Recently, a link broke in my How Not to Raise a Rapist article, and I searched for a replacement with similar information. While hunting for a new link, I came across this:
Are rapists and sexual predators products of failure with women?
Like if women taught these lonely men more about how to listen to their needs, that these men would not resort to such desperate actions.
Or if a woman just felt the attraction for one of these men that have been shunned by society, that our society would have less rapists?
think about it
after a man gets rejected by women so-on-so number of times, he is likely to become so upset that he becomes depraved and will resort to any action outside of reason and rationality
Before I get into the psychology, let’s just imagine what this would look like. What if there was, maybe, an entire class of women who would engage in romantic relationships and sex with men they aren’t attracted to for, I don’t know, maybe money? And what if we made it an unregulated criminal industry, so the cost of this emotional and sexual satisfaction could run from cheaper than the average date to quite expensive for the really special stuff? Just in case too few women went into this line of work willingly, we could oppress the more desperate women and girls until they felt they had no choice. We could call this industry…
…oh, right. Prostitution.
Why do people keep arguing that if only women would give sex to men they don’t want to have sex with, rape would end? Prostitution was invented so men would always have an available supply of affordable sex. It hasn’t reduced rape at all.
Maybe that’s because rape doesn’t satisfy the same urges as sex does, and a craving for one can’t be satisfied by the other. Oh, I’m not talking feminist theories about power. I’m talking about what rapists themselves say. Some describe enjoying the fear in their victims’ eyes, or feeling all-powerful. Others talk about anger:
“I wasn’t thinking about her whatsoever, just she was there,” he says. “Somebody to vent my anger, my frustrations, and my anxieties and pain.”
That doesn’t even sound like a description of sex at all.
Of course, there are some rapists who delude themselves that they’re having consensual relationships with their victims – in law enforcement, they’re called “power reassurance rapists.” Other rapists just feel entitled to dominate women (“power-assertive”), and find rape the most thorough way to do it. Others actually get off on their victims’ pain (“anger-excitation”). Others just want revenge against women for perceived wrong-doings (“anger-retaliatory”). Notice the words “power” and “anger” popping up over and over again? That’s not because feminists took over law enforcement. That’s because these are the motives revealed through psychological studies of rapists, and interviews with rapists, which have been helpful in leading law enforcement to find and build cases against sexual assailants.
There are a few things all rapists have in common:
- They are all serial, repeat offenders, unless circumstances force them to stop after the first rape. They will not stop on their own.
- They don’t connect with what their victims are feeling or experiencing. Either they’re so delusional they really think she’s enjoying their “date”, or they don’t care if she wants to die right now, or they’re barely aware she’s there, or they actually get off on her pain.
But let’s look at some other aspects of this myth. Are all rapists actually men that women don’t love? From a Utah prison psychologist:
Many of these individuals at least on the surface have a relationship with women and are having sex on a regular basis. But for some reason, they have chosen to go out and victimize people in this fashion.
Quite a lot of rapists are married or dating, and have as much access to consensual sex as the general populace. If rape and consensual sex satisfied the same drives, why would anyone have both going on in their lives at the same time? And what sort of mind chooses to rape people when prostitutes are readily available? Solicitation carries much less prison time and social stigma.
So where is all this logic fail coming from? Ask yourself: who benefits from having you think rape is the result of uncontrollable male lust fanned to flame by cock-teasing women, and that men don’t have an entire class of women devoted to taking care of that for them? Rapists.
Rapists have occupied positions of power for thousands of years. They’ve shaped societies. They’ve signed laws into effect. They’ve been judge, jury and prosecutor to other rapists. Let’s face it, society: you’ve been had. Rapists are selling you this crap, and you’re believing them. If someone steals your car and says, “Oh, only because my family was starving” do you instantly believe him and throw in your TV, too? Or do you question that claim? It’s time to question what rapists are telling you and why they might not be entirely truthful – even with themselves.
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Argh, I checked this a *day* after I posted it and it didn’t show up, so I thought I’d failed to hit submit…
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
Don’t worry, Alara. I deleted the dupe.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
That’s exactly it. The Amptoons post made me so angry. One commenter says a few violent deaths is a small price for women to pay for having it soooo much easier than men because, thanks to feminism, we make them buy us stuff. Anyone who’s never seen that before – that MRA’s honest to God think men never paid for dates until feminists ruined the world in the 1970s – may be tempted to laugh. But then read what he’s saying: because women have it sooooo easy, we should be raped and murdered and think, “Well, at least I had it sooooo easy.” And then be ashamed for being feminists who had it soooooo particularly easy.
