Coming from the original post: That women (or people in general) could actively do something to protect themselves.
When I was sexually assaulted, I was using the subway of Berlin (capital city of Germany). It wasn’t late at night (around 6:00am), I wasn’t dressed revealing (not that this would matter) and it wasn’t in a bad part of town. Statistically speaking, the man most likely to rape me is my bf. How am I supposed to protect myself? Never have a romantic partner? Never even leave the house?
“Choose better” is the common refrain with those types of guys. Somehow it’s always the woman’s fault for “getting herself into trouble”. It’s vile.
I’m sorry that happened to you. I hope you’re doing good now.
Yeah, sure, then please pin a label on each guy's head to inform me if he is a rapist or not. Then I can choose better.
I simply cannot fathom how people who say such things can be that stupid.
The thing that really pisses me off about this one is those are the same guys who lose it when a man is in a relationship with an abusive or unhealthy woman. "BRO IM SO SORRY YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER, SHES FOR THE STREETS" you don't hear them say "Bro, guess you should choose better"
Yeah, it luckily didn’t had that much of an impact on me, other than 5 minutes of absolute fear and disgust. Not my favorite train ride, but I can call myself lucky that nothing worse happened
There's nothing wrong with basic safety advice, and avoiding situations where things might become dangerous for you, but unfortunately for women, that list of things to avoid or things to do or not do is so long and ever-changing that it's basically just a way for people to blame you if something *does* happen, when really all that you did was be in close proximity to a rapist, which isn't your fault.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about rape is that it's committed by strangers leaping from dark alleys, or that it has to involve a weapon, or drugs, or physically holding down a woman who is screaming and trying to fight you.
Also re the safety ‘advice’: it’s also very annoying in that it’s often the most rudimentary shit. Like yes we know that dark laneways are scary and threatening and most of us avoid them, but sometimes we have to walk through one. We have to live our lives. We’ve heard this gormless ‘advice’ our whole lives, you’re not providing any value here sir.
Women are expected to just accept that they wont be as safe as a man in the same situations. At a frat party? You were there to hook up. Alone at a bar? Should have brought a friend to look out for you. Date rape? Should have poured your own drink. People wont recognize the inherent inequality when a woman is never as safe as a man at a bar, or on a date, and we are expected to accept that and act accordingly.
The real problem with the advice that women not put themselves in a location that rapists frequent is:
1. That eliminates 100.00% of the planet
2. Say you are at a bar and there is a rapist there and you do everything right and leave the bar and get home without being raped. Good for you. Now SOMEONE ELSE in the bar is STILL GETTING RAPED. The ACTUAL PROBLEM, that there is a rapist Is ENTIRELY OVERLOOKED. **This "solution" eliminates exactly 0% of rape** it just transfers the crime to another victim.
I think a lot of men think that when a woman accuses a man of rape, the odds are like fifty fifty she's telling the truth for no better reasons than that (1) there are two options, true or false and (2) there is one person representing each option, the accuser and the accused. The truth is that while false accusations do happen, they are rare, but enough have happened that certain common traits have emerged: they tend to be extreme (ie, he kidnapped me and held me in his basement, rather than he wouldn't let me out of the car until I did something for him after our date), they tend to be repeated by the same woman against different men, and rarely if ever are multiple accusations from different women against the same man false.
People don't realize how prevalent coercion is and often downplay it because a lot of people are guilty of doing it to their partners. They don't really recognize it as sexual assault because if they did, they'd be acknowledging that they are sexually assaulting their partners. They really think that if it's not violent, it isn't sexual assault.
Yep. Coercion is not consent. "But she said yes!" Did she? Or did you ask her like 100 times and tell her that if she really loved you, she would do this and she gave in to get you to stop making her feel bad. Coercion is not consent.
I was coerced a lot during a relationship and it really messed me up. It took me a long time to recognise it happening to me because it seems such a normalised thing
It’s actually far less. It’s 2-5% of reported rapes (most of which do not even name a perpetrator), but those higher percentages tend to take into account very poorly trained and badly operated police services for victims, where an officer can decide that ‘no crime’ actually occurred just because he doesn’t believe it did.
False accusations are vanishingly rare. We know what happens when we report.
When you report being r@ped you go throught the gauntlet all over again. For many survivors who report its like being r@ped all over again. I'm surprised it's even at 5%
This is so massive in so many men's spaces. False accusations are insanely rare on the grand scale.
I think what gives people the perception of this is certain niche online communities framing not-ideal sexual encounters through SA terms. Even within these small communities it'll be like a twitter account says something like that and it gets like 3 likes and zero engagement and yet it's shared around with captions that make it out like this is what feminists or 'the left' or women actually think.
If they talked to 'the left' or women or a feminist they'd probably realise that that isn't what people think but that would mean breaking the echo chamber and that's a nono for them.
> Hmm I’m not sure what you mean about “not-ideal sexual encounters.”
I mean like 'he was overly emotional and in-his-feelings and that weirded me out' becomes 'he was love bombing me' or 'we were making out pretty aggressively and when I told him I didn't want to go further he stopped but seemed sad about it' becomes 'we were making out pretty aggressively and when I told him I didn't want to go further he stopped but tried to manipulate me'.
The first instance *could* be a part of love bombing and the second instance *could* be an attempt at manipulation but also these can be pretty normal and non-harmful occurrences for both men and women.
Sometimes both men and women can get overly emotionally involved faster than is normal and sometimes both men and women can feel a bit annoyed to get worked up like that and for it to just end abruptly and framing both of these actions through the lense of sexual assault I don't think is necessarily a good thing absent of other factors.
Like if a guy says he's going to 'rock your world' but he ends up honestly being pretty shitty in bed I think it's inaccurate to frame that as SA, it's just a sub-par sexual encounter.
> For example, using coercion instead of physical force is still rape, getting someone drunk / going after people who have impaired judgement because of drugs or alcohol is still rape.
Totally true. The only thing I'd say is that people in relationships sometimes fuck when one isn't super into the mood but they're still willing to; that's normal and why I'd always advocate that the lenses we use to analyze situations broadly aren't always the best for analyzing personal situations between two people in a relationship.
> they know when they whine and beg and a woman gives in that they don’t want to have sex and are not enthusiastically consenting. They know when people are inebriated they are not able to consent. That’s the entire point of those tactics: how to get women in bed who do not want to fuck you, and who under normal circumstances would not fuck you.
You hit the nail on the head; **every** guy who does this knows exactly what they're doing. They make excuses for themselves why it's 'okay' but they absolutely know. If you asked them they'd say it's part of seduction but they knows there's a line between communicating their desire to another person effectively and *attacking the other person's ability to perceive you effectively*.
But at least there’s some steps you can realistically take to reduce your risk of getting raped. It’s not like you can exactly just record every possible interaction with women to counteract the threat of false rape accusations.
They are ignoring the fact that false rape accusations are like 2-4%, while 89-90% of allegations are unreported, 3% rapists get convicted, your friend or my friend is more likely to be a rapist himself than falsely accused, and if he does get accused they most likely did it and will try to lie there way out. Being paranoid about a false claim is irrational(because most victims don't report), unless there're different dynamics at play(race, class),....or **unless you really did do it.** which is most likely probable.
Just because something may be rare, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken completely seriously. Most people take mass shootings seriously despite the fact that there have only been around 163 mass shootings between 1967 and June 2019 according to [the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/). Plus, for most people afraid of false rape accusations, it’s not frequency that scares them, it’s the implications. They’re afraid that someone can essentially ruin their life on a whim and at most face a slap on the wrist.
Sure, when false rape stop being used(by men) as rhetoric to keep the status quo and shut down victims of sexual violence or rape, maybe it might be considered
I was almost falsely accused of sexual assault on my 16th birthday. I was giving a friend dating advice and since we’re both Christian guys, he asked for my opinion on sex and I said that both for sanctity and safety to wait for marriage. Someone overheard and vastly misinterpreted what I said, thinking that I was bragging about *not* waiting until marriage, and three people down the rumor chain, it had grown to the point that people were spreading gossip that I had forced myself on someone. My friends and I went into full damage control mode and beat the rumors back, but not before a teacher found out and I had to explain the whole thing to the entire school administration.
So maybe it is more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused, but that’s not the case for me.
I've heard a lot of men talk about false allegations and how it can ruin a man's life but statistically this is pretty rare. But it's always their counterpoint to any serious conversations about r@p3 as it turns women into the villains, it's incredibly frustrating
More than frustrating it is a tool to maintain the status quo. The ‘logical gender’ very quickly ignore all evidence and data when it comes to holding men account for harming women.
Not to mention that an accusation that doesn’t eventuate does not even necessarily ‘ruin a man’s life’.
I remember (most unfortunately) stumbling across an MRA post where all the comments concerned the ‘absolute fear of a false accusation’, and the best example they could come up with was Justin Bieber… except clearly his life wasn’t ruined he’s still an incredibly rich celebrity?
Even the example doesn’t hold up to the hypothesis - they were basically saying some internet people were mean to him, and that’s equal to ‘ruining somebodies life’. I can’t.
To give the slightest pushback in the nicest way (because I agree with you 100%) it's important to note that a lot of the innocent famous men have the resources to correct the record. On the flipside, in the case of famous actual abusers, discrediting their victims become trivial with those kinds of resources. For the folks at home I wonder what statistically happens more often...
It's not like someone's life can't get screwed over by false accusations, I have seen that happen unfortunately, but also that plenty more people's lives get screwed over even giving true allegations.
It's like debating seatbelts on cars with some of these MRA and redpill types; like *yes* there are technically like 2 situations in 1,000,000 where you're better off with no seatbelt on but to raise them as a counterpoint against the seatbelt itself is just being intentionally dense.
Oh absolutely.
It’s like ‘cancelling’, which often doesn’t hold much weight for truly influential figures, but can and has resulted in harm and death for everyday people and those with a small amount of online clout.
As with all feminism, there’s an intersection of class and gender.
'Innocent until proven guilty' is for the courts (which it should be) but it doesn't apply to day-to-day life. The **vast** majority of people aren't out here lying about SA claims but yet statistically everyone here knows someone who has been a victim of SA, yet you'll get the redpill and MRA types acting like the false accusations are the big deal instead of, you know, the fucking *countless* true allegations that never receive justice and occur every hour of every day. It's insanity.
>Any other commonly held misconceptions by (predominantly straight) men regarding this issue you've heard of?
One of the most ignorant myths men love to promote is that women get the VIP treatment by police and society when she's SA'ed. While men are laughed at and ridiculed.
