Cara addresses most of what I want to say to this Heather MacDonald rape apology printed in the LA Times. I only have a couple things to add, though. First of all, MacDonald pulls the standard conservative trick of just repeating ancient, easily disproven arguments as if they’re fresh and new. Mary Koss’s research has been vindicated repeatedly by other sources, including organizations that even the most reluctant wingnut puts his trust in, like the FBI.
But the crux of MacDonald’s argument lies in the idea that a) if rape actually happens, women should be so scared that they put their lives on permanent hold and b) if you’re in denial, that’s as good as if you weren’t raped. Both of these can easily be refuted by a rape victim on hand, namely me. Of course, the fact that I was raped 10 years ago this spring probably means I’m an un-victim by magic ass right wing logic, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that having been there, I know better than this MacDonald asshole who thinks by hating other women, she gets an honorary exemption from being a woman.
Point #1:
Such a crime wave — in which millions of young women would graduate having suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience — would require nothing less than a state of emergency. Admissions policies, which if the numbers are true are allowing in tens of thousands of vicious criminals, would require a complete revision, perhaps banning male students entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergraduates would need to take the most stringent safety precautions.
I was in a car accident within a year-ish time frame of being sexually assaulted. It was extremely terrifying, and my physiological reaction to remembering it is much different than remembering getting raped. I think about the accident, and well, my asshole clenches in terror and my heart starts to beat rapidly. I think about the rape, and instead, it’s more like that sinking gut feeling you have when you’re confronted with the ugliest parts of human nature. Remember how you first felt when you saw the pictures from Abu Gharib? It’s like that, with the caveat that you must be a decent person who was floored with disgust. I’m angry, and at the time, I was deeply traumatized, but it was a slow burn. But either way you cut it, both were traumas that should, by MacDonald’s logic, have created in me a deep unwillingness to ever leave my house, much less be in the presence of a man or a car.
It doesn’t work that way. After a car accident, most victims proceed to drive around in cars anyway, because risk is part of life. Surely a solid patriot like MacDonald knows the term, “Give me liberty or give me death!” If so, then instead of mocking young women, many of whom have already had traumatic experiences in regards with sexual assault, MacDonald should be lauding their patriotic courage and willingness to proceed with life, despite the risks. She should talk to a mugging victim or two, as well. People are surprisingly resistant in many cases to letting a trauma or the threat of one completely destroy their lives. For this, people should be admired, not mocked or belittled. For me, going out a lot and hanging out with a lot of men was an important (albeit sadly rocky) part of my recovery. I needed to know that because there are a lot of wicked men out there doesn’t mean they’re all bad. If it makes MacDonald feel any better, I did suffer a great deal. It’s sad to think that’s the price that I have to pay for justice to even be remotely considered an option.
Point #2:
It was a flawed study on a number of levels, but the most powerful refutation came from her own subjects: 73% of the women whom the study characterized as rape victims told the researchers that they hadn’t been raped. Further, 42% of the study’s supposed victims said they had had intercourse again with their alleged assailants — though it is highly unlikely that a raped woman would have sex again with the fiend who attacked her.
On the latter point, consider that rape is another flavor of the same dynamic that creates domestic violence, and you’ll see how full of shit she is. The fact that the victim doesn’t react how MacDonald wishes she would doesn’t make rape suddenly an okay way to have some fun on the weekend, and I’m sort of sickened by the fact that this is her implication. Do you think that MacDonald would consent to date a man who admitted that he repeatedly held down a girlfriend and fucked her against her protests? Would she think that there’s nothing alarming about a man who preys on women who are too beat down to offer proper resistance? Instead of doing what we all love to do, and examine a woman’s motivations over and over again to establish the requisite perfection before she’s permitted halfway admission to the human race, how about we look at men for a minute? What kind of man stalks and repeatedly abuses a woman? Is that really something that doesn’t ruffle MacDonald a bit?
Point #3:
A 2006 survey of sorority women at the University of Virginia, for example, found that only 23% of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped — a result that the university’s director of sexual and domestic violence services calls “discouraging.” Equally damning was a 2000 campus rape study conducted under the aegis of the Department of Justice. Sixty-five percent of those whom the researchers called “completed rape” victims and three-quarters of “attempted rape” victims said that they did not think that their experiences were “serious enough to report.”
Believing in the campus rape epidemic, it turns out, requires ignoring women’s own interpretations of their experiences.
Pseudo-feminist denialism. I’m sure she doesn’t even believe that women have a right to define their experiences even as she says it.
But again, there’s this weird dehumanizing of women going on, this demand of utter perfection before a woman is permitted to even exist. A woman only “gets” (whoopie!) to be a rape victim if she’s got a remarkable ability to avoid certain rationalization traps common to human beings with a side dish of superhuman abilities to not absorb any of our cultural teachings (like that if you admit you’re a rape victim, people will flinch, take an uncomfortably pitying attitude towards you, and people like MacDonald will make fun of you). Truth is that a lot of rape victims do practice an unconscious attempt to downplay their own trauma by embracing euphemisms. In that link, you have an example of a woman who was raped at gunpoint afraid to call it rape.
For example, check out this week’s Savage Love Podcast. Yes, yes, yes, I know that Dan Savage is far from perfect in his counseling of a young woman who calls in, freaked out because her friend was recently sexually assaulted. But set that aside for a moment and listen to what happens. The young woman—who isn’t even the victim, mind you—just feels weird and uneasy. (See the disgust reaction that happens when confronted with rape that I describe above.) It’s not until Dan walks her through the events (basically, her friend had a young man come into her bedroom naked, demand sex, and the “compromise” was that if she “let” him fondle her tits, he wouldn’t rape her), and then carefully points out that this is sexual assault. This kind of situation is more common than not—people definitely slip into magical thinking when bad things happen. “If I don’t say it, maybe it isn’t true,” is the thinking that goes on when people have diseases, a cheating spouse, or some other horrible event happen. It’s not exclusive to rape victims.
