Today’s lesson
A 17-year-old Hispanic boy was allegedly attacked, sodomized with a pole, and burned with cigarettes by a couple of skinhead freaks in Houston. The two skinheads, who are charged with aggravated sexual assault, encountered the victim at a party.
Interestingly, no one so far has suggested that the alleged victim may have actually agreed to be sodomized and later changed his mind. Nobody’s said a word about whether the victim was drinking, and as far as I can tell, there are no reports on whether he was a virgin or had any kind of reputation for sexual activity. Defense attorneys have not suggested that the victim was leading the skinheads on, giving off signals that he wanted to be sodomized with a metal pole; nor have they floated the possibility that the whole “assault” was something the victim asked the skinheads to do in order to help him launch his porn career. Most surprising of all, no one is focusing on the obvious point that the victim went to that party willingly.
Could someone please review the Haidl rape case — or, for that matter, almost any other gang rape case with a female victim in the history of American jurisprudence — and explain the difference to me?
Once you’re done with that, I’m prepared to entertain conjectures on how the sentencing will go if the skinheads are found guilty: Eighteen months? Probation-only so as not to ruin these young men’s lives over a youthful mistake? You make the call!
86 Responses to “Today’s lesson”
-
Paul Tergeist says:
This is old news. The Hispanic supposedly tried to kiss a girl at the party and the Nazis took exception to it. There is no doubt they did it since there were a bunch of witnesses who didn’t try to stop them. These are the people who need to be euthanized on the end of a rope without a trial.
Let someone argue ‘fair trial’. The word TRIAL means an attempt at fact-finding to determine guilt or innocence. That is not the case here.
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:03 am EST -
Violet says:
The fact that he was kissing someone is right there just a gift for the defense — he had already initiated sexual activity! How were the skinheads to know that he didn’t want more? Were they supposed to be mind readers?
Oh, wait, this only works if the victim is a female.
-
Alon Levy says:
Well, for a start this is a hate crime, so there’s a huge aggravating factor that doesn’t exist in ordinary rapes (or even in ordinary rapes of men).
-
Violet says:
Go read the Haidl rape case.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
Rape is not always rape. These guys were involved in a hate crime involving torture, not necessarily a sex crime. They ought to be strung up. ALL rapists, torturers and murderers ought to be strung up or castrated with a chainsaw and left to bleed to death.
The best article I have ever seen about science and politics in America is “Political Science” by Michael Specter in the March 13 New Yorker. The government is failing everyone, but especially women who are being driven back to the era of no vote, no rights. This story explains why in sufficient detail to piss you fembots off. Please read it.
-
Alon Levy says:
I read about it. Obviously in terms of violence the cases are equally aggravated, though this case is a sexual assault and not a rape.
Hate crimes provide one more factor: they entail not just an immediate crime, but also intimidation of a community. When someone criminally murders someone who happens to be Jewish, it’s murder; when someone murders a Jew and sprays a swastika on the nearest wall, it’s a hate-motivated murder meant to intimidate Jews. The legal system is geared for this, so that hate motivation is considered a sufficient aggravating factor to invoke the death penalty.
Regrettably, one big difference seems to be that Haidl and his gang simply had better lawyers than the skinheads here. If Haidl were poor, he could have gotten 20 years.
-
Violet says:
So you guys are arguing that this case isn’t rape (Alon) or isn’t a sex crime (Paul)? Why? They forcibly penetrated this guy’s anus with a pole — that qualifies as rape of a male under DoJ guidelines. The Haidl crowd penetrated their victim with a pool cue. Why is the one rape and the other isn’t? Why is the one a sex crime and the other isn’t?
As for the hate crime aspect, Alon, you know that some people think female rape needs to be classified as a hate crime against women. It’s a vexed subject, but the case can be made. Men who rape women hate them and their actions unquestionably intimidate an entire class of people: women.
But let’s not get bogged down in the hate crime definition, at least not yet. Allow me to note instead that you are both ignoring my main point: if this had been a Hispanic girl, I guarandamntee you every thing I mentioned in paragraph 2 of the post would be in play right now (except possibly the porn star thing).
-
Alon Levy says:
They forcibly penetrated this guy’s anus with a pole — that qualifies as rape of a male under DoJ guidelines.
Okay, then I retract my comment. When I scanned the post again to write my comment, I seized upon the “aggravated sexual assault” part.
Allow me to note instead that you are both ignoring my main point: if this had been a Hispanic girl, I guarandamntee you every thing I mentioned in paragraph 2 of the post would be in play right now (except possibly the porn star thing).
Well, it’s possible, although I still need to see a comparison that controls for the effect of expensive defense lawyers to be convinced of that. I’m not saying you’re wrong here - I’m saying I don’t know yet.
-
Violet says:
Well, it’s possible, although I still need to see a comparison that controls for the effect of expensive defense lawyers to be convinced of that.
Alon, I want you to think about this: do you honestly believe that the most high-powered defense attorney in the world could possibly make a public case right now that this Hispanic boy “asked for it”? Do you think he could publicly say, well, this was sex that got out of hand, or the kid had been drinking and who knows whether he consented, etc? Yet this is typical in a rape case involving a female victim — even the most egregiously brutal cases.
Okay, I need to just get this off my chest before I go to bed:
When people read the second paragraph of my post, they probably react to the absurdity of it — of course it would be ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the Hispanic boy was “giving off signals that he wanted to be sodomized with a metal pole.” And I suspect men in particular think to themselves, “But in this case it’s so obvious that none of that could apply: who the hell would agree to be brutally sodomized and burned with a cigarette?”
Clue: That’s how most women react to every reported gang rape of a female. Ridiculous to think anyone would want that. Obvious that this wasn’t “sex” gone wrong.
The Haidl rape case? The very notion that this girl “asked” to be brutalized in that manner, that it was “sex gone a little too far,” or that she was a slut who agreed to it — incomprehensible. A pool cue, a Snapple bottle, a juice can, and a lit cigarette. Thinking of that rape as anything but a horrifically vicious assault is impossible.
And yet, and yet, and yet: Haidl’s defense team almost convinced one jury that this girl had indeed agreed to the whole thing, had asked to make an amateur porn film that would feature her being raped and maimed, or at least had given the boys plenty of reason to think that she would enjoy having her vagina burned with a cigarette and a pool cue poked up to her stomach and a can shoved in her anus. The defense could never have done that if there weren’t already in people’s minds the idea that rape is something women incite, deserve, or fake. And that assaulting women’s bodies isn’t really such a big deal anyway.
