AKA: Women like it, really! They say they don’t, but they do!
A: I’m not joking, some people still do use this argument. Even if most of them are just trolls looking to stir up outrage, this trope is still out there needing some debunking.
- Potential PTSD Trigger Warning
OK, let’s go through this step by step:
- Imagine your favourite dessert. You know, the one you almost always end up ordering at a restaurant even though you’ve had it heaps of times before. That one dessert of which you always want second or even third servings. The one you ask friends and family to make for your birthday.
- Really imagine it. The taste of it. The feel of it on your lips and tongue and sliding down your throat. The lingering aftertaste. How much you’ll enjoy it the next time you have a chance to eat some.
- Imagine the surroundings. Are you alone, savouring it all to yourself? Are you with friends, all enjoying sharing this delectable dessert? Are you in a lovely cafe or restaurant, enjoying the ambience and the service, and the accompanying coffee or liqueur?
- Imagine how many servings you are going to have this time. Will you eat it fast or slow? Will you eat it all, or take some home with you for later?
- NOW imagine someone forcing you to eat your favourite dessert. It’s not a joke. You can’t get away. They are too strong for you, and they are kneeling across your chest and pinning your arms. Maybe they have threatened you with a weapon to get you to this place, or perhaps tricked you with an offer of your favourite dessert and then overpowered you once they got you alone.
- Imagine that they are not just offering you your favourite dessert in any way that you can control how you bite it, chew it and swallow it. This person is shoving your favourite dessert down your throat. With a stick.
- Imagine that your favourite dessert down is being shoved down your throat so hard and fast that you are choking on it, and you can’t take in quite enough air in between mouthfuls. You are going dizzy from lack of oxygen, yet you’re afraid to gulp air too deeply in case dessert gets into your lungs.
- Imagine how the stick is bruising, scraping and lacerating your throat as more and more of your favourite dessert is being shoved down your throat.
- Imagine how the taste of blood from the lacerations in your throat is mingling with the taste of your favourite dessert.
- Imagine how your teeth are being chipped and broken by the stick, and how they are mingling with the dessert so that you are swallowing them as well.
- Imagine how your lips are being split and bruised by the stick as the dessert continues to get shoved in your mouth.
- Imagine how you are squirming to try and avoid the next mouthful, how you are crying, how great streams of snot are streaming down your cheeks, how your eyes are begging for the person to stop but the person just won’t stop.
- Worse: imagine that you are so frightened that the person will kill you that you just lie there, unresisting, unmoving, trying hard not to really be there in your body because then the stick shoving dessert down your throat doesn’t hurt quite so badly.
- Imagine how in either of the above – squirming fear or immobile shock – you are totally aware that your lack of power to stop the person, and your terror and pain, is what they want from you most. The dessert is irrelevant except for being a way to hurt you and degrade you through your powerlessness.
- Imagine that you survive the forced-feeding, and that as your attacker leaves you, either in the place of attack or having dropped you off somewhere to make your own way home, that they mock you by talking about how wonderful your favourite dessert tasted, and how lucky you were that they gave you more of it than you’d ever had before.
And now for the kicker:
- Imagine that when you tell people what happened, and how bad it was, and how scared you were and how hurt your body is, they look at you blankly, and say: “But what’s the problem? Everybody knows that you really, really like that dessert!”
Think about how long it might take for you, or whether you would ever want, to eat your favourite dessert again, because every time you saw it, let alone smelt it or tasted it, you would remember that attack by the force-feeder.
Then stop repeating or believing bullshit about how rape is really just rougher than usual sex, things just “get a bit out of hand” and no real harm done.
The metaphor above deliberately uses the roughest imagery possible of sticks and broken teeth and lacerations, which I expect some people might object to as not the case in many acquaintance-rapes where women are left without physical injuries. I suggest that anyone tempted to make such objections really think a bit harder about the difference between doing something when you choose to do it, and enjoying doing it when it is your choice, versus being forced to do it at someone else’s choice with no care for your safety or dignity, and that someone being gratified at you being powerless to stop them.
Concept Credit: the above imagination points are a paraphrase and extension of a dialogue between Mavin and her younger brother in The Song of Mavin Manyshaped, by Sheri S. Tepper.
Filed under: FAQ, debunking myths, violence | Tagged: coercion, debunking, FAQ, fear, force, injuries, myth, power, rape, sexual-assault, terror
I was just informed about the existence of this site and I want to say I like what I am seeing so far. Kudos for the dino comic I saw earlier.
But I have something else to say and I want someone to take it into consideration. This question, it seems to me, is sexist and so far I don’t see anyone challenging it’s premise. Maybe it is critical for this question to establish that women are raped by men – and indeed, patriarchy and sexist attitudes and behaviors that give it such power mean that a majority of rape victims are women.
