Antifeminists tend to be very hung up on blame. According to antifeminists, feminists blame men for all their problems, and feminist men are masochists who enjoy guilt.
My personal experience of feminism ain’t at all like that. I’ve met a handful of feminists who blame men for everything; but the vast majority of feminists I’ve met don’t waste their time with that. Which makes perfect sense. Blaming men would be unproductive for feminism, for several reasons:
- It makes some women and many men who might otherwise be indifferent to feminism – or even willing to listen to feminism – defensive and angry. In this way, blame creates enemies and reduces potential converts.
- It wastes time by paralyzing many pro-feminist men in a useless mire of defensiveness and guilt (trust me, there’s nothing as boring as an hour spent with a guilt-ridden feminist man).
- It blurs the distinction between the Alan Johnsons and the Jerry Fawells of the world (not to mention between the Anita Bryants and the Susan Faludis), by assigning people blame according to their genitalia rather than their actions.
- It deflects attention from the real powers-that-be. If we’re going to blame anyone, I think it makes the most sense to blame the real rulers – CEOs, high political mucky-mucks, Network executives. People who have real power to change society. Remember, although the vast majority of society’s ruling class are male, the vast majority of men aren’t in the ruling class.
That isn’t to say that men shouldn’t be blamed for the ways in which they personally perpetuate male dominance (by not treating daughters and sons equally, by abusing wives/lovers, by holding a female coworker to unfairly high standards, by refusing to do a fair share of housework, by telling sexist jokes, etc…). And it’s true that men do these things far more than women do. Still, some individual women do some of the same things, and some individual men do none of them. Any blame cast should be a matter of individual’s actions and not their genitalia.
If we do make blame a matter of genitalia rather than individual action, that significantly reduces the motivation for individual men to reform or change their actions. If they’re equally at fault no matter what they do, what’s the point?
Judging individuals based on their genitalia, rather than their actions, is not just wrong; it’s antifeminist. It would be like beating people up for pacifism.
I don’t feel guilty for being male. What would be the point? My guilt wouldn’t improve anything. Although I’ve benefited from being male in a male-dominated society, that’s not my fault. The system was in place a hundred generations before my birth; how could I be to blame?
So if we don’t have blame, what’s left? I would say, responsibility.
Although not all men perpetuate sexism, virtually all men benefit from sexism. Virtually all men have in some way gotten gains that we don’t deserve, at the expense of women. And that means that even though we’re not to blame, all men have a special responsibility to support feminism and fight sexism – because we owe women for our unjust gains.
(Ditto, by the way, for White people and anti-racism).
Blame is silly and counterproductive: it gets hung up asking “who made this mess?” Responsibility is productive: it says, “time to clean up this mess.”.
Well, you don’t “have” to do anything. But I don’t have to restrain myself from criticizing the (in my opinion) essentializing and totalizing aspects of what you say, either.
I have never and will never suggest that there’s something wrong with paying more attention to rape than to totalizing statements about men. It’s completely obvious that rape is more important.
However, I think that everything that supports what Sandra Bem calls “the lenses of gender” in the end has an effect of reinforcing our gender system and thus male power. So I think it’s a bad idea for anyone (men or women, feminist or non-feminist) to use language in a way that tends to reinforce and support either essentialism or gender polarization more than necessary..
And I don’t want women defined that way, either.
I guess the difference is that I tend to see the whole thing as a collective system. In the end, we can’t fight and eliminate rape while maintaining and keeping concepts of essentialism or of gender polarization. Individuals should do what compels and makes sense to themselves, of course; but in the long run, the systems are interlocking, not separate, and cannot be solved separately.
Q, that’s coz hating men is just plain wrong whereas hating women, is, gosh, y’know just part of the culture. And we shouldn’t take it all personal-like and should rather be patient and understanding when men say things to us that show how much they hate us. Of course, if WE ever let on that we have even the slightest dislike for men–even if it’s only *certain types* of men–well, all freaking Hell breaks loose, doesn’t it?
After all, if the past couple of weeks here has proved anything, it’s that the onus is on US to prove ourselves worthy of human value (through our civility, proper adherence to accepted terminology, and absolute diligence in avoiding the possibility of causing offence) and NOT on the class of people who are dominating and harming us to sit back, look at themselves and change their own behaviour.
Firs, a shout out to the magnificent women in this thread. Just…wow, and thank you.
I remember in college how my boyfriend’s roommate got into on top of me as I lay asleep in my boyfriend’s bed, and even though I pushed and yelled for him to get off of me, a week later at our building meeting (he was president) he moaned, “Why don’t women like nice guys?”
Like Crys T I have found that “even when women phrase things in a very gentle, generous way, at the slightest hint of any criticism or even suggestion that things might be somewhat, well, unbalanced, most men immediately fly into fits of hysteria.”
I have a dear progressive, bicyclist, environmentalist friend who, despite long talks about my life’s dedication to women, continues to talk about feminism like it’s a disease he’s afraid of catching. I gave his wife the book “The Frailty Myth” for her birthday and since then I’ve had to endure ‘harmless’ quips about how I’m inculcating her to hate men and despise her own husband. It’s not funny, it’s hurtful because even though he couches such comments as jokes I know he’s not entirely kidding about feminism as a disease he’s afraid of his wife catching.
All the years of our friendship, all the late night political debates we’ve had on 1000 subjects, all the book recommendations we’ve shared, and still simply giving his wife a feminist book threatens him to the point I keep hearing about it in half-mumbled comments many months later.
And you know what? When my male partner speaks to him about feminism our friend gives him an ear and the courtesy of not interrupting that I don’t get even though my partner often uses exactly the words, phrases and examples he’s heard me use a zillion times.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Amp, there is nothing essentialist in saying that men rape. Men do rape. It is a cultural thing, not essential. Which is why I’m so pissed off at you men for sitting on your assess over it.
You’re the one’s that treat it as essential. Essentially something that some other man does.
I don’t get the option of a gender lens when it comes to rape. Rape is something that men **do** to women’s bodies in order to bolster a social, gendered hierarchy. Fuck, I don’t even get a gender lens in regards to my own body. Gender is a system. A system of power.
Don’t think for one minute that my critique of men as a class is the same fucking thing as the systematic, culturally sanctioned, gendered oppression of women.
No fucking way.
[that would be the male reversal though, wouldn’t it? to take criticism of men and make it equivelent to the social hatred men hold towards women. Gotcha.]
Wow, that’s complete fucking bullshit.
If that statement is something you’re serious about, rather than just something over-stated in the heat of debate, then I don’t think you have ANY business calling anyone “heartless.”
You look at a nine-year-old child who gets beaten up every single day for years and you have to say “what’s between this child’s legs” before you even know whether you’re willing to say you feel sympathy.
That’s not any kind of feminism I’m willing to sign up for. We don’t have to know what sex a torture victim is to know that they are a victim, and what’s being done to them is evil.
Maybe I am a complete sexist – but I’ve never in my life had to make sure that a victim was MALE before I was willing to give a shit.
“Maybe I am a complete sexist – but I’ve never in my life had to make sure that a victim was MALE before I was willing to give a shit. ”
Because there is a social system of support that gives you that option. It feels like a personal choice to you, something that you’ve arrived at from you own merit. But it is culturally sanctioned, you see depictions in all of our media and entertainment. It is in the Koran, the Bible. Everywhere there is support for your feelings.
What we are trying to say is that there is no reciprical, socially or philosophically sanctioned belief system towards women/girls.
I don’t really see the point in fighting if all men are as guilty as the next. That means that we can’t ever break things down and achieve equality, no?
I guess it depends on how you envision equality. I don’t want a piece of the pie, certainly not an equal piece. ‘Cause the pie is the problem in the first place.
I certainly don’t want to have to wait until we achieve “equality” for men to stop raping women.
The whole “men rape women” thing just seems entirely too vague to me and implicating all men equally in the crimes of some actually makes me feel like my experience of rape is being belittled. It’s not the same thing as a guy who disapproves but isn’t sure what to do about it–the latter to my mind is forgivable and such a man just needs to do more thinking and working through his feelings, the former is criminal.
Actually, I’ve never said or suggested that anyone should be a “manlover.” But that’s another good example of how you like to put words in my mouth and then pretend I’ve ever said those words, or anything like them.
I don’t think anyone should be a womanhater, or a womanlover; or a manhater, or a manlover. As much as is practically possible, people should be judge-people-by-something-other-than-their-sex-ers.
But I don’t think I can explain this to someone who defends the idea that it’s justifiable to need to know the sex of a beaten child before feeling sympathy.
It’s simply not true that women in general “lack the social supports” to know that beating children is wrong regardless of sex; that implies that we’re talking about a society-wide thing, and that’s not true. That kind of thought is a product of a radical philosophy that some folks on the Ms boards espoused, not something shared by all of society. It’s not a philosophy shared by all women, or even by all feminist women.
“But that’s another good example of how you like to put words in my mouth and then pretend I’ve ever said those words, or anything like them.”
I’m sorry if this is what you think I am doing. I am trying to voice how I interpet your words.
“The whole “men rape women”? thing just seems entirely too vague to me and implicating all men equally in the crimes of some actually makes me feel like my experience of rape is being belittled. ”
When rape is used as a social control, it is men raping women.
How would you express it? And why do we have to make rape a personal issue before it is taken seriously and not belittled? It is a social phenomenom that affects all women. Your pain is my fear.
For the record Amp, I don’t think that “little boys” was supposed to be taken literally. It sounds like it hit a bad nerve for you.
You guys have been busy.
Talk with each other about how you assume that none of you have raped … and then see if someone admits to a squicky situation where he’s just not *sure* how the woman might have interpreted it. Ask your friends how rape informs their sexuality ““ from its vast portrayal/suggestion in mainstream media to its frank display in pornography. Ask your friends if they can envision a male sexuality without rape as a cultural backdrop.
… and then just see if a conversation develops.
Comment by Q Grrl … 2/21/2005 @ 1:55 pm
Q, just for you, i got busy last night. One down…..
At this point i think things are beyond my ability to say anything about them but just so that i dont leave here with the complete impression that im an asshole:
“But meanwhile David P can compare his *right* to personal happiness to a fucking video game.
Talk about a disconnect from reality.”
Was in reference to the whole jedi idea of you know…helping people and doing good and all that, in case you didnt know that. Which seems to me to be something of a decent system to strive for, even without the weapons and powers. The idea seems sound to me, regardless of wether it was a video game based ona movie that was made for entertainment purposes, or something more structured like say, the bible.
And as a last qualification, i dont see how i can just blindly trust her any more than you condemed me for blindly trusting my male friends. It is possible to be helpful and supportive without casting judgement one way or the other. But it sounds like unless i immediately cast 100% of my vote to her, i might as well be telling her shes full of shit. i guess the way i see it is, if 1:20 men rape, then 19:20 dont. What kind of friend am i, whats the point of even having friends, if i cant at least consider that they might be part of the 95% that dont?
Well, but I think rape happens any time a woman has sex she doesn’t want. ANY time. Including in marriage. I think lots of women don’t know they were raped until after the fact. I think women can initiate sex that still amounts to rape (because she knows sex is going to be required of her later on so she might as well initiate it and get it over with.) I think those statistics as to rape are centered in men’s experiences and definitions, not in women’s. I don’t think 1 in 20 men rape, I think MANY more than that rape. I would say that most men rape, by women’s, not men’s definitions. And they don’t even know they’ve raped. They don’t get it. Because they are men and privileged under male supremacy and they feel entitled to sex from women.
Which is why men need to get really, really hard on men if anything is going to change. If a man is going to call himself a feminist, he ought to be all about all the ways men violate women — by women’s definitions, not men’s. Meaning if a man says he didn’t rape, there are a whole lot of questions he ought to be asked, and ought to be asking himself.
Heart
It occurs to me btw that we are intepreting the question of “what would i do if a female friend came up to me and said a male friend raped her”. You are assuming that its true because…well because its your question and thered be no point to it if she HADNT been raped.
Unfortunetly, i cant answer the question with the knowledge youve used in asking it. Unless she comes to me with a video tape or something right off the bat, i cant know that it had actually happened. All i have in front of me is a trusted friend who says something happened to her. So thats why i have to reserve a little bit of myself for my other accused friend. Because theres no way for me to know what really happened at that moment in time. Thats what police are for. All i can do is try and comfort her and figure out what the hell to do.
If there was unrefutable evidence right off the bat…id call the police myself. Does that make any difference?
Q Grrl:
Well, it did hit a nerve, but that doesn’t mean I was mistaken. Nor do I think that it’s wrong to have limits. Anyone who thinks that rape is acceptable, in any circumstances, or that sympathy for rape victims should be conditional, is not acceptable in any decent society. And anyone who thinks children of either sex being beaten daily for years is acceptable, or that sympathy for them should be conditional, is also not acceptable in any decent society.
(Of course, many people in our society beleive both these things. But it’s not like I believe that ours is a decent society.)
I had written a post which brought up the concept of “patriarchy hurts men too,” and used the specific example of boys beaten because they’re seen as girlish (in an ironic way, the reason boys are beaten is misogyny).
To that specific post, the reply was:
In that context, it would be a fucking amazing coincidence if “poor little boys” wasn’t meant as a direct response to the poor little boys I brought up discussing PHMT.
However, it’s possible I’m mistaken – coincidences do happen. Maybe “poor little boys” was just a derogatory phrase for full-grown men, as you suggest. If so, I hope Crys will clarify her meaning.
