OK. Please can we talk about women raping men?

[curlew]

It's a key part of the MRA agenda. Some MRA even say that men are as often victims of rape by women as women are of rape by men.

I absolutely agree that sex should always be consensual,and if a man has been forced, by either physical or psychological means into sex, then he has been raped and deserved of course to be taken seriously, and for the perpetrator to be charged and ,nif found guilty, convicted. And I know that an erection is a physiological response, and does not necessarily mean that a man actually wants to have sex.

But the MRA are full of stories of men waking up after falling asleep drunk at parties to find women on top of them. And vqriations on th them of being forced to penetrate against their will. And, it might just be my misandry showing, but really? Does this happen a lot? Is it a really serious problem that needs to be addressed, and have equivilant resources given to it?

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.

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 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?

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.

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

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.

Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.

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.

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.

@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

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.

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.

All sexual assault is sexual contact without consent; tape is a specific form of such assault.

ola redline can describe what happened to him any way he wants. He can't demand that everyone else agrees with that description.

what is taken in the context of rape?

"...what is taken in the context of rape?"

Your choice/right to consent or otherwise to what is happening to you.

You don't have to agree with Redline but his use of the term is factually correct, if not legally so under English law.

If you use words so loosely, anything could be rape, any sexual assault on a woman could be rape. Is that what you had in mind?

I don't know if your assertion 'More men are likely to say they would love it if they were raped' is one you can prove.

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 agree with this, though I think the power play is done by men to men too, and for the same reason it is done to women.

There is nothing loose about the idea that consent is at the heart of rape. Hence the hours and hours spent in courtrooms arguing about it, decisions to go ahead with prosecution or not based on how clear it was that lack of consent was present and how hard it would be to prove, historical reliance on the character and reputation of victims to back up assertions that consent wasn't given, and the debate over the concept of rape within marriage. 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. They were raped because they did not give consent every single time. This law highlighted the concepts that women are not property of their husbands, and that they are capable of withholding or giving consent even after marriage.

"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."

Maintaining the current definition only serves to marginalise the crime precisely because women are silenced in our society, and 'women's issues' are filed under 'Ignore - invisible - irrelevant'. I think changing the definition would result in exposing the power dynamic inherent to the very hierarchical nature of male society (in which the majority of men themselves are losers.) I think it might help us all acknowledge our shared humanity.

mathanxiety, I think I understand the sentiment behind your view. That if rape is something that happens to boys and men too, it will be taken more seriously than if it is just something that happens to girls and women.

Except, that is currently the case anyway, boys and men can be victims of rape - I don't know a great deal about how seriously male on male rape is taken, but I don't see male on female rape being taken seriously by society, despite rape being something men can be victims of.

I don't see how changing law, to say that women can be the perpetrators of rape too, will change this. How exactly would a woman rape a man or another woman? Currently rape is defined as two elements; penetration with a penis without consent . If you say that women can rape, you are taking away 1 of those two elements.

I do not understand to what purpose; what exactly do you think would be achieved, and how? Women having sex with men who do not consent to it is already a sexual offence.

Acts that women (as well as men) can commit are covered in the 2003 Sexual Offences Act as assault by penetration or sexual assault or Causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent

Consent, or lack of, or inability to give, is an element to all of these sexual offences, as is the element that the perpetrator "does not reasonably believe that B consents".

Rape is a distinct category of sexual offence because it involves a penis. If you change the definition to be something that women can do too, all you do is disappear rape, it doesn't exist anymore.

This has been the case in Canada, for example, and there doesn't seem to be an improvement for women WRT to the matter of unwanted penetration with a penis - something they now call sexual assault. Indeed, this change in the law has made things worse, and it has done nothing to change societal attitudes, rape culture, male supremacy, women's safety or anything else. www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-canadas-sex-assault-laws-violate-rape-victims/article14705289/?page=all

Bloody hell, beach, there some awful stuff in that article.

