The discussion about the man who claims he can’t be a rapist because his penis is too large set me thinking about my own near-miss a couple of months ago. It feels odd to talk about rape in connection with an experience that was more irritating than traumatic, but technically I came close to being raped and escaped more through luck than through anything I did “right”.
I’d gone out looking for sex: a division of paratroopers were camping in the village for the weekend, and I knew one of them should be willing to give me sex with no strings attached. I met a couple of likely men in the pub – they’d been drinking all evening, while I stayed completely sober because of my pregnancy – and went with them back to their camp.
For a while, everything proceeded in a way that satisfied us all. In the darkness, I didn’t realise immediately that one of the men was no longer wearing a condom – whether accidentally or by design I had no way of knowing. I told him to stop, and offered him two options: he could find and put on another condom, or we could abandon the idea of having sex. For myself, I preferred the first option, but it did depend on the availability of another condom.
Neither of these possibilities suited him. He made several suggestions of his own, none of which adequately covered my objection to unprotected sex. I tried to reason with him, but I found that I had to keep my hand over my crotch throughout the conversation to prevent his attempts to penetrate me without wasting time on discussion.
At that point, I started to worry. He was physically stronger than me, and drunk enough to be deaf to reason. If he decided to force me physically, there was little I could do about it. I began to imagine the recriminations I would face if I had to report him for raping me. “You went in the pub looking for sex, you left with two soldiers and went back to their camp – what did you think would happen?” And although I believed my answer – I thought a grown man would be capable of using a condom properly – was a satisfactory one, I wasn’t sure it would satisfy others.
The fear killed my desire to have sex and I started to put my clothes back on. Luckily, he made no protest; perhaps he was too drunk. I left without incident, and the fear receded once I was away from the danger.
If he had persisted, if he had penetrated me despite my objections, that would have been rape. I had consented to sex, but I had made it clear that condoms were part of the deal. When the condom vanished, so did my consent.
It can still be rape even if she wants to have sex with you. It can still be rape even if she’s sexually aroused and apparently ready for sex. If she consents to this but not that and you make her do that, it’s rape. If she consents to any kind of safe sex and you make her have unsafe sex, it’s rape.
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here, but I hope that by telling my own story I can convince anyone who isn’t sure.
Robert, the evidence for the proposition that “risk reduction” strategies for rape are ineffective is the multitude of situations in which women are raped. See also comments 31 and 32 above. Do you have evidence that any of the proposed risk reduction strategies actually do reduce a woman’s risk of being raped? Especially since approximately 85% of raped are by acquaintances of the victim?
Lilith:
Just like wearing my seat belt won’t eliminate the risk of my getting my skull fractured in all cases, it will just greatly REDUCE the risk of that happening on that particular outing in a car.
That’s probably true (provided you’re not going home to a husband/boyfriend/uncle/father, etc). The question is, how is saying that relevant or productive? It does nothing but push the responsibility for the instance back on the woman.
How’s a woman supposed to go about her life if she has to avoid every situation in which there’s a reasonable chance she might get raped?
If it is true, it is a counsel of resignation for women. The only variable we control is our own individual behavior; if modifications to one’s own behavior does not reduce the likelihood of negative events, then we are helpless, and fatalism is the only appropriate response.
Robert, you do understand!
No matter how I control or modify my own behavior, no matter what situations or places or people I avoid, no matter how isolated and insulated from the world I might keep myself, if I get raped someone will blame me for allowing it to happen. No matter what the circumstance, one more rule will be added to the list of things I should or should not have done in order to prevent it. Rape is the only crime I know of where the victim and not the perpetrator is blamed.
Jake: How’s a woman supposed to go about her life if she has to avoid every situation in which there’s a reasonable chance she might get raped?
She’s not supposed to go about her life: that’s the whole purpose of these blame-the-victim advices. A woman is supposed to take from them that she ought to avoid all men except the one man who will “protect her” (and if he rapes her, tough: he’s protecting her, she owes him sex, so it’s not rape).
No, I’m not saying that everyone who tells women what they should do to avoid rape (and those advice lists never include “Divorce your husband, leave your boyfriend, and go live in an all-woman commune which lets in men only under armed guard”) is directly thinking about keeping women from going about their normal lives by putting all women into a state of fear that if they do, they could be raped: indeed, the success of the “women need to avoid rape” meme can be measured by how many people pass it on with ever thinking about what this meme says.
Someone (Ginmar?) should do a reciprocal advice list of Things Men Should Do To Avoid Rape.
I mean, to avoid raping. That would be amusing, in a bitter kind of way.
Short, though.
I know that Jes. It was a rhetorical question.
Would anyone here, when advising their six-month pregnant sister, daughter, niece and friend, RECOMMEND Nick’s actions. Seriously, if someone you loved complained of being horny, would you recommend that they find a couple of drunk strangers to satisfy their sexual desires? Take the pregnancy out of the equation — would you recommend her actions?
You can argue sexual rights, male patriarchy, and risk management all you want, but I have a hard time believing that must people here want someone they love to make the same choice as Nick. You don’t have to be a moralizing religious fundamentalist, to be a little concerned about her decision-making.
It’s the decision of a woman who doesn’t love herself very much, and that’s a sad thing, not something to be championed.
Nick, would you recommend your actions to the prospective daughter you are due to deliver next week? If a son, would you recommend drunken encounters with strangers as an ideal?
There was a list somewhere, 50 Things men can do to stop rape. It was pretty funny, full of things like
If a woman is doing X, DON’T RAPE HER.
If a woman is doing Y, DON’T RAPE HER.
If a woman is doing Z, DON’T RAPE HER.
I find this conversation very interesting. As I am not a woman, have never been raped, have never counselled anyone following a rape or near-rape (and, incidentally, have never raped anyone), I don’t really have a good view of how “society” treats rapes/ rape victims.
From my perspective, I have young daughters, and among my paternal responsibilities is to keep them from getting killed/kidnapped/raped/hitbyacar etc.
At my younger daughter’s childcare centers, there is a strict “never alone with one adult” rule, to the extent that a (female) childcare provider was once suspended for two weeks for (accidentally, I assume) closing a bathroom door while changing the diaper of a one-year-old (male) baby. There was never an allegation of abuse/improper conduct. She broke the never-alone rule, and was suspended.
Now, I have no illusions that I am eliminating all risks, but I am doing my best to reduce them. As my daughters get older, I will feel responsible for teaching them how to stay as safe as possible when I am not there screening every person they come into contact with. One of the pieces of advise I would give them is, “Always be careful when you are alone with men. Try to minimize those times, and more so the less you know the man.” That sounds like sound advise to me. Right up there with “Don’t take candy from strangers.”
Now, Jake says, (in all caps, no less), “Avoiding certain behaviours (like going home with drunk men) does NOT reduce your likelihood of being raped.”
That certainly surprises me. It may very well be true — I don’t have any facts one way or another. It seems intuitive to me that not going home with drunk men would reduce (not eliminate) your risk of being raped, just like not lending your keys to drunk men reduces (not eliminates) your chances of having a dented fender.
While I have no pretensions that I have any rights to act paternalistically toward Nick, I certainly feel like I have the right to act paternalistically toward my children.
Do any of those of you (such as Jake) who so emphatically feel that behavior modification will not have positive results in this area (i.e., will not even REDUCE the risk) kindly explain why my intuitive sense is incorrect?
Robert,
In response to the following:
Avoiding certain behaviours (like going home with drunk men) does NOT reduce your likelihood of being raped.
You wrote:
Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?
If it is true, it is a counsel of resignation for women. The only variable we control is our own individual behavior; if modifications to one’s own behavior does not reduce the likelihood of negative events, then we are helpless, and fatalism is the only appropriate response.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But until men such as me and you start holding other men accountable for rape and attempted rape, then no, behavior modification on the part of women probably won’t do much for women’s overall safety.
The problem, as I see it, is the _men_ rape. So _men_ need to stop doing that for women to feel safer.
We as men can aid, assist, and do everything in our power to make other men stop raping.
I don’t see anything fatalistic about that approach.
I would, Emmen. If what you want is anonymous, no-strings-attached sex, then what better way to get it. We can argue the merits of such sex until the cows come home, but surely you admit that women are as entitled as men to *want* it.
Would anyone here, when advising their six-month pregnant sister, daughter, niece and friend, RECOMMEND Nick’s actions.
Hmmm. That’s an interesting question. The most interesting part is how you leave out brother, son and nephew. Why is that glaring omission in your post?
Aside from that… No, I wouldn’t recommend it because I wouldn’t do it myself. But if I had a friend, brother/sister, niece/nephew, grandmother/grandfather who wanted to do that I would advise that they make sure condoms are used (as Nick did) to prevent contracting inconvenient, painful or fatal diseases. By the same token, I would never recommend that a friend, brother/sister, yadayadayada go skydiving because I wouldn’t do that myself. But I don’t think that either seeking anonymous sex or skydiving are inherently bad things.
But that’s just me.
“Would anyone here, when advising their six-month pregnant sister, daughter, niece and friend, RECOMMEND Nick’s actions.”
If they wanted to have anonymous, morality-free sex, then yes.
My question to you is: when your son, father, brother, nephew, uncle, etc., is getting ready to go out for a night on the town, do you recommend he get drunk and then refuse to wear a condom during sex and still try to penetrate the woman who has just told him “no”?
And yet, at the end of the day, men can go out and have casual sex and not get moralizing lectures about it. Here’s the thing–they aren’t urged not to do so, or told they must not love themselves if they go out and fuck around or have a threesome. Hell, they get cred most of the time.
The day that men are told they don’t love themselves because they fuck around, that they are whores and sluts for having sex (not in this thread, but out in the world, yeah), and that they are “stupid” for having one night stands because who knows what could have happened–well, then I might start buying everyone’s insistence that they don’t have any double standards. But I’ve yet to see this on a societal level, frankly.
And here’s the other thing–they aren’t likely to be the ones raped. It could happen, but it’s not nearly as common as women getting raped. And in that way, it’s an issue of power and privilege. When women are supposed to watch their behavior because of the choices of certain men to rape, and those men aren’t held accountable, that’s sick. It does not hold the men accountable. This is not a car accident (victims aren’t normally held accountable for the at-fault driver’s actions), preventing illness (viruses and bacteria don’t make concious choices), fending off animal attacks (not people, no rationality). Rape is the result of bad choices–the choices of the perp. Period.
Emmentropia, why on earth should only Nick be the one whose actions are being scrutinized? Why aren’t you holding the paratroopers to the same standard? C’mon – how hard is it to say, “Yo, guys, don’t pick up one-night stands when you’re really drunk because your judgment is impaired?”
