Posted on 10/24/2003 8:29:20 AM PDT by Scenic Sounds
Today, I was sitting outside my education classroom waiting for a friend with whom I was having lunch. While I was relaxing, I could hear the sounds of a film that was being shown for a sexual trauma class next door. The door was open, and with careful listening, I figured out that the film being shown was an educational documentary about date rape. Curious, I moved my chair closer to the door so that I could hear more clearly. The more I heard, the more interested I became.
“Men are, by nature, predators”, explained the narrator. “Women, especially young women on college campuses, are surrounded by rapists. These rapists are in the guise of your closest male friends. You may think they are on your side, but you’d be wrong.”
This was only the beginning. After a few more statements – which I missed because I was scrambling for my notebook – the female narrator began to explain the warning signs that women should look for in their male friends to see if he was a rapist. The first signal, said the woman, was drinking. “Rapists tend to drink alcohol and become drunk at least once a month.” The second was a fondness for “exploitative men’s magazines.” The narrator listed Playboy and Penthouse as two of the magazines that are popular with rapists.
It sounded a bit ludicrous to me – assuming that guys who drink and look at Playboy are automatically rapists – especially college guys, since sometimes it seems that their only pastimes are drinking and looking at Playboy. This view, however, is typical of the paranoid outlook that some liberal feminists are teaching on college campuses.
On the other hand - there are so many varying ideas about rape these days that it’s hard to keep up with them all. There are people who think that women ask for rape by a look or a short skirt or a tight shirt, and there are people who think that any sex at all is rape, because men always prey on women. The pure version of these two ideas is served up mostly by fringe groups, but the more watered down versions are what get touted as truth to different groups of people at different times.
Sometimes the line between rape and intercourse is so finely drawn that it cannot be distinguished. There seems to be a new criterion for rape, which can be anything from saying no and then consenting to not specifically saying yes. There are new definitions of consent now. As Susan Estrich once put it: "Many feminists would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing a 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided. For myself, I am quite certain that many women who say 'yes' to men they know, whether on dates or on the job, would say 'no' if they could. I have no doubt that women's silence sometimes is not the product of passion and desire but of pressure and fear."
Then, on the other hand, there are people (oddly enough, most seem to be women) who hear about a woman’s rape and immediately look for an excuse to justify the man’s behavior. This is the other side of the coin – but it’s equally wrong. There are brutal people in the world that will not hesitate to take advantage of someone weaker than themselves, and both women and men need to realize this. There cannot be excuses made for rapists.
That’s what rape boils down to: brutality. Rape is about power and violence, not about sex or the pursuit of sex or even lust. It is about dominance. It is not about regret the morning after, and it is not about whether the girl who was raped had consensual sex with another man the night before. It is about the act itself; it is about the emotional scarring that it causes; and it is about the physical damage that it causes.
Extreme definitions of rape don’t help rape victims. Instead, calluses build up on the public consciousness and more victims of rape find themselves being given the cold shoulder by the courts and by the press. It’s as though they are being raped all over again.
The truth is, before we open our mouths to discuss someone’s rape or accusations of rape, we should stop and think about the consequences of the ideas that we are promulgating. Are extreme opinions and ideas – from either side – going to help us see the issue of rape with more clarity, or less?
Cathryn Crawford is a student at the University of Texas. She can be reached at cathryncrawford@washingtondispatch.com.
I did enjoy it in this one particular case, but it would definitely get old after a while. I enjoy being wanted unconditionally too much.
Michael
Yes.
I've been asked many times about what men can do to try to protect themselves in this crazy environment. In order to help them, I've devised a series of steps that each young man should commit to memory:
Step 1 - Marry her first! I'm indebted to Dr. Laura for this one - just refuse to have sex with women before marriage. Many of the most aggressive women will be deterred if you just let them know of this rule right up front.
Step 2 - Only date women who are trustworthy! By now, you should be able to separate the women you can trust from those you can't. Don't be a slut. Don't date untrustworthy women.
Step 3 - Deuteronomy readings! Most of you probably carry a Bible with you or at least keep one in a convenient place. If you have perhaps misjudged a woman (notwithstanding your strictest efforts to comply with Step 2) and she becomes sexually aggressive on a date, ask her to read aloud to you from pertinent portions of the Bible. (Hint: Deuteronomy has some great stuff!) I assure you, this request alone will deter all but a few of the females who are most difficult to control. And, if that doesn't work, go to
Step 4 - Insist on videotaping your sex! This is the Rubicon, guys - not many women will cross this line! You just tell the young lady that you will not engage in any sexual activities that aren't fully videotaped for your protection.
I can hear some of you now. What, you ask, should you do if you happen to find yourself involved with a woman who insists on having sex with you while reading passages from Deuteronomy and being videotaped? That's the beauty of this program, guys - you just go right back to Step 1 and marry the girl.
She's what you've been looking for all along!
Just skip the whole thing. Go find so woman you can't stand and buy her a house.
ROFL. That's the secret shortcut, Gary! How did you find out about that? ;-)
No. I'm saying that rapists can confuse lust for power with sexual arousal. People seem to have no problem grasping that people who are not rapists can have fetishes such as feet, leather, and even being bound yet seem unwilling to consider that people who are rapists may have a more malevolent fetish. If it is possible to imagine someone being turned on by being dominated, why it isn't it possible to imagine someone being turned on by dominating. And if it is possible to imagine someone being turned on by dominating in a consentual relationship, why is it impossible to imagine someone being turned on be dominating in a non-consentual situation? S&M is a two-sided coin and the "S" side of the coin doesn't need the mirror "M" if consent is not an issue.
Many rapists are unable to function sexually during the rape.
I'd like to see evidence of that. Post rape exams looking for semen and forced vaginal entry would seem kinda pointless if the rapist were not aroused and not ejaculating. Are you telling me that most post-rape exams turn up empty or are pointless? Some rapists choose their victims by opportunity rather than any physical characteristic. The same rapist may attack women of different ages, simply because he can.
I'm sure there are some rapists for whom the act is entirely violent and not sexual in any traditional sense. I simply doubt that such rapes are the norm. I find it difficult to imagine a man becomming erect enough to force his way into an unwilling and unaroused woman if there was not some sexual arousal involved. Men do not walk around with erections 7X24. Not without Viagra, anyway. And while some men may use objects to rape, I get the impression that it out of frustration or necessity more than choice.
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