A Note to Rystefn and Lou

Some writers fall in love with words. The more I write, the more I know how little individual words mean. The more I interact with people very different from me, the more I ignore exact words and tell others to do the same. They’re just not that helpful. “Divided by a common language” and all that.

There were two words placed in close context in one of these posts, “soldier” and “rapist.” The first of these words invoked your pride in a way that probably no other word can. Rightfully so. About the only benefit you’re given in return for the privation and danger of serving your country as a solider is pride. That’s wrong, in that you deserve more in return for what you give, but that’s another post.

It’s also wrong in terms of what pride does, because that second word ran smack into that pride. Honestly, I can’t even begin to imagine how much that must have hurt. That’s a strong word and pride is very vulnerable. I hurt in sympathy, but I know it doesn’t approach what you must have felt to hit that. I’m pretty sure I can’t understand that.

However, and I ask you to bear with me as I explain, rather than starting to argue immediately, this does not mean that Greg owes you an apology for calling you a rapist. For two reasons.

The first is that he didn’t call you a rapist. At least not in the post or the comments on his blog. I will get to the other part later.

1. He elucidated someone else’s theory and asked for responses and challenges to it. Those words were fully embedded in that person’s theory.
2. He asked for a different word. No, he didn’t endorse Rystefn’s alternative. He didn’t argue with it either. Given the specificity he was looking for regarding a physical response and the confusion in the comments over whether “potential” is even meaningful, I get being hesitant.
3. He actually used quite a large number of words to explain what the theory was saying about behavior. In order to claim he called you a rapist in any way that is more meaningful than calling you a motherfucker, you need to ignore a lot of context, context that specifically states you didn’t rape anyone, even if the theory is correct in all its details.

None of that changes the fact that it hurt like hell. It just says that Greg did not call you a rapist.

The second reason is that “you owe me an apology” is a direct functional equivalent to “dance, monkey, dance.” Apologies are rituals. They’re socially useful, but they’re empty on their own. It would probably make you feel better for Greg to apologize for calling you a rapist, but given that he doesn’t believe he did, it wouldn’t mean anything. He’d be dancing.

If you want an apology, ask for one that doesn’t involve him saying something he doesn’t believe. Do you really think he’s any happier about the fact that you’re hurting than I am? (Actually, Rystefn, there’s a pretty fair chance that by the time we got to my blog thread, Greg was hurting you for hurting me. You can ask him.)

In the meantime, you’re walking around in a discussion about rape wrapped in a sense of entitlement. Somebody owes you something. It comes across in your focus, where you’re pushing people to discuss the details of marginalized sexuality, about which you know quite a bit, rather than the general topic of preventing rape. It comes across in your language, where you’re telling women they “have to” do something, generally agree with you. Sometimes apologize to you.

You’re telling these people to dance, too. Some of them are rape survivors. All of them are aware of their potential for victimization, particularly aware at the moment. I’m pretty sure you would generally be much more sensitive to both of these behaviors in this context, so I’m blaming the entitlement.

In most contexts, the shift in behavior that entitlement creates would make me unhappy, because my friends aren’t communicating. In this context, I find it creepy as hell. You’re giving me a very clear picture of how entitlement can lead to me, both personally and as a female in general, being utterly discounted, even by someone I consider a very close friend.

Guys, I understand and hate that you’re hurting, but you’re scaring me.

Silence Is the Enemy is, as should be obvious, an initiative to get people talking about rape, with the goal of stopping it and helping the victims. A large number of the people who don’t usually talk about this but are now are women.

For the record, we don’t tend to keep silent not because we’re not interested parties. We keep silent because there are risks to talking. There are the people who will mock us for talking about a bad experience.

More to the point, how did this thread come to be about you? It strikes me as a wee bit narcissistic of you, to turn a thread about the scope and limits of cultural relativism into an account of What Happened to Me When I was a Kid.

Just remember, Steph: it’s all about you. Everything’s about you.

There are the people who will insist that your concern be subsumed in the interest of uncovering the DARKER TRUTH.

Do you know that for nearly 30 years feminists were using pseudo-science to justify the belief (not the fact) that men were the only ones who are violent in a relationship? For 30 years, dozens of studies were fudged to support this LIE. Eventually, the truth came out: one third of hospital visits related to DV are from men, victimization studies amongst younger couples show that women are slightly more violent than men. And it turns out that the most violent form of relationship is same-sex female (i.e. lesbians).

