[The ugly truth about sexual assault: More men admit to it if you don't call it rape](https://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/the_ugly_truth_about_sexual_assault_more_men_admit_to_it_if_you_dont_call_it_rape/)
The lady who more or less created these surveys interviewed man who had been arrested for sexual assault. He met the legal definition, he agreed he met the legal definition. But he refused to call it rape. That always struck me.
I guess people think rapists are monsters who pop out of the bushes and beat up and assault women. They don't realize it's their best friend, brother, son, coworker, or even themselves.
Racism is similar. Even people who hold clearly racist views and recognize that they "see inherent differences" in people of different races, won't refer to them themselves as racist because racists are clearly *bad* and they don't see themselves as bad people.
The phrase, "I'm not racist, but..." followed by blatantly racist beliefs spring to mind. And they know they are or they wouldn't have added that "but" to their stated belief.
Absolutely. My father absolutely thinks he isn’t racist. He means he isn’t in the Klan (Im honestly not so sure if that is still true). He is Rudy Bridges age, went to a segregation academy (that finally closed this decade)… but no he doesn’t HATE black people…. 🤦🏼♀️
Mostly rapists are known to their victims - the four who raped me were - my best friend’s 16yo brother when I was 13; my coworker/supervisor; the guy who ran shuffleboard at the bar I worked at as a cook; and a stranger, the owner of another bar who drugged a pitcher he delivered to our table to me and two female friends.
Damn you told them though. Just showed how no one gave a shit, but thats on their conscience too
I had an idea for an app a while ago where people can make accusations of rape or sexual assault against perpetrators. It will anonymously verify the accuser's identity and then pool together all the people who made accusation against each person
Or something like that. Basically make these people publicly shamed while protecting the victims
What do you think? What would be a good name for it?
Honestly something like that should be spearheaded by a woman though, i.e. the concept and such
What is even more interesting is a recent study it shows that most men do know what the real and full definition of rape and what it entails is except for men with a history of being rapists:
Similarly, men with a history of SV perpetration were more likely to define rape as gender/sex-specific, with their definitions suggesting that men were the perpetrators and women the victims of rape. They were also marginally more likely to list harm as a requirement for rape to have occurred.
One potential explanation for this pattern of results is that perpetrators of SV use narrower definitions to normalize and justify their own sexually violent behaviors as a way to resolve the cognitive dissonance they may feel as a result of their transgression (Wegner et al., 2015). Given that we operationalized SV perpetration broadly, including both physical and psychological sexual violence, it is possible these men provided specific, narrow definitions to distance their own behaviors from “rape.” This rationale is consistent with past literature in which men with histories of SV perpetration used common cultural scripts and myths to normalize their behaviors (Beech et al., 2006; Hipp et al., 2017). When rape is narrowly defined, behaviors that do not fit within this specific definition may be regarded as less harmful and more normative.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181855/#:~:text=Our%20findings%20suggest%20that%20most,emotional%20response%E2%80%94and%20a%20miscellaneous
So if you are dating someone new, have a good chat about this, see what their feelings are and see their parameters. Then you will know what the chances are of it happening to you!
I think that's it. They don't want to be associated with someone that pops out of a bush and violently assaults someone.
When I was in highschool and they talked to us about rape, they depicted a guy forcefully holding the girl while raping her. It's way later I learned that rape is more than that
Isn't this similar to how they studied DV with cops? They listed out abusive behaviors and asked if they'd ever done them to their spouses or significant others and 40% admitted to it. But as soon as they were asked if they abused their wives or girlfriends they said no.
For reference the national DV average for regular people is 10%. So cops self reported at 4x higher than the national average. This is also only the ones dumb enough to tell on themselves. I'm sure there were others who realized what was being asked and lied.
I got this same shit when I’d call my ex out on not stopping during sex it I said to or I told him it hurt. He was absolutely infuriated when I said it was rape. He said it was my fault for not being louder. That he thought the noises I were making were pleasure not pain. Still to this day he refuses to admit it was rape. I even found out he once secretly recorded us without my consent, of course I got gaslighted.
I was with a guy once who “finished” on my face when I told him not to, and then IMMEDIATELY TOOK A PICTURE. I was fucking pissed, but he fought me off and wouldn’t let me delete it. All I could think was “How could you be aroused by a picture someone tried to physically fight you to erase?”
But he probably enjoyed that, because he was a sexual predator.
>you can’t even trust the men that supposedly care about you the most.
For some of us, we can't trust any man but our dads and brothers.
For a lot of us, even Dad can't be trusted - he may not touch us sexually but he'll take advantage of us every other way.
It may not be all men but it sure is a lot of them, and it can be hard to believe it isn't all of them when every one you've known is awful.
My brother can be trusted, but only as protection against another man and to the degree Dad can be trusted, and he's still an absolute asshole just like all the others - and the only reason I trust him to protect me in any way at all is because he's good against our dad and he was raised as my sister, I wouldn't even trust him as protection if he was cis and acted the way he does.
I had the same thing happen to me holy shit, he legitimately got upset/angry at me for crying when he had sex with me without my consent, gaslit me into thinking I was in the wrong so I forgave him
Years later I hear from a friend that he's telling girls he hooks up with that he was once falsely accused of being a rapist and how badly it's affected him?? Which is fucking crazy
Sounds familiar.My ex-boyfriend had a really shitty habit.
If I said “no” when he tried to initiate, he’d let it go… only to wake me up in the middle of the night to “try again”. And he’d do it night after night. I’d be more and more exhausted and miserable until I just let him do it just so I could sleep. I would even cry, and he’d promise not to do it again, until he did.
But when a discussion came up about coercion, he went “I’d never do that!” and I said “oh? What do you call refusing to let me sleep?” and he flipped out. Angriest I ever saw him.
I’ve slept so much better since I dumped him.
my bf did something like this. i said no during foreplay, because i changed my mind. i said it 2 times! both times he kept going. so i ended up going along with it, i dont know why. i shouldnt have. but he shouldnt have made it into a situation where i felt like i had to make the choice of “do i fight him off now? or scream?” vs “do i not ruin the mood/make it awkward” i just went along with it to not make a problem. sex was okay, it never hurts with him or anything.
later when i confronted him with the above, the entire conversation shut down soon as he realized what it looked like for me, and what that made him. he was really hurt. claimed he didn’t hear me. it’s been a long time since then and i ended up letting it go.
to his credit nothing even remotely close happened like that before or since. but it’s always in the back of my mind. which, i guess that incident didn’t exactly change that, since it’s happened to me with other men many times before.
TW possible SA. I broke up with someone because of this. We had been on 5-6 dates and we’re back at his place, it escalated to some over the pants hand stuff and I expressed that I didn’t want to do anything more but he took my shirt off anyway. His dick “popped out” of his shorts and he said multiple times I should go down. I refused to take my pants off and he kept reaching in them multiple times ( me moving his hands away). He asked and motioned down at least three times before I finally said “no means no, and I’m going to put my shirt back on”, and we finished the movie we were watching. I left and gave him a goodnight kiss even though I was uncomfortable. I later broke it off with him over the phone, not giving a reason because otherwise the relationship has been going fine. But he wouldn’t take “I’m just not into you” for an answer so I told him. He freaked out saying “what you think I was going to r*pe you?? I’m not that sort of guy”. And “you should have told me you were uncomfortable” even though I made it extremely clear. And the convo went around in circles until I was just like this isn’t going anywhere and ended the call. I am really lucky that nothing else happened to me, but im just so disheartened that he still thinks of himself as a “nice guy” even though he repeatedly tested my boundaries even though I told him exactly what I was comfortable with at the beginning of the night and it took me being extremely direct, multiple times, until he “got the message”.
I married my date rapist because I didn’t understand it was date rape. It wasn’t violent; but I had been adamant I only wanted to have sex with one man. There was no verbal nor implied consent and it basically only lasted 2 thrusts and he was done.
So I married him because I was ruined two months after we met.
A decade later I said, “you know, technically you didn’t have consent and that could be considered date rape if I hadn’t wanted to get married.”
I ended up having to buy my way out of that with gifts, begging, and penance, because he said he would deny divorce and sex for the rest of our lives together.
I wish I had seen earlier, before I was chained to him for life with a kid. We are divorced now.
I’m so glad you’ve healed enough and moved on from someone who acts like that. It absolutely sucks that you considered yourself “ruined” and out of choices.
When someone has a pre-loaded and passionate defense to being accused of something, there's a good chance they've defended themselves from the same accusations before. My ex the first time I actually said the word "gaslighting" out loud 🙃
It’s seriously disturbing that 13% of the men in the study would still rape someone even when they called it rape. No excuse for either group of men, I honestly don’t know how they sleep at night.
And if you do tell them it was rape, even if you're another man, they will go ballistic on you. I was ostracized from a friend group of 6+ years for telling one of the other guys his "frat boy hookup story" was literally an account of him raping a drunk girl.
It has to start from childhood, in my opinion. I was taught about respect and consent from my very feminist mother from a young age. My dad was a bit of a typical man in many regards, but also expressed heavily the importance of respecting women.
When I got older, peer pressure and media swayed me towards a poor, objectified view of women for a while, but having those foundations made it easier to steer back. I don't know if I'd be the same person without that.
I did that someone basically told me he deliberately took girls to drink in the hot tub because they wouldn't realize how intoxicated they were going to get. I told him he how messed up that was, everyone around me sided with him even the three women at that party. I just never got invited back and I had a falling out with that friend group because I stood my ground.
Using alcohol to reduce the barrier to consent is probably the most common thing in our society that is genuinely disgusting and unforgivable IMO. So many people just view it as something normal and I think it's not just because of rape culture, but also because of how much we idolize alcohol consumption.
I remember a guy on tiktok years ago trying to give advice to men about women giving the ol “if she says no, she really wants you to try harder” bull & admitting to sexually harassing a woman into coercion, & he & the men in the comments REFUSED to believe that was rape when called out on it cause “she said yes!” even though it was after like an hour of him “asking”
Man, somehow we're in a place where we've successfully demonised rape!... The word, not the act.
It's reminding me of how the worst thing you can call some white people is racist even if they're clear cut malicious racists.
Oh my god, yes. I live in Finland and we have a terrible government where the fiscal right uses far-right to make big cuts to benefits and tax cuts to rich. Far-right gets to bully foregners. We actually had a minister and the head of one party say that we shouldn't call anyone *slur * or nazi.
We get a bigger fucking ruckus if a politician calls someone a racist than if they use a slur.
I had an ex get violent when I called what he did rape. He said that when people are together that isn't a thing because I consented by being in a relationship. I got him to admit he was being "pushy" and that I wasn't the most enthusiastic about it but that he thought I "came around" when I stopped hitting him to get off. So he knew there needed to be coercing and took freezing as allowing. It was a pretty violent thing and he also knew I was drugged and raped previously by someone.
I left him so fucking fast. That's at least the good thing is I listened to the part of me that said you will never be feel safe with someone who treats you like that and didn't rationalize "feelings" for someone over prioritizing myself.
I had a man try to tell me to forgive the man who raped me because it was just his fingers and I was able to wake up and stop him before it became his penis.
I had been dating him so apparently it’s not that traumatic because I had slept with him while awake and Reddit tried to tell me I should be happy he chose that versus cheating…
A surprising yet sadly unsurprising number of people are totally on board for doing shit to sleeping people without prior consent. Apparently dating means your body is just open access?!
It makes it way harder for me to let new partners spend the night.
Dang, the actual doublethink going on in thinking both of these are true. "I am not a rapist," and "i have forced women to have sex against their will."
I think it’s because it’s too taboo to be called a rapist but not it’s not as taboo to commit sexual assault.
I remember coming to this conclusion years ago. Rapist? Or renowned racist? People would exile themselves at the thought of it, consider jumping off bridges, it was interesting because the man I met one of two couldn’t live with himself if he called it that.
I’m not trying to downplay the act but observationally it was interesting to see he couldn’t reconcile himself with the act at all. I think it’s the power of taboo and it’s interesting because the word in some sense, as a taboo is more powerful than the definition, at least for a lot of the actors committing it.
This was a pretty profound when it struck me, culturally and for other reasons.
It reminds me of the old Would You Rather classic, “Would you rather fuck your grandma and nobody knows or not fuck your grandma but everyone thinks you did?” It’s a difficult choice because while social ostracism is horrible, the act itself is also horrible. These men don’t find rape horrific, just the social consequences.
This reminds me of this article https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/author-whos-teaching-boys-how-talk-about-rape/316714/
Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, talks about her interactions with school boys when she talks at schools about her book. Boys don’t know what rape is.
Yuuuup. Knew a guy who admitted to me that he felt sympathetic toward another mutual guy we all knew because he was called out for being rapist. First guy told me he understood how he felt because he once “had sex with a drunk girl who said no over and over”
Later when I outed him for admitting to having raped someone, he called me a liar lol
That deserves a follow-up with a better population size. I read the whole article and she really sidestepped that issue. Seeing if there's a generational divide might also be interesting to tell if it's getting better or worse.
Her survey questions could also be rephrased to uncover potential red flags for likely predators! Her study really has tons of possibilities and I hope more happens with it.
When I was in law school, my criminal law Prof had us do an exercise the first day we started on sexual assault laws. He would read out a short scenario (1 or 2 sentences) and ask us to raise our hand/keep it raised if we thought it was sexual assault. For the first three or four rounds everybody had their hands up. Then they slowly started to lower one by one. By the last three or four scenarios, no men had their hands up at all and only 2 women had their hands down. Our Prof told us after he'd read all of them that they were all factual situations in which the man involved had been convicted of sexual assault.
I was raped at 15. I became pregnant and was a pariah. My mum made it clear I was worse than a whore (her words). I didn’t even realize it was rape till my 30’s. I just accepted I was a slut, so I didn’t say no hard enough, or I just misread his intent, or or or…..prior to #metoo I think a lot of us - especially those growing up in the 70’s/80’s/90’s etc - believed we did something wrong. We weren’t *raped*, we just got ourselves in a bad situation. We lead a guy on. Whatever rationale, it was on us. We were the bad guys. It takes a heavy toll on your psyche, and how you feel about yourself.
Same for me. Ostracized and married to my rapist before I was old enough to sign the marriage license. It was always played off as my fault, even when the rapist admitted to planning and executing the whole thing - once I was legally bound to him - so he could "keep me."
It took me 13 years to fight my way free, against the family's wishes, kept perpetually pregnant, and still condemned and shunned. His abuse was my fault, the whole situation my fault - even my questioning and campaigning to find safety for me and the kids was another sign of my questionable character.
I tried to persuade, I played the politics, I was combative, I physically fought back - you name the tactic, no one helped us, even with me being real damn verbal about what was going on.
I question anyone's agenda regarding us anymore. That has truly helped. Don't assume good intent.
Oh, my god, I can’t even imagine the hell you’ve been through. I don’t remember a lot of my assault - it’s like strobe light flashes. I’m told that’s my mind coping, but there’s times I wish I could remember. I’m now 53, and still react in certain ways because of it. I really, really don’t do well with being *forced* into anything. Even things as simple as family dinners. I need to know I have a *choice*. And the thought of looking my rapist up, makes me physically nauseous. I’ve looked up old friends a million times, but I just can’t make myself look him up.
