Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Abby Tassel" <>]

I’m now wanting to challenge a little as well!

While we live in a rape culture, research has shown us that only a small percentage of men rape (although a much larger percentage commit other sexually-violent crimes).  Thus, there is something going on with these men that allows them to violate at this level.  I am not saying the construct of a diagnosis would be appropriate, just that when we talk about rape as mistaken hooking up, we are not recognizing the violent nature of the act.  Having heard hundreds if not thousands of accounts from victims/survivors, it has become clear that these men know they are hurting someone else when they rape.  So, yes, our culture supports predatory behavior, objectifying, trying to “hook up”, but for most men, when women freeze, scream, cry, or otherwise indicate lack of consent, they stop.  For the men who are not going to stop, the culture provides a camouflage for their behavior.  So “Frank” and other rapists think that what they are doing is normal.  It’s not.   I think we need to be careful to not sanitize the violence along with “Frank”.

 

Peace,

Abby Tassel

Assistant Director

 

From: [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 3:32 PM
To:
Subject: Intention, Sociopaths, and Rape Culture

 

I wanted to comment and challenge us on a couple of the assumption that have been made in the responses to these questions about two tier policies. These assumptions are that very few perpetrators are unintentional and that most rapists are sociopaths. Lisak's research is often pointed to validate this perspective.

 

I think Lisak's research is very well done and very helpful, but his findings are often misunderstood out to validate some of our own assumptions: to help us villainize perpetrators who we are understandably angry at and hurt by and so that we don't have to collectively take responsibility. Lisak uses the term "serial rapists" to indicate perpetrators that repeatedly engage in the behavior. I know many of us connect the terms "serial rapists" with "serial killers" - who I would agree are often (probably always) sociopaths. But just because one does something bad repeatedly doesn't mean one knows what he is doing is bad and doesn't care (sociopath). It could also mean that he has been taught by the culture that has surrounded him that what he is doing is not bad, that it is normal, and that it is expected of him.

 

We live in a rape culture that mis-educates us about what is sex and what is rape throughout our lives. Extreme examples of the rape culture are often shared on this list with calls for activism to confront them. But we often become oblivious to the more subtle aspects of rape culture that surround us everyday - even those of us who do this work everyday. The reason we don't see the rape culture is not because it is not there, but because it is everywhere. The rape culture encourages, condones, and teaches men to rape women, only it doesn't call it that. It calls it hooking up, getting laid, and having sex. As a result of this rape culture men in particular are taught that the way you hook-up and have sex includes pressure, coercion, using alcohol to ply invalid consent, etc. Only we don't call it that. We call it "having game," "being a sweet talker," "knowing how to butter her up," or "finding a cheap date." Pardon the heterosexist examples - but heterosexism and homophobia are also a part of the rape culture. Most men who have engaged in behavior that meets the legal definition of rape and the definition of rape in college policies don't define what they have done as rape (84% according to Koss). I would think that makes them rapists but perhaps rapists who didn't intend to hurt, violate, dominate, coerce, or control their victims - although I am sure their lack of intent to do so does much to change that the victims of their perpetration feel exactly that. Nor should it.

 

Now, let me be clear, this does not excuse, condone, or mitigate the perpetrators responsibility in anyway shape or form. This is why I don't think separating intention with unintentional in terms of policy or sanctioning should be done. I would argue instead this implicates the rest of us, who contribute to the rape culture ourselves despite our best of intentions.

 

If we are going to be effective in preventing sexual assaults, we have to really understand who the perpetrators are (as hard as that might be - especially for those who do this work who are survivors) so that we can be most effective in reaching them. If we hold sessions telling college men that rape is bad - it is a tremendous waste of our time and theirs. The sociopaths (who I would argue are limited but clearly dangerous) aren't going to care. And the nice, well-meaning, well-intentioned rapist (who I would argue data suggest are the vast majority) will agree with you wholeheartedly and then continue hooking up the way they have been taught their whole lives and engaging in behavior that does indeed meet legal and campus definitions of rape. In fact, they may perpetrate repeatedly (becoming a serial rapist) not because they are sociopaths but because they are doing what they have been taught is expected of them. The problem is with how we have been taught to hook up our whole lives.

 

This is why we must challenge the rape culture by clearly defining consent, clearly defining informed consent, and beginning to unpack the ways the rape culture has and continues to mis-educates us so that there are fewer perpetrators and so that we can begin to challenge, confront, and dismantle the rape culture that continues to mis-educate others.

 

--Keith E. Edwards, PhD

www.menendingrape.org

www.keithedwards.us