-
Promenea says:
The Haidl rape should have been treated as a hate crime imo. It was certainly beyond the simplest form of rape (ie penetrative sex alone). At the very least it should have been considered aggravated sexual assualt.
I know people (women included) who participate in staged rape/consensual rape play and they are very very clear about getting consent in writing prior to enacting any of the events.
Good boys carried away by the emotions of the time is bunk and only people who are incredibly hateful themselves or totally naive about such things would ever believe that theory of the crime in this case.
-
Taffy Davenport says:
It’s difficult to imagine a more glaringly obvious illustration of the misogynists’ double standard than these two stories, and the contortions some people will put themselves through to avoid getting it put Cirque du Soleil to shame. “The trouble with trying to make oneself stupider than you already are is that you very often succeed.”
-
Paul Tergeist says:
GRRRR! The skinheads brutalized a person. Their motive was torture, not sexual gratification. So it is ~legally~ a rape. It is really an assault and a hate crime. I could probably argue attempted murder but they would plead it down.
This may have fit the federal guideline of a sex crime, but it was not a sex crime any more than the following defines a sex crime:
IMPALE, v.t.
In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound. This, however, is inaccurate; to imaple is, properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position. This was a common mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia. Down to the beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in “churching” heretics and schismatics. Wolecraft calls it the “stoole of repentynge,” and among the common people it was jocularly known as “riding the one legged horse.” Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in Tibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of sacrilege. To the person in actual experience of impalement it must be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s DictionaryFor heaven’s sake, carrying one vicodin in my pocket for lumbar arthritis is a federal crime if I don’t have it in a prescription bottle. Let us use a little common sense. Do the ladies here become so unhinged at the word’ rape’ that reason leaves them when it is used?
-
Violet says:
Their motive was torture, not sexual gratification.
How do you know? Really, what do you know about what was going on in the pants of those skinheads? I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if those two skinheads had hard-ons the whole time.
The main difference between the Haidl case and this one is the sex of the victim. I’m surprised you can’t see that.
-
Taffy Davenport says:
“Their motive was torture, not sexual gratification.”
Of the countless ways to harm or injure a human being they chose to stick things up his ass. How anyone can argue that this is without sexual connotations is beyond imagining.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
I CAN see it and that is a HUGE difference. The gender of the victim speaks to the nature of the crime. If the victim had tried to kiss another male, the probability is that exactly the same attack would have occurred. It was a crime against the victim’s race, and what precipitated it was nothing. No matter what he did or did not do, I think he was marked.
That is not to say I would not vote to convict them for any-damn-thing the prosecutor could find, but I think the motive for the crime was hate, not sex and I think that imagining what was going on in their pants is not admissible evidence and is not a productive exercise. From there you can start imagining that ALL men are ticking time-bombs just waiting to rape any woman OR MAN they run across. It ain’t so.
Having made my point simply and eloquently, I again return to my compulsion: The government’s ongoing attack on science and women.
This is a long article, but it is mandatory. There will be a test at the polling places in 2008.
Read it online here: http://www.wesjones.com/specter2.htm
-
Violet says:
So Paul, how about that punitive gang rape in Afghanistan? By your lights that wasn’t a sex crime, right? It was a hate crime. The judges ordered it to force the woman into committing suicide, and the men who carried it out obviously weren’t doing it for sexual gratification. It was a deliberate act of sadism. So that makes it not sexual, right?
-
Paul Tergeist says:
to 14: Please show me where I suggested that the methodology of the crime did not have sexual connotations. That’s not what I said. You quoted what I said and you are reading something into my statement that is not there.
One of the methods of torture used during the Inquisition was shoving a glass wine bottle in someone’s anus and filling it with molten lead. That may have been a sex crime or it may have been torture or it may have been both. But the advantage of using the bottle was that the lead could be recovered quickly and easily by slitting the gut of the victim. I choose to argue that was primarily a hate crime motivated by religious fervor, not sex. Of course I can imagine the physical state of the torturers as being sexually aroused by the screams of their victims, or I can forego that.
I can more easily imagine that Vlad the Impaler was possibly at least partially sexually motivated.
from: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/Balkan/Dracula.html
(He)liked to set up a banquet table and dine while he watched people die. His favorite form of execution was impalement. It was slow; people could take days to die. He liked to impale many people at once, arranging the stakes in fancy designs. Nothing was too brutal for Dracula - he enjoyed having people skinned, boiled alive, etc. He prided himself on making the punishment (supposedly) fit the crime.
By 1462, when he was deposed, he had killed between 40,000 and 100,000 people, possibly more. He always thought up some excuse for these executions. He killed merchants who cheated their customers. He killed women who had affairs. Supposedly he had one woman impaled because her husband’s shirt was too short. He didn’t mind impaling children, either. Afterwards he would display the corpses in public so everyone would learn a lesson. It’s said that there were over 20,000 bodies hanging outside his capital city.
But in either case I am imagining.
I cannot successfully make rational arguments against fanaticism because fanatics are not rational.
-
Alon Levy says:
The main difference between the Haidl case and this one is the sex of the victim. I’m surprised you can’t see that.
How are gay-male-on-gay-male rape cases treated?
-
Violet says:
Alon, I’m no expert on gay-male-on-gay-male cases; all I can tell you I’ve never in my life heard of such a case where it was argued that the victim was a slut who was asking for it.
Paul, quibbling over the intentions of the criminals (ratio of sexual gratification to sadism, etc.) is getting away from my main point about how victims are treated differently because of sex. The Haidl gang and the Houston skinheads may or may not be similar in whatever personal motivation drove them to their brutality; but the crimes they committed are almost the same. Yet one victim is villifed in the press as a slut who must have egged the boys on, and it’s suggested that no crime was committed at all (since impaling and burning women is somehow part of “sex”). The other victim is treated as the sympathetic victim of a hate crime and no one dreams of suggesting that this was anything other than a ferocious crime against his person.
What I’m trying to do is use this case to prompt people to rethink those assumptions surrounding female rape victims that don’t seem to surround male victims.
-
Alon Levy says:
Well, that’s not enough to be convincing, but let’s for the moment assume that indeed, the difference is about the victim’s gender. Do you know which aspect of the patriarchy is responsible to that? The only one I can think of is the MRA backlash - “it happens to men, too” - which causes the media to magnify rape and abuse of males and deflate rape and abuse of females.
