[Passe, not very interesting spoiler alert.]
Not to be a broken record about this, but the notion that most rapes are a matter of women making drunken choices and regretting it later doesn’t match the realities. 
I’ll never forgive Tom Wolfe for writing that plot line into “A Man in Full.”

Of course, given the whole trend of not taking women’s issues seriously, it’s pretty common for a woman who accuses someone of rape to not be taken seriously if the situation doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of rape (ie, no dark alley or date-rape drug is involved). Men’s rights assholes act like they have to live in constant fear of having sex with a woman who will afterward accuse them of rape. Those poor men. In reality, false accusations of rape are far outweighed by, y’know, actual rapes, and the fact of the matter is that if a woman has sex and then feels like she’s been raped, the legal system has a responsibility to consider the possibility. Instead, they’ll often dismiss her because she didn’t act like a pure, chaste maiden from step one.

Patriarchs like the idea of stepping in to save the innocent damsel whose purity was taken away against her will, but if said damsel actually acts like a sexually functional human being, there’s no fun in protecting her. Already fallen, y’know.

I’m amazed people remain appalled at the idea that women can withdraw consent during intercourse.  Is there something confusing about it that I’m unaware of?  Are there other activities that don’t become criminal if you withdraw consent during them?  If someone comes to your house consensually, and you tell them to leave, they have to leave.  Do people really believe in a society where your front door is more inviolate than your actual person?

I’m amazed people remain appalled at the idea that women can withdraw consent during intercourse.  Is there something confusing about it that I’m unaware of?  Are there other activities that don’t become criminal if you withdraw consent during them?  If someone comes to your house consensually, and you tell them to leave, they have to leave.  Do people really believe in a society where your front door is more inviolate than your actual person?

That is possibly the best refutation of this idea I have ever seen.

@3

Yeah, pretty much this.

I was blinking slowly to the notion that “women yank away consent to be capricious”, because being the type of consent fetishist that believes (crazy I know) that there should always be consent, it just seemed psychotic for someone to calmly state that or imply that as if it was wrong.

Okay, so let’s say all women, every woman everywhere constantly and always yanked away consent capriciously in the moment of sex because they hate men so much. This world of their analogy has wholly replaced our own. The correct response on the part of the men would naturally therefore be: STILL STOPPING WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING.

It shouldn’t matter the motives for stopping sexual consent. If it’s stopped, one should stop because otherwise you’re doing something with someone’s body they don’t want you to do. You stop and if they “just as capriciously” want to restart the sexual interaction, you can start in again or just as capriciously decide you don’t want to anymore and then they’d have to respect YOUR choice.

When you examine the arguments of most of these anti-feminists and rape-apologists and anti-choicers, you really see how little they value women as people. There’s this constant edge of “how dare my car sass back to me”. They imagine a world where your car could “capriciously” not want to run on the freeway some day and how unfair that would be. And when you really think about that, the truly appalling nature of their argument spills like black bile over your face.

“Capriciously” removes consent? Who the fuck cares how it was removed? Who the fuck should care how it was removed except for the purposes of addressing the why when you can address it? It should be, stop, check in, and if it’s “capricious” you hug them say it’s ok and either excuse yourself or downgrade to something like cuddling them asleep so you can talk about it later or not.

That should be a natural fucking response. Instead withdrawal of consent is seen as a threat, a weapon. And I think that’s the toxic masculinity worldview in a nutshell and why we have a rape culture.

In patriachy-land, penises are like vampires: You can’t kick them out once you invite them in.

Imagine a situation where a man and a woman are having sex and the woman suddenly demands that the man stop.  It is for one of two reasons, either:

A.  The woman is an evil bitch who just loves to frustrate/himiliate/bother men with her almighty vagina powers

or

B.  She does not feel well or is in pain or discomfort of some sort

Now, either one is a good enough reason for me and every other person on earth who believes that a person’s body is his or her own.  But it is amazing to me how many people out there, given this scenario, immediately imagine A and it takes some crazy feminist to point out the possibility of B.  Why do we fist imagine women as villains and have to be convinced that they are actually just people with feelings?

