Now that you’ve had a little time to reflect on the mind-boggling controversy that occurred when Rebecca Watson suggested that propositioning strange women in elevators was creepy, and men – including Richard Dawkins – whined in response and wondered however would poor menz ever get laid again if they couldn’t creep women into giving it up, I want to tell you a couple of things you need to understand.
Rejecting a strange man’s sexual advances is scary. That’s right – scary. Some women will tell you it’s not and that Watson was overreacting, but no one’s experience is universal: the fact is, a small minority of people cope with rejection by lashing out in violence, and when those people are bigger and stronger than you, or have power over you, you can end up getting hurt. It is completely rational and sensible to think defensively when you’re in a situation full of unknowns. A man you don’t know may respond to your rejection with a friendly, “Well, couldn’t hurt to try, right?” or he may turn out to be a rapist who likes showing teh bitchez they can’t reject him, or he may fall into that huge gray area in between.
This should explain two things to you: why women are often unclear in their rejections (“I’m busy/engaged/have a headache” rather than “No, I would never be interested in you”), and why women are creeped out by situations men think women should find flattering.
Does anyone else suspect that when heterosexual men envision these situations, they’re seeing only beautiful women, without judo training, propositioning them to do something they really want to do? Of course. That’s how privilege works [required reading]. So let me present a more fitting version (previously discussed in comments, if it sounds familiar):
You’re a man. A really big, muscly guy gets in the elevator with you. He tells you he’d like to fuck you. You feel keenly aware that if he wanted, he could easily just spin you round, pull down your pants and fuck your anus as hard as he wants. You know it can happen, because this has happened to lots of men you know. You’ve seen it on literally thousands of TV shows and movies ever since you were a kid. And you also know that no one would believe you if you reported it, because he’s well-dressed and looks extremely respectable. And he wants to fuck you, and he can rape you if you refuse. Maybe you should just give him a blow job, to be safe. But then wouldn’t that be the same as being raped, since you don’t want to have sex with this guy? Yes, except, well, you’d retain some small measure of control. As you prepare to get on your knees, you think, “God, I hope he doesn’t ask for my telephone number afterwards.”
Do not read this as an argument that Watson’s situation was this terrifying. From what she’s said, it wasn’t. I’m just showing you an extreme because apparently some of you just don’t have a clue, and an extreme might be required to penetrate the dense fog surrounding your thinking processes.
Maybe a better example is Greg Laden’s wonderful post about encountering a dog, and how he’s not afraid of dogs generally, and he knows how to handle them generally, but sometimes you meet a dog and have no way of knowing if it’s the sweetest creature ever or rabid and vicious, and how, gee, maybe apprehension in that situation is absolutely justified. Ya think?
Whichever example you prefer, that brings me to my second point. Rejecting a strange man can, in the right circumstances, be so scary that some women will simply skip the rejection and do what’s being asked, in hopes that they won’t be brutally raped (because having sex you don’t want in order to avoid a worse fate is rape, too). Remember when we were all being told by public awareness campaigns in the 80s: do not fight with muggers, just give them the money and they’ll leave you alone, but if you fight with them they might kill you? That’s what women have known about men since forever, and so many of us are extremely pro-active in our avoidance of strange men in uncertain situations. And, yes, that’s a pity for you genuinely nice guys – but you if you are nice, you’ll blame rapists, not women, for making things difficult.
And that, folks, is one of the many ways rape culture benefits “nice guys”, or, men who are not legally rapists but are perfectly comfortable with manipulating women into sex rather than looking for mutual sexual experiences. Rape culture provides a ton of ways to frighten women into allowing you to rape them without anything resembling physical violence:
- Creeping women out by targeting them in the way a rapist would. Read Laden’s post. Be aware of the ways male rapists approach adult women: they come up to us in areas where we’re alone, where there are no witnesses, where “nice girls” shouldn’t be, when we’re obviously intoxicated, etc. Your best bet is to meet women in other types of situations. If you strongly feel the need to hit on a woman in a situation where you’d be creeped out if a big burly guy hit on you, the way to do it is: offer her your number instead of asking for hers. Ask her if she’d meet you for coffee in the hotel dining area tomorrow morning rather than right now in your room. Indicate your interest without pressuring her into demonstrating reciprocation. That’s exactly how rapists don’t think. (And honestly? If you think you need rapist tactics to “get laid”, you probably really are just a rapist at heart.)
