We have some tips for you.
There are a couple of things you should try to avoid….
Don’t engage in rape denial, rape erasure and rape apology – Don’t try to insist that the overwhelming majority of rapists are male, so as to cover up female rapists; don’t deny that women are socially enabled to apply much greater sexual coercion – gay-shaming, claiming if the guy doesn’t want it he’s insulting them or hates women – to men than men can on women; don’t deny that male rape victims get ignored, erased and that their rapes are often dismissed by law enforcement.
And when it comes to the matter of consent, please, please don’t make the mistake of indulging in dehumanizing, sexist stereotypes that claim that men are all sexual animals who want sex all the time 24/7, so that a woman can just have sex with a man anytime she feels like it, because he’s in some kind of permanent state of consent. And please don’t indulge in the peasant ignorance of basic biology that claims that an erection equals consent. Because either of those will just make you look like stupid and hateful and not really worth discussing this with.
Feminists have done such good work getting everyone to see that non-consensual sex is rape; please don’t go and shit on all of that.
Don’t try to say that female-on-male rape is so rare as to be insignificant, that it is such an anomaly that it really doesn’t merit much attention, or worse yet, that talking about female-on-male rape is just a ploy to divert attention from women who are raped, “the real victims of rape”. Instances of female-on-male rape and sexual aggression are in no way anomalous.
Don’t try to claim that men categorically cannot be raped because rape is a crime of power and men have all the power. That will just makes you look ridiculous to anyone who has lived as a man for more than a week.
And don’t try to claim that being made to penetrate is somehow any less of a rape than being penetrated. That’s just noxious sexist bigotry, and it’s probably not a comparison you’re in any position to make anyway. Also please don’t try to claim that very influential people have insisted on this very distinction and succeeded in getting it recognized as authoritative.
Don’t try to insist that rape is socially condoned and ignored – Don’t claim there is a “rape culture” in a society where rape is punished almost as severely as murder, where accused rapists are denied specific Constitutional guarantees, and where there is a bloody history of rape accusations being used in the service of racist terrorism and oppression, resting on a cultural valuation of women’s bodies as sacrosanct, because it puts you in nasty, nasty, nasty company and can even suggest you may be a nasty, nasty, nasty fellow traveler.
Don’t try to deny that false rape accusations are a real problem – Don’t advocate for policies at schools that enable anonymous accusations without any provision for verification, don’t deny that people accuse other people of rape for all kinds of spurious reasons for completely self-serving ends, or that they can and quite have had quite deadly consequences. So please don’t try to claim that a false rape accusation is somehow less serious than an actual rape. And when people advocate for reasonable penalties for false rape accusers, don’t come up with every squirmy prevarication and distortion you can to argue against that.
Don’t try to insist that when a woman rapes a boy it is somehow not as harmful to him as when a man rapes a girl. I hope this doesn’t require any explanation, but that’s just a disgusting thing to even say.
And last and most important:
Don’t try to monopolize the discussion – Don’t assume rape is a feminist issue or that the issue belongs to feminists, or to women, and that you as a feminst have some special insight into the problem that others don’t, because that just shows very clearly how little insight into the problem you do have.
This is really simple – simple gender equality – just make an effort to regard and assess female and male victims and perpetrators the same way, by the same standards, without special exemptions and excuses for rape. It is simple but very difficult, because it will mean jettisoning everything traditional society has taught you about gender relations and rape. And don’t be surprised to find a lot of those traditionalist assumptions embedded even in your feminism.
We can finally start to have some productive discussion about rape, but it is going to take some work. Some of us really have some trash to take out before that discussion can get under way.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
I like what it says about the female body being seen as sacrosanct (while the male body isn’t). I think that’s also part of romance novels, chivalry and a lot of other things.
Beautifully put. I’m bookmarking this one for later reference when I run into radfems who make these same pathetic blunders.
Copyleft, they are the ones I was thinking f when I put this together. Ally’s threads collect this kind of shit, and he is too nice to lay the smacketh down where it belongs the way he should given his stated strong feelings on the matter.
