It was a while ago, but I don’t remember the topic of rape being touched on at all. Then again, I recall that class leaning pretty heavily on the concept of abstinence.
Yeah, see, my class also covered contraception, which is apparently far from universally taught for some reason.
This was part of a larger Career and Personal Planning (CAPP) class. It also covered things like abusive relationships and eating disorders. You know, things that teenagers ought to know about.
That’s weird that some locales wait until youths are college freshmen before telling them the ins and outs of consent. Do educators there not realize that A) many youths have sex before that age and B) not everyone goes to college?
You’re not from the American South or Midwest, or a rural area almost anywhere, are you?
This was in a small city (~10,000 people) in northeastern British Columbia. Not exactly a centre of progressive thought, though.
I am male and I do not think there is much of my sexuality that overlaps what I think of as rape-like behavior. But I also think (and always have thought) of myself as outsider to my gender, and zillions of male-bodied people have told me they think me to be unlike them as well.
I have seen how normative heterosexual flirting and courting and dating (and sexing) rules are set up. So (in all likelihood) have you, whether you spend much time thinking about them in those terms or not. The rules and roles and expectations and so forth are not equal and reciprocal. They’re gendered. To say it in a very simplified and nuance-ignoring fashion, SEX is treated as something men want from women, that women possess sex as (or are subsumed into sex AS) a commodity, that it is up to men to aggressively push for it to happen, to do things to MAKE it happen, whereas women’s role is, if not precisely passive, at least “reactive”, a response (yea or nay) to the man’s sexual initiative.
That polarizes sex already, right there, with the circumstance where sex takes place representing a male triumph over the female; hence, sexually active females have a very hard time crawling out from under the implicit definition of themselves as having somehow been taken advantage of, of having been “had”. That doesn’t make sex into rape, though.
But going back to the things that men do, are encouraged to do, are expected to do, in the name of trying to make sex happen: a certain forceful willfulness, a determination not easily turned away by rejection, is eroticized as sexy masculine behavior. There’s very definitely a blur between being “man enough” to overcome barriers and being some kind of disgusting creep who does things to women against their will. It’s not particularly subtle. It’s not the only notion of how to be a male-bodied person whose sexuality is directed towards female-bodied people but it’s sure as fuck OUT THERE as a widely shared and popularized notion of what it means to be sexy if you are male.
I don’t know if “men” can be taught not to rape but if males could get over this whole “being a man” thing and discard the conventionally sexualized ideal and relate sexually to women OUTSIDE of any definition of the sexes that says he’s the one with the main appetite and that sex his him getting over on her and that she is the one with the sexual favors to bestow or withhold, then yeah, there’s no built-in reason that so many males would rape. Women’s sexual behavior also has to be increasingly outside of those conventional definition of the sexes in order for it to work. Fewer female people intimidated by the threat of being labeled a slut, or letting the old messages get to them about how if they had more self-respect they’d do a better job of using their desirability to their own advantage for things other than the pleasure of the connection, or just plain carrying around a default notion that sex means being taken advantage of. Women’s changes in that direction can’t take place if men don’t change, either, of course.
Would rape ever completely disappear? I doubt it. Not as long as there are short tempers and short attention spans and selfish people. But I think it would be a much more rare thing if our common shared repertoire of how normal sex works were not so polarized and oppositional like that.
So your contention is that one major difference between rape and theft is that a thief must intend to steal. Well, this is true insofar as mens rea is required for a criminal prosecution. But rapists must also intend to rape.
Personally, I don’t believe there are people who think having sex with someone unconscious isn’t rape. Certainly forcing yourself on a date is inarguably rape. If there are people out there who think forcing yourself on someone or having sex with someone unconscious isn’t rape, and they’ve made it to adult life thinking that, I don’t think a “don’t be that guy” is going to change their minds.
Also, quoting from the report I link below:
So it might be wise to consider the damage campaigns like this might be doing.
The Canadian government report The Invisible Boy:
I really don’t think so. Or if not kindergarten, by at least the second grade. That’s when my daughter first got educated about it at school.
Of course, we live in Rapeville, Rape Province, Rape-istan, so there’s that.
If you want to teach men to not rape, fair enough. But then you should also teach women how to not be victims of rape.
There are things parents and friends do with *toddlers *that lead up to the whole mindset that encourages sexual aggression and lack of bodily autonomy. They can be addressed and changed long before school starts.
“Give Aunt Edna a kiss good-bye! Go on, give her a kiss…just one little one. Please?”
“You have to see his dance. Dance for us! Dance! Come on, shake your booty butt! Oh, come on, just a little dance?”
