(First, kudos to Amanda Marcotte whose comment and link here in the Daily Kos Kerfuzzle thread served as the inspiration for this post)
How ingrained is our culture’s prominent “past-time” of ‘guilt tripping the sexual assault/rape victim for the attack’ in our psyches–especially the victims’? Whenever we begin to talk about the perpetrator (usually a guy) it seems as if we just throw up our hands in surrender and say, “yeah well, he’s a guy. Guys do that so watch out ladies.” Once again we slam the victims and women with all the responsibility for the attack, as if they raped or sexually assaulted themselves. When we list whose to blame for the attack and crime, we list everyone, including the victim, but rarely–if ever–the attacker. Or he’s at the bottom of the list and is portrayed as the least responsible for the attack. It’s the “we can’t help what guys do, but women should bear all the burden when it comes to prevention of sexual violence,” mentality of our culture. Rape Culture 101; guys are entitled to get sex on demand, to sexually harass, commit sexual assualt, and rape. And it’s all your fault if it happens to you. Guys can’t help themselves after all.
No one–I’m certainly not saying that women shouldn’t take precautions to protect themselves, but that’s a mere ‘band aid’ solution to the problem. The root of the problem here is that we barely or don’t at all take steps to educate young men about sexual violence prevention. While girls and young women are lectured on what not to do in certain scenarios in social settings, what do we do with the guys? Why are we so afraid to lecture them on “why they shouldn’t rape or sexually assault?” Why do we keep making up excuses for their behavior and crimes, but continue to scold the female victims for their attack? Boys will be boys; a tenet of the Rape Culture. Steve Gilliard’s post on the missing young woman in Aruba and his comment are prime examples of how we make up excuses for guys’ behavior towards women, and expect women to foresee their own attack. Never mind the guys’ responsibility in the attack at all–that doesn’t count.
I don’t think it’s not so much that “she got what she deserve”, but a media refusal to look at their conduct and say these girls were placed in a less than optimal situation. I would also bet no one had an honest discussion with them about acting like adults and making adult choices. Of course not. It was a “Christian” school. So they could get drunk, fuck any cute boy and no one would say things like:
“Be careful. Don’t just go off with any cute boy. He may not act that cute when you’re alone.”
“Carry condoms and lube”
“When you get drunk, you tend to make shitty decisions. So stick together and don’t let someone go off alone.”
Now, I’ve always been confused as to why a girl would go off with three guys. Was she going to pull a train? Or did she have two spare sex organs for them to use? Because otherwise, that sounds like a really bad decision. One which she should have been warned against. Boys in groups tend to do things they wouldn’t do alone. And the expectation of sex must have been high.
And we continue to gloss over the perpetrators and focus our blame squarely on the victim. Yes she didn’t make very good decisions but how does that warrant rape or sexual assault? How are rape and sexual assault “okay” decisions for guys? It’s okay to rape or sexually assault if the young woman made a poor decision? Is that what we tell guys? And his comment…
[…] Because you can’t tell someone to not brutalize women. Most men won’t do that, but if they do, you can’t say “hey, you know rape is wrong”. Most guys know that. The ones that don’t aren’t going to listen to a lecture.
The best we can do is say “look, some guys are assholes and you need to watch out for them.”
Now, you can tell boys that it isn’t OK to screw the drunk or hit women, but most guys aren’t going to do that anyway. But the problem for women is the guys that do and dealing with them.
[…]
I think women have a more idealistic view of men than men do. Chris Rock summed it up: “if a man comes up to you over the age of 13 and asks you if you want help, he’s saying ‘you want some dick with that?’
Women tend to resist the idea that most men size them up sexually. I can assure you that if there’s a boy in your daughter’s life and he’s a “friend”, he’s either not interested in her, or is just biding his time. But the idea of sex has crossed his mind.
The same applies to all your coworkers and opposite sex friends. If they’re straight, they have either thought about having sex with you or reasons why they shouldn’t.
But the issue is on the table.
Have you ever been out with a friend and then suddenly he got grabby or romantic and you didn’t expect it. Now, you might have written that off, but it happens because men rate women sexually, and that one time might be the time he actually acted on his feelings.
So when I say men will do anything for sex, I’m not just saying that. It’s observed behavior.
We continue to ignore the elephant in the room whenever we talk about sexual violence and prevention. We conveniently forget all about the perpetrator and focus on the [female] victim, and lecture them on why it’s all their fault. So much for those karate lessons and pepper spray–it’s still your fault. Gee, why don’t we just come out and say, “well if you didn’t have a vagina you wouldn’t have been attacked.” That’s the hint if you really think about.
And here are some questions about violence to ponder, that ties into our rape culture. Via V-Day: Until The Violence Stops…
What frightens you about giving up violence?
What are you afraid of losing?
What do you secretly like about violence?
How will sex change when there is no more violence?
What stories will you have to give up when you give up violence? what parts of your past will you have to release?
Why do you think ending violence is impossible?
Do you know anywhere in the world where there is no violence? describe.
Do you know anyone who truly lives non-violently? describe.
What is violence?
Where does it come from?
Do you believe violence is part of human nature?
Do you believe violence is taught?
What is the relationship of violence to patriarchy?
Do you think violence has to do with race, class, a particular place?
What would have to change in the world in order to end violence?
What would have to change in you in order to end violence?
What makes you violent?
What stops you from being violent?
Who has been violent towards you?
How did this change who you are?
Do you believe it is possible to end violence? why? why not?
I’m pretty sure you got your knickers in a wad during the “all men benefit from rape”? threads.
Nope.
I forsee another round of people complaining about how it’s unfair for them to be sandbagged when they answered a question honestly. The answer was honestly revolting.
OK, thanks to Jeff and Amanda, and to the tune of “Riders on the Storm”:
Keepers of the Cock
Keepers of the Cock
Into this bod we’re born
Into this skin we’re thrown
Like a key without a lock
Or New Kids on the Block
Keepers of the Cock
There’s a rapist on the street
He’s scopin’ everyone he meets
He makes a power play
Where his dick holds sway
If ya let his bad deed ride
Sweet innocence will die
Rapist on the street, yeah
Guys ya gotta keep it zipped
Guys ya gotta keep it zipped
When the gal says NO
Let your respect show
If she’s really eager
You’ll know you can believe her
Ya gotta keep it zipped, yeah
Wow!
Keepers of the Cock
Keepers of the Cock
Into this bod we’re born
Into this skin we’re thrown
Like a key without a lock
Or New Kids on the Block
Keepers of the Cock
Keepers of the Cock …
Robert wrote:
and jstevenson wrote:
Of course anyone can see that the stuff jstevenson wrote is pure speculation. I fear the distinction between what Robert wrote and jstevenson’s “analysis” might have been lost somewhere along the way. So to prevent people from figuratively shooting themselves in the leg I’m (and I hope I don’t sound overtly patronizing) posting this reminder in case anyone missed it. Of course some might find Robert’s comment disgusting too (and have every right to do so), but I’m getting much more disgusted by jstevenson’s claims about men (I never gave him the right to represent me, for example).
Or could be that jstevenson’s speculation was correct. Can’t know for sure. I only know that if Robert gets to point out this stuff after taking lot of attacks he will have a field day, and I really only want him to be miserable ;).
I was once a member of a primarily male board. Every day, just about, there were threads of over a hundred posts of hot women in few clothes.
I got sick of it and made my own thread of hot guys with as offensively objectifying comments as I could think of. On and on I ground with that thread, trying to rub the guys’ noses in their behavior. After three hundred posts (mostly my own) someone (a man) stepped in and began mocking the men’s appearance as the models not being ‘real men’. Other men jumped in and talked about how hurtful it was when I said that some of the models needed to lose weight because the models were much thinner than they were. Guys got angry because I was dehumanising men. And yet they did it every day to women and didn’t appear to notice.
Men do not want to be objectified any more than women do.
I don’t even think that Robert was being all that honest. I’ve heard guys from deeply religious backgrounds say stuff like that before, and it’s only a rotten layer of an onion whose deeper layers are yet more rotten. What sexists who base their morality first and foremost on a “personal relationship with God” usually mean is that “I can ask God for forgiveness anytime” is pretty much the same as “I can get away with it.” :(
Thomas, it gave me a lot to chew over, though. I think that many men’s unwillingness to embrace female subjectivity is probably one of the biggest underlying causes of the rape-permissive culture. Like BritGirl pointed out, men desire, women consent. Well, men also consent and women also desire and unless all four elements are in place, you should walk away from the encounter.
