Violating the conservative mythos on rape
Published by punkass marc January 18th, 2007 in Feminism, Rape, Edumakashun, Shame on you for being a womanAfter reading a Courtney Martin article on sex education that’s been covered quite well across the blogosphere, my mind was immediately flooded with the kneejerk reactions I would expect to hear from your standard-issue rape-apologist wingnut.
Courtney opens her article by recounting the story of her friend, Jen, whose sociology professor described the power dynamics of rape in class, leading Jen to realize one of her recent experiences after a night of drinking precisely fit the mold.
The Right would be incensed by this tale, but not because of the rape. No, they’d be pissed she had the gall to get raped and then realize she got raped, advancing arguments like:
“It’s her own fault for putting herself in a bad situation!”
Yep. Drinking is dangerous. Problem is, the conservatives never ask themselves what’s worse: drinking which puts you in danger of being raped, or drinking so that you release your inner rapist and actually rape someone. If anyone should be chastised for imbibing so much alcohol that you can’t control yourself, it should probably be the violent offender. Wacky pinko liberal theory, I know. But hey, when a drunk driver hurts someone, we usually blame the person who got hit for being out in the road, don’t we?
What’s that? We don’t? Oh.
Getting in a car is dangerous. Jaywalking is dangerous. Challenging Jeff Goldstein to a fight is dange- okay, well, not that one so much, but you get the idea. Every day, each of us do plenty of things that increase our risk of being hurt, but that doesn’t give a single soul the license to hurt us.
“If she really didn’t want to have sex, she’d have fought back harder!”
A famous conservative once made waves with a powerful and popular slogan: “Just Say No.” For las drogas, that was supposed to be good enough. For rape? Apparently, in a paradox to the previous wingnut axiom, you’re expected to increase your risk of being harmed even further by instigating violence against your attacker. That’s the only way to “prove” you didn’t want it. If you didn’t bleed, says the ‘nut, then voluntary sex was decreed.
I’d wager that if any of the asshats promoting that position ever switched places with Ned Beatty in Deliverance, they’d have a whole different outlook on how one would react in a rape situation, or any situation where you are in real danger of being hurt even more by escalating violence. Of course, these same nitwits think waving a gun at an intruder in your home will somehow “protect” you, so maybe they shouldn’t be considered too trustworthy when it comes to risk factors. [Insurance agents, take note!]
“Liberal academics are filling our kids’ heads with lies!”
I guess if evolution is a lie, so, too, is the idea that being forced to have sex after saying “no” equates to rape. Either that, or those kooky academic ideas just happen to threaten two of the conservative’s most endearing positions, namely “I will NOT die and rot in the ground because I AM A BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE GODDAMIT” and “Boy will be boys!”
When handled by a reasonable teacher, almost all meaningful education points to a belief in equality. The traditional differences we’ve been taught to fear are better explained, and in some cases torn down, by biology, philosophy, and, yes, sociology. But hey, if you go that route, then the special treatment and double standards afforded men don’t make as much sense any more, and *poof!* you lose your ability to get away with stealing a bit of the ol’ in-and-out.
That simple fact is part of why we have so much trouble fulfilling Ms. Martin’s desire to see reasonable sex ed taught in American schools. She’s right that, if done correctly, sex ed could dramatically reduce rape and sexual confusion, but I fear there are far too many people who like the system just the way it is. It’ll be some time before we can even hope to have a reasonably-sized pool of teachers in our school system who wouldn’t mangle sex ed with their own broken beliefs or religious righteousness.
Fortunately, painful as it has been at times, feminism continues to make real progress in America. Maybe in 100 years it won’t be so easy for so many people to dismiss stories like Jen’s with the loathsome lies above, or so hard to teach our kids about the basics of their bodies and how to interact with them responsibly.
7 Responses to “Violating the conservative mythos on rape”
- 1 Pingback on Jan 18th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
- 2 Pingback on Jan 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am
***standing ovation***
If you didn’t bleed, says the ‘nut, then voluntary sex was decreed.
You must have wanted it at least as much as their wives do.
excellent.
I was a police officer for many years, and dealt with several sexual assault cases. In addition to the ones I had direct contact with, I would speak with other officers about the ones they were investigating, or had investigated in the past.
Allow me to give away one of the biggest secrets in law enforcement; the majority of genuine rape cases are never reported. The police will never hear about them because of the dehumanizing effects on the victims makes them less inclined to talk. Thats a fucking fact, and I will not argue about it.
Heres the other side of the coin. We deal with so many “bullshit raped” cases it would blow your mind. Girlfriends/wives who were caught cheating and claimed “I was raped”. Susie X was tipsy and lowered her natural inhibitions and had wild consentual sex with 1,2, even 3 guys, and now is having some inner crisis over destroyed herself socially. And the lie that I was raped is more palatable than “drunk, horny and not wise”.
Maybe this is being defensive before the fact, but I don’t give a damn about these bullshit rape cases. There are too many genuinely hurting women for me as an officer to give credence to a self serving liar.
I would also like to add every situation is different, and unfortunately there is just not any way to generalize any situation or genre of crime.
Ok, Becky was drunk, Bob is an idiot. Bob is now a convicted sex offender. Amen. As a cop I am a pragmatist/realist, and I did the dirty heart breaking work of being at ground zero with the victims. Rape is not an academic subject, and should not be treated as such.
I suppose what I am trying to say here is if you have been sexually assaulted; I am deeply sorry.