Nobody’s in favor of rape, but it keeps on happening. What’s not working?
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The first reaction most people have, upon being told about the concept of rape culture, is to dismiss it. It’s intuitively obvious to them that our society doesn’t condone rape or consider it a trivial matter. Very much the opposite: rape is seen as the worst crime in the world, rapists are considered inhuman monsters, rape is often talked about as worse than murder.
What nobody wants to admit is that those assumptions and attitudes are rape culture.
The key to understanding rape culture is that, in our society, nobody (outside a few MRA bloggers, who are beneath consideration) says “Hey, rape is just fine and dandy!” They say “Rape is awful, it’s vile, it’s the worst crime a human can commit, I am totally opposed to rape.” Yet somehow, when any actual case of rape is put before them, they work to find reasons why it wasn’t really rape, it was something else instead. Those last two sentences depend on and support each other.
One of the most common occurrences when a woman has been raped is that her entire sexual history is brought up and used against her. The point of this attack is not that rape is okay, it’s that she’s a slut so she must have consented, right? Therefore it’s not rape.
When guys are told “When a woman says no, she means try harder,” it doesn’t mean that rape is okay. It means that a woman is still consenting even if she says no. Therefore it’s not rape.
When a man is raped, he’s often outright laughed at. Everyone knows guys are always horny, there’s no way a man wouldn’t consent to sex. Therefore it’s not rape.
Perhaps most often, we see the character or friends of an accused rapist being held up as proof that they can’t possibly be guilty. “I’ve known that guy for years, and he’s no rapist!” “How could someone think he’s a rapist? He volunteers at the food bank!” and so on and so forth. Rapists are inhuman monsters, everyone knows that, and this person’s not an inhuman monster. Therefore he’s not a rapist. Therefore it’s not rape.
It’s weird to have to say this to adults, but let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as monsters. Every person who’s ever been raped has been raped by a human being. No exceptions. Dehumanizing rapists actually helps perpetuate the very culture it tries to oppose.
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There’s a certain platonic ideal of rape, a model of what it’s supposed to look like. It was most clearly described, in disturbingly specific detail, by a state senator named Bill Napoli, who thought he was discussing abortion policy:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated.
That, our cultural subconscious is vaguely aware, is what “legitimate rape” looks like. The further from that image that any given rape gets, the more likely that we’ll pull out our excuses for how it’s not really rape.
What’s more, even anti-rape campaigns very often buy into that image. All those lines about how women should carry their keys sticking out between their fingers like Wolverine, all those slogans about women being afraid to walk down the street; they’re all based on defending against Bill Napoli’s legitimate rape.
It’s weird to have to say this to adults, but let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as monsters.
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This can’t be repeated enough: most real-life rapes don’t look anything like that. If you’re raped, it will probably be by someone you know, in a place that you usually feel safe. It will definitely not be by a monster, so stop keeping an eye out for monsters. Most likely it will be someone fairly likable in most respects, as most people are. You might have been laughing at their jokes right up until they assaulted you.
It is very, very common for people who’ve just been raped to have a hard time admitting that that’s what happened. They’ve heard all the reasons why something doesn’t really count as rape. They’ve probably said or thought some of those rationalizations themselves. So if all those other cases weren’t really rape, theirs must not be either, right?
Then, too, rape is the worst crime in the world, the most horrible, traumatic, life-destroying thing that can happen, right? So if they don’t feel completely traumatized and destroyed, it couldn’t really have been rape, right?
And the person that raped them isn’t a monster. Maybe they still like their rapist, even love them. Maybe they don’t want to permanently label that person as an inhuman monster. Maybe they just don’t want to accuse someone who’s well-liked and will have an army of defenders arguing that they’re not a monster. Maybe they don’t want to be accused of lying because after all, it obviously wasn’t really rape.
So another man or woman just keeps their mouth shut about what happened, tries to file it away and forget about it. And another rape ends up being condoned by a society that vociferously does not condone rape. And nobody wants to talk about how this happens, because saying that rapists are human beings, and human beings commit rape, sounds like being insufficiently anti-rape. We would rather condone actual rape than appear to not oppose imaginary rape strongly enough.
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Photo—fruity monkey/Flickr
Ace. That’s the ticket! She couldn’t help herself.
