For Marianne Cassidy, society’s lesson that “Strange Men Are Dangerous” is damaging. Men are not the problem. Rapists are the problem.
“Society teaches Don’t Get Raped rather than Don’t Rape.”
As far as I know, this slogan originally emerged as part of the SlutWalk movement. It has become a key expression of protest against the idea that women should dress more modestly to avoid getting raped. When I heard it first, it resonated with me; it’s challenging, it’s punchy and it felt like a succinct summation of a complex problem. But, (and this is a big “but” because) while my gut feeling is still agreement, I know factually that nothing is ever so black-and-white when it comes to such a sensitive topic. Every time I see it emblazoned on a T-shirt or SlutWalk sign or cropping up in blog posts and comments in the gender arena, I feel the need to break it down and think about what it actually means.
For me, the first half seems straightforward. As far back as I can remember, I have been taught to be suspicious of strange men. And I don’t mean “society taught me” or “experience taught me.” I mean I was literally taught – through the public education system in Ireland, through Health and Safety classes, through guest speakers, through seminars, by authority figures both male and female – that strange men are the single biggest threat to my personal safety, as a girl and later as a woman. I have be careful what I wear and where I go and when I go there and who I talk to when I get there and I should always be vigilant and aware of my surroundings and take self-defence classes and carry a rape whistle and never walk home alone and we all know the drill at this point.
I remember clearly attending a safety lecture when I was eight years-old and a teacher telling us that if we ever got lost or separated from our parents in a strange place and we couldn’t find a police officer, we should “look for a nice lady to help us.” Apparently, nice ladies are a safe bet. It’s the nasty men who are more likely to be holding candy and luring us into their van. This is my earliest memory of the “strange men are dangerous” rhetoric. Since then, it’s been a consistent feature of my life.
In Emily Heist Moss’s excellent article “The Story of Men Is the Story We Decide To Tell: A Single Woman Travelling Alone,” she explodes the standard “creepy guy” story that most women can tell you as an example of why men can be dangerous to a lone woman. Most women have at least one story about a creepy guy who followed them, harassed them, touched them inappropriately and made them feel scared and vulnerable. While it’s definitely unfortunate that most women have had an experience like this, Emily points out that most women also have stories about men who were kind to them or who helped them out of a rough situation. But we rarely tell or hear these stories. This may simply be because potential danger makes for a better story, but we may also gravitate towards the “creepy guy” episode because it reinforces the narrative we have been labouring under for most of our lives; all men are potential rapists.
As the debate in comments section of this article highlights, this is a damaging and offensive stereotype.
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It goes without saying that the vast majority of men are repulsed by the idea of rape or sexual assault. Most are offended by the prevalent myth that all men are slaves to their libidos and literally cannot control their sexual urges. Others worry about the perception of sexual abuse as an exclusively female concern and are attempting to break the resounding silence around the issue of male rape. In light of this, it must be frustrating when a woman crosses the street to avoid you when she’s walking home alone after dark. It must be baffling when you approach a woman (because she dropped her keys, or she looks lost, or she caught your eye and you’d like to get her number) and she acts like you have every intention of dragging her down an alley. I can only imagine how confusing it is when a woman would rather wait in the rain with her broken-down car rather than accepting a ride from you. Often it seems no matter how many considerate, kind and thoughtful men we encounter, the relatively small handful of men who perpetrate sexual violence on women still dictate how the majority are viewed.
This is not fair to men. I have a feeling that if I were a man, I would be insulted by the idea that society failed to teach me that rape is a serious and horrific crime, or that my sexual urges somehow prevented me from assimilating that lesson into my moral code. I would be utterly sick of being perceived as a pervert or a creep because I had the misfortune to flirt with a woman who wasn’t interested. I would hate the thought that my sisters, my daughters, my partners and my female friends spend their lives looking over their shoulder with fear and suspicion, scared of the intentions of perfectly decent men like me.
