This post has trigger warnings.
It’s mostly about rape.
I’ve never been raped. Like most women who haven’t been raped, I do have a bunch of near-miss stories, starting from when I was six or seven and declined to go for a walk with a nice man who was hanging out at a lefty peacenik vegetarian cafe. My parents were there, volunteering, and I knew they knew most of the adults there, so I assumed (child me) he wasn’t a stranger whom I had to be wary of: I just didn’t feel like going for a walk with him. Shortly after I had persistently said “No” to him, and gone over to stand near someone I did know because his persistence made me feel uncomfortable, he left: I never (to my knowledge) saw him again. It was only much later that I wondered: what would have happened if I’d gone for a walk with him?
Of course I still don’t know. But I’m happy I don’t. I’m glad that my parents taught me it was okay to be a stubborn little girl who didn’t have to do what she was told. I told this story once to a woman with two daughters, and she went ashen and told me after a while that both her daughters had been sexually abused. It made her feel terrible to hear me say that – made her feel that she should have taught her daughters to be stubborn and disobedient – even though at the same time she knew, it wasn’t her fault or her daughters’ fault any more than it would have been my fault if I had decided I wanted to go for a walk and it had turned out that man was exactly what cynical-adult-me says he probably was.
I know a lot of rape stories. Mostly they’re not about violence, not about stranger-danger. Mostly, the rapist is never reported to the police. Although most of the rape stories I know are told by women, none of them are really about women.
All of the rape stories I know are about men with a massive sense of entitlement. That’s always what comes across most in rape stories, after the pain and devastation: that a man had an unstoppable sense that he was entitled to take what he wanted from a girl or a woman, and it didn’t matter in the least what she wanted. Many men don’t notice their sense of entitlement is massive: they’re too used to getting what they want from women.
Even Laurie Penny carefully does not identify the man who raped her, though she has said on Twitter that he has to her knowledge done the same thing to other woman. If she did, because the man hasn’t been charged, still less convicted of rape, he could probably, successfully, sue her for libel for speaking about the truth of her experience.
We say, “He’s innocent until proven guilty” as if we were talking about real innocence and real guilt instead of legal concepts meant to establish burden of proof; as if a truly guilty man was innocent before proven guilty, or is made innocent because they can’t prove him guilty. We act as if the man has every right to assert his innocence but the woman does not have the right to assert her own rape, especially if it might damage his career or community standing (never mind how she’s been damaged).
Say a man’s a rapist before he’s been convicted, and you could end up being sued, even if you are one of the women whom he raped. Because of this, news stories about rape tend to describe rape in passive-voice sentences, as if rape “just happened”, as if it’s some kind of unfortunate disaster like skidding on black ice or tripping over a step.
@nakedgrrl@kateharding I was told it wasn’t “technically” rape bc he eventually stopped (even though he started when I was asleep)— Lady T (@FunnyFemLadyT) August 23, 2012
@funnyfemladyt@nakedgrrl Ugh. The first male friend I said, “I was raped” to responded with, “Are you sure?”— Kate Harding (@KateHarding) August 23, 2012
Most of the lists of “how to avoid rape” tips are more of the same: the presumption that a woman can save herself from unfortunately getting raped by staying sober, dressing soberly, not walking home alone at night, not getting into a lift alone with a stranger.
Thing is, none of that actually works. A woman isn’t raped because of anything she did or said or wore: she’s raped because a rapist got rapey.
The thing is, you don’t have to hold a knife to someone’s throat or beat anyone to be a rapist. You don’t need to leave visible bruises to permanently damage someone. All that you need to do is to refuse to hear what they say, you render them invisible and take away their free will.
A woman can only avoid being raped by never being within arm’s reach of a rapist: never marrying a rapist, never going out with a rapist, never being at a disco or a pub or a party with a rapist, never trusting a rapist. And this is tricky, because while only one in twenty men are rapists, they look, act, and speak no differently from many of the other 95%.
What Facebook and others who defend this pernicious hate speech don’t seem to get is that rapists don’t rape because they’re somehow evil or perverted or in any way particularly different from the average man in the street: rapists rape because they can. Rapists rape because they know the odds are stacked in their favour, because they know the chances are they’ll get away with it.
These are some of the stories I know about rape. They’re only a small fraction of the stories you could read or listen to if you wanted to hear the other side of the story, not George Galloway‘s or John Pilger‘s or Glenn Greenwald‘s or any of the other nice liberal men who pop up to defend innocent until proven guilty or free speech or what you will. They’re not stories that any of the women who’ve shared rape stories need to read.