I don’t believe that I could ever rape, under any circumstances. But…
How many of the mobs who contributed to or directly committed mass-murder and mass-rape in Rwanda would have said, “If I could get away with it, I would rape and murder” if someone had asked them that in 1990? I bet lots of them would have said “I could never do something like that. I could never rape. I could never kill if it wasn’t self-defense.”
I assume everyone here has heard of the famous experiment in which test subjects were given a button to press, which they were told would give a painful electric shock to someone in the next room. A person in a white lab coat ordered them to press the button, and if they did an actor in the next room screamed as if in horrible agony. What the experimenters found is that the vast majority of people tested kept on pressing the button when ordered to – despite the screams of pain.
I’m sure that we’d all like to imagine that, if we had been a subject of that experiment, we would have been among the tiny percentage of people who refused to press the button. But if nearly everyone says that they wouldn’t have pressed the button, but we know that in fact most people did, then what can we conclude?
I conclude that people’s self-assessments of what they’d do are probably not always accurate. As Robert said, you can’t know for sure until you’re tested.
In a world gone mad – if I had been in the midst of the Rwandan genocide – what would I have done? I think I would not have raped, not in that circumstance, not in any circumstance.
But then again, I think I would not have pressed the button.
Interesting thing to say, it reminded me of a ‘discussion’ I had on another board last year. I had replied to a thread discussing sex, most of it a bunch of men od’ing in bravado, and I said something along the lines of ‘well when I fuck my husband blah blah’. It was met with a kind of uncomfortable shock. I got chastised, as well as a few choice words being tossed my way. Only a few reacted positively. At the time I had thought nothing of it, until realised just how threatened these men seemed at the idea of being ‘fucked’ back by a woman. Thinking about it now, it really fits in to this statement.
Most “average guys”? would love to be objectified like your “average gal”?. When is that parade starting?
I sincerely doubt this is true. “Most guys” just probably think objectifying means finding them sexy, just as they are, rather than holding them up to unachievable standards. Something my brother loves to complain about the few times it does happen to men.
Or, you know, what Jeff and ginmar said.
“I think it scares the crap out of most women, because it implies that the man/men in question don’t really care about how we feel or whether they’re harming us, that all we are to them is a body. And that’s pretty damn disturbing. ”
Yeah, that’s what bugged me about that too. To go with the stealing analogy (despite it’s faults) one of the big reasons why I don’t steal is because it’s harmful, even if only a little bit. So the idea that rape being harmful to others doesn’t play a part in the average guy’s morals scares the crap out of me.
I second the comment that this is a great thread.
Amanda, are you talking about your own post – ’cause I seriously want to go kick some ass (or, well, um, at least try to) but I’ve been having issues with typekey. :(
Jake wrote:
Part of the difference between you and Robert is the difference between someone who thinks “I do know what I would do if I could get away with it” and someone who thinks that such things are inherantly unknowable. I tend more towards Robert’s view than towards yours, as far as that question goes.
I don’t think there’s much limit to the evil people will do, if circumstances are right. Faced with Nazism, some people refused to cooperate, and some people hid Jews; but the vast majority went along with the flow, regardless of how evil that flow was.
I’ve met plenty of guys who were picked-on wimps in childhood and who grew up into classic misogynists, resentful of women because of a sense of wounded entitlement. (Go to a comic book con, you’ll meet dozens of guys like that – as well as dozens who are not, of course.) Would some of those guys rape if they were sure they could get away with it? I suspect so.
Q Grrl wrote:
Rereading Robert’s comments, I don’t think he can fairly be said to have said either of those things.
I sincerely doubt this is true. “Most guys”? just probably think objectifying means finding them sexy, just as they are, rather than holding them up to unachievable standards.
Well, that and they think it means someone who they find sexy finding them sexy. Because there’s a tendency, when men start talking about this sort of thing, to forget that women they don’t find attractive exist.
I said it initially to Steve, because he was deliberately blurring the lines between sex and rape. It really makes me sad–I love sex and hate to hear other people even claim they can’t tell the difference between sex with someone who is mentally checked in with you, having fun and someone who is resisting you.
Rereading Robert’s comments, I don’t think he can fairly be said to have said either of those things.
That doesn’t really make a difference. ;) But thanks for reading.
When I studied the Nazis in college, the main lesson I came away with was a sobering and rather glum one; there isn’t really any difference between a Nazi and a human being. I would like to believe that I would have been among the tiny minority of heroes, and that my friends would have been, as well.
But the things I’d like to believe, and the things that I observe, don’t cohere nicely together.
Ampersand, I think the much-cited experiment has a fundamental difference with real-life scenarios of violence and rape: a) you know you’re in an experiment; b) you only see a button you’re pressing, what you hear of its effects, paradoxically, goes in the background of your mind; and most of all c) there is some authority figure ordering you to press that button.
I can’t think of a realistic rape scenario which has analogies to all three conditions.
The experiment has a relevance to analysing the behaviour of people who were ‘only following orders’ in a military dictatorship, but I don’t see how it relates to a rape situation in any other context.
As for mass-murder and mass-rape in Rwanda, or the Balkans, or Chechenya etc etc. or any other violent ethnic conflict, I don’t think it’s the first instance of hypothetical rape that someone replying ‘I can’t know for sure’ would think of. Not that it would change things much, because a man who doesn’t fantasise about rape as a kick and as an act of power that they could do in their ordinary life in their ordinary peaceful country, wouldn’t feel any inclination to do it even in a war. I don’t think the people who committed mass murder and mass rape EVER asked themselves any questions even before they did it.
Amp,
It’s true that you can never know with 100% certainty what you’d do in a hypothetical situation. I don’t believe that I would be physically or emotionally capable of rape no matter the circumstances. A big part of that has to do with my viewing women as people and not a different group of people. I wonder what Robert’s answer would be if he was asked if he would/could rape a man if he thought he could get away with it.
Amp says, “I’ve met plenty of guys who were picked-on wimps in childhood…”
That’s not what I was referring to when I said that I was physically overwhelmed and powerless. I’m talking about being 3 (or possibly younger) and having an adult hold me in the air – one hand holding my wrists and the other hand holding my ankles – naked and unable to get away or even move really for what seemed an eternity to a 3 year old. I’m talking about being beaten on a regular basis by adults who were 4 to 5 times my weight and infinitely stronger than me. Being picked on & beaten up by classmates was a cakewalk compared to that shit.
It really makes me sad”“I love sex and hate to hear other people even claim they can’t tell the difference between sex with someone who is mentally checked in with you, having fun and someone who is resisting you.
I think most people can tell the difference between the two; it’s just that we’re in a culture where it’s still not acknowledged that women actively enjoy sex, so they think they’re being asked to tell the difference between resistance and acquiescence.
It’s that whole “‘no’ means ‘no,’ but we’re not going to teach you what a ‘yes’ is for fear that you’ll actually have sex” issue. It encourages men to treat anything but an unequivocal rejection as an invitation, and means that a lot of people who don’t think of themselves as rapists are doing an awful lot of harm.
I agree with Amp on this one. (Egomaniacal advert: in my comment 28, I made a similar, but more theoretical point than the more striking one Amp did in case of Rwanda). It really is one of those questions to which plenty of people will answer: ABSOLUTELY NO! But is there really a way of knowing? I don’t think so. One can make an estimation, though.
It tends to turn at some point into: “But I wouldn’t do it, and neither would any of the men I know, that I can say for sure”. But in reality plenty of women do get raped, and too many men rape. And I’m betting that potential rapists are quite vehement in denying their “needs” to general public and friends, so I’m not concerned about the “I sincerely hope that I don’t have an urge to rape” -group. I’m far more concerned with “But it’s a natural instinct that men have!” -group, and tend to view “Only thoroughly fucked-up, sick and irredeemable men rape, certainly not me or my any of my buddies, like never” -group as naive and living in denial.
