I agree with this much. When I speak of “rape,” I’m only ever speaking of situations in which one person has said “stop” (or anything equivalent) and the other has not stopped.
I’m almost with you there. “No? Oh, come on baby,” isn’t rape.
Although the idea that anyone is rightly indignant at being denied sex suggests that some people owe sex to other people under some circumstances. That’s where you start crossing into rapey territory, right there.
These are people who have been flirting on a date and then decided (or always knew) that they didn’t want to have sex that night. As you said, they always had the “absolute right to terminate that contact at their discretion.”
And then they were, in fact, raped.
And you speak of their guilt? You suggest that they are not actual victims?
BULLSHIT. This is classic victim-blaming, dressed in sanctimonious concern for “the real horror.” No, this is the horror, that ordinary healthy human social interactions, like dating and flirting, are taken by some to give license for violation and brutality.
The only one who is fooling his or herself is you. I’ve been very clear in my distinctions in that last post, and you simply choose to ignore them, cherry pick, and take things out of context which is extremely important in such a discussion. You can hop up and down and scream until you are blue in the face that rape is whatever she says it is, it won’t make it true; legally or ethically.
Just for the record though, I’m happily married to a very strong and independent woman. During my single years, I didn’t have much trouble finding partners either; not because I played some game or shamed them into contact, but because I sought out confident partners who also were looking for casual relationships.
Yeah, because who’s more trustworthy than a bunch of losers who resort to manipulation and sexism because they can’t get laid otherwise?
Classic sexism. You know, you’re basically saying ‘welfare queen’ over and over and wondering why nobody’s accepting your stunning analysis of welfare fraud. You can repackage a stereotype all you want. It’s still a stereotype and you’re still using it to make yourself feel better.
So let get this straight. You think that when a woman’s trying to fight the guy off her it’s not rape. And that if this fight is going on ina relationship situation, it’s acceptible.
You’re the one mixing stuff up but I guess you need to do that if you think a woman fighting off a guy who she was dating isn’t indicating that she’s not consenting. But then again, the PUA philosophy basically comes down to overcoming female resistance, doesn’t it? No wonder you don’t want to talk about consent. You probably don’t get a lot of it.
Yeah. No. Your whole viewpoint is that women just change their minds afterward, so it wasn’t rape because according to your standards, a little resistance that you overcome isn’t rape, it’s just a temporary setback.
I’m sort of astonished that some dude would actually just blatantly trot out so much crap and not be aware that he’s revealing he thinks that women resisting him isn’t lack of consent, and that rape is really just women changing their minds afterward. You sure do like hearing yourself talk, too.
So your opinion----being that of a guy who only cares about getting women into bed whether they consent or not—IS the be-all and end all.
You don’t have a dog in this hunt? Well, for one thing, nobody said ALL men are rapists, but you’re doing an admirable job of showing how lots of men think that what they’re doing isn’t rape and what the woman says to them about it just doesn’t matter.
Oh, and a link to some Xeroxed, uncredited piece of crap that doesn’t say what you’re saying is not convincing either. I guess rape to you is just a overcoming that resistance, which you seem to think is a normal part of romance. Wow. If all your dates are resisting you, they’re not the problem. You are.
I don’t think that is necessarily the case. It’s not about being “owed” something, It’s about expecting something (that might be the key difference between normal men and those that commit rape though) and having it suddenly taken away. If someone spent all evening talking about some delicious ice cream they have, and indeed agreed all along to take you home and give you some, got out the bowls, spoons, made a sundae and then decided to tell you to fuck off, you’d be a little indignant too. That doesn’t give you the right to take some anyway of course, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to be upset as well. Both partners have feelings, emotions, and desires. That’s my point.
Then they were raped. Full stop. Nothing excuses the action of their attacker.
Don’t be absurd. I never suggested either that they were not victims nor that it was their fault, BECAUSE THEY ARE AND IT IT ISN’T.
