i don’t think anyone is going to argue that most cases of prison rape are almost entirely about power. However, every case of rape is different, and some are more about sex. Especially ones that take place in what seems to the rapist to be a “grey area” of consent. Saying that all rape is about power is just as inadequate an explanation as saying all rape is about sex.
I’m not sure why the rapist’s motivation matters. Rape is wrong, no matter why they do it.
I wouldn’t say it is typical for rape, as it’s been so long since I was interested that I no longer remember the statistics, but in Australia in the 70s there was a major subset of rapes where it was clear that the rapist really really didn’t get it that a rape was happening.
Theoretically, this might make you not guilty, but in practice it didn’t work out that way.
We’ve just had some taxi-driver rapes reported. This is a different situation from the series I just mentioned, but it appears that the rapists come from a minority culture that assumes unaccompanied women consent to sex. This is clearly not just a man thing: over the years, I have only heard women express that opinion.
In both cases, it’s hard to make the call that they guys “couldn’t” learn not to rape. Rather it seems that society messed up the education process.
In the first set I refered to, there was an obvious failure of communication. There were clear signals from both sides. Both sides could have avoided the rape really easily. The girls could have walked away. The boys should have walked away. It was that easy.
Regarding the second set, I was appalled when I first heard a young woman making a judgement about unaccompanied women in general. I thought then, and still think, that Mothers and Sisters are primarily responsible for the way young men regard women, and I think that if you want to “teach” the young men not to rape, you need to start with educating the Mothers and Sisters.
I’m not saying all rapes fall into these catagories. It’s what I thought of when I saw the global term “men”. When I see language like that, I automatically think of Susan Brownmiller.
<Women are exempt> Yeah, that’s about right!
While I wasn’t physically raped by a woman, mentally she really did me in, and women should be included in anti rape classes if they are going to be made compulsory.
I’d quite like to be in a compulsory anti rape class and see how long it would take to have the tutor incoherent with rage. Unfortunately, the rabid anti male PC wonks always seem to avoid me. It’s always so easy to wind up the humor deficient PC people.
The moment you invoke political correctness, your argument becomes hilariously invalid.
The question this thread is based on is quite stupid, but the poll makes it even stupider. What possible contribution could a survey of this message board make?
The poll itself is not that helpful, but the discussion afterward, I would argue, helps participants and lurkers clarify their thinking on the topic. For example, Melbourne’s post, about the third post prior to yours, brought up some interesting points on the contribution female relatives can make to educating men about rape, and how they can REINFORCE rape when the cultural norms make rape acceptable in some ways.
Yeah, the thread is certainly more interesting than I first suspected when I saw the question. Dopers aren’t bad at finding a good discussion to be had. It’s a shame about the title, though.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that rape is ever okay.
Rape is about sex. If it were about power, men would just tie women up and make them clean the house or something.
I’m not accusing anyone of saying that, I just don’t see the relevance of the motivation. Unless you think lessons can be taught about power and not sex, or vice versa. If you think that, you should make that point.
Like I said a few posts ago, I think most rapes that revolve around sex are cases where the offender doesn’t know what does and doesn’t constitute consent. Assuming this is the case, they can be educated and prevented from commiting rape. Rapes that revolve around power generally involve someone who knows that what they’re doing is frowned upon. These people probably can’t be educated.
I just want to know what other crimes that I, as a white male, should look forward to being taught not to do.
I think part of why I get irritated about the “teach men not to rape” thing (apart from the obvious implication that rape is a male-only crime) is that it comes from people taking offence at being given tips about how to avoid being raped. I just don’t see why this is an issue, I’ve been given all sorts of helpful advice about how to avoid being the victim of crimes (from the simple not leaving valuables in view in a car to, when I was student, being told where not to go as the locals were known to not be student friendly and I could end up getting beaten up) and none of these are presented in a victim blaming way. Yes, some people do blame victims (you left your laptop in the front seat, you idiot) but the vast, vast majority of people do not. Which is also how it works with rape too, but for some reason we are hit with propaganda saying that giving advice about how to avoid being a victim of a crime is always without question blaming the victim for this one specific crime.
I just don’t agree and I find it just as offensive to have people say that I should be taught not to rape as a person does to be given good advice on how to avoid getting raped.
And the long and short of it is, we’re never going to get rid of all crime. I’m pretty sure that as a society we’ve got to grips with the “don’t murder” thing yet there is still murder. The same is true of rape, there will always be rapists and when you except that then you realise that maybe some good advice might be a bit handy.
It’s probably not PC to blame the victims.
I wish to apologise to everyone for using “except” instead of “accept” at the end there. Feel free to verbally abuse me. I deserve it.
I think the “power” rapists can be taught too, though granted, it will not be easy given that they have not already learned it is wrong to rape. People abuse others all the time in all sorts of ways simply because they think they can get away with it, i.e., sexual harassment on the job for example. Education helps there, too.
For example, there are apparently quite a few football players and frat guys who need to learn that if you get a girl drunk and have sex with her, you can still go to jail for it, even if she was too drunk to say “no” coherently. Her drunkenness may have given the guy the power to have sex with her if he wants to, but the rest of us will still stick him in cage for doing it.
As has been touched on throughout this thread: while most people know not to rape, the problem is that most people think of rape as yanking an unsuspecting woman off the street, violently restraining her, and forcibly pounding away at her while she cries hysterically, begging you to stop.
Does that kind of rape happen? Absolutely. Is it the majority of rape that happens? Probably not.
If one in four college-aged American women report either being the victims of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14, it makes me think that it’s unlikely that this is all just the work of a few real bad guys, lurking in the bushes. For example, I’ve never been victim to that first kind of rape I described (thankfully), but I’ve certainly had otherwise could men who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Men who thrust their hands down my pants or up my blouse despite my protests, men who tries to feed me drinks after I initially declined their offers of sex. I highly suspect those types of scenarios-- ones lacking the expressed enthusiastic consent, ones we’d label as “Date Rape”-- are far more common than the scary Law and Order opening scene kind of rape we expect.
Everybody knows that first kind of rape is wrong, but society tells us all that sometimes “a no is just a yes that needs convincing.” That sticks with people. And even otherwise good people make some very bad and violating decisions based on that faulty logic. Hell, in previous threads on this board, several male posters have even copped to the fact that they believe full well in this logic.
So, teaching people that date rape IS definitely rape/ lack of enthusiastic consent IS definitely rape would make a difference, I think. Will it stop the pyschopaths? Of course not, but I do think it would make a tremendous difference.
See, this is part of the problem, too. It’s not just frat bros and football stars who date rape people. I know plenty of quiet nerdy type dudes who have committed these same crimes— and plenty of women who have hand waived away these crimes because they were taught it was their fault for wearing a skirt/ being at the wrong place/ drinking/ whatever. This is a human problem, one that is created by an entire social perception about who a rapist is and what they do. SPOILER ALERT: there are all kinds of rapists, they aren’t all wearing coats made of human skin and lurking in the bushes— and they also aren’t douchey dude bros in popped collars at the frat party on Saturday night.
Also, holy cow at all the errors in that post. Me type good. Apologies.