Maybe I should say, “… because I know what it’s like to be physically overwhelmed and powerless and I can empathize when others are in that situation and I never, ever want to make another person experience that feeling.”
My reading of Robert’s statement didn’t lead me to think he was referring to a situation like Rwanda.
Not picking on comic con men because I was a D&D playing, comic-reading nerd in my youth, but Amp’s comment reminded me of an LA Times article about child pornography a few weeks ago.
Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl
Their work is a daily sojourn to the underworld. Gillespie has a team of 10 men and six women who spend hours in front of their computers, extracting leads, writing warrants and sifting photos for clues. The payoff is the day they get to kick down a door and take the “bad guy” away. The mood is light and the humor often off-color to ease the horror.
On one wall is a “Star Trek” poster with investigators’ faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.
Det. Constable Warren Bulmer slips on a Klingon sash and shield they confiscated in a recent raid. “It has something to do with a fantasy world where mutants and monsters have power and where the usual rules don’t apply,” Bulmer reflects. “But beyond that, I can’t really explain it.”
I don’t get it why rape as it happens ordinarily every day in even the most peaceful, advanced, civilised countries (yes, including the US), has to be compared to living in nazi Germany.
You don’t live in a dictatorship. No one is forcing you or intimidating you to harm anyone. You’re not going to risk your life if you abstain from collaborating with evil. You’re not being asked to stand up and resist against a whole regime.
I’m not particularly interested in what Robert meant with his statement, I read it as ‘I can’t know for sure because it’s hypothetical’ rather than ‘wow I just can’t wait to rape someone, if only there was an amnesty’. I still wonder how can anyone not know for sure what they’d want or like to do if they could get away with it (like Jake I also have a very long list, none of it including actual violence of any kind, but I guess I’m just a boring peace-loving deluded naive wussy…). But in any case I just want to point out that the answer to that “would I do it? could I do it?” had none of those nazi or rwanda scenarios in it.
Rape is not being compared to living in Nazi Germany. Complicity in evil is being compared to complicity in evil. The active choice of doing evil is being compared to the active choice of doing evil.
Noodles,
Actually, I think that Robert’s answer – in which he pretty much had to postulate a world in which God didn’t exist – was very similar to the Rwanda or Nazi Germany examples, as I understand it. From the relgious perspective Robert is speaking from, if I understand it correctly, “imagine that you could get away with it” is saying “imagine a situation which is utterly unlike any situation you’ve ever experienced, in which the world has gone mad.”
If you accept that Robert is sincere in his religious beliefs, then the change from a world in which God exists to a world in which it’s possible to get away with it is just as extreme as the difference between our society and Nazi Germany, if not much more so. From Robert’s perspective, the “if you could get away with it” hypothetical is just as extreme as the Rwanda or Nazi Germany hypothetical.
Thanks for correcting me.
I’m sure what you’re saying is true of you, but I suspect that it’s not true for everyone. Isn’t it statistically the case that many abusers were abused themselves as children? Some abused children learn to be repulsed by abuse; others learn that it’s how people should be treated.
Well Amp, then what is he saying?
To me it’s really clear. Rape is thrusting your penis into a woman’s body without her consent. Robert seems to imply that god’s overview not-withstanding he would rape. He doesn’t mention the woman involved. From this it is obvious that he doesn’t consider her human. All he is considering is that act of thrusting his penis into an unwilling female body. And he would do this given the right circumstances (i.e., no condemnation from a god which might or might now exist, entirely ignoring the real female body upon which his hypothetical morality will be played out.)
You might be looking at Robert’s comments in a vaccuum, but I’m not. Robert openly insists that when his wife is pregnant, he is pregnant with her (i.e, “We’re pregnant). He openly insists that women do not have a right to abort a fetus. And now he “honestly” admits that he would rape. There is a sum total here that can’t be ignored, not even for blogosphere politics.
How can you, Robert or Amp, suggest that you raping a woman is some “unknowable” factor in your life. I mean, WTF? It’s unkowable to you whether you would forcibly take something that you have know friggin right to? You would use a woman’s body without her consent? I bet there are five things you could name off the top of your head that you would never do in your life… why isn’t rape so easily qualifiable for you? For any of you men?
I’m really having a hard time imagining that this is an unknown.
Pingback: Feministe » Women Speak on Rape
I’m gonna have to agree with Q Grrl here. I understand saying that “well one never knows what may happen” only to a certain line. I hate saying never too. But there are some things I know I can’t do. Raping another individual is one of them. By not saying that you know that you will NEVER rape a women, aren’t you allowing really allowing yourself an out, even if its a purley subconsious out?
Robert, your answer made a lot more sense before you brought in the nazi comparison. Not least because nazi comparisons tend to be out of place 99% of the time.
Sorry, I genuinely can’t see how the difference between complicity vs. actual evil doing has anything to do with the “I can’t be sure if I personally wouldn’t rape” answer. The hypothesis there was about active choice of doing evil, right?
Noodles wrote:
I really don’t understand where your certainty comes from, but I don’t share it.
I also think that ordinary rape – even date rape – is in fact comparable to more overt large-scale instances of societies going mad and evil. The most basic evil, in my view, is a combination of entitlement and selfishness – the belief that we’re entitled to ignore the horrible effects of our actions on others, because they make us feel good or benefit us in some way.
In the case of American slavery, the widespread cultural belief that blacks were lesser humans enabled whites to believe that slavery was justified, and even a good thing. In the case of same sex marriage, the widespread cultural belief that same-sex couples are worth less than cross-sex couples enables people to believe that “protecting” heterosexual families justifies any amount of harm to non-heterosexual families.
In the case of rape, the widespread cultural belief that women are worth less than men enables rapists to feel entitled to take what they want from women. Most rapists aren’t deeply individualistic thinkers; they’re aligning themselves with the messages the culture sends them, about sexuality as something possessed by women and pursued by men, about male entitlement, and about the relative worth of men and women.
Is there a difference between Rwandan gang-rapes and the date-rapes in the USA? Yes, of course. But there are also significant overlaps. Apart from sociopaths, rapists are doing what their culture has given them permission to do; and that’s true in both the “date rape” example and in the Rwandan example.
Awhile back Amanda said
I love sex and hate to hear other people even claim they can’t tell the difference between sex with someone who is mentally checked in with you, having fun and someone who is resisting you.
and though the “Would I rape” discussion has drifted off into extreme circumstances, back in the real world the more likely question probably is “Would I call what I did rape?”
Could I rape someone if I knew I’d get away with ti?
No only no, but HELL NO. Few things get me as visceraly upset as the idea of whomever I’m having sex with wanting it to stop, and me not stopping. The idea that any partner I’m with feels anything but safe with me is repulsive.
And I do have ‘rough’ sex, and have played with BDSM. Consent, and the knowledge that afterwards, my partner really wanted all of those things to happen, is vital.
People who’d commit rape are like aliens to me. I understand that they exist, and even have good theories that explain how they exist, but I can’t figure out wanting to do that to someone. I have wanted beat the crap out of someone, but never rape them.
jstevenson Writes: Most “average guys”? would love to be objectified like your “average gal”?. When is that parade starting?
Really? Then how come most straight men I know are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that gay men may find them attractive? Most straight men I know are really unhappy with the idea of being “objectified” – unless it’s by someone whom they find attractive.
Did you get a little thrill out of the guy with the cucumber making it clear he found you attractive? Did you love it? Somehow, belying your claim that you would love to be objectified, I got the strong impression that it made you as uncomfortable as being objectified makes “your average gal”.
Tuomas, there’s another possible answer to that question, and it’s: I cannot answer for anybody else but me, because I cannot read their minds; however, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t really picture myself raping anyone as a pleasant form of sadism I may want to entertain when and if possible. Not because I’m particularly moral or have a high notion of myself or think myself above any act of evil, but because, long before any sense of morals or considerations about the other person even had time to kick in, my sense of disgust at the act of rape and at myself doing it would simply make it impossible for me to even entertain the idea of getting a sexual kick out of it.
I don’t think that’s a form of denial. I think that’s simply liking sex for what it is.
Q Grrl wrote:
Actually, he didn’t say that; he said he didn’t know. Here’s what he said:
To characterize “I don’t know” as being the same as “I would,” as you’ve been doing, is inaccurate.
