Personal Experiences with Rape Culture
Consent is not sexy and I hate men less than Hugo Schwyzer hates men:
I genuinely believe that most men do not rape women. Despite generally agreeing with Andrea Dworkin’s overall theory about the way that dominance and oppression taint all of our relationships, I really do assume that almost all men who have sex with women are looking for a sexual relationship based on mutual affection and mutual pleasure.
I believe most men are invested enough in the happiness of their romantic partner and have spent enough of their life genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around them, that they would never find themselves in a situation where a romantic partner tells them one day that they have been raping her.
Almost all men are perfectly capable of reading non-verbal communication. And most men don’t cavalierly ignore non-verbal communication to continue with the fucking they wanted. Narcissistic rapists do this.
Narcissistic rapists like to pretend that their behavior is normal. And apparently, one of the ways they do this is by setting themselves up as experts who patiently explain to men how easy it is to “accidentally” rape or abuse someone. Because I, maybe naively and optimistically, don’t hate men, I assume that there’s a whole, broad, chunk of dudes in Hugo Schwyzer’s intended audience who are just so fucking confused by his message.
But then there’s also probably this narrow, self-perpetuating chunk of Hugo Schwyzer’s audience who find the whole thing soooo validating. ”See,” they say to themselves, ”I am a victim of the patriarchy, and of those women who refused to give me a straight answer. Now I will spread this gospel!”
And women, and men who aren’t sociopaths, believe it too. So we start endlessly talking about consent and looking to bdsm subcultures are our model for healthy sexual relationships…which is so fucked up. And we do this because we think that surely, if only we could find the right magic words we could stop rape. But the Hugo Schwyzer’s of the world don’t give a shit about ~consent~.
I’ve been pondering how to address this for a few days now, but I still don’t really have a clear order of thought. I think I’ll just list some points and hopefully what I’m saying makes sense*:
- What you’ve written is massively problematic because you’ve set up “men” and “rapists” as almost mutually exclusive groups. Everything we know about rape, rape culture, psychology and criminology shows us this isn’t true. Rapists are just normal people. For the most part they are also men. And men who are rapists are just the same as men who aren’t rapists. Trust me when I say this because I’ve met and interviewed a fairly representative number of rapists and child sex offenders. They’re just regular people. In fact, in almost every respect aside from their offending, they are indistinguishable from men who have never raped or sexually assaulted anyone.
- Of course, this is a very unsettling thought. We want to be able demarcate sex offenders. We want to feel safe. Completely understandable. And if it makes you feel safe to believe that “almost all men are perfectly capable of reading non-verbal communication” then that’s fine. But that doesn’t make it true. Unless you’ve been trained to - not only recognise - but listen to that non-verbal communication, then you aren’t going to be receptive to unspoken communication.
- One particularly interesting study discusses this. In non-sexual situations it is the norm to be perceptive and to pay attention to body language that says “no”. This is what we are trained to do. For instance, if you invite someone to your house for dinner and they pause for a micro-second before answering, most people will immediately understand that hesitance and reluctance, and respond accordingly. The one context where this isn’t seen? Sexual interactions. During sex this same micro-second hesitance is virtually never interpreted the same way. It’s glossed over. It is ignored. It is interpreted as “they need convincing” or “soon they’ll realise how good this feels”
- If you are interested in these sorts of observations, I suggest you do more research into conversation analysis and consent.
- The other this is that, by and large the Western sex-education system and the media do not teach men to focus on pleasuring women. A disturbingly high number of men become adults without ever having brought a partner to orgasm. Many without ever even realising this fact. This alone should be sufficient to understand that a women’s sexual satisfaction is not always a priority for heterosexual men.
- The one trait that almost all male rapists share is entitlement. To a lesser extent they share proprietory attitudes towards women, and to a slightly lesser extent again, they tend to view women as Madonna/whore caricatures. Narcissism and psychopathy are not traits you can use to successfully identify rapists.
- I won’t comment on the Hugo Schwyzer aspect of this post because there’s enough internet space wasted on that man already. I will, however, leave, by linking to everythingbutharleyquinn’s awesome critique of the OP.
I think that’s all.[*Since this discussion has been framed in terms of men raping women, that is what my answer will focus on. Clearly sexual assault happens between all genders.]
