I should have published this ages ago, but I spaced.

There’s now a new, private forum for progressive bloggers, and also for progressive members of the “progressive blogosphere” community (i.e., comment-writers). It’s called Progressive Bloggers Kicking Ass Forum. It’s intended as a sort of support group, where we prog blog types can share info, advice, supportive vibes, experiences, bitching about trolls, and general high-fiving.

There’s also a sub-forum, moderated by me, for men only - specifically, pro-feminist and feminist men. This is a forum for men to discuss ideas, thoughts and issues pertaining to men and feminism. I don’t know exactly what it’ll be yet; hopefully we’ll discover that as we go along. But it is intended to be a space for discussion without personal attacks.

Men who want to participate should first join PBKA (which requires moderator approval), and once your membership is activated click “usergroups” on the top bar. Then, on the next screen, choose pro-feminist and feminist men forum from the pull down menu, then follow the directions to join!

Although as the moderator I’m most focused on the pro-fem men group, I want to point out that the forum also includes sub-forums for feminist women only, for women of color only, and for white anti-racists only. If you’re interested in any of that, or in progressive blogging in general, please come join us.

From the “Alas” mailbag…

hi,

I’m looking for a book recommendation, and i wonder if you or a blog reader could help (though please don’t give out my e-mail address).

I’m a teacher at a jr. high/high school. A recent incident at the school exposed what i thought was a serious need to start a dialog about sexism at the school among our students and possibly our faculty. We are a fairly liberally oriented group, but i think a lot of our kids dont see how sexism affects their lives. And i think the faculty is sometimes passively sexist without meaning to be. so i floated the idea of a discussion group among the faculty about sexism and sexuality, and i got a pretty strong response. now I’m looking for a book i can suggest we all read to give us a basis for further discussion and action.

The ideal book would be something like the practical modern feminists guide to navigating the pre-teen and teen years.

We need ideas about teaching 12-18 year olds (boys and girls) about the effects of sexism, a positive and responsible attitude about their sexuality (without seeming preachy or coercive or censoring), skills for critically analyzing media portrayals of sex and sexism, and other important things like that.

I don’t know how often you take requests like this, but if it seems worthwhile, id appreciate a request to your readers for a recommendation.

Readers? Anyone got a recommendation for this nice teacher?

If you can spare five or ten bucks right now (or more!), a couple of people in what I think of as my blogging neighborhood could use help.

First, the Count - husband of the Countess, aka Trish Wilson - finds himself unexpectedly jobless. Trish is one of the leading debunkers of anti-feminist nonsense in all Blogistan, and has kept at it year after year. I’m a fan of her work. But right now Trish needs our help, to rescue her and her Count from a fate worse than death:

Anyone who can help us will forever be on our good side. Thanks so much if you’re able to throw some moulah our way. We really need it. Otherwise, we have to live with my mother, and listen to Christian radio, hear “Praise the Lord” when she finds a good parking space, and listen to The Cowsills on an old console record player. Please Don’t Let Us Have To Live Like That!!!!

The Countess and her Count have job prospects and future plans; but they’ve had the rug yanked out from under them, and they need help getting through the next little while. If you can, head on over and use the Paypal link at the top of The Countess’ page.

And then head over to Slant Truth and use the “help Vegankid & Friends” button on the upper right (you can also follow the links there to read more about the scary stuff Vegankid has been dealing with lately) to send VK exactly one dollar.

VeganKid is one of those “lynchpin people” you meet sometimes - people who just seem to naturally draw a network of people around them, and to turn that into something vital. You know, like George in “It’s a Wonderful Life” or someone like that. This is, of course, an excellent reason for me to nurture a burning hatred of VK, since I’ve never been anything like that.

Nonetheless, VeganKid has been sick, and one of VK’s housemates suffered a major, major traumatic burning (follow the links at Kevin’s place for details). As Kevin says, right now I’m sure VeganKid would appreciate some help. To be specific, a buck of help - the link automatically fills in the amount for one dollar, no more, no less. It would be really cool if a couple of hundred people PayPal’d a single dollar, don’t you think?

“Chuckdarwin,” while criticizing the Male Privilege Checklist, wrote:

5. The odds of my encountering sexual harassment on the job are so low as to be negligible.

Anecdotal. Unprovable. As a manager, I have fired people for sexually harassing men at work.