But I’m not a man. I’m a woman, and I still cross the street rather than cross paths with a strange man at night. I still balk at the idea of getting into a car with a man I don’t know. These are instinctive reactions, born of years of being told that strange men are dangerous. If I said I cross the street to avoid black people, instinctively or otherwise, I would be shouted down as a racist, and rightly so. By that reasoning, avoiding the male half of the population after dark is a sexist act. Yet this precautionary measure is viewed as not only socially acceptable, but as advisable and sensible.
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Rather than a society that teaches “Don’t Rape,” we have a society that teaches “Don’t Rape But She Was Pretty Drunk and She Didn’t Explicitly Say No and Look At What She Was Wearing.” This is problematic, because what we really want is a society where “Don’t Rape” means “Don’t Rape, Don’t Assault, Don’t Harass, Don’t Intimidate, Don’t Abuse, Don’t Take Advantage of a Situation, Whether You’re Male, Female or Anything In Between.
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The issue is complicated by the fact that women are not just told that strange men are dangerous; we also are told that is our responsibility to avoid them and keep them at bay. There is no fool-proof way to prevent rape or sexual assault, but society tells us that a woman would have to be completely devoid of common sense if she didn’t take every possible precaution to avoid a worst-case scenario. For many women, it is worth offending a hundred good men if she manages to avoid even one situation that could potentially end in rape. Or worse, that could end in her blaming herself for being raped, because society tells hers that she should have been more cautious.
The “Don’t Rape” part of the SlutWalk slogan is muddier and presented more of a challenge when I tried to figure out why it rang true with me initially. On the surface, “Don’t Rape” seems to me to fall under the general umbrella of “Don’t Be A Shitty Human Being,” along with other basics such as “Don’t Murder” and “Don’t Steal.” I think society at large does a pretty good job of instilling us with these basics at a young age.
To me, the concept that society fails to teach “Don’t Rape” is an attempt to articulate the fact that rape apologists exist. Victim-blaming exists. For many, a grey area of consent exists. A woman who has been raped will be interrogated about everything from her previous sexual partners to the absence of an extra two inches of skirt. In these cases, society does not teach that rape is unequivocally wrong and that the rapist must bear the full brunt of his actions. Instead, it teaches that there is an ambiguity of blame and responsibility, that there is a chance of getting off lightly, and even a chance that society will forget all about the rapist in the rush to find fault with the victim. As far as I can identify, this is the main reason that society does not teach “Don’t Rape” as well as it could. Rather than a society that teaches “Don’t Rape,” we have a society that teaches “Don’t Rape But She Was Pretty Drunk and She Didn’t Explicitly Say No and Look At What She Was Wearing.” This is problematic, because what we really want is a society where “Don’t Rape” means “Don’t Rape, Don’t Assault, Don’t Harass, Don’t Intimidate, Don’t Abuse, Don’t Take Advantage of a Situation, Whether You’re Male, Female or Anything In Between.
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Equally problematic is the fact that society doesn’t teach “Don’t Get Raped” so much as it teaches “Strange Men Are Dangerous.” This is damaging because men are not the problem. Rapists are the problem. It’s also particularly bizarre and misleading when it is estimated that 73% of rapes are committed by someone the victim already knows.* Nonetheless, the numbers indicate the vast majority of reported rapists are male and the majority of rape victims who come forward are female.* So how do we reconcile this, when the numbers reflect a vastly gendered divide?
I mean this as a genuine question. In an ideal world, a woman would be able to walk down the street wearing whatever she wants at any time of day or night, without any fear of rape. However, people utterly bereft of morality and empathy will always exist, so this ideal world is not attainable. In the meantime, women have the right to look out for themselves and prioritise their own safety. Equally, men have the right to walk down the street without being treated like rabid monsters just waiting for their chance. How can we teach women to be safe and savvy, without simultaneously demonising every man they come into contact with?
For the moment, how do we come up with a slogan that encapsulates this?
