In the previous thread about the thin line between an ordinary guy and a rapist, Sailorman writes:
rethinking this: why do folks insist on using “rape” or “almost rape” or “like rape” to describe things that, well, aren’t rape?
I can see it if you think those things should be legally punishable. (in other words, it makes perfect sense if you think those things ARE rape)
But if you DON’T want to put those in the legally punishable category, then I wonder if it’s not such a powerful word as to be ineffective. It’s polarizing. You’ll get men to admit their behavior is “wrong” or “bad” way before you’ll get them to admit it’s “almost rape” or “very similar to rape.”** So using those terms increases the “preaching to the choir” aspect. I’m not sure that’s functionally a good idea.
And it’s also a bit a priori which i find sort of annoying: because rape is bad then “…____ like a rapist” means ___ is very bad. So using that label assigns those things a “fault level” that is fairly high.
The problem with THAT is that these conversations inevitably contain a lot of things that differ hugely in how bad they are. But because “like a rapist” = “veryvery bad” that makes no sense: surely telling someone they’re “prude” because they won’t sleep with you is in an entirely different category from, say, filling someone’s drink with the goal of getting them drunk enough to agree to sleep with you when you know they wouldn’t do so sober. **
There are a few–very few–generalizations one can accurately make, when one includes such disparate behavior. Why is “calling someone a prude” lumped in as Teh Eevil Misogyny together with wanting to rape someone? That’s just ludicrous.
Are some of those things bad? Yes. Some are VERY, VERY, bad. But some are, in the grand scheme of things, not that big a deal. And if there’s not going to be any distinguishing between those categories, I don’t think this is a good argument.
**The power of the word “rape” is not necessarily beneficial. A parallel exists in racism. There used to be things that were referred to as “prejudiced,” which was sort of “racism lite.” Now, “racism” has been deliberately expanded to include all of that, and a whole lot more. The benefit? People get to use a very powerful and socially unacceptable word, “racism,” to control and comment on behavior. The downside? You might have gotten someone to admit they’re a bit prejudiced; not many people will admit to being racist.
After a bit of back and forth, my reply was:
Sailor,
You wrote this: “I can see it if you think those things should be legally punishable. (in other words, it makes perfect sense if you think those things ARE rape) ”
That suggests that the only definition of rape that is acceptable is one with a legal ramification, because it suggests that one only thinks things ARE rape if one seeks to make them legally punishable. That means that you’re saying that a personal definition of rape should be consonant with one’s desired legal definition of rape, and thus that the deciding factor of rape is the legal system.
Which I meant to support the following assertion: “The legal system is not the sole arbiter of meaning. Period.”
Since various people, including Sailorman and myself, feel that this line of discussion is a distraction from the other thread, I’m reposting it here so that it can be explored by anyone who wants to. If people want to repost comments from the other thread here, that’s cool.
I’m locking this to pro-feminists only, in which category I am intending to include Sailorman in case that’s a question (I know he was excluded last time this came up).
Thanks for doing this Mandolin. What I find so frustrating about arguments based on legalities – is that it insists that we think about rape in terms of the perpetrator, not the survivor. If the starting point of any discussion of rape is “What should we do with the perpetrator”, which is what a legal argument is, then the person who was raped is always invisible.
That’s true to an extent and important. But it wasn’t the victim that did it. She wasn’t at fault and isn’t responsible for the attack. To end rape men need to stop raping. (okay it should probably be “to greatly reduce” not stop but the difference is very small.)
My opinion is that rape is a horrible assault that society needs to work hard to stop. An important part of stopping horrible assaults is punishing the people that commit them.
I think there are ramifications for survivors if the word “rape” is watered down to include things that aren’t legally actionable.
Thanks for bringing this up. As I noted over in that other thread, I don’t know how to delete my posts and I’m not interested in derailing it. Feel free to pull them, if you want; I won’t complain.
Since you didn’t seem to think I was clear in my quoted post, I’ll try to state the position more clearly:
1) Language is like algebra. In any given conversation it doesn’t matter what value you assign to words, so long as everyone reading is using the same values.
2) However, words have a “default meaning.” Irrespective of how that meaning is reached, it exists for most words. It’s the “default” because it is the usage/definition used by most of the society in which those words are spoken.
3) For “rape” the default matches the criminal charge pretty closely.
4) I am well aware that the legal term doesn’t cover victim perspective. No problem: just agree on a term for victim-centered, subjective, legal-irrelevant rape (I use “moral rape” on my blog.) But any rape discussion that runs into “society” or laws, or actions, etc needs to distinguish between legal and moral rape. Using just “rape,” without qualifiers, to describe two radically different things is ludicrous.
5) Anyone can use any definition they want. However, if you don’t use the default, AND you don’t explain yourself, it’s as if I suddenly started using the “+” symbol to refer to division. It only works if everyone knows what’s going on.
6) The power of the word decreases as the included behavior expands. If “rape” is “violent sex” then all rape is horrible. If “all sex is rape**1” then NOT all rape is horrible, because not all sex is horrible.
7) You can’t simultaneously claim a new definition of “rape” AND claim the default “badness level” of rape. If you open the act to new thinking (e.g. expand the definition) you have to accept that the result will also be reevaluated.
So why on earth does everyone refuse to define what the heck they mean when they say “rape?”**2 Is there any serious dispute that the word has a default meaning to the vast majority of Americans, and that the default meaning is an extraordinarily close match to the criminal charge? Is there any reason that using “rape” as it is commonly used is offensive?**3
8) It’s because of politics. Folks WANT to be able to claim the “rape = bad” standpoint, unchallenged, while simultaneously expanding the definition of rape. Because otherwise, there’s no logical reason to confuse the issue by changing the definition of a commonly used word. If all you cared about was being able to discuss different levels of sexual behavior, whether illegal, offensive, or otherwise, you wouldn’t need to use the word “rape.”
9) I hate rape. But I like clarity and I dislike obfuscation. The rape discussions here (IMO) are muddied by semantics. I wish they were’nt
I have to go reboot my server so this isn’t done but it’s “post or lose it”. more later perhaps
**1 yes, I know, this common quote is actually wrong. It’s just a hypothetical example.
**2 As I asked, in the other thread.
**3 I also think that throwing people in jail who rape is a good thing to do. IOW, I don’t think the “hmm, how can we convict him?” question is as anti-victim as some here suggest.
“So why on earth does everyone refuse to define what the heck they mean when they say “rape?”**2 Is there any serious dispute that the word has a default meaning to the vast majority of Americans, and that the default meaning is an extraordinarily close match to the criminal charge? Is there any reason that using “rape” as it is commonly used is offensive?”
Ok, I ususally don’t post here, but seeing as I work in the anti-rape movement and read the post, I thought I may have something to add.
1. I agree that we need to definte the word “rape” when we discuss this topic so that everyone can be on the same page. But I don’t understand your assumption that there is a “default” meaning of rape that “closely matches the criminal charge” when, in my experience, the term “rape” is not even standardly defined in the law.
For instance, in my state, Kentucky, “rape” is criminally defined as intercourse that was forced and/or where the victim was incapable of consent. We have a separate legal crime of “sodomy” that refers to what people generally call “anal rape”.
These definitions differ from our neighbor state, Indiana, which has the crime of “criminal sexual assault” that is described as an act of “sexual penetration” by force and/or without consent. This seems to include what in Kentucky is legally the crime of “sodomy,” which is a separate crime than “rape”.
So, legally the term rape is not standard.
2. Language is fluid. “Rape” used to not include forced sex by a married person upon their spouse. Now, it does. At the beginning of the anti-rape movement, many women did not know what word to use to define their experiences of sexual violence and coercion. To them, “rape” was the stranger in the bushes who jumps out and uses a weapon to force sex (not the guy you went on a date with, or your doctor who used his position against you, etc). Thankfully, the definition has broadened.
So, in my opinion, the legal difinition of rape has been, and continues to be influenced by the evolving social definition of “rape”. We do need to be careful to define our use of the term “rape” and challenge these as the discussion moves forward, but I am not sure it is harmful to expand the definition. The expansion has not diluted the meaning thus far; in fact, it has helped victim define their experience and helped strengthen our laws against rape and challenge society’s views about sex, violence, and the intersection of the two.
Oooooh, my favorite discussion. You bring up rape, and you get flooded by men who want to know how much rape they can get away with before they go to jail. No need to worry about not raping because, you know, it’s wrong. Moral concerns only apply to people, which we know women are not.
There is no reason why the meaning of the word “rape” should rest on its legal definition, especially as the world does not operate under a single homogeneous legal system. As SC rightly pointed out, the legal definition of “rape” is not standard even across US state lines, much less across countries.
For example, look at Scotland, where “rape” includes only the forced penetration of a woman’s vagina by a man’s penis—so a woman can’t commit rape in Scotland, nor can a be raped. Sexual assault with any object other than a penis isn’t rape. A man forcing someone to give him a blow job? Not rape. At least, not under the legal definition of the term.
The fact is, there is often a disconnect between legal definitions of words and what ordinary people understand them to mean. I’d need a lot of convincing before I’d believe that lawyers are the proper people to define what “rape” means outside of a purely legal context.
Curiousgyrl said in the thread “The thin line between an Ordinary Guy and a Rapist”:
I’d like to clarify that I coined the expression “quasi-rape” in the other thread as a convenient shorthand for a type of sexual behavior, as described by Amp in his post, that is misogynistic and deplorable, but which might not be generally understood as constituting rape. I was actually hoping to avoid a discussion about whether “rape” is the appropriate word because that really wasn’t the focus of my comments. Judging by curiousgyrl’s reaction, that attempt obviously failed.
If my use of the term “quai-rape” left anyone with the impression that I was trying to minimize or trivialize what the victims/survivors of this type of misogynistic behavior have gone through, I want to apologize. That certainly wasn’t my intention.
I think my reaction stems in part from the slippage between “not generallly understood as rape” and “not understood as rape by most men” and “not understood as rape by rapists.” I think the post was actually focused on the last two not the first one.
Twisty’s got it.
Twisty’s definition of rape may work in the utopian (or dystopian, depending on your point of view) world she is describing, but I’m not sure how well it would work in the world as it exists today.
