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by Anonymous User on Friday August 31, @10:35AM EST (#1)
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FHM (For Him Magazine) in the UK did a survey on women's opinions and thoughts about many things, over 3,000 women took part in the survey and when asked this question said:
Do you ever lead men on if you have no intention of actually getting together with them?
Yes= 60%
No= 40%
FHM comment: Although far nastier than fox hunting, it seems few women want to ban cock teasing.
Source: FHM March 2001, issue 134, page 127
Make of that what you will.
Adam H
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I may be the voice of insanity on this one, but I am not ruled by my penis. A woman can cock tease me all she wants, and yes, I will feel the pressure... but it's not going to lead me to rape her.
Unlike the stereotypes, I do not think with my dick. I DO think rape laws too much protect false accusations, I DO think the definition of rape and sexual assault needs to be seriously studied in many places. I DO NOT think rape can be provoked. Rape is a violent attack.
If I'm walking down the street and my wallet is sticking out of my back pocket, am I provoking robbery? Should the robber be let off because of that?
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Consider the following scenario:
A man and a woman meet and begin to date. During the few months of dating, they establish a regular pattern of consensual sex.
On one particular occasion, they are together and engage in active foreplay. Just at the moment of coupling, the woman says "I don't really feel like doing this tonite."
Now I must ask who is being raped?
A gentleman of proper upbringing (potentially a sexist term, but stick with me here) and who would be able to control his libido might desist. But should the law expect this? I am much like Nightmist in that I would do so as a matter of keeping peace (if not future pieces) in the relationship.
I'm convinced that not all men have the same kind of self control and in a situation like this, I don't believe such self control is mandatory.
There are psychologists who believe that rape is, in many ways, just a man exercising the corresponding choice to a woman's choice. Farrell comments on this in "The Myth of Male Power." There are degrees of rape even though the law does not currently recognize them. For a man to accost a woman with whom he's had no prior contact and rape her in the face of aggressive resistance is clearly criminal. In the scenario described above, where the woman may be acting arbitrarily or may be trying to use sex as a coercive force, the circumstances are not so clear.
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I certainly agree that the waters are murky. I simply don't want my opinions on rape laws to be automatically associated with those of men who claim to be victims of their biology, and who may use that as an excuse to commit a violent act. It's the same as those assholes in the media who like to write columns supporting male-bashing commercials because they "prove that men are stupid, so we can behave however we want."
Certainly, in Frank's scenario the line is blurry, and that is a case in which laws could benefit from greater clarity. In current society, though, those laws would more likely favor the female.
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I totally agree that Frank's scenario is not a very nice situation, but I still think it doesn't give the man any "right" or even justification in raping the woman (that is, penetrate her even though she physically resists). Some women are really mean (although the real evil ones might be fewer than we men's rights guys think :-), and sometimes, you just have to live with it. If someone insults you, is it then (legally) jusitifed if you hit him/her?
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Self-restraint is something that varies widely among individuals. While I would never tell my son, for example, that he would be so justified, if I were on a jury, I would never vote to convict an man who were so accused and send him to prison for 20 years. At some point, the woman becomes responsible for her own behavior, and every woman should recognize that, once they arouse their partner beyond a certain point, they cannot rely on his good manners. We're talking about much more than an insult here. We're talking about 1) a reasonable precedent of previous intimate behavior, and 2) a real-time indication (foreplay) that furthering the event would be acceptable. If I were to compare it to two men in a potentially violent argument, I would suggest that you consider the case where one man were essentially trapped in a situation where he was unable to walk away from the argument and the other man continually verbally abuses his opponent and threatened him bodily. Even though it's not "justified," at some point it becomes unreasonable to ask that the provocation be silently withstood.
Oh, by the way, this seems to be exactly the kind of provocation that the Marine most recently accused of rape in Okinawa was subjected to. I was not there, obviously, but from what I've read, this sounds like the likely scenario.
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I don't agree. Your scenario doesn't justify violence, and neither would the "can't walk away from the argument" scenario. I discount the "being threatened bodily" bit since there's no analogy to this in your "provoked rape" scenario.
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This article of mine seems relevant!?
It's short!
http://www.angryharry.com/esWomen are Sometimes Partly Responsible.htm
Karl
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With all due respect, Phil, I think you give women too much credit. Here's (http://www.angryharry.com/esWomen are Sometimes Partly Responsible.htm) an essay you might take a few minutes and read. The guy who wrote it is pretty angry, but he makes a good point or two about how women have been using rape laws as a weapon against men. Either way, I stand by my position: men should not have to withstand unreasonable provocation.
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Frank, I think the one thing we don't agree on (or are confused about) is responsibility and justification. I agree that a woman in your scenario above is to some degree responsible for what happens to her, but the guy raping her is not less guilty IMO, since raping someone is a rather prolongated act and thus can't be attributed to a fit of anger or "loss of control due to provocation". On the other hand, were he to slap her in the face or somesuch, I think this should be considered somewhat justified and deserves a lot less punishment than if it was done without provocation. I don't know about UK or US laws (a lot of the anglo-saxon justice system seems very odd BTW from the point of view of someone used to codified law), but AFAIK, in Germany, this is actually part of the law. When you hit someone or beat someone up, whether and how you've been provoked actually *is* considered by the courts.
