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| I’m walkin’ here! |
Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society has broken past the limits of mere logic, arguing that the fact that a small number of guys at a couple of events have put on women’s clothing to raise money for women’s causes means that rape culture doesn’t exist. That seems to be the main message of a post of his today with the baffling title “Boys in bras, boys in heels, boys in pink — all to raise money for women’s causes: Is this the ‘rape culture’ we hear so much about?”
Harlan, posting as “Archivist,” complains about several recent campus events, in which college guys have literally put on heels (to raise money and awareness about sexual assault) and bras (to raise money for breast cancer research). Harlan isn’t thrilled about the causes themselves: he has sneeringly derided sexual assault awareness as “a supposedly good cause” and, while acknowledging that breast cancer research is theoretically a good thing, he’s evidently tired of hearing about it.
But he seems even more hot and bothered about the cross-dressing by guys he calls “chivalrous clowns,” describing the bra-wearing as “creepy” and deriding the guys “prancing around in high heels.” Apparently, as Harlan sees it, these fellows are just doing it to impress the chicks:
young men will do pretty much anything to help, to curry favor with, and to be admired by young women.
It is heinous to suggest that attitudes of sexual aggression and dominance over women are normalized, rationalized, and excused by the alleged beneficiaries of “patriarchy” in our culture. In point of fact, the foolish young buffoons in heels and bras are far more representative of young masculinity in our culture than is the young rapist.
There’s not a lot of logic in this, er, argument, but in an earlier posting Harlan elaborates on the distaste he feels towards the “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” event, which was held at the University of Montana (clearly a hotbed of radical feminism).
It would be downright shocking if this or similar events ever prevented a single sexual assault from occurring because: (1) prancing around in high heels and similar useless stunts has nothing to do with preventing sexual assault; and (2) the vast majority of young men who strutted their stuff and who participate in such events are highly unlikely to ever rape a woman. …
If we want to curb sexual assault, we need to teach our young people the truth, but the truth doesn’t jibe with the current rape meta-narrative that holds only one gender responsible for stopping it. …
Young people generally do not understand that women experience much greater after-the-fact regret than men do. Sometimes feelings of regret are translated into feelings of “being used,” and sometimes feelings of “being used” are misinterpreted or purposefully misconstrued as “rape.”
Asking the police, a judge, or a jury to sort out what happened in an alcohol-fueled tryst based on a “he said/she said” account puts an impossible burden on our law enforcement and judicial apparatuses. …
There is no “rape culture”; there is no “rape continuum.” Rape is committed by social deviants, not the nice boy next door. It is almost a certainty that none of the charming young buffoons who strutted around in women’s heels yesterday will ever rape a woman. …
The sad, politically incorrect fact of the matter is that young women have far more power to stop rape than innocent young men by not putting themselves in situations where rape is more likely to occur.
There’s a lot of bullshit condensed into these short paragraphs. There’s victim-blaming, of course: do we regularly attack murder victims for “putting themselves in situations where murder is likely to occur?” There’s his weird complaint that actually investigating and prosecuting date rape puts an “impossible burden” on police and the judicial system: should we simply stop enforcing laws against all crimes that are hard to investigate or prosecute? And there’s his unwillingness to accept the simple fact that rapists all too often do look exactly like the “nice boy next door.” As for his complaint that these events target the wrong people, see here for an argument as to why it makes sense to raise awareness specifically amongst those men who are NOT likely to rape women.
In the past a few MRAs have asked me why I put the False Rape Society blog in my “boob roll” — and formerly in my “enemies list.” This is why. Spreading blatant misinformation and blaming victims: these are not exactly good ways to actually reduce the number of men falsely accused of rape.
And here’s another thought for the MRAs reading this, Harlan included: if you are truly as concerned about testicular or prostate cancer — or any other male malady — as you so often and so loudly claim to be, take a few moments away from your constant complaining about feminism and/or women, and actually hold a fund raiser yourselves. In a comment on his latest post, Harlan writes: “My problem is this: how about an event to raise funds for male suicide, etc. once in a while?” You know how events like these happen? PEOPLE ORGANIZE THEM. There is nothing stopping MRAs from organizing such an event on their own. How about it, guys?
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>Amused: well done.
>It is just an attempt to redefine rape/sexual assault not in terms of consent, but rather in terms of the perceived social worthiness of the victim.This is what I was ineptly trying to get at. Thanks for setting me straight.
