I attended a rather liberal college in the 90’s, years which might be the high water mark for feminist thought in America. It was a cozy supportive environment that gave people the chance to – maybe, in a very safe environment – talk about the things that we do not talk about. I showed up for protests and even organized some, but I missed plenty and would never have heard about an event called Take Back the Night! except that my girlfriend at the time dragged me to it. Women and their supportive male friends marched around campus for a few hours letting people know that they were not afraid to walk around campus in large groups. Or something. To be honest I got bored in a hurry.
The thing that might make my campus unique is that the march ended up in a little plaza with a mic and some rented speakers set up. Everyone settled down and after a minute or two someone walked up to the mic and told her story of being raped. Then another student stood up and told hers. A half hour passed and people had formed a sort of line for the mic, and those were only the people forward enough to step up and not wait for a quiet moment or a gentle push from a friend. Some talked about boyfriends. Some (many) talked about relatives. Others talked about hookups gone incredibly bad or strangers at a party or friends of friends. Men and women spoke.
The event left me speechless and crying. It was not so much any single story (those were bad enough); it was the numbers that killed me. It was a small campus and I could never imagine how many people whose faces I knew had the cast iron stones to stand up and tell it to strangers. How many people came but chose not to speak, and how many people could have come but did not, certainly represented an order of magnitude more.
A few years later I saw a play called Hysteria. Dr. Freud, it argued, in fact discovered how truly prevalent sexual abuse was in the Austria of his time, but the implications scared the shit out of him so he came up with elaborate alternatives (penis envy and so on) as a comfortable, bogus framework to explain away his obvious but dangerous observations. It would sound silly except, after what I heard that night, christ, I believe it.
All of which is to say that I doubt this new survey will surprise many people who have experience talking with their friends about the things we do not talk about.
Linda Featheringill
Yes.
I’m a member of the club, I’m sorry to say. And even after all these years, I still don’t understand how a person could do that to another human.
I have no answers. I have no witty remarks.
I do have some really shitty memories.
BethanyAnne
I personally know 8. Given that I have a fairly small circle of friends, I have a hard time believing any number below 50%.
BarbF
I was molested at age 8 by a teenage friend of the family. You simply cannot imagine how you lose your sense of self when that happens. No matter what, you feel you did something wrong. Or that it was your fault.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I self analyzed myself as to why I’d made so many poor choices in relationships and realized that it went back to that molestation. It was only then that I even spoke about it.
One of my dearest friends said, when I told him, that it explained so much about me. I guess he’d noticed the walls I put up around me.
It’s a rare person that it doesn’t affect the rest of their life.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
I’m the product of a family with a horrifyingly rich record of incestuous rape. One of the most horrifying things about becoming a special ed teacher was the realization of how incredibly common the sexual abuse of children really is. I don’t know what the answer is, either.
Ben Wolf
I want to know how many men engage in this sort of predation. If these numbers are true it makes me wonder whether men who abuse women are the tiny minority we’re told they are.
CT Voter
When you finally get around to talking about the things we do not talk about, it’s , I don’t know the word that I’m looking for…at this point, no longer surprising how many people have similar stories.
BethanyAnne
and I know, small sample, plural of anecdote isn’t data… still. I just have a hard time believing less than 50%
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
The one event that convinced me that Abortion must remain safe and legal — switched me from a “of course” liberal supporter to a full-bore activist on the matter — was attending a speak-out of some sort where woman after women spoke about their abortions, both pre-and-post Roe V. Wade (this was in ’89-’90).
And, without going into details, similar person-to-person contact convinced me that sexual assault wasn’t just something only “bad guys” did. It was a slow shock, but painful and powerful, to hear story after story that underlined how rampant rape is in our culture — and how little we’re encouraged and “allowed” to tell those stories. How much both genders suffer, in ways horrifying similar and disgustingly unequal, from the assumptions of a culture that’s dysfunctional around sex.
It’s painful that it takes a story, takes someone putting their heart and soul and pain out there, to oftentimes turn tides and open other’s hearts. It should nto be this way, at all.
Yet, in many cases, it is.
schrodinger's cat
I took a self defense class when I was in school, it was taught by the campus police, and one of the officers who taught the class told us a very moving story of being raped by a friend’s brother when she was a teen. After it happened she was shocked and jumped from the window of the friend’s house breaking a the window pane in the process. The most horrific part of her story was about how she had to mow this friend’s lawn as a payback for breaking the window. Her mother made her promise that she would never tell anybody what had transpired. She promised herself after this incident that she would become a police officer and never be this helpless woman again. She and the rest of us were in tears as she finished her story.
feral1
When I was in my early 20’s I realized that about 25% of my good female friends had told me they had been raped or suffered an attempted rape. It was a staggering realization.
schrodinger's cat
As a woman the fear of being sexually assaulted is always at the back of your mind and colors many decisions you make. From the simple to the complex.
ellennelle
tim, i’m on the north shore, around the corner from you (and anne laurie), so to speak.
as a psychologist, i see a lot of damaged people. i have not taken a formal count, but i can tell you, the numbers are utterly astonishing. i feel it’s safe to say that the vast majority of people i see – mostly women – have been sexually abused.
whether it’s rape or incest or that weird date rape place that so many women find themselves in while wondering how the hell can this be happening, the damage is profound. and it does not stop there; not only do most of these victims suffer scars, sometimes their whole lives, but most perpetrators have histories as victims themselves. and, to add insult to injury, most victims suffer blame from some source, their parents (even when the perp is the father or brother or uncle!), their clergy (even when the clergy is the perp), the police (even when a cop did it), society as a whole.
and yeah, the fact that it is so rampant is utterly astonishing, isn’t it? i’ve come to believe that it’s those of us who have managed to get through life without being raped that is astonishing.
and on some level, that’s the real truth. when you think about the physical act of rape, it amounts to the man overpowering the woman, or the child, which could happen at any time to anyone. the social taboo against that impulse is pretty damn strong. (a friend, len shlain, wrote a book about that some years ago, sex, time and power.)