As I wrote before, I don’t think I’d rape under any circumstances. But I can’t say I know for sure, because I think it’s impossible to know for sure.
You’d lose that bet.
Putting aside physically impossible things, no, there are not five things I can think of that I could say “it is unimaginable that I’d do that in any circumstance.” Historically, all sorts of evil things have been done by people who (before they did the evil things) did not appear to be monsters before they were put to the test. I suspect that some of them, at one time or another, imagined that they were incapable of doing real evil, too.
(Edited to change “most of them” to “some of them.”)
Nothing enrages certain groups of men more than the idea that women have more right to define what they do to us than they do. Language gives them a cozy, deceptive cushion. They call it ‘a mistake,’ they call it ‘things got out of control,’ they call it all kinds of things—-including sex. But they hate it when their gender gets mentioned, and they hate it that women now have the power to say, “Rape, not sex.” That’s the real reason for the hatred of the term PC; it’s language. It’s the real civility unlike the stuff the trolls complain about.
But they slip up when we try and have a discussion about rape and all they talk about is what women should or shouldn’t do. It’s funny, the way men want to disappear themselves from the language just when they’re the whole topic of the discussion.
Thanks AndiF for steering this convo back on track :)
That is a reasonable answer, noodles. I’m quite disgusted at the thought of using someone purely for my pleasure too, when that person is clearly suffering from what I do and wanting me to stop. But I lack the certainty to say that for sure, not because of low notion of self (I like myself at least) but simply because people have done bad shit in extreme situations before. So maybe I should answer: No, I would never rape anyone as I am now , but were I to change fundamentally I might. However, I’m past the age where my views and especially my ethics fluctuate, so I think such a situation would be very unlikely, and hypothetical at best.
Ampersand – If you accept that Robert is sincere in his religious beliefs, then the change from a world in which God exists to a world in which it’s possible to get away with it is just as extreme as the difference between our society and Nazi Germany, if not much more so.
But that sounds like mind-reading, no? I didn’t read any of that in Robert’s first reply. If that’s what he had in mind – ie. ‘I could perhaps have done it if I had been a Nazi or a Janjaweed’ – he should have written that. But then, that’d be adding conditions – being a nazi or a Janjaweed – that already define you as evil. So wether you rape or torture or murder or boil people doesnt make a difference.
My idea of “getting away with it” was “not getting caught”, in the ordinary reality of the thousands of rapists who do get away with it because of lack of forensic evidence, or lack of reporting, or the police not believing the woman, etc.
Besides, I don’t see the relation between ‘a world where God doesn’t exist’ and total lawlessness. Laws exist even without the need for religious beliefs, surely?
I’m sorry I don’t mean to be dense on purpose, I honestly am not getting it. I didn’t even pay attention to Robert’s comment, I don’t care, but I don’t think these explanations make it sound like it makes more sense, quite the opposite.
The common theme I’m seeing among all of these examples is that people are capable of doing horrible things to other people if they are successful in being able to characterize them as inferior others. Which is the whole point feminists have been trying to get across for years – that when women are seen as inferior others by men, then men will be capable of raping women and not seeing it as a bad thing. Those of us on this thread agree that rape is not about sex; it’s just called sex because that’s the way the perps can justify it to themselves afterwards.
Amp: “Isn’t it statistically the case that many abusers were abused themselves as children?”
Yes that is so. But that is also why I wrote, “…I can empathize when others are in that situation…” I believe that makes a big difference in people’s attitudes and actions. I believe that not understanding that other people have feelings & emotions & physical sensations just like you is what allows people to rape & kill & oppress & torture and all the other billions of horrible things that people do to each other.
So, you don’t see women as being the same as you? Then, sure, “No means yes,” and you need to care for & shelter & protect your women. Because they’re not fully human. They have only the attributes that you ascribe to them. It’s today’s version of the old belief that animals are just little machines – no thought, all instinct. Women are not men, therefore women are inferior & only capable of what men decide they are capable of.
“Would I rape if I thought I could get away with it? Well, I believe that I can’t get away with it where it counts, so the hypothetical is moot. But my answer would have to be “I don’t know.”? The only way to know is to find out; I pray never to undergo such a temptation. But even if I did undergo such a temptation, I would be aware that “getting away with it”? was not on the table. ”
These are Robert’s words Amp. He says that because he “can’t get away with it where it counts” the hypothetical is moot. But it isn’t is it? In fact, he’s just compounding the hypothetical in such a way so as not to have to make a decision. Later he says, “The only way to know is to find out ” To me this means he won’t know if he would rape until he is actually raping a woman. Nice. Real nice.
But, given the right set of circumstance (i.e., he could get away with it where it counts) he *would* rape. No, he doesn’t state that in black and white, but he certainly makes it clear that getting away with it is the deal maker. Rape is plausible to Robert if he doesn’t have to suffer for it. Again, nice.
While I do think Robert was, perhaps, misunderstood, as I think the vital point was the apparent understanding that you can never “get away with it” as even escaping punishment still leaves one with a victim. I took that reference to mean that he valued the horrific impact this would have on someone’s life as equally important to suffering legal consequences, which I would take to mean that he genuinely couldn’t ever do it.
Nevertheless, I have to quite emphatically say that this is something I could never do and I have a tough time appreciating the personal skeptism of some that they don’t think they can say that. That is not to say that I think any of them are capable of rape. I don’t. I just wish they could see that in themselves.
Look, I’ll admit that I can’t know a lot of things in an absolute sense. I don’t think I could murder someone, but I can’t say for certain that a hypothetical circumstance couldn’t arise where I might. I don’t think I’ll ever steal, but I know I can’t say it for certain. Rape is different. And I think that’s why a lot of the people here are taken aback by the lack of an absolute answer. I am, too. I functionally understand what motivates the reluctance, but from my personal experience I simply can’t understand how someone could feel that way.
Rape is a sadistic crime. It is not something one does in a passion or out of fear. It is either done with creulty and malice or it is committed by someone with such self-importance that they are incapable of seeing their actions for what they are. I know myself enough to know that I am incapable of rape. Rape is something I am extremely aware of. If I am with a woman and I hear anything even hinting of resistance I will pull back immediately and address the situation. Not that I can recall having even had to do so. In general, though, I know that I’m, if anything, over sensative to the issue. Which is certainly the side I want to err on. I’m reluctant to initiate sexual contact because I don’t want a woman to feel that I am at all pushing her into anything. I would never have sex with someone I thought was intoxicated. I’d hope that belief is strong enough to survive my own intoxication, though here I’ll admit I can’t know if it would because I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten drunk enough in the first place, much less gotten drunk and had a sexual opportunity with someone who is drunk. But I darn well want to be careful because I don’t know how I could live with myself if I did that to a woman.
(switching gears now) All men aren’t to blame for rapists. No one is making that suggestion. But all men need to play a part in stopping it. We can make a difference. Moreso, it makes utterly no sense to only focus on victimin intervention. There are a lot of things men can do and it starts young but that doesn’t mean there is every a time not to do something. I saw the origins of these attitudes growing up and I wish there was something I could have done, but it was always expressed by people who had no use for me to begin with. It bothers me to this day, though. The ease with which these proto-rapists would banter about this. And nobody says anything. I hope I would have had the guts to say something if it was a friend of mine express these kinds of attitudes, but I don’t know. I do know that many men who probably don’t feel that way smile and nod. They don’t challenge it. They probably don’t even think much about it.
But men, as a gender, do have to take some responsibility for the way we, as a gender, treat women. That doesn’t mean taking personal responsibility. It means realizing that we need to be a part of the solution. We can’t possibily do that if we want to argue that rape is inevitable and the only thing to do is get women to try to stop it. That’s not a productive solution at all, and it seems to just make excuses for rapists.
So why is it that now the men are only thinking about “extreme” circumstance regarding their ability to rape.
This really chaps my ass. This isn’t about hypothetical ethics. This is about the reality of women, like me, who daily have to make choices to avoid rape… any rape. Not the extreme ethical dilemna type of rape, but your goddamn garden variety it-happens-every-fucking-day to women rape.
Why, why, why are you men so capable of extracting women’s lived realities into hypotheticals? It just seems like a sick twist of the objectification game to me. And it seems immature, to be honest. Rape is not an anomalie. It is not an extreme occurrence, only because it happens so frequently and only because so many men refuse to see the role they play in perpetuating rape.