As a hetero (maybe bi… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to try that after what happened to me though, thanks a lot triggers for ruining so much) male victim, I am frequently slightly agitated at the lack of discussion concerning male rape. Maybe it is up to me and other men to write about it – no, it must be, but I guess I am just frustrated there aren’t more people talking about it.
Although, I can see only a sliver of how it must have felt, must still feel, to be a woman and a survivor during some of the most repressive and oppressive decades of the last century.
Maybe my whining is ridiculous considering the adversity all women have faced because of Patriarchy and the entrenchment of sexism in our society – but I want to bring light to the matter never the less. Now that you are thinking about it, maybe some discussion can occur. I wouldn’t know where to start though because after enduring it for years along with mental and physical abuse and repressing it all for about 5 years or so, I have only been dealing with this since January. So, making it through the day is about the best I can do right now.
Many of the questions answered on this blog are sexist. They are frequently asked by sexist people. That’s why it is necessary to answer them.
Your points about male rape victims are all valid, of course. The trauma of being attacked must obviously be just as bad for a man as for a woman, and there are even greater social barriers to reporting and seeking help. I hope that you find the help that you need.
Something else: A.S. writes, that men can’t possibly understand what rape means to a victim unless it’s presented in a way they can understand.
I encourage you to make a distinction between men and “people aren’t victims or survivors”. (I still use the word victim for myself because I wouldn’t say I have survived it until I stop planning to kill myself. So in time maybe I will use survivor in reference to myself.)
The sentiment is honest, but I have had a few friends who are women and who have never been assaulted or raped and sometimes they don’t understand it either. I think the key issue is that unless it has happened to you, it is very hard to understand the personal trauma created by rape or assault. The same could be said for racism, sexism, homophobia, and any other form of oppression. Unless it has happened to you – you will never fully know or understand the consequences that victims will have to live with for the rest of their lives.
But people who have survived can try to communicate some of the pain and difficulty in a way that others can sympathize with.
I know this analogy of dessert is well-meaning but I’m not sure it is even close to adequate. I have never been good with analogies myself but I feel analogies are probably less than useful in conveying what a victim goes through.
I have to say though, I have no monopoly on tact. If someone asked me this I would probably just beat the shit out of them with whatever was within arm’s reach.
It may be more efficient to just cut to the chase: Rape victims suffer a variety of psychological, physical, and emotional pain because of the simple fact that their choice was taken away from them. It is wrong because they didn’t choose what happened to them. I would go on to mention or detail the specific ways victims suffer and then emphasize that everyone is different and will experience the trauma in different ways.
This analogy is intended purely as a discussion opener, to get people whose minds are closed regarding the brutality of rape to consider the possibility that an act that is normally pleasurable can nonetheless be used maliciously to violate and degrade another person. It is certainly not meant to be any sort of final word on the experience of rape in general.
Look, where I live, men are never victims of rape themselves. Maybe just under aged boys, but I don’t include them in what I have said.
Do you know what is the common answer given by men here to a woman who has been raped: well, you asked for it! You shouldn’t have dressed that way or you shouldn’t have done that! Or if it is a former boyfriend or a current one men are all like: what, you liked it and now you’re complaining about.
Marital rape here has become an offense here in 2002, which says a lot.
And without no offense directed at you, but men have done and are continuing to do a lot of harm to women in more than one sense. And most of them, as far as I saw, are taking quite a lot of pride in hurting and abusing women and no society in this world really punishes them.
And by the way, no rape is not only about the choice, at least for most woman.
I am sorry for what happened to you, but for women getting assaulted in numerous ways is like menstruation: if you’re a woman, at some point in time it will happen to you. Which, I’m sorry, but for men is not the same.
I hope I haven’t come across as too harsh to you, but as far as women I haven’t met one yet that could mock another one for being raped; but the vast majority of men do that.
Mostly because when they think about sex and rape they see it from their point of view.
Men have no way of being truly hurt through heterosexual intercourse, so they haven’t got the slightest idea what it is like for woman.
And none of them makes the effort to think what is like to be the victim of a rape committed by a man. When that happens it’s a tragedy for men(here, the case is only in prisons as far as I know), but they still don’t understand women and continue to make fun of them and their sufferance.
In a conversation with a friend, we were talking about why we think different of sex than men and she put it quit bluntly:
she said – it’s like someone shoving their hand/fist down your throat, it won’t hurt their hand, but it will sure as hell damage your body. And she was referring to consensual intercourse!
>And none of them makes the effort to think of what is like to be the victim of rape committed by a man.
None? That’s a pretty broad statement. Even if only a fraction of a percentage of men “make the effort”, that still means hundreds of millions of men fall outside of your stereotype.
