Moral victory?

[trinityvixen]

The last post about assholes on the message boards at TWoP, I promise.

The BSG recapper, Jacob, made some half-assed statement about how men can't be raped and any attempt to depict male equivalents of rape were hollow attempts to equalize something that is inequitable. I respectfully disagreed, saying that the trauma of sexual abuse can't be ranked, let alone place rape as some holy grail above all others. (Not to mention that it is very disrespectful, not to mention sexist, to assume that men can't be violated like women can.)

I got this as a response: The only person saying that, again, is you.

I call it a moral victory that this smarty-smart-smart person resorted to "I know you are, but what am I." I had to respond as much, but they'll probably delete it. I still walk away the superior here. Because I didn't call anyone a smothering asshole for refusing to tolerate dissent.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

This is speaking entirely out of context, and I'm sure the TWoP person is being an idiot, but I would say that while rape is equally devastating to both sexes, women are trained to be afraid of it far more than men. At my high school, the girls had an afterschool class about daterape that told us the statistics and taught us to be aware and be wary of men, especially when young, single, and in an urban area. The guys just had a class that taught "don't rape women!"

Consequently, movies and tv shows often play on the woman's fear of rape (really often, actually) in a way that has no direct equivalent for men. So I could see some argument for rape as a story-telling trope being inherently about women. I'd never argue that the act itself was, though.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, no, the threat of rape being worse for women is something I absolutely conceded in that argument. It just is. The corollary was also that men, being built for penetration, are more likely to be rapists. In a society not formed on a rape culture, however, my theory was that all rape would be reduced, not equal necessarily. (A lot of fantasy/sci-fi worlds where there aren't gendered stereotypes present women as raping a lot. If neither gender had power over the other, I don't think either would rape except in isolated cases--pedophiles, etc.)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Isn't that an interesting statement in itself, though, that the only way many authors can think to show that a sf society has different gender norms than we do is by making women rapists.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That, to me, is the false equivalence of rape. Our high-mindedness can only go so far before biological reality reigns us in. We have to be able to understand what the limits of biology are and where society and socialization pick up. We assume we can make everything equal in the latter case, and sometimes forget that we can't in the former. Women can rape with objects, but they are not physically equipped to rape, so regardless of socialization, they start at a disadvantage if they want to rape. Ignoring that is just glaringly stupid, not some strike towards equality.

The socialization aspect could explain why women would rape more, but then it wouldn't be a gender-neutral society. Because you would have to move so far beyond equality to a point where women have the sort of insecurity and meanness that plague male rapists today. Rape culture is so entrenched now because it sprang from a biological beginning (the most cogent theory is that men figured out that intercourse made women have children, and once that link was made, they were more likely to start after every female to propagate their line). Female rape has no such analogue, so it would have to be some social revolution (or extreme biological one--disease or some such) that took the sexes and reversed their power structures. Again, that doesn't mean they're equal.

False equivalences are bad!

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

To me, trying to prove that women have power in your sf verse by making them rapists just sounds like saying, "See! This is what happens when you give women power!" So...I don't think it works really on any level.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Women can rape with objects, but they are not physically equipped to rape, so regardless of socialization, they start at a disadvantage if they want to rape.

Are you defining rape as "forced penetration" or simply "forced sex"? Because I really can't get behind the former--that gets into the "rape is always the man's fault" issue. (If the only way a woman can rape a man is with a plastic penis, you keep the same problems as "men can't be raped at all".)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Fair call, you're right. Women are quite capable of forcing sex without penetration. In fact, in the example being debated, that's what happened--a woman tricked a man into sex that he would not have had had he known who she really was. I called that rape. So I'm sort of defeating my own argument here. You're right.

Biology works against male victims of this kind of rape, too, especially in our society where erection is considered proof-of-purchase, so to speak. (Obviously, I don't agree with that.) Women who rape in that way--through forced "sex" without male penetration--get away with it. If that were the kind of female rape most of these stories were about, then you'd really have something.

Of course, the obsession with "equal amounts of rape" to everyone is not about non-penetrative rape 9/10ths of the time. It's a phallo-centric fallacy that rape can't happen without penetration, but it's one that people fall victim to. This would not change my original assessment that their stories are thusly not less-sexist-than-thou. In fact, overlooking female rape of men with no male penetration is worse than over-reporting female rape of men with penetration.

I still think that, absent a social system like we have where rape culture thrives on gendered imbalances, any cases of rape would be less frequent. So long as we have a power imbalance between the sexes, we have rape culture potential. In a society without it, we would have less support for rape and fewer men or women growing up who would need to defeat their insecurities through raping someone else. I admit it wouldn't go away, but we'd certainly do better than a world like ours where1/3 of men surveyed would commit rape if they absolutely could get away with it.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

I never really thought about women being able to rape until I read Val McDermid's "The Torment of Others", where (spoiler!) the killer in her past has raped another woman with a drink bottle (I think it was)... You're right that people don't think of that because women aren't 'equipped'.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

the most cogent theory is that men figured out that intercourse made women have children, and once that link was made, they were more likely to start after every female to propagate their line

I dunno if I buy that. For one thing (while I haven't exactly conducted interviews, obviously) the same logic probably underlies most sex in the animal world. So if the source of rape culture is a male desire to propagate, then rape predates humanity.

I think it's more about the desire to violate and hurt people. The other just seems too... rational, calculating, almost (though not) forgivable...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Rape does predate humanity, from what I can tell. It's a consequence of women no longer going into periods of heat. With fertility hidden, men can't predict a woman's cycle and he would initiate intercourse more or less randomly until any sort of pregnancy would result. With time and evolution, the predictability of the menstrual cycle made such efforts less necessary. But yes, I'd say that rape was a biological fact.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- that's the bigger problem of "post-gender" societies (and real-world folks) who basically just make everybody a man.

Masculinity, in our culture, is messed in the head, and we're never going to be fair and just unless we fix the problems in the way masculinity is constructed as well as in the way femininity is constructed.