The accident comparisons for risk reduction are also irrelevant in the sense that rape is not an accident. Nobody ever said, “Ooops, my bad, my penis slipped into your vagina by mistake, here’s my insurance card.”
Emmetropia, I don’t think what Nick did was risky. Nick met two men with whom sie had the opportunity to sit and talk face-to-face. They understood what Nick was looking for. They were reasonable enough to hear and accept Nick’s stipulation that condoms be used.
I’ve never agreed with those who claim that many rapes spring from misunderstanding — but even if that were true, Nick eliminated any such risk. Sie was going to have sex with them. They were required to wear condoms. No misunderstanding. In fact, Nick put hirself in a position where the only thing that could likely go wrong was an intentional, criminal act by one of the men.
Looking for people on the internet is probably riskier. I’m not sure that doing this sort of thing with strangers is any more dangerous than with acquaintances, based on the prevalence of acquaintance rape. And, in fact, being in a room with two horny guys with the intention of fucking them may put a woman at less risk of rape than being in a room with two horny guys with the intention of not fucking them. If one postulates that these are men who will, if denied consent, penetrate the woman anyway; then in the latter case, the circumstances where the woman will not want to have sex with them predominate, while in the former case, those circumstances are comparatively few (such as Nick’s story, where one of the men got a good fuck and the other inexplicably blew it by refusing to wear a condom).
In short, as modes of seeking sex with two male partners goes, I think what Nick did is about as sensible an approach as any.
Now, if what you’re suggesting, Emmetropia, is that my pregnant sister, daughter, niece or friend ought not to be looking for sex with two male partners, I have already addressed that in the penultimate paragraph of #86, above.
Someone better start talking about positive things we can do as a society to reduce the incidence of rape. The world is not perfect! If you accept the worlds imperfection and attempt to make it a better place you will live an infinitely more fruitful than if you act like it should be and get insulted when it surprises you.
I stumbled on this blog/thread this morning and came back this evening to see what sort of solutions would have been posted. Reading through the posts, I can only say that I am exhausted: why all the quibbling and minutiae?
I think all the rhetoric of risk analysis and saying that Nick was stupid or foolish in the situation plays right along with the discussion of rape-prevention, and blaming the victim, and what the victim could have done differently. . . and it’s the big circle which seems utterly senseless to me.
The way I see the situation, if a man has the mentality to be a dog, to be a rapist, to be disrespectful against women’s bodies, and disobey common sense and decency . . . at some point in time, he will eventually commit an act of rape. And all the rape-prevention rhetoric is trying to do, is “empower” women, so that it isn’t them, so that they don’t become a victim, so that they aren’t the foolish one . . . which in turn only ends up failing.
When I was a child, my grandmother never allowed me to ride in a car alone with a man or be alone with a man in general, it didn’t matter if she knew him for years, if he was a member of the church, or a complete stranger. She didn’t want me to go over friends houses and visit them. Then finally one day when I was in my teens, after a heated discussion, she told me she had almost been raped by her friend’s brother. Her “friend” told her to come over to her home, and then she lured her into a room with her brother, who almost raped her. So in essence my grandmother was applying rape-prevention strategies so that the same thing would not happen to me.
But it didn’t stop an older adoptive cousin from molesting me before I was a teenager, in the backyard of her home where she told us to play while she talked to my aunt inside. But I guess it was foolish of her to send us to the backyard to play, if only we had played indoors, or maybe if someone had been watching us, it wouldn’t have happened.
If my grandmother hadn’t gone over to her “friend’s” home, yes she would have avoided being a victim, but I can guarantee that it wouldn’t have stopped the rapist, it wouldn’t have stopped a rape from occuring. All the risk analysis does is possibly stop the rape from happening to you, but it doesn’t stop the rape from happening at all. And perhaps, I also wouldn’t have been a victim, but seeing as how my cousin already had the mentality, wouldn’t he have just preyed on someone else? So how in the hell can you suggest that someone is foolish in any situation involving rape? If a woman says no, no matter what the situation, she could be a prostitute, a stripper, a wife, a girlfriend. . . she could be in a dark alley, in her home, butt naked on the table top. . . if she says no, it’s NOT HER FAULT, all the stupidity and foolishness belongs to the rapist, not the victim.
Richard: “Always be careful when you are alone with men. Try to minimize those times, and more so the less you know the man.” That sounds like sound advise to me. Right up there with “Don’t take candy from strangers.”
Well, it does sound like sound advice, superficially, and especially it must if you’re the kind of guy who would never rape anyone and who would never molest his own daughters – and I’m sure that you wouldn’t, before you take offense.
Statistically, however, “Don’t take candy from strangers” is not the best advice to give small children on how not to get sexually molested. The best advice to give small children on how not to get sexually molested would be “Stay away from your father, uncle, grandfather, stepfather, and older brothers, and any adult male your parents have introduced to you as a trusted individual, such as a priest or a minister.”
Statistically, women are most likely to be raped by a man they know well. Your advice to your daughters to avoid being alone with men in order to avoid being raped is backwards: they are less likely to be raped by a complete stranger than by some man they know socially, just as children are more likely to be molested by an adult man they know than they are by a stranger.
Better advice to give your daughters is that they should be independent, strong, active, self-confident, able, and have absolutely the right to make their own decisions at any point in any sexual encounter – and if the man doesn’t listen to her, it’s his fault, not hers. When a man rapes a woman, it’s not because she did something stupid: it’s because he did something wrong.
There was a list somewhere, 50 Things men can do to stop rape.
50 Things Men Can Do To Stop Rape
Statistically, women are most likely to be raped by a man they know well. Your advice to your daughters to avoid being alone with men in order to avoid being raped is backwards: they are less likely to be raped by a complete stranger than by some man they know socially, just as children are more likely to be molested by an adult man they know than they are by a stranger.
But isn’t that because they are more likely to BE with someone they know well? I mean, if we are talking statistics, then I will agree that a person is more likely to be raped by an uncle (who she sees every day) than by the stranger at a bar who she goes off alone with. But that is because she’s only going to be with the one-night-stand guy for ONE NIGHT, giving him a relatively short time to rape.
Not to overdraw the car-accident metaphor, but when we hear “95% (or whatever) of accidents occur within a mile or two or home”, that is because that is usually where we are when we are driving. The “moral” isn’t “Drive to Nebraska, because the statistics say you’re unlike to get into an accident there.”
While I will agree that, statistically, rapes by close aquaintances are most common, I would also assume (again, intuitively) that if Person A spends every one of her nights in a month alone with a close “trusted” acquaintance/relative, and Person B spends every one of her nights in a month alone with a different stranger she met at a bar, Person B would get raped more often. A more “normal” person, Person C, who spends 29 nights with a close acquaintance, and one evening alone with a stranger, is probably more likely to be raped at some point during the 29 days — but not 29 times more likely!
Better advice to give your daughters is that they should be independent, strong, active, self-confident, able, and have absolutely the right to make their own decisions at any point in any sexual encounter – and if the man doesn’t listen to her, it’s his fault, not hers.
Certainly good advice. Other good advice to take from this is to state explicitly that it’s okay to “rat out” someone who acts inappropriately — even if it’s someone they think is a “trusted adult.”
But I still feel like the “most rapes are acquaintance rapes” argument is mis-leading. It smells too much like “Why are so many closets I open full of my clothes?” Because 99% of the time, you are opening your own closet!
If the choice for this evening is “trusted acquaintance” or “stranger”, stranger is still the riskier option for any given period of time.
If the choice for this evening is “trusted acquaintance” or “stranger”, stranger is still the riskier option for any given period of time.
Only if you assume that all strangers are more likely to be rapists than all trusted acquaintances. The real problem is that you can never know that a trusted acquaintance or family member will not rape any more than you can know that a stranger will not rape. Truth be known, none of us have the skills to make that determination – no matter how long or how well we know a person. We can fully believe that our best friend/father/uncle/grandfather would never rape but that belief doesn’t make it true.
Richard, Jake Squid has got it right. While the predominance of people with the opportunity (acquaintances) among rapists may only speak to their opportunity, you don’t seem to have anything but a hunch to show for the proposition that trusted acquaintances are less likely to be rapists. In fact, one could theorize that, for some rapists, “familiarity breeds attempt,” so that the more time one spends with such a man, the more at risk one is.
Richard: But isn’t that because they are more likely to BE with someone they know well?
And how do you suppose that someone who wants to molest a child will best arrange to have his desires fulfilled? Why should he go out and take the risk of offering candy to strange children, when he has daughters (or sons) at home who can more easily be manipulated into keeping quiet?
While I will agree that, statistically, rapes by close aquaintances are most common, I would also assume (again, intuitively) that if Person A spends every one of her nights in a month alone with a close “trusted” acquaintance/relative, and Person B spends every one of her nights in a month alone with a different stranger she met at a bar, Person B would get raped more often.
And your intuition is wrong. Person A is alone every night of the month with an acquaintance or relative, who can rape her as he pleases: she might be raped more than 30 times in the month, and she might even believe that “it’s not really rape, he’s my husband” or “it’s not really rape, because he just pestered me till I gave in” or “it’s not really rape, my uncle just makes me do stuff to him, he doesn’t screw me”. Person B is making a judgement each evening about a man she just met: she might make a wrong judgement, but she’s unlikely to think that she owes a man she just met sex, or that it’s not “really” rape. Person B is probably as wary as she’ll ever get each night. Person B might get raped – one man she picks up might appear to be a nice person and turn out to be an asshole like one of Nick’s picks, or might turn out to be a sociopath – but Person A is stuck with her rapist and his betrayal.
A more “normal” person, Person C, who spends 29 nights with a close acquaintance, and one evening alone with a stranger, is probably more likely to be raped at some point during the 29 days … but not 29 times more likely!
Only if the acquaintance Person C spends 29 nights with is the kind of guy who doesn’t commit rape. If he is, Person C is 29 times more likely to be raped during the nights she spends with him – a lot more than 29 times more likely.
If the choice for this evening is “trusted acquaintance” or “stranger”, stranger is still the riskier option for any given period of time.