Danny,
I think I could find the story, but I suppose most folks have heard of it. A guy is blacked-out, comatose drunk. Not the knee-walking, commode-hugging, snot-slinging drunk. Really wasted. A woman performed oral sex on him and, after another encounter, talked to an “adviser” and charged the first guy with assault. He was expelled.
What was he wearing?
I think something that needs to be settle is what exactly is rape. And let’s be honest its not just people who don’t agree with the idea of rape culture that make this a problem. We have cases where a man and woman both drunk have sex and only the guy is charged with rape. We have cases where two under age kids have sex and only the guy is charged with rape. We have cases where a man and woman have sex and then somewhere down the line the woman decides it was rape and the guy is just… Read more »
Noah. Couple of points: First, ref your last sentence, and a bunch of others, lose the “we”, GMP style book notwithstanding. “We” is first person plural. It means the speaker—which is you—and at least one other person is doing this. So I suggest you stop, that would be a help, and if you know this other guy, get him to stop. That’s two. I never started, so that’s three and we’re on our way. We oppose murder and yet it still happens. Why should rape, or any other crime, be any different? We do not bring up a woman’s sexual… Read more »
“The key to understanding rape culture is that, in our society, nobody (outside a few MRA bloggers, who are beneath consideration) says “Hey, rape is just fine and dandy!”
EL James portrays rape in her famous books and women by the million think it’s “romantic”. If feminists want to eliminate rape culture, they need to start by showing women that rape is still rape, even if he is a billionaire.
Personally, I think murder is worse than rape.
But sometimes I seem to be pretty lonely in that opinion.
“The key to understanding rape culture is that, in our society, nobody (outside a few MRA bloggers, who are beneath consideration) says ‘Hey, rape is just fine and dandy!'”
This is just pointless/baseless slander and you know it. MRAs are the ONLY people out there treating male rape as a serious problem that needs addressing. By making this baseless comment you are hurting rape victims and contributing to rape culture.
“it’s that she’s a slut so she must have consented, right? Therefore it’s not rape.”
“a woman is still consenting even if she says no. Therefore it’s not rape.”
“there’s no way a man wouldn’t consent to sex. Therefore it’s not rape.”
“Rapists are inhuman monsters, everyone knows that, and this person’s not an inhuman monster. Therefore he’s not a rapist. Therefore it’s not rape.”
Thanks for getting at what I’ve been trying to say for years. Rape culture erases rape by trying to change the definition of what rape really is.
What I have a problem with is people who think that “rape culture” is some kind of organized conspiracy by men against women, like “patriarchy.”
Well said. I think people also want to believe that rape could never happen to them, so when it occurs in situations that were supposed to be safe, they have to deny its validity in order to convince themselves that they are in the clear.
“(outside a few MRA bloggers, who are beneath consideration)” Why do you have to use MRA as an insult as if MRA’s are totally ok with sexual violence. Funny how it was the MRA’s that made many of us aware of the actual level of sexual violence against men when most feminists were pretty much silent about those CDC statistics. In fact I saw MANY MRA’s discuss them WELL before feminists even noticed, but no “a few MRA bloggers” think it’s just dandy. Which MRA’s are they? Are you sure they are MRA’s and not redpillers or PUA’s which for… Read more »
The way I read it was that he used MRAs (noting that a FEW of them seem to think rape is ok) because people are familiar with that situation in light of the attention that group has gotten over the last few years. If he had said “a few feminist bloggers” someone would be upset about that. If he’d said “a few…” anything else, the same would have resulted. He simply chose one option of many to illustrate the point, as it would have been awkward and clunky to include the entire list and say “a few MRA bloggers, a… Read more »
Trouble is that collectively the strawman’s all end up creating this culture of hatred towards MRA’s as a monolithic group of misogynists where they represent all that is bad in gender equality, where they don’t want equality but women back in the kitchen or whatever. They will never get a good break because so much ignorance is thrown about in their name by popular mainstream sites. Hell the Elliott Rodger guy was linked to them when he wasn’t an MRA and the MRA reddit was completely against his actions.
The way I read it was that he used MRAs (noting that a FEW of them seem to think rape is ok) because people are familiar with that situation in light of the attention that group has gotten over the last few years. If he had said “a few feminist bloggers” someone would be upset about that. If he’d said “a few…” anything else, the same would have resulted. He chose the one that he knew would he could get away with. He simply chose one option of many to illustrate the point, as it would have been awkward and… Read more »