And again, just because some particular action or behavior falls outside whatever definition of rape that society comes up with doesn’t mean that it’s morally (or even legally) acceptable behavior.
Finally (and I’m not sure which thread this should go in), let’s say that a woman is in a situation where she has consented to sex but only because she has been manipulated into doing so. Can there be some benefit to her to be able to describe it as a “rape” even if it doesn’t fit the legal definition? This isn’t a rhetorical question.
I don’t know about the legal definitions but always accepted this as the standard from the time I was old enough to understand what the word rape meant. Is there actually any case law that holds that the default is the assumption of consent?
That said, I think there are useful distinctions to be made between rape, battery, assault and abuse. But these are distinctions of degree, not of kind.
W.B. Reeves writes:
Yes — “Innocent until proven guilty”.
I know this doesn’t explicitly state that “consent” is the default, but lack of consent must be proven in order to prove many rapes.
One of the men who raped me was a relative. Every time he got into a situation where he’d been forced to admit what happened, his defense was “it was mutual”. The same thing can, and does, happen in other rape cases.
Just following that here is my definition of rape:
“Sex without active consent, or sex where consent is attained through coercion”
That’s not hugely radical, that’s not changing the meaning of many words.
What happens in these arguments is someone says “In situation X consent obtained is not meaningful, because of Y and Z.” Rather than try to argue that the consent was meaningful (which is often an uphill battle) people jump straight back and say “well how should we deal with men who have done X.”
Consent must, has to be, the starting point for any discussion on rape. If you believe is consent is meaningfully obtained then say so. If you think consent obtained by coercion isn’t rape then say so. But don’t by-pass that whole conversation to put the rapist at the centre of the discussion and to ignore the woman who was raped.
Maia:
As usual the meaning is all in the details. I certainly don’t agree that all sex without active consent is categorically rape, either morally or legally speaking. Implied consent can suffice, for example.
Coerced sex as I define it is generally legal rape and is almost always moral rape. But I don’t think we agree there either. After all, requiring “active consent” is all the way at one end of the spectrum. Any coercion would be very far from active consent, so why include that at all? This makes me suspect you’re using a different definition of “coerce.”
Merriam-Webster defines “coerce” as:
1 : to restrain or dominate by force 2 : to compel to an act or choice 3 : to achieve by force or threat
Under that definition, is all coerced sex moral rape and quite probably legal rape? Sure. But somehow I don’t think you’re using that definition. I know that many people (don’t recall if you’re one of them) use “coerce” as a synonym for “pressure.” How do you define it?
Also, I think you’re missing one of the main reasons I argue for 1) clarity of language, and 2) a close link between the word “rape” and the criminal charge of rape: WHAT TO DO ABOUT RAPISTS.
See, when I hear that “john raped Jill” then I think “John should be in jail”. For a long time. Because rape is linked to the criminal charge, an accusation of rape is linked to governmental, state-backed, responses.
But if the definition of rape is expanded significantly to include a lot of stuff which I don’t like, but which I don’t think should be illegal**, then this is no longer my reaction. It confuses the issue.
FCH:
Yes, it’s an integral part of almost all of them. So it has to get proven. This isn’t easy, or fun. I’ve written about the problem on my blog.
Sadly, a lot of people seem to feel that discussing the practical applications of defining rape are too “man centered.” I don’t see that. Punishing rapists is not a bad thing; discussing
**this has caused you and I to butt heads before. You’ve defined rape fairly broadly. You also think (as far as I can tell) that all rapists should be punished. Does that mean you think any sex without active consent should be illegal and punishable by government action? Or do you share my belief that there are things that are problematic and bad, but should not be illegal? If so, what language to you use to make that very important distinction?
Sailorman said:
So we should keep the legal definition of rape narrow because a broader definition wouldn’t agree with your opinions?
Speaking for myself, I absolutely think that sex without active consent should be illegal in most cases. The only exceptions I can see that might be reasonable are in long-term relationships with no history of physical or mental abuse, where both partners have actively consented to sex on a regular basis—in a case like that, I could see where an argument against a rape charge could be made on the grounds of implied consent, if consent was not actively denied. (But how often do cases like that come up, much less end up being prosecuted?)
Are there other cases where you could see obtaining active consent to be so difficult that the requirement should be dropped?
Yep. What, we should change things just to agree with your opinions?
Pardon the snark, but that’s why they call them “opinions.” They differ.
I don’t necessarily think obtaining active consent is all that difficult. In the context that it is presented, though, there’s usually an added implication that switches the burden of proof.
IOW, most people who say “sex without active consent should be illegal” ALSO MEAN “…and there should be no presumption of active consent.” Which, functionally, means “…so anyone who claims consent as a defendant has to prove it.”
That’s a problem for me.
“But,” you may say, “you’re thinking about the MAN again!”
Well, sure. In a more general sense, I’m thinking about the defendant (and mind you, if “active consent” is law then women will be charged as well.) I don’t do it all the time, but as soon as you start talking about “illegal” then the accused becomes a lot more important.
While I hate rape, and want to punish rapists, I ALSO have a distrust of the fairness in the criminal system, a proper wariness of governmental power, and a strong belief in defendant’s rights. This is universal; I feel this way about defendants I dislike and defendants I like. Changing the standards of proof is a flat-out big deal major move in our criminal system.
This shit isn’t simple. Pretending it is simple, “obvious”, etc, is simply ludicrous.
Just to throw a snag into the discussion – if it derails the thread, feel free to ignore.
Yes, there are cases where consent is implied in all cases – think marital rape. It’s only recently that marital rape laws have come about and the ability to prove it is almost impossible. And where the rape is not rape at all in the rapists mind, even if it legally fits a definition. The fact that it is not rape at all in the mind of the rapist is DIRECTLY related to the idea that this rapist didn’t have respect for women, or his wife in particular and decided that his “god – given” right to sexual access to his wife meant that there is no way he could rape his wife. The act of taking marital vows should and does give him free access to his wife anytime he wants. This has a lot to do with why it IS important to discuss the misogyny involved in the “nice guy quasi rapes” – it’s not until you make the link that they stem from the same problem of definitions of masculinity and respect for women that you can begin to make the real changes to PREVENT rapes not just punish rapists. Because in all honesty, fear of prison doesn’t really prevent rape – just as corporal punishment doesn’t prevent crime. Prevention of rape requires cultural changes, not ONLY legal ones. I’ll give you a for instance (true story):
Man and woman and married and don’t have the best of relationships. He has forced himself on her before, when drunk, getting his “male right” – she fights him when she is able, but there is otherwise no “abuse” – no verbal insults to the point of berating her, no physical assaults, just his forcing himself on her because it’s his god given right as a husband (I’m not minimizing this by using the word “just” I’m being facecious). I have no idea why she didn’t leave. Might have something to do with fear of cultural reprocussions, might have something to do with the fear of not being able to solely provide for her 4 kids, may have been that she decided in terms of costs and rewards of leaving or staying she decided having to fight him off periodically was less of a cost than those of leaving. I can’t speak to her mindset. I only know she didn’t leave, or press charges.
Fast forward a few years. Their relationship continues to disintegrate. They don’t even openly like one another anymore, although there is no blatent hostility or violence. She becomes diabetic and sometimes has low blood sugar problems at night. These cause her to go into hypoglycemic shock – if left untreated will cause her to become comatose and die. Husband takes this opportunity – of when she is unconscious – to “have sex” with her. He is walked in on by her children at various times in their lives – they threaten to call the police (but never do), make him get off, and begin treating the hypoglycemic reaction (because without treatment she will die). This occurs long enough until the oldest child leaves the household and the wife can move into the spare bedroom – where she remains for the next 20 years.
At the time when a lot of this was occurring, there were no legal consequences for the husband – marital rape laws were not on the books in all states. I think if they were, this very clearly would fit a legal definition of rape – she was unable to give consent, had fought him when she WAS conscious before) and there were witnesses.
However, I’m not certain the wife ever defined this as rape, per se. (she knew about it because her children would talk with her and ask if they wanted her to report him, etc). I suspect she viewed it her husband being an asshole, but not necessarily rape. I’m CERTAIN that the husband didn’t view it as rape. And I’m relatively certain that if their friends and collegues knew what was going on they would find a way to explain it away as non-rape “because he’s such a good man, always provided for his family, blah blah blah.”
The fact that we live in a society that 20-30 years ago would not have described the above scenerio as rape and that even today people will wish to explain it away and say it’s “not as bad” as “real rape” is a good explanation for why legal definitions of rape are not always the standard by which we should hold ourselves to (***I’m not suggesting anyone HERE would describe the above scenerio as not rape – I’m fairly confident everyone HERE would – but there a lot of people in the general society who sadly would not.)
Sailorman, I very much agree with your general sentiment here. Which is why I think the answer to reducing rape is not necessarily found in the criminal justice system. (and also partly why that discussion of the thin line between nice guy and rapist is SO important). Reducing rape is not going to come from the criminal justice system – it’s going to come from a cultural revolution of the definition of masculinity and respect and value of women. Out of that cultural change, stronger rape laws will probably follow – I don’t think stronger rape laws will lead to that change.**
**though I agree generally speaking we need stronger rape laws, that’s not my point.
What was perpetrated on you was horrific and unpardonable. It’s a lot more prevalent than people care to admit. I’ve had several friends who were raped and in each instance by someone they knew. In two cases by a relative. When I consider that these are only the women who chose to confide in me and the actual number of people I know who are rape victims is, in all likelyhood, much larger it turns my stomach.
I see your point about how consent is treated during criminal trials of rapists. It seems to me that, if the physical act is proven by evidence or the accused admits to it, the burden of proving consent ought to fall on the defense.
After all, if a thief claims that he was given permission to take whatever he stole, the law doesn’t make the presumption that he’s telling the truth. No one would expect that his assertion would be given equal weight to the word of his victim. I can’t think of any other crime where a claim of the victim’s consent as a defense would put the onus on the victim to disprove the claim. I have to wonder why rape appears to be an exception.
