OK. Please can we talk about women raping men?

vesuvia "..."having something taken without consent" does not make it rape.""

Yes it does - I suspect you haven't read my post property. You are confusing the 'meaning' of rape with its 'legal' definition under English law.

One nation can 'rape' another, and that is not an analogy to 'sexual' rape - it comes from the fact that the meaning of the word goes beyond a the simple case of a man forcing himself sexually on another person....Hence why Redline is free to describe what happened to him as rape even if English law does not agree with him.

I have not read 13 pages, so apologies if this has already been covered. But the more I read on MN FWR, the more I realise that the shit that happens to men is not a fight for feminists to take part in. I don't think enough men realise this, hence the whataboutery from so-called MRA's. Obviously they call it out as they see it as some sort of achilles heel within feminism, but it is spectacularly missing the point.

@curlew

I think it is more common than believed, not as common as women's or children's rape though.

See this video:

www.couragenetwork.com/videos/view/interview-w-james-landrith-sexual-assault-advocate-_287.html

No. I'm saying that women are subjugated by male violence, including rape and other sexual violence. And that this is a gendered and class issue.

I don't know whether men as a group think that rape is a legitimate way to keep women subjugated; you would have to ask men that and your answer would no doubt vary from man to man and culture to culture. I doubt many men would admit that sexual violence is a factor in women's oppression TBH. And yet it happens, the world over, all the time.

Beachcomber, Are you saying that men, as a group, think rape is a legitimate way to keep women subjugated? Sorry if that question seems naive to you, I'm just trying to understand your perspective.

Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.

I would not want to see oral or anal rape, or vaginal rspe with a condom or of a woman past menopause reclassified because they cannot result in pregnancy , though.

Sorry for multiple posts but just wanted to say that this is what I mean about the symbolism that is present in addition to the violence in rape, and about rape being a class issue.

It is about women as a class being the class that are impregnated and therefore the sex class; the rapeable class. This is what girls and women are for. This is our status within social hierarchy. And rape reminds us of this and puts us in place.

And this stands true regardless of whether a pregnancy actually occurs as the result of an individual rape.

Hence a lot of the really shocking victim blaming we see in rape culture, particularly WRT to underage girls. They are going to be fucked by a man at some point in their lives, right? so it isn't that big a deal if it happens without her consent or when she is young.

If we change the legal definition of rape to be something that happens to men too, we blur the lines. We make it harder to challenge and analyse rape as a sex class issue whilst the actual social hierarchy and power dynamic that rape as VAW is founded on, remains untouched and unexamined. Which of course is what MRAs want.

Rape can be defined as an act of terrorism (radical feminists often define it that way). It is intrinsic to the systematic oppression of women as a class by men as a class. It is political.

Defining rape as something that women can do to men has political ramifications for women as it invisiblizes background power structures and the system of social organisation that places men as higher status than women via the construct of sex.

In other words, rape, and rape culture, is very much about keeping women in their (rightful according to society) place; subordinate.

Not all females risk pregnancy from rape.

No, we don't. But rape - the act of a man forcibly penetrating a woman with his penis is an act of male dominance and violence that is also symbolic of women's subjugation. And the root of women's subjugation is that we are the ones that carry and birth babies. We are the ones that can be impregnated. Rape is a class issue.

I didn't know that about how rape in marriage worked, thanks Flora.

Isn't the high fiving stuff just another load of patriarchal bullshit, though? As in, it's "not macho" for a man to be physically assaulted by a (weak) woman so let's pretend it was what he wanted all along rather than draw attention to his lack of power in that situation?

ola before the law was changed, marriage was a defence to a criminal charge of rape. The law recognised the act of rape against a married woman but provided a defence to the husband based on the marriage. Of course those women were raped.

math I can't agree with what you say on any level. More men are likely to say they would love it if they were raped. I think it would diminish the impact of rape. Hence a joke I once saw on television told by a man after a woman teacher was convicted of having sex with a male pupil that the boy had subsequently died of high-fiving. Lots of men think this way. I also would prefer for men to recognise that women are human and their penises are not weapons. I don't think that's too much to ask.

I would not want to see oral or anal rape, or vaginal rspe with a condom or of a woman past menopause reclassified because they cannot result in pregnancy , though.

