For under-reporting, look here. Even amongst high-school students, the incidence rate was as high as one in five women, and half of these had never told anyone about the incident.
The point here is that feminists tend to use a definition of “rape” that is vastly more general then what the word commonly refers (it tends to boil down to “any sex you regret in the morning”) to in order to inflate the statistics.
I’m sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. In fact this is precisely the kind of nonsense that gets used to systematically belittle and trivialize rape victims, and which leads to the under-reporting I mentioned.
The typical popular model of sexuality goes something like this. The woman has, i.e. possesses, sex; the man wants to get it from her. She, on the other hand, wants to hold onto it for the best mate she can find (in order to get married, etc.). Therefore his job is to put on the moves, and her job is to put on the brakes. However, if she resists, then she’s a bitch, because he deserves it after all, therefore she better not resist. If she does resist she might just be playing hard to get, because after all she really wants it, so as long as she’s not resisting too hard you can keep pushing anyway, either ignoring her protests or whining until she gives in. If she regrets it in the morning, well, she shouldn’t have been such a slut anyway. Because this is after all the sexual norm, she probably won’t even think of it as rape, and might never think to mention it to anyone.
Feminism makes the radical suggestion that this model is totally, balls-out insane and that maybe our notion of a healthy sexual interaction should necessarily include enthusiastic consent on both sides. If you want a more complete summary of the feminist position, “Yes Means Yes” is a good introductory source. I don’t think I can do as good a job of explaining as the authors can, so I’m going to leave this off here.
Though obviously the consequences aren’t as severe, it works the other way too: it can be the woman who has the model that she must play hard to get even when interested (thereby diminishing the information value of even the sincere rejections), and the man who views this mentality as batshit insane. (Consider the effects on the incentive profile and the kind of man this selects for.)
Yes, absolutely. This is actually where “Yes Means Yes” got its name: the authors were looking for a positive view of female sexuality, which is to say, the freedom for women not only to turn down propositions but also to fully explore their own desires.
But enthusiastic consent doesn’t always happen, because women routinely use male sexual aggressiveness as a filter. These women make the man do all of the initiation and all of the advancing, and may put up “last-minute resistance” to having sex the first time, because they only want to have sex with men who are aggressive enough to overcome this resistance.
This is probably related to the high prevalence of rape fantasies among women. Men seldom fantasize about being raped; surveys indicate most women have. And most romance novels depict the heroine being raped, usually by the hero. And I’ve had women ask me to pretend to rape them, because it gets them more excited.
And it’s also related to the strong attraction some women feel towards violent men. Even men who display violence only towards women. Men who are in prison for murdering their wives get unsolicited offers of marriage from women who haven’t met them. The more violent the murder was, the more solicitations they get.
The best thing women can do to make men stop acting aggressively towards women, is to stop rewarding men who act aggressively towards women.
(Of course, to do so would be to deliberately change evolved human values.)
The best thing the subset of women who reward men who act aggressively towards women can do is stop rewarding. Those who already don’t reward it don’t have “stop rewarding it” as an option.
True. But they do have the option of shunning other women who reward it. Or of mentioning it as an option, when they write books about male aggression.
That women should learn to take a more assertive role in their own sexual fulfillment is one of the main themes of Yes Means Yes, and is more or less the unanimous view of mainstream feminism today.
I have mixed feelings about this. In the first place, while I’ve seen this dominance-seeking theory tossed around, I’ve never heard it from a reliable source, nor backed by solid evidence. I consider it reasonably likely that there are some women out there who prefer to be pseudo-”forced” into sex, but I have no reason to think they are anything close to a majority—in fact, I’ve never met a woman who feels this way, though my social circle is not necessarily representative of the general population in this respect. As a model of typical human sexual roles, this is most likely false—a bit of wrongheaded folk psychology tossed around by Nice Guys™.
There’s always a significant danger, when making these sorts of claims, of victim-blaming: of putting the responsibility on rape victims to solve their own problems. I think you’re right, however, in identifying feminine sexual roles as part of a more general problem: even beside the rape epidemic, our sexual milieu is far from healthy. I think there is indeed a burden on women to learn to take the initiative and ask for what they want, simply because no one else can do it for them. Even mock rape scenes can be safely enacted if properly negotiated beforehand.
In the meantime, however, men can facilitate the process by healthier gender roles ourselves. Sure, a little bit of swagger is a turn-on, in men and women alike. But this is not the same thing as being pushy. A man who can coolly and confidently articulate his desires (when appropriate) in a way that doesn’t impose them on the object of his attraction becomes about an order of magnitude more attractive himself.
The typical popular model of sexuality goes something like this. The woman has, i.e. possesses, sex; the man wants to get it from her. She, on the other hand, wants to hold onto it for the best mate she can find (in order to get married, etc.). Therefore his job is to put on the moves, and her job is to put on the brakes. However, if she resists, then she’s a bitch, because he deserves it after all, therefore she better not resist. If she does resist she might just be playing hard to get, because after all she really wants it, so as long as she’s not resisting too hard you can keep pushing anyway, either ignoring her protests or whining until she gives in. If she regrets it in the morning, well, she shouldn’t have been such a slut anyway.
