Someone recently asked me in an accusatory/chiding tone why we didn’t have an article explaining to parents how to raise their boys with love and respect for women so they wouldn’t be rapists. I pointed her to this article on the “consent conversation” – which, she claimed, still put the burden on the girls (huh? It’s all about teaching boys to make extra freakin’ sure they have consent rather than pressing ahead in the face of “I didn’t hear no!”). At this point I gave up on that particular conversation. But later I realized we really don’t have a post explicitly telling parents the magic secret of how not to raise rapists (of either gender). Are you ready? This is it:
Don’t abuse your kids.
Um, yep, that’s it. See, like love and respect, rape is a learned behavior. People don’t become rapists because someone failed to teach them something; they become rapists because they’ve been taught abuse. [ETA: somehow a lot of commenters extrapolated from this statement that I'm suggesting all abused kids become rapists. That is absurd. The best stats we have, which aren't great but do ring true to my personal experience, suggest about 1 in 8 abused kids becomes abusive, but each abuser typically has more than a few victims, which is why abusers keep replenishing themselves despite how hard it actually is to make a human being into an abuser.]
As it’s impossible to collate data on what motivates people to rape, and you can’t trust what rapists tell you, here’s the best possible evidence available. A number of qualified sources believe most rapists have survived abuse (PDF link – relevant quote: “As with most sexual abusers, most rapists were also sexually abused as children.”) in their early years.* Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood says this in Dark Dreams: A Legendary FBI Profiler Examines Homicide and the Criminal Mind:
My research on serial rape supports the view that a large number of sexual criminals have been childhood victims of physical, sexual or psychological abuse.
Keep in mind that “psychological abuse” entails neglect and headgames, a type of abuse that many people still aren’t schooled in recognizing. So when I say “don’t abuse your kids” I’m also saying “don’t strategically withhold affection to make your child unnaturally dependent on your approval, which you dangle like a carrot, so that he or she gets the idea all people of your gender are evil and should be punished.” [ETA: This is not a reference to mothers specifically, as some commenters assumed. See here.]
Of course he’s talking about the sort of rapists (often rapist-murderers) the FBI chases. Date rapists, for example, are probably very under-reported. Can we assume these rapists think the same way as the Ted Bundy type? I believe so, and here’s why. I’ve asked the following series of questions of a number of people over the years:
- Have you ever experienced the urge to hit someone? Most people answer yes. It’s a natural animal urge.
- Have you ever experienced the urge to kill someone? Most people answer yes. Again, that’s our animal nature.
- Have you ever experienced the urge to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you as they protest and try to get away from you and come to loathe you for what you’re doing to them? No one’s ever answered this one yes. In fact, their faces typically wrinkle as they try to imagine wanting to do such a thing. Wanting to have sex with someone who doesn’t want you back – that’s familiar to most of us. But the idea of having sex with them anyway, over their protests, making them hate you and killing any hope of reciprocal feelings – that wouldn’t be satisfying. It just doesn’t track. In fact, it would be icky and weird, and then you’d be scared of the consequences afterward, right? (This has nothing to do with rape fantasies, which can sound all sorts of sick and still not indicate psychological problems.)
The reason why I describe rape so much more fully than I describe murder is: a human being can, in a passion, pick up a blunt object and murder someone in mere seconds, before he has time to return to his senses and think about what he’s doing. Hence, the concept of premeditated and unpremeditated murder. But while rape may begin with an unpremeditated impulse, it takes thinking to figure out how you’re going to subdue someone long enough to complete the act. It takes time to establish and maintain control. Overwhelming impulses don’t allow for that sort of cogitation, begin to fade within seconds, and involve face-to-face interaction with the victim in a way murder need not.
Again, rape is a learned behavior. It’s about enjoying or being profoundly indifferent to someone else’s suffering. It’s about remarkable levels of entitlement and the failure to recognize another human being as another human being. It’s about a gaping hole inside the rapist that nothing will ever fill. It’s way beyond a lack of love and respect. It’s beyond ignorance.
That’s why I wrote the above-linked article on consent. Because the only “rapists” who can be stopped by being taught something are inexperienced young boys are getting conflicting messages about, say, whether it’s rape or not if everybody’s equally intoxicated. There is such a thing as genuine confusion about consent, and nice people are subject to it, too. The rapist personality goes looking for “confusing situations” and finds them over and over again and conveniently never learns a non-predatory response to them.
By all means, teach your kids to love and respect others – particularly their social “inferiors.” But if you think this information will help the parents of future rapists to correct their parenting mistakes, you’ve got another think coming. The sort of people who raise rapists are not listening and can’t be told.