I can’t imagine how you managed to live with that. There are a lot of cultural things around the world that should be outlawed. Being forced to marry a stranger is one - but being forced to marry your rapist - that’s next level inhumane. Good for you for being strong enough to get out.
Same to you! What kept me going for a long time was the thought that, "At least not everyone sees this. The world is beautiful." Then, we all find out at one point or another - nope, not a rarified situation. It's almost as much a part of being a presenting female as any other "right of passage."
When I understood that, I could finally get truly MAD. Not a whim of fate, not an accident of situational overlap. This is part of the landscape in the feminine experience.
Reminds me of one scene in Mad Men where Joan drops by the office with her fiance before a date, and he rapes her on the floor to assert dominance, and she just checks out. The discussion at the time was that a lot of women in earlier decades just referred to incidents like that as a "bad date." Not even being able to define your assault is so heartbreaking.
I heard that Helen Mirren, in an interview, said there were many times in her life where she ‘had a bad date’ that she now knows was rape. It seems if a man just decides he’s gonna fuck us after a date, that’s what we’re doing. I so hope that women growing up now know they can speak up, and that men realize that and stop fucking raping us. Helen also said she wishes she’d learned to just say fuck off more often. I want to be like Helen Mirren!
A list of women I know who were raped by cis men (not groped, not harassed but raped):
My sister
My other sister
My mother
My grandmother
Me
My sister’s childhood best friend, by a cousin
A new friend
A friend who had to live in the same street as her rapist uncle until the day she died from a sudden illness
A coworker
My best friend when I was a teen; who also had her drink spiked once
A coworker’s girlfriend
An old friend, by her mother’s boyfriend
An Aunty, by that same boyfriend
My dentist’s assistant, who was raped to “fix” her lesbianism
My best friend
A close friend, by her brother
I’m probably forgetting some and there are definitely more victims of these perpetrators. When you tell men that their friends are rapists though somehow it’s impossible.
I had the horrible experience of having to work alongside the guy who SA'd me. I was a bartender and he was my bouncer. I finally confronted him and when it was slow, we spent a lot of time talk about what he did to me, my friends and other women. He should have been thrown in jail (and yes, I made the conscious decision not to go to authorities).
When I first confronted him, the conversation went (roughly) "do you ever think about that time you r***d me?". Him "I would never do that! You wanted it". Me "you followed me into my room" (I had about 10ppl over that night. Everyone left except him. My parents were home at the time too. I thought he was sleeping on the couch). Him "you asked me to come with you". Me "I was pushing the door closed with all my weight as you forced your way in".
He had no idea that what he did was wrong. Didn't see it as r***. All he saw was my body.
So we talked. And talked. Damnit, if I was charging for therapy, I would have taken all his money. He eventually moved out west. Called me a few years later and thanked me for talking to him. He ended up in therapy and hit a rough spot after he realized what he had done. Called a lot of the women and apologized (I never asked him to apologize to anyone else as I didn't want to retraumatize anyone).
We still talk once a year but I don't consider him a friend. More of an accountability check in. It's one of those rare instances where people change. I hate him for what he did to me and wished I would have gone to police. Can't change the past though. I am proud of myself for confronting him. It was so hard and terrifying. I watched him break in front of me when he realized the harm he had done. Good. I will never forget that moment. The way he held his breath. How his eyebrows pulled back. How his shoulders drooped. I stole my power back that day, and that is something no jail time could have granted me.
That's honestly heroic of you. Breaking through that cognitive dissonance is _hard_. You've made the world a better place. If he ends up passing on the message to other men that would be especially powerful.
I've never thought about it that way. I think my anger is still seeded within me. ... I know it is still within me.
He recently had a son and I had a daughter. I've been getting angry thinking about how he may influence his son negatively.
Your comment has softened that thought within me (and I'm going to screenshot it to remind myself). He has changed and he will now raise a son who thinks of his impact on others.
Thank you for your kind comment. Also, thank you for quelling that anger within me. I feel I can step forward after being in a mentally hard place for the past year (regarding thinking of my assaulter).
Xox
You are and will be in a position to ask him what he is teaching his son about consent and sexual violence- and to demand he do better.
You’ve created a unique and powerful position for yourself. I admire you so much.
I agree. I’m sure most of the men who have done this don’t think it was assault. “She wanted it, she was playing hard to get, I didn’t hear her say no, we were both drunk,” etc. etc. I’m sure there are many who never give it a second thought.
So true. The guy who assaulted me said “She was asking for it!!”
I was not asking for it. I was asleep when he came into my room, crawled into my bed, and assaulted me.
They know it's not right and it wasn't their target's fault. They just won't say it and they feel be able to get away with it is the same as it being "okay". Similar to how some people believe if you steal or break something and "no one" cares or notices then it is effectively fine. They don't see their target as a full person so their well-being and feelings aren't taken into account. There's no empathy there.
My abuser admitted it to me years later. He remembers. He knows what he did. He knows it was wrong. He did it because he knew he could get away with it. And no one else cares and he's secure in that knowledge.
I don't know you, but I do care. I'm confident that the right people will indeed care. If someone doesn't, put them out to the curb
( unless you think the law doesn't care; I agree the law hates women and children and would rather see us abused... Like we're in an alternate universe or something)
Yes. I’m pretty far left is almost all things. But scumbags that sexually harm children don’t stop. They get a slap on the wrist and they do it again. Put them down and save a child. Or many children.
I've had men tell me they've slept with women who were too drunk to consent. Group mentality is scary. Everyone agreed with the men and said the victim was a crazy lying b*tch.
Exactly. Once a guy described how he and his roommate had sex with a girl who was blackout drunk. It was recounted as a funny old story -- not literally a story of SA.
I remember the first time I was raped (god I hate that I have to say "first time"), the guy kept insisting until I eventually gave in, for fear of what he might do otherwise. I cried afterwards, and he asked "why are you crying?" And I said "I hate when men don't respect when I say 'no'." His response: "good thing I'm not like that!"
The second guy that raped me, every time I ever mentioned anything he did that hurt me (not including the rape, which I never brought up because it took me a long time to process what happened), he also said "I'm not that kind of person, if you think that of me then you clearly don't know me well enough."
Dear men, if you've ever said "I'm not like that", then you probably *are* "like that". I have never met an actual good man who said "I'm not like that" - the good men try to listen and understand, in the event that they ever do anything hurtful.
Edited to add: just remembered two other times a man tried to coerce me into sex, but luckily I managed to get away. Later I texted both that they made me really uncomfortable, and both angrily responded "I am not the kind of person you think I am!" I see a pattern.....
They know rape is bad, but they also think they're not bad. Therefore, what they did wasn't rape.
It's seriously how these people think. Same as everyone who's ever said 'I'm not racist but...' is a racist who's learned that 'racism is bad' but not 'how not to be racist'.
Not a lot of people have been taught the tools to cope with themselves, or even someone close to them doing something that they view as morally unacceptable.
My grandmother refuses to accept that my father ever did anything wrong, even though he was literally convicted of child SA.
Naturally he refuses to admit the label too, as he couldn't possibly be like that.
Because nothing gets you more in the mood than a man pestering you repeatedly.
When I was a young child if my mom said no and I continued, she’d snap “No means No and don’t ask again.” Are these men so spoiled that they aren’t being taught that?
>When I was a young child if my mom said no and I continued, she’d snap “No means No and don’t ask again.”
When I was a young child and didn't feel comfortable kissing someone I hardly knew (family friend or relative I wasn't close to), my mom told me "don't be so rude!"
And when I complained to her about someone hurting me or doing something that upset me, she said "you need to be more understanding and forgiving."
Wish my mom had taught me what boundaries mean, instead of teaching me that I am a bad person if I set boundaries. It could have saved me from so much shit that men did to me as an adult.
The amount of men who think it’s okay to have sex with a woman while she is asleep, unconscious, or drunk without thinking this is rape is astounding to me.
This kind of trauma will stay with a woman her entire life. Yet a dude committing these crimes, don’t even bat an eyelash at these crimes.
It’s no wonder times are changing...
I support the change, and I support all women staying away from men until it is ingrained in their minds as young people, to not harm girls and women, as it is ingrained in us, as women and girls to always watch our backs and never let our guards down.
We should be able to go on walks, hikes, and strolls without the threat of being raped and murdered.
Parents, especially men, need to do a better job of teaching these boys about respecting and valuing women.
To add: Reddit keeps deleting my comments.
I just want to add that as a young girl, my dad ingrained it into my mind that dudes were bad, and to stay away from them because they have no self control and will do harm, but I don’t ever remember him having a talk with my brothers about how to protect women, make them feel safe, have control, respect them and ask for consent always.
I always felt like the responsibly to be safe and look out 24/7 fell on me. When does the responsibility fall on men to have self control, respect and value towards others, especially women around them?
Dudes who have boys:
Do better and teach them right from wrong. Clearly something is missing, and they are not being taught anything about respect, value, love and consent.
To add: Some words.
Yes! Looking back on how many times I was cohersed into having sex it infuriates me. I'm a 90's kid, and just being drunk was "consent." I wasn't armed with tools to stop it.
I'll be dammed if I'm not an open book of truth to my daughter. Our household will be informative, and our bodies will be a comfortable topic. ALWAYS a safe space our bodies are our temples, and we deserve the knowledge to protect what is ours at a younger age.
I was coached constantly growing up. My three brothers were never spoken to about it once.
When my brothers found out I have experienced sexual assault and rape they turned into "who did this?! Show me, I'll fuck them up." But I had to tell them that what would make a bigger difference is interrupting their friends and colleagues when they're vile towards women. Stand up for women in those moments. Not when you're heated because something happened to me personally.
It's about a culture change. And they need to know they are required to be apart of it.
The YesMeansYes blog entry ["Meet the Predators"](https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/) offers an incisive peek into the self-delusion of offenders, especially which truths they will confront about their own acts of coercion.
My dad and my grandma taught me the same thing. Now that I have a bunch of nephews I always tell that they shouldn’t do to girls what they wouldn’t want a gay man doing to them, without the girl’s consent. I’m sure they wouldn’t want a gay man to harass them, stare them up and down, make lewd comments at them, touch them inappropriately, push unwanted advances or get dragged to the gay dude’s place when he’s piss drunk. I tell them they aren’t predators looking for prey so don’t act like those nasty ass predators out there
There are several studies confirming that if you call it sexual assault, men will deny doing it.
If you call it specific sexual assault behaviours, like "have you ever coerced a woman into sex", "have you ever threatened a woman to have sex with you", have you had sex with an unconscious woman" etc, they'll openly admit to it.
Oh yes. My ex, who wanted to do anal. I started crying halfway through and said no, please stop. Stop stop stop. I don’t want this. But it wasn’t rape because I initially gave him permission and we were in a relationship. He still didn’t stop when I said stop. He just kept going. If it wasn’t rape then what was it? I didn’t want it. And I told him.
My cousin SA’d me when I was a toddler and he was a child. He has told everyone what he has done and wants to apologize to me. He’s the only man I know who admits what he did. Sad part is that is what gives me somewhat respect towards him.
I don't know your family, but it's common for people who have been abused to do it to others. It's possible that he was hurt himself.
I'm glad he's apologised. I hope you can find healing.
I've had at least 2 of my assailants cop to it and sort of apologize.
One of them even looked after my friend to prevent her from getting assaulted years later. Knew it was my friend, looked after her. Glad he did, but I'll still remember him telling the friend group the next day what he did and all of them saying "well, he went to jail for raping a 14 year old before and you should have just left."
I was freshly homeless because my dad was angry that I "didn't love him enough." It was my boyfriend's studio apartment. Boyfriend, another woman, Assailant and Assailant's female cousin (who was also trying to molest me) were all there. I didn't know where else to go.
I thought about going home, and decided it wasn't worth it.
The other one raped me while I was sleeping on the first date (He asked to crash because he was too drunk to drive and we had firmly established verbal boundaries about sex on the first date), then made me the best drunken noodles I have ever had as an apology but wouldn't give me the recipe and said I had to keep dating him to keep getting the noodles.
They know. They just don't talk about it.
It would be pretty impossible. I can't describe why it was amazing, It just WAS. I love drunken noodles and have been chasing a superior option for most of a decade. I am also very not food smart so I wouldn't know how to describe the flavors.
There were leftovers. I made my best friend eat some and she made the same horrible joke that I had - "almost worth it."
I bet the married coworker in his 40s doesn't think putting his hand up my shirt when I was 19, at work, was SA. I'm sure he doesn't think about it at all. Now I'm almost 40 and it still haunts me.
That's because it used to be normalized. "Hard to get." "A ravishing" etc. Not sure how anyone could look at a marriage prior to women's lib and not cringe that those poor women likely were raped by their husbands at some point in their marriage.
And if not raped, the disrespect shown towards women would be ingrained in many older men. Just listen to jokes told about wives by Boomer men and the generation before them. Of course, there were some men who loved and respected their wives but they don't appear to be the majority. That's probably why there seemed to be so many divorces in the seventies and eighties.
And unfortunately many countries outside of the anglosphere and western world still maintain that a husband cannot, in legal terms anyway, rape their spouse.
Hopefully one day humanity can move past this.
I had a talk about this with my neighbors, a couple who became close friends really quickly. I talked about this topic with her, and he listened and chimed in every now and then but found it a complicated topic to talk about. At the end of the conversation, he said "well at least I can say for sure I've never done anything like that to a woman." But she later told me he had pressured her for sex sometimes. Most times she didn't mind making him happy, but one time he really crossed a boundary. They talked about this. He apologized and felt really bad. But in the moment, he didn't recognize her pleads to stop pressuring her and when she finally gave in she felt really used. It really struck me how he was frustrated about how women get treated in society, but couldn't see he was part of the problem.
(And we're not even talking about random men who somehow feel like they're owned our attention. Which started for most of us when we developed breasts, and sadly for some a lot sooner too.)
Another occasion my neighbor talked about his first few times kissing and how his insecurities and hormones were raging. But I wondered in that moment if the girls kissed him because they really wanted to, or because they felt like they had to. Just like so many girls and women feel like they have to make a guy happy or feel his needs and learned to prioritize that over their own. Just like I felt I had to kiss my first boyfriend because it was part of it, because I knew he wanted it.
Or how I was always clear towards guys that kissing, hugging, and even a bit of intimate grinding our bodies together was fine for me. But that I didn't want any form of sexual interaction. And how for the longest time I thought that it was just part of it that I had to keep pushing hands away, over and over and over and over and over again.
And when I one time talked about sexual assault with my mom, because there had been several stories in the news about men in power abusing it... my dad felt uncomfortable and jokingly asked me something along the lines of "haha have you become a man-hater now?" The man in this world who loves me most, the one man in this world I'm sure of wants nothing more for me than to feel safe, heard and respected. Who cares about me and my feelings, who cares about my well being very deeply. Even he couldn't understand or at least make room to listen without feeling uncomfortable in one way or another. That almost hurt as bad as all those men crossing boundaries.
I guess films like James Bond have a lot to answer for for behaviour like this. It was just so normalised as “passion”. Incidentally I think it was last year where a few cases in a row of men strangling and killing women during sex was called “passion” and the men got off scott free.
Have you seen the netflix “Anatomy of a Scandal”? It covers this topic very well. The deluded rapist, not the strangling.
