Toxic Masculinity
Thomas at Yes Means Yes quotes from a paper by Lisak, the groundbreaking rape researcher, about the characteristics of male rapists (unfortunately, I am unaware of similar studies about female rapists): “more angry at women, more motivated by the need to dominate and control women, more impulsive and disinhibited in their behavior, more hyper-masculine in their beliefs and attitudes, less empathic and more antisocial.”
The lesson here for masculists should be simple.
If a man believes that he cannot care about other people’s emotions, because if he did he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes that he must have power over other people, especially women, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes he must reinforce his masculinity, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever… if a man believes he must be angry, must be impulsive, must be dominant, because if he didn’t he would be like a woman, and that would be the worst thing ever…
That man is more likely to rape people. Period.
In short, gender-policing causes rape. You want to end the rape of women? Work for men to have freedom from gender roles– even the limited freedom that women have right now.
Disrespect for Boundaries
Our culture is fucked right the fuck up about boundaries.
Let us consider a hug. Pat doesn’t like to be hugged for whatever reason– could be anything from childhood abuse to wanting to save physical contact for people Pat really likes to a simple distaste. Robin, on the other hand, is a very touchy-feely person and loves hugs. One day, Robin hugs Pat without permission. Pat freezes and very politely asks that Robin not hug her.
What’s the reaction we’re likely to hear?
“Why don’t you like hugs? Hugs are great! Everyone loves hugs! Come on, just hug me once and I promise I won’t make you again. You’re so weird that you don’t like hugs. Are you sure you aren’t just making this up? Come on, everyone likes hugs, don’t be so ridiculous.” Occasionally other people will get involved in the social pressure to hug.
We systematically disrespect people’s boundaries, and then we expect people to be assertive when they have boundaries in bed. We tell women they’re being mean, or crazy, or stuck-up, or angry, when they strongly assert who they do or do not want to touch their bodies, and then we expect them to yell and kick and scream and punch when someone is trying to touch them in a different way they don’t want. We expect women to care about other people’s feelings and their pride and be diplomatic instead of saying “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME,” and then we are surprised when women care about other people’s feelings and their pride and are diplomatic instead of punching the rapist in the face.
Men, we cut out the middleman just think they’re being mean or crazy or stuck-up or angry in sex and non-sex. You don’t want a perfectly attractive girl to give you a blowjob? What, are you a fag or something?
Rape Is Really Important, That’s Why We’re Ignoring It
But our culture does care about rape.
Most people, if you ask them, will say that they are against rape and look at you funny for asking the question. Rapists are incredibly evil scary monsters, you see. They jump out of bushes to hold young screaming women down and force them to have sex, and then the women are traumatized forever. They also probably have claws and pointy teeth and say MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA a lot.
Hell, even rape apologists agree rape is bad. They’ll just say things like “all these people who just had someone continue sex with them after they said no are taking attention away from real rape survivors!” who are, presumably, the people who had a rapist jump out of a bush at them.
Our culture hates rape– and that’s why so many people question rape survivors.
Because rapists aren’t incredibly evil scary monsters. A rapist could be your best friend, the guy who sat behind you in high school algebra, your parent, your sibling, your lover. A rapist can be the handsome football star; a rapist can be the beauty queen cheerleader. A rapist can be a feminist who says all the right things about anti-oppression and bodily autonomy. A rapist could be the lead singer of an indie rock band, an Oscar-winning filmmaker, an activist for free speech and transparency in government. The only thing that makes rapists different from ordinary people is that they rape people.
And that’s scary. Because if rapists are ordinary people, not monsters, it means that someone you know and like and respect can be a rapist. It means that you might even be a rapist!
So people try to minimize rape. Newspapers say “sexual intercourse” instead of “alleged rape” or feature rape stories in the Odd News. Judges at rape trials sometimes ban the use of the word “rape” as unfairly prejudicial. Survivors describe their rapist continuing sex with them after they say no as “gray rape” or “not really rape.” People a rape survivor discloses to say you must have enjoyed it or but you were leading him on or it wasn’t rape, it was just sex you regretted the next day or well, he’s a nice guy and you don’t want to ruin his life. Whoopi Goldberg claims that Roman Polanski raping a thirteen-year-old girl who was too drunk and high to consent and saying no as “not rape-rape” (no, I am STILL not over that). Police officers and prosecutors and judges and juries are disbelieving or unmotivated or victim-blaming.
Rape survivors’ behavior after the rape is policed. If they didn’t report it immediately because they were in shock, if they didn’t report it at all because they didn’t want to relive the experience, if they were in denial, if they have a happy sex life afterward, if they don’t seem traumatized enough, they’re not a “real” rape survivor, so we don’t have to face the fact that rapists are ordinary people, often people we like and admire.
And the vast majority of rapists– acquaintance rapists– rape again and again and again, and never get put in prison or suffer any consequences for their actions, as their victims suffer from trauma, PTSD, substance abuse, problems with intimacy, flashbacks…
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to quit the human race and become a squid. Squid never do this kind of shit.
aliarasthedaydreamer
Ami Angelwings
Hershele Ostropoler
Cheradenine
jlandrith
kaija24
2020
noahbrand
Cliff Pervocracy
ozymandias
Shora
sirgabe
figleaf
John Hawkins
No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
Well-spoken.
Well, Lisak does make the point that alcohol is involved in so many of these acquaintance rapes that telling women to try to control their drinking would indeed have some affect. There’s not always going to be someone around to intervene in any case.
But then Lisak’s research on “Super Predators” seems to fly in the face of other models of rapists that one can find all over the reasearch and all over the web.
After all these years, I still don’t think we have good data on rapists, because so much seems conflicting.
Hmm. Under Rape is Really Important That’s why We are Ignoring It, what are you trying to say? It’s certainly been my experience that most rapes are reported in near breathless tones in local papers and often no skepticism is evinced of the claim at all. I would say of all the pieces you have identified of “rape culture” this is probably your weakest.
@ Ozy
“Thomas at Yes Means Yes quotes from a paper by Lisak, the groundbreaking rape researcher, about the characteristics of male rapists: “more angry at women, more motivated by the need to dominate and control women, more impulsive and disinhibited in their behavior, more hyper-masculine in their beliefs and attitudes, less empathic and more antisocial.””