*Update, June 13, 2010: in the interests of brevity, I left some points out of this article originally which apparently weren’t as obvious as I thought. First, while most abusers have themselves been abused in some form, it does not follow that most abused kids will become abusive, and at no point did I say or imply this. In fact, the opposite is true. There are few good stats available, largely because so much abuse goes unreported (and non-physical abuse isn’t even legally actionable) but one study found that only 1 in 8 sexually abused boys go on to abuse children themselves. Extrapolating from this, I suspect the majority of abused children do not become abusers.
Second, just because an abuser has most likely been a victim does not mean you must feel sorry for them, or forgive them, or in any way think they are not a monster. Rapists make choices like everyone else. If they can choose who they will strike, when and there to do it without getting caught, etc., then they can choose to get help, or turn themselves in, or commit suicide. The fact they chose instead to make a career of rape is entirely their responsibility, no matter what was done to them. They should be scorned and shunned from society – who knows, it might even give them an incentive to start seeking help.
Third, abuse can be extremely subtle, so never assume you know for sure someone was not abused. Logically, you can’t prove a negative. Practically, headgames and emotional neglect are rarely apparent to outsiders. This might seem to provide specious support for Hazelwood’s conclusion that most sex offenders have been abused in some way, but consider that Hazelwood and his colleagues are more alert to the signs of abuse than most law enforcement personnel, most feminists, most people, other than those in the psychology field.
Fourth, teaching your son that he’s your Golden Boy and can do no wrong and anyone who says otherwise is just a nasty pile of envy to the extent that he does not develop empathy or conscience is a form of abuse. It produces adults with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the disorder Hazelwood believes the vast majority of sex offenders have. These people often function very well in society, succeeding in business or government or the arts, sometimes possessing what seems to be a perfect family but is actually more like a set of hostages manipulated through terrorism and threats into supporting the NPDs image of himself as Mr. Nice Guy. But they are severely damaged people.
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I will read up more on NPD. I think both my parents had it and it simultaneously fascinates and infuriates me. Any reading recommendations would be appreciated, but I can google.
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
My first sources were the DSM and a used psychology textbook. I haven’t read any other books I would recommend, but this book has been recommended to me:
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Self-Absorbed-Grown-ups-Getting-Narcissistic/dp/1572245611/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271651670&sr=8-6
Then there are some online sources:
http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/
She has some great insights. Be aware of Sam Vaknin, who will come up if you Google:
http://samvak.tripod.com/npdglance.html
This author claims to be both a psychiatrist and an NPD who’s been treated as much as you can treat NPD. Oh, and he’s been in prison, he says. Since NPDs are liars, it’s hard to credit his claims about who he is, but I have to admit, everything he says about the disorder rings absolutely true to my experience with diagnosed NPDs and is, IMO, worth reading.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Also, as a victim of childhood abuse, I tend to get a bit defensive about the meme that victims grow up to be abusers, so that might be getting in the way of my understanding.
It’s a horseshit meme left over from bad 80s research spread by a lazy media. I too am a survivor of childhood abuse (by an NPD, by the way), and it made me an activist rather than an abuser.
I think it can really go either way–I was raped when I was seventeen (which might be too old to fit into your theory), and there’s no way I’d ever do that to another person, the very thought sickens me.
However, the dude who raped me had been physically abused by his stepdad when he was very young, and had seen the stepdad abuse his brother and mother as well. And while he said that he hated his stepdad and was so glad that his mom eventually left, the fact that he raped me says that the abuse was internalized, emulated, et cetera.
So I do think that there’s a pattern there, that it does get carried down, but…obviously, only in some people.
Genevieve(Quote) (Reply)
Genevieve, I believe support is probably the determining factor in whether an abused person will abuse others. Stats tell us that boys are more likely to become abusers while girls are more likely not to, and I would say girls are more likely to get support than boys because therapy and emotional work is “girly” in this society. Women seek counseling more often than men. Women admit their feelings more than men. Men are socialized to Just Be A Man, and if someone had told me that when I was suffering, not only would I have internalized the abuse, but also a lot of rage and frustration because their advice isn’t working. If I’m not allowed to go inside myself in a girly fashion and fix it, what am I going to do? Take out that rage on a handy victim.
And we all know which people society doesn’t really mind you raping all that much.
Just to be clear, the article was not intended to suggest that abusing someone guarantees he will become a rapist. Like I said in another comment, only 1 in 8 abused kids become abusers.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks for the links, Jennifer.
