Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please.

Wow, you really went there.  Wow. 

For the record, I “got myself” raped by getting drunk with trusted friends.  You don’t know anything about the situation, but feel free to blame me and minimize the responsibility of the man who chose to attack a helpless 20-year-old woman for his own sick reasons.

For the record, Notorious, it should go, “please do not be in the presence of a significant other”.  Because, in fact, most rapes are by an intimate partner, or additionally someone who is known to the victim.

I would strongly recommend that you immediately apologize and stfu. You are out of your depth here.

I mean, really, why beg?  Once you believe that women are to blame for getting themselves raped, then it’s a short step to suggesting that rapists are practically heroes for setting her straight.  That was certainly the defense’s strategy in the Orange County case, where the victim’s drinking and sexually history were dragged up to excuse raping her with a juice bottle, burning her with cigarettes, and raping her with a pool cue so hard she peed herself.

“Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please. “

please, please don’t go anywhere near women.  And absolutely do not breed. Please.

And I’ve “gotten myself” raped by getting drunk with a partner.

But, yes, of course I’ll be sure to tell my daughter that, if she gets drunk around people and then is subsequently raped, it is at least partially her fault, and she maybe even owes her attacker an apology for making such an easy target; you at least need to give them a challenge to get them in the spirit of things!

Fuckwad.

Seriously, pity the poor rapists.  Who else is willing to get demonized in order to keep the drunk sluts in line?  They do serious work on the behalf of people who want women afraid, and while we defend them by blaming the victims, we don’t exactly give rapists the medal of honor.

I think that Amanda Palmer has it all right - just send a letter to Oasis and you’ll be all set!

Notorious,

See what | mean? I think you owe us all an apology. And read up on rape culture, listen to the stories, and just stfu.

“we don’t exactly give rapists the medal of honor. “

Perhaps not, but we usually don’t jail them either, leaving them free to continue their oh-so-important terrorism in support of patriarchy.

Melissa McEwan really said it all on the subject of warning women about getting themselves raped.

Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing.

Who was, of course, an ex-boyfriend who attacked her in her home while she was sober and wearing sweats.

Well, if we have to pick one, I definitely pick the Medal of Honor, because I certainly know my place now.

Wait - no I don’t.  So jail it is; sorry, rapists.

Oh, and by the by, just to underscore that rape doesn’t only happen when you’re drunk, rape was one component of an abusive relationship I was in, and it happened on multiple occasions, most of which did not involve alcohol.

This whole fucked up thread does really show why Jaclyn’s essay in the book is a really great one, too.  She defends the right of women to go out and have fun, even if it’s wild fun, just like men.  Depriving women of fun and adventure out of a phony concern for their safety is one way that rape culture benefits killjoys and misogynists who aren’t actually rapists themselves, and who may in fact feel that they’re anti-rape.

Does that mean that I get to rape men if they get too drunk?  Because I don’t hear anyone telling men not to get drunk around strangers.

But, then, a lack of consent kind of kills the fun of it for me.  Maybe I’m just a freak that way.

Hey guess what.  Any woman could get drunk in my company, though to her I am a male stranger, and both her physical person and the contents of her purse would be entirely safe.  Why?  Because I am not an asshole nor a criminal.

“Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing.”

Which, according to Notorious Douchebag, is every single man a woman might happen to be around if she drinks.  So, all men are rapists to pat.  Including himself, then?

Interesting how one comment can reveal so much about its poster.

Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please.

Congratulations Notorious P.A.T., now you get to feel brave, and I get to feel angry, and some other commenters get to feel hurt. I’m so glad you could start this horseshit.

The opening example in this article is also one that undermines the “girls get themselves raped by being alone and drunk in public” theory, too. First of all, girls don’t rape themselves, duh.  But second of all, this woman was at a party with a guy she trusted enough to date.  How is this her fault?  Are women just never to trust men?  Becoming a hermit and cutting yourself off from the world is punishment for being a woman as well.

atheist, I’m consoling myself by thinking that this will give an opportunity to educate people, and it shows why this book is so damn necessary even in the 21st century.

Are women just never to trust men?

A woman assumes she can’t necessarily trust any man: What a manhater!
A woman trusts at least one man who betrays that trust: Doesn’t she know what men are like??

This is a little bit tangential, but for folks who read Savage Love, I was curious what they thought of Dan Savage’s advice that the letter writer confront - even if just in writing - the guy who raped her. He seemed to think it was important that the guy be made to face what he did and not be able to tell himself that all he did was “persuade” her, but I couldn’t help but think that a guy who would do that would feel so entitled that he would refuse to get the message. Thoughts?

I agree with the idea that most guys who rape a girl (in the usual situations, not the rare stranger-in-a-dark-alley one) would not be able to connect rape with what they did in their heads, and would be bewildered and possibly pissed off if it were pointed out.

My rapist is listed with my friends on Myspace, because he asked a few years ago and I didn’t feel like dealing with saying no.  I haven’t removed him, and part of it is because I would like to, someday, yeah, say something to him.  But I don’t think it would get through.  That’s the main reason I don’t.  I don’t even view him as a human being the way I do with other people; I’m not angry or hurt with him personally, because he is a nonentity to me.  I’m just angry at the effects it has had on my life, and that’s mainly what I want to say.  Fucked up, innit?

Chingona,

I think he would refuse to “get the message”.  Which is why I think the public shaming route is better, reporting him to the police, etc.  It’s very possible she wouldn’t have a case against him, but yes, having him line up for a picture, being arrested and everything, might just be what he needs to have some sense knocked in him.

“The only essay that made me want to put down the book and post critically about it was Stacey May Fowles apology for female sexual submissives, and not because she’s wrong to defend them, but because the essay pointedly ignores the real source of feminist discomfort, which is male sadism that finds an outlet in BDSM.”

I wonder if anyone might elaborate on this topic. Not that I don’t understand feminist discomfort with sadism from males, but sadism in general is not the same as sadism in a BDSM context. I would generally, although admittedly with many caveats, say that sadism within a BDSM context is a decent alternative to the kind of sadism that produces rape culture, and that at least some men who would otherwise generally abuse women could be “reeducated” as it were by focusing their impulses through the lens of BDSM.

I think Dan’s right that rapists need to face some kind of consequences, or they will continue to rape.  We know for a fact that a small minority of men commit the majority of rapes.  I don’t think that it’s a bad idea to confront the rapist, but I wouldn’t do it alone.  I’d try to have some friends backing me up, because frankly, I wouldn’t feel safe around the guy.  Dan’s trying to find a way to make sure the guy feels like he’s being held accountable, because we live in a rape culture and rapists do what they do because they’re rarely held accountable.

But he’s doing that because he thinks she doesn’t have a case.  I disagree.  It couldn’t hurt to call the police and let them decide if there’s a case.  First of all, that takes some of the pressure off the victim to take all the responsibility for making this guy pay herself. Second of all, it’s a for-real consequence, and like you said, chin, he may not take a confrontation seriously.  Third, I think it helps many victims heal to take steps to prevent the rapist from striking another women in the future.  Doing good yourself can often help heal bad done to you.

The comments in that thread made me want to cry.  Even Savage understood the situation to be rape (in general I like Savage but sometimes he comes across as a little misogynistic to me, IMHO).  And the thread at Jezebel devolved into a close examination of her culpability for listing her friendship with this guy as a reason why she stopped trying to fight him off, and suspicion at her use of the phrase “I can’t” rather than “I don’t want to.”

As others here have pointed out, our culture puts women in quite a bind when it comes to avoiding rape.  We not only cannot appear in public, but we cannot maintain friendships or relationships with any man.  At the same time we must allow some men to protect us from being raped by other men, but woe to us if we choose to trust the wrong one, because clearly we are either stupid or negligent when we do.

“having him line up for a picture, being arrested and everything, might just be what he needs to have some sense knocked in him. “

I’m not sure.  to me, the being arrested, etc and then LET GO would pretty much teach him that he’ll get away with it. And, since he likely doesn’t think he did anything wrong anyway, it would just be more support for the “girlz lie about rape to ruin you life” fallacy.

I’m so sorry, Amanda.  I hope time and whatever is good in this world can leave you happy and free about this, if that’s possible.

When my Kindle finally arrives I’ll read this book.  I hope you stay so well and I’m sorry.

*shrug* You may be right, Gypsy Lee, but I think it would be even worse if nothing happened at all.  At least he’d now know that rape *can* be prosecuted, and he only got lucky this time.  Also, I honestly don’t think he would change his mentality about “girlz lie about rape..” regardless of what happened.  Even if he was convicted and jailed, he’d probably still be convinced that she lied.  Cognitive dissociation in the name of self interest is a powerful thing.

4min, I’m not trying to stake a claim.  I’m just pointing out that the real taboo is talking about male sadism in BDSM, and if it’s really not a bad thing, then I want someone to write about why.  The giant silence on that aspect troubles me.  Claims that feminists are ganging up on female submissives without even addressing the question of male dominants seems to be dodgy to me.  I’m open to examples of how BDSM is different, or that it contains it somehow.  But silence is unnerving.

Don’t worry, I know what an awful, awful person I am.  Go ahead and read into my statement anything you want.  But please, don’t do it.

From what I’ve read, you’re absolutely right that rape is a power thing for rapists. They get to feel powerful by attacking someone, and they get to make someone else feel helpless.

Back in college, a friend of mine told a group that he’d been out at a bar and overheard some cobag bragging about raping other students. He said he followed him into the restroom, smacked his head into the tile, and told him he’d be watching him, ready to fuck him up in the future.

While we were congratulating the guy, someone else who’d done some studying on the topic pointed out that, rather than preventing future rapes, he’d probably guaranteed that his next victim would be even worse off, because the rapist now had to make up for his powerlessness in that restroom.

This kicked off a new discussion about what we, as random college students/beer pong contestants could do when faced with someone who bragged about raping people, and it was depressing that we didn’t know what we could do.

I think Dan’s right that rapists need to face some kind of consequences, or they will continue to rape.

Damn Straight.

This is what bothers me, though I “understand” it, when women simply decide to move on after being raped without pressing charges or telling anyone.  Like I said, I “understand” it, because I “understand” (mentally if not emotionally) how traumatic it is to relive and how the woman can be the one who ends up on trials.  Still, every rapist who rapes without consequence will rape again.

Having behaved badly in my past, having gone from grey areas to darker shades, and having felt like shit afterwards and vowing never again to even go near the grey areas, I have the misfortune to know something about this subject.  The problem is caused by both culture and assholery, but the assholery is where it can go from a shitty possibility to a shitty reality.  I’d really love to blame the culture, but the part of me that could do so is outweighed by the part of me that knows that other part is full of shit.

But please, don’t do it.

You’re an idiot. Stop thinking you’re a martyr trying to protect women at the expense of their dislike. You’re telling us not to live and not to enjoy our lives, and to spend all our time being scared, and that’s hateful, nothing more or less. Save us the tears of love.

I don’t know about that, 4min33sec.  The guys like that would never respect anything the people that belong in the scene are actually about.  There’s very much a respect for boundaries, limits, and consent that arguably isn’t there in “vanilla” culture.  If you put the kind of sick fuck that doesn’t respect other people’s rights in that scene, you’ll just reinforce the idea that his behavior is all in good fun.

NPAT:

Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers. Please.

1) Massive, gargantuan, Hollywood-esque epic fail.

2) Millions of women manage to get drunk surrounded by strangers every single day without getting raped. The blindingly obvious conclusion is that getting drunk surrounded by strangers and getting raped aren’t causally related.

See that quote from Melissa McEwan that Amanda pulled? Do yourself a favor and get that tattooed across your forehead backwards.

It sure would be nice if the local paper didn’t have to print articles like this one anymore:

http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/01/a_cautionary_cocktail

Lansing police warn of risks in light of recent alleged date rapes
By Nicquel Terry
The State News

. . . Holly Rosen, director of MSU Safe Place, said if victims have any suspicion that they may have been date-raped, they should immediately get a urine sample and take it to the police. Specialists can only detect the presence of drugs in your system within 12 hours after consumption, Rosen said.

The urine sample will provide evidence for the case if a victim decides to prosecute his or her assailant.

Rosen said although narcotic drugs often are used in date-rape situations, alcohol is the No. 1 date-rape drug.

She added that men often give women multiple drinks at social events with plans to isolate them and rape them at the end of the night.

“If you’re going to drink, do what you can to decrease the negative consequences of it,” Rosen said.

Victims of date-rape typically leave their drinks unattended at social events or accept drinks from strangers, [Lansing police Lt. Bruce] Ferguson said.

I can find Holly Rosen’s contact information if anyone wants to tell her not to breed.

“:Don’t worry, I know what an awful, awful person I am.  Go ahead and read into my statement anything you want.  But please, don’t do it. “

Also known as the “get women to feel guilty about being completely right so they’ll making me fee uncomfortable about being a rape apologist” tactic.

Shove your feigned concern and rape apologetics.

Oh, paradox, I’m fine.  I was assaulted 11 years ago, and whatever effects it did have me are largely in the past. I won’t lie; I was not doing well emotionally in the aftermath of the assault.  But that was a long time ago, and being able to take my anger and use it productively has been a positive thing for me. That I get angry at people spouting myths about rape doesn’t mean that I’m suffering from mental problems.  It just means that rape myths are fucking infuriating.  I reference my own assault mostly as a reminder that victims of rape are real people, not some stereotype of the dumb bunny slut.  I was never dumb, and I’d had a total of one sex partner when I was assaulted, so you can’t even strain the word “slut” to describe me.  Nor was I reckless.  If anything, I was lucky to be amongst trusted friends, which is why I was saved by a male friend from any further violence.

The point is not “pity Amanda”.  Amanda is fine.  The point is that I have direct experience to say that the excuses we make to blame women for their assaults are stereotypes and bullshit, and if you see sexual assault firsthand, you have no doubt that it’s not a matter of mixed signals, cock teasing, or even too much drinking.  It’s just pure power tripping and plain old bullying.

Agreed, Spooky.  One of the most important things in a relationship where BDSM is incorporated is mutual respect and trust, and you can’t have either with someone who wants to hurt people against their will.

Yeah, Notorious.  Self-pity upon deliberate trolling and victim-blaming isn’t going to cut it.  Jesus H. Christ, not only are a lot of readers of this blog rape survivors who have to put up with the victim-blaming shit, so is the blogger who wrote the post.  You’d have to be stone cold stupid to think that I did something wrong that got me raped.  The passive aggressive attempts to curtail women’s freedoms by threatening them with rape (not with your own cock, of course, but someone out there is willing to do it) is fucking gross.

MSU Safe Place

Referral Number: (517) 372-5572
Business Phone Number: (517) 372-5572
Address: PO Box 14149
City: Lansing
State: MI
Zip: 48901

I was going to send Holly Rosen an email saying she shouldn’t breed or go near women, but there is no email address listed and frankly I’m not very good on the phone.

“The passive aggressive attempts to curtail women’s freedoms by threatening them with rape (not with your own cock, of course, but someone out there is willing to do it) is fucking gross.”

Since he’s absolving rapists of blame as long as they rape a drunk woman then he’s absolve himself too.

I’d had a total of one sex partner when I was assaulted, so you can’t even strain the word “slut” to describe me.

Doesn’t mean no one will. “Slut” means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, which is usually “woman whose sex life makes me feel inadequate,” and it doesn’t take much to make some people feel inadequate.

Amanda, I’ll be the first to tell you that, yes, the BDSM does contain a certain amount of male sadism that is based in disrespect for women.  That mentality and attitude isn’t tolerated for very long and those people are, once discovered, not allowed into any serious discourse or activities.  People that enjoy that kind of sexual activity aren’t the problem.  It’s the people who mask their own psychological hangups and hide in the scene that are the problem.  It’s, in my view, kinda similar to big giant brutes who play football just to beat the shit out of other guys, while completely ignoring the fact that football was and is largely about strategy and teamwork.

We attempt, sometimes in vain, to police ourselves.  In some places, taking advantage of someone who trusts in a scene or at a party is a good way to find oneself beaten senseless or disappeared.

Rewriting this: Notorious, that article is about how women should be able to go out and drink if they want to, in direct contrast to what you said.  It just said to be mindful of people trying to drug you, which of course is not saying what you were, which is don’t drink or leave your house unescorted.

Why didn’t you say, “Please don’t get drunk and rape someone, guys.  Please.”?  Would have been a refreshing change of pace from telling people like me that we raped ourselves.

Notorious, you’re not coming from the same place as someone offering real help to women who were raped.  You judged women who get raped.  A crisis center is offering help, not judgment.

frankly I’m not very good on the phone.

You’re pretty much EPIC FAIL on the Internets, too.

“Hey, Notorious, that article is coming from the same vein you are.  “

Don’t rob him of his only line of defense. He needs to pout, whine and pretend to be insulted if he’s going to make people feel bad for not being grateful for his very useless and totally not misogynistic “advice”.

Exactly. A no-win situation does not make for a real choice.

I’m actually one of those people who is actually highly suspicious of alcohol related activity, and I’d never think what P.A.T. just wrote. I think that “I was drunk” by no means should EVER be a defense to anything, but along those same lines, it doesn’t mean that it makes anything that other people do to you to be your fault.

And that’s the point. Being raped isn’t something you do to yourself in any way shape or form, it’s something that other people do to you against your will. That’s the entire point.

And yes, this is neck deep in male culture when it comes to how men (and by proxy our society as a whole) view sexuality, not as an intimate exchange of emotional and pleasure, but as a social conquest and status symbol.

I rewrote it.  I was wrong the first time.  The article is about a very specific threat, which is drink drugging. Interestingly, guys who drug drinks do so because they know that drunk women are basically legally rape-able, because people like Notorious put all the responsibility on the victims not to leave the house unescorted.  Now, mind you, the victims did nothing wrong.  They were out drinking, but it was the drug slipped in their drink that put them under.  That happened to a girl I know---she had one drink, and suddenly her friends saw her reeling and hitting the wall, and they hustled her ass out of there.  But if the rapist had gotten to her first, then comments like Notorious’s would have made it impossible for her to get justice.

Thanks, Spooky. That’s very interesting.  I’m really curious to read more about how male domination in BDSM can even be constructed in a misogynist society, though.  I’m open to hearing about it, but it seems from feminist BDSMers, the focus is completely on what motivates women, which of course is the less politically problematic area.

The number of “She gave up trying to stop him! That’s consent!” comments on the Savage thread are terrifying. Have these guys never contemplated the possibility of mutually desired sex?
...Do I even need to ask that question?

“Notorious, that article is about how women should be able to go out and drink if they want to, in direct contrast to what you said.  It just said to be mindful of people trying to drug you, which of course is not saying what you were, which is don’t drink or leave your house unescorted.”

That’s what you took away from “alcohol is the #1 date rape drug”? 

“Why didn’t you say, “Please don’t get drunk and rape someone, guys.  Please.”? “

Because 1) I have no compassion whatsoever for guys like that and 2) I seriously doubt guys like that read Pandagon.

“Would have been a refreshing change of pace from telling people like me that we raped ourselves. “

I always like being told what I said.  Especially when I didn’t say it.

When mom told me to make sure to wear my seatbelt I never thought that meant that if I was in a car wreck, I deserved it.  Maybe that’s what she was telling me.

Again, Holly Rosen’s contact info is above.  I didn’t make up the “don’t get drunk around strangers idea” myself.  I got it from people like her.  Quick, tell her she is wrong and minimize the damage.

A woman assumes she can’t necessarily trust any man: What a manhater!

“But I’m not like that!” wails the eternal refrain.  Fantastic.  If you’re not like that, then you’re not like that, and this isn’t about you so please, please stop feeling all insulted.

It was weird as hell, going from privileged to not-privileged in these equations.  Fear of men came early and hit hard: Oh shit those guys at the next table keep looking over at us and whispering to each other.  They’re pretty big.  God, what if they follow us out to the parking lot?  And for me specifically, holy fuck what if they find out I got non-standard lady parts and flip out?  I don’t want to die ‘cause I went out dancing…

Nothing came of it, fortunately, but it kind of wrecked what had been a fun night up until then.  We went home early.  I spent a long time in the shower trying to relax enough to be able to sleep.

He needs to pout, whine and pretend to be insulted if he’s going to make people feel bad for not being grateful for his very useless and totally not misogynistic “advice”.

MSU Safe Place
Organization Director: Holly Rosen
Referral Number: (517) 372-5572
Business Phone Number: (517) 372-5572

I first would tell the director of Safe Place that her advice--pardon me, “advice"--is useless.  Save calling her a misogynist for another call.

Notorious,

A rapist’s actions are reprehensible whether or not the victim is drunk. If a man is confused about whether or not the woman wants to have sex (e.g. her saying “no, stop, I can’t") or whether or not the woman is incapable of consenting (e.g. she’s passed out), the best course of action is not to force the issue. I don’t claim to be the most PC feminist guy on the planet, but even I get this.

What are you so worried about that blinds you to these basic facts of healthy adult sexuality?

The guys like that would never respect anything the people that belong in the scene are actually about.  There’s very much a respect for boundaries, limits, and consent that arguably isn’t there in “vanilla” culture.

Exactly. I’m somewhat “vanilla” in my own tastes, but I’m also GGG (to use Savage’s term) when it comes to the woman’s tastes. To that end, I’ve found the concept of a “safeword” very useful.

I knew all was basically all right, but still, no one had said anything empathetic or kind, I felt it was necessary.  It had nothing to do with pity, just being there as a person.

As you know, I’ve been watching this topic a long time.  We as a society have gone horribly astray here, I wish I know what I could do.

[sigh] We should have learned by now.  It’s all so profoundly wrong.

Don’t worry, I know what an awful, awful person I am.  Go ahead and read into my statement anything you want.  But please, don’t do it.

You’re not an awful person. You’re a callow and immature man. You can overcome your callowness by opening yourself up so that you realize that this discussion is not a joke, the violation of a woman’s body is not a joke. It does not matter if the woman is drunk or even foolishly naive. Violations of a person’s inner private self seem so hilariously petty a matter until it happens to you or someone you actually care about. Your blithe attitude toward this issue makes you sound childish to my ears.

Why didn’t you say, “Please don’t get drunk and rape someone, guys.  Please.”?  Would have been a refreshing change of pace from telling people like me that we raped ourselves.

A-fucking-men.  It’s about shifting the goddamned defaults, people.

It just said to be mindful of people trying to drug you, which of course is not saying what you were, which is don’t drink or leave your house unescorted.

Oh for christ’s sake.  “Don’t leave your house unescorted”?  Please.

Alcohol is the #1 date rape drug.  If you drink, do what you can to minimize unsafe consequences.  Why is this controversial?

Your blithe attitude toward this issue makes you sound childish to my ears.

MSU Safe Place
Organization Director: Holly Rosen
Referral Number: (517) 372-5572
Business Phone Number: (517) 372-5572

They really should have a toll-free number.

You fucked up, Notorious.  You told me, though you didn’t intend to, that it was my fault I got raped, because I consumed alcohol.  Your options are 1) keep digging or 2) apologize, buy the book, and reflect on why it’s so important to you to constrain women’s freedom by threatening us with rape, albeit at the hands of others. 

Now, can we talk about the culture that supports rape, especially by making comments about how drinking leads to rape, which puts the responsibility for stopping rape on the shoulders of victims.

Because 1) I have no compassion whatsoever for guys like that

Bullshit.  You don’t have to like someone to want them not to rape.  You didn’t say it, because your interests went straight to controlling female behavior that is, by itself, harmless and not mean-spirited, and not towards controlling mean, dominant, bullying male behavior.

2) I seriously doubt guys like that read Pandagon.

Oh, nice to know you think that the women who read this blog are all so fucking stupid that it never occurred to us to be mindful of our safety when we go out.  That, or you just couldn’t resist the urge to scold women for behavior that bothers you.  I’m guessing the latter. 

Either way, it’s fucking insulting, and worse, it’s just more of the same.  We’re restricting you to the house/covering you with a burqua/refusing to let you go without male escort for your own good!  It has nothing to do with controlling women.  We’re controlling women for altruistic reasons!

Gah, rape apologists get the first comment. Sad.

The question of male sadists is something that I think is discussed within the BDSM community (My exposure to BDSM is pretty much just from blogs, podcasts and the like, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt). My impression is that the thing that makes sadism ok is the same thing that makes any sex ok: consent as a bare minimum with the ideal of mutual desire. Things like safewords are in place to make sure that no one accidentally does anything that the other partner does not want. Someone upthread mentioned trying to move the impulses of abusers towards more ethical actions by exposing them to BDSM; I don’t think this is a particularly good idea for two reasons: 1. I don’t think the psychology of BDSM tops is the same as that of abusers 2. It would be very dangerous for the submissive/masochist to be involved with someone who might otherwise be a domestic abuser or rapist, because they are much more likely to go over the line and ignore the consent, or lack there of, of the bottom and could easily hurt them.

God, Notorious, go away. Quit cutting and pasting the hotline. You’re just piling on the insults.  People know how to read, and you’re obviously not the expert on rape that you’re pretending to be.  You’re exploiting the nice people at the rape hotline as cover for your assholery.  It’s just more evidence you don’t care about women who get raped, when you use services meant for them for your own agenda of aggressive assholery and victim-blaming.

From the article:

Murgittroyd said many date-rape victims are reluctant to talk to others about their situation because they are blaming themselves for it.
“The number one thing that we tell our clients is that it was not their fault,” she said. “Nothing that they have done warrants or deserves them being raped.”

A rapist’s actions are reprehensible whether or not the victim is drunk.

I still don’t get it--what part of what I wrote leads to any other conclusion?

Thanks, paradox.  Sorry if I was being weird; sometimes I feel weird about drawing on my own experiences, as if I were asking for pity instead of just trying to educate.  And so I’m oversensitive.  I appreciate your kindness.

Okay I’ll leave.

Any responsible scene is going to largely be about what the bottom wants.  The top’s desires factor in, too, but largely you don’t want to abuse someone who’s nice enough to let you bind them and have your way with them.  If you want to read more, I’d suggest checking out Gloria Brame’s site.  I can’t remember the specific URL or article titles, but she’s got volumes of research available at her site.  I seem to remember one that addresses just what you’re looking for.

As far as the drugged rape thing, I have a God son because of it.  The guy drugged my girlfriend and got to her before I did.  The police wouldn’t do anything because they claimed all of the date rape drugs get out of the blood too fast to be tested for.  It wasn’t nearly long enough for that to have happened, but they didn’t even bother investigating because it was just too much trouble for something they couldn’t prove.  She did get some small bit of justice courtesy of the Navy, but the bastard should be in jail. 

Of course, that police department would later taser a guy in his own home who had called them because he was being robbed.

If you read Savage Love this week, no doubt you were as haunted as I was by the letter written by an 18-year-old rape victim who is being re-victimized by the rape culture.  Haunted, because her story is so common as to be mundane: Her ex-boyfriend rapes her, but of course, it’s “gray”, not because he didn’t rape her, but because we allow men to rape under some circumstances by politely calling it something it’s not.

There’s another point here that took a long time to sink into my head in these conversations.

He was there! He was in the face of a woman who was about to cry, who was begging him to stop, and kept trying to keep her clothes on.

It seems to me that, in this culture, it’s easy for that to slip out of the conversation, like there’s some slight, subtle difference between a woman who wants you and a woman who is horrified.

And I think it’s something that needs to be thought about more. When you give the benefit of the doubt to a man who insists that everything looked just fine, you are also casting doubt on the woman’s statement of her own feelings and actions.

“I first would tell the director of Safe Place that her advice--pardon me, “advice"--is useless.  Save calling her a misogynist for another call. “

no matter how many women tell you this sort of thing is irrelevant, useless and actively sexist, just keep repeating it - blaming it, of course on another woman. Because repetition makes it very very clear you’re desperate to save face.

“If you drink, do what you can to minimize unsafe consequences.  Why is this controversial? “

Which is NOT AT ALL what you’ve been saying this entire time, but hey, yeah for backpeddaling!

“What are you so worried about that blinds you to these basic facts of healthy adult sexuality? “

I think its plain and obvious what he’s worried about.

I hope Pat understands that if he ever gets mugged, it will be his fault for not taking the necessary precautions to keep his wallet safe. Don’t bother calling the cops, dude. You were so asking for it.

</snark>

MSU Safe Place
Organization Director: Holly Rosen
Referral Number: (517) 372-5572
Business Phone Number: (517) 372-5572

They really should have a toll-free number.

MSU Safe Place can kiss my ass.

You should realize that when men try to blame rape on women who get too drunk, they sound either like assholes or like immature people who speak without thinking. I believe that you are the latter, and that is why I said that to you.

“It seems to me that, in this culture, it’s easy for that to slip out of the conversation, like there’s some slight, subtle difference between a woman who wants you and a woman who is horrified.”

Too right.  Since there’s a mountain of media that fosters, supports and justifies seeing a terrified woman as “sexy” and “ready to go”, then it’s no wonder people both believe this and exploit it to keep rapists out of jail.

NPAT:

I didn’t make up the “don’t get drunk around strangers idea” myself. I got it from people like her. Quick, tell her she is wrong and minimize the damage.

Again, millions of women go out and drink around strangers every day of the year without getting raped. Statistical analysis alone dictates that drinking around strangers and getting raped are not causally linked in any significant way.

So you’ve found one woman who thinks otherwise. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. What you’re failing to take into account, however, is that women — even women who run rape-counseling centers — are just as capable of sucking at statistics as men are. They’re also just as capable of using hyperbole and intentional vagueness for ideological reasons, and of supporting patriarchal tropes of oppression.

In short: the fact that it’s a woman telling other women not to go out and have fun with alcohol doesn’t magically make it a non-sexist thing to say. Either leave the tokenism to the Republicans or go join them yourself. That dog won’t hunt.

“Alcohol is the #1 date rape drug.  If you drink, do what you can to minimize unsafe consequences.  Why is this controversial?”

Uh, alcohol, being a lifeless liquid, has yet to rape anyone in the history of the world.  That is why.  The problem is still the rapist.

From the BDSM stuff I’ve read, I have to say that the sexual stereotypes are very strong in those stories (and real lives.) Even when the dominant in a male/female couple is the woman, the man is not just a man, but an emasculated man.  Words like “pussified” and “feminized” are used, whereas a woman submissive is often called “a natural submissive” or something like that to somehow justify the cruelty inflicted upon her.

I don’t “get” those people, but I think I understand them: they believe in a “natural” order where masculinity (even if there’s no male involved) controls everything, or at least want to live as if there is such an order.  Laid bare, their philosophy is indefensibly backwards (or is that “backwardsly indefensible”?) But they don’t care.  They want to be controlling and they want to be controlled.  They want to punish and be punished.  Some do it as a lifestyle, some for occasional play.  Some are extreme 24/7 lifestyle people with a Gimp or two in the basement, some just normal people with some mild (your experiences may vary) kink. 

And as usual, the question comes down to consent.

But to answer your question, Amanda, I think the cruelty of those men who abuse women is inexcusable.  I can’t answer in any other way without a mealy-mouthed excuse concerning the notion that some women want that.  But I still can’t say it isn’t wrong to treat them that way.  I think that the men (and occasional women) who get off by humiliating and abusing others are the kinds of sad people who can’t be happy without others being unhappy, and I can’t endorse their lifestyle whether it’s chosen or not.

Then do I think people should be able to consent to BDSM?  That’s where my desire for freedom of choice and my desire to let people make even bad choices comes to a cognitive stalemate.  But in the end, I guess my willingness to legalize drugs makes me willing to let people be a slave to a needle or a pipe.  So why should I be bothered by someone choosing slavery to some twisted freak?

Now that I’ve calmed down, I’ll point out that rapists target drunk women for the very reason that they know that everyone blames the victim.  Why did she go out and get drunk?  Didn’t she know the danger?  Ironically, the more we tell women to stay at home and not go out for drinks, the easier it becomes for rapists to rape women who’ve been drinking, because they know that the responsibility is on the shoulders of the victim for not staying home.  And that people can’t lash out at the finger-shakers, because to do so is to imply that you think going out and getting drunk is a good thing, and you can’t say that without losing your status as a serious person.

Getting blitzo drunk is rarely a good idea.  But going out and having drinks while socializing or taking in a show is a fine thing indeed, and sometimes it gets out of hand.  People pay for it with hangovers, and preferably learn their lessons.  I think one reason that so many young people go out and get blitzed is because our culture has no use for moderation.  We treat all drinking as if it’s the same thing, and what we should be doing is differentiating between having fun/being silly and getting stupid. 

The ridiculousness of the discourse on alcohol hits a million when it comes to women and alcohol.  We use the specter of rape to discourage women from drinking, and of course therefore from going to parties, social events at bars, and rock shows.  The gender imbalance that results only reinforces the idea that men have a right to dominate social events, and this makes it easier for rapists to function, because they are the little kings of these temporary societies that are created at these events, and they get drunk on their power over women.

MSU Safe Place can kiss my ass.

Hey, don’t blame them because he was using them as cover.  It’s not their fault.  They’re trying to get the message out to young women---if you’re drunk and you’re raped, you deserve help.  You are not to blame because you were drinking.

Rape apologists want us to accept that certain men are going to rape, no matter what, so it’s useless to try to change their behavior. OK, fine, let’s try instead to stop rape by controlling women’s behavior. We’ll start by keeping women from getting drunk at parties. So if no one gets drunk at parties, what’s the inevitable rapist to do? He’ll have to start raping sober women. We’ll have to start keeping women locked up at all times, or never go anywhere without an escort. But the rapist still has to rape, because he can’t help it, so he’s going to have to resort to breaking into houses when women are momentarily unattended by their men.

Clothes work the same way. If only women who wear short skirts get raped, and I decide not to wear a short skirt, the rapist skips over me and goes to the next woman wearing a short skirt. Eventually all women stop wearing short skirts, and the rapists have to start going for women with long skirts, then jeans, and so on, up to and beyond burqas for every woman. But the rapists are still there, and still have raping to do, so in the end the only effective rape prevention will be to stop women from existing.

Jon,

I wouldn’t even play with a woman who called herself a “natural submissive,” let alone have a long-term relationship with one, or any relationship at all, really. So, y’know, stop being a douche.

Yours,
4min33sec

I still don’t get it--what part of what I wrote leads to any other conclusion?

It’s the fact that you wrote it at all in the context of this post—it’s irrelevant to the core issue of a man (drunk or not) forcing himself on a woman (drunk or not). And it’s clear that the comment emerges from the same insecure and inexperienced place that your comments in Amanda’s infamous NiceGuy® threads do.

I’m not saying that you’re an awful person, just that (judging by your own comments) you don’t seem to have experienced many healthy romantic/sexual relationships with women. Which is fine in and of itself. However, there are certain threads where it’s better to keep your mouth closed and risk being thought a fool than open it and demonstrate that you are one. For me, it’s the music threads—for you, it’s clearly threads about male-female sexuality.