- Being her boss, and having that long history of bosses retaliating against female employees who don’t submit to rape – and the long history of a society that didn’t understand why this was wrong until the 90s. Again, use a method acting trick to figure it out. You’re a man. Your boss wants a blow job. You know there’s not another job half this good available to you in the tri-state area. No one’s going to believe you if you claim he demanded this from you, because everyone thinks he’s so nice.
- Promoting the idea that your religion states that a woman can never deny her husband “sex”, when your religion is dominant in your culture and, perhaps, government.
These are just a few ways that rape culture enables men to rape without physical duress or fear of consequences. I bet commenters can name some others.
Rape culture works because rape is a history every woman shares. If you haven’t been raped, you know someone who has. Or you’ve been in situations where, in hindsight, you think you narrowly and luckily avoided being raped. You don’t know a strange woman’s history with rape culture. Just as she needs to assume you are a rapist until she has good reason to believe otherwise, you should assume you’re dealing with someone who’s keenly aware you might be a rapist and taking sensible precautions. You are not entitled to resent her for making that impersonal assumption. You are entitled to resent rapists for setting up a culture in which such assumptions are, sadly, quite rational based on the facts she has before her.
And rape is only the beginning of rape culture enforcement. There’s also the fact that women are far more likely than men to be murdered by an intimate partner, or a serial killer with misogynistic issues, or get beaten half to death when they’re rented out by one man to another for sexual purposes. Rape is traumatic as hell on its own, but just in case that’s not enough, we have to keep in mind that some men won’t be happy until we’re dead. And when we meet strange men, we don’t have a magic way of telling the harmless majority from the lethal minority.
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I would like to share a web site with you, because I think more men need to know this stuff. Otherwise, they may not realize the harm they do.
http://artofmanliness.com/
Some guy(Quote) (Reply)
Some guy,
I forgot to mention that I think you should get in contact with the site’s author to see if you can write a guest column about this subject. That’s why I brought it up.
Some guy(Quote) (Reply)
“There’s also the fact that women are far more likely than men to be murdered by an intimate partner…”
Recently there was a murder in a neighboring town where I live. A young woman (18 or 19) was killed by her boyfriend and her body left in a marsh. She was found a short time after. Not sure of the circumstances but ti was scary, as things like that don’t typically happen where I live.
Red(Quote) (Reply)
Very good point. Going along with, “rape culture allows men to get laid without doing the dirty work of rape-rape themselves”, I’ll add that rape culture allows survivors to not even realize they’ve been raped. Just because someone doesn’t know she’s been raped, doesn’t mean she hasn’t been. She might think of it as “just” assault, he might not realize that he was too drunk to consent, or she might have internalized that rape only happens to bad girls who deserve it.
Example 1. A friend of mine was at a house party when a friend of her boyfriend’s cornered her in the dining room. Everyone else was in the back yard or in the family room, with music blasting. He never touched her, but backed her into a corner where she couldn’t leave without pushing past him. She kept saying, “My boyfriend wouldn’t like it, I need to get back to the party,” but he wouldn’t leave and no one came to her rescue and finally she compromised by giving him a blowjob. When she related the story to me, she didn’t realize it was rape. Because she’d said yes in the end, that made it her fault in her mind.
Example 2. A friend’s mother was molested by her own father when she was a little girl. Years later, she freely and willingly let him babysit her own little girl (my friend). He raped my friend. Her mother couldn’t believe it. You see, he’d only raped her when she was little because she was a bad girl who needed punishing, and he would never do that to her daughter because her daughter was a good girl. It ended up destroying her marriage because her husband couldn’t understand how she could possibly leave their daughter alone with a man she knew to be a pedophile.
Example 3. A friend of mine (male) went to a party and got smashingly drunk. A female coworker helped him home and then had sex with him. Weeks later she confronted him, said she was pregnant with his baby and she wouldn’t abort if he gave her money. He ended up borrowing money from his family and paying her to surrender custody of their child. Never once has this man ever admitted that he was raped. I’ve never told him either, because being religious he’s already conflicting enough about having a child out of wedlock. I don’t want to put the stigma of “rape bastard” onto the innocent daughter.
Yes, I really do know all of these people (and more besides).
