Anti-rape education is making poor frat-boys’ penises sad, according to this article at Bloomberg.
…making out with a girl at a party. Things were going fine, the student said, when suddenly a vision of his school’s disciplinary board flew into his head.
“‘I want to go to law school or medical school after this,’” Pollack said, recounting the student’s comments. “‘I said to her, it’s been nice seeing you.’”
OK, if the disciplinary board is flashing into your head, chances are it’s because you know something’s not right. It’s too bad fear for your future, and not, you know, empathy or human decency, made you back off, but I’m sure the woman in question appreciates it.
“I don’t think it’s about me,” said Gill, the Harvard student. “I feel like I’m pretty good guy. But if I’m talking to a girl and want to gauge her interest, I’m more cautious than I used to be. I don’t want to cross the line.”
And this is a bad thing?!
Some men feel that too much responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been put on their shoulders, said Chris Herries, a senior at Stanford University. While everyone condemns sexual assault, there seems to be an assumption among female students that they shouldn’t have to protect themselves by avoiding drunkenness and other risky behaviors, he said.
“Do I deserve to have my bike stolen if I leave it unlocked on the quad?” Herries, 22, said. “We have to encourage people not to take on undue risk.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Let’s talk about undue risks here. Back in the day, I used to be a goth/punk/alternative club-girl. I used to go out dressed super-provocatively, and dance provocatively, and drink – sometimes too much – and sometimes go home with people I met at the club and we would have consensual sex. I never got raped. In fact, I don’t even recall having been touched inappropriately without my consent. And we’re talking about a period of several years, here.
Why was “my” club a safe place for women to express our sexuality? Because, simply put, the culture there was a culture of consent and mutual respect. Things like coming up behind a woman, grabbing her by the hips, and grinding against her, were Simply Not Done, and the social opprobium unleashed on anybody who tried it (“normal” bro-dudes out to slum with the weirdos and ogle girls in corsets) put a very swift end to it, and to the perpetrator’s presence in the club.
But you know what? None of this put any kind of damper on people hooking up. So suck it up, poor poor fratboys of Stanford and Harvard, and learn to tell the difference between a woman who wants to make out with you, and a woman who was happily minding her own business before you imposed your unwelcome person on her. I assure you, it’s really not complicated, as long as you’re not an entitled flaming douchebag who thinks your boner makes everything you do morally ok.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
22 comments
August 25, 2014 at 6:38 am
ffibs
Some men feel that too much responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been put on their shoulders, said Chris
LMFAO
and that statement dear Chris will be on the internet forever.
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August 25, 2014 at 9:28 am
VR Kaine
@ffibs:
Thought the same thing once I got to that statement. You think a Harvard or Stanford guy would know of the phrase “off the record” for such boneheaded comments.
@IO:
“It’s too bad fear for your future, and not, you know, empathy or human decency, made you back off, but I’m sure the woman in question appreciates it.”
Are you sure about that? That’s one possibility, sure. The other is he’s a decent guy (what’s his crime, btw?) who’s “making out” with a drunk girl that’s into him, but instead of taking a chance going home with some stranger he just met he’s now thinking, “Who knows what she’d accuse me of the next morning? Even if it IS consenual, I can still get charged with rape. I don’t know this girl – not worth it – bye”. Who knows, maybe she would have said “stop” or maybe she actually consentually wanted to go home with him rather than “appreciating” him rejecting her – it’s anybody’s guess.
Either way, I don’t think the guy you’re pretending he is doesn’t start having second thoughts regarding punishment at the kissing stage if his intent was rape. Sure, I would have preferred to hear, “I started thinking, ‘she’s drunk – maybe she’s not into this” instead but that doesn’t automatically mean he had intended rape on his mind like you seem to be 1000% certain of just because he thought about punishment. Do you think maybe he had ‘false accusation potential’ on the brain just because she’s drunk?
Like he says, he could have actually been thinking about his future and saying that even kissing her isn’t worth the risk of a false accusation later, so he stops there. Should he be thinking “Maybe she really wants sex” first? Should he assume that she’d have “empathy” and wouldn’t think for a second of having second thoughts after-the-fact as to what was consensual and what wasn’t?
Nice of him to just assume automatically that she’s a potential false-rape accusationist, don’t you think, even though she might be the other 98 out of every 100 women? Is that “fair”? It may not be fair, and his reasons may be self-centered and twisted (maybe), but at least he took responsibility and made the safe decision for both of them – to go home – and It also seems to me that even if you didn’t like his reasons for stopping, his behavior is one which this entire blog is always asking for and supports except where there’s an opportunity to man-slam, which is taking responsibility to stop before something harmful occurs.
If women are assuming that all men are potential rapists, then to me it makes sense that men on the receiving end of that accusation are now assuming that all women are potential false-rape accusers, since just as you’ve done here, she may easily presume that “if he’s thinking bad things then he must be a bad person intent on doing bad things.” Even if only 2% of rape accusations are false compared to the (let’s say) 50% of male college students that are Tucker Max incarnates out there, when spending hundreds of thousands on an education and looking forward to a likely highly visible and successful career, why take the chance at all on a false accusation that can ruin everything, even if you’re innocent? If that’s a deterrent which is also helping to prevent real rapes, I’m all for it. Instead of the first night in a drunken stupor, they hook up the second or third night after actually (hopefully?) spending some more sober time together – big deal. They’ll live.
“Some men feel that too much responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been put on their shoulders” – a ridicuous comment, and with it a ridiculous tone of the article, I agree.
“Do I deserve to have my bike stolen if I leave it unlocked on the quad?” Herries, 22, said. “We have to encourage people not to take on undue risk.”
Point #1, bikes are not equal to people. Point #2, bikes are possessions, women aren’t. Point #3, #4, #5, #6, etc. etc. etc. Ridiculous.
I don’t agree with the sharp angle that you took with this particular guy (first guy, not the second) and we may disagree on the fine details of his “case” but overall, I think artcles like these take the focus off the real problem and speak to the Patriarchy you talk about often here, which means to me they’re part of the problem.
I would have rather seen a “new consent rules, even if over-the-top, causing a sharp decline in rape incidents” article than a “boo hoo, now more drunk frat boys are having to go home alone and jack off” article, but no, somehow it has to be about the guys and how “poorly mistreated” they are now because why… the consent rules are so confusing? Please.
I wish like you do that it wasn’t about some rules and instead about empathy and decency, but these are the times we live in – empathy hardly registers anymore. I think empathy and human decency have been largely replaced with “I deserve it, I want it, and I want it now” along with “I’ll just play victim later”, and that has to do with almost any “vice” that generation is involved with today, whether it be drugs, money, or sex.
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August 25, 2014 at 9:40 am
syrbal-labrys
Only seems fair to me that the responsibility is on the shoulders of the ones who DO the deed….
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August 25, 2014 at 10:26 am
The Intransigent One
Amazing achievement Vern: you show some rudimentary signs of Getting It, while at the same time scoring a rape apologist bingo.
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August 26, 2014 at 10:44 am
VR Kaine
“Amazing achievement Vern: you show some rudimentary signs of Getting It, while at the same time scoring a rape apologist bingo.”
Rape apologist? Nice try. Nowhere at all am I defending rape.
I challenged your position on this article concerning this kid because I think your presumptions are false, and worse, your position risks propogating mistrust, tension and hatred between the sexes in general based upon conjecture at best.
Furthermore, when has it been acceptable for you to outright declare what a member of the opposite sex’s outright thoughts and feelings are, acting as though you’re an authority on such things? Isn’t this the same practice you repeatedly come down on men for doing – men “pretending” to know what women think and how dare they presume? Yet what you criticize men for – presuming thinking and promoting mistrust – seems to be exactly what you’re doing here – is that not allowed to be challenged if you’re so free to do it the other way?
