Predator Theory
As always, trigger warning is in effect.
If you guys haven’t seen the Predator Theory post over at Feministe yet, really, go check it out. Thomas breaks down some great new research that confirms what survivors have long known through repeat observations: rapists develop a preferred modus operandi; successful rapists’ modus operandi involves selecting victims and opportunities that maximize victim-blaming; successful rapists are repeat rapists; stranger rapists use alcohol or drugs; acquaintance rapists (the vast majority) are the only ones using force, because using force as a stranger rapist means you are likely to become an unsuccessful — and thus incarcerated — rapist, while using force as an acquaintance means you are likely to become a “misunderstanding” and “he wouldn’t do that, I know him.”
So we don’t all want to rip our eyes out and go live underground, this does offer good news, thoug it’s good news most of us have already known and have been trying to scream from the rooftops: serial rapists operate with identifiable patterns that can be witnessed and interrupted. Those identifiable patterns take full advantage of misogyny, victim-blaming, and misperceptions about what abuse is and whether or not it’s actionable. In other words, the guy who says “she’s a dumb slut who probably liked it, so what does she expect” means it, and statistics will back up your gut. That doesn’t sound good. I guess it’s good and depressing news. You can identify rapists, is the good news, and it’s exactly who you thought it was is the depressing.
Thomas finishes his post with something I think is really important. Predator theory really breaks down to bystander theory: until the criminal justice system recognizes the consistent pattern of grooming and abuse rapists utilize as criminal and actionable, we can’t remove predators from the general population. What we can do is stop giving them a license to rape around us, using those we know and love as victims. We can do that by recognizing their pattern for what it is — not a misunderstanding, not a drunken night, not a thing Nigel just spouts off about women sometimes but otherwise he’s okay, not a helpful action totally misinterpreted by crazy ladeez (I was just trying to walk her home!), not a joke — and making it clear that we consider those things repugnant, unacceptable, and socially actionable. In other words, making it clear to the potential rapist that his big bag of victim-blaming tools don’t work around you.
This research shows that rapists aren’t just testing the boundaries of their victims, but they’re testing the boundaries of the entire social group and support structure that surrounds the victim. A potential rapist might find a potential victim who does not respond well to his attempts to invade her boundaries and otherwise wouldn’t be a good target, but if that potential victim is surrounded by friends that laugh at rape jokes, don’t speak up when the potential rapist goes on sexist screeds, and doesn’t offer support when the potential victim says that guy is really creeping her out, that potential rapist (or serial rapist) is going to make an accurate assumption that when he rapes your friend, you won’t help her prosecute. You probably won’t even believe her, which — good news for the rapist! — means he can rape all your other friends now, too, before moving on to a new social circle.
To make it more clear, any time you have ever said or believed or made clear through action that you think women who are drunk/slutty/undressed/stupid/have been raped before/have daddy issues/don’t walk around with a tattooed no on their heads/married/young/sexy/pretty/unvirgin/did not lock their doors/did not scream/do not call the police/do not physically fight back/do not weep and gnash their teeth afterwards may have contributed in some small or large way to their rapes, remember that you are not talking about some theoretical woman, out there: you are talking about every female friend and family member you have. Because a rapist is going to hear you say those things, see you believe them, and that rapist is going to make a (likely correct) guess that he has free reign to rape every woman you know, possibly a few times, without risking anything — certainly not arrest or prosecution, not even the cold shoulder from you.
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Harriet, great points. Those type of rape denial comments could also be considered rapist magnets. Rant against rape victims and the rapists will want you to be their BFF.
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I really love this research that is coming out and showing what many of us knew all along and how it is finally starting to get some widespread attention. It’s way past time and it shows that just maybe we might be able to get people to be more aware of what’s going on around them.
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Thank you. And Thomas.
I linked to this post on Facebook and it was all I could do not to go off on a rant directed at the people on my friends list who I’ve heard say shit like “Well it’s not like I’m blaming her, but [reasons for why she's to blame]” about rape victims. It makes me so very angry. Victim-blamers don’t even have to own that they’re blaming victims. It’s just part of the normal way we talk about rape. “It’s not her fault, but…” If it’s not her fault, why the but? Why?
I think part of the reason people can say these things and not believe they’re emboldening rapists is because most people don’t think they know any rapists. Which leads me to one thing that worries me about this research: if it turns out that most rapes are committed by a small group of men, as anti-rape activists have suspected, is that going to make it even harder for people to acknowledge that someone they know might be a rapist because, after all, what are the odds? And if people have a hard time believing that a friend or loved one could commit rape, would they find it even harder to believe that said friend or loved one could commit multiple rapes? Not that I’m suggesting we shouldn’t promote the research, just wondering if this is something we need to address in our response to it, somehow.