I really doubt that the principle of innocent until proven guilty has much applicability here, except as a fig leaf. When the physical evidence isn’t in dispute, it’s both ridiculous and repulsive to suggest that the perp’s claim of permission doesn’t require some proof. If a crook claimed he was framed we’d expect some proof. If he claimed he was out of his mind we’d expect some proof. If he claimed extenuation we’d expect him to prove it. You don’t hear shrieking about innocent until proven guilty in such cases.
Rather than buying into to what appear to be spurious claims regarding a legal principle , perhaps the most effective way to attack this would be to demand that we cease to treat rape as an exception to the rules?
Kate L–nicely done.
Absolutely. But it’s worth remembering that whatever progress has been made against white supremacy in this country in the last 40+ years was predicated on changes in law.
But we have the laws – just as we have civil rights laws – the rest of the progress and change has to be cultural. We still have a LONG way to go with regard to racism and sexism and the legal changes are not the answer anymore.
ETA: I think we’ve largely done what we can with regard to legal changes – it’s time to explore other avenues.
WB, rape’s not the exception you think it is.
For example, you’ve got to prove all the elements of theft. That means that if you accuse me of stealing your car, you have to prove (for example) it’s your car. You can’t just say “he stole it!” and then try to make ME prove it’s MY car.
I realize rape seems different from most criminal cases. That’s because usually, the physical evidence supports only one side of the story. (If I’ve got your car and you don’t have a payment, it’s a pretty obvious case.)
In rape, everything changes. For rape that doesn’t involve obvious physical evidence of violence, there is no smoking gun. The little evidence there is (if someone got a rape kit at all, which is unfortunately rare) can be used by either side. Sex /= rape, so even 100% evidence of sex can (and usually is) coopted by the defendant who claims consent.
There’s also not a “permission exception” that applies only to rape. Lack of consent is an element of rape, so the state has to prove consent (as with all crimes involving consent.) Intent is also an element of rape, so the state has to prove intent (as with all crimes involving intent.)
And as with the physical evidence, the apparent “exceptions” revolve around the fact that the line between rape and sex can be quite thin. Violent consensual sex? Fine. Identically violent nonconsensual sex? Not fine. And so on. The only relevant difference there is consent.
Its just that we INFER intent and consent more easily for other crimes. People don’t normally give their wallets to strangers, and they don’t normally ask strangers to punch them. So if you have my wallet and I’m bloody, it’s comparatively easy to infer that you stole it and beat me up. Nobody thinks that I consented to being beaten and consented to giving you my wallet. And nobody thinks you reasonably believed that you had my consent.
But to compare that to one of the most difficult rape charges to win: “my husband raped me when we were drunk.”
Couples DO normally have sex. Many couples normally have sex even when one (or both) are drunk. And many couples engage in at least some dominance play, where one member of the couple might say “no” and mean “yes” at some point.
Because of that, judges are less willing to infer that sex between a couple, even when drunk, was rape. They won’t necessarily infer it was consensual… but they don’t NEED to. (the defendant doesn’t need to “win” to be found not guilty). The past history of dominance in this case means they are also more likely to infer that the defendant believed it was consensual. Therefore, the state needs more proof to differentiate it from voluntary behavior.
That’s a big part of why it’s so hard to prosecute.
To Sailorman:
I should have thought more about what I meant when I wrote:
I don’t know nearly enough about how rape trials work in actual practice to debate where the burden of evidence should lie in rape cases, in order to maximize rape convictions but minimize wrongful convictions.
I really meant that I would like to see our society head in the direction that we consider all sex without active consent to be rape; for us to reach the point where guys realize that if you have sex with a woman who doesn’t want it, you’re hurting her. And where the idea of hurting a woman, a fellow human being, is more important to a guy than getting himself off.
Perhaps one thing that’s important in a discussion like this is recognizing that the words (or even the actions) will never yield absolute clarity, and that, as the saying goes, “hard cases make bad law.” Any of us can, if we want, think of any number of corner cases, from the meaning of “active consent” to the nature of coercion to the internal knots people get themselves into when deciding whether they want to have sex (or continue having sex) at a particular moment. Except in terms of personal development I’m not sure that these corners cases are necessarily useful, or that much is served by assigning them to one side or the other of a supposed bright line.
(I’ve had sex when I didn’t want to, for example, but under circumstances where the feeling of violation had next to nothing to do with my partner at the time, who was most likely unaware of the issue. Don’t think it matters what that gets called.)
Not surprisingly, very few of the corner cases have anything to do with the vast majority of actual situations where rape might be alleged.
I’m not sure any legal re-write would help. As long as juries are comprised of people that think women who dress ‘slutty’ ‘lead men on’ or ‘put themselves in bad situations’ can’t be rapped the burden of proof won’t matter. Look at any of the cases where a credible defendant testified that she didn’t want to have sex, was videotaped in a semi-conscious state being rapped and STILL there was an acquittal.
I think a legal rewrite would open the door for a lot of other advocacy groups to move the burden in ways I think would be a lot more harmful. “Prove that you aren’t a terrorist” comes right to mind.
That said I think the legal definition is important. People on juries should feel a terrible sense of dread at the thought of letting a rapist free to rape again. I think keeping the commonly accepted definition of rape bad is part of that.
I was not the “paul” who posted comment #24.
There appears to be general agreement that non-consensual sex is rape (and I am guessing that most people here would agree that the word “sex” in this context is not limited to penile-vaginal sex). But after reading the comments here and in other threads on this and other blogs (like the incomparable Twisty’s), I’m wondering whether there are circumstances where sex can be consensual (without coercion) but still be considered rape in a moral, if not legal sense.
For example, if a man convinces a woman to have sex with him by telling her he only has a few months to live (when I was in high school one of my classmates actually used that line, but at least in his case it was true), that’s clearly misogynistic because he’s thinking about his one pleasure and not giving any consideration to her. But is it rape? If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said no. Now, I am no longer sure.
#28 Paul:
Focusing on the bolded text (cause this is where I always disagree with people)
UNLESS you modify criminal laws, then
In that world, not all rapists would be in jail.
In that world, not all rapists would be criminally liable.
And so on.
So that definition means that:
1) you would have expended the word “rape” to be parallel to what we might now call “amoral activity” or “very bad behavior”–it would no longer be linguistically equivalent to “criminal behavior.”
2) We would need to find a NEW word to describe what is NOW referred to as “rape”. Because so long as we live in a society that punishes criminals using the power of the state, the distinction between criminal and noncriminal behavior will always be important.
Maybe it’s just the efficiency that kills me. But I don’t see why we would change the definition of a word AND then, because we still “need” a word to match criminal rape, then find/invent/adopt a new word.
Why change two words, when we can only change one? Why is it so darned important to say “we consider all sex without active consent to be rape;” as opposed to saying “we consider all sex without active consent to be a very very bad thing (or some other term)?”
Warning: this is going to be incredibly long.
Sailorman, you continue to appear to assume that there will be one definition of rape used by all people in all places. This is silly, and not even currently true. People are adept at code-switching. I can hold several different constructions of what the word ‘rape’ means, and use them in different places in different ways and never be confused. Move onto the societal level, and this is even more obvious.
It’s possible for a legal definition of rape to exist, and for a definition of rape to exist in radical feminist discussions, and for these two definitions to be dissimilar. It is possible for the people involved in the discussions to move from one venue to the other and to alter their speech accordingly, because we’re social critters who know how to do this sort of thing.
Not only is it possible, but it’s a good thing. You seem to be laboring under the misaprehension that the only, or even the primary, action around rape is legally dealing with rapists. I’m not denying that it’s an important part. But it’s not going to address the kinds of rape which will never be given a good rate of legal redress in our system, for reasons you yourself have discussed in other threads.
It’s important for women to be able to talk about a broader cultural critique in terms that make sense to them. It’s important for women to be able to get out the message to other women that rape is not limited to the legal definition.
I had a fifteen-year-old friend who was raped by an eighteen-year-old man. They were both in high school. She had been sheltered to the point that she didn’t know what an erection was; he was well aware. He badgered her repeatedly until she said yes, and then he had sex with her.
It would be inappropriate for this situation to be dealt with legally. I mean, this guy needs to be swatted on the nose and someone needs to hold his head in the dogshit that was his raping behavior. But a jail sentence would have been a stupid remedy, as it is often a stupid remedy.
That doesn’t stop my friend from having had the experience of rape, from having been traumatized in the ways that rape victims are traumatized, from having been terrified of sexual activity due to her frightening introduction to it, from developing a sexual detachment from herself stemming from her first sexual encounter during which she had a panic attack, and from needing to heal the way that rape victims need to heal. She. Was. Raped.
And for years she blamed herself for the rape. She had said “yes,” after all, nevermind the power differential in the encounter, nevermind the fact that she was 15 and terribly sheltered, nevermind the fact that he didn’t stop having sex with her despite her obvious panic. She blamed herself for her trauma, she blamed herself for all her recations.
It was not until she could put the name ‘rape’ to her experience that she was able to begin the process of expiating her own guilt and trauma, that she was able to look at the situation not as something that she caused herself by sinning in some way, but as an inappropriate sexual encounter.
It wasn’t until she was able to reframe her experience through the term ‘rape’ that she was able to start to heal.
This is one of the points of woman-centered discourse. Raped women need spaces where they can talk about their experiences without you descending with your legalese.
Your legalese is useful, your dedication to thinking about these issues is admirable — but it is misplaced. You are single-minded on this issue where single-mindedness is not the best tactic.
I think part of the reason you’re stuck on this issue is stemming from an impulse on your part to assume that all activists must deal with issues in the same way. This is not true. Don’t look at activism or feminism as a monolith. Look at it as a bunch of waves of people, all doing different things.
Part of that wave is – say – Twisty Faster saying that lack of consent should be the default, and problematizing the very concept of consent with its associations that sex is something ‘done to’ not ‘done with.’ When she makes a proposal that all heterosexual sex should be legally rape for men, this is (in my opinion) not workable or even desirable in the real world. What it grants is a frame shift, a way for other activists to look at the discussion of rape from a couple steps removed and go “oh, huh.” I would never have thought about the problems in the term consent without Twisty’s post or something like it. Twisty isn’t proposing a workable law. But what her post is doing is something else important.
