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
tigtog
tekanji
shakesville
JB & Quinn: If you want to discuss issues like male rape and such, why not make your own blog? I don’t think FF101 is obligated to acknowledge your perspective in this article (or any other article) because this blog is primarily about the female experience.
I think it’s rather cocky (not to mention rude) to come into somebody’s space and tell them how they should phrase their articles. If the author chooses to use a food-related analogy to describe rape, that is her prerogative. As many men so often say….. “if you don’t like it, don’t read it”.
Bottom line: Go get your own blog. They are free, ya know. It isn’t FF101’s duty to tell your story; that’s up to you.
Aaaahhh…Sweet Honesty, I feel your pain. In the seven years that I have had a website open for female survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, I cannot count the times I’ve been derided for discriminating against male rape victims – with the usual tirades about the “injustice” that feminists fuel. My answer is always similar to yours: Plenty of free webhosts out there – create a resource yourself for the group you claim I am marginalizing. So much whining and so little action is wearying, but I never feel apologetic for creating a resource for women, which consider that I am within my rights to have done.
Of course we see this in it’s worst form when “men’s rights” groups start suing shelters for “discrimination….”
Great blog this-I am glad to have come across it and will visit often.
Not sure how much of this is directed at me, since I was simply responding to specific statements made by AS and Nell, not tigtog.
As to the suggestion that I should go get my own blog, I suppose that that could be said to anyone on here who is sharing her experience.
If I had my own rape story to tell, that’s probably what I’d have talked about, but thankfully I am one of the few women who has never been raped. My big brother wasn’t so lucky. He was raped in jail and he killed himself eight months later.
So I apologize if I get a little upset when I see sweeping generalizations that seem to suggest that his experience wasn’t valid.
I believe I said that anybody who wanted to discuss off-topic material (eg. “rape happens to the menz too!!!”) should get their own blog. Why should those who discuss Feminism get their own blog, since this blog IS about Feminism???
Nobody suggested anything like that. You’re putting words in people’s mouths.
I am from Romania and people here are extremely misogynistic. Even women shy away from feminism more from ignorance than anything else. Ignorance and the lack of desire to educate oneself before opening the mouth and blurting out stupid things.
I don’t get why men have to say every time a woman complains about something very important like this subject over here, that it happens to them too or why no one discusses their problems too. I agree with what Sweet Honesty said above and I’d like to add that everyone talks about how bad is for men, no one gives attention to women.
When a woman wants to discuss some real issues she is labeled as crazy, a stupid emotional WOMAN and whatever she says it’s a stupidity, including any claim towards violence from men. Because, you know, men being gods couldn’t possibly do anything wrong, it’s just crazy talk from those inferior beings called women. It’s pretty much the same attitude a master has to its slaves.
PS: I did remember a woman making fun of me when I told her about my story about my uncle trying and almost succeeding in raping me: she looked at me with a face that said she was on the break of laughing her ass off and she asked me if I haven’t confused things with a movie. I was shocked. Firstly because it was very hard for me at that time to open up about that and still is and because she was supposed to be a friend
So that shows that cruel and insensitive people come from both genders.
Unimagibale some people dont understand the difference between rape and rough sex. Rape is not consensual. Rough sex usually is.
no = no.
Further to my earlier point, I just thought I would share here how NZ is considering some potential changes along the lines I was talking about, e.g. perpetrator requiring a ‘yes’ from the other person, rather than just proving that they did not say ‘no’.
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/5747277/changes-mooted-for-sex-trials/
Tigtog: not sure on your policy on links but it really is an interesting, on-point article!
double, I’m always happy for people to share interesting links!
There’s been some noise about moving to a positive consent model here in NSW as well, but so far it’s just noise.
I have to give kudos. This is the best ever handling of this subject I’ve ever seen. Vivid & clear & to the point. It even actually brought tears to my eyes a little.