known to their victims, what does that say about the usefulness of your risk-reduction techniques?
The fact is that situations like mine are the rule, not the exception, and “advice” that cautions women to be careful is in fact very harmful. I can’t believe I have to explain this here, but here you go:
When you tell women to be careful, and counsel them in risk-avoidance you:
1) create a heirarchy of women, some of whom deserve to be raped, and some of whom do not. Whether you intend to create this heirarchy or not is immaterial
2) create a culture of fear among women whereby women’s lives are restricted in ways that men’s lives are not
3) create a false sense of security among women who do follow your rules.
Why can’t you understand? This kind of advice is HARMFUL.
I don’t think we’re ever going to get anywhere because some people are talking about personal experiences, and other people are talking about generalities. I have things I would like to say regarding the general discussion of risk reduction, but I don’t want to come across as insensitive to all the people in this thread who have suffered rape or attempted rape, so I’ll just shut up now.
I’m not sure that it is every appropriate, when somebody tells you about their victimization, to tell that person that their actions were foolish or stupid. It is one thing to say to yourself, “Oh, I never would have done that/put myself in that situation.” It is another thing to say, “Oh, that’s so terrible. I’m sorry this happened to you. But, still, that was a stupid thing to do.” As somebody noted above (it’s too late & I’m too lazy to scroll back up – sorry), the victim is most likely blaming themselves already. It is not something that you say to a person that you don’t hate if you have any social skills at all.
If you’re having a discussion about risk reduction for a particular form of victimization, that is something else. But, as mentioned by Jake, risk reduction as rape prevention functions mainly to create a (very large) class of (overwhelmingly) women who deserve what they got & a (miniscule) class who were merely victims (although w/ risk reduction theory you can blame almost any victim). Risk reduction as rape prevention also functions to put limits on one-half of the human race without appreciably reducing rape.
Jake:
1. The vast majority of rapes are by aquaintences as opposed to lurkers in bushes. I don’t know where these men (who I think are vile) would fit.
2. Risk reduction doesn’t mean risk elimination. If I look both ways before crossing the street, cross at a cross walk etc. etc. I’m more likely to avoid getting hit by a car. I haven’t eliminated that risk completely.
3. I don’t think risk counsling does create a hieracrchy of women. A crime is still a crime. It doesn’t reduce the crime, and it doesn’t mean that “some women deserve to be raped.” it means it lessens ones chances of being victimized. That is giving someone strength, not weakness. If you can assess the risk value and act accordingly you can achieve your goals and are less likely to come to harm. Women who think that means they won’t get raped are also being foolish.
4.Perhaps I shouldn’t call her stupid. I know that is mean and usually I am not a mean person. And if Nick were a stupid person I wouldn’t have done that. It doesn’t appear to me that she is stupid. We all act stuppidly from time to time. There are ways to achieve her goals if she wants sex without strings to reduce, not eliminate, another rape story. I don’t get how that isn’t a desireable goal. If a woman just wants to hook up with whoever and wants to do it as Nick did, she could also call on someone to ring her doorbell after 1/2 hr or have a panic button or some other mode to receive help if the situation warrants it.
Men rape. Women rape as well. Being raped or almost raped isn’t fun. It harms, and the ezxtent of the harm differes from person to person in character and degree. That doesn’t negate, imho the following statement:
Counting on the other person to be moral, especially a person one doesn’t know and one hasn’t vetted and who is impaired by drugs/alcohol, is not intelligent. Having some sort of plan to get out of a negative situation is.
I think it is a greater disservice to people in general to tell them just act like the next person is smart and moral and reasonable than to tell them “treat the other person fairly be protect yourself.:”
We drive defensively, , imho it isn’t wise to do that in fulfilling one’s drives?
And what have we learned here, boys and girls?
A sad truth. To mesh generalities and personal stories; the single best action women could take to reduce their risk of being raped by men is simply to never be alone with them or to enter into intimate relationships with them.
That’s a pretty fucking sad statement if you ask me. That men, even “liberal” men are so unwilling to place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the men who commit it and thus are the ones who have to *stop it* is even worse.
I mean, really, more broadly a woman can do no two things in her life that will increase her risk of sexual assult, violent assault and murder than entering into an intimate relationship with a man and getting pregnant. That is fucked up.
“the single best action women could take to reduce their risk of being raped by men is simply to never be alone with them or to enter into intimate relationships with them.”
Unfortunately i’m starting to come to that conclusion.
I could list a great number of examples of behaviour that would also be ‘stupid’ in terms of exposing onesself to physical danger. Trouble is, my own list seems to involve ‘walking to work in broad daylight’.
Whatever you think about anyone’s actions – provided they aren’t hurting anyone – there is no justification for implying that they deserve to come to harm from it.
Confucious say, She who lie with dogs not permitted to complain when she gets fleas.
“We drive defensively, , imho it isn’t wise to do that in fulfilling one’s drives?”
We also drive even more defensively around semi’s – and yet most people’s reactions to the fact that we must do so is to not only complain about it, but to be more restrictive of what semi’s can do, not what everyone else can do. Driving extra defensively around semi’s is a temporary solution to an immediate problem. Anyone with a brain understands that without strict regulation – and enforcement – the semi’s would take over even more of the road than they already do; that we would be in more danger, not less, if we concentrated on defensive driving – or even gave equal weight to both.