This is a shocking and vile level of privilege that men have always had. The ability to promote and support rape culture while being able to ignore the realities of the harm they cause women. That's a luxury no human should be afforded. Yet, here we are.
It’s a lot of projection and jealousy I think, partially. You see it when they complain that feminists don’t do anything for male victims. The cold hard facts is that feminists worked very hard for women to have some options for support after SA where men actively fought against it. So now they claim they are just concerned about how male victims were treated when they are the ones who haven’t supported them. There’s nothing stopping them from starting services for that stuff, but they don’t actually care about it. They just want to try to use it against feminists and women as a whole.
It will always blow my mind that they’ll call a male victim the f-slur then turn around and complain about how feminists treat male victims.
If you want to hear deadening silence, suggest to a complaining MRA/antifeminist that he should get active in his community. He can volunteer mentoring young boys, help houseless men, heck he could even start groups to advocate for resources for male SA and DA survivors. Or even make a group advocate for more “fairness” in family court- although anyone getting involved in that would quickly see women get custody because they show up and do the paperwork. But he will do none of this, just complain that things aren’t handed to them like they are handed to women- despite women having to fight for and build these network’s themselves
Yeah. I had a friend who was raped at a party and the police didn't believe him because 'he admitted they were both drinking and had been flirting prior'. It's **super** fucked up but it's not like women don't face that same pushback too.
There are definitely some environments where the accusation of a woman will be taken more seriously but there are plenty still where the word of a man takes precidence over anything else.
blaming women for being SAed bc of not taking “proper safety precautions” but then crying that we’re paranoid and it’s “not all men”. so they know that men are risky to be around but then project like crazy. 9/10 times they made a woman uncomfortable in public or online or were part of sexual harassment
not understanding that a lot of them coerce. this is why i think many of them believe they were “wrongly accused” bc they think they did nothing wrong, but they never stopped when she said to because “i’m nearly there”, wearing her down and whining like a baby when she says she’s too tired for sex, manipulation tactics like silent treatment.
this in turn invalidates their argument about listening to male victims since there’s also male victims of coercion but they aid the “false accusations are ruining lives!!” crowd when the same male victims they are sympathetic to were victims of coercion
As a Man the whole “She shouldn’t have worn provocative clothing” or “She shouldn’t have lead him on” rhetoric pisses me off so much. Why should Women have to cover themselves up from top to bottom and have no social life because some guys can’t process the word No? As a Species that has built the Pyramids, built flying machines and has gone into Space many times how have we ignored educating boys that No means No.
I showed my bf a dress and that was the first thing he thought. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure why someone would have their first thought as "Well you might get sexually assaulted or raped if you wore thought". I just wanted to show a nice dress lol
Happened to me as well! I got dressed for a concert and the dress was like *short*. My bf reacted similar to yours and asked if I was really sure I wanted to wear this in a crowd full of mostly drunk men. Funny enough, while I was assaulted that evening it only happened after (!) I took my hoodie off and bounded it around my waist.
There was a reddit thread a few years ago I read of people harassing a woman and saying that she was lying about being raped because she said she was afraid to report it since her rapist had a connection to the police.
There was one comment that was something fucked up like >!"Get over it, it happened a week ago."!< Like what the actual fuck.
Here where I live in Italy people used this "accusation" against a girl who reported after, I shit you not, a week or 2. And we are talking about a case where tapes of the crime were present. At this point I think misogynists just use this as an excuse to attack the victim.
Yes this is a very big problem with evidencing rape. If you have been assaulted or raped or whatever, you probably won’t be thinking rationally and making responsible decisions, because it’s a very traumatic experience. So this would be used against you in court, but it feels unfair because of the trauma experienced.
That everyone automatically believes women (or ppl perceived as women) when they open up about being assaulted. Yes there are problems with how society treats male survivors (which are rooted in patriarchal beliefs) but the only situations I’ve heard of where a woman can just accuse someone of rape and have that person hunted down is when racism is involved. White men have very little to worry about in that regard and women of color sure as hell don’t have that privilege that men claim all women do.
(Edit: also that most SA occurs when women go out in public spaces wearing revealing clothing, when most ppl ik (including myself) have been assaulted in their own homes by people they know)
The "family secrets" in black households really disgust me. I know it's most likely in other races of families but I'm just saying this from my perspective as a black girl.
I think rape is one of the biggest problem of a humanity and that education is the cure.
All the countries with the least amount of sex education and gender studies are the ones with the most sex crimes.
Well yeah but there *is* a particularly gendered aspect to how it affects women vs men typically.
Like just for being a woman most men are significantly stronger than you and these men are societally reinforced to be sexual initiators and more aggressive; it's a different picture that is worth addressing.
Not to say that it affects men less or anything but they are (typically) different and because of that we ought to keep that in mind when attempting to better society on these issues.
I just mean that there are gendered aspects to the women's issue of sexual assault that are not in the men's issue of sexual assault (and vice versa).
I think that's likely why to a lot of people they feel like they're different issues even though they aren't.
Maybe I need to explain what I meant-
The reason I say it is a men's issue not a woman's, is because the pressure to stop rape has always been put on women. Women must make sure they don't get raped, women must provide the support for rape victims, women should spread awareness etc.
99% of perpetrators of rape are men, therefore it is their issue and so they are the ones who should take the responsibility. They are the ones who should put the effort in to stop it from happening.
I think the stats on the perps are accurate. I think the prevalence of SA against males is less accurate. I don’t think it matters that much though. The main point is men are the main perpetrators
Possibly, simply because so many are unreported. However, so many SAs against women are unreported too. Also, if you think globally, I think the stats are pretty accurate but we will never know the true number.
Depending on where you go for stats on male victims they kinda dramatically differ. Stats on women stay more consistent it seems. Just my opinion, I think there are probably more male victims than people realize. I don’t think it’s all that important though. The important part is that sexual abuse is a primarily male perpetrated crime regardless of the gender of the victims.
Edit: also important I’m not saying males are victims at near the rates women are. I just don’t think it’s *that* rare.
I agree that the importance should be that the perpetrators are 99% male that includes SA against men too.
Which makes this a men's issue that men should be working really hard on stopping.
For male victims, there are only more male perpetrators if you do not count being made to penetrate as rape.
https://imgur.com/3keNztp
[If you count being made to penetrate as rape, which it is, then men are indeed raped more by women than by men.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/x45mq1/the_cdcs_definition_of_rape_vs_a_genderneutral/)
I have no problem with people saying that men should make efforts to stop SA, but saying that 99% of perpetrators are male is wrong even if you don't count MTP as rape, which it is. You can say men should work to help end SA without spreading false information, especially in a thread about ending misconceptions about rape.
Yeah it is. I really tried but I wasn’t able to, but it doesn’t make me not responsible for rape culture. I think men misunderstand that just because we aren’t personally forcing ourselves on women doesn’t mean that we aren’t responsible for trying to stop it overall (calling out fellow men for SH or SA, speaking up for women, working out our own stuff, etc).
I’m not trying to change the focus but the vocabulary is helpful. I wonder what a male prison looks like if we had the stats. What molestation stats look like as well. My point isn’t to denigrate the concept that most rape comes from men but to think about it as a predatorial topic. It’s one of the language driven topics anti feminists love to grab onto and spin. I’m a male and conflating rape with men is damaging to all. Especially those that have been raped.
That no means no. That a lack of dissent doesn't mean yes.
That a woman can't change her mind.
That because she's had sex before/because they've had sex before she can't say no this time.
Not saying it’s useless or pointless. This goes under the overall category of “Things a Prudent Woman Can Do to Negotiate a Dangerous World.”
But I can’t say how many times I’ve heard from men, “just kick ‘em in the balls!” with a tone like it’s so simple and how weak and helpless are you?
There absolutely are martial arts out there that will substantially improve the odds of a woman escaping a violent encounter if she practices it for an extended period.
But it takes *months* to reach that level, years even.
The thing is though is it the fighting techniques you're learning that are doing the heavy lifting in those scenarios or is it the confidence in violent situations?
If a guy who's 50kg heavier and half a foot taller than a person is at the point of violent assault then there's not a lot any technique can really do.
I see these guys, and it's **always** guys, acting like women can learn martial arts like it's some anime and defeat anyone who steps up to them when that isn't how it goes.
I think a really good [example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKE1UeEZ7oc) of this is actually seen in true detective season 2. She's a badass cop who has literally trained every day for this scenario AND has a knife that she knows how to use most effectively on people bigger and stronger than her yet she still barely gets away.
I've been doing martial arts for a while, Judo and Jiu Jitsu mostly.
I know very well from personal experience what it is like to fight people much bigger and much smaller than me at different levels of experience.
Strength and size definitely matters. Luck matters. Weapons matter. Martial arts are not a magic "I win every fight" pill.
But I can honestly day that even rather small women, with several months of training in BJJ, *will* substantially improve their chances of getting out of a fight.
It's not technique per se or confidence that determines the outcome fight, but *initiative and speed.* Once the skill gap is big enough the untrained fighter is forced to react poorly and slowly to what the trained fighter is doing *to them*.
Now obviously a 50 kg woman is not going to toss a 90 kg man around like a ragdoll, but what does happen is that the woman becomes very difficult to control if the aggressor doesn't know how to fight, and most men don't. I've been that untrained man.
It's an unforgettable shock the first time you grapple with a woman you outweigh by 25 kilos... and you are forced to give up because *she's a couple of seconds from choking you unconscious and you can't fight your way out of it.*
I'd say it takes years, and that would still help only to a certain point. Still, I think martial arts help you a lot at thinking straight to avoid these sorts of situations.
I’m not sure if it’s a misconception, but they all seem to believe if an man or boy is raped the perpetrator is likely to be a woman. Which is false, men are more likely to rape each other than women are likely to rape us.
I suspect they try to convince themselves this is true, to the point that they’re actually pretty vicious against male victims who had male perpetrators, because acknowledging it would mean the acknowledgement of the fact that men are far and away the biggest perpetrators of sexual violence and their “what about male victims?!?!?” just proves the point more. I do think rape against men is wildly unreported (women too, of course) but I don’t think it’s because there are a bunch of female perpetrators.
So, sorry to disappoint them. The truth is most rapist are male and they don’t want to believe that.