-
CR says:
I got our point Violet. Very good. Well done.
-
CR says:
And I think you fellows are getting nitpicky over the meanings of words and legalistic minded. So the point gets taken off tack. And starts to wander into places that it doesn’t matter all that much where it sounds relevant from a cold intellectual standpoint but really isn’t. A moe rough way to say it is “Way to miss the point, fellows.”
-
Steve says:
Vi
I ask you again.
Why do you hang in on some of these arguments that involve splitting hairs and obscuring the differences in the way assaults against men and women are viewed by society and treated by the legal system?
I love you Socks, but sometimes you indulge these little nitpickers beyond any point that they deserve.
What the hell does it matter if it legally or linguistically qualifies as a rape or a sex crime or not? What is the point of the discussion?
How about applying the well-known, emprically confirmed, orifice rule? This is:
“In any crime involving parties of any gender or combination of genders in which any orifice is either directly or involved or penetrated, vicitim blaming — both subtle and overt — will be more likely when the victim is a woman.”
Period.
And I mean that gramatically and not menstrually.
-
Burrow says:
Oh good, i was starting to think intelligence and that ability to see past ones own privilege was lacking from this thread (not counting Violet or CR).
Rape IS a hate crime. It’s a war crime, it’s a hate crime. Good grief, she spelled the point out for y’all and you’re refusing to accept it. Are you caught in the dense fog of privilege?
-
Timothy Shortell says:
I think Violet’s point is correct. The difference between these two cases exposes how male privilege operates in American society. Lawyers defending accused rapists attack the female victim (”it’s her fault, the boys are the real victims here”) because they can. I think lawyers defending the skinheads would use the same tactic if they thought that they could get away with it. The fact that they can’t is evidence of male privilege.
Women are blamed for out-of-control male sexuality. The only time that works in male-on-male violence is when homophobia is introduced. A gay man can be made the equivalent of a woman in a case like that and blamed in the same way that a woman would.
The motives of the attackers don’t matter; the status of the victim does. It is unlikely that media coverage will deal effectively with this because exposing assumptions is not the mainstream media’s forte. To merely ask the question about male privilege is construed as a radical act.
-
Michael says:
Do men that rape women hate them? That is interesting. While I know rape is a crime of violence, I think the violence is a manifestation of a man’s desire to have what he cannot have. It is a sort of coveting. The fact that he is willing to deeply hurt the object of his desire is indicative of hate, but the motivation for the action, I think, is desire.
The difference, if there is one, with a hate crime is, I don’t think the man is saying, i hate that bitch and I’m gonna rape her. (Although I’m sure that happens, too.) I think the man is thinking, I want her and I’m gonna take her by force if I have to.
The difference may be slight. I’ve just always kind of assumed that with rape men are taking by force what they know they could not get by any other method. Let me add that whether or not this is true does not make it one bit less deplorable.
-
Steve says:
For an interesting discussion of how rape victims are treated in mainstream media and how the victim blaming that Timothy describes actually plays out, see Helen Benedict’s Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes. NY: Oxford, 1993.
Rape victims are either sacred virgins, almost secular nuns, who are violated and then rendered permanently damaged goods; OR are sleazebag vamp/whores who had it coming the moment they put on their “fuck me” shoes.
In any social panic a major casualty is almost always the middle ground or nuance in public discussion. This is no less the case with our panic about female sexuality. Men fear female desire and female sexuality. They despise the same erotic impulse that they are all too happy to sample when the lights are low. They are profoundly confused and ambivalent about where to place female desire in their cosmology of good and evil, of the sacred and the profane.
So when an instance of sexual violence presents itself that has to be filtered through the frame of mainstream media, we often resort to the simple virgin/vamp dichotomy for the comfort and clarity it offers. Virgins are virgins and whores are whores and never the twain shall meet.
This dichotomy also allows us to avoid confronting the broad middle ground in which sexual desire might — god forbid — be something that good girls do, but might just not want to do it with our sorry ass.
I have always felt that this is a big subtext for sexual violence, i.e., that enormous amounts of male anger results from the simple fact that legions of fucktards would rather die (or be violent) than face the fact that a women might find them sexually undesirable, even disgusting.
And what do they call women who reject their advances? Bitches. Fucked up. She doesn’t know what she wants.
Hey asshole: Maybe she does know what she wants and maybe it isn’t your misogynistic, well traveled shlong!
The fact that women might be empowered enough to know exactly what they want and can withhold their sexual favors from dipshits because they are dipshits fuels so much fucktard anger.
This circles around to Sockso’s man hating thread. Men had to invent the mythical “man-hating woman.” We needed her and needed her badly. That way we could chalk up our rejection to general man hating rather than face the fact that we might be acting in a way fully deserving of hate.
Sexual violence is very much an extension of this vision held by many men of a world invaded by man-haters, virgins who won’t give it up, or whores who give it up too easily.
-
Violet says:
Michael, the problem with the desire theory is that rape victims range from infants to octogenarians, and include every sort of female imaginable. What rapists seem to look for is opportunity and a vulnerable target. I suppose it’s remotely possible that a rapist actually has a deep sexual desire for, say, an 80-year-old disabled grandmother, which he relieves by raping and torturing her, but frankly something else seems to be at work. That something else is generally considered to be a deep-rooted hostility to females. The “desire” involved is the desire to control and destroy.
-
Violet says:
I have always felt that this is a big subtext for sexual violence, i.e., that enormous amounts of male anger results from the simple fact that legions of fucktards would rather die (or be violent) than face the fact that a women might find them sexually undesirable, even disgusting.
Steve, are you suggesting that this is the general basis for rape as a phenomenon? Male inadequacy? If so, how do you see that intersecting with the Brownmiller observation that rape enforces male domination of women?
Re your comment about my tolerance for the nitpicking: Moderatin’ is hard work. If I cut off trolls too fast, I’m criticized. If I indulge others, I’m criticized. As for the unworthiness of the arguments occasionally made here, I’m often tempted to just ignore the silliest remarks — but then somewhere down the line someone asks why I let that person get away with it… It’s hard work! Harder than presidentin’!
-
Occasional Expositor says:
Michael’s argument is so… so… ridiculous it left me speechless.