So why is the logical response to rape then to focus on what women should do and not to discuss what we expect of men? Why does every goddam discussion of what behaviour we should be able to expect from men turn into what defensive tactics women can/should take?
“Risk reduction as rape prevention also functions to put limits on one-half of the human race without appreciably reducing rape.”
Exactly. If such advice actually did jack shit to stop rape in general, rather than just decrease one’s chances at a particular point in time, I might let it slide more often. But it doesn’t, just like talking about defensive driving saves much fewer lives (in terms of semi’s vs. cars) in the long run compared to effectively restricting semi’s speed and available lanes compared to that of cars.
And again, if every godamn discussion of what behaviour men should be held to did not devolve into “how you could be so stupid as to think that you would be safe in that situation!?!” I might have more patience for all the silly driving, stealing, etc. analogies. But they do, so I don’t.
And no, “but of course what he did was wrong” does not count as discussing men’s behaviour. Especially not in this case. As far as I can tell, Nick’s purpose in sharing this experience is not to proclaim “I have the right to dance on tables naked and not get raped” (although she does) but to illustrate how consent is an ongoing process, something that society is far too often confused about. To take a story whose purpose is to edify the clueless about reasons why women may withdraw consent and to turn it into a lecture on what is somewhat safe and what is less safe goes beyond defeating the purpose, it is insulting.
Relationships are always a process of explorations and negotiation, whether you go slow or fast, whether sex is involved at all or not. Yet, for some reason society seems to think that once a woman gives a yes to sex that negotiation has ended. Whether, given this reality, certain actions are “safe” or not is beside the point. The point is that if we ever want to get away from the idea that we must (to extend your painful driving pun) stick to surface streets to stay reasonably safe from those that are larger and more powerful than us, then we need better discussions about each party’s moral and legal responsibilities. And better discussion does not mean rehashing to the ten thousands time what is “safe” behaviour and what isn’t.
Rachel Ann: If you can assess the risk value and act accordingly you can achieve your goals and are less likely to come to harm.
So, have you arranged your life so that you are never alone with men and never enter into intimate relationships with them? If not, do you accept that your foolish behavior means you stand a fair risk of being raped, and that if you write about it afterwards, people like you can point at you and say “Yes, but it was a stupid thing to do, wasn’t it? Being alone with a man, getting involved with a man: you knew that put you at high risk of being raped.”
What I have learned from this thread is that I was an extremely stupid four-year-old. ^_^
Jesurgislac:
Getting raped, which did not happen to Nick, is a horror and should never occur. She also noted in her post that it was more irritating than traumatic. I took her at her word. If she had asked for no comments just support I could have done that easily.
She wrote a post. I responded.
I responded that rape is a crime period and I don’t care what the woamn does or doesn’t do she doesn’t deserve it.
That still doesn’t mean there aren’t certain thing one can do to minimize the event from reoccuring. Emphasis on minimize which I think I spelled wrong.
There are ways to assess risk and stating “You have a chance” isn’t the same as saying “You have a high degree of risk.”
I don’t put myself at a high risk of rape because I havee vetted those I’m alone with in some form or other. I have a low risk. I am cautious among unknown men. I am more cautious when my “instincts” tingle. And being an Orthdox Jew, which hasn’t entered into this discussion, meanss that I don’t close myself off with any man but only close relatives. (there are all sorts of laws and I think it would take away from the discussion to speak about them too much here.). That doesn’t mean there isn’t some risk involved. My husband could go looney. (A friends husband did, do to a brain tumor. She had to institutionalize him.) I could feel safe with a particular man and find him a dog. I could go to a friends house to wait for my friend and it turns out that really, unbeknownest to me, they are killers and I’m the next body.
The likelihood of that occuring are slim.
Ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away.
The questions that need to be asked of any situation are:
Was this outcome the one you expected/desired?
If not, what could YOU (or I) have done to bring the event closer to the ideal?
You (or I) and not s/he it because one has limited control on the actions and thought patterns and moral/legal behaviour of another.
If in fact one of those men who I have vetted and whom I have been alone with acts in a manner which makes me fearful of them, I have to rerasses my behaviour and figure out a way to make myself safe.
That might mean distancing myself forever from said person. It might mean reassessing my vetting system. It may mean a lot of things.
It might mean that this event is so rare that it probably won’t occur again and I can strike the action of the man in queestion up to “meteor dropping on you”.
It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have the right to call the police or press charges if a rape/assault occured
It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have right to counsling and help and love and someone putting their arms around me and feeling glad I’m okay.
Now I’ve given several, not give up sex spontaneously suggestions, which go against my moral thought process, as suggestions to make sex safer, not safe. If you don’t get the fact that my concern is for the life of another human being, then don’t get it, get angry, decided I’m trying to force you to walk in my path and get snarky.
I can’t come up with a perfect solution on the spot. I think that without properly vetting who comes into your private space is a foolish behaviour, especially if one has no back up planned.