WTF?
Even for people who HAVE had it easy, this is vile unjust bullshit. But the ideas expressed here are a total distortion of reality.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Very true. Men turn their aggression toward women (because turning it towards other men, even when deserved, is possibly risky), while women either turn it on themselves or OTHER women (but not in a violent way usually, just in a “lookit that b*tch!” way). It’s all conditioning.
Women are “safe” targets.
Completely off topic (but related in the way of blaming women), but something I was thinking about today. Of all the divorced or separated men I have known, if the split was NOT amicable, the guys always call their wives crazy. The ones I know personally have told me tales of their suffering this craziness! Yet when I meet the wife she seems pretty normal. But most of the guy’s friends and family just take for granted that “she’s crazy”, rather than maybe think it takes two to tango. I even know a woman whose own family blames her for her divorce, even though her husband is the one who left. Because they’ve heard all the stories about all her craziness.
It got me thinking that men can behave any way they want in private, because men are socially assumed to not be “crazy” and to be “objective” and cool at all times. A guy sharing his sob story where he’s long-suffering and put upon by his shrew wife is just sort of believed without any question. It was an interesting thought. And a woman can behave like a Vulcan in private, but as soon as an ex says she was hysterical during arguments and “crazy”, it becomes truth?
JT(Quote) (Reply)
I even know a woman whose own family blames her for her divorce, even though her husband is the one who left. Because they’ve heard all the stories about all her craziness.
You say this as if it’s rare, but in my experience, this is actually pretty common. Marriages are these things that women cause to function and men are, well, there. I’ve seen loving families sympathetically advise their daughters/sisters/whatever, “Well, but you know, you didn’t try this, and you should have.” And I’ve seen dysfunctional families turn on a woman: if they envy her, her marriage crumbling makes them gleeful, and if they always thought she was a loser, it’s lovely to be right. And I won’t detail what abusive families do, because you can imagine.
You’re exactly right, that we’re primed to think of men as stable and rational, and women as prone to over-reactions and emotionalism. That’s one bit of programming I was lucky enough to overcome in childhood – people kept insisting to me that this was the nature of the genders, but I knew so many women who were just ROCKS of stability and rational behavior, and so many men who were just… god, melodramatic is really the only word for it. Over-the-top emotionalism that cracked me up to watch… except when I got reminded how much power they had. Combining that with how two years old they behaved… geez, sorry, I’m having one of those “Whoa, how did I come through childhood relatively unscathed again?” moments, LOL. Take five.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Exactly! Feminists aren’t the ones telling me that it’s my nature to have no self-control and engage in violence.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
This is actually one of the things that really annoys me about talking to my guy friends about their exes. To hear them say it, it’s a world full of nutty women and sane, beleaguered men who only want to LOVE them as EQUALS.
ETA: Also, I realized I was doing that radical apology theing where you try to soften critique by saying my friends or saying I see your point. We’re not friends. I generally don’t like men like that, and make appropriate mouth noises until I can leave.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
This kind of thing is happening right now to someone I know and love. Her own family will “side” blindly with her husband, because she should have known what he was like before they got married. She’s so demanding and cold and heartless. She’s this and she’s that – and no one even bothers to look at him or what he may or may not be doing in regards to the shambles of their marriage.
Because if she should have known what he was like, should HE have also not known what she was like? Why is she held accountable for everything when he is given “Poor guy, I don’t know how he lives with HER.” from her own family. He’s the one who refused counseling because “there’s nothing wrong with him”.
And I get so ragey about it I can barely contain myself.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Damn, Sbg, that’s horrible.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
*applause*
As one Nerd Girl to another, I heart you to infinity.
Chai Latte(Quote) (Reply)
<3 I'm in my thirties now, so thankfully I've recovered from being a "Nice Girl".
But the Nerd part is there to stay!
And Maria said: "This is actually one of the things that really annoys me about talking to my guy friends about their exes. To hear them say it, it’s a world full of nutty women and sane, beleaguered men who only want to LOVE them as EQUALS."