“Unless she comes to me with a video tape or something right off the bat, i cant know that it had actually happened”
What do you do when a friend reports having been the victim of some other crime – mugging, burglary, car theft, etc? Do you require video tape evidence before believing her? And if not, then why the difference?
I guess i lied. I do still have things to say.
“Comment by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff
Well, but I think rape happens any time a woman has sex she doesn’t want. ANY time. Including in marriage. I think lots of women don’t know they were raped until after the fact. I think women can initiate sex that still amounts to rape (because she knows sex is going to be required of her later on so she might as well initiate it and get it over with.) I think those statistics as to rape are centered in men’s experiences and definitions, not in women’s. I don’t think 1 in 20 men rape, I think MANY more than that rape. I would say that most men rape, by women’s, not men’s definitions. And they don’t even know they’ve raped. They don’t get it. Because they are men and privileged under male supremacy and they feel entitled to sex from women.”
Im going to really shove my foot in my mouth on this one but i have to ask….if im out with a chick, and for whatever reason, she feels like sex is going to be required at the end of the night…hell maybe its even my wife, since you mentioned that too…so she climbs aboard and we have sex at her initiation, how the hell can i be held responsible for raping her?
Like, i get maybe that all this stuff you guys have been talking about might make her feel like she has no choice right? But if she never says no…if she willingly starts things and ive got no way of knowing that inside, shes like “i really dont want to do this” than who’s really to blame here? Me, whos just enjoying the night and getting laid and not putting any intentional direct pressure on her other than, im a male and we are out on a date, or her, for just caving into her own internal expectations and not standing up for what she doesnt want to do?
Ive been in situations where ive been making out with girls and even beyond and i could just feel that the vibe wasnt there, even though from where i was, i was way into it and it seemed like she was ready to go all the way. And i stopped and said, hey maybe id better go and left. Some here would say, big deal, thats how it should be, do you want a cookie?
Ideally, i could agree with that. But the way “reality” is, that Q grrl is so fond of, im a goddamn superhero for doing for her what she wouldnt do for herself. Thats how i see it. Regardless of what her vision of what my expectations were of the night, if she didnt want it, all she had to do was say so…or even be less subtle about things.
I realize that sounds really shitty to say, but its like….you want to talk about taking some resonsibility for things? Ive got enough things going on upstairs during a situation like that without trying to set it all aside and look at things through her eyes, which seems like it might be impossible given how much of the female experiance seems to be based around (rightly so) things that i cant ever understand. I NEED her to help me out and do what she wants to do, and speak up when something is going on that she DOESNT want to do. I need all the women to do that. Without that….i dont see how females are taking any control of thier destiny in a situation like that.
“Unless she comes to me with a video tape or something right off the bat, i cant know that it had actually happened”?
What do you do when a friend reports having been the victim of some other crime – mugging, burglary, car theft, etc? Do you require video tape evidence before believing her? And if not, then why the difference?
Comment by Sheena … 2/22/2005 @ 2:34 pm
If my friend lori says that my friend jason stole her car, id probably take the same course of action. The special factor here is that its friend vs. friend.
Friend vs. random person, i have no special interest, nor probably any ability, to pursue the truth myself. If a friend rapes my friend, i dont want to know them. If a stranger rapes my friend…well, i dont know them so theres not much that i can really do to affect things one way or another. thats what the police are for.
In any case, be it friend vs friend or stranger vs friend, that doesnt stop me from providing some default support, a ride to the police station, a ride to the hopsital, listen to what happened, etc. I take the questiont o mean, what do i do personally when something like that happens to someone i know. Obviously if the accused is someone i know, steps must be taken if the accusation is true to rid myself of that person’s presence in my life. If i dont know them…my own required actions are somewhat lessened.
What my raped friend does and what i could council her on doing is a seperate issue and isnt affected by who it was or if i know them.
Yes, but…
If you count up every man in your life that you have had friendly relations with, ever, you’ll have a number much higher than 20. Workmates, family, former friends, people you hung out with in high school and college, guys at conventions, etc…
Are all of them rapists? No, not by any conventional definition of “rape.” But odds are some are.
Look, rape isn’t something only freakishly rare men do. Rape is committed by ordinary men. Some of them may seem fine on the outside, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t harbor, anywhere inside them, ugly streaks of misogyny and entitlement. Maybe not enough to hide in dark alleys waiting to jump out at women – but most rapes aren’t like that. The typical rapist is a date, friend, acquaintance, or husband of his victim.
Do you really think it’s impossible that ANY guy you’re friendly with could have, on a date, just decided somewhere in the back of his mind that he’s too drunk to listen, or that her “no” means “yes,” or that she’s already consented because she didn’t object when he took her shirt off, or….?
Going back to the study I mentioned before, it also found that of those men who reported having used force to make a woman have sex when she didn’t want to, the large majority didn’t think what they had done was to commit rape. Rapists are ordinary guys, by and large – and they have a large capacity to lie to themselves, as well as others.
None of this means that you should assume all your male friends and loved ones are rapists. But I think we should understand that rape is something that ordinary men do. And if we want to change it, we have to change the way that all men think and are raised.
I think it would be a very unusual person – woman or man – who could have their much-loved brother or husband or son or best friend (if he’s male) accused of rape and not hold open the possibility that he’s innocent, especially if they’ve never seen him act abusively or aggressively. But real rapists have best friends and spouses and siblings too, none of whom want to think that their loved one is a rapist. Just because he’s someone we love, can’t justify assuming that the rape story isn’t true. Ordinary, nice guys sometimes commit rape.
(I’m not assuming you’d disagree with what I’m saying; I’m just bouncing off what you’ve said, not necessarily debating.)
If you count up every man in your life that you have had friendly relations with, ever, you’ll have a number much higher than 20. Workmates, family, former friends, people you hung out with in high school and college, guys at conventions, etc…
Comment by Ampersand … 2/22/2005 @ 2:48 pm
Im not counting those people. If i did, id probably have to hide at home, because you are certainly right But thats my own personal limitation on who i consider friends and whom im friendly with. Im mostly considering the 5 guys and 2 girls that ive known for the last 14 years, which for the most part, are pretty much the entire roster of “friends” ive ever made.
I dont disagree with you at all amp. But it sounds to me, like I said, that Q grll is saying im either in with her 100% or i might as well spit in her face. And i cant agree with that kind of logic.
And i cant agree with that kind of logic.
Comment by David P. … 2/22/2005 @ 2:54 pm
…right now. Unless someone changes my mind. Thats an important PS. I think.
I don’t, unless you’re defining “want” very broadly.
Rape is something men do; rape is overwhelmingly committed by men. Defining rape in a way that a woman can be raped regardless of what the man she was having sex with said or did puts the onus on the woman, not on the man. I don’t think that makes sense.
Well, it depends on what “required of her” means. If it means that she initiates unwanted sex because she doesn’t want to hear her husband whining about not having sex later, then I don’t think that’s rape. If she initiates unwanted sex because she knows that if she doesn’t have “consensual” sex, he’ll force her, then that still amounts to rape, imo.
I don’t think there is such a thing as “women’s definition of rape.” By which I mean, there is no consensus among women about what rape means.
Many, probably most, women in our culture would not agree that “rape happens any time a woman has sex she doesn’t want. ANY time..” That’s an unusual point of view.
“You look at a nine-year-old child who gets beaten up every single day for years and you have to say “what’s between this child’s legs”? before you even know whether you’re willing to say you feel sympathy.”
Give me a break: that 9 year old child is going to have a much better chance at getting out of that situation than the little girl who sits beside him in class–ONLY because of what they, respectively, have got between their legs, and you know it.
“Maybe I am a complete sexist – but I’ve never in my life had to make sure that a victim was MALE before I was willing to give a shit.”
You know, enough of the drama and attempts to make me in The Devil, please. You were the one going off on the PHMT tangent….and, btw, throwing in bits about little boys getting beaten in order to detract from the discussion on why exactly all men should take responsibility for MALES raping FEMALES hasn’t gone by unnoticed. Why the hell is it that there can never be a discussion of how shittily men in general treat women in general without some guy crying PHMT? And of course, the fact that there is one little boy out there getting treated like shit is an excuse for the men to shrug off, or minimise, or just flat-out not deal with the horrendous shit THEIR CLASS perpetrates on *countless* females every single day. And *I* am the Evil One here? Give me a break.
“I hope Crys will clarify her meaning.”
You want me to clarify? Well how about this: Every single time women get angry about shit men do, some man has got to come forward with some sort of PHMT example. And that blows. It’s a way for you to minimise your discomfort in dealing with the fact that you belong to this privileged class that commits atrocities. And you expect us all to immediately back down, lavishing compassion on all those poor little boys who are hurt by patriarchy, while, yet again, the much larger percentage of little girls who are being hurt are marginalised, *their* suffering shunted aside so we can all make a big deal over the little boys. That sucks, and I’m not going to do it anymore. Someone has got to stick up for the little girls first, and I don’t care if you think that makes me Satan Incarnate, that someone is going to be me.
You know, all this gender-blindness has just reminded me of the whole “colour-blindness” malarkey, whereby certain people insist that the colour of a person’s skin should never be made an issue. Of course, on the surface, this looks like a sensible, even laudable point. But the fact is that it is really a tactic that obscures the very real significance of race in our society. Yet again, this is the old “equal treatment” myth, that only goes towards favouring the already powerful. Of course, men are going to be the first to insist that “it’s not what between your legs that matters,” because they are the ones who are benefitting the most from a system that in fact judges each and every human being’s basic worth by just that criterion…so of course they are going to deny that it does in fact have signifcance. Much like white people who go round insisting that skin colour is irrelevant.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has this to say about it:
http://www.tamu.edu/univrel/aggiedaily/news/stories/01/050301-4.html
“A new racial ideology has emerged that, in contrast to Jim Crow racism – or the ideology of the color line – avoids direct racial discourse but, nevertheless, effectively safeguards racial privilege,” says Bonilla-Silva.
He says colorblind racism is a less overt expression of racial resentment, often taking form in what seems to be plausible rationalizations about a variety of race-related issues.
“It’s a type of racetalk and behavior that is hard to identify,” he notes. “In fact, many of the people who are acting in this manner aren’t even aware of it because it has become the dominant framework for dealing with racial issues.
“It can appear – even to those acting this way – to be embedded in compassion, and that makes it hard to confront because the first part of fighting racism is confronting it on a moral level,” he explains.
————————————————————-
And that is the point: as long as you’re in the dominant group, insisting that “X shouldn’t be relevant”, when in fact X is exactly that thing that is giving you your social power, then you are avoiding that moral confrontation because you are avoiding, in a very real way, facing head-on exactly what it is that puts you in that dominant position.
Though I would never want to claims an absolute one-to-one perfect fit between any 2 social phenomena, looking over some of the colourblind racism stuff has been seriously striking chords.
OK, all of the women who have participated here and been frustrated by the lack of understanding that the men on this thread have been showing, take a look at these quotes, taken from an article called A Black British View: ‘Colorblind discrimination’ – the new racism? by Clare Xanthos, and see if you don’t find at least something there that seems awfully familiar:
“If this colorblind philosophy takes hold…it could be argued that the denial of racial discrimination will become further entrenched, and consequently, hidden or subtle racism will become unchallengeable…
“this form of racial bias essentially involves white individuals discriminating against blacks without revealing their true motive. This type of discrimination often requires the collusion of other individuals with the perpetrator; other whites conveniently ignore acts of bias, so long as nobody verbalizes anything in racial terms. For example, whites may have racist emotional reactions to blacks, and then personalize their racism by attributing their unease to some factor other than race, often blaming the black individual for some personal failing. Whites also often systematically misinterpret blacks’ behavior in negative terms. Thus while they might regard an outspoken white person as an “extrovert,”? they may perhaps label a similar black individual as “aggressive”…
“Hidden racism is very much about ‘adding insult to injury’ since one is subject first, to the discriminatory act itself, and second, to being prevented from labeling it…
“Ultimately, making racial bias unmentionable is its own oppression; it is merely another form of social control of black people in the contemporary world.”
Many, probably most, women in our culture would not agree that “rape happens any time a woman has sex she doesn’t want. ANY time..”? That’s an unusual point of view.
Sometimes women have sex they don’t want, and says you, it isn’t rape.
Wow.
Heart
Damn!! I somehow managed to cut myself off again!!
Anyway, you can find the article I got the above quotes from at http://www.blackcommentator.com/86/86_guest_black_brit_pf.html
Also, it’s past midnight for me, so I’m going to bed. Therefore, if I fail to respond to anyone, it’s not because I’m bitchily ignoring you.
And Amp, reading your definitions, as a white man, of rape, and your interrogations of my definitions, and your pitting woman against woman as TO definitions, is really, really creepy.
No man gets to say what rape is or isn’t. That belongs to women, and women only, even if we don’t agree. If we don’t agree, then we’ll work that out amongst ourselves. Here’s where you, as a man, need to really just stop talking and start listening. Because what you are writing here is not good at all.
Heart
It also depends on what is meant by “sex she doesn’t want”. That’s a damn broad category. It ranges from “gee, I’m not really in the mood but he was so sweet today and he’s so horny, aw what the heck,” all the way up to the most horrible of coercions.
As you say, rape is something that men do. On the other hand, a woman’s perception is also real. I can certainly envision a scenario where a woman thinks she’s been raped and a man thinks not; my inclination there is to side with the woman.
Sorry, Heart. If you want what you say to be immune from questioning by men, then I suggest you go to an all-female forum and say it there.