I don’t put myself at a high risk of rape because I havee vetted those I’m alone with in some form or other
Which is precisely what any woman who has been raped by a man she thought of as a trusted friend would have thought… right up to the moment she realized she was wrong.
It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have the right to call the police or press charges if a rape/assault occured
It would, however, mean that the police would advise you that pressing charges would mean your public humiliation in court, and your rapist being acquitted.
It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have right to counsling and help and love and someone putting their arms around me and feeling glad I’m okay.
Of course not! Just because you’ve been smug and unsympathetic towards women who have been raped wouldn’t mean that if you were raped, you shouldn’t get counselling and help and love. You would need it, though I cannot say that I think you would deserve it, but I think people should get the help they need, not the help they deserve.
1. Nick wasn’t raped. She stated she wasn’t raped. She stated she wasn’t even traumatized by the incident. I took her at her word. If she actually stated she was raped or traumatized by the incident I would have responded differently. She did not. She was irritatated. You are irritated by my words. Maybe she was irritated by my words. Maybe I find you irritating. I don’t expect sympathy for that.
2. You have difficulties with the word “high” don’t you. As in a “high” versus “low” risk. What you take as smug is fact. By not being alone with a man I have a lower risk of rape/sexual assault. Not NO risk. But a lower risk of rape.
3. Most likely I would feel humiliated by any court proceeding, closed or open. I didn’t say that anyone who acted stupidly should be humiliated in court, This is not court. The statements aren’t meant to be legislative and the morality or wisdom of the victim shouldn’t enter the court’s decision. If it did I would state that is wrong.
4. Cruelty seems to be your domain. I had made no statement as to the help Nick should or should not get if she had in fact been raped and or traumatised by the incident. She was not raped and did not feel traumatized but irritated. This is not a rape counselors office. Furthermore, rape counselors might very well advise a client to find various other solutions to meet their needs and to raise the level of, not assure, their safety. MIGHT. Depending on the circumstances. There might not be anything at all one could do under a particular set of circumstances. Raising one’s level of safety is a good thing, not a bad thing.
By not being alone with a man I have a lower risk of rape/sexual assault. Not NO risk. But a lower risk of rape.
If that were true. But you’ve admitted that you DO let yourself be alone with men: so you DO put yourself at risk of rape.
Most likely I would feel humiliated by any court proceeding, closed or open.
My point was that by “making yourself safer” by only being alone with men you think you can trust, if you are ever wrong – and I refer you to the point that any woman who was raped by someone she knew thought that she could trust him – you have ensured that if you press charges, you will see your rapist acquitted. Because you have ensured that any man who rapes you will have the defense of claiming that he knew you socially, you had consented to be alone with him, and any protest by you that you had not consented to sex with him will be ignored. You are right in that trials of rapists are invariably humiliating or the principal witness: by “public humiliation” I meant “in the presence of the man who raped you”, whether open or closed.
I had made no statement as to the help Nick should or should not get if she had in fact been raped and or traumatised by the incident
No: you merely asserted, smugly, that it was her fault if she had been, and that you had taken sensible precautions to assure yourself that it wouldn’t happen to you. Like wearing galoshes in the face of Katrina.
Raising one’s level of safety is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Being smug about your galoshes in hurricane territory is foolish, not “good”.
So many comments overnight (for those that don’t know, my internet access is limited to UK daytime hours). I’ll try to respond to some of the points that came up.
I don’t like to assume that all men are rapists or assholes or anything else unpleasant. I do like to assume that if a man wants to have sex with me he will comply with a reasonable request like “use a condom” rather than trying to get round it because he doesn’t feel like bothering. It strikes me as blackly amusing that feminists are the ones accused of seeing all men as rapists when in any discussion it’s the rape-apologists that come out with the “what did you expect” attitude.
I freely admit that being alone with two people I had only just met, who had consumed more alcohol than was conducive to good decision-making (and yes, that is what I meant by “deaf to reason”) and who were both physically much stronger than me increased my vulnerability. But, as Jake’s story illustrates, the same thing can happen with someone you know well and believe you can trust.
I think a world in which a woman can safely go out and pick up a couple of guys in a bar to have no-strings sex and not have to worry that one of them will ignore her clearly-stated wishes would be a far better world to live in than the one we currently have, and the only way that world can come about is through a change in men’s behaviour.
For the people who suggested alternative ways of getting no-strings sex, I have very few practical options. I could explain them at length, but I’ve already laid out as much of my life as I’m comfortable with in this area, and it shouldn’t matter what my reasons are. If I assess my options and decide that the best of them is to pick up soldiers in a bar, I don’t have to justify that decision.
Thomas asked a couple of specific questions way upthread, here are the answers:
1. I did present myself as female, which is my usual decision in the offline world.
2. The other man sort of wandered off once he’d got what he wanted from the encounter. I can’t remember whether he was physically present or not by the time the trouble started, but he certainly didn’t intervene in any way.
First off,
The colors of this blog are aweful and need to be changed (off topic).
Secondly, what happened to personal responsibility? Is it any wonder men are marrying less and less. Sure it could have been rape by current legal standards. I won’t argue that.
But I think women need to recognize the BS they are putting men through because in the long run, in the big picture, women are only hurting themselves.
