Want to stop rape?
Aug. 25th, 2010 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumDon't rape
It's not a great campaign, but the idea is sound. Men rape. Women don't need to change what they do, the people who rape them do.
Yes, I l know the arguments... people need to take care of their surroundings, not do stupid things, etc.
It's all true, and none of it is relevant to the real issue. No one will really say, "it was my fault" if I do something which increases my risk, and I get attacked.
Example: A kid was murdered down the block from me. The word on the street is he was killed over money. What money? Stuff he won in the illegal dice game the folks next door used to run (they stopped, just after the killing... I wonder why).
No one is blaming him for playing in the local game, nor for being on a streetcorner. They blame the people who shot him.
Which is as it should be. They also don't have campaigns up saying, "If you hang on the corner, you are asking to get shot/robbed/thumped." When the Klan rolls into town and beats someone for being "uppity" we (no longer) blame the victim.
But rape... we still do that. She was in the wrong bar. She went out alone. She wore, "provocative" clothing (which is to say, she wore clothes). She "led him on", etc.
All of it is nonsense.
Rape isn't a con-game. It's not a Nigerian scam. It's not a case of the victim being beguiled into doing something. It's a guy who doesn't take no for an answer. It may be force, it may be subterfuge (the "get them drunk" trick). It may be social pressure. It may be any number of things.
But the root of it all, the rapist didn't take no for an answer. It may have been in advance (force, drugs) it may have been soft-pedal ("if you loved me", "you know you want to"), it may have been thoughtless (she says, "maybe this is a bad idea").
The simple fact of the matter... the consent you want, if you are going to avoid rape; the consent we need to teach our sons (before they get confused messages from the culture), the message we need to make the norm...
Consent = enthusiastic consent.
It's that simple. If one's partner is enthusiastic, then the question of rape goes away. If one doesn't pressure, then the question of rape goes away. If one sets rules (when I started having sex, my rule was, "if one of us is impaired, and we don't have an extant physical relationship, we aren't starting one now." As I got more experience with sex, and impairment, I modified it some. I have a pretty good idea when my ability to decide is starting to get fuzzy, and at that point the rule kicks in. For my partner, I do a slightly less nuanced version of this. I look at age, and what I've gleaned from conversation; while not impaired, to decide. I try to err on the side of, "we can wait." First times are, IMO, better sober, in any case).
Enthusiastic consent = no rape.
Non-consent (no matter when, nor how mildly expressed) = rape.
It's that simple. The same way the thief steals, the murderer murders and the liar lies: the rapist rapes.
It's not a great campaign, but the idea is sound. Men rape. Women don't need to change what they do, the people who rape them do.
Yes, I l know the arguments... people need to take care of their surroundings, not do stupid things, etc.
It's all true, and none of it is relevant to the real issue. No one will really say, "it was my fault" if I do something which increases my risk, and I get attacked.
Example: A kid was murdered down the block from me. The word on the street is he was killed over money. What money? Stuff he won in the illegal dice game the folks next door used to run (they stopped, just after the killing... I wonder why).
No one is blaming him for playing in the local game, nor for being on a streetcorner. They blame the people who shot him.
Which is as it should be. They also don't have campaigns up saying, "If you hang on the corner, you are asking to get shot/robbed/thumped." When the Klan rolls into town and beats someone for being "uppity" we (no longer) blame the victim.
But rape... we still do that. She was in the wrong bar. She went out alone. She wore, "provocative" clothing (which is to say, she wore clothes). She "led him on", etc.
All of it is nonsense.
Rape isn't a con-game. It's not a Nigerian scam. It's not a case of the victim being beguiled into doing something. It's a guy who doesn't take no for an answer. It may be force, it may be subterfuge (the "get them drunk" trick). It may be social pressure. It may be any number of things.
But the root of it all, the rapist didn't take no for an answer. It may have been in advance (force, drugs) it may have been soft-pedal ("if you loved me", "you know you want to"), it may have been thoughtless (she says, "maybe this is a bad idea").
The simple fact of the matter... the consent you want, if you are going to avoid rape; the consent we need to teach our sons (before they get confused messages from the culture), the message we need to make the norm...
Consent = enthusiastic consent.
It's that simple. If one's partner is enthusiastic, then the question of rape goes away. If one doesn't pressure, then the question of rape goes away. If one sets rules (when I started having sex, my rule was, "if one of us is impaired, and we don't have an extant physical relationship, we aren't starting one now." As I got more experience with sex, and impairment, I modified it some. I have a pretty good idea when my ability to decide is starting to get fuzzy, and at that point the rule kicks in. For my partner, I do a slightly less nuanced version of this. I look at age, and what I've gleaned from conversation; while not impaired, to decide. I try to err on the side of, "we can wait." First times are, IMO, better sober, in any case).
Enthusiastic consent = no rape.
Non-consent (no matter when, nor how mildly expressed) = rape.
It's that simple. The same way the thief steals, the murderer murders and the liar lies: the rapist rapes.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 10:45 pm (UTC)A friend of mine was raped while she was working a night shift in a convenience store. She was left for dead. She and I have different sorts of trauma. Her physical scars are horrific, and I have none. I assume that my ability to trust and to love have been damaged in a different way than hers, both due to my age and my relationship with my rapist. I don't see a value to comparing who has it "worse." Neither of us is at fault, and teaching women "not to be raped" isn't going to eliminate situations like hers or mine.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 11:03 pm (UTC)Violent, with a subtext of resistance, = rape.
Everything else = misunderstanding.
Which is the entire point of saying that non-consent = rape. When that meme takes serious hold, we can start talking about degrees of rape.
Because right now, we have courts accepting that women in alcoholic comas weren't raped. That people with mental disabilities, in wheelchairs, are consenting adults (at IIRC, 16).
That wearing "skinny jeans" = cannot be raped because it requires the active participation of the wearer to remove them is the finding of fact by a judge.
Those all trivialise rape too. Worse, they completely discount it, because they absolutely cancel out granularity.
In the formulation you seem to be advocating (one which says more than one thing = rape is bad) ends up being binary (violence is required, or it isn't rape) and which says that only violence = trauma, the ability to discuss degrees of rape is gone.
I've agreed that rape is a continuum. I've also said the greater burden on preventing it is on the part of those who do, not those who are done by.
Just as we do for things like burglary, fraud, mugging, etc. We may not do all we can to prevent those things, but those who fail to prevent it are not, by default, assumed to have caused it.