March 16th, 2006 at 8:28 am
It would also be nice to see some awareness in this sort of campaign that badgering a “yes” out of a woman isn’t genuine consent. Does your partner genuinely want to be doing this, or did you push and push and push until she caved? What consequences did she have to fear if she continued to say no?

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As a feminist woman, I am however somewhat tired of this assumed weakness on our part. I agree we should have a compaign like that, back to back with another one telling my fellow sisters to please stand up for themselves. You owe yourself, as a human being, to stop others from doing to you, insofar as you can, what you would not do to them.

I have always pictured myself taking a machine gun, either under my coat if I had to track my rapist down, or else into the courtroom if he had been arrested (I know, I know, the metal detectors would eject me automatically.) I would look him in the eye and say, “This is how much it hurts - and you’ll never feel even this again. Rot in hell.” And then I would pull the trigger until it’s empty. Interestingly enough, I never picture his face or the physical details or feel the muscularity of the vengeance- it’s an abstract delight that I take, the securing of a lasting peace, from such imagining.

Ditto for an abuser coming to kill me and our children - as it seems to be their wont and speciality to do. I would station myself at a window and calmly take him out, dispensing with polished compliments. I will not wait for him to take the pleasure of slaughtering my children in front of me, keeping me for the delicious last - oh no Siree. The only problem is the children witnessing it - hopefully he would have made a mistake about their schedule or something and they are not around, otherwise I am afraid I would be in a bit of a bind. Still, if I have to choose I would vote for Mommy killing Daddy because Daddy is out to kill everybody first, than Daddy killing absolutely everybody. And then these cowards kill even themselves - they never have the balls to face up to their inhumanity. Fuckin’ weasel!

Note: I have always been happy in love, been in a happy relationship in the last ten years, have an otherwise sunny disposition, and have some good male friends and have never been assaulted, sexual or otherwise. My brother is kinda angry at times though - maybe it’s a chemical imbalance in our heads. I was even an angry feminist at six.

I do want to say that I am not blaming other women from not killing their rapists and abusers - I just sometimes get sick and tired of this crap, this all-powerful oppression, and wish it would go away.

Yes, this seems to be a really common reaction. I had that reaction too.

On the face of it, this makes no sense, because of course being raped is worse than being slandered. But I think if you look at why people feel this way, it starts to make more sense. What these adults–lawyers, parents, jurors, private investigators–did to Jane Doe in a cold and calculating and utterly unempathetic (is that even a word?) is even more chilling than what the boys did.

I think this is probably true. And, in fact, it follows from the feminist idea of a rape culture. If there’s a pervasive rape culture–and I don’t think many on this board would argue that there isn’t–then a lot of otherwise decent people will find themselves excusing rape, or not acknowledging rape, or even commiting it because they’re not sure what it is, because they think having sex with a drunken woman is just a fun, slightly naughty thing to do like getting a tattoo.

Speaking from personal experience here, I’ve had arguments with men–men who I would otherwise consider good people, who are generous and kind for the most part–who clearly have no real understanding of what “rape” is. I remember an argument I had with a friend of mine over the Kobe Bryant case–his “argument,” such as it was, was basically that Kobe Bryant doesn’t need to rape anyone because he’s Kobe and women are lining up to have sex with him. Which reveals a total ignorance about the difference between rape and sex. My response: “Yes, exactly. Kobe’s used to getting what he wants. So he thinks he’s entitled to take it, even from people who don’t want to give it to him.” This guy had never thought about things in that light before, and he just looked kind of blank.

I agree 100% on promoting discussion of sexual ethics/morality/whatever you want to call it. The discussion shouldn’t be just about “How much can I do before I get legally liable for rape?” but also “Is it right to have sex with this person at this time?”

Two things prevent crime, an individual’s conscience and fear of incrimination. Due to a rampant amount of sexism in our culture, both of these aspects are severely compromised. The pervasiveness of the idea that if a woman consents to being alone with a man while wearing a sexy outfit, she automatically consents to sex allows rapists to justify to themselves that what they’re doing isn’t really rape, and even for those who don’t need that justification, these ideas mean they’ll almost certainly get away with it. A stronger social change is necessary if women are to be truly freed from the treat of sexual assault. Sure this campaign is a first start, and if it takes 30 years or even 100 years to finally achieve these social changes, then in 30-100 years that’ll be great.

Until then, though, it’s still depressing.

we also talked about the difference between the american “no means no” and the canadian (so i’ve heard) “yes means yes.” i like the idea of teaching the need for explicit consent, as opposed to letting men think they have a “green light” until they hear “no.” (and that’s a sober “yes,” not a drunk one.)

(1) I’m wary of the “rapists are stupid not malevolent” theory behind education campaigns. They must know it’s wrong, and we wouldn’t try and educate people out of committing any other serious crimes. I hope the campaign is of the “don’t do this because it will land you in prison” type.

