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Further to this article, I present my (somewhat scattered) thoughts on the subject.
I think when Andrea Dwarkin and company say things like "Rape is a tool used by all men to keep all women opressed"... well, maybe they do mean it litterally, I don't know... but I tend to read it like this:
The threat of rape -- or even 'just'[1] unwanted sexual contact -- is double-edged.
A woman isn't 'nice' if she turns down a ride from an aquaintance (to use the example from the above-linked journal) -- she's making horrible assumptions about him if she says "no, thanks, I'll stick with the bus" and doesn't change her mind.
BUT
If she accepts the ride from the aquaintance -- who then rapes her -- she is stupid for having accepted the ride in the first place.
Whereas the guy can be offended and self-righteous if his offer of a ride is turned down ("How can you compare me to those jerks? I'm not like that!") our social rules still allow him to blame a rape-victim for her rape by saying "She shouldn't have gotten in the car", rather than "What the hell did he think he was doing?"
Side-Rant: See, when you say "She shouldn't have gotten into the car", implicit in that statement is the idea that the woman's rape is entirely due to the fact that she got into the car and, thus, is entirely *not* due, in any way, to the fact that her rapist decided to pull over, rip her panties off, and plunge his dick into her cunt even though she was screaming and pleading and fighting to make him stop.
See?
By the logic implicit in "she shouldn't have gotten into the car", if Joe invites Frank over to watch the game, and then stabs him to death on his couch, Frank's murder is, in fact, Frank's fault -- it has everything to do with Frank's descision to enter Joe's house, and nothing to do with Joe's descision - his making of that choice - to plunge his knife into Frank's stomach until his life was utterly destroyed adn reduced to nothing.
See?
The logic is totally stupid.
And yet we persist in applying it in this particular case (see linked entry, above, for a really good break-down as to why we do this).
/Side-rant.
Anyway. The Dwarkin-esque phrase I cited earlier? My reading of it is that it's not so much that "all men rape all women", because that's obviously not the case. (If it were, none of us would ever be off our backs, now would we?)
It's that both the threat and the consequences of rape are all upon women, while the privilige of non-responsibility, and the privilige of confidence[2] are men's.
The above-linked author has explained this about a million times more eloquently and effectively, I think, than I have, so do please read her entry.
***
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1]Okay, 'just' is a tricky word here. Because it implies than anything short of outright rape is... dismissable. As in: "He just tried to kiss you, come on, what's so bad about that?" -- in reference to what happened to me on the bus 366 days ago.
Obviously, a rape is millions of times worse in degree -- the difference between a cigarette burn and having someone pour kerosine over your head and laugh while setting you on fire, say -- than an unwanted kiss.
But the statement is the same: "What I want (sex, control) is more important than what you need (safety, autonomy, confidence, freedom)".
[2]You've heard the sentiment "Courage is acting despite the fear"? Confidence, I think, is not experiencing the fear at all.
I think when Andrea Dwarkin and company say things like "Rape is a tool used by all men to keep all women opressed"... well, maybe they do mean it litterally, I don't know... but I tend to read it like this:
The threat of rape -- or even 'just'[1] unwanted sexual contact -- is double-edged.
A woman isn't 'nice' if she turns down a ride from an aquaintance (to use the example from the above-linked journal) -- she's making horrible assumptions about him if she says "no, thanks, I'll stick with the bus" and doesn't change her mind.
BUT
If she accepts the ride from the aquaintance -- who then rapes her -- she is stupid for having accepted the ride in the first place.
Whereas the guy can be offended and self-righteous if his offer of a ride is turned down ("How can you compare me to those jerks? I'm not like that!") our social rules still allow him to blame a rape-victim for her rape by saying "She shouldn't have gotten in the car", rather than "What the hell did he think he was doing?"
Side-Rant: See, when you say "She shouldn't have gotten into the car", implicit in that statement is the idea that the woman's rape is entirely due to the fact that she got into the car and, thus, is entirely *not* due, in any way, to the fact that her rapist decided to pull over, rip her panties off, and plunge his dick into her cunt even though she was screaming and pleading and fighting to make him stop.
See?
By the logic implicit in "she shouldn't have gotten into the car", if Joe invites Frank over to watch the game, and then stabs him to death on his couch, Frank's murder is, in fact, Frank's fault -- it has everything to do with Frank's descision to enter Joe's house, and nothing to do with Joe's descision - his making of that choice - to plunge his knife into Frank's stomach until his life was utterly destroyed adn reduced to nothing.
See?
The logic is totally stupid.
And yet we persist in applying it in this particular case (see linked entry, above, for a really good break-down as to why we do this).
/Side-rant.
Anyway. The Dwarkin-esque phrase I cited earlier? My reading of it is that it's not so much that "all men rape all women", because that's obviously not the case. (If it were, none of us would ever be off our backs, now would we?)
It's that both the threat and the consequences of rape are all upon women, while the privilige of non-responsibility, and the privilige of confidence[2] are men's.
The above-linked author has explained this about a million times more eloquently and effectively, I think, than I have, so do please read her entry.
***
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1]Okay, 'just' is a tricky word here. Because it implies than anything short of outright rape is... dismissable. As in: "He just tried to kiss you, come on, what's so bad about that?" -- in reference to what happened to me on the bus 366 days ago.
Obviously, a rape is millions of times worse in degree -- the difference between a cigarette burn and having someone pour kerosine over your head and laugh while setting you on fire, say -- than an unwanted kiss.
But the statement is the same: "What I want (sex, control) is more important than what you need (safety, autonomy, confidence, freedom)".
[2]You've heard the sentiment "Courage is acting despite the fear"? Confidence, I think, is not experiencing the fear at all.
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