But if you’re posting on my blog, then don’t demand that anyone will say something – or not say something – based on what sex they are. And don’t expect anyone, male or female, to agree with you just because you’re a woman, regardless of if what you’re saying makes sense. That’s not the ideology this blog runs on.
And yes, if a woman has (or, in your example, initiates) consensual sex when she didn’t want to in her heart (maybe she’s just doing it to be nice, maybe she’s doing it because she feels obliged, maybe she gave in to non-violent begging) – but there is not physical force, or a threat of physical force, or any form of coercion – that may be a bad idea. And it may even be abusive. But it’s not rape as most people – male or female, feminist or otherwise – understand the term.
Actually, I’m saying it isn’t necessarily rape. Some unwanted sex is obviously rape; but some, as in my example above, is not. Not as most people define and understand the term.
No man gets to say what rape is or isn’t. That belongs to women, and women only, even if we don’t agree. If we don’t agree, then we’ll work that out amongst ourselves. Here’s where you, as a man, need to really just stop talking and start listening. Because what you are writing here is not good at all.
Heart
I can see why you would want to reserve the creation of a “rape” definition for women only, but obviously, theres a complete lack of consensus as to what it actually is, or there would be a definition someone could point to as “the one”. So maybe with the assistance of some men who have a better understanding of things than most men (probably not me), you know, two minds are better than one….
anyway, I still dont see how its reasonable to say that if a woman initiates sex for any number of reasons that arent based on me threatening, coercing or beating her into submission, im responsible for raping her when there is nothing for me to base that on. I agree that if a woman is forced to have sex because of the male priviledge “i cant say no” thing or whatever, its wrong and sad and needs to not happen, but did I rape her in that senario if i dont threaten her with physical violence or coercion? Or did she “rape” herself? At what point can I expect a little help in determining if we are both firing on all thrusters?
Heart, you are blurring the distinction between consent and desire. Hell, you can want it really bad and then halfway through think, “Damn, this sucks,” and just sort of peter out and let it go. That’s hardly rape. I agree that women sometimes feel pressure to have sex for reasons other than gotta have it now desire, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t consenting, initiating, whatever. Men have sex when they’d rather be doing other things at times, too.
Blurring the distinction puts rape victims in real danger, too, of not being believed. If it’s widely believed that sympathy fucking, faking orgasms or exchanging sex for money or favors of your own free will is the exact same thing as rape, then rape becomes a non-criminal activity. If you go to the police and say that you are raped, they are already inclined to believe that you are reporting “bad” sex instead of non-consensual sex. They don’t need any further excuses, like being able to point to bona fide feminists who equate a fake orgasm and being beaten into submission.
I must say, while Q Grrl and Heart have not yet fully convinced me of their views, they are quite tempting. After all, they virtually absolve me of all responsibility for my own character failings. If, as most people might say, 25% of people are jerks, 50% are normal, and 25% are good guys (leaving aside the fact that we’re all sometimes good guys, even if we’re usually reprehensible, and we’re all sometimes jerks, even if we’re usually good) then being a jerk is a cause for shame, and bieng a good guy is a quite reasonable aspiration. If, however, the overwhelming majority of my gender class are jerks, and decent folks are a tiny, all-but nonexistent subset of it, like billionaires, then aspiring to be a decent person is a thoroughly unreasonable aspiration. I don’t really scheme about becoming a billionaire, because it’s something that is almost certain not to happen, but I do think about building a new computer to replace my six-year old 500 Mhz Dell. I think I have a reasonable shot of doing so, after all, whereas I don’t think I have a reasonable shot of being a billionaire. If morality is something that is basically unachievable for the overwhelming majority, why should I waste my time thinking about how to be a decent guy?
It’s a tempting point of view for an entitled man who would find it so much easier not to try to take responsibility for any of his own character faults and shortcomings. Q Grrl and Heart haven’t convinced me yet, but it’s a liberating thought.
“Because you know, in my experience, even when women phrase things in a very gentle, generous way, at the slightest hint of any criticism or even suggestion that things might be somewhat, well, unbalanced, most men immediately fly into fits of hysteria.”
This really struck me. I almost hesitate to say this, because I don’t want to sound like I am gender/power blind. However, I can’t stop thinking about how it would make me feel if I read the same statement with the genders reversed (the use of the word “hysteria” notwithstanding, of course). I am not saying that we can never say things about men that we would never want said about women, but this just seemed like a particularly objectionable generalization. My experience has been quite different, but them again , I tend to speak only to feminist males as much as humanly possible. : )
Which makes me want to ask you a question, Samantha. If it is too personal or too impolite for me to pry, by all means tell me so. But I am wondering. How is it that you, such a strong femininst, has a friend that is anti-feminist? How can you stand it? I have had friends from childhood that were hard to give up, but give them up I did, due to their anti-feminist views. Perhaps you are just much more tolerant and forgiving than I. I just couldn’t call anyone who was antifeminist a real friend. I can talk to non-feminists on the internet, I can deal with the sexists jerks that I encounter on a regular basis in the public arena, but if I find out that a friend is not a feminist, they are no longer a friend. I can’t interact in a trusting and personal manner with a non-feminist. Please don’t think that I am judging you, Samantha. I actually admire you for your tolerance. I am just very curious.
So, Crys, is it your opinion that when Eduardo Bonilla-Silva talks about colorblind racism, he means that it’s racist for white people to suggest that a child who is beaten up every day deserves sympathy regardless of the child’s race?
Nothing he said in that article supports that reading.
Clare Xanthos defines “colorblind”? ideology as “the notion that race is no longer an issue in contemporary America.” The parallel to that would be a man who argues that sex and sexism are no longer issues. I don’t argue that sex and sexism are no longer issues in contemporary America; on the contrary, I frequently argue that sex – and, in particular, male privilege and gender injustice towards women – are essential issues in contemporary America.
And, again, I very much doubt that Ms. Xanthos would say that before she can feel sympathy for a beaten child, she needs to know that the child is black, which would be the analog to the view you’re defending here. Of course, there’s no way to know for certain, but I don’t see any support for that view in the article you linked.
For the record, I’m certainly against “genderblind” ideology if that means being against affirmative action, or pretending that men and women live in an identical context in all of society, or ignoring the many ways women are disadvantaged, or pretending male privilege doesn’t exist.
However, to say that not being “genderblind” means that we should judge people first and foremost based on their sex – so that we can’t even feel sympathy for a beaten child unless we can first determine that she’s a girl – is ridiculous.
So that makes it NOT a problem that he’s beaten every day?
Actually, the PHMT wasn’t a tangent; it was part of an argument showing that black/white and female/male are not exactly analogous, in ways that are relevant to this discussion.
I’ve never said or implied that because PHMT that means that men shouldn’t take responsibility for rape; and I have frequently said the opposite (pretty much every time I’ve ever mentioned PHMT). Thank you for making up fiction, though.
Far from saying any of that nonsense, I explicitly said the opposite.
You’re arguing for an ideology (which isn’t what I’d call feminism) which says that before we can feel sympathy for a beaten child, we have to make sure he’s not male. If I thought you were willing to apply that ideology in the real world, then yes, I’d call that evil.
I think it’s sad that you think showing sympathy for a beaten little boy – or at least refraining from arguing against sympathy for him – is the same thing as backing down. I think you’re mistaken about that; neither sympathy nor suffering are zero-sum games.
Nor do I think that acknowledging that a beaten boy suffers and deserves sympathy requires ignoring, minimalizing or shunting aside what happens to girls and women.
[Comment edited by Amp to clarify one badly worded sentence a minute after the initial posting.]
Um, you know there are a LOT of men who know EXACTLY what it means to be raped by a man. They also know EXACTLY what it means to revictimized by a society that laughs about the crime and shames and blames the victim. Is it okay if THESE men get to define what happened to them, or are they out of the loop because they are, after all, just men?
“I think it’s sad that you think showing sympathy for a beaten little boy – or at least refraining from arguing against sympathy for him – is the same thing as backing down. I think you’re mistaken about that; neither sympathy nor suffering are zero-sum games.
Nor do I think that acknowledging that a beaten boy suffers and deserves sympathy requires ignoring, minimalizing or shunting aside what happens to girls and women.”
I have a different read on that situation, but anyway, welcome to our reality. That any time women discuss or bring up the issue of rape and how it as a tool oppresses them individually and as a class, historically and in the present, all over the globe and in the household, it always comes to be: What about the men? What about boys? THAT is what is being objected to, by several feminists here. NOT that it isn’t a bad thing at all. Does any woman here think that rape and abuse of young boys is a great thing? Do they think it’s horrible(after all, maybe some of these feminists have sons of their own)?
Okay, that’s established, let’s move BACK to what this discussion was about, the rape of WOMEN by MEN. Because whether or not, you’re dialoguing with antifeminist men or pro-feminist men, the strategies used by both are the same. Maybe by antifeminists, it’s more intentional, but it still happens with men holding vastly different views on feminism. Not all men, because some of them can sit back as Heart said, and LISTEN(which doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions, but Hearrt wasn’t the recipient of questions as much as criticism of her comments sometimes in the form of rhetorical questions}
As for Hearrt, guess she’s not anyone’s “nice” feminist anymore. Damn shame too. Because whether I or you or anyone agrees with her or not, she has been fairly patient and civil(by anyone’s definition)with men here, not bad considering early on, one said she didn’t seem “too bright.” She’s the same person who was so richly complimented by men here only a week ago.
I agree that if a woman is forced to have sex because of the male priviledge “i cant say no”? thing or whatever, its wrong and sad and needs to not happen, but did I rape her in that senario if i dont threaten her with physical violence or coercion? Or did she “rape”? herself? At what point can I expect a little help in determining if we are both firing on all thrusters?
David P. I think you’ve asked a very good question.
Just to get antecdotal for a moment:
Say I am in a relationship (as a female) with a man of my own age, class, “power” etc. Suppose we have sex and either during or aftewards I decide this isn’t working for me, that sex is not what I wanted that relationship to go into (for religious or any other personal reason). This first sex act has damaged my perception of self, similar to how a rape might.
So it is discussed (afterwards), and agreed upon between the partners in the relationship that there will be no more sex. Except the following week, things get carried away again and we have sex again, further damaging my self-esteem.
Is the first situation rape? Is the second?
I’ll put on my armchair psycologist hat and put forward a couple of interpretations. The first is almost certainly not rape, unless something DURING the initial sex act was said clearly (like “stop, I’m not sure”). It is damaging, but certainly not criminal rape.
The second situation is more akin to rape, but still probably doesn’t fall under the legal definition of rape. It involves a more wilful, deliberate ignorance of the man’s part of the females stated desires. However, that is NOT the same thing as rape. It is probably closer to abuse, but not rape.
“think it’s sad that you think showing sympathy for a beaten little boy – or at least refraining from arguing against sympathy for him – is the same thing as backing down. I think you’re mistaken about that; neither sympathy nor suffering are zero-sum games.
Nor do I think that acknowledging that a beaten boy suffers and deserves sympathy requires ignoring, minimalizing or shunting aside what happens to girls and women.”
Has anyone here supported the abuse or rape of men and young boys? No. Do we think it’s a terrible thing? Of course! Many women do have sons, brothers, and male friends and SOs.
That said, it’s common for women to discuss rape and all the ugliness it entails in ways that makes men uncomfortable, because women are not exonerating men as a class from responsibility. Then, what happens are the words, what about men who are raped? And then what about boys? Then you see more visceral emotion in response from the men than you ever did during the more dry, intellectual discussions of the rape of women. Then it’s women who are inhibiting men’s discussion about their own sexist oppression and how patriarchy hurts men too.
Acknowleging that abuse or rape of the male gender is wrong, or bad, is one thing, but using it to divert discussion of the abuse and rape of women when it starts getting uncomfortable is another. And whether it’s antifeminist men or profeminist men, that happens a lot in these kinds of discussions. WHY?
If there was a thread on men and rape, and a woman started talking about women who were raped, she would be told that she was speaking off-topic and told to start her own thread or post elsewhere about women and rape, b/c the discussion was of men and rape. Well, on this thread, it’s whether men are to blame for sexism(paraphrase) and the issue of rape used as a sexist tool of oppression against women as a class was inevitably raised as it would be in most feminist discussions of this same topic.
As for Heart, I guess she’s not a “good” feminist anymore and she’s been ordered back to the same space that was defended on another thread. But Heart, whether you, I or anyone agrees or disagrees with her, is the same person she was, when she was “good” last week. And she came onto a thread, where some one said she didn’t seem all that smart and still was patient and interested in dialoguing with people. What’s changed? She stepped outside the comfort zone. Every feminist and I dare say, every woman has been in her shoes. Good, one moment, bad the next. Welcomed, then told to go to a women’s only space, because she dared ask men to LISTEN to what women say, rather than speak first on women’s issues(like patriarchy teaches)
Sorry if that post was a repeat of the one above it, which wasn’t there when I started writing the second post.
QGrrl and CrysT, I am curious and concerned how I’ve “bought into the male mindset” for attempting to make the distinction between a reaction to gossip and reaction to a criminal accusation.
I am fully aware that in the case of my friend and the misuse of the word molest, that it was him using the wrong word for what he was trying to express. In the situation I described, it was very much a “cry wolf” scenario.
Now please keep in mind that I 100% agree that there is a culture of skepticism and disbelief and minimization when it comes to rape and accuastions thereof. But I was trying to make a distinction that I felt was important, not “buy into” the supposedly male mindset. Gossip and accusations of criminal acts are not equivalent. No rational person would ever treat them the same. If Lisa says “Bob’s a nice guy, but he’s really boring in the sack.” this should in no way be treated the same as “Bob’s a nice guy, but when he wants sex, I’m scared he’ll hurt me if I say no.”
