So How Do We Talk About Rape?

[rax]

Lately I've been working on talking about things when I think it's important to talk about them, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable. I've also, very recently, been trying to be more frank about what I don't know, and willing to be publically uncertain. So here's a post that contains a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable to share, and that I have absolutely no idea what to do about. As such, it might also contain a lot of things other people have said before or said better; I might be totally off base or missing something obvious. Please let me know if so.

I roll with a pack of genderheads, and sometimes conversation turns to rape[1].I usually refrain from talking about my own experiences. Frustratingly, not talking about my experiences makes me feel like I am silencing myself; I often am actively preventing myself from participating in conversations. However, when I do come in and bring up my own experiences, I feel both silenced and silencing. If a conversation is theoretical or about a specific issue of policy or behavior, and I say "This one time that I was sexually assaulted, the following things happened," conversation often shifts radically to be centered around my own personal experiences of sexual assault. Everyone is so sorry that I had to deal with that, and I have no idea how to respond. How did it happen? What have you done about it? Who did it, so I can be mean to them? That's not actually what I wanted to talk about. I didn't share the anecdote because I was looking for sympathy; I gave you details because they were relevant. I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

At the same time, when someone says "I'm sorry that happened to you," I do appreciate it. And I've gotten used to it. I don't know what it would feel like to be talking with a group of friends and just be frank about my experiences and have everyone take it for granted. What if it actually felt really horrible? I don't want to take rape and sexual assault for granted, I don't want that sort of statement to be just part of the scenery, and I don't want my experiences glossed over as if they aren't important, either. If this sounds like I want it both ways, it's because I do; I want every assault to be treated as unacceptable but I want to be able to discuss them calmly and impersonally. I have no idea how to do that.

At this point, anyone sufficiently on the Internet to read this post shouldn't need me to tell them that rape happens to many people, regardless of age, color, creed... There are various blog posts and forums and LJ communities where survivors (I'm pretty sure that's the right term? I'm not really a part of this community) get together and discuss their experiences, and anyone who wants to have an absolutely depressing and reality-inducing evening can go and read them. Hopefully you already know that a number of the people in your social group have been victims of rape, and most likely some of them have been perpetrators, too. You'll note I didn't list gender; for the most part these collections of rape stories are very gendered. Partially this is because rape itself, as a cultural phenomenon, as an exercise of power, is gendered. What we know both anecdotally and statistically suggests that this is true: The lion's share of rapes and sexual assaults have male perpetrators and female victims.

I recently read something someone I didn't know wrote that said something like "No discussion of rape is complete without referencing the Ceretapost." (I don't remember exactly where it was, or I would reference it.) This sort of bothered me. I don't know cereta , and I think that her original post --- about men and rape culture --- was valuable and worth reading. The comments made me really upset, though. I didn't read all 4000 because, well, I have a job, but there were a few themes I picked out, that I've also seen other places where this topic comes up in conversation:

• The idea that women shouldn't have to feel unsafe walking alone at night, because most rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances. Yes, thank you, I know this; what I'm concerned with here is a feeling of safety, something that can't just be rationalized away, because most is so, so far from all, and even if I'm not likely to be raped, I may very well be harassed.
• The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so. There's a part of me that thinks this is one of the ways sexism hurts men and that I don't want to be part of perpetuating that in the name of feminism, and a part of me that looks at the other part and says "Are you crazy? Can you really afford to give men the benefit of the doubt like that?" The answer is, I don't know.
• A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I recently had a personal conversation with a good friend after having talked about one of my assault experiences. She felt strongly that I should push my friends to terminate connection with my assaulter, and to call my assaulter out on their behavior. I did not and do not want to do this; I do not feel the energy spent in making a big deal out of it is actually worth what little I might gain. After all, even if 100 people walk up to this person and tell them "You raped rax  and you're an asshole," I'm not going to be unraped. So I'd rather just let it slide and get on with my life. At first, I thought my friend was bringing it up on my behalf, and I tried to explain that it just wasn't worth it to me. After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about. She expressed that she wished she knew who in her life had done such things so that she could call them out and ostracize them, and that it was difficult to not be able to, knowing that people she associated with regularly had gotten away with rape. And I feel bad, now, to be contributing to that; to some extent, it's like I'm defending and protecting them by not revealing them, even though what I'm trying to do is defend and protect myself. Oh, cultural systems of power, how clever you are at preserving yourselves!

So what do I want from people when I tell them this has happened to me? Mostly I want them to keep seeing me as a person, not as a "victim," not as someone needing physical or emotional protection, not as a shrill man-hater. Really it depends on context; I'm not averse to expressions of sympathy but if that takes away from the conversation, can we save it for later? Also, it's important to keep in mind --- but it's the sort of thing that I might forget if I didn't write it down here --- that not everyone's desires and needs in this space will be anything like mine. Maybe some people really want and hunger for that sympathy, that focus. Maybe some people feel very strongly that it should go completely unremarked, as if saying "Many years ago, I ate a sandwich." All of these things and more are valid, and I don't know how to handle them any better than anyone else, except when it comes to myself, really. [2]

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

[1] I'm going to use "rape" here as shorthand for "rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault" both because it's convenient and because having a four-letter word to cover that seems valuable and maybe "rape" should be it? I don't know. I could write a whole post on that too except no thank you I have spent enough time on this already.

[2] What I do know is how I'd like you to respond to this post: Please, please don't comment and tell you how sorry you are that I was raped. I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased. If you really want to tell me anyway, send me a private message or an email. I'm much more interested in talking here about how we talk about rape and handle these conversations than in the particulars of my experiences or how terrible they must have been. Thank you.

Comments

[ckd]

This is not easy stuff for anyone to talk about, and that's unfortunate for everyone.

To look at only one of the several points you address: I think that women considering all (or most) men to be potentially dangerous is bad, yet sadly necessary. I don't mean this in a sexist way, but there is a power asymmetry in society and that's the direction it runs in. This doesn't mean that all men are rapists, nor does it mean that no women are; this also doesn't mean that this assumption is somehow not hurting the men who would never harass or assault a woman.

This just means that the costs of a false positive (someone feels bad) weighed against those of a false negative (someone is raped) make it better to err on the side of caution.

The only way to change this equation in a general way is to change the culture, which is hardly a simple task. The only way to change this in a specific situation is to build trust between the woman (or women) and the man (or men) involved.

I am flattered when someone says or otherwise indicates that they have that level of trust in me. I wish I weren't, because I wish it were possible for it to be a baseline default assumption; I don't treat it as "oh look I get a cookie" or anything. I do see it as an indication that I'm managing to be the kind of person I want to be, to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

But dammit, I really wish it wasn't like this.

[friode.livejournal.com]

Is culture the reason people fail to respect other people's boundaries at times? I somehow suspect there are other factors at play in at least some cases.

[ckd]

There are certainly many other factors in play.

I think that a change in the culture to make personal boundaries more clearly valued within the larger cultural framework would make boundary transgressions (all across the spectrum) less common. Will they be sufficiently less common to really matter? I'd like to think so, but it's probably a utopian hope.

[kiya]

It's not that simple (and you're not even saying that it's simple; it's not even as simple as that).

What I tend to take away from 'men are dangerous' is "And therefore it's your own stupid fault you were sexually assaulted, you should have known better."

It does not help that my own mother was so blase about the prospect that I might have been raped that she not only didn't ask me if I was all right when she thought it had happened, but the first time I tried to talk about it she responded with a shrug and a, "I figured he forced himself on you." Just another everyday occurence.

That's the message I get from it: rape is normal. If it happens to you it's because you didn't take proper precautions. You should have known men are just like that.

(The victim-blaming self-hatred shit around rape and sexual assault? I managed to pick up rather a lot of that.)

Took me eight years to get the emotional space to believe it was okay to admit to having been messed up by the assault; nine years after that, and I still haven't genuinely shaken the conviction that it was basically my fault. Because men are dangerous. I should have known better.

Y'know?

[ckd]

That's not a reading I'd thought of, and I apologize. My privilege is showing.

That was not my intention, but I can see that angle on it, and it doesn't change anything for me to say ex post facto that I don't support victim-blaming.

I'll be more direct about it: the rapist is the one responsible. Period.

My apologies.

[kiya]

It's not a big deal; you didn't trigger me or anything, I'm not upset. Just ... wanting to point out some of the difficulties of talking about it: you don't know what will be someone's trigger, what approaches will be useful. There aren't sound narratives, and it's all tremendously fraught.

The messages of culpability directed at survivors are many and complicated, and it's hard to tell which ones will catch. I got what I think is an atypical one there, or at least I haven't run into many people who have it and will speak up about it.

[ckd]

I really do appreciate it, and I'll do my best to keep this in mind, and to be more aware of possible interpretations and different viewpoints. It's important.

There aren't sound narratives, and it's all tremendously fraught.

It is, and yet it still needs to be talked about. Somehow. As part of that, I need to be willing and able to listen.

[friode.livejournal.com]

What's your take on defensive driving, then? (The idea that, sometimes it's worthwhile to be a conservative driver in ways that can prevent an accident, even if the accident that's prevented is one that the insurance companies would have decided you weren't primarily at fault for?)

[ckd]

That's a good question. My first reaction is that I think there's a value to being cautious in many areas of life (driving, finances, and so on) but that there's a wide band of "reasonable caution" between the overly cautious (driving at 25 mph all the time) and reckless (driving at 125 mph all the time).

The analogy is hard to carry too far, because of the question of intent and agency; there's no equivalent to the one-car accident (which is quite possibly what the 125 mph driver will wind up in), and the number of people actively trying to crash into your car is fairly low. (Not zero; every so often a bunch of people are busted for insurance fraud for staging or causing accidents that will appear to be the other driver's fault.)

[friode.livejournal.com]

Actually, with the way curves are banked on interstate highways, etc, driving at 25 mph on an Interstate might be less safe than driving 45 mph, so I'm not sure I'd necessarily label always 25 mph as cautious. But that's pretty tangential to this discussion.

[eredien]

I think there is definitely a 'men are dangerous, so stay away from them, and if you get hurt it's your own fault for being around men,' conversation even around general sexuality, much less rape. It definitely comes into the forefront when talking about rape in part, I think, because it's already there.

[zdenka]

I'm a little confused by that. Because I do have an ingrained habit of thinking that says "all men are (potentially) dangerous," but "so [all women should] stay away from them" only follows a little and "if you get hurt it's your own fault" doesn't follow at all. What is says to me is that I should make an evaluation of each situation based on a whole lot of circumstances, before deciding whether I'm comfortable walking home alone or being alone in a room with someone. It definitely doesn't mean "rape is normal" as described by lilairen above. It definitely doesn't mean that anyone other than the rapist is to blame.

Is there a better way for me to say what I mean? Or am I missing something inherently problematic in my thinking process?

[eredien]

Because I do have an ingrained habit of thinking that says "all men are (potentially) dangerous," but "so [all women should] stay away from them" only follows a little and "if you get hurt it's your own fault" doesn't follow at all. What is says to me is that I should make an evaluation of each situation based on a whole lot of circumstances, before deciding whether I'm comfortable walking home alone or being alone in a room with someone. It definitely doesn't mean "rape is normal" as described by [info]lilairen above. It definitely doesn't mean that anyone other than the rapist is to blame.

I agree with you that the assertions don't necessarily make logical sense or follow from each other, but I don't think that the fact that the idea is not well-formed stops people from believing in it, or having it shape their behavior and attitudes, to various extents. I also agree that individual situations should be assessed on their own merits whenever possible. I also agree that it shouldn't mean "oh, you were hanging out with men, you got raped, no big deal," or that anyone other than the rapist is to blame.

I think the point that I am trying to make is that so long as the attitude of "you got raped because you were hanging around a man, what did you really expect" exists, that that idea is going to color the talk about sexuality and emotions surrounding sexuality in general, such that the idea is going to be there hanging around, ready to be brought out as a wrongheaded justification, when the conversation turns to rape in particular (since rape is part of people's experience of sexuality). That is the point I was trying (and failing, I hope I explained it here) to make.

It's hard to tease out connections; these ideas seem to exist in the opposite of a contextual vaccuum, where the connections from idea to idea are almost too thick to see and follow. I am going to make a personal aside here by way of explanation, and hope I don't derail the conversation:

My sophomore year of college I went home for the summer and was having a lot of trouble finding a job. I needed to have a job to be able go back to school the next year, so I was interviewing for anything. My father drove me to one interview at a pizza place, where I interviewed for a delivery person job, and was informed that I had gotten the job. I told my father, who said, "turn it down. I don't want you to take this job." I boggled, and argued, but my father was very firm: "I won't let you take it." I gave up, angry and mystified. Later on that same summer, he became convinced that I shouldn't walk around in the woods where I had been going since I was 8 because homeless people lived "down there in the bushes." Later on that summer, I realized that my father probably didn't want me working with an all-male pizza delivery staff or to run the risks of delivering pizza to the "bad part of the city," where drug deals and shootings were/are a regular occurance. I also realized that he was worried about my being dragged into the bushes and raped by the non-existant homeless people.