While I know rape is a crime of violence, I think the violence is a manifestation of a man’s desire to have what he cannot have. It is a sort of coveting. The fact that he is willing to deeply hurt the object of his desire is indicative of hate, but the motivation for the action, I think, is desire.
Men rape women because they don’t give a shit about them or they want to hurt them or they want to dominate them or all of the above. It’s got NOTHING to do with “desire”, except in that their sexual gratification is intensified by the control they exercise over the women in question.
Violet is spot on in her analysis - it’s the victims that are different in these two cases. Woman = sex class. The bullshit that was put forward in the Haidl case was staggering.
-
Steve says:
I wouldn’t say it is a general basis, but I would add it to the mix.
And I think that what I suggested is not at odds with Brownmiller.
Any threat to a male’s sense of himself as a someone whose privilge includes the right to sex on his terms is a threat to his status and power. In some cases, sexual violence becomes the way that he reasserts this power and enforces his domination.
I guess I am saying that many angry men who feel that women threaten their power and position are at least partially driven by anger at a system that requires them to gain consent for sex; that requires THEM to be desirable.
-
CR says:
I don’t know. Unless someone in here a scientist or something. It doesn’t seem that anyone has come up with the definative reason why a person will rape another yet- or sexually assualt them, or whatever word you like to use. Lots of theories going around. Domintation, intimidation, feelings of inadequecy, over whelming desire. So it is looking to me- at least so far- that one fellow’s opinion is just about as good as anothers. To say - NO- that’s not why a person rapes- this is. Just strong like that. Who knows. You folks are all educated. What do the actual scientific studies say? Otherwise, Steve,Violet, Michael and Occational all have perfectly reasonable ideas. Not one above another. Maybe people rape for a variety of reasons and not just one.
-
Steve says:
One last shot.
By introducing desire, I am not suggesting that rape is primarily a crime of sexual passion.
Rape is a crime of power and domination by men, some of whose path to desire has been thwarted by a system that allows womem to decide who they will sleep with.
For some men, this consent requirement grates as a constant reminder that they do not own a woman’s sexual choices.
-
Violet says:
The bullshit that was put forward in the Haidl case was staggering.
Yes, it was. What is even more staggering is how effective it was. It led to one hung jury, and even had an effect on the second jury (the one that convicted). I recall but can’t find the link to an interview with the jury foreman who talked about how brutal the crime was on tape. But he felt compelled to add (paraphrasing): “However, she did go to that party willingly. Nobody forced her into that house.”
Message: if you’re a girl, going to a party equals agreeing to be raped.
Apparently this is why the jury failed to convict on the most serious rape charges rather than the other sexual assault charges. A lone male juror held out against convicting the boys of rape.
-
Michael says:
Occasional Expositor, I think you are thinking of the word desire too literally. I don’t mean affection or love or something like that. I mean a form of greed, in a sense.
I do admit, though, that if I try to place myself in the mind of a rapist, I probably do a poor job of it. I do understand the instinctual pull of the male sex drive, but I’m sure I don’t understand the psychosis that leads people to hurt others.
-
CR says:
That rape case happened were I live. They said that the little girl was promisuous and had slept with all of those little boys before. They said that she was caught up in this idea of being a porno star and talked about it alot. They also said that she had spoken of making such a tape like she had seen on the internet. and invited the boys to such. They confused the case so much that it was hard to tell heads from tails and that’s the ways it ended up. The boys are in jail for quite some years now though. I think it was just in the end. Those boys were very messed up in the head and dangerous.
Which makes me think of another thing. There is this idea with many females that they think they have to be something that appeals to boys. They immitate what they see in mens magazines thinking that is the way to get boys to like them. and little boys also think they have to act like what they see in music videos and video games and the like. And lately it all seems to be getting extreme.
All those theories you guys are putting out seem quite good to me. Maybe it is a combination of them to one degree or another depending on the individual rapist mental state.
-
Occasional Expositor says:
Violet: I’m always amazed at the seeming lack of empathy by jurors. I wonder why jurors don’t think, “What if I had gone to a party. Would that mean I wanted to be brutalized and filmed?”
I sometimes think that, at least for women jurors, there’s a level of cruelty and malice that maybe leads them to think that there’s got to be another explanation for the actions of the perpetrators. Because surely no-one could be that cruel. That’s when I’m feeling optimistic.
Michael: Desire in the sense of “want, must have, am entitled to, other person is not a person so I can take”, that I can buy. I think that the word “desire” is problematic in this instance, because most people associate it with sexual desire not greed. That’s why I reacted to your post so strongly.
I’m just so used to hearing crap like, “Oh, he doesn’t need to rape women - he’s so handsome. Besides he has a gorgeous girlfriend.” Stuff like this so totally misses the point. This guy isn’t raping women because he can’t have sex, he’s raping women because he gets off on raping women.
-
Alon Levy says:
Rape IS a hate crime. It’s a war crime, it’s a hate crime. Good grief, she spelled the point out for y’all and you’re refusing to accept it. Are you caught in the dense fog of privilege?
There’s a big difference between saying something and substantiating it. I can also say that the idea that rape’s a hate crime is preposterous and the rape-feminism connection is a self-serving assertion made by radicals who need to justify their political existence by finding things to disagree with everyone else on. But I’m not going to say that unless I have the facts to back it up, and I’m certainly not going to demand that everyone else see the self-evident truth of my assertions.
Steve, are you suggesting that this is the general basis for rape as a phenomenon? Male inadequacy? If so, how do you see that intersecting with the Brownmiller observation that rape enforces male domination of women?
It’s not an observation; it’s a factless assertion (no, the fact that rape exists in misogynistic societies doesn’t imply anything on its own). Maybe there are facts that show that rape is what enforces misogyny; but if there are, they don’t appear in Against Our Will.
Michael, the problem with the desire theory is that rape victims range from infants to octogenarians, and include every sort of female imaginable.
Maybe different rapists rape for different reasons. Although rape victims include infants and octogenarians, not all women have the same risk. The probability of a 75-year-old woman to be raped is negligible compared to the probability of a 25-year-old woman. So some rapists might do it strictly for domination, whereas others might do it because of sexual desire. At any rate it’s simplistic to assume a priori that there can only be one primary motive.
The difference, if there is one, with a hate crime is, I don’t think the man is saying, i hate that bitch and I’m gonna rape her. (Although I’m sure that happens, too.) I think the man is thinking, I want her and I’m gonna take her by force if I have to.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s neither of the two in the case of most murders and assaults, so I don’t see why it has to be in the case of rape.