It also makes me wonder about the sex lives of the people who make the claim that women capriciously withdraw consent. I suspect I’m like a lot of people in that I’ve had the experience of being in the middle of a good time and all of a sudden something hurt or felt uncomfortable. The reaction of most partners when you say “Stop, stop, it hurts” is to jump off and ask what’s wrong, what did they do, what can they do, etc. That’s ... you know, normal common courtesy.

Exactly, chingona.  And who, looking upon that scene, would watch a woman screaming “stop, stop, it hurts” while a man continues to have sex with (aka rape) her and NOT RECOGNIZE IT AS RAPE?  What could that man be BESIDES a rapist?

it’s pretty common for a woman who accuses someone of rape to not be taken seriously if the situation doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of rape (ie, no dark alley or date-rape drug is involved)

Just thought I’d point out that even when there IS a dark alley or date-rape drug involved, ppl often won’t believe it. I have been drugged (in my own apartment) by a friend of a friend. When I tried to tell my friend I thought his friend drugged me, he didn’t believe me. The rape was not successful, thank goodness (I don’t think I had enough of the drug in my system, but he did manage to get me into a bedroom and be on top of me before I came to and pushed him off). Needless to say, that “friend” was not my friend anymore after that.

Even still when I tell the story people think it must have been some kind of misunderstanding. Or that it was the pot (yes we were smoking, but i had one hit and i am a stoner - I think I can tell the difference between weed and ghb… and it was my weed and i smoked plenty of it before and after with no probs). ppl are willing to defend a rapist even without knowing who he is!!!

With the skill he seemed to posses and the way he went about it i am CONVINCED he’s done this to women before. I didn’t call the police =(. I just had no evidence, I was underage with illegal drugs and alcohol, and he didn’t even rape me, just attempted to. how do you even prove that? i didn’t even know the guy’s full name. But I worry about how many women he’s succeeded raping…

If someone comes to your house consensually, and you tell them to leave, they have to leave.

Perhaps in some states. This is apparantly not the case in Washington state, though. One time I had a guy a little too drunk at my party and was causing all kinds of problems. Everyone left but of course I couldn’t, it was my apartment! I couldn’t get him out and he was starting to scare me and my roommates. We all ended up outside while he was in the place yelling. We didn’t know what to do. I called the cops and they said, “did you invite him into your house?”. “yes” “Well then there is nothing we can do. We can only legally extract people breaking and entering.” “Wait are you saying if I invite someone in they can stay there forever?” “yes.”

I called a friend with gang experience to help me out.

You know, I’ve withdrawn consent many many times in both casual sex and partner sex and I’ve never had a man keep going.

There are a million reasons to withdraw consent, I, like others here, can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t see this.

Some reasons I’ve had:
Guy wouldn’t wear a condom. (consent to safe sex is not consent to risky sex)
Pain/discomfort. (everyone i’ve been with has immediately stopped when I said “ow”)
My period suddenly starts. (i don’t mind sex on my period, but when it’s the first time i’ve been with them… well it can be awkward if you’re not prepared.)
They want something I don’t want to do and/or they don’t want to do what I want. (sexual incompatibility)
Roommate comes home while on the couch. (consent to sex in private is not consent to public sex.)
Guy wants to invite his friend in. (consent to one is not consent to all)
Attempt at anal or certain position, but realizing it’s just not gonna happen today.

I’m sure there is more. And yet none of these men ever attempted to rape me. Sometimes we even stopped having sex and slept the rest of the night together.

The only times I’ve ever had someone sexually assault me I was doing completely non-sexual things like:
Hanging out in my apartment with my friends.
Turning down someone for a date. (this pisses some guys off… funny thing is i would have said yes if i didn’t have a bf cuz i WAS attracted to this guy. boy am i glad i did have a bf and didn’t get involved with that asshole!!)
Walking down the street with my girlfriends.
Sitting at a stop light in my convertible.

I resent that women are told they can’t withdraw consent, and I resent that men are told that it’s somehow impossible enough for us to deal with consent being withdrawn. I mean, I’ve been with a lady (wink wink, nudge nudge), and yet somehow, my brain did not decouple from my body. As Kat noted, if a partner shows discomfort, it’s not exactly difficult to stop, and say, “Hey, you okay?” Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no, sometimes it’s no big deal, sometimes it is—but if the answer involves “let’s stop,” then I am capable of stopping. And have. And will in the future, if need be.