I think that in his head there was this narrative, of "I don't want my daughter to get hurt, especially by being around men who are possibly dangerous, so I will make her stay away from where I think there may be possibly dangerous men." I feel like in all of this, he never actually needed to utter the word "rape" to get across the idea that he was worried that men *might* rape me, because it was already there in the cultural discourse surrounding men's and women's sexuality and rape; I knew it already without ever talking about it, and so did he (although I am not clear if he knew that I knew it. I find it more problematic that he didn't realize that I'd already started educating myself about rape, and realized that I could and ought to take steps to prevent being raped as much as possible). I think in this case my father and I discussed emotions surrounding sexuality and men by avoiding discussing them, but the idea, "dangerous men rape so I will not let you put yourself in a situation where rape is to be expected/assumed," was still so strong neither of us had to state it aloud.

[kiya]

In addition to all this, there is a very strong cultural thread of "The woman is responsible for controlling the man, who is otherwise uncontrolled." This is the underlying narrative behind everything from 'boys will be boys' to 'what was she doing there wearing that short skirt anyway?', the thing that backs up the idea that prostitutes, women who have casual sex, kinky women, and so on are unrapeable.

Consider the fact that a woman who agreed to a threesome with a couple of sports players was gangraped by a selection of the rest of the team, and some people's response was, "She agreed to have sex with two of them, what's a few more?"

[eredien]

Yes. I hadn't really thought that far ahead, though now that you mention it it's obvious. There was never the assumption "these men are possibly dangerous, but have the ability to make undangerous choices." It was just assumed that since they *might* rape me, that they *would* make that choice sooner or later.

I find it sad that a man, also, would also assume the worst of other men. After all, he had the ability to make choies, and did.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's one of those things wherein we have to specify the intent first? As in, "Now, I'm about to give this example to facilitate conversation, and I'd rather avoid expressions of sympathy that detract from that conversation..."

I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased.

That's also a very good way of putting it.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think... we have to be able to distinguish between Support Conversations and Theory Conversations and Policy Conversations.

For instance, a Scenario:

Boy and Girl are hanging out. They end up somewhere private. Boy makes a move; Girl doesn't respond clearly; Boy has sex with Girl, who doesn't say no.

Boy figures he had sex with a cold fish.
Girl figures she was raped; she was too afraid to turn him down clearly when he made the move, and she shut down when he started to have sex with her, and could not respond.

If I'm in a support conversation with Girl, then I figure if she feels raped, she was raped; the important bit about people taking psych damage is that it's all about their own perceptions.

If I'm in a theory conversation, then I'm interested in the fact that Girl was raped -- she didn't consent to the sex -- but Boy didn't know he was raping her. Isn't that interesting? I think that's really interesting, and I wish the conversation could make a space with this. You can rape someone and not know it. Wow. Bring this up in a dynamic forum and watch the condemnation rain down on your head... people *suck* at thinking theoretically about rape, like they can't think theoretically about terrorism or child porn, as if understanding it would be condemning it. But you've also got questions here about "what if both people are impaired?" and "what should a person's level of responsibility be around sex?" and "how can we help all the different kinds of sexualities determine and communicate consent, because most people just are not ready for Enthusiastic Consent or any of the other theoretical constructs."

If I'm in a policy conversation, then I'm interested in what society should do about rape, whether by constructing laws or inducements or education. Here is where generalizations are absolutely necessary; you don't make policy for individuals. I'd be trying to change assumptions and challenge sexism, and I will pretty much not give a rat's ass about Poor Men Who Would Never Rape (although I am very, very sympathetic to Men Who Are Raped; I think policy needs to address this population, and that the numbers are probably way higher than we know.)

So, I guess... I'd want to know what conversation I'm having, so I know how to respond to disclosures. I think people are not good at figuring out what conversation they're having, and that some disclosures tend to make everyone shift into a Support conversation. After all, for you it's old news, but for them it's the first time they heard; it's a fresh shock. Ideally, you could calmly accept condolences and then move back onto the topic. Maybe there's some communication tricks where you can give the audience a moment to respond and then guide everyone back to the real point, before they get derailed into a litany of suffering and sympathy?

I dunno. I do know that, while my personal story is not like your story, people do react way more strongly than I would have expected. I'm also only recently discovering the goodness that comes with discussing it; I hadn't really talked about it, because it seemed like it was long ago, not that big a deal, and didn't really matter. Now I see echoes of it and have talked about it a bit, and it's helped. So I think it would be fantastic if we could find ways to welcome peoples' stories without making it into A Big Deal.

It is A Big Deal. It also is just a fact of life for millions of people; and in fact, it almost has to become Not A Big Deal, so that it doesn't control a person's life.

(and yes, the terminology is "survivor", and from what I can tell the same peoples' experiences are consistently left out of the conversation, and yes at least part of that is because it seems like the only people who bring them up in non-trivial ways are trolls of one sort of another.)

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

over the char limit!

(digression: I would like education to expand into Teaching Women About Their Bodies, in addition to all the Sex For Men: How Not To Rape education. If women know it shouldn't hurt, and if women know how to make sex good, I think they'll be more in touch with themselves and able to communicate consent better. This is often called Victim Blaming, and that annoys me. How Not To Rape is incredibly important education and we should all take the class. But we should also take Clear Communication And Assertiveness Training. I think a lot of rape is the Clueless Asshole kind; where people aren't responsive, people are trained that nonresponsive is normal, and don't know they're raping when someone's not responding. I think a lot of assholes are more likely to stop if the victim is screaming "stop raping me!" although, of course, a lot aren't. mumble mumble, can't address rape without addressing rape culture; can't address rape culture just by addressing one gender; mumble, mumble grr.)

[friode.livejournal.com]

The man who (thinks he) just enjoys sex with the cold fish might look at the title and figure he doesn't need How Not To Rape, and that sounds like an unpleasant title that isn't exactly going to draw voluntary participants, either.

Be careful with Clear Communication and Assertiveness that those who are naturally assertive don't miss the point about how some people aren't anywhere near as assertive as they are.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

You're taking that over-literally; I wouldn't title the classes that, and it wouldn't necessarily be classes; even this conversation involve education.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

Er. I mean, "as if understanding it would be condoning it". Sheesh. :)

[friode.livejournal.com]

And yet, I get the impression that the legislators in our government (aren't they the folks who write policy?) actually want to know about individual experiences moreso than general theory, both from things I have heard from one of them, and a letter I got from another in response to one of my letters.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

That could be. Hopefully they also seek out information in the aggregate, aka data. People are imperfect, and like Stirring Anecdotes. But from what I can tell, laws and using laws are all about trying to apply general principles to specific cases, and creating laws is (ideally) all about trying to craft general principles that do the right thing in the majority of cases. (all laws are both too broad and too narrow, in the real world.)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Legislators want examples they can throw before the public that are illustrative and make good soundbites. The policy isn't usually based on the examples - the examples are used to justify the policy. (yes, sometimes it does go the other way around, but then we usually get bad policy - i.e. Terry Schaivo (thankfully that did not end up going much of anywhere))

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

So, I guess... I'd want to know what conversation I'm having, so I know how to respond to disclosures. I think people are not good at figuring out what conversation they're having, and that some disclosures tend to make everyone shift into a Support conversation. After all, for you it's old news, but for them it's the first time they heard; it's a fresh shock. Ideally, you could calmly accept condolences and then move back onto the topic. Maybe there's some communication tricks where you can give the audience a moment to respond and then guide everyone back to the real point, before they get derailed into a litany of suffering and sympathy?

This. In rax's post here, she framed the issue for us to talk about, what sort of conversation she wants in this space. But in real life it's not always so clear and most people aren't experienced working with rape survivors and able to figure out, and sensitively inquire, what sort of conversation everyone wants to be having.

Also, I don't know what others think, but I'm having issues with referring to women as "cold fish," especially in reference to "sexually non-responsive." This brings up images of fish as an analogy for women's genitals (actually a derogatory term for a woman in some cultures), as well as "frigid" for not being interested in sex (with all those negative connotations). Also women are not food.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't know what others think, but I'm having issues with referring to women as "cold fish," especially in reference to "sexually non-responsive." This brings up images of fish as an analogy for women's genitals (actually a derogatory term for a woman in some cultures), as well as "frigid" for not being interested in sex (with all those negative connotations). Also women are not food.

I'm torn between "yeah actually that's not a way I like being described" and "that's a really useful bit of cultural shorthand for a certain set of behaviors that made me instantly know what cshiley was talking about."

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to use a phrase that annoyed you. I was trying to get at what the theoretical guy might think; I do not think women are fish or food. Unless they want to be.

Using cold as an insult for women is problematic in all kinds of ways; basically, for women to be good quality women, they have to be sexually prepared for whatever advances men might make on them. If they're not, they're ice queens, frigid, cold fish, etc. It sucks. I think it's also an important part of the cultural narrative, for my example.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Hm, yeah, OK. The term in quotes with a footnote explaining that you are using it for the purpose of describing it as the way a theoretical guy might be thinking (or how it's a part of the cultural narrative in your case) would have been clearer and less issue-pinging for me (since I have a real personal issue with the women/cold/bad thing. Personal "ish" alert. ^_^). It is part of the cultural narrative. It's also a way of thinking/speaking that even well-meaning people in my life have used in a way that's caused me a lot of pain.

Using cold as an insult for women is problematic in all kinds of ways; basically, for women to be good quality women, they have to be sexually prepared for whatever advances men might make on them. If they're not, they're ice queens, frigid, cold fish, etc. You're right, but it also gets to how women are supposed to want, and enthusiastically want, whatever sexual advances men make towards them, and if they don't, they're disordered. IMO, one can't really feel "no" is a fully valid option when too many "nos" means "there must be something wrong with you/you must have a disorder." A "hot" woman is not just a sexy woman, she's a woman who wants the advances.

So overall I'm thinking, even though there are men who are using this term to refer to women, is this a term that women should ever be using ourselves to refer to other women, even in a hypothetical context? We can describe what men are thinking, but doesn't our choosing to adopt that term into our lexicons (along with "ice queen" and "frigid") also work against women as a whole at the same time? (Hence why I suggested the quotation marks and footnote.)

Anyway, I won't derail this conversation further.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I triggered you.

I do feel, though, that we can't actually asterisk everything that might trigger anyone. I... well, I'm caught between "obviously we should try not to hurt anyone's feelings ever" and "but I kind of like edgy obnoxious possibly evil speech and I often think it's funny and useful and can exist without actually hurting people"*.

I'm generally uncomfortable with deciding that nobody should ever say something ever. Even the things that I think nobody should ever say.

Maybe I think it's because it's better we let people say it sometimes so we know they're still thinking it. The problem is that people think it, right, not just that they say it? Probably both. I dunno.


* with a dose of "was it really necessary for thirty of you to pile on me for using 'drink the kool-aid' after I apologized?" And no I won't stop using it, although I try not to use any language around people it may upset, but I rather like the phrase and do not think it means I'm actually calling people suicide cultists.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I, for one, thought it was obvious that you were speaking from the supposed guy's perspective not your own, and as such did not require quotes or a footnote explanation. It kinda goes with the tone of all of your comments here, but maybe I get that more because I know you in realspace and can hear your voice when I read your comments.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's OK, I'm happy to agree to disagree and move on. My point wasn't so much about saying or not saying things that could hurt people so much as members of the target group internalizing the language/thinking that oppresses them and other members of that target group, but this is a tangential conversation anyway.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

You seem to be indicating that, in the case of a woman and a man involved in sexual activity, the woman need give no express indication to the man that she does not want to participate in that activity yet may consider herself to be raped nonetheless.

My issues with this are severalfold:

First of all, you're suggesting that all women should live with the expectation that they do not have to say no if they don't want to have sex. This idea seems to me liable to create many more heterosexual rapes than it could prevent. Words remain a far more effective means of communication than telepathy.

Second, you're turning all heterosexual sex into potential rape. That opens up a cultural ground we shouldn't set foot upon: if a woman can decide that she was raped after the fact when she did not say no at the time, and that woman is fully supported in her decision, she actually loses some of her power to control her own body. Instead of, "I made a bad decision," a self-controlled thought that leads to determination to say no next time, she may instead think, "I am a victim," which leads to any number of psychological problems.

Third, we have enough issues with sex in this culture. If, as I mentioned above, all heterosexual sex becomes potential rape, that is a backwards step in our progress towards doing away with those issues. I can't imagine the numbers of men and women who would develop neuroses from not knowing whether the sexual activity they'd participated in constituted rape. How many would wonder if the sex about which they fantasized was of rape? How many would blame and guilt themselves for that?

Side note: how long before what constituted rape became so ambiguous that we started "protecting" women from rape by creating new social or legal restrictions on sex?

Fourth, and last for right now, if we accept that a woman may determine herself to be/have been raped without having said no, we do indeed take into account that the man may have pressured her into sex in such a way that she felt unable to refuse. However, there's also a possibility you're overlooking that she may be forced later by other social pressures into believing and/or saying that she was raped.

I'm aware that I'm not addressing rape or sexual assault in which a woman attacks a man or one member of a sex attacks another, and I ask pardon in that; I am entirely willing to discuss it, but the example given above made me think of a general case involving male attacks against females.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think that you and cshiley may have had different mental pictures of what was going on in this hypothetical situation. I think that it can clearly be rape, or at the very least have a lot of the same psychological interactions, in a situation like this:

Person A approaches person B and starts having a conversation. The two chat pleasantly, and then all of the sudden person A starts fondling/kissing person B. Person B starts to panic: sweating, trembling, being unable to form words, breathing heavily. Person A says "Oh great, they're into it!" and that's totally a misreading.