Re your comment about my tolerance for the nitpicking: Moderatin’ is hard work. If I cut off trolls too fast, I’m criticized. If I indulge others, I’m criticized.
Yes, but not by the same people… at least I hope not.
-
Cassandra says:
Occasional Expositor-
Personally, I think that when jurors lack empathy as you describe in these horrific cases it is because of the overwhelming violence and danger. I believe the way they deal with the empathy which is so scary they have to put a “safety” on it in their minds so they can feel secure that this would never happen to them. So it comes down to blaming the victim for putting themselves in the situation- then the juror has the “control” in feeling they themselves would never be in that situation and therefore are safe from it. The reality, that there are sociopaths out there that would do it to you, too, is too mind-blowing to deal with. -
Paul Tergeist says:
to 16: How do you arrive at the conclusion that court-ordered rape cannot have been committed for sexual gratification and how can you compare the cases if the victim was a woman and was not raped with metal poles??
I think we are arguing at cross purposes. I do not deny your conclusions about what the lawyers would be telling the press if the victim had been a woman and I am not comparing this to any other case.
I am merely saying that the boy was singled out to be a victim because of some other primary reason than the sexual gratification of the suspects. I suspect it was racism, but it may have merely been that the skinheads wanted to brutalize someone and he was there.
I simply don’t think they picked him out as a rape victim as their primary motivation to brutalize him and I doubt you think so either.
-
Occasional Expositor says:
Cassandra-
I think you’re right. To allow yourself to really understand the woman-hatred that is expressed through sexual violence is scary; it usually means an adjustment to your world view that means you are not safe and nothing you do will guarantee your safety. -
Cassandra says:
Occasional Expositor-
It is the only thing over the years that I have come upon that makes sense when I see again and again how people can rationalize what is so clearly wrong. It tends to happen in cases where things are particularly brutal. I see this kind of logic among the pre-schoolers I teach, also. One child might explain why another child choked on their grape as, “its because she didn’t eat her sandwich first.” There is safety in that, where if one just adheres to some rule one will be safe. Don’t go to parties and you’ll be safe. Or, if you go to parties, don’t wear shorts to parties and you’ll be safe. Basically, don’t think too much on this because you’ll realize there are no guarantees in this world. -
Violet says:
It’s not an observation; it’s a factless assertion
Of course rape enforces male domination of women. Women the world over are intimidated by the possibility of sexual violence from men. That’s simply a fact, quite apart from any theories about the origin of rape.
-
Violet says:
There is safety in that, where if one just adheres to some rule one will be safe.
Religion!
-
Alon Levy says:
Orf course rape enforces male domination of women. Women the world over are intimidated by the possibility of sexual violence from men. That’s simply a fact, quite apart from any theories about the origin of rape.
That’s a huge leap from “women are afraid of being raped” to “rape reinforces the patriarchy.” Recall that Browmiller’s original assertion is even stronger than yours: it’s that slavery, war, and hierarchy could only evolve once men had started to rape women.
-
Violet says:
I didn’t say it reinforces the patriarchy, though it does. I said it enforces male domination. That’s one of Brownmiller’s observations, along with many others about how rape functions in society and how it affects the behavior of men and women. I’m not referring to her larger theory about the origin of rape and its role in the patriarchy.
-
Occasional Expositor says:
Violet and Cassandra -
Re safety: Many years ago, I read Dworkin’s Right Wing Women; it was a revelation. IIRC, the idea was that right wing women believe that if they can only make the rules work that are supposed to protect women when they bind themselves to one man (marriage), they will be safe. Otherwise they are open to exploitation by many men, like “liberated women” are, in their way of thinking.
Whereas feminists saw the lack of safety in marriage (domestic abuse, rape, poverty, control of money, abuse of children), right wing women want to enforce marriage but make it safer.
Unfortunately that hope is reliant on men behaving well inside marriage, and that’s where religion is supposed to come in, I think.
At the time it made sense to me when I saw intelligent women condemning feminist goals; it still makes sense to me today. Although I think there’s more to it than that.
-
Violet says:
the idea was that right wing women believe that if they can only make the rules work that are supposed to protect women when they bind themselves to one man (marriage), they will be safe. Otherwise they are open to exploitation by many men, like “liberated women” are, in their way of thinking.
It’s a protection racket; that’s how the patriarchy sells itself. Give up your freedom to one man who will protect you from the ravages of other men. And it’s still being sold that way: women all over the world, including conservative Americans, are brainwashed into believing that this is the only way they can be safe. It doesn’t seem to matter that every anthropological study shows that the more male-dominated and patriarchal a culture, the more violence women suffer. Gender equality is the path to safety, not patriarchy.
-
Alon Levy says:
How’s that different from “The sexual revolution only oppressed women more than before,” an argument that to my understanding Dworkin advances?
-
Occasional Expositor says:
It’s a protection racket
That’s it precisely.
-
Cassandra says:
But you only get “protected” if you are a good little girl and follow his rules. For many, the protection comes at a big cost.
-
Violet says:
Well, yes, I’d say giving up your rights and freedom as a human being is a big cost. And of course it’s no guarantee of safety anyway; you’re only safe if the man who owns you happens to be a nice guy. Many aren’t. That’s why the most patriarchal cultures also have the most violence: wife beating, wife killing, mutilation of children, abuse, all that. And there’s little or no recourse for the women, since they’re effectively chattel.
-
Alon Levy says:
And, of course, if you try to get away from that, the way the system is set up will ensure that you’ll get screwed, pun intended. Shopkeepers in turn-of-the-century Little Italy didn’t have the option of not paying protection.
-
Violet says:
How’s that different from “The sexual revolution only oppressed women more than before,” an argument that to my understanding Dworkin advances?
You should work more on your understanding of Dworkin. Or if you don’t care to read her, just read Twisty regularly. Twisty’s her own self, of course, but her radicalism has a distinctly Dworkinesque flavor.
-
Alon Levy says:
I did care to read her; it was just impossible to glean the points she intended to convey from her writings. But I remember distinctly that she said something about how the sexual revolution was really oppressive for a variety of reasons - the one I remember is that it didn’t address gay rights. When I got to the point where she said why the idea of privacy was patriarchal because sex was a violation of women’s privacy, I figured I had better things to do with my time than try understanding drivel.
