Blog Against Sexual Violence Day - How You Can Prevent Rape
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
Everybody agrees that rape is a bad thing.
Whether it’s being used as a threat, being employed in combat, happens to your friend, your sister, your cousin, that woman across the street, the man who works at your local pub, we all agree: rape is bad. It’s wrong. It’s the worst crime that can be committed against a person, to the point where people will use it to describe severe emotional trauma. “I felt violated - it was like I was raped. It was like my soul was raped.”
Rape is bad.
What is a subject of intense disagreement is “What is rape?” The answer to this completely covers the spectrum, from Bill Napoli’s insistence that rape only counts if it happens to a virginal Christian woman and involves much violence and sodomy to “It’s rape if you feel at all pressured”. We don’t agree. We’re all talking about something entirely different, and this is where problems are happening. This is where people get confused.
This is where we get two conflicting ideas: that all rapists are horrible monsters, and that men should fear being falsely accused of rape.
As long as we keep having these conflicting definitions and ideas of rape, we can’t talk about rape. It stays undefined by society. The law may say one thing, but people say and feel and think and believe another. All the “no means no” advertisements in the world aren’t going to make a difference when we don’t even agree on what “no” is.
What I think is important if we’re going to move forward on this is to discuss what we’re taught about rape, and how we’re taught it.
Media Depictions of Rape
When I think about rape on t.v., in movies, and in books, I’m always reminded of The Accused. For those that haven’t seen it, the movie is about a “trashy” woman who is brutally gang raped. It begins with her running from the bar where it happened, screaming and naked, and ends with one of the men who watched the whole thing telling what he saw, narrating the event as the viewing audience watches his flashback.
More often than not, the media depicts the “stranger rape” - the violence, the monster in the alleyway, the woman struggling and screaming and begging to be let go. There’s bruising, sometimes blood. She’s often shown as a complete wreck afterwards.
Quite often when the media does show an acquaintance or date rape scene, things are just as cut and dried. She definitely struggles. He uses excessive force, is shown to be violent beforehand, or she’s shown being drugged. She’s usually begging him to stop, or is crying. She’s often shown as a complete wreck afterwards.
This creates an image of what is a “proper” and “real” rape, and how an “actual” rape victim will react. It makes a very clear image of an “actual” rapist, as well - he’s a monster.
How To Avoid Rape - What We Tell Women
I did several Google searches on “how to avoid rape” and “how to prevent rape“, since these will be more objective than my recollections of what I was taught, but all the sites I looked at supported the same sorts of things:
“Avoid situations and lifestyles that could lead you to be raped.”
Women are often told:
- Don’t go out drinking
- Don’t go into dark places
- Always get ID from anyone you let into your flat to do any work
- Watch what you wear (”Avoid dressing seductively: “Action”, they say, “speaks louder than words”. When a woman or girl dresses half-naked, she is saying through her action, “I am available to any man that needs me”. When you dress seductively, you are exposing yourself to the danger of being raped.“)
- Fight back as hard as you can, as strongly as you can
- Don’t go out alone
In other words, the vast majority of the things women are told are designed to prevent Stranger Rape - the rapist-as-monster. They’re also presented often as a set of rules that will “prevent” a woman from being raped - don’t do this, don’t do that, listen to me and you’ll be safe.
How To Not Rape A Woman - What We Tell Men
There are significantly less hits for “How Not To Rape“.
Having spoken to several men on the topic, what I’ve gathered they’re taught is:
- No means no
- Don’t hit women
In other words, men are taught about how to not “date rape” a woman.
These are three entirely different, very simplified, ideas about rape. They primarily put the onus on women - the implication is that only certain types of women get raped, only certain types of behaviour lead to women being raped, and women have to react in certain ways in order to be considered a true victim of rape.
This makes it easy to spot the victim, spot the rapist. It means never having to consider what rape is about, what rape statistics show us. Rape victims vary from infants and toddlers up to great grandmothers in long term care homes. The vast majority of them know their rapist. A significant number are related to their rapist.
As long as we fall into these ideas that “no means no” is the only thing men have to learn about preventing rape, we perpetuate the idea that men don’t need to, or can’t, learn anything else.
As I’ve said before, I think better of men than that.
This is what I think needs to change:
How To Avoid Being Raped
- Don’t blame the victim. A woman dressing sexy is not an invitation to every man. Even if she’s going out with the express intention of picking up a man for sex that night, she is not expressing intention to have sex with every man she sees. A woman going out drinking with friends, or strangers, or on her own, is not inviting herself to be used sexually by every man who sees her. She’s simply going out and drinking. Saying yes to some sex, or some sexual acts, is not saying yes to every sexual act, to all sex. Sometimes, not fighting just means the victim was too scared.
- Communicate, to the best of your ability, what you mean, what you want, and what you’re comfortable with in regards to sex and sexual play.
- If you are attacked by a stranger, do whatever it takes to stay alive.
How To Avoid Raping Someone
- Act at all times like the women you’re with are people. A woman dressing sexy may mean she wants to have sex - but it doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to have sex with you. If she’s falling down drunk, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have sex with her. If you’re falling down drunk, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have sex with her. Remember - alcohol impairs your judgement too, and what may be a clear communicator of “no” when you’re sober may not seem like it when you’re drunk.
- Communicate, to the best of your ability, what you mean, what you want, and what you’re comfortable with in regards to sex and sexual play.
- 60% of communication is in body language. Don’t pretend this isn’t true. If the person you’re with is acting uncomfortable ask them if they’re uncomfortable. If the person you’re with is pushing you away, ask them if they’re uncomfortable. If the person you’re with is shaking their head, ask them if they’re uncomfortable. Men are not monsters. They are not animals. They are not driven wild with lust at the sight of an attractive woman. They will not die of blue balls if they don’t get sex right now. It is not a hardship to ask someone who is behaving uncomfortably if they are okay with things. To say otherwise is to say bad things about men, and you may want to question the motives of people who are doing this.
Yes, we can change the world. Tell your friends what I’ve said. Tell them that rapists are not the monsters who leap out from dark alleys. Tell them that women can be raped by men who refuse to acknowledge a shove away, who conveniently forget when a woman’s told him she doesn’t want sex, who takes a drunk woman to bed even though she’s too drunk to stand, who assume her short skirt is an invitation, who act like men are animals who cannot control themselves, their sex drive, their lust. Tell them that in these simple actions, in these refusals to blame the victim, in these decisions to treat women like they’re people and men like they aren’t monsters, we can change the world.
Tell them.