YES, exactly! You put it much more succinctly than I did.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
I also get really tired of men bewailing how they ONLY want a NICE woman who’s STABLE and LOVES them… when all their girlfriends are conventionally gorgeous. I always say, “Have you thought of enlarging your search beyond those who look like supermodels? Or is that part of your parameter, too?” They don’t get it. They’re either in denial about it (“they’re not THAT beautiful”), or they justify it with “Well, we men can’t help that [we demand women look 10 times better than we do].”
This is why I don’t get that people say men will sleep with anybody. They absogoddamnlutely will not. They’re so picky, even when they lack beauty, money, personality, stability, etc., themselves. I was taught that hetero men would sleep with anybody, so when I got to be a teenager and noticed none of the ones I knew were like that, I actually assumed, like, 80% of men were secretly gay. Turned out I’d just been lied to. I don’t even know how this myth persists – who hasn’t, by the age of 16, overheard guys having a “Would you do her?” “Eh, maybe, but I’d have to have a lot of drinks first!” conversation. Even in their macho posturing moments, the pickiness is encoded. (It’s also part of male status to be dating the best-looking woman. Maybe guys anxious to have sex for the first time will drop their standards, but after that it’s all “5 extra pounds? Uncomfortably smart? Breasts too small? Nose too big? You’re OUTTA HERE, lady!”)
Seriously, can anyone explain to me why I am somehow the only person I know who’s twigged to this? It’s EVERYWHERE, if you actually pay attention to what men do/say instead of what you’re told about them.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
*reply to Jennifer below me, for some reason I can’t hit the reply button after a certain number of nested comments.
OH I KNOW! I agree, ha, I was having this conversation with my brother in law. He is younger than I am, but was complaining that he can’t “talk to women” or be real friends with the ones he wants to date. I told him he was unfairly placing women into compartments: “fuckable” and “nonfuckable”, and the nonfuckable were in effect invisible to him and his experiences WITH them did not count toward his experiences with “women” (like, he has plenty of female friends, but THEY never spring to mind when he says he “can’t talk to women”). I even said, hey, you talk fine to ME, and I’m a woman! He said I was “different”. Of course.
Being nerdy and never conventionally attractive, I’ve heard it all. And as a teen, should I happen to voice what you did about men being picky, my male family members would castigate me openly and call me unfair. What, so men should have to lower their standards to please YOU? Men should have to sleep with every fat and ugly woman? NO WAI! Maybe you should join a gym or get implants or something. After all, men are VISUAL. (Have I mentioned how much I HATE evo-psych bullshit? It is all my father and other male relatives spouted as I was growing up; before it was couched in this pseudo-scientific jargon it was just called sexism and “boys will be boys”!)
I’ve had male friends in my geeky circles complain that women don’t notice them. Um, hello? I’m right here and I’ve liked you for like, 3 years, guy. (OF course, I had some undesirable Nice Girl qualities back then, but instead of blaming men, I’ve done work on my own self-confidence and body acceptance. A healthy dose of feminism doesn’t hurt either, because it taught me that my entire worth as a human was NOT based upon my fuckability, and anyone who thinks so isn’t worth my time because they don’t see me as fully human.)
Anyhoo, I could go on and on, because I have sooo many stories, but my comments are pretty mammoth so I’ll just stop now.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
Re: empathy being trained out by society. I haven’t had a TV for 3 or 4 years. I still watch it every now and then, when I am visiting my parents, and I can watch DVDs on my PC, though I don’t do it very often, first because I didn’t had a lot of viewing material and now because I prefer to game or to read various blogs. A decade ago I would have watched nearly every show available on TV and read tons and tons of sci-fi and fantasy books, so this is still the image my friends have of me, but like I said, my habits changed a couple of years ago. Now, because a friend of mine is always nattering about how wonderful “A song of ice and fire” is, I finally began to read the first book in the series, and while it is good written, only fifty pages into it there was a chapter about underage Daenerys being practically sold to the highest bidder by her brother to be raped. Rape wasn’t even shown, it was only implied, but it horrified me so much, that I’m seriusly wondering why people keep preaching about this book. I am stuck somewhere on page 80 and can’t bring myself to read even one word. And while I mused about why I couldn’t do it, a thought struck me that only five years ago the book would probably been right up my valley. For me, the best demostration that empathy had been “trained out of me” to some degree by available media. By the way, I read every post on your site, Jennifer, I am just a lurker by nature. But discussions in the comments are sometimes ten times better than the content of post itself, and that is saying much.