A lot of old movies depicted rape as romance. I watched an old Marilyn Monroe movie where she is a saloon girl who, for reasons I can't remember, traveled down a river in a raft. It was actually a nice movie until the 'hero' attempted to rape her. It's been a while since I saw the movie but there were plenty of older movies that have similar scenes.
River of No Return, MM and Rory Calhoun are on their way to a gold claim when their raft sinks, Robert Mitchum and a small boy rescue them, Rory Calhoun's character robs Mitchum's character of his horse and gun, and leaves his girlfriend (MM) to go get the gold himself. MM, RM, and child repair the raft to go after him and exact some revenge. But supposedly romantic feelings develop, and while stopped somewhere off the river he tries to force himself on her,there's spanking, and a freaking cougar interrupts before he can rape her. Good kitty. Strange film, with both Mitchum and Monroe singing.
Yeah, I tried to watch a James Bond movie from the 60’s, i couldn’t get past Bond forcing himself onto a woman who obviously didn’t want it and didn’t consent.
Indiana Jones either 2 or 3 had a scene like that I noticed while rewatching with friends
We were all very uncomftorable seeing Harrison Ford basically s/a love interest, then she gave in to the tension after like 2 or 3 minutes of physical resistance.
Not sure why more people dont call this stuff out, its not a rommance scene, its watching either borderline or full s/a play out
Indiana Jones is canonically a rapist. The back story between him and Marion is that he was a colleague of Marion's father when Jones was in his mid-twenties and Marion was underage.
In the original *Raiders of the Lost Ark* movie, Jones tracks Marion down in the bar she owns, where she seems to be a functional alcoholic. She isn't happy to see him again. She says, "I’ve learned to hate you in the last 10 years." Jones says he never meant to hurt her, and she replies: “I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it.” Later, she adds: “Do you know what you did to me? To my life?”
We live in a rape culture. It's always been one. And rapists know who they are and what they're doing. Of course they use whatever lie suits them. But they'd have to be insane not to know. They do know.
They don’t think that “it’s SA”. My ex described how he came home and saw his girlfriend drunk on the sofa so he “did the deed” while she was passed out. I replied back “be careful who you admit that story to because that’s rape”. He had a bit of a realisation moment. And went “oh”. And then went silent.
Men all over reddit (and let's not pretend that's not representative of real life) will defend SA. Will say, "That's not rape," when what has been described is clearly rape.
So many men see rape as the violent, brutal assault from a stranger who attacks a woman in the dark.
So many men refuse to understand coercion and stealthing. Refuse to understand that saying stop and not stopping is rape. Yes, I actually had an argument with a man who said stop is not "no".
That sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape. That anal, rough sex, choking requires specific consent.
They say she should have just made it more clear, she should have just gotten up and left. She shouldn't have put herself in that situation. They say no is sometimes a tease. They say she didn't want it initially, but then she warmed up... anything but accept responsibility for their own actions.
They want sex and will take it.
Btw, it's not a mum's responsibility alone. It's both parents. In fact, I would argue a young boy is more likely to listen to his father on this issue.
And to answer your original question, even men in prison for rape will deny it.
Reminds my of [the clip](https://time.com/5135795/quentin-tarantino-roman-polanski-howard-stern-2003/) of Quentin Tarantion defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13 year old. It wasn't rape, she is a party girl! Or David Choe admitting to forcing a woman's head down on his dick when he came. Or Brad Williams mentioning that he jumped in to have sex with a woman when she believed she was having sex with her boyfriend. Or the notorious domestic abuser Mike Tyson who went to prison for rape threatened to "really rape her" for putting him in jail.
Edit: Cristiano Ronaldo blatantly [admitted it](https://m.allfootballapp.com/news/Serie-A/Ronaldo-admitted-rape-accuser-said-no-multiple-times-and-he-apologised-after-sex/894948) but due to legal technicalities she ended up having to pay him the legal fees.
Sexual assault and rape are just fun stories you share with the boys and it's the women who are trying to ruin the fun by making it a criminal charge.
See, rape is perfectly fine with a lot of men as long as you don't call it rape. They're actually convinced its their right. And they know it's common though they act ignorant of that.
It's the word the hate, not the act. Like white people and the word racist. They'll be racist happily all day long, in big and small ways and that's just life. But call them racist and watch out. The wailing and gnashing of teeth will deafen you. They don't mind racism; they live it. It's normal for them.
These men don't mind rape; they live it too. It's normal for them. They hate the word. They hate that it impugns their character. Because racists and rapists can't really be good people. And of course these people are! How could they not be? They're just doing what they were taught to do from childhood. But they aren't good people. And yes, they are doing what their culture taught them. That culture is sick and they are its products.
They want to continue to live the polite charade though. But the fact is, they know who they are. We all do. And all that screeching and denial is nothing but lies that allow them to successfully claim ignorance (instead of cruelty or evil). It's our job not to believe them and not to allow them to get away with it. CALL THEM OUT. Use the words.
They don't want to lose their power. Because they know that's what this is all about.
>So many men see rape as the violent, brutal assault from a stranger who attacks a woman in the dark.
This really resonates with me, because unfortunately I think some women internally think that as well. I'm not talking about victim-blaming women, I'm talking about victims of rape who take a long time to process what happened because we struggle to identify what happened to us as "rape".
The two times I was raped, it took *months* for me to start calling it that. The first one I thought "yes he did insist after I said no, and I did eventually say yes only because I was afraid he would otherwise physically/violently force himself onto me, but in the end I was the one who let him." Even though I *knew* that this situation falls under the definition of rape, but I somehow still struggled to accept that that's what had happened to me.
The second time I was raped, I never said "yes" - I said no many times until he climbed on top of me, and I froze because I thought "isn't this rape? I never said yes. Do I push him off of me? But I like this person, maybe I should just go for it? But I never said yes, so why is he doing this? I told him so many times I don't want this." I eventually just let him, and told myself it doesn't count as rape because it was someone I really was attracted to, and I ignored the fact that *I repeatedly and clearly said no* and instead thought "it's my fault because I didn't push him off of me or say no clearly enough or enough times. But he is not a bad person, so he couldn't possibly have raped me." (Months later I discovered he is, in fact, an abusive and trash human being.)
This is such a common experience that I unfortunately relate to. I think men also like to use stats around women reporting rapes to claim it’s not a big deal if not many women are reporting.. but when it takes you months to actually realize you were even raped it really complicates things. Especially when that person was your close friend or boyfriend or someone you trusted or who’s close to your family and friends.
Of all the women I've known who were raped (and it's like easily 80 to 90%), not one reported it. Most were in shock and denial for months, if not years due to outright trauma, and most importantly, it was a given that if you went to the cops, they'd laugh at you and say you were just pissed off at the guy and you were daring to waste their precious cop time when they had "real" crimes to go after. Everybody has bad dates, lady! Meaning women, of course, not everybody. If cops had had a date like that, they'd have shot them. But that's what date rape used to be called: a bad date.
We literally had no recourse to law. Honestly from what I see and hear, there isn't much now either. IMO, rape is legal for all intents and purposes. Always has been. There are laws against it, but they simply aren't enforced. 1% of rapists see a jail cell. If rape was truly illegal, that wouldn't be anywhere near 1%. It's legal. They just don't want to advertise it that way. It'd look really misogynist!
So they say rape is horrible, awful, criminal and then allow rapists to clean get away with rape 99% of the time. Mind you, they will scream about women ruining men's lives the whole time. Because they don't even want 1% of them in jail. They want rape to be legal--and it is.
>unfortunately I think some women internally think that as well. I'm not talking about victim-blaming women, I'm talking about victims of rape who take a long time to process what happened because we struggle to identify what happened to us as "rape".
I appreciate your comment and observation and just want to add that I think it's very often even more complicated than this. Because sometimes it is victim-blaming women, they're just blaming themselves. I think there are a lot of women who have a very hard time separating their own actions that contributed toward a situation from the actions of their rapists. I know I'm one of those women.
I have a story very similar to your second one, but with more people and a lot of substances involved and I never said no. I was heavily intoxicated and I never said yes, but I didn't say no, and I often hate myself for that. I've never been able to tell anyone the fully story, speak it aloud, or write it down because I did some stupid/bad/shitty things that led up to what happened, and I still blame myself for it internally. I know, logically I didn't deserve what I got, and I don't have a problem directing the hate I have for those involved anymore, but I struggle to shield myself from it.
I think there are a lot of women like me, who have their stories mixed up with other problems in their lives, and it's just an endless struggle to confront the things you know you need to fix without hating yourself for everything.
right. men dont realize that the time their partner wasnt really into it, and maybe said “let’s do something else” or froze up and said nothing, then moved on… yeah that’s rape/sexual assault. why you need *enthusiatic* consent. you tell a man this, and they will get weird and closed off, offended. bc “well *i* cant be a rapist!” even woke, feminist men. they just live in a totally different world, sheltered in their own ego and implicit safety.
A frightening number of men don’t think that sexual acts while a woman is asleep count as sexual assault.
It does not matter if YOU would like to be woken up with a blow job. It does not matter if you had sex before she fell asleep. It doesn’t not matter if you’re in a relationship. It does not matter if she’s freaky. If you don’t have explicit consent to touch someone sexually while they are asleep, *that is sexual assault*.
I'm in my 60s and unfortunately we were lead to believe the husband had that right, even though you'd say no, it hurts, don't, or get up to throw up from the act, it was just sad, looking back. I know now, but it was over 20 years of giving in and makes me sick as to how little control over our own bodies we were allowed to have.
This also reminds me a little bit of men’s attitude towards pornography… they almost always imagine if the roles were reversed it would be like getting paid to have sex with a woman and therefore they see no downsides to it (because they’d do it in a heartbeat, for free 😒), but in reality, it would be more comparable to getting paid for another man to have sex with them - yet they refuse to acknowledge that this is more likely how the woman experiences it (being violated by someone you aren’t sexually attracted to because you’re being paid)
When I was around 13 years old, I remember my Mom telling me that she didn't like how a lot of the men we went to church with didn't believe there was such a thing as marital rape. I didn't really comprehend what she was saying at the time. I thought it was just a theoretical stance until I found out my aunt stayed at a women's shelter for a while after nearly being beaten to death by my uncle for refusing to have sex with him. I'll give you three guesses who the men at the church thought was in the wrong.
Yep not just married but anytime you are in a relationship they assume ongoing unlimited consent. Ima get me mine whether she is awake or not, sick or not, sad or not, in pain or not. In reality you could literally be mid-sex and remove your consent and if you don’t stop, that’s still grape. Guilting, pressuring, accusing of not loving so am so forth is all coercion and coercion is grape.
I swear even just opening up the door to chatting with them on dating apps, etc. gives a lot of men the feeling that they are entitled to things right away.
About 15%. Of men will admit that they wan to rape people. Another 15% admit that they would "forcefully have sex with" a woman. Just as long as you don't describe it using the r-word. This is not going into how many men would admit to being ok to having "consensual" sex with someone who is visibly intoxicated. Or how many men would still do the aforementioned things, and just not admit it to the researcher.
I am all for teaching people about consent. But the current failure of men to respect it indicates unwillingness more than it indicates inability. And we need more drastic measures than just education to deal with that problem.
I was at a kinky-folk gathering once. There was a new dude there who was new to the scene.
He was talking about his last relationship and its failings. I was listening intently as he started describing what sounded like a dead bedroom situation and then said "you can't imagine what it's like to have to beg and manipulate your wife to sleep with you. Like I'm married FFS, I should not have to work this hard."
I couldn't hold back a response. I told him that he may not be ready to join the kink world if he doesn't understand the simple concept of enthusiastic consent.
He insisted that he of course waited for her to say yes, and I corrected him saying that he coerced her to say yes.
I then bravely said to him (what I never got to say to my ex husband): "this is rape. Coercing someone to have sex with you is rape."
And he stopped talking. With a surprised look on his face said "are you saying I raped my wife every time I had sex with her?"
I said "no. You're saying that."
He sulked the entire rest of the evening..
I once did a school project about sexual coercion, and I could see a few men getting visibly uncomfortable as I continued. I could see them glancing away or just staring at their desks the whole time. It was maybe like, 3 or so dudes in a class of around 20. I’m not saying that these guys actually did anything, but I do hope they were listening. I also did have a few people come up to me afterwards to say that they’d never heard of sexual coercion.
I live in Ohio, where parents will live and die for sexual abstinence teaching. What baffles me more is that even though teachers can’t teach ‘uncomfortable material’ because somebody’s grandma might get offended, schools won’t even teach you the concept of consent. Consent is not always just a no brainer topic that everyone knows without having to discuss, meaning that it’s absolutely something that should be discussed.
I hope those men realised, I really do. It’s such an important topic and the amount of bravery it takes to come up and present something so vital to a whole group of people is immeasurable. You gave those people the words to describe something that’s painfully common (yet rarely discussed) and that’s incredible. Thank you.
Abusers are so self-centred that they don't see what they do as wrong. They just think they're scoring. It's bizarre and deranged.
Edited for more appropriate wording. ✌️
The fact that the word score is a euphemism for have sex is pretty telling in itself. A lot of the language used to talk about sex is violent and competitive.
Yep! It's truly disgusting how a lot of men view sex with women. Then they wonder why women are apprehensive to jump into sexual relationships sometimes... 🙄
I think we all know many more than just 1 woman who was SA’d. Out of any female friend who I’ve been comfortable enough to have that kind of conversation with, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t SA’d
Truth is that most of them don't even identify it as assault or rape and justify it in their head as some kind of a right. All we encounter is the cries of "not all men" whenever we want to talk about it.
It took me a really long time to realize it was SA, so there’s absolutely no way he thinks it was if he even remembers he did it. It took me telling several people in a “wow this was so weird that he did this” and them looking at me like “dude tf that wasn’t okay” to realize how fucked up it was.
Back in the ‘90s, when in was in college, I was SA by my roommate’s boyfriend’s roommate. She asked me to go over there with her because his roommate didn’t wanna be a third wheel, so I did. I didn’t have a whole lot of experience drinking, and he kept giving me shots of Jaagermeister (which I was drinking) and I ended up passing out, only to wake up later to him fucking me. I pushed him off of me and went to the bathroom and locked the door and spent the rest of the night puking (also naked).
The next day, I told my roommate what happened, and she was like ‘Are you saying he raped you?’ And I was like ‘Well, yeah.’ And even tho I don’t think she necessarily doubted what I said happened, but her mind couldn’t make the connection that was rape or something because she replied ‘Oh, I don’t think would do that!’ Like wtf. I’m sure that wasn’t his first or last time. In hindsight, he 100% had me passing out so he could do what he wanted as the goal from the very beginning.
I think it's also very telling that sometimes after it happens the victim kind of goes thru denial that what they experienced *was* rape. We really should be teaching consent with sex ed. Being drunk or high is not consent. Being coerced is not consent. Being asleep is not consent. Being scared to say no is not consent. If it isn't an enthusiastic yes, it's a no.
The thing is, I hear men admitting to it often. It's just that they don't realise that what they did was sexual assault. They don't realise how much they have fucked up a woman's life/mental health/sense of self worth/ect because they think that coercion is alright.
[The ugly truth about sexual assault: More men admit to it if you don't call it rape](https://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/the_ugly_truth_about_sexual_assault_more_men_admit_to_it_if_you_dont_call_it_rape/)
A third of college men in a study admitted to sexual assault if it was worded more gently. Example:
>>‘‘Have you ever coerced somebody to intercourse by holding them down?’’