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Wish we had an edit button…
On the study about how people cope with rejection with violence; that comes as no surprise to me. People who are so accustomed to getting what they want and being ego-stroked and feeling entitled to things don’t know (or were never taught how) to cope with the reality of life that is disappointment and rejection.
These people are typically the ones who had the parents who just ‘couldn’t say no’ to their kids and gave them everything they wanted or the overly ‘feel good’ parents who insisted on doing everything they could to keep their kid from being let down too much or that they didn’t feel like a ‘loser’, so they would ‘bend the rules’ just to make them feel better. Sometimes they are one in the same.
Yes, I’m aware it’s a blanket assumption, but from what I’ve witnessed, those are one of the categories those kinds of people fall into.
Red(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t have anything worth saying, but just wanted to acknowledge this post.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
I’m so glad you made this post. I live downtown and many times men, often drunk or high, have come up to me when I’m walking down the street. Always is it easier to pretend I’m not rejecting them and walking along until I see a store/some other place filled with people and can make an excuse and run into it. I think this is pretty much universal.
Angela(Quote) (Reply)
I’m curious about how this would turn out . . . at times, this site seems to try to be about masculinity being something other than just the opposite or lack of femininity, but at other times it can be quite dismissive and patronizing towards the more female issues.
Jack(Quote) (Reply)
Jack,
I only gleaned the front of the site and assumed due to the old time-y theme/layout that it was “ironic”.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Just last night I had a simple but unpleasant experience with a guy who was probably perfectly decent. He probably had no idea how uncomfortable he was making me feel, or that I palmed a kitchen knife, just in case. It probably wouldn’t occur to him to try and physically force me to do anything, just to keep pushing and cajoling when I said no. It didn’t make me feel any less icky.
And the thing is, seeing as he was probably perfectly decent, he probably would have backed off sooner if I had just said “I don’t want to have sex with you” straight off the bat rather than avoiding the topic and then making excuses about bad ideas and early work in the morning. But because I was feeling nervous and flustered and socially obligated to be pleasant and amiable, and because I didn’t know him well enough to be sure, I didn’t. Because probably isn’t good enough.
Thank you for this post.
Wren(Quote) (Reply)
And here i thought everything had been said about that incident. Thank you for proving me wrong.
Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Yes, this.
And it doesn’t even have to be fear of physical assault or rape. For whatever reason–fortunate past, strange brain, whatever–I don’t think about the possibility of rape much in relation to myself, not even when unwelcome guys hit on me.
I do, however, worry about them making a scene. Because our culture has *also* taught guys that being persistent and self-pitying is a great way to get laid, and that being loud and obnoxious is a great way to feel better after someone’s rejected you. So even though I’m not worrying about physical violence, for whatever reasons, I get fairly tense anticipating the barrage of “oh, c’maaaaahn”/”why nooooot?”/”nobody likes me”/’you fucking bitch”. As Wren said, we’re socialized to be polite and amiable, and if people start looking at me, I feel flustered even though that’s not my fault.
And I’m fairly comfortable with being mean, with identifying as a bitch, with telling guys that no, they damn well *aren’t* good enough for me. Someone who’s absorbed more of the various sociological toxins re: ladylike behavior and “being nice” could have a really shitty experience even without anyone laying a hand on her.
Which is not in any way equivalent to the fear of getting sexually assaulted, of course. Absolutely not. But it bears saying, I think, that even the more “socially acceptable” behavior of asshole rejected guys can be a reason that women don’t feel that comfortable with propositions under certain circumstances.
Isabel C.(Quote) (Reply)
Thank you for the excellent post–a friend forwarded it to me.
I think men really do have a difficult time thinking about the sheer size issue–again, going back to the dog analogy, your great dane might be the sweetest dog in the world, but if it’s not it can kill me. So I treat it as if it’s dangerous until I know for sure that it is not.
I also think that it might be the case that, since women are perhaps less likely to disclose to male friends that they’ve been raped, men think that no/few women they know have been sexually assaulted, compared to what a woman friend of those same people they know would think.
Emily Chapman(Quote) (Reply)
Emily Chapman,
There probably is a gender disparity in who rape survivors choose to tell, but my guess would be that it’s an indirect result of survivors choosing to tell those who are more sympathetic (who would likely be more female). In particular I’m thinking of a friend I made at college, who disclosed her story to me when I’d only been there a month. Later a mutual, female friend of ours, who had known the survivor far longer, told me she didn’t know any rape survivors. In other words, a female friend wouldn’t necessarily know more if the survivor had decided she might not be sympathetic.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t have much to add to this, but i just wanted to say thanks for the excellent post.
