Elliot Rodger and the specter of Shrodinger's Rapist

A little background: a few years ago, "Skepchick" blogger Rebecca Watson became involved in what Wikipedia calls the "elevator incident" and the web quickly dubbed "Elevatorgate." Much of the ensuing ferocious debate dealt with the supposed male privilege involved in not being afraid of random people--specifically men-- sharing an elevator, speaking to you in an elevator, or inviting you to their hotel room for coffee in an elevator. I even saw one woman opine (in a comment on reddit.com that was quickly deleted) that men of color and/or of a certain stature/build (read: tall, muscular men) should actually defer to women waiting for an elevator and, out of respect for her unspoken concern about being confined in a small space for a few seconds with a larger man (especially men of color), should wait for the next elevator.

A term previously coined-- Schrodinger's rapist-- was quickly brought into wide use. The idea being, like Schrodinger's cat being in a state of unknowable life or death until one opens to box, every man is potentially a rapist, and women are behaving perfectly reasonably and justifiably-- not being sexist-- by treating them as the potential rapists they are. That behaviors such as avoiding sharing an elevator with a man, crossing the street to avoid passing a man on the sidewalk, etc. are not just reasonable and justified, but practically necessary in this dangerous world.

It's fear-mongering, ladies and gentlemen, nothing more. It's a few people who do know better and a few people who should know better blowing up a few statistics to make it sound like rapists are hiding behind every bush. Even if we accept that rape is something that is overwhelming perpetrated by men on women (it's not, more on that below), it's a classic fallacy to assume that just because all (or most) rapists are men, all (or most) men are rapists.

Here's a thought exercise-- what if we applied this logic to Muslims: because the majority of airplane-related terrorism is perpetrated by Muslims, all Muslims are potential terrorists? Or people of color: the majority of gang-related violence is perpetrated by Latinos or African-Americans, so all Latinos and African-Americans are potential gang-bangers? All murders of abortion doctors have been committed by Christians, so all Christians are potential murderers?

People who espouse the above ideas are called bigots, racists, and repudiated. They are not taken seriously, except by a small fringe minority that already agrees with them. But for some reason, when this logic is applied to men, anyone who objects risks being labeled a misogynist and a defender of rape culture.

Of course, in reality, men and women have about equal numbers of rape victims, and male rapists outnumber female ones only slightly (40/60). So the premise is faulty from the beginning-- women actually have no special reason to fear rape. Except, of course, that we've been told our whole lives that women need to be careful because it's a dangerous world out there for us-- while men are not warned at all. Even though a man statistically runs a far higher risk of being the victim of violence-- assault or homicide-- than a woman.

I've suffered from chronic anxiety my whole life, so maybe that gives me an edge of discernment? I've been dealing with irrational fears for as long as I can remember, so I've had a lot of practice at sorting reasonable fears and precautions from unreasonable ones. The sensible from the crazy. And the Schrodinger's rapist lady I linked to up there? She's a little on the crazy side. By definition, behavior becomes pathological when it starts to interfere with your everyday life. If she is feeling limited in what she can do or where she can go or with whom she can associate, she should probably consider therapy.

Anyway, fast forward to this past week, and the #yesallwomen movement. I've already covered at least some of my feelings about #yesallwomen and the rejection of #yesallpeople as somehow anti-woman or an attempt to silence women.

Slate's blogger Phil Plait, last Tuesday, posted this piece chastising the men who criticized #yesallwomen-- or worse, tried to "derail" it with #yesallpeople and the like. His message to the every-guy out there? The normal guys who don't threaten women who turn them down, who have never raped anyone, who are horrified at violence against anyone? The ones who are equal parts guilty and defensive and puzzled by all this blame being pushed at them by feminists (if they're aware of it at all)? Sit down, shut up, and accept your blame. Nobody is to blame but the rapist, when remarks are made about a woman's clothing, her drinking, her flirtations, her various decisions of the night-- but when it comes to men, all men are somehow complicit just by making the audacious claim that they, too, might understand what it's like to be attacked, or harassed, or even raped.

