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cereta has an excellent post on many issues, but mostly on how men are acculturated to believe that rape is okay and that not raping women, much less preventing other men from raping women, is an extraordinary good deed.I genuinely like a whole lot of heterosexual men. But I do not believe that just because I like a man, he has the same ideas about rape that I do. In fact, the conversations I've had with straight men about rape and sexual harassment have been almost universally depressing. (I know that gay men can also be misogynistic, but in my experience it's much less prevalent.) In my experience, about ninety percent of the men with whom I've had those conversations in person believe at least one of the following:
-Once a man is sexually aroused, he's not responsible for his own actions.
-Once a man is sexually aroused, sex is inevitable and something he can't control.
-If a woman goes on a date with a man/gets drunk with a man/goes to a man's apartment/flirts with a man/kisses a man, she has consented to sex with him and may not revoke her consent.
-Consenting to one sexual act is automatic consent for any further or other sexual acts. (ie, consent to oral sex = consent to vaginal sex.)
-Women falsely accuse men of rape all the time, and all men are terrified of being falsely accused. All conversations about rape must revolve around this, a much bigger problem than the problem of actual rape.
-There is no way for a man to protect himself against accidentally raping a woman whom he thought consented but actually didn't. Verbally asking if a woman wants to have sex with him is impossible. (Yes, I've heard this one repeatedly.)
ETA: Since people are still trickling in, and sometimes blaming me for hearing men blame women for being raped, let me clarify who the men are who I've heard say all that stuff. They are not only my closest circle of self-selected friends. They are drawn from the pool of all men ever whom I've heard discussing rape. This includes co-workers, students in classes I was in, friends of friends, men waiting in line, men with whom I share an activity, men with whom I share public transport, men at parties, men in the jury pool, etc.
The next person who blames me for associating with the general population will get their thread frozen, and may be subject to banning if they persist.
End ETA.
And yes, I do know that men are raped too, and women can be rapists or child molesters. However, due to the way at least USA culture works, while women sometimes believe all this stuff I mention above, it is almost universal in my experience that men do.
If you are a man and you DON'T believe that this stuff is okay, it would be really nice if you started teaching other men and boys what you believe. If nothing else, teaching them that it really is possible, acceptable, and sexy to ask, "Do you want to have sex with me?" And take no as a no. Because right now, you are in the minority.
ETA: If you are a man who does not agree with the rape myths, AND you are vocal about your opinions with other men, this post is not about you. Carry on with your good work.
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Good points. Here's my 2 cents, if ya want 'em!
While it was happening, at first I was shocked, then I wondered why I deserved such sudden ager and he didn't love me like he said, then I didn't want to be a damn statistic so I said nothing and didn't protect myself but instead hoped he'd stop and apologize. Those two minutes resulted in a great deal of turmoil for months and months. Now that I'm taking ninjutsu, I've learned to give myself permission to say no and to even protest physically. I'm learning to make it a habit to protect myself, even.
But the fucked up thought processes at the time probably did not clue my boyfriend in to the fact that what he was doing wasn't just animalistic or inconsiderate or selfish--it was unwanted and depressing and damaging.
So, I think it's also important for all of us to not just teach men the facts, but to teach women that they have a responsibility to make how they feel about what's happening really, really, really clear, and to stress that saying no or even having to fight someone off doesn't make them a bitch, a tease, a bully, a liar, ungenerous, unfeminine, stuck up, unsexy, over-reacting, frigid, a dramaqueen, or nuts. It just makes them honest.
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how to respond to one of those myths (1)
This is statistically shown to be the case, at least in the United States. Probably you can find it cited on rainn.org along with a lot of other very useful statistics about sexual violence.
The reasoning behind men's stupid fear of being accused of rape (or of women "abusing" laws about sexual violence should they be strengthened) seems to involve women getting revenge on or money from men they're mad at. (I think this in itself reveals an unconscious understanding that women have so little power in our society that they may have to resort to underhanded tactics to get what they want.)
Here is what a woman has to go through in North Carolina, where I'm a volunteer rape crisis counselor, in order to accuse a man of rape:
1. She goes to the hospital for evidence collection. This involves HOURS of exhausting and invasive physical examination. They take pictures inside and out and check for hair, skin, semen and other samples. Her clothes are usually also placed into the evidence bag--it may be months or never before she can recover them (if she wants to). If she's at a hospital like mine, she's lucky because there's an examination room reserved just for rape victims and she will be attended by specially trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners. This program is extraordinary and underfunded--more likely she will have to wait in the emergency room and be attended, questioned and physically probed by people who are uneducated about sexual violence, who possibly believe any number of the ideas in your post above and let it show in their treatment of the patient.
