After he is bitten by a radioactive common house spider, Peter Parker develops a number of remarkable abilities, including the ability to detect both vague and imminent dangers. Whenever danger lurks nearby, Spider-Man experiences a tingling at the base of his skull, which can range in intensity from a slight tickle to indicate an enemy is nearby to a full-blown, almost painful burst of awareness that tells him a lethal threat is about to present itself.
Reading this article at the Atlantic has my spidey-senses on full alert.
Don Draper Was Raped
Mad Men’s non-consensual encounter between a young, frightened Dick Whitman and a prostitute didn’t generate as much chatter as its gender-reversed scenario might have. Why?
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/don-draper-was-raped/276937/
I know who Don Draper is, and I’m aware of the general premise of Mad Men, but I have never seen the show. From the writer’s description of the episode, it seems fairly straightforward that yes, the young Don Draper was raped, depending upon your definition of raped. Abigail Rine, who wrote the piece, is somewhat startled when her research makes her aware that there is something very, very wrong with our definition of rape as it stands.
She’s right, but for more reasons that just the ones she gives.
Both the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the FBI use a definition of rape that is both explicitly and implicitly feminized:
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
The definition is explicitly feminized because it includes the word “vagina”, which obviously men do not have. It is implicitly feminized because the victim is defined by “penetration”, which strongly implies “penis”.
Victim = woman
Rapist = man
Can men be raped under this definition? Absolutely. Hugo Schwyzer is a big fan of the strap-on, and that object could be used to penetrate a man against his will. Not easily, mind you, but it’s possible.
The problem with this definition is that it does not reflect how men are sexually assaulted in real life: being raped tends to mean “being forced to penetrate”. And how common is that?
To me, one of the more startling findings of the NIPSVS [National Intimate Partner Sexual Violence Survey] is this: In the 12 months prior to taking the survey 1.26 million men (1.1 percent) had been “made to penetrate,” and that number is almost identical to the 1.27 million women (also 1.1 percent) estimated to have been raped during the same time period. If these numbers are anywhere near accurate, this paints a significantly different portrait of sexual violence in the U.S. than what I’m used to seeing.
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/
The made to penetrate data is on page 19 of the report, if you are interested in confirming that information.
The idea that men can be forced to penetrate someone against their will does not show up very often in popular culture, and even when it does, it is dismissed as something trivial and inconsequential. When a boy recounts his experience of being made to penetrate a girl while drunk, in the presence of others, who take pictures of the assault on their phones, feminist writers brush his experience off as just having bad sex with the wrong people.
We know what happens when men do that to women.
The Don Draper episode was met with silence in the media, with a notable exception at the Guardian, who claimed Don wasn’t raped, he wanted it!
He remembered that, when feverish as a youth, he had been cared for by a hooker with a heart, Aimee Swanson. Not only that, but she took his cherry. (For no given reason, it has to be said, beyond the usual “do you like girls?” male wish-fulfillment guff; but taken all the same.) Aimee knew what young Dick really wanted and was prepared to do what was necessary to give it to him.
You can well imagine that if the genders were reversed and it was 16 year old Aimee being “taken” by adult Don Draper, there would be national outcry and no one would dare to say Don “knew what young Aimee really wanted and was prepared to do what was necessary to give it to her”.
Reading the accounts of men having been raped on the Good Men Project, what immediately struck me was the men’s passivity in the face of assault. James Landrith was raped by a pregnant woman, so his passivity is very understandable. He was not going to attack a pregnant woman.
Levi Greenacres was completely incapacitated by alcohol. He WANTED to resist, but was physically incapable of doing so, and his attacker appears to have been a rather fit, strong woman who easily carried his 250 lb dead weight body.
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/i-am-a-survivor-and-i-can-finally-talk-about-it/
Both of those examples are very likely outliers. Of the million men who were forced to penetrate a woman against their will in the NIPSVS, I doubt very many of them were facing down pregnant or physically imposing women. It can happen, absolutely.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/04/09/four-fat-chicks-walk-into-a-bar-looking-for-a-good-time/
But I think something else is at play, and it’s exactly why I’m uncomfortable with the new definition of rape. It’s absolutely important that we tackle the idea that men can’t be raped, and that an erection is a sign of consent. How could he get hard if he wasn’t in to it?
In our culture, male sexuality is overwhelmingly depicted as powerful, dominant, invulnerable, and sexually insatiable. Our more cartoonish notions of gender, found everywhere from deodorant commercials to bromantic comedies, perpetuate the idea that men are little more than walking boners, always up for sex. And, even though science has demonstrated otherwise, the misconception that an erection implies consent–that a man, in fact, can’t penetrate unwillingly–is still commonplace.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/science-arousal-during-rape
Yes, we want to confront this caricature of men, but there is a trap waiting to spring, depending on HOW we do that. The reality is that men, in general, have an option that women, on average, do not.
They can physically fight back, and they are likely to win.
There are some damn good reasons men DO not fight back under intimate partner violence scenarios, the most obvious being that even if the entire rape is caught on camera and the fact that the man does NOT consent is incontrovertibly clear, if he punches the woman, he is the one who will likely be punished.
That tends to be the result, no matter what the conditions of the assault.
Men are also deeply conditioned to not hit or hurt women, even when they are being attacked. For many men, the idea of hitting a woman, even one who is in the process of raping them, is unthinkable.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/chivalry/the-white-knight-problem/
There are two approaches to the problem: accept that men will be passive in the face of assault by a woman, or create a culture in which women are held responsible for their assaults and must prepare to face the consequences.
