Sorry to come in anonymous, Matt I love your work, I'm Jacinta, the OP that Ts'o was originally responding to. I originally brought the statistics into the discussion. I was also lazy in that original email and I regret it immensely. I didn't provide references.
I later rewrote my contribution (with references) and it's a guest post over on the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org/2011/02/09/because-sexual-assault-is-more-common-than-you-think/).
With Ts'o's objections in mind, I went out of my way to pick sources that were Australian-focused from extremely thorough, completely respectable organisations.
Let me quote you the relevant bit (reports are linked to from the blog post):
"The Australia Bureau of Statistics reports that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15 years, where sexual violence includes sexual assault and sexual threat. This gives us minimum numbers because it doesn’t take into account women and men who have experienced sexual violence before the age of 15 years and not since. The US Department of Justice reports that 1 in 6 women will be the victim of a completed or attempted rape at some time in their life.
"Most sexual assaults and rapes are not reported to the police; and the Office of Women’s Policy reports that rape offenders were charged in only 15% of reported rapes. They also found that only 2.1% of reports were designated by the police as false which corroborates other studies demonstrating that the rate of false accusations is very low."
But you know what? The precise numbers didn't actually matter. Whether my number of conference attendees who've experienced sexual violence come out to 36/700 or 45/700 is irrelevant. I was attempting to point out that a significant proportion (about 5%) of attendees have experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives (it's no better if you were a child at the time), and thus a talk that used imagery of sexual assault as a metaphor for the loss of personal freedoms was in extremely poor taste.
This point did not require a discussion of what constitutes rape or sexual assault and I viewed Ts'o's first response as a troll and derailment and didn't respond to him further. I viewed Ts'o's later response as rapist enablement, because by continuing to try to diminish how serious rape is, by trying to draw a line between one kind of non-consent and another kind of non-consent and saying that one kind is less bad somehow, he was (perhaps unintentionally) allowing men who do rape to feel that what they are doing is less bad, more acceptable somehow. That they had an ally in Ts'o, so long as they stayed with the non-violent kind of non-consent. If they merely (deliberately) took their date drinking, and then when their date had had a few too many took them home and badgered them into having sex, that Ts'o would argue that they were both drunk so really it's too hard to tell, or at least that their date is partly at fault. Even if these men make a habit of behaving this way, deliberately. (I don't know that Ts'o would argue that, but his post certainly suggests he might.) Maybe Ts'o doesn't know that this kind of predatory behaviour is common, that 6% of men seem to be willing to admit to doing this kind of thing if you don't use the word "rape". 6%... 42ish men at that LCA talk? (see blog for reference) His thought experiment, even if innocently intended, is enablement.
For what it's worth, the 1 in 4 women sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, 1 in 6 women victims of attempted or completed rape figures have been consistently backed up with studies in Australia, the USA and England. For example, the USA CDC published a study (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/NISVS/) just last December supporting the 1 in 6 figure: (they actually say "nearly 1 in 5").
Some people on this thread have suggested that "other people" only consider rape to actually be rape if violence has been involved. I suggest to any of you who are reading this, that you get out a bit more, improve your social skills, and then when you can talk to women, ask them. While stranger rape is more terrifying because you can't easily protect yourself from it (other than never going out, never walking alone at night not even to your car on a well lit street, i.e. not having any independence) it's by no means the only kind of rape women regularly protect ourselves from. Many women go on dates, and try to assess whether it's safe to allow our date to walk us back to our car. Many women consider party invites and wonder whether that creepy "nice guy" will be attending, and how we can stay out of his reach. Many women ponder inviting a man into her otherwise empty house, when she doesn't want anything to happen... because if it does, she'll be blamed. The same applies when going into his house.
Most women have been taught to be polite, to not make a fuss, to never hit or punch or be violent, to laugh at jokes that aren't funny so as to not hurt a man's feelings, to comply, to conform and to do unpleasant things to make other people happy. Then (even without alcohol) women can get in a situation where they're being pressured to do things they don't want, and suddenly they need to go against all of that training. Suddenly you're supposed to shout "no", but that might not be enough, and many women were taught to refuse in polite terms not direct "no"s. They're supposed to punch and hit and scratch and push and shove, and run out of the house naked and screaming rather than submit. But most women weren't taught to punch and hit and scratch and push and shove. When many women were kids we were told to let the creepy uncle give us a kiss hello. To let the dodgy friend of the family pull us onto his lap and cuddle us whether we liked it or not. Most women have been taught that our bodily autonomy wasn't really ours. Except, that when we might be raped we're supposed to act completely differently. Note that women are also taught that running out of the house naked and screaming is not acceptable behaviour either (and could result in them getting raped by a stranger). So a lot of women submit, because that's what they've been taught to do for all of their lives and when faced with an unfamiliar and scary situation, we fall back on our training. There doesn't have to be alcohol or violence, but submitting isn't consent. Then what do they do? They blame themselves, because maybe they should have said "no", louder. Or they shouldn't have invited him in, or that they should have known what his intentions were and headed it off sooner (miscommunication), or they should have somehow done more to stop it from happening. But pressuring or forcing someone into having sex with you, when they've indicated unwillingness is rape. Even if the rapist is just emotionally manipulative, rather than violent. Even if they just cajole and sook or just keep nagging. Especially if they've plied the victim with some form of drug to lower their inhibitions. Rape is rape, even without violence, from a stranger or not. Rape is rape. Rape is not the victim's fault. Rape is never the victim's fault. It's the fault of the rapist, 100% the fault of the rapist.
