More Yewtree Witch Hunts

I am going to have to try harder than I already am to avoid newspaper headlines - finding out today that even Sir Cliff is being dragged into the Yewtree witchhunts is genuinely making me feel suicidal. All of Britain seems to have become a Kafka novel, with all men featuring as the protagonists.

In case you somehow haven't realized yet, we live in an age now in which any man can have his whole life destroyed in the worst way imaginable on nothing more than the unsubstantiated word of any person with a grudge he's ever even shared an elevator ride with or, heaven forbid, had consensual sex with.... forty years after the alleged fact.

Seeing each individual bewildered old man going through this unimaginable ordeal is so sad: They cannot quite grasp why the world has turned so crazy and are unable to identify or articulate what machinations have brought it about. So the puppet show continues, and none of the children watching see who is pulling the strings .

The two most important factors in all this repugnant nightmare are the ones almost no-one is mentioning: firstly that Britain is unique in all of Europe in having no statute of limitations when it comes to allegations of sex crimes. This is why we aren't hearing of any similar scandals coming out of France or Germany, or the USA for that matter. This has led to a grossly unjust loophole that only recently has been exploited to bring utterly unfounded accusations with no accompanying physical evidence of any kind to court 40 years after their alleged occurrence and end in convictions.

The second thing is that there has been a 40 year campaign by feminists to expand the definition of rape and sexual assault to include pretty much any physical contact whatsoever, if the woman so decides. They have been wildly successful in their attempts to redefine male sexuality as inherently predatory, pathological and abusive.

This works to the benefit of feminism itself, since it helps to further demonize men and hence draw in more donations, political influence and apparent justification for the otherwise blatant obsolescence of their hate movement. It also benefits the state, because by turning one half of the population against the other half, it fatally weakens any sense of unity and kinship that could otherwise pose a threat to whatever their plans for us are.

But it doesn't help us. All it does is make fundamentally necessary human contact more and more frightening and alien, and all of us more and more isolated and alone. I've said it before many times and before all this is over I'll have said it many times again: Feminism is a force of oppression, not liberation. It has done more damage to simple, natural human relationships than any other force in human history, and it's nowhere near finished yet.

But the bovine masses don't care, they'll lap the newest 'paedo' scandal up and scream for the heads of those accused, too stupid to realize any one of them could be next. Or their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, their sons. But if they don't speak out against it now, maybe they deserve what's coming. Maybe you do too.

Aw, I can't write any more about this. It's all so black and hopeless, and heartless beyond belief.

See you all in Hell, if we're not there already.

Another Yewtree Pensioner Cleared of False Rape Accusations

In the UK the past couple of years just about every minor (male) TV celebrity from the 1970s, it seems, has been hounded and witch-hunted with accusations of rape or sexual assault by a police investigation called 'Operation Yewtree', at the behest of anonymous, identity-protected women who waited FORTY YEARS(!) to come forward and point fingers.

And of course, as I predicted, one by one they are all being found innocent. The latest faded pensioner to be falsely accused, arrested and then eventually cleared is comedian Freddie Starr. One look at the poor bastard’s face tells you what a year on bail for a sex crime can do to a human being. What an absolute nightmare.

One day people are going to look back at this Kafkaesque age of free-for-all false rape accusations and consider it one of the worst witchhunts and miscarriages of justice in all human history, and I hope those people responsible for the legislations which led to it are still alive to face punishment for it themselves.

 Freddie Starr, 71, pictured with his lawyer today.Credit: SWNS Group

"Freddie Starr appeared briefly outside his home in Warwickshire alongside his lawyer Dean Dunham, who condemned the investigation and said the entertainer’s health was now a priority.
Mr Dunham said “there was simply never any evidence in this matter that was anywhere near sufficient” to keep his client on bail for so long.
Mr Dunham went on: “At the moment we need to concentrate on getting Freddie back to his health.”The lawyer said there various courses of action open to Starr but now was not the right time to comment on them.
"He’s a man of good character, remains a man of good character, and I would ask the public now to stand by this man," he added."No doubt about it, his innocence has been proven."
Starr said he was “very relieved”, adding: “I’m not feeling well, really.”
Asked if he had a message for his fans, he said: “Thank you.”