Lavenderlabia does a great job here (thanks!) and I just want to add that the whole “consent is not sexy” thing really disturbs me on a visceral level. Like, reading that was actually triggering, my heart rate and blood pressure both sky rocketed and I got really tense.
I think it upsets me most because the idea that consent gets in the way of good sex and makes sexy times not so sexy is a massive rape culture issue that leads to more and more rapes every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year. Seriously, people should be so concerned about consent that they’re willing to risk awkwardness and are willing to even potentially “ruin” or miss out on sex altogether if they’re not 100% certain that all people involved are completely freely consenting. We should live in a world where even a single shred of doubt is enough to put the breaks on. But we don’t. We live in a world where avoiding awkwardness and (women) giving people (men) what they want, pleasing them is the ultimate goal.
There’s nothing sexy to me about being potentially involved in rape or sexual assault while the fact that my partner is so concerned about my consent that he’s willing to stop in the middle of hot sexy times to double check is mega hot. Knowing that I’m safe with him turns me on in ways I can’t even describe. Consent is sexy and I’m wary of anyone who says otherwise. People who really can’t say that consent is sexy I fear and I fear them because they’re contributing in some way large or small to rape culture and actual incidents of rape and sexual assault. I fear them because there’s an ulterior motive that ultimately says forcing things to run smoothly without ever risking anything overtly unpleasant is more important than ensuring that everyone involved really wants the sex to happen the way it’s happening and to me that’s damn sure something we should all be afraid of.
MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE AND CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE
The poster reads:
“I gave you that body, I can take it away.” -my mother
“Let’s play hide & seek in the dark!…This time I dare you to take your pants off when the lights go out.” -teenage neighbor, 8
“What?! You sat on my hand. It wasn’t my fault.” - 6
“How big can you open your mouth?” - 6
“You wanna see something?” - 9
“Don’t. Move.” - several times
“This is how boys like it, you have to move your hips. One day you’ll thank me for teaching you.” - 15
~These are all words from my brother. He’s 10 years older.~
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Photographed in Chicago, IL on September 27th
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TW: RAPE, MURDER, RAPE “JOKE,” VICTIM BLAMING, GENERAL AWFULNESS
Testing. 1,2,3. Is this thing on?
I was taking a break from writing a post about introducing D/s to a vanilla relationship when I came across this image. I sat and looked at it for a moment trying to sort out exactly what it evoked within me. Then I looked at the notes.
At the time of this post 13,491.
So, I clicked on the notes expecting that there would be outrage, someone crying foul, a bit of righteous indignation and the like. Nope. Like, after like. Reblog after reblog. I gave up after scrolling through four pages of notes and not finding even one comment saying “What the fuck is this?”
I am not easily offended. I get off on the weirdest and kinkiest shit. I really don’t care what two consenting people do to each other, even when the squick factor makes me throw up in my mouth a bit. I’m all for expressing whatever you want to express, no matter how offensively stupid and thoughtless it is.
However, this post has struck a nerve. And yes, I’ve talked about some of this before but it bears repeating to make a point.
This week here in Melbourne, a young woman on her way home from the pub, walking a distance of less than 500 meters, disappeared from the street, only to be found a few days later buried in a shallow grave on a dirt road outside of the city. She had been raped and then murdered.
What could she have done to have kept her assault simply a rape instead of her murder as well? Did she fail to remain calm?
In 2008, after leaving my long term boyfriend and moving into my own apartment, I agreed to meet him one last time to talk. I made sure to be careful, as he’d been physically abusive in the past and I chose to meet him at a neutral location (a friend’s apartment). I knew better, but there were drugs involved, and at the time, I was in a bad place and risked common sense for a need. Bad choice? yes. Consent to horror? No.
He brought a friend to ‘teach me a lesson.’ My boyfriend sat on the sofa, doing the drugs I thought we were going to share over conversation, while his friend beat me unmercifully and raped me. I did not fight. I did not struggle. I choked on my own blood, tried to keep breathing, focused on surviving, looked into my ex-boyfriend’s eyes and plead for help.
When M., the friend, was done with me, Colin took his turn. He was high on coke and more violent than I’d ever seen him. I was barely conscious when the police kicked down the door. The two men went to jail, I was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a number of significant injuries.
Colin had the audacity to say aloud to me as the gurney was being taken from the apartment, “I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done here.”