“Only women should be allowed to define rape. Rape is something that men do to women.”
“What about men who get raped by men?”
“Why are you changing the subject again?”
Not only is mentioning abuse little boys and raped men relevant to specific claims made previously in the thread, it is also generally relevant to discussions about how the partiarchy oppresses women. When effeminant boys get beaten up on the playground by “tough” bullies or gay men get raped in prision by strait men, saying PHMT is only part – and probably the less important part of the point. The systemic purpose of these acts of agression is to enforce the gender roles that opress women, and keep men in line who threaten the system that oppresses women. If the nerdy and gay men who are victimized by this behavior are blamed equally with those who attack them, this ignors a huge method by which patriarchy uses violence to maintain the oppression of women.
Acknowleging that abuse or rape of the male gender is wrong, or bad, is one thing, but using it to divert discussion of the abuse and rape of women when it starts getting uncomfortable is another. And whether it’s antifeminist men or profeminist men, that happens a lot in these kinds of discussions. WHY?
If there was a thread on men and rape, and a woman started talking about women who were raped, she would be told that she was speaking off-topic and told to start her own thread or post elsewhere about women and rape, b/c the discussion was of men and rape. Well, on this thread, it’s whether men are to blame for sexism(paraphrase) and the issue of rape used as a sexist tool of oppression against women as a class was inevitably raised as it would be in most feminist discussions of this same topic.
Bingo, radfem.
The other problem with discussing violence against men and boys is EXACTLY the fact that in these discussions, it does invariably become a plea for exoneration of the very man (or men) who brought up the whole issue in the first place. How does being used in such a fashion help the case against violence toward men and boys ? It’s a diversionary tactic, a tactic meant to produce paralysis in women, pure and simple.
Was the whole point of this thread exoneration ? Well, forget it. I don’t have the power to exonerate every man, friend or foe, who crosses my path. Just as I don’t have to power to witthold exoneration. So if that’s the main goal of this whole discussion, I’d say that it’s a futile goal.
Also, enough with the acusation that women who hold men accountable as a class for rape and violence against women are being too “essentialist” or “reductionist” or whatever. Amp, for the love of NOTA, YOU started a thread called “Should Men Be Blamed.” NOT “Should Kobe Bryant Be Blamed, not “Should Roman Polanski Be Blamed” and not even “Should That Guy I Saw Last Week At the Bar Shoving A Woman Toward His Car Be Blamed ?” YOU framed the discussion IN an “essentialist” fashion yourself. Why are you (and others here) surprised that this is the fashion that at least some of the women responded in ?
I think lots of women don’t know they were raped until after the fact. I think women can initiate sex that still amounts to rape (because she knows sex is going to be required of her later on so she might as well initiate it and get it over with.)
Heart, I’m astonished that you would take this view. Even if you used “rape” to mean acts you’d just like to eradicate in addition to acts you want to punish with jail time, why would you blur the distinction between the two? What do you think that accomplishes?
Y’all make an interesting point about burden of proof between friends, though.
Amp, your (or any man’s) arguing with women as to our definitions of rape is no different from your arguing with a black person, or a person of any racial minority ,about whether or not someone’s behavior was racist. You don’t know. They do. Even if they agree among themselves, they STILL do. I really doubt you’d do that here, even though these are “your boards.” You would respect people of color in a way you clearly do not respect women. You don’t. It’s just obvious.
It’s like Portia said elsewhere, so insightfully, something l ike, you want to speak on behalf of feminism but you don’t want to listen to women. Kinda like the preacher who says he loves the church, it’s all those people he can’t stand. Same difference.
Women defining rape absolves men of nothing. Women defining rape puts men on notice that they better be abso-fucking-lutely positive there is no coercion in the sex they are having with women, because if she says there was, there was. Full stop. Nobody is going to be interested in all of your bullshit and baloney and “I thought.” Buy a clue. Under male supremacy women put out to SURVIVE. And men like to pretend that isn’t true because, truth be told, there are billions of men on this planet who do not give one single rip whether a woman wants sex or not. They’re satisfied with the use of her body, her soul, her spirit, her mind, her heart, her human dignity are *meaningless* to them. And if that weren’t so, there would be NO such thing as men prostituting women.
And no, this has not a goddamn thing to do with “desire” and deciding in the middle of fucking that it’s for shit. This has to do with women defending the boundaries of their physical bodies, with women being the last word on whether or not what was done to them was something they wanted or not. The last word. The very last word.
Well, fuck it. I am really really angry right now.
Heart
“How is it that you, such a strong femininst, has a friend that is anti-feminist? How can you stand it? ”
It’s a good question and one I struggle with sometimes too. I haven’t lost good friends specifically to anti-feminism but I have certainly bruised some friendships along the way, and some of those took a great deal of time to heal but because we cared for each other like family and respected each other for so much more than this one thing, both friendships and resultant scars stay.
I guess it depends on how antifeminst is too antifeminist, because I do activism besides feminist-issue concerns and value the connections I’ve made with people who are mostly likeminded. My male friend is progressive in many typical NW ways and while we get into fierce (flames of hell fierce) arguments, I do a good enough job explaining my feminist positions and how I came to adopt them that I see small changes in things said and arguments made over time. This male friend has come a long way and has on occassion defended certain feminist positions to other men in our company, but he’s still a 50-something year old privileged white male NW hippie and I try to accept that about him while working to change his mind. Very, very few men get the time from me Ralph gets, but he also considers my partner and me close like family and comes over to drink beer and listen to me speak about women, which I do voluminously, and he keeps coming back for more.
I think this is interesting:
“I can talk to non-feminists on the internet, I can deal with the sexists jerks that I encounter on a regular basis in the public arena, but if I find out that a friend is not a feminist, they are no longer a friend. I can’t interact in a trusting and personal manner with a non-feminist.”
It’s true this friend is not as intimately close to me as my women friends, but even among my closest women friends there are only a few who see truly where I’m coming from with my particular brand of feminism. Some older friends just aren’t political and I deal with that whole bucket of goo when around them because activism is where my life has taken me to, but even some current feminist friends don’t fully get why I work to have prostitution recognized as the crime against women’s right to sexual autonomy I believe it to be.
I can’t make rules like “can’t be a porn user” because at one time that was me, and I’m tremendously grateful Heart took the time to write her truths on the Ms boards because that’s where I got the beginnings of my vocabulary to speak about that funny feeling I started to feel more intensely in my gut when I went to strip clubs. I suppose everyone has to determine which rules are deal breakers, and in the process of writing this I can’t think of any anti-choice friends of mine, but I keep speaking what I believe to be the truth about what I know, educating myself on the issues important to me so I can be as good an advocate as possible, and keep trying to explain how I came to be convinced of what I believe to people I hope are at least partially receptive. What more could I do?
Omar, a lot of women are raped, but don’t call it rape because they knew their assailant, they weren’t beaten, they were drunk, etc. I’ve got several friends who described rapes to me (as in, “I was passed out and woke up to find this guy fucking me” or “I told him to stop but he didn’t listen and just did his thing” or “We were having sex and he wanted to do X but I didn’t and he made me do X anyway”) but wouldn’t say they were raped. They were traumatized, but they didn’t call it rape.
And?
I said a week ago that Heart was so obviously and overwhelmingly intelligent that it was laughable that someone suggested that she’s not bright. I stand by that. Earlier today, I praised highly a post of hers on this thread, and I stand by that too.
You seem to have this idea that when I agree with Heart or say that she’s smart and says admirable things, I’m saying she’s a “good” feminist, and when I disagree with her and say why I think her arguments are wrong, I’m saying she’s a “bad” feminist. That’s nonsense. As you say, she’s the same person. But just because I agree with and praise Heart on some occasions, doesn’t mean that I’m obliged to agree with her on every occasion, or that when I disagree with her I’m saying she’s “bad.”
For the record, I think Heart is incredibly smart, a great writer, and I have never and would never question her feminism. But she and I have radically different views, and I’m going to keep on disagreeing with her, just as she and I have always disagreed passionately on most things for many years. I’m really sorry that you see this as me calling her a “bad” feminist, but I’ve never said and never thought that. I’ve always disagreed highly with Heart, and – apart from sometimes in the heat of argument – I’ve always admired her and said so. I don’t think this is going to change, frankly.
If a black person came here and said “Any time a white person talks to a black person and the black person feels bad about the encounter, that’s an incident of racist abuse. ANY time.” then I certainly would disagree with that, and say so. I don’t think that being non-racist – or non-sexist – means deferring mindlessly to anything anyone female or black says. On the contrary, such an attitude would be racist (or sexist) in and of itself.
As usual, the politics of personal denunciation. No matter what’s being discussed, you have to turn it into a personal attack on the character of anyone who disagrees with you.
Look, if I thought there was the faintest chance that you would ever give me, my character, or my personality a fair hearing, then maybe I’d take your criticism seriously. But since you made it clear years ago that you will never do that, you’ve long ago lost any credibility with me, when it comes to your many denouncements and personal attacks on me. (I sitll find you highly credible on other topics, of course.) Since you’ll denounce me as a misogynist no matter what I say or do, I can’t take that judgement from you seriously. So it’s kinda pointless for you to go there.
(My guess is that you’ll say I’m only saying that because you’re a woman. Wrong. I don’t take Rich Leader’s opinion of me seriously for exactly the same reason, for example.)
You’ve shifted your definition of rape. Earlier, it was any sex that she didn’t want to have, even if she initiated it, and you didn’t say a word about “coercion.” You’ve realized that you can’t defend that logically. Now you’re quietly shifting your definition to something more defensible, so suddenly “coercion” becomes part of your definition, where it wasn’t before.
If you want to say that rape is coercion used to make someone have sex when they don’t want to, then I’ll more-or-less agree with you. But the addition of coercion as a factor makes that definition significantly different from the Dworkin-inspired definition of rape you were using earlier.
Omar, a lot of women are raped, but don’t call it rape because they knew their assailant, they weren’t beaten, they were drunk, etc.
Then clear condemnation of rape using a clear definition seems in order, Sheelzebub. Again, the quote that stunned me reads as follows: I think lots of women don’t know they were raped until after the fact. I think women can initiate sex that still amounts to rape (because she knows sex is going to be required of her later on so she might as well initiate it and get it over with.)
Neither your account nor Heart’s pits women’s definition of rape against men’s. Both say the women involved didn’t view it as rape, though in your examples the women apparently fell for a rapist-friendly definition. If society gave them a definition that allowed violence, that certainly explains the anger here. But I still don’t see how that quote helps anyone or anything.
” is it your opinion that when Eduardo Bonilla-Silva talks about colorblind racism, he means that it’s racist for white people to suggest that a child who is beaten up every day deserves sympathy regardless of the child’s race?”
Amp you are deliberately ignoring the context I made my comment in, which was that, when faced with women’s anger, you starting whinging about PHMT. And you did so to shift attention away from the topic at hand, which is how shitty men can be, to focus it on little boys in order to make it seem as if what is happening to little girls is somehow “only one” issue. Quit trying to demonise me just because I don’t drink your Kool-Aid. I could just as easily say that YOU are not a very nice person because when the suffering of little girls is brought up, your response is to begin weeping and wailing over All Those P0or Little Boys.
“The parallel to that would be a man who argues that sex and sexism are no longer issues. I don’t argue that sex and sexism are no longer issues in contemporary America; on the contrary, I frequently argue that sex – and, in particular, male privilege and gender injustice towards women – are essential issues in contemporary America.”
Please go back and read the bit where I said that I would never claim a one-to-one perfect fit between the two situation, BUT THAT FOR MANY OF US HERE, THINGS THAT ARE SAID IN THOSE ARTICLES RING TRUE. My experience here and now is showing me that you are using the idea that “your genitalia doesn’t matter” in order to avoid dealing with specific feminist issues, and also to minimise or deflect attention away from women’s suffering by playing the PHMT card.
The whole point of the colourblind racism connection is just THAT: your insistence that “what’s between your legs shouldn’t matter” when, and because of YOUR CLASS I might add, it is in fact the thing that is used to define my entire fucking existence. Of course, YOU can say “it doesn’t matter” because that way you can pretend that you don’t fully belong (due to your pro-feminist sympathies) to that dominant class.
“For the record, I’m certainly against “genderblind”? ideology if that means being against affirmative action, or pretending that men and women live in an identical context in all of society, or ignoring the many ways women are disadvantaged, or pretending male privilege doesn’t exist.”
But you’re all for ignoring the basic premise that all of these injustices are based upon. So any good intentions you may have don’t amount to that much. What is it they always say about the Road to Hell?
“However, to say that not being “genderblind”? means that we should judge people first and foremost based on their sex – so that we can’t even feel sympathy for a beaten child unless we can first determine that she’s a girl – is ridiculous.”
Get off the demonising stick, Amp: it didn’t work on Ms. when Jeannie et al. tried to make me into the Devil because I called them on their racism and it isn’t going to work here with me. You know good and damn well why I said what I said, and you are pounding away at it in order to paint me as something that I am not just because you’re pissed off at me. Why don’t you examine your own self, and why you have that need to drag in the Poor Little Boys when the topic at hand is Poor Little Girls? And why it is that my insistence that Poor Little Girls not always be marginalised so we can all weep over Poor Little Boys angers you so much?
“I’ve never said or implied that because PHMT that means that men shouldn’t take responsibility for rape; and I have frequently said the opposite (pretty much every time I’ve ever mentioned PHMT). Thank you for making up fiction, though.”