We already know men are dogs. That hasn’t changed over time. So what has changed? Women.
Women are now dogs. For equality sake – that is fine. But think of it this way. Women have now lowered their standards to the level of men. We now have both genders in the gutter. Quite frankly, this women is a whore. Already pregnant and looking for additional partners.
How about this for your “reasonable request”. You are the person making demands that a stranger won’t know about prior to meeting you. How about since you demand that condoms be used, that you make sure there is a supply available by bringing them with you. Once again, we have female putting all responsibility on the man without taking responsibility herself. Pure BS just because she thinks her vagina is gold.
If you don’t like the message, tough.
Christ, the thing about the smug Rachel Anns and the other “I told you so!” people is that you have to expect there’s more than mere cluelessness going on here. There’s more than an element of boasting going on there, too. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” And of course it’s damned stupid to compare a rape to a car accident: a driver who injured a pedestrian would be blamed and fined and arrested for it, all of which most rapists manage to avoid. The damage done to the victimfor so simple an error in judgement—jaywalking, say—would drive judgement from the mind of anyone apprised of the accident. Christ, you’d men would be the most determined to bitch at these rapists: women are doing them a compliment by trusting them. Instead we get this response by alleged women. In effect, they’re defending guys’ right to rape. Sorry, but saying “But I’m NOT blmaing the victim!” does not mean you’re not blaming the victim. It means you know exactly what you’re doing and you’re trying to dodge getting nailed for it.
And I reiterate what I said above: what about those guys that don’t wear condoms and then whine about babies? Unlike rape victims, there’s a cause and effect there, but if you even hint at such a thing OMG you’re a manhating bitch. Well, if that’s the case, in rapes where there’s no cause and effect on the victim’spart then I guess it’s clear that these people are woman-hating whatevers. Their defensiveness ought to be a clue.
Nick and Jake,
Thank you for your stories.
Regarding the various strands of “what were you thinking?!”:
The issue is not how any person (male, female, trans, etc.) presents themselves or the types of situations they put themselves in. If that were true, indeed, if that were the answer to solving the rape, then rape would end when all people stop putting themselves in risky situations.
This supposition cannot, however, address what Jake’s boyfriend did.
Why?
Because rape is always about the rapist. What sucks about the responses of RonF et. al. is that you don’t say to the guy, “what the fuck were you doing????”
Instead, you shrug, roll you eyes, sigh and offer various strategies to avoid stranger rape. But since you cannot place the responsibility where in needs to be placed, you can offer no strategies against intimate/acquaintance rape.
To RonF et. al. ~ women are not fucking stupid. Every woman I’ve every met, and the few that I’ve had the pleasure of dating, and the one that chose to marry me, ALL have strategies for staying safe.
But rape still happens because rape is about the rapist.
For whatever it is worth: (and I say this for the folks who are not familiar with my story) I lived the first 30 years of my life as a woman. The last eleven as a man.
The biggest, saddest, change: women are sometimes, afraid of me now. Those that aren’t, put me in a contested arena, until I’ve proven that I’mnot a dick head.
Now, according to the RonF et. al. cabal, their fear is their problem. But you see, it is my problem,too. Because their fear diminishes MY life. And after a few women have shared their stories of their rapes with me, I understand why women are afraid of all men.
Yes, I know it sucks. But I’m a good guy too, I can certainly whine.
But if I can’t say to a rapist, or attempted rapist, “What the fuck are you doing?” then I should just STFU.
In the end rape is about the rapist and their need to control. Drunk ornot, soldier or not, boyfriend or not, rape is always about the rapist.
Men rape women. And until we can shift the action of the verb away from the passive (“women are raped”) form of the verb to be, to the active voice of the verb rape, we, as a society, will be fucked.
Thank you again Nick and Jake.
Can you all do me a favour and not pile on Rachel Ann? She’s contacted me privately to explain her views, and I appreciate that she’s motivated by concern for women who put themselves in dangerous situations.
I’m with those who think that concern is misguided, but some of the invective being thrown in her direction is unfair and over-the-top. Surely we can argue that the advice is bad without implying that the offerer is somehow morally at fault?
It is morally wrong. That’s the problem. It needs to stop. People need to stop attacking rape victims for what someone else did to them and start attacking rapists. It’s incredibly cruel to do this to rape victims and then hold one’s self up as an example—which is what she did.
Getting criticized for this, frankly, is better than the way she treated you or, I bet, other victims. Unlike the situation you described, there is a cause and effect when Rachel Ann gets ‘piled on.’ She’s getting a taste of her own medicine, in effect.
I don’t put myself at a high risk of rape because I havee vetted those I’m alone with in some form or other. I have a low risk. I am cautious among unknown men. I am more cautious when my “instincts” tingle. And being an Orthdox Jew, which hasn’t entered into this discussion, meanss that I don’t close myself off with any man but only close relatives.
Rachel Ann, you are a true specimen of naïveté. Close relatives can rape you too. Unless you completely close yourself off from society you will never, ever be safe from it.
So do we get to call you stupid when (probably not if) rape happens to you?
