Two of my favorite right-wing bloggers, Jane Galt and Cathy Young, have commented – in a rather unkind fashion – on Nicks’ recent posts about rape. Jane, responding to Nick’s fantasy of what Nick’s “ideal world” would be like, wrote:
…it’s stupid. Not only are we not in this utopia, we are never, ever going to be in that utopia. Even if we achieved a marvelously gender-blind society, there would still be some people who want to have sex with people who do not want to have sex with them. So, to summarize: Nick made it clear she was talking about an “ideal world,” not the real world; Jane responds by saying, in essence, “but your ideal world won’t ever be real.” Well, duh, Jane. That’s why Nick used the phrase “my ideal world,” to distinguish it from the real one. Meanwhile, Cathy wrote: But alongside it, another type of double standard has developed as well: one that views unconstrained, selfish, hedonistic female sexuality as “liberated” while condemning similar male behavior as sleazy and exploitative. In this new double standard, the promiscuous or adulterous male is a pig, while the promiscuous or adulterous female is a rebel against the patriarchy. This kind of feminism is not about equality and not about female empowerment. It’s about female entitlement. “This kind of feminism” is not one that Cathy has actually shown exists – say, by quoting a single example of such a feminist. Let alone quoting enough examples to provide evidence of some sort of widespread trend within feminism. The prime example – indeed, the only example – of a feminist in Cathy’s post is Nick. Under that circumstance, most readers would naturally assume that Nick is an example of the double-standard Cathy’s railing against. But that’s not the case, and Cathy doesn’t bother to clarify this point for her readers who don’t click through. Cathy’s argument seems to boil down to this: Nick says one thing; some feminists Cathy doesn’t name have said something different; therefore feminism has developed a double standard. I shouldn’t have to explain why Cathy’s argument doesn’t hold water. Feminism is large and varied, and – as any regular “Alas” reader knows – feminists often disagree. (If you ever want to start an endless argument in a room full of feminists, just say “I think prostitution ought be legalized” or “must never be legalized” – either one will do the trick). Nick is under no obligation to agree with Cathy’s unnamed feminists; and the fact that not all feminists agree on everything doesn’t establish some large strain of feminist hypocrisy. Are there some feminists out there – out of millions – who actually hold such a double standard? I’m sure there are a few. But in general, the feminists I know are pretty consistent – the ones who favor women fucking around a lot (consensually) are also the ones who don’t see anything wrong with men fucking around a lot (consensually). (For example, you’ll never find Amanda of Pandagon criticizing men merely for wanting to have frequent, consensual, casual sex.) Cathy also says: In fact, let’s take this a step further. Suppose things didn’t end quite so well for our male Nick. Suppose he actually does get drugged and robbed by the two female strangers he picked up in a bar for sex. Do you think Nick is going to encounter a lot of sympathy for his plight, from men or from women? I seriously doubt it. In fact, I suspect that the response is going to be mainly along the lines of, “he had it coming.” (A male friend to whom I outlined this scenario said, “The word ‘dumbass’ comes to mind.”) Really? If Cathy says her friends have that reaction, I’ll take her word for it. But I’m glad I don’t have her friends. I can’t imagine any of my friends saying “you had it coming” to a robbery victim in the situation Cathy describes, let alone to a rape victim (male or female). Someone who said that sincerely (rather than in an ironic, dark-humored way) would be considered appalling among my friends. Cathy’s argument supports my theory that many conservatives are far more anti-male than the typical feminist is. It’s not feminists, after all, arguing that men are incapable of controlling themselves and need to be civilized through marriage to women; that sort of argument is reserved for conservatives like Maggie Gallagher. It’s not feminists who say that men, once in the sex act, are incapable of stopping, like dogs; but it’s a pretty common belief among conservatives (just read the comments following Jane’s post and you’ll find a couple of examples). Not all conservatives are like that; I’ve never noticed such anti-male nonsense coming from Cathy or Jane, for example. And for all I know, the friend Cathy quoted was a flaming liberal. But anti-male attitudes such as what Cathy’s friend said, certainly seem more accepted among conservatives than among any of the feminists I hang with.
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Give Jane a fair reading there – the piece above your quoted selection is
“There is a strain of feminism that encourages women to behave as if we have arrived in some feminist utopia where rape is impossible. This stems from a very admirable desire to put the responsibility for rape on the men, not the women, and is an understandable backlash to rape trials that used to investigate whether the woman was “asking for it”.”
So, Jane isn’t even talking about Nick’s utopia there; rather, she’s against letting concern for “the patriarchy-reinforcing effects of telling women not to do things that put them at risk of rape” get in the way of having women “take action to protect themselves.”
Her criticism isn’t that writing about a utopia is unrealistic, it’s that acting as if the utopia were reality is unwise.
And if anyone had endorsed “acting as if utopia were reality,” then that would be a cogent point.
But Nick’s post didn’t say that Nick believes in acting as if we lived in utopia; Nick acknowledges that her actions carry risk, but finds that the downside of not being able to have the kind of sex she wants, is greater than the downside of taking a risk.
I guess that could be interpreted as “acting as if utopia were a reality,” but I don’t think that’s a fair interpretation.
Nick wrote “The attitude that women have the responsibility to protect themselves from rape is, at the most generous reading, an uncritical acceptance of the idea that men cannot be prevented from raping.”
Jane argued that “women are going to have to take action to protect themselves” and that women should not “just stick your head in the sand and claim that it’s all society’s fault, so you’re not going to do anything until society takes care of the problem.”
How is Nick not arguing that women should not have a responsibility to protect themselves from rape? That’s what got to Jane, and fairly enough: adults generally have a responsibility to protect themselves.
I suppose Nick could have said something about it being bad that women have a special responsibility vis a vis rape, as distinct from other harms less implicated in the patriarchy – but she didn’t. And Jane called her on that.
With all due respect, morally speaking, it’s not women’s responsibilty to make sure rape doesn’t happen. It’s up to men – and most of all, up to men who might be tempted to not take “no” for an answer, or to rationalize away a “no” – to make sure rape doesn’t happen. [*]
In other words, rape is the responsibilty of rapists, not of victims. Just as murderers are responsible for murder, and murder victims are not.
Do women as a practical matter have little choice but to consider the risk? Yes, and clearly Nick does weigh risks.
I admit, it’s a bit hair-splitting – but then, so is Jane’s critique. I continue to think that Jane’s critique depends on a misrepresentation of what Nick, read fairly, actually said.
[*]And yes, it’s also up to the incredibly few female rapists who exist.
I wonder if what’s going on here isn’t partly that people are using two different senses of the word “responsibility.”
That is, Jane sees Nick as saying “no one should ever have to take responsibility for their own well-being.” But I see Nick as saying “rapists, not victims of rape, are responsible for rape.” Two different senses of the word “responsibility.”
Of course, it may also be that I’ve completely misunderstood Nick, Jane, or both of them; only they can clarify that for certain.
Jane certainly wasn’t arguing that the moral culpability lies anywhere but with the rapist – nor does she misrepresent Nick’s post in characterizing it as “on the patriarchy-reinforcing effects of telling women not to do things that put them at risk of rape.” Nick does believe and argue that excessive attention to acceptable risk confuses the question of moral culpability and leads to the ‘victim-blaming and control’ of her post title.
Jane, in turn, argues the converse: that excessive attention to moral culpability distracts from the question of acceptable risks and leads to needless risk.
They disagree about what balance should be struck between the amount of attention allocated to the practical and the moral, but Jane’s position does not require a misrepresenation of what Nick, read fairly, said.
Hmmn. I take your point seriously, but I’m not sure I agree with it. Let me think on it for a day, and reread the relevant posts.
People constrain their behavior every day on the basis of what’s right and what’s wrong, and on the basis of what they have the right to do and what they don’t have the right to do. But they also constrain their behavior every day on the basis that not everyone else does so. Recognizing the necessity for the latter does not provide justification for those who are not moral enough to do the former.
And if anyone had endorsed “acting as if utopia were reality,” then that would be a cogent point.
In fairness, it wasn’t Nick who said this. It was rather the tone of the comment thread, which seemed to take the (eminently reasonable) proposition that it isn’t women’s job to stop men from raping to the tortured conclusion that any attempt on the part of women to reduce their own risk or to act rationally was the patriarchy stomping on female sexual autonomy. Or something.
After reading pretty much everything on this issue, both posts, comments references etc. I think there are basically two main groups. (yes there are other opinions but this is what I see it boiling down to.)
I’m speaking mainly of those who would call it rape if the paratrooper had proceeded against Nick’s will.
1. One group GROUP A feels that risk-management is a sensible method of self-protection and CAN reduce an individual woman’s risk.
2. One group, call them GROUP B. feels that risk-management can’t reduce risk if at all (one is fooling oneself, and because one thinks one is less at risk, one is actually at greater risk) and that such actions INCREASE the risk for all women by shifting the emphasis from what the man did to what the woman could have done. This continues the mindset, at least in some people’s eyes (not the members of GROUP B, nmgb), that the fault would lie with the woman, at least to some degree and is the actions of the man are either acceptable or understandable; thus allowing a woman to be raped and the criminal to either get off or have a lesser punishment. Moreover, as at least some indicated, it sets up a possiblity that a woman who did take the precautions CAN NOT be rapesd (again in the eyes of nmgb) and if a woman is raped under those conditions she will not be believed.
To some extent it is an understanding of the word RESPONSIBILITY.
But I think it is basically a disagreement about how to reach the “ideal world” or at least as close to the ideal world as possible.
In the first place, Cathy and Jane aren’t right-wingers, they’re libertarians. They hold the classical feminist viewpoint that men and women are fundamentally equal, that both have agency and both have responsibility for their actions the effects that they have on others.
The theme that I see trying to hit the surface here is the notion that women are uniquely incapable of affecting men, therefore they’re blameless in all things.
We don’t believe that assault is a good thing. But that doesn’t mean that we consider unprovoked assault at the same moral level as assault that follows badgering, insulting, and threatening.
Think about why that is.
We can mouth all the tedious slogans about how “no means no” and that only men are responsible for men’s actions, but biologically and psychologically these things are fictions. We all affect each other all the time, that’s what relationships are all about, and reducing women to the level of infants that don’t have agency doesn’t liberate them, it enslaves them.
Robert: to the tortured conclusion that any attempt on the part of women to reduce their own risk or to act rationally was the patriarchy stomping on female sexual autonomy
To the not-at-all tortured conclusion that the “advice” handed out to women on how to “reduce the risk of rape” is invariably designed to prevent women from going about our normal daily lives, interacting with strangers on the expectation that strangers will behave like lawabiding, responsible human beings.
(Men are not advised on how to “reduce the risk of murder” by arranging their lives so that they are never alone with another human being….)
And repeatedly (and repeatedly ignored) the point that most women are raped by someone they already know – that telling women to avoid strangers as a “risk reduction” makes no sense: you might better tell women to avoid fathers, boyfriends, and husbands.
Rachel Ann: And Group C believes that giving up our freedom to pay for a rape-free life is not acceptable, and we know perfectly well that we might get raped if we run the risk of acting like adult humans. And we’re still not going to stop.
There’s this complete logical disconnect in y0ur dichotomy, because there’s no attempt to acknowledge that “risky behavior” doesn’t equal “something women shouldn’t do.” Women take risks. We get to do that.
Robert: or to act rationally
Every time a policeman goes out to do their job, they risk death. Funnily enough, when one gets shot, their “irrational” behavior doesn’t seem to diminish sympathy for them. Can’t think why that is. If they’d just stayed in a safe place, it never would have happened.
So? I’m a mixed-market socialist. Libertarians are to the right of me. Hence, I classify them as right-wingers. :-)
With a few exceptions, libertarians in the US are almost all right-wingers; although they have a couple of left-wing sympathies (not all libertarians are pro-war, many are pro-equal rights for queers, etc), they generally still vote for the Republican candidate when push comes to shove.
It’s very convenient that you criticize a “theme trying to hit the surface”; put another way, you’re making up straw men rather than criticizing what people have actually said.
I don’t see how insisting on the use of a condom is the equivalent to – or even remotely comparable to – “badgering, insulting, and threatening.”
Of course we all affect each other, including women affecting men. But not all responses to all effects are reasonable. Attempting to force your penis into someone who is saying “no” and trying to keep your penis out – even if up until a minute ago that person had been an eager participant – falls into the “unreasonable” category. (Needless to say, the same thing would be true of a woman trying to envelop an unwilling man’s penis).