Look, I concur with Amp and Robert. They’re talking about the heart of darkness that lurks in every man. It is likelier easier not to fall victim to it if you acknowledge, in fact. Those who think they are always acting righteously are the ones who end up SS guards, I’d think.
It’s why there’s torture at Gitmo–the prison guards there are in the raptures of their righteousness post-9/11.
You know what. I find the heart of darkness a very convenient patriarchal excuse. Very convenient.
Amp, re: comment 127, I didn’t mean to enter into the sociology of gang rape and mass rape in ethnic conflict and how it differs from date-rapes in the USA and how it can compare. My “certainty”, when I wrote that “I don’t think the people who committed mass murder and mass rape EVER asked themselves any questions even before they did it”, was simply that they obviously never questioned what they were going to do. The other certainty is: if someone is repulsed by the idea of committing rape, out of a genuine disgust for picturing themselves in the action of harming another person, even aside from morals, then they would not do it, even in the worst of circumstances. I mean, what would change? What benefit would they get? Why should their desire to rape suddenly manifest itself? Because it’s no longer repressed? But that means it must have always been there.
The only situation I could think of where the worst of circumstances can turn you into a rapist is like that experiment, someone literally ordering you to do it even if you you really wouldn’t want to in normal circumstances. And again, that’s a pretty strict condition for an hypothetical question about rape as it manifests itself in ordinary, peaceful, lawful, democratic countries.
QGrrl – What, you don’t have a heart of darkness? You are a remarkable person.
I disagree w/ the “heart of darkness” hypothesis. I believe that it is people who are unable to really look at themselves and their actions who are guards at Gitmo. I don’t acknowledge any “heart of darkness” in myself, yet I would never be a guard at Gitmo. I don’t acknowledge any “heart of darkness” in myself, yet I would never rape.
There is torture at Gitmo because the victims, “…don’t value human life the way that we do.” They are other and different and inferior. It is not because the guards (and their superiors and the folks in charge of the US government) don’t acknowledge their own “heart of darkness”.
Perhaps we need a clear definition of this “heart of darkness.” What is meant by it? And does it ever lurk in woman?
Whew. I am a feminist guy who has just read this whole thread. I agree with Amanda who says
“Sex is fucking a girl who’s fucking you back. And that’s gonna make a lot of men squirm.”
I get this, and I think it’s exactly right. (Well, if you were going to embroider it on a pillow it’s be a “person.”) It just doesn’t make me squirm. Not only does it not make me squirm, but in fact, I can’t really get into the heads of those it would make squirm. This is the source of the defensiveness that comes up with many men. Those of us who get this cannot reach out to the ones it does make squirm. We don’t know who they are. They wouldn’t hang out with us. I certainly don’t know how to reach them, on this, or really any other topic.
Some of the “honest” postings above have been rightfully condemned. Other than adding my voice to the chorus, what can I do?
Yes, it lurks in every woman. And granted, it’s a poetic reference–some things are indescribable in the language of logic.
[shrug] If by “heart of darkness” you mean “fantasy world,” then yeah. I’ve got one. I also can state with absolute certainty that there’s an iron wall between my fantasy world and my daily life at least three or four feet thick. Whether that would break down under a neo-Nazi regime or in a Portland that looked like a bombed-out Iraqi urban center ? I can’t say, but I don’t find it particularly relevant to the original point of the thread. Gilliard went to great lengths to talk about sexual mores in the context of world tourism: A state of leisure and luxury, not a bombed-out near-Armageddon full of traumatized and terrified people desperate for a crust of bread. Going off on what state of mind I’d have to be in to forget or ignore the moral code I believe in is completely besides the point.
Though I will restate my utter creeped-out feeling at jstevenson, and submit that for me, there wouldn’t be enough booze in the world to make me assault anyone while he or she was passed out. :(
Perhaps we need a clear definition of this “heart of darkness.”?
A Christian would characterize it as original sin. Some orthodox Jews would put in terms of a fallen and fractured world, whose brokenness is shared by humanity.
To put it in rationalist and empirical terms, it is the innate selfishness of the biological organism: overridable, but ineradicable. You’ll have to override it again tomorrow; practice may make it easier.
I’m a Christian, albeit not a very good one, so I put it in the Christian terms; I incline to evil, and have to resist that evil with God’s assistance if that isn’t the direction I want my life to go in. I believe that this is true for others, but can speak definitively only of myself. YMMV.
The condemnatory posts appear to be a lot of soup from a little bone. But everyone is entitled to their own point of view.
From Wikipedia:
The Heart of Darkness is what Conrad called a “hidden evil” in his novel Heart of Darkness. The Heart of Darkness is a universal part of the human condition that was first notably used in Conrad’s literature. To be put simply, the Heart of Darkness is a human’s struggle with their own morals, and their own battle with their inner evil. Although first chiefly used in the novel, this device is now used in countless pieces of literature and media, it is an unwritten conventions for almost any piece of art. For example, one of the most notable uses is the Star Wars franchise, with characters always struggling over falling to the Dark Side of the Force. Although slightly exaggerated perhaps in literature, Conrad questioned humanity and proposed the idea that we all, by nature, have a Heart of Darkness, and that idea has existed from the dawn of man.
Whatever. It’s a convenient excuse to ignore reality.
I’m still waiting for some of the guys to step up to the plate of normative experiences for women.
“Sex is fucking a person who’s fucking you back.”
I think I will embroider that on a pillow! Good idea, biztheclown!
Q Grrl, does something being convenient have any probative value in determining whether or not it is true?
tuomas – But I lack the certainty to say that for sure, not because of low notion of self (I like myself at least) but simply because people have done bad shit in extreme situations before. So maybe I should answer: No, I would never rape anyone as I am now , but were I to change fundamentally I might.
Yes, but see, you’ve added another qualification there – if you were a different person. Which means, you can’t picture your actual self doing it.
You’ve just described the reason for this surreal drift from the hypothetical “would I ever do it?”, to the hypothetical “would I do it in extreme situations? of course I can’t know because I’ve never been in extreme situations”. People are assuming external circumstances alone can fundamentally change them from ordinary boring fucker into the next Hitler. A bit egomaniac, perhaps?
Of course in theory anyone could be the next Hitler.
It becomes absurd though. If we all in theory could be Hitler, what makes us ourselves, as individuals?
Plus, again, no one was talking of extreme situations of fundamentally altered personalities a la Dr Jekyll vs. Mr Hyde when they answered the “would I personally do it” question.
God, original sin? Some Christians call that the sin of Eve. Just sayin’.
I agree with noddles that as someone who finds rape very personally repugnant, the only time I could imagine myself doing it is if someone had a gun to my head and order me to under threat of death to myself and to the women. Now, I’m pretty sure if someone puts a gun to your head and orders you to have sex or be killed, that’s rape itself. And I still don’t know that I’d do it. Just that this is a scenario where I can admit that I’m not sure how I’d act.
Still, I do want to stress that while I don’t get why some people can’t see this as unthinkable for themselves, I do feel myself that the people in this thread, at least, are incapable of rape. I just have more faith in that then they do because I’m not as moved by the notion of an unavoidable evil lurking within us. I don’t think acknowledging it makes it easier to hold at bay. I think ignoring the issue entirely isn’t going to do any good, but I feel I’ve considered the issue and I am deeply repulsed at the notion of raping anyone. I find it incomprehensible and I further find men who do rape to be incomprehensible. I think that’s the concern that’s playing out in this thread is that some cannot understand how someone can’t see this issue as being able to have an absolute. I get what you’re saying and I’m not going to condemn you for it, but I also don’t understand it and can see why others are responding as they are.
This thread is really hitting home for me, after having just told the third person in five years about a date rape that happened to me in college.
I was drunk, he was drunk, and we were fighting. We’d had casual sex many a night before that, but this time was very different. This time I didn’t want to, but he won. He won because he was bigger. He won because I couldn’t face the aftermath of telling people what happened, of being blamed for “asking for it,” for leading him on. He won because he was “a good man” and I would be “lying” or “misguided.” He won because I eventually forced myself to forgive him just to give myself some piece of mind.