You’ve called me a lot of things on this blog, IO, some probably deserved at times, but I think it’s safe to call you a “hypocrite” at the very least on this one. The egotistical moral and intellectual high horse, the belittling, the acting ilke an expert on the opposite sex, and of course the ad hominem attacks – all sound like things you attack the MRA’s for, and there’s no real difference between your words and theirs in either your post or your recent comments.
And before you presume to know as a female what I think as a male about MRA’s, I don’t agree with their position, either, primarily for the same reason – false pretentions and because it promotes mistrust, tension and hatred between the sexes as well.
So thank you for your “bingo”, it pales in comparison to the (always) condescending, misandry-loving, and prejudice/bigotry-promoting “grand slam” you so often produce the moment anything gets challenged. I can only hope to one day work my way up to such an open-minded, objective, non-sexist, and “liberal” response to my comments as yours. :)
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August 26, 2014 at 1:39 pm
The Intransigent One
When you start acting like it’s reasonable to consider the possibility of a false accusation as remotely as bad as actually being raped, you sound a whole lot like a rape apologist, considering that prosecutions for rape presume innocent until proven guilty for the alleged perpetrator, but put the victim on trial. And add to that, the fact that college campuses try to handle campus rapes without involving the police; tend to be mainly concerned about keeping it secret; and are incredibly lenient against perpetrators – that’s what all the furor and increased education and actual policy implementation lately has been about.
When you throw out a number like 2% of women making false rape accusations, when the actual figure is 2% of rapes reported to police – and act like that’s the same thing, you sound a whole lot like a rape apologist, as well as somebody really bad at math.
When you argue that women seeing all men as potential rapists promotes hostility between the sexes, you sound a lot like a rape apologist. The fact of the matter is, the way rapists get their victims into situations where they can rape them is, they disguise themselves as normal, kind, safe men until it’s too late. Fucking rape promotes hostility between the sexes, not women’s entirely reasonable worries about being raped.
I concede it may have been unjust to have read bad intent into the young man’s thoughts of the disciplinary board. Except that in my experience, it’s pretty obvious when a person is into making out with you, and when they’re not, and when they’re too drunk to really be sure whether it’s them or the booze talking. And anyway if you’re really uncertain, you can use your words. And then, if you’re seriously worried more about a false accusation, than you are about possibly doing lasting harm to a person, let’s face it you’re an asshole, and not the kind of person I’d feel safe making out with.
I’m not too worried about my high horse. It’s no higher than yours when you get on about knowing what’s best for everybody because you’re a wealthy business owner. And condescending? Please! Your posts drip with condescension. That’s the number one thing that rubs me the wrong way about you.
Just please don’t call me a liberal, that’s way right of my actual position.
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August 27, 2014 at 1:23 am
Reneta Scian
You just don’t get it Vern. If he’s more worried about being charged with rape, rather than the safety and well-being of the woman he’s into, then it’s safest to assume he’s done this to women before and that the problem lies with him. And he’s likely done it before he was made aware of his own accountability for it. People who “rape” are often more sensitive to their own self interests, than the interests of the people they target. His attitude moves him up the “Schrodinger’s Scale” from “Not Really” to “Serious Risk”. If your only concern about committing something you’ve been made aware is a crime relates only to getting caught, especially when it’s a crime that violates another person’s autonomy, your moral reasoning can easily be seen as flawed.
His attitude demonstrates a lack of the empathy and moral maturity to “Not have sex with her when she could not consent”, and indicates he had (long before she met him) sexually objectified her. His goal was most likely to “Fuck Her”, not have an engaging, intimate, consensual relationship/encounter her give that making out made him think of being accused of rape. His intent was clear, and when that goal came with extra baggage, he bailed on her. Not raping her doesn’t make him a “Good Guy”. The fact that he was cognizant enough to recognize that she was potentially too drunk, meant he wasn’t significantly drunk himself. Now, this state of “Drunk, but not that drunk”, is a common tactic of people who commit statutory rape. Because, if they get too drunk, they’ll either be unable to perform the act or be unable to identify potential “lays” (because that’s how men like him see women).
When men like him go to the club to meet women, they aren’t there for fun or socialization. They’re looking for someone who will fuck them, and they have very loose morals about how they’ll acquire that target objective. These people are predators with intention to have sex with women who can’t consent, or who have reasonably had their inhibition dampened. Men with a lack of empathy for women that is enough to commit rape. Also, I’m into the same sorts of scenes as Intransigent One described, and yeah they are very different from the “Hook-Up Culture” sort of clubs statutory rapist usually go. They are also more accepting of gender and sexual minorities, unlike the guys I mentioned who usually assume you’re cis/het (and throw a shit fit if you’re not). Guys will get booted for pulling shit like that there. Alcohol may loosen your inhibition, allowing you to do things with less reservation than you would before, but it doesn’t demand you do anything.
The Dude-bros “Sad Feels” about being forced to reconsider their rapey habits is their own damn problem, end of debate. Failure to understand that, means they don’t understand consent to begin with. Recognizing and understanding consent, as well as having empathy for women could have allowed him to negotiate that situation without fear of being accused of rape. His behavior and attitude was an acknowledgement that he bears an attitude that could, or may already have, led to statutory rape. Men like him look for those women they can predate on. They, at least on some subconscious level, see the women they go after as targets, marks, prizes, fucks, lays, just pieces of ass.
They most certainly don’t see them as people, with rights, lives, dreams, hopes or identities of their own. Merely existing and being intoxicated makes them “Available” regardless of their identities. They see them as blank slates, objects onto which to imprint their own sexual desires, and they do not see consent as a dynamic, informed process. For them, doing as little as kissing means “sexual consent”. Even I’ve made out with men, while intoxicated, but I wouldn’t want to sleep with one. That is the problem here, that dude-bros are whining about being told not to rape people, rather than educating themselves, or trying to see women as people. Instead of learning how to understand consent, they’re bitching that they’re being held accountable for statutory rape, curtailing their “right to get laid”.
And that, is utter fucking bullshite, and it’s also rape apologetics. The only piece of rape apologetics missing from the excerpt is some asinine statement about how, “Back in the day, we didn’t have statutory rape, because people just understood accountability for the risks they take. And when something happened, they took personal accountability rather than claiming victimhood”, or some shit like that. And then, it usually turns into “She was asking for it”, “Her skirt was too short”, “She was too drunk”, “She was alone”, et cetera. I’m not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but when you put the responsibility on women to “avoid rape” it really does lead to a slippery slope of justifications for rape. Kinda like expecting women to wear anti-rape nail polish that detects date rape drugs in their drinks.
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August 27, 2014 at 12:57 pm
ellahawthorne100
There’s a very simple test for finding out if a women consents to sex or not. You just say, “Do you want to have sex?” If she says yes, then she wants to have sex. If she says no, then she doesn’t want to have sex. Problem solved. Too bad the dudes at Harvard aren’t smart enough to think of that one.
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August 27, 2014 at 5:48 pm
Reneta Scian
Also, sorry if I ever sound overly extreme at times… I may, admittedly, be biased on this one. That’s because for the 10 years I was in, I worked with a lot of statutory rapists of the variety this article is about. They all had a game plan for how to get women to sleep with them. They did humiliating, and dehumanizing things to these women. They were terrible people, and the one time I tried to tell someone about it, it was clear I was the one in danger of punishment for blowing the whistle. I still sometimes look back wishing I could have done more, wishing I hadn’t been so scared. I never personally witnessed them doing it, just them talking and bragging about it. Anyone who spoke up lost their position, and got transferred out. My old career field had a serious lack of accountability for that stuff. So when I hear stories of men like those above, I’ve heard it all before. I tend to assume the worst, not the best. Also, if I’m ever going overboard, I welcome critique.