You’re still assuming that men known to be “trusted acquaintances” don’t usually commit rape. Statistics show you wrong.
i suppose some people see how men benefit from rape in the institutional sense that fear of rape allows men more social freedoms than women. but i most definitely am harmed by men who rape. every time, every-every-every-every time, that sit alone with a female student to help her with math, i worry that something i say or do will be misconstrued in a way that could cost me my job. the fact of rape makes me less able to do my job (provide safe, friendly, helpful advice on math or life to all students equally, male or female).
and if we just remember that rape does not equal sex, then there is simply no question about blaming the victim. the victim of rape may have asked for sex, but that’s not what she (or he) got. the main reason i enjoy sex is that my partner has chosen to be with me. her arousal and willingness to be there and to do what we’re doing is what makes it fun, intimate, erotic. the instant she doesn’t want to do something, i lose all motivation to try to do that…it’s just not sex (by definition a mutual act) anymore.
there is nothing wrong with Nick for wanting sex or for doing what she calculated would be the way to get some. and clearly the guy she was with was part asshole for persisting after she said no, but ultimately, it looked like his decency (or maybe drunknness, but okay) won out.
what’s terribly wrong is that there are guys out there who can even maintain an erection in the presence of an unwilling partner. putting aside the atrocity of the actual rape, just for the moment, the fact that some men’s psychology enables the mere possibility of (penile) rape is abhorrent to me to the point of true lack of understanding. (seriously…some guys can get it up when she’s resisting??)
there’s the appropriate place for blame, right there. on the men who pervert the sex act so much that they can imitate it (since it’s not real sex) even when a woman is resisting. don’t put it on rape victims.
One of the pieces of advise I would give them is, “Always be careful when you are alone with men. Try to minimize those times, and more so the less you know the man.” That sounds like sound advise to me. Right up there with “Don’t take candy from strangers.”
Translation: Men can not be trusted. Avoid any “alone” time with a man. It is your job to keep yourself from getting raped.
But I guess at the same time, you hope they will date and eventually get married? Or do you plan to cut out the dating part and simply choose a suitable man based on how he acts around you? Knowing that how a man acts around you might have no relation to how he might act alone, with your daughter?
Trying to keep your daughters safe shouldn’t mean teaching them to limit themselves, it should mean you, out telling men that rape is not OK and that you are not going to passively support the concept that “men rape and if you get raped you are at fault” by putting the burden on your daughters to avoid it.
When I was young, my father told me that boys were only after me for one thing, sex. I was told it was my job to keep them from getting sex. But at the same time, I was encouraged to date and find a guy to marry. How contrary is that? Men only want me for sex and I should avoid them, but I should find one to marry so I can have sex. And if in the mean time, I get raped, I am at fault. For either not following a list a rules that don’t help, or for simply wanting sex.
It must be nice to be a guy, getting to go out looking for sex and your only worry a girl saying “No”. And heck, if the circumstances are right, you can ignore the “No”. It is hard to be a girl. We aren’t supposed to want sex at all. And if we do, and go looking for it, we are whores and deserve what we get, we are asking for it.
Richard, if you had sons, instead of daughters, would your ‘keeping child safe’ list be a long list of things to avoid? Or would it consist of ‘wear a condom’.
As long as there are rapists, there will always be victims. You can’t solve the problem by learning not to be a victim. That’s senseless.
The only way that risk-analysis/prevention will truly work, is if the man/woman you plan to go off with doesn’t have the intention to rape you, or doesn’t have the intention of raping anyone period.
The car analogy is truly senseless. If you got into an accident, you can cry all day long of how if only you had left the house two minutes earlier, or if only you had checked your mirror a third time, or if only you hadn’t been distracted by the kids passing you the popcorn you would have had more time to react, if you weren’t so foolish as to take this particular street instead of a different route. . . blah blah blah. But the fact is, there was nothing you could do to change the situation.
This makes being victimized by rape even more ludicrous to imagine saying you could have done something differently. Because the fact is, the rape was intentional. The only way the crime would be able to be stopped, is if the perpetrator decides not to rape someone. If the rape doesn’t happen to you, it will inevitably happen to someone else.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/474570.html
List of things to do to stop rape. Car analogies need not apply.
This is very much like my rape story, when I consented to one thing, but didn’t consent to unprotected sex. And she knew that, but got on top and started humping me, despite me saying “no, don’t!” She had already gotten me quite close, so it was very urgent: I pushed her off me rather violently. I didn’t report it for the same reasons you didn’t, and I wouldn’t have been able to force her to abort anyway, so what good would come from that. I just blamed myself for being naked with a crazy woman.
Did the guy know you were already pregnant? That might have lessened his own incentive to use a condom, and it makes your story a little different from mine. But regardless of pregnancy risk, and even std risk, penetration requires consent, or at least requires there to be no “NO!”.
Great list, Ginmar. There’s a new addition to the list, at the top of this thread: If she picked you and your friend up, fucked your friend, spread her legs and said she’d fuck you if you had a condom, but you tried to put your penis in her without a condom, you’re a rapist.
(Honestly, folks, Nick could not have been more clear or straightforward: if X then Y, if not Y then not X. This guy either had the temerity to take off the condom and try to do the one thing sie said sie wouldn’t do; or the entitlement to somehow lose the condom and think sie was obligated to let him fuck hir anyway. What a gigantic asshole!)
But I still feel like the “most rapes are acquaintance rapes” argument is mis-leading.
That may sound like common sense, but considering the well documented way that abusive behaviour in intimate relationships tends to escalate, and the way in which rape and abuse is different from other crimes, it’s really not.
Eliminating risk of getting caught is about more than just picking victims from the people around you, it’s about getting to know when the intended victim is most vulnerable and biding one’s time. When it comes to people who abuse their partners this often involves constantly testing boundaries. Few abusers come straight out and say that they are going to hit you, very few even get physically violent within the first year. Once it starts, the physical violence is often, at first, broken up by long periods without violence. Very few abusers think of themselves as abusive.
Likewise, very few rapists come out and say they will treat you like less than a person. They usually wait until you, and those around you, trust them to some extent. (If they didn’t, they’d get caught more often and we wouldn’t have as much of a problem.) They often don’t think that they are rapists either. I doubt the guy that Nick fooled around with would have if he had raped her. (“Hey, she said yes…and we were already doing it!”)
Besides, the big difference between rape and abuse on one hand and murder and theft on the other is that the former cannot be done without creating a witness to the crime. Thus, it’s to the rapists/abusers advantage to establish a relationship that gives them a measure of control and to adopt a persona that makes everyone around them trust them (and consequently distrust any accusers). Commiting stranger rape, unlike stealing from an empty house or store, is in some ways riskier than raping ones partner or date. The former only leaves the question of who the perpetrator is, the latter also brings up the question of whether a crime was commited at all. The way in which we focus of what women should do rather than what men do only makes this worse.
Blasting people for using Nick’s story as yet another example of What Women Shouldn’t Do is not unwarranted. Telling people to put on their selt belt does not feed into the non-existent idea that semi’s have the right to rule the road, but saying that a woman who does not always avoid men she hasn’t known for ages feeds into the idea that men can’t be trusted, and that most rapes are stranger rapes (or would be if women routinely engaged in “riskier” behaviour).
Tell your daughter or niece – or son or nephew – whatever you wish, but don’t be surprised if people get pissed when you choose to lecture an adult on her “risky” behaviour while also ignoring the social constructs that make the behaviour risky and failing to offer any advice on how to change them.
oh, and what ginmar said
A trifold hypothesis:
There is very little a woman can do to protect herself from acquaintance/family-type rape. These rapes are a betrayal; they are someone who was thought to be trustworthy, proving themselves unworthy. Aside from going off to live in an all-woman commune in the woods, there is generally nothing that an individual woman can do to preclude or prevent these rapes.
There is a lot a woman can do to protect herself against stranger rape. These rapes are not a betrayal; while monstrous, there was no trust established or taken advantage of. They are simply a power dynamic at play; a man who wanted to exert power over a woman had the opportunity to do so with someone not in his circle of friends and acquaintances, and took it. Women are significantly capable of avoiding this type of assault by restricting or modifying their own behavior so as to not provide openings for the opportunistic criminal; not walking drunk through the park at night, etc.
Women act rationally, and concentrate their strategies for harm reduction in the area where it can reduce their instance of being raped: strangers and dangerous situations. Can’t do anything much about Uncle Ollie if he starts raping, so don’t worry about it; can prevent the stranger rape in the park by not going into the park.
If all three prongs of this hypothesis is true, we would expect to see what we actually do observe: large quantities of acquaintance rape (which cannot be modified other than by cultural change, and individual moral choices by men), and relatively smaller quantities of stranger rape (which can be avoided, and often is, by women modifying their own behavior).
Okay – alternate ending to Nick’s story:
Let’s say after Nick’s initial objections, she finally concedes and has sex without a condom. What she didn’t tell the man is that she had a case of herpes, which is passed to the man. The next few weeks, the man inevitably will complain to his friends about “that whore who gave him herpes.” Would anyone say, “hey that sucks, but you were dumb.” Cos it is dumb to have sex with a stranger without a condom. Still, I doubt anyone would say it. The proper thing to do would be to commiserate over a pint of beer.
Which is just why this “you were dumb” pisses me off so much. What benefit does it give to say that? The reason why rape is so common is that men feel they can get away with it, that the woman won’t confess. And that feeling is reinforced when someone like Nick or Samantha talk about their rape or near-rape experiences and are immediately punished for speaking about it.
So here’s what you do. If a woman tells you she’s been right, you console her. If your only response is “well that was dumb of you” or something of the like, then kindly shut the fuck up. You’ll be doing her a favor.
False analogy. Car accidents, being accidents, aren’t maliciously seeking easy, available victims. Rapists are. That is why the real danger to children and women is from close to home. And it thrives on fear, shame and secrecy, so if you really want to do your daughters a favor, teach them to TALK if someone hurts them sexually. And then take it seriously. If you could get a room full of women talk about the myriad ways male realtives, teachers, friends of the family and fathers of friends got their sexual jollies by touching, pressing, propositioning, etc. when they were too young and insecure to stand up for themselves, you’d probably freak out and then maybe you’d realize that “stranger danger” is a dangerous, red herring.
A lot of us probably are taken aback by the casualness of Nick going off to have a threesome w/ two strangers. For me this has nothing to do with her being a woman, or with the fact that one of the men was assaultive. It’s just not how I’m put together- I can’t fathom ever doing such a thing. I’m not sexually adventurous. It doesn’t fit in with how I see myself, and a lot of men and women are like this.
So what? There are cultures where a woman is foolishly “risking rape” by showing her hair, or going to school or leaving the house. It’s the wrong way to think about it.