I can tell you that the times I’ve been intimate with women, I’ve done so because I liked that particular woman I was intimate with; if you like someone, you don’t actually want to cause them pain, and you take their feelings into account. This is not hard. This is very, very easy, in fact, which is why I have never bought the idea that women at some point pass a moral even horizon after which they’re committed to see sex through.

@13:  The officer you spoke with was lying or mistaken.  In Washington (I just checked), trespassing means entering OR remaining somewhere you’re not supposed to be.  And furthermore, state laws tend to encourage you to call the police, rather than deal with it on your own.

If this wasn’t a long time ago, register a complaint with the police department.

@16 Well that’s lame, they didn’t even send an officer out, it was the 911 operator that told me they couldn’t send anyone. It was 8 years ago, though, so I think it’s a little late to do anything about.

I agree with calling the police instead of dealing with it. That’s why I did, despite the risk that I myself would be charged for having alcohol and being under 21. The cops here can be fuckwads sometimes though.

There’s a bit about 28 minutes into the discussion where Mac Donald keeps insisting she isn’t defending stranger rape and the other speakers want to know what kind of rape Mac Donald is defending that cracked me up.

Both times I was sexually assaulted were acquaintance and withdrawal of consent situations. The first time was my first time having sex and it was painful and I asked him to stop. He behaved as if he had not heard me. That is what I think goes on with a lot of rapes: you have entered a zone in this person’s mind where you are an object for his pleasure, so your words are not taken seriously or even registered as meaningful. There is something intensely sociopathic about that, but it is a culturally sanctioned sociopathy and one that sometimes only manifests in very specific contexts. It’s like sexual activity becomes a cue for the withdrawal of empathy (or whatever false show of empathy the guy has been giving off most of the time).

The second time was on a first date, and what was weird was that when I tried to put a stop to his physical advances, because he was going too far too fast and making me uncomfortable, he didn’t take me seriously, but when I made the excuse that I needed to leave so I wouldn’t be tired driving home, he acted all concerned and stopped. In that case I think he has picked up on the social script that says we aren’t serious when we say no to sexual activity and that overcoming our wills is somehow sexy to us and fun for them. It seemed less sociopathic, less objectifying, more like trying to communicate with someone from an extremely different cultural framework. That’s not at all to excuse his behavior (note I still count it as a sexual assault), but more to say that his behavior seemed to stem from an inability to correctly interpret my cues, rather than an unwillingness to notice them at all.

I stopped sex in the middle with one guy once because I just wasn’t enjoying it—and a roach ran up the wall by my head in his skeevy apartment.

He was okay with it.

And once, with a friend I’d developed feelings for, he stopped after some making out, before sex.  So by men’s rights standards (and the bitch Heather Macdonald) the guy should have been forced to put out for me, no matter his feelings.

Wonder why they never tout for THAT outcome.

I’m amazed people remain appalled at the idea that women can withdraw consent during intercourse.  Is there something confusing about it that I’m unaware of?  Are there other activities that don’t become criminal if you withdraw consent during them?  If someone comes to your house consensually, and you tell them to leave, they have to leave.  Do people really believe in a society where your front door is more inviolate than your actual person?

Yes, yes they do. This is why you have right-wingers advocating shooting trespassers but also not wanting to let women have abortions.

I wanted to listen, but couldn’t get past the first caller.

In addition to viewing women as objects for men’s pleasure, there’s also a tendency among those with traditional patriarchal attitudes to see men’s sexuality as a force of nature—like a tornado or tsunami—that cannot be easily controlled.  Thus, men rape because they simply can’t stop themselves in the presence of those sexy sluts, who really ought to know better than to be female in the presence of men.  Men are just that way (this line of thinking goes)—they can’t control themselves! 

Of course, it’s all self-serving bullshit.  Speaking as one, I can say without a doubt that men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves enough not to commit rape, even it that means stopping in the middle of sex when their partner says stop.  Been there, done that, and it wasn’t even even hard.

Er…no pun intended.

My understanding is rapists rape because a female authority figure emotionally and/or physically abused them as children. Rape is a retaliation against that abuse and the victims represent their childhood tormentors. This is not an excuse for rapists criminal behavior, but all of the articles I have ever read about why rapists rape came to this conclusion. Rape is almost never about the sex but about the control exerted by the perpetrator on the victim, which resembles the actual or perceived abuse they experienced as children.