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August 28, 2014 at 12:46 am
VR Kaine
IO,
First of all, in my opinion the guy had no reason to personally worry about her safety from him if he had no intention of causing her any harm. In fact, as I think about it more if his statement to the writer was that he stopped out of fear for her safety I would have probably sided more with your opinion. He made a statement, however, that could easily be because he had simply decided not to let booze get the better of both of them – even if at the time there appeared to be consent. If anything it was drunk consent, which I wouldn’t trust these days and neither did he.
And with respect to ellahawthorne100, it’s been proven to not be that simple – a woman can change her mind on whether there was consent after sex has happened. To say it has never happened would be a lie, which means to be concerned about the possibility of it happening with some drunk stranger you just met at a college bar is not unreasonable.
And no, that’s not defending the rapist and certainly not defending rape – it would be defending someone who is wrongly accused. If I defended Hurricane Carter for decades before he was acquitted, would I be a “murder apologist”?
Some could argue that it’s totally unreasonable to have a fear of flying since the chance of death by airplane is <1%, and yet for the passengers of United 71, or MH370 it was 100%, so is it TOTALLY unreasonable?
Personally, I equate it to this – when I visit Playa del Carmen I choose not to walk near the beach at night because it's well-known that you can be arrested by the cops on the assumption that you're there to buy drugs. I've never touched drugs and never would, but it's their word against mine and I'd rather not take that chance. So if I was asked by someone and said that I didn't go down to the beach that night because I didn't want to risk arrest for buying drugs, does that mean I had any intention whatsoever of buying drugs? Am I now a drug apologist?Of course not.
Second, "When you argue that women seeing all men as potential rapists promotes hostility between the sexes, you sound a lot like a rape apologist."
I think that's an utterly ridiculous statement! Defending someone who shows no indication of having wanted to or actually committed a rape and not letting you simply tear into him on the assumption of the opposite is hardly being an "apologist".
Third, as for "promoting hostility", if one was to say that all Muslims are potential terrorists because a few happened to blow up a few buildings, or that blacks are all potential deadbeat fathers, is that not 1) promoting hostility between two races and 2) something that in any other case you'd frown upon? Yet for some reason both shaming and promoting a generalization about only one of the sexes is perfectly OK?
While I get that the message, in part, is for a woman to err on the side of safety I reject the approach and the reasoning on the basis that applied to anything else it sounds either racist, sexist, ridiculous, or all three. Why not walk around Edmonton with a sign hung around your neck saying, "Potential drug dealer", or "Potential murderer", since by the "potential rapist" logic, you are? Or have an uneducated, unemployed black man hang a sign around his neck saying, "Potential Deadbeat" since statistics show he has the potential to be? Rape is wrong, but that doesn't mean using it to justify what you do is right.
Fourth:
“When you throw out a number like 2% of women making false rape accusations, when the actual figure is 2% of rapes reported to police – and act like that’s the same thing, you sound a whole lot like a rape apologist, as well as somebody really bad at math.”
And here we go again. I didn’t make it up that number – it’s from Wikipedia, and I took the lower of the estimates at that from people who I suspect have done far more research than you have on the subject.
“I concede it may have been unjust to have read bad intent into the young man’s thoughts of the disciplinary board.”
Thank you.
“Except that in my experience, it’s pretty obvious when a person is into making out with you, and when they’re not, and when they’re too drunk to really be sure whether it’s them or the booze talking.”
I don’t disagree, however I think it was a different time than when you or I were in college. The kid may have very well been a creep underneath, who knows, but my point was that I think the rush to judgment and attack may have perhaps been too premature and heavy-handed.
Lastly:
“I’m not too worried about my high horse. It’s no higher than yours when you get on about knowing what’s best for everybody because you’re a wealthy business owner.”
Good stuff. I’ll ask, though – are you not condescending for precisely the same reason, that “you get on about knowing what’s best for everybody” as well? Are you not just as stubborn and passionate about your views, even if ours are different, because you want to help and are they not based largely upon your own life experiences as mine are? Should anyone throw a condescending or manufactured outrage comment at me, I’ll certainly throw one at least one back at them or better. In this case, however, you condescended every man from the very beginning and I fail to see where I was condescending to you at all in my first comment – so now what’s right is you have to go back to some old comment of mine to defend yours now?
“Just please don’t call me a liberal, that’s way right of my actual position.”
Haha! Although that of course puts us miles apart politically, I do applaud the stand. :)
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August 28, 2014 at 1:55 am
VR Kaine
“You just don’t get it Vern. If he’s more worried about being charged with rape, rather than the safety and well-being of the woman he’s into, then it’s safest to assume he’s done this to women before and that the problem lies with him.”
Hi Renata,
With respect, you and other women here make it pretty clear that a man is not to presume to know what a woman is thinking, at any time, whatsoever. It is along the lines of what you collectively call “mansplaining” I believe?
So I’m held back by every woman here seeming to know exactly what this guy has done in his past, what he has thought, and what his intentions are now.
I say “with respect”, however, in regards to you describing the unfortunate situations you’ve encountered and respect that they color your opinions here – all good.
“Men like him look for those women they can predate on. They, at least on some subconscious level, see the women they go after as targets, marks, prizes, fucks, lays, just pieces of ass.”
“When men like him go to the club to meet women, they aren’t there for fun or socialization. They’re looking for someone who will fuck them, and they have very loose morals about how they’ll acquire that target objective.”
Men “like him”? You mean men like the guy that didn’t just assume that drunk girl making out with him was his for the taking, and instead said goodbye and left?
I would really think both you and IO are painting the brush pretty wide here, until you make the following point:
“If your only concern about committing something you’ve been made aware is a crime relates only to getting caught, especially when it’s a crime that violates another person’s autonomy, your moral reasoning can easily be seen as flawed.
A very valid point, however there’s no indication that it was his ONLY concern. The article was in the context of how confusion over the consent regulations was affecting college hookups. Therefore the boy’s comment could have easily be in reference to that, and in fairness we have no idea what question was asked by the writer, either, or if or how his statement was edited.
For all you know every hookup he’s ever had has been consensual, yet we’re talking here like he went off after that and roofied and raped a bunch of women after saying goodbye to the first one.
“The dude-bros “Sad Feels””
Another point: I haven’t seen one comment here by a guy where a woman has been called even so much as “bitch” – (yet alone a whole room of bitches), and de-legitimizing a woman’s feelings? No way, Jose, we wouldn’t dare – and yet it’s perfectly fine here to assume all guys at a frat party are “dude bros”, and any feelings any of them might have are “sad feels”. Isn’t this the group that is so against shaming and stereotypes, and so for equality?
Anyways, as I say in my reply to IO, maybe at the end of the day this guy was a creep, who knows. Maybe something worse happened and that public article gave him an easy way to say publicly that nothing happened.
However, since no one on this blog can seem to give the guy doing the right thing (stopping-wise) an ounce of credit or even the slightest possible benefit of the doubt here, I will.
“Also, sorry if I ever sound overly extreme at times… I may, admittedly, be biased on this one.”
Not sure if this was directed at me specifically, but as far as I’m concerned no apology needed. I rarely give one so I rarely ever expect one, and consider, too, that I’m jumping in and wholeheartedly defending some kid I don’t even know because of nothing other than my biases and experiences which are opposite to many here.
It’s cool, and with controversial and impassioned subjects, of course personalities will flare and butt heads from time to time. Totally understandable.
For me, I love to battle and I love a good debate, and in the spirit of that no one ever has to worry about offending me. I disagree with many of the opinions here, but many of the people here have backgrounds I don’t have, so at the end of the day I respect your experiences even if based upon my own background I may disagree with their meanings or opinions.