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J: I agree with you in principle, but the way you phrased that comes off as more victim-blaming. As in, “Maybe if you hung out with the right crowd of people, you wouldn’t have been raped,” or, “What do you expect, with the people you’re friends with?” which are things I’ve heard myself.
I get what (I think) you mean. I agree that all people deserve to have friends who support them and respect their safety and boundaries. I didn’t publish your comment the way it was phrased because this is a safe space for victims, and the way you phrased that came out as victim-blaming. However well-intentioned, that’s still triggering and shitty to hear.
Basically, on this site, do not issue blanket directives to women about how they should keep themselves safe. You can say: “I wish more women felt they had the right to demand their friends supported them,” or “I wish there were more supportive people out there,” or “I don’t understand why women don’t dump friends of theirs who endanger them; can anybody help explain to me why this happens? It’s never something I’ve had to experience myself.” But, on this blog, you don’t get say, “All women should just go ahead and do X, so they won’t be endangered.” This isn’t a threat you live with on a daily basis, it’s not territory you’ve ever had to navigate, and you don’t necessarily know the obstacles involved, or the reasons it might not be possible for any given person at any given time. You can ask, if you want to understand those things more, but assuming you understand these things enough to issue a blanket directive to 50% of the population (whose experience of the world you do not have) is one giant mansplain, and it gets your comment deleted.
You didn’t ask, but I’m going to give you an example of why “just dump all your shitty friends” isn’t a fail-safe plan. Exhibit A: You. A woman can route out the obvious people in her life — the people who make rape jokes, the people who say outright “She deserves it!” — and then they run into somebody who says, “Why didn’t you just drop all your friends? Obviously, that was the thing to do if you wanted to be safe.” I’m assuming your intentions are good here, but that shows you how quickly this gets complicated and impossible to navigate. You, guy with good intentions, have just engaged in a little rape-apology during a discussion about how rape is bad and wrong. Women’s lives are populated with plenty of similar people with good intentions, and to drop them all would often as not mean she’s now completely friendless, and has left a trail of people who think she’s crazy/picky/controlling/demanding in her wake, which also makes her a pretty good target for a rapist. It’s not as simple as “drop the people who act like assholes,” because unintentionally, and trying to help, you were just one of those people.
Telling women that they ought to fundamentally change their social group — so easy! — and then somehow root out a social group that is super supportive and great and never says something like you just said — just as easy! — illustrates, to me, that there’s a lot you don’t know about women’s experiences; it also illustrates that you decided that, even without knowing why women would be friends with endangering people, you were able to give advice on the subject. A big lack of knowledge coupled with an assumption that you know better makes you one of those endangering people.
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Gah! Sorry! My mistake, I apologise completely. I never had the least intention of implying “why didn’t you” – but now you’ve pointed it out I can see it there, and intentions are unimportant. So, again,sorry. You can publish this or not, since it’s written to you (but also anyone else who might have felt the same).
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Let me know if you’d rather this response wasn’t published. I like putting it out there, because sometimes a good apology can really wash away any bad taste from a questionable encounter, but also from other similar encounters where confrontation maybe wasn’t possible. I think it’s a morale boost. But, if you’d rather this stay a private comment, I can take it down.
After I wrote that response, I looked at it and thought it was a pretty long response to the very short thing you had said, which I was pretty sure you hadn’t meant in the way it had come out. But I think I was putting it out there to address more than what you said, but anybody else who might be thinking something similar. Sometimes, a whole group of people are thinking the same thing, but it can’t be talked about until one person is willing to put it out there. I felt like you created that opportunity, but keeping the space safe for victims won out over having your comment out there. I still felt like responding was worthwhile, though. Blah blah blah. What I mean is, I think a lot of my response was addressed not specifically to you, but to anybody else who might be considering similar ideas — I was pretty sure all you would have needed was a quick explanation to get the idea of what I didn’t like about your comment, but I wanted to flesh out the explanation more for other people than for you.
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It’s definitely OK to put it up. That bit about “publish or not” was to make sure you knew I was apologising to you personally and not trying to “put my case in public” or any such sneaky thing. But also it was aimed to other people possibly offended, so publishing fulfils the purpose and is good. Also, I would have responded immediately not 24h later if I had set up the email notify properly (I forgot to click on it).
