"A man cannot be expected to support his wife if she is raped." Discuss

[dollius]

This made me shake with rage

here

"The man was my boss and he was very drunk and forceful. I tried to push him away without upsetting him, but he was too strong and I didn't fight him."

She tried to push him away - doesn't that make it clear she didn't want it? If he was too drunk to pick up on being pushed away as a fairly obvious signal, isn't that his fault rather than hers?

"I'm convinced there are men who would find the compassion to do this."

there may well be but if i'm being honest i doubt i could do it, i'd have the ultimate respect for someone who could but i suspect they'd be in the distinct minority.

But Mayor, would you be unable to go with your wife to the doctor to discuss an abortion because you couldn't bear to hear about the conception dates?

Or would you put her obvious distress and suffering above your own squeamishness and support her?

And what about people who don't agree with abortion - for whom it would mean real emotional anguish to have to go through with one?

In this story there is a lot about what she should have been doing to protect her husband's feelings, and not alot about what she should have been doing in regards to her own self care.

i can't answer those with any certainty as it's obviously a hypothetical which i doubt anyone could fully grasp.
i'd like to think i'd have enough strength to do many things but if i'm honest i'd imagine actually sitting in on doctor consultations/clinic visits would be extremely hard verging on the impossible.
i don't think it's acurate to somewhat diminish the the mans reactions as squeamishness and the womans as obvious distress, while i agree with you that there's an obvious discrepency in what they've been through the objective facts will often have no bearing on a subjective reaction. i'd echo what someone said earlier on, reacting in such a way doesn't make someone a bad person it just makes them human.
obviously there's no handbook to rely on for when your wife is impregnated following a rape and there'll be very few people who you'll feel you can talk to so i think expecting people to react in a measured and responsible way is holding them to too high a standard. if we take the case on the facts the husband was torn. he tried to support her in his own way but admittedly fell short of what a lot on this thread may have expected in not accompanying her into the doctors office. i simply think there's no way to know how any of us would react so find it hard to judge his response on that front.

having decided to keep the baby you then get to the point of support and love for the wife vs the fact he can't face raising the rapists baby. this one is definitely not so clear cut,while it'd be hard to argue that he's being selfish i'm sure that the wife would feel she is being punished for being a victim of rape.

I'd abort any pregnancy that was a result of a rape. Quite masochistic not to I think. Why roll out decades of pain ahead of yourself like that.

A good man and a decent husband mightn't be able to support you after you'd been raped, but he'd have to want to try.

and it was her boss as well. She was probably thinking, he'll fire me, he'll fire me.

He probably fired her anyway.

Sounds like the victim was getting into an affair with her boss and when they came to have sex she changed her mind and pushed him away.

He forced her - that IS rape, but what possibly came before that was her cheating on her husband.

I suspect that is why her DH left her - not because of the rape itself.

It is unfortunately true. Studies show this. Women are more likely to be left by their partners after being raped. Those aree the facts folks.

intersteing post MayorQ.

The male fear of being cuckolded and then raising another man's child does seem to be central here. I have studied this too. The evidence is very robust that men do have difficulty in such situations.

It makes sense if you look atr it from an evolutionary fitness perspective. For a woman, being raped is one of the most detrimental things that can happen to her, for a number of reasons. Female sexual choice is the primary agent of evolution by sexual selection. There is a lot of robust evidence that women have evolved many psychological rape avoidance behaviors, the huge trauma a woman feels on having been raped only one of them. But basically, being forced into sex and impragnated by a man you did not choose is, evolutioarily speaking, very bad for fitness.

But men have also been evolving - in sex and matters of paternity they are at an acute disadvantage in comparison to women in that hey can never be 100% sure of paternity. The anxiety this creates is a huge part of the masculine psyche and one of the driving forces of oppressive patriachies. Basically for men, being duped into raising another mans child (a rapist has duped the partner as well as the victim, bypassed social mores and cheated his way into evolutionrty fitness at the expense of both victim and her partner) is just as detrimetal to his fitness as being raped is to hers. Men and women have both evolved (different) psychological mechanisms which can seem to be at odds in such situations.