Yes, meant to say, apologies for the ghastly stuff about the poor young menz needing to learn how to hold their alcohol in case it makes them rape someone and the implication that drugged women only have themselves to blame and are fair game.

I think we can see that doing away with rape has not done away with victim blaming, misogyny, etc...

I think wrangling over legal terminology or making comments on Redline's punctuation of his trauma is really not on. It's one thing to discuss the reality that males perpetrate the overwhelming majority of sexual violence, another to discount a personal account of trauma because it doesn't fit a neat overarching cultural narrative.

I had a very traumatic lesbian experience in my early teens which was violent, intended to humiliate and destroy me. The fact this may be rare etc is really immaterial in the context of my life. It happened. It had a huge effect on me. I also had a man drunkenly penetrate me while I slept at a party e.g 'rape' me in my mid-20's but it was nowhere near as violent or shaming as the earlier experience and I really do view it as about this man being totally socially inept and sexually unskilled and thinking he had consent because I showed up in his house. Like Twibble above it disgusted and irritated me he would take this liberty with my body but there is just no comparison with what went on in my other experience which was wholly about abuse and the perpetration of pain through overpowering me. I can't even give details of that, I can barely think about it.

Half the problem with current definitions of rape is that no, it's not the same to wake up with a man penetrating you at a party as it is to be subject to a violent attack. The shame and trauma of the former is largely a cultural construction. I don't think men should go round ignoring others' physical boundaries and sticking their dicks where they feel like it because they can but I don't agree that it helps that we have a 'rape is rape is rape' line either, that drunken penetration at a party is in the same category as any assault that is intended as an act of violence, that is intended to wound.

I know practically it is impossible to really define the parameters where the intention for an assault can be legally proven and so we have these crude but operational definitions. However, I would say that trauma related to assault arises out of the intention regardless of gender... It's about subjugation, humiliation, destruction. Yes many many more men partake in this and culturally there's a huge issue that needs addressing but it diminishes for me what really causes severe and sustained human distress in these situations, which is not necessarily gender specific. It's the threat and fear of violence (physical or psychological) and shame that really defines 'rape' for me.

Ninjago1978, I'm very sorry to hear of both your experiences of sexual attack.

Thankfully the law does differentiate between rape without additional violence (the rape itself is already considered an act of violence) and rape with additional violence. The additional violence is not covered under the Sexual Offences Act as that piece of legislation deals with the specifically sexual nature of an offence. Additional violence is covered under "Offences Against the Person" - a rape charge that involves an injury or beating will involve other charges such as common assault, ABH, GBH, etc depending on the severity of the violence and the injuries sustained by the victim.

I think it is important that we have a 'rape is rape is rape' frame, as it is not for an outsider to decide, whether another individual found it more or less traumatic, to be raped by someone they know or by a stranger. If we are going to do that, we might as well bring back being married as a defense for rape within marriage. Raping someone you know is not OK and I don't think we need to be sending the message to boys and men that it is (anymore than we already do via various rape myths). Especially considering that most rapists are known to their victims.

The idea that it is less traumatic to be raped by someone you know is dangerous for women IMO and implies that a woman's right to bodily integrity is conditional.

Raping someone you know is not OK and I don't think we need to be sending the message to boys and men that it is (anymore than we already do via various rape myths). Especially considering that most rapists are known to their victims.

85% of rapists are either a husband/boyfriend/friend/relative of the victims, Scotland's statistics though.
My ex bf was my abuser and rapist. Therefore, it is less rape if you're raped multiple times by the same 'monster' only because you knew him? Just because you stand everything because you know he's armed to the teeth and he could kill you? I couldn't leave until I had the financial means to disappear, change name, address and life.

Sorry but a rape is a rape, yes. Not just the one perpetrated by strangers in dark alleys.

Rape is seen as more serious and traumatic precisely because of narratives around the importance of penises in defining the meaning of sex.

A woman posting on a survivors' forum was gang-raped by her husband's 'mates' with a knife. Wasn't that rape because it didn't involve a penis? Your logic escapes me a bit here......