As for the releative classification of rapes – some being on different moral levels than others – I think that its necessary, in our society, for us all to agree that rape is rape. Charles put it very well in the previous thread, so I hope he won’ t mind my quoting him at length here:
Since this subject always seems to brings ut analogies, I thought I’d offer one which just happens to also be a true story.
At age 8 while playing kickball with my friends, I was run over on purpose by a boy on a bike for being “a dirty kike Christ killer.” This boy had called me names before, spit on me, and threatened me so I certainly knew that being outside when he was around was a risky; in fact, I was afraid of him but it really bothered me that he might think that. My friends all told me I should just stay inside my house when he was around but I didn’t do it, even though I knew staying outside would mean that he would harass and maybe harm me. I thought that it wasn’t fair that I should have to stay inside when he could come and go wherever and whenever he wanted. I wasn’t doing something bad, he was.
So HC and Jane and Cathy could certainly say my “excessive attention to moral culpability distracts from the question of acceptable risks and leads to needless risk.” But before I accept that argument, they need to explain in words that an eight-year-old (or 55-year-old) can understand why giving in to other people’s bad behavior will ever lead to anything other than a world where the people who are threatened are the ones who give up their freedom.
Men are not advised on how to “reduce the risk of murder” by arranging their lives so that they are never alone with another human being
That’s true. That would be utterly unreasonable.
Men ARE, however (or at least this man was) advised on how to reduce the risk of mugging by not being in certain neighborhoods after dark. I’ve been advised (and taken classes) on how to reduce the risk of being assaulted by learning techniques of how to defuse a violent situation. I’ve been advised on how to avoid STDs by not sleeping with high-risk partners without protection.
Are these unreasonable?
I can be mugged in any neighborhood, day or night, so does walking alone in the bad part of town at 2 AM not affect my chances at all?
Almost any person could assault me at any time, so does picking a fight with the drunk skinhead not affect my chances at all?
Anyone could be infected with an STD, and anyone could lie about it, so does having unprotected sex with the IV drug user I met 1/2 an hour ago really not affect my chances at all?
The ‘kind of sex I like’ is unprotected, with multiple partners. Seriously. This isn’t some kind of rhetorical trick.
It’s utterly unreasonable that I shouldn’t be able to have the kind of sex I like because there are other people out there who don’t get tested or who lie about their sexual health status. Nonetheless, that is the kind of world I live in, and I feel strongly that I do have some responsibility for modifying my own behavior to minimize my risk as much as I can within the parameters of ‘sex I like.’
Last, and this is just a hunch (and perhaps an unfair one, for which I apologize) but I suspect that, were I to have lots and lots of unprotected sex with many people I didn’t know, and I ended up contracting a disease, many of the people who have been piously claiming that to ask a woman to modify her behavior is to trample her sexuality wouldn’t feel much inhibition over saying “For god’s sake, why didn’t he wear a condom?”
AndiF –
You want words an eight year old can understand about why giving in to other people’s bad behavior will ever lead to anything useful? Asking a loaded question like that answers itself – cowardice gets you a life of fear. And without advocating cowardice, or a hermit’s life, one can still acknowledge that some fears are rational.
Did you find the advice of your friends and parents to not get into a car with strange people unfair? You weren’t doing something bad, they might have been, so why should you restrict your movements while they drive around freely?
Do you leave your keys in your car and its doors unlocked when you park in public places? What about your house or apartment – do you lock the door or have an alarm system installed? Insurance against theft?
The moral responsibility for kidnapping or theft lies with the criminal; the practical consequences lie heavily on the victim. Where reasonable precautions are available, any rational non-masochist would avail himself of them. Deciding which precautions are reasonable and which not is a debate in itself, but concluding that one should never take account of other’s capacity or propensity to act badly seems unwise at best.
Some advice on how to reduce the risk of rape (or taunting, in your example) is bad advice, and some advisers fail to understand that one may rationally choose to take calculated risks. But to go from those two facts to an argument that there is no good advice is a bit of a leap.
Anonymous, there’s a major difference between STIs and rape. The latter can, and often do, get transmitted by people who don’t intend to do so, and just don’t know that they are infected. By barebacking, you expose yourself to the danger of an accident — which puts barebacking in the motorcycle/seatbelt category.
AndiF is talking about a deliberate, racist hate crime. That does not happen by accident. Rapes, lynchings — these are things that only happen when bad people do them on purpose. It is for that reason that some of us are so unwilling to say, “just restrict your own behavior to avoid the bullies.” The danger is not an objective hazard with no agency. The danger is bad people.
The latter can, and often do, get transmitted by people who don’t intend to do so, and just don’t know that they are infected.
Yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What happened to me was an infection by someone who lied . . . either lied about her sexual health status or lied about getting tested. Either way, she knowingly put my partner and I at risk, and either way it was sex that we would not have consented to had she told us the truth.
The full story is here: https://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/11/08/my-rape-story/#comment-85276
It’s as close as I’ve come to being raped, in that our consent was obtained through deception. I don’t actually know if I’d call it rape, but it was certainly a sexual betrayal, and it was NOT an ‘accident.’
Anyhow, that’s why I lumped it with the mugging and assualt examples, both of which, like rape, are active choices a criminal makes.
Rachel Ann, I wasn’t arguing that any form of risk-management is foolish—just that the overwhelming majority of what is offered to women as rape-prevention advice is either impractical, impossible, or ineffective “feelgood” advice—kinda like the feelgood advice I follow every time I lock my doors and windows before I leave my house. Every home that has been robbed in my neighborhood was robbed by having the windows broken out. Even the ones that had unlocked doors, as the thieves assumed the door would be locked anyway!
I really don’t see a difference between being alone with a man with the intention of having sex with him, and being alone with a man without the intention of having sex with him. A woman is just as much at risk on a traditional date as she is on a one-night-stand. Advice to not go out on dates, or talk to men under any circumstances without a chaperone, is not practical advice. It’ll keep you from being raped, but it isn’t workable.
What’s the difference between a scenario in which a woman gets raped (either on a date, or during a one-night stand) and a traditional date with a chaste kiss goodnight? The plans of the rapist, that’s what.
Rachel Ann,
What La Lubu said. The argument isn’t that women should ignore all risk reduction theory. Rather, the argument is that most rape risk reduction advice is either useless or unreasonably restrictive.
“Don’t be alone with a man,” for example, is just not something that most women can reasonably do and still have a life.
The argument is that, whether or not a woman follows any risk reduction advice – it is not her fault if she gets raped. All you have to do is read the comments of “Rex” on Gault’s thread to see where blaming the victim leads (once you’ve consented to sex but later withdraw that consent, although morally wrong, it shouldn’t be criminal for a man to keep pumping away). Read Young’s thread and see how often the point of the comments is how repugnant and immoral, etc. Nick’s choice of sexual activity was. Read Young’s thread to see Nick personally attacked (down to how damaged her child will be). When blaming a rape victim is OK, this is the result.
Anonymous, I missed your story on the other thread, perhaps because it was a long time in the moderation que.
I’m not calling you stupid, and I note that nobody in the other thread did, either. It’s not as if you’re unaware of the risks. You took measures that balanced your desire against your risk, and you thought they were sufficient. In the absence of what was surely fraud and probably a criminal act, those measures would have been sufficient.
What I’m not going to do is Monday-morning quaterback you: It would do you no good because the decision is behind you and not in front of you; it could only make you feel worse and I’m sure you’ve caught enough shit; and I still believe that shifting the focus to you takes some of the responsibility off of the person who knowingly, willfully did something wrong.
And repeatedly (and repeatedly ignored) the point that most women are raped by someone they already know – that telling women to avoid strangers as a “risk reduction” makes no sense: you might better tell women to avoid fathers, boyfriends, and husbands.
Perhaps most women are raped by someone they know because most women adopt risk-avoidance behavior regarding men they don’t already know, and it’s working.
Men are not advised on how to “reduce the risk of murder” by arranging their lives so that they are never alone with another human being….
To my knowledge, women are not advised on how to reduce their risk of rape by arranging their lives so that they are not alone with a man. At least, not in American culture; in, oh, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran I think it’s a different story. Women are advised not to be alone with men they don’t know in certain circumstances, though.
And given my experiences back when I was a young man in Boston and Cambridge, a boy or young man is well advised not to be alone with a man they don’t know under certain circumstances as well, something I’ve talked to my son about.
When I was old enough to drive and started driving into Chicago, my father took me aside and taught me about what neighborhoods not to go into. He didn’t tell me that no neighborhoods are safe, nor did he tell me never to get out of the car under any circumstances. He also gave me a knife to keep under the front seat, too. This sounds a lot more like the advice that young women get in America about how to deal with the potential of rape than “never be alone with a man.”
A woman is just as much at risk on a traditional date as she is on a one-night-stand.
LaLubu, are you asserting this as a fact, or as your opinion?
I’m not calling you stupid, and I note that nobody in the other thread did, either.
Well, actually, nobody in the other thread called me anything at all. The aforementioned long time in the moderation qeue, I think means that my comment was mostly missed. Too bad, too, I said smart stuff. *grin*
In any case, my point wasn’t that me or Nick or anyone was ‘stupid’ for doing or not doing something. I’ve already made my judgements as regards my own behavior, and I’m uncomfortable making those judgements about the behavior of another. Those are their decisions to make.
No, my point was mostly in reference to the ideas that ‘risk reduction behavior’ is utterly useless and doesn’t reduce risk whatsoever, that to engage in risk reduction behavior is equivalent to knucking under to oppression, that to engage in risk reduction behavior is to let the perpetrator of the crime off the hook for their responsibility, and that men aren’t ever taught to engage in risk reduction behavior out of fear for the consequences if they don’t.
To put it bluntly, I think all of these ideas are absolute nonsense.
There are risk reduction behaviors we all engage in in different parts of our lives. Some of these, like wearing your seatbelts, are to avoid accidents (or, more properly, to avoid injury through accident). Others are to avoid criminal conduct, like being mugged in the bad part of town, being assaulted by someone drunken and belligerent, or being given an STD through the deception of another. These categories aren’t solid, either. I also wear a seatbelt in case somone doing 95 MPH while drunk plows into me. I am a man, and I have been taught some ways to avoid being hurt by malicious or criminally negligent people.
I’m not saying that if we don’t engage in risk-reduction behavior we ‘get what we deserve.’ That’s horrid and repugnant. What I AM saying is that risk reduction behavior is a real thing, and a good thing, and that it works. It reduces risk.
Saying, “I could be raped by any man at any time, therefore avoiding being alone with threatening looking men I don’t know does nothing to mitigate my risk,” is the intellectual equivalent of abstinence only education. “Condoms aren’t 100% effective, so just don’t have sex.” “Any man could rape you, so either engage in zero risk mitigation or just never be around men.” It’s the all-or-nothing viewpoint that I have a problem with.
It’s like Bean said. There are red flags. There are ways to reduce risk. WHETHER OR NOT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THEM, being victimized is never, ever ever ever ever your fault. I think it’s possible to believe both of these things at the same time, and it’s disturbing to me that so many people on one side or the other seem to disagree.
La Luba and Jake,
Okay, now we are getting somewhere. It started to sound like people were stating it was ineffective to practice any sort of risk management.
In terms of being alone for sex or alone for a date; it can make a difference if one is dressed versus not dressed…simple access. It buys you time. HOWEVER, I’m not talkiing about comparing situations. Each sitaution would carry its own risks. Each situation needs evaluating.
And Jake, I was nauseated by several of the comments. My focus is also less on what others will say afterward because, again, I can’t control what others will say afterwards.
Nor can I control what will happen in court. I have a pretty low opinion of court systems operating today. In a slightly less than perfect world when a woman is raped she won’t be blamed. That is a step before the no more rape world. That is the work we as a whole need to do.
You want words an eight year old can understand about why giving in to other people’s bad behavior will ever lead to anything useful?
Not my question. My question was “why giving in to other people’s bad behavior will ever lead to anything other than a world where the people who are threatened are the ones who give up their freedom.”
Some advice on how to reduce the risk of rape (or taunting, in your example) is bad advice, and some advisers fail to understand that one may rationally choose to take calculated risks. But to go from those two facts to an argument that there is no good advice is a bit of a leap.
