Women and sexual assault.

In My Humble Opinion
301

Made worse because SOME women DO play hard to get. We are told not to call him back right away. Not to make ourselves TOO available. There are women who protest about having sex not because they are saying no, but because they feel that being ‘persuaded’ to do so puts them on some moral high ground and makes them less ‘easy.’

And that’s part of the culture as well.

But I think we need to believe what people say and respect that. Giving into the women who are playing manipulative games about being hard to get or making you the aggressor is sex they want is rewarding them for bad behavior. If men complain that women never tell you what they want, and then men ignore women when they tell you want they want - what is everyone learning about interaction between genders.

We are all - both genders - victims of a ‘rape culture’ - but both genders share some responsibility in its existence.

302

I am a 47yr old man who would like to say that I have understood the legitimacy of this issue long before reading this thread but have further been impressed by the personal contributions .

To the ladies here, I am going out on a limb a bit but am hoping that there are many male dopers who, like me, have understanding and empathy on this issue but simply haven’t voiced out here, are staying on the sidelines - perhaps because they do not know specifically what to contribute.

With a couple of the male posters who to me seem out of line, I felt the need to offer that suggestion - that there are hopefully a lot of guys reading this thread who are not only well on the side of understanding this painful issue at hand but admire the women who have bravely offered their experiences.

303

This is an excellent point.

I think, for me, I worry about giving up too much of my power. If men start being ‘extra sensitive’ about me because they are bigger and stronger, then that implies that my being smaller and less strong makes me…well, weaker.

I would much rather have all men, no matter how big or strong, treat me with the same rules that all humans should treat eachother. If you wouldn’t talk to John when he is busy, don’t talk to me when I’m busy. But please don’t factor in that I am a female, so should be treated differently because of my vulnerability.

I don’t know what it feels like to be raped, so I am trying to see this thread through different eyes… I do know how I felt after a man invaded my space and threatened to hurt me. But I have to be courageous and fight those fears…I personally look at men differently now, when I’m alone at night…but that is my problem…my issue to work out. Not something that men need to change about themselves…unless they are men who assault women.

One more thing…it seems like in this society we put this shame around rape that shouldn’t be there for the woman. I know I have felt some of that shame myself. We put this shiny halo aurond female sexuality that dictates it must be pure and true with her husband. If she has sex with a lot of men just because she likes to she is a whore and a slut and dirty and shameful. If a man takes sex from her, she is also dirty and shameful, or shamed. That’s why it is absolutely not appropriate to joke about it, even though we joke about everything else in this society up to and including baby killing. I wonder if I ever were raped, would I be able to joke about it. I have joked about every other tragedy in my life, bar none.

304

[ul][li]Threatening a woman with violence[/li][li]Killing a woman’s pets[/li][li]Calling a woman fifty times a night[/li][li]Speaking to a woman on the bus who is staring out the window[/ul][/li]One of these things is not like the others.

Regards,
Shodan

305

And yet, they all have something in common. They are probably unwelcome by the recipient and prioritize your need for her attention over her desire for you to leave her alone.

306

I feel the same way, Nzinga. I get the most ticked off when a guy (or a woman, for that matter) doesn’t treat me with the same respect that he would a male.

Like the dude this past Monday who told me smile. Now anyone who has paid any atttention to my contributions on this board will know that this is a routine occurence in my life. So once again, I have some random stranger commanding me to do something specific with my face as if, you know, it’s their face, and I’m not entitled to do what I want with it. This always bugs me, but this guy’s comment made me feel extra stabby because my reason for not smiling was really valid this time: I’d just finished running almost 3 miles and on my way to my car, I got overheated. Sweat was pouring off of me, I was thirsty, and I was in desperate need of some fresh air blowing on my face.

So here comes Seagent McSmiley with the Face Police, telling me to smile as I sublimate into the atmosphere.

Now would he have done this with a man? I’m thinking no. “Smile” is a flirtative tactic that a lot of guys employ, and since straight men don’t flirt with other men, they don’t say this kind of stuff to each other. But it bothers me that this is the way many guys go about sparking conversation with a woman. What better way of discounting a woman’s personal feelings than telling her that she has the wrong expression on her face?

Sorry, no more rants from me.

307

Sargent McSmiley with the Face Police is killing me.

308

The common theme that jumps out to me: these are all cases of one person refusing to acknowledge another person’s boundaries. They’re just varying degrees of it.