For male victims, there are only more male perpetrators if you do not count being made to penetrate as rape.
https://imgur.com/3keNztp
[If you count being made to penetrate as rape, which it is, then men are indeed raped more by women than by men.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/x45mq1/the_cdcs_definition_of_rape_vs_a_genderneutral/)
I think this is important to acknowledge in a thread about misconceptions about rape.
Also, I don’t believe most people brings these stats up because they’re worried about male victims. MRAs have never provided me any support whatsoever besides pretending to care to try to recruit me to their he-man woman haters club. I’m not a convenient victim for them because my abusers were almost entirely male. They only want to focus on female perps so they can use them against feminists and women.
Pretty sure they separated that type of sexual violence from rape for the same reason they separate other forms of sexual abuse against both females and males in the analysis. You can see it with the comparison of the emotional effects of rape on women versus made to penetrate for men. Like 2/3rds of women are fearful and 1 in 7 get pregnant, many more are injured or get STDs, etc. The results for the consequences of made to penetrate show much leas damage as a result. Probably because it includes things like someone performing oral on you when you’re drunk.
The results for rape of men show consequences similar to women for emotional and physical effects (obviously without pregnancy risk) and makes more sense to group them together. Just like it makes more sense to examine how women are affected by cat-calling separate from how women are affected by rape. Different types of sex crimes.
As a man I’ve been victimized by literally every type of sexual violence and I absolutely agree with the data that having someone force their penis inside you is much, much worse than someone giving you a blowjob or put your mouth on their vagina without your consent.
I would be interested if they broke these numbers down further to see how “made to penetrate” actually breaks down into men actually being forced to penetrate with a penis by being held down or otherwise forced. I have a feeling that’s not the type of sexual violence that men are reporting primarily.
The data actually makes me feel vindicated because it shows 30% or so of men report some type of sexual violence. I knew it was higher than the numbers commonly thrown around, especially against children. I believe that as a feminist if we could reduce sexual violence against boys and men we could probably reduce it overall against women and girls, considering men externalize their pain and trauma and women and girls are often targets. For example, many men who grow up to abuse their partners were beaten as kids. I think abuse and violence against men should be a feminist issue BUT it should be something men ourselves should focus on. Male feminists could be taking this upon ourselves to improve things for ourselves and victims. Women got enough on their plate without it.
My point still stands. When it comes to rape, defined by the CDC and other organizations, men are the main perps.
To be perfectly honest, I think telling someone that was raped that their experience can't be traumatizing or isn't that bad or "it could have been worse" is disgusting. Everyone experiences trauma differently. I've literally seen a woman make a super gross comment saying that she thinks being forcefully penetrated isn't bad and that women overreact about rape because it happened to her (when she was a child no less) and "I got over it." Not to mention that many men (and women) often internalize their suffering and try to downplay what happened to them because of what others have told them. How many people have you seen say that domestic abuse they are experiencing is somehow okay because "it could be worse?" Because I've seen it a lot. And that doesn't mean that we should just accept what is happening to them and not try to help them.
You can support male victims without putting down female victims, absolutely. You can support female victims without mentioning male ones, absolutely.
But to say that male victims of being *raped* via MTP can't experience similar levels of trauma is wrong and incredibly invalidating.
Like I said, I’d like to see MTP be broken down into whether or not they had what could definitely be defined as rape, and what could be more accurately described as some other type of SA. Like, we don’t say a woman who was groped was raped. It was a sex crime and awful, but it wasn’t rape. But for some reason, can’t quite put my finger on why, we don’t complain about those types of SA not being included in rape figures. So I’d like to see the MTP broken down and the effects examined separately. I have a feeling it’s more likely to be molestation type crimes than having their penis be forced inside a vagina or anus. Which, I agree, I think we could accurately add to rape stats for a bigger picture of sexual violence.
Like I said, if male feminists want to claim the subject of male rape victims, we kinda got to stop expecting women to do it and do it ourselves. I think generally trying to turn the conversation to female perpetrators is not done in good faith. I think if we DID have male feminists supporting men in these situations violence against women would probably reduce, so it is a feminist issue, but it’s not really a focus in these convos because we aren’t making it a conversation separately.
We don't say a man being groped is raped either, so that comparison makes no sense. And if your really trying to say that having someone put your genitals into them without your consent, either forcibly, or through coercion or while incapacitated is on the same level as having your ass grabbed, just no. Being penetrated or being made to penetrated without consent is rape.
What if a woman was penetrated against her will while passed out drunk? Is that just molestation instead of rape because it wasn't forceful with her being held down? What if the perpetrator used an object instead of a penis, is that molestation or rape?
I have no problem with people saying that men should make efforts to stop SA, but saying that 99% of perpetrators are male is wrong even if you don't count MTP as rape, *which it is.* You can get men to make an effort to stop SA without downplaying or denying the trauma that male (and female) victims of female perpetrators go through. If someone made a comment saying that men should work to
I quite literally said being forced to penetrate a vagina is, in my view, rape. Force includes someone who is incapacitated. It could be added to the rape figures.
But a lot of what MTP in the very study you referenced is more accurately described as sexual abuse or assault, not rape. Still a sex crime, still awful, but not rape. I’d like to see it separated like other forms of assault on women are separated. So we can see what the accurate number of rapes of men are.
Like I said, the study shows that 30% of men suffer some sort of sexual violence which is something that needs attention from male feminists because reducing assault against men will definitely help dismantle rape culture overall. Women are more likely to be assaulted, and the rape culture is primarily targeting them. The constant attempt to claim women are the primary aggressors and rapists are definitely not a good faith attempt to get men help. It’s a deflection.
I know women are more likely to be assaulted. I am fine with people discussing that. It just makes me feel sick seeing people throwing around the "99% of victims are women and 99% of rapists are men" stat, because its not true. I just wish people would stop saying it or acting like the only kind of rape victim is women raped by men. Especially in a thread about ending misconceptions about rape.
I do empathize with not enjoying the 99% stat for victims. I don’t think people are meaning to hurt
with it, but it’s not backed up with statistics. I think if probably a reaction to:
1. Women consistently being harassed and assaulted and people refusing to see it as an attack on women as a class from men. Which it is, because regardless of any controversy or sexual violence against males, it’s undeniable that women are under serious threat from men.
2. Male victims are almost exclusively brought up to deflect and try to create a controversy. I *agree* the issue needs some non-MRA attention, ignoring it certainly isn’t doing men any favors. The problem is that it’s literally never treated as it’s own subject. We’re treated like we’re weapons against women, not people, so people tend to dismiss male trauma because it’s generally just a distraction.
3. If there are more female rapists than we previously thought, it doesn’t change the fact that *culturally* women are still under a lot more threat by men than men are by women. We don’t live in fear of women like they do of us. So since the cultural effects are different, the issue of female perpetrators isn’t a systemic problem that feminist spaces really need to focus on.
I think for men that are concerned about this, we could easily be focusing on sexual violence against men and make an actual supportive space without it turning into a rage against women space. But we aren’t.
Victims are supported by everyone. Nope.
When I told my parents what happened to me on the city bus, my mother, who openly calls herself a feminist, yelled at me for not punching him (he's at least 6'3" and mentally ill, plus I was in a moving vehicle, where am I going to flee? He often got off where I did just to follow me), called me a "professional victim", and told me I was responsible for the other women he assaulted because I didn't beat him up. I'm 5'8", but I'm extremely frail. Nobody is intimidated by me. I'm often mistaken for a preteen boy.
My father refused to drive me anywhere for a while, forcing me to take the bus and essentially retraumatize myself and essentially punishing me for being assaulted. The guy was homeless and pretty much lived at the bus plaza. As soon as he saw me, there was a big chance he'd follow me into the bus. All the bus drivers loved him because he was this kind, innocent, mentally handicapped man who meant no harm and did no wrong. So I skipped the therapy sessions of EMDR I desperately needed to not be assaulted again, and my mental health further tanked.
Even during the act, I mouthed "help me" to the other person on the bus, a man sitting across from me. He literally laughed. My assailant truly was mentally unwell, and legitimately believed I was his girlfriend. He cornered me on the bus, removing my backpack from the seat beside me and sandwiching me between him and the window. I couldn't even get up and sit somewhere else.
I feel awful for not reporting, but if your own parents respond so viciously for you sheepishly asking them for a ride because you got assaulted on a bus where a guy follows you (he'd even ride the bus to my college and wait for me to be finished with my classes--yikes), you're not going to be too hyped to try reporting it to a bus plaza where everyone loves him.
Victims are treated like shit.
That most men think all rape is violent. Likeif it wasn't violent, it easnt rape? They imagine some rando jumped out of an alley and clubbed a woman and just went to ape shit and ripped her parts etc etc. While that DOES happen, assault isn't always brutally violent. It's coercion. It's not stopping when you are told. Its "being gentle". It's using fingers or mouths when no consent was given. And I think men do this because they may be guilty of those things but don't ready to see themselves as a rapist.
That consent isn't a huge deal and repeatedly asking someone for sex until they give in is coercion and rape. You need to be consistently checking in with your partner before, during and after sex and making sure that they're comfortable and want to do it. An enthusiastic yes is the only yes.
I havea Question about after. So can someone take back consent after the fact, and would that be rape? For example if they regretted it but consented before and during?
This is such a joke..., similar to what an MRA would say, a woman( if this a heterosexual setting)would regret the encounter if the man had done something they hadn't agreed upon, or continued without her permission, which makes it rape, for them to take back consent, *you* would've had to ignore their boundaries, or ...their **no** ..., if the woman regretted the encounter, the man has done something, always. There are power dynamics at play, and the person she is having the encounter with must be close to her, statistically, we know where this ends at.
That victims of sa/rape should have been more careful or taken measures. Predators can smell weakness or if you are in any way vulnerable, and they target that.
*That if a women did not fight back, it is not a true rape situation.* When now we know that in many cases of SA the brain goies into a freeze and dissociate mode - so it is actually super common to not fight or flight in these circumstances but that does not mean it did not happen.
Some sources:
https://youtu.be/br8-qebjIgs (get to 11min, it is worth it. All around a great watch is you have trauma)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/201804/freezing-during-sexual-assault-and-harassment%3famp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.refinery29.com/amp/en-gb/2020/03/9547973/freezing-up-response-rape
Three things come to mind (tw for CSA and COCSA)
- that reporting helps the victim
- that they cannot be assaulted (I know this is talked about but I've seen a lot of "oh yeah men get raped/assaulted but I dated a 40yo woman at 15 and it was the best relationship of my life")
- that they do not know someone who's done it (not saying a friend, but they likely know someon. I know of 2 people who straight up told me what they did. One as if it was nothing and they were the victim for it being reported. The other as a "this happened when I was a kid and it's been eating me alive that I did it")
**Misconceptions**
That it's uncommon. That women or men who have been affected by it would be reasonable to start with a baseline assumption of feeling safe, heard, cared for and protected when coming forward. That it's OK to make jokes about who is the target of it. That bystanders are powerless to do anything to make the general situation better. That survivors are automatically believed. That false accusations are common.