Here is where my Spidey-senses really start to tingle. On the one hand, I very much like living in a world in which men generally think they shouldn’t hit women. The price of that is accepting that when women assault men, men are generally not going to fight back with full or even any force.
But pick an assault, any type of assault. Any kind of violent crime. Women get charged and convicted far less often than men, and even when they are convicted, they receive preferential treatment and reduced penalties.
Of all offenders convicted in U.S. district courts in 2003, 82.8 percent of the males were sentenced to prison but only 57.5 percent of the females. Among offenders convicted of violent crimes, 95.0 percent of the males and 76.4 percent of the females were incarcerated. For these offenses, the average sentence was 90.7 months for men and 42.5 months for women (Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online 2003 N.d., tables 5.20.2003 and 5.21.2000).
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/27008_4.pdf (p. 143)
Do we really think that accepting complete passivity in the face of sexual assault is going to be any different? For every man who refuses to hit a pregnant woman, even when she is raping him, there will be thousands of women who will claim they were raped, even though they gave absolutely no indication that they did not consent, and offered no resistance of any kind.
And that is the trap I fear will spring.
Look at this account of a woman being “raped”. It’s fucking ridiculous. It’s past ridiculous! It’s outrageous!
She said that soon afterward Dixon penetrated her and she was in pain and unable to move. She said Dixon asked her to turn around so he could penetrate her from behind, which she did. When asked by the investigating officer if she ever tried to stop Dixon, she said “she had just let it happen and she did not know why.” She said she was not afraid of being struck by Dixon.
According to the report, the woman said Dixon stopped after about 20 minutes and she reached for her pajama pants. She said that when Dixon asked why she was trying to put on her pants, she replied, “because this was never supposed to happen in the first place.” She said she went to the bathroom, and when she returned Dixon asked her to perform oral sex on him. She said she told him no, and then Dixon asked her to masturbate him, which she did. She stated “she didn’t know why she did.
http://jezebel.com/5964359/when-will-we-stop-pretending-that-college-athletes-cant-be-rapists
Let’s go back to the definition of rape. It needs to be updated to remove the presumption that men are rapists and women are victims by including the forced penetration scenario. But it needs something else, too. The previous definition of rape included the clause “forcibly and against her will”. That was the wording that triggered the redefinition in the first place. “Her” denies that men are victims. But in throwing out the whole clause, the definition removes any requirement to clearly communicate lack of consent, and it removes any requirement to resist.
I went along with everything he said and I don’t know why. I wasn’t afraid he would hurt me. But now I would like to see him jailed for a few years and have his career and reputation destroyed.
That is what I think is going to happen.
I would like to see a definition that acknowledges that women can rape men by forcing them to penetrate a body when they do not wish to, but I would also like to see the requirement to resist brought back.
Rape is sexual contact by either penetrating, or by forcing penetration, of a person, forcibly, and against their will.
While I understand the reasons that men might reactive passively to sexual assault, I am very wary of accepting complete passivity as a defense. I think it will be used against men far more often than it is used to defend them. The reality is that most men can defend themselves. I don’t accept “I was socialized to be passive and sweet and quiet” as a defense from women, and I don’t accept “I was socialized not to hit girls” as a defense from men, either.
When the girl in question is raping you, feel free to use whatever force is required to stop that from happening. She’s a rapist first, and that is what you should be responding to.
I am interested in other perspectives on this issue. I am completely willing to consider that I may not have taken all factors into account. I am willing to consider that I might be utterly mistaken here. I am willing to change my mind.
Unlike Peter, I was not bitten by a radioactive spider, and my senses could be dead wrong.
It happens.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
I was sleep-raped. There are a large variety of ways in which the ability to resist can be completely negated, and it would really surprise me if most female-on-male rape didn’t utilize some mechanism of eliminating the guy’s ability to resist. Drugs, threats of accusing the guy of rape, simply waiting until he’s asleep. The legal system handicaps men’s ability to defend themselves against women; ultimately we’re legally liable no matter what we’re subject to. And if there’s a requirement to resist we’d just get thrown in jail for domestic abuse. I don’t see men getting any justice here at all in the near future.
Fact is we live in a society in which a woman can effectively use the threat of accusing a man of rape in order to rape him. That’s the extent to which men lack effective legal rights and protections.
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One of the Great Books For Men applies the definition of rape thusly:
Deuteronomy 22:23-30 “23 “If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them [n]to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.
25 “But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. 27 When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.
28 “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.
30 “[o]A man shall not take his father’s wife so that he will not uncover his father’s skirt.”
Even the writers of the Old Testament understoods that there is an impetus on the woman to avoid, stop and signal for help during a rape. Obviously, this was removed from our society by Feminists because it removes responsibility from the woman and gives her leverage against men.
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So if you drug someone it’s not rape? What about your scenario with your doctor friend in which his wife used his fatigue and professionalism as weapons to force compliance?
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I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “women’s rights,” with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminist ought to get a good whipping. Were women to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.
