Illegitimate Rape?

[syrjustus]

Since this has been in the news so much of late Ive been meditating on the trouble with our words and understanding of them.

Todd Akin is not the first person to be lead into trouble by the tongue. I will try to keep from getting into trouble myself but I do want to talk about this. I remember Whoopi Goldberg recently got into trouble by trying to

Comments

[llelwyn]

Part of the issue I see with this stance is that it presumes men and women are approaching relationships and sex on an even footing as "just two adults." This doesn't take into account the way most girls and women are socialized to respond to men. "Slow no's," humor, diffusion and ignoring their own feelings are socialized in and are part of the power dynamic that fosters the possibility of rape in our society. None of that means that women shouldn't know themselves well enough to know what they do and don't want and to talk about it it early and directly and often, but it does make having that knowledge and communicating it much, much harder. Not communicating leaves everyone involved in danger of being hurt, but there are also situations where the mood genuinely changes or a person thought something would be ok until it started to all of a sudden not be. There are also situations where a person may not feel safe saying what she wants until it gets to the point where it's intolerable or may not believe that anything short of a flat “No!” will be heard, if that. I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to expect someone to know how they are going to react to a novel situation or to expect someone who is used to not having power in a situation to know that she has it in this instance.

While women who are being cautious may end up in fewer dangerous situations than women who aren't, the purse snatching analogy doesn't really line up. Most people who commit rape are known to the victim, which puts them in a more trusted category where someone might reasonably feel able to lower their guard. Even taking into account the 'picking up a stranger at a bar' scenario, there is a double standard of what is safe and acceptable behavior that divides on gender lines. The double standard that tells women that it's their responsibility to be always watchful and self-protective so they don't get raped is not just a really scary way to have to live--and one that most women experience daily--but also lacks a parallel societal obligation on the part of men not to rape or to prevent other men from raping. I don't think most men understand how it feels to have to be constantly on guard against someone harming you, nor how it feels to know that if someone does harm you that you will likely be asked how loudly you objected and why you put yourself in a situation where you could be harmed in the first place.

Knowing that women might not always be communicating their needs can leave men who are well-intentioned in a frightening place, but it's something that isn't going to be addressed overnight or through reacting with intense anger to hearing "no." This element of the problem is, I believe, a societal and relational one and reinforces itself through sexual violence. The other hand of it is that most men who rape aren't doing it because they're really confused about the situation they're in, they are in a moment where they don't care that the person they are having sex with isn't consenting or they don't even bother to check. On the whole, I think this argument leans problematically toward victim-blaming.

[saint_of_me]

It's completely illogical to never gently ask the victim, "What will you do differently next time?" It's like we can ask that question in every situation except for rape. Do I intimidate people? Yes. I've caught flak for learning kick-boxing and carrying pepper spray (where legal, which is also crap because wouldn't you rather I had a weapon where you could see it? I've been studying terrorism since before it was cool and I bet I could name 50 things that will make it past airport security that can be used to kill some one with varying levels of effectiveness. But I digress.), and certain rather mundane segments of the population regularly call me 'sir' when I'm clearly not a 'sir.' But guess what? I've never been raped!* Mission accomplished.

And I think men do understand how it feels to be constantly on guard against harm. Also against theft, defamation, and the same hazards for the people and things that he cares about.

*Ahem! To me, rape is vaginal, anal, and very occasionally oral or eye-socket penetration. None of this, "ew, he touched me in my squishy places! He kissed me and his breath was nasty and he bit!" No. No no no. None of this, "he showed me porn and raped my mind!" No. "I FELT raped." Really? Isn't rape a real thing, with results that can be photographed and measured? Rape results in bodily damage, not just mental damage, or it should. If it doesn't result in bodily damage then the "victim" wasn't resisting. If the victim was passed out drunk, she'd better also go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning later. I think there really ought to be a different word for non-consensual sex. Rape is such a powerful word to me that I would only apply it in cases where the victim came close to death.

Now, there are times when a person can't escape, but resistance is the duty of every prisoner. Victims must certainly gather and present evidence of the crime since the perpetrator will not.

[llelwyn]

I don't think I said that people shouldn't be asked what they might do differently in the future, after they're at a point where they could take that question. I also don't think I ever said that we should define things that are classed as sexual assault (touching without consent, for example) as rape. I do disagree that bodily harm differentiates rape and sexual assault, there are plenty of "forceful" rapes, to use that definition, that don't leave bruises or cuts or even necessarily much in the way of forensic evidence period. I also don't think the survivor is under the obligation to have struggled to the point of near death to have her rape be considered something that is "really rape." I think I get what you're saying, that you feel that the word rape has been weakened, but I also know that human beings don't always respond with physical resistance to every situation. The reaction is fight/flight/freeze for a reason, and a lot of people do the latter two, and I cannot agree with you that the way someone responds to that kind of stress is what makes the difference between whether they were raped or "just" made to have non-consensual sex. It seems to me that this attitude risks putting people in the position of being told that if they don't fight back then they really must have wanted whatever happened to them, and that's just not ok at all.

As for your other point, well, I've never been a man. I can't tell you whether they feel under constant threat of this type. I do know from Trans* friends that their perception of threat between presenting as male to presenting as female changes drastically, as well as the way people respond to them.