Trigger warning for discussion of rape.
Toxic Masculinity
Thomas at Yes Means Yes quotes from a paper by Lisak, the groundbreaking rape researcher, about the characteristics of male rapists (unfortunately, I am unaware of similar studies about female rapists): “more angry at women, more motivated by the need to dominate and control women, more impulsive and disinhibited in their behavior, more hyper-masculine in their beliefs and attitudes, less empathic and more antisocial.”
The lesson here for masculists should be simple.
If a man believes that he cannot care about other people’s emotions, because if he did he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes that he must have power over other people, especially women, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes he must reinforce his masculinity, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes he must be angry, must be impulsive, must be dominant, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever…
That man is more likely to rape people. Period.
In short, gender-policing causes rape. You want to end the rape of women? Work for men to have freedom from gender roles– even the limited freedom that women have right now.
Disrespect for Boundaries
Our culture is fucked right the fuck up about boundaries.
Let us consider a hug. Pat doesn’t like to be hugged for whatever reason– could be anything from childhood abuse to wanting to save physical contact for people Pat really likes to a simple distaste. Robin, on the other hand, is a very touchy-feely person and loves hugs. One day, Robin hugs Pat without permission. Pat freezes and very politely asks that Robin not hug her.
What’s the reaction we’re likely to hear?
“Why don’t you like hugs? Hugs are great! Everyone loves hugs! Come on, just hug me once and I promise I won’t make you again. You’re so weird that you don’t like hugs. Are you sure you aren’t just making this up? Come on, everyone likes hugs, don’t be so ridiculous.” Occasionally other people will get involved in the social pressure to hug.
We systematically disrespect people’s boundaries, and then we expect people to be assertive when they have boundaries in bed. We tell women they’re being mean, or crazy, or stuck-up, or angry, when they strongly assert who they do or do not want to touch their bodies, and then we expect them to yell and kick and scream and punch when someone is trying to touch them in a different way they don’t want. We expect women to care about other people’s feelings and their pride and be diplomatic instead of saying “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME,” and then we are surprised when women care about other people’s feelings and their pride and are diplomatic instead of punching the rapist in the face.
Men, we cut out the middleman just think they’re being mean or crazy or stuck-up or angry in sex and non-sex. You don’t want a perfectly attractive girl to give you a blowjob? What, are you a fag or something?
Rape Is Really Important, That’s Why We’re Ignoring It
But our culture does care about rape.
Most people, if you ask them, will say that they are against rape and look at you funny for asking the question. Rapists are incredibly evil scary monsters, you see. They jump out of bushes to hold young screaming women down and force them to have sex, and then the women are traumatized forever. They also probably have claws and pointy teeth and say MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA a lot.
Hell, even rape apologists agree rape is bad. They’ll just say things like “all these people who just had someone continue sex with them after they said no are taking attention away from real rape survivors!” who are, presumably, the people who had a rapist jump out of a bush at them.
Our culture hates rape– and that’s why so many people question rape survivors.
Because rapists aren’t incredibly evil scary monsters. A rapist could be your best friend, the guy who sat behind you in high school algebra, your parent, your sibling, your lover. A rapist can be the handsome football star; a rapist can be the beauty queen cheerleader. A rapist can be a feminist who says all the right things about anti-oppression and bodily autonomy. A rapist could be the lead singer of an indie rock band, an Oscar-winning filmmaker, an activist for free speech and transparency in government. The only thing that makes rapists different from ordinary people is that they rape people.
And that’s scary. Because if rapists are ordinary people, not monsters, it means that someone you know and like and respect can be a rapist. It means that you might even be a rapist!
So people try to minimize rape. Newspapers say “sexual intercourse” instead of “alleged rape” or feature rape stories in the Odd News. Judges at rape trials sometimes ban the use of the word “rape” as unfairly prejudicial. Survivors describe their rapist continuing sex with them after they say no as “gray rape” or “not really rape.” People a rape survivor discloses to say you must have enjoyed it or but you were leading him on or it wasn’t rape, it was just sex you regretted the next day or well, he’s a nice guy and you don’t want to ruin his life. Whoopi Goldberg claims that Roman Polanski raping a thirteen-year-old girl who was too drunk and high to consent and saying no as “not rape-rape” (no, I am STILL not over that). Police officers and prosecutors and judges and juries are disbelieving or unmotivated or victim-blaming.