Maia wants to have discussions about rape that are woman-centered, focusing on how women experience rape and how we should talk about and conceive our own stories in regard to the concept of coerced sex. It may not be legally workable to send the 18-y-o in the above paragraph to prison (although his actions were technically illegal, I think it would have been dumb to prosecute him), but it is important for my friend to have access to reframing her own experiences within the context of experiences other women have had. Those discussions are important because they center on cultural attitudes about masculinity, and identify problems that might not otherwise be namable; they’re important because they give women the power to define for themselves what was done to their bodies; they’re important because they give shape to new, radical edges which may never be legally defined.
And it’s important for you to think about the legal code and work out ways for rape to be prosecuted, legally and fairly, with the hope that legal remedy will salve victims and deter rapists.
You ask why all three groups of people need access to the word ‘rape.’ You call out that men will get all defensive and shit if you say they’re rapists. But tihs is applying goals to some parts of the activism which may not apply to all of them. Some kinds of activism about rape may indeed involve trying to explain rape and coerced sex to men. Others don’t. Not all activism needs to accomplish all goals at the same time.
As to the kind of thread that Maia wants to run, she doesn’t have to justify her use of the word rape to you anymore than my friend needs to justify her use of the word rape to you. It is the word that makes sense to my friend’s experience as a woman whose initiation into sex was coerced, panicky, and traumatizing. You have no more right to the word than she does.
Using the word ‘rape’ in its specific legal sense may make sense for your kind of activism. But Maia has reasons for defining it the way she does. She wants to make it clear that all kinds of rape feed into each other and magnify each other. She also wants to speak to the experience of the rape victims, which may be more alike than it is different in the ways that she wants to discuss. Those are reasons to use the word rape.
Rape is not the name of some kind of Plutonic object that exists out in the world. Rape is a theoretical construct. The category isn’t a continuum — it’s not organized in a line. It’s amorphous, radial, all over the place, and any circle that one draws is going to be imperfect. It will include the wrong things, exclude the right things.
It seems to me that you’re confusing the signifier with the thing signified. The legal system is an attempt to codify theoretical constructs, to make them into something with defined edges. That’s fine for the kinds of discourse where that’s useful, but it’s just as much an affectation as any other way of defining rape, because abstract linguistic categories cannot be contained in boxes. There’s always liminality. If we were to use a single definition of rape across contexts, we would be reifing rape; we’d be making a pretend thing. We’d lose the flexibility that we need to talk about it in different ways, to discover new ideas, to shock people when we need to shock them, to give license to others.
Words have power. Sometimes we need to shock men by saying that their coerced sex is really rape. Sometimes we need to give women permission to know that they were raped. Sometimes we need to prosecute a rapist. The word will not be used the same way on all three occasions.
Sailorman – What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. In places where marital rape is legal you different words to describe rape in marriage from rape outside marriage. Just because there are limitations to the law in some places (and in fact the NZ rape law covers a lot), doesn’t mean we have to use completely different definitions of words from place to place.
Even with perfect laws, and our current legal system, most rapists will not be in jail or liable to their reactions. In most cases of rape it is not proven beyond reasonable doubt (particularly given the prejudices of juries).
But your underlying assumption is that the criminal justice system will play some part in reducing rape. I don’t think we have any evidence, or reason to believe that, quite frankly. I’m not the only one. Time and time again on this thread people have said, in one way or another, ‘the criminal justice system isn’t the issue.’ And you keep bringing it back.
What you are say will and does uphold rape culture, and make it harder for people who are fighting to change that culture.
One of the main goals of anti-rape activism is to deepen the understanding of what meaningful consent is. That doesn’t require any expansion of the definition of rape, like you seem to insist it does.
The wider culture change needed is made harder by people who try and limit narrow discussions and definitions of consent and rape. Your constant quibbling makes things worse.
Two adendums to my earlier post:
1) Note that none of the described actions are “comiserating over a beer,” or however you phrased it.
2) I spoke for Maia a lot above based on things that I remember her saying, and I apologize if I have mischaracterized her opinions.
Sailorman: Under what circumstances could sex without active consent not be considered rape? I don’t see the problem with calling it–and prosecuting it–all as rape. If you hit someone and break their fingernail, it is still assault and (I think) battery, even though the damage to the other person is obviously minimal. If you steal 1 cent from someone it is still theft, even though their loss is minimal. Why should rape be any different? Rape is, I thought, defined as sexual activity undertaken without the consent of the other person involved.
As far as the “said yes then no” issue goes…If someone consents to be in a research study then withdraws their consent then their participation must end. To not allow a person to end their participation as soon as is physically possible without harming them is illegal and immoral. So why should sex be any different? If one partner withdraws their consent, then it ends, no matter how far it has gone. Men can stop, you know, and will–if they think of their partners as humans whose comfort and pleasure are important.
Sailorman far from ignoring it I’ve been saying all along that the reason you define rape the way you do is that the perpetrator, not the survivor is at the centre of your understanding of rape.
From a feminist perspective, that’s a problem.
Sailorman: why wait until after the rape? Why not define things so that the man can sidestep becoming a rapist?
Sailorman, I’m afraid I don’t find your legal arguments terribly compelling. I think it’s a mistake to approach the law as though it were a finished, logically coherent and comprehesive edifice. More like a decayed Manse constantly undergoing demolition, renovation and addition.
The distinction between criminal acts and bad behavior isn’t and never has been fixed in law. Once upon a time, neither long ago or far away, property laws applied to property in human beings. Today what was then mundane and accepted practice is now criminal. Yet, despite the formal, macro legal changes, vestiges of the earlier norms remain embedded both in law and in jurisprudence. A good example of this is the recent SCOTUS ruling on so called partial birth abortion which implicitly resurected the paternalistic model of the law in terms of women’s autonomy.
In the specific instance of rape, the law’s attitude has fluxuated and morphed repeatedly. The definition of what constitutes rape and even who is the actual victim of the crime has varied and altered depending on changes within the larger culture. In my life time the idea of marital rape has become a credible legal concept, whereas previously it had been considered a legal absurdity.
To speak of the peculiar characteristics of rape prosecutions as something unique and distinctive, as though such distinctions were immune to the legacy of prior law, tradition and prejudice, is a mistake. The substantive point is whose interest is being served.
To use your example of drunkeness. What is the difference between the man who gets a woman drunk in order to obtain sex and one who spikes her drink with a drug? Why is it assumed that a willingness to drink alcohol with someone implies consent to having sex? Why does the question of informed consent, relatively straightforward in most legal matters, inspire such ambivilance and ambiguity when the question is one of sexual contract?
To provide another illustration, if I were to misrepresent myself in order to obtain something I actually had no legal right to, few would argue that I had not committed theft and fraud. Yet, if I were to slip into bed with a woman pretending that I were her husband or boyfriend in order to obtain sex, there are courts in this country that would rule that I had not committed rape.
The issue of pre-existing relationships is notable. Does the fact that I may have loaned my car to someone in the past make me less credible if I should complain that they returned at a later date and stole it? Does a previous amicable business relationship undermine my credibility if I assert fraud in a later transaction? If I loan money to someone does it handicap me if they later help themselves to the contents of my wallet without asking?
I would say that the difference isn’t located in the complexities of human sexual relations or the law but in the implicit assumption that men are entitled to employ numerous strategems for obtaining sex from women that in any other context would be readily defined as either immoral or criminal or both. I’m sorry to say that I think the distinction between rape and “bad behavior”, as you posit it, partakes of this assumption.
Again it really comes down to whose interest is being served. Any resort to coercion or induced incapacity that would be criminal in other transactions can’t suddenly be transformed into mere “bad behavior” when it occurs in a sexual context. Unless, of course, the purpose is to defend an existing privilege rather than establishing equity.
I think that Q grrl hits the bullseye. The fact is that boys are implicitly given permission for coercive and invasive behavior that in other contexts would , at the least, be considered harassment, assault or battery.
Paul:
I wouldn’t call that consensual, as whatever consent is obtained is obtained by misrepresentation.
I’d go as far to say that any form of sex that’s facilitated by material fraud or misrepresentation is a form of rape. If your partner wouldn’t have sex with you if they knew the truth, you don’t really have their consent, and that makes it rape, even if a jury’s unlikely to convict you of it.
(Usually, when I make this argument, some MRA type goes and channels Hamlet, arguing that wearing makeup or getting plastic surgery is another form of misrepresentation and therefore they should be allowed to lie through their teeth in the pursuit of sex.)
If it’s not rape, and it is merely within the vein of heterosexual sex, you have to concede that a great deal of male heterosexual sexuality is misogynistic and duplicitous.
Of course lying and misrepresentation in pursuit of sex isn’t limited to heterosexuals or even men. Whatever the context, it is an act of violation.
why?
I don’t think the victim should be absent from thoughts and discussion about rape. But it’s the attackers not the victims that need behavioral change.
It’s inevitable that from a legal point of view, the rapist is at the center of attention. After all, in countries that follow English common law (as opposed to European civil law), the case is billed State/Commonwealth/People/Crown vs. [Name of Accused]. The victim/survivor isn’t even a party. She’s “just” the complaining witness.
Besides, if you take the position that the way to keep women from being raped is for men to stop raping, that inevitably puts the focus on the rapist, as well.
That being said, it appears from Mandolin’s post that there may be some benefit to the victim/survivor of these incidents that don’t quite meet the legal definition of rape for her to be able to describe what was done to her as a rape. If so, perhaps she should be given some leeway in her use of the word.
So, while the legal definition of “rape” must be focused on the rapist, perhaps the “therapeutic” definition should be focused more on the victim/survivor.
Note to Q Grll: I completely agree with that a great deal of male heterosexual behavior can be misogynistic. The question is at what point does misogynist sexual behavior cross the line and become rape. At least for me, that line is a lot fuzzier than it used to be.
Joe,
Both/and.
Discussions of rape tend to focus on what victims can do to stop it (dress more conservatively, don’t go out at night), and what the rapist’s view of the crime was (how was he supposed to know she didn’t want it?).
We’re trying to talk about the victim’s view (it felt like rape, thank you very much), and the rapist’s responsibility (don’t rape people, asshole).
