I remember as a kid seeing an episode of 21 Jump Street (I think) in which one of the protagonists gets the hots for this girl at his school, but when it comes time for sex, she says no. So he backs off, and she’s disgusted and tells the whole school what a wuss he is, how he’s probably gay, etc.
The episode ended with him sitting at a restaurant recounting the story to a friend of his, with sort of a wry, “Whaddya gonna do?” expression. He finishes up by saying, “Doesn’t matter if she means yes when she says no. Ya gotta take it as a no.”
The episode, obviously, stuck with me. It might’ve been sorta afterschoolspecialish, but I think it’s the kind of message that guys need to hear from a young age. Yes, sometimes “no” doesn’t mean “no.” Too goddamn bad: you gotta take it as a “no,” because to do otherwise risks becoming a monster.
You are putting words in my mouth. tdn asked anyone to explain why he or she doesn’t use the word sex when he or she speaks of rape. I am not trying establish a meaning for the word that everyone is obligated to respect. I answered his question–re-read the post and tdn’s post before it.
Regarding the rest of your post, I am not and I don’t purport to be an abnormal psychologist and I will be the first one here to admit to you that I am certainly not an expert into the how a certain type of deviant thought occurs or are realized. It may well be that many rapists formulate the thought pattern you described. For instance, many have said that about Ted Bundy. Many have also opined that his actions were the result of pent up anger over his ex-girlfriend. Many have wondered about his failures in law school and whether that had something to do with it. However, the fact that Ted Bundy might equate sex with dominance and violence doesn’t really change my opinion as to why I don’t equate those thoughts together. (i know, i know, a cite would be nice, but I thin, even citeless, we can agree that experts still argue over the driving force behind Ted Bundy’s actions, et cetera.)
I admit there are many times we need to define and redefine words depending on our audience, our own understanding of the word, and society. However, one thing I can tell you is that when the subject is rape and I have a child, if he or she asks me what it is, I am not going to use the word sex. and that has nothing to do with the courtroom.
My apologies; I’m definitely not trying to put words in anyone’s mouth, but am instead trying to see if I understand what folks are saying.
Let me see if I understand now: are you saying that you don’t consider yourself qualified to opine on whether “sex” for rapists includes the act of rape, but that for you personally, sex emphatically doesn’t include the act of rape, and that (similarly) “rape” doesn’t include sex for you personally? If so, that makes complete sense to me and I agree with it; it really squicks me out that anyone finds violence (most especially sexual violence) to be erotic.
If that’s what you’re saying, it’s very different from saying that rape is objectively not about sex, and again I apologize for misinterpreting you.
OK-just read that article that Maureen posted. This made me sick:
One thing universally common to rapists is that they don’t think about what their victim goes through. “As you can imagine, committing that type of crime against another human being requires a tremendous amount of detachment, of dehumanizing that individual,” says Sanchez.
Tony is serving time at the Utah State Prison for sexually abusing his 13-year-old sister-in-law. But he doesn’t think it was rape. “I believe she consented but her boyfriend at the time didn’t like it,” he says. “My mom was a cocktail waitress so I’ve been around females portraying themselves as sex objects. I seen my mom in her skimpy outfits which that was the type of work she chose. After seeing women like that in magazines, on billboards, and casinos wearing hardly anything, you grow up after 23 years pretty much thinking that’s what a lot of these women bring on themselves. They want to be an object. You go to different parts of the country and women don’t want to be recognized that way. So I’m a monster here, but yet I’m normal in Nevada.”
He admits that his victim didn’t deserve what he did to her and calls it a “selfish act on my part,” though he minimizes his crime and its impact. “I can’t put mine in the same category as a violent crime. Mine wasn’t violent. I didn’t break in to do the crime. I didn’t use a weapon to do my crime. I just used the trust I had in my victim. That was my weapon…She’s gettin over it. She’s gotten over it. She’s movin’ on. She’s goin’ to college. She’s doing’ good.”
Hell, he helped make her what she is today–the guy’s practically a hero!
<really wish there was a puking smiley here>
And tdn --I do take precautions, and I am teaching my daughter, too. I may be idealistic, but I do live in reality!
Yeah–the article Maureen posted was pretty horrifying. In large part, I thought, because it depicts these guys as so completely living in their fucked-up fantasy worlds, and so completely incapable of emerging from them.
Perhaps I spoke too quickly. I don’t think of myself as an expert, but I do have an opinion on this subject.
I think there is a very valid argument that rape at its root is about power and dominance and is not about physical lust or sex. Rapists may equate the feeling they derive during this act as associated with physical lust or sex. Many rapists also orgasm during this act. Some also don’t. However, simply because the rapist believes there is a connection between them does not give any credence to that there is a connection between them. I would say rapists are fairly out of touch with themselves, myself. Would it be useful for an abnormal psychologist to talk to a rapist using his terminology? Sounds believable to me. However, I know many sex offender treatment providers from my former job and I can tell you that sex offender treatment is all about getting the offender to confront this very issue.