He says at one point:

Fourth—and this is important, so listen carefully—when a woman is walking down the street, or on a blind date, or, yes, in an elevator alone, she doesn’t know which group you’re in. You might be the potential best guy ever in the history of history, but there’s no way for her to know that. A fraction of men out there are most definitely not in that group. Which are you? Inside your head you know, but outside your head it’s impossible to. 

This is the reality women deal with all the time.

This is only "the reality that women deal with"-- a reality of fear and uncertainty, not a reality of an actual risk of being raped or attacked-- because it's a reality of their own making, born out of a fear-mongering media and an ideology that requires a male oppressor in order to work. If any of the various feminist bloggers and thinkers who are so vehemently against hearing anything a man has to say about this, other than "I'm so, so sorry for my gender," took five seconds to listen to these men, instead of just dismissing their words as "mansplaining," they might see that rape and harassment and just general human shittiness isn't a female experience, it's a human one.

#YESallpeople #nonotthiswoman

I am, once again, baffled. Angrily baffled. Frustratingly baffled.

I don't get it. I'm admitting it, this one time: I DON'T GET IT.

I've been around in my life. No, really. I've been to drug-laced parties. I drank before I was twenty-one. Once, in my early twenties, driving alone at night, I picked up two male hitchhikers, and we drove around for a while and just talked. I've been to clubs and bars. I spent the better part of a year using the Los Angeles public transit on a daily basis. I've been on the brink of having sex with a man (I mean, right there) and changed my mind. I've been politely propositioned by older random men and swinger acquaintances alike, and declined. I can check off most of the list of "stupid, risky things women aren't supposed to do"-- and not only have I never been raped or sexually assaulted, I don't feel like I've ever come close. I've never been threatened with violence from a man for being a woman.  I've never been groped or harassed or gotten more than what I feel is reasonable attention-- a quiet proposition, a statement of interest, a once-over and compliment-- that didn't just lose interest when met with a polite but firm "no."

That's not to say that the experiences of women who have experienced harassment or violence aren't valid. But inherent to the idea of #yesallwomen are two premises: first, that all women share this pervasive fear of men, based on these universally shared experiences of ill-treatment by men; and second, that violence and harassment experienced by women is somehow fundamentally different-- and worse-- from the violence and harassment that men experience.

But that's not surprising. No, what's making me angry is this blog post from Courtney Enlow, "#YesAll Women, #YesAllPeople and the Dangers of Misunderstanding Feminism." What makes me want to cry and rage and scream is her stubborn, self-defeating opposition to empathy. Elliot Rodgers killed men, too. More men than women. Men are harassed, men are abused, men are raped, men are objectified. As she herself points out, "someone sharing their unique, specific experiences does not diminish anyone else's." Instead of spitting on the shared experience with men, why not take the opportunity to empathize and work together to reduce all the violence? Why the need to insist that your "unique and specific experience" isn't actually unique and specific to you, but is common to people with vaginas-- but arbitrarily exclude people with penises?

She ends by pleading:

I want to be loud. I don’t want to accommodate. I want to be heard. We want to be heard. Please. Someone please listen.

Why is it so important for you to be heard as a woman? If the essential part of your message is "I was hurt and I want someone, anyone, to know it," why does it matter whether that other person over there who was also hurt is a man or a woman?

Like I said, I don't get it.

False rape claims have "silver lining," according to local newspaper (via Community of the Wrongly Accused)

via Community of the Wrongly Accused

"Last Sunday morning at Union College in New York, an official emails alerted students about an atrocity that never happened. It stated that a female freshman had been sexually assaulted by three "males" (one of whom might have been approximately 16-years-old) at 1:41 a.m. The alleged victim refused any medical treatment, and did not seem traumatized. Police investigated for two days until finally the alleged victim retracted her statement and left the school. A video camera reportedly had captured the young woman on her phone at the time she said the assault occurred. After she ended the phone call, she jumped into a clump of bushes, and stayed there until her friends arrived and pulled her out, the sources said."