Also, not anything I suggested. I described a circumstance that parallels Nick’s. The advice I got matches the advice Nick is being given: don’t do a particular behavior, which ought to be harmless, because there are people who will make it harmful. So we are to give up what we want, although it will have no effect on the bad behavior. We sacrifice some of our freedom but there’s no benefit gained since our sacrifice does not nothing to prevent the same occurrence repeating endlessly, if not to us, then to someone else.
Anonymous and Rachel Ann and others have been saying that, where effective risk reduction exists, surely one needn’t case blame on victims to suggest that those methods be employed. I’ve resisted that conclusion to the extent that it protects against other people’s criminality — but then, that’s not a perfect distinction either. I lock my car doors. I lock my car doors because it doesn’t really cost me anything.
La Lubu made a strong point about risk reduction: much of the resistance to it in the area of rape is that the advice is either ineffective or very limiting. I think La Lubu is right.
AndiF makes a really persuasive point about risk reduction: that taking some advice costs you more than running the risk. Andi stood up to the little anti-semite in her neighborhood, and I’m glad she did. Sure, she could have avoided that risk, but what soulless coward would advise her to do that? What soulless coward would say, “don’t try to sit at the front of the bus; don’t try to eat at the all-white lunch counter”?
Perhaps most women are raped by someone they know because most women adopt risk-avoidance behavior regarding men they don’t already know, and it’s working.
That’s just insulting. To both women and men, actually, because given the number of aquaintence/friend/family rapes the statement implies that a vast majority of men are psychopaths hiding in dark alleys just waiting to rape women who aren’t giving them the chance.
Most women are raped by men they know because it’s generally accepted that stranger rape is “rape” (and therefore “bad”), but up until a couple decades ago date rape and spousal rape were seen as a man’s right. Even now, most people (not just men) don’t even know what rape really is.
Men are not taugh to say “no”. They are not taught to respect a woman regardless of any sexual choices she may make. They are taught that they are entitled to a woman’s body – both sexually and emotionally. They are taught that they have a right to control her reproductive freedom. They are taught that they are unable to control their own behaviour.
Women, for their part, are taught to be the gatekeepers of these “beastly” men. They are called “frigid” when they refuse sex and “sluts” when they consent (or are raped). They are taught to not wear short skirts, not go out at night, not do this, not do that – and none of it can protect them from their male friends and loved ones who have been trained that a woman wants it even if she says she doesn’t.
The bottom line is that most women are raped by someone they know because society condones the “lesser” forms of rape as natural and okay.
Right on, Thomas. That, right there, is why I try not to judge the risk-reduction choices others make. I would imagine that a majority of the people here, were they given to judging my choices, would percieve ‘wearing a condom’ or ‘not having multiple partners’ as trivial restrictions on my freedom, as compared to the risks involved. For me, they are not. As far as Nick’s choices are concerned, I see “don’t have sex with drunk people you just met’ as a trivial restriction compared to the risks, BUT I’m savvy enough to understand that Nick herself does not see it that way, and that her choice is the one that’s important.
My point is twofold.
First, that rape is not just a patriarchal thing; I’d argue that it’s even largely not a patriarchal thing. Even in feminist utopia (something I think we are unlikely to reach), lots of men will still want to commit rape because many people are tempted to take what they want by force when they cannot get it by free consent. [cough] Socialists [/cough] [grin].
Second, that it is perfectly natural to be upset when someone you know has been engaging in risky behaviour. If my sister was walking through a bad neighbourhood alone at night, and got mugged and beaten up, you bet your sweet life I’d be yelling “What the hell were you *thinking*?!” as soon as I’d hugged the breath out of her. The reason is that when we care about someone, we don’t want them to engage in risky behaviour, because we don’t want them to get hurt.
Undoubtedly, such concerns about rape do sometimes get tied up in our ideas about propriety and appropriate sexuality (though I question the assumption that these are always gender specific–I don’t think my mother would be any happier to see my brother in skin-tight pants and a shirt open to the navel than she would to see me in such an outfit). But saying that people shouldn’t warn women away from dangerous behaviours just because they can be tied up in patriarchal notions of women’s sexuality strikes me as dangerously misguided. Nick is under no obligation to listen to such concerns, of course, but I doubt many people would care to live in the sort of radically atomistic society in which concerns about sexism (or independance) outweigh the right of one’s loved ones to express concern for one’s physical safety.
AndiF –
My apologies for the inapt paraphrase. Either way, it’s a rhetorical question – to ask “why giving in to other people’s bad behavior will ever lead to anything other than a world where the people who are threatened are the ones who give up their freedom” is to imply the answer, and miss the point that taking precautions against other people’s bad behavior can lead to a world in which it is less likely that one will be victimized.
Judging the proper tradeoff between reduced risk and reduced scope of activity is a legitimate question; lumping all precautionary measures in with cowardly surrender gets us nowhere.
Your previous experience with bad advice demonstrates that you would choose to stand on principle at some personal risk. That’s certainly noble, but it’s not universal nor is it common at the extremes – martyrs are notable because most people are not faithful unto death. Somewhere between the certainty of agonizing death and the possibility of irritating harassment, most people find a certain degree of severity and likelihood troublesome enough that they are willing to modify their behavior to reduce the risk – is that somehow wrong?
Again, with your example – would it have been bad advice to suggest that you be prepared to defend yourself when you went outside? Or does that also count as giving in to other people’s bad behavior?
Again, with your example – would it have been bad advice to suggest that you be prepared to defend yourself when you went outside? Or does that also count as giving in to other people’s bad behavior?
To a certain degree because it still doesn’t address the issue — that anti-semitism or rape or gay-bashing is wrong and that it’s more important to fight the attitudes that engender those actions that it is to fight a single perpetrator. And he was a damn sight bigger than me.
Thomas, thank you for your words of support which make me sound much braver than I was.
Jane Galt: lots of men will still want to commit rape because many people are tempted to take what they want by force when they cannot get it by free consent.
But in a feminist utopia a man who was tempted to rape a woman would know that if he gave into that temptation, his reputation would be destroyed forever: whether or not he was prosecuted and imprisoned for his crime, no one would ever trust themselves alone with him again, since he had proved he had no self-control and no judgement. He would know that if he succumbed to temptation, it might be the last time he ever had partner sex with anyone. He would know he risked a jail term, and certainly a humiliating trial in which every detail of his past sex life would be exposed. In a feminist utopia, a man who thought of committing rape would be ashamed at the thought – petrified at the thought of the consequences.
Second, that it is perfectly natural to be upset when someone you know has been engaging in risky behaviour
Are you upset when a woman you know has let herself be alone with a man?
Another aspect to add to the discussion of who gets to define “risky behaviour” is that of privilege.
It’s easy for us to look at our own situation and judge others from it, but it’s not realistic by far. The only acceptable solution is to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of whom it belongs: the rapist.
RonF,
Way back when, last year I believe, a young woman was raped in high school in Ohio, and the principal tried to cover it up. This case made the blogosphere, and there were those who felt that this young woman should have known better than to enter the high school auditorium alone with those young men (it was a gang rape), that she should have known they were going to do something to that effect.
Well, it made Amp’s place too, as you could imagine, and generated well over 400 comments. I ran my mouth extensively on that thread too, and I’ve got links to some stats in my comments. But to save you the trouble, I floated through there and nabbed these statistics on rape survivors from one of Basement Variety Kim’s posts:
28% raped by husbands or boyfriends
35% raped by an acquaintance
5% raped by another relative
Also, that one in twelve male students surveyed had committed acts that met the legal definition of rape. Of those who admitted to such acts, 84% of them said that what they had done was definitely not rape.
Those statistics came from the United States Department of Justice, Violence Against Women office.
So, in answer to your question, I’d say my statement was fact, not merely my opinion. I’d find it hard to believe that the population of men having one night stands is any different from the population of men as a whole. The idea that men who have one night stands are more likely to rape women than any random sampling of men is one of those rape myths taught to women from a very early age.
Depending on the context, yes. If my sister met a strange guy in a seedy bar and went off to his hotel room with him, would I freak out? Absolutely, and not because I’m uncomfortable with her sexuality. I’d freak out because she could end up in his trunk. On the other hand, if she invited a coworker over to finish up work over dinner, I’d be perfectly comfortable with them being alone, because it’s a low-risk context.
On the other hand, if she invited a coworker over to finish up work over dinner, I’d be perfectly comfortable with them being alone, because it’s a low-risk context.
Why? Serial murderers or rapists can be coworkers, too. Why is a male coworker assumed to be a “low-risk” person, as opposed to a male stranger? Are men less likely to rape a woman that they know? Why then, are 68% of female rape survivors raped by someone that they know? Why is “dinner” a lower-risk context than “sex”. What if your sister had “dinner” in mind, while your sister’s guest had “sex” in mind? What then?
Again….it’s not about saying that risk-reduction is worthless. It’s about a realistic assessment of how much actual reduction is taking place. Realistically, your sister is statistically as likely to end up raped by the coworker she intended on just having dinner with as she would be by the man she went home with to have sex with. Unless of course, your sister went home with a convicted rapist.
Show me the statistics that say that men who have one night stands are more likely to rape than the general male population.
La Lubu,
It’s because we’re pretty much all xenophobic that we assume that we (or our friends/family) are safer with a man they know than a stranger. Strangers are unknown and therefore scary and dangerous.
Funny thing is, the Green River Killer had not only a steady job but a career. Most serial killers & serial rapists, when caught, their neighbors say, “He was a quiet guy. Good neighbor. Never bothered anybody.” You can’t tell by looking at somebody or working with somebody or being neighbors with somebody whether they are a potential rapist or killer. Hell, my scary situation happened w/ a neighbor – well dressed guy, minister & bishop. I’d helped him a couple of times, he’d helped me to prune a tree. I was not safe with him and I knew him about as well as one is likely to know the average neighbor.
Jane (and to be fair, most of her commenters & many commenters here) cannot seperate the irrational xenophobia inherent in most of us from the facts. She feels very strongly that a stranger is inherently more dangerous than a co-worker and it doesn’t seem like there is anything that could possibly change her mind.
Jane, re. this comment:
First, that rape is not just a patriarchal thing; I’d argue that it’s even largely not a patriarchal thing. Even in feminist utopia (something I think we are unlikely to reach), lots of men will still want to commit rape because many people are tempted to take what they want by force when they cannot get it by free consent.
I’m not sure what your reading has been on this but mine has indicated that this is not the case. I think it may have been Peggy Sanday who did a study of a large number of tribes and concluded that in those where the mother-child bond was the central social link, rape was practically non-existant. Patriarchally-based hierarchies, however, used rape as a social control to keep women in their place.
My problem is that the stats are not definitive enough:
that 28% what porportion is current, what ex or soon to be? How many long term. It dosenn’t change the pain, or the morality, but if exes or soon to be exes (and which one is more dangerous) form the largest number of rapist, then a woman can be made aware of that fact and the police can be made aware of the fact and greater protection (not absolute) can be given.
It makes a lot of sense to me.
Who all is counted as an aquaintance? I would think La Luba that one-night stands would be included in the aquaintance group.
Here’s an interesting paper on the whole topic of aquaintance rape.
btw Helen thanks for posting about Peggy Sanday; she sounds quite interesting.
I am really asking that if anyone wants to gift me on one of her books on gender and dominance issues I would really appreciate it. She looks interesting, I can’t afford it. Never hurts to ask, one never knows.
Two points
First, tekanji – thank you. I have a very good friend who spends her life in a wheelchair. She has limited mobility, poor vision, and is almost completely dependant on other people to get about. She has been stranded in very unsafe circumstances more times than I can name because of that dependancy. To imply that every woman who “knows better” than to be alone in some parts of the city after dark, is therefore resposible if something happens to her is a profound insult to her, and to anyone in like circumstance.
Second, there is a major misconception that I see again and again that criminals of all sorts, but especially serial rapists or killers, are ”different from us”. Meaning that we can somehow tell these people from the “normal” population. We can’t.
Ann Rule, a crime writer, wrote about a set of serial murders, and then discovered when the murderer was caught, that she had worked beside him on the Suicide Hotline for months. His name was Ted Bundy – and he was a nice guy. Except for that little habit of his. Rapists have jobs, have families, buy groceries. They come from every walk of life, from the elite to the dirt poor. They don’t come with signs. A rapist may depend upon the anonymity of stranger rape to protect himself, but he is just as likely to rely on the social conditioning of a victim who knows him to prevent her from resisting effectively. A rapist can be your co-worker, your teacher, your boy-friend, that nice man who lives down the street. They are just like us, and you can NOT tell the difference 99 times out of 100.