Queen Victoria, March 1870
Rape: violate; force a PERSON to submit unwillingly to sexual intercourse…Webster dictionary
Yes for all the education many feminist will boast they obviously have some trouble understanding the dictionary. So as defined rape is a felony, a violent crime perpetrated on a human being by other criminal humans which also includes tying a man up and forcing him to take Viagra and raping him for three days, forcing objects into a man’s body, woman on woman or lesbian rape, and so on. Feminist have reengineered the definition of one of the most violent and vile acts a person can commit upon on another for the feminist court monopoly and often for making men pay the consequences for bad choices and shoddy social behavior such as “I was drunk and didn’t intend to sleep with him, it’s all his fault, it was rape”. Just like everything else that has been infested with feminist plague, a male victim of sexual assault or a female victim of sexual assault by another female will be brushed aside in the legal system in America because according to our racket of a court system and feminist that does not exist. Just a rape accusation by a vindictive harpy can derail a person’s life and when proven wrong the little witch will have little to no consequences for it. Here in the U.S. a man has got to think twice before getting involved with a woman and the PUA guys are playing a very dangerous game. I left society 6 years ago and left it to itself. I will never trust a woman in this horrific mine field of bullshit social experiment.
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Incapacitating someone with drugs so you can have forced sex with them is definitely rape, and in that case, it’s impossible to resist.
I’m wondering if requiring resistance is a reasonable legal measure?
I don’t know. But if it’s impossible to resist because you’re unconscious, then it’s impossible
Dr. K has sex with his wife because its easier than arguing with her. That’s shitty, but it’s not rape.
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How about this rule? “If it’s impossible to resist, it’s impossible for you to consent, but if it’s possible to consent, you must resist.”
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Nice one!
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I hate that saying “It’s rape only if she’s ugly.”
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I’m on the fence with the passivity issue because of all the stories I’m seeing about teacher/student rape with the female teachers. This is a different kind of rape in that the young men probably seem as if they’re willing participants. But in that situation the power structure is such that a boy is expected to say no to someone he has been told, his whole life, to obey unconditionally. I don’t know how that translates to older men and the rape scenarios that you mention here, but having a woman force sex on a man has to be such a surreal experience that I can see how a guy might not resist when he really should.
There are a whole mess of issues with a man’s ability to come out and admit he’s been a victim of any kind of abuse at the hands of a woman. Not only will his victimization be dismissed by other men (I can’t count how many times I’ve heard that they boys being raped by their teachers are “lucky”), his manhood will also be questioned if he even brings up the assault at all.
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Is that a corally to “Only ugly girls get raped”?
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Or when I don’t screw it up: “Ugly girls don’t get raped” and “Only pretty girls get raped”
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I think western masculinity is tied to martyrdom. Men are expected to suffer and to bear suffering. You’re a failure as a human being if you complain.
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Heh, reminds me of the whining that some feminists have done about older (wealthier, more powerful, more connected, etc.) men acquiring younger and more attractive trophy wives. Often these men would reach these heights in society, leave their current wives and become a sort of sugar-daddy to a younger girl. This… was an abomination in the views of some in the feminist community… why… they were using their position in society to take advantage of these innocent and pure maidens!
First off, this is bullshit. Those younger women know full well what’s gong on. They know that they’re selling their youth/good looks and getting money/connections/status with their new boyfriend. They’re selling high. Not surprisingly, in such matches, little concern is paid to some boyfriend of the young woman that was dumped, but the wife of the aging alpha/cad/high-status male is heralded as a “survivor”.
But, more importantly, if you have seen Justin Bieber’s previous girlfriend of an older woman or take a gander at the cougar phenomenon, I don’t see a single feminist crying about this or how these young men are being “taken advantage of” by careerist women who have more experience in life. Some, in the hook-up community, get older women to be their little sugar-mommies. I say, power to them. They cover their rent, gas, whatever and the men have to put-out. But God help that young man when he turns older and gets in bed with a college freshman girl… oh no…
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The reality is that most men can defend themselves. I don’t accept “I was socialized to be passive and sweet and quiet” as a defense from women, and I don’t accept “I was socialized not to hit girls” as a defense from men, either.
Men rarely ever physically defend themselves against physical assault (to include rape) by a woman –and indeed almost instinctively fight their natural urges to do so– for a very practical reason. If they were ever to allow their natural instincts to take their course, the female assailant, unless she was a MMA champion or female body builder, would probably wind up severely maimed or even dead. Even if, as you point out, JB, it was an obvious case of self-defense, what passes for the “justice” [*bullshit*] system in the Anglosphere would, without a second’s reservation, place all blame for the woman’s maiming or death on the man and would punish him accordingly, to the fullest extent of the (positivist) law. Not only would the man’s manhood be questioned, as RS points out (and that would be the least of his problems), he would also be beset upon by an entire army of white knights, both inside the “justice” system and from society at large, that would be ready to tear him limb from limb, figuratively and literally, for daring to have injured or killed a delicate little flower of the fairer sex. And of course once he’s convicted and sent off to the gulag, he’s a marked man who won’t last more than a week before meeting the wrong end of a shiv (or worse). IOW, more than enough precedent has been established to make self-defense against assault by a woman a losing proposition in every way imaginable. For all the trauma a man might endure from being raped by a woman, it would be an absolutely pleasurable experience compared to what awaits him if he should choose to defend himself against it.
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What about the distinction between manslaughter and murder? Should there be a similar divide between different types of rape?
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I’m really grateful for your posts and the angles and challenges they encourage readers to consider. They have made me become more alert to the female biases in many areas in my society. Thank you.
I’d really enjoy your perspective on this link, too, if you have time.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/06/if-you-know-someone-who-doesnt-believe-sexism-exists-show-them-this-trigger-warning/
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Giraffe:
My first response to the article you linked is this:
“Who the fuck ever claimed that sexism doesn’t exist?”
I certainly don’t remember anyone worth listening to ever claiming that. If there is one constant in this world, it is that we humans seems have an unending wellspring of inspiration for ways to be bastards to each other.