TIME Magazine: It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria

The nation's largest and most influential anti-sexual-violence organization is rejecting the idea that culture — as opposed to the actions of individuals — is responsible for rape.

“Rape is as American as apple pie,” says blogger Jessica Valenti. She and her sisters-in-arms describe our society as a “rape culture” where violence against women is so normal, it’s almost invisible. Films, magazines, fashion, books, music, humor, even Barbie — according to the activists — cooperate in conveying the message that women are there to be used, abused, and exploited. Recently, rape culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream. In January, the White House asserted that we need to combat campus rape by “[changing] a culture of passivity and tolerance in this country, which too often allows this type of violence to persist.”

Tolerance for rape? Rape is a horrific crime and rapists are despised. We have strict laws that Americans want to see enforced. Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there’s no evidence that it’s considered a cultural norm. Twenty-first century America does not have a rape culture; what we have is an out-of-control lobby leading the public and our educational and political leaders down the wrong path. Rape culture theory is doing little to help victims, but its power to poison the minds of young women and lead to hostile environments for innocent males is immense.

On college campuses, obsession with eliminating “rape culture” has led to censorship and hysteria. At Boston University, student activists launched a petition demanding the cancellation of a Robin Thicke concert, because the lyrics of his hit song “Blurred Lines” allegedly celebrate “systemic patriarchy and sexual oppression.” (The lyrics may not exactly be pleasant to many women, but song lyrics don’t turn men into rapists. Yet, ludicrously, the song has already been banned at more than 20 British universities.) Activists at Wellesley recently demanded that administrators remove a statue of a sleepwalking man: The image of a nearly naked male could “trigger” memories of sexual assault for victims. Meanwhile, a growing number of young men find themselves charged with rape, named publicly, and brought before campus judicial panels informed by rape culture theory. In such courts, due process is practically non-existent: Guilty because accused.

Rape culture theorists dismiss critics who bring up examples of hysteria and false accusations as “rape denialists” and “rape apologists.” To even suggest that false accusations occur, according to activists, is to engage in “victim blaming.” But now, rape culturalists are confronting a formidable critic that even they will find hard to dismiss.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is America’s largest and most influential anti-sexual violence organization. It’s the leading voice for sexual assault victim advocacy. Indeed, rape culture activists routinely cite the authority of RAINN to make their case. But in RAINN’s recent recommendations to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, it repudiates the rhetoric of the anti “rape culture” movement:

In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming “rape culture” for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campus. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important not to lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.

RAINN urges the White House to “remain focused on the true cause of the problem” and suggests a three-pronged approach for combating rape: empowering community members through bystander intervention education, using “risk-reduction messaging” to encourage students to increase their personal safety, and promoting clearer education on “where the ‘consent line’ is.” It also asserts that we should treat rape like the serious crime it is by giving power to trained law enforcement rather than internal campus judicial boards.
RAINN is especially critical of the idea that we need to focus on teaching men not to rape — the hallmark of rape culture activism. Since rape exists because our culture condones and normalizes it, activists say, we can end the epidemic of sexual violence only by teaching boys not to rape.

No one would deny that we should teach boys to respect women. But by and large, this is already happening. By the time men reach college, RAINN explains, “most students have been exposed to 18 years of prevention messages, in one form or another.” The vast majority of men absorbs these messages and views rape as the horrific crime that it is. So efforts to address rape need to focus on the very small portion of the population that “has proven itself immune to years of prevention messages.” They should not vilify the average guy.