It’s extremely important, however, that rape victims come around to facing up to their experiences. For two reasons. One, you can’t ignore a trauma away. It happened, it traumatized you, and the longer you avoid facing up to it, the longer you will be suffering the mental health consequences. I was both startled but ultimately relieved when the detectives working my case said the word “rape” out loud, and basically forced me to face up to what had happened. Once I had a name for my trauma, I had a path to walk towards getting better. Had I lived in denial, who knows how fucked up I’d be.
Second of all, and MacDonald seems not to get this, though Dan Savage does, rape is a crime committed by a person who needs to be held accountable. Shocking, I know. We focus so much on the victims—what they were doing/wearing when they were raped, whether or not their reactions conform to our stereotypes, etc.—that we often forget that the perpetrators are out there and if their victims are scared to name the experience accurately and seek help, the perpetrators will still be out there doing it. Why are there so many rape victims? In part because so few of them will utter the word “rape” and set in motion the events that will help make rapists stop raping. MacDonald again:
And who will be the assailants of these women? Not terrifying strangers who will grab them in dark alleys, but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria.
It’s not a one-to-one ratio by any measure. It’s not like one in four guys sitting in the cafeteria is a rapist. What’s happening is that a small percentage of those guys in the classroom or cafeteria are raping a lot of women, and getting away with it in part because their victims are afraid to call it rape. (By the way, MacDonald is also misrepresenting the facts here—Koss didn’t find that 1 in 4 were raped, but the victims of rape or attempted rape. It’s important to measure the latter insofar as establishing that we do in fact have a rape culture.) Again, the podcast is really instructional in seeing how this happens. The caller believes her friend is living in denial a bit, and hopes that by ignoring the situation, it will go away. Dan points out that if the would-be rapist isn’t held accountable, he might do worse to someone else in the future, will probably do worse to someone else in the future. The fact that women are afraid to label their experiences and take action is part of the reason justice is elusive.
Not that I blame them, of course. Most of the time, even if you do pursue justice, nothing will come of it but misery for you. On a one to one basis, it doesn’t seem worth the time. But if in fact you experience sexual assault and feel up to pushing for justice, remember that every little bit helps.
65 Responses to “Rape: Pretty real when it’s happening”
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I absolutely hate people like her. I’m one of the 42% who had sex with a guy who raped her. If she ever asked why, I’d explain that I was in denial because I grew up being told that rape wasn’t something that happened to good girls (which is a really f-ed up belief but I was young then and too conservatively idealistic, at that time I also believed that I could just choose not to be gay, but that’s a different story), but I doubt she ever really cares as to why women do what they do.
I didn’t think I was raped until I heard a rape survivor tell my exact story at a rally. It was such an overwhelming sense of relief– although it came a year after I was raped. It was so nice to know that what happened to me was wrong, really wrong. It led me to get counseling and heal.
Women don’t identify as rape victims because of crap like this article. It makes me so sad.
When my friend told me she had been raped I’m sorry to say my reaction was to be uncomfortable at first and I have no idea why. Then again, she’s the first woman I’ve known who’s out right told me they’ve been raped so that may be a bit of it. I also felt really bad for her because she went through so much, even with her family not fully supporting her, but I remember I was happy to hear she’d put the bastard in jail for two years. I could say you’d be surprised by the shit she had to go through just to get that, but then again we all know better.
Even still, now whenever we watch movies together and there’s a rape scene I find myself becoming uncomfortable (and I’m realizing I’m becoming uncomfortable with rape scenes in general, not just watching with her). We watched Mysterious Skin and I remember thinking “Oh shit, he’s going to get raped,” and when it happened I just became really tense and I think at that one I stopped breathing because it was so graphic and I felt bad watching it with her. We recently saw Teeth together and at that rape scene I became very tense, worrying if it was going to be a trigger for her. I suppose I should ask her how she feels but I don’t know if I’d be an ass to do so, I honestly don’t know how to talk to her about it. She never says anythign and she seems to have moved on, so I don’t know if it’s my place to bring it back up.
I’m sure she doesn’t even believe that women have a right to define their experiences even as she says it.
We discussed this earlier today. By your own admission, YOU don’t believe women have a right to define their own experiences!
Its always interesting when the debate sometimes goes towards the stats. In my mind the stats are indicators, not definitions, of the problem. For some reason some people tend to see the stats as the “truth” when this is very much not the case. Rapes and sexual assaults are underreported if the victim is female, male, poor, rich or whatever. There will never be 100% accurate rape statistics so I dont get the constant harping on them by some and the constant bolstering of them by others, other than to raise awareness. Besides, you can always find the stats you want, You could look at the DoJ stats for the country as a whole or for say only college-aged persons and find nothing even approaching 25% even when you include all their definitions of sexual assault, to include verbal threats. You can also find stats to counter the 2% claim some groups put out there. I know its rather simplistic of me and will do no good in raising awareness overall but I dont care if its 2% or 25%, its too much either way and all that can be done should be done to stop it.
“facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable”
Ultra, I’m in a similar situation, but as the victim. None of my friends have ever brought it up and neither have I. Sometimes I know they look at me when I say something particularly scathing about “men” but no one ever says a thing. And I can’t speak for your friend in any way at all, but I’m usually glad they don’t… People have too much of a tendency to give you the third degree about what what *you* were doing and not what the rapist was doing. It’s easier to pretend it’s water under the bridge.
That said, Amanda, I must say you are very brave to talk about your experiences with such brutal honesty. I wish I could do the same.
I read the entire article by Heather MacDonald and did not to get the impression that you did. It appears to me that the women themselves have a disagreement with the Koss study’s definition of rape.
MacDonald has a point about holding the drunken male responsible for his misbehavior and that of his female hook-up.
One of the things she (along with so much of the patriarchy) doesn’t get is that denying that an experience constituted rape is a crucial coping mechanism for (many) women who want to salvage some sense of personal agency from having suffered sexual assault.