I think its plain and obvious what he’s worried about.

In general, yes. But I’m curious as to what scenario is running through P.A.T.’s head. At this point, though, he’s probably better off leaving before he digs himself in deeper.

Hey, don’t blame them because he was using them as cover.  It’s not their fault.

I’m sorry, I typed quickly and somewhat angrily. I also have nothing against MSU Safe Place, I had a problem with P.A.T. bringing it up as if it meant something.

Wait, maybe I missed something here.  How is this “gray rape”?  He said, “Sex”.  She said, “No”.  He proceeded to have sex with her anyway.  She wasn’t so inebriated that she didn’t object.  She didn’t fool around with him first and just stop before intercourse.  This wasn’t a “maybe you can have sex with me, I just have to think about it first” thing.  Where the hell are we finding a “gray” area?

And P.A.T., suggesting that she shouldn’t get drunk at a party with her friends is less like saying, “Don’t walk into a dark alley on gang turf in a downtown metropolis, or you’re asking to get mugged” and more like suggesting, “Don’t sit on your uncle’s knee, or you’re asking for incest”.  A girl shouldn’t have to live a hermit’s life just to avoid getting attacked by people she previously felt she could trust.

>>That mentality and attitude isn’t tolerated for very long and those people are, once discovered, not allowed into any serious discourse or activities.

I call bullshit. I’ve also been involved in the lifestyle for 5 years, and my gf/domme got harrassed by multiple individuals online and off (2 doms and 1 sub, all males). One said that women can’t dom and that he would show her how to submit (implied lack of consent) if she ever stepped into a play party. He then later went on to verbally and physically abuse a sub at a play party and while the hostess did kick him off and banned him from her events, it all devolved into cliquish ‘he said, she said/that must have been a part of her kink’ bs and he’s still allowed elsewhere because he’s too much of an asset to the community due to his skillset. Of course, no one asked the sub whether she wanted what she got, except us. And since the original hostess stopped hosting events, now there ain’t no other places in the city we feel are safe spaces for women to play at.

Add to that plenty of examples of subs ‘topping from the bottom’ and using their male privilege to try to bully my gf into feeling like she *owe them* a seance.

Rape culture exists in the mainstream, why wouldn’t it exist in the BDSM scene? Sure, I would claim we’re no worse than mainstream culture, but believe me, we’re no better either.

We use the specter of rape to discourage women from drinking, and of course therefore from going to parties, social events at bars, and rock shows.  The gender imbalance that results only reinforces the idea that men have a right to dominate social events, and this makes it easier for rapists to function, because they are the little kings of these temporary societies that are created at these events, and they get drunk on their power over women.

It also allows Nice Guys to whine that every social event is suddenly a sausage fest, and what does a guy have to do to get laid these days? On the other hand, it’s convenient that they can now blame poor odds for their lack of game.

Eventually all women stop wearing short skirts, and the rapists have to start going for women with long skirts, then jeans, and so on, up to and beyond burqas for every woman. But the rapists are still there, and still have raping to do, so in the end the only effective rape prevention will be to stop women from existing.

Remember hearing about those stories of women in Iran and Pakistan and Syria who get stoned to death for being raped?  Funny how all the crazy religious dictates in the world won’t stop a man with a penis and criminal intent.

That said, it would be nice if we could find a way to keep guys in check.  Sex drives make desperate people act like assholes and worse.  If you can come up with a good way of getting rid of desperate men, I’m all ears.  It would be nice if the problem could be dealt with at the root if for no other reason than when some idiot eventually does run off and attack a woman, the general public mood can be, “If he was so damn horny, why didn’t he just do X and leave the poor girl alone?”

Thanks, Longhaired.  It’s a great point.  And it gets right at the point of this project---we know that rapists rape because they like to rape.  But why on earth do the rest of us buy their lies and excuses?  I think a lot of men that aren’t rapists nonetheless have some memories of times they forged ahead when a woman was obviously not there with them (even if she was consenting), because there’s so much pressure on men, especially young men, to prove their virility through sex.  You have a lot more on your plate than simply enjoying this event with another person.  (Women do, too---sex “proves” our worth as sexually attractive people, and this introduces another host of issues.) And so it becomes easy to believe that rape was a matter of poor communication.  But like you said, if someone is crying and putting her clothes back on, you’re raping her and you damn well know it.  But it’s in the interests of a lot of generally good guys who’ve given into certain social pressures to keep the focus on the absence of no, instead of the presence of hell yes.  The result is that rapists get away with it, though.  Obviously, we need to rethink masculinity and why it’s so important for men to prove themselves through sex, to the point where getting some ends up being prioritized over making her happy.

Conversations like this one hopefully will elucidate how people cling to the rape culture even if they’re not rapists for the side benefits they perceive. For instance, rape culture is, as this thread demonstrates, a useful way for people to justify controlling attitudes towards women as things adopted for women’s own good.  In our culture, women’s socializing in situations that have alcohol is discouraged.  In other places, the mandatory veil is excused.  Or the requirement that you be under direct male supervision at all times, or the fear of women living alone.  It’s not that these things don’t increase your risks---they do, I think---but it’s useful to wonder why they increase your risks.  I think these things increase your risk in no small part because rapists hear all the messages and they realize that raping a drunk woman, an unescorted woman, a single woman, or an unveiled woman will mean they get away with it.  Which means that the messages aren’t necessarily so much about safety, but about setting up standards of female behavior, and if you cross one, you lose the support of your society.

The “On pigs, basketball, frames, and music” post is still there on Blogsome:
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/06/21/on-pigs-basketball-frames-and-music/

“Sex drives make desperate people act like assholes and worse.  If you can come up with a good way of getting rid of desperate men, I’m all ears. “

Are you saying that rape is the act of a horny man who just can’t help himself?  Seems to me they can help themselves just fine, but don’t feel the need to do so. N

Can I just mention again how awesome I found Julia Serano’s piece on aggressive straight male sexuality?

4min, I’m not trying to stake a claim.  I’m just pointing out that the real taboo is talking about male sadism in BDSM, and if it’s really not a bad thing, then I want someone to write about why.  The giant silence on that aspect troubles me.  Claims that feminists are ganging up on female submissives without even addressing the question of male dominants seems to be dodgy to me.  I’m open to examples of how BDSM is different, or that it contains it somehow.  But silence is unnerving.

I don’t get how it’s different either, from the standpoint of sadism, even though I can kinda see how someone can want to be submissive and/or masochistic in BDSM without wanting to experience those things in real life.  Sadism requires you to hurt other people and even when done in the context of consensual gameplaying I just don’t understand that urge or how it could possibly be safe.  IOW, I’m not all that reassured by 4min’s contention that BDSM provides a safe outlet for sadists to funnel their urges.  And maybe the reason no one is writing about it is because no one wants to know the answer.

“But like you said, if someone is crying and putting her clothes back on, you’re raping her and you damn well know it. “

Agreed, but I wonder if something like this isn’t also the result of men being taught from birth to disregard what women say.  If she’s crying and trying to keep her clothes on, but you’ve been told you’re entire life that women’s voices don’t matter, that they change their minds on a whim, that they don’t mean what they say, etc, then would it be obvious? 

I’m just wondering if there isn’t another facet of patriarchy we can add to the blame list.

Remember hearing about those stories of women in Iran and Pakistan and Syria who get stoned to death for being raped?  Funny how all the crazy religious dictates in the world won’t stop a man with a penis and criminal intent.

I don’t know if you’re agreeing with me here, so I’ll assume you are.

That said, it would be nice if we could find a way to keep guys in check.  Sex drives make desperate people act like assholes and worse.  If you can come up with a good way of getting rid of desperate men, I’m all ears.

Try putting rapists in jail, for a start. Then try not apologizing for rape and pretending it didn’t happen when a friend does it, not blaming women when it does happen, and not automatically accusing women of being lying bitches when they say they were raped. Maybe not being friends with someone you know is a rapist, not laughing about rape with your friends, not ostracizing the rape victim in your group of friends instead of the rapist. The comment someone made earlier about how she friended her rapist on MySpace because she was afraid to say no? We need to get to a place where that unbelievable bullshit doesn’t happen as a rule.

There’s no reason to “get rid” of anyone. There are always going to be desperate, angry, lonely men with a mean streak in them, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But if there are real and harsh consequences for rape, both legal and social, more of them are going to think twice about acting on their hate.

That said, it would be nice if we could find a way to keep guys in check.  Sex drives make desperate people act like assholes and worse.  If you can come up with a good way of getting rid of desperate men, I’m all ears.  It would be nice if the problem could be dealt with at the root if for no other reason than when some idiot eventually does run off and attack a woman, the general public mood can be, “If he was so damn horny, why didn’t he just do X and leave the poor girl alone?”

It’s not sex drive, it’s power and privilege.  Many women have incredibly powerful sex drives and yet are not often driven from “desperation” to assualt people.  As for “X”, that thing already exists.  It’s called masturbation and has been used to relieve sexual tension for millenia.  No one is entitled to the use of another’s body for sexual gratification.  I know that comes as shocking news to the Dennis Prager’s of the world, but it’s the truth.

Thinking about male dominants… (as a male submissive, myself.)

I’m in a happy five-year partnership with a marvelous man-- funny, geeky, loving, compassionate, weird, creative, and sadistic as fuck.  This works out nicely for me, as a similarly weird, creative and loving masochist.  I’m independent, even uppity, in the rest of my life-- but in bed what gets me going is rough sex with me on the bottom.

I’m deeply grateful that my ethical loving honey was able to fight past the shame of being sadistic-- in some ways I think that’s a lot harder then fighting the shame of being masochistic-- to be able to play these games with me and use them as one way to build a joyful life together.  The rough sex actually adds to the love-- in the way that loving sex helps build relationships for folks who get off that way.  I think most folks on the thread can testify to how much love is enhanced by sticky, sweet, satiated-sex that leaves you too exhausted to do anything but mumble inane i-love-you’s.  Well, for my honey, it takes sadism to get there.  This is lucky for me, since it takes masochism to get me there.

Hmmm, trying to think about how to explain this to someone vanilla… do you ever enjoy violent entertainment?  Do you like horror movies, or video games where you shoot people, or books where people hurt other people?  For me and for my honey, some of our darker impulses are hooked onto sex and violence.  I write fiction, my honey smacks me around.  These are ways of dealing with our negative impulses that build connections with other people, rather then violate other humans.

Now, there are certainly many asshat male sadists out there.  Sadly, I think they dominate internet conversations-- I don’t run into them nearly as often in real-life, probably because they’d be laughed at and kicked out of parties.  But there many asshat vanilla men out there as well, right?  The male sadists I love-- my honey, my dear friends-- have done a lot of personal work & struggle to reconcile their sadistic impulses with their ethics, their anti-sexism, their anti-racism, their desire to support love and equality. 

Does that help?

xoxo

Alec

4min33sec,

My experience with BDSM comes second and third-hand (online stories and such, a coworker who was into BDSM and also a TMI case study, and some stories and experiences of dating nightmares involving spanking and some mild bondage), so I can only report what I’ve seen, heard and read.  Much is innocuous stuff, while some is some hardcore rape fantasy bullshit that is justified by an attitude that suggests it’s natural.  As for your real-life experiences, thanks for offering another side.  I can only be a douche in regard to my own experiences, you can be a douche in your own special way.

Most fantasy is fantasy, whether it’s dressing up as a leather daddy and spanking a wayward “daughter”, joining up with the 501st Stormtrooper battalion, or reading a novel about a good girl who befriends a somewhat bad boy who just happens to be a romantic vampire but not as bad as those other vampires.  As with everything, some people take it too far.  How far is too far is a fair question, but I have to say the stuff I’ve read on bdsmlibrary.com/stories pretty much qualifies as evil.  I don’t care if it’s mostly fantasy, and I really do know that that’s only one segment of one part of a sexual subculture, but that’s where I saw a lot of talk of “natural submissives” and it didn’t impress me with its logic.  But kink is kink, people want their fantasies, and whatever.  I guess I’m a douche for saying what I think, but I guess since 4’33” won’t date the kind of women I saw described and which he’s never met, I guess that makes those attitudes I saw described magically go away.  Pfft!

Zif, I don’t think it’s gray.  That’s the point---so-called “gray rape” is just date rape under a new name.  There’s a great essay in the collection about this.  As Longhaired pointed out, most rape that we want to feel ambivalent about as a society was not ambivalent at the time.  The “gray” comes in after the fact, as we try to find ways to blame the victim and suggest that her assailant wasn’t as guilty as he looks.  In this case, it’s “gray” because unenlightened people like the boyfriend thinks she cheated.  It’s a product of the objectification---she “had sex” because she was penetrated.  What happened to her body is considered more important than her will.  It’s one of the many attitudes that leads to our rape culture.

The comment someone made earlier about how she friended her rapist on MySpace because she was afraid to say no? We need to get to a place where that unbelievable bullshit doesn’t happen as a rule.

Just wanted to clarify that I’m not blaming her for being scared, just saying it’s fucked up that we live in a world where she has to be.

<blockquote>Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please.</blockq

Spooky Skeptic: The guys like that would never respect anything the people that belong in the scene are actually about.  There’s very much a respect for boundaries, limits, and consent that arguably isn’t there in “vanilla” culture.  If you put the kind of sick fuck that doesn’t respect other people’s rights in that scene, you’ll just reinforce the idea that his behavior is all in good fun.

In my (admittedly. very limited) experience of the BDSM scene, this is primarily because the straight BDSM scene is set up so strongly for the men involved - both Doms and subs - that the only women who take part are those who have already consented to be part of the scene on men’s terms, since there is no other way to be involved.

I have read at least one direct account by a female sub who was raped by a male Dom - he used a condom, she had consented to be tied up and caned but not to have penetrative sex - and she not only could not report him to the police (as he pointed out to her, and she realised, trying to explain to the police that yes, she had agreed to let him do sexual things to her but not to screw her, was just never going to lead to his even being arrested for rape, let alone taken to court). she also found it extremely hard to convince her local BDSM sceners that the man was a rapist: he was popular, friendly, and convincing that she had invited him to have sex and had then “changed her mind”.

And I’ve read any number of accounts by women in the BDSM scene being steadily pestered by male subs/slaves who regard “no” as an invitation to keep trying, and who do not, apparently, regard a woman’s sexual preferences as anything to be particularly interested in. (For the perspective of a feminist/sadist, I cannot recommend Bitchy Jones’ Diary highly enough.)

I don’t see that sexism/the patriarchy/the rape culture ending at the edges of the BDSM scene. I think the attitude of male subs/Doms to women in the BDSM scene is certainly more supportive of a woman getting to say “no” - providing she doesn’t say “no” to men too often or too consistently - but not to the idea that women want and deserve sexual pleasure exactly as men do.

I was the commenter about Myspace, and, to clarify, the reason why I did at the time was not because I was worried about any threat to my person - it was because, honestly, I don’t like to make waves.  I didn’t feel like dealing with his asking me why I didn’t friend him, and then discussing it.  And I didn’t feel like blocking him because I didn’t want to hurt him, however fucked up that impulse may be.

Now I keep it more because he is married and his wife is on there, too, and I look for little tipoffs that he is hurting other people.  Those subtle little comments, like that she likes doing something but he does, too, so he gets to do it while she doesn’t.

He’s in the middle of a divorce now and is suffering from severe PTSD because of multiple deployments.  At this point it’s the closest I can get to seeing that he’s not hurting anyone else, and, even then, I can’t be sure.  It’s all very shitty.

Women should be able to get drunk and not be raped.  Women should be able to not get drunk and not be raped.  What it boils down to is, women should not be raped.  I think we can all get behind that.

I cannot comment on the book because I have not read it and will not read it.  Amanda’s review is as usual well-written.  I’m not sure I can accept the concept of “rape culture” as an endemic American problem; that implies to me a culture where rape is celebrated as a civic virtue, a good thing, and I think it’s pretty clear that that’s not the case.  To the extent that it may exist, it is the willful ignorance and chauvinism of a minority (as it is for racism).  How many cop shows each week, how many Law & Order and CSI spinoffs and clones deal with rape cases every other week?  And always always always it is presented in the most negative light possible.  I think this is an area where feminism can claim great success, in terms of getting the message out.

Like Dan says, in our fucked up system, she doesn’t have much of a chance to get justice, because we live in a culture that condones aggressive behavior to “get some” from men, including badgering, guilt trips, misrepresenting yourself, and other forms of light coercion that fall short of legally defined rape.

First off, is that really the reason?  Or is it because it’s a “he said/she said” situation?  Were there any witnesses?

Second, if it doesn’t measure up to “legally defined rape,” what is the system supposed to do?  That legal definition was presumably made by people trying to criminalize rape; and also presumably they did so in good faith.  They drew the line, and if this creep that coerced this girl stayed on the right side of it, he’s going to get away with it.  That sucks, but that’s what the law is.  If the law is bad and needs changing, advocate for that; but you’re going to have to come up with something better than “he’s guilty but he’s getting away with it because we live in a rape culture.” You can’t convict someone based on a belief; you have to prove a law was broken.  Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?  Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat?  I know we can agree between you and me that of course it’s coercion because of the implied threat; but is that the same as actual rape?  To the woman in question, it seems certain that it is.  So let’s write a new law.  What should it say?  And remember, even under your new law, you have to be able to prove in court that the law was violated.  What is the standard of proof?  Is accusation by the victim enough?

I wouldn’t be so hard on Notorious.  He was trying to give good advice, but this is a venue where such good advice is almost guaranteed to be misconstrued as an indictment of the victim.  It really is good advice; keeping a clear head and not getting drunk is always a good idea, no matter who you are or who you are with.  Also good advice:  don’t go walking in unfamiliar neighborhoods in the dark.  Yeah, we’d all like to live in a society where you can walk anywhere anytime without feeling threatened.  The fact is, we don’t.

Alec, thanks for speaking up.  I still can’t say I can endorse your lifestyle, I do think there should be some shame in wanting to be sadistic, but I have a hard time condemning him when you guys are pretty much happy with your life together and not hurting anyone else (at least not without their consent.) Still, thanks for speaking up.

And you’re right: there are asshats in every group of people, some do it occasionally and some make it a lifestyle choice.  I really hope the ones in the sadist community are overrepresented online, because you’re a bunch of serious freaks otherwise.  And I don’t mean that in a good way.

That said, it would be nice if we could find a way to keep guys in check.  Sex drives make desperate people act like assholes and worse.

Zif, rapists aren’t desperate for sex.  They’re bullies who get off on power.  I think understanding that is the first step in the right direction.  This myth is related to the “only unfuckable losers go to prostitutes” myth that Eliot Spitzer disproved handily.  A lot of women I’ve known who were raped were raped by men that had consenting sex available to them, but consensual sex wasn’t what they wanted.  They may not want someone who is crying in fear, but they do want someone who doesn’t actually want sex with them, because they can get off on feeling like they have power over another person. A lot of rapists are angry at women, too, and this is the way they punish them.  Like the ex-boyfriend in the Savage Love example.  The reason masturbation is unsatisfying for people is because sex satisfies us emotionally---the connection, the affection, the joy of playing with others.  You get none of that with rape, so I don’t think we can reasonably put them in the same category.

Shock, liberalrob, that you’re posting that after your upskirting apologetics much earlier on.

Damn it.

Anyway, despite the well-played take downs so far, my comment for you NPAT, is to improve your reading comprehension.

The vicitm in this case was not drunk, just tipsy.  She wasn’t surrounded by strangers, but friends.  More than that-->you’re scare tactic “don’t be drunk around strangers” directly led to her rape.

She let her ex-, a man she trusted, walk her to her car b/c she was a little drunk and all women--ALL WOMEN--know that you can’t safely go out alone at night.  So she let him come with her to protect her from rapists.

Then he raped her.

Had she not been frightened of going out alone, she would have said, “Don’t bother.  I’ll be right back.” and she never would have been alone in the dark with a man she trusted.

Your comment is not only tone-deaf, but is in indirect cause of some rapes and of this rape in particular.  The rapist used her known fear of going out alone in the night to get her somewhere where he could rape her in private.

How did he know she had a fear of going out alone at night, drunk or not?  BECAUSE ASSHOLES LIKE YOU, NPAT, AND MOST OF THE REST OF THIS COUNTRY BLAME WOMEN FOR RAPES. THEY TELL WOMEN NOT TO GO OUT ALONE IN THE DARK.  And because women are blamed for rapes, she took that rapist to the car with her for protection.

She was raped b/c that asshole wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  She was raped because he raped her.

Alec, that’s interesting, but I have a question.  If I were a submissive, I would want, for my own peace of mind, a sex partner like yours, who had to adopt the idea at my behest, and liked it not because it fed some internal need to hurt and dominate, but because he liked getting me off.  Then you get the sex without the nagging questions about what’s going on with him.  Obviously, most submissives don’t get that situation and end up with men who are into dominating for its own sake.

I wouldn’t be so hard on Notorious.  He was trying to give good advice, but this is a venue where such good advice is almost guaranteed to be misconstrued as an indictment of the victim.  It really is good advice; keeping a clear head and not getting drunk is always a good idea, no matter who you are or who you are with.  Also good advice:  don’t go walking in unfamiliar neighborhoods in the dark.  Yeah, we’d all like to live in a society where you can walk anywhere anytime without feeling threatened.  The fact is, we don’t.

No, it wasn’t good advice. It was the type of advice you give when you are trying to cover your ass, not the type of advice you give when you have actually looked at the situation and are attempting to fix it.

“Just don’t party, girls” is like, “Just don’t act wild, teenager” or “just don’t be strident, activist”, or “just don’t think about the past, old man”. Totally useless as an actual prescription for behavior, and insulting besides. As I said, I don’t think Notorious P.A.T. is an awful person, I think he’s callow.

I have recently found a site “No Nonsense Self-Defense” (it’s not what it sounds). It’s written by a former street-fighter and has many interesting sections. He talks how to deal with violent people (robbers, rapists, etc), how to behave in dangerous situations by tricking, de-escalation, how criminal’s mind works. What do you think about his advice?

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/escape.html

Are women just never to trust men?
I am a woman and I don’t understand why I should trust anybody, men or women.  Actually, I don’t trust anybody until they prove they deserve it. Of course, one can be mistaken, as many women, who are raped, were.

>>In my (admittedly. very limited) experience of the BDSM scene, this is primarily because the straight BDSM scene is set up so strongly for the men involved - both Doms and subs - that the only women who take part are those who have already consented to be part of the scene on men’s terms, since there is no other way to be involved.

My experience as well. And some of the women in BDSM I’ve met were amongst the most antifeminist people I’ve met, all genders confounded.

I would say a lot of the problems of the scene is that they go from truisms like “some people like to get spanked, or worse even” to “there’s these two boxes, sub and dom/top and bottom, and these behaviors are okay in that box and not okay in that other box” and it’s all very ritualized and mixed in with mainstream gender roles (that are seen as also obviously essentialist in nature).

The whole hijacked part of this thread has pretty much been about someone having been hit by a car and a self-assured loser crowing again and again “You should have been wearing your seatbelt.”

I’m a female masochist and into the scene, and yes, it contains more or less the same amount of idiots as the rest of society. But they tend not to be doms. There are dom idiots, but being a dom (of either sex) requires a certain status, and you don’t get there if you’re a total douchebag. Now, there may be people out there who claim that women are natural submissives but they can’t get out much because about 70% of the scene is made up of desperate male subs in search of a female dom.

A lot of people in the scene are more, not less, sensitive to issues of violence and abuse. Some are oblivious but most are spooked by their impulses and think about it a lot. I know that I have had some very bad moments when I had to come to terms with the specific ways that my sexuality worked. In the end, the more you are in the scene the more you look into some pretty unpleasant impulses, and the less power they have over you.

Part of the issue is that in an S/M scenario, you cannot be in denial. You KNOW that it’s about power. You have to negotiate such power.

An by the way, what they say about the ultimate power residing with the bottom, is actually true in my case. I have never doubted that I am the one who’s calling the shots in a scene.

And, Paul, note that it is someone who has been hit by a car when they usually weren’t even in one to put a seatbelt on in the first place.

liberalrob, read the link.  The “rape culture” isn’t one where it’s celebrated as a civic virtue.  But not everything that isn’t eligible for awards handed out by the Lion’s Club is automatically condemned.  Rape is technically illegal; on occasion, the law is actually enforced.  Culture is not a monolith, and obviously people who fight against rape are in the culture. 

However, our culture is absolutely one where sex is portrayed as something women have but don’t desire and something men desire and don’t have, but have to get from women.  And thus we believe sex is something that men take from women, which means that some men are going to get out of control and take it by force.  But when most sexual interactions between men and women are constructed along the lines of women give/men take, then we have a rape culture.  And it’s going to be one where a lot of rapists get off, because really addressing rape would require rethinking sex.

Instead of just blasting off into pure denial mode when confronted with a challenging concept, how about getting the book and reading it?  I bet “rape culture” doesn’t sound as scary as you think it is if you actually bothered to engage the concept.

In addition to what has been covered, I’d like to see an analysis of the meme about fathers being “aggressive” towards their daughter’s hypothetical boyfriends. It is culturally pervasive that fathers always fantasize about beating up these kids if they get too close to their daughters. Would this be classified as a strong condemnation of male aggression towards women (the daughters), or just an proponent for more violent male culture?

I have a step daughter that is almost a teenager and is starting to have boyfriends around. Even if I trust her with herself, should I stop the jokes about hanging the boys from their jewels if they “misbehave” around my step daughter?

jon, unfortunatly I don’t think they’re overrepresented online.

The only reason why I bother with ‘the scene’ is that it’s the only place to learn how to do the stuff me and my sweetie enjoy in a safe manner, and that’s worth dealing with the asshats because I don’t want either of us to get some permanent damage.

And really, fascinating that someone denies rape culture in one breath, and then contributes in the next by suggesting that the responsibility for stopping rape lies not with our justice system and certainly not with the people who rape, but with the victims, who apparently have insufficient investment in not being raped.  Gosh, those stupid women just love inviting it?  Thank god we have men to tell us to take care of ourselves, because unless we hear it every single second from someone who doesn’t understand the issue, we’ll just stupidly up and rape ourselves again.

“Just don’t party, girls” is like, “Just don’t act wild, teenager” or “just don’t be strident, activist”, or “just don’t think about the past, old man”. Totally useless as an actual prescription for behavior, and insulting besides.
I heard once a good idea - women going out together (in a mixed company too) and protecting each other. Having a woman driver, who doesn’t drink at all. Or inviting a taxi together. That way it’s much harder to isolate a woman and hurt her.

Markus, yes.  That will just make her worry that, if she has sex, you’ll take some sort of action against consensual partners.  It also completely devalues the fact that she, as a person, has sexual desires and, as such, isn’t simply an object they can misbehave around.

Shock, liberalrob, that you’re posting that after your upskirting apologetics much earlier on.

Eppur, si muove.

I wouldn’t be so hard on Notorious.  He was trying to give good advice

Do you really think any woman reading Pandagon, or really any woman on earth, doesn’t know that if she gets drunk and then a man rapes her, assholes will blame her for getting drunk rather than blaming the man for raping her?

liberal rob, the reason it is NOT good advice is that it gives cover to rapists.

Had the victim in this case not been afraid of going out in the dark alone, she would never have let the rapist accompany her.

There’s nothing wrong with getting drunk occasionally.  There’s nothing wrong with tee-totalling.  There’s nothing wrong with night or the dark.

There is something VERY VERY wrong with raping, and all the “good advice” is doing is giving them cover.

Don’t you think if there were a fool-proof way to prevent rapes, that women WOULD DO IT?  There’s no “right” way to dress.  There’s no “right” way to behave.  Women in burkas are raped.  Polite, submissive women are raped.  Women who don’t fight back are raped.  Women who fight back are raped.

Women are raped.

By rapists.

Any advice aimed at women meaning to reduce rape is MEANINGLESS b/c rapists rape and the “advice “ is used to blame the victim.

Look at NPAT here, 1st comment, begging women not to get drunk around strangers, b/c that’s just begging to be raped.

No?  He was just offering advice?  Why would you think that?  B/c the article in question had a woman who was a little drunk, but WITH HER FRIENDS.  SHE HAD HER FRIEND ACCOMPANY HER TO HER CAR BECAUSE OF ADVICE LIKE HIS NOT TO BE ALONE IN THE DARK OR DRINKING WITH STRANGERS.  SHE WAS FOLLOWING THE “Don’t let yourself be raped” RULES. 

And she was raped.

And what NPAT took out of it was to caution all other women not to do something THAT THIS VICTIM DIDN’T DO.

Shit.

Rapists rape.  They deserve all the blame and all the shame.  Until we can get society to recognize that, and to stop blaming the victims for being dressed to sluttily, for being too rude, or too nice, or going out in public, or not going out in public, or WHATEVER-->we will still be a RAPE CULTURE.

OTOH, I’m glad to see anna had a better experience than us. If your local scene is really that great, stick with it.

I’m not sure how much of my experience is due to something that was always in the scene, or whether a good part of it is due to the influx of noobs due to the ‘porno chic’ mainstreaming of BDSM.

Okay, so I was a pro domme in New York City for a while. First, I think it’s important to know that the majority of people in the BDSM scene are submissive men, according to what I’ve read. We (my fellow dommes and I) always thought that this was because men have all the power in real life, and most of the men that we saw were upper class with high-stress jobs, (doctors, bankers, TONS of lawyers). We thought that they were looking for some level of balance, since they were in control all the time.
As for male dominants, yes, there are some that are great, and focus largely on the feelings of their subs. But constructs of masculinity can fuck it all up, just like in real life. You have men who are doms because they’re repressing what they really want, which is to be a sub, in which case they do to the sub what they would want done to them, regardless of what he/she wants. You have men who are working out their anger at the cheerleaders who rejected him when he was 16, or at society because these damn liberal feminists won’t let him fuck his clearly non-virginal teenage stepdaughter the way he wants to. And then you have the “Swept Away” style -dom, working out his lack of power in real life by being, in his mind, safely abusive, in a BDSM way. And just like in the movie, these guys don’t get that it’s a game, and can be dangerous. Female submission has nothing to do with anything; it’s the idea that women are innately submissive and men innately dominant that screws up both BDSM and society generally.

Seriously, NPAT? Just apologize. You said something breathtakingly insensitive and got called on it, and the mature thing to do is own up to your mistake, apologize, and not make the same one again.

A lot of women I’ve known who were raped were raped by men that had consenting sex available to them, but consensual sex wasn’t what they wanted.

This is the same conclusion I have come to, and I think this is why there is so much confusion over whether rape is about sex or power-tripping...because ultimately it’s about both. Nobody commits rape because they’re just so desperately horny and have no other option. Bullshit--sex (real sex, with two or more willing and eager partners) is not that hard to come by, and as a last resort there’s always Rosie Palm and her five sisters. At the same time, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to leave sex out of the equation entirely. If you want to go on a power-trip for its own sake, there are lots of easier ways to do it than to force or coerce someone into having sex with you.

Rapists commit rape because they conflate sex and power-trips, because they find sex better when they force it upon an unwilling party. Consensual sex bores them, because something has gone wrong in their heads and they need to dominate and control another person in order to feel properly sexy. Enthusiastic consent would spoil things. If liberalrob or anyone else can’t see how our cultural constructs of masculinity and sexuality encourage this sickness, then he hasn’t been paying attention. Our justice system may officially smack down rapists with one hand, but our culture unofficially pats them on the head with the other.

Thanks for the response, Jon.  Of course it’s odd for me to hear that you can’t condone me but won’t condemn me, but I’ll take it. 

Amanda, sounds like I was unclear:  my honey did not take on his sadism at my request.  He was sadistic waaaay before I got to him.  He had worked through a lot of his own shame at being sadistic before he met me-- I had worked through a lot of my own shame at being masochistic as well.  This makes things easier for us, as it’s hard to build a loving relationship when you’re ashamed of your sexual desires.

I’m actually really glad that my honey gets off on the same things I do.  I wouldn’t be as happy with a vanilla partner, who was willing to do these things to please me but didn’t enjoy them really.  I don’t just want a partner who consents, I want a partner who is actively, excitedly into it-- as excited as me-- and comes up with his own ideas as well.  I want a partner who is turned on by the same things that turn me on.  Does that make sense?

It’s not scary to me that my partner has these sadistic tendencies, these violent images.  While I’m not sexually sadistic myself, I definitely have antisocial tendencies-- tendencies towards competition or bullying or meanness.  I work hard not to express these with my friends, but I can express some of these tendencies in writing and reading, where they don’t hurt anyone and can bring joy.  For me the important distinction is not the emotions and the tendencies-- I’m not all sweetness and light and neither are most people I know-- but actions, what you do with it.  I’m very clear that my honey has genuinely sadistic desires and fantasies, and utterly clear that he is a deeply ethical man who doesn’t abuse people. 

This is so hard to explain!  I’m doing my best, but don’t think I’m doing well.  Let me make one last try:  some of the most ethical, anti-sexist, thoughtful, and egalitarian people I know are sadists who have really looked into themselves, seen that they have nasty tendencies, and decided to learn how to transform those tendencies into the positive good of mutual sexual pleasure.  Again, I know there are a lot of asshats out there-- but thank the Disco Ball for my honey and the people like him.

xoxo

Alec

t is culturally pervasive that fathers always fantasize about beating up these kids if they get too close to their daughters. Would this be classified as a strong condemnation of male aggression towards women (the daughters), or just an proponent for more violent male culture?

It’s classifying their daughters as property. 

If you really think your daughter is a self-aware adult capable of making her own decisions, then you don’t need to be involved in her sex life at all--until and unless she asks you for advice.

I wouldn’t make the jokes around your daughters suitors anymore, b/c they just reinforce the patriarchal notion that you own her, and until you give her away, no one can touch her.  SHE should be the one who decides what’s right for her, and you should strengthen her anyway you can.

On the other hand, if she seems to be dating boys that are threatening, I’d talk to her about that.

a reader, all these suggestions may not be the worst in the world, but again, they end up functioning to shore up the rape culture.  All that happens is that women who don’t do X, Y, or Z don’t get justice because the blame for the rape falls on their shoulders.  Second of all, it serves the interests of a misogynist society to limit women’s freedom.  Don’t go out without a huge posse ever?  That eliminates, for one thing, dating.  So you lower risk of rape and you dramatically raise your risk of never falling in love.  I’ve broken “the rules” many times, and my life is better for it.  I’ve gone on dates, but that’s why I have a loving boyfriend.  I’ve gone in public unescorted and had drinks.  I’ve flirted, and it was fun.  I walked by myself down a dark street, and got where I was going.

It was, however, when I was running in a huge, mostly female posse that I got raped.  Go figure.  Turns out the presence of the rapist was the main issue, and he didn’t have the courtesy to hang a sign around his neck labeling him as a rapist.