Perhaps conflating these traits with masculinity has to end? What does ‘hypermasculine’ refer to anyway?
Anyway, considering the high rate of sexual abuse by women in the back history of rapists, I imagine ‘angry at women’ is a bit of a no-brainer. As is ‘motivated by the need to dominate and control men’, more ‘impulsive and disinhibited’, ‘less empathic’, ‘more antisocial.’
Incidentally I have read a study on the attitudes of female rapists. The authors of that study found that they were hyperfeminine and used concepts associated with femininity to excuse their behavior, namely concepts related to feminine passivity and vulnerability. ‘I couldn’t help myself’, ‘I was out of control’, ‘My need overwhelmed me’, ‘I felt we were drifting apart’, ‘I wanted him to love me’ etc. etc.
All these studies have really discovered is:
A. Rapists have an exaggerated, cartoony understanding of gender.
B. Rapists appeal to that exaggerated, cartoony understanding of gender to excuse and justify their behavior.
So it seems that the above point in the post is reinforced then…strict gender policing is problematic for everyone, and dangerous.
Clarence:
A large part of the problem is that often the only rapes that do get talked about “in near breathless tones in local papers” (/on local TV news) are the rapes that fit the script we’re most comfortable with as a society: Stranger rapes.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a newspaper article or news report about someone who was at a party, had been drinking, went into a room with someone… and didn’t consent to sex, and was raped.
This, in my opinion, is a shining example of the kind of attitudes that cause many rapes to be shrugged off as ‘not really rape.’
-Nathatalas
@ Ozy
http://www.female-offenders.com/bibliography.html
Take a look at some of these studies. If you need any downloaded contact me and I’ll get them for you.
I won’t tell you how I do it though. 😉
I’d also like to point out that we can’t easily know whether what typhonblue called “an exaggerated, cartoony understanding of gender” causes people to develop a propensity for rape, or whether some other factor(s) predispose people both towards rape and towards having a cartoony understanding of gender.
-Devil’s Advocate
Eh, some male squids cut holes in the female squids in order to have sex. You don’t really want to be a squid.
@ machina
“Eh, some male squids cut holes in the female squids in order to have sex. You don’t really want to be a squid.”
So do some human males.
http://www.fgmnetwork.org/authors/Lightfoot-klein/sexualexperience.htm
Read all the way down. The whole concept is a complete mindfuck all way round; the idea that male sexuality *must* cause pain to women seems, to me, to not just be fucked up for women but men as well.
I don’t really know. This sounds to me very similar to the rhetoric against violent video games. Shooter plays violent video games > playing violent video games leads to being violent. But correlation does not imply causation. It is likely that a violent person tends to like violent games more not the other way round. And especially tossing “hyper-masculinity” into the mix makes me cringe. Not that I disagree with you, we have to fight for this, if this however influences the number of rapes is what I would doubt.
Somebody said something about different literature about rapists. People, keep in mind that we are talking about 2 different kinds of rapists.
1) The forcible rapist that is usually the stranger that overpowers the victim
2) The person who rapes that believes he is not actually raping someone
Nathanlas, newspapers and people in general find it harder to get worked up about non-violent rape when it’s not related to someone we know. Generally we hear alcohol, drugs, and some level of consent was involved and that makes it really hard to see someone as a victim. One of my friends was mugged and robbed while walking home one night, he was drunk, alone, and in an area of town where that stuff happens alot
he got little sympathy from people and no assistance from the police. The fact he wouldn’t leave the house for a month afterwards was irrelevant, he was seen to be at fault.
If it had happened to one if the people who ignored it though it would have been a big deal and the mitigating factors irrelevant. However that’s how people are raised / indoctrinated now. We cant see crimes in such behaviour because of ‘mitigating factors’ and the lack of evidence. Most men if you really talk to them have had bad sex, sex they only had because well they are a man etc. It’s become so normalised to ignore what you feel and simply accept the role handed to you.
I agree with your point. Rape is so horrible an action to my mind (and, I assume, to other people’s) that it is fundamentally inconceivable for me to rape someone. On the other hand, I’m not sure that I could rule out misunderstandings completely. Note that I’m not arguing that this would be ok – it’s still horrible – or that one should not exercise as much caution as possible. I’m not even arguing that this is a common problem — most people should be really good at picking up the relevant cues very quickly. But I guess I can imagine tragic circumstances leading to a communication breakdown between fundamentally decent people, while I can’t imagine rape with a guilty mind.
Is there a way out of this?
And a side note on your hugging story. Your continuation of the story is not how it would have played out in my mind – Robin would have apologized and felt horrible for a few days. But that’s my intuition as a moderately touchy-feely person aware that people exist that do not like physical contact, and who thus does not feel licensed to hug people outside of very specific contexts. I certainly don’t mean that your intuition is wrong – it’s probably more accurate than mine. But people are different.
Feckless: Rapists are not divided into the “violent stranger rapist” and the “person who doesn’t know they’re raping someone.” Most rapists, even if they answer no to a question like “have you raped anyone?”, answer yes to questions like “have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?” I feel that is… somewhat difficult… to do accidentally, even if it isn’t a violent stranger rape.
I really recommend everyone read this post: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
Also, I am too lazy to dig through Lisak’s papers and figure out which measure he used, but gender roles do have several standard psychological measures– presumably rapists score very high as the “hypermasculine” gender role.
kilo: Not only is this an intuition, this is a situation I have witnessed and (much to my general guilt) participated in. Perhaps people get more sensible as they age, but certainly teenagers have this whole mindset of “if I hug someone who doesn’t want to be hugged, it’s their fault for overreacting and we should get them to not do that.”
typhonblue, you mean that paper I linked to here? 😉 It’s an interesting paper, yeah.
The yes means yes blog seems quite misandrist as on it rape is depicted as gendered.
@Ozy
I guess I was referring to that:
“After all these years, I still don’t think we have good data on rapists, because so much seems conflicting.”
The way I see it (not sure how accurate my knowledge on rape is these days) there is a difference between interviews of rapists in prison and what Lisak calls (I believe) undetected rapists. I believe we have conflicting data on rapists because of different ways to ask them (inmates vs undetected rapists).
Does that make sense?