I looked into this after reading Chuck’s post, and I think he has a point. #5 is too strongly worded; in the US, according to Federal EEOC statistics, the proportion of sexual harassment charges filed by women has dropped from about 90% to about 85% over the last decade. Therefore, I’ve rewritten #5 to say “I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.”

27. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car.

Salesmen just want your money, no matter who you are. While it may still happen in rare cases, this is just neurotic tinfoil hattery and an unimportant concern in the grand scheme of women’s issues.

That this happens - and doesn’t appear to be a matter of “rare cases” - has been documented by sending male and female negotiators, trained to use identical negotiating techniques, to car lots to negotiate for cars. The initial offers made to men are simply better. (This doesn’t mean that women will always pay more, just that they’ll have to negotiate harder to reach the same price.) (References at bottom of post).

Admittedly, the academic research I’ve read only applies to the US. However, a November 2005 story in The Guardian reported that a non-academic British study had found similar results.

What Car? magazine sent men and women into 45 dealerships across England, and used hidden cameras and microphones to track their progress.

The team found the women were quoted up to £1,800 more to buy a BMW 320i, Ford Focus 1.6, Nissan X-Trail 2.2 dCi, Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 and Volkswagen Beetle Cabriolet 1.6. On average they were asked to pay a premium of £534. [That's $1,005 U.S. -Amp]

Less than half the staff were happy to cut prices for female customers, compared with more than four-fifths for men.

More women thought their inquiry had not been taken seriously by the dealer, and complained that finance packages had not been explained. Even the presence of a man appeared to cut prices, with couples offered a better deal even if the woman took the lead.

In general, the theory that the free market prevents market-based discrimination from happening - “Salesmen just want your money, no matter who you are,” as Chuck puts it - has not been supported by the experiences of discriminated-against groups, or by empirical testing.

37. If I have a wife or girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

This one is just plain old insulting.

#37 is well-supported by tons of research, from a large number of countries (I’ve included a handful of citations at the bottom of this post). Women do more household chores, and in particular are more likely to scrub the toilet, wash dishes, change the diapers, etc - tasks that must be repeated again and again, day after day.

I don’t see why any man should find this insulting. Some men do as much or more housework than the women they live with (I live with such a man), but statistically these men are a minority; why be insulted because I point this fact out?

41. I am not expected to spend my entire life 20-40 pounds underweight.

Come on, now. This is all based on ‘target weight’, which is in no way an exact science (and that’s as nice as I can be about the ’subject’). No one EXPECTS any woman to be 40 pounds underweight. Some famous models and actresses may try this, but most people actually say it’s a BAD thing (reading the tabloids whilst in line to purchase groceries).

41. Probably I could have phrased this better - in particular, including a particular poundage was a mistake. So point well taken. I’ll have to reword this item.

But I feel that Chuck is focusing on the trees and ignoring the forest. Is there any serious doubt that women as a group face much more pressure than men to be thin?

(This is one of a number of posts responding to Chuck’s critique. You can use the category archive to see all posts related to the Male Privilege Checklist.)

References
Read the rest of this entry »

On the Male Privilege Checklist (henceforth “the list,”) I wrote:

7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.

Karmaq, writing in The Unseen Kid’s comments, responded:

I question some of the stats… For example, the myth that rape only happens to men in prison (or gay men), when the FBI stats (if you want to believe the FBI) are that it happens way more often than we think. No one wants to talk about and even if they do, no one wants to hear about it. But I’ve met enough men (straight, never been in jail) who have talked to me about it (cause people tend to tell me stuff they don’t normally share) that I tend to suspect the FBI’s “1 in 7 men; 1 in 3or4 women” had some validity.

My response to Karmaq:

First, Karmaq is mistaken about what the FBI’s statistics say. The FBI only counts the small proportion of rapes that are reported to police, and they calculate their numbers per year, rather than per lifetime. As a result, the FBI’s numbers are far, far, far lower than the numbers you provide here. Most importantly, because the FBI’s inexcusably sexist definition of rape excludes men (”forcible rape, as defined in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will”), the FBI’s numbers are irrelevant to Karmaq’s point.

