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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But now you’re talking logic. I figured by now you’d know women are totes responsible for EVERYTHING men do or do not do. Seriously, they are entirely never ever at fault! We MAKE them do the things they do because of whatever it is we do.
/sarcasmlolsob
P.S. Great post. I’ll probably be thinking about it for a while! And I will be missing this website for the next month while I am in Namibia! I believe this will be the ONLY website I’ll miss…perhaps besides DeviantART.
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
I know they do, but I have the hardest time believing that people really think this way. I just can’t wrap my head around it. Basically if women weren’t gooey centers of sex wrapped in a candy shell of prudishness, we wouldn’t be raped? Remember ladies, every time you say no to a guy (or even just don’t notice his soulful eyes on you) you are responsible for his raping another woman. But remember, if you think he’s okay, and dance with him, or flirt, or wear anything other than a suit of especially shapeless medieval plate armor, and he rapes you, it’s your fault. Think about teh poooooooor rapists!
WTF?
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
I wonder what this does to the often heard claim that any man has the “equipment” to be a rapist. Perhaps that is physically true, but it makes me wonder if it is true of mental capabilities.
Of course, then why is rape so common in war? Do people who already would have been rapists anyway rape more, or does the dehumanization of the enemy cause people who otherwise wouldn’t be rapists to become such? Are you aware of any studies that illuminate this corner of human depravity?
Kevin C.(Quote) (Reply)
Hard to say, since we don’t really have any societies (that I know of) without prostitution…
But, judging from the psychological information you link, yeah, seems like sex and rape are very different things. I hadn’t really understood why people said that before; thanks for this post!
DSimon(Quote) (Reply)
Brava!
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Aw, we’ll miss you too!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Basically if women weren’t gooey centers of sex wrapped in a candy shell of prudishness, we wouldn’t be raped?
That may be the best way I’ve ever heard it said – at first I wanted to laugh because it’s so clever, but then it hit me how very dead-on it is, and it’s very sobering.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well, there are conflicting theories, but the ones that say “all men are potential rapists” are just plain bad science.
There aren’t any great studies, because of how hard it is to get at the truth about rapists and their motives. But psychiatry has a slightly indirect answer: rapists* have damaged or missing empathy. You’d need that in order to force sex on someone who doesn’t want is, is miserable and traumatized at what’s happening, and is going to hate the hell out of you and want retaliation/justice. That would freak an empathetic person out WAY too much. The rapist – not at all.
So no, I absolutely believe not all men are capable of rape (which is actually the opposite of what a lot of second wave feminists thought), based on psychiatry, which I think is the best place to find anything like hard data on this topic just now.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Good point re: prostitution.
Glad it was helpful. There are other reasons why people argue sex and rape are different, too, but I think the most unassailable is: just listen to how rapists themselves describe it.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
And the worst part is now I’m craving M&Ms.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
So, does entitlement come into this at all? I always thought it did, so maybe, if we really want to change how we raise men with regards to sex, telling them that women who won’t put out are to blame would be what we need to get rid of. Wouldn’t it?
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Yes, entitlement comes into it, and yes, ANY reduction in “blame women for stuff men do” would help.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
<3
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
But only the sexy green ones, right?
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
I live on the edge.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
Guys who drop comments like the one you presented want for us to prostitute ourselves for free. And then they want to pretend that it’s a mutual love relationship. It’s not mutual and it’s not love. It’s about having a suitable woman as a commodity to attain social status and to make them feel like a man. They want relationships to be effortless because they are insufficiently psychologically equipped to handle the inherent instability of a connection built on trust. If they go to prostitutes or escorts it’s because they want to make sure that their investment is reciprocated. I would feel sorry for their total inability to form real connections if there weren’t so many women suffering under their antics.
kurukurushoujo(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I agree entitlement is a huge component in this equation. Jennifer, the quote at the start of the article is unnerving, but not surprising. I see a lot of that sentiment expressed by creepy internet Nice Guys trying to drum up sympathy.
Now, I have BEEN that “Nice Girl” geeky type who never got noticed by men. I got rejected, ignored, and even laughed at. But I NEVER NEVER thought about raping men or taking a machine gun and gunning down men. Not even in my worst revenge fantasies. Why do so many of my male counterparts immediately go to violence like this?
I believe it is entitlement. Women might become Nice Girls who passive-aggressively mope and pine over men, but it is the Guys who are raised with that male sense of entitlement. If no one likes you, Nerd Girl, it is YOUR fault because you are ugly, fat and awkward, and men are visual after all, so what man would want ugly old you? You need a total overhaul makeover before you can get your man NAY! Before you can even be acceptable! But if no one likes the Nerd Boy, it is totally because women are shallow bitches who are inscrutable and mysterious and consciously play men and laugh at them. You DESERVE a hot chick, Nerd Boy, and every movie/show/whatever will cater to that. The hot cheerleader will come around to see the fabulousness that is you and how totes UNFAIR she was (and really all women are, AMIRITE?). Oh, and you don’t need a makeover, you can be attractive while portraying many different body types and looks.