You know I’m reading through at all the speculation of whether being with men we know or being with men we don’t know is more of a risk factor for rape or assault. (FTR, I’m in the “at higher risk with men I know” camp, based on general statistics). But what’s not mentioned are the characteristics of men who rape. I would posit (though there is no way to test this) that men who rape (fine! People who rape) are more likely to rape someone that they know than to rape a stranger. AND they are more likely to not be incarcerated it, because it seems to me that raping people that you know is less likely to be associated with the kinds of crimes that are more successfully prosecuted (assault, robbery, etc) and more likely to be associated with crimes that are far less prosecutable, like intimate family violence or intimate partner violence.
This of course is all speculation, but damn if I wouldn’t rather the pundits speculate about the characteristics of the rapists than the characteristics of people who are raped. Because the only thing that has been proven (or as close to proven as possible) is that when looking at the characteristics of people who are raped there is as much variation between them as there is in the total population. The ONLY thing this group has in common is in being in physical proximity to someone who raped them.
Now, if the ONLY thing this groups has in common is centered around the perpetrator, doesn’t it make a whole lot more sense to talk about, speculate about, spend tax dollars in think tanks researching, punditing about and what not, the people who rape?
I know, choir and all that, but I had to chime in.
Would anyone say, “hey that sucks, but you were dumb.” Cos it is dumb to have sex with a stranger without a condom. Still, I doubt anyone would say it.
If the jackass were my friend, I would almost certainly say that. Oh, I’d say it all nice-like, and I would certainly mix in more “that sucks” than “you’re dumb,” but I’d still say it.
And, in fact, I have.
—Myca
Robert, you’re still missing it and that’s becuase you’re going after this ass backwards. You know who stops rape? Men. Men rape. IF a guy sets out to rape a woman, any woman will do. The only way to protect all those women is to stop those men, not restrict those women. It’s a choice. Who do we impose the curfew on? The women men are raping? Or the men who do the raping? IF we lock women up in their houses, the men will break in.
Furthermore, telling women they have to protect themselves ignores the fact that women DO protect themselves, and that they get no damned praise or recognition for it at all. When one woman gets attacked, though, it’s assumed that she failed not that she did everything a reasonable person could do. A reasonable person. Women should not have to make huge sacrifices for safety.
See, the thing about rape is that men are not doing their share at all. None. They’re not doing one damned thing to end it all. Instead, they’re bashing rape victims with polite phrases and passive rape acceptance. Rape isn’t like the weather or some force of nature that you avoid, like puddles. It’s an act committed by men who don’t think they’re rapists. Their denial that it’s rape and your denial that it’s men’s job to end it leave women always in the postion of having to react because the intransingence of so-called reasonable men leaves women no choice. Try thinking about it before you repeat the same old shit.
Women are doing all they need to do to end rape. MEn are not. Pick up the slack or shut the fuck up. If men aren’t out there, bashing men who rape, then, no, they’re not doing shit, and they have no damned place in the debate at all.
Ginmar, I agree with you about what has to be done to stop rape.
I did not post a prescription. I posted a description.
I mean men in general, not guys like Jake and so forth. If men as a group did their share, women wouldn’t have to do it all.
There is very little a woman can do to protect herself from acquaintance/family-type rape.
No, there isn’t. So why is it anytime a woman is raped she is presented with a list of things to do, or avoid doing, that “might” prevent rape?
There is a lot a woman can do to protect herself against stranger rape. These rapes are not a betrayal; while monstrous, there was no trust established or taken advantage of.
They are a betrayal. I do not expect my car to be stolen, my house to be burgled, to be robbed, mugged, or harmed in any fashion. I would do none of those things to any others, so it would be a betrayal if they happen to me. It is like a social contract. I don’t hurt you, you don’t hurt me.
They are simply a power dynamic at play; a man who wanted to exert power over a woman had the opportunity to do so with someone not in his circle of friends and acquaintances, and took it. Women are significantly capable of avoiding this type of assault by restricting or modifying their own behavior so as to not provide openings for the opportunistic criminal; not walking drunk through the park at night, etc.
Women should watch what they do, how they act, where they go. Women should modify their behavior. Women can avoid rape if they follow the rules.
And I don’t need to say anything else. Ginmar, post #125 said everything.
Someone else said this, too, and it needs to be repeated: WHY ARE YOU TELLING A WOMAN WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE?! What is she supposed to do, get in her damned time machine and go back in time and prevent the rape? The thing is, if it wasn’t her that guy raped, chances are the guy would have moved onto another target. As long as you focus on any one woman, you’re leaving all other women out there undefended. Harden one target and you’re just ensuring that they go after other targets. You can only do so much with a target. Eventually you have to realize that the simplest thing to do is go after the person doing the attacking.
Think about it in terms of shooting a weapon. You can move the target great distances but if you’re the one firing that weapon it only takes a tiny bit of movement to keep the sight trained on the target. So why are we going through all this crap when all we have to do is disarm the shooter? The victim is not shooting themselves. The shooter has all the advantages. Why don’t we go after him? Instead we’ve got victims doing all this incredible labor. It’s not like they’re running after the bullets and trying to catch them.
It’s incredibly stupid to go after victims in the name of crime prevention, and yet somehow we only do this when it’s females. Or gays, in some cases.
The victim-blamers, as a rule, seem to believe that bad things only happen to people (women) who have been bad or stupid. I’m sure it’s a very comforting idea for some people to believe that rapes mostly happen to women (=not me or my sister/daughter/wife) who have been stupid. Unfortunately, it is bullshit. And like Raznor asked, what does it help to declare people stupid, (except possibly) to maintain a sense of control, a sense that it won’t happen to me or anyone I care about?
And I suppose someone might now call this “fatalism” or “resignation”. However, let me just say that I don’t aim just for a society (in a broad, global sense) in which all public places feel to women like places where they are safe from rape, I’d go as far as to demand a society in which NO place would feel like a safe place for a rapist to rape. No cop-outs like “yeah, but until that happens, women need to…”, they’re just distractions and insults to women who are currently doing much against being raped. I think an almost rape-free society is a possibility (same goes for other crimes) but it sure won’t be achieved by victim-blaming, or the attitude that rape victims first have to prove their “innocence” in not having been stupid, tempting, too vulnerable, too in-the-wrong-place or whatever the hell people want to hold rape victims liable off.
Just adding my voice, others have been saying the same thing (ginmar most vocally), but the idea “No woman (or a man) is to blame for being raped at the least, the fault is 100% with the rapist” is such good stuff it bears repeating. Oh, and it’s a good thing the title “My Rape Story” wasn’t what I was expecting. Phew.
can prevent the stranger rape in the park by not going into the park.
And not going around or into:
* the grocery store
* the gas station
* the movie theater
* the restaurant
* the pharmacy
* the pub
* the coffeehouse
* the bookstore
* the library
* the post office
* the doctor’s office or clinic
* the dentist’s office
* the hospital
* the city hall
* the department store
* the record shop
* the clothing store
* the bakery
* the sporting goods store
* the gym
* the auto repair shop
* the home supply store
* the florists
* the nursery
* the pizza joint
* the video rental store
* the bank
* the house of worship
* the health food store
* the daycare facility
* the bus stop
* the subway
* school
* work
And don’t stay home alone, either.
Robert, do you have any clue at all why most women find this “advice” completely repugnant, not to mention unworkable?
and ginmar? I am wholly in your amen corner!
Perhaps it’s just me, but I would tell a male acquaintance who got herpes from unprotected sex that he was stupid.
I have, in fact.
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“There is very little a woman can do to protect herself from acquaintance/family-type rape.”
Actually, sometimes there is a lot one can do – you can get the hell out of a relationship the moment he starts to test those boundaries. Or you know, you could become a nun. But the fact that you can do something about this doesn’t mean that the focus should be on telling women to be overly sensitive about what their partners do (or avoiding men altogether) – at the expense of discouraging such men from such behaviour.
There is a lot a woman can do to protect herself against stranger rape….while monstrous, there was no trust established or taken advantage of.
It’s ridiculous to say that there was no trust established in Nick’s story. It may not be the same level of trust as in a decades old marriage, but it’s still trust. At what magical point do you think trust is established? A few hours? A few dates? A few months? A few years?
But then, technically, if Nick had been raped, it would not have been stranger rape. Which leads me to:
If all three prongs of this hypothesis is true, we would expect to see what we actually do observe: large quantities of acquaintance rape (which cannot be modified other than by cultural change, and individual moral choices by men), and relatively smaller quantities of stranger rape (which can be avoided, and often is, by women modifying their own behavior).
Gee, that’s a neat trick – taking what is known to be true, hypothesising about why, and then taking what is known to be true as proof that your hypothesis is correct as well.
I do wonder though, should we women modify our behaviour to protect ourselves from acquaintance rape (in direct violation of your hypothesis) or does being raped by a guy (or two) that you’ve hung out with for a few hours not count as acquaintance rape?
Besides, if your hypothesis were true, and stranger rape decreases in direct proportion to actions taken by women – and is unaffected by societal norms, then we would expect global rape stats to be in direct proportion with women’s modesty and lack of freedom rather than their political and economic power.
Cultural norms still strongly affect rape stats worldwide. Women’s individual choices only affect their individual safety in limited ways. Culture plays a large part in defining what is “risky” behaviour, and consequently, the rates of both stranger and acquaintance rape.
With apologies, Robert:
I’ve been raped and not by a stranger.
I spent decades blaming myself, which is kind of silly, because I was a kid at the time and really couldn’t have prevented anything, but kids are silly and I was a kid when I started blaming myself.
Eventually I got a little better on that.
After I got a little better, I spent six or seven months thinking that it really was in some way different from people who got raped by strangers, or as adults. That because I was young and didn’t have options, it was less my fault than theirs.
Then I got smarter.
Robert: Listen. What you are describing is a fantasy. Everyone who was raped was like me. Even if it was by a stranger. It’s all the same. It’s always about the rapist’s cruelty. It’s a sin carried out against, not by, the victim’s body, mind, and soul.
And let me add this.
This is not a fatalistic philosophy. It’s an optimistic one. It is clear and it is bright like the morning sun. Because I am not interested in cowering from the world and from morality and saying, “Nothing to be done, nothing to be done.” I’m saying that it has to be fought, not lived with, not accomodated. I’m saying that every woman and every man who is abused or raped or hurt deserved better, because they are my siblings and my allies in this world.
I reject your frame. Too much has been given up already. If it is a risk to live in the world instead of hiding then it’s just civil disobedience against the unwritten laws; and I admire people like Nick for that heroism of actually living.
I’m not very good at that kind of heroism. But please don’t suggest that it’s somehow worthy of praise that I’m afraid.