Now, stop a moment and switch gears. My point about responsibility for one’s actions is separate, and distinct. We all have control of the messages we send to others. If you aren’t interested in sex, or unsure of your partner or their intentions, then you don’t give them the opportunity. Don’t take them home, don’t lead them along farther than you are comfortable. In fact stop well before that, or make it clear that they aren’t going there tonight. It is an unfortunate fact that or society has developed a double standard in terms of sexual frankness. Until we rectify that there will be problems, but I see no reason to treat someone who shows a serious lack of judgement with the same care and consideration I’d treat someone who was brutally attacked. If you go climbing without a rope I’m still going to treat your wounds when you fall; I’m just not going to be as sympathetic as I would had you been more prudent with your actions. You still are a fall victim. We all take risks every day, and we all act to minimize those risks and make our interactions as smooth as possible.
Nice mini skirt ya got there, miss. Be a shame if something happened to it.
What’s fascinating is comparing you to the PUA up above, who I guess you either don’t read or aren’t bothered by. He calls women liars and thinks that resistance is a normal part of relationships. Maybe women just don’t want to fuck him, but apparently not being an asshole has not occurred to him. Now, according to you, women are in this unfortunate situation which you’re going to comment on and blame women for, but that tends to leave out any criticism of the men who seem to think that sex is like a dessert that women owe them.
As to PUA’s I was withholding commentary because you seemed to have it in hand. I have no approval for that style of sexual conquest. it’s sexist, repugnant, and deceptive. However, would you agree that “overcoming objections” is part of a normal relationship process? I’m not speaking about violence here of course, or carrying on past the point of consent. I would think most normal men would use that term to refer to the actions and dialogue they use to make their partner more agreeable to sex. Women do that too.
Could you please elaborate on this? In the first paragraph, it looks to me like you’re describing a scenario in which the woman was clearly raped, but was convinced afterward to both decline to bring charges and to forgive the rapist. I don’t get how it fits with the rest of your post. Based on your description of the situation, this woman was raped!
I have a quick response to that, which is that it’s dangerous and misleading to base conclusions about how much people care about certain things based on “number of conversations about things that happen on the SDMB”. This is the first thread in which I can remember posting about rape (although I’ve been posting here for 10+ years so I’m likely forgetting something). Does that mean that the main/only opinion I have about rape is something relating to the topic of this thread? Not at all… it means that this is where the disagreement/controversy is. More specifically, this is where the disagreement/controversy that happened to randomly grab my interest.
On the scale of Important Things I Think About Rape this topic is way the hell down there after “Rape is very tragic and awful” and many other such opinions and positions… it’s just that those are non-controversial things that everyone agrees about that I (thank goodness) have no personal experience with, so why would I ever post about them on the SDMB?
The most important question is why does TheWhoToTheWhatNow refer to such a scenario as seduction and not rape. It’s just glaringly weird.
If I break into my neighbor’s apartment to borrow some sugar, I’m committing a crime: breaking and entering. Doesn’t matter if I leave behind a pleasant note telling them thanks with a smiley face. At the time of my actions, I have no clue what the emotional aftermath will be, but that is irrelevant anyway. My neighbors could be nonchalant about it or they could sic the cops on my ass. Since either reaction and everything in between could occur, then I shouldn’t be doing it.
Until a guy has access to a crystal ball and can predict with 100% certainty whether a protesting woman will later regard the encounter as a “romantic sexual adventure” and not rape, then he should not be having sex with her. Just like I shouldn’t be prying into my neighbor’s house for any reason.
“Overcoming objections” is a completely foreign concept to me with regard to sexual relationships. Maybe this has something to do with being a woman, I don’t know. But if I ever found myself trying, in anyway whatsoever, to persuade a man to have sex with me over his natural inclinations, I’d probably feel pathetic.
It’s all about how your outlook. If the default assumption is that women don’t want to sleep with you, then you’ll resort to manipulative techniques to “override” their resistance. If that isn’t your default assumption, then “overcoming objections” wouldn’t any sense to you. I disagree that most normal men would use that term in their relationships.
