Apparently worried that the world might forget what a thoroughly reprehensible human being he is, fantasy author and freelance bigot Vox Day (Theodore Beale) has decided to bring up the issue of marital rape again – in order to assert, as he has many times in the past, that marital rape doesn’t actually exist.
In a post yesterday on his blog Vox Populi, Beale notes with obvious pleasure that an Indian judge recently ruled that marital sex, “even if forcible, is not rape,” thus upholding a section of the Indian Penal Code that refuses to acknowledge marital rape as rape.
Beale crows:
Some of my dimmer critics have attempted to make a meal out of my factual statement: a man cannot rape his wife. But that is not only a fact, it is the explicit law in the greater part of the world, just as it is part of the English Common Law. …
The fact that some of the lawless governments in the decadent, demographically dying West presently call some forms of sex between a husband and wife “rape” does not transform marital sex into rape any more than a law that declared all vaginal intercourse to be rape would make it so.
Unfortunately for Beale, simply declaring that the world is on his side on this one does not make it so. It not simply a handful of “ lawless governments in the decadent, demographically dying West” that see marital rape for what it is. The United Nations has recognized marital rape as a human rights violation for more than two decades. And the world is coming around to this point of view.
While (as of 2011) only 52 countries had laws specifically criminalizing marital rape, many others don’t have a “marital rape” exemption to their rape laws, meaning that in more than 100 countries marital rape can be prosecuted. And that number will inevitably grow.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia showing the countries (in red) in which marital rape is illegal. The countries in black allow marital rape. In the other countries, it’s a bit more complicated. (See here for the details.)
But for now, at least, Beale is happy for another chance to explain the toxic “logic” behind his assertion that “marital rape” is impossible.
Anyone with a basic grasp of logic who thinks about the subject of “marital rape” for more than ten seconds will quickly realize that marriage grants consent on an ongoing basis. This has to be the case, otherwise every time one partner wakes the other up in an intimate manner or has sex with an inebriated spouse, rape has been committed.
Now, by Beale’s logic, a husband is entitled to force his wife to have sex over her screaming objections. Since “consent is ongoing,” in Beale’s version of marriage, a woman could say no or even fight back against her husband’s advances, but none of this would count as non-consent because once a woman is married there is no such thing.
But of course Beale doesn’t want to have to defend what is obviously – at least to anyone with any humanity – violent rape. So he tries instead to restrict the debate to the seemingly innocuous practice of “wake-up sex.” After all, what guy doesn’t want to be woken up with a blow job?
But even this example isn’t as persuasive as he thinks it is. Some people like to be woken up in an “intimate manner,” at least some of the time; some don’t, and you don’t get to override their desire not to be sexually manhandled in their sleep just because you’re married to them. And while drunk sex is not necessarily rape, marriage doesn’t give you the right to force sex on a partner who is intoxicated to the point of incapacity.
And for those who wish to argue that consent can be withdrawn, there is a word for withdrawing consent in a marriage. That word is “divorce”.
No, that word is “no.” There is no such thing as ongoing consent to sex. The fact that you are married to someone doesn’t give you the right to have sex with them whenever and wherever you want, whether they want to or not, any more than the fact that someone is a professional boxer gives you the right to punch them in the head any time you feel like it.
The concept of marital rape is not merely an oxymoron, it is an attack on the institution of marriage, on the concept of objective law, and indeed, on the core foundation of human civilization itself.
No, Mr. Beale, you having the right to do whatever you want to with your dick is not the basis of civilization itself. Civilization, in fact, is built in part on the repression of some of our darkest desires. Part of growing up is reconciling ourselves to the sad fact that we can’t just do whatever the hell we want to all the time; Freud described this as putting behind the “pleasure principle” of infancy and early childhood for the “reality principle” that governs the more mature mind.
Beale seems to be driven not only by a desire for instant sexual gratification, whenever and wherever he wants, but also by a certain degree of sexual insecurity. In a previous post on the subject, he wrote:
If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her! It would make no sense whatsoever to marry a woman who believes that being married to her grants her husband no more sexual privilege than the next unemployed musician who happens to catch her eye.