309

This is my case, and I like to think that I get it (two years of doing anti-sexual-assault, pro-survivor workshops for frosh can help with that kind of thing), but I didn’t want to sound like I was just me-tooing to get an ally cookie. But if it can help to hear that there are more men who get it, or are trying hard to, then here I am.

310

Yep. It’s varying degrees of “I want therefore you must.”

311

Thanks matt and the lone cashew. It does help. :slight_smile:

312

I recently watched a Comedy Central roast (I think it was Joan Rivers) and one of the speakers was a woman from the Howard Stern show (Robin Quivers) who has spoken out about being sexually abused by her father.

More than one of the speakers at the roast raked her over the coals for this. One stated that she was so damn ugly she should consider herself fortunate that her father took sexual interest in her.

She laughed the whole time. And I remember thinking, ‘‘Is she really okay with this?’’ It seemed to really cross a line. But some people do have thicker skin than others. And I can see how laughing publicly about something we are taught we should be ashamed of could have a certain psychological appeal.

I used to get bent out of shape when comedians joked about child abuse, but I learned to get over it. Sometimes the best way of coping with something is laughing at it. I still think it depends on the context.

[QUOTE=mattmcl]
This is my case, and I like to think that I get it (two years of doing anti-sexual-assault, pro-survivor workshops for frosh can help with that kind of thing), but I didn’t want to sound like I was just me-tooing to get an ally cookie. But if it can help to hear that there are more men who get it, or are trying hard to, then here I am.
[/QUOTE]

It doesn’t just help–we need you. Dudes speaking up about this are the only way it’s going to change.

Some time ago a man posted his account of witnessing a gang rape at a house party, and how he was physically intimidated into walking away, and how he felt having to face the victim, and how she started dressing differently and her personality changed and he never got over the guilt. And man after man after man came in and posted, ‘‘Wow. I didn’t realize. I never thought.’’ Etc. Etc. I think that one man did more to change social consciousness about the issue of rape than a thousand similar posts started by women about their own experiences.

I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family, where abuse of all kinds was actually quite common. It wasn’t until I hit my teens that I began to speak up about it – to call out certain behaviors for how messed up they were. And the overwhelming consensus in my family was, ‘‘Why are you making such a big deal out of this? You don’t fit in here. Something must be wrong with you.’’

I’m getting the same vibe here. People want to point to the dominant female paradigm expressed in this thread as evidence of irrationality when in fact it’s the environment itself that’s irrational. Any normal person subjected to the same experiences would reach the same conclusions.

My mother was sexually abused by two male family members, and according to the conception story she has shared I am the product of date rape. She married her rapist, my Dad, and he was abusive, and eventually she was forced to climb out the second-story window of their apartment building with me, an infant, under one arm. Though she ended up going back to him, she eventually did get away, and she promptly married a child molester. After he went to prison, she had several more relationships, including two more marriages, and her fourth marriage was, again, a child molester, only this time when the story got out she didn’t believe it, and she stayed married to the fucker for another 5 years, which means until I was 23 years old my mother was married to a man who molested me for 6 years, and nobody in my family gave a shit.

In fact, most of them just conveniently forgot that it happened. And in fact, for reasons I don’t care to go into here, he is still a welcome guest to certain family members. I can look forward to seeing him at least twice more before I die (funerals), and I am physically afraid of him. I resent having to choose between paying my last respects to family and seeing this douchebag again.

And every time I mention this in the context of the oppression of women, the response is, ‘‘Well, that’s an unfortunate situation but highly outside of the norm’’ the implication being, ‘‘your weird experiences aren’t relevant to whether or not women in our society are oppressed by men.’’

Say what? Really? You think you have more of relevance to contribute to this topic than I do? I take it that when you want to talk about the psychological devastation of military combat, you strongly believe that the veterans have an irrational and biased opinion and that the only true insight we can glean is from civilians who have been unfairly treated by veterans.

313

Um, I do think I need to address this one, after brooding about it for a bit. Maybe this sort of attitude from some men explains why some other men are a bit reluctant to admit understanding where women are coming from. You wrote a romantic comedy? Oh boy, turn in your man card. Huh???

314

I had no idea that the Victorian idea of the “proper introduction” held such support on the SDMB. I suppose the correct response is “How dare you, you cad!”

