"Teaching men not to rape"

[Opshinz]

I been noticing more and more people spitting rhetoric like this. I love freedom of speech and surely they should be allowed to say this, but.. rather then describe my feelings perhaps I can give an example.

Imagine I was giving a lecture and said "We really need to teach women to stop killing children", or "We really need to teach black people not to eat so much fried chicken".

Anyone have any thoughts?

Well, the point was raised on here, so I assumed it was worth discussing. It is an inflammatory statement, and has only one purpose. It is designed to provoke argument, not discussion. So, in the words of Vic and Bob, I'll let it lie.

"For every transgressive joke you've heard laughed at, there's the quiet moment where one guy round the pub table mutters 'rapists should get their throats cut' and you can hear the low animal growl of assent and feel the animalistic surge of rage"

Bloody hell- I'd much rather those men spoke up rationally and coherently- animal growls and surges of rage aren't helpful........

Yes, I will listen out for these growls and surges....and then run a mile!

Artetas - Criminologist David Lisak (wiki article, but the references to his work are all in there) has done a lot of work on this. His estimate is that something like 1 in 16 men on US campuses will admit to behaviour which meets the legal definition of rape. So yes, it is overwhelmingly likely that many of us, in our day-to-day interactions with other people, will have met rapists and not realised that that is what they are.

I've only really heard it said as a counter to the emphasis on making not getting raped the woman's responsibility.

Atretas statistically research has shown that it is pretty much certain that every person knows at least one man who has raped/ committed sexual assault. Have you ever been touched in a way you didn't want?

Have you ever been touched in a way you didn't want?

I do struggle to compare male-to-female and female-to-male sexual abuse. I think there is a distinction between the two, but I'm not sure why. Could be society teaching me that I suppose? I'll try to explain.

When I was around 12/13 my first job was working in Woolworths (yep, I'm oldish). I was a schoolboy so it was weekend/evening work. I would regularly get touched up by old ladies. We're talking pnesioners here. Now, I found it creepy, weird and offensive. Yet I never felt particularly threatened per se. Switch the genders and I can see how it would be viewed far worse. Maybe it was the physical size difference, not sure?

In another job, I worked as a waiter in a University canteen. I got on well with all the other workers there, primarily female (a range of ages). I must've been 16 at the time. On my last shift there as a "treat" I was held down in the klitchen and stripped to the waist before being rubbed down with cooking oil. It was accutely embarassing, but nothing more than that really, yet once again, switch the genders and you're into a whole different world of abuse.

Not really asking any questions, just stream of consciousness type thinking I suppose.

Disclaimer: I very rarely post on these topics and may well not know what I am talking about

Keepithidden I think the difference is not in the gender direction (male-to-female vs female-to-male) but in the way the incident is perceived, which can vary from person to person regardless of gender. The incident you describe in your canteen job I would categorise as an assault. It may not have bothered you enough to decide that action was necessary, but had you been a different person who found that incident humiliating and violating (whether male or female), you would have been completely in your rights to report those people.

Just because some people are able to brush off an incident and find it didn't affect them, does not mean that the actions inflicted on them were wrong. However, the problem lies with many people wrongly believing that everyone should be able to brush off an act that they might view as not serious, or meant light-heartedly - in other words the whole "but I was just mucking around, I thought they'd be up for it" mentality. This is why I believe strongly that the high-profile celebrity sexual assault cases recently are so important, even if ultimately they are unable to lead to a conviction, because they (I hope) are playing a part in changing the message to society that it is unacceptable to grope a woman's tits or stick your hand up her skirt, or indeed strip down a young lad and forcibly rub him with cooking oil.

Thanks Buffy, I didn't feel frightened but probably agree with the other emotions. It was a long time ago, I was young etc. so if I had raised them at the time (even had I wanted to) I suspect ranks would've closed and the usual excuses trotted out. I doubt whether safeguarding legislation was in place back then anyway.

Fluffy - I agree with all you say. I'm gender stereotyping rather than viewing them as an individual (sorry slipped into third person there!), it's an easy trap to fall in to.