Beale seems to think that if married women are allowed to say no to their husbands, they’ll desert these poor beta schlubs en masse in favor of scruffy alphas with guitars. At the root of all his arguments against the idea of marital rape is an obvious terror of unrestricted female choice.
In a way Beale’s petulant, self-serving defenses of marital rape serve a positive function, in that they help to remind us how abhorrent the practice is and how nonsensical the “arguments” in favor of allowing it really are.
Every time he opens his mouth on the subject, he helps to strengthen the growing consensus against marital rape.
@Toolbox
Amen to that.
I have seen this happening.
There are also a lot of people who are not deliberately covering up to abuse, but did not quite grasp the concept of “consent”, therefore making them potential abusers as well (although the potential varies according to the type of community, IMO)
I have also seen rape myths “translated” to BDSM, things like “(female, obviously) subs will agree to anything, then call it abuse if they get dumped (or they dump their Dom and he finds a new sub)”
I’m seriously thinking of starting conversations about abuse in my usual communities, especially since I’ve been reading Lundy Bancroft. There’s so much vital information there.
I guess it’ll piss off the MRA-ish crowd, but I don’t feel bad about trolling them
(Also, they love to talk about/on behalf of an alleged “silent majority” who allegedly lurks and allegedly agrees with them but is allegedly too shy or scared to speak up. Allegedly).
The only thing I’ve consented to do in perpetuity is serve the furrinati.
Way off topic, but the comments in this article http://gawker.com/judge-grants-mom-an-emergency-order-to-protect-3-year-o-1577491316/all are making me think of the conversation with Mez from the other day. What is it with intactivists never being able to make an argument without being an insulting and creepy? I really wish they’d stop comparing it to FGM and rape and it’s really gross to tell men who are circumcised and OK with it that should feel bad about their penises.
OK. Sorry to bring that up again. It was just really bothering me.
Can somebody tell me how you post a link where you replace the URL with a word in the sentence? It’s really not self evident and I don’t why everyone seems to be able to it and I have no clue 🙁
Thanks to all for the hugs! Even more for the things I learn here.
But I have to admit that it was much more traumatic to realize that I have been guilty of rape myself, as well. If a more relevant thread comes up, I may share that then. My education in these things didn’t even begin until a scant few years ago, beginning with “Schrodinger’s Rapist” (and the entire comment thread) on the old Shapely Prose blog.
Funny how I thought myself a feminist for most of my life, as ignorant as I was.
@Tealily:
“The idea that I, or anyone else, should be required to agree to some edict of perpetual compliance to something as intimate and personal as sexual activity so selfish and sleazy abusers don’t have to face the fact that they are rapists/abusers is absurd.”
THIS.
Yes. It is also brutally inhumane, while allowing the perps to overlook it and/or “officially” justify it, because marriage. This makes marriage understood in such a way the best racket ever for rapists/abusers. It becomes no different from sex slavery, but stamped with an official seal of approval.
“I don’t believe for a minute that anyone is confused over what rape or consent is. What we’re talking about here is people that are so extreme in compartmentalizing their thinking that they want others to agree to their manipulation so they don’t have to feel bad about taking whatever they want from others without abiding by what they want for themselves.”
Yes.
See this from the study I mentioned in my earlier comment:
http://tinyurl.com/oocmmj7
Rapists rarely, if ever, see their rapes for what they are. In those rare instances when they do admit to rape, they do not consider themselves rapists. As Scully writes, “The perspective of these men [admitted perps and deniers] reduced rape to nothing and no one to a rapist.”
And this is what VD champions, because this is what he is: a (ironically self-admitted, yay — kudos for a fleeting glimpse of almost self-reflection) rapist who does not want to come to terms with this truth. Those who support his views are cut from the same cloth.
Luzbelitx,
Good idea. There is a Risk! podcast story told by Mollena Williams that was about a scene involving experienced kinksters that went horribly awry. I cried while I listened to it. It went badly wrong. Mollena tells the story as a warning to others. It’s called “playing” but you better take it seriously. People’s trust and safety is not something to take lightly. When you are pushing boundaries, playing with things like suspension, electricity, etc.