From what I understand, the rapist uses sex as a vehicle in order to assert his dominance over his victim, but the root need satisfied is not physical lust–it’s power.
Can there be an exception? I think so. IMO, they are few and far between.
Let me flip this over, though, and ask you a question. Why don’t you think that rape is about power at its core? If you disagree, what do you propose?
Unfortunately, I think it stems more from the fact that men are encouraged, both by peers and by women, to be the agressors in sexual relationships. This is fertile ground for all sorts of messed up behavior.
As for the rest, I tend to agree with tdn on the problems of sexual communication, as well as his (?) take on the criminal justice system. Rape is a unique crime. As much as I’d like to substitute murder or theft as far as penal codes go, you just can’t. There has to be some legal burden on the accuser. In the case of a murder, all you need is a body, and proof that the accused was the one that did the killing. As for theft, you just have to prove the money is gone that the accused did the taking. But for rape, you have to prove that a rape has taken place even before you get to whodunit. That’s fucked up, but I don’t see any other way to do it. you don’t often having someone punching you in the face if you’re giving them money of your own free will…but you can have bruises, etc. in the course of consentual sexual relations.
In my experience, every single rapist I dealt with felt he was the victim because of the legal system. every single one. I have seen child molesters break down and admit what they did out of guilt (not many, but a few). I have not seen a rapist admit it–even when we have had what I would call damning evidence. Of course, that may be the product of some very strict sex offender laws in Colorado.
It is very common to hear the contrite and forced apology from the Defendant at sentencing to the victim, “You took what happened the wrong way, and for that I apologize.” Grrrrrrrrr. All that says is “I am really innocent but you falsely accused me and now I am here in shackles…” Grrrrrrrr.
IMO, that is another sign of that guy still trying to control the process and especially the victim. The anecdote you referred to is another classic example.
I think that it’s about many different things, as referenced earlier: for some it’s about anger as expressed through sex. For some it’s about power as expressed through sex. For others it’s about the eroticization of pain. For others it’s about sex, but they don’t understand sex as anything but a power game. For others it’s about sex, but they believe that women say “no” when they mean “yes.” For others it’s about sex, but they believe that they own women and that a woman’s desires are immaterial.
For some it’s about power at its core, yes. But I think that denying that some folks have a very sexual component to this–that at its core it’s about their very awful understanding of sexuality–makes it difficult to treat them. Even worse, it makes it very difficult to prevent them: if someone is growing up with the understanding that rape is an appropriate means of obtaining sex, then denying that this might be their motive is going to make it unlikely that you’ll say anything to them to make them re-evaluate this understanding.
What I propose is that people talking especially to adolescents (boys and girls) acknowledge that power and sex and violence have got all sorts of ties to one another, but that many of these ties are very harmful and immoral. Talk to these adolescents about how some strategies for having sex are acceptable, and others are not. Talk to these adolescents about exactly how conflating sex with violence hurts people, and talk to them about how a sexuality free of violence is a healthy sexuality.
Did you read the articles that Maureen and I linked to? A quote from the former:
Completely true. I think acquaintance rape is the hardest case to prove because the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not consentual. It boils down to a he said/she said situation and the jury must believe the victim. if they don’t, buh-bye, not guilty. This makes the defense attorney want to discredit the victim as much as humanely possible and to make the process of her testifying and cooperating with the prosecution as difficult as humanely possible. Nonetheless, we live in a system I believe in, a system where the state needs to prove the allegations against a civillian beyond a reasonable doubt. It is just extraordinarily sad that the system puts sooo much stress on the victim. It makes them feel as if they are being revictimized over and over. I don’t disagree, but there just isn’t away around it unless we give up our right in this country to confront witnesses.
I owe you all a lot of responses and many thanks, but I wanted to address this right off:
Sickening? Sure. But not surprising.
Let’s shift gears here for a minute and consider childhood sexual abuse. The predators often play the victim card because they were victims themselves. In almost every single case. They are usually playing out a role-reversal thing, the psychology of which is pretty complex. They don’t feel for their victims because they long ago learned how not to feel. Denial (in a clinical sense) is an artform with these people. It’s often been said that there is no cure for pedophilia, but that’s incorrect. Years ago there was a program not of aversion therapy, but empathy therapy. It was quite successful, and had an almost 0% recidivism rate. The gist of the therapy was to get the patient to remember his own past, and how much it hurt, and to connect with that hurt. And it worked.
I suspect that with rapists who rape adults, or at least some subset of them, something similar is going on. And when I remember this, I’m always a little less eager to label them as monsters.
Well, I thought maybe you had a cite of someone who believed that rape was a woman’s fault in this thread. Because I missed it if there was one.
And to lee: in my response to your example of the young men who don’t think that no means no, I went off a little to quickly onto a tangent that really bugs me. That is: women who say no, but don’t say it until days or weeks after they’ve had consensual sex with a man. But this was not the subject at hand.