I’d be interested in finding out the age of the posters to this thread. I’m wondering if there’s an age gap here. I’m 49 and most of my female friends are 45 – 65. Between us there’s a whole host of real world sexual experience — long- and short-term marriages, annulments, divorces, affairs, one night stands, a few swinging experiences, and lots of battery operated toys. Probably half of us were born into pretty traditional homes, with rigidly defined roles for men and women. All of us have tested those roles, and I suppose one of the reasons we’ve remained friends is because all of us are kind of considered rebels by our families. There’s not a lot of moralizing going on within the group, but we have all come to a point where we acknowledge that our first responsibility is to ourselves, — that as we have gotten more healthy and self-possessed, we have made better decisions and have been less likely to put ourselves in risky situations, physically, emotionally and financially.
None of my peer group would recommend Nick’s actions to another, and those who have made similar choices in their younger days, recall these stories with both a chuckle and sigh of relief that things didn’t go bad. I think the difference is, is that all of us have been caretakers at some point, and rather reflexively look out for others, and so err on the side of preventing pain when possible. It’s a view that you’re not going to find in any feminist graduate seminar. I’ve taken a few. Although they can be great for helping to conceptualize the power dynamics within relationships, systems and organizations, they’re of little help when one is in a risky situation.
Nick exposed herself to a whole host of dangers, quite apart from sexual assault. Men will nearly always be stronger then women, and two men against a pregnant woman is pretty bad odds in my book. Sex with two drunk strangers was not the only remedy to her situation.
Frankly, when it comes to talking to loved ones about the best way to protect themselves, I really I don’t care whether a women is more vulnerable to stranger vs. acquaintance rape. I’ve seen and lived both sides of the equation. There are predators and there are prey in the world, and while we’ll waiting for everyone to evolve, let’s make sure that everyone has a way to protect themselves. At nearly fifty years of age, and having lived in the real world, I think it’s better to equip people with actual tools and skills, over statistics and discussions of male patriarchy. Slogans are little comfort to someone who’s actually been raped or killed.
I escaped two attempted abductions by strangers at age 14 and 17, when I was out walking, in very low risk areas, back in the bucolic 70’s. What I learned from the first attempt, saved my life the second time around when two men tried to force me into a car at knifepoint; I knew what was coming, and was able to respond the moment he grabbed me and put the knife to my throat. I never felt I was to blame, but retrospectively, realized that I had let myself get way too close to the point where I couldn’t protect myself. I had ignored my intuition that had been screaming danger in my ear, let him keep stepping into my personal space, and kept trying to accomodate his request for directions (I was raised to be a “nice,” helpful girl). Later, I worked as a bartender for several years, as I worked myself through school, and witnessed a whole slew of potentially dangerous situations that people got themselves into, usually fueled by alcohol and depression. I have referred to those instances when talking to my nieces and nephews, and the homeless women I’ve worked with, and don’t care one whit if that makes me a moralizing snob, if I reduce their chances of assault by even 2%.
You know, Emmetropia, you can use a lot of words and still blame the victim. Also? Sneering that ‘while we wait for eveyrone to evolve’ means you’re on the side of the rapists. You don’t end rape by going after the victims. The victims have done all they can. It’s about damned time we started nailing rapists for what they do. You don’t want to deal with that, fine. But don’t expect anybody to tolerate the same old crap with a fine new gloss on it.
PS; The only thing we’re missing is somebody whining that we don’t want women to protect themselves.
grrr….sorry about the italics (must remember to preview)
Ginmar, your powers of interpretation, leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t know where you get that I’m “on the side of rapists,” or where I’m “going after the victim,” but frankly those are cheap shots. I know rape isn’t taken seriously enough. The police refused to go after the two men who held me at knifepoint, despite the fact that a witness had taken down their license number, and that they had been implicated in three other attempted abductions around the county. The father of the driver swore the car had never left the driveway that day, and the police said, “besides, you really weren’t hurt.”
They were young and inexperienced. I’m sure they went on to commit other successful assaults. In the 30 years since that happened, there have probably been millions of rapes worldwide. If every known rapist was locked up, there would be more rapists to take their places. I’ve yet to hear of any idyllic culture on this side of the veil, that was free of sexual assault. Now in the interim, I suppose we can just encourage people to endanger themselves, and then raise them to sainthood when they’re victimized. But the people I know and love are actual flesh and blood beings, and I prefer that they not sacrifice themselves for the “cause.”
So I will continue to encourage them to protect themselves as best they can, and you can make icons.
Now in the interim, I suppose we can just encourage people to endanger themselves, and then raise them to sainthood when they’re victimized. But the people I know and love are actual flesh and blood beings, and I prefer that they not sacrifice themselves for the “cause.”
Oh good grief. Project much? Who is advocating for rape here?
Look. I understand that some people here have an issue that Nick left a bar with two men, with the intent of having sex. Fine. Have an issue with it. Try to make it all about “morality”—separating the “good” women from the “bad” women, as if that’ll make you either feel or be any more “protected”, or “less at risk”. Just one question….
How does the scenario surrounding Nick’s experience differ from that of the typical date? Surely I can’t be the only person on this thread who goes out on dates before a lengthy getting-to-know-you period (which, is kinda what a dates are for, no?)? And dates amongst non-teetotaling adults usually involve a certain level of imbibing alcohol, right? And a certain amount of alone-time out of the public eye, right? So, what was physically different in Nick’s scenario? (for a younger crowd, even the other guy isn’t so unusual; where rent is expensive, roommates are common). What was different? ‘Cuz from where I stand, the only thing that was different in this picture was that Nick was up-front about wanting to have sex. And I think that if Nick told the same story, but without the candid admission of wanting to have sex, no one would have found fault with hir actions.
Emmetropia, in no way, shape, or form do I want women raped for a cause. I firmly believe every woman should train in martial arts and carry a weapon (many everyday objects make excellent weapons!). I think we should all be aware of our surroundings and prepared to defend ourselves if necessary. I believe we should be prepared to kill if necessary. However, I am not under any illusion that “good girl” behavior is going to protect me from rape, or from the harsh criticism that would come my way if I ever was raped. You mentioned age. Well, I’m thirty-eight….old enough to know that if I was raped on the way home from work or a trip to the grocery store, or even at home behind locked doors and locked windows, raped by an assailant who broke in—-I would receive the exact same blame, the same dirty looks, dismissive attitude, the same “she should known better” bullshit as if I were a crack-smoking prostitute assaulted while turing tricks. Simply being female makes both of us targets. I’m not under any illusion that I would be treated better by either the police or the State’s Attorney than the official “bad girl”, the prostitute. And I’m not under any illusion that rapists are making “moral” assessments of their targets (“oh, I couldn’t rape her, she’s too nice”). Oh, and I’m also not under any illusion that, in the rare event of a rape conviction, let alone arrest, that my rapist would do any more time than the official “bad girl’s” rapist.
weird. my earlier comment is still awaiting moderation….
Sorry, I spent most of today on planes (returning to Oregon from Florida) and so didn’t have internet access; hence, slow approval of comments stuck in moderation.
Emmetropia,
It’s nice that you think your approach is more practical and worldly.
I don’t think you’ve actually tried to demonstrate it.
Look. Respecting women’s choices and not blaming victims—these are both strategies for both preventing and mitigating rapes.
Respecting women’s choices, incidentally, means neither advocating “go have sex with strangers” or saying “don’t do that! You’ll get raped!” If they’re a kid or if they ask your advice, help them hone their own risk factor judgment rather than superimposing your own.
It’s not ideology to me. That’s just how I talk about it. It’s about stopping the endless broken human lives. It’s about someday maybe meeting just a few more people who have never been raped. Just a few more people who were raped and bounced back because nobody dogpiled on them for their errors. Just a few more. I have a long life ahead of me. Just 2% would be good.
. . .
And it’s hard, because so many people are, in their opinions on rape, so comfortably smug.
Robert: There is a lot a woman can do to protect herself against stranger rape. These rapes are not a betrayal; while monstrous, there was no trust established or taken advantage of. They are simply a power dynamic at play; a man who wanted to exert power over a woman had the opportunity to do so with someone not in his circle of friends and acquaintances, and took it.
So, basically, Robert, in YOUR view of the world, no man owes any human feeling or respect towards any woman who ISN’T inside that man’s circle of acquaintances? Every woman OUTSIDE that circle is fair game and can be raped – there’s no “betrayal” involved, it’s the woman’s responsibility to avoid strange men, not a man’s responsibility not to rape women he doesn’t know?
Final try it probably won’t work and probably people will call me names but that is life.
1. Risk reduction means reducing not elimiating. It is not blame the vicitm. It means that one is less likely to become a vicitm, not that if one doesn’t follow these procedures one is asking for it, or to blame for it. It means that the behaviour increased the risk of becoming a victim. At least that is not how I believe.
Many here seem to think risk reduction is pointlesse. I disagree. We make risk assessments in our life all the time, on many issues.
2. This is not a court of law; . In a court of law the prosecution (not Nick, legaly) would need to prove the case against the man, and the man’s lawyer would need to show teh court didn’t have enough evidence to convict (not that the man wa innocent). Nothing needs to be proved to me. I accept everything Nick has told me without querstioning.
Because it is not a court of law issues, such as intelligence of a certain act, or the morality of a certain act, or the relative likelihood of a certain act leading to another act, can be discussed. I would be opposed to them in a court of law. If I were a juror in a court of law and the case was presented to me with a less pleasant ending, I would disregard issues concerning (my views) of morality and intelliegence. Nick would not be on trial. Nick would not have to prove anything; that would be the prosecutions job. Finding the man not guilty because the prosecution couldn’t prove its case would not mean to me that Nick lied, or was imagining the situation. It would mean that based on the evidence I could not find for guilt. I think when these issues are wrong if raised in a court of law to try and prove the defendent is not guilty. They have no place in a court of law. I would fight against them being used in a court of law.
This is not a court of law.
3. Nick wasn’t raped. She states she escaped rape but came close. She was initially upset and frightened but later it was merely irritating to her. I am glad it came to that in the end and that she did not feel traumatized and was not traumatized and she and her child were safe. I should have stated that. I perhaps should have stated things in a more polite way.
I presumed that Nick was an adult and therefore could take someone she didn’t know and hadn’t real reason to care much about saying her actions were stupid. I presumed she was big enough and adult enough that if my remarks upset her she’d come and tell me that. And we could talk about that issue as well. Or not, as either of us wished.
You can call me smug and I can tell you why I think you are wrong. Or not. I can care or not. This is part of my responsibilty to myself. I don’t think discussion of risk reduction are an anthema to the freedom of women, nor, in my mind do they have anything to do with the responsiblity of the man for rape. A woman could stand naked in front of a man. do the dance of the seven veils, in front of a sign that says “take me, I’m yours” and go off with him to a distant corner where no one can hear. The moment she says stop he must. Period. If he doesn’t he has raped her. Period.