I caught most of this on NPR but I didn’t get all of it.  So unless I missed it, I wish someone had just directly asked MacDonald whether she even accepted that there is such a thing as acquaintance rape.  In my opinion she seemed to be hinting that she believed there wasn’t.  Or she may have been just claiming that such a problem is being exagerrated for political reasons by the “campus rape industry”.
Anyway, I wish we had got some clarification on that so I could determine whether to classify her as vicious or merely delusional.

It’s hard having a debate with a wingnut since you can never assume even a basic agreement on definitions.  MacDonald had this weird circular argument going on where she proclaimed she didn’t blame rape victims because anyone that she found blameworthy wasn’t really a rape victim. 

Thus, you could agree with her that rape is never the victim’s fault and still agree with her on absolutely nothing.

I have not read any articles about interrupting coitus rape.

My understanding is rapists rape because a female authority figure emotionally and/or physically abused them as children.

What? So it’s still women’s fault, huh? Cite plz

My understanding is rapists rape because a female authority figure emotionally and/or physically abused them as children. Rape is a retaliation against that abuse and the victims represent their childhood tormentors.

Er, no.

Wikipedia isn’t much help (evolutionary pressures? yeah, right) but there’s no mommy-blaming:

Motivation for rape
There is no single theory that conclusively explains the motivation for rape; the motives of rapists can be multi-factorial and are subject to debate. Several factors have been proposed: anger, a desire for power, sadism, sexual gratification,[18] and evolutionary pressures.[18]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape

Also Sexual gratification - welp, it looks like the Men’s Rights advocates have been hacking Wikipedia again,

the wording is also suspicious, there’s no “motivation” for rape, sociopathology, maybe.

This seems more likely:

Understanding the Rapist’s Mind
Elizabeth Janssen, MA, RN 1
  1 Graduate Program in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, School of Nursing, at Columbia University, New York, NY
Copyright 1995 by Nursecom, Inc.
KEYWORDS
Date rape • stalking • stranger rape
ABSTRACT
topic. The motivations and psychology of the rapist.

purpose. To provide a framework of sexual perversions so that the motives and psychology of rapists can be better understood.

source. Analytic literature.

conclusion. Unconscious motives leading to rape appear related to issues of control, power, and dominance.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119239719/abstract

trivia, we didn’t ask because she repeatedly denied that rape in social situations happens.  I’m not sure if that’s what she meant to say, but she repeatedly made it clear the only rape she accepts is the “jumps out of the bushes” stranger rape.  When it was pointed out to her the people rape members of their own family, including children, she went back to the stranger rape nonsense.

people rape members of their own family, including children

It’s those children’s fault… somehow…

Andrew Luster comes to mind as a counterexample, seeing as he was a trustfundarian who never had to work a day in his life and presumably had a comfortable upbringing, but nevertheless ended up not just raping women he brought over to his place and drugged so they wouldn’t remember what happened, but had to videotape his crimes as well, a sign of a seriously imbalanced state of mind.

Also, I’ve known men who had a less than satisfactory relationship with their mothers who didn’t become rapists, in one case a man was told at the age of 12 by his father that his mother was leaving the family for another man,(his mother stayed with the family and never did leave), but it didn’t prevent him from marrying and having a great relationship with his wife and their daughter as well.

One additional thought, the show referred to a poll in which over half of the women attributed some level of blame to rape victims.  This seemed to catch a lot of people off guard.  You might expect that sort of a reply to some degree from males in a mysogynistic culture where women are regarded as devious temptresses but you wouldn’t typically expect it from women. 

I don’t know that this is in fact what it is going on but the traditional pyschological explanation behind blame the victim mentalities of any sort it is that is a denial mechanism.  If only bad things happen to bad people or to people who are responsible in some way for their own suffering, then I as a person who doesn’t do those things or behave in that way, don’t have to worry about it.

Or the other possibility is that these attitudes have just been absorbed by women from the culture. 

From a social science/psychology point of view, it would be interesting to see if these sorts of blame the victim attitudes towards rape amongst women correlate with blame the victim attitudes in general on a range of issues or only on this specific one.  A general correlation would suggest this has more to do with a general psychological denial mechanism.  No correlation would probably suggest it has more to do with a general prevalence of mysogynistic stereotypes even amongst women.