How much of a risk you have is completely immaterial, and you truly cannot judge your amount of risk by resorting to stereotypes. I could walk through a bad neighborhood alone at night, completely naked, and never be attacked once. Meanwhile, my stepmom was in danger from her own father. Constantly. Until she ran away from home.
I’d love to see you tell her that she was at “low” risk of rape because it was her father. Put it this way, she was lucky to be able to have my brother.
Oooh looky, a troll. What fun!
I don’t see what my pregnancy has got to do with anything. I know this may come as a shock to you, especially if you have your madonna/whore complex etched deep in your psyche, but pregnancy doesn’t stop you from being sexual and wanting sex.
You know what – I did. I supplied a condom and he, whether through carelessness or a desire to put one over on me, “lost” it.
And while we’re on the subject, I didn’t demand condoms be used. I offered a choice of two options: sex with condom or no sex. The only way to read this as a demand that condoms be used is if I somehow owe him sex.
Yeah, because making a man responsible for a) something staying on his dick and b) his dick staying where it ought to be (did you read the bit about him trying to stick it in me while I was negotiating with him?) is soooooo unfair on the poor ickle man.
How about this for your “reasonable request”. You are the person making demands that a stranger won’t know about prior to meeting you. How about since you demand that condoms be used, that you make sure there is a supply available by bringing them with you.
The way women oppress men by expecting them to put on a condom before they have sex! It’s terrible! Don’t you know–if a woman gets pregnant, it’s because it’s her fault since birth control is her problem. And STD’s aren’t men’s problem at all–they have a Magic Penis Shield.
I’ll take it further–not only should women bring the condoms at all times, but she should also bring snacks, beer, and a comfy pillow. And she should wipe his ass when he poos. Because men are just expected to take too much responsibility.
Is it any wonder men are marrying less and less.
Damn bitches, expecting men to be appealing before you want to be with them! You’d better stop it or the self-centered men will not marry you! THEN where will you be? You’ll be off sipping mojitos with your girlfriends and completely relaxed from not picking up some entitled asshat’s dirty socks, that’s what. You’ll be married to a guy with a brain who treats you well and respects you. And you may THINK you’re happy, but YOU WON’T BE. Because–because–er. . .because some random troll said so.
Nick: Can you all do me a favour and not pile on Rachel Ann? She’s contacted me privately to explain her views
Fair enough.
Nick, out of respect for your thread, I’ll shelve further counterattacks on Rachel Ann. However, I agree with Ginmar on this one.
You posted a story of near-rape on your own feminist blog and the third commenter called you stupid and victim-blamed you. This is so pervasive and so predictable.
This problem, I think, is best addressed by behavior modification. Whenever someone on this blog victim-blames, you can count on a bunch of us, including Ginmar, and me, and Jake Squid, and BritGirl, and Sheelzebub, to gang-tackle the offender. Maybe if folks see enough such commenters pounded into the turf, then at least on a feminists blog, women will be able to talk about their rape experiences without getting “what were your mistakes? Let’s list them.”
Thanks, Nick and Jake, for sharing your stories.
I think part of the reason we’re getting all of the blame-the-victim posts is because the perps are nowhere in sight. I have yet to see a blog by a guy that contains anywhere in it a version of “Man, I was so stupid last night – I let my dick do the thinking and now I’ve raped somebody and I feel really bad about it.” THEN maybe we would see the posts about rape prevention with what really ought to be out there: “Going off with a girl when you’re really drunk is really stupid, man.” or “Dude, stop when she says no!” But until that fateful day, we’re going to get comments on what we can see, which is the victim’s side of things, and that’s going to drive the discussion.
What Lee said.
A number of years ago, my partner and I decided that we wanted to have a threesome with another woman. Not knowing a woman who was interested in us that we were both attracted to, we placed a personal ad online, which was quickly answered by a lovely young woman who lived in a nearby town. We met her, chatted for an evening, and retired to our bedroom, where we had vigorously unprotected sex. This continued, to our mutual satisfaction, for the next month or so.
During our chatting that first evening, we’d discussed our sexual health status, and had all avowed that we were all STD free and tested regularly, which was true, at least, for my partner and I. It came as an unwelcome surprise, then, when we began to feel the telltale burning sensation while peeing. Luckily, we hadn’t contracted anything that couldn’t be cured with megadoses of penicillin, so all’s well that ends well, but my mind is drawn to this true life story by this discussion.
Was contracting this STD our ‘fault’? No. Absolutely, 100% not. Someone we thought we could trust lied to us and deceived us, and infected us with a disease due to her own carelessness and selfishness. She either knew she had an STD and did not disclose it, or, more likely, didn’t know she had an STD, but didn’t bother to get tested and lied about having been tested. This STD was the fault of the liar who infected us, and nobody else.
Did we do things that made it more likely for us to contract an STD? Yes. Yes we did. We could have used barrier protection that would have protected against STDs, and we didn’t. We should have. Not doing that was stupid, and it involved putting more trust into someone we’d just met than was very smart to do. She wasn’t drunk. She wasn’t a one night stand. This was someone we’d been with for a month. In the end, though, I strongly feel that it’s my job to take whatever precautions I need to in order to ensure my own sexual health.
