Oh, one more thing
I knew I’d forget something.
Sure, A Woman Shouldn’t Be Raped For Wearing a Short Skirt, But If I Leave My Door Unlocked, It’s Only Reasonable To Expect I Will Be Robbed
I hate hate hate really bad and smug analogies when it comes to rape. This kind of shit is the equivalent of, “I’m not a racist, but…” It’s “Women shouldn’t be raped, but…” You wouldn’t have to preface your shit with a disclaimer if what you were about to say didn’t indicate that you do, in fact, believe these very things. I was ranting about this to the bear the other night, and he said, “I’m not a racist, but I really like Coke.” Exactly, EXACTLY. You would never use the “I’m not an X, but…” format of speaking if you weren’t about to actually endorse X. “I don’t think women shouldn’t get raped for wearing short skirts, but goddamn did you see that SpongeBob movie? My kids loved it.” That entire disclaimer exists to absolve you of any responsibility for actually in fact believing this thing. “I’m not the kind of person that believes X, but I really think that X is true.” THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SAYING GODDAMMIT
Okay, but it’s the analogy that bothers me the most.
Women shouldn’t be raped because they A) drink B) go out in public C) walk down dark alleys D) have sex E) wear clothing F) are pretty G) whatever, but if they do these things, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get raped.
The comparison for this isn’t, “I shouldn’t be surprised if I get robbed if I leave my door unlocked.”
The comparison is, “I shouldn’t be surprised if I get robbed if I carry a purse or a wallet, or spend money in public, or leave the house wearing anything but a burlap sack (thus indicating I have money to purchase clothing), or have a job, or talk about my job, or reveal my salary to friends, or have a bank account and go to the bank in public. I mean, let’s be reasonable, anybody could see me doing any of those things and intuit that I have money, and so naturally they’re going to try and take my money.”
That wouldn’t be unreasonable, would it? I mean, that’s what a robber would look for in a target. But we don’t consider people who leave the house with their purses and purchase goods in public stores to be really reckless and stupid and deserving of their eventual robbery, because jesus christ, that’s just normal stuff that every person in the world does.
But we do think it’s unreasonable for women to leave the house looking like women, and acting like women in public, and they are really reckless and stupid and deserving of their eventual rape, because jesus christ, they made the choice to do these obviously dangerous things.
It’s not unreasonable to believe that criminals with criminal goals will target individuals as victims that will yield them the highest rate of success and the lowest possibility of punishment. And criminals with criminal goals will make those determinations of success based on cultural indicators within the victim’s appearance and physical location.
But here’s the crucial difference.
A robber can look at a person who is leaving their job, driving a car, going to the bank, wearing a purse or carrying a wallet, and going to businesses and purchasing goods and reasonably assume that they have money, and if attacked in a successful way, the criminal can acquire that money.
A rapist who is looking to rape a woman can acquire what he wants from any woman. They all have what he needs to complete his crime. Having a short skirt or slutty personality doesn’t make her vagina any more or less existent on the physical plane. This is not at all comparable to somebody who may be robbed, whose appearance and behavior actually have something to do with the crime. Somebody driving a flashy car with expensive clothes and a wad of cash is more likely to be a worthwhile target for a robber than somebody bringing their groceries home on the bus. A criminal has more to gain by targeting somebody who exhibits more of the quality the criminal wants. People with money can make their possession of money more apparent. But outside of attempting to look like men, women cannot be more or less female in public.
All a rapist is looking for is a woman. Any woman can fit this bill. Maybe they have a particular type of woman they’d like to rape; this narrows the field to all women who match the type. But there is no corollary to the robber and his victim; all women have what a rapist wants. No woman has more or less vagina for a rapist to violate.
What some women do have is cultural approval to be raped.
A criminal wants to A) commit a crime and B) get away with it. When we’re talking about rape, any woman fits the bill for A. But only women that bystanders believe deserve to be raped fit the bill for B.
When somebody says, “I don’t think women should be raped for wearing short skirts, but what do they expect when they do go out like that?” what you are actually saying is that if a woman in a short skirt is raped, you will be less likely to hold her rapist culpable. Which makes a woman in a short skirt really appealing to a rapist. That’s something that you did. That’s not something the woman in the short skirt did, or something the rapist did. You made that woman a more comfortable target by making it clear that if she got raped, you would be less upset about it, less willing to see the rapist go to jail, less willing to support the woman. A woman is not increasing her risk of being raped by wearing a short skirt. You are increasing her risk of being raped by saying that women who get raped in short skirts should have expected that. Rapists hear you say that. By only raping the women that bystanders agree should be raped, a rapist reduces his chance of being caught and, if caught, punished. And that is why he will pick those women, over and over again, not because there is something more appealingly rapeable about them — they have what any woman has, as far as rape goes — but because he will be less likely to be held culpable for his actions.