The Dan Savage podcast is a perfect example: because the woman avoided “rape classic” the fact that she was sexually assaulted gets made invisible. You know, the way that if a mugger threatens to stab a man and then settles for just taking his wallet, everyone agrees that he wasn’t really mugged. Oh, wait.
(A friend once told me the story of how a man threatened to rape her at knifepoint, and she bargained him down to “just” a blowjob. One the one hand she was relieved and a little bit proud to have avoided something far worse, but on the other she was under no illusion that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. And she would have politely torn a new one for anyone who suggested as much.)
I think there’s also a parallel with attitudes toward handicapped people (another disempowered, stereotypically feminized group) where really hard work and “success” in overcoming a handicap is taken as a reason that no further accommodation should be made.
I have dealt with rape and sexual assault for many years. When the numbers were increased by adding after encounter regrets, I was offended.
After reading MacDonald, two questions come to mind:
1) Even if Koss were wrong and the percentage of rape victims were ‘only’ ten percent, how is that not a crisis? Take a college campus with a student population of 10,000. Are 500 rapes acceptable, but 1,250 aren’t?
2) Why is MacDonald seemingly threatened by a high number of rape victims (they’re not the ones raping anybody)? This appears to be some sort of oppositional disorder: feminists say X, so therefore, I must say the exact opposite. I wonder if this stems from a typical conservative need to demonize ‘evil’: if a rapist looks like the nice kid sitting next to us in the cafeteria, defining who is evil becomes much harder.
An aside, to Ultra Magnus:
Even still, now whenever we watch movies together and there’s a rape scene I find myself becoming uncomfortable (and I’m realizing I’m becoming uncomfortable with rape scenes in general, not just watching with her).
So you weren’t uncomfortable watching rape scenes before you knew someone who had been raped? Just curious and wanting some elaboration….
Oh, shit, it’s rape apologist city on this thread already. Do these freaks just park their stupid asses on Google all day, fingers ready, just waiting for an opportunity to defend their right to rape? Sick, sick, sick.
Why hasn’t Mold been bunnied by now? Really, it’s like every time you sit down for five minutes with a cup of coffee, your toddler feels lonely and hits the cat.
Shorter Heather Macdonald: I never got raped, and it’s because I’m a good girl, not like those drunken sluts I went to college with, who deserved it.
Very true, Mike (re: point #2). Whenever I see someone quibble about the numbers, I feel like asking them if they’d kindly offer up the number of rapes they’d consider to not be a serious problem.
Don’t people ever feel guilty talking about holding victims accountable for the crime of being raped in the presence of rape victims who are sharing their stories?
“Don’t people ever feel guilty talking about holding victims accountable for the crime of being raped in the presence of rape victims who are sharing their stories?”
A fair amount of it seems to be an attempt to silence rape victims, so probably not.
Nah, it’s more like;
a) rape is sex, only eviller.
b) women are responsible for all evil in the world, especially sexual evil.
Therefore;
c) women are responsible for being raped.
If you want to understand the crazies, you gotta think like a crazy.
Blue Jean, I’d say a lot of it comes from the idea that “women have to submit to men,” so to them, rape isn’t a crime committed by a man against a woman, but a crime of not submitting properly committed by a woman against a man.
I just focused on the part where she said “blah, blah, blah, rape, the most terrifying assault short of murder that a woman can experience.”
I mean, c’mon, for real? It seems (seems?) like there are deeply mixed messages about rape out there. On the one hand, women are told to fear it, sometimes to fear it more than death itself. We (meaning people, not women - I am a man) are asked to believe that rape is so terrifying and traumatic as to transcend any other violent experience.
And yet, at the same time, rape is a joke. Rape is funny! Rape is not to be taken seriously, and we need to watch out for those poor men who will have their lives ruined by groundless accusations of rape.
So which one is it? I mean, is this really a healthy way to view rape as a culture? It’s not even consistent! For one thing, we need to be realistic: rape is a crime of violence used as a tool to enforce sexism. Okay, got it. So rape is bad. Rape is not funny. Rape needs to stop. Now, what about the reaction to it?
Now, I suppose MacDonald would think this is CRAZY, but could we perhaps allow for the fact that different women will respond differently to rape? I mean, I’m concerned that this idea that rape is a terrifying fate second only to being the victim of a murder really serves to trivialize rape. If she’s not absolutely scared witless at the slightest reminder of the incident, it wasn’t a “real” rape?
I really think that these people have taken the archetype of the hyper violent stranger rape and run with that. And if it doesn’t fit into that little box, it doesn’t count. Need I go into the reasons that the myth of the hyper violent stranger rape is incredibly convenient to mysogynists? There seem to be so many to choose from.
Goodness knows that a more rational social approach would not only allow for better emotional processing of the event by women who are assaulted, which might lead to, um, let’s see… more rapes reported as RAPE, more rapists charged and convicted, and ultimately FEWER rape victims. Whoah. Crazy. But this won’t convince the apologists to turn to a rational understanding of rape, since fewer victims isn’t REALLY what they want. They just want the bitches to keep their mouths shut.
Nowadays my standard question to the deniers of a particular alleged rape is, in honor of Sonic Youth, “Do you believe Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill?” This would be FUN to play on conservatives, I would dearly like to try it on our local Republican Club president, who has been accused of sexual harassment by several women.
I especially liked this part: “Further, 42% of the study’s supposed victims said they had had intercourse again with their alleged assailants — though it is highly unlikely that a raped woman would have sex again with the fiend who attacked her.”
It’s just so weird to hear a rape apologist be all like, “But there’s no way a woman could ever have a relationship with a known abuser!” at the very instant she’s begging desperately for approval from the patriarchy.
I’m really thrown by this post. Thanks for the honesty. It makes it so hard to be in the presence of other humans to know just how pervasive rape (and rape apology) really is.
