Look at it this way: does anybody here not believe that attitudes toward sex and rape have changed over the last couple of decades? Not that long ago the idea that a man could rape his wife was considered bizarre because marriage implied consent to sex.
Exactly. Speaking as a white male, I am seeing cultural references moving away from a WM-dominated society - it’s one of the reasons Mad Men seems so far away.
Obviously, there is a long way to go. But especially with the Internet, it seems like a more balanced set of voices are asserting themselves.
I don’t think you can teach a rapist not to rape.
Can you teach a man increased respect for women? Why the hell not? We had an event last week and some man slapped my coworker’s ass. How does that guy not know that’s inappropriate? Why is that ever considered to be OK?
The question is why this is the only time you hear “teach people not to commit crime”.
The vast majority of child-murders are by women, most often the mothers. So, where the campaign to teach women not ot murder their children? To teach women not to look at children as nothing more that tools for their own satisfaction that can be discarded on a whim or destroyed to take vengeance on someone else?
The reason is that doing that would be seen as insulting to women and largely nonsensical. Well, “teach men not to rape” is just as stupid and insulting.
Rape is generally considered the worst crime other than murder, by some people worse than murder. The taboo is at least as great as that behind not fucking your sister. Also, as procrustus alludes to, the number of rapes has been in steep decline for decades.
As for those, like AliveNot, who think we need to change the culture to accept that women like sex, and to undermine the predator/prey narrative, perhaps the first step should be to astain from idiotic advertising campaigns designed to force the words “man” and “rape” into the same sentence, to paint all men as potential rapists, to terrify women by pretending they go through life in ever-present danger from men, which is statistically untrue. Deal with the beam in your own eye before looking for the splinter in mine.
Because rape is based on that sex has to be consensual, and once you start talking about consent, you involve communication and expectations. Those things generally are not factors in other crimes.
Rape is about power. Often it has to do with a man thinking he is more entitled to a woman’s body than she is, and if she will not willingly give consent, then it is an assault to his manhood, power, and male privilege. THAT is why rape is about power.
…to achieve sex. That is why rape is about sex.
Is theft about power? Is corporate malfeasance about power? They use power-over to gain their objective - objectives to which they may believe their position of power entitles them against the wishes of their victim(s) and the point of view of the law - but they’re not “about” power.
We see different rape rates among different cultures, so there clearly is something that can be encouraged or suppressed by a culture.
Let’s talk about theft. Most of us probably stole something as a little kid. Most parents, upon discovering the theft, would clearly explain what theft is and why it is wrong, mete out some kind of punishment, and (perhaps most importantly) instill an internal sense of shame or guilt for violating the rules. This will go along with a general respect for other people’s property, and acts like graffiti will also be discouraged. They may be exposed to the human element, and made to apologize personally to the person they stole from. As we grow older, these lessons are reinforced by those around us. Most of us, if we walked in to work and bragged about shoplifting, would face strong social disapproval.
But we can certainly imagine a family that is indifferent towards or celebratory towards theft. Maybe the child sees her parents stealing, and even is encouraged to steal. Perhaps their peer group steal often, and considers it a mark of honor. They may also commit other acts of disrespecting other people’s property- vandalizing and trespassing. Perhaps they buy in to some rhetoric that celebrates theft; something like “The big evil corporations deserve to be shoplifted,” or “It’s not really a big deal, the rich guy will never miss it.” Perhaps they don’t even consider what they are doing is theft.
I think in most cases, the children from the first family are less likely to become thieves than the second. This isn’t a perfect situation, of course. Family one could end up with a kleptomaniac, and family two could certainly have a kid that isn’t interested in theft. But all things equal, your average person is less likely to steal when they are in a culture where theft is clearly defined as wrong, where property in general is respected, where theft is strongly socially discouraged, and effectively punished.
Likewise, a culture where rape is subject to strong social disapproval, where women in general are respected, where rationalizations are shot down, and where the rules are clear and unambiguous is less likely to have a lot of rape. There isn’t much anyone can do about the truly unhinged- psychopaths and sadists. But for normal people, one’s internal moral compass can be more or less amicable to rape.
Well said even sven.
For some subset of raping, yes. For other subsets of raping, yes, with stronger cultural changes.
If it’s made clear to people that what they’re doing is rape when they pressure people into sex without giving them an appropriate way to decline, then yes, we can teach that away.
For the “I am owed the attention, affection, romance, and sexual favors of women” stuff that men trot out, this can be taught away to some degree for some, but massive cultural shifts really need to happen here.
Edit: What even sven said.
There are MASSIVE coordinated campaigns to teach women not to murder their children. I’ve got a fussy baby, and every resource I read-- books, websites, etc.-- includes targeted warnings against shaking babies. You see phrased like “Never shake a baby. If you are overwhelmed by the baby crying, take a moment to step aside until you have calmed down. Research shows that crying babies are most likely to suffer abuse. Shaking a baby is a violent act with severe consequences, and can cause severe brain damage or death. If you frequently feel rage or frustration towards your child, please contact a health professional.”
And of course, any woman who does kill her children is going to be chastised everywhere. She will be a pariah in her community. Her face will be on the news as a monster. Her life will never, ever, be normal again. This is pretty different than countries where infanticide is routine and fairly acceptable. And, not surprisingly, we have less infanticide than those countries.
And this is exactly what you can do with rape: define the problem, clarify the impact, teach methods for avoiding getting out of control, and point to resources for professional help.
rape is about power not sex.
nurture and nature. defines us.
Of course we can teach men not to rape, and we do, which is why most men don’t rape. We even know what kind of background tends to correlate with an increased risk of a man becoming a rapist. The question is, are we willing to change our cultural expectations so as to reduce the frequency of those kinds of backgrounds and thus address the issue of rape?
Regards,
Sho-damned
Minor quibble: it sounds like that’s about rapists with one particular motivation (“displaced anger”). Nevermind, there’s a bullet point further down that says boys from a fatherless home are 14 times more likely to commit rape. That doesn’t give us an overall picture, but it’s something.
The source is also 35 years old. I think our understanding of rape has changed a bit since 1978.
I’m sure it has. There was a statement lower down that men who grow up without a father are 14 times more likely to commit rape. Shodan’s statement was too broad - if that holds up it’s a factor that correlates with rape, not necessarily ‘the background’ that correlates with rape more than any other. But it could be a data point anyway.
I think some kinds of rape can be reduced through education.
Everyone knows that the kind of forcible rape where you grab a woman off the street and hold a knife to her throat is rape. But some people don’t understand that it’s also rape when you have sex with somebody through coercion or lack of consent or intimidation. That’s ignorance you can fight with education.
We teach children not to steal, right? Not to take things that don’t belong to them. Not to hit people when they’re angry but to use their words. Not to hoard all the toys in the playroom, not to talk with their mouths full, not to pull the dog’s ears, not to throw trash out of the car window.
Then we can teach children to respect personal space, to not touch others without permission, and to respect others’ “no”.
For the vast majority of men, it’s quite possible to teach them not to rape. I would suggest that there is far less non-consensual sex in the world today (percentage-wise) than a few hundred years ago and prior because men have been taught the importance of consent, and that they don’t have a right to sex whenever and however they want it. For much of recorded human history, raping was pretty much a common fact of life, and you need look no further than The Bible to see how permissive people were of it (Well if you rape an unwed woman just pay the father 10 sheckels or whatever and marry her and you’re good to go! If you rape a married woman in the country, well that’s just a bridge too far I’m afraid.)