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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

<Trigger warning> Are sex attacks attacks on the sex or the gender

42 replies

NoTechnologicalBreakdown · 26/07/2015 20:28

Some people kindly said that this may be interesting, so I think I have to start it now. I apologise right now if it upsets anyone. It is inspired by the transgender debates over sex/ gender though I'm not specifically thinking of transgender.

The most obvious immediate answer to the question seems to be that it is the sex being attacked, because it doesn't matter what you are wearing or how the victim identifies, but does further reflection not suggest that it is actually gender? It certainly doesn't matter what gender identity is going on in the mind of the victim, and how they are expressing that, what matters is what is going on in the deranged mind of the attacker - I want to emphasise that. Whatever it is that is being expressed through (intimate) violence is the issue. And sex attacks and harassment occur because the attacker is utterly contemptuous of a whole group: because of a power differential, the idea that male gender is superior to the female. Isn't that a gender construction?

I am thinking that if it is the gender that is being attacked, then the gender divide is an important contribution and needs to be minimised. If not, it's less important for this issue.

Hard hat on. This could get messy, I'd appreciate it if we can minimse the vitriol.

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LurcioAgain · 27/07/2015 13:05

I think that there is a role gender-as-social-construct plays, Lass, though you're right it's not as simple as "society moulds them into sex attackers." It's more that gender-as-social-construct provides a certain type of man with a set of off-the-shelf excuses for his behaviour, excuses which society at large buy into far too readily (at its most pernicious in the form of the attitudes of people prosecuting rapes, or failing to prosecute them, and judges and juries).

If you look, for example, at the work of David Lisak (American psychologist who studies date rape), something round 6% of men on American campuses will admit to behaviours which meet the legal definition of rape. That's a lot of men. And these are (presumably) the demographic who are fairly privileged in terms of income, educational opportunities and job prospects. (Relevant for reasons I hope I can make apparent). They hide behind what Solid Gold Brass calls the good-guy-rapist persona. The idea being that what they think what they do isn't rape, it's just fairly insistent seduction, or being a jack the lad who takes the golden opportunity a woman's drunkness provides, or (insert other self-serving excuse here). And I think gender stereotypes do play into this.

Rember gender-as-social-construct isn't an exhaustive, internally consistent set of rules. It's a loose set of overlapping social norms, some of which actually contradict each other (the Daily Mail is a great example of this in action - they can villify benefit scrounging mums on one page and working mothers on the facing page without worrying at all about this!) And it's about far more than simply dress, or makeup, or shaving or... It's about "appropriate roles" in the sense of jobs, and "appropriate spaces" (working mens' clubs, pubs, dark alleys, car repair shops etc... all those places where traditionally a woman entering them would often find herself feeling very uncomfortable in). And about sexual double standards in behaviour (one example - the film Better than Sex has a flag on the IMDB site for "female promiscuity" - despite the fact that in the film the male protagonist has actually had more sexual partners).

So when someone says "gender-as-social construct" plays a role in contributing to a rape culture, they don't mean "women with shaved legs are more likely to be raped", or that "bringing boys up to play with guns and be inarticulate about their feelings turns them into rapists". That would indeed be ridiculous. But at the same time, I'd argue that some of the gender norms society constructs around appropriate female behaviour (nice girls don't ... have sex, get drunk, whatever, and girls who aren't nice are fair game and have brought it on themselves) do contribute in a very real sense to the set of beliefs that enable the "good-guy-rapist" to continue in his behaviour patterns (and Lisak also notes that these are not one-off offenders, these are serial, repeat offenders, with an average of 7 offences to their names).

And, I think more importantly (because I don't suppose these men would stop if you could somehow make it clear to them what they were doing, they'd just find an alternative set of justifications), they play into society's expectations about what's right in the way of responses to victims, how likely convictions are to be obtained.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 27/07/2015 13:16

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almondcakes · 27/07/2015 13:27

I agree with Buffy that the words sex and gender don't currently have an agreed meaning.

One of the meanings of 'gender' is the social relationship between males and females. In that sense rape isn't attacking gender; it is enforcing gender: male as dominant, female as passive/victim. In the same sense much slavery isn't an attack on race; it is enforcing race.

If we are talking about what element of the victim as a person the perpetrator has in mind as a hideous justification or focus for their crime, I'm not sure how we would separate sex from gender. In genocidal rape and in forced marriage, one of the main purposes of the rape is to impregnate the victim, so although the social concept of those crimes relies on ideas about gender, they can only be applied to female bodies if pregnancy is the aim.