Is this the same as saying we ‘deserved’ to contract an STD? No, read the first question again. I believe it’s possible to say both “What we did wasn’t very safe and was likely to lead to that sort of consequence, not because ‘all women are liars,’ but because it’s hard to know who is and who isn’t, and it’s a good idea to be careful” AND to say “but that’s not exculpatory in any way towards the people who do lie about their sexual health status and infect their partners, and that’s not the same as blaming the victim.”
Are there people who do blame the victim for this? Yes, and those people sure suck ass. Whether it’s a moral judgment punishing women for enjoying casual sex or a moral judgment punishing anyone for participating in non-standard sexual practices, there will always be these sorts of assholes out there. These are the people who believe that, “AIDS IS GOD’S PUNISHMENT FOR THE GAYYSS!!1!!!1″ They’re wrong (and evil and stupid) but that doesn’t mean that having unprotected sex with an IV drug user you just met 15 minutes ago isn’t a goddamn suicidal thing to do. Most of the critical comments I’ve read here, I’ve seen as being more in the second category than the first.
Am I putting all the responsibility for change and restriction of behavior on myself and my partner? Is this unfair? No, I’m not. Our playmate should have been more honest, and should have been responsible for her sexual health. Her behavior was reprehensible, and, was it a different STD, could well have approached murder. Nonetheless, my actions are the only ones I can reliably control, and thus, when I enter a situation, my actions are the ones I must rely on. Is that unfair? It’s not about whether or not that’s fair. In fact, it’s goddamn unfair, but it is what it is.
What kind of response do I have a right to expect to discussions of my behavior? I think that depends on who I’m discussing this with. With my friends, I expect “Oh god, man, that’s awful! I’m so sorry.” With a doctor, I expect some combination of “This is NOT your fault” and “Here are the things you can do to make it less likely,”(which is actually what I got when we went to a doctor). With random people on a blog floating in cyberspace? I don’t know. I would hope for something similar to what I’d expect from a doctor, with the understanding that there are always people who take the opportunity to troll. I’m not sure I have a right to expect a blank “Oh god, man, that’s awful! I’m so sorry” from strangers, especially when I’m specifically opening the topic for discussion.
I guess the only other question that I’ve been mulling over is how well this translates to the issue of pregnancy. If our playmate had been lying about, say, being on the pill . . . and she’d become pregnant . . . would most of the commenters here believe that that’s a situation I have no responsibility in? Before I get involved with any sexual partner, I always discuss what will be done in the event of a pregnancy, and make clear that I’m not ready to be a father, and make sure that we’re on the same page regarding abortion and our mutual desire to not have a child any time soon. What if she’d been lying about that, and actually wanted a child . . . and despite our mutual agreements, decided, after becoming pregnant, to keep the child? Is that a situation I’d have no responsibility in?
Maybe in your family.
Oh, and I apologize for not posting this earlier:
Oh god, Nick, I’m so sorry. That must have been really scary and infuriating and horrible. Fuck that guy. What a fucking asshole.
Rape is a terrible thing and if things had continued on I’m a firm believer that the rapist should have been punished and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yup, NICK should have been sentenced to serious jail time.
By every legal definition of the term Nick is the attempted rapist here. Nick is the one who went out looking for sex, plyed them with so much alcohol that the could no longer make informed decisions, and then tried to make the victim perform a sex act that they didn’t want to. Just because the man here appears to have consented and appears to be enthusiastic in his participation doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape.
Now before you begin the insults I ask that you look at the scene layed out before you and take away the sexes of the participants and simply examine the facts, look at them as party A and party B. One person gets another drunk and attempts to do what they want to them while they are too drunk to be able to control themselves. Many cases have been won and “rapists” locked away in just this scenario.
I personally have gone out and wound up with a drunk woman in a secluded place who was quite focused on getting what she wanted and not caring how I felt about it. (though if anything had happened I would have been the one most likely charged with a crime if the police had become involved)
Now, for all you hypocrites who are going to say it’s not the same thing, remember this the current legal definitions being pushed for do state that providing, endorsing or enabling another person to drink heavily and then having sex with that person while their judgement is impaired makes their consent ambiguous and if they decide to withdraw that consent upon sobering they have every rate to claim rape then.
And yes I am a man.
Hm. So, I’m a bad guy because I said picking up a drunk in a bar and taking off with him for some sex was stupid. Nick (the only person I owe anything to on this), I’m sorry if you were offended by my bluntness. I think I’m a reasonably smart guy, but God and my wife both know I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life, too, some that nearly cost me my life. So if you think I think you’re stupid, I don’t. You express yourself quite intelligently on here; in fact, more so than many of the respondents.
But it was a dumb thing to do. Look what almost happened. Some asshole almost raped you. And the world abounds with assholes. There are entire social and educational structures to eliminate assholes, and there’s an entire legal structure to take assholes out of circulation once they demonstrate who they are. But, to paraphrase Jesus, “assholes will always be with us.” We’ll never get rid of them all.
