Think Before You Speak (Cathryn Crawford)

Washington Dispatch ^ | October 24, 2003 | Cathryn Crawford

[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.

[gcruse]

Obviously Hemingway was an over-rated hack.

I think he was.  Reading Hemingway makes me think of reading a story assembled from a child's alphabet blocks.  The words he used do not carry sufficient nuance to enrich the meaning of his sentences.  If a caveman were to have written in a 50-word Trog vocabulary, I think he would have presaged Hemingway. 

[vin-one]

Yes, I am a predator, watch what you wear around me the
slightest hint of clevage might send me off the deep end(SARCASM)

CC steps to the plate and knocks another one out of the Park
You go girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ginger Grant]

Reading Hemingway makes me think of reading a story assembled from a child's alphabet blocks. The words he used do not carry sufficient nuance to enrich the meaning of his sentences. If a caveman were to have written in a 50-word Trog vocabulary, I think he would have presaged Hemingway.

I stand corrected. Crawford's work, using your definition of Hemingway's writings, is on par.

[DannyTN]

"Doesn't the Liberal Clitorati think that all sex, even between married couples, is rape?"

Yes as opposed to the Liberal Clintorati that thinks that all rape isn't sex.

[mountaineer]

"A fine writer" is a matter of opinion. Having won several first place awards in a statewide press association competition (are those credentials acceptable to you?), my opinion is that the author's work shows little originality and not much insight. This is not to say she doesn't show promise as a writer. In a few years, with more experience, she may become a fine writer.

[Pukin Dog]

"A fine writer" is a matter of opinion.

So is, "you are an a$$hole". Just an opinion.

I would rather when describing the works of someone to stress the positive, and seek to encorage, then to come off as a classless jerk.

Just another opinion.

[mountaineer]

Thanks for sharing your expertise on the topic of literary criticism.

[Pukin Dog]

You are quite welcome.

[Treebeard]

No, they're not acceptable credentials, for the reason that statewide press associations are made up of members who publish headlines like "Connivance Store Owner Killed in Robbery Attempt. That one ran in a local newspaper this week.

How about: "Porn Trial Ends in Hung Jury,", which, although it gets points for a really awful double entendre, is subpar editing for a major metropolitan newspaper.

However, if you, or any other of Crawford's detractors, would care to post some of your literary attempts, I'm sure you would finally be given proper credit for those efforts.

[mountaineer]

Why refer to headlines that have nothing to do with me or my newspaper? Resorting to irrelevant "facts," personal attacks, namecalling and insults is a poor substitute for intelligent and reasoned discourse. It doesn't even pass for chivalry in this instance.

[petitfour]

So, I wonder what the point of that whole feminist movie was. If you're a female who does not want to be raped, then don't hang out with drunk males who "get off" on pictures of nakey women. Sounds reasonable. My Mama always encouraged me to stay around sober folks. So did my Daddy. I wonder why Daddy disliked drunk males so much. (OK. So Daddy didn't like ANY males, but that's beside the point.) I bet my husband will also encourage our daughters to avoid drunk males. I guess my Daddy was a closet feminist. And hubby must be a feminist, too.

All that sort of avoids the point of this article. I wonder what my father's definition of rape was.

[Treebeard]

I answered a question you asked about the acceptability of your credentials. I gave examples drawn from what very likely were members of 'statewide press associations' to support an assertion that perhaps those credentials weren't exactly sterling.

[mountaineer]

very likely ... perhaps

Oh, okay.

[Nick Danger]

A lot of the fringe groups do. After all, all men are predators.

Excuse me. I am the proverbial visiting Martian Anthropologist. I'm hoping you can help me out with something here. You seem to be making light of the idea that men are predators, as if it were a joke. In the article you positioned it as a somewhat ludicrous view promoted by the people I refer to in my notes as 'feminist extremists.'

Let me show you a passage that I have found puzzling. I hope you can help me make sense of this:

What is, in fact, the basic tenet of feminism? According to most feminist organizations, it is to protect women from all forms of bodily harm and to promote their equality with men. Yet so often, due to the outrageous and sometimes downright silly behavior of organizations such as NOW, feminism is boiled down to building up women while at the same time tearing down the institutions of family, children, and men.