Someone should really inform the poor dear that no matter how much masochistic, pathetically-desperate-for-male-approval, *cock-sucking a woman does for the misogynist fellas–and “make friends” with their female groupies–who hold status and influence in our society, will never, never truly recognize her as a full citizen and an autonomous human being (*whether it’s literal or just verbal, or both). She’ll–and the rest of us wimminfolk–will always be subhuman, inferior, and aberrant creatures to them, and society’s favorite scape-goat. Some of civilizations’ “greatest” and longest lasting myths/superstitions were born out of misogyny. The myth of Adam and Eve, Pandora, and so on, and they have been used to justify misogynist tyranny ever since (and if not myths/superstitions, then some evo-psych sexist bullshit). Oh, sure, she’ll get a “honorary man” gift-card, but the misogynist fellas she’s so pathetically attempting to please and make them believe that she’s “not like those other slutty, man-hating, lying, uppity bitch-women, because she’s different, she’s one of the ‘good ones’,” will still call her a “cunt” in the locker-room and talk about “what it would be like to ‘hate-fuck’ her.” I think Amanda said it best some time back that it’s better to be called a “cunt” to your face by some misogynist guy, than to have him smile in your face, feign “liking” you because “you’re different from those other lying bitches“, and then to have him go “hang out with his buds” and talk about how all women–even “special” ones, like you–ain’t worth a shit!…because you’re female. A cunt. Some aberrant creature, not worthy of being recognized as a full human being, but worthy enough to be recognized as the root of all “evil”. Especially if she claims rape or any crime perpetrated by a man. As much as misogynists–especially rape-apologists– love to put forth their ideology that there are two types of women, “good ones and bad ones,” they really don’t make any distinction between individual women. We aren’t male, and that’s all they need to know. (And yeah, they don’t really make any distinctions between individual men either. Everyone is “supposed” to act a certain way to them. It must be so nice to think so simply.)
Normally post here under a name, but I prefer to remain anonymous for this.
I’m pretty sure a very good friend of mine was raped this past weekend. I can’t say for sure, and I hope I’m wrong (I’m deducing it based on a variety of things that I don’t want to go into here). We’re very close friends, we’ve been on-again, off-again lovers.
If it turns out she was… what can I do to help her the most?
I wasn’t going to post this, but this post got me really upset, and pissed off at rape apologists. Fuck them.
I am another who had a sexual relationship with the man who raped me. Why? Because once he proved that he could and get away with it he had power over me. I never tried to say no after the first time, the idea that I could have never even crossed my mind.
So true. if you’re able to get on with your life and be happy and productive, then people suppose that it must not have been that traumatic. And, of course, if it wasn’t a life-wrecking trauma, then it really couldn’t have been rape, because that’s something that YOU NEVER GET OVER. So, you must have really wanted it - liar!
That’s why, on average, the more a woman is beaten during a rape, the LESS she suffers psychologically after - she’s got nothing to prove (or less to prove). The crime is horrible to go through, but for some of us, the judgement that we face afterwords is even worse.
grolby, keep in mind that the “fate worse than death” view of rape dates from the days when, if it became known that you were a rape victim, you would immediately become a social pariah. Other women would stop speaking to you. Men would ignore you if you were lucky, or constantly try and hit on you because, after all, you gave it up at least once already, didn’t you? You certainly would never find a man who would marry you, which could potentially mean starvation since the only job open to women was prostitution. So, yes, having it become publicly known that you had been raped was a one-way ticket to social oblivion.
That’s what the real “fate worse than death” was, not the assault itself.
I mean, I’m concerned that this idea that rape is a terrifying fate second only to being the victim of a murder really serves to trivialize rape.
Not to mention, demonizes rapists to the extent that nobody will believe that he could actually do it. After all, he’s a nice guy, right? He couldn’t possibly inflict a fate worse than death on somebody, right?
It’s how rapists skate by amongst their friends and family. The horribleness of rape is inflated to such a degree that people refuse to believe anyone short of a monster is capable of it.
The funniest thing about the article? All the things she suggests:
are exactly what we would be doing if these crimes weren’t limited almost exclusively to the one-half of the student body it’s perfectly ok not to give a shit about.
{One the one hand she was relieved and a little bit proud to have avoided something far worse,}
aauugh this makes my stomach flip. far worse?? that’s like a choice of having your leg or your arm chopped off. yes i know hiv/aids & the way things are now even pregnancy can be more to deal with than to be on the receiving end of a bj, but really, wtf…the depth of the damage is done on another level, for most i would think in the same fashion…be forced to hold the grenade or have it dropped on you…
havent read thru but just want to say 1) im not grossed out at the victim or her choice, just pointing out that both choices are horrendous & though the poster didnt mean to at all im sure, it is gutwrenching to image anyone in that position (including myself) & know that the damage is going to be tremendous. because the magical thinking, the denial, all the other defense mechanisms that help you through a trauma, they go away eventually.
anyone who deals with pain..be it torture or illness… reacts in the same way a crime victim does; on some level you may have feelings of guilt etc , that you were supposed to protect your body & you couldnt–ie, loss of control over your own body. it’s irrational, but it’s like some primitive physical reaction to pain/trauma, & it causes a range of seemingly irrational reactions.
So you weren’t uncomfortable watching rape scenes before you knew someone who had been raped? Just curious and wanting some elaboration….
annejumps, I wasn’t as uncomfortable. I really don’t remember watching too many movies that had graphic rape scenes. When I was a kid I saw Clan of the Cave Bear where they had a scene of the main character being dragged off camera and I asked my dad what happened and he told me she was being raped and that was my first explanation on the subject. I remember thinking that really sucked and the male had no right to do that and my dad telling me I was right. I think the only other thing was Jodie Fosters The Accused and this sci-fi film called Moon 44 in which a young male was raped off camera but you knew what had happened. As stupid as this sounds, as a kid I felt bad and wanted to help the characters somehow. (And before anyone gets all up in arms: yes my parents let me see these films, we often watched them together and no, I’m not screwed up, whenever I had questions my parents would give me frank, honest and, when necessary, medically accurate information. Lets just say there were no nicknames for genitalia in our household).