He tells a very different story. He does not see himself as a rapist, or a bad man. He “does not hit women.”
I don’t know what it means that even though he hurt me I do not identify him as a rapist or a bad man either, but I have an idea.
I think that it is easier for men to say “I could never hit a woman,” or “I could never rape a woman” than it is to admit that yes, they actually could. This is different from saying that you would, or you’re inclined to do so. Admitting that you have the potential to rape is a first step towards erradicating rape – it does not condone it, or make it a “boys will be boys” issue. We all have the potential to harm each other. Some of us have greater potential than others. Pretending that this is not so – DENYING it, claiming that intentionality or fear of punishment is all that matters, that it is somebody else’s issue, somebody else’s crime, somebody else’s theoretical victimhood will not solve our problem.
This thing of darkness we must acknowledge ours – condemning those who are able to do so serves only to keep it deeper buried.
Could I rape? I don’t know. I don’t have the equipment to do it, the conditioning to understand my sexuality as a physical power. Could I assult a child? Yes. I have the conditioning to understand my physical superiority over a more vulnerable creature and the ability to exert it. But I believe that I would not. I like to think that in the future I will not. But I am surrounded by opportunities to do so. It does me no good to pat myself on the back for drawing a line in the sand in the belief that this somehow makes me more moral – because if I do not I force myself to continually acknowlege that there is a power imbalance at work in which I have the advantage.
When a man admits that he could rape or hurt a woman, he is acknowleging his physical and socio-cultural power – with a full understanding of what that entails. He cannot hide behind the fact that rape or violence against women is the work of “other” men, or something unique to individuals in specific situations. It is in him too. He is now a potential rapist who must actively fight against rape. He can not sit idly by and muse about “those others” – they are a part of his gang. Rape is no longer theory. It is a part of his life in a way that it wasn’t before.
Thanks for the definitions, but I’ve gotta agree with alsis and Q Grrl on this.
I’m sorry, Q Grrl, are you saying that, in the real world, people don’t struggle internally with “stop it” and “go ahead”? Haven’t you ever had a situation where you had to stop yourself from following through on an urge to do something that another part of you knew was wrong?
What a few of the guys here have posted is an acknowledgement that they can’t say for sure that they would always win that inner struggle. It creeps me out that they are saying this, but they are not ignoring reality.
Heart of darkness. How come nobody ever wants to talk about the brain of consciousness that makes these decisions? Actually, screw that. How come we’re not talking about the ‘temptation’ of rape? Let’s stop talking in metaphors and internal organs and talk about the real life men they’re in. Blaming it on heart of darkness is just one more way of compartmentalzing it and taking it away from the real live guy who decides to rape the girl from the next dorm room over, secure in the knowledege that as long as he doesn’t use a gun, attack her in an alley, makes sure she’s had a drink or two, nobody will think of blaming him for his own damned actions.
Heart and brains are still just organs. Let’s talk about the man who has control over both of them and uses that control to shove his dick inside another person.
There’s nothing poetic about rape. Poetry, in fact, is about as cruel as you can get in this situation.
Amanda – They’re talking about the heart of darkness that lurks in every man. It is likelier easier not to fall victim to it if you acknowledge, in fact. Those who think they are always acting righteously are the ones who end up SS guards, I’d think.
It’s why there’s torture at Gitmo”“the prison guards there are in the raptures of their righteousness post-9/11.
Oh well that’s a special kind of righteousness, then, isn’t it? And I thought that the prison guards were in the raptures of their government’s complete disregard of all international laws, of an imperialistic mindset that led to two unjustified wars that killed thousands of people, and scapegoating 9/11 on any poor Arab/Muslim fucker who happened to be in the vicinity when they raided Afghanistan, instead of actually pursuing the investigation into which rich Saudi banker financed the operation. But maybe that’s just my flawed impression.
Also, incidentally, they’ve been instructed to do all they do. They didn’t wake up one morning and single-handedly decide to create Guantanamo.
I’m not sure the idea of a heart of darkness lurking in every man quite accounts for all that.
No one’s saying that we are all happy fluffy bunnies with no sadistic desires, Amanda. But it’s quite a stretch to go from saying every human has the capacity to do harm and even more or less occasionally also the desire to do so, to say we all could one day rape or torture, and that we can actually picture ourselves doing it and deriving pleasure from it. Which I thought was the idea of wondering, “would I do it”?
Besides, again, what does Guantanamo have to do with that question? It wasn’t “if I was in Guantanamo I guess I could rape a woman”. It was “if I could get away with it, I don’t know, I can’t tell, but maybe I could do it”.
By the way, I also read Robert’s statement as “I cannot know” and I really couldn’t care less about second-guessing what he might or might not have implied. But it had nothing to do with extreme situations, or government-enforced torture. That was only thrown in later.
In my case, I’m absolutely certain that I’d never rape in ordinary circumstances. So, the way my mind works, if I’m asked if I could ever rape, and I know I’d never rape under ordinary circumstances, I’m not really answering the question if I don’t also address what I’d do under extraordinary circumstances.
I was also trying to make a point that what rapists do is dependent on what their culture says to do. Why do I think that matters? Because, in Rwanda or in the ordinary USA, we have to change the messages we send men and boys if we want to make rape something that’s rare, instead of something that’s common. Individual rapists are to blame for what they did; but at the same time, we have to understand how the society enables them to rape.
It’s not about hypothetical ethics. It’s about trying to understand why men rape and what could make men rape less.
And it’s close-minded at best to imply that the only reason to believe that a “heart of darkness” might exist is a desire to create excuses for patriarchy.
Hell, another way of putting it – and a way I believe – is that the Heart of Darkness is patriarchy. And I don’t think any of us raised in patriarchy ever completely unroots it, although we can do a lot to lessen it.
Actually, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was about British colonialism in Africa, and the marriage of militarism with tribal violence and a one man’s descent into the maddest bits of both. Which was even clearer in Coppola’s adaptation. It’s more political than about an individual battle with morals in any pseudo-christian terms and it’s definitely got nothing to do with Star Wars.
But I’m being pedantic now =)
I’m not excusing it. Just acknowledging it. To my mind, knowing that even you have evil in your heart makes it easier to control. If you don’t think you have a scrap of evil in you, then when an evil impulse comes into your head, you tend to think that it’s right to do it. In fact, that’s exactly what happens with rapes–the guy who does it denies that he acted out of evil and claims the woman provoked him, since women are the evil ones.
“Now, I’ve always been confused as to why a girl would go off with three guys. Was she going to pull a train? Or did she have two spare sex organs for them to use? Because otherwise, that sounds like a really bad decision.”
That quote really bugs me. For many years now I’ve found it easier for me to make new male friends than female friends. (I’m sure there’s some sort of subconcious issue here, but that’s not the point.) Anyhow, when I’m thrust into a new environment, the truth of the matter is, I find it easier to talk to strange guys than strange gals. If I were to show up at a club/party/gathering in another city or country, I might well end befriending males before females. That’s just my nature. Of course, this quote implies that the only reason I’d want to befriend them is so we can have a mad orgy, and that if I’m not interested in such play then I’m some sort of ignorant cock-tease. The original post addressed the absurd fact that statements such as this place the responsibility of stopping rape square in the hands of the woman, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. Obviously, everyone is responsible for his/her own personal safety to a great extent, but this fellow apparently thinks that if I want to make friends but don’t want to screw, I need to stay away from the opposite sex. Bah!
Problem is, I don’t for one minute think it’s the unconscous process that the phrase makes it seem like. Too many guys get too defensive for it to be lurking somewhere in their hearts. They know. They know what they’re doing.
Sorry, handing out passes isn’t going to help anybody.
Robert: perhaps my emphasis should have been more on “excuse” than “convenient”. In this case it’s convenient because some other man has done the thinking for you and coined the phrase.
“Haven’t you ever had a situation where you had to stop yourself from following through on an urge to do something that another part of you knew was wrong?”
No, Lee. I have never had the “urge” to violate the bodily integrity of another human being. Ever. It is beyond my comprehension. Maybe that’s because I know all to well how that violation feels and how it shapes and socializes women.
Rape is not a hypothetical urge and I resist placing it on the slippery slope of historical horrors and how one *might* react.