-
Violet says:
You mean this drivel?
She, a human being, is supposed to have a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has a hole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole, her hole, is synonymous with entry. A man has an anus that can be entered, but his anus is not synonymous with entry. A woman has an anus that can be entered, but her anus is not synonymous with entry. The slit between her legs, so simple, so hidden– frankly, so innocent– for instance, to the child who looks with a mirror to see if it could be true–is there an entrance to her body down there? and something big comes into it? (how?) and something as big as a baby comes out of it? (how?) and doesn’t that hurt?–that slit which means entry into her– intercourse–appears to be the key to women’s lower human status. By definition, as the God who does not exist made her, she is intended to have a lesser privacy, a lesser integrity of the body, a lesser sense of self, since her body can be physically occupied and in the occupation taken over. By definition, as the God who does not exist made her, this lesser privacy, this lesser integrity, this lesser self, establishes her lesser significance: not just in the world of social policy but in the world of bare, true, real existence. She is defined by how she is made, that hole, which is synonymous with entry; and intercourse, the act fundamental to existence, has consequences to her being that may be intrinsic, not socially imposed.
-
Violet says:
One more thing: the argument Dworkin and others make re the sexual revolution is that as long as the patriarchy remains in place, women are not truly liberated. The sexual revolution “liberated” us from housework to pole dancing, but we’re still living in the patriarchy. It’s just a different kind of oppression. The point is that the revolution is incomplete, stillborn, until it goes all the way towards complete emancipation.
-
Steve says:
Sockso:
Were you kidding about the passage being drivel?
I think it is remarkable.
-
Mandos says:
I read that passage too. I thought it was a good point, but a pessimistic one. I understand she said that heterosexual penetrative sex would survive the end of patriarchy, but it still suggests that even after the end of patriarchy, women are at an inherent psychological disadvantage because of the physics of natural biological reproduction.
OR it could be that we simply have to view the woman as “engulfing”…
-
Violet says:
Were you kidding about the passage being drivel?
Of course. About as far from drivel as you can get. That was my point.
-
Steve says:
This is the second or third time I didnt get your irony and sarcasm, sockso. Ill keep trying.
-
Alon Levy says:
You mean this drivel?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m referring to.
One more thing: the argument Dworkin and others make re the sexual revolution is that as long as the patriarchy remains in place, women are not truly liberated.
No, I’m pretty sure she said that the sexual revolution only oppressed women more, or at least that it didn’t liberate them from anything. Obviously there’s more liberation to come, but both of these arguments remind me of communists’ delusions about the New Deal, and of libertarians’ delusions about every failed privatization/deregulation scheme.
-
Violet says:
Alon, considering that you’ve just demonstrated that Dworkin is over your head, you should probably refrain from trying to explain what she really said about anything.
-
Mandos says:
It would be really nice, actually, if he explained why he thought that quote was drivel.
-
Alon Levy says:
Because, for one, if I didn’t know who wrote that, I would have guessed the author is a sexist who’s trying to justify the subjugation of women on essentialist grounds. Usually, when you say something like “by the nature of penetration, women have less privacy than men,” you have to justify it based on more than “God intended it that way.”
-
Alon Levy says:
While we’re at it, it’s weird that you take the one paragraph of Dworkin’s I understood well and flail it as evidence that she’s just over my head. Of course even if she is, what I’m going to do is quiz libfems, sex-positive radfems, and people who are merely pro-feminist (or not even pro-feminist) about her… if I think it’s worth bothering, which it isn’t. She’s extreme enough that I can ignore her, and frankly I’d much rather concentrate on Browmiller, who seems to have been far more influential.
-
Mandos says:
I thought the argument was a lot more complex than “God made it that way”. The idea is that people have personal boundaries, and there’s nothing more personal than the interior of the body, and since women are expected to yield up that boundary while men are mostly not and women are expected to yield it up as a matter of normal life, then this has profound consequences.
These profound consequences are made all the more severe because of the way in which La Patriarchidad constructs the notion of privacy. By having to yield up that internal boundary, women are deemed less able to attain an independent privacy—in patriarchal societies, women’s privacy is contained within her man’s, because her man is authorized to compromize her internal boundary.
Now Dworkin was clear, as I understand it, that she thought that penetrative sex would survive the end of patriarchy. She wasn’t writing that passage as a commandment from God (at least not how I read it), but rather simply using her usual expository style and reporting what she felt La Patriarchidad felt about women. In another passage, I remember, she analyzed it from the male side, where penetrative sex is viewed as the lethal consumption/engulfment of the male that must be braved but denied at all costs.
Whether she’s right or wrong is another matter but I don’t think you can describe it as drivel
-
Alon Levy says:
If she put it as clearly as you did, I wouldn’t describe it as drivel. My comments about her comprehensibility stem from her writing style more than from her arguments. I might be prejudiced because I disagree with her so much, but then again I think Brownmiller writes well even after recalling that she was the person who wrote Pornography Hurts Women, the essay that made me despise radical feminism for years.
Incidentally I also disagree with it, mostly based on the fact that a lot of the skirmish about how to view penetration seems generational. Granted my evidence here is anecdotal, but since I don’t know anyone under 30, online or offline, who views penetration as yielding the internal boundary, I think the generational view is correct. The millennial generation is also less sexist than previous ones, but the emphasis is on “less,” and we’ll still need a generation or two to be born and then grow to adulthood to get rid of the patriarchy.
-
Violet says:
that you take the one paragraph of Dworkin’s I understood well
No, that’s just it — you completely misunderstood it.
Mandos is correct that she’s not writing that women’s status is actually a commandment from God. The phrase “the God who does not exist” is the giveaway there.
This whole conversation reminds me of George VI’s remark on seeing one of artist John Piper’s storm scenes: “Pity you had such bloody awful weather!”
-
Alon Levy says:
This whole conversation reminds me of George VI’s remark on seeing one of artist John Piper’s storm scenes: “Pity you had such bloody awful weather!”
Really? Me it reminds of my conversations with fundamentalists who couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that people could read the Bible and still not believe in their version of God.
-
Violet says:
You’re just pissed off at being told that you don’t understand something. Well, you don’t. Flailing around like this won’t change that. Insulting people who do understand it won’t change that and just makes you look more foolish. If you don’t understand something, the thing to do is recognize the fact and then work on it. At your age you have plenty of time to develop your intellect. There is no reason to be embarrassed about your lack of knowledge or understanding of anything; you haven’t been alive long enough. On the other hand, digging in your heels and insisting that you know it all will not serve you in good stead.