Also, it is worth noting that in the United States, rape of men outnumbers rape of women by a 3-to-1 margin. That’s right: for every rape that happens to a woman, there are three rapes that have happened to a man. And yes, as you mentioned, that is mostly in some form of government custody, but does that make it any less real? Because someone gets picked up for having a joint, they get thrown in a cage and gang-raped every single night for five years? Or perhaps they only get held in county lockup for a night, and only get gang-raped for four hours, then released the next morning. How many guys have you known who spent a night in jail at some point in their life? A little too drunk one night? Or maybe they got picked up at a protest? Think they’d tell you if they got raped?
And how would you like it if your rape was only ever mentioned as the butt of a joke? Turn on any sitcom and you can hear jokes about men being raped in prison. We would be outraged if network TV routinely joked about women’s rape, but we all just laugh along when it happens to men. So, you’re right when you say, “for men is not the same”. It’s worse. Much, much worse.
The vast majority of men do not joke about rape. That is completely untrue.
I have also never met anyone male or female, who really thinks that anyone should think of rape as just rougher sex.
That is sick.
I’m sorry for anyone who has experienced that, and I don’t mean to be dismissive, but you simply cant say that the vast majority of men joke about rape…. you just cant. Its not true. Do you have brothers? a father uncles? any men that you don’t dismiss as twisted ? I personally get really tired of feeling judged for other peoples sins…. because of my sex.
I hear my first joke about rape when I was 10 years old.
“Confucius he say rape not possible: woman with skirt up run faster than man with trousers down”
It was told at a campfire by an older man in my family to general approval as indicated by loud laughter. It was a very popular joke at school for years afterwards.
Tough luck for any woman who’s been deliberately drugged, or bashed, or who is also wearing jeans that have been pulled down, eh? Of course, when I pointed this out, I was accused of “spoiling the joke”.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of men tell jokes about rape, but “they don’t mean anything by it” and we “should just get a sense of humour”. If you haven’t heard such jokes you either don’t get out much or you haven’t been listening.
Yes, I have a father who called me a whore when I was ten and an uncle who tried to rape me. Plus other two sexual assaults on the street, in broad day light. Maybe I am just unlucky, but as I said before there is no woman out there who doesn’t go through some form of sexual harassment or assault.
And if the vast majority of men would be nice, empathetic people we wouldn’t have to discuss these matters. And rape and other forms of sexual assaults wouldn’t be so common and in some cases so brutal.
IN MY COUNTRY, there is just mockery for women and no kind of help. Trust me, I know what I am talking about.
There are men who I don’t dismiss as twisted, THAT is why I said “the vast majority” and not “all men”.
I am sorry if you feel judged, but just imagine what life can be for a woman in a world where men treat women as objects and where she can be beaten, raped, killed or at least mocked and ridiculed for the sin of being a woman and sometimes a victim of men’s abuses. And then come and tell how life is so hard for you.
To end this discussion, I have never met at least one who thinks and treats women as their equal. In the best case,s they think woman should not be treated bad as long as they are subservient.
what country do you live in?
Prison rape is a crime and should be prosecuted as such. When condoned or ignored by prison authorities, it constitutes a violation of the 8th amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Having said that, however, prison rape, which overwhelmingly consists of heterosexual males forcibly raping other males (who may be hetero- or homosexual) is a fundamentally misogynistic act. When no female victim is available, the rapist substitutes a readily available male victim. Prison rape victims are often referred to as “bitches,” are given female names, and forced to perform menial “women’s work” tasks.
The statement that male rape victims outnumber female victims by a factor of 3 to 1 is patent nonsense. Department of Justice statistics indicate that more than 90% of rape victims are female. Male rape victims deserve our support, but to suggest that rape is something other than a crime of violence against women is intellectual dishonesty in the extreme.
Let me see if I’ve got this right – a man attacking another man is “fundamentally misogynistic”. Hmmm. I think you might be reaching a bit. While I would agree that prison rape can have misogynistic qualities, to say that these violent acts perpetrated against men are “fundamentally” misogynistic is a bit of a stretch. I could no more buy your argument than I could buy one that was trying to pretend that acts of violence against women are “fundamentally misandristic”, regardless of whatever names the perpetrator might me calling the victim.
And you’ve misunderstood my statement about the 3-to-1 ratio. I didn’t say “number of victims”, I said “number of rapes”. When a man is raped in prison, he is marked as a victim, and is very likely to be brutalized hundreds or thousands of times, so the number of rapes each year is much higher for men than it is for women.
Also, as bad as reporting is for women, it is much worse for men. Imagine you are locked in a cage with your rapist. Think you’re gonna tattle on him? Even if he did get taken away, the prison code is universal: Snitches get Stitches. So, if anything, that 3-to-1 ratio is probably low.
Which country do you come from? In my country, women are generally treated as equals, in fact men are often dominated by them as far as I can tell. New Zealand has a very strong history of feminism. We were the first country in the world to give women the vote, and one of the first to have a woman prime minister…. My mother is a feminist.