“If liberalrob or anyone else can’t see how our cultural constructs of masculinity and sexuality encourage this sickness, then he hasn’t been paying attention.”

Because he’s male and this doesn’t affect him in the least.  Pat’s “advice” sounds good to rob because HE doesn’t have to understand what it means for women, he will never have to worry about being raped if he drinks in public, is alone with trusted friends, etc etc. 

All these types of “advice” sound good to those privileged enough to not have to know better.

Okay, Alec.  That makes a lot more sense.  I’ve learned a lot from this thread!  That’s always fun.

Rapists commit rape because they conflate sex and power-trips, because they find sex better when they force it upon an unwilling party.

I disagree with this to the extent that I think it’s more about power for forcible rapists and less about power and more about sex for date/gray rapists.  (Keep in mind that I think both are equally inexcusable, but we’re talking about motivation here.) Rape culture gives the date/gray rapist the mental space to lie to themselves that what they did wasn’t “really” rape or wasn’t “really” bad or was kinda sorta consentual.  You hear a lot of that sort of justification any time you try to talk to these sorts of men about what they’ve done, and if it was truly about power, they wouldn’t need those justifications. Hell, they’d be proud of it, and many of the other sort of rapists are. (Apologizing for possibly triggering language - they “gave the bitch what she deserved” etc.) Deep down, of course, the date/gray rapists know they’ve done something very wrong, but it’s because they really don’t get off on power/dominance/etc. that they feel the need to try and conceal even from themselves what they’ve done.  I think if we can get rid of rape culture and reframe sex the way this book and feminism in general talks about, that the typical gray rapist may have a possibility of reform.  Again, i’m not apologizing for them at all, but understand your enemy and all that.

If you really think your daughter is a self-aware adult capable of making her own decisions,

That’s the problem, she is barely a teenager. I am still a parent, even if we keep gradually increasing her independence.

On the other hand, if she seems to be dating boys that are threatening, I’d talk to her about that.

How about direct involvement with the aggressive suitor? As I mentioned, she has a while to go before she is considered an adult. Also part of overcoming the rape-culture is men talking to men, and not just giving advice to daughters on how to avoid getting raped, right?

I can certainly cool down on the jokes..

Gavel Down, it’s a big world, so there are probably some dudes who commit rape to get off (Because they don’t even consider women’s emotions important enough to notice). But if power tripping weren’t a large part of it, wouldn’t you expect them to seek out non-violent, consensual sex?

Sigh. Skipping over comments to write this directly.

I “got myself raped” this way: I was a young, wide-eyed, conservative Christian at a boyfriend’s house. I did not want to have sex - period - until I was married, and I’d made this very, very, very clear. I was willing to “take care” of him in certain ways, but no vaginal sex.

I have a bad back, have since I was a very little girl. I was young and trusting and very naive. He offered a back massage to ease my pain. It wasn’t very helpful. Maybe it’d be more helpful if I removed my clothes? Ok, but just for a massage, I’m serious about this - No Sex. Sure, of course, just trying to help, baby. When my clothes were off, I was held down to the ground, and he was inside me, with me yelling “No!” as loud as I could. I cried the whole time it was happening. Afterwards, he kissed me and told me he loved me - that was supposed to make it ok.

I had wanted to wait for my wedding night, but I didn’t get that choice. I didn’t get a choice at all.

Try to tell this story to anyone, and they look at you like you are an alien. You went to his (parents’) house? Alone? At night? And you took your clothes off? In his bedroom?

Yes, I was stupid. Yes, I was an idiot. Yes, I blamed myself. And because I blame myself, I don’t blame others when they give me that What did you expect him to do?!? look. But, you know, I keep thinking that it shouldn’t be that way.

When I have a daughter, I will tell her what happened to me. I will tell her not to make my mistakes. But I will always feel, until the day I die, that I shouldn’t HAVE to feel stupid, naive, and ashamed for being “complicit” in my own rape. I should be able to feel justified in being angry, hurt, and upset that someone did that to me, as I cried and screamed and begged and bleed, regardless of how naked I’d been moments before.

Or am I wrong. I hope not.

I wouldn’t be so hard on Notorious.  He was trying to give good advice, but this is a venue where such good advice is almost guaranteed to be misconstrued as an indictment of the victim.  It really is good advice; keeping a clear head and not getting drunk is always a good idea, no matter who you are or who you are with.

It’s a good idea to avoid date rape drugs too but the cretins who use them devise inventive ways to get them into their victims.  As for alcohol - still the #1 date rape drug according to law enforcement - while you may have every intention of not drinking to excess a person who is trying to get you drunk for the purpose of raping you has other ideas.  The more you drink, the more impaired your judgment and perception is, thus the more you think you can drink.  Then there’s the old cultural paradox where men are encouraged to ply women with alcohol to reduce their inhibitions, while women are told not to get drunk around men because anything that occurs is automatically their fault. 

And I’m just going to come out and say, based on my own and other women’s experience, that my first instinct is not to believe a man when, after he’s had sex with a drunk woman, he claims he was as drunk as she was.  Almost invariably in such situations the man was in way more control of his faculties than the woman, has better recall of the events, and (most importantly) was feeding the woman drinks.  I also say this after 10 years in the military and another decade in a male-dominated industry and bearing witness to guy’s attitudes about this stuff.  The prevailing view was that a drunk woman was fair game and whatever you had to do to get her to that state was all good. 

One particularly disgusting example of this was a guy I was stationed with in Japan.  He came to work one morning regaling all the guys about coming upon a drunk local woman who was stumbling out of the base enlisted club.  According to him she was “fucked up” and completely unaware of her surroundings.  So what did this prince among men do?  Help her to a cab?  See if he could find any friends she had gone out with that night so they could help her get home safely?  Take her to security at the front gate so they could help her?  Nope.  He took her back to his room.  Most of the guys in our unit thought it was a rollicking good story.  There was only one guy who had a problem with it and I told him straight to his face that he was a rapist*.  So what was his defense of his behavior after I made that charge?  You guessed it!  “Shit!  I was drunk too!”

*In retrospect I should have reported him but I was in my early 20s at the time, new to feminism, and dealing with my own issues with sexual trauma - trust me just confronting him like that was HUGE for me.  I still regret that I didn’t.

“Rape culture gives the date/gray rapist the mental space to lie to themselves that what they did wasn’t “really” rape or wasn’t “really” bad or was kinda sorta consentual.”

I don’t think this is essentially separate from the power tripping angle.  So called “gray rapists” might not want to think they’re as bad as violent rapists, but they want to be able to say they got what they wanted from her.  That they are so manly and dominate that they convinced her into it.

Its still a power trip, its just one taken by someone who doesn’t want to admit he’s a rapist.

Gavel Down, they are proud of it. Men brag about “scoring” and making “conquests.” It’s explicitly a competition--with each other, but also with the women. Our culture portrays heterosexual encounters as zero-sum contests, in which the man wins and the woman loses if intercourse occurs, and vice-versa if it does not occur. Convincing an initially reticent woman to have sex is phrased as “getting through her defenses,” as though she were a fortress.

banisteriopsis

They do though.  All the time.  But when consent fails to materialize (even if it’s only on a particular instance - i’m not saying that all gray rapists are completely unable to ever get consentually laid), they try to trick themselves into seeing consent where none exists, aided greatly by our culture that says that women say no when they really mean yes, can’t be trusted to know what they want, etc.  None of this is to excuse them in the slightest, mind you.  I think the thought that rape can be about sex for some rapists is profoundly icky, and would very much prefer it not to be true, but I think we’d be hiding our heads in the sand not to acknowledge it.

Amanda, yay, so glad to be useful!  I like to be useful. 

Thank you for clarifying that your feminist concern with BDSM is with male sadism.  I had never heard that articulated before, and it makes a lot of sense.  It was also fun for me to try to explain my positive experiences of male sadists.

BTW, me and my honey both love your metaphor of sex as band practice vs basketball-- I read that post out loud to him and it got us both cheering.  Of course all right-thinking people want active excited participation, not consent!  I don’t want to make out with anyone who isn’t pretty dang excited about the idea!

xoxo

Alec

Mark, going over her head and talking to the boy is implying that even though you believe she’s just a minor who can’t make her own judgments, the boy is closer by virtue of gender to adulthood. It comes across as dismissing the women from the room so the men can decide their fate without their input.  I definitely think it’s a tough spot you’re in, but when we say that men should talk to each other about rape, we mean that men should confront other men who are accepting of rape.  I think it’s obvious to a young man that you don’t want him to rape your daughter.  But we’re thinking more that if you hear men joking about women in objectifying or disrespectful ways, you confront them.

Prime example: Those lists that fly around the internet tallying up “sex” practices like the dirty sanchez or the donkey punch.  Now, these are largely fictional sex practices, which is why people think these jokes are harmless.  In reality, these jokes are a way for men to construct and reinforce the idea that rape and sex are the same thing, because these jokes are not about sex at all.  They’re about rape.  Pretty much all of them are about inflicting something on someone unwilling and relishing her humiliation, and pretending that’s sex.  This is a situation where feminists think that men can do a lot of good.  Don’t coddle these jokes or pretend you think they’re funny.  If you’re close to someone who talks about this stuff, try to talk to him about why you don’t think misogyny is funny, and why jokes about rape masquerading as sex jokes are inappropriate.

how many Law & Order and CSI spinoffs and clones deal with rape cases every other week?  And always always always it is presented in the most negative light possible.

I actually watch a lot of Law & Order reruns on TNT, and this is pure BS.  Here are synopses of a few L&O;’s that are relevant to the conversation. 

A woman kills a Japanese man.  Turns out the woman had been kept as a sex slave/prostitute by the man when she was living in Japan, and by the time she managed to escape she had contracted various diseases that make her unable to have children and unable to have sex without crippling pain.  When he came to America, she confronted him and ended up killing him.  She was prosecuted as a cold killer, because she happened to have books in her home about abused women.  So apparently, trying to deal with your issues by reading psychological books covering those issues makes you a calculating murderer.

A couple of episodes I remember in less detail have to do with women lying about rape.  One involves a black girl who stages a rape scene in order to blame it on white cops.  Her ultimate motive is to convince her strict religious family to allow her to have an abortion because she had an “oops” with her boyfriend.  Another involves a very convoluted revenge story where a woman pays a prostitute to have sex with a man and save the condom.  The woman then gives herself a near-deadly combination of drugs (or maybe she somehow beats herself up, I can’t remember exactly) and puts the semen from the prostitute’s condom in herself to frame this man she wants revenge on for rape and attempted murder.

In any case, telling women not to drink around strangers is completely pointless in addition to victim blaming.  PAT says that alcohol is the #1 date rape drug.  Well, if you’re dating them, they’re probably not strangers, are they?  In fact, we all know the majority of rapes are committed by people who are known to the victim.  In these cases, any advice you give to women on how to behave around “strangers” is completely irrelevant.  The only way women can be completely safe from male rapists is for women to avoid men entirely.  THAT is what you should really be advocating, PAT.  Anything less than complete segregation of the sexes is pointless.  I was raped by my boyfriend, who lived with me.  He never drank, and hated when I did so.  We could have had a nice, normal, happy sex life, but he didn’t want to accept the fact that sometimes, when he was in the mood, I wasn’t.  So he raped me instead.  Well gee, Denise, maybe I shouldn’t be around men, huh?  I shouldn’t date them, have sex with them, or live with them.  Is that really what we want to advocate?

Or, we could place the blame where it belongs:  on the shoulders of rapists.  Stranger rapists, date rapists, boyfriend rapists, husband rapists, “I’m going to bug her and beg her and guilt trip her til she fucks me” rapists.  Hey you fucks:  QUIT RAPING.

Gypsy Lee, Karalora,

As someone who has had many conversations with people who’ve done this sort of thing (and boy did I scrub hard in the shower afterwards) this is not always the case.

Men brag about “scoring” and making “conquests.”

Not all men do, and some of the men who don’t have still raped people. I’ve known plenty of good liberal boys who claim to despite this sort of talk, and while their excuses (and, I believe) rationales are different, they can still be rapists.  I think it’s oversimplifying to say all rape is about this.

Essie, I’m so sorry.  That’s horrible.  But it’s not your fault.  You wouldn’t be dating him if you didn’t trust him.  You gave him your trust and he violated it.  It’s his fault.

Sorry, that “despite” should read “despise.”

I think Gavel Down has a point, but I would frame it a little differently. There are guys that rape or engage in stuff that’s pretty close to rape who aren’t “violent.” (I use scare quotes because they don’t hit or choke or whatever, but there is no way to put your body inside someone else’s without their permission that isn’t a form of violence in and of itself.) I think they fundamentally don’t see sex as an activity that two people do together. They see it as something women have and give to men or that men take from women. I think they see the coercion they engage in as similar to bargaining someone down at a flea market and feel good that they got a great deal. Just because they drove a really hard bargain doesn’t mean they stole it. I guess I’m arguing that they get off on the power, but in a different way than we normally think of it. It’s power in the sense that these guys feel like they “won” by getting the woman to go along. (I think that’s how they view their behavior. As a guy I work with said once, “Sometimes girls need a little bit of convincing.” This is a guy who is married and if you asked him, he would tell you rape is the worst thing in the world.)

And for liberalrob, though I doubt he’s really open to argument as opposed to just telling the feminists how they got it wrong, that’s part of what we mean when we talk about rape culture. Sure, everyone thinks that a guy that jumps you in an alley and beats the shit out of you and rapes you is horrible. That’s not really what we’re talking about when we talk about rape culture. Rape culture is about how the culturally condoned dynamic between men and women wrt sex pretty much sets the stage for coercion and rape. For it to be “real rape,” the woman has to be screaming no and trying to claw the guy’s eyes out. If the woman resists repeatedly, says no repeatedly and finally gives up and just lies there, then that’s “consent.”

Which brings us back to Yes Means Yes. Changing the way we view women and sexual desire probably won’t stop the guy who is lurking in the alley or staking out someone’s house. But I think it will change the other kind of rapist.

Ok, I think I get what Amanda and Donna are asking: How can a male in today’s society be a sadist in the context of BDSM without also being a misogynist asshole?

The terminology as I’ve encountered it is underdeveloped, but I and others whom I’ve encountered do make a distinction between “hurting someone” and “actually-hurting someone.” (My terminology.) “Hurting” a partner is hot; “actually-hurting” a partner is decidedly not sexy.

Something that I think gets missed is that as a dom and a sadist, I have to trust my partners as much as they have to trust me. First, I have to trust them not to change their minds afterward, which sadly has happened; check out the BDSM section of xeromag.org for at least one example. (Note: Keep in mind that there are generally no legal protections in place for “consensual abuse.” That is the one and only reason I’ve brought this up.) Second, I have to trust my partners to tell me when I’m even approaching the line between “hurting” and “actually-hurting.” Obviously, I don’t rely entirely on their reporting, but I still need to know that they’ll tell me if they can.

As for what I get out of it, I can say that I enjoy “hurting” people, or more precisely, I enjoy having someone want me to “hurt” them, and then I enjoy “hurting” them. I enjoy the drastic openness that I am able to “force” in them, in all senses of the word. In fact, I was first introduced to BDSM as an “intimacy enhancer,” which it certainly is if used correctly, but over time I’ve learned to admit that I also just enjoy the power. Like I mentioned before, though, it’s not fun if the person I’m playing with doesn’t want it; in more vulgar terms, actually-unwilling fucktoys are no fun.

I also, as part of my enjoyment of the control aspect, enjoy having total responsibility for my partner while in scene, at least as far as it’s possible to take it in a scene. This involves something analogous to but not the same as parenting, as well as “hurting.”

I think that covers some basics, at least. Anyone have any questions? Anything you want me to clarify?

So, while I was typing that long comment, you all worked it out. Nevermind. Carry on.

Thank you chigona.  I agree, adding to that that if we only talk about rape as a total power trip that doesn’t really have much to do with sex, the guys i’m talking about won’t see what we’re saying as applying to them as well.  And they need to.  Because they’re rapists.

Gavel, that may happen.  I think more common is they know they didn’t have consent, but they exploit our culture’s willingness to endlessly extend the benefit of the doubt to rapists.  Whether or not they believe they had consent, I doubt.  Maybe to an extent, but they can’t believe it too much, or else the pleasure of getting one over on a woman is diminished.

“I think it’s oversimplifying to say all rape is about this. “

hmm. I get what you’re saying and need to digest it a it.

From my perspective however, it seems unlikely that rape is about anything else.  Rape is using someone else’s body for your own ends without their permission.  I don’t see how the ultimate reason behind it could be anything but a power trip.  Regardless of what they tell themselves, the whole point is to subject someone else to something they don’t because he does want it.

Just as a Nice Guy(tm) is just a different kind of misogynist, “date/grey rape” is just a different kind of power trip.

Essie the Elephant: I’m so sorry about what happened to you. If it helps at all, I did something similar (minus the conservative christian virgin part), and did not wind up raped. I too have a bad back, and had just started hanging out/dating the man who would later become my husband. He was massaging me, and said it’d be better if I took of my shirt. I told him I didn’t want him to look, and semi-reluctantly removed my shirt. He respected my request, and did not behave in any inappropriate way.

So yes, that situation can very much occur without any rape or assault taking place.

“Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please.”

Blaming the victim - ur doin it rite.

Jon,

You were a douche because you pronounced about something that you’re not part of, and which by your own admission don’t understand, and because you pronounced and did not ask any questions. You were rude. Cut it out.

4min33sec

INTPagan:

exactly. There are some automobile accidents for which it would be a good idea to put on your seatbelt, so pedestrians who don’t put them on are automatically suspect.

(This reminds me a little of a long-ago medical journal article on moose-motorcycle collisions, in which the authors remarked that the injuries to the motorcyclist were strongly dependent on whether they were wearing a helmet, but that all the moose were sverely injured, as none of them were wearing helmets.)

Notorious: Getting so drunk that it matters whether you are around friends (who’ll likely get you to the emergency room) and strangers (who likely won’t) is a bad idea in general, but completely irrelevant to the topic. You claim that you were misread, have you considered that you might have posted to the wrong thread?

I guess I’m arguing that they get off on the power, but in a different way than we normally think of it. It’s power in the sense that these guys feel like they “won” by getting the woman to go along.

I won’t argue with this; in fact, it’s just shy of being my entire point. Not all power-trips are overt to the point of involving brutality. But anyone who would keep after another person for sex after the second person has already said “No, not in the mood” is making a competition out of it and trying to “win,” which is a form of power-tripping. And because of patriarchy, and because of the way our culture frames male-female interactions, many men fall into the trap of thinking that having sex with a woman is an accomplishment, a triumph of his will over hers. And that is the very definition of rape.

And, as a positive counterpart to my earlier stories, and also as a subversion of the “it is always your fault and it always happens!”

When I was sixteen I was dating a guy who was twenty-two.  Whenever we first started fooling around, he asked repeatedly, at every step, “Is this okay?  Do you want to do this?  Are you sure?” It did a great deal to defuse the age difference, and he really would have stopped if I had stopped him.  It was a fun relationship.

“And you’re right: there are asshats in every group of people, some do it occasionally and some make it a lifestyle choice.  I really hope the ones in the sadist community are overrepresented online, because you’re a bunch of serious freaks otherwise. And I don’t mean that in a good way. “

This is what I meant by you being a douche. Do you really think any good doms would be willing to talk to you if you have an attitude like that?

I just read the Savage column and I disagree with Dan’s advice.  The woman should talk to a prosecutor.  I get the sense that he’s trying to be realistic about the chances of successful prosecution in this situation but this woman was raped and he’s wrong.  I don’t think she should confront him herself since that could create problems with the legal case.  Her first instinct to stay the fuck away from him is the right one.  Let the authorities deal with him.  As for her current boyfriend, it makes me sadder and angrier than words can express that she feels she needs to apologize to him for being raped.  But it shouldn’t come as any surprise, considering that there are countries where women are executed for being raped.

inge, I haven’t been lurking very long, but NPAT seems to post much the same thing on every rape/abuse-related thread. He continues to fail to see any point of view but his own.

Whether or not they believe they had consent, I doubt.  Maybe to an extent, but they can’t believe it too much, or else the pleasure of getting one over on a woman is diminished.

Again, I would really like to believe this, but it’s not true.  Even if you don’t believe you’re “getting one over” on a woman, you can still believe that sex tolerated grudgingly after pleading is morally ok. 

I don’t see how the ultimate reason behind it could be anything but a power trip.  Regardless of what they tell themselves, the whole point is to subject someone else to something they don’t because he does want it.

And in some cases the point is to lie to yourself that they did want it, so you can sleep at night.  They would read you guys talking about men “scoring” and “getting one over on” women and think that what they did is ok, because they didn’t feel proud about it, and didn’t think of it as a conquest. 

If you don’t agree, that’s ok, and I’ll stop pressing the point, but I think that for some men, rape isn’t about power, and until we change the paradigm to enthusiastic consent being the only consent possible, they’ll think that they’re excluded from any discussions about it.

That’s not the only kind of thread he posts on and absolutely refuses to see any point of view but his own, but I digress, because this thread is unrelated.

Keep in mind i’m not denying the power element is always present in rape, i’m arguing it isn’t always the purpose.  Just to be clear.

Amanda and Ashley,

Thank you. Like you said (Amanda), it’s in the past and you deal with it and don’t let it define you, but by god if it isn’t frustrating to live in a culture that blames you for it each time it comes up.

Ashley, especially, thank you for that story. I can’t tell you how good it is to hear that it didn’t HAVE to end that way, that some women make the same choice that I made (trust), and that some men chose not to abuse that trust!! I have hope for my own daughters someday!

Rape apologists want us to accept that certain men are going to rape, no matter what, so it’s useless to try to change their behavior.

One does not have to be, in any way, a rape apologist to point out that most Rapists WILL NOT change their behavior.

They need to be killed or locked in a cage.  I prefer killed.

Right. It’s an idea of sex that begins and ends with getting your dick wet, and getting your dick wet matters more than if she’s having a good time or even wants to be there with you or said no a few times but not so loud anyone else would hear and she’s not fighting now. If I’m understanding Gavel Down correctly, he’s saying that because this type of guy doesn’t understand the difference between sex and rape, it IS about sex to them, but that doesn’t make it not rape. They basically cannot conceive of sex in a way that isn’t rape. But I think that deep down, they do know it’s wrong, which is why you see so much protest from supposedly non-rapists about feminists supposedly expanding the definition of rape and concern about women “changing their minds” and all that.

I prefer killed, and that is why I say locked in a cage.  I should not get to say what happens because my emotions cloud it.

I had an idea a while back for a nonprofit called “Women with Baseball Bats.” It would be a group of women who have been abused or raped, and they would have baseball bats - no guns or knives; that would be uncharitable.

When a man is confirmed to be abusing his partner, we would go to their house and beat the ever-living shit out of the man.  Then we would take the woman somewhere safe.

Any takers?

I’m not sure if MSU has a higher rate of rape than other places, but it always seemed like it did. And yes, the East Lansing Police Dept and the MSU Police can be complete and utter victim-blaming choads when a woman is raped* but that doesn’t mean that we should victim-blame because rapes will just happen anyway, and as it’s been pointed out, the tendency for rape apologists to fall all over themselves to explain away the behavior of the rapist doesn’t mean that if women follow a very strict set of rules they won’t ever be raped, it just means that rapists will break those rules too, until the rules for a woman to Not Get Raped By include “not leaving the house without a male escort” “showing a square inch of skin—anywhere” or “having a job.”

* (I’m actually friends with someone who, having busted a dude for slipping a roofie into her friend’s drink, watched as the East Lansing police let the dude go and then proceed to harass the victim because she was underage).

chingona - Yeah.  They’re exercising a power differential, but that’s not the aspect they’re getting off on, and they don’t require a lack of consent to get off.  Consentual sex may even be better for them, but they’ll take what they can get. 

And that’s one of the reasons it’s so gross - because we don’t think like that and don’t want to, so it’s easier to believe they’re all sadists or power-trippers.

Ok, I think I get what Amanda and Donna are asking: How can a male in today’s society be a sadist in the context of BDSM without also being a misogynist asshole?

I think that’s what they’re asking too and your comment is very cogent.

Bottom line, someone who gets off on smacking and is also an ethical person will look for a partner who gets off on being smacked by them. Someone who gets off on tying up and is also an ethical person? Will look for a partner who gets off on being tied up by them.

There really is a yin to the yang here, two complementary sets of needs/desires. I’m a hetero woman and a feminist, and I would have a sad, sad life with very few orgasms if my partner weren’t into some smacking and tying me up.

4m33s:

The terminology as I’ve encountered it is underdeveloped, but I and others whom I’ve encountered do make a distinction between “hurting someone” and “actually-hurting someone.” (My terminology.) “Hurting” a partner is hot; “actually-hurting” a partner is decidedly not sexy.

I’ve heard it as “hurting” versus “harming”, myself.

really, fascinating that someone denies rape culture in one breath, and then contributes in the next by suggesting that the responsibility for stopping rape lies not with our justice system and certainly not with the people who rape, but with the victims, who apparently have insufficient investment in not being raped.

You indicted the judicial system, Amanda.  I’m not saying you’re wrong to do so; I just wonder how it can be fixed in your eyes and what the implications of that are.  If the responsibility for stopping rape doesn’t lie in the justice system (because it is imperfect and corrupted by a toxic “rape culture") and doesn’t lie in the victim (regardless of the circumstances, I agree ultimately blame should not ever fall on the victim), where does it lie?  In the rapist?  That’s a good one, asking that the rapist stop his raping.  How do you do that?  What if he just says no?  What do you do then, there being no adequate justice system?

Let’s fix the justice system, if it’s broken.  I think feminism is in the process of fixing whatever “rape culture” there may be; I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a bad thing, so I don’t see it as a defining characteristic of our culture.  But, and there’s no delicate way to put this, I also think it’s impossible for a victim to be objective on the subject regardless of how much time has passed.  I think victims and potential victims are more likely to see danger in every situation, to imply meaning where intent is otherwise, and to interpret dissent as attack.  In short, to use a potentially “misogynist” term, I think people are hypersensitive on the subject (understandably so, but nevertheless) and that gets in the way of our discussions.  I don’t know any other way to interpret the continual attacks on my character whenever I bring up an alternative viewpoint.

Instead of just blasting off into pure denial mode when confronted with a challenging concept, how about getting the book and reading it?

Do I need to?  I have no doubt that you have presented an adequate synopsis of what’s in the book.  You say you have already distilled out the salient point, the organizing principle behind the collection:

If we can shift the paradigm from one where sex is something men want and women give to one where it’s seen as a collaboration, we would start to see any level of coercion as unacceptable, and rapists couldn’t get away with hiding in the “gray” area between pressure and force.

That’s a great concept, except that I’m not sure what is meant by defining any level of coercion as unacceptable so rapists can’t “hide.” Yes coercion is wrong, we all agree; but then what?  Do we pass laws equating spoken threats with actions?  If I say casually to my seatmate that “this would be a great place to sit if I wanted to blow up the plane,” is that the same thing as actually trying to blow up the plane?  If I didn’t say any such thing, but my Republican seatmate saw my Obama for President sticker on my briefcase and told the flight attendants that I was talking about blowing up the plane, should I be detained as a precaution?  What kind of society are we building, if we go that route?  I think we have to consider the consequences of things we propose.  It’s not an attack, it’s not blaming the victim, it’s not denial or somehow suggesting that there isn’t any problem at all.

I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a bad thing, so I don’t see it as a defining characteristic of our culture.

Headdesk.

If the responsibility for stopping rape doesn’t lie in the justice system (because it is imperfect and corrupted by a toxic “rape culture") and doesn’t lie in the victim (regardless of the circumstances, I agree ultimately blame should not ever fall on the victim), where does it lie?  In the rapist?

From Amanda’s post:

Men who rape have their own issues,* and no one is suggesting that a little more belief in female desire will fix them.  But what can be changed is a culture that coddles rape.  If we can shift the paradigm from one where sex is something men want and women give to one where it’s seen as a collaboration, we would start to see any level of coercion as unacceptable, and rapists couldn’t get away with hiding in the “gray” area between pressure and force.

It really is sexists who have a lower view of men than feminists do.

Liberalrob cannot conceive of reducing rape without some sort of force of law. We’re not talking about arresting someone for having a bad thought or saying a bad thing. Try reading the exchange over the last 20 comments or so between Gavel Down and a bunch of other commenters. And then think about how making enthusiastic consent the norm might reduce rape. Think about how men calling out coercive behavior in other men (even just saying, “Dude, that’s not cool.") might reduce rape. You seem to think that rapists are monsters who exist outside of all social norms. What we’re saying is that they very much exist inside social norms, and that changing those norms can change behavior.

“I’ve heard it as “hurting” versus “harming”, myself.
XtinaS”

:-D Very nice. That’s much better than what I’ve been using…

Re: Notorious.

I actually don’t think he was trying to say that women are culpable in their own rape.  I think he was pushing the “hypervigilance” bullshit on bad assumptions: that you 1) need to be constantly aware of the strangers around you (as if it’s the strangers who are most likely to harm you, when it’s actually men you know) and 2) adjust your behavior to do whatever is reasonable to proactively dissuade attackers from interest in you as a victim, by changing your behavior/looks/habits to do something statistically or anecdotally likely to repulse an attack.

Not drinking around strangers actually is a fine safety tip.  As is not wearing your hair in a ponytail or any style easily pulled by an attacker, as is not walking the same route to common destinations to avoid someone easily tracking your travel patterns, as is always having your hands free enough to defend yourself if attacked.

At some point though life interferes and women have alcohol on a date, or they interact with people they don’t know, or they get stranded somewhere late at night without a cell phone handy, or they grow their hair really long.

Point is, I don’t think women need tips on how to be hypervigilant.  Women need to learn physical self-defense and how to move past the shame involved in physical/sexual abuse to report their attackers to police.  I think advances in those two things would go far in preventing violence toward other women and yourself.

4m33sec:

Yeah, to me, “hurting” is specifically about pain, whereas “harming” (a) is more about lasting damage and (b) has strong connotations of non-consensualness, in some fashion or another (duration, location, at effing all, &c;).  It’s tremendously useful when one is into causing or receiving pain in a BDSM-type fashion. 

“Keep in mind i’m not denying the power element is always present in rape, i’m arguing it isn’t always the purpose.  Just to be clear.”

Rest assured that, at least for me, you’re perfectly clear.  I’m saying that it is always the purpose, regardless of how much lying to himself a rapist might do.  There’s no small level of cognitive dissonance going on – they want to be dominate (thanks to patriarchy) without being the dominating one (thanks to plain old human decency).

Doesn’t change a thing.  They are not excluded from it. And that’s the message we need to communicate.

+++

“I think feminism is in the process of fixing whatever “rape culture” there may be; I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a bad thing, so I don’t see it as a defining characteristic of our culture.

“I don’t know any other way to interpret the continual attacks on my character whenever I bring up an alternative viewpoint.”

Privilege table for one! yeah, it must be so hard being a man (statistically safe from being the victim of rape) to have to listen to all those hysterical, whiny, irrational bitchez who think that they, with the actual real world experience to back it up, have a valid viewpoint. 

Nah! they’re just all out to get you!!11

I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a bad thing, so I don’t see it as a defining characteristic of our culture.

Liberal Rob,

I’m going to attention-whore for a moment. Did you read my experience, up-thread?

Most people who hear my story feel sorry for me (poor virgin girl) but also feel like it was just a murky situation and the poor boy was getting mixed signals.

Nevermind that he coaxed / tricked me into getting naked. Nevermind that he physically restrained me from moving. Nevermind that he had to shove his penis into my vagina without any help from me while I cried and yelled ‘no’ at the top of my lungs.

THAT is what we mean by “rape culture”. That young man is not seen as an anti-social asshole who hurts women. He is seen as a normal boy who was getting mixed signals, who couldn’t control his raging hormones, who was in a bad situation but who is not a bad person.

That’s the problem, she is barely a teenager. I am still a parent, even if we keep gradually increasing her independence

Ah...I must have blipped over that part.

You have the right to set curfews and meet anyone, male or female, that she wants to hang out with, but you need to reinforce the notion that she’s a smart, strong person, and that *she* has good judgment and *she* and only *she* has the right to decide what to do with her body.

As far as the future boyfriends go, I think you’re better off telling your daughter that you will always come get her, anywhere, anytime, no questions asked if she calls.  This goes for when she goes out with her girlfriends as well.  If she ever feels uneasy about a situation, she should trust her judgment and call you.  She won’t be grounded, she’ll just have a safe way out of any uncomfortable situation because you support her no matter what.

You hope you never get the call, but I think it’s better to tell her you trust her and have her trust herself than to threaten or faux threaten boyfriends.  Not only is that slightly icky, but it shuts down communication between you and your daughter.  You don’t care about the boys, not really.  You care about HER.

I’m a parent, too, and even though my girls are little, I worry about the world they will grow up to face.  But you can’t lock them up, you have to let them live.

Gypsy Lee -

I’m saying that it is always the purpose, regardless of how much lying to himself a rapist might do.

Well, I don’t agree i’m afraid.  But that’s ok.  At least we managed to argue without getting angry or misrepresenting eachother.  And that’s always a win in my book.

Or is it because it’s a “he said/she said” situation?

The fact that in a “he said/she said” situation the prosecution would be impossible is one more facet of the rape culture that we live in. 

After all, can you think of any other crime where the victim/eye witness isn’t considered the most important part of the case?  If you report that you’ve been mugged or robbed, even by someone you might know, the assumption is that you were indeed mugged or robbed, and not that you willingly gave away your car and then changed your mind.  So why, with rape, is the assumption that the victim is lying?

Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?

Again, if someone says he’s going to shoot me if I don’t give him all of my money, no one would argue that I willingly gave him my money, even if we can’t get in a time machine and prove that he was really going to follow through on the threat.

Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that
mean he was GOING to?

I missed this the first read-through.

There really isn’t an appropriate response to this, that doesn’t involve fists or a baseball bat or something.  Get a goddamn clue, and get it fast, and, until then, lock yourself in a room and don’t interact with human beings.

That’s the problem, she is barely a teenager. I am still a parent, even if we keep gradually increasing her independence.

Just say “Be home by X time, and you’d better be where you say you’re going to be.  Don’t think I won’t check up on you” and leave it at that (and yes, you should probably do at least a couple of checks, at least in the early days).  That restricts her access to all of the things that I’m sure you want to keep her away from, not just her boyfriend’s penis - drugs, booze, unsupervised parties, etc. - and it does so in a way that doesn’t create a situation where she’s sexual territory that you’re protecting.  Just a general, common-sense safety rule. 

How about direct involvement with the aggressive suitor? As I mentioned, she has a while to go before she is considered an adult. Also part of overcoming the rape-culture is men talking to men, and not just giving advice to daughters on how to avoid getting raped, right?