Amp – Thanks for fixing my Wikipedia link. I don’t know why my links haven’t been posting properly.
“Hell, another way of putting it – and a way I believe – is that the Heart of Darkness is patriarchy. ”
That’s actually what I was trying to say, but obvioulsy failed.
Hmm. Asking the question: “Would I ever rape?” to me, is asking the question about all circumstances, and therefore the question in itself is almost absurd. The question is all-encompassing, and does, to me at least, include ordinary and extreme circumstances. But maybe this is splitting hairs about the issue.
Maybe. But I will do everything in my power to preserve my current self, because I happen to like my current self, and respect my current self (especially on theoretical ethics level) even if I’m seen as a “boring fucker” instead of a cool super-villain. Maybe I am egomaniacal in that respect, but really, egomaniac is not the term I want to be paired with, except as a joke (I try only speaking from my own experience/viewpoint, seldom on absolutes, there is no egomania involved there. There are many, many good comments by other people that I have enjoyed reading, that have IMHO, surpassed my comments, but this is not a competition). I don’t know whether it’s egomania manifesting on Robert or Amp. I would quess not.
Certainly I’m not assuming that extreme circumstances turn me into the next Hitler, or a rapist (btw. can we stop the nazi stuff?), or making an excuse in advance. But I cannot say with absolute certainty what I will be like after 20 years, for example. Hopefully older, happier and wiser mostly. :|
Fair enough, ginmar, but I think acknowledging it is the first step towards prevention. Otherwise you have the excuse-making going on at Gilliard’s place.
Gisele, I’m really sorry you had to deal with that shit. I hope the people you’ve told your story to have at least been receptive, and not anxious to play the kind of games that Kos and Gilliard and too many other men did in their comments elsewhere.
That being said, I don’t think that acknowleding some inner darkness is the same as saying, “I could do that.” I know very well that I *could* beat up small child, burn down my neighbors’ house, what have you. I know that these things are physically plausible. That’s not by any means the same as saying “I *would* do those things if I could be assured that no one could ever catch me and punish me.” Not even close. There is no child or neighbor I can imagine hating enough to ever do something like that, under any circumstances.
Jake, Q, ginmar, noodles, thanks. Sometimes when these tangents really get rolling, I worry that I’m losing my mind. :/
Oh, I cross-posted with plenty of people now. Response was directly to 156 in case anyone wondered.
Q Grrl, actually I have been in a situation where I seriously contemplated violating the bodily integrity of another human being. And I really really had to hold myself back from laying a finger on him. I was shaking and trembling with the urge to castrate him with my bare hands. But I didn’t.
That situation isn’t comparable to rape. We have to change the message men, boys, and the rest of society believe concerning unconsentual sexual contact, and it has to become as ingrained as deeply as not killing or maiming other people. Acknowledging the heart of darkness is one way of approaching this goal, because then we can take it into account.
I don’t believe in giving them any outs. It just draws the process out. It’s conscious, and the most dark thing about it is their denial about what it is and how it benefits them. If we let them keep doing it, we just keep going nowhere. At least we can back them into a corner and hold up a mirror.
I’m so sick of denial and excuses. I had some guy talk about how ‘rape happens’ and he got snitty with me when I pointed out it wasn’t like the weather. I’ve been seeing the same discussion for twenty years; same tactics, same thread drift, and same words. Only time is changes is when you do take a chance and stop letting them deny their actions.
Gotta go, so if I don’t respond to posts for a while, I’m not blowing you off, I’m just not where I can post.
I suppose that what it really comes down to for me now, is that I do not believe anyone who says “Oh, I could never hurt/rape a woman.”
It seems too easy to say. I feel much more comfortable with someone who can say, “Yeah, I think I could. I know that it’s possible, however unlikely, no matter how much I don’t want it to be possible – and so I have to actively try not to make it happen, by not drinking or by not letting myself see women as objects or by not doing any of the things that contribute to rape or violence against women. I have to act. Rape is now MY problem, just as it is a woman’s problem.”
“Oh I could never ____” is a carte blanche to do nothing. This statement makes rape/violence a thing outside oneself, somebody else’s problem. When you talk about rape in such a context, you become either patronizing (“oh, poor victim!”) or condemning (“rapists are evil”) or both. But you will not learn much from such a manner of discourse, because you have no vested interest in the matter. It is not a personal issue for you, as it would be if you viewed yourself as a potential participant.
I’m sorry. I just can’t agree here. The ‘potential’ I have to rape is not something I feel I’ll ever actualize outside of alien mind control, or some other such implausible conditions.
Tuomas, that “boring fucker” and “egomaniac” was a joke and a little sarcastic and it wasn’t even directed at you. It was a dig at that shift in the discussion, that desire to entertain extreme scenarios in which one would suddenly turn into Colonel Kurtz!
There is a bit of fascination with that idea, I think. Hmm.
Oh, and the “boring fucker” was a self-reference! I do feel like a boring fucker after all this talk of how all ordinary men and women have a bottomless heart of darkness they need to keep under control or else they’d all run around opening Guantanamos in their gardens. I have a terrible fear at the bottom of my heart there’s nothing but a desire to watch Eastenders with a good cup of tea and a smoke. I must find myself some truly evil desires and acknowledge them, possibly by paying $400 a month to a Freudian analyst, or I may end up raiding my neighbour’s house and raping his daughters before I even realise it! Yikes!
noodles:
*bit off topic*
I suspected that, but wasn’t sure, and decided to play the game anyway :)
I gave you too little credit, it seems. I was bit worried earlier whether some of my comments that had subtle sarcasm would be taken completely literally, because I try not to get too “jokey” on a rape thread, but I can’t be dead serious all the time either (not that I’m accusing you of any of those either). And considering I’ve spent the whole God damn day on this thread I too feel a bit of a boring fucker. :|
Yeah, what Josh said. I have the PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT to potentially wring someone’s neck, but that’s still thousands of miles away from thinking “I’d strangle so-and-so if I could get away with it, you know for kicks or just ‘cuz I really really hate them.”
If you want a “heart of darkness” revelation, than yeah. Some people I do really hate. But not that much. Nowhere near that much.
But hey, you’re pro-choice, so you can always murder unborn babies and laugh maniacally.
Ugh. That didn’t look too good on the screen. It’s either sleep or back to topic now…
Just in case it wasn’t clear, Tuomas, I really genuinely enjoyed all your contributions along with those of most other commenters and please don’t even think I was calling you an egomaniac or boring or whatever. Sorry if it came across that way!
I think there is whole lot of confusion in this thread between thoughts and desires, theoretical possibilities and actual likely situations from one’s daily life, and good/evil and simple pleasure/harm distinctions.
That being said, I don’t think that acknowleding some inner darkness is the same as saying, “I could do that.”? I know very well that I *could* beat up small child, burn down my neighbors’ house, what have you. I know that these things are physically plausible. That’s not by any means the same as saying “I *would* do those things if I could be assured that no one could ever catch me and punish me.”? Not even close. There is no child or neighbor I can imagine hating enough to ever do something like that, under any circumstances.
Alsis, you took the words out of my mouth. Aside from morals, I don’t think everybody is mentally and emotionally capable of cruelty (or any other emotion, good or bad) in the same exact terms. Some people don’t even want dead animals on their conscience, I don’t think we can say they’re only being righteous or not acknowledging their darkest desires to slaughter pigs and cows and drink their blood, they genuinely dislike the idea.
Tuomas, I hadn’t seen your reply when I posted that…
I gave you too little credit, it seems. I was bit worried earlier whether some of my comments that had subtle sarcasm would be taken completely literally, because I try not to get too “jokey”? on a rape thread, but I can’t be dead serious all the time either (not that I’m accusing you of any of those either).
I didn’t get that impression at all from your posts, in fact, I thought some of my comments may have come off as too long and preachy. Or too snarky. Or both.
And considering I’ve spent the whole God damn day on this thread I too feel a bit of a boring fucker. :|
Heh, I so know what you mean! I just looked at the time…
It’s just the irresistible magnetic force of this blog. It’s all its fault.
noodles:
Thanks, my fragile ego is saved and I don’t have to turn into a MRA. Oh, I think I got the correct impression and to tell the truth this I’ve enjoyed this a lot too.