Dani, there’s a whole series of post waiting to be born out of your comment.
Do (some) Feminists argue against gender neutral rape definitions/laws on the basis that men would abuse them to harm women? I know the reasoning for primary aggressor policies is similar, and I know about Mary Koss, but I’m not certain whether or not I’ve heard this exact argument in regards to rape.
I’ve been thinking about prioritizing female perpetration vs. false rape accusations lately, and it occurred to me that when female perpetration is taken seriously in frequency and intensity, false rape accusations will probably become a Feminist issue.
IDK, maybe I’m just rambling here.
@logSotot
“Do (some) Feminists argue against gender neutral rape definitions/laws on the basis that men would abuse them to harm women?”
Yes.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Womens-groups-Cancel-law-charging-women-with-rape
IogSotot …
“it occurred to me that when female perpetration is taken seriously in frequency and intensity, false rape accusations will probably become a Feminist issue.”
Probably not. Teacher unions in Australia are moving to create protections for teachers – three quarters female in Aus – from false accusations. I know of no other industry bodies doing the same. Coincidentally schools are environments where there may be up to three times as many female perpetrators as male.
To add to TB’s response during the past year Indian feminist groups successfully opposed proposed gender neutral sexual assault laws by asserting that boys and men would falsely accuse women.
I think you have made several good points, and generally I agree. I REALLY disagree regarding your stance on rape culture.
It is absolutely ridiculous to cite a case against a group of African Americans in 1930s ALABAMA as proof that rape culture doesn’t exist. That’s absurd. To this day African Americans still receive disproportional sentencing, and you’re going to turn back 80-some years into the past, in an area and time where black people were lynched for walking down the street?
I think the recent events in Steubenville, OH, and revelations of 400,000 untested rape kits in police custody in the US, is evidence to the contrary.
Also, rape culture effects men quite negatively – it is part of the mechanism of shame that prevents many men from talking about being raped and seeking justice.
@ JollyGreenDragon
“It is absolutely ridiculous to cite a case against a group of African Americans in 1930s ALABAMA as proof that rape culture doesn’t exist.”
We don’t need to go back that far in history; there are plenty of modern day examples of white men being beaten + killed for having been accused of rape (along with black men).
There’s more evidence for a culture that condones the rape hysteria that has, throughout history, been both the primary justification and the trigger for wide-scale violence against marginalized men–and still to this day justifies violence against all men–than there is for a culture that condones the rape of women.
If you want to talk about “rape culture” in terms of men being raped, you have a leg to stand on.
But women allegedly being raped has been the rallying cry to kill, beat and exile men for millennia.
If you’d like some more recent cases, here you are:
http://www.cotwa.info/2013/10/the-horrific-consequences-of-false-rape.html
Excerpt:
“Two teenage girls lied to a 19-year-old man that another 19-year-old, Cory Headen, had raped one of them, so the man broke into Mr. Headen’s home and beat him to death with a baseball bat while he was sleeping. At the man’s trial, the judge described the teens who accused Mr. Headen of rape as “stupid, drunken, immature girls” who delivered a vile message. The judge sentenced the killer to seven years in prison. The girls who ignited the fire apparently escaped unscathed.”
@JollyGreenDragon
“revelations of 400,000 untested rape kits in police custody in the US, is evidence to the contrary.”
Indeed. What does it say about our culture that men can be convicted without the physical evidence even being _processed_?
I really approach the topic of rape with much confusion. I guess that is all you feel when legitimately raped. I am not talking about feminism and the heirchy that involves how women subjugate other women which I feel as a victim thereof. I mot gay and have been repediately raped by gay women and am sour. I am not prejudice asp I press on for the right to decide on my own sexual preferences. I talked about the issues of rape before and have only been left with a regretful remorse for how I have been used. Take it or leave it.
Sorry for the late welcome, SGL. Welcome! And thanks for that comment.
Nobody seems to want to talk about F>F rape. It reflects too badly on the sugar and spice half of the species, I guess. Too bad. It will get discussed here. Thanks again.