By blaming so-called rape culture, we implicate all men in a social atrocity, trivialize the experiences of survivors, and deflect blame from the rapists truly responsible for sexual violence. RAINN explains that the trend of focusing on rape culture “has the paradoxical effect of making it harder to stop sexual violence, since it removes the focus from the individual at fault, and seemingly mitigates personal responsibility for his or her own actions.”

Moral panic over “rape culture” helps no one — least of all, survivors of sexual assault. College leaders, women’s groups, and the White House have a choice. They can side with the thought police of the feminist blogosphere who are declaring war on Robin Thicke, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, male statues, and Barbie. Or, they can listen to the sane counsel of RAINN.
 
Caroline Kitchens is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.

Questions From Readers Vol. 2

"I just have a quickie question, so could I remain anonymous? I know you’ve been around the feminist movement and that’s why you disagree with it’s methods and ideologies, but is it possible that there could be a new wave of feminism forming? Oh, and I was also wondering why you don’t believe in rape culture? (Or how you define it) Thanks!"

The notion of ‘rape culture’ is something invented by radical feminists from the 70s onwards with Dworkin et al saying things like All Men Are Rapists and All Heterosexual Sex Is Rape etc.

Because this is clearly insane (defining the natural act necessary for all human life as an inherently violent and despicable crime), it had to be given seeming plausibility through the inflation and manipulation of actual rape statistics, most importantly the (and I apologize if I get this wrong, it’s late I’m tired and I can’t be bothered to go look it up) Koss Report on rape, by Mary Koss in the 1980s. She did things like count women who’d had sex while intoxicated as rape, and ‘have you ever had sex when you weren’t initially in the mood?’ as rape, and something like half of all the women who explicitly said they did not think they’d ever been raped as raped, and so on. And from that came the infamous ‘1 in 4’ statistic still indignantly squawked by fresh-faced and empty-headed campus feminists to this day.

If we actually lived in a ‘Patriarchal Rape Culture’, there would be no laws against it: you’d see it happening on every street corner and nobody batting an eyelid. All depictions of rape in films and TV would have the message that it’s no big deal and that the girl should just suck it up and stop being such a crybaby. That being raped is, in fact, a silly, everyday part of life and as funny as falling off a ladder or stubbing your toe.

But of course, nothing could be further from the truth: in the west, rape is universally considered, after paedophilia and perhaps murder, the very worst crime possible, and depictions in the laws of the land, the education system, the press and other media reflect this without exception.

In fact, the only times rape is ever treated as trivial or a fit subject for humor is when it happens to men. Which, as you probably know,  is where the term ‘Rape Culture’ first originated: a 1974 documentary about the institutionally accepted prevalence of male rape in the U.S prison system. Yep, the feminists stole that too.

If all of the above does not explain why I have as little interest in a 'new wave' of feminism as I have in a new wave of National Socialism, then my reply will have to wait until some other day. But thanks for the ask, anyhoo.

Women Can Stop Rape

According to the SFRCC (San Francisco Women Against Rape), it is estimated that one out of three lesbians have been sexually assaulted by another woman. Here's a few posters reflecting that fact to make a refreshing change from those god-damned awful 'Men Can Stop Rape' ones presently doing the rounds:

Feminist Activist Makes Up Her Own Rape Threats

"Meg Lanker Simons is a feminist activist at the University of Wyoming. Unable to find enough evidence of any rape culture on campus she invented her own. Under an anonymous name she posted rape threats [such as the above] against herself on Facebook. The campus police investigated. She has now been charged with making a false claim of a threat."  

I don't have much to add to this, it kind of speaks for itself. Googling her name brings up photos of a dumpy girl in a 'Take Back The Night' T-shirt.

Looking at her, I thought "who exactly is she taking back the night from?"

And the answer is, of course, herself, & the fevered nightmares she & others like her have had to invent to prop up their otherwise irrational hate.

It sure is a twisted, crazy world.

