firecat

There's an Internet conversation about rape, one post about which is here.

After reading that post, I saw several posts in which a woman said although she intellectually understands that many women fear men as potential rapists, she doesn't have that fear, and she has never been sexually assaulted, either because no one tried or because she defended herself with words or weapons.

I'm really glad that these women haven't suffered sexual assault or fear of sexual assault.

But I don't understand why a number of women are apparently responding to this conversation by saying that they aren't afraid of rape and don't have a general fear of men as potential rapists. Do they feel they should be afraid? I'm getting the impression that they feel not being afraid of rape makes them weird. Maybe that it makes them unfeminine somehow? Is this because our culture sends the message that all women should be afraid of rape?

I'm also not sure what I think about the suggestion that a certain attitude or body language -- specifically, attitude/body language that shows a lack of fear -- can prevent an assault from happening. I think it can make a difference in some situations--maybe a lot of situations. (I gather that it's part of what's taught at self-defense classes.) But I don't think it's any kind of guarantee. I know plenty of people who have a "don't mess with me" attitude/body language who have been assaulted.

(For the record, I haven't experienced sexual assault either. I have feared it in a few specific situations.)

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From:

elynne.livejournal.com

To me, that post seemed to make the assumption that yes, rape is an integral part of our society, and as such, women should - think of all men as potential rapists, which implies being afraid of them. That is an entirely subjective reading of the post, though; I have to admit, I'm pretty croggled by the whole thing.

I have been in situations where I have feared the possibility of sexual assault; I've been lucky or something that such a situation has never come to pass. I've also been in situations where I should have thought about it as a possibility, but not realized it at the time; again, I've been lucky or something, in that nothing happened.

I make absolutely no suggestions that certain attitude or body language provides a rape-free guarantee. Sometimes, all it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that wrong place can be your own home, and there's really not a damn thing that can be done about it but try to survive. No Blame Attaches to being the victim of sexual assault. I'm pretty sure that a combination of my own attitude, certain learned behaviors, and care about my associates and choices of when to relax versus when to be on my guard has gone some way towards my lack of experience; but there have been times when it really was just luck that there was nobody who decided to take advantage of a situation I was in.

Mostly, what that post and most of the responses are doing to me is making me feel like an alien again. :P

From:

firecat

as such, women should - think of all men as potential rapists, which implies being afraid of them

I didn't read that assumption in the post. I saw it as addressed entirely to men, and not telling women they should anything. But I can see where your reading came from.

From:

elynne.livejournal.com

Hmm. I think I had some knee-jerk negative reaction to that post because 1. it's very difficult for me to read something like that without seeing it as prescriptive for women, like "all men are (potential) rapists and if you disagree you're stupid and asking for it" - which at least partially comes from having read so many, many variations on the "If you don't do x or do y or associate with z then you're stupid and asking for it", and the whole goddamn blame the victim mentality; and 2. I forgot what else I was going to say. o.O

To me, the "all men are (potential) rapists" concept is inextricably linked with the secondary clause of "if you disagree you're stupid and asking for it." At this point I degenerate into incoherent handwaving because I've only had six hours of sleep and the words, they are not doing what I want them to do, also the thoughts, they are scattered. So, yeah, that.

From:

pgdudda.livejournal.com

I think the thing that squicks me about "all women should fear and suspect all men" is that it feeds into and supports the patriarchal/kyriarchal paradigm, in ways I haven't yet figured out how to verbalize. The only way I can start to get at it, is to say that it is different from "all people should exercise caution and judgment over where they are and who they are with" in gendered ways that I find troublesome.

(Admittedly, my perceptions are skewed out-of-norm by both my sexual orientation and by my personal history in which my perpetrators-of-violence were not particularly distinguished by their gender. My personal experience is that women are just as violent as men; they are simply socialized to enact that violence in different ways.)

From:

elynne.livejournal.com

Someone on my own post put it perfectly, or at least in a way that exactly explains my own feelings on the subject: It all stems back to this concept that men have a right to women's bodies regardless of their consent and so if he decides not to exercise that right, he's being incredibly considerate and deserves huge kudos. It's putting the emphasis on the woman's body as a sexual object, without any context about people on either side of the gender line.