not a nice topic, but been annoying me all day

[ButWhyIsTheGinGone]

Hello All,

I've been dithering whether to post this as it's not really an "issue," and it's not the nicest of subjects, but I've been thinking about it all day.
After reading and watching the fantastic "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" film, I was talking with a male friend in the pub about the horiffic scene where Lisbeth Salander (possibly my favourite fictional character ever) was attacked and anally raped by her guardian.

This led to a discussion bout how appalling an act that is, at which my friend claimed it would be far "worse for a man." I couldn't quite believe this and he said he couldn't explain it and I "really wouldn't understand." At this point a second man (drunk and not intelligent) pointed out that "women do it all the time." I didn't even acknowledge this fairly disgusting comment and the conversation changed.

But it's been bugging me all day. My friend is a sensible and intelligent man and would never say anything to deliberatly hurt or offend, but this view has shocked me and got me thinking. If a woman who has previously had consensual anal intercourse is attacked in this way....is it less "horiffic" than if a man is similarly attacked who has not?

Would be interested to hear any opinions - I'm no feminist expert but am lurkng around this board a lot more and finding a lot of the discussion really interesting.

no victim is entitled to any more sympathy than any other victim.

Seriously?! You are arguing against this?

Genuine question - what is the purpose of ranking degrees of rape / degree to which a victim is deserving of sympathy?

For those of you arguing that you can - why? What difference does it make?

Phoebe, I wonder if you're going through a process, which most of us have at some point, of investigating whether you've been unconsciously prejudiced by some of the popular rape myths. A man who rapes a stranger, perhaps inflicting multiple injuries as he subdues his victim, commits the same crime for the same reasons as one who rapes a colleague or his neighbour, or his partner or a family member, or drugs his victim first.

The tendency to think of "different kinds" of rape plays into the victim-blaming hypothesis that relationship and prior consent mitigate the crime. They don't. Each rape victim has been penetrated, by a penis, with hatred. It's a crime of power - not passion. Each victim's body has been attacked with hatred.

Because the act of penetration can also be done lovingly, the difference is in the manner of its doing. Hence the consent test: you know if somebody's ab/using, rather than sharing, your body, so you withdraw whatever consent may have been given or implied and try to stop the act. I realise you know all this intellectually, but perhaps you still have a visceral feeling that the clichéd stranger rape is worse ... Just a thought?

Well exactly Spoons. It's not a "who suffers the most" competition. Spoons. It's not a "who suffers the most" competition.

Begone

That's is exactly what he has suffered with :( but how on earth at 14 with a knife involved could he have fought back but even now he still feels he should have done something .I got to know him through his sister when he was having a good few months when he was 20

For him sadly it is probably to late and he will succeed in taking his own life one day

Apols for odd post, I'm blaming my phone. Plus I was responding to a post that seems to have disappeared! Weird.

Hope I'm not veering off at too much of a tangent here ...

It's interesting that men who are raped suffer added shame for not having fought their attacker off. The same thing used to happen to women - and probably still does. I remember people saying, when I was a child, things like "She can't have fought hard enough" and "Should have kept her legs crossed"

By way - I hope! - of illustrating how spurious this is: I have prevented strangers from raping me, but not people I trusted. This doesn't make me a superwoman with a blind spot! I was fortunate in ways my stranger-attackers didn't expect. People I trusted, however, knew what to expect of me - and, in the case I posted above, I'd willingly put him in a position of physical domination. That can happen in all kinds of situations - and, equally, I could be pounced on by somebody who doesn't fall for my tricks next time.

Abi Grant, who managed to fight off the rapist that broke into her flat, still suffered intense shame, guilt and fear. It's never about "how hard you fight".

"There can be no hierarchy of rape" IS NOT "all rapes are the same."

I haven't seen anyone on this thread saying 'all rapes are the same' or even 'we should react with exactly the same facial expression and hand gestures every time someone tells us they have been raped.' Or whatever is being inferred.

Most people seem to be arguing that there can be no hierarchy of rape, because the thing that makes it rape - the lack of consent, the ab/use of the body, the violation - is the headfuck, the horrific thing, the terrifying and degrading and appalling aspect. That seems to be what rape victims are saying.

I may not have got that right, but it's what I've seen.

I'm very annoyed by what was said in this post;

EasternPhoebe Sun 25-Sep-11 13:46:02

I imagine that you are addressing me as you quote me.

EP you say;

You're the ones saying you can define all rapes as being the same.

No we are not. Nobody has said that - it would be an extraordinarily stupid thing to say. Perhaps you might want to be a little less aggressive in your posting style on this most sensitive of subjects - particularly as you are neither listening to, nor understanding what we are saying.

