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Most rapists were subjected to some form of sexual abuse in childhood. A startling amount is perpetrated by females. Peer-reviewed studies conclude that between 60-80% of “rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men” were sexually abused by a female.
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McGill professor of Social Work Myriam Denov, who did her Phd thesis on female sex offenders, notes, as recently as 1984, a study proclaimed that “pedophilia does not exist at all in women.”
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According to a 2004 U.S. Department of Education mass study of university students, 57% of students reporting child sexual abuse cited a male offender, and 42% reported a female offender. Interestingly, 65% of the survivors of female abuse who opened up to a therapist, doctor or other professional were not believed on their first disclosure. Overall, 86% of those who tried to tell anyone at all about their experience were not believed.
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When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
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Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan offered his thoughts on an abused woman's case.But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.
the notion that a woman cannot rape a man has been around for quite a while and still persists. In the late '70s it was argued in the book "Sex, Crime and the Law" that "for obvious biological reasons, a woman cannot be guilty of raping a man ... certainly a woman cannot bring about sexual intercourse with a male against his will." What's certain is actually the opposite, that it's physiologically possible for a woman to impregnate herself by raping a man. (Also, note that rape doesn't have to include penis-in-vagina penetration.) Researchers have studied this very thing, in fact. A study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that "the belief that it is impossible for males to respond sexually when subjected to sexual molestation by women is contradicted" and it also corroborated "previous research indicating that male sex response can occur in a variety of emotional states, including anger and terror." Much as woman can experience lubrication and even achieve orgasm during rape, men's physiological response can act independent of consent or desire -- and in neither case does it make it any less rape-y.
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A 2001 report in Psychiatric Times found that female rapists "are most likely to use psychological pressure such as verbal pleading and arguments, emotional blackmail, and deception." Also common among cases of female-on-male sexual assault is taking advantage of an intoxicated man.
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, it's tough to accurately estimate how common female-on-male rape is, because it's presumed to be greatly under-reported. That's due in part to the general stigma around sexual assault, but more important, to cultural assumptions about male and female sexuality. Men, we're told, always want sex from women and are happy to get it any way they can. This yarn is so strong that it's tragically woven throughout even cases where underage boys are molested by female teachers.
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By distinguishing between acts of random violence and acts of violence against women, the sponsors of the Violence Against Women Act believe that they are showing sensitivity to feminist concerns. In fact, they may be doing social harm by accepting a divisive, gender-specific approach to a problem that is not caused by gender bias, misogyny, or "patriarchy"-an approach that can obscure real and urgent problems such as lesbian battering or male-on-male sexual violence
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"There was some pressure-at least I felt pressure-to have rape be as prevalent as possible . . .. I'm a pretty strong feminist, but one of the things I was fighting was that the really avid feminists were trying to get me to say that things were worse than they really are"
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One obvious reason for this inequity is that feminist advocates come largely from the middle class and so exert great pressure to protect their own. To render their claims plausible, they dramatize themselves as victims-survivors or "potential survivors." Another device is to expand the definition of rape...
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MattyRoy1015
17 July 2011 8:53PM
I would appreciate the report more if the Guardian dropped its trademark liberal condescension, which habitually appears in their reports on developed countries.
And it's just so obvious...the picture and vivid descriptions of the traumatized "native" just above the picture of a confident, manly western saviour and passages like:
"his eyes cast towards the ground, as if in apology for his impressive height. He has a prominent upper lip that shakes continually – a nervous condition that makes him appear as if he's on the verge of tears....I am aghast"
Is this necessary?
And of course, the rape victims are willing to talk, "thanks largely" to a magnanimous white man willing shoulder some of their burden. Really, Guardian? I would have thought the rape victim's willingness to talk was "thanks largely" to personal agency.
