(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?

Hmm.. I do agree the feminist theory about 'rape is about power not sex' is flawed. I'll expand below..

Tbh on AskReddit type threads about visiting prostitutes, I've seen several posts (with no outraged replies) that essentially say they knew the prostitute wasn't into it but it was "their choice' to sell sex, so they didn't have any qualms.😡🤢

You can't be insulted on behalf of someone else. You may be insulted.

The other ‘excuse’ for being a rapist…
‘I didn’t realise she didn’t want it, how was I to know? She didn’t say…’.

I mention this one in the light of the various employment tribunals recently where someone has said- every single case, and often more than one person and more than once- ‘but no one complained’.
The irony here being that this is a tribunal brought because complaints weren’t heard or acted on. When you are in a tribunal, clearly someone has in fact complained, it’s just that for various reasons no one wanted to listen was apparently able to hear them.

If you think prostitution isn’t about power, you’re utterly naive. Especially men who want to rape prostitutes. It’s ALL about power.

Archive link here:
archive.ph/CPqJ1

This whole thread is literally about the fact that I think it's shockingly unbelievable that 1/3 of men would do this. I've expressed my anger and sadness over sexual violence multiple times in this thread, and my anger that Perry sees so many men as so dangerous yet encourages women as a whole to marry young and be financially dependent.

It's not news to me that rape is far more common even in supposedly progressive countries than it should be. Of course I'm angry about this. But if you're interested in stopping these kinds of issues, like I am, you have to have some level of distance.

I'm a history student & I've studied extremely distressing events such as the Indian Partition and the Cultural Revolution. You have to have some emotional detachment to be able to write about these things- otherwise how would you be able to do it? My intention is to become a criminal lawyer: how can you help clients if you're not able to detach at least somewhat?

If having the ability to deploy some level of emotional detachment about terrible subjects makes me 'a middle-aged man', that says far more about pps than it does about me. This doesn't make me 'flat' and 'detached'.

I'm a man, and I'm not insulted. I think 1/3 is probably an underestimate, depending exactly on what "getting away with it" means. For comparison, something like 80-90% of people of either sex have fantasized about killing someone.

I don't know anything about Louise Perry, but if she believes that a large number of men are unpleasant, then coupling up young could be a rational strategy for straight women to get one of the okay ones before they're all taken.

Who do you mean by ‘men’? Because you seem to mean WEIRD men. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

No, I'm sorry- let me explain what I mean..

Apologies for being explicit but I think it's key point : Men who rape must be sexually aroused to do so. So imo power and sex are inextricably intertwined in this crime. Men who rape are sexually aroused by power, exerting power over someone unwilling. So saying it's about power rather than sex seems to overlook that it's about sex to these repulsive men : but not normal sexuality, sadistic & twisted sexuality.

OP is quoting me quoting LP - her point isn't that power isn't relevant, it's that feminists underestimate the degree to which it's also about basic sexual gratification. One of the themes in her work is that women typically underestimate the male sex drive overall. If it were purely about power a man could demonstrate it in many different ways, but he picks the one that gets him off. (Of course it's interlinked, and probably the power dynamic also gets him off, but the point is it's different in nature from, like, exploiting warehouse workers or something.)

Re coupling up, I see what you mean (similar to how older women on dating apps often meet a lot of weirdos who couldn't find anyone to commit earlier).

However, I think she should emphasise safety strategies, like keeping a strong extended network of family and friends if possible, keeping skills up if SAHM so can work if needed unexpectedly, having a running away fund etc

Maybe she's done that & I've missed it. I know she's given tips on avoiding sexual psychos (avoid BDSM fans etc) but that's not quite the same issue.

I don't think murder is a valid comparison, in the sense that there's reasons most people might find morally legitimate or at least understandable (or almost) to commit murder. Moreover, rape is sadistic, in a way that murder isn't, in the sense that you're inflicting pain for no discernable other aim other than your own enjoyment. Arguably torture is a better comparison to rape than murder is.

Thanks both. I see.

Thank you, this is a good summary of what Perry's said.

FWIW, I don't think most rape is sadistic in the sense that the rapist derives pleasure from the suffering of the victim. I think the rapist is generally indifferent to the physical and emotional consequences for the victim. It's purely about their ability to do what they want and their sexual gratification.

I do think it's similar to murder in the sense that the perpetrator doesn't consider the victim's suffering to carry any moral weight or enter into their thinking.

Studying history does not explain why you are very comfortable discussing the rape of women, yet emotional and offended for men because of statistics.

Does Perry encourage women to be financially dependent on men?

What you hope is of no relevance. I don't think that you are posting in good faith.