His message was perfectly clear, his going to jail, his doing what he and his friend had done to me was my fault. I was to blame.
I know that had a tactical team of cops with rifles and shotguns not broken down that door and stopped what was happening that my rape would have turned into a murder no matter how calm I had or hadn’t remained.
Oh, but you’re overreacting you say. The t-shirt in the picture is meant as a joke. Fuck, you can’t take a joke?
Nah, I can take joke. I can laugh at shit that is inappropriate, off color, at times I have a chuckle when I really really shouldn’t. I’m not really that much of a buzz kill.
So why am I getting torqued over a stupid t-shirt that isn’t really supposed to literally be taken as about real rape, real murder?
Well, who is to say that?
Rape isn’t a joke. Murder even less so. There have been times when I think I would have been better served to have died on the living room floor of a friend’s apartment with my face bashed in and my ribs bashed, bleeding from the inside as well as outside. The baggage after surviving something like this is so very weighty. The end of the assault is just the beginning of whole other kind of fresh hell.
I hadn’t even gotten to the place in my life at that time that would turn out to be the worst, most traumatic experience that would come my way. That came a year later after Colin had been dead at his own hand so that he wouldn’t have to go back to prison.
Yeah, I know life sucks. Get over it. I’m not naive.
What gets me about this post is the likes and reblogs. The number of them that appear to be women who are reblogging this. I am gobsmacked.
It is sexist, sure, but I expect this from men. Not all men, but a fair number who have no earthly idea about the experience of abject fear and terror, of hanging on to every moment not knowing if it is soon to be your last. Of that secret hope that it would just end, be over with, that the murder would free you of your fear and your pain and the horror of what was happening.
But women? I really don’t understand that in the least. Someone kindly explain what is ‘likeable’ about his image. Seriously. Please do.
If anyone thinks that in addition to it being a woman’s responsibility to not get herself raped in the first place, that it is also her responsibility to not get herself murdered, well, here’s a thought for you - go fuck yourself.
And no, I’m not going to sit down and shut up. No, I’m not going to lighten up. No, I won’t fucking take a joke.
I will speak up for myself, the woman I was lying on the floor, half beaten to death before I was raped and beaten more afterward. I will speak up for the young woman in this god forsaken metropolis found in a shallow grave on the side of the road and for all the other myriad women who have prayed, begged, plead their way through a rape, hoping against all odds that it wouldn’t turn into a murder or possibly that they wished the murder would come quickly to save them from the awful reality of what they were enduring.
13,491 likes and reblogs.
My faith in humanity is in question.
Cher
(via pallas-athena)
TW - RAPE, FAT HATE, and maybe also some victim blaming depending on how you look at it
I saw this and it broke my heart..
I don’t really have words for this. This hurt to the core of my being.
My heart just sank.
(via ragingnewborn)
TW - RAPE, RAPE CULTURE
A Grand jury indicted an SMU student of raping another student in a dorm room. The SMU newspaper refused to publish this story unless the tipster(s) were identified. I love my alma mater, but there’s been a history of sweeping sexual assault under the rug. Because of this, I’m posting this story everywhere I can.
Fuck victim blaming and fuck internal “judicial” hearings for sexual assault charges on a private university.
(via 021013)
There has been tons of research on hookup culture over the last few years, and most of it shows that -on average- random hookups are not entirely satisfying for anyone. Women rarely orgasm and men don’t even orgasm most of the time.
It’s because tons of boys and men think of hooking up as a game, and women as pawns. They don’t go out looking for a pleasurable experience, they go out looking to boost their ego and to have power over someone else. When I talk to my female friends who like to hook up, they generally go out to find someone who desires them. When I talk to my male friends they just want to get laid.
If it’s not about orgasms or even pleasure…then there’s obviously something else there, and it has less to do with “hookup culture” than rape culture. If you go out only looking to coerce someone into hooking up with you at any cost, regardless of their desire for you or for doing sexual acts…then you’re thinking of them as objects you can wield power over, not human beings.
Um thank you for this!! I’ve thought for YEARS hook up culture and rape culture eerily share some of the same aspects, but have never been able to verbalize it correctly/not get chewed out for being “sex negative”.