Amusingly, one feminist complained in the comments (ignoring what was the most disturbing part of the article for me: how feminarchy is trying to silence, sideline and ignore male rape):
"Why the hostility toward feminists in some of the readers' comments? Are feminists to blame for male rape (as well as every other evil in society these days)? I doubt any feminist reading the article feels anything but revulsion with regard to the rapists (who were not feminists - just in case you were confused) and I'm quite sure all of us feel nothing but sympathy for the victims. Blame the perpetrators."
Someone pointed her to one of her previous comments:
"Really - should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence?"
She "clarified" that she meant "Should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence against women?", but this just exposes feminarchy even more blatantly.
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Another commenter points out (in response to an affirmation that "the perpetrator class *is* monolithic. In these countries, in these war situations, it *is* exclusively composed of men, acting out masculinity's obsession with the use of sex as violence and power over"):
"Women also use sex as a means of violence and power. Research conducted in the US show that 95% of male victims in juvenile detention centres are abused by women http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/mar/11/the-rape-of-american-prisoners/ and that another report highlighted that women raped in US prisons were more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted by another woman than a man" -
when some UK Rape Crisis centres began to accept and help male rape victims they received death threats and even threats of having their offices fire bombed. Apparently these threats came from volunteers at other rape crisis centres
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wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."
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As part of an attempt to correct this, the RLP produced a documentary in 2010 called Gender Against Men. When it was screened, Dolan says that attempts were made to stop him. "Were these attempts by people in well-known, international aid agencies?" I ask.
"Yes," he replies. "There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake." Dolan points to a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa.
"I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female. He also recalls a man whose case was "particularly bad" and was referred to the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR. "They told him: 'We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.'"
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Women who retract allegations of rape out of fear of violence should not face criminal charges, according to fresh guidance issued by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.
His announcement is intended to help prosecutors distinguish between those who pervert the course of justice by inventing false claims and genuine victims in danger of attack from vengeful partners or assailants.
We appear to have built a system where cops leak whatever information and speculation suits their case, but have no obligation to make the facts of a case public when the accused are innocent.
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#3 Hofstra University gang-rape case
An 18-year-old Hofstra University freshman accused five men, including another Hofstra student, of gang-raping her after a campus party in Hempstead, N.Y., in September 2009.
Four of the men were charged and a fifth was about to be arrested after the woman told police she was lured to a dormitory after a dance party. She said she was bound with rope while the five men took turns sexually assaulting her in a stall in the men's bathroom.
Then a grainy and explicit cellphone video of the incident emerged, showing the sex was consensual. The woman recanted her story after the prosecutor asked her: “If there is a video, and I get that video, it's going to show me that what you're saying is true?”
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"The men did nothing illegal, but that doesn't make the behavior any less despicable," wrote Newsday columnist Joye Brown about the case. At the same time, "one woman's lie could have sent five innocent young men to state prison for up to 25 years."
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if people are trying to critique from within the academic establishment, and they're getting tarred with the word "neoconservative," you keep on doing that long enough, people will get used to hearing it about themselves, and they will become conservative
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a lot of people have been driven toward the neoconservative side by the failure of the liberal academic establishment to critique itself. So rather than blaming The New Criterion or Roger Kimball for all the problems of the world, it's time for the liberals of academe to critique themselves, to reform it from within.
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Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.
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they “have problems with the case” based on what their investigators have discovered, and will disclose more of their findings to the defense. The woman still maintains that she was attacked, the officials said.
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the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.
Before Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s release from house arrest, two well-placed law enforcement officials in New York said that the case against him was on the verge of collapse because of major questions about the credibility of his accuser, a hotel housekeeper who said he had sexually assaulted her in a suite at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in mid-May.
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Before his arrest, Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been widely expected to resign from the International Monetary Fund to run as the Socialist candidate against President Nicolas Sarkozy next year. But after his arrest he was forced to quit, and the fractious French Socialists embarked on a potentially draining quest for a new candidate.
All that changed Friday when France awoke to reports that the case against him was crumbling.
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“People are not going to forgive him. At a political level, he is dead,” said Agnès Bergé, 44, who works for a law firm. But Sophie Leseur, 50, an artist, said the saga could turn Mr. Strauss-Kahn into a “martyr.”