Another potential source of abuse is someone who has never picked up a whip before decides it’s a good idea to hit someone with it. That’s a nopey no, but it happens and people get hurt. They don’t realize that there is a right way and a wrong way to hurt your friends.
It is a little complicated! You type:
(a href=”http://linkgoeshere.com”)your text here(/a)
but instead of normal parens, use the pointy brackets. Also, the quotation marks are important; make sure not to forget them! Hope that all makes sense 🙂
David:
Have you ever seen the Frontline documentaries “Medicating Kids”, and the “Medicated Child”?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17awuw_the-medicated-child-2008_news
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/watch/
Do you have the same criticism of the parents in those documentaries, for revealing the details of theiir childrens’ medical and therapeutic information?
By your criteria, such documentaries should not exist, and no one would know what is going on.
Believe it or not, I do not wish to have any animosity with you, and have been following your blog for over a year. What has happened to me and my daughter is a travesty, and is still ongoing. I don’t know what your position is on that, but it is the simple truth.
@Michelle, oh that common law marriage thing begins to sound complicated now. If you’re “sambo” with someone you also have certain legal rights from that, although they’re not as extensive as if you were actually married. But there’s no particular procedure you have to follow in order not to be “sambo” any longer – you just move apart, and that’s it.
I’ve actually heard the term posselque before, an American friend mentioned it once. I think one problem is that it specifies that the couple must be hetero. I said “maybe I should start using ‘sambo’ when I speak English too, try to introduce the word into English”, and she said that’s probably not a good idea, since Americans associate “sambo” with some racist story about a black man that was called by that name. That surely would be a bit unfortunate.
Perhaps “partner” is as good as it gets in English. 🙂
Fun thing about the Mammoth site that we often have these language discussions. It’s interesting.
Re: html for links –
If you use Firefox, there’s a simpler way to do it. Get the Text Formatting Toolbar add-on and it’ll do these things for you.
The download can be found here.
Oh dear, Gary is back and he doesn’t understand consent in this area, either. Hey, buddy, you know whose personal information isn’t shown in documentaries? Anyone who didn’t consent to have that information revealed.
I bet he understands it just fine – he simply ignores it. I’m not willing to give even that much benefit of the doubt to an AVfMer. I don’t think Hanlon’s razor really applies to them. At best, it’s malicious stupidity – or what someone on RS, I think, called malidiocy.
(Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”)
@Luzbelitx
Indeed. It’ll bring them out of the woodwork, where they can be seen for who they are. It doesn’t create crap where there wasn’t any before; it just brings hidden crap to light, where it can be dealt with.
Not an easy discussion to have, but the only thing worse than talking about it is not talking about it.
@weirwoodtreehugger
<a href=”https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com”>This site</a>
becomes:
This site
And for others who want to demonstrate HTML syntax:
<tag> becomes <tag>
as a mentally ill person who has had parents who are shitty about mental illness… parents revealing medical details w/o their kids consent are horribad. f the parents revealed it in the documentary w/o asking about it, THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH IT
@Lea
Absolutely.
I think pushing boundaries, even if it’s not with potentially dangerous additions, is an intense experience on itself. Also, I belive it’s hard to push physical boundaries without pushing emotinal boundaries as well.
And boundaries change all the time with our moods, our emotions, and the flow of the relationship, so it’s not a matter in which you can write it down to remember the next time: you need to be fully concentrated in what you’re doing, every time, all the time.
Well, this could have been myself if I had fancied being Dom rather than sub.
However, in the largest community here there is a group of people who organize “newbie meetings”, as well as workshops for inexperienced subs and Doms (they also have a radio program and are creating an NGO to raise awareness).
I think it makes the community so much healthier in general, and people who are new or confused are made to feel welcome and I think it neutralizes a few risks regarding that.
@DreamingRainne
So true.
Actually, discussions about street harassment and the use of gender neutral language already uncovered a lot of shitty ideas (and people).
It doesn’t really take a lot for this guys to show their true colors.
@Twincats
(Late) hugs to you if you still need and/or want them <3
I too learned with time that in a lot of occasions I overstepped others’ boundaries.
I specially remember a time I got into a girl’s home without her being convinced at all. I kept insisting, though we didn’t have sex in the end, but damn it was creepy of me.