But before I knew my friend these things were abstracts to me. It was something that was a *possibility*, something that everyone was warning me away from (don’t go out alone at night, don’t be alone in a room with a boy, don’t leave your drink unattended, etc. etc.). I didn’t actually SEE too many rapes either (aside from The Accused), unless you count Anime which always just made me go “what the fuck is wrong with Japanese animators?” when I saw it. I did have one male friend who asked to use my VCR one summer school (he only had his playstation or whatever) before I knew her and he was watching Henti and after a few hours I kicked him out because I got tired of trying to study over the screaming and I was offended by the material.
But once I found out that someone I actually knew and who was my friend had been raped, and even though I didn’t know the word “trigger” then I felt bad for her having to watch it. As bad and as narcissistic as it sounds, I felt for women who’d been assaulted but once it hit home it became something else entirely. I listed to her describe what happened first hand and I could not believe how shitty the whole ordeal really was, how fucked up (and racist, my friend was a black woman raped by a white college student in a white town) the system was and how hard it had been for my friend and was for other women.
I did warn her away from watching Irreversible, however, because I’d seen it and told her about the rape scene and she decided she could do without seeing it for herself. I was completely appalled by that scene but that was the point.
Sorry if that was a long response.
2) im so frustrated & sickened that the rapist culture hasnt been rolled away by this point in time. i look back 20 years ago & cant beliee how vile & rape-saturated & shamefilled girls were made, even though it was supposed to not be that way…& now, hardly progress it seems at times. and also, for some reason now that clinton is losing the nomination it looks like, im absurdly upset. i dont like her politics, but im also pissed off as hell on some level that theyve done her in with this tide of misogyny coming from all over in waves. and if you dont think it’s that so much as herself that did her in, ok. but im still processing the waves of misogyny that ive seen aimed at her only because she is a woman, & im angry & disgusted & feeling sick about it –that nothing much has changed in this fuicking society.
aauugh this makes my stomach flip. far worse?? that’s like a choice of having your leg or your arm chopped off.
I think the point was that she was able to have the choice and even having that tiny amount of control made her feel slightly better about it. It’s the difference between being able to choose either arm or leg or having the person swing at you with no idea what body part is going to get chopped off.
Grolby, also remember–a lot of the whackjobs who write articles like this are like Doug Henry: “Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.” (Apparently violation against your will BY your spouse is perfectly fine…but I digress.) So, you see, if you’re a perfectly behaved virgin, you will never get over your rape. And slut don’t get raped at all, they just have second thoughts, so you can joke about them however you’d like…
Excuse me, I need to find some steel wool to scrub Essence of Wingnut off my brain. I feel like I’ll be making logical circles for *weeks*.
It’s the difference between being able to choose either arm or leg or having the person swing at you with no idea what body part is going to get chopped off.
It seems like that would make it much, much, much worse. Making you choose which way you’re going to be raped is just Sophie’s Choice level of mental torture. I am, of course, glad that it doesn’t strike everybody as that horrendous, especially if they’ve had to go through it. But I wouldn’t feel it as choice or control if it were me, just as an extra layer of powerlessness.
As someone else pointed out, even if you take her numbers at face value they are still disturbingly high. If 5-10% of college men were raped we’d be reading about the rape epidemic nonstop.
The quotes in the piece were terrible, especially the last “why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free” variant.
I would also say that a lot of the argument amounts to “being taken advantage of isn’t the same as being raped” which is distinction without much difference.
When I was in college in the late 80s-early 90s, there *were* a lot of anti-rape security measures; I doubt it’s become less so. Campus Escort Service: electronic key card dorm locks: news alerts when rapes or assaults were reported. Training for freshman girls on arrival about What Rape Is, how to avoid it, and where to report it. I believe freshmen orientation also included a warning for the guys about the consequences if they were accused, though I’m not as sure.
I doubt that colleges have become less interested in preventing rape than they were back then; in fact, at least one of the more liberal colleges came under criticism form handing out a sort of How-To Guide on consent which was aimed at making the men be *sure* they had consent rather than taking silence for assent at any step. ]
So if college measures are anything to go by, there is a serious rape problem. Duh.
http://www.nowldef.org/html/njep/PDFdocs/undetectedrapist.PDF
I like this study because it neatly refutes two of the more moronic arguments that people make to apologize for college rapes.
1) The guy was drunk too! It was just a drunken hookup!
The study/interview done here actually demonstrates that these men are only slightly drunk, seek out women who are likely to get extremely drunk, spike drinks, plan the rape before they get drunk, and have been drinking with the specific intent that they later be able to call it a “drunken mistake” rather than a rape/in order to make themselves feel relaxed enough to ignore a strange woman’s pleas for help as they rape her.
2) But if they don’t call it rape and you do, you are defining someone else’s experiences for them!
The men in this study would not admit to having raped someone, but would admit to having performed actions which meet the (rather conservative) dictionary definition of rape, such as “physically forcing another adult human being to have sexual intercourse.”
People realize rape is bad, but they don’t like to say that it happened. The women whose experiences are getting “labelled” as rape have been raped. They admit that they have “been physically forced to have sexual intercourse” or that “someone has had sexual intercourse with you while you were unconscious.” They may not be ready to say they were raped yet, but unless you believe that physically forcing someone to have sex and/or having sex with people who are unconscious does not count as rape, these women were raped. Period.
I just want to say thank you Amanda for this post. My SO and I were able to use this to deconstruct her previous rape and attempted rape (2 separate incidents) and finally allow her to come to terms with the ideas that 1) she was a victim; 2) that she wasn’t responsible somehow for the ill feelings she got afterwards or the intense guilt of thinking it was her fault; and 3) that they had done something wrong that she was allowed to be aggrieved about.