Sexual assault of the nature Redline described (and I am sorry that happened to you, Redline) I believe has the same sentencing guidelines as rape ie that degree of sexual assault is taken as seriously as rape by the law.

Not all females risk pregnancy from rape.

The effect on a dishonoured father or husband of a raped women was the main problem with rape, historically, and the danger of pregnancy resulting from rape was seen as primarily one borne by the men whose chattel or child the woman was since he would be providing for a child inveigled into his household illicitly.

Also in reference to Beach's post, rape of men and boys by conquering armies was a feature of ancient war and possibly of modern war too.

olathelawyer05 wrote - "If Redline has had something taken from him without his consent, that is rape, and he is perfectly entitled to call it so."

Rape is one type of sexual assault.

My understanding is that, in English law, sexual assault covers 3 situations:

1. sexual assault - which covers sexual contact without consent and without penetration. Perpetrators and victims can be female or male.
2. sexual assault by penetration - which covers sexual contact without consent, including penetration by an object other than a penis. Perpetrators and victims can be female or male.
3. rape - which covers penetration by a penis without consent. Perpetrators can be male only. Victims can be female or male.

"having something taken without consent" does not make it rape. This phrase also applies to the other types of sexual assault as well as non-sexual crimes such as theft, burglary, fraud etc. Absence of consent is a major feature of rape but it is not the defining characteristic of rape.

Why are some people trying to change the meaning of rape to become any type of sexual assault, with or without penetration and with or without a penis? Who does this benefit? It benefits the people who want to obscure the gendered nature of rape.

Although men and boys can be rape victims, two of the reasons why rape is a gendered type of sexual assault are that only males are doing the raping and only females risk pregnancy from being raped.

Rape and the other types of sexual assault are all terrible crimes that can have devastating effects on the victims, but this does not mean that all types of sexual assault are gender-neutral or the same in every way, as if they were interchangeable.

Women, girls, boys and men can be raped by male rapists. This does not appear to be Redline's situation.

I hope male rapists will stop raping women, girls, boys and men.
I hope male sexual assaulters will stop sexually assaulting women, girls, boys and men.
I hope female sexual assaulters will stop sexually assaulting women, girls, boys and men.

That is all undeniable. There is of course a very compelling argument that rape is a gendered crime.

Sadly, men in general do not want to know, and see women's description of historical oppression as well as the impact of rape on our consciousness as a personal attack. They are apparently able to avoid acknowledging that rape is a problem created and inflicted upon the world by something innate in masculine nature.

It is too easy for men to avoid thinking about the problem because it is one that affects only women. It is too easy for men to look at rape in war and congratulate themselves that they or their ancestors were on the side that didn't do that, or that that is something only uncivilised Africans or hate-filled Serbs or cruel Russians would do to women -- it's something other men do, and recounting of historical oppression with rape as a tool thereof makes them very defensive on an individual or tribal level.

As seen fairly recently in the US, it is an item of belief that the issue of pregnancy resulting from rape is a non-starter because women's bodies are able to stop conceiving if 'real rape' has occurred . There's mental gymnastics for you. And then there is the subset of men who do not have enough empathy to understand how much rape hurts women because deep down they hate women and do not see them as human. I am not sure rational argument would sway them at all.

It's fairly clear when women are being raped en masse by invading armies what is going on (even if that spectacle only reinforces the belief that that is only done by other men). In the here and now, in the pub carpark, at the party or out on the date, or at home in bed with your husband, the issue of consent is paramount, and too easy to sidestep thanks to a convenient mental trick of seeing women's speech as unreliable when it comes to indicating what they want or don't want, as if they speak some alien or non-human language. It is too easy to portray women as beings who communicate in extra linguistic ways, who 'ask for it' telepathically. More mental gymnastics of course. This can only happen and can only be got away with when individual men feel completely entitled to use women/see women as less than human/have got the message that their behaviour is acceptable. If something only happens to women or if it only affects women badly, then in the minds of some men, it is not all that significant. The idea that men can share the position of being preyed upon (primarily by other men but also by women) might make inroads into the tendency to see rape of women as something that happens to beings that are somehow alien.