Are there things one can do to be safer? Yes. But they don’t make you nearly as much safer as people seem to think. I was told at least weekly not to accept rides from strangers. I was never told not to accept homework help from a teacher. Truth to tell, I accepted a ride from a stranger one day – he took me straight to school, berating me all the way about how I should never get in a car with a stranger. The teacher was the dangerous one.
What it boils down to is that you learn what you are willing to do or not do for risk reduction – and don’t second-guess someone else’s choices. They may be safer than you are. And for God’s sake don’t cripple your life looking for safety. The only truth I’ve been able to find is that there is none. You live with it, and you go on. And you work for a better day.
that 28% what porportion is current, what ex or soon to be? How many long term. It dosenn’t change the pain, or the morality, but if exes or soon to be exes (and which one is more dangerous) form the largest number of rapist, then a woman can be made aware of that fact and the police can be made aware of the fact and greater protection (not absolute) can be given.
Rachel Ann, what difference do the proportions make? If an ex is a danger to a woman, she already knows it. The police can’t do anything. Unless the ex or soon to be ex actually beats or rapes a women, there is nothing for them to do. It’s a bit late by that point, isn’t it? Even if a woman manages to convince a judge that a man is a danger before she gets hurt and gets a restraining order, it’s only worth is an added charge for violating it if he harms her.
Jane Galt: On the other hand, if she invited a coworker over to finish up work over dinner, I’d be perfectly comfortable with them being alone, because it’s a low-risk context.
No, it’s not. That’s my point, in fact: when you try to advise on “risk reduction” you need to have a realistic idea of what the risks are. Your idea of risk reduction is unrealistic, based on preventing women from going about their lives in their usual way.
Rachel Ann, I had assumed “husband or boyfriend” meant current, and that exes would fall under “acquaintance”. I know many women who were raped by husbands or boyfriends, and they weren’t exes (they did become that, eventually). Mousehounde is correct that the police can’t do anything until after the fact. Orders of protection are difficult to come by; even if you have witnesses to the fact that a man has threatened your life and stalked you, unless you can prove that he has already harmed you, you won’t get an order of protection—even if he has an arrest history to prove that he has been violent to others in the past. Also to keep in mind, orders of protection are of little help against someone who is determined to harm you. Just as locked doors “keep honest people honest”, orders of protection keep nonviolent people nonviolent.
How many women research a man’s criminal history before a date? I do, because of my experiences. It won’t catch ’em all, but it’ll eliminate some with a proven higher risk factor. Yet, I’ve never seen that offered as standard rape or violence prevention advice. Why not? Why do we continue to get the “check the back seat” advice, yet not get “check his arrest and conviction record” advice. Few, if any, women were raped or beaten by a criminal that broke into her car and hid in the back seat. Contrast that with the number of women raped by a man they dated. There’s advice, and then there’s practical advice.
We need to put emphasis on the fact that women are more likely to be raped by a man they know, not so women will isolate themselves, but so we can take proactive measures that are workable in our daily lives that can make a difference in our safety and survival. Women in the U.S. are typically conditioned from an early age to avoid strange men; that’s not the problem. Women here are conditioned from an early age to fight back and/or escape in the event of attack from a stranger. While you can never be too prepared when it comes to your ability to fight back or escape (I think martial arts training is beneficial), that’s not really where the problem lies either.
See, women here are not conditioned to give that fight-or-flight response to a boyfriend, husband or date. Many women have no moral qualms about doing maiming techniques against a stranger—but how many have no qualms about maiming a man they know? That’s my beef with much of the standard advice; it’s pointed off in a tangent, while the real danger is straight ahead. Many folks on this thread would say offhand that being with your husband is “safe”. And for many women, it is. But that wasn’t my experience, nor was it the experience of many women I know, or knew while growing up. Their/our husbands were the men precisely the most likely to inflict violence. While we were checking our backseats, we were also continuing to live with violence, because we had been conditioned to think of domestic violence as part and parcel of the family experience.
In the United States, we are still conditioned to think of rape as a “sex crime”, rather than as a control-issue crime. Women on juries are less likely to convict a rapist than men. Why? Because they Monday-morning quarterback the rape victim, thinking, “well, if I was her, I would have done x, and therefore not been raped. why didn’t she do x?” That’s a big problem. Practical anti-rape advice would start with identifying the traits of individuals with control issues, and avoiding them from the start. Practical anti-rape advice would start with identifying the traits of individuals who are likely to use violence as their prime means of solving problems, or who are likely to escalate to violence when uncalled for.
Looking back on my experience with my ex-husband, there wasn’t anything I would (or even could, as a practical matter) done differently when it came to my decision to divorce and my means of carrying that out. I still believe it was not only the right decision, but the only decision—I would definitely be dead had I remained married to him. However, if I had known better what the warning signs were of a relationship likely to escalate into domestic violence, I would have been divorced years earlier (even with the cultural baggage that divorce is wrong). My ex did show signs of obsession and escalating violence (wilingness to “ramp up” without provocation) after the first year of marriage. He did seek to isolate me from friends and relatives (and in fact, was able to drive off most friends; they were afraid of him). But, being raised in an environment where generally only family goes behind the closed door of the home, and where it is a male perogative to drink too much and be both verbally and physically abusive, I didn’t recognize the warning signals. I thought that was “normal life”. I wasn’t stupid, even though I felt that way. To me, that was my blue sky and green grass—that was what family life looked like. That was normal. Was it miserable? Yes. But that’s what I considered family life to be; it was a fatalistic view of “well, this is the hand you’ve been dealt, live with it until somebody dies—then maybe you’ll get a breather.” All fucked up? Yes, indeed.
And like I said, there are parallels between domestic violence and rape, as to how women are socialized to endure the pre-existing.
La Luba,
Thank you.
What you wrote, your whole piece, is what I’m talkng about. Real eduation, real facts, that can help a woman make the best decision in her particular situation.
I don’t want to live fatlalistically and I don’t think we have to.
Knowledge is the key, and what to do with that knowledge is the hand that opens up the lock.
Daughter just came home from school and wants dinner…I meant to go into this more…but the facts you have listed can help another woman avoid at least some of the pain you went through. And the knowledge you have gained has helped you prevent further pain. Not that anyone can keep it away completely, but now you check criminal backgrounds. You are lowering your risk.
Real knowledge equals real advice.
take care, and I am sorry for all you went through.
For one thing, you have a better sense of what a coworker is like than what a stranger in a bar is like. Does he take things he’s not entitled to? Bully others to get his way? Is he obsessive? I would be nearly as uncomfortable with my sister inviting a brand new coworker home to finish things at her place over dinner as I would with her picking up strangers in bars. Yet I wouldn’t care at all if she was snogging with random strangers in alleyways, because you’re generally pretty safe in a public place.
For another thing, the coworker knows that you know who he is, and can ruin his career. That offers you a substantial measure of protection, as does the fact that if you disappear, your boss will likely know that he is the last one to have seen you, and police attention will be focused on him accordingly.
Does that mean she’s perfectly safe? No. SHe’ll never be perfectly safe. But that’s not a reason to engage in high risk behavior.
Finally, I’m deeply suspicious of the rape statistics that get batted around feminist fora, because when I dig into such statistics I generally seem to find that they are supported by questionable methodology, or are simply figures that “everyone knows”, passed around and around with no good source. So I’m leery of the famous assertion that most rape is acquaintance rape, especially considering how dependant such assertions are on definitions of rape–more than one friend has been assured by my college’s women’s centre that she was raped because she had sex while drunk. It is also, of course, dependant on the definition of “acquaintance”, as a commenter above pointed out: if a one-night stand is counted as an acquaintance, then this statistic bolsters, rather than refutes, my fears for my sister’s safety.
But even assuming that this is true, y’all are committing a statistical fallacy when you deduce that acquaintances are more threatening than strangers. The fact that there are more acquaintance rapes than stranger rapes doesn’t necessarily reflect the fact that acquaintances are more likely to rape you than strangers are; it is more likely to reflect the fact that you spend more time in potentially dangerous situations with acquaintances than with strangers. I would never get into a car with a stranger, or go to his house, or invite him into mine, or walk out to a deserted area with him, yet those are the places I am most likely to be raped.
Such a fallacy is the source of the oft quoted statistic that flying is safer than driving. It is true that there are many more car accidents than plane accidents in the US, but then there are many more cars in the US than there are planes. If you look at miles travelled, the number of fatal accidents is about the same, meaning you are approximately as likely to be killed flying somewhere as driving.
So I stand by my assertion that going somewhere alone with someone you have just met is far more dangerous than going the same place with someone whom you know well, whom you have had time to assess, and who will be an obvious suspect if something happens to you. Frankly, even without the statistics lesson, I’m a little dumbfounded that people are actually trying to assert the contrary.
We are now on our fourth thread about Nick’s story, and this argument has been addressed (see comments 118 and 119 on the original thread). While the predominance of acquaintance over stranger rape of course does not compel a conclusion that acquaintances are more dangerous than strangers, nobody has empirical evidence for the proposition that acquaintances are less dangerous than strangers. For that proposition, you’re relying only on theory. And we doubt much of what you conclude.
For example, if your sister is at home with a co-worker, you say that she is in less danger because people know who she’s with, and she can ruin his reputation. In fact, his perception may be (and may accurately be) that, if she complains the next morning that she raped him, and he says they had consensual sex, his account will be believed and hers will be rejected, and that her reputation and career will be ruined. Even if this is not what would actually happen, if the co-worker is a rapist and he believes that’s what will happen, then the factors you mentioned are no deterrent.
Likewise, you’re apparently comfortable with your sister engaging in sexual activity in a public place, because you believe she’s safe in a public place. But the New Bedford gang-rape happened in a crowded bar. That’s a public place. The Orange County, Ca. rape happened at a crowded party. That’s a public place (full of men the victim knew). You may think that the alley outside a crowded bar is safe, but you might be wrong, and you really have no way of knowing.
In short, Ms. Galt, your assertions about risk reduction amount to your best guess and nothing more.
And while we’re on the subject:
[cough]childish[/cough]. If you have off-topic political axes to grind, do it on your own blog.
So I stand by my assertion that going somewhere alone with someone you have just met is far more dangerous than going the same place with someone whom you know well, whom you have had time to assess, and who will be an obvious suspect if something happens to you.
This is only true if you believe that the dynamics of acquaintance rape are exactly like those of stranger rape. As to having time to assess… what does co-worker A do in his spare time? What are his hobbies? How does he treat his parents/siblings/neighbors/pets? What is his criminal record? Do you know any of these things? No, probably not. What you do know is how he interacts with others at work and what he has told you. You really don’t know your coworkers as well as you think that you do. Most people probably don’t know their coworkers any better than they know random person X who they spend an hour talking with at a bar.
Jane, I urge you to really analyze your preconceived notions of how well you know your coworkers, neighbors, etc. You may well find that you don’t know them nearly as well as you think you do. I, for one, am a very different person at work than I am at home.
For one thing, you have a better sense of what a coworker is like than what a stranger in a bar is like. Does he take things he’s not entitled to? Bully others to get his way? Is he obsessive?
Not necessarily–and I say that from personal experience. There were two guys (I knew them at separate times in my life) whom I thought I knew quite well, who acted in all the right ways and said all the right things in public, but showed a much more menacing and entitled face in private. I’m told I’m paranoid for not inviting dates up for coffee until I know them very well, but I still hear people going off on how stupid a woman who was raped/assaulted/threatened on a date was for letting the guy in for coffee.
I would be nearly as uncomfortable with my sister inviting a brand new coworker home to finish things at her place over dinner as I would with her picking up strangers in bars. Yet I wouldn’t care at all if she was snogging with random strangers in alleyways, because you’re generally pretty safe in a public place.
That’s not true, either, and you don’t have to be snogging random strangers in alleyways to be assualted in public. A woman at the Seattle Mardi Gras was stripped and sexually assaulted by a group of men, and several women in Central Park were also stripped and assaulted. As were female soldiers/officers at Tailhook.
And here’s the other thing–you may think it’s okay for your sister to invite a coworker she knows well into her home, or for her to snog strangers in public, but I’ll guarantee you that some asshat in the peanut gallery will go on about the poor choices she made in inviting someone in or acting in such a slutty way. All in the guise of learning from the experience.