More on the story here:
http://kowb1290.com/meg-lanker-simons-cited-for-making-uw-crushes-post/

The '1 in 12' Rape Statistic Broken Down

Really nice analysis of the Koss Report's '1-in-4 / 1-in-12' rape figures, from back in the 80's, still used by many feminists today. All very tidily explained on the website Permutation Of Ninjas:

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I’ve seen a statistic come up a few times.  For those people not familiar with it, it goes something like this:  ”One in twelve college-age men admit having fulfilled the prevailing definition of rape or attempted rape, yet virtually none of these men identify themselves as rapists.”

Like most statistics of its ilk, however, a closer look reveals that not all is how it seems.  The first sign of trouble comes from the name of the author: “Koss, Mary P”.  People who aren’t familiar with the name might not know that she’s been behind at least a couple different things of….suspect validity.

The next thing to do is to look at the actual study.  The only full copy I was able to find was barely legible, but nonetheless an accurate version.  If someone has a better copy I’d love to have it, getting through 31 pages of that typing with no search function was nasty.  (The questionnaire used is in better quality at the bottom.)

A “yes” to 4 or 5 was labeled as an “attempted rape”, and a “yes” to 8, 9 or 10 was labeled as a “completed rape”.  The problem starts with questions 5 and 8.  The question goes something like this: “….when you didn’t want to by giving you alcohol or drugs….”.  Now, supposedly, this met the legal definition in her state….except it didn’t.  The definition she uses in her study purposefully omits a portion of the statute which specifically labels “plying with alcohol or drugs” as outside the legal purview of rape.  (Having sex with a woman while she was passed out due to those, however, would be counted.)
In fact, this was so controversial that Koss herself recanted on the question, stating that while she’d thought it acceptable at the time, it was inappropriate.

So what is “one in twelve” anyways?  Basic math, but percentages are useful here.  For our purposes we’ll use the truncated 8.3%.  We then look at the “yes” responses.  Note here that these are not counted by “highest”, but rather by aggregate.

For “attempted”, 2% of men said yes to 4 (force without completion) and 5% said yes to 5 (alcohol/drugs).

For “completed”, 4% of men said yes to 8 (alcohol/drugs), 1% said yes to 9 (intercourse by force) and 1% said yes to 10 (other penetration by force).

We should note here and now that discarding the alcohol/drug questions, the highest possible figure we can get is 4%, less than half.  This doesn’t tell the whole story, though.  If you add up all the numbers, we’d see a result of 13%, not 8%.  (About 60% too high.)  This means double-counting was going on.  (No, not bad research.)  Because someone could say yes in multiple categories, the data had to be handled on a per-person basis because otherwise you’d be counting a man who said yes to 8, 9 and 10 as three rapists rather than one.  If we assume the double-counting is even (which is bad science, because it’s more likely to be occurring in the two questions we discarded) then we actually have to take that 4% we got and modify it down.  This gives us 2.5%, slightly more than a quarter of the original figure.  (Incidentally, according to Koss only 27% of the people she labeled as victims considered themselves to have been raped.  While this doesn’t imply a strong relationship, it’s an interesting correlation.)

Now, what I’ve done here is not inherently statistically valid, I had to make assumptions.  This is, to put it one way, a “worst-case” scenario, (though I could go into it further).  However, simply by removing the two questions that were admitted by the researcher to be unacceptable (and assuming that the double-counting was even in order to get a meaningful result from the data available)  the figure goes down practically fourfold.  One in twelve becomes one in forty.  Big difference, and even at that somewhat inflated.

This study is also the source of the “1 in 4” figure for college women being raped.  (27.5% to be more exact.)  Simply by removing the objectionable question 8 (not 5) the number drops to about 1 in 9.  If we take the women at their word and include all questions, the figure would be 1 in 16.  Most importantly, this should be noted to include many pre-college incidents as well, which are something entirely different.  One examination concluded that if you remove both the objectionable question and limit the responses to those who considered themselves to have been raped, with the understanding that an individual is most likely the best judge of what happened the number ends up “between one and twenty-two and one in thirty-three depending on the amount of overlap between groups.”  (That is, how many of the people who considered themselves “not to have been raped” were also removed by Q8.)