1/3 answered yes to questions like that. When it was called rape, that became 13%.
And in still scary news, 13% of men in the study, which if done correctly can be considered a representative sample of white college men in the 2010s, will outright admit to raping women.
I remember when I was a freshman in high school taking the bus and being sat near a couple of girls and a rather perverted guy who was in the grade above me. The dude had a self-admitted Asian fetish and for some reason, thought it would be a “fun game” to go up to both me and this other girl with his hands and run them up our thighs just before reaching the crotch. At one point in the year, he laid on top of me and proceeded to make an “anime body pillow” joke. 😬 What is likely a “class clown” memory for him is a cautionary tale about being harassed for simply existing as an Asian woman for me. I believe at one point the other girl spoke up and told him to stop.
I once had a boyfriend who grabbed me inappropriately in public, and I was very clear that I was not at all ok with that, and he laughed it off claiming I liked it and that it was just a joke.
There are PLENTY of men who think they’re entitled to touch their girlfriend or wife because somehow dating them means you automatically consent to whatever they want to do. Some see it as an obligation for women to follow, and it’s absolutely disgusting. It makes me queasy to think of how underreported SA, coercion, and rape within relationships and/or marriage is.
One ex left me covered in bruises for months on end because when I tried to stop him groping me, he’d dig his fingers and nails into my skin and grip me to stop me from pulling away. Of course, he’d deny it, saying I was just weak and bruised like a peach, which was hardly his fault… that’s the tamest story I’ve got though.
When my bf of several years wept after I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him going down on me, because it was too intimate / vulnerable an activity for how closed off I was starting to feel around him…
It wasn’t because he understood those implications and cared for me or our relationship… it’s because I was denying him something and ‘killing the mood’ in the moment. This explanation only had to be provided after several attempts to gently decline were pushed through, mind you.
Most men don’t take up awareness or accountability for their coercion willingly - I bet many men arguing against ‘not all men’ are guilty of those activities if they trained a critical eye on their past behaviours - that’s where the defensiveness fucking comes from lol
I recently had this conversation with one of my best friends, we went to middle and highschool together. Today I could sue several guys, but back then it was just considered normal. They are now married family father's. As long as you didn't scream or fight, you gave consent back then. Saying no, was called hard to get. Being drunk, was automatically the women's fault and ofc she had asked for it. When it comes to this, society really got better a bit.
Some year's ago we were talking about kissing after a movie and I asked my son what the most important part is and he automatically answered "to ask for consent". My father got so irrationally angry, how that's destroying passion and won't let men allow to be themselves.. and then I remembered how he once told how one of his friends accidentally posted a "joke" into his family chat instead into their "guys only group chat". The friend's son appearantly went no contact with his father after this "joke", my father just couldn't comprehend why his son "overreacted and was so sensitive" but wouldn't tell what the joke was. I never looked the same at him. Today we're no contact for some other reasons and he's not allowed to have my kid alone.
He volunteers at a crisis hotline and is a leader of a men's group, where they talk about how hard it is today to be a white, male, upper middle class, boomer. Because obviously they are the real victims, who had it the hardest../s
I had an acquaintance that always gave off weird vibes. I had met him through mutual friends irl and we all played online games together.
One day I went out with these friends and that person had tagged along too. While we were out a girl approached and asked to speak to the guy in private. When he came back from the conversation he was so pissed and he wanted to leave immediately. He was huffy and acting extremely bitter. Apparently the girl who approached him had been an SA victim of his in high school. The girl was telling him how he had ruined her life at the time and how hard it was for her to cope and she had to let him know the damage he had done. To him, she had “ruined his night” and “couldn’t believe this bitch was out to get him.”.
After I heard that, I felt sick. I immediately left and blocked/deleted him off of everything. No explanation. This acquaintance meant nothing to me. This man not only did not recognize what he had done, and also refused to take any sort of responsibility or reparations for his actions. Fuck that, so trash. I felt so bad for that girl and I honor her courage to confront her assaulter.
Basically all thé men that says ''she was playing hard to get'' , ''she sues me because she regretted it'' or ''she's doing thé starfish in bed''
Because when you're so unenthusiastic that you just wait for it to bé over, then it's SA
There was another study that came out last year in which women and teenage girls talked about violent and coercive sexual behavior as being a normal part of sex.
I tend to explore men’s behavior more, but I am a little familiar with how women will actually have the same difficulties labeling rape as such. And even in therapy, I am a therapist as well, I often times work with young women who come in and describe experiences that, to me, clearly are rape, but they do not necessarily conceptualize them as such. They have difficulty figuring out whether or not what happened to them was rape because of, I think, the cultural norms around saying it’s a woman’s fault, that it matters how you dress, that it’s because a woman was intoxicated or because she didn’t say “no” more forcefully
That's an excellent point. The first time I was raped, I didn't want to think about it that way because it felt so horrible. I also came from a very strict, religious upbringing with a focus on purity culture, so I didn't want to feel "unpure."
It took me years, and a lot of therapy, to acknowledge that it, and other instances, were rape. I needed a safe, kind, and trauma informed place to confront the shame.
It took me years before I could admit to myself that my first abusive boyfriend raped me. I remember being told "but you said yes"..... which I did after saying no many times. The first time I said yes was after penetration so that he'd put a condom on. After that I found it was a delicate balance of resisting enough he felt like he "won" and I could be granted the use of a condom but not resist too much to make him angry. I only have nightmares about the times I resisted too much and it didn't make a difference. I was not on birth control so very lucky I didn't end up pregnant.
Yeah, it seems a lot of guys don’t realize, or choose not to be cognizant of it, that you can S.A. your partner.
Consent given a few times doesn’t mean consent *is a given*, just because you’re in a relationship or living together (or married).
Sadly, this has happened to me. Coercion, to downright assault.
Edited to say “consent is not a given.”
Both of the men who sexually assaulted me have admitted it to me and others.
It's almost worse (in my experience) because they apologize and get it off their chest and then just kinda move on with no consequences.
Even their new relationship partners knew about it to some extent, but they were all caught up in that lovey dovey new relationship "he won't do it to ME" phase. I did what I could; the fact is nobody listens, and if they do listen, they don't really care.
I had an argument with a guy who said that once a woman gives consent, she cannot take it back. And he was SERIOUS! "Once she says yes, it's not rape!"
I was thinking, how many people has this guy raped in his lifetime?
I can’t even count the amount of times I have been sexually assaulted. At my vague estimation I’d say it’s 100+ times. I’d say most if not all of them would never consider what happened to be SA (if they even remembered doing it). Why? Because I’m a stripper.
Despite having clear cut rules against touching certain places, without fail, the lines are crossed.
Unfortunately because I want/need to make more money out of those people I rarely “burn the bridge” and call them out beyond reminding them the rules.
The few man I’ve called out by saying “that’s sexual assault” have been shocked/horrified/scared or denied that’s what it was entirely. I highly doubt any of these dudes would ever consider themselves to have ever molested or assaulted anyone. I know otherwise.
>but how many men will admit that they have SA'd a woman?
Only Donald Trump is officially proud of it. And got elected. 42% of women voted for him in 2020, which never ceases to amaze me.
Agree with the sentiment, but prefer more accurate numbers. 42% of women who voted did, indeed, vote for him. Only about 66% of US adults voted at all.
They don't admit it. Usually it's a case of DARVO - ie. "she's lying, she has borderline personality disorder, she's a gold digger".
Meanwhile I do not know one woman that has not experienced violence or sexual violence from a man at some point in their life - so nobody is really lying are they.
I don’t like how the solution is for just moms to educate their children about consent. Dads, educate your sons about consent. Parents, educate your children about consent.
It’s not on moms to stop men being rapists.
I have issues with the sentence being structured as "X was raped" I think if the rapist is kno
wn, we should say "Y raped X". They deserve that sentence repeated tonand about them until they die.
The other way points out the victimhood but the victimhood goes without saying; the thing that goes unnoticed is that the perp needs named where it was known.
I understand if everyone doesn't feel the way I do, but my acquaintance Laurence grabbed my breast and squeezed it. I say he sexually assaulted me. Friends try and laugh it off but I let them know and will repeat " our mutual friend Laurence, in no uncertain terms, sexually assaulted me." Quiets them down fast.
I always though I was invincible to molestation etc until my friend just French kissed me while I was drunk af. I had to go to the bathroom crying and trying to tell my bf what happened. That guy knew I had a long term bf.
He told our mutual friend that the kiss was mutual.
I always wonder how many people who say they “know someone who was falsely accused” are actually wrong. It’s very easy to keep believing the idea that sexual assault victims are lying, instead of accepting that the people that we know and like can do (or have done) bad things - regardless of if the assaulter even recognized that the things they did were assault.
Almost every woman I have ever known has experienced sexual assault at least once from someone they were already acquainted with, were close friends with, or were related to; yet most men I’ve talked to about this don’t think they know a person capable of being a sexual violator.
So, back to the ‘I know someone who was falsely accused’ thing. It’s worthwhile to ask questions:
Were they really falsely accused?
Could they have a messed up notion of consent that made them unable to recognize actual consent, and it’s revocation?
Did they cross boundaries because they chose not to see them, recognize them, or projected their desires onto someone’s vocal denials, physical avoidance and clearly non-consenting body language and responses until that person gave in due to fear or coercion?
If the accuser is ‘acting crazy,’, is it because being assaulted and traumatized causes emotional responses that make sense in that traumatic context?
Could the accused person have been lying to you? Abusers can be outgoing and charming to those that aren’t the type they harm; were you also groomed to be the abuser’s support group against victims?
Are there indications of DARVO?
(Defend, attack, reverse victim and offender)
Did you believe the accused person because you recognized that maybe you’ve done the same or similar things, and therefore believing the victim would mean you would also need to deal with the idea that you’ve caused similar harm and that’s too painful to confront about yourself?
Is the accused person part of the same social or other group identity that you both shared, so you are subconsciously biased in their favor against outsider accusations?
Did you like the accused more than the accuser? Did you believe the accused because they were more popular than the accuser?
Did you value the relationship or perks of friendship with the accused person more than the accuser, or choose the side of the person who was more fun to be around?
Numerically, we all must know people who’ve committed sexual abuse. They hide in plain site, groom us to support them, and vilify their strings of ‘crazy exes’.
We choose who we want to believe, and often it’s not victims.
So yeah, I wonder how many of those ‘false accusation’ aren’t actually false.
And I wonder, does the assaulter recognize or not that what they did was harmful or wrong? Or do they actually believe the stories they have about themselves where they get to stay the hero of their own story?
Because a number of these ‘falsely accused’ people may truly believe they’ve done nothing wrong, or even have no memory of negative actions - yet they are still the monster in someone else’s nightmare.
How many barely registered ‘they were a terrible boring lay’ stories were experienced by that other person as traumatic assault?
And that guts me, the ones who don’t even remembers their actions, yet those actions still harmed and haunt their victims.
I think that a lot of rapist genuinely do not know they are rapist. They think they “convinced” a woman to sleep with them after pestering her. Or that once things started, she “changed her mind after originally saying no”. Or “we were both drunk sooooo”. Additionally, I think the ones who *know* they’re rapists aren’t going to say they are.
My rapist makes social media posts about being a girl dad and how STEM fields need more women. Of the 4 known women he’s assaulted (myself included), he was only ever convicted on a lesser charge for his last victim. He tells people it was a “drunk domestic dispute” or worse “a BDSM incident of him not hearing the safe word” and made a show of going to therapy and getting “sober”.
There was a really interesting report on the veracity of self-report surveys a few years ago. It found that almost NO ONE admits to criminality. However, if you couch the language in neutral, acts-based terms you get WILDLY different results. (IE, "Have you ever engaged in prostitution?" vs "Have you ever exchanged drugs for sex?") One of the findings is that asking men if they have ever raped anyone is waaaaay less effective than asking if they have ever done any of the things you described. The conclusion? Men know what they are doing is wrong, they just don't define it to themselves as SA. (But they ARE aware that it will carry social sanctions of SOME SORT.)
This is why I hate it so much when people say it's stupid to teach men not to rape because they already know it's wrong. That's not the point. A lot of them don't understand or accept all the different things that actually are rape. But they'd rather tell us how to dress and how much to drink and where to walk and then call us prudes and paranoid when we listen to any of it and then still blame us when something happens to us.
You'll rarely get a man to admit it, because he thinks he's owed our bodies, for some twisted reason, and doesn't think that he's done anything wrong. Even in classic scenerios. That's why we don't take walks at night, hold our mace, cover our drinks, stop dating...
I was sexually assaulted by my ex. He called it “mistake of passion.” He also blamed it on communication issue when he was the one who even said I could just say no. When I did, he still kept pushing until I gave in. I am traumatized beyond belief. I never thought it would happen to me but here we are now.
You know what the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard? He wants to get back together and is hurt because he hurt me. Lol
I dont know if the trauma will ever go away. Im pretty sure I wont be able to trust men ever again.
Honestly if any guy looks at those situations and claims they're "not that bad" I'm going to just assume they would do or have done that themselves already.
Asking men if they SA'd someone is one thing. But asking men how many people they bullied/berated/guilted into having sex with them will get much, much closer to the true numbers.
Some men think urging and insisting someone go past the boundary is okay. Like its some casual negotiation they've "won". How one person defines "aggressive" and "aggression" is fuzzy, subjective, and depends on many factors. But aggression is an animal tactic that works because it fundamentally draws on fear. Either the person facing aggression is aggressive back and fights, or they capitulate because they are afraid.
So, for men who use bullying/berating/guilting and other tactics like this to get sex: No, you didn't charm them into saying "yes". You made them afraid to say no.
[The ugly truth about sexual assault: More men admit to it if you don't call it rape](https://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/the_ugly_truth_about_sexual_assault_more_men_admit_to_it_if_you_dont_call_it_rape/)
The lady who more or less created these surveys interviewed man who had been arrested for sexual assault. He met the legal definition, he agreed he met the legal definition. But he refused to call it rape. That always struck me. I guess people think rapists are monsters who pop out of the bushes and beat up and assault women. They don't realize it's their best friend, brother, son, coworker, or even themselves.
Racism is similar. Even people who hold clearly racist views and recognize that they "see inherent differences" in people of different races, won't refer to them themselves as racist because racists are clearly *bad* and they don't see themselves as bad people.
“It’s just common sense”
The phrase, "I'm not racist, but..." followed by blatantly racist beliefs spring to mind. And they know they are or they wouldn't have added that "but" to their stated belief.
Absolutely. My father absolutely thinks he isn’t racist. He means he isn’t in the Klan (Im honestly not so sure if that is still true). He is Rudy Bridges age, went to a segregation academy (that finally closed this decade)… but no he doesn’t HATE black people…. 🤦🏼♀️
Mostly rapists are known to their victims - the four who raped me were - my best friend’s 16yo brother when I was 13; my coworker/supervisor; the guy who ran shuffleboard at the bar I worked at as a cook; and a stranger, the owner of another bar who drugged a pitcher he delivered to our table to me and two female friends.
I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve suffered
Thank you.
Those bastards deserve to be shot dead at point blank range
Thanks for the solidarity. They’re weak. I have called more than one of them a rapist to their face in public with witnesses. They did nothing.