Yes, it is possible to not know your coworkers as well as you think you do. But you don’t know a stranger in a bar *at all*. Even assuming that rapists are randomly distributed between acquaintances and strangers, and even assuming that you can only pick out 25% of the violent, bullying assholes, you’re still doing better with an acquaintance than with a stranger. Your theory requires us to posit that there is absolutely no correlation between rape and things like impulse control, attitude towards women, and so forth, such that it is completely impossible to predict who will commit rape. This is ridiculous. Any psychologist can tell you that you can, in fact, predict who will commit basically any crime by looking at their behaviour in other areas of their life; people who have bad impulse control in sexual situations, have bad impulse control in their job; people who are violent in bars tend to be violent at home, and so forth. No psychologist can predict perfectly exactly who will commit a crime, but statistically, they can give you good odds on who is more likely to commit a crime.
I’m not saying that our knowlege of the people around us is perfect, only that it is better than perfect innocence. Why would you even argue this proposition?
Nor am I arguing that the deserted places I named are the only ones that crimes can be committed. But the rapes that you’re describing made the headlines precisely because they are extraordinary. Most rapes, like most other crimes, take place when no one else is around, because when they take place in a public venue, there is a very high likelihood that the culprit will be stopped before he can commit a crime, or apprehended after he does.
Jane:
The majority of studies of rape prevalence are based on fairly conservative, straightforward definitions of rape; to conflate those studies with anecdotes about what someone on campus once said, as your post did, is an error. This is a case in which the social scientists are right and the pundits are wrong. I’d be happy to discuss this in more detail with you, if you’d like.
Aside from that, I pretty much agree with your post. The overall statistics really don’t say anything at all about if a stranger pick-up is safer or less safe than a work acquaintence, because of the factors you cite.
However, I disagree with what you said earlier, about misogyny not having much to do with rape.
I think it’s fairly obvious, if you look at the evidence, that factors like male feelings of entitlement, a peer group that masculinity must be proved to, and the status of women will have an effect on rape prevalence. Yes, some men will always want to have sex with women who don’t want them; but whether they feel entitled to sex, and whether or not they view women as lower-status than men, will effect how likely men are to translate desire into action.
For instance, a study by a social scientist often cited by anti-feminists (see the book Four Theories of Rape in American Society) found that states in which women were more equal (measured by things like the size of the wage gap and how many women were in elected office, etc) also had lower rape prevalences. This is similar to evidence from anthropology someone cited earlier this thread.
There’s also a lot of evidence showing that rape-supportive attitudes (i.e., “if a woman dresses that way she’s just asking for it”) and support for traditional gender roles are linked.
Is sexism the only factor that determines rape? No, other factors matter too. But there’s good reason to think that it is a factor, and that a society with less sexism will therefore (all else held equal) have less rape.
Thomas:
[cough]Mellow out dude.[/cough]
It was obviously a friendly joke (even after you cut out the “grin”), and one I found funny. You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but in my opinion you need to relax a little and not jump on every little thing.
Amp, I read it as “kidding on the square,” but if you say I should have taken it as a joke, I’ll take your word for it. There are people who think I’m a totally serious, insufferable douche; I concede that this position is well supported by the evidence.
Have to agree with you there, Jane. It would be interesting to ask the present crowd if they or a close personal friend have ever been raped by a co workers have ever been raped by a co worker. Can it happen sure. Anything can happen. The question people need to ask themselves is, How LIKELY is it to happen, based on their life experiences.
Based on my experience, its HIGHLY unlikely. Most people understand that the risk of rape , contrary to popular opinion , is a ruined reputation at the MERE accusation of rape and if convicted, a felony record and years in prison. That is quite likely to stay any rational person’s hand.
Aside from that, I pretty much agree with your post. The overall statistics really don’t say anything at all about if a stranger pick-up is safer or less safe than a work acquaintence, because of the factors you cite.
Man. Where were you guys around posts 115-120 of the original thread when I was getting my clock cleaned?
Amp, I’d be happy to look at your studies; the ones I looked at (which are only the ones I happened to come across, so there may well be better ones) either used extraordinarily broad definitions of rape, had severe methodological problems with the sample, or couldn’t be located when I tried. But it’s been a long time since I looked at it, so if you can forward me the names of some reputable studies on the incidence of rape that find acquaintances leading the numbers, I’d love to see them.
Does rape happen in a social context? Absolutely. But I’m sceptical that the general social context in which most American women now live is as rape-friendly as your commenters seem to be suggesting. Yes, young men want to have sex because it makes them feel masculine, but they also want to have sex because it feels good. What I’ve read about those who have been criminally convicted of rape suggests that they share many traits with other criminals: poor impulse control, rage problems, and so on. They also have the same sort of sexual fixation on rape that some men have on foot fetishes or children, and my understanding is that emerging evidence shows that the underlying sexual fixation is much less determined by social context than was once thought, though the details are largely so determined–in other words, pedophiles are probably pedophiles from birth or early childhood, although the particular scenarios they fantasize about are culturally determined.
Of course, acquaintance rape might be an entirely different crime, but I am *extraordinarily* sceptical that it is more dependant on our current social context than on personal idiosyncrasy. That is not to say that there are not cultures in which it might be so, or even subcultures of our own country, but I simply cannot reconcile a belief that rape is widely acceptable enough to produce large numbers of acquaintance rapes with my experience of American society. Having interacted with a significant number of American subcultures, including working class and inner city ones, and the infamous jock/fraternity bands, I simply have not encountered large groups of men who encourage each other to rape women as a matter of social policy. Terrible things do occasionally happen in groups, but they’re really very occasional, as evidenced by the fact that they inevitably make headlines.
By way of analogy, a lot of armies in the past made rape a policy, not to say an aim, of war. Our army doesn’t. Rape still occurs, but not the way it did when, say, the Babylonians swept through your village. In the former case, rape is socially determined; in the latter, environmental and personal context matters a lot more than social factors. In my opinion, we are now in a context where most rape is idiosyncratic, thanks in large part to the earlier efforts of feminists.
See, now, this is interesting to me. As a big ol’ socialist I disagree with many of the opinions Ms. Galt holds (not least of which the opinion that one ought to name oneself after any of Ayn Rand’s characters. Ew.), but I agree with almost everything she said in her most recent post.
When she wrote:
I found myself pointing at the screen and saying “Right! Right! Exactly!”
This, honestly, has been my biggest problem with the ongoing conversation about this. I don’t have a problem with the idea that there are risk reduction techniques that are too restrictive and amount to putting women in a straightjacket, or the idea that rejecting these risk reduction techniques without the fear of criticism is the right of every woman, or the idea that even if you engage in ZERO risk reduction techniques, every single rape is 100% the fault of the rapist and 0% the fault of the victim. All of these are things I agree with absolutely.
My problem comes in when people say things that amount to ‘A drunk man I don’t know, who I’m alone with in his apartment at night is no more likely to rape me than my best friend (whom I’ve known for 10 years) while we walk down main street together at noon, because, after all, they’re both men.’
This is, to my mind, both a false statement, a pretty seriously silly one, and a pretty seriously offensive one, and yet, if you take each of the components of this statement seperately, you’ll find that someone here has been arguing for each of them.
Drunk people are no more or less likely to rape than sober men. You’re no more or less likely to be raped in public than private. People you don’t know are no more or less dangerous than people you do know. The best information we have (as well as common sense) seems to indicate that these statements are all untrue, and yet, when they’re challenged, the ‘evidence’ for them seems to amount to anecdotes or isolated counter examples.
The fact that sober men rape too (while true) is NOT counter-evidence for the statement “A drunk man is more likely to rape.” The fact that rapes take place in public too (while true) is is NOT counter-evidence to the statement “You are more likely to be raped in private.” Every single time someone trots out these ‘counter examples’ a little voice in the back of my head says “well, I guess you can safely ignore that person’s arguements from now on.”
Christ, this isn’t even about rape! This is about how facts and evidence and logic work. This especially makes me crazy, because my goal is THE SAME as yours. I am on your side. I want to end rape. I do not believe it is the responsibility of women to end it. I believe it IS the responsibility of men to end it. I do not, however, believe that there will be no rape tomorrow, or next week, or next year, and until there is no rape, I want the information available on what women can do to be less at risk (IF they choose to) to be the best it can be.
That’s all I want.
Jane, you’ve missed my point. Even if a woman does practice your risk-reduction techniques, she is still a target for criticism if she’s attacked. And this is because–I’ll say it again–people will wonder why she allowed a coworker into her home if she had no intention of having sex/didn’t know him as well as she should have (which is pretty subjective), etc.
Yes, it is possible to not know your coworkers as well as you think you do. But you don’t know a stranger in a bar *at all*.
But we don’t criticize men for picking up strange women in a bar. I think there’s more than a little Victorian squeamishess behind some of this ‘safety’ advice.
Even assuming that rapists are randomly distributed between acquaintances and strangers, and even assuming that you can only pick out 25% of the violent, bullying assholes, you’re still doing better with an acquaintance than with a stranger. Your theory requires us to posit that there is absolutely no correlation between rape and things like impulse control, attitude towards women, and so forth, such that it is completely impossible to predict who will commit rape. This is ridiculous
What’s ridiculous is your attempt to attribute things to me that I never said. Kindly note that I never said you can’t predict who will rape; I merely asserted that a) some people aren’t what they seem and b) using your risk-reduction techniques would still leave a woman open to criticism if she’s attacked. Case in point: thought I knew these men pretty well. They never demonstrated any of the behaviors you described. In public.
Any psychologist can tell you that you can, in fact, predict who will commit basically any crime by looking at their behaviour in other areas of their life; people who have bad impulse control in sexual situations, have bad impulse control in their job; people who are violent in bars tend to be violent at home, and so forth.
Not quite. First of all, psychologists like Lundy Bancroft, who study abuse and abusers assert that such men are perfectly polite and even personable outside of their homes; they even treat their female bosses with respect. And while a rapist may show poor impulse control, I rather doubt that most acquaintence rapists are out there humping the furniture or attacking any women in sight. They may show this type of behavior, but the people who are subjected to it are often women, and they are often criticized for putting themselves into such a position of vulnerability in the first place. It stays pretty quiet. Really, will a coworker’s wife issue a bulliten warning people that he has a nasty tendency to not take no for an answer? His ex girlfriends? I rather doubt it.
No psychologist can predict perfectly exactly who will commit a crime, but statistically, they can give you good odds on who is more likely to commit a crime.
They’ll also tell you that most people put up a good public face no matter what their dispostion.
I don’t think the answer is treating all men like potential rapists, nor do I think the answer is throwing caution to the wind. But my original point still stands: following risk-reduction strategies leaves women open to criticism–we are either paranoid, or we aren’t being careful enough if we are victimized.
Yes, it is possible to not know your coworkers as well as you think you do. But you don’t know a stranger in a bar *at all*.
Kinda depends on the conversation, doesn’t it? I’m much more likely to look for cues that suggest someone might not stop when I say no when I am intending to get involved with with someone (irregardless of how soon). It’s not like I’m going to be as focused on testing co-workers out for the same.
While I personally have had enough of the right types of conversations with currrent co-workers to trust them more than someone I just met, I definitely couldn’t say the same of every job that I’ve held. Seems to me there’s a bit of a white collar assumption that there is time for conversation among co-workers to begin with. I’ve had several jobs where I never have the time to talk to my co-workers the way I could talk to someone at a bar, and yet there is still a blanket assumption among the general public that my co-workers are safer than the guy at the bar.
To me, this is part what I mean about most rape prevention advice being unhelpful. Even assuming one should be cautious about who one spends time alone with, the advice should not be to avoid guys at bars altogether, but to learn to have the right kinds of conversations with any man you plan on being alone with, irregardless of your reasons.
I haven’t read anyone as trying to argue that picking someone up for sex doesn’t involve risks. I, personally, just get annoyed with people who assert that it must be obviously unsafer than many other things women don’t get lectured about. Especially when they have no statistical evidence to back this up, or assume that patterns of rape are identical to patterns of theft without any real evidence that this is so (and despite a lot of logic that says it ought to be different in many ways).
Based on my experience, its HIGHLY unlikely.
While I luckily don’t have any experience with rape, I’ve had quite the opposite experience with lesser violations. So while I’m not going to hold up my experiences as proof, I’m certainly not going to take yours as proof either.
a ruined reputation at the MERE accusation of rape
That’s funny ’cause I could have sworn that the last rally I went to in college was to protest the fact that a man who had allegedly raped a woman while at a party he was working security for was still working security at parties. That hardly seems like a ruined reputation to me – in fact it seems like legal presumption of innocence taken to a dangerous extreme.