And about giving women too much credit - maybe I do, but OTOH, I think we "men's activists" should be careful not to become like the radical feminists we despise so much... there still *are* a lot of very decent women (at least where I live).
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Actually, Phil, this is probably a discussion we could just as easily take off-line, but while I was vacuuming the pool, another thought occurred to me. It isn't that I claim that a man would be "justified" in carrying out a rape. I think we agree that he would NOT. However, I think where we differ is whether or not the law should send him to a maximum penalty for rape in such a case. No, rape is never justified, but to regard a man who's been placed in such a situation (possibly deliberately) as a criminal is also not justified. You're right, there are decent women everywhere, and you can bet that most women in a growing relationship would be sympathetic to their partner's situation. The difficulty comes in places like Okinawa, where sexual gamesmanship (and gamesWOMANship) is common.
A man who has been so abused (and this certainly abuse) should have the common sense and good manners to zip up his pants and walk away (and keep on walking, I might add). This we should teach our sons. But the law should not allow a woman to back a man into such a corner by allowing such manipulative behavior to be reinforced by the rule of law..
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Guess we agree then. It was a nice discussion :-) There's not many places left on the internet where you can have those.
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A review of a new book by feminist elder Midge Decter includes this interesting observation:
"What truly irks [Ms. Decter] most today is the damage wrought by the so-called women's liberation movement and the likes of Betty Friedan, NOW and Gloria Steinem over the last 20 years. She has sat on more than one panel with Ms. Steinem arguing those issues, and is struck by the hypocrisy, conscious or not, of Ms. Steinem standing there on a platform in 'a crotch-high skirt and knee-length boots telling men that women were no longer willing to be men's playthings.'"
Almost certainly not conscious, in fact, as is most female behavior in this area. I am reminded of the famous 1980s (?) case of the young woman who, dressed in what any intelligent person would consider "provocative" clothing, walked into an all-male working-class bar. When her obvious, if perhaps not consciously intended, invitation provoked (what does "provocative" mean, after all?) a forceful, group response, she screamed "Rape!!"
Once in the heat of an argument with a girlfriend, I exclaimed in exasperation, "That's not logical!" She replied, "I'm not logical." Full stop. I thought, that's true, and it's pointless to expect otherwise. (This particular amie taught me a lot about women, for which I am honestly grateful.) Women have always claimed, and exercised, the "right" not to be logical. Because of the power of their position (sex is the seller's market) they can do that; men have the choice of either putting up with their irrationality (and compensating for it with our own energy), or looking elsewhere.
On the other hand, men are expected (by women, and thus by ourselves) to be rational, logical, and dependable; that's what they made us for, after all. It is up to men to be adult enough to control our behavior regardless of what women do. Women labor under no such constraint, though they certainly may (and often do) suffer the consequences of their irrational behavior.
It is precisely because women are mostly unconscious in their sexual behavior that all human societies have worked out structures to control and channel that behavior. It is these structures that women complain are "unequal." Yes, they are, because the sexes are not "equal." To pretend otherwise, which feminist women are now insisting we all must do, leads only to more suffering. The brutal fact is that women, so long as they are not prepared to be fully conscious of and fully responsible for their actions, must be protected from the consequences of their behavior. This task has traditionally been the responsibility of men (who else is there to do it?), and it is this disparity that is the source of "male privilege." One who is responsible (the definition of an adult) is inevitably more "privileged," in law and in nature, than one who is not responsible.
Female children learn very early (indeed, long before the development of reason) that males, though much larger and stronger (beginning with Daddy), can be easily controlled and manipulated with coy and flirtatious behavior. This is natural, and not a problem in a sane culture, where children may play in an environment controlled and protected by adults. Feminism, however, demands that we must pretend not to see the differences between the sexes, which inevitably leads to the decay of our ability to see other important differences as well, such as the difference between a child and an adult. The result is what we have, a society of children in adult bodies, playing children's games but suffering adult consequences: "children having children," "adult" men sexually molesting children, the whole crazy show.
A sane culture is aware of when children's games begin to have adult consequences, and provides for the transition with such mechanisms as the coming-of-age ceremony performed among the Apache for girls at puberty (pictured in a National Geographic article I have around here somewhere), which emphasizes to the girls that they are entering a danger zone and must begin to exercise appropriate care. In traditional cultures, adulthood begins at that time, when actions can have life-and-death consequences. In our culture, adulthood never really happens at all, except in individual cases by individual realization and effort - and increasingly against the current.
The only woman writer I've come across who's really prepared to be truthful on this subject is the very refreshing Camille Paglia, who scoffs at the idea of "date rape" and the American female culture which refuses to prepare its daughters (or sons, whom it literally cripples in this regard by the tender ritual of infant male circumcision) for the reality of sex, its power and consequences.