Second, contrary to Karmaq’s remarks, I never claimed that “rape happens only to men in prison (or gay men).” That would obviously not be true.

What I said is, that for men who aren’t in prison, the chances of being raped are very low, and I stand by that claim.

According to this study by the Centers for Disease Control, 15% of women and 2% of men in the US have ever been raped in their lifetime. That difference alone is enough to justify my statement. (The CDC’s numbers are based on interviews with a representative sample of the US population, not on police reports.)

Although the CDC’s is one of the best rape prevalence studies, I believe their results underestimate the prevalence of rape, especially for women. One particularly striking (but not at all unusual, as these studies go) flaw of the CDC’s survey is that their interview questions didn’t include a specific question asking about rapes that take place while the victims are unconscious or otherwise unable to resist due to drink or drugs - which is to say, a prototypical frat-house rape. Of course, anyone can be raped while passed out, but anecdotally I believe it happens significantly more often to women. (Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any good studies addressing this question, so anecdotal evidence is all I have.)

Readers may be wondering, of that 2% of men who report having been raped, how many were raped in prison? The CDC did not ask if rapes took place while incarcerated, so there’s no way of knowing what portion of the 2% of raped men, were raped in prison. However, it’s at least plausible that a significant portion of that 2% represents prison rape.

According to this Bureau of Justice Statistics report, 5% of US men have been in prison at some point in their lives. If one in ten men are raped while in prison - and some studies suggest prison rape prevalence may be that high or much higher - that would account for a quarter of all the male rape victims in the US. So although this is speculative, it’s plausible that a substantial number of the 2% of American men who have been raped, were raped while in prison.

Does it matter where rape takes place or who the victims are? In every moral sense, it does not matter. No one deserves to be raped. Prison rape is rape, and is totally inexcusable. Rape is rape, evil and wrong no matter where or to whom it happens. Every rape victim deserves sympathy and support.

But one point of the male privilege checklist is to make visible some ways a male-centric society harms women. (I believe that male-centric societies also harm men, but that’s a subject for a different post). Pretending that there’s no statistical difference in the likelihood of being raped goes against that purpose. In that context, that rape in ordinary US society is a crime overwhelmingly committed by men against women is important, and must be acknowledged.

It should be noted that the prison rape epidemic is probably going to get worse. Over the next couple of decades, the proportion of male rape victims may increase, because the proportion of men who have been in prison is projected to skyrocket. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ projections, if our current rate of sending men to prison is maintained, then at some point in the future 15% of American men will have spent time in prison. (6% of white men, 17% of Latinos, and 32% of Black men. For comparison’s sake, the projections for women are 1%, 2% and 6%.)

If those projections are true (or even partly true), and if the prison rape epidemic continues unabated, the overall number of American rape victims will vastly increase over the coming decades. This is true even if rape prevalence outside of prison doesn’t change at all. This is one reason why it’s essential to support strong measures to combat prison rape; unfortunately, all that’s gotten through congress so far are weak half-measures.

* * *Please Note* * *
My posts on “Alas” are sometimes heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid that, you can instead leave a comment on the identical post at Creative Destruction.

In the comments of my post, False Allegation Worse Than Rape? cross-posted to Alas Ed wrote:

Would you rather be raped or incarcerated for 1, 10, or 20 years. Maybe I am a freak but I will take a rape, ESPECIALLY the I am too drunk to remember kind, over giving up years of my life. No hesitation, no second thoughts.

Okay, I’ll take your choice and run with it. Since rape by it’s definition is beyond the rape victim’s control, I’ll create a full scenario from that to show how this “easy” choice may not be something that’s over and done with in one night.

Since many rapes happen on college campuses, our fictional raped man is a senior who has landed his perfect job and his perfect fiance. He’s at a party where he bumps into a girl he dated his freshman year. He broke up with her when he discovered that she was into drugs, porn and sleeping around. This night she hands him a Coke (he gave up drinking alcohol at the same time this relationship ended) and tells him that she’s turned her life around and because he once cared for her, he sips his drink and listens to her financial plans even though he wishes he could be anywhere else.

The smoke and the noise start getting to him and he tells this girl that it was good seeing her, but it’s time for him to go since he has a big test in the morning. She tells him that she’s ready to leave also, but the walk to her dorm takes her through an area where a girl was raped the month before. Because he’s a gentleman, he reluctantly agrees to see her safely to the entrance of her dorm.