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1982190,00.html
So it’s not a “How not to raise a rapist” article, but I thought the presence of a “How not to raise a bully” article was nonetheless interesting. The author, I felt, makes some of the point that have already been made on this site, which was kind of hopeful…
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Arguably, the _really_ brave action that would show you were “manning up” would be to admit you need a helping hand and getting it, whether or not people thought you were a sissy.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Snobographer, you’re welcome.
Raeka, YES – great article! I’m frustrated by hearing how there’s nothing we can do about bullying, and this article counters that argument nicely. Now we just need another one to explain to people that empathy doesn’t mean weakness.
CharlesRB, I very much agree. And why the hell shouldn’t men simply want to be happy, and feel entitled to do whatever it takes to get them there? Happy people don’t go around deliberately harming others.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I am so excited that you said “another think coming.” I have literally never read that in use before. It is so nice to finally see that in print.
A6M4(Quote) (Reply)
LOL, A6M4, another benefit of watching British TV. Americans say “another thing coming” and I never could make sense of the expression until I heard it said correctly on British TV.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I dunno… I’ve experienced pretty serious neglect and some parental abuse, and I have never had any desire whatsoever to rape anyone. The thought hasn’t occured to me, but reading the post on repulsion of the idea, yeah, that fits. I know other people who have been abused by parents, and are empathetic and responsible.
On the other hand, my first “boyfriend” raped me when I was 18. I had gotten to know his family a little bit. He was not particularly abused, but his father was profoundly sexist, though not violent, and believed deeply in the subordination of women. His mother went along with it, and was an anorexic, and very disrespectful to her only daughter. This man grew up with a sense of male entitlement and superiority, which he actively defended. Also, I can see in retrospect he was in the closet gay. This didn’t make him more misogynyist or violent toward women, but I think it did make him think he had something to prove, while at the same time he was not attuned and had no interest in attuning to a partner’s female sexuality.
So that’s my experience with one rapist. I’m sure there are a lot of factors in why men grow up to rape. I think it comes down to male supremacist values, and low self-esteem, a rejection of the self, largely because one accepts male supremacist values. For instance, he rejected his own gayness the way male supremacy rejects gayness, because that value system wants men to be men (the dominant, respected, not sexually violated people) and women to be women (the subordinated, disrespected, sexually violated people). He wanted to be a man, not a woman, and he wanted to treat another person, on the pretense of being her “boyfriend,” as someone who was less worthy of human status than him. Like what he saw growing up and all around him.
Pearl(Quote) (Reply)
Since I wrote this, there’s been more confusion than I was expecting regarding what abuse is. For example, this paragraph describes a textbook emotional abuse cycle from hell but calls it “not particularly abused.” He certainly was abused, based on your description.
The “favored” children in an abusive home are still being abused, still being programmed with beliefs about themselves and their place in the world that may prevent them developing empathy and compassion (without which I would argue one doesn’t experience full humanity, because one can’t connect with others) and put them at risk for becoming criminals – both of which seem to have been the case with this person you’re describing.
A child need not be *targeted* for obvious abuse to suffer abuse all the same. Your boyfriend probably would reject the notion he was abused, and so might the whole family. But Mom’s got anorexia and is verbally/emotionally abusing the daughter, Dad’s almost certainly psychologically abusing Mom (the fact that she may have come to him pre-abused and ready to submit doesn’t change that fact), and the son is (a) being taught sufficient misogyny to make him think he’s entitled to rape women even though that’s a crime and (b) being indirectly taught to loathe himself for being gay and therefore not a Real Man. There’s a lot of abuse there.
Additionally, let me be clear: absolutely no physical or verbal abuse is required to cause the damage I’m talking about. Emotional abuse is not always obvious: for example, when people try to recount what an emotionally abusive parent said that was abusive, it frequently doesn’t sound bad at all. They’re at a loss to explain how they know the ill intent behind the harmless-sounding words, how they’ve picked up a pattern over the years. They get written off as spoiled liars when in fact they’re suffering similarly to what victims of physical forms of abuse suffer.
Additionally, people typically envy kids who are being taught to be narcissists. Even if those people don’t develop into full-on sociopaths (the worst form of narcissism), they won’t have any survival skills. They’ll walk out into the world and expect someone to hand them an allowance, and once the doting parent can’t or won’t provide for them, they’re in deep trouble. That’s not enviable, but that’s how screwed up our society is.