And then there are your friends–bless their myopic hearts. Let me tell you a story.

I sent an email to a male friend yesterday afternoon because I was finding a combination of arguments made in all this mess to be creepy and he had a perspective that could be useful. I used the word, “creepy,” in the email and asked for a gut check because I know I’m not a disinterested party in this discussion. This is not an easy subject to talk about for the reasons listed above and others, and I’ve been getting less and less comfortable as the week has worn on. I was going out of my way to be fair to the party in question.

For reasons of no importance, the email didn’t reach its target until this morning. My friend and I chatted back and forth a little bit. He asked me how things were going. I responded.

Stressful. I’ve just spent this week talking and writing about rape with a bunch of guys who have told me:

• I have no business bringing personal experience into the discussion and making it all about me.
• Women lie about these things, you know.
• What about the men?
• It’s more important to have fun sex than to be clear on consent at the beginning and throughout the process.
• Their gut impression is more valid than my interested and studied opinion.
• Where is my outrage about name calling?

Yep. Stressful.

That wasn’t going out of my way to be fair in the least, but he’d asked.

As he dug into the thread, he commented about the lack of communication going on in the comments. I directed him a bit more toward the parts that were “creeping me out,” including a lack of apparent empathy. Eventually, he came back with a fairly dispassionate analysis of the theory of the rape switch and some commentary on the nature and complexity of sexuality.

I asked, “So, in all this, why was I not able to sleep last night?”

He responded, “Because you hate to be wrong.”

When I had choked back both the urge to cry and the urge to rip his throat out, I carefully asked him to “be a little more specific about what I said yesterday that was wrong that I would know was wrong that would keep me awake.”

The response: “I was just poking you, I wasn’t actually serious.”

That was when I did cry. Hell, I’m crying now, writing about it.

There is a fundamental disconnect here that I do not understand. What about “we’re talking about rape, and I’m creeped out and stressed to the point that I’m having trouble sleeping and want someone to double-check me on something” invites poking? For that matter, what about “when it comes to my safety, I don’t care about fine distinctions in words” invites people to tell me I need to stick to higher moral ground than the trained guys with weapons?

Yes, those are questions. I’m still closing the comments on this post, because I truly can’t predict what I’ll do if someone tries to answer them in terms of their feelings and needs instead of mine. If someone wants to talk about it, they can open a thread somewhere where I don’t have to see it.

I had enough not being heard. Y’all can try it for a change.

Update: DuWayne’s got a somewhat ridiculously titled post open for anyone who wants to talk among themselves.

If the point of Silence Is the Enemy is to get people talking, this post at Greg’s about whether there is a “rape switch” that can be triggered in warfare is doing the trick. Of course, much of the talk is debate over rape statistics and over this section of the post:

In the [genteel] society in which we imagine ourselves living (at least according to many of the comments on the above cited post) the switch is off, and stays off for most people’s lives. But there are circumstances in which most men’s switch is turned on. The switch being on does not mean that rape will happen. It simply means that the man (with the switch on) is now a rapist, whether he actually rapes or not (but he probably will), and when the switch is off, he is not (so he probably won’t). It is a bit of a metaphor, and a strained one (see comments by commenter Elizabeth) at that.

The first comment is from Rystefn, objecting to the classification of “rapist,” something he does throughout the thread. Finally, he wants to know, from me:

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, why is it that you’re so opposed to calling actual rapists monsters, but stand idly by and let innocent innocent men be called rapists without a word of complaint?

(Monsters is explained here.)

DuWayne’s first response is much less rejecting:

My gut reaction to this is that it’s total bullshit. I want it to be bullshit – almost need it to be. But I then consider the recent discussions about torture and my acceptance that while the circumstances are far-fetched (i.e. on a scale with getting struck by lightening three times, each time standing in the same spot) I can think of hypothetical situations in which I would not only condone torture, but wouldn’t hesitate to engage in it myself.

Eventually, however, he posted his response on his blog. Much of it is a very eloquent exposition of one part of why I don’t talk about monsters in general. I highly recommend reading it.

At the end of his post is his response to the rapist question:

Now a reasonable reading of this discussion will show that this is not something that Greg is saying as an absolute. Indeed, it is clear that he is willing to be convinced otherwise, though he strongly suspects that this is the case. I am going to answer the question in the title and respond to the idea in this quote with an emphatic and resounding; No, this is complete and absolute bullshit.

