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

[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.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Now revised to say more of what I actually meant.

[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, 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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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

Thanks for the reminder.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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

[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).

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.

[eredien]

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

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.

[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.

[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.

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?

[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. :/

[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.

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.

[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.)