In relation to mnsr’s MRA nonsense,  I’ve always wondered about that meme that people abuse others because they themselves were abused.  It’s very convenient, somehow, in that it allows society to disengage. 

Of course, when you think about it, it makes no sense, since most sexual abusers are men and most victims are women, and this has been pretty much the case for generations.

mnsr@24:

No.  That’s just bad, outdated pop psychology.

Actually it makes perfect sense. “Nice men never rape” is part and parcel of patriarchal ass-kissing.

According to the Lundy book “Why Does He Do That” wife beaters who claim child abuse stop claiming child abuse when you hook them up to a polygraph. So I would imagine the same is true for rapists.

This is not an excuse for rapists criminal behavior, but all of the articles I have ever read about why rapists rape came to this conclusion.

You should read more than one article.

From a social science/psychology point of view, it would be interesting to see if these sorts of blame the victim attitudes towards rape amongst women correlate with blame the victim attitudes in general on a range of issues or only on this specific one.  A general correlation would suggest this has more to do with a general psychological denial mechanism.  No correlation would probably suggest it has more to do with a general prevalence of mysogynistic stereotypes even amongst women.

Believing in Just World Theory (that people generally get what they deserve) usually correlates with acceptance of misogyny, racism, etc., since opposing those things means admitting the world is not just.  I’m not sure one can draw a line between “psychological denial mechanism” and ideology, since our politics are necessarily an outgrowth of what we believe about the world.

I was blinking slowly to the notion that “women yank away consent to be capricious”

I think it makes perfect sense if you assume the person who says it also believes that women don’t have sexual desires of our own.  If women only have sex to please men (since we allegedly can’t enjoy sex for ourselves), if we withdraw consent, obviously it’s just because we’re conniving bitches and not, say, because there’s just no sexual chemistry there (or we’re tired or the guy just isn’t so great or it just turns out we’re not in the mood).  Then there’s the whole other issue of what this implies about the men who believe this.  What does it say about their sexual prowess that they firmly believe that women don’t or can’t enjoy sex?  This blog post says it much better than I ever could.

#35 triviadude—It’s not surprising that women can have negative views about women who are raped. It’s the same thing that leads rich people to think that poor people “deserve” to be poor because they “didn’t work hard enough.” Admitting that women don’t deserve to be raped is admitting that no matter what you do, you can’t be perfectly safe. Never go outside after dark, never walk alone, don’t go to bars, don’t dress provocatively—do everything right, and you won’t get raped. Also, bang these two sticks together, and you won’t be attacked by bears.

It’s not rational—it’s totemic. The truth is much messier, which is that most places are about 97% safe, and it all comes down to whether you happen to be in a place at the 3% time. That place could be the scary back alley or abandoned parking garage—or it could be your uncle’s house, or your bedroom after a date.

Now, people who want to stop rape try to figure out what the common theme in that 3% is, and it turns out to have very little to do with what the victim is doing, and quite a bit to do with what the rapist is doing. But if you’re worried you’re going to be raped, that’s damned unsatisfactory; surely, you can do something to protect yourself. So you blame the victims for their “errors in judgment,” because if they made a mistake then you can ignore the fact that sometimes, horrible things happen to people who didn’t do a damn thing wrong. And you can bask in the proof of your superiority, because you didn’t get raped—unlike those other, reckless women.

Unless you do get raped. And since that’s more likely to happen because you’re dating/married to/related to a rapist as it is if you dare to be female after dark, you just might.

It’s whistling in the dark. And I totally get it, and frankly, all of us do it in some ways. But just as attacking fat people for being fat won’t keep you from dying of cancer at 48, blaming victims of rape won’t keep you from being raped. All it does is take the focus off the responsible party, which is always, always, always the rapist.

The arguments about hook-up culture and regretful lying are completely contradictory.  If it’s more acceptable for women to have casual sex, then they would be much less likely to make up a rape out of shame.  Come one, people!  Logic really isn’t that hard.

Catgirl@45, remeber whom you are talking about.  Also, I absolutely agree.

I think that it’s often helpful to look at these issues with roles reversed, so I’ll share a true story.  Please note, I’m not trying to say “Oh, but it can happen to men too” or anything like that.