Sheelzebub, again, what subculture are you living in that you have experienced women being blamed for being raped? I know of no one who absolves men because she brought him home with her, not my small town Victorian grandmother and not my jock football playing, beer quaffing college friends.
As for not freaking out when men pick up women in a bar, I agree that there is still a double standard in many parts of society about women’s sexuality. But there is also genuine reason to freak out more when a woman picks up a strange man, because said strange man is much more likely to assault the woman than the woman is to assault the man. One form of assault, rape, is, assertions to the contrary, extremely difficult to commit on men; you certainly can’t count on his having a spontaneous erection as a fear reaction.
Nor did I say that patterns of rape are similar to patterns of theft. I said that the personality traits that make someone a rapist are likely to show up in other areas of their life, just as the personality traits that make someone a thief show up in other areas of *their* life. Yes, there are master thieves who go undetected, and undoubtedly there are master rapists whom no one suspects until it is too late. But in general, you have some chance of detecting people it is dangerous to be around . . . and indeed, every story I’ve ever heard about a man who couldn’t be trusted in a dark spot turned out to involve a man I’d long ago decided never to be alone with. Having been involved in an abusive relationship, ironically enough with a radical feminist, and having done some work with battered women, I can also testify that I, and they, knew very early on that he had rage problems and poor impulse control, and so did everyone else who knew the abuser at all well.
You, and others keep proclaiming that you’re just trying to get me to reassess my confidence in the relative risks of acquaintance and stranger rape. But I haven’t proclaimed that I, or anyone else, is perfectly safe with acquaintances; only that my experience of the world has indicated that being alone with someone you know well is safe enough to risk, and being alone with someone you met an hour ago while you, or they, were three sheets to the wind is not. That doesn’t mean that a man who rapes a woman he just met has any less (or more) moral culpability than a man who rapes a woman he has known for years. But it does mean that I believe it is ludicrous to attempt to seriously argue that the risks of accepting a ride from a coworker are even of the same magnitude as the risks of picking up a stranger in a bar and going off somewhere with him where noone can hear you scream.
When people tell women how not to get raped and say that there will allways be bad people they seem to ignore the fact that this will do nothing to lower the overall amount of rape. In fact it may actually encourage a rapist mindset of “she is asking for it”. Rapists aren’t mindless beasts in helpless thrall of their masculine hormones. They know enough allways to go after women who are vulnerable. Thus every attemt to prevent rape by telling women how to behave will only shift the assault to their more unfortunate sisters.
Why not take a look at the two (fairly) recent US government studies that focused on rape? The nice thing about studies by the Fed is, they’re always easy to locate. There’s the National Violence Against Women study (pdf file), and the Sexual Victimization of College Women study.
The former study found that 17% of rapes of adult women are stranger rapes. From the latter study: “For both completed and attempted rapes, about 9 in 10 offenders were known to the victim. Most often, a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, classmate, friend, acquaintance, or coworker sexually victimized the women.”
There’s no special reason to think that people who are tried and found guilty of rape are representative of rapists as a whole. For one thing, the traits you identify are also traits that won’t serve someone well as they try and navigate the legal system; someone with poor impulse control and rage issues isn’t going to organize the best defense, all else held equal. For another, stranger-rapists are far more likely to be convicted, but the typical rapist isn’t a stranger-rapist (see above cites; see also the book Real Rape by Susan Estrich).
My belief is that the studies probably underestimate the total prevalence of rape, because they don’t even ask about some types of rape (such as someone who is raped not by force, but because she or he drank themselves to unconsciousness at a party and someone had sex with them while they were knocked out), and also because many don’t ask about rape before age 16 or so. That aside, most recent “best practices” studies have found that about 10%-15% of American women are raped (not including attempted rape) at least once in their lifetime.
I’m not sure if you consider that to be “large numbers” or not. But I think that represents the best current understanding of how often rape happens in the US, regardless of whether or not you’re able to reconcile the facts with your own view of American society.
More to the point of our discussion, that certainly makes rape common enough so that it’s not outlandish to want to find social policies which will reduce rape. The fact that some cultures – and some states – apparently have significantly lower rape rates supports the feminist belief that we can make our own rape rates lower than they currently are.
You’re a woman, Jane, and (if you’ll excuse my saying so) a pretty woman at that; I think you’re mistaken if you think groups of young men act exactly the same in front of you as they do among themselves.
Do young men say “hey, Bob, I think you should seriously consider committing sexual assault this Thursday?” No, I don’t think they do. Do some groups of young men put intense pressure on each other to prove their masculinity by getting laid? Yes, they definitely do. Are teens or men under such intense pressure more likely, on the margins, to commit rape than those who aren’t under such intense pressure? I believe they are.
LaLubu said:
A woman is just as much at risk on a traditional date as she is on a one-night-stand.
and I asked, “LaLubu, are you asserting this as a fact, or as your opinion? ”
whereupon LaLubu responded:
28% raped by husbands or boyfriends
35% raped by an acquaintance
5% raped by another relative
….
So, in answer to your question, I’d say my statement was fact, not merely my opinion. I’d find it hard to believe that the population of men having one night stands is any different from the population of men as a whole. The idea that men who have one night stands are more likely to rape women than any random sampling of men is one of those rape myths taught to women from a very early age.
I fail to see how these numbers (horrible though they are) prove your assertion. Unless I very much miss my guess, those numbers above are lifetime numbers, not the odds for given single instances of contact. The amount of contact with husbands, boyfriends, acquaintances, and relatives would seem to me to be far more frequent than the amount of contact women have with one-night stands. If one night stands raped their dates 10% of the time, and the above classes of people raped the women they are in contact with .01% of the time, I’d still expect the numbers to look just as they do above, and yet the odds of being raped on a one-night stand would be 1000x higher. Granting the above figures, the likelihood of a women being raped by someone they know is higher than someone on a one-night stand over their lifetime; but the likelihood of their being raped on a given occasion if that occasion is a one night stand instead of a traditional date with a boyfriend could be much higher and still consistent with the above data.
Also, you say ” I’d find it hard to believe that the population of men having one night stands is any different from the population of men as a whole.” I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe. Lots of guys have never had one-night stands, or very few. Seems to me that the guys who repeatedly go for one-night stands are much more predatory than the ones who don’t.
Well, yeah, B, I can see how you see it that way, but that seems to assume that there will always be a vulnerable woman around who’s ‘easy’ to rape. The way I see things, let’s make it as goddamn difficult as possible for a prospective rapist to rape. We can do this by increasing the penalties for rape, both criminal and social, we can do this by teaching women to defend themselves socially and physically, and we can do this by making sure women know which situations are riskier than others.
In a perfect world, B, men wouldn’t want to rape.
In a slightly less perfect world, they wouldn’t be as able to rape, because there would be no easy targets, and no ‘unfortunate sisters’ to shift the rapes to. The cost to the rapist would be too high.
I believe that these are both worthwhile goals.
tekanji said:
That’s just insulting. To both women and men, actually, because given the number of aquaintence/friend/family rapes the statement implies that a vast majority of men are psychopaths hiding in dark alleys just waiting to rape women who aren’t giving them the chance.
and, two paragraphs later:
Men are not taught to say “no”. They are not taught to respect a woman regardless of any sexual choices she may make. They are taught that they are entitled to a woman’s body – both sexually and emotionally. They are taught that they have a right to control her reproductive freedom. They are taught that they are unable to control their own behaviour.
First, I find the assertions in that second paragraph a bit breathtaking. All of those assertions are the exact opposite of how I was brought up. My dad was old school, and he taught me to respect a woman’s choices in this matter. He and my mother both taught me that a man’s honor was measured in part by his ability to control himself and his emotions, and that taking advantage of someone who is weaker or more vulnerable than you is evil behavior. I’ll freely grant that there are males who exhibit all the behaviors you describe (I was taught that they don’t deserve the title “men”). I’ll suppose that that class would include rapists. But to say that in general all men (including the vast majority of us who are not rapists) are or are not taught these things as you state is, to quote you, “just insulting”.
Secondly, it seems to me that these two paragraphs contradict each other.
Heck, it was suggested to me on a different thread that a feminist perspective demanded that I teach my daughter just that; that every man is a potential rapist.
“If she didn’t want to have sex with him, then why did she go to his room” comments were common during the Kobe trial. Regardless of if Kobe committed rape or not, the prevalence of that comment suggests that many Americans are prepared to blame the victim – at least, when the rapist is someone who is well-liked.
Jane Gault said:
Second, that it is perfectly natural to be upset when someone you know has been engaging in risky behaviour. If my sister was walking through a bad neighbourhood alone at night, and got mugged and beaten up, you bet your sweet life I’d be yelling “What the hell were you *thinking*?!” as soon as I’d hugged the breath out of her. The reason is that when we care about someone, we don’t want them to engage in risky behaviour, because we don’t want them to get hurt.
A point I’ve tried to make elsewhere. I’m a white, middle-aged guy. If I walked into any number of bars in the West side of Chicago at 1:30 AM, I might expect that there’d be a pretty high risk of getting mugged or worse. And when my wife or brother walked into the ER an hour later, I’d expect that they would say something along the lines of “What the f**k were you doing in there, idiot?” But that doesn’t mean that what happened to me was my fault.
What does “kidding on the square” mean? I’ve never heard that one before.
I’m sure it was intended as a friendly jibe. I’ve met Jane in person once, and my impression was that she was funny and not mean-spirited.
LOL!
Funny, people have sometimes thought the same thing about me. Maybe we should form a suport group? “Totally serious insufferable douches anonymous (TSIDA).”
Amp, you talk upthread about rape in American culture. Sometimes I wonder whether what’s unique about American culture is not how much rape goes on, but how much more of it is actually considered rape and is publicized as such compared to other cultures?
I take as a very extreme example Moslem/tribal cultures as found in Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. The proponents within those cultures will tell you, “Our culture is superior to the West; we respect women and our incidence of rape is much lower.” Only to find out that 1) women don’t report rape because they are likely to be killed by their own families if they reveal that it’s happened, and 2) the legal structure requires 4 male witnesses for a rape conviction. Hardly surprising, then, that their reported incidence of rape approaches 0%.
In how many other cultures do people take seriously the concept that a husband can rape his wife? That having sex with a person too drunk/stoned/high to give informed consent is rape? That engaging in heavy petting, getting all worked up, and then penetrating a woman right after she’s said “No” or “I’m not sure” at the last second is rape? I suspect that even in many Western cultures, these all may not be taken as seriously as we do here in the U.S., and their rape numbers both official and unofficial may be lower on that basis.
I am careful to not assert that as fact, as I have not studied this question. You may have, so I ask you.
Amp, “Kidding on the square” is an expression I have heard (and used) to mean “ha, ha, just serious,” when the joker means what he or she says, but frames it as a joke because he or she recognizes that it is offensive or mean-spirited and wants an out in case the remark goes over badly.
I’ll pass on the support group. I think of it more like a title: Thomas, TSID.
Amp and I have met each other; it was good-natured teasing. I was not claiming that being a socialist is the same as being a rapist.
Amp, I am sure that men don’t act the same way around me as they do around other men. But the men I have known in various contexts have expressed rather explosively their belief that 1) if she says no, you stop and 2) you don’t have sex with a woman who has passed out.
I also agree that our culture encourages men to prove their masculinity by getting laid. But our culture also encourages people to prove their status by accumulating consumer goods. I do not believe that that is an excuse for theft, nor do I see us as therefore living in a “theft culture”. To me, a rape culture is one that encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who do not want to have sex with them. I just don’t see that as being a major undercurrent in any subculture that I have participated in.
RonF, with all due respect, I didn’t read Ampersand’s insights about prevalence of rape in American society as a way of saying that “American society sucks, other societies are much better” (especially extremist and quite misogynistic cultures such as the one in Saudi Arabia), but the numbers like 10-15% raped in lifetime, are big numbers in itself. I don’t believe that any society can ever get to the point of 0% actual (not just reported!) rape, but still, 10-15% is rather big even without any comparison (as rape is a rather serious crime, and that many victims of a very serious crime sounds like a problem).
How are the unofficial (does this mean like unreported, unconvicted?) rape rates lower because of taking rape less seriously? That makes no sense. Also, your statements about other western cultures are speculation by your own admission, thus not very conclusive. (I’m not American, thus I try to avoid broad generalizations about the American Society. Not my specialty. I don’t see why Americans should get to make broad generalizations about unspecified “other” cultures, either.)