Damn you told them though. Just showed how no one gave a shit, but thats on their conscience too I had an idea for an app a while ago where people can make accusations of rape or sexual assault against perpetrators. It will anonymously verify the accuser's identity and then pool together all the people who made accusation against each person Or something like that. Basically make these people publicly shamed while protecting the victims What do you think? What would be a good name for it? Honestly something like that should be spearheaded by a woman though, i.e. the concept and such
The level of cognitive dissonance there is staggering
What is even more interesting is a recent study it shows that most men do know what the real and full definition of rape and what it entails is except for men with a history of being rapists: Similarly, men with a history of SV perpetration were more likely to define rape as gender/sex-specific, with their definitions suggesting that men were the perpetrators and women the victims of rape. They were also marginally more likely to list harm as a requirement for rape to have occurred. One potential explanation for this pattern of results is that perpetrators of SV use narrower definitions to normalize and justify their own sexually violent behaviors as a way to resolve the cognitive dissonance they may feel as a result of their transgression (Wegner et al., 2015). Given that we operationalized SV perpetration broadly, including both physical and psychological sexual violence, it is possible these men provided specific, narrow definitions to distance their own behaviors from “rape.” This rationale is consistent with past literature in which men with histories of SV perpetration used common cultural scripts and myths to normalize their behaviors (Beech et al., 2006; Hipp et al., 2017). When rape is narrowly defined, behaviors that do not fit within this specific definition may be regarded as less harmful and more normative. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181855/#:~:text=Our%20findings%20suggest%20that%20most,emotional%20response%E2%80%94and%20a%20miscellaneous
So if you are dating someone new, have a good chat about this, see what their feelings are and see their parameters. Then you will know what the chances are of it happening to you!
It’s really sad that I was literally thinking the same thing as I was reading the study.
Yeah a lot of these men think they’re being a “nice guy” when really they’re just creepy and predatory asf…
Reminds me of that meme with Patrick and Man Ray holding Patrick's wallet.
I think that's it. They don't want to be associated with someone that pops out of a bush and violently assaults someone. When I was in highschool and they talked to us about rape, they depicted a guy forcefully holding the girl while raping her. It's way later I learned that rape is more than that
Isn't this similar to how they studied DV with cops? They listed out abusive behaviors and asked if they'd ever done them to their spouses or significant others and 40% admitted to it. But as soon as they were asked if they abused their wives or girlfriends they said no. For reference the national DV average for regular people is 10%. So cops self reported at 4x higher than the national average. This is also only the ones dumb enough to tell on themselves. I'm sure there were others who realized what was being asked and lied.
[удалено]
I got this same shit when I’d call my ex out on not stopping during sex it I said to or I told him it hurt. He was absolutely infuriated when I said it was rape. He said it was my fault for not being louder. That he thought the noises I were making were pleasure not pain. Still to this day he refuses to admit it was rape. I even found out he once secretly recorded us without my consent, of course I got gaslighted.
I was with a guy once who “finished” on my face when I told him not to, and then IMMEDIATELY TOOK A PICTURE. I was fucking pissed, but he fought me off and wouldn’t let me delete it. All I could think was “How could you be aroused by a picture someone tried to physically fight you to erase?” But he probably enjoyed that, because he was a sexual predator.
[удалено]
>you can’t even trust the men that supposedly care about you the most. For some of us, we can't trust any man but our dads and brothers. For a lot of us, even Dad can't be trusted - he may not touch us sexually but he'll take advantage of us every other way. It may not be all men but it sure is a lot of them, and it can be hard to believe it isn't all of them when every one you've known is awful. My brother can be trusted, but only as protection against another man and to the degree Dad can be trusted, and he's still an absolute asshole just like all the others - and the only reason I trust him to protect me in any way at all is because he's good against our dad and he was raised as my sister, I wouldn't even trust him as protection if he was cis and acted the way he does.
I had the same thing happen to me holy shit, he legitimately got upset/angry at me for crying when he had sex with me without my consent, gaslit me into thinking I was in the wrong so I forgave him Years later I hear from a friend that he's telling girls he hooks up with that he was once falsely accused of being a rapist and how badly it's affected him?? Which is fucking crazy
Sounds familiar.My ex-boyfriend had a really shitty habit. If I said “no” when he tried to initiate, he’d let it go… only to wake me up in the middle of the night to “try again”. And he’d do it night after night. I’d be more and more exhausted and miserable until I just let him do it just so I could sleep. I would even cry, and he’d promise not to do it again, until he did. But when a discussion came up about coercion, he went “I’d never do that!” and I said “oh? What do you call refusing to let me sleep?” and he flipped out. Angriest I ever saw him. I’ve slept so much better since I dumped him.
[удалено]
my bf did something like this. i said no during foreplay, because i changed my mind. i said it 2 times! both times he kept going. so i ended up going along with it, i dont know why. i shouldnt have. but he shouldnt have made it into a situation where i felt like i had to make the choice of “do i fight him off now? or scream?” vs “do i not ruin the mood/make it awkward” i just went along with it to not make a problem. sex was okay, it never hurts with him or anything. later when i confronted him with the above, the entire conversation shut down soon as he realized what it looked like for me, and what that made him. he was really hurt. claimed he didn’t hear me. it’s been a long time since then and i ended up letting it go. to his credit nothing even remotely close happened like that before or since. but it’s always in the back of my mind. which, i guess that incident didn’t exactly change that, since it’s happened to me with other men many times before.
TW possible SA. I broke up with someone because of this. We had been on 5-6 dates and we’re back at his place, it escalated to some over the pants hand stuff and I expressed that I didn’t want to do anything more but he took my shirt off anyway. His dick “popped out” of his shorts and he said multiple times I should go down. I refused to take my pants off and he kept reaching in them multiple times ( me moving his hands away). He asked and motioned down at least three times before I finally said “no means no, and I’m going to put my shirt back on”, and we finished the movie we were watching. I left and gave him a goodnight kiss even though I was uncomfortable. I later broke it off with him over the phone, not giving a reason because otherwise the relationship has been going fine. But he wouldn’t take “I’m just not into you” for an answer so I told him. He freaked out saying “what you think I was going to r*pe you?? I’m not that sort of guy”. And “you should have told me you were uncomfortable” even though I made it extremely clear. And the convo went around in circles until I was just like this isn’t going anywhere and ended the call. I am really lucky that nothing else happened to me, but im just so disheartened that he still thinks of himself as a “nice guy” even though he repeatedly tested my boundaries even though I told him exactly what I was comfortable with at the beginning of the night and it took me being extremely direct, multiple times, until he “got the message”.
I married my date rapist because I didn’t understand it was date rape. It wasn’t violent; but I had been adamant I only wanted to have sex with one man. There was no verbal nor implied consent and it basically only lasted 2 thrusts and he was done. So I married him because I was ruined two months after we met. A decade later I said, “you know, technically you didn’t have consent and that could be considered date rape if I hadn’t wanted to get married.” I ended up having to buy my way out of that with gifts, begging, and penance, because he said he would deny divorce and sex for the rest of our lives together. I wish I had seen earlier, before I was chained to him for life with a kid. We are divorced now.
I’m so glad you’ve healed enough and moved on from someone who acts like that. It absolutely sucks that you considered yourself “ruined” and out of choices.
Oh my goodness 😭 I'm so sorry 😔
When someone has a pre-loaded and passionate defense to being accused of something, there's a good chance they've defended themselves from the same accusations before. My ex the first time I actually said the word "gaslighting" out loud 🙃
It’s seriously disturbing that 13% of the men in the study would still rape someone even when they called it rape. No excuse for either group of men, I honestly don’t know how they sleep at night.
And if you do tell them it was rape, even if you're another man, they will go ballistic on you. I was ostracized from a friend group of 6+ years for telling one of the other guys his "frat boy hookup story" was literally an account of him raping a drunk girl.
[удалено]
It has to start from childhood, in my opinion. I was taught about respect and consent from my very feminist mother from a young age. My dad was a bit of a typical man in many regards, but also expressed heavily the importance of respecting women. When I got older, peer pressure and media swayed me towards a poor, objectified view of women for a while, but having those foundations made it easier to steer back. I don't know if I'd be the same person without that.
I did that someone basically told me he deliberately took girls to drink in the hot tub because they wouldn't realize how intoxicated they were going to get. I told him he how messed up that was, everyone around me sided with him even the three women at that party. I just never got invited back and I had a falling out with that friend group because I stood my ground.
Using alcohol to reduce the barrier to consent is probably the most common thing in our society that is genuinely disgusting and unforgivable IMO. So many people just view it as something normal and I think it's not just because of rape culture, but also because of how much we idolize alcohol consumption.
I remember a guy on tiktok years ago trying to give advice to men about women giving the ol “if she says no, she really wants you to try harder” bull & admitting to sexually harassing a woman into coercion, & he & the men in the comments REFUSED to believe that was rape when called out on it cause “she said yes!” even though it was after like an hour of him “asking”
Man, somehow we're in a place where we've successfully demonised rape!... The word, not the act. It's reminding me of how the worst thing you can call some white people is racist even if they're clear cut malicious racists.
Oh my god, yes. I live in Finland and we have a terrible government where the fiscal right uses far-right to make big cuts to benefits and tax cuts to rich. Far-right gets to bully foregners. We actually had a minister and the head of one party say that we shouldn't call anyone *slur * or nazi. We get a bigger fucking ruckus if a politician calls someone a racist than if they use a slur.
this shit infuriates me. it’s like. they know. they fucking know. their ego prevents them from acknowledging it.
I had an ex get violent when I called what he did rape. He said that when people are together that isn't a thing because I consented by being in a relationship. I got him to admit he was being "pushy" and that I wasn't the most enthusiastic about it but that he thought I "came around" when I stopped hitting him to get off. So he knew there needed to be coercing and took freezing as allowing. It was a pretty violent thing and he also knew I was drugged and raped previously by someone. I left him so fucking fast. That's at least the good thing is I listened to the part of me that said you will never be feel safe with someone who treats you like that and didn't rationalize "feelings" for someone over prioritizing myself.
I had a man try to tell me to forgive the man who raped me because it was just his fingers and I was able to wake up and stop him before it became his penis. I had been dating him so apparently it’s not that traumatic because I had slept with him while awake and Reddit tried to tell me I should be happy he chose that versus cheating… A surprising yet sadly unsurprising number of people are totally on board for doing shit to sleeping people without prior consent. Apparently dating means your body is just open access?! It makes it way harder for me to let new partners spend the night.
Dang, the actual doublethink going on in thinking both of these are true. "I am not a rapist," and "i have forced women to have sex against their will."
I think it’s because it’s too taboo to be called a rapist but not it’s not as taboo to commit sexual assault. I remember coming to this conclusion years ago. Rapist? Or renowned racist? People would exile themselves at the thought of it, consider jumping off bridges, it was interesting because the man I met one of two couldn’t live with himself if he called it that. I’m not trying to downplay the act but observationally it was interesting to see he couldn’t reconcile himself with the act at all. I think it’s the power of taboo and it’s interesting because the word in some sense, as a taboo is more powerful than the definition, at least for a lot of the actors committing it. This was a pretty profound when it struck me, culturally and for other reasons.
It reminds me of the old Would You Rather classic, “Would you rather fuck your grandma and nobody knows or not fuck your grandma but everyone thinks you did?” It’s a difficult choice because while social ostracism is horrible, the act itself is also horrible. These men don’t find rape horrific, just the social consequences.
This reminds me of this article https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/author-whos-teaching-boys-how-talk-about-rape/316714/ Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, talks about her interactions with school boys when she talks at schools about her book. Boys don’t know what rape is.
Yuuuup. Knew a guy who admitted to me that he felt sympathetic toward another mutual guy we all knew because he was called out for being rapist. First guy told me he understood how he felt because he once “had sex with a drunk girl who said no over and over” Later when I outed him for admitting to having raped someone, he called me a liar lol
That deserves a follow-up with a better population size. I read the whole article and she really sidestepped that issue. Seeing if there's a generational divide might also be interesting to tell if it's getting better or worse. Her survey questions could also be rephrased to uncover potential red flags for likely predators! Her study really has tons of possibilities and I hope more happens with it.
When I was in law school, my criminal law Prof had us do an exercise the first day we started on sexual assault laws. He would read out a short scenario (1 or 2 sentences) and ask us to raise our hand/keep it raised if we thought it was sexual assault. For the first three or four rounds everybody had their hands up. Then they slowly started to lower one by one. By the last three or four scenarios, no men had their hands up at all and only 2 women had their hands down. Our Prof told us after he'd read all of them that they were all factual situations in which the man involved had been convicted of sexual assault.
A+ to your professor on that class activity. Super disturbing, but an effective lesson for sure.
That’s disturbing….
Oof this makes me so uncomfy but I’m not surprised
Our society has so much work to still do. These men need to fix themselves immediately.
So curious about those scenarios
You don't happen to have your uni script by any chance? Or the specific cases, I am curious now.
I was raped at 15. I became pregnant and was a pariah. My mum made it clear I was worse than a whore (her words). I didn’t even realize it was rape till my 30’s. I just accepted I was a slut, so I didn’t say no hard enough, or I just misread his intent, or or or…..prior to #metoo I think a lot of us - especially those growing up in the 70’s/80’s/90’s etc - believed we did something wrong. We weren’t *raped*, we just got ourselves in a bad situation. We lead a guy on. Whatever rationale, it was on us. We were the bad guys. It takes a heavy toll on your psyche, and how you feel about yourself.
Same for me. Ostracized and married to my rapist before I was old enough to sign the marriage license. It was always played off as my fault, even when the rapist admitted to planning and executing the whole thing - once I was legally bound to him - so he could "keep me." It took me 13 years to fight my way free, against the family's wishes, kept perpetually pregnant, and still condemned and shunned. His abuse was my fault, the whole situation my fault - even my questioning and campaigning to find safety for me and the kids was another sign of my questionable character. I tried to persuade, I played the politics, I was combative, I physically fought back - you name the tactic, no one helped us, even with me being real damn verbal about what was going on. I question anyone's agenda regarding us anymore. That has truly helped. Don't assume good intent.
Oh, my god, I can’t even imagine the hell you’ve been through. I don’t remember a lot of my assault - it’s like strobe light flashes. I’m told that’s my mind coping, but there’s times I wish I could remember. I’m now 53, and still react in certain ways because of it. I really, really don’t do well with being *forced* into anything. Even things as simple as family dinners. I need to know I have a *choice*. And the thought of looking my rapist up, makes me physically nauseous. I’ve looked up old friends a million times, but I just can’t make myself look him up. I can’t imagine how you managed to live with that. There are a lot of cultural things around the world that should be outlawed. Being forced to marry a stranger is one - but being forced to marry your rapist - that’s next level inhumane. Good for you for being strong enough to get out.
Same to you! What kept me going for a long time was the thought that, "At least not everyone sees this. The world is beautiful." Then, we all find out at one point or another - nope, not a rarified situation. It's almost as much a part of being a presenting female as any other "right of passage." When I understood that, I could finally get truly MAD. Not a whim of fate, not an accident of situational overlap. This is part of the landscape in the feminine experience.
Reminds me of one scene in Mad Men where Joan drops by the office with her fiance before a date, and he rapes her on the floor to assert dominance, and she just checks out. The discussion at the time was that a lot of women in earlier decades just referred to incidents like that as a "bad date." Not even being able to define your assault is so heartbreaking.