Or the one that really makes me ragey:
“Bobby, give Cindy a hug! Hang on, let me get my camera. Go on, give her a hug! It’s okay, she’s fine, give her a hug! Aww…so cute! It’s his little girlfriend! Cindy, stop crying, he isn’t hurting you. It’s so cute! Give him a kiss! Good girl!”
I mean…really? I see that shit with toddlers and preschoolers all the time, and it’s rather disturbing when you think about what sort of pattern for interaction it sets up. And yes, before I get jumped on again, it’s just as awful when the genders are reversed.
Kindergarten may be too soon for discussion of roofies and pepper spray, but it’s certainly not too soon to discuss and reinforce that your body belongs to you, and no one, not your classmates or teacher or siblings or Aunt Edna has the right to touch it in a way or in a time you don’t like. That sometimes nurses and doctors might have to touch you in a way you don’t like, but that you get to pick who else you want to be with you and where you want them to stand when they do. That who you kiss and hug is entirely up to you, and if anyone is disappointed when you won’t give them a kiss, it’s their problem, not yours.
Well, also when students’ parents aren’t as likely or able to complain to the school board if they don’t like your Sex Ed curriculum.
When my campus did this, we had a small, informal session where they completely defined consent and the ground rules, discussed how and where sexual assaults have historically occurred on and around campus, opened the floor for students to share their own experiences with sexual assault, explained what resources are available to avoid sexual assault (police escorts at night, a partnership with local taxies to get drunk students home, alcohol abuse prevention services) and what to do if one is a victim of sexual assault and what one can expect. IIRC, this session was mixed, so both men and women got the same information.
Are you seriously arguing this is damaging?
Once again, where would they have gotten these numbers, except from prisoners? And prisoners lie.
I don’t know where you’re getting this. It’s not even close to what I am saying.
That’s apparently crazy talk, at least according to the objections to the article that spawned this discussion. As women we must do nothing to reduce our risks of being victims, or else we’re focusing on the wrong culpability aspects of this violent crime. Or something.
As for the OP, no, rapists cannot be taught not to rape. Most men can’t either: most men were merely boys when the lesson sank in so there’s not so many you could teach something new by harping on why rape is bad.
Or the cop is sitting right there and says, “She’s gonna wake up with her pants around her ankles and think…what happened?” and then laughs and says the rapist “…just hit the Mega Millions” as he leads a protesting drunk stranger away from a bar to have sex with her under the stairs on the beach. Start at 6:45 if you like.
What. The. Fuck.
BINGO!!!
on another note for those who think rape is about sex. As far as I am concerned all rape is premeditated, is predatory, is violent and is about dominance and power. So just to clarify… when a male prisoner rapes a fellow inmate its about sex? Female inmate rapes another female its about sex? only difference between that kind of rape and the rape that occurs outside that venue is it occurs outside of that venue.
If it’s fair it might not be. That is to say, if both sexes are treated equally. If, on the other hand, only men are mandated to attend, or the discussion focuses on how men need to be taught not to rape, that’s a different matter altogether.
So, to be clear, you have no actual reason to distrust the figures other than an inherent disbelief in the possibility of gathering any indicative numbers on any issue from that wretchedly dishonest humankind.
It was literally exactly what you said.
Rape is rare. Most men want the woman to like it for some reason.
People are just not very smart. So they think rape is common and happening everywhere when it is not.
Sort of.
You can educate parents about proper parenting to reduce potential antisocial children (of both genders). Attention, appropriate touch, and so forth likely reduce chances of psychopathy developing in a child.
You can teach children to report inappropriate touch. You can explain what this is without telling them about sex if they’re too young. “Your privates are private,” etc. (maker sure to clarify that doctors may need to check those parts with a parent there).
You can teach older kids about consent. No means no and yes means yes. Do not touch someone sexually without their permission. This protects everyone.
You cannot teach a sociopathic violent criminal to stop raping. They do not reform. This has been proven time and time again. They are highly likely to reoffend and should be incarcerated indefinitely if they commit a violent crime and are diagnosed with ASPD.
“Teach men not to rape” is a reaction to blaming victims, for example asking what rape victims were wearing when they were raped. It is certainly infuriating that victims are blamed and it leads to many violent crimes going unreported.
That said, there are definitely people you cannot teach to be good. Some people lack empathy. We should try to control what we can by educating about sexualized violence and consent. Both genders should be educated in this way. It would not eliminate rape but it could reduce it.
Over 200,000 rapes per year (via US Department of Justice). That’s one rape every 2 minutes (ish).
No, I distrust information collected from a particular subset of humankind, prisoners, who have every reason to lie and tell authority figures what they think those authority figures want to know.