Jane, time forbids me from going into detail on what men are taught that makes rape more likely (versus, say, a hypothetical ideal feminist culture). But I wrote about it in detail in an earlier post, if you’re interested.
The term “rape culture” is very nebulous. My view is that the vast majority (95% or so) of men never rape anyone, so by “rape culture” I don’t mean that most men are actively pro-rape or would rape someone. But I do think that if we raised boys differently, to have different understandings of masculinity, rape would become less common.
To Jenny K;
While I luckily don’t have any experience with rape, I’ve had quite the opposite experience with lesser violations. So while I’m not going to hold up my experiences as proof, I’m certainly not going to take yours as proof either.
_________________________
Nor should you. They are both anecdotal.
But if you engage in the thought experiment I suggested, you’ll see that rape by a coworker must be highly unusual. I’ve never heard that people are even that concerned with it, whereas they are VERY concerned about sexual harassment .
As far as reputation goes, regardless of whatever anecdotes you may know, no man wants to have the reputation of a rapist.
carib:
(emphasis added)
Precisely because people would find it hard to believe that any man would risk his reputation like that, then she must be lying about rape. He wouldn’t be that stupid and all (ironically, that might be exactly the reason why acquintance rape is more common than stranger rape, the rapist knows that he can get away with it simply by claiming “I wouldn’t be that stupid”).
To me, a rape culture is one that encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who do not want to have sex with them. I just don’t see that as being a major undercurrent in any subculture that I have participated in.
______________________________
Every society that I’ve ever heard of has laws against rape. often the official (or unofficial) penalty for rape is death, with Family members of the victim filling in where that law falls short.
I appreciate Ampersand’s belief about raising boys but that will not change the basic reason why people rape: men want to have sex with women who don’t want to have sex with them., That will be with us for all time, regardless of education, which will help some, i guess. Effective law enforcement will help more, and risk reduction strategies can also play a part( Horrible as this blog considers the necessity)
Tumas:
Precisely because people would find it hard to believe that any man would risk his reputation like that, then she must be lying about rape
If you are saying its possible to getaway with rape, you are correct. But considewring the disastrous downside if you convicted, ….
by the way , it seems that people are lamenting that its difficulkt to prove rape. Given the penalties, criminal & otherwise, it should be.
That said, its much easier to convict a person of acquaintaince rape than before. Ask Mike Tyson..
I have wanted to have sex with many women, most of whom I found out didn’t want to have sex with me. Well, tough luck. No sex then.
Sometimes I’ve come across a woman who wanted to have sex with me, with whom I didn’t want to have sex with. Tough luck. No sex.
Same goes for man-man sexual wants, and woman-woman sexual needs.
Rape, for the most part, isn’t as simple as to be about satisfying sexual needs. Certainly there is a sexual element to it, but is it mostly about simple biological need for sex? Or are need to get laid (for studly status), need to be a “man who takes what he wants” (supposedly a desirable quality?) more relevent? Rape is hardly about having sex with someone. It is about having sex in someone, despite her. Thus, while probably every man and woman will end up wanting to have sex with someone that doesn’t want to have sex with them, the majority of men, and even bigger majority of women will never rape. Rape just doesn’t qualify on the WITH part of “having sex with someone”. Simple biological response can be taken care of with masturbation.
And when it comes to studies, there is always Nicholas Groth who did extensive work among convicted rapists:
For the most part, offenders report finding little if any
sexual satisfaction in the act of rape. Their subjective reactions
range from disappointment to disgust. When rapists discuss
pleasure they speak of being aggressive and having power over
their victim, her actions, her life. “It gave me pleasure knowing
that there was nothing that she could do.”
Crime does not usually pay. I suppose I believe that rapists, like many other criminals, might not have entirely rational risk assessment capability. Perhaps they are just so arrogant that they simply refuse to believe they can be convicted? After all, there are societies that have death penalty for murder, yet murder happens in them, too. And when it comes to murder, we know for 100% sure that the victim isn’t lying. Why must we always assume that the woman is lying about rape? I mean, I’m all for fair trials and “beyond reasonable doubt” and that stuff, but the reasoning: he just wouldn’t do it, because the penalties are so severe! Is faulty logic.
Jane Galt Writes: Sheelzebub, again, what subculture are you living in that you have experienced women being blamed for being raped?
Read the threads on this blog responding to Nick’s story. All of them include comments from people blaming Nick for putting herself into a situation where she could have been raped. It’s possible that if she had actually been raped, as opposed to defending herself successfully from an attempted rape, those people would have shut up and not blamed her, but they’re certainly taking the attitude that Nick was at fault.
carib Writes: To me, a rape culture is one that encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who do not want to have sex with them. I just don’t see that as being a major undercurrent in any subculture that I have participated in.
Where do you live? Because it’s certainly not in the US, nor in the UK – is this in some feminist utopia somewhere?
Oops, sorry: that was carib quoting Jane Galt, who claims (falsely, since I know Jane lives in the US) that “To me, a rape culture is one that encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who do not want to have sex with them. I just don’t see that as being a major undercurrent in any subculture that I have participated in.”
Jane, as you yourself said, the US is not a feminist utopia, and alarming numbers of men do believe that they are entitled to sex with women whether or not the women want to have sex with them.
I was talking about this with my wife (who is far to the right of me, politically) this evening and here is what she had to say wrt to various topics we have discussed here and on the other threads:
Mrs. Squid’s words (paraphrased by Mr. Squid):
I would never date a coworker, what if something happened? Could I say anything at work? My reputation would be ruined because nobody would believe me, they would believe him.
The thing that I always did when dating or meeting men at bars was to always make sure that I didn’t have to depend on him for a ride. I also made sure that he didn’t know where I lived until I felt safe with him.
Two comments, one refutation of the coworkers are safe myth and one risk reduction technique. I get the feeling that if she had been raped by a man that she met at a bar that, even though she clearly took steps to reduce her risk, that she would be barraged with criticism for hooking up at a bar.
I seriously question how well women know any man the first time they are in a situation that “should be avoided” according to rape risk reduction advice. Certainly, the two women that I have dated/married would have been deemed foolish by the risk reduction crowd had I been a rapist. And that experience (being alone w/ a man who is not very well known by the woman) seems to be nearly universal in American culture. Yet, when a woman is raped, the reaction of many is consistently in the vein of, “You shouldn’t have been alone w/ the guy. That was a stupid thing to do.” And that is blaming – it is not advice.
It’s a no-win situation. Unless women seperate themselves entirely from the company of men, every woman will be alone with a man that they don’t know well. This is my complaint against the rape risk reduction crowd – your “advice” can’t be followed, it’s a set up to place blame and to allow you to feel that you (or your friends & family) are safe.
“But if you engage in the thought experiment I suggested, you’ll see that rape by a coworker must be highly unusual.”
sooooo….I’m supposed to arrange my life around your conclusion to a thought experiment you thought up? hah.
How about this for a “thought experiment”: Do rapists never have jobs? Do rapists never plan out their crimes? Do they never “case the joint”? Why would the guy at the bar be more likely to be a rapist than they guy I work with? Why would being alone with a person I barely know, but happen to work with, be safer than being alone someone I’ve had deliberate conversations with? I may not know the latter very well, but he also knows less about my life, how capable I am at defending myself, who I can expect to come to my aid, and how likely I am to go to the police.
Now, for me personally, this may work in my favor in terms of being safe from co-workers because I think they all know what I’d do if they tried something. This isn’t true for all women though – especially if co-workers includes supervisors. Again, I think there is a bit of a white collar assumption about the dynamics of the work environment underlying the idea that co-workers are inherently safer than recent aquaintances. Or maybe it’s not so much white collar as it is just privileged.
“I’ve never heard that people are even that concerned with it, whereas they are VERY concerned about sexual harassment.”
That’s funny, ’cause I could have sworn that pretty much all the landmark cases about sexual harrassment involved threat or fear of rape. The threat of sexual assault is generally an underlying fear when I talk about sexual harrassment with people I know. In fact, if the underlying threat to deny another person their right to consent isn’t there, people generally refer to it as just plain sexism in my experience. After all, the point of sexual harassment is not just that women are sex objects, but more importantly, that women’s consent is less important than fulfilling male desire.
“it seems that people are lamenting that its difficulkt to prove rape”
No, we are pointing out the that since it is difficult to prove rape in ways that theft is easy to prove – one on one analogies between theft and rape are often quite ridiculous.
We are also pointing out that there is a difference between a legal presumption of innocence on behalf of the defendant and a cultural assumption of shared culpability on the part of the victim.
“To me, a rape culture is one that encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who do not want to have sex with them”
Obviously you’ve never seen how nasty men can get when you turn them down -(not that I have much practical experience with this – but others I know have and can attest to it). You are also missing the point to a certain extent. It’s not so much that culture encourages men to believe that they are entitled to have sex with women who don’t want to have sex with them, but that they are entitled to have sex and women’s wishes don’t really factor into it. Everything sexual in our culture tends to center around male desire – this is what makes it so hard to discuss consent. What kind of negotiations are possible between someone who needs to have sex and someone who rarely even wants to? Pretty much only “yes, you can” – certainly not the healthier “sure, let’s do that.”
“But in general, you have some chance of detecting people it is dangerous to be around . . . and indeed, every story I’ve ever heard about a man who couldn’t be trusted in a dark spot turned out to involve a man I’d long ago decided never to be alone with.”
Not in my experience with sexual crimes – and this is why I think Amp is so very right when he talks about how we raise boys and what we expect of men. My first experience with someone deliberately ignoring my consent involved a close relation who happened to be younger than me (we were both kids at the time). My other experiences (with groping, etc.) for the most part have occurred in broad daylight in very public places.
As for the latter, I never had the opportunity to establish a relationship, but the offenders did not feel the need to hide their actions from public view either. In the first, I had every reason to trust him at the time and while I didn’t for a long time during and afterwards, I do now – with my life and more. I do realize realize that part of this is a direct result of his age at the time and his ability to grow afterwards, but the point that you can’t instantly tell the people who are going to hurt you apart from those who won’t still stands.
I’d also like to point out that the intimacy of our relationship wasn’t just a contributing factor in terms of proximity or my feelings of betrayal, it also played a role in terms of the trust that he had that I wouldn’t narc on him. It’s one thing to get a stranger in trouble, it’s another to get an aquaintance, friend, or someone you love in trouble – no matter how much they deserve it, it’s often never easy. The intimacy of our relationship also made me more likely to trust him even after it was obvious I shouldn’t. Being close, I knew so many good things about him – stuff that very few other people knew; how could I trust others to see the good as well as the bad? The abuse continued for as long as it did because of the intimacy we had, not despite it.
Obviously rape is several levels above the types of crimes I’m describing, but they all require that the offender break the same types of laws and social mores. Even good boys, like my relative, are given conflicting messages about what they have a right to when it comes to sex and girls/women and I think this causes many boys and men to commit crimes they would not if our culture was more respectful of female autonomy.
You know, I went to Jane’s site and read through the comments, and feel that the position of many posters here is being misrepresented. No one here is seriously arguing that women are just as likely to be raped in broad daylight on a crowded street with their best male friend as they are leaving a bar with a stranger and going to an isolated place after dark. No.
What I am saying is that a woman is just as likely to be raped doing the socially acceptable action of going out on a date with a man that she hasn’t known for very long, as she is doing the socially unacceptable action of going home with a man she doesn’t know very well to have sex. The critical physical component that makes both actions risky is there—she is alone with a man, and likely to be in an isolated area. If the man is not a rapist, there will be no rape in either situation. If the man is a rapist, there is a strong likelihood of rape in either situation, as the critical components of alone with a man, no one else near are there.
In the absence of statistics that show that men who engage in one night stands are significantly more likely to be violent and/or be rapists than the general male population, I’m inclined to believe that this subset of men mirrors the male population at large, and that socially unacceptable (for women) one-night stands are no more inherently dangerous than socially acceptable dating. Are we clear?
Read what Jake Squid said. Most women do not “vet” potential dates over the process of a year, or even six months. Most women go out with a man after anywhere from a series of casual conversations, to just one or two casual conversations—-about the same amount of discussion time as an evening at the bar. And speaking of “bar” isn’t that a loaded term (aack! bad pun!)? Most folks would quickly jump to the conclusion that going somewhere alone with a man after meeting him at a bar is inherently more dangerous than going somewhere alone (say, for coffee) with a man after meeting him at church. Why? Rapists go to church, too.