“Society teaches us All Strange Men Are Dangerous, instead of Look Out For Yourself Because There Are Always Going To Be Assholes Out There, But Remember That Society Has Your Back And The Hammer Of Justice Will Be Swift And Mighty In Your Defence, Because No One Should Ever Touch You Without Your Express Consent And That Goes For Everyone, Regardless of Gender.”
I know, I know, it’s not quite as catchy. But that’s why a slogan is just a slogan, and not a fully-formed argument. “Society teaches Don’t Get Raped rather than Don’t Rape” serves its purposes on protest signs and sandwich boards, but taken out of context, it can successfully stop conversation dead in its tracks. Many women wield it like a talisman, throwing it down as their last word, their core point in any discussion about rape. Many men view it as an offensive generalisation, and grow impatient trying to debate around it. A slogan should be a spring-board, not a full-stop. It should make you think, not tie up the argument. In any discussion concerned with breaking down stereotypes and forging new perspectives, there should be no full-stops. There should be fluid dialogue, honest opinions and respect even in disagreement. Above all, there should be a genuine attempt to understand experiences that are foreign to you, whether that experience is being called a creep or trying to shake off a man who is following you. These are the stories that cause people to change the way they think, but they can’t hear them if they are deafened by a slogan. More importantly, neither can you.
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photo used with permission by Michael Courier
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*From the U.S. Department of Justice National Crime Victimization Study, 2005.*In 1991, The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 91% of rape victims were female and 99% of rapists were male. It was also estimated that over 60% of rape cases go unreported, making it the most unreported serious crime in the US.
About Marianne Cassidy
I take strong issue with the statement, “But Remember That Society Has Your Back And The Hammer Of Justice Will Be Swift And Mighty In Your Defence”. This is patently not true. Even when rape is reported, the chance of conviction is low; even when convicted, the sentences are often paltry. A men’s magazine got in trouble recently for telling readers that if they raped somebody, they were unlikely to ever be punished. But they were right in their facts, if not in their advice. Until society really does have your back, until the hammer of justice really is swift and mighty, we can’t really expect anything else to change.
Yes, it’s obviously not true. If you read it in context, you will see I offered it up as an ideal to strive for, not my view of the actual state of affairs in the world today.
“Nonetheless, the numbers indicate the vast majority of reported rapists are male and the majority of rape victims who come forward are female.* So how do we reconcile this, when the numbers reflect a vastly gendered divide?”
The entire premise of your article is completely, 100% false.
If you care about the truth, study table 2.1 (page 18) and table 2.2 (page 19) of the CDC’s 2010 “National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)”:
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
Here are the facts. In 2010, the NISVS estimates that there were 2.537 million “intimate” assaults in the United States:
1.270,000 assaults of women, by men (female victim, male perpetrator)
1,267,000 assaults of men, by women (male victim, female perpetrator)
These refer to non-consensual forced intimacy.
Just to point out your inaccurate reading of those tables.
First: those numbers are only for victims. You’ll see the text on page 24 notes that the perpetrators against BOTH sexes are over 90% male.
Second: you are comparing different cells in those two tables. Compare only cells that have values in both tables, and ones that have more comparable aggregate values, for example the lifetime reported (ignoring various reporting biases). That shows a roughly 20-fold greater amount of female victims.
So: these numbers are fully in line with the premise that men are the primary perpetrators and that although male victimization has long been a serious and often suppressed issue (for a current and HUGE scale tragedy see the war-rapes in Africa that in some areas affect men *more* than women), in the US at least women are by far the the most victimized.
I love this article so much. It is spot on with the problems we have regarding rape in our culture today. We still whole-heartedly blame victims and tell people how they should behave in order to avoid being raped or how they should have behaved to avoid being raped.
And yes, the being scared of strange men was something I had internalized since elementary school. Fortunately, I appear to have mostly grown out of that, but I think it is also because I have had zero negative experiences with sexual harassment, stalking, or what-have-you. I think the only negative interaction I have had was once when I was in France and some drunk guy started yelling at me about my yellow umbrella. Weird, but not sexual or anything. However, I think I have just been lucky in this regard. But negative experiences, street harassment and stalking, would just solidify the “beware of strange men” fear. :/
“We still whole-heartedly blame victims ..”