In my country, the vast majority of men are very judgemental of men who mistreat women, and no one I know does this.
I am not saying that women are not mistreated by men. I do say that men are also mistreated by women.
I personally believe that many women use men, manipulate them emotionally, and feel that women rape emotionally.
Many women see men as interchangeable tickets to security and a good time. More often than not, if a man is incapacitated or loses his ability to work, his wife leaves him. Men are expected to always be in control, always know what to do, not to express emotion or vulnerability. they are expected to be violent if necessary and to be dominant. Women expect this of men. Even self professed feminist women. I think we are all victims of millions of years of cultural and evolutionary conditioning.
I’m not sure how we go about fixing this. Feminism has created a frame work for addressing this, which is why I am interested. Although I don’t necessarily agree with some tenets of feminism.
Gender stereotypes cut both ways.
I doubt that the vast majority of men joke about rape. But I don’t know where you come from. I am very sorry you have experienced the the things you have and I don’t make light of that. I have had times in my life when I have disliked all women because I felt I had been mistreated, and I have not had anything near happen to me what has happened to you.
But I do understand that it becomes difficult to not judge all people because of ones experiences.
I think its called generalisation.
I have always wanted an equal, a woman who takes as much responsibility as I do and doesn’t expect me to handle everything and always know what to do. Who doesn’t fall for the same old alpha- male crap.
This is pretty hard to find.
Even as I write this I feel compelled to say ” I can do Alpha Male” I can be very masculine. But why the should I modify my behaviour to fit other peoples expectations?
I am not a feminist. But I do support many aspects of what feminism fights for, and feminism provides far more resources on gender issues than any other heading.
Its obvious that my issues are not the same or indeed as serious as yours.
They are still important to me though.
largely in as much as trying to understand what it means to be male considering what some men do, what is expected of us by women, and the changing expectations of society.
Thanks again for the reply,..
Quinn
I have been following this conversation for some time now and I am curious.
Why would members of the ‘pick-up-artist’ community feel a need to seek feminists’ approval for their activities? Couldn’t they just proceed as they see fit and ignore feminists’ opinions?
Whats a pick up artist? Its not just feminists aproval that people seek its aproval full stop isnt it?.. ie they want to know that they are good peope or at least not “bad” people…. Feminist movement is one of those that kind of stakes out the finer points of morality, or at least discusses them , and I love it for that….
To be honest, I’ve been thinking about this, which is a good thing… thats why I’m interested in this site… because I want to learn…which may mean admitting that Im wrong or have mis understood something…
and on the whole joking about rape thing…. yes there are constant jokes about rape…. when I think about it…. like when your woeking and things get really really busy you might joke that you and your workmates got “bent over the bench” …. and yeah there are 1 or 2 jokes mentione now and then, and I am guilty of this… about men and women… though the one about femal rape is way more taboo…. and to be honest its actually not neccesarily rape… its more like a woman consenting to have sex with more than one man… And I wont mention it….. its one of those lines thats only “funny” because it is So SO SO Wrong…..
Its a nevous laughter… in the same way that people joke about suicide bombers, I mean that is NOT funny…. but in some way… joking about serious and often disturbing things can be a relief from always walking the sort of social tight rope of political correctness…… along with not being egotistical, not being rude, not being stupid, being relatively up to date cultured, with the times etc… It kind of gets tiring, which is why I think the guilty pleasure of an incredibly innapropriate joke can be so appealing. But I dont think anyone would ever joke about somebody, as in an actual person, being raped. Never. its not funny. its sick.
And maybe all jokes of this nature are sick…. about all sorts of things. Jokes about guys getting “butt raped” are so common….. but nobody ever really thinks thats so bad….
I dont know… but I had to admit, yup its true, there are jokes about rape. And I know one. And I’d hate to think what somebody would feel having had that done to them would feel reading about it…
Theres a lot of jokes about gay people too in m famil, and I often worried that if one us really was gay it would be terrible…. I think we all know in the long run that we love each other enough that of cours we would accept each other, no matter what….
But does that make it okay?
I guess when I mean men ( and women ) dont joke about rape…. I mean nobody finds the idea of someone actually being raped funny. It absolutely horrendous. Its awful. If that happened to any woman i my family, or much more unlikely any man n my family, although my dad actually was nearly when he was young….
I’d want to kill who ever was responsible. I would. Id go to jail for it. I understand the anger. I feel like that about it too. Humour is weird……. isnt it… sometimes it just doesnt make sense.
Quinn, I’ll think about what you’ve written and respond later this weekend, but just a quick Moderator note for now: will you please aim for comments that are within the guidelines of the comments policy for length? You do tend to ramble. I’ve let a couple go through so far, but the next one that’s an essay rather than a comment won’t get published.