Elee(Quote) (Reply)
(We don’t nest the comments below a certain point because they get very hard to read (so narrow).)
And as a teen, should I happen to voice what you did about men being picky, my male family members would castigate me openly and call me unfair. What, so men should have to lower their standards to please YOU? Men should have to sleep with every fat and ugly woman?
Exactly what I’m talking about. “Men will sleep with ANYTHING” but “they shouldn’t have to settle for someone who doesn’t look like the cover of Sports Illustrated, how dare you.” It’s an incredible feat of doublethink.
I’m actually reading a book right now that picks apart various eco-psy myths, and the “visual” and “auditory” ones are doozies. Turns out the studies were just lousy to begin with, and even then, the “differences” they found (which are contradicted by other studies) were so minimal as to be insignificant. I’ll probably review the book, and maybe go into detail on some topics later, but for now feel free to tell people the thing about men being visual and women having better hearing? Just plain bad science by people who give every appearance of being strangely desperate to find biological differences between the sexes.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
The main reason that I love sci-fi/fantasy as a concept, but I usually get disgusted with the actual works. The female characters more often than not have some sort of rape/sexual component to their characters. I’m just so tired of the rape-molestation-or-lurid-sex-as-backstory. Male characters don’t have to deal with this!
My brother recommended a fantasy book to me, and when I seemed lukewarm, I explained to him that most fantasy was crap when it came to female characters. He asked me (not in a douchey way) to define what I meant. I said I’d have to think about it because my dissatisfaction is hard to quantify. It’s definitely something I’d like to write an essay about someday.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
This is why I tend to stick to YA fantasy. Aside from the Twiclones, they tend to be much better at the female characterization, give me loads of female main characters, and have kick ass heroines. It’s also where I can find my cool queer people in fantasy. Still working on the disabled though, and the Medievalism/Euro-centrism
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
Yes, after having heard so much about Tamora Pierce’s books I finally began to read her Alanna-series. (Actually, I finished the first book right before I began ASOIAF.) And while I have a whole set of different problems with it (YA knows no shades of grey. Such a pigment does not exist), I found it infinitely more satisfying and was constantly comparing both books. Though, I am beginning to develop a hesitant hope that Arya Stark might turn out interesting.
Elee(Quote) (Reply)
Can anyone recommend any more good YA sci-fi/fiction? It doesn’t have to be YA, but it DOES have to be refreshingly free of rape and sexploitation, please!
The last book I read that was good in that way was called Black & White by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge. It’s about two women, one a superhero, the other a villain. It was as shallow and light as the shallowest comic book, but it was good fun. And the female characters were not sexualized and were not described with the male gaze. Especially the villain, where so many authors would feel the need to “vamp up” the “bad girl”. Bonus points for not making her a “psycho lesbian” too. It was nice.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
The True Meaning of Smekday
Savvy
Mind-Hold
Mind-Find
Z for Zachariah
The City, Not Long After
Zahrah the Windseeker
The Shadow Speaker
Justice and Her Brothers
Try checking out the book reviews on the site — there’s tons of good stuff
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I found a part of Marion Zimmer-Bradleys Darkover-series really interesting, as it was what actually made me interested in reading more fantasy (I prefer sci-fi). Darkover is not unproblematic, but “The Renunciates”-subplot is fascinating. I read The shattered chain and Thendara house, you can find rest of the book titles on wiki.
Elee(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks for the recs! I’ll be checking them out.
I remember trying to read Mists of Avalon once, but I was far too young at maybe 15? I was a little scandalized at all the sex back then.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
Funny, I read it at 12. My sexuality is surely warped, due to it. Fantasy. Not all suitable for kids.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
It’s also part of male status to be dating the best-looking woman.
That’s something I noticed in high school, too. Certain groups of guys always seemed to date the same girls. Sometimes really beautiful girls would just get overlooked because none of the guys had dated her, therefore making her ‘acceptable’ and collectively considered beautiful/status-worthy. It’s like if no one had dated a girl before, none of them knew whether or not they were ‘allowed’ to find her attractive, so they just kept dating the ones that had been ‘certified’ to give them status.
Savannah(Quote) (Reply)
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