Uh, yeah, guess you didn’t read one of those links. Also, since when is anecdote data?
** Acid Lamp**
When come back, try to be honest about yourself and your statements.
You’re calling women cockteases, then protesting that of course nobody deserves to get raped, but gee, they’re going to get raped unless they put out. Cockteases get raped, and why are you making the rapist invisible? Oh, and you’re not going to be too nice to anybody who’s been ‘brutally’ attacked, as opposed to that slut who asked for it.
The thing about rape and guys taking on other guys is that when you don’t, and when you’re justifying blaming women for rape–despite protesting repeatedly that you’re not blaming women for rape—is that it’s really clear you disagree with. You didn’t feel the need to protest against these guys defending ‘resistance is normal’ . That’s because in a lot of cases, quite obviously, you think those women caused the situation that required them * to need* to resist.
Obviously, dressing like a slut is never justification for rape. But it can be considered stupid, depending on the time and place.
Here’s an analogy: let’s say I walk down the street in the “bad” part of town while wearing a Rolex and holding a big wad of bills. Am I asking to be robbed? No. Would it be wrong for someone to rob me? Yes. But is what I am doing stupid? Yes.
Okay, so in what time and place does “dressing like a slut” put a woman in danger of being raped or attacked? And in such a time and place, would a woman who’s not “dressed like a slut” really be that much safer?
Seriously? You’re comparing a woman to an inanimate object? And you’re kind of missing out on how that robber would be treated. Would he be let off? Not in any real world. In fact, what’s the point of having nice things if you can’t use them, wear them, etc., etc.,?
And I’m so sick of people going, “Oh, I’m not blaming the victim or justifying it but it’s really stupid and incredibly dangerous to do that.” If men are such nice guys then how come it’s so dangerous?
Also, the scenario was only asking for it by wearing provocative or revealing clothing. How come everybody thinks that a women who wear miniskirts do so in dark alleys? How come it’s considered to be so dangerous that when people compare it to something it’s always like being in a dangerous part of town? ** Why is it so dangerous?]/B] Nobody will answer that question, and yet men have protested that it’s mean and cruel to criticize men for reading too much into a woman’s dress. Wearing provocative clothing is so terribly dangerous because the people being provoked are men, and you must not do that. Otherwise you’ll get what you deserve, because…Oh, yeah, let’s protest that nobody said that, that rape is wrong, that that’s not there. Well, how come it’s there when a woman wears a short skirt?
The validity of the question depends on having certain beliefs about sex, rape, and mens' sexuality, and yet to analyze those beliefs---and put them into words-----arouses great outrage. And while some people are protesting that, yeah, sure, women can say <i>no</i> at any time, it's profoundly unfair of them to do so after they've gotten those poor guys all aroused. The sympathy is for the guys, not the women. The resentment is all for the women.
Oh, and by the way, just speaking generally, protesting that one is not blaming the victim while dreaming up a scenario where the victim is robbed because she was a dumbass is blaming the victim. And yet people miss out on a substantial factor: the robber doesn’t walk. He still gets convicted. He still goes to jail, and nobody sympathizes with him.
People are erasing erasing men and rape from these scenarios, and recasting it as women cockteasing men. And the hatred of women who do this, and the belief that such women are horrible people, permeates this thread. But men are invisible except as victims. Of women. Who totally ask for it by being cockteases but of course the speaker is not blaming the victim.
Poor men, lies the belief underneath these comments. Poor things, tempted and aroused by women. Those women are offering something and then reneging. And while the original premise was merely women in certain types of clothing, we’ve since moved on to guys making such women into cockteases. You get a guy aroused, you got to get him off, is what they’re saying. Oh, sure, qualification, qualification, lame excuse, justification, defensive denial of victim-blaming, etc., etc., etc., But the bottom line is there’s apparently a lot of guys out there who think that dressing ‘slutty’ is an invitation to sex, and that a woman cannot realistically rescind her invitation, even though lip service is paid to this concept. The women owes the guy an orgasm.