Females these days, especially in American culture, seem to have chosen the dubious pleasure derived from hysterical indulgence in perpetual victimhood, over the comfort provided by harmonious, if "unequal," relations between the sexes. They can do that; they do, after all, control the world. I wonder if they will ever tire of this scenario. It'll only get worse until they do.
A while ago I heard about a poll which queried a large cross-section of American women, and found that the happiest were "middle-aged, long-married Christian women," who, presumably, "submit" to the "authority" of their husbands in marriage. (What's nearly always forgotten is that such husbands also submit, to the authority of God - or whatever you wish to call a Truth greater than our limited selves; such is the natural order of "hierarchy" in which all are cared for.) Feminists, of course, would scream that such women aren't really happy, they only think they're happy. Well, what is happiness, anyway?
As the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, "So long as a man is entangled in his desire for woman, his mind is bound like a suckling calf to its mother." Only the man who has cut this cord can deal effectively with women; the man who is not is still a boy. This truth is the ultimate taboo in the Matriarchy.
Andrew
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Since I have a tendency to be diarrhetic with words, I will attempt to summarize my position on rape and (some) women's behavior by drawing a quick (and hopefully potent) analogy.
I am a pedestrian walking down the street in a downtown area. As a pedestrian, I feel like I am somehow morally superior compared to motorists, because they have more power to do damage than I do. They have unfair physical advantages compared to me, so they should always be expected to behave in a more responsible fashion than I do, and be punished far more heavily for any moral transgressions on their part than I, as a pedestrian, would be. And I expect most motorists to know this and to be generally permissive of my occasional reckless pedestrian behavior - because they should know that I am always in the right, for being far more innocuous to them than they are to me.
So, if I'm running late, and I need to cross the street in a hurry, and the light is just turning green but I don't want to wait for another red light, I may make a mad dash across the street even as several cars are close in the distance. I know I'm risking my life. I know that not all motorists can be depended on to acknowledge their greater responsibility and to behave accordingly. But, I still don't feel especially guilty for causing one or two of them to throw on the brakes or be irritated with me, because I know that, even as I am obnoxiously running across the street under a green light, those motorists coming at me have to abide by a special law that motorists must abide by - which is the law that you simply don't run people over, no matter what color the light is.
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Uh, not quite sure what point you're trying to make here, but if your analogy is women = pedestrians, men = motorists, I don't think it holds water, as the behavior of pedestrians is not (usually) designed to attract, control and manipulate motorists. (Sometimes, of course, it is, as in the case of the woman in "crotch-high skirt and knee-length boots" swaggering down the sidewalk. One of my high-school friends broke both wrists while riding a motorbike when such a female caught his adolescent attention.)
Of course, women, if asked, will commonly dispute the idea that their behavior is designed to attract, control and manipulate men. Nevertheless, it is - as is the behavior of all female animals when "in heat." (The only difference between female humans and other female animals is that the former act as if they were "in heat" all the time, rather than only when they are actually in the fertile phase of their reproductive cycle. The adoption of this behavior by female homo saps - especially considering its substantial costs - could not possibly have been for any other purpose than to control and manipulate males.)
That's what I mean by "unconscious." A woman may "turn up the heat" on purpose when she has her eye on a particular man, but even when it's the last thing on her conscious mind, her behavior remains sexual most of the time. She is not to be "blamed" for this, for it is unconscious behavior, mandated by an earlier stage in the species' evolution; but refusing to acknowledge the reality of this force and its operation - whether conscious or not - only leads to more, preventable, suffering. Truly, it is sex that makes the wheel go 'round.
I also note that in your analogy, what it amounts to is that the motorist is expected to be more responsible, i.e. more adult, than the pedestrian. My point exactly. This is also why women & children get in the lifeboat first.
On the other hand, as a male pedestrian I simply would not make any of the assumptions your pedestrian makes, regarding others' responsibility to make up for my lack of responsibility. That's the difference, it seems, between a man and a woman.
Andrew
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I'd say you pretty much figured out what my point was. No, it's not a perfect analogy. And to tell you the truth, I don't study pedestrian behavior, so I couldn't tell you if the hypothetical example I invoked was, in any way, reflective of real life pedestrian/motorist behavior.
But I think the analogy aptly characterizes the perceived distinction between men and women and our respective capabilities for doing harm. A motorist is never justified in (deliberately) using his/her vehicle to injure a pedestrian, no matter what the pedestrian's behavior was. There's a dramatic advantage of power on the motorist's part which effectively cancels out any culpability on the pedestrian's part, in people's minds.
And I think we feel the same way when it comes to men and women. Men's "ultimate" ability to physically harm or rape a woman basically cancels out any wrongdoing on her part, because there's no equality there, as people see it.
And I suspect this creates, in women, a simultaneous feeling of being more vulnerable, but also more righteous - thus, the obnoxious sexual behavior displayed by certain women may be permissible (or "harmless") in their minds.
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