Thus one in twelve becomes one in forty, and one in four becomes one in thirty-three.

See the problem?

Some information taken from “Researching the ‘Rape Culture’ of America”, by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, found HERE.

Link To Full Study

Questionnaire Used

Rape Propaganda

As an addendum of sorts to that last piece, here is an interesting article by Duncan Idaho over at Eternal Bachelor. Hope he doesn't mind the callous thievery.

Feminists love to rant and rave about how men are all rapists, potential or otherwise. Naturally, this is absurd, as they well know.

In fact, the idea of young women being raped is one thing guaranteed to infuriate men and get them rolling up their sleeves and ready to hit someone (note that I’m defining rape as forcibly having sex with a someone without their consent, not the feminist definition of rape, which is where a woman consents but regrets it the next day, or the Andrea Dworkin definition of rape, which is any sex between a man and a woman regardless of whether the latter consents or not.)

The outrage men feel about women getting raped is utilized with great efficiency in propaganda. The extreme-right-wing British National Party recently spread rumours around that Asian gangs in Bradford were organizing gang-rapes of white women. The KKK whipped whole communities into a lynch-happy frenzy by telling horrifying tales of how black men prowled around raping white girls. Anti-semitic groups in Russia have been uttering ominous claims that Jewish gangs are supposedly abducting poor Russian girls to be taken to work as sex-slaves in Israel, and the Iraqi insurgents try to bolster anti-US sentiments by producing fake evidence of American GIs raping defenceless Iraqi girls.

All this is through the simple knowledge that – assuming they believe them – men will be outraged by such tales. Claim that a certain ethnic or religious group has a desire to rape women, and tell them that this group is eying up “our women” then you will get men more liable to feel hate towards that group.

In Birmingham a few months ago, the rumour of a 14-year-old black girl having been gang-raped by Asian men lead to rioting between the black and Asian communities, resulting in two deaths and dozens of injuries. Tensions had been simmering between the communities for a while, but it exploded into violence just by the rumour of a rape that almost certainly never happened.

Likewise, talk of the enemy raping “our women” works well in war. This does have some basis in truth, as rape is often carried out by victorious invaders, especially in the old days before War Crimes tribunals came about. It is rape that is so frequently emphasized and exaggerated in wartime propaganda more than any other atrocity.

The Japanese atrocities in Nanking during World War II included the murder of over 300,000 civilians and the sexual assault of about 80,000 women, but it is largely the sexual assaults that are often concentrated on in Chinese accounts of the atrocities (and indeed they gave the whole terrible affair the name “The Rape Of Nanking“) because the idea of Japanese soldiers raping women and girls ensures an even greater amount of anti-Japanese sentiment can be whipped up than “just” the idea of Japanese soldiers killing civilians.

Tell men the enemy are “raping our women” – or planning on doing so – and whether that “our” is translated as female relatives or just women of the same nationality or religion, and you will have most of the male population grabbing swords or guns and marching off to risk their lives. It works wonders.

It is very rare to find a man who genuinely thinks that tying women up and screwing them against their will is okay, and such men are naturally shunned if they make their beliefs known and imprisoned if they act upon them (significantly, of course, rapists are the regarded as the lowest-of-the-low in prison; even their fellow criminals do not like them.)

Yet on and on feminists rant and splutter about how all us men are somehow in favour of rape. They insist we’re all evil rapists-in-waiting, that there is an epidemic of rape in society, that teenaged girls should even be wary of their own 11-year-old brothers lest they want to ravish them with their evil willies, and furthermore they try to give the impression that the supposedly small minority of us men who don’t regularly beat up and rape women at least approve of such activities.

