Some can. It’s probably a very different experience though.
And many women can’t. If it’s unknown to the rapist, asserting power through a threat of forced pregnancy might still happen, but if she’s like sixty-five that’s not going to happen.
But gender does matter. A man raping a cis woman has a gender wars element to it, usually something like “Men want sex and women don’t, so this man is taking it from this woman, scoring one for Team Men. She’s a slut for letting it happen, unless she can prove she’s a perfect victim and he’s a complete monster, in which case she’s a victim of female weakness and needs protected by a strong good man.”. Conversely, a man raping a man hinges more on “A man weak enough to let someone rape him is not a real man, but gay-female-feminine. He is ridiculous and pathetic.”. There are other gender-dependent examples with female perpetrators, with prison rape, with corrective rape, with rape as a weapon for cultural domination, with isolated communities, and so on.
Of course it doesn’t matter in that some rapes count and some don’t, and it shouldn’t matter at all. Just saying, you should expect different support structures, not identical rape shelters which just happen to be 25% male-populated.
In addition to what MixedNuts said, the question I was raising was whether this was a feminist position. To the extent that it is, I’d like to know whether it is from the methodologically incorrect branch (represented in this discussion by Mary Daly) or the methodologically more correct branch (represented by Andrea Dworkin).
It would surprise me to hear that Dworkin has asserted that men can’t be raped—and if I heard it, I’d need to re-examine whether her arguments about the social effect of porn are valid (even if she’s right, there are knock-on concerns that weigh against censorship).
More generally, conflating Daly and Dworkin is like conflating Stephen J. Gould and Stephen Pinker.
I think I saw a comment subthread on The Good Men Project along the lines “What’s it matter whether it’s a man who has sex with a woman too drunk to consent [or something like that] or the other way round?” “The woman can get pregnant, etc., etc.” “Wow, that’s some serious Dworkin you’re channeling”, but I can’t find it right now, so I might have dreamt it or something.
I’ve heard non-obviously-bogus arguments that it should, e.g. men cannot get pregnant as a result of rape.
Some can. It’s probably a very different experience though.
And many women can’t. If it’s unknown to the rapist, asserting power through a threat of forced pregnancy might still happen, but if she’s like sixty-five that’s not going to happen.
But gender does matter. A man raping a cis woman has a gender wars element to it, usually something like “Men want sex and women don’t, so this man is taking it from this woman, scoring one for Team Men. She’s a slut for letting it happen, unless she can prove she’s a perfect victim and he’s a complete monster, in which case she’s a victim of female weakness and needs protected by a strong good man.”. Conversely, a man raping a man hinges more on “A man weak enough to let someone rape him is not a real man, but gay-female-feminine. He is ridiculous and pathetic.”. There are other gender-dependent examples with female perpetrators, with prison rape, with corrective rape, with rape as a weapon for cultural domination, with isolated communities, and so on.
Of course it doesn’t matter in that some rapes count and some don’t, and it shouldn’t matter at all. Just saying, you should expect different support structures, not identical rape shelters which just happen to be 25% male-populated.
In addition to what MixedNuts said, the question I was raising was whether this was a feminist position. To the extent that it is, I’d like to know whether it is from the methodologically incorrect branch (represented in this discussion by Mary Daly) or the methodologically more correct branch (represented by Andrea Dworkin).
It would surprise me to hear that Dworkin has asserted that men can’t be raped—and if I heard it, I’d need to re-examine whether her arguments about the social effect of porn are valid (even if she’s right, there are knock-on concerns that weigh against censorship).
More generally, conflating Daly and Dworkin is like conflating Stephen J. Gould and Stephen Pinker.
I think I saw a comment subthread on The Good Men Project along the lines “What’s it matter whether it’s a man who has sex with a woman too drunk to consent [or something like that] or the other way round?” “The woman can get pregnant, etc., etc.” “Wow, that’s some serious Dworkin you’re channeling”, but I can’t find it right now, so I might have dreamt it or something.
Unwanted pregnancy can be a result of rape, but rape seems like a separate Bad Thing that can happen to someone.