The problem is that it goes both ways, and feminists refuse to believe or accept that. The linked article is a perfect example of a feminist setting up a straw man to prove her point, but the point she’s trying to prove wasn’t even in contention.
I feel sort of bad for her with the perv on the train, but the difference between a feminist and a normal person is that she’s allowed it to bother and degrade her, by her own admission, for all these years, whereas most normal people would have:
1. Called him on it and told him to stop OR;
2. Moved seats so he wasn’t near them anymore AND;
3. Promptly forgot about it, unless you needed a funny/sick story to tell late one night at a party.
She’s spinning the tale as if she’s a shrinking violet, repressed by men because one guy told her that she surprised him with her intellect (which, really, is what the chalk-board at the start of the article is saying, even if it is said in a kind of dickish way) and another because she, like almost all of us at one point in time or another, had to deal with a damn pervert.
Kind of like JB’s story about PrinceCharming being “raped” by his boss – that would have ruined a feminist’s life, but PrinceCharming was all like “eh, had sex I guess.” It’s the difference between a person that lets their life be ruled by an unrealistic narrative of the way they think things should be, and a person who lets reality dictate their reactions.
Are you going to allow things that other people do to you rule your life, or are you going to take charge of your own destiny?
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No, because there is only one type of rape. All the rest of the things that they call rape are not rape and really shouldn’t be punished in the criminal system.
While I feel badly for the women who claim to have had sex that they didn’t want, but didn’t stop it for some reason (that they can never seem to quite put their finger on), you can’t possibly expect the man in the situation to read her damn mind when she’s cooperating willingly and not protesting.
Is it a bad situation? Hell yes. But it isn’t HIS fault, and he certainly shouldn’t be ruined for what happened.
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Not martyrdom. Just sucking it up, because you can choose to allow others to rule you, or you can be your own man.
Men just have a different attitude about being victimized than women do, and it has a lot to do with the personal responsibility aspect of the situation. Even when they don’t have any control, men don’t like to admit that they didn’t. So when they get assaulted or something bad happens, they are more likely to look at the situation through the lens of failed opportunities to avoid the problem, and through the lens of sharing responsibility for the incident – ie, when a man gets mugged, he says “Its my own damn fault for walking through that alley, next time I’ll stay on the lit streets!” A man doesn’t trust other men not to mug him and then act shocked when they do. He expects other men will try to mug him, and when he gets mugged, he looks at his own actions and says “this was my own damn fault.”
In the situation described above, where the woman didn’t protest, didn’t say “no” and actually willingly cooperated with the man, a man in the same situation would have shrugged and said “oh well, I guess in the future I probably shouldn’t go with strange women to their hotel room and get naked with them – I make bad choices when I do.”
That’s not being a martyr, that’s just looking at the situation differently. It’s not a “I was victimized” it is “I was stupid, and there are things I definitely should have done differently.”
Being a man, I’m trying not to spin this as his way being the truth or being better, because I’d just be speaking from my own bubble, but I really can’t see how it isn’t – how much more noble it is to take responsibility for your own actions and not blame the blameless and ruin their lives over something YOU DID.
I’m not talking about cases of legitimate assault here, just to clarify – I’m talking about those “second thoughts” cases like the one described above.
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This. I had a friend’s psycho girlfriend assault me once. I had every natural right on Earth to drop her crazy ass, but I didn’t, and as a result, ended up with a bloody nose and a fat lip when she hit me with a pan.
The whole time it was happening (in slow motion) I was telling myself to be cool, to dodge and not return fire, to get away from the situation, because I was, at the time, 6’-4” tall and 250 pounds of bone, brain, and muscle and I’d have killed her if I’d tried to fight back. I knew, even at 18 years old, as I was at the time, that I would lose far more than a little blood if I hit her, because there is no way a man my size explains his way out of hitting a woman once the cops show up.
She confessed to me later that the only reason that she had done what she did is because she was sure I wouldn’t fight back. I promised her that if it ever happened again that I would. It didn’t happen again.
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She confessed to me later that the only reason that she had done what she did is because she was sure I wouldn’t fight back.
Unless the man is an emaciated midget or a skeleton without an ounce of muscle, that’s the ONLY reason any woman ever picks a fight with one – because she KNOWS he won’t fight back, for the reasons we both stated.
I promised her that if it ever happened again that I would. It didn’t happen again.
Those would be my exact words too. Lightning will never strike twice in the same place.
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Are you going to allow things that other people do to you rule your life, or are you going to take charge of your own destiny?
It seems that the majority has already answered that question. This is why “personal injury” lawyers and politicians are so busy.
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This is a tricky issue. I’m gonna talk about something controversial here, which will no doubt anger some people. But I can’t stay silent about the facts. I do think that sometimes men can be raped by women, but I fear this issue is starting to achieve a dogmatic character in men’s rights sites.
I have read a lot of these stories, and heard them from men personally. And what I have gathered is that some men do indeed feel raped when this occurs. Others, on the other hand, don’t react, brush it off, one guy said he “didn’t know whether to feel happy or mad”, others feel positive. Two guys said they were drunk, then woke up with a woman on their dicks. One was happy. The other one was sad, because he didn’t remember most of the experience and the sex ended too quickly. Can you imagine a woman ever saying such a thing about finding a dude inside her upon waking up?
I also read many studies on sexual harassment. And again and again, I encounter that men are often positive to unwanted sexual attention, while women are pretty much always negative to it.