And I expect, of course, that my opinions here will never be agreed to – such as business being king, or that Megyn Kelly should be queen, or that money smells awesome and feels great rubbed on one’s nether-regions, but c’est la vie! I may think people are seriously off their crackers if they don’t agree with me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate people taking a passionate stand against me all the same. To me it might not always make us smarter, but it does make us stronger, I think, therefore I’m all for it. :)
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August 28, 2014 at 10:05 am
Reneta Scian
The guy is talking like a person from the creep handbook. He demonstrated from his own statements that he doesn’t understand consent, and the article is one complaining about how he had to “second think his intentions at kissing” before sex could even occur (lending itself to his intentions). Rape implies non-consensual intercourse, kissing not so much. The whole excerpt is rife with, “you’re making men feel bad because they want to maintain their right to have sex with women”, which is very, very deeply problematic. True, this man may have never done anything. But he’s talking like someone who has a flawed perception that lends itself to the potential that he could himself be or become a rapist. Which makes him a threat to women. Consent can be amazing, and charming, and it most certainly isn’t the “Buzz-Kill” those in the excerpt are making it out to be.
I have, and continue to have, throughout all relationships I’ve ever had, expressed and open talk about consent, and it’s an amazing experience.
I don’t kiss, or touch, or anything without the other persons expressed permission, and likewise for my partners. Ever. And there is nothing about how I’ve gone about that which was in any way troublesome, awkward, or depreciating of the experience for either partner. I, in fact, find it really cute to have a woman I’m interested in ask to kiss me, or touch me in an intimate way. Sometimes I get butterflies and I’m nervous, and I think it’s very sweet for them to ask if my body language isn’t giving them clear indications I’m interested. Consent, and informed consent in this instance, are about making the exchange of intimacy something enjoyable for all participants, not just the one/s making the advances. Moreover, it’s about women being allowed to choose who they sleep with, who they just kiss, who they just cuddle, or who they do all of the above with.
And I’ll put it to you straight here, men who let the sexual objectification of women affect them fail to exercise proper consent (even if it never results in something clearly defined as rape, legally). They also often fail to recognize or act on the verbal and non-verbal communication of consent from women. Some even ignore it because of societal misinformation about how women exercise consent, or because of their own distorted thinking, or internalized objectification of women. We live in a culture where a woman’s worth is still strongly weighed by how fuckable she is, how attractive she is to men. It makes no mention of her identity, needs, wants or desires, and it doesn’t care because she is just an object. An object for the male gaze and male desire. She is not a player in the game. She is the ball, the goal, the prize.
And often times, those men do rape, or ride a foggy line of consent, and the only reason they remain utterly unaware and unprosecuted for it is because of the impact that rape culture has on women. Rape culture exists because men aren’t aware of the systemic ways in which they sexualize, and infringe upon female agency/autonomy. They don’t understand the way in which that culture makes women afraid to reject sexual advances or harassment, report rapes, or exercise their own agency more. Silence is not a yes, passivity is not a yes. If more men spent more time understanding the realities women live with, then they could clearly see what consent is, and exercise consent in a way that is also enjoyable for their sexual partners. Consent is a recognition of your partner’s needs and wants, intimately or otherwise, in a way which preserves their autonomy and encourages them to exercise their own agency.
Women aren’t empowered with agency by cultural depictions of them, they are disempowered. Basically, male privilege, female conditioning, sex, and rape culture collides to make sexual encounters problematic for women, due to peer pressure, slut-shaming, as well as the burdens put on women with regards to rape prevention. This issue is never more clear than when addressing consent and the use of alcohol. Is it any wonder that rapists feed on the fuzzier boundaries of consent, at least with regards to the messages we send as a culture? They do it because they know they can get away with it, and that the odds are stacked in their favor, and that women are shamed into silence, and that women are groomed by our culture to be vulnerable to it, and that women are blamed for mistakes arising from their very status as women. Consent is a beautiful thing, and rape culture is the ugly thing we’re trying to eliminate.
We accept far to often that women somehow deserve to be raped, and far too often put women on trial for being raped, questioning their every move as if being raped is the crime, not raping someone. It’s time for that to end.
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August 28, 2014 at 11:58 am
The Intransigent One
All right, Vern, it’s on. I retract my comment about you showing signs of getting it. Your reply to me consisted almost entirely of reiteration of tired narratives that support rape culture – which is being a rape apologist, even if you believe you’re against rape. Let’s have a look…
*”*If anything it was drunk consent, which I wouldn’t trust these days and neither did he.”
THESE DAYS? Drunk “consent” has NEVER been ok, it’s just that it’s finally being acknowledged as not ok. Sure, at one time you could get away with making sexual use of somebody who was too drunk to make a truly autonomous choice about whether to participate, because it wasn’t specifically against the rules and because everybody would blame the victim, including the victim themselves. That doesn’t mean it was ever ok. The right thing to do, if you’re interested sexually in somebody who’s currently impaired, is get their number and call them after they sober up. That has always been the truth, even if it hasn’t always been the norm. The only thing that has changed is that sometimes now there are consequences for the perpetrator. And I stand by my original position: if you are in a position to gain by doing (potential) harm to another, and you refrain not because of a desire not to do harm, but because of the potential consequences for you, you are not a nice person. If you refrain from wandering into the murky zone of intoxicated-maybe-consent, not because you don’t want to be a rapist, but because it could impede your future career prospects, you are gross and rapey even if you aren’t a rapist.
Of course, I’m assuming that in the scenario we’re theorizing about, the young woman in question was pretty drunk, drunk enough that there could be some question about what was her genuine desire and what was just the booze, and that withdrawing from the situation was the right thing to do because proceeding could have been not as consensual as one might like. I suppose it’s also possible that she was some kind of evil harpy who wanted to seduce some poor unfortunate man, fuck him silly, then accuse him of rape on the grounds that she had been drinking, and ruin his life for shits and giggles. I’m not going to say no woman has ever done this, because just like there are fucked up evil men, there are fucked up evil women, but seriously, is this the scenario you’re defending the young man against? Because wow, who’s being hostile about members of the opposite sex now?
” it’s been proven to not be that simple – a woman can change her mind on whether there was consent after sex has happened. To say it has never happened would be a lie,”
It is, in fact, a lie, that you appear to have swallowed hook, line and sinker, despite its blatant absurdity. What actually happened in *Maouloud Baby vs State of Maryland* was, two men kidnapped a girl. The first man raped her. Then the second man told her she had to have intercourse with him too. She said ok as long as you stop if I ask you to. He started fucking her, she asked him to stop, he carried on until he was done. The case was then prosecuted very poorly: legally, any intercourse that takes place between a kidnapper and their prisoner, is rape, end of story. But the second man’s lawyer was very clever, and argued that she had given consent, and that according to some old statute that viewed rape as more like theft of property, once the property had been taken, it was already taken, and so her asking him to stop once the initial penetration had occurred, was meaningless. The first judge bought it; the appeal judge threw it out and ruled that in fact, if a woman asks a man to stop during intercourse and they don’t, that’s rape. In other words, a woman can withdraw her consent after *penetration*. Which is a whole hell of a lot different to withdrawing her consent after *sex*. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maouloud_Baby_v._State_of_Maryland
“And here we go again. I didn’t make it up that number – it’s from Wikipedia, and I took the lower of the estimates at that from people who I suspect have done far more research than you have on the subject. ”
Go read the Wikipedia article again Vern. Maybe the problem isn’t your math, it’s your reading comprehension. Directly quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape : “The “conventional scholarly wisdom,” according to American law professor Michelle J. Anderson , is that two percent of rape complaints *made to the police* (bolding mine) are false. The United States Justice Department agrees, saying false accusations “are estimated to occur at the low rate of two percent — similar to the rate of false accusations for other violent crimes.” The only way you could get from 2% of reports made to the police being false, to 2% of all women making false rape reports, is if 98% of all women made at least one true report of rape to the police over her lifetime – in other words, if 98% of women get raped at least once in their life, and the two percent who don’t, lie that they have been.
