a disturbing thought

[swan_tower]

The various blow-ups around Todd Akin's comments and the accusations against Julian Assange and all the rest of it mean that a lot of the internet is talking about rape right now. And one of the posts I just read got me thinking about the topic from an angle I've never considered before -- a deeply disturbing one.



I know that I know women who have been raped. I know that I probably know more of them than I think, because not all of them necessarily have mentioned it to me -- or to anyone. This is horrifying, but it's a kind of horror I've gotten used to, in the sense that I understand this is a real thing in my life.

Tonight, I found myself thinking that I may very well know one or more rapists, too.

I can't be sure, of course, because it's the kind of thing people bring up even less than they bring up being the victim of rape. But I may know a guy (or a woman, but that's uncommon enough that I'll go with the assumption of a guy for now) who has raped someone. Not the hold-them-at-knifepoint kind of rape, maybe, but the sort where the other party didn't consent -- which is, yes, still rape. I may know a guy who slipped roofies into a woman's drink (or a man's), or just got her too drunk to know what he was doing. I may know a guy who climbed onto a sleeping woman and fucked her against her will. I may know a guy who coerced his victim with words, who did any one of the hundred things that guys write off as "not really rape" and therefore rest secure in the knowledge that they aren't rapists.

But they are. And maybe I know a guy like that.

It's easy for me to think, when I read about those kinds of cases, that the guys in them obviously deserve condemnation. That it doesn't matter whether they're "nice guys" the rest of the time; what they did is still rape and should be called such, without prevarication. That their friends need to accept that somebody they know and like did a horrible thing, and not try to defend the guy by shifting the blame onto the victim.

Then I wonder how I would react if somebody told me one of my friends raped them. How long it would take me to move past the "but he wouldn't do that!" reaction, and listen to what the victim has to say. To believe them, at the cost of what I believed before.

I hope I could do it. I hope I could, if the situation arose, swallow questions like "are you sure?" and "but didn't you . . . ?" and other things that would hurt somebody who's already been hurt too much. I think I could do it after a while, but in the moment itself, I'm not sure if my principles would beat out my partisan bias, my loyalty to that friend. I hope they would.

I hope that, if one of you ever comes to me and says somebody I know and like did a horrible thing to you, I will be able to face the fact that there is a rapist among my friends.

Because there might be one among them right now. And that's appalling in ways I'd never really thought about before.

Comments

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

The estimates put the number of rapists at anywhere from 1 in 13 (Lisak and Miller's study) to 1 in 6 (McWhorter's study)*, and the numbers suggest that it's probably on the higher rather than the lower side. Given that most of us know at least 13 men... yeah.

IME, it was pretty damn easy to condemn the rapist in our midst when he came to light. I think my reaction was "holy fuuuuuuuuck" when my friend told me what he'd done, no question. It meant I lost a huge section of my friend's group, but I was so grossed out that they'd keep a rapist among them that I didn't even mind that much. I do, a little, now-- I'm pissed off and disgusted with them and even kind of worried, because he gave me the heebie jeebies (he never hit on me, out of the entire group, "because you're such an alpha!" another friend said, which I found weird and super-creepy and they thought was kind of charming because I intimidated him). They thought I was reactionary and jumping to conclusions (buh?) but I was like, it's in my own best interest not to hang out with a rapist. I'm still friends with the victim, but it wasn't even about supporting my friend and "picking a side." I mean, I did because that's what people should do, but quite simply: I was friends with a rapist and he had to go. For my own safety. I would never be able to let my guard down around him, and that defeats the point of being friends.

I'm sure I have another rapist in my social circle. It just feels so inevitable.

*These numbers really only studied college-age men.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read a post about both of those studies (in fact, I've been meaning to post the link). They're a part of what made it clear to me how much of this boils down to guys not seeing what they do as rape.

Which . . . I dunno; in a way I find that encouraging? It makes me think that positive education and having a conversation about this can actually make a difference. Maybe that's optimistic of me, but it helps me get through the day.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

I admit I'm not as optimistic, because the studies also show that while the guys don't think of it as rape, they did know it was wrong and did it anyway-- esp. McWhorter's study (hence why most rapists drug their victims and many of the rapes are premeditated with a lot of setting the scene). They know it's wrong, or at least, not acceptable, but they justify it to themselves to make it okay.

I'd like to be optimistic! You know, "all people are inherently good" is a credo I really want to get behind. But I've found that people tend to be inherently lazy and really unwilling to call their raping, harassing buddies to task. Which I find almost more hurtful.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

And that's why I decided to post this: because the more we say, publicly, that things like that are rape, the more we as a society agree on that fact, the harder it will be to "justify" it, and the easier it will be for people to believe somebody else will have their back if they say what happened was rape.

Progress may be slow. But it used to be that a lot more people believed there was no such thing as marital rape, and we've changed that -- not 100%, but a lot, compared to before. We can and will keep pushing.