It’s like the Barney Stinson character. There are tons of people like that in real life and I feel like that kind of character/person is at least rape adjacent if not actually straight up a rapist. I mean, if we get that coerced consent isn’t really consent and we get that lying to people in order to get them to do what you want which might be something they wouldn’t do if they weren’t lied to is a form of coercion then doesn’t the logic follow that this is totally rapey behavior?
(via sissypunks)
TW - RAPE, RAPE CULTURE
TW - RAPE, RAPE CULTURE
TW - RAPE APOLOGISM
TW - RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, RAPE CULTURE
(via feelings-princess)
I really, really, don’t think I cannot cry when I read, or see, or even hear about a guy going down on a girl on his own accord. My training (from porn & previous relationships) has taught me, and is now engraved in my brain, that eating a girl out is gross, not normal, a special and rare thing that never lasts long and is only the precursor to penetration, sometimes. Also, whenever I see it happening, (with a guy going down a woman) he seems to be genuinely disgusted by it. His face is as far away as possible, he stops a lot to look at it for a while and then barely touches for a shorter amount of time. And the women react like it’s the most amazing thing in the world.
There are songs out there (in mainstream radio) about women giving guys head. Innuendos hinting about a woman sucking cock. I have never, in all my life of listening to the radio and being exposed to various music genres, heard a song that implies a man going down on a girl.
What kills me the most is that while pleasing a woman is so unbelievably unnatural to our culture, hurting her/ sexually assaulting her/ using her for your sexual pleasure/being dominant over her sexually/forcing sex on her/coercing her to have sex with men/slut shaming her for when she does enjoy sex is completely normal.
Here is another question I have on this matter, why do mean enjoy seeing a woman go down on another woman? And if they themselves are disgusted by it or avoid so much, then why does is turn them on to see another person doing it? Is it because it’s a woman and that’s what their supposed to do? (being pleasing someone) And if that’s the reason, why would they like seeing a woman being pleased?
And another thing: When boys grow up, they are socially encouraged to sleep with woman and awarded/praised when they do so. And it’s even better when you supposedly please them. So why don’t you actually please them?
I know why. Because we, as woman, are taught to appease men no matter what. Our pleasure doesn’t matter. Since we’re taught that men hearing us or seeing us in pleasure arouses them, why should we ever deny them that? Even if we don’t like it? To be honest, it’s probably better to fake it anyway, because why would we ever want to bruise a man’s ego? That’s just bitchy.
I was taught all my god damn fucking life that my wants/needs don’t matter. That my emotions aren’t valid. That I was literally placed on earth to please and serve men. My clothes are meant to arouse them. My actions are meant to please them. Every single thing I do in life is, and should be, judged by men.
This is why I cry when I see a guy going down on a girl and actually pleasing her, and more so, enjoying it. Or when I hear about it. Or read about it. It’s because I am jealous. I’m so fucking jealous that those women get to have that, without asking. Without feeling ashamed and wrong. I am jealous of them being able to enjoy such a thing.
I almost wish I had never had the experience of someone eating me out so I wouldn’t feel so upset about this. But I have. And wanting it more often, makes me feel like a man-hater. I’m ashamed to want it. I cry because I want it.
And that’s just not right.
positivelysexypoliticsandstuff:
My human sexuality text book says if you are in a situation where you are going to be sexually assaulted, try avoiding it my saying “I have my period” or “I have herpes.”
I don’t even know what to make of this at all…
Help?
I just… what the actual fuck is this?! Seriously?! I mean… I guess maybe something like that could work in a really specific situation where the rape involves some sort of violent stranger where the victim isn’t incapacitated but what about all the rapes that don’t work that way? This “tip” assumes a lot - that rape is about sex and that rape is always some sort of attacker coming out of nowhere in the dead of night. In real life intimate partner rape is actually the most common sort and non-violent forms of coercion are the most common methods used by rapists. Something like this doesn’t help in those situations. Not to mention the rape of incapacitated victims (drunk, drugged, sleeping, etc) which makes up a good portion of all rapes. Not to mention the fact that rape isn’t about sex and I really can’t see menstruation being a problem for somebody who’s simply interested in dominating, controlling, and violating a person.