It really angers me that such a vile and devastating act is so rarely punished by society. I understand why it is so difficult to hold rapists accountable, but it is so sad.

And its not just men who struggle with children concieved during rape obviously. I knew a child I once whose mother just couldn't love him, she told him why as well, it was so very tragic.

I thought her advice was fair.
Couple of points that werent right - it could very likely be considered rape.
Some men may cope very welll with a child conceived in rape. But not all. Not many. I think me being raped would hurt dh terrily. and i am not sure he could cope with the child of that rape. columnist put it badly/is wrong on these 2 points.
But the woman never told the truth to dhh and is probably fantasising that it could all work out. Agree with columnist she is probably deluded/fantasising.

Op is OTT. The article never says anything of the sort.

it's odd - on one level we do not want women to be infantilised. That means women realising they have a duty towards self reponsibility. This is a far cry from victim blaming. If a rich man goes to Compton wearing his rolex and flashing his cash, he will be mugged. To say he was daft (as we would) is not to say what happened to him was not more wrong and criminal. The same standard should apply to women putting themselves in vulnerable situations and - most importantly - getting so drunk they are unable to consent or otherwise.

I will not be telling my daughter that she should stay back at a party after all her female friends have gone home, get totally pissed and expect that there may not be a male there who will take advantage of her. That is how it should be; it isnt how it is.

OP is OTT - was deliberate, hence the "discuss" bit.

What I object to is the columnist's failure to recognise that this is very probably rape and then proceed to suggest the woman is a liar.

I find that hard to take.

On the one hand we have this thread in which a surprising number of women seem to feel this woman was rather odd keeping her baby and ought to have put her husband's feelings first.

On another thread I read yesterday by a woman whose partner doesn't want her to go ahead with her pregnancy unless he can move in, everyone is telling her to put her child first.

Why are the reactions different because of the way the child is conceived?

To my mind this sounds like rape. As dittany said, rape is not always as clear-cut as a stranger grabbing women and pulling them into dark alleys. She did not want to have sex with this man. He was her boss, and so wielded power over her, both physically and emotionally. She tried to stop him - but of course she didn't nut him, or kick him in the balls: she felt powerless because she needed to keep her job and clearly this man is something of a monster - what kind of manager goes round forcing his employees into sex?

Like dollius I am shocked by the appalling advice, and the assumption that deciding to have an abortion should be as simple as clicking one's fingers. I remember hearing the poet Lemn Sissay talk about being adopted and the only black child in his town, then discovering why he was adopted - he was the product of a rape. As ABD says, a woman connects with a baby earlier and in deeper ways than a man, and so her feelings will of course be far more complex than the moronic Garner suggest.

MQ, I have to be honest, I am deeply saddened to read your post about what level of support you would be able to offer a partner who was raped. Sometimes life brings along real gut-wrenching emotional turmoil, either in your own life or in the life of others whom you care about, and we have to choose whether to deal with it or run away.

Over the years I have learned to do the former, and as a consequence of this can honestly say that I believe I could find a way to endure almost (almost!) any emotional pain. Earlier this year I supported a friend (not even a partner) through an absolutely horrible situation; this was a role which took its toll on my health in several ways but because of my love for and belief in my friend I gave her my unconditional support for as long as she needed it. I would expect no less of a partner. In fact I would go so far as to say that if I felt so badly unsupported by my DH following a rape, I (as someone who would normally never contemplate divorce) would leave him.

Monkeytrousers - your post at Sun 15-Nov-09 14:00:37 was interesting.

The underlying 'evolutinary fitness issue' is at severe conflict with the 'social mores' we have now in our Western society that a man should support his wife if she is raped. Sad but true in many societies raped women are routinely shunned and treated badly by their families afterwards and it seems that this spans religions and cultures.

MayorQuimby - I agree with your posts too although I do think I would be able and willing to go to the Dr with DW if it happened to her. This is a really tough question though and not sure how any of us (man or woman) would react in this situation.

displayuntilbestbefore Why are there so many "do nots" in your post?

Who are you to tell women how they should react to being raped?

"Unfortunately too many flings are passed off as rape and this is outrageous"

Evidence please for this hugely offensive and jaw droppingly stupid comment?