As for teacher/student sex, this issue was only presented to me as a problem when I moved to a western country and read about USA. A close friend of mine was 14 when he lost his virginity, and yes, it was a teacher.
But here in Norway, our definition of rape does take into account female on male attacks (has been for quite a while), and so far I can think only of one case where a man accused a woman of raping him. Is it because 100s of men are raped, but they can’t push her off due to fear of punishment? Or because it doesn’t happen very often? Or perhaps it happens, but men don’t care to report it? We don’t know.
James Landrith’s story I used to believe, until I heard that repressed memory therapy was used to ”help him remember” stuff that happened to him. Since then, his story changed somewhat. But repressed memories are not reliable. Whether he was raped or not, putting repressed memories into the mix is likely to damage men more than help them. And one must also remember that his reaction is not universal.
So what is the point in saying all this? My point is that we might be heading for unexpected danger, if we don’t think things through. A trauma reaction is not universal, and perhaps not even common. Repressed memories is not a valid way to extract information. But questioning this seems not to be allowed. MRA Typhonblue even said this:
“If you think about it a good portion of the men who are saying things like “you got lucky” were likely victims themselves. Since they can’t hope for any kind of help with dealing with their victimization, saying “I got lucky” is a way of distancing themselves from the pain and closing it off from every day reality.
And the ones who weren’t victimized live in a society where their consent is effectively meaningless; they are sexually available to women whenever women want, regardless of their own wishes. Subconsciously they are aware of this reality and when you’re in a society where a woman can sexually exploit you whenever she wants with legal and social impunity, perhaps the only way to defend yourself psychologically is to pretend you don’t care about consent in the first place. It’s not like men’s consent is something that society’s going to respect any time soon.”
Many men felt this was quite patronizing, like a feminist who tells women they should feel raped/degraded by this and that, but just too dumb and traumatized to realize it.
So my point is, fight for men’s rights. But please, PLEASE don’t pull statistics out of your butts like feminists once did. Like JB points out, it only hurts men more. No, you will not succeed in your plan to hurt women with feminist laws as much as men. First, feminists don’t stop their laws the moment women are hurt. Second,most men won’t bother to report that they woke up with some woman on their dick, and all the extra laws (repressed memory validity, lack of resistance rape, etc etc) will fall on more MEN.
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I think having sex with someone unconscious was called “sexual exploitation”, until it was made over into rape. I suppose the difference was that rape is like a sexual robbery, while sexual exploitation is like sexual theft. Both are crimes, but one is considered less bad/violent than the other.
Drugging a person against their will and having sex with them was still considered rape, though.
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There’s a difference between making the laws stricter and making the laws better.
I’m personally of the opinion that many kinds of rape, including the one which happened to me, are going to be better addressed with mandatory therapy for the rapist that with prison sentences. I’d never report my rapist; prison is a massively disproportionate punishment for what was done to me.
I suspect I’m not alone in that. I feel violated and dehumanized about it – not just the act itself but the knowledge of how little protection I can actually get, that my consent, in the end, doesn’t actually matter all that much as far as society is concerned. But… I remain friends with the girl who raped me, and after some serious discussion about it I’ve forgiven her.
She made a mistake that she will always regret. Society, on the other hand, doesn’t admit fault, and continues to erode my rights as a human being, continues to insist my consent doesn’t even matter. I’m probably more legally vulnerable today than I was when it happened. I think there have been some court decisions since then which further enshrined the “right” of a rapist to collect child support from her victim.
So… I think a conversation is appropriate, if for no other reason than to address the fact that men are human beings too.
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“Fact is we live in a society in which a woman can effectively use the threat of accusing a man of rape in order to rape him.”
While I understand some men may fall for it, I have some doubts that most would. How would giving in to her requests alleviate the potential for being accused? If you have sex with her, you’re essentially securing the physical and witness evidence (beyond her word) that you raped her. Then there is fat chance you will ever get out of this nasty story. That way, she can use this as an excuse to keep raping you for all eternity. And if you get sick of it, she has all those times you “raped” her and evidence for it.
The brilliant solution to this would be to make sure an accusation or rape or domestic violence is not an automatic sentense or arrest.
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A conversation is definitely appropriate. There are 2 dimensions to it. One is “what to do with the law”, and another is “how to validate the feelings of those who were in any way injured”. And what is good for one, is not necessarily good for the other one! I agree the latter is important. But my comment was mostly about the former. I want to say a bit more on it, for clarity, I hope it’s ok.
Like you said, laws need to be better. Roll back a lot of these feminist law reforms, but don’t blow up the issue, like feminists have been blowing up the rape issue for decades, as it won’t help men. The reason I say this, is that I sense some MRA sites want to blow up the issue. They are equating “how the law should be” with “how to validate those who were injured”. I think they are hoping to use feminist tactics and definitions of rape to hurt women, so feminists stop with all the injust laws. Not gonna work. All they are doing is giving support to laws WOMEN are likely to use against MEN, and MEN will most often not bother with. Some men will use them, but damage to men on average will outweigh the benefit.
Our Norwegian feminists actually strongly support the idea that women rape men, but I doubt you would like it here as a man. We also have drunk rape, accidental rape, and “you didn’t read my mind and didn’t realize I didn’t want it” rape – applying to BOTH genders. And in the media, I have often seen them run stories on sexually aggressive teenage girls, who unreleningly pressure their boyfriends into sex. It’s as gender neutral as you can get here. Yet men don’t use any of these accusation opportunities. Women, however, do. JB is right, and Norway, IMO, is a great illustration of what happens when you apply unreasonable rape definition to both genders. So I wish you a good life, but don’t run to your enemies for protection.