I realize it is probably mostly the context of the thread - polls about sexual assault are not likely to evince stories of how a man remarked on the book you were reading on the subway, and now you have been married for a dozen years and have three children - but the notion that speaking to a woman and raping her are mere points on a continuum is pretty extreme.

Regards,
Shodan

315

I think I see where you’re coming from.

316

You know, when we had the “book on the subway” talk pages ago, several of us said if he made a comment that was pertinent to the book, that was ok. A way of forming a connection. Of course, if we smiled in that “polite, but why-are-you-talking-to-me-I’m-trying-to-read” way and went back to our books, that was intrusive and uncomfortable and crossed the line.

317

I don’t want to do the piecemeal quoting thing too much, so I won’t, but I want to point out right away that no I didn’t, and it’s important. When you say “forcing yourself on women is culturally acceptable,” you’ve ramped the rhetoric up to a point where somebody like Shodan can, with plausible deniability, argue that this whole exercise is silly because of course physical rape isn’t culturally acceptable, and avoid having to trouble his beautiful mind any further with the issue. I did not say that. Please make the distinction between unhealthy aggression, which can manifest in just a couple of seconds in broad daylight without any physical contact, and forcible rape, which cannot. They’re both bad, but they are very different.

And neither has anyone in any form argued that it does. At this point you’re either willfully misconstruing the things you’re arguing against or you have enough contempt for them that you’re missing the distinctions. Nobody thinks that romantic comedy movies make sexual assault happen, all right? We can agree, and you can leave it alone. Nobody said prison rape is explained entirely by misogyny. Nobody said there’s open sexual abuse every 20 minutes. Nobody said these things.

I can restate what people are actually saying. No matter who else gets sexually assaulted, adult women also get sexually assaulted, and much, much more frequently. And this is a problem. Also, society doesn’t have much respect for an adult woman’s right to be free from unwanted sexual advances, which can be seen all over the place, all the time. And if you want to make women get sexually assaulted less frequently, a good idea would be to have more respect for an adult woman’s right to be free from unwanted sexual advances. And the trappings of a culture that doesn’t take this issue very seriously can be seen in things like advertisements, movies, news stories, etc.

Note all the things that I did not say in that paragraph about causation. Note that I didn’t say that our culture lionizes violent serial rapists, or that a culture of rape explains every societal ill, or entirely explains any particular one, or that every woman in the world has been raped, or that the most important piece of the puzzle that we’re missing here is your personal opinion about why movies get made and who likes it. None of that is going on, and none of it matters. Too many women get sexually assaulted, and we could be more vigilant about that, and we aren’t, and in fact we send a lot of signals that suggest that even though these things are technically crimes, they aren’t really exploitative. That’s all this means.

Well, there has to be a least-offensive version of everything, right? I agree that talking to somebody while they’re reading is incredibly mild, but what about, say, telling somebody she has beautiful eyes while she’s reading? That makes more sense to me, at least, and I think that’s the spirit in which that point was made.

318

Dangerosa, am I getting this right? Two situations:

A)I’m reading a book on the bus. You make a comment related to it. I like it and we start talking. Line not crossed.

B) I’m reading a book on the bus. You make a comment related to it. I don’t like it and smile in that polite but why-are-you-talking-to-me-I’m-trying-to-read way. Line crossed.

319

I meant to say - AND you continue to chat…

320

You know, it just occurred to me I had an experience as an adult… I don’t know if it was sexual assault or not, but it definitely crossed a line.

I was eighteen years old and was dating this guy. I had known him less than a week, and he kept pressuring me for sex. I told him I was not ready for sex. He kept pressuring me anyway, at which point I felt obligated to provide him with an explanation (in retrospect I realize I owed no such explanation.) So I told him, flat-out, that I was dealing with the aftermath of a childhood sexual trauma and I wasn’t ready.

He said, ‘‘The only way you’ll ever be able to move beyond that is to learn to view sex in a positive way.’’ He then took my hand and put it on his penis. He had his pants on, so I’m not sure where it came from, but I was definitely in contact with erect bare penis after explicitly stating I was not ready for sex. We weren’t hugging or kissing or cuddling, we were sitting on his living room sofa talking about why I don’t want to have sex right now, and his best response to that was to grab my hand and shove it against his junk.

I’ve always viewed that incident as a mistake I made–I was too trusting, should have never been in his house, should have never agreed to date an older man, etc. And I think that could be true for a lot of women with similar experiences. This shit is so regular we don’t often question it. We just do what we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.