I still contend that what should be, as can be plainly seen, is not what is, and wanting it to be a perfect world is not the same thing as operating in it as if it were.
Now it may be that Nick has evaluted the risk/benefit ratio differently than I have and we come to different conclusions on the intelligence of the behaviour. And that is fine.
If you want to conclude that I am wrong that is fine. If you want to conclude that risk analysis does no good, that is fine. If you want to conclude that rape falls into the “earthquake catagory” (no abiltiy to predict or prevent) instead of perhaps the “hurricane catagory” (some prediction possible, some methods of protection possible—evacuate etc, not a sure thing,) I think you are wrong. I think it is more like a hurricane and there are preventivtive steps to avoid dying in one, but that there are no guarrantees. And I intend to take those measures.
But that is not blaming the vicitm.
Jesu, that seems unfair to me. Robert called stranger-rape “monstrous”; that’s not compatable with considering women outside the circle “fair game.”
Wow, hot stuff going on here. Have to admit I was pretty astonished when Nick said she went off with these two complete strangers alone, but, anyway- it was better than taking the ‘all guys are rapists’ mentality, and as someone else said here (can’t remember who)- being more precautious about rape doesn’t neccessarily reduce the number of rapes considerably.
Since women today are bold enough to admit to wanting sex, why not just pay for it. That way you get a professional with professional ethics to go along. Clean and fun.
When paying for a man, he’s your toy under your command. You say start, he starts. You say stop, he stops. But that’s no fun isn’t it. You want him to be spontaneous and dominate you, don’t you?
Well girls, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Nick, would you recommend your actions to the prospective daughter you are due to deliver next week? If a son, would you recommend drunken encounters with strangers as an ideal?
I like to think I would raise my child to make the choices that were right for hir. I also like to think that by the time my child becomes sexually active, we will have made enough of an impact on sexist behaviour that should sie choose anonymous sex, sie wouldn’t suffer from that choice.
Maybe I’m just being hopelessly idealistic though.
Legal eagle – telling someone to put a condom on is not equivalent to raping someone. Don’t fudge the issue.
Emmetropia, I am calling bullshit on your ageism. I am in my mid-30’s with a spouse and a child and a mortgage. Your speculation that the folks who disagree with you are some kind of kids, is without foundation. You’re wrong because you’re wrong, not because your detractors don’t “live in the real world.”
By every legal definition of the term Nick is the attempted rapist here. Nick is the one who went out looking for sex, plyed them with so much alcohol that the could no longer make informed decisions, and then tried to make the victim perform a sex act that they didn’t want to.
Isn’t it wonderful how you can change the whole complexion of a situation by leaving out a detail or two? I didn’t ply them with alcohol; they’d been drinking for hours when I met them, and I can only infer how drunk they were based on their behaviour.
But much more importantly, I gave the asshole a choice. Either he could get a condom, or I was getting dressed and going home. I wasn’t forcing him to perform any sex act, unless you mean that he would be “forced” to wank off his frustration after I’d gone if I didn’t give him exactly what he wanted.
Rachel Ann:
Risk reduction, or at least the version of risk reduction that is preached in the conservative part of the U.S. that I live in, assumes a high degree of financial and social privilege on the part of the potential victim. For example: “don’t go in parking garages by yourself”. Well, if you work for a living, or have any business to conduct downtown, you’re going to be entering parking garages—and it’s probably going to be by yourself, and half the time it’s going to be after dark. “Avoid bad neighborhoods.” Well, you live in the neighborhood you can afford. “Install exterior safety lighting around your house.” For what? So intruders will have an easier time seeing how best to break in? In my neighborhood, the houses will all the fancy lighting are the ones broken into most often!
Yes, it irritates me that you are speaking on this issue, when it is clear that you lead a life far more insulated than that most of the rest of us do. I am alone with men often in the course of my work. I am usually the only woman on a crowded construction site—and tradeswomen have been raped on the job. Some folks take the opinion that women who put themselves in an all-male environment, or even a depopulated envoronment where they may encounter men, that those women are tacitly accepting rape risk by that action. No. That is flawed thinking.
I don’t have the privilege of quitting my job. I don’t have the privilege of finding someone to be with me all the time as I go about my business. As a single, adult woman, I simply cannot function by the “rules” that are supposed to keep my life rape-free. Whether you want to admit it or not, the woman who goes off alone with a man she doesn’t know well in order to have sex, isn’t really at any more risk of being raped than any woman who finds herself alone for any reason with a man she doesn’t know well. Most of us are continually in the presence of men we don’t know well. At work. At school. Walking home. Running errands. At the park. We are at risk—-why? Because we are around the people most likely to commit rape. Men.
Why isn’t the focus on stopping men from raping? To me, it seems painfully easy to avoid raping someone. It isn’t easy to survive without a job, or to survive without ever leaving the house. And your advice translates pretty much to exactly that where I live. Every time a woman is raped around here, the chatter is, “well, she shoulda done….” or not done, whatever. The focus is never, “that man should have listened to the word “no”. It’s disingenous of you to not recognize that we, as women, are still to this day blamed for our rapes, regardless of our behavior. We can have impeccable, “good woman” behavior, and still end up blamed for our rape, or called the same names (stupid, whore, etc.) as the “bad” or “naive” woman.
You think you have a life that is more sheltered from rape than mine. You may not. Regardless, my life would be recognized as “more risky” in terms of rape where I live, because I “put myself” in positions where I am either alone with men, or alone on the street (in a parking lot, parking garage, park, wherever). Where I live, minds have not been changed—not enough minds. I can’t survive following your protocols. Your protocols are not available to me. So, in order to survive, I have to engage in the “risky” behavior that will get me blamed for my rape. There are many rapes here, yet few arrests. What the fuck do you suggest that I do? Why is the burden on me to prevent rape? I’m not the one raping!! I already engage in all the “risk management” I can. So do the women I know. Most of the women I know have been raped, anyway.
What the fuck do we do?
Rachel Ann Writes: Final try it probably won’t work and probably people will call me names but that is life.
Rachel, I agreed not to “pile on” you any more, because Nick asked us to: does this mean you feel free to come back and tell us, again, that it’s a woman’s fault if she gets raped? Evidently so.
Ampersand: Robert called stranger-rape “monstrous”; that’s not compatable with considering women outside the circle “fair game.”
Then Robert needs to rethink his definition of “monstrous” or his definition of “fair game”, since he asserted (as I quoted) that a man who rapes a woman outside his circle of acquaintance, a woman he doesn’t know, has committed no betrayal of trust – presumably because Robert thinks no woman should expect any man to behave with any humanity towards a woman he doesn’t know.
Or is Robert arguing that all men are monstrous?
Emmetropia, I’m calling bullshit as well. As it happens I’m 42, and a soldier part of the time. I spent a year in Iraq and I’ve forgotten more about self defense than you’ll ever know—and I’ve used it, too.
It’s really simple. Men have to hold up their end of the bargain. They have to work just as much to end rape as women do. They’re not. As long as they’re saying one word about the victim, they’re not. Rape victims don’t commit rape. We could get rid of every rape victim there is and there’d still be rapes becuase we hadn’t gotten rid of the rapists. Maybe then men would give a shit if it started happening to them as often as it happend to women.
I think the persistance of the victim bashers is pretty damned disgusting. They keep fighting for their ‘right’ to blame victims instead of shutting the fuck up and opening their minds. It’s the attitude that you see on too many rape juries.
That’s a claim about the law. I don’t know what the law is in Lincolnshire, England. I know what it is in New York, and for alcohol to negate consent the intoxicated person must be passed out, as a practical matter. Legal Eagle, can you point to a statute or decision that says that simple intoxication negates consent?
Or are you making things up?
La Luba,
You stated:
I agree with you that if your profession requires you to go off alone with men you don’t know, regardless of why, you probably are more at risk than I am, and you know what? (BTW, I was addressing the issue of going off with two drunks, not why she was going off. I would have stated it foolish to go off with two drunks to buy a puppy as well).
That sucks. It plain sucks and I wish I could come up with a suggestion that could help you make yourself safer. It isn’t that the burden is on you to prevent the rape. It is my hope to find ways to help keep you safer until such time as men who are nothing more than dogs no longer exist.
I don’t like the world we are living in. I haven’t been to the dentist in three years because we don’t have the funds for the dentist and my teeth are begining to hurt. That is a different issue, obviously, but it is a fact. By the time I can afford the dentist a can’t imagine the cost of the work. Lucky me.
I want solutions. I would never place the blame on the woman for the rape. My only goal would be to help make that a less likely event. I will try and think of things you could do to even out the score as things were. Aside from carrying mace and a personal alarm I really can’t think of anything.
Again, your right about me life. I live on a yishuv (settlement) with about 350 families in our particular area, 1,000 in the area above. The walls are fairly thin and in the summer the windows are never closed. There are almost always someone in the street: kids playing and what not. And there is a security person at the gate. Because of my lfie-style, men rarely come to my house unless my husband is here. That doesn’t mean I’m never vulnerable.
Again as an Orthdox Jewish woman I would not take a job where I was the only woman among many men; and personally I don’t like working with a bunch of men anyway. But that’s me.
I am an idealist. I picutre in my head a time when the world isn’t as evil as it is, when even has their needs met, and when we stop living in hatred. But we have to work our way up there and until we reach that state we have to try and devise ways in which we are less likely to be harmed.
This is without foundation in anything Nick wrote, and in fact, to my knowledge, in anything Nick has ever written. Rather, I’m quite sure that if Nick wanted to be dominated in a BDSM scene, Nick is willing and able to find a dominant partner and make hir needs known explicitly.
Lucipher, I read your comment as a veiled admission that you fantasize that you get to rape women as revenge for the loss of male privilege you perceive. You don’t, and you should seek help before you do something you will have to live with for the rest of your life.
But as long as we put the responsibility on women for men’s behavior, that time will never come.
If Mary Koss’ research is valid (and I think it is), that’s simply not true. Being drunk, and being with men who are drunk, are both significantly correlated with rape. Read the book I Never Called It Rape for more information.
It’s clear that rape is caused by the behaviour of rapists, virtually all of whom are male; and that reducing rape significantly on a society-wide level won’t happen until we change the way men think and behave.
