No. I mean it’s #notallmen who treat women this way, but the ones that do think it’s normal courting behaviour. That’s courting behaviour, not any other encounters with women. The guy who raped me in university behaved perfectly well in class, for instance.
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Well, I just spent the last hour trying to catch up on this thread because I LOVE IT so much. In no way did I get through it all. But I will, dammit. It may not be Feminism 101, but I’ll never forget my first feminist lit class - Judith Fetterley, you changed my life. I’ve missed all you lovely people!!!
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I’ve missed you too! Welcome back!
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Define “few”?
We know that when polled, 30% of male college students said they would “have sex” with an unconscious person if they knew there would be no consequences. Is nearly 1/3 a “few”?
We know that when asked if they would rape someone that number drops to 13%. Is 13% a “few”?
(Funny how words matter eh?)
We know that out of 1800+ men, 120 describe acts that meet the legal definition of “rape”.
So 7% of those polled - but that also that 7% report approximately 6 rapes each.
So 120 men are responsible for 720 rapes. Is that “a few”?
So sure, “a few” - but they don’t do it once and then straighten out, they do it again and again and again. See Cosby, Weinstein, C.K. et al. And THATS what we’re talking about here.
It may be shocking to you, and it may be foreign to you and you can’t understand who would do this to another person. But to many many of us, its common place and its just the landscape of the world we navigate. Being appalled is not enough, saying you would never do anything like this is not enough, washing your hands of our every day lived experience is not enough, everyone needs to act, now.
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And the attitude of the police.
In 1986 one of my staff came into work distressed because his estranged father had threatened to kill his mother and was walking around with a shotgun. (I sent him off to keep a watch, of course). When he told the police they replied that there was nothing they could do, he had a licence for it. Fortunately the man was too drunk to do anything.
Then the Hungerford Massacre happened and everything changed.
Slowly police attitudes have been changing and perpetrators around here get prosecuted if they come to police attention. Then the local criminal solicitor reads out the same script with a different name - alcohol problems, drug problems, trying to get act together. But never “grew up in a time and place where this sort of thing was considered normal”.
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I have no idea. This is completely alien to me.
So what do I do?
I can’t even clean up my own act because there’s no act to clean up. I have never wanted to have sex with anyone, at any time, let alone an unconscious person. There’s not a lot I can do here.
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Ok, so, I know you don’t mean to, but every time you say “this is alien to me” all I hear is “this doesn’t apply to me I don’t need to think about it or be concerned”.
There are 100s of 1000s of victims all screaming to be heard and be seen and its really hard to not react badly to your shrug of a response “what can I do” and not hear it as “none of my business”.
And please, don’t conflate sexual desire with sex assault, they two are not the same, at all.
So if you’re serious, about what you can do, there are many handly listicles online just for you!
Unless you’re actually serious and think “theres not a lot” you can do here… if you actually think that, I have no words…
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Look at all the people in this scenario who could have made all the difference, just by changing how they interacted with the eventual victim over the course of the evening:
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I think i have the same attitude as @LearnedCoward towards this stuff. Saying “this is alien to me” isn’t trying to dismiss what we’re hearing, it’s trying to express incredulity that anyone would think this is acceptable behaviour.
To be honest, in the face of all of this I’m not sure what I can do to help. I’m not raping people or sexually harassing them. I try to be conscious of personal space, and looking up at the face , but I don’t know what else I can do to let women feel less threatened by me simply because I have a penis.
Because I’m not a threat, and it upsets me to know that’s how some people will see me.
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This video has made me a bit weepy…
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I’m sorry for that. That’s not what I meant.
Mostly, I’m just shocked at how prevalent this is. I can’t say I don’t feel powerless, or at least very weak, to do anything about this, given how prevalent it is.
Thanks for the article though. It makes some very good points.
- Practice this phrase: “That’s not cool.”
An easy first step. No excuse for not doing this
- Read and follow feminist writers.
Sounds tough, but it really really isn’t.
- Be mindful of how you introduce women, particularly at work functions. … Don’t mention appearance when introducing female colleagues
- Don’t focus on little girls’ looks.
This is important. It’s amazing how sneaky this stuff is, especially for the older folks who grew up swimming in this stuff. Paying attention to word choice definitely helps.
- Give extra space after dark.
It was important for me to learn how to do this, and also to learn how to not take it personally.
- Teach your elders to do better.
I nearly got punched in the face for this once. Totally worth it.
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Indeed.
The “natural” reaction is to minimize their behaviour (part of our anti-confrontation conditioning, partly self-preservstion instinct), but calling fellow men out on their shit is our duty. Therr is no justice, except what humans impose. Let us, thrn, impose a more equitable society… By word or by fisticuffs if necessary.