A person does not move from having the potential, to being the thing, unless they actually commit the act. The fact that a lot of people who end up fitting a similar set of variables commit acts of rape, does not mean that everyone who fits those variables is a rapist. It simply means that those who don’t rape, require a different set of variables to become a rapist. […]

I’m sorry Greg, but unless and until a person actually commits the act, they only have the potential to commit the act. Until the specific variables that will cause them to act are met, they are in fact, incapable of committing the act.

Read the whole thing.

I understand where Rystefn and DuWayne are coming from on the questions of moral judgment and punishment. For those purposes, the presumption of innocence should absolutely be maintained. However, that still leaves me with a question.

As a potential victim in this situation, what do I gain from making that assumption of innocence?

There are a lot of benefits, to me, of treating that large increase in incidence of rape as a universal, particularly if my goal is to prevent my rape in a war situation or that of others in a potential war situation. If I avoid all male soldiers in war, I am much more likely to avoid being raped. If I can stop war from happening, I can keep many more women from being raped. If I assume that no man is a rapist, even in war, until it’s proven, there’s a very good chance I can’t do either. But both of those are the point of Silence Is the Enemy.

So, what outweighs the potential costs, to me, of acting as though Greg’s statement were untrue?

As part of the ongoing discussion regarding Silence Is the Enemy (go read, click, donate), there is a commenter, Thomas, in this thread who is terribly concerned that rape statistics in the U.S. are inflated. He’s citing this article by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers (PhD in philosophy) suggesting that several studies on rape prevalence shouldn’t be quoted because, well, you can read the reasons if you feel like it.

However, one helpful thing that Sommers does point out in this 2004 article is that the Bureau of Justice Statistics annual criminal victimization survey was revamped to ask about rape and sexual assault directly. It hadn’t before 2004. Really. This means that the numbers are available, although Thomas didn’t go out to find them himself.

So I did.

The question as asked in the survey is pretty simple and does not describe what is included in sexual activity. When kids who take abstinence pledges don’t seem to understand that oral or anal sex is still sex, this is an important consideration. Nor does it specify what constitutes coercion.

Incidents involving forced or unwanted sexual acts are often difficult to talk about. (Other than any incidents already mentioned,) have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by –

(a) Someone you didn’t know before –
(b) A casual acquaintance –
OR
(c) Someone you know well?

The overall annual rate was 0.1%. Note, that’s an annual rate–0.1% of people in the U.S. over the age of 12 reported being raped or sexually assaulted in 2007. Those numbers are 0.01% for males and 0.18% for females. 71% of those assaulted were under age 25.

Doing some not-so-fancy multiplication of annual rates by years at that rate and adjusting for the gender difference, that gives me a 5.5% victimization rate for women before age 25, 10.4% lifetime, only counting assaults that happened after age 12. This doesn’t count revictimization separately, because the data doesn’t capture that. However, given the looseness of the question, I’m not going to sweat it.

Now these numbers are significantly lower than the numbers Sommers criticizes, 27.5% by college age and 12.5% lifetime. However, there’s one more thing at the Bureau of Justice Statistics site.

Rape rates (and note that this just includes rape, not other sexual assault) have been dropping along with rates of other violent crime. The study on rape among college women was done in 1985, when rates of rape were approximately three times higher than they are now. That means we’re looking at a one-in-six statistic instead of a one-in-four statistic at that time. Are you comforted?

The lifetime rates that displease Sommers, which were generated in 1990, look particularly grim if that same three-times multiplier is applied. Even counting for significant revictimization, which would become a greater factor over time, the one-in-eight figure from 1990 looks quite reasonable, if not conservative.

Nope, I’m unimpressed with the claims that anyone is “crying wolf.”

Gosh, apparently talking about rape is controversial, particularly when one doesn’t argue that only inhuman monsters rape. I haven’t been trolled this hard since talking about…huh, equal pay. Let me count the ways.

• Apparently, I was both bragging and claiming victimhood.
• Talking about a personal experience made the whole thread all about me, narcissist that I am.
• I got diminutivized.
• I was told what my point was.
• I set out on a slippery slope.
• Saying nasty things.
• And ended up a anti-male bigot.
• With no point.
• And then the name-calling started.

Interestingly enough, our troll declined to interact with Greg in any way, except to say, “Oh, I’ll be busy for the next few days. By the way, we have something in common. Nice to meet you,” when Greg put up citations. Charming little transparent creep.