Internet, if there were ever a day you needed to look at a baby manatee, today is that day. is.gd/n0u12X
— Jess Zimmerman (@j_zimms) August 24, 2012
So if you’d rather not, do the otter thing.
Otter pup, sitting in a bowl, yawning. twitter.com/EmergencyPuppy…
— Emergency Cute Stuff (@EmergencyPuppy) August 22, 2012
[Update, 26th August - I'm putting part of a question and a Boggle cartoon first... hope this helps]
An anonymous 17-year-old asked Boggle:
“Ten years later, I’m still trying to resolve whether I can really call that rape, and whether I should hold myself partially responsible for never doing anything….”
A month ago, we were making love. I was restrained to the bed; we did this all the time. The next thing I knew, he’s fingering my anus. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He took his time, stretching and lubing. I was screaming and crying for him to stop the whole time. I won’t get into how much it hurt, but suffice it to say, I nearly passed out from blood loss as a result of his tearing open old scars. He freaked out when he saw the amount of blood on the bed and called 911. (This was after he’d had an orgasm). I spent a week in the hospital and ended up with 30 stitches to rerepair the damage. I’m still in a lot of pain.I refused to see him while I was in the hospital. I didn’t take his calls. I gave the flowers he sent to other patients. He utterly and completely betrayed my trust. I trusted him with my safety when I let him restrain me, and he took advantage and hurt me. I want nothing to do with him ever again. I’ve been told he’s been on suicide watch at the local hospital several times since the incident. His friends and family tell me he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to hurt me, and that I should forgive him. I realize that he may have not intended to hurt me; he did use lubrication, and attempted to open me up a bit first. If he had meant to hurt me then he would have just shoved his way in. But the fact is, I said no.
Me and my ex had the biggest argument we ever had, over me eating a strawberry. One day at his we decided to make a cake. We did it wrong &>
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
Date Rape Engenders Awful Depression:
Two nights ago, I went to a party. My ex-boyfriend was present, but my current boyfriend was not. I had several beers, and while I wasn’t drunk, I was tipsy. I had to go to my car to get my cell phone, and my ex offered to accompany me. When we got to the car, he pushed me against the car and started making out with me. I tried to push him away and said, “No, I can’t” several times. He kept trying to pull my pants down, and every time he did, I pulled them back up. He took his dick out and tried again to pull down my pants. I know it sounds stupid, but all I could get out were meek “nos” and “I can’ts.” I was afraid of a confrontation because he and I have been friendly since we broke up. I eventually discontinued my attempts to pull my pants back up because I figured the easiest way to get out of this situation was to let him finish. He had sex with me. I wanted to cry the whole time, but as much as I wanted to scream, “Stop! Get the fuck off of me!” I couldn’t get the words out.
spent hours trying to make it. Obviously it was kind of fun cos we had each other for company. When we finished the cake we decorated it w/>
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
I had just told my ex-husband I wanted a divorce. I also told him we could have sex that night, because I assumed if I didn’t let him, he would rape me. He kept pushing for anal sex, which I unequivocally said I would not have. We argued back and forth, and I kept saying no. He finally backed down, we started to have “consensual” sex, and he switched over to anal. I didn’t fight him off, or continue saying no. I figured I’d just let him get it over with.There was no question in my mind that what had happened was rape. There was plenty of hopeful doubt, pretend denial, but never a question. I knew. I wished it wasn’t so, but I knew exactly what it was. I knew because I had said no, out loud, several times, and when somebody has sex with you after you have said no, that’s the definition of rape. But I also knew because of how I felt about it. Because it was so different from other sex. Because I spent my time imagining I was a tree outside, and telling myself, “He’ll be done eventually and then this will be in the past,” and afterwards, telling myself, “I’ll admit what happened once I live in a place he does not have a key to.”
strawberries, like, cos that’s what you do to cakes. We cut the cake into slices and put them on plates. I ate a bit of strawberry first. >
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
[Clayton McDonald] took her back to the hotel where they had sex and were joined by Evans, who also had intercourse with the woman.The jury was told that as the incident took place, Jack Higgins, an “associate” of the footballers, and Ryan Roberts, Evans’s brother, watched through a window.
