(TW : Discusses rape stats) AIBU to find this interview with Louise Perry insulting to both women and men?

[Carla786]

I still think Louise Perry has valid points in her 2022 book The Case Against The Sexual Revolution and some of her Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast interviews, although I've always had disagreements with quite a few of her points

I cam across this interview today and was shocked, however. She badly states that she thinks 1/3 of men would commit rape given the chance of getting away with it.

Evidence? In her book, she does cite a study of US college students where 1/4 of the men said they would force sex if they could get away with it. (Higher numbers said yes when asked that than when asked if they would commit rape if they could get away with it).

But 1/4 is not 1/3, and a sample of US college students is not 'all men'. I searched for other studies giving such high numbers, but could find none. I myself believe that the numbers of men who would do that are higher than we'd like to think, but I certainly don't think they're as high as 1/3, and tossing around this kind of unsubstantiated claim feels insulting to men on general

She's spoken of the huge impression working for Rape Crisis for her gap year had on her, so maybe that's given her a skewed view?

Furthermore, if she sincerely believes that 1/3 of men are that evil, why on earth does she keep encouraging women to marry as early as possible and have kids younger? I don't think there's anything wrong with marriage and kids young, but I certainly wouldn't give that advice if I believed 1/3 of men were potential rapists! lt feels profoundly immoral to encourage women to prioritise marriage so much if you believe 1/3 of men would rape. Particularly as someone who claims to be so knowledgeable about abuse surely knows that those men who would rape or abuse are more likely to step that up when a woman's pregnant or raising a young kid.

MN thoughts? Am I overreacting, or is this position both disturbing and profoundly insulting to both men and women?

Frankly, if men as a group really have so many potential paedophiles & rapists are among them, maybe the ideal future for women is founding a new planet with IVG technology to procreate and robots to do heavy labour.

I don't seriously mean that...I'm still sceptical that the problem is this huge. I do think cultural norms can play a huge role, but at the same time, I don't think we should necessarily see the societies like Papua New Guinea as necessarily having cultural norms that show men's natural behaviour when there are no restraints.

This made me think of the terrible Pitcairn Islands case. I don't want to think that's how most men naturally act, but it was definitely a very scary insight into a society where women (and children in general) had very little ability to protect themselves.

I think you’re being incredibly naive, lacking in critical thinking skills and pretty fucking offensive yourself.

I cast my mind back to being cat called wearing my school uniform. To being in clubs in my late teens/early twenties and not being able to go an evening without being grabbed or groped or being called a fat whore because I wasn’t interested in snogging some complete stranger in exchange for a plastic rose. I remember buying those ballet pumps that rolled up, so I could run if I needed to. I remember walking home with my keys between my fingers and the sheer terror I felt about being followed home one evening (before mobiles) where my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t get my key in the door. I remember my friends all deciding whose turn it was to stay sober and make sure that we all left as a group and none of us got spiked and dragged off with some random. I know friends who have been date raped. Or have thought that they were with a friend they could trust, who turned out not to be that. I read articles now about those scientists who invented that dress that measured touches and the areas that had been touched, then sent that young woman across a nightclub in it. I watched a documentary about those vigilante groups who catch on line predators and the police officers who were admitting that they would never put a stop to it because the numbers of offenders were just too high.

I don’t give a flying fuck if some men find it offensive that a woman believes high numbers of men are capable of rape. I find it offensive that you’re concerned about upsetting men’s feelings rather than addressing the fact that sexual violence against women has become so normalised that it’s not even shocking anymore.

I think she’s vastly underestimating the numbers. And I’m not a ‘man hater’. The men in my life are wonderful to me. I sincerely hope that none of them have ever done anything like that. And our families are raising young boys to be wonderful and decent young men. I hope even more that none of them ever do anything like that. But let’s be honest here; we know that sexual violence against women and children is happening. Someone’s husband, son, brother, dad, friend are committing these acts. Are all the offenders hateful individuals who have been abandoned by everyone decent? Of course not! They are often men who are loved by their families and friends, who can’t believe that their loved one would be capable of doing that.

And yes, she’s advocating for marriage and children at a young age. I haven’t read the article so I can’t comment on her reasoning. But what’s the alternative in light of her opinion? Tell women not to get involved with men at all, in case they choose one of the third that are a predator? To only carry female pregnancies to term in case their son grows up to be a predator? Of course not. That would just be silliness and achieve nothing, particularly as she’s saying she believes that two thirds of men are perfectly decent in that respect.