There are close cultural links between Narcissistic Personality Disorder – the psychiatric problem that classifies most sex offenders and almost definitely your boyfriend – and they lead to a lot of this confusion. It’s… really a big topic, but that’s the oversimplified version.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I agree with Jen. My ex-fiancee used to come up with such gems as ‘journos (the field I wanted to go into) are all crooks, and you can do so much better than that’ – simultaneously putting me down (I wanted to go into a crooked industry) and elevating me (I was better than that). Whenever I tried to explain it to someone, it sounded like I was complaining that he wanted better for me. There were *dozens* of examples like that – the dyed red hair I preferred was skanky, and I was so much classier than that – which are the MO of emotional abusers. They know how to deliver an insult that comes across as a compliment, or at least makes it difficult to complain that they’re putting you down.
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
I still disagree with your basic premise of cause and effect, Jennifer. By your description of abuse, almost every child has been abused. Yet very few women want to rape, and most men don’t rape. I think there is a strategy to that latter fact. Most men don’t rape, which makes rape systematic and kept under the wire. There is a system to it, a politics to it. Families are shaped within this system, and abuse is reflected there. But I don’t think the problem begins with mom and dad. The question should be, “How to end a rape culture.” Families would be one of the many aspects of society that would change in reaching that goal.
Pearl(Quote) (Reply)
Uh, no, and how did you get to that conclusion?
How does my saying “abuse is what makes someone a rapist” equate to saying “all abused people end up rapists?” As we discussed up thread a bit, it’s believed that about 1 in 8 abused children become abusers.
Well, it’s not just “[my] basic premise” as you referred to it. I provided a source in the article, and argued up thread why I consider it the best available source, but there are plenty of others that support this premise. I’m aware of nothing in psychiatric literature to support the idea that culture could impact a child’s development more than the people he depends on for food and shelter (who, of course, impart aspects of culture and are affected by culture, so yes, it’s important to change the rape culture, but an egalitarian society will still produce rapists as long as sadistic, compassionless personalities exist). But if you’ve read something I haven’t, I’d love to see it. And if you haven’t, but simply choose to believe a particular theory, that’s your prerogative.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I think the Harry Potter books offer a good example of this. Harry’s adoptive family, the Dursleys, are quite abusive to him but fawn upon their own son Dudley, who becomes quite the spoiled bully. When they finally meet Harry’s teacher Dumbledore, he calls them on both abuses:
“You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted on the unfortunate boy sitting between you.”
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
That’s very cool, Patrick. Enough so to make me wonder if I should read those after all.
BTW, I’ve updated this article with a few edits and a rather large addition at the end. There were points I left out originally for brevity, that in hindsight really needed to be included.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
@ Patrick, that was one of my favorite bits of the series, where Dumbledore calls them on being shit parents whose coddling has been counter-productive.
@ Jenn JK Rowling is a damn talented writer – the detail to which she’s established the HP universe is incredible – though it’s still problematic. Like, Harry is basically flawless, the tragic hero beset by all these bad guys who want him dead, and a bunch of people who resent his specialness ‘cos they aren’t as special. And of course he kicks all their asses and wins the day each time :p
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
Scarlett: Not to derail the thread, but Harry certainly has his flaws – and much of the plot of book 5 is based on the villain exploiting them.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
That explains a lot. I read the whole thing through several years ago but only got up to book 4 reading it again :p
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
How about the questions -
Would you have sex with someone who you had just been petting and snuggling with after an enjoyable night, and is now silent and unresponsive beneath you?
Or how about
Would you have sex with someone who you had just been petting and snuggling and was showing obvious signs of arousal even though they hadn’t said they were willing to have sex (and may actually be saying no, no, no)?
IMO another part of teaching people how to not be rapists is to teach them that our bodies come with a set of pre-programmed responses to various stimuli, but those responses are there to make things easier for the body, not for the mind. And just because the body is saying yes doesn’t mean the person your with actually wants sex. (this applies to both sexes, it’s just that the male sex tends to be more able to physically say no, or get out of the situation).
If you look at survivors support forums/groups this sort of story is fairly common. And it’s this type of rape (that was referred to as grey rape above) that needs the education, as even if it wouldn’t get through a court of law, the impact on the victim is still huge, and on top of that a lot of people will assume that the victim is lying.
DragonLord(Quote) (Reply)
Actually, Mr. Confused is very often Mr. Entitled in disguise. It’s an apologist myth that consent is so confusing that most boys can hardly be expected to figure out whether they have it. I mean, yes, confusion exists, hence my link to the consent article. But the rapist who simply feels entitled to assume consent whenever he likes is far more common, and often actually makes up for a lot of these so-called “gray rapes.” Many of them commit a number of these “Oh, I’m sorry, I misunderstood” rapes – it’s their MO to get society to think they didn’t really mean any harm. It only becomes apparent when they get caught for one rape and that leads police to five more. All of which he was so gosh-darned confused about.
