No man admits to rape Caitlin Moran in The Times

[IcakethereforeIam]

Depressing but thought provoking. It's an archive link. I think there have been interviews with admitted rapists but there is a massive gap. It's great and laudable to want to improve conviction rates and better support victims but prevention is better than cure. The problem is most rapists go unpunished and I can't see a #yeahme getting much engagement, except perhaps as a wank bank.

https://archive.ph/Vp9og

Like a pp, the man who raped me told me, immediately afterwards, that it wasn't rape, and then continued to tell himself that until he had convinced himself and gaslit me. He did it again and did the same thing again, only that time it only convinced one of us. He still believes to this day that he is 'one of the good guys'.

It's true

I posted a thread a week or so ago with some training I'd done and most men fit the "compensatory " rapist where they justify they behaviour to themselves and never see themselves as a rapist .

I also experienced this on a date a few years ago. I'd agreed to sex (I was a bit off the rails due to a heartbreak and I think I was trying to get over it by getting under others as it were )
This man , whose name I can't even remember, went from consensual vaginal intercourse to attempting anal without so much as a word . It was a wake up call . I was shocked and didnt know what to do . He carried on like nothing had happened.

Now I realise it was not a mistake , it was rape . Would he ever seem himself as a rapist ? No. He must have carried on dating . I think that's most men .

In fact I wonder if she read my thread .

She is not terribly well versed in feminist thought, when she says some feminists think all men are rapists. I expect that bit of feminist slagging off is in there to appease anti feminist readers.

It is far closer to the truth, to say too many men think all men are rapists. In the sense that that they think all men behave like they do and their coercive behaviour is normal.
The reasoning goes: I am a good guy. I ‘persuade’ my girlfriend to have sex with me. Rapists are bad guys. Therefore me ‘persuading’ my girlfriend to have sex with me is not rape. Persuading is not rape, because it is normal and all men do it.

This reasoning is applied regardless of what the ‘persuasion’ involves.

Yes, this bit:

While the most angry — for which read “scared” — feminists insist “all men are rapists”"

Is a misreading of Brownmiller. Or it's a purposeful throwing of feminists under the bus.

Yes, exactly this. And society colludes with them - pressurising a woman into to sex is 'seducing her', 'trying it on' 'being a bit of a lad' etc. Anything other than sexual assault.

I'm so sorry to hear about your experience, @bemorebernard . The same has happened to a number of women I know. I would guess it's the commonest form of rape, but almost never reported because women know that the police and judicial system would dismiss it, because they had consented to vaginal sex.

Yes, there is a commonly held belief, perpetuated by books, film etc, that when a woman says 'no' she actually means 'yes but I can't say yes so you have to make me'

Or that ‘no’ means ‘keep pestering’.

I think that was a huge factor in the past, but, these days, porn telling men that women are constantly up for it is probably a bigger problem.

TBH though, I think the main issue is more fundamental. A lot of men believe that sex is what women are for. So having sex with a woman is never really that wrong, whether she wants it or not.

I saw them do a TED talk and it was all, everything is OK now, he admitted it, I was screaming at the screen (watching on YouTube) "You need to go to the police, hand yourself in"

Totally this.

Then your own father suggests to him that he get a lawyer 'to protect himself'.

That's the reality of men's understanding of rape.

I think the problem with porn is much bigger than that. I think the problem with the violent, misogynistic porn is that men are being wired to be sexually aroused at women’s distress. I was sent a link to a thread on Reddit ‘ what do you do when your girlfriend is crying and you get a boner?’ I was so appalled I commented on this in an online women’s group. And young woman, after young woman posted to say ‘ yup, I’ve experienced this’

So where does that leave us to go? We can’t get men to see rape is wrong by encouraging empathy with the trauma it causes women, because they become sexually aroused when we talk about that trauma.

I see your NAMALT and raise you AAMAABLT. Almost all men are a bit like this.