You are right. I have lots experience with this.
Strange men can be suspicious and potentially damaging…but the men who damaged me the most were those who were closest to me and in a position of power and trust: teachers and mentors….
Rapists wear many faces…some of them you know….
Although certainly effective from a provocative standpoint, this statement is simply untrue because it implies that our society condones rape. Which it absolutely does not. There are stiff prison sentences enforced for rapists of either gender, and we do not live in a society where you get a pat on the back for a particularly “good rape”. Growing up in Africa, and having friends and family in the Middle East, I know that there are situations, sadly, where the above statement can be taken literally, in context, to be true. Where, in fact, rape is applauded, and societies ostracize, further punish, and often kill victims of rape as opposed to the rapists themselves. Mostly women, yes – but also children and (mostly homosexual) men of both sexes. Perhaps the ignorant person above, holding the sign, should have spent some time in countries where “honor gang rapes” of young women and children occur on a daily basis, are legal, and are fully condoned by the governments involved. Where a young teenaged woman whose head scarf accidentally blows off in the wind is publicly raped by her male family members before being publicly stoned to death by members of her community for causing shame to her family (true story, and very sadly not uncommon). Perhaps s/he should have researched the all to common practice in South and West Africa where men inflicted with HIV buy young girls from their village elders to rape in the twisted belief that sex with a virgin will cure them of their disease. Are these things lauded in our society? Thankfully, they most certainly do not.These are a few real examples of societies that teach “Do not get raped” in the context of the sign displayed above.
Unfortunately – rape happens. In every society. But implying that as a society we condone the act is sickening. It is equally as important to teach “Do not get raped” as it is to teach “Do not rape”. As children we are taught to always look both ways before crossing the street. Why? Do they not teach drivers to ALWAYS watch out for and never hit pedestrians? So shouldn’t we then as a society stop teaching our children to look for oncoming traffic before traipsing out into the street. Shouldn’t our society teach “Do not hit pedestrians” rather than “Be aware and do not get hit by a car”? Of course not – ridiculous! YES – thankfully our society teaches “Do not get raped” – but NOT in the context stated above. Any good parent, teacher or caregiver to a child , be it boy or girl, should strive to empower that child with the information and skills needed for them to navigate our world, with all its pitfalls. Thankfully – despite the uninformed opinion above – our society also very certainly teaches “Do not rape”. The majority of people in our society view rape as the heinous crime it is, and importantly our government and laws reflect that. Unfortunately, this will not – it cannot – wipe out rape completely, which is why empowering individuals with the education about how best to protect oneself from the predators that sadly will always exist is just as vitally important as it is to maintain our views as a society about rape as a crime.
Your comparison of the situation in the Middle East to the situation in the US proves nothing and weakens your argument. The situation in the Middle East is terrible and certainly nobody condones it. While the situation in the US may be better than that of the Middle East, that does not mean that the US society doesn’t still fail at teaching “don’t rape” as opposed to “don’t get raped.” Just because a society has it worse doesn’t make the problem any less relevant. The opinion above is not uninformed.
You ask the rhetorical question: “Shouldn’t our society teach “Do not hit pedestrians” rather than “Be aware and do not get hit by a car”?” You answered it as “of course not,” and I could not disagree more. We ABSOLUTELY should teach “don’t hit pedestrians” rather than “don’t get hit by a car.” I never drive through an intersection without checking for pedestrians whereas I’ve often walked across the street without looking both ways. Is it smart? No, but our society certainly has taught me to be much more vigilant about pedestrians as a driver than as a pedestrian about cars. Why is that? Because pedestrians always have the right of way. If I’m the victim of a car accident as a pedestrian, I don’t get questions of “did you look both ways? were you talking on your cell phone? did you make eye contact with the driver?” The guilt is assumed upon the driver who should’ve been more careful.