The completed sexual assault/rape she had been carrying the guilt of for awhile because the had sexually assualted/raped her for refusing to participate in a three-way in a drunken cheat on his girlfriend. The then told his girlfriend that the opposite happened, that my SO came onto him and kissed him against his will to protect himself against the truth if she had enough self-esteem to tell anyone. She has been trying to rewrite the event to fit into his actions ever since and tonight we made a big breakthrough on whose fault it was.
So thank you Amanda. Your post has helped a rape victim come to terms with her assaults even if it is probably just the first step.
On the post itself, I am not at all surprised by the numbers that deny they were raped or keep on having sex with their assailants afterwards. My SO denied until this day and she had numerous sexual encounters with the one who only attempted rape (he tried to fuck her ass while she was asleep and she woke up before he could do anything).
It is entirely the rape culture and misogyny that supports it that causes that problem. To be a victim of rape is to be a bad girl in this culture, to have done something wrong. It is also something that comes with a thousand rules of what it’s supposed to be like to be real rape despite most rapes coming from people you know.
Sorry, I know this is a long post, but I just wanted to get that out.
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Ultra Magnus. I thought you were saying something else initially. I didn’t want to seem like I was calling you out, but I was curious.
Anon @ 23:
Don’t press her about it to find out. If she reveals she was, be passively supportive (”I’m here for you, whatever you want.”) And likely she can’t be told enough that her attacker is at fault and whatever she did to get through the experience is ok.
That said, Amanda, I must say you are very brave to talk about your experiences with such brutal honesty. I wish I could do the same.
Thanks. And agreed—there’s such a stereotype about rape survivors being broken, unworthy, man-haters, etc. that it becomes hard to speak up because you don’t want people to have the wrong impression. But I feel I have to, because in the vacuum, people like this MacDonald douchebag want to impose their interpretation. Like saying, “Oh, that you don’t call it rape means YOU’RE JUST FINE NOW GO HOME.” As someone who was afraid to call it rape until the detectives used the word—and carefully explained to me that by the legal definition, after I told me story, that is exactly the charge that applied—I really take offense at this. MacDonald claims to be supporting women’s right to define their own experience, but if you think about it for a millisecond, she’s actually denying women that right. She’s not allowing women to be human beings, who engage in euphemisms because they’re traumatized. By depriving us of the words we need to talk about what really happens, she’s saying a) women are not allowed full rights and b) that rapists are not a social problem worth addressing through the justice system.
Even if Koss were wrong and the percentage of rape victims were ‘only’ ten percent, how is that not a crisis?
It’s worth noting that she lied and put the 25% into Koss’s mouth. Actual, accomplished rapes were 1 in 8 of the cases by Koss’s study (done in the 80s, by the way, showing how old bashing her to make a point that’s been disproven has become). That puts the rate at 12%, not 25% as MacDonald is claiming. I’m not sure why someone who lies about this much should be trusted on any account.
Don’t people ever feel guilty talking about holding victims accountable for the crime of being raped in the presence of rape victims who are sharing their stories?
That’s not as bad as I’ve seen it. I’ve had to delete comments in the past that accused me of lying or told me it was my fault that I was raped. I’m not really that ruffled by it. When I see them, at this late date, I recognize someone who’s broken inside. Increasingly, it becomes easier to pity them, even though they’re nasty SOBs. I mean, I’ll fight them on an anti-woman agenda to the last breath, but I am increasingly able not to take personally. They’re just lashing out. Our culture has a remarkable power to completely destroy the decency in men with masculinity standards.
Thanks, Cer. Your comment made my a bit snuffly. Knowing that I reached someone is why it’s easy to let the apologists roll off my back some.
I too had a relationship with the person who raped me–for 4 1/2 years. I was stuffed full of the idea that true love meant you only got one shot, that the first guy you met, especially if you had sex, was the only one you needed to have, that if it didn’t work out you were pretty much through with love, or else you were a slut. That relationship ended many years ago, but I can’t remember enthusiastically consenting to sex at any point, and the first time was downright rape. I did not realize this, however, until I started reading blogs like this one. So I thank all the folks who address this situation in a dignified and realistic manner. And I’d urge the rape apologists to realize that every woman is different. Some women will get angry at their rapist, even to the point of physically harming them. Others, like me, are so shy and self-hating that we’ll think our rapist is all we deserve. Rather than relieve the rapists of blame, we need to be reaching out to such women and helping them understand their worth.
This is a key point. I know a college student who was charged with stalking another student and he didn’t understand what was wrong with his behavior. He thought that because she was politely rejecting his advances that she was still interested and the situation escalated. I hope he got the message after he was charged, but I’m not holding my breath.
About the magical thinking: I was once assaulted in my office (far short of rape), with the door open to a busy hallway, by a student I knew, maybe 10 years younger than me.
While it was happening, all I could think was “this isn’t happening - this isn’t happening - this isn’t happening …” I was completely frozen. I hear the first thing they teach you in self-defense classes is to acknowledge the horrible situation, shout, DO SOMETHING about it.
Afterwards I faced the facts, rallied my co-workers, told them that if they ever saw that guy again to look out for me, and look out for me in general. If I hadn’t done that, and they hadn’t been supportive, I don’t know how I could have gone back to that office day after day.
The kid turned out to be undergoing a nervous breakdown of which my assault was just one facet. In the end I was glad he didn’t harm himself. He took a break and I believe he’s fine now. And I learned that my brain doesn’t like to deal with unpleasant realities: George Orwell was right, the hardest thing is seeing what is just in front of ones nose.
Let’s just all admit that we don’t have the right to define our own experiences beyond a certain point. Or at least, we don’t have the right to have our idiosyncratic definitions respected by others. If the victim of a mugging decides he wasn’t actually mugged but was in fact given a nice present, that does not change the fact that he was mugged, that someone took his money by force. And it does not change the fact that this someone will probably go do it again to someone else, and that it’s our duty to stop it. The victim does not get to redefine the English language and stop us from treating the crime like what it is.