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Passive and Not consenting are two distinct things and easily separated. Passive being taking no action. Assertively saying NO clearly communicates lack of consent with out the need to actively resist. Teaching men that they CAN say NO and it does have meaning is very important. The line is consent, not inflicting some par of physical damage upon the attacker.
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Something like that. This is evident even in so many of JB’s role-reversal articles – where a situation seems socially outrageous when an incident is described as happening to a woman – but as soon as the genders are reversed, it then becomes generally accepted as ‘no big deal’ or ‘man up & deal with it’.
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“young men probably seem as if they’re willing participants.”
Those young men grow up in a culture that tells them they are faulty if they don’t want it. Furthermore such right to consent that they may have is always taught to them as being secondary to that of the other participant in any heterosexual interaction. They learn very early that consent is an obligation rather than a right they actually have themselves.
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Following is a post I wrote for the Feminist Critics site in early 2009. My apologies for dredging up something so old but I no longer have the patience or energy to produce anything with this level of detail. The thread concerned remains active to this day. I still have scars around my scrotum from the fingernails of the woman concerned in my 1999 experience.
DaisyDeadhead said in the original embodiment…
My last sexual experience was in October 1999.
I had been in the relationship about twelve months. Should have left earlier. Her hatred for her ex husband was extraordinary and consequently quite abusive. Last time I saw her privately she turned up midway through the afternoon expecting sex. I declined. I was busy. She was outraged. I tried to calm her down by offering a cuppa and sitting and talking. She jumped me and pinned me on the couch. I’m no weakling. As a younger man I was one of the best javelin throwers in my country. But she was six or seven stone heavier than I. As it was over a hundred that day I was only wearing shorts and singlet. She had access to everything and made it clear she didn’t mind hurting me. The only way out of the situation for me was violence for which I have zero capacity. I ended up complying. Apart from one chance meeting in the library I’ve not spoken to her since. I doubt she has any inkling as to why and probably refers to me in similar tones to her ex.
Is that rape?
I never really considered this until several years later when in counselling for childhood abuse. Interestingly counsellors tell me that experience, another incident in my mid twenties and one in my late teens are also rapes by their standard. The childhood event is rape by legal standard anyway and may be partly causal to my getting into those other circumstances. In other words I have a capacity to attract those women who have the ability to act that way.
If the question is are some women willing to act in ways that constitute rape – assuming that forcing sex on somebody is rape – the answer must be yes.
We are left with male consent.
Can we equate erection with consent?
(As an aside when I first told my mother about my childhood experience – I did this only a few years ago – her almost immediate reaction was “you must have wanted it”. My having an erection was her basis for this. I was eight.)
I guess you could assume this if erection(and by default non-erection) was one hundred percent under the control of the individual at all times. That it was available ONLY on command. I don’t believe you are ignorant of this being a physiological absurdity.
One of my sisters found herself in a relationship that was on the skids. She concocted a plan. She offered herself up as designated driver at a particular event. Kept his glass full all night. She later had sex with him while he was basically comatose. Her aim had been to get pregnant. She succeeded. His family, very catholic, made him marry her. Intriguingly she brags about this openly to this day AND does it in his presence.
Is that rape?
At what point does one’s state of arousal shift your status from non-consenting to consenting? Is this even a question? It certainly shouldn’t be where female victims are concerned. Any physiological responses to physical contact, lubrication and even orgasm, during rape are not indicative of consent. In fact they are provably problematic for many victims as a physical betrayal of self. Terror, sleep and even death are not disenhancers to male erection. They can be prompted by physical or even optical(a fact many women gladly facilitate) stimuli. The only means of coercion available anywhere near exclusively to men is the physical. Even this is absent sometimes as I can attest.
DaisyDeadhead said in the original embodiment…
I suspect we differ on definitions of “rape”.
I look to coercion. It may be physical. It may not. It may be a bit broader circumstantially than mere consent. “Consent” can be coerced.
Rape was once defined in such a way as to require provable physical damage. It punished on that basis. While lip service was paid to the long term consequences I don’t believe the law respected this. Those women who couldn’t show blood or bruises were marginalised. So were those women compelled by other forms of threat to their well being.
The broadened definition of rape, largely impelled by feminist attention, was essential. By requiring injury to prove rape we created an atmosphere of permissiveness toward many real rapes. There’s a similar permissiveness today for the experiences I, and not a few other men and boys, have had(which extends to prime time, free–to-air, international media). I didn’t find that acceptable for women and a can’t find it acceptable for men.
Regarding penetration have you considered that it requires both penetration AND envelopment? Are you genuinely able to determine that either is any more problematic physically(in some respects I’d acknowledge there can be), emotionally or psychologically?
While not completely analogous…
When I was eight my “partner” of the time was quite a lot bigger than I. She loomed above, and on, me in a quite “enthusiastic” manner. I’ve had sporadic, and seemingly inexplicable, experiences of compression and immobility through my life that quite likely stem from that youthful exploit. Consider my 1999 encounter in this context.
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Ridiculous politicized psychobabble. Teens are certainly horny, and we rarely hear how these relationships started, or who made the first move, because no one wants to think about it. Unless there is actual force or threats used, “Blow me or you get an F” it’s not rape, though the teacher should be blacklisted, not for harming the student, but for harming the taxpayers by not following the terms of the job
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“I’m on the fence with the passivity issue because of all the stories I’m seeing about teacher/student rape with the female teachers.”