Why I think your concern over false allegations makes you sound like a rape apologist: Because false allegations are so fucking rare, compared to a risk of between one in three and one in five, of being actually raped if you’re a woman. I don’t think they even bother to calculate lifetime risks of being falsely accused, because it’s such a small number. Because we have a legal system where the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, so even if you’re accused, you can get yourself de-accused. You can’t get yourself de-raped. Related to this, in the majority of cases where a man has been imprisoned for a rape he didn’t commit, the problem was not that there wasn’t a rape, the problem was that the wrong person was identified as the rapist. When you express such deep and vehement concern over something rare and reversible, while actual rape happens to between one third and one fifth of women, it sounds a lot like you care more about protecting men than women. It sounds like you don’t mind making it easier for actual rapists to get away with actually raping, if it will protect the falsely accused. And considering how many actual rapists do get away with actually raping, without any legal consequences at all, because their victims are too afraid or too ashamed to come forward, or because police just write them off as not credible and don’t bother to investigate, do you really need to be saying things that support the patently false belief that it women often lie about rape?
Why I think your butthurt about all men being potential rapists makes you sound like a rape apologist: Because there is no equivalence between a potential rapist, and a potential drug dealer or deadbeat dad. A deadbeat dad is only a threat to the family he walks out on. And I honestly believe that the vast majority men want to be good dads and in the stereotypical deadbeat dad scenario, there are so many structural factors at play that are preventing him from being the man he could be, and the dad he could be. Sure, he makes choices, but not in a vacuum. In any case, it does no good to me to consider whether a random man might be a deadbeat, only the man I’m considering settling down with. A deadbeat is no threat to me. A drug dealer is no threat to me. Drug dealers are like skunks, you don’t want to piss them off but they won’t go out of their way to harm you if you’re not a threat to them. The worst thing a drug dealer is likely to do to me is try to sell me drugs, and he doesn’t want to attract unwelcome attention so he’s not going to follow me down the street verbally abusing me if I say no thank you. He’s not going to try to break into my house and stuff cocaine up my nose. I’m not afraid of drug dealers.
You clearly don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman. What it’s like to know that roughly one in 20 men you meet, is a predator (see http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/ ) and he’s not wearing a sign around his neck. That you have between a 1/3 and a 1/5 chance of being wrong about who the predator is, at least once in your life. And that the narrative of our culture is that it’s up to women to protect ourselves from rape, and to be blamed and slut-shamed and disbelieved by default if the measures we take are insufficient – but to be shamed and blamed and called bitches and misandrists if our self-protective slowness to trust ever inconveniences a man or makes him uncomfortable. I’m sorry but my need to keep myself safe from a well-documented, common threat, trumps your need to not have your feelings hurt. If you honestly think not hurting men’s feelings is more important than not getting raped, I’m sorry but you’re on the side of the rapists.
When it comes to condescension – sure I think I’m right and those who disagree are wrong. But a lot of it derives from the fact that the arguments I’m arguing against, are tired and unoriginal and have been shot down and shown fallacious so, so, so many times, and I’m frustrated with the repetitiveness and the lack of originality.
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 12:46 AM, Dead Wild Roses wrote:
>
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August 29, 2014 at 10:27 pm
VR Kaine
IO,
Are there two separate brains in your head or just two completely opposite beliefs that you choose to let live inside one brain? Instead of The Intransigent One perhaps it should be Congitive Dissonance On Fire?
Exhibit A:
“Back in the day, I used to be a goth/punk/alternative club-girl. I used to go out dressed super-provocatively, and dance provocatively, and drink – sometimes too much – and sometimes go home with people I met at the club and we would have consensual sex.”
So you were drunk, and consented, but then it’s:
“Drunk “consent” has NEVER been ok….The right thing to do, if you’re interested sexually in somebody who’s currently impaired, is get their number and call them after they sober up.”
Which by the way is what the guy did, but forget that for a moment – are you saying now that every guy at the club you mention in your post raped you because you gave “drunk consent” which isn’t consent?
Exhibit B:
2) The false claims statistic.
“It is, in fact, a lie, that you appear to have swallowed hook, line and sinker, despite its blatant absurdity”
It’s a lie, so according to you it doesn’t exist. Then I guess this never happened:
Law Graduate Falsely Accuses Boyfriend of Rape
“The allegations were not true and I am sorry I made them. I find it very difficult to understand why I said these things.
“I believe that in some funny way I have hit out against Paul as he was close to me – the nearest target of those unresolved feelings of anger – and I regret the hurt that I’ve caused him as a result.”
A little more than “hurt” that she caused him, I would say.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/03/law-graduate-falsely-accused-boyfriend-rape-assault-excuse-jury
… and this never happened
High School Football Star Exonerated of Rape
“During an initial meeting with him, she said she had lied; there had been no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record, court records state. But she refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return payout from the civil suit.
During a second meeting that was secretly videotaped, she told Banks, “`I will go through with helping you, but it’s like at the same time all that money they gave us, I mean gave me, I don’t want to have to pay it back,'”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/27/brian-banks-exonerated_n_1548823.html
…and this never happened
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/10/31/for-the-falsely-accusedmovingonfromrapistbrandingachallenge.html
Oh wait, now you’re saying it isn’t a lie, they’re just rare.
“Because false allegations are so fucking rare…it’s such a small number.”
Isn’t just one rape too many? Or one child abuse case one too many? We don’t ignore it or write it off because that would be ignoring the victim, would it not?
Unlike in your world, one can actually be on the side of rape victims and false rape victims at the same time, which come to think of it is being more on the side of victims than you are. My sympathy and support may favor actual rape victims 1000:1, and for you as a former one perhaps 10,000,000 to 1, but that still doesn’t mean the victims who were falsely accused get nothing – not even a possibility of innocence, like they don’t get with you. And on that note, such a shallow hypocrite you are!
Like I said in the beginning – perhaps this kid was primed to think that she might be a potential false accuser same as she was primed (right or wrong) to think that he is a potential rapist. Either way, he ultimately did the right thing by not leaving it to guesswork and instead heading home – which is what, when you put your thought-police, “I’m not a guy but I know how every guy thinks” b.s. aside for a moment, is exactly what you say he should do – “get their number and call them after they sober up.” Your words.
Exhibit #3:
“Nobody can know what the other sex thinks or believes” vs.
“I, TIO, know exactly know what all men think and believe even when I don’t have a clue”
Exhibit #4:
“Vern doesn’t say anywhere that hurting men’s feelings is more important than not getting raped.” vs.
“If you honestly think not hurting men’s feelings is more important than not getting raped, I’m sorry but you’re on the side of the rapists.”
Again where, ANYWHERE, did I say that? Nowhere, yet once again you have to put words in my mouth and make shit up to stuff up your strawmen here.
While we’re on the subject of you making things up, do you spend any time at all in reality, or is it all just in some bubble of perpetual victimhood where you’re holding a hammer and anything and everything around you looks like a nail?
You keep trying to make the thought-leap that just because I don’t immediately rush to brand a kid as a “rapist anyways”, or point out the hypocrisy and idiocy of alienating and vilifying a group you’re trying to gain understanding and support from is me somehow defending rapists or supporting rape? You’re wrong, and so idiotically, egotistically, and categorically wrong at that.
Same tactics in reverse – should I just plug my ears, say “lalalalalalalala”, try and twist all your comments into man-hating ones, insult your gender and your genitals and start calling you a misandrist since that’s YOUR go-to move when challenged? Set aside your “men do it, too” argument for just a moment and tell me what the actual intent of your post was? To vent? To shame? To puff up your chest? Or was it actually for the purpose of discussion or dialogue? Do you ever wonder why there’s so few men in your merry band of misandry apologists, or is that the point – not to have any? Good luck with that isolationist strategy of yours – really seems to be helping the whole feminist cause.
You clearly don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman.