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While waiting for my final train out of Edinburgh, an attempt to lose myself in an unprecedentedly emotional moment was foiled by a buzz from my phone. Surprise: it was a lengthy letter from Benjamin Cheah himself! (If you don't have a clue who I'm talking about, refer to this (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150219878858774). Anyhow, I'm convinced I ought to share it with the world, just so we enrich their perspectives on rape, the people who talk about rape, and - if that's not enough - the principles of argument. Benjamin has not only granted me permission to re-post it verbatim, but encouraged me to do so.
One thing, though: as Benjamin and I have agreed that this is about greater issues, and not a private disagreement confined between two individuals, I will abandon the standard form of correspondence, and perform an analysis of his email, rather than addressing him directly. Let's hope it will be as illuminating for everyone as I sincerely wish.
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The core of my writing is my research. I refer to Marc MacYoung, Rory Miller, and Gavin De Becker amongst others fairly extensively when I talk about self defence. I posted quite a few links to MacYoung's website in my article, because amongst the three MacYoung conducted the most research into the behaviour of rapists. These men have spent their careers understanding criminal psychology and developing personal safety tactics, and are widely-recognised experts in their fields. I don't recognise any of their ideas in your work, so I would like to understand who and what informs your arguments. I don't want to assume that you're a straw feminist drawing from straw feminist theories, but I don't sense any concepts drawn from criminal psychology or personal safety in your article, which I sense should underscore any discussion on criminal behaviour - including rapists.
Nicholas Liu has brought up his quarrel with Benjamin's sources, so I see no need to restate those points. You can view the thread here (http://benjamincheah.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/slutwalk-noble-but-misguided). The reason why Benjamin does not 'sense any concepts drawn from criminal psychology or personal safety in my article' is simple: I unequivocally reject how these concepts inform his conclusions, and the import he happily attributes to them. Nor do I think it is necessary for me to cite who exactly informs my understanding when I am perfectly capable of understanding - and seeing through - things myself. A note of advice from myself: one of the first things we learn, as philosophers, is that citations do not undergird arguments; it's what you do with available concepts, ideas already on the table, that matters.
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SlutWalk believes that society pins all the ‘blame’ of a rape on the victim instead of the rapist. On the surface, this is only logical. A rapist committed a rape, therefore the rapist is to blame. But this is a shallow way of looking at rape – the rape probably occurred because the victim didn’t look after herself.
Most rapes occur because a woman took a risk, and got burned. She took a risk by walking down a dark alley, by ignoring the three young men lined up against a wall, by leaving a charming handsome stranger alone with her drink, by continuing to live with her abusive husband, and she paid the price. But these are avoidable risks. Most crimes occur this way. It’s controllable, even eliminated in some cases.
If this isn't victim-blaming, I don't know what it is.
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Today I came across a blog post titled "Slutwalk: noble but misguided" by Benjamin Cheah (http://benjamincheah.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/slutwalk-noble-but-misguided). I am personally for Slutwalk and am pleased that it's coming to Singapore, but as I believe it's important to critique the things we support, I decided to read it.
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The heart of SlutWalk’s stance on rape is its attack on ‘victim-blaming’. SlutWalk believes that society pins all the ‘blame’ of a rape on the victim instead of the rapist. On the surface, this is only logical. A rapist committed a rape, therefore the rapist is to blame. But this is a shallow way of looking at rape – the rape probably occurred because the victim didn’t look after herself.
What did I tell you? Can a deep, incisive, correct way of looking at rape point us back to (gasp) victim-blaming? If you can bear to, let's read on.
Predatory rapists like to ambush their targets. The key word is ambush. They wait in dark, secluded areas, and assess everybody who walk by. As soon as they see a target, they strike. Predators can be avoided by going where they can’t hide and not provoking an attack. Personal safety is beyond the scope of this blog, but for more information, there are plenty of books and websites available. I favour Marc MacYoung, Gavin De Becker, and Rory Miller. While geared towards an American audience, much of what they say applies across cultures and borders. More importantly, they make sense, and their tactics work.
