back to the Amnesty Intl findings..
November 23, 2005 – 1:30 pmHaving read the comments on the ‘perceptions of women’ post below- i had something to say which i didn’t want to simply reply to in the comment thread - i realized it’s quite a big deal so i thought i’d have a separate post.
Someone commented that ‘In a lot of instances, what the women was doing and wearing at the time of rape are key factors in the occurance.‘
Key factors indeed.
i suppose part of the problem is that a lot of people seem to think only young attractive women get raped. what about men- this happens a lot in prison and in the army- Hmm im sure what they were wearing were ‘key factors’.
Rape is about Violence. it’s something completely separate to ‘attracting attention’ and the ‘mating game’. it’s one thing to say people need to be aware of the fact that the way they dress and behave will attract varying amounts of attention/different kinds of attention. Sure - that’s a valid point in itself- but again - unrelated - it’s not going to explain rape, or indicate ‘mitigating circumstances’ . It might influence how many people you have asking for your phone no. or even trying it on with you. You could even say that women if they are wearing x or y that they are encouraging male attention. well fine - maybe they do - maybe they want to find a boyfriend, a one-night stand -whatever. Maybe they are looking for sex - so fucking what? If they meet a man they want to sleep with - fine - their business, no-one else’s. How can anyone ‘logically’ jump from the assumption that if someone is ‘looking for sex’ they have ‘encouraged’ rape. In case people haven’t realized - there’s a big difference between sex and rape. In connecting these two things people seem to be implying that they don’t think there is a big difference - and that’s really in my mind what is the big problem. The conflation of these two things is seriously problematic. I worry about the fact that lots of people don’t seem to think so.
So given the fact the media and popular culture of the day represent men as a bunch of ’sex-hungry’ people who are always on the lookout for sex - by this sort of thinking - any violent nasty person can come along and rape them and say - “well they’re a bunch of tarts, they’re looking for sex, they should realize that they ‘encouraged’ me to come and rape them. They should realize that their ‘attitude’ is a key factor in me raping them.”
Would that make a lot of sense ?!! Obviously it wouldn’t.
The problem with conflating sex and rape is that by doing so it is in a way rationalizing rape and diminishing its dysfunctional nature. Doh! you’d think you wouldn’t really have to point this out. ‘ oh there was some pretty young thing about why shouldnt i want to have sex with them’. Well i’m sorry that’s completely different to ‘oh there was some pretty young thing about why shouldnt i want to have sex with them. But they said no but i dont care so i will do it anyway’. The violence factor completely changes the dynamic. Studies of rape indicate that what it is generally about is power - power to overtake someone - and usually goes together with issues like feelings of powerlessness/inadequacy. I’m no expert but i think its fairly clear that there are usually some serious psychological problems involved.
quite a different kettle of fish.
6 Responses to “back to the Amnesty Intl findings..”
Bullshit. Rape is about the sex urge pure and simple. Aroused males do stupid things sometimes in order to get sex. If they are unethical, they may force it on someone else.
“The problem with conflating sex and rape is that by doing so it is in a way rationalizing rape”
Just because you don’t like the facts doesn’t mean it’s not true. Rape is a rational strategy. Look at the animal kingdom or primitive tribal societies like in Africa where rape is endemic.
Luckily this also means rape has a straightforward solution. Just cut the rapists balls off and they don’t do it again. Easy.
By frizzled on Nov 23, 2005
Yeesh where’d this loony frizzled come from?
If a woman (or man, for that matter) comes into a pub, rips off her clothes, lies on the pool table and says “do me”, then changes her mind as someone is about to start and says “no”, and that person continues, it’s rape. There are no extenuating circumstances. No means no. That’s it. It really is quite simple.
By Shermozle on Nov 23, 2005
A woman and a man meet in a bar. They flirt. They tease each other. The girl positions herself suggestively, the guy fools around, makes her laugh. They drink while they talk. After an hour they begin to feel really good about each other. One of them invites the other home. They go back, still flirting, chatting laughing, touching. They’re enjoying each other’s company.
They get inside, start to kiss, start to pull each others clothes off, things get hot, passionate.
Suddenly the girl wonders how things have managed to go so far this evening. She remembers a guy she met six months ago in circumstances which started exactly like this but then went badly wrong and she ended up having to deal with a stalker for three months.
Maybe she’s not ready for something so similar so soon. She doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice in such a short time. Perhaps this is far enough for tonight - they’re already practically both naked, but she needs to end it now and maybe see the guy again in a couple of days time.
But he’s already pulling her thong off; she’s pushing his shoulders, saying no. He’s pushing against her, with no loss of enthusiasm, he thinks she’s messing about. With horror, she realises he’s lunging against her. Before she knows it, he’s inside her. This is really not what she wanted - she’s pushing on his shoulders, hard. She’s screaming: “NO!”. But he’s already penetrating her.