I’m a woman, and I’ve been “hooking up” since I was 15.  When I was about 21, I met a guy in college that I was interested in hooking up with.  He was still a technical virgin, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to lose his virginity yet.  I assured that even though I enjoy PIV sex, I would never pressure him to do anything he doesn’t feel ready for.  So, I simply didn’t.  We made out, got naked, and experimented with a few other activities.  He was in my bed and clearly aroused, and it probably would have been very easy for me to “convince” him to give in and have PIV sex.  But I never even thought about bringing it up.  FWIW, we both left completely satisfied, but I would have maintained my position even if it meant that we did nothing more than making out.  I knew that I would hate myself if I had not maintained my integrity.  Essentially, I probably could have raped this man and I chose not to.  Well, I didn’t even choose not to; it didn’t even occur to me to “take advantage” of him.  I simply respected him as a person and it was easy to do the right thing.  I managed to have self-control, and I demand the same behavior from men.  For men that truly can’t control themselves, it is their responsibility to never get into a situation like this, not the potential victim’s.  But I wonder, if I had cajoled this man into having sex, would other people blame him for getting into bed with me?

The first time a woman I had sex with called out my name, I stopped and asked her if everything was ok. (It was, she was just the type to actually call out a name, which I had not encountered before outside of fiction.) So put me in the “of course you stop” side of things.

Catgirl: I was on the opposite side of what you describe. I first had PIV (or really any) sex quite late. The woman I was involved with found out I was a virgin and agreed to take it slow. Two days later, we had dinner, ended up in her bedroom and had sex. Afterward, she asked if I was ok with it, having perhaps worried that she did “convince” me to move faster than I wanted. I assured her that wasn’t the case, as I was quite happy to lose my virginity and my hesitation was far more about having no idea what I was doing than anything else.  But I’m also quite confident that had I asked her to hold off or slow down she would have been fine with that.

And since that’s more likely to happen because you’re dating/married to/related to a rapist as it is if you dare to be female after dark

Something I can confirm from my professional experience- from the jurisdictions my lab serves I have seen very, very few rape-by-stranger cases; it’s overwhelmingly more probable for rapist and victim to be acquainted in one of the ways you list. 

I’m also happy to say that the scenario outlined by Triplanetary way back at #2 pretty much doesn’t exist where I work. I’ve never heard of a complaint not being taken seriously by any of the departments we work with, and our prosecutor’s office has a very active victim-assistance office that works hard to try to get any woman who reports an assault to the ER in a timely fashion for evidence collection. I know these things aren’t true everywhere, which saddens and angers me.

LC, it sounds like you found a good woman that who really cared about respecting you.  I’m not really into romantic stuff, but that’s the kind of sweet thing I like to hear about.

The guy in my story was actually very experienced, except with that one specific act.  I personally don’t hold PIV above everything else, but I still respected him anyway because it’s his body and his choice what to do with it, regardless of the reason he makes that choice.

Since almost everyone’s first authority figure is their mother…

But I really wanted to comment on

A.  The woman is an evil bitch who just loves to frustrate/himiliate/bother men with her almighty vagina powers

So if a guy believes this is true, why on FSM’s green earth would he want the most sensitive and vulnerable part of his body unprotected anywhere near her?

Is it really so “natural” for anyone in the heat of the moment to be gracious and considerate to someone who has just been deliberately and hatefully sexually malevolent as you described?

The notion of “asking for it” is a cross-cultural one, not just some academic term limited to certain heterosex situations. Blacks and Jena Six, wives and Mrs. Woods’ 9 iron and redneck girlfriends and that Carrie Underwood song come to mind.
Comment #44: wrongsideofthetracks on 02/19 at 08:07 AM

Please ban this person immediately. I, personally, would not like a repeat of the last thread where this guy was explicitly defending rape under any and all circumstances.

I’m in the middle of a romance novel, and in one of the sex scenes the woman gasps (or something) and the guy immediately stops and asks her what’s wrong. Nothing was wrong and they went along their merry way, but I loved the fact that he’s horrified by the idea that he might hurt her and he just stopped what he was doing and made sure she was ok and wanted to keep going.

