I am not sure that guys who raped passed out girls at parties or the coworker they give a ride home to or their stepdaughters or whatever have enough choice that they can pick only the ones that really get them going with scantily clad legs or whatever.
I am confused what your point is now.
I can’t overstate how formative that conversation was. I strongly changed from “some guys are jerks” to “society is fucked up here” immediately. This wasn’t the brightest girl I ever met but I couldn’t reconcile my earlier thinking with how casually she took the incident she was relaying.
Don’t we? Ever? I don’t think “hey, you might want to drive the old Honda instead of your new Tesla to that party tonight, it’s in a pretty shitty part of town…” would be a ridiculously-out-of-the-blue thing for someone to say.
(Which isn’t to say that discussions of that sort are disproportionately common wrt rape and sexual assault compared to most other crimes…)
This is an extremely interesting insight, and a fascinating way to think about it.
I’m now very curious what percentage of rapes are what you are claiming here is uncommon… a guy whose personality and motivations would be very recognizable to a non-rapist, but with just a bit more aggression, a bit more lust, a bit less empathy, a bit less impulse control, etc. (This distinction could apply to both acquaintance rape and stranger rape).
Taking a step back, btw, I think there’s an important distinction between “you should ignore all of that ‘don’t wear revealing clothes’ advice, it won’t help you at all [subtext: fuck the patriarchy]” and “you know all that ‘don’t wear revealing clothes’ advice? Well, evidence suggests that it would make no difference at all to a large percentage of potential rapists, meaning that the actual impact it will have on your statistical likelihood of being victimized is extraordinarily small [subtext: it’s almost certainly not worth doing but feel free to make up your own mind]”.
I’m certainly not intending to deny that there are some men who are absolute intentional rapists, who leave the house with their rohypnol or whatever and are consciously planning out how to commit a rape. It’s certainly not clear to me if those sorts of rapists commit 5% or 50% or 95% of rapes.
(Nothing I’ve written in this thread has been intended to be sympathetic to or forgiving of rapists… I hope it hasn’t come off that way).
One further thought, which is that your position seems to be a pretty strong turn away from a frequently-expressed position about men and rape, that being, emphasizing the extent to which all men are potential rapists. (Not trying to “gotcha” you here, I’m genuinely interested).
As a man who went to a liberal arts college at a point in time when there was a lot of discussion about rape culture, etc., the message I got was definitely not “rapes are committed by a small number of men who are horrible evil criminals”, it was “rapes are committed by men who are just like you and me, so let’s spend a lot of time teaching you about consent and so forth to make sure that you’re not one of them”.
Granted, that’s two decades in the past now. And of course, both could coexist… if 75% of rapes are committed by 1% of men, it’s still worth trying to prevent as many as we can of the other 25%.
I can believe this is generally the case, but (speaking from experience) there is one subset of men who can identify with the woman in your scenario. Because I, a male rape victim, know that’s who I identify with. I’m not saying every male rape victim does, but some others besides myself must do. And there are a lot of us.
On the freeway? Bullshit.
Might as well say they have right of way on the rail tracks, and the train is the one that had to swerve
I don’t think that the subtext of the first statement is “fuck the patriarchy”. I think it’s factually correct. If someone wants to ask for more clarification, it’s fine to ask for it, but that’s not the same thing. I mean, if I say to someone “you can ignore all that “don’t go out with wet hair” advice”, am I saying “fuck the old lady brigade”?
I think that the intended audience here is what is confused. It’s not “any man could be a rapist, even you!”; the audience is women, and it’s “any man could be a rapist, even that cute guy who obviously has no limit on his access to consensual sex, even the guy that has no “creeper” vibe, even your boyfriend”. It’s meant to advise women not to base their evaluation of risk based on these things, and, more importantly, not to blame themselves if someone that doesn’t fit the mold of “rapist” rapes them. Twenty years ago, when the cute guy you were going to fuck anyway raped you or your boyfriend raped you, you interpreted it as your fault. It must have been, because he’s not a rapist, a rapist is a creepy guy in an alley. So guilt and shame got added and humiliation and anger. “Any guy can be a rapist” was a message for women, not men.