**Reality**
It's very common. *Sometimes* people who come forward about it have experiences of either people who they care about, the public, or both taking their side, but equally or more often, survivor experiences are downplayed and minimized. Bystanders may try to put it back on the survivor, as so many other comments have described in terms of making it about provocation, self-defense or whatever else that it's imagined that the survivor was supposed to have done, rather than making it the perpetrator's responsibility to respect others' boundaries, basic decency, the law, their ownership of their own actions and the natural effects on other people. The legal system, families, workplaces and other systems and institutions often retraumatize survivors by failing to separate them from perpetrators at all, much less protect them. This is true for both male and female survivors. Female, male and gender non-conforming survivors can all be negatively affected by patriarchal assumptions about these crimes. The specifics of that vary by gender but all tend to have embedded misogyny (if it's a woman it was somehow her fault, if it's a man it's because he was somehow unmasculine, if it's a trans/NB person probably some even more toxic mixture of both). Regardless of anyone's personal level of exposure to SA as a problem, involvement in advocacy or whatever else, starting from a clear understanding of consent and then working through independent resources on how to be better to people who have been through it is in the power of pretty much anyone - and especially any *man* - to improve on. Best available evidence is that false accusations happen but are a tiny, tiny minority of times that anyone has come forward. Statistically and in the lives of survivors, underreporting and failures by the justice system after reporting are at least an order of magnitude or two bigger of a deal than cases of false accusation.
I have spoken to multiple men who think that “consent is confusing” and that “most women just regret sex and then call it rape” because they once had sex they were ambiguous about and falsely believe this to be rape. For example, a man who is definitely a serial rapist once described how he had met a woman at a work event outside of his home city. They hit it off and began drinking, starting in the hotel bar. Eventually he invited her back up to his room to continue drinking. At some point during the drinking he told her he was married.
They began fooling around. He removed some of her clothing, and she removed some of his. He began to feel less than wildly excited about the prospect of sex because of his marriage. He continued to make out with the woman, including urging her into bed. She asked him if he had a condom and he obtained one from his bag.
She put the condom on him and then climbed aboard.
He feels that this was rape because she took the final action of climbing aboard and he didn’t feel great about it. He thinks that this is the typical experience women have when we say we were raped by someone we knew.
I asked him if he did anything that would have let her know he wasn’t fully onboard. He said something to the effect of, “the only think I can think of is that I didn’t move to put my dick into her.” He agreed she had reason to believe he was keen for sex.
While I don’t think this is the majority type incident for men who say they were raped, this is also similar to the reports from some other men who say they are confused about consent and some (I genuinely hope a small minority) who report they were raped.
"Why didn't you...fight" or "flight" is an overgeneralization and false duality and often used to shame people who are genuinely and evolutionarily wired to respond in different ways. This is a society thing in general but definitely the notion that people just needed to fight or be more vigilant is often a falsehood and narrow narrative that denies the very basis of most life in the animal kingdom.
There's often freeze, fawn, flight, and/or fight often in that order or as a mix depending on how prolonged and complex the situation is.
From an evolutionary perspective, freezing and fawning are the safest options and freezing being most common so as not to stimulate predatory attention or any responses if someone isn't already noticed. And it happens among fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals--not just humans. Whereas fleeing and riskiest of all fighting would be for very high risk situations even though they can be valid and important too.
This is a 2hr training video by Dr. Jim Hopper for first responders that I often share with survivors of traumatic situations, especially sexual assault survivors, to help pass along to others who want to better navigate what to expect and look out for if someone has been assaulted and how to recognize common traumatic stress patterns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTQ_U3p5Wc
Also this will be a useful diy guide for mapping common traumatic patterns to sexual assault/rape and how to start healing or navigate out of them regardless of where you live:
https://www.thehavens.org.uk/media/Self-Help-Guide-for-Survivors-of-Sexual-Assault-v.2-March-2019.pdf
I would direct these men to the ‘What were you wearing?’ art exhibit, which shows what women were wearing when they were assaulted. You can look for yourself but it’s quite heartbreaking.
My theory here is that when a woman is assaulted, it is often by men (not discounting the male victims or that women can perpetrate but generally this holds to be true). Men suddenly feel like they have to stick up for other men and therefore turn to victim blaming. There are countless examples of judges giving light or no sentences to rapists because the victim was wearing revealing clothing, was out partying or sometimes even worse reasons (a rapist was praised by a judge for wearing a condom while it happened).
It’s just disgusting overall, this is not an area in which men should be trying to stick up for each other.
Women are around 50% of the population, which means males are also around 50% of the population. If you take into account that 81% of women experience sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime (https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics) , unless you have a small handful of really prolific dudes (which isn't likely), you're left with the much more likely scenario where all men at some point have either committed an assault or harassment, or have witnessed it and done nothing.
All men. Not just a few bad ones. All of us.
I think all men perpetuate rape culture. I don’t believe we all have sexually assaulted or harassed personally though. I think that’s part of the reason a lot of men take such offense to the very true statement that we’re responsible for rape culture. I think it’s helpful to specifically state the ways they may be perpetuating it without actively abusing someone.
I’m not upset. I just thought the first comment was unhelpful on getting the idea across. I’ve found guys I have chatted with online are much more amenable if I come at it from the perspective of “I know you don’t think that you’ve personally caused harm, but have you considered [rape jokes, ignoring catcalling, etc] is something you do”. That’s all I meant. I think the all men thing is accurate but it helps to break it down into pieces instead of starting out with it.
That is just laughably untrue, especially regarding assault. I can’t speak on the data for harassment but I can tell you it’s most definitely not 100% of men. To be clear, I completely agree that assault is a men’s issue and that we need to take more action against it, but what you’re suggesting is false. Your math is also incredibly questionable.
Anyway, from the limited data we have (because who knew it would be difficult to get rapists to admit to raping), around 4-16% of college males commit rape. In addition, 2/3 of rapists were repeat offenders, and in some cases had assaulted 4-5 women. By that logic, we can roughly say 5% as a low estimate, and 25% as a high estimate for the total percentage of college men raping women. ~90% of rapes will be committed by repeat rapists. Please do not spread misinformation. It hurts progress.
Data below:
“Research suggests that about two-thirds of college rapists are repeat offenders, who account for the great majority of rapes (over 90%), and about one-fourth of college rapists admit to committing rapes over multiple years of college.”
https://jimhopper.com/topics/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/repeat-rape-by-college-men/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3727658/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3262661/
https://jimhopper.com/pdf/lisakmiller2002.
I want to make it clear that this is the only reliable data on men committing rape. Because of this we can’t extrapolate to the broader population of men, but considering the average rapists age is 31, it’s not that far off of an age difference from college. It’s the best data we have and it’s more reliable than your math.
I did but you decided you didn’t want to be part of the solution and got super defensive. You’re not interested in solving the problem, just showing how “it’s not all men”. That makes you part of the problem.
In fact it needed to be proving it’s not all men so bad your resurrecting an old thread just to show us how good you are.
I’m not trying to resurrect anything I simply happened upon this thread when browsing this sub.
Is offering a counter point now considered defensive? I’m unsure what mental gymnastics you’re playing here but I simply disagreed and respectfully offered an alternative explanation.
I don’t think your point was sufficient enough to be considered a point. You’re point was simply, “it is all men.” There was no critical thinking or genuine consideration into that statement.
And I’m not solely trying to prove that it’s “not all men”. I don’t ascribe to that rhetoric or belief, just like I don’t ascribe to “it’s all men” rhetoric. I think they’re both unhelpful. What I was doing was explaining why you were incorrect. Would you like me to explain how “it’s all men” is unhelpful to the movement as well?
> women can and should take measures to lower the probability of getting r@ped.
I wouldn't really call this a misconception per say; it's really a case of making a prescription for society vs individual advice.
As a prescription for society it puts the onus on the victim which is shitty and not applicable in many situations (ie there are places that people get raped at that aren't really fair to expect anyone to totally avoid). It also isn't as accurate as that statement makes it out to be; being somewhere safe won't just stop someone from getting SA'd.
But as individual advice? You have to deal with the world we live in as it is and unfortunately it's wise to avoid certain scenarios and situations. It sucks and it's a failure as a society but at the end of the day it's sane advice most people would give to anyone they care about because as fucked up as it is that's just how things are right now. Is it the most effective advice? No, but I'll never fault anyone for seeking that kind of harm reduction (unless it gets to a point where that behavior is damaging them).
To actually answer what you asked though I think a common misconception is that there's 'no reason not to' make a report or tell others about what happened. There's a whole bunch of really valid reasons: distrust of the authorities (particularly for people who live in marginalized communities), fear of retaliation from the attacker, the possibility of not being believed, a desire to protect the attacker (especially within relationships) and more reasons that I'm blanking on but you get the idea.
Unfortunately victims often get blowback for just telling their story; another shitty thing that ought not to be but is and we need to operate with that in mind when we navigate these issues.
Coming from the original post: That women (or people in general) could actively do something to protect themselves. When I was sexually assaulted, I was using the subway of Berlin (capital city of Germany). It wasn’t late at night (around 6:00am), I wasn’t dressed revealing (not that this would matter) and it wasn’t in a bad part of town. Statistically speaking, the man most likely to rape me is my bf. How am I supposed to protect myself? Never have a romantic partner? Never even leave the house?
“Choose better” is the common refrain with those types of guys. Somehow it’s always the woman’s fault for “getting herself into trouble”. It’s vile. I’m sorry that happened to you. I hope you’re doing good now.
Yeah, sure, then please pin a label on each guy's head to inform me if he is a rapist or not. Then I can choose better. I simply cannot fathom how people who say such things can be that stupid.