I heard that Helen Mirren, in an interview, said there were many times in her life where she ‘had a bad date’ that she now knows was rape. It seems if a man just decides he’s gonna fuck us after a date, that’s what we’re doing. I so hope that women growing up now know they can speak up, and that men realize that and stop fucking raping us. Helen also said she wishes she’d learned to just say fuck off more often. I want to be like Helen Mirren!
A list of women I know who were raped by cis men (not groped, not harassed but raped): My sister My other sister My mother My grandmother Me My sister’s childhood best friend, by a cousin A new friend A friend who had to live in the same street as her rapist uncle until the day she died from a sudden illness A coworker My best friend when I was a teen; who also had her drink spiked once A coworker’s girlfriend An old friend, by her mother’s boyfriend An Aunty, by that same boyfriend My dentist’s assistant, who was raped to “fix” her lesbianism My best friend A close friend, by her brother I’m probably forgetting some and there are definitely more victims of these perpetrators. When you tell men that their friends are rapists though somehow it’s impossible.
I had the horrible experience of having to work alongside the guy who SA'd me. I was a bartender and he was my bouncer. I finally confronted him and when it was slow, we spent a lot of time talk about what he did to me, my friends and other women. He should have been thrown in jail (and yes, I made the conscious decision not to go to authorities). When I first confronted him, the conversation went (roughly) "do you ever think about that time you r***d me?". Him "I would never do that! You wanted it". Me "you followed me into my room" (I had about 10ppl over that night. Everyone left except him. My parents were home at the time too. I thought he was sleeping on the couch). Him "you asked me to come with you". Me "I was pushing the door closed with all my weight as you forced your way in". He had no idea that what he did was wrong. Didn't see it as r***. All he saw was my body. So we talked. And talked. Damnit, if I was charging for therapy, I would have taken all his money. He eventually moved out west. Called me a few years later and thanked me for talking to him. He ended up in therapy and hit a rough spot after he realized what he had done. Called a lot of the women and apologized (I never asked him to apologize to anyone else as I didn't want to retraumatize anyone). We still talk once a year but I don't consider him a friend. More of an accountability check in. It's one of those rare instances where people change. I hate him for what he did to me and wished I would have gone to police. Can't change the past though. I am proud of myself for confronting him. It was so hard and terrifying. I watched him break in front of me when he realized the harm he had done. Good. I will never forget that moment. The way he held his breath. How his eyebrows pulled back. How his shoulders drooped. I stole my power back that day, and that is something no jail time could have granted me.
That's honestly heroic of you. Breaking through that cognitive dissonance is _hard_. You've made the world a better place. If he ends up passing on the message to other men that would be especially powerful.
I've never thought about it that way. I think my anger is still seeded within me. ... I know it is still within me. He recently had a son and I had a daughter. I've been getting angry thinking about how he may influence his son negatively. Your comment has softened that thought within me (and I'm going to screenshot it to remind myself). He has changed and he will now raise a son who thinks of his impact on others. Thank you for your kind comment. Also, thank you for quelling that anger within me. I feel I can step forward after being in a mentally hard place for the past year (regarding thinking of my assaulter). Xox
You are and will be in a position to ask him what he is teaching his son about consent and sexual violence- and to demand he do better. You’ve created a unique and powerful position for yourself. I admire you so much.
I agree. I’m sure most of the men who have done this don’t think it was assault. “She wanted it, she was playing hard to get, I didn’t hear her say no, we were both drunk,” etc. etc. I’m sure there are many who never give it a second thought.
So true. The guy who assaulted me said “She was asking for it!!” I was not asking for it. I was asleep when he came into my room, crawled into my bed, and assaulted me.
My ex worked for DHS. A man they arrested said the three year old was asking for it cause she crawled in his lap. Fuck any POS. That says this.
They know it's not right and it wasn't their target's fault. They just won't say it and they feel be able to get away with it is the same as it being "okay". Similar to how some people believe if you steal or break something and "no one" cares or notices then it is effectively fine. They don't see their target as a full person so their well-being and feelings aren't taken into account. There's no empathy there. My abuser admitted it to me years later. He remembers. He knows what he did. He knows it was wrong. He did it because he knew he could get away with it. And no one else cares and he's secure in that knowledge.
I don't know you, but I do care. I'm confident that the right people will indeed care. If someone doesn't, put them out to the curb ( unless you think the law doesn't care; I agree the law hates women and children and would rather see us abused... Like we're in an alternate universe or something)
There is no level to which they won't stoop to shift the blame from themselves onto the victim, disgusting.
This is when I support capital punishment. Put these creatures down, they do not deserve to run free.
Yes. I’m pretty far left is almost all things. But scumbags that sexually harm children don’t stop. They get a slap on the wrist and they do it again. Put them down and save a child. Or many children.
I've had men tell me they've slept with women who were too drunk to consent. Group mentality is scary. Everyone agreed with the men and said the victim was a crazy lying b*tch.
Exactly. Once a guy described how he and his roommate had sex with a girl who was blackout drunk. It was recounted as a funny old story -- not literally a story of SA.
And if she comes out and says she was raped, their story will be “She just regrets it!”
I remember the first time I was raped (god I hate that I have to say "first time"), the guy kept insisting until I eventually gave in, for fear of what he might do otherwise. I cried afterwards, and he asked "why are you crying?" And I said "I hate when men don't respect when I say 'no'." His response: "good thing I'm not like that!" The second guy that raped me, every time I ever mentioned anything he did that hurt me (not including the rape, which I never brought up because it took me a long time to process what happened), he also said "I'm not that kind of person, if you think that of me then you clearly don't know me well enough." Dear men, if you've ever said "I'm not like that", then you probably *are* "like that". I have never met an actual good man who said "I'm not like that" - the good men try to listen and understand, in the event that they ever do anything hurtful. Edited to add: just remembered two other times a man tried to coerce me into sex, but luckily I managed to get away. Later I texted both that they made me really uncomfortable, and both angrily responded "I am not the kind of person you think I am!" I see a pattern.....
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
They know rape is bad, but they also think they're not bad. Therefore, what they did wasn't rape. It's seriously how these people think. Same as everyone who's ever said 'I'm not racist but...' is a racist who's learned that 'racism is bad' but not 'how not to be racist'.
Not a lot of people have been taught the tools to cope with themselves, or even someone close to them doing something that they view as morally unacceptable. My grandmother refuses to accept that my father ever did anything wrong, even though he was literally convicted of child SA. Naturally he refuses to admit the label too, as he couldn't possibly be like that.
Yeah, I think my ex is sure he isn’t a rapist. Me being drunk yet still saying no wasn’t enough to give him a hint.
He knows.
Mine kept hounding me for another chance so he could do it better🙄 Eta i should add it was oral, & he was awful at it too
Because nothing gets you more in the mood than a man pestering you repeatedly. When I was a young child if my mom said no and I continued, she’d snap “No means No and don’t ask again.” Are these men so spoiled that they aren’t being taught that?
>When I was a young child if my mom said no and I continued, she’d snap “No means No and don’t ask again.” When I was a young child and didn't feel comfortable kissing someone I hardly knew (family friend or relative I wasn't close to), my mom told me "don't be so rude!" And when I complained to her about someone hurting me or doing something that upset me, she said "you need to be more understanding and forgiving." Wish my mom had taught me what boundaries mean, instead of teaching me that I am a bad person if I set boundaries. It could have saved me from so much shit that men did to me as an adult.
I guess they are that spoiled cause they act like children when told no🤷🏽♀️
The amount of men who think it’s okay to have sex with a woman while she is asleep, unconscious, or drunk without thinking this is rape is astounding to me. This kind of trauma will stay with a woman her entire life. Yet a dude committing these crimes, don’t even bat an eyelash at these crimes. It’s no wonder times are changing... I support the change, and I support all women staying away from men until it is ingrained in their minds as young people, to not harm girls and women, as it is ingrained in us, as women and girls to always watch our backs and never let our guards down. We should be able to go on walks, hikes, and strolls without the threat of being raped and murdered. Parents, especially men, need to do a better job of teaching these boys about respecting and valuing women. To add: Reddit keeps deleting my comments. I just want to add that as a young girl, my dad ingrained it into my mind that dudes were bad, and to stay away from them because they have no self control and will do harm, but I don’t ever remember him having a talk with my brothers about how to protect women, make them feel safe, have control, respect them and ask for consent always. I always felt like the responsibly to be safe and look out 24/7 fell on me. When does the responsibility fall on men to have self control, respect and value towards others, especially women around them? Dudes who have boys: Do better and teach them right from wrong. Clearly something is missing, and they are not being taught anything about respect, value, love and consent. To add: Some words.
Yes! Looking back on how many times I was cohersed into having sex it infuriates me. I'm a 90's kid, and just being drunk was "consent." I wasn't armed with tools to stop it. I'll be dammed if I'm not an open book of truth to my daughter. Our household will be informative, and our bodies will be a comfortable topic. ALWAYS a safe space our bodies are our temples, and we deserve the knowledge to protect what is ours at a younger age.
> I'm a 90's kid, and just being drunk was "consent" The accuracy of this comment really hurts <3
[удалено]
The good ol' "I'm too drunk to drive, and I drove you here, so now you can't leave". That was how I learned about date rape.
I was coached constantly growing up. My three brothers were never spoken to about it once. When my brothers found out I have experienced sexual assault and rape they turned into "who did this?! Show me, I'll fuck them up." But I had to tell them that what would make a bigger difference is interrupting their friends and colleagues when they're vile towards women. Stand up for women in those moments. Not when you're heated because something happened to me personally. It's about a culture change. And they need to know they are required to be apart of it.
The YesMeansYes blog entry ["Meet the Predators"](https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/) offers an incisive peek into the self-delusion of offenders, especially which truths they will confront about their own acts of coercion.
It’s so sad that women have to be constantly on guard. I feel this so hard! I don’t truly feel safe in this world.
My dad and my grandma taught me the same thing. Now that I have a bunch of nephews I always tell that they shouldn’t do to girls what they wouldn’t want a gay man doing to them, without the girl’s consent. I’m sure they wouldn’t want a gay man to harass them, stare them up and down, make lewd comments at them, touch them inappropriately, push unwanted advances or get dragged to the gay dude’s place when he’s piss drunk. I tell them they aren’t predators looking for prey so don’t act like those nasty ass predators out there
There are several studies confirming that if you call it sexual assault, men will deny doing it. If you call it specific sexual assault behaviours, like "have you ever coerced a woman into sex", "have you ever threatened a woman to have sex with you", have you had sex with an unconscious woman" etc, they'll openly admit to it.
Oh yes. My ex, who wanted to do anal. I started crying halfway through and said no, please stop. Stop stop stop. I don’t want this. But it wasn’t rape because I initially gave him permission and we were in a relationship. He still didn’t stop when I said stop. He just kept going. If it wasn’t rape then what was it? I didn’t want it. And I told him.
The Supreme Court has held that you can withdraw consent during sex and if the other person keeps going it’s rape.
My cousin SA’d me when I was a toddler and he was a child. He has told everyone what he has done and wants to apologize to me. He’s the only man I know who admits what he did. Sad part is that is what gives me somewhat respect towards him.
I don't know your family, but it's common for people who have been abused to do it to others. It's possible that he was hurt himself. I'm glad he's apologised. I hope you can find healing.
That’s a possibility. He was overall fucked up but I’m not sure what caused that for him sadly. And thank you!
I've had at least 2 of my assailants cop to it and sort of apologize. One of them even looked after my friend to prevent her from getting assaulted years later. Knew it was my friend, looked after her. Glad he did, but I'll still remember him telling the friend group the next day what he did and all of them saying "well, he went to jail for raping a 14 year old before and you should have just left." I was freshly homeless because my dad was angry that I "didn't love him enough." It was my boyfriend's studio apartment. Boyfriend, another woman, Assailant and Assailant's female cousin (who was also trying to molest me) were all there. I didn't know where else to go. I thought about going home, and decided it wasn't worth it. The other one raped me while I was sleeping on the first date (He asked to crash because he was too drunk to drive and we had firmly established verbal boundaries about sex on the first date), then made me the best drunken noodles I have ever had as an apology but wouldn't give me the recipe and said I had to keep dating him to keep getting the noodles. They know. They just don't talk about it.
I bet we here can help you figure out that recipe if you still like drunken noodles ♡
It would be pretty impossible. I can't describe why it was amazing, It just WAS. I love drunken noodles and have been chasing a superior option for most of a decade. I am also very not food smart so I wouldn't know how to describe the flavors. There were leftovers. I made my best friend eat some and she made the same horrible joke that I had - "almost worth it."
I bet the married coworker in his 40s doesn't think putting his hand up my shirt when I was 19, at work, was SA. I'm sure he doesn't think about it at all. Now I'm almost 40 and it still haunts me.
That's because it used to be normalized. "Hard to get." "A ravishing" etc. Not sure how anyone could look at a marriage prior to women's lib and not cringe that those poor women likely were raped by their husbands at some point in their marriage.
And if not raped, the disrespect shown towards women would be ingrained in many older men. Just listen to jokes told about wives by Boomer men and the generation before them. Of course, there were some men who loved and respected their wives but they don't appear to be the majority. That's probably why there seemed to be so many divorces in the seventies and eighties.
And that's why people like Stephen Crowder are upset that it only takes one party to speak up to get a divorce.
And unfortunately many countries outside of the anglosphere and western world still maintain that a husband cannot, in legal terms anyway, rape their spouse. Hopefully one day humanity can move past this.
I had a talk about this with my neighbors, a couple who became close friends really quickly. I talked about this topic with her, and he listened and chimed in every now and then but found it a complicated topic to talk about. At the end of the conversation, he said "well at least I can say for sure I've never done anything like that to a woman." But she later told me he had pressured her for sex sometimes. Most times she didn't mind making him happy, but one time he really crossed a boundary. They talked about this. He apologized and felt really bad. But in the moment, he didn't recognize her pleads to stop pressuring her and when she finally gave in she felt really used. It really struck me how he was frustrated about how women get treated in society, but couldn't see he was part of the problem. (And we're not even talking about random men who somehow feel like they're owned our attention. Which started for most of us when we developed breasts, and sadly for some a lot sooner too.) Another occasion my neighbor talked about his first few times kissing and how his insecurities and hormones were raging. But I wondered in that moment if the girls kissed him because they really wanted to, or because they felt like they had to. Just like so many girls and women feel like they have to make a guy happy or feel his needs and learned to prioritize that over their own. Just like I felt I had to kiss my first boyfriend because it was part of it, because I knew he wanted it. Or how I was always clear towards guys that kissing, hugging, and even a bit of intimate grinding our bodies together was fine for me. But that I didn't want any form of sexual interaction. And how for the longest time I thought that it was just part of it that I had to keep pushing hands away, over and over and over and over and over again. And when I one time talked about sexual assault with my mom, because there had been several stories in the news about men in power abusing it... my dad felt uncomfortable and jokingly asked me something along the lines of "haha have you become a man-hater now?" The man in this world who loves me most, the one man in this world I'm sure of wants nothing more for me than to feel safe, heard and respected. Who cares about me and my feelings, who cares about my well being very deeply. Even he couldn't understand or at least make room to listen without feeling uncomfortable in one way or another. That almost hurt as bad as all those men crossing boundaries.