Nonetheless, although rape is never the victim’s responsibility or fault, it’s mistaken to say that nothing a woman does will change the odds that she, personally, will be attacked by a rapist. And I’m worried that people are criticizing others so harshly that they’re in effect creating an “orthodoxy,” in which certain things cannot be said without fear of being ostracized from the group.
But that is exactly what I’m saying Sheelzebub; I am not responsible for someone else’s behaviour and I have limited control over their behaviour. So all I can do is try and do my best to avoid situations where I’m more likely to get hurt and try and work to alter the law so that if I or another person gets hurt the law will be an actual force against the perpetuators rather than a minor risk, and to change society so that fewer and fewer people think that another person is their tool.
It is like saying that theere are poor in the world, in an ideal world there would be no poor, society would be built so that couldn’t happen, and so any suggestions on how to help the poor until that day comes are delaying that time period.
I also, quite frankly, see the view that there is nothing to do till society changes as very negative. I think there are always solutions, not perfect solutions, not ones that will insure (ensure? one of my I hate this word because I can never get it right) a positive outcome, but one that will more likely lead to a positive outcome.
Maybe I am wrong and it is an earthquake situation. There is little one can do about it so don’t even try. But I don’t think so.
BTW, another thing I disagree with Nick about is that she didn’t do anything right. I think she absolutely did. It is quite probable that her demeanor and her insistence on what the man had to do to go on and have sex with her is what kept her from being raped. That’s a whole lot of right in my book.
What an appalling statement! I think you’re utterly confused between what classifies as dominating, and what classifies as exerting power and control over an unwilling victim. When a woman is raped she’s not putting herself into a submissive role, she’s not letting someone “dominate” over her . . . being raped isn’t fun for the victim . . . I think you need some serious reassessment in your thought processes concerning sex . . . .
another thing I disagree with Nick about is that she didn’t do anything right. I think she absolutely did. It is quite probable that her demeanor and her insistence on what the man had to do to go on and have sex with her is what kept her from being raped.
I didn’t say I didn’t do anything right, I said my escape had more to do with luck. Luck that I got a man who, while an asshole, was not prepared to physically force himself on a woman who was actively resisting. Sure, it helped that I dared to stand up for myself, but it also helped that he didn’t threaten me with physical harm – if he’d threatened to hurt me or the CLP, I guarantee the story would have ended very differently.
Rather, I’m quite sure that if Nick wanted to be dominated in a BDSM scene, Nick is willing and able to find a dominant partner and make hir needs known explicitly.
Since you mention it, I’m muuuuuch more likely to be looking for a submissive ;)
I was active, at least online, in the BDSM scene for a while, and I’ve been wondering whether that’s where I picked up this strange idea sex is more fun when you approach it in a spirit of negotiation rather than some kind of all-or-nothing attitude to consent.
One of the reasons I posted the story I did (back at post #81, which just got approved this AM) was that I’m very uncomfortable judging the behavior of someone else, especially in any sort of sexual context. Thus, when discussing something like this, I focus on my past behavior, and how I have judged myself.
So, just taking my past behavior into account, the idea that risk reduction behavior is both ineffective and equivalent to ‘blaming the victim’ rings false to me. What I experienced was not rape . . . and wasn’t even close from the standpoint of violation or trauma or violence or power, AND I’M NOT CLAIMING IT WAS, even for a second. It was, however, a deliberate sexual violation by another person I’d wrongly placed my trust in . . . and one I probably could have avoided by being more careful. The fact that there’s no way for me to be 100% safe doesn’t make that not true. My partner could cheat on me and bring home an STD. I could be infected my unsanitized medical instruments or a blood transfusion. I could be raped and infected with an STD (although, as a man that’s very unlikely). These are all things I can’t control, but it’s important to me to control what I can.
Alcohol is just an excuse, Amp. Every rapist and wife beater uses it. ‘
Risk reduction tips—which occur after the rape—do no damned good at all. What is the victim supposed to do—get in her time machine? Christ on a pony already. IT’s been pointed out over and over that women do protect themselves but they can’t read the rapist’s mind, can they—how are they supposed to know what he’s going to do so they can protect themselves against it? Every time a woman gets raped, there’s this chorus that goes, “You didn’t protect yourself.” They don’t acknowledge either the effort she put into it or the fact that she’s doing this all by her damned sefl, with no help from society at all.
If you guys who are victim-bashing are so sincere, how about bashing the rapist for a change? Where is it? I’m not talking about ‘other bashing’ where you turn the guy into a monster, I’m talking about the personal bashing that Nick has gotten from either the trolls or the self-righteous. Where is it?
It is like saying that theere are poor in the world, in an ideal world there would be no poor, society would be built so that couldn’t happen, and so any suggestions on how to help the poor until that day comes are delaying that time period.
I disagree. If we’re going to use an analogy, then we’d have to say the “what were you thinking” argument is like telling poor people it’s their fault for doing something so stupid, and then telling people who criticize this assessment that if the poor would only take the right steps and make wise choices, they wouldn’t have these problems, and that until the world is a more just place, the poor will just have to accept this judgement as valid.
ginmar, I like your list.
One repsonsibility I’ve had in raising a son is that I’ve had to impress upon him that sex is something that two people do together (we’ll leave other variants out of this for now); it’s not something that one person does to another. If you want to do something but the other person doesn’t, then NO MATTER WHAT you have no right to do it, no matter how “heated up” you are or what situation you’re in. “I lost control of myself”, “I was drunk/stoned”, etc. are not excuses. There are no excuses. And the same goes for him; he has a right to say “no” as well, at any time. In neither case does stopping mean you’re less than a man; in fact, it means you’re more of one.
I have a question about a couple points.
8. IF a woman you know says she’s been raped, believe her.
9. If a woman you know says she’s been raped by a buddy of yours, believe her.
Do you advocate acceptance of unsubstantiated accusations of violent crime for other crimes? I don’t think that anyone makes such an accusation lightly, and that the odds are that if such an accusation is made, it’s quite likely to be true. But do you advocate having no doubt at all?
If your friend told you your other friend ripped him off, would you wait to see all of the evidence before being a friend and providing comfort?
If your friend told you your other friend ripped him off, would you wait to see all of the evidence before being a friend and providing comfort?
Levels of friendship and trust being equal?
Yes, of course. In fact, for me, this is a ‘duh’ situation.
I try not to make decisions based on half the story, and I would never assume any of my friends are guilty of any crime without getting their side of the story.
Ahh, I see I misread the original post and replied half-cocked.
No, I wouldn’t wait to verify before saying “man, that really sucks. I’m sorry that happened.”
Yes, I would wait to verfy before saying “my friend X is a goddamn THIEF!”
Being drunk, and being with men who are drunk, are both significantly correlated with rape.
At this point, isn’t that a chicken or egg question? Correlation not being causation and all.
The problem w/ risk reduction theory/advice is twofold. First, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, what the speaker calls “advice” has been, for the most part, criticism of past action. Look at RonF in comment # 3 (he certainly didn’t hesitate before blaming) and then look at his comment # 85 in which he calls that “advice.” Secondly, pretty much all women already practice risk reduction. However, no living human being can follow every avenue suggested to reduce the risk of rape. As a result, when a woman is raped, she is immediately criticised for not following every avenue of risk reduction.
All that is without even getting into whether risk reduction is an effective method of reducing rape – clearly a few things are (but they are not always feasible), but a lot of risk reduction techniques are just there so the victim can be blamed for doing something wrong.
Various people have said, “Why aren’t I blaming the guy?” Well, he’s not on the blog here, so I can’t respond to him directly. I led off by saying that he and anyone else who commits rape should be sent off to jail. If he was on here I’d have harsh things to say to him, but he’s not, so I can’t.
I was initially amazed that so many people here equate advising a potential victim that they should adopt risk-reduction behavior as placing the blame on the victim. But in reading later postings, I realize where this comes from; the history in rape trials where the defendant’s attorney tries to shift the blame onto the victim by bringing up things like the way they were dressed, their behavior towards the rapist, sexual history, etc., playing on whatever sexism and specific moral viewpoints that any of the jurors may have.
I imagine that there’s lots of people who look at these things emotionally instead of logically and say, “‘x’ didn’t take what I consider prudent/reasonable/moral risk-avoidance behavior, so they are to blame when ‘y’ did something to them.” Defense attorneys tend to try to fill juries with them. I’m not one of those people. “y” is to blame. It’s pretty simple.
Jake, I’d explain what happened to you by saying that you had reason to expect that you could trust the person you were with, but they betrayed that trust.
However, that has nothing to do with whether or not going out and picking up drunk strangers in bars is a good idea.
RonF,
But what you did in comment #3 was not advising a potential victim. What you did was to blame (or criticise) a past victim (or near victim). And then, in comment #85 you called that advice. It wasn’t advice when you wrote it, it wasn’t advice when you tried to call it that later and it isn’t advice now. It is blaming, pure and simple. Aside from that, I’m not sure why you think that what Nick did was any “stupider” than if Nick had gone on a more traditional “date” with the intention of having sex. So, even if we break the physical laws of the universe and consider comment #3 to be advice, it doesn’t seem to be good or useful advice.
Note:
I have not actually written what happened to me, you may be confusing me with “Jake” of no surname. But, aside from that, I’m not really sure that what happened to me was any more of a betrayal of trust than what happened to Nick.
Nick, you got asked:
Nick, would you recommend your actions to the prospective daughter you are due to deliver next week? If a son, would you recommend drunken encounters with strangers as an ideal?
I think your answer was kind of idealistic, as you basically said, “I would advise my child to do what’s they feel is right for them; hopefully, society will have changed by the time it’s an issue for my child.” That kind of puts the answer down the line, though, positing in part that you would be looking for conditions to change from what they are now. So let me ask this question; given the present condition of society, would you recommend your actions to someone right now?
i’m curious about what the percentages of people who have been raped or assaulted are on either side of this debate. i can see how someone who had never been raped would think “hey, (since i’ve been able to make my own decisions), i’ve been doing something right- i’ve avoided certain situations, and i’ve never been raped.” this belief may be entirely wrong, but it gives the person (woman, probably) confidence that her actions are keeping her safe(r). otherwise, she might feel helpless- that no matter what, she’ll probably be raped sometime. and if it hasn’t happened yet, it will eventually… that’s a lot of dread to carry around perpetually. it might be easier for her to believe she has some power over the occurrence. is this denial? is this denial a bad thing? does it always negate the experiences of women who have been raped? why is there only a dichotomy: either blame the victim totally, or allow the victim absolutely no control? both of these situations are horrible.
I have a question about a couple points.