The problem with this is that it removes your stepdaughter from the equation entirely.  Once again, she’s sexual territory that you’re protecting. 

It’s true that men educating other men is the key to changing the rape culture.  However, talking to a suitor just before a date is a really tricky time to do it.  I personally can’t think of a way to do so without falling into the “I’ll cut your balls off if you touch my little girl” trap.  You might be better off - if you must give a warning - in making it a more general one about bringing her home safe (you want him to keep the shiny side of the car up, after all, right?) unless…

Hm.  Stick with me now:

It’s true that we want to go beyond “giving advice to daughters on how to avoid being raped”, mostly because that puts the onus on women to restrict their behavior rather than on men to not rape.  That said, women are influenced by the rape culture as well - the general belief that they give men sex as a token of love or because something about the situation means that they “owe” it to him somehow, rather than because they want it.  If you teach your daughter from as young an age as you can that that’s bullshit, that she does what she wants and only what she wants, when and only when she wants to, because sex is for her, too, and she doesn’t owe anyone anything when it comes to her body, it might give her more confidence in setting boundaries, demanding safe sex, getting out of the situation if it’s looking like things are going bad (and not just sexually - suppose her BF has been nipping from his hip flask and still wants to drive) even though “manners” or “love” tell her to stay...or recognizing what’s happened as rape (and thus not her fault), not just a “bad date”, and coming to you for help if things go bad anyway, because as we keep pointing out, the real key is not the woman’s actions, but the presence of a rapist. 

Having made sure she’s learned that lesson well, you take the young man aside on the first date and (after making the general safety warning), tell him: “My daughter makes her own choices.  I respect that.  If you don’t, she’s got me for backup, and you’re in a world of hurt.”

How’s that sound to anyone else? 

I can certainly cool down on the jokes..

You probably should.

Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that
mean he was GOING to?

Oh jesus christ.  It’s people like that that make me ashamed to have a wang.

“ At least we managed to argue without getting angry or misrepresenting eachother.  And that’s always a win in my book. “

I still say we aren’t disagreeing, exactly, but I just wanted to add my “here here!” to this statement.

I prefer killed, and that is why I say locked in a cage.  I should not get to say what happens because my emotions cloud it

INTPagan,

This kind of personal insight is useful.  When it comes to this, sometimes my emotions get the better of me.

is it because it’s a “he said/she said” situation?  Were there any witnesses?

I have to defend liberalrob on this one part. 

Rape is a wrong, but we have, for good reasons, a criminal justice system that demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Personally, I could NEVER, in good conscience, send someone to prison for rape based purely off their accusers testimony.  I would require a rape-kit, witnesses, marks of a struggle on her and/or him, or at least SOME sort of actual evidence. 

The woman in the letter is not to blame for getting raped.  But, for God’s sake, could a woman please explain to me WHY she didn’t at least go to the hospital for a rape kit which would have at least allowed her to preserve evidence of the rape in case she decided to press charges?

Amanda: Bitchy Jones (http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/) has a few choice words for men who claim that they are dominant in a sexual sense when in fact they are just assholes.

Jon (@12:51pm): I think you fell off the clue train in your posting. You might want to try to get back on.

Amanda: But why on earth do the rest of us buy their lies and excuses?.
Because if bad things happen to good people, there is no reason for bad shit not to happen to us.

Donna: Sadism requires you to hurt other people and even when done in the context of consensual gameplaying I just don’t understand that urge or how it could possibly be safe.

I don’t get why this seems so difficult. Sex with someone you so not want to have sex with is shitty to traumatic. Sex with someone you want to have sex with is OK to great. Getting hit by a car and ending up all bruised is no one’s idea of fun. Playing rugby or doing SCA heavy fighting and ending up all bruised is what many people do for a hobby. It’s all context, all the time.

I share your doubt about the “safe outlet” theory, though. It assumes that a person whose desire to beat someone up or make them cry or whatever is so strong that it could override their decency, common sense and desire not to get arrested, would still be safe doing it to a consenting person. I’d say that amount of selfishness and low impulse control is never safe.

It seems like it can be all about power through sex - it’s the denial of sex that makes the rapist want to dominate the victim through rape. He might not see this as the motivation, but his sense of privilege is so outraged by denial that he just has to show that, actually, the little woman-body is his for the using.

ugh.

angulimala - Personally, I could NEVER, in good conscience, send someone to prison for rape based purely off their accusers testimony.

Would you do it for theft?  Assault?  Because our justice system does that all the time.  If you disagree, fine, but it’s still not ok for us to treat rape differently from other crimes in that respect.

But, for God’s sake, could a woman please explain to me WHY she didn’t at least go to the hospital for a rape kit which would have at least allowed her to preserve evidence of the rape in case she decided to press charges?

Many, many reasons.  For starters, if you think (and she was probably right) that there’s no chance of successful prosecution, she’s putting herself through a horribly unpleasant ordeal* for nothing.  It would probably make her feel worse.  And, a rape kit would prove nada in this case.  His defense will be consent - he won’t be claiming there was no penetration.  But i’ll let a woman tackle this in depth.

*Yes, reporting a rape can be an awful, awful experience.  Being shamed, not believed, and forced to fight institutional apathy or hostility is not the first thing most people want immediately after a traumatic assault, and is a downright common experience for rape victims.

“But, for God’s sake, could a woman please explain to me WHY she didn’t at least go to the hospital for a rape kit which would have at least allowed her to preserve evidence of the rape in case she decided to press charges?”

have you have seen how women are treated in rape trials?  ever heard of the vast amount of rape kits that go untested? Or how, despite having witnesses, evidence of struggle, etc, prosecuters will still not even bother with the case (i.e. DeAnza)?

After all, can you think of any other crime where the victim/eye witness isn’t considered the most important part of the case?  If you report that you’ve been mugged or robbed, even by someone you might know, the assumption is that you were indeed mugged or robbed

Go ahead and try to have someone convicted of robbery without evidence and based only on your word. 

, and not that you willingly gave away your car and then changed your mind.  So why, with rape, is the assumption that the victim is lying?

Possession of your car would count as EVIDENCE and therefore it is NOT “he said/she said” and therefore contradicts the very assumptions you set out at the beginning.  Hence, apples and oranges. 

The proper analogy is claiming a man robbed you but the police find NONE of your property in his possessions or any other physical evidence or witnesses connecting him to the robbery.  See how far such a claim gets you.

The word of an accuser, by itself, should NEVER be considered “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”.  The fact that it often works when the defendant is a black male doesn’t make it acceptable.

“Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?  Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat?”

If I say I am going to rape you unless you let me stick my penis* in you when you do not want me to is like saying I am going to rape you unless I rape you.  Threatening a person with violence in order to stick your penis in them is rape.  Once you threaten someone with rape, if you then stick your penis in them, you raped them.

*I am aware that not all rape involves a penis, but I think that it is safe to say that most does.

But, for God’s sake, could a woman please explain to me WHY she didn’t at least go to the hospital for a rape kit which would have at least allowed her to preserve evidence of the rape in case she decided to press charges?

Because of responses like the first one on this very thread - “Sure, it kind of isn’t your fault, but you still kind of deserved it for being an idiot.” No one needs that, ever, but I know I’ve been able to stand it better after having time to process my own rape. I was at home and didn’t tell my own parents because I was afraid they’d be mad at me for going to visit my boyfriend of 2 years.

Trauma makes your brain kind of… well, traumatized.

I don’t know any other way to interpret the continual attacks on my character whenever I bring up an alternative viewpoint.

I’d take you seriously, except that your “alternative viewpoint” consists of things like, “Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?” That’s not an alternative viewpoint; that’s a fourteen-year-old shut-in trolling for attention. I would suggest that you either come up with something worthwhile to say or stop trying to waste everyone’s time for the sake of feeling like people care what you think.

Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?  Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat?

If a robber comes into a bank and says “give me all the cash or I blow this place up,” does the terrified bank teller who hands it over get prosecuted for the theft if it turns out there was never actually a bomb?

“It seems like it can be all about power through sex - it’s the denial of sex that makes the rapist want to dominate the victim through rape. He might not see this as the motivation, but his sense of privilege is so outraged by denial that he just has to show that, actually, the little woman-body is his for the using.”

Precisely.  And (this is what I was trying to articulate to Gavel Down, but I suck at being articulate) this is true even of the guys who don’t use force, don’t think they’re rapists, and/or who don’t see themselves doing this, etc. 

It’s still about power trips. its still about domination. It’s only their privilege that allows them to pretend (or truly believe) otherwise.  They might not want to admit to themselves, or they might honestly believe they did nothing wrong. But it changes nothing.

4’33”,

Let’s review: I can have an opinion on something I don’t have full understanding of as a participant, but if it’s negative I’m a douche.  Okay, got that.  Now since you don’t really know me as well as my standards go, I can say that your opinion that I’m a douche makes you a festering pustule.  Isn’t this fun?  No.

Let’s review even further: my limited experience with sadist men suggests that they are a bit messed up in the head regardless of what their masochist partners may want.  Some agree, some disagree, but I haven’t heard anything other than various excuses for this.  I also don’t really mind that these pairs hook up and do their thing, and even think it’s probably for the best that they do find each other.  What follows is an extreme example, but here goes:

Remember that German guy who put out the internet ad for a hot guy wanting to be slaughtered?  Well, he got responses, rejected some, nearly went through with it a few times, and then found the one guy who wanted that, cut off his penis, they cooked and ate it together, and then the meat got slaughtered.  This was discussed on a radio talk show I liked at the time, and the host and callers were generally horrified.  Then someone emailed in with a comment that sort of changed things.  The email said that it was great they had the internet to find each other because otherwise those dreams would be repressed and probably acted out on unwilling victims.  There’s a certain logic to that that cannot be denied.

I sort of view many things along those lines, and although I’m very glad that cannibal guy is not out in public right now, I am willing to accept that some people need to go to extremes to get what they really need.  I just have a negative opinion toward hurting others.  If that makes me a douche, c’est la vie.

I was going to say that coming to a legal solution for this sort of thing might be tough (I’d actually more say counter-productive, but that’s something different), but reading acallidryas snapped me out of that. They’re right. We don’t have that level of burden of proof for other crimes, so why should we have that burden of proof for rape? It makes no sense.

The best result isn’t putting rapists in jail. It’s not having rapists in the first place. In terms of that, even rape that falls below the current legal rape line (which is way too high), or even implied rape or discussion of such, should be grounds for social correction, by your peers as mentioned above, even if it is just something like “that’s not cool” or something like that.

It’s a start at least.

I like Fatman’s analysis above better, my bank thing was… not the best.

As for why the letter writer didn’t go to a hospital for a rape kit, everyone else has given very good answers, but I think it’s also noteworthy that the letter writer herself doesn’t even use the R-word to describe what happened to her. I think a lot of women see situations like that as “one of those shitty things guys do sometimes” as opposed to a crime or don’t want to say it was rape for fear of being accused of exaggerating (see people who think “real rape” is when you get the shit beat out of you). If she cannot bring herself to call it rape in an anonymous letter to an advice columnist, do you really think she could have brought herself to call the police or go into a hospital and say “I just got raped”?

I’m not sure what is meant by defining any level of coercion as unacceptable so rapists can’t “hide.” Yes coercion is wrong, we all agree; but then what?  Do we pass laws equating spoken threats with actions?

We do right now, and have for a long time. There are long-standing laws in the U.S. against extortion and blackmail, for example.

Your other examples are remedied by disorderly conduct laws (allowed under the exception to the First Amendment regarding falsely yelling “fire” in a theatre) and defamation laws, respectively. Both hypotheticals are also as irrelevant to the core debate here as was P.A.T.’s initial comment.

MarcusR, have you talked to your step daughter about sex, respect, safe sex, etc? Going over her head to speak with her male partners implies that you trust them more than her, that they have more power than her, that her sexual safety is held in your/their hands and not hers, etc.

If you haven’t already done so, do please sit down with her and reassure her that you’ll love and support her if she has sex, if she gets pregnant, if she gets an STI, etc. Make certain she respects herself and knows that she can say no, and that if she needs you, you’ll help her. That you’ll pick her up from the party, the restaurant, the gas station, whatever she needs if a date/outing goes sour. Make certain she knows how to use birth control, and knows actual facts about reproduction and doesn’t think that if she has sex standing up she’ll be fine, or if she uses a candy wrapper for a condom she’ll be fine, or if she has sex the first time ever she’ll be fine.

Ask her about her boyfriends. What are they like? Do they treat her with respect? Do they treat other women with respect? What about their friends? Do they make rape jokes? Do they slut shame other women? Do they spread rumors? Make it clear to her that she can talk to you about her boyfriends, and ask advice about them and her relationships, and that you won’t judge or threaten the guys. I mean, of COURSE you’ll judge. But don’t go overboard and react to any criticism on her part with “dump him, you’re too good for him” or the equivalent. Be someone she can trust and confide in.

And most of all, make it clear to her that you trust and respect her to do the right thing; and if she doesn’t know what “the right thing” is, she can turn to you and her mom to help her figure it out. Not figure it out FOR HER, but help her figure it out.

There really isn’t an appropriate response to this, that doesn’t involve fists or a baseball bat or something.  Get a goddamn clue, and get it fast, and, until then, lock yourself in a room and don’t interact with human beings.

Feel better now, INTPagan?  All empowered and charged-up for battle?

In a court of law, it doesn’t matter what you and I believe, all the matters is what we can prove.  (Yes, that’s a line from A Few Good Men.  I like to use movie quotes and song lyrics.  Sue me.) We may believe that there was coercion, but can we prove it?  If all our assumptions are true, that the episode in fact happened (all we have is an uncorroborated letter to Dan Savage, right?), that all happened exactly as described (no reason to doubt it, if we assume the letter is geniune), and that the ex was thinking exactly like we assume he was (we’ve never actually heard his side, nor apparently are we interested), then it would appear there was no question.  Guilty, guilty, guilty and I agree let’s string him up.  But if any of our assumptions aren’t borne out, might that not change things?

Put your baseball bat back in the closet.  Or stick it up your ass, I don’t care.  Dammit.  Why do I keep trying to have a rational discussion with irrational people.

Jon,

You stated categorically that anyone who got their kicks hurting other people was a “sick freak.” You didn’t distinguish between people who do that consensually and people who don’t. You didn’t leave any room to change your opinion based on the things that we’re actually in to. That’s why you were a douche.

You can not like BDSM all you want, but if you call me a sick freak without even asking first whether or not I’m one of these misogynistic doms you claim to have met, then you’ve been a douche.

(Note: I don’t doubt that there are many misogynistic doms out there; I just doubt Jon’s experience.)

4min33sec

Ok, here is my story:

Eighteen years old. On second date with what seemed by all accounts as nice guy. I was not drunk, not that it matters. Went back to his dorm room with other people and talked. Other people drifted out. We were alone and made out. I decided I did not want to go any farther. He agreed and was very nice about it. But, he said, it was 4 am and he was too tired to drive me home. Just sleep here tonight and he will take me home in the morning. We go to sleep. I am AWAKEN because he is on top of me pulling down my pants, pinning my arms and legs.

So, my crime was a) trusting his actual words when he said I could sleep there and not have sex and b) falling asleep.

I guess, yes. Notorious. We all have a responsibility to protect ourselves and never be alone with men again. I think it would be much easier and more fair to just lock up all the men or make sure they never drink and are never left alone with a woman. Can we require all men be chaperoned by a trained guard to protect society from them.

I’m not sure what is meant by defining any level of coercion as unacceptable so rapists can’t “hide.” Yes coercion is wrong, we all agree; but then what?  Do we pass laws equating spoken threats with actions?

To spell out this unbelievably obvious fact: Not everything society finds immoral is illegal.  Not everything legal is considered morally sanctioned. Illegal actions are necessarily a smaller subset of acts that society thinks is wrong.  Defining something as unacceptable does not equal outlawing it. Geez.

i especially love when irrational people think that whatever they say is rational just because they said it were the ones who said it.

“Yes Means Yes” sounds amazing and I’ll definitely check it out, but it made me a little sad to see the absence of Shere Hite in the contents. Obviously you can’t include every noteworthy feminist in every collection and it’s important to let new voices be heard, but she is the godmother of this stuff--not so much the critique of rape culture, but in pointing out that our concept of sex is mostly based on male pleasure. She was frogmarched out of the country (she moved to Germany after years of harassment and death threats) for promoting hetero sex that includes an equal emphasis on female pleasure. That the writers of this collection can publish relatively unmolested shows that we actually have made a lot of progress thanks to Hite, though we still have a long way to go.

We may believe that there was coercion, but can we prove it?

I think our (lack of) ability to prove rape in court has a lot to do with how much we, as a society, value the words of women. And THAT is what is meant as a rape culture - the fact that men can systematically terrorize women through sexual violence and the justice system simply has no place for evidence against those men.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

my bank thing was ... not the best

Every time we have a thread like this, I think about how hard it is to come up with an anology for rape that doesn’t reference property crime. I feel like it is nearly impossible, but at the same time I feel really creepy for using property crime references. I was trying to think why getting beat up doesn’t seem like the right analogy, when rape is an assault on another person, and I realized that even as a woman and a feminist, on a gut level, I still think of the rapist as having got something from the victim or taken something from the victim. Most of us clearly still feel that way on a gut level, even as we reject it on an intellectual level, because we keep reaching for these references. One more iteration of rape culture.

“Feel better now, INTPagan?  All empowered and charged-up for battle?”
“Put your baseball bat back in the closet.  Or stick it up your ass, I don’t care.  Dammit.  Why do I keep trying to have a rational discussion with irrational people. “

Repeated just in case anyone still believes this is an actual progressive speaking.  This is a rape apologist with a repetitious need to belittle women.

excuse me… that should have read “just because they were the ones who said it.”

Look, not-so-liberal guy-who-doesn’t-rate-to-share-a-name-with-my-boyfriend,

What you said has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of rape.  You essentially said that, hey, if a girl actually believes a guy who says that he will rape her, and lets him rape her instead of fighting him and then getting raped, hey, she’s a sucker and deserved what she got.

Moron.  That’s the only rational way to read what you posted. 

And the fact that you thought that I said that just to feel empowered says a great deal to me about what you think about women as well.  No, I don’t feel empowered by that statement; I feel sick that you actually get to share air with my daughter.  I didn’t say that so that I could psych myself up to something; I said that because my first impulse, as someone who has been raped, both forcefully physically and through coercion, upon hearing you say,” well, how does she KNOW that he’ll rape her if he says so?” is to take a baseball bat to your skull.  That wasn’t my way of saying, “girl power!” That was my way of saying that hearing you say that makes me want to do damage to your cerebral cortex.

Which is, again, why I am not in charge of the criminal justice system.

Why do I keep trying to have a rational discussion with irrational people.

Maybe because deep down you know you’re being irrational by trying to keep moving goalposts in a discussion, deliberately misunderstanding what people say, and asking ridiculous, irrelevant questions to try to derail an argument, but you feel validated when you can get people whose opinions you respect to pay attention to you. But I’m probably giving you too much credit.

chingona, I think a lot of it has to do with the physical nature of women’s defenses against rape - at least, it does for me. I am always really bothered by the mugging analogy, but society constructs female bodies as a kind of fortress (that must be defended!) that is continually under siege.

i’m late, but P.A.T., go to hell, rape-apologist. kinda hard to not drink around strangers if you ever GO OUT.

Oops, “irrational”? Anyone have a bingo card? Before long he’ll start complaining about all those rape victims and their histrionics.

I still like Chris Clarke’s analogy: “if you hit someone over the head with a banjo that’s violence, not bluegrass. Using a sexual organ as a weapon doesn’t make the violence “sex.“”

He already called victims “hypersenstive” and said they are too close to the situation to be trusted to give objective testimony.

Hey Jon,

I bet you know some sadistic men and don’t know they’re sadistic.  Lots of sadistic guys don’t talk about it with feminists because they know you think they’re fucked up.

I used to have a friend/ playmate who volunteered hours every week working with women’s self-defense, putting on padding so women could beat him up while learning to defend themselves.  He wasn’t out to any of his coworkers for being kinky.  I always thought it was sad that he had to be closeted about his sex life with the people he was volunteering with-- sad, but realistic.

Homophobes don’t tend to know many queers, transphobes don’t tend to know many trans folks-- funny thing that.

xoxo

Alec

“Before long he’ll start complaining about all those rape victims and their histrionics.”

he already did.

liberalrob on 01/12 at 03:07 PM”

“Let’s fix the justice system, if it’s broken.  I think feminism is in the process of fixing whatever “rape culture” there may be; I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a bad thing, so I don’t see it as a defining characteristic of our culture.  But, and there’s no delicate way to put this, I also think it’s impossible for a victim to be objective on the subject regardless of how much time has passed.  I think victims and potential victims are more likely to see danger in every situation, to imply meaning where intent is otherwise, and to interpret dissent as attack.  In short, to use a potentially “misogynist” term, I think people are hypersensitive on the subject (understandably so, but nevertheless) and that gets in the way of our discussions.  I don’t know any other way to interpret the continual attacks on my character whenever I bring up an alternative viewpoint.”

See?  it’s not that he’s completely wrong and being a douchebag.  No, no.  it’s all those hypsterical, irrational victims who don’t let him speak for them, that’s the problem.

I think P.A.T. really is gone. He was just waiting for a woman to reject him again, and now he doesn’t have to keep waiting for that shoe to drop. Sad.

Hmph, not sure how I missed the signs. It’s obviously time to get back to my students, my BS-ometer is faltering. Usually I can tell when someone is arguing in bad faith....

Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.  Please.

I think victims and potential victims are more likely to see danger in every situation, to imply meaning where intent is otherwise, and to interpret dissent as attack.

Ah, we’ve come full circle. Women are supposed to remain cloistered to avoid rape, but women ("potential victims") see danger in every situation, even when it’s not there. And that hurts men.

In a court of law, it doesn’t matter what you and I believe, all the matters is what we can prove.

Very true. And whether we’re talking about extortion, defamation, rape, disorderly conduct, etc. etc. we start from the victim’s statement or complaint, giving him the initial benefit of the doubt to start an official investigation (or, in Dan Savage’s case, analysis). Assessment of the evidence comes in due course.

It’s worth adding that, frequently, the victim is too humiliated to make a statement (victims of confidence artists and rape victims being common examples).

For the record, I haven’t been raped, and I still think liberalrob’s a douchebag. But how to account for my hypersensitivity? Perhaps the problem is my vagina. Hmm, but wang-possessors on this thread also think he’s a douchebag. What could it be? What could it be?

...and that the ex was thinking exactly like we assume he was (we’ve never actually heard his side, nor apparently are we interested)

Aw, well, maybe the rapist had a big test on his mind that night, or his dad was mean to him and withheld the keys to the Jetta, or maybe his tummy hurt and JESUS NOBODY CARES ABOUT HIM, HE RAPED A GIRL.

I’m tired of the rape victim being the one on trial, as if confessing to rape was so easy that everyone did it all the time. Can we prove there’s coercion ? The burden of proof should not be on her to prove that she’s not lying, but on him to prove he didn’t rape somebody. Attitudes like that contribute to the low prosecution rate of rape. If this was a mugging, and a guy had identified the mugger and made a sworn statement, would we need to hear about how the mugger saw things ? ("I thought he was giving me his wallet because he liked me !") Or, if you want to move away from property crime, what about murder ? Insanity or fit-of-passion killings might get the convicted party a reduced or altered sentence, but it doesn’t mean that the jury waves its hands and says “well, I guess since you were crazy mad at him, or you were insane at the time, then you didn’t kill him and he’s not dead.”

Rape is the only crime I can think of where we act like it maybe didn’t happen based on what the criminal felt about the crime. We act as if the rapist “thinking she enjoyed it” or “not meaning to hurt her” or “not really forcing her, just asking and asking and pleading and suggesting and threatening” means that she didn’t get raped. But she did. Can we, as a jury of internet readers, prove coercion ? No. But there’s also no reason for anyone to act like her very statement, her personal narrative of fear and pain, is an exaggeration or a lie.

Why do we tolerate a culture where, even if rape is technically illegal, the assumption that men are predators and women are prey goes mostly unchallenged?

I don’t think we so much live in a rape culture - or rather, not only in a rape culture - as we just generally have a culture that lionizes predators for being powerful enough to victimize others and sneers at victims for being weak enough to be victimized, with a handful of designated scapegoat instances so people can condescend under a tissue-thin veil of sympathy. As demonstrated so aptly by Pat and Rob, who read a story about a woman being raped by a close acquaintance, and immediately start mouthing irrelevant homilies about women staying away from strangers, while straining mightily to make excuses for the actual rapist in question.

I think he’s a douchebag, chingona, but my opinion is probably suspect as the only thing keeping me from trading in my wang on newer parts is that it’s expensive and hard to get a loan for. I’m sure it makes me hypersensitive and irrational in many ways.

Not only does it hurt men, but aren’t those women bitches? I mean, dude, they expect you to be able to read their minds and shit! She’s saying “no,” but I know she means yes… wait, now she’s accusing me of rape? It’s so CONFUSING! How can she not realize my intention was pure, I’m no rapist!

That’s not to say, of course, that everyone should not get their say in court- of course we hear the mugger and the murderer and the rapist’s side of things, because that is a justice system.

But to clarify my point: that even when the facts are proven that an unwanted sexual assault actually happened, our culture feels compelled to say it isn’t rape if the rapist doesn’t feel like it was rape.

Every time we have a thread like this, I think about how hard it is to come up with an anology for rape that doesn’t reference property crime.

The problem is, in these threads you’re generally arguing with Amanda’s NiceGuys® and/or Randian types, who consciously or otherwise view sex as an economic transaction. The only way these guys can come close to comprehending the gravity of rape in its various forms (e.g. date rape, spousal rape, etc.) is to explain it within their narrow frame of reference (which basically defines rape soley as the kind involving a violent stranger).

We can only hope a guy like liberalrob (or, as I’m starting to think of him, Libertarianrob) can make the connection between a property crime like extortion (AKA coerced extraction of money) and a personal assault like coerced sex (AKA rape).

Both hypotheticals are also as irrelevant to the core debate here as was P.A.T.’s initial comment.

Then one of us doesn’t have a correct understanding of the core debate here.

I thought the problem was that this young lady in question could not receive justice from our legal system as it stands.  That the ex was going to get away with rape because the system wouldn’t convict him, because he only implicitly threatened rape and the system is rigged to let him off.  Now you’re saying that that’s not a problem?

It’s not like yelling fire in a crowded theater, because there is no crowd.  It might be a variety of extortion, except there is no financial consideration so I’m not sure how that is handled.  The bomb on a plane hypothetical was a direct reference to the incident a week or two ago where a Muslim family was thrown off a plane because of casual talk; I added an example of partisan asshattery to illustrate how this kind of thing can be abused if codified in law.  I don’t think my hypotheticals were at all irrelevant, or I wouldn’t have given them, and your dismissal of them is similarly dismissed by me.  Try again, if you want to continue the discussion.

Yes, but generally extortion doesn’t involve a vagina.  If it involves a vagina, all bets are off.  Vaginas make people prone to hypersensitivity, irrationality, and lack of empathy (with the poor guys who need access to them).

Blarg, hit enter too early.

I meant to go on and say how this attitude, as keenly displayed as it is by the occurence of rape, is mirrored in so many other power relationships in our society, where predatory behavior is ostensibly condemned, except that official disapproval of such behavior is reserved for designated ‘others’ who actually commit crimes with whatever degree of rarity while the individuals actually likely to engage in such acts are both excused and subtly admired through the vehicle of hatred and scorn directed towards their victims.

liberalrob: In a court of law, it doesn’t matter what you and I believe, all the matters is what we can prove… We may believe that there was coercion, but can we prove it?

“Prove beyond a reasonable doubt”, not “prove to the satisfaction of someone who will always say the victim is lying”. We routinely convict based on the credible testimony of witnesses and victims. It is evidence, it is probative, and if the jury believes the victim more than the accused, it may lead to a conviction.

Additionally, you’re calling people “hypersensitive” after you made the following comment:
Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?  Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat?  I know we can agree between you and me that of course it’s coercion because of the implied threat; but is that the same as actual rape?
Aside from your lack of understanding of the legal system, your persistent attempts to reclassify rape through threats of force as a lesser incident unworthy of conviction mean you’re way the fark offbase, dude.

angulimala - Personally, I could NEVER, in good conscience, send someone to prison for rape based purely off their accusers testimony.

Would you do it for theft?  Assault?  Because our justice system does that all the time.  If you disagree, fine, but it’s still not ok for us to treat rape differently from other crimes in that respect.

It’s not treating rape any differently.  With the two crimes you mentioned, there’s objective evidence something has happened.  Something is missing.  Someone is injured.  The testimony of the accuser alone isn’t sufficient: if I go to the cops to say that someone punched my in the face six months ago and I want him arrested for assault, without corroborating evidence (say, pictures taken the day after showing my bruises, or witnesses who saw me being injured and/or punched, or damage that’s still detectable), they’ll quite rightly tell me that I don’t have a hope in hell of seeing the other guy punished unless for some stupid reason he confesses.  If I accuse someone of stealing my Ferrari, but there’s no evidence I’ve never even owned a car, my word alone isn’t going to mean squat.

Imagine if a department store accusing you of shoplifting based on the fact that you have a common magazine sold in their store in your apartment.  They don’t have video of you stealing it, no one stopped you at the door after it happened to see if you had the magazine, only the word of an employee that they saw you stuff it in your jacket and the fact that there’s a magazine that could be bought anywhere at your place.  If someone is prosecuted based on that, I’d question the sanity of the cops, prosecutor, judge and jury.

Now for rape: it’s unwanted sex.  The problem is that humans have sex all the time, so the mere act of sex having taken place isn’t evidence in itself, unless there’s something, anything, to corroborate that the sex was unwanted.  It could be the state the victim was found in, it could be the circumstances the sex act happened, it could be the type of sex act, it could be the victim’s history, all of which easily lends one to the conclusion that yes, odds are the sex was involuntary and the rape likely happened.

But in a true she said/he said type situation, where the only evidence of a rape is that she told someone else after the event, a situation where (without the accusation) no one would consider it odd that consensual sex would be taking place, well, of course people will be hesitant to move it forward.  You’re pretty much going to have to see who’s story is more believable.

MarcusR: Would this be classified as a strong condemnation of male aggression towards women (the daughters), or just an proponent for more violent male culture?

It’s simply territorial. Notice how all of the conflict is between males and the girl they fight over has no voice in it?

Don’t set your daughter up to chose between her boyfriend and you. If she knows that her father will disapprove or even become dangerous to a boy she loves or has a crush on, she’s more likely to keep silent with her questions or doubts, or get her advice from people who have not her best interest in mind. If she knows that she needs not give in to pressure, that she can afford to be honest, that she has a right not to get hurt, and a right to be happy, that goes a lot further in keeping her away from people who would use her. And if you have her friends over, listen to how they talk about women and call them out if they are sexist. Yes, that will embarrass your daughter, but it will show where you stand on the issue better than “I’ll beat you up!” male posturing.

Also, not freaking out about small things goes a long way towards being taken seriously when freaking out about big things.

a reader, wrt nononsenseselfdefense: IMO the author makes good point about realistic estimation of danger, keeping one’s eyes open and not hanging out with violent people. All of this is useful. What he does not talk about, because it’s not within the scope of his page is that you can do everything right and still become a victim of violence, and that no one can live in a war zone 24/7. He’s not tackling systematic issues. 

liberalrob: Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to?

Just because he said he’d stab you if you did not hand over your wallet, did that mean he was going to? Do you feel lucky?

RAPE IS NOT SEX.

Repeat times one million.

Plus, society is constructed in such a way--*deliberately* constructed--so that the man’s side is always more believable. Because of the irrational histrionics of those vagina-bearers.

I dunno, fake-liberal-guy.  Honestly?  That one sentence that I repeated of yours pretty much covers the whole thing.  You really aren’t worth conversing with, because you have ideas in your head about what rape is and isn’t, that pretty much seem comprised of, “If a guy in an alley forces a virgin to have sex with him, she was raped.  If a woman is with a guy she might have had sex with or might be willing to have sex with, it’s not rape, because she would have been willing anyway.  And if a woman is actually stupid enough to believe a guy when he says that he will rape her, she deserves to be raped.”

You are not worth conversing with, but it’s very kind that you’re offering to continue the discussion provided that the terms I just mentioned are abided by.

As far as the future boyfriends go, I think you’re better off telling your daughter that you will always come get her, anywhere, anytime, no questions asked if she calls.  This goes for when she goes out with her girlfriends as well.  If she ever feels uneasy about a situation, she should trust her judgment and call you.  She won’t be grounded, she’ll just have a safe way out of any uncomfortable situation because you support her no matter what.

Caren:  YES YES YES YES and again - YES.  Your little girls are very very lucky they have a mother who understands the importance of this.

That was the message I CONSTANTLY preached to my daughter when she was growing up.  I made very clear to my her that she would NEVER get grounded, yelled at, judged, etc. no matter what she was doing, as long as she called me to get her out of an uncomfortable/unsafe situation.  And it worked.  She is now 23 years old and was home from college over the holidays - partying with all her friends home from all over the world.  (We’ve all been there, right?) She called me one morning around 1:00 a.m. asking if I would come get her.  She was with her best girlfriend and for whatever reason, was very uncomfortable about her surroundings (but not about her friend).  No questions asked, I hopped in the car and drove 40 miles to get her; she also talked her friend into coming with us.

Our daughters (or sons) should never ever have to fear what we, their parents, are going to do to them when they feel unsafe.  Just the simple fact that they WILL call us shows they know they are in a bad situation they can’t handle alone and, over the growing-up years, those calls become fewer as they learn to avoid (as much as they can) those situations.

Again I say, your daughters are lucky. 

It takes two to consent.

So if either doesn’t consent, then… Umm.  It’s rape.

“Oh, yeah, she was totally in to it.” is not an excuse.  Well, maybe it is, assumably you want your partner to be into it.  But make sure they say yes now and again later.

chingona: Think about how men calling out coercive behavior in other men (even just saying, “Dude, that’s not cool.") might reduce rape. You seem to think that rapists are monsters who exist outside of all social norms. What we’re saying is that they very much exist inside social norms, and that changing those norms can change behavior.

This was said upthread, but I wanted to repost it. It really is an excellent point and well said.

kac90b, that’s a nice thing to hear- that your daughter felt safe calling you and knowing you wouldn’t judge, that you managed to get across the message that her safety was the most important thing to you, and that you probably helped both young women out of a bad situation.

My parents gave me the same message again and again growing up, and I took it to heart just as your daughter did. I have called them a few times (never in a truly dire situation, just dumb ones, lol) and I feel we have a strong and trusting relationship.