Her two opinions don’t counteract each other.

If Pitcairn and PNG and war don’t show unrestrained male behaviour, let’s flip it.

How can you possibly think that western, 2020s life reflects normative male behaviour? The most equal, most progressive, most safe for women civilisations in the history (and geography) of the earth and still women die every day at the hands of their partners and ex-partners. Women are raped every day. CSA is not only common, it’s a group activity. Somewhere like Sweden or Switzerland, rule-bound, egalitarian, enlightened. Still huge numbers of rapes, DV and CSA.

It’s our small corner of human civilisation that is an outlier, not PNG. If we turn every part of the world into Sweden, women still experience rape.

The only time that was probably better was hunter-gatherer. Women had a great deal of power in many of them because gathering is reliable and provides more calories (if you ignore the Inuit). Piss the women off, you didn’t eat between hunts. And that was often seasonal. So unless you go back to before fixed agriculture, when strength and power meant you could hoard food and wealth, we’re left with Sweden being the best of a bad lot for women.

A few more studies since you're still sceptical...

In a community sample (i.e. not college students), 25% of men admitted to previously committing an act of rape and an additional 39% to an act of sexual assault. That's 64% of men surveyed:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4589184

And a systematic review that found an average perpetration of sexual assault rate of 29.3%, but up to 41.5% depending on how it was measured:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524838019860619

I don't seriously mean that...I'm still sceptical that the problem is this huge.

Do you think women are lying?

And if stats and data aren't enough...

I was raped when I was 15. It took me 20 years to realise that's what had happened, and that I hadn't 'brought it on myself' because I was drunk. A classic example of a scenario where he knew he'd get away with it, so he did it. He's a solicitor now, in a senior position - his colleagues, wife and kids will have no idea, etc. I've opened up to quite a few friends about this in recent years, and almost all of them have a similar story.

I’m so sorry @EmeraldSloth.

Similarly the bloke who locked me in a bedroom to assault me when I was underage (I got away) is now very successful and I assume I probably wasn’t the only one.

Neither of these men would show up in statistics.

It’s a bit of a speculation, but I think men compartmentalise efficiently in a way that allows them to disregard whole swathes of people and situations.

So a man who in a civilised situation would not, in a more desperate situation may well. A man who would always protect all the women and girls he came across, would not protect the women and girls from a different community (‘savages’ of one kind or another).

And I think disregarding the behaviour of men under stress, in fiercely competitive environments, is wildly irrational. Our current stability and wealth here in the west is anomalous. Our history has been less affluent.

And currently, despite all the advantages of so-called civilisation and education we have, the statistics for sexual violence are appalling.

Are you aware that the results of those surveys are based on wording questions neutrally?

I don’t think men own up to a question about ‘rape’. They do own up when asked if they have ever encouraged a girl to have another drink so she’d be more likely to have sex, or if they’ve persuaded a girl to have sex.

So they pretty much all owned up to rape adjacent behaviour. Pushing their luck. Pouring generously. Coercion.

Yes, I am. I put that in one of my earlier posts. Very revealing.....

Legally, if a man has had to ply a woman with alcohol or coerce them into sex, it's not "rape adjacent", it's rape..

Sex without consent is rape - consent must be freely given and both parties must have the capacity to consent.

Giving women drinks to increase the likelihood of sex = reducing capacity to consent.

Persuading a woman to have sex = coercion = consent not freely given.

No, I certainly don't. I meant that I was sceptical that as large a proportion of men as 1/3 would rape if they could.

I totally agree. I wasn’t intending to minimise so much as describe how the behaviour is seen by those who do it. They perceive themselves as ‘confident’, ‘assertive’, ‘determined’. Relationships are approached with the same wheeler dealer, close to the wind, attitude.

Informed consent and cups of tea would be sneered at.

Persuading is often treated as a grey area, but this concerns me.

Legally in the UK, I thought consent was only invalid if someone had drunk over a certain threshold, as opposed to having consumed any alcohol at all.

https://www.pcdsolicitors.co.uk/advice-news/latest-news/when-is-a-person-too-drunk-to-consent/

The question is, should this be changed?

I've heard people argue that in some cases of disputed consent, both man & woman have drunk equal amounts, or roughly so. Is this really often true though?

You are coming across as very naive and from reading your posts you want to stay that way.