If in doubt, reverse the genders. There’s your answer.
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There are laws that require a rape accuser’s name is never revealed. There is no such law shielding the name of the accused. You are guilty until proven innocent.
The problem is even an false rape accusation is enough to ruin a man’s career, family and marriage even if there is no evidence.
Say you are in a position of authority. Teacher, doctor, lawyer, even just a manager. Just the accusation of someone who you have authority over would be enough to ruin your reputation, in some cases forever.
What career prospects do you think a teacher would have if accused by a female co-worker of raping her, even if down the line if was proved to be maliciously false. What do you think the chances of getting to see you kids are if someone accuses you of rape and your wife divorces you?
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Yep. Boy gets lucky.
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JB,
Reporting sexual assault and seeking support as a survivor is a good thing. Period. The reason people–not one gender or the other, but people–get away with sexual assault is that attackers count on the people they have assaulted to remain quiet. The title of this article and the subsequent casting of doubt on the validity of people coming forward to tell their story of sexual assault is not only ambivalent in direction, but extremely discouraging to people who might be considering whether or not to come forward themselves to discuss their rape, or who might be considering encouraging others to speak up.
Do you know what’s harder than being falsely accused of being raped? (Which statistically speaking, considering how few rapes get reported at all, is pretty rare.) Getting raped and then living in a society that doesn’t want to hear about it, and heaps shame upon the victim.
I am deeply saddened that you could write a piece that seeks to sway discussion away from disclosure of a victim’s assault because it’s just too hard for people to think about, based on their gender. If you’re going to take an editorial stance on something in writing, at least commit to it. You either think people should speak up or your don’t. While I do agree with you that it’s complicated for everyone regardless of gender to report or to hear about a sex crime, the energy expended in extolling the virtue of maintaining a status quo might be better used next time to suggest that people listen to and support victims of sex crimes.If we as a society want to end rape as a cultural phenomenon, it won’t happen with people staying quiet. And as a writer, you have the potential to use your words to encourage specific change in the world as a result of thoughtful consideration.
It’s at least some comfort to me that while you are reluctant to advocate for being vocal yourself, you do provide links to some excellent articles where others have done the hard work of speaking up about their rapes, which is extremely painful–but really the only way to educate others and let other survivors know they are not alone. I’d love to hear what you might have to say about taking steps toward a solution, or at the very least, counseling others to find one.
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I don’t think I’ll ever understand this issue.
First off, I’ve never met a woman who could force me to do anything I didn’t want to do. That’s crazy. Unless a guy is drugged or tied down while he sleeps…..I just don’t understand. I passed out at a party once, and one of the girls there dared another one to give me a BJ and see if I woke up. I did, and told her to quit, I was tired and drunk. The end. I didn’t need any therapy. My girlfriend regularly wakes me up with BJs. Should I call her a rapist?
Even if I were drugged or whatever and a woman had sex with me…..unless I ended up with an STD or she got pregnant….who cares? I wipe myself off and grab a beer. I’m not going to go around crying and calling myself a victim and whining on the internets. I refuse to refer to myself as a “victim”.
As I said, maybe I just don’t get it. But come on guys, we are tougher than this.
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I have never commented here but this I feel I must say something about.
Being Swedish we have had an unprecedented escalation of rape definitions for quite a while now and we have ended up with pretty much the same rape definitions you have over in Norway. There seems to be a bit of a difference how the population has reacted though. The latest round of this pretty much introduced statutory rape laws and things have went downhill quickly from there. The statutory rape laws are gender neutral like the other rape laws but suddenly women, for the first time, were prosecuted. What happened was a huge backpedal when outraged lawmakers went out and publicly criticized what happened saying that the law was “never meant to work that way”. Never mind that the cases involving women and underaged boys were generally more brutal then the reverse. Unsurprisingly the young women were freed and the young men in the same position were convicted.
The point is that even when the law are gender neutral AND men try to press charges (or in some cases the state presses the charges) we live in a society that won’t allow women to be the perpetrators of sex crimes.
Unsurprisingly neither the police nor men themselves try to press or pursue charges against women anymore.
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(this male) would like to see the narrowing of the legal situation of rape (i.e. prosecution, investigation) to require clear physical evidence of sex with lack of consent (drugging, restraints, wounds from fighting). Most cases won’t have that i.e. the “he said/she said” cases.
This would avoid the motive and potential of false accusations.
and yet, we are right to be troubled by this situation, So them we need a response that has no bias in favor of “yes, he raped her” or “no, it’s a false accusation” (to use the stereotype). I’m not quite sure what that would be, since the current situation is so polarized and prejudicial. Think, some kind of education and experiential learning to help people not get into this situation again, entered into as freely as possible, to preclude/avoid a criminal investigation or civil action or social sigma. There’s a lot in this I know. Yet, I think it could be done, would destroy fewer lives and cost far, far less.
As an example, I was molested for two periods of time in childhood (starting age 9), and each time I froze. It became quite automatic. I learned sex was something someone just does to you. When a woman jumped on me (forced to penetrate) at age 20, it was pretty traumatic. I avoided women for 25 years. It’s complicated all the things going on, and rape/not rape is just not adequate in this and many, many cases and leads to injustice in many ways. I’ve dealt with this a lot. Too much to begin to detail here. I believe the 1 in 6 statistic for boys abused sexually, yet, I’m not on board with the excessive victim mentality around child sexual abuse. Offenders need help too and were often victimized in the past and prison is no help and hugely expensive.