Just re-read my post. Should have been "does not mean that the actions inflicted on them were not wrong".

It's about teaching men that women are not objects. Even men who don't rape many, many have groped women in clubs, harassed them in the street, use women in the sex industry, it's all about an attitude where men see women as objects and have an entitlement to their bodies. That's what we need to challenge, it's a scale that goes from everyday sexism to acts of sexual violence.

I think KeepitHidden makes a good point about how female to male sexual abuse is treated differently than male to female. Just think of the 'Mrs Robinson' effect, a young man/boy and an older woman is thought of as a 'lucky boy' situation whereas the reverse is more accepted as abuse (if not yet fully accepted by society as abuse).

I'm sure most of us know someone who has raped. As a student I had a male flatmate tell me the story of some of his friends in a student society. One of them persuaded a girl back to his room and they started having sex. But all his friends were hidden in the room and all jumped out and then timed how long he could 'stay on the bucking bronco'. My flatmate thought this was hilarious and was really shocked when his female flatmates told him that was rape. I found it incredible that he and his friends thought that was acceptable behaviour and shows how young men don't understand where the boundaries are. I never heard a similar story from anyone else but it did make me wonder how common that attitude it.

Forgive me, but at least in the privacy of my own mind rape exists alongside assault, battery, robbery or in fact any crime that exists that causes harm or loss to another human being.

I simply cannot fathom why we even have to frame this discussion as a woman's issue. Any crime that results in harm or injury to just one person is also a crime against us all irrespective of gender.

The fact when this topic comes up we repeatedly boil it down to the same old tired gender divisions betrays the fact we don't even consider women worthy of personhood. Which is fundamental to the reasons why rape even happens in the first place.

If someone walks down the street and is beaten up, we don't argue that they shouldn't have walked down a different street or pontificate about wether they are wearing the wrong thing we take it seriously because it's wrong. We don't lament the loss of the perpetrators good name, we rightly blame and censure them.

Rape is a violent crime and should be treated the same as any other. The current collective view is not one held by purely men. I know of at least one female police officer who works in this area who holds the view a lot of rape allegations are fabrications, and a some of the reaction to that rape in the US over the boys who did having their lives ruined over it came from mothers.

We need a fundamental shift across all of society to view rape as what it essentially is: a violent crime that should never be tolerated.

I simply cannot fathom why we even have to frame this discussion as a woman's issue. Any crime that results in harm or injury to just one person is also a crime against us all irrespective of gender.

Rape is a violent crime and should be treated the same as any other.

Agreed, Dervel. But who do you think is keen to continually make this distinction? Rape as a cornerstone of the violence against women/patriarchal conspiracy is fundamental to feminism.

If someone walks down the street and is beaten up, we don't argue that they shouldn't have walked down a different street or pontificate about wether they are wearing the wrong thing we take it seriously because it's wrong.

No? I have come across situations where people were victims of various crimes and were subsequently judged harshly for not exercising an appropriate level of pre-judgement and action, including three in which victims were beaten up (two hospitalised and one of them near killed).

We don't lament the loss of the perpetrators good name, we rightly blame and censure them.

No good name lamenting over crimes of violence, theft, fraud, drug use and gun running? 'He was a nice lad, good family, its such a shame he went wrong'? Seems common enough to be cliché to me.

I cannot bring to mind occasions where victims of serious assault, or even murder are ever considered to have brought it on themselves. Oh wait there are occasions where a woman is described as being gobby, as justification for being assaulted.

And in response to a criminal used to being a good lad and it's a shame he went wrong is a world away from its a shame this rape victim is prosecuting and ruining these boys futures. In fact the default position is to scape goat the whole of the blame onto the victim is she is so much as a little tipsy or dating to show a bit of skin. Her reputation is ruined by default.

Daring not dating

The case of Tony Martin is the only one I can think of where certain sections of the media considered the actions of the murder victims to be "have brought it on themselves". Yet even that sparked a massive public debate and the Judiciary eventually disagreed anyway.

Blaming sexual assault and rape on women is an order of magnitude more commonplace from my limited viewing of media and society.