Rape is rape no matter how drunk: Stupid posts about rape need to stop

Dear Anonymous Rapist  on Good Men Project,

You are in fact a rapist, and no being a survivor of rape doesn’t make it ok. Given the faux apologetic article you wrote, I’d argue you’re proud of being a rapist and bragging about doing nothing to curb this behavior, which you argue you can’t be expected to control when drunk. And why? Because getting drunk and doing stupid stuff is fun and the tradeoff we have. This is like the libertarian argument in favor of rape. If you go to a party and drink then you are consenting to anything that happens to you because we’re all consenting adults with the same power even if no one ever asks for permission. You’re a pioneer. Well, fuck you buddy.

I particularly enjoyed the part where you victim blame describing your victim as having alcohol and substance addictions, and she was flirting with you. Well, then she must have had it coming. Incredibly, you didn’t victim blame yourself. I’m just glad you feel safe enough to talk about all this. I mean imagine she had to go through a program to get to the point where she could talk about it. Several of my friends, including myself, couldn’t talk about the sexual assaults we experienced for years, seriously, years. Because of the victim blaming, I was told I needed to man up about the whole thing, which makes it difficult even now to talk to people about it.

But thankfully, someone is coming to the defense of rapists. Lord knows they need it, with the lack of time served for rape, the laughable punishments, and victim blaming that permeates all aspects of our society.

Sincerely,

Kari (see my real name)

Ok, but for real this needs to stop. There is so much wrong with what is happening right now. So the Good Men Project, which sounds like an awesome idea has become an outlet for rape apologists and misogynists. They have posted as of now, four posts about rape that are god awful, like Republican rape theory awful. The last of which is the reasoning behind posting all of this in the first place. I’ve written about the original post, as has every feminist ever. It was bad. But then they gave space to an admitted anonymous rapist to speak about how hard it is to be a rapist. Yep, read that again.

In a laughable kind of way, and I’m a huge nerd, he invokes Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the beginning of his piece, but the episode he invokes is where Buffy is invited (as a minor) to a party, served alcohol, and delivered to  a snake monster in exchange for power and money. Oh yeah, he identifies with the guy who invites her, the grand dragon of this cult, which implies he thinks of himself in the same way. Analogy fail.

But that is how the piece begins, by explaining how one must accept that sometimes you’re the villain. Now, we all do bad things, but the bad things I do usually don’t result in another person being harmed. He argues that this villain identity is the tradeoff for the fun because we can’t have fun without it. He says:

“I swear to God, it is only after the fact that you start figuring out that one of the tradeoffs you’re accepted is a certain amount of rape. The way crooked businesses accept paying fines for their infractions as the cost of doing business, you gradually, an inch at a time, realize that some of the stories you’ve heard, some of the stories you’ve lived didn’t involve what they call good consent nowadays.”

First, what is good consent? Because I’m pretty sure there is consent or a lack of consent. So like corrupt business we have to accept some men are going to rape, and we should do nothing about this? I’m pretty sure we try to regulate corrupt practices in industry, but I do like that he brought it home to labor for me. Thanks rapist!

At this point he talks about how he was informed he is a rapist, but given his representation of the situation, I have no idea how he didn’t know already except he didn’t want to. This whole, “I didn’t know I raped someone” thing is about privilege. The more I read about it the more that becomes clear. She kissed him congratulations, and he pushes her against a wall and violates her in a room of people. But you guys, she kissed him so she was consenting to anything he wanted to do. He invokes “gray” and other “it wasn’t rape” or “I was confused” language here. He talks up how when you’re drunk you don’t feel drunk and all that that garbage. And it is garbage because drunk drivers are held responsible for their actions and because the homeless are regularly arrested for public intoxication. So really the only people who deserve a pass are rapists?