wrt freud, the play sounds interesting, though i don’t know as i would give him so much credit as to have consciously devised an alternative explanation with the oedipal complex and such, quite frankly; i don’t think he ever believed these were rape victims, but instead truly saw them as lusting after their fathers. my sense has long been that he was a man of his time, and the victorian mind could simply not wrap itself around such a horrifying notion, that men in fact could be such brutish monsters.
this was around the same time that anthropologists were exposing the world to sexual habits of aboriginals, and gaugin was shocking the world with his topless natives. though many attempted to show how noble these primitives were, there was always at least implicit in their analyses the patronizing perspective that they were of course merely savages; civilized men did not do such things. freud held that patronizing condescension across most of his attitudes.
as brilliant as freud was in so many ways, and i suppose we should be grateful to him for at least opening up this pandora’s box of human sexuality for public discussion. but his entire sexual theory was woefully wrong-headed, and likely detoured our understanding of these matters for decades.
schrodinger's cat
Bad as things are over here, I shudder when I think about countries where women are actually punished for being raped. The recent story of the Afghan woman who was imprisoned and then released on the condition that she marry her rapist comes to mind.
cathyx
@schrodinger’s cat: That is the truth. Many men just don’t get that. Walking somewhere at night, running out of gas, being alone somewhere, can all cause anxiety. I know that most men can out run me and outfight me.
Violet
I got together with eight girlfriends from college for a weekend about a decade after we graduated. Somehow the subject of rape came up. We’d never discussed it on a personal basis while we were in college, but in the middle of discussing what ex-boyfriends and other classmates were doing, it came up. One friend admitted that a boyfriend she had while we were in college, who we all knew, had raped her. Then another said she too had been raped. By the time we were done, half of us admitted to being victims of rape, just while we were in college. It was staggering to look around the room at the faces of these incredibly bright, talented women and realize that so many of us had been the victims of sexual assault.
After that experience, I completely believe that 50% is pretty accurate. People don’t talk about it. When it does come out, the numbers are horrifying.
JCJ
A few years ago we took in a foreign exchange student who was staying with a family in a nearby suburb. The host “father” had walked out of the bathroom naked when our student (female) was the only other person in their small house when she was in the next room. Later, again when nobody else was there, he sat on the couch next to her wearing nothing but a t-shirt barely long enough to cover anything. When she called us asking for help we immediately took her in. Some people said they were amazed we would do that on such short notice. My reply was always, “What, we should wait until she is raped first?” We found out later that there had been complaints about this host from a previous student. I think one of the problems this revealed to me was that people don’t take sexual assault seriously.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is absolutely true. Men don’t get it. Women live with it always.
Southern Beale
I went to college in the early 80s. I remember sitting with some girlfriends in a dorm room, cross legged on the floor, probably passing a joint around. And we were talking about rape, and someone mentioned the statistic that 1 in 4 women are raped. And we looked at our group and realized there were four of us having this conversation. And someone said, “oh my God that’s one of us.” That was very creepy.
ellennelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
and remember that cheerleader in silsbee TX who was raped by the school’s star athlete; he was arrested but let off on probation. but when she refused to cheer him as he did a free throw, she was thrown off the squad. she filed a lawsuit, and the court said she had no first amendment rights to refuse to applaud her rapist because she represented the school. they even fined her for filing a frivolous lawsuit! SCOTUS declined to hear the case, so that stood.
yeah, american taliban.
gaz
needs moar snark
/meta-snark
Southern Beale
@Violet:
There’s a great book called The Gift Of Fear by Gavin de Becker. A friend of mine bought it for his daughter, actually. A lot of it talks about how women should trust their intuition, that a lot of times we women will disregard that sixth sense that tells us something isn’t right … anyway, a quote from that book which always stuck with me, is something to the effect of,
I happen to think that’s very astute.
seabe
My last year of college (2010-2011), I organized Virginia Tech’s “Take Back the Night Rally and March”. It’s my favorite event of the year, and very empowering. You’d see people who’ve never been to a rally leading chants:
Wherever we go, however we dress,
No means no, and yes means yes!
I’m also one of the few men at the rally to speak — as I was an organizer — and it was important to reach out to the men in the audience that yes, you too can help organize this stuff. You don’t need to be teh womenz…
Angela
@Southern Beale: Great book. I use it a lot with clients.
Omnes Omnibus
I was going to try to make a clever yet sensitive and socially aware remark, but I think not. A thing that stands out to me from the post, the link, and the comments here is that I probably know, and have been friends with, someone who is a rapist.
Linnaeus
It really wasn’t until college that I got any real sense 1) of what rape culture was and its effects and 2) the kinds of things women have to be on the lookout for from “minor” indignities to violent attacks. In the case of #2, I was aware of these things in the abstract, but it took coming into contact with more women for me to be more concretely aware of it. Even after all that, I still needed more years of maturation and learned self-awareness to better understand just how far-reaching the problems of rape and rape culture are.
Cat Lady
Flip through every channel on TV any night of the week and make a note of how the sexual assault and/or murder of young women is the dramatic jump off point for what this culture considers to be entertainment. And shooting of people, also too, but women in the current entertainment paradigm are disposable sexual objects. It’s sick.
Betsy
Great post, Tim.
@Ben Wolf: My understanding is that, according to the most recent research, many (most?) rapists are serial rapists. They rarely get charged; when charged, they’re rarely prosecuted; when prosecuted, rarely convicted.
TRIGGER WARNING: One of my good friends was raped by her boyfriend last year. It was a situation that would never in a million years be prosecuted – they were having consensual sex, he wanted anal, she told him absolutely not, he held her down on the bed and raped her anally. It’s one reason why I want to punch someone every time I see “anal rape” or “bend over” as a metaphor for a policy someone doesn’t like.
If you want something that explains the ubiquity of rape culture in a different way, check out this story about the indistinguishability of lad mags from rapists.
