Monday, April 09, 2007
I didn't know I was a rapist...
This started boiling in my backbrain, partly from reading various forums, generally raising my awareness, and partly from reading a lot of relevant commentary on or around Blog Against Sexual Violence Day.
There's a common thread (theme?, something) I've seen a lot of lately, which is that any time someone doesn't want sex, and sex happens, it's being called rape. I've never seen it tagged to specific examples, but generalized, which is maybe where my distaste for it comes from.
There's been days when I've come to bed wanting sex, and my wife hasn't. We've ended up having sex. Maybe there was seduction involved, maybe some other form of covert or overt manipulation; maybe there wasn't. There was no explicit permission given or denied.
There's a lot of folks out there that are, through generalizations, calling me a rapist, and that really stings. So I find myself thinking "manipulation=rape" and working through permutations of that. Thinking of things that are equally as intimate and important as sex, like childcare. And I'm thinking "so, what makes manipulation for sex rape, and not this? My wife doesn't want to get up with the kids, neither do I - we bargain and manipulate and someone gets to sleep in, and someone has to deal with Saturday morning kids." This is the gentle form of Cohen's "homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen".
But mostly I admit that when I do stuff like that I'm pushing the metaphor beyond it's reasonable limits, and keep to rape being a sexual thing. But then I think "Sometimes my wife comes to bed wanting sex, and I don't. We end up having sex. Now people are calling my wife a rapist? What the hell?"
And that gets me even more pissed off, for a couple reasons. One is that anyone calling my wife a rapist makes the caveman in the back of my head all growly and reach for his club. The other is that I get the strong impression that there are people who would NOT call my wife a rapist, while maintaining that I am.
But there's clearly places where it IS rape - date rape, whether it's drugs or social pressure used to elicit agreement to sex, is often really rape (although sometimes not). I'm sure that in abusive relationships there is a lot of sex that could be described exactly as I descibe my hypothetical rape above, and it would be really rape. The only difference being that my relationship isn't abusive. (How do I know that? 'Cause I do. How does generic third party person know that? Uhh....)
So there's part of my brain that wants to keep rape and sexual violence to the commonly accepted view (violent, coercive, usually from a stranger). But there's a part of my brain that also recognizes that's not enough. That sees the stats and studies that show most incidences of rape involve someone known to the survivor, and can't deny that they are well-conducted, and probably true.
And the rest of my brain HATES that part. Because it says "1 in 3 women are victims of rape. You've got a mother and 5 sisters in law. So, pick two males in your family and call them rapists". And I can't. I mean, I recognize that "my family" is way too small a sample to be used statistically like that, but I still see "1 in 3" and read "pick two guys in your family" - I can't help reading the numbers that way. I personalize statistics all the time. So I personalize the rape statistics and my brain rejects them. Can't possibly be true; that's not my family. But they (they = 'the one's I've dug into some') give every appearance of statistical rigour and my science brain says "Not much margin for error, bub."
So I go around in circles, wasting energy in undirected anger, and not getting anywhere. Which, of course, makes me mad...
James
(Please, by whatever you hold dear, no "don't worry James, you aren't a rapist" comments. If you're going to comment, offer something from your own perspective.)
Labels: I think too much
posted by James at 1:37 PM
8 Comments:
I wrote an incredibly lengthy response to this and then decided anything I posted five minutes before leaving for work would be counter productive in the extreme.
James, sincerely, something I'd like you to answer for me, though - why did you think those posts were about you?
Anna, I don't think they were about me. I'd really like to what you've got to say on this, but keep this in mind as you re-read and consider your response*: I don't think those commentaries were about me. But many of them were written in a way that didn't exclude me.
It's not a simple thing to express, and this is the kind of conversation that the internet sucks at, but let me know if that makes sense, or helps you see the perspective I came to this with.
James
*And let me add a Super Kudos with Extra Awesome for not posting a kneejerk response. And on the internet! Your self control kicks mine around the room.
Ultimately I think the problem is that 'rape' is a bad word. Not in the 'gosh that's so naughty, you should wash your mouth with soap' way but in that it's usage is overly broad and emotionally laden. The vocabulary to talk about rape in a useful way doesn't exist and due to the emotional nature of rape and rape related activities never will, lest it be inferred that we are demeaning someone's experience.
Regardless, I see the situation of coming to bed wanting sex while your spouse doesn't vs the Saturday morning childcare dilemma as not being an unreasonable stretching of the metaphor. Both of these situations fall into that vast unspoken (at least it is unspoken in my marriage) compact that makes marriage work. We do things in our marriage sometimes, not because we want to, but because they 'need' to get done or make our spouse happy. If you wouldn't accept a clear 'I'm just not up to it tonight' from your wife without continuing to pressure her then it, then you might be a rapist. However if you would accept her decision I think that there is no question that morally you wouldn't be a rapist.
That such a common healthy sexual situation gets tied into the same net as rape and sexual violence and that caring husbands are labeled rapists ties back into my original statement about the failure of the language of rape. Further, this failure damages feminism as a whole by alienating men who are ideal allies in the struggle to eliminate sexual violence and rape.