There is a myth that rapists are visibly creepy people; that one can “tell” who the rapists are. Read what Jenny K and other have said; rapists can put on a charming public face just like the domestic abusers. The BTK serial killer wasn’t recognized as such by his coworkers, his fellow church members, or neighbors. Neither were numerous other headline offenders. And neither are even more numerous non-headline offenders.
I don’t assume that I am safer amongst male coworkers than males in general. If it is someone that I have known well over the course of many years, then yes—I have a better handle on who they are and what they are like than a random man. But worksites and the people on them change a lot, and I won’t know everyone well. Some of the men on the jobsite I may only have known from being on the jobsite with them over the years; I recognize their faces, sometimes even know their names. But I haven’t really gotten to know them, as I haven’t had spent any time talking with them (other than maybe to say, “can you drywall this next so I can run a rack of conduit on it?”). In the mind of the public, I should “know” this guy, and therefore be relatively safe with him. In the minds of some, he would be more naturally inclined to not assault me even if he were that type of dude, because of fear of social ostracism. And that’s bullshit. Yet, it’s bullshit that we teach to women all the time—“he’s ok, he’s so-ans-so’s brother” and all that. In my experience, the general public is more likely to believe the accused and not the accuser; the accuser is the one more likely to receive the ostracism. After all, “nice guys”, the one’s with a job, who hold doors open for women, who know how to hold a conversation—-they don’t rape, right? Bah.
Few people thought my husband was an abuser, too. He was handsome, charming, intelligent, and “chivalrous”. He had a public face that went for miles. Law enforcement and military men were especially enamored of him, as he was sharp and “old school”.
And behind closed doors, he was a complete, abusive, hateful shitass. And no, he wasn’t that way during courtship or even during the early stages of our marriage. He followed the traditional pattern of not displaying these characteristics until later. Capisce? Not displaying these characteristics until later. It is a pattern, and it is well-documented.
I’m saying that the standard advice is for the most part upside-down, not that risk-prevention advice at all is completely worthless. I’m saying it’s headed in the wrong direction. Most women aren’t at risk from strangers, and most women aren’t spending extensive amounts of time alone with strangers. Most women are at risk from the men that they trust, and that minority of men who are abusing that trust make the most of societal myths about women, about sex, and about safety—and they do so both unconsciously and consciously. By changing the script, we can make it more difficult for them, and make it easier for women to avoid harm. Clear?
I travel as part of my job. I regularly park in parking garages, get into cabs, take subways, walk to and from restaurants, alone and in the dark. I obviously can’t ask some man to accompany me because any man I asked would be a stranger.
According to some folks, these are high risk activities I ought to avoid, except I can’t because it’s part of my job. In this case, I suspect they will say that this makes it an calculated risk I need to accept as a condition of my employment– which I think means that if I get raped, I get full sympathy. But if I rode the subway by myself at night coming home from the theater and got raped, I would be told (after appropriate noises of sympathy, I guess) that I was stupid for exposing myself to needless risks.
Or maybe I’m wrong and I don’t get a pass for the work-related risks either — after all, I could always quit the job. And I believe that mere fact that we do this kind of evaluation is a key to understanding attitudes toward rape — the main reason for the evaluation to exist is so that other people can judge a woman and her behavior in order to decide just how much blame they are going to assign her for failing to not get raped.
Sheelzebub, again, what subculture are you living in that you have experienced women being blamed for being raped? I know of no one who absolves men because she brought him home with her, not my small town Victorian grandmother and not my jock football playing, beer quaffing college friends.
Not a subculture–the dominant culture. Look at the vitriol thrown at Kobe Bryant’s accuser–you can check out the threads on this very blog to see people saying she should have known better since she went to his room. Or check out the OC rape case, where the girl was passed out, and gang-raped with a bottle, can, pool cue, and lit cigarette. She’s been slut-baited and blamed from day one. Or the Big Dan’s gang rape in New Bedford, where patrons cheered as a woman was gang-raped on a table. She was blamed for being there, for being slutty, etc.
What I’d like to know is what world you’re living in.
As for not freaking out when men pick up women in a bar, I agree that there is still a double standard in many parts of society about women’s sexuality. But there is also genuine reason to freak out more when a woman picks up a strange man, because said strange man is much more likely to assault the woman than the woman is to assault the man. One form of assault, rape, is, assertions to the contrary, extremely difficult to commit on men; you certainly can’t count on his having a spontaneous erection as a fear reaction.
Okay, so men are the enemy? I just need to keep track, as I’ve already been told by a couple of people on another thread here that I’m paranoid and worried over nothing for taking risk-reduction measures, that I’m treating all men like they’re the enemy. When I point out that employing risk-reduction techniques still leaves women open to criticism if they are attacked, I’m supposedly denying any danger at all and being terribly niave. Can you all make up your minds, please?
Random woman could be much more likely to rob the man (you don’t need force, just stealth). Or in Carib’s world, since we’re all liars and all men are thrown into the clink just as soon as they are accused, a one-night stand could falsely accuse a poor man of rape! Again, I don’t see people freaking out over safety issues in the case of men having sex. And most of the horror I’ve heard directed at Nick’s behavior had to do with moral problems with her knowing what she wanted and seeking it out.
Nor did I say that patterns of rape are similar to patterns of theft. I said that the personality traits that make someone a rapist are likely to show up in other areas of their life, just as the personality traits that make someone a thief show up in other areas of *their* life. Yes, there are master thieves who go undetected, and undoubtedly there are master rapists whom no one suspects until it is too late. But in general, you have some chance of detecting people it is dangerous to be around . . . and indeed, every story I’ve ever heard about a man who couldn’t be trusted in a dark spot turned out to involve a man I’d long ago decided never to be alone with. Having been involved in an abusive relationship, ironically enough with a radical feminist, and having done some work with battered women, I can also testify that I, and they, knew very early on that he had rage problems and poor impulse control, and so did everyone else who knew the abuser at all well.
And as I pointed out, Lundy Bancroft and other researchers and professionals who study abuse and abusers report that a lot of these men save those impulses for the people they are intimately involved with. Their friends and colleagues don’t always pick up the signs.
You, and others keep proclaiming that you’re just trying to get me to reassess my confidence in the relative risks of acquaintance and stranger rape. But I haven’t proclaimed that I, or anyone else, is perfectly safe with acquaintances; only that my experience of the world has indicated that being alone with someone you know well is safe enough to risk, and being alone with someone you met an hour ago while you, or they, were three sheets to the wind is not. That doesn’t mean that a man who rapes a woman he just met has any less (or more) moral culpability than a man who rapes a woman he has known for years. But it does mean that I believe it is ludicrous to attempt to seriously argue that the risks of accepting a ride from a coworker are even of the same magnitude as the risks of picking up a stranger in a bar and going off somewhere with him where noone can hear you scream.
Uh, no. You insist on miscontruing my point. If you want to actually argue with me, it would behoove you to get a grip on what I’m actually saying. I’ll bold the crux of it for you: I’m saying that no matter what risk-reduction techniques a woman employs, she is still open to criticism if she is assaulted. In fact, she’s still open to criticism, period. She is either paranoid for employing risk reduction techniques, or she was careless if she was attacked. It doesn’t matter which techniques she used–there’s always someone who will tell her she should have been more careful, that she was damn stupid to let her date in for coffee/accept a drink from someone/go into a bar to make a phone call alone/whatever.
RonF, with all due respect, I didn’t read Ampersand’s insights about prevalence of rape in American society as a way of saying that “American society sucks, other societies are much better”
Neither did I. I brought up other cultures to illustrate the concept that what is commonly considered rape in America, and the reactions to such actions, are different in America than in at least some cultures, and I’m looking to expand my understanding of how American compares in that context to other, less extreme “Western” cultures (such as in various European countries). I was not positing that anyone here holds the position that America is worse than other cultures when it comes to rape.
I have to say that a few years ago I was quite surprised to learn that there were cultures where a woman who had been abducted and raped would then be killed by her own family because she had “dishonored” her family by “allowing” herself to be raped. Talk about blaming the victim ….
Jake Squid, your wife said (approximately):
I would never date a coworker, what if something happened? Could I say anything at work? My reputation would be ruined because nobody would believe me, they would believe him.
Do you believe this? Does anyone here believe this, that if a female co-worker accused a male co-worker of rape, everyone would automatically believe him and not her? I don’t think that would happen where I work (white collar IT environment).
Sheezlebub, I don’t know that I can agree with this:
I’m saying that no matter what risk-reduction techniques a woman employs, she is still open to criticism if she is assaulted.
You give various examples of people who were publicly criticized after they were raped. I don’t dispute your examples. However:
If you want to say that no matter what a woman does, there are at least a few people out there who will criticize her if she is assaulted, I’d have to agree. But then, so what? As I said in Nick’s original thread, assholes abound. No matter what action anyone might take, they would be criticized by at least a few people. None of us could do anything if that was significant.
So let me ask two questions. FIrst, how significant is it that a vocal minority of people would criticize someone’s lack of risk-reduction behavior, whether it’s a woman inviting a physically powerful drunk she met in a bar an hour ago into her room, or me going into a bar on Chicago’s West Side at 1:30 AM? Second, do you propose that a majority of people would criticize a woman for not taking extreme risk-behavior behavior to avoid rape, and do you think that this applies only to women and not to, say, me stumbling into the wrong bar?
This happened at one of my previous workplaces. A group of colleagues were on a trip somwhere. The two in question were both drunk, he had pursued her all evening, and she had laughingly resisted, in the way women do when they’re trying to fend off a superior who is getting all handsy. They were all in another colleague’s room at the end of the night, and when she went back to her room he followed, pushed his way in, and raped her.
I was told by a colleague who had been there, who said that the raped woman had told someone who had told the colleague who told me. The colleague who told me (sorry this is so complicated) implied that the raped woman was a liar and a slut. This seemed to be the consensus, so it never went anywhere. The woman had never demonstrated any behaviours that society might label as ‘slutty’. The man, on the other hand, was constantly critiquing and commenting on female co-workers’ bodies, and talking about sex.
The victim was in a different office to me, and I’d never spoken to her, so I felt like it would have been inappropriate to contact her to offer any support. I totally kick myself for that now.
Ron, I’m saying that women can’t win. If we take risk-prevention measures, we’re paranoid man-haters who think all men are rapists. If we don’t take risk-prevention measures, we are niave at best or sluts at worst. And if we take some risk-prevention measures, we get a slew of Monday-morning quarterbacking if we are assaulted. Monday morning quarterbacking that my male friends have *not* had to deal with if, say, they went into a bar at 1:30 am and someone picked a fight with them, or they got mugged.
And I see quite a striking double-standard–for all of the protestations to the contrary, I see more anger at Nick for daring to go out and seek sex and be sexual. The same criticisms could be made of men who do this, but I’ve yet to see the same level of energy and vitriol thrown their way–no questioning of their parenting abilities, no questioning of their intelligence or their morality, none of that.
Do you believe this?
Based on the places that I have worked over the past 20 years, yes I do believe this. I don’t know where you have worked, but I’ve worked both blue-collar & white-collar and, without a doubt, the misogynistic jokes, comments and bragging have been much, much worse in the white-collar environments. (Of course most of my blue-collar jobs were for companies that would be considered more artsy elitist – movie theaters, book store warehouses, etc.)
But, even more important than me believing this is the fact that women believe this and, thus, are even less likely to report a rape that happens under those circumstances. Even more important than that is that whether or not you are safer alone with a co-worker than with a stranger is a matter of faith, not of fact. That faith is often (see Nick’s original thread, comment #3, to begin with) used to blame the victim.
Ron, in the practice of law, I have become aware of situations where young women were pressed very hard for sex by senior lawyers. The conventional wisdom has been that these women invite the advances to help their careers, but that story does not check out with the information available to me (and as far as I can tell, these women’s careers have suffered). I am sad to say that I think there is a good chance that if a junior woman was raped by a senior male colleague, the woman would be accused of making a false allegation.
RonF: If you want to say that no matter what a woman does, there are at least a few people out there who will criticize her if she is assaulted, I’d have to agree.
We know, Ron. You were one of the first to criticize Nick.
Second guessers will be with us always. It happens for men who get mugged too.
As for Nick, she can do what she wants. But lets not pretend that its exactly as low risk as going out with a well known and trrusted family friend.