Kilo;
As far as miscommunication goes, you should also read Thomas’s Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer. In it he discusses a paper whose findings are, in a nutshell;
“Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour.” (emphasis Thomas’s)
You should read the whole thing, it’s really quite good. You should also read some Harriet J as she explains that you You can’t accidentally rape someone. Some key points;
” If you were having sex with somebody, and they were unengaged, lying still, not touching you, not moaning, staring at the wall, flinching, or just completely passed out, YOU WOULD NOTICE THESE THINGS.”
and also;
“To a rapist, drunken sex is spiking a drink or finding a girl who is voluntarily so drunk that she’s blacking out or passed out and raping her while she’s unconscious or unable to move. She’ll call it rape, he’ll say “she was drunk!” and bystanders will think about the times they’ve had drunken sex with a consensual partner, and how HORRIBLE it would be if they were accused of rape later, so obviously THIS couldn’t be rape, never realizing that the rapist has a very different definition of “drunken sex” than they do.”
But you should go read the whole thing, because Harriet J spits mad truth, and i can’t do justice to it by quoting the few lines I have here.
Cats and Dogs; I’m pretty puzzled that you would call Thomas misandrist, especially on just the one point. Being mistaken is not the same thing as being hateful, and if you’re going to dismiss everything that has a single flaw or differs even a little from your worldview…. well…. You’ll be missing out, because Thomas is awesome.
Shora
To me any source depicting domestic violence or rape as mainly gendered, is not only factually inaccurate, it’s promoting hate. That’s why I’m referring to the blog as misandrist. To say I’m dismissing it over a single flaw …. we if I were to link to a site that depicted crime as black on white, or some religion on some European decent blue eyed blonds, would that site have a single flaw, or would it be grotesquely racist/anti-some religion?
If you are going to be a masculist, you need to know what misandry is.
Thank you so much for posting this.
“Because rapists aren’t incredibly evil scary monsters. A rapist could be your best friend, the guy who sat behind you in high school algebra, your parent, your sibling, your lover. A rapist can be the handsome football star; a rapist can be the beauty queen cheerleader. A rapist can be a feminist who says all the right things about anti-oppression and bodily autonomy. A rapist could be the lead singer of an indie rock band, an Oscar-winning filmmaker, an activist for free speech and transparency in government. The only thing that makes rapists different from ordinary people is that they rape people. ”
It took me over a year to finally accept the fact that I was raped, by my now ex-husband. Because, “husbands can’t rape their wives”, right?
Cats and Dogs:
I’m with you on Thomas. Much as people I like such as Clarisse Thorne and Ozy like him, I think he has a bias when it comes to rape statistics. Some on this blog such Toy Soldier , HughRistic , and a few others have tussled with him in the past. He basically doesn’t believe that false accusations occur with any frequency (he’s very much on the lower side of 2 percent ) and yes, he very much is a follower of “hegomenic masculinity” theory as propogated by people such as Kimmel. That’s not to say he doesn’t believe what he says or that he’s always wrong. He’s also a good writer. But I take his studies and the posts on them with a great deal of skepticism.
Clarence
The repackaging of misandry as masculism that goes on here, on this blog is just… I don’t really have the words to describe how I feel about it right now.
Emphasis added. That is not what Lisak’s study suggests. It suggests there is a correlation between extreme hostility towards women, hyper-masculinity, and sexual violence against women. That is hardly surprising.
However, my first question is why the extreme hostility against women occurred. The obsession with proving their masculinity suggests identity issues (perhaps related to a history of abuse as Typhonblue noted), not necessarily gender role issues. Gender roles are just how people demonstrate their identity in a society, so removing them would no more prevent sexual violence against women than replacing male priests with female priests would prevent sexual violence against boys. We can prove this with a simple observation: most people conform to gender roles, yet most people do not commit rape.
Cats and Dogs.
I know precisely what misandry is. Just because i disagree with you on whether or not Thomas is hateful or misandrist doesn’t mean that I don’t, or that I’m wrong. I’ll thank you to drop the condescension.
You are obviously entitled to form whatever opinion you like and not read his blog if you wish. But likening him to a violent racist is ridiculous on its face, regardless of his views on the genderedness of rape and domestic violence. If how he handles rape and violence is a deal breaker for you, that’s fine. I was only saying that he has a lot of valuable things to say and you might want to give him a chance. That’s all.
@ Ozy
“Also, I am too lazy to dig through Lisak’s papers and figure out which measure he used, but gender roles do have several standard psychological measures– presumably rapists score very high as the “hypermasculine” gender role.”
@ Shora (quoting Thomas)
““To a rapist, drunken sex is spiking a drink or finding a girl who is voluntarily so drunk that she’s blacking out or passed out and raping her while she’s unconscious or unable to move. She’ll call it rape, he’ll say “she was drunk!” and bystanders will think about the times they’ve had drunken sex with a consensual partner, and how HORRIBLE it would be if they were accused of rape later, so obviously THIS couldn’t be rape, never realizing that the rapist has a very different definition of “drunken sex” than they do.””
Wow, I find genderizing rape like this triggering. Sorry. Not interested.
Shora, I’m not sure that you have read up on misandry at all, the fact that you think that text that is dripping with it is “awesome”, sort of suggests that you haven’t and don’t really know what it is.
@ Shora
I have a thought experiment for you. Letsay you know a friend who’s a rape survivor. And you’ve read this really, really awesome book. Except it has rape in it. A lot of it. You give it to your friend and say ‘this book is really awesome, you need to read it!’
Are you an asshole? (rhetorical question)
Being treated like their rape and abuse doesn’t exit is hugely triggering for a lot of men. Hell, it’s triggering for me. Probably because of my (relatively mild)gender dysphoria.
The problem with calling someone a hater for saying rape is gendered, is that rape is, for the most part, gendered.
Major caveat here that rape of children is not gendered, also major caveat here that there are still many male survivors* and many female rapists, but it’s still true that rape is committed mostly by men to women.
In fact it kind of annoys me when MRAs call misandry on claims that “men do bad thing X more than women”. Even if the claim happens to be wrong, it’s not misandric if it’s sincerely believed. (After all, what if it was true? Would you call the universe misandric?)
*: And if you happen to be one of them, I want to be very clear that I’m not trying to deny your experience in any way.
@Typhon: That’s not Thomas, that’s someone else.
