Images from Make Your Move Missoula on Facebook.

The tag lines from these poster series all turn the "obvious" interpretation inside out.  For instance

Big text: "It was 2:00 A.M. I offered her a ride thinking you never know..."
In tiny letters: "...if the guy who'd been after my friend all night might try something. No way I was taking off without her."

And I think that's pretty great!  I appreciate that they're all like that -- that all have a "I'm watching out for her" theme where the standard social scripts would expect sexual violence.

And reallly, I don't want to see less of that.  I'm not complaining, at all, about the good intentions. And it really, really is a good idea to keep an eye on each other.

But! I'd like to see some corresponding posters about intervening with the guys (and it's mostly guys) who are the implied threats the friends are being proactive about in the posters.

Because, seriously, each poster treats "those guys" as if they were unchangeable, unmovable Chthonic Gods of hearth and date rape.  Instead of, you know, social beings who are subject to peer pressure, care about reputation, fear of seeming ignorant or stupid, threats to self-preservation, appeal to reason, etc., just like all other social beings are.

I particularly appreciated the "Don't Be That Guy" campaigns coming out of Canada.  They're directed... well... directly at potential predators.

And yes, I completely understand that a disproportionate amount of sexual violence and coercion is perpetrated by a remarkably small percentage of predators.  And I get that, by and large, those predators aren't going to be directly affected by any kind of appeals to their better nature or to guilt trips or peer pressure.

But!  By tackling both sides of the perpetrator/victim problem, and not just the victim side, by setting those kinds clear social expectations in media we can still reduce the still very-large volume of assaults by the merely oblivious, ignorant, or intoxicated.

Which, in turn, will tend to make it much, much harder for the serial predators to "pass" as just one of the gang.

---

Final point, the other reason I'd like to see both sides addressed is that the tone of the ads is still a little patronizing: the whole "she can't help herself so I'll help her."  It's really important to communicate that just because someone needs help they're not helpless.  Because that kind of "good man gallantry" also perpetuates the attitude that without intervention women are fair game.  Let's not be those guys either!

What Henry Rollins said (emphasis mine)

It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn’t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt.

That's pretty clear. If the town of Steubinville is even remotely like other sports-identity towns then even if you subscribe to dolorous of MRA/PUA/Ev-Psych analyses of gender it's unlikely such a town or school's star quarterback and wide receiver will have much trouble finding willing partners.

To add to that consider the "apology" issued by one of the four prominent, well-connected Carmel, Indiana, basketball players as part of his reduced-sentence plea bargain after "allegedly" digitally sodomizing a smaller boy on a school team bus filled with fellow teammates and at least three adult coaches.

"I can assure there was absolutely no malice in my actions. At the time, I truly believed this was normal everyday athletic team horseplay. After reflecting, I came to realize how I could have put a teammate in a situation in which they were uncomfortable."

Source: Indianapolis TV news station WISH

Horrifyingly, I believe him!  I believe the boy really didn't believe the sexual violence he perpetrated against his victim was done with any particular malice towards him.  And I also agree he probably considered it "everyday athletic team horseplay."

I very gloomily suspect the perpetrators in Steubinville were little different, even though the Carmel victims (that we know of) were male and the Steubinville victim (that we know of) was female.

This indifference does <em>not</em> absolve the perpetrators.  Instead it damns them.  And it damningly confirms Rollins' point: sexual violence is almost never about <em>sexual desire</em> for the victim.  Instead it's waaaay more about choosing tools for establishing, demonstrating, or maintaining social, not sexual, status of the perpetrator. Sometimes the victim is the intended recipient of the demonstration.  More often, however, the victim is the object, in the most literal sense of the word, of the perpetrator's demonstration to others.  Thus the bragging.  Thus the (not even always nervous) laughter by peers and nominal elders.  Thus the "boys will be boys" indifference by coaches, police, "proud fathers" and other nominal supervisors.