Mandolin, I wasn’t trying to say that it’s an either or situation. I think the ‘perfect solution’ would be for men to start treating all women like people. After that we can work on all people treating other people decently and life should be good.
Since that won’t be happening any time soon I want men to fear the very accusation of rape, let alone conviction. To that end I think the ‘definition’ of rape needs to stay ‘narrow.’ I think Maia’s summary was good. “Rape is sex in the absence of consent.”
I think I’ve misunderstood what the focus of the thread was so I’ll drop out and just lurk.
The question is at what point does misogynist sexual behavior cross the line and become rape. At least for me, that line is a lot fuzzier than it used to be.
Well, if I were Sailorman, [insert smiley face] I would say that the current law system defines that line as the degree of force used. The law, and our current moral code, agrees that a certain amount of force is legitimate and not harmful to women.
From my perspective, the misogyny that is embedded in normative heterosexual sex makes it impossible to draw a line, insisting rather that sex and rape are a continuum of male heterosexual behavior. The misogyny embedded in this sex also makes consent a non-issue [see: Twisty Faster].
Well, of course. But that’s not what’s at issue here. Men raping women is what is at issue here.
Massachusetts just ruled recently
(http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/05/11/court_rules_sex_through_use_of_fraud_is_not_rape/)
that a man *can* fraudulently represent himself, rape a sleeping woman, and not be found to have criminally raped her.
IOW, *his* fraud is considered *her* consent.
That’s fucked up beyond reason.
So, talking about how women might lie is *never* the same as talking about how men lie in order to rape women. Socially and legally, even men’s lies have more weight.
Fucking insane.
Sure: That’s what laws are–defining. BEFORE the act.
I personally think that the most effective* way to keep a group of people from doing something is to tell them where the line is, and tell them not to cross it.
Of course, trying to define things, so that people will avoid doing what is prohibited, gets a certain conversatio going.
First, you tell men”don’t be a rapist.” The, for many men, the follow-up question is: “OK, I don’t want to be a rapist, but I want as much personal freedom and personal liberty as I can have–what, exactly, am I not supposed to be doing?”
And then, someone will inevitably say (as in comment #6 in this thread) “you get flooded by men who want to know how much rape they can get away with before they go to jail.” Or “stop focusing on the rapist.” Or…
At which point, a large portion of the men, who would quite possibly have been willing to adhere to a new set of rules, say “oh, fuck this shit” and leave.
As discussed below, in a lot more detail.
* “effective” in this context includes the cost of effort and work on both sides. It’s obviously better to have everyone in society be uber-aware of each other’s wants needs etc, and to act accordingly. But its a lot harder to change minds than to convince someone to follow a clear rule.
This didn’t post the first time I tried, I hope it goes through, and I hope it doesn’t create a double post.
Well then, that line has to be solely defined by women, since it is our bodies that men are desiring access to. Unfortunately, yourself included, very few men are comfortable not having any say in defining the line. Most men think this is unfair and wish to have an “equal” say. You yourself wish to have your say by boxing rape into the judicial system and it’s male-bias (the majority of laws were conceived and established by men, many of them that surround rape were conceived and established by men at a time when women were considered to at least some degree to be the property of men, i.e, it hasn’t been until the 21st century that the majority of states and courts conceded that a husband is raping his wife if she says “no”).
Well I dare say then that they weren’t earnest and honest about not wishing to rape women (with rape being defined on women’s terms). They leave because they know that they can still get away with their current behavior. Women can talk all they want about change, and we can do our part to change our behavior, but unless men are willing to stick around for the long conversation, men’s attitudes about rape and sex are not going to revolutionarily change. This isn’t a quickie conversation. Women don’t know all the answers yet. And it’s harder still to foment new answers when men keep wanting to focus the conversation on a predetermined, misogynistic set of sexual beliefs which gets translated as personal need.
Furthermore, just because men are walking away from the conversation doesn’t mean that the points women and feminists are raising are invalid. It just means that those who are walking away are bowing in to their emotional, intellectual, and sexual immaturity.
Hey Joe,
I may not have been clear either; I’m sorry if I wasn’t. I also haven’t been unhappy with your participation in the conversation, so please feel free to keep commenting if you have something to say.
You say that “Maia’s summary was good. “Rape is sex in the absence of consent.”” and this strikes me as a good starting place, too. But even with a definition like this, there are a lot of ambiguity and problems. We have recent court cases ruling that things are consent even when they don’t intuitively look like consent: for instance, withdrawn consent (the woman says “no” in the middle of sex, the man refuses to withdraw), and fraudulent consent, not to mention coerced consent. Even this definition is up for argument and interpretation — and if we were to interpret it solely by the law, it would rule out things which, to me at least, seem very clearly to be rape.
I find this summation kind of chilling. “I want to be as cozy with almost-rape as I can.” Seriously?
I don’t think this follows with your earlier lines of argument, Sailorman. For instance, earlier you said that coerced sex would be, if not rape, then a very very bad thing. Okay.
So if it’s a very very bad thing, then wouldn’t the aforementioned bloke understand it to be a bad thing whether or not it’s called rape? So if it gets called rape, wouldn’t he already understand it as bad, and thus not walk out on the conversation when he’s told not to pretend to be his brother so he can fuck his sister-in-law?
If he’s walking out of the conversation because the pretending-to-be-his-brother rights are just too dear to his heart, then um. Well, then I suggest he wasn’t very valuable to the conversation in the first place.
This didn’t post. Hopefully it doesn’t double.
I do not, actually, think that the uberflexibility of language usage that you discuss is such a good thing.
It well have been a good thing, and an easy thing to live with, prior to the information age. Then, what you said was limited to your immediate speaker/reader. What you said was therefore likely to get read in context, understood in context, etc.
Now? Not so much. Your words that you write are able to be taken far away, out of the sphere in which you wrote them. The myth of “feminists think all heterosexual sex is rape” has done a fair bit of harm to the feminist movement, for example. Was the actual statement reasonable in the context of the book? Sure, probably. Was the book helpful and important in other contexts? Yup. But you don’t get to control the dissemination. There are costs, as well as benefits, of speaking.
See, I believe in leveraging to reach my goal. And I believe in the effectiveness of government power (I don’t like the way it’s used all the time, but I think it’s powerful). I think that a very minor change in the way that we prosecute rape means that we would be able to use the extraordinarily powerful and fairly effective and well-funded prosecutorial system to do a lot of our work for us. I think that changing the behavior of 500 legislators, or 10,000 prosecutors, is a lot easier than changing the behavior of 150 million men. And the payoff is HUGE.
That means changing laws, for example, or enforcement strategies. And what does that have to do with language and clarity?
Because when people make statements like, say, “all sex without explicit verbal consent is rape,” and when those statements get publicized (and they do…) that makes this job HARDER. Not easier. HARDER. Because then, when people like me go out seeking support for stricter enforcement, we run into people who heard those statements, but who don’t know the context in which those statements were made.
They–like most people in the U.S., I imagine–share a language that is at least somewhat overlapped with respect to what terms mean. We can discuss things with the fairly decent knowledge of what the terms mean. Sure: they may have a slightly different definition that I do, or than their neighbor does. But almost all the people I talk to BASE their definition on what is simplistically thought of as “rape = forced sex.” And when more and more people start using terms that are different, it adds a new, more difficult, layer to the entire conversation.
See, when you start talking to people about laws, you start realizing something: Nobody likes rapists.
Many people are supportive of longer sentences, for example (even men). Most people I talk to would support better investigative procedures and victim support. Many people would even support some rewrites of the rape laws to reflect modern sensibilities.
But if they think, say, “all sex without explicit verbal consent is rape” then say goodbye to their support. No way, no how. By making that statement, which is at complete disagreement with most people’s understanding of rape, you will often permanently lose their support. Almost nobody is going to support a law that they think will make them into a rapist. Nobody. The more extreme the statement, the more behavior is referred to as “rape,” the worse the effect is. Cognitive dissonance, self-interest, choose your explanation, but it’s true.
Of course, as you and others in this thread have noted, that’s not really what people mean when they say that. They don’t mean that I and my wife, should go to prison for having had sex with my wife where neither of us said a word; “what they really mean is that ________….” And people who say “you can never consent when you’re drunk so all drunken sex is rape” don’t necessarily really mean that every time two equally drunken people get it on they’re both rapists, they mean that taking advantage of drunk women is horrible.
But it’s too late. Unless they happen to know the context, you lost the listener to your cause, AND to my cause, as soon as they read your**1 statement, and most of the time they’re not coming back. Conversation over, goodbye. (and of course, seeking clarification on those points often also gets them insulted—see my post above–which has a similar result)
(Not only that, but you will sometimes have selectively made them OPPOSE your cause. Not what you want, right? That’s sure as heck not changing men, or society, for the better. But when normal disagreements**3 like “what about what she does?” or “what about if I’m drunk, too?” get classified as “supporting rape” or “antifeminist” or what have you… that sort of polarization isn’t the change you’re looking for.
Yes, there ARE people who can constantly get called “antifeminists” or who can get accused of “supporting rape” and who will, nonetheless, try to support feminism and antirape activism. I’m one of them, having been called both those things. But you, and I, and most people here, are not “normal.” As compared to society at large we’re extremely literate, flexible, liberal, and willing to tolerate that type of comment. You want to talk about “society” then you need to acknowledge things are different.)
So when I read things like this:
I say: Bullshit. And back atcha. What you are saying makes it harder for people who are trying to make it more difficult, or more penalized, or more unpleasant, for rapists. Fewer rapists = fewer victims, remember? Do what you want on your threads, of course; I don’t post there at your request. But don’t accuse me of being some closet rape supporter and claim some imaginary high ground.
We are fighting two different fights, in two different arenas, with the same goal. The difference is that in my arena, I need to use a legal definition. I need a consistent definition to use in advocacy.
You and others don’t. Here:
Actually, in this circumstance I have less difficulty with prosecuting the guy. So “she was raped” gets no disagreement from me, HOWEVER you use the word.
Why?
Why couldn’t she obtain the same process by having realized that she had, as you called it, an “inappropriate sexual encounter” with an asshole? Why couldn’t she obtain the same process by having been “morally raped?” Or “horribly taken advantage of?” Or….