But even if something like this legitimately “worked” and it was a good tip what in the actual fuck is wrong with these people that they think institutionalized victim blaming is actually a good thing?! Seriously, we have a textbook which means there’s systemic power behind anything it says in which the responsibility to avoid rape is placed solely upon the victim as though it’s actually all about hir to keep from being raped. In real life the sole responsibility for a rape is on the rapist, that’s it, nobody else so tips to avoid rape should be geared towards potential rapists telling them how to not rape not towards potential victims. Having that sort of institutionalized victim blaming is seriously fucked up and kind of makes me want to hurt all the people responsible for creating that textbook and all the people responsible for deciding it was a good idea to use it. Fucking hell…
CW - rape and rape culture
I found this article about it and basically I think it’s bullshit. For starters it talks about reported rape, not actual rape. There could be many reasons why there’s a drop in rape reporting and a 7.3% decrease in reporting that happensto coincide with internet porn becoming available is not legitimately statistically significant not to mention correlation does NOT prove causation.
Secondly this bullshit theory assumes that rape is about sex. That sexually frustrated heterosexual, cis men just want to fuck and when they want to fuck and can’t find a willing cis woman to fuck they go out and rape because they just really need to get their rocks off but if they can wank to porn all of a sudden their “need” to rape lessens which decreases overall incidents of rape. That’s such horrifying rape culture bullshit I honestly can’t handle it. Seriously, no, just no. Rape is not about sex, rapists don’t rape because they want to fuck. Rape is about power, control, and degradation. Rapists rape because they don’t see their victims as humans deserving of rights they see their victims as objects to be used and as subhuman entities deserving of being humiliated, degraded, controlled and overpowered (“put in their place”). It’s not about sex at all, even if the argument could be made that in some rare cases it is just because the guy is horny it’s still not about sex it’s about a belief that he is entitled to get sex whenever he wants sex, it’s a privilege/entitlement issue, not a sex issue. Plenty of horny people don’t rape, have no problem not raping, and because of the simple fact rape is not about sex AT ALL being able to wank to porn can’t possibly have any effect on decreasing incidents of rape.
Beyond that, the whole idea that cis, het men are entitled to have sexual access to cis female people whenever they wanna fuck is actually reinforced by the massive availability of mainstream porn. Mainstream porn reinforces women as objects, as commodities, and the idea and men can and should always have easy access to women they desire whenever they desire them. These are all serious rape culture issues so I have a really hard time believing that having constant easy access to mainstream porn doesn’t actually increaseincidences of rape since it definitely increases overall rape culture and we know that rape culture in and of itself directly increases overall incidences of rape in the world.
xobladi-obladax Asks:
rapeculturerealities Said:
CW - rape and rape culture
I found this article about it and basically I think it’s bullshit. For starters it talks about reported rape, not actual rape. There could be many reasons why there’s a drop in rape reporting and a 7.3% decrease in reporting that happens to coincide with internet porn becoming available is not legitimately statistically significant not to mention correlation does NOT prove causation.
Secondly this bullshit theory assumes that rape is about sex. That sexually frustrated heterosexual, cis men just want to fuck and when they want to fuck and can’t find a willing cis woman to fuck they go out and rape because they just really need to get their rocks off but if they can wank to porn all of a sudden their “need” to rape lessens which decreases overall incidents of rape. That’s such horrifying rape culture bullshit I honestly can’t handle it. Seriously, no, just no. Rape is not about sex, rapists don’t rape because they want to fuck. Rape is about power, control, and degradation. Rapists rape because they don’t see their victims as humans deserving of rights they see their victims as objects to be used and as subhuman entities deserving of being humiliated, degraded, controlled and overpowered (“put in their place”). It’s not about sex at all, even if the argument could be made that in some rare cases it is just because the guy is horny it’s still not about sex it’s about a belief that he is entitled to get sex whenever he wants sex, it’s a privilege/entitlement issue, not a sex issue. Plenty of horny people don’t rape, have no problem not raping, and because of the simple fact rape is not about sex AT ALL being able to wank to porn can’t possibly have any effect on decreasing incidents of rape.
Beyond that, the whole idea that cis, het men are entitled to have sexual access to cis female people whenever they wanna fuck is actually reinforced by the massive availability of mainstream porn. Mainstream porn reinforces women as objects, as commodities, and the idea and men can and should always have easy access to women they desire whenever they desire them. These are all serious rape culture issues so I have a really hard time believing that having constant easy access to mainstream porn doesn’t actually increase incidences of rape since it definitely increases overall rape culture and we know that rape culture in and of itself directly increases overall incidences of rape in the world.