And re:rapists, it’s not productive to categorize “rapist” as some sort of inhuman Other monster. Rapists are human and all around us; they have families and are respected and loved. They have friends. Othering them allows them to hide in plain sight. It’s like my friend who is an alcoholic and she vehemently denies it, because she has this wierdly stereotypical platonic ideal of Alcoholic, like a movie wino with a paper bag or something. She doesn’t fit that narrow description, therefore she is not an alcoholic no way no how!
JT(Quote) (Reply)
Well, there are a large number of societies, both historically and right now, where their understanding of ordinary marriage practices equates to our understanding of rape – societies where women are not given permission to choose their husbands and not given permission to refuse sex with their husbands. I strongly doubt that every man in such societies who has sex with his wife when she does not want to is a person who lacks all sense of empathy.
Rather, I believe that while empathy is innate to humans — even tiny children as young as 2 evidence it — it can easily be trained out of people, and it can be trained out in a targeted way. In every patriarchal society I’ve ever heard of, including our own, there’s a lot of pressure on men to *not* empathize with women. Men are taught that women are mysterious and inscrutable. “What do women want?” “Who understands women?” The concept that you could find these answers out by *asking* women doesn’t seem to occur to anyone… because nothing a woman says means anything, because actually listening to a woman can cause you to be “contaminated” in a way that makes *you* share the non-human aspects of being a woman.
In our society, now, this is getting better as women acquire more and more public space to speak. Women already write close to 50% of the published fiction, I believe (hard stats don’t seem to exist there). Obviously, we have much less voice in the television and movie industries, but even that is getting better (at least in television.) But there’s still tremendous pressure on boys to *not* understand or empathize with women, and I’m sure in more patriarchal societies the pressure is greater.
Couple that with entitlement — societal rules that say that men are entitled to sex under certain circumstances — and enforced silence on women about their own desires, backed up by slut-shaming, so that women do not feel comfortable saying “yes” to sex — and it’s easy to understand how men who are perfectly empathetic under ordinary circumstances could end up raping their wives… because they think it’s their right, and they’ve been trained to think that women always say no even if they want it, and their specific ability to empathize with *women* has been damaged by their society. Men could even do this to women they love, because of this poisonous combination of entitlement, trained lack of empathy, and being taught that what women say is meaningless.
It’s not true that any man can be a rapist, but it’s true that any man, if he were raised under different circumstances, could have been a rapist (of course, actually, the same is true for women). Any good person could have been a bad person if the circumstances of their upbringing were different. And it’s true that many, many men who are *generally* “good people” have committed rape because of the combination of factors that made them believe that what they were doing wasn’t rape at all. This does not necessarily lessen the damage they did, nor does it suggest that we forgive them… what it says is that rape isn’t inevitable, that the fact that “good” men rape is because they are not taught that rape is bad (or, rather, they’re not told that the specific thing they’re doing *is* rape) and they are actually trained to *not* listen to women, and therefore we can lower the incidence of rape and maybe even eliminate it by training men differently.
There will always be damaged people in the world who lack all empathy for other humans. There will always be sociopaths. But sociopaths are much, much rarer than rapists. If we train ordinary men that women are their equals, they should listen to women as much as they do to men, that sex without an enthusiastically willing partner is as disgusting and weird as dancing with a dead body and as cruel as beating someone up, that no one ever owes anyone sex, and that just because you love someone doesn’t put any obligation on them to love you back, we’d probably eliminate 95% of all rapes.
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
I’m gonna slap links here:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10216/1077405-455.stm
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/08/pennsylvania_fitness_center_gu.html
because this hate crime shows so perfectly what Jen is talking about: he didn’t want to have a girlfriend or love a woman or whatever. He wanted to hurt them — and at the time, remember, his wanting power/control over women and their bodies was something that commentators to media blogs and newsites understood and endorsed!
http://health.quickezt.com/fitness/george-sodini-pittsburgh-la-fitness-killer-home-video/
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2009/08/06/mens-rights-activists-anti-feminists-and-other-misogynists-comment-on-george-sodini/
Not only are women rapeable bodies as a result of rape culture — we have no rights to bodily sovereignty at all. :-/
IDK y’all, I found pulling the above links enormously triggering.
Hat tip to Jen for wading through this.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I agree with you very much – both rape culture and Nice Guy Syndrome revolve around the idea that men are entitled to women’s bodies.