When this happened to me, Person A even asked at some point "Is this OK with you?" I tried so hard to say no, but it didn't come out. The experience did, in fact, give me tremendous determination to say no next time (not that it stopped the next person when I did say no, but at least I did) but I don't think calling that rape lost me power to control my own body, I think having a panic attack lost me control over my own body. Saying after the fact "I didn't want that" and working to be able to say it more clearly the next time actually gained me control in a way I think was productive even if I wish I hadn't had to do it in that way.

This particular situation might have been solved by the "enthusiastic consent" model --- you aren't just stopping if you hear no, you are only going when you hear yes. I've found this helpful when I've explored more twitchy or challenging stuff with partners; I don't think it's a solution to rape culture but it's something worth keeping in mind.

In terms of whether something like the situation I described should legally be considered rape? God, I don't know. Maybe this is an issue of separate, overlapping conversations where how people feel about things could be the same but what we do about them could be different?

How many would wonder if the sex about which they fantasized was of rape? How many would blame and guilt themselves for that?

Some of us are already there.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I don't think calling that rape lost me power to control my own body, I think having a panic attack lost me control over my own body.

This, yes.

Trauma theory says: our response to terror is not just fight-or-flight; it's fight-or-flight-or-freeze. When we're both terrified and trapped and out-matched, we tend to shut down, go limp, and "play possum," in the unconscious hope that this will get us hurt less.

In some cases, we're completely right.

In other cases, freezing means that a person is not able to say "no, stop" even when s/he wants nothing more than for what's going on to stop happening.

I agree with angstnokami that we need to stay aware of the fact that if "rape" just means "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter regrets it afterwards," that that has all sorts of really unfortunate consequences. I just think it's really complex, and I'm hard-pressed to find any statement you can make about rape that doesn't have at least one person whose experience is the exception to it.

[sylvanstargazer.livejournal.com]

i don't know that "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter suffers PTSD afterwards" would necessarily be unreasonable, though.

i think we can make lots of generalizations about rape, including: having sex with someone who did not say yes and stay communicative and an active participant during the experience (unless otherwise communicated ahead of time), is not acceptable. i think the "unfortunate side effects" is that less sex would be had, and especially by men, which seems to be deemed by our culture an unacceptable cost. i think the sex that was had would be better sex, and we'd have fewer traumatized people in the world.

i have met a number of men who act traumatized, who talk about their early sexual experiences with 18 or 20 year old babysitters, or girlfriends who threatened them with rumors if they didn't participate. They would never once think of themselves as raped but were still suffering because they were. i have known a woman who woke up to a strange guy having sex with her, and didn't call it rape, but she has panic attacks. i hate that we are afraid of letting these people call what they experienced rape because it might unfairly burden straight men who want to have sex (it burdens a lot of other people, too, but they never seem to come up in the conversation of "but what if she regrets it!").

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

i don't know that "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter suffers PTSD afterwards" would necessarily be unreasonable, though.

As discussed elsewhere in this thread, that leaves out the people who AREN'T traumatized by the experience. It's probably relatively rare but it does happen. And the people who push nonconsentual sexual encounters are still in the wrong, even if the person they had sex with isn't damaged by the experience. The next person they force or coerce might be.

[kiya]

When I was assaulted, it was the culmination of a long sequence of events in which he pushed over boundaries. And the assault went:

He asked me over to his place for a movie. I went, like a little idiot. He stripped naked, pinned me down, and tried to forcibly remove my clothes. I panicked, shut down, tried to curl up into a little ball to protect myself.

I never said no. I never had space for it.

"I made a bad decision" would be a lie; I never had space to make a decision about sexual activity. (And, furthermore, I had been carefully taught that I had to say "yes" for sex to happen; nobody had given me any guidance on what to do when dealing with a guy who didn't give enough of a damn about my consent to ask or even give me space to volunteer input.)

Your response to cshiley does not appear to have space for me to exist.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

After I read the responses to my comment, I called a good friend to ask for perspective. Was I in the wrong, or were those who replied? A little of both, that person noted.

We talked about the trauma theory that gaudior has mentioned, though not in those words. I had not been aware of the fight, flight, or flee reaction, though now it makes perfect sense, especially as I have been hit in the past, right before which I became perfectly still, hoping that my attacker would lose interest. Rape is more serious and harmful than any physical attack I've experienced, so I can understand that the freeze reaction would be that much stronger in such a case.

Even before the aforementioned conversation, I did not mean to belittle you or your experience or recriminate any victim of sexual assault. I have no doubt that your experience was horrible. I'm sorry to have given the impression that I didn't care.

I meant to say two things, namely that we don't have enough terminology to differentiate between different types of sexual assault, that calling everything that goes wrong between two people in a sexual context rape is too general; and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact. Regretfully, that doesn't always happen, but even so blame shouldn't be assigned 100% on any party.

My terminology may be flawed; I admit that. I'm not sure there shouldn't be a different term for what you experienced than "rape," but since there isn't, then yes, you were raped.

However, I do not appreciate your attempt to turn a theoretical discussion into an emotion- and event-based one.

[kiya]

I am quite familiar with this particular theoretical discussion; back when I was trying to deal with the aftermath of my assault the going conversation on the subject was all about whether or not date rape was really rape, or whether it should have a different word.

When the theory invalidates someone's experience, the theory needs to be fixed. Period.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I meant to say two things, namely that we don't have enough terminology to differentiate between different types of sexual assault, that calling everything that goes wrong between two people in a sexual context rape is too general; and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact. Regretfully, that doesn't always happen, but even so blame shouldn't be assigned 100% on any party.

I am not sure if this is what you mean to say, but I am reading this as a zero sum argument. That is, that you are arguing that if assailant cannot be held 100 percent responsible for the assault, using your terminology, that the rest of the responsibility falls to the person who was assaulted. Read in this way I find the argument flawed. Some of the responsibility might be argued to fall elsewhere; with society in general, with whomever designed or executed any sexual education the assailant participated in during the course of their schooling, with the assailant's parents/guardians, etc. I don't think someone physically incapable of communicating is in any way at fault for being unable to communicate or for that lack of communication being interpreted as consent, whether the lack of ability to communicate is due to freezing or being incompasitated in some other way. The way that I am interpreting the above appears to me to indicate that you do place some blame on the person who has been assaulted.

Perhaps this is not the argument you are trying to make?

I find a paragraph below similarly problematic. I will reply to it as well briefly.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that blame may not be 100% assignable merely between the parties involved in the sexual situation, but no, I don't agree with you that the victim is entirely blameless.

It is really hard to talk about this without delving into personal experience, so I'll do so with the caveat that I'm saying what follows to illustrate a point, not for sympathy.

I lived alone with my mother, a schizophrenic at that time entirely untreated, between the ages of 7 and 16. She had kidnapped me after my father was awarded custody in their divorce, and there was a warrant for her arrest because of it, so we lived incommunicado, and I did not attend school or interact much with other people of any age. I came out of that experience with chronic PTSD and severely flawed to nonexistent social skills. (And before you say it, yes, they're still flawed, though not to the same extent.)

In the years following, those flawed social skills have caused me extreme difficulty. No one has ever taken me aside to explain that in such-and-such a situation, you do this, and in this other situation, you do that. I have been in every case expected to pick this information up on my own, as my own responsibility.

And you know what? That is correct. To no one but me is it most important that I acquire these skills, and since this is the nature of individuality, so it should be.

So here is the parallel I build on the above: If it is true that a person is responsible for his or her own social skills, does that not include, to some extent, acquiring education on how to act or react or communicate in sexual situations? Aren't both parties to blame when there is a situation involving a misunderstanding that leads to rape, for neglecting to educate themselves on how to handle such a situation, at the very least? Because it is most important to those people involved in the situation, not to someone else or to society, to avoid rape.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

The problem is that we are talking about someone who is not able to communicate. (At least that's what I'm talking about?) Probably someone who knows they should say no/stop/don't and isn't capable of doing so, because they are frozen due to fear, or because they are intoxicated, or because things are happening too fast for them to process quickly enough to react appropriately, or there are some other factors making them physically incapable of communicating a lack of consent.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

The victim should in no way be blamed for the act of being raped, and in many cases, it's really hard to tell what social situations can lead to rape, so there is no fault on the victim's part in those cases. But if before such a social situation begins, someone feels that something weird is going on, that it's uncomfortable, that someone else is making unwanted passes and they're not alone yet... I would say that knowing that and getting into the situation anyway is partially the fault of the person who may later because of it become a rape victim.

[kelkyag]

They're not to be blamed, but they're partly at fault? You can't have both of those.

Having sex with someone who is unable to say no is wrong and entirely the fault of the one initiating sex in my worldview, even if the one unable to give or deny concent was in that state entirely of their own initiative.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

They're not to be blamed, but they're partly at fault? You can't have both of those.

I think there's an important distinction to be made between "blame" and "responsibility". Blame is "you fucked up and did something you absolutely should not have done". Responsibility is "you could have done something to mitigate or prevent this, but you weren't the ultimate cause". So, yes, it can be both, though I think "fault" was probably the wrong word to use, as it's a fuzzy concept that can apply to either "blame" or "responsibility" depending on context.

[rax.livejournal.com]

If it is true that a person is responsible for his or her own social skills, does that not include, to some extent, acquiring education on how to act or react or communicate in sexual situations? Aren't both parties to blame when there is a situation involving a misunderstanding that leads to rape, for neglecting to educate themselves on how to handle such a situation, at the very least? Because it is most important to those people involved in the situation, not to someone else or to society, to avoid rape.

This makes me really nervous. I'm not 100% sure that you're wrong --- it's hard to get emotional brain and theory brain to calm down and talk to each other rationally on this one --- but I think there's a big difference between the enlightened self-interest of "I want to learn how to say no more effectively" and blame of "This was my fault for not having the presence of mind to say no more effectively." At the same time, I don't want to do the anti-porn feminist thing and act like women are some precious flowers who need protection and can't protect ourselves.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. I don't mean the "This was my fault for not having the presence of mind to say no more effectively" interpretation. I mean that we should all make an effort to listen to signals we're receiving, and if we don't want to respond to them in the positive, respond to them immediately in the negative.

Sometimes that doesn't happen, and sometimes if it does happen, it doesn't work. But it's always worth trying.

[rax.livejournal.com]

OK, I feel much better now. Thank you.

[eredien]

However, I do not appreciate your attempt to turn a theoretical discussion into an emotion- and event-based one.

I think part of the point of this whole discussion is that it's really hard to seperate out the "theoretical" of discussions surrounding rape from the "emotion" or "event-based" discussions surrounding rape.

Rather, I see it as a series of open questions, among them these:
- whether there are or can be such distinctions
- whether it is good to have such distinctions
- whether it is useful to have such distinctions
- a question of who makes the distinctions, on what basis or grounds.

I think that you and lilairen may be running into the question of if there can be a distinction between theory, emotion, and event on some of these questions; I think you are each coming down on different sides of that question. I won't presume to answer the question of why you may be coming down on different sides or what on what grounds or basis you are distinguishing, because I don't know.

and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact.

This would be ideal, yes.

As I understand it, it's your understanding that both people need to communicate before the fact, and if that doesn't happen it's partially the fault of both people that the rape occurs for not communicating clearly. However, that doesn't address the point that I think lilairen is making, which applies to situations where people *can not* communicate clearly (panic attack, druggings, mentally disabled people, the very elderly or very young, people with severe mental health problems, those in institutons, etc.)?

I think your position leaves those people out because it's assuming that everyone has the ability--and associated responsibility--to give or withhold consent, but not everyone does at all, and of those that do have that ability, not every one of those people has it all the time.

If I've misrepresented your understanding in the above, please post here and let me know so I can come back and reconsider.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

The second half of this articulates the thing I was objecting to much better than I did. Thank you.

[kiya]

Precisely this, yes.

I would add: the ability to have a discussion purely in theoryland about such subjects (rape, racism, heterocentricity, transphobia, whatever) is a pretty sure sign that the person in question doesn't have to wrestle with the problem on an intimate personal level. "This is just an abstract, theoretical conversation" not only doesn't play with actual life stuff, it can't; as soon as real people with actual experiences come into play, the theory needs to be tested against reality, and if reality conflicts, the theory has to go.

And part of the cost of being those people with actual experiences is being told by the people with the theories that those experiences are atypical, exceptional, don't count, didn't happen the way they were reported, or, as in this case, that mentioning those experiences is a sign that we are too emotional to have the conversation in the first place.

I am glad that other people took up the conversation, honestly, and were competent to express the points that I felt needed to be made; I am not someone who is well-suited to teasing out alternate interpretations of theories that appear to me to be primarily about making space to blame victims of crimes for allowing themselves to have been harmed.



Looking at some quoted phrasing, meanwhile, there's an interesting and relevant question:

Who determines that people are "participants in a sexual situation"?

I know in my own experience with assault and harassment, the "sexual situation" was something that was created externally and inflicted upon me from the outside. I was not a "participant in a sexual situation" any more than the victim of a pickpocket is a "participant in an act of commerce".

I'm entirely willing to grant that participants in a sexual situation have some level of reasonable obligation to communicate about their boundaries, but that still does not cover situations in which nonparticipants are dragged into such a situation. This isn't even getting into the question of whether or not those nonparticipants are capable of expressing consent clearly - it's noting that one person's sexual desire does not obligate anyone else to perform.

The idea that someone can unilaterally create a "sexual situation" that conveys obligations on other people is one I think ... dangerous.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I would add: the ability to have a discussion purely in theoryland about such subjects (rape, racism, heterocentricity, transphobia, whatever) is a pretty sure sign that the person in question doesn't have to wrestle with the problem on an intimate personal level. "This is just an abstract, theoretical conversation" not only doesn't play with actual life stuff, it can't; as soon as real people with actual experiences come into play, the theory needs to be tested against reality, and if reality conflicts, the theory has to go.