The girl waves at those around them and tells them she’s being seen safely home so they don’t have to worry about her. A few people wink suggestively, but our man needs fresh air too much to correct anyone’s impression about his intentions.

The next morning, our man wakes up naked in a strange bed. He’s in a dorm room and it isn’t his. He sits up and feels like he’s going to puke. As he rushes to get dressed and get to his class which he’s already late for, he nearly trips over a tripod.

By the time he gets his supplies from his dorm room and gets to the class where his big test has already started, he’s so waxen that the professor suggests he go to the infirmary. He doesn’t and instead somehow makes it back to his dorm room and collapses.

The next morning he’s fine and he soon takes that exam and he just knows he aced it. Friday night, he and his fiance have a romantic encounter and everything is once again as it should be.

The end?

Not so fast. This man was raped, remember.

A few days later, a group of students he doesn’t know well point at him. He hears something about him being movie star material. His fiance has told him more than once that he has the looks to be a model, but looks aren’t what matter to him. Still, he gets a little ego boost.

The day after that, his fiance has her best friend return his engagement ring. He tries to contact her, but is told to stop stalking her.

A week later, his favorite professor stops calling on him.

A month after he walked his ex-girlfriend home, a representative from the perfect employer who made a written job offer, tells him that his job offer is being withdrawn. The person says something about a background and credit check. He immediately goes online and requests his credit report, but it is still pristine. His name isn’t uncommon so maybe his future employer has mistaken someone else for him.

He goes online and searches for his name and finds it listed on his ex-girlfriend’s web site. To see what she’s written about him he would have to pay since she has a fee-based members-only section. Adults only.

He vaguely remembers her saying that she was paying her way through college by designing and maintaining web sites, but this isn’t what he envisioned. He wants to know what’s linked to his name, but he doesn’t want to pay to find out.

He talks to several friends and the ones who, like him, stay focused on the goal of building a stable future don’t have a clue. But a friend he parted ways with around the same time he broke up with this old girlfriend, winks and calls him a real stud. Feeling nearly as sickly as the night he walked his old girlfriend home, he waits while this old friend turns on his computer.

Far too soon he sees what happened that night. And he looks like a willing participant in the making of porn. The woman keeps her face averted so his identity is the only one that is unquestionable.

Without having to think about it twice he says, “She must have slipped drugs into my Coke. This was rape.”

The other man laughs. “Yeah, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it.”

Within hours it seems like everyone on campus starts calling him, “Raped Man.”

He goes to the campus police and the officer tells him that’s what you get when you do drugs or go binge drinking. The man then asks if he at least had enough common sense to use protection.

He hadn’t even thought about STDs. With his ex-girlfriend’s drug habit, she could very possibly be HIV positive. He gets tested, but he’s told he needs to be retested for HIV even if this test comes back negative.

He scrounges together enough money to pay for an attorney without talking to his parents. The attorney sends a letter demanding that the video be removed immediately. A letter is sent to his lawyer saying he signed a consent form. He remembers signing a form his freshman year when she wanted to submit his portrait to a competition. The lawyer asks him how he could be so stupid.

The rest of his senior year doesn’t get any better and college becomes an endurance event. He contacts other employers who offered him a job, but they tell them the position he was offered has already been filled. Six months after graduation, he finds a job but it pays far less than the position he lost. He saves every extra dollar and has a new lawyer make an offer to have the video removed. A ridiculous counter offer is made but he feels he has no choice so he pays it.

He gets involved with his local church and finds a safe place. He avoids talking about his college experience. Two years after he was raped, he has another HIV test taken and to his relief, it comes back negative. He then asks the woman he loves to marry him and hopes she will never learn about the video. He doesn’t even think about telling her what happened to him.

As they build a family, he prays that video never surfaces again.

This sort of scenario could happen to a college woman. Even the refusal by so many people to see her as a real rape victim. Only a woman might get far enough in the process to be identified by many as someone who made a false allegation of rape.

The scariest part is my fear of posting this scenario since some will try to use it to minimize the impact of rape on women. “See, men can get raped too so stop talking about gender violence. If we can endure it without legal recourse, you can too.”

Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 38 Comments »