Aside from your lack of understanding of the legal system, your persistent attempts to reclassify rape through threats of force as a lesser incident unworthy of conviction mean you’re way the fark offbase, dude.

Yeah I don’t get where rob is kidding himself that this is anything less than thoroughly retarded.

If I tell you to give me your wallet ‘voluntarily’ or else I’ll beat the fuck out of you and take it, have I somehow not committed a robbery?

It’s not treating rape any differently.

Oh but it is.  There is the presumption in rape cases that the victim is lying. If I show up at the police office angry and upset, and say my roommate hit me, they’re going to at least interrogate him, with the presumption i’m telling the truth.  Even if he doesn’t get arrested or convicted, until my story is proven false (say, my roommate was somewhere else at the time I claimed this happened, and can prove it) I am going to be treated as the victim of a crime. This does not happen to rape victims. If I am a woman showing up at a police station accusing my friend of rape, chances are the first thing they do will be to interrogate me.

Note that I agree that the case in the Savage column probably wouldn’t be prosecutable.  But how you and liberalrob manage to read this post and get that it’s an indictment of the legal system rather than an indictment of the culture that treats such things as not just difficult or impossible to prosecute, but actually excusable and justified, I have no idea.  Rob is going from “what happens after a rape” to “what happens once you have a case in court” in order to raise the bar.  It’s still rape even if it’s not prosecutable, and it’s still assault even if I have no evidence.

Think about how men calling out coercive behavior in other men (even just saying, “Dude, that’s not cool.") might reduce rape. You seem to think that rapists are monsters who exist outside of all social norms. What we’re saying is that they very much exist inside social norms, and that changing those norms can change behavior.

Chingona is right.  This is the point of the post - not revising the legal system, other than to change how rape victims are treated to put them on par with other victims of crimes.  So rob, keith, etc. are missing the point.

I also think a lot of rape-apologists don’t understand what constituted coercion - they don’t understand the inherent threat in being female and in a vulnerable position, physically or socially. My boyfriend is infinitely wonderful and I trust him to the utmost, but he could, if he wanted to, do serious physical harm to me. It would never happen in a million years, but still, he has an in-your-face style of arguing, and there have been times when I’ve felt threatened by the combination of closeness and anger.

And, you know what? The first time this happened, we stopped the argument to address the issue, and then resumed arguing about the original issue, both much calmer. Because, you know, infinite trust and awesomeness.

The point being, his privilege in not realizing how unsafe it would feel for me to be confronted by an angry man led him to act in a way that was physically threatening, and if it had been a different kind of situation, it would have been very not-okay. This is very difficult for a lot of men to understand until it’s pointed out.

>>If you report that you’ve been mugged or robbed, even by someone you might know, the assumption is that you were indeed mugged or robbed, and not that you willingly gave away your car and then changed your mind.

I was going to be nitpicky, mentionning that when my brother-in-law took my gf’s iPod we went to the police and they basically told us “well, no way he’s gonna get into any trouble because it’s probably already pawned and there’s no proof of ownership”.

And then in the process of being nitpicky, I realized that the cops basically assumed we DID get robbed, they just thought we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, which is a long way ahead from the usual way cops treat rape victims when the perp was known to the victim…

KeithM: It’s not treating rape any differently.  With the two crimes you mentioned, there’s objective evidence something has happened.  Something is missing… If I accuse someone of stealing my Ferrari, but there’s no evidence I’ve never even owned a car, my word alone isn’t going to mean squat.

No, you used to own a car. But you gave it to me. That’s why I have it now. You consented to transfer the car to me. And your word that you didn’t do that doesn’t mean squat.
Right?

Wrong. Please stay on topic. We’re talking about rape through coercion. The defense is not “we never had sex” any more than it’s “you never owned a car”. The defense is “we had consensual sex”, and “you gave me your car”, and no amount of evidence collection - the existence of semen or a Ferrari - prove the defense.

If someone is prosecuted based on that, I’d question the sanity of the cops, prosecutor, judge and jury.

Can I borrow your car?

Repeated just in case anyone still believes this is an actual progressive speaking.  This is a rape apologist with a repetitious need to belittle women.

Gypsy, you’re completely wrong about me.

I’m tired of the rape victim being the one on trial

Me too, other orange, let’s just let accusation stand as proof.  It would simplify the judicial system a lot.

But to clarify my point: that even when the facts are proven that an unwanted sexual assault actually happened, our culture feels compelled to say it isn’t rape if the rapist doesn’t feel like it was rape.

Nice save.  That’s what I interpret as Amanda’s point about the culture, and what I think is already changing.  I don’t actually care what a convicted rapist thinks, he’s clearly insane and/or sociopathic.  But I do care about wrongful conviction, and I do care about due process.  It’s slow and sometimes unfair, but it’s better than the drumhead tribunals like we have on blogs.

Ah, we’ve come full circle. Women are supposed to remain cloistered to avoid rape, but women ("potential victims") see danger in every situation, even when it’s not there. And that hurts men.

No Essie.  It’s like when you burn your hand on the stove.  After that, you are excessively wary of anything that looks like it might have the remote potential to be hot.  And tell me, as a woman, do you not always evaluate your surroundings and keep an eye out for danger, when you are out and about?  Even moreso than a man would?  If I were a woman living in a rape culture, I’m pretty sure I would.  It would be silly not to.

chinoga: I think about how hard it is to come up with an anology for rape that doesn’t reference property crime.

Interesting point.

One could take hate crimes as an analogy: “If he didn’t want to get kicked in the head by neo-nazis he shouldn’t have shown his black face in that part of town”. Of course, something like that might de-rail the discussion even worse than the usual analogies. Also, ethnicities and gangs tend to have territories that they defend against each other. Men and women, not so much.

Bringing up instances of gaybashing as an analogy might not work well in creating empathy in those not inclined to it, quite the reverse. (What Gracchus said about pointing the analogy where it hurts.)

Also, one might share sex willingly like one might share property willingly, but both can also be taken by force—hard to find another analogy that provides that. Consensual BDSM vs assault suffers from a worse failure to create empathy than gaybashing.

Sports that you get home from black and blue vs. getting beaten up by thugs—that might do.

Or trespassing, maybe: My place, my rules. You smoke only on the balcony and if I say leave, you leave. Still, “my house” = property.

Any opinions?

It’s still rape even if it’s not prosecutable, and it’s still assault even if I have no evidence.

I don’t think anyone is debating that,

I, for one, am interested about practical things victims can do to put the bastards away so they don’t rape again.

Fatalism rarely helps change anything.

Christ. You know, I’ve gotten pretty heavily drunk around acquaintances and strangers. I’ve worn mini-skirts. I’ve gone out at night. I’ve worn pony-tails. And I haven’t gotten raped. At this rate it is looking like pure luck, but you know, it is pretty damn horrible that the expectation is to wear jeans, have a female acquaintance attached to your hip (don’t go to the bathroom alone!), never drink anything! (I mean, a roofie can be placed in a soft drink, people) and you know, pretty much stay home until your father has found a suitable placement for you. Please. Where are the requirements for men? Maybe THEY should have female supervision at all times, one on one, to ensure appropriate behavior. And I’m talking about a younger friend, I mean their mother or aunt or someone unlikely to put up with bullshit. Maybe it should be like the mall with teenagers, no more than four men together or else they’ll cause trouble for women in clubs. These are ridiculous, but I hope that some of the guys that are pushing these limitations on women THINK about them and why they’re punishing the victims, and my examples punishing innocent men, instead of you know, the rapist. The car theft is an apt example, if the only defense someone needs is “well I thought they were going to hand over the title tomorrow, I mean they were really sending mixed signals here” and then the victim was jeered at, called an idiot to associate with the robber (whether or not they had before), told to stop being neurotic about locking their car, etc.

I used to know a girl who was homeschooled like me, we took driver’s ed privately together at 16. She wasn’t allowed to go across the street from the class to get coffee with me and my brother, in the middle of the afternoon, because it was unsafe. Because something might happen to her. They also had arrangements so it was never her, the male teacher and another male student in the car (regardless of another female student) but always a female student, her and the male teacher (no female teachers available). At the time I thought it was crazy, now I wonder what her mother must have suffered or been told and believed was just ‘society’ and that was how to protect from rape.

As for BDSM, you know, I came close to becoming involved in a male-dom/female-sub+me situation a number of years ago. The mysogynist guy isn’t just on the internets, although there are probably quite a few guys who only type stupid shit on message boards and are at least passable human beings in real life. I can say this guy crossed a few lines and I’m glad I avoided the relationship. Things like meeting me with the wife, then when he wanted to change the venue to his house ignoring my time requests and changing times so that I wouldn’t be able to be accompanied, looking up my address without my knowledge and putting flowers on my doorstep at night, etc. And on and on and on about how he KNEW I was really into it and HE knew how to open me up to things, etc. etc. And I like BDSM, there’s a smattering of it in my relationship now and was before, although it has tended to switch rather than strictly anyone dominating all of the time. But that kind of relationship that guy was proposing skeeves me now.

I, for one, am interested about practical things victims can do to put the bastards away so they don’t rape again.

Ok, but that’s not what this is about.  And it’s not what we’re talking about when we speak of rape culture.  It’s what MEN can do to stop other MEN from thinking everything short of violent rape at knifepoint somehow doesn’t count or is ok.  That will lower the rape rate far more than anything the victims do.

Thanks, Other Orange.  Some people thought I was crazy, but I think it worked pretty well over the years.

My parents gave me the same message again and again growing up, and I took it to heart just as your daughter did. I have called them a few times (never in a truly dire situation, just dumb ones, lol) and I feel we have a strong and trusting relationship.

Same here.  And I was in a lot more dumb situations than my daughter ever was. 

I’ve read a lot on this thread about what we teach our daughters on how to keep safe.  I find myself asking, though, “What do we teach our sons?” I don’t have a son, but wouldn’t one way of eventually making all of us with vaginas safer be teaching our sons that sex without clear consent is rape?  You do not ever ever EVER take advantage of a girl/woman when she is drunk, tired, not into it, naive, christian, virginal, confused, asleep, young, old, alone, in company, with friends, with strangers, etc. etc.

Why do so many men grow up thinking any of the above is acceptable?  What are people teaching their little boys??

Rape Culture......that comment itself loses 90% of your audience.  Unfortunately for your movement, there is a very small minority that believes we live in a rape culture, so by saying something inflammatory like this, 90% of the country immediately tunes out.  In addition, it is impossible to read any of your posts or a book like this without coming to the conclusion that you despise heterosexual men....strike 2.  Finally, unless you are willing to have an honest debate about rape, which includes the false rape epidemic, or the female predators that lurk everywhere in our schools, you lose credibility and are revealed to be the propaganda pushers that you are.

In addition, it is impossible to read any of your posts or a book like this without coming to the conclusion that you despise heterosexual men....strike 2.

I am a heterosexual man.  You, on the other hand, are a freakin’ psycho.

I guess I had better tell my boyfriend that I hate him before we get married.  I wouldn’t want there to be any confusion.

Is “h0tr0d” a bad joke?  Criminally stupid?  Should be banned for life from everything?

Ew, Bush voter.

no amount of evidence collection - the existence of semen or a Ferrari - prove the defense.

Defendants never have to, and never should have to, prove themselves innocent IN COURT.

That doesn’t mean I expect every woman to prove her rape before I believe her myself. 

As for the “Car” analogy - its not really good because Cars have titles.  If you give someone a car you have to sign your title over to them.  So, if you accuse someone of stealing your car and they claim you gave it to them, then there is an EASY first test.  Do they have the title?  If yes, then you will have your charges thrown out, tout suite, unless you have serious evidence that it was indeed stolen.  If not, then you are right that they will assume the car is stolen.

I, for one, would like to avoid mandatory paperwork for sex.

Dum de dum, readin’ the responses…

I dunno, fake-liberal-guy.

Oh snap!  I totally got zinged!  How will I ever recover from being called “fake-liberal-guy” by “INTPagan?”

Are you 12?

You really aren’t worth conversing with

...which apparently is no deterrent to you…

“And if a woman is actually stupid enough to believe a guy when he says that he will rape her, she deserves to be raped.”

...since if you don’t like my words you’ll just put some in my mouth.

You are not worth conversing with

You said that already.  Quit conversing with me, if it’s so beneath you.

I thought the problem was that this young lady in question could not receive justice from our legal system as it stands.

If you think that’s what the post is about, you really need to work on your reading comprehension. Also, did you actually read the letter? Her current boyfriend is acting like she cheated on him because she was raped by this guy. Basically, no one believes that she didn’t consent. Sending the rapist to jail is sort of the least of her worries. She just wants to never be in the same time and place as the guy ever again and have her boyfriend believe her when she says it wasn’t consensual.

So the post is about why the rapist felt entitled to continue and impose his will on the victim, despite her repeated statements that she didn’t want to and her physically pushing him away and about why no one treats an event like this as if it were a crime.

That Amanda thinks the woman might have a legal case was basically a parenthetical statement to the whole post. And you turn that into, “Feminists think men out to be arrested and sent to jail for even thinking about rape, which might not really be rape.”

“Gypsy, you’re completely wrong about me. “

Uh huh.  Tell me again how victims are just too damn irrational to talk to, but also how you’re so persecuted when you speak up. Be sure to use some needlessly insulting language and “scare quotes” as well.

backpeddaling now doesn’t erase what you posted earlier.

“Rape Culture......that comment itself loses 90% of your audience.  Unfortunately for your movement, there is a very small minority that believes we live in a rape culture, so by saying something inflammatory like this, 90% of the country immediately tunes out. “

Also known as the “I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m very privileged, so you have to listen to me” troll.

The rest is like a run down of the most desperate Malignant Rape Apologist “oh my god the chicks are onto us!” cribs notes.

perhaps im just thickheaded, most likely the case, but I just dont get it other orange. Propery theft results in a transfer of property, he now has something of mine that you can see. Murder results in a body, no body no murder unless there is a ton of evidence pointing to murder, either way there is evidence. I just really dont get at the end of the day how this works in a criminal case with zero evidence outside of the testimony of the victim and the accused. You say I did it, I say I didnt, then what? I want womens words to be valued more, I want the word of any adult to be worth as much as possible, only problem with that in this scenario is that the words of the victim and the accused are worth the exact same in my little world. How do you remove reasonable doubt from that? I get the “why would she lie/it takes a lot to come forward” side of it but it just isnt adding all the way up in my mostly befuddled mind.

as backwards as i can sometimes be though I still dont get why some people cant differentiate between the dry, legal side of things and the rape culture we live in. For some reason they conflate the ideas in my first pargraph with the whole argument and cant seem to see that the legal side, though to me a fascinating question, is but a small part of what needs to be done to our entire culture.

the ex was going to get away with rape because the system wouldn’t convict him, because he only implicitly threatened rape and the system is rigged to let him off.

As I understand the Dan Savage letter, the ex took out his penis, yanked down her pants, and inserted said penis inside her despite her protests. Nothing implicit about that.

The core concern here is that the system might not convict him of rape for several reasons, including: the fact (based on her story) that she stopped fighting and gave in; that her protests were somehow not strong enough; that she she had a prior sexual relationship with him; etc; and that she’s too humiliated and confused to go to the police. Those are indeed problems—exactly the problems Amanda and others are trying to convey here.

That is the core debate. But since you tried to shift it to a question of threat vs. action, I also pointed out that threats of extortion and blackmail are prosecuted, too, if the evidence warrants it. And I entertained your irrelevant hypotheticals as a bonus:

It’s not like yelling fire in a crowded theater, because there is no crowd.

Your hypothetical described someone on an airline, which does involve a crowd (and witnesses), so the relevance of o.W. Holmes’ classic to the hypothetical is valid. The relevance of the hypothetical to the case of rape described by Savage remains to be seen.

The bomb on a plane hypothetical was a direct reference to the incident a week or two ago where a Muslim family was thrown off a plane because of casual talk.

Again, in your second hypothetical a crowd is present, with plenty of witnesses.

Since you’re being deliberately obtuse, Lrob, and don’t have the good sense of P.A.T. to cut his losses, I’ll tell you what I suspect that you, he, MRAs, Amanda’s NiceGuys®, and Randian men are really worried about: that you’ll have a few drinks with a girl (maybe an ex), find yourself alone with her, be your manly dominant self, and get falsely accused of rape by the crazy bitch the next day. And since there’s no crowd or witnesses to corroborate your counter-claim that she’s lying, you might very well be sunk.

I’ll be glad to grant you that schoolboy fear, but some men choose the more rewarding path of calculating the odds of that happening (slim), trying to mitigate risk (basically by acting like a bloody grownup and treating the woman as more than a prop or object), and moving forward despite the wisps of fear that might remain.

OK...let the lynching begin.  Just so you can tune your slander, I voted for Obama, and have voted for a democrat in every presidential election except when Carter was up for re-election.  I have a wife, a mother, a daughter and 3 sisters, just so you know I have an interest in eliminating rape.  I just think your dishonest methods reek of propaganda.

That up above is another tried and true liberalrob technique. He picks whichever commenter is being “mean” to him and posts a bunch of comments complaining about how you cannot have a rational debate with someone who engages in personal attacks like that and acting like we hurt his feelings, and somehow never gets around to responding to all the counterarguments presented to his arguments (either by the “mean” commenter or anyone else).

But imagine, angulimala, that a quick retort of “oh you were just silly and forgot to give me the title! I mean, you were drunk and couldn’t find it at that second and were going to order a replacement like monday morning from the DMV!” was actually an adequate defense for stealing the car. That the police called YOU stupid and drilled you about the conversation and whether or not you were drunk and how much you drank and why’d you start drinking with someone when they wanted to have your car? Of course we don’t do that, because it’d be ridiculous, but that IS how we treat rape victims.

OK...let the lynching begin.  Just so you can tune your slander, I voted for Obama, and have voted for a democrat in every presidential election except when Carter was up for re-election.  I have a wife, a mother, a daughter and 3 sisters, just so you know I have an interest in eliminating rape.  I just think your dishonest methods reek of propaganda.

So fucking what?  There are a lot of misogynist Democratic fuckwits with mothers (most of them), sisters and daughters.  Being surrounded by women (and not learning a damn thing) doesn’t give you an extra clue.

“OK...let the lynching begin.”

Also known as the “I’m such a victim!” troll.

“ Just so you can tune your slander, I voted for Obama, and have voted for a democrat in every presidential election except when Carter was up for re-election. I have a wife, a mother, a daughter and 3 sisters, just so you know I have an interest in eliminating rape. “

being on the left is no magical talisman against being a rape apologist. And you made clear that you have absolutely no interest in stemming rape, as evidenced by your focus on phantoms and lies, rather than the topic at hand.

“ I just think your dishonest methods reek of propaganda.”

Your flat out lies reek of misogyny.

angulimala: Defendants never have to, and never should have to, prove themselves innocent IN COURT.

I take it you’ve never heard of an affirmative defense? Let this be a lesson in why you never make a “never” statement in an area that is outside of your education or employment. If you kill someone, it is a defense that you acted in self-defense. The burden of proof is on you, not the prosecution - they proved you killed someone, now you prove why you were justified… e.g. “prove yourself innocent IN COURT.”

That doesn’t mean I expect every woman to prove her rape before I believe her myself.

How kind of you.

As for the “Car” analogy - its not really good because Cars have titles.  If you give someone a car you have to sign your title over to them.  So, if you accuse someone of stealing your car and they claim you gave it to them, then there is an EASY first test.  Do they have the title?  If yes, then you will have your charges thrown out, tout suite, unless you have serious evidence that it was indeed stolen.  If not, then you are right that they will assume the car is stolen.

Sure. Then you can keep your car, but may I borrow your television, computer, and as much cash as you can lay your hands on? And if I am later convicted of theft of those items, you’ll claim that the prosecutors, judge, jury (and you, the victim) are insane?
Stop being a pedantic jackass. You know as well as I do that the argument is about consent and proof of consent, not over a car’s title or existence of semen.

I, for one, would like to avoid mandatory paperwork for sex.

Then stop claiming that rape through coercion or threat is less of a crime.

Counter arguments ?  That’s funny....there aren’t any.  Name calling is all you get here.

gypsy lee, do you have anything intelligent to say, or is rhetoric all you know ?

“ Name calling is all you get here. “

When you parrot Malignant Rape Apologist talking points (of course without any evidence), then yes, people are going to call you a rape apologist. 

It’s not really our problem that you don’t like it.

I’m sure it’s going to be said, but just in case dan2 is arguing in good faith, here goes. In the event of a rape, the result is a woman who has been raped. That the rape culture warps fucking everything so that people, by and large, don’t believe that a woman who has been raped even exists is neither true nor her fault.

Counter arguments ?  That’s funny....there aren’t any.  Name calling is all you get here.

There’s a vigorous and detailed discussion going on around you, and you’re not involved in it and never will be, because all you wanted to do was barge in here, insult everyone, and wallow in self-pity when no one took you seriously. Congratulations, people smarter than you acknowledged your existence. And you’re right that all you’re going to get here is name-calling, because even that is more than you deserve.

I take it you’ve never heard of an affirmative defense? Let this be a lesson in why you never make a “never” statement in an area that is outside of your education or employment. If you kill someone, it is a defense that you acted in self-defense. The burden of proof is on you, not the prosecution - they proved you killed someone, now you prove why you were justified… e.g. “prove yourself innocent IN COURT.” (emphasis added)

My 25 years in the legal profession may prove this wrong, but I believe in a criminal case the burden of proof is on the STATE (i.e. prosecution).  Affirmative defenses aside, that doesn’t shift the burden.

Unfortunately for your movement, there is a very small minority that believes we live in a rape culture, so by saying something inflammatory like this, 90% of the country immediately tunes out.

90% is harsh. But 70% of the country immediately tunes out if presented with any statement the requires a reading comprehension and abstract conceptualisation level greater than that of an 8th grader. And another 20% tune out anything that disrupts their happy fantasies of 1950s suburbia.

In addition, it is impossible to read any of your posts or a book like this without coming to the conclusion that you despise heterosexual men

As I understand it, Amanda has a live-in boyfriend. Also, the posts here are generally sex-positive, and have moved beyond Boomer-style militant feminism.

Finally, unless you are willing to have an honest debate about rape, which includes the false rape epidemic, or the female predators that lurk everywhere in our schools

An epidemic, eh? Epidemics, even social ones touching on criminal behaviour, are usually well documented. Your citation, please…

And female predators lurking everywhere in our schools? Beyond a few press sensations like Mary Kate Letourneau, I’m not familiar with this other epidemic. Tell us more, Mr. “Disappointed Lifelong Democrat.”

“Rape Culture......that comment itself loses 90% of your audience.  Unfortunately for your movement, there is a very small minority that believes we live in a rape culture, so by saying something inflammatory like this, 90% of the country immediately tunes out.”

I don’t know, close to 300 comments in this thread, the book sales are slightly more in one month than a Mary Higgins Clark book sold earlier that year on Amazon, and that it isn’t alone in its category tells me that it hasn’t alienated 90% of the country. It alienated you, all right, someone reportedly interested in reducing rape.

“In addition, it is impossible to read any of your posts or a book like this without coming to the conclusion that you despise heterosexual men....strike 2.”

Gee, I hadn’t come to that conclusion from the initial post, the book or this entire thread. I took it to mean Amanda and others here despise rapists and love their partners who don’t rape. They don’t think that rape is normal behavior. I’d take your comment here to mean that you feel the male in the linked Dan Savage article acted completely normally, which is very troubling.

“Finally, unless you are willing to have an honest debate about rape, which includes the false rape epidemic, or the female predators that lurk everywhere in our schools, you lose credibility and are revealed to be the propaganda pushers that you are.”

for probably the 80 billionth time since I’ve been on Pandagaon, this basically comes down to “you’re trying to have a conversation about a topic I don’t like! you need to talk about a topic that effects ME! MY fear of females falsely accusing me of rape! Or female rapists! Why aren’t you talking about that, huh huh? Me me me!!” How exactly WOULD discussing female false accusers advance this discussion in that slightest? Do you deny that females aren’t taught to view themselves as withholding sex and men just need to ‘convince’ them to “put out”? (charming phrase as case in point)

Theaetetus,

If you kill someone, it is a defense that you acted in self-defense. The burden of proof is on you, not the prosecution - they proved you killed someone, now you prove why you were justified… e.g. “prove yourself innocent IN COURT.”

Are you saying that if a woman accuses a man of rape that any evidence of sex should be assumed to be rape unless he can prove it was consentual? 

Then stop claiming that rape through coercion or threat is less of a crime.

I never did such a thing.

kac90b: My 25 years in the legal profession may prove this wrong, but I believe in a criminal case the burden of proof is on the STATE (i.e. prosecution).  Affirmative defenses aside, that doesn’t shift the burden.

The “affirmative defenses aside” is a bit silly since the affirmative defenses were the point, not an aside. Affirmative defenses shift the burden of proof to the DEFENSE (i.e. defendant). But your 25 years in the legal profession aside…

Are you saying that if a woman accuses a man of rape that any evidence of sex should be assumed to be rape unless he can prove it was consentual?

How about… yes! Because she’s saying it’s not consensual.

If we (as Twisty posited some time back) stopped assuming that all women were automatically in consent mode, this kind of thing would make a lot of sense.

*How many cop shows each week, how many Law & Order and CSI spinoffs and clones deal with rape cases every other week?  And always always always it is presented in the most negative light possible.  I think this is an area where feminism can claim great success, in terms of getting the message out. *

Oh, and liberalrod, I’m not so sure this is a big triumph for feminists.  If anything it points to the ubiquity of rape and even normalizes it.  While we may see rape in a negative light in these shows, we also, simultaneously, see victim after victim, women’s bodies beaten, mutilated, half-clothed, etc. which reinforces the totally pervasive fear and almost defeatist “it’s just a matter of time” attitude among women, passed down from mother to daughter often.  This fear is nearly a COMMON DENOMINATOR among women since we are caught in the double bind of self-protection and knowledge vs. defeat and expectation. 
The fear of rape is one of the most defining aspects of holding the gender identity of “woman” and it shapes our experiences and it curtails behavior.  You cannot deny that there is a RAPE Culture.  How do you think they get all of those “true” stories for all your Law and Order shows?  Because it happens all the freakin’ time.  And remember, those shows just tell the stories where there was police involvement. 
Oh, and who normally solves the crimes?  Our male heroes and protectors!  thank goodness for them!
Oh, and who calls that shit entertainment? ...

Theaetetus on 01/12 at 05:15 PM

Theatetus:  Please excuse my post above—I believe I misread your post about affirmative defenses.  You are correct, obviously.  If you assert an affirmative defense of self-defense, the burden of proof is certainly on you, the defendant, to prove it.

So sorry.  Carry on!

I’m going to second an above comment (and offer an example to dan2, just in case he’s asking in good faith.)

The “evidence,” so to speak, is the woman who’s been raped. In some cases, but not all, there’s also a rape kit, or evidence of an assault like torn clothes or bruises. There’s sworn testimony of witnesses, which is considered “proof” in a legal sense. In a case like the one that started this thread, you could probably get statements from other partygoers present that night.

And liberalrob, when you say this: I don’t actually care what a convicted rapist thinks, he’s clearly insane and/or sociopathic. 

...I think you miss a point that feminists make again and again: that calling rapists “insane” makes it seem as if the normal, everyday guys at your work or your friends’ house or the bar down the street couldn’t possibly be rapists. This contributes to the low reporting of rapes, the accompanying disbelief when a rape accusation is made (the “but he’s such a nice boy” excuse) and the general sense that only someone fucked-up and “crazy” and abnormal could rape. But our culture breeds and then excuses rapists, and they’re out there among the so-called “normal” guys- plenty of the women on this thread alone have said that it was an intimate partner or a trusted friend who committed the crime.

My 25 years in the legal profession may prove this wrong, but I believe in a criminal case the burden of proof is on the STATE (i.e. prosecution).  Affirmative defenses aside, that doesn’t shift the burden.

Usually in an affirmative defense, the defendant affirms the basic facts of the case, thereby relieving the state of its burden. The burden of proof is then on the defendant to prove his defense, though not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but either by a preponderance of the evidence or by clear and convincing evidence. I would guess if the basic facts of the case somehow were not affirmed by the defendant, you would then have two burdens of proof, one on the prosecution to prove disputed facts and one on the defendant to prove the affirmative defense.

How about… yes! Because she’s saying it’s not consensual.

Ok.

What would you consider to be acceptable evidence that sex was consentual?

Whoops, we worked that out. Sorry.

Liz:  See my above mea culpa.  Misread original post.  Pretty sure these new bifocals are not doing me any favors!  :(

kanichen,
I appreciate the willingness on your part to go with good faith. Sometimes it clicks for me and seems very clear but other times doubts creep in the more I read and the more I’m exposed to at my layperson level of legal understanding. I understand as much as possible given my own history, age and gendered upbringing, about rape culture and try and read a lot from various sources but at this moment in time its just not clicking.

This is a small part of the huge amount of things that need to be done and changed in our culture. On this specific topic of the legal part of it, you say the result is “a woman who has been raped”. Try as I might I cant not see that differently than a murdered body as far as evidence of a crime. The result of a mugging is the transfer of who has the wallet that you can see, the result of a murder is a body you can see. Im sure you could throw other crimes into this that might help my understanding of your point though I would not ask that of you nor do I deserve it. The result you mentioned implies the crime took place, something I pretty much always assume to be true given what ive seen in this world but in a courthouse those assumptions should go out the window. If a rape takes place, you know it did, I know it did but the victim waits a day week or month to file charges and no evidence is taken or presented I just dont see how the rapist gets convicted given the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. Is there any way other than making the words of the victim definitively outweigh by far the words of the accused? In this case there doesnt seem to be. Its very frustrating but I do think our system, as far as how I understand the rights of the accused, is a good one. Im not sure how to change it.

Gah, this is to me an interesting question I just sometimes get a bit too much into it, especially the power of accusations against other oppressed groups in the court system but its just a small part of the rape culture, seems like theres no good place to start sometimes, its so overwhelming.

How exactly WOULD discussing female false accusers advance this discussion in that slightest?

Per h0tr0d, it’s an “epidemic” that far outweighs actual cases of rape. Now do you see why it’s so important?

Seriously, this irrational fear of false accusations is a roadsign to the real issue: these guys are frightened of living, breathing women with their own agency (or, in their view, gold-diggers, psychos and sluts who use sex to get what they want, and make false accusations of rape if they’re denied). There’s also a whole twisted Madonna-Whore aspect to this worldview, sometimes supported by religious fantasism, but I’ll let others take that one up.

I love Law & Order, but I hate Law & Order.

That episode with the woman who killed her kidnapper / rapist was so rancid. She had books in her apartment! So clearly she was making up her affirmative defense! And she only got off because the jury was racist! Ugh.

Ah, and then there was the charming episode where a woman was being stalked and attacked by this terrible stalker guy. She finally fabricated some evidence just to get the cops to take her seriously, so - when she finally dies - they just assume it was another fabricated attempt gone wrong. Nothing to see here! Move along!

Then there was that he said / she said episode where she showed up in his apartment in sexy (and unlikely) lingerie! And then supposedly got raped! Do you think she was lying?! Who can say!! *headdesk*

Come to think of it, the only time I can remember L&O;dealing with rape in a way I really approved of was when a woman was raped in prison (?). The female assistant to Waterson (I think it was Abby, my favorite) was going after her on the stand, when the rape victim shouts that she was ashamed and she accepted “favors” from the prison guard so that it wouldn’t “really” be rape. And Carmichael (assuming it was Abby) has a ohmigod moment and realizes that she feels the same way about HER rape.

But, other than that, L&O;is a little too conservative jack-off when it comes to the rape issue. They spun off SVU, but it’s just as bad sometimes - I had to stop watching because I am afraid that Stabler will come through my TV and murder me while I’m sleeping. (That was a joke, people.)

thanks for the example other orange, makes sense to me, especially in the specific case you were talking about. I just wonder about cases where there arent witnesses/other evidence.

The affirmative defense talk was very interesting and seems to me like it could have some interesting applications in rape prosecutions though due to really having zero legal acumen Im not sure how it might impinge on the rights of the accused, Ive have seen many posts/a few articles in the past advocating having to actively prove it wasnt rape but Im not sure how that will work.

Ill bow out now, thanks for the post/info, off to amazon to pick this book up.

I do have a suggestion for all the guys living in daily fear of false rape accusations: stop having sex with women.

I mean, if we’re supposed to stay indoors and never drink again to avoid getting raped (not that it’d actually help) then they ought to be willing to take steps as well.

Are you saying that if a woman accuses a man of rape that any evidence of sex should be assumed to be rape unless he can prove it was consentual?

Yes, that is it exactly!  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

To think otherwise is to assert that the default mode of women is to consent to sex.  That every woman out there is by default consenting to sex with all comers, until and unless she says “no”. Doesn’t that sound a little fucked up?

Or at least stop having sex with women who haven’t signed a statement to that effect.

And dan2, thanks. Genuine questions are always welcome, and I hope we on this thread have made sense to you.

Hope you get a lot out of the book.

To think otherwise is to assert that the default mode of women is to consent to sex.  That every woman out there is by default consenting to sex with all comers, until and unless she says “no”. Doesn’t that sound a little fucked up?

Ok, but now let me follow up and ask what kind of evidence you would accept from someone trying to prove consent?

I’m not being difficult.  I just want to ask these questions so I know what you are saying so I don’t burn down a strawman responding to you.

The wheels are turning now, because of the idea that a woman saying she was raped is enough to bring a case or a get a conviction. Where else would we do that? If someone shows up at a hospital with fresh bruises and says, “X assaulted me,” X gets interrogated. If X says, “It’s not an assault, he agreed to have a boxing match with me . . .no, I don’t have any witnesses. . .” I think X gets arrested, and tried if a plea agreement fails. (Still probably a tough case.) If a woman shows up at a hospital, the rape kit is positive, there’s minor vaginal tearing, and says, “X raped me,” and X says, “No, it was consensual,” does X get arrested? Maybe. But I bet it doesn’t go much further than that. In the first example, people think, “Oh he’s just covering for the fact that he beat up this guy. WHat an asshole.” But in the second example? People think, “Well, maybe it was consensual.”

That’s why it’s a rape culture.

kac90b: So sorry.  Carry on!

No problem. My apologies for snarking in response.

If I tell you to give me your wallet ‘voluntarily’ or else I’ll beat the fuck out of you and take it, have I somehow not committed a robbery?

You have, dan, but you probably won’t be convicted of it.

Also, did you actually read the letter?

Yes, chingona, I did, though not very carefully.  I think Amanda summarized it well enough for the discussion, which is really more about Amanda’s review.

That up above is another tried and true liberalrob technique. He picks whichever commenter is being “mean” to him and posts a bunch of comments complaining about how you cannot have a rational debate with someone who engages in personal attacks like that and acting like we hurt his feelings, and somehow never gets around to responding to all the counterarguments presented to his arguments (either by the “mean” commenter or anyone else).