Across a lifetime, I agree; in an individual conversation, I disagree. I know this isn't what you mean, but it's possible to read this as "your abstract theoretical engagement means you don't have to wrestle with this problem on an intimate personal level," and just no.

[kiya]

Yeah, I didn't phrase that as well as I could have. I have a lot of pent-up frustration around stuff that looks like "My theory about people like you, it matters more than what you've actually been through!" right now which is probably interfering with my language generation functions, alas.

Plus reading more goddamn racefail stuff in which various POC have pointed out that it's all easy to be rational and detached about stuff that isn't the same-shit-that-gets-thrown-at-one-every-damn-day, which I paraphrased poorly.

[rax.livejournal.com]

That's cool, I know you well enough to know where you were going, but I thought it was important to clarify. I have a lot of related frustrations. :/

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think it's absolutely ridiculous to go from "if a person doesn't say no, they can still have been raped" to "all heterosexual sex is potentially rape."

I think that everyone should be expected to say yes to sex. I think everyone should be prepared to say no to sex. I *also* know that this is a totally unrealistic assumption.

But frankly, the absence of a no does not mean yes, and saying so doesn't mean all sex is rape. (absence of no also doesn't mean no. It can get really complicated.)

Aside from the cases below, I know of one specific case where the woman felt, unquestionably, that she had been raped. Given that rape is about her consent, she *was* raped. She had a lot of psychological difficulties from it. The man unquestionably did not intend rape and did not believe he had raped her.*

Better communication would help prevent this (I'm all over communication) but it's very hard for people to even agree that it's possible. It *is* possible, it *does* happen, and acknowledging reality is a better way of addressing it than pretending it doesn't exist. Right now, our narratives of the situation are either that he's an evil rapist, or she's changing her mind and attacking an innocent man. Neither is true.

Also... huge numbers of people have rape fantasies. I am not particularly concerned with adding more fodder to that, even though not everyone gracefully copes with their own internal life. I can just as easily construct a just-so story about how my theoretical models free everyone to fully experience their fantasies. We should normalize rape fantasies and acknowledge that taboo fantasies are OK.

Finally, when it comes right down to it, I don't believe that people often decide later because of social factors that they were raped. I do believe that people often realize later that they were raped, or that the icky feeling they had when they had sex constitutes rape.** I think that nonconsensual sex is rape, and people can tell if they're consenting. They may not have the words, but somewhere inside they know. I also believe that in situations where someone is too disconnected from themselves to have that feeling, then it is by definition rape. It does a lot of damage to a psyche to accept that an experience was rape! It's not a fun walk in the park. Accusing someone of rape is also not a joyful experience; the accuser is often ostracized as much or more as the accused.

Please observe that this is theoretical and that policy is a different story; just as I believe a rape can happen without the rapist intending it, I also believe that not every rape can or should involve prosecution. I definitely believe that we should be able to talk about it without losing ourselves in hyperbole.



* However, it was still his responsibility not to have raped her, even though he didn't know he was doing it. It's complicated. That's why this conversation belongs in the *theoretical* space.

** This icky feeling can happen when someone has decided to have sex but doesn't want it. People do this for all kinds of reasons. I think this is a result of some situational coercion, and is rape, and is not something we should prosecute but is something we should work on. Most people wouldn't call those scenarios rape, but I don't have another word for nonconsensual sex. It'd help if we had different words for the verb (to force someone to have sex through violence, threats, or coercion) and the noun (an instance of nonconsensual sex).

Outside of the theoretical space, our culture is still stuck on step one: that it is ok to not want sex. Heck, sometimes we're stuck on step zero: that it is ok to want sex.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

someone has decided to have sex but doesn't want it.

I wouldn't always call that nonconsentual. I've had sex with people where I wasn't into it. Where I started the evening planning to have sex with them but they did something that irritated me or turned me off such that I would really rather have been somewhere else but I went through with it anyway. Because, really, bad sex with someone I'm not into isn't the worst thing in the world. And it's easier than trying to explain why I changed my mind and then either lie next to them in angry silence or find another place to spend the night. This is absolutely definitely not rape. But it was sex I didn't want. And the icky feeling was that I had put myself in that situation, that I hadn't thought more about how much I REALLY wanted this person beforehand, that I hadn't made other plans in case I changed my mind, etc. It was a useful learning experience and in the future I knew myself better.

[kiya]

Other forms of consensual but not desired sex I'm familiar with:

"There's so much stress in our relationship I'm feeling completely disconnected from sexuality with you, but sex is a big bonding thing for me and maybe that will help us get back on track." (It didn't. I felt like crap afterwards. Also sort of like a blow-up doll.)

"You're clearly feeling awful right now, and I know this sexual thing would help, even though I don't really want to do it. However, I will do it because I really want to help the feeling-awful." (This is usually fine.)

"Our particular kinky relationship agreements permit you to initiate sex under this set of circumstances, which does not necessarily include me wanting you to at that moment."

Probably some others.

Heh. One of my husbands could probably include something along the lines of, "It's a stupid hour of the night and I need my sleep but we're trying to have a baby and she's ovulating right now." His desired sex includes less three in the morning. :P

[q10.livejournal.com]

can you elaborate a bit on your concept of the connection between wanting and consenting? i think there's a lot going on in that part of the analysis and it'd be very instructive if we could see a bit more of it.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

plymouth and lilairen bring some important bits to this too. Let me think; this is further afield from what I've already considered in detail.

I would normally say that "of course someone knows if they're consenting unless they're drunk or something" but I've been repeatedly educated in the concept that no, people do not always have good self-insight. These people are probably more likely to get into adverse situations, because you can't communicate effectively if you don't know what you think about something.

When I've been in nonconsensual situations, I've had a pervasive feeling of wrongness, even when I was too young to know what was really going on. I guess I theorize that this pervasive feeling of wrongness is the emotional state that underlies consent.

But it gets all wonky because yeah, you can totally consent to sex you don't really want, and that's not rape. But you can also consent to sex you don't really want and it really is rape; coercion is a funny thing. Consent has to be freely given to matter. A lot of unquestionably raped people have huge problems because they didn't fight to the end, or said yes because they were afraid they'd be killed (or because their bodies reacted to the sex). Obviously coerced consent is meaningless.

Situations can constitute coercion, too. Here it gets even more mucky, because I can certainly see how a person could put themselves into an emotional situation where they felt obligated to have sex they didn't want to have, without any significant coercive energy provided by the partner. Because people can be crazy.

Still, I think that pervasive icky feeling is really important and useful to sorting out when it was true consent and when it was coerced.

...Or maybe it's all in what the person believes will happen to them if they don't have that sex. If they believe the world will fall down upon them or violence will be done upon them or something similarly drastic, it's probably coercive; if they believe that it would probably be all right and if it does have consequences, they'd be manageable, it's probably not coercive.

I am definitely further out on the limb here, though.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I think "I think it's absolutely ridiculous" isn't an argument. Please either explain why I am wrong, or refrain from belittling my viewpoint.

Yes, it is very complicated. I agree.

Given that rape is about her consent, she *was* raped.

This might be an odd question, but would you please define how you are using the word "rape"? You seem to be using it to refer to an emotional state, whereas I'm using it to refer to a sexual situation involving more than one person in which one of those people says no and is forced into sexual activity anyway. I think this is why we're having communication difficulties.

I'm not saying, in our example involving a heterosexual man and woman, that either party is entirely without blame. The man should be able to tell when the woman doesn't want to have sex; sometimes he can't. The woman should be able to voice her refusal to have sex; sometimes she can't. What I am saying is that neither person is entirely at fault or entirely without fault, even when one of them suffers from the experience and the other doesn't.

I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay. You seem to admit that this terminology is flawed but demand that because we have no other words, we should call it rape. I object to that because saying it's rape attaches a lot of other associations and baggage to such an experience.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay.

I think I said pretty much that in my comment above in this same thread.

You seem to admit that this terminology is flawed but demand that because we have no other words, we should call it rape. I object to that because saying it's rape attaches a lot of other associations and baggage to such an experience.

I agree with this and would expand further upon it. A common refrain of anti-rape narrative is that "Rape is not about sex - rape is about violence, power, control." In a case where a person has sex they didn't really want but went along with and don't feel violated by it is most definitely about sex! If the initiating party has no idea the person they're having sex with isn't into it, they're most likely just there for the sex. Of course even in plain vanilla everyone's thoroughly enthusiastic consensual sex there are STILL power dynamics involved. But it's not ABOUT power.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't think that it was nonconsensual if you freely chose to go along with it (see above, somewhere) where the key part of that is probably the word "freely".

It's a really, really good meme to spread that rape is not about sex. It's important for changing the social narrative from "Oh he was just horny" to "He was a criminal". I don't think this culture is ready to step away from that meme.

However... I don't think it's entirely true. For instance, for some people, the sex and the control are the same. And I think a lot of rape comes from people just plain not giving a damn about how their partners feel. Is that about sex? Or is it about power, because the person is exercising the ability to disregard another person's personhood? Is this possibly another area where the experience for the sex-or and the sex-ee can be quite different, so that for one it's the sex and for the other it's about the loss of power/control/agency?

I dunno.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

It's a really, really good meme to spread that rape is not about sex. It's important for changing the social narrative from "Oh he was just horny" to "He was a criminal". I don't think this culture is ready to step away from that meme.

Oh, I definitely think it's an important meme. I was just trying to explain how I think it becomes problematical as we expand the definition of rape to include all types of sexual activity where the sex-ee feels violated even when sex-or did not intend so. Which I think you've described pretty well in your following paragraph. My personal preferred solution would be that we call the situations where it's not clearly about violence and power something other than rape. But nobody gave me control of the english language yet :)

Is this possibly another area where the experience for the sex-or and the sex-ee can be quite different, so that for one it's the sex and for the other it's about the loss of power/control/agency?

Definitely. I can specifically think of someone I know trying to explain that "I was raped but the person who did it was not a rapist" and that this was a very difficult concept for most people to understand. I don't want to go into any more detail on that example though for fear of violating confidences.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying, in our example involving a heterosexual man and woman, that either party is entirely without blame. The man should be able to tell when the woman doesn't want to have sex; sometimes he can't. The woman should be able to voice her refusal to have sex; sometimes she can't. What I am saying is that neither person is entirely at fault or entirely without fault, even when one of them suffers from the experience and the other doesn't.

This is the other paragraph I find particularly problematic. I would argue rather that if the man can't tell if the woman wants to have sex or not, if she is not clearly consenting, that he should take that as an indication that she does not until proven otherwise.

I find it particularly problematic that you believe that a woman who cannot "voice her refusal to have sex" is still not "entirely without fault". How is it her fault if she is not able to express consent and her lack of ability to express consent is read as consent? Again, we might choose to argued that the man in this scenario is not entirely at fault for not knowing the correct thing to do in a situation where consent is not being actively communicated. But even if we are making that argument that does not mean that the balance of fault, as it were, automatically transfers to the woman in this scenario.

I would also like to note that I'm not quite sure which example involving a heterosexual man and woman you are referencing here.

I'd also like to reply to this: I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay.

I think in my mind the main distinction between having unpleasant sex that makes one feel yucky afterwards and having sex that makes one feel violated is a question of consent. I've had sex that I've regretted, but it was sex that I agreed to, and in fact initiated. I've never had sex that I didn't consent to. The non-consensual touching and kissing I've experienced did feel violating, as did attempts to coerce me into touching I was expressly not interested in.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I would argue rather that if the man can't tell if the woman wants to have sex or not, if she is not clearly consenting, that he should take that as an indication that she does not until proven otherwise.

Yes. He should. And if he doesn't know enough to do that? And she doesn't know enough not to put herself in a situation where she might not be able to say no and regret it later? Who's at fault then? Everyone should be more aware of these issues. But that doesn't mean that they are or will be. I would argue that there is an element of personal responsibility there that we're trying to say isn't there.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

And she doesn't know enough not to put herself in a situation where she might not be able to say no and regret it later?

Unfortunately, this is prohibitively restrictive. Such situations might include going over to someone's house to watch a movie or play games and being the only other person who shows up, inviting someone over for dinner and having them be the only other person who shows up, getting a ride home with a coworker and having them ask to come inside to use the bathroom, being in a hotel room with a coworker for some sort of conference either because you are rooming with them or because you are working on some sort of work thing with them, staying late at work, staying late at school, getting off at the same bus stop as someone you know from the bus and chatting with them as you walk home, having a couple of drinks at the bar with friends and getting more drunk from them than you expected, having some punch at a party and getting drunk from it because you didn't know it was spiked, going for a hike in the woods with someone you've hiked with before, making out with someone without any intent of going further, leaving your room unlocked when one of your roommates has a guest you don't know well staying over, leaving your room unlocked when you have roommates... Any social situation has the possibility of suddenly becoming a situation where one person is initiating sex and the other person isn't able to say no. And I do go through my life personally assessing how safe I feel in each situation as I go along. This isn't going to help if all situations are potentially dangerous.

If the options are never be anywhere alone with anyone ever even if you think you know them pretty well or ever let yourself be at all incapacitated in a voluntary way such as drinking or being tired even if you think you are in a pretty safe space, or sometimes put yourself at risk, that isn't really a choice.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's a really good point; I hadn't considered that variety of situations. Sometimes there are no signs beforehand that things are amiss. But when you're getting the feeling that something's wrong, and you ignore your instincts, you're putting yourself in danger.