“Women shouldn’t be raped for doing X, but really what do they expect if they do X,” really says, “Rape a woman for doing X and I am not going to be the one who calls the police.” And then a woman who does X gets raped and suddenly it’s, “She was raped for doing X!” instead of “She was raped because I made it clear I would not punish a rapist who only raped women who did X!”
Cause and effect people. Women don’t get raped because of things they do or do not do. They get raped because a rapist wanted to rape a woman, and made a very rational decision to rape a woman you don’t give a shit about so he wouldn’t go to jail. Women get raped because rapists decide to rape them, but rapists choose which women to rape because there are some women you believe deserve to get raped, and a rapist was listening carefully when you said that.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks
- links for 2009-08-27 « Embololalia
- Who decided that “wearing a short skirt” meant “free pass?” « SENSATE AMERIKAN
- Trans stuff « Fugitivus
- Polanski, God, Auster, me: a kind of free association « Jessica Ferris's blogariffic bloggity weblog
- A reminder about rape apologists, brought to you by… « FemBot
Comments are closed.
Thanks for this.
Because of the limited, but perhaps still fucked up, manner in which I have engaged in this in my own mind…
(“Saying a woman who walks alone in a dark alley shouldn’t be surprised if she gets raped is like saying a person who walks alone down a dark alley shouldn’t be surprised if they get mugged. Neither of them deserve it, and there’s no excuse for that shit, but there are Bad People in Dark Alleys, and it is really not surprising that Bad People like to do Bad Things like raping and otherwise attacking men and women where there are no witnesses.”)
…I have been more tolerant of people who only say, “A woman who walks alone down a dark alley shouldn’t be surprised if she gets raped,” than I ought to have been, not ascribing to them the opinion that the woman deserves it.
And I have never actually considered how rapists hear this.
Which is fucked up of me.
So thanks.
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No woman has more or less vagina for a rapist to violate.
Well, except for trans women.
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Fair point. I got into a complicated mess writing that post, because it’s not just vaginas that get raped, and it’s not just women that get raped. But in the interest of brevity, I simplified. If I hadn’t simplified, I would’ve ended up talking more about rape occurring within a framework of feminization: certain people deserve to get raped because they have certain qualities we assume are female and less worthwhile, and people who act or look like women are available for sex to anybody who looks or acts like a man. That excludes actual biological sex as a necessity in rape, but includes the profoundly important concept of gender within rape, since gender is all tied up with power and entitlement, and rape is so much about power and entitlement. But it was also a crazy complicated way to try and write, so I thought I’d set it aside for another post in the future more exclusively focused on gendered behaviors vs. biological sex.
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bone-chilling & absolutely true…
i really appreciate how you vocalize (or write about..) your ideas. they are so simple, true, & obvious, yet somehow not at all obvious. we need them vocalized and explained because we don’t truly get it…yet…
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And that particular excuse for rapists also contains the frightening conflation of *living as a woman* with *being a possession.*
Robbery cannot possibly be an analogy for personal bodily violence. That should be glaringly obvious, and yet to so many people it’s not. Because when I wake up in the morning, and go out to walk the dogs, I should have known–as Wanda Sykes put it–to leave the pussy at home.
When I hear people argue that women aren’t objectified, and then later I hear the same people compare rape to robbery…well, I don’t even get angry anymore: I simply want to cry.
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I want to be you when I grow up. That’s all.
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Ditto.
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I have actually had the argument you describe in the title. He thought that some rape victims where a least a little bit culpable for being raped.
I just couldn’t agree
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It’s also a shitty comparison because, you know what? I would be surprised if I left my apartment unlocked and I got robbed. I mean, it’s not like people go door to door testing rattling knobs to find unlocked ones. I mean, honestly.
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The way you word things so eloquently catches on to the points I can’t put into words rationally. I applaud this blog, and love it more with each new post. ‘I’m not racist, but’ is something I hear a lot…On my way to prom my date looks out the window and says, “Look at all those damn niggers.” I look at him and just absolute disgust, he says, “I’m not racist, I mean come on, I’m going to prom with you(reffering to my lack of aryan descent).” Gross, gross people…i hear those two lines many, many times.
