These men were lynched because a white woman accused them of rape.

Jill over at Feministe has two posts about rape that have unsettled me some.
The first one, She was asking for it is in response to a post at Alas A blog by Nick Kiddle called My rape s

Please do not post any more comments here, and thank you to everyone who contributed to a productive discussion.

People call each out for uncivil language or undue hostility all the time on online discussions, but my personal experience is that when it comes to everything but feminism people are more likely to simply take issue with others’ tone or language and/or use others’ tone or language as an excuse to ignore the actual argument - and leave it at that. It’s only when it comes to feminism that people seem to constantly also feel the need to lecture their fellow debaters about “playing nice” as an argumentative strategy - even once they have been convinced.

It may be that my view on this is skewed because of the types of blogs I frequent, and it may be that feminists are more apt to see hidden meaning in requests to stay civil, but even if there is truth to both of these, I don’t think the problem lies solely with us.

Too often when non-feminists hear accusations of sexism and misogyny they take the accusations personally even when they aren’t meant to be. I mean, really all you have to do is read spicy’s translation of your synopsis of the events to see that most of those who were arguing with you were not trying to call you names just because they were angry or careless. For the most part they were arguing that you were wrong and that your arguments make it easier for rapists to get away with their crimes. At worst they were pointing out that you may end up committing criminal and unkind acts yourself - without meaning to - if you continue to hold such beliefs. No one was accusing you of currently being a rapist.

How else were people supposed to respond to what you said? I suppose you could say we could be less angry, but in my experience that tends to backfire. We are talking about a serious and intimate crime here, if we didn’t sound angry we would come across as simply playing devil’s advocate or arguing with you for the sake of arguing or being right or proving you wrong.

In my experience in discussing sexism and mysoginy, anger can be a very useful tool. It’s true that when we come across as angry others can get the impression that we are taking things too personally or are being too quick to judge, but it can also force them to try to put themselves into our shoes rather than simply attempt to “win” the debate. By forcing others to find arguments that will work against our anger, we also end up forcing them to consider viewpoints they usually would not if all they were doing was looking for holes in our arguments. The New York Times may not be the best venue to attempt this type of strategy, but I do think that informal conversations (online or off) can be - depending on the audience.

Quite honestly - I don’t think most of the people who “walk away” from such anger will be convinced by people like me no matter what tone, language, or strategy I use. I think they will be convinced by people like you - so my job is to convince people like you. Mission Accomplished.

I’ll repeat: if someone can’t handle tough criticism, they aren’t capable of evaluating their behavior and their beliefs. The kid gloves have to come off in order for this stuff to be challenged. You can’t call out rape-apologist ideas without using words like “rape apologist.” You were able to listen, and I appreciate that. But if your ego had prevented you from thinking through, “If that’s your definition of consent, I worry about the women you’ve been with,” it would have prevented you from thinking through, “These sentiments make it easier for men to rape women.”

Well, Dave, you clearly weren’t prepared to consider anyone’s viewpoint but your own, so we weren’t ever going to “have an impact” on your thinking.

Ironically, despite the best efforts of some of the commentors here, I’ve been sold on Marsha’s original standard. Piny is absolutely right when e says “This ‘heartbeat away from orgasm’ thing is just so much horseshit.” It absolutely is, and now that I see it, I’m dismayed that I bought into the (near ubiquitous) horseshit. I guess I never put much thought into it, as I’ve never had anyone tell me to stop. Lucky me. :)

I still think you (in general) might want to reconsider your approach to the discussion. Lots of people will just walk away with the first accusation of rape, and then you’ve lost ‘em. Just something to think about.

I don’t think they did so out of a sense of evil though, even though their action was evil in its effect. They were conditioned to believe that domestic violence is a family matter, and that by involving the police, it contributes to divorce and family breakups. They believed that divorce was worse than getting beaten. I don’t think they really thought he was going to kill me, just beat me up. So, in that sense, shaming isn’t going to have an effect—first, you have to teach them that that view of domestic violence is flawed thinking. Divorce isn’t worse than being punched, or kicked, or spit on, or having obscenities screamed at you all night. It’s not. Divorce is a birthday party compared to that.

But with this pre-existing cultural idea that divorce is worse than family violence, you’re not going to convince them with shame. They really think they were doing the right thing. They thought that their silence was going to keep my marriage together, which in their eyes was the “best thing”. You have to meet people where they are, and work from there. If you start with “a family living under domestic violence is already broken—divorce won’t make it worse” you won’t get there (IMHE). If you start with, “if it was a stranger doing that, would you call the police?” will get you there faster. Baby steps, ya know? And to me, that’s part of what this conversation on these various rape threads is about—-breaking down those mental barriers in order to do something that will make a practical difference.

Or shaming. Fear of being shamed is a powerful motivator. I think the people who ignored La Lubu’s cries for help behaved contemptibly. Shame on them.

Seond:
BINGO!!

I wrote How close one was to people who would intervene.
and you responded with:

The time my (now ex) husband broke into my apartment after I filed for divorce, with the intent of killing me (lucky for me he had knives but not a gun). See, I lived in an apartment building with paper-thin walls. There were twenty apartments in that building. And yes, I screamed bloody murder for the neighbors to call the police, that my husband was trying to kill me. Where I live, domestic violence isn’t yet viewed by the population at large as a matter to involve the police in. If it comes to actual murder, yes, but getting beaten up badly? That’s just a “family matter”. So, when I was screaming at the neighbors to call the police, their translation of “he’s trying to kill me” was “he’s beating me up.” And since taking a beating is part of what sometimes happens to wives, it wasn’t considered something worth phoning up the cops for.