What I said was: “throwing in bits about little boys getting beaten in order to detract from the discussion on why exactly all men should take responsibility for MALES raping FEMALES hasn’t gone by unnoticed.”
And what I mean was: throwing in PHMT is a method of distraction from the topic at hand. It’s getting too hot in here, so you gotta defuse it all, and in the process soothe your own feelings, by dragging in the idea that, hey, ya know there are MALE victims out there, too. Well, we weren’t discussing MALE victims, now were we? It has nothing to do with what I think you’ve said regarding responsibility and everything to do with my noticing that you are diverting an uncomfortable situation.
” ‘And of course, the fact that there is one little boy out there getting treated like shit is an excuse for the men to shrug off, or minimise, or just flat-out not deal with the horrendous shit THEIR CLASS perpetrates on *countless* females every single day.’
Far from saying any of that nonsense, I explicitly said the opposite.”
That’s not the way it works, Amp: just exactly WHY did you feel compelled to turn the attention to Poor Little Boys? And why are you so insistently hammering away at it? It’s to let us all know that we aren’t the only ones who’ve got it tough, so maybe we should just back down on our positions. Well, I hope I’ve made it clear by now that I’m not prone to caving in to guilt-tripping tactics. The subject right now is what MEN do to WOMEN. So, despite what you may have argued in the past, you are showing that when women get too mouthy, you feel you’ve got to shame them into their places by pointing out there is other suffering on the planet than theirs. Like we ever said wasn’t, btw. Why can’t we just deal with the original premise of this whole damn thread, which, as far as I recall was the whole “MEN’S accepting responsibility vs. MEN’S accepting blame” for sexism against WOMEN? WITHOUT you throwing Poor Little Boys in as a diversionary tactic?
“You’re arguing for an ideology (which isn’t what I’d call feminism) which says that before we can feel sympathy for a beaten child, we have to make sure he’s not male.”
Absolute and utter bullshit, Amp, and I’ve got the feeling you know that very well. What you are doing here is trying to make me cave in and wibble on about how, golly gosh gee whiz, I didn’t really mean it that way, and ooh I am just so sorry it came out that way and {sobbing hysterically} oh GOD PLEASE ACCEPT MY APOLOGIES, I’M SUCH BAAAAAAAD PERSON!!! I can’t live with myself any longer, so I’m off to slit my evil, bad Feminazi wrists RIGHT NOW!!!!
No. Anyone here can go back and read my posts, and I think most of them will know what I was really saying.
“I think it’s sad that you think showing sympathy for a beaten little boy – or at least refraining from arguing against sympathy for him – is the same thing as backing down. I think you’re mistaken about that; neither sympathy nor suffering are zero-sum games.”
Oh gawwwwwwwwd, you’re really laying in on thick, aren’t you? Look, I don’t respond to threats, either explicit, or those implicit Internet-type ones where the person is telling me, “Look, either back the fuck down or I’m going to make you look so evil in everyone else’s eyes that you’ll be hounded off any relevant forums forever.”
“Nor do I think that acknowledging that a beaten boy suffers and deserves sympathy requires ignoring, minimalizing or shunting aside what happens to girls and women.”
That is totally ignoring the fact that we are not in a real-life situation where we are being faced with a living, breathing little boy who is suffering. In the case we are dealing with here, any hypothetical little boys were dragged into the conversation IN ORDER to defuse concerns over what might be happening to women and girls–and, crucially, to what extent men can be blamed for those things. THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE, Amp, and all the demonising of Crys T you can muster isn’t going to change that fact.
Crys:
1) I’m not trying to “demonize” you, any more than you’re trying to demonize me. I’m disagreeing with you. Unlike you, I’m doing it without constantly making up things you never said, or arguing about your motivations.
You seem to be saying you should have the right to say horrible things and never, ever be criticized for what you say; and if you are criticized for what you say, that means I’m trying to demonize you or “blackmail” you. I’m doing neither. I’m criticizing what you’ve said, and that’s all I’m doing.
2) “You know good and damn well why I said what I said, and you are pounding away at it in order to paint me as something that I am not just because you’re pissed off at me.”
No, not true; I’m pissed off at you (as opposed to, say, RadFem or Q Grrl) because of what you said. The reason I’m focusing on this particular statement you made is that I genuinely disagree with it really, really strongly.
“Why don’t you examine your own self, and why you have that need to drag in the Poor Little Boys when the topic at hand is Poor Little Girls?”
There are literally hundreds of instances on this blog of me discussing how patriarchy oppresses women and girls without “dragging in the poor little boys.”
“And why it is that my insistence that Poor Little Girls not always be marginalised so we can all weep over Poor Little Boys angers you so much?”
That I don’t disagree with at all, nor does it anger me. Please try not to make up fiction about what I said or what I mean.
However, I disagree with you that we have to have to be dismissive of what’s wrong with a boy being beaten up in order to not marginalize little girls.
In fact, I think that concern for girls and for boys who are harmed by patriarchy (not denying or ignoring the fact that on the whole females are harmed much more than males) is entirely compatable. Far from being a zero-sum game, I’m convinced that these things are interlocking parts of the same problem; and when we fight patriarchy, male dominance, and the cult of masculinity, we inevitably help all victims of patriarchy, not only girl victims or only boy victims.
3) It’s obvious to anyone who’s been reading this blog for the last two weeks that I did not bring up PHMT the moment anyone criticizes me or talks about male responsibility; you and others have been doing that more or less nonstop for two weeks, over the course of something like 700-1000 posts. Yet late in this thread is the first time I’ve brought up PHMT.
I’m not complaining; you have every right to criticize me. However, to claim that my immediate or initial reaction is bringing up PHMT is clearly untrue.
4) I brought up PHMT because it was logically relevant to the argument I was making. Also, this thread is a discussion of men (read the initial post!), so PHMT is hardly irrelevant.
5) The suffering of little boys being discussed in this thread is no more hypothetical than the suffering of little girls being discussed in this thread. Neither case is hypothetical at all; both are happening, right now, in the world around us.
I’m gonna go out on a really big limb and say this is bullshit in relevance to the feminist discussion of how the rape of women is a social control:
“Um, you know there are a LOT of men who know EXACTLY what it means to be raped by a man. They also know EXACTLY what it means to revictimized by a society that laughs about the crime and shames and blames the victim. Is it okay if THESE men get to define what happened to them, or are they out of the loop because they are, after all, just men? ”
To be honest, I’m not concerned about the rape of men by men. Or by women. That’s not my political concern. Maybe on a compassionate level I can grieve along with the male victims.
But ultimately it’s a fucking red herring. Poor little men get raped too! And you want, what? me to do something about it? to offer support? No, get that from your brothers.
When men start getting raped in the same SYSTEMATIC, STATE SANCTIONED, PHILOSOPHICALLY acceptable ways that women are raped, well then we can have a discussion about the similarities.
As you said yourself, the rape of a man is a source of ridicule. THAT is how society (read: other men) react. The rape of a man does not instill fear in other men. It doesn’t cause them to change their social behavior. And in case ya’ll are still reading impaired, I’m talking about men as a class rather than individual men who might change a few behaviors. As a class, men shrug off the rape of other men. As a class, women are controlled when the class of men rape them….. because the reasons for raping women as a class are DISTINCTLY different from the rape of men.
And the fact that a male rape victim can’t see that is inexcusable. For him not to be able to extrapolate the pain and humiliation across an entire class of people (read: women worldwide), is simply navel gazing of the grossest kind. You, of all males, should get it. But you want to take your anger out on WOMEN instead of the MEN who create and perpetuate a systematic rape culture.
Go fucking figure.
Go take your anger where it is appropriate.
“Then clear condemnation of rape using a clear definition seems in order […]”
I’ve always found Kate Fillion’s remark entirely reasonable: “Unwanted sex isn’t rape; unavoidable sex is”.
my posts keep getting eaten….
Amp, I agree with Crys. Your discussion of violence against boys is a red herring. I have yet to see you discuss either it or the rape of males on your blog in the time that I have been reading. You are attempting to use our lack of sympathy as a cudgel to our credibility, and I think that is pretty low. You are expecting *more* sympathy out of the women for your pithy comments about young boys getting beaten everyday then you are expecting out of your male counterparts when they spout off crap about women getting raped. You have yet to jump on Julius for his lack of sympathy, so knock it the fuck off when you use it against Crys and me.
When the use of violence against boys and girls means the same thing socially, then you might have a valid point. Otherwise you just seem to be having a temper tantrum.
Instead of listening to what we might be saying, you first try to discredit the content through claims to faulty diction, then it was stating philosophical/political differences, when we still refused to budge from our criticism of yes, ALL MEN, you then brought in your innocent boy child, beating him publicly to see, not if he would bleed, but if Cyrs and I would. Well, we won’t. We don’t have to. Not for your pleasure, not for your rage, certainly not for your rhetorical device.
Look, we’re not talking about specific instances of rape or violence. We’re talking systems. Systems perpetuated by men, as a whole, so that they might have the creature comforts, political power, and easy access to fuckable bodies that they seem to want. For fuck’s sake address those last three things — not women’s “accusations” of them. Address it from what you know: your relationship to these three things, however direct or tangential.
Or, for a really challenging think: consider the social feminization of the male rape victim or the boy victim of abuse. Maybe that would be easier. And then wonder why they have to be feminized before they are sympathized with. And THEN think of what it means to be female bodied in this type of social system. At least the men and boys START OUT with bodily integrity.
“It’s a tempting point of view for an entitled man who would find it so much easier not to try to take responsibility for any of his own character faults and shortcomings. Q Grrl and Heart haven’t convinced me yet, but it’s a liberating thought. ”
Snerk.
At least I’m able to think for myself Julian.
“I’m doing it without constantly making up things you never said, or arguing about your motivations.”
Excuse ME? Constantly harping on what a one-woman Axis of Evil I am for not immediately breaking into
hysterical sobs of compassion for your Poor Little Boy may not be “making things up” but it is pretty deliberately ignoring everything I said in order to paint me in as black a light as possible. Hmmmm, wasn’t it you going on a week or so ago about how it behooves us all to give each other “generous readings”? What’s that mean: unless it’s YOU do the reading of a post that radically disagrees with you, then all bets are off?
Come on, the reason you picked the example of Poor Little Boys being beaten rather than any other PHMT example you could’ve pulled out of your hat was specifically to plant the image in everyone’s mind of tiny, frail little waifs, bottom lips quivering, their huge, wounded eyes brimming over with crystalline tears of fear and pain. So that, faced with that image, I would feel shame for my convictions and everyone around me would see me as a hardhearted bitch. Like I said, I don’t respond to guilt-tripping or any other forms of emotional blackmail.
“You seem to be saying you should have the right to say horrible things and never, ever be criticized for what you say;”
You see, there you go again: deliberately refusing to acknowledge what I actually DID say so that you can make me into Feminazi Deluxe. You are trying to force me into yet another explanation of what I meant when you have at least 2 versions in earlier posts. Read them and stop deliberately twisting my meaning.
“No, not true; I’m pissed off at you (as opposed to, say, RadFem or Q Grrl) because of what you said. The reason I’m focusing on this particular statement you made is that I genuinely disagree with it really, really strongly.”
With the problem being that I did not say what you accuse me over and over of saying. But hey, this is your blog, don’t let being flat-out wrong stop you.
“There are literally hundreds of instances on this blog of me discussing how patriarchy oppresses women and girls without “dragging in the poor little boys.”?”
OK, how about if I rephrase my question to simply, “Why can’t we have a conversation right NOW that challenges Amp’s assumptions regarding the whole responsibility vs. blame question, not to mention the fact that some of us have to live every fucking second of our lives by what we’ve got between our legs, without having it be sidetracked into PHMT issues at the moment at which men begin to feel uncomfortable?”
“‘And why it is that my insistence that Poor Little Girls not always be marginalised so we can all weep over Poor Little Boys angers you so much?’
That I don’t disagree with at all, nor does it anger me. Please try not to make up fiction about what I said or what I mean.”
Why the hell not? You’ve been doing it to me for your past several posts addressing me. Or is that just another perk of running your own blog? And sorry, you may SAY that you didn’t bring up Poor Little Boys in order to deflect attention from Poor Little Girls, but you know, the BNP say they aren’t racist. Hell, some of them maybe even genuinely *believe* they’re not racist. But just about any Asian or Black person in Britain is going to hear racism when faced with BNP rhetoric.
“However, I disagree with you that we have to have to be dismissive of what’s wrong with a boy being beaten up in order to not marginalize little girls.”
And hey, if what I said had even remotely like that, you’d have a point. But since it wasn’t, well…………..
“Far from being a zero-sum game,”
You know, you are really giving away that you are not even bothering to read what I write. I may as well be posting recipes……I ought to post some right now, just to see if you’d even notice or if you’d just go on ad infinitum about what a bad, vicious, evil, bad, vicious, monstrous, vicious, evil, horrible I am.
The “zero-sum” stuff you made up yourself. To deflect from the fact that I was calling you out on your previous deflection from the point. {wistfully} Hmmmmm, the Point…..remember the Point? I thought we were here to discuss the Point……..but I guess not, because trying to make out Crys T is Baaaaaad seems to be so much more fun.
“I’m convinced that these things are interlocking parts of the same problem; and when we fight patriarchy, male dominance, and the cult of masculinity, we inevitably help all victims of patriarchy, not only girl victims or only boy victims.”
Fine. Dandy. That’s a topic of its own. But the Point is, you pulled it out in a discussion of what MEN do to WOMEN. At at point at which many men here were expressing discomfort with what women were saying.
