Rape and Feminism, Page 3

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There was a time when women were not allowed to vote or hold office, could not sign legal documents or legally own property, when they themselves were legally considered the property of either father or husband.  In fact this was true in most cultures for most of history, but there are practically no people left (in modern Western society at least) who would advocate back-pedaling quite that far.
Much more recently, discrimination based on gender was legal, and, due to the legal definition of rape, a wife was never entitled to say no to her husband.  This is clearly wrong, basically amounting to human slavery.  But these too were changed a (less) long time ago.  The push for universal suffrage, sexual freedom, women's liberation and equality, access to birth control, and equal protection was almost entirely successful.
In some ways, particularly as relates to sex, the push for change has continued even past the point of equality, to the point where it is the responsibility of men to ensure that women never feel the least uncomfortable, and never need to stand up for themselves in anyway. 
This is a modern version of the sentiment behind the old "women and children first".  If it were not patronizing enough of a concept to suggest that women are defenseless and must be taken care of by the men around, that line makes it clear by overtly comparing adult females to children.
Because there was once a time when male employees might feel entitled to slap a female co-worker on the butt as she passed by, we have swung in the opposite extreme to say that any discussion that involves sex in any way, in the presence of a person who might be offended by it, potentially constitutes sexual harassment.
There is a cautionary video shown to military recruits in which a woman goes to a bar with friends, gets drunk, decides to go home with a guy she just met, gets on his bed, takes off her clothes, makes out with him, and then more or less during the process of starting sex makes a half-hearted indication that she would rather not - and in the analysis afterward in addition to the obvious guilt of the man who actually did the actions, her friends are called out for not having forcibly protected her from her own actions by insisting that she not go home with him.  The only part of the story that suggests she could have done something differently to prevent what happened is to moderate the intake of alcohol.  At no point is it suggested that every single decision she made was just plain stupid, because, of course, that would be "blaming the victim" and "justifying the rape". 

In a sense, this idea is the same old ideas, just reinterpreted.  In the past women were assumed to have no agency, and that was reflected in their not being able to sign legal documents on their own behalf.  It was their male partner’s job to take care of them.  Today, it is the responsibility of a woman’s male partner to understand what she wants when she is unclear, and to ensure she doesn’t do anything while drunk that she might later regret.


The popular line used to be that rape was not about sex, but about power and dominance, but as people came to realize that the masked man in an alley with a knife was actually pretty uncommon and the majority of non-consensual sex actually occurs in established relationships, the popular conversation began to focus more on ways to justify calling an act “rape” (with all its sub-conscious primordial implications) when there was no violence involved.  The emergence of date-rape-drugs provided a perfect segue into the idea of date rape, and showed a potential way a person could be forced to submit without violence. 
Only problem is, as it turns out almost none of the people who think they have been slipped something actually have been.

The vast majority of the time, a person who has sex while drunk and regrets it upon being sober is under no illusion that they must have been slipped drugs.  Of those few who do believe that, almost none of them were either.
Of all the people who get checked up thinking they have been drugged, approximately 98% of them haven’t been (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_rape_drug#Frequency_of_occurrence). And that’s those who actually suspect it strongly enough to seek treatment.  When you filter out all the people who don’t even suspect it, and then those who think maybe there is a chance, but maybe not, and then finally filter the remaining pool by 98%, people slipping drugs into other people’s drinks is a truly rare occurrence.

All that's left is definitions of what constitutes lack of consent have to be changed to accommodate the predetermined idea that anytime a woman concedes to sex when it isn't her preference she was actually raped. 
That in turn means introducing the standard that instead of having to make any effort to actively express a lack of consent, anything shy of explicit consent automatically implies that lack. 

If that wasn't clear, let me use a non-sexual analogy.  Say someone were to say to me "your sweater looks soft, may I touch it?" and in response I just shrug my shoulders and say "meh".  If then they touch my arm to feel the sweater, no one would consider that assault.  Any reasonable person in that circumstance who did not want to be touched would actually say "no", and/or would actively move away. 
In fact, if we had just gone shopping together, and we were having a conversation about sweater softness, it would generally be considered socially acceptable to reach out and touch me without even asking first, and unless they persisted despite me specifically saying "don't touch me" or pulling my arm away, no one would consider this assault either.
For some reason, though, a (conscious) woman is able to make literally zero effort, verbally or physically, to avoid something which she supposedly does not want to happen to her, and we accept that this constitutes rape simply because she states after the fact that she didn't want it.  No reasonable person does something they genuinely do not want to do unless they feel threatened.  In any aspect in life, a person's genuine intent and desires are to be found in their actions, not in their words.


