Steven Landsburg is having himself a fun thought experiment. He doesn’t have the visceral reaction to contemplating legalizing the rape of unconscious people experienced by myself or other women, some of whom have been raped and essentially all of whom have had moments when we’ve wondered if we’re going to be raped. He thinks he’s grappling with fascinating questions, but in reality he’s asking whether it should be legal for me to be raped.
So, this is kind of horrifying, but some individuals are actually arguing that women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in more military positions because when they do the rate of sexual assaults will go up, and that will ruin men’s careers. Yes, you heard that right. Men’s careers. Because men are apparently sexual monsters who can’t control themselves. Or something.
What we call “rape culture” is nothing new, and its roots go deep. The “no means no” campaign on first glance seems to be too obvious to need saying. Except that it’s unfortunately not. Too many men seem to think that “a no is just a yes that needs a little convincing.” Every single time I think of this issue a crucial passage from Pride and Prejudice comes to mind. It’s the passage where Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth – and then refuses to accept that her “no” actually means “no.”
“In response to claims that men are unable to restrain themselves from committing rape if they see women in skimpy clothing, members of law enforcement agencies around the country have called for men to blindfold themselves when they are in places where they might encounter a female wearing a tank top or a short skirt. “For years, we have been told that men don’t understand how to respond to the sight of a woman wearing, say, gym clothes – that as far as they are concerned, if they can see the outline of her body, then that’s an invitation to sex that they are simply unable to refuse,” said one police chief. “If that’s true, then we have no choice.”"
Yesterday Custador, who writes at Unreasonable Faith, published a post in which he tackled rape culture, discussed some of his own experiences, and finished by making a pledge.
When an Indian woman died after being gang raped, some officials blamed the rape on her – she was out after dark, and with a man who was neither her husband or father. In this post I examine the way the threat of rape is used to control women.
Question: What is the difference between a woman who wants an abortion after accidentally becoming pregnant with her boyfriend and a woman who wants an abortion after becoming pregnant through rape? Answer: The first woman voluntarily chose to have sex while the second woman didn’t. In this post I look at the implications of rape exemptions and how a better understanding of the rape exemption can help further the pro-choice cause.
In its recent series of posts on rape, the Good Men Project has been focusing on “nice guys” who “accidentally” commit rape because things like consent are “confusing.” In this post I address some of the Good Men Project’s writers’ statements about rape and argue that while they clearly think they are taking on rape culture they are actually feeding it.
By now you have probably heard about the Good Men Project’s recent putting its foot in its mouth on the topic of rape by arguing that “nice” men can get confused by alcohol and “accidentally” rape someone and discussing the supposed “mixed messages” women send men in these situations. Plenty has been written on this already. What I want to do here is place what the Good Men Project is doing in a bit of historical context.
Rape culture means that a woman who doesn’t take all of those supposed “precautions” and ends up raped can end up blaming herself for what she did wrong. It also means that men can end up viewing a girl who is dressed provocatively and drinking too much as, well, “asking for it” and therefore fair game. And it means that society, yes, can talk about things like “legitimate” rape. And you know what else? It means that the emphasis is taken off of consent and placed instead on what a woman has to do in order to avoid being raped.
The articles collected here deal with abortion and pro-life groups. The first argues that rape exemptions are harmful because they divide abortions into those that are “legitimate” and “not legitimate,” or at least “acceptable” and “less acceptable.” The second asks why pro-life groups aren’t working to improve workplace rights for pregnant workers. The third discusses efforts to use the undercover techniques to investigate pro-life pregnancy resource centers. And finally, the fourth looks at just how bad pro-lifers are at discussing abortion.
In the midst of the whole Todd Akin induced furor over rape, several posts came to my attention that I wanted to highlight. The first reveals from personal experience that Akin’s ideas about rape are not as uncommon as some would have us think. The second uses this as an opportunity to talk about how fundamentalists generally deal with rape. And the third discusses the conflation of rape and, well, sex, much like I did in my post on rape and premarital sex.
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