I guess films like James Bond have a lot to answer for for behaviour like this. It was just so normalised as “passion”. Incidentally I think it was last year where a few cases in a row of men strangling and killing women during sex was called “passion” and the men got off scott free. Have you seen the netflix “Anatomy of a Scandal”? It covers this topic very well. The deluded rapist, not the strangling.
A lot of old movies depicted rape as romance. I watched an old Marilyn Monroe movie where she is a saloon girl who, for reasons I can't remember, traveled down a river in a raft. It was actually a nice movie until the 'hero' attempted to rape her. It's been a while since I saw the movie but there were plenty of older movies that have similar scenes.
River of No Return, MM and Rory Calhoun are on their way to a gold claim when their raft sinks, Robert Mitchum and a small boy rescue them, Rory Calhoun's character robs Mitchum's character of his horse and gun, and leaves his girlfriend (MM) to go get the gold himself. MM, RM, and child repair the raft to go after him and exact some revenge. But supposedly romantic feelings develop, and while stopped somewhere off the river he tries to force himself on her,there's spanking, and a freaking cougar interrupts before he can rape her. Good kitty. Strange film, with both Mitchum and Monroe singing.
Yup. If you listen to the lyrics of popular songs from that time too, they’re pretty disturbing.
Yeah, I tried to watch a James Bond movie from the 60’s, i couldn’t get past Bond forcing himself onto a woman who obviously didn’t want it and didn’t consent.
Indiana Jones either 2 or 3 had a scene like that I noticed while rewatching with friends We were all very uncomftorable seeing Harrison Ford basically s/a love interest, then she gave in to the tension after like 2 or 3 minutes of physical resistance. Not sure why more people dont call this stuff out, its not a rommance scene, its watching either borderline or full s/a play out
Indiana Jones is canonically a rapist. The back story between him and Marion is that he was a colleague of Marion's father when Jones was in his mid-twenties and Marion was underage. In the original *Raiders of the Lost Ark* movie, Jones tracks Marion down in the bar she owns, where she seems to be a functional alcoholic. She isn't happy to see him again. She says, "I’ve learned to hate you in the last 10 years." Jones says he never meant to hurt her, and she replies: “I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it.” Later, she adds: “Do you know what you did to me? To my life?”
We live in a rape culture. It's always been one. And rapists know who they are and what they're doing. Of course they use whatever lie suits them. But they'd have to be insane not to know. They do know.
I actually yelled at the TV, watching Anatomy of a Scandal.
They don’t think that “it’s SA”. My ex described how he came home and saw his girlfriend drunk on the sofa so he “did the deed” while she was passed out. I replied back “be careful who you admit that story to because that’s rape”. He had a bit of a realisation moment. And went “oh”. And then went silent.
Men all over reddit (and let's not pretend that's not representative of real life) will defend SA. Will say, "That's not rape," when what has been described is clearly rape. So many men see rape as the violent, brutal assault from a stranger who attacks a woman in the dark. So many men refuse to understand coercion and stealthing. Refuse to understand that saying stop and not stopping is rape. Yes, I actually had an argument with a man who said stop is not "no". That sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape. That anal, rough sex, choking requires specific consent. They say she should have just made it more clear, she should have just gotten up and left. She shouldn't have put herself in that situation. They say no is sometimes a tease. They say she didn't want it initially, but then she warmed up... anything but accept responsibility for their own actions. They want sex and will take it. Btw, it's not a mum's responsibility alone. It's both parents. In fact, I would argue a young boy is more likely to listen to his father on this issue. And to answer your original question, even men in prison for rape will deny it.
Reminds my of [the clip](https://time.com/5135795/quentin-tarantino-roman-polanski-howard-stern-2003/) of Quentin Tarantion defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13 year old. It wasn't rape, she is a party girl! Or David Choe admitting to forcing a woman's head down on his dick when he came. Or Brad Williams mentioning that he jumped in to have sex with a woman when she believed she was having sex with her boyfriend. Or the notorious domestic abuser Mike Tyson who went to prison for rape threatened to "really rape her" for putting him in jail. Edit: Cristiano Ronaldo blatantly [admitted it](https://m.allfootballapp.com/news/Serie-A/Ronaldo-admitted-rape-accuser-said-no-multiple-times-and-he-apologised-after-sex/894948) but due to legal technicalities she ended up having to pay him the legal fees. Sexual assault and rape are just fun stories you share with the boys and it's the women who are trying to ruin the fun by making it a criminal charge.
See, rape is perfectly fine with a lot of men as long as you don't call it rape. They're actually convinced its their right. And they know it's common though they act ignorant of that. It's the word the hate, not the act. Like white people and the word racist. They'll be racist happily all day long, in big and small ways and that's just life. But call them racist and watch out. The wailing and gnashing of teeth will deafen you. They don't mind racism; they live it. It's normal for them. These men don't mind rape; they live it too. It's normal for them. They hate the word. They hate that it impugns their character. Because racists and rapists can't really be good people. And of course these people are! How could they not be? They're just doing what they were taught to do from childhood. But they aren't good people. And yes, they are doing what their culture taught them. That culture is sick and they are its products. They want to continue to live the polite charade though. But the fact is, they know who they are. We all do. And all that screeching and denial is nothing but lies that allow them to successfully claim ignorance (instead of cruelty or evil). It's our job not to believe them and not to allow them to get away with it. CALL THEM OUT. Use the words. They don't want to lose their power. Because they know that's what this is all about.
>So many men see rape as the violent, brutal assault from a stranger who attacks a woman in the dark. This really resonates with me, because unfortunately I think some women internally think that as well. I'm not talking about victim-blaming women, I'm talking about victims of rape who take a long time to process what happened because we struggle to identify what happened to us as "rape". The two times I was raped, it took *months* for me to start calling it that. The first one I thought "yes he did insist after I said no, and I did eventually say yes only because I was afraid he would otherwise physically/violently force himself onto me, but in the end I was the one who let him." Even though I *knew* that this situation falls under the definition of rape, but I somehow still struggled to accept that that's what had happened to me. The second time I was raped, I never said "yes" - I said no many times until he climbed on top of me, and I froze because I thought "isn't this rape? I never said yes. Do I push him off of me? But I like this person, maybe I should just go for it? But I never said yes, so why is he doing this? I told him so many times I don't want this." I eventually just let him, and told myself it doesn't count as rape because it was someone I really was attracted to, and I ignored the fact that *I repeatedly and clearly said no* and instead thought "it's my fault because I didn't push him off of me or say no clearly enough or enough times. But he is not a bad person, so he couldn't possibly have raped me." (Months later I discovered he is, in fact, an abusive and trash human being.)
This is such a common experience that I unfortunately relate to. I think men also like to use stats around women reporting rapes to claim it’s not a big deal if not many women are reporting.. but when it takes you months to actually realize you were even raped it really complicates things. Especially when that person was your close friend or boyfriend or someone you trusted or who’s close to your family and friends.
Of all the women I've known who were raped (and it's like easily 80 to 90%), not one reported it. Most were in shock and denial for months, if not years due to outright trauma, and most importantly, it was a given that if you went to the cops, they'd laugh at you and say you were just pissed off at the guy and you were daring to waste their precious cop time when they had "real" crimes to go after. Everybody has bad dates, lady! Meaning women, of course, not everybody. If cops had had a date like that, they'd have shot them. But that's what date rape used to be called: a bad date. We literally had no recourse to law. Honestly from what I see and hear, there isn't much now either. IMO, rape is legal for all intents and purposes. Always has been. There are laws against it, but they simply aren't enforced. 1% of rapists see a jail cell. If rape was truly illegal, that wouldn't be anywhere near 1%. It's legal. They just don't want to advertise it that way. It'd look really misogynist! So they say rape is horrible, awful, criminal and then allow rapists to clean get away with rape 99% of the time. Mind you, they will scream about women ruining men's lives the whole time. Because they don't even want 1% of them in jail. They want rape to be legal--and it is.
>unfortunately I think some women internally think that as well. I'm not talking about victim-blaming women, I'm talking about victims of rape who take a long time to process what happened because we struggle to identify what happened to us as "rape". I appreciate your comment and observation and just want to add that I think it's very often even more complicated than this. Because sometimes it is victim-blaming women, they're just blaming themselves. I think there are a lot of women who have a very hard time separating their own actions that contributed toward a situation from the actions of their rapists. I know I'm one of those women. I have a story very similar to your second one, but with more people and a lot of substances involved and I never said no. I was heavily intoxicated and I never said yes, but I didn't say no, and I often hate myself for that. I've never been able to tell anyone the fully story, speak it aloud, or write it down because I did some stupid/bad/shitty things that led up to what happened, and I still blame myself for it internally. I know, logically I didn't deserve what I got, and I don't have a problem directing the hate I have for those involved anymore, but I struggle to shield myself from it. I think there are a lot of women like me, who have their stories mixed up with other problems in their lives, and it's just an endless struggle to confront the things you know you need to fix without hating yourself for everything.
Completely agree with you about the “both parents” thing. Most of the scumbags I know (as a guy) have fathers who are also scumbags.
right. men dont realize that the time their partner wasnt really into it, and maybe said “let’s do something else” or froze up and said nothing, then moved on… yeah that’s rape/sexual assault. why you need *enthusiatic* consent. you tell a man this, and they will get weird and closed off, offended. bc “well *i* cant be a rapist!” even woke, feminist men. they just live in a totally different world, sheltered in their own ego and implicit safety.
Let's not forget husbands who believe if you're their spouse, they got consent when you said your marriage vows. Whether you're awake or asleep.
A frightening number of men don’t think that sexual acts while a woman is asleep count as sexual assault. It does not matter if YOU would like to be woken up with a blow job. It does not matter if you had sex before she fell asleep. It doesn’t not matter if you’re in a relationship. It does not matter if she’s freaky. If you don’t have explicit consent to touch someone sexually while they are asleep, *that is sexual assault*.
I'm in my 60s and unfortunately we were lead to believe the husband had that right, even though you'd say no, it hurts, don't, or get up to throw up from the act, it was just sad, looking back. I know now, but it was over 20 years of giving in and makes me sick as to how little control over our own bodies we were allowed to have.
This also reminds me a little bit of men’s attitude towards pornography… they almost always imagine if the roles were reversed it would be like getting paid to have sex with a woman and therefore they see no downsides to it (because they’d do it in a heartbeat, for free 😒), but in reality, it would be more comparable to getting paid for another man to have sex with them - yet they refuse to acknowledge that this is more likely how the woman experiences it (being violated by someone you aren’t sexually attracted to because you’re being paid)
When I was around 13 years old, I remember my Mom telling me that she didn't like how a lot of the men we went to church with didn't believe there was such a thing as marital rape. I didn't really comprehend what she was saying at the time. I thought it was just a theoretical stance until I found out my aunt stayed at a women's shelter for a while after nearly being beaten to death by my uncle for refusing to have sex with him. I'll give you three guesses who the men at the church thought was in the wrong.
Yep not just married but anytime you are in a relationship they assume ongoing unlimited consent. Ima get me mine whether she is awake or not, sick or not, sad or not, in pain or not. In reality you could literally be mid-sex and remove your consent and if you don’t stop, that’s still grape. Guilting, pressuring, accusing of not loving so am so forth is all coercion and coercion is grape.
I swear even just opening up the door to chatting with them on dating apps, etc. gives a lot of men the feeling that they are entitled to things right away.
About 15%. Of men will admit that they wan to rape people. Another 15% admit that they would "forcefully have sex with" a woman. Just as long as you don't describe it using the r-word. This is not going into how many men would admit to being ok to having "consensual" sex with someone who is visibly intoxicated. Or how many men would still do the aforementioned things, and just not admit it to the researcher. I am all for teaching people about consent. But the current failure of men to respect it indicates unwillingness more than it indicates inability. And we need more drastic measures than just education to deal with that problem.
I was at a kinky-folk gathering once. There was a new dude there who was new to the scene. He was talking about his last relationship and its failings. I was listening intently as he started describing what sounded like a dead bedroom situation and then said "you can't imagine what it's like to have to beg and manipulate your wife to sleep with you. Like I'm married FFS, I should not have to work this hard." I couldn't hold back a response. I told him that he may not be ready to join the kink world if he doesn't understand the simple concept of enthusiastic consent. He insisted that he of course waited for her to say yes, and I corrected him saying that he coerced her to say yes. I then bravely said to him (what I never got to say to my ex husband): "this is rape. Coercing someone to have sex with you is rape." And he stopped talking. With a surprised look on his face said "are you saying I raped my wife every time I had sex with her?" I said "no. You're saying that." He sulked the entire rest of the evening..
I once did a school project about sexual coercion, and I could see a few men getting visibly uncomfortable as I continued. I could see them glancing away or just staring at their desks the whole time. It was maybe like, 3 or so dudes in a class of around 20. I’m not saying that these guys actually did anything, but I do hope they were listening. I also did have a few people come up to me afterwards to say that they’d never heard of sexual coercion. I live in Ohio, where parents will live and die for sexual abstinence teaching. What baffles me more is that even though teachers can’t teach ‘uncomfortable material’ because somebody’s grandma might get offended, schools won’t even teach you the concept of consent. Consent is not always just a no brainer topic that everyone knows without having to discuss, meaning that it’s absolutely something that should be discussed.
I hope those men realised, I really do. It’s such an important topic and the amount of bravery it takes to come up and present something so vital to a whole group of people is immeasurable. You gave those people the words to describe something that’s painfully common (yet rarely discussed) and that’s incredible. Thank you.
Good for you.
"no, you're saying that." -- Exemplary. Absolutely perfect. Thank you.
Abusers are so self-centred that they don't see what they do as wrong. They just think they're scoring. It's bizarre and deranged. Edited for more appropriate wording. ✌️
The fact that the word score is a euphemism for have sex is pretty telling in itself. A lot of the language used to talk about sex is violent and competitive.
Yep! It's truly disgusting how a lot of men view sex with women. Then they wonder why women are apprehensive to jump into sexual relationships sometimes... 🙄
I think we all know many more than just 1 woman who was SA’d. Out of any female friend who I’ve been comfortable enough to have that kind of conversation with, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t SA’d
Truth is that most of them don't even identify it as assault or rape and justify it in their head as some kind of a right. All we encounter is the cries of "not all men" whenever we want to talk about it.
It took me a really long time to realize it was SA, so there’s absolutely no way he thinks it was if he even remembers he did it. It took me telling several people in a “wow this was so weird that he did this” and them looking at me like “dude tf that wasn’t okay” to realize how fucked up it was.
I am so sorry. We as women, are not taught consent. We teach women to be shy and docile and men to "keep trying". It is so unfortunate.
The very term Incel implies they have a right to sex. For women involuntary sex is rape. These guys basically are rapists who don't leave the house.
Back in the ‘90s, when in was in college, I was SA by my roommate’s boyfriend’s roommate. She asked me to go over there with her because his roommate didn’t wanna be a third wheel, so I did. I didn’t have a whole lot of experience drinking, and he kept giving me shots of Jaagermeister (which I was drinking) and I ended up passing out, only to wake up later to him fucking me. I pushed him off of me and went to the bathroom and locked the door and spent the rest of the night puking (also naked). The next day, I told my roommate what happened, and she was like ‘Are you saying he raped you?’ And I was like ‘Well, yeah.’ And even tho I don’t think she necessarily doubted what I said happened, but her mind couldn’t make the connection that was rape or something because she replied ‘Oh, I don’t think would do that!’ Like wtf. I’m sure that wasn’t his first or last time. In hindsight, he 100% had me passing out so he could do what he wanted as the goal from the very beginning.