I would never say that if a person gives another person the benefit of the doubt after getting a negative impression of him or her and is later raped by the other person, that the first person was "asking for it," should be socially reprimanded, or should be legally at fault. But it remains a personal responsibility to hone your instincts and learn to listen to them.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

This has been a really interesting conversation. Thank you.

Instincts is one of the places where things start to get complex, I think, because there is a great deal of social pressure to not listen to them. I think most of that is related to expectations about polite society and not making a big deal out of things. I also think that we get inured to listening to gut instincts because most of the time nothing bad happens.

(On the other hand, if I'd listened to my instincts I'd never have dated my first boyfriend, and that wouldn't be such a bad thing. I mean, nothing really bad happened, but he was obsessive and pushy and I most certainly wouldn't date him again.)

I think it would be very good if we did listen to our instincts more, and I think I've been able to more as I've gotten older, but I do still feel social pressure to not listen to them sometimes in situations where I've decided that the discomfort I'm already feeling is better than the possible discomfort of doing something socially improper where I don't know what the consequences are going to be. So far this has worked out OK, but it is a risk.

Example: I went to a class on bondage with a friend and her boyfriend. I didn't have a partner and so I partnered with someone else who was there on their own. I felt a little uncomfortable about this, especially when he started to insist that I smile more, but kept working with him because I didn't want to not work with anyone and couldn't think of any better solution.

[eredien]

And she doesn't know enough not to put herself in a situation where she might not be able to say no and regret it later?

Unfortunately, this is prohibitively restrictive.

I agree.

In its focus on giving or withholding of consent and trying to determine "safe" vs. "unsafe" situations, I think this mini-conversation is still overlooking situations where people are not able to say "no" at all.

It is not true that everyone is capable of having and/or expressing those instincts that tell you "something's wrong," and of those people who can and do express those instincts, there is a subset that is not capable of putting themselves into or getting themselves out of a dangerous situation. Please see partial list above.

I think that the culpability and responsibility in those cases, especially, lies firmly on the shoulders of the rapist.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

You are right, that wasn't a good argument. I apologize for my approach.

I do not understand how you get from "You can be raped without saying no" to "all heterosexual sex is potentially rape." For one thing, shouldn't it be "all sex is potentially rape"?

I believe that we should all live in the expectation that we will not have nonconsensual sex acted upon us. I believe that it is a reasonable burden to place on the sex-or to establish the consent of the sex-ee. (I observe that there's lots of different ways to establish that consent that do not involve the words "yes" or "no".)

I truly do not understand how this becomes "all sex is potentially rape". For one, all sex that has express consent isn't rape. All sex that has implicit consent is not rape. All sex that does not have consent is rape. The vast majority of sex seems to have express or implicit consent, and is therefore not rape, even in a context where most people are terrible about communicating verbally.

My definition of rape is nonconsensual sex. I'm aware that there's sticky wickets around "nonconsensual" and "sex" (and my particular sticky wicket is the whole "X can be raped by Y while Y is not raping X). In theoretical conversations, I'm not terribly interested in fault or responsibility; I think the conversation about "How to not be raped" is different from "who's at fault for rape" and very, very different from "how should people behave".

I think it is both a good and bad thing that the word rape carries such baggage. It's bad because it's really hard to talk about. But it's good because it's a really big important thing that people should get angry about. I think we should call nonconsensual sex rape because that's what I think it is, and I'm a big fan of calling a thing by its name. People get angry and upset when something they think is not-rape is called rape, and that's fair; but from my perspective, they are often whitewashing the thing that is not-rape.

Some things that rape is not, to me:
- Something that must be prosecuted
- Something that always has a bad guy
- An event that always has a the same effect on people: some people are profoundly affected, and some aren't
- Something that's easily legislated or criminalized
- Something that exists in a vacuum.

Also, so I don't have to make a whole nother post elsewhere: I think it is really, really good for people to learn to be assertive and say no. I want more people to be good at that, and I want more people to respect and encourage that behavior. Right now, the cultural feedback loops seem to run in the other direction. But sometimes, being coy is the correct survival choice, and sometimes people aren't able to be assertive when they maybe should be. Their choices for their behavior are their responsibility. However, even when their choices may contribute to a negative outcome, that outcome is *not* their fault, or their responsibility. The difference between "walking home half naked and drunk" and "walking home half naked and drunk and getting raped" is in the choices that *someone else* makes.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I believe that it is a reasonable burden to place on the sex-or to establish the consent of the sex-ee.

And in a lot of situations involving "implicit consent" it's because BOTH people are actually sex-ors.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think this is a really interesting set of distinctions. I will try to keep this in mind when framing conversations in the future, thank you.


It is A Big Deal. It also is just a fact of life for millions of people; and in fact, it almost has to become Not A Big Deal, so that it doesn't control a person's life.

Yes yes yes THIS.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... well, the reason I'd want to know if a person I knew/spent any amount of time around had committed rape/attempted rape/sexual assault is not just so I could break off connections with the person, ostracize them, or even express disapproval; it is so I could never be alone in a room with them again. Telling people about it when you know someone to be dangerous helps keep everybody safe.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I had genuinely not considered this reason, which now feels incredibly obvious, and I am glad I made this post if for no other reason than this realization. I need to sit long and hard and figure out if this changes my mental math. Dammit, and thank you.

[friode.livejournal.com]

I think there is also the question of whether this person needs cshiley's How Not To Rape and is merely misinformed, or if no amount of paying attention to How Not To Rape would improve this person's behavior in the future. But I suspect in the real world it's often hard to figure out which category someone fits into.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

Looking at the rest of this thread, I tend to agree with the tactic of not necessarily spreading it around publicly, but of warning people who are spending a lot of time with the person or considering a romantic relationship... mostly.

The exception to the mostly is highly specific and individual, and is, for example, me. I have a trauma history; I have an extensive and violent and nasty trauma history; I, personally, due to my history, have a fairly serious zero-tolerance policy about being around people who have committed sexual assault, as in, I guess I could see someone who had managing to convince me that they had changed and would never do it again and really felt bad etc., but we would be starting from a position of me not wanting to speak to them at all so it would be hard to do. Maybe that makes me a bad person in some ways, I don't know. The point is, many people with trauma histories have much firmer zero-tolerance policies about this sort of thing than people in general do, I know that's not just me; many trauma survivors also work very hard to feel safe(r) on a day-to-day basis, and finding out something like this about someone one has already been around does not help with that. So when you're aware someone has a trauma history, you might consider telling them this sort of info about a person even if the social contact between the two is fleeting and tangential.

Or you might not; I don't think it's a moral issue, I think it's a case-by-case social thing.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. I think that's a very good point, and I'll add it into my mental math. I think the end result is likely to be "no change in current behavior but lower threshhold for change of behavior" but I won't know for sure what I'm going to do for a couple of weeks while my subconscious churns.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you, THIS. And also for warning my friends not to be alone with them.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thinking more about this, and replying here because of the conversational thread rather than because I expect an answer from you necessarily, though I'm curious what you think: Is it reasonable to attempt to warn strangers, or is this something that works within a social group? I feel waaaaaaaaay unsafe just publically saying "here are some names, don't get in a room alone with these people" but I do feel more comfortable approaching people and saying "hey I noticed you've been hanging out with X, you might want to know about this thing that happened, I'd appreciate if you could stay quiet about it."

I do also worry, as all of my experiences are at least five years old --- what if people got better? Is it appropriate to endeavor to blacklist people on this basis? (I mean it's fair to just say YES RACHEL IT IS in all caps, but part of my brain is genuinely unsure.) I guess at the very least if they have gotten better they can work to make people trust them, but don't deserve to start with the benefit of the doubt? I don't know. I guess I go through phases where I am like "X raped me, I hope X falls in a well and drowns" but I'm not in one of those right now.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think... we have to be *really* careful with blacklisting people. People can make mistakes, people get better, people get treatment for their mental health issues. And sometimes, certain relationship dynamics cause people to break in ways they never otherwise would.

For instance, there's plenty of people who have nonconsensually had sex with someone who I'd be perfectly safe with; I'd be in a totally different context.

like... don't date the crazy, but sometimes it's ok to be friends with it.

And people react really, really strongly to allegations of rape. I mean, the people here are basically saying "give me names so I can never talk to them again and tell all my friends to stay away, because they are BAD PEOPLE."

I think, personally, I would tell close friends that someone is PNG. (in my case, "Not Welcome In My House", and it can be for more than sexual assault.) I would consider telling people the person is dating, if you happen to know about it and are in a position to influence them (but often people will ignore you and it will turn into Dramaz.)

Finally, if you believe that the person is a possible threat to people they're not in a dysfunctional relationship with, or if the attack was unambiguous or violent, you might consider a louder broadcast. I'll just let you know, though, that even broadcasting "JonMon Is Sketchy" cost me some social capital.

From my understanding of your situation (and I don't remember the details clearly), if you asked me, I'd say not to broadcast the name of your first rapist (maybe broadcasting where appropriate that at least a few years ago, it was full of TEH CRAZY), but considering broadcasting the name of the second. Oh, and also, I think most of the math ought to be about your comfort, unless you believe someone to be a no-shit sexual predator.

When I was younger, I did ostracize people based on allegations of less.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think gaudior's post says a lot around this. Personally I have a lot of trouble PNGing people and mostly haven't needed to, but sometimes I am tempted. Maybe I should be more willing to do so for my living environment.

With regard to my situation personally, the number of the counting is three, so I'm not sure which one you're missing; would it be OK to ask your opinion sometime out of band? I don't think I want to go into detail here.

[baniszew.livejournal.com]

I haven't personally had any assault experiences, but I generally avoid publicly spreading around the names of the people who I have been told have committed sexual assaults, mostly because I've felt like it would bring more unwanted attention upon their victims.

On the other hand, I have had private conversations of the sort, "You seem to be spending a lot of time with X. X was involved in a situation a while ago where they may have sexually assaulted someone they were dating, although I don't think they understood what they were doing at the time. I don't mean to tell you that X is a horrible person, but please be careful."

I know that publicly outing assaulters could warn a lot more potential victims than privately saying something when I happen to notice a potential bad situation, but it also seems like it would cause a lot of larger social strife. I feel like there's a degree of social ostracism that can make someone realize that they really committed a sexual assault and they were wrong, but there's also a degree which can make them too defensive to think about their situation. I don't really know where the happy medium lies.

[iainuki.livejournal.com]

The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so.

I'd argue it is sexism (because it's judging all members of a gender as a group, not as individuals), but a necessary evil nonetheless in our place and time? Maybe in the future some context will change, whether its human biology or pervasive surveillance or VR pornography (yes, crazy suggestions), but for now I don't see a way around it. It's really a subset of the caution that I think everyone should have about men and their potential for violence, male and female, it's just because most men are heterosexual, women need to pay special attention to the risks of sexual violence. It doesn't make me happy, but I don't know how to change it.

On the other hand, I think the sexism surrounding men and rape, the dismissive attitude of society towards men as victims of rape, is entirely unnecessary. Sexism most often cuts against women, but that's one definite way it hurts men.

[kiya]

I think, like I said back when that post was making the rounds, that the necessary first step is for people to talk about their experiences. To be able to do that, to open up and say what happened, in their own terms, on their own terms. The people whose rapes were in keeping with the social narratives of rape; the people whose rapes were not. The people whose emotional responses were in keeping with the social narratives of response; the people whose emotional responses were not.

There was a meme that went around back when I was fairly new on LJ, called "No pity, no shame, no silence." In response to that, I wrote down my assault experiences in detail for the first time; I'd talked around it before, but there I laid out what happened, in detail, as precisely as I could do it. And there was a huge number of people who did basically the same thing - ranging from violent rape through to 'yeah, it was technically rape, but whatever' - and it was impossible to read through all this and say there is one true narrative of the rape experience.

I think the asynchronisity of the internet helps with that one; nobody was talking over anyone else, everyone had their space for it. It was also spontaneous - not a "Let's all tell our stories" but one person, then another, all these people cascading into this giant expression of reality and stunning all those people who didn't know, who weren't aware that all this was out there, who could now be aware of the fact that this was only the people who were able to speak up and tell their stories.

I don't know what the next step is after that. I'm pretty sure that's the first step, though - to make it so that this stuff can be said. All the stories. Without the people telling the stories getting stamped with the RAPE VICTIM stamp and sent off into the purgatorio of never-listened-to-again-except-to-tell-a-sob-story.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the next step is after that. I'm pretty sure that's the first step, though - to make it so that this stuff can be said. All the stories. Without the people telling the stories getting stamped with the RAPE VICTIM stamp and sent off into the purgatorio of never-listened-to-again-except-to-tell-a-sob-story.

Yeah I've got to admit I'm terrified of this: No longer being taken seriously because I've shared my emotions. It's not just here, either, though this is one of the big places; I feel like I have to keep them in check and keep things in intellect, in theory (which I'm very good at doing) in order to have a conversation where people actually listen to me. Sometimes it's good for me, but I wish it didn't feel like it had to be all the time.

[kiya]

i do feel it's a real risk for survivors, the "You only exist now to tell your story and be A Warning To Us All; you don't get to be a complete human being anymore."

The whole 'damaged goods' attitude towards female survivors feeds into this bigtime.