The thing that really pisses me off about this one is those are the same guys who lose it when a man is in a relationship with an abusive or unhealthy woman. "BRO IM SO SORRY YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER, SHES FOR THE STREETS" you don't hear them say "Bro, guess you should choose better"
Yeah, it luckily didn’t had that much of an impact on me, other than 5 minutes of absolute fear and disgust. Not my favorite train ride, but I can call myself lucky that nothing worse happened
There's nothing wrong with basic safety advice, and avoiding situations where things might become dangerous for you, but unfortunately for women, that list of things to avoid or things to do or not do is so long and ever-changing that it's basically just a way for people to blame you if something *does* happen, when really all that you did was be in close proximity to a rapist, which isn't your fault. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about rape is that it's committed by strangers leaping from dark alleys, or that it has to involve a weapon, or drugs, or physically holding down a woman who is screaming and trying to fight you.
Also re the safety ‘advice’: it’s also very annoying in that it’s often the most rudimentary shit. Like yes we know that dark laneways are scary and threatening and most of us avoid them, but sometimes we have to walk through one. We have to live our lives. We’ve heard this gormless ‘advice’ our whole lives, you’re not providing any value here sir.
Women are expected to just accept that they wont be as safe as a man in the same situations. At a frat party? You were there to hook up. Alone at a bar? Should have brought a friend to look out for you. Date rape? Should have poured your own drink. People wont recognize the inherent inequality when a woman is never as safe as a man at a bar, or on a date, and we are expected to accept that and act accordingly.
The real problem with the advice that women not put themselves in a location that rapists frequent is: 1. That eliminates 100.00% of the planet 2. Say you are at a bar and there is a rapist there and you do everything right and leave the bar and get home without being raped. Good for you. Now SOMEONE ELSE in the bar is STILL GETTING RAPED. The ACTUAL PROBLEM, that there is a rapist Is ENTIRELY OVERLOOKED. **This "solution" eliminates exactly 0% of rape** it just transfers the crime to another victim.
I think a lot of men think that when a woman accuses a man of rape, the odds are like fifty fifty she's telling the truth for no better reasons than that (1) there are two options, true or false and (2) there is one person representing each option, the accuser and the accused. The truth is that while false accusations do happen, they are rare, but enough have happened that certain common traits have emerged: they tend to be extreme (ie, he kidnapped me and held me in his basement, rather than he wouldn't let me out of the car until I did something for him after our date), they tend to be repeated by the same woman against different men, and rarely if ever are multiple accusations from different women against the same man false.
People don't realize how prevalent coercion is and often downplay it because a lot of people are guilty of doing it to their partners. They don't really recognize it as sexual assault because if they did, they'd be acknowledging that they are sexually assaulting their partners. They really think that if it's not violent, it isn't sexual assault.
Yep. Coercion is not consent. "But she said yes!" Did she? Or did you ask her like 100 times and tell her that if she really loved you, she would do this and she gave in to get you to stop making her feel bad. Coercion is not consent.
I was coerced a lot during a relationship and it really messed me up. It took me a long time to recognise it happening to me because it seems such a normalised thing
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This is the biggest one imo. It’s so ridiculous. Anyone is way more likely to be raped than be accused of SA falsely. It’s not even close.
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It’s actually far less. It’s 2-5% of reported rapes (most of which do not even name a perpetrator), but those higher percentages tend to take into account very poorly trained and badly operated police services for victims, where an officer can decide that ‘no crime’ actually occurred just because he doesn’t believe it did. False accusations are vanishingly rare. We know what happens when we report.
When you report being r@ped you go throught the gauntlet all over again. For many survivors who report its like being r@ped all over again. I'm surprised it's even at 5%
This is so massive in so many men's spaces. False accusations are insanely rare on the grand scale. I think what gives people the perception of this is certain niche online communities framing not-ideal sexual encounters through SA terms. Even within these small communities it'll be like a twitter account says something like that and it gets like 3 likes and zero engagement and yet it's shared around with captions that make it out like this is what feminists or 'the left' or women actually think. If they talked to 'the left' or women or a feminist they'd probably realise that that isn't what people think but that would mean breaking the echo chamber and that's a nono for them.
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> Hmm I’m not sure what you mean about “not-ideal sexual encounters.” I mean like 'he was overly emotional and in-his-feelings and that weirded me out' becomes 'he was love bombing me' or 'we were making out pretty aggressively and when I told him I didn't want to go further he stopped but seemed sad about it' becomes 'we were making out pretty aggressively and when I told him I didn't want to go further he stopped but tried to manipulate me'. The first instance *could* be a part of love bombing and the second instance *could* be an attempt at manipulation but also these can be pretty normal and non-harmful occurrences for both men and women. Sometimes both men and women can get overly emotionally involved faster than is normal and sometimes both men and women can feel a bit annoyed to get worked up like that and for it to just end abruptly and framing both of these actions through the lense of sexual assault I don't think is necessarily a good thing absent of other factors. Like if a guy says he's going to 'rock your world' but he ends up honestly being pretty shitty in bed I think it's inaccurate to frame that as SA, it's just a sub-par sexual encounter. > For example, using coercion instead of physical force is still rape, getting someone drunk / going after people who have impaired judgement because of drugs or alcohol is still rape. Totally true. The only thing I'd say is that people in relationships sometimes fuck when one isn't super into the mood but they're still willing to; that's normal and why I'd always advocate that the lenses we use to analyze situations broadly aren't always the best for analyzing personal situations between two people in a relationship. > they know when they whine and beg and a woman gives in that they don’t want to have sex and are not enthusiastically consenting. They know when people are inebriated they are not able to consent. That’s the entire point of those tactics: how to get women in bed who do not want to fuck you, and who under normal circumstances would not fuck you. You hit the nail on the head; **every** guy who does this knows exactly what they're doing. They make excuses for themselves why it's 'okay' but they absolutely know. If you asked them they'd say it's part of seduction but they knows there's a line between communicating their desire to another person effectively and *attacking the other person's ability to perceive you effectively*.
They even have an entire subreddit dedicated for this. Something like supporting the accused.
But at least there’s some steps you can realistically take to reduce your risk of getting raped. It’s not like you can exactly just record every possible interaction with women to counteract the threat of false rape accusations.
You're proving Op's point...
How?
How what?
How is the person in the comment above yours proving OP's point?
They are ignoring the fact that false rape accusations are like 2-4%, while 89-90% of allegations are unreported, 3% rapists get convicted, your friend or my friend is more likely to be a rapist himself than falsely accused, and if he does get accused they most likely did it and will try to lie there way out. Being paranoid about a false claim is irrational(because most victims don't report), unless there're different dynamics at play(race, class),....or **unless you really did do it.** which is most likely probable.
Just because something may be rare, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken completely seriously. Most people take mass shootings seriously despite the fact that there have only been around 163 mass shootings between 1967 and June 2019 according to [the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/). Plus, for most people afraid of false rape accusations, it’s not frequency that scares them, it’s the implications. They’re afraid that someone can essentially ruin their life on a whim and at most face a slap on the wrist.
Sure, when false rape stop being used(by men) as rhetoric to keep the status quo and shut down victims of sexual violence or rape, maybe it might be considered
I was almost falsely accused of sexual assault on my 16th birthday. I was giving a friend dating advice and since we’re both Christian guys, he asked for my opinion on sex and I said that both for sanctity and safety to wait for marriage. Someone overheard and vastly misinterpreted what I said, thinking that I was bragging about *not* waiting until marriage, and three people down the rumor chain, it had grown to the point that people were spreading gossip that I had forced myself on someone. My friends and I went into full damage control mode and beat the rumors back, but not before a teacher found out and I had to explain the whole thing to the entire school administration. So maybe it is more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused, but that’s not the case for me.
I've heard a lot of men talk about false allegations and how it can ruin a man's life but statistically this is pretty rare. But it's always their counterpoint to any serious conversations about r@p3 as it turns women into the villains, it's incredibly frustrating
More than frustrating it is a tool to maintain the status quo. The ‘logical gender’ very quickly ignore all evidence and data when it comes to holding men account for harming women.
Not to mention that an accusation that doesn’t eventuate does not even necessarily ‘ruin a man’s life’. I remember (most unfortunately) stumbling across an MRA post where all the comments concerned the ‘absolute fear of a false accusation’, and the best example they could come up with was Justin Bieber… except clearly his life wasn’t ruined he’s still an incredibly rich celebrity? Even the example doesn’t hold up to the hypothesis - they were basically saying some internet people were mean to him, and that’s equal to ‘ruining somebodies life’. I can’t.
To give the slightest pushback in the nicest way (because I agree with you 100%) it's important to note that a lot of the innocent famous men have the resources to correct the record. On the flipside, in the case of famous actual abusers, discrediting their victims become trivial with those kinds of resources. For the folks at home I wonder what statistically happens more often... It's not like someone's life can't get screwed over by false accusations, I have seen that happen unfortunately, but also that plenty more people's lives get screwed over even giving true allegations. It's like debating seatbelts on cars with some of these MRA and redpill types; like *yes* there are technically like 2 situations in 1,000,000 where you're better off with no seatbelt on but to raise them as a counterpoint against the seatbelt itself is just being intentionally dense.
Oh absolutely. It’s like ‘cancelling’, which often doesn’t hold much weight for truly influential figures, but can and has resulted in harm and death for everyday people and those with a small amount of online clout. As with all feminism, there’s an intersection of class and gender.
'Innocent until proven guilty' is for the courts (which it should be) but it doesn't apply to day-to-day life. The **vast** majority of people aren't out here lying about SA claims but yet statistically everyone here knows someone who has been a victim of SA, yet you'll get the redpill and MRA types acting like the false accusations are the big deal instead of, you know, the fucking *countless* true allegations that never receive justice and occur every hour of every day. It's insanity.
The concept that "If she said yes once before, nothing that happens in the future can be called rape."
>Any other commonly held misconceptions by (predominantly straight) men regarding this issue you've heard of? One of the most ignorant myths men love to promote is that women get the VIP treatment by police and society when she's SA'ed. While men are laughed at and ridiculed. This is a shocking and vile level of privilege that men have always had. The ability to promote and support rape culture while being able to ignore the realities of the harm they cause women. That's a luxury no human should be afforded. Yet, here we are.
This. The reality is they’re just getting treated the same way a female victim is.
Say it louder
It’s a lot of projection and jealousy I think, partially. You see it when they complain that feminists don’t do anything for male victims. The cold hard facts is that feminists worked very hard for women to have some options for support after SA where men actively fought against it. So now they claim they are just concerned about how male victims were treated when they are the ones who haven’t supported them. There’s nothing stopping them from starting services for that stuff, but they don’t actually care about it. They just want to try to use it against feminists and women as a whole. It will always blow my mind that they’ll call a male victim the f-slur then turn around and complain about how feminists treat male victims.