Then he launches into how a friend of his almost committed rape, but figured out the woman wasn’t capable of consent and calling him by the wrong name. [Break out your tiny violin.] This friend could have been a rapist! Our rapist hero didn’t know how to tell his friend that the thing his friend was afraid of being he already was. He then argues drunk sex is better than sober sex…no it isn’t. I swear. Some guys can’t perform at all when they are blackout drunk, which apparently this rapist never has been so drunk he can’t hold an erection. When I’m (and generally my exes, too) super drunk I’m sloppy and uncoordinated. Do you want that by your more sensitive areas? I think not.  

He then explains some women accuse men of rape because they regret consenting, but this follows him saying women don’t do that. So essentially, he thinks women cry rape, but doesn’t want to admit that outright so he added a line about most women who cry right are for real, but you know when it is about him then they are liars. No take-backs ladies.  Then he goes on to appropriate our language though he doesn’t understand what heteronormative means. He thinks it means invoking tradition gender roles i.e. men are rapists and women victims, but it actually means assigning gender to situations. So I’m telling a story about a doctor and using the male pronoun because only men can be doctors. I guess in an abstract way he could argue that assuming rapists are male is heteronormative except upwards of 90% of rapes are in fact committed by men. Also, he is using specific stories, where the gender is known. So I’m pretty sure he’s trying to score progressive points here. This is where he tells the story of his rape by a woman he doesn’t remember having sex with. It is unfortunate, and no one deserves to be raped or sexually assaulted.

However, that isn’t a get out of jail free card. Pedophiles who were sexually abused are still guilty of the abuse they commit. I guess I’m assuming that’s why he brought this up right? Especially at the end. Perhaps if it came at the front of the article framing it in a different way would be better. This is what he says:

“There’s been at least one time I was informed, days after the fact, by multiple eyewitnesses, that I’d had sex with a girl. This came as news to me, and explained a couple of messages I’d gotten from her, a girl I generally had no interest in getting involved with.

“It must be bad manners to admit to being a rapist and to also say one is a rape survivor all in one article. I don’t know any set of social mores where that’s ok. I certainly don’t feel like a rape survivor, whatever that’s supposed to feel like. I just can’t quite find a workable standard where I’m one but not that other. I don’t say that as any kind of apology or justification for my actions or my mistakes. I’m just trying to state the facts nobody ever quite wants to state.”

 So actually, this is common. People who were sexually abused as children frequently abuse as adults. So there are social mores for this, but that means taking responsibility for it and empowering yourself. My issue with his disclosure is that he victim blames his victim, but now we’re supposed to not victim blame when it is him. That doesn’t seem fair. I’m not saying we should victim blame at all, but I am looking for consistency. Also, he might not feel like a survivor because he hasn’t empowered himself. He hasn’t gotten sober, which for a lot of victims is a necessity. Additionally, we live in a sexist society that says men can’t be the victims of sexual assault. This is untrue of course, but propagated by the same people who think we need to accept rape as a fact of life. We even have a name for it: rape culture or team rape during the 2012 election.

He concludes with perhaps the best example of entitlement and privilege I’ve ever read, like epic:

“Some might think it’s monstrous of me to keep drinking, keep partying. But I have had so many good, positive, happy experiences because I took a chance and altered my state and connected with someone else sexually, it seems crazy to throw all that away. Do people who’ve been in car accidents give up driving?

“When I sit down to think about it, it seems like I’ve accepted a certain amount of rape as the cost of doing business, and so have most the people I know. And that seems like the most sick, fucked-up broken solution to anything ever. And maybe finding it livable-with condemns us all to hell. I don’t know. I can’t even talk about it under my own name.”

No, you can’t. He’s a coward. So he’s accepted this, but what about his victim(s)? He’s been assaulted once, but we know the victims of sexual assault are more likely to be the victims again and again. It sounds to me that he’s throwing your hands up, going, “well, it wasn’t that bad, we can all live with this.” Tell the people he parties with he’s a rapist and see who still wants to party with him. He is a danger to others who don’t know he thinks this way.

