The idea of “blaming men” for their attitudes toward women is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Being angry about being objectified (and worse) by the opposite sex can only take me so far, and when I think about all of the brainwashing and abuse that boys must endure on their way to becoming men, it just confuses me even more. Why is it this way? Where do we draw the line? How can we stop the cycle of children being raised to “take it,” who then experience the desire to exert their power over others to make them take it?

I take your point, especially about the letter having been published in Penthouse, and you’re right, I am not looking at the letter, in this essay, in its published context. I am more interested here, for the purpose of thie essay, in taking the words at face value.

I think the difference is that you are taking the words on the page at face value. At least that is what it seems to me. At face value, I agree that a violation of someone’s will in a sexual context is rape.

I am understanding them within the context of an story that is meant to feed fantasies in a porn magazine.

The authors of the story, as related by you, have minced words and images in order to provoke desire and longing within their readers. They are telling a story of “rape” in such a way as to NOT provoke fear or a sense of real, physical danger (at least until the end, which at that point is not about the sex act and is obvious that it is not going to materialize) in a magazine that portrays women in as non-threatening (emotionally, intellectually, physically, etc) a manner as possible. Within that context, they are portraying “rape” as virtually non-threatening. In that context, even revenge is non-threatening. This, to me, is BDSM among consenting adults, not rape.

In the end, we may agree to disagree. However, I appreciate the discussion. I have been able to take a visceral reaction, understand it and explain it (hopefully articulately) as a result of the interaction here.

However, I am still not comfortable with the story in Penthouse being called rape.

We can agree to disagree about this, and I am open to being persuaded to change my mind, but I would p0int out that, however much he might have thought his encounter with the woman who tied him up was consensual, the man in the letter–once it was revealed to him what was going on–did not want to be shaved; he did not want to come; and so he was forced to come against his will. Now that I have reread the passage in which I describe the letter, I can see how maybe that aspect of the encounter is not as clear as it could be. I suppose I assumed it would when I explained that the women were planning the encounter as revenge from the start. I will have to think about whether that section needs to be rewritten.

Rethinking what I said in the first comment, rape is not just the physical act. It has an emotional component that is unlike any other situation. It destroys trust, your sense of security, your sense autonomy, your sense of control over your own body. It instills fear, insecurity, passiveness and the expection of being dominated again. Even if people overcome these, in my experience (meaning with various friends who have been raped in vastly different situations) these are the initial reactions. So, I would agree that the situation in the science fiction book is rape. However, I am still not comfortable with the story in Penthouse being called rape.

the two women teased the man sexually until he was begging them for release. In response, the women took out a razor and shaving cream, telling him that if he ejaculated while they rubbed his penis, the would shave all the hair from his body. The letter went on to describe in great detail first the man’s pleading with them not to do it and then his efforts to keep himself from coming while the women took turns masturbating him. Finally, of course, he came, and the women shaved him, threatening to slice off his testicles if he didn’t lay still.

Threatening to shave all of the hair off of his body is not a threat of violence. It is actually something that can be very pleasureful. An ex-boyfriend used to request that I shave him because it felt good. Albeit, it can be dangerous, but that is not the impression that is given. It may be a threat to his masculinity. However, the actual physical threat of violence is after the “rape,” and is connected to him being shaved not being masturbated.

Auguste: I have read about incidents of molestation in which the victim did physically enjoy the sex act. I have heard of women who physically enjoy being raped, but this comes as a result of being raped before. It becomes a conditioned response. I haven’t read much about it and I don’t have any personal experience with women who have been raped and later come to physically enjoy the act of rape.

In the end, I agree that if a person’s will and bodily autonomy are violated, it is rape regardless of whether the person being raped is male or female or whether there is pleasure involved or not. Perhaps I was being reactionary because of the glorification of rape that occurs in general and the conflagration of rape and BDSM (it seems like a conflagration to me).

thanks for engaging in conversation and for the food for thought.

FTR, I didn’t fiddle with it. RJN asked the other mods yesterday (while I was on a plene) to remove a different comment; perhaps yours got removed accidentally when the other mod was removing the offending comment.

EDIT: Or I see Barry already answered what happened. Sorry.

[Yes, I rescued it from the spam-catcher. --Amp]

I object to the comparison because there is an element of pleasure…There is no element of pleasure for a woman being raped.

At the risk of appearing to pretend to understand the experience of a woman, this goes against what I understand to be the case. Certainly women have had orgasms while being raped; if I’m not mistaken a big challenge for rape victims’ advocacy is that exact attitude, that if a woman has an orgasm that rape is automatically excluded.

I’d assumed I’d come too close to being a “rape apologist” and had gotten kick-banned. It was gone - notice the reversed timestamps in the right sidebar.

The fact is that a lot of people - male and female - have a submissive fantasy about being raped. In the context of the Penthouse story (which is a place of fantasies) it fits in perfectly.

Of course, media catering to this fetish is tricky, since there’ s a thin line (maybe none at all) between fiction that glamourizes fictitious rape and fiction that glamourizes real rape.

Thanks for the kind words. You wrote:

However, I reject the comparison of the situation described in the Penthouse story with the rape of a woman.

I actually thought quite a lot about whether to use the word rape in response to that story, and I don’t remember exactly why I decided that the word was appropriate–that portion of the essay was written a long time ago–and I wish I had more time than I do to put down all of what your comment made me think. But let me at least start by posing to you the first two questions that came to me after reading your post: Suppose a woman forces a man to fuck her against his will (there is, actually, a science fiction story–though I don’t remember the author’s name or the name of the book–in which this is a practice regularly engaged in by women, who are the dominant ones in the book’s world) and he ejaculates while doing so, would you say he has not been raped because he has not been penetrated?

That said, I understand the line of relation that you are drawing between the story in Penthouse and your student’s story.

My second comment is regarding your colleague. I don’t have children, but I am an ESL teacher in an elementary school. No matter how much I try to resist using the sexist tropes that they have already internalized (from family, from their peers or from other teachers) in order to manage the class, sometimes I am tired, out of patience and I do it because it will work. Sometimes I do it consciously and sometimes unconsciously. Sometimes it is the only thing that works. I suspect that many people, feminist and non, fall into the same trap.