You seem to feel that I’m attacking you, but I’m actually trying to give you a little help here.
-
Alon Levy says:
And, I should add, start harping on how I didn’t really understand the Bible once I inform them that I’ve read substantial portions of it, and in the original Hebrew.
-
Alon Levy says:
I knew we’d crosspost…
If you don’t understand something, the thing to do is recognize the fact and then work on it.
As I said, I’d work on it, if I thought Dworkin mattered enough.
There is no reason to be embarrassed about your lack of knowledge or understanding of anything; you haven’t been alive long enough. On the other hand, digging in your heels and insisting that you know it all will not serve you in good stead.
Do I have to always agree with you to be considered understanding? Honestly, I’ve been through this crap countless times. Apparently I don’t understand the Bible or else I’d be Christian/a practicing Jews, I don’t understand Marx or else I’d be a communist, and I don’t understand Ayn Rand or else I’d be a libertarian.
But hey - I can only understand what Dworkin wrote; I’m not a psychic. If I can’t glean her views directly from her writings, then it means she’s a bad writer (yes, I apply this principle when I’m the writer, too) unless she’s writing satire, which she’s not.
The point is, this and a lot of other things 1970s feminists say about sexuality is crap. It may not have been crap in their experiences, but as soon as they started to talk in general, they started getting things wrong. It may be hard for me to understand - as I said, if I cared about it, I’d check who else doesn’t understand it. So far, the formulation of Dworkin’s view that you and Mandos seem to agree on has nothing to do with reality.
-
Violet says:
This isn’t about agreeing with me. Your summary of Dworkin’s theme was just plain wrong. Weirdly wrong. As for her writing not being clear, perhaps it’s not to you, but to millions of readers she’s one of the most incisive philosophers of female experience who’s ever put pen to paper. It genuinely surprises me that you could understand Mandos and not Dworkin, since her writing is so clear it doesn’t need to be glossed.
As for Dworkin’s philosophy of the body having nothing to do with reality, that’s another example of hubris on your part. You’re a 17-year-old boy, and you consider yourself a greater expert on the interior life of females than Dworkin? As for there being a generational difference, nothing you’ve ever said about your life leads me to believe me that you have your finger on the pulse on what teenage girls are feeling. On the other hand, Dworkin’s nuanced explorations of female experience have struck a chord with millions of female readers. It strikes an even deeper chord with those readers who are familiar with women’s history and recognize the ideas she is echoing rhetorically.
Beyond this particular issue is the fact that whenever you summarize second wave radical feminism, you almost invariably get it wrong. I’ve pointed it out to you before, but you always get so pissed off I rarely bother.
-
Mandos says:
To be fair, I’m quite sympathetic to Alon’s feelings on the matter of Dworkin’s writings. She is NOT always clear. I have encountered women who misunderstand or disagree with her for much the same reasons. She very quickly and easily slips between what she believes is actually true and what she believes The Patriarchy is saying that it’s very easy to get confused. It’s also sometimes hard to say when she’s making a generalization or talking about a specific experience.
So I’m very sympathetic to people who misunderstand her, and while she’s a very accessible writer compared to a lot of the far more philosophical/theoretic writers, she sometimes lets her raw anger cloud her writing. I do think she really does need a much dryer gloss some of the time. Dryness can be good. If she could occasionally have had a style like, say, Twisty’s, I think a lot of misunderstanding could have been avoided.
So I think that a misreading of that passage is highly excusable. It really can look like she’s claiming that penetrative sex MUST NECESSARILY rob women of privacy, instead of saying (as I read her as a whole, including that passage) that male fear of the feminine turns the necessary yielding of a personal boundary into a patriarchally constructed denial of women’s dignity—when it needn’t be so.
-
Violet says:
You may be right about Dworkin being difficult, Mandos, and I recognize that I’m probably not a good judge. To me she’s easy as pie. On the other hand, I also find Foucault, Heidigger, and Hegel easy.
(Not that I can really credit the idea that Dworkin is that hard. She’s widely misunderstood, yes, but also widely revered and deeply understood, at least by some readers.)
Nevertheless, if someone mischaracterized Foucault’s work and then, based on this misunderstanding, described it rather aggressively as “drivel” and not worth reading, I would take exactly the same tack as I have in this case.
-
cicely says:
…of course it would be ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the Hispanic boy was “giving off signals that he wanted to be sodomized with a metal pole.” And I suspect men in particular think to themselves, “But in this case it’s so obvious that none of that could apply: who the hell would agree to be brutally sodomized and burned with a cigarette?”
Clue: That’s how most women react to every reported gang rape of a female. Ridiculous to think anyone would want that. Obvious that this wasn’t “sex” gone wrong.
A movie that has stuck in my mind since I saw it in the 1980’s is the one set in an English borstal and called ‘Scum’. It was adults only viewing and highly controversial at the time both because it revealed the brutal reality of these institutuons (which had changed little decades later) and because of something else it contained. One of the central stories involved the gang rape and subsequent accidental suicide of a young boy. (accidental because he cut himself in his cell, then changed his mind and called for help which wasn’t forthcoming…)
The rape scene was not glamourised, sanitised or otherwise minimised so the audience could not avoid being disturbed by it. You felt deeply the boys’ fear, shame and despair. Like every woman I am soaking in portrayals of the rape of members of my own sex since they are so much a part of our cultures ‘entertainment’, and I have yet to see a single one that compares in terms of realism. (Not saying one doesn’t exist, just that I haven’t seen it if it does.) It has occurred to me that ‘Scum’ should be compulsory viewing for older boys and men so they are forced both to identify with a victim of their own sex, and to be confronted by an almost documentary portrayal of what it’s actually like to be raped. And that, for a male, would still be without all the baggage of ‘it must be your own fault, for one reason or another’, that girls and women are forced to carry.
Taffy Davenport put it better but - if anyone, anyone, out there can’t see the blatantly obvious double standard Violet has highlighted, or you want to talk about something, anything else to avoid it, please ask yourself why that is. How about a show of hands? Who is willing to type a simple ‘yes’ to the question “Do you see that the point Violet has made, that male victims of rape are never assumed to have ‘asked for it’; the circumstances surrounding the assault or the victims backgrounds are never trawled for ‘evidence’ that they may have ‘asked for it’ in the way those of female victims invariably are’ is correct?