A number of people here apparently have the viewpoint that advising someone to avoid risk equates to placing blame on that person for any bad outcome if they don’t adopt the risk-avoidance behavior. It doesn’t. I own a home. I don’t have a fence around it. I don’t have a burglar alarm. And I don’t own a guard dog. It’s in a reasonable neighborhood, but for sake of argument let’s say that I live in a high-crime area. If someone breaks into my house, it’s their fault, not mine. But that doesn’t mean that if I have a lot of valuables, I wouldn’t be wise to go the fence/alarm/dog route, or move. I have no expectation that society will be able to convince everyone to stop stealing, nor that the law enforcement structure will be able to stop burglaries.
All of us; male or female, black or white, old or young, constrain our behavior in part on the basis of what we or others have a right to do. But we also constrain it on the basis of what other people may do that they have no right to do. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But it’s real, and you ignore that at your peril.
Yes, women get raped by people they know and should be able to trust. Limiting yourself to having sex with someone you know and trust can still result in rape. That doesn’t mean that someone isn’t acting foolishly if they seek sex from people they have no reason to trust. Risk cannot be eliminated from life, and I don’t think it should be. Acceptance of risk often presents a growth/learning opportunity. But it can be reduced.
Morals? I never mentioned morals. But since others have opened the subject, let me ask everyone this; where do you think moral rules come from? Are you all convinced that the origin of moral rules are to justify one group or class of people dominating another? Or could it be that in many cases, they’re just formally encoded forms of very practical advice?
Nick, it isn’t your fault that this guy almost raped you. I’m glad you weren’t; in no way would you have deserved it if you had been. However, based on your experience, I’ll ask this – are you likely to try this again? I hope not. I would be very sad to read a posting from you later on how you did get raped, or a posting from Amp or Kim or Pseudo-Adrienne about something worse happening.
A number of people here apparently have the viewpoint that advising someone to avoid risk equates to placing blame on that person for any bad outcome if they don’t adopt the risk-avoidance behavior.
Well that’s a convenient way to label saying, and I quote from comment #3, “But you were damn stupid to put yourself in such a situation.”
How often do you advise people to avoid risk by saying, “You were stupid to do such and such?” See, that is blame. Advice would be more along the line of, “It would be foolish for you to do such and such at some point in the future.” Do you see the difference. You, in comment #3, did not advise. In comment #3 you blamed. That is what I am taking you to task for.
If you want to have a discussion about risk reduction theory as it relates to rape, that is a seperate issue. An issue on which I think that your opinion is demonstrably wrong, but it is not a rude and shitty thing to say – like your final sentence in comment #3 was.
Is it more important to you to justify your rude and callous statement by attempting to rationalize it as “advice” than it is to apologize for it and move on? Justification of a rude, callous statement is certainly what your comment (#82) appears to be.
I’m sorry if you were offended by my bluntness.
What a classic non-apology.
I can’t, of course, speak for what might offend Nick, but what certainly offended everyone else who was offended was that you blamed Nick for her behavior, not the man who nearly raped her. You could have blamed Nick bluntly or tactfully: it is the blame-the-victim mentality that is offensive.
You have a point, Lee. While it would be nice if men called men more often on sexist behavior in a broader context than you suggest, there’s limited scope for that here—outside of answering sexists who post.
That said, what anyone of good intentions but a desire to criticize Nick’s behavior should really take away from this that criticizing the victim’s behavior is . . . er, damn stupid. ^_^
* It doesn’t map to statistical realities as well as the average person thinks.
* It makes light of the rapist’s responsibility.
* It reinforces the victim’s shame—in this case, moot, since the rape didn’t happen and Nick didn’t express shame, but often important.
* It reinforces the idea that people who get raped get raped because they did something wrong, when you can’t actually live life without going through huge numbers of risky situations.
* It reinforces the idea that men are, well, dogs, which either means that they should be kenneled or that they can somehow get away with anything (“Ooh, Fwuffy, so cute, you ate that girl’s face! Good boy! Good boy!”)
* No matter how good the advice is, the chance of it preventing the rape that already happened is 0.
* No matter how good the advice is, the chance of it preventing future rapes is potentially smaller than the chance of it causing future rapes by making the victim more afraid and less confident.
* This goes double if the victim gets convinced that it was her fault.
It’s easy to want to do it. It’s easy to feel like it would help. But it’s a lot like trying to cheer up someone in a hospital bed by juggling torches and chainsaws for them—the potential damage somewhat exceeds the expected reward.
Rebecca
RonF, you had all the warning in the world to keep your head down, but you just had to return to the scene of the crime.
Ron, what you did was wrong.
1) there is no problem with a social dynamic of victim-blaming people whose houses are burglarized. However, every woman I know who has been raped has gotten “well-meaning” lectures on what she could have done differently — whether she was raped by a stranger or someone she knew well. As long as the prevailing dynamic is victim-blaming, the marginal benefit of any such advice pales in comparison to the harm it does by instilling fear in other women.
2) you are wrong that you owe nothing to anyone but Nick. Every woman who is potentially a victim of rape (that’s all of them) or who has been raped suffers from the social dynamics that surround it. You’re participating in it. In fact, you initiated it.