> Hmm… I've gotten into pretty heated arguments with boyfriends, I've been dumped out of the blue and I've been summarily ignored. But you know, I have never once been even remotely tempted to accuse the men in question of something they didn't do, much less rape. I've certainly cried and called them names and wished ill fortune on them – but I've never once been tempted to file a false police report about anyone.Hey isn't this the "I am the world" argument? Elizabeth, you commented after that so you obviously saw it, why didn't you harp on her for using it? You had no problem falsely accusing me of using it, but when a feminist genuinely uses it you stay silent? What's up with that?
> A query for those who wish to respond: A man and a woman are having consensual intercourse. In the middle of the act, one partner (it doesn't matter who) asks the other partner to stop. The other partner refuses to stop, and continues until finished. Has rape occurred?This actually happened to me so I am quite curious to know.Many years ago before I had my vasectomy I was in bed with my girlfriend and she mounted herself on me with no condom. I didn't object to it at first but as I got close to orgasm it occurred to me that I really didn't want to be a father and so I told her to get off. She just smirked at me and refused to do so, even as I tried to lift her off. The end result was that she got my semen inside her against my will, but luckily she didn't get pregnant. Am I a rape victim?
>She just smirked at me and refused to do so, even as I tried to lift her off. The end result was that she got my semen inside her against my will, but luckily she didn't get pregnant. Am I a rape victim?Two considerations:1) When you asked her to stop, she absolutely, unconditionally should have stopped.2) Whether or not you were raped basically depends on how you feel about it. If you felt raped I would support you in that.While number 2 may seem capricious and arbitrary, number 1 makes it entirely appropriate. If your girlfriend didn't want to risk a rape charge she should have stopped when you told her to.
>Let me guess, you think the police would actually have taken such a charge seriously if I pressed it?
>Not necessarily, but I think the average man is likelier to simply not report the crime out of shame than he is to be rebuffed by the police if he does choose to report it.
>Oh, and what makes you think that? Can you even point to a single case in which a woman was prosecuted(not necessarily convicted, just prosecuted) for raping a man? Note that by "man" I mean a male of at least 18 years of age.
>I think that the police may very well have not taken you seriously. That doesn't mean that I don't think you were sexually assaulted. You were sexually assaulted. In my experience, and this is pure "anec-data," most people who have a partner refuse to stop during what was a previously consensual sexual encounter don't go to the police. Doesn't mean they weren't sexually assaulted.
>I read a case where a woman was prosecuted for raping a man. She tied him up and raped him.The scenario you described above is rape. Scenarios like that are often not prosecuted, however.
>Capt. Bath:I don't know the answer legally.I do know that I want to be the kind of person, and have sex with the kind of people, who would be more worried about their partner's discomfort than their orgasm. I also know, if I was having sex with someone and asked them to stop and they refused, we would most likely not have sex again.
>Google provides me with:http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1027927.ece
>@ Captain BathrobeYes. Full stop. The partner that wished to stop may choose not to report it to the authorities, given our toxic culture and attitudes about consent, but that was rape. Honestly, I don't even want to imagine the kind of person who would hear their partner say, "no, stop," and continue anyway. (Aside from consenting adults engaged in kinky things with a safe word or signal, good for them.) The only people I've had sex with have cared about my pleasure as well as their own. I am fortunate.
>Per Arizona state law: A. A person commits sexual assault by intentionally or knowingly engaging in sexual intercourse or oral sexual contact with any person without consent of such person.—–Most American states have signed on with the Model Penal Code, I cannot imagine your state is any different Cold and if you said stop, she should have stopped. Failure to do so sounds like the quoted law and therefore she should/could have been charged with committing sexual assault (and probably unlawful kidnapping because you were unable to get away from her.)Whether or not the charges resulted in a conviction is another story but no means no-even for us ladies.
>Honestly, I don't even want to imagine the kind of person who would hear their partner say, "no, stop," and continue anyway.It's a monstrous attitude, but it's not uncommon. Glenn Beck has some vile tripe about "don't wake the dragon" in his novel The Overton Window.Many misogynists, and I've seen Roosh for example display this kind of attitude, talk like male sexuality is some unstoppable force, and if you get a man going, you have no right to say no because you can't expect him to be able to stop. Evilwhitemaleempire's car analogy up above betrays this attitude, I think. This is a lie to excuse rape, obviously.For those of us who have sex with women for mutual enjoyment, rather than to dominate the fuck out of them, being asked to stop mid-sex is not some impossible request. There might be any number of reasons a woman is asking me to stop. There could be some sudden pain, or any number of other things. If you can't even be arsed to stop and find out why she's saying stop, yeah, you're a rapist asshole.