John Weiss
@Cat Lady: Rape. It’s sick. It appears to be part of the ‘human condition’.
There’s no hope for us humans until, if ever, there’s a cure for mental illness. Evolution hasn’t been particularly kind to us, has it?
Violet
@Southern Beale:
I’ve heard of the book but haven’t read it. I think trusting your intuition is a very smart thing to do. When I was in middle school I was in a situation where an adult who had institutional power, but who always creeped out me and my friends, tried to get me to walk with him from what was a public location to a more hidden location. I followed him for two steps and then stopped. My intuition kicked in. I told him whatever he had to say he could say to me right there. He backed off and told me to go on my way.
This guy had already gotten me and one of my friends in trouble for some trumped up infraction. He went out of his way to “befriend” the girls in the school and then turned ugly if they didn’t do as he thought they should. He was seriously creepy, but since he was in a position of authority, there wasn’t a lot we could do and parents didn’t believe us. He came across as a model citizen.
Thankfully after one year he was gone. I don’t know why or where he went. I still wonder how many girls he assaulted. I’m certain he was a pedophile.
Cat Lady
@John Weiss:
Who you talkin’ to about “us”, white man?
Jebediah
@gaz:
I dunno. I have three “real” nieces and three “psuedo”-nieces, and I just can’t stand the thought of what those percentages mean. Can’t find any snark. I can’t imagine how freaked I would be if I had kids of my own. Someone close to me has a mom from a very large family who always thought she was sent away to live with relatives because she was unwanted. Turned out someone was trying to spare her from the molestation and rape her father was handing out to her sisters.
Aussiesmurf
There’s great page which chronicles the half-funny, half-scary ramblings of MRA web-pages, where every rape allegation is invented, and every woman is evil.
From my (male) perspective, I think one of the real problems is that for many (even many well-meaning) people, there’s ‘real’ rape (stranger drags you into alley etc.) and then there’s sort-of, second-thoughts-afterward, date-gone-bad rape. A ridiculous amount of responsibility for the second sort is heaped upon the woman – “You should have known better” – “You shouldn’t have worn that” – “You shouldn’t have gone home with him” – “You shouldn’t have led him on” and so forth.
I always liked this analogy :
which compares how idiots think of rape to financial matters.
seabe
I also particularly like this piece:
Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced
Southern Beale
@Aussiesmurf:
I think a lot of men may like to think such a thing exists but I think those instances of false accusations are extraordinarily low. I think a lot of men like to think that women are evil and would do such a thing because it’s easier to think women are awful than that men are awful.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Southern Beale: Everyone should read The Gift Of Fear, at least once. At the beginning of this thread I thought of that quote, which is so true.
But a key part of de Becker’s book focuses on how the way men and women are socialized sets up women to avoid standing up to potential predators for fear of being rude, because women in this culture are trained from a young age to be nice, and accommodating. Likewise the culture allows males of all ages to “discount no” and de Becker reminds us that “no” is a complete sentence, requiring no explanation or justification.
It is those connected phenomena that creates an atmosphere in which women get raped by men known to them, regularly, because the men can. While stranger rape is certainly a danger, and de Becker’s book can help you learn how to trust yourself to avoid it, acquaintance rape is far more prevalent. That’s actually in my view, the biggest danger. Just like for children – it’s not the creepy guy in the raincoat who’s the biggest threat, it’s the neighbor or uncle Fritz.
I’ve given away probably 20 copies of that book over the years, and I read it again every other year. It’s well worth it. And yes, I, too have been forced to engage in conduct I did not choose. Though the man (whom I knew)got some bruises in the process. So it could have been much worse, and were I a different personality with less physical strength, it could have been brutal. So I’ve got an axe to grind.
Thanks for starting this discussion Tim. Tell Max hi.
GregB
America is an extremely violent place.
Guns and threats of violence are our bread and butter.
It is still a big laugh line for many, to imply that a prisoner is going to be raped during their incarceration.(Not a laugh line for me.)
Still the numbers are shocking.
Jebediah
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that, but I am sure you are right. Shit.
John Weiss
@Cat Lady: Heh. The joke about ‘Kemosabe’ and Tonto.
I meant what I wrote.
I think that the ladies are almost as crazy as us white men.
Lucky me, I learned better (about women) long ago and got to marry a (mostly) sane and grounded female person.
Lucky me!
Gex
As the saying goes: Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will rape or kill them.
The Schrodinger’s Rapist is an interesting read. Also interesting was the huge rift in the atheist circles about male privilege and how… well to far too many of the men it boiled down to “them bitches are too sensitive/to prick teasy.”
I don’t want to belittle or slight the abuse of men either. Frankly we should all treat others as human beings worthy of respect and not just objects to do with what we wish.
John Weiss
@GregB: Rape is always an act of violence, doesn’t matter who’s being raped.
Aussiesmurf
@Southern Beale:
There was one ridiculous study from a small town where the sheriff hardly ever investigated which concluded that something like 40% of allegations were false. This has now been quoted by douchebags forever. I gather the real statistic is something like 8%.
Anne Laurie
@Southern Beale:
This, times many. Part of our modern “rape culture” is that women (and, of course, children of both sexes) are taught in so many ways, spoken & unspoken, that we don’t “own” our own persons — that if we aren’t comfortable about how others are looking at us/touching us/hurting us, it means that we’re somehow “doing it wrong”.
I grew up in a physically abusive household, nothing sexual, just the kind of ‘acceptable family violence’ Denis Leary uses in his comedy routines. As a result, when I went off to college & some individual set off my “danger” synapses, I immediately reacted defensively — by getting the hell out of his/her range, at least. Or by speaking up, “too aggressively” disagreeing with the kind of gosh-why-are-women-so-uptight laments that “nice guys” in those days (1970s/80s) used to scent out potential victims. This got me yelled at by some of my female friends, but it also saved me from further attention from at least a couple of genuine repeat predators (including a dormmate’s boyfriend who was institutionalized as a violent psychotic within 18 months of my “totally unreasonable” predictions that he was Bad Trouble looking for a target).