They can all "assure there [is] absolutely no malice" in the perpetrator's actions.

This is the opposite of assuring.

Incidentally I'd go one step further and say that this phenomenon of the use of sexual violence to demonstrate social dominance best explains the reflexive defense of perpetrators and for the equally reflexive anger and blame launched against their victims.

#@$!&%!!!

Click for larger image

In remarks both here and on my other blog I've made snarky references to what I've been calling "The Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial."  I'd like to explain what I mean with this chart.

The big, big problem is that most people seem to believe that the entire spectrum of sexual violence extends from ex-Senate candidate Todd Aikin's indefensible standard of "Legitimate Rape" to Whoopi Goldberg's equally indefensible standard of "rape-rape."In other words they see it as somewhere between attacks so violent that organ failure, a.k.a. "shutdown," results (Aikin) to something evidently worse than what Roman Polanski was convicted of (Goldberg.)

For Aikin, Goldberg, and evidently too many others, anything less than the most brutal forms of assault by stranger doesn't count as sexual violence at all.

There are many, many ramafications of this.  The big one being that virtually all victims to the left of Goldberg in the graph, above, are women and girls.  And while there are certainly exceptions, virtually none are men or boys.  Furthermore, perpetrators of sexual violence to the left of Goldberg on the spectrum are almost exclusively men and boys.  And because most people seem to believe the entire range extends only from Aikin to Goldberg it really seems as if all the stereotypes about gender, from the bitterest anti-feminist to the bitterest feminist, must be true.

 And if all that was to it then the stereotypes would be true.

However it's not true.  Aikin and Goldberg's standards are squeezed waaaaay over to the left of the spectrum.  There's substantially more.  In fact I'm pretty sure even Goldberg (though probably not Aikin) understands this.  But as I suggest in the chart, that public understanding still fades pretty quickly to a point that there can be bafflement or confusion (or calculated sexual-violence denial) about the so-called "gray area."  

Somewhat further to the right mainstream sexual-violence advocates understand that there's no "gray area," and understands as well that workplace and street or social sexual harassment is sexual violence and.  There's general (though not yet complete) agreement that young men and boys can be victims and even that for the most part, that "stolen kisses" and unwanted hugs count.  Although somewhere around that point understanding fades out and sexual-violence denial begins to creep back in.

I'd like to suggest, however, that the spectrum extends quite a bit further into terrain where almost everybody will deny there's sexual violence.  Although, I'd like to argue, that like the microwave background it's still there.  And that perhaps, like the microwave background, the extreme right end represents the faintest traces of original sexual violence.  But I digress.

I'd further like to suggest that as one begins to recognize the scope of the Goldberg spectrum the less easy it is to make tidy assertions about what is or isn't sexual violence or who the victims and perpetrators really are.

Image from The Enliven Project nicely illustrates the problem.

While I don't want this blog to be all about sexual assault of men, the issue of sexual assault looms large for a lot of men who have a) been or felt assaulted and b) have had their experience discounted or disbelieved.

Also, who c) often find themselves clogging feminist survivor's forums because, frankly, it often feels like there aren't a lot of other avenues in general society for broaching the subject.  To, d) the dismay and frequent exasperation of the hosts of those forums who for better or worse feel derailed.

As I said, I don't want this blog to spend too much time on sexual assault of men.*  But it is a blog about the impact Patriarchy has on men.  And one area where that impact looms large?  Well, there's the blunt fact that the concept of "rape" and related forms of sexual assault have been so completely bound up in patriarchal understanding of women as transferrable, depreciable property that there's simply no social location, construct, or concept in which men can be the assailed rather than the assailant.

As usual it's patriarchy, not feminism, that screws male victims of sex crimes.  (And just to bring the point home and to anticipate one possible objection, the extent to which some older-school feminists said only women can properly be victims is the extent to which they grew up mired in the language of patriarchy.)