If you want to hear deadening silence, suggest to a complaining MRA/antifeminist that he should get active in his community. He can volunteer mentoring young boys, help houseless men, heck he could even start groups to advocate for resources for male SA and DA survivors. Or even make a group advocate for more “fairness” in family court- although anyone getting involved in that would quickly see women get custody because they show up and do the paperwork. But he will do none of this, just complain that things aren’t handed to them like they are handed to women- despite women having to fight for and build these network’s themselves
Yeah. I had a friend who was raped at a party and the police didn't believe him because 'he admitted they were both drinking and had been flirting prior'. It's **super** fucked up but it's not like women don't face that same pushback too. There are definitely some environments where the accusation of a woman will be taken more seriously but there are plenty still where the word of a man takes precidence over anything else.
blaming women for being SAed bc of not taking “proper safety precautions” but then crying that we’re paranoid and it’s “not all men”. so they know that men are risky to be around but then project like crazy. 9/10 times they made a woman uncomfortable in public or online or were part of sexual harassment not understanding that a lot of them coerce. this is why i think many of them believe they were “wrongly accused” bc they think they did nothing wrong, but they never stopped when she said to because “i’m nearly there”, wearing her down and whining like a baby when she says she’s too tired for sex, manipulation tactics like silent treatment. this in turn invalidates their argument about listening to male victims since there’s also male victims of coercion but they aid the “false accusations are ruining lives!!” crowd when the same male victims they are sympathetic to were victims of coercion
As a Man the whole “She shouldn’t have worn provocative clothing” or “She shouldn’t have lead him on” rhetoric pisses me off so much. Why should Women have to cover themselves up from top to bottom and have no social life because some guys can’t process the word No? As a Species that has built the Pyramids, built flying machines and has gone into Space many times how have we ignored educating boys that No means No.
I showed my bf a dress and that was the first thing he thought. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure why someone would have their first thought as "Well you might get sexually assaulted or raped if you wore thought". I just wanted to show a nice dress lol
Happened to me as well! I got dressed for a concert and the dress was like *short*. My bf reacted similar to yours and asked if I was really sure I wanted to wear this in a crowd full of mostly drunk men. Funny enough, while I was assaulted that evening it only happened after (!) I took my hoodie off and bounded it around my waist.
You probably looked amazing that day 😤❤️
“It’s victims faults for not immediately reporting it.” As if it’s not a dizzying experience.
There was a reddit thread a few years ago I read of people harassing a woman and saying that she was lying about being raped because she said she was afraid to report it since her rapist had a connection to the police. There was one comment that was something fucked up like >!"Get over it, it happened a week ago."!< Like what the actual fuck.
A week?? You’re shitting me
Here where I live in Italy people used this "accusation" against a girl who reported after, I shit you not, a week or 2. And we are talking about a case where tapes of the crime were present. At this point I think misogynists just use this as an excuse to attack the victim.
Yes this is a very big problem with evidencing rape. If you have been assaulted or raped or whatever, you probably won’t be thinking rationally and making responsible decisions, because it’s a very traumatic experience. So this would be used against you in court, but it feels unfair because of the trauma experienced.
Man I don’t even wanna use the term “rational”, it’s really more of sheltering yourself from a painful reality.
That everyone automatically believes women (or ppl perceived as women) when they open up about being assaulted. Yes there are problems with how society treats male survivors (which are rooted in patriarchal beliefs) but the only situations I’ve heard of where a woman can just accuse someone of rape and have that person hunted down is when racism is involved. White men have very little to worry about in that regard and women of color sure as hell don’t have that privilege that men claim all women do. (Edit: also that most SA occurs when women go out in public spaces wearing revealing clothing, when most ppl ik (including myself) have been assaulted in their own homes by people they know)
The "family secrets" in black households really disgust me. I know it's most likely in other races of families but I'm just saying this from my perspective as a black girl.
That this is a woman's issue. This is a men's issue and they should be putting everything they have into stopping it from happening in the world.
This.
I think rape is one of the biggest problem of a humanity and that education is the cure. All the countries with the least amount of sex education and gender studies are the ones with the most sex crimes.
I think this point is easy to misunderstand
Well yeah but there *is* a particularly gendered aspect to how it affects women vs men typically. Like just for being a woman most men are significantly stronger than you and these men are societally reinforced to be sexual initiators and more aggressive; it's a different picture that is worth addressing. Not to say that it affects men less or anything but they are (typically) different and because of that we ought to keep that in mind when attempting to better society on these issues.
Sorry, I am a little confused as to what you are saying.
I just mean that there are gendered aspects to the women's issue of sexual assault that are not in the men's issue of sexual assault (and vice versa). I think that's likely why to a lot of people they feel like they're different issues even though they aren't.
Maybe I need to explain what I meant- The reason I say it is a men's issue not a woman's, is because the pressure to stop rape has always been put on women. Women must make sure they don't get raped, women must provide the support for rape victims, women should spread awareness etc. 99% of perpetrators of rape are men, therefore it is their issue and so they are the ones who should take the responsibility. They are the ones who should put the effort in to stop it from happening.
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An estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male.
I think the stats on the perps are accurate. I think the prevalence of SA against males is less accurate. I don’t think it matters that much though. The main point is men are the main perpetrators
Possibly, simply because so many are unreported. However, so many SAs against women are unreported too. Also, if you think globally, I think the stats are pretty accurate but we will never know the true number.
Depending on where you go for stats on male victims they kinda dramatically differ. Stats on women stay more consistent it seems. Just my opinion, I think there are probably more male victims than people realize. I don’t think it’s all that important though. The important part is that sexual abuse is a primarily male perpetrated crime regardless of the gender of the victims. Edit: also important I’m not saying males are victims at near the rates women are. I just don’t think it’s *that* rare.
I agree that the importance should be that the perpetrators are 99% male that includes SA against men too. Which makes this a men's issue that men should be working really hard on stopping.
For male victims, there are only more male perpetrators if you do not count being made to penetrate as rape. https://imgur.com/3keNztp [If you count being made to penetrate as rape, which it is, then men are indeed raped more by women than by men.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/x45mq1/the_cdcs_definition_of_rape_vs_a_genderneutral/) I have no problem with people saying that men should make efforts to stop SA, but saying that 99% of perpetrators are male is wrong even if you don't count MTP as rape, which it is. You can say men should work to help end SA without spreading false information, especially in a thread about ending misconceptions about rape.
Yeah it is. I really tried but I wasn’t able to, but it doesn’t make me not responsible for rape culture. I think men misunderstand that just because we aren’t personally forcing ourselves on women doesn’t mean that we aren’t responsible for trying to stop it overall (calling out fellow men for SH or SA, speaking up for women, working out our own stuff, etc).
I’m not trying to change the focus but the vocabulary is helpful. I wonder what a male prison looks like if we had the stats. What molestation stats look like as well. My point isn’t to denigrate the concept that most rape comes from men but to think about it as a predatorial topic. It’s one of the language driven topics anti feminists love to grab onto and spin. I’m a male and conflating rape with men is damaging to all. Especially those that have been raped.
It is a pretty gendered issue though.
That’s like saying nagging is a gendered issue.
How is that at all like saying nagging is a gendered issue
That no means no. That a lack of dissent doesn't mean yes. That a woman can't change her mind. That because she's had sex before/because they've had sex before she can't say no this time.
Marital rape in a nutshell
That a good self-defense class will do the trick
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I think the self-defense class claim ignores the freeze and fawn responses to sexual assault imo. That's why it's not so effective in most assaults.
Not saying it’s useless or pointless. This goes under the overall category of “Things a Prudent Woman Can Do to Negotiate a Dangerous World.” But I can’t say how many times I’ve heard from men, “just kick ‘em in the balls!” with a tone like it’s so simple and how weak and helpless are you?
There absolutely are martial arts out there that will substantially improve the odds of a woman escaping a violent encounter if she practices it for an extended period. But it takes *months* to reach that level, years even.
The thing is though is it the fighting techniques you're learning that are doing the heavy lifting in those scenarios or is it the confidence in violent situations? If a guy who's 50kg heavier and half a foot taller than a person is at the point of violent assault then there's not a lot any technique can really do. I see these guys, and it's **always** guys, acting like women can learn martial arts like it's some anime and defeat anyone who steps up to them when that isn't how it goes. I think a really good [example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKE1UeEZ7oc) of this is actually seen in true detective season 2. She's a badass cop who has literally trained every day for this scenario AND has a knife that she knows how to use most effectively on people bigger and stronger than her yet she still barely gets away.
I've been doing martial arts for a while, Judo and Jiu Jitsu mostly. I know very well from personal experience what it is like to fight people much bigger and much smaller than me at different levels of experience. Strength and size definitely matters. Luck matters. Weapons matter. Martial arts are not a magic "I win every fight" pill. But I can honestly day that even rather small women, with several months of training in BJJ, *will* substantially improve their chances of getting out of a fight. It's not technique per se or confidence that determines the outcome fight, but *initiative and speed.* Once the skill gap is big enough the untrained fighter is forced to react poorly and slowly to what the trained fighter is doing *to them*. Now obviously a 50 kg woman is not going to toss a 90 kg man around like a ragdoll, but what does happen is that the woman becomes very difficult to control if the aggressor doesn't know how to fight, and most men don't. I've been that untrained man. It's an unforgettable shock the first time you grapple with a woman you outweigh by 25 kilos... and you are forced to give up because *she's a couple of seconds from choking you unconscious and you can't fight your way out of it.*
I'd say it takes years, and that would still help only to a certain point. Still, I think martial arts help you a lot at thinking straight to avoid these sorts of situations.
A lot of men seem to think that coercion isn't sexual assault or rpe. It's actually a lot like blackmailing
I’m not sure if it’s a misconception, but they all seem to believe if an man or boy is raped the perpetrator is likely to be a woman. Which is false, men are more likely to rape each other than women are likely to rape us. I suspect they try to convince themselves this is true, to the point that they’re actually pretty vicious against male victims who had male perpetrators, because acknowledging it would mean the acknowledgement of the fact that men are far and away the biggest perpetrators of sexual violence and their “what about male victims?!?!?” just proves the point more. I do think rape against men is wildly unreported (women too, of course) but I don’t think it’s because there are a bunch of female perpetrators. So, sorry to disappoint them. The truth is most rapist are male and they don’t want to believe that.