Rape survivors’ behavior after the rape is policed. If they didn’t report it immediately because they were in shock, if they didn’t report it at all because they didn’t want to relive the experience, if they were in denial, if they have a happy sex life afterward, if they don’t seem traumatized enough, they’re not a “real” rape survivor, so we don’t have to face the fact that rapists are ordinary people, often people we like and admire.
And the vast majority of rapists– acquaintance rapists– rape again and again and again, and never get put in prison or suffer any consequences for their actions, as their victims suffer from trauma, PTSD, substance abuse, problems with intimacy, flashbacks…
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to quit the human race and become a squid. Squid never do this kind of shit.
Oh yes, this, on the hugs thing. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a problem until I got to college and met a few people who were not okay with random hugs — anyone who hugged them without getting consent was lucky if they *didn’t* get punched in the face. Ever since then, I’ve been careful to telegraph my intent and give clear warning before I hug someone, with enough time that they can step back, shake their head, or tell me no thanks.
Squids have their own kind of fucked up shit. “Skipping the entire challenge of courtship, some species of squid store their sperm in complex arrowlike packets they can unexpectedly unleash on the female like a volley of spoogemissiles, fleeing back into the depths before she can even friendzone him. The female might not even notice he was ever there, except for the spunk-filled needles now drilling into her body. The literal cock rockets first adhere to the female’s skin with a cementlike secretion, then release digestive enzymes to drive themselves deeper and deeper. Whether or not she was ready to… Read more »
A.T:Barnum: Whaddya know, women are as a group no more human(e) than men as a group. They as women have no special in-build moral compass men lack which prevents the women from taking advantage of a situation when they see the opportunity to get something they want.
It’s actually strange how what happened to him parallels exactly what happened to the man in the Salon article. It almost sounds like female date rapists have an M.O. all their own…and it’s not all that different from the one we’re used to hearing about in males…
A male friend of mine was raped by a female in college. He was drunk and on drugs and he woke up to her stimulating him orally then mounting him. He did not actively fight because he was stunned and too intoxicated. He did not know how to feel afterward, but he was confused and upset. One thing he never did was call this what it was. It pains me now to think of how often this could happen, with men completely unwilling and often unable to even identify their experience as rape. I can’t even imagine what they’d go… Read more »
@Tamen: You wrote: “Discussions around alcohol and consent is always exclusively centered around women – men who are very drunk are indoctrinated to have no other option than to regret that they didn’t remember the sex they had if they find out they’ve had sex during a black-out. The possibility that they were raped is just not on the radar.” I’d go one step further and say that if the man who had sex was really really drunk, it is pretty probable that the partner also was drunk, which, according to some models about “alcohol and consent” would mean that… Read more »
Here you go, here’s the kind of denial and stonewalling men face trying to make a rape acsuation. Here’s Tracy Clark-Flory wrting a level-headed statement of the obvious, and look at the disgusting comments and rape apology she gets.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/02/male_rape
“BlackHumor is a man, I believe. He used the name ‘Brian’ before and I’m pretty sure referred to himself as a man.” Well then I take it back. Since he is a man, he sounds like he is white knighting about rape. “Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater. ” I can think of lots of reasons women would be reluctant to report rape. One is simple denial as a coping mechanism. One is fear of treatment by LE. One is fear of stigma. Now let’s look… Read more »
Hm, is my above comment still in moderation or can people see it? Either way, I’m not sure if it actually bothers me when feminists focus on women’s issues. As I do understand how irritating it is to be talking about an important issue and then have someone show up to say “yeah, your issues are my issues so let’s talk about my issues”. However, if they’re going to bring those issues up they should handle it better and listen to reasonable* critique and if they aren’t going to bring those issues up then they should allow others to create… Read more »
Patriarchy Hurts Men Too. All too often used in the sense: “Here’s a small bone, now shut up and let us get back to the stuff that matters”.