[taliabear.livejournal.com]

Ironically, I find it easier to listen to folks who DON'T always keep their emotions in check. I can be a bit special that way. I suppose it's because for me, thinking and feeling are entwined in such a way that I don't know how others can keep them separate without completely shutting down emotionally, and that kinda puts me off and sometimes scares me.

I am, of course, a left-handed, right-brained ENFP, so the mileage of others may vary.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think I come off as an emotionless automaton. (I kind of hope not.) But being able to put the dampers on FEEEEEEEELINGS is helpful, even as I'm working to be careful not to damp them as much as I used to when my needs were different.

If I'm ever scaring you in this way, warn me, and I can modulate?

[moogle.livejournal.com]

I'm a left-handed, right-brained ENFP too, and I basically feel the same way.

Rachel, the times I have taken you the most seriously are the times you have been open in sharing your emotions with me.

I <3 you.

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

These are all very good points, and rather than come up with a coherent essay response (which would require more brain power than I have right now; blame baking), I'll respond to a few points that really jumped out at me.

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

I think that's asking a lot of survivors, don't you think? If we're just exchanging facts and getting people up to speed, that's one thing, but to have a conversation and dialogue ideally entails an ability to consider alternate points of view, a willingness to be wrong, an ability to not let differing opinions generate anger or distress, and a degree of adeptness with the material being discussed. For many reasons owing to the trauma experienced, I wouldn't assume or expect an individual survivor to be ready to do some of these. If they're in a really angry spot in relation to their trauma, I wouldn't expect them to be in a place to calmly discuss mitigating factors in rape, for example. It's not my call to expect that of survivors; it's a factor of their healing and coming to terms, and that is a life long process. It certainly is for me.

I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

Yeah, that's pretty much why I don't bring up my experience at all. :) A similar thing happens when I bring my speech disorder into a discussion; they don't apologize for me having to live with it, but it does put a pall on the discussion, like I simultaneously played a trump card and a sympathy card unexpectedly and inappropriately. It's quite annoying, and oddly silencing; in the past, it was even shaming.

Having been on the other side, though, it's not just about the person who says it. It's also about the other people in the conversation. No one wants to be the person who doesn't have sympathy for the rape victim, you know? For example, you may be ok and even appreciative that I didn't try to apologize but instead carried onward with the conversation; but the other people listening certainly will wonder why. That's not to excuse the act or diminish or dismiss other facets, but just to bring to light another facet of the situation.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think it's important for survivors to have a place to center our experiences and the trauma they've caused us. For my part, at least, I would also really like places where I can (and am pushed to by conversational structure) consider alternate points of view, be wrong, and try not to get upset about differing opinions. For me, it's both a trying-to-make-things-better-by-having-conversations thing and a healing thing --- one way I deal with very difficult situations is to intellectualize them, and the way discourse around rape works has made that very hard for me. I don't expect this of anyone, but I also expect I'm not the only person who would like it.

Having been on the other side, though, it's not just about the person who says it. It's also about the other people in the conversation. No one wants to be the person who doesn't have sympathy for the rape victim, you know?

This is a really good point, but one that I don't know how to address, because it feels awkward to have an obligation to frame things properly, as the person making the disclosure. It's also uncomfortable to feel like the sympathy might actually not be about me but about seeming sympathetic? I understand that it's complicated but I have difficulty engaging with it emotionally from where I sit.

[eredien]

Having been on the other side, though, it's not just about the person who says it. It's also about the other people in the conversation. No one wants to be the person who doesn't have sympathy for the rape victim, you know?

This is a really good point, but one that I don't know how to address, because it feels awkward to have an obligation to frame things properly, as the person making the disclosure. It's also uncomfortable to feel like the sympathy might actually not be about me but about seeming sympathetic? I understand that it's complicated but I have difficulty engaging with it emotionally from where I sit.

Yeah. I brought this up with rax yesterday evening. I don't even think it's usually about appearing to express sympathy--I think it's expressing real sympathy, and also about other people seeing that you're expressing real sympathy.

I'm still not sure what to do to engage with this issue. I worry that if I try and express sympathy in a different way I will get read as condoning, when in fact that's the last thing I am.

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

You may like my reply, posted below.

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

(Sorry about the long delay in response - I have a job too. :) )
I think we're on the same wavelength regarding intellectualizing trauma. And I don't think we're alone either - after all, we exist! But it's definitely not universal. A former friend of mine became very defensive and hostile if anyone said anything she didn't like about rape or sexual trauma, as if she had the monopoly on understanding it. Looking back on it, it was partly a defensive reaction - she had reached a stable stasis in regards to it, and coudln't deal with anything that would upset it. I didn't see it as my place to challenge that.

We could simply put out a call for a like-minded group, but I think two bad things could happen: some people would sign up and discover boundaries and triggers they didn't know about and blame the process, or some would consider the very existence of such a group threatening and troll.

This is a really good point, but one that I don't know how to address, because it feels awkward to have an obligation to frame things properly, as the person making the disclosure. It's also uncomfortable to feel like the sympathy might actually not be about me but about seeming sympathetic? I understand that it's complicated but I have difficulty engaging with it emotionally from where I sit.

It's not our obligation at all to disclose in a certain framework. There are two things going on in such a situation, I feel - the disclosure and their reaction to the disclosure. In the case of feeling they have to present a certain behavior to their friends, it's entirely their problem, not ours.

The sympathy is almost certainly genuine; I'd be amazed if it weren't. It's the expression that's the problem here, and their fear of not seeming supportive to you and to others. Again, their problem. An understandable one, but it's their fear and self-confidence to deal with. I'd say it isn't my obligation to frame it in a way that makes them comfortable, because the source of their fear isn't me, it's their perceptions.

On a related note, a question - do you feel that exercising some control and restraint when you disclose, such that others might feel you are framing it in a certain way, helps you deal with it? It seems to for me, and I find that interesting.

[rax.livejournal.com]

(Sorry about the long delay in response - I have a job too. :) )

You'll note I didn't get to respond to anything between 8:15 and 17:45 EDT... :)

The sympathy is almost certainly genuine; I'd be amazed if it weren't. It's the expression that's the problem here, and their fear of not seeming supportive to you and to others. Again, their problem. An understandable one, but it's their fear and self-confidence to deal with. I'd say it isn't my obligation to frame it in a way that makes them comfortable, because the source of their fear isn't me, it's their perceptions.

I'd agree that I don't hav the obligation, but I am curious if there's a way I can frame things to not have to deal with it. Perhaps that is selfish of me. :)

On a related note, a question - do you feel that exercising some control and restraint when you disclose, such that others might feel you are framing it in a certain way, helps you deal with it? It seems to for me, and I find that interesting.

Honestly? I don't have enough experience disclosing to say. Ask me again at some point in the future?

[eredien]

The sympathy is almost certainly genuine; I'd be amazed if it weren't. It's the expression that's the problem here, and their fear of not seeming supportive to you and to others. Again, their problem. An understandable one, but it's their fear and self-confidence to deal with. I'd say it isn't my obligation to frame it in a way that makes them comfortable, because the source of their fear isn't me, it's their perceptions.

Mmm, good point. It's very hard, especially with the discourse surrounding rape today, to disentangle the personal fear of others' perceptions of you ("If I don't speak up, this person will think I'm not supportive") from the natural instinct to try and protect friends and loved ones ("I feel like I have a responsbility to support this person, especially when times are tough for them, so I will speak up because I have been trained that condeming rape is what you do in this situation"; it's hard to disentangle both of those to get to the thought, "what does this person want when they disclose? Do they even want or need anything from me at all? If they do want my support, would there be better ways to give it that don't involve expressing it through x or y?"

The fact that the person in question might not need or even want support hardly enters into the matter in the minds of the supportees--I haven't, honestly, thought about this much before today--which, I think, points to an even larger problem surrounding language, perception, control, and ability for someone who has been raped to guide a discourse about rape without being labeled or having to label yourself as a RAPE VICTIM.

On a related note, a question - do you feel that exercising some control and restraint when you disclose, such that others might feel you are framing it in a certain way, helps you deal with it? It seems to for me, and I find that interesting.

I find that having some control over disclosure has been the number one reason I am able to disclose things at all (though none of those have been rape, and I am not going to talk about it any more here because it would be derailing).

Second part:

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

Well, cereta's post sort of assumed male on female rape was the major issue that needed to be discussed. She was targetting it as a female to her male readers and friends, so I can see why she'd make the assumption, but it's still there, and it's still silencing and distancing. When we discuss these issues, it isn't like physics or engineering where we can consider a gluon or a cog apart from the whole; it's like biology, where even if we discuss a muscle apart from the body, that body is still there, implicit and necessary to understanding the muscle. And just as a discussion of that muscle would have to mention the other muscles near it or related to it, the bones it attaches to, the nerves and blood vessels and use and overuse of it in relation to other bodily functions and actions, so should a discussion centered around male on female rape at least give tacit acknowledgement that it's not the only kind of rape, just that they're choosing to focus on this kind in that post. This can be done either in the post, or though responses in the comments. Maybe she thought her blog and prior posts were acknowledgement enough?

That didn't really come out as clearly as I thought it would... let me know if you want me to restate it.

Also: Thank you for having this discussion. :)

Re: Second part:

[rax.livejournal.com]

Maybe she thought her blog and prior posts were acknowledgement enough?

I think part of the problem is that the many, many people sent links to her post (including me) did not have that context, and with thousands of looming comments, were unlikely to go read more. :) This isn't her fault, but I didn't read any more of her blog until yesterday, and I originally saw it quite a while ago.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I really just... don't talk about rape.

The culture around talking about it feels like it's full of assumptions as to who is "allowed" to talk about it, and it includes people who sound like their feminist discourse could slip into saying I'm not a woman (and thus not allowed to talk about anything "feminine" let alone rape) because of the trans thing. I have enough lingering issues about my own femininity that I just don't want to go wading into something like that. Not with people who sometimes seem to have ended up with "I was raped" being a huge part of their identity in a way that seems terribly counterproductive. (On the other hand it took me about fifteen years to recover from the trauma of my father's unexpected death on my twelfth birthday; some stuff can take a loooong time to process and not everyone does their processing in as involuted a manner as I did...)

Also, you are the first person I know who has ever said "I have been raped", and I get the sense that you're at a point where you've mostly processed it. A few people I know have told me about sexual encounters that could probably be labeled "rape", but they did not couch it in that term - instead, it was stories of Really Bad And Regrettable Sex with Regrettable People who they'd really rather not ever interact with again. With a power imbalance involved. I have simply not had a reason to have a conversation about it with anyone I'm actually already talking with, nor any reason to get involved in a conversation (argument) with a stranger!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, there was the one time I had some lazy sunny morning thoughts about the recurrence of "rape" in the titles of various classical paintings, and posted some half-formed thoughts to LJ about some images that would poke at that theme. The flames I got made me take the post private, and decide that yes, these images would generate a hell of a lot of discussion if I actually did them... and that this was not a subject I really felt like I wanted to fight to be allowed to explore, not when I only have so much time and have some big ideas that I'm much more drawn to. I'd much rather do something that makes people happy to look at.

[rax.livejournal.com]

The culture around talking about it feels like it's full of assumptions as to who is "allowed" to talk about it, and it includes people who sound like their feminist discourse could slip into saying I'm not a woman (and thus not allowed to talk about anything "feminine" let alone rape) because of the trans thing.

This is one of the things I'd really like to change, and one of the reasons that I don't feel welcome in a lot of the existing conversations. Of course, I have absolutely no idea how to change it, except to raise hell with people who try to pull that shit.

Also, you are the first person I know who has ever said "I have been raped"

I guess it's good that I said that then? At least if you assume that these kinds of disclosures are important, which I think I agree with lilairen on?

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

"Transwomen aren't really women" is a meme that makes me get very very stompy. Transpeople say interesting things about gender essentialism; depending on how it's framed, their existence either attacks it or reinforces it. I'm not sure about the global truth or value of gender essentialism, but I am absolutely sure that excluding people because they're not "real" is badbadbad.

Oh sure, at best they say it's because transwomen didn't have the same childhood experiences that tie all women together (or because they can't experience pregnancy or menses or whatever you believe makes all women alike) but that's all bullshit; there's no universal female experience. We are not all alike!

Grrrr. Er. Sorry if this is a hijack. I think you should be welcome in conversations about rape. I think it's really really important that transpeople get included in the conversation; even if we don't want to include transpeople based on how they're, you know, people, we should be including them because statistically, they're more vulnerable.

(someone tell me if that last paragraph became Othering; I've been trying to observe that behavior in myself.)

[rax.livejournal.com]

Transpeople say interesting things about gender essentialism; depending on how it's framed, their existence either attacks it or reinforces it.

While some trans people say incredibly interesting things about gender essentialism, I think what you're saying here is that gender theorists say interesting things about gender essentialism using trans people as a rhetorical point. I don't think this is always bad, but it's something to keep in mind; often it's not a trans voice saying those things, and sometimes they're being said in a way many trans voices would disagree with strongly.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes. That is what I mean. Something along the line of "the existence of transpeople has possible implications like".

Thanks for the reminder.

[eredien]

Oh good, I thought I was the only one having trouble reading that sentence. Thanks for the clarification, rax and cshiley.

Overdue Apology

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Hi Shatterstripes, I'm cshiley - renamed due to marriage. I reread this post recently. When I reached my comment from 2009-08-18 12:34 pm, I winced. I wanted to reach back in time and smack myself. That was cissexist and jerktastic and all-around uncool.