Of course there are, and I should not have forgotten that. I’m sorry. Personal experience is obviously a central facet of identity. But I think the general idea–that when we hear a story, we pick a person to “be” and we seek to understand that story through that lens, is valid. And what strikes us as the most important qualities to “match” is a pretty profound analysis of how we identify ourselves. And it’s often very hard for men to identify with the woman in a story. Women are better at it, because we are taught to: half the stories we read and watch and hear literally don’t have significant female characters, and almost none have girls or women as the central figure. Boys, on the other hand, are actively prevented from reading/hearing/watching stories with no male characters. So while I don’t doubt at all that you identify with the victim in a story about rape, I also would not be surprised at all to find out there are men who are victims of rape but who process the experience of female victims, and men who rape women, as just utterly different than their own experiences.
But women are told to treat everywhere as a “pretty shitty part of town”. A nice college campus. A quiet neighborhood. A party that’s half people they know well and half strangers. An upscale neighborhood. Gas stations.
Also, I don’t think carjackings happen more in shitty parts of town. Junkies looking for shit to steal, sure. But not carjackings. Again, people don’t carjack spontaneously, because a fancy Tesla inspired them. They plan it out. They scout a location. Then they select a target.
Right. As soon as a woman gets raped in a location, that area retroactively becomes “bad” somehow and the woman was silly for putting herself in that situation.
To piggy back on what Manda JO said, if a guy is carjacked in a “non-bad” neighborhood, then he is off the hook for interrogation. He gets the “Sometimes shit just happens, my dude” treatment. No one wonders if he could have prevented the attack by keeping his windows rolled up and his doors locked. No one asks him just what was he thinking, driving around at night.
People expect women who have been raped to give a blow-by-blow list of all the lessons that can be extracted from the experience. “I was wearing a low cut tight sweater with skinny jeans and red pumps, just like all the girls at the party were wearing. But I guess maybe next time I’ll wear MC Hammer pants with a cardigan and flats. And I won’t drink any alcohol, even though I love to drink. I’ll just have sparkling water. Lesson learned, guys!”
Oh, fully, no argument at all on that score.
My school is in a pretty dodgy area. There’s this VERY busy gas station on the corner, right off the interstate. I actually do avoid it because of panhandlers. I feel like if I got mugged there, I would be asked why I was there at all, but if a man got mugged there. . . Same crime . . .he wouldn’t be. Now, there are very very sketchy gas stations where both sexes would be asked why they where there*, and very posh gas stations where neither would, but there’s this huge range in the middle where I am expected to accept that it’s common sense that I am not safe, and common sense that it’s “safe enough” for a guy. Despite none of us really having any idea about actual crime incidence there.
assuming they aren’t poor, and possibly white. One of the fucked up things here is that middle class white people think they are especially in danger among groups that are neither, but poor and/or dark people are not taking an unreasonable risk. Or it’s an acceptable risk, because. . . Well, I am not sure why.
*That’s a lie. I know why. Because as a lily white middle class lady, my life and safety matters more to society, so I am weirdly under more pressure to preserve it.
You’ve mentioned a few examples where you imply that men would be off the hook, but that would not be the case. Men give men a hard time about stuff all the time. Men will ask other men details about the situation and point out things that were excessively risky. If the guy is carjacked in a safe suburban area, then it’s like “oh well”, but if the guy is driving through an open air drug market, people will give him a hard time.
While I agree that sometimes people ask questions to assign blame, there can also be valuable lessons learned from what led to it. You mentioned switching to sparkinging water, but some date rape drugs can be added to water and won’t be noticed. That doesn’t mean women can’t drink anything, but by talking about it we can make people aware that if they feel off or strange, don’t just attribute it to drinking to much or not feeling well. If victims were never asked about their drinking or level of inebriation, then we might not know as much about these kinds of drugs.
monstro, I was wondering if you would share how you would react in these situations. If you were in your 20’s and called a girlfriend to do something, how would you react if she said either of these things:
I can’t. I’m wasted and four boys from the football team are going to give me a ride home so I can sleep it off.
I can’t. I’m headed to the keg party at the football team’s frat house. I’ll be the only girl. It should be a blast!
There’s nothing inherently wrong about those situations. She should be able to freely do those things. But when I hear these specific kinds of situations, they seem very risky for women. How do you feel about scenarios like that, and would you intervene for your friend in any way?
Could you present them more realistically and see how monstro responds?
I can’t. The party just ended and I’m drunk as hell, but don’t worry I’m catching a ride with John and his buds.
I can’t. I promised John and his buds that I’d go to their keg party. You know how they are; it should be a blast!