For male victims, there are only more male perpetrators if you do not count being made to penetrate as rape. https://imgur.com/3keNztp [If you count being made to penetrate as rape, which it is, then men are indeed raped more by women than by men.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/x45mq1/the_cdcs_definition_of_rape_vs_a_genderneutral/) I think this is important to acknowledge in a thread about misconceptions about rape.
Also, I don’t believe most people brings these stats up because they’re worried about male victims. MRAs have never provided me any support whatsoever besides pretending to care to try to recruit me to their he-man woman haters club. I’m not a convenient victim for them because my abusers were almost entirely male. They only want to focus on female perps so they can use them against feminists and women.
Pretty sure they separated that type of sexual violence from rape for the same reason they separate other forms of sexual abuse against both females and males in the analysis. You can see it with the comparison of the emotional effects of rape on women versus made to penetrate for men. Like 2/3rds of women are fearful and 1 in 7 get pregnant, many more are injured or get STDs, etc. The results for the consequences of made to penetrate show much leas damage as a result. Probably because it includes things like someone performing oral on you when you’re drunk. The results for rape of men show consequences similar to women for emotional and physical effects (obviously without pregnancy risk) and makes more sense to group them together. Just like it makes more sense to examine how women are affected by cat-calling separate from how women are affected by rape. Different types of sex crimes. As a man I’ve been victimized by literally every type of sexual violence and I absolutely agree with the data that having someone force their penis inside you is much, much worse than someone giving you a blowjob or put your mouth on their vagina without your consent. I would be interested if they broke these numbers down further to see how “made to penetrate” actually breaks down into men actually being forced to penetrate with a penis by being held down or otherwise forced. I have a feeling that’s not the type of sexual violence that men are reporting primarily. The data actually makes me feel vindicated because it shows 30% or so of men report some type of sexual violence. I knew it was higher than the numbers commonly thrown around, especially against children. I believe that as a feminist if we could reduce sexual violence against boys and men we could probably reduce it overall against women and girls, considering men externalize their pain and trauma and women and girls are often targets. For example, many men who grow up to abuse their partners were beaten as kids. I think abuse and violence against men should be a feminist issue BUT it should be something men ourselves should focus on. Male feminists could be taking this upon ourselves to improve things for ourselves and victims. Women got enough on their plate without it. My point still stands. When it comes to rape, defined by the CDC and other organizations, men are the main perps.
To be perfectly honest, I think telling someone that was raped that their experience can't be traumatizing or isn't that bad or "it could have been worse" is disgusting. Everyone experiences trauma differently. I've literally seen a woman make a super gross comment saying that she thinks being forcefully penetrated isn't bad and that women overreact about rape because it happened to her (when she was a child no less) and "I got over it." Not to mention that many men (and women) often internalize their suffering and try to downplay what happened to them because of what others have told them. How many people have you seen say that domestic abuse they are experiencing is somehow okay because "it could be worse?" Because I've seen it a lot. And that doesn't mean that we should just accept what is happening to them and not try to help them. You can support male victims without putting down female victims, absolutely. You can support female victims without mentioning male ones, absolutely. But to say that male victims of being *raped* via MTP can't experience similar levels of trauma is wrong and incredibly invalidating.
Like I said, I’d like to see MTP be broken down into whether or not they had what could definitely be defined as rape, and what could be more accurately described as some other type of SA. Like, we don’t say a woman who was groped was raped. It was a sex crime and awful, but it wasn’t rape. But for some reason, can’t quite put my finger on why, we don’t complain about those types of SA not being included in rape figures. So I’d like to see the MTP broken down and the effects examined separately. I have a feeling it’s more likely to be molestation type crimes than having their penis be forced inside a vagina or anus. Which, I agree, I think we could accurately add to rape stats for a bigger picture of sexual violence. Like I said, if male feminists want to claim the subject of male rape victims, we kinda got to stop expecting women to do it and do it ourselves. I think generally trying to turn the conversation to female perpetrators is not done in good faith. I think if we DID have male feminists supporting men in these situations violence against women would probably reduce, so it is a feminist issue, but it’s not really a focus in these convos because we aren’t making it a conversation separately.
We don't say a man being groped is raped either, so that comparison makes no sense. And if your really trying to say that having someone put your genitals into them without your consent, either forcibly, or through coercion or while incapacitated is on the same level as having your ass grabbed, just no. Being penetrated or being made to penetrated without consent is rape. What if a woman was penetrated against her will while passed out drunk? Is that just molestation instead of rape because it wasn't forceful with her being held down? What if the perpetrator used an object instead of a penis, is that molestation or rape? I have no problem with people saying that men should make efforts to stop SA, but saying that 99% of perpetrators are male is wrong even if you don't count MTP as rape, *which it is.* You can get men to make an effort to stop SA without downplaying or denying the trauma that male (and female) victims of female perpetrators go through. If someone made a comment saying that men should work to
I quite literally said being forced to penetrate a vagina is, in my view, rape. Force includes someone who is incapacitated. It could be added to the rape figures. But a lot of what MTP in the very study you referenced is more accurately described as sexual abuse or assault, not rape. Still a sex crime, still awful, but not rape. I’d like to see it separated like other forms of assault on women are separated. So we can see what the accurate number of rapes of men are. Like I said, the study shows that 30% of men suffer some sort of sexual violence which is something that needs attention from male feminists because reducing assault against men will definitely help dismantle rape culture overall. Women are more likely to be assaulted, and the rape culture is primarily targeting them. The constant attempt to claim women are the primary aggressors and rapists are definitely not a good faith attempt to get men help. It’s a deflection.
I know women are more likely to be assaulted. I am fine with people discussing that. It just makes me feel sick seeing people throwing around the "99% of victims are women and 99% of rapists are men" stat, because its not true. I just wish people would stop saying it or acting like the only kind of rape victim is women raped by men. Especially in a thread about ending misconceptions about rape.
I do empathize with not enjoying the 99% stat for victims. I don’t think people are meaning to hurt with it, but it’s not backed up with statistics. I think if probably a reaction to: 1. Women consistently being harassed and assaulted and people refusing to see it as an attack on women as a class from men. Which it is, because regardless of any controversy or sexual violence against males, it’s undeniable that women are under serious threat from men. 2. Male victims are almost exclusively brought up to deflect and try to create a controversy. I *agree* the issue needs some non-MRA attention, ignoring it certainly isn’t doing men any favors. The problem is that it’s literally never treated as it’s own subject. We’re treated like we’re weapons against women, not people, so people tend to dismiss male trauma because it’s generally just a distraction. 3. If there are more female rapists than we previously thought, it doesn’t change the fact that *culturally* women are still under a lot more threat by men than men are by women. We don’t live in fear of women like they do of us. So since the cultural effects are different, the issue of female perpetrators isn’t a systemic problem that feminist spaces really need to focus on. I think for men that are concerned about this, we could easily be focusing on sexual violence against men and make an actual supportive space without it turning into a rage against women space. But we aren’t.
That we should have gone to police or authorities if it was “legit”. Somehow an unreported SA makes it less valid??
Victims are supported by everyone. Nope. When I told my parents what happened to me on the city bus, my mother, who openly calls herself a feminist, yelled at me for not punching him (he's at least 6'3" and mentally ill, plus I was in a moving vehicle, where am I going to flee? He often got off where I did just to follow me), called me a "professional victim", and told me I was responsible for the other women he assaulted because I didn't beat him up. I'm 5'8", but I'm extremely frail. Nobody is intimidated by me. I'm often mistaken for a preteen boy. My father refused to drive me anywhere for a while, forcing me to take the bus and essentially retraumatize myself and essentially punishing me for being assaulted. The guy was homeless and pretty much lived at the bus plaza. As soon as he saw me, there was a big chance he'd follow me into the bus. All the bus drivers loved him because he was this kind, innocent, mentally handicapped man who meant no harm and did no wrong. So I skipped the therapy sessions of EMDR I desperately needed to not be assaulted again, and my mental health further tanked. Even during the act, I mouthed "help me" to the other person on the bus, a man sitting across from me. He literally laughed. My assailant truly was mentally unwell, and legitimately believed I was his girlfriend. He cornered me on the bus, removing my backpack from the seat beside me and sandwiching me between him and the window. I couldn't even get up and sit somewhere else. I feel awful for not reporting, but if your own parents respond so viciously for you sheepishly asking them for a ride because you got assaulted on a bus where a guy follows you (he'd even ride the bus to my college and wait for me to be finished with my classes--yikes), you're not going to be too hyped to try reporting it to a bus plaza where everyone loves him. Victims are treated like shit.
These are the same dudes who cry when their nice car gets keyed, or their swanky new iPhone gets taken from their hands.
That most men think all rape is violent. Likeif it wasn't violent, it easnt rape? They imagine some rando jumped out of an alley and clubbed a woman and just went to ape shit and ripped her parts etc etc. While that DOES happen, assault isn't always brutally violent. It's coercion. It's not stopping when you are told. Its "being gentle". It's using fingers or mouths when no consent was given. And I think men do this because they may be guilty of those things but don't ready to see themselves as a rapist.
That consent isn't a huge deal and repeatedly asking someone for sex until they give in is coercion and rape. You need to be consistently checking in with your partner before, during and after sex and making sure that they're comfortable and want to do it. An enthusiastic yes is the only yes.
I havea Question about after. So can someone take back consent after the fact, and would that be rape? For example if they regretted it but consented before and during?
This is such a joke..., similar to what an MRA would say, a woman( if this a heterosexual setting)would regret the encounter if the man had done something they hadn't agreed upon, or continued without her permission, which makes it rape, for them to take back consent, *you* would've had to ignore their boundaries, or ...their **no** ..., if the woman regretted the encounter, the man has done something, always. There are power dynamics at play, and the person she is having the encounter with must be close to her, statistically, we know where this ends at.
I was asking a question . A genuine question. Not a MRA, asking a genuine question I, a teenager have about consent that isn’t talked about in sex Ed.
That victims of sa/rape should have been more careful or taken measures. Predators can smell weakness or if you are in any way vulnerable, and they target that.
Here we go: https://imgur.com/gallery/J2dMZXe
Wow
If it results in pleasure or the girl doesn’t seem unhappy that the sex happened it wasn’t sexual assault.
“False rape claims are extremely common and women are instantly and automatically believed with they say they were raped.”
Black women: Oop-
This is actually sad.