Unfortunately, this would take the money out of it and there’s way too much money to be made for this to happen: lawyers suing organizations for $1 million for each case of past sexual abuse, the “justice system”, prisons, the victim services industry, the war on men/women and anything else, on and on. It’s clearly not working.
We’re trapped in a victim/offender mindset. It keeps us stuck in the past at great expense. I’ve never liked survivor much either. It doesn’t work as an identity for men as well as women. Yes, it happened, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with someone who betrayed me, it probably shaped my life, yet, it seems to hurt me to make it a part of an identity. It’s not denial. It’s the little bit of choice I can have in the matter. Which is better than none. Which is kind of the human condition. Make the best of it and don’t fixate on what you’ll never have, how unfair life is (because, yes it’s damn unfair).
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School girl crushes on teachers are very common. I’m sure a very high majority of male teacher/female student relationships or “rape” cases are with all willing participants.
I thought that the issue comes with the inherent power imbalance that the age and teaching position grant, effectively removing the students ability for informed consent. Whether the student is a willing female or a horny, young and “lucky” boy should be irreverent.
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” Not surprisingly, in such matches, little concern is paid to some boyfriend of the young woman that was dumped,”
That’s because he’s not dumped.
The implicit “don’t ask, don’t tell” assumption in these May-December relationships is that the much younger partner will of course see a young man her own age on the side. The much older partner turns a blind eye because he understands the deal.
Hence those young, virile boyfriends never get dumped. Only a fool would do that.
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“So what is the point in saying all this? My point is that we might be heading for unexpected danger, if we don’t think things through. A trauma reaction is not universal, and perhaps not even common. Repressed memories is not a valid way to extract information. But questioning this seems not to be allowed.”
What do you mean questioning repressed memory therapy is “not allowed”?
It has been debunked a long time ago after several “satanic child abuse” scares turned out to be hysterical hoaxes based on “repressed memory therapy”.
Fathers sent to jail in cases using RMT have been set free.
This is all old news here in the States.
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I was raped and spoke out in young adulthood. Something I was told by therapists is extremely uncommon, especially for men raped as children. However, I was marginalized and ignored. Still to this day, I am marginalized by men and women for discussing it. People tell me, “Why do you ‘always’ have to talk about being raped?” Or my “PTSD?” “All you ever do is talk about it.” Or “You speak to frequently about the bad things that have happened to you and are perpetuating the title of ‘victim’.”
These are abhorrent silencings by my culture–I live in Portland, Oregon, in the USA.
Should I be silenced further because I would dare speak out about the troubles facing our society?
The only way these immoral acts will change is if people stand in opposition to them. As a man who suffered childhood rape, I feel far better knowing that I’m “not alone” in being ignored and can add my voice to those suffering, and can help other men who are too afraid to speak out.
You cannot change that which you hide in ignorance from. This article is an example of muckraking. I’m glad to see it, because it motivates me to keep speaking out. I’m not alone on this matter. I can keep fighting and put words to this immovable barrier I face in life. It’s not just me–it’s real.
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Too* frequently.
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Eleanor Roosevelt said that every day comes
with new strength and new thoughts. Thank you for putting new
ideas into my head.
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May-december sounds like 20-60 then. What about may-august or 20-40?
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How about we focus on teaching people to make better choices in life so that female on male rape is not even a issue in which we need to waste our time discussing or trying to figure out the “legal” ways in which to remedy or punish those who took part in such activity…..regardless of who was willing or unwilling when it occurred. Make better choices and these issues are non-existent.
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It may not be possible to resist once you have made choices (without any outside influence as every adult has freedom to choose and make decisions based solely on the individuals free will) which put you at risk of becoming a victim of this particular crime. Bottom line is……make better choices and ensure you NEVER become a victim of female on male rape. Unless of course the rare and virtually non-existent scenario of a random unforeseen and impossible to guard against, attack occurs (Has that EVER happened…I doubt it) every man should be aware of, and capable of protecting themselves against any female criminal who is planning to engage in such dysfunctional and clearly mentally unstable behavior by simply making better, more intelligent choices to render this behavior completely ineffective or virtually impossible. Its really not that difficult, and probably the reason men who have become victims are so deeply affected by guilt and shame because the ego tells them repeatedly that they are less than a man because they allowed it to happen when they have every means at their disposal to ensure that it never will……Most men do not have the ability or were never taught how to deal with this “hit” to their fragile ego’s and because the ego has much affect on the sub-conscious as it does the conscious state of a person, its ladting and damaging affect can be pretty devastating to deal with this. And if buried and left to fester can manifest itself negatively in a variety of ways that will never be attributed to its root cause because the man refuses to acknowledge it……….I could go on for hours on the affect of this issue and its AFTEREFFECTS…………But my point here is to create a better solution to the problem by eliminating the problem altogether. This can be accomplished by educating young men (and women) to make better choices .This starts with the parents by allowing your kids to make kid mistakes and then having conversations with them explaining to them why and how they can avoid repeating them in the future….This gives your child confidence and more importantly, ACTUAL SKILLS making correct decisions. This type of parenting is non existent today and results in a generation of adults with either a false sense of security or an overwhelming insecurity that tends to gfo hand in hand with poor choices in their adult lives. If these earlier in life obligations are actually performned by people who CHOOSE to become a parent, then these things would be non-existent issues. . Women are capable of committing crimes just as horrendous and conniving, and affective as a male and to let your guard down because of gender is, in this day and age, just not wise at all………….BETTER CHOICES eliminates the females ability to commit these crimes ……PERIOD
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