What a frustratingly contradictory statement, I’m not racist but; anything you say after that is INDEED racist. As far as the fight for ‘acceptable’ rape?!? That’s too much for my brain. To hear someone ACTUALLY say that, and mean it…well I fear for this species.
Keep up the great posts.
http://spazztasticallyuntitled.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/dumb-fucking-things-people-say/
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Thank you for tearing up that analogy. Oddly, no one who ascribes to it has suggested chastity belts. The analogy also ignores the fact that no one should rob or rape, just as saying caregivers should keep their eyes on children every second (which is physically impossible) ignores that no one should kidnap.
Both thieves and rapists take security, but the gains and losses of a robbery are usually the same: items one can bag, box, or photograph as evidence. The evidence of rape consists of what the rapist left; one cannot bag, box, or even photograph what a rapist took.
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Damn, I admire your thinking. You are so wonderfully clear.
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Maybe a footnote acknowledging this in the post? Because I had this thought as well, and let’s be honest, the feminist blogosphere is not so wonderful on not disappearing transwomen. And of course, I’m guilty too.
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I’m going to have to think on this some. It wouldn’t be hard for me to do this at all, which makes me think I should; it would mean a lot to some people and doesn’t cost me a thing. On the other hand, I am wary about this being a slippery slope. Not that being sensitive to wide swaths of people is a terrible road to start my way down or something, but I find that posts like this are really susceptible to “But you didn’t address specific situation A or hypothetical B or possibility C!” You know, stuff of the “but what about the men?” or “but what about false rape accusations?” variety.
I’m not saying that’s what this is. Usually those “but what about THIS?” questions are about derailing the conversation and de-legitimizing (or purposefully misunderstanding) the argument, and I don’t think that’s at all what this is about. I’m qualified to speak about my own experience, which is that of a woman being raped by a man. I’m not qualified to speak about rape in other situations, so I don’t, but am often taken to task for not addressing rape in other situations. Enough of that gets me rubbed pretty raw, because I eventually end up feeling like I can’t talk about rape without making sure I talk about every single possible scenario or tangent, as if I’m responsible for speaking for the rape hive-mind. It also irritates me because it’s like, hey, man, I just wrote a post about topic A, if you want a post about topic B, you fuckin’ write it, I’m not your cipher.
I’m wondering if I shouldn’t place something in my About Me clarifying that this is a blog that often addresses my experience of having been raped by a man, and I usually don’t address other situations because I don’t have the experience or ability — there are others who do, and I’d like to hear from them. I doubt that’ll end comments and questions about why I didn’t address this or that or the other, but at least I can write it once and not pontificate endlessly in the comments.
Anyway, that is an extra long response just to try and make all my feelings and thoughts behind this more visible. I don’t think you’re asking me to do something so super hard or out-of-line that I couldn’t possibly do it. But I do have concerns about getting down the slippery slope of being expected to account for things I can’t reasonably account for. I am more interested in the people who can account for those things relating their own experiences, though having a blog that seems welcoming and then illustrates some very obvious cisgender ignorance probably isn’t what you’d call encouraging.
On the other hand, I like what’s been done here, where I’ve been called out in the comments and a conversation happened. I think it’s a pretty good example of how to do this sort of thing, and also an example of how even the “good guys” in this sort of thing can fuck up and make mistakes. In some ways, I like the idea of keeping things like that as open and unedited as possible.
This is all also mitigated by the fact that I know myself, and I rarely go back to edit posts, for no real reason other than I just don’t ever get around to it, so I could come to the conclusion that I’m going to go back and edit this, and then never do that and be an asshole.
I’m looking for a longer-term solution than going back and editing my posts every time a commenter asks me to account for something additional, because sometimes I feel that’s a valid request and sometimes I feel it’s not, and I don’t like having the back and forth there. Now that I have some readership on my blog, the comments often turn into a much bigger conversation than the original post ever was, covering more ground than I ever try or even want to cover. I might feel more comfortable about the whole thing if instead I go back and leave an edit at the bottom saying what’s generally in the comments, such as “Comments include commenters sharing their experiences, I get called to task for my language, and there is some clarification about my thoughts on how a victim defines themselves.” That satisfies my weird bug about not wanting to change what I’ve written, doesn’t address whether or not I think I deserved to be called out (because sometimes I don’t think I do), and operates as an additional trigger warning for people reading. That also lets anybody who was offended by something I said see if it was addressed in the comments, so I don’t have t address it three or four times every additional time it gets brought up because somebody didn’t read the comments.
Of course, change is relatively glacial for me, so this may be my grand idea that i never get around to.