And as someone pointed out, giving people the blanket right to “define their own experiences” must also mean giving perpetrators that right, which is flatly ridiculous.
eruvande, reblaw…thanks for speaking up. i agree. managing to convince yourself that you are in love with, or want to continue a relationship with the person who raped or assaulted you is an awesome coping mechanism. it worked great for me when i got assaulted, until it stopped working a year later after the relationship had come to an end. and then i got to wade through the aftermath nice and late.
really, it’s sites like this and interacting with open-minded feminists that helped me stop bullshitting myself about what rape and assault actually are, and figure out the whole host of social and cultural forces, wignuts included, who were bullshitting me.
once you realize how much most men hate women trust becomes a pretty selective thing.
She is contributing to the culture in which women are skeptical about their rapes and hesitant to call them what they are - RAPES. At the same time, she pretends the hesitance is just a coincidence, and proof that if one doesn’t call rape “rape,” it’s not rape. ARHHH!!
“once you realize how much most men hate women trust becomes a pretty selective thing.”
So does that dating pool, thank goodness. I’ll tell ya, having been in an abusive relationship is an effective way to show one who not to date in the future.
From MacDonald’s article:
“If one partner puts a condom on the other, does that signify that they are consenting to intercourse?” asks Alan D. Berkowitz, a campus rape consultant. Short of guiding the thus-sheathed instrumentality to port, it’s hard to imagine a clearer signal of consent…
This is disturbingly like the case of a rapist who broke into his victim’s apartment, acceeded to her request that he wear a condom, then tried to persuade the jury that doing so meant “we were making love after that.”
Alice Vachss, a veteran New York City sex-crimes prosecutor, had a label for people like MacDonald: “Collaborators.”
Vive la resistance!
WARNING: LONG POST
Dan points out that if the would-be rapist isn’t held accountable, he might do worse to someone else in the future, will probably do worse to someone else in the futureThere’s a big problem with accountability. Even when there is ample evidence — such as the two condoms used and hair from the victim that was obviously torn from her head with force — the perpetrator often goes unpunished. Despite the evidence, prosecutors are often reluctant to take on the cases because a good defense lawyer can reduce it to “he said, she said” and no prosecutor will take on a case where they have a chance to fail.
This isn’t a made up situation. This is what happened to my girlfriend two years ago in New York City. The prosecutor said that evidence was “peripheral, and does not provide definite confirmation.”
The rapist is a guy who had been accused of the crime FOUR TIMES already, but his family happens to be quite wealthy and has a very successful lawyer. After the first two times they took him to court and lost, they basically gave up. All of the victims — including my girlfriend — didn’t immediately go to the police, and when rape victims don’t do this the police don’t even try. Another case of blaming the victim. We actually heard two of the cops talking in the next room, one saying to the other it’s hard to figure out when a victim is telling the truth, especially if they don’t run to the cops as soon as it happens. Then the other said
“If they don’t go to the cops right after it happens, I think they’re lying about it. I know if I was raped, the first thing I would do is go to the cops. I don’t know why they don’t, it doesn’t make sense to me.”
I don’t think I have to tell you that the officer was not a female.
Who says things like this? Why are rape victims so often accused of lying, and rarely taken seriously?
One of the hardest things for rape victims to do is to go to the police immediately. Understandably, the first thing usually done is to try and clean themselves, but this removes the primary source of evidence, and without it, rapists can easily beat the charge because of the way current system works.
If the police used the same evidence collection and scene processing techniques that are used for murders, I personally think there would be a massive increase in successful prosecutions, but as far as I’m concerned, the cops do not take rape seriously.
At least, not in New York City.
Anon @ 23
I would have to disagree with D. I think you should actively encourage her to tell you what happened, in a gentle, pressureless way.
First, try to talk with her one on one in a private, comfortable place. Ask her how she’s been doing. Say you’re worried about her. Ask “Did anything happen to you?”
This question might elicit a tearful confession. If it doesn’t, say that you’re really glad she’s ok, because certain things had you worried. Then go through all the reasons that you thought she’d been raped. If she’s ok, she should have reassuring explanations for all of them, and she’ll be touched by the fact that you care about her. If she has been raped, encourage her to go to a crisis center or counseler. Don’t worry about getting her to prosecute- get her the professional help she needs asap, and the professionals can encourage her to prosecute. (Note- some time has passed since the assault. If it was recent, I’m in favor of being more aggressive re prosecution in order to preserve evidence.)
If you take this course of action, there are two possible outcomes. 1- she was raped. You will have done an immeasurable service to your friend by giving her the right opportunity to talk about it. She will get help in a timely fashion, and recover much better than otherwise. There is a possibility of some effective legal strike against the rapist- even a complaint on his record is better than nothing.
2. She was not raped. You will feel like a paranoid idiot, but at least you’ll know your friend is ok.
If you don’t actively help her talk to you about it, there are two possible outcomes.
1. She was raped. Either she never tells anyone, or doesn’t tell anyone for years. The therapy in this case is much more expensive. Any chance of justice is lost.
2. She was not raped. But you won’t know that. You’ll always be wondering, you’ll geel guilty. It will have consequences for you and for the friendship.
I think the first set of outcomes is much better. Good luck. I have been in your situation, only the victim was a child. It is terrifying. Have courage. You CAN do this.
If you want to talk further, we can email each other.
Amanda, it seems like from your description that the detectives involved took your complaint seriously. I am just wondering whether that is the norm? The process of prosecuting or even reporting rape always seemed so horrible, and that was one reason women were not into reporting… It would be heartening to know that at least some people are supportive of people who find themselves in that situation.
Oh- also at Anonymous @23.
I totally forgot that you might be a guy. If you are male, you might want to take a different tack. If your friend was raped, she was almost definitely raped by a man, and she might not be feeling totally cool around dudes at this moment. I hate to endorse gossip, but you might want to share your concerns with a mutual female friend and have her broach the subject.
Actually, even if you are female, the mere fact that you’ve been sexually involved with her might make you a less good choice. Use your judgement.