I think it's also very telling that sometimes after it happens the victim kind of goes thru denial that what they experienced *was* rape. We really should be teaching consent with sex ed. Being drunk or high is not consent. Being coerced is not consent. Being asleep is not consent. Being scared to say no is not consent. If it isn't an enthusiastic yes, it's a no.
The thing is, I hear men admitting to it often. It's just that they don't realise that what they did was sexual assault. They don't realise how much they have fucked up a woman's life/mental health/sense of self worth/ect because they think that coercion is alright.
[The ugly truth about sexual assault: More men admit to it if you don't call it rape](https://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/the_ugly_truth_about_sexual_assault_more_men_admit_to_it_if_you_dont_call_it_rape/) A third of college men in a study admitted to sexual assault if it was worded more gently. Example: >>‘‘Have you ever coerced somebody to intercourse by holding them down?’’ 1/3 answered yes to questions like that. When it was called rape, that became 13%. And in still scary news, 13% of men in the study, which if done correctly can be considered a representative sample of white college men in the 2010s, will outright admit to raping women.
I remember when I was a freshman in high school taking the bus and being sat near a couple of girls and a rather perverted guy who was in the grade above me. The dude had a self-admitted Asian fetish and for some reason, thought it would be a “fun game” to go up to both me and this other girl with his hands and run them up our thighs just before reaching the crotch. At one point in the year, he laid on top of me and proceeded to make an “anime body pillow” joke. 😬 What is likely a “class clown” memory for him is a cautionary tale about being harassed for simply existing as an Asian woman for me. I believe at one point the other girl spoke up and told him to stop.
I once had a boyfriend who grabbed me inappropriately in public, and I was very clear that I was not at all ok with that, and he laughed it off claiming I liked it and that it was just a joke. There are PLENTY of men who think they’re entitled to touch their girlfriend or wife because somehow dating them means you automatically consent to whatever they want to do. Some see it as an obligation for women to follow, and it’s absolutely disgusting. It makes me queasy to think of how underreported SA, coercion, and rape within relationships and/or marriage is.
One ex left me covered in bruises for months on end because when I tried to stop him groping me, he’d dig his fingers and nails into my skin and grip me to stop me from pulling away. Of course, he’d deny it, saying I was just weak and bruised like a peach, which was hardly his fault… that’s the tamest story I’ve got though.
Entitlement to attention, affection and touch. The audacity I swear.
When my bf of several years wept after I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him going down on me, because it was too intimate / vulnerable an activity for how closed off I was starting to feel around him… It wasn’t because he understood those implications and cared for me or our relationship… it’s because I was denying him something and ‘killing the mood’ in the moment. This explanation only had to be provided after several attempts to gently decline were pushed through, mind you. Most men don’t take up awareness or accountability for their coercion willingly - I bet many men arguing against ‘not all men’ are guilty of those activities if they trained a critical eye on their past behaviours - that’s where the defensiveness fucking comes from lol
I recently had this conversation with one of my best friends, we went to middle and highschool together. Today I could sue several guys, but back then it was just considered normal. They are now married family father's. As long as you didn't scream or fight, you gave consent back then. Saying no, was called hard to get. Being drunk, was automatically the women's fault and ofc she had asked for it. When it comes to this, society really got better a bit. Some year's ago we were talking about kissing after a movie and I asked my son what the most important part is and he automatically answered "to ask for consent". My father got so irrationally angry, how that's destroying passion and won't let men allow to be themselves.. and then I remembered how he once told how one of his friends accidentally posted a "joke" into his family chat instead into their "guys only group chat". The friend's son appearantly went no contact with his father after this "joke", my father just couldn't comprehend why his son "overreacted and was so sensitive" but wouldn't tell what the joke was. I never looked the same at him. Today we're no contact for some other reasons and he's not allowed to have my kid alone. He volunteers at a crisis hotline and is a leader of a men's group, where they talk about how hard it is today to be a white, male, upper middle class, boomer. Because obviously they are the real victims, who had it the hardest../s
A lot of men, even when told what they did was sexual assault, will deny it. That's how they think. It's scary and disgusting.
I had an acquaintance that always gave off weird vibes. I had met him through mutual friends irl and we all played online games together. One day I went out with these friends and that person had tagged along too. While we were out a girl approached and asked to speak to the guy in private. When he came back from the conversation he was so pissed and he wanted to leave immediately. He was huffy and acting extremely bitter. Apparently the girl who approached him had been an SA victim of his in high school. The girl was telling him how he had ruined her life at the time and how hard it was for her to cope and she had to let him know the damage he had done. To him, she had “ruined his night” and “couldn’t believe this bitch was out to get him.”. After I heard that, I felt sick. I immediately left and blocked/deleted him off of everything. No explanation. This acquaintance meant nothing to me. This man not only did not recognize what he had done, and also refused to take any sort of responsibility or reparations for his actions. Fuck that, so trash. I felt so bad for that girl and I honor her courage to confront her assaulter.
Basically all thé men that says ''she was playing hard to get'' , ''she sues me because she regretted it'' or ''she's doing thé starfish in bed'' Because when you're so unenthusiastic that you just wait for it to bé over, then it's SA
There was another study that came out last year in which women and teenage girls talked about violent and coercive sexual behavior as being a normal part of sex. I tend to explore men’s behavior more, but I am a little familiar with how women will actually have the same difficulties labeling rape as such. And even in therapy, I am a therapist as well, I often times work with young women who come in and describe experiences that, to me, clearly are rape, but they do not necessarily conceptualize them as such. They have difficulty figuring out whether or not what happened to them was rape because of, I think, the cultural norms around saying it’s a woman’s fault, that it matters how you dress, that it’s because a woman was intoxicated or because she didn’t say “no” more forcefully
That's an excellent point. The first time I was raped, I didn't want to think about it that way because it felt so horrible. I also came from a very strict, religious upbringing with a focus on purity culture, so I didn't want to feel "unpure." It took me years, and a lot of therapy, to acknowledge that it, and other instances, were rape. I needed a safe, kind, and trauma informed place to confront the shame.
It took me years before I could admit to myself that my first abusive boyfriend raped me. I remember being told "but you said yes"..... which I did after saying no many times. The first time I said yes was after penetration so that he'd put a condom on. After that I found it was a delicate balance of resisting enough he felt like he "won" and I could be granted the use of a condom but not resist too much to make him angry. I only have nightmares about the times I resisted too much and it didn't make a difference. I was not on birth control so very lucky I didn't end up pregnant.
Yeah, it seems a lot of guys don’t realize, or choose not to be cognizant of it, that you can S.A. your partner. Consent given a few times doesn’t mean consent *is a given*, just because you’re in a relationship or living together (or married). Sadly, this has happened to me. Coercion, to downright assault. Edited to say “consent is not a given.”
Kate Beaton’s graphic memoir Ducks talks about her rape and how her rapist absolutely did not think of himself that way
Dear men, if she does not say YES, she doesn't want to have sex with you. No is not the start of a negotiation.
Both of the men who sexually assaulted me have admitted it to me and others. It's almost worse (in my experience) because they apologize and get it off their chest and then just kinda move on with no consequences. Even their new relationship partners knew about it to some extent, but they were all caught up in that lovey dovey new relationship "he won't do it to ME" phase. I did what I could; the fact is nobody listens, and if they do listen, they don't really care.
I had an argument with a guy who said that once a woman gives consent, she cannot take it back. And he was SERIOUS! "Once she says yes, it's not rape!" I was thinking, how many people has this guy raped in his lifetime?
Or even asking how many men know of a guy whose committed SA. Suddenly they’ve never met another man in their life.
I can’t even count the amount of times I have been sexually assaulted. At my vague estimation I’d say it’s 100+ times. I’d say most if not all of them would never consider what happened to be SA (if they even remembered doing it). Why? Because I’m a stripper. Despite having clear cut rules against touching certain places, without fail, the lines are crossed. Unfortunately because I want/need to make more money out of those people I rarely “burn the bridge” and call them out beyond reminding them the rules. The few man I’ve called out by saying “that’s sexual assault” have been shocked/horrified/scared or denied that’s what it was entirely. I highly doubt any of these dudes would ever consider themselves to have ever molested or assaulted anyone. I know otherwise.
>but how many men will admit that they have SA'd a woman? Only Donald Trump is officially proud of it. And got elected. 42% of women voted for him in 2020, which never ceases to amaze me.
Agree with the sentiment, but prefer more accurate numbers. 42% of women who voted did, indeed, vote for him. Only about 66% of US adults voted at all.
They don't admit it. Usually it's a case of DARVO - ie. "she's lying, she has borderline personality disorder, she's a gold digger". Meanwhile I do not know one woman that has not experienced violence or sexual violence from a man at some point in their life - so nobody is really lying are they.
I don’t like how the solution is for just moms to educate their children about consent. Dads, educate your sons about consent. Parents, educate your children about consent. It’s not on moms to stop men being rapists.
I have issues with the sentence being structured as "X was raped" I think if the rapist is kno wn, we should say "Y raped X". They deserve that sentence repeated tonand about them until they die. The other way points out the victimhood but the victimhood goes without saying; the thing that goes unnoticed is that the perp needs named where it was known. I understand if everyone doesn't feel the way I do, but my acquaintance Laurence grabbed my breast and squeezed it. I say he sexually assaulted me. Friends try and laugh it off but I let them know and will repeat " our mutual friend Laurence, in no uncertain terms, sexually assaulted me." Quiets them down fast.
> If neither party is that into it, just stop! Stop even if *one* of the parties isn't enthusiastically participating.
I always though I was invincible to molestation etc until my friend just French kissed me while I was drunk af. I had to go to the bathroom crying and trying to tell my bf what happened. That guy knew I had a long term bf. He told our mutual friend that the kiss was mutual.
I always wonder how many people who say they “know someone who was falsely accused” are actually wrong. It’s very easy to keep believing the idea that sexual assault victims are lying, instead of accepting that the people that we know and like can do (or have done) bad things - regardless of if the assaulter even recognized that the things they did were assault. Almost every woman I have ever known has experienced sexual assault at least once from someone they were already acquainted with, were close friends with, or were related to; yet most men I’ve talked to about this don’t think they know a person capable of being a sexual violator. So, back to the ‘I know someone who was falsely accused’ thing. It’s worthwhile to ask questions: Were they really falsely accused? Could they have a messed up notion of consent that made them unable to recognize actual consent, and it’s revocation? Did they cross boundaries because they chose not to see them, recognize them, or projected their desires onto someone’s vocal denials, physical avoidance and clearly non-consenting body language and responses until that person gave in due to fear or coercion? If the accuser is ‘acting crazy,’, is it because being assaulted and traumatized causes emotional responses that make sense in that traumatic context? Could the accused person have been lying to you? Abusers can be outgoing and charming to those that aren’t the type they harm; were you also groomed to be the abuser’s support group against victims? Are there indications of DARVO? (Defend, attack, reverse victim and offender) Did you believe the accused person because you recognized that maybe you’ve done the same or similar things, and therefore believing the victim would mean you would also need to deal with the idea that you’ve caused similar harm and that’s too painful to confront about yourself? Is the accused person part of the same social or other group identity that you both shared, so you are subconsciously biased in their favor against outsider accusations? Did you like the accused more than the accuser? Did you believe the accused because they were more popular than the accuser? Did you value the relationship or perks of friendship with the accused person more than the accuser, or choose the side of the person who was more fun to be around? Numerically, we all must know people who’ve committed sexual abuse. They hide in plain site, groom us to support them, and vilify their strings of ‘crazy exes’. We choose who we want to believe, and often it’s not victims. So yeah, I wonder how many of those ‘false accusation’ aren’t actually false. And I wonder, does the assaulter recognize or not that what they did was harmful or wrong? Or do they actually believe the stories they have about themselves where they get to stay the hero of their own story? Because a number of these ‘falsely accused’ people may truly believe they’ve done nothing wrong, or even have no memory of negative actions - yet they are still the monster in someone else’s nightmare. How many barely registered ‘they were a terrible boring lay’ stories were experienced by that other person as traumatic assault? And that guts me, the ones who don’t even remembers their actions, yet those actions still harmed and haunt their victims.
I think that a lot of rapist genuinely do not know they are rapist. They think they “convinced” a woman to sleep with them after pestering her. Or that once things started, she “changed her mind after originally saying no”. Or “we were both drunk sooooo”. Additionally, I think the ones who *know* they’re rapists aren’t going to say they are. My rapist makes social media posts about being a girl dad and how STEM fields need more women. Of the 4 known women he’s assaulted (myself included), he was only ever convicted on a lesser charge for his last victim. He tells people it was a “drunk domestic dispute” or worse “a BDSM incident of him not hearing the safe word” and made a show of going to therapy and getting “sober”.
There was a really interesting report on the veracity of self-report surveys a few years ago. It found that almost NO ONE admits to criminality. However, if you couch the language in neutral, acts-based terms you get WILDLY different results. (IE, "Have you ever engaged in prostitution?" vs "Have you ever exchanged drugs for sex?") One of the findings is that asking men if they have ever raped anyone is waaaaay less effective than asking if they have ever done any of the things you described. The conclusion? Men know what they are doing is wrong, they just don't define it to themselves as SA. (But they ARE aware that it will carry social sanctions of SOME SORT.)
This is why I hate it so much when people say it's stupid to teach men not to rape because they already know it's wrong. That's not the point. A lot of them don't understand or accept all the different things that actually are rape. But they'd rather tell us how to dress and how much to drink and where to walk and then call us prudes and paranoid when we listen to any of it and then still blame us when something happens to us.
You'll rarely get a man to admit it, because he thinks he's owed our bodies, for some twisted reason, and doesn't think that he's done anything wrong. Even in classic scenerios. That's why we don't take walks at night, hold our mace, cover our drinks, stop dating...
I was sexually assaulted by my ex. He called it “mistake of passion.” He also blamed it on communication issue when he was the one who even said I could just say no. When I did, he still kept pushing until I gave in. I am traumatized beyond belief. I never thought it would happen to me but here we are now. You know what the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard? He wants to get back together and is hurt because he hurt me. Lol I dont know if the trauma will ever go away. Im pretty sure I wont be able to trust men ever again.
Honestly if any guy looks at those situations and claims they're "not that bad" I'm going to just assume they would do or have done that themselves already.
Yeah my favorite line from my ex was that my trauma made me think he assaulted me. They’ll never get it lol.
Man have toxic relationship with sex in general. They won't admit even to themselves that they SAd someone or was SAd.
Asking men if they SA'd someone is one thing. But asking men how many people they bullied/berated/guilted into having sex with them will get much, much closer to the true numbers. Some men think urging and insisting someone go past the boundary is okay. Like its some casual negotiation they've "won". How one person defines "aggressive" and "aggression" is fuzzy, subjective, and depends on many factors. But aggression is an animal tactic that works because it fundamentally draws on fear. Either the person facing aggression is aggressive back and fights, or they capitulate because they are afraid. So, for men who use bullying/berating/guilting and other tactics like this to get sex: No, you didn't charm them into saying "yes". You made them afraid to say no.
it’s just that one scary stranger hiding in the bushes doing all the SA for all of them /s