Holy moly, if I responded to each and every comment in detail it’d be a mile long!  (Longer than they are already.) I pick the ones that stand out to me as ones I want to respond to.  I’m sorry if I skipped yours; somehow a couple dozen comments come in while I’m typing in my next response.  INTPagan pissed me off and so got my special attention.  Here’s your last post to me that I saw:

That Amanda thinks the woman might have a legal case was basically a parenthetical statement to the whole post. And you turn that into, “Feminists think men out to be arrested and sent to jail for even thinking about rape, which might not really be rape.”

I wonder sometimes, but that’s not what I said at any point.  I never said anything about thinking about rape; it was about talking about, threatening rape, and whether that should be equated with actual rape in terms of the law.  I actually was rather hawkish on that, if you saw; several times I brought up that the threat might be to all intents as harmful as the act.  I just want to make damn sure we’ve got the goods, if we’re going to be writing laws to put people in jail.  And all I tried to do with respect to the Dan Savage letter was point out that we’re making a whole ton of assumptions on our way to railroading this ex for rape.  Yeah, if we take everything as given then it’s pretty clear-cut, and it makes us feel good to rightfully condemn the bad guy.  But if our assumptions are wrong at any point?  Well, we won’t worry about that.  Any alternative cases?  We won’t worry about those either.  We know what the situation is.

dan2, d’you think that maybe women don’t report being raped because they have every reason to believe that there will not be a presumption that she has in fact been raped?  Look at what happens to women who report being raped, whether by famous people or not.  In all but a very few cases the presumption is that in fact no crime has taken place.  Even when there is very strong evidence that there was.  Go read up on cases like the girl in Orange County (mentioned above) where the perpetrators filmed themselves in the act of doing a number of awful things I’d rather not repeat.  Pay close attention to what happened to the victim.  Her name and picture, where she lived, where she went to school, all these things were made public by people involved with the defense despite all kinds of laws and legal rulings that prohibit exactly those things.  She was forced to watch the video of herself being raped, she was harrassed inside and outside of the court room, she changed schools at least once.  It’s not just the rape, it’s everything else.  It’s all the people who will think that she’s been ruined (like herself) because some nice respectable young men fucked her while she was unconscious.  Read the comments at Dan Savage’s column.  This is what we mean by the rape culture.  Despite all the evidence, there are people who believe that the girl in Orange County deserved it somehow.  That the perpetrators of the crime against her should go unpunished because why ruin their lives?  Just because hers was?  Yes, absolutely we have to start assuming that A Woman Who Has Been Raped is a real thing.  The presumption has to be that if a woman says she has been raped that she in fact has.  Men who rape women need to fear that if they do, they will go to prison.  Women have lived in fear for… ever.  Men should get to carry some too as a way to start balancing out that historical injustice.

angulimala: Ok, but now let me follow up and ask what kind of evidence you would accept from someone trying to prove consent?

What kind of evidence should a court accept from me to prove consent when you accuse me of stealing your television and I claim you gave it to me? My word? Evidence from my neighbors of my good reputation for honesty? Evidence from your neighbors of your poor reputation for lying?

These are all standard acceptable pieces of evidence and would be acceptable in a case to prove consent to engage in sex.

Note what is not included: evidence that you have given other people gifts. Likewise, evidence that a rape victim has previously engaged in consensual sex is not probative to whether she consented this time. Like you giving a gift to someone else, it’s irrelevant.

If you don’t agree, that’s ok, and I’ll stop pressing the point, but I think that for some men, rape isn’t about power, and until we change the paradigm to enthusiastic consent being the only consent possible, they’ll think that they’re excluded from any discussions about it.

I think that for these men, sex is about power and conquest.  I think back to the book Guyland, where Michael Kimmel had a young man saying that he fantasizes about telling his friends that he got with girl X while having sex with her---the bragging points is the pleasure, not the sex nor the intimacy.  And so rape and sex become one thing.

Liz, yes. That’s a pretty good summary.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about as far as who gets raped and who rapes- think about the examples on the news where elderly women in a nursing home were raped by a younger male orderly or staff member. Why can people immediately see that as rape, but when confronted with a similar situation with a younger woman, they go “uhhh, maybe it was consensual ?” Because our entire society thinks of women in terms of their sexual value, as determined by a misogynist culture.

liberalrob: “If I tell you to give me your wallet ‘voluntarily’ or else I’ll beat the fuck out of you and take it, have I somehow not committed a robbery?”

You have, dan, but you probably won’t be convicted of it.

But you said earlier: Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat? I know we can agree between you and me that of course it’s coercion because of the implied threat; but is that the same as actual rape? (emphasis mine)

Apparently, if the situation is rape, you don’t believe that the perpetrator has committed the same crime, questions of likelihood of conviction aside. But if it’s robbery, you do. Interesting…

Liz, yes. That’s a pretty good summary.

Seconded.

kac90b: Is “h0tr0d” a bad joke?  Criminally stupid?

Trollus genericus, the common troll in his natural habitat. Really, we need bingo cards. We are already at “you are mean to me” with liberalrob.

Name calling is all you get here.

Mr 00, you are a troll. Name-calling is what you are here for. We are just being nice enough to oblige.

There is some kind of example here for those who have trouble believing that consensual BDSM exists.

liberalrob, I understand your concern about the justice system, but we don’t have to change laws, we have to change perspective. If the victim says he was assaulted, but the defendant says that the injuries are from some sort of sporting activity, and neither has any witnesses, what happens? Most people vote to convict, because they think the idea of someone just making up an assault is ridiculous. You may think that’s wrong if there’s no corroborating evidence, but most jurors are going to view the victim’s statement as credible, and the defendant’s excuse as lame. Rape victims don’t get the same treatment. They are viewed as more likely to be lying, or to have “misunderstood”, even though rape is falsely reported only as often as any other serious crime. That discrepancy is the problem.

It’s also hard to go way back upthread to find people I’ve missed, so I hope gracchus is appropriately impressed that I took the time to go back and answer him:

As I understand the Dan Savage letter, the ex took out his penis, yanked down her pants, and inserted said penis inside her despite her protests. Nothing implicit about that.

Here’s what Amanda said:

And because of this, men who cross the line from, as in this case, mere badgering to making it clear to their victim that her options are non-injurious or potentially injurious rape, and when that happens, we end up condoning that as well, straining to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt, saying he just overdid it out of passion, and ignoring that he was on a power trip.

All emphasis mine.  So that’s where I got the “implicit threat” scenario.  It appears that was a misreading of the Dan Savage letter by Amanda, which I propagated.  I apologize for that; but within the context of the (flawed) reading, if you would allow it to stand, I think I made some good points.

Your hypothetical described someone on an airline, which does involve a crowd (and witnesses), so the relevance of o.W. Holmes’ classic to the hypothetical is valid.

That is an assumption of yours, an assumption I did not state.  The airplane could have been devoid of other passengers, or all other passengers could have been immersed in their own tasks; the presence or absence of other witnesses was unstated.  So the relevance of O.W. Holmes classic to my hypothetical is, again, invalid.  You made a new hypothetical and attributed it to me so you could dismiss mine.

Since you’re being deliberately obtuse

Tell me more about what I’m thinking and what my motivations are…

what I suspect that you, he, MRAs, Amanda’s NiceGuys®, and Randian men are really worried about: that you’ll have a few drinks with a girl (maybe an ex), find yourself alone with her, be your manly dominant self, and get falsely accused of rape by the crazy bitch the next day. And since there’s no crowd or witnesses to corroborate your counter-claim that she’s lying, you might very well be sunk.

Since you are apparently a lawyer, tell me:  is that not something to be afraid of?  I have to laugh at the crack about my “manly, dominant self;” I am pretty far from that.

Amanda writes that the victim understands her choices to be non-injurious or potentially injurious rape. Liberalrob, you take that to mean “implicit threat.” How is non-injurious rape an implicit threat? It’s rape. Her choices are fight and maybe get beat up and raped or not fight and not get beat up but still get raped. How does that turn into “merely” the threat of rape? And can you really imagine actually having consenual sex with someone who has just threatened to rape you? Have sex with me or I’ll rape you. There is, quite literally, no way for what comes afterward to be an act engaged in of your own free will. By very definition, the sex was coerced.

liberalrob: Since you are apparently a lawyer, tell me:  is that not something to be afraid of?

Are you equally terrified of receiving birthday gifts, on the grounds that the giver may accuse you of theft the next day and you’ll be forced to defend yourself using only your word? A reasonable person would not, but then, a reasonable person doesn’t usually receive gifts without being sure they’re gifts. Applying the concept to being sure of the other party’s consent to sex should be a trivial step. For a reasonable person.

This is a serious reply.  I think technology offers a way out here.  Portable camcorders -FLIP-, phones with video capability and audio recording are available.  It wont change the culture but being equipped with devices that can take the “he said she said” out of the picture may be all we have left and allow for prosecution of the guilty or protection of innocent.  In the Savage case, a lot of parking lots have security cameras and the footage would show a struggle here so the case could be proven.  The burden isnt on only women to change their behavior either. Both genders should carry.

Since you are apparently a lawyer, tell me:  is that not something to be afraid of?  I have to laugh at the crack about my “manly, dominant self;” I am pretty far from that.

Maybe, but you are quite obviously an arrogant asshole. Typical trolling:
Troll says: Something ridiculous.
Everyone else says: You’re an asshole!
Toll says: But you just didn’t understand.

Going back to the beginning…
Read the Savage Love article.  And then read the totally messed-up postings by all the people blatently or covertly blaming, in one way or another, the 18-year-old woman who was raped.
I don’t know how anyone can deny that THIS is a rape culture.

Well put, Theaetetus.  See, liberalrob, this is why feminists are so keen on enthusiastic consent. Men who are afraid of false accusations should realize that enthusiastic consent is their friend, too.

<<Since you are apparently a lawyer, tell me:  is that not something to be afraid of?>>

Actually, no, it’s not something you have to be afraid of. Because most women don’t arbitrarily decide to levy rape charges against men, just for the fuck of it.

Look, a man rapes a woman, and he gets some benefit: he orgasms, he gets revenge against women who’ve refused him, it’s a power trip, it’s exciting. It’s fun!

A woman lodges a rape accusation against a man: She gets a lengthy and painful medical exam, gets interrogated about her sex life, what she did to put herself in that situation, she’s seen as damaged goods, a liar, overreacting, or just not understanding the rules of this world ("boys will be boys"), and she takes days off from her job or school for a rape trial (if it goes that far).

Seems like it’s more fun to rape than accuse someone of rape, doesn’t it? I mean, I’d rather do something that gave me an orgasm and an ego boost than get GYN exam followed by weeks stuck in a court room. So who is more likely to lie about it in a he said/she said situation?

So, Rob, if you never, ever rape a woman, your chances of being accused of the crime are astronomically low. Because while there are women who freak over rejection, or who bitch about what a lousy lay their date was, few women go through the process of accusing someone of rape just for the pure joy of it. I can absolutely guarantee you that if you never rape a girl or woman, your chances of being accused, let alone convicted, of a rape is far less than your chance of getting struck by lightning.

So rest easy! While girls and women the world over fear rape and arrange their day to day lives around personal safety concerns, and have that little tinge of uncertainty every time they date or are alone with a man or accept a ride from a male acquaintance, you can go blissfully through life without ever having a reasonable fear of either being raped or being the victim of a false rape accusation. Now, whether you can go through life without the fear of a legitimate rape accusation is all up to you! Just don’t rape chicks, and you’re home free. It’s so simple, really: you can almost completely eliminate any danger to yourself just by not being a rapist.

Or trespassing, maybe: My place, my rules. You smoke only on the balcony and if I say leave, you leave. Still, “my house” = property.

Not related to rape, really, but in Seattle at least, this isn’t true. I once had a party and had allowed in certain guests I shouldn’t. When they were drunk and causing trouble and refusing to leave I called the cops. They told me if i invited them in, there was nothing I could do, unless he was committing a crime, and being a drunken asshole is apparently not a crime. I asked, “Does this mean if I invite someone to my house for dinner and they move in on my couch, there is nothing I can legally do to get them out?” And they said, “Only give them an eviction notice.”

They left and I had to call a friend that was an ex-gang member come take care of it…

I really don’t understand people who are so concerned about being wrongly accused of rape. I have a LOT of male friends. I have FAR more male friends than female friends. I’m into a lot of really nerdy/geeky stuff and people in my age group and geographic area who share these interests are more likely to be male. I get drunk around these guys, I wear “revealing” clothing around them, I trust them implicitly. I would never EVER fear that one of them would rape me. None of them has EVER mentioned being afraid that a sexual encounter with a woman might be reclassified as rape.

Why? Because they only have sex with women who are obviously into them, and into sex. It’s not just a matter of a lack of no, it’s a matter of a resounding yes.

They are respectful, kind, smart, sexy men and none of them complain about evil women or fret about being falsely accused of rape. It’s interesting how that works, and I think it says a lot about men who DO fret about false rape accusations. Do people, male and female, sling about false accusations of rape? Of course they do… at the same rate that they sling about false accusations of assault, theft, etc. But most folks don’t sit around obsessing about someone maybe falsely accusing them of breaking and entering. I have encountered men, both in person and online, who mention fear of false rape accusations. I generally cool relations with them, assuming (possibly wrongly, but eh) that there is a REASON they have these fears. Sometimes it turns out they have these fears because they have mentally unbalanced ex partners and it’s an understandable fear. Usually, however, it’s revealed that they are just assholes who ultimately view women as sexual objects for their pleasure, and that if the woman isn’t sobbing in terror and clawing at their eyeballs it isn’t really rape.

I mean, seriously. Repeated “nos” and the woman trying to pull her clothing back on and push the man away somehow means she wanted sex? I can not understand that mindset at all.

nmmng: I think technology offers a way out here.  Portable camcorders -FLIP-, phones with video capability and audio recording are available.

Serious reply - frankly, not everyone wishes to have their sexual escapades recorded. I think your heart is in the right place, but in practice, it would not be used. Additionally, it deflects scrutiny of the issue of gray rape towards false accusations, which occur no more often than in other crimes. We don’t require that all gift exchanges be recorded, because false accusations are similarly rare.

Or maybe you shouldn’t be arguing hypotheticals where real people with relevant experience are trying to have a discussion. And then you get all confused that people are angry with you. Pfffft.

This is a serious reply.  I think technology offers a way out here.  Portable camcorders -FLIP-, phones with video capability and audio recording are available.  It wont change the culture but being equipped with devices that can take the “he said she said” out of the picture may be all we have left and allow for prosecution of the guilty or protection of innocent.  In the Savage case, a lot of parking lots have security cameras and the footage would show a struggle here so the case could be proven.  The burden isnt on only women to change their behavior either. Both genders should carry.

Unfortunately, in a rape culture, this just doesn’t work. Note the recent case of the gang-raped that was ON VIDEO and still she wasn’t believed.

I think in this case, even if a video caught everything exactly as she described, ppl would still say she consented. Notice in the Savage thread that ppl are saying not that she is lying about her description of the story, but that per her description, they think that was CONSENT!

Gavel Down -

I don’t know if someone responded or not, but you mentioned that power-tripping is not the goal of the male who is guilty of so-called “grey rape”, as in when he pressures a woman until she gives in.

I can see how you could judge it as how a male would want to have sex, and see sex as the eventual goal, and be ignorant of how exactly consent works.

BUT if you are gettin’ down with someone, and they become ambivalent or uncertain about what they are doing, why WOULD you want to continue?  Sex is a mutual act of pleasure.  Those men who engage in “grey rape”, ARE powertripping.  They’re trying to overcome the woman’s will with their own. They may have started out horny, but at the end it’s all, “I can get her to give it to me if I just do this.” It isn’t about sex.  They get off on having sex, but they also get off on being such macho dudes that they could win over the ladies to get what they want. THAT is a powertrip.

We are already at “you are mean to me” with liberalrob.

Yes you are.  Please stop.

People think, “Well, maybe it was consensual.”

That’s why it’s a rape culture.

Now is where I get flamed for asking “but is that actually true?” Do most people actually assume all sex is consensual, even in the face of a victim claiming it was not?  I don’t know the answer to that.  I guess Amanda would say that they do and it is true.  There are certainly lots of anecdotes, but is it enough to support a blanket claim about the culture?  I’m not ready to go that far.

you are quite obviously an arrogant asshole

Not being said in a mean way, though, right?

Is it wrong that when I saw this post on the main Pandagon page, and saw the huge number of comments it had garnered, my first thought was “Oh, here come the rape apologists!”

I’m sad to say that I was not incorrect.

melaka: BUT if you are gettin’ down with someone, and they become ambivalent or uncertain about what they are doing, why WOULD you want to continue?  Sex is a mutual act of pleasure.  Those men who engage in “grey rape”, ARE powertripping.  They’re trying to overcome the woman’s will with their own. They may have started out horny, but at the end it’s all, “I can get her to give it to me if I just do this.” It isn’t about sex.  They get off on having sex, but they also get off on being such macho dudes that they could win over the ladies to get what they want. THAT is a powertrip.

I believe Gavel’s point was not that it isn’t a powertrip, but that they don’t see it as one - nor do they see sex as a mutual act of pleasure. By saying that rape is solely about power, the rapists-via-coercion say “oh, that’s not me, I’m therefore not a rapist” because they read “power” as “violence,” not as “unequal bargaining positions”.
There was an analogy upthread about haggling over a price at a market - the purpose is to get the item at the lowest price, and though strength of bargaining positions are certainly involved in how successful the debate is, haggling is usually not about dominance. In the same way, “if you love me, you’ll have sex with me” may be about sex, not dominance, even though unequal positions and coercion are still involved. The “Rape Culture” comes from the fact that the majority of society, as exemplified by liberalrob, does not see the latter example as rape.

Men who are afraid of false accusations should realize that enthusiastic consent is their friend, too.

I don’t disagree.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way to go.  But the world is not as I would like it to be.

liberalrob: Now is where I get flamed for… responding only to posts where people call you an arrogant asshole rather than the myriad posts where people patiently answer your questions and shred your arguments.

OK liberalrob, please think for a while why your reaction of saying “Just because he SAID he would rape her if she didn’t consent, did that mean he was GOING to? “ made so many people so angry, so quickly. Think about that shit. That you refuse to do so is what marks you as an arrogant asshole. Think!

liberalrob, you yourself expressed doubts about whether this woman was raped. We have the commenters on Savage Love saying that when she stopped actively resisting that equaled “consent.” Just about everyone here agrees that even if it happened exactly as she said, there is very little chance of him being arrested, much less convicted. The victim herself does not use the word rape, and she keeps APOLOGIZING to her boyfriend for allowing herself to be raped. How much evidence do you need that people tend to assume that sex is consenual, even when the woman says it isn’t?

Is it wrong that when I saw this post on the main Pandagon page, and saw the huge number of comments it had garnered, my first thought was “Oh, here come the rape apologists!”

Let me know when you spot one.

ordered.

great post at 6:23 Liz, makes a lot of sense. I see better now where some of the confusion comes from and your explanation on perspective is great. Will take me some time to mull over and fully internalize as I’m sure is the case with some of the other lurkers here.

It makes total sense to me yet still leaves me asking for particulars in the example you set. You said the victim has “injuries”, that would be evidence of at least some kind of assault right? What if he didnt have any injuries or marks of any kind?  I think I understand that this kind of question might not be relevant to your example but it does tie into a little of what I mentioned earlier about cases with a lack of evidence.  Perhaps more mulling will help with that.

Kaninchen- I hear what youre saying, I’m really trying to fully understand. I totally agree that a woman who has been raped is a real thing. Im with you there, I’m just a little thickheaded it seems in regard to the presumption that if a woman says she has been raped then she has. I agree 100% that should be the case anywhere other than a criminal trial. If she is in the courtroom and her rapist is being prosecuted and the charge is rape we cant automatically assume it took place if we’re sitting in the jury box. Perhaps I’m just wrong or too privileged to see how trying to separate the legal and the social can make sense.  I know they feed into each other and I know that the entirety of rape investigation has to be changed along with the overall culture Im just not sure what should be changed in the actual courtroom. 

As far as balancing historical injustice, I dont know what to say about that other than I feel its better to work on anything in the past that we can but to focus primarily on making things best for everyone now. Dismantling the rape culture benefits all a ton, more and more of my friends are coming to see that even if the initial motivation might be for personal benefit.

liberalrob: I don’t disagree.  As far as I’m concerned, [enthusiastic consent is] the only way to go.  But the world is not as I would like it to be.

Did you just admit here that you have sex without enthusiastic consent, rob? Seriously? I think you did - otherwise, you’d have no fear of false accusations.
I think we now know why liberalrob is so adamant on rape through coercion not being “real” rape.

responding only to posts where people call you an arrogant asshole rather than the myriad posts where people patiently answer your questions and shred your arguments.

I have answered gracchus and chingona in painstaking detail.  I can’t answer everyone, despite how it appears.  I don’t like being called an arrogant asshole, as I don’t consider myself one.  I don’t start all my comments “Amanda, you ignorant slut!”

(That was an SNL reference.  Amanda is not ignorant nor is she a slut.  I feel I have to make these disclaimers just to prevent any misunderstandings...not that it will help with some people.)

liberalrob: I can’t answer everyone

Anyone want to guess a ratio for the number of posts where rob replies to a substantive point vs. the number of points where he complains about a personal attack?

Anyone want to guess a ratio for the number of posts where rob replies to a substantive point vs. the number of points where he complains about a personal attack?

It appears to be about 7:8.

Perhaps, rob, if you don’t want to be accused of cherry-picking your replies, you should reply to the arguments more often than the accusations.

If you don’t want to be called an arrogant asshole, don’t be an arrogant asshole, liberalrob.

I don’t start all my comments “Amanda, you ignorant slut!”

You should have. Would’ve saved a lot of ppl’s time.

liberalrob, you say the world is not as you would like it to be, but you are arguing as if it were. Because YOU think enthusiastic consent is the way to go, you act and argue as if that’s how all men except crazy rapists are. What you are not listening to - what we are trying to tell you with the dozens of personal stories that have been shared here - is that lots of men who are “normal” still rape. And as for enthusiastic consent, even more men who are “normal” don’t wait for it. They might prefer if it was there, but they’ll get theirs one way or the other. And we’re arguing that as long as enthusiastic consent isn’t the standard for EVERYONE, we will have a culture that excuses and dismisses rape. You say you’re not sure we actually do have a rape culture, but you keep not paying attention to the stories shared here. And the reason we are getting so frustrated is not because you don’t agree with us. It’s because you show no evidence of even hearing what we’re saying.

Did you just admit here that you have sex without enthusiastic consent, rob?

OK, seriously, that’s a headdesk moment.

you yourself expressed doubts about whether this woman was raped.

No, chingona, I expressed doubt that it would stand up in court, in the judicial system that Amanda says is compromised.  I thought I was pretty clear that if everything was taken at face value, it was pretty clear-cut that she was.

How much evidence do you need that people tend to assume that sex is consenual, even when the woman says it isn’t?

I didn’t read the comments at Dan Savage’s past the first page.  In any case, I would need a lot more evidence than the commenters there and here to decide if there was a cultural issue one way or the other.

liberalrob, you claim to have answered me in painstaking detail. You claimed this the last time we, uh, talked. And yet both times I feel almost completely ignored. Why might that be? The only time you responded to me directly was when I accused you of wallowing in your hurt feelings. That’s not helping your case. (And no, the issue is not my ego. Lots of others have made very similar points to mine, often more succinctly, and as far as I can tell, you are ignoring them roughly 80 percent of the time, as well.

Here’s my request. If you really are here in good faith, and if you are going to respond to me at all, please don’t respond to this post. Respond to one of the others. There are three or four to choose from.

liberalrob: No, chingona, I expressed doubt that [a rape conviction] would stand up in court

No, you said:
Is that enough to justify a rape conviction, merely stating a threat? I know we can agree between you and me that of course it’s coercion because of the implied threat; but is that the same as actual rape?

You expressed doubt that it was actual rape as opposed to that lesser kind.
Own up to your own comment, dude. It’s right at the top of the page in black and white.

I’m so glad someone else has the patience to go back and actually find the quotes.

liberalrob, you have to read the full example: a victim claims assault, it’s assumed that he’s telling the truth and the defendant is lying; a woman claims rape, and she gets, “oh it’s he said/she said, who knows?” Again, it’s the discrepancy. Odds are equally low that the victim in either case is lying, and it’s the public/institutional reaction that’s instructive.

dan2, my example assumes injuries on the assault victim, (which could be the result of a consensual boxing match), and a positive rape kit and/or minor vaginal tearing on the woman (which could be the result of consensual sex). If there’s no evidence of ANYTHING, in either case, I would guess neither would go forward. I was clearer about that in an earlier post.

thanks Liz, still an excellent post, your perspective on this is really helpful.

If you don’t want to be called an arrogant asshole, don’t be an arrogant asshole, liberalrob.

Thats kind of like telling Barack Obama not to be a secret Muslim.  How am I being an arrogant asshole?

It appears to be about 7:8.

Pretty good ratio.  I’ll try to do better.  Oops, I bet this comment counts against me!  (Twice!) Let’s see if I can balance it a bit:

What you are not listening to - what we are trying to tell you with the dozens of personal stories that have been shared here - is that lots of men who are “normal” still rape.

And I believe all of those stories are true; but I refuse to believe that any man who would rape is in any way “normal.” I’m normal (I think), and no way in hell am I going to rape anyone.  I can’t even conceive of it.  What is wrong with me, if those guys are normal?

You say you’re not sure we actually do have a rape culture, but you keep not paying attention to the stories shared here. And the reason we are getting so frustrated is not because you don’t agree with us. It’s because you show no evidence of even hearing what we’re saying.

I hear what you’re saying.  I just don’t accept your (stipulated as true) stories as descriptive of the culture at large.  How many would it take to change my mind?  Let’s pick a number.  50%.  If 50% of all women in this country are verifiably raped and their rapists all get off with light or no sentences, then I’ll believe that there is an endemic cultural problem.  Otherwise, if it’s 20% or less (and that would still be a whopping, unacceptable number) I don’t see how you can call it an endemic cultural problem.  It’s a problem if there is even one single rape, but I’m not prepared to indict the entire culture on the basis of a few dozen or thousand anecdotes.  Does that make me a rape apologist?  An ignorant asshole?

A very good start, dan2, would be to treat the ‘But she said she wanted it at the time!’ as the bullshit it is.  If a result of eroding the rape culture is that men come to fear (for real fear, not apologist troll fear) being jailed for rape in an iffy situation and they get themselves into fewer iffy situations, then I see that as a sign of progress.  As things are now we can’t get rapists like the man described in the letter even arrested.  Let’s change the assumption to ONLY Yes dammit yes! means yes.  “No please don’t,” crying, trying to keep some drunk asshole who thinks that he’s owed sex from pulling your clothes off shouldn’t even be questionable.

If we’re going to treat sex as a transaction, then why not have men get receipts?  Notaries have kids to feed too.

I think victims and potential victims are more likely to see danger in every situation, to imply meaning where intent is otherwise, and to interpret dissent as attack. 

This.

If you’ve been victimized, what the hell does it matter what the criminal’s intent was?  Okay, it would matter if you wanted to prosecute Murder One vs. Manslaughter, but as far as the victim is concerned?  Completely irrelevant and NOT HER PROBLEM.  It’s not up to the victim to rationalize what the criminal’s intent was.

The framing that needs to be pushed HARD is that sex is not something a man does to a woman and that a woman allows.  Sex is something people do TOGETHER, and, if, at any point, one person is not enthusiastically consenting, it is NO LONGER SEX.

Seriously, we need to do this, so that poor men no longer have to struggle with where “the line” of exactly how much of a rapist do I have to be before I go to jail.  Think about the men!  They’re just confused.  They don’t INTEND to rape, they just can’t take “no” for an answer.

chingona: I’m so glad someone else has the patience to go back and actually find the quotes.

I appreciate not being called pedantic and exacting.

if it’s 20% or less (and that would still be a whopping, unacceptable number) I don’t see how you can call it an endemic cultural problem.

Jesus fuck, do you read what you type?

As for what we teach our sons, besides the “you can call me anytime anywhere if you are uncomfortable and I will get you, no questions asked”? 

Exactly what I said above.  Right now, my son’s not old enough to have much of a discussion besides “If the girl you like at school thinks you have cooties, you have to respect that and leave her alone.” But as he gets older, and discovers that his parents have had sex more times than it took to have him and his sisters, we’ll discuss the fact that sex is fun, that people have sex b/c it’s fun, and that “sex” means two people doing things to one another.  If either one wants to stop, you stop or it’s rape.

In other words, you tell your sons the same things you tell your daughters:  Women are human beings.  Women are the only ones allowed to decide what to do with their bodies.  If you have to pressure or coerce someone, it’s not sex, it’s rape.

Oh, and the “you can’t have sex unless you can have sex responsibly wrt birth control.  If you are too embarrassed to discuss sexual histories and birth control with your partner, you aren’t ready yet.”

Oh god, we’re playing “gotcha” now?  I’m not going to go back and review everything I’ve said before.  I write comments as best I can; contexts change as the conversation flows.  I do question whether we should always punish implied violence the same as actual violence, not that implied violence should be given a complete pass; and I do believe at some point the conversation did come around to the likelihood of the Dan Savage case standing up in court (or more precisely, that justice could come from the judicial system).  Those are two completely different contexts.

liberalrob, “rape culture” doesn’t mean that the majority of women get raped and everyone holds a parade for the rapist. Perhaps you are trying to have your own definition of rape culture, but when a phrase has an excepted definition among a community, you can’t say “No, it isn’t” just by using a different definition than everyone else is using.

Rape culture is the way we treat sex as transactional. Rape culture is the way every women - even the ones who haven’t been raped (yet) - have to look over their shoulder in a way that men don’t. Rape culture is that I have to type that word “yet.” Rape culture is that every time the topic of rape comes up, we immediately get people telling women what they should do differently, as if that makes a difference. Rape culture is when a woman is raped (as in the letter) people say that well, it’s really a gray area. I mean, she did stop struggling. Rape culture is that a large number of people think that if a woman isn’t actively clawing a guy’s eyes out, there is some possibility that maybe he was just confused. Rape culture is refusing to consider a realistic threat as coercion. Rape culture is that nearly every woman has experienced sex on a continuum of coercion - sex where she went along because it seemed like too much trouble to say no. Rape culture is that men, “normal” men with wives and daughters, think “sometimes a girl needs a little persuading.” Rape culture is that we cannot come up with analogies that don’t involve property. Rape culture is worrying more about the effect on a man of the (very rare) false accusation than we do about the effect of rape on actual victims.

It’s all of that. It goes far above and beyond the percentage of women who are actually raped.

liberalrob, 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. While it’s true that the definition of sexual assault is broader than rape, it still involves unwanted physical sexual contact. If apparently “normal” men, aren’t doing this, who is?

Also, I think you’re misunderstanding the term “rape culture”. It’s not just about the number of rapes that take place, and whether or not they’re prosecuted. It’s also about our perception of rape victims, the perpetrators, of where and how rape happens, “grey” rape that is in fact not grey at all, and our lingering notion of sex as conquest.

Oh, and liberalrob . . .only 6% of rapists spend any time in prison.

I seem to attract a lot of submissive men who want me to be dom.  The first time playing dom was difficult for me, especially since my bf was black and liked to bring race explicitly into it.  I was weirded out by that, but I don’t think it’s my place to judge people’s kinks unless they’re causing real harm.  I got to really enjoy it after seeing how joy much he was getting out of it.  There were a few awkward moments for me when his boundaries were tested, but he always let me know when things were at risk of going to far.  Since then i’ve played dom for plenty of other guys. I don’t think I’m naturally a dom. In fact, I saw so many guys really getting off on being sub that I wanted to try it myself.  I didn’t care for it, so I guess I’m not really a sub either, but I could see playing one for a guy I really liked if he needed it to get off.  My only problem with BDSM is when that’s all my partner ever wants. Being dom all of the time is exhausting.

In defense of Dan Savage’s “gray area” rape, I think he meant that because of the circumstances-ex-lover, no witnesses, alcohol(like it or not, testimony of events during which you were drunk is not always considered credible)-the case would be very difficult to prosecute.

Let me give you a very extreme example. In early part of the 20th century, there was an epidemic of lynchings in the southern United States. Hundreds of black men were lynched by mobs made up of the finest, most upstanding members of the community. People took pictures of lynchings and sold them as postcards to tourists. But there were millions of black people living in the region. Only a tiny fraction of blacks were ever lynched. And there were millions of white people. Only a slightly larger fraction actually participated in lynching. Today, lynchings are very, very rare. When they do happen, they tend to involve people who already have a history of violence, and everyone reacts with shock and horror. No one tried to explain away the dragging death of James Byrd as anything other than horrific. No one said, “Well, the boys got a little out of hand, but really, than n- shouldn’t have been antagonizing them,” which is how it would have been treated in the 1920s.

What do you think changed? Were white people “abnormal” then and now they’re “normal”? Or do you think the culture changed? Do you think the changing culture affected people’s behavior?

sigh, post eaten.

Summary: Kanichen, I see what youre saying but I dont think fear is the best way to go. It might have limited use but the reaction/backlash would be huge. I think anger and frustration are other emotions that could be used more effectively. Get the letter mentioned in the OP broadcast far more broadly, use the anger and frustration that would generate to positive ends. Breaking down the rape culture will happen with teaspoons, as they say, and I think the anger and frustration spoons would work better. Could be wrong though so I will take what youve said to heart and to overuse the word mull, it shall be mulled.

Summary for liberalrob: As this thread has gone on I’m left wondering what your goal is. I’ve disagreed with people on this thread, made that known and tried to make what I believed to substanative counterpoints or further questions, what are you trying to do? Berate people into agreeing with you? I lack the faculty with words you and many of the other posters here have so to ask the -whats the summary of your thoughts- question in the manner I would verbalize it: “What you gettin’ at bro?”

@ dan2 - the letter was broadcast very widely. Savage Love is very widely read and syndicated in dozens of newspapers and widely read on-line. People know about this stuff. They just don’t think it’s rape.

I know it will not solve all the problems. Yet sometimes I wonder if we men should not be allowed out at night pass 7pm. 

I know chingona but it hasnt reached critial mass, my mother doesnt know about it nor do any of my coworkers but they do know about the whole caylee (sp?) thing. Thats a whole ‘nother kettle of fish but there it is. These kinds of things need to reach that level, saturate the culture, confront people with it, this doesnt seem to be happening. I agree that even if it did many would see it as not rape and to my mind it makes sense in our current construct but damn it, keep hitting it, preempt the coverage of the most recent whatever on greta, get the women on the view to mention it more etc. Perhaps Im too naive in that regard.

you know michael, as a man with feminist beliefs though not sure in any way what label would or should be attached to me, Im not sure how to respond to those kinds comments even if they are in jest. just seems to write it all off to us being animals or not able to control ourselves and im sick and tired of that bullshit.