(2) I hope nothing comes of the suggestion that the law should be changed so that someone can be ‘too drunk to give consent’. I’m not suggesting that someone who’s unconscious is capable of consent, or should be legally. But my reading is that in the hope of jailing more rapists the proposal would make an explicit ‘yes’, from someone who’s conscious but drunk, a legal ‘no’. That would be a mistake. It would be an absolute disaster in terms of law reform and would make criminals of people who have done nothing wrong.

(3) Sexual ethics good. But like Sara says, beyond “rape is bad” could we really get people to agree on much? Even on this blog?

In the comment thread at Dorcasina’s I mentioned earlier, there was actually a guy who said something to the effect of, ‘rape is by its nature primarily a legal matter.’ And I don’t think that’s an uncommon belief–that when we talk about rape, we’re primarily talking about a legal concept. (As opposed to something like theft or fraud–where people in general can agree that certain behaviors are theft or are fraud, even if one could never be prosecuted in a courtroom for them.)

And so I’m frustrated sometimes by campaigns like the one referenced here, that while trying to do something really great–change ideas about consent!–just uphold this idea that rape is primarily a legal violation, as opposed to an *ethical* violation. Or a humanitarian violation. We don’t teach people that shouting racial slurs at someone is wrong because they could be arrested; we teach them it’s wrong *because hurting others is unethical*. Because hate is wrong. Because it decreases their humanity to treat someone like that.

(On a parenthetical note–while writing that, I just realized that rape isn’t the only feminist issue that is treated this way. Sexual harassment, anyone? It’s interesting, now that I think about it. I’m going to have to ponder that for a while.)

i think the arguments should be both the ethical ones and the legal ones, but also (and this is why i made my smoking analogy, but i didn’t develop it well enough in the comment) the public health/safety argument. the obvious costs of rape are the burdens on the police, courts, and hospitals of finding and prosecuting rapists and treating victims. less obvious are: the toll on the psyche of women feel unsafe alone at night; the monetary loss that women have to take if, out of fear, they refuse to take a job or housing that requires them to be out alone at night; the sense of unease and distrust between men and women (especially non-friends) due to the possibility of rape (however unlikely); the continued subjugation of women’s sexuality due to chance of being accused of “asking for it”; i’m sure there are others.

while i don’t usually like appealing to selfish interest, a lot of people find smoking unacceptable because of the social costs to non-smokers (second-hand smoke risks, rising health costs, etc.). i think we can appeal to the same instinct to make rape unacceptable because of the social costs to non-victims. a sort of “rape hurts everyone” campaign.

Oh, yes. I like this… something catchy like this.

I agree that attitudes around smoking have changed. However, it’s worth pointing out that didn’t happen by making smoking illegal in order to make everyone aware of how bad it was. I would argue that attitude change is not the same thing as legislative change (or more awareness of legislative change).

There’s a long history of women being screwed over by unjust (or unfairly applied) law, so it’s understandable that many times feminists’ first impulse is to fix a problem by legislating it, or relying on the law to fix it. And I’m just thoroughly unconvinced that it’s sufficient to cause actual behavior change here–yes, throw rapists in prison, tighten up definitions of sexual assault to make it easier to convict, but at some point that’s all reactive rather than preventative, and thus will never lead to a lowering in the actual incidence of rape.

Attitude change (and by extension, a change in the normative sexual scripts we all use before getting laid) is a tough sell for a lot of people in the anti-rape movement, though. In order to get behind it, you have to believe at least a little in the humanity of some rapists. That is, you have to believe that some men who date-rape women are guys who basically think of themselves as good people but who have ingested the sexist and woman-harmful models of sex that our culture is swimming in, and who could be convinced of a different model. Sometimes I’m sure that must be the case. Other times I wonder if I believe that just because the alternative is too horrible and too upsetting to really believe.

The alternative is to use the stick approach: don’t do this because it will land you in prison. (Implicitly, assuming that men can only be stopped from raping by threatening them with punishment.) The only catch being it doesn’t really work that well, in my experience.

reducing rape now instead of in 30 years would be better, of course, but it’s better than nothing.

Small steps, very small steps. I wrote about what might–and I emphasize the word *might*–be an indication that some small steps have actually been taken in my Blog-Against-Sexism-Day post. The post is about some potentially hopeful signs that I have noticed in my male students in class discussions I have been having about rape in my freshman English class.

reducing rape now instead of in 30 years would be better, of course, but it’s better than nothing.

it sounds like a better slogan would be “are you sure it’s not rape? what if it happened to your sister? would it be rape then?” but i don’t think that’s going to happen…not catchy enough. *musing* maybe if they got sting or bono to say it….

The caricature of what they are looms so large in their imagination that they wonÂ’t bother to identify with it.

The fact that a governmental figure said “I believe that we need to start putting the onus onto men and make them aware of their responsibilities” and hoped the campaign would make men “take more responsibility” is indeed a feminist dream come true.

Yes, true, but it still feels like saying “I believe we need to start putting the onus on murderers and have them take responsibility”. Ergh. And then I banged my head into my keyboard.