Things have actually improved, to a degree, since those days. We have words for things like “date rape” and “marital rape” that didn’t even exist as concepts when I was growing up. And at least in the American middle class, it’s considered bad parenting not to teach young children about “inappropriate touching”. But too often victims become predators, and even if we magically managed to stop all sexual abuse of children and young people from this minute forward, it would take years of hard work over multiple generations just to root out all the little “ordinary” abuses that lead to bigger, darker crimes.
GregB
@John Weiss:
I hoped that I made the point that I did not find prison rape as something funny or even to be joked about.
Violet
@Aussiesmurf:
You’re not the only one. Remember Whoopi Goldberg and how was Roman Polanski did wasn’t “rape-rape”?
John Weiss
@GregB: You did make the point.
Aussiesmurf
@Violet:
Don’t ever get me started on that scumbag. The pathetic attempts at justification and whitewashing on his actions was absolutely sickening. Particularly galling was how the wish of the subject of the crime (I won’t say victim) to move on was used as some after-the-fact justification of the fact that he had evaded punishment.
One of the best-crafted things about my beloved show Veronica Mars was the fact that Veronica suffered the emotional effects of her rape for an extremely long time afterwards, as compared to other shows / movies where someone cries for one episode and is then ‘straight back into it’.
suzanne
I remember going to church camp when I was a young teen, and having one of my fellow campers speak about how she’d been raped as a child. I was so heartbroken for her. And sadly, I’ve added a lot of friends to that list.
And, as Omnes noted, I’m probably friends or colleagues with at least one rapist.
No one of importance
@Violet:
Which didn’t even make sense from her own twisted perspective, because how is drugging a little girl and sodomising her against her will not ‘rape-rape’?
I will never forgive her for that remark. No one should have made it, let alone a woman. The Polanski apologists were just sick making.
John Weiss
@No one of importance: I’m no Polanski apologist. But the fact is that he was ‘tried’ in the national media. Should have been tried in court. We heard all sorts of stuff about it and he ran to France. Given the media circus around the ‘affair’, I can’t say that I blame him.
That’s about all we know. Media circus.
Whoopie is/was an actress. Who gives a damned about what she said about what should have been a legal trial?
YellowJournalism
Aussie, I miss that show so much. The emotional effects of sex or rape was handled so well. They even acknowledged the sexual confusion of Mac, her friend who had the bad experience with the boy who turned out to be Veronica’s rapist. I wish they’d been able to do that Veronica in the FBI show.
I participated in three Take Back marches while in college. The stories told at the rallies were horrendous and brutal, but they reminded me that I was not crazy for carrying my car keys in my fist like a weapon whenever I walked home or to my car on late nights. I have far too many family members who have been molested, raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, both male and female. I had far too many friends with even worse stories to tell. I have been one of the “lucky” ones. I want to teach my sons that, as said above, no is a sentence that must never be dismissed.
Comrade Mary
I’m very lucky. I’ve never been raped or assaulted, and as far as I know, none of the women I’m fairly close to have been raped, either. (Then again, I can’t remember ever sitting down with some wine and deliberately starting to talk about the topic: that could yield some surprises).
But there’s a woman in my social circle who also hasn’t been raped, and her circle of female friends (which doesn’t overlap with mine very much) also hasn’t been raped.
I look at my experience, and I consider myself and my friends to be outliers. Very, very lucky outliers. She looks at her experience and considers other women’s claims to be very possibly a tiny bit exaggerated, maybe, and that talking about other women’s shared experiences of rape just makes women more afraid.
I despair.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Omnes Omnibus:
And the daughter in law and sister in law of a rapist. It’s passed down through the generations … and trying to explain this to children, to those who marry into the families is unbelievably difficult – especially to those fifty percent who have been raped in other family situations. I’m so proud of nieces and sons and sisters in law and daughters in law who manage to make their lives through this. I can’t tell you how difficult it was just to write this. I’ve never spoken to about this to anyone. What makes this particularly difficult is that we all loved the grandfather who carried this down.
No one of importance
@John Weiss:
He was, you moron. He pleaded guilty but ran overseas to avoid being sentenced. You’re making excuses for a convicted criminal.
You mean when a famous woman (and a bunch of famous men) make statements supportive of rape and rapists, we ignore it because Polanski had his day in court, ran like a coward, and then made a bunch of films that a few people thought well of.
Christ you make me sick. You’re exactly the kind of shit that this post is all about.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@John Weiss: You? Shut up. Not one more word.
suzanne
@John Weiss:
Um, he WAS tried in court. And was convicted. And then he fled before going to jail.
So, FAIL.
No one of importance
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
My uncle raped his daughter when she was in her early teens. My estranged mother passed me the news when the uncle admitted it some 30 years after the event, and managed to make it all about *her* distress and her sister. Not a word about whether anyone had been in touch with my cousin, her niece, to find out how she was doing now the truth had come out. Not even a word of concern. It was just ‘how awful my sister had to find out after all these years’.
I pretty much loathed my mother before that letter, but afterwards, I vowed that nothing would make me get back in contact with her.
I have no way of finding out where my cousin lives and don’t know her married name, so I can’t contact her. But I hope she found good support in her husband, and her mother and sisters. Sadly, it’s likely she didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@suzanne: Wasn’t tried. Pleaded guilty.
/pedant.
Doesn’t change your point one bit.
No one of importance
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to strike someone like him down with instant aphasia and whole body paralysis until they could prove evidence that they were no longer dickheads?
I mean, by sending communications through the tubes or something?
gaz
@Jebediah: Jebediah…
dude.
/meta-snark
The very comment was meant sarcastically. Learn some ‘netspeak.
I was riffing off of the idea that assholes think rape is funny.
see:
/meta-snark
Apparently, blunt is still too subtle for you.
Not sure what I can do about that, since I can’t actually smack you from way over here.
eldorado
this doesn’t just happen to women.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@No one of importance: Well, it’s just as likely she did find good support. It’s astonishing how well our family manages. I tried to explain here how we’ve managed, but it was too complicated. I’d have to write a book, literally.