That is an assumption of yours, an assumption I did not state.  The airplane could have been devoid of other passengers, or all other passengers could have been immersed in their own tasks; the presence or absence of other witnesses was unstated.  So the relevance of O.W. Holmes classic to my hypothetical is, again, invalid.  You made a new hypothetical and attributed it to me so you could dismiss mine.

Ah, so it was a deliberately and needlessly absurd hypothetical--how novel (in a deliberately obtuse kind of way). The fact remains, there are at still at least two other people aboard this nearly empty passenger plane besides the two passengers (the flight attendant and the pilot)—two more than the rapist and his victim in the scenario Savage reports. So the public disturbance charge allowed by the First Amendment exception per Holmes is still applicable, and your hypothetical is still irrelevant to the core issue.

Shall we reduce it further absurdity, making it just the pilot and flight attendant? If so, which one utters the false terrorist threat?

Since you are apparently a lawyer, tell me:  is that not something to be afraid of?  I have to laugh at the crack about my “manly, dominant self;” I am pretty far from that.

I am not, in fact, a lawyer (some lawyers assume I am, but no). And yes, it’s something to be afraid of, just as terrorist incidents on airlines are something to be afraid of. However, the probability of the latter happening doesn’t warrant all airline passengers living in fear and handing over this degree of power to the TSA Security Theatre Players. And the probability of the former happening doesn’t warrant living in fear and assuming (like poor old h0tr0d, above) that there’s an “epidemic” of women blithely dropping false accusations of rape.

And I’m glad you laughed about the crack, since it was what we call sarcasm.

And by the way, you never addressed my counter (repeated twice) to your implication that a threat of harm alone isn’t enough to warrant criminal charges, and what an awful world it would be if it did: does this mean you’re fine with the repeal of extortion and blackmail laws?

I think you are being naive. Stories like hers are a dime a dozen. If it hasn’t happened to you, it’s happened to someone you know. What happens every single time a story like this comes out, is that you get this big backlash about what women should do differently and this fear that if you make it any easier AT ALL to prosecute rape, you’re going to ensare all these “innocent” men. That’s why we’re pissed off.

Chingona- In cases where it’s one person’s word against another, I don’t know how you would make it easier to prosecute without ensaring “innocent men”.

Gracchus/Chingona,
As far as making it easier to prosecute rape and the threat of harm topic, how would these mesh in rape prosecutions? I can definitely see it in the case of a witness, a paper trail, evidence of some sort but again I’m hitting a wall when it comes down to the cliche she said/he said he said/he said or anything else. “I didnt want to have sex, he said he’d harm me if I didnt” “No I didnt it was consensual”. I can see how something like that, since the airline thing was a hypothetical I guess this one can be to, can make it to court but how the heck can one get a conviction? Even in a perfect world with all means available to everyone, some would wait to alert the police or other authorities and would therefore lack evidence other than testimony, how do you prove a threat of harm? How do they prove it with extortion or blackmail cases without some item, service or something else a third party can see and see it went from one to the other?

I hope it is clear that my questions are simply wondering how it would work, not trying to make rape prosecution or anything related to it harder. I simply dont see how it can work given the system we have and I dont know how we get past the beyond a reasonable doubt or the rights of the accused, most of which I agree with.

Ok Im gonna bugger off now, thanks all for the insight and perspective. I apologize for making so many posts/taking up so much time. Have a wonderful night.

pablo, have you read the thread? Like, the whole thing?

That is to say, generally the complaint on this thread has been that every time feminists say “Rape is bad,” this howling chorus of “But what about false accusations???!!!” comes back. It would suck to be accused of any crime that you didn’t commit, and it would extra special suck to be accused of a rape you didn’t commit. My request is that since the post is about rape culture and female desire and what that all means, wouldn’t it have been nice to discuss those topics without people stamping their feet and saying “That will never hold up in court!”

indeed it would chingona, sorry i got off on that tangent, seemed to happen earlier in the thread and i went with it as i find the topic in itself interesting but its only a small part of the rape culture. seems like its mostly been a good thread though. ok gone for good, someone is giving me the evil eye heh

That wasn’t really directed at you, dan2. It’s just frustration that after all this discussion, we come back to this because of a phrase that I used as a shorthand for male privilege, not as an actual policy prescription.

My request is that since the post is about rape culture and female desire and what that all means, wouldn’t it have been nice to discuss those topics without people stamping their feet and saying “That will never hold up in court!”

Yeah, but most of us live in the real world. Remember? Lawyers? Juries? Evidence?

I do question whether we should always punish implied violence the same as actual violence, not that implied violence should be given a complete pass;

The case in the post was not one where a woman was threatened with rape.  It’s one where she was threatened with rape, and THEN RAPED.

If you want to discuss the difficulty of prosecuting crimes and of how to write laws, go for it, but when you smersh it up by saying shit like “just b/c he threatened to rape didn’t mean he was going to “ in a thread following a post about rape...c’mon.  You are either trolling or completely tone-deaf.

Did you read the posts from the woman who wanted to remain a virgin till her marriage bed, but agreed to let her boyfriend give her a backrub, and then he raped her?  Followed by the post from another woman who did the same thing, but her boyfriend DIDN’T rape her?  It wasn’t agreeing to a topless backrub that caused the rape--it was the rapist who chose to take advantage of the situation, and part of the situation is a culture that says being alone, even with your boyfriend, means you have already consented.

As for this particular post, the victim said no and pushed him off several times.  He didn’t stop.  Maybe if she’d continued to fight with him, he would have stopped.  Or, maybe, like he said, he would have raped her harder and hurt her more.

The idea, when you are being victimized in any crime, is to survive.  He raped her, but he didn’t kill her.  He didn’t maim her.  He didn’t beat the ever living shit out of her.  And, yes, I do think those were options, b/c they were physically possible.  He showed himself capable of rape.  He violated her trust.  That makes me unable to trust him not to brutalize her in other ways until he got what he wanted.  She survived, and she should be PRAISED for that. 

He got her to go somewhere alone with him by preying on her fears of being alone in the dark.  He knew that as a man who had been consensually intimate with her in the past, that THERE IS PRACTICALLY NO FUCKING WAY HE’D GO TO JAIL.  She wasn’t a virgin.  She’d has sex with him in the past.  She went somewhere alone with him.  It’s only her word--a slut who’d slept with him before--against his.

If we didn’t live in a rape culture, he wouldn’t have even tried it.  But he knew the fears and the privileges conferred by a rape culture, and he used them.

If you still can’t see the double standard that rape victims are held to--> they cause their crimes; they are considered liars by the authorities; even if they are believed, they are “damaged goods”, and the very things that are supposedly going to protect them “don’t drink with strangers/don’t go out alone at night” still get them hurt--if you still don’t see that, then you flunk the stick test and deserve the label and the bunnification.

Read the fucking thread before you condescend to me like that.

Chingona- In cases where it’s one person’s word against another, I don’t know how you would make it easier to prosecute without ensaring “innocent men”.

Well then, pablo, those “innocent men” shouldn’t have sex unless it’s with a thoroughly enthusiastic partner.

If sex is something you do together, with (at least) 2 active partners, then there’s no problem.  If it’s something a man does to a woman, and the woman only allows or denies the man to do what he “needs” to do, then there are gray areas where one can argue about where the passive partner should or should not have agreed. 

If rape victims were believed, then men would have to make sure their partners really wanted sex.  And why is that such a scary idea?  Why isn’t that considered NORMAL?

--------
One more thing, poor innocent men.  Try to think about a world where half the people are 8 feet tall, steroid-rocking, 300# musclemen who have been told all their lives that they are only real men when they jam a coke bottle up a regular-sized guy’s ass.  And once they’re holding that bottle, well, they can’t just put it down!  They have needs.

But you have to love those 300# musclemen who might hurt you.  If you don’t trust them, you are pathetic.  If you do trust them, and they hurt you, well you asked for it.

Seriously.  Women are generally SMALLER than men.  Men have more testosterone, which makes them stronger even at the same size.  Our bodies are shaped differently, and women are the ones have something PUT INSIDE THEIR BODIES.  Can you even imagine it? 

If you did, I think your stupid rape apologia would be much harder to make.  That’s what pisses so many off here:  the complete lack of empathy from someone who simply doesn’t face the same risks b/c of a quirk of DNA.

Don’t just rip things out of context and wave them around.

pablo has the essence of the point:  If the rape has no move evidence than one says there was no consent and the other says there was… How do we make these prosecutions go through?

There is definitely a problem that too many rapists never see jail time.  But not all rapists probably need jail time - the time should fit the crime.  And that’s a completely different problem than attempting to make sure that low-evidence rapes are prosecuted.

<ul style=circle>What needs to be done:
<li>People need to be educated on what rape is.  Most people don’t think rape is a crime, even those who have been raped.  What it is needs to be taught before people are sexually active that without prior and post consent from both parties, it really is rape.</li>
<li>Women need to believe their case will be heard.  There is currently no widespread belief in the justice system for these crimes.  It needs to be demonstrated that police and prosecutors will vigorously defend victims who cry rape.</li>
<li>Prosecutors, Police, and Emergency workers need to accept the victim without reservation.  No doubts cast until the day at court.</li>
<li>Judges need to be educated on when and where the severity of the crime should be considered and what counts for the severity of the crime - the victim’s clothing or prior sex acts shouldn’t be considered, for instance.</li>
</ul>

Until then, it doesn’t matter.  Yes, a thousand guilty men may go free… But we need to teach men and women what rape really is and how it should be judged.

As a lawyer, I’d have to say on the question of whether the prosecutors have a case, it totally depends.  It depends on the state law (some southern states still require active, violent resistance, some require actual physical force, some require threat of physical harm, some just require coercion - this would need to have happened in a coercion or coercion-like state), it depends on how secluded the spot where her car was and whether she had a relationship with anyone there other than her ex, it depends on their physical size and whether he had a history of hurting her (this can cut either way, sadly), it depends on what any witnesses saw, and how she would perform on the stand.

Probably it’s not strong enough to prosecute, but if she’s in a coercion state with a big ex who had never hurt her before but had a history of threatening or hurting others (or a record! or a record she didn’t know about!?!) then maybe.....

Amanda Marcotte: We know for a fact that a small minority of men commit the majority of rapes.

We do? I’m not kidding here--I’d been going under the assumption that, since a significant proportion of close female friends told me they’d been the victims of some kind of sexual violence, a similar proportion of my male friends were likely rapists. This has been a particularly disturbing thought to me, but I figured that was because it was one of those truths that my privilege had long blinded me to.

So I have to ask--how do we know that? Who discovered it, and when?

Crissa, why would a rapist NOT deserve jail time?

As far as making it easier to prosecute rape and the threat of harm topic, how would these mesh in rape prosecutions?

I take a different view from the commenter who proposed what basically amounted to a gross violation of “innocent before proven guilty” principle of American criminal law by placing the burden on the accused to prove consent (or, more accurately, “not-rape"). But there are ways to make it easier.

First, as noted above, I believe that a victim’s complaint regarding any crime should be taken at face value by the authorities—this is usually the case, but rape seems to be a particularly unfortunate exception to the “let’s give the victim the benefit of the doubt” rule.

As to incorporating the threat of harm, it’s certainly taken into account in stalking and harrassment cases to prevent rape and assault. The problem in a he-said/she-said acquaintance-rape case is that it happened in private, immediately before the hard, which has already been done. And investigators can only do so much.

They have forensic evidence from the rape kit, so they can demonstrate that intercourse happened, and that it was fairly rough (blood, scratches, bruising). Still not conclusive proof of non-consent.

They can investigate the nature of the relationship: first date? exes (for how long)? married? co-workers, etc. and build a case based on how likely it was that this was rape. But still, no definitive proof.

They look at the parties involved (ages, power relationships), time, location, context. Sometimes it helps clarify, sometimes it muddles things further.

They can interview character witnesses for both sides about sexual history and such, but that turns into a larger game of he said/she said.

Ultimately, then, the only tools available are the same ones traditionally used with extortion or blackmail cases: stings in co-operation with the victim or a potential victim; or presentation of a history of other such crimes supported by testimony by victims unrelated to the current victim. Each approach has its risks: accusations of entrapment, exclusion of prior bad acts and crimes for which the defendant has paid his debt to society.

A prosecutor builds a case from all these pieces, and does so with a level of zeal based on his belief that a crime has been committed (the prosecutor represents the state, not the victim; and the experienced ones usually have good BS detectors). Throw in a whole bunch of other factors (state law, type of alleged rape, to name two big ones) and the bottom line is that there aren’t any easy answers.

It’s far from a perfect system, but the goal in that situation is to make the pieces fit together so that someone who’s actually committed the crime (and his lawyer) will be reluctant to have it all presented to a jury. Then it’s plea bargain time.

Let me be clear: rapists belong in jail; women do not make false accusations of rape lightly; and there is a certain aspect of our culture that unfairly treats accusations of rape with greater skepticism than other crimes. Still, the law is what we have to work with, and compromising it, even with the best intentions, is a risky business.

grendelkhan - the key problem with your whole statement is the word “assumption”. Assuming anything is never a very good idea. it’s really easy to do research on the internet… here’s a head start.

www2.binghamton.edu/counseling/documents/RAPE_FACT_SHEET1.pdf

Jesus H. Christ, stop arguing with liberalrob, he’s not that interesting

Crissa,

Most rapists get away with it.  We aren’t currently facing a crisis where innocent men are being locked up.  We do have a crisis where rape victims are even afraid to report the crime.

But even if we were facing a situation where innocent men were somehow being convicted of rape, and I find it almost impossible to imagine, how does that change the fact that if men treat women as human beings and sex as an act that two actively participate in, rape goes down?  That if your partner actively wants to participate in sex with you, there won’t be a rape charge?

If you don’t want to go to jail for rape, DON’T RAPE.  If you’re in a situation that appears “grey” to you, DON’T CONTINUE, b/c anytime you try to engage in a sexual act without enthusiastic consent, you’re probably raping the other person.

This is not hard for men who don’t rape.  This is what they do without thinking much about it.

Worrying about “innocent men” being prosecuted, when all the evidence points to rapists getting away with rape pell-mell is silly.

Oh, the poor man might have to think about a situation instead of just satisfying his needs.  TOO DAMN BAD.  Women have to think about sex ALL THE TIME.  We have to plan for birth control.  We have to make sure we’re “safe”, even though we never really are.  We *have* to think about the situation. 

I feel no sympathy toward any man who doesn’t think he should have to put in the same effort to make sure he’s NOT raping.  It’s pretty simply to avoid raping a woman.

Any guy who gets into a situation where it’s “grey”, deserves to be shamed.  Either find a woman who wants you, or make friends with your hand.  Anything else is completely unacceptable.

“Innocent” men.  ::roll eyes:: Yeah, like the poor ex-bf of the post who just wanted a last fuck and had to work so hard to persuade his ex to do it.

Kat, those statistics suggest (if my math is correct, which is a crapshoot in and of itself), that maybe a little over 10% of men are guilty of some sort of sexual assault. Is that consistent with other statistics you’ve seen? While still a minority, it’s stomach-churningly high.

those statistics suggest (if my math is correct, which is a crapshoot in and of itself), that maybe a little over 10% of men are guilty of some sort of sexual assault. Is that consistent with other statistics you’ve seen? While still a minority, it’s stomach-churningly high.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised, myself.  As was the original point of this post (gods help us, is it even possible for a thread about rape to not dissolve into a toxic sludge of “women should do this to protect themselves” and “You can’t prove it was rape</i>”?  This is a progressive blog!), we live in a culture where consensual sex is defined as a woman not saying “no” (or at least, not too vehemently).  I have no trouble believing that one out of ten men “went a little too far” at one point or another.  It might not have reached the point of PiV intercourse, and even if it did they might not think of it as “real” rape - that involves a weapon or at least a physical fight! - but it was sexual assault nonetheless.

Thanks to Crissa, AHG, and Gracchus for providing answers to my question on how would you make it easier to prosecute rape without curtailing the rights of the accused, and for not trying to twist it into a ridiculous “pablo approves of rape” statement.

Marc: It is culturally pervasive that fathers always fantasize about beating up these kids if they get too close to their daughters. Would this be classified as a strong condemnation of male aggression towards women (the daughters), or just an proponent for more violent male culture?

Caren: It’s classifying their daughters as property.

It’s not just that, or possibly even mostly that.  You’re bought up to regard anyone wanting to have sex with your children as a monster, and the traditional male role (and it is a good one) is to protect the family and kids.

And then you wake up one day and find that your daughter is (a) interested in boys (b) likely to be dating teenage boys who, frankly, are almost always emotionally retarded inarticulate idiots as you yourself well know, (c) she’s going to screw up, make mistakes, and get her heart broken, (d) you probably can’t protect her and (e) you HAVE to let her do it.  I’d panic a bit too.

Marc, Brigid’s advice is probably best.  I’d would strongly suggest that you add a bit in there when you discuss trusting her, and talk about the fact that she probably will make mistakes and she is welcome to approach you or her mother (assuming that you’re in such an arrangement); about why you yourself might feel a bit scared, but that you are trusting her and why you are trusting her; and about her responsibility to consider and deal with her own safety.  And do a deal with her that you’ll try your best not to intimidate or be aggressive towards her dates if she’s willing to talk to you frankly about it if she thinks you are.

Then again, I’m not a father. Take the above suggestions as you will.

Didn’t get a chance to post this until now, and my wife needs the computer right now, so forgive the lack of an explanation, but I thought this was a pretty good bit on “no means no”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXtGINeDK0

Yeah, but most of us live in the real world. Remember? Lawyers? Juries? Evidence?

So remember kids, unless you can get convicted in a criminal court, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Seriously, the big problem here is that we as a culture look at rape as merely a legal category, which means our followup to the question “was this rape?” is not “did everyone involve want to be having sex with each other?” but “if we call this rape, are we going to set a precedent that will make false accusations easier?” And that’s fucked up.  From an ethical standpoint, if you have sex with someone who doesn’t want to be having sex with you, you are a rapist. Even if the nature of the justice system means that there’s no chance you’ll ever be convicted, even if in your jurisdiction it’s technically legal (e.g., the other person is your spouse in a place where marital rape is unrecognized, or you forced someone to have oral sex in a jurisdiction where only PIV is considered rape).

What to do legally is a secondary question, but if we treat rape with the same moral censure as tax evasion no answer to the legal question will ever do much to solve the problem.

Thanks to Crissa, AHG, and Gracchus for providing answers to my question on how would you make it easier to prosecute rape without curtailing the rights of the accused, and for not trying to twist it into a ridiculous “pablo approves of rape” statement.

In earnest, Pablo: did you actually read the thread before you started scolding chingona and Caren?

Every time we have a thread like this, I think about how hard it is to come up with an anology for rape that doesn’t reference property crime. I feel like it is nearly impossible, but at the same time I feel really creepy for using property crime references.

I agree, Chingona.  And your analysis that the fact we keep thinking of rape as “taking” something is one more example of the rape culture is spot on.  But I’d say that it’s similar but slightly different.  It’s because the “excuses” for rape always involve someone being tempted, and wanting something of someone, and the only similar analogy is with property crime.  But also, as far as in the analogy I used, burglary was the only crime I could think of where someone could have conceivable consented.  Pretty much no one consents to being killed or having their arm broken, but someone might choose to give another person $50, but we believe them that they didn’t, and were, instead, robbed.  For many rape cases, the defense isn’t “There was no sex,” but, “She totally wanted to have sex.”

As for the “Car” analogy - its not really good because Cars have titles.  If you give someone a car you have to sign your title over to them.  So, if you accuse someone of stealing your car and they claim you gave it to them, then there is an EASY first test.  Do they have the title?

Wow.  Way to miss the point.  Okay, replace car with radio, lamp, necklace, curtains, etc.  Or “given” with “loaned.”

from blacbloc: I was going to be nitpicky, mentionning that when my brother-in-law took my gf’s iPod we went to the police and they basically told us “well, no way he’s gonna get into any trouble because it’s probably already pawned and there’s no proof of ownership”.

And then in the process of being nitpicky, I realized that the cops basically assumed we DID get robbed, they just thought we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, which is a long way ahead from the usual way cops treat rape victims when the perp was known to the victim…

Exactly.

i had to stop reading the comments. i have PTSD from being raped by my step-father.

and my best friend came over today, so we could go over her “escape plan”, because she FINALLY FINALLY decided enough is enough and is leaving her “husband”, the guy who rapes her. this is the guy who told me to tell her to never say no to sex othewise he would kill her (because i told her to tell him no. i almost got her killed. except it would not have been my fault. but it would have been because she listened to my advce...)

i’m sorry. thank you for posting this Amanda

Seraph: I have no trouble believing that one out of ten men “went a little too far” at one point or another.  It might not have reached the point of PiV intercourse, and even if it did they might not think of it as “real” rape - that involves a weapon or at least a physical fight! - but it was sexual assault nonetheless.

If you (and you should) include coercive sex under the definition of rape, I sadly have no trouble believing that one out of ten is a far too conservative estimate. Even here in the liberal progressive bastion of Boston, I’d lean towards one in three or higher having pressured someone for sex at some point. I don’t ever gamble, but I’d put money on that figure.
That, I think, is the point of the conversation regarding our “rape culture”. Pressuring someone for sex until they give in is thought of as so incredibly normal that it’s expected, and if a girl doesn’t need to be pressured, she’s a “slut”. The default relationship in our society between men and women dating involves coercion and subterfuge. And frankly, once you come to that realization, it’s horrifying.

If the victim says he was assaulted, but the defendant says that the injuries are from some sort of sporting activity, and neither has any witnesses, what happens? Most people vote to convict, because they think the idea of someone just making up an assault is ridiculous.

That hasn’t been my experience, although in my case it was dealing with cops who wouldn’t even talk to the guy who was standing right there, as opposed to taking it all the way to a jury trial.

I don’t say that to take liberalrob’s position; on the contrary, I’ve been meaning to ask him whether he’s ever been non-sexually assaulted*. Because it’s been my experience that the cops will do and say pretty much anything to not make an arrest in that situation, and I thought it would open a window (if only a small one) into the frustrations the women (and most of the men) on this thread are expressing.

* I assume if he had ever been sexually assaulted or raped, he would have said so by now, thus clearing the air on the big problem people are having with him and Notorious, i.e., the tremendous privilege that is displayed by waltzing into a thread like this and dispensing pearls of wisdom that they somehow really think haven’t been tried and found insufficient.

The statistics appeared to be based on surveys, (the insidious kind that doesn’t use the words “rape” or “sexual assault"), so I guess it would depend on the questions and the man’s perspective. Of course, if “she really wanted it” is in his head, he won’t think that he actually pressured someone into sex. Some of the higher percentages were around 15%, and I assume they used a broader definition of rape/assault. Or more telling questions.

denelian, good luck to you and your friend. If you’re anywhere near Cleveland, I have a big scary dog that hates strange men, if you need us.

Liz: Of course, if “she really wanted it” is in his head, he won’t think that he actually pressured someone into sex.

Exactly. And my point that it’s probably at least one in three who have shows us a dichotomy. If you separate out the people who believe that pressuring someone into sex isn’t rape, you get another 30% who would denounce rape as liberalrob did upthread, while simultaneously fearing that a woman will falsely accuse them. Because to them, it’s normal, not rape, in spite of the legal and moral definitions. And those legal and moral definitions terrify them.

I have several friends who were raped.  None of the bastards are in jail.  None of them even went to trial or got questioned by the cops or had to call a lawyer.

So fuck you, liberalrob.

Well then, pablo, those “innocent men” shouldn’t have sex unless it’s with a thoroughly enthusiastic partner.

And right there is one of the major disconnects I see happening.

Who said there had to be actual sex involved?

I know the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “proof”, but bear with me.  Back when I was in university, a woman in my residence claimed to have been raped.  On two separate occasions.  No evidence of sex (she said she’d been too scared to report it right away, cleaned herself up, and so on).  She reported when the events happened.  On one of them a parking lot at night, one could believe it happened, except for one detail: at the time she said it happened, there were people in the lot for an unrelated reason.  No one saw her.

The second time, assuming you took her date and time at face value, she was raped in front of the residence, in the middle of the big, open Quad, in the afternoon during a weekday, when roughly several hundred students, staff, employees, and visitors would have had a clear view of it happening.

She had legit psychological issues and eventually had to go on meds.  In this case, no harm was done because there was no one named in the false accusations.

Second time, I was the one who came thisclose to being falsely accused.  Two girls in our residence decided to go on a major drinking binge one Friday, and by 8 pm or so were incoherent and unable to walk.  One of the girls had passed out in our residence lounge, and a friend of hers asked me to help.  I carried her up to her room, put her on the bed, pulled a blanket over her, and made sure the door was locked before I left.  Her friend and some other random people who were in the residence watched the entire thing.  Some time during the night she’s pulled her clothes off and passed out again.

At lunch a few days later, she was upset and telling her friend that she was going that afternoon to report that she’d been sexually assaulted.  From her point of view she’d been toasted in the lounge and then woken up in her room, on her bed, stripped, and the vague memory of a man taking her in there.  In this case it was dumb luck: her friend she told this to was the same one who’d asked me to help, so she told her (and to her relief that she hadn’t been raped, but only dreamed/hallucinated it) what had really happened.  I found out about it later and it scared the complete shit out of me how close I came to being accused.  What would have happened had her friend not followed me all the way up and saw me leave the room?  What would have happened had I decided on my own to help her, someone had seen me with her, but no one had seen me go into the room and leave within a minute?  And best of all, I didn’t have any other alibi: I’d spent the remainder of the night in my room watching TV.  Oh, sure, I probably would have gotten off due to lack of evidence, but “Accused Rapist” isn’t something you want to add to your resume, even if followed by the words “Later exonerated”.  A lot of people tend to stop at that first phrase.

Literally, my only defense would have been to attack her as a drunk with too much self-inflicted stupidity to know what was happening.

More recently, one uncle was forced to move with his family all the way across the country because they found they couldn’t stay in the town where he’d been falsely accused of raping a teenage foster child in their care.  See, people tend to stop at the “Accused’ part.

So yeah, I’m a bit touchy on the subject even though the I know the number of unreported rapes vastly outnumber the number of false accusations.  You only need to have it happen to you once.

By the by, I have experienced sexual assault, by a drunken idiot, when I was helpless (sleeping at the time), so I’ve been on both sides of the problem.

If you (and you should) include coercive sex under the definition of rape

I do.  That little aside was from the perspective of men who can coerce women into sex, then righteously condemn rapists.  As far as they’re concerned, what they do isn’t rape because it doesn’t include overt physical violence.

In this case, no harm was done because there was no one named in the false accusations.

That’s good, considering that you didn’t actually describe any false accusations in that case. You know that, right? You described false reports. Two, you know, different things. I will say it again just for the fun of it: When nobody is accused, there is no accusation, of whatever truth value. When mentally ill women genuinely but mistakenly believe they have been raped by an unknown assailant, and tell people that, there is no false accusation until they take the further, separate step of ACCUSING somebody.

For that matter, if a woman in possession of her faculties deliberately lies about having been raped by an unknown assailant, and reports it, that’s not a false accusation either, until she--wait for it--accuses somebody. False police report, sure, which I believe is a prosecutable offense. False accusation? Not so much.

This is not a minor point. This is a really big distinction.

So yeah, I’m a bit touchy on the subject even though the I know the number of unreported rapes vastly outnumber the number of false accusations.  You only need to have it happen to you once.

According to your report, which I believe, it hasn’t happened to you even once, though. “This one time, it came really close to happening!” is not quite the same.

But even if we were facing a situation where innocent men were somehow being convicted of rape, and I find it almost impossible to imagine,

Then put your imagination aside.

The Innocence Project list just under 50 men exonerated of sexual assault (which may have been connected to other crimes, such as murder).

That is a small number, but you have to consider some other factors, mainly that those were accusations where there was some way of definitively proving innocence at some point.  Like after 17.5 years in jail.

Or, to use a Canadian example, David Milgaard, sentenced to life at 18 years old for the rape and murder of a woman, it was 22 years before he got out of prison, 27 before he was exonerated, and 29 years before the actual rapist/killer was convicted.

False accusations are exceptionally harmful to the system because, in cases where a rape did happen, the false accusation means the real rapist can still be out there.  In cases where it didn’t happen, it would make any investigator and prosecutor jaded and perhaps gun-shy.  If you had nearly thrown someone in jail for a crime like rape that never happened, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t get a small twitch in the back of your mind the next time a case came up.

According to your report, which I believe, it hasn’t happened to you even once, though. “This one time, it came really close to happening!” is not quite the same.

Neither is “She would have been raped had not something extremely fortunate happened to interrupt the rapist” the same as “She was raped”, but I wouldn’t dismiss or belittle that former woman’s fears concerning it.  Do you?

One thing I think has to be realized is that human reality is a continuum.  There are things that we agree are bad, things we agree are good, and that whole mess in the middle where not everyone agrees where clear boundaries are.  The unfortunate thing is that the boundaries are the problem.

Just as a hypothetical: man and woman are having sex.  They’ve had perfectly consensual sex before, but for some reason the woman isn’t enthusiastic about it for whatever reason this time.  She feels pressured to have sex, and so she goes through with it.  Unenthusiastically, maybe, but doesn’t say anything to the guy, or do anything, to make it obvious she doesn’t want to have sex with him right then, but felt she had to.

Is the man a rapist?

It’s easy to say yes if he’s the type of asshole who doesn’t give a shit about what his partner thinks.  Suppose, however, he’s the type of person who would be appalled if he found out she thought she was being forced, who would have stopped immediately had she said or done something to indicate she didn’t want sex.

Is the man a rapist?

What happens if both are legitimately plastered after a night out, they have a rousing good time, and wake up the next morning with one or the other regretting it, knowing that had they been sober, it never would have happened.

Rape?  Yes or no?

Once one recognizes that sometimes the issue isn’t black or white, one might find it easier to work towards solutions.  People who think there isn’t a widespread problem of sexual abuse, that whatever its level is, it’s too high, are or either fools or idiots.  Those who don’t think that there can’t be genuine confusion by people, that sometimes intent isn’t there, that consent can be mistakingly believed to have been given with no harm intended, aren’t any better.

KeithM, the false accusations you describe above were made by the police, not the victims. Who, in several of those cases, were dead and not in a position to accuse anyone of anything.

But I think that’s an important distinction and obvious enough that I wonder why you skip over it. What we’re talking about one this thread is how coercion is part of a lot of male-female interaction and how that sets the stage both for rape and for plausible deniability on the part of the rapist.

And then it got into what to do about “he said, she said” cases where everyone agrees there was sex but disagrees about whether there was consent. What you are describing is a situation in which there is no doubt that a crime was committed - you have a dead body that shows signs of having been sexually assaulted - but the police got the wrong guy. You are absolutely right that issues of “enthusiastic consent” don’t really come into play here, but I don’t think these examples really shed any light on the average guy’s fear of being accused of rape after a bad date.

What happens if both are legitimately plastered after a night out, they have a rousing good time, and wake up the next morning with one or the other regretting it, knowing that had they been sober, it never would have happened.

Rape?  Yes or no?

What are the chances, in a situation like this, that either partner would actually file a criminal charge? Pretty damn slim.

Keith, you are full of shit. David Milgaard was accused of raping and murdering a victim who WAS DEAD.  He was not accused by the person who he was accused of raping; he was accused by the authorities. That is not remotely comparable to the situations that have been discussed. Please research your examples before you try to use them to defend your position.

On the subject of male doms (from a million hours ago, I’m just reading this thread), I know a couple.  They are really, really careful.  Even in bondage porn, the moment there is even a hint of discomfort from the sub they will break character and fix what’s wrong.  When the sub wants marks, they leave marks, when they want marks that will go under clothes, they do just that.  I would never confuse any of their make believe with real abuse or rape.

Keith, all of the Innocence Project cases you’ve mentioned (as well as the ones that have gotten publicity) are cases where <i>a woman was raped<?i>. And murdered.

No false accusations by crazy, vengeful, or lying women. A rape was committed. The wrong man was charged and convicted.

You’re not really making a case about the number of false accusations. You do get that though the wrong man was punished, a woman was raped and murdered in these cases, right? Um, so how is this different than the wrong man being punished for a murder that doesn’t include rape? Oh, right - women lie about rape. Even when we’re dead. 

And, shit, man - a woman wakes up stripped in bed with no memory but that of an unknown man putting her there, and she’s freaked out and frightened. And you’re the victim. She didn’t accuse you, personally, of rape. She didn’t know what the fuck had happened to her. There was no close call for you. You had witnesses. There wasn’t any evidence of sexual assault, she wouldn’t even recognize you, and there would have been no DNA evidence, since you didn’t fuck her, and she never filed a police report. And this incident makes you believe false rape accusations are rampant?

<What are the chances, in a situation like this, that either partner would actually file a criminal charge? Pretty damn slim.>

Well, obviously, Chingona, women don’t just habitually lie about being raped, they’ll go so far as to engineer a suicide that looks like a rape/murder, all to frame innocent men.

Notorious,
Fuck you.  You know what you said. 
Maybe you should become a bartender, you know, just like fundamentalists like to become pharmacists to deny women their birth control, you could deny them alcohol!  You’d be such a hero then!  And think of all the women who would hate you!  When women don’t like you it is always proof that you are doing something right.

liberalrob, you’ve already taken possession of one thread Can women talk about sexual abuse without dealing with apologists for rapists, just once? Do you know how much it might mean to readers to be able to talk about sexual abuse without someone suggesting, however much through implication, that women owe our bodies to the world?

You all trying to make our rape apologists see it are awesome.  I’m tired.  I see men like liberalrob, and I see men who are angry at women and lashing out, but hide behind other, nasty men to do the dirty work.  I don’t get the anger at women.  I really don’t.

Seriously, liberalrob, you’re not interested in a “rational” discussion. You’re interested in a discussion where women validate your problematic views of us.  It won’t happen.  We aren’t inferior.  We aren’t stupid.  We don’t like to be raped.  The day you really, truly believe that women are equal---nay, that many women are smarter than you---is the day you will become a man who doesn’t come across as a misogynist choad.  A man who loves women’s freedom, who will do anything to fight for it, is a man worth knowing.  If you fall short, it’s time not to lash out at feminists, but to do some self-evaluation.

Rape Culture......that comment itself loses 90% of your audience.

Not everyone stops reading when they encounter an unfamiliar phrase. But enjoy your Reader’s Digest.