While this is a phenomenally stupid and dangerous position to hold, it does not in any way disprove or even address the claim that these studies are conflating actual rape, of the kind which causes serious trauma and involves forcing someone to have sex with you, (for a wide definition of “forcing”, of course,) with consensual sexual activity which is later “regretted”. I’m not going to endorse that claim, but talking about how some people interpret refusal as “playing hard to get” or selfishness or any of a number of things rather implies that you have pattern-matched Eugine—correctly, for all I know—onto your model of the misogynist Enemy rather than engaged with his point.
For under-reporting, look here. Even amongst high-school students, the incidence rate was as high as one in five women, and half of these had never told anyone about the incident.
I’m sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. In fact this is precisely the kind of nonsense that gets used to systematically belittle and trivialize rape victims, and which leads to the under-reporting I mentioned.
The typical popular model of sexuality goes something like this. The woman has, i.e. possesses, sex; the man wants to get it from her. She, on the other hand, wants to hold onto it for the best mate she can find (in order to get married, etc.). Therefore his job is to put on the moves, and her job is to put on the brakes. However, if she resists, then she’s a bitch, because he deserves it after all, therefore she better not resist. If she does resist she might just be playing hard to get, because after all she really wants it, so as long as she’s not resisting too hard you can keep pushing anyway, either ignoring her protests or whining until she gives in. If she regrets it in the morning, well, she shouldn’t have been such a slut anyway. Because this is after all the sexual norm, she probably won’t even think of it as rape, and might never think to mention it to anyone.
Feminism makes the radical suggestion that this model is totally, balls-out insane and that maybe our notion of a healthy sexual interaction should necessarily include enthusiastic consent on both sides. If you want a more complete summary of the feminist position, “Yes Means Yes” is a good introductory source. I don’t think I can do as good a job of explaining as the authors can, so I’m going to leave this off here.
Though obviously the consequences aren’t as severe, it works the other way too: it can be the woman who has the model that she must play hard to get even when interested (thereby diminishing the information value of even the sincere rejections), and the man who views this mentality as batshit insane. (Consider the effects on the incentive profile and the kind of man this selects for.)
Yes, absolutely. This is actually where “Yes Means Yes” got its name: the authors were looking for a positive view of female sexuality, which is to say, the freedom for women not only to turn down propositions but also to fully explore their own desires.
But enthusiastic consent doesn’t always happen, because women routinely use male sexual aggressiveness as a filter. These women make the man do all of the initiation and all of the advancing, and may put up “last-minute resistance” to having sex the first time, because they only want to have sex with men who are aggressive enough to overcome this resistance.
This is probably related to the high prevalence of rape fantasies among women. Men seldom fantasize about being raped; surveys indicate most women have. And most romance novels depict the heroine being raped, usually by the hero. And I’ve had women ask me to pretend to rape them, because it gets them more excited.
And it’s also related to the strong attraction some women feel towards violent men. Even men who display violence only towards women. Men who are in prison for murdering their wives get unsolicited offers of marriage from women who haven’t met them. The more violent the murder was, the more solicitations they get.
The best thing women can do to make men stop acting aggressively towards women, is to stop rewarding men who act aggressively towards women.
(Of course, to do so would be to deliberately change evolved human values.)
The best thing the subset of women who reward men who act aggressively towards women can do is stop rewarding. Those who already don’t reward it don’t have “stop rewarding it” as an option.
True. But they do have the option of shunning other women who reward it. Or of mentioning it as an option, when they write books about male aggression.
That women should learn to take a more assertive role in their own sexual fulfillment is one of the main themes of Yes Means Yes, and is more or less the unanimous view of mainstream feminism today.
I have mixed feelings about this. In the first place, while I’ve seen this dominance-seeking theory tossed around, I’ve never heard it from a reliable source, nor backed by solid evidence. I consider it reasonably likely that there are some women out there who prefer to be pseudo-”forced” into sex, but I have no reason to think they are anything close to a majority—in fact, I’ve never met a woman who feels this way, though my social circle is not necessarily representative of the general population in this respect. As a model of typical human sexual roles, this is most likely false—a bit of wrongheaded folk psychology tossed around by Nice Guys™.
There’s always a significant danger, when making these sorts of claims, of victim-blaming: of putting the responsibility on rape victims to solve their own problems. I think you’re right, however, in identifying feminine sexual roles as part of a more general problem: even beside the rape epidemic, our sexual milieu is far from healthy. I think there is indeed a burden on women to learn to take the initiative and ask for what they want, simply because no one else can do it for them. Even mock rape scenes can be safely enacted if properly negotiated beforehand.
In the meantime, however, men can facilitate the process by healthier gender roles ourselves. Sure, a little bit of swagger is a turn-on, in men and women alike. But this is not the same thing as being pushy. A man who can coolly and confidently articulate his desires (when appropriate) in a way that doesn’t impose them on the object of his attraction becomes about an order of magnitude more attractive himself.
While this is a phenomenally stupid and dangerous position to hold, it does not in any way disprove or even address the claim that these studies are conflating actual rape, of the kind which causes serious trauma and involves forcing someone to have sex with you, (for a wide definition of “forcing”, of course,) with consensual sexual activity which is later “regretted”. I’m not going to endorse that claim, but talking about how some people interpret refusal as “playing hard to get” or selfishness or any of a number of things rather implies that you have pattern-matched Eugine—correctly, for all I know—onto your model of the misogynist Enemy rather than engaged with his point.