I interpreted this as the author trying to draw a distinction between the "bad feminism" of NOW et.al., which seeks to tear down everything except women, and a non-controversial "good feminism," the basic tenet of which is to protect women against bodily harm, and of course to promote equality.

What stumps me is that the author does not bother to tell us why women need to band together for protection against bodily harm. Apparently this is something you Earthlings all know, but it has left me guessing.

As a Visiting Martian, I must assume that there is some predatory force out there that, in the absence of this women's movement, would be visiting bodily harm upon women... and apparently only women. For while the Good Feminism seeks "equality," it does not bother itself with any bodily harm that might be visited upon men, or children, or really anyone except women themselves. (As a Visiting Martian, I have found this to be typical of feminisms of all kinds. I have classified them in my notebook as "Equality movements which seek special privilege and protection," a classification I had not previously encountered in my travels.)

To understand this passage better, I need to know what the predatory and apparently quite brutal force is that the Good Feminism seeks to protect women from.

I hope you can help me out, because the author seemed to think it was obvious.

[Scenic Sounds]

So, I wonder what the point of that whole feminist movie was. If you're a female who does not want to be raped, then don't hang out with drunk males who "get off" on pictures of nakey women. Sounds reasonable. My Mama always encouraged me to stay around sober folks. So did my Daddy. I wonder why Daddy disliked drunk males so much. (OK. So Daddy didn't like ANY males, but that's beside the point.)

Obviously, I didn't see the movie itself so I really can't guess what points were being made. However, I think the part of the movie which this columnist quotes suggests that the movie had a somewhat inflammatory purpose:

“Men are, by nature, predators. 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.”

As for me, I agree with your parents even though there were times long, long ago when I was drunk and would have been the focus of your parents' apprehensions. I never raped anyone, though, at least not if we stick to anything resembling traditional definitions. LOL. ;-)

I bet my husband will also encourage our daughters to avoid drunk males. I guess my Daddy was a closet feminist. And hubby must be a feminist, too.

I don't know, but it sounds to me like your husband's a pretty good father.

All that sort of avoids the point of this article. I wonder what my father's definition of rape was.

I suspect he probably had a pretty rational view of things. ;-)

[Qwinn]

"If you're a female who does not want to be raped, then don't hang out with drunk males who "get off" on pictures of nakey women. Sounds reasonable."

No, not really. If the article said to stay away from drunk males, that would be within the realm of reasonable (the outer edge of it), but that's not what it said. What it said, paraphrased, was "if he drinks at least once a month, he's probably a rapist, best to abandon him altogether". That's simply vile. What was in that movie would be considered hate speech if it were said against any other group, but then we all know that males are inherently evil so it's okay.

This is brainwashing in academia, hands down. What really bothers me is so many men here can read about this and it doesn't really bother them - best to make a few jokes. Watch out, cause many states are fast approaching the status where all sex is -legally- considered rape, and all a woman has to do is call it rape after the fact and she is by definition correct. The accusation = the crime.

I have a friend in law school who swears that that is already the case in NJ. I'm still trying to get in touch with her so she can document it for me - if so, I'd like to make a big deal out of it. My impression is that that is not the case in the actual text of the law, but the -case law- has evolved to the point that there is enough precedent to make that definition stick whenever desired.

What my friend claimed was that case law had watered down consent to where consent simply didn't matter anymore. What mattered was the use of force. And legally, "force" is defined as the amount of physical force necessary to have sex. So yes, according to her, all sex in NJ is -legally- rape.

Again, I can't prove this yet, but I'm working on it. Yes, looking up the statutes will seem to contradict what I'm saying, but as most people should know by now, what the statutes say doesn't matter, what the case law says the statutes mean is the only thing that matters.

In the media, I suggest getting the condoms with the consent forms. Although I doubt they'd hold up in court. All sex is rape, consent doesn't matter.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

In the last sentence, "media" was supposed to be "meantime"... sorry, wires crossed.

Qwinn

[WaterDragon]

Excellent essay by Crawford! Thanks!

[Pukin Dog]

I didnt call anyone a name, I displayed another example of an opinion. If you feel that what I wrote somehow resembles you, is not that your problem? I was just ..... sharing.

[bk1000]

I knew one that was into that. She had a special word she would use if she really meant stop. Otherwise anything was OK. She made all that clear up front. It was weird, I didn't
much like it.