Dani(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick: It never ends. Never. And it’s sad and depressing. And while some people might be able to turn it off, women don’t have that choice.
The societal conversation around women’s level of comfort in public will not end with the Watson situation. There will be other situations of women speaking out, and the patriarchy trying to silence them. There will be high profile rape cases, and the rape apologia. There will be slut shaming, from innocuous “what are our girls wearing these days!” up to questioning a politcian’s clothing/make up choices.
Amanda(Quote) (Reply)
Excellent post. I sympathize with Watson’s experience of discovering that the group that seemed so great is in fact composed of people just like everybody else. Also further evidence that Richard Dawkins is a massive asshat.
This article also highlights a lot of the things that most men don’t think about when interacting with women, and that they generally aren’t taught due to our rape culture. Back in college, I had to determine on my own that when in a room (say, a study lounge) with a woman who I didn’t know well, it was a good idea to sit further from the door than her if possible, and if not to never sit between her and the route to the door.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick McGraw,
So, you didn’t get all huffy and massively insulted?
I swear, the comments on that dog link are unbelievable. Some of these guys are so invested at staying insulted (how DARE you call all men potential rapists!!) that they reject all well-reasoned arguments. First they were saying the author was saying men ARE dogs. He wasn’t, it was just an analogy. We’ll use another analogy: let’s say you have a rental property and are looking for a tenant. Do you just give the property to the first person who asks, with no references or credit checks or anything? And people on the thread made some really good points about shielding PINs when using the ATM or teaching children Stranger Danger (even though stranger abductions are actually rare).
“So now you’re comparing women to CHILDREN! BLARGLBLARGL INFANTILIZATION!”
…
…*facepalm*
JT(Quote) (Reply)
JT,
It’s even more annoying when you hear this (“how DARE you call all men potential rapists!!”) from the same kind of guys who buy into all this shit of men being hunters and women the prey. Evo-psych, pick-up and other manly menz are all propagating the idea that men are uncontrollable beasts – yet when a woman starts to believe them and reacts to this as she would to any other potential danger all of a sudden *she’s* a horrible person. You just can’t win this shit.
Sabrina(Quote) (Reply)
Sabrina,
Exactly. And had the worst been true of Elevator Guy, and Rebecca not presumed it, then the same self-proclaimed voices of reason that denounce her now presuming the worst – even though she didn’t – would be denouncing her for not doing so, and blaming her for any hurt that she’d suffered.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Sabrina,
Oh I know! If you stick with their comments long enough, eventually they end up slipping that their real problem is women daring to attempt controlling who has sexual access to them. Because “prey” shouldn’t have a choice.
JT(Quote) (Reply)
Actually just reading Laden’s dog analogy post gave me the willies. Seriously, palms sweating.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have only a handful of Elevator Guy stories, but the sad truth of the matter is that is not fortunate at all. No one should have an Elevator Guy (or, in my case, guy following me down a deserted street and getting all up on me or other guy on the dance floor trying to stick his tongue down my throat while everyone around me shot looks of annoyance at ME) story. No. One.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I swear, the comments on that dog link are unbelievable. Some of these guys are so invested at staying insulted (how DARE you call all men potential rapists!!) that they reject all well-reasoned arguments.
I don’t get it, I really don’t. I mean, my fifty bucks says that most of these dudes are the same ones who respond to accounts of rape with “Well OBVIOUSLY it’s terrible this happens, but women should really be careful when they’re [drinking/getting dressed/going on dates/walking home/leaving the house]. I’m not victim blaming, I’m just saying common sense!” Etc etc ad nauseum.
We are just doing what you say, dudebros. My common sense is telling me to stay far away from you.