No one of importance
@eldorado:
When 20% of the American male population reports being raped, then you can derail the conversation by making out this isn’t a woman’s issue.
Rape is horrible. Men get raped. It’s still overwhelming a fate suffered by women, perpetrated by men.
There is nothing – *nothing* – about ending the rape culture which male victims won’t benefit from. So why shouldn’t men support it too?
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
I think a lot of men think about being falsely accused of rape because they’re self-centered. They can largely ignore the risk of being raped on a date, and they believe they’re in control of themselves so they’re not at risk of committing rape, so they’re most worried about being falsely accused. It may not be a realistic worry, but I think it’s a genuine one.
Of course it doesn’t help that false accusations are a lot more likely to be publicized than real ones. That’s both because of the news media’s tendency to hype “man bites dog” stories and because there are some pigs like Rush Limbaugh who will talk them up to score political points. Toss in Hollywood’s love for stories that put a twist on reality, and men are likely to grossly exaggerate the risk of being falsely accused.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@No one of importance: Can’t disagree. But I can’t begin explain to anyone how you can still love these dicks … and just make sure they never come near those you love. I do have to say, I am really, really tired of listening to second wives and girlfriends who just don’t understand why we’re all such haters. God.
Jebediah
@gaz:
Thanks.
eldorado
why would you think i am trying to derail the conversation or thing that rape culture should be supported?
The Fat Kate Middleton
@eldorado: oh god. so true. another terrible fact in my family. can you begin to talk about it? You now, here’s the thing – we’re all amazingly successful, with wonderful families and everybody with college degrees. Except for the occasional one who really, really, doesn’t succeed.
No one of importance
@eldorado:
Why do you need to point out that rape happens to men too? Has anyone said it doesn’t? What exactly were you trying to say?
Conversations about women being raped are derailed all the time by men moaning that they’re being ignored, like conversations about misogyny will be flooded with men bellyaching about ‘misandry’ and women being mean to men, and why don’t the courts award custody to men more often (Hint – maybe it’s because the kind of men who bitch about Family court decisions are too often the kind of douchnozzle who would kill their kids rather than let their wives have custody). Too many men see a conversation about a serious women’s issue and want to turn it into all about them. They can’t bear not being the centre of attention since they believe they’re the centre of the universe already.
So if you weren’t derailing, you were doing a damn fine imitation of the kind of blokes who do. Maybe you should think before you post, hmmm?
I also don’t believe you don’t know this.
Rathskeller
In my 20s, I did volunteer rape counseling at two local hospitals for a few years. I kind of fell into this work, initially from a continuing ed class I took as an EMT. Consequently, even though I had a feminist perspective, and lots of female friends, and thought I had a clue, like so many kids in their 20s, I was still absolutely flabbergasted how many of my friends opened up about their own experience, ranging from uncomfortable date rape scenarios all the way up to huge stranger with a knife stories. It’s just a big, hidden part of our lives, both for the abusers and for the abused.
One point I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is that male-on-male rape was relatively common in the rape survivors that we saw in those hospitals. A typical story was a robber being surprised by the homeowner. The home-owner is violently raped, in part to keep them quiet. (“now go tell the police what happened.”) By implication, I only saw the brave ones who sought help afterwards.
These stories frequently talk about female-on-male rape and sexualized violence, but honestly I never saw nor heard of this in my six years doing that work. With no evidence on my side, this aspect of the stories has has always seemed like some reflexive attempt to be balanced, not least since the stories never seem to mention male-on-male rape.
I concur heartily with the recommendations of The Gift of Fear. Trust your instincts. I strongly believe that my wife’s caution and willingness to GTFO of situations when there are potential problems has led directly to her safety. And of course, she has that caution because of the traumatic rape of her own mother.
The Spy Who Loved Me
One of my daughter’s sorority sisters was raped during her junior year in the alley outside of a bar in their small college town. The police were called and the rape kit done at the hospital, but no one was ever caught. She refused counseling, and refused to go home for a while, even though her parents and friends encouraged it. Instead, she developed a pretty severe drinking problem. That was almost three years ago. She is just now starting to get her life back together and getting the help she needed from the beginning. I just hope that she recovers and finds some peace.
dadanarchist
I had a very similar experience, Tim, at a small liberal arts college in Oregon.
I participated in Take Back the Night too. There was even a special session for men to attend to learn about sexual abuse, rape and sexual violence, and learn how to be better supporters of their friends and loved ones who had been sexually abused.
But, as Tim recounts, the most shocking – and powerful – moment was the speak-out at the end. I watched/listened in horror/amazement as a steady parade of young women stepped forward to take about their experiences, many of them my friends. The prevalence – and their courage – was profound, shocking and stirring.
Take Back the Night is a powerful event – and, sadly, very, very necessary.
eldorado
so remember guys, if you were abused, not only does society in general shun you, if you reach out for help to the abuse community, this is the bullshit you can expect to deal with.
Rathskeller
@eldorado: pity party, table for one.
Nutella
re the question of what percentage of men are rapists: There have been some small studies. Trigger warnings about reading these posts about them: first post, followup post.
Summary: The studies surveyed groups of young men (college students and navy recruits) and 6% and 13%, respectively, admitted to rape as long as the word ‘rape’ was not used. The followup article suggests that those percentages are a probably low. The main takeaway is that most of them had raped many times so there are a lot more victims than rapists.
eldorado
rape is a funny joke!
Rathskeller
@eldorado: Rape is not funny in the least. But you’re a melodramatic idiot, and that’s kind of funny.
eldorado
rape isn’t a lifetime movie either.
seriously, wtf is up you guys?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Violet: Intuition, male version. Back when I was hitchhiking, it only took the question: “Are you going as far as XX?” and the answer from the driver to give me enough info to know whether or not to get in the car.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@eldorado: @eldorado: I’m with you on this. Really … what the hell? My foster kids were overwhelmingly male – overwhelmingly raped as children. You think that’s melodramatic? That it somehow takes away from our awareness of what happens to our sisters and daughters?