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Thank you so much for this whole blog. I’m a rape survivor as well, and currently doing a lot of processing of it, and reading your writing is such a huge help. You are completely made of awesome. (My therapist thinks so too – I e-mailed her some links, and she printed out several of your posts and waved them around excitedly during one of our sessions.
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I think adding a note at the end of a post pointing to comments is an excellent way to include what’s come up in discussion, in posts where that’s relevant – I, too, am leery about editing posts. I don’t think that’s a weird bug at all.
I haven’t been blogging long enough (or seriously enough) to grok what it’s like to have people popping up to tell me how my post could better be their idea of perfection if only I …, so I’m sorry if I’m the last straw!
I have been *reading* long enough to be as irritated as the next feminist blogger when that person is popping up to say that men get raped too. Yes, I know. Yes, that’s terrible. *But it isn’t what I’m talking about right now.* I get that frustration.
I guess what pinged me was that, yes, you are speaking (really damn well, seriously) about *cis* women being raped by men, pretty specifically in this particular post, because of the stressed link between physical bodies and status as women. Acknowledging that cis angle somehow would be more correct, as well as more inclusive.
…I have rewritten that and rewritten that and I can’t find a wording I don’t wince a bit from, because I don’t want to be that commenter who’s all, “And I demand you change your post because I say!” So. I hope I’m not.
Still really loving your blog.
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I want to print this and hand it out to everyone I know and everyone I don’t.
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This is so exactly dead on. And what do you think would happen if *every single woman* in the world *stopped* wearing sexy clothes, because after all, she doesn’t want to be “rapeable”? You would get tons of moany letters from men about how “my girlfriend just won’t dress sexy for me. How can I manipulate her into it? Should I dump her?” But never mind, right? We’re not supposed to be attractive… Oh wait…
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I’m going to respectfully disagree with some of the things you said in this post, Harriet.
Let me make it clear where I am coming from: I am an Indian woman who has never been raped but has been sexually harassed by strangers on the streets of India too many times to count, starting from age 12. My mother has been among those who have accused me of bringing the “unwanted attention” on myself by wearing (gasp) jeans and a tshirt in a town where ethnic dress is the norm (never mind that the ethnic dress is WAY more sexually suggestive than jeans-and-tshirt could ever be, seeing as how sarees intentionally bare a vast tract of midriff). I may not “get” what a rape survivor has gone through, but I DO get the sheer outrageous wickedness of victim-blaming, and almost all of what your post talks about I heartily agree with.
But I disagree with this:
> “Women shouldn’t be raped for doing X, but really what do they expect if they do X,” really says, “Rape a woman for doing X and I am not going to be the one who calls the police.”
A while ago on Alas!, Nick posted about the time she (I assume it’s a she) was almost raped. She picked up two strange men at a bar. All three were quite drunk and perhaps also high, at least one of the men she herself describes as being too drunk to be rational. They were about to have sex when she noticed that one of them wasn’t wearing a condom, something he had agreed to do before. She asked him to stop and find one, or else cancel all plans of having sex, and he in his drunken haze insistently kept trying to penetrate her anyway. Nick, recognising the danger she was in, left and counted herself lucky to have narrowly avoided being raped.
If Nick had picked up two different men, men more likely to be violent rapists than the two men she did pick up, and then if she had been raped, I wouldn’t be surprised.
She wouldn’t have deserved it. But she WOULD have put herself in an extremely risky situation.
The comparison I’m making is not, I shouldn’t be surprised to get robbed if I leave my door unlocked.
The comparison I’m making is, I shouldn’t be surprised to get robbed if I take two complete strangers home with me and they tied me up and robbed my flat.
The comparison I’m making is, If I were a man and picked up a stranger and took her home to have sex, and she turned out to be a HE who then proceeded to anally rape me, I shouldn’t be surprised.
In every single case – including someone getting robbed after leaving their door open – I AM ABSOLUTELY GOING TO CALL THE POLICE.
So, yeah, that’s what I disagree with. That there IS such a thing as risky behaviour, and if a risk you took did not pay off, I am not going to be surprised even though I will be sympathetic and helpful.
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I thought of something like this when writing the post, but decided not to address it immediately because I thought it might derail the point I was actually making.