Wren(Quote) (Reply)
Wren,
Hmmph, none of the men I know would be so reserved in regard to accounts of rape, they’d usually blow it off by saying something like “LOL SILLY HYSTERICAL WOMAN, YOU WEREN’T RAPED YOU JUST GOT DRUNK AND REGRETTED IT”…these are the same guys who complained that “A BUNCH OF BITCHES” were slut-walking in town near where they lived and why they were a bunch of “STUPID BUTT-HURT CUNTS” because “SLUTWALK IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I EVER HEARD OF”…granted there’s a lot of valid criticisms of Slutwalk, but you know that’s not why they think it’s dumb.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Of course, when someone responds that it should be the responsibility of the man NOT to rape, they react like that’s the strangest thing they’ve ever heard, and they start trying to come up with excuses as to why it’s still the victim’s fault. -_-
Dani(Quote) (Reply)
I wonder whether some of the men who get defensively angry about this base their lives on the assumption that their penises are the most wonderful thing ever and that anybody who doesn’t think so is just mean and bad and wrong and trying to kick away the foundations of their selfhood. That’s juvenile thinking: rather cute in a three-year-old who just figure out how to pee on a Cheerio in the toilet, but a grown man who can actually hurt somebody should be beyond this.
Jenny Islander(Quote) (Reply)
Yes. A stranger’s invitation to his hotel room at 4AM is totally innocent… until you’ve got to convince law enforcement/cable news personalities/a jury that accepting his offer of “coffee and conversation” was not consent to sex.
Patito Gigante(Quote) (Reply)
Let me just go on the record as saying – it’s happened to me.
I’d just moved to a new town and we were at a party at an acquaintance’s house. He was attractive and all, and I’d been having a good time talking to him on and off, so when he came to stand beside me I didn’t mind. Then I was pinned against the counter and he was more or less forcing me to kiss him. And I realized that I was more drunk than I’d thought – I didn’t want to respond, but I did.
After that, he wouldn’t leave me alone. I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him, and that I thought we should get back to the party – but I was still pinned to the counter, and I couldn’t get away. And he kept touching me.
Finally I told him I had to puke and literally ran away from the party. I couldn’t call anyone to pick me up, because there was no cell service, and everyone at that party was drunk and on his side because they were all his friends. They thought I’d freaked out for no reason and blown him off, but the thing was, my first priority had to be avoiding rape.
All I knew about this guy was that he was too strong for me to fight, he was drunk and he had taken my first reaction to the kiss as overruling my spoken and repeated requests to stop. Maybe he would have stopped short of actual sex, maybe not. Rape culture means I couldn’t risk sticking around to find out.
Rose(Quote) (Reply)
I think men are either
1) So ignorant of why people are afraid of them that when they are told they need to be treated like ferocious dogs they don’t understand where that is coming from and feel insulted for no reason they can fathom.
2) Are really really disgusted by all the nasty they see in their fellow men but don’t think of themselves that way and dislike being painted with the same brush.
Honestly, assuming the worse about strangers in unsafe situations is the only safe strategy. But when people are compared to animals it is fairly human to get upset about it.
Jhamin(Quote) (Reply)
I think one reason that many men react poorly to the elevator story is that when presented with a story containing a normal-ish man and a woman, they automatically start by imagining themselves to be the man. So the story gets filtered through some amount of personal perception of why they might have behaved similarly to the elevator guy, and if they might have behaved that way, then it can’t have been that bad. They’re starting out by empathizing with the wrong character, from the story-teller’s point of view, so the message goes awry. The reframing of “you’re in an elevator with a Big Scary Guy” helps with that, because they can start by empathizing with the right person, but then it’s hard to see any aspects of their own behavior in the Scary Guy, because of course *they* don’t corner people nearly so bluntly.
A version I’ve been wondering about goes something more like “You’re in the bar with your younger sister. When she goes to the restroom, a guy pulls you aside. He says he thinks your sister is interesting and pretty and he’d really like to see her in a more private setting. Could he ask you a favor? He’ll be waiting in the lobby – when your sister starts heading out to go to bed, could you text him, so he can arrange to “coincidentally” bump into her in the lobby and corner her in the elevator? Then he can try to charm her into coming up to his room, while they’re in the elevator alone together. The guy is good looking, seems charming enough – the kind of guy women always seem to go for. Do you agree – after all, your sister can always just say no, and how much trouble can one guy in an elevator be? Or is your reaction ‘ew, creep, there is no way I am helping you try that?’ ”
But in this version, while I think it might help with “why this comes across as creepy” it does so by playing into the “My womenfolk need my protection because they’re fragile flowers” stereotype, so I’m not sure it’s going in enough of the right direction.
Laura(Quote) (Reply)
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