[Note 1/11/2014 - COTWA, for whatever reason, has taken their article down since my posting, so I have changed the below link to SAVE Services, which reprinted the COTWA article on their site.]

Read more...

Survivors Manchester excluded from Rape Support Fund (via Toy Soldiers)

via Toy Soldiers

"One of the main barriers male survivors of sexual violence face is a lack of services. Most existing sexual violence services only assist women and girls. Of the services that do assist men and boys, most provide limited counseling and referrals.

"Male survivors need services,  however, even when those organizations are created, they face dismissal by the existing female-only groups...."

Read more...

The New Chivalry, Feminist Style

Let’s get one thing straight. I think women are equal to men. I don’t hold any quaint notions of a “woman’s place,” or believe that men and women are obligated to fulfill prefabricated roles, in the home or anywhere else. And while there are certain physical advantages and brain chemistry differences that, on average, cannot be denied, I believe each man or woman should be judged on his or her own individual merits, and not those of their gender.

Which is why it drives me nuts when well-intentioned people try to protect women from themselves.

Rape is as rape does: Epilogue

In my last post, I discussed the findings "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey" (NISVS 2010). I compared the figures on rape and sexual violence for men and women over the 12 months previous to the survey, and I promised I'd get back to why I was using the 12-month figures rather than the lifetime figures (which were the figures significantly more emphasized by the CDC in the introduction and press releases and so forth). 

Rape is as rape does, Part 3: "Other Sexual Violence" a.k.a. "Not Rape"

In 2010, the CDC conducted the "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey" (NISVS 2010) and published the results in 2011.  From the introduction: "This report presents information related to several types of violence that have not previously been measured in a national population based survey, including types of sexual violence other than rape; expressive psychological aggression and coercive control, and control of reproductive or sexual health" [emphasis mine]. Why is this important? Because traditional methods of surveying or studying rape don't include male victims of female rapists (except in the cases of the woman using a surrogate penis to penetrate the man), because that's Not Rape.

Rape is as rape does, Part 2: Lady Rapist 101

So, how does that even work? Men are bigger and stronger than women, on average. Physically, they generally have the upper hand. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but there are certain anatomical realities to penis-in-vagina sex that require the cooperation, and, presumably, the consent of the male. Right?

Rape is as rape does, Part 1: Define "rape"

Thinkprogress.org recently posted a piece discussing the findings of what they call "The Largest International Study On Rape That’s Been Conducted So Far." The study itself was published in The Lancet and was titled, "Prevalence of and factors associated with non-partner rape perpetration: findings from the UN Multi-country Cross-sectional Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific." Surveys were performed over two years and six countries and 10,000+ men.

But men were only surveyed as perpetrators.

No man was asked if he'd ever been a victim of rape. No woman was asked if she had ever "'forced a [man] who was not your [husband] or [boy]friend at the time to have sex,' or if they had ever 'had sex with a [man] who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether [he] wanted it'” [genders reversed.].

Men getting raped? Absurd, right? Only happens in prison.  Maybe during wartime. And always by other men. Women don't rape. That's the official narrative, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, it's complete bullshit.

Objective?

Every other day, I hear about "objectification," and what I hear is that men, as a group, objectify women, as a group, and that this is wrong and terrible and we need to teach our men better. There's a whole lot of subtext involving "rape culture" and "victim blaming" and so forth, and the general message is that if you don't condemn the "male gaze," you are complicit in the general oppression of women everywhere.

A friend of mine recently shared this link on Facebook, with a hearty endorsement of the contents. I could tell from the title, "Seeing a Woman: A conversation between a father and son" that it was going to annoy me, and I was not disappointed.