Jasmine
Wow. What is up? eldorado basically admits to being abused and gets jumped on and insulted by R-skeller (I hope to hell you were never a Madisonite) and No one of importance (too true).
Shorter R-skeller: I helped men who were raped when I was younger. Oh, you were raped?!? Pity party! You’re melodramatic and funny!
Shorter No one of import: Oh you were raped but you’re a man?! You doochenozzle! Only women deserve discussion here!
Ick!
eldorado
i’m sorry i said anything, seriously. carry on with your topic.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@The Fat Kate Middleton: You do understand I’m responding to all those people who think you’re some kind of asshole, right?
eldorado
i think the above was directed at me. i will fully cop to being some kind of asshole, but not the kind of asshole that was implied.
That Guy
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
They were jumping on him because the way he weaseled in the statement “this doesn’t just happen to women”. That’s a known fact, and it needed to be brought up as it was. Most threads discussing feminists topics (which includes sexual topics, too) end up being flooded by a bunch of privileged assholes who feel they aren’t being paid enough attention.
edit: To fully understand what I mean, look at Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason. Nobody will respond negatively to his statement because it isn’t the common privileged asshole comment.
Sasha
Whenever I hear statistics stating that 20% of all females will be/have been raped, it always sends a shiver down my spine.
I have five nieces …
Rathskeller
@The Fat Kate Middleton,
@eldorado
Honestly, both of you win no points for reading comprehension. Can you take a moment, and re-read what has been said? If you are no trolls, I think you will see that you have been mistaken.
eldorado wrote cryptically up thread about rape not just affecting women, and received instant criticism for it. Whether he intended to or not, this is a common type of de-railing comment that comes up every online discussion of rape. In fact, here’s a pretty on-point analysis of this derailing tactic. Rape just isn’t a problem that primarily affects men. To make that a point is to miss the overall one, which is the immenseness of the tragedy of rape, abuse, and sexualized violence.
I don’t know or care if eldorado intended to derail the discussion, although I do note a pattern of repeated mis-reading comments, which makes me doubt good faith. in particular, he wrote this self-pitying marvel:
Fuck you.
Rape is overwhelming a male-on-female crime. The possibility affects every female’s life. That is just how it is. Rape is also a rarer male-on-male crime. Although rarer, I can personally attest that it happens frequently outside of prison. I have read of female-on-male rape, so I imagine it exists, but in six years of doing that counseling with ~150 other men & women, it didn’t come up once. I’m no authority; that’s just my lived experience.
Maybe you were raped by a woman, and you post these cryptic comments in the hope that we’ll ask about it. Maybe you have read the same things I have, and think that you are contributing to the discussion. Who cares? Your comments are not particularly helpful, and they’re ALL ABOUT YOU. Who are you, and why would we ever care. I didn’t call rape a melodramatic anything. I called YOU a melodramatic idiot. Your immediate misreading of what I wrote just a minute later means either that you are, in fact an idiot, or that you’re just trolling, deliberately misreading my plain comment “you are an idiot.” Either way, not so interesting.
@The Fat Kate Middleton, assuming you’re not the same person as eldorado, please stop and think before posting. Thanks for taking care of foster kids, however. that’s a noble service.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@That Guy: Obviously, I haven’t sat in enough threads that have wrangled through all this. All I know is that those baby boys who came to me sexually abused were as damaged as me, my sister, my daughter in law, and my nieces. I’m having a lot of trouble looking at it in some way that somehow this is different for those little boys. I’m a slow learner here, I freely admit, but how does this all make eldorado some kind of bad guy? Maybe you might want to ask about his experiences, or why he connected with this thread?
Sasha
@Violet:
In her defense, I think that Whoopi believed that Polanski’s victim was young but still above the age of consent (she wasn’t).
Rathskeller
@The Fat Kate Middleton: my lengthy comment is in moderation, so who knows when it will pop up.
in brief, because some guys always do this in rape discussions. it’s a derailing tactic. when criticized, he made it all about himself in an absurd way, which also highlights his desire to achieve victim status.
of course it is awful that your foster boys have been abused in this way. they are no less injured due to their gender than any female would have been. I am so very sorry that this happened to them, and I hope that they can get the help that they need. I am glad that you are there for them.
but rape as a global, societal problem, well away from your house, is overwhelming a male-on-female problem. that has always been the case, in war, in peace.
Any man can live a long life without ever worrying one time about being raped. That belief is a partial illusion, but it’s still quite true for most of us. The reverse is not true for every woman.
MikeJ
@Rathskeller:
Imagine the nerve of a rape victim wanting to be acknowledged as a victim.
300baud
Thanks for posting this, Tim. It’s beautiful, and so is most of the ensuing discussion.
Mnemosyne
@Rathskeller:
Hmm. I would revise that a little bit. I would say that if a guy can make it to adulthood without being raped or molested, it’s quite likely that he will make it the rest of his life without having to worry about it. Women never lose the awareness that they could potentially be raped if they walk down that alley/have a drink with the wrong guy/leave a window open by mistake.
I think it may also need to be revised to specify straight men — IIRC, it’s more common for adult gay men to be rape victims than adult straight men since gay men are also put in situations where they could be date-raped, or some random SOB thinks they need to be “punished” by being beaten and raped, etc.
Rathskeller
@MikeJ: eldorado makes no claim in this discussion of actually being raped himself.
No one of importance
@eldorado:
I apologise. I realised after thinking about it, that this might have been what you were trying to do.
I overreacted because of the behaviour of other men in this and the other post, and didn’t read your signals correctly.
Yes, rape happens to men, and male victims are often ignored.I hadn’t seen anyone doing this on this thread, that’s all, and I’ve certainly seen discussions on rape which flat out deny the existence of male rape victims.