That link from kesh @42 is interesting.  A sad number of men believe this—-that if a woman “likes sex”, that means with any random man, and so if she doesn’t want to fuck you, it’s because she doesn’t like sex.  Unlike those ever-giving porn stars.

wrongsideofthetracks, when people have proven your weird worldview wrong, retorting by incoherence isn’t really going to get you where you want to go.  Why not just grow up and change your mind to fit reality?

Okay, I deleted wrongside.

“(evolutionary pressures? yeah, right)”
For what it’s worth, rape *does* exist in nature, and pretty widely at that. So there must be some sort of adaptive benefit to it (like there is to so many other things that exist in nature we consider wrong)...

For what it’s worth, rape *does* exist in nature, and pretty widely at that.

Is this actually true?  Can you provide some sources?  I know that ducks sometimes rape, but I don’t think many other species do it.  I thought that the idea of it being very common was antiquated and basically fabricated to justify rape.

So there must be some sort of adaptive benefit to it

That doesn’t necessarily follow- selection isn’t all-powerful and adaptation is a “satisficing” process not an optimizing one. So it shouldn’t be just a default assumption that every feature of every organism is adaptive.

(Sorry to put on my pedant hat but that’s one of the more common misconceptions about evolutionary biology.)

For what it’s worth, rape *does* exist in nature, and pretty widely at that.

For rape to exist in nature you presuppose that non-human animals have an understanding of consent and bodily autonomy. If they don’t there’s no such thing as rape “in nature.”

ISTR that dolphins have been seen engaging in gang rape.  And I’ve seen one duck mounting another who was very clearly trying to get away.

And evolution doesn’t make things perfect!  The fact that something exists in other species does not indicate that there’s a “benefit” to it or that the Panglossian hand of evolution designed it that way.  Sheesh.

presuppose that non-human animals have an understanding of consent and bodily autonomy

Certainly I can provide examples of some mammals refusing other mammals (kicking out, running away, etc. I’ve seen mares in heat flirt with a stallion but then kick him in the chest when he tried to mount her. I’ve seen female birds choose one suitor over another. I think it is fair to say that at least very basic concepts of consent exist in the animal world, albeit perhaps not universally.

We’re only beginning to get an understanding of how animals learn, think, make decisions etc. For thousands of years we just assumed that they didn’t - that instinct was entirely unrelated to thought - it’s a hard bias for humans to get past.

A sad number of men believe this—-that if a woman “likes sex”, that means with any random man

I have never understood this reasoning, though I’ve encountered it plenty of times as a woman who officially “likes sex”.  Most people like sex, and that includes straight men.  So, would these men be willing to have sex with any woman at all?  Don’t they have any standards?  Maybe they truly don’t.  But everyone has preferences and just because I have sex with 100 guys doesn’t mean I’ll want to have sex with Mr. 101.  Maybe those first 100 guys were non-smokers and Mr. 101 is a smoker and I’m allergic to the smell.  Maybe the first 100 were within 5 years of my age and Mr. 101 is twice my age.  Is it really so hard to realize that men are individuals and I find some of them more appealing than others?  The only reasonable conclusion is that these men assume women are equally repulsed by all men, and the women who will tolerate with one should tolerate it with any.

Is this actually true?  Can you provide some sources?  I know that ducks sometimes rape, but I don’t think many other species do it.  I thought that the idea of it being very common was antiquated and basically fabricated to justify rape.

Oh, yeah, it is in fact pretty common. Chimps do it, orangutans do it, dolphins do it, and ducks apparently do it so often that females have evolved to account for it (53% of duck copulations are what they call “forced copulations”, ie, the female does not cooperate and appears to be trying to escape; 3% of such copulations result in eggs.)

It is true that animals can’t consent in the human sense of the word, but a female animal can initiate sex, can actively participate in sex, can demonstrate receptivity to sex, can fight off a male animal who attempts to have sex with her… there’s no moral dimension to it, because animals have no capability for moral thought, but it is entirely possible for a male animal to copulate with a female animal against her will.