  Comment: "Danny says:

“Being drunk was not an excuse for either party. The responsibility was not on her to say “stop”, it was on him to ask if it’s okay before he did it. This part is simple.”

I have to admit a bit of confusion. This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen that while drinking does not shift responsibility in a situation like this it seems that in the end the responsibility is always put on the guy.
Ideally I would think that in a situation where some sort of substance is used the initiator of the sex act is the one that should be held responsible (which I would agree with) however that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s always on the guy no matter what. As if the woman’s responsibility can actually be absolved by some means but in no circumstance can the guy’s responsibility ever be absolved.
That’s the mixed signal that I have a problem with."



Each person is, or at least should be, responsible for the actions they take - as well as responsible for any actions they fail to take.  Being drunk is indeed not an excuse for either party.  Indeed the responsibility is on him to ask before he did it.  And it also IS her responsibility to say stop.  To absolve her of that responsibility is to equate her to a child, which is not only inaccurate, but demeaning.
 
People have said - rightly - that being drunk does not let the rapist off the hook for their actions, esp. since they voluntarily got drunk in the first place.  In case of assault, being intoxicated may be a mitigating factor for a jury, but it is still assault.  In the case of an accident when driving a car, far from being an excuse, the fact of being drunk is what turns it from a simple mistake into a crime. People are rarely prosecuted for car accidents if they were not running red lights or speeding excessively.  People are expected to be aware of the effect alcohol has on the mind, and to take any necessary precautions in advance of getting drunk in the first place.  

So, having established that being drunk is not an acceptable excuse for one's behavior, then any time a woman gets so drunk that she is incapable of clearly saying "no", she - and she alone - is responsible for that fact. Is it manipulative of a guy to offer to buy a girl a shot - while deliberately moderating his own intake, with the explicit intent of "loosening her up"?  Sure is.  Is it coercive?  Not unless he threatens to harm her if she doesn't accept the offer.



Let’s say you go on vacation for a month.  Let’s say, in the hustle to catch your flight you not only forget to lock the front door, you forget to even close it.  When you get back, someone stole all your stuff.  They didn't actually "break in", because the door was open, but that is not an invitation to steal, so the person who takes your stuff is still a criminal.  The fact that you made it easy for them in no way mitigates their guilt.  The police will still show up and file a report, and if you are lucky they might even put some effort into following up on it.  However there is a good chance that your insurance company is not going to compensate your losses, because, although it is the fault of the person who did it, the fact that it happened was significantly contributed to by your own negligence.

Lets say you are in a bar, and you find some big burly drunk guy, hanging out with his friends, and you accuse him of being stupid and ugly, of being gay, and of having sex with his mother, and you throw in some racial epitaphs for good measure.  Except you don't say any of it quite so politely as that.  There is a reasonably high chance that you are going to be punched in the face.  This is assault and battery.  It is not ok.  It is the responsibility of every competent adult to control their own anger and not be violent except in self defense.  However, your actions were absolutely a contributing factor to the outcome.  In fact, the law even takes this into account - its called "fighting words" or provocation  and while it does not absolve the attacker of guilt, it may be considered a mitigating factor for a jury, and in fact, the victim themselves can be prosecuted for having used those words to provoke the attack in the first place.

Lets say you open your wallet after a meal at a restaurant, and you leave $20 to cover the bill and the tip.  Unbeknownst to you, another 2 bills fall out as well.  If the waiter keeps all the money, is he a thief, because he reasonably should have guessed that leaving them there was not an invitation for you to take them, (since it is not customary to leave a 350% tip)?  Or is it on you to be more careful, and not do things which another person might potentially misinterpret as an invitation?  Since it was an accident, one which you were fully unaware of, you did not in fact give consent for the waiter to take your money.  But given the context, is it entirely unreasonable of him to assume he had it?

It is the responsibility of anyone who drives a car to pay attention to the road, and be aware of pedestrians and cyclists.  So long as a bike rider was following the law, there is no excuse for a driver to hit them.  From a philosophical or moral perspective, it is entirely the driver's "fault" for their own negligence.  From a practical perspective, it is recommended that cyclists wear a helmet and bright clothing.  No one ever suggests that advising cyclists to wear a bright jacket is "blaming the victim" of bicycle accidents.  It is just acknowledging reality.  If your goal is to keep cyclists safe, you don't tell them "you have a right to wear all black clothing and expect not to get hit by cars."  It is technically true - they do have that right, but saying so is not helpful.  Assigning blame after the fact does nothing to make it less likely to happen in the future.