These sort of comments assume that there’s a huge amount of danger in wearing such clothing. Yet at the same time, you’re just not allowed to think that if there’s that much danger, that must mean that there’s many rapists, that they’re incredibly common. But if so few men are rapists, then there’s nobody to ‘ask for it’ from, there’s no danger. If if it’s so dangerous that it’s akin to waving a Rolex around in front of a firing squad of robbers, (mild sarcasm), then there’s lots of rapists, lots of angry, hostile men looking for a reason. The guys who are saying it’s wrong and horrible to be a cocktease are setting up scenarios that work only if certain assumptions about men are built in. And they want women to be afraid of men.
I’m supposed to protest here that I know lots of nice guys, blah blah blah but you know what? Screw that. Guys don’t seem to do that about women. It seems like when a roughly analgous situation comes up with the genders reversed it’s open season to talk about how common it is.
How can people seriously protest that it’s wrong to say that if men are that dangerous that so many of them are rapists while they’re saying that wearing a short skirt is as dangerous as being in a crime-ridden area? If there’s lots of crime, then there’s got to be a lot of rapists to make it work.
It’s only common sense if one ignores the facts about rape, which is that most rapists are known to the victim. Sometimes they’re dating the guy; sometimes he’s the next door neighbor. I have to ask, do the infants and older women and coma patients who are also raped dress slutty as well? How do they manage to walk down dark streets?
And why does ‘dressing like a slut’ inevitably entail dark streets? What next, alleys? People always feel compelled to introduce solitude and dark alleys. That specific type of hypothetical indicates that they feel it’s so dangerous----that men in general are so dangerous—that it’s akin to a dangerous part of town.
It seems to presume that such a woman is drawn to dangerous parts of town. We’re not talking about prostitutes, yet that’s the only way this constant scenario makes sense.
And prostitutes don’t deserve to be raped, either.
By saying it’s common sense, you’re saying rape is so common that women have to beware it by adjusting their dress and staying in groups and cannot go out at night. The jury’s still out on if a woman’s safe in daytime. Yet if rape is so common then it’s a social problem and we’re not doing enough to stop it.
Actually, I try not to drive on New Year’s Day until around 8 am. If it turns out that driving from 10 pm until 2 am significantly increases the risk of accidents, then yeah, I’d try to avoid driving during those hours unless I had a good reason to do so.
And rape isn’t really singled out, IMO. The government regularly puts out travel advisories telling people, “Don’t travel to this country right now, it’s dangerous.” When there’s a shark sighted around certain beaches, the beach is closed. If I know that a particular student has a hair-trigger temper, I’ll work with that student on anger-management–but I’ll also help other students know to stay away from that kid when warning signs show up.
None of these analogies are exact: the travel advisories can depend on a number of factors besides malice, and the shark isn’t a human threat, and the students I keep away from the angry kid are minors. It’s true that there’s no exact analogy to rape.
No it’s not. It’s terrible. And there are PSAs telling people about how to avoid all kinds of danger. If you’re suggesting that the various women’s centers I linked to above are wasting their times advising women how to stay safe, I’ll simply have to disagree with you.
Well, and that’s a big part of why I think advice not to “dress like a slut” is probably foolish. Setting aside the fact that nobody’s presented evidence that it heightens the risk of rape, even if it does, a woman may reasonably take that heightened risk to gain something she wants. She may consider her dress to be part of her identity; she may find that dressing as she does is more comfortable; she may want to attract people through her dress; she may see her dress style as beautiful to herself; etc. There are plenty of situations in which people knowingly take risks. A man might travel clean-shaven in Saudi Arabia and risk a beating by the religious police without being called foolish, if he knows the risks and takes them for a reason he finds valid.