Exactly; you weren’t in close proxiity to people who could intervene or would intervene, in this case because of cultural background.

Now I dont know if you knew at the time the cultural attitudes of your neighbors or the potential risk to you from a husband that one was in the midst of divorcing. Neither do I know if your husband showed a propensity towards violence during the marriage.

But if you had known, how would you have changed what you had done, not that it would change your past, nor is it a matter of placing the blame on you. Alternate histories are mind games without any provable truth; but the information could help you in the future or prove invaluable to another woman in the same situation.

Furthermore, the information you disclose should help us alter the thinking in society. What could bring the message home to the community where you were living that spouse abuse isn’t a family affair? How can we make society as a whole see this? How can we put pressure on the courts that this matter is dealt with more seriously?

Part of the problem is that until the “jury” sees that spoue abuse isn’t a serious crime, the police can arrest the prosecution can do its utmost and the guy can still get off.

One way might be to arrest and fine those who hear but do nothing; difficult because unless you can prove they actually heard the words and knew where the sound was coming from they can shrug and go “well I heard a fight, but I didn’t know anyone was in danger” Or “I heard screaming but I had no idea where it was coming from.”

The consent model is predicated on a view of sex as a transaction or set of transactions between two-plus autonomous humans, who each own and control their own body. It’s transactional, atomistic and temporally limited in scope.

As opposed to (say) a spiritual model, where people are not autonomous, but complementarily paired, and where the sexual act is not primarily a physical coupling, but a spiritual unification. It’s process-oriented and not temporally bound; once joined, always joined.

Rape is a grave wrong under both models, but for different reasons.

Problem is, JayQ”“and you and others keep refusing to get this…is that a man is not a high-speed vehicle. He’s not a machine.

Agreed. Neither are women. Neither are children.

The problem is, that the consent model essentially defines human sexual relationships in terms of an simple exchange between consumer and supplier, like video rentals. Each partner seeks to maximize his or her benefit at a cost that they deem is reasonable.

Society does not generally require that consumers consider the needs of the supplier. The consumer need only consider that his or her needs are being met. Such transactions are essentially self-regarding for the parties involved. Each becomes a means to the ends of the other, and objectifies men and women.

Violating them, even.

No. You’re doing some pretty nasty things to logic and semantics by imputing that meaning to my words, but that doesn’t put you on a par with a rapist, or even with the men who didn’t take Nick’s no seriously.

I asked you a simple, one sentence question, that sought to flesh out your viewpoint. A usual practice among critical thinkers, and certainly not at all out of line when having a discussion with a group that purports to establish a uniform definition of rape. I’m really unclear what meaning you believe I was trying to impart to your words.

Rachel Ann, you know what I flashed on when I read this? The time my (now ex) husband broke into my apartment after I filed for divorce, with the intent of killing me (lucky for me he had knives but not a gun). See, I lived in an apartment building with paper-thin walls. There were twenty apartments in that building. And yes, I screamed bloody murder for the neighbors to call the police, that my husband was trying to kill me. Where I live, domestic violence isn’t yet viewed by the population at large as a matter to involve the police in. If it comes to actual murder, yes, but getting beaten up badly? That’s just a “family matter”. So, when I was screaming at the neighbors to call the police, their translation of “he’s trying to kill me” was “he’s beating me up.” And since taking a beating is part of what sometimes happens to wives, it wasn’t considered something worth phoning up the cops for.

That’s coloring my view of this situation. I’m having a hard time believing that there is this “special” population of men who rape, with distinguishing characteristics that make them markedly different from the general population of men. Yes, I believe that men with previous rape convictions are more likely to rape, but barring a previous rape conviction, I don’t think rapists behave or express themselves any differently than men in general. The same way thieves don’t express themselves any differently than the population at large—you often won’t know if someone is a thief until you’ve had that thief steal from you.

One of the myths that isn’t a rape myth, but feeds into rape myths, is that of “women’s intuition”. The idea that women have a special sixth sense that is more highly attuned than men, and that we have a special ability to pick up on cues about other people and/or situations that is inherent to our femininity. Back to our thief analogy. Society urges employers to screen employees for their likelihood to steal. Yet, no one blames an employer for having hired an employee who later turned out to be a thief. It is recognized that no matter the vigilance of the employer, if that employer hires enough people, that employer will eventually hire a thief, and be stolen from. And further, that when that employer is stolen from, that the blame rests 100% on the shoulders of the thief, and not of the employer. That employer is not blamed for having faulty intuition.

Yet, that is exactly what we do to rape survivors. Blame them for having faulty intuition. There’s this background belief that if Nick had only “known” who ze was going home with, that hir situation would have been safer. What does that say to the 68% of women raped by men that they did know?

The story was a story about rape, about consensual and nonconsensual sex, told to make a point about what is and is not considered violation.

So, may I ask, are all “violations,” all attempts at violation, equal?

Riiiight. That was what Richard was objecting to. I disagree. The story was a story about rape, about consensual and nonconsensual sex, told to make a point about what is and is not considered violation.