8. IF a woman you know says she’s been raped, believe her.
9. If a woman you know says she’s been raped by a buddy of yours, believe her.
Do you advocate acceptance of unsubstantiated accusations of violent crime for other crimes? I don’t think that anyone makes such an accusation lightly, and that the odds are that if such an accusation is made, it’s quite likely to be true. But do you advocate having no doubt at all?
RonF, I know you asked a response from ginmar, and I know she’ll probably give you one later, but my take on these two that you listed from the list, is to change the way people have usually reacted in the past. As it’s been stated before, victims often blame themselves in the situation, and don’t reveal that they’ve been raped because of the fear that they won’t be believed and/or because of shame. So for a victim to acknowledge this fact, to tell this information to another person and even have the slightest pause in the person’s reaction which can be seen as disbelief, let alone a person asking them a question about what they may have been wearing, or doing, or if they are sure, or any other verbal signal of disbelief . . . can cause serious damage to the whole situation.
Usually if a victim tells you about what happened to them, they’re putting trust in you, and there are rare situations where people have lied about being raped, and it’s been vicious and malicious, and it hasn’t been right. But the other fact is that most victims who are raped don’t report it to the police, don’t press charges against their attackers, and will only tell a very close personal individual about it. Most of the time when they are telling someone, it’s not so they can get you to rally against the individual or take him/her down for the dirty crime, it’s because they are looking for support.
Plus, you’re not a defense attorney for the defendant, and when the victim tells you, you probably aren’t in a courtroom, so the victim shouldn’t have to prove anything to you about what happened. You job isn’t to prove reasonable doubt. If someone tells you they were raped, even if you have doubt, take a no-doubt stand, believe it when you first hear it, and make that known. For instance:
Let’s say for instance you were witness to a couple at a club who were dancing, making out all night long, all over each other, and at some point they disappeared, left to go somewhere more seclusive. If the next day one of them tells you that they were raped. I’m sure lots of people’s first inclination would be disbelief. Why? Well because it looked like sex would be a likely thing to follow, so why would anyone believe that anyone was raped in this situation? Maybe it was like Nick’s situation and a condom was asked to be used, maybe the victim changed their mind. But since you weren’t there, you can’t know.
It’s like disbelieving a child who tells you they were abused by their parents. Parents that are pillars of the community, who “look” as though they could never lay a hand or a say a negative word to their child. I’m sure there’s a reasonable doubt in anyone’s mind, to the extent of, “I hope it isn’t true.” But when a person divulges something so personal, your first reaction should be to believe the person in all totality.
So let me ask this question; given the present condition of society, would you recommend your actions to someone right now?
RonF: I’d like to ask you some questions. As a woman, my society basically presents me with the view that I should assume that every man is a potential rapist. How does that make you feel, as a man? Do you have daughters, and if so, do you instruct them to view every man as a potential rapist? Do you provide them with rigorous, self-defense instruction, so that they will have the ability to fight off attackers? Do you provide them with a feminist perspective on self-defense, so that they know that even if one of the so-called “good guys” or “nice guys” attacks them, they have the moral authority to resist just as much as if a “stranger” attacked them (see, that’s key. many raped women have gained a certain amount of trust in their rapist, because he’s a friend/neighbor/boyfriend/husband. women are still taught to be accomodating to men).
I’m not a trusting soul. I trust men even less. And I think that’s fucked up. I don’t like having to adopt a hostile attitude when I’m walking down the street, minding my own business. I don’t like carrying a fuck-you attitude around. It’s heavy baggage. But…it’s also lifesaving, like a bullet-proof vest. It adds an extra layer of protection.
You have no damn idea of the various levels of risk-reduction the average woman inserts into her daily life. I urge you to watch the hands of women as they walk, the next time you’re in a parking lot. How many of them have their keys in their hands? How many of them have those keys splayed out in their grip to be used as brass knuckles, if necessary? How many have kubota-type bars (a small self-defense baton, quite legal) as their keyring? How many have mace cans attached to their keyring? I see this a lot. I almost never see a man even take his keys out of his pocket until he is practically at his car.
We are given all kinds of contradictory advice, most of it wholly unworkable. I have yet to see extensive use of rape prevention programs focused on teaching men how not to rape. I haven’t met a parent yet who hasn’t taught his or her daughter how to avoid molesters and rapists, even if the daughter is in grade school. How many parents are having heart-to-heart talks with their son on how to never be a rapist, rather than just assuming that their son would never, ever be a rapist—–even though the culture gives plenty of messages that are quite frankly, pro-rape.
Why should I have to operate under the assumption that it is inevitable that I will encounter a rapist? So far, we aren’t telling men that it is inevitable that they will rape.
Go back to my other post. I’m not kidding about the good-girl/bad-girl operating assumptions. If I go out on a date with a man I’ve met at work, who I’ve gotten along with but haven’t known extensively for years, and we go out for dinner, and I have a couple of margaritas, and we dance for a few late-night tunes with the house blues band before he takes me home and walks me to the door, and nothing else happens, I’m not a slut. I’m a normal adult woman who had an enjoyable evening. If the exact same scenario occurs, but instead of a smooch goodnight at the door, he rapes me in the parking lot of the pub, then I’m a slut, and the States’ Attorney won’t prosecute, even if the cops think I’ve been roughed up enough that I could be telling the truth about it not being consensual.
And even if I have iced tea instead of alcohol, I’ll still be branded as a slut.
RonF: So let me ask this question; given the present condition of society, would you recommend your actions to someone right now?
By her actions, Nick successfully resisted being raped, Ron. Why wouldn’t she recommend her actions to anyone else? Do you think she ought to recommend inaction, and just let herself get raped? Or are you still pissed that she’s not blaming herself, as you started out blaming her and went on to justify blaming her by claiming that blaming her was “advice” – and are now, apparently, blaming her for acting to resist getting raped?
MiaMarie, that was partly why I put that on the list. The other part is this: most rapes are acquaintance rapes and most guys are incredibly reluctant to acknowledge this. Not their buddy, their friend, their son, their boss, uncle, cousin, whatever. Oh, no, the rapist is the Other. That prevents them from seeing how rape is woven into the fabric of life for women. By refusing to see the rapists around them men are abdicating their part of the responsibility. More than that, though—Once a guy has decided his buddy couldn’t possibly be a rapist, it becomes equally impossible to believe that the victim is a victim.
There’s a stereotype that women are naturally liars. There’s also the stereotype that men don’t lie—about rape, about wife-beating, about anything. It’s very important to see women as human beings, and if you reject a woman’s story of rape out of hand because your buddy Joe hasn’t raped you—you’re a guy, after all—–then you’re denying her something very basic. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Heres’ the thing, though—Your buddy Joe may tell you he didn’t rape her and he may genuinely believe it. But he’s not entitled to that decision. She is. Both parties may be absolutely sincere. Whose side do you come down on?
Nick, unfortunately my wife and I don’t really get to Lincolnshire …
But seriously: I would never have theorized that all FT_ transfolk practised BDSM, but in my very limited experience, the phenomena correlate at 1. Is my sample totally skewed, or is there a big overlap?
Jane,
I have never been raped, but escaping two abductions in my teens taught me to be very aware of my surroundings, and more reliant on my intuition — a sense that modern society downplays and asks us to surpress. During the second incident, my mother drove by, and not recognizing me and thinking it was two people in a “lovers quarrel,” she continued driving. I suppose that has both made me more aware and self-reliant.
In both instances I was able to later identify the moment I knew something was wrong — several minutes before the attempts actually took place. I determined that I could have lessened my risk by following my gut, and taken a different course of action from what I ultimately did. My mistake was not chosing to be in the “wrong place,” or of being a “slut,” but in failing to take direct action to protect myself and to get the hell away, the moment I knew something was “off.” Would I have blamed myself if I had been raped? Blame for the assault would have rested with the rapists. Post-rape, would I have evaluated whether I could have taken proactive steps to avert such a situation in the future? You bet. But that assumes I wasn’t killed.
Anything I can do to lessen my chances of being killed, is for me, worth the effort.
I’m not generally a fearful person. But I am cautious. When I go into a restaurant or other public place, I always identify the exits, and position myself so I can get out quickly, or can take some cover if the need arises. I also scan my surroundings when I’m out, and pick up on environmental or situational anomalies pretty fast. My radar about potentially sticky situations and untrustworthy people, goes off pretty quickly. And I’m not talking about just physically risky situations. It’s a skill that comes in pretty handy in the boardroom, and in all interpersonal relationships.
Now when choosing a seat in a theatre, I’m not worrying about rape, but desire to take care of myself in the face of danger, in general. I want to optimize my chances of escaping pain and death from a variety of potential harms. In the face of a host of unknown variables, I’d rather rely on my own abilities, than hope others can rescue me.
Has my intuition and attention to potential dangers, protected me from rape? I have no way to prove it, but I think it has. There have been instances — when far less than my personal life was at stake — where I, or others have regreted not following my gut instinct. Once in huge way.
Do I trust it to protect me in all circumstances? No. It is one skill-set, but why wouldn’t I use it?
Is this a special burden women carry, this hyper-vigilance? In terms of possible sexual assault, it is, although I think some gay men, and certainly children, also carry a special risk. Is it fair that we have to clutch our keys, and walk quickly to our parked cars at night? No. But my first responsibility it to take care of myself.
People blame rape victims because rape is so ugly that they have to deny that it happens, or can happen to themselves. It’s why airplane crashes are so horrifying: there’s no way to comfort ourselves by blaming the victims. This is to be resisted, as it is unfair and gives rapists a pass.
Robert’s assertion that stranger rape isn’t a betrayal can only be made by someone who either has not been a victim of a crime or forgot how it felt. Just the other day a man off his meds came after me with his fist raised saying “I’ll beat your ass bitch!” and I felt betrayed because I had thought that this stranger on the street in my own town in broad daylight was going to ask me directions. I’m sophisticated enough to know it wasn’t personal and I felt betrayed anyway that someone I assumed was nice and normal almost assaulted me. Crime is always a sort of a betrayal, and rape is 1000x more devastating than most because it is so personal and scary.
Thank you, bean. Well said.
Word, Bean.
Exactly right.
And another chime of agreement with and thanks to bean from this quarter.
So let me ask this question; given the present condition of society, would you recommend your actions to someone right now?
If someone told me they wanted to get laid and did I think they would be OK picking up paratroopers in a pub, I’d advise them to take the same basic precautions I did, ie insist on condoms and walk out if the paratroopers tried to mess them around. I might even recommend they take less shit and not waste time negotiating. If someone had no interest in picking people up for sex, I wouldn’t try to tell them it was something they had to experience.
Exactly, bean.