I’ve already learned that the “rush and save” feeling is (when applied to after-the-fact rather than a person who is actually in an immediate position to be saved) counter-intuitively mostly a selfish thing, wanting to decrease my own dissonance by “fixing” the victim. Similarly I get that the “I know the solution” feeling is a way of mentally defeating the attacker which allows me to feel “there’s no danger to me”, again a selfish thing. So I should have been more careful.
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So, it turns out that rapists are exactly who victims have been saying they here for YEARS.
But even though we have SCIENCE(tm) on our side, the same old victim-blaming tropes will continue to be trotted out every time there is a high-profile rape case.
Sigh.
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, the general population numbers were 6%, that *is* a minority, but if you know 17 male people in your life, chances are one is a rapist. The vast majority of people know far more men than that. The army stats were 13% admitting rape, or one in eight. Also, this is self reporting.
The numbers are *low,* but at the same time, the average number of rapists any one person would have in his or her social circle, is definitely one or more. I don’t see why these numbers would undermine telling people they can’t just consider it “other people’s” problems, because they don’t know any rapists.
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I had the same concern looking at those numbers, so I spent a little time thinking how I might explain this to somebody. Here’s what I came up with:
Regardless of the number of men committing these rapes, we still have something between the 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 victim ratio. Considering this research also shows us that the majority of successful, repeat offenders are socially known to the victim, you have this conclusion: you very likely are socially acquainted with a victim, and that victim very likely was socially acquainted with her rapist, which increases the likelihood that you were socially acquainted with the rapist as well. That’s not necessarily a one-to-one — certainly I’m not friends with everybody my friends know — but I have a passing familiarity with most friends-of-friends, and a minority of them I know quite well. If the rapist were a stranger, it would be a crapshoot. But since the majority of successful, repeat rapists are personal acquaintances of their victims, and since these rapists specifically target victims housed within unsupportive social networks (meaning they had to evaluate the social group at some point), the liklihood that these rapists became personally known to you at some point is very high. “Personally known” can cover a lot of ground. Maybe he’s always at the same parties you attend. Maybe he dated a friend of yours. Maybe he’s in your class, or works on another level of your building. Maybe he’s somebody you’ve grown to like and hang out with quite a bit. Maybe you introduced him to the victim. Maybe he’s a Facebook friend.
It seems less certain when you look at the stats for the population of rapists. But when you look at the quite high population of victims, and understand that most of them were raped by a personal acquaintance, it becomes very likely that you know a victim, and more likely that you knew her personal acquaintance. More than that, if you know a victim, the chances are high that at some point you were briefly evaluated by her rapist to ascertain whether or not you would be a threat, because the majority of rapes are committed by rapists who engage in that kind of prep work. That may mean that he’s your best friend; it may mean you were introduced once at a party. But if you know a rape victim, and she knows her rapist, it’s likely that you do, too.
Obviously, we need way more research on this topic, and this is a lot of conjecture, but I was also considering this: if the repeat, successful rapists operate solely with women that they know socially, they are probably burning their way through a lot of social circles in order to find new victims and diminish damning proximity with people who might begin to get suspicious of a guy who is consistently making rape jokes and driving drunk girls home from parties, especially when all the women in the social circle start to show evidence of PTSD, or start to accuse him of rape. These rapists are operating with a model that allows them to rape as much as possible with the least risk possible, so I find it likely that they’re burning their way through mixed social circles, rather than hanging around and increasing the chance of a confrontation, accusation, or criminal action.
If social circles were closed, with permanent members, the liklihood of knowing one or many rapists would be much lower. But social circles are usually dynamic — their make-up consistently changes over time — and they interact with dozens of other social circles. Since repeat and successful rapists use social relationships as a tool in their predation, by definition, they need social circles to work with. And since these rapists are quite deliberately planning crimes with the lowest possible risk, I’m guessing they’re not spending a lot of time hanging around the scenes of their crimes, unless they’re very sure that this social circle will never ever in a lifetime support this woman. But since these rapists are the repeat rapists, they’re out there scouting for new victims, which they will likely have to find in a new social circle, where there’s less chance of somebody putting all the pieces together and saying, “That guy? Isn’t that the guy who keeps getting accused of rape by multiple women?” So, the rapists who are committing the most rapes are likely moving through multiple social groups quickly, increasing the chance that you met him.
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Great analysis, thanks. Agreed, more research would be really helpful (and I think it would largely confirm your theories here).
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Thank you for this. I’ve removed three men from my friendship groups for engaging in the kind of behaviour that I found repulsive and a little too rape-apologetic for my tastes. It’s terrifying to read this and realize that I did the right thing – it was one thing when it was just a hunch, and another when it’s backed with data.
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