So the Good Men Project posted an explanation of why they would create a space for this garbage, written by Joanna Schroeder. Schroeder argues the post by the rapist was written by an addict, and thus an addict doesn’t really care about what happens to those around him. This is perhaps even more offensive than the rapist’s post. Why? Because that means rapists who use the compulsion defense just gained a new ally. Really, rape is a repeat crime, so if you can prove they have a compulsion they what get therapy? What happens when they fall off the wagon? This is crazy. Pedophiles can’t stop abusing kids. We know this, so they get a pass? This logic doesn’t work here.

Schroeder pulls out the story the rapist gives of his friend who didn’t commit rape and deserves the pat on the back for you know not being a rapist. But she presents it as though we should all be surprise, and that if the rape occurred it wouldn’t have been a “real” rape. Because you know that’s a thing. It is all so confusing for rapists and rape apologists. She goes on to invoke the Nice Guys post about how nice guys can commit rape, and her own post about how no means no is confusing when people aren’t saying yes. In her post she also talks about how a guy was raped by a woman (progressive! That will shut all us whiny feminists up.). But there is another school of thought: yes means yes. So if consent isn’t given then sex shouldn’t happen. It is that easy. And what is confusing about that?

I remember when I was in high school, and a friend of mine wanted to have sex with her boyfriend. He wouldn’t buy condoms. He wanted to have safe sex, but he was embarrassed and so was she. It took three of us to do it, when finally our third friend present lost her patience grabbed a pack and bought them for the happy couple. Now, I refused to buy them for my friends. You know why? Because if you can’t buy condoms, if you can’t ask for permission, if you can’t say what you want and don’t want, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Now that’s easy. But Schroeder keeps pulling out the “in a party environment we all do things we’re not proud of” defense.

Schroeder comes to this:

“I think most of them [drunk people i.e women] do not. I would venture to guess that most of them do not expect to wake up being penetrated by a man they did not give consent to. I don’t think they expect to be pushed up against a wall and so violently groped that it physically hurts. I think that’s just a story that this particular addict and rapist is telling himself to make it okay for him to continue partying—and raping.

“But he’s not the only one. No, he’s far from the only one. People, particularly young people, are putting themselves in dangerous situations on a regular basis because of their partying. A few hours, weeks, or years down the line, the hurt and pain caused by these scenarios might become very real to them and they will start to see the ways in which they were taken advantage of—or took advantage of others.

“We know that alcohol and drug use does not make anyone responsible for his or her sexual assault. However, we cannot continue to ignore the context in which many so-called “date rapes” and “acquaintance rapes” happen. (For the record, all rape is rape. Calling it “date rape” doesn’t make the crime any less horrific.) When you are drinking or drugging, regardless of whether you’re a man or a woman, your judgement is impaired. And for many, sexual desire is heightened.”

Get that? Young people, we suck and deserve what we get? Notice how the rapist from earlier is an addict first and rapist second? He never called himself an addict. I think it is interesting that Schroeder is assigning a label to him he wouldn’t use. He did however define himself as a rapist and that gets second billing. Maybe her language is actually presenting her feelings on the whole thing?

Schroeder then goes back to her article about calling people who commit rape bad. It is clearly unfair to call rapists bad people, after all they just raped someone. She says rape is complicated and doesn’t always look like what we think it does.

Rape looks exactly like what I think it does. You’re more likely to be raped by someone you know than by a stranger, and if we continue with the victim blaming, the “it wasn’t my fault” defense, and “I was drunk” defense then we get nowhere. Consent isn’t confusing; it is only confusing for people who don’t care about it. People who rape are capable of ignoring the wishes of others, violating them, and exercising privilege and control over another human being. That is my definition of a bad. Now, maybe this is an isolated incident, but the act is bad, and when you repeatedly perform this act then you are a bad person. Good people think their actions through. And fuck anyone who disagrees.

The rapist from earlier was completely flippant about his own rape, and expects everyone else to be as well. He doesn’t remember it, which doesn’t make it ok, but perhaps a clear traumatic memory would change his mind or maybe not. Maybe if a friend told him about a rape in graphic detail, he’d change his mind, but I doubt it. I think in the end he thinks all rapes when the rapist and/or the survivor are drunk are incoherent.