“I’m not complaining; you have every right to criticize me. However, to claim that my immediate or initial reaction is bringing up PHMT is clearly untrue.”
What, like your claims that my statements above make into some sort of Not-What-*I*’d-Call-Feminist, Anti-Poor Little Boy Heartless Evil Bitch? Oh dear. Look, I indulged in a little anger-induced exaggeration, largely influenced by the lack of comprehension many of us feminist women have been seeing in most men (yes, including you) here over the past few weeks. Happy? That doesn’t take away from the fact that throwing in PHMT was an evasive move.
“I brought up PHMT because it was logically relevant to the argument I was making. Also, this thread is a discussion of men (read the initial post!), so PHMT is hardly irrelevant.”
It’s about men’s accepting blame or responsibility for sexism!! And you are flagrantly glossing over the context in which you played the PHMT card. When women are trying to tell you that what’s between a person’s legs is damn important in how we live OUR lives, ESPECIALLY in the context of rape, pulling out images of trembling, heartrending male moppets and throwing them on the table is a blatant silencing tactic.
I’ve discussed both bullying and rape of men in the past on “Alas,” but neither one are major focuses of mine. I’m generally more focused on harms to women, because I think that’s a bigger and more essential problem.
What’s interesting to me is the catch-22 here. Because I don’t discuss these things often, you imply that if I do discuss it EVER, it’s only a red herring. But if I did discuss these things often, I’m pretty certain you’d slam me for that, too.
Look, either you think I’m being sincere when I say that bullying (of girls and boys both) is an issue that matters to me, or you don’t. If you don’t think I’m being sincere, then I really wish you’d stop posting on my website, because talking to me when you constantly imply that every word I say is somehow a deception is a waste of both our times.
Finally, if anyone here explicitly said that the suffering of men means that we can’t or shouldn’t feel sympathy for female rape victims, I certainly would disagree with that; and I’d probably ban them, as well. However, no one here has said that, unless someone did and I missed it (in which case, please quote me where they said it or let me know the post number).
You’re saying “our” and “Crys and me,” but that’s inaccurate. You made it clear that you didn’t think “little boys” should be taken literally, and I haven’t once criticized you regarding this issue since then.
I’m criticizing Crys for a single, specific thing that Crys said; when I disagree with you, it’s on entirely separate grounds.
(Note that, by pointing out that you’re being inaccurate, I’m setting myself up for you to slam me for setting you against Crys, or calling you “good” and Crys “bad.” That’s not what I mean at all, and that’s not what I’m saying at all. Treating you and Crys as two different people, and criticizing Crys but not you for what Crys says, is not an unfair or sexist thing for me to do.)
That I agree with. I mean, I could quibble with details (can’t I always?), but on the whole we’re on the same page about this.
Actually, I’m curious as to why you say “they have to be feminized before they are sympathized with.”
When I first read this, in the split-second when you first glance at a sentence but before you read every word, I thought you were going to say “wonder why they have to be feminized before they are abused.” It’s clear, in my opinion, that the reason wimpy boys are victimized is in order to maintain the gender dichotomy that’s an important part of the patriarchal system. In other words, because they are not being properly masculine, they are feminine (in the masculine mindset, whatever is “not-masculine” is “feminine”), and that’s why they are beaten.
Which is to say (and I think I said this earlier this thread, but maybe not), the root reason boys are beaten is misogyny. Whether the victim is male or female, the core issue remains male hatred of women.
(I think you could make a similar argument for rape of men, which occurs nearly entirely in prison.)
So if you said that the real point here is male misogyny and patriarchy, no matter which victim we’re talking about, I’d entirely agree.
But I really don’t know what you’re saying when you say that boys have to be feminized before we feel sympathy for them. I don’t think anything’s wrong with feminizing boys, per se (most boys, and men, could do with a lot of feminization, compared to what our culture tells them they ought to be). But are you saying that by suggesting a beaten boy deserves sympathy, I’m feminizing the boy? If so, how? Or… well, I just don’t understand what you’re saying in this instance.
So although I realize you’re not obliged to explain anything, if you could expand on what you mean here, I’d appreciate it.
No man gets to say what rape is or isn’t. That belongs to women, and women only, even if we don’t agree.
Has it been mentioned yet that men are also victims of sexual violence? (Usually from other men.)
David, look, your posts are about YOU. You you you. You want women to make things easier for you, you want feminists to make you feel like you’re helping, you want to not have to think about whether your male friends are rapists, etc. Get over your own bad self.
” But are you saying that by suggesting a beaten boy deserves sympathy, I’m feminizing the boy? ”
No, you have that inversed. The boy deserves sympathy. The sympathy is often only expressed after he has been socially feminized. I’m not talking so much about the boy or the feelings of sympathy, but the outward social expressions of sympathy and what are deemed the “appropriate” contexts for that. Which is why I tied it back to what it means to have a feminine/female body in this society in the first place. Both the victimized boy and the female have to be othered/objectified before “appropriate” social expressions are made towards them.
_____________________________
“Look, either you think I’m being sincere when I say that bullying (of girls and boys both) is an issue that matters to me, or you don’t. If you don’t think I’m being sincere, then I really wish you’d stop posting on my website, because talking to me when you constantly imply that every word I say is somehow a deception is a waste of both our times.”
I’ve never doubted your sincerity Amp. I am doubting your use of this as a rhetorical device. I find it problematic only because it is widely used by class men to divert women’s discourse.
That’s not what I said, and that’s not what I criticized you for. I criticized you for stating that, because I and other men here allegedly don’t have the right attitudes towards woman, you aren’t going to have sympathy for a boy who is beaten every day for years on end.
That is, pretty much, what you said (see post #198). And you could have clarified it at any point since then, but – until this most recent post – you did not.
Now you have clarified it, and that’s fine. And I appreciate your clarification.
Yep, and you and other posters succesfully convinced me that it’s pointless to attempt that with people who will never, ever give you that consideration in return. It’s like refusing to hit a bully back – you’ll just take it as an invitation to keep on attacking me. [UPDATED TO ADD: I mentioned bullying as an analogy. I’m not actually claiming that you are a bully. Sorry if that came out wrong, which it probably did.]
Even so, I made sure to invite you to offer an alternate reading, and opened up the possibility that you’d clarify your statement. Until this most recent post, you’ve chosen not to do so.
If you’d like to, right now, mutually agree that we two will attempt to give each other’s posts generous readings from this point forward, I will happily agree to that.
Okay, I’m still not getting it, but I’ll keep on thinking about it, and maybe that’ll help me get it.
So I’m not going to reply right now, but that’s not because I didn’t read and appreciate you taking the time to answer.
If you wouldn’t mind, could you clarify what the “appropriate” contexts you’re referring to are (or are considered to be, by society)?
I was thinking of having that “appropriate” read with a bit of sarcasm. IOW, appropriate as defined by patriarchal beliefs about masculinity and male supremacy. Under both of those it is fairly inconceivable to the power structure that men can be raped (despite all evidence to the contrary). In order for a patriarchal society, as a whole, to offer sympathy, the victim has to be feminized.
Any clearer?
Yes, that helps a lot. Thanks.
Damn addition! i lost all the stuff i wrote.
David, look, your posts are about YOU. You you you. You want women to make things easier for you, you want feminists to make you feel like you’re helping, you want to not have to think about whether your male friends are rapists, etc. Get over your own bad self.
Comment by mythago … 2/23/2005 @ 8:23 am
They are about me because thats all i can comprehend right now maybe. How this all relates to me. Women that I know, situations Ive been in, My “rapist” friends, what I would do if someone i knew got raped by a friend. From what ive read at any rate, Im not sure id be any better off trying to discard all that and “be a woman” for the purpose of conversation because id invariably get it wrong anyway. As far as wanting feminists to make me feel like i am helping, that wasnt it at all. What i want is to feel like i CAN, instead of, leave this definition to us, dont try and compare that, you cant understand this, you dont deserve that, etc etc. There doesnt feel like much room for me to do anything when thats all i see.
Im not sure how you can sit there though and tell me that im an asshole for wanting my friends to not be rapists or my dates to say NO if they dont want to have sex. In the situation i discribed earlier, when i was on a date and im pretty sure the chick didnt want to get it on but clearly wasnt going to say no, all i had to go on that made me walk out the door was a “funny feeling” and a “vibe”. If i hadnt known her personally before the date, i might not have even known enough to know something was up.
Heart earlier stated that sometimes women say “yes” when they mean no because its just easier. Well…how the hell am i supposed to deal with that as a male who doesnt want to rape anyone? There i go again making it about me. Well sorry, apparently only one of us in that situation is capable of doing the right thing and due to male priviledge, social pressure, physical size, past experiances, etc etc, it obviously isnt her. So that does make it all about me. I dont think thats fair at all. It sure as hell isnt fair to her. She should be able to say no and not feel like a backhand is coming.
And i guess i cant push away the concern that using that definition of hearts from earlier, the one that didnt contain the word coercion, it puts women off the hook for speaking up and doing the right thing by saying no. If its thier feelings and bodily integrity, stand up for it. And yes im aware, VERY easy for the 300 lbs. white male to say. Doenst make it any less true though.
Ready the violins and “boo fucking hoos” – I got picked on in grade school up through 8th grade for all kinds of reasons. And i moved around a lot as a kid so it was always at a new school with a different group of boys. And try as i might to just go along with things or run away or whatever, it always ended up with me getting my ass kicked. And the part that always drove me nuts afterwards had more to do with the fact that i didnt just stand up for myself and say leave me the fuck alone and do everything i could to protect myself. So eventually, id finally take a deep breath and throw a punch. Didnt stop the fight, wasnt right…but at least i had the personal satisfaction of knowing that i wasnt an acomplice to my ass kicking that time.
And every year, id try the same crap, turn the other cheek, meekly go along with the humiliation, run away, tell the teacher, try and ‘talk’ or whatever. Eventually though, when i recognized the patern of where things were going as i got older, i learned to just say no, leave me alone at the start. (heres the point of all that) It never stopped the fights later, but i didnt feel like it was my fault, like i helped. That always felt better to me than the alternative.
I guess i expect, maybe wrongly, that if given a choice between helping a man rape you by not saying no and saying no and getting raped anyway, id rather know that i did what i could to stop it. Is that such a ridiculous idea?
“I criticized you for stating that, because I and other men here allegedly don’t have the right attitudes towards woman, you aren’t going to have sympathy for a boy who is beaten every day for years on end.”
Again, if that had been anything remotely like what I said, you would have a point.
“That is, pretty much, what you said (see post #198). And you could have clarified it at any point since then, but – until this most recent post – you did not.”
Excuse me, but I do recall quite clearly clarifying it in the very next post I made after your initial request for me to do so. You may have given my explanation an anti-boy interpretation, but I don’t really feel resposible for that, as I think that was your anger getting in the way. At least some other people had no trouble understanding me.
“”If you’d like to, right now, mutually agree that we two will attempt to give each other’s posts generous readings from this point forward, I will happily agree to that. ”
Y’know, It’s not even the “generous reading” thing (hell, I’m used to people flying off the handle & making all sorts of accusations whenever I offer an opinion they find unconventional) so much as the feeling of constantly needing to swim against the current, with a whole load of guys tied to your back being nothing but unresponsive dead weight. Or maybe it’s more like trying to drag a bunch of the world’s most stubborn mules, who are desperately digging their heels in, up a steep incline. Whatever it is, it ain’t much fun, I can tell you.
“For the record, I think Heart is incredibly smart, a great writer, and I have never and would never question her feminism. But she and I have radically different views, and I’m going to keep on disagreeing with her, just as she and I have always disagreed passionately on most things for many years. I’m really sorry that you see this as me calling her a “bad”? feminist, but I’ve never said and never thought that. I’ve always disagreed highly with Heart, and – apart from sometimes in the heat of argument – I’ve always admired her and said so. I don’t think this is going to change, frankly. ”
That’s all very well and good, but then why when she was basically telling men to be quiet on rape and listen to women, she’s told that if she wants to say that, she can do it in women-only space, I guess making an assumption that all women-only space has the same universal set of discourse guidelines.
You say that men were asking questions. Some were, and were respectful to her. They know who they are. Others were doing JUST WHAT PAIGE WAS BANNED FOR DOING. Which was playing the prosecutor cross-examining a criminal defendant where their minds are made up, but they are asking questions in order to have the “defendant” make their case for them. Heart isn’t going to do that, b/c as you said, she’s very smart, articulate and committed. She won’t play ball, and remains EXACTLY who she’s always been and didn’t come with an agenda against you at all, and is told to pick up her toys and leave basically. Because “coed” space still has its rules of civility determined by men, and imposed on women.
“Women run to extremes, they are either better or worse than men.”
~ Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)
French philosopher & writer
I’m a woman. I’ve never been violated or beaten, physically or psychologically or verbally, by a man but I sure have been by other women. It’s this extremism in women that causes us to always be on the outside looking in.
My grandpa always used to say that women can cackle worse than a barnyard full of old hens. They used to do it over the clothesline fence. Now it’s on internet blogs and bulletin boards. Everytime a cackling woman continuously opens her mouth, she puts her foot on our gender’s head and shoves us further into the ground.
The very women who are screaming for equal wages as men spend a large portion of their days at work writing on bulletin boards and blogs, rather than giving their employers a fair day’s work for their wage. This is the root of the failure with extremism as its trunk.
Hmmm, well you could also say there’s men spending their day on the internet who are getting paid MORE than women who don’t, but somehow I don’t think you will.