“The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 91% of rape victims were female and 99% of rapists were male. . .”
That is not true if you properly define rape. According to the latest CDC survey, 4.8% of all men have been “made to penetrate” and 79.2% of the perpetrators were women. Examples of “made to penetrate” are: a woman who has sex with a man who is passed-out drunk, or a woman who forces a man to have sex with her through blackmail or physical force. There is some confusion due to the fact that their definition of rape excluded “made to penetrate” and only included men who had been penetrated. That was far less common (1.4% of men) and was mostly perpetrated by men. However, if you include “made to penetrate” as rape, which you should, since it is forced sex, the majority of male rape victims were raped by women. You can read the report at:
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
Here are direct quotes from the report:
“Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported that they were made to penetrate someone else during their lifetime”
“For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion (83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (53.1%).”
Here are some stories from male victims: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/v73r4/men_who_have_been_raped_by_women_can_you_tell_us/
In response to the “Society teaches…” slogan:
First, the “don’t get raped” line is unfair to push. I would amend it to “don’t knowingly set yourself up for rape.” A man who has it in his mind to abuse a woman will presumably (attempt to) do so regardless. But such men still respond to certain stimuli. A woman can reduce her chances of getting raped by minding a few key points. Sadly, these points aren’t absolutes, but they can help.
1. As I understand the reports, rape isn’t always about sex as it is about power and control. Even so, it manifests itself through sexual behavior. It’s no mystery that men are deeply affected by provocative clothing. A woman who wears such is NOT, in my mind, to blame if she is raped…however it does not put her in the safest of situations as far as she can help it. After all, a woman dressed modestly can still be raped, too, but I would speculate not as likely.
2. Be mindful of the type of men/people she is around. No doubt, a man who is likely to be a rapist is not going to have a bright neon shirt that screams, “I’m a rapist!” This is why women need to learn (especially from parents when younger) how to rightly judge character and mannerisms. A man who leads respectfully and does not pressure or entice a woman into compromising situations us likely to be a safer bet.
3. And that leads to another thing a woman can do: don’t put herself into comprising situations. Such as going out alone at night, especially in dark and/or isolated areas. Don’t have premarital sex. Etc…
4. Carry protection. Since being attacked can’t be 100% prevented, a good defense is a good offense. Carry mace, a gun, a mini-foghorn…a brick in the purse…a “Men In Tights” chasity belt.
5. Teach their sons and daughters how to respect each other. This is best taught when a mother and father demonstrate such love and respect that the children can properly emulate that into adulthood.
Women are victims of rape. It’s a sad truth. But they CAN help themselves to not be.
However, that’s only half the story. I alluded to sons a second ago.
Teaching men how to be men includes teaching the healthiest views on sex and what a man is expected to do in regards to trading a woman with respect and dignity. Love, discipline, and an on-going living example is critical to tempering a boy’s mind and body.
If we focus on only preventative measures, we miss the opportunity to address the very thing that would make prevention virtually obsolete.
If we focus only on teaching boys to be men of good character, we miss the need to help women defend themselves when the boys/men reject the teaching.
Thus, I teach both.
What do people think of men who drug and raps women they are in a relationship with as a form of punishment or revenge? What should be done with men such as these and how do you stop them? Are they psychopaths?
Well, the same as what was written above (by Michael Miller)
Women are victims of rape. It’s a sad truth. But they CAN help themselves to not be.
I can only advice women to choose their friends carefully. Why do so many women socialize with thugs and psychopaths, while plenty of honest men have big problems to find even a nice girlfriend?
What do these women expect from those men? They often say, they are so exciting…
Men who work regularly, keep their life-style non-violent, do not waste money for drugs etc. are often considered as ‘boring’ and rejected.
We are all adults and responsible for our own decisions, it’s wrong to keep only men responsible.
Sorry, but if a woman makes a bad choice regarding her partners it’s her problem, and not my problem because I am a man.