But I fail to see how one gendered example is making male survivors invisible.
I wonder if rape culture feminism is the most active and effective rape culture, not the prison system or the catholic church denies rape victims and protects rapists to the extent that rape culture feminism does.
>Major caveat here that rape of children is not gendered, also major caveat here that there are still many male survivors* and many female rapists, but it’s still true that rape is committed mostly by men to women.
It’s not true. Jeezus, stop forcing me into the role of victim when you very well know that:
1. The ‘mainstream’ statistics regarding rape don’t even INCLUDE what very well may be the largest portion of rape of men, rape of men by women.
2. There are studies that indicate parity in rape in relationships.
3. The number of rapes of men in prison outnumber the number of rapes of women by men outside of prison. (By that single fact *alone*, the largest victims of rape are men.)
And, you know what, I’m not even arguing that you have to say men and women are equal victims of rape, or that men are greater victims of rape. I’m just arguing that you admit that the situation isn’t COMPLETELY KNOWN AND DECIDED.
BlackHumour
Mra’s have generally read about misandry and have access to better studies and resources on misandry, rape, domestic violence etc, so are generally going to be the best people to ask about abuse stats. and what constitutes misandry,
@Typhonblue; I was quoting Harriet J, who is herself a rape survivor. She blogs about, among other things, her experiences with rape and one of her goals is to create a safe space for female survivors. Does she concentrate on female survivors of rape, such as herself? Yup, she does. You can say she’s wrong to do that, if you like. I wont.
Also, I find the logic behind these claims problematic. If I create a shelter for dogs, does that mean I hate cats? If I donate money to disaster relief in Haiti, but not to Japan, do I hate Japanese people? If I create a fund to help abused children, do I hate abused adults? If I am a veterinarian and concentrate on helping sick animals, do I hate people, because I don’t help them too?
People focus on certain issues. If people focus on women, it doesn’t mean they hate men. If people focus on trans issues, it doesn’t mean they hate cis people. It’s just a focus. Many people here focus on men, which is wonderful, because it is certainly true that not enough people focus on men’s issues. That doesn’t mean that it is bad or wrong or hateful to focus on women’s issues.
@ Shora
“You can say she’s wrong to do that, if you like. I wont.”
I’m not saying she’s wrong to do that. I’m saying that her focus is personally triggering; is likely to be triggering to anyone else who has problems with asymmetrical victimhood favoring women.
And if she makes arguments of this form:
“Cats are responsible for the abuse of dogs, the abuse of cats is, at best, a minor problem and a distraction from the real abuse, which is of dogs.”
I think pointing to her as a ‘resource’ is rather fraught. Because not only does she actively minimize the abuse of cats, which is damaging to abused cats; she is actively promoting the victim-consciousness of abused dogs, which is damaging to abused(and non-abused) dogs.
@ Cats and Dogs
“Mra’s have generally read about misandry and have access to better studies and resources on misandry, rape, domestic violence etc, so are generally going to be the best people to ask about abuse stats. and what constitutes misandry,”
Men don’t have authority over their lived experience; only women can explain to men their actual experiences.
“And if she makes arguments of this form:
“Cats are responsible for the abuse of dogs, the abuse of cats is, at best, a minor problem and a distraction from the real abuse, which is of dogs.””
She doesn’t do that though, really. I mean, the argument can certainly be made, and i don’t agree with a lot of her stuff the way I used to. That comment in particular that I linked, however, i thought would be useful for the question “Can you accidentally rape someone?” I wouldn’t recommend the whole of her blog on this site, for many reasons, but that thing in particular i thought would be helpful.
Incidentally, Thomas has never made such a claim. Which is why I expressed puzzlement at calling him misandrist,
@Typhon:
1. That’ s not true, one of the largest mainstream studies regarding rape did that. Others, however, have found fairly large differences in rates of rape by asking people straight out if they’ve been raped.*
2. I talked about that a long time ago; long story short I have my doubts that the biggest numbers from that study were actually measuring rape. The questions, at least by my reading, would seem to measure threats of rape as well.
3. Source? That seems incredibly unlikely.
A quick google search turns up this, which claims about 60,000 rapes in state and federal prisons for the year measured. That’s about half the BJS estimate of all rape per year; if all those 60,000 were men, the total number of rapes in the US would still be skewed slightly towards rape of women. (Assuming the data can even be mixed, of course; there’s a good chance these studies were asking different questions)
That the situation is not completely known and decided I’ll admit; however that’s mainly to the extent that no situation is completely known and decided. From what I’ve seen the evidence that women are raped more than men is quite strong, even taking into account things like the near-total failure of the NVAWS to measure rape of men. Of course more evidence would be nice but I don’t think it’s reasonable to withhold a conclusion until the evidence is perfect.
*: I know from other studies that asking people straight out is not a good way to find absolute rates of rape. HOWEVER I see no reason why it would result in such a large relative difference.
@ Shora
I made an attribution error. I should have said ‘Harriet’ when I said ‘Thomas.’
@ Shora
Also, according to Harriet’s analysis, it would be impossible for a woman to ‘accidentally’ rape a man. Let’s say a woman mounts a man while he’s unconscious thinking that erection = consent or that, as society tells her, men never say no so she can assume his consent.
That isn’t, then, accidental?
“The problem with calling someone a hater for saying rape is gendered, is that rape is, for the most part, gendered.
Major caveat here that rape of children is not gendered, also major caveat here that there are still many male survivors* and many female rapists, but it’s still true that rape is committed mostly by men to women.”
Black Humor, I know you have good intentions, but this really does erase alot of people’s experiences because it anomalizes and marginalizes them. Worse, your comment and the discourse it supports supports female rape of men and boys, whatever disclaimers you may append to it. And make no mistake that your comment comes right out of the patriarchal narrative on sexual male agency/female passivity.