Personally I don’t find naivety in adults the cute, charming trait that it is made out to be in Hallmark movies. For me I consider it to be a significant character flaw.

There is a really funny and astute Indian comedienne who points out that culture is just another word for what men in any society are happy with. Men trying to convince us by so many of society’s structures that their versions of socially acceptable behaviours are the ones that should be endorsed by that society.

Good points...maybe I'm too optimistic about men...

Re Sweden, are there really huge numbers of rapes there? I thought part of the issue might be that reporting is much more common there.

Otoh, I have read that VAWG rates are higher than much of Europe in supposedly the most gender-equal country, Iceland. There's speculation it's some kind of aggressive male reaction against women having more power than most other countries.

Switzerland- I'm not sure if I'd pair that in the same way. Yes, it's fairly peaceful and civil but otoh how good are gender attitudes there : after all, Swiss women only got the vote in the 1970s, for one thing.

In my defence, I might point out that I'm 19. (For those curious why a 19yo's on MN, I initially came because of being GC & wanting to investigate those issues). I don't aim to be naive or find it cute either, but I think it's fair to ask for some leeway on that basis.

Moreover, is it necessarily naive to think most men wouldn't rape if given the chance, or at least not as many as 1/3?

Maybe it is. Do most women in the UK believe this? If not, does that mean they're mostly naive too?

Do you think most women have, deep down, similar views to Perry?

Arguing over the stat is a discursive dead end (just like Perry bringing it up in the first place).

We know that male sexual violence is a huge and disproportionate problem. It doesn't really matter if it's one-third of men or one-sixth of men (and reducing it to black-and-white numbers with no context actually prevents us from truly understanding it). The questions are why, and what next?

The preferable reason is nurture (collective not just individual). Rape and sexual assault aren't the only violent behaviours that we (think we've been) in the process of civilising ourselves out of. Whatever the numbers of men who think they're entitled to rape women in 2025 are, I would bet that they're lower than they were in 1625.

Or is it nature? Because the actual reason Perry is flagging a stat like that is to convey that something is inherently bad and abhorrent with the male sex drive, and no amount of "civilising" can actually fix it. I see a lot of people hint around this, but not many take it to its logical end point.

On MN particular I also see a lot of women with a steadfast belief that we are prisoners of our own biology - that everything boils down to binary male/female animal instincts. It's a mirror of the evo psych bullshit I see on MRA/incel forums and personally I think it's moronic. But my point is that if you box yourself into your female biology... and box men into their male biology... what is next?

And for those who do think this predatory aspect is inherent to the male sex drive, but are also happily married... what makes your husband different? How has he overridden his "animal instincts"?

It’s an area that would reward study, but anecdotal evidence would suggest you trust men at your peril.

It’s like the bear in the woods.

Or indeed the XL Bully. Sure, yours seems lovely. But a surprisingly large proportion turn out not to be.

This is a very good point re compartmentalisation. I also think lower average empathy levels play a role probably.

Again agree re current levels of wealth etc being unusually good in historical terms.

Are current rape stats in here, or in Europe as a whole, say, still very bad with no discernible improvement? I thought the general trend was for rape to have declined since the 1990s.

Otoh I wonder if rapists etc have maybe moved onto more invisible stuff like online sextortion...

Many of them haven’t, sadly. Many men coerce their wives into sex. Many women don’t consider it rape. Many women have maintenance sex which gets increasingly onerous until they finally realise they’ve been coerced for years.

I agree. As I've said, it seems morally abhorrent for Perry to claim to believe this yet badger & bother women to marry young & be financially dependent (at least for early childrearing period) on a man. If men are as awful, in aggregate, as she says, why should women be pressured to marry them? I don't agree with her, but if I did, I'd still find her logic irrational & disturbingly hypocritical.

Definitely agree re culture & nurture. Unluckily stats like this on rape & DV are relatively new...

Yes. I know. I've read about all this. I don't need to be educated further on the bad things men do. My question is what should be done about it.

To be honest I think you could go out there yourself and ask the 3.5 billion men and if 1/3 said they would rape then you’d still find some way of rationalising because it is way, way to uncomfortable a reality for you to sit with. You need to come to a question with an open mind as many of us have done over many decades and been confronted with significant research and anecdotes and personal lives experience that have illustrated the scale of these issues but it is obvious you have decided it is not nearly1/3 of men (which is still a minority btw), you are offended on their behalf and you are pushing back on anything that might contradict that.