With the exception of hardcore lunatics like the thankfully-dead Andrea Dworkin, not even feminists really believe this. They know damn well that the majority men are outraged by the idea of rape. They rely on this fact to push through their anti-male laws (like VAWA in the US) and to ensure plenty of tax-payer cash flows to misandrist feminist organisations that help break up families. They know that exaggerating claims of rape – by either coming up with absurdly loose definitions of rape, such as a woman who regrets consensual sex a few days after the event, or by just coming up with utterly fabricated statistics – will infuriate male judges and politicians and get them to engage Chivalrous Mode and start coming down hard on the supposedly rape-happy male population.

This is why you get organizations like Men Against Rape (a rather loathsome name for a group because it implies that men who do not join them must therefore be for rape.) These guys may mean well but they’ve just been suckered into the propaganda of feminists and their bullshit statistics. Their outrage against rape has been manipulated by feminists so that they are as paranoid about the idea of an “epidemic of rape” as feminists are.

Feminists know damn well that if they claim that there are tens of thousands of unreported rapes on college campuses a year then, without even bothering to ask for evidence, men will be extra-fearful for their daughters and will join feminists in demanding women-only areas in colleges. Feminists know that if they claim that it is very common for men to spike drinks in bars and clubs with rape-drugs then you will have men becoming intensely protective of their girlfriends to the point of paranoia and will support the idea of taxpayer’s cash being poured into feminist anti-rape organizations, creating more lucrative jobs for the girls. Feminists know that if they make out that the majority of men who are acquitted of rape are actually guilty and only walk out of court free (and with wicked Patriarchal Oppressor grins on their faces) because the law is stacked against victims, then you will get men – furious at the idea of their sister or mother being raped and the rapist getting away with it – happy to accept laws being pushed through that shred men’s rights in rape cases and force men to prove their innocence against a woman’s word, even though these same men may one day find themselves the victims of such anti-male laws.

Most feminists don’t really think men are all rapists, but they do know that we hate rapists, and so they claim the former to utilize the latter, simply in order to make us hate ourselves as much as they hate us.

On Not Being A Victim

by Mary Gaitskill

In the early 1970s, I had an experience that could be described as acquaintance rape. Actually, I have had two or three such experiences, but this one most dramatically fits the profile. I was sixteen and staying in the apartment of a slightly older girl I’d just met in a seedy community center in Detroit. I’d been in her apartment for a few days when an older guy she knew came over and asked us if we wanted to drop some acid. In those years, doing acid with complete strangers was consistent with my idea of a possible good time, so I said yes. When I started peaking, my hostess decided she had to go see her boyfriend, and there I was, alone with this guy, who, suddenly, was in my face.

He seemed to be coming on to me, but I wasn’t sure. My perception was quite loopy, and on top of that he was black and urban-poor, which meant that I, being very inexperienced and suburban-white, did not know how to read him the way I might have read another white kid. I tried to distract him with conversation, but it was hard, considering that I was having trouble with logical sentences, let alone repartee. During one long silence, I asked him what he was thinking. Avoiding my eyes, he answered, “That if I wasn’t such a nice guy you could really be getting screwed.” The remark sounded to me like a threat, albeit a low-key one. But instead of asking him to explain himself or to leave, I changed the subject. Some moments later, when he put his hand on my leg, I let myself be drawn into sex because I could not face the idea that if I said no, things might get ugly. I don’t think he had any idea how unwilling I was–the cultural unfamiliarity cut both ways–and I suppose he may have thought that all white girls just kind of lie there and don’t do or say much. My bad time was made worse by his extreme gentleness; he was obviously trying very hard to please me, which, for reasons I didn’t understand, broke my heart. Even as inexperienced as I was, I sensed that in his own way he intended a romantic encounter.