And make no mistake female rape of men and boys is an instituional part of the culture and of law. It is only recently that it was even defined as a crime at all, and it is still punished very leniently if at all. men have very little license to turn women’s sexual advances aside in this culture and actual physical aggression is usually laughed off. Note how the date rape discussion never entertains the possiblity that the drunk men in the encounter may be a rape victim he is only ever the perpetrator, even if he is drunker than the woman. Then there is the sickening traditionalist atitude around women rpaing boys – the boy “got lucky’ or even sicker, Hugo Schwyzer reassuring a woman who raped a high school student of hers that she was right to have some qulams but of course since her victim was male, the power differential means that her rape of him was somehow not as mcuch a crime as if the genders had been reversed – classic white knighting, right out of classical chivalry, and all dressed up in feminist terminology. There are places where you can go to find out about this if the issue truly interests you, but you could start with ToySoldier’s blog: http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/
Shora,
yes, I’m aware of that post on YMY, and I kind of tried to hint at it in my post. In general, I agree completely with what he’s saying. As a side note, from my experience, while the type of refusal discussed in the post is rather clear as an immediate refusal, it can be quite difficult to understand as a general refusal, especially if you’re really hoping for a different result. e.g. in example (4), I’d find it difficult to blame A for trying again on another day; yet if it was me and I did and received similar refusals again I’d feel really bad for pestering her.
But I fully agree that such misunderstandings should generally be rare and – if they happen at all – not lead to any sexual interaction and thus not rape.
I did not know that post by Harriet J and found it very interesting. To the first quote you used, yes, I assume that I would notice if my partner were unengaged, lying still etc. I’m not sure how quickly I would notice it and understand that it’s not just a moment of distraction but a possible revoking of consent and that I need to stop immediately. One second? Five? Ten?
I’m not saying that most or even any rapes are really miscommunications. I’m saying that the idea of committing rape is so horrible, so revolting to my very core, that I find it difficult to understand that there are actually people who do it. [1] After reading Harriet J’s post, I’m now aware that this makes me part of rape culture, and I’ll have to think more about this. Thank you for the links.
[1] On the other hand, I have no problem believing that someone was raped; it would be a horrible thing to categorically not believe survivors after what they went through.
@TB
“Men don’t have authority over their lived experience; only women can explain to men their actual experiences.”
I know! How do you think that happened?
“Also, according to Harriet’s analysis, it would be impossible for a woman to ‘accidentally’ rape a man. Let’s say a woman mounts a man while he’s unconscious thinking that erection = consent or that, as society tells her, men never say no so she can assume his consent.
That isn’t, then, accidental?”
Uhm, no it isn’t. She didn’t accidentally trip and fall on his dick, she deliberately mounted him while unconscious. This situation is no different from the man who penetrates a women who is passed out drunk and assumes consent because she sat on his lap and made out with him earlier, or came up to his room.
@Kilo
“I’m not sure how quickly I would notice it and understand that it’s not just a moment of distraction but a possible revoking of consent and that I need to stop immediately. One second? Five? Ten?”
I’m not sure the length of time matters? But it is probable that as a human being who does not want to rape you would notice, and you would stop when you noticed something obviously wrong. Within reason, the time it takes for you to pick up on the cues is less important then what you do once you pick up on them.
“I’m not saying that most or even any rapes are really miscommunications. I’m saying that the idea of committing rape is so horrible, so revolting to my very core, that I find it difficult to understand that there are actually people who do it.”
I dont think this makes you part of rape culture. Rape IS horrible and revolting, after all. I do think that assuming rapists are only evil monsters and/or creepers who jump out of bushes DOES promote rape culture.
I’m glad you found the links helpful though 🙂
““Men don’t have authority over their lived experience; only women can explain to men their actual experiences.”
I know! How do you think that happened?”
Same way women and people of color and gay and trans people don’t have authority over their lived experience, I’d imagine. Something about we’re too biased and emotional and these things can only be properly analyzed with the emotionless impartiality only found in people who have a stake in denying the lived experience of others.
@ Shora
“Same way women and people of color and gay and trans people don’t have authority over their lived experience, I’d imagine.”
So no one has any authority over their lived experience. What a funny world we humans have created.
“Same way women and people of color and gay and trans people don’t have authority over their lived experience, I’d imagine. Something about we’re too biased and emotional and these things can only be properly analyzed with the emotionless impartiality only found in people who have a stake in denying the lived experience of others.”
No, Shora, actually that’s not the mechanism at work in denying men the right the describe and define our own lived experiences. In fact it’s not the mechanism at work with gay people’s experiences either. In fact that doesn’t describe what happens with gay people’s experiences either. With us, we are just considered anomalous and exotic and tend so we tend to be discussed in medicalized ways, treated as if we are some kind of pathology. With men, we are just considered too morally inferior for our opinions to matter; that analysis is better left to our moral betters, those pure vessels with blue noses and the right genitals, who fancy themselves the defenders of civilzationagainst the brutes who built it.
I think you are exactly right that that is how women get denied the right to define their experiences – the accusation that women are emotion-crazed sub-humans who are basically mad. That has a well-documented and evil history. However, I fond it interesting that you assume the same mechanism is at work for all the groups you mention, almost as if to apprpopriate our struggles into your own. You may call it solidarity, but it’s not.
Obviously not; she’s freely choosing to have sex with him without his consent. Maybe she doesn’t realize it’s rape, but that’s quite a different thing from it being “accidental”.
slight tangent @Jim 2:40: If I’m right, is the universe marginalizing male rape? Of course not.
So then even if I’m wrong, since I’m disagreeing about facts, I am not marginalizing male rape.
I didn’t mean to appropriate anything. I’ve seen the “you’re just biased/overreacting” argument used against women, people of color, and gay people right in front of me. I extrapolated from there to men and trans people, although perhaps i shouldn’t have.
Which is not to say that i find your analysis any way incorrect. Things like this usually have more than one source.
@ Black Humour “So then even if I’m wrong, since I’m disagreeing about facts, I am not marginalizing male rape.”
The “facts” and limited details that feminists are given to work with, marginalize male rape victims and protect female rapists…. so you might not be consciously marginalizing MRV’s but by arguing the feminist depiction of reality relating to rape, you are in fact marginalizing MRV’s.
@blackhumor
” Even if the claim happens to be wrong, it’s not misandric if it’s sincerely believed.”
???… Ok, I’m trying to take my own advice and not jump to the worst possible interpretation but… you’re going to have to explain this one to me.
“I didn’t mean to appropriate anything. I’ve seen the “you’re just biased/overreacting” argument used against women, people of color, and gay people right in front of me. I extrapolated from there to men and trans people, although perhaps i shouldn’t have.”