I don’t disagree that many people need support. Even if 100% of women who were legally raped could be instantly identified, there would be many MORE women who need support. The girl who lost her virginity on prom night to a boy who said he loved her, and found out the next morning he was sleeping with someone else and hated her guts? Needs support, though she wasn’t legally raped. She shouldn’t need to define her experience as “rape” to get support. She should get it anyway. But it’s not my fault, or the fault of those in the legal field, that she can’t get support without that definition.
All women who are raped need support. Many women who are NOT raped need identical support. The answer as I see it is to increase the availability of support, not to refer to all those other women as “rape victims.”
Similarly, all rapists behave badly towards women. Many other men who are NOT rapists also behave badly towards women. The answer as I see it is to try to convince men not to behave badly, not to refer to all those behaviors as “rapes.”
**1 the global “you”, not you Mandolin–I don’t think you’ve made that statement
**2 “normal” as in “representative of the average”. Doesn’t imply “valid” or “good.”
I don’t buy it.
People have their definitions of rape challenged all the time. I have another friend who was raped — at sixteen — by three older, strange men, because she went off and got drunk with them.
I’ve talked about this with many people, and gotten the reply that she wasn’t raped. I’ve also talked about my first friend’s experience with many people, and gotten the reply that she wasn’t raped. We know these people exist and are omnipresent; they get on juries and exonerate fellas who videotaped assaulting their victims.
It’s not like people agree on the legal definition.
And, Q Grrl:
I completely agree. The points are valid. The audience is uneducated.
And if your goal is to feel like you are morally and/or objectively correct and to win that argument, then if someone walks away like that, you get your goal. You “win.”
But if your goal is to convince them (changing behavior and all that) then you DON’T get your goal; you lose. Because when they walked away, your chance to talk to them, and to convince them of their need to change, ended.
Hardline policies work reasonably well if someone wants something from you. But they don’t work a bit when you want something from them–even if it’s something you are ENTIRELY entitled to have.
In that example, you won the battle, and lost the war.
Your needs don’t supercede a feminist reconstruction of heterosexual sex, women’s autonomy, and rape. Your needs are wholly irrelevant – see my above comment about imbedded misogynistic beliefs masquarading as needs.
As long as school children are still being formally taught the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, then the legal system is nothing but a codification of male misogynistic sexual practices.
I don’t have the power to make *any* man listen to me. If they are walking away, they never had a desire to conceive of women as equally human.
But, I will say, if things really are as bleak as you say. If men really are so locked into their rapist sexuality that I’d better tread lightly and precisely along the logic trail, then why the hell don’t we just castrate boys and be done with the lot of male sexuality? If men really can’t be taught, then why not head off the problem before it starts? Works for dogs.
Morally raped isn’t raped now? Meh.
She couldn’t because words have power. They move little blocks in our heads.
Have you ever been abused? I was, once. Not very severely. But the whole situation didn’t make sense in my head until my psychologist said “that sounds abusive.” Then — ahhh — the frame shift. I could suddenly see the situation in such a way as to know: he was being inappropriate. It wasn’t my fault for instigating it, or not knowing how to make the situation better. I needed to get out.
The process of extrication was difficult, of course, but it was a beginning.
You are prioritizing your need to acheive a nebulous prosucatorial goal over my friend’s need to get back on her feet. You say that these two things are directly opposed. I don’t agree.
People don’t believe date rape is rape. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call it rape. People don’t believe marital rape is rape. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call it rape. (Would you be arguing that these things should have been excluded from the definition of rape, if we’d been having this conversation thirty years ago? Or what about fraudulently obtained consent, or refusal to withdraw after consent is withdrawn? These things don’t appear to be illegal. Should we not call them rape?)
Calling these things rape makes some number of people mad. They may not like rapists in general — and I bet they’d rush to convict, for instance, my aunt’s rapist, there being a gun involved and all — but I think you should reconsider the suggestion that we should play the definition of rape in such a way so that we’re salving the egos of people who don’t like rapists. We know where that game leads us. If it’s a black man raping a white virgin nun who struggles at gun point (and, say,”sodomizes her, as bad as it gets”) then people will still be willing to call it rape. Vary the paradigm at all — maybe she didn’t fight back, or hey! she’s black and he’s white, or she was wearing a short skirt or drunk, or he looks like such a nice guy … and people no longer “hate rapists.” They are more than willing to blame her, to let her go, to find a way out of the ethical box they’ve constructed for themselves.
So, what? To stop some fraction of rapes, we have to keep narrowing and narrowing the definition until we can hit what makes the people who “hate rapists” comfortable?
You know, she was drunk, so she was probably asking for it anyway. So that’s no longer rape. She had sex with five other guys, why was she saying no to him? That’s no longer rape. She asked him to wear a condom, so that indicates she was okay with it. That’s no longer rape, either.
Shall we keep winnowing down until we reach the Platonic ideal?
It’ll reduce victims, you say. Or at least people who happened to be victims of the right crime.
See, herein lies your problem. I don’t want anything *from* men. Nor do other feminists.
We want our autonomy. Beginning with our bodies.
That’s the only thing we are entitled to, but so far, in 2007, it’s not guaranteed. If any man were to “give” me my autonomy, then it would not be autonomy in the first place.
“I think there are ramifications for survivors if the word “rape” is watered down to include things that aren’t legally actionable.”
FurryCatHerder,
You’ve mentioned before that you feel this way. Are your arguments similar to sailorman’s, or do you have other feelings, too? If you feel comfortable discussing them.
Speaking as a man whose opinions on the subject have changed over the last year or so, I think that the “extremist” approach (e.g., “all sex without consent is rape, no exceptions”) is much more useful than the conciliatory approach (e.g., “rape is bad, but using coercion or fraud to get nominal consent is a ‘gray area’ you don’t have to worry about”).
The conciliatory approach gets a lot of people on board, but for what? It’s the easy anti-rape stand, where the rapist is the guy in the alley with a knife or gun and never your buddy Joe, or yourself.
The extremist approach, even if not everyone agrees with it, gets the idea out there that sex that isn’t based in genuine consent isn’t acceptable, and shouldn’t be treated as ordinary heterosexual behavior, or as “a bad date,” or as “boys will be boys.” Some men will initially avoid this argument, because they can (but not as easily as if it never gets made!), and because their willingness to fight rape stops when it impacts their chances of “getting laid,” but it might make some of them think about the issue. It did for me.
And personally, I think that the vast majority of men who walk away at being told that “quasi-rape” is off limits are going to walk away from that idea no matter how it’s expressed, because what they don’t like is being told they shouldn’t engage in those behaviors. The people who say things like “what if both people are drunk?” or “what if consent takes the form of nonverbal enthusiastic participation?” aren’t usually doing it because they’re unclear on the concepts (when they are, they listen and try to understand); they’re doing it because they don’t want the behavior to be thought of as unacceptable.
Sailorman, I just read this thread, and I’m appalled.
“How much can I coerce a woman for sex before it’s rape” is not an inquiry that we should be validating. That is a fundamentally property-centered concept of rape law — which, of course, is the history.
In property crimes, perhaps “how close can I get to the line” is a reasonable inquiry. But that’s not the way we ought to deal with sex. I’ll come back to that, but I need to point out that the kind of bright line you argue for as policy is not the way we deal with crimes of interpersonal violence. For example, in New York, the difference between the first subdivisions of Assault 1 and Assault 2 (respectively) is whether the physical injury caused by an attack with a weapon is “serious.” That does not lend itself to the policy argument that the assailant needs clear guidance as to how bad he can beat up his victim before incurring the greater penalty.
Now, about how we ought to deal with sex. The whole culture conceives of sex as a property transaction; sex as a thing (a res, to use the Latin). In this view, sex is something transacted. A woman has a finite amount (“virtue”) and is lessened for giving it up while man gains; therefore she should trade it wisely for something of value; it is had, given, or taken, and the crime of rape is simply one kind of transaction (taking) that is off-limits.
If that is how you think about sex, then what you think about sex is wrong.
We as a culture ought to conceive of sex is a performance, something that one does, alone or with another. Nobody is lessened and it need not be traded for anything more than the shared joy in the experience. Viewed that way, the idea of consent as mere withdrawal of objection is silly. Nobody should want to dance with a partner who just stands there.
If you’ve been around a while, you have probably seen me or Amanda Marcotte or Zuzu or someone else say either that “consent is not the absence of no but the presence of yes” or “consent is enthusiastic participation.” Those views are grounded in the conception of sex as performance, not property.
How does this affect the criminal justice system? The criminal justice system is administered by people. Police make arrests, prosecutors make charges, judges instruct juries and jurors render verdicts. The legal definition of rape is in a statute book. Each of the groups that administer the criminal justice system consult the definition in the book only after they apply their cultural lens to the information available to them The legal definitions are not even uniform, varying from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; and they contain words that are subject to interpretation that is affected by people’s sensibilities.
So, what really matters is the sensibilities of the actors in the criminal justice system. They don’t walk around with a statute in their guts, laid out in neat subsections. They operate with conceptions of how “sex” works and what “rape” is. Real change — the kind of change that results not in marginal changes to how many women are raped but sea-changes in whether rape is an overwhelming reality for women — has to come at this level of the cultural discourse; the okay/not okay level. The criminal justice system has a small role to play in that only, and even that role has to start at the right/wrong foundation that people apply.
What I say we need to do is to move the core cultural consensus to the notion that sex is performance; that it isn’t property. Only then, in my view, can we fundamentally alter the dynamic that Qgrrl pointed out (rightly in my view) that there is a baseline coercion in the accepted norms of het sex that means it is of a continuum with rape — because is sex is property, than though one may define theft as a crime, theft is still a kind of transaction and stealing is on the same continuum as begging, buying and defrauding.
Qgrrl, you do want something from men, you are looking for the social acceptance that woman = man = person. Society can only work out something like that if both parties agree to it, and it is way too easy to dismiss things that occur to someone outside your immediate causal friendships. Men don’t have autonomy without the social acceptance that they do so women are unlikely to achieve this either.
True autonomy doesn’t exist, no person is an island, however what can and should exist is the respect of rights which means you need to start overturning the “lad” / “ladette” culture that exists. Men can be taught that something is wrong, the problem is if you start to use loaded terms you will lose your audience and once you do its hard to bring them back.