If it helps, I think it’s not what you know that makes you a feminist, but what you are willing to learn.
Mental illness is still very stigmatized. I don’t think it’s right for a documentary to use a child’s full name if that is the subject. Someone should give informed consent before their psychiatric information is made public and children aren’t capable of giving informed consent.
Gary, It would have been so easy to anonymize your daughter’s information, while still getting the basic story out there. The fact that you didn’t do that shows a truly alarming lack of judgment, and certainly makes me question whether or not you should have any custodial responsibilities/rights at all. You are letting your daughter down. Try thinking of her first, rather than yourself.
And, yeah, seriously, I hate it when people share information about kid’s mental health without their consent, because of the reasons people listed here, but also personally, because it led to my parents talking about my mental health and getting me diagnosed without the massively irresponsible psych ever having met me.
So fuck that noise.
@Michelle C Young – you always had to do ‘legal stuff’ to be married under common law in the US, because marriage IS ‘legal stuff’. It’s a myth that simply living together made people married.
As for renewable marriage, no, horrible idea, unless you like the idea of people being able to shed a financially dependent or disabled spouse without all the muss and fuss of divorce, or, you know, equally sharing property and income.
I just checked what is actually required in Sweden in order for two people to count as “sambo” and have the kind of legal rights that goes with that. Apparently the written law is fuzzy, but there was a case where the supreme court decided that the following is required: They must live together, have a sex life (!), a common household, and either a shared economy or “economic cooperation” with each other. Also, their relationship must have gone on for a “sufficiently long time”, although how long is sufficiently long is anyone’s guess.
To be actually married and have the more extensive rights that go with that though, you have to have an actual wedding by someone legally approved to wed people (both lots of politicians and lots of religious figures are approved to do this).
Your statement or comment is not well formed.
The people in the documentaries, situations that track my child’s situation very closely, consented for their children to appear in the documentaries and for whose identity and medical information was made far more detailed and more public than anything I did.
Yet you would find fault with me, but legitimize the very same acts by others.
I am only trying to save my child from the very same fate that has befallen the poor children in these documentaries, and in many other exposes of the same type that have been published and talked about in other presentations, articles and investigative journalism.
You only know a tiny part of what has been happening in my daughter’s situation.
The worst thing I could do is take your advice, sit back, do nothing, and hope for the best.
no. you misunderstand
It does not matter if the parents consent. it matters if their children consent
if you still don’t get that, here’s it rephrased
parent: “hi dear documenterer, it’st totally okay for you to put my kids mental health history in your thing!”
This is not what i care about
KID: “hi dear documenterer it’s totally okay for you to put my mental health history in your thing”
Gary,
In your rush to declare yourself a victim of our evil misandering ways, you’ve missed that we were opposing putting any child’s full name in anything public that has to do with mental health. Unless that child is old enough to give informed consent and has done so. This isn’t a judgment we’ve reserved for you alone.
Do you care if your daughter misses out on a job in the future because a prospective employer googles her name and finds your post and decides he/she doesn’t want to hire someone with a psychiatric history?
Do you care if she’s being bullied at school and that bully decides to google her name and use the psychiatric information you posted online against her?
If the answer to either of those questions is “no” maybe you should take a long hard look at yourself. Maybe it isn’t everyone else’s fault you don’t have primary custody. Maybe it’s yours.
Obviously, I don’t know your whole situation, but your lack of concern for your daughter’s privacy is troubling. You’ve shared her name and psychiatric information with a group of people (MRAs) known for doxxing and harassing women.
Do you really not get why that’s a bad idea?
Once again, Gary T. demonstrates that he has no concern at all for how his daughter might feel about her mental health diagnosis/history shared permanently on the internet. Demonstrating clearly that he lacks the kind of judgment a custodial parent would need to have.
Not to mention that his reading comprehension is shit, since he’s accusing us of holding positions no one has argued for. I even gave him an example of how he could have publicized the situation while protecting his daughter’s privacy… Sigh.
Gary, the thing you don’t get is that — even assuming everyone else in this scenario is totally wrong and evil as you are portraying them — YOU ARE JUST AS BAD AS THEY ARE.