Women themselves for a long time bought into the reasoning that if a woman had been raped there must have been contributing factors on her part. Many still hold this belief. Women for their part have been conditioned to accept that there is something about some women that makes rape inevitable or even deserved, certainly not something they have a right to complain about. Again, the spectacle of rape in war is different; however, it's easy to avoid the big picture of general male oppression and see it as the work of specific armies or ethnic or racial groups, somewhere else, and not something any individual man is capable of doing to any individual woman.

The net result of the patriarchal system (which imo includes capitalism and acceptability of rape) can be seen in the few men who are very well off financially and a majority who struggle. I think if socialism (and other alternatives to capitalism) managed to appeal to people who have been the losers in capitalism then it will also be possible to define rape in a way that makes men sit up and understand it could happen to them. Just as asserting that rape can happen within marriage served to raise consciousness of what constitutes rape among women (and some men) and steer many away from the idea that rape is done to scantily dressed young women of 'loose morals', consciousness raising among men that men can also be raped would go far towards erasing the notion that it is about anything other than consent of the victim (as a matter of legal definition) and entitlement on the part of the perpetrator.

I feel the MRA may well end up hoist by its own petard if the definition of rape is extended.

Great post, beach. Trying to make out that that rape and sexual violence isn't gendered is (almost) at the top of the MRA agenda.

It is important that rape remain a crime distinct from sexual assault. And it is nothing to do with attempts to make men as a class out to be 'bad guys' or to confer victim status to women as a class. Rather, it is a statement of fact; of biological fact and of sociological fact.

Rape is an act of male dominance. Of biological dominance and of social dominance. Rape (and fear of rape) contributes to maintaining a system of social hierarchy in which men dominate and women are oppressed.

Rape is an act in which the penis becomes a weapon, and it is a weapon that women are very afraid of because it can impregnate us.

Rape is used as a weapon of war in the ultimate act of male dominance - an act of violence on entire communities by forcibly penetrating their female members.

Never in human history have women used mass sexual assault on men as a weapon of war or act of dominance. Girls do not routinely use the sexual assault of boys in gang culture hierarchy dominance. Women do not mass pimp out men to be sexually assaulted for money by women. Women do not traffic hundreds of thousands of men for the purpose of being sexually assaulted by other women. Women do not use sexual assault or fear of sexual assault to keep men off the streets and out of female dominated areas of power.

No man, after being sexually assaulted by a woman, will ever have to do a medical test to find out if he now has a piece of that woman growing inside his body. No child will ever be born, aborted, adopted, or killed as a victim of infanticide after a man has been sexually assaulted by a woman. No man will ever be dominated in an abusive relationship by being forcibly impregnated by his wife. No communities will ever be colonised by outside women sexually assaulting the men.

Rape is a gendered crime, and the law reflects this.

The fear is that equality of victimhood will mean that all that women have gone through and continue to go through will be erased as men elbow women and women's experience over the millennia aside and milk it for all it's worth. I think this is a valid fear given that there is an organisation in the first place campaigning to preserve men's rights against alleged attack.

On the whole however, I think one way to attack the idea that rape basically doesn't exist, that it is all she said/he said, unquantifiable, impossible to define, etc., is to have men stand up and say they were raped, by women, yes, but more importantly as far as the cultural politics go, by other men. Until men get involved in the conversation about rape, and converse as equals, there is no conversation possible. It is always going to be a case of women banging their heads against a brick wall and groups like the MRA and religious right spewing misogyny at whoever will listen - the net losers will be women who are already very much silenced.

In the long run I think women have more to gain from focus on the issue of consent, which I think would be the outcome of men coming out about being raped, because the likes of the MRA (there are lots of fellow travellers with half baked Neanderthal ideas about rape) would have difficulty explaining what exactly it was about the behaviour or dress of men that suggested they were 'asking for it' without completely exposing themselves as the rape apologists that they are. It would be difficult for them to explain what made some men entitled to rape other men, or what made some men deserve to be raped - far more difficult than it is for them to assert that men are entitled to rape women. Even in the case of accepting that women can and do rape men, which of course would be trumpeted loudly by MRA types, the issue that would come to the fore is that of consent.

Yes, the penis is involved and since women don't have them only men can legally rape under current law, but the crux of the matter is lack of consent.