Video recordings found on Mr Higgins’s phone showed he had been filming or trying to film the incident, the court heard.
Mr McDonald claimed that Evans asked if he could get involved, while Evans said it was Mr McDonald who asked him if he wanted to have sex with the woman.
The judge: “CCTV footage shows, in my view, the extent of her intoxication when she stumbled into your friend.
“As the jury have found, she was in no condition to have sexual intercourse.
“When you arrived at the hotel, you must have realised that.”
Upon seeing me consume the strawberry, he flew into a massive rage because to him, eating the strawberry *first* was somehow insulting.
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
“You came across these two women and were friendly towards them in a genuine fashion. You then invited them back to your student accommodation with the best of intentions.”
…
The court heard Lusigi, who was a mature student at the time of the attack in February, had massaged the women when they got back to his flat, but the victim had made it clear she did not want sex. Both women then ended up in Lusigi’s bed, where, while the victim was either drunk or asleep, he raped her.
When I say rage I really mean rage. Worst argument I’ve ever had with anyone. He made me cry. Because I ate a strawberry.
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
A fun-loving, left-leaning chap who was friends with a number of strong, feminist women:
One night, a group of my friends held a big party in a hotel. Afterwards, a few of the older guests, including this man, invited me up to the room they had rented. I knew that some drinking and kissing and groping might happen. I started to feel ill, and asked if It would be alright if I went to sleep in the room – and I felt safe, because other people were still there. I wasn’t planning to have sex with this man or with anyone else that night, but if I had been, that wouldn’t have made it okay for him to push his penis inside me without a condom or my consent.The next thing I remember is waking up to find myself being penetrated, and realising that my body wasn’t doing what I told it to. Either I was being held down or – more likely – I was too sick to move. I’ve never been great at drinking, which is why I don’t really do it any more, but this feeling was more profound, and to this day I don’t know if somebody put something in my drink that night. I was horrified at the way his face looked, fucking me, contorted and sweating. My head span. I couldn’t move. I was frightened, but he was already inside me, and I decided it was simplest to turn my face away and let him finish. When he did, I crawled to the corner of the enormous bed and lay there until the sun came up.
In the morning I got up, feeling sick and hurting inside, and took a long, long shower in the hotel’s fancy bathroom. The man who had fucked me without my consent was awake when I came out. He tried to push me down on the bed for oral, but I stood up quickly and put on my dress and shoes. I asked him if he had used a condom. He told me that he ‘wasn’t into latex’, and asked if I was on the pill. I don’t remember thinking ‘I have just been raped’. After all, this guy wasn’t behaving in the manner I had learned to associate with rapists. Rapists are evil people. They’re not nice blokes who everybody respects who simply happen to think it’s ok to stick your dick in a teenager who’s sleeping in the same bed as you, without a condom. This guy seemed, if anything, confused as to why I was scrabbling for my things and bolting out the door. He even sent me an email a few days later, chiding me for being rude.
This is the same ex who pretty much tried to rape me – that caused another argument.
— Pawzilla The First (@pawzilla) August 24, 2012
Some men have a massive sense of entitlement but don’t commit rape. Having a massive sense of entitlement is a necessary precursor to rape, but it doesn’t by itself make a man a rapist.
But all rapists have this massive sense of entitlement.
Fröken A and Fröken W are both clear: They consented to sex with Julian Assange only if he used a condom, and Assange didn’t want to use a condom. For quite a while there was a massive Internet meme going on that Assange was being charged because unprotected sex is illegal in Sweden.
“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,” he said. “I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.”
It would surprise many safe-sex campaigners I know that to insist on a condom when having sex with a new partner is “revolutionary feminism”. They would say, and emphatically, that it’s just common sense: if you’re having penetrative sex and you’re not absolutely confident of your partner’s STD status, use a condom. No man should find that condition surprising, nor – if he has any concern for his sexual partners at all – unwelcome. (Assange claims to find it “baffling“.)
But repeatedly, even though not using a condom makes it easier to prove that non-consensual sexual intercourse took place, many rapists are found not to have used a condom. They want unprotected sex – “not into latex” as Laurie Penny’s rapist put it charmingly, and they don’t care what the woman wants.
Julian Assange has a massive sense of entitlement.
I’m just saying.
The “invite them over the threshold once, they can come in again any time” thing? That’s how vampires work. Not sexual consent. VAMPIRES.
— Tom Phillips (@flashboy) August 20, 2012