3) Let’s look at what the marginal benefit of your “advice” is, anyway. You think Nick ought not to go looking for anonymous sex with a couple of guys down the pub. So, what would you have Nick do, then? Nick could meet men on the internet — but then Nick’s ability to vet them fact-to-face like in a pub would be diminished. They could easily come of as sane and respectful only to lure Nick into their clutches — and then you might just as well be telling Nick how stupid it is to meet sex partners on the internet. Or, as Rachel Ann said, sie could have joined a club for people seeking anonymous sex. I’m not sure there is one in Lincolnshire. Assuming there was, you might just as easily criticize Nick for seeking sex partners in a pool of known deviants who possibly cannot be trusted. Or, Nick could just try to happen across friends who are interested in a threesome with Nick and another man. If Nick can find two such men by looking in, essentially, the general population, then Nick is very lucky or very patient. And then it wouldn’t be anonymous, so these people might get attached and want to have a say in Nick’s life, etc., which is not what Nick was looking for — and hey! They could be rapists, too, as Samantha pointed out above.
Of course, you may say, Nick could simply forgo the kind of sex sie wants. And that’s the real answer, isn’t it? When you said “[morals are] just formally encoded forms of very practical advice”, you suggested that. But that’s not materially different from saying that if Nick does things the patriarchy finds morally objectionable, sie runs the risk of the patriarchal enforcement mechanism. “I’m not defending the enforcement mechanism,” you may protest, “I’m just saying if you step out of line, they’ll get you.” I’m sure you’ll protest that you didn’t mean it that way, Ron, but that’s how it works out in the end. If you say, “do the disapproved thing and you’re taking a risk,” no disclaimer can remove the structural approval of that consequence.
Ron, no matter how many times you say that you’re not making excuses for rape, what you are doing does, in fact, have the effect of excusing rape. If that’s not the effect you want to have, stop doing it.
RonF.
If what Nick did was stupid then how do you explain what happened to me? Was I stupid, too? If not then how can you claim that not being stupid can protect one from being raped? If I was stupid then how can women expect to live their lives while living up to your standards of not being stupid. My point, which you, Rachel Ann, and a few others don’t seem to be getting is this:
Avoiding certain behaviours (like going home with drunk men) does NOT reduce your likelihood of being raped. Therefore, those behaviours can not resonably be said to be stupid. Saying it was stupid blames the victim. Full stop.
NO ONE has said that avoiding certain situations will ELIMINATE the risk of being raped. What HAS been said is that avoiding said situations will REDUCE the risk of being raped at that moment in time. Just like wearing my seat belt won’t eliminate the risk of my getting my skull fractured in all cases, it will just greatly REDUCE the risk of that happening on that particular outing in a car.
Avoiding certain behaviours (like going home with drunk men) does NOT reduce your likelihood of being raped.
Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?
If it is true, it is a counsel of resignation for women. The only variable we control is our own individual behavior; if modifications to one’s own behavior does not reduce the likelihood of negative events, then we are helpless, and fatalism is the only appropriate response.
Yeah, but what you’re missing is that a car accidnet is an accident. A rape is a deliberate act and it’s not the act of the victim. Sober guys rape. Drunk guys rape. Friends, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins rape. How do you avoid all men? Get a fucking clue already.
Oh, Jeebus. Stop it with the car safety comparisons.
When you compare rape,women’s choices in life, car accidents/crime, and completely leave out reference to the behavior of rapists/men you are absolutely, without doubt, not helping and are most certainly, without doubt blaming the victim.
Re: car accidents and the stupidity of that argument. We pave roads. We have yearly inspections. We have speed limits. We widen roads. We create sidewalks. We have relatively inexpensive places to go to fix your car for safety related issues. We, as a society, work together to reduce the overall risk of driving, both for individuals and for the general good.
Re: rape. We focus almost exclusively on the person raped. We, as a society, sit back and give her advice and comparisons and we don’t do a god damned thing about the rapists and their behavior. Our society does little to nothing to reduce “risk”, because strangely enough when it comes to women’s well-being it becomes an issue of personal choice and the woman’s own personal ability to assess or reduce risk.
Want a safe car ride? Chances are the state has covered the majority of the risks that could occur. Chances are your community has voted for lower speed limits, stop lights, crossing guards for children, etc., etc.
Want to reduce the chance of rape? Our society tells women to be smarter, dress better, don’t do this, don’t do that… and then turns its back on women.
Our society tells women that the risk of rape is a personal problem, not a social one. That. is. fucked.
I just realised that my above comment gives the impression that if a certain behaviour *did* increase your likelihood of being raped then it would be okay to call you stupid for doing it, and that’s not what I meant at all. I was just trying to emphasise the fact that in addition to being mean and harmful, the claim of stupidity is nonsensical.
Lillith, note that I didn’t say “eliminate”. I said “reduce”.
Robert, since most rapes are acquaintance-or-family rapes, i.e., most rapists know or are related to their victims, then women avoiding certain “risky” behaviors does not (I would say significantly) reduce their chances of being rape victims.
All of these comparisons to car accidents or property crimes are misleading, IMO, because these are relatively impersonal incidents, while rape is a very personal crime. Maybe mugging would be a closer analogy; I don’t like the comparison, though, because muggers rarely attack people they know. Does anybody know how often people get mugged when they already have their wallets out and open and are ready to hand over the money? ‘Cause that’s the closest I can come to comparing another crime to rape.