For some time afterward I described this event as “the time I was raped.” I knew when I said it that the statement wasn’t quite accurate, that I hadn’t, after all, said no. Yet it felt accurate to me. In spite of my ambiguous, even empathic feelings for my unchosen partner, unwanted sex on acid is a nightmare, and I did feel violated by the experience. At times I even flat-out lied about what had happened, grossly exaggerating the violence and the threat–not out of shame or guilt, but because the pumped-up version was more congruent with my feelings of violation than the confusing facts. Every now and then, in the middle of telling an exaggerated version of the story, I would remember the actual man and internally pause, uncertain of how the memory squared with what I was saying or where my sense of violation was coming from–and then I would continue with my story. I am ashamed to admit this, both because it is embarrassing to me and because I am afraid the admission could be taken as evidence that women lie “to get revenge.” I want to stress that I would not have lied that way in court or in any other context that might have had practical consequences; it didn’t even occur to me to take my case to court. My lies were told not for revenge but in service of what I felt to be the metaphorical truth.

_______

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I could not bear to watch movies or read books that I considered demeaning to women in any way; I evaluated everything I saw or read in terms of whether it expressed a "positive image" of women. I was a very PC feminist before the term existed, and, by the measure of my current understanding, my critical rigidity followed from my inability to be responsible for my own feelings. In this context, being responsible would have meant that I let myself feel whatever discomfort, indignation, or disgust I experienced without allowing those feelings to determine my entire reaction to a given piece of work. In other words, it would have meant dealing with my feelings and what had caused them, rather than expecting the outside world to assuage them. I could have chosen not to see the world through the lens of my personal unhappiness and yet maintained a kind of respect for my unhappiness. For example, I could have decided to avoid certain films or books because of my feelings without blaming the film or book for making me feel the way I did.

I have changed a lot from the PC teenager who walked out of movies that portrayed women in a demeaning light. As I've grown older, I've become more confident of myself and my ability to determine what happens to me, and, as a result, those images no longer have such a strong emotional charge. I don't believe they will affect my life in any practical sense unless I allow them to do so.

I am not idealistic enough to hope that we will ever live in a world without rape and other forms of sexual cruelty; I think men and women will always have to struggle to behave responsibly. But I think we could make the struggle less difficult by changing the way we teach responsibility and social conduct. To teach a boy that rape is "bad" is not as effective as making him see that rape is a violation of his own masculine dignity as well as a violation of the raped woman. It's true that children don't know big words and that teenage boys aren't all that interested in their own dignity. But these are things that children learn more easily by example than by words, and learning by example runs deep.

___

A few years ago I invited to dinner at my home a man I'd known casually for two years. We'd had dinner and comradely drinks a few times. I didn't have any intention of becoming sexual with him, but after dinner we slowly got drunk and were soon floundering on the couch. I was ambivalent not only because I was drunk but because I realized that although part of me was up for it, the rest of me was not. So I began to say no. He parried each "no" with charming banter and became more aggressive. I went along with it for a time because I was amused and even somewhat seduced by the sweet, junior-high spirit of his manner. But at some point I began to be alarmed, and then he did and said some things that turned my alarm into fright. I don't remember the exact sequence of words or events, but I do remember taking one of his hands in both of mine, looking him in the eyes, and saying, "If this comes to a fight you would win, but it would be very ugly for both of us. Is that really what you want?"

His expression changed and he dropped his eyes; shortly afterward he left.

I consider that small decision to have been a responsible one because it was made by taking both my vulnerable feelings and my carnal impulses into account. When I spoke, my words came from my feeling of delicacy as well as from my capacity for aggression. And I respected my friend as well by addressing both sides of his nature. It is not hard for me to make such decisions now, but it took me a long time to get to this point. I only regret that it took so long, both for my young self and for the boys I was with, under circumstances that I now consider disrespectful to all concerned.

 ___________

Originally published in Harper's Magazine, March 1994. The full article, which is long but very much worth your time, can be found here:
http://genedseminars.umb.edu/engl273-2/spg09/documents/HarpersMagazine-1994-03-0001592.pdf