Anyways those are my thoughts on the subject,
--Dan
PS. I'm separating this off since it is largely irrelevant to the broader point. The statistics that say 1 in 3 women are victims of rape do not correlate to the idea that 1 in 3 men are rapists. While the stats are largely unknown for the more insidious forms such as date rape, for forcible rape the vast majority of instances are committed by a tiny minority of individuals repeating their crimes.
It wasn't that my initial post was knee jerk or angry, it was that I make a serious effort to proof read and make sure I'm saying what I want to say to people in my comments, and there's no point in my rattling off something on the way out the door and then having to spend the rest of the discussion clarifying what I actually meant.
"Many of them were written in a way that didn't exclude me".
Can you please give an example of this so that I know what we're talking about? It will give any conversation about the topic some context to people, the vast majority of whom I'm going to assume didn't read about BaSV day on my LJ or elsewhere. As well, it means we're both talking about the same thing, instead of me speculating. Was it something in my post? In the comments to my post? Something you read elsewhere? How much is this directed at me and what I've said, and how much of it is directed at other people's writing on the same topic?
The other thing you might want to consider reading is Ilyka Damen's post "Occasionally Conversations With My Man Are Instructive. I suggest it because it may address your concerns and feelings, and if so - great! It would probably be a lot clearer than anything I come up with here. And if it doesn't, I at least know what the problem *isn't*, if that makes sense.
If nothing else, your thoughts are important, and I'd like to hear/read them as much as you're willing to share. My goal in my writing isn't to make you, or anyone else, feel that they're under attack, and if I'm not achieving that goal, I really do need to know.
I’m shocked and more than a little appalled at the interpretative direction you’ve gone with the posts against sexual violence. Not only are you taking statistical research and trying to personalise it a very linear way but your personalising actions that have nothing to do with you. Can you direct me to the posts that have you thinking that they are about you? Otherwise you’ve made these posts about you when they aren’t.
You’ve taken the statistics surrounding rape, 1 in 3 women and “rape involve someone known to the survivor” and made it about you and your family. Never mind that a rapist will likely have more than one victim. Never mind the socio-economic factors at play. You say that your family “is way too small a sample to be used statistically”. You’re right, so why do you insist on making it about you and your family. Why do these statistics make you fear your own status. Unless you can point to a blog that says explicitly that you, James, are a rapist, it isn’t about you.
As much frustration as I have with your interpretation of the statistics you at least left the door open that it might not be personal. The same can’t be said when it comes to the definition of rape. I am baffled that in discussions of rape you can’t see the difference between coercion and communication. I would have thought you could.
You use personal examples about you and your wife where one of you is disinterested in sex and has to be coaxed or convinced. This exchange is a form of communication. There is an underlying set of boundaries that have been established on how far the issue can be pushed. The “seduction” or “manipulation” has rules and limits. These have been established before hand and probably don’t come up at the time but the you and your wife know them. You wouldn’t try and push past those boundaries. You also know, because you communicate, how to read the signals of body language and word choice. Permission doesn’t have to be an explicit yes because consent can be given without it. If there is doubt, more communication ensues.
Coercion and force have no respect for other people’s boundaries. It doesn’t involve establishing boundaries. There is no communication, because only one party involved is considered to matter. Permission is not a factor because the victim is not a person. There is no reconsideration because the rape is considered part of the natural order by the attacker.
How then do you see yourself reflected in the discussions of rape? The blogs I’ve read seem pretty clear on the difference between communication and coercion. You’ve chosen to make them about you. If they are then maybe you do have a problem that needs to be addressed, but thhat seems unlikely. If they aren’t then stop taking it personally and apply that energy to examining the real problem.
Argh. OK, I VERY. FUCKING. OBVIOUSLY. did not communicate clearly.
I will try again, and I will do some research and digging to pull relevant commentary and try to detail out what I'm talking about. But I will warn in advance that it will suck. Because the point isn't to cherry-pick comments and say "Haha! Here is where you, Anna, call me, James, a rapist!".
Anna, the link to 'Conversations with my Man' was useful and informative, but not what I'm dealing with here, I'm pretty sure.
Don, can I please ask you to re-read what I wrote through the same filter I asked Anna to read through: I KNOW it's not about me.
Also, remember the part up at the top, where I say I'm still conflicted about this? Please don't attack me or my position. I don't have a position. I'm trying to work through something and figure something out, and obviously I shouldn't have started on the fucking internet. Your suggestion right at the end is what I'm *trying* to do: examine the real problem. Have some patience, please.
I'll try and get something up later today, but Tuesdays are busy, so it might be tomorrow. In the meantime, let's try and pretend this is a conversation between friends and people, and not happening in the Internet?
James
You'll have plenty of time to get a response to Don. He'll be without reliable internet for the next week or so.
When you are making your response, could I ask you to remember that if this were a face to face conversation between friends, I wouldn't like you to yell at me or swear at me for not understanding what you meant when you said something? It would be very intimidating (and more than a little shocking, being that I've never heard you raise your voice) in real life. On the internet, it's just as surprising an outburst to what I would think would be a reasonable request to please clarify what you're talking about so I *know* what you're talking about.
It wasn't meant to make you feel attacked, James, it was meant to make sure I was responding to what your concern was, not what I *thought* your concern was, which would be counter-productive at best,
Sorry Anna, I was yelling at me. Internet sucks.
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