So I placed the emphasis exactly where it belonged, because I have actually spent a lot of time reading on this topic and studying it rather than just looking at the world and assuming I know what I’m on about.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
That makes 2 of us, probably for different reasons though, and I haven’t looked at the psychology behind rapists. Which would explain the slightly different takes on the same thing.
Personally I don’t think that most men are likely to be that confused when in full control of their faculties, and (as you’ve mentioned in another one of your blogs) suggesting that they are is just perpetuating a cycle, however after they have become a little inebriated…
On the other hand teaching our children that if they are inebriated and there is any doubt what so ever they should stop rather than go ahead would prevent most of the true confusion situations (which is where your article on consent comes in)
DragonLord(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not convinced alcohol creates legitimate confusion about consent – again, it’s just an excuse. Like driving – people claim they can’t tell when they’re too drunk to drive, but that’s such apologist horseshit. We hold people accountable for figuring out how to avoid drinking and driving. Why not drinking and raping? Because we’re looking for excuses for rape, as a society.
Basically, I only buy into the notion of confused consent for boys and very young men – say, under 21. And I’m skeptical about it then.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I’ll go with something like that.
The only thing that I’d say about alcohol is that it is well documented that it seriously affects judgement, observational ability, dexterity, pain sensitivity, short term memory, and mens ability to have sex. As such I think that people should adopt the BDSM rules for mixing it and play. DON’T, especially in a new relationship situation (anything less than 2 years old I consider a new relationship) where you’re still learning about each other and how you respond, any triggers or buttons you both have, etc.
On top of that I personally am an equal opportunities kind of guy, if we hold everyone to the same standards of awareness without lowering our standards for anyone (men, women, young or old) then it’s fair on everyone.
DragonLord(Quote) (Reply)
To everyone:
Using an example from DragonLord’s above comment (well, one of the many):
I haven’t looked at the psychology behind rapists.
This isn’t an impressive preamble to rebutting a researched article with citations on the topic of the psychology behind rape. I’m mentioning this because I’ve seen a lot of similar remarks around the net since I posted this article and deleted a few from this thread. See, this isn’t an opinion piece where I issue my own semi-founded thoughts, and you rebut with yours. It’s not my opinion at all: it is a conclusion based on and supported by many sources I’ve researched over many years, several of which are cited right there in the article so you can check them yourselves. C’mon, even US public high schools still teach about writing papers based on research, don’t they?
To rebut a research article’s points without introducing contradictory research or even apparently realizing that perhaps you ought to look into the topic before assuming your opinion counts for something is simply ignorant. It’s like saying, “I haven’t looked into the biology behind seizures, but I think people have seizures because they have demons in them. Little green ones, with horns, wearing blue t-shirts. Your totally imaginary idea that it’s biology and neurochemicals and stuff is just stupid.”
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Yes!
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
The concept of finding pertinent sources and citing them? Sure. Why it’s important/has meaning? Not so much. It could be better in other schools though; if i recall correctly, the year I graduated from HS, my school district had the distinction of being the only one in the state to be in both fiscal and academic emergency.
Though if basic knowledge of the scientific method were more common, this wouldn’t have been such a problem here. A big point of confusion (not just here, but regarding scientific research and non-scientists in general) seems to be a lack of understanding that anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence in scientific research.
ValeriusNaso(Quote) (Reply)
It’s actually incredibly startling to me how many people (based upon interactions both online and IRL) have a fundamental lack of understanding of science at it’s very basics. Most of the people I have experience with are either highschool or college grads or working through a degree (growing up in a very well-off part of suburban CO and now living in a college town will do that), and yet most except the few friends I have that graduated from a science field really do not understand what “science” is. To the point where they couldn’t tell me what the scientific method is, why science is not comparable to faith, what the difference between a scientific theory and a normal theory are…it makes for those lovely, irritating conversations in which they compare my “faith in science and things like evolution” to their belief in a divine being no one has ever interacted with or proven with falsifiable evidence and testing. Because evolution is a theory, and they have a theory that God exists. (This has nothing to do with either of us being right; just that argument in and of itself drives me up the wall!)
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
It’s not just a problem of understanding the value of the scientific method. As a biologist I am well versed in its methods, and I wholeheartedly believe in the primacy of unbiased observation over opinion! So I will accept arguments that are based on research, for example, Jennifer Kesler’s writings on this site. But I don’t know how to differentiate GOOD psychology research from unsubstantiated or biased work. In fields other than biology and chemistry, I have very little ability to identify flaws in research. For example, I have to take the word of a physicist that their methods are sound, because I have NO clue what they are talking about most of the time. Any thoughts?
Allie(Quote) (Reply)
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