So the answer then, is that women should be seen and not heard to advance their gender? Gotcha.
Interesting thing about poultry, only my great-aunt used to warn me about them roosters….but it was my great-uncle who wrung their heads off.
“Hmmm, well you could also say there’s men spending their day on the internet who are getting paid MORE than women who don’t, but somehow I don’t think you will.”
I think if you’d count up the words, you’d find that women are yapping a lot more than men around here and elsewhere on the net.
“So the answer then, is that women should be seen and not heard to advance their gender? Gotcha.”
No, that’s not what I said. It’s the cackling like hens and the fulfilling of the stereotype (that’s not so stereotypical when you look at this blog and others) that women should avoid but don’t. It’s the cackling that does NOT advance our gender one bit.
“Interesting thing about poultry, only my great-aunt used to warn me about them roosters….but it was my great-uncle who wrung their heads off.”
Cute. Not relavent and come to think of it, not cute either. Just reads as cackle and sadly enough, you just don’t see that.
This is why women are where we are today. I’m tired of the cackling hens speaking for me. You female radical extremists push our gender down more with your mouth than any man has with his foot or his fist. You’re not doing our cause any favors.
If female extremists and all the Hollywood idiots would just shut their mouths, the causes of women will advance by great strides and the right guy will be elected to office next time.
That’s all for my input. I don’t cackle on.
LOL…you’re pretty good….
Smells positively Byronic in here at the moment, don’t it, radfem ?
Plus ca change, etc etc…
Heh. I only put my mouth on the women I want to.
Well, Woman of Few Words, you may want to live up to your name and refrain from cackling on and on about how other women talk too much. Isn’t there a man you can go listen to?
Every woman have her share of problems, WoFW, but somehow, I’m inclined to think that the wage gap might have something to do with the 99.48% of CEOs and Chairs of Boards who are men, the 87 out of 100 Senators who are men, and the 96.6% of high-level corporate managers who are men more than it has to do with the wage gap than Q Grrl chatting about feminism rather than keeping her nose to the grindstone. I would guess, though I have no hard info, that the average man spends more time on the Internet than the average woman. I know I do :^).
As for advocacy of change hurting those it tries to help, I think that it very frequently hurts the actual advocates of change, but I can’t think of an instance of it hurting the class it was intended to benefit. I.e., Ken Saro Wiwa was harmed by his advocacy, without a doubt, but I don’t think that the Ogonis of the Niger Delta were. I think they were helped by it. Similarly, I think Newt Gingrich’s radicalism undermined him as Speaker of the House, but I think that he ultimately helped the radical right as a whole.
The very women who are screaming for equal wages as men spend a large portion of their days at work writing on bulletin boards and blogs, rather than giving their employers a fair day’s work for their wage. This is the root of the failure with extremism as its trunk.
Comment by Woman of Few Words … 2/23/2005 @ 11:31 am
Theres no way to prove that and given that we all have to pay bills, im guessing most of the people posting here are either ignoring work or school to read and post. I know that my employer hasnt gotten my full attention the last 3 days since i started reading this. Of course, my opinion of what the work i have done in the last few days is worth probably differs from what my boss thinks.
I also think that its kind of minimalizing things to dismiss everything thats been said as cackling. At least some of what everyone has said has been a good point and important.
If you’re going to argue that all men have friends who have raped, then it seems likely that all women (apart from our separatist friends here) have friends who have raped too. I don’t think that makes either all men or all (non lesbian-separatist) women complicit in rape.
Similarly, if all “unwanted” sex is rape, even if initiated by the alleged victim, then I suspect there are an awful lot of women out there who would count as rapists. I’m not prepared to use a definition of rape so broad that agreeing to have sex with someone who asks you for sex counts as rape, if the asker’s motives were not entirely pure. I do not think such a definition can possibly be helpful to rape victims or do anything to prevent rape.
I am certainly not going to accept a definition of rape which says that anything men do sexually is rape and anything women do is trivial because rape is a male / patriarchal problem. I don’t think that’s what most people in this thread are claiming, but I think some of the comments here are coming close to implying that.
Indiv-ewe-all, that’s only a valid idea if anywhere in the world at any time women have commited rape in anything approaching the numbers attained by men. The fact is, most rapists are men and as we’ve seen in this thread, men tend to take their buddies way more seriously than they take their female friends. Rape IS a male problem.
“men tend to take their buddies way more seriously”
This is true.
This comment is not intended as a provocation or as a troll. It is a simple observation. I’ve read a lot of feminist comments here on Alas, and there are several recurring themes: men have common tactics which we use to derail women’s issues, men shield one another from the consequences of acts of rape, sexism, misogyny, etc., men listen to men more seriously than to women, etc. There are strong elements of truth in each of these themes.
It seems as though what’s actually happening is that men, as a class, are more cohesive, mutually cooperative, mutually protective, etc., than women as a class. Assuming that this statement is broadly true, it doesn’t automatically extinguish the existence of sexism, misogyny, etc., but at least some things attributed to those ideologies might actually be caused by strong male performance in the social behaviors.
You are right, its very wierd that i would trust my FRIENDS over complete strangers. Look, i feel safe in saying that its a natural instinct to protect the people that we care about, male or female. There are many instances where i wouldnt take a word my friends say seriously, say if one of them starts telling me that stephen hawking is full of shit.
If someone accuses them of a crime, god forbid i allow the slightest possibility that they didnt do it. Thats what you do for people you love and trust. Should you follow it blindly? No and i dont think anyone is avocating that you do. Im certainly not, nor did i ever mean to imply that i did. By that same token, if i cant completely trust in the character of my friends when i hear they raped someone, why should i completely trust the person who says they got raped? Whats good for the goose….
The topic of this thread was, “Should men be blamed” and it seems to me that the answer is if they are, so should women. There are certianly women out there who are encouraging that kind of behavior, and every woman who has sex without even putting up a fight only reinforces the notion that the man “deserves” sex for the future. Its like psychological conditioning. He learns to expect it and she learns that resistance is futile.
“The topic of this thread was, “Should men be blamed”? and it seems to me that the answer is if they are, so should women. There are certianly women out there who are encouraging that kind of behavior, and every woman who has sex without even putting up a fight only reinforces the notion that the man “deserves”? sex for the future. Its like psychological conditioning. He learns to expect it and she learns that resistance is futile. ”
————————————————–
So in the interests of equality, women are responsible when men rape them. Men are psychologically conditioned to rape by the behaviors of women. Women encourage men to rape them. I guess we’ll be hearing next about women wearing clothing that practically forces men to rape them. Women acting “loose”, women walking alone at night, women dancing provocatively with a guy at a bar.
This just keeps getting better….
Ginmar, I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying, but I think you may have misunderstood my argument. I certainly never claimed that in the real world women do rape just as much as men. That is clearly false.
But if you define rape as, for example, having sex with someone who consented and indeed wanted to have sex, but for the wrong reasons, I would think the number of women “rapists” would be rather high. Maybe not as high as the number of male rapists, but that’s not something I’d care to predict. I reject that overly broad definition of rape anyway.
Using a more consensus definition of rape as actually coerced sex, I agree that it is primarily a male problem. It doesn’t follow from that that a man who has male friends is to blame for rape, as some would seem to be suggesting. My counter to that is that most women also have male friends, and clearly nobody here is trying to blame women for rape.
So in the interests of equality, women are responsible when men rape them. Men are psychologically conditioned to rape by the behaviors of women. Women encourage men to rape them. I guess we’ll be hearing next about women wearing clothing that practically forces men to rape them. Women acting “loose”, women walking alone at night, women dancing provocatively with a guy at a bar.
This just keeps getting better….
Comment by radfem … 2/23/2005 @ 3:56 pm
Its not about equality and its not about shit that doesnt matter. You getting drunk != me getting to have sex with you.
You climbing on top of me naked because you dont want to say no = me getting to have sex with you.
Im not making those other arguments because ive read enough to know they are stupid. Its apples and oranges. At best, all it does is put the actual situation in question, is a woman going to be raped, at a higher probability of having to be addressed. If shes dressed a certain way, i might not notice her and never ask her out on a date. If there isnt “provocative” dancing, maybe i decide she doesnt want to do anything with me physically and i never ask. Certain factors make it more or less likely that her and i end up alone somewhere where a rape could occur.
And walking alone at night is probably stupid for everyone, not just women and certainly not just because of rape. You could get mugged or fall in a ditch and die. Who knows.
Everyone should be accountable for what they do. Its not a question of equality, 50/50 split. If a girl doesnt say no, or even goes so far as to say yes….Look i dont even know what to compare all this to, because theres nothing i can think of that seems adequate. All i know is, if we are talking about responsibility, women have a responsibility to themselves to say what they feel and to not do what they dont want to do. It might not stop the end result of forced sex. But at least she wouldnt be an accomplice at that point by helping things along.
The Clothesline Project around Chicago have started a campaign, that, as a complement to “no means no,” “only yes means yes.” I think this is a good, catchy meaningful slogan, though I think “even yes doesn’t always mean yes” is getting a bit nutty.
How about this? I think it might be too long for a single posting, but I think you should get the idea. I got thisi from a website, but I first read it many years ago.
——————————————————————————————————
“The Rape” of Mr. Smith – Unknown
The law discriminates against rape victims in a manner which would not be tolerated by victims of any other crime. In the following example, a holdup victim is asked questions similar in form to those usually asked a rape victim.
“Mr. Smith, you were held up at gunpoint on the corner of 16th & Locust?”
“Yes.”
“Did you struggle with the robber?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He was armed.”
“Then you made a conscious decision to comply with his demands rather than to resist?”
“Yes.”
“Did you scream? Cry out?”
“No. I was afraid.”
“I see. Have you ever been held up before?”
“No.”
“Have you ever given money away?”
“Yes, of course –”
“And did you do so willingly?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, let’s put it like this, Mr. Smith. You’ve given away money in the past — in fact, you have quite a reputation for philanthropy. How can we be sure that you weren’t _contriving_ to have your money taken away from you by force?”
“Listen, if I wanted –”
“Never mind. What time did this holdup take place, Mr. Smith?”
“About 11 p.m.”
“You were out on the streets at 11 p.m.? Doing what?”
“Just walking.”
“Just walking? You know that it’s dangerous being out on the street that late at night. Weren’t you aware that you could have been held up?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“What were you wearing at the time, Mr. Smith?”
“Let’s see. A suit. Yes, a suit.”
“An _expensive_ suit?”
“Well — yes.”
“In other words, Mr. Smith, you were walking around the streets late at night in a suit that practically _advertised_ the fact that you might be a good target for some easy money, isn’t that so? I mean, if we didn’t know better, Mr. Smith, we might even think you were _asking_ for this to happen, mightn’t we?”
“Look, can’t we talk about the past history of the guy who _did_ this to me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Smith. I don’t think you would want to violate his rights, now, would you?”
Naturally, the line of questioning, the innuendo, is ludicrous — as well as inadmissible as any sort of cross-examination — unless we are talking about parallel questions in a rape case. The time of night, the victim’s previous history of “giving away” that which was taken by force, the clothing — all of these are held against the victim. Society’s posture on rape, and the manifestation of that posture in the courts, help account for the fact that so few rapes are reported.
Great post sheena. And i can see its relevance to the issue of rape in general.
We all seem to be hung up though on this broad definition of rape that includes women initiating sex that she doesnt want because she knows sex is inevitable.
So if we follow the mugging analogy, if Mr. Smith is out at night in his nice suit and walks up to a guy whos standing in the cliched alleyway and hands him his wallet while thinking “i dont want this guy to pull a gun out on me and take this later” can the man then go to the police and say “i was mugged?”
and as i said before, nice suit or didnt shout != deserves to get mugged. BUT, man in nice suit alone in the dark should be aware that he is raising the probability of a crime happening to him. Is it wrong? Yes. Shouldnt we all be able to walk alone in the dark? Yes. But there are bad people in the world. So people need to be aware of the probability of ending up in a situation where something bad can happen.
I think the reason why women don’t fight back because they believe that if they struggle against the attacker, then he’ll inflict more pain, more violence, and even kill her instead. When some women have their backs against the wall and know that they have unfortunately lost the battle, they want the pain to be minimal as possible and survive. Sad that it would have to end that way, but I think it’s a survival instinct. Does that excuse the rapist and means that people should ridicule the victim for not fighting harder against the rapist– NO!!!!
Nothing excuses rape, people shouldn’t shift the blame on the victim, period. The victim never asks to be a victim, so why victimize them again by telling them that they “failed” in stopping someone who seemed pretty damn determine to commit such as heinous act as rape? It’s the rapist’s fault! Put the blame where it should be–on the rapist!
I’m not yelling at anyone here, I’m merely saying that people need to stop placing blame on the victim and criticizing the choices the victim made before, during, and after the attack. I’m sick of hearing people blame the victim for a horrific crime that no one wants to happen to them. It’s a form of victimizing the rape-victim for a second time. People make mistakes, so does that mean we should rape, rob, and murder them to “teach” them a lesson. I doubt anyone believes that it’s safe to walk home alone in the dark, but sometimes they have no choice. I have no choice but to walk alone to class in the morning in complete darkness, does that mean I should be raped, robbed, or murdered to “teach” me a lesson? NO!!! Which is why that whole, “well you didn’t do ‘this’, so you got what you deserved” rationalizing is bullshit. I’d like to see someone tell that to the family members of a little girl who was abducted and raped (that’s a hypothetical example), because she was out riding her bicycle alone in the driveway.