Women, like most people, socialize with friends and acquaintances mostly. In the first scenario, it wouldn’t be some nameless, faceless team of footballers the friend would be riding home with; most likely it would be “John”—a person she knows and trusts. She probably also knows his “buds” well enough not to see them as predators. Also, note that my rewrite makes it clear she is actually trying to make herself safer, not less safe. Wouldn’t you agree that driving home drunk is more dangerous than catching a ride with a friend, assuming they aren’t also wasted? That would be the risk I’d be most concerned about if I were talking to an inebriated friend.
In the second scenario, I took out the “I’ll be the only girl there” because it’s patently unrealistic and also, what’s the implication here? That there’s more risk of being raped if you’re the only girl in a group of partying men? This sound like more of the same kind “common sense” thinking that causes people to fault rape victims for dressing immodestly. If I were a straight so passionate about getting laid that I would be willing to rape, a sausage fest would be the last thing I’d be attending.
You keep giving these hyperbolic examples and they make your case weaker, not stronger. Sure, a guy who drives his BMW through an open-air drug market might get shit–but I’m asked to treat anywhere that isn’t an affluent suburb like you have to treat an open air drug market. You have a short list of unsafe places and everywhere else is assumed safe. I have a short list of safe places and everywhere else is assumed unsafe.
The same with the “catch a ride” or “party with the football team” examples. It just doesn’t happen that way. As you with the face pointed out, you get a ride with a FRIEND, whom you think you know well and whom you have good reason to trust. You hear horror stories of girls being lured by football teams for gang-rapes–but they are LURED, it’s planned. They are told that there will be a party with lots of people. The rapist goes out of his way to offer a ride to several girls, and takes a weird way home to drop his target off last-- and she’s lthe target because he thinks she won’t tell, for whatever reason. It’s planned. And hell, maybe she notices he’s dropping her off last but she thinks he’s cute and hopes he will make a pass. Good marriages have started with exactly this scenario. But instead, he’s a rapist and he wants to rape her. And now it’s her fault that she didn’t throw a fit when she didn’t realized he wanted to be alone with her and jump out of the car.
The precautions that would make a meaningful difference in your chances of getting raped would also result in you dying old and alone. I mean, when I was young I liked to play RPGs. I spent a LOT of nights as the only girl at the gaming table. And nothing terrible ever happened, or came close to it. They were good guys. Friends. I’m married to one, still. But by this logic, I should have given up that hobby.
This. All of this.
filmore, my reaction to these scenarios depends on the particulars, not merely the genders of the people involved. There are some women I would worry about being drunk in the company of guys she doesn’t know very well and then there are some women I wouldn’t worry about at all…and in fact I might actually worry more about the guy she gets mixed up with!
If my friend is brand new to partying and she is known to lose her mind with just little alcohol, yeah, I might worry. If she’s like this, I might ask if she wants me to pick her up instead of relying on guys she doesn’t know. And I might nudge her a little if I don’t like her response to this question. But honestly, if any of my friends said they were drunk and told me they were waiting for another potentially drunk person to give them a ride, I’d volunteer my services. That just seems to be a basic “good friend” thing to do. So in this situation, rape wouldn’t be at the forefront of my mind. It would be the drinking and driving that would be of concern to me.
In the second scenario, I would probably wish my friend well and then end the call with a “Have fun but let me know if you need a ride home.”
I would like for you to respond to the same scenarios, except in this case it is a male friend. How would you react to a male friend calling you to say that he’s wasted at a frat party and he’s planning on catching a ride with some girls? How would you react if a male friend called you to tell you he’s on his way to a kegger and he hopes he can hook up with a girl there?
And what we are telling you is that women are hardly ever given an “oh well”. There are ALWAYS lessons that we can extract from the bad things that happen to us. We could get raped in a safe suburban area, and someone will still accuse us of tempting fate by dressing too sexy or being outside when its dark or having too much to drink or being too friendly.
My housemate was assaulted in our yard on a Sunday morning walking home from church. I heard her scream, ran to the window, and saw the guy on top of her. I screamed at him and he jumped off and ran away.
I called 9-1-1, cops came, and the first thing they said to her was “why were you walking alone”.
From church, dressed for church, in our own neighborhood, on a Sunday morning.
I almost ripped the cop’s head off. The lecture, the lesson to be taught, happens all the time.