I work in a place that is closely connected with child welfare services. We hear a lot of horror stories. And I wasn’t devoid of horror stories before working here. So when somebody — friend, coworker, acquaintance — tells me a new horror story, I often respond with, “I’m not surprised.” And by that I don’t mean, “Well, obviously that four year old child shouldn’t have been so coquettish! I’m not surprised her father sold her to his online group!” What I mean is, “I am already fully aware that the world is full of evil, so this little bit of evil you brought me today doesn’t surprise me a bit.” I also sometimes say, “I’m not surprised” because sometimes I think victims — or people experiencing the secondary trauma of knowing victims — feel like they are alone and alien in all the world. Most people grow up with some degree of a “just world” view, and to have that totally shattered by your first brush with something horrific and personal can be an uprooting and isolating experience. So, in those situations, when I say, “I’m not surprised,” what I’m saying is, “You’re not alone with this experience; it’s common enough that I can’t even be shocked by what you’ve told me.”
In this post, what I’m addressing is the people who say “I’m not surprised” and mean “Well, that’s what she gets.” If a woman gets raped “because” she wore a short skirt or took a bunch of guys home at once, I can definitely say I’m not surprised that somebody took that as reason enough to rape her, which I think is what you’re saying in your example here (correct me if I’m wrong). But believing that a short skirt actually caused the rape (rather than providing the excuse) and thus the woman caused the rape by wearing the short skirt isn’t the same thing as believing that a short skirt caused a rapist to think he had the right to rape a woman.
Rape prevention for victims is kind of a tricky thing. On the one hand, there is absolutely no behavior or style of dress that can cause a man to rape; that is all the rapist’s responsibility. So by that logic, there is no way a woman can prevent a rape with her behavior. On the other hand, there are certain behaviors or style of dress that we as a culture have decided make rape an appropriate and psuedo-legal response. So by that logic, a woman who wants to reduce her risk of being raped could avoid those behaviors and styles of dress. It’s kind of a conflict between a perfect world and the one we live in. In a perfect world, we’d all goddamn admit that rape is never anybody’s fault but the rapist’s, and we’d hold rapist’s accountable. We don’t have that world; we have a world where certain things women do make them open season for rapists. But we also have a world where women who don’t do those certain things are only somewhat less accountable for their rapes. We don’t have a world where there can ever be a rape that a woman is totally blameless for, so we also don’t have a world where women can actually prevent rape. So it’s this double bind. I know that if I choose to be outside at night, I’m increasing my chances of being raped outside at night. I know that if I choose not to be outside at night, I’m increasing my chances of being raped indoors by a friend. All I can realistically do is reduce my chances of being raped in certain situations — don’t want to be raped in a bar? I don’t go to bars; don’t want to be raped by a stranger outdoors? Always have a male escort (maybe get raped by him indoors); don’t want to be raped by drunk guys I barely know? avoid ever being around drunk strangers — but I cannot in any way reduce my chances of being raped at all.
That’s kind of a long explanation to put out what I think is some really conflicting ideas. We want to live in a world in which women can’t be blamed for rapes, which means we have to not accept these excuses for why women get raped. Yet at the same time, since that world doesn’t exist yet, we want to live in a world where we, personally, do not get raped. which means we have to accept these excuses to some degree in order to protect ourselves. And yet at the same time, we have to understand that that protection doesn’t actually work, because it doesn’t actually address the problem, which is rapists. So we end up engaging in protection for the real world that is actually counter to our work to achieve an ideal world. It’s a goddamn mess, and just one more thing on top of the pile of “not fucking fair.”
What I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s out of line or victim-blaming to recognize that there are certain things women do that make other people view them as more worthy of being raped, and if the way you express that is by saying “I’m not surprised,” I didn’t mean to put the kibosh on those words in particular. I meant to put the kibosh on the version of “I’m not surprised” that actually lays the blame on the woman instead of laying the blame on the rapists and the culture that makes a short skirt = rape. I think it’s problematic to assume that following the status quo is any kind of protection from the status quo, but it’s necessary for survival to recognize that not following the status quo is likely to have consequences.
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I don’t think it’s much more complicated to leave out the stuff about genitalia…?
It’s true that rape is not limited to M/F rape or always aided by that power differential, but I think it’s fine to only address that kind of rape in your post. The problem here is that you said all women have vaginas, and that’s just not true.
I mean, if you just say “women,” you are including trans women. Since they are women.
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I have only skimmed the comments, but: I think there is a big difference between saying ‘I’m not surprised that you got yelled at on the street, wearing THAT’ and ‘I’m not surprised you got raped, wearing THAT.’
This is because being an asshole is still not illegal. And even assholes aren’t always rapists. And I’m not saying you DESERVE to get yelled at, just that, well… people. many of them are assholes. And there IS STILL A BIG DIFFERENCE between harrassment, however horrible, and actual rape.