I also find this myth really repulsive because it basically paints me as prime rapist material. I’m a 31-year old virgin, so clearly it’s just a matter of time before I finally lose patience and start committing rape, right? ::incoherent rage::
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
Don’t forget that women in such societies are taught that they don’t have a choice, just “lie back and think of England” so to speak. Combine that with the men not being taught that women can enjoy sex, so they expect the women to just lay there like a dead fish, and it is possible there really is nothing to disturb a man with empathy.
You left out teaching women that it is ok to be enthusiastic. There are still plenty of women around, even in the US, who don’t fully get that yet. It is very weird for a man who is expecting that to be with a woman who isn’t. It can end up being a case of mixed signals, where the woman is verbally being quite clear what she wants, but the man is hesitant to follow through because he isn’t getting the other signals he expects. (Of course, certainly a much less dangerous case of mixed signals than the more typical case in our culture.)
Kevin C.(Quote) (Reply)
Re: culture. Psychology definitions are always understood to be in the context of the culture where they’re happening. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear. Whatever a particular culture calls rape – THAT is where the lack of empathy is necessary.
Which reminds me of another potential exception I meant to mention but forgot: group psychology. People will do things in groups they would never do alone. I haven’t seen studies on how far this extends in the case of group rapes. Generally, groups that commit serious felonies together screen out people they can’t “trust” – i.e., someone with enough conscience to become so troubled he eventually goes to the police. Can men with empathy become involved in group rapes? Unknown. But maybe.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I agree too, absolutely.
Note too how much in your post reflects another subtle nuance of this: by social conditioning, when men aren’t getting sex they’re taught to wonder what’s wrong with women. When women aren’t getting it, we’re taught to wonder what’s wrong with ourselves.
There are loads of individual exceptions – I always think men who don’t want me just lack taste and intelligence, LOL, and loads of men wonder how they can change to become more attractive. But the general trend exists, and is taught by society.
It’s always women’s faults. Everything is.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Yep, absolutely. Especially:
They want relationships to be effortless because they are insufficiently psychologically equipped to handle the inherent instability of a connection built on trust.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I almost included a big chunk on him!! Then I decided, no, it’ll confuse the article because he wasn’t a rapist, he was a killer. And it *would* have confused the article, but I’m glad you brought it up here.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
it is possible there really is nothing to disturb a man with empathy.
Not only possible, but definite – very well said. Whatever is “normal” in a culture will be accepted by its empathetic members, no matter how sick it sounds, *until* they have an event that makes them start questioning their culture. This is exactly why we ALL have privilege issues: a lot of slave owners surely had empathy for their slaves, and treated them reasonably well, and thought this whole slavery thing was working fine. Until abolitionists pointed out, ya know, we’ve declared an entire race of people not human under the law. You can’t really treat them well enough to justify that lack of freedom. Then your empathy hits a crisis, and you have to reconsider the beliefs you inherited from your culture.
This would work the same way.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I also find this myth really repulsive because it basically paints me as prime rapist material.
As I’ve remarked before, feminists show far more faith in men than patriarchy does.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
No worries — I think the most obvious connection between them is that in defending his slaughter of innocent women, the commentators implicitly/explicitly defended the rape of other women. And then blamed feminism.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
This. I mean, I support legalized prostitution for a variety of reasons, but…as far as I can tell, it doesn’t reduce the frequency of rape. The guy who has a macho bullshit investment in Getting A Girl doesn’t hear “just pay for it” any more than he hears “just jerk off”, because it’s not about physical gratification; it’s about emotional validation, which, by and large, you can’t buy. (Or you can, but it costs a fuckton, part of you knows it’s not real, and then…well, Elvis.)
And…no. Having A Relationship does not actually solve anything for anyone ever. The more our society realizes that, the better everything will be.
Isabel C.(Quote) (Reply)
This is one of the reasons why I’m pretty straightforward/abrasive about only dating men that I find physically attractive. The onus is really on women to be the “less shallow sex” while still looking good themselves. I mean, I’m expected to have an “attractive” figure, shiny hair, good clothes and makeup, etc etc etc, but God for-fucking-bid I hold out for a flat stomach, a full head of hair, and some rudimentary fashion sense when I’m looking for a partner in a SEXUAL relationship.
The changing standards of beauty in romance novels came up on a couple blogs recently, and a couple people asked if there was a problem with wanting female standards to change while still preferring beefcake heroes. I said no, because a) fantasy aimed at het women is fantasy aimed at het women, whatever, but more importantly, b) we’re *still* supposed to go to the salon regularly and never eat while we’re reading and whatever the hell else, and guys are *still* thought to be doing okay if they put down the Cheetos and change their shirts once in a while.
/rant.
Isabel C.(Quote) (Reply)
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