Looking at my friends, they make rape jokes, the objectify women, they can be real assholes towards women outside of their immediate group. Once however a woman is within this group she has their unconditional support (same as any guy, though then the insults tend to be about appearence or skills). Their problem is not one with acknowledging rape or with respecting specific women but rather the fact that people need to earn respect so giving it to a group as a whole doesn’t occur to them. I however tend to treat people more with indifference until they classify themselves into groups with actions or words, most people ignore me and I them however we both maintain a pleasent demeanor and co-exist peacefully.
I agree with Sailorman that you need to split the definiton realistically, one for the law and to get people to talk to you to let you win the war and a different term to allow people to frame things in a way that allows them to recognise what was done to them. The information age really made this split mandatory because people are connected but in a superficial way, information flows in spurts and gists rather than full understanding of a subject. I am not going to say that you can’t define rape as all non-verbally + signed contract sex however by doing so you start to lose a group of people.
One of my friends (male) was raped by a woman a few weeks ago, she got him drunk and then got what she wanted. Up until that point he had no intention of sleeping with her but at that point he consented and sex occurred. I talked to him about this and he does not see it as rape, he sees it as a mistake that occurred because he was drunk, his personal view was that this wasn’t rape despite it ticking all the boxes for a rape (well technically a sexual assault since men can’t be raped in Scotland). The minute I talked to him about it in terms of rape I started to lose the war beause he can’t frame it that way despite being the victim. My other friends also didn’t see it this way, the comments basically all ranged in the insult the woman for her appearance and insult friend for having sex with her even when drunk, again victim blaming. My friends won’t classify this as rape but rather as a mistake, this is where the reluctance to embrace feminist definitons of rape starts.
Framing the discussion in terms people will understand and working through the prospects with them seems like a better approach for feminism to take than to jump in with how a single person sees the matter or a blanket statement that puts many of the people you want to talk to (and whom aren’t rapists even in your view) into a defensive and non-talking mood.
(altered name since there seem to be several people who post as Chris).
Chris,
Because your tactic didn’t work with one person doesn’t mean that it is morally correct for you (or Sailorman) to limit the way that other people have their conversations.
That has never been, will never be, my stance.
I do not have to equal a man to equal a person. What is this? Feminism 101 again?
And if the only social acceptance that I can get is my getting it from men, then hell, I’m in the same fuckin’ boat I’ve been in all along. Good freakin’ grief.
The problem is not how these guys give out respect. It’s that *you* give *them* respect despite their sexist behavior.
What’s with the “people” crap. You mean men, right?
Again, I don’t weep for the men who get defensive. If they’re getting defensive because it’s being suggested that the sex they are having might just be construed as rape by the women they’re having that sex with, then they need not to be having sex.
Feminism should by all rights make 99.9% of men sweat. It isn’t comfortable. It isn’t nice to men’s view points. It doesn’t coddle the thousands of years of codified and legalized rape that has been played out upon women’s bodies.
Besides Furrycatherder (who I hope will join this discussion!), are there any women lurking out there who feel affinity with what Chris and Sailorman are saying? I’d be interested in hearing from you.
[Comment removed by moderator]
Mandolin:
But the whole situation didn’t make sense in my head until my psychologist said “that sounds abusive.” Then — ahhh — the frame shift. I could suddenly see the situation in such a way as to know: he was being inappropriate. It wasn’t my fault for instigating it, or not knowing how to make the situation better.
Bingo! That pretty well defines why I find Sailorman’s argument on this to be so distasteful.
Also, Q grrl & Thomas – yes & yes.
Chris, do you identify as a feminist or pro-feminist?
From your comment in the thread about the billboard, in addition to the language in this thread about feminism as something that you observe rather than are part of, I am making the decision that you do not qualify as a feminist for the purposes of this thread.
Please refrain from posting here again. I will leave it up to Qgrrl as to whether or not she wants to reply to what you’ve already posted. If she doesn’t, I’ll be deleting it.
If you have comments about this removal, please feel free to post them on one of the open or moderation threads.
Mandonlin –
NO affinity.
My impression of Chris’ and Sailorman’s participation here is in agreement with the sentiment at Twisty’s place re: the Mandos referendum.
Silly nitpickiness, obfuscations, and refusals on their part to allow us women to define a concept in ways that make sense to *us* and to derail *our* thoughts, coercing us to engage on their terms instead of *us* discussing what we wish to in whatever manner *we* so choose.
Just my $0.02.
Mandolin, I have no desire to respond to Chris b/c it would be too much of a derailment.
Bonnie: it’s interesting that you bring up coercion. I was just walking about running an errand and it crossed my mind that Sailorman almost, and I do say almost, seems to want men to be coerced into viewing rape from a more feminist POV, giving a sort of weird credence to the politics of coercion. Mind you, he might disagree with me, and it’s merely my $0.02. But it was an interesting tangent to note.
Q Grrl: I hadn’t really seen it that way.
So here’s a thought – in the law, an assault is defined as an attempted battery in which the victim is in apprehension of imminent battery.
Yes, assault is defined from the victim’s POV. The defendant’s intent is also one of the elements of the tory, but conviction will fail if the victim did not believe battery was imminent.
So, too, should rape be defined – if the victim perceives rape, than a rape has occurred. UNLESS the defendant has a rebuttable affirmative defense which the victim cannot rebut, the rapist goes to jail. Because it’s primarily about the victim’s perceptions and does not turn solely on the the defendant’s intent.
Another $0.02 (soon I’ll have a dime).
Great great great. A guy in my CrimLaw class took exception in the following manner to the defense that a man who’d murdered his former girlfriend with this statement:
“I don’t get the ‘rejected’ defense. I mean, people get rejected by women all the time and don’t kill them.”
I turned to the woman next to me and said, “Huh, so women aren’t ‘people’ I suppose.”
To pay homage to the Lena Lamont character in “Singin’ in the Rain”: “People?!? *I* *ain’t* *People*!”
“Just my $0.02.”
Glad you’re here to give it, Bonnie. :)
~Mandolin
:)
Did I tell y’all the story of an email I sent to my mother re: her telling me (not in an admonishing sort of way) that my partner’s father’s ego gets in his way? He took exception to something I said and walked out of our home. On our birthdays.
Anyway, my pithy comment to my mother – “I’m not here to take care of any man’s ego. If he wants to behave like a child that’s his choice but he sure has to accept the consequences of his actions and grow the fuck up.”
Seriously. It’s like he’s all eggshells and stuff, and I gotta be careful. Not.
Affinity, no. I can sort of understand where Sailor is coming from, I think, and I don’t believe his intent (there’s that word again) is to figure out how to assault women without getting into legal trouble.
So let me turn it around and ask: Sailor, in the other thread I asserted that badgering a woman mercilessly, getting her too drunk to protest, and holding a gun to her head as methods of getting sex from her are all points along a continuum from somewhere close to “normal” heterosexual male behavior to rape. (In fact, in some states, including mine, having sex with a woman who’s not mentally competent to consent, either permanently by disability or temporarily by being drugged or comatose, is legally rape — although apparently waiting until she’s too sleepy to distinguish you from your brother is not.) All of these behaviors have in common that they treat the woman as an object (a video game or vending machine, if you will) rather than a human being.
Your argument, as I understand it, is that using the word “rape” to describe badgering or sweet-talking a woman until she gives in sets up a defensive reaction in most men, and so if you want men to change their behavior, this approach is counterproductive. What arguments would you make, then, to get men to see that the underlying problem in all of these cases is basic misogyny, basic refusal (or inability?) to treat women as human beings?
(Btw, Mandolin, I completely agree with you on the importance to women of naming these behaviors rape.)
After reading through this thread, a couple of related thoughts occur to me:
1. I think the juxtaposition of the terms legal and personal in the title misrepresents what is at issue here because the definition(s) of rape that would, in the context of this discussion, fall under the heading “personal” do not define a range of entirely idiosyncratic notions of what rape is, held by individual men and women whose experiences vary widely and which are, potentially, incommensurate with each other. Rather, the non-legal definitions of rape put forward here—all of which have to do, broadly speaking, with how we as a society define sexual boundaries and what it means for us to have (or not to have) such boundaries in the first place—represent a collective shift, or, at the very least, the beginning of a collective shift in social consciosness about those boundaries, how they are defined and what it means to have them.
There was a time when marriage was understood to dissolve a woman’s sexual boundaries entirely. Prostitutes are still (mis)understood by many as having dissolved their own boundaries by virtue of their profession. A woman who has sex when she does not want to, who engages in any kind of sexual activity that she does not want, is no longer so easily and universally understood to have willingly allowed a man inside her sexual boundaries simply by virtue of having been sexual with him. Similarly, that man is no longer so easily and universally understood to have done nothing wrong (nor is he so easily and universally understood to be the stud he once would have been), because while the questions of where his sexual boundaries are or ought to be and of what it means for him to live inside them might not be so well understood, it is generally understood that he has a responsibility not to violate women’s sexual boundaries.
This shift is most decidedly not personal. Indeed, the fact that individual women can now name their own experiences as rape, even if those experiences differ widely in degree is a result of the fact that this shift in our understanding of rape is not merely personal. To put it another way: it does not mean that the women who name their experience as rape are indulging in merely personal definitions.
2. The legal definition of rape is a subset of this larger understanding of what rape is—and that larger definition, if you really want to get into it, would need to include metaphorical uses of the word rape, such as “the rape of the land” (and it is a metaphor only because it is an extension of the use of the word beyond its primary use, not because what happens to the land when someone rapes it is a metaphor. The legal definition of rape, in order to be useful, needs to have very clearly delineated boundaries so that it can distinguish between what is legally actionable and what is not. At the same time, however, Sailorman’s desire to control the meaning of the word rape, to limit its definition with that kind of legal precision, needs to be recognized as a fundamentally conservative move. It is no different in its underlying structure than the attempts by people on the right to control the meaning of the word marriage or, for that matter, than the now defeated and futile attempts by grammatical purists to maintain the distinction between who and whom. This underlying conservatism, as other people in this thread have pointed out, cannot help but ultimately play into the hands of the conservatives—in this case, the men who want to know how much they can get away with before they will be charged with rape, or attempted rape, and hauled into court—not because Sailorman supports that way of thinking (I don’t think he does), but because his approach implicitly, if unintentonally, accepts as valid the kind of parsing they do of their own behavior anyway to label as not rape behavior that very clear ought to be labeled as such.