I contributed to the othering you were complaining about, even while I was attempting to agree that trans women are women. Trans people are people, not theoretical constructs or walking educational resources.

I screwed that up, and I'm sorry.

Re: Overdue Apology

[egypturnash]

I think you're overly concerned about othering; you asked to be told if you were doing that in the original comment and nobody said a word. I mean I'm a transwoman who is PERFECTLY HAPPY with her cis female friends theoretically wanting to have a conversation about The Mysteries Of Being A Woman that excludes me because it involves being raised as a Bearer Of The Womb and all that entails in our society. They invite me to the parties that are actually about fun things like "getting drunk" and "watching bad movies" and "drawing crazy things" and that's what matters.

And geeze honestly I've never really studied exactly what the identity politics concept of "Othering" is precisely supposed to entail but if it means that it is a bad thing to state the simple fact that yes, transwomen really are at risk for being raped and for a lot of other things because of the power dynamics involved in their change from male to female and because their support networks are often completely fragmented by their transition, and maybe 'we' (where 'we' is whatever group the speaker belongs to that is Not Transwomen) should be cooler to them, then, you know, fuck worrying about othering because it's worrying about one little sapling in the middle of the Continent-Spanning Legendary Forest At The Mythic Center Of The World.

Not that this should be taken as a reason to guilt yourself out for not dropping everything and going to help every transwoman who needs a hand or something. I mean I'm a transwoman and my extent of Helping The Cause is pretty much limited to being open about my gender so that more people can say "hey I know this pricklady and she's pretty cool" because they've met me and/or like my art. I don't think you need to beat yourself up over that comment in any way, shape, or form. Though I guess if you want to pass it by someone with a PhD in Othering Studies and they say you should beat yourself up over it then I guess you should, I dunno, I think I've lost track of where this thought was going, if it was going anywhere in particular.

Re: Overdue Apology

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the funny thing is that it's not the last paragraph that was the problem. It was the whole deal. I skipped over the whole, important step of "You Are A Person Too" to "I Shall Wank About What Your Category Of People Means For Normal People". And I persisted in saying "them" instead of "you" even though I was responding to someone who identified herself as trans.

The othering I did was about... emphasizing how I had the normative perspective, as a cis feminist lady, and trans people were something strange and not normal -- who don't deserve bad things, but still, not normal -- who can teach us normal people stuff about gender.

People called me on some of the content, which is good, and I took it well, which is better. But still, when I read it four years later, I was unhappy with myself. It's never too late for an apology.

You are welcome to disagree! It's okay.

Also, I guess, I should say that I'm not a big angstmuffin about this? I mean, I screwed up, I apologized, it's cool. It is a part of my job as a person with privilege to notice when I'm wagging it around and stop doing that, because I don't want to be an asshole. I don't expect a cookie, it's just background work.

[seth99rb.livejournal.com]

in a sense, rape is already normalized. look at how much it is portrayed on TV and how natural is it to watch these shows without realizing the reality of the portrayal.

also, most of us have been raped, or raped someone, so again, very normal in our everyday lives.

then again, why should we try to normalize rape? normalizing the conversation about it, maybe, but not the act itself certainly.

your definition is pretty much the definition used in court cases and whatnot according to the womens studies class i took.

i dont think these conversations should ever not center the person sharing. when someone shares a rape experience, they should welcome and expect concern and a more centered conversation. otherwise they should not mention themselves as the so called "victim" of the experience. one can share personal experiences without making them personal, especially if one or more of the people involved are friends of friends etc.

if someone raped you, and it was not out of context, then that person should be brought to some form of justice. whether that justice is merely you coming to terms with that relationship and understanding how to get out of it, or you bringing them to court, or you moving away, then so be it. but right and wrong and justice and injustice may mean different things to different people. as you say, you are not interested in really bringing up the name of the person or forging an army against them, someone else might not be satisfied or able to live their life if they don't take that kind of action.

a way to speak about rape in a public or at least conversational setting is certainly possible. i talk about it all of the time with people, trying to teach with what i have learned from experiences and classes. generally i will speak of tv shows and move my way to specific facts about people in our community and cities. this way i dont have to talk about myself or my experiences, but can still move from general to specific and get listeners and friends involved in the conversation without feeling pressured to uncover their own rapists.

im scared to go out alone at night because i get harrassed and hit on in broad daylight every day at my job in a department store, without light and security its only easier. do i look at all men and expect harrassment? no, or else i wouldnt be able to function at my job or in life in general. i am just careful of any stranger that i meet or speak too outside of a controlled situation. i think thats really all i can do. or anyone really.

i think same-sex rape and rape committed by women is much more common when u think of rape more broadly. whats i mean is when the definition of rape constitutes sexual assault rather than merely penetration. and this occurs all over by any gender, any orientation, or any particular relationship type. we see it within families, gay circles, straight circles, whatever. it doesnt matter but its not the perpetuated norm because of the dislike of the non straight man=power woman=weak relationship. derailing? no. just not as well known or thought about.

[rax.livejournal.com]

then again, why should we try to normalize rape? normalizing the conversation about it, maybe, but not the act itself certainly.

I guess that's what I meant; I'd like to be able to talk about my own experiences without having that be a sudden conversational shift. I like what you said about moving from the general to the specific; I wonder if there's a way to do that and use my own experiences when they're the evidence I have, without getting the shift in focus I don't want?

i dont think these conversations should ever not center the person sharing. when someone shares a rape experience, they should welcome and expect concern and a more centered conversation. otherwise they should not mention themselves as the so called "victim" of the experience.

I disagree with this; I think maybe I should expect it, on the grounds that it's what's likely to happen, but I don't feel like I should be obliged to welcome that sort of treatment in order to speak up.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

...and many years ago, you made a sandwich? [/cryptic to other people]

it's weird, at this point i can't really remember how i reacted back then. Now I totally take my cues from you. not that it comes up much.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

First of all, thank you for this post, and you are brave for making it.

A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I think that is exactly the problem- the same people left out again and again, and by default. So that if someone whose experience is not that of a heterosexual cis-woman having been raped by a heterosexual cis-man wants to have a conversation about his/her/hir experiences, he/she/ze has to have it in a separate "conversation about rape of people like me in circumstances like mine" space, away from "normal" conversations about rape which involve straight cis-men raping straight cis-women. And that's othering, it's heteronormative and cis-privileged, and it overlooks the similarities of experience in favor of the differences. And sometimes it's those similarities which need to be discussed, so people become more aware of what really goes on and how it's not just a straight cis-men and straight cis-women phenomenon.

So while some people saying these things is derailing (such as "But women rape men too!" as a way of shifting the blame to women "equally" in a conversation about men raping women), not all instances of mentioning non-"default assumption" rape is derailing. Sometimes it's very necessary to keep the conversation honest, to keep participants from leaving people out, and discrediting their traumas, and making it harder for them to heal because they're being silenced from the rape discussion spaces as well as out in the general world.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you for expanding on that, I was hoping someone had thought about it more than me and would have a considered take on it. I think you're right, and it's something that often makes me feel like I should squeeze my stories a little bit to fit into that narrative, because I can. I think I should work more against that tendency.

[sethg]

that's othering, it's heteronormative and cis-privileged, and it overlooks the similarities of experience in favor of the differences. And sometimes it's those similarities which need to be discussed, so people become more aware of what really goes on and how it's not just a straight cis-men and straight cis-women phenomenon.

Case in point: the common attitude, even among people who would never ask a female rape survivor "what were you wearing", that a man who gets raped in prison is simply getting his just desserts for, well, whatever crime put him in prison in the first place.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Yes- it's even considered "part of the punishment" that prison brings.

Which, not to derail this into a rant on prisons, becomes, "Men have to commit crimes to deserve to be raped."

Also, male/male rape is "funny" to a lot of people. A bunch of my friends in school were laughing over a video involving some D&D campaign (everyone here probably knows the name of the video but me) where male/male rape is the Big Punchline for this whole section of the film. And I was HORRIFIED. Horrified that that scene was made, and even more horrified that MY FRIENDS were the ones who found that funny. So I called them out. I asked what could possibly be funny about a man getting raped by another man in his sleep and waking up to discover he had been raped (in full graphic detail). The response was, "Because no one takes male/male rape seriously." And "Men laugh because they don't see this as possibly anything which could ever happen to them."

Contrast this to another context when I called out someone joking about male/female rape and it successfully became a moment of embarrassment and shame. Everyone else knew I was right about that, and that it was not OK to be joked about. And people understood why I, with my line of work, would be VERY ANGRY about this kind of joking.

[kiya]

One of the things that's also worth keeping in mind, I think, is that people whose reactions to rape aren't normative can also wind up excluded.

Back when the 'No Pity, No Shame, No Silence' meme was rattling around, a friend of mine wrote about her rape - which was pretty much, to her, an emotional nonevent - and she mentioned not always feeling comfortable mentioning that she had been raped, for fear of being taken as talking about a trauma when she wasn't.

A lot of the "normal" conversations about rape not only privilege cis-heterosexuality but particular reactions to the event.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I'm most immidiately offended by cereta's repeated use of the acronym ETA.

[kelkyag]

I have no answers, but I am listening, and also interested in finding some.

I think cshiley is right that there multiple conversations to be had about rape. In a context like livejournal, it seems appropriate to start off saying that one is currently interested in one of those conversations, or some aspect of one of them, if that is known, and perhaps to branch of threads or encourage others to do so as there is interest. The harder problem, I think, is managing the scope of a conversation that wasn't opened with such boundaries -- one needs a polite/acceptable/firm way to say "this is outside the scope of this discussion (but might be of interest over there in that discussion)", and for participants to respect that. (But then, lack of respect is part of the topic ...)

[sethg]

I think one reason it's hard to have a "normal" conversation about rape is that the norms surrounding rape are still up in the air. So if there's a discussion of someone's personal experience with rape, that larger controversy casts a pall over the conversation.

I mean, if I tell people about my house being broken into and I mention that we have conventional door locks--the kind that an MIT alum with a little spring steel could pick in about thirty seconds--I don't think many people would tell me "not to excuse what the burglar did, which of course was a crime, but dude, you should have had better locks".

"Men are potential rapists" is badly phrased, I think, but true in the sense that "cars have the potential to crash" and "buildings have the potential to burn while occupied" are true, and I can't think of a better concise phrasing right now.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

I can. "People are potential rapists."

[sethg]

It's true that one has some risk of rape from people who are not male, just as it is true that one has some risk of traumatic collision from things that are not automobiles. (My aunt has been in a coma for a week because as she was crossing the street, she was hit by a cyclist.) Still, the statement "cars have the potential to crash" conveys some useful information that is lacking from "moving objects have the potential to crash".

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Does it really? Putting aside the difference between information and implication for the moment, was it useful to your aunt?

"Black people are potential rapists" says more too. Let's decode the implication into "There are more black rapists than white rapists." Even if it's true information, is it useful? I think we've demonstrated pretty well in this country that when we take this "information" to heart and decide that the solution is to treat a group like ("potential", read "likely") criminals, it not only fails to reduce the crime, but feeds the cycle by leading more of them to conclude that they might as well be criminals if we're not going to let them be anything else. Yes, the individuals are responsible for their actions, but statistics beget statistics. People can be weak in the face of limits, and the nature of these circumstances decides how many succumb and turn their back on virtue. Do we want to uphold the statistics so we can keep pointing at them, or prevent them? This ties into lilairen's vital complaint.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of those "We are having different conversations" moment. I think sethg_prime is just saying that it is significant that men do more rape than women do. You are talking about "well what should we do about that?" and generally contending that anything we do about that is going to be bad.

Some of the things we do about it could be more positive, such as spending our money to put "It's hotter if she says yes" ads in the mens' bathrooms at bars instead of in both the mens' and womens'. It could lead us to wonder why men are more likely to rape and try to figure out the underpinnings and address those (like figleaf's Two Rules of Desire (http://www.realadultsex.com/archives/2009/01/shorter_nosex_class_paradigm.html)) where we can.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

and generally contending that anything we do about that is going to be bad.

No, there are good things to do about it, and they fit into these categories:
1. Focusing on the crime itself, and saving our scorn and punishment for those individuals who commit it and enable it.
2. Undermining cultural gender essentialism at every opportunity. Not feeding it.

Too often the question is reduced to "What is it inherent in men that makes them more likely to rape?" which by its starting assumption throws out a lot of answers. I believe that this very assumption and its repetition throughout culture is one of the underpinnings of why, and I am addressing it. Dissatisfied with the lack of first cause, you can instead follow it chicken-and-egg back to the Stone Age, but the answers you find there are not going to offer a solution to today's problems.

[sethg]

Putting aside the difference between information and implication for the moment, was it useful to your aunt?

In spite of my aunt's experience, I would still contend that a cyclist who wears a helmet while riding in traffic is exercising necessary prudence, while a pedestrian who wears a helmet while crossing the street is being silly.

Let's decode the implication into "There are more black rapists than white rapists." Even if it's true information, is it useful? I think we've demonstrated pretty well in this country that when we take this "information" to heart and decide that the solution is to treat a group like ("potential", read "likely") criminals, it not only fails to reduce the crime, but feeds the cycle

As cshiley says above, it's not the recognition itself that is the problem; it's the response--in particular, response that reinforces social hierarchies. In the case of race, the problematic social response is generally actions to maintain white privilege using the threat of black-on-white rape as a pretense.