And here we go again. I can’t challenge your presumption about a kid being a rapist and suggest that it’s harmful to the overall dialogue because I’ve never been raped and I’m not a woman. No, I’m not one, but do you see me acting like I automatically know what the girl in that article’s intentions are? No. See me asserting that the kid’s flat out NOT a potential rapist? Nope, none of that, either, yet you seem to know automatically and full-well what this kid’s intentions are because you’re a woman and he’s a man.
I know you still can’t/won’t touch the hypocrisy of that, but glaring it is that you can pretend to be so all for equality on the one hand and yet promote such a hypocritical double-standard on the other.
But a lot of it derives from the fact that the arguments I’m arguing against, are tired and unoriginal and have been shot down and shown fallacious so, so, so many times, and I’m frustrated with the repetitiveness and the lack of originality.
News flash for ya: your “arguments” (if that’s what you want to call them) are just as tiring, just as unoriginal, and just as repetitive as those anyone would hear from an MRA, and and like their (bitter strawman) arguments, yours do nothing but keep your side wrapped around the axle pushing a zero sum game as well Worse, the MRA’s have you pegged on their blogs:
First, start with a questionable assertion, in this case, this kid is a rapist
Second, automatically paint anyone who challenges this assertion as someone being against reforming or helping with the problem being identified, in this case, rape. Use strawmen arguments ad nauseam,
Third, those who challenge the original questionable assertion that first insinuated was fact but later mildly conceded to must be shunned while others who are part of the cause are encouraged to dog-pile on in order to silence him, and paint him as evil so that the one making the questionable assumption in the first place feel justified and empowered. Once done, repeat the process with yet another questionable assumption for whenever the Eternal Victim wants to feel all justified and empowered again.
Venting is venting, but if you’re actually trying to bring two sides together with your posts to try and move the feminine cause forward you’re the one who’s “not getting it” about men and how to change both perceptions and behavior in the mainstream, which supposedly is what your target is.
The words I use make me sound like a “rape apologist” to you? Well I guess to you everything’s a nail, like I said, but in kind let me say what your constant belittling and shaming of men makes you sound like: one of those marginalized, bitter, man-hating bloggers who on the one hand demand “fairness” yet on the other can’t for a moment consider anything but their own side – even against other more mainstream women, who they consider to be brainwashed themselves and just as stupid and ignorant as men.
I truly don’t think that’s you, but if I’m supposed to take that brush you’re using on me and turn it around on you, that’s what I would get and you’d be proving my point.
Anyways, to close this off on my side, I’m not your enemy here. Venting’s venting and if I’ve misread that with your post then I’ll apologize and step aside (I wouldn’t attack the rationality of a “vent”), but if it’s discussion and dialogue you’re after and not just soft, avoiding, subservient men on your side applauding every man-shaming post you put up here, my goal was to discuss and understand right from the very start.
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August 29, 2014 at 11:09 pm
VR Kaine
“We accept far to often that women somehow deserve to be raped, and far too often put women on trial for being raped, questioning their every move as if being raped is the crime, not raping someone. It’s time for that to end.
I agree, and would also agree that the needs of these women outweigh the needs of any man wrongly accused at a rate of a thousand to one (physical violence trumps label/accusation every time).
However I don’t think a victim should be ignored in a horrible crime just because they were on the shallow end of the bell curve. Do I mean “Horrible” as in as bad as rape? No, but I think the “ignore them over there because look what happens to “real” rape victims over here” is bullshit and says a lot about people who pretend to preach equality/justice.
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August 30, 2014 at 8:01 pm
The Intransigent One
Nope only one brain in my head. Maybe I should have been a bit more clear: I never had sex while impaired. Part of that culture of respect and consent I was talking about, was that hitting on people who were too drunk to really make a decision, was another of those things that was Simply Not Done. The times I got that drunk, a friend (sometimes male) would pour me back into my house and I’d go to bed alone. Being taken advantage of by the guy who helps you get home is not an uncommon scenario, but it never happened to me, because my guy friends were not rapists, and for that matter neither were my girl friends. The times I’d hook up with people, i’d had probably two drinks in four or five hours. I was not impaired.
If you’ll reread my previous post, you’ll see that the thing that I said was a lie, was the falsehood that right-wing media has fed you, that women can legally take back their consent after sex (when it’s actually after penetration, which is a huge difference). I never said that false accusations don’t happen. Is that your reading comprehension problem cropping up again, or are you a deliberate liar?
It’s very nice that you’re 1000x more concerned about rape victims than you are about victims of false accusations. The proportion of time you spend defending victims of false accusations, on the other hand, seems to lean the opposite way. If you, unlike a MRA, are not trying to use false accusations as a way of diminishing the seriousness of rape, you’re not going about it particularly well.
I really object to your characterization of pro-feminist men – and therefore my husband – as soft and avoidant. Arb is one of the strongest, most passionate and morally upstandting people I know. I suggest you apologise to him.
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August 31, 2014 at 4:51 am
Reneta Scian
I don’t mean offense here, Vern, honestly… But you seem to be digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole.
– First, Intransigent One never once was duplicitous, or contradictory. She was quite clear. Moreover, she never said false accusations don’t happen, just that paying more attention to that, over the tribulations of the victims is rape apologetics 101. She also never said she had sex with people while too drunk to consent, and even if she had how she deals with that is entirely irrelevant.
– Second, there is courts, law, and forensics. An accusation alone is not enough, and considering other statistics there is likely no statistical prevalence for false accusations leading to innocent men being incarcerated. Especially, if you’re a white, able-bodied, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender man.
– Third, its safe to say that of that “2% reported false allegations” that some were actually rape, but because the woman consented prior to penetration but withdrew at some point before the end of coitus it was thrown out because of our broken system. Furthermore, many cases are declared false for flawed reasons, or because of mishandling. (I don’t know the actual statistics of rapes thrown out before or during testimonies in trial in this way, and any statistic will likely be skewed to be smaller than it actually is by misogyny.)
– Fourth, 60% of rapes go unreported, and 97% of offenders never spend a day in jail. So the odds are stacked in the rapists favor even if they are reported, this is quite clear. Women intrinsically fear the system, with regards to it’s history with the handling of rape. Women are shamed and abused into silence, and given no recourse against their abusers. This is something most women are abundantly aware of, and if they aren’t, they get a strong dose of it the moment they start considering reporting a rape.
– Fifth, due to fears relating to taking a case to trial, as well as fear of being held in contempt, do you think it’s also possible that women might recant? There is no recourse for a woman who recants out of fear, because of the bias in the system. How much of that 2% we’re really raped, but the stresses of trial, slut-shaming, threats of abuse because of a system that inadequately protects women from violence, and other misogyny made them too afraid to proceed? Is it plausible to think that rape victims will actually recant their true testimonies out of fear? How many of that 2% recanted before trial, how many during or after, and what were the circumstances of their lives when they recanted, were they being harassed, or abused, did they feel safe from their perpetrators? Our culture overwhelmingly protects the victimizer of women, but not the women.
Moreover, consider how the media always smears the victims, because you can’t talk about fear resulting in recanting without considering it as well. Fictitious Newspaper Articles (which actually are similar to shit that gets published, “NFL Hopeful’s dreams crush by allegations that he raped three Women”, “Promising Young MIT Undergrad loses scholarship after a booze-charged fling with a Sorority Girl”, “High School Student drafted for prestigious College Team, Future Now in Jeopardy”. Et cetera, ad nauseam ad infinitum ad “holy fuck my head is spinning and I wanna puke”. The media makes the rapists look good on paper, and makes it out like it’s the woman’s fault for being raped, like her “sexual trap” was designed to ruin the man’s life. Some of those victims are even shamed to suicide. Because a women’s potential is always secondary to men’s, because in our society women still aren’t quite whole people.