No one of importance
@Jasmine:
That’s not remotely what I was saying and you know it. I didn’t realise at the time what Eldorado was trying to say. That’s possibly because other people have clearly stated they are among the statistics, and he didn’t.
Men invading female centric discussions and being real pricks can be observed in this very thread and in ABL’s post, so it’s not surprising I mistook what he was saying.
Now fuck off.
No one of importance
@Sasha:
And she never apologised for her ‘mistake’ which was still garbage anyway.
Greyjoy
In looking up a tangentially related factoid, I ran across a Newsweek article that found that 1 in 5 women, and 1 in 15 men, have been sexually assaulted by other servicemembers while serving in the military. Zoinks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/04/03/the-military-s-secret-shame.html
No one of importance
@Greyjoy:
There was an article in the Guardian just this week about rape in the US military:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/09/rape-us-military
Greyjoy
My point being that for those who were pondering whether, and in what scenario, male-on-male rape among adults might be found outside the prison system, well, now we know! Of course, both systems enforce a strict hierarchy in which absolute obedience is ingrained via quasi-abusive methods. And in which people are expected to deal those same methods out to others in order to survive. So, maybe that’s not so surprising. Kind of like how cops and criminals often come from the same mentality of wanting to be above the law.
Greyjoy
@No one of importance:
Yikes. That article is disturbing as hell.
Mack Lyons
@No one of importance @Rathskeller @Mnemosyne:
This is trending far too close to the “Men don’t get raped” meme for my tastes. And the backlash against eldorado isn’t sitting too well with me, either. True, men by far and large don’t have to constantly worry about being raped. In fact, the only setting I can think of off the top of my head where men would be constantly on guard against sexual assault is in prison, for a variety of reasons. Otherwise, it’s something men don’t have to worry about. But women do, and for men to not understand this is something I’m sure pisses them off about us to no end.
But that doesn’t mean we have to jump down the throat of someone who merely acknowledged that men can be victims of sexual assault, too, out of fear of the conversation being derailed by a “IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT WOMEN” strawman. I wouldn’t want to see a derail like that happen, either.
No one of importance
@Mack Lyons:
I realised I’d made a mistake about eldorado, and apologise. But I’d like to see you respond to John Weiss and his weak as piss apologia for Roman Polanski, instead of telling off us women first.
“out of fear of the conversation being derailed by a “IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT WOMEN” strawman”
We wouldn’t have that expectation if it didn’t happen all the bloody time, now would we? If conversations about serious topics weren’t trolled by men without fail, and men stopped to acknowledge *first* that rape is *mostly* a women’s issue, we wouldn’t be so sensitive about a man apparently starting up the same old shit, would we?
Rape is ultimately a product of the kyriarchy, which is why gay men along with women and children are the main victims. It’s about power, and suppression. Rape conversation are often turned into rape by proxy in that sense, in that straight men barge in to assert their authority and dominance, and disrupt attempts by victims and their supporters to push back.
Your post is well intentioned but you coming in to lay down the law to a bunch of women isn’t sitting well with me. It happens all the time on BJ, regardless of the topic – rape, abortion, reproductive rights, sexism. Men seek to control and police the conversation, and will actively attack and deride if they don’t get their way. You don’t want to come off as that kind of dick.
The Raven
@Southern Beale: “at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them,while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”
And many men are also afraid–with reason–that other men will assault them, and “assault” includes rape. There’s a violent subgroup, in vast majority men, who are dangers to men as well as women.
One question that comes to mind is: to what extent are the “creepy guys” also a danger to other men? I don’t know. But I’d guess they are.
The Raven
Unless he is imprisoned in the USA.
BTW, the historical work on Freud’s change of theory was done by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, formerly Projects Director of the Freud Archives. I believe his criticisms of Freud to be essentially correct.
The Raven
One reason to think about male victimization is that it may provide a lever to pry men away from their reality of rape and its prevalence. Rape is a form of violence, and it is one of the great errors of our society that men are taught they are not at risk.
The Raven
@The Raven: er, their denial of the reality of rape…
(This is what happens when I post too late at night.)
debbie
When Tyler Perry appeared on Oprah last year, after citing a 1 in 6 statistic for abuse of boys, I heard another statistic maybe even worse: Of all assaults, 80% are perpetrated by an adult the boy knew and trusted. What a betrayal! No wonder this society is so screwed up.
Mack Lyons
I think you’re mistaken. I’m not “laying down the law” or telling you women off. I see where you’re coming from, and I’ll leave you be.
You want me to say something about John Weiss being apoloplegic concerning Roman Polanski. Fine. I didn’t notice Weiss making excuses for a man whom, if he wasn’t the famous film director with connections and money, would have been remanded and incarcerated from jump street instead of being allowed to flee and remain on the run for years on end. Apparently Weiss’ comments were too inherently worthless for me to have remembered, let alone read. Hopefully the guy doesn’t take that as some sort of fucked up complement.
Jamey
I may be stating the obvious, but a lot of men’s idea of “sex” probably falls under the definition of rape, at least in certain environments (campuses, etc).
Not even sure that sincere, objective efforts at education can ever make a dent in this.
Mack Lyons
@The Raven: I always thought of rape as being about power and control, as in “I can take whatever I want of you from you and I’m strong (or devious) enough to do it.” It is a form of violence, but men are generally considered physically strong enough that the only way many people can even conceive men getting raped is if those men let their rapists rape them. That is some twisted shit we’re dealing with.
When I mentioned prison rape, I was referring to how rape in those institutions is used not just as some sort of “sexual release,” but as a form of establishing one man’s dominance over the other in a way that simply beating the man half to death can’t match. No, you have to take away the man’s dignity, make him absolutely vulnerable, and leave him with shame. Shame that he couldn’t protect himself from an event that happens to women with depressing regularity. Shame that he’s somehow less than a man for being raped. And if others learn of what happened, he’s haunted and hounded by other inmates with the same proclivities for the rest of his stay.