I don’t see how inflicting violence on someone who made the mistake of walking alone at night or wearing a nice Armani suit around “thugs” is a positive way of making them change their habits. Nothing excuses a crime and nothing exucses those who commit them. I don’t care what a rapist’s rationale behind committing the crime was. He’s a scumbag who deserves NO sympathy,….to me anyway.
Samantha-
Thatk you so much for taking your time to discuss this with me. Just to clarify: I too, don’t really have one specific issue on which I can draw the line, because I believe that feminism is a big tent that can accommodate various differences. So a pro-porn man could still be my friend (and a feminist), assuming he shares other feminist ideologies with me. However, he would also spend a great deal of time listening to me about porn! I do think that the one deal breaker would be a man or a woman who publicly declares himself or herself not a feminist or an anti-feminist. Because I think that those people are purposely being dismissive of a belief system that I hold very dear. It would be like the difference between telling my lawyer friend that I feel that there should not be class action lawsuits- an issue we can disagree about with mutual respect, and telling my lawyer friend that law is a ridiculous career and should not be practiced at all- a disrespectful act to the core.
I would love to hear other feminists’ ideas on this!
David P.:
the only problem with that is that people don’t understand it as simply trying to help, but assigning blame.
If someone dies in a car crash because they weren’t wearing a seat belt, It’s assigned as blame. It isn’t read as “wear a seat belt to protect yourself in case” it’s “if you DON’T wear a seat belt it’s your fault if you die.”
from that statement is read, even if not intended, that it CAN be at least partly the victim’s fault. and that it CAN be the victim’s fault perpetuates the idea that a rapist isn’t responsible for his own action.
No matter how foolhardy or stupid a person is acting, under no circumstances does it excuse criminal conduct on the part of the perpetrator. Sheena’s post was spot on and very well written.
I should clarify: I didn’t actually write that “Mr Smith” piece. It’s been around for many years, but I don’t know who originally wrote it.
yes, I gathered from your original post. “I got this from a website” is very unambiguous. But someone (I forget who, so it must be me) said “creativity is just forgetting who you plagerized from.”
but I suppose I’m getting off track. back in place:
Emma:
I think you might be careful about your wording there. I understand anti-feminist (the same reason I don’t tolerate Bushist company. they don’t just disagree, they are personally dismissive.) but “not a feminist” is a different line.
based on your description, it sounds like you wouldn’t do away with an aquiantance for being apolitical, and apolitical people may be described as non-feminist, or even anti-feminist, if all they’ve ever heard about feminism is a bunch of repeated rhetoric from anti-feminists like “feminists say all sex is rape.”
of course, I might still just dismiss that second bunch of apolitical folk, as It’s frequently more work than it ends up being to keep those people as aquiantances.
It would be like the difference between telling my lawyer friend that I feel that there should not be class action lawsuits- an issue we can disagree about with mutual respect
YMMV.
David, saying ‘That’s all I can understand” is not good enough. Get off your (mental) butt and stretch a bit, will you?
David, saying ‘That’s all I can understand”? is not good enough. Get off your (mental) butt and stretch a bit, will you?
Comment by mythago … 2/23/2005 @ 8:01 pm
What do you think im doing here mythago :P
Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but i think that my comprehension now is already better than when i posted the first time way back at 160 something.
And im reluctant to stretch too much because im already seeing that i dont have the experiance necessary to really relate to the topic at hand. As many have so elequently put it, i can never know what its like to be raped the same as a female and there arent really any great examples to make an analogy with. I already agree that raping people is wrong and no means no and such. Im not sure i need any more enlightenment there. My concern, pretty much consistantly, has been what am i supposed to do when women here are writing that a woman can initiate sex with me and still be raped?
I dont feel like the Mr. Smith trial is really a fair one to make when discussing the problem of “women who get raped while initiating sex because they see no alternative.” Its just not the same. Even i can see that. Which is why i (selfishly i guess) relate everything to me.
And i dunno, whats worse, living with the trama of being raped, or living with the trama of having helped rape yourself by initiating things. Is there a difference afterwards in state of mind?
And im not trying to put any blame on women at all. If someone rapes her, its not her fault. BUT since the question of responsibility (which i interpret from amps meaning as, what to do to prevent things in the future from happening) came up, I feel that its a womans responsibility to herself to voice any concerns she has about the situation before or hell, ill even accept during, even though id view that as being irresponsible behavior. And then its the guys responsibility to NOT rape her.
If someone accuses them of a crime, god forbid i allow the slightest possibility that they didnt do it. Thats what you do for people you love and trust. Should you follow it blindly? No and i dont think anyone is avocating that you do. Im certainly not, nor did i ever mean to imply that i did. By that same token, if i cant completely trust in the character of my friends when i hear they raped someone, why should i completely trust the person who says they got raped? Whats good for the goose….
But you said you wouldn’t allow for the possiblility that your friends rape. And that’s fine with me–they’re your friends, after all. But you don’t give the same unconditional support to your female friends if one came to you and said she was raped. You’d need to decide if it were true or not. You don’t need any such proof for you male friends. That’s pretty telling.
Robert wrote: “It seems as though what’s actually happening is that men, as a class, are more cohesive, mutually cooperative, mutually protective, etc., than women as a class. Assuming that this statement is broadly true, it doesn’t automatically extinguish the existence of sexism, misogyny, etc., but at least some things attributed to those ideologies might actually be caused by strong male performance in the social behaviors. ”
Numerous 70’s feminists have written about this and how this is actually part of sexism (i.e not an essential character trait of either group). Men historically have had a hand in keeping women from being cohesive, cooperative, and mutually protective: the history of marriage and the “nuclear” family stand as proof of this. It’s interesting stuff to read, if not just a little nauseating.
“We all seem to be hung up though on this broad definition of rape that includes women initiating sex that she doesnt want because she knows sex is inevitable.”
But I think you are viewing this “sex” as something that, although inevitable, is somehow wanted by the woman. What is really being said is:
A woman is initiating sex that she does not want to have because she knows that it is inevitable that sex that she does not want to have is going to happen.
She knows that saying no might mean:
She might lose her home
She might lose her children
She might be beaten
She might lose her job
She might face public ridicule
She might lose her marriage
Men actively coerce women into having sex with them, to the point where men expect sex, and a woman will initiate sex because she knows just how many strings are attached to her ability to say “no.” The sick part of it is, that if she initiates it, the strings are fairly invisible and men not only get what they want, they also get out of their responsibility, they get to define what sex is and isn’t, what rape is and isn’t, all the while saying “hey, look man! *She* initiated it. How was I to know?”
Pretty slick.
“I am certainly not going to accept a definition of rape which says that anything men do sexually is rape”
Well then this is your lucky day, because no one here has ever said that.
Way to set up yet another straw man, Indi!
“There are certianly women out there who are encouraging that kind of behavior, and every woman who has sex without even putting up a fight only reinforces the notion that the man “deserves”? sex”
Ahhhhh yes, blaming the victim yet again……….I was wondering when this one would show up. Well done, David!
“If there isnt “provocative”? dancing, maybe i decide she doesnt want to do anything with me physically and i never ask. ”
What you are failing to see here is that what you consider “provocative dancing” may be what I just call “dancing”. With no intention of “provoking” anything other than the pleasure I get out of moving my body to music I enjoy. And even if I do happen to catch your eye while I’m doing it, that doesn’t automatically mean I’m in love with you. I may not even really be registering you. The same with clothes: maybe *you* interpret the length of my skirt as an indication of my sexual availability while I just think of it as fun or cute or pretty. Have none of those ideas ever crossed your mind?
And even if we are getting into the area of my trying to attract your attention: maybe when I do that all I’m really looking for is the chance to meet and get to know you first, before I decide it’s time to take all our clothes off together. Especially if I’m still really young and new to all of this in the first place (excuse my saying that, but I do get the impression from your posts, David, that you are quite young yourself). Maybe all I’m after is a couple of dances and a chat over coffee.
Not, btw, that I’m saying there is anything wrong with women, even younger women, wanting sex and going after it. All I’m trying to do is point out that signalling interest doesn’t *always* mean signalling sexual intent, and that sometimes the “provocation” in a woman’s actions are purely in the mind of the beholder.
“if Mr. Smith is out at night in his nice suit and walks up to a guy whos standing in the cliched alleyway and hands him his wallet while thinking “i dont want this guy to pull a gun out on me and take this later”? can the man then go to the police and say “i was mugged?”?”
Yeah well, if the other guy was so innocent, why did he take the wallet? I mean, seriously, if you were out standing in an alley, and some total stranger came up to you and insisted on your taking his wallet, wouldn’t you conclude he was more than a little bit nuts? Wouldn’t your response be to refuse the wallet and, presuming he didn’t look scary, try to get him some help? No stranger just offers you his wallet out of the blue without something weird going on.
Anyway, I’m really dubious about trying to equate rape with robbery or mugging. Going back to all those ideas that “sex” is something women “have” that men want to take and other such bullshit. If what we are talking about is rape by a stranger–which is of course not the majority of cases–I think it’s much more like walking down the street, minding your own business, and having someone come up and bash you in the face for no other reason than they felt like a little face-bashing. If it’s done by someone the woman knows, I can’t even think of a good parallel.
“Men historically have had a hand in keeping women from being cohesive, cooperative, and mutually protective”
Yep. Which is why so much of this is perpetuated in the first place. Nothing like separating a woman from her support network–or even from having one in the first place–to make her insecure and unsure or herself.
Crys, it was not my intention to set up a straw man; that’s why I said: “I don’t think that’s what most people in this thread are claiming.” My argument is that if you use the kinds of unreasonably broad defintions of rape that some people are insisting on, the definition would include something that a lot of women do.
There are three alternative possibilities here: 1. Women are also to blame for rape, as well as innocent, non-rapist men. 2. There are certain actions that count as rape if men do them, but are perfectly hunky-dory if women do them. 3. The definition of rape being suggested is not a practical definition to be working with.
I meant option 3, because it is obvious to me that 1 and 2 are both ridiculous! But I didn’t make that sufficiently clear, since Gimar thought I meant 1, and you, Crys, thought I meant 2. No, I meant 3: your defintion of rape leads to unreasonable consequences, thus, your definition is not a good definition.
But you said you wouldn’t allow for the possiblility that your friends rape. And that’s fine with me”“they’re your friends, after all. But you don’t give the same unconditional support to your female friends if one came to you and said she was raped. You’d need to decide if it were true or not. You don’t need any such proof for you male friends. That’s pretty telling.
Comment by Sheelzebub … 2/24/2005 @ 6:52 am
Im not sure where i said that i wouldnt allow for the possibility that they rape. I said that im as sure as i can be that they dont. And the fact that i said i would make some kind of inquiry as to the truth of things if someone accused them of it by default means that im allowing for the possibility that they might have doesnt it?
Again, what i see here is you telling me that its ok to implicitly trust a female friend who says she was raped by a male friend, but if i reserve even the slightest bit of doubt for that male friend, then i might as well be telling her to go fuck off. Everyone deserves a fair shake as far as im concerned. And im no more willing to throw away my male friendship without making any attempt to find out if its true than i am to throw away my female friendship because i think shes a “lying whore” or whatever.
The police have a legal responsibility to detain my friend if someone accuses him of rape. Should i then completely cut him off until i read the verdict in the newspaper? If i have to cut him off, shouldnt i cut her off too until final judgement is passed? Or could i maybe find some inbetween ground until i find out a verdict?
“Yeah well, if the other guy was so innocent, why did he take the wallet? I mean, seriously, if you were out standing in an alley, and some total stranger came up to you and insisted on your taking his wallet, wouldn’t you conclude he was more than a little bit nuts? Wouldn’t your response be to refuse the wallet and, presuming he didn’t look scary, try to get him some help? No stranger just offers you his wallet out of the blue without something weird going on.”
One of many reasons why i dont think this analogy parallels real well with what we are discussing. If a woman walked up to me in the street and “offered” me sex, id do exactly what you were suggesting.
“”There are certianly women out there who are encouraging that kind of behavior, and every woman who has sex without even putting up a fight only reinforces the notion that the man “deserves”? sex”?
Ahhhhh yes, blaming the victim yet again……….I was wondering when this one would show up. Well done, David!”
By women who encourage, i was kind of thinking more along the lines of heidi fleiss(sp) types, or (i think i saw someone infer this up there somewhere) mothers who tell thier daughters to always wear makeup and earings and a skirt so she can find a nice man, my fault though for not clarifying. Again, i dont believe that short skirt = sex.
But regardless of what you are after, certain things will cause me to do other things, and i was attempting to set up some kind of a chain that results in a situation where im alone with a girl and i make a move and she goes along with it or even takes it to the next level on her own, because of all those strings you talked about, am i the only one “to blame” for her having unwanted sex? If she speaks up and says “Hey, maybe i should go” then theres a decent chance that shes going home without having sex. In this specific example anyway.
Inadequate analogy time! If we are standing in a field with a shovel and I say “we need a well” and you, without a word and maybe even a smile, pick up the shovel and start digging because you didnt want me to force you to do it later, did i really make you dig that hole? Even if i have to take some blame for it, by allowing you to do it, do you get off scott free? You volunteered to dig.
This isnt about blaming people for mistakes or inferences, its about thinking, however unrealistically, that if a NO is sounded in there somewhere and you stick to your guns, that HAS to be better in the long run than just submitting.
And since you asked, my “sound” on here is probably a mix of my age (25, is that young?), naivity, caution, relatively small experiance with women, and 25 years of not really giving this any serious thought beyond, yeah, raping people is wrong.