2. If she has no insurance, she may have to pay for this examination, and it is EXPENSIVE. In North Carolina there's a Victim Compensation Fund which she can apply for, contingent upon her making a police report (and, possibly, on there being a conviction--I'm not sure about that part). This might cover the examination plus medical care of any wounds she received during the assault. It probably won't cover therapy. And it definitely won't cover HIV prophylaxis, a treatment someone might want to choose if they believe they may have been exposed to the virus, and which is incredibly unbelievably expensive (not to mention administered over several weeks with horrible side effects).
3. She will certainly have to talk to the police. During my rape crisis center training I witness a mock interview between a police officer and a volunteer pretending to be a rape survivor. The police officer has worked with our center before, is part of a police force which is in an extraordinary collaboration with our center and other community organizations to respond more effectively to sexual violence, and was probably on his best behavior because he was being carefully watched by twenty feminists. His questions were many (the interview lasted over half an hour), detailed, and left us feeling pretty uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure that many police officers believe at least a handful of the myths above and carry those beliefs with them in their interviews of crime victims.
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how to respond (2)
5. If she can afford to do so, and can actually stand the thought of more time in court, she can sue him in civil court. This is the only way I know of that someone could get money from somebody by accusing him of rape--but I've never actually heard of anyone doing this, and it's hard to imagine a scenario in which this would be worth it for the survivor (although I would absolutely support any survivor who chose to go forward with it). If she couldn't pay a lawyer to do it, she would probably turn to Legal Aid, who, though incredibly wonderful, are horribly underfunded and understaffed and might not even have the ability to take the case on. In either case it would involve more filling out of forms, more interviews, an incredible drain of energy.
6. Then she has to live with it. If she is telling the truth about her assault--and I ALWAYS, ALWAYS believe that she is--she has to live with the memory of what happened, of the loss of control over her body, with mental and emotional and possibly physical damage. She may have to live with an STD. She may have to decide what to do about a pregnancy. She may need to relearn how to love herself, her body, her life. She may be more vulnerable to assault in the future. She may have nightmares, trouble sleeping, changed eating patterns, panic attacks, an inability to trust people who remind her of her assailant, fear in situations that remind her of her assault. She may have no one in her life who can empathize with how she's feeling. These things can negatively impact her job, her relationship with friends/partner/family, her ability to take care of her kids, her ability to take care of herself.
And--even if the assault DIDN'T happen--she has to live in our society. Which believes all of those things you listed in your post. Where there are way too many people who think that if someone were raped, there must have been something wrong with her. That she was asking for it. Or that now that she's been raped, there is something wrong with her--she might be too hard to talk to, or too fragile, or too angry. Someone too difficult to be friends with; someone who's not "normal." And then there might be the friends and family of the accused--they're not happy, and what if they're her friends and family or in-laws too? What if they have power over her life? And then of course there's the accused, who has probably had very little happen to him and is free as a bird (http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates), but if he thinks he's been punished, he may think it's time to punish back. Not all women have the ability to keep themselves safe from an angry man who really wants revenge.
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90%?
I've never believed any of that, and I've never heard any man I know assert any of that. As for teaching others, sorry, I don't feel that responsibility. I taught my son well, I hope, but I don't have a special obligation to teach any other men proper behavior.
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Re: 90%?
Maybe it was your intent to be dismissive. If so, mission accomplished.
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Re: 90%?
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Re: 90%?
We're also actually the majority, or there'd be a lot more rapes. And I don't know about anybody else, but I've stepped up on aggressive creepy guys a number of times in my life. I went with a bunch of guys to...ah...strongly encourage a rapist to go away and never come back once, when his victim wouldn't press charges.
I don't make a habit of hanging out with guys who *wouldn't* do that, personally. I guess that would be my only suggestion for any woman who thinks the majority of liberal/left American men are weenies on that score: the world is full of left-leaning (and not) males who've been in fights before and aren't afraid to face down an aggressive bully or take a punch over it, if it comes to that. Hang out with more of those guys. We exist.
BTW, I don't actually have any stories about how I didn't rape my drunk girlfriend, once, just like I don't have any stories about how I didn't murder her or hang her out a window and listen to her screams. That's kind of a weird statement.
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Re: 90%?
But I don't think this is a fair characterization of men in general, either.
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Re: 90%?