Lack of asking for explicit consent, or taking previous consent as current consent, or inferring consent from dress, behaviour (all sorts of elements that are in the eye of the beholder and are convenient ex post facto justifications) -- not the penetration per se but the fact that it is done without consent is the heart of the crime of rape. The criminalisation of rape within marriage went some way towards increasing awareness of the idea that lack of consent is the issue, and not how some young single women dress or where they go after dark or how much they drink, or how much of a fight they put up once attacked.

Focusing on consent as the key element of rape as opposed to penetration would make the problem far easier to understand for neanderthals like Elam and the rest of the MRA who apparently do not think something is a problem unless it affects men, although admittedly it is clear that they do not acknowledge the rape of men by other men as an issue, and of course they use the alleged scale of the problem of women attacking men as a way to attack women's campaign against rape. While I acknowledge that women can and do assault men, I do not think the issue of women assaulting men is a problem on the same scale as men assaulting other men, which by some estimates affects about 10% of men. I have to say it would be nice to see someone like Elam who clearly thinks women are members of another species and can legitimately be hunted as if they are some sort of prey having to admit that men also suffer assault, and similar devastation after assault, and above all that they are assaulted by other men and sometimes women.

Yes the 'legal' definition of rape in this county makes it something that only men can commit (thus making men the ultimate bad guys!! Hooray!).

However the 'legal' definition of something is not necessarily the same as the 'meaning' and contrary to what some might want to believe, the meaning of rape is indeed very gender neutral - it is simply in the taking by force/without consent. You only need to carry out relatively surface level research to know and accept that this is true, and observing that most rapes [legally speaking] are committed by men, doesn't change this.

If Redline has had something taken from him without his consent, that is rape, and he is perfectly entitled to call it so. There was a time when a man could not 'legally' rape his 'wife'. Would you care to correct a wife whose husband had forced himself on her during that time, that she wasn't actually raped because that's not what the law says rape is?

I generally don't understand the fervent desire by some (feminists typically) to 'own' rape as something men do to women. Does it really lessen the seriousness if women could 'legally' rape men? This kind of position indicates not so much an interest in 'equality', but in the retention of some manner of special victim status for women.

I am of black African descent raised in the UK, and have experienced rascist crime. The overwhelming majority of the rascist crime I have been privy to during my lifetime has been 'white on black' if you will. However, it would be frankly silly of me to believe that the racism I have suffered as a black person would be somehow diminished by the legal recognition that white people can suffer the same thing.

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/court-gang-rape-indian-village-birbhum

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25100122

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/children-as-young-as-12-are-committing-sex-abuse-on-other-children-as-part-of-gang-violence-8963775.html

"I think including assault of men by women under the definition of rape would highlight the issue of consent, which is at the heart of rape."

I totally disagree. This would be a false attempt to gender neutralise the reality of male violence against women. The heart of rape is violence against women inflicted by means of a penis as a weapon. It is at the heart of women's oppression as can be seen in rape in war, "corrective rape" of lesbians, rape culture in the media, rape to punish a woman, rape to disrespect another man. The list goes on.

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/court-gang-rape-indian-village-birbhum

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25100122

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/children-as-young-as-12-are-committing-sex-abuse-on-other-children-as-part-of-gang-violence-8963775.html

This last article about rape in the UK starts off with gender neutral language about children raping and sexually assaulting children but the detail of the numbers makes it clear that girls and young women are the targets, the young girls and women are not sexually assaulting the young boys.

If we have any chance of dealing with this problem, we need to be able to name the problem. The problem is male violence against women and when it is inflicted with a penis, that is rape.

I'm struggling for the right words here, but isn't there something in the power imbalance that makes it different?
(Curlew)

No, there is nothing in the power balance that makes it different imo. The issue is always consent, pure and simple.
No always means no.
Only Yes means yes.

Read Elam's words and note above all his attempt to say there is really no such thing as No, or Yes; to completely fudge the idea that consent or refusal is easily ascertained directly from the other person and if it is not then he should not proceed, and assert instead that if the perpetrator thinks his victim wants sex then he can go ahead and have sex (of course this is all justification of entitlement).

Read what Twibble said about the feeling his house had been burgled. Read what Redline said about choice.

SF, if Elam doesn't mean what he wrote, or if what he wrote in those links wasn't representative then I think he himself is very capable of having them removed or posting an article explaining himself.

You write words. They have a certain meaning. That is how you get your point across. If you change your mind or realise that wasn't what you meant to say you retract or remove or both.