But femininity is still a target even in the absence of a female body, or rape wouldn't be a common form of gay bashing (of men).

vesuvia · 27/07/2015 14:58

LurcioAgain wrote - "If you look, for example, at the work of David Lisak (American psychologist who studies date rape), something round 6% of men on American campuses will admit to behaviours which meet the legal definition of rape. That's a lot of men."

In terms of numbers of men, if Lisak's survey can be extrapolated to the entire population of about 9 million male students in American colleges and universities, 6% of that would be about 540,000 male students, who will admit to rape behaviour (when survey questions deliberately avoid the word rape). That is, indeed, a lot of men.

LurcioAgain · 27/07/2015 15:03

I can really recommend looking at Lisak's stuff, Vesuvia. It is fascinating (and hugely depressing). He's also done surveys where he repeats the questionnaires only this time with the word "rape" in there, and almost as large a percentage will admit to actually committing rape - they know exactly what they're doing but they don't care (an important fact to remember next time you encounter a rape apologist going "oh, but date rape accusations are really a misunderstanding over regretted sex...")

InnocentWhenYouDream · 27/07/2015 15:04

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StormyBrid · 27/07/2015 16:57

Rape as a form of gay bashing - it's not the femininity that's the "problem"* there, it's the lack of adequate perceived masculinity.
*Not the right word but I can't think straight right now.

Will be back later to waffle on a bit more when I don't have a) sudden grief and b) a fractious toddler to deal with.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 27/07/2015 17:04

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StormyBrid · 27/07/2015 18:16

Yes, just found out an old friend has died. Bit of a shock. We weren't close in recent years, in part because hanging around FWR made me Hmm at some aspects of his character. Which oddly enough are relevant to my earlier comment about society turning people into sex attackers (not that he was one, to my knowledge). I'll expand on that when I've got a couple of pints of tea down me, just need to gather my thoughts a bit.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 27/07/2015 18:47

Just wanted to say that gender (femininity) is presented in many different ways around the world, and has also differed enormously through history. And in all of those prevailing norms, modes of dress, behaviour and so forth, there have been men sexually assaulting and raping women. The common denominator is the biological sex, rather than any particular gender traits.

I really don't think that gender display (is that a word?) is the motivating factor here. The motivating factors are sexual preference of the offender (some prefer men, some female children, some elderly women etc) and opportunity.

I think.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 27/07/2015 18:49

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, stormy.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 27/07/2015 20:08

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NoTechnologicalBreakdown · 27/07/2015 20:16

Flowers Stormy it's always a shock when someone you know dies, however far you've drifted apart in the present.

It occurred to me to wonder about empirical rape figures in more socially equal countries, but I wouldn't know how to identify the second and find the first.

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WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 27/07/2015 21:55

Whole lot of trouble with that in all countries around reporting levels / whether those reported get recorded etc. And also different definitions of rape, some countries "sex you don't want" some countries "sex you don't want and put up a fight" some countries "sex you don't want and you're extraordinarily injured". Marital rape is legal in some countries I think (?) and only illegal on paper in many.

You could look at areas where rape rates are unarguably very high (eg DRC, South Africa) and see what the contributing factors are - studies have been done on that I'm sure.

It's a bit of a minefield really.

Beachcomber · 28/07/2015 08:33

Gender is a hierarchy. It is a social construct which categorizes human females as inferior to and of lower status than human males. We call these categories "women" and "men".

Rape reinforces gender and it is a result of gender. Same goes for rape culture, pornography and prostitution.

Rape is an attack on a woman or abuse of a woman or girl because she is female. Gender is also an attack on women because we are females. Gender is like a yellow star that girls and women cannot remove and it is societal violence against girls and women and it encourages societal violence against girls and women. Gender is used as a justification for violence against girls and women and it is used to normalize and invisibleize that violence.

What gender most certainly is not (in feminism) is an individual identity. Nobody chooses their gender - all an individual can do is be non compliant but only in very limited ways to do with how one presents oneself to society.

FloraFox · 28/07/2015 10:41

ITA with Beachcomber.

NoTechnologicalBreakdown · 28/07/2015 20:09

Wow. There's been some very intelligent comments on here and you've all given me lots to think about at leisure. A simple summary of the answer might be 'it's complicated' Smile, with components of both... thank you all very much!

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