General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]ancianita
(36,053 posts)This issue was given much attention in the 1970's and died out when the evangelical bashing against feminism got into full swing.
As one famously maligned feminist, Andrea Dworkin, once argued -- from her research on reported and unreported rape data (official and unofficial), and by interviewing hundreds of night life people -- this particular argument: out of the 100 men who run the night, the one rapist who commits the one rape that will keep 99 other women wary, vigilant, and "insecure," as many of the complicit 99 silent men like to refer to women. Dworkin's claim -- and I have always agreed with her -- is that it only takes one rape to create the climate of the threat of violence. That the Hague has declared rape a war crime is an important step by the international community in challenging climates of fear enabled by men's silence.
Of course -- of course! -- women have sexual needs and desires and aggressively go out to satisfy them. But in public spaces, women will trust but verify. Women will stay vigilant. When it comes to men -- family or acquaintances -- most women not conditioned to adapt to male dominance take the position that equality is as equality does. The fact that rape is such a prevalent and criminally unprosecuted male behavior will always place the 99 non-rapist men in the inconvenient position of having to prove their trustworthiness.
Until men seriously make sure that rape gets the same rates of arrest and conviction from male-dominated law enforcement and judicial systems as do other personal crimes, men will be distrusted as seeing women as either pitiful, manipulatable puppets or as a "challenge" to "break." "Ganging up" in discussions, gaslighting and rape are the tools.
e: cleanup for clarity