I don’t like my use of “appropriate”. It doesn’t really fit and it is more than a little accusatory, and you didn’t earn that. So that’s my “tone argument”. I think I was a little rude and I apologize. I just couldn’t think of the word I really wanted.
You were still right about the way groups get lumped together. Maybe women get a pass on showing emotion, and then pay for it by being stereotyped as emotionalist. Hey, maybe the same thing is going on with the “big, strong and silent” stereotype the gets forced onto boys.
But anyway, there has been an arrogant tendency in academic discourse for centuries – male, in other words – to look at the groups you mention as specimens in a petri dish. Is that what you were getting at? I agree with that, whattever stereotype was then used to justify it in the case of each group.
I want to throw my support in to Jim. Those groups are VASTLY different in their treatment and the reasoning behind it. Regardless whether the end result is the same I do not like to see them lumped together. Falling into at least three of those groups I have had infuriating experiences with this. (I like it even less when a group I don’t belong to tries to draw shaky parallels and claim that my opression are just their opressions+1).
Black Humor:
You don’t? The report you referred to found that every fifth person who said they’ve been raped or sexually assaulted are men. You don’t think that the widespread notion that men can’t be raped by women because they’re physically stronger and because they wouldn’t get an erection if they weren’t willing and because just about all public narrative about rape is gendered (which is one of the reasons why gendering rape in public discourse is insidious) and the widespread notion that men never decline the opportunity to have sex would discourage/influence men from framing the incidents as rape to a larger degree than for women although even when it legally qualify as such?
I know a few men who experienced the same as me, a woman had (“surprise”) sex with them (oral or PIV) while they were sleeping or were passed out drunk. Just about all of them frame it as “getting lucky” even though the act is rape by legal standard. When a woman got convicted a few years back for performing oral sex on an man who was drunk and passed out lot’s of men and some women commented that he should feel lucky and that he must’ve wanted it because he’s a man. Some made the “generous” concession that
I’ll expand a bit on why I think gendering rape in public discourse about rape is insidious. Framing rape as a pre-dominately male-on-female thing to the point that all other forms of rape is an statistical abberation very much stops men from recognizing what happened to them as rape – not necessarily pathologizing them as victims, but to give them understanding and tools to process what happened in a healthy way. Attitudes such as this comment from a female reading about a man (James Landrith) being raped by a woman
very much erases male victims.
source of comment: http://pajamasmedia.com/comment/66568/ (NB! Do not following that link if you find rape apologies triggering)
In addition I believe that only talking about male-on-female rape and only barely and grudgingly acknowledge female-on-male rape as an statistical aberration place women at higher risk of being a perpetrator – increasingly so now when they’re rightfully getting more and more sexually assertive.
@Ollie: Using feminist as an insult = automatically not talking to you. (As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)
@Paul: Statements of fact have no moral value to them. Claiming a fact is true or false says nothing and should say nothing about your values.
“Men are stronger than women” is not misogynist; there are many misogynist conclusions that could be drawn from it but just the plain fact is not and cannot be misogynist.
@Tamen: I think I have been clear that I don’t think male rape is anywhere near a “statistical aberration”. It happens, it’s actually pretty common, it’s just not as common as male-on-female rape. 20,000 rapes per year (probably more) is not anywhere near uncommon. Strictly more than 5,000,000 men have been raped in their lifetimes (by the NVAWS’s number of 1 in 33, which didn’t include some of the most obvious ways men could be raped), which certainly isn’t a small number by any stretch of the imagination.
But getting to the rest of your post, there are tons of reasons why women wouldn’t call what happened to them rape as well. I could see how men might report rape slightly less than women; I don’t see how they could report rape at 1/5 the rate of women if they weren’t actually raped less.
@ BlackHumor
“I could see how men might report rape slightly less than women; I don’t see how they could report rape at 1/5 the rate of women if they weren’t actually raped less.”
According to surveys only 3% of girls abused by women ever reported their abuse. 0% of boys did.
Now do you see how men could be reporting ‘significantly less’ then women? Even if we allow for a tenth of a percent of boys reporting their abuse at the hands of women, women are still reporting it 300X times more often. And then you have to factor in the fact that _that_ differential is between men and women abused by women as children, not the differential men abused by adult women as adults(even more stigmatized, if that’s possible) and women abused by adult men as adults.
I can easily see how the reported rape of men by women is a much smaller fraction of all female-on-male rape then the reported rape of women by men is of all male-on-female rape.
And why not? Why would women be raping less then men?
RAINN states (although without giving any specific sources) that men are the least likely to report a rape to the police. Although it’s not the same I supect that there is a relation which strengthen the argument that men are the least likely (which I read as a stronger assertion than “slightly”) frame what happened to them as rape when it in fact legally was.
very well said.
Pingback: About Rape Culture | Aconite
BlackHumour: “”(As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)””
People like myself who are not feminist* but still recognise men can be raped? ‘Recognising male rape victims’ is hardly some sort of special status exclusive to feminists and being feminist isn’t necessarily a good predictor of someone being “pro-men” or admitting to the existence of male rape victims (that’s a fairly recent development and a good number don’t discuss it or gloss over it and deride most avenues of discussion for it without offering alternatives). Even if being “pro-men” were exclusive to feminism, as an argument, “maybe you should get over your mistreatments because who else would even care?” is rather horrible.
*For clarifiation I find feminism too exclusivist as it tends to focus heavily on Straight, White, Middle Class, Cissexual, Cisgender FAABs of good physical and mental health. Any criticism of the exclusion of women who do not fit that narrow (but populous) paradigm or the opression of both women and men outside of that paradigm (ablism is ablism whether directed at a man or woman and either man or a woman should be able to call it out) by these women is usually met with a some shielding technique to make sure the criticism is never heard, such as Feminism Is Not A Monolith or, as you demonstrated, “everyone else would treat you worse!”. So, I am not a feminist, I would say I am “pro-women”, though, used as an opposite to “pro-men” in this context.
And for further clarification I am not an MRA either. So, they also aren’t the only ones skeptical of the broader feminist approach to “social justice”.
@ OrangeYouGlad
“For clarifiation I find feminism too exclusivist as it tends to focus heavily on Straight, White, Middle Class, Cissexual, Cisgender FAABs of good physical and mental health.”
The best evidence of this? The rhetoric around the wage gap.