I don’t object to “sexual gratification” being in a list of why people rape. In cultures where female consent is considered completely unimportant (as in, it’s not even a consideration), men rape (by our standards) because they just want sex all the time. If you were given in marriage to a man who then owns you, and you were never given the option to consent to the marriage, and are not asked for your consent to the sex, then the man might be raping you every time he wants sex, but for him the point to it isn’t the power and dominance—the point is that he wants sex and he doesn’t think your opinion matters. (And, in fact, *you* might not think your opinion matters. In such cultures, rape is generally defined by women as well as men as the sexual use of a virgin or of a married woman by a man she is not married to, and the question of her consent is considered so totally unimportant, in some such cultures the rape victim is treated as if she consented and punished, as a matter of course. Women participate in creating and maintaining this definition as well as men do.)

In our culture, since we are taught as a culture that female consent has at least theoretical importance, rape is generally not committed for sexual gratification… it’s easy enough to get sexual gratification from consenting partners. But what we would define as rape has been committed by millions of men throughout history simply because they wanted sex and their culture told them (and the women they raped) that the woman’s opinion on the matter was unimportant. They wouldn’t have defined it as rape, so perhaps in that sense “sexual gratification” doesn’t belong on the list. That being said, I believe the existence of rape porn does suggest that some men are specifically sexually aroused by the idea of rape, and will rape because it gets them hot to do so… which is no more a justification and makes it no more acceptable than admitting that pedophiles are aroused by the bodies of young children. Just because someone gets sexual kicks out of committing an evil act, doesn’t make it not an evil act.

Oh, yeah, it is in fact pretty common. Chimps do it, orangutans do it, dolphins do it,

But do they really do it?  I know about the ducks, but what about others?  I thought this was one of those things like the lemmings jumping off cliffs that is more of an urban legend.  If the evidence shows it, I’ll believe it, but I’ve only heard it passed along as “common knowledge”.

This whole discussion just brings to mind John McCain’s certainty that women lie about the health threats of pregnancy in order to get abortions. The utter refusal to trust what women say is so pervasive and pathalogical. And it’s so self-serving! If a woman says something flattering it must be true, if she says something you disagree with/ that would indicate that you’re hurting another human being then she must be lying. It’s a neat trick to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes with a) thinking you’re a good person and b) hurting other humans. It assures people that a) they’re not really hurting anyone, because women are just lying about their pain/fear/feelings AND b) it doesn’t matter if they are hurting someone, because liars don’t deserve sympathy.

I’ll never forgive Tom Wolfe for writing that plot line into “A Man in Full.”

I’ll never forgive Tom Wolfe for writing anything that he’s ever written, or for wearing that stupid white linen suit every day, or basically for existing.

I’m sorry to say that Heather MacDonald is one of two famous people from my high school (actually, prep school) class. (The other is Dana Delaney.) I had the most glancing acquaintance with her and certainly never knew she’d grow up to be so obnoxious. (“Campus rape industry” my ass.)

I thought it was a top performance Amanda, and I’m really glad you brought up the point that specific sex acts can be counted as rape if they’re on-consensual, even in a sexual situation that started out as consensual, and that that often gets ignored due to people being uncomfortable when discussing sex in detail.

I’m not sure what Heather McDonald was on about though, as others have pointed out she didn’t seem to be engaging with the points in any meaningful sense at all. Even though I tutted a bit at it, I could kind of understand why the host and/or other panellists were audibly sniggering or making other dismissive noises while she was talking. The only thing she said that I agreed with was when she claimed that the not-stopping-while-drunk date rape was motivated by sexual gratification rather than power. Other than that, well I suppose it would have been difficult to get hold of an intelligent counter argument given the subject matter.

I don’t believe that the issue of rape is always black and white, there are many reasons that people do horrible things to other people but I strongly feel that there are many more women who are truly innocent victims than those labeled as “consenting” or are simply pushed aside as liars. For example if a prostitute is raped does that count? When does a human being start to matter? And how can you possibly justify someone being raped by delving into their past sexual history? That’s like saying “well this person possessed a gun so how could they expect not to get shot?” The bias in my opinion favors the perpetrator. Our justice system is dominated by older white males, that is a fact. I think that if anything, a victim of rape is always a victim, no one ever asks to be raped.

How Feminist sluts (aka professional victims) play the blame game with men (aka professional perpetrators): http://manhood101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=488

Yes, because a thread where women are called bitches is so mature and adult, you’d be crying in your beer if Amanda referred to men as ‘bastards’ here, t4h.

#48 Steve LaBonne.  Where do you work, because police taking women seriously about rape sure as shit doesn’t happen in the Seattle area much.