This girl is amazing, he’s thinking. This evening turned out really well. He practically has his eyes closed - he doesn’t see the expression in her eyes.
That’s rape.
That’s a very common form of rape.
Where is the violent aggression?
Because it doesn’t seem to be the man’s head.
Monitoring against this kind of mistake is possible - as I and plenty of men can testify. But it’s something one has to constantly be on guard about and conscious that one has to be on guard about. Even when drunk.
By Ibn-Battuta on Nov 23, 2005
That’s not to say, of course, that some men don’t use rape as a method of physical and / or psychogical abuse or intimidation or torture - a method which is probably a good deal more traumatising to the victim than simply being physically beaten up.
But we should be clear here that there are different situations which society-at-large classes under the catch-all term of “rape”.
There are different forms of premeditated rape which get progressively worse in calculated maliciousness.
And there are different forms of spontaneous rape - usually resulting from a failure of communication between the two people involved - which may be an accident, start off as an accident and then become deliberate or masquerade under the pretence of being an accident.
By Ibn-Battuta on Nov 23, 2005
you could say that. from the point of view presented in that story it sounds all very ‘accidental’ and the sort of thing where you’re implying the bloke was a ’sensitive one’ and oh dear he was very sorry. He didnt mean too.. so there is the danger of a one-sided view because we don’t know in your story what the girl was Really thinking! But - it is sort of perpetuating the viewpoint that men ‘can’t control themselves’ well if they didn’t control themselves just because they didn’t ‘mean to’ doesn’t mean a) it wasn’t violent and that b) it wasn’t aggressive
i’m sorry but according to your own story i dont know how you think that pounding into someone who is ’screaming NO’ isn’t aggressive, and oh he didnt see the ‘expression’ on the girl’s face… so that’s okay? He didn’t ’see’ the effect of his violence so it wasn’t violent? he was ‘blinded’ by his aggressive instincts then i suppose?
i guess some one who has murdered someone could say the same thing- think the same thing - oh i just shoved him- i didnt ‘mean’ to be physically violent - oops.
Sure, its sad..BUT- sorry- that doesn’t mean it wasn’t violent and it wasn’t aggressive.
anyway this is all problematic as you’re right in saying obviously situations are always the same. Pre-meditated violence is not the same as ’spontaneous’ violence, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t violence. I suppose you could say yes its the ‘manslaughter’ equivalent. Pre-meditated murder and manslaughter are clearly different - but i think you’ll find they both resulted in someone dead, and one can debate the level of ‘culpability’ etc. but i don’t think anyone’s fooling themselves in thinking manslaughter isn’t violent and aggressive. depending on what sort of reasoning you come up with, some would say people who haven’t thought things through carefully might not be ‘coldblooded’ killers- but behave in a hot-headed aggressive fashion and end up ‘manslaughtering’ someone. its a normative issue as to which is ‘worse’ - society makes value judgements about that - but hey - bottom line was that (in this murder/manslaughter context) victim is dead.
anyway i appreciate your point - i hope you can appreciate mine.
By sonia on Nov 24, 2005
Two points:
1) “it is sort of perpetuating the viewpoint that men ‘can’t control themselves’”
Well some men control themselves better than others. Some men in the scenario illustrated would have realised what was up and reacted faster. Others just simply wouldn’t understand that given all the cues and the activity up that point, the girl wasn’t indulging in her own fantasy, which she didn’t want to have interrupted by a reality check.
The scenario also illustrates how women sometimes fail to control themselves in their indecisiveness. That is, the girl was committed to a course of action and then changes her mind. She wants it and then she doesn’t want it. (I had to imagine all of this and since I’ve only ever been a man, I’m slightly afraid that it doesn’t quite ring true to the way a woman might think in that situation… I had to guess quite a lot). Given the sexual build-up, I imagine a lot of men would find this change of mood very difficult to grapple with.
If it’s incumbent on men to be more sensitive to recognise when their advances have gone too far, then it should also be incumbent on women not to give cues that they are committing themselves to a course of action which they might later have second thoughts about. If second thoughts are a prospect, better not to “go with the flow” in the first place. That applies to both parties.
2) “i’m sorry but according to your own story i dont know how you think that pounding into someone who is ’screaming NO’ isn’t aggressive,”
The point was that he doesn’t get it. He’s really not sure why she’s saying no, but he’s having a great time, she’s been having a great time and it’s simply not feasible that she could have changed her mind, so he thinks she must be playing her own game and thinks “oh well, whatever gets her off…”
Anyway this is all conjecture, ‘cuz I made the scenario up. I’m not enough of a psychologist to know how likely it is that two people in this exact situation would actually react in this way.
My initial point was that in certain types of non-consensual sex, the sex urge cannot be discounted as a principal cause. Especially not when combined with a) alcohol, b) ignorance and c) mixed messages.
By Ibn-Battuta on Nov 24, 2005