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I am trying to gather my thoughts here, forgive me if this comes out skewed.
Firstly, I think the issue here has boiled down to whether or not women are potentially as prone to rape as men and secondly, the definition of rape is apparently a hotly contested topic. It's rather difficult to address the first issue without looking at the second one. Personally, I don't agree with the suggestion that this thread be re-named "women who sexually assualt". While I feel that both sexual assualt and rape are acts of violence designed to undermined the mental and bodily integrity of an individual it seems to me that "rape" is something that achieves this aim more completely than "sexual assault". Be assured that I am not basing my distinction between the two on penetration, I am more of the mind that if the survivor feels it was rape then it was rape - rape being something that, as I've said, undermines the mental and bodily integrity of an individual in an almost total sense. Thus, if a person (male or female) feels that they have been raped by a woman then we should not tell them no, they are wrong, it was sexual assault because it did not involve penetration.
In our culture the word "rape" has more horrific and violent connotations than the phrase "sexual assault". I'm not saying this is the truth but it IS the way we use these terms. To say that men can not be raped but "only" sexually assualted by women is to take their anguish somewhat less seriously.
My definition of rape, then, is very broad. Some people do not have the psychological wherewithal to maintain integrity in the face of verbally based sexual abuse. Trapping someone who is seemingly weaker than you in a situation where they are forced into listening to you telling them all the nasty things you would like to do to them could be considered an act of rape. After all, in this hypothesis you would have used sexual means to gain dominion over another (hmm,"...sexual means to gain dominion over another..." How about I just leave that for my definition and stop talking myself into knots).
I'm sorry but I don't believe that rape is in any way about sexual desire. But I will concede that it is about desire for dominion. Soo, I know there are plenty of women who have such desires. But really, I don't think women rape as much as men do. And I don't even have a theory about why that is (!). One thing I have noticed is that women are often conditioned to be far more passive-agressive than men in achieving control (over others, over situations) - I don't know if this could have anything to do with it because I imagine there are plenty of passive-agressive rapists out there, especially those that commit "date-rape". I do think that women are conditioned to see themselves in more passive terms, so that the idea of taking power in such a directly domineering way as rape may not occur to women the way it does to men who are more often than not conditioned to go out there and grab what they want.
But the subject of female on male rape is convoluted further by the conditioning most men are subjected to, that is: men are not victims. A man might be coerced into extremely self destructive sexual acts by a woman, might feel the psychological and physical damage that this has caused but may never consider himself a rape victim because he has been saturated with data that tells him that women are weaker beings, they do not impose their will on others because their will is not strong enough to be imposed and furthermore men are strong enough in will so as not to EVER allow their will to be undermined by a woman.
Even the most right-on of New Men has doubtlessly absorbed some of these values - we can see from this very thread that men have difficulty coming to terms with the idea of female on male rape. And I think a lot of that stems from the fact that a lot of men have difficulty in believing that a woman is capable of breaking down a male will to such a great extent, to the extent that he will be forced to give all his bodily power to her. Note that most men have no trouble believing that male on male rape occurs. It is understood that amongst men there are strata of power (I SO want to say stratas...I know, I know, it's so wrong, but it feels so right...) - some men are strong enough to hold dominion of any kind over other, weaker men.
It is also understood, it would seem, that even a strong woman is of a lower stratum than the weakest man, at least in terms of bodily dominion ( although, to clarify, when I say "strong" I don't necessarily mean physical strength). My point, the one I'm slowly trying to tease out of my tired brain, is that not only will men not report female on male rape, they may not even believe it could happen. I realise this contradicts somewhat what I was saying about my defintion of rape but for my views on contradiction please see Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". Bottom line is that men seem to find the concept of bad things happening to them very difficult - won't admit to weird lumps in groin area, can't countenance the idea of female on male rape. I am presuming that this difficulty stems from the overriding cultural wisdom that tells men that they are strong, invioable fighters and victors and I deeply sympathsise. Such an awful thing, not being permitted to have any weaknesses.
Anyway, it's under-reported in a number of senses. It's a matter of redressing one's worldview - we know that "date-rape" effectively didn't exist unil women began believing it was happening to them and vocalising that. What we think of as rape was just an occupational hazard of dating or marriage or whatever no so long ago.
It's unfortunate that there's still a lot of guff about how men are always up for sex and would always enjoy it and yadda yadda because those kind of sentiments are very similar to the old-fashioned view that if a woman accepted a date with a guy or went up to his room or whatever she was basically giving her consent - both veiws deny their subjects' agency. And it's a pity that the issue of female rapists isn't taken as seriously as that of male rapists as it seems that by looking at the need of certain females to gain dominion over another through sexual means would improve all round understanding of rape and power.
It's easier to divorce female rape from the sexual violation and to concentrate on the domination/power, which is of course, what rape is about. People can often still subscribe to the view that men are just so horny and full of testosterone that they absolutely MUST fuck and if they're not given the opportunity to do so, well, then they'll seize it. Female rapists problematize (ugh) this erroneous belief - plus because it is generally impossible for a woman to physically force a man into submission against his will I would imagine that female rapists would employ more complex mental coercion, more drawn out cat-and-mouse games with their victims, demonstrating further that rape is about gaining dominion and not about expending pent-up sexual energy in onne short, grab-and-penetrate burst.
I've read through this and some of it makes some sense to me. I hope it comes across. I'm too tired to neatly summarise. |
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