BlackHumour: “”@Danny: But sad as it is that’s* still better than the rest of the world. I’m not denying that a theoretical really pro-man movement wouldn’t be better, but aside from occasional wingnuts feminists do a much better job in the pro-man department than pretty much all of culture outside feminism.”” There are plenty of people who do not ID as feminists who are pro-men. Feminists do not have exclusive claim on this or any other social issue. But I will say that feminists are a sizable group and they do in fact control a good portion of liberal/socially progresive… Read more »
@Danny: What is a PHMT?
@ Black Humor
Remember those studies in which, by the definition of rape, many more women were raped then were willing to call it rape? That was because it didn’t fit the rape ‘narrative.’
Now let’s apply that phenom to men. Very few men believe rape of men by women(of any type) fits the rape ‘narrative.’
BlackHumor: Just about about every women think that they can be raped, most men believe a woman can be raped. Very many, if not most men don’t think it’s possible for them to be raped (outside of prison) and many women don’t think it’s possible for a man to be raped (outside of prison) and not at all by a woman. This is the main reason why I think many men would not call what happened to them for rape while a woman in the same situation would. The rape-awareness programs so many have been through in school/college have failed… Read more »
@ Black Humor “Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater.” How would you know? As I said in a previous post no boys abused by women reported their abuse to anyone. 3% of girls did. I can very well see that the predominant cultural attitude which decriminalizes female sexual victimization of men would tend to reduce reporting of male victims far more then female victims. Anyway, if you’re quoting the NVAWS stats they don’t even capture female-on-male rape. It’s absolutely absurd to argue that there wouldn’t be… Read more »
@Jim: Like Typhon says, I am a man. And I know there are huge pressures on men not to report rape. But there are ALSO huge pressures on women not to report rape. Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater. (Oh, as an aside, the survey I cited did not measure formal reports, it measured how many people who the survey was administered to said they were raped. So the thing relevant to this survey is being able to say that what happened to you was rape.… Read more »
BlackHumor: (As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?) Hell I’m not an MRA and I have a hard time seeing the pro-men angle of feminists a lot of the time. Frankly I still think its a dice roll as to whether any given feminist will acknowledge that men can be raped. But while I will say the odds are in favor of finding a feminist that can acknowledge that men can be… Read more »
@ Jim
BlackHumor is a man, I believe. He used the name ‘Brian’ before and I’m pretty sure referred to himself as a man.
“I don’t see how they could report rape at 1/5 the rate of women if they weren’t actually raped less.” Of course you don’t , BH – you weren’t socialized as a man. You operate under different rules and you don’t know the rules for being a man. If you are raped and you tell someone, that will not lead them to think you have stopped being a woman. How willing would you be to come forward if your criminal complaint would socially negate your entire gender identity? How likely would you be to come forward if you knew that… Read more »
“@Ollie: Using feminist as an insult = automatically not talking to you. (As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)” BH, I don’t see Ollie using feminsit as an insult here: “The “facts” and limited details that feminists are given to work with, marginalize male rape victims and protect female rapists…. so you might not be consciously marginalizing MRV’s but by arguing the feminist depiction of reality relating to rape, you are in… Read more »
@BlackHumor:
all right, I’ll buy that if thats what you meant, but thats not what you actually said.
@ OrangeYouGlad “For clarifiation I find feminism too exclusivist as it tends to focus heavily on Straight, White, Middle Class, Cissexual, Cisgender FAABs of good physical and mental health.” The best evidence of this? The rhetoric around the wage gap. The wage gap, rather then being about the gap in wealth between the poor and the rich, or the gap in wages between people of color and white people, is about the gap in wages between men and women. Incidentally the greatest ‘victims’ of the wage gap are, as you put it, Straight, White Middle Class, etc. women whose husbands’… Read more »
And for further clarification I am not an MRA either. So, they also aren’t the only ones skeptical of the broader feminist approach to “social justice”.
BlackHumour: “”(As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)”” People like myself who are not feminist* but still recognise men can be raped? ‘Recognising male rape victims’ is hardly some sort of special status exclusive to feminists and being feminist isn’t necessarily a good predictor of someone being “pro-men” or admitting to the existence of male rape victims (that’s a fairly recent development and a good number don’t discuss it or gloss over… Read more »
very well said.