A note on the editing: I personally find it quite reasonable and even comforting when bloggers just add ‘ETA: let me explain blah blah’ That way the original post stands, I don’t feel left out of the conversation, and even better, you can see that the blogger is open and responsive to comments.
Also, maybe we should just agree that pretty much everyone is at least a little bit racist/sexist/whatever at least occasionally. I mean, I try pretty hard to not be, but a lot of that is just the way the human brain works. We like to ‘other’ things, and we like to feel superior. And copping out of taking responsibility for that by adding a qualifier is cheating! We played a game at work that was baiscally Monopoly, but about racism. It was sort of blue eyes/brown eyes styles. It was alarming how readily things that I would NEVER EVER allow my front brain to think just sprang to my lips as if I’d been saying them all my life. ‘What else do you expect from them’ etc etc. It was all part of the game, but that didn’t make it ok, really. We are steeped in that culture and the first step to nuetralising it is acknowledging that we never ever finish the battle.
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In reply to Nandini, it’s definitely a good point that there are risky behaviors. But we knew that, didn’t we? We as women are aware of it all the damned time. But. I can walk buck naked down the street at noon with little twirly things attached to my nipples, smirking and waving and soliciting all the men around me, and they’re still in control of their sexual response to me. Even if I do that–even if I’m a stripper twirling around over some guy’s crotch, even if I’m a prostitute offering free samples, the other party has a choice. He still has a choice. He always has a choice. He doesn’t get out of a solicitation charge in court on the “I just couldn’t resist her boobies, judge!” plea. He can’t rape a stripper and then say, “But she was there! Naked! Gyrating in my lap! Any guy would have done it!” He can’t even say, “But I was drunk off my ass and didn’t have the willpower to NOT have sex with her.”
“Really, what do they expect?” has undertones of “She pushed that poor guy past what was reasonable. She invited him to her ROOM! She said they could have SEX! He was all primed and ready, and then she changed her mind! How could a reasonable person be expected to stop at that point?” And that’s what we have to fight against: the idea that any person thinks that a man can’t stop himself, or shouldn’t have to in the face of overwhelming temptation. Not the idea that there is risky and less-risky, but the idea that a victim can ever put herself in a position where “No means no” can no longer be expected to apply. There is no such place. The fact that you’re in bed together, or you’re married to each other, or you’ve been promising to put out for months, or you wore fishnet stockings to dinner, or you picked him up in a bar, or you drank a lot, or he drank a lot, or you don’t know his last name–none of it ever means that you’ve ceded your control over your own body. And THAT’S what, “Really, what do they expect?” implies. That the victim gave up so much, it’s unreasonable to expect the rapist not to take advantage.
That’s a completely different kettle of fish than the question of risky behavior.
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What I hear more often than “She doesn’t deserve it BUT…”
is:
“I’m not saying she deserves it, but this is reality, it is more likely to happen to her if she’s drunk and wearing a short skirt. That’s just the way it is, and she should look out for herself by [insert list of behavioural restrictions]”
This latter “argument” is harder to argue against, despite being just as bloody awful as the first, not least because the person proposing it has phrased it in a way where they are expressing how terribly sad it is, that this is so.
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“She doesn’t deserve it, but that doesn’t mean she should act like she doesn’t deserve it.”
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Harriet
As a man generally trying not to fuck up, I’ve read a lot now on feminism, and on rape culture. And no I’m not asking for a cookie, affirmation of my right-on-ness or any of that rubbish.
This whole blog is brilliant, and any man who either is or thinks himself to be a feminist fellow traveller needs to read it. It goes to the heart of feminism and especially rape culture without being an academic lecture full of jargon (which has its place, true, but can be daunting to those not used to it), but by being…well…what it is. Which is fab.
D.
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I think the only qualification needed for most rapists is that you have a vagina. Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about violence. About making the gender who “did you wrong” pay.
I may be mistaken, but I believe some of the most assaulted women on the planet are the burqua-clad inhabitants of the mid-east who suffer through legalized rape within their marriages and other intimate relatioships. Ask them how not wearing short skirts is working for them.
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I thought “vagina” was part of the point of view of rapists who think woman=vagina. No term, or an inclusive term like “hole,” would go so far as to include men.
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Because any man can rape, any situation with a man is risky. Acquaintances commit most rapes, especially when they live with their victims, to the extent that victims won’t recognize or want to call assaults “rape.” If you’re going to accuse a woman of “risky” behavior because it involves men you think she shouldn’t trust, why not accuse her of “risky” behavior because it involves men you think she should trust?