Want proof the legal concept of rape is so tied up with patriarchy that we ought to throw the whole thing out and start over?  David Ferguson says a California appeals court has supplied the last straw:

A California appeals court has overturned the rape conviction of a man charged with raping a sleeping woman, basing the decision on an 1872 law that does not protect unmarried women the same protections as those who are married. According to the LA Weekly blog, the court found in favor of Julio Morales, who was convicted of rape after he slipped into bed with a sleeping 18-year-old woman and initiated sex with her, pretending to be her boyfriend.

...

Judge Thomas A. Willhite, Jr. wrote in the court’s decision, “Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the answer would be yes.”

The court argued, however, that the case should be retried and that the archaic law should be examined and possibly overturned. Willhite called Morales’ actions in the case “despicable,” but that the state’s law left the three judge panel with no choice.

Source: The Raw Story

First of all, pause for three deep breaths: a) the defendant was initially charged and easily convicted; the appeals court recommended a retrial rather than dismissal; the appeals court judge called the law archaic and the defendant despicable.  So we're not exactly in conspiracy theory land here.

But!

As I've harped on endlessly about, the entire foundation of "rape" law rests on the bedrock idea from English Common Law that rape is a property crime against women's custodial males: their husbands, fathers, or others the value of whom's dowries or bride prices depend on the "condition" of their property's (a.k.a. the female victim's) genitalia.  In other words virtually everything about rape as a crime is based on literal, men with beards and hats, capital-P Patriarchy.

Thus the conceit, embedded in California law (and elsewhere), dug up by a particularly enterprising defense attorney, and despised by appeals court judges, that it makes a criminal sexual assault conditional on whether a woman is married or not.

You want to know why sexual assault of boys and men is disregarded?  You want to know why sexual assault on unmarried non-virgins is taken so seriously?  You want to know why so many jurisdictions here and around the world consider it "rape" if and only if a penis (but only a penis) penetrates a vagina (but only a vagina?)  You want to know why there's so much "she must have asked for it" and so much concern that "she must have wanted it but changed her mind?" (Note: in comments feel free to add more of the plentiful outrageous examples to my partial list.)

It's because in its heart of hearts the entire concept of "rape" isn't about assault at all.  It's about vandalism of some guy's unguarded property.  Where the "property" can't be counted on (entirely reasonably!) to share the interests of her property "owner."

Meanwhile, here in the American 21st Century there's a whole 'nother, non-gender-bound way of addressing the various sex-related crimes against people not property.  Like sex-related variations of crimes like assault, battery, kidnapping, fraud, false pretenses, impersonation, intimidation, misuse of authority, and of others wherein neither the victims nor the perpetrators sex, gender, orientation, relationship status, sobriety, attire, or consensual activity have any bearing on how or even whether charges should be made or dropped.

Because (sweet Krishna on a rye crisp!) how many other deplorable little easter eggs from the 19th Century and before are still lying around in various local, state, and national laws regarding "rape?"  The whole thing's a patriarchy-soaked, gender-bound nightmare.  It's bad for women.  It's bad for men.  It's bad for prosecutors.  It's a moral fucking sinkhole for defense attorneys  It's bad for respect for the law as a whole.  And it's bad for society.  Time to chuck it. Whatever they're called there are crimes still being committed, but what we're continuing to call them is getting in the way.  We're already 13% of the way through the 21st Century.  We've waited long enough to get serious about this under the law.

* So unfortunately this blog isn't the best place for that either, but see suggestion.

Image via Sowetan Live

"Don't tell your daughter not to go out, tell your son to behave properly"

This seems like a thoroughly reasonable request. I'd add that it would be nice if the society would stop indoctrinating our young men to have no impulse control.

(If nothing else this is supposed to be a patriarchy! And according to patriarchy aren't men supposed to be superior? As it stands the whole victim-blaming business is a tacit admission men's self control isn't even up to the standards of a golden retriever.)

(Important note: "Behave properly" does not mean be a "good man" and treat women differently than you would men. The golden rule would suffice.)