PS: I'm not saying every woman everywhere has been socialised in the way above, or that women can't overcome this dodgy training, but I am saying that many women have been socialised this way, and that first you have to acknowledge it before you can overcome it. I'm also not saying that men don't get any of this training, or different training that has its own disadvantages.
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Statistics, sources, and at the very least Ts'o was enabling rapists.
Date: 2012-11-05 04:48 pm (UTC)Sorry to come in anonymous, Matt I love your work, I'm Jacinta, the OP that Ts'o was originally responding to. I originally brought the statistics into the discussion. I was also lazy in that original email and I regret it immensely. I didn't provide references.
I later rewrote my contribution (with references) and it's a guest post over on the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org/2011/02/09/because-sexual-assault-is-more-common-than-you-think/).
With Ts'o's objections in mind, I went out of my way to pick sources that were Australian-focused from extremely thorough, completely respectable organisations.
Let me quote you the relevant bit (reports are linked to from the blog post):
But you know what? The precise numbers didn't actually matter. Whether my number of conference attendees who've experienced sexual violence come out to 36/700 or 45/700 is irrelevant. I was attempting to point out that a significant proportion (about 5%) of attendees have experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives (it's no better if you were a child at the time), and thus a talk that used imagery of sexual assault as a metaphor for the loss of personal freedoms was in extremely poor taste.
This point did not require a discussion of what constitutes rape or sexual assault and I viewed Ts'o's first response as a troll and derailment and didn't respond to him further. I viewed Ts'o's later response as rapist enablement, because by continuing to try to diminish how serious rape is, by trying to draw a line between one kind of non-consent and another kind of non-consent and saying that one kind is less bad somehow, he was (perhaps unintentionally) allowing men who do rape to feel that what they are doing is less bad, more acceptable somehow. That they had an ally in Ts'o, so long as they stayed with the non-violent kind of non-consent. If they merely (deliberately) took their date drinking, and then when their date had had a few too many took them home and badgered them into having sex, that Ts'o would argue that they were both drunk so really it's too hard to tell, or at least that their date is partly at fault. Even if these men make a habit of behaving this way, deliberately. (I don't know that Ts'o would argue that, but his post certainly suggests he might.) Maybe Ts'o doesn't know that this kind of predatory behaviour is common, that 6% of men seem to be willing to admit to doing this kind of thing if you don't use the word "rape". 6%... 42ish men at that LCA talk? (see blog for reference) His thought experiment, even if innocently intended, is enablement.
For what it's worth, the 1 in 4 women sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, 1 in 6 women victims of attempted or completed rape figures have been consistently backed up with studies in Australia, the USA and England. For example, the USA CDC published a study (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/NISVS/) just last December supporting the 1 in 6 figure: (they actually say "nearly 1 in 5").
Some people on this thread have suggested that "other people" only consider rape to actually be rape if violence has been involved. I suggest to any of you who are reading this, that you get out a bit more, improve your social skills, and then when you can talk to women, ask them. While stranger rape is more terrifying because you can't easily protect yourself from it (other than never going out, never walking alone at night not even to your car on a well lit street, i.e. not having any independence) it's by no means the only kind of rape women regularly protect ourselves from. Many women go on dates, and try to assess whether it's safe to allow our date to walk us back to our car. Many women consider party invites and wonder whether that creepy "nice guy" will be attending, and how we can stay out of his reach. Many women ponder inviting a man into her otherwise empty house, when she doesn't want anything to happen... because if it does, she'll be blamed. The same applies when going into his house.
Most women have been taught to be polite, to not make a fuss, to never hit or punch or be violent, to laugh at jokes that aren't funny so as to not hurt a man's feelings, to comply, to conform and to do unpleasant things to make other people happy. Then (even without alcohol) women can get in a situation where they're being pressured to do things they don't want, and suddenly they need to go against all of that training. Suddenly you're supposed to shout "no", but that might not be enough, and many women were taught to refuse in polite terms not direct "no"s. They're supposed to punch and hit and scratch and push and shove, and run out of the house naked and screaming rather than submit. But most women weren't taught to punch and hit and scratch and push and shove. When many women were kids we were told to let the creepy uncle give us a kiss hello. To let the dodgy friend of the family pull us onto his lap and cuddle us whether we liked it or not. Most women have been taught that our bodily autonomy wasn't really ours. Except, that when we might be raped we're supposed to act completely differently. Note that women are also taught that running out of the house naked and screaming is not acceptable behaviour either (and could result in them getting raped by a stranger). So a lot of women submit, because that's what they've been taught to do for all of their lives and when faced with an unfamiliar and scary situation, we fall back on our training. There doesn't have to be alcohol or violence, but submitting isn't consent. Then what do they do? They blame themselves, because maybe they should have said "no", louder. Or they shouldn't have invited him in, or that they should have known what his intentions were and headed it off sooner (miscommunication), or they should have somehow done more to stop it from happening. But pressuring or forcing someone into having sex with you, when they've indicated unwillingness is rape. Even if the rapist is just emotionally manipulative, rather than violent. Even if they just cajole and sook or just keep nagging. Especially if they've plied the victim with some form of drug to lower their inhibitions. Rape is rape, even without violence, from a stranger or not. Rape is rape. Rape is not the victim's fault. Rape is never the victim's fault. It's the fault of the rapist, 100% the fault of the rapist.
PS: I'm not saying every woman everywhere has been socialised in the way above, or that women can't overcome this dodgy training, but I am saying that many women have been socialised this way, and that first you have to acknowledge it before you can overcome it. I'm also not saying that men don't get any of this training, or different training that has its own disadvantages.