I avoid arrogant men in all scenarios. Where I see entitlement, in any sphere or circumstance, I assume a tendency to rape. Thank god I’m past the dating stage or I’d never meet anyone.

Caitlin Moran no longer has anything interesting to write about, her opinion of herself is too high, and she is lazy. I think I agree with @MissLucyEyelesbarrow that her lack of formal education is showing. She has coasted along on their natural talent - and to be fair, she had plenty - but she has shallow, almost entirely personal, takes on serious issues, and she doesn’t seem to know what she doesn’t know.

Her take on angry/afraid feminists is pretty offensive. I remember when I first started reading feminist writers when I was about 19 and how hard and shocking it was but that understanding of feminism and the relationship between men and women as classes has informed my whole life. It doesn’t make me a paranoid man-hater as it happens, but I’d rather be that than a fool who’d stake anything at all on none of the men I know being capable of rape.

The nice, good ones, the one who say the right things, express the right sentiments can too. The ones who’ve realised they can gain trust, and therefore access, by being the good guy.

There’s no fail safe way to spot men who rape. Some are just better deceivers, actors and manipulators than others.

And some are just opportunistic.

I guess so, Wheresmypal, I just see so many men quietly waving red flags no one else seems to care about. The needy ones, the confident ones, the spoilt ones.

I must say, I’m probably completely unreasonable. I just have no time for these people anymore. It ties in with my refusal to do emotional labour for other people these days.

I’m not even sure it is about men being opportunistic or whatever.

The real problem is that the cultural sense of men’s entitlement to women’s bodies is utterly endemic and ingrained in society that men’s problematic behaviours and attitudes only register as ‘hysterical women being difficult’ or ‘nasty man hating’.

Culturally we have no properly considered that vague platitudes about women’s bodily autonomy simply do not translate into expectations for men’s behaviour. The sense that men are entitled to sex as a default is strong.

About 1/4 of women have been raped or sexually assaulted. But probably close to 100% of women have likely experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact and been gaslit into feeling that they can’t complain about it/it was somehow not unwanted/they were somehow complicit because they acquiesced.

The social response to that is, sadly, to present men as the poor victims. They can’t possibly get it right with all these nasty women who are making a fuss about nothing and demonising them.

As @pickledandpuzzled says AMAABLT.

Great article. I can't believe within 2 pages people are slagging her off for writing this.

Having been on numerous threads here where I get told I'm angry/a man hater and causing the problem by putting men off talking to feminists, I completely agree with her sentence about angry/afraid. Write as a feminist about avoiding men and you get called angry. Whereas the reality is I am wary of men, and there's no way to tell who is a rapist and who isn't.

Similarly her sentence about none of the men in her life - you have no idea how much she's had to soften her language and pander to men to get them to run the article.

bernard I thought she must have read the "mostly men" thread in AIBU!

Oddly, when I read that sentence of Caitlin's, I thought she must have committed this sort of typo. It does jar.

Well, she's getting slagged as that sentence undermines the entire article. Which is about there being an awful lot more rapists that we would like to acknowledge, and you can't tell who they are, except you can because its none of the men you know and like, but when men think rapists are bogey men over there somewhere that's a bad thing, but obviously when we women think it, because all the men we know are nice and Not LIke That, we are right.

Softening her language and pandering to men to get her article printed makes her a traitor and a sellout in my book. I stand by my original that she's a coward.

The real problem is that the cultural sense of men’s entitlement to women’s bodies is utterly endemic and ingrained in society....Culturally we have no properly considered that vague platitudes about women’s bodily autonomy simply do not translate into expectations for men’s behaviour

You are right. I agree with this.

Lots more men are rapists than you think, and you can't tell by looking, apart from every man I know personally is quite the take. That's why she is getting slagged off.

Perhaps that's the answer. Before anyone starts a relationship of any sort with a new man, one of the first questions should be, 'do you know Caitlin Moran?'