Well, I always admire a person who is prepared to put their hands up when they've made a mistake. So no hard feelings from me.

If you don't mean to offend people, you should be more careful about how you post, especially about sensitive subjects.

:) :)

I come back to my original question:

Why is it so hard for most people who haven't been raped, to listen to the voices of those who have been raped?

Why do so many people have a real vested interest in asserting "facts" that they believe to be true about rape, when rape victims are telling them that those facts aren't true?

I think it's something to ponder.

And back to the OP. I was thinking about this today and decided that basically, people are horrified by the idea of a child, a man, a nun, a pregnant woman or a woman over the age of about seventy being raped.

But a woman who is around the age at which she can be sexually active, her rape does not elicit the same horror. That's why that friend thinks it's worse for a man to be raped.

An interesting academic question to ask him, if you want to actually feel like killing him and never being his friend again, would be whether he thinks it's worse for a nun, a female pensioner, a child or a man to be raped. I expect he has a hierarchy.

i think the hierachy debate and the OP reflect that society does not take the act of rape seriously in itself (because most women have consenting sex with men?)

there is a search for another factor which you just dont get with any other crime: he had a knife, the victim was a man etc. it is then this other factor which society defines as making it a serious crime.

a violation of a women's consent is not seen as much of a crime by itself. so in a way, society and the rapist's view align. no wonder conviction rates are so low.

taken together, ThereBe and Tilly's posts get right to the heart of it, I think.

Yes that's it Tilly - the violation of a woman's boundaries, is so normal, that rape is just another violation and so although regrettable, merely an extension of normal behaviour - women's boundaries are always being violated.

When we consider that rape historically and culturally, has been not about the violation of a woman's boundaries, but about the attack on a man's honour via his chattel, his wife or daughter or sister, or other relative under his protection, then maybe that gives us a clue as to why people are so thoroughly fucked up and confused about rape. Why there is such a double-think about it - OTOH, the worst crime after murder, but OTOH, usually just a regrettable mistake which isn't really worth sending a man to prison about. Even rape victims themselves have that double think - the idea of my rapist being arrested horrified me, I identified with his possible trauma at being arrested, more than my own real trauma at being raped by him. And that identification with his pain and the value of his welfare at the expense of my own, is something I think a lot of rape victims feel because we are taught to do so. And once again, it's that idea that men are more valuable than women, that their trauma and pain are more meaningful, more sad, more worthy of respect and consideration - even when they're rapists, let alone when they are rape victims.

Well that's a relief.

Do you want a cookie now?

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I suspect that the fellas had never thought of the pain, humiliation and fear of being raped, and do not often think of it. When they hear about rape, it's usually something that happens to "not them". The idea of it happening to them is pretty horrible (to themselves). This is the same reaction everyone has, which is, rape is horrible, I hope it won't happen to me. Also, I think that many people think that anyone who survives rape and "appears" to handle it well, must not have been all that upset by it.

Which is utter horseshit, of course, people handle horror in their own way, and because someone is able to get back their life sooner than someone else means nothing for the magnitude of the act. People suffer tragedy their own way, some of us need to get back our lives, some of us need to change our lives, whatever we do, it's what we need.

It's not the act that is different, it's the people effected by the act who are individuals, which is why there are different reactions.

So by the reasoning that women have done it before, vaginal rape shoulnd't really upset most women?

I suppose in his tiny fragile little mind what he really thinks is the humiliation he would feel would make it worse for him than a woman. Because women just laugh it off don't they. He's a twat.

I used to know a really nice guy from work who was pretty intelligent and we'd have really random conversations and one day (i'm not sure why the conversation became about consent. In his words a woman who was drunk so badly she passed out was basically fair game, because if she cared she wouldn't have gotten so drunk in the first place. I said (and I realize how far apart these two scenarios are before anyone jumps down my throat) that if he got drunk and passed out it would be OK for me to steal his wallet. he said no because stealing is wrong.........

WIWATWP, yeah, that's madness. But it goes back to the notion that women are only here to reproduce with the craftiest man, or are property (or somehow our reproductive organs are) and so taking what any man must do is not a crime. After all, he has a biological imperative to reproduce with as many women as possible, why try to fight nature?

ToxieMoxie, I think that you really have something there. I've noticed that people often people make judgements almost entirely based on outward appearance after a crime using that as their way of figuring out 'Who Did It'.

X is guilty because she doesn't look upset enough, Y didn't do it because they look so relaxed, so perhaps it's not surprising that women who aren't obviously battered and bruised then get judged on how traumatised they appear. There seems to be a setting in people's minds about how other people should appear/behave in certain circumstances, based on our own (usually untested) ideas of how we would/should behave. Plus the whole disassociation thing where so long as something is very 'other', it can't possibly happen to us.