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

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

If you could choose some kind of alias to sign your anonymous comments with, I'd appreciate it. I want people to be able to join the discussion without having to identify themselves (given the topic, it only makes sense), but we may have more than one anonymous commenter, and a moniker at the end is easier to notice than the IP address.

I do agree that it's hard to judge things from the outside, when we may not have all the information . . . but I also agree with wshaffer that asking, asking, asking, asking, and then not asking sounds like "she'll forgive me for it later" logic.

And it seems that she did, in fact, forgive him. Maybe for good reasons; I won't judge her for that. But scenarios like this one are why I'm in favor of pushing "yes means yes" as a meme -- not putting the burden on people to speak up with a rejection (which can be really problematic in a lot of cases), but encouraging everybody to express their enthusiasm for what's happening, and to check for it if it isn't there.

[ckd]

[S]cenarios like this one are why I'm in favor of pushing "yes means yes" as a meme -- not putting the burden on people to speak up with a rejection (which can be really problematic in a lot of cases), but encouraging everybody to express their enthusiasm for what's happening, and to check for it if it isn't there.

Yes, absolutely this. (Enthusiastic consent to this...discussion thread? :-)

[(Anonymous)]

From HG.

But if "Yes means yes" means "Silence means jail", then there's a burden on the woman at every moment to express (or pretend) enthusiasm. But with "No means no" and "Silence means probably", she only has to express the occasional "No". And it will never be completely safe to rely on every man always accepting "Yes means yes"; for safety she must learn and be ready to actually say "No".

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

But if "Yes means yes" means "Silence means jail"

It doesn't. Silence plus the other person feeling violated means jail -- maybe, assuming they decide it's worth pressing charges, and get other people to believe them (which right now is sadly rare). Nobody is going to play Big Brother and require everybody to file a consent form before they get it on. But shifting from "no means no" to "yes means yes" means that people will look differently at a lot of scenarios that, right now, don't get recognized as rape and should.

Case in point: this post (http://www.anamardoll.com/2012/08/deconstruction-legitimate-rapes.html), with three instances that might all have been prevented if the guys had been taught -- not just told, but raised in the solid understanding -- that they need a green light before they proceed.

Because the problem with "she only has to express the occasional No" is that such defenses do absolutely no good for women who are asleep or drunk or otherwise incapable of expressing their refusal.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for accepting my anonymous comments. To way overstate things, I'll use the alias "HG" from the Hermione Gingold character in Gigi, as I'm a very old lady who has had lovers (and wannabes) in a variety of cultures and continents.

Always, however, for my own sincere pleasure. At some stages it may be necessary to encourage the man with some positive feedback. But at the stage being talked about here ... well, a requirement of words or even non-verbal 'enthusiasm' would, what do they say, 'frost' my own silent passive bliss. Such a requirement is invasive.

When uncomfortable, to learn to say "No" is a needed safety habit.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thanks for adding an identifier. Sorry for not unscreening your comments sooner; I didn't notice in e-mail that they had been held for moderation.

Yes, we need people to feel comfortable saying "No." And I think the entire yes/no thing does need to be read in the context of the individuals involved: one person's enthusiasm is another person's show of disinterest, if that makes any sense. And once you get to know the individual you're getting it on with, you'll recognize the signals. But I have to say that if you're ever in the slightest bit of doubt -- whether because your partner is new to you, or something has changed, or whatever -- then it's better to dull the mood a bit by saying "you okay?" or something like that, than to risk hurting them by pushing forward at the wrong time.