Unfortunately for your movement, there is a very small minority that believes we live in a rape culture, so by saying something inflammatory like this, 90% of the country immediately tunes out.  In addition, it is impossible to read any of your posts or a book like this without coming to the conclusion that you despise heterosexual men....strike 2.

I will treasure this comment, an open admission that for some men like you, criticism of rape is by definition criticism of heterosexuality.

Never mind that Amanda is dating a heterosexual man. If she really loved him, she’d never talk about rape again. Likewise, if he’s a real man, he’ll never tell another man that it’s not okay to rape.

I’d say the people who are calling Rob an actual rapist as opposed to a rape apologist are stretching things a bit.

I’d say that Notorious PAT probably is unaware enough that he honestly thinks that most women don’t know that being sober in well-lit places with friends is safer than being on your own somewhere. I don’t know whether it’s clicked that even if you do everything you can to make yourself safe, rapists can still get you.

I’d say that Gavel Down and chingona are spot on about date-rapists. Or not even all date-rapists - there are obviously plenty who premeditate. But there are men who just don’t consider how their actions impact other people, and while they aren’t intentional rapists per se - in their heads, they didn’t FORCE her, they just nagged and wheedled and blackmailed and groped a bit until she stopped saying no - but the impact is just the same as if they’d held a knife to her throat or dropped a roofie in her drink.

It’s a path that I strayed towards in my youth, and I now feel utterly horrible about. I never went so far as to try and take anyone’s clothing off, but looking back I know I made women feel really uncomfortable in college. I wasn’t getting off on some power trip, the idea that people other than myself might have feelings of some sort just never crossed my mind. I was at my worst when I was really drunk, and I realised that that means I’m not allowed to get really drunk.

When I looked back at it I thought about what I could do to make things better. I considered calling the women in question to apologize but I hadn’t seen any of them in years and figured it would just dredge things up again. So, I don’t know. I should probably give money and/or time to a charity which supports abused women.

(And no, I’m not speaking up about this in the hope of getting some kind of “you realised that sexual assault was wrong!” cookie. I’m speaking up because if learning from my experience can prevent some future-pepito from making some future-college girl’s life miserable, then at least something positive can come from it, and I kind of think that’s worth me losing the respect of commenters who know me, and possibly my posting privileges here. Understanding what goes through the heads of all men who rape, rather than just the guy who’s getting back at society for keeping him down, will help us stop all rapes.)
===============
As for false accusations - my wife told me about a girl she was at high school with had sex with some boy and was bragging about it, and then 2 weeks later when people were calling her slutty changed her story to “he raped me”. Obviously slut-shaming benefits no-one. She didn’t have anything that would hold up in court but she utterly socially crippled him - for the rest of high school he was “that guy who raped ...” and no-one would talk to him.

And while accusing the rapist when you have been raped is incredibly painful, accusing someone of rape when you haven’t been raped isn’t, because you haven’t been through that horrific experience.

So do women accuse falsely? This is the only story I’ve ever heard of someone doing it - and she was a high schooler - and I’ve known dozens of women who were actually raped or sexually assaulted. So false accusations are so rare as to not be worth considering.

I read the post, and then read the first comment (PAT’s one, from ages ago).  Without context, it struck me as good advice (as Ms. Marcotte said, getting blitzed isn’t always a great idea, and you always want friends to watch your back), and when I came back to read the rest of the thread after going to dinner and suchlike, I was amazed by the storm of comments.  I read the whole thing more-or-less straight through thanks to insomnia, and I’d like to thank folks (well, most folks- thanks for nothing, h0tr0d) for having this discussion, and Ms. Marcotte for hosting it, because it’s definitely led me to think hard about important issues in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise.

I initially felt sympathetic towards PAT.  I don’t usually read the comments, so I didn’t know any past history, and even in this thread it took me a while to realize that, if nothing else, he was being tone-deaf and insensitive (if I quote rape statistics to a victim and they get upset, I’m telling the truth… and still an asshole).  But it struck me as simply true on the face of it that there are some precautions that individuals can take that make them less likely to suffer, and I was confused why, in the reality-based community, we couldn’t advise people to follow them.  Wearing seatbelts is a good example: say you’re driving like a perfectly normal human being, 30 mph in a residential area in broad daylight, but not wearing your seatbelt.  Someone, blind-drunk, slams into you at 60 mph.  What happened was in no way your fault, and the blame is entirely on the drunk, but you would be less hurt if you had buckled up.  Does telling people that they should buckle up do more harm via the *implication* of blaming the victim, than good is done by the *intended* effect of encouraging a beneficial practice?

That’s how I felt, and as things got quickly heated I settled down to read this thread as I read the rare conservative whatnot: something I should really just back away from, but something I can’t help reading and getting worked up disagreeing with.  But what the fervent takedowns of PAT and, yes, even liberalrob* made me realize is that rape does *not* analogize to mugging, or assault, or extortion, or car accidents, because of the intense emotional resonance and, yes, the insidiousness of certain attitudes that are called “rape culture.”

I read the savage love article before I came across this discussion, and it made me shudder, made my skin crawl, and made me want to forget about it as quickly as possibly, because the whole thing was so wrong (the gut-wrenching description of the assault itself, the victim’s incomprehension of the fact that she’s not to blame, the lack of prospects for real justice, and to add insult to injury the boyfriend’s hurtful ignorance).

I’m privileged in that if I wanted to, I could forget about it.  Women, and in particular past victims, don’t have the luxury of not thinking about it in the (likely justified) belief that it won’t happen to them in their lifetimes- assuming, of course, they don’t care about the other people in their lives…

... because it’s that “one in six” statistic that gets me.  Being a human being in America, I know many multiples of six women.  I don’t want *any* of them to have to deal with anything even within spitting distance of what happened to the girl in Dan’s letter. 

So my question is, how do I help? How do I help keep my sisters, my mother, my girlfriend, and my female friends safe, and everyone, of all genders, happy?

Having read this thread, I think I agree that offering even well-meant and statistically backed warnings about how to be vigilant enforces rape culture by shifting responsibility for rape, in the minds of both women and ignorant third parties to the phenomenon (most of the people in America) to women from where it belongs: the rapist.  And this causes all the associated cultural and legal problems that make rape only more likely.** But what do I do instead?

*Although I think he’s arguing in good faith, and making an honest if imperfect effort of debating a sensitive topic in a heated environment in the emotionally tone-deaf, empathy damping and flame prone environment of the internet (see http://xkcd.com/438/ ).

**This is why discussions of the courtroom technicalities of rape miss the point, although less so that warnings to be vigilant in such and such a way.  The physical evidence for sex can be very similar to the physical evidence for rape, leaving nothing but individual witness statements- but those statements aren’t created equal.  Cops and juries both are always in the place of having to use whatever lie-detecting, mind-reading machines people naturally have to figure out who’s testimony is worth more.  Rape culture means is that those machines end up so borked that women can’t possibly get a fair shake, so until we fix that, there’s not much to be done.

This thread has made me feel physically sick and that’s rarely happened with threads on Pandagon.  I can’t even imagine what the women who are survivors must be feeling.

The rape apologists in this thread are fucking revolting.  I note that it’s always Pandagon’s comparatively fewer male commenters who jump into these threads (note: I realise there are men in this thread who are equally appalled) and it disgusts me more than I can say that they consider themselves liberal or on the side of human rights etc.  And nearly always men with male pennames; there’s something in that, it’s far too common.

Damn all the scummy rape apologists.  And, liberalrob, people like you fascinate me.  I saw someone in the exact same situation yesterday, with an overwhelming pile of evidence against them and with near everyone on the website telling them what a racist shit they were, and they continued to insist - like you do - that you’re the only sane voice.  But then, it is mostly just those vagina-havers who are calling you out, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

Many thanks to the majority of awesome Pandagonians whose attitudes are undoubtedly having an effect, as I hope mine do, on the people in their lives and who are creating small pockets of transformation in society’s attitudes towards rape.

Sorry, this was kind of long, but I’d still appreciate some kind of response from those who have the endurance- useful?  Pointless?  Insensitive?

Also, I put a hold on “Yes Means Yes,” at the local library- although I’m tenth in line and they don’t have any copies yet, so.  I look forward to keeping thinking about this, here on Pandagon and elsewhere.

Thomas, I think one of the best ways men can work for justice for women and against rape is to take care of men’s attitudes “in house.” It is men who are primarily the rapists and men who need to be worked on if there’s to be any headway made with regards to rape in our culture. 

If you have male friends who you have drinks with, and who reduce women to meat during male bonding conversations, say something.  If someone tells a rape “joke”, make it clear that it’s not funny.  If comments are made about sexual conquest or degrading ways of treating women, speak against it.  These type of social interactions are are part of the culture that ultimately leads some men to rape.  These men have their misogyny and dehumanisation of women endorsed by other men. 

I very much doubt that there are many people in our society, male or female, who have not at some point made a comment or laughed at a joke or tacitly endorsed (with their silence) sexist and misogynistic viewpoints.  It’s just too prevalent in our society, same as something like racism.  Where men have a particular responsibility is that women are not raping and men are, and it is particularly in male spaces where pro-justice men need to step up and actually ensure that pro-rape views aren’t given space and endorsement.

Me personally, I called two male co-workers “pigs” at work a few weeks back, in a way that was jokey enough not to get me into a troublesome situation but which made is very clear that them talking about women at work in terms of hotness/fuckability etc was unacceptable and made me think less of them.  One, in particular, got very quiet and was obviously offended.  It hasn’t stopped him completely, but even just that one comment, that one expression of disgust at his attitude has slowed it down and made him think twice.  I will call him a pig again if he makes more comments, and I will keep on telling him he’s a chauvinistic asshole.  If people (primarily men) don’t have a space in which they can comfortably make sexist and misogynist comments and have people nod and smile (or say nothing) they realise it’s not getting a good reaction and they keep it to themselves because people mostly work to fit into social situations.  And the more this kind of shit gets shut down, the less likely it is that men are picking up the current social message that sex is about conquering and women’s bodies are what’s there to be taken.  And the less likely they are to rape.

That’s just one way in which men can actively step up to the plate and show that they mean it when they say they don’t want to live in a culture of rape.  Others may have other suggestions.

“So do women accuse falsely? This is the only story I’ve ever heard of someone doing it - and she was a high schooler - and I’ve known dozens of women who were actually raped or sexually assaulted. So false accusations are so rare as to not be worth considering."--pepito on 01/13 at 04:03 AM

I’m with you in regards to rarity, but the idea that false accusations aren’t worth considering is not something I can endorse.  If you think everyone in prison is guilty, you are an idiot.  Most are, usually for only a fraction of the offenses they did.  But some aren’t, and if that’s not worth considering, then I worry about your humanity.

False accusations, whether it was “She wanted it” or “He raped me” are wrong.  And they’re always worth considering, no matter what the alleged crime.

So my question is, how do I help? How do I help keep my sisters, my mother, my girlfriend, and my female friends safe, and everyone, of all genders, happy?

A huge proportion of men who think of themselves as allies to women still do not take what women say seriously. So it’s largely up to men to educate other men. Just talk about what you learn.

It’s often helpful to make the conversation about how “we’ve all grown up in a sexist environment” rather than “you are choosing to be a sexist because you are an asshole.” Nobody wants to have an uncomfortable conversation, and conversations about male/white/hetero/etc privilege are inevitably uncomfortable to the privileged. See how Obama’s election means “we’re all post-racial now (thank God I won’t ever have to talk about race again!)” Any opportunity to put up the defenses will be seized upon.

I wish I had more detailed advice though. Anybody else?

There are things that we agree are bad, things we agree are good, and that whole mess in the middle where not everyone agrees where clear boundaries are.  The unfortunate thing is that the boundaries are the problem.

Honestly, from a moral imperative standpoint, I think “don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you” is acceptably black and white, just like “don’t run over pedestrians with your automobile” is.  We don’t say “well, if it’s foggy and the pedestrian is jaywalking, it’s okay,” even if we might be more sympathetic to a driver in that situation.

Sure, legitimate confusion about consent can happen.  But constantly pulling out hypotheticals designed to excuse folks whose sexual partners didn’t consent to sex with them comes across as encouraging willful blindness.  Especially when the question we ask about these hypotheticals is “is what this person did okay?” and not “how can we prevent this situation?”

Thomas, what you said makes perfect sense to me. Other commenters, & especially Hekie, have given good advice about how you could start do something about this issue. I don’t doubt but that there are more structured ways of learning about this as well, but I don’t know them.

I wanted to respond to one thing you said in particular: I initially felt sympathetic towards PAT.  I don’t usually read the comments, so I didn’t know any past history, and even in this thread it took me a while to realize that, if nothing else, he was being tone-deaf and insensitive

In fact, I also feel sympathetic toward Notorious P.A.T., whoever he (or she) is. This is why I spoke as I did. It seems to me that P.A.T. is communicating in a way which is insensitive, given the topic, but is also somewhat in denial, or perhaps defensive. I can remember being younger, and saying things very reminiscent of what Notorious P.A.T. said. I can also remember how I got beyond this stage, which was by gaining more ability to look at the situation with detatchment, rather than taking the issue as a kind of affront to my gender, or finding it simply too negative to really contemplate. It is obviously not possible to know someone’s mind over the internet, but if this take on Notorious P.A.T. is at all accurate, then I would like to invite him or her to look at the situation a little less personally, and also to consider why statements like “Please, people, don’t get drunk surrounded by strangers.” are going to be taken as a minimizing of the problem rather than an attempt to help… and not only in relation to this topic.

pepito, you’re kind of talking about what I was talking about.  A lot of men apologize for rapists because they have pushed women but they haven’t raped them.  (Not that you’re apologizing---far from it.) So they assume---wrongly, I think---that rapists are just men who took it a little further.  Not really my experience, especially considering some of the nasty names that the guy who assaulted me called me when he was forced to stop.  The sooner we put to bed the idea that most date rapes are “accidental”, the better.  I think a lot of people read the example above and think, “Gosh, that could have been me when I was feeling a little horny and feeling the pressures of masculinity telling me to get some.” But I don’t think so.  I think that rapist knew that he was hurting her, and that was the point.  He’s her ex.  He’s probably angry at her.  This was revenge.  He exploited her need for safety.  He pushed past her fear. I think the fear was what he was after.

Also, pepito, the rate of false reporting of rape is, according to the FBI, about the same as the rate of false reporting of any other crime.  False accusations are exceedingly rare.  Most are situations where the woman was actually raped, but fingers the wrong guy because she didn’t get a good look at him.  Most false reports, from what I’ve read of FBI materials on this, are situations like the Tawna Brawley situation---either troubled women or vulnerable women making up a stranger rape in order to satisfy their paranoia, need for attention, or to cover up behavior that will get them in trouble.  What’s important to realize is they make up stranger rape, in hopes that no one will get caught for it.  They’re not trying to hurt anyone.  Most cases are like that Republican campaigner who claimed to be beat up by an Obama supporter---they make up an attacker (hoping no one will get caught) and usually they confess before an investigation starts.  The Brawley situation was a little different because it got politicized, and coming up with suspects became a priority, and the girl herself got swept up into it.  It almost never gets to that point, because most of the time, people have little concern for rape victims.

Which is why I would caution you against believing every rumor you hear about how some slut made up a rape story.  Being a rape victim is far more stigmatizing that being a slut ever could be, especially when you’re young.  You will be treated like the worst kind of slut (the kind so bad she was “asking for it”, as the faux concern from Notorious and liberalrob demonstrates).  You will be accused of lying, and being a slut who lies.  Even people who believe you will distance themselves from you, especially if you’re young, because they’ll fear it’s catching.  Knowing this, if I heard a rumor that some slut was bragging and then saying she was raped, I would wonder how much of our need to believe the worst of rape victims distorted the story before it reached my ears.

And, I guess that I would say something similar to liberalrob, in the event that he would be at all interested in my opinion. The border between the masculine and the feminine can be a treacherous. Maybe that sounds new-agey, but I think its true. It takes a certain amount of detatchment, a certain level of acceptance for a male to view things from a female point of view. And this rape culture-- which we can and should talk about even if it pisses people off, and I mean both ends will probably get pissed off-- makes communication between the genders twisty and confusing. Suffice to say to the men, since you are members of the gender that is dominant in society, you may find that your assumptions about how women feel are just simply wrong, even if they seem to make sense to you.

Seriously, the big problem here is that we as a culture look at rape as merely a legal category, which means our followup to the question “was this rape?” is not “did everyone involve want to be having sex with each other?”

This.

This is the problem on the thread.  This is why we have stupid discussions about “but is it rape if I do this?  What if she said yes then no?  Do I have to stop immediately, or can I go ahead and rape for another 30 seconds?” Stupid stupid shit about what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court, as if that were the only problem and it’s not rape if it’s not illegal.

OBVIOUSLY, the legal system is failing rape victims.  We need better laws and better enforcement.  We need rape victims to be supported by the community and not re-victimized by either the police, the hospital staff, or the defense actions.

The simple fact that most rapes are not even reported makes that self-evident.

However, what we can currently prove, or what we eventually want to prove in a court of law doesn’t change whether or not someone is guilty of a harming another person. 

If a woman doesn’t report the rape, and indeed, does as the woman in the post does--goes home and takes 4 scalding hot showers scrubbing her skin raw in an attempt to get “clean"--she’s lost the evidence and most likely will not be able to get a conviction.  That doesn’t mean she wasn’t raped, and it doesn’t mean her ex-bf is not a rapist or just “made a mistake” or somehow didn’t understand that she didn’t want to have sex with him.

You should never make that mistake.  If you do not look at sex as something a man takes from a woman, who’s not really human, then there’s no grey area for poor innocent men.

Seriously.  If you are a normal man and not a rapist, you want your partner to be an active, happy participant.  If you want to do something to your partner that s/he doesn’t want you to do, and you still do it over her/his objections, you’re a rapist.

It’s that fucking simple.  It doesn’t matter that the legal system is fucked up.  If a woman says “No.  I can’t.  Stop.” while repeatedly pulling her pants back up, YOU FUCKING STOP.  There should be no *repeated* pulling up of pants.

Anything other than enthusiastic consent is unacceptable, whether it’s provable or not.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve fucked in the past.  It doesn’t matter that you will fuck in the future.  No means “stop right fucking now, or you’re a rapist.”

If you want to debate better rape laws and enforcement, start with that fact, and then discuss how best to deal with it.  Starting with current legal definitions, and then questioning or belittling a victim b/c she was raped is what will set people off, and that’s EXACTLY what it sounds like, whether or not you mean it that way.

A lot of the time, there’s no real justice that a court can provide.  Even if the rapist is locked up, the rape still happened.  If a murderer is executed, his/her victims are still dead.  A court of law is a means of compromise and a means of keeping society functioning.  It’s not a place where everything is made “okay”.

If you (and you should) include coercive sex under the definition of rape, I sadly have no trouble believing that one out of ten is a far too conservative estimate. Even here in the liberal progressive bastion of Boston, I’d lean towards one in three or higher having pressured someone for sex at some point. I don’t ever gamble, but I’d put money on that figure.

Ok, and now I have an academic question, at the risk of a derail, and at the risk of Too Much Information.

I had a boyfriend about a year ago, a grown man, very “normal” seeming and all that. We had sex consensually, enthusiastically, and regularly. One night, we got started making out, taking off clothes, etc.

I wanted to have sex.

However, I also wanted some, uh, help in the form of lubricant (we had plenty on hand).

I stated this desire explicitly. I couldn’t get up and get it myself, because he was on top of me and I’m a fairly weak and petite person. And I didn’t feel that it was necessary to claw his eyes out, I mean, I asked and he would get the lube. That simple, right?

Only he didn’t get it and h didn’t let me up to get it. He just...pushed himself in.

I don’t know if it was over-whelming desire or laziness or what. I tend to rule out desire, because we were having sex regularly, multiple times a week, and in fact I tended to “want it” more often than he did.

At any rate, it hurt. Bad. I cared about this guy deeply and god knows I’ve been through much worse, so after a few more, “No, please, stop, I need some lube,” statements (I probably said it about three times), I grit my teeth and shut up.

He eventually looked up and saw my face and stopped immediately. When I asked him why, he said, “You looked like I was raping you.” I didn’t really know what to say. He was upset and angry, but I never could tell if he was angry at himself or angry at me. Knowing him, I suspect he was more anry with me - if ‘d just “got into it”, I wouldn’t have needed “help”. (Dry bitch, and all that.)

I wouldn’t have reported him to the police or anything because I didn’t feel (at the time) that being an asshole boyfriend was worth going to jail for. But...I never know how to respond on “Have you been raped and if so, by how many different men?” questionnaires. And I never ask this question, because it sounds like a perfect strawman. But I trust chingona and Seraph and INTPagan and so many others here.

So, was this rape? I mean, I did want the sex. I just wanted it to not hurt. And it did hurt and I asked him to stop and do something very simple (or let ME do the simple thing) to ensure it wouldn’t hurt. And he didn’t stop and didn’t believe me and thought that if he just did it HIS way, everything would be fine, if I’d just shut up and “trust him”. So he was an asshole douche. But was it rape? (And I don’t mean “legally”, to avoid that can of worms, I know that no prosecution would have been successful and I didn’t WANT to prosecute anyway, so don’t go there, LiberalRob.)

KeithM, before you continue to slander rape victims with the, “They were just drunk sluts who are trying to get out of it,” I’ll have you remember that many human beings on this thread are slandered with that.

My victim services’ counselor told me that one of her other cases when she was working mine was a lot like mine.  The victim was out with her boyfriend, some other people, and his best friend.  They stopped at the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, and she realized she was tired so she went to bed.  The party continued onto the next destination, and the “best friend” made up a story about leaving something at the house, went back, got her to let him in (of course she trusted him), and raped her.  His story?  To quote KeithM:

What happens if both are legitimately plastered after a night out, they have a rousing good time, and wake up the next morning with one or the other regretting it, knowing that had they been sober, it never would have happened.

Because of rape apologists like yourself spreading this vicious lie about how victims are drunk sluts, he looked (according to the counselor), like he was going to get away with it.  She said I was so lucky there were witnesses, because apparently the guy who raped me was spreading the same lie.  Despite the fact that I was rescued because I called for help. Thank god there were witnesses.

Reality: Because rape apologists like yourself claim rape is a matter of women regretting it the next morning and deciding to make themselves social pariahs for reasons that make no sense (because women are stupid and subhuman, unlike men, who are so sensible), rapists wait until they’ll be able to rape a woman in a situation where she won’t be believed.  They’ll single out women that they can convince people are sluts who went too far and are trying to cover it up.  So they’ll do what this rapist I’ve described did, and single out their best friend’s girlfriend, for instance, knowing that people are eager for any reason to disbelieve a rape victim.  Oh, she cheated and is trying to cover it up, wouldntyaknow?  They target members of their own social circles, knowing that in the majority of cases where a dispute arises between a man and a woman, most people in their social circle will side with the man and isolate the woman. They target drunk women, or women they’ve already had sex with, knowing that they’ll get a jury full of guys like the ones who’ve cropped up in this thread, who are eager to believe the worst about women “crying rape”.  They know jumping out of the bushes and attacking some stranger is risking jail, but they know raping a good friend who had a few and thought she was safe with them is basically legal, because they know that raping “bad girls” who befriend men and drink alcohol means a jury full of people whose hearts go out to the boys who will be boys.

In the book, the “KeithM” effect is so profound, that Latoya Peterson talks about watching a case where the defense attorney used the “dumb slut who had a few too many” type defense when the victim was beaten so badly she was unrecognizable in a photograph.  The defense attorney in the Orange County case got a hung jury with the “KeithM” defense, even though the rapists taped themselves, and the victim was so passed out cold that the people who found the video thought they were watching a video of a group of teenagers having sex with a girl they’d killed.  That also tips you off to how violent it was.  But they got a couple hung juries, because the “KeithM” defense is that good.  Only until the prosecution explicitly stated at the front and end of the trial that it’s illegal to rape all women---that raping “bad girls” is illegal, believe it or not---that they got a conviction.

The “drunk sluts” effect is so profound that only 1% of rapes end up in a conviction in England.  Only 1%---that’s 5.7% of reported rapes, with reported rapes being only 10-20% of rapes. This thread, with all its accusations of lying and victim-blaming, shows why rape in England has been, for all intents and purposes, legalized.

The more I think about it, the more “Prove Consent” appears to be interesting. 

At first I thought it would make it too easy to railroad a guy, but now I’m not as sure. 

I’ll have to think about it more.

So remember kids, unless you can get convicted in a criminal court, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Seriously, the big problem here is that we as a culture look at rape as merely a legal category, which means our followup to the question “was this rape?” is not “did everyone involve want to be having sex with each other?” but “if we call this rape, are we going to set a precedent that will make false accusations easier?” And that’s fucked up.  From an ethical standpoint, if you have sex with someone who doesn’t want to be having sex with you, you are a rapist. Even if the nature of the justice system means that there’s no chance you’ll ever be convicted, even if in your jurisdiction it’s technically legal (e.g., the other person is your spouse in a place where marital rape is unrecognized, or you forced someone to have oral sex in a jurisdiction where only PIV is considered rape).

I want to echo what jp is saying and point out to the men who obsess over the legal definition this truth of how you sound---like someone who enjoys raping and wants information on how much raping you can get away with. That may or may not be true.  But if I hear a guy demand, over and over, to hear if A is legally rape or B is legally rape, I will not allow myself to be alone with him.  Period.  A guy who is more interested in how much force he can legally use than whether or not women are 100% there and enjoying themselves is a scary man.

I’m not saying you guys rape.  But I’m letting you know what you sound like.

Keith M., please read in context.

If I wasn’t clear, what I can’t imagine is a world where women are not afraid to report rape, that their reports are taken seriously, that most rapists are put in jail, and where there might actually be a high chance of “innocent” men being convicted--a crisis of innocent men being convicted.

An absolutely “through the looking-glass” world compared to reality.

I’m not advocating for innocent men being jailed or denying that some men have been wrongly convicted.

BUT THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT POOR INNOCENT WRONGLY CONVICTED MEN, YOU FUCKING THREAD-JACKER.  We don’t have a crisis of wrongly convicted men in comparison to the crisis of women who can’t even get anyone to believe they were raped and fucking rape apologists claiming that maybe it’s okay to rape a little bit.

This is not the place, Keith M.  This thread is not the place, 450+ posts in, to start to whine about poor wrongly convicted men, and how feminazis just want to jail poor guys for being men.  Not when the post that starts it is concerned with a woman who WAS raped, who did say no and who can’t possibly get a conviction in our current world.

Not the place.

So, was this rape? I mean, I did want the sex. I just wanted it to not hurt. And it did hurt and I asked him to stop and do something very simple (or let ME do the simple thing) to ensure it wouldn’t hurt. And he didn’t stop and didn’t believe me and thought that if he just did it HIS way, everything would be fine, if I’d just shut up and “trust him”. So he was an asshole douche. But was it rape?

Yep.

I hope you’re not with him anymore.

How hard would it have been for him to wait 10 seconds for you to be able to be a willing and enthusiastic partner?  But instead, he did what he wanted and hurt (harmed) you, after you repeatedly asked him to stop.

Maybe he’s an idiot, and doesn’t understand that sex without enough lubrication HURTS, but he’s also a rapist.  You made a totally reasonable request, sex was still imminent, he didn’t give a shit about you except as a receptacle.

No means no.  Even if you’ve had sex before or will have sex again.  YOU did nothing wrong: he did. No, you would never be able to prove it in a court of law, but that doesn’t change the fact that he hurt you and betrayed your trust b/c he wanted to please himself and didn’t give a shit about you at the moment.

We do? I’m not kidding here--I’d been going under the assumption that, since a significant proportion of close female friends told me they’d been the victims of some kind of sexual violence, a similar proportion of my male friends were likely rapists. This has been a particularly disturbing thought to me, but I figured that was because it was one of those truths that my privilege had long blinded me to.

One thing that most of these threads are suffering from is an utter lack of research.  Part of it is that while the research is there, it’s hard to search for, because rape apologists clutter up the internet with bullshit information designed to conceal good information.  But this one is one that’s very easy to answer!  Yea! 

Mary Koss’ much-discussed 1987 study of rape prevalence is famous mostly for its fidning that 1 in 8 college women have been victims of rape at some point in their lives.  What’s not as well known is that the same study also surveyed thousands of college men, asking them about if they had ever forced a woman to have sex against her will. About 4.5% reported that they had.

4.5% of the men in the United States is an incredibly high number - that translates into over six million men.

The survey found that 1 in 8 women are raped, and 1 in 4 are a victim of attempted rape.  So, what we’re seeing is that your average rapist probably seeks out and attacks someone 5-6 times, and succeeds 2-3 times.  If you’re raped, know that he’s either done it before, will do it again, or both.  Which means that if you were raped, know that it’s not your fault.  Rapists just like raping, and you were selected for some reason, and sadly it may be because the rapist works by targeting women who trust him, knowing that the KeithMs of the world will let them get away with it.

I really can’t say anything, so I guess I might as well drop it.  Any attempt at working out nuance, about questioning whether all situations are as black and white as some people seem to make the universe out to be, and I’m a rape apologist.  Any questions about specific circumstances, and I’m accused of it representing the general.  I was talking about a possible scenario, and you slander me and imply that I mean it as a rule.

I’ve had family members sexually assaulted, I’ve had to deal with victims when I was working an ambulance, I was sexually assaulted once and for years felt utter humiliation at even remembering it happened, even though it wasn’t my fault, and the perpetrator suffered no punishment, with me being the butt of the jokes about what happened among those who knew.

Christ, it still pains me to think about it.  The worst part was that it was so profoundly embarrassing that I never did report it.  Oh, my superiors (I was in the military at the time) found out it had happened, but they never did anything about it.  Simple drunken goofing off on the part of my roommate, was the view.  I don’t know whatever became of the asshole who did it, but he’s probably still getting drunk and doing things and getting away with it.

I’m one of the men in the world who does know and can understand because it happened to me.  Unless, of course, the presence of testicles meant that the experience wasn’t real or something.

Rape apologist.

Caren, I’m not with him anymore, and he did (in the end) turn out to be a fairly privileged asshole, so I tend to come down on the side of “rape” whilst knowing, in my heart of hearts, that 90% of people I might try to explain it to would insist that it wasn’t rape. Which is frustrating. And I think it’s why the rape apologists come out like this - maybe they’ve never done this, but they recognize that just because you’re dating or married, doesn’t mean you’re “safe” from not-raping her. You have to listen to your partner and not believe in the fantasy that your cock overrides your hearing / thinking / mental processing. Some men don’t want to give up the caveman mentality.

I don’t even think that HE believes it was rape, despite his “you looked like I was raping you” comment. In believe, in his mind, that (pardon me) ‘wetness’ is a matter of determination and, had I not been so preoccupied with doing things “my way” (he frequently leveled the “You’re a control freak” label at me) with fancy lube and what not, if I had just gotten into the right frame of mind, his gargantuan mighty penis would have pleased me just fine, on its own, without lube or foreplay or anything else like that. In other words, I was being stubborn. And my being stubborn turned him into a rapist, against his will. You could say that I raped him. (Again, privilege.)

Keep in mind that this man insists, regularly, that he is a feminist male. He will never (I don’t believe) put on a test that he’s raped someone. And that’s why I don’t agree with Amanda’s interpretation of the statistics - I don’t believe that rapists have 2-3 victims each. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But saying that 4.5% of men are rapists because 4.5% of men realize they are rapists is a fallacy.

All we have from that survey is that 4.5% of men realize they are rapists. But plenty of rapists don’t realize that they are rapists, or won’t self-identify that way, even on any anonymous survey.

If you count my above incident, I’ve been raped by two different men. (I’ve also had an abusive husband, a third and unrelated incident.) I can either assume that there’s something wrong with ME (I’m attracted to rapists?) or I can assume that we live in a rape culture where some men rape without realizing that they are raping. Since I tend to believe my two rapists do NOT think they did anything wrong, that shows which direction I lean.

It’s also, incidentally, why I don’t think that all rapes are “about” power rather than sex. Of course, rape is an act of overpowering someone, physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever. And I was overpowered. But at least one of my rapists and possibly both were also just really interested in having sex, even if it was about having sex “their way”. So I think it’s about power AND sex sometimes. And sometimes it’s just about power. In my opinion.

But I still have a hard time identifying as being “raped” because both men were boyfriends and I wasn’t pure and “virginal” because even when I WAS a virgin, I was giving oral sex to try to ease the pain for the poor boyfriend. Slut!!! And that is why I believe the patriarchy still exists - because, in moments of weakness, I can still feel guilty for “withholding sex” and causing those poor men to rape me.

And then I shake myself out of it and tell myself that’s Dr. Dobson talking.

About railroading all those poor innocent men accused of rape… it’s not happening.  Really, it isn’t.  I live in Dallas, where a whole lot of men who had been convicted of rape and murder (this is key, so please keep in mind that these cases are specifically cases of rape and murder) have been exonerated by DNA evidence.  Much of this is because we now have a district attorney who, rightly, considers it a priority to encourage DNA review (and review of the many, many cases where mostly Spanish-speaking people convicted of possession-with-intent-to-distribute what turned out to be crushed-up drywall with a tiny amount of cocaine or heroin mixed in to make a lab test show positive) and get wrongly convicted people out of jail.

What has happened her in Dallas is that we had, for many, many years a criminal justice system that failed everyone but those in power.  The men wrongly convicted of these rapes and murders were nearly all black men, all of them were poor, and even without considering DNA evidence, their trials were deeply flawed.  Prosecutorial misconduct was rampant—the DA’s office had a manual on how to make sure no brown people were picked for juries.  Many convictions depended on wildly unreliable witnesses, either eyewitnesses who may have inadvertently misidentified the defendant or jailhouse informants who ever-so-conveniently heard the defendant confess while in jail awaiting his not exactly swift trial.

This is all true and it is all tragic.  What it is not is an indictment of women falsely accusing completely innocent men of rape.  These women are dead.  The false accusations came from a police and prosecutorial system interested in convicting someone, anyone, of these rapes and murders to look good to the public and to get re-elected as being Tough On Crime.

Convictions in cases of rape where the victim survived is vanishingly rare.  In these cases, and in very few other cases, there is a common assumption that the victim’s testimony is inherently unreliable.  I am not worried about the poor innocent men who fuck someone who is unconscious.  She didn’t say no, did she?  I am not worried about the poor innocent man who saw his tied-up girlfriend as an opportunity to get his dick in her ass, despite her protests and despite the copious amount of blood.  I am not worried about the man who fucked his crying girlfriend.  As we see every time we talk about rape, there are plenty of people who worry about these poor innocent men.

I am worried about women like Amanda, like Melissa, like denelian, like Essie, like my wife, like way, way too many people I’ve known who carry the scars of rape.  I am a huge supporter of the rights of equal protection under the law and of due process.  I just