As an aside, there’s a lot of terribly stupid argument going on in this thread. If someone compares minimizing the risk of rape to minimizing the risk of theft, they’re not comparing women to inanimate objects. That’s an idiotic conclusion. They’re comparing being victimized by one crime to being victimized by another crime. If there’s anyone who’s suggested that a rapist is the least bit forgiven for the rape because of any action of the victim, that’s also idiotic (barring weird comic-book-style hypothetical scenarios that aren’t worth entertaining). I’ve not seen anyone making such a suggestion, but admittedly I’ve been skipping over a lot of posts in the thread because of all the stupid in their first couple of sentences.
No it’s not when you look at the relative ease in locking up a wallet, for instance, and “locking up” a woman.
Most rapes occur in the context of relationships–not your classic stranger, dark alley crime that is most relatable to robbery and the like–so repeated comparisons to theft causes us to oversimplify the issue being discussed. Do most armed robberies and email scams occur between acquaintances/friends? No, they don’t. These tend to be stranger crimes. That makes all the difference. It’s a lot easier to avoid strangers than it is to avoid forming relationships with others.
Let’s suppose most mugging victims were robbed by people they knew. Exactly what prevention messages would you craft for these people? “Don’t make friends with knife-weilding bastards?” “Keep an eye out for shifty-eyed behavior from your potentially thuggish buddies?” “Always keep mace on hand just in case your pal decides to stick you up for your wallet?”
This is the dilemma when it comes to rape. It would be much easier to exert more pressure on men to abstain from sex with protesting women–regardless of the nice, rationalization-inducing waffle breakfast being planned the next morning. As our PUA has revealed, there is a misconception out there that rape isn’t really rape if you somehow manage to make the chick feel better about the thing after the fact. Then it because seduction. Right. Someone needs to tell that to a judge.
And what you personally do to prevent being hit by drunk drivers doesn’t address my point. It’s not like I walk the streets at night dressed like a hooker, either. My point was that drunk driving prevention programs are targeted to potential drunk drivers. They aren’t targeted to the law-abiding. I don’t think that is insignficant.
Nobody is talking about locking up a woman, though, so why are we looking at the relative ease of it?
If mugging victims were mugged in situations similar to acquaintance rapes, they’d look something like this:
-A victim might be repeatedly mugged by a stronger relative. There’s not really any advice I’d give there.
-A victim might be mugged by a shopkeeper as the victim was browsing wares at the store; the shopkeeper would decide she was entitled to the victim’s money, since the victim entered the shop. I’d advise browsers to keep their money well-hidden, to shop in pairs, to keep their guard up while shopping, etc.
-A victim might be mugged by an angry cashier who hates all customers and who comes out on the street to grab folks’ money, mostly because those fucking customers don’t deserve their money. I’d advise customers to be careful where they walked, to watch out for angry-looking cashiers, not to wear wallets on chains, etc.
If we don’t give advice for how to avoid rape, then we’re treating it differently from other crimes where people can change their risk for the crime. I don’t think rape, however horrible it is, should be treated differently in this regard.
Drunk-driving programs for teens are often addressed to the law-abiding: “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” for example, and I remember a PSA from my childhood whose message was something along the lines of, “If you get in a car with a drunk driver, you’ll get out of the car in a body bag.” Again, giving advice to people on how to avoid being victimized by a crime is commonplace, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to carve out an exception for rape. Neither, as I’ve pointed out several times, do campus women’s centers.
You’re right, of course, that a lot of attention needs to be placed on preventing men from becoming rapists in the first place. If I had my druthers, there’d be a significant component of required sex ed in school that dealt with issues of consent in a no-bullshit fashion. A couple of weekends ago I walked in a rape-prevention-awareness event wearing a “Consent is Sexy” button, along with a few hundred other men, as part of an effort to put forward the message that rape is socially unacceptable (that phrasing is poor, but I’m not sure how else to say it). Folks who devote their energy to rape prevention among men are doing incredibly important work, and I cannot applaud it strongly enough.
However, as long as there are rapists out there, I think it makes sense to advise all possible victims of risk factors, to consider those risk factors honestly, and to evaluate behavior with those risk factors in mind. Not all rapes can be prevented by the intended victim, of course–but if some can, shouldn’t they be?