– Sixth, Laws that prevent violence against women, as well as those that hold men accountable for crimes against women are constantly under attack, and almost never effectually enforced. Meaning, a rape allegation carries with it the risk that your abuser will be able to haunt you, and continue to inflict harm on you. Furthermore, violence against trans women reflects the unbridled misogyny in our culture. If women aren’t quite people, then trans women aren’t even human (barely even fuck toilets). Also, I liked the goth, punk, industrial scene for reasons other than just the clothing, style, and people. I liked it because those spaces I frequented were more safe for both women, queer people and trans women. I got really, super drunk once, and no one raped me. Moreover, I saw more than a few dudebros get ejected from the club in my times there.
– Seventh and final point. You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. To experience what life is like to be seen and perceived as a woman in society. You have never been catcalled, or groped by random people you don’t want touching you. You’ve never been afraid to go to the convenience store at night because of the chances of being raped. You don’t have to travel in packs, or carry weapons for fear of rape. You never have to do any one of literally hundreds of “Street Smart” things to avoid the chance of being raped, potentially even murdered that women do. You’ve never been slut-shamed (an even if you had it would not carry the same weight), or harassed just for what you’re wearing. You’ve not been sexualized by total strangers, or had people feel entitled to touch you because you’re a woman.
In conclusion, in light of the astronomical odds stacked against women with regards to protecting their sexual agency from men, any case you could bring to light to counter it is anecdotal at best and lacking of any statistical relevance considering the evidence. It’s also not how proving a point works, and you’d need more than sporadic, data-mined factoids to prove your point. You also didn’t refute the 2%, just utterly failed to understand it. Furthermore, it is rape apologetics. I think you got into this debate, and perhaps got in over your head because you weren’t adequately informed, and rather than concede that you’re in fact wrong on all counts, your trying to argue your way out hoping for a better point to hop off later that makes you feel more comfortable. Your own points are contradictory, so perhaps you should reevaluate them, and perhaps admit you’re wrong. That’s more respectable than defending the indefensible, and it’s ludicrous and offensive. (Need I add that sites claiming false allegations are actually higher all have ties to MRAs, or really flawed research data).
http://www.rainn.com
http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Rape-Victims-False-Rape-Accusations.htm
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/08/23/i-am-a-false-rape-allegation-statistic/
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August 31, 2014 at 4:21 pm
VR Kaine
IO,
I call b.s.. You were judging a college boy’s behavior with a frat girl’s, to which you related and contrasted the behavior of your male friends’ behavior towards you in a similar situation. You said “Sometimes (I drank) too much” means being impaired, just as “Sometimes I ate too much” means overeating and “Sometimes I spent too much” means overspending. Nice try.
“What I said was a lie, was the falsehood that right-wing media has fed you, that women can legally take back their consent after sex.”
Again, I call b.s.. I said false rape allegations either exist or they are a lie, and you said they are a lie. To your point about the takeback, however, where am I saying that ‘women can legally take back their content after sex”? I was, and am, simply saying that the kid in the example could have been concerned about her changing her mind afterwards even if it was consensual. I was not arguing, and never did argue, the “legality” of it – I was simply saying that some women do it in some very public cases and therefore the kid wasn’t out of his mind to have that on his mind re: a girl who may very well have wanted to have consentual sex with him that night..
“The proportion of time you spend defending victims of false accusations, on the other hand, seems to lean the opposite way.
Of course it does – everything to you is a nail and everything has to support your narrative or it’s immediate ad hom attacks.
In fact, the only time I think I’ve ever even brought them up was here in this conversation when you tried to act like they either a) didn’t exist, or b) didn’t matter, and as for any of the causes you pretend to support here, pretty sure based upon both feet on the ground and dollars in the real world (and not just venting on some blog), I’ve done more for your causes in more places than most boys have.
“I really object to your characterization of pro-feminist men – and therefore my husband – as soft and avoidant.”
Interesting. So “pro-feminism” to you is automatically stereotyping, shaming, and judging a kid, is it? And I’ll say again that any guy who thinks the kid is a rapist and deserved such a quick rush to judgment without having the guts to say so saying so himself is “soft and avoidant”. Getting out of the way and letting someone vent is one thing, I think this is another.
“Arb is one of the strongest, most passionate and morally upstandting people I know.
You have a good guy there, I’d agree, but I’d assume then that he can speak for himself and ask for his own apologies if need be.
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August 31, 2014 at 5:28 pm
VR Kaine
Renata,
“I think you got into this debate, and perhaps got in over your head because you weren’t adequately informed, and rather than concede that you’re in fact wrong on all counts, your trying to argue your way out hoping for a better point to hop off later that makes you feel more comfortable”
I’ll say first that you you raised a great point about the “fear of consequences” thing in this kid’s actions which, knowing you as I do from here, likely meant that there was a shitload of research you have that backs up perpetrators’ mindsets. That alone may have beat me on the point I was making hands-down because I wasn’t aware that there was such a connection.
Instead, however, with respect, I think you’ve hijacked our discussion and took it way out to lunch.
Asking that we perhaps consider that the kid maybe wasn’t a “Tucker Max Incarnate” as I had asked says ZERO about my position on campus rape as a whole, yet you automatically went to me being “for rape” or unwittingly supporting rape.
On that point, defending someone perhaps innocent of a crime does not make one an “apologist” for that crime, and personally, accusing someone who defends someone of being wrongly accused of rape of being a “rape apologist” is a gutless, lame, and bush league tactic if I do say so, and if I may also say, a huge failing of the typical liberal stance.
If you defend someone charged with murder that doesn’t mean you’re a “murder apologist”. Put more simply, if you happen to only drink Pepsi that doesn’t mean you automatically hate Coke.
I can be a corporatist and hate some of the things corporations do. I can be an atheist and actually defend Christians in their time of need, like I’m doing now where hundreds are getting slaughtered for their beliefs while liberals (best I’ve seen) stand by and say nothing. I can think MRA’s are idiots and actively call them out as such, but I can be just as quick to say that the treatment a particular guy got in court was absolute bullshit and unfair.
I can do this primarily because my values aren’t threatened by one another. I can be an atheist and not be threatened by a Christian or Muslim, and likewise I can hate false rape accusationists and rapists at the same time. More importantly, I can do so without having some defensive rage come over me that by pointing out that women falsely accuse of rape I’ve now somehow ruined the entire “No Rape” movement.
Look what happened here – I suggest that we perhaps don’t rip that kid apart so quickly because what we was fearing could happen, and all of a sudden I’m now “in favor” of rape which is a weak and fucking ridiculous stance for anyone here to take based upon my position.
The man-hating I see here does bother me at times. Not because of some insecurity, but rather as I said because I see discourse and lack of leadership that I believe holds back a cause that men and women both have a stake in.
Most times I recognize it as venting but I made the point earlier: have you ever seen any guy here on this blog “vent” in that same way towards women? Ridicule their genitals, or shame them in the same way? The only defense for it I hear is “the other guys do it, too”, which if was turned against you, all of you here would be calling it bullshit.
So with respect, you can accuse me of being “over my head” here, but I don’t think you have a clue as to what I was actually challenging in the first place because apart from that single point you made, even our conversation turned into nothing but this big long diatribe on catcalls, patriarchy, and “here’s all the shit I’ve experienced in MY life” which was way out in left field from anything I had said.
If every single little discussion on anything (even coffee cups), requires everyone involved to transverse “The 100-Year Academic History of Feminism” ocean plus the 26 volumes of “Why We’re In a Rape Culture” plus the “War and Peace” version of “What It’s Like to Be a Woman” with a whole bunch of insults and shaming along the way (not from you, per se, but IO’s, Rebecca Watson’s, etc.), then your movement’s war will have been lost before it ever started.
Would you ever listen to anything a guy had to say, no matter how true, after he’s insulted you? Yet all you women seem to expect that it’s what men are somehow obligated to do once you’ve insulted them. It’s ridiculous, and you’re right – I really don’t get it. Surely men like me aren’t doing you any service but I truly don’t think the man-shamers and man-haters are doing you any service, either. That’s not to say that I know what “service” to your cause is necessarily; I say that based upon the results I see once the man-shaming and diatribes begin from your side, which are zero.