I'd suggest that a post like this isn't really the place to take up your argument. In essence, you have come into a post about rape and society's attitudes toward rape to say "Nuh-uh, this is not a problem."
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Re: 90%?
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Re: 90%?
And the post is originally about what MEN should do to make the world safer for everyone.
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Re: 90%?
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Re: 90%?
As I said, I don't live in a world, personally, of intimates who'd let me or anybody else get dragged off in a stupor and brutalized. Those aren't the kinds of people who attract me, as lovers or friends or whatever. They never have. So there may be a big disconnect between the writer of the linked piece and my chosen social circles and thus different views of how the world works, I dunno.
My Fox News fundamentalist dad taught me that, too, and I also taught it to my son: sometimes you have to, and if a woman's being attacked, you always have to. There aren't any questions or grey areas or acceptable pauses for consideration on that one. That may be wildly retrograde and sexist and chivalrous and crap, actually, but it's what I believe and a belief I expect to see reflected in my male friends.
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Re: 90%?
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Re: 90%?
Honestly, I don't think you get it. Your whole comment just makes it clear to me that as a man, you have never had to live each day of your life with the awareness of the fact that you might be raped every time you walk through a dark parking lot, every time you stay at work late alone with a male coworker you don't know well, every time you enter the apartment of a man you've just started dating.
Given that, of course you don't think rape and sexual assault are as big a problem as women make them out to be. Of course you don't think it happens that often. Of course you think women should be reassured by the fact that there are men who wouldn't rape a woman out there, and if women would simply hang out with them, everything would be OK.
I find your comment incredibly depressing because I'm sure you don't think you are part of the problem. But you are.
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Re: 90%?
Rachel expressed that, in her experience, 90% of the men she had come across held rather alarming views about rape. She discussed the fact that many of the men she knew seemed to feel that they were not morally responsible for rape if it occurred under certain circumstances. She discussed that the prevailing attitude is often that women should be responsible for not getting raped, rather than holding men responsible for not raping women.
This does not 'tar' men with any sort of 'accusation'. This is a post discussing how men can and should be encouraged to be advocates against rape.
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Re: 90%?
As I already acknowledged exactly that, I get the impression you didn't read much of what I wrote.
I certainly have no idea how you could think I "don't get it" or don't think rape is a problem. That contradicts like five other things I already said. And as I've also said: this is a core belief that is, yeah, paternalistic and sexist and maybe better discarded at a later date, but I think it's unfortunately necessary and useful, still: some men are wolves, some women are weak, some situations make that imbalance even greater. Part of the measure of a good man is taking action to fight off wolves in those situations. If you can't do that, you are not a good man. This is actually what most fathers teach their sons, in my experience, anyway.
This is what I believe, this is what I do, this is what I pass on. That's what I can do. I'm not responsible for anybody else's cowardice or inaction.
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Re: 90%?
it tarred 90% of men with a vile accusation.
What accusation? Do you believe rachelmanija is lying about what men tell her when she discusses this topic with them? Because if you believe that she's telling the truth about her experience, then she's not accusing men. They're accusing themselves in their own words.
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Re: 90%?
It's good for you that you surround yourself with rainbows and people who will never let you down; I'd like to think that I do the same. But nobody ever knows for sure. Most girls don't go out and put themselves into situations that make them think, "Gee, I could get raped here; I should probably stay."
And I would still appreciate it if people could have conversations with the men in their lives like the ones Rachel describes above.
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Re: 90%?
If men don't like being thought capable of raping someone, perhaps they might take action to change the way men think about women, and act toward women.
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Re: 90%?
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Re: 90%?
I imagine not, but I have no idea - as I said, I don't have friends who do stuff like that.
And I would still appreciate it if people could have conversations with the men in their lives like the ones Rachel describes above.
I did, with the one where it mattered. I don't have men who need that talking to in my life, as I said. I'm not likely to run out and make friends with a bunch of passive guys and teach them to grow a pair, this not being a movie comedy or something.
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Re: 90%?
Stuff like what? Do you think that every woman who gets raped started her evening at a frat party?
I did, with the one where it mattered. I don't have men who need that talking to in my life, as I said.
Have you ever talked to the men in your life about rape? How do you know? Are you just assuming that they know what you know because they seem like "nice guys"?
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Re: 90%?
Whaaaaat? No, really: What on Earth?
We're also actually the majority, or there'd be a lot more rapes.
I hate to break it to you, but there ARE a lot more rapes and non-rapes (http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/21/original-essay-the-not-rape-epidemic/).