I firmly say that someone has to do it.
Female rape apologists strike me as the worst sort of superstitious people. They want to believe that they can’t be raped, as long as they don’t drink too much, don’t go up to a man’s apartment unless they plan on sleeping with him, etc. They have so much invested in this that men, not women, men make the better jurors in a rape case. I wonder who’s more likely to report a rape: a woman who understands what rape is and that it can happen to anyone, no matter what you do, or a woman who has convinced herself that, if you follow the “rules”, you won’t be raped.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, rape apologists bear more of the responsibility of rape than any woman who drank too much, left her drink unguarded at a bar, or fell for a man’s “What me? I wouldn’t hurt you.” and let him into her apartment. They create a climate where women are too afraid and ashamed to report the crime and where rapists know that society at large will defend them and that they’ll likely never suffer consequences for their actions.
Of course, the primary person responsible is the rapist, and only the rapist.
I’m reminded of my self-defense teacher years ago- one of those black belt types- telling the class that she’d had attempts at assaults happen to her twice. She fended them off. One time she went to the cops, the other time she didn’t. She said she wished she’d never gone to the cops.
*sigh*
It makes me wonder: what would I do if/when it happens to me? Hell, my cousin is one of those asshole cops, I’d never hear the end of it if he found out about it- that it’d be all my fault, I’m sure. I wouldn’t want to just lie down and take it, but it seems like everyone who’s “been there” says you’re better off letting them get away with it right off, since they will get away with it anyway even if you prosecute.
I was raped by an old high school friend in college. I couldn’t admit to myself what had happened to me until a friend carefully explained that acquaintance rape is, indeed, rape. When I tried to report it, I was flat-out denied by the RA because I “might ruin the life of this young man.” And also because I might be “confused about what happened.”
So does that explain to McDonald why a lot of rapes don’t get reported?
Being of a certain age, I have heard of many rapes. Friends, co-workers, strangers, dates, husbands, lovers, etc. Violence or only the threat of violence. Brutal force or the unstoppableness that comes from being twice her size.
Just because Ms Entitled wakes up with regrets for a hook-up or the partner wasn’t up to her standards is not rape. The questions were worded to allow this situation to be termed rape. I disagree.
We make our choices as adults and live with them. If that means having sex and then, upon sober reflection, thinking it was not the best option, so be it.
The questions were worded to allow this situation to be termed rape. I disagree.
So, the concept of coercion through intoxication has no meaning for you?
I’m curious - in how many of these “regrettable hook-up becomes rape” scenarios did the woman actually give full, enthusiastic consent? As opposed to simply lying there while the guy did his thing? That would be none, right?
I am increasingly able not to take personally.
And that, Amanda. is why you amaze me. I’m still working on that one myself; another five years and I might get the hang of it.
To whoever said the bit about “if rape happened to 10-15% of men” - I’m sure I’m not representative, but I’ve had equal numbers of men and women come to me with their rape stories. The men definitely suffer less for it, and they have a whole world of support devices to draw from afterward, but their reporting rate is incredibly low because of some MASSIVE acts of denial.
If anyone else here has listened to a man painfully describe his sexual assault, only to have him get annoyed at you for not congratulating him, you know just how much denial we’re talking about here.
Damn, it’s hard to talk about this without sounding like some sort of MRA. Suffice it to say I’ve seen the same psychological issues played out in both sexes.
I think consent works both ways, and reframing rape as a crime committed against a person is good for everyone, we can make the world a better place, kumbaya, etc.
But mostly I get this chilling feeling that I already know what would happen if 10-15% of men were rape victims, because maybe they already are.
Re Anon @ 23 & REI:
Perhaps better than iliciting advice from random blog commenters, professionals could be consulted. And to clarify, when I say not to press the issue, I don’t mean act like you have no concern, but rather don’t attempt to pry information. Such aggression, even if well intended, can be extremely threating to someone who is dealing with having had control taken from them.
You’ll have to forgive me- I didn’t read anon23’s comment closely enough the first time. To clarify, ex-lovers of either gender are not the most appropriate people for this sort of thing. And I think it’d be too hard for most men to pull it off, regardless, except in a case where a male was assaulted. So this is less for anon23 than for the record. And it applies mostly to situations where you believe that the incident is still “a secret.” The link D posted is certainly the best course of action once people have already been told.
But I really, truly, firmly believe that clearly signalling your willingness to listen to someone who may have been assaulted is invaluable. I’ve been on both sides of the situation, and in both cases the recovery didn’t start until someone sat someone else down and said: “You don’t seem ok. Did something happen?” I was, and remain, immensely grateful to the person who asked that question of me, and I’m incredibly thankful that, later, I didn’t hang back from asking that question myself.
I am appalled that this piece of right-wing propaganda made it into the LA Times in the first place. The response,written by SAFER’s Nora Niedzielski-Eichner, does an excellent job at exposing how the tired rape denialism argument has been repackaged over and over again by the same set of “culture war”-fueling right-wing institutions and, specifically, MacDonald’s connections to these institutions.
Not only is this denialism argument old and discredited, it is part of a larger effort by right-wing organizations such as the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the Independent Women’s Forum to delegitimize and combat feminist successes on campuses nationwide, particularly the rise of women’s/gender studies departments, rape crisis centers, and other anti-violence programming. This is a longstanding strategy bankrolled by the top right-wing foundations (Scaife, Olin and Bradley, among others) and implemented, in large part, through a great deal of media savvy and a suspect ability to place even the most discredited propaganda in the pages of respected news publications.
Even the most minor of fact-checking endeavors would reveal MacDonald’s op-ed as not only dated, unoriginal and a complete rehash of numerous past efforts bankrolled by the same institutions, but also one that has been torn apart time and time again in a wide variety of forums. The Times owes its readers an explanation of how it is that think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute, with their old, discredited propaganda, have such access to their op-ed pages.
Check out the united bloggers’ responsesto this disgusting distortion.