“Feminism should by all rights make 99.9% of men sweat. It isn’t comfortable. It isn’t nice to men’s view points.”
God, yes! And if it’s not making most men sweat–or at least do some serious squirming–it’s probably not very feminist. I’m getting tired of the people who keep reiterating that we’re supposed to be “winning men over” and all that. Nonsense.
Wow Richard! Thanks for connecting those particular dots.
My mind has a baby-crush on your mind right now.
How do you square that with the belief (which I share) that only men can end rape?
—Myca
Winning someone over to your side implies that the other person was right in the first place. Goes along with my comment above about Sailorman and my perception of coercion.
In which world?
I want to (to choose an example we all probably share) win pro-life folks over to my point of view on abortion. This isn’t because I think their political stance is, was, or will ever be ‘right’, but because I believe my political stance is right, and I’d like their support.
If I do ‘win them over’, they acknowledge that my stance is correct and abandon their previous (incorrect) stance. How is this a validation?
Too often, it seems like the argument I hear goes something like:
1. “Only men can end rape, because it is (overwhelmingly) men who are rapists, and it is their actions and thoughts that must change, not those of women.” I agree with this.
2. “I hate rape and the rape culture, and want it to end.” I agree with this.
3. “Therefore, fuck convincing men.” Not only do I not agree with this, I don’t see how the mind can hold 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously. I mean, huh?
Which comment # are you referring to?
—Myca
Myca, you are aware of how the “argument” that we should be winning men over is used to derail feminist commentary, right? There are a good many feminists who would rather knock around their own stray thoughts about feminism than coddle the men who whine about how we’re not convincing and how they’re just going to walk away from us silly women if we don’t get it just right, explicity simple and easily digestible for the male audience. Sailorman did a good job of it above.
I don’t see you being too concerned about that though.
Winning a man “over” to feminism does indeed imply that his misogynistic paradigm has legitimate substance. I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to humiliate myself further by telling myself that it is my responsibility to convince Man A, then Man B, then Man C, ad nauseum, that I am fully human.
Frankly, it’s much easier for me to enjoy my humanity with my sisters and forget the men completely. When they are done doing their work, then we’ll have a grand ol’ time together again. But until then, I will let them sweat.
Note: I’d prefer not to derail this thread any further into the game of tit-for-tat. I think, Myca, that if you’re in earnest here, you will respond to what has actually been said in this thread, rather than pulling in your random, poorly remembered, never cited, references to what feminists “say”.
You can’t convince men to change by telling them they don’t need to.
What did I reference that you believe to be incorrect?
—Myca
Agreed completely, Jeff.
I don’t know that it does. It’s common for Democrats to speak of a former Republican’s being won over to their side (or vice versa), for example, or in general of winning someone on the “wrong” side over to the “right” side.
There’s a tension here that we’ve all been dancing around between being true to our ideals and framing issues so as not to alienate the other side instantly and permanently. I don’t see any need to give ground, to acknowledge any validity in the idea that a man is entitled to sex any way he can get it (short of brute force, maybe), since this idea is absolutely invalid. I do think it’s reasonable to refrain from using inflammatory language if by doing so we can persuade more men to reexamine their thought patterns. I don’t know what language we should use, and I’m not convinced that it would work (which is why I asked Sailorman what language he would prefer), but the principle is not a bad one.
I’ve read that men are more likely to treat women as people if as boys they see their fathers/male role models doing so consistently. (And the sisters of those fortunate men are less likely to tolerate being treated as walking vaginas.) How does the man who’s already full-grown and already socialized to misogyny, to whom* it’s never occurred to think any other way, rewire his brain?
*I hope this doesn’t brand me as a conservative.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Lu.
I would never advocate trying to water down feminism in order to ‘convince’ men, but ‘not ranting, screaming, and insulting’ is not the same as ‘watering down.’ Let’s put effort into actually convincing.
I think convincing our opponents is important, and when they become convinced of the rightness of our cause, our cause becomes stronger. It’s only in Bizarro World that them becoming convinced of the rightness of our cause somehow makes their cause stronger.
—Myca
“but ‘not ranting, screaming, and insulting’ is not the same as ‘watering down.'”
But it’s still important for there to be space for people to rant and scream.
Sometimes ranting and screaming is the most fertile ground for yielding ideas.
By the way, Lu, I’m not getting a conservative vibe off of your comments, and I appreciate your participation in the thread. I’m glad you feel safe enough to post here.
Oh, agreed absolutely, 100%. I think all kinds of spaces are valuable.
I’m just reacting to the idea that it’s pointless/counterproductive/validating to misogyny to try to convince men. I think it’s possible (necessary, even) to have a robust and fearless feminism that is also actively engaged with convincing men to change their minds.
—Myca
First, QGrrl, thanks! (For comment #80) Coming from you, that means a lot to me!
Second, Myca wrote:
Crys T, in comment 79, put the term winning over in scare quotes, suggesting that she was using the term not to mean, simply, persuading someone of the rightness of an argument they previously disagreed with, but rather—at least as I read it—to connote a kind of accommodationist stance in which the point is gently to coax men over to a feminist perspective on women and rape. This implication in the expression winning over, I think, is in part what QGrrl was responding to when she said that to win someone over implies that the position they have been won over from had validity in the first place—which is precisely the kind of “winning over” that you argue against when you say
In other words, it doesn’t seem to me like there’s any real disagreement here.
I also agree, Mandolin — what may be counterproductive in one context (changing perspectives) can be, you should forgive the expression, seminal in another. For instance, my initial reaction to the suggestion that sex without explicit verbal consent is rape was, “yeesh, what have my husband and I been doing all these years?” — but turning 180 degrees from “if she doesn’t say no loud and clear, she means yes” is, um, intriguing.
(And, sorry, the bit about “conservative” was a joke playing off something Richard said and my tendency to use the word whom, and not a very good one, it appears.)
Myca, I’m really not sure what your purpose is here. We’re having a really deep, serious, and well thought-out conversation and suddenly you come along and make insinuations that someone, in this thread, said
This isn’t being said in this thread, and your insertion of it as if it is *even* a valid claim or criticism is just too slickly weird.
I mean, you come across as bitching at the feminists for not doing enough to convince men, not being somehow martyr enough to convince men.
But GODDAMN it! What the fuck do you think every word I type is? A fucking ego trip? And intellectual muscle flex?
The time I spend here, the time Crys T spends here, or Mandolin, bean, all the other women who repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, under the harshest of scrutiny and ridicule, what our basic beliefs are, that time, that effort, the typing, the spell check, the mind stretching. You know what that is, right? THAT’S FUCKING REACHING OUT TO THE MEN!
Over and fucking over and then warmed up to just the right fucking man temperature so that it goes down just as smooth and gentle as last night’s milk and honey so as not to gag the poor fellas.
We’re willing to do that.
We do, do that.
What we CAN’T FUCKKING DO is to convince men. That, Myca, is up to the men.
We teach. And teach again. We have NEVER fallen down in THAT category.
So fuck off with your insinuations that we aren’t doing enough.
Hey Qrrl, maybe you need to take a little break to calm down a bit. It seems like you’re having trouble reacting to what I said rather than what you think I said.
I think our goals are the same here, and as Richard said, I don’t necessarily think that there’s a conflict in that I’m not (and have not ever) advocating watering down feminism in order to make it palatable.
That having been said, I don’t think I’ve ever said or implied that the bit you quoted was something anyone in this thread had said, and I don’t think I deserve the level of vitriol you routinely point my direction.
—Myca
Because I feel like there’s some actual progress going on in terms of clarifying to ourselves (or at least to me!) some of the important facets of activism, I’d like to repsectfully ask Qgrrl and Myca to back off from the personal exchange — not because y’all don’t have points, but because I’d like to focus on the discussion at hand.
My first instinct was to ask us to move away from Myca’s side point about whether or not it’s important for women to convince men, but I think this is the crux of the matter.
Sailorman wants the entire discourse of rape to revolve — not around the rapist — but around the observer male, who might be potentially offended. The entire conversation, as he frames it, is being spoken around this figure, this default audience member, this subject, who is viewing us as an object. We’re losing our own subjectivity when we constrain ourselves to Sailorman’s terms of discussion.
This assumption by women that they are always, and appropriately, being watched by men is part of what feminism argues against. I refuse to define my experience based on the possible reaction of an observing man. If I were to do this, I might as well give up and go home, because nearly everything we’ve ever argued for as feminists would piss off some potential ally somewhere.
The fact that the experience of women — not the potential reaction of men — is at the center of feminism is not (to my mind), and should not be, negotiable.
Outreach and teaching may be arms of feminism, but let’s not mistake the part for the whole.
“(And, sorry, the bit about “conservative” was a joke playing off something Richard said and my tendency to use the word whom, and not a very good one, it appears.)”
LOL! Sorry, I know you sometimes feel that people feel you’re conservative, so I guess I over-interpreted. Sorry to be dense!
~M
What I am reacting to, Myca, is your insistence, and your belief in it’s legitimacy, of barging into an intense thread with your pontifications about the appropriate outreach tactics addressed in Feminism 101.
My beef with you is that this is what you do here. I’m sick of it.
With that, I end my role in the derailment.
Way upthread, Sailorman said:
From a feminist perspective, “all sex without explicit verbal consent is rape” is, I think, a useful statement to make. In my experience, it’s not true, and I can’t see any way it could be enforced legally. But it completely turns the default position of “as long as she didn’t say no, she said yes” on its head, and it makes me think: what would a world look like where everyone had internalized that?
I think Sailorman is probably right that most men would react to this statement by getting defensive or tuning out: those wacko feminists are talking crazy again. What I don’t know is if you can frame the issue in a way that will make sense to those men. I’d be interested in hearing from Myca, Richard, or any other men who care to comment on this.