Here’s an excellent assessment: Misfocusing on Minutiae – an Analogy.
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Interestingly, being absent minded I have gone out and left my door unlocked. However the one time I was burgled the door was locked, the burglar(s) removed a pane of glass. Still I suppose it’s my fault for having a house with windows.
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Harriet, I, too, want to be you when I grow up.
I don’t think you did anything wrong here. There is no way one post can cover every possible scenario.
Clearly you were talking about heterosexual rape only.
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I left my sat nav in my car on the street one night, and it got stolen.
My friends and family called me naive and stupid. The police became less interested and told me there were enough signs up to tell me not to leave stuff in the car, and there was little they could do. They told me it was my fault.
No one seemed to notice this is a crime. The perpetrator should not be doing a crime. It is never my fault for being a victim.
Having said that, i now bring the sat nav in the house.
The real oddity is that if someone broke into my house and stole the sat nav, the police would be more interested and my friends and family more supportive.
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Nandini,
I disagree about your view of risking rape by … and your use of Nick’s experience is an example of why I disagree. Those you view as inherently dangerous (men met a bar) may not be any more dangerous and willing to rape a woman who has consented conditionally (only if a condom is used) than women who date men who everybody around them views as safe.
The societal attitudes which say that if a girl or woman promises sex she must deliver gives even so-called trustworthy men potential rationalizations for rape.
Many times when a boyfriend rapes his girlfriend under this circumstance he is excused and what he did is not accepted as rape. She got raped, he just got carried away.
This focus on criticizing the victim’s choices often echoes the words of rapists. “If you didn’t want me to …, you should/shouldn’t have …”
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Coming late to this post. It’s brilliant. Don’t change a word.
It’s stark and true and to the point, and trying to change it to fit everyone would dilute it, which is what already happens out there in the world when women try to talk about rape.
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Wow, this is awesomely articulate. Thank you.
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I’ve thought over this a while now, and I find I pretty much agree with Macarena, and I think context is really important with what you say.
You are clearly examining the mind of the rapist when saying ‘all women have vaginas and no woman has more or less vagina’
In that context, if a rapist came upon a m/f trans, I don’t think the rape would necessarily be motivated by ‘woman =vagina’, but I think ‘woman=vagina is still something that is going to influence the situation. Do you think a rapist will be thinking about whether there is a trans person around? I doubt it. And how do you think they would react if they picked a woman who, it turns out, actually didn’t have a vagina?
In fact I think the more common scenario there is that the trans person will be raped for ‘transgressing’ (pun included) the expected rules for men – one of which is that they don’t act as if they have a vagina. In this case the exception proves the rule.
This is in no way saying that there is anything less horrifying about rape when it happens to trans people; just that it possibly happens to m/f trans (the ones without vaginas) for a different reason.
Or rather, the excuse is different. The reason is always that a rapist decided to rape.
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Thanks for the rant, it was a really great read. I do want to point out some errors in your argument that are similar to what you were yelling about. Sorry if this has been addressed in another post.
You make the assumption that only women get raped or that it’s far-and-away a female problem. Incorrect. More men are raped in this country than women. Yes, that’s right. According to Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc. statistics indicate that there are more men raped in U.S. prisons than non-incarcerated women similarly assaulted.
I’m not going to put words in your mouth, but the reaction I typically hear to this is “well they’re in prison, what do you expect?” Since this is basically your gripe you might understand why it’s infuriating. Men are disproportionately incarcerated compared to women. We’re half the population but the vast majority of inmates. This is a VERY big problem.
We could quibble about how many rapes are reported and how that number might be low. Of course. But as a rape victim myself, I can tell you men who are raped are FAR less willing to talk about it than women. I’ve talked to a lot of male rape victims and I can also confidently add this: very few of their rapes are of the “We were making out and I said no but he kept going anyway” variety. They are closer to “I was beat into submission” variety. I am in NO WAY discrediting any woman’s rape story. Please understand that. But I am saying most male rape involves violent assault.
NOBODY should have to put up with rape. Women, Men, Transexuals, whomever. Thank you for reading this.
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More men raped than women? Hardly. Estimates have it that 1 in 4 women has been raped/assaulted, so even assuming every single man who ever went to prison was raped – the prison population is not that large. 1,2 million in the US, if I’m not mistaken? Of course we have to factor in ex-cons, but I doubt there are more than 10 million of them. Roughly 125 million women in the US, one fourth of which is… ca. 30 million.
So, no way are men raped more than women.
That is not to say that I disagree with your point about the horrors of male rape. But let’s stay factually correct.