The wage gap, rather then being about the gap in wealth between the poor and the rich, or the gap in wages between people of color and white people, is about the gap in wages between men and women.
Incidentally the greatest ‘victims’ of the wage gap are, as you put it, Straight, White Middle Class, etc. women whose husbands’ greater income allows them to take part time work or not work at all.
The fact that the male-female wage gap is buffered by the male-female spending gap in favor of women(and the social or state enforced wealth-trasfer between men and women) whereas the black-white wage gap is most definitely not never comes into consideration when deciding which has greater relative importance.
What does the wage gap refer to–overwhelmingly–after all?
@BlackHumor:
all right, I’ll buy that if thats what you meant, but thats not what you actually said.
“@Ollie: Using feminist as an insult = automatically not talking to you. (As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)”
BH, I don’t see Ollie using feminsit as an insult here: “The “facts” and limited details that feminists are given to work with, marginalize male rape victims and protect female rapists…. so you might not be consciously marginalizing MRV’s but by arguing the feminist depiction of reality relating to rape, you are in fact marginalizing MRV’s.”
…and in fact he is just reporting what really happened. There was a time when there were feminsits who insisted that men could not be raped as a matter of category, since rape was a purely patriarchal oppression of women. That lasted into the mid-90’s. Then when that specious argument was slashed to ribbons, the argument fell back on old traditionalist macho tropes about big brutish men and our invincible physical strength as a threat to frail damsels. You see some of that in comments here.
You see this in practical terms in the treatment of men in rape centers – ToySoldier can tell you about the way he was treated, specifically by feminists, when he neded help.
So if feminists are coming around finally – good, but it’s little and it’s late, and it’s in the exhaustion of defeat. And it is certainly untrue that feminists are male rape victims. You ask who else thinks men can be raped – try out an MRA blog like A Voice for Men and se what they think. It happens to be undergoing a revamp right now, but it’ll be back up soon. And TS believes it for instance, and he’s hardly a feminist.
“I don’t see how they could report rape at 1/5 the rate of women if they weren’t actually raped less.”
Of course you don’t , BH – you weren’t socialized as a man. You operate under different rules and you don’t know the rules for being a man. If you are raped and you tell someone, that will not lead them to think you have stopped being a woman. How willing would you be to come forward if your criminal complaint would socially negate your entire gender identity? How likely would you be to come forward if you knew that you could very well be the one charged with the rape if your rapist turned around and accused you, and you knew that that’s the story the police were likeliest to believe ( a la James Landrith)? That’s what we are saying.
Of course you don’t , BH – you weren’t socialized as a man – but you clearly are making a strong good faith effort to see this from the other person’s angle. It shows.
@ Jim
BlackHumor is a man, I believe. He used the name ‘Brian’ before and I’m pretty sure referred to himself as a man.
BlackHumor: (As an aside, do MRAs realize that feminists are some of the most pro-men people out there? True they’re not perfect, but who else, for example, even acknowledges that men can be raped at all?)
Hell I’m not an MRA and I have a hard time seeing the pro-men angle of feminists a lot of the time. Frankly I still think its a dice roll as to whether any given feminist will acknowledge that men can be raped. But while I will say the odds are in favor of finding a feminist that can acknowledge that men can be raped I do think the are against finding one that can do it without immediately preceding/proceeding said acknowledgement that basically amounts to “but women have it worse” (and probably throwing in a PHMT for good measure.)
@Jim: Like Typhon says, I am a man. And I know there are huge pressures on men not to report rape. But there are ALSO huge pressures on women not to report rape.
Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater.
(Oh, as an aside, the survey I cited did not measure formal reports, it measured how many people who the survey was administered to said they were raped. So the thing relevant to this survey is being able to say that what happened to you was rape. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to go to the police about it for whatever reason.)
@Danny: But sad as it is that’s* still better than the rest of the world. I’m not denying that a theoretical really pro-man movement wouldn’t be better, but aside from occasional wingnuts feminists do a much better job in the pro-man department than pretty much all of culture outside feminism.
*: Taking what you said at face value; for the most part I don’t actually agree that feminists do this stuff, or that when they do it it’s as bad as you say, but I’m definitely not going to get in yet another argument on this same subject on here.
@ Black Humor
“Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater.”
How would you know? As I said in a previous post no boys abused by women reported their abuse to anyone. 3% of girls did.
I can very well see that the predominant cultural attitude which decriminalizes female sexual victimization of men would tend to reduce reporting of male victims far more then female victims.
Anyway, if you’re quoting the NVAWS stats they don’t even capture female-on-male rape. It’s absolutely absurd to argue that there wouldn’t be a significantly greater underreporting of female-on-male rape compared to male-on-female rape on an instrument that doesn’t even capture most female-on-male sexual assault.
BlackHumor: Just about about every women think that they can be raped, most men believe a woman can be raped. Very many, if not most men don’t think it’s possible for them to be raped (outside of prison) and many women don’t think it’s possible for a man to be raped (outside of prison) and not at all by a woman. This is the main reason why I think many men would not call what happened to them for rape while a woman in the same situation would.
The rape-awareness programs so many have been through in school/college have failed in regards to men as victims – one example is outlined in this comment by Glaivester: https://noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/strictly-moderated-what-i-mean-when-i-talk-about-rape-culture-part-1/#comment-7163
Discussions around alcohol and consent is always exclusively centered around women – men who are very drunk are indoctrinated to have no other option than to regret that they didn’t remember the sex they had if they find out they’ve had sex during a black-out. The possibility that they were raped is just not on the radar.
@ Black Humor
Remember those studies in which, by the definition of rape, many more women were raped then were willing to call it rape? That was because it didn’t fit the rape ‘narrative.’
Now let’s apply that phenom to men. Very few men believe rape of men by women(of any type) fits the rape ‘narrative.’
@Danny: What is a PHMT?
BlackHumour: “”@Danny: But sad as it is that’s* still better than the rest of the world. I’m not denying that a theoretical really pro-man movement wouldn’t be better, but aside from occasional wingnuts feminists do a much better job in the pro-man department than pretty much all of culture outside feminism.””