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Most rapes occur because a woman took a risk, and got burned. She took a risk by walking down a dark alley, by ignoring the three young men lined up against a wall, by leaving a charming handsome stranger alone with her drink, by continuing to live with her abusive husband, and she paid the price. But these are avoidable risks. Most crimes occur this way. It’s controllable, even eliminated in some cases.
Now, two things. I first need to point out how ludicrous the second paragraph is. So, to avoid being raped, I am responsible for developing an internal Rapist Detector that enables me to systematically de-friend any rapist that could inhabit my friendspace. What's more, Cheah claims that they're "not that difficult to spot". I would love to personally introduce him to all my friends, just so he can tell me, afterwards, who is most likely to rape me - lest I suffer the consequences. It's easy! Cheah also conveniently ignores the fact that many rapists are people that you cannot easily disassociate yourself from with the click of a button - what about family members? Work superiors? Husbands you have young children with? Is it my fault that I am raped, or is it their fault for raping me? No prizes for the correct answer.
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The recent events swirling about the ex-next-president of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has revived old tropes about how culture affects sex, including sexual violence. Before this scandal, many continued to believe that Americans are still infected by their Puritan past in matters sexuel, while the French are just chaud lapins: hot rabbits. The supposed difference consisted of not only a heightened sexual activity but an altered set of conventions about where to draw the line between benign sexual interaction and harassment. The French, many believed, drew that line differently.
One needs to be a cultural relativist to know when one is being hit upon.
The number of women speaking out in France post-scandal calls into question this easy embrace of relativism.
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The more thorny question is whether relativism is relevant to those domains we generally want to put in the non-benign category: harassment, sexual coercion, even sexual violence. Could it be that offensiveness is relative to the perspective of the recipient, based on her own cultural sensibilities? More troubling, could it be that our very experience of an encounter might be significantly affected by our background, upbringing, culture, ethnicity, in short, by what Michel Foucault called our discourse?
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date rapes, statutory rapes, and many instances of harassment can be subject to multiple interpretations, which has given rise to the new term popular on college campuses — “gray” rape. The writer Mary Gaitskill famously argued some years back that the binary categories of rape/not-rape were simply insufficient to classify the thick complexity of her own experience. In this netherworld of ambiguous experiences, can understanding cultural relativism be useful?
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Yes means no, by the Supreme Court’s reckoning, even when the complainant has said yes-no-yes and admitted under oath that the charge was provoked — two months after the incident — by a custody dispute between the couple.
Or, as the majority decision on Friday put it: “Yes in fact means no in law.’’
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One night in 2007, as they moved from the living room couch to the bedroom for lovemaking episode, K.D. agreed to being erotically asphyxiated — choked to the point of unconsciousness, which some people apparently find heightens the sexual experience.
I am certainly not here to judge anybody’s sex life when both parties consent to the activity. Neither should the court.
K.D. gave prior consent not just to the choking but also — the defendant’s lawyer argued and the complainant later acknowledged — to the insertion of a dildo while she was unconscious. “At the moment, I just went with it, in the spirit of experimentation,’’ she testified.
By her own estimation, K.D. was unconscious for about three minutes and, when coming to, discovered she was being anally penetrated by the dildo. It was removed some 10 seconds later and the couple then had vaginal sex. There was no evidence the woman ever did anything against her will, that permission was revoked by words or conduct, that the husband had failed to ascertain or misunderstood that consent had been given, or that consent was somehow “vitiated’’ by intentional infliction of bodily harm.
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Indeed, the trial judge who sent the husband to prison for sexual assault acquitted him on charges of aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm, concluding the wife had agreed to the choking and didn’t suffer bodily harm “since the unconsciousness that she experienced was only transient.”
Yet she convicted on sexual assault because K.D. could not “legally consent to sexual activity that takes place while she’s unconscious.”
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The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
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