>Cold: It sounds like you were sexually assaulted. I am sorry that happened to you.
>Glenn Beck has some vile tripe about "don't wake the dragon" in his novel The Overton Window.Many misogynists, and I've seen Roosh for example display this kind of attitude, talk like male sexuality is some unstoppable force, and if you get a man going, you have no right to say no because you can't expect him to be able to stop. Evilwhitemaleempire's car analogy up above betrays this attitude, I think. This is a lie to excuse rape, obviously.It's this type of attitude, the intention to shame and blame the victim and absolve the perpetrator, that quite possibly aids in hindering adult female-on-adult male rape (or sexual assault) from being taken seriously.
>FWIW, I agree that it would, or should, constitute rape. Whether it would prosecutable as such is another question.
>@Elizabeth, no state has actually fully or verbatim adopted the model penal code section on rape (article 213 of the model penal code). Some states adopt more of the model penal code in general than others, but on certain subjects, the average state laws are vastly different from the model penal code (attempt liability is one good example). That said, the model penal code has really, really fucked up rape and sexual assault definitions (see Model Penal Code Article 213 "Sexual Offenses). Only males can rape (though sexual assualt and "deviate sexual intercourse by force or imposition" can have female perps), but spousal rape is exempted and evidence of the victim's past promiscuity is allowed as a defense when the victim is a minor in statutory rape cases (referred to as "corruption of minors and seduction" section 213.3). So, the model penal code is actually rather shitty here.@ Captain Bathrobe and Cold, yes, that situation as described is rape. Maybe not under every legal code, but ethically it is rape and it should criminally be rape as well. On purely legal grounds: If you look at the US (sorry to be US centric, but law is specific to country and that is my area), some states define rape as by definition to be penetration of anus or vagina of the victim with a penis, so under those definitions, only people with penises can be rape pepetrators. Non-penetrative rapes or rapes with female pepetrators are classified as sexual assaults in those jurisdictions and may or may not have the same punishment. Some states do not define rape this way. At least one state supreme court has affirmitively stated that females can rape male victims and that all rape statutes apply accross gender (Commonwealth v. Hitchcock, 523 Pa. 248, 251, 565 A.2d 1159, 1161 (1989))Okay, so I am a 1L and have a copy of the Model Penal Code on hand and access to Westlaw (West's online database)…
>Let me guess, you think the police would actually have taken such a charge seriously if I pressed it? 1. Unfortunately, no, they probably would not have taken it seriously.2. That failure to take your sexual assault seriously would not be the fault of feminism, but rather of traditional values about male sexuality. If anything, feminism has made it more, not less, likely that such a charge would be taken seriously–which is not to say that we don't have a long way to go here.
>Glenn Beck has some vile tripe Vile tripe from Glenn Beck? No way.
>This is a lie to excuse rape, obviously.Break out the tin-foil hats, those evil pick-up artists are plotting ways to excuse strangling a woman while they forcibly penetrate her, obviously. Never mind the fact that even male criminals look down on rapists and accusations of rape have been used to justify lynchings as far back as the antebellum period.Feminists know jack shit about the heterosexual male opinion. Only a very, very small minority of men would not ruthlessly assault a man who was convicted of rape – take a look at how rapists are treated in prison. They often receive treatment many times worse than what they subjected on their victim, assuming it was not a Duke Lacrosse-type trial with overzealous feminist harpies screeching from the sidelines.
>DSC-lucky! I only get access to AZ's and the 9th circuit appellate cases on Westlaw and have to look up federal cases outside the 9th circuit on Justia/OpenJurist. And I have never seen the model penal code in its entirety so I stand corrected and am shocked! Shocked! I tells you that Arizona actually has a better than average view of sexual assault.
>Not really-we were one of the few states that made spousal rape a serious offense.
>@ColdThat sounds like rape to me. Your girlfriend should have stopped the moment you asked her to stop. As for whether the police would even take it seriously, it's a matter of chance. Honestly, we can't guarantee that they'll take any rape victims seriously, male or female. I'd hope they would listen, FWIW from this feminist.