Gisele:
I appreciete your honesty about your horrible experience, (and I can only hope that stuff didn’t happen in this world we live in, but reality sucks, and work needs to be done to make it suck less, by men us mostly on this issue) and I agree that acknowledging the possibility of being a rapist would probably be a reassuring thing. It does show a certain degree of introspection, while “I would NEVER rape” comes across as a knee-jerk reaction sometimes. Not so when backed with truly credible reasons going beyond “rapists are just sick”, or “I don’t need to rape”.
I am a bit sexist on this issue though (or something), I don’t go very hard on women who say they would never rape, because men are the ones who are taught to be the ones who ought to “get sex”, while women are the ones “possessing sex”, so rapist mentality is generally instilled on boys and men only. And these views, these mentalities, might be quite deep-rooted. It could be also that some men have natural inclination to rape (that’s no excuse, of course), even if that sounds a bit oxymoron.
“men us” no, not that but “us men”. Typo
There is no child or neighbor I can imagine hating enough to ever do something like that, under any circumstances.
But the limitations of your imagination do not prevent your future action.
Some people don’t even want dead animals on their conscience, I don’t think we can say they’re only being righteous or not acknowledging their darkest desires to slaughter pigs and cows and drink their blood, they genuinely dislike the idea.
And I would venture that most of those people would slaughter animals and drink their blood if they were starving, regardless of how abhorent the idea of it is from their comfortable positions of entertaining hypothetical situations. And they would do it because they’d be in a position where they could rationalize that behaviour as being necessary, integral to their survival. The movement from integral to survival to integral to self-identity (gender, cultural), I’d argue, is one of degree, not kind.
Rape is not so simple that one can say “HE would do it, and I wouldn’t”. Men rape. Women rape too, even though we don’t like to talk about it. Women-on-women sexual violence also happens, and so long as we admit that “WE could do no such thing,” I don’t believe we’ll get anywhere. There is a culture of silence in sexual assult around shame and guilt – but we’ve been led to believe that that shame and guilt is the victim’s alone. The perpetrators feel it too – and so long as we create us/them divides around ideas of “evil” and exclusivity, there will not be a dialogue on what leads perpetrators to rationalize rape.
I’m surprised it took as long as it did for someone to point out that Robert’s early statement was just his personal account of his belief in Original Sin. And it was Robert pointing it out.
You want to know what sustains rape culture? Christianity’s a big reason. Why did Eve get kicked out of Eden? She wanted to be powerful in her own right. Why did Adam get kicked out of Eden? He chose Eve over God.
Look through the Bible some time, and notice how often rape is treated as if it were the natural form of sexuality. How many rapes are described? How many times are women portrayed as intrinsically evil? And compare that to the number of times there are descriptions of loving relationships.
What I hate most about religion is that it treats figments of the imagination, the big phallus in the sky, as more important than any actual living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being. And in Christianity, the worst thing you can possibly do is care about another person more than you care about God — because humans are evil and only God is good.
No, Robert wasn’t giving an honest admission of the secret heart of darkness in every man. That attitude is, in fact, precisely the problem: treating other human beings as completely alien to each other, treating all human interaction as battles between enemies.
REgarding the original post, I am very suspicious of men who say men and women can’t really be friends and any woman who thinks so is a fool. When I really think about it, this is about a sexist an attitude as there is. Friendship is a relationship of equality and respect, and these men say that even if I am deluded that some men regard me this way, really there is no way this could be true, and I’m foolish and naive to boot.
“But hey, you’re pro-choice, so you can always murder unborn babies and laugh maniacally.”
Yarrgh. That’s only funny if you live in a country where radical pro-lifers are as rare as hen’s teeth, Tuomas. Maybe they are in Finland. More than once, I’ve been treated on this very blog to graphic, one might almost say lovingly detailed, descriptions of cuddly pre-born babies getting their brains sucked out, faces gouged with scissors, etc. The language would be right at home on one of those websites where slasher/splatter movie fans gather. At least a few radical pro-lifers seem to enjoy reeling that sort of thing out. They seem to enjoy it an awful lot for people who claim to love babies.
noodles, thanks. May I join you in the sad confession that most of my long-playing fantasies also involve kicking back with cool videos and cool beer ? In my case, it’d probably be MST3k and a nice microbrew. Hold the smokes.
Sorry to have drifted the thread, All.
“But the limitations of your imagination do not prevent your future action.”
How so, Gisele ? As I said earlier, it’s entirely possible that in a bombed-out post-apocolyptic wreckage, I’d behave like a different person. But that STILL strikes me as pointless speculation, having little to do with the piece that kicked off this thread. Certainly the assholes that targeted you, or Amanda, were not operating in some post-Apocalyptic mode. The man, or men, who went after that poor girl on her tropical getaway weren’t, either. The hypothetical drunken man who rapes a hypothetical passed-out drunk woman a la’ jstevenson’s earlier post ? Also, I’ll wager, not acting in that mode, since few –if any of us– are posting from such an environment or have experienced it directly.
alsis:
Yes, I had that revelation myself a bit after a clicked submit (and pro-lifers are quite rare here, but they are vicious too, though not to the point of killing doctors). And knowing the kind of shit american women and abortion providers have to put up with your “pro-lifers” does make the comment quite unfunny. My apologies. The comment was tacky.
>>And I would venture that most of those people would slaughter animals and drink their blood if they were starving, regardless of how abhorent the idea of it is from their comfortable positions of entertaining hypothetical situations. And they would do it because they’d be in a position where they could rationalize that behaviour as being necessary, integral to their survival. The movement from integral to survival to integral to self-identity (gender, cultural), I’d argue, is one of degree, not kind.
Rape is not so simple that one can say “HE would do it, and I wouldn’t”?. Men rape. Women rape too, even though we don’t like to talk about it. Women-on-women sexual violence also happens, and so long as we admit that “WE could do no such thing,”? I don’t believe we’ll get anywhere. There is a culture of silence in sexual assult around shame and guilt – but we’ve been led to believe that that shame and guilt is the victim’s alone. The perpetrators feel it too – and so long as we create us/them divides around ideas of “evil”? and exclusivity, there will not be a dialogue on what leads perpetrators to rationalize rape. >>
I think it’s equally important to recognize how strained some of these scenarios are. It’s like the “Well, what if you knew that this particular suspect wasn’t only a suspect but a confirmed terrorist operative–no, um, wait, wait, actually, he’s Osama bin Laden himself!–and he knows the locations of several nuclear devices planted by his followers in major metropolitan areas all over the country! Some under orphanages and petting zoos! And there was no other way to find the bombs in time! And he’s a total wuss, really, just turn on the Christina Aguilera and he’ll fold! Then would you use torture?” argument.
At some point, the “Yes, that could be me,” is utterly meaningless. And at some point, it becomes clear that the arguer is not seeking reasons, but excuses.
Sure, the darkest depths of the human heart &c., but the rapes we are confronted with here and now do not take place in extremis. They don’t involve the snowball effect. They aren’t a result of anarchy or fear. They sure as hell aren’t necessary to the survival of the rapist. They involve perpetrators who live mundane lives. These men are not normal people driven to acts of inhumanity by desperate circumstances, like lifeboat cannibals. They themselves are in entirely comfortable positions.
It isn’t naive to say, “That’s not me,” given that we are actually comparing two people in normal circumstances. It doesn’t really matter whether Robert would commit one sexual assault in order to save Manhattan’s water supply from a drug resistant supervirus. The question is whether, upon encountering a clearly drunk and out-of-it woman by herself at a party, he would help her or hurt her.
Since someone brought up the “but men have uncontrollable sex drives and can’t help themselves!” cliche, I have an answer that’s always worked for me.
Sweetie, that’s why God gave you hands!
Of course you can substitute the deity or belief system of your choice.
See that’s what I don’t get about the uncontrollable desire/temptation theory. Men come equipped with these wonderful appendages that have opposable thumbs and everything. Why not use them?
Amanda, I’m going to “borrow” both Keeper of the Cock and Pussy Oversoul from you (and zuzu). Is it just me or do both of those sounds like characters in an RPG? To recieve the knowledge you need to complete your quest and recieve the secret of life from the Pussy Oversoul, first you must battle the Keeper of the Cock!