Andrew
@Southern Beale:
That Gavin de Becker quote (or a paraphrase thereof) has also been attributed to Margaret Atwood.
kay
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
I work with abused boy and girls in the court system and I’m sympathetic to how you want “your” boys included.
I’ll just tell you what I’ve found really helpful. Think of them as “children”, not “boys” or “girls”.
Children, boys and girls, have a lot more in common with each other than they do with (male) adults, in a vulnerability sense. Simply, boys aren’t men.
It works the other way, too.
Children in abused sibling groups transcend gender expectations/stereotypes in ways I find really great and amazing. For example, a female sibling will OFTEN be the person who physically intervenes (puts herself between the abusing adult and her brother). I don’t think we’re taught to expect that sort of physical boldness or bravery from “girls”, but they do it, all the time. Besides being siblings, and the bond there, the commonality of “child” is what binds them, I think.
One of the things I love about, say, ten year olds, is that they move so easily in and out of societal roles/expectations on gender. They’re still fluid in a way that adults aren’t.
Anyway, this is the way I approach what’s bothering you about this discussion. I put boys and girls together-“children are vulnerable to abuse”. I think it’s both more accurate and more inclusive.
Woodrowfan
which is why, even though I am pro-life in my inclination, I am pro-choice in my politics. I think abortion is wrong, but who the frak am I to tell a woman in that situation what to do.
Terry
I recall incidents when I was in boot camp where it was common among a certain aggressive sort to do things like run their penis across the mouth and face of someone who was sleeping. It was often done in a group, with intense sexual criticism of the victim when he awoke. Sometimes there was penetration when the victim’s mouth was open. I saw this – at a distance – at least 8-10 times in a few weeks.
Rape? If so, things like that are extremely common in the military, very common, and not just boot camp. I doubt if they ever get reported as rape. They certainly did not in 1968.
Tim F.
@No one of importance: I would suggest stopping at ‘But’. The guy deserves more than a qualified apology.
AxelFoley
@Cat Lady:
Barry
@John Weiss:
“@No one of importance: I’m no Polanski apologist. But the fact is that he was ‘tried’ in the national media. Should have been tried in court. We heard all sorts of stuff about it and he ran to France. Given the media circus around the ‘affair’, I can’t say that I blame him.”
Um, did you actually not hear that he *was* tried?
According to Wikipedia: “In 1977, after a photo shoot in Los Angeles, Polanski was arrested for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl and pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawful sex with a minor.[7] To avoid sentencing, Polanski fled to his home in London, eventually settling in France. “
Original Lee
@Roger Moore: This. I had a conversation a few months ago with an acquaintance about a date rape case for which he was on the jury, and he had voted for acquittal because the victim had not resisted at the time and had waited until the next day to go to the police. I pointed out that there was research on child sex abuse victims that showed that passivity was a survival response and then gave him stats on sexual abuse of girls. I asked him, “What is the likelihood that the victim was an abuse survivor? Is that number greater than the probability of a false rape accusation?” I’d like to think it made a difference, but I have my doubts.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Andrew: de Becker freely admits that it’s not his in The Gift of Fear. My recollection is that he couches it basically as “I can’t recall who said this, but it’s true and essential.” So when I used “quote” I wasn’t intending to attribute it to him originally.
/pedant
Mnemosyne
@Mack Lyons:
Frankly, that’s how it’s used against everyone, including women and gay men. It’s a way to demonstrate that the person you’re raping is lesser than you are. It’s a way of physically demonstrating your contempt for the other person.
But I think that’s why it’s such an uphill battle to get prison rape recognized as the horror that it is — that’s the arena where it’s most obvious that rape isn’t about sex, it’s about dominance and hierarchy, because you have two people who are (theoretically) at the same level in the social hierarchy. If rape is something that only happens to women or gay men, people who are “naturally” lower in the social hierarchy, it doesn’t have to be taken seriously.
JR
@John Weiss: Dude, you are just wrong. He was adjudicated guilty as a result of pleading guilty, and fled the country because he feared his sentence would involve going to jail.
So any bilge about how he was tried in the press is just that. He was tried in the justice system and the result was guilty. Then he ran away before being sentenced.
Guilty, guilty guilty of drugging a little girl and raping her multiple times. Disgusting monster. Not artistic hero, monster.
Lex
Related question: Do these cases of men abusing children that we’ve heard about lately indicate that the crime is becoming more common, or that it’s as common as ever but more cases are becoming public? I can’t prove it, but I suspect it’s the latter.
wrb
A few days ago I was called for jury duty for a molestation trial. Quite a few potential Jurors broke down & were dismissed when asked if they had suffered similar abuse.
Tim F.
@Lex: Latter. My wife comes from a traditional Catholic family, where way way back such things were widely known but NEVER talked about.
Catsy
@No one of importance:
You. Your high horse. Down from it.
FWIW, I was going to post the same thing as eldorado. Speaking from personal experience, not anecdotally.
Not to derail or distract from the point of this post. But to affirm it as something which can directly affect everyone, including self-centered guys who think they don’t have to be concerned because they aren’t a rapist and don’t have daughters or close female friends.
But fuck you very much for asking.
Brachiator
I keep secrets. I am not easily shocked. And I utterly lack any trace of that despicable thing that leads people to shame or disparage women over anything sexual. And so, for this and other reasons, a number of women friends have shared with me stories of abuse and molestation over the years.
I recall something from my college years, when a visiting female poet talked with a group of us students. Somewhere in the conversation, she brought up an anecdote about a fairly famous writer who had date raped a woman. With rising, but contained fury, she went on to talk about how people in the writer’s circle, including her, decided to keep the incident hushed, because it was felt that miring the writer in controversy would be “unnecessarily damaging” to his reputation since he was a young and promising star.
This has always angered me. I always want it to anger me.
Mack Lyons
@Catsy: Thank you. You’ve put it in better words than I could have.
eldorado
@Catsy: she had the grace to rethink her comments and offer an apology, which i accept without hesitation. i could have been clearer in my initial comments, but i’m not an artful writer and i would have been better served to not respond immediately.