To keep it simple: If you have talked to college men that seriously don’t believe that they need to guarantee that a woman really is consenting to sex before they start, well, this is sad. Those men need a wake up call.
I’ve considered having women sign a notorized contract before having sex because it is just too common for mixed signals to be given.
Read the PDF article I linked above: it’s apparently a very common attitude among college men. One study showed that something like 11% of college men believed it was okay to force sex on women, or that if a woman had sex with a man at a party when she’d just met him and was drunk, she was fair game for any other guy at the party who wanted to have sex with her, whether or not she consented. It’s pretty fucked up on many levels.
All good points. I don’t disagree that there are different opinions amongst experts. Clearly there are. Do you know of any area of, say, forensic psychology, where every expert agrees?
“I would disagree with some of the early feminists who would say rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex. Because, unfortunately, in this culture sex is completely interfused with violence, with notions of dominance and subordination. Our gender roles are constructed so we have these two genders, masculine and feminine, that are defined by one being powerful and one being powerless. So, powerlessness and power themselves become eroticized.”
This strikes me as a logic pretzel. “Rape is not a crime of violence. Our culture has infused sex with violence. Power has therefore become eroticized. Therfore, rape is about sex.” Uh, no. By the way, when has a “professor of american studies”–whatever the hell that is–become an expert on rape?
Michael Ghiglieri, in my opinion, has it backwards. IMO, the sexual invasion and sexual nature of the act is the vehicle for power and control. The fact that the rapist gets off on power and control does not mean that it is about sex. More on that below.
A person who has eroticized pain may well be a sadist, but I have yet to see one rapist who raped people because he solely wanted to satify himself sexually through a sadistic act. Could there be one out there? Sure, I guess. Most sadists I have heard of go to to an S&M joint or start a club with people that find pain erotic. S&M just doesn’t explain the crime of rape to me.
The guy who just “misunderstood” no as yes was not necessarily after sex. (Personal issue of mine by the way: If a woman says no and you keep going, expect some jerk like me to not believe you and take you to court.) IMO, that is what you deserve if you just figure that when a woman says no she really means yes. To me, that person went as far as he could, heard no, and then refused to accept it. At that point, it really isn’t about physical lust. To me, at that point, it turns to dominanting one’s will over the other person, in other words, power.
Now, I DON’T disagree that there is an aspect of sexuality to a rape. As I have said before, I believe that the sexual intrusion is the vehicle so the rapist can get off on the feeling of dominating his victim.
Interesting thought, I think one can argue that DV offenders have more in common with the psychological make up of a rapist than child molesters do–even though the child molester’s action are sexual assaults just like rapes. Why? The child molester typically wants to have a relationship with his victim. Disgusting as it is, most of them create a fantasy that the child is capable of having an adult relationship with the offender. (A lot of these offenders truly believe that they are “sharing” something special with their young victims.) Sick, yes, but that crime is motivated by physical lust and desire. IMO, rapists, like DV offenders want power and dominance. The heart of any rape is the lack of consent of the victim. DV offenders use physical and psychological violence to dominate their victims. So do rapists, but they do it by using the vehicle of sexual intrusion. So, yes there is a sexual component to the crime, but, no, I don’t believe it is about sex.
I guess it just comes down to me not understanding that sentence. I get the impression (which may well be wrong) that for you, there’s only going to be one significant motive for a crime, and that motive might be anger, or it might be a desire for power, or it might be sex, but it’s gotta be only one of these.
I’m suggesting that there are often multiple intertwined motives. And from what I’ve been reading, it seems extremly likely to me that some acquaintance rapists are motivated primarily by sex: they start off wanting sex, and the fact that they have to dominate their partner to gain the sex may be slightly exciting to them or it might be slightly annoying to them, but it’s not as important to them as the fact that they want sex and by god they’re going to get sex.
Whether it’s “about sex” may end up being the wrong question. The right question may end up being how a person’s sexuality develops such that rape is an appropriate means of obtaining sex, and even more importantly, what intervention can prevent that development from happening.
I am referring to the primary need satisfied by most rapes. Motive is more subjective and more dependant on the assailant’s understanding of he or she is doing. IMO, the primary need that is satisfied is not sexual, it is power.
“but it’s not as important to them as the fact that they want sex and by god they’re going to get sex”
I agree with that sentence, but that sentence is ALL about power. It’s about getting what you want without the consent of person who has to give it to you. Do you really not see the power issues in that sentence?
I think that you and I disagree on a fundamental aspect. I do not believe the primary goal of a rape is sex even though the physical actions of rapist would seem to indicate that. I believe it is about the dominating feeling they get while they’re raping the victim. (again, this is not a blanket statement of every rape on the planet, but a statement of what I believe happens in the majority of rapes.)
Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like we are spinning in circles on this subject. I think your replies are very well-reasoned, but I am not sure we are going to reach a conclusion on this subject since we disagree on such a base premise. Maybe we should leave it for a while and see if perspective helps us. I do, however, appreciate your thoughts and professional attitude towards this subject.