Its probably obvious where I am going with this. I ask that, just for a moment, you try to withhold any preconceptions, put away any righteous indignation, and honestly ask yourself if someone who left home for a month with the front door wide open, or someone who made nasty direct insults to a stranger, were at least partially at fault for the crimes which are perpetrated against them.
Then consider a woman who voluntarily goes home with someone she just met, (whether with or without voluntarily getting drunk first), voluntarily makes out with him, voluntarily takes off her own clothes and voluntarily gets into bed with him, does not explicitly “consent” to sex, but is physically coerced to have sex anyway.  If we take the assumption that women are fully competent people, who are intelligent and have free-will and the agency to enact it, then how is it that in this situation we are suppose to pretend that her own choices played no factor in her victimization?

Just in case it isn't perfectly clear, I'll just go ahead and say it directly:  sometimes the victim is partially at fault.  In the case of "date rape", it is likely a lot of the time. 
And claiming otherwise is just continuing the age old societal bias that women are weak and helpless, given by their very nature to be victims, and incapable of being responsible for the consequences of their actions.
I will say further that, anyone who has read everything up to here and is still insistent that that actions of a person prior to an act of sexual coercion play no factor at all in whether it happens is more interested in maintaining their dogmatic ideology than they are in exploring the subtle complexities of truth using reality as a guide.

The sticking point to what should be common sense yet is universally denied, seems to be that people are afraid it will make the rapist appear less guilty if we pretend her actions didn't provoke it.  But think about that.  The home burglar can not use the door being open as an excuse.  What any reasonable, moral person would do upon realizing a neighbor left town with the door open is close it (as my neighbor did, when I in fact left my front door open once when leaving for the weekend).  And while the attacker can press charges against the victim for using "fighting words", they can not use it as a legal defense.  In exactly the same way, it is entirely possible for us to acknowledge that certain actions make one much more likely to end up having sex they don't want, and still leave the perpetrator fully culpable for their own actions.

This is very, very important if our goal is to reduce the incidence of rape.  When the police department wants to cut down on home invasions, they give residents booklets full of tips on locks and lighting and other means of security.  If your friend was hospitalized after a bar fight you might recommend he stop insulting strangers.  We even give women recommendations on avoiding the infamous "stranger in an alley" type of rape by suggesting, for example, she avoid walking alone at night (despite the fact that men are actually at a higher risk, statistically, of being the victim of violent crime by a stranger).  And yet, everyone is loath to make similar recommendations for avoiding date rape, for fear of "blaming the victim".
So I'm going to just go ahead and make a few suggestions myself:

-Do not get drunk unless you are at home, or with people you absolutely know you can trust.
-Do not go home with, or invite into your home, any guy you just met within the past several days.
-Do not make out with a guy you don't know very well, in any secluded or private place.
-Do not go home with, or invite into your home, any guy who makes you uncomfortable, or is generally a jerk.
-Do not take off your clothes and/or get into bed with someone unless you already have a well established relationship with them.

Obviously all of these apply only if you do not in fact want to have sex.  
If you do want to have sex, then there is nothing wrong with doing any of these things.  

Note that I am not saying anything about how someone dresses or whether they are flirtatious.  I am talking about concrete things which are regularly precursors to date rape, and which we are supposed to pretend are in no way contributing factors.
Let me say it again, just because this is such a hot issue for so many people: if you do choose to do any of these things, it does NOT "justify" the actions of another person who takes advantage of or harms you in any way.   What it does do is make it a whole hell of a lot more likely.  

I understand that all of the emphasis on how dressing sexy and acting flirtatious are not justifications for rape are meant to send a message to men, demanding that they control themselves - and this is an appropriate and accurate message to send.  However, intentionally or not (and I believe it is often intentional, though it doesn't really matter), it also sends the message to women that they should be able to do whatever they want all the time and those around them are responsible to take care of them.  This would be like the local police department sending home owners brochures that say “feel free to leave your doors unlocked and your windows open, turn off your porch light, and make no special arrangements before traveling, because, after all, it is every other citizens’ moral responsibility to not break into your house.” You no more have a “right” to behave however you like and expect to not get raped than you have a “right” to leave your front door open while your not home and expect to not get burglarized.

A natural corollary to the idea that all women are inherently weak and need of protection - essentially prey by nature - is that men are strong and, at least some men, are predators. This is literally how proponents of this idea refer to it, and they point as evidence to a study by psychologist David Lisak who surveyed men who admitted to engaging in non-consensual sex.

In it the majority of those who answered yes, they answered yes specifically to the question:

"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances?"
Does "advances" mean physical actions, or does it mean mental seduction?  It could be interpreted either way, but a yes answer would mean something very different.

On the basis of the answer to this question alone, the conclusion is drawn that most if not all males who engage in non-consensual sex do so deliberately, while fully aware that the victim doesn't want to.