When men's statistically greater likelihood of being raped just leads women to be a little more on their guard when they are alone with men, well, it makes me sad that not everyone can read my mind well enough to perceive my impeccable virtue and trustworthiness, but I wouldn't call it unjust.

When it leads to women being restricted (by law or social pressure) from doing certain activities that men are free to do, because "if you do X and Y and Z you will be all alone with a bunch of men and one of them might rape you" (examples have been given in other people's comments here), that's a problem, because that restriction is perpetuating male privilege.

I assume there are a few cases where a man was turned down for a job as a nurse or some other conventionally female job because everyone else in that work place was female and having him as a co-worker would lead to a woman alone with a man in the break room, or whatever, and they were concerned about the threat of rape. I would also consider that to be illegitimate discrimination. (If the job in question was working at a battered women's shelter or some such, and the justification for not hiring him was that it would be triggery for the clients... I'm not sure where I stand on that one.)

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really looking at it in terms of how the treatment is fair or unfair, but more in terms of what happens when you put the idea in someone's head that this behavior is in their nature. There are a lot of people who think they need to follow their nature, even if they have to do it consciously because someone else told them what it is. Make a thing part of their identity, no matter how negative, and they embrace it, even take pride in it. A small-minded man who thinks cleaving to his gender role is the most important thing in the world might feel like a rape or two is what he needs to assert and fortify his masculinity. This may, in fact, be what happens every day. I can imagine a really insecure F2M having internalized this idea and thinking that to be a man he really has to rape someone. Set down tracks for people and they will follow them.

[sethg]

I'm not saying that a propensity for rape is in the nature of men, or that there's no hope of ever reaching a society where rapes by men and women are equally rare. It's just that right now in this society, the correlation exists, and it's not always unreasonable to act in a way that takes that into account.

A Few Thoughts

[eredien]

Random thought (mostly theoretical): is it considered derailing to move the conversation away from "rape culture surrounding cis women and men" because it's genuinely derailing from a topic, or is it more that the spaces where discussion of rape happens are not yet inclusive/broad enough?

I can see where it sometimes genuinely might be derailing if that's the only thing you want to talk about, but I think it's hard to talk about cis rape culture without also noticing that cis rape culture by necessity influences non-cis rape culture. Is noticing it common, but talking about how you noticed it, really derailing?

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

Here are some of my thoughts; it may be helpful to reference the discussion above regarding sympathy and why people don't want to be the asshole who doesn't express it.

As someone who doesn't think she's been raped, it's really hard for me to participate in discussions about rape. I feel like there are a few set responses that people without rape experiences feel both able and allowed to express in the context of a discussion about rape, especially a discussion where personal experiences of those who have been raped are shared. Here are some I've noticed:

The "sympathy" responses:
- Expressing sympathy to the rape victim
- Expressing anger, about rape or about the social/cultural situations that lead to it.
- Expressing indignation.
- Expressing disbelief (this one is less awesome, but I imagine that assault victims get this all the time: "but you're so with it! How are you not a mess on the floor? You must be really strong.")

The "I don't have experience, but I have thought about this" responses (now that I think about this, I think this could be another way of expressing sympathy, by showing others you've thought about an issue and it's affected you, even if you haven't been a victim):
- The "dry statistics" approach
- The emotional "what does this tell us about problems in the larger culture" approach (which I am guilty of above in my comment to lilarien).

The "guilt" responses:
- "I haven't had this experience/read enough books/have the 'wrong' genetalia, so I can add nothing substantial to this conversation; I will just read and not say anything and hope people don't notice I'm not participating and don't take that as a sign that I think rape is ok."
- "I feel guilty about never having had an experience that has shaped the lives of so many people around me and all over the world, even though I know I never want that experience."
- "I find it hard to talk about this because I once had my head in a place where I seriously considered raping someone because I was really confused about what they wanted, sexually and emotionally, from me. I talked myself down from it, but was angry and confused for months afterward."
- Or, even more strongly: "I have no place in this conversation because I'm a rapist."

These aren't all of them; this is just what I thought of last night and this morning; I hope it is a somewhat representative sample.

I feel like conversation around rape often (intentionally or un-intentionally) not only shuts out those who have been raped but don't fit into the model under discussion, but also shuts out those who haven't been raped, except for that set of proscribed, unhelpful roles.

How can those of us who haven't been assaulted break out of those roles and offer genuine sympathy but also do genuine work to end rape alongside those who have been raped? I don't know.

Thanks for this post, R.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Hi. This is a really interesting and thought-provoking entry, and has led to really interesting and thought-provoking discussion! I hope to respond more to what you said and what other people have said, but in the mean-time I have jumped off of part of it (the thing about ostracizing people) and made this post (http://gaudior.livejournal.com/281141.html) about it.

Hope to be back soon to say more.

<3, R.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Now revised to say more of what I actually meant.

[q10.livejournal.com]

although each particular case is different, and although it puts unfair pressure on victims (for lack of a better word) to demand that they speak up, i think there's a lot to be said for trying to establish a norm that accusations should be made, and made in public. besides the safety issues raised by rushthatspeaks, such a norm can have a lot of other benefits, in particular:

-it benefits people who might be unpleasant or have distasteful attitudes about sex, or who just happen to hit it off badly with somebody else, but who have not in fact raped anybody. as it stands, every time somebody i know expresses strong-bug-vague distaste for a mutual acquaintance, i'm left wondering (especially if the gender breakdown fits with the standard pattern). i can't imagine i'm the only person who has this reaction. this means that a lot of people end up going through a lot of social interactions with the stigma of being vaguely-suspected rapists, including a lot of actual rapists, but also a lot of people who are basically blameless, but happen not to get along with the wrong people.

-it often benefits the falsely accused. it's true that maliciously false rape accusations are rare (although they're not wholly unheard of, and false accusations based on errors of identification are more common), but this is still not to be underestimated. specific accusations can be met and denied, and conrary evidence can be presented. a vague word that's been put around that so-and-so is kinda sketchy can be much harder to refute.

of course, the fact that such a norm would be desirable doesn't say much about what any individual person should do in the world as it is today, but this point still seemed worth getting out there.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'm concerned about what having to defend accusations would be like for survivors. I don't think I would have been equipped to do so in most of the cases where I would have wanted to. Even now there's one case where I would just not find it worth it to me to have it out publically, because the person in question denies everything and trying to talk about it with them is almost as bad as the rape itself. I understand that when an accusation is leveled at a specific person in public, there needs to be a higher barrier to believe that it's true, in some sense; on the other hand this makes me reallllllly go twitch twitch twitch. I guess it would be great to have that be the norm in some ways, but I think I'm inclined to prioritize not putting further pressure on people who just got raped.

I learn something new every day.

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

I had a giant comment posted and livejournal ate it. Om nom nom.

Basically, I wanted to quote your statement about how your friend felt. "After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about." Because. Yea. I'm your brother. Although I imagine that this reaction is what everyone close to you is going to have given the circumstances.

As far as meaningful "conversations" about rape and the culture, I was citing my fraternity as an example, both good and bad, in kind of response to cetera's post up there. There are things that happened and things I stopped from happening, but in far more places out of my area of control people let these things continue to occur, use free alcohol as a lure for underaged women (under 21, that is), and perpetuate that culture of straight males using straight females for... you know all that stuff they say happens in frat houses. Because it does. Even in my own, I'm sad to say, and I imagine that it will happen even more now that I and those I respected to help me are no longer there. It was impossible for me to speak directly to the people involved, as they didn't even believe they were doing anything wrong. I'll speak more about this if you want, but I need to cut this short. sorry if I'm not really hitting the topic in consideration, just wanted to share my feelings

Re: I learn something new every day.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear your perspective on this --- it's radically different from mine and that of most of my friends, and I respect your opinion and thoughts. That said, you should only share if you feel comfortable doing so.

Re: I learn something new every day.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I second rax, I would love to hear what you've got to say. I mostly have lived in my woman-bubble; now I've gotten to an age, manner, and personal style where young men don't see me as a peer, and so I get a bizarre kind of respect mixed with dismissal. My woman-bubble never really overlapped with traditional Guy Culture narratives; I was both unwilling to go into an environment where I was devalued, and also was never the kind of woman those environments considered high-value enough to pursue. No fat chicks, right?

Also, good on you for confronting misbehavior instead of just quietly being the guy who would never do that kind of thing.

Re: I learn something new every day.

[eredien]

Even in my own, I'm sad to say, and I imagine that it will happen even more now that I and those I respected to help me are no longer there.

Have you considered forming some kind of an outreach to the current members of your frat? If you and some friends were educated about these issues and managed to help some people, it is likely that there are still currently or will be in the future more folks like yourselves wanting to educate women and men on campus and in your frat. If those people had even an informal support network to lean on, composed of alumni and current students, you and your friends could be a serious force for good and education/outreach.

Re: I learn something new every day.

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

Eh. I am not sure that the alumni would be willing to take that kind of initiative, nor would the students who are... problematic feel like anything wrong has, is, or will happen. I really wanted to participate in the "taking back the night" program, which was a weekendish training for this sort of thing, as well as the take part in the safe space training from the rainbow alliance, but sadly I had schoolwork and other commitments that kept me from doing so while I was in school. I could still try and get something started there, while our house is still a bastion of safety, as far as I know, compared to the other frats on campus. Is there a larger organization that something like that could piggyback off?

Re: I learn something new every day.

[eredien]

Well, you're *an* alumnus...

I would contact the "take back the night" program people, and/or the GLBT alliance if there is one. Now you don't have schoolwork and you have a little bit of clout w/the administration since you've graduated and could (potentially) donate to your frat and/or the college and you can manipulate that to get involved in causes important to you, like this one.

Re: I learn something new every day.

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Thank you! I'll yell at my friend who used to be president of rainbow alliance (who is also an alumnus of theta chi and northwestern) and see what could happen.

Re: I learn something new every day.

[rax.livejournal.com]

If you need resources, let me know. I'd be happy to help you with this inasmuch as I can without context.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

I've really got nothing intelligent to say on the subject, although I do wish there was more clarity at the start of a conversation as to what kind of conversation the originator wanted it to be.

I was at the WisCon Rape Panel that prompted a lot of the discussion that immediately preceeded Cereta's post, and a huge part of why that panel turned out to be made of pure fail was that most of the audience, and most of the panelists, came in expecting a Theory Discussion. And then all of a sudden, bam!, the moderator decided to make it a Support Discussion. And then one disclosure after another started pouring forth, and then some men tried to disclose and were silenced and yeah. Thinking about it still makes me twitch, and a lot of the secondary trauma that a lot of attendees experienced could have been avoided if there had been more clarity and guidelines up front as to what to expect.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I did not have any of that context, thank you for sharing it. (Also, men tried to disclose and were silenced? Seriously? Ugh.)

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Yes. It was really really shitty.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Here's a description of what happened from one of the moderators. And hour long panel turned into a four hour long . . . Thing.

http://shadesong.livejournal.com/3880998.html

There were also some skeevy race issues from the moderator that the writer of that post didn't catch (telling the men of color, but not the white men, after the panel was over that she was too scared of them to let them talk, describing the women of color in the room as "loud people" who don't let "people" talk, etc.)

[rax.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just, wow. Thanks for pointing that out; I read all the comments. That's just ugly, but I'm glad to see a bunch of people thinking so? *sigh*

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I regret speaking without for-serious content, but I speak to support the idea that silence and shame are very problematic narratives, that substituting in gradually more sane narratives about rape is good, to support the survivors who find themselves obliged to speak, to support active use of framing so that conversations can actually move with minimal trouble from Theory to Support to Other and back.

Very educational thread.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Every time I come back to this my thoughts end up traveling along Foucauldian lines, thinking in terms of power and collective strategy, so I guess I'll just go with it.

There are certain acts or things very significant within a society, which are paradoxically significant in such a way as to make discussion of them and reaction to them very difficult: race and rape, and to a lesser extent nudity and (healthy) sexuality, are examples. On a personal level, the prevailing silence on these topics relegates most discussion of them to extraordinary, often emotionally charged, situations. So a person's instinctive (and reasonable) response to the topic will be to anticipate that emotional charge, and change their words accordingly, whether or not it's actually present. A certain fearful uncertainty (you realize you probably do not know who among your friends has been raped, and who is a rapist) contributes to the difficulty of holding a discussion. On a collective level, the undiscussed act or fact strengthens some power relation, while at the same time allowing that relation to benefit from a contradictory explanation for itself -- in this case, the pertinent explanation for sexism would be something like "Men should protect women." So the fact becomes undiscussable, allowing a power relation to benefit both from an unspoken act and from a contradictory rationalization.

More generally, I think shame and blame (which not coincidentally appear in discussions of rape, or race, which seems the topic most comparable) have the collective result of allowing some large-scale asymmetry to be sustained both by an irrational, unspeakable act/fact and by contradictory rationalizations. And whatever the worth of shame and blame to individuals, the paradoxical nature of the concepts thereof damage attempts to discuss the unspeakable, and thereby hinder attempts to challenge the rationalizations of power with the reality of power: discussions of rape and race that turn to the topic of blame, say, are more likely to be circular and unproductive.

As for how to actually discuss rape: I dunno. A silence resulting from a prevailing irrationality of society can only be countered by extraordinary reasonableness, whether on the part of a group able to discuss the topic or an individual able to weather the inevitable deflections and confusions. Because that reasonableness is extraordinary, there's no easy way to acquire it. Anyway, pardon the tangential nature of my response.