Anyways, I’ve followed much of what you’ve written here re: your struggles and even in the face of my rudeness you’ve always come from a very kind place so I do appreciate the efforts you’ve made to help me understand your position. even if we disagree.
Thanks and I hope you enjoy the rest of your long weekend.
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August 31, 2014 at 7:16 pm
The Intransigent One
Vern, you’ll notice that my original construction (‘sometimes i did x, and sometimes I did y’, as opposed to ‘sometimes I did x and y’), and subsequent clarification, clearly states I didn’t fuck while impaired. And that nobody took advantage of me while I was impaired. Believe what you want though, because other participants in the discussion seem to understand what I meant.
You did say that a woman can sometimes decide after sex that there wasn’t consent, and you’re right, it does happen as in the cases you described. I thought you were incorrectly referring to the Maouloud Baby v. Virginia case, which received a lot of play in right-wing media as a case saying women can take back consent after sex and legally that would constitute rape – which is a falsehood; as I outlined, the case actually confirmed that if a woman says stop during sex, you have to stop or else you’re a rapist. I apologise for assuming you were as widely-read as I am about this issue. I also apologise for assuming your reading comprehension to be up to the task of reading a paragraph, realising that it’s refuting a slightly different argument than the one you made, and moving on, rather than twisting what I actually said into a blanket denial that false accusations happen.
Now, is it possible that the woman in question wanted sex, and the man in question was afraid of a false accusation? It is not impossible. On balance of probability, though, with false allegations being a couple of orders of magnitude more rare than rape, the latter is a fairly reasonable assumption. I apologise that my interpretation of probabilities threw you into a frothing fit of hysteria.
Getting out of the way and letting someone vent is one thing, I think this is another.
And what do you think it is? Do you think Arb is afraid to tell me to tone it down or else I’ll unleash my vitriol on him? lol forever! If anything, he’s more radical than I am.
And about this “soft and avoidant” thing. I commented to Arb that I was pissed off on his behalf about it, and he laughed and pointed out that using words that denote feminity, to insult a man, is misogyny writ large. Apparently I have a bit of internalised misogyny to deal with since it bothered me. You, on the other hand…
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September 1, 2014 at 10:04 am
The Arbourist
@Vern
I think being referred to as ‘soft and avoidant’ falls into the shallow end of the pool with regards to the range of monikers you’ve affixed to me.
Grande Deludedly Idealistic Pope of the Anti-Capitalist ‘I hate america crowd, dogmatic appeasement-monkey, left-wing union loving, terrorist supporting ,egg-head-freedom hating communist etc… (No quotes, just a general summation to date.)
I’m thinking ‘soft and avoidant’, is a step up. :)
Anyhow, I’m all good on this side.
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September 2, 2014 at 5:33 pm
Reneta Scian
Well, I know I’m emotional and often quite verbose. Also, when I write a comment, I usually take well over an hour or two for formulate a response (often longer because I do a lot of research). I’m very passionate, and when I disagree with someone, it carries that intensity. I try to be aware of my own biases. I think I’ve been this way for as long as I’ve commented here. DWR Editors, have I been pretty consistently like this? Anyhow, I believe I have entirely valid reasons to dispute you…
You are defending your position on the grounds of “potential false accusations” while using anecdotal or spurious instances in defense of what you saw as a “smear” against the man in the excerpt. The argument is not very consistent, and is defending a position that is indefensible (in my opinion). And… I don’t believe me, or Arb, or Intransigent were insinuating that false allegations do not exist, or that “because actual false rape allegations are spurious or uncommon false convictions are no big deal”. Moreover, I don’t go out of my way to attack people, but I will speak out on things I see as important. I only pointed out that his behavior lends itself to a moral obfuscation related to rape, demonstrating a failure to understand consent, and therefore a person similar to the example excerpt poses a “higher risk” for the perpetration of rape.
The mature way to handle a “issue of consent” is to understand consent, prior to ending up in a situation where capacity for consent is in question. The appropriate behavior when involved with an inebriated woman would be to not rape her, and not allow or help someone else to rape her. She could have been drugged, or baited into becoming excessively intoxicated by someone else, or just unaware of her own threshold. Whatever the case, his intentions were made clear by his own assertions. To understand how this sounds imagine a guy shouting, “I don’t want to have sex”, after merely being kissed by a drunk woman. It’s my firm belief that he intended to have sex with her. And if you go to bars looking for drunk women to have sex with, you are a rapist. Though classically, society has been far to permissive of this form of rape, thus why it’s so problematic.
If we see someone who is vulnerable it’s a moral imperative to not rape them, to be vocal that it’s not okay to rape them, to discuss what consent is and to intervene someone else is attempting to rape someone. And this is feminism 101 stuff, not doctoral thesis level. A woman’s purpose is not the sexual gratification of men, and any attitude that reflects that position is wrong. That man could have observed her, had fun while respecting the fact that she could not consent, made sure she got home, gave her his number and then met up later, potentially even had consensual sex when she could consent. But, his intention was to have sex with her, and he only stopped because he didn’t want to be accused of rape. His priorities were, “I want to have sex without being accused of rape”, and that shouldn’t take a PhD to understand why that’s a problem.
Not trying to be venty, but I think I have good reason to be concerned, even upset. Because I’ve made out with men while intoxicated and I have not ever had the desire to have sex with a man. Being a lesbian doesn’t mean I hate men or hate kissing them, and it doesn’t mean I want to have sex with them either. The assertion that kissing leads to the expectation of sex is a major problem feminists are particularly concerned about. Consent is not a dichotomy or bundle package and there are degrees of consent. You can consent to have vaginal sex, but decline other kinds of sex, or consent to kissing, but not to sex. The fact that rape culture construes one act as consent to all others (and that courts of law have at times enforced it as such) is deeply problematic. No one deserves to be raped because they were drunk and kissing a man, or woman, or anyone because they assumed “kissing” was a green light to have sex with them.
I’m not trying to insult you, Vern, but your assertions more than troubling. You’re not getting why it’s not okay to defend people who demonstrate a failure to understand what consent is. Moreover, you don’t seem to grasp why bringing up false accusations of rape with regards to this discussion is rape apologetics. This was about men getting uppity because they had to think twice above having sex with intoxicated women. Which is patently wrong, something that we still have a significant problem with in our culture. It’s an area where women are particularly vulnerable to victimization. I didn’t jump in here to derail, or put myself in the middle, but because the matter of rape is something very deeply personal to me as it is to all women, trans or cis. This isn’t women being irrational, this is a valid, statistically significant fear.
And you could be right that my position does bias the way I speak of and approach an issue. This is an emotionally charged issue for me, so I apologize if I’m being offensive, but I’m not just talking out my ass here. I’m presenting you with experience, statistics, reasoned and thoroughly researched evidence to back the position that I hold. And I’ve read the denier’s blogs, and researched their sources as well, even when I have to sift through some seriously cringe-worthy material So when I say I feel the way I do, I’m not jumping to conclusions. I could be wrong, but you’re going to have to provide a thorough counter-argument that is relevant to the discussion. I reject your assertion for reasons other than some feminist bias against men.
And feminist have really good reasons to call that out, because it is a common derailment. It ignores the fact that the chance of being raped is statistically high, while the chances of being accused of rape are not. Moreover, I demonstrated why that 2% statistic was highly questionable, even without Intransigent’s point, and why it’s probably inflated by rape culture, misogyny, slut-shaming, victim blaming, et cetera (with references). In addition, I’ve found no credible evidence indicating that false accusations or convictions therein being at all statistically significant. Feminism is just as against convicting someone of rape for just being a man, as it is against women being raped or oppressed just for being women.
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