If we assume that intent is a part of a crime, then that must be true by default. In that case any situation - like the one in the post that inspired the discussion - where the intent was not there, must be reclassified as not rape afterall.
But if the end result of someone having had sex that they didn't want is what defines it, then the question above asked in the survey is not enough to cover all situations.

In order to determine what percentage of rapists are active predators, a couple other questions would have had to be asked as well:
"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, when you were less than 100% sure whether they wanted to or not, because you or they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to tell?"

"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, who indicated that they wanted to, but that consent was not legally valid because they were intoxicated?"

"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, who initially indicated that they did not want to, but eventually changed their minds and consented?"

"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, who claimed verbally that they did not want to, but you believed from their non-verbal communication that they did want to?"

"Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, when you thought that they wanted to at the time, but later found out/realized that they did not?"

It is possible that if those answers were asked, the outcome would have been the same.

But the fact is that they weren't, so there is no way for us to know.
The study was, from its outset, designed specifically to profile those men who are predators. Since that is all it was looking for, that's all it found. This does not take anything away from the things that it found, but it does mean it can not be reliably used to extrapolate to the general population. It would not, for example, have captured the man in the original blog, because he did not know at the time of his actions that the woman he was with did not want to have sex with him.


But lets say that the instances of genuine misunderstanding and mistake are rare, and the vast majority of rape really is premeditated.

That means that no degree of education about consent or boundaries could ever possibly have any impact on how many rapes occur.
If it is being done deliberately, than the entire concept of "no means no" is completely pointless. You don't try to reduce murder with public campaigns saying that murder is wrong, or reduce burglary with slogans of "a locked door means keep out", precisely because we know that people who do these things know its wrong and do it anyway.

If it is true that nearly all rapes are perpetrated by deliberate, serial, predators, as many interpretations of that study suggest, that means EVEN MORE that we need to be focused on educating potential victims on how to avoid situations that could make them victims.
It makes absolutely no sense to say that the problem is deliberate serial rapists who use alcohol as a weapon, and then chastise anyone who suggests ways to avoid them, such as moderating intake of alcohol.

So, let me ask, is the goal to prevent rape, or is the goal simply to figure out who to blame after the fact and to be angry about it?  Everyone is going to claim its the former, but the focus of many suggests otherwise.

As mentioned earlier, physical resistance, such as punching, kicking, biting, or even more passive resistance such as struggling or trying to run away, is effective in preventing rape 85% of the time.  This is true even given that over half of all victims are intoxicated (even in cases where the perpetrator is a stranger), 20% of unknown assailants use weapons and 20% of cases of unknown assailants have more than one working together - even considering those factors which should make fighting back less effective, it still is effective overall, the vast majority of the time.  Studies have also shown that the victim is less likely to be physically injured if they do fight back, because, as I said before, the attacker is usually not looking for a fight.

So why the HELL are we not making a very loud public campaign to tell women to fight back?!?!




Fuck the slogan "no means no".  Why are we putting the safety of women in the hands of potential rapists?  If it were true that rape is about power and dominance, then that would mean the rapist WANTS to hear "no".  If its true that its about sex and not caring one way or another about consent, then "no" still won't mean anything to the potential rapist.  Which means that "no means no" can only work on those guys who genuinely don't know better - and that message is countered by all the women who actually do want their partner to be the assertive one.  Why are we giving the power over whether rape occurs in the hands of the criminals who perpetrate it?

What about the slogan "FIGHT BACK!"?

Why isn't that being passed out on pamphlets on college campuses, and held up on signs at rallies?


Some fear that if it were promoted, it would reenforce the misconception that anyone who doesn't fight back is de-facto consenting, and will have a harder time proving their lack of consent at any trial that might occur.
In other words, it is more important to slightly lessen the "putting the victim on trial" phenomenon after the fact, then it is to actually prevent rapes from occurring in the first place!  If we taught every young woman "fight back, as hard as you possibly can, every time", then rapes would decrease at least 85%.  Probably more, as rapists would eventually catch on that it wasn't working, and stop trying.  If we combined "fight back" with "moderate your drinking", it could be reduced by more a whole lot more than 85%.  That should be the goal.  Not some political or philosophically motivated principal.  Yes, its true that women shouldn't have to be responsible for their safety, because no should attack them in the first place.  Just like no one should ever have to fear getting mugged on a street corner.  But we don't try to stop muggings by reminding criminals that mugging is bad.  People ARE responsible for their own safety.  If you teach people to be passive, to put their safety in the hands of the goodness of others, then you are teaching them to be victims.  Why do we teach women to be victims?






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