There are plenty of people who do not ID as feminists who are pro-men. Feminists do not have exclusive claim on this or any other social issue. But I will say that feminists are a sizable group and they do in fact control a good portion of liberal/socially progresive spaces. However, considering they refuse to recognise the amount of power they wield in controling that I wouldn’t call this a good thing. Largely because it seems to lead them to shunt critisism with the rather terrible defense of “quit yer bitchin’ or we’ll throw you back to the conservatives/culture at large”.
Typically this doesn’t bother me as much in the context of “men’s rights” as much as it does in the context of other minority groups I belong to (or care about) because typically I feel the consequences to be a bit more grave in the other situations and, maybe most significantly, feminism has never really claimed to be my ally as a man in the same way it, almost controllingly, insists that it is my ally in those other regards.
Still, the “don’t criticise us ’cause we’re the best you’ve got” directed at me (and others I care about) ranks pretty high on my lists of why I no longer identify myself as such and, I realise, bothers me in any context.
Patriarchy Hurts Men Too. All too often used in the sense: “Here’s a small bone, now shut up and let us get back to the stuff that matters”.
Hm, is my above comment still in moderation or can people see it?
Either way, I’m not sure if it actually bothers me when feminists focus on women’s issues. As I do understand how irritating it is to be talking about an important issue and then have someone show up to say “yeah, your issues are my issues so let’s talk about my issues”. However, if they’re going to bring those issues up they should handle it better and listen to reasonable* critique and if they aren’t going to bring those issues up then they should allow others to create an avenue for discussion without being immediately dismissed as anti-feminist (hence why I think this website was only possible because it was started by a woman and feminist).
*reasonable being important as the initial post for this website showed how criticism isn’t always worth listening to. Still, it should be addressed, not dismissed with catch-phrases, and to my delight it was.
((if it is still in moderation due to questionable use of a (possibly) anti-woman slur meaning “to complain” can that be edited and the post go through anyhow?))
“BlackHumor is a man, I believe. He used the name ‘Brian’ before and I’m pretty sure referred to himself as a man.”
Well then I take it back. Since he is a man, he sounds like he is white knighting about rape.
“Maybe one set of pressures is greater than the other, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not five times greater. ”
I can think of lots of reasons women would be reluctant to report rape. One is simple denial as a coping mechanism. One is fear of treatment by LE. One is fear of stigma. Now let’s look at how those play out for men reporting a rape:
Denial – here it’s not just the victm doing the denying. It’s the whole damned leglal code until very recently, it’s the adminstration fo that legal code both by police and in the courts, it’s the culture itself that denies that women can rape at all. Five times as much for men as for women? Probably.
Treatment by LE – Men reporting rape can easily be accused by the rapists, who are likely to be believed. Is that a disincentive any woman is likely to face? Probably a lot less than a fifth of the time.
Stigma – a raped woman used to be considered broken or damaged – in some cultures – to the point of being subject to honor killings. That does not aply in the US except in soem backward pockets. Honor killings in the Middle East are as relevant to this discussion of a cultural phenomenon as a re grammatical structures are in discussing another cultural phenomenon, thegrammar of Englsih – not at all relevant. And what stigams atach to men who get rpaed? It negates their gender identity, here in the US. Does rape make a woman any les a women in this culture? Five times less? No, not at all.
Here you go, here’s the kind of denial and stonewalling men face trying to make a rape acsuation. Here’s Tracy Clark-Flory wrting a level-headed statement of the obvious, and look at the disgusting comments and rape apology she gets.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/02/male_rape
@Tamen: You wrote:
“Discussions around alcohol and consent is always exclusively centered around women – men who are very drunk are indoctrinated to have no other option than to regret that they didn’t remember the sex they had if they find out they’ve had sex during a black-out. The possibility that they were raped is just not on the radar.”
I’d go one step further and say that if the man who had sex was really really drunk, it is pretty probable that the partner also was drunk, which, according to some models about “alcohol and consent” would mean that the man very likely “raped” his partner (according to the rape awareness people).
A male friend of mine was raped by a female in college. He was drunk and on drugs and he woke up to her stimulating him orally then mounting him. He did not actively fight because he was stunned and too intoxicated. He did not know how to feel afterward, but he was confused and upset. One thing he never did was call this what it was. It pains me now to think of how often this could happen, with men completely unwilling and often unable to even identify their experience as rape. I can’t even imagine what they’d go through if they tried to report to the police; look at what happens when teenage boys report!
Anyway, I don’t see why we have to go all “oppression olympics” in these discussions. I think childhood sex abuse and rape probably happen to all genders and sexes enough that we all have a vested interest in ending the cycle of violence. I have no doubt in my mind that adult women rape boys, and that adult women rape men. It doesn’t matter how often. Once is enough.
Now let’s get down to the business of dismantling the social structures that silence victims and allow perps to roam free… (easier said than done, I know…)
It’s actually strange how what happened to him parallels exactly what happened to the man in the Salon article. It almost sounds like female date rapists have an M.O. all their own…and it’s not all that different from the one we’re used to hearing about in males…
A.T:Barnum: Whaddya know, women are as a group no more human(e) than men as a group. They as women have no special in-build moral compass men lack which prevents the women from taking advantage of a situation when they see the opportunity to get something they want.
Squids have their own kind of fucked up shit.
“Skipping the entire challenge of courtship, some species of squid store their sperm in complex arrowlike packets they can unexpectedly unleash on the female like a volley of spoogemissiles, fleeing back into the depths before she can even friendzone him.
The female might not even notice he was ever there, except for the spunk-filled needles now drilling into her body. The literal cock rockets first adhere to the female’s skin with a cementlike secretion, then release digestive enzymes to drive themselves deeper and deeper. Whether or not she was ready to settle down, her body will automatically absorb and utilize the sperm almost anywhere it hits, making the male squid sort of like a flying rape gun and the female squid sort of like one big inside-out fanged vagina.”
Read more: The 7 Sleaziest Mating Rituals in the Animal Kingdom | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19295_the-7-sleaziest-mating-rituals-in-animal-kingdom.html#ixzz1UXo7D18W
Oh yes, this, on the hugs thing. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a problem until I got to college and met a few people who were not okay with random hugs — anyone who hugged them without getting consent was lucky if they *didn’t* get punched in the face. Ever since then, I’ve been careful to telegraph my intent and give clear warning before I hug someone, with enough time that they can step back, shake their head, or tell me no thanks.