(Violence isn’t always right, but it sometimes is the only thing men understand)
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Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t planning on hitting anyone. It’s just the sheer (perceived) arrogance of this concept that drove him to violence:
Teach… your elders?!? Where the fuck do you get off?
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A younger friend of mine was talking about his bro once, and all his friends rolled their eyes in a “oh man that guy is the worst” kind of way, but he was still his bro, and still their friend. And the reason they all had this reaction was because said bro-dude would only “date” really really drunk girls. And by date, I mean he’d find the drunkest girl at the bar and take her home for the night and probably never see her again. They jokingly referred to him as a rapist, to his face, and he laughed about it.
So I told them all, that he was a rapist, and they were enabling him, and that they needed to call him out and stop him. Because joking about it makes it normal. And what would they do if he “dated” one of their girlfriends?
Literally every time I see my friend now I ask him if he’s still friends with the rapist. Sometimes he gets angry with me, sometimes he listens. Eventually I hope he will stop this guy, and warn people away from him.
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There is a program at Tulane that is teaching men to stand up against rapists, because there is research showing that A LOT of the times there is another guy present and that he can stop it if he speaks up. I personally was in this situation once where a guy was aware of his roommate being a rapist and, after I ended up alone in a car with the creep, the roommate came out of the bar and back to the car for me. Very grateful for him.
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Nice of the guy, but man, how many whisper networks or broken stairs do we have to deal with before this ends?
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I’d like to discuss motherhood, and particular women who stay home to be full time moms.
I have two people in my life who do this. One is my step-daughter. She go married at age 19. She has 3 kids. Her husband is an engineer. They seem to be very happy together. She has a side business in family photography that she dabbles in as much as she likes; when she had her youngest she cut it way back, but she still has a local following.
She seems really happy being a mom, and she has time for her relationship with her husband. They have recently gotten into Cross-fit and they also did a Dancing with the Stars type of evening for a local charity where they did a dance performance. She doesn’t seem nearly as stressed as I was trying to juggle a career and a baby.
The other person is my BFF. She also had children young, mainly due to a health issue that meant either have them young or don’t have kids at all (or adopt). She has her degree in teaching but after a year of teaching at an inner city school she gave it up and did some work from home legal transcription. She did that off and on while her kids were little, then gave it up as her husband started bringing home more money.
Both of these people seem like their families handle money better because there is someone there to really pay attention to spending.
I feel like I am part of the Mommy Wars. That I was raised to see their work as less valuable than career work. But when I was at my friend’s home this summer, man it was nice to be in a place where it felt like the family was cared for, and the home was filled with attention and love.
I wonder why staying home full time was never an option I even considered.
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Exactly.
I’ve always assumed rape was a violent crime, like stabbing someone. But if you told me that one third of all people are fine with stabbing someone, and about one in fifteen regularly stab people and think it’s Ell Oh Ell, no big deal, I would be a little incredulous. I would be even more incredulous if there was a preponderance of evidence that these numbers were true, or maybe even a little understated.
Then I hear stuff like:
And it creeps me out. I can’t make that claim for myself. I wasn’t raised in a progressive hippy-dippy liberal household. Actually kinda the total opposite of that. Why is not raping women a liberal vs conservative issue, and not just something that decent people don’t do, ever?
This is what I meant when I said it’s hard to not take it personally when giving women space when walking at night. I’m just trying to get home, same as anyone else, and I’m not a criminal or up to no good. For a while, I couldn’t help but take it as an insult against my character. But if one in fifteen men is not only a rapist but a serial rapist, just being outside is tempting fate, so I’d rather not add to that stress.
What’s worse is that rapists don’t all have the same physical appearance or political ideology. Even “Nice Guys™” can be rapists, once they’ve decided that the world owes them something and they’re tired of pretending to be nice. Even people who were raised liberal could be rapists, if they think rape is a political issue and not a human one, and one can change their opinion on rape as easily as they can change their opinion on tax codes. Male feminists can be rapists too, especially if they’re just working an angle and they don’t really care about feminism at all. It’s dumbfounding to me, both how scary this is, and how much of this is completely hidden from me.
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To a certain extent, a good part of the fear is simply based upon how much damage an average man can do to an average woman. We’re usually taller and usually stronger, sometimes much taller and stronger. I’m as mild-mannered as they come, and consider myself pretty far from imposing or formidable. But I’m 6’2" tall, and weigh over 200 lbs. I am fully one foot taller than my sisters. As far as any passing woman can tell at a glance, not only am I a potential threat like any other unknown man (and woefully many men known to them), but also potentially a grievous threat. The very same qualities that might make someone attracted to me as a big strong man that could make her feel safe, are the same qualities that can make me look dangerous. Few women indeed could pick me up and carry me home. There are a lot of women I could overpower if the urge struck me, whether or not I know I’d never do such a thing under any circumstances. Biology does not offer comfort here.
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