Not really. 25% that responded were comfortable to say they would rape a woman, 33% said they would if you hedged around the name given to describe forcing a woman to have sex without consent.

They're just the ones who were confident/arrogant enough to admit it and weren't thinking of whether the survey responses could be leaked, that they could be identified in some way or that weren't in a situation where they wanted to be seen to be A Nice Guy or don't believe that women who say no or wear particular clothes, go out, have dates or simply exist in the world ever really mean it. It also partially selected - obviously for educational level, probably fairly significantly for income, in terms of ethnicity, faith, social capital - but still a third of the respondents said that women's ability to consent is of no interest to them or their penis.

ETA: my point is that you cannot assume that the other 66-75% are all men who would never dream of it. Some of them will have been suspicious/smart enough to not admit it. And some of them will have already done it. Many, many times.

It's interesting that we look at western statistics, which are bad but don't consider the rest of the world. Racist?
Do we differentiate between rape as a form of lust and rape as a symbol of asserting power? Of course rape is rape is rape but the reasoning ( in the perpetrators mind).

As I have repeated more than once, the 'insulted' in OP was equally about anger that Perry apparently believes this yet encourages women to marry and have kids young with very little emphasis on protective measures to put in place while doing so.

And 'able to discuss with some (for some things necessary) detachment' is not the same as 'very comfortable'.

To be fair to Perry, she gives a lot of guidance on how to avoid picking a bad man (a lot of it common sense- eg. Avoid sexual sadists- but stuff that's been eroded by destructive recent trends like 'all kinds of sex are ok as long as there's consent, no matter what they are').

But afaik she mentions zero techniques for avoiding an abusive husband once you're married young & with kids.

Maybe her forthcoming book The Case For Having Children will..

She is definitely open about thinking that kids are best off if mother stays home with them for first few years, which presumably requires financial dependence. (I actually agree with this, but not the wider implications of what she recommends)

Normally I rate Perry higher than Mary Harrington (fellow 'reactionary feminist' who wrote Feminism Against Progress' recently) but on this topic Harrington is better, since she stresses how Child Benefit was originally Mother's Allowance paid directly to mother, as social reformer Eleanor Rathbone advised, so they weren't dependent on male breadwinner handing over wage. Unsurprisingly, male trade unions were often not keen on this!

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.jstor.org/stable/172376&ved=2ahUKEwiJ9KjM-_<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?opi=89978449&rct=j&sa=t&source=web&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fstable%2F172376&usg=AOvVaw1rPApLzZaWzw<u>S</u>M<u>7WX6e&ved=2ahUKEwiJ9KjM-</u>mQAxVWXUEAHdd5OngQFnoECBwQAQ" rel="nofollow" target="blank">mQAxVWXUEAHdd5OngQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1rPApLzZaWzwSM7WX6e

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=unherd.com/2020/09/what-if-the-feminists-had-won/&ved=2ahUKEwjDkoz_<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?opi=89978449&rct=j&sa=t&source=web&url=https%3A%2F%2Funherd.com%2F2020%2F09%2Fwhat-if-the-feminists-had-won%2F&usg=AOvVaw3GOoFUBZhYrc2aOqFa5eCj&ved=2ahUKEwjDkoz<u>-</u>mQAxWZWUEAHTDhDn4QFnoECCgQAQ" rel="nofollow" target="blank">-mQAxWZWUEAHTDhDn4QFnoECCgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3GOoFUBZhYrc2aOqFa5eCj

I don't like Harrington's suggestion that women shouldn't have competed in the workforce (why doesn't she get back to the kitchen then and stop jetting about the world giving speeches? - her husband is the breadwinner) and that we should have kept the Empire & not entered WW2 (as a part-Pole, I'd never agree with that!), or kept stigmatising divorce and premarital sex as strongly as the 1930s. But I do think that the core point about Rathbone's goals is a valuable one.

Racist? That's not the same as acknowledging that a lot of other countries have very different norms about rape : India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea as pp said etc

The question is : is this due to particular cultural dysfunctions that have developed (eg. Rural Pakistan clan system fostered abuse?).

Or is it due to a universal lack of self-control/empathy/other characteristics which huge numbers of men will manifest if there aren't social norms against doing so?

33%?? That's even worse.. In that case, Perry's stat isn't plucked from thin air. I thought she was better than that.

I still am sceptical about judging all men from one US college sample. The frat system seems to foster rape, at least according to some analyses. There's a big push recently to say that the huge numbers of Title IX cases were due to too-broad definitions of rape. But I have my doubts...

Of course, if the frat system does foster rape, it raises the question of why this might be. Do some frats attract antisocial individuals? Or are they appealing to some latent male psychology which is much more widespread and disturbing than we want to admit? Or both?