Also, please don’t presume that the author of this blog is unaware of male rape. But this was clearly a post on female heterosexual cis rape, and crying “But what about the MEN?!11!!” is thread derailing.
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What R-Tam said.
Steve, you didn’t include any links to actual statistics because you are lying. At Stop Prisoner Rape, they note that According to the best available research, 20 percent of inmates in men’s prisons are sexually abused at some point during their incarceration.
That’s only 1 in 5 which is less than the minimum figure of 1 in 4 for women, even if every man was in prison.
That said, “NOBODY should have to put up with rape. Women, Men, Transexuals, whomever. ” Not even you. But lying isn’t going to stop it. And derailing isn’t either.
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SING IT.
This is the first I’ve seen of your blog, but now I’m bookmarking it.
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As a survivor myself, I rather think Steve misses many points in making his argument. And I wouldn’t agree if he hadn’t.
Put simply, ALL rape is violent transgression in my book and essentially arguing that there is some kind of scaling to rape – presumably that there is lower-end date rape and higher-end near-murder – and that male rape is often more violent misses the point (and, on that last score, is inaccurate). Rape is rape. Its consequences physically and psychologically will vary from person to person.
Moreover, I do not grasp why any man, survivor or advocate, would argue what we might dub ‘statistical greatness’ being applied to male rape over female rape. Again, rape is rape. Male and female survivors exist with tales of attack with knife, gun, fists – and date rape occurs in the gay community A LOT actually. Either that, or I somehow have friends who can tell similarly horrible stories.
It is also entirely the right of a woman to discuss rape from her own perspective as a woman, whether she is a survivor or not. By doing that she is not in any way making less of male rape, nor seeking to ignore it, nor seeking to present any kind of distorted view that male rape doesn’t exist or is not as impactful as female rape.
I would not expect a woman to take issue with me as a gay man talking about the rape of men exclusively at any given point in time. It could never be extrapolated to suggest I don’t care about female rape, or refuse to recognise it as equal in terms of wrongness and devastation caused. That would be untrue.
All that said, men and women have socially constructed differences and prejudices to deal with – but even so, their reactions are individual and not entirely defined by gender or, for that matter, sexuality.
One aspect of male rape is that it is often committed by heterosexual males perhaps more so than by gay males, and that only serves to underline the notion for me that rape is ultimately, however it is inflicted, about ‘power over’.
Finally, I think extrapolating subtexts is a game where we get things wrong far more than we get them right.
This is a courageous blog.
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“Women, Men, Transexuals”
Are transexuals not women and men then?
A better list might be “Women, Men, Genderqueers” or “cis-women, cis-men, transexuals”
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I keep finding myself bookmarking your posts, because you speak truth in a clear, concise and yet emotionally powerful way that very few people have the talent, skill or will to do. This post is no exception.
However, in light of the “anti-trans” alarm that a statement like “All women have [..] a vagina” rings, I hope you do reword those statements. Seeing such denials of trans women’s lives and experiences may be hurtful to those women and I know it gives allies like me the wrong impression about your post; my two cents is that we shouldn’t have to read through a long page of comments to see your analysis of this issue, because a lot of people won’t read the comments and will come away thinking you’re disappearing trans women. For example, I almost never read comments threads, and I wouldn’t have read this one except I wanted to make sure I wasn’t repeating somebody else’s reaction to that statement.
As a committed ally to trans people in general and a few trans individuals I count among my close personal friends, I am most troubled by statements like ‘All women have a vagina’ because, while cis privilege allows us allies to say such things innocently, they have been said by some so-called “feminists” for the express purpose of hurting trans women and excluding them from bathrooms, music festivals, and society at whole, and even for advocating violence against trans women [c.f. Mary Daly]. It is clear from your comments in this thread, Harriet, that you understand the issues and you don’t personally mean to exclude or hurt anyone. But when we become aware that our words are exclusionary and/or hurtful, I think we have a responsibility to go back and correct them, especially when they’re quick and easy to edit, like in a blog.
Because your post is already an excellent piece about the rape of cis women by men, I think you can clear up any confusion and prevent any [further] unintended exclusion or hurt just by dropping the word “cis” into it before the word “woman” in the appropriate places. That’s just my suggestion. I think it would require very little effort and would help you address this piece’s one glaring drawback without compromising what is otherwise a well-written post, or taking it in a direction you don’t intend for it to go. Just one short word dropped into a few well-chosen places and we can all walk away smiling. That’s my vote.
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Thanks for the correct terminology.
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