Alternatively, could anyone who disagrees with it please provide evidence to the contrary?
-
Mandos says:
Alon: yes, but did you stop to think WHY she’s considered the embarassment? It’s for the same reason that a lot of the American left is embarassed by folks like Chomsky.
It’s possible that she was wrong about a lot of things. But then there’d be a serious attempt to engage her ideas. I’ve seen serious attempts to engage her ideas. There are ideas that Dworkin had that I deeply disagree with: for instance, the civil litigation end-run around the free speech questions.
But by and large I see a lot of rejection of Dworkin just because she’s a scary radical and said that “all men are rapists.” Her strongest opponents, and many of her actual targets (among feminists) accord her a certain amount of respect. It’s people who never engaged with her ideas that I see being “embarassed” by her.
I see very few known to be in the “second wave” who are embarassed by her as you say.
-
Mandos says:
To clarify, I meant that she said that “all men are rapists” ironically—she didn’t, she said that patriarchy (not her) models ideal masculinity on rapist behaviour. That’s quite a different proposition, one that isn’t drivel, and one that can be debated seriously.
-
Violet says:
she said that patriarchy (not her) models ideal masculinity on rapist behaviour.
Did she even exactly say that? I don’t remember it that way, but that’s certainly closer than the canard that “all men are rapists.” It seems to me she was talking about the socially constructed ideal of man-conquering-woman, which finds its most extreme expression in the idea of the rapist and its banal expression in every day heteronormativity. All of which she thought was bullshit. She wrote very eloquently about how each of us is profoundly human and nothing but, how gender is a social construct and prison.
People seem to think that Dworkin used too big a knife, that her rhetoric was too unsubtle, but for me one of the joys of reading her is her subtlety. It seems to me that she’s in dialogue with 2000 years of western civilization; the allusions and echoes in her work are delicious. As a philosopher she’s like Bergson — not literally in style, but in affect: more poet than debater; lyrical rather than forensic.
-
Violet says:
Cicely, I apologize for stepping over your comment with this strange Dworkin tangent.
I like your suggestion:
“How about a show of hands? Who is willing to type a simple ‘yes’ to the question “Do you see that the point Violet has made, that male victims of rape are never assumed to have ‘asked for it’; the circumstances surrounding the assault or the victims backgrounds are never trawled for ‘evidence’ that they may have ‘asked for it’ in the way those of female victims invariably are’ is correct?
Alternatively, could anyone who disagrees with it please provide evidence to the contrary?”
-
Mandos says:
Did she even exactly say that? I don’t remember it that way, but that’s certainly closer than the canard that “all men are rapists.” It seems to me she was talking about the socially constructed ideal of man-conquering-woman,
Hmm. My thinking is that she was promulgating the notion that rape is, in fact, patriarchy’s ideology and pornography its propaganda. If rape is an ideology and a way of being, then the rapist is its ideal. Because it’s in the end impractical to openly state this patriarchy masks it and sugar coats it, among other things.
She wrote very eloquently about how each of us is profoundly human and nothing but, how gender is a social construct and prison.
(going on a tangent…) I think it overlooks a lot of things, though. Gender—though by definition socially constructed—is nevertheless critically connected to physical reality and to reproduction, and any liberation has to take into account the forms of dependence this necessarily entails.
Gender doesn’t float unfettered, at least not from the basic macro-level fact of reproduction.
As a philosopher she’s like Bergson — not literally in style, but in affect: more poet than debater; lyrical rather than forensic.
That’s really the problem. Her subtlety and wit comes from the gut when the argument requires something a little more cerebral and, like I said, “dry.”
-
Violet says:
Gender—though by definition socially constructed—is nevertheless critically connected to physical reality and to reproduction, and any liberation has to take into account the forms of dependence this necessarily entails.
Gender doesn’t float unfettered, at least not from the basic macro-level fact of reproduction.
No, it doesn’t, which Dworkin understood very well.
One reason that I regard her with interest as a philosopher is that she was working towards an understanding of how gender (a constructed thing) arose from our bodies and sexual reproduction (a natural thing). She was looking at things on the deepest level possible. How did the way we are formed, and the way these bodies interact, help create these mental universes we occupy?
But as I said, I’m probably not a good judge of how difficult Dworkin is, because she’s a comfortable match for the way my mind works. Long before I ever encountered her work, I was puzzling out a theory of human experience and gender relations rooted in the body, and I’ve always appreciated an allusive philosophical style that asks questions rather than formulates dogma. So I read Dworkin and dig what she’s doing.
On the other hand, I remember reading a piece by someone who said she’d read Dworkin’s “Intercourse” in college and thought it meant she couldn’t have sex with her boyfriend!
-
Mandos says:
But here’s the thing: I never saw any acknowledgement from her (and I note that I may have forgotten or missed it, and I haven’t read *everything* she’s written) as to the external reasons why men would want to create these distinctions and enforce it. Everything I read from her has to do with internal psychological reasons. Her “root cause”, as I recall, was expressed primarily in psychological terms.
Frankly, whoever rocks the cradle rules the world. Whoever has control over reproduction has a lot of power. Under conditions of noncoercion, women have control over reproduction and hence massive social power simply due to that fact. Men are necessarily peripheral in at least some subtle way. The only society I know of in which marriage does not at all take place (the Moro?) demonstrates this relatively well—as well-off or badly off as it may be, men are still somehow psychologically secondary due to the lack of social control over reproduction.
Did it take rape to create a system in which men are no longer peripheral? This to me is the disturbing question.
On the other hand, I remember reading a piece by someone who said she’d read Dworkin’s “Intercourse” in college and thought it meant she couldn’t have sex with her boyfriend!
That’s because when you read Dworkin, you’re reading a form of preacher—maybe an intelligent, often correct preacher, but a preacher. And hence you look for moral advice from the preacher. If you read Dworkin as you would the Ten Commandments, you can easily imagine that nothing you do is patriarchally untainted and that THIS IMPLIES that all sex is rape…
-
CR says:
Well, this conversation about Dworkin certainly has been educational and thought provoking for me. Most of it is way past my comprehension. But I got some of it. Very interesting. Never had heard any of this before.
-
Violet says:
Mandos, I was inspired to write a whole post on the issues raised in the second and third paragraphs of your last comment.