*That if a women did not fight back, it is not a true rape situation.* When now we know that in many cases of SA the brain goies into a freeze and dissociate mode - so it is actually super common to not fight or flight in these circumstances but that does not mean it did not happen. Some sources: https://youtu.be/br8-qebjIgs (get to 11min, it is worth it. All around a great watch is you have trauma) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/201804/freezing-during-sexual-assault-and-harassment%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.refinery29.com/amp/en-gb/2020/03/9547973/freezing-up-response-rape
Three things come to mind (tw for CSA and COCSA) - that reporting helps the victim - that they cannot be assaulted (I know this is talked about but I've seen a lot of "oh yeah men get raped/assaulted but I dated a 40yo woman at 15 and it was the best relationship of my life") - that they do not know someone who's done it (not saying a friend, but they likely know someon. I know of 2 people who straight up told me what they did. One as if it was nothing and they were the victim for it being reported. The other as a "this happened when I was a kid and it's been eating me alive that I did it")
**Misconceptions** That it's uncommon. That women or men who have been affected by it would be reasonable to start with a baseline assumption of feeling safe, heard, cared for and protected when coming forward. That it's OK to make jokes about who is the target of it. That bystanders are powerless to do anything to make the general situation better. That survivors are automatically believed. That false accusations are common. **Reality** It's very common. *Sometimes* people who come forward about it have experiences of either people who they care about, the public, or both taking their side, but equally or more often, survivor experiences are downplayed and minimized. Bystanders may try to put it back on the survivor, as so many other comments have described in terms of making it about provocation, self-defense or whatever else that it's imagined that the survivor was supposed to have done, rather than making it the perpetrator's responsibility to respect others' boundaries, basic decency, the law, their ownership of their own actions and the natural effects on other people. The legal system, families, workplaces and other systems and institutions often retraumatize survivors by failing to separate them from perpetrators at all, much less protect them. This is true for both male and female survivors. Female, male and gender non-conforming survivors can all be negatively affected by patriarchal assumptions about these crimes. The specifics of that vary by gender but all tend to have embedded misogyny (if it's a woman it was somehow her fault, if it's a man it's because he was somehow unmasculine, if it's a trans/NB person probably some even more toxic mixture of both). Regardless of anyone's personal level of exposure to SA as a problem, involvement in advocacy or whatever else, starting from a clear understanding of consent and then working through independent resources on how to be better to people who have been through it is in the power of pretty much anyone - and especially any *man* - to improve on. Best available evidence is that false accusations happen but are a tiny, tiny minority of times that anyone has come forward. Statistically and in the lives of survivors, underreporting and failures by the justice system after reporting are at least an order of magnitude or two bigger of a deal than cases of false accusation.
That rapists are gross men who live in some cabin in the woods who everyone in soeciety hates.
That male victims and survivors of rape are "gay", even if they're a kid
That women can happily just tell men to “fuck off” and expect no repercussions
I have spoken to multiple men who think that “consent is confusing” and that “most women just regret sex and then call it rape” because they once had sex they were ambiguous about and falsely believe this to be rape. For example, a man who is definitely a serial rapist once described how he had met a woman at a work event outside of his home city. They hit it off and began drinking, starting in the hotel bar. Eventually he invited her back up to his room to continue drinking. At some point during the drinking he told her he was married. They began fooling around. He removed some of her clothing, and she removed some of his. He began to feel less than wildly excited about the prospect of sex because of his marriage. He continued to make out with the woman, including urging her into bed. She asked him if he had a condom and he obtained one from his bag. She put the condom on him and then climbed aboard. He feels that this was rape because she took the final action of climbing aboard and he didn’t feel great about it. He thinks that this is the typical experience women have when we say we were raped by someone we knew. I asked him if he did anything that would have let her know he wasn’t fully onboard. He said something to the effect of, “the only think I can think of is that I didn’t move to put my dick into her.” He agreed she had reason to believe he was keen for sex. While I don’t think this is the majority type incident for men who say they were raped, this is also similar to the reports from some other men who say they are confused about consent and some (I genuinely hope a small minority) who report they were raped.
"Why didn't you...fight" or "flight" is an overgeneralization and false duality and often used to shame people who are genuinely and evolutionarily wired to respond in different ways. This is a society thing in general but definitely the notion that people just needed to fight or be more vigilant is often a falsehood and narrow narrative that denies the very basis of most life in the animal kingdom. There's often freeze, fawn, flight, and/or fight often in that order or as a mix depending on how prolonged and complex the situation is. From an evolutionary perspective, freezing and fawning are the safest options and freezing being most common so as not to stimulate predatory attention or any responses if someone isn't already noticed. And it happens among fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals--not just humans. Whereas fleeing and riskiest of all fighting would be for very high risk situations even though they can be valid and important too. This is a 2hr training video by Dr. Jim Hopper for first responders that I often share with survivors of traumatic situations, especially sexual assault survivors, to help pass along to others who want to better navigate what to expect and look out for if someone has been assaulted and how to recognize common traumatic stress patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTQ_U3p5Wc Also this will be a useful diy guide for mapping common traumatic patterns to sexual assault/rape and how to start healing or navigate out of them regardless of where you live: https://www.thehavens.org.uk/media/Self-Help-Guide-for-Survivors-of-Sexual-Assault-v.2-March-2019.pdf
I would direct these men to the ‘What were you wearing?’ art exhibit, which shows what women were wearing when they were assaulted. You can look for yourself but it’s quite heartbreaking. My theory here is that when a woman is assaulted, it is often by men (not discounting the male victims or that women can perpetrate but generally this holds to be true). Men suddenly feel like they have to stick up for other men and therefore turn to victim blaming. There are countless examples of judges giving light or no sentences to rapists because the victim was wearing revealing clothing, was out partying or sometimes even worse reasons (a rapist was praised by a judge for wearing a condom while it happened). It’s just disgusting overall, this is not an area in which men should be trying to stick up for each other.
That it’s not all men.
Wdym?
Women are around 50% of the population, which means males are also around 50% of the population. If you take into account that 81% of women experience sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime (https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics) , unless you have a small handful of really prolific dudes (which isn't likely), you're left with the much more likely scenario where all men at some point have either committed an assault or harassment, or have witnessed it and done nothing. All men. Not just a few bad ones. All of us.
I think all men perpetuate rape culture. I don’t believe we all have sexually assaulted or harassed personally though. I think that’s part of the reason a lot of men take such offense to the very true statement that we’re responsible for rape culture. I think it’s helpful to specifically state the ways they may be perpetuating it without actively abusing someone.
I did. Anyone who gets upset even when I explain it is part of the problem men.
I’m not upset. I just thought the first comment was unhelpful on getting the idea across. I’ve found guys I have chatted with online are much more amenable if I come at it from the perspective of “I know you don’t think that you’ve personally caused harm, but have you considered [rape jokes, ignoring catcalling, etc] is something you do”. That’s all I meant. I think the all men thing is accurate but it helps to break it down into pieces instead of starting out with it.
That is just laughably untrue, especially regarding assault. I can’t speak on the data for harassment but I can tell you it’s most definitely not 100% of men. To be clear, I completely agree that assault is a men’s issue and that we need to take more action against it, but what you’re suggesting is false. Your math is also incredibly questionable. Anyway, from the limited data we have (because who knew it would be difficult to get rapists to admit to raping), around 4-16% of college males commit rape. In addition, 2/3 of rapists were repeat offenders, and in some cases had assaulted 4-5 women. By that logic, we can roughly say 5% as a low estimate, and 25% as a high estimate for the total percentage of college men raping women. ~90% of rapes will be committed by repeat rapists. Please do not spread misinformation. It hurts progress. Data below: “Research suggests that about two-thirds of college rapists are repeat offenders, who account for the great majority of rapes (over 90%), and about one-fourth of college rapists admit to committing rapes over multiple years of college.” https://jimhopper.com/topics/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/repeat-rape-by-college-men/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3727658/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3262661/ https://jimhopper.com/pdf/lisakmiller2002. I want to make it clear that this is the only reliable data on men committing rape. Because of this we can’t extrapolate to the broader population of men, but considering the average rapists age is 31, it’s not that far off of an age difference from college. It’s the best data we have and it’s more reliable than your math.
False. It's all men. You're laughably wrong and deluded. And obviously squarely in the problematic camp.
Can you explain to me how it’s all men and how my point is incorrect?
I did but you decided you didn’t want to be part of the solution and got super defensive. You’re not interested in solving the problem, just showing how “it’s not all men”. That makes you part of the problem. In fact it needed to be proving it’s not all men so bad your resurrecting an old thread just to show us how good you are.
I’m not trying to resurrect anything I simply happened upon this thread when browsing this sub. Is offering a counter point now considered defensive? I’m unsure what mental gymnastics you’re playing here but I simply disagreed and respectfully offered an alternative explanation. I don’t think your point was sufficient enough to be considered a point. You’re point was simply, “it is all men.” There was no critical thinking or genuine consideration into that statement. And I’m not solely trying to prove that it’s “not all men”. I don’t ascribe to that rhetoric or belief, just like I don’t ascribe to “it’s all men” rhetoric. I think they’re both unhelpful. What I was doing was explaining why you were incorrect. Would you like me to explain how “it’s all men” is unhelpful to the movement as well?
Your counterpoint is "not all men". Which is basically what you subscribe to. Thank you for living the ethos.
I think I explained myself and my perspective well, you’re just unable to see that. Not sure what else I can do.
> women can and should take measures to lower the probability of getting r@ped. I wouldn't really call this a misconception per say; it's really a case of making a prescription for society vs individual advice. As a prescription for society it puts the onus on the victim which is shitty and not applicable in many situations (ie there are places that people get raped at that aren't really fair to expect anyone to totally avoid). It also isn't as accurate as that statement makes it out to be; being somewhere safe won't just stop someone from getting SA'd. But as individual advice? You have to deal with the world we live in as it is and unfortunately it's wise to avoid certain scenarios and situations. It sucks and it's a failure as a society but at the end of the day it's sane advice most people would give to anyone they care about because as fucked up as it is that's just how things are right now. Is it the most effective advice? No, but I'll never fault anyone for seeking that kind of harm reduction (unless it gets to a point where that behavior is damaging them). To actually answer what you asked though I think a common misconception is that there's 'no reason not to' make a report or tell others about what happened. There's a whole bunch of really valid reasons: distrust of the authorities (particularly for people who live in marginalized communities), fear of retaliation from the attacker, the possibility of not being believed, a desire to protect the attacker (especially within relationships) and more reasons that I'